(Author's note: Begins at the beginning of season one and proceeds from there, playing off canon to meet my needs, but with a few significant tweaks - particularly the one in which I thought Stiles and Allison needed to be better friends. Heavy quoting from episodes starting with 1x04. This chapter is light on the sex, but it will absolutely get more graphic later. Warnings in this chapter for vague thoughts about domination and bondage, and sexual conversation.

Just to be clear, the Sterek in this story does not begin as a particularly loving relationship. There is no nonconsensual anything, but a lot of angst about wanting it. Also, Stiles is not monogamous here, but he's also not completely amoral. He loves his best friend most. So you'll see some Toppy!Allison and some confused!Scott, and polyamorous situations and negotiations, and BDSM situations and negotiations, but no cheating.

There's a schmoopy mixtape because I can't help myself: 8tracks dot com slash nubianamy , as well as lots of lyrics throughout for inspiration. Thanks for reading. -amy)

Cigarettes and chocolate milk
These are just a couple of my cravings
Everything it seems I like's a little bit stronger, a little bit thicker
A little bit harmful for me

If I should buy jellybeans
Have to eat them all in just one sitting
Everything it seems I like's a little bit sweeter, a little bit fatter
A little bit harmful for me

And then there's those other things
Which for several reasons we won't mention
Everything about 'em is a little bit stranger, a little bit harder
A little bit deadly

It isn't very smart
Tends to make one part so broken-hearted

- Rufus Wainwright, "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk"

When his dad agreed to get him the car sophomore year, he'd probably expected Stiles to repaint it. But Stiles would go so far as to say he adored his powder-blue Jeep. There wasn't anything remotely masculine about the color, it was true, but it was bright and beautiful and stood out in a parking lot, which made it practical. He figured the Jeep part was masculine enough for him, and the rest of the world could just go fuck themselves if they weren't okay with Stiles' car the way it was.

He'd put more money into making the car awesome on the inside than on the outside. Both front seats had comfortable covers. There was a Cody Jamieson bobblehead on the dash, along with a completely contraband police radio underneath, which Stiles was pretty sure his dad knew about. In any case, his dad hadn't yet taken it away from him, so he figured that was as good as permission to listen on it - he knew well enough not to say anything on an active channel, though he did sometimes talk to the dispatcher at the station. He'd also installed his own sound system, complete with seven speakers arranged to his own particular specifications, though he hadn't bothered with the ridiculous bass that would certainly have gotten him in more trouble than the police radio would have.

Scott's reaction, upon seeing the Jeep for the first time, had been just about what Stiles would have expected from his best friend regarding anything unusual: he'd blinked a couple times, made a face, and said, "Well... okay." Thereafter, he'd accepted it as normal. Now, whenever anybody tried to diss Stiles' car in Scott's range of hearing (which, admittedly, had expanded recently), Scott would shake his head, look disappointed, and say, "Hey, come on." Which was about as harsh as Scott ever got with anybody.

Scott's kind-of-girlfriend Allison's reaction had been different. Her eyes had lit up, and she'd run her hand over the paint with reverence, like she understood something more primal, more essential about the car, how it was more than just a ride. It had almost been like she was checking it out, like a guy would do with a girl - or possibly a girl with a guy, although Stiles knew fuck-all about what girls thought about guys. In any case, Allison had nodded approvingly at Stiles.

Nice, she'd said, and Stiles had known exactly what she meant. She hadn't meant, "It's nice." She'd meant exactly the way Stiles was, with his car, with other people, with the world.

That word, nice, was a treacherous one for Stiles. His dad sometimes said, "It would be nice, Stiles, if you would..." followed by some unreasonable demand about Stiles being responsible, or honest, or something else Stiles had never been and never would be. A request like that was inevitably a disappointment waiting to happen, which Stiles was pretty sure his dad knew. Stiles never promised he'd follow through on any of those unreasonable things, because although Stiles might lie to his dad all the time, he wasn't going to lie to himself.

He thought about it while driving to school in his car, the sound system jacked up as loud as it could go, the windows rolled down. Stiles thought he knew himself pretty well, and one thing he was certain about, that he could have even articulated to anybody who'd cared to listen, was that he was not nice. He'd always pretty much sucked at being nice.

