Training is nothing like what Derek expected. The way Deaton had been talking about control, he had thought they would be focusing on Stiles reining it in and locking down the way Deaton had with his.
That thought, he should have known, was terribly wrong. For one, Deaton still hadn't explained the difference between himself and Stiles.
For another, Stiles needed a wolf with her at all times, and there are only so many reasons that could be for.
Over the past two weeks; Derek had been shocked, thrown, silenced and had his mind intruded on more times than he cares to remember. And that is not including the magic Stiles was doing by accident. She still had the, sometimes disturbing, ability to know the baseline of how someone was feeling and what they were thinking when it was in direct relation to her or the pack.
When her father had turned up the day after her magic had made itself known again, she had locked herself in the bathroom and cried for an hour until the sheriff had sighed out an apology and left. Stiles had managed to tell him later that night when she was curled between himself and Jackson, that her father was overwhelmed with guilt, with pain, with loss and anger and disappointment.
In some ways, Derek thought it was lucky that Stiles' horrendous on again/off again morning sickness kicked in a couple of days later, because her father's hidden feelings were put on the back burner for now.
So, he was thankful when two weeks in Deaton told Stiles they needed to switch up which were they where using.
Stiles had looked faintly sick, and not from the morning sickness. He could scent the underlying aroma of fear-panic-worry that translated into a ticklish pepper feeling in the back of his nose and sliding down his throat.
"You're more comfortable with Derek than the others. We need to understand if it works this well because you're settled around him, or if it will work with any of them." Deaton had tried to explain while Derek lay his hand over hers in what he hoped was a comforting move. He was safe enough in their comfort with each other, or her sense of safety with him at least, that it would not be too much of an uncalculated risk to touch her when she was not at her best.
"W-what if it doesn't work? And then it stops working with Derek and i get all-" Stiles uses her free hand to mimic her head exploding, making a 'whoosh' noise under her breath that has Derek trying to suppress a grin.
Deaton's enigmatic smile remains, his posture relaxed and his thoughts must be calm and reassuring, because Stiles isn't reacting badly.
"Then we'll find another way to practice." Stiles looks between them, and Derek would have thought she was looking for changes in body language if he couldn't feel the increasingly familiar of probing along whatever it was inside him that projected feelings and thoughts. Eventually, she let out a deep sigh, all of them grateful that Stiles' has healed up enough to take and release good deep breaths now, and nodded.
"Alright then." She whistled out. "Who are we starting with? Are we setting up a rota?"
"How about we go with a new pack member each week? Starting working from those you trust the most down to those you trust the least?" They all look like they're considering it, sharing glances with each other, Stiles' fingers trailing over her stomach in an increasingly familiar movement whenever she is worried or concerned. Stiles has her gaze fixed on her lap when she eventually nods.
"It could work." She mutters, mostly to herself, before she look up and between both Derek and Deaton with a tiny and nervous smile. "Yeah, okay."
Derek lets out a little sigh, almost inaudible, but Stiles shoots him a slightly amused glare anyway.
"Wha'sa matter, sourwolf? All this magic a bit too much on your fragile wolfy ass?" She teases him, prompting Derek to let out a bark of surprised laugh. It's not the same, he doesn't think it will ever be the same; but hearing Stiles tease him, hearing her call him that stupid nickname with a tiny side smile gracing her mouth is like starting anew every time.
"I have to admit," Derek gives Deaton a wry lopsided smile. "This is a little different than i was expecting when we decided on learning how to control the magic, but i guess i can deal with it for the next few days until we figure out an arrangement."
Deaton hums, calm smile and all, and then gets back to business. They're trying to determine how far Stiles' need to protect herself extends, whether it is just the ability to read people like an open book or whether she has physical capabilities to go along with it. Up to now, all Derek had learnt was that Stiles wasn't afraid of him even when he was trying his hardest to send predator-anger-pain signals her way.
Mostly, he thought about the people that had touched Stiles, about Kate, about Peter.
Maybe, he just couldn't tell Stiles in any way that he was a danger to her, because he never was and never could be.
Sure, she had gotten a few sharp charges to run through him. Had tossed him spectacularly into a tree when he'd moved a hand too fast and too close when trying to catch a bottle of water Isaac had thrown to him.
There was also the frankly amusing time she had made it feel like his mouth was full of marshmallows that he couldn't talk around, a feeling that didn't go away until Deaton interfered and pulled away the string of magic connecting Stiles' ability to silence away from Derek.
