Chapter Text
Stiles was bored, and that was never a good thing. It generally led to trouble and mayhem and all hell breaking loose.
Her dad had left half an hour ago, yelling at her to get some sleep for school tomorrow. There was a note of emergency in his tone that he tried to hide, but she could always detect the subtle undertones of his mood. It was a skill she had learned first with her mother when she had gotten sick, and then had continued to use on her father upon Claudia’s death. Back then, it had been a survival skill. She needed to be prepared for when her mother was about to change from the loving and doting figure to a complete nutcase who thought her daughter was a demon or to watch over a father who had lost the love of his life to ensure that he didn’t die from alcohol poisoning or lose his job. These past few years, though, when everything had begun to right itself, Stiles had found that such observational skills could now be used in more fun ways.
This evening, for example. Hearing that slight edge to her dad’s tone alerted her that something was going on in Beacon Hills, something out of the ordinary, something that threatened to disturb the calm of a sleepy small town. Something, in other words, that could break her out of her boredom.
She was in her jeep the moment she knew her dad would be past the corner. Revving up Roscoe, she turned on the police scanner that she had installed months earlier. It would seem that all deputies were on the case, speaking back and forth about locations and sightings. Dead body. Fresh. In the woods. Unidentified female. Half the body missing. This was the beginning scene of a Criminal Minds episode. And Stiles needed to be there for it.
Now, there was a slight voice in the back of her mind, very slight and very quiet, that may have been trying to tell her that going out into the preserves at night, looking for a dead body, with the murderer possibly still nearby, was a bad idea. A morbid idea too. Like, what kind of psycho wants to go out and find a dead body? But Stiles was never good at listening to that quiet voice of reason in moments like these. Moments of severe boredom. She had a problem, but she couldn’t find it in herself to want to fix it.
She ended up at the place where she always seemed to find herself. Her second home. Though it wasn’t really the place that was her second home, but the person inside that second story bedroom who, through the shadows on the curtains, looked to be completing a workout montage. She climbed the tree that she had been climbing since she was 8 years old to knock on his window, but in her excitement, slipped on one of the branches and she got stuck, hanging from the branch by her armpits, her feet dangling. She tried to swing her feet with enough gusto to get back into the tree or the ledge of the house when she heard thundering footsteps in the house and the door swung open. It was about that time she managed to get her feet up, but then Scott had to scream like a little girl, shocking Stiles into a panic squeal herself, and she dropped from the tree, arms and head first.
“What the hell are you doing?” Scott demanded.
“You weren’t answering your phone.” Nevermind that she hadn’t even tried to phone him. She’d been in a hurry. In such a hurry that she may have left her phone on her bed. Possibly almost dead. “Why do you have a bat?”
“I thought you were a predator!”
And he was planning to beat the predator with a bat? This poor guy. If he thought she was a predator, why he’d even open the door? He should have just hid behind something, waiting for the predator to come in and then unsuspectingly wack him with the bat. Because there had been nothing unsuspecting about the way that Scott had run down the stairs. Not that any of that was something that she needed to lecture him on right at this moment. There were bigger things to focus on!
“Look, I know it’s late but you got to hear this. Two joggers saw a body in the woods.”
“A dead body?” Scott did not look sufficiently appalled or interested. Just confused. This doofus.
“No, a body of water. Yes, dead ass, a dead body.” She related all the details she had heard over the police scanner on her way over. Her entire body was vibrating, eager to get on the move.
She managed to convince Scott to accompany her. Truthfully, she was well aware that she could convince Scott to do anything. It had always been this way since they had become the best of friends in first grade. And it was a good thing too. Without her, he’d be staying at home going through a mundane life, never once stepping out into the real world to experience the thrill of what it meant to really be living. He should be grateful for her efforts to make his life interesting. When they were old, they’d look back on adventures like this, talking and laughing about the trouble they used to get us to.
