Chapter Eleven
It's not difficult for Stiles to find his pack. He doesn't need mystical senses or GPS. He knows exactly where they're going to be. Every step he takes in the direction of the Hale house only has him more pissed off. He reminds himself several times that the others will be okay, that Derek may not be comfortable waiting in the burned out remains of his family home, but it won't actually hurt him.
He's made a number of preparations. His Jeep is filled with all the different things he's going to need. He parks it in the drive to the Hale house and hops out. Kali is waiting for him on the front porch, a smirk on her face. Stiles walks over until he's about ten feet away. "My pack's inside?" he says, more to confirm than anything else. She just shrugs at him, so he raises his voice. "You guys okay in there?"
"We're fine," several voices call out.
"Okay." Stiles looks at Kali and says, "Give me a minute."
"Take your time," she responds, clearly amused. Stiles walks over to the Jeep and busies himself with what he brought. He's had stupider ideas, he's sure, but he's also pretty sure that this one is going to get him yelled at by everyone he knows. Possibly everyone he's ever met. But he's been thinking about it for a while now, and this is the best idea he has.
When he's ready, he turns around and walks towards Kali. As he goes, he strips off his leather jacket. Then he takes off his shoulder holster, carefully setting his gun down next to the jacket. She can see the chain mail this time, because he wore it over his T-shirt, but then he takes that off as well and tosses it aside. He even peels off his T-shirt until he's standing there wearing nothing more than jeans and sneakers.
"What are you doing?" Kali asks, her eyes narrowed.
"I don't need all that stuff to beat you," Stiles says.
Kali laughs at him. "Well, it sure as hell won't help you. You're not wrong there."
Stiles picks up his baseball bat, then takes Laura's journal out of his back pocket. "This is all I need to beat you."
Kali's eyes gleam red. "You – "
Stiles flips it open. He doesn't need to; he's read it so many times at this point that he's pretty sure he has it memorized. But it helps the effect. "Kali, I know you're reading this," he says.
Kali snarls at him. "Cut it out."
"I know you were here last night and that you went through my stuff. I know what you said to Derek."
"Shut the fuck up!" Kali shouts.
"Did you think I wouldn't be able to tell?" Stiles asks. "Did you think I wouldn't smell you?"
Kali screams and lunges at him, but Stiles is ready for her. The time he spent training with Gerard wasn't for nothing, and even now, they're all kept in shape. Allison teaches them what she learns from her father, and Derek drills all of them on physical combat, Stiles included. Nobody wants him to get hurt because he's not a wolf. And Kali is so furious that her move is easy to see coming. Stiles just bounces to one side, and she misses him entirely. He tosses the journal aside and continues to recite from memory. "We are done," he says. "I'll never forgive you for the way you frightened Derek and tried to take away the only stability he has."
He has to stay on his toes while speaking, jumping backwards twice to avoid her blows. She's shifted now, into her partially human form, and completely mad with rage. Stiles only barely ducks another blow and continues. "Our family was murdered, you selfish cunt."
"Shut up!" Kali screams. "Just shut the fuck up!"
"But it's not me!" Stiles retorts. "It's Laura. No matter how much you don't want to admit it, she's the one who wrote those things. No matter how much you try to convince yourself that you were the starring role in a tragic love story, that's not what it was. Laura never loved you."
"You don't know! You don't know anything!"
"Yes, I do," Stiles says. He scrambles back behind the Jeep for cover as Kali charges forward. "Because Laura told me. It's all there in her words. Did you read her older journals when you were there? There's some great stuff in there about how you drove her fucking crazy for three years."
Stiles can feel his heart beating faster now, a little erratically, and that's a bad sign. He needs to get this over with quickly, so as he ducks back around the car towards the house, he swings the bat. Kali ducks underneath it and aims another slashing blow at Stiles' torso. He dodges backwards, but not fast enough. Three of her claws catch him right across the abdomen. The force of it knocks him down, but he rolls and bounces back to his feet.
