Work Text:
Stiles knew that going to the old mansion in the hills was a bad idea the second he read the mysterious invitation that appeared under his door without a postmark.
His apartment building had three locked doors between the rundown street outside and the actual apartments, meaning whoever left the envelope had wormed their way through all three and knew exactly which apartment he’d moved into just two weeks before.
He hadn’t even updated his address at work yet.
*
He knew it was a bad idea when the date on the invitation finally came, and he stumbled out to his jeep straight off another double at the station, only stopping at home long enough to leave his uniform, gun, and badge behind.
If you can’t go there proud to be a cop, you either shouldn’t be going there, or you shouldn’t be a cop, his dad had always said.
Stiles was pretty sure both applied to this situation
*
He told himself it was a bad idea as he stopped the car at the end of the long, sloping driveway to stare up at the ominous house looming above him, illuminated only by lightning flashing in the dark night sky behind it.
It was pouring, he’d almost skidding off the road at one point because his brakes were a little sketchy and he couldn’t afford to get them fixed.
The last thing he’d said to his dad was for him to get his own coffee.
*
He almost listened to his gut instinct, standing in the entryway of the mansion and staring down at a velvet lined tray holding five other cell phones in a neat row with a space at the end. Three of them were totally identical iPhone models, no cases or any identifying marks whatsoever.
“If you would surrender your cell phone, you can join the others in the lounge for drinks. It's for everyone's privacy, we wouldn't want anything to be recorded.”
Stiles’ hand tightened around his phone reflexively as he glanced up at the ominously pleasant face of the house butler, Deaton; he wasn’t used to being completely cut off from backup, but he wanted this to end more than he wanted a safety net.
“Together, not the same, eh?” He joked with a weak grin as he added his much larger and brighter (and scuffed) Android to the line, squished in and overlapping the slim and pristine iPhone next to it. Deaton’s face didn’t even twitch as he righted it with more than a little attitude.
The sort of sharp metal ding on the back of Stiles’ phone left a scratch in the screen protector.
It took conscious effort to continue further into the house when out of the corner of his eye he saw the butler lock the phones behind a fancy secret panel in the wall.
The lock on the front door bolting into place echoed through the large and spacious house.
*
He knew, without a doubt, that it had definitely been a bad idea to come as he stared down at the lifeless corpse of the man who’d been blackmailing him for a year, standing in a room with five other guests who were finally out from under Gerard Argent’s thumb.
And one of them had killed him.
* * *
Derek looked from one guest to another—analyzing, listening, trying to gauge who was showing signs of guilt.
The storm had only taken out the lights for a moment, then a banshee scream overtook his senses, and when everything finally settled and the lights came back on, Argent was dead on the floor.
There was Scott, an alpha, who was kneeling over the body and inspecting it carefully. It had no distinctive scents on it as far as Derek could tell, which should’ve been impossible when he was stabbed at close range, but Scott was still hoping to find something. He refused to let it go and leave when the others suggested it.
Judging from Argent’s gloating comments, Scott’s only fault was using his werewolf abilities to get ahead in his med program. He hadn’t killed a human or put anyone in danger, but he was still considered to be interfering in human affairs, and that alone was enough to bring hunters down on him.
Technically he’d done wrong, but only for the purest of reasons: so he could use his abilities to help people in the place he could do the most good.
Next was Kira, who’d been nothing but pleasant and positive despite being blackmailed solely for, as far as Derek could tell, being a near-immortal kitsune. She had a steadying hand on Lydia’s shoulder, but she was also craning her neck to see the body around Scott; checking her handiwork or just morbid curiosity?
Lydia, Derek was pretty certain she hadn’t done it. Banshees were completely overtaken by their scream of death, unaware of anything else around them. There was no way he knew of that would’ve allowed Lydia to attack while screaming, she was still trying to pull herself together. Banshees announced death, predicted it, sometimes witnessed it from miles away, but they didn’t cause it.
Humans on the other hand…
He didn’t know what to think of Allison, the straight forward woman who was almost impossible to read. She was tense throughout the evening, which was understandable given the circumstances, but she was also incredibly aware of everything and everyone. Always watching, processing, on guard. Since the lights came back on, she’d hung back, glancing over occasionally, but always looking away. It was the most flustered Derek had seen her yet.
And that left the last person to arrive, Stiles. He’d been standing closest to Lydia when she screamed and was working his jaw, trying to get his ears to pop, not look overly concerned about standing a few feet from a dead body. Either he was used to bodies, or he’d been the one to put it there.
