They compromised. On Saturday John got to sleep in and around eleven Stiles intended to come over for their driving lesson. As a thank you he promised to bring breakfast. John offered to pick him up at the lake but Stiles declined.

"Walking into town will burn some energy," Stiles said over the phone when they set up the details on Friday evening. "I might have that excited-scared feeling. Like ninety-eight percent excited and two percent scared. Or maybe it's the other way around. Could be ninety-eight percent scared, two percent excited but that's what makes it so intense, it's so ... I can't really figure it out."

Stiles' rambling did sound familiar, John was pretty sure that there was a movie quote mixed in there somewhere but that only proved Stiles' point.

"Why would you be scared?" John asked. The excitement he got but why would he be scared?

"I can't drive," Stiles answered carefully. "But that doesn't mean that I never tried."

"Let me guess, you totaled the car?" John was glad that Stiles couldn't see his amused expression over the phone.

"Drove my car straight into a ditch," Stiles admitted meekly. "Not that my car was actually my car. I was driving it but technically it didn't belong to me. I fully intended to bring it back before the owner even noticed, I swear. I just wanted to know what the big deal was about. Couldn't be that hard, right? Every sixteen-year-old can do it and have you seen the average sixteen-year-old?"

"Stiles?" John cut into his rant. "Shut up."

"I'm just saying that I'm a bit nervous." Stiles took an audible breath to calm himself down.

"It's going to be fine," John assured him. "You're a quick learner and you're more mature than the average sixteen-year-old, at least sometimes …"

"Hey!" Stiles yelled but it was in good nature. "And just so you know, I'm at least eighteen. Do you have any idea what kind of a difference in brain development and maturity that makes?"

John listened to him rambling over the phone for almost an hour before they called it a night. Stiles offered to come over, if John needed him to was the unspoken part in that statement, but it was clear that he would rather not. The longer Stiles stayed with Derek tonight, the longer he would be able to stay away from him tomorrow. John assured him that he was fine and that he wanted to turn in early anyway and to his own surprise, it wasn't even a lie.

He did have a beer with his dinner and a shot for dessert but otherwise, he went to bed sober. They would repeat Stiles' driving experience if he tried to give him a lesson hungover and for some stupid reason, it was important to John that tomorrow was a good day for Stiles.

Already drifting off to sleep, John wondered if this was how it could have been if he and Claudia had kids of their own.

John did sleep in the next morning, the last few days were taking their toll, but he was still up early enough to clean out the jeep and to park it in the driveway. He might have set in the driver's seat for a few minutes with misty eyes before he cleaned out the last things Claudia had left behind but he wanted a clean cut. Today was just about the driving lesson but he intended to give the jeep to Stiles, the sooner he started to think of it as Stiles' the better.

You're over me this quickly? John could almost hear her voice. It was not her nice voice, not the loving and caring Claudia he knew and loved. This was the nasty thing in the hospital bed that had hurled insults at him.

Giving away my car. What's next? My chair? My cardigan? My home?

John closed his eyes and took a breath. He knew it was stupid. That was not the real Claudia talking. The real Claudia would be here with him, getting the car ready for Stiles.

John shook his head and washed a hand down his face to get rid of the dark thoughts. His hands were shaking and that was not just because of his nerves. He needed a drink. Just to calm down. To take off the edge. To silence the voices whispering in the back of his mind. To numb the pain and the guilt. He needed a fucking drink.

It was just past ten, he had almost an hour before Stiles would show up. John hated himself for it but he got out of the car and with his shoulders hunched in defeat he went inside to get a drink.

Having Stiles around did help, he would drink himself into oblivion every night without him and he would most likely be dead by now. If by accident or with intention he didn't know, though. Not that it mattered. But there were still moments like this. Moments when he just had to have a drink at ten in the morning.

John poured himself a healthy drink but then he just stood there in his kitchen for a long moment with the glass in hand. The guilt already tasted bitter in the back of his throat but he knew that it wouldn't keep him from drinking what he had in his glass.

The doorbell rang when he had the glass halfway to his mouth. For a long second, he didn't know if he should just knock back the drink before he answered the door but then he set the untouched glass on the counter and went for the door.

"You're early," John said when he opened the door. "Couldn't wait any lon...?" The last word died on his lips when he noticed that it was not Stiles at his door.

"Mark?" His partner stood hunched over, swaying on his feet, and he was clutching his right upper arm with his left hand. John couldn't see what kind of injury was hidden under his hand but his sleeve was soaked with blood and some kind of black goo.

"What the hell happened?"

"Didn't know where else to go," Mark said, his voice pressed. He was way too pale and there was a sheen of sweat on his face. He looked a bit like Derek, John had to admit. Kind of drowned and dead but aside from his sleeve, his clothes were dry.

