A/N: I thank everyone who responded to this from the very bottom of my heart. I have no idea where it's going or how long it will be but we're in it for the ride.
Fic title is from the Whitesnake song but the song has absolutely nothing to do with the fic except that David Coverdale is pretty scary these days and the song mentions wolves but otherwise, nothing, you hear me? Nothing!
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine. Dear Lord, if they were, TW wouldn't be on MTV!
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x
Even with his eyes closed, Stiles could tell that the day was half over. As consciousness overcame sleep, the pool of drool he was lying in became more obvious and uncomfortable. Stiles rolled over. "Ugh", he muttered to himself, throwing a hand up to wipe his cheek. He set his feet on the floor, noticed that he was still dressed and with his elbows on his knees and his head hanging, began to take a full body inventory.
Going from his feet up, he was relieved to find that all body parts were still attached but as he approached his head, the story started to change somewhat. His throat was rough and dry and swallowing reflexively didn't seem to shift the nasty taste in his mouth. He identified that he had a headache of the type that just intensified according to the degree of movement he allowed himself.
He opened one eye and cast a look at his alarm clock; the digits told him that it was after mid-day but not by much. He took a deep breath, stood up and stripping off his night-sweat soaked clothing, he dropped it piece by piece on the floor as he lurched to his bathroom. Stiles ran the shower for a moment or two and cleaned his teeth thoroughly while waiting for the plumbing to kick in. When he'd judged that the water would be warm enough but not too hot, he got in and stood under the torrent. With his eyes closed and his face turned into the stream, the events of the previous night started to come back to him.
Lyla's rejection of him was naturally the first thing he recalled and he thumped a fist on the shower wall in frustration then brought his hands up to wipe the water away from his face and head before beginning to wash his hair and then his body. He worked his way down, wondering all the while just how he could be in this place yet again. He seriously never had any luck with women, never! Stiles slipped his hand between his legs to wash his more intimate area and as he proceeded to soap his cock and balls, the flashback came out of nowhere.
Stiles fell back against the wall as impressions from the evening before washed over him like the water from the shower. A pause in the fabric of reality and then a great rushing enveloped him, like the passing of an express train when you're waiting on the same platform. Something had been in the alley with him, something that could have been familiar if he could just put his finger on what it was he was reminded of: a smell; a taste perhaps; a change in the atmosphere? Not a sound but a feeling. Yes, a feeling! But when had he had that feeling before? Stiles couldn't remember.
'…The fuck was that?' Stiles thought to himself as he shifted off the wall and recommenced his ablutions. Nothing concrete would come back to him as he probed the inner recesses of his memories. Nothing tangible would form no matter how hard he searched. All this thinking was starting to make his headache worse so he finished up his washing, turned the water off and got out of the shower, wrapping a towel around his waist. In amongst all the aches and pains arising from the previous day, the little empty space deep within him just begging to be filled was barely noticeable.
Stiles dressed carelessly, pulling on some jeans and a t-shirt that were closest to hand and moved to the kitchen with the aim of finding something to temper his banging head. He ran himself a glass of water and searched in a cupboard for some painkillers, throwing two down his throat and wincing as they hit the soreness when he swallowed, draining the glass.
That was good but not enough; he needed coffee, maybe that would kick-start his recall and help him work out what he had encountered. Stiles groaned as he remembered that he had run out during the week and had intended but failed to buy more. No matter, the coffee shop on the corner would provide and the fresh air would probably do him some good.
Returning to the bedroom, he picked up his scattered clothing, throwing it into the laundry basket as he checked each garment looking for his wallet. Not in his jeans, not in his shirt pocket, it must be in his jacket but no, it wasn't there either. It probably fell out when he undressed so he attempted to check over the rumpled bed and the floor but the bending down still aggravated his headache and he resolved to find it later. Grabbing a handful of change from the dish on his dresser, he left his apartment, slamming the door behind him and cringing at the sound it made, then he exited into the street, breathing in the crisp autumn air.
