Chapter Text
Ow.
Stiles’ head really hurt. He groans at the feeling, it’s as if someone went in there and yanked something out. Something tightens its hold on his hand, and he thinks someone’s talking, but he can’t hear anything over this horribly painful, empty feeling in his skull.
After a minute or so he finally gets the hang of ignoring it, as pushing past pain is unfortunately a skill he’s had to learn since his best friend became a werewolf and he started getting attacked by the supernatural on a daily basis.
He manages to crack his eyes open, the room thankfully dim enough to bear. His eyes widen in alarm as he notices that the first thing he sees is not, in fact, a ceiling or even the sky as he had expected, but instead a face.
Derek was, for some reason, leaning over the bed Stiles was in and hovering directly over him. Stiles now realizes that the thing that tightened over his hand was definitely Derek’s hand. Holding his.
Suddenly the strange headache wasn’t the weirdest thing about this moment.
“Uh, hi,” Stiles manages to croak out, after it seems that the weirdly-intense face of Derek wasn’t going to speak.
Derek’s face seems to relax somewhat, though he’s definitely still rocking some irritated eyebrows.
“What day is it?” Derek asks, still hovering uncomfortably over him. Not even unnecessarily uncomfortable for Stiles, though it definitely was a bit strange, but it just seemed an uncomfortable position for Derek to maintain.
Stiles squints up at him, thoroughly confused. “Um, Saturday,” he says.
Derek glares at him for reasons Stiles cannot parse, but he always seems to be glaring at Stiles so it wasn’t that out of the ordinary.
“Which Saturday?” Derek asks, his jaw clenched.
“The 11th, I think. May 11th,” he replies, though it’s honestly more of a guess. He’s not the best with keeping track of the date.
Derek’s face immediately seems to completely shift into pure relief, and it actually unsettles Stiles because he doesn’t think he’s ever seen the man so unburdened. He collapses down on top of him, though thankfully catches himself at the last moment so he doesn’t squish the man below. Derek buries his face in Stiles’ neck and seems content to just… stay there.
Was he sniffing him?
Stiles just lays there, frozen, because he honestly doesn’t know how to react to this.
“Derek! Get off of him, oh my god,” he hears from the doorway, Erica’s voice.
Derek finally sits up, falling back into the chair that he had been neglecting to use to instead hover creepily over him.
Erica comes over and rests her hand on Derek’s shoulder, a juxtaposition to her irritated tone with him, “give him some space for once, will you?”
Derek doesn’t even react to her tone, he just mumbles out, “he thinks it’s the eleventh, he’s only lost a week.” His eyes are still glued to Stiles, relieved disbelief carved into every inch of his face.
“I’m sorry, what?” Stiles cuts in before Erica can respond to that, “can someone fill me in here? I’m starting to freak out.”
And for a multitude of very good reasons, thank you very much. For one he was still reeling from Derek smelling his neck, then there was him talking like Stiles was some amnesia patient, and also a fact that Stiles is just now noticing, is that he has no idea where he is. A bedroom, obviously, one with admittedly very soft sheets and a really nice pillow, but a bedroom he did not recognize. This wasn’t his own room, wasn’t Scott’s, and it definitely wasn’t a hospital. Where he should probably be if he really was an amnesia risk.
“Witch zapped you in the forest, said something or other about taking your memories,” Erica summarizes succinctly, her free hand waving in some half-assed gesture somehow meant to convey this, “it’s the 17th, you’ve only got about a week gone.”
“Okay, well,” that was a lot to process, but, “that’s not so bad, really.”
Erica snorts and smacks Derek on the shoulder before removing her hand entirely, “had him worried out of his mind for no reason.”
“Sorry?” Stiles says, though he’s not really sorry. Whatever lead up to the witch zapping him was definitely not his fault. Probably. Maybe. Okay, there was like a 50% chance it wasn’t his fault. And it wasn’t like Derek would actually be worried about him.
She rolls her eyes and goes to leave, “the pizza just got here, I need to grab a box before the animals devour it all, I suggest you guys do the same.”
After she leaves, it’s just Stiles and Derek.
Stiles sits up in the bed, because he feels kind of like some coma patient on Grey’s Anatomy with him lying down and Derek in the chair next to him.
Derek’s hands immediately rush out to help him, adjusting his pillow and helping him scoot up. Definitely not helping the coma energy here.
“Are you feeling okay?” Derek asks after staring at him for definitely too long.
Stiles frowns as he thinks for a moment. His head still feels weird, but it doesn’t really hurt anymore, per say. Just feels like something’s missing. He supposes that must be from the witch taking a week of memories. The rest of him feels perfectly fine, though a little hungry now that Erica had mentioned pizza.
“I’m fine,” Stiles says, watching Derek for a moment before adding, “are you?”
Because Derek was honestly acting way stranger than the amnesiac here. Whenever Stiles gets hurt, which is unfortunately often, he usually just recuperates by himself. Scott or Lydia will help bandage him if it’s really severe, but there’s definitely no one hovering at his side like they were a worried spouse. And the worried spouse in this vignette certainly wouldn’t be Derek.
Derek nods, his eyes darting around Stiles’ face, as if reaffirming to himself that he really was fine.
“I am starving though,” Stiles admits and goes to stand up, swinging his legs around, “let’s go get pizza.”
Derek is immediately on his feet, putting a hand in Stiles’ shoulder as if to keep him there, “I’ll get some for you, stay here.”
