Semi-Lucky

Confusion Before More Confusion

Disclaimer - I own nothing, blah blah blah.

Chapter 2

STILES' P.O.V.

Good Lord, I had never had a headache this bad. I wondered if I had a hangover. And what was that strange rumbling noise? What that my stomach? I wondered when the last time I ate was. Oh well. It was time to wake up from my little nap and eat a sandwich. Or maybe some steak. Yeah, steak sounded pretty good.

I opened my eyes and saw a ceiling that was not that of my bedroom, nor a school classroom, nor Scott's room, which were the only areas I could think of that I might fall asleep in.

And I was in a moving vehicle. A crappy vehicle by the sounds of it wheezing. I was also lying down in the backseat. Weird.

I soon recognized the not-so-smooth roar of my own jeep's engine and quickly sat up, wondering why I wasn't the one driving it, but the blood rushed to my head and my vision clouded again. Again? Yeah…I had been this dizzy before, recently. When, and why?

And then I vaguely remembered the events that had taken place at the school.

Well, shit! Was I dead?

"Lie down, Stiles." My head whipped to the front and I saw Derek, driving my jeep, with a black eye and a few cuts on his face.

What the hell?

"Woah…what's going on? Why is your face all busted up?" I thought it was a legit question. Apparently not. Derek reached back with one arm and shoved my shoulder down so I was once again lying on my back. "I said 'lie down'. You have a concussion, not to mention that your head is bleeding all over your interior."

I twisted around fearfully and saw a dark red pool sinking into the material beneath where my head had been a second ago. I groaned loudly and then felt my head. Sure enough, there was partially dried blood down the side of my face, and in my hair. Gross. I wondered how long it would take to get the blood out of my seats.

Suddenly I felt sick, even sicker than when I used to see Lydia and Jackson making out….

"Pull over!"

Derek swerved to the side of the road surprisingly smoothly, since he had turned around to look at me with, was that concern?, on his face. I didn't exactly have the time to figure out whether it was concern or disgust or anger or hatred…. Who knew, with this guy?

Before we had even made a complete stop, I hopped out of the side door and promptly puked onto the leaves. After a minute or two of disgustingness, I stood up straight again and looked around. We were on some path in the middle of the forest.

No, I lied. I was in the middle of the forest, and Derek was nowhere to be seen.

I walked around the jeep, and forced my eyes to see as far as they could into the distance of the forest. "Derek?" I called. No answer. I peered into my jeep windows and he wasn't there either. "If this is some sort of practical joke, it's not funny. You know how much I hate the woods. And the dark. And anything creepy." Still nothing. "And if you didn't know that, well, now you do, so you can just come out of your little hiding spot and turn the car lights on again, cuz it's frickin' dark out here.…"

Absolute silence.

"Okay. Cool, no big deal. I'll just chill all alone tonight in the dark forest. Full of werewolves. With a possible concussion. Don't worry about me."

Well this was just fantastic.

Shivering, I went back to my jeep, praying that the keys would still be in it and I could ditch this place, but the doors were locked. I swore loudly and punched a tree. Not smart, Stiles. Who knew trees were so sturdy?

I swore once again in pain, nursing my sore knuckles.

To top it all off, my head was still in agonizing pain.

Then I slid down the side of my jeep until I was sitting down and closed my eyes, trying to formulate a plan.

What were my options?

1) Run around blindly until possibly reaching the edge of this giant forest.

But I would most likely trip over a root and get a double concussion, if that was even a thing. Also, with my luck, my jeep would probably be scratched up by animals and then sprayed by a skunk.

2) Break into my own jeep and hotwire it.

But I didn't know how to hotwire a car, nor get into my locked jeep. Breaking glass with your elbow doesn't actually work, unless you're the Hulk.

3) Sit here until Derek decides to comes back or someone else comes along to help me.

But that someone else could be an axe murderer. Or a skunk.

In defeat, I put my head in my hands and started to panic. Especially when I heard footsteps, kinda close to where I was sitting. Then they stopped, and I held my breath, eyes shut extremely tight.

"Here."

I fell sideways onto the mud and leaves…spastically, you could say. Looking up, I saw the moon-illuminated form of none other than Derek himself.

"What the hell, man? You nearly gave me a heart attack!" I clutched my chest and took a deep breath, then got to my feet slowly. 'Slowly', only because my head still killed, as did my ribs, but I didn't want to show pain in front of Derek, who never happened to show pain himself. Despite my efforts, he noticed. "Stop moving so much, it will only slow your recovery."

