This was... interesting to write. I had already decided how this particular event would go for a while now, but that didn't make it any less difficult to put to words.
Anyway, this chapter shows I'm in the Let Stiles Say Fuck club, enjoy!
September 26th, 2009
By some unknown miracle - that just goes by a very loud alarm - Stiles wakes up a little earlier on that Saturday, early enough to make smoothie bowls for his aunt and cousin before the former leaves for work and the latter goes to hang out with some other school friends. He's just contemplating what to do and whether to take Damon up on his offer - of the book and not the other insinuated ones - when a notification noise makes him look at his phone.
Baby Gilbert(10:42a.m.): free today?
Stiles(10:42a.m.): sure.
Stiles(10:43a.m.): gym?
He'd had a feeling that Jeremy enjoyed it last time, and technically working out can also become addictive, so he won't be too surprised if that's the reason for the latest text.
Baby Gilbert(10:44a.m.): pick me up?
Stiles(10:44a.m.): there in 10.
Stiles goes up to his room and changes into something more sportive than sweats and a hoodie, grabbing his gym bag and heading to the kitchen to fill the water bottle in it before heading out. He doesn't text Jeremy once he makes it to the house, instead walking up to it and ringing the doorbell. This time it takes a little longer for Jenna to open it, looking once again surprised to see him.
"Stiles, back again?" She greets with a smile, stepping to the side, "Come on in."
"Yeah I'm just waiting on Jeremy," he informs, stepping into the house just as Jeremy peeks out from the top of the stairs.
"Aunt Jenna, have you seen any of my socks?" He asks before spotting Stiles, "Hey, I just gotta find those and we can go."
"Laundry room," Jenna tells him and a barefoot Jeremy rushes down the stairs to fetch them, nearly colliding with Elena who was coming back from the direction of the kitchen.
"Stiles, what are you doing here?" She asks with a slight smile in a confused tone.
"Just picking Jeremy up to hang out," he tells her, shoving his hands in his pockets.
Something crosses Elena's expression then and she opens her mouth to say something, but Jeremy interrupts by rushing back up the stairs, probably carrying up his socks. She waits until her brother is out of hearing range to speak, "You do remember he's only fourteen, right?"
"I- yeah?" he frowns, not sure where that was going, and judging by Jenna's expression she has no idea either. "What's that go to do with anything?"
"It's just that- you were Damon's date, and he's… older. But that doesn't mean it's alright to get involved with my little brother," she explains and Stiles can only stare at her in complete bafflement, with Jenna not far behind in mirroring his reaction.
He's not even sure if that's a veiled homophobic comment or just a glimpse into what she really thinks of his character.
"What the hell, Elena?" Jeremy exclaims from the last step of the stairs, startling all of them.
"I'm just making sure-" She doesn't even get to finish speaking before Jenna starts pulling her toward the living room.
"That was out of line," Stiles can hear her telling Elena as they walk away, as she should.
"Uh- I'm good to go," Jeremy says after a moment, snapping Stiles out of his shock.
He nods and motions for the door, still too stupefied at his friend's assumption to speak. He does turn to Jeremy once they're in the car, wanting to make sure the kid isn't uncomfortable. "You do know I'm not trying to seduce you or whatever, right?" he raises one brow, "I have a type and it's called over the age of consent," he jokes lightly.
Jeremy thankfully only rolls his eyes, not seeming worried at all, "Good to know, and I'm sorry about her," he offers but Stiles just waves off the apology, since he's not the one that needs to offer it. "Can we go now?"
"Yep," Stiles starts the engine and decides to just forget about the past few minutes.
"So… we're just not gonna talk about it?" Jeremy asks once they're sitting at the Grill for a late lunch.
They'd gone over a bit of form that morning, with Stiles testing the kid's memory on where to punch, and he even caved in showing him a takedown for being grabbed. Not that most people remember to use specific self-defense techniques when being grabbed unless they're particularly ingrained into their instinct, but Jeremy still seemed to enjoy making his back hit the mat repeatedly as he tried to get it right.
"Talk about what?" Stiles feigns obliviousness, munching on a bite of stake.
Jeremy lowers his voice to a whisper, "y'know, you being Captain America or something," he says, making Stiles almost choke on his meal and glare at him after the coughing fit stops.
"Dude," Stiles whispers back, "I'm not Captain America. You read comics?"
"Don't change the subject," Jeremy warns, catching his attempt. "And you broke a punching bag, I won't believe you just forgot bout it."
"First of all, I slightly damaged it, it didn't break," Stiles corrects, taking a sip of lemonade before continuing, "and no, I had a mini breakdown about it, but I'm good."
"And?" the kid looks at him expectantly. "Did you try doing it again?"
Stiles hesitates for a moment, glancing around the Grill and wondering if he should actually tell Jeremy he's apparently some sort of still unidentified mutant or supernatural creature now. The kid did see him show a ridiculous amount of strength and also didn't look about to let the subject go. "Sure did," he reveals eventually, holding back a slight smirk at the excited look that takes over the littlest Gilbert's expression.