Scott, on the other hand? Scott was nice. Stiles may have at one point wanted to be Scott, because some things came easy to nice guys, but mostly he was too realistic for that. Trying to be something he wasn't just led to feeling woefully inadequate. Scott got to be the nice guy, and Stiles... well, at his best, Stiles was willing to not be nice, even if that was kind of isolating. Stiles would rather be himself.

Pausing at the traffic light, Stiles drummed the beat of the music on his steering wheel while he considered examples of how not-nice he was. Taking Scott out into the field to look for half a dead body, for one. That hadn't been nice. Listening in on his dad's phone calls wasn't nice either. Lying to his dad about Scott not being there definitely wasn't nice, even if his dad did already know his son was a habitual liar. He got that his dad's job was to reinforce the rules, even if he was clear Stiles wasn't going to follow them. Luckily for Stiles, as long as his grades were good (which was easy to maintain), and he didn't break the law too obviously (which was harder), his dad mostly let him alone. He was grateful for that. It made it a lot easier to get away with stuff.

Stiles pulled into the parking lot and wandered into school, where he found Lydia Martin and Jackson Whittemore, leaning against one another with obvious intent to do something very wet and dirty right there in the hallway. He stopped close enough to listen and opened his backpack, watching them out of the corner of his eye, for once appreciating his invisibility.

"You know I don't care about what you think," Lydia was saying, her tone wheedling and disdainful at the same time. Jackson huffed, sounding completely annoyed. Stiles watched Lydia's hand travel down the center of Jackson's tight abs to rest just above his fly. "But whatever you decide, you know what I bring to the table. It's up to you to decide if it's worth it or not."

Lydia Martin... Stiles concealed his grin. Whatever it was Lydia brought to the table, Jackson would be a fool to turn it down.

Lydia definitely wasn't nice. At times like these, he could see beneath her obnoxious popular-girl exterior. He could see just how not-nice Lydia was, and it was completely, compellingly awesome. Right at that moment, by manipulating him with sex, Lydia could have made Jackson do whatever she wanted.

That's fantastic, Stiles wanted to tell her. Teach me how to do that. Do it to me. But Lydia wouldn't have known who Stiles was if he'd stopped her in the hallway and done a naked tango with a bear on roller-skates, so he just kept his not-nice thoughts to himself.

He waved at Scott as he slid into his seat behind him in chemistry. Stiles had to admit Scott was good camouflage (or had been, anyway, before he'd become a freaking werewolf). Having a good-boy best friend made people assume you had a secret good-boy side too. If Stiles had one of those, he hadn't yet found it, but he was willing to keep digging. Sometimes he got away with pretending to be a nerd. His grades were good enough for that, but Stiles had had too many suspensions and office referrals to be a very convincing nerd. The best he thought he could manage was undercover operative. He was lucky enough that both the school nurse and Jody in the main office were on his side, so he often got away with more than he should. He was the Jack Bauer of Beacon Hills High School.

"Homework tonight?" Stiles whispered to Scott, while Mr. Harris' back was turned.

Scott shook his head. "Date with Allison."

Stiles shrugged. Allison was turning out to be too awesome for Stiles to hate, even if she did occupy way too much of Scott's free time. He figured Scott deserved to have that goofy-stupid look on his face, the one he got whenever he talked about her. Allison had accepted Stiles' place in Scott's life as best friend without question, and that made her an automatic ally, but Stiles could tell there was more than that going on. He suspected she got him in a way that Scott, being the nice guy, never would.

It made Stiles want to do something to reach out to Allison, to let her know he got her in return. He did enough snooping to find out what classes she was struggling in. Then he waited until just before a quiz to casually suggest during lunch, "I could use a study-buddy for econ."

She regarded him, wrinkling her nose. "You? Aren't you acing that class?"

"I would be, if Finstock didn't put me to sleep. Can I copy your notes? Come on, I don't want to ruin my average just because I was slacking one day." He gave her the cutest please-please look he could manage, and she laughed and agreed.

He gave her a ride to the coffee shop after school. Allison didn't even complain about the volume level of his car's sound system, and she sang along to This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arm's Race as loud as he did.