So why did it seem like he wasn’t remotely interested? She had parked Roscoe at the edge of the preserves, miles away from where she knew the deputies had started their search, and they began to trudge through the trees. But despite her own adrenaline spiking, Scott was doing nothing but complaining. Which was so ridiculous. Something like this had never happened in Beacon Hills before. This argument about the school starting back up tomorrow was completely inane. They were going to be going to school for the next three years, and it wasn’t like the first day of school took all that much effort. Heck, the easy going ways of the first day required three hours of sleep tops. And why was he talking about lacrosse? Sitting on the bench all year wouldn’t take much “effort either.
Oh, he did actually want to put effort into lacrosse this year? Was that what the workout montage was all about? “Hey, that’s the spirit. Everyone should have a dream, even a pathetically unrealistic one.”
Not being about to deny her statement, all Scot could do was point out what he thought to be a sad truth too. “What if we’re killed?”
“Didn’t think about that.” If she had thought about that, she probably would have stayed in her bedroom. She wasn’t suicidal after all. She didn’t think she was, anyways. No, she was just bored.
An abrupt noise cut through her manic thoughts and stopped Scott from trying to be even more logical. It got louder. Spooked, Scott and her took off running in the opposite direction. Stiles could feel the rush of blood pulsating in her veins. It carried her faster and faster, the wind and leaves snapping against her ears.
“Ahhh!!” She screamed at the sudden snarling mass in front of her and she landed hard on her backside. She shook the pain away and stood, groaning. Not from pain, but what stood before her.
Her dad was shining a light at her as one of his deputies held the dog at bay. It was still attempting to get to her, its teeth sharp and snapping. “This delinquent belongs to me.” He ordered the others to continue their search as he caught Stiles by the arm to drag her away. “So do you listen to all my calls?”
“Not the boring ones.”
“Where’s your usual partner in crime?”
Where was Scott? He had been right behind her as they ran. She was sure she had felt him at her back when the dog had startled her. He must have had enough of a warning to hide behind a tree until he was sure he could sneak away. Their rule of thumb was to never give each other away. They had a ride-or-die kind of friendship. Stiles had gotten caught, so Scott should have been on his way back to the jeep, going safely back to his room as he had wanted to do all night anyways.
Suddenly, Stiles’s ear was stinging. Her dad had pinched to keep her walking with him. Not hard enough to hurt, but just enough to let her know he was serious. “...talk about something called invasion of privacy.”
^^^^^^^^^^
Stiles woke up the next morning scolding herself for being such an idiot. In the light of a new day, she actually had the brain power to realize how stupid her “adventure” had been, and how much of an awful friend she was to drag Scott out with her. She didn’t know why she often did things like this. Why she couldn’t control her impulses or why she seemed to lean towards the morbid and terrifying. Why she was always seeking out something to get her adrenaline rushing.
On top of feeling stupid, she felt the full weight of guilt too. The first thing she had done once she’d gotten home was plug her phone in to charge so that she could call Scott. They’d been on the phone for over an hour as he had described how he’d run across a wild animal and had ended up with a wicked bite on his side. He had sounded pained on the phone too, out of breath and scared. It had torn Stiles in two, but she knew that if she had revealed such emotions it would have made Scott more panicked. As it was, he seemed to be handling the fright fairly well. He said he had cleaned it and made sure to keep away any sort of infection (thank goodness that his mom was a nurse who had taught her son the basics) and that he would definitely survive.
Still, Stiles had to make sure he was okay for herself.
“Let’s see this thing,” she demanded as she ran up to him at the front of the school steps. She kept her voice manic as she knew she often sounded like on the highs of adderall, masking the guilt she felt at having him. He had it covered in bandages, but as thick as the bandages were, deep red stains had spread across it. She reached out with gentle fingers, but pulled back at the last second, doing her best to hide the guilt that was beginning to choke her.
“I didn’t see much, but I’m pretty sure it was a wolf.”
“A wolf bit you?” No. She climbed her way out of the guilt to explain the facts. “California doesn’t have wolves.” Something else had been in the wolves. Someone else.
“I found the body.”