He was jittery and nervous, clearly hadn’t slept in a while judging by the shadows under his eyes, and he reeked of constantly ebbing and flowing anxiety since the moment he walked in, but it was impossible to tell if he was worked up over planning a crime, or if he was just like that. He was a contradiction; composed at the scene of a murder, an anxious mess the rest of the time.
Dangerous, Argent had called him.
“It's always the ones we least expect, isn't it, Stiles?” He’d said with his hands resting threateningly on Stiles’ shoulders. “The weakest of the bunch can be the most dangerous if the right buttons are pushed.”
“You’re getting pretty close to them, old man,” Stiles had replied with only the slightest tremor in his voice. It was unlikely any human would’ve been able to hear it.
Argent had laughed, deep in his chest, and patted Stiles’ shoulder once before leaning in closer to his ear to whisper: “She was a very dear friend of mine, you know.”
“He’s my dad,” was Stiles’ hard reply.
Stiles was human in a room of supernatural creatures. He hadn’t even known about their existence twenty minutes ago, and yet he was already muttering disgruntled curses against banshees as if their wails were a minor inconvenience he put up with daily. Yes, some humans did take the Big Reveal in stride with little more than a shrug, but some humans were also excellent liars.
Stiles seemed to fall into both categories.
* * *
Stiles stared down at the cell phone in his hand, the unsaved number of a just-missed call staring back at him.
“Call them back!” Scott hissed.
“And do what, pretend to be him?" Stiles snapped back. "I’m not known for my impressions! In fact, I’m known for being terrible at impressions! My Yoda tanked, and there is literally no one else on the planet who talks like that!”
He was panicking.
He wasn’t proud of it, but that’s what was happening, and there was nothing he could do but ride it out.
“What’s to stop us from killing you right here?” Derek had asked, in a very threatening manner, when Argent detailed the new ways they would be working for him in exchange for his silence. Stiles would be burying evidence, doctoring witness statements, going against everything he was raised to be and swore to do when he joined the Sheriff’s Department.
“The fact that my associate has instructions to release the evidence against you to the proper authorities if they don’t hear from me every hour that I’m in this house.”
Now Argent was dead, it’d been one hour since he arrived, and his associate’s check-in call had gone to voicemail while everyone scrambled to accuse each other of not actually surrendering their phones.
And also of murder. There were a lot of murder accusations being tossed around.
The entire reason Stiles came to this stupid evening was to keep his skeletons in the closet, bend his already murky morals a little bit more, and he couldn’t even do that right. He just stared down at the phone in his hand, looked at his own reflection, and tried to picture the look on his father’s face when the evidence crossed his desk that his own son had murdered someone and covered it up.
He probably wouldn’t even be surprised at this point, not with the way Stiles had been acting ever since. Working too long, too many hours, getting less and less sleep as the nightmares of accusing faces just got worse and more twisted the longer he obsessed over it. He was breaking, and he couldn’t tell anyone, and now he was going to lose everything.
So yeah, he was panicking.
Suddenly the phone was snatched out of his shaking hand, jolting him out of his spiral, and he looked up to see Derek put the phone to his ear. Had he been standing that close before? He glanced over at Stiles, and it felt like even that brief glance cut straight through him. He knew. He had to know what he’d done.
Derek opened his mouth to say something, but stopped, took the phone from his ear, and turned his head away to listen to something in the distance.
“Do you—” Scott started, and Derek nodded.
“What is it?” Lydia asked sharply from where she sat with Allison.
“The phone that called is somewhere inside this house,” Derek answered, disconnecting the call to dial again as he hurried out of the room.
Stiles exchanged a quick glance with Scott before they both took off after him, footsteps of the others close behind.
If Argent’s partner was inside the house, he still had a chance to fix this.
* * *
Derek followed the generic ringtone into the kitchen at the back of the house. The phone sat on the otherwise empty and pristine counter, and aside from the five people coming up behind him, there were no other heartbeats nearby. None in the old mansion at all.
“Deaton,” Scott said what he was thinking. They should’ve been able to hear Deaton anywhere in the house.
“That’s his?” Stiles swiped the iPhone right out of Derek’s hand, payback, probably. He angled it in the overhead light while he studied it closely, totally focused and calm now that he had something to focus on. “No, this is one of ours,” he announced, and pointed to nothing on the left side of the screen.“My phone left this scratch when I put it on the tray.”
Derek could see even less of the nothing when the screen responded and lit up under his touch, with a pastel patterned background behind the lockscreen.
“Wait, that’s my phone,” Kira said, shouldering between Scott and Lydia to get closer. “Deaton took it when I got here.” Meaning the creep had definitely been snooping through their phones this entire time, pins be damned, probably looking for more ammunition against them. And conveniently, the only concrete evidence of this night would be a single call from Kira to Argent at the time he died, dragging her into any investigation that took place.
