Chapter Eight
It becomes obvious to Stiles that he isn't going to want to wait for wolfsbane seeds to grow into plants, not to mention that he has something of a black thumb. In ninth grade biology class, he had managed to kill pretty much every plant he tended, in a variety of means. So with that in mind, he calls almost every nursery in a hundred mile radius trying to find someone who has the actual plants. Nobody does. "It's highly toxic, you know," he's told, no fewer than six times.
His frustration must show, because after his 'run with Allison', which he has learned is code for 'let's go make out with Scott in the woods', something he is not particularly interested in doing, Gerard asks him about it. Chris is 'observing' their training session, which seems to be code for 'sit in the corner and menacingly clean his knives'. Stiles is learning that he does not like the euphemisms employed by the Argent family.
"Not trouble at school, is it?" Gerard asks.
"No, it's just," Stiles thinks about it and decides to tell the truth. What the hell. "I was calling around, hoping to find someone with some wolfsbane seedlings I could buy so I wouldn't have to wait for seeds to grow from scratch, but nobody around here carries it."
Gerard gives him a surprised look. "Oh, that's not a problem. Chris, we have some we could give to him, don't we?"
Chris looks up with a frown. "I'm not sure I'm comfortable with it. He's not a hunter yet."
"I just want some to plant by our front and back door," Stiles says. "I only need a few."
"Sure." Gerard gets up and leaves the room.
Chris glares at Stiles. "I don't know what game you're playing here, but – "
"But what?" Stiles meets his gaze. He is calm; he is in control. He will handle this shit. "You going to tell Gerard my best friend is a werewolf? Don't lie to me. I know you won't. He scares you, even if you won't admit it. He's not obeying the code; he's crossing lines you won't cross. So you're not going to say a word to him about me or about Scott."
Chris gives him a flat look and says nothing.
"As for the 'game' I'm playing," Stiles says, "it's called 'learn to protect myself', and I'm racking up quite a few points."
"That's not what concerns me," Chris says. "What concerns me is who you think you're protecting yourself from."
"Well," Stiles says, "that is the question, isn't it."
Gerard comes back in then, and Chris goes back to glaring. The older man is carrying a cardboard box with three wolfsbane plants in it, two of which are flowering. "Now be careful with this," Gerard says.
"Toxic to humans," Stiles says. "Got it."
He heads home a little early so he can make a stop to get bigger pots to plant them in; Gerard put them in Dixie cups and that obviously won't last. He reads up on what kind of soil and sunlight the plants like, then drives back to his house. He pots them in the garage, as far away from the house as he can get. Wolves seem to have trouble even with proximity, so they can't be anywhere near his room, but it's too cold to plant them outside.
The first he gets transplanted with no trouble, but by the time he's working on the second, his hands are starting to feel strange. His fingers and palms tingle and burn. The feeling has spread up his arms by the time he finishes with the second plant, and he says, "Fuck," as he recognizes the symptom from his reading. "Shit, they weren't kidding about this stuff."
He leaves the third plant in its cup and goes inside to thoroughly scrub his hands. The burning, pins and needles feeling persists for a few minutes, after which his hands go numb. He can barely handle his laptop enough to determine that he probably doesn't need to go to the emergency room since the feeling never went up past his elbows, and therefore his heart won't be affected. He takes his pulse and finds it normal, even and steady.
"Shit," he says again, and collapses on the sofa with a movie.
Within an hour, he can feel his hands again, although the sensation isn't exactly pleasant, and his pulse has remained stable throughout all of it. Still, knowing what he knows about wolves, he takes out his phone and sends out a text to all three members of his pack. 'Don't come over tonight. Repotting wolfsbane. Got it all over me. Probably not safe.'
It takes several minutes because he's a little fumble-fingered, but eventually he gets it sent out. Lydia just sends back a reply that says 'k'. Scott's is considerably longer and more creative; the gist of it is that he thinks Stiles is a fuckwit. Stiles can't help but agree, so he doesn't argue. Derek doesn't respond to the text at all.
So it's Stiles' second night on his own since Peter had abducted him, without even his father in the house, and he's not looking forward to it. He thinks about going to sleep at the hospital, in his dad's room, but he's pretty sure the nurses will throw him out. So he locks all the doors and windows, takes a shower, and decides to try to sleep. He leaves the light on and climbs into bed.
Half an hour later, he's still awake, and he nearly jumps out of his skin when someone knocks on his window. He's practically hyperventilating when he twitches the curtains aside to see Derek giving him a glare that's even more ferocious than usual. "Didn't you get my text?" Stiles asks, through the closed window.