Kali laughs at him. The scent of blood has calmed her down a little. She delicately licks off each of her fingers. "By the end of this, you're going to be begging me to kill you, little boy."
Stiles presses one hand against the wounds. They're shallow. They'll bleed a lot, and probably scar, but they won't keep him from fighting. "Yeah?" he says. "Did you tell Trevor the same thing?"
Kali goes still for a moment. "What?"
"You know," Stiles says. "Before you stole his medication and set him up to get shot by the hunters."
From inside the house, he hears a snarl. It sounds like Justin, although he can't be sure.
"You son of a bitch, how dare you – " Kali stops abruptly. A strange look crosses her face, more confusion than anything else. She wavers a little. "What . . ."
"That would be the wolfsbane you're feeling," Stiles says helpfully.
Kali snarls. "You haven't laid one hit on me."
"No, but you laid one on me," Stiles says, and holds up his hand, his palm and fingers coated crimson with blood. He's feeling a little light-headed now. He's not sure if that's from the blood loss or from the aconite. "You just had to do the stock villain 'if you're crazy and you know it lick your enemy's blood off your fingers' thing too, which helped."
Now Kali just looks stunned. "You . . . took wolfsbane?"
"Hey, I'm not a wolf, remember?" Stiles says. "Okay, yeah, it's still toxic, but it hurts you a hell of a lot more than it hurts me."
With that, he goes on the attack. Kali is so shocked that she just stands there as he walks up to her, not even running, but just walks over and then presses his palm against her face, smearing her cheek with his blood. She lets out a little cry, almost a wolf whine, as the wolfsbane saturating his blood burns into her skin. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" she screams.
"Oh, well," Stiles says, "I have ADD. I'm not very good at lacrosse. My ability to pick up girls is really embarrassing. I spent two days in the trunk of a car last winter. In short: a lot. But I also make a mean gingersnap cookie and there's nothing I won't do when my pack is at stake."
He reels a little as the world abruptly gets a little fuzzy around the edges, his vision swimming out of focus for a minute. He knows all the symptoms of aconite poisoning. He was careful with his dosing, very careful, but even if the dose he took won't be fatal (probably) it was big enough to do one hell of a number on his nervous system. His heartbeat is jumping around, too. The physical exertion is speeding up the work of the poison. He needs to end this.
Kali sees his moment of difficulty and lunges forward. Her own balance has been affected too, and the two of them go down in a heap. Stiles grapples with her, and her claws dig into the flesh of his forearms. Then she pulls away, howling. He can see the blisters and burns on the skin of her hands.
"You can't touch me, bitch," he pants, getting to his feet. "There ain't shit you can do to me now. I'm Kryptonite to you."
"You – you can't – " Kali protests, but actually cringes when Stiles starts toward her, and that's when Stiles knows he's won. Kali hasn't figured it out yet, and she'll continue to fight, and he's won this battle. He swings the bat straight at her face, swings it hard. She ducks backwards, then backs away a few steps. "You crazy son of a bitch!" she screams.
"Glass houses, sweet pea," Stiles says, and swings again. She stumbles backwards and falls, landing on her back, and he's on her in a heartbeat. She snarls at him, but then shrieks when a few drops of blood splash onto the skin of her chest, where her tank top leaves it bared. Stiles straddles her and presses the baseball bat against her throat. The barbs of the wire cut into her skin, bits of silver flaking off. The scream she lets out at this is a breathless howl.
"I tried to be your friend, Kali," Stiles says, his own breath coming harsh and rapid, "but you're poison. I can't have you in my life."
"Let me go!" Kali wails, but her struggles aren't enough to free her. Stiles has the leverage, gravity is on his side. The wolfsbane she ingested has weakened her, and the silver entering her bloodstream is making things worse.
"If I ever see you again, I will fucking kill you," Stiles says. "If you stay, the gloves are coming off. I will deal with you once and for all."
