Archive of Our Own ^beta

prolog: might be getting through

"Oh my God, no," Stiles says. "I did not wax things just to have you ignore me all night. You're dancing with me."

Jackson, who'd appeared mildly ill when she'd said wax things, stares up at her, blank.

"You're dancing with me," she repeats, holding out her hand - fingernails clean, manicured, with tiny pale-pink flower decals that she’d had to sit still and let dry for hours. "You're going to dance with me because this isn't some test where you have to prove you're the coolest guy at the dance. It’s not a contest. It’s just the gym. It’s just you and me and four minutes of Adele. No one is watching."

Jackson shifts uncomfortably in his seat, looks around, visibly anxious about something.

Stiles says, "You don't have to prove yourself to Greenburg or Finstock or anyone else for that matter. And you certainly don't have to prove yourself to me." At the last part he looks directly at her, a little startled. "Even if you never played lacrosse again or you fell into a vat of chemicals and came out looking like the Joker I'd still… So the least you could do is dance with me."

Jackson reaches into his jacket pocket for his flask and takes a long pull from it. He stands up and takes her hand, leads her out to the dance floor.

Her head spins at being near to him, at the smell of his cologne and his hand warm in the small of her back.

The song ends and he says, low, "Thank you." He looks over her shoulder, scanning the crowd, searching. She doesn’t have to ask who he's looking for.

Stiles says, "I saw her leave earlier. You should, yeah."

She lets go of Jackson’s shoulder, his hand slips off her back, and then he’s gone.

 

 

 

the hunger will linger

The cafeteria's burritos are a sludgy combination of mashed pinto beans and canned chili, the tortilla by turns soaked through like wet paper towels or bone-dry like saltines and yet, somehow, they're like the greatest thing ever. Scott always used to eat two at a time and now that he's a werewolf he gets like four.

Stiles stares listlessly at her salad. The burritos come covered in sour cream and melted cheese and a bland, jalapeno-less salsa that tastes like watery, fantastic ketchup. Her salad doesn't even have dressing, she just squeezed a lemon wedge over the top and she keeps crunching her teeth on the seeds.

She catches sight of Jackson across the cafeteria, smiling his shark-smile at something Danny's saying. His hair looks really good like that.

"You want some?" Scott asks, holding a burrito crispy-side-out towards her.

"Nah," she says, "I'm good."

Scott shrugs and takes it back, eats half of it in one massive, unattractive open-mouthed bite. He looks over his shoulder at where she's watching Jackson.

"Don't freak out," he says, "But I think Jackson's a werewolf now."

---

By the time she stops the Jeep in front of Derek's house Stiles can't remember driving there. She’s pretty sure she stopped at red lights.

"Derek," she says, not yelling but not really in control either. Nothing happens, there’s no movement visible through the half-melted and broken windows. No sound.

"Derek!" she shouts up at the collapsed second floor. "You need to come down here so I can claw your eyes out."

"Yeah," Derek says from the front doorway, "I can see how that's incentive."

She refuses to show any surprise or shock, though no doubt he can hear her heart-rate jackrabbiting out of her chest.

"You-" she starts, voice too clogged with anger to finish.

He jumps down off the porch, ostentatious, and walks towards her.

"Why are you here," he asks, not that he says it like a normal question.

She finally manages to spit out, "Jackson."

Derek makes an exaggerated, dumb face at her, like he doesn't understand what she's getting at. He says, "What about him."

She says, "You bit him."

Derek shrugs, spreads his hands. "He asked for it."

"And you just did what he wanted," Stiles says, "Because he's shown such good judgment up until now."

She’d thought, no, hoped, that after winter formal Jackson would have re-evaluated what he wanted from life. Made better decisions. She was wrong, apparently.

"He's not my responsibility," Derek says, eventually. "He doesn't want my help."

Stiles starts to protest that Jackson doesn’t know what’s good for him and Derek cuts her off mid-sentence, says, "You care about him? Fine. You look after him."

She stares at him, open-mouthed, outraged.

Derek asks, "Is that it?"

She’s too mad to speak, it takes a whole minute to throw together enough words to say, "No, that’s not it."

Derek looks at her expectantly, makes a hurry-up gesture with his hand.

"Something’s going on with Lydia. Peter–" Stiles pauses at the name, at the memory of Lydia in Jackson’s arms that night, all the blood. "He attacked her. Do you think she might–"

"I’ll look into it," Derek says, and turns his back on Stiles like she’s not even there.

 

 

 

lord knows there's a method to her madness

She sees him out of the corner of her eye in the cafeteria of Beacon Hills Memorial, while she’s waiting in line to fork-over two-thirds of her savings account for some truly awful-looking food. She walks across the empty, echoing space of the hospital cafeteria, slams her tray down onto his table.

Derek raises an eyebrow, Stiles slides into the other side of the booth anyway.

"Fancy meeting you here," she says. "Come here often?"

Derek says, "Lydia’s not a werewolf."

Stiles is relieved for a whole ten seconds before he adds, "I don’t know what she is, but you’re right. Peter did something to her."

The bandages had come off yesterday, most of the claw-marks weren’t deep enough to scar but Lydia had looked tiny, helpless, violated at the ones that were. Stiles had said, mechanically, "Mountain lions are vicious creatures, you’re lucky to be alive." Lydia wasn’t buying it.

"You know what," Stiles says, "As charming as this conversation is, I think I really don’t want to talk about werewolf-related things for like, the next fifteen minutes. Can you handle that?"

Derek shrugs, leans back into his seat. Stiles starts picking at her dinner. She’s not even hungry, she’s only here because Lydia’s harpy mother kicked her out of the room by saying, "Why don’t you get something to eat, dear? You must be starving."

"Laura used to eat those," Derek says, looking down at her tray, at the gray, shapeless pressed-soy-and-black-bean-burger and the whole-wheat bun. "They taste like ass."

They really do.

"She was always on some weird diet," Derek says. "It’s not like she needed to lose weight."

Stiles grabs her fork with her right hand and holds it up, tines towards him, says, "If you tell me I'm not fat I'm going to stab you in the neck with this fork."

Derek actually smiles, says, "She used to say that, too."

"I have a right to my body issues," Stiles says, indignant. Derek pushes his mostly-empty plate of crinkle fries in her direction and she set the fork down, takes a couple. They could use salt, but they aren't bad. "It’s because of people like you that I feel like I have to hide in a closet to eat anything. I eat healthy and it's all, You don't need to lose weight. I eat one donut and some jerk will say, From the lips to the hips. Do you know - did you know that your chance of getting endometrial cancer increases by two to four times if you're obese?"

Derek says, "With the way my life is going, I haven’t spent a lot of time worried about dying of cancer."

Stiles kind of laughs, because it’s kind of funny. Frickin’ werewolves, right? She’s not sure she wants to trade off worrying about carcinogens for worrying about getting burned alive.

Derek says, "In high school I used to drink all those creatine shakes. I was always trying to bulk up, but I could never keep weight on."

Stiles sincerely doubts that, and it must show on her face because Derek says, "No, really."

Stiles steals another fry and gestures at him with it, says, "Pics or it didn’t happen."

Derek shakes his head because, right, all of his documented childhood probably died in a fire.

"I weighed less than you," Derek says. "Soaking wet."

She pictures a young, skinny Derek, drenched and hissing like an angry cat.

"What changed?" she asks, indicating the cover of Men's Health wedged into the vinyl booth across from her.

"I got older," he says. "Things are different after high school."

"Yeah, yeah, it gets better. Thanks, Lady Gaga."

Derek rolls his eyes and stands up. He takes his plate and her picked-over tray and the fork from the table, turns to take them to the bussing stand. Over his shoulder he says, "You're not fat."

Stiles closes her hand over the patch of laminated pressboard where the fork used to be.

"Oh damn it," she says, "I see what you did there."

"I've been stabbed in the neck before," he says. "Doesn't hurt to take precautions."

Stiles wants to say something clever, reach for another utensil to threaten him with, but that’s when she hears Lydia start screaming.

 

 

 

broke mirror, broken home

Being the equipment manager for the lacrosse team sounded like a good, reasonable idea when Scott said he was going out for first line. She figured that way she could stick close to him, help out, call the ambulance when he had an inevitable asthma attack. That the position came with unfettered access to the men's locker room was also taken into consideration.

She didn’t think she’d use it to have secret meetings about werewolves.

Scott looks nervous, says, "There's another in here right now."

"Another what?" Stiles asks, distracted.

Scott says, low, "Another werewolf."

Stiles scans through her mental rolodex of the team, searches the locker room for anything that looks different or out of place. She spots Isaac Lahey by his locker, out of uniform. He looks a little out of it, disoriented, overwhelmed.

She turns back to Scott to catch his attention. “It’s Isaac," she says, "It has to be. My dad said his dad came in to file a missing person’s report last night, but it hadn’t been 48 hours yet.”

Scott hisses, “Derek’s kidnapping people now?”

Stiles smacks him upside the head, points across the locker room to where Isaac is slowly putting on his pads. “Yeah, well, if he is he’s not very good at it.”

“Oh,” Scott says, relieved for a few seconds before he immediately goes back to panicking about something else. “What about the full moon tonight? Tell me you have something better than handcuffs this time.”

Stiles says, “I got you covered, buddy.” She pulls open the team equipment locker to show him the iron chains she put there, and when she tries to close it again one link starts to slip over the side of the top shelf. She tries to frantically to put it back, but it slips through her fingers and the rest spill out, loud and obvious, attracting the attention of pretty much everyone in the greater Beacon Hills metro area.

Finstock walks up, looks from the pooled chains at Stiles’ feet to Scott’s embarrassed face and says, “Kinky! I like it.” He pounds Stiles on the back, nearly knocking her over, and she briefly considers the pros and cons of a sink-hole opening up underneath her and swallowing her whole.

---

The deputy who comes for Isaac during practice doesn’t feel right.

Stiles doesn’t recognize him right off, but he could be new, it’s not like she gets to vet the whole department. Normally she’d let it go except that he doesn’t walk right for a deputy. Deputies are trained to make as small a target as possible and appear non-threatening, but this guy walks more like her survivalist ex-Marine uncle, more confrontational.

He’s also not following protocol. There are specific things they’re supposed to do when pulling a kid out of school. They're supposed to have at least two deputies, go through the front office first. They’re not supposed to show up out of nowhere, alone, and grab a student off the field, take them back with them to their car.

Stiles thinks, that’s not a real deputy. Her stomach drops, her heart-rate kicks into overdrive and she’s on her feet in an instant. She takes a couple steps towards the parking lot without a plan or even a glimpse of an idea of one.

She's walking blindly, brain working too fast to pay attention to where she's going, and runs smack into Allison.

"Stiles, are you OK?" Allison asks, putting her hands on Stiles' arms to steady her. "What’s wrong?"

Stiles doesn’t know what else to say, blurts out, "I think that guy’s going to kill Isaac."

Allison's head snaps around, she takes in the guy in the deputy uniform, the way he's dragging Isaac behind him, and her eyes narrow in suspicion. She turns back to face Stiles and says, "I have a bow in my car."

Stiles stops walking, stares at her in disbelief.

"What are you going to do? Shoot him in the leg? Here?" Stiles can hear her voice getting high-pitched and screechy, can do nothing to stop it.

Allison says, "Just meet me the parking lot. Can you distract him?"

Stiles nods and Allison starts walking away quickly.

Stiles finally gets an idea. She runs back to the field, grabs a spare goalie stick from behind the bench, and takes off for the parking lot.

Any doubts she has about what’s going down evaporate when she sees the man with Isaac stop at a black, foreign SUV with dark-tinted windows. No way is that BHSD-issue, they do not have that kind of budget.

Stiles runs to the first car she sees likely to have a working alarm and physically flinches when she sees that it’s Jackson’s Porsche.

She hesitates - he loves this car, it’ll destroy him - and then pulls the lacrosse stick back and smashes it across the front windshield with everything she has. The wail of the alarm is immediate, nearly deafening, and the fake deputy stops, turns towards her and the noise long enough for Allison to actually shoot him in the leg.

