If Stiles had ever needed any proof that Derek would do, literally, anything for her; it is this night. What had started off as a dinner to entice her dad to come visit again had turned into the most awkward collection of people Derek could ever have imagined crammed in around a table.
Once Scott had been invited, it had only been a matter of time before Stiles had began obsessing about making sure Allison knew she was welcome to, and then Chris wouldn't let Allison walk into an uncertain pack territory without protection, so of course he had to come along.
Frankly, the least awkward person was the one adult at the table that this entire thing had been planned for.
The Sheriff was sober. Honest to God, not a drop in two whole weeks, sober. He looked fresher, more alert, and Stiles wasn't screaming herself raw trying to block out the sounds of his thoughts bouncing around in her head. All in all, Derek was going to count that part a win and hopefully call it a night. Who needs food, anyway? Not him. No-siree. Not if it comes with this amount of tension and nervous giggles.
The way that Stiles keeps throwing him desperate pleas for help with her eyes, accompanied with sharp little jolts of electric magic when she gets a little overwhelmed with how off-track her plan seems to be going, tells him that he had better buck his ideas up.
And if this dinner means that much to her, then it means even more to him.
That is his justification, at least, when he finds himself helping an extremely panicked and sweaty Isaac make sure his roasted potato's don't burn while he carves chicken.
There's almost an entire Christmas dinner laid out along the counters, ready to be served, and only a few things left to be taken out of the over or off of the stove. Isaac had volunteered himself for kitchen duty before Stiles had put in a ridiculous online shopping order and decided Christmas had come early this year in the Hale Pack household. The poor kid, as talented as he is, was more than under prepared and had spent two days scanning cook books with an enthusiasm that reminds Derek of post-bite, pre-nice Isaac. Twitchy and with a sharp edge, worried at all times. Emotions that had threaded through Stiles' magic shielding and mixed into her own well of worry over this night.
It had been a pretty bad few days, overall.
At least now that everyone was here and it was about as awkward as Derek had anticipated, they could get it over with. Stiles could begin to let people build or destroy whatever bridges they wanted and then it could become more casual, it could be whatever the hell Stiles wanted, just once they got this night out of the way for her.
And Derek was going to be as enthusiastic as he possibly could. Even if he hated boiled carrots and could only ever think of blood and pain and death when he looked at Allison and saw Kate's face staring back at him.
Isaac puts out pretty amazing food, for being as unprepared and worried as he had been. It's warm and fresh and good, all the things Derek had once thought he couldn't have again, and it provides a particularly helpful distraction when conversation falls flat around the table as they sit down to eat.
Chris sits beside Allison, who is pale faced and avoidant as she sits quietly beside Scott. The pack is spread around wildly in a semi-square formation around Stiles' position directly opposite her father. There are titters of over-enthusiastic laughter whenever two people reach for a bowl at the same time, the Sheriff keeps nudging Scott in the side and shooting pointed glances in his daughters direction.
Stiles isn't eating anything.
Derek is sat right next to her, and the only thing on her plate are the slices of carved chicken Isaac had dished out to each plate before allowing them all to roam free with everything else. Although she isn't eating anywhere near what she should be, and nothing like before, Stiles has been better about eating recently. Especially since she began getting the magic under control, and if anything, Derek had thought the stress of all of this stilted and painful conversation would make her want for something to occupy her before she inevitably said something that made her gesture wildly trying to back pedal and begin blushing.
He begins to worry when she pales significantly, mouth twisting into a tight line. No one else seems to have noticed, having fallen into an almost sarcastic conversation about the state of sport at the moment, so he reaches out to grasp the hand she has laid in a fist on the table beside her plate.
"What's going on?" He whispers to her quietly. His betas might be able to hear, but it really does look like they're on the verge of something like a conversation now and aren't really listening.
Stiles' hand tightens beneath his as she breathes out through her nose heavily.
"I'm just a little warm; I'm going to get some water." Stiles shakes him off before he can reply, leaving his hand to thump heavily down on the table.
Every face turns to him suddenly, conversation falling flat as they stare at him and then at the empty space beside him. He knows that, like himself, his betas are listening to Stiles find her way into the kitchen. That they can all hear the too-fast thrumming of her heart.
Everybody hears it when the glass that had been in her hand falls to the floor with a crash, the sound of Stiles' body following it soon after.
Derek is out of his seat before his mind even registers fully what is happening, racing through, half transformed, to find Stiles struggling to sit up against the cabinets behind her. Around her there is a pool of water and smashed glass, tinged pink where her soft and human skin has caught on the sharp edges and is bleeding into the wet.
He's on his knees beside her, getting the denim of his jeans damp, as the Sheriff takes the other side. Together, they get her resting back against the solid wood, panting out breath after pained breath with her eyes clenched and her hands now curled into pink-red bloody fists over the swell of her abdomen. Under her laboured breath, Derek can just about hear her mumbling words over and over in time with the clenching of her fingers.
"Stiles, what is it? What's wrong?" From her he can only smell the bitter fear and pain that he had hoped they were leaving behind; can only see that somewhere, somehow she is in distress.
"Hurts." She manages to grip out, throwing out a hand to grab for her father who clasps it back as tightly and Derek knows he dares. Stiles' knuckles are white with the force of her grip on him; there must be vaults of Stiles' magical energy flowing through the man but he doesn't even flinch, just gives her that one point to ground her on and offers all the comfort that any of them might have right now.