Derek glowers. "What are you doing with wolfsbane?" he growls.
Stiles stares at him. Then, after a long pause, he says, "Good night, Derek," and draws the curtains closed.
He's pretty sure that Derek is going to spend all night sitting on his roof sulking, which amuses the hell out of him, so he goes back to bed and even manages to sleep for a few hours. Then it's off to the hospital, where his father has taken a turn for the worse again. He's awake, but confused, rambling incoherently and complaining of pain in his legs and feet. The doctor mentions getting an MRI of the spine, in case there's a nerve injury that was missed. Stiles sits with his dad and tells him about the book he's reading for English class. This calms him down somewhat, but then he starts insistently asking for Stiles' mother and getting upset when Stiles tries to remind him that she's been dead for years. Stiles finally gets him calmed down, but then has to lock himself in the bathroom for nearly half an hour so he can have his hysterics in private.
At school, he doesn't want to talk to anybody, and actually manages to get through the first half of the day without saying a word, which has to be some new kind of record. Scott catches up with him at lunch and thrusts a pair of gardening gloves at him.
"I can buy my own gloves, you know," Stiles says, giving him a look. "I just didn't realize I would need them."
Scott gives him a worried frown. "You were handling something like that without having gone on a full research binge about it?" he asks. Personally, he'd had no idea that wolfsbane was poisonous to humans, but he's definitely surprised that Stiles didn't know, particularly since he's growing it.
"No, I did know that, I just didn't know it could be absorbed through the skin like that," Stiles says. "I've kinda been doing a lot of research lately, okay? Not every single detail is going to sink all the way in."
Scott takes a deep breath and shoves the gloves into Stiles' bag. "The first thing you need to do is stop doing internet research about your dad."
"First you're telling me to research more. Now you're telling me I'm researching too much. Make up your freakin' mind, why don't you?"
"I'm telling you that some topics are off limits."
Stiles is clearly unimpressed. "Uh huh," he says, and starts to walk away.
Scott follows him, not about to be fobbed off. "You are, aren't you. You're still getting on the internet and scaring the shit out of yourself every time someone isn't watching you."
"Look," Stiles says, "if there was a way to research my dad's condition without scaring the shit out of myself, I would be all over it. But unfortunately, he has what's called a traumatic brain injury, and in case you can't tell by the words 'traumatic', 'brain', and 'injury', it's some pretty scary stuff."
Scott stands in front of him and grabs his friend by the shoulders. "Stiles, just . . . just stop for a while. Just a day or two. I mean, I know that research and learning is how you stay sane even on a good day, but give the doctors a chance. They haven't screwed up, have they?" he adds. It's a real question. If Stiles says they have, Scott will be on the phone to his mother within moments. "Just pick another topic. God knows we're in enough trouble in general that there should be plenty to choose from without you finding the worst version of everything that could happen to your father."
"No, the doctors haven't screwed up," Stiles says, "but at the same time he isn't exactly getting better, and I want to know why. And not just 'well, it happens' or 'recovery is a slow road' or 'you have to be patient'. I want to know why."
"Is he getting worse?" Scott asks, because he visits, of course he visits, but he doesn't know Sheriff Stilinski as well as Stiles does. He lets go of Stiles' shoulders, but stays close. "Do the doctors have any idea why he isn't getting better?"
"He . . . he has good days and bad days," Stiles says. "Some days he looks great and the doctors are like this is good, we've turned a corner, it's all uphill from here. But then he just . . . crashes. And nobody really knows why it's happening." Stiles feels the frustration building up, a lump in his throat that's difficult to swallow or speak around. He's not even aware of the fact that he's clenching his fists so hard that his fingernails are leaving marks in the skin of his palms.
Scott can actually smell Stiles' impending panic. He reaches out and wraps a hand around Stiles' arm. Comfort by touch has become habit of late, but he tries to keep it small while at school. Then Scott does what he usually does when he wasn't sure what to do. He flails at the situation, grasping at straws. "Uh . . . are they sure it's something wrong with his brain? I mean, can't other things mess that up?"
"Yeah, they uh . . ." Stiles wipes his eyes with the corner of his sleeve. "They think it might be his spine, something they didn't notice at first. They're doing an MRI today. But that's kind of my fucking point, Scott. I mean, why the hell do you think I'm researching? To try to figure out what's going on."