"Stop it, stop it, stop it - "
"Do you yield?" Stiles asks her.
"I'll kill you, you son of a bitch!"
Stiles presses the bat harder against her throat. His whole body is going numb now. If she doesn't yield soon, he's going to lose, and she doesn't even know it. "Do you yield?"
Kali's only response is an inarticulate, strangled scream.
"Say it!" Stiles shouts right in her face. "You know that I've won. You're only making things worse for yourself. Now do you want me to keep bleeding wolfsbane on you? Or do you want me to let you go?"
"Let me go," Kali sobs. "I yield, I yield, let me go . . ."
Stiles is up and off her moments later. He means to bolt into the house, but the feeling just floods out of his legs. He stumbles two steps and then collapses onto the front porch. Behind him, he hears Kali scrambling to her feet and thinks, vaguely, uh oh.
But before Kali can leap onto him and tear his throat out, wolfsbane be damned, Stiles hears a crash of glass and wood. A dark shadow passes over him, and he feels a rush of wind, and for a moment he thinks that Derek has come to his rescue. He hopes it won't impact the trial. But when he manages to turn over, it's a large gray wolf that is snapping at Kali, who has gone full wolf and is snarling. It's Justin.
The two of them circle each other for a few moments before Kali suddenly turns and runs into the forest. Stiles doesn't see what happens after that because he's managed to drag himself up to his hands and knees, and crawls – okay, it's embarrassing, but he's done worse things – into the Hale house to find his pack. He uses the door frame to get back to his feet, and staggers into what was once the living room. "Hey, you guys okay?" he asks, and then falls flat on his face. Or at least he would, except Derek grabs him before he can hit the floor.
"You fucking idiot," the other man is snarling.
"You're the fucking idiot, gonna make yourself sick," Stiles says, but he's having trouble breathing now, and he can feel his heart skipping beats, which is disconcerting, to put it mildly. He waves at the others. "Scott," he says. "Brought . . . brought some things. Saline bags. IV stuff. A suture kit or two in case she sliced me up. Instructions. For treating the poisoning."
"Oh my God, how stupid are you," Scott replies, and Stiles thinks of about a dozen clever retorts, but things are getting blurry fast.
"If . . . if someone has to give me CPR . . . it had better be Lydia or Erica," Stiles says, and he's going, going, gone.
Somewhere far away in the distance, Stiles can hear someone screaming. It sounds rough, scratchy, like it's being played on one of those old-timey phonographs you see in black and white movies. Hollow and indistinct, like it's coming to him down an extremely long tunnel.
It takes a minute for him to realize that the person screaming is him.
He shakes himself, like a dog coming up from underwater. Why is he screaming? Is he in pain? He's not sure. He can't really feel much of anything. His legs are all pins and needles, hands numb and tingly, like that time he used too much IcyHot after a rough lacrosse practice. Everything's fine, he's fine, and for just a moment he's entirely lucid, and then he realizes that the reason he's pins and needles is because tiny insects are burrowing up from his skin. He can see them, a black, messy swarm coating his feet and his hands, and then he's screaming again.
A dark shape lurks beside him, and he throws up a hand to defend himself, and someone grabs it. Somewhere in the background, he hears Scott say sharply, "Watch those cuts on his arm!" But he's calming down now, as someone is squeezing his hand. It hurts, but it's pain, not that terrible fuzzy non-pain.
"Derek, you're going to – " someone says, and then his hand is being transferred from one to another, a more slender one. The dark shape moves away, and Stiles cries. He can't help it. He doesn't even know why. It's back within moments, and he hears a low snarl, and then someone else's voice, "at least wear gloves, for Christ's sake – " and then he's out again.