I ignored him and stood fully straight. "I thought you were those goons who practically jumped me in the school parking lot. Holy crap…" I said, putting a hand to my head and leaning back against my car door. Flashbacks of the night's events invaded my memory, with a force like a blow to the gut. Another blow, I should say…

And in addition to my several throbbing body parts, I needed a bit of support from my jeep.

I remembered just exactly how frickin' scary it all was, and wondered how I had managed to escape.

There was a guy who had come to my rescue after the beating…and had kicked the crap out of the other three…and must've put me into my jeep. He then continued to drive it in the shortcut through the woods, that he knew well, on the way back to my house.

I stared up at Derek in awe, putting the twisted and confusing puzzle pieces together. "You, how? What the…?" I sputtered, pointing at him. He just stared back, saying nothing.

Noting the awkwardness, I dropped my arm and coughed, kinda lamely.

Then I realized that Derek had said 'here' before, and I squinted through the darkness to see what he was holding out to me.

"Where did you go just now? …And whaddya mean, 'here'?"

"This will ease your headache." He walked closer and threw a wet piece of cloth at me.

"Oh." I looked at it warily, still confused and skeptical of the sorts of remedies that werewolves used.

"It's just water. Put it on your head." Derek ordered, as if he had read my mind.

"Yes, mom." I mumbled just loudly enough for his heightened senses to pick up, and pressed the cloth against my temple, where the pain seemed to be radiating from. It soothed the pain pretty quickly, actually. So I thought I'd start up with my questions again. "Where'd the water come from? And the cloth? And what even happened tonight? Why are you here, where are we going, and seriously dude, what happened to your face?"

"I think I liked you better when you were unconscious. Get in the car, I'll explain what I can on the way to your house."

Eager to understand this whole situation better, I jogged to the driver's side and reached for the handle, when I felt a firm hand pulling my shoulder back.

"What do you think you're doing?" Derek asked.

"Um, getting in my car. What does it look like?"

He shook his head. "You have a concussion, idiot. Want to get us both killed? Get in the back."

"Oh please, let me have some dignity. …Passenger's seat."

I practically felt Derek roll his eyes in the darkness, but he didn't protest, so I went around and got in on the other side.

Once Derek had slammed the car door, he looked at me wearily before revving the engine.

And he began. "The water came from the stream a few miles away. The cloth came from your very own t-shirt."

I glanced down to see that a strip had been torn off the bottom of my plaid shirt and groaned.

"Dude, this is one of my favourite shirts…"

"You're the one who wanted answers. If I hadn't told you that, you would've never noticed."

"…fair point. Keep going."

"As for what happened tonight, well, I was hoping you could help me out with that part. I was going for my night run and heard four hearts pumping much louder than normal, so I followed my senses to the school parking lot and found you, getting attacked by three men."

"Yeah, and then I got knocked out and woke up here. Wait, did you say 'night run'? As in, running….at night time?"

Derek glared at me. "Not all of us are afraid of absolutely everything."

"Hey, that was rude. All I'm saying is that I'm impressed you didn't trip over a root and get a concussion. Or get sprayed by a skunk."

He ignored my last comment and started up with his own questions. "What were you doing at the school so late?""Looking for my phone. Thought I'd left it there after the game, but turns out the big dude had it."

"What? Why would he have your phone?"

"He said he'd found it while looking for Scott's stuff in our change rooms, while we were playing lacrosse."

Derek furrowed his brow but pressed on. "You should be more cautious, Stiles. Those men? They're hunters, and you don't know the kinds of tactics they will use on anyone that they think might be in association with werewolves. You need to watch your back at all times, as well as Scott's, because he's looking out for you too.""Okay, I'm sorry. Man, associating myself with werewolves…sounds so cool, huh?" I smiled for what felt like the first time in ages, but it quickly turned to a frown when I realized, "And I STILL didn't get my phone back!" I mentally cursed myself. It seemed I had been doing that a lot in the last hour or so.

"Here." Derek said once again. He reached in his pocket and tossed my phone at me.

"What? NO way, man! Are you serious? Thank you, Derek! Oh my God how I thought it was gone for good."

He shrugged. "It basically fell into my hand when I punched the guy holding it. I have more questions, so shut up and listen. What did they ask you about Scott? And what did you tell them?"

Turns out I didn't hear him the first time, because I was making sure everything still worked on my phone and looking through texts to see what the thugs might've read.

Derek snatched my phone out of my hands and held it out the open window. "Answer my questions Stiles! They are more important than your stupid phone."

"Okay, don't freak out!" I think my voice squeaked, just a little bit. "Just, bring the phone back inside the jeep, nice and slow, and I'll leave it alone and answer all your frickin' questions."

