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januarylightSorry (again!) for the delay. I'm not sure this turned out quite as prompted (and not quite as I intended when I began), but it's done, thank God!
*
“That was a shoulder-tap of brotherly solidarity!” Scott says, which is a total lie, but Stiles wishes Derek were buying it. “It was light! It was a love-tap!”
Derek coils as if to spring, and Scott actually looks over his shoulder and considers fleeing back the way they came, which, no. Nobody is getting eaten today. Stiles is not about to watch his best friend get hunted down and torn to pieces like a fluffy bunny; he was traumatised enough when he had to watch the pack do that to an actual rabbit that one time, he’s not letting anyone turn cannibal on him here.
“Hey,” he says, shouldering in front of Derek, trying to block Scott from view. “It was a non-sexual, non-romantic tap, okay? It didn’t even hurt. See?” He grabs Derek’s wrist and puts his hand on his shoulder, hoping it will distract Derek for a minute or two. “Scott was just leaving!” he calls in that general direction.
“Scott is not leaving you alone!” Scott squeaks, voice sounding like he’s inhaled helium.
“Stiles will be fine,” Stiles says, biting down on his annoyance as Derek probes his arm through his shirt-sleeve. He’s pretty sure he will be fine, but he doesn’t really want Scott here if that isn’t the case. “You’re just going to make things worse. I’ll follow you out.”
“Okay,” Scott says. “No. No way. I’ll just—stay here.”
Derek and Stiles both twist to look at him over Stiles’ shoulder.
He clears his throat. “So, Derek,” he says, trying for brightness and almost making it. “Stiles thinks you haven’t told me anything about this whole heat thing because I don’t need to know, but I do, right? I mean, that wasn’t a question! You need to tell me about it now. For my own purposes, nothing to do with Stiles. Aaaall yours, buddy. I mean, not literally, not—“
“Why are you such an idiot,” Stiles says, because he always holds out hope that saying it will make him feel better about having to deal with the incontrovertible reality.
It takes Derek a minute to find his words, but he manages it. “I haven’t told you anything because I don’t know anything,” he says. “My family died before it was to be explained to me. I don’t know much about it at all, just what I saw, and I don’t know if any of that applies to me.”
“Okay,” Stiles says, trying to think about that, but it’s difficult to think about much of anything with Derek so close to him, holding on, twitching and distressed.
“It won’t happen to you,” Derek says. “You’re too young. Stiles is too young.” His hand tightens around Stiles’ arm until it’s painful, but he lets go quickly once he realises what he’s doing.
“It’s okay,” Stiles says. “I mean, not really, but it will be fine, we can—we can figure it out.”
“Really?” Scott asks sceptically. “Because Derek is the one who’s supposed to know what he’s talking about, so if he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on I’m not sure—I’m not sure what we should do. Derek said you should just stay away for a week, but would that work? Would it pass, or would you just be worse then?”
“I don’t know,” Derek says. “He should still do it.”
“Does it have to be me?”
“I don’t know,” Derek says, watching him carefully, and Stiles nods his head again and again, hands flexing anxiously.
“Is it permanent?” Stiles asks quietly.
“Sometimes,” Derek says, mouth twisting. “I—“
“Don’t know,” Stiles says on an exhalation. “Right.”
“You should try to get it out of your system with someone else,” Scott suggests. “Or, is it weird? The sex, I mean, when you’re in heat. Would you need another werewolf? Not volunteering!”
“I don’t know,” Derek rumbles, frustration obvious. “I have never been in heat before. Stop asking me stupid questions I don’t know the answer to!”
“They’re only stupid because you don’t know the answer,” Scott says, and Stiles can almost see Derek’s hackles rise.
“Okay!” Stiles says. “We’re going to go now. We’ll, uh, we’ll look into it, see if we can find anything out.” Derek drops his hands from Stiles and moves to let him pass, but he looks really sad about it. Whatever, Stiles doesn’t care. “We’ll, uh,” he says, low. “We’ll keep in touch, okay? I’ll call you when we find something out.”
Derek nods unhappily, and watches as Scott comes up behind Stiles, holding up his hands as he slides past.
“When, he says,” Scott mutters. “Hey, Allison read Twilight last month, maybe she’d have some kind of idea—“
“No,” Stiles says firmly, shoving Scott towards the front door, moving quickly and refusing to look back this time.