“Okay well he can’t have gotten far,” Stiles started to mull it over aloud, handing the phone back, “this kitchen only exits into the hall where we came from, right? And the dogs outside would’ve started barking if he left out the back. So he has to still be in here somewhere.”
“He could be masking himself somehow.” Derek couldn't hear him anywhere, and his scent was too embedded in the old house over time to track him that way.
“Okay then we split up and search,” Stiles decided, and immediately the other four shifted into teams of two. Apparently they’d all made tentative bonds in the short hour they'd been there; Lydia and Allison, Kira and Scott.
“This doesn't seem like a great idea,” Kira said, even though she didn't seem to be complaining about the partner she chose. Scott nodded.
“I'm with her. Strength in numbers, right?”
“And what's to stop him from waltzing out the front door while we're all upstairs with our strength in numbers?” Derek asked, resisting an immature eyeroll.
His point landed and everyone agreed, if somewhat reluctantly, and a quick game of rock, paper, scissors determined that Scott and Kira would take the basement, Derek and Stiles the first floor, and Allison and Lydia the upstairs and attic.
They all parted ways, and Derek was left with Stiles in the otherwise empty kitchen. It didn't feel all that empty though; Stiles and his vibrating energy had a way of taking up space even after he'd calmed down. He was focused now, he had a goal and was seemingly right at home as he began to methodically open closets and cupboards.
Derek didn’t know what he was expecting to find in places a grown man certainly couldn’t fit, but he kept moving down the line of drawers, never really touching anything enough to leave anything behind. He didn’t seem to be realizing he was even doing it. Like it was a habit.
“So what’s he got on you?” Stiles broke the silence; trying to be casual but clearly he’d been dying the ask the question for a while now.
Derek looked back at him, and his face must’ve conveyed just how much he didn’t trust Stiles, because he nodded a little sheepishly and went back to poking around in the fridge.
“Sorry, I’m nosy. Comes with the job.”
“You’re a cop right?” Derek asked. It made the most sense given his behavior.
“Deputy. How’d you know?”
“You’re observant. Always watching everyone, but you don’t move like a soldier.” He opened the large pantry, glanced over the shelves of cooking supplies, and closed the door again. “At first I thought you were a wolf.” He could feel the waves of smugness from Stiles until he added with a shrug, “but you’re too jumpy.”
“Hey, I think I have a right to be a little jumpy when I’m locked in a mansion with a murderer, no gun, no backup, and werewolves.”
Derek shrugged as he moved on to look elsewhere. “I’d be more worried about the missing butler with the power to ruin and control your life.”
“Oh believe me,” Stiles scoffed as Derek heard him yank on the handle of the walk-in freezer. “I’m worried about him too. I have more than enough fear and anxiety to—”
He was cut off by a metallic clang and a yelp.
Derek spun around to see Stiles slowly collapsing under the weight of Deaton’s limp body, a large bloody wound on the back of his bald head.
* * *
At this rate, Stiles was going to be scarred for life. Or at least, more than he already was. No more occasional peaceful nights of sleep, he could easily predict that one; nightmares and panic attacks forever, from here on ‘til death. If death didn’t come before he had a chance to sleep again, that is. There was really no way to tell in his present situation.
It wasn’t that he’d never seen a dead body—he was a deputy living in a really sketchy side of town, and had even made one himself that he couldn’t shake from his nightmares—but he’d never had one fall on him before. It was a very different experience.
He would never feel clean again.
“Blunt force trauma to the head,” Scott announced where he crouched over the body, rather unnecessarily given the gaping wound in the back of Deaton’s head and the bloody section of pipe that had fallen out of the freezer with the body. “It’s fresh. Still bleeding.”
Stiles pressed his fingers into his eyes and took a deep, sort of not really calming breath. “Yes, but see the problem with that is that it means someone else killed him very quickly in the short amount of time between him calling Argent and us getting here.”
“Or he wasn’t the one to call in the first place,” Derek added, like that didn’t make everything ten times worse.
“Which means that either we’re all still royally fucked, unless one of us went ahead and took care of the problem.” Everyone looked around at everyone else, and literally everyone looked shifty. “Come on guys, own up so we can go home. I’ll even give you twenty bucks and a high five.” He wouldn’t even arrest them. He was more than fine with ignoring his badge for the night if it meant that he could be done with all of this and finally go back to living his life.
He would probably collapse into a mental breakdown under the crushing guilt at some point, but that was a problem for Future Stiles to deal with.
