Inamorato III
Stiles is a dreamer. It seems that it's one of the few ways he's able to keep his ADHD under control. But something soon starts to make his dreams restless, make them more vivid and panicked. Little does he know that his mate is looking for him. He's caused the leather-clad werewolf out of hiding and would stop at nothing for his inamorato.
Reminding everyone, THIS IS MY FIRST TEEN WOLF FIC.
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Chapter 3: Pack Mentality
"Is it bad?"
Derek ignores Stiles's whining and continues to pace in front of the weathered staircase.
"I feel like its bad."
'Stiles, seriously, be quiet.' Of course it's bad, because any time that Derek is involved with something, supernatural or not, it's bad. Honestly, he's trying to work with the pack he was given—well, his makeshift pack because not in a million years is Stiles in his pack—that consists of a teen wolf, his psychotic uncle, a hunter, a human with maniacal hallucinations that used him to resurrect his psychotic uncle (everyone's been filled in on that whole clusterfuck but they don't talk about it), and some annoying little lusus naturae that smells like the fucking rain that's dreaming about the Erchitu. Yeah...Derek's not feeling so good about this whole situation.
Stiles groans and stands from where he was seated on the stairs, sweeping his hands up from the back of his neck to around the top of his head, ruffling his hair. "I can't take waiting around like this, ya know?"
'Jesus, Stiles. SHUT UP.' Derek refrains from punching the teen in the face, and then kissing the bruise he makes.
"It's nerve wracking. My nerves are wracked, they're severely wracked. Wra—"
"I could beat you unconscious and wake you when it's over."
Sighing, Stiles resumes his seat, continuing to rub the back of his head. What a fucking sourwolf.
Moments pass before Stiles speaks again, "What are we even waiting for? If it wanted to attack us, why doesn't it already?"
Derek abruptly stops. His arms cross in front of his red henley, biceps bulging against the seams of the short sleeves. "That's what I'm trying to figure out." He hasn't quite been able to determine the intentions of this thing yet. Although Derek does know one thing, it's here for a reason.
Derek mind had told him, "CallPeterCallPeter." So he did, but only because he had to. Otherwise, there was no way he would've because damn, Peter's an asshole.
"I called Peter."
Stiles visibly grimaces. "From what you've told me about him, I don't think that was such a good idea."
The daylight shone in through the dilapidated shutters in the room adjacent to the staircase, falling on the left side of Derek's face. "He's dealt with something like this before, Stiles."
"You know Scott doesn't trust him, right? And personally, I, well, I trust Scott."
Stiles's breath catches in his throat when Derek's pale jade eyes gleam in the light. He's positive that Derek can feel all the times he's staring at him, but he doesn't say anything because...well, he's Derek and since when does anything Derek does make sense?
"Do you trust me?"
He tries hard not to hesitate, but the answer just doesn't want to come out. Derek can practically smell the conflict in Stiles's head and predicts the answer before it comes out of Stiles's mouth.
"Yes."
And Derek's pacing again.
"I still don't like him."
The older man scoffs, "Nobody likes him."
The door swings open, nearly missing Derek's shoulder as Peter steps into the house.
"Boys. FYI, coming back from the dead has left my abilities somewhat impaired, but the hearing still works. So I hope you're comfortable saying whatever it is you were feeling straight to my face."
Derek doesn't skip a beat. "We don't like you. Now shut up and help us."
Peter clenches his jaw. "Fair enough."
Stiles grimaces and makes no attempt to talk to Peter. He knows Derek will force him to eventually and he's going to make sure Derek does just that, because there's no way in hell he's going to talk to Peter willingly. He doesn't want to end up like Lydia. For all he knows, speaking to Peter will result in him getting possessed, shot, or maimed, all of which Stiles is competely NOT okay with.
He's also not okay with the way Derek gives him a glare and nudges his head toward Peter. "Tell him Stiles."
Stiles just keeps his mouth shut because Peter's crouched on the stair right in front of him, looking him up and down with a scrutinizing regard. Frankly, Stiles isn't a piece of meat, and he doesn't like to be treated like one.
"Him?" Peter's icy gaze swings to Derek. "This is the one that's dreaming about the Erchitu? He's more...irritating than you described."
