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Stiles smelled like blood.
Derek really hated that.
“Stop squirming,” he said instead of admitting it. “You wanna go to the hospital instead?”
“I don’t need stitches,” Stiles said, jerking again when Derek wiped at one of the slices in his side. “And I trust my judgement better than yours seeing as I’ve had them and you have super healing.”
Derek sighed. “Just hold still.”
Okay, so maybe he put a little bit of a growl into the words, but he was half convinced the kid was going to fall into the sink with all the squirming and then he’d be bleeding again and he just needed Stiles to sit still for five minutes.
When Stiles was as taped and bandaged as he could get, Derek took a step back from where he sat on the bathroom counter. “You can get down now.”
Stiles nodded, but didn’t move. “I’m not entirely sure I can, actually.”
The kid tried to laugh, but it came out strangled. He bent in half at the waist and buried his face in his hands. Derek could see him shaking even from a few feet away and… what was that?
He frowned and took a step closer again until he could touch an angry red spot on the back of Stiles’ head. “What the hell happened to your hair?”
“Huh?” Stiles groped the back of his own head. “Oh, yeah. Lost a chunk. Got a little crispy, too. I’m probably going to have to buzz it again. Too bad, I was getting used to it being long.”
“There’s a razor in the top left drawer.”
The laugh this time is shaky but more like Stiles. “No. Thanks, but no. Last time I tried that was one of the times I had to get stitches. Although to be fair, it was mostly Scott’s fault…”
“I can do it, if you want.”
Stiles blinked up at him. “For real?”
“I almost made you cut my arm off once, Stiles. I think I can handle cutting your hair.”
“Alright.” Stiles waved his hand and grimaced. “I don’t think I could hold the thing anyways.”
There was a bruise there that Derek thought wouldn’t heal for days, maybe weeks. He didn’t know enough about human healing to be certain, but if other bruises took days, this one would surely take longer. Considering this one was spread, an angry red-purple, across half his hand. And it was Derek’s fault. He'd been trying to get Stiles out of the way, more wolf than human at the point and… kind of stepped on him.
It was not his finest moment.
He picked the ice pack up off the counter and pressed it over Stiles’ knuckles, then reached for the top drawer. “Take your shirt off so you can clean up easier after.”
Stiles slipped his good hand under the hem of his t-shirt and carefully eased it over his head. “God, getting dressed is gonna suck for a few days. Tell me a story.”
“What?” Derek blinked. “Are you five?”
“A wolf story.” Stiles rolled his sore shoulder carefully. “You had them when you were a kid, didn’t you? Tell me one of those.”
Derek threw a towel on the floor under his feet to catch the hair clipping and plugged the razor into the socket behind Stiles. “Like fairy tales? Little red riding hood who teased the wolf and nearly got herself killed by the hunter? The wolf who cried ‘boy’ and nobody listened?”
“Three little pigs?”
“You eat bacon,” Derek said, raising his eyebrows. “I’ve seen you put away half a pig yourself. The wolf shouldn’t get blamed for wanting an honest meal.”
Stiles grinned. “No, he shouldn’t. You pick. One you liked when you were a kid.”
“Yeah, alright.” Derek adjusted the razor as he thought, as he tried to remember he’d been told this story, the rhythm of the words. “Once there was a child,” he started slowly.
“Oh, goody.”
“You wanna hear a story or not?” When Stiles nodded, Derek continued. “Like, I said, there was a child. It was loved, very much, but its family died suddenly. Sickness, maybe, or an accident, or… it doesn’t matter.” He ran his fingers through Stiles’ hair a few times, just to check for knots. “The child was very young, little more than an infant, and it didn’t understand what had happened.”
“This is depressing,” Stiles mumbled.
Derek rolled his eyes. “And the woodsman sending his children into the woods to starve to death isn’t?” He palmed the back of Stiles’ head. “Be quiet and listen. The child cried, for it was lonely and frightened, cried as though its heart was breaking. There was a wolf pack nearby, and one of the alphas heard the cry. She was a mother of her own cubs, you see. Hold still.”
Stiles closed his eyes when the razor touched the top of his forehead, smiling a little. “Mother’s instincts?”
“Yeah.” Derek took off the first strip of hair easily. “She found the child and could tell what had happened to its family, could tell it was alone. The child was comfortable with her and the other wolves, more comfortable than any human they had encountered before. The wolf fell in love with the child and treated it the same as any of her other cubs.” Derek paused. “You’re – normally somebody would say, ‘Just like Mom.’”
“Why?” Stiles asked, gently.
“Tradition. My little sister was human. I had human cousins. It’s – it’s tradition. ‘Just like Mom,’ or ‘Of course’, or ‘As any mother would.’ Depends on who’s telling it and who’s listening.”
“Of course,” Stiles said.
Derek felt the corner of his mouth twitch up. “Right. So the wolf raised the child as her own and the child acted more wolf than human. Maybe it didn’t even realize it was different, when it had been treated as wolf for longer than it had been treated has human.”
He leaned back for a second, brushing a stray strand of hair away from Stiles’ nose when it twitched. “But the wolf knew, and she loved her cubs enough to let them go when they were old enough, and the human child was very much her cub. So she brought him to the village nearby and showed him other humans and then she left.”
“Oh,” Stiles said softly. “Depressing again, dude.”
“The child was heartbroken,” Derek agreed, adjusting the razor blade to trim the sides of Stiles’ hair. “He had been raised to be a wolf but wasn’t, fully, wasn’t fully human either. He spilled his heart to the moon because it was too hard talking to humans and the moon always listens. The moon hurt for him and so it made him wolf and human both, so that he could go between forms as he wished.”
Derek pressed Stiles’ head down to get the last bits at the back, then changed the razor setting one last time to clean up the edges. “And that’s where werewolves come from, sweet dreams, I love you, leave your sister alone and go to sleep.”
Stiles laughed. “You told me the bedtime werewolf stork story?”
“You asked for it.” Derek turned the razor off and set it down. “You’re done. You can shower if you want.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Stiles nudged Derek’s knee with his toes, then pulled him down to brush their mouths together. “Cool story, bro.”