"Scott!" Stiles jerks to a halt, just manages to catch the doorframe and keep himself from toppling into the house.
Scott, who had apparently heard Stiles coming, finishes pulling the door open and stares at him, brow furrowed, as though trying to decide whether or not he should be alarmed. "What is it, are you okay?"
"Dude, I went to see Deaton, because I figured, alpha were-pack: we're probably going to need some more heavy artillery to go with our magic fairy dust. Anyway, he says it's going to take some time to learn anything that would help in a fight; but he showed me something we can do now, as a precaution. It's no help in werewolf showdowns, but it's still pretty awesome. I thought maybe we could try it out, you know?" Stiles takes a breath, face practically glowing with enthusiasm for this new project.
Scott looks at him, uncertain, "Uh, yeah, that sounds great, and I'm totally up for it, but can it wait until later?"
Stiles deflates a little, smile fading, "Aw, come on, man, it'll just take a minute. I've got everything we need in my jeep," he jerks his head toward the driveway.
"Yeah, it's just—" Scott looks over Stiles' shoulder, and Stiles whips around as footsteps sound on the deck behind him. "Isaac and I were about to go for a training session in the woods. You know, alpha pack in town and all." Scott pauses, rolling his hands against each other a little awkwardly. "You wanna come along? We can all go in your car, and do the thing you learned from Deaton after?"
Stiles blinks, looking between the two werewolves a couple of times. Finally, he nods, eyeing Isaac warily, "Sure, great, sounds…good. Let's get going." He trips slowly down the stairs while Scott locks the door, wrapping his mind around the idea of Scott and Isaac doing training sessions together. When had they even started getting along?
He swings himself up and into the car as Isaac somehow manages to make clambering into the backseat look graceful and Scott settles into the passenger seat. It's odd. He feels left behind in a way he hadn't when Scott and Allison had started dating.
As he backs out of the driveway, he asks, "So, you trust each other now, huh?"
Scott looks at him, "Isaac stayed. He helped with Jackson. He's the one who told me about the alpha pack. So…yeah, I guess we do," he half-turns in his seat to give Isaac a bright half-smile, which Isaac returns.
Stiles jerks the gear-shift a little harder than necessary, but doesn't bother to answer.
They drive to a secluded area of the woods, and Stiles leans against the jeep, arms crossed, as Scott and Isaac frolic off into the trees.
"We won't go too far. Call if you need us, okay?" Scott says, watching Stiles until he nods, waving them away.
"Yeah, got it. Go have fun playing in the leaves."
When they're out of sight, Stiles lets out a frustrated sigh and tries to think what he can do while they're gone. The sun won't set for at least a couple more hours, so at least he won't be waiting in the dark. Unfortunately, he hasn't brought much besides the supplies from Deaton to keep himself entertained.
He turns back to the jeep, wondering whether the books on Native American and Celtic myths he'd picked up were still under the seat. A dark shape among the trees catches the corner of his eye and he almost jumps before realizing it's only Derek. Only Derek, leaning against a tree a few yards away, gazing blindly at the ground. He must know Stiles is there, but he isn't making a move. He probably followed them here, Stiles realizes. Why? To check on Isaac, maybe? Maybe he didn't have anywhere else to go.
After a moment of silent debate, Stiles puts his keys in his pocket and walks over until he's standing beside Derek, close enough to put a hand on his shoulder. Or punch him, as he'd contemplated doing when Scott had first made the not-so-happy announcement that they now had an alpha pack to deal with.
Derek meets his eyes long enough to constitute an acknowledgement of Stiles' presence before looking away again.
"So, I hear there's a new pack in the vicinity. A new alpha pack," he waits. Derek nods.
"And you've known they were here for a while, haven't you?"
"I knew they'd be coming." Derek's still not looking at him and it's irritating. They've always looked each other in the eye before.
Stiles presses his lips together and shrugs impatiently, "And you couldn't have told us we should be expecting a whole pack of powered-up, potentially murderous werewolves anytime sooner?"
Silence. Derek's eyes are unfocused, and his head is tilted to the side, listening, Stiles thinks, to Scott and Isaac having their training session/play date/whatever off in the distance.
"Nothing, huh? You've got nothing."
Derek's lips thin and Stiles stops, thinking.
"You've got nothing. You don't know what to do, do you?" He scrubs a hand over his head when Derek doesn't deny it and, after a pause, says, "What about Peter? Scott says he's back. Does he have any suggestions that don't scream psychotic?"