"Scott should probably be here, too," Stiles ventured to suggest, watching Allison for reactions. "He can use all the help he can get, in most of his classes."

She just shrugged. "Scott's probably better off on his own. When I'm around, we don't get a lot of actual studying done."

Stiles snorted, expecting her to laugh or blush, but she just grinned wickedly at him. It was enough points in her favor to make him feel safe. "Yeah, well, that's not the worst thing that could happen to Scott. He deserves a little happy. He's pretty simple in that way. I honestly think all he really wants is to love somebody and have them love him back."

Allison gave him a quizzical smile. "Isn't that all anybody wants?"

He blew out a breath, chuckling. "Well. I would say some people want... different things."

"Cryptic," she said, turning back to her notebook.

"You really want more details?"

She shrugged, looking coy. "You offering them?"

Stiles felt a little reckless, talking to a girl he barely knew this way - and his best friend's kind-of girlfriend, at that - but Stiles also wasn't one to pull punches, for any reason, ever. "Hypothetically speaking, I'm not much like Scott."

"No," she agreed. She tapped her pencil. "That's okay, though."

"Why, thank you." He beamed, giving her the full-force Stilinski smile, and she laughed, and things felt so easy and comfortable that they actually studied economics for the next twenty minutes, talking about the material at a level Stiles rarely encountered from anybody, opportunity cost and productivity and scarcity. It was awesome.

When he dropped her off at home afterward, Allison said, "We should do this again. It was helpful."

"Yeah," he said. "Definitely."

So it seemed Allison was a friend. At least he had one person who got him. Most of the time, though, he was alone, and that was okay. There were too many things happening in Stiles' head for him to feel comfortable talking about them with Scott, or anybody else for that matter.

Most mornings he woke up with a whole host of not-nice feelings. Some of them were about girls and some of them were about guys and none of that really bothered him very much, but the fact was, none of it was actually going to happen. He was stuck thinking about it. This was frustrating, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Stiles was all right with having an active fantasy life, but it was damned distracting.

The night after they first ran into Derek Hale in the woods, for example, Stiles had a dream. It was vivid enough to still be alive in his memory by the time he got to his next study session with Allison. When she noticed, she frowned thoughtfully and asked, "What's on your mind?"

He was too involved with the dream to come up with an adequate cover story. "A lot of TMI," he said. "Usual teenage boy stuff." That wasn't precisely true, but it was a lie he told often, so it didn't take any effort to tell it now.

"Anything you want to talk about?"

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "It's not really the kind of thing you talk about with - girls." Or anybody.

But Allison just said, very casually, "Try me." And Stiles had looked at her for a long time, turning the request over and over in his mind, before responding.

"Sometimes there's - things. Things I want. That aren't very... you know."

"I do?"

He sighed. "Not very nice. Things that aren't nice."

Allison nodded slowly. "You want... those things." She paused. "What kind of -?"

"People making me do things," he said. The words felt foreign on his tongue. They were words he'd never said out loud before, even though in his dream the ideas had been more than clear. Derek Hale, kneeling over me in the dry leaves, holding me down on the ground, wearing nothing but that leather jacket. The things Derek had made him do weren't nice at all, but they'd sure made him come hard within minutes of waking.

Stiles stared at his chemistry book and waited for the inevitable fallout, the comments of Stiles, that's creepy, or Stiles, it would be nice if you would just act normal for a change. But Allison wasn't saying anything. Eventually he looked up.

"It's okay, Stiles," she said quietly. "There's nothing wrong with you for wanting that."

He wanted to throw something. He wanted to cry. He wanted to yell completely inappropriate things at Allison, demanding how dare she dig things up that had hitherto been buried. He managed to swallow all of that and nod, his throat dry, and say, "Sure."

She didn't bring it up much, but after that, it did feel better. It was easier, knowing she knew, that somebody knew, even if there were still things he wasn't going to tell her.

(For one thing, Stiles was pretty sure he couldn't talk to Allison about the first time he'd tried to tell Scott he might be a werewolf, even if he didn't mention the werewolf part.)

That day, when Stiles had tried to get Scott to cancel his date with Allison - because nobody raised Scott's pulse like Allison - Scott had totally freaked out and thrown Stiles against the wall. And when he'd calmed down, he'd apologized, said he was sorry, because he was a nice guy even if he was a freaking werewolf.

