Sorry about the wait, I got distracted writing 13000 words of fluff. (If you'd like a break from all of this angst, I suggest you check out my profile for "A Simple Life.")

XXXXX

It's a quiet ride as they make it down the last stretches of highway to the hotel. Boyd and Erica are asleep in the back, and Lydia's driving, breaking the speed limit by a healthy 20mph to meet her original time goal. Jackson is zoning out to his ipod, and Scott is texting Isaac, who's in Derek's car. He keeps sending Stiles concerned looks over his phone, so Stiles rests his face against the cool glass of the window and pretends to sleep, even though Scott can tell by his heartbeat that he's awake.

Stiles just knows that they're all brimming with questions, but they're just going to have to wait. Or maybe just never get their questions answered, because quite frankly, Stiles is fed up with all of them and their matchmaking attempts. He isn't an Austonian heroine, he doesn't desperately need a man.

They finally reach the hotel, and Lydia gets them checked in in record time with a few well-placed simpers, (then, when the clerk turns out to be gay, a few well-placed glares.) Derek's car arrives just when Stiles is distributing the stack of key cards, and Stiles tosses Derek's key card at his head. It just sort of... happens, and Stiles can't bring himself to feel bad about it. Derek catches it, of course, giving Stiles a look before following the signs towards the "200-260" hallway.

If Stiles didn't know it before, he knows it now: this is going to be a long road trip.

XXXXX

They wolf down their breakfasts at the hotel.

Stiles doesn't care what anybody else says, he loves continental breakfasts. Something about the waffle station with the little waffle iron that hisses just so when you bring the lid down. That, and unlimited breakfast pastries. Definitely yes to unlimited breakfast pastries.

Nobody else seems to share his opinion. The rest of the pack grimaces and works their way through enough coffee to energize a small island nation, trying to get through their meal as quickly as possible.

"I don't care what any of you say, I like continental breakfasts," Stiles announces. They need some conversation at this breakfast table. "Just look at the cheerful shine of the jam packets."

At the other end of the table, Derek snorts. "Our little connoisseur."

"Says the guy who is eating literally nothing other than bacon and sausage," Stiles shoots back.

"It's protein, for god's sake, we've talked about this-"

"Shut uuupppp," Erica growls. "It is too early in the morning for this."

XXXXX

Lunch takes place on a picnic table at a park near the grocery store where they picked up their sandwiches.

Stiles doesn't care what anybody else says, he hates grocery store sandwiches. The way they come all pre-wrapped, like they've been cryogenically frozen for who knows how long, and the way he has no control whatsoever about how much condiment gets on his bread. It's gross, and he doesn't care how inefficient it is, he would have much preferred that they bought all the raw sandwich materials at the grocery store, then put them together on their own.

Nobody else seems to share his opinion. Probably something to do with whatever addictive chemicals the grocery store puts in their lunch meats.

Derek saunters in halfway through the meal, jamba juice in hand.

"Well look who deigned to join us," Stiles drawls.

Snorting in exasperation, Derek points out, "you hate those grocery store sandwiches as much as I do. I just decided to do something about it."

"I thought that I would be a team player and eat the same thing as everybody else," Stiles snaps. "I'm being cooperative!" he almost shouts in annoyance.

"Not at the table, please," Isaac says, sugar-sweet.

XXXXX

Dinner is some mexican restaurant in San Diego's Oldtown, and Stiles doesn't understand why they couldn't get their mexican food in Mexico, where they'll be in an hour, but apparently his retinue of werewolves wants their food, and they want it now.

Stiles doesn't care what anybody else says, it's not time for dinner.

To his irritation, Derek agrees with him, and they both only order a drink.

"I hate your face," Stiles informs him.

"Your voice is annoying," Derek retorts.

"Gentlemen," the waitress sighs, "we're going to have to kick you out if you keep saying these things next to all those kids at the next table over."

Okay, so maybe they're being a little passive-aggressive. Whatever.

XXXXX

When they drive into Tijuana, it's not like it's immediately obvious that something supernatural is afoot. There aren't riots in the streets, or fairy dust dripping from telephone poles. Stiles sees a few people that look disoriented and shell-shocked, but that could really be because of anything.

"Fen better not have been leading us on about Tijuana," Jackson grumbles, looking at the window like he'll see the fairy queen gallivanting down the street any second.

"What we need to be looking for are fairy circles," Lydia points out as they drive through the intersection, "if we're lucky, they'll be made of mushrooms, which will be easy to spot in the city. If we aren't lucky, what I've been reading about fairy circles being able to camouflage themselves into their environment is true, and we'll need to look around a lot more carefully."

Groaning, Stiles thuds his head against the headrest. He's going to be trapped in Mexico with Derek and the Pack of Concerned Friends forever isn't he?

There's another hotel, another keycard, another shared room with Scott and his long phone calls with Allison, and another breakfast with Derek and the pack the next morning.