"Isaac!" Stiles yells, "This way."

Isaac, confused, turns towards her slowly.

She yells, "Now!"

Isaac finally takes a step forward, puts some distance between himself and the fake deputy, enough that Stiles can see a flash of something in the guy’s hand. She has time to think, he’s got a gun, before it’s drawn and leveled at her. Isaac sees it, there’s a quick flash of claws and teeth and then the guy’s down on the ground, bleeding - not fatal, not that deep - and Isaac is staring down at his hands, the blood there.

Stiles drops the lacrosse stick she’s still holding and runs to him. He turns to her, a dull, numb look in his completely human eyes. She grabs his elbow, says, "The whole school’s gonna be here any minute, you gotta-"

Isaac lets himself be dragged behind her for a minute, gets his feet under himself eventually and follows her, running to the Jeep. Out of the corner of her eye she sees what she thinks is Allison pulling her arrow out the guy’s leg, saying something to him. Stiles doesn’t slow down enough to find out for sure.

Stiles has to stop to open the door and get into the Jeep, doesn’t turn when she hears Greenburg shouting, "Jackson, I think that’s your car, man!"

Isaac hauls himself over the side into the passenger seat and Stiles peels out of the lot just as the rest of the lacrosse team rounds the corner.

---

Stiles cuts the engine of the Jeep. Her hands feel permanently fused to the steering wheel, it takes conscious effort to unpeel them.

"Ok," she says, "I need-"

"Derek’s here," Isaac says.

"Not that," Stiles says. "I wasn’t going to say that."

She undoes her seatbelt and gets out of the car.

They weren’t followed, she doesn't think they were, but she drove them to a well-populated, public place anyway, just like her dad taught her. Derek looks out of place in the busy, brightness of the mall food court. She spots him right away and heads over to his table, mostly falls into a chair across from him.

She says, "We have to stop meeting like this."

Derek’s eyes sweep right past her and he asks Isaac, "Are you OK?"

Isaac nods. He doesn’t say anything, settles into another chair at the table and stares at his hands.

"I'm fine, too. Thanks for asking," Stiles says, and Derek nods at her, finally bothering to acknowledge her presence. "I need a milkshake."

She tries to stand up, but the adrenaline that got her this far has drained out of her body and her legs feel like wet cardboard.

"Sit down," Derek says, "You’re useless like this."

Stiles flops back down, folds her arms on the table and rests her head on them. She falls asleep for a little while, comes to when something cold and wet is pressed against her wrist. She blinks up and sees Derek set down a muffin in front of her, next to a smoothie in a plastic cup.

"It’s whole grain," he says. "You owe me $8.74."

Stiles takes a sip of the smoothie, it’s good, tastes like actual fruit instead of just sherbet and orange juice. She says, "I don’t owe you shit. I saved Isaac’s life, if anything, you owe me."

Derek makes a derisive, dismissive noise. He says, "You save Scott’s life all the time."

"Yeah," Stiles says, "And a this point he owes me his first born and a pony."

Isaac says, "I’m going to go wash my hands."

Stiles glances over at him, sees the dried blood caked under his fingernails.

After winter formal she'd washed her hair ten times to try and get the smell of smoke out of it and eventually she just hacked six inches off with kitchen shears so it wasn’t always in her face.

Isaac stands up and walks away, towards the bathroom.

"Did Isaac ask for it, too?" she asks. She’s too tired to be accusatory, she just wants to know.

Derek’s jaw clenches. After a moment he says, "His father used to lock him in a chest freezer in the basement."

She doesn’t ask any more questions.

 

 

 

why, where, what for, and who

Stiles sets out the iron chains, a couple different padlocks and keys. The whole set-up together looks like the props for a Houdini stunt or some pretty hardcore BDSM porn.

"I'm serious," Scott says, shooting her a pleading look from all the way across the room, as far as he can get from her torture chamber looking desk as possible. "It's not like the last full moon. I don’t feel the same urges."

"Oh, does that include the urge to maim and kill people? Like me?" she asks, and Scott shakes his head at her.

He says, "I swear I don't have the urge to maim and kill you."

"You say that now," she says, "But then the full moon comes up and out come the fangs and the claws and there's a lot of howling and screaming and running everywhere and it's very stressful on me, so -"

Across the room her phone starts buzzing and lighting up and playing Werewolves of London. Scott picks it up, glances at the display. A puzzled expression crosses his face and he says, "Why is Derek calling you?"

Stiles scrambles over to him, lunges for the phone, grabbing it out of his hand. She hits accept, trips over a discarded pair of leggings.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, breathless and sprawled in a heap on the floor. Something must be wrong. Derek never calls and she just saw him a few hours ago.

"There’s someone watching Jackson's house," Derek says.

"What?" she asks, heart pounding loud enough he can probably hear it over the phone. "Besides you, you creeper?"

Derek says, "This is serious."

"This is my serious voice," she says, getting to her feet. "And this is me hanging up and calling the cops."

“Don’t,” Derek says, "It might be another hunter."

"Shit," she says. Shit shit shit. Scott already has this expression on his face like he’s going to offer to help and Stiles makes a violent cutting gesture at her throat. She covers the microphone on the handset with her palm, like that’s going to make a difference, and hisses at him, “No.”

Derek asks, “Is Scott there?”

Stiles decides to just bulldoze past answering that question, asks instead, "Why can't you do something?"

Derek makes an aggravated noise, says, "I have shit to do besides babysit your boyfriend."

"Fine,” she snaps. “I’ll take care of it by myself.”

For a long moment Stiles just breathes into the phone, seething with incoherent rage, and Derek doesn’t say anything either. Scott starts making increasingly frustrated and confused faces at her, his hands gesturing in some untranslatable sign language.

“I have to stay with Isaac,” Derek says.

Oh. Right.

Derek says, "If anything happens, call me."

“OK,” Stiles says. She wants, a little, to say, Good luck, but it doesn’t seem right, so she just disconnects the call.

She looks from Scott to the chains and padlocks on her desk.

“If I call Allison to come over here,” she says, “Will you be OK tonight without me?”

Scott says, “Sure.”

She says, “I wouldn’t go, except…”

“It’s Jackson,” Scott says, “I get it.”

---

In the morning she wakes up with a crick in her neck, slumped forward over an unfamiliar steering wheel. The phone on the seat next to her is still hooked up to video feed from Jackson’s room, it shows him asleep on top of his bed. Stiles could almost believe that nothing happened, but there are leaves stuck in his hair, the bottoms of his feet are caked with dirt.

There's a tap on the driver's side window and when she looks out she sees Derek, standing over Matt Daehler’s unconscious body.

She gets out of the car, stretches, and cracks her neck.

Derek looks down at Matt, looks up at her with a raised eyebrow. She shrugs. Derek crouches down, checks Matt’s pulse. Lying face-down like he is Stiles can see where the leads from her stun-gun are still attached to the back of his shirt.

“That guy,” she says, “Is not a good person.”

When she’d come up on him last night it’d been dark and he’d been peeing against a tree, his back to her. She’d tazed him out before she’d recognized him and when she saw his face her heart had lurched painfully and she’d thought, isn’t he in my English class? What the hell is he doing here? She’d felt guilty and confused, her whole body heavy and numb with the idea that she’d made a horrible mistake, but when she saw the pictures of Allison on his camera she regretted only that she hadn’t tazed him twice.

"I got your text," Derek says. Stiles has a blurry, vague memory of sending something to him after Jackson transformed and took off into the woods too fast for her to follow.

“Is Isaac OK?” she asks.

Derek nods.

“Jackson?”

“He didn't hurt anyone ,” Derek says. A kind of smug, amused expression crosses his face and he says, “I think he ate a raccoon."

Stiles laughs.

"Then he's had more breakfast than I have," she says, "I hope you brought bagels."

---

“Warm up?” Marlene asks, interrupting Stiles mid-sentence.

Derek nods and Marlene smiles and winks, pouring more coffee into the half-empty mug in front of him. Marlene sways off, the soles of her Crocs squeaking against the black-and-white linoleum floor.

“As I was saying,” Stiles finishes, only slightly aggravated, "That’s when Scott fell through the window."

Derek stops moving, fork full of hash browns halfway to his mouth. He asks, "He didn’t know it was open?"

Stiles shakes her head. "Before Peter,” she says, “Scott was not a paradigm of coordination."

Derek smirks, says, "The bite is a gift."

"Oh shove it," Stiles says, laughing. Derek’s food falls off his fork and he looks stupid, silly. She’s never really seen him look anything other than angry, intimidating, or hurt. She’s not exactly sure what to do with the knowledge that this version of him exists.

Derek asks, “Are you going to eat that?”

Stiles looks down, sees she’s idly pushing food around her plate with a spoon.

"The problem with fruit salad," Stiles says, "Is that at some point it all just tastes like it’s been bathing in cantaloupe."

"Then why did you order it."

"It was 95 cents," she says, "And all the other options were deep fried. Or bacon.”

Derek looks for a minute like he wants to say something, but is thinking better of it. Stiles nudges her plate across the table and he hooks a finger around the rim, slides it closer to him. He spears a chunk of honeydew with the tines of his now-empty fork.

Stiles turns on the seat of the boot, the vinyl protesting a little, and puts her back against the wall, pulls her legs up to her chest. Derek’s quiet, methodically working his way through the remains of her breakfast and she lets her thoughts drift and settle.

“Allison’s grandfather’s the principal at school now,” she says, “It’s like he’s everywhere. He’s planning something, I know he is, and he’s got Scott all spun up. I’m freaking out a little.”

"You shouldn’t be," Derek says, "Gerard is a problem, but he's my problem."

She says, "That’s bullshit."

"Stiles," Derek says, condescending as shit, "You don’t know what you’re doing-"

"Like you do?" she asks, voice gone loud and a little shrill, attracting attention.

Derek leans in across the table and says in a low, forceful voice, "I don’t have a choice."

Stiles refuses to be intimidated by him anymore, is not backing down on this, and she says, "Neither do I."

“You can walk away from this,” Derek says, "He’s not after you, he’s trying to hurt me because of Kate."

"Fine, he's not coming after me, but like hell he’s not going after Scott,” Stiles says, voice still loud and high-pitched and awful.

Derek says, “You don’t know that.”

“And what if he finds out about Jackson? Did you even think about that?" Stiles asks.

Derek says, “Jackson knew what he was getting into.”

"Literally everyone I care about is in danger now."

“And what?” Derek asks, "That’s my fault? I didn’t ask for any of this. I was born this way."

He doesn't mean being a werewolf, she thinks, he means in danger. When he was born he was alreadyin danger because people like Gerard Argent think he’s a monster.

“That’s not fair,” she says, and her voice sounds a lot quieter, less angry, “He doesn’t even know you.”

Derek leans back, confused. “What?” he asks.

Stiles isn’t sure why she said it, it was just the first thing that came to mind. She clears her throat, awkward, says, “Gerard. The Argents. It doesn’t make sense how much they hate you.”

"No," Derek says, "It doesn't."

Derek leans all the way back, slouching down into his side of the booth. He looks young. It’s easy to forget most of the time that he’s not actually that much older than she is.

Stiles says, “I mean, it took me until I really got to know you to want to kill you.”

Derek’s face slips back to a sarcastic smirk. He says, “That’s’ a lie."

Stiles briefly wonders what her heartbeat must sound like.

Derek says, “You threatened to leave me for dead the fourth time we met.”

“What can I say,” she says, “You’re an easy guy to get to know.”

 

 

 

 

boys' numbers there in magic marker

Stiles has been under the impression that Boyd maybe has a thing for her for a while now. Like, since the summer before freshman year, after she went away to computer camp for a couple months and when she came she had boobs. It’s a spidey-sense, not based on evidence and she’s never mentioned it out loud because assuming that kind of thing about other people makes you sound really full of yourself.