"Okay," Deaton interrupted Derek's thoughts. "How about you think of how you felt when you first found out your mom was sick, Stiles? I want you to imagine that Derek is what you imagined the cancer cells to be at the time, and attempt to stop them from progressing any further."
Stiles spared Derek a glance out of the corner of her eye, giving him a watery attempt at a smile before she closed her eyes and started to concentrate. This part was familiar, the thickening of the air around them, the stronger scent of recently struck lightening invading his senses. Stiles gathering her magic around her could be described as a beautiful thing. The way her shoulders straighten and her skin almost glows, like she's strong and invulnerable and whole.
The first indication he got that something was happening was the sudden flush of heat through his body, starting in his stomach and then branching outwards like roots. He could feel it inside of him, gaining heat by the degree with each stretch inside of him.
Next came the feeling of bugs, crawling over his skin, spilling out from his ears and mouth and nose to scuttle along his body and they disappear like they were dropping off to the ground.
Derek had to fight not to scratch and claw at his skin, had to battle to remember that it was magic, an illusion. Stiles looked so lost inside of herself as she worked, eyes clenched closed, breathing harshly. If he paid close attention he could see the sheen of tears on her lash line and the clench of her fists against the concrete ground of the basement they were practicing in.
"Stiles-" Derek reached out to press against the fabric covering his chest, can feel the heat growing and spreading intensely throughout him, radiating from his skin dangerously. His head becoming heavy, double vision blurring everything around him.
"Stiles, stop." In the peripheral of his understanding, Derek can hear Deaton bark out at Stiles, can see his wavering hand reach out and cover Stiles' eyes with his hand.
There is a moment of building tension, a sudden escalation of the heat inside of his chest, reaching up towards his throat, and he's momentarily terrified that they've pushed her too far and she won't come back.
Stiles sucks a gasp in, lets it out with a deep whine in the back of her throat, and scuttles backwards away from Derek and Deaton.
"I'm sorry! Oh my- Derek, i'm so sorry!" From where he had fallen backwards when the magic had released, he can see Stiles curling her knee's up to her chest and burying her face into them. Deaton is sat beside him, calm broken, breathing deeply and slowly trying to calm his elevated heart beat.
As Derek struggles to sit back up so that he can reassure Stiles that he's okay, that the pain is gone now, Stiles makes a different decision. He watches as she stands quickly, shaking out vertigo once she's up right, and apologises once more before rushing out. Listening closely, he can hear her rushing past Isaac and Boyd in the kitchen and getting upstairs to lock herself in Jackson's bedroom. He's about to go after her, can hear the confused bumbling of his other pack members, but Deaton reaches out and puts a weirdly cool hand on his arm.
"Let her be." It's just loud enough that the others in the house can hear.
"But-" Derek tries to shake off Deaton and stand, but vague dizziness has him back on his ass in seconds.
"Derek, stop. She'll be okay, she isn't using magic right now and you'd smell or hear anything worrying. Just give her some time." Deaton stands effortlessly, much to Derek's ire, and brushes dust and dirt from his knees. He holds out a hand to Derek, that he takes reluctantly, and steadies him with a hand on his elbow as Derek gets his wits about him again, shaking off the remaining effects of the magic and taking another second to listen intently to Stiles to reassure himself.
Feeling helpless, Derek turned his attention back to Deaton.
"What do we do now?" Calm back in place, Deaton just shrugged.
"Give her the weekend, i'll come back on Monday and we can start again if Stiles is ready. None of this will work if she isn't wanting to practice." Deaton just turned, walking sedately up the stairs, bidding those upstairs goodbyes as Derek caught his breath leaning against a wall.
Jackson's room was a different kind of safety than Derek's. Before – before everything happened, Stiles had spent very little time in Derek's bedroom. It had been his sanctuary, a place she knew he went when he needed time away. After, it had become the only place Stiles had felt she wouldn't be approached, questioned, attacked.
This room, however, Stiles had spent a surprisingly large amount in. Once Jackson had decided to be part of the pack, to move past what had happened when he was the Kanima, he had needed something to anchor him to humanity. Something or someone that he could trust, talk to, someone that wasn't Lydia.