Stiles eyes him strangely, “um, dude, my memories are busted, not my legs. Think I’ll be okay.”
Derek stares at him a moment, his gaze oddly intense, before removing his hand and straightening.
Stiles manages to navigate to the pizza, following his nose since he still has no clue where he is. He lets out a triumphant noise as he rounds a corner to find a den, filled with people eating pizza, a few boxes on the coffee table. Man, Stiles is good at this scent stuff, maybe he’s becoming a werewolf just from hanging out with so many. Like osmosis.
Scott waves at him with a slice of pizza from his spot on one of the couches, his other arm occupied with being curled around Kira. Who is tucked into his side with a pizza slice of her own. Isaac is next to them, offering Stiles a smile around a mouthful of pizza. Cora is leaned against the armrest, her feet resting next to Isaac, currently stuffing a large slice in her mouth. On the other couch sits Boyd and Erica, and next to them sits Lydia (the only one to actually have a plate) and Jackson.
…and Jackson? What the hell was that jackass doing here?
Before he had a chance to ask, Erica shouts out, “how you feeling, amnesia boy?”
Stiles rolls his eyes as he walks over to the coffee table, looking through the boxes. One of them was, oddly enough, topped with the exact toppings he liked. He usually just ate supreme, since that was close enough and easier than bothering with a complicated pizza order. He figures they just felt bad for the amnesiac, and Scott had apparently actually listened to one of Stiles’ rants about the perfect pizza.
Speaking of the amnesiac, Stiles shrugs, “I feel fine, honestly. That witch must’ve gotten her spell book from the bargain bin,” he says, grabbing a piece of pizza and falling back into the empty armchair.
“Ugh, no, I’m not ready to make jokes about this yet,” Cora complains, throwing her head back. Stiles actually thinks for a second that maybe she’s oddly concerned-
“Derek was such a pain while you were unconscious, it was a nightmare,” she continues.
Speak of the devil. Derek growls at her words as he walks in, grabbing a seemingly random slice of pizza from the first box he opens then going to stand next to Stiles. Still doing that hovering thing, apparently. Maybe the witch also had a clinginess spell that hit Derek.
“Don’t deny it, and I used your card to order the pizza as a sliver of payback for dealing with you,” Cora says.
“C’mon now,” Stiles huffs, glad that at least one of the Hales is their normal grumpy self, “I doubt he was that bad.”
Erica snorts, “we were literally worried he was going to go feral.”
Boyd shoots him a serious look, “you are never allowed to get hurt again.” Man, even he couldn’t deal with whatever the hell Derek was like.
“Aw, you guys really do care,” Stiles grins sarcastically, leaning back and taking a bite of pizza. He chews as he tries to process their reactions.
He can’t fathom why Derek would be so much more difficult to deal with just because Stiles was stupid enough (although it was a 40% chance it wasn’t even his fault) to get whammied by a witch. It did seem like Derek hadn’t been sure how much of his memories he would be missing, and Stiles guessed that if he had lost, say, around two decades or so, that would be pretty distressing. Having to deal with an adult Stiles that had the memories of an infant would honestly be traumatizing, so he can’t blame Derek for being freaked out about that.
“You guys have to fill me in on what I missed. Or, what I forgot, I guess,” he says, seriously wanting some answers on where he was, why Jackson was here, and why he was fighting a witch.
“Nothing really happened, to be honest,” Scott shrugs, “it was a typical week up until yesterday when the witch popped up. And you know how that ended.”
“Actually, I don’t. Did you guys at least manage to take her down after I got hit? Which definitely wasn’t my fault, so you don’t even need to fill me in there,” he says, and it really was a whole 30% chance it was in no way his fault.
Jackson scoffed, “we got her, no thanks to our Alpha, though.”
Stiles whipped his head over to Jackson, about to ask him, seriously, why was he here. But he was interrupted by Lydia cuffing Jackson on the back of his head and scolding, “don’t be an asshole.”
Jackson scoffed again and crossed his arms, but seemed to be actually listening to her. Well, in the fact that he was no longer talking. But just by existing Stiles felt that he was still being an asshole.
Seriously, “why are you here?” Stiles asks him sharply.
“Could ask you the same thing,” Jackson mutters, only to be cuffed by Lydia again.
Though she then leans forward, looking carefully at Stiles. And man, what Stiles wouldn’t have given a few years ago to have her full attention on him like this. And it honestly wasn’t so bad even now.
“Why do you ask?” She questions him.
“Um, I don’t know, maybe it’s the fact that the biggest jerkwad I’ve ever known is eating pizza with everyone and we’re acting like it’s normal?”
Everyone seems to freeze, and Stiles suddenly has a bad feeling in his stomach.
“Stiles,” Scott says carefully, leaning forward himself to look at him, “Jackson’s a part of the pack.”
Stiles scoffs, ignoring the feeling of dread to ask, “you’re telling me we for some reason let Jackson into the pack this past week and you didn’t feel the need to catch me up with that?”
“Stiles,” Lydia says slowly, and Stiles really doesn’t like how carefully everyone’s suddenly talking to him. He’s back to the Grey’s Anatomy coma patient feeling again. “Erica told us you said it was the eleventh, but what year?”
Stiles answers easily, because while he was a bit unsure on the day of the month, he can in fact keep track of the year.
No one said anything, and everyone was staring at him with varying looks of horror. Stiles didn’t look over to where Derek stood above him, figuring he likely had a similar look.
Either Stiles suddenly turned into a horrifying monster, or… “that’s not the year, is it?”