He stared at me for a moment doubtfully, but finally brought my phone back and put it between the two seats. I did a silent prayer of thanks.

"Did they question you about Scott?"

I wracked my brain, trying to remember these seemingly insignificant details. "Yeah. But all they wanted me to say was where they could find him. That's it. And no, I didn't tell them. I would never betray my best friend like that. …Although I don't know why Allison's dad wouldn't just give them Scott's address. It'd have saved me a hell of a lot of pain." I snorted, which hurt my ribs, but on the inside I was actually really worried that they would find Scott.

Derek nodded. "They won't know where to look because Argent won't tell them Scott's address. It would give his whole family away if they knocked on Scott's door, and he turned into a wolf, and his Mom or another eyewitness saw. Don't worry, Scott's safe at his home. If he was alone at the school after dark, however, that'd be another story…"

Derek looked at me accusingly.

"I get it, I get it. Have Scott's back, and he'll have mine. I said I was sorry! And why am I even apologizing to you? I'm the one who got a beating. I should really apologize to myself."

The minute of silence was strange after so many questions. Then I came up with another one. "So, did you…kill those guys?"

"No. But they are all unconscious with broken limbs."

I whistled low. "I guess it's time to thank you for saving my ass."

We pulled into my house. "This is you."

"Well I'll just wait here 'til you accept my gratitude, because my Dad is gonna kill me, and I don't really feel like facing him right now."

"Forget it. I didn't save your ass, you still got the worse end of things. Just go see a doctor in the morning. And I don't hear anyone inside your house. Your Dad must still be at work, so you can get yourself cleaned up before he comes home."I was relieved to know that my Dad wasn't out searching for me, and that he wouldn't see me covered in blood. At the same time though, I wished he would be home to comfort me. Or so I could give him a blow-by-blow account of the night and he could go arrest those guys.

"Well I'm no doctor, but you look like shit." I grinned, trying to make this more lighthearted, but a pained look crossed Derek's eyes.

"I'm fine." He said.

Somehow, I got this feeling that that was his answer to everything, regardless of whether or not he was really fine. I sighed, "No, Derek. This is the part where you say 'you should've seen the other guys!' and we both laugh and you go home."

He just stared blankly straight ahead.

"Okay…Look, I won't make you ever save my life again. I really am sorry you got beat up for me." And then I got out the side door but paused before slamming it shut. "Um, this is actually my vehicle, so…" I stated nodded once and exited the driver's side.

"Thanks." I mumbled. Walking around to the door of my house, I noticed that Derek was just standing in my driveway, hands in pockets.

"Uhh, you need something? Not trying to sound ungrateful or anything, but you look kinda creepy right now…"

"I'm sorry."

Okay, what? This was not right. The hero doesn't apologize to the victim, what was going on here?"Sorry? For what?"

"Sorry that I didn't get there sooner, to prevent the worst of things."

"Derek, don't be an idiot. If you hadn't showed up, they would've killed me for sure. But here I am, quite alive, and rather glad to be. Concussions go away, as do scratches. I'm gonna be fine."

He looked at me and sighed. "I know. I still feel bad, though. Which is strange, considering how much you annoy me."

I grinned. "There you go. I thought you were going crazy for a second. Now listen to me. Thank you, for everything. Even if you don't accept it, I needed to say it. So there. Now go home." I turned around and unlocked the door.

"You're welcome, then. Oh and Stiles…" I turned back around to face him. "You really should have seen the other guys." He shrugged.

I laughed. "Get out of here, man."

Derek stared at me incredulously. "Don't call me 'man'; this doesn't make us buddies or anything. You still fear me."

I arched an eyebrow, pretending I didn't agree with him, then actually thought for a second and replied, "True…would you prefer 'Powerful and Vicious Werewolf of the Night"? Or how about, 'Almighty Derek, the Feared One'?"

He narrowed his eyes. "I, unlike those hunters, will actually succeed in killing you if you call me anything but 'Derek', understand?"

I cringed and nodded, imagining the pain.

"…Idiot." he murmured, just loud enough for me to hear. And with that, he turned and started running towards the forest with his strange, werewolf speed.

One of these days, Derek was gonna stop hating me. And I was gonna stop fearing him…but can you really blame me? He's just a naturally terrifying guy.

I rolled my eyes, closed the front door behind me and flicked on the lights. Then I went in my bathroom to check out my face in the mirror.

Nice, I looked kinda tough. I smiled but it quickly turned into a frown.

My Dad was definitely going to kill me.