Now he's offended. "Um, at least I'm not some resurrected asshole that likes to turn teenagers into hallucinating zombies that flip their shit on a full moon." Stiles doesn't break eye contact when he waves his hands in front of him. "Now you better back the fuck up." Stiles is damn near proud of himself for standing up to this dickhead when his mental celebratory pat on the back is interrupted by Derek reaching through the bars in the railing to yank him forward by his shirt, his face in front of Derek's against the decomposing banister.
"Tell him what you know or I'm going to rip your intestines out with my bare hands."
Stiles grunts, extremely vexed by Derek and his lack of follow-throughs. "Is that a promise?" Derek clenches his jaw and snarls at Stiles, but that's gotten old very quickly because once Scott had started doing it about a month after the bite, Stiles started to ignore it. "Nice try, Der, but teeth-gnashing gets you nowhere." So Derek growls again and releases him—reluctantly because Derek fucking loves the way Stiles smells and having him that close was just damn near intoxicating—and he starts pacing again.
"If you're not going to help, then go home, Stiles. Dream about the Erchitu. I hope it kills you in your sleep again."
The words fall from Derek's lips before he realizes his mistake.
"How the hell do you know about that?"
Derek's mind fumbles to formulate some lie that sounds remotely plausible when Stiles practically leaps down the stairs—maybe Derek was rubbing off on him a bit—to threaten Derek with the can of pepper spray his father forces him to carry now—maybe Derek was rubbing off on him a lot, but at least he'd follow through with his threats—until he tells him how the fuck he knows about that dream.
"Really? You're threatening me with pepper spray?"
And Stiles swears his teeth are going to be ground down to nubs by the end of this debacle. It dawns on him though, a wave of realization.
"You heard me, too."
"I'm surprised the whole fucking neighborhood didn't hear you," Derek retorts, snatching the pepper spray from Stiles, "and get something else to defend yourself with because this pepper spray is shit." He tosses the can somewhere and Stiles doesn't bother to look for it. He just sighs and sits on the staircase again.
"Can we speed this up? It takes almost a half an hour to get from my apartment to here."
Both men glare at Peter.
—
By the time Peter had left, Derek was ready to just shoot himself in the head. If he's learned anything, it's to never in a million years put Stiles in the same room as Peter because they will hurl insults at each other. His favorite did come from Stiles though—despite the fact that he was being particularly annoying as fuck—when he'd just looked at Derek and asked, "Would someone please kill him again?"
Derek sighs, pacing.
Stiles glares at him from the stairs. "I can't believe you didn't tell me."
"It wasn't necessary."
Stiles stands and briskly skins down the stairs to squall at the back of Derek's head. "The fuck it wasn't! You came in my fucking house, Derek! I don't understand how that's NOT important." Stiles is furious. He isn't so furious that Derek had done it, but more so that he hadn't told Stiles. "That's seriously creepy, dude."
Derek rolls his eyes and whips around to meet Stiles's irascible gaze with a provoked one of his own. "What would you do, huh? You hear some immature little shit screaming for you in the middle of the night and you do what, ignore it? Well, that might be you, Stiles, but that's not me!" Derek huffs and pinches the bridge of his nose, turning away from Stiles's bewildered expression. "Everyone around me gets hurt. I don't want—I can't lose anyone else."
Stiles minces. "Derek, I—"
"It doesn't matter. Just go home, Stiles. Be a normal teenager." Derek stalks up the stairs leaving Stiles to wallow in guilt.
He considers following Derek upstairs but decides against it, instead choosing to gather his things and watch the top of the staircase longingly. He knew Derek was miserable after his family's death—Stiles may or may not have done some digging in Derek's case file at the station—but he never knew just how miserable Derek was. Being the little detective he is, Stiles figures it was probably the fact that the love of Derek's life, aka Allison's lunatic aunt, decided to set his house on fire with the hope that Derek was inside. He can't help but feel a bit dickish with how he acted toward Derek, granted Derek was a bit of a dick himself.
Stiles just goes straight home because wow, he's spent the past three hours at Derek's impoverished manor talking about supernatural shit and there's no point in going back to school halfway through the last period of the day. The entire way home, he starts feeling guiltier and guiltier. He knows he should apologize but would Derek even listen?
'Probably not,' he decides as he parks his jeep in his driveway and heads his the house. His dad's at work and he suddenly feels lonely in his own house. Heading upstairs, he drops his backpack and sits at the computer, choosing to take some Adderall to curb his panic attacks while he researches this Erchitu thing.
His phones buzzes in the corner of his desk and he reaches for it, seeing a text from an unknown number.
'I'm coming over.'