All that said, this is a surprise.

"I’ll give you the keys if you go out with me," Boyd says, dangling them in her line of sight.

"That’s extortion," she says. "You said twenty bucks last week." Boyd shrugs, seemingly unconcerned, closes his fist around the keys when she reaches for them.

Scott will be pissed if she can’t get them, he’s had everything all planned out for weeks.

"Fine," she says.

Boyd smiles, since when did he do that?

Stiles says, "I know it’s where you work, but you could come with us tonight."

Boyd finally, finally drops the keys into her hands and says, "I’ll be there."

---

Scott moves to follow Allison and Lydia into the rink and Stiles hangs back, conspicuously looking around the parking lot.

Scott stops walking and asks, "Why are you so jumpy?"

Stiles wants to say she’s not jumpy but when she looks down at her knees she can see that one of them is bouncing up and down super-fast. She deliberately stills her leg, tries to at least look relaxed.

"Someone’s meeting me here," she says.

Scott looks hopeful, encouraging. He says, “Yeah?”

Stiles hates to disappoint him, but says anyway, "It’s just Boyd."

"Boyd?" Scott asks, disbelieving and surprised. She doesn’t blame him. Until he needed the keys to the ice rink, Scott never remembered that Boyd was in their class at all. "But I thought you were saving yourself for..."

Stiles lunges towards him, shoves at his face to get him to stop talking. She regrets, very much, the day Scott found her sixth grade English notebook and immediately flipped to the page where she’d spent most of a class period practicing her signature as Mrs. Jackson Whittemore.

Stiles frantically gestures at Lydia, hisses, "Shut up."

"Hey, you said it yourself that she’s not a werewolf," Scott whispers, "It’s not like she can hear me."

Boyd says, "Hear what?"

Stiles jumps. Where the hell did he even come from?

"Nothing," she says, simultaneously with Scott.

Boyd kind of half-smirks at the two of them, shakes his head.

Stiles is strangely reminded of like, every conversations she’s ever had with Derek.

---

"So," Boyd says, "What do you do outside of school?"

Stiles glances up from where she’s tangling her fingers in the laces of her skates. Boyd’s already suited up, hanging out against the side wall and watching her get ready.

Hanging out with Boyd is, it’s fine. Except for the part where she can’t answer benign questions because the answer is usually werewolf-related.

She says, "Hang out, you know. Video games?"

She hasn’t so much as logged in to WoW in three weeks. She got an e-mail the other day from someone in her guild asking her if she’d died.

Boyd says, "That’s cool."

"You?" she asks.

Boyd shrugs, says, "I work." He pushes off the low wall and within seconds he’s skating away from her backwards faster than she’s ever been able to move forwards.

Stiles stands up, gingerly steps out onto the ice.

Lydia glides past, makes a derisive tsking noise, and starts making like Sasha Cohen in the center of the rink. Show off.

Boyd skates back up to Stiles, shaking his head, and tries to teach her how to skate backwards, do a couple tricks. It doesn’t work.

It should be cute and adorable, a Bambi-on-the-ice kind of couple-y moment like Scott and Allison are having across the way, but it’s really just awkward. Stiles elbows Boyd in the face twice, almost slices his hand open with her skate once before her ankles start to hurt pretty bad and she gives up and sits down.

"Sorry," she says.

Boyd shrugs again. He says, "It’s alright."

She’s not usually at a loss for words, for things to say, but she can’t come up with a single interesting topic and everything she’s asked Boyd so far has been answered in short, straightforward sentences that she hasn’t been able to riff off at all. It’s like trying to play tennis on a wet court, everything she throws at him just lands with a damp thud.

Some sick part of her is grateful when Lydia suddenly starts freaking out. At least it’s a distraction.

---

Allison takes off with a shaken-up and shaking Lydia, leaving Scott and Stiles and Boyd staring at each other.

Scott looks mildly annoyed, like he always does at supernatural shit, like the universe has invented yet another problem just to torture him. He looks quickly from Stiles to Boyd and back and says, "I’ll wait in the car."

Stiles turns to Boyd, who’s looking at most everywhere he can that's not directly at her.

"So that was-" she starts, trails off.

"Yeah," Boyd says.

They stand there, mostly avoiding eye contact, Stiles starting to pick at her left thumbnail out of habit. It’s the longest, most awkward ten seconds of her life.

"Don’t take this the wrong way," Boyd says, "But I think we should-"

"Never do this again?" she asks. Boyd nods. "Great idea."

 

 

 

force fed, forced meds ‘til I drop dead

She thinks about not telling Scott about Boyd.

She does it anyway.

It’s just so out of character for Boyd to be gone and she could be wrong about why he's not at his usual table at lunch. He could be hurt somewhere, or worse. It's not like she thinks she’s a curse or anything, but the last boy she went out with nearly got mauled by an alpha werewolf, God help her for exercising a little caution.

Scott says, "OK, I'm going to go to the ice rink, see if he's there, and if he's not at home, you call me, got it?"

Stiles hesitates.

"What?" Scott asks.

She says, "Maybe we should let him. It's Boyd, you know?" Despite the fact that she's not sending out Save the Date cards for the Boyd/Stilinski wedding anytime soon, he's still a pretty cool guy who's life kind of sucks. "It's not like it was with you, Derek's not biting people at random. He's giving them a choice."

Scott huffs out a breath in annoyance. He says, "We can't just let him."

"You gotta admit Erica looks pretty good. You know? The word sensational comes to mind," Stiles says, because Erica basically went from zero to hotass overnight.

"Yeah?" Scott says, "How do you think she's going to look with a wolfsbane bullet in her head."

Stiles thinks, better than she did writhing on the floor of the gym yesterday. She says, "Maybe this one isn't totally your responsibility."

"They all are," Scott says, "And you know this thing's going to get out of control and that makes me responsible."

Scott looks at her, pleading, the weight of the whole frickin' world on his shoulders. She doesn't agree with him, not really, but she can't let him take everything on by himself.

"Alright, I'm with you," she says. "And let me say this newfound heroism is making me very attracted to you. Seriously, you just wanna try making out for a second? Just to see how it feels? Fifth grade didn't count."

Scott rolls his eyes and shoves her down the hallway.

---

Stiles knows when she knocks on the door that Boyd isn't going to be there, but she's not expecting Erica.

"Oh," she says, turning around and nearly falling into Erica's cleavage. "Wow."

Erica asks, "What are you doing here, Jenna?"

Stiles has been trying since the second grade to get out from under the disastrous and short-lived decision to go by that particular nickname.

"Just looking for, uh-" Stiles says.

"Boyd?" Erica asks, voice saccharine-sweet.

"Yeah," Stiles says. "Yes. It turns out we had more in common than I thought."

Erica says, "He's not here."

"I got that," Stiles says.

Erica steps too close into Stiles' personal space, intimidating. In the shoes she's wearing she's about half an inch taller than Stiles and Stiles is having a really hard time not staring at her boobs.

"Do you know where I can find him?" Stiles asks, pitching her voice in the same fake-sweet tone Erica's using.

"You know what you're doing right now that's kind of funny?" Erica asks. Stiles shakes her head, frantically. "You're looking in my eyes."

"That's funny?" Stiles asks.

"Well, yeah," Erica says, "Because it's that kind of look where you're trying not to look anywhere other than my eyes."

"Screw it," Stiles says, lets her gaze drop down to Erica's freakishly impressive rack. "It's just - you look amazing."

Stiles drags her eyes up to Erica's face and Erica smiles. For the first time since lunch yesterday Stiles recognizes the girl she used to play My Little Ponies with. "Thanks," Erica says. "I feel great."

When they were kids Erica was always taking huge pills, going to doctor's appointments. Even if everything in Stiles thinks that it's wrong, that it's a bad decision for her to do this to herself, it's hard to want all that back for her.

Erica's face turns serious and scary again and she says, "I need you to stay away from Boyd."

"And if I don't?" Stiles asks.

"Then I hit you over the head with this," Erica says, and holds up what Stiles recognizes as part of her car.

"OK," Stiles says, "Let's not do that."

"Don't stand in our way," Erica says, "This is what Boyd wants."

Stiles asks, "Do you even know what you're getting yourselves into?"

"No," Erica says, voice flippant. She tosses Stiles her starter motor. Erica was holding it effortlessly, but it nearly wrenches Stiles' arm out of her socket when she catches it.

Erica says, "We're doing it anyway."

 

 

 

every morning I deliver the news

Allison hands off Gerard's keys, the plan to get the bestiary going a little more seamless than usual, and Stiles slips away from the game reluctantly. Jackson looks good out there.

She's almost to the front door of the school when she hears a sad little hiccup and turns around, spots Lydia in her car. She hesitates for a minute, torn.

Lydia is one of her oldest friends. They stopped being close when Lydia decided she wanted to run the school and Stiles decided she didn't want to spend a lot of time on her hair, but they're still friends. Stiles still cares about her, wishes there was something she could do about whatever the hell is going on with her.

Stiles stops, turns around, and walks to Lydia's car.

"Hey Lydia, what's wrong?"

Lydia rolls up her car window without saying anything, but Stiles can still hear her crying through the glass, muffled. Stiles knocks on the glass, but Lydia ignores her. "Just go away," Lydia says, her voice just wrecked with tears.

"What's wrong?" Stiles asks. Lydia shakes her head, pawing a little at the tear-streaks on her face with the back of a gloved hand. Stiles hurries around the front of the car, opens the passenger side door before Lydia can lock it. She sits down inside and pulls the door shut behind her with a loud click.

"Look," Lydia says, “I don’t need anyone seeing me cry.”

“Aw, come on Lydia,” Stiles says, "Like I haven’t seen you cry before. I still remember Olivia McCormick’s sixth grade birthday party. Now that was a train wreck.”

Lydia almost smiles.

“You shouldn't care if people see you cry, alright?" Stiles says, "Don't you remember that stupid song that the principal used to sing in middle school?”

Lydia looks over at her, manages to roll her puffy, red eyes disdainfully, the expression on her face clearly stating, Why are you such a weirdo?

Stiles hums a little, sings off-key, “It's all right to cry.”

Lydia doesn't react.

Stiles says, “No, you totally remember.” She hums a little more, starts again, “It’s all right to cry.”

Lydia takes in another hiccupping gasp of air, sings in wavering voice, “Crying gets the sad out of you.”

“There,” Stiles says, fist-pumping a little. "I knew you remembered. Now tell me what's wrong."

A fleeting, scared look crosses Lydia's face. "No," she says, "You're gonna think I'm crazy."

"If you trust me on anything, you can trust me on this," Stiles says, solemn. "There is nothing you can say to me that will make you sound crazy. Literally nothing."

Lydia is quiet for a long, drawn-out moment, but she's not crying anymore. Stiles sits there, thinking about how lucky she is that she can tell Scott anything. That her Dad is who he is, someone she can count on, always. Lydia doesn't have anyone like that anymore.

“You should go out there," Stiles says. "Jackson’s having the game of his life, I know he’d want you to see it.”

Lydia says, “He doesn’t want me there.”

“Sure he does,” Stiles says. “And he’s handing a guy named The Abomination his ass. It’s a beautiful lifetime moment. He'd hate for you to miss it.”

"OK," Lydia says, and they get out of the car.

---

Stiles takes one whole step into the school before running into Erica, who's tapping her fingers on the wall of the hallway, looking bored.

"Hello Jenna," she says, "Derek wants to talk to you."

"Of course he does," Stiles says. "Not like I'm busy or anything."

Erica doesn't say anything, just tilts her head to the side. Her eyes are huge, bright white in the dim light filtering in through the windows.

Stiles asks, "Is it OK if break into the principal's office first? I gotta do a thing."

Erica shrugs, says, "I don't see why not."

They walk together to Gerard's office, the only noise the click of Erica's heels and the jangle of Gerard's key ring in Stiles' nervously shaking hand. When they get there it takes Stiles four tries with three different keys to get the door open.

