Written for SterekWeek2015's Day 3 - Hunter's Moon prompt.
Stiles grasped at the grass and tore it out, but it did not lessen the pain. Above him, the red moon seemed to take up half the sky, and it burned in his vision. He could see so clearly in the night because of this moon, but it did not help him in the fight. Calling it a fight, even, was giving Stiles too much credit.
"Derek," he gasped and tried to move, but it caused too much pain and he only cried out helplessly.
In all the years of fighting supernatural creatures, Stiles had never been injured to such a degree. The only thing even mildly comparable was when the nogitsune tortured him in his dreams, setting his legs in bear traps and tormenting him for days. Then was so much worse. He was certain he'd lost a limb or a finger or maybe his intestines were falling out. He didn't know. All he knew was it hurt.
There was a scuffling sound to his right but his heart rate couldn't speed any faster. The animal was back to finish the job. A bear – a bear of all things! Stiles had been fighting sentient wolves and coyotes and alligators and cannibals and what got him was an ordinary bear! He was ashamed to go out like that, but he had no choice. He'd already been torn into.
But it was not the bear. It was a wolf. It was his wolf. Stiles sobbed in relief.
The wolf morphed and took human form once more and then Derek was by his side, eyes full of concern. He tried to push his hands under Stiles, but it only caused Stiles to cry out again, and he stopped.
"The bear?" Stiles croaked when the pain lessened back to excruciating.
"Dead," Derek said. God he even sounded wrecked. If Derek was hopeless, what could Stiles be? "Stiles, I'm sorry." Closing his eyes, Stiles tried to find the energy to correct Derek, to tell him he didn't need to be sorry, but his mind was so focused on the gashes. "I shouldn't have left you alone. I should have been here."
Sucking in a harsh breath, Stiles managed, "Did you get the siren?" The trees seemed to shiver at the mention of what had been taking refuge in their shade.
"Yeah. Yeah, she's gone. She can't hurt anyone anymore." He smiled down at Stiles, but it was a sad thing. "You were right. We were the only ones who could stop her."
The only ones. If Danny had been in town with Ethan, that wouldn't have been true, but they were in New York. So the only men unaffected by a sirens call in their pack now were Stiles and Derek… except Stiles still felt a slight pull. Being bisexual only gave a slight advantage, and while Derek was also bisexual, his supernatural prowess of being an evolved wolf seemed to give him further advantage. So in the end, Stiles had to stay behind for the final take down… and then the bear.
"Derek," Stiles said with a smile, but it quickly faded into a terrified frown. "I don't wanna die."
"You're not going to die," Derek said with such conviction that Stiles almost believed him. But he couldn't feel his fingers on his left hand, and that was never a good sign. His ears sounded stuffy and turned the few crickets daring to make noise into a low bass.
Stiles looked back up at the moon, away from Derek, and laughed sourly. "A Hunter's Moon," he murmured. The red of the light was visible through the tree tops, and Stiles wondered if it made it harder for Derek to see where the actual blood was on Stiles. "Did-did you know? It's also called a Blood Moon. As in… I'm gonna bleed out under it."
"Stop it," Derek said, a growl taking over the words. He got in Stiles' vision and shook his head. "Listen to me, you're not going to die. I can-" He hesitated.
Stiles understood though. He was too injured to get to a hospital and no ambulance would reach the middle of the woods in time. There was only one possible way to save him, and it wasn't even a guarantee. The bite was his only hope.
"I know… you never wanted the bite," Derek said, dropping his voice low. "You didn't want to become what we are."
It sounded too much like degradation, as though Derek thought Stiles had something against werewolves or being one, and yeah it had a hell of a crash course, but that wasn't true. Stiles had too many were-friends to think of them as monsters or animals or anything less that utterly human in every way that counted in the end.
"I just wanted to be good enough," Stiles said and then wheezed. "Just the way I was."
"You are good enough, Stiles. You always have been," Derek assured. He shifted and Stiles got the impression he'd taken up Stiles' hand, but he couldn't feel it at all.
Tears fell from his eyes now and he felt dizzy. "I just wanted you… to like me. Even though I was just a human." He shut his eyes and sobbed once. "I wanted to be enough."
Derek got the hint about the hand. He leaned his forehead down to touch Stiles' and made a shushing noise. "Stiles. Stiles, you are enough. But you have to focus. Listen to me. Stiles, if I don't try to turn you, you aren't going to be anything but dead. Do you get that? I need to save you, Stiles. I can't just watch you die. But I won't bite you without your permission." He paused multiple times, but Stiles did not respond. "Stiles, tell me I can. Don't leave me. Do you hear me? You can't die on me."