Scott moves closer to Stiles as he senses the meltdown that's been hovering around Stiles for days getting closer to the surface. He personally thinks that Stiles might feel better after having a meltdown, if he and whoever witnessed it didn't die of embarrassment first. For now, he just moves closer, to block other people's view. He opens his mouth to say that Stiles didn't have to do the research because the doctors have done it, but then closes it. What is he supposed to do, tell Stiles to sit around helpless? He heaves a sigh, more of an annoyed growl. "Fine. But no more in the middle of the night because everyone gets irrational then. And you need to eat more, and . . ." He trails off, not knowing what to say. He's just worried. Stiles looks like he's ready to fly apart at the seams. And it isn't a fragile look, exactly. He might have hysterics in a corner, but then again he also might take out some of the lacrosse team if they said the wrong thing.
Stiles, seeing the frustrated concern on his friend's face, forces a smile. "Okey dokey. No more research in the middle of the night. Check."
Scott rolls his eyes, amused despite himself. "Dude, I can so tell when you're lying. And it has nothing to do with hearing your heartbeat or anything weird. It's because I've known you my whole life."
Stiles holds up his right hand and says, "May God strike me down and take my wi-fi. Anyway, it's not like Derek doesn't wake up every time I get up anyway. Man, he gets growly when he's woken up. Needs his wolf-naps."
"Don't invite trouble!" Scott protests. "We've had shit luck lately. And Derek needs more than wolf-naps to make him anything besides growly." He gives an exaggerated shudder, even though he and Derek have been arguing less now that they had something to draw them together.
"Yeah, but there's like a baseline level of growliness that makes him, well, Derek," Stiles says. "No amount of wolf-naps in the universe will cure that."
"So true. If we ever saw him laugh, we'd have to ask who drugged him," Scott says. He starts walking again, moving towards the cafeteria.
"And what with, and where we can get some," Stiles agrees.
"So we can slip some to Harris," Scott says, but mostly underneath his breath. They don't need anyone hearing a comment about drugging a teacher, even a joking one.
"Yyyeeeeah," Stiles says, tucking his hands behind his head. "I don't know if we'll need to worry about him much longer. Gerard Argent said he would, uh, make sure his unprofessional behavior doesn't continue. And knowing what I do of Gerard, that may include tweezers and Tabasco sauce. Which, as much as Gerard scares the shit out of me, I would find deeply satisfying."
Scott's eyebrows went up. "I don't even know what to say to that. So many conflicting emotions."
Stiles gives a little shrug. "I'm learning a lot from him. I just have to be careful."
"And I'm glad," Scott says. "I feel better knowing you'll have a fighting chance against someone like me." He wasn't about to say 'werewolf' in the cafeteria. "But Allison's family is screwy. Even she thinks so. And he scares her. Not that she's said anything. But he does."
"No shit, Sherlock," Stiles says. "Guy's got issues. See above: I have to be careful. I'm pretty sure that if he knew I hung out with a werewolf, he'd chop me in half."
At that, a muted growl escapes Scott's throat, which conveys his opinion fairly clearly.
Stiles arches his eyebrow, then reaches out and snags Scott's pudding cup. "Keep it down there, Fido," he says, "before somebody notices."
Scott takes a deep breath and does his best to rein in the non-human and therefore not-safe-for-school instincts. He lets Stiles have the pudding cup uncontested; at least it's voluntary calorie intake. "Is he teaching you things that would be useful for the rest of us?"
"Sure," Stiles says. "I'm learning all about the different ways to kill werewolves. Of course, that's not so useful in the long-run because, you know, they're not teaching me about how to not kill werewolves. But hey. I'll be prepared if I happen to run across Peter Hale. Which is all I really care about."
"I say we just nuke him." Scott surveys the rest of his lunch, then nudges the bag of crackers and the apple into the space between himself and Stiles, hoping that his friend's restless hands will just steal one or the other before he can think about it. Stiles has so far made no move to take out his own lunch, and Melissa has been giving him twice as much food because she knows that Scott will try to give half of it to Stiles. "Anyway," he continues, assaulting his sandwich, "it tells us what sort of things hunters will be trying to do, which is useful, right?"
"Yeah," Stiles says. "I've gotten some pictures of the traps they use. If we can make some mock-ups, we can figure out the fastest way to escape from them, in case you get caught." He twitches, then reaches out and grabs the apple, sinking his teeth into it in a very wolf-like fashion.
Scott does a mental cheer at Stiles' food 'theft', and doesn't really notice the way he and the other wolves are rubbing off on Stiles. Predatory movement towards food is just a norm now. "Awesome."
"We can experiment on Derek. You know that dick actually still showed up last night even after I texted you guys saying not to come?"
"To do what, get poisoned?" Scott asks. He's wearing his confused face. It's an expression that gets a lot of mileage when Derek Hale is involved.