"Book, book, it's gotta be here somewhere," Stiles mutters to herself, rummaging through every drawer, every file-folder she can find.

Erica picks at her nails, watches with disinterest.

"There's nothing here," Stiles says, defeated.

Erica asks, "Do you even know what you're looking for?” Stiles shakes her head, no. "But you think it's a book?" Stiles nods her head, yes.

“Who reads actual books anymore?" Erica says, "Maybe he has like, an iPad or a Kindle or something."

Stiles rolls her eyes, says, “Yeah, right, Gerard was born before the industrial revolution."

“Then what’s that?” Erica asks, pointing to the thumb drive dangling from Gerard’s key ring, still in the door.

“Uh,” Stiles says, gaping at it.

“Jenna,” Erica says, tsking and shaking her head. “For a smart girl you can be pretty dumb sometimes.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Stiles says, jiggling the mouse on the office computer to wake it up. “Give me a minute to upload this and you can take me to your leader.”

---

She’d assumed Derek would be waiting for her somewhere that made sense, but instead he’s by the BHS pool, leaning back against the wall and looking at something on his phone.

"What's up?" Stiles asks. "You planning on biting any more underclassmen?"

Derek’s only response is to glare up at her. She guesses that’s a no. He slips his phone back into his pocket, crosses his arms, unconcerned by her and in visible control of the situation. Stiles feels twitchy and nervous in comparison, isn't sure what to do with her hands.

"You owe me 1500 bucks," she says, "For what Selina Kyle over here did to my car."

Derek re-directs his glare at Erica and she backpedals a step away from Stiles, lets go of her deathgrip on the back of Stiles' jacket. “Hey,” Erica says, "You told me to keep her out of it. I improvised."

Derek pinches the bridge of his nose for a second, pained. He drops his hand and looks back at Stiles, says, "Sorry. I left my checkbook in my other jacket."

"You have a checkbook?" Stiles asks. “Wait, you have more than one jacket?”

Erica makes an annoyed noise and taps her foot. "Derek," she says, “She’s here, you’re talking. Can I go back to the game now?”

Derek says, “I’m not keeping you here.”

Erica turns on her heel, sashays out, and Derek’s posture changes once she leaves, a step down from alpha-I’m-in-charge mode.

“Can I go too?” Stiles asks and Derek glares. She says, “Jackson’s-“

“This is more important,” Derek says, “I don’t care if your stupid boyfriend is-“

Stiles crosses her arms, says, “He’s not my boyfriend-“

Derek makes an aggravated noise, says, “Then why do you-“

“Yet,” Stiles says, “He’s not my boyfriend yet, I have a ten-year-plan-“

Derek says, “That sounds moronic.”

“Oh my god,” Stiles shouts, “We are not talking about this!”

Derek shuts his mouth and looks away, jaw clenched. Stiles takes a deep, calming breath.

“Why don't we start this conversation over,” she says.

“Fine,” Derek says. His spine had gone rigid and tense, but he slouches down again, forces his shoulders to relax.

She walks over until she's right next to him and mirrors his pose, leaning back against the damp, tiled wall. It’s easier to talk if they’re not making eye direct contact.

“Erica just helped me steal Gerard’s Wikipedia of Magic Shit,” she says. “It's in latin or something, so I don't know what it says, but Deaton told Scott it might be useful someday. You want a copy?”

“Sure,” Derek says, and he reaches into his pockets for a pen and something to write on. He scrawls on Circle K receipt dhale87@ and then something unintelligible - gmail.com, maybe - and hands it to her. “Send it there.”

“Wow,” she says, a little stunned, “You have e-mail.”

Derek sighs, says, “It’s 2011.”

“Last I heard you live in a boxcar,” Stiles says, “I’m shocked you have electricity and running water.”

Derek shakes his head, but he’s smiling, just a little bit. "I need you to talk to Scott. He won't listen to me,” he says. He sounds frustrated and annoyed. Scott often has that affect on people.

“Huh,” Stiles says, "I wonder why that is. Seems like you couldn't possibly go wrong with such a winning communication style of constant violence and intimidation."

She heard what went down at the ice-rink, it sounded stupid and reckless and ultimately pointless. Boyd was a werewolf now, Derek was still an asshole, Scott was going to be even more stubborn about everything. It's not like anything changed.

"That hurts," Derek says, fake-outraged.

Stiles says, "I'm just saying you could work on your approach a little. You get more flies with honey than with, you know, slashing them to pieces with your claws."

She turns her head to get a better view of his face and the expression there is thoughtful.

He says, "Maybe I should buy him food."

Stiles laughs.

"Or maybe not," he says, "You don't listen to me either."

"I listen when you make sense," she says. Before he can reply with, I’m the alpha, I always make sense, she cuts in, adds, "I'll talk to him."

“Thanks,” Derek says. "Thank you."

Stiles says, “Just add it to my tab.”

---

When she makes it back the whole team, the whole crowd, is jumping and shouting in the middle of the field, back-slapping and high-fiving. She assumes that they must have won. In the middle of the mess is Scott, so she starts to push her way in towards the center, nodding and saying, "Yeah! We did it!" to people as she shoves past.

She runs straight into Danny's back, bounces a little bit off his pads. "We're in the finals!" he yells, too close, and he picks her up and spins her around until she's dizzy.

"Awesome!" she shouts back, crowd still spinning around her after he sets her down.

Danny says, "Scott's that way!" He points in the wrong direction and then turns around and grabs someone else, letting Stiles slip away in the right direction.

She comes up on Scott, smiling nervously at Allison and Allison's dad and shit, Allison's grandfather. Stiles grabs Scott by the shoulder and shouts, "Scott! I need you."

Gerard turns towards her, quirks an eyebrow in her direction. She shivers.

“Allison!” Stiles says, feigning surprise to see her, “It’s been like, forever!” She grabs Allison into a hug, slips the keys into the pocket of Gerard’s coat.

"Sorry,” Stiles says, “I have to steal Scott. Co-captain stuff." She give Scott as significant a look as she can in such tight quarters with so many hunters.

Scott looks at her, relieved. He says, "Right. Yes. Co-captain things. Very important."

He turns back to the Argents and tries to look regretful, but it just looks strained. He says, "Great seeing you. Allison. I've got to, uh."

Stiles rolls her eyes and grabs his wrist and pulls him out of the jubilant crowd, towards the bench. She makes a big show of gathering up discarded sticks and masks and Scott picks up on it at some point, starts playing along.

Scott leans in while he's helping her load up some equipment into a large mesh bag. He asks, "Did you get it?"

"Technically yes," she says, nodding. "But it's not a book. And it's not in English."

Scott looks puzzled. "What?"

Stiles says, "I'll explain later."

Stiles watches as Allison and her family finally leave the field, headed towards the parking lot. Gerard stops and turns one last time before they're out of sight, eying Scott with suspicion.

Stiles says, "Derek thinks Gerard is planning something big."

"Derek? You know this how?" Scott asks.

"I talked to him about it just now," she says.

Scott looks horrified.

"Relax, bro. I just talked to him," she says, "It’s not like I gave him Poland."

 

 

 

solo rowing on one side of the boat

Scott walks in the front door without knocking or ringing the doorbell, heads straight for the kitchen. Stiles has thought before about just giving him a key to the house, but werewolf or not she’s still afraid he’d lose it somewhere stupid.

"You want something to drink?" she asks, "Our options are a little limited right now, basically we've got Fresca and whiskey. The economy, you know?"

Scott opens the fridge and grabs a soda.

"Derek wants me in his pack," Scott says. "He’s been on me about it for the last like, week and a half. Isaac says he has them training like all the time and he wants me to join them."

Stiles grabs a bag of kettle corn out of the cupboard, unwraps it and puts it in the microwave. She pushes the popcorn button on the microwave, even though it goes for way too long and the popcorn always ends up charred and awful if she doesn’t pay enough attention.

"Yeah?" she says, "Are you going to do it?"

Scott shrugs. He says, "I don't know. I don't think it's a good idea."

Stiles doesn't really have an opinion about it one way or another. She says, "You might learn something. He knows things I can't get from Wikipedia and sketchy, sketchy blogs."

Scott kind of shrugs with one shoulder. He asks, "You haven't seen him in a while, have you?"

"Derek?" she asks and Scott half-nods. "Nope."

Scott says, "Because it seemed for a while you were like, I don't know."

She doesn't really know what he means by like, I don't know. She says, "I just kept running into him."

Scott says, "People saw you together."

"Who?" She can't imagine who he's talking about, besides Marlene and the regulars at the diner and whoever was at the mall the day stuff went down with Isaac.

"Just people, OK?" Scott says. "You need to be more careful."

Stiles blinks at Scott, says, “It’s just Derek.”

Scott says, "Forget I said anything."

She lets it drop.

"So," Stiles says. "You, me, Friday night platonic date night. We haven't had one of these in a while. What's the occasion?"

Scott's face goes carefully blank and he says, "Allison's at that rave."

“Is she into that kind of thing?” Stiles asks, surprised. She overheard a couple of the club kids at school talking about it, it didn’t sound like Allison’s scene.

"Not really. Some guy asked her if she wanted to go to it and we thought it would be a good idea if she was seen out with someone else, you know," Scott says, opening and closing all of the cupboards in Stiles' kitchen, looking for who knows what. "Maintain our cover. Like, she's going to make a big deal of it in front of her mom and stuff."

"Sure," Stiles says, "That makes sense. I mean, that sucks, but it makes sense."

A slight look of triumphant crosses Scott's face, he dives all the way up to his shoulders into the cabinet next to the stove and comes back with a pack of Oreos that probably date back to the Clinton administration.

"Who's the guy?" Stiles asks.

"I don't know him very well," Scott says, "It's that guy who's always taking pictures at our games."

Stiles' heart starts pounding, she can feel her hands sweating.

"Matt something," Scott says.

"Matt Daehler?" Stiles asks, voice thin and weak-sounding.

"Yeah him," Scott says. "Is something burning?"

There's smoke coming from the microwave.

"Forget it," Stiles says, "We have to go."

---

At speeds higher than 40 mph the Jeep starts to rattle and feel like it's shaking apart, so every minute of the 23-mile drive over to the rave is pure torture.

"She's still not picking up," Scott says, after the fourth or fifth or twelfth time trying Allison's phone. “And she’s not answering my texts.”

"Then we'll have to go in and get her," Stiles says.

"I can't go in there," Scott says. "If I go in there and someone sees, then it's going to ruin everything."

"OK," she says, "But I have to do something. She shouldn't be alone with that guy."

Scott says, "You shouldn't be alone in there either." Every once in a while he gets this big-brother protectiveness about her, it’s always kind of sweet, even if it’s usually misguided.

"I'll call for backup," Stiles says.

She waits until the next red light, fishes around in the back until she can grab her phone out of her purse. She turns it on, flips through to the homescreen, moves her thumb over an icon of the three-wolf- moon T-shirt.

Scott reaches over and stops her hand. He says, "Don't call Derek."

"Why not?” she asks, confused, “He owes me."

Scott looks at her, pleading. He doesn’t give her an answer.

"Nope," Stiles says, "That's not gonna work. Put the puppy-dog eyes away, I'm calling him in."

---

The music inside the building is loud enough that even Stiles can hear it from parking lot, inside the Jeep with the windows rolled up and the doors closed.

Derek pulls up in the Camaro and Scott slouches down in his seat like it's going to make him less obvious. Stiles rolls her eyes at him and gets out.

Derek looks her over, says, "Fancy meeting you here. Come here often?"

“You’re stealing my material,” Stiles says. She narrows her eyes at him, suppresses a smile. She asks, “Where are the wonder triplets?”

Derek says, “It’s past their bedtime.”

"Nice one," Stiles says. “Much better.”

Derek shrugs, and says, “I try.”

Stiles says, “So, how do you suggest we get in? I don't have a ticket or anything."

Derek glances at her sideways, like, Are you kidding? He walks up to the locked back door and rips it off its hinges, gestures inside with a gallant after you kind of gesture.