Pft, like his brain would ever leave a problem for Future Stiles to deal with. Past, Present, and Future Stiles would all be obsessing over it, in every possible parallel universe whether he knew what he was obsessing over or not. The fear and anxiety would be there.
No one stepped forward, even with Derek’s intimidating eyebrows aimed in their direction, until finally Lydia broke the silence.
“You do realize that we were all in the same room at the time, and we definitely would’ve noticed someone sprinting to the kitchen and back, right?”
That condescending tone was wholly unnecessary and really trying Stiles’ patience. “Yes, I’m aware of that, thank you. Pardon me for trying to be an optimist for once.”
“Okay then,” Allison stepped up next to Lydia like some kind of bodyguard, “we keep searching the house. Either there’s someone else here, or someone’s lying. Either way, we’ll figure it out.”
She had both an air and the eyebrows of authority, and Stiles found himself not wanting to argue with her.
He really had to look into these strong eyebrows sometime; it would be nice to not have everyone ignore or second guess every damn thing he said.
With a satisfied nod of superiority, Lydia and Allison left the kitchen like they were the two coolest girls in school; untouchable by mortals and probably dating each other because no one else was worthy.
Scott and Kira followed them out awkwardly with zero percent of their confidence or authority. Kira tripped over the threshold.
“So…” Stiles started, really wishing for eyebrows of confidence now that he was stuck with Derek alone again, “library next?”
Derek just nodded and led the way.
* * *
There was nothing in the library or the study, or the dining room or the ballroom or the conservatory where Stiles tripped over a very expensive vase holding a very rare flower. They returned to the lounge where they’d all first met, both edging around the body of Gerard Argent, still lying sprawled on the carpet.
It looked like a very expensive carpet. Too bad there was a massive blood stain right in the center of it.
“I hope the others are having more luck than we are,” Stiles muttered, whipping back a heavy curtain, probably more out of frustration than thinking there might be someone hidden behind it.
“They aren’t.” Derek had been keeping an ear on them the entire time. Scott and Kira were flirting in a painfully awkward and innocent kind of way, very high school, while Allison and Lydia methodically cleared rooms and talked smack about everyone else. Neither thought highly of Stiles’ fashion choices, Kira was too smiley for their taste, and they both agreed that Derek had definitely killed people before.
There were no heartbeats unaccounted for, no weird scents, nothing to suggest there was anyone else in the house. Meaning one of them was the accomplice, or had killed the accomplice and taken the evidence, because it was nowhere to be found on Deaton. He didn’t have a personal phone on him, just Kira’s, nor did he have a thumb drive of any kind.
At least, not in any of the usual cavities, Stiles had pointed out with a grimace. They decided to shelve that option for when they got truly desperate.
Stiles groaned in frustration and kicked the antique sofa. “What’s the point in bringing us all up here? Is it just a power play? Did he want to rub our faces in the fact that he has all of us by the balls? Why not just tell us in private that we're fucked for life and move on?”
Derek had been wondering the same thing. “I guess it's more efficient doing it all at once.”
“Yeah, but why risk having us all meet and gang up on him? He had to know this wasn't going to end well for him.”
“He probably thought we were too desperate to try anything.”
Stiles snorted. “You’d think a guy who blackmails this many people at once would know that desperate people do crazy things.”
“He hunts down werewolves purely because of what they are, whether they’ve done anything wrong or not. I wouldn’t say he’s the pinnacle of mental health and rational thinking.” Derek pulled open one of the drawers in the sideboard and sifted through the contents. He didn’t know what form the evidence would take, probably just a thumb drive, but it wouldn’t hurt to check nonetheless. “He kills for sport and bragging rights among other hunters.
Nothing. Just old papers, receipts, notes, pens, playing cards, nothing out of the ordinary or incriminating in the least.
At least until Stiles blurted out: “I killed someone.”
* * *
Derek looked over his shoulder in surprise and Stiles immediately regretted saying anything. He hadn’t intended to, but this was probably the last time he would ever see Derek anyway and it just came out. It was bound to happen eventually after a year of it sitting on the tip of his tongue, stewing in guilt. He was just glad it hadn’t been at his dad. Derek was a much safer option.
“Not tonight, a little over a year ago,” he quickly added when Derek seemed to be putting things together wrong.
He straightened and shut the drawer he’d been looking through, turning his full attention to Stiles. “Doesn’t that come with your job?”
“I wasn’t on duty. And I didn’t report it.” He saw the moment Derek realized this was the reason for the blackmail. The reason his entire life and being had fallen apart, the reason he was breaking down.
“Did you have a good reason?”