*
There’s a surprising lack of information in the books Stiles has managed to procure since Scott became a werewolf, but there is some, even if it’s conflicting.
He calls Derek.
“This one says fuck or die,” Stiles says bluntly.
“No,” Derek says, and Stiles isn’t reassured because he wasn’t worried.
“So this one says it’s about pack hierarchy, and you can do it with anyone of suitable ranking, or any outsider who will, uh, respect your status, even if they don’t know of it?” Derek doesn’t deny this one. “And this other one says the alpha, uh, tries to breed their mate until the moon is full.”
“Could be,” Derek says. “Could be something else. I have no idea which of the possibles it is, but I don’t have a mate, so that one isn’t.”
“I’ll, uh, keep looking,” Stiles says, and hangs up.
The internet is shockingly unhelpful when Stiles looks up ‘werewolves in heat’; he isn’t sure what he’d been expecting, really: less porn, or maybe less blogs with people roleplaying being werewolves going through their heat cycle as an excuse for porn—but he isn’t sure why he would have been expecting either of those things, since he isn’t actually new.
He regrets reading so many of the blogs, but he would’ve felt really dumb if they’d turned out to be written by actual werewolves. As it is, he may never have a wet dream about Derek again in his life.
“Hey, dude,” he says when Scott picks up. “Nada. Just a ton of emotional scarring. I would almost rather have read Twilight as my research. What’d Allison say?”
“She laughed,” Scott says. “And said she doesn’t know anything, but—“
“But what?” Stiles asks, perking up.
“Nothing,” Scott says. “I’m not doing it.”
“Come on, you have to, what?”
“No,” Scott says, “I’d cry at Derek’s funeral first, and I don’t really even like Derek,” and that’s how Stiles ends up sitting at Allison’s kitchen table as her father gives him a cup of coffee and a creepy smile.
“So, Stiles,” Mr Argent starts. “Allison said you had something you wished to discuss with me?”
“No,” Stiles says. “Not to say wished.”
“Oh,” Mr Argent says, and takes a sip of his coffee.
“More forced.”
“I see.” Mr Argent smiles at him. Creepy. “What is it?”
“Well—“ Stiles says, and knocks back half his cup of coffee, scalding his throat in the process. Mr Argent is still smiling when Stiles is finished choking and pounding on his chest. “Well—“ Stiles says again.
“I can ask Allison,” Mr Argent suggests.
“No!” Stiles says. “No, that’s okay, I’ll tell you. So, uh, maybe there’s this, ah—nothing, maybe there’s absolutely nothing going on, so—I should—just—“ He isn’t buying it. “—tell you. You don’t know my dad, right?”
“No,” Mr Argent says, so Stiles figures it’s safe to ignore the deepening scepticism being thrown his way.
“Okay, so—“ Stiles starts, and hurries on, because Mr Argent is looking a little bit like he might throw his coffee-cup to the floor, dive across his kitchen table, and choke a bitch, at this point. “So what do you know about what happens when werewolves go into heat? Because there may be a situation. That has nothing to do with Allison, okay, it isn’t Scott! And it has nothing to do with me, either, but, uh, maybe it does, but my dad does not have to get involved with this, okay? That would just be really embarrassing for me. Yeah, so, Derek Hale is in heat? That wasn’t a question.”
“The question, I assume, is what you should do about it.”
“Yes!” Stiles says, delighted at this easy understanding. “That was the question.”
“That will depend on Hale.”
“Derek doesn’t know anything about it,” Stiles says, rubbing his palms nervously against his jeans, because he isn’t sure he should be telling a hunter any of this, even if things have mostly been peaceful for a long time now, and he probably definitely shouldn’t be going behind Derek’s back about it, but they’re out of options.
“He doesn’t?”
“He was pretty young when his family died, and he’d managed to pick up bits and pieces, but not enough.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Mr Argent says, finishing off his coffee and putting the cup on the table so he can steeple his fingers, all the better to make Stiles squirm.
“Have the other members of the pack shown a noticeable increase in attraction towards the alpha lately?” he asks in a business-like tone.
“Uh—“ Stiles says, not sure whether to be baffled or horrified.
“Have there been any unexpected orgies recently with Hale at their centre?” Mr Argent clarifies impatiently, and okay, horrified, for sure.
“Unexpected?” Stiles asks faintly.
Mr Argent smiles. “I’ll take that as a no. Has Hale shown increased aggression?”