Stiles wasn't going to tell him what he'd really been thinking, which was I don't want you to be sorry. I want you to throw me against that wall again.

Because Scott was a nice guy who wasn't at all into other guys. Discovering that being thrown against the wall by his best friend really did it for Stiles was a discouraging thing, but it was only one among a whole series of discouraging things regarding what Stiles really wanted, so it was okay. Stiles wasn't going to make this one a big deal.

Focusing on lacrosse helped. Scott was suddenly so much better at lacrosse that it was scary, but Stiles helped Scott deal with that as much as he could. Sometimes Scott got out of control and tried to kill him, which was not at all sexy, but Stiles helped Scott with the werewolf stuff anyway - because, as it happened, Stiles really got the idea of how your emotions and desires could totally rule you, how they could drive you to do crazy, frightening things. Granted, he didn't really want to be in charge of Scott, but if his best friend needed that sometimes, he could step up and provide it.

It came to Stiles, in the middle of another study session, exactly how to solve that problem. Luckily, this one was at Allison's house instead of the coffee shop, which made it easier because he didn't have to worry about other people hearing him talk about sensitive topics.

Stiles threw his pen down and sat up straight, staring at Allison. "You," he said.

"Me," she responded, unperturbed.

"Scott," he said.

Allison cocked her head, grinning. "Is this, like, Mouseketeer roll call?"

"I'm just waiting for my mouth to catch up with my brain. Okay, so... you know how Scott gets overwhelmed sometimes? How you help him calm down." She nodded, and he went on, feeling unaccountably relieved. "Yeah, so... you actually do that. Help him calm down."

"... Yeah," she said, looking perplexed.

Stiles flopped back onto Allison's bed. "God, that's so great. I really love the guy, but that kind of stuff, I'm really bad at it, you know? If I'm going to do anything, it's rile Scott up, not calm him down."

"I could see that happening, sure." She considered him. "You don't want to tell him what to do."

"No," Stiles said emphatically. "That would be one of those on-pain-of-death things, right up there with having family dinner with his grandparents and taking out the garbage."

"You take out Scott's garbage?"

"Only when his mom bribes me with dessert." He pointed at her. "But you could tell him what to do. He'd listen to you."

She gave him a funny look. "I don't understand."

"Never mind." It would be so much easier if they could just tell Allison everything, about Scott being a werewolf, and about all the weird stuff happening in Beacon Hills. Allison might be one of the ordinary people, but she was cool. He was pretty sure she'd deal with it, someday - but he wasn't going to take that risk at the moment. "Just, sometimes, when he's stressed out, he needs somebody to handle him. That somebody so far has been me, but it'd be so much better if he could get it from somebody who's good at that sort of thing. Somebody who doesn't mind being -" He paused on the words the alpha. "In charge."

"Yeah, I guess I don't mind that." She grinned. "Sometimes it's fun."

Stiles left that conversation there. He didn't mind TMI, not in the way that Scott did, with the squirming and the embarrassment. Stiles was too curious for that. But he was also willing to let Allison tell him whatever she wanted to in her own good time.

Stiles' dream about Derek subsided eventually, to be replaced by more familiar ones. His familiar dreams often featured Lydia, but they also frequently starred special guests doing not-nice things to him, some of whom weren't even appealing to him in an ordinary context. But Stiles had learned years ago not to put too much stock in his dreams. He thought of them as a combination pressure valve and creative writing assignments: when his body needed something, his brain would come up with several possible solutions, many of which he would never, ever actually want to do.

He thought that particular dream had been excised entirely - until the night when Stiles watched over videochat as Derek Hale appeared behind Scott in his bedroom. He could do nothing but sit there helplessly as Derek grabbed Scott and threw him against the wall, growling threats into his ear. In addition to the fear that rose up in his throat like bile, Stiles had to choke back the selfish jealousy that rose up along with it.

"Fuck," he whimpered. Then he clutched his screen, shouting, "Scott? Scott, what's going on? I mean - I see what's going on, but - Scott, just tell me you're not dead. Or eaten. Preferably not either?"