"Why Rhett Butler," Stiles says, pitching her voice in a high, girlish Southern accent, "I do declare."

The back half of the building is a warren of empty, dank hallways. Stiles makes her way as best she can, towards where the techno beat sounds loudest. When they get through the last door to the main room the sound level goes from tolerable to airplane-engine decibels and if Stiles thinks the music is deafening, she can't imagine what Derek's hearing right now.

She mimes something at him that she hopes he interprets as, Are you OK?

He glares back at her, jerks his head to the side like, Let's just get this over with.

The warehouse is huge, filled wall to wall with writhing, neon-colored bodies. She can't see Allison or Matt anywhere. She gives up halfway through and stops, Derek running straight into her. He doesn't have any room to move back when she turns around and she's suddenly aware of how uncomfortably close they are. She hasn't showered since this morning and it's hot in here, she's sweating, at this point other people have been sweating on her, she probably smells awful.

"Hey," she shouts into his ear and he winces. "Oh, sorry," she says, at a much lower volume and his eyebrows come down from where they're trying to climb off his face.

"You can hear me?" she asks and Derek nods. "Can you smell Allison or something?"

Derek moves his head from side to side like a bloodhound, fixes in one direction. He jerks his chin towards the back of the room, closer to where they came in.

Stiles tries half-walking, half-dancing through the crowd, but she's constantly running into people, getting elbows in uncomfortable places. At some point she stumbles, trips over someone's untied sneakers. Derek steadies her, hand at the small of her back.

They get to a low bench in the back and Derek focuses on it for a minute before he starts walking again towards another hallway.

Stiles spots a flash of bright yellow at the end of the hall and she runs to it. Matt is leaning in towards Allison, he's got a hold of one of her wrists and is saying something in here ear. Allison doesn't look nearly as into it as he does.

"Allison!" Stiles says, skidding to a stop near her. "I've been looking for you all night!"

Allison looks relieved, breaks away from Matt's hold and takes a couple steps forward.

"Stiles," she says, "What are you doing here?"

"You're not answering your phone," Stiles says. Allison's eyebrows twitch together in confusion and she pulls her phone out of her purse.

She says, "It's off. How did it-"

"Your dad texted me," Stiles says, hopes it's an obvious enough lie that Allison picks up on it right away. They should have come up with codewords or phrases or something for this kind of situation. Something innocuous and obvious, like, Your parakeet is missing.

"My… dad," Allison says, slowly. Stiles nods. "Of course. My dad."

"It seemed important," Stiles says. "He said you need to come home right away."

Allison turns back to Matt, says, "I need to go."

Matt looks at Stiles, suspicious, but he nods to Allison, says, "I'll drive you home."

Stiles trips over herself saying, "No, no, that's OK, you don't have to go. We were just leaving! I can drive Allison back."

Allison clutches her purse a little tighter to her body, says, "Great." She takes another step towards Stiles, but Matt grabs her wrist again, pulling her back.

"No, it's OK," Matt says. "I'll take you."

Stiles really wishes she'd thought to bring her stun gun, but she'd left the house in too much of a rush to think it through.

"Is there a problem here?" Derek asks, coming up next to her.

Oh, right, she brought a werewolf instead.

Matt looks up and up to Derek's face and drops his hold on Allison. He says, "No problem."

Derek grins at Matt, large and fake and subtly menacing. He says, "Allison's dad seemed pretty worried about her."

Derek moves forward, putting a guiding arm around Allison's shoulders and moving his whole body between her and Matt. Derek looks down at her, head angled to keep an eye on Matt the whole time, says, "Why don't we get you home."

---

Stiles lets Scott take credit for masterminding the rescue, throws him the keys to the Jeep so he can take Allison back to her house. Derek sighs at Stiles, put-upon, but he opens the passenger side door of the Camaro anyway. "Get in."

Stiles slides into the car, puts on her seatbelt and once Derek starts the engine she flips through the pre-programmed stations on the radio: classic rock, classic rock, the greatest hits of the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and today!, and NPR. She leaves it on a local college station, turns the volume down low. She can't hear much over the ringing in her ears anyway.

Stiles lets her head fall back against the headrest, says, "I knew I should have tazed that guy twice."

Derek cracks a half a smile. He hadn’t asked once what was up with Matt, why Allison had needed saving. He’d just taken Stiles’ word for it that she needed help and said, “I’ll be there in 10 minutes, meet me around the back.” It was a Friday night, Stiles hadn’t even asked if he’d been busy, if he’d had other plans.

“Thank you for coming,” she says, “I know you have, uh, issues with Allison. You could have said no, I would have understood.”

Derek says, “I didn’t do it for her.”

Stiles shivers, sweat cooling on her skin, uncomfortable. Derek reaches over, turns up the heat.

“You can call us even now,” Stiles says. “You don’t owe me anymore for Isaac.”

Derek doesn't say anything. Stiles listens to the half-audible drone of radio for a while, watches out the window as the blur of buildings start to get closer together, the streetlights brighter.

"Allison should press charges," Stiles says. "Get a restraining order at least."

Derek says, "She won't."

"She should," Stiles says, "This kind of thing can escalate."

"If it escalates," Derek says, "It's not her I'm worried about."

Stiles has a sudden, clear mental image of Allison shooting Matt with a crossbow.

Stiles stares up at the ceiling of the Camaro, only looks out the windows again when Derek stops the car outside of her house. There's a light on in the dining room, visible through the front bay windows and Stiles can see her dad inside, drinking from a tumbler of whiskey and looking over a case file. That recent string of burglaries, probably. Jackson had been worried about those, she heard him talking to Danny about them last week.

When she doesn't get out immediately, Derek looks over at her, questioning.

She says, "I can't face my dad like this."

She'd changed clothes before she left the house, grabbed whatever she could think of as rave-wear camouflage and ended up with most of her Halloween costume from the year she went as a pre-rehab zombie Lindsay Lohan. Her skirt barely covers the important parts, the tank-top she's wearing is cut so low her bra is visible and now she's covered in glitter and other people's sweat.

Derek reaches into the back seat, hands her an old, soft and faded Henley and a pair of workout shorts. The sleeves of the shirt are comically long on her, reaching down past the tips of her fingers. She has to wriggle around in the seat to get into the shorts and once she's in them she has to roll up the waist three times before they'll stay on her hips.

"Thanks," she says, again, meaning the clothes, the whole night.

Derek tilts his head to the side, looks like he wants to say something, but the he shakes his head.

“What?” Stiles asks.

“Nothing,” he says, "You look terrible."

"Thanks jerkwad," she says, and smiles. "They're your clothes."

Her dad glances up at her when she comes inside, at her strange outfit and wrecked hair. He doesn't say anything.

 

 

 

you can't defeat her, when you meet her

Stiles pulls up in front of the old abandoned train depot on the outskirts of town and Derek is already waiting for her, leaning up against the brick wall. He looks like he's posing for an H & M ad, but she doesn't think he's doing it on purpose, he probably just always looks like that.

"We have to stop meeting like this," she says.

Derek looks at her sideways as he swings himself up into the Jeep, says, "You called me."

"Eh," she says, "I’ve heard it both ways."

Derek rolls his eyes.

"You couldn't have driven yourself?" she asks. "Or did you just miss the Stilinski-mobile. Because ten miles away from everyone ever is not exactly on my way to the vet’s."

Derek says, "Boyd needed the car. I think he's teaching Erica how to drive."

She didn't really think Derek was the kind of guy who'd hand over the keys of his expensive car to a pair of teenagers with emotional issues. Well, outside of life or death situations.

"So," she says, as it occurs to her that the last time he was in her car was the time he asked her to cut his arm off , "About that time where I tried to leave you to die by the side of the road…"

Derek looks at her, raises an eyebrow.

"Still totally not sorry about that," she says. "I’d do it again in a heartbeat."

"Mmm-hm," Derek says. "Turn left up here."

Stiles flips on her blinker about a block and a half too early just to show that she’s paying attention.

Derek asks, "Why did Scott want to meet?"

Stiles shrugs. "Maybe it's about Gerard?" She pulls around into the lot for the strip-mall where the clinic is, parks the Jeep in a spot reserved for expectant mothers.

Derek climbs out of the passenger seat, looks pointedly at the sign, at her, and back.

"What," she says. "I could be, someday. It’s not like the sign’s time bound."

One second Derek is shaking his head at her, smiling, corners of his mouth turned up, and in the next second he’s gone rigid, eyes darting. He asks, "When did you last see Scott?"

"Scott?" she asks, not following.

"He’s in danger," Derek says. He takes off running towards Deaton’s and Stiles trips after him, door of the Jeep hanging half-open.

"How the hell can you know that?" she asks, but Derek is already gone.

"Derek!" she cries out, stumbling through the front door of the clinic. "What the hell is going on? Jesus, what’s that smell?"

She takes a hallway corner too fast, skinning her knuckles against the wall as she ricochets from one side to the other and it takes her a second to place what, exactly, is out of the ordinary. The backroom of the clinic has smelled like burnt wolfsbane for weeks, but now the whole building just seems permeated with that same acrid stench, dialed up to 11.

"Derek, you can’t be in here," she says, "It’s-"

"Poison?"

Stiles nearly collides head-on with Victoria Argent.

"What are you-"

"It’s only poisonous if you’re not human," Mrs. Argent says, and she sounds so calm and in control and sane but the look in her eyes is completely bugnuts.

Stiles squints into the smoky room and spots Scott curled up on the ground, gasping. She can’t see Derek anywhere.

"Does crazy run in the family?" Stiles shouts, taking a step and a step back. She saw a flash of red out of the corner of her eye when she came in and reaches back for it, blindly, pulling the fire alarm just as Mrs. Argent rounds on her completely.

The sound is loud enough to be distracting, the flashing lights of the alarm visible even through the heavy mist filling the room. There’s a blur of motion past Stiles’ shoulder - Derek - and Mrs. Argent turns towards it, reaching for something. Stiles doesn’t think, kicks out, crunching the ball of her foot into the back of Mrs. Argent’s knee, sending her sprawling to the ground.

"Go!" Derek yells. "Get out of here! I’ve got Scott."

Stiles doesn’t wait to be told twice, backpedals out of the room and away from Mrs. Argent as Derek heaves past, dragging a barely-moving Scott with him. Stiles can hear an approaching blare of a fire-engine getting closer as they fall back through the front door into the parking lot and the open air.

Derek drops Scott onto the asphalt near the Jeep and Scott coughs, takes a few pathetic hitching breaths. He sounds awful.

Stiles scrambles towards Scott, sits and pulls him into her lap, tilts his head back. Scott's leg twitches, barely struggling when she holds his nose closed.

She says, "I’m sorry, I haven’t brushed my teeth since Tuesday."

She takes in a deep breath, breathes it out into his lungs for him.

By the time the fire trucks arrive there’s a real fire in the front of the clinic, small and hot, flames licking out the door. The parking lot fills with the shrieking of sirens, the sounds of cats and dogs howling and barking in terror.

Stiles hands Scott off to the EMTs, tells them that he’s having an asthma attack, that he inhaled a lot of smoke before they got there. She squeezes his hand as they roll him into the back and says, "I won’t tell Allison that we made out if you won’t - don’t want her to get jealous."

Relief floods through her system when Scott manages a weak smile.

Someone, probably a firefighter, tells Stiles that what she did was heroic, but she’s not paying attention. She’s watching Derek, who's sitting on the hood of the Jeep, motionless, staring at the flames.

 

 

 

a lifesaver down my throat

The clinic has a sign up in the window that reads, "STILL OPEN DURING CONSTRUCTION," but this late in the day there aren't any customers around.

Stiles pushes inside the newly installed door, says, "Scott, you ready to go?"

The walls are wrecked, the row of built-in metal chairs is a twisted and scorched mess, but there are some things scattered here and there that are conspicuously, suspiciously undamaged.

Deaton comes out of the back, wiping something off of his hands with a wet rag. He says, "Miss Stilinski, if I may have a moment?"