“Um.”
“Towards you?”
“Not towards me, no,” Stiles says, relieved, but Mr Argent doesn’t react like that was the right answer.
“Increased aggression towards other people triggered by you? Towards other members of his pack?”
“Kind of,” Stiles admits, oddly reluctant. “He can be kind of aggressive anyway? Not towards Allison! But it isn’t like his kicking Scott’s ass is a stretch.”
“Were you involved with Hale before this began?”
“No!” Stiles says, face burning. “What! Why does everyone think that?”
Mr Argent is amused. “Are you lying to me?” he asks, mouth curling up. “Keeping in mind that I’m not going to tell your father that werewolves exist because I’m outraged that a teenager is having sex.”
“Sex?” Stiles squeaks. “Who here is having sex? Neither of us! Or, uh—not me. Presumably you—are, oh God. Nobody I know is even thinking about having sex, not before marriage, after years of dating and, uh, checks, STD checks, and background and financial, and can I get out of this conversation now?”
“I need an answer,” Mr Argent says calmly.
“No!” Stiles says. “I—He doesn’t even—He wouldn’t even want that.”
Mr Argent hums. “Well, that isn’t true, not if he’s fixated on you.”
“Fixated?” Stiles asks, ignoring the rest of that, ignoring the nervous twist in his stomach.
“If he’s displaying territorial behaviour towards you alone it’s likely. Has he made any unusual attempts to be close to you?”
“Yes,” Stiles says, but doesn’t volunteer anything further.
“Scent-marking?”
“Um,” Stiles says, “not—really? Not—“
“Not yet,” Mr Argent says. “If this is a new relationship he’s more likely to fight it.”
“Can he fight it?”
“He can,” Mr Argent says slowly. “But he won’t succeed, not without help.”
“Okay.” Stiles blows out a shaky breath. “Okay, I can do that. And you’re going to help a guy out, right? You’re not going to tell my dad about any of this.”
Chris Argent lifts his hands in surrender and offers Stiles a quick smile. “I’m not going to go to the sheriff and start raving about werewolves,” he says, and Stiles decides to take that as agreement.
*
It’s always difficult to take Derek by surprise, and he’s more attuned to Stiles than usual, now, so Stiles is a little surprised himself when his plan works—when he walks up to Derek, pushes through his boundaries, breathes through the flare of warmth and panic as he gets as close to Derek’s body as he can and reaches up to pull Derek down into a kiss.
Derek goes from frozen shock to pleased reciprocation like a switch has been flipped, biting at Stiles’ mouth and tongue and licking slowly over the same spots in apology, pulling Stiles into him like he thinks there’s some way they can get closer.
“I’m sorry,” Stiles gasps, but Derek just laughs.
Stiles goes with it for as long as he can, fighting his way into Derek’s mouth, rubbing his hands over Derek’s shoulders and chest as he shoves him back to the wall, testing to see if Derek likes being bitten as much as he likes biting Stiles, as much as Stiles likes it. But then Derek is licking down to Stiles’ shoulder, taking in great breaths of Stiles as he goes, scenting, if not yet marking, and his neck is right there, open and vulnerable as he bends to Stiles’ skin, and Stiles has to reach into his pocket for the syringe.
Derek spasms as it goes in, and Stiles presses down on the plunger immediately. There’s resistance, and he sucks in too much air as he bears down, as the liquid trickles through the needle into Derek and the base snails closer to zero.
Derek’s mouth is still attached to Stiles’ shoulder, his body still hard against Stiles’ as he collapses to the floor. The plastic has left indentations on Stiles’ thumb, but the skin isn’t broken.
“Okay,” Stiles says, “okay,” and gets to work.
*
Stiles is still there when Derek wakes up.
He looks around slowly at the chains holding him in place, at the bare walls of his basement, squints in the halogen lights, and ends up on Stiles, sitting huddled at the bottom of the steps.
Stiles stands up, joints stiff from inactivity. “Hey,” he tries.
“Hey,” Derek says, and Stiles winces at the amount of sarcasm that can be contained in one word.
“Sorry,” he says, knowing it’s weak. “That was safe, I didn’t get it from Mr Argent or anything, Scott gave it to me. It was left over from that thing with the Coach, you remember.”
“Why would you have gotten anything from the hunters?”
