Written for the Starlight Challenge on Dreamwidth, the first prompt: The soundtrack of my life sounds very ominous.
It's a multifandom challenge (and this round is open until January 6th!) and I read that line and instantly knew it had to be Stiles.
Stiles thwacked the side of his dying flashlight and cursed it quietly as he tripped over a rock and stumbled to one knee before catching himself. "I knew it was a bad idea to do this, I knew it when I got out of the car, but I did it anyway." Stiles sighed, regaining his feet with the aid of a conveniently low-hanging branch.
The flashlight flickered and steadied a little, and Stiles forged onwards, looking for anything magically suspicious, which sounded like something his dad would have said about a stupid case, but was actually precisely the description of what he was searching for.
"Life's weird." Stiles muttered, pausing to investigate some scratches on a tree trunk that proved to not be runes. Specifically his life was weird, honestly.
The forest was quiet around him, but normal night quiet, which meant he could hear frogs and sleepy birds and the occasional chitter of unidentifiable origin, soft scratching noises and rustling all around him. It wasn't exactly his favourite but Stiles had become way too familiar with this particular set of sounds to be unnerved, even when he leaned on another branch and a lizard darted out from almost beneath his hand.
Okay he might have yelped and jumped backwards and nearly tripped over something again, but that was between him and the lizard that had just appeared out of fucking nowhere and nearly went up his sleeve.
Stiles thought that was reasonable.
"You've got my back on that, right buddy?" he asked the lizard's tail, which was just barely visible. It twitched and disappeared further into the crevice, and Stiles laughed, shaking his head and moving on.
His flashlight flickered three more times as he continued his search, and Stiles thought briefly that if he was smart he'd be using this time to make his way back to his Jeep. But. . .
Stiles sighed and kept going. It was important he find any magical traces out here, preferably before any of the wolfy idiots ran into them, and there were certain things the full moon would make more visible.
Stiles had, at least, largely finished with his initial circuit by the time the light finally flat-out died. He inspected the flashlight, briefly debated the wisdom of using a spell, then silently admitted he wasn't going to do that and dropped to take a seat on a fallen log. Another lizard skittered away only to freeze at the opposite end, and Stiles watched it in the low light filtering through the branches above.
Give it a little longer, let the moon rise higher, and Stiles would probably be able to make his way back to his Jeep all right. If not quite so easily as with an artificial light. He smacked the flashlight again on principle, but it offered not so much as a flicker in response this time. He dropped it into his lap and slid his knapsack off to rest at his feet.
A wolf howled in the distance, followed by the screeching of several coyotes, and the forest nearer Stiles almost shivered with awareness of the predators abroad tonight. The usual night sounds shifted, some disappearing entirely and some growing louder.
Stiles leaned back against the tree trunk and tipped his head, looking up. He found himself locking eyes with a somewhat startled looking owl. Of course, it might just look startled because it was an owl. Stiles snorted, shaking his head, and the owl resettled its wings with a low hiccupping sound, still staring down.
"The soundtrack of my life has been kind of ominous lately." Stiles told the owl, rolling the flashlight back and forth absently between his hands. True, if you counted 'lately' as 'for the past seven years at least'. "Although," he allowed, "maybe not ominous enough, considering the kind of shit that keeps happening."
The owl shifted its feet on the branch and tipped its head at an angle that was a little uncomfortable to look at - though it was nothing to watching shapeshifting - and kept staring at Stiles. He frowned slightly and reached down to put his flashlight in his knapsack with his left hand, then kept it down past his thigh and out of sight as he continued talking.
"And I mean, here I am tromping in the woods on a full moon night well aware that there are not only werewolves - some of whom, between you and me, are not the greatest at control - but fuck knows what else out here." Stiles told the owl, shaping his fingers to call up a simple pulse of magic.
It flowed out under his direction and Stiles tensed, but the owl above him really was just an owl, probably staring at him because he was a strange intrusion into its world and it could fly off at any time, so hardly felt threatened by him.
"I am rather inviting the kinds of things that ominous-" Stiles broke off as something shivered across his senses and the owl's gaze darted away at the same time. He looked around in the same direction and. . . "Hey babe." he said, relaxing again.
Derek fixed him with what might be an unimpressed look, but Stiles claimed ignorance because he was standing in shadow too deep to quite make out. He slipped out of it a moment later, though, paws all but silent on the forest floor, and stretched out his neck, sniffing Stiles in a cursory inspection.
Stiles laughed as warm breath ticked him through his clothes over his belly, sliding one hand over Derek's neck affectionately. "I'm fine," he assured his worry-wolf, "just finished my rounds - looks clear thus far - and stopped to have a chat with," he jerked his head upwards at the owl's roost, "before trying to find my way out of here."
Derek huffed, dropping down and settling heavily against the log as he rested his head on Stiles' lap. He obligingly dug his fingers into the thick fur behind Derek's ears, comfortable and feeling fairly secure after his magical check of the woods - and, admittedly, with his alpha wolf boyfriend draped across his lap.
Derek tipped his head and shoved his muzzle against Stiles' body again, and he sighed. "My flashlight died." he admitted, and rolled his eyes as Derek just sighed loudly. It wasn't like it was his fault . . . exactly. Spare batteries in his knapsack probably would have been a good idea, although he thought there were still some in his Jeep. Unless he'd used them in the last unplanned-for catastrophe in the dark and forgotten.
Derek caught his sleeve gently between alarmingly huge fangs and tugged, and Stiles let himself be shifted off the log. "Thanks." he said as Derek rose, sliding his knapsack back on and resting his hand on Derek's shoulders as they began walking.