In the ten seconds that passed between Derek's appearance and Stiles' decision that there was no way he could make it to Scott's house in time to do anything useful, Derek was gone, and Scott was taking a shaky seat back in front of the computer, looking terrified. "I'm - I'm okay. I'm fine."

"God, Scott, isn't there a way to keep crazy monsters out of your room? Garlic, or something?"

"That's vampires, Stiles," Scott said dully. "I don't think I can keep Derek Hale out of my room if he wants to come in."

Really don't want to think about that. Stiles disconnected the connection, gritted his teeth, ignored his arousal and focused all his attention on learning everything he could about werewolf prevention lore before he fell asleep. If there was anything Stiles could do for Scott, it was to put his obnoxious memory to work on Scott behalf.

Unfortunately, no amount of research cramming was going to blot out the images once he was actually asleep. Stiles woke up near dawn with his dick in his hand and Derek's name on his lips, and coming like that wasn't a pleasant feeling at all.

"He's probably a murderer," he muttered as he cleaned himself up. But apparently believing that didn't make him any less hot. Stiles tried to redirect his own traitorous brain back to more gentle thoughts of pain and control, but his brain was having none of it. His brain knew exactly what it wanted, and there was nothing nice about it.

He was tense enough following the lacrosse game and Derek's arrest that he brought it up with Allison at their study session. Obliquely, of course; he couldn't exactly say, so Derek Hale broke into your boyfriend's bedroom the other night. He couldn't talk about the half-wolf-girl they'd dug up in Derek's yard, either.

"When my dad arrested Derek Hale." Stiles twiddled his pencil. "I talked to him. In the back of his police cruiser. Through the wire screen," he added, watching Allison's eyes widen.

"Jesus, Stiles, talk about risky?"

"Maybe." He glanced up at her, then back to his book. "He does kind of scare the shit out of me. I told him he didn't, but..."

"No doubt," she agreed. "So what made you do that, anyway?"

Beats me. He wanted to laugh, but he was pretty sure it would come out hysterical at this point. He flexed his hands. "I had questions. He has answers. But he's definitely not giving them up."

She nudged his ankle. "You're not the police officer in your family, you know."

"Sometimes the only way I can get answers is to go after them myself. Turns out that dead girl, she was Derek's sister."

"No way." Allison stared at him. "You really think he killed his own -"

"I don't know. I don't know! He's just... he's dangerous. That's all I'm sure about."

She nodded slowly. "And sometimes dangerous is hard to resist."

Stiles shrugged as noncommittally as he could manage, but his heart was beating double time. "It doesn't matter."

"Stiles, if it didn't matter, you wouldn't have bothered confronting him in the back of a police cruiser."

He grinned weakly. "Yeah, that's... that's what Derek said. Wondered why I was bothering with him when I should be worried about -" He swallowed on Scott's name. "More important stuff."

"The most important stuff never gets talked about." Allison gave him a decisive nod. "I think that was brave, what you did."

That actually made Stiles a little embarrassed, but he covered it with a leer. "Talk about brave. Scott, kissing you in the locker room after the game? Completely adorable. That was a real Snow White moment. Freaking birds landing on your shoulder and shit."

She shook her head, smiling. "I thought for a while I was going to have to make the first move, but I talked him into doing it eventually. He said I make him nervous."

"You sure as hell weren't scared."

"Of Scott?" Her smile widened. "Definitely not. He's a puppy."

Stiles' dream came back the next night, in startling clarity, in which he was Scott, being grabbed and shoved against the wall. He had enjoyed watching Scott and Allison being happy together, and maybe he'd stared a little while they kissed, but that wasn't the image that had stuck with him, that had followed him from bed to car to class and made it hard to do anything other than want things.

Stiles, feeling a little desperate, managed to corner Danny Mahealani by his locker while he was doing something from which he couldn't reasonably escape. He asked, very quickly and very quietly, "So what does it mean when you keep having the same dream about a really awful guy?"

"Stiles," Danny exhaled, closing his eyes, "do we really have to -"

"Yes, because when I tried to tell Scott, he told me never give that much detail again, and I'm not quite ready to talk to Allison about this. Probably not ready. Pretty soon ready. So does it mean my subconscious is talking to me and I should listen to it, or does it mean my hormones are freaking nuts?"