"To yell at me and demand to know why I had wolfsbane in the first place," Stiles says, gnawing another chunk of apple. "Duh."
"To . . . poison werewolves?" Scott asks, just to be sure that he's on the right page here.
"Yeah, if they try to get fresh with me," Stiles says.
Scott just snorts at that.
"Anyway, I shut the curtains in his face," Stiles says, "so be prepared to listen to him whining about my lack of respect for him for the next month."
That makes Scott grin. "I wish there had been a way to get his expression on film."
"Yeah, maybe for once he had an expression," Stiles says. He lets out a little sigh. The apple and the pudding have settled somewhat uneasily in his stomach, and he keeps thinking back to his father that morning, so confused and upset. His father has always been the rock that Stiles has leaned his back against; he feels unsteady, unanchored, with him gone. He reminds himself that he is tough, he is capable, he is handling this shit. "I've gotta go. I want to talk to Danny about trying to hack into my dad's cell phone account since I can't manage to guess his password. Later?"
"Yeah," Scott says. "If we both survive the day, I'll go with you to see your dad after school."
The Argent house, Stiles is slowly learning, is more like a fortress. There are really only a few parts of it that are anything like a normal house: the kitchen and dining room, a couple bedrooms upstairs. The garage is, as Scott had famously described it, the Wal-Mart of guns. But it's more than that. It's corridors that end in doors that are locked and alarmed. It's pictures that hide wall safes. It's the tabletop that flips up to reveal a rack of guns underneath.
All of these are things that Stiles casually discovers while he's wandering around the house unobserved. Training with Gerard usually takes place in the rec room, which is a large, open space, and sometimes outside. There are plenty of times when Gerard will be showing Allison how to do something and Stiles will excuse himself to use the bathroom, or volunteer to go get some ice when one of them gets bruised, or run outside to check the weather. During these brief trips, he pokes, he prods, he explores. Chris is never home, off doing business, and Victoria is often out as well.
He's not sure how knowing any of this will help later, but gathering information is something he does, just to occupy himself. Where he wants to go is the basement. He saw Gerard punch in the code once and jog down the stairs, before coming up with a special trap to show them. That's where he went to get Stiles the wolfsbane, as well. Stiles is sure that all the real equipment, all the important secrets, will be behind that door and down those stairs.
Three weeks have passed since Peter abducted him; two weeks since his father was injured. He's still twitchy and avoids crowds whenever possible, but his resolve is made of steel. He is going to take care of himself. He can handle this. So he ignores Scott's worried looks and the way Derek scowls at him. Although to be fair, Derek has been scowling less lately. Not so much that anyone who didn't know him would notice, but Stiles notices.
It had occurred to him after the night they spent in the hospital that if Derek really was so touch-oriented, he had to be starved for contact by now. When he and Scott had found out that the murdered girl in the woods was Laura Hale, they had jumped straight to 'how awful, Derek killed his sister'. Later they had found out that wasn't true, but somehow had never jumped back to 'how awful, Derek lost his sister'. It explains a lot about his behavior, now that Stiles is thinking about it.
So the next time he sees Derek after the wolfsbane incident, he goes right up to him and gives him a hug. "What the hell are you doing?" Derek asks, his tone annoyed but his arms already sneaking around to circle Stiles' waist.
"Hugging you," Stiles says.
"Cut it out," Derek replies, one hand knotting in the back of Stiles' shirt, practically squashing Stiles' face into his chest.
"'Kay," Stiles says, and lets Derek hold onto him for another moment before letting go. From then on it's anything goes as far as he's concerned. He flops in Derek's lap when they're watching movies; he curls up right next to him when they're sleeping in the puppy pile. It's all done in the name of 'annoying Derek', and if one or both of them gets comfort from it, well, that's nobody else's business. They never have to tell.
Life is looking up in other areas, too. Three days after the Argent family dinner from hell, Mr. Harris stands up in front of the entire chemistry class and apologizes to Stiles for his behavior. He looks deeply angry to have to do so, particularly the part where he says, "I should be grateful to your father for his leniency, rather than punishing you for the fact that he was doing his job." Stiles grins throughout this entire speech, a shit-eating grin that Harris obviously wants to slap off of his face. He can't help but wonder exactly what Gerard threatened him with. He probably does not want to know.
If only his father's condition would improve, he might feel like he was actually getting his life back together. But every time it looks like they might be able to discharge him from the hospital and into rehab, he takes another turn for the worse. He also can't remember anything that happened before the 'accident', and Stiles still can't find his phone. Derek has found no sign of Peter, and Stiles is ready to tear out what little hair he has in frustration.