"You've gotta show me the damage!" Jeremy insists, way too invested in this for Stiles' comfort in a public place.
He's not dumb, or at least he likes to think he's pretty smart, so he's not entirely clueless on the whole supernatural strength having to be a bit of a secret. Every bit of superhero media says so, and humans do have a history of persecuting anything slightly out of the norm, but hey… this is Jeremy, he's a kid and Stiles is growing kind of fond of him in a 'little sibling he never had' sort of way, so what's the harm, right?
"Maybe," he caves but immediately follows it with a warning look, "but you can't tell anyone."
"Obviously," Jeremy deadpans, giving him a 'do you think I'm an idiot?' look that makes Stiles snort. "Come on, let's go then."
"Whoa, slow down there," Stiles shakes his head, "I'm not the best at control yet, plus I need to get you home. We can do the show and tell next gym day, ok?"
Jeremy looks like he wants to insist but thinks better of it. It doesn't stop the kid from pouting about it for the rest of the meal though, but Stiles forgives it because it's kind of funny.
He ends up dropping Jeremy off at home an hour after since they had to finish lunch and Jeremy insisted on scheduling the next time in advance, he put an alarm on Stiles' phone and everything, but soon enough Stiles is back on his own, free to drive back to a safe forest spot and give training a second try. He'd prepared in advance this time and had a couple of ideas that called for a secluded corner to test them out. Soon enough, Stiles parks by a decent-looking forest spot, though not the same as last time just to be a little cautious. Grabbing his trusty notepad and a pen to shove into his pockets, he walks back into the wild.
Wild may be a bit much, he muses with a look around the forest.
Most of the trees are spaced out enough that the afternoon sun still shines through, so it feels less like a horror movie set and more like somewhere one would end up on a camping trip. He walks for a couple of minutes before judging it deep enough into the forest and stopping in front of a tree.
I won't damage this tree, Stiles tells himself, focusing on that as he rears back a fist and strikes at the tree trunk- and stares when it doesn't actually do much. Is it that easy? I can just- pick if I'm using human strength or Captain America stren- oh no Jeremy is rubbing off on me.
He shakes his head in amusement and dismisses the thought, instead focusing back on the strength tests. It takes him a while, but it's eventually established that yes he can actually dial back that easily, it's controlling the dial-up that gives him issues since it's hard to figure out how much strength is enough strength when you're not used to having that much of it. A few thinner trees do end up sacrificed in his quest to figure that out.
Stiles also finds out that he can jump pretty damn high, and that it's a bad idea to test that theory from under very thick tree branches perfectly capable of knocking him out when he crashes into them from below. On the other hand, climbing into said branches is a piece of cake and he ends up hanging upside-down from them by the knees for a while just for the fun of it, especially since the sun starts going down and it makes him feel like a bat or something.
He has some trouble modulating his speed, which is the last thing he chooses to work on, and it's already well into the evening when he realizes that running in the dark feels even better than during the day. Maybe it's because most wolves are nocturnal predators, which would explain why his vision also seems better in the dark the way he expected it to after looking more into wolves and their abilities. He's in the middle of a short sprint when the smell of smoke suddenly assaults his senses.
Is someone burning leaves? He wonders for a moment, absently changing directions to head toward the smell, but is disabused of that notion when the next inhale makes him gag and stumble to an abrupt stop.
It smells like burning flesh.
Stiles barely has time to make sense of that realization before something tackles him into the ground at an incredible speed - his head hitting the floor painfully but thankfully not hard enough to make him lose consciousness - and starts attacking his neck. He starts trying to push whatever attacked him away, but apparently, he needn't have worried because it moves away on its own with a pained hiss.
"Vervain," a raspy female voice whispers and Stiles scrambles to sit up, eyes only then registering that what attacked him hadn't been something but someone, a strangely dressed middle-aged looking woman with blood-red eyes and thin black veins protruding from her skin.
She looks a second about to attack him again when he starts to stand up, but something blurs in between them, a familiar-looking young girl with brown hair and worried brown eyes trained on the person that attacked him.
"Don't run off like that!" She chastises the older woman, whose bloody face - is that his blood? - suddenly goes back to looking human.
"He's on vervain," The lady that looks like she took the wrong path out of a Renaissance fair says, and the younger girl looks at him for a moment before suddenly rushing in his direction at clearly supernatural speed.
Stiles doesn't hesitate this time and meets the attack with one of his own, focusing all of his strength on pushing the attacker away and being rewarded with the sight of the girl's body flying away and hitting a tree a few meters back. She rushes to stand up, throwing him a fearful look - which doesn't make sense since she was the one attacking him - before blurring toward the older woman and speeding both of them away.
What. The. Fuck?
Stiles can only blink at the spot they had previously occupied, a little in awe of their speed and a lot in confusion about what the hell had just happened. Something keeps nagging him, a persistent thought at the corner of his mind, and suddenly he's reminded of the descriptions of the monsters that go bump in the night from the journal Damon let him borrow the other week.
Vampires.