He glared at Stiles. "Yes. Both. I have no idea. Why are you asking me?"

"Because you're my resident expert on gay? Danny, come on, I'll never ask you anything again." He tried the cute please-please look on him, but Danny just slammed his locker and walked away. It was a little disappointing; apparently the look didn't have the same effect on everybody.

He finally gave up trying to spare Allison his TMI and grabbed her at lunch, positioning her to stand next to him in line for tater tots. "Okay, you were right."

"Of course I was," she said blithely. "... About what, exactly?"

"Sometimes dangerous is hard to resist. I just..." He sighed. "I feel like a complete idiot for not resisting harder."

Allison's eyebrows were somewhere up by her hairline. "Stiles, I've known you for less than a month and I can already tell that you are really, really bad at resisting. Anyway, you're not actually doing any... anything, are you? You're just thinking about it?"

"That is the sad story of this sophomore's life," he agreed. "So, what, it's more moral if I'm not actually doing it, just thinking about doing it?"

"You're asking me?" She shrugged. "Maybe? I don't think there's any harm in thinking about anything. You get to decide if it's okay to go for it or not."

Stiles stared at her. "Go for it? I'm not going to be doing any going for anything, trust me. For one thing, he's a freaking w- uhh, w...asshole. Yeah. Wasshole."

"Yeah, and I think as Lydia can attest, there are plenty of people who'll put up with assholes if they're pretty enough. Jackson definitely qualifies." Allison's eyes ranged across the cafeteria. "Speaking of Lydia, have you seen her?"

The fact that Stiles couldn't immediately conjure up Lydia's exact location made him even more disgusted with himself. Since when had he replaced her in his fantasy queue with a psychopathic mythical creature? He sighed. "No, but if you wait a few minutes, you'll probably find her walking directly away from me."

She gave him a sympathetic shoulder-pat. "Don't worry, Stiles. I'm still firmly in the there's nothing wrong with you camp."

Stiles wasn't at all sure that was true when, later that night, he found himself waiting outside the school in his car for Scott to scope out the bus-o'murder. He still felt like the sidekick, even if Scott said he wasn't.

He tapped out the entire chorus to I Write Sins Not Tragedies on his steering wheel before picking up his cell phone and calling Allison.

"Where are you?" he said.

"At home; where else? There's a curfew." She didn't sound all that worried. "Don't tell me you're not following it."

"Rules and I are only passing acquaintances. We had a falling out a long time ago. Anyway, I'm totally safe." He peered out the windshield at the silent school. "I think. Scott's here."

She snorted. "Scott needs protection as much as you do."

"Only if you're talking about the latex kind." He grinned at Allison's burst of laughter. "Oh, come on, don't tell me you don't have that on the agenda."

"Hell, yes," she giggled. "But I'm letting him set the pace. It's not just about what I want."

"You're negotiating with him about sex?" Stiles considered that. "'Cause, honestly, I don't think he would say no."

"No! No, I mean... I'm just saying, if it's his idea, it's hotter. I'm sure I could get him to do whatever I wanted him to do, but -"

"But that's not what you want. And I get the idea that you pretty much get what you want."

"Pretty much. I should go, Stiles; Lydia's here. Stay safe, okay? In regards to latex or whatever."

He hadn't told Allison about his dream, the one Scott hadn't wanted to hear about, but it was okay. It felt more and more safe every time he danced closer to the truth with her. He was pretty sure by the time he actually got around to saying the words Derek Hale terrifies me and gets me off at the same time, Allison's reaction would be nothing but a nod and a smirk.

But the next time he saw her, Allison didn't look like she was interested in talking about Stiles' confusing non-love life. When he sat down next to her in Spanish class, she appeared to be chewing on something tough and unpleasant.

"Just because you're a really good liar doesn't mean I shouldn't trust you," she said. "Right?"

Stiles blinked. "I'm... touched. Thanks."

"No, not you. I mean somebody, in general." Allison glanced at him with a wry smile. "But okay, yeah, you fit that profile, but... I'm thinking about somebody else."

"Scott's a terrible liar."

