They recon at his house.

Like they always do.

It's a new place. Built where the old place used to stand. Derek started planning it right after he realised he needed spare bedrooms for all of them, especially because Scott was still studying Vet Science and preferred to live in a pig sty instead of an actual home.

Isaac and Allison are the last to arrive and they trudge through the door slowly with Isaac closing the front door behind him.

Stiles doesn't usually spend nights at his place, and when he does he usually just takes the couch, or crashes in Scott's bed, or his Dad's place. But it's a full house tonight and Derek's definitely not dumping an unconscious-previously-dead Stiles on the couch, no matter how comfortable it is.

-x-

"You know the study upstairs could easily be turned into your room, right?" Derek offers. No-one can ever say he never put it out there once or five times.

Stiles is almost all the way asleep, sprawled on his stomach on the couch like he owns it.

"I'm good, dude," He drawls.

Derek takes in the long fingers trailing the carpet, raises an eyebrow at the snuffle that leaves Stiles' mouth. He grabs a throw from the back of the armchair to his left and pegs it at the kid. Stiles flails an arm out to catch it and half shakes the throw over himself.

"See you in the morning," Derek throws over his shoulder as he climbs the stairs.

It's not loud enough for human ears, but Stiles has known long enough that he never really needs to raise his voice very much around werewolves.

"Thanks, Sourwolf."

-x-

Deaton informs them that Stiles will be unconscious for at least another few hours. Something (or a bunch of witches) sucked pretty much all the life out of him, hard enough and fast enough to stop Stiles' heart.

Derek watches as Scott fields every question Deaton throws at him. He's known Scott long enough now to know that the alpha wasn't about to tell Deaton anything until he got Stiles' explanation to what happened in that clearing.

It's Derek, Deaton and Scott gathered around Derek's bed with Stiles resting peacefully under the covers. It unnerves him, the way the kid is lying so straight and still. He's seen Stiles sleep enough times to know that there should be awkward limbs and light snuffles instead of this motionless coma.

"Give this to him when he wakes up, it should help," Deaton hands Scott a vial of orange liquid as they head towards the door. "If he doesn't wake up by tomorrow, give me a call."

Derek steps aside to let them pass.

He's still standing by his bedroom door with his arms crossed over his chest when Scott returns and stops beside him.

They've been through enough screaming matches in the last couple of years to know that the best way for Derek to acquire need-to-know information is if he didn't push, and Scott isn't pressured. During Stiles' first year away, Derek had more than had his fair share of jumbled sentences and half-remembered recaps. Scott needed time to process and calibrate before relaying. Without Stiles' constant presence and not being able to pick up phone calls all the time, or answer emails every second of every day, Scott had had to readjust to (sometimes) using his own brain as his soundboard.

So Derek takes in a quiet breath and waits.

"All the research and evidence told us it was pixies," the young alpha begins.

"I know."

"We weren't ready for them."

"I know," he replies again.

"It was a trap."

"It's certainly starting to look that way," Derek agrees. Now tell me how Stiles ended up in the picture.

"We got past the forest and there were pixie dust trails everywhere. They led to all different directions so we fanned out. Allison and Kira, the twins, and me and Isaac. One second we were hunting and then the next, I felt–," Scott shakes his head trying to find the right words. "They were in the trees, in the shadows, chanting. I could feel little pinpricks, like…electric shocks snapping at me. At first they were just annoying, but then they started to get stronger and more painful. Isaac started yelping and I could feel all of us being herded…"

Derek's frowning so hard he can't feel his forehead. He realises he's glaring intently at Scott and makes a conscious decision to relax his brow.

"It was so easy for them to drive us into that clearing. I had no control over my body. They were strong, Derek," Scott looks him in the eye as he says this. "I've never seen anything like them before. The ground was shaking, the wind—came out of nowhere - and it was like there was something…pulling at me. Like, on the inside. I can't explain it. I wanted to move but I couldn't. I couldn't turn my head, all I could see from the corner of my eye was Isaac's face starting to turn blue because of some invisible force around his throat, and I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even scream."