The world is dissolving, running around the edges, and nothing seems to make sense anymore. He knows that aconite poisoning causes hallucinations and altered mental status. But these can't be hallucinations; they're much too real. They're bouncing over the old dirt road but it's not Derek with him, it's Peter. The alpha leans over him, eyes gleaming red and blood dripping from his jaws. "You couldn't kill Kali, and you couldn't kill me," Peter says, his face twisted in a horrible, rictus grin. "I'm still alive, you see. You're the one who's dead. You're still in the trunk of the car . . . you've dreamed all of this in your head as you die . . ."
Stiles screams again and thrashes his way back to reality. Someone is pinning him to a bed, or a stretcher, or the floor, he's not sure, can't tell. He tries to claw his way free, because he can feel the walls closing in around him, and the terror cannot be contained.
"For Christ's sake, Stiles," he hears someone say.
"He can't help it, he's – "
"He could help it if he had tried something like not poisoning himself – "
Then Justin is shaking him, all teeth and claws right up in Stiles' face. "Is it true?" he snarls. "Did that bitch kill Trevor, is that fucking true?"
Stiles wants to answer, he knows that the answer is inside him, that he can be calm and rational and explain to Justin how he knew, how he put the pieces together. He fumbles for the words, trying to put the world around him back into some sort of logical order, but it fragments again and Justin's blood drips down onto his face. It burns his skin, and he can smell the scent of cooking flesh. It's so vivid that he could be at an outdoor barbecue.
"Wolfsbane is highly toxic, you know," Gerard says, calmly sharpening his knives, and then leans over and stabs downwards, the point of the knife piercing Stiles right where he put the needle in Peter. He howls, arms waving madly as he tries to defend himself.
"You should know," his father says, but it's not his father, it's some hideous parody of the man who has raised him, who has been his anchor for so many years. His skin is rotting off his face, eyes sunken and clothes in pieces. "That's how they killed me, after all . . ."
Abruptly, everything suddenly goes fuzzy, cotton-wrapped. He doesn't even feel the sting of the needle, but some distant part of his brain notes that whatever drugs they just gave him, they are good. Then he passes out.
When he comes to, it's with absolutely no concept of how much time has passed. But he's feeling a lot better. His hands and legs are still somewhat tingly, which is uncomfortable, but his heart is no longer trying to beat its way free of his chest, and he's capable of studying his surroundings and identifying them. He's in a hospital bed, which irritates him. He had brought everything they would need to treat him; why had they taken him to the hospital?
It looks like he might get a chance to ask. Derek is in wolf form, curled up at the foot of his bed. Someone has hilariously put a little blue vest on him, which he supposes is how they're explaining his presence. His eyes are closed, and he looks asleep, so there will be no answers there. But Scott and Allison are there too. Scott's in the other bed in the room, leaning against the wall. Allison is cradled against his shoulder. She's asleep as well, but Scott is awake, thumbing at his phone.
Stiles clears his throat a little and tries to talk, which doesn't work at all. Scott's head jerks around. He carefully slides Allison off his lap and lays her down on the bed. "Hey," he says, hopping down and moving over to Stiles. Derek has lifted his head as well, but he stays in wolf form. Stiles thinks that they're both much happier this way; he won't have to listen to Derek's lecture and Derek won't have to talk about how worried he was. Scott gives a quick look at the monitors, the glance of someone who knows approximately what they're looking for. Then he pours Stiles a cup of water and helps him sit up enough to drink it.
"Why am I in the hospital?" Stiles asks.
Scott gives him a look that's part exasperation, part anxiety, and part anger. It's a look that Stiles doesn't much like. "Because you poisoned yourself."
"I brought everything you would need – "
"Dude, Stiles, I am not a doctor," Scott says. "You can try to pretend all you want, but I'm not. I have some decent paramedic skills, but I was not about to try to explain to your father that you kicked off because I thought I could handle this."
Stiles sulks. "Stealing that stuff from the hospital was a lot of work."
"Yeah, and you were really sick," Scott says.
"Oh, come on, it wasn't that – "
"Stiles," Scott interrupts, "you were crying for your mother."