Stiles glances around, trying to figure out who this is hopefully before they arrive at his home. His phone clatters on the floor when there's a knock at the door two seconds later. 'So much for notice.'
Stiles hesitantly heads downstairs and stands behind the door, trying to find some kind of weapon just in case.
"For Christ's sake, Stiles. I can hear your fucking heartbeat through the door. Just let me in."
Stiles relaxes and is immediately nettled. 'Fucking Derek.'
He swings the door open and even through all his annoyance, his breath still catches at the sight of Derek in his leather jacket. He tries to mask the fact that he's just fucking drooling at the way the jacket pulls over Derek's biceps and tugs tight across his abs.
"Are you gonna let me in?"
That seems to snap him out of it. "Oh—yeah, right. Please, enter, O Mighty One."
Derek rolls his eyes at the caustic remark and pushes past Stiles to remove his jacket and drape it over the back of a dining room chair.
He sighs and leans against the back of the chair. "It killed someone last night," he says, and Stiles detects some distress in his tone. "Word is, your father has the case."
Stiles forgets about being snarky and moves to the chair across from Derek. "This morning he told me he had a case about some guy they found that committed suicide. But no weird supernatural thing."
"This was a girl." Derek pinches the bridge of his nose and tries his best to tolerate the teenager because being in close proximity with him drives him crazy more ways than one.
Stiles jumps up and shouts, "Gimme a minute," while dashing upstairs, giving Derek a bit of time to himself. The house reeks of nature. It seems as though Stiles is really the only one that lives here. He inhales deeply, picking up mostly a single scent that he can identify as Stiles as he makes his way around the house, realizing how it looks like his once did. Before the fire, their mantle was littered with family photos and trinkets, focus items that had long run out of juice, jewels and rings that were collected as souvenirs from previous battles. They'd even had a horn from the time they'd defeated the Erchitu long before he was born.
His mom had an obsession with the triskele, having ones that represented the Trinity, the three realms. His mother had a necklace with a triskele, representing her three children: Laura, Derek, and Cora. After the fire, they recovered it. They'd given it to Derek and he'd broken down in tears. He let Laura have it because she was the elder and after all, that's what his mom would've wanted.
After Laura's death, the necklace was in his possession. He kept it safe, but he didn't wear it. He had his own triskele, a tattoo on his back. It represented plenty of things, the three important women in his life: Laura, Cora, and his mother, but more importantly, it represented Alpha, Beta, Omega.
Derek is staring at the picture of Stiles's mom he's holding in his hands as the teen comes barreling down the stairs with a case file.
"Derek, I—" Stiles stops abruptly when he sees what Derek's holding. He walks up and smiles a bit at the picture Derek has in his hands. It's of Stiles when he was a toddler and his mom, the pair at the zoo. "She was my best friend, you know. She died when I was ten."
Derek senses that Stiles really hasn't gotten over her death and that he blames himself for it. "You have her eyes."
Stiles nods and holds back tears as he ponders his mother's passing. It's always been a sensitive topic for him. He seems to snap back into it when Derek sets the photo back where he got it, the teen waving a case file in his face.
"This file is dated for yesterday. It says cause of death is unknown."
Derek snatches it and moves to the table, splaying the contents of the file across the mahogany surface. "She was seventeen. But why her?"
No response.
"Stiles?"
Derek looks up from where his nose is buried in the police report and sees Stiles staring at the photos from the scene. "What is it?"
Stiles's eyes frantically flicker over the photos and a single tear drips down his cheek. "I-I knew her. Her name's Heather."
Derek moves the photos back into the Manila folder and away from Stiles. "We can hold off, figure out another way to find this thing if—"
"No."
Derek seems skeptical. "You're sure?" He just wants to embrace the teen and kiss him until everything's okay.
"I went to preschool with this girl, alright? Our moms were best friends, Derek. We used to take friggin' bubble baths together when we were three. I gotta know what happened."
Derek completely understands. Hell, he's had enough losses to know exactly what Stiles is feeling. He hates the stench of sadness and remorse that's emanating off of Stiles. It smells like charcoal, like burning wood...like his house.
Derek moves to step outside for some fresh air, trying to clear his head and his nose.
He glances up and sees a pair of red eyes glaring at him from the bushes.
He turns briefly to the sliding glass door and opens it a crack. "I'm staying the night."
"Way to give me a choice," Stiles retorts, leaving Derek fuming.
When Derek turns back, the eyes are gone.
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—A