Every time Stiles sees Derek now, it's like there's this person jumping around in the back of his head, hollering "poke the dragon! Poke him!" And Stiles knows that it's stupid and immature to poke the dragon, but then there the dragon is with his stupid face, poking back, and Stiles can't resist.

Plus, it's easier to be mad at Derek than keep feeling guilty.

During breakfast, Derek attacks Stiles' food with the salt shaker, and the person jumping around in the back of his head hisses euphorically, "yesss, welcome to my level. It's fun down here, isn't it?"

Once they're finished eating, they head to the part of town where most of the reports of erratic behavior have been coming from, then stand on a sidewalk and scratch their heads.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Jackson asks, like it's a personal insult that they aren't prepared with a roster of fairy court locations and anti-fairy spray.

So they wander around the neighborhood for a week, looking for fairy rings.

Stiles finds a shop that sells wicker bracelets exclusively, a group of UCSD students trying to find the meaning of life by begging on street corners -"like Japanese monks, you know dude?"- and some very interesting graffiti, but no fairy rings. Everybody else has similar results, which is to say, none.

He wishes he took Spanish, not French, in high school. He's pretty sure the shopkeepers are laughing at him whenever he buys something, and not the fun kind of laughing.

"We need a better plan," Derek states matter-of-factly when they all meet back up on a square of old, cracked brick. "We're getting nowhere fast."

Lydia throws up her hands. "We're going in a grid pattern, investigating anything circular that could be a fairy ring, hanging around places where other people have displayed enchanted behavior, what more are we supposed to be doing?"

"Something... else," Derek grunts out, running a hand through his hair. "These fairies need to be dealt with." He grumbles under his breath, "as violently as possible," and Stiles has to suppress a smirk. Looks like Derek resents them a bit as well, would you look at that.

"If I may," Stiles starts.

"Shut up."

"Hey now!" Stiles protests.

"I don't need any more of your unending sass, we're trying to problem solve."

Of course Derek has to over enunciate "problem solve" like Stiles doesn't know what the word means. It's hilarious, real sense of humor that guy has.

But then Stiles spots something, and what do you know, the universe has decided to take pity on Stiles at that moment and grace him with the best timing for a comeback ever.

"I suggest," Stiles says with equal exaggerated pronunciation, "that we see what's going on with those guys."

He points over Derek's head at a rooftop, where a guy -Stiles realizes it's one of the UCSD guys- is standing at the edge, arms pinwheeling, his whole body faintly glowing turquoise.

"Dude, I can fly!" Rooftop Guy hollers to his friends below.

"Marcus, chill out!" his buddy with long hair hollers back up, "we're all just tripping balls! I'm, like, seeing colors, that, like, shouldn't be there. Don't jump, man!"

Rooftop Guy dangles one of his feet over the edge. "No, I totally can, I can, like, feel it! My bones are totally levitating, dudes!"

With an awkward hop and a flail of his arms, Rooftop Guy removes his second foot from the roof and plummets downwards. For a split second, Stiles is terrified that he was just imagining the guy's turquoise glow, and Rooftop Guy really is just out of his mind, but then Rooftop Guy lurches upwards.

It kind of looks like swimming, but if the swimmer were drunk, and dealing with air instead of water. Rooftop Guy's trajectory follows a crooked parabola as he flops his way over the bricks of the square, hanging onto flight by the skin of his teeth. Eventually he sort of approaches the ground, and gets a little closer, then a little closer, until he's sitting on his ass on the bricks, looking understandably dazed and confused.

"Well that was anticlimactic," Boyd notes.

Rooftop Guy's friends rush over to him, and the pack rushes further into the square, looking for the source of the magic.

Stiles sees a tall man with a neck that looks almost a foot long silhouetted in the alleyway and yelps, "over there!"

Derek is the closest to him, and the first into the alleyway after the fairy. The rest of them quickly follow, hands twitching towards the pieces of iron they all have secreted on their persons.

The fairy's neck is not the only long and skinny thing about him. The entirety of his figure looks like it was made out of silly putty, then stretched lengthwise by some enterprising kid. Even his hair sticks up in skinny spikes.

Spreading his hands out generously, the fairy drawls enticingly, "anybody up for a dance? Feel like flying? Come on kidsss, you think this town is crazy? I can show you things that are... out of this world."

Pausing for a second, the pack glances at each other.

Stiles mutters, "always with the puns, these villains."

At that, Derek gives out a huff of a laugh under his breath, and saunters forwards with a confidence that is either impressive or stupid, considering how much taller than him the fairy is.

Derek grabs the front of the fairy's elaborately tie-dyed shirt and yanks it forward. Stiles rolls his eyes. This is going to end badly, it always does when Derek gets to posturing.

"I'll tell you what we're up for," Derek hisses into the fairy's face, "we're up for slamming your whole court of fairies with so much iron they won't be able to breath without inhaling rust."