With nothing else to do, he focuses on getting into the Argents' basement. He takes a picture of the alarm on the door, both the front and the bottom, where the serial number is displayed. Then he goes home and employs some Google fu to get the name and phone number of the company. He browses their website until he finds the correct model. A quick search through his father's files – he's always known where the backup key to the file cabinet is – and he has the information about Chris Argent that he needs. He gave a statement after Kate's body was found, and all his information is in there: address, driver's license number, social security number.
Ninety-five percent of hacking, Danny told him once, is really more like phishing. Guessing passwords, or in this case, getting them reset.
"Maximum Security alarms, this is Nicole, how can I help you?"
"Hello, Nicole," Stiles says, dropping his voice to a lower pitch as much as he can without squeaking. "My name is Chris Argent, and well, this is embarrassing, but I seem to have forgotten the code to my alarm system."
"No problem, sir," Nicole says. "I can show you how to set it back to the factory default. Let me just get some basic information . . ."
Stiles has everything she asks for. Five minutes later, he has instructions on how to reset the alarm system so it will take six zeroes as a valid password. "Then you can set it to whatever you like," she tells him. He thanks her and hangs up.
Getting into the house when nobody is there is going to be a little trickier, but it's actually easier than he would have expected due to how big and convoluted the house is. He just waits for a night that he knows the family has plans – thank God for lacrosse, thank God for Chris Argent's inability to let his daughter go to a lacrosse game without him lest she start mooning over Scott again – and then excuses himself a little early from training. "There's a neurologist coming to see my dad again," he says. Then he jogs over to the front door. Opens it, waits a beat, lets it fall shut. Darts back into the house and hides in a convenient closet. Nobody has any idea that he hasn't left the house.
Of course, what he doesn't count on is the fact that hiding in the closet is terrifying. It's dark and quiet and altogether too much like being in the trunk of Peter's car. He stares at his watch as the seconds tick by, uses it to control his breathing and try to keep his heart rate even. He reminds himself over and over again that he is in control; he can leave the closet whenever he likes.
Even so, by the time he hears the Argent family leave and exits the closet, he's shaking like a leaf and his body is soaked with sweat. He has to sit in the kitchen for several long minutes, trying to calm himself down. Finally, inch by inch, breath by breath, he recovers. Then he walks over to the door to the basement and follows the steps that Nicole at the alarm company had given him. It works like a charm. He punches in six zeroes. It tells him to set a new code. He punches in six zeroes again. That way, when Chris discovers his code doesn't work anymore, he'll think an electrical glitch reset it to factory default. He might have his suspicions otherwise, but he won't be able to prove anything. It's not a perfect crime, but it's the best idea that Stiles has.
The basement is exactly as Stiles would have imagined it. Racks of weaponry, rows of traps. A lightbox with some plants, including the familiar blue-purple of wolfsbane. Outdoor gear like climbing equipment, protective vests, boots and gloves. More chilling equipment, like duct tape, fishing line, car batteries and clamps, pliers. There are locked cabinets and drawers along one wall; he doesn't see a key anywhere and presumes that Chris keeps it on his person.
It's interesting, truly, and he takes pictures of almost every square inch, but somehow he's disappointed to have found exactly what he expected to find. He takes a case of wolfsbane bullets and the proper gun to match them, and slides them into the bag he's carrying. They'll never notice one missing gun amongst all these, and Stiles is still annoyed that Chris refused to sell him one.
He's about to leave when he realizes he hasn't quite seen everything. There's another door on the far side of the room. It's not alarmed, and although the door has a lock, it isn't locked. So Stiles opens it and looks inside.
He stops in the doorway.
It's a small room, barely five feet square, and quite bare, without even a single cabinet. There's a man suspended by chains, his feet only barely brushing the floor. He's bare-chested, wearing only a pair of black pants that are long past their prime. Blood has dried and crusted on his chest and abdomen. The cuffs around his wrist glint in the harsh, fluorescent light. They're silver, or steel coated with silver. Stiles knows that because he can see the way the skin has blistered and burned where the cuffs touch it. In some places it looks almost like it's rotting away. He can see the man's veins, the telltale dark blue of wolfsbane poisoning. A piece of duct tape is fixed over his mouth, going all the way around his head, over his dark hair. His head is hanging down at first, but when Stiles enters he looks up, slowly. His eyes are glassy with confusion, exhaustion, and pain.
Stiles freezes in place. He forgets to move, forgets to breathe. The world stops. Everything stops.
The man in chains is Peter Hale.