What? The guilt dissipated and despite her awareness of her stupidity just a moment before, she was hit with the same interest as the previous night. There was a murderer in Beacon Hills. Possibly a serial killer, Stiles thought, since the kill had been done in such a gruesome way. And the body itself didn’t seem to belong to someone from town. Had the killer chased the victim into the preserves from somewhere else, or had the victim come into town and happened upon them? Actually, Stiles was now thinking as she and Scott headed into the school building with the bell ringing incessantly around them, why had the victim been in the preserves at all. Besides Stiles (and Scott) and the occasional deputies sent out to check the area for drunk teenagers or homeless, no one really went that deep into the woods. If it was someone from out of town, why would they have gone through the preserves at all?
Going into the woods last night had been stupid, and it was horrible that her attempts at seeing a dead body had led to Scott getting hurt…but Stiles couldn' help but want to go out there again. Was the murderer still in the preserves?
^^^^^^^^^^
As much as Stiles yearned to know more about the dead body and investigate into this mysterious murder, she forced herself to keep such morbid thoughts away. Instead, she focused on Scott. She wanted to make sure he was okay, that her actions hadn’t led to him truly getting messed up.
Odd thing was, though, Scott did seem okay. In fact, he didn’t even move as if he were hurt at all. When he bent down to get a pencil from his backpack to give the new girl that came in, there was no wince of pain or sign of strain. He’d just smiled at the newcomer with that puppyish expression, his dark brown eyes soft and welcoming. That was odd too. Scott didn’t generally go goo-goo eyes over some girl.
To be fair though, Stiles supposed, the girl (Allison), was pretty. Objectively. She had long, luscious, dark hair that sort of cascaded just past her sharp shoulders. Stiles was just a little envious of that; her own hair was a boring shade of brown, often dry, and extremely short. She’d had a buzz cut Freshmen year for reasons she could not yet admit to and it had taken almost a year to grow out as much as it had, which was to say, tufts about her ears and neck. Allison also had a figure on her. Very curvy. That, though, Stiles was not at all envious of. In the locker room, she had heard plenty of the other girls complain about back pains and growing pain and just general boob pains because of such developments. So Stiles figured she was lucky to not yet experience such burdens, if she ever would, and was quite happy with her Double As. They were even small enough that she could get away with not wearing a bra on days when she didn’t have PE. She had been gloriously free this summer.
“She’s talking to Lydia.”
“Hmm?” Stiles turned to see Scott looking longing at Allison who was now surrounded by Lydia, the strawberry blonde bombshell that practically ruled the school, and Jackson, whom Stiles had aptly named Jackass. “Oh yea. It’s because she’s hot. Beautiful people herd together.” Poor Allison, she thought. She had seemed fairly nice too. If she was going to be spending time with those two, though, nice was going to be thrown out the window before the end of the week.
Poor Scott, actually. He wasn’t going to stand a chance at all.
^^^^^^^^^^
After school, Stiles and Scott were on the lacrosse field, only vaguely listening to Coach Finstock as he went back and forth between shouting out orders and making weird comments that not even Stiles could follow along with. She figured try-outs would be much like they had been last year. They’d play, have fun, enjoy mocking the other players (mainly Jackass), and not really care about winning or losing. As much as Scott said he was trying to make first line, it was pretty obvious neither would be getting off the bench anytime soon.
At least, that’s what Stiles had thought, but then she had spent the next hour watching Scott dominate the game. She had winced at the first ball that had smacked Scott in the helmet as he was unfairly selected for goal keeper. Then shocked at watching him catch the second one. Then completely amazed at the speed, accuracy, and agility he displayed with every catch after. He even did a flip. What the heck? Since when was Scott capable of doing flips, let alone doing one with such grace to catch a freakin’ ball?
“And that’s not the only weird thing,” he was telling her later when they were back in the preserves. Not to look for the murderer like Stiles was only meagerly interested in doing, but to look for Scott’s inhaler that he had apparently dropped while running away from that “wild animal”. “I hear stuff I shouldn’t be able to hear. Smell things like mint mojito gum in your pocket.”
That was oddly specific, yet so very wrong. “I don’t have…” Oh, she did. When the heck did she put gum in her pocket? “So all this started with a bite.”
“What if it’s like an infection?”