"Agreed. Not Scott. My aunt. She showed up last night with a bunch of nice words for me and a kung-fu death grip on my arm when I reached for her bag." She shook her head. "And a completely fake story about what went wrong with her car."

"So? My dad lies to me all the time." That was actually a lie, but Stiles didn't have any other adults in his life who could be the bad guy. He could make up a not-nice character to suit the conversation.

"But without a reason? No. Something's going on here. I just haven't figured it out yet." She shrugged, slumping into her seat. "Anyway. What were you guys up to last night, anyway? Scott didn't answer his texts."

Stiles was going to have to respond with another lie. Stiles managed to redirect the conversation before Allison could detect his discomfort, but it wasn't easy. Not only was she smart, but she was obviously looking to catch people in a lie, just like Stiles was, pretty much 24-7. While Scott expected the best from people, Stiles wasn't going to expect anything but complete and utter chaos - which is pretty much where he found himself.

If Derek's not the alpha, he reasoned on his way to history, then that means he's not the guy who bit Scott. That means, not only is some other werewolf more in charge than Derek is - which is a pretty freaking scary idea - but Derek's not nearly as much of an asshole as he seems to be. Which is even more of a scary idea.

He felt worked up enough to confront Scott with his concerns at the beginning of class, but Scott was too morose about the D- on his paper to be ready to listen.

"No more questions," Scott begged.

"No," Stiles agreed. "No more questions. Not about the alpha, or Derek. Especially Derek. Who still scares me."

It was starting to piss Stiles off that Scott didn't want to hear about what was going on with him, especially considering Stiles was totally fine with being Scott and Allison's cheerleader. For a best friend, Scott could be awfully squeamish. Stiles spent the rest of the day scowling at the images in his head of Derek grabbing his wrists, Derek kneeling over him, Derek -

Derek in the freaking parking lot. Stiles almost hit him with his Jeep before he screeched to a halt.

"Oh, my god," Stiles muttered. For a minute, he actually thought Derek might be another hallucination. Judging by the state Derek was in, things were not going well for him. He looked like he'd been doused in a whole lot of bad news. Stiles leaned on his horn, but it didn't seem like Derek even noticed he was there. What's new? he thought bitterly.

And then Derek slid to the pavement, and Stiles felt his heart constrict. He thought later that it had partly been because watching Derek do that was a grim reminder of Scott's abiding mortality; even lycanthropy wasn't going to protect him from getting killed. And of course it was damned inconvenient for a werewolf to be passing out on the road in front of his Jeep. But at that moment, as Stiles scrambled for the door handle, all he could feel was blind panic.

Then Stiles heard a thump on his window, and he looked up to see Scott barreling past to kneel beside Derek.

"What are you doing here?" he heard Scott hiss as he approached them.

Derek swallowed. "I've been shot."

"He's not looking so good, dude," Stiles murmured. He shifted from foot to foot, trying to keep his distance, because Derek actually looked terrible. This was taking the whole Robert Pattinson thing to a new, pasty-grey level. Stiles had no idea what he wanted to do, but it definitely involved being far away from there until Derek felt better and could go back to glaring and throwing people against walls with authority.

Scott touched Derek's shoulder, then drew his hand back as though he'd been stung. "Why aren't you healing?"

"I can't." Derek was having trouble catching his breath. "The bullet was different."

"Silver bullet?" Stiles blurted.

Ah, there was Derek's glare. "No, you idiot."

But Scott was shaking his head. "Wait, wait. That's what she meant when she said you had 48 hours."

Derek gritted his teeth, looking uneasy. "Who said 48 hours?"

"The woman who shot you."

In the midst of honking horns, Stiles watched as Derek blanched, his eyes going ice-blue as he hissed against the pain. He could see the flash of Derek's canines, just past his lips. Stiles stifled a whimper.

"What are you doing?" Scott demanded. "Stop that!"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you: I can't." The words were little more than a low growl by this point.

Scott slid his arms under Derek's, hauling him to his feet. He looked imploringly at Stiles. "Help me get him in the car."

But Stiles barely did anything, opening the door and hanging back until Derek was securely in the passenger seat. He could scarcely focus on their murmured conversation. Three cars back, Allison was standing beside her sedan, watching them with concern, but he just shook his head and she stayed where she was. Watching Derek lose control was hard enough; he didn't need to deal with Allison's questions on top of that.

Scott gestured, exasperated, as Stiles climbed into the driver's side. "Get him out of here."

"I hate you for this so much," Stiles muttered.

His tires screeched on the blacktop as he peeled out of the parking lot. Derek was still and silent on the seat beside him.

"Okay, exactly what in hell are we doing here?" he demanded.

"Trying to keep me alive long enough for Scott to find one of the bullets that injured me." Derek simply sounded exhausted now, as though all the sullen had been leached out of him by the interchange at the school.

"Well, where are we going?"

"I don't care," Derek moaned, squirming on the seat as he gripped his arm. "Just drive. Anywhere."

That shouldn't be so hard. Stiles headed down a random residential street. He tried to keep his foot from jamming down onto the gas pedal. Even with the police radio, he probably didn't want to be caught speeding in his dad's own jurisdiction. He eyed Derek nervously, feeling the tension in his stomach. It wasn't sexy, it was just freaky as all hell, to see Derek in so much pain and not to know what to do.

"Do you need, like, water or anything? There's a fresh bottle in the side door."

Derek's eyes were closed, his breathing shallow. "I'm fine."

"Are you going to shift? Should I be worried about you trying to kill me? Because Scott's done that a couple times, and it was -"

"Stiles!" Derek barked. "Shut. Up."

Stiles tapped out an angry text, ignoring the dirty looks Derek was shooting him. Did you find it yet? When Scott didn't reply, he sent it again via voice mail.

"Call me back, okay? This isn't working out. He's -" Stiles watched Derek helplessly. Dying. He's dying, right here in my car. "He's pissing me off," he finished.

But he had barely finished the voice mail when Scott's answer to his text came. Need more time, he read. Stiles tossed the phone down with disgust.

"Try not to bleed out on my seats, okay? We're almost there."

Derek wasn't even looking out the window. "Where?"

"Your house."

His head snapped up. Stiles' eyes were on the road, but for a moment, he thought Derek might actually be scared. "Don't take me to my house! Not when I can't protect myself!"

Stiles pulled over to the side of the road. He was done with not having the answers, with only knowing part of the story. Whatever stupid fantasies he was having about Derek, this was irritating him more than he was willing to deal with. Derek watched him warily as he put the parking brake on and faced him across the seats.

"What happens if Scott doesn't find your little magic bullet, huh?" He tried to keep Derek's gaze, but it slid away as Derek sat there, his resistance ebbing. "Are you dying?"

"Not yet." Derek took a deep breath. "I have a last resort."

"What do you mean?" Stiles snapped. "What last resort?"

And then Derek pulled up the sleeve on his shirt, revealing an oozing, gangrenous wound in his arm. The skin around the bullet hole had turned grey, and it was so swollen, Stiles was surprised Derek could fit it through his sleeve. He turned away, feeling sick.

"Oh my god... what is that? Is that contagious? You know what, you should probably just get out."

"Start the car," Derek said, focusing with obvious effort on the dashboard. "Now."

It wasn't the grossness of Derek's gunshot wound that was making it hard to look at him. Stiles just didn't think Derek needed to see the completely inexplicable tears that had sprung up in his eyes. It horrified him to realize how entirely out of control he felt around this jerk. His hands clenched the steering wheel, and he forced his eyes up.

"You know, I don't think you should be barking orders with the way you look... in fact? I think, if I wanted to, I could probably drag your little werewolf ass out there in the middle of the road and leave you for dead."

Derek's arms were trembling, but his gaze on Stiles didn't waver. "Start the car," he said evenly, "or I'm going to rip your throat out. With my teeth."

Stiles had heard people describe moments of extreme importance as though time stopped, or everything slowed down. This wasn't like that. Stiles simply couldn't move, or speak, or breathe very effectively, because every drop of blood in his body felt like it had immediately rushed from his brain to one other essential organ. He struggled to close his jaw, but even so, it took several seconds and a lot of effort.

Then he figured, if he could do that, he might be able tear his attention off Derek's canines. No, not canines. Fangs. He had freaking fangs. Stiles was not going to allow himself to think about kneeling on the ground before somebody with fangs.

He started the car.