“Oh. Uh, I maybe talked to Allison’s dad about—“ Stiles makes a hand gesture that he thinks is meant to signify the Earth floating through the cosmos, but he’s too anxious to really figure it out. “—this whole thing.”
“Really,” Derek says, thoughtful, which is a good sign. “And what did he have to say about it?”
Stiles sinks back down to the steps. “He said he doesn’t think it’s anything to be too concerned about!” Stiles says, trying for lightness, but it doesn’t really come off. “He said it isn’t a mating thing, but you’re, uh, focussed—“
“Fixated,” Derek interrupts. “He said fixated, right?”
“Yeah,” Stiles says, mouth dry, and when Derek doesn’t say anything else he continues, “So nobody else is affected, and it’s safe to keep you contained, and it will pass in a couple of days with the moon, but we do need to keep you contained or, y’know. I mean, you know, right?”
Stiles hopes Derek knows, because he doesn’t want to say it, definitely doesn’t want Derek to demand a recounting of the whole agonising conversation that Mr Argent had almost had to force on Stiles, by the end.
“I know,” Derek says.
“Great. So I can stick around for a little while, but my dad’s expecting me home for dinner, and I can’t be around you at all tomorrow, because it’s the full moon, and you’ve already proven you can pull that wall right down.”
He tries not to look at Derek’s arms, at Derek’s tshirt stretched tight over his chest by the position Stiles forced him into, but it’s a losing battle.
“What did Argent tell you about fixation?” Derek asks.
Stiles drags his eyes back up to Derek’s face. “Nothing. He didn’t tell me anything.”
“Okay.” Stiles’ eyes are wandering again when Derek says, “You don’t have to stay.”
Stiles snaps back to attention. “Oh!” he says. “Okay, that’s—“ Expected. “Fine, that’s fine.” He scrambles to his feet. “I’ll just, I’ll get Scott to come over, okay? He’ll come over later.”
Derek is silent, so Stiles bounds up the stairs awkwardly, and he knows Derek is watching him go, but there’s nothing else to look at this time.
*
Stiles goes back over there the morning after the full moon.
Derek is asleep, still hanging from the chains. He looks really tired. Stiles struggles to get the key turned in the lock, but the screech doesn’t wake Derek; he stays asleep until the loosed chain slides through the iron ring and he slumps forward.
“Stiles,” he says, sounding surprised.
All the hardware is still in place, but when Stiles releases Derek’s wrists from the cuffs his skin is scraped and purpled with bruises, half-healed already.
“Sorry,” Stiles says abruptly. “I didn’t want to bring you down and trap you here, but I didn’t have anywhere else to take you.”
“What are you doing here?” Derek asks, and he ignores the apology, of course.
“I need to know—“ Stiles says, and stops, because he does need to know, but he still can’t imagine saying it.
“What?” Derek asks, picking up the bottle of water Scott had left in the corner.
“So, when Mr Argent said the only reason Scott and Jackson and Lydia haven’t been trying to jump you for the past week was because you were into me, was he lying? Because you can say he was lying, but he seemed to be pretty accurate about everything else.”
The bottle is empty, but Derek keeps it held to his lips with his head tilted back for a long minute.
“I was surprised he didn’t take the opportunity to lie to you and try to kill me somehow,” Derek says, screwing the cap back on the bottle. “What else did he say?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Stiles says, because he doesn’t want to think about that yet. “I just want an answer.”
“No,” Derek says. “He wasn’t lying. But it doesn’t matter. It isn’t important.”
“Wow,” Stiles says, stung, and if that is true he never wanted to hear it. “Wow, okay, no.”
Derek pauses, bent over to reach for a clean shirt Stiles left on the floor two days ago. “No?”
“No. You don’t get to pull all this crap on me and then tell me that it doesn’t matter because you’re a werewolf, you get a free pass. You don’t get to climb into bed with me, and touch me like that, and, and kiss me and say it doesn’t matter. It matters to me.”
“I didn’t want to,” Derek says, and Stiles is frozen with the sharp pain of having been right all along. “I didn’t want to make you do that, to make you do something because my biology didn’t give me a choice, because you didn’t think you had a choice.”
“Oh—“ Stiles says, and the relief is a warm rush.
“And,” Derek continues, nervous now. “I wasn’t going to do anything about it before, because—you’re so young.”
“I’m almost eighteen,” Stiles says, and Derek smiles.
“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
“I know what I want,” Stiles says, and he thinks he does, now.