There's a long silence.
"Shit, really?" Stiles says. He searches his memory for this. There's absolutely nothing there. Pretty much everything after Kali yielded the fight is a big fuzzy splotch in his memory. Parts of it are clearer than others, but he definitely does not remember that. "Shit."
"Yeah," Scott says.
"Even so," Stiles just has to argue, "it's not like treating wolfsbane poisoning is that hard, you just give medicine to stabilize the heart rate and flush the system with saline, I wrote directions and everything."
There's a pause while Scott looks at the ceiling, obviously praying for patience. "Stiles," he says again, "someone had to put a tube up your dick. Would you rather that have been me? Or a medical professional?"
Stiles grimaces. "I, uh, I didn't think of that – "
"No! Of course you didn't! Because you are not a trained medical professional and so you don't even know what a saline flush actually means, yet you seem to hold this bizarre belief that twenty minutes on Wikipedia gives you a medical degree. Shut the fuck up and be glad you're alive, you crazy bastard!"
"Okay, okay!" Stiles tries to raise his arms in surrender. They flop around a bit, and he glares at them. "I'm sorry I put you guys through that."
Scott huffs out a sigh. "Thank you."
"So, uh, how long has it been?" Stiles looks around. There's a clock on the wall that reads that it's about two thirty, but that could mean anything. He had gotten back to Beacon Hills around four PM, and it had been nearly sunset by the time he confronted Kali. He's hoping that it's the middle of the night, not the middle of the next day.
Scott also glances at the clock. "About, I don't know, five hours?" he says, and Stiles breathes a sigh of relief. "The others are all sleeping in the lobby. My mom wouldn't let us all stay in the room because the doctors needed to be able to, you know, get to you. So we've been taking it in shifts. Except for Derek; he's not moving."
"Where's my dad?" Stiles asks, with a wince. He doesn't exactly want to face his father after the events of the past twenty-four hours, but he desperately wants to see him after the hallucinations.
"He was actually here until about fifteen minutes ago," Scott says. "Then he got a call about . . . well, about a body being found in the woods."
"Déjà vu all over again," Stiles says. "Any idea whose?" he adds, hoping that it's Kali.
"I can wager a guess or two," Scott says. "After Kali ran off, Justin and Yasmin went after her. But only a minute later, we started hearing gunshots. Looks like Vivien and Tyrone were waiting for their chance. So either they shot one of the alpha pack . . ."
"Or the alpha pack found one of them," Stiles concludes. "I would not have wanted to get between Justin and a hunter after what happened."
"Me neither," Scott agrees. "But, well, we didn't really care who was killing who as long as no one was shooting at us, and Ravinder and Mei said they would cover our exit so we could get you to the hospital." He shrugs a little at Stiles' obvious surprise and says, "I think that as far as they're concerned, you've passed. That means you're one of them, and deserving of their help."
"That or they just really enjoyed watching me kick the shit out of Kali," Stiles says.
Scott grins a little. "Yeah, maybe."
"So . . . how much trouble am I in?" Stiles asks.
Another sigh, more of a huff. "With us? Not too much. To be fair, up until 'don't take me to the hospital', it was a pretty decent plan. If you'd actually tried to go head-on against Kali without a trick or two up your sleeve, she would've ripped your face off. So I think we're all pretty much okay with it."
Stiles nods and looks at Derek, winding a hand through the wolf's fur. Most of what he does remember during the hallucinations is how much he freaked out if Derek left. He hopes that the prolonged exposure to wolfsbane hadn't hurt his lupa, but to be fair, Derek looks fine. At his touch, Derek looks up, nudges his nose into Stiles' hand, and then puts his head down again. Stiles takes that as 'you're forgiven'.
"With your dad, however . . ." Scott says.
Stiles winces. "Bad?"
"Oh my God, you should've heard him," Scott says.