"Can I come in?" Mark asked with a quick glance up and down the street. There was nobody else in sight but one never knew which neighbor was watching them from behind the curtains.

John hurried to step aside and he was ready to catch Mark when he stumbled over his own feet but he managed to stay more or less upright. He did leave a bloody hand-print on the wall, though.

John closed the door.

"What happened?" John repeated, keeping a close eye on his partner. "For somebody who's supposed to heal from almost anything in a matter of minutes you look like shit."

John's mind was racing with possible explanations for Mark's current state. They all circled back to the Winchesters.

Mark slumped down in one of the kitchen chairs.

"I got shot." Mark leaned back in the chair, catching his breath.

"Let me see." Gently John pried Mark's hand off the wound. There was a hole in the fabric but aside from more black and red John couldn't see anything. There was more black than red, though. Was Mark bleeding black?

"I'm not an expert but I don't like the color of your blood," John commented and used the moment of distraction to rip open the sleeve from shoulder to elbow. Mark bit back a scream and out of the corner of his eye, John noticed a flash of electric blue.

"I'm trying to help you." John put a calming hand on Mark's shoulder. "You're safe here."

Mark nodded but his eyes kept that eery blue and when he spoke, it was a growl coming through too many teeth.

"I know, that's why I came here." He visibly fought the transformation, it did some interesting things to his face, but he managed to keep his human features. "Didn't want to lead them to somebody from the pack."

"The Winchesters?" John guessed. He had no clue what to do here. Should he call an ambulance? Agnes?

Mark nodded.

"Might have been a trap. Or not. I don't know." He grimaced in pain.

Since Mark seemed to keep it together for the moment, John dared to leave him for a second to get some towels and a wet washcloth. He washed off the black blood to have a real look at the injury. The skin was cool and clammy to the touch, the gunshot wound stood in stark contrast to the too-pale skin. The wound look almost necrotic black and there was a spider web of black lines under the skin. It did not look like the black lines John had seen when Mark had taken that man's pain in the ER. This looked poisonous.

"What do you need me to do?" John asked helplessly. He was so far out of his depth here, he didn't even know where to start. So he just stood there, wringing the washcloth in his hands. "I can call somebody."

"It's a wolfsbane bullet." Mark swallowed thickly. "You have to get it out."

"That's … I can't do that …" John took a step back, shaking his head. "I'm not going to dig around in your arm. I'm going to call Agnes."

That sounded like a plan of action. Agnes would know what to do.

However, when he got his phone out, a clawed hand closed painfully around his wrist.

"It's killing me," Mark gritted out. "I'll be dead before anybody gets here."

John lowered the phone. He had wolfsbane bullets in his safe. Just in case, as Dean had put it. Dean had said that even if he hit something not vital with such a bullet it would kill the werewolf over time.

"Didn't think that over time would be this quickly," John muttered but he put the phone away. Looked like he either did dig around in Mark's arm and got the bullet out or his partner died right here at his kitchen table.

"Okay, okay." John ran a hand through his hair, thinking. He needed something to grab the bullet. There should be some pliers in the garage.

John sprinted to the garage to get the pliers, they even were where he thought he'd left them, and was back in the kitchen in less than a minute but it still felt way too long.

It was most likely not necessary but he poured the drink that was sitting forgotten on the counter over the pliers before he turned back to Mark.

By now he was barely conscious, the spider-web lines disappearing under the fabric of his shirt. The poison had at least reached the shoulder, John didn't waste time to find out if it had gone farther already.

"This is going to hurt," he said and took Mark's arm in a tight grip.

Mark grunted in pain but didn't fight him when John dug into his arm. Black blood oozed out of the wound, obscuring the bullet so that John had to search blindly for it. It also made everything slippery.

When he finally got a good grip on the bullet, he ripped it out before it could slip away again.

Mark cried out in pain, his claws of his free hand leaving long marks on the table, before he slumped down.

"Mark?" John ducked his head to look him in the eye but Mark didn't respond.

"Mark!" John shook him by the shoulder but Mark's head just lolled to the side and he slumped farther into himself.

"Don't die on me now." John shook him harder but he still got no response. A part of him was convinced that his partner was dead and he wasted long seconds until he dared to search for a pulse on Mark's throat. He did find one.

John kept his fingertips pressed to Mark's throat for a moment longer just to feel the steady beating of his heart.

Mark was alive. At least for now. John would feel better once he gained consciousness again.

However, the wound still looked the same, sluggishly oozing black blood and the spider-web lines still stood in stark contrast to the pale skin. John wasn't an expert on werewolves but shouldn't Mark rapidly improve now?

"What the fuck is he doing here?" Stiles spoke up behind him, making John jump.