"Sure," she says, though Deaton still kind of freaks her out, a little. He's too calm.

"I have something for you," he says, walking behind the front desk and opening a drawer. He comes back, hands her a dog whistle on a key-ring.

"Thanks?" she says.

"That may come in handy one day."

Stiles clips the whistle onto her keys and follows him into the back of the clinic.

"As my assistant explained to me the events of last week,” Deaton says, “It occurred to me that I may have been remiss in not sharing with you things that may be to your benefit."

"Like what?" she asks.

Scott's already in the back room when they get there, sitting on a table and flipping through an old-looking, dusty book.

"Like this," Deaton says, reaching for something on a shelf and coming back what looks like a spice jar full of black sand. Scott stands up, walks towards Deaton, curious. He reaches out for the little jar, but Deaton gently pushes his hand back.

Deaton turns to Stiles and says, "This is for you, Miss Stilinski, and only you."

He hands the jar to Stiles.

"It's from the mountain ash tree," he says, "Which is believed by many cultures to protect against the supernatural. This whole place is lined with ash wood, making it difficult for someone like Scott to cause me any trouble."

Stiles says, "You may have noticed, but I don't spend my time defending humans from the supernatural. It usually goes the other way."

"Hunters use this to set traps," Deaton says, "You should know what you're up against."

Stiles looks down at it, shakes it a little, asks, "Werewolves can't cross it?"

"Yes," Deaton says, nodding. "Among other things."

Stiles asks, "How does it work? You just spread it around?"

"More or less," Deaton says. "Think of it like gunpowder. It's just powder until a spark ignites it. You need to be that spark."

"If you mean I need to set myself on fire," she says, glancing around the room, "I think we've all had quite enough of that."

"Let me try a different analogy," Deaton says, taking the mountain ash from Stiles, unscrewing the top, and handing it back to her. "I used to golf. I learned that the best golfers never swing before first imagining where they want the ball to go. They see it in their mind and their mind takes over."

He gestures at and around Scott, and Stiles gets the idea that he wants her to try it out.

She feels kind of stupid, pouring black sand out of a jar.

"If this is going to work, Stiles, you have to believe it."

Stiles takes a deep breath and holds the idea in her mind, This will work. She'd thought, when she started pouring it out, that there was no way that there was enough in the jar to make a whole circle, but when she's back around in front of Scott there's just enough left to make the two ends meet.

"Well," she says, looking up at Scott, "How do you feel?"

Scott says, "I'm fine." He sounds fine, if a little puzzled. He reaches his hand forward, towards the line of ash and when he reaches it, his hand stops, flattens against some barrier Stiles can't see. He looks like a mime in an invisible box.

"Yes!" she yells, and pumps her fist. "Did you see that? I did that!"

Deaton looks enigmatic, as usual, but proud around the edges. When she turns back to Scott, though, he seems anxious.

Scott says, "Stiles? Could you?"

"What?"

"Stiles," he says. "Let me out."

"Oh," she says, "Right." She crouches down, runs her finger through the black dust. Scott moves fast, is all the way on the other side of the room in an instant.

"It can be pretty extraordinary," Deaton says, "What the force of your own will can accomplish."

---

There’s new construction on Fourth between Alameda and Beckett, re-routing a sewer line or something, and the only detour makes it a much a longer drive than normal from Deaton’s to Scott’s. Scott spends most of it looking out the car window without talking. Stiles lets it go on until she just can’t stand it anymore and she blurts out, “So what’d you tell Allison? About her mom? What's she going to do?”

Scott keeps staring out window, doesn’t say anything.

“You didn’t tell her,” Stiles says.

Scott’s head rolls back against the headrest.

“You didn’t tell her?” Stiles says again, louder.

Scott asks, “What am I supposed to say?”

“How about, I don’t know, gee Allison I think your hair looks amazing in the moonlight and by the way your crazyass mother tried to kill me the other day? “ Stiles says, “Seems pretty straightforward to me.”

Scott says, “It’s not that easy. I don’t want to hurt her.”

“I know you love her,” Stiles says, in what she hopes is a reasonable tone, “But you really need to consider how many members of her family have actively tried to kill you at this point. My count is at least three.”

“You don’t understand,” Scott says. Stiles is getting pretty frickin’ sick of Scott telling her about how much she doesn’t understand being in love.

“It’s not worth you dying over!” she yells, voice loud as hell in the small confines of the car, “Nothing is worth you dying over.”

Scott groans, pained, says, “You sound like Derek!”

“Well sometimes he makes a hell of a lot more sense than you do,” she says. She pulls up in front of Scott’s house and parks in the driveway. She gets out of the car, even though she was initially just giving Scott a ride home, and follows him up to his front porch.

“You’re coming in?” Scott asks.

“Yes,” she says, “Yes I am. If you’re not going to at least take basic precautions, you’re damn well gonna take me with you wherever you go from now on.”

“You’re gonna follow me everywhere,” Scott says.

“Yes,” Stiles says, “Absolutely.”

Scott looks at her sideways. “Even when I go to the bathroom.”

She nods. “I’ll work out some sort of buddy system with Isaac.”

Scott asks, “For the rest of our lives?”

“Yes, until you get this through your thick skull, OK?” She grabs his arm, turns him until he's looking her in the eye. “I’ll be devastated if you die. I will literally go out of my freaking mind.”

“I’m sorry,” Scott says.

Stiles isn’t listening, she's got too much momentum.

“Death doesn’t happen to you, Scott,” she says, “It happens to everyone around you. OK? To all the people left standing around at your funeral trying to figure out how they’re going to live the rest of their lives now without you in it.”

“I’m sorry,” Scott says, again.

Stiles lets go of his arm. She takes a deep breath and step back. She says, "This is serious, OK? You can't just pretend nothing happened. Talk to Allison. Maybe she'll talk to her dad or something, I don't know, but we need all the help we can get."

"OK," Scott says. "OK, I'll talk to her. We'll figure something out."

"Because, really," Stiles says, trying to get her voice back to normal. "I'd be like one of those old Sicilian ladies, throwing myself on your coffin. Rending my garments, it wouldn't be pretty."

Scott puts his hand on her shoulder, and says, solemn, "I promise I won't let that happen."

"OK," she says. She believes him.

Scott opens the door to the house, says, "You want to stay for dinner? I think mom cooked."

"I'm not coming in anymore," Stiles says, and she starts slowly backing away from the house. "It smells like your mom's tuna casserole in there.”

Scott shoots her a questioning look.

Stiles says, “That stuff will actually kill you."

 

 

 

i hear her whistle, that's how I know she's home

"Stiles," Jackson calls out to her from across the hallway.

Stiles closes her locker, locks it, and turns around. Jackson pushes his way sideways through the moving crowd until he's standing right in front of her. He's never done this before, never once has he sought her out deliberately.

"You have to help me," he says. It's a command, not a request, but it still sounds like it's costing him to say it. "Scott said you helped him with the-“

“With the what?” Stiles asks.

Jackson’s voice drops to a forced, bitten-off whisper, he says, “The shift. It's almost the full moon, I don't want to-"

Derek told her all about how Jackson spent the last one, running around out of control, wild and half-naked in the woods.

Jackson clenches his jaw and says, "I need you."

Stiles has been waiting her whole life for this moment. Except every time she's imagined it - and it's been many, many times - he's referring to her naked, nubile body, not her expertise on werewolves.

"Sure,” she says, “I can help. Come home with me after Lydia's party."

Jackson nods, and starts to walk away.

It takes Stiles a second to realize that she's being stupid, and she shouts out to him, "No, wait, during Lydia's party. It's gotta be before moonrise."

Jackson stops and turns to her, his expression clearly asking, Why are you still talking to me? But he says, "Fine."

Some part of her thrills at the idea - Jackson! in her bedroom! - while the rest of her is paying attention to her more sensible self, the one that's shouting at her that this is a dangerous, bloodthirsty creature she's letting into her home. The one that's pointing out that she has no idea what she's doing.

---

Stiles tips her punch into the pool, sobriety seeming like the better course of action for the evening, and glances up at Jackson in time to see him drop his empty glass. He doesn't look good, his eyes are darting from side to side and he's pale, sweating. Stiles stands and takes a hesitant step in his direction.

"Jackson?" she asks, her voice sounds loud to her ears but he doesn't hear her. He's staring at a patch of empty air, shaking his head. He takes a half-step backwards, panicked, and then the claws come out and he lunges forward at nothing.

Stiles does the only thing she can think of - it's a shitty idea, but it's all she's got - she takes four or five quick steps around the edge of the pool, plants her feet and shoves him forward with everything she has, tackling him into the water and falling in after.

Some other people at the party obviously think her shitty plan is a great idea, because she hears a series of splashes following, feels the spray of chlorinated water hitting her in the face.

"You need to get your heart-rate under control," she says, holding on to Jackson as he thrashes, snarling, his face thankfully out of sight of the rest of the drunk, tripping crowd. "You've got to focus on something."

There's another loud splash, and someone in the pool starts shrieking that they can't swim. It takes her a second to recognize the voice as Matt's. She doesn't know what to do. Matt's a creep, but he doesn't deserve to die, and she can't just leave Jackson like this.

Stiles hears Lydia, near the edge of the pool, call out, "Jackson?"

At the sound of Lydia’s voice Jackson transforms completely back to human. He looks around, startled, and then takes off, perfect form, to where Matt is still shouting, his hands making frantic cutting motions against the surface of the water. Jackson grabs him, hauls him lifeguard-style to the side of the pool and heaves him up over the side.

Stiles climbs out of the pool, shivering in the cool air.

"Jackson?" Lydia asks again, "Are you OK?"

Jackson pushes himself out of the pool, gets to his feet. "I'm fine," he says, in his normal voice, haughty and dismissive. "Let's get out of here."

It takes Stiles a while to realize he's talking to her.

---

The sight of Jackson in her bedroom is strange, overwhelming. It’s something she’s thought about for years and now that it’s happening she almost doesn’t want him there. She’s soaking wet and exhausted. All she wants is to take a shower and a nap.

Jackson’s attention goes straight to where she was hoping he wouldn’t look and he spots the expensive things she has stacked up in the corner. His eyes go from the boxed flatscreen TV to the men's size 13 Pumas to the signed Kanye West album to her.

"I didn’t know what to get you for your birthday," she says, "Derek suggested a choke chain."

He says, "My birthday’s not until June."

She shrugs, says, "Doesn't hurt to be prepared."

"Why am I not…" Jackson trails off. He gestures at one of the padlocks on Stiles’ desk, from the last full moon when Scott still needed training wheels.

“Turning into Cujo?” Stiles asks, and Jackson nods. "You've got something to ground you, remind you that you're human. Scott has Allison. You have… Lydia."

Jackson scoffs, says, "I don't need her."

"Are you sure about that?" Stiles asks. Jackson’s jaw twitches, he doesn’t say anything.

His phone buzzes, and when he looks at the display his face drops its mask of indifference for a split-second. It must be Lydia, then. Stiles doesn’t even have it in her to be jealous. "You should probably get that," she says.

Jackson clenches his teeth for an instant before he picks up.

"What do you want?" Jackson snaps, but his voice goes from annoyed - it’s an act, Stiles thinks, such an act - to scared and concerned in an instant. He says, "Where are you? Stay there, I’m coming to get you."

Stiles sits up.

"Stay there," he repeats, and disconnects the call.

He looks up at Stiles and says, "She’s at Derek’s."

Stiles grabs her keys.

---

They take the Porsche to the house and the whole time over Stiles has déjà vu. It’s just like the night of winter formal, except this time she’s wearing shoes she can actually run in.

Inside the door they split up, Jackson to Lydia, huddled and shaking against a wall in the corner, Stiles to- "Oh my god, Derek."

He’s collapsed on the floor, covered with blood and dirt and sweat. He won’t wake up when Stiles tries to shake him. She looks back to Jackson for help, but he's walking with Lydia towards the door, talking to her in a low voice. What they have going seems private, important, it feels like she'd be intruding.