He'd shifted at some point, his face wolf-ed out and rough. Stiles couldn't feel his left hand but he managed to lift his right the short distance to Derek's face and feel the new arch of the eyebrow. He smiled at Derek's stunned expression. He couldn't help it. He'd always thought the wolf-ed out face was particularly cool, and he'd always thought Derek cool too, and attractive, and dangerous, and yeah for awhile he thought him too dangerous, but he'd been young and stupid.
What would he, Stiles, look like wolf-ed out? Would he look cool too? That or dead, he supposed. He didn't want to put Derek in another Paige situation, but he didn't want to leave Derek either. At least with the bite he had a chance… right?
"I love you," he breathed out, because anything more hurt too much at that point.
"Stiles?" Derek spoke the name with worry.
"I just wanted to tell you… in case it doesn't work." His hand dropped back to the damp earth and he closed his eyes. He was in pain, but it seemed to be turning his entire body numb. It was a terrible sign. His body was disappearing into the hunter's night, and there was nothing Stiles could hold onto to delay it. In the distance, a coyote cried out in the night.
There was a dulled increase in pain in his right arm, but he barely flinched, his forehead only slightly creasing. For a moment he didn't understand. He could barely hear or concentrate, after all. But then he thought he knew. Derek had bitten him. But how long would it take before they knew if it worked? How long until they knew if it just killed him worse on top of the bear attack?
Air felt like a foreign concept, but not because he couldn't breathe. He felt as if he were floating away, and oxygen was only a mild concern. He was sleeping in nothing, in darkness, and he felt no pain, but also no pleasure. Was he still on the forest floor? Was Derek still bent over him, watching his progress anxiously? Was he turning into a werewolf?
There was no way of knowing and he knew he'd usually be trying to figure out the answers. But he was so tired. The only thing he could find energy for was to fight the draw of unconsciousness… or, more unconsciousness than he was already experiencing.
Where was he? When was he? He felt a tingling in his extremities, in his toes and fingers. Then his hands and feet, like circulation returning to warmed skin after being in the cold too long. A spark flickered on the edge of his thoughts, a pull toward true consciousness, and he actually wanted to fight against it at first. It threatened the painless, cool state of his mind and body. But he knew, logically, that he couldn't stay as he was – he'd be catatonic or dead if he did. So he turned his attention to the spark, to rousing his senses and fighting for the surface of his murky state.
When he opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was a blue sky with white clouds. But the clouds were rimmed in a hint of golden light and just a touch of pink, and it looked to Stiles as though the colors of a sunrise had forgotten to get out after it was midday – but it looked pretty so, you know, whatever. Really he was a bit more concerned that the sun looked redder than usual, which he supposed was also a symptom of not leaving the sunrise behind, but this effect actually left him a little spooked.
Then he noticed that he was lying on a rock, not on soil, and that didn't seem nice. He distinctly remembered lying on soft soil, so whoever moved him to the stretch of rock overlooking Beacon Hills was gonna have some explaining to do when his back ached later. He always got back aches when he laid on hard objects or in weird positions – okay so maybe not bad back aches, but they still happened. A lot. He fell asleep in odd places a lot.
Except, upon further inspection, Stiles found he didn't hurt. Like anywhere. Remembering his wounds from the night before, Stiles startled and pushed himself up. He wasn't in the clothes he'd put on to go hunting a siren. Clean, new clothes covered him but he lifted the shirt up to check his chest and stomach for bleeding. There wasn't even scar tissue. He pushed the long sleeves of the windbreaker up and checked his arms. Pristine.
"Holy shit," he gasped.
"You're awake." And Derek's observation was full of just as much awe and surprise as Stiles' gasp.
Flipping around, Stiles saw Derek approaching slowly, bags of Wendys in his arms. Wow, if he hadn't said it last night, he'd have said it for the first time right then. "Oh my god, I love you."
Derek smiled and laughed, setting the bags down by Stiles, who immediately pulled one into his lap and started devouring curly fries. It was only halfway through the first order that he realized he'd known exactly which bag had the fries without checking and he almost choked.
"Yeah. Your senses are much better now," Derek said. He was sitting a few feet away, quietly eating a cheeseburger. "Your sense of smell, touch, sight. In time you'll come to hone them all."
"Dude, you're telling me you see sunrise colors all the time?" Stiles asked around a full mouth. Derek nodded without comment. "That's crazy. That's-"
He paused and chewed slowly. Stiles could see sunrise colors in the clouds. Stiles could ferret out fries over burgers without looking. To his right, he could hear an animal scurrying through the trees to get away from them.
He… He was a werewolf.
"I'm-," he began after swallowing. "Everything's gonna be different now."
"Not so different. You already operate in a pack. You don't need to hunt or eat anything specific. You're still you. Just… with the volume turned up," Derek explained. "But you knew all of that."