Stiles slumped into an easy chair in the window of the coffee shop nursing his double espresso grande. After having consumed a quarter or so of it he started to feel that little bit more human so he picked up the newspaper that someone else had left behind on the table. He perused the pages while slowly sipping on the rest of his beverage. He told himself he was checking for updates on the headlines of the day but what he was really looking for were those little one paragraph local stories; the ones that detailed odd occurrences that nobody ever took seriously. Reading the whole thing from front to back, there was nothing in there that he could remotely link to his experience.
As he put the paper back down, he felt a tickling as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up for no reason at all. It was the most unusual sensation, like he was being watched. He glanced round the shop but the rest of the patrons were immersed in their own business, much like he had been; no-one was paying any attention to him. He spun his head round to look out of the window into the street but again, nothing, just people going about their daily affairs, too busy to even check out a hangover –stricken man sitting in the window of a coffee shop.
The coffee and painkillers had started to do their work so Stiles left the shop to amble the short distance home. As he approached the main door for his apartment block he completely failed to see the tall man step out from behind a tree, the man who watched him as he crossed the last few feet to his destination. As the door closed behind Stiles, the man turned and walked away down the street in the opposite direction.
Once ensconced back in his apartment, Stiles recommenced the search for his wallet. This time he was more thorough, he rechecked all his clothing, stripped the sheets from the bed and shook them out. He even shone a torch below the bed on the off chance that he'd kicked it underneath there at some point. After a second cycle of checking found nothing he sat down on the edge of the bed. He supposed he could have left it at the bar so he elected to phone them later and ask if it had been handed in. The hangover was still present enough to make worrying about the situation an unwelcome chore, the answer then being to not think about it at all right now.
Stiles mooched out into his living room, switched the TV on and flopped down on the couch. He flicked through the sports channels, eventually settling on a football game between two teams he didn't care about and let the action and commentary wash over him. He let his mind free-form as he replayed his memories of the previous night's encounter. Twenty minutes later a quiet beep brought him out of his reverie. Realising it was his text alert, he palmed his phone from his pocket and saw that, of all people, the text was from Scott.
Hey buddy what's shaking in the big city?
Stiles tried to form a succinct reply but failed…several times. He bounced the phone on his knee and then manipulated the touch screen until he had Scott's number in front of him. He hit send.
"Hey Dude!" Stiles greeted Scott, "How are you?"
"I'm fine, we're fine, Ali's got a piece in an exhibition next week so we're all excited for that."
At college Allison had majored in Arts and that had led to her finding a talent for sculpture. Her kind of work wasn't pretty-pretty pieces but large, often disconcerting but intricate creations using found objects and metals. The skills she learned in her work had the benefit of also being handy for her side-line of modifying and making some of the weapons that were used in her family's more unusual occupation. Scott, on the other hand, had taken Business Studies at Community College which he then used to help him get a small but moderately successful grounds maintenance business going. It was generally agreed that outside was a better place for him to be working rather than being cooped up in an inside environment with all the potential change triggers that that could offer.
"That's great, wish her luck from me." Stiles was genuinely pleased, he didn't understand Allison's art but he appreciated the work that went into it.
"So, how was the big date?" Scott asked, "Any news for us there?"
Stiles wished he'd never mentioned Lyla to his friend. Scott and Allison were still sappy beyond belief but he knew that deep down, all they wanted was for him to have the same happiness in his life that they shared.
"No, man, the usual story there..." Stiles didn't want Scott to pursue this line of conversation, it was just tiring going through it all again and again so he ploughed straight on into the subject that had been bugging his mind for the last hour or so. "Listen, I wanted to ask, has there been any, umm…odd activity back home?"
"What do you mean 'odd activity'? Jim, two doors down, bought a sports car last month; we all thought that was pretty odd." Typically Scott failed to read between the lines.
"No, I mean activity of a more nightly kind. Oh look, have you been wolfing out more, has anybody else been wolfing out or anything like that?" Stiles spat out his question in desperation for an answer.
"No, no, nothing like that at all. You know it's fairly quiet here now, I'd have told you if anything happened. Why you asking?" Scott was now definitely curious.