Stiles thought back on that night, still so vivid in his mind almost a year later; the sneering, taunting, threats against his dad, the gleeful way the woman ran her gloved fingers over family portraits on the wall.
The sound her body made when it hit the wood floor.
“I’d do it again.”
It wasn’t a real answer to the question, but Derek didn’t call him on it.
Stiles didn’t even have a real answer to that question; it wasn’t self-defense, not really. Not when the woman’s own gun had been tucked away and her back turned. But the way she’d had it all planned out, calmly detailed how she’d do it without actually admitting anything she could be arrested on—Stiles had to protect the only family he had left. Maybe not justifiable in the court of law, but to him, it was more than enough.
“Does anyone else know?”
“Argent did. His partner, probably.” He couldn’t tell anyone in his life; he’d seen their accusing expressions and disgust and fear too many times in his nightmares already. If he saw them in person, real and tangible, he would shatter on the spot.
Derek’s face held none of those things. He was processing, asking questions, but there was no judgment.
“So you haven’t talked to anyone about it. Is that why you don’t sleep?”
“How do you—” Stiles’ heart picked up with fear. Argent had men constantly following him, stalking him to and from work, to his dad’s house, always present and reminding him. If Derek was one of them...
“You look exhausted, pale and jittery, you smell like coffee and stress—you’re a cop so I’m guessing you’ve had to pick up extra shifts to afford the blackmail payments.”
Stiles nodded instead of adding on all the things he’d had to sell as well, the constant moving to progressively shittier parts of town, his broken jeep that wasn’t safe to drive in its current state, the nights he went hungry.
“Nightmares?”
“Almost every night. It’s awesome.” He forced a humorless grin. They didn’t used to be so bad, but the men following him, the invitation sitting on his kitchen counter the last two weeks to remind him—they’d gotten infinitely worse. He was actually grateful he lived in such a terrible area because no one would ask questions when he woke up screaming.
“The do fade. Eventually,” Derek finally said.
“Speaking from experience?”
“Why do you think I’m here?”
Stiles squinted at him, studying Derek in an entirely new light. He’d assumed his blackmail was something like being so attractive he’d had a number of affairs with important people, real high society, soap opera kind of stuff, when in fact, he might just be the only person there on Stiles’ level. All the stories he’d heard so far were full of the best intentions and the greater good. Seriously, who let themselves be crushed under the weight of blackmail solely so they could save lives? Scott was far too good a person to be stuck in this house with Stiles. They didn’t even belong in the same county.
Stiles crossed his arms, nonchalantly leaning back against the wall and trying to look as cool and rugged as the man with the chiseled jaw before him.
“Derek, I have to say, you have unsuspected dep—” The wall behind him suddenly gave way, and he was falling backwards, probably would’ve cracked his skull open had Derek not grabbed him with superhuman speed and strength.
Boy, was that an unexpected turn on.
Still held in Derek’s attractively muscled arms, Stiles craned his neck to look behind him, where the wall had opened up to reveal another room—no, not a room, he realized when he looked to the side, it was a passage. Only a couple feet wide, sandwiched between two brick walls, dimly lit by the air vents leading to the rooms on either side.
It was a secret motherfucking passageway.
Derek scooped him back up to stand, so quickly that his head spun for a moment, and when it stopped, the werewolf was already half into the wall.
“I’ll go first, I can see in the dark.”
Of course he could.
He held out a hand behind him—to guide Stiles through, he realized belatedly, after staring at it and feeling entirely flustered for a little too long. Then he grabbed it a little too fast to try to make up for the staring, and he definitely saw Derek smirk as he disappeared into the darkened passage.
Bastard.
At least he didn’t go as far as to comment on the fact that Stiles was also probably a little too close to him the entire time they were in that passage. He couldn’t help it. Yes, he was a cop and had gotten used to going into darkened buildings, but he usually had a flashlight, a gun, and quite a bit of backup right there with him. Here it was just him and Derek’s hand in the pitch black and narrow space between two walls that his shoulders kept bumping into.
“I think we’re at the end.” Derek murmured as he stopped, still surrounded by darkness identical to all the previous darkness. They’d only been in there for a couple minutes, probably hadn’t walked the length of the house yet.
Stiles waited for a few beats for him to do something, but it was silent aside from what he assumed was Derek using his free hand to feel around the walls. “There is a way out, right?”
“If I can get it to—”
Stiles squinted in the sudden brightness when the wall cracked open and let Derek continue to guide him forward.
“Fuck,” Derek said suddenly, and Stiles forced his eyes open to find that he completely agreed, and that really summed up his feelings on the situation perfectly.