Stiles turns back to Derek, jabs her fingers into his neck to check his pulse, and as soon a she's sure he's alive, she starts yelling at him.

"Come on, you asshole," she hisses, grabbing his massive bicep and shaking him again, "Don’t do this to me, what the hell is wrong with you, I have had the shittiest day, don’t you dare-"

It's not working at all and Stiles tries to think of anything that might help. She remembers, suddenly, the dog whistle that Deaton gave her and thinks, sure, why not? She works her keys out of her pocket, tries blowing into it and Derek - oh thank god - jerks awake.

"That sound," he says, "What was that?"

Sound? Oh yeah.

"Dog whistle," she says.

Derek gives her a wry look and it's like she can finally breathe now that back to his usual, dickish self. She was genuinely scared for him for a minute there.

“Hey,” she says, “It was Deaton's idea.”

She crouches down and reaches out, helps Derek up, catches him as he stumbles. She doesn’t let go because she doesn’t trust him to stand on his own yet.

Derek asks, "Where is he?"

"Where is who?" Stiles asks.

"Peter," Derek says.

"Peter?" Stiles asks, "What the hell are you talking about?"

Derek's jaw twitches a little, he says, "Peter’s back."

Stiles can’t wrap her head around it, asks, "From the dead?"

Derek glares at her like she’s being dense and unimaginative on purpose, gestures at the hole in the floor.

Stiles, still not processing any of this, asks, "You buried him under the floor?"

Derek says, "I’d have done it outside, but I was afraid someone was going to come by and dig him up." He gives her a pointed look.

Stiles settles Derek down onto the half-upholstered, wrecked couch. She takes a minute to look him over: he's covered in blood, pale, he looks awful.

"Look at you," Stiles says, "I leave you alone for one minute and you raise the dead. You’re not setting fantastic precedent here."

He shakes his head. "Peter raised himself," Derek says. "He used Lydia, that's why she didn't turn."

Lydia’s odd behavior and crying jags, the night in the woods, the freak-out at the ice rink, the punch at the party: it was all adding up to something. Stiles just didn’t know it was going to add up to this.

Derek asks, "How did you know I was here?"

“I didn’t,” Stiles says, "Lydia called Jackson."

"Jackson was with you?" Derek asks, and his voice changes, flattens.

Stiles shrugs, says, "He needed my help."

She kind of expects Derek to say something insulting, like, Why would he need your help?

Derek doesn’t say anything.

Stiles is suddenly exhausted. She sits down on the floor at Derek’s feet, picking at the splinters in the wood and thinking about Lydia, Gerard, Peter, the whole effing mess. She doesn’t really move until the darkness of the room starts lightening and she realizes that the sun’s coming up. Her dad’s going to be home soon.

She stands up, moves to the door and when she steps out she it hits her that Jackson’s Porsche is gone and Derek’s Camaro is nowhere to be seen either. They’re stuck with no car at a house with no address in the middle of nowhere.

“Crap,” she says, “No way a cab comes all the way out here.” No way she could afford one that did. “How the hell do I get to town?”

“You walk,” Derek says, suddenly right behind her.

“Sure,” Stiles says, “I had nothing better to do this morning than hike ten miles.”

Derek brushes past her on the patio, jumps down the stairs.

Stiles stares at him for a minute before following, actually taking the steps like a normal person. “I guess you’re feeling better, then.”

“Come on,” Derek says, starts walking towards Beacon Hills proper. “I’ll buy you a burrito.”

“Make it oatmeal,” Stiles says, falling into step next to him. Derek rolls his eyes, starts walking faster. She has to jog a little to catch up.

 

 

 

when I'm busy I couldn't care less what you do

Tripping head-first down a flight of stairs isn't the way she usually likes to enter rooms, but the burly guy who shoves her into the Argent's basement doesn't give her much of a choice.

Gerard looks down at her, in a heap at his feet. "Poor girl, let me help you up," he says, voice pitying, condescending.

He reaches his hand down, but she hits it away, gets to her feet on her own.

"No, I'm fine, this is great," Stiles says, "When people ask me what my dream date is, I usually tell them that I'd really love to be kidnapped after a lacrosse game and locked up in a musty-ass basement with a sociopath."

Gerard smiles at her, a sick, evil smile.

"Thanks," Stiles says, "For making that dream come true for me."

Gerard tips his head, doffs an invisible cap.

"You’ve been meddling where you oughtn’t, young lady," Gerard says. "There are things going on here you don’t understand."

"I understand that your psycho bitch daughter got what was coming to her," she says, and she’s a little shocked by how much she means that.

Gerard backhands her across the face, her head snapping to the side.

The inside of her lip is cut up, it must have caught against her teeth. Stiles spits blood out onto the floor.

"Okay," she asks, "So what are you doing with me?"

Gerard glances at her, pitying, like she’s some dumb lost lamb.

"Because Scott can find me, alright," she adds. "He knows my scent. It’s pungent, more like a stench. He could find me even if I was buried at the bottom of a sewer covered in-"

"And Derek?" Gerard asks, cutting in.

"Sure thing," she answers, "Him too. If he’s not too overwhelmed by the smell of Ensure and Fixodent."

"You have a knack with words, Miss Stilinski," Gerard says, "I have to give credit to our English department, you paint a very vivid picture."

Stiles can’t help but snort in derision at that one. The BHS English department is terrible.

Gerard continues, "Let me paint one of my own. How about your little werewolf boyfriend finds you bloodied and beaten to a pulp. How does that sound, now?"

"I think I might prefer more of a still life," she says, trying to cover the panic at the thought of Scott or Derek finding her like that, what they might do. "Or a landscape. You know?"

Gerard backhands her again, sending her to the floor.

"You might want to get some ice on that," he says, "Might bruise. Wouldn’t want people to see you riding around like that with that mongrel of yours, they might get the wrong impression."

---

They actually pull up in front of her house and shove her out of the side of a panel van.

“Very original!” Stiles shouts at their retreating taillights. “You guys get an A+ in kidnapping!”

The porch light switches on, she’s momentarily blinded before her dad is rushing up to her, pulling her into a hug.

“Stiles,” he says, “You’re OK? You’re OK.”

“I’m fine, dad,” she says, when he takes a step back and she can breathe again.

Her dad touches her face, asks, “Who the hell did this to you?”

Nothing’s going to get her dad’s attention like saying It’s nothing, brushing it off like it didn’t happen, but Stiles is tired, hungry. She doesn’t have a good excuse prepared and for a minute she just doesn’t say anything.

“What the hell have you gotten yourself into? Is it,” he asks, “Are you - is there some boy?”

Stiles shakes her head, says, “No. How could you even think-”

But of course that’s what he’s thinking, that’s what Gerard wants everyone thinking.

“I don’t know what to think anymore!” her dad says. “You’re out at all hours of the night and you come back home looking like-”

Stiles takes a deep, steadying breath, says, “Like what?”

“Like a daughter I’m not sure that I recognize anymore.”

Stiles says, “Dad.” She doesn’t want to start crying, but it’s a near thing. “I’m not doing anything you wouldn’t-”

“Then what happened?” he asks again, “Why won’t you talk to me?”

A plausible scenario comes to her head and she says, “It was some guys from the other school, they thought, you know, they wanted to send the guys on the team a message. I’m kind of like the team mascot and I guess these guys thought I was an easy target.”

Her dad starts to say, “I want names-”

“I wasn’t,” she interrupts, “An easy target. You should see the other guys.”

Her dad looks like he’s trying to decide whether to be worried about her or proud of her. He says, “I just want you to be safe.”

“You can’t lock me up in a tower,” Stiles says, trying to smile, knowing it looks lop-sided and awful with her split lip. “I can handle myself.”

“I know,” he says, pride starting to win out. “I know you can. But it’s hard for me to see you, you know, growing up so fast. You’re just like…” he shakes his head, trailing off.

“Here,” he says, voice rough, turning his face away, “We found this on the field after the game.”

He hands over her phone, his hand lighting up in strange little green flashes from the blinking of the little indicator in the corner.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Come inside,” he says, “Let me get you a, what do you even eat these days? Yogurt?”

“Sounds good,” she says, looking down at her phone to hide a crooked smile. She swipes at the display, pulls down the status bar. Twenty missed calls, from her dad and Scott and Isaac, and one text message, from Derek.

 

 

 

make a hole in a lifeboat

There’s only two gas stations in Beacon Hills and the one right off the highway charges 30 cents more per gallon, so really, if you don’t have a trust fund, there’s only one gas station in Beacon Hills. It’s a choke point, everyone in town who drives has to pass through it least once every couple of weeks, like it or not. Stiles knows this, everyone knows this, and everyone unfortunately includes Allison’s dad.

“Stiles,” Chris Argent says, smiling, showing a frightening set of bright white teeth. “So good to see you.”

He leans back against the side of his SUV, casual, like he really just happened to need gas at this exact moment and happened to run into Stiles. What a coincidence.

“Hi, Mr. Argent,” Stiles says, glancing at the gauge on the pump as it ticks slowly up from 1.024 to 3.036. She could cut and run, but with the Jeep’s MPG she’s not gonna get very far. “How’s Allison doing?”

“Good, good,” Mr. Argent says. “I wish you’d come by the house more often. Allison needs to spend more time with girls her age. With her mom taking that job in Oregon, it’s just me and my father around. There are things in her life we just can’t relate to.”

Sure, Stiles thinks, like make-up and boys and not cutting people in half.

“I didn’t know that about Mrs. Argent,” Stiles says, “When did that happen?”

“Oh, quite recently,” Mr. Argent says, “She got a great offer and we thought it would be the best decision for the family if she accepted.”

“Yes,” Stiles says, “That does sound like the best possible option for everyone involved.”

Stiles would be happier with Mrs. Argent spending the rest of her life in prison, but out of town and away from Scott she can live with.

“It might not be a permanent change,” Mr. Argent says, an obvious threat underlining the words, “It does rain there a lot, and she has terrible arthritis in her knee.”

Stiles says, “I’m sorry to hear that about her knee.” She’s really not.

14.45 gallons, finally, and the pump shuts off with a clunking noise.

“Well it was great running into you,” Stiles says, “We’ll have to do this again sometime soon.”

Stiles carefully puts the nozzle of the gas pump back, screws the cap back onto her tank. She doesn’t wait for her receipt.

---

It's late afternoon when she gets to the house, the sun looks like it wants to start setting any minute. Derek is waiting for her on his porch when she pulls up and he slips inside when she approaches, casually leaving the door swinging open. She follows him in, perches on the remains of the couch in his hollow shell of a living room.

Derek points at the bruises on her face, asks, "What-"

"Gerard," she says. "It’s fine. He’s an asshole."

Derek looks murderous, and she says, "It's fine, it's really fine, OK? If you let him get you upset the terrorists win. Trust me on this one?”

Derek growls, “Fine.” He doesn't look very calmed at all.

Stiles tries to think of some way to distract him, says, “We have-”

“If you say we have to stop meeting like this-”

“We have like 10 pounds of tamales in our fridge at home," Stiles says, over him, loudly.

Derek’s vengeful look dissolves into confusion and she goes on, "Layla at Dad’s work always goes crazy this time of year and makes a ton and then the whole station’s eating them for weeks. Please, take some of ours so I don’t die of some kind of masa overdose.”

“Stiles,” Derek sighs, but he nods and he seems amused despite his better judgment.

“Do you have an oven or something? Microwave?”

“Why am I here?” Derek asks, “We could have done this over the phone.”

“What?” Stiles asks, because Derek texted her to come out here. “I thought you wanted to- Oh shit. “

Derek snaps to sudden attention and Stiles can hear the sound of a car starting, more than one. They must have already been in the woods, waiting.

Stiles says, “We have to stop falling for that one. We need codewords.”

Derek says, “Yeah, you think?”

Now she can hear muffled voices coming from the half-open back of the house.