Stiles debated how much to tell him, he could be on the wrong track and he didn't need to set a false trail in Scott's mind, he knew Scott would worry and make something out of potentially nothing.
"Well…." Stiles drew out, still debating but eventually electing to go with honesty, "there was just this strange thing last night and the only thing I could put my finger on was that it gave me the same sense of risk and danger that I felt when, you know…" Stiles paused, still unwilling to put into words the unformed thoughts he'd been having "…the Alpha was around."
"What?" exclaimed Scott, "No, nothing like that, it's quiet here, you know it is. What the hell happened then?"
Stiles sighed and rubbed his free hand over his head. Telling Scott was just going to make something that was nothing, something and then he'd never hear the end of it from Scott, and God help him if he told Allison because then he'd have it coming at him from two directions.
"Look, I was a bit drunk, okay? It could easily be nothing at all."
"Yeah, but what was it, what happened?"
"So, I was in this alleyway near here and there was something else there with me and I don't think it was human but I didn't see anything really, I was drunk, it's just a feeling I got." The words just tumbled out of Stiles' mouth like an avalanche.
"What were you doing in an alleyway?" Scott, as usual, fastened on the wrong piece of information.
"I was throwing up, okay? It's not important why, just don't ask."
"That girl, huh?" Scott could be remarkably prescient at the worst moments.
"Yes….No…that's not the point, the point is I felt something, it touched me and even when I'm trashed I can tell the difference between a family pet and a ravenous, snarling beastie. The fucking thing knocked me over, it wasn't Snuggles out on a nightly walk!"
"Oh…wow!" Stiles appeared to have finally made Scott think. "I don't know, I mean you looked into this far more than I ever did but from everything I ever heard, wolves don't like cities."
"Yeah, that's what I thought", admitted Stiles. "You think there's maybe something else out there, something maybe we don't even know about?"
"Seriously, man, I don't know. Ten years ago, we'd have laughed if someone had tried to tell us that werewolves were real. There could be anything out there."
"Thanks bud, way to reassure the scared shitless city boy here."
"So, what are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing", stated Stiles firmly, "I'm not going to do anything, I'm certainly not going to go out looking for something that potentially has razor sharp teeth and claws and could rip me to shreds. I'm going to stick to beer in future and I'm gonna stop asking out unobtainable women."
"Okay but you gotta let me know if anything else happens. Promise?"
"Yeah, I promise. Hey, give my love to Allison will you?" Stiles succeeded in changing the subject back to the one he knew was Scott's favourite.
"I will", said Scott and Stiles could hear the smile in his voice as Scott thought about his girlfriend. "But you know she's going to ask when we'll be seeing you next."
"I dunno, Thanksgiving probably, I'll give it some thought, 'k?"
"Yeah, look, take it easy, don't go chasing after monsters. We're not there to back you up."
"Yeah, you too. Talk soon, bud." Stiles put his phone down and considered the conversation he'd just had. He shook his head, he'd got no real answers and sometimes it just wasn't worth overthinking things.
The game on TV was over now so Stiles mooched around his apartment doing weekend chores and trying to put all thoughts of mysterious encounters out of his mind. He'd had more than enough weirdness a decade ago and his move to the city had been, in part, to ensure he never had to deal with any of that again.
Later on that day he phoned the bar he'd visited the previous night but they hadn't had anything handed in so Stiles resigned himself to phoning his bank the next day to cancel all his credit cards. That was just going to be an almighty nuisance until the new ones came through.
There wasn't much else to do and he had no plans for the evening so, still tired from the excesses of his unplanned alcoholic bender, after some supper he went to bed early and fell into a dreamless sleep. His sleep was blissfully uninterrupted except that when he got up to answer a call of nature in the middle of night, while stumbling back to bed after, eyes closed and half asleep, he felt the hairs on the back of his head rise again as if in warning of some unseen threat. He fell back to bed confused and anxious. Who on earth could possibly be watching him at 2 o' clock in the morning?