Stiles had been weirdly happy when Jackson had taken to sitting with her when she was at the pack house without the others. When he'd come back from a run a little earlier than the others and watch crappy daytime TV with her. When he would make her a sandwich or grab her a drink when doing so for himself. It had been a while before he had started to speak, little things at first like asking for her help with the math homework or passing her a limited edition batman and blushing when he admitted he had read them all growing up. After that, they'd started grabbing lunch at the diner on the edge of town together. Jackson had come to her after he killed his first rabbit during a hunt, horrified with himself. He had been on the edge of tears as they sat in his room at the Hale house and he told her how hard it was to mix with the pack, when every time they sparred he got flashbacks to trying to kill them when under the control of abusive assholes.
So yeah, after all that time, these calm coloured walls and this cotton bed set were familiar to her, oddly comforting, a reminder of when things hadn't been quite so bad. The tiny grey teddy that was currently clutched to her chest was almost the last security blanket Stiles had in her life, smelling like Jackson and Lydia and so strongly of that pack that was deeply ingrained into her.
Stiles had heard other members of the pack come and go. Isaac and Danny swapping with Boyd and Erica when they came home, Derek swapping with them after that; all of them sitting outside of the locked door into Jackson's room. She's assuming one of them have called him to come back from spending the day at his family's home with Lydia.
For some reason, she wants him to come back and curl up beside her. She wants him to read to her from books that other people, people outside of the pack that still looked at him as some self-centred jock, would believe out of his understanding. She wants him to lay his head in her lap and laugh with her at old episodes of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
Stiles wants to be normal, just for a little while.
Jackson is sitting on the edge of the bed with his fingers trailing lightly along her arm as she wakes up. Stiles gives him what she hopes is a smile as she shifts and moves until she is resting back against the headboard.
"Hey."
"What're you doing in my bed, Stilinski?" Jackson smirks at her, shifting himself so that he is leaning against the wall on a right angle to her, sitting cross-legged so that he doesn't interrupt her space like he usually would. Stiles sighs, reaching forward to tug at the bottom of his jeans until he gets the idea and stretches them out over the top of her own legs.
"Memory foam mattress, Jacky-boy, where else would i go for my afternoon nap?" Jackson graces her with an amused smile but they both know her attempts at joking are falling flat. There isn't the same enthusiasm, the same sparkle in her eyes.
"Anyway-" Stiles coughs out, sneaking a glance over at the bedroom door, "How'd you even get in? I locked the door." Sinking further down the wall and into the bed as he sighs, Jackson waits until only his shoulders and head are supported against the wall and he looks like a petulant twelve year old before replying.
"I had to break it. Not that it took much." He shrugs as he looks at her. "It doesn't matter, Derek said he'll get it fixed tomorrow. And it didn't cause too much of an issue. Hell, you slept through it happening." Stiles can feel herself blushing, humming in reply and letting her fingers twitch nervously in the comforter that she had dragged over herself some time during her nap.
"Hey." With concerned eyes, Jackson reached out and untangled her fingers from the fabric. He seemed to consider what he was going to say or do before continuing.
"How about, i go and shoo the rest of them out for the day so they can't interrupt us, make some popcorn, and we can watch whatever god-awful movie you like, huh?" Beneath them, Stiles could just about hear the quiet closing of the front door. Knowing that everybody had already filed out and that she could just relax and watch movies without magic or fear or pain helped to settle her mind and she nodded, gaining an honest smile from Jackson.
He climbed over her and off the bed carefully, throwing a wide arm gesture behind him and towards the wall of DVD's as he went out of the door. Stiles stifled a laugh, crawling down the bed until she could sit off the edge at the end and consider the choices before her.
Jackson took his time coming back, but Stiles understood when he came through the door with his arms laden with food. An overflowing bowl of popcorn with two sandwiches balanced on top of it, two bags of chips on top of those, all crowed in the centre of his arms and cushioned in by four bottles of Gatorade. She just huffed out a laugh at him, making grabby hands in his direction until he deposited everything on the bed beside her and then climbed in and over again, settling down with his legs splayed sideways and his head resting on her thigh.
"Really, Stiles? Again?" Jackson mock glared at the television on his wall. Stiles laughed, dropping a handful of sweet popcorn onto his chest.
"Quiet, nairwolf, you love inaccurate werewolf movies just as much as i do."
"But Teen Wolf? Really? It's- well, horribly inaccurate isn't even the word for it."
"But you enjoy it anyway." Before Jackson could reply, Stiles lifted half of a sandwich up, shoving it into his half-open mouth.
"Now shut up and watch."