With a nod, Stiles stuffed more fries in his mouth. Life with the volume turned up. The others had tried to explain it to him before, but now he would experience it firsthand. What would his dad say? What about Scott?
"Do the others know?" he asked, setting his bag aside.
Derek nodded. "I called Scott as soon as you lost consciousness. He knows as much as I did at the time – that your wounds were healing slowly, that all we could do was wait and hope for the best. I told him I would call again when you woke up."
"If I woke up," Stiles amended.
Looking grave, Derek agreed. "If you woke up." Then he shook his head. "But the odds looked good. People don't show signs of healing if they're going to reject the bite. As soon as the bleeding stopped, I moved you out of the area. Some wild animals were taking notice. And then it was just… waiting."
"Waiting and getting me new clothes and bringing me food," Stiles pointed out.
"Unless you wanted to wake up in rags," Derek said, furrowing his brow as though the concept confused him.
But it meant Derek pulled those rags from Stiles' limp body and then cleaned him up and redressed him. It meant Derek had spent a lot of time taking care of Stiles, had spent a lot of time looking over every inch of Stiles to make sure the bite was taking, had stared down at his motionless body for a long time. It made Stiles blush all over to think of Derek undressing him, but the embarrassment was overshadowed a moment later when another thought popped into his head.
"Why are you so far away?" Stiles asked while Derek texted someone on his phone – probably Scott. It was true. Derek was a least five feet away. But they had grown much closer over the years, invaded each other's personal space on a regular basis, so it made no sense to Stiles why there was so much room between them.
For another moment, Derek was silent – which was also becoming unusual lately – and then he sighed. "You don't have to pretend to be okay," he said. "If you're angry with me, you can tell me."
"Why would I be angry at you?" Stiles picked up his bag and scooted closer to Derek, putting them within easy arms reach.
"I gave you the bite, something you never wanted," Derek explained.
"Something I gave you permission to do," Stiles reminded. He pushed lightly on Derek's shoulder. "Don't revert to being a sourwolf. Yeah, it's crazy and yeah, I'll have to go through the crash course of werewolf-dom and full moons and shit, but I'm not dead, Derek. That's the part that matters, right?"
Derek looked grave. "But you were. I bit you three times because I couldn't tell if it had taken effect. You'd lost so much blood. I was worried there wasn't enough left to carry the effect through your system." He hesitated, took a slow breath and glared at the grass on the edge of the rock face. "Your heart stopped for two minutes. And then when it started up again, I didn't know if you'd wake up the same. Death… changes people."
And if that was some bad reference to Derek's death and evolution into a wolf, Stiles would have to smack him. But he suspected it was a reference to mental capacities failing or altering due to a lack of oxygen. That made much more sense with Derek's somber tone.
"Well I did change," Stiles pointed out and shifted closer still. "But I'm still me. And I'm not dead. And maybe I'm wrong, but I think I told you I loved you before I died, and that hasn't changed either, in case you were wondering."
That brought a snort of amusement out of Derek. "You're not wrong," he said. "But I sort of attributed it to the near death experience."
"More like a near life experience." Stiles grinned, hope rising at Derek's lack of a negative response. In fact, Derek smelled – oh damn, Stiles was smelling emotions! – excited but also… shy? "Dude, I've been holding that in for ages. But if you don't like me too, I can totally hold it in. I have plenty of experience with unrequited love."
"No," Derek answered quickly then looked away, embarrassed. Wow, that was adorable. "I do like you. And I like you werewolf or not," he added quickly, and Stiles remembered his fears from before the bite – that he hadn't been enough as a human. It was nice to hear. "But… My relationship track list isn't great, Stiles."
"He says like I don't know from personal experience," Stiles answered sarcastically. "Look, you're enough too. You understand? I said I love you, not some ideal image of you. I am perfectly aware of how messed up you are and how messed up everything else is too. Honestly, you act like I give a shit about any of that."
Now Derek was definitely smiling and he looked at Stiles like an amusing puzzle. Then he was leaning toward Stiles, and Stiles eagerly leaned toward him, and they kissed chastely. "Okay," Derek said between them afterward. "We can give it a shot. But that doesn't mean I'm going to go easy on you about controlling your new powers."
"Dude. I'm gonna be the hardest student you've ever had," Stiles promised with a laugh and then pressed his forehead to Derek's and pushed his hand up into the hair on the back of Derek's head. He was a werewolf now, could see it in everything, could sense it in every molecule of his body, and for now it felt great. And when it didn't feel awesome later, he'd have his pack with him to help him cope. He'd have Liam to revenge tie him to trees and Scott to give him inspirational speeches and Derek to lecture him and it was going to be great even when it sucked, and now he wasn't one of only two people in the group without a significant other either. Win win, am I right?