“I think I’ve heard of this,” Stiles mused. It made sense, she thought, all things considered. Except, of course, for the fact that such things didn’t exist. Did they? “Lycanthropy. It’s the worst but only once a month." She howled for good measure and laughed. "Hey,” she smacked Scott’s arm when he acted affronted by the idea, “you’re the one that heard a wolf howling.”
He glared at her, to which she deflected, “Oh, is that your inhaler?” His glare immediately dropped as he bent down to search through the leaves.
“What are you doing here?” The rough voice startled Stiles and she practically jumped out of her skin. “This is private property.”
While Scott talked to the man, Stiles just stood there in shock, staring in disbelief. He looked vaguely familiar, but it wasn’t a face that had been in town anytime recently. She knew everyone in town.
The man tossed Scott’s inhaler to him and then turned to leave with a huff and a silent warning that they should indeed get off this “private property”. Which was a crazy thing to say. While it was technically private property, the people the property belonged to weren’t around anymore. Hadn’t been around for nearly five years.
As if hearing Stiles’s thoughts, or maybe just sensing her continued stare, the man turned to her with a furious gleam. Stiles’s heart almost stopped, her breath caught in her throat. Those eyes. Those kaleidoscope eyes. Stiles had seen those eyes before, though it had been half a decade since.
“Dude,” Stiles smacked Scott’s shoulder again, this time with sudden inspiration and a rush of adrenaline. “That’s Derek Hale.”
He’d certainly grown since the last time she’d seen him last. She’d been 10 and hanging out at the station when her dad had brought in the 2 eldest Hale children. Derek, who had been 15 at the time, had been covered in soot and his eyes had had a glassy sheen to them, void of any life. There had been dried tear stains marked across the dirt and soot on his cheek. He had been frail and lost, hunched in on himself, and Stiles could remember the pang in her own chest at the sight of him. She had wanted to reach out in comfort, she remembered, but even at that age she had known that she was too insensitive to be of any real comfort to anyone.
For better or worse, he wasn’t frail anymore. He’d filled out nicely these past years, looking as if he’d been helping out at the farm during the day and saving Metropolis by night. Though that wasn’t too surprising, Stiles figured, remembering the way in which he used to play almost every sport back when he was in jr. high and high school. He had been especially good at basketball.
The years had also taken away that lost, empty gaze in his eyes. It had been replaced by rage.
Shit. Stiles couldn’t take her stare away from the spot the man had just left, only vaguely aware that Scott was talking. She just couldn’t believe that Derek Hale was back. Just when a murderer had come into town too...killing someone preserves…on private property. Private property because it had once, and probably still did, belong to the Hales.
Well shit. Was Derek Hale the murderer?
^^^^^^^^^^
Stiles did not sleep at all that night. Her thoughts buzzed furiously and it felt like there were hundreds of spiders upon her skin. Despite her suspicions about Derek, she knew she had to keep her mouth shut without any proof. Though it all seemed like too much of a coincidence to be anyone other than Derek, she couldn’t find it in herself to actually accept that he could do something like that. It didn’t fit the image she had had of him all those years ago.
She was eager to get her hands on any further information that the station had on the case, but her dad was currently still had the station pulling a night shift’s, so there would be no way she’d be able to sneak a look at any of those files. Her dad knew her too well when it came to things like that. Plus, she was pretty sure that if she left the house now and he found out, she’d be grounded for a month.
Therefore, it was with dark bags under her honeyed eyes and sluggish movements that she went to school the next day and tried to distract herself with classes (though that had been a foolish thought to begin with), Scott, and lacrosse practice. The latter two did actually serve as a distraction from her thoughts of murder and Derek, but caused an entirely new set of problems that plagued her being.
Scott was acting weird. And not just wanting to be popular, breaking out of his shell, going through some teenage boy thing weird. Like utterly, unexplainably weird. She was pretty sure she caught him sniffing Allison’s hair while they were in English when Allison briefly leaned back in her chair to stretch her legs. Scott had also been ignoring Stiles all of lunch, his head titled slightly in a way that reminded her of a dog that was trying to guess what noise it had just heard, and then had quickly sprinted to Allison before the new student had even entered into the cafeteria. Those instances, though, Stiles could almost chalk up to Scott’s level of infatuation. Apparently when he fell, he fell hard. What happened at lacrosse, however, could not be blamed on such a thing.