"I'm sure I will," Stiles says, with a sigh. "Especially since I'm sure there will be some sort of police report . . . what did you guys tell the doctors?"
"Uh, that you'd been in the woods and we heard you shouting, so we went to see what was wrong, and some large animal – wolf, dog, cougar, we couldn't be sure – ran off when we got there."
"Okay," Stiles says. "And . . . I just happened to have poisoned myself with aconite?"
"Uh . . . bath salts, actually," Scott says.
Stiles sits up at this. "You told them I was on drugs?"
"Dude, what the fuck was I supposed to tell them?"
"You were supposed to not take me to the hospital," Stiles reminds him, and then Derek lets out a low growl. "Uh, but, okay. I can see why you did." He clears his throats. "But couldn't it have been a cool drug? Bath salts are so lame."
"Well, to be fair, I didn't say anything. I said I thought you might have gotten a batch of Adderall cut with something – "
"I never buy my Adderall on the street, you dick, I'm so much smarter than that – "
"I know that, you doctor-shop, which is really not any more responsible, by the way, but they don't know that. I had to tell them something. I said as little as possible, just that you were hallucinating and had a rapid heart rate and I wasn't sure why. They're the ones who had the theory about bath salts. When your tox screen comes back – "
"They did a tox screen on me? I am never getting into college now – "
"It'll come back negative and you'll just be a medical mystery and nobody will really care why because you will have made a full recovery, they'll probably give you a referral to neurology because of the altered mental status that we can just ignore, now shut the fuck up, you asshole."
Stiles shuts up, pouting again. Derek growls at him. He growls back. Derek sits up abruptly and puts a paw over Stiles' mouth.
"Right, then," Scott says. "I'm going to go let my mom know you're awake so the doctor can take a look at you, and tell the others that you're okay." He gives a brief glance at Allison sleeping in the second bed, and seemingly decides to let her sleep, since he exits the room.
Stiles flops back against the cushion. "I have a tube up my dick," he says to the ceiling.
Derek lets out a snort, more of a sneeze, that clearly conveys that his opinion on the matter is that Stiles deserves it.
The doctor comes in, then, a different one than he saw during the winter. He checks Stiles' reflexes and asks questions about who the president is. Then he asks Stiles what he took. Stiles decides that denial is the best refuge right now, and so he swears he didn't take anything besides his Adderall, which he got from a regular pharmacy. It's a pretty safe bet that the doctor doesn't believe him, but just like Scott had said, since he's doing better they don't worry about it. They proclaim him cured through the miracle of modern medicine, tell him to get some more sleep, and they'll think about discharging him in the morning.
Before he can sleep, all of his wolves have to come in and check on him. There's cheek rubbing and hand squeezing and Stiles protesting that he's maybe still a little radioactive and they shouldn't get too close. Allison wakes up when the others come in and joins in the snuggling. Stiles is enjoying it, to the point that he almost doesn't notice when his dad comes in. Then he does. Scott ushers the rest of the wolves out of the room, closing the door most of the way behind him.
"Hey, Dad," Stiles says, already flinching at that so-not-amused look on his father's face. "Whose body was it?"
Sheriff Stilinski's jaw sets in an unhappy frown. "We don't have a positive identification yet," he says, "but I'm guessing it's Tyrone. Black male, about five eight, dressed in outdoor gear with a hunting rifle."
"Sounds like him," Stiles says. "Animal attack?"
"Yeah. Pretty vicious one, from the looks of it."
"Probably Kali, then," Stiles says, "although I guess it could have been any of them." He wonders briefly if Justin shaking him and demanding the truth had been real, or just another hallucination. He'll have to ask Scott later. "So . . ."
"So, how about you tell me what the hell you think you were doing?" his father asks, and Stiles winces again. "C'mon, kid. Out of all the possible solutions, that is what you decided to do? Poison yourself? You saw 'willingly inject a toxic substance into my veins' and thought that was what should happen?"