Now that it’s okay to want it, now that he knows he can maybe have it, if he tries, and maybe that’s cowardly, but give him a break, he can’t be brave all the time.
He’s brave a lot, though, if he does say so himself, and it still feels brave when he pushes forward under Derek’s gaze, ignores Derek’s bitten-off protests about Stiles’ age, Stiles’ father, and presses as close as he had when he had known there was no possibility of Derek turning away, presses into Derek’s mouth easily this time.
Derek doesn’t turn away.
Derek’s fresh shirt is on the ground when Stiles pulls away, and Stiles’ shirt is wrinkled from his hands even though Derek gave up his hold on it quite a while ago, pushed his hands under it to splay on Stiles’ back instead, curious against his skin.
Derek’s mouth is curling with happiness as he looks down at Stiles, and Stiles can feel his own face mirroring the emotion in response. He has to breathe in deeply to calm himself and regain a little control.
“Okay,” Stiles says, “let’s go,” and he steps back so he can take Derek’s hand and pull him up the stairs, out of the basement, and into the light of day.
end.
*
“That was a shoulder-tap of brotherly solidarity!” Scott says, which is a total lie, but Stiles wishes Derek were buying it. “It was light! It was a love-tap!”
Derek coils as if to spring, and Scott actually looks over his shoulder and considers fleeing back the way they came, which, no. Nobody is getting eaten today. Stiles is not about to watch his best friend get hunted down and torn to pieces like a fluffy bunny; he was traumatised enough when he had to watch the pack do that to an actual rabbit that one time, he’s not letting anyone turn cannibal on him here.
“Hey,” he says, shouldering in front of Derek, trying to block Scott from view. “It was a non-sexual, non-romantic tap, okay? It didn’t even hurt. See?” He grabs Derek’s wrist and puts his hand on his shoulder, hoping it will distract Derek for a minute or two. “Scott was just leaving!” he calls in that general direction.
“Scott is not leaving you alone!” Scott squeaks, voice sounding like he’s inhaled helium.
“Stiles will be fine,” Stiles says, biting down on his annoyance as Derek probes his arm through his shirt-sleeve. He’s pretty sure he will be fine, but he doesn’t really want Scott here if that isn’t the case. “You’re just going to make things worse. I’ll follow you out.”
“Okay,” Scott says. “No. No way. I’ll just—stay here.”
Derek and Stiles both twist to look at him over Stiles’ shoulder.
He clears his throat. “So, Derek,” he says, trying for brightness and almost making it. “Stiles thinks you haven’t told me anything about this whole heat thing because I don’t need to know, but I do, right? I mean, that wasn’t a question! You need to tell me about it now. For my own purposes, nothing to do with Stiles. Aaaall yours, buddy. I mean, not literally, not—“
“Why are you such an idiot,” Stiles says, because he always holds out hope that saying it will make him feel better about having to deal with the incontrovertible reality.
It takes Derek a minute to find his words, but he manages it. “I haven’t told you anything because I don’t know anything,” he says. “My family died before it was to be explained to me. I don’t know much about it at all, just what I saw, and I don’t know if any of that applies to me.”
“Okay,” Stiles says, trying to think about that, but it’s difficult to think about much of anything with Derek so close to him, holding on, twitching and distressed.
“It won’t happen to you,” Derek says. “You’re too young. Stiles is too young.” His hand tightens around Stiles’ arm until it’s painful, but he lets go quickly once he realises what he’s doing.
“It’s okay,” Stiles says. “I mean, not really, but it will be fine, we can—we can figure it out.”
“Really?” Scott asks sceptically. “Because Derek is the one who’s supposed to know what he’s talking about, so if he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on I’m not sure—I’m not sure what we should do. Derek said you should just stay away for a week, but would that work? Would it pass, or would you just be worse then?”
“I don’t know,” Derek says. “He should still do it.”
“Does it have to be me?”
“I don’t know,” Derek says, watching him carefully, and Stiles nods his head again and again, hands flexing anxiously.
“Is it permanent?” Stiles asks quietly.
“Sometimes,” Derek says, mouth twisting. “I—“
“Don’t know,” Stiles says on an exhalation. “Right.”
“You should try to get it out of your system with someone else,” Scott suggests. “Or, is it weird? The sex, I mean, when you’re in heat. Would you need another werewolf? Not volunteering!”