While Scott had certainly proven his prowess the day before, now he was going above and beyond what was realistically possible. Stiles sat on the bench, jaw dropped and hands fidgeting restlessly in a what-the-freak amazement. There was no way summer work-out routines had given Scott the ability to dodge and catch so quickly or to do freakin’ flips. Not even steroids could give him the ability to do these kinds of things, could they? Though she knew for a fact steroids wasn’t even a possibility. Scott was too much of a goodie-too-shoes except for when he was following along with one of her schemes. There was definitely something unnatural going on.
Stiles slammed her palms into her forehead so hard that Greenberg glanced at her in concern momentarily, though he then must have thought it was just Stiles being Stiles because he turned his attention back to practice without a word. She’d been joking the day before about lycanthropy, but it didn’t seem so much like a joke now. All his little quirks and sudden skills made so much more sense within this line of thought. Why had she dismissed Scott so easily when he had mentioned hearing a wolf howl? Why hadn’t she questioned Scott more on his heightened sense of hearing and smell?
“Want to come to mine?” Stiles asked Scott the moment practice was over, trying to conceal the fact that her skin felt like critters were crawling over her again and that her blood was rushing as if she had been the one to run up and down the field.
Scott’s attention was elsewhere. Surprise, surprise. Guess on who? “Actually, I think I might walk home by myself today if that’s cool?”
Stiles looked over to where his puppy dog eyes were staring to see that Allison was staring right back with a small, upward tilt to her painted lips. She really was pretty, and seemingly just as interested in Scott as he was in her. Well, maybe not as interested - Stiles didn’t think Allison had his same obsessive manner - but she clearly liked him. The thought did something to Stiles that she couldn’t exactly decipher. It felt like something was twisting in her gut. Stiles took a breath and did her best to ignore it. “Of course dude,” she slapped him on the back in camaraderie, “Don’t blow it huh?”
Then she was off to Roscoe before she could see Scott make his way over to the girl of his dreams. Stiles pushed the thought to the deepest part of her mind as she drove home, allowing herself to focus on the possibility of the supernatural instead. Once home she ran upstairs and slid into her wheeled chair in front of the computer, settling herself in for hours of research.
She wasn’t entirely sure how long she had been at the research, only that when Scott came into her room, she was strung out on energy drinks and Adderall (granted, not the wisest decision), there were printed articles scattered across her floor and bed, and her fingers were aching. There must have been something off about her appearance too because Scott gave an odd look, briefly scrunching up his nose. “You’re a werewolf,” she stated, seeing no reason to beat around the bush. “Werewolves are a thing. And you are that thing.”
She had sort of thought Scott would understand where she was coming from. Afterall, he had been the one to be experiencing all these changes personally and he was the one to hear the wolf and they had just talked about it yesterday…two days ago?...Stiles wasn’t actually sure at the moment. Anyways, she had figured Scott would be on board.
Instead, he just stared at her as if she were insane. “What the heck is this?”
“Research.”
“On werewolves?” Why was he speaking to her in that incredulous tone?
“Yes, because that’s what you’ve become. You can’t just gain reflexes and moves like you’ve suddenly gained over night Scotty.”
“I’ve been training.”
“Training doesn’t get rid of asthma.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Dude, just look at these,” she grabbed the newest article she had printed and practically shoved it into his chest out of excitement.
Usually Scott took her slightly too aggressive movements with ease, either just backing away from her or gently reminding her to calm down. He had always seemed to understand that there were times she just couldn’t control the amount of energy inside her. Her simple shove of papers, though - which had hardly been a shove at all really - had caused Scott’s expression to harden. In the next second, he shoved her back. She faltered backwards, her feet getting tangled in the wheels of her chair, and she landed with a loud thud onto her floor, scattering the papers as her hands braced her landing.
Scott grabbed the chair before it could topple over her. “Sorry.” His voice was panicked and slightly hoarse. He was gone before Stiles could call him back. With an aching backside, Stiles used the chair to lift herself up. Her jaw dropped at the sight of claw marks that had punctured the faux leather where Scott’s hand had been.