Derek can sense the others listening in on their conversation – those with supernatural hearing anyway – and he doesn't like the way Isaac and the twins don't interrupt to say Scott's got it wrong. Doesn't like how they're listening to this whole thing without butting in.

"I had my eyes open when it started and they were totally alpha'd out, I couldn't shift them back. And then, one of them came up to me until she was right in front of me, but no matter what I did I couldn't smell anything of her – I didn't pick up anything. It was like they'd found a way to block their scent."

-x-

Scott committed everything he could see of her to memory. It was easier to hunt creatures down when he remembered what they looked like. And he would definitely take this bitch down – right after he and the pack got out of this mess.

He takes in her black eyes as she leans into him, almost touching the tip of his nose with her own.

"Brave alpha," she drawls softly. All he can do is watch as she raises a finger and strokes it down the left side of his face, temple to chin. "Such beautiful red eyes you have."

The wind swirls around them like a hurricane and he tries to turn his head but fails. Instead, he keeps his senses honed in on the other five members of his pack.

"Don't bother," she says, watching him struggle. "You're all frozen unless my coven and I let you go. And we won't be doing that any time soon. Your pack is filled with blood."

Scott hides his alarm at the mention of blood. Knows better than to show anxiety and fear at the face of what's starting to look like imminent death.

He's just about to try to reply when the witches start to hum a deepthroated sound. Isaac shifts beside him and starts to move forward. His movements are awkward and jerky and Scott realises that his steps are against his will.

"Invenies potestas in de sanguis de lupus," the witches murmur.

Isaac gives a surprised yelp, sounding a lot like the pup he always denies he is, and continues to stagger awkwardly towards the tree line. Another witch is in front of him, mirroring his every step, her eyes focused on his face as she walks backwards without hesitation, mouth moving along with the chanting around them.

Scott tries to yell, scream, anything. But again – nothing.

-x-

"I seriously thought we were done for, I didn't know what to do. And then all of sudden Stiles was there. Completely out of the air – no don't look at me like that, Derek, I know what I saw, what we all saw. He appeared out of thin air and called to the one standing in front of me. She turned away from me and I don't know how, but none of us could hear the rest of what he was saying to her. He didn't look at us once, it was like he was…possessed."

Scott pauses for a second and glances towards the bed. They both lay eyes on a still unconscious Stiles, but Scott grabs his arm anyway, leads him out of the room and pauses in the hallway - out of human earshot.

"I've watched that mouth talk my ear off my whole life, Derek. I saw when he told her to let us go. He said something about them not knowing what they were up against. She shook her head and raised her hands towards him. A red ball of light shot out of her hands, and I was freaking out dude because I thought it was going to kill him, but, Stiles—h-he, he caught it. He caught it, Derek. He held it in his hands like a soccer ball. He made it grow until it was as big as a satellite dish, and then he heaved it up and slammed it into the ground. There was a bright light that exploded all around us, and there was a roaring sound, and the wind was–it was like a hurricane."

Scott's words were running together so quickly that Derek had to concentrate to keep up. The alpha was so worked up that he spoke in short, quick bursts like he just couldn't wait to get what he saw out of his head.

"Stiles must've done something to lift the spell because I was able to move my arms and shield my eyes from the light. The wind went away but the light stayed, then I think I grabbed for Kira behind me…and then I could hear them screaming. All of them. Like they were being burned alive." Scott is staring blankly at a spot on the floor between them, eyes glazed over and lost in the memory.

"Someone grabbed my shoulder from behind, and when I turned around I could just make out Lydia running out of the trees, and then she was screaming too."

Scott takes a breath and Derek can hear his heartbeat hammering away a hard, pounding beat.

"The light went away, and I see Isaac looking around him. And then suddenly Stiles was in front of us. He was breathing really hard like he was having a panic attack and," Scott shook his head, struggling to find the words. "There was…something different about his eyes. Some sort of, I don't know, pin? of…light? I—" Scott shakes his head helplessly. "He asked if we were okay, and then I saw his eyes go back to normal and he dropped like a sack of potatoes. And that's when I called you. And, you know the rest."

-x-

He walks into his kitchen and sees broad shoulders covered by a plaid shirt. Stiles is busy stirring some sort of soup on his stove and he wonders when his house had become such a communal area for the pack. And since when had Stiles started to fill out those plaid shirts?