It's a strange feeling, the abrupt realization that he's not the only supernatural creature around, but it's also strangely relieving even if the discovery came about through being attacked by a fellow supernatural being. Thinking of the attack makes him bring his hand up to the side of his neck, feeling for any injuries. It feels perfectly fine, but his hand does come back bloody so it's safe to assume he had been injured and it had healed as quickly as his other injuries have lately.
The continued smell of burning flesh eventually brings him back to the situation at hand, and Stiles only hesitates for a moment before continuing to head toward the point of origin, this time at a normal speed in case he stumbles into any other vampires viewing for a snack. His feet eventually bring him to what looks like ruins, the stone remains of what looks like some sort of public building by the size of the only remaining archway. And the smell and smoke are coming from below it.
It takes him a minute to find the entrance, a bit of a fall from the center of the remains into a narrow stone stairway leading to-
Damon?
He'd recognize the man leaning on the far wall of the chamber he ends up in anywhere, but he's never seen the man look so- wrecked. He doesn't even seem to have noticed Stiles, so he makes a point of remedying that, especially since the thick smoke coming from the open chamber opposite Damon is starting to get overwhelming.
"Damon!" He yells as he comes closer and slightly unfocused blue eyes immediately meet his, "What the hell is going on?"
His immediate response is a slightly hysterical laugh, "She's not here," the man whispers but Stiles still manages to hear, "She was supposed to be here!" his tone rises, tinged with anger.
"Who?" He tries to ask calmly, but there's smoke getting into his lungs and he's just been attacked a few minutes ago, so his tone is more urgent than soothing, "Who's she? And what's burning? We should get out of here!" he insists, stepping closer to his friend.
"If she doesn't get to live, they don't either," is the chilling answer he receives, making him pause any and all movement. "She's not-"
"I-is that the smell of people burning?" Stiles exclaims, staring at the smoking opening and wondering if he should look inside, but the smell-
"They're not people," Damon mocks, stumbling to his feet. Stiles can't help but take an instinctual step back. "They're already dead, anyway." the man leans back on the wall for support - he doesn't look too good. "I'm just making sure it sticks."
"They're not- what-" Stiles's eyes widen with realization not a second later, but is interrupted by a coughing fit that has him backing away to the edge of the stairs for a breath, "they're vampires?" he feels the need to confirm.
"Mhm," Damon nods, mouth stretching into a twisted sort of smile, "I had a torch- vampires are highly flammable," he explains with the inflection of someone telling a secret, moving closer to Stiles, "and I'm speaking from experience."
His brain immediately latches on to that declaration, suddenly overanalyzing every single interaction he's ever had with Damon, "You're a-" he starts, but the dropping fangs and reddening sclera of the man in front of him answer enough, and he barely has time to run all the way up the stairs before he's tackled into the forest floor.
"Damon, stop-" he glares at the supernatural creature holding him down, not sure where the man was going with the attack. He'd seen it coming, of course, since his friend seemed out of it even before blurting out what is clearly supposed to be a secret, but that doesn't mean he'll put up with it. In a quick movement, he leverages his superior strength and turns the situation around, shoving the vampire down on the ground and holding him down with a hand on his chest. "Tell me what's wrong, for fuck's sake!"
"Everything!" Damon exclaims, finally managing to push him away. They both stumble back to their feet, the vampire eyeing him warily while Stiles mostly feels concerned.
Then there's a gust of wind, suddenly blowing the rising smoke into his face and making him cough at the sudden inhalation of what he now knows are vampire remains. When he looks back in his friend's direction, Damon is nowhere to be found.
"What's that smell?" Caroline grimaces as he nearly bumps into her while making his way into the house.
He'd tidied up by the river, cleaning the blood from his neck and brushing off the ash from his hair and clothes, but it clearly hadn't been enough. "Someone was burning something," Stiles replies vaguely.
"Please take a shower," she tells him before shooing him toward the bathroom.
It turns out to be a longer shower than his cousin probably hoped for, with all the time Stiles spends just letting the water drip down his body in hopes of completely erasing the smell of burning vampire flesh, but he feels a little better later after slipping into clean, softener-scented sweatpants and falling face-first into the bed.
Fucking vampires, he thinks to himself, having finally gone past the surprise stage and into the analytic one.
There are, quite clearly, supernatural creatures in the world. It's no longer a conjecture or an attempt to explain his newfound powers, but a concrete fact, and that changes some things. Not much, of course, but he now knows who to ask about his own supernatural issues - at least once Damon deigns to talk to him again - and that the chances of Bonnie being an actual witch are higher than he previously thought. With that in mind, he reaches for his phone on the bedside table and starts typing a text.
Stiles(8:51p.m.): can we talk?
A quick note that the Teen Wolf show was pretty inconsistent with the whole being able to see in the dark thing (Derek could but Scott couldn't?) so I'm making the executive decision that it is a thing werewolves can do. Because it makes sense. (Now, if Stiles actually is a werewolf or not, that's still up in the air, for now, heh)
Also, I have no idea how they get into the tomb so I made that up. Sorry?
Anyway... please don't kill me XD