Somewhere Safe
dennifer oneshot

Jennifer feels jittery, nerves frayed around the edges. Even as she sits behind her desk, red pen uncapped and hovering just over the atrocious excuse for an essay, she can't focus. Something feels horribly wrong, out of place—but she can't place it. She sighs, sets the pen down, and covers her mouth with a tentative, shaking hand. Her brows scrunch up as she turns slightly and pushes her chair out with the gentle kick of her foot. She pauses, lets her hand fall back down to her side, and gets up out of the chair, heels clicking against the tile flooring. She scrambles to pack up the unorganized pile of essays sitting on her desk quickly, glancing nervously at the clock while she does so.

She can't shake the buzz in the air, the sense that something awful is about to happen. She bites her lower lip anxiously before fleeing the familiarity of her classroom. She heads straight to her car, papers clutched tight against her chest as she attempts to calm the way her heart rate ratchets up.

Werewolves, she thinks idly, are real. She leans against her car, breathing uneven and anxiety ridden. She hasn't… she's hasn't always been the most put together person, admittedly. She has problems, some justified and others… petty and silly. She's a grown woman and yet she fears what's hiding in the dark. Panic is always on the cusp of her consciousness, waiting for a moment of weakness so that it can sweep in and drive her to the brink of insanity.

Jennifer squeezes her eyes shut, breath stuttering. "You're okay," she says aloud, swallowing harshly around the knotted up feeling of her throat. After a beat, she opens the driver's side door to her car and slips inside, tucking away her things, and scrambling for her keys. She's calm, she's okay, everything is perfectly normal. She's just paranoid, and honestly Jennifer, get it together.

That's the precise moment Derek Hale decides to show back up in her life, covered in blood (and honestly, that really, really shouldn't be a thing), face open and vulnerable, body ripped to shreds. She gapes, mouth hanging open in unadulterated shock. "Oh my god," she exhales, scrabbling wildly with her car door as she fights to get out without tripping over herself. She falls to her knees immediately, tucking a stray strand of her own hair behind her ear as she hovers over Derek's broken and bleeding body, panic settling in. "Oh god, please don't die," she says, reaching tentatively to press her palms against his cheek, her own fingers becoming slick with blood. "Derek?" she asks, voice wrought with distress.

He looks up at her, eyes unfocused and face pale, so pale, crap, crap, crap. "Jennifer," he rasps out, blood bubbling out of his mouth and trickling down his chin.

She stares in horror. "What are you, oh god, we need to get you to a hospital," she tells him urgently, trying in vain to wrap her arms around him and lift—to do something! Because, by god, she can't just leave him here to bleed all over the school's parking lot.

"No," he gargles, swatting at her in what seems to be reflex. "No… no hospitals," he chokes on a cough and rolls into her, face hot as he tries to focus on her face, gaze wavering. "Safe," he tells her in between stuttering, gasping breathes, "Somewhere safe."

She nods along vigorously. "Okay," she replies, focusing her breathing as she centers herself. She can do this. She can. Screw what her therapist says, there's a man dying in her lap (a very attractive, but potentially dangerous man, and oh god where are her priorities, seriously?), and he's not going to draw his last breathe while he's in her care. "Okay," she reiterates, face set in determination. "I can't lift you," she tells him, voice wavering. "Can you stand?"

Derek makes a noncommittal grunt, and moves, teeth scrapping together as he growls around the pain. Jennifer stands with him, allows him to curl into her side, to shift his weight onto her as they half hobble over to her car. She manages to get the door to the backseat open and all but flings him inside, wincing as she does so. "Sorry," she apologizes, wincing with empathy. Derek doesn't seem to mind, his head resting against her seats as he breathes harshly, chest rising and falling at an alarming rate.

"Right, okay," Jennifer murmurs to herself, pausing momentarily to stare in horror at the blood smeared across her clothes and skin. She swallows. Now is not the time to have a panic attack, not when she has two hundred pounds of bleeding werewolf in her backseat. "You can do this," she nods at herself, puts her car into gear, and tears out of the parking lot like a women possessed.

Really, getting him into her tiny apartment without anyone seeing proves to be the hardest part of this whole save hot catatonic, bleeding supernatural creature of the night debacle. "I'm going to go to jail," she tells herself as she practically chews a hole through her lower lip. "Oh, screw it!" With that, she's out of the car and hauling Derek into apartment 204, and honestly, this really isn't how she pictured bringing the man back to her place.