There they stood in the kitchen, Deaton’s body still lying at their feet, having just come out of the walk-in freezer.
Meaning that if they moved fast enough, any one of them could’ve snuck off to the kitchen and killed Deaton while they were all too busy arguing over a phone call.
*
No one took the news particularly well. The second Stiles popped back out of the wall panel to the waiting group in the lounge, all hell broke loose around him. Accusations had even been directed at him briefly, until he pointed out that he’d literally been holding Argent’s phone throughout the entire window of Deaton’s death and couldn’t very well have rushed off to kill someone without them noticing.
So there he was, standing in the middle of five supernatural creatures who were all phenomenally stronger than he was, trying to keep some semblance of order and understand what they were even yelling.
Lydia was accusing Derek, Kira yelling about timing, Scott firmly denying that even his alpha speed could let him pull it, Allison repeating over and over again that it was her, Derek—
“Wait, what?” Stiles wildly threw his hands around to get everyone to shut the hell up for a second, and pointed to Allison. “You. What did you just say?”
“I said I killed them.” She lifted her chin as she said this, as if daring anyone to...what, deny it? Take the fall for her? That certainly wasn’t going to happen, but she was daring them to do something, that was for sure.
“No you didn’t, because I killed Deaton,” Lydia said as she stepped forward, proving Stiles epically wrong. “I overheard him talking to Gerard when I first got here.
Stiles ran his hands over his face, scrubbing away a much louder and more violent reaction.
“And why didn’t either of you say anything like two hours ago?”
“We hadn’t found the evidence yet. I wasn’t sure if one of you had taken it to use against the rest of us.”
“You guys found it?” Scott asked excitedly.
“We found it,” Allison confirmed, holding up a thumb drive. “It wasn’t in any of his usual hiding places so it took a little longer than I thought it would.”
“How do you know his usual hiding places?” Kira asked, and her mind definitely went straight into the gutter with Stiles’. A surprise, coming from her sunny and angelic face.
“Because he’s my grandfather.”
There was a moment of confused silence at Allison’s totally unexpected statement until it clicked. Stiles had so many thoughts going through his mind he didn’t even know where to start, couldn’t do much beyond look wildly between the Allison and the body on the floor, as if their faces would suddenly look similar if he looked fast enough.
“He’s—” Scott started, frowning.
“You’re an Argent.” Derek growled—literally growled—from right behind Stiles, and then lunged around him and towards her with glowing blue eyes. Again, just for emphasis: glowing blue eyes.
Stiles didn’t know what he was thinking, he wasn’t really thinking, to be honest, he was acting purely on his stupid, ingrained, defender of justice instinct when he threw himself between the two of them, and what he’d done didn’t really register until it was too late. There was a very pissed off werewolf coming at him, and he regretted everything.
“Whoa, whoa, Derek! Chill out for a second!” He threw out his hands to stop him, and miraculously, it worked. He was still alive and not torn to shreds by the literal claws that had sprouted from Derek’s fingertips. Again for emphasis: claws sprouted from his fingertips.
“She’s in on it. She’s working with him,” Derek protested, still standing a little too close to Stiles, but Stiles was still too busy dealing with a near-death experience and the fantastically stubbled jaw in his face to back up. He was just trying to focus on breathing for the moment, getting his heart to calm the fuck down, and not on the very solid chest brushing against his own.
“We don’t know that for sure,” Lydia said, dismissively, as if she were explaining this to particularly slow children. “Why don’t we all sit down and give her a chance to explain before someone else gets murdered tonight?”
No one moved.
Lydia arched an eyebrow, and everyone very quickly found a place to sit, and Stiles found himself on a loveseat with Derek.
Allison took a deep breath, shooting Lydia a grateful smile before she spoke.
“Gerard is—was my grandfather, but I wasn’t working with him. He was blackmailing me too, for years, and I couldn’t take it anymore. That's why I invited you all here.”
“Why did you invite Gerard too?” Kira asked, which was a fair question.
“I didn't, he found out somehow. Probably through Deaton. I was hoping that if we all came together, put the entire story together, we could come up with a way to confront him. We could get out from under his thumb.”
“Story?” Scott frowned, “what story?”
“The Hale fire. Four years ago today.”
Everyone shifted in a way that suggested everyone was familiar with the story, Stiles certainly was. He was in college at the time, but his dad spent months obsessing over it, and still did. Every once in awhile when Stiles was back at the house, he would see the cold casefile sitting out, half tucked under a newspaper to hide it.
“The thing I was being blackmailed with was my involvement in the fire,” Allison confessed, and her eyes flicked up from the carpet to Derek. “I didn’t know what I was working on, and I tried to stop it when I realized, but it was too late.”