"That stuff better be able to kill a kelpie or you've got no reason to be in my kitchen," Derek says. He's surprised by the lack of animosity in his tone but doesn't pause to question it too deeply.

He hears rather than sees the small smirk. "Not even if it's good enough to feed a nasty wolf like you?"

Derek's close enough to the bar now that it seems only natural to take a stool by its back, flip it around, and straddle it.

"Since when did you cook?" He asks, ignoring the friendly barb from the younger man.

Stiles finally turns an easy, hazel gaze at him as he continues to stir. "College'll do that to a person. It doesn't take long for pizza pockets and toast to start tasting like cardboard."

Derek just raises an eyebrow.

"These, though…" Stiles continues, pulling vials full of green stuff out of his back and front pockets and lining them up on the bar between them as he speaks. "These

will kill kelpies. Just aim and throw."

Derek's lips move with an almost impressed twitch. He's about to say something about his almost-impressed reaction when Stiles speaks again.

"But first, food. Food is good."

-x-

The clock ticks over to 4AM.

It takes him at least an hour after Scott finishes his story to finally get Kira to coax their alpha to get some sleep with a promise to wake him if there's any change.

He doesn't appreciate the seemingly too-long pauses between the rise and fall of Stiles' chest. Doesn't like the blue tinge still staining the edges of Stiles' mouth as well, but it's definitely better than the previously ashen hue to his skin hours earlier.

Derek's about to resign himself to another hour in the armchair by his own bed when he notices a twitch in the middle finger of the hand he's been glaring at for the past ten minutes. He almost cracks his neck by how fast he turns to look at Stiles' face. They're no larger than narrow slits, but Stiles' eyes are open and blinking at him calmly.

"Doesn't your face ever hurt from glaring like that all the time?" Stiles slurs. Derek's eyebrows creep even closer together as he watches Stiles lift a hand up to his own forehead.

-x-

"I'm fine," he continues, as he rubs the spot above his left brow. Stiles ignores the pounding in his temples and tries for a demeanour that would cause less worry. It's just his luck to wake up when it's Derek's turn to watch him.

Said wolf continues to glare at him. He watches as Derek leans forward and looks him right in the eye.

"You know I can tell when people lie, right?"

Stiles looks away from Derek's discerning gaze and tries for sarcasm. "Um, hello? Sidekick of the true alpha here, remember? So, duh."

He senses Derek brush his sarcasm off with a frustrated shake of his head.

"Don't do that," he says as he raises a finger and points it at Stiles' face. "You can't bullshit your way out of this one, Stiles. They all saw whatever the hell you did today, and I'm not Scott or Lydia or Isaac, I'm not gonna hang back and wait for you to make up some story. You tell me right now what the hell you've been hiding, and how you did what you did."

"I—"

"—Don't." Derek warns again, eyes boring holes into his skull as Stiles focuses on anything but Derek's face.

For a brief moment he wonders if Derek is thinking about the last time, with the nogitsune. He wonders if the others are just waiting around the corner for some hidden signal before they jump him. Wonders if they've already talked about him behind his back while he was out cold.

Maybe that's why Derek's the one by his bedside. Because he would be the right choice. Cold and calculating, Derek would be able to do things the others couldn't bring themselves to.

"Stop that!" Derek snarls with a flash of his wolf eyes and startling Stiles out of his inner monologue. He's surprised at how well Derek is reading him considering how little they've seen each other the past few years.

"I didn't—" he blurts.

"We don't think you're possessed, dumbass," Derek snaps.

Stiles doesn't even bother feigning ignorance. "How did you even—"

"I'm not blind, Stiles. And you, you—don't ever play poker with that stupid face."

"Oh my god, we're just full of insults-for-Stiles today aren't we? Did I just not die earlier or…?"

"Yeah, speaking of earlier. You still haven't answered my question."

"What question? It wasn't a question." Stiles replies smugly. He knows he's being an evasive jackass but he just needs some more time, dammit! How exactly was he supposed to explain – to Derek, of all people – what he's been doing in college all this time aside from acquiring a degree in Occult Science and Mythology?