“I don’t know,” Derek rumbles, frustration obvious. “I have never been in heat before. Stop asking me stupid questions I don’t know the answer to!”
“They’re only stupid because you don’t know the answer,” Scott says, and Stiles can almost see Derek’s hackles rise.
“Okay!” Stiles says. “We’re going to go now. We’ll, uh, we’ll look into it, see if we can find anything out.” Derek drops his hands from Stiles and moves to let him pass, but he looks really sad about it. Whatever, Stiles doesn’t care. “We’ll, uh,” he says, low. “We’ll keep in touch, okay? I’ll call you when we find something out.”
Derek nods unhappily, and watches as Scott comes up behind Stiles, holding up his hands as he slides past.
“When, he says,” Scott mutters. “Hey, Allison read Twilight last month, maybe she’d have some kind of idea—“
“No,” Stiles says firmly, shoving Scott towards the front door, moving quickly and refusing to look back this time.
*
There’s a surprising lack of information in the books Stiles has managed to procure since Scott became a werewolf, but there is some, even if it’s conflicting.
He calls Derek.
“This one says fuck or die,” Stiles says bluntly.
“No,” Derek says, and Stiles isn’t reassured because he wasn’t worried.
“So this one says it’s about pack hierarchy, and you can do it with anyone of suitable ranking, or any outsider who will, uh, respect your status, even if they don’t know of it?” Derek doesn’t deny this one. “And this other one says the alpha, uh, tries to breed their mate until the moon is full.”
“Could be,” Derek says. “Could be something else. I have no idea which of the possibles it is, but I don’t have a mate, so that one isn’t.”
“I’ll, uh, keep looking,” Stiles says, and hangs up.
The internet is shockingly unhelpful when Stiles looks up ‘werewolves in heat’; he isn’t sure what he’d been expecting, really: less porn, or maybe less blogs with people roleplaying being werewolves going through their heat cycle as an excuse for porn—but he isn’t sure why he would have been expecting either of those things, since he isn’t actually new.
He regrets reading so many of the blogs, but he would’ve felt really dumb if they’d turned out to be written by actual werewolves. As it is, he may never have a wet dream about Derek again in his life.
“Hey, dude,” he says when Scott picks up. “Nada. Just a ton of emotional scarring. I would almost rather have read Twilight as my research. What’d Allison say?”
“She laughed,” Scott says. “And said she doesn’t know anything, but—“
“But what?” Stiles asks, perking up.
“Nothing,” Scott says. “I’m not doing it.”
“Come on, you have to, what?”
“No,” Scott says, “I’d cry at Derek’s funeral first, and I don’t really even like Derek,” and that’s how Stiles ends up sitting at Allison’s kitchen table as her father gives him a cup of coffee and a creepy smile.
“So, Stiles,” Mr Argent starts. “Allison said you had something you wished to discuss with me?”
“No,” Stiles says. “Not to say wished.”
“Oh,” Mr Argent says, and takes a sip of his coffee.
“More forced.”
“I see.” Mr Argent smiles at him. Creepy. “What is it?”
“Well—“ Stiles says, and knocks back half his cup of coffee, scalding his throat in the process. Mr Argent is still smiling when Stiles is finished choking and pounding on his chest. “Well—“ Stiles says again.
“I can ask Allison,” Mr Argent suggests.
“No!” Stiles says. “No, that’s okay, I’ll tell you. So, uh, maybe there’s this, ah—nothing, maybe there’s absolutely nothing going on, so—I should—just—“ He isn’t buying it. “—tell you. You don’t know my dad, right?”
“No,” Mr Argent says, so Stiles figures it’s safe to ignore the deepening scepticism being thrown his way.
“Okay, so—“ Stiles starts, and hurries on, because Mr Argent is looking a little bit like he might throw his coffee-cup to the floor, dive across his kitchen table, and choke a bitch, at this point. “So what do you know about what happens when werewolves go into heat? Because there may be a situation. That has nothing to do with Allison, okay, it isn’t Scott! And it has nothing to do with me, either, but, uh, maybe it does, but my dad does not have to get involved with this, okay? That would just be really embarrassing for me. Yeah, so, Derek Hale is in heat? That wasn’t a question.”
“The question, I assume, is what you should do about it.”
“Yes!” Stiles says, delighted at this easy understanding. “That was the question.”
“That will depend on Hale.”
“Derek doesn’t know anything about it,” Stiles says, rubbing his