Beside Stiles, Derek was shaking. He couldn’t see it, only feel it through the cushion they shared, but he could definitely hear the rumbling in his chest that sounded like a growl in the making, see his clenched jaw and eyes glowing blue. It should’ve been terrifying, but his eyes weren’t angry, they were devastated.
“I went to the Sheriff in charge of the investigation, and I tried to tell him, but Gerard found out before I could give him any evidence.”
The witness Stiles’ dad bemoaned during the hard evenings when the whiskey came out. The one who refused to speak to him again and then disappeared completely. Now that it was coming together, it was amazing how long these people had appeared in his life, considering they’d never met just three hours ago.
“My family is a matriarchal hunting family,” Allison continued. “My mother was the head of the family until she died right before the fire. I had just taken her place, and Gerard said that if I ever talked to the police again, he would pin the entire thing on me and my aunt Kate would take over the family. No werewolves in Beacon Hills would’ve survived her, whether they broke the code or not.”
“Kate set the fire,” Lydia said quietly. Her eyes were large, fixed on some distant memory. She didn’t look like she was even aware of anyone else in the room, but the moment everyone turned to her, she raised her eyes to Derek. “I saw it. That was the night I awoke as a banshee.”
The air in the room got heavy, thick with tension; Derek was coiled tight and ready to spring at the slightest provocation and everyone seemed to be aware of it, and yet Stiles was dying to ask...
“And what exactly does awakening as a banshee entail?”
It might’ve been insensitive—and it definitely was judging by her scathing glare—but Stiles was genuinely curious, and what were the odds that he would ever meet a banshee again?
“I woke up from a coma in the hospital three days later, spent the next few months slowly losing my mind, flunked out of my graduate program, and now have to solve murders for the reward money to pay off my debt and still afford the blackmail payments.”
Kira cleared her throat awkwardly in the shocked silence that followed, looking literally anywhere that wasn’t a person. Stiles could relate. If that wasn’t an answer specifically to make him regret asking, he would eat his own foot. And Derek’s.
“That’s rough,” he said belatedly, because how do you even respond to that?
* * *
Derek huffed a laugh before he could stop himself, and it set something loose in his chest, knocked something free that allowed him to breathe again.
He let the conversation fade away, focusing on his body now that he’d backed away from blind rage, reining in the grief and anger and packing it away—measuring his breathing carefully and easing the claws back where they’d come from. Concentrating on the feel of the velvet cushion under his human fingertips, the warmth of Stiles next to him.
The feeling of a pinky hooking tentatively around his and squeezing gently. Someone on his side, pulling him back away from his mind. It was like cool water sweeping over his shoulder blades, down his back as his wolf features slinked back into hiding, the opposite of the boiling hot tidal wave that had brought the change ripping through him.
Did Stiles know it was Derek’s family who died in that fire? Probably, he was a deputy in town, even if he hadn’t been on the force when he happened, but did he know that that Derek had been the one to let the murderer into their home? That he’d ripped her throat out when he finally found her?
Would he still have reached out if he knew?
Slowly, painfully so, Derek looked to the side, barely moving his head more than a centimeter or two, terrified that if he reacted too obviously, it would scare Stiles into letting go. But Stiles seemed to be completely focused on the others, listening with excited eyes, soaking up all the information he could on this new world of the supernatural. Banshees, werewolves, hunters, kitsunes—he’d only just begun, but Derek could tell that it would be impossible for him to let it go after all this. Not after the way he’d lit up like a spark the second the night turned morbidly exciting.
He didn’t break away from the conversation or even glance in Derek’s direction, but his pinky squeezed just a little bit tighter like a reassurance.
With someone finally standing with him, figuratively, for the first time in four years, Derek faced the conversation again.
Kira was describing her role, her foxfire having been used to start the fire that killed his family, which explained why there had never been a determined point of origin. The Argents had stolen her tails and still had them, a part of her soul, essentially, and were using them as leverage to make her cooperate.
Allison went on to explain the sudden death of the fire marshal three years ago, two deputies, the way her family had continuously held back the investigation through even more blackmail of innocent humans. It was ironic, their interference in the human world and laws, considering they would kill a wolf for doing far less.
“And then a year ago,” Allison glanced to Stiles, “Gerard found out that the Sheriff hadn’t dropped the case like he was supposed to, so he sent one of his hunters to kill him.”
“And she found me instead,” Stiles finished, taking a deep breath as waves of his anxiety washed over Derek. He shifted his hand just enough to squeeze Stiles’ pinky and try to return the comfort he’d taken from it.