Impressive wordsmithing, Stiles will admit. The fairy seems to agree, since he yanks himself out of Derek's grasp, losing a bit of shirt as he goes, and skips backwards a few steps until he disappears.

Stepping forward, Isaac looks at the ground. "Ohhh... it's a circle of spray paint."

Lydia smacks Jackson on the back of the head.

"What was that for?" Jackson protests.

"I needed to smack somebody," Lydia growls. "Why have we been ignoring those? They're all over the place!"

Boyd shrugs. "We assumed it was a gang sign."

"What gang would that be," Derek grumbles, "'The Circles?'"

"Intimidating," Stiles adds.

There's a popping noise behind them, and Stiles turns to see the fairy return, as well as a few of his friends. And by "a few," Stiles means "a metric ton of fairies armed to the teeth." He isn't even sure what half of the weapons do, he just knows that he wants nothing to do with them, and they're pointy.

"Go, just go," Derek barks.

They go. There's putting up a fight, and then there's being idiots martyring themselves when there's a way out. Sometimes turning tail is just the best idea. The air outside of the alley feels much fresher when they reach it, and Stiles breathes it in happily as he and everyone else sprint as far away as they can. He's so glad that they know a strategic retreat when they see one, now. Back in the day, it was "kill the monster immediately or die." Now it's more of a "meet the monster a few times, gather knowledge, then kill the monster later in a more practical way." Way more effective. They even know how to run away: in pairs, so if one of them gets cornered, they have a buddy, but the whole pack isn't in danger of dismemberment, or kidnapping via fairies, or spells being cast on them. So Isaac is running west with Scott, Erica and Boyd are going east, Lydia and Jackson are going south, and-

Wait.

Stiles turns a 180 and sprints back towards the alley. Sure enough, there's Derek, half wolfed out, backed up against a wall, fighting off five fairies at once while the rest wait to take their turn if Derek manages to down one of them.

Right now, it's looking like Derek won't manage to down one of them.

Scrambling to unzip one of the pockets in his cargo pants -silly looking, but practical- Stiles grasps a miniature aerosol bottle in one hand, and a short iron rod in his other. He works his way through the crowd of fairies sloppily, just going for the eyes with the spray -lemonwort tincture- and for the crotch with the iron. He's lucky: the fairies are more concerned with the angry Alpha werewolf than the scrawny human, and from where he's standing, it's only a few fairies deep to Derek.

Reaching between two fairies with one hand, and clubbing them across the head with the iron in his other hand, Stiles gets ahold of Derek's belt loop and tugs.

Derek makes a questioning growl, pausing mid claw swipe to look at Stiles pulling on him. It's ridiculous, Derek gets into anything resembling a challenging fight and it's like he can't smell anything outside of it.

"Fucking- Derek, come on," Stiles groans, pulling harder, "there is literally no reason for you to be here. Move that ass. Come on, we aren't killing a whole fairy court today."

After a few more pulls, he and Derek are running down the alley, a few of the fairies chasing after them, but most content to filter back to the court. They're a block or two away when the fairy brigade is almost entirely gone.

"Looks like they were on the defensive, not offensive," Stiles wheezes. "But still! You!" He rounds on Derek, whipping his hand away from where it had automatically come to rest on Derek's weak spot, "just. Ugh, of course you would."

"Would what?" Derek snaps.

"Stay behind to fight them off like you're some sort of action hero, instead of some idiot who's going to get himself killed!"

Derek smacks his hand against the closest vertical surface, which happens to be the wall of a taqueria. "I was going to be fine. I just needed to distract them while the rest of you escaped. Why did you even turn back, anyway?"

"Because," Stiles sighs in irritation, "I know you like the back of my inexplicably untanned hand, and you always do this shit, with the putting other people before your own safety, even when it is literally the stupidest thing you could do."

Looking at Stiles oddly, Derek says slowly, "you knew I'd stay behind."

"Yes! I mean, I know you, don't I?" Stiles grumbles.

"Nobody else turned around."

"Yeah, well, they were busy running for their lives," Stiles says distractedly as he checks his phone. "Okay, so we're going to meet back at the hotel, and everybody has sent their 'I'm alive' text, so we're good. Come on, let's go find a stupid bus or something. I'm telling you Derek, if you had just brought the car with you-"

"I'm not parking the camaro on these streets-"

"See now, that's profiling. You just assume that all of the creepy dudes hanging out on street corners are going to steal your car, when the only proof you have are the crowbars they're always carrying around."

XXXXX

Their hotel is not fantastic, but it's functional, which is more than Stiles can say for some of the wrecks they passed on their way into town. When it comes right down to it, all he cares about is if there's a softish bed, and there is one, so he's mostly cool with it.

He collapses into bed exhausted, with his limbs sore, and the smell of industrial strength detergent in his nose.

He wakes up still exhausted, his limbs protesting at being hoisted out of bed, with the smell of cold dirt in his nose.

Then he's whacked over the head with something heavy, and he goes back to sleep.