Hunting a Hunter

Stiles is in the woods, following the path of a werewolf. He probably should've brought more protection than a bat, considering it's a full moon tonight, but Derek is missing and all Stiles can do is try and find him. SterekWeek2015. SterekHunterMoon.

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The moon was full and bright in the sky, casting a pale glow on everything below. Stiles was grateful for the light. In the past few years, he had gotten really good at seeing in the dark – a side effect of always running around in it – but the less strain on his eyes the more he could focus on the actual task at hand.

Derek was missing. It was the full moon, and his werewolf boyfriend wasn't at home, or answering his phone or text messages.

It was autumn and there was a decent layer of leaves on the forest floor. Brown and gold and red and yellow. They covered everything under the trees, from the spot where the Camaro and Derek's phone had been to where Stiles was now and beyond. They were his greatest asset right now.

Stiles knelt down in the underbrush and held out his hand over a break in the leaves. To most people, nothing would be stranger about this bunch of leaves than any other. To Stiles, it showed that someone or something had been through this way recently. The way the leaves were crushed by feet, how they piled up alongside the trail made by the passer – both signs that he was headed in the right direction.

He pulled his hand back without touching a single leaf and he stood, moving around the faint trail as he followed beside it.

Up ahead, a bush had a broken twig of a branch on it, the delicate victim hanging precariously from the host plant. Whoever was going this way either wasn't paying attention to their surroundings or didn't care if they left a trail.

Stiles held his bat tighter in his left hand. Derek hadn't been kidnapped, as far as he could tell. The trail through the leaves was too small for that. Only one person had gone this way. So Stiles didn't need to worry about hunters or other wolves or anything like that. However, if Derek had ditched his car because he'd lost his mind to the moon? Stiles' bat wouldn't do much good against him. It was made from ash wood and Deaton and Stiles had worked hard to make it as supernatural-proof as possible, but Stiles wouldn't fight Derek. Not if he didn't absolutely have to, and he definitely wouldn't hit Derek if he thought it would severely injure him. Stiles could only hope that Derek was in his right mind, or that a simple whack from the bat would wake him up if he wasn't.

Still further into the woods, the leaves thinned with the trees for a short distance. The trail Stiles was following metaphorically dried up. He slowly canvassed the area, walking back and forth over the packed earth as he moved forward and looked for any sign that Derek or anyone else had been there.

His foot hit softer ground and Stiles paused, again kneeling to check. The dirt was moist here. He lifted his eyes to the sky and saw the moon shining clearly through a break in the canopy. It had rained yesterday, and the ground here was still damp from the extra water. Casting his gaze to the forest floor ahead of him, Stiles prayed for a miracle.

There.

Hurrying forward, Stiles examined the footprint. It was Derek's size. For a moment, Stiles stopped to muse on how odd he was – knowing Derek's shoe size. Then he shook his head and moved on, following the impressions in the dirt.

Derek wasn't running. The strides were too short for that. Stiles loosened his grip on the bat. For all intents and purposes, Derek looked to be going for a stroll.

The footprints came to an abrupt end on a slate of rock. Luckily, by then Stiles didn't need any guidance to find Derek. He was plain to see, sitting further up on the rock, out of the tree line.

Stiles scrambled up the rock, into the bright moonlight, and punched Derek in the back. Derek jolted and gave him the – honestly – cutest surprised look Stiles had ever seen.

"You dick!" Stiles said with a glare. "Do you know how worried I've been?!" He tapped his bat on the rock a few times, making a dull thud sound with every strike.

The surprise melted away into a smirk. "You found me though," Derek said. "Your tracking skills are improving."

Stiles resisted the urge to smack him with the bat. "That's not the point." Though, no, seriously, he was pleased with the compliment. Derek + compliments = Stiles' Kryptonite. "At least take your phone with you or tell someone where you're going next time."

Derek shrugged. "I wanted to be alone for awhile."