“Exactly. We found her body even after you hid it, she was taken to the morgue—”
“And I did her autopsy,” Scott finished, picking up the story, “I was doing a rotation down in the morgue, the ME was a total alcoholic and constantly let students take lead so he could take days off when he was hungover. Gerard found me, said he knew what I was and how I’d got to the top of my class, and that I had to declare it an animal attack or he would expose me.” He paused, swallowed, and looked horribly pained when he finally admitted, “they used my report to prove that an innocent werewolf had broken the code. They cut her in half and left her body in the woods.”
“And I was one of the deputies called out to find it,” Stiles muttered, more to himself then to the room, but Derek heard the wave of panicked hearts as the news sunk it.
“You’re a cop?” Kira asked quietly. There was a flicker of orange around her, a brief glimpse of her aura, as she temporarily lost control of her true self. With all the confessions that had happened, everyone was worried.
Stiles shook his head. “Not tonight. As far as I’m concerned, I have no jurisdiction over supernatural matters like this. You guys have been policing yourselves for as long as you’ve been in Beacon Hills, I see no reason to get the law involved now.” He paused. “Even if I did, I don’t even know where to begin to write this up. The paperwork alone would be a literal nightmare.”
*
They burned the flash drive in the lounge, and immediately regretted it at the smell of burning plastic. Scott assured them that the symbolism of moving past this together more than made up for it.
Then they went through the house room by room under Stiles’ supervision, cleaning up any trace that they’d been there, and locked it up tight. Allison would return in a couple days, find the bodies of her grandfather and his butler in their summer home, and call the police.
Kira left first, with a promise from Allison to return her tails to her, but not before she passed a folded piece of paper to Scott.
Lydia was next, after asking that none of them contact her again, but her gaze lingered on Allison in a way that said she was the exception to that rule.
Scott shook everyone’s hands like a true gentleman before leaving, and Allison took one last look up at the house before nodding to Stiles and Derek and climbing into her own car.
Stiles and Derek stood in silence a little longer, until the very last pair of tail lights had faded between the dark trees of the forest down the winding driveway.
They should both leave, Derek knew that. They’d had a horrible experience there and needed to get as much distance from it as they could, both for criminal and psychological reasons. And yet they stayed, shuffling and picking at clothing, always finding another excuse to linger.
Stiles dropped his keys, picked them up.
Derek gave a very brief history of the architectural style of the house.
Stiles gave an exhaustive list of everything he was going to get fixed on his old jeep (which Derek decided he would be following all the way back to town in case something went wrong).
Derek pointed out a few constellations in the clear night sky now that the storm had passed.
Stiles huffed a laugh, squeezed the keys in his hand, and finally said it.
“Okay look, this is probably...super inappropriate given everything that’s happened tonight, but,” he looked away, took a bracing deep breath, “I really don’t think I was imaging everything between us and I’d really rather not be alone tonight. After this. And everything.”
Derek’s chest tightened as he took in the nervous jitters, his fingers tapping together at his side, the vulnerability in his eyes when he finally looked back for an answer.
Given what he’d learned about Stiles this evening, there was a good chance this was the first time he’d asked for something he really needed, admitted he needed anything at all.
“No, you definitely didn’t imagine it,” Derek said with a grin that Stiles almost shyly returned (which was ridiculous, really, there was no need to be shy after covering up a murder together), “and I’d really rather not be alone tonight either.”
Stiles let out a breath he’d been holding.
“Okay. Great. Awesome. Oh, and fair warning, I’ll probably have nightmares from now until forever, because a body fell on me. I don’t even know what to do with that—I mean, shower, obviously, like six times, in disinfectant, but beyond that—I don’t know, get new skin? They say that’ll only take seven years, you know, dead skin cells getting replaced, but that really—”
“Stiles,” Derek interrupted before he passed out from his own ramblings, “get in your car. I’ll follow you back to your place.”
Stiles took a deep breath, looked at his jeep, then turned back grinning.
“You know, that totally makes you sound like some kind of murderer.”
Derek glared.
“What, too soon?”
He walked away, heading to his own car, leaving Stiles to confirm to himself,
“Yeah, too soon.”
* * *
The next day, it was reported that the entire house went up in flames and burned to the ground before the fire department could get it under control.
Stiles cashed in his saved up vacation days and quietly avoided the whole mess. He spent the blackmail payment he’d set aside on restocking his entire fridge and sending the jeep into the shop, caught up on his sleep, and when he jerked awake from a nightmare of accusing eyes and bloody hands, there was a warm arm wrapping around his waist to pull him back into sleep.