What? Supernatural craziness aside, the guy is outrageous levels of hot.

Jennifer is only human, okay, and so what if he looks good even while bleeding to death on her living room floor? Crap. Right. Focusing.

By some miracle she gets him onto the couch and then promptly collapses beside it, knees bent as she merely sits there, covered in a sheen of sweat and blood that isn't her own. She pauses, presses her face into her hands, and lets out a single, frustrated sigh. "What now?" she says to an unconscious Derek. He doesn't respond. "Yeah, I could go for a shower," she agrees.

Derek wakes with a snarl, jolting up off the couch, claws extended and face feral. Jennifer backs up several paces, wrings her hands nervously, and shifts from foot to foot. "Um, hi?" she tries, feeling truly ridiculous.

He looks startled as he zones in on her, eyes blazing red and wow, okay, yeah, that's not disconcerting. Not at all. No, she isn't going to have nightmares about volcano eyes over there. Jennifer mentally slaps herself. "You, um, you look better?"

Derek's brows knit together in confusion as he looks around, the red bleeding out of his eyes, returning to their normal liquid blue. "Where am I," he croaks, throat raw, and eyebrows still furrowed.

Jennifer takes a half step forward when Derek doesn't look as if he's going to lunge and rip out her throat (not that she thinks he will, mind you—but wounded animals and all that). "Somewhere safe?"

Derek doesn't look impressed, but as he glances up at her, his face softens. He looks as if he's going to speak several times, but he just sighs and leans back into the couch. "Thank you," he says, but the words sound like they've been ripped from his mouth forcibly.

Jennifer smiles anyway. "You're welcome," she says primly. She pauses, and then says, "Is this going to be a thing with you? Showing up covering in blood?"

Derek smirks, but there's no malice in it.

She swallows before continuing, "Because I," she inhales sharply, "I don't mind? I mean, I do mind, I don't want you to—to be hurt, but if you need someone, or a person, to go to? I don't mind, is what I'm saying, and oh, gosh, this is embarrassing I'm just going to—stop."

He's looking at her now, eyes soft. He regards her for a moment, and then beckons her. "Come here," he says gently.

She hesitates.

He raises his eyebrows at her, and she gives in.

She walks over to him, marveling at how much better his cuts look—not completely healed, but better. She frowns. "Why aren't you healing?" she asks curiously.

Instead of answering, Jennifer finds herself being kissed. It's startling, sloppy, carries the metallic tang of blood, and has too much teeth, but she finds herself melting into the touch regardless. She makes a helpless sort of noise, grabs at the couch and blinks confusedly as Derek pulls back. "What—" she sputters.

"You ask too many questions," he tells her, looking decidedly smug and amused.

Her face flushes. "I, what, of course I'm asking questions," she replies hotly. "That's pretty normal considering you showed up at my car bleeding to death."

Derek gets that look—the one she's seen only once before—where he looks decidedly constipated. "Why do you care?" Jennifer thinks he meant for the question to be cutting, to be cruel and accusatory, but it comes out as gentle, broken, and sad.

"Why shouldn't I care?" she counters stubbornly.

Derek doesn't answer her. After a beat, he says, "I should go."

Jennifer gapes at him. "No," she refuses adamantly, "you shouldn't. Admittedly, this is not how I foresaw taking you back to my place, but uh, you're wounded. You need to rest."

"You don't understand," he grits out, "It's not… safe, for you. For me to be here."

Jennifer swallows down the fear swelling in her chest. "I don't care."

"You will," he replies softly.

And oh, that makes her heart ache. That look of complete and utter devastation that sweeps over Derek face makes her insides feel like lead. "I won't," she says resolutely.

He looks up at her, hope swimming briefly in his gaze before it's snuffed out. "Everyone around me gets hurt," he tells her seriously, and she believes him.

"Okay," she says cautiously, reaching for him hesitantly. Her hand slides against the rough texture of Derek' stubble, fingers settling into the soft edge of his hairline as she leans in, lips hovering over his. She dips her head down then, letting their lips meet gingerly, the soft press of skin on skin like igniting sparks. She gasps as he deepens the kiss, tongue skittering over the edge of her lips, asking silently for access, for permission.

She allows him in, allows him to reach up and take what she's offering. Jennifer enjoys the moist heat of his mouth, the slide and gentle caresses of his lips on hers. It's slow, heady, and so perfect she doesn't know what to do with herself. As they pull away, he holds her gaze.

"Okay," he says.

Jennifer silently prays that this man won't be the death of her.