“Peter?” she asks.

Derek shakes his head.

“Argent,” he says, growling, fangs and the tips of his pointed ears starting to show already. He vaults over the couch, moves to the front door and opens it, but when he tries to take another step forward he ricochets off like he’s run straight into an invisible wall.

Stiles pulls herself up off the couch and walks up to the doorway. Her hand passes right through, no problem. Mountain ash, then.

Derek turns to Stiles, says, “Go. They’re only here for me.”

“No,” Stiles says, “I’m not leaving you here.”

Derek doesn’t give her a choice, grabs her around the waist and heaves her across the threshold, slams the door in her face.

“Derek!” she shouts, banging her fists on the splintering wood on the side of the house, “Don’t you dare.”

Shots start to ring out from the rear of the house, the pop-pop-pop of semi-automatic fire bouncing off the trees and half-gone walls. Stiles doesn’t think, lets her legs decide for her where to go and within seconds she’s in the Jeep, turning the engine over and putting it into gear.

The porch is a no-go, but the side of the house where the dining room used to be was built into the hill. Stiles drives the car around, squares the Jeep up so that it’s facing that side of the house and without giving herself enough time to reconsider, she floors it. She has a couple seconds of panic, thinking, This isn’t going to work, and then she’s through the wall.

It’s hard to see through the hail of debris, what’s left of the second floor raining down, but as soon as her vision clears she spots Derek, backed into a corner. The Jeep makes an angry rattling noise, but it lurches forward, hunters scattering in front of her bumper, until she reaches him and pulls up along-side. She grinds the gears into park, launches out of the driver’s seat across the car, pushes open the passenger side door and reaches out.

"Come with me if you want to live," she says in one raspy, panting breath.

When she feels Derek’s hand fold into hers she yanks him into the Jeep with all of her strength, falling back into her seat. She jams the car into reverse and backs it out all the way, back through the wall, through the preserve, and onto the highway.

---

The abandoned factory on fifth used to make gears for tanks during WWII, and it’s old enough that it’s mostly windows high up towards the ceiling. There’s some light still coming in through them on the west side, the last dying red embers of the sunset.

"I texted Scott," she says. "He’ll be here in ten minutes."

She slides down the wall and rests her head back against the peeling, lead-based paint. Derek sits down next to her. He looks as exhausted as she feels.

She asks, "Are you OK?"

"Werewolf," he says, like it's an explanation.

"Yeah," Stiles says, dismissive, "Like that fixes anything ever."

Derek says, "Fixes getting stabbed in the neck with a fork."

"I still have to try that someday," Stiles says, smiling a little. "I owe you."

“I’m fine,” he says, “I’ve already healed.” He plucks at his shirt, riddled with bullet holes, and what she can see of chest is smooth, unmarked.

“Anyway,” she says, "You know what I meant. Being a werewolf doesn't magically fix everything. Jackson's been one for like a month and he still drops his guard on the left side when he's moving on goal." She's only mildly horrified to realize she's actually learned something from Finstock's ad-hoc coaching methods.

Derek's posture goes from loose and relaxed at her side to something a little bit stiffer. He says, “I don’t think anything could fix Jackson.”

“He doesn’t need fixing,” she says, an involuntary, knee-jerk reaction.

Derek’s expression clearly says, Yeah right. He asks, "How’s your ten-year plan going?"

"It’s more like a fifteen-year plan at this point," Stiles says, though she really hasn't been thinking about it recently. "Someone’s gotta be the second Mrs. Whittemore. Pick up after the messy divorce, raise the kids. If I start taking Pilates now," she says, trailing off.

Derek shakes his head, probably trying to clear it of the vision of her in yoga pants. He asks, "What do you see in him anyway?"

Stiles shrugs.

She fell in love with Jackson in the third grade when Greenburg pushed her down and shoved mud in her face and Jackson said to him, "Stop it, she’s alright." Jackson just wanted Greenburg to help him beat up Scott for his Pokémon cards, but during that moment he was her hero. And unlike almost every other boy on the planet he’s never been mean to her. Even when he’s actively being a douche to Scott and she’s right there he’ll ignore her at worst and at best glare at the assholes that are giving her shit. There’s some invisible line there that he doesn’t cross with her and sometimes she mistakes it for integrity.

When the silence has lasted too long, Stiles says, "He's handsome, rich, captain of the lacrosse team, what's not to like?"

Derek says, "You just described Peter."

Stiles chokes on air for a few beats.

"Oh my God," she says, horrified, "You are not trying to set me up with your creepy undead uncle."

Derek makes the noise he always makes when he doesn’t approve of her dumb sense of humor, a sound halfway between a laugh and a pained sigh.

He says, "That's not where I was going with that."

Stiles says, "Thank the baby Jesus."

They sit in silence for a little while, Stiles kicks at the rocks and debris near her feet.

"It doesn’t matter what I want anyway," she says. "It’s never going to happen. Jackson and Lydia are meant to be."

Derek says, "They deserve each other."

She doesn’t think he means that as a compliment.

Stiles sighs, overly dramatic, and says, "I just wish someone would look at me like that."

Derek makes a bitten-off noise of frustration. He says, "God, you’re an idiot."

"Kick a girl while she’s down, why don’t you."

She turns to Derek, expecting to see him smirking at her, in on the joke, but what she sees on his face knocks the air right out of her lungs.

Derek is looking at her like that. He's looking at her helpless and fond and mildly exasperated. He's looking at her like he knows he should look away, but can't.

Derek, who has silently been suffering through what has been, cumulatively, hours of listening to her go on about Jackson. Derek hates Jackson.

Shit, someone cast her in a John Hughes movie without bothering to tell her.

"Derek," she says, suddenly, inexplicably breathless.

Derek sits up, his head turning towards the door. "Someone’s coming," he says.

"Crap," Stiles says, "Scott."

Except it’s not just Scott.

"This is quite a touching little scene," Gerard says, coming in on Scott's heels.

Gerard signals to someone Stiles can’t see and suddenly the place is full of people, half a dozen men in black spilling in through the doorway behind him. Stiles jumps to her feet and Derek comes up next to her, fully wolfed-out and snarling.

Stiles says, "What the hell is-"

Before she can finish, one of Gerard’s henchmen grabs her by the neck and yanks her roughly away from the wall. Derek growls and lunges forward, but the rest of Gerard’s men move in, guns cocked and pointed, pinning him down.

"What are you doing with her?" Scott asks.

Gerard doesn't say anything, just smiles that awful smile at her.

Scott says, "This isn't what we-"

Gerard turns to Scott and he abruptly goes quiet.

Gerard's goon wraps one hand around Stiles' throat and pushes a gun into the side of her head with the other. Tears start welling up involuntarily in her eyes and she thinks, Damn it, if I'm going to die this way I should have had those mozzarella sticks last night.

Gerard starts rolling up his sleeves.

"What are you doing?" Stiles asks, her voice steadier than she thought it would be.

Scott says, "He's doing what he came here to do."

Gerard turns to him, surprised, "Then you know?"

"What is he talking about?" Stiles asks again.

She doesn't like being so God damn out of the loop when someone is pointing a loaded gun at her, but Gerard isn't paying any attention, he's looking at Scott with admiration.

"It was that night outside the hospital wasn't it when I threatened your mother," Gerard says. "I knew I saw something in your eyes. You could smell it, couldn't you?"

Scott says, "You’re dying."

"I am," Gerard says, with a little dramatic bow. "I have been for a while now."

Stiles says, "Not fast enough." The grip around her throat tightens.

Gerard sighs, says, "Unfortunately science doesn't have a cure for cancer yet.” He rounds on Derek. “But the supernatural does."

It hits Stiles all at once what he's actually talking about and she spits out, "You're one sick bastard."

Gerard says, "Not for long. Now, Mr. Hale."

Gerard turns to Derek, brandishes his arm in invitation.

"If you play nicely," Gerard says, "Miss Stilinski here gets to live long enough to make it to graduation."

"No," Stiles says. "Nope. Stay back. Don't you dare."

Once Gerard's a werewolf he's, there's no way he stops there. He's going to kill Derek to become Alpha and that can't happen. That just can't.

Derek has to keep on living so that he can make fun of her food choices and roll his eyes at her when she makes dumb jokes. She’s heavily invested in whether he lives or dies now, which is a thing that happened gradually, unnoticed, and completely without her permission.

She says, "Please don't."

Derek doesn't say anything, but she knows anyway what he's thinking, what he's going to do. He looks at her in a way she decides is not goodbye and then turns away, towards Gerard.

She says, "God, you're an idiot."

"Of course he is," Gerard says, "There's just no competing with young love."

Derek lunges towards Gerard, fangs out, and time starts to speed up and slow down all at once. Stiles’ vision tunnels to almost nothing and all she really notices are sounds:

Gerard retching as black bile pours from his mouth.

Scott's voice shouting, "Get down!"

The sickening crunch of Derek breaking the arm of the man holding the gun to her head.

And then ringing silence.

"What-" she starts. All around at her feet are Gerard’s henchmen, knocked unconscious or groaning in pain on the ground.

"Everyone said Gerard had a plan," Scott says, "I had a plan, too."

It's half an explanation at best, but Stiles nods.

Derek turns on Scott, asks, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I was going to," Scott says, "But then I thought it wouldn't have worked if you knew-"

Derek shouts, "You had no right to put Stiles in danger!"

Scott yells back, "He had to be stopped!"

Stiles stops listening. They're each one going to think they're doing the right thing for the right reasons. They're going to hate each other for it. It’s not like getting involved is going to change anything.

It takes her a second to catch up when everything goes quiet. They must have stopped yelling at each other, then.

"Scott," she says, "Can you give me a ride home? My car-"

She walks outside to look at it: frame warped, rear axle almost certainly bent and that's when everything hits her. What happened, what almost happened. She starts shaking, uncontrollably, shivering.

"Are you OK?" Derek asks. Stiles barely hears him, doesn't react until he says, "Stiles."

"I’m," she says, turning towards him sharply, "I am so fucking mad at you."

Derek looks startled, confused. She doesn’t know what he was expecting her to say, but obviously that wasn’t it.

She says, "You can't do this thing where you go and make me like you and then do stupid shit that almost gets you killed."

"Sorry," he says, but he doesn’t even sound remotely apologetic. "Scott started it."

She laughs, a small, surprised, barking laugh.

"I’m sorry," he says, again, a little more sincere. "I'll buy you a new Jeep."

"You can't afford that," she says, "You live in a boxcar."

"Then I’ll unbend the axle with my bare hands," he says, his voice is serious, he maybe isn’t kidding.

"I’m still mad at you," she says, but she’s not. She can't really stay angry at him with what he was willing to do to protect her. She was in love with Jackson for almost a decade because he stood up for her once and that was just to Greenburg.

Derek takes off his leather jacket and hands it to her. She takes it, shoves her arms into the too-long sleeves and wraps it around herself. It’s warm, she’s shivering less now with it on, though when the breeze picks up it cuts right through the bullet holes.

“Quit it,” she says, "This isn’t over, Peter’s still out there, we don’t know what’s going on. I think Gerard melted and you’re trying to distract me."

"Is it working?" Derek asks. He reaches one hand out, hesitantly rests his fingertips against her hipbone.

Stiles shakes her head, lying.

"I had a plan," she says, "You weren't supposed to happen to me. That's not how this works."

He must hear the hitch in her heartbeat because he smiles, corners of his mouth turning up, buck teeth starting to show.

"If it helps," he says, leaning down to whisper into her ear, "I was captain of my lacrosse team in high school."

He pulls her close, big hands framing her hips, no longer hesitating, and he kisses her. The kiss is gentle, careful of the cut on her lip, and her head swims, her heart feels like it’s trying to jump its way out of her chest. When he pulls back she’s glad he’s got his arms steadying her because she’s not sure she can still stand on her own. Her whole world feels re-aligned, tilted on its axis. She thinks she could get used to the view from here.

"It helps," she says.

the end.