Derek's eyes sharpen even further, and the finger he's still pointing with is almost touching Stiles' nose as he cuts off whatever Stiles is about to blurt out with another abrupt don't!, with the even think about it tacked on right after in the silence that follows.

Like a big, fat, sourwolf-sized exclamation mark.

-x-

He sees the wheels in Stiles' head turning. There's a quiet hesitance in his gaze that Derek has never seen before. From all the years they've known each other, Stiles had always been all kinds of impulsive, almost to the point of careless. But this time, Derek can almost see the pause in him. The hesitance.

Stiles opens his mouth again but Derek cuts him off. Again.

"Don't lie," but the threat in his voice is gone.

He doesn't know why it's suddenly so important that Stiles not lie to him. This moment shouldn't feel like anything different, but for some reason it does, and he knows that whatever comes out of Stiles' mouth in the next moment will probably shape everything else that comes after it between them.

Stiles snaps his mouth shut. His eyes slide away from Derek's for a second before shifting back to meet his gaze.

"I'm…I'm bullshit at it most times," Stiles' eyes wander away and then back again and Derek's intrigued by this uncertainty that he's never seen before. "Sometimes I can't even get it to work properly, but I've been dabbling. And there's people at school that I know who've been teaching me, and they say I can help people, that it's strong in me. I just—I'm learning. I've been learning for a while now…and when I found out that you guys weren't about to face pixies, I panicked. There was no time to—I panicked."

It has occurred to Derek on numerous occasions that he's probably spent at least half of the time he's known Scott and Stiles trying to decipher the stilted gibberish that pours out of their mouths, but Derek thinks he's gotten quite good at it, considering. Most times he just replies with a confused sigh and a frustrated—

"—what?"

Stiles looks almost bashful as he murmurs quietly, "The spark. M-my spark. I've been…dabbling."

His hand lifts slightly and Derek's eyes widen as thin, golden tendrils of light start to sliver around Stiles' long slender fingers as he wriggles them softly. Derek doesn't know whether to smack the offending limb away or be careful with it. Hasn't had to deal with a kid who's been meddling with magic before.

"Stiles…" he murmurs warningly as he backs off a little.

Stiles looks at him with a half worried, half guilty expression.

"It's just a parlour trick," he assures dejectedly, "something about manipulating the particles in the air and bending light. It won't do you any harm, I swear. I told you I'm mostly not that good."

Derek's still staring open mouthed at the swirling, glittering ribbons of light when Stiles suddenly shoves his hand towards him and wriggles his fingers frantically.

"You wanna touch it?" he asks with a sneaky grin.

Derek's shock is washed away by the overwhelming urge to roll his eyes. Before he can say anything there's a muffled thud from the other side of the house followed by the sound of smothered giggles, and he wonders how that last part must have sounded without the aid of visuals to someone just tuning in.

Scott's ewwwwww, dudes, gross! is enough to make Derek clamber to his feet and rush to the doorway to rectify the situation.

"Whatever it is you're thinking, it's NOT!" he yells into the empty hallway.

Stiles is snickering into his pillow in the background as Lydia's voice reaches him from another side of the house.

"It is 4AM in the morning and I am not getting any beauty sleep. You all better shut up, and Stiles, I will cut off those fingers!"

Derek turns to Stiles with a questioning look and the kid just shrugs with his reply. "She tried to surprise me on campus one time and caught me trying to set things on fire."

Derek feels his surprise fading away with the end of Stiles' casual words.

"She's right, it's 4AM," he takes the potion Deaton left for Stiles from the bedside table and hands it to the kid.

"Oh, uh-uh," Stiles murmurs with a shake of his head. "I don't do miscellaneous potions anymore."

Derek sighs. "It's from Deaton, it's supposed to get rid of any residual spell marks or…whatever."

He watches quietly as Stiles takes the little bottle from him and sniffs. He cringes but brings it to his mouth and downs the concoction all in one go. Derek stays by the door and resists the urge to tuck Stiles in. Really?

He turns away from the kid and grabs the door handle.

"Get some rest because we're gonna have a really big conversation tomorrow," he throws over his shoulder without looking back.

-x-