Plopping down on the stone next to Derek, Stiles let his bat lie next to him and roughly ran his hands through his hair. "But what if you'd lost control and no one was around to stop you killing a poor, random hiker?"

That wasn't likely to happen in Beacon Hills, where the residents had long since learned to avoid staying out late on full moons, but still. What if someone's cousin came visiting or something? What if hunters were passing through?

A hand landed on his shoulder and shocked him out of his descending panic. Derek just stared at him until Stiles' heartbeat returned to normal, his eyes reflecting the moonlight.

"There's no way I'll lose control," he said at length, "because I have a full proof anchor."

"Oh yeah? What's that?" Stiles asked. "Cause last I checked your anchor was anger and dude, you can't be the Hulk all the time."

"You."

It was said so simply, so matter-of-fact, as if it were the obvious answer. Stiles felt his face heat and his heartbeat kick back up a notch. Sure, they were dating, but to be an anchor?

Derek's hand slid from Stiles' shoulder down to his hand, which he turned over and held, never taking his eyes from Stiles' face.

Clearing his throat, Stiles said, "That's…that's not exactly fool proof. Scott's anchor used to be Allison and he still lost control all the time." He shook his head. "Every time they had a fight or broke up, he'd lose it. And even when he had her, it sometimes didn't help."

"It didn't help when he didn't know how to focus on an anchor properly," Derek corrected. "And you've been my anchor since before we got together, and have been through all our fights and issues. It doesn't change the fact that you remind me of my humanity, my sanity. You always have, even when you were sixteen and annoying me so much I wanted to kill you."

Stiles chuckled even though he knew his face was tomato red and clearly visible in the moonlight. "Dude, you never would've killed me. For all that you look like a mass murderer, you're actually just a cuddlebot. Perhaps not quite human, but soft on the inside all the same."

Derek rolled his eyes as if to say, 'Why do I bother?' Then he released Stiles' hand and laid back on the rock, hands on his chest and staring skyward. Stiles followed suit, but put his hands behind his head like a pillow.

The moon was big and low in the sky, which had given Stiles more light to see by tonight. It was also vaguely yellow-orange in color, though he honestly hadn't been paying attention before now. He clicked his tongue.

"Oh right," he said, and Derek turned his head to look at Stiles instead of the sky. "It's October. This is a Hunter's Moon."

Derek shifted closer, his body heat warming Stiles in the cool fall air. Their bodies were now touching and Derek could simply tilt his head to hit Stiles' with his own.

"Human hunters or supernatural ones?" he asked. His tone was of simple curiosity, but Stiles could tell that Derek already knew all about the Hunter's Moon. He just wanted Stiles' opinion.

Stiles shifted, and if he'd been standing then the motion would've puffed out his chest. "Humans, of course," he said. "After all, I hunted you down didn't I?"

Derek huffed out a single laugh. "I left a trail for you to see if you could follow it."

"Liar," Stiles replied with a frown. "I totally used my awesome tracking skills and you had no part in that."

Silence met him. When Stiles turned his head to look, Derek was staring at him with an expectant look.

"No," Stiles said. "No, you did not help me. Don't do that. I'm an awesome hunter, okay? A. W. E. Some."

That made Derek laugh and he looked away. When he had stopped chuckling, Derek nodded. "Of course you are."

Stiles removed one hand from behind his head so he could mash Derek's head away from him in a playful gesture. "Shut up with your dumb face. You're ruining the mood."

"There's a mood?" Derek asked.

"Yeah." Stiles nodded. "The 'Stiles is Awesome and Derek's Lucky to Have Him' mood. But seriously, shut up and moon gaze with me. There's only one of these moons every year."

They laid in silence for some time after that. At some point, they started holding hands again. Then they laid their heads together. Stiles was actually about to drift off despite the chilly weather and hard rock under his back when Derek's voiced whispered in the night,

"Only having one Hunter's Moon a year explains why you're so bad at it every other day, doesn't it?"

He totally earned that elbow to the ribs.

...

...

fin.