"Well, to be fair, it did work," Stiles says.
Stilinski pushes both his hands through his hair. "Yes. Yes, it did. That doesn't change the fact that it was an idiotic idea. And it wasn't your only option. Why didn't you call me? The alpha pack can't hold a bunch of teenagers against their will – "
"Yeah, then I would've gotten my pack but failed the trial," Stiles says. "None of them would have passed me if I'd done that."
"But doing something suicidally insane, that gets you points?" his father asks.
"Apparently, yeah."
"God, Stiles, some days . . ." His father shakes his head, then reaches out and embraces Stiles, nearly dislodging Derek as he pulls his son into a rib-crushing hug. The slashes on his chest sting, but Stiles ignores that in favor of hugging back. "You're going to be the death of me eventually, you know that, right?"
"It'll never happen," Stiles says, comfortably resting into the embrace. "You're way too tough for that."
Stilinski lets out a snort which is almost, almost a laugh. "Okay. You get some rest. I have some paperwork to do. Shouldn't take long – just an animal attack, you know. I'll turn it over to Fish and Game, who won't find anything. I'll come by first thing in the morning to pick you up. The doctor told me he thinks you'll be stable for discharge then."
"Okay," Stiles says.
"Oh, and then," his father says, "we're going to have a very stern talk about drugs."
Stiles makes a face at him. "I'm going to make Scott pay for telling them that."
His father departs without another word, and Stiles lets out a sigh. The changing of the wolf guard occurs, so it's Lydia and Erica who are now dozing on the second bed in the room. According to Scott, his mother pulled some strings to get him in an unoccupied room (officially, because his hallucinations might be exacerbated by strangers), so there's room for more visitors.
He's almost drifted off to sleep when his phone starts making the jingly text message noise. He sits up and looks around for it.
"Pick up that phone and I will take your hand off at the wrist," Lydia says. She reaches over and takes the phone off the little table. Erica leans over her shoulder and they read the message together. "Hm," Lydia says. Derek lifts his head and looks over at them.
"Hm, what?" Stiles asks.
"It's nothing," Lydia says.
Stiles gives her a look. "Don't make me pull rank on you."
Both girls exchange a look. Lydia seems to be considering keeping quiet, but Erica isn't up to disobeying a direct order from her alpha, and they both know it. So there's no point in forcing the issue. "It's from Kali," Lydia says. "She says that you need to be at the Hale house in an hour to receive her verdict."
Derek lets out a low growl. Stiles groans. He can't help it. It's the middle of the night. He just wants to fucking sleep. "Okay," he says, and pushes the blankets back. Derek's growl intensifies in both tone and volume. He sounds like a small chainsaw. "Down, Fido," Stiles says. "We both know what a catastrophe it'll be if I don't show up."
"Stiles, you can't just walk out of the hospital," Erica protests.
Stiles frowns. He knows that she's right about that. The instant his monitors stop giving readings, every nurse on the floor will be in the room (and that's nothing to say of the fact that he still has a tube in an unpleasant location). "We need a diversion," he says. "Erica, go pull the fire alarm."
"Up your hole with a ten-foot pole, Stiles; I'm not doing that," Erica retorts.
Stiles sighs. "What floor are we on? Please tell me the first."
"Fourth," Lydia says.
"Great. Derek, you'll have to be all parkour werewolf and carry me down. Lydia, go tell the others we're leaving and bring the car right around underneath my window. And give me my freakin' phone."
Nobody is very happy with this. Lydia says, "Stiles, we don't need to go receive her verdict. The alpha pack isn't even going to keep her as their leader, not after they found out she got Trevor killed to steal his spot – "
"We don't know that," Stiles says, "and this show isn't over until the fat lady sings." He thinks about pointing out that the fact that he suspected Kali would pull something like this is half the reason why he didn't want to be in the hospital in the first place. Then he thinks better of the idea and just says, "Go get the car."