"What hurts, sweetheart? Where does it hurt?" The Sheriff uses his other hand to brush wisps on hair from her pale, clammy face while Derek holds her upright and steady with on hand over her shoulder and the other covering her own over her abdomen.
"The-" A low, drawn out groan of pain interrupts her as she curls up over her protruding belly. "The baby." She manages to claw out once whatever stab of pain had caught her off guard lessens. Derek watches as her head lolls momentarily, almost disconnected from what he is seeing. Stiles is paling quickly, breathing erratic and heart beating beyond what even his enhanced senses can keep up with.
It should have been expected, when she goes limp and unresponsive in their arms.
The silence that falls over them is deafening and stunned, all of them stood or knelt watching as she falls gracelessly and without consciousness into the waiting hands of her father and her alpha.
It must just be a moment, no time at all that feels like a lifetime, before people finally kick into gear. Chris shoulders John out of the way while, surprisingly, Boyd and Lydia move Derek's heavy body off to the side. Together, they lift her out of the water and up, up, up onto the breakfast nook in the kitchen.
Derek thinks, a little hysterically, that it's a shame they hadn't had a chance to clean that today.
Above him, where the people who are actually functioning exist, he can hear babble and letters that he thinks are supposed to make words but all he can hear when he tries to listen is the sound of Stiles pain. All he can see when he thinks he is looking up at them from where he is kneeling in the wet is the sickening way that Stiles fell into them when she had hardly been able to touch anyone mere weeks ago.
He's not sure how long both he and the Sheriff sit there in all that broken glass while the rest of his pack rush around, shouting things at each other, but he doesn't manage to pull himself out of his stupor until someone thrusts a phone at him and propels him off the floor.
"What- I don't- Who am I calling?" Derek manages to get out eventually, clutching the phone to his chest like it's the only thing keeping him sane. Maybe it is, maybe it's the only thing keeping him from look at Stiles and wondering why he can't see those stupidly expressive eyes or hear her quietly powerful voice or why he can't feel that constant thrum of energy that should surround her.
"Deaton!" Jackson shouts – is he shouting? – from about a foot away from him. "Stiles has gone into labour."
Derek had been so blind to everything around him. He had knelt on the floor in pink-tinged wet and let himself believe it was spilt water and cut palms. Easily cleaned, easily fixed, not a threat.
Deaton arrives and brings with him a flurry of calm that seems to settle them, most of them, into some kind of order so that he can find out what is going on. Erica, strangely enough, is situated between Stiles' legs, knelt up on the breakfast bad and covered in wet and red like an exaggeration of where Derek had knely. Her words are some of the first he's really heard since Stiles passed out.
" Stiles waters have broken. At first, we thought she had passed out from the pain, but well-" She gestures at space that Derek isn't tempted to investigate, for reasons more about Stiles respect and her recent ordeals than any other kind of fear. Deaton seems to share no such regard for her sufferings or dignity, appearing beside Erica – although his feet remain entirely on the floor.
Somewhere inside himself Derek had hoped that Deaton would – well who knows what he had hoped, something other, he thinks. Instead, he pales, takes in a deep breath and tries to centre himself.
"Alright, that's a lot of unexpected blood." Derek had smelt it, strong and cloying, and denied in the deepest recesses of his conscious that it was not, in any circumstances, Stiles' blood filling up the room with that bitter metallic taste on the back of his throat and coating his tongue.
"What do we do, take her to a hospital?" Some other, familiar, voice asks. Shaky and quiet and only just heard.
"It seems like our best bet, at the moment. Stiles is around ten weeks from being full term and if we want them to – well yes. Hospital is our best bet." Derek watches as Boyd swoops forward, arms steady and large as they curl under her body lightly and lift with ease. He is a step from following them before a voice, Isaac he thinks, coughs wetly to interrupt.
"What about her magic? Won't it, y'know, interfere?" The pack stops, turns, then turns again to face Deaton while Boyd hesitates with a bleeding Stiles in the doorway.
"No, at the moment all of her magic is trying to figure out what it's meant to be protecting. It won't go for something growing in Stiles so much as it will do whatever it can to save her. Hopefully, that will mean that it will stem enough of this bleeding, wherever it is coming from, that she won't die of blood loss while doctors get the child out safely."
Collective sighs, relief relief relief, and Derek shares a horrified look with the Sheriff over the expanse of a room.
They move when Boyd moves.
To the cars, separating and panicking, leaving food and fluid and blood behind to be dealt with later.
Into the hospital, where everything is bland and too bright, dulled and too sensitive. Time isn't a construct when all you hear is surgery and blood loss and unstable.
Derek is pushed into a seat by someone, familiar scent, familiar touch, warm voice. The Sheriff is put next to him and he knows, knows inside of him where all the bad things live, that they're both hoping and praying when everyone knows that they've never saved a person with faith before.
Distantly, Derek thinks about how Stiles became their linchpin. The one thing they revolved around, always and without fault. He thinks about how they got to this point, and how they saved her then failed her all over again.
He thinks about what they will do without her.
All he can think about is life without Stiles and how they could possibly live without their life, he's thinking about it so hard and so much that he almost misses it. Almost misses the moment when faith, hopes and prayer for the first time, saves someone he doesn't think he could bare to lose. When some doctor who smells like exhaustion and elation and the thick, painful scent of Stiles' blood says that one word he hadn't allowed himself to think because it would hurt too much when it wasn't the reality outside of his head.
Alive.