Stiles looks up, and Derek's finally giving him his full attention, staring intently at his face. He looks tired and just this side of despairing. It's like Artax in The Neverending Story, Stiles thinks suddenly, sucked down into the swamp and drowned by his own sorrow. Derek looks like he's sinking.
"I can't fight them, not like this. I've got two betas who aren't even half-trained, and one of them would probably just as soon join them as me. Scott doesn't trust me, and I don't know if he'd fight with me anyway. I can't trust Peter… The only thing I can think of is building up a good defense, but that takes time." Derek had rolled his head back against the tree while he'd spoken, but now he turns back to Stiles, who has started chewing one of his hoodie strings.
"What about Deaton?" he says finally. There are things he wants to say, things about proper communication and thinking before you act and why didn't Derek tell anyone? But they can wait, for a little while. "I talked to him earlier. It's going to take time to learn to do anything beyond making a circle of mountain ash, but…it seems like our best bet. Actually," he looks at Derek, who had perked up at the word "our," as though trying to be certain he'd heard it, "he taught me something today. I was going to try it out with Scott. It's not much good in a fight, but if any of us ever need to find each other… Want to try?"
Derek takes a moment, but eventually he nods. Stiles grins slightly and leads the way back to the jeep, where they spread Deaton's supplies out on the hood.
"Okay, so, to magnetize a needle, you know how you rub it against the end of a magnet a bunch of times to change the polarity? Well, this is a little like that, except, instead of getting the needle to point north, we're getting it to point to a specific person. So if we ever need to find someone who's a long way away, we can use this as a kind of personal compass."
"How do we make one?"
Stiles waves a sheet of paper at him. "You draw this," he indicates a circle composed of symbols that look very much like runes, "put the needles inside, say the words at the bottom here, and then you prick the finger of whoever the needle's supposed to hone in on. Then you give me your needle and I'll give you mine and we're all set."
"And that's all?" Derek asks, watching Stiles meticulously copy the rune circle onto the hood with a piece of chalk.
"More or less. You do have to believe that the needle will work. You just kind of imagine it leading you to the person, you know? Okay, ready?"
Derek places the needle he's been examining into the circle beside Stiles'.
Stiles checks his handiwork, takes a deep breath, and reads out the words in as clear and firm a voice as he can manage.
They stare at the needles as he finishes as if expecting them to start glowing or sparking or something, but nothing happens.
"Did it work?" Derek asks.
"Guess we have to try them out," Stiles says, making a face as he jabs himself with his needle.
Derek follow suit, and they trade, both eyeing the needles somewhat skeptically.
"Well, hide-and-seek, here we go," Stiles closes his eyes and bats a hand at Derek to indicate he should go. He opens his eyes when Derek doesn't respond, and sees nothing but the trees. Biting his lip, he lays the needle in his palm and pictures it leading him to Derek, pointing the way like a compass. There's a tickle on his hand, and when he looks down the needle's moved, so he sets off in the direction it's pointing.
Five minutes later, he finds Derek, watching the sun through the gaps in the leaves. He can't contain his glee, whooping and punching the air.
"Yes! It worked! Didn't even need the pixie dust this time. Yes. Okay, your turn; remember, try not to use your wolfy powers."
Derek nods and Stiles takes off, zigzagging through the trees.
It seems to take longer for Derek to find him, but when he does show up (Stiles turns and nearly has a heart attack at finding a space occupied that had been empty half a second before), Stiles is almost sure he can see Derek smiling.
They return to the jeep, and Stiles strings the needles on pieces of thread so they won't get lost. "Hey, what kept you? It felt like it took you longer to find me."
It takes a second for Derek to respond. "I couldn't get it to work at first," he admits finally, watching Stiles' hands.
Oh. Stiles just nods, tying the final knot in the thread. "Alright! There's your friendship necklace. Try not to lose it, because I'd kind of prefer not to stab myself with needles any more than is absolutely necessary."
Derek slips the loop of thread over his head while Stiles rubs the chalk off his jeep. He's putting his own necklace on when—
"Stiles."
He looks up, and Derek is staring at him, face more open than Stiles is used to seeing.
"Thank you."
And Stiles knows what he means and smiles as Derek turns to leave.
"I'll talk to Scott," he says, and Derek pauses. "We all need to work together this time, okay?"
He watches until Derek nods and then Scott and Isaac are coming back and Derek is gone.
A week later, when Stiles goes looking for some magic mushrooms that probably aren't in season anyway and ends up lost in the woods with a dead phone, his needle again leads him right to Derek, who, though he looks a mix of concerned and exasperated, leads him back to his car. As he climbs in, offering Derek a ride, Stiles is surprised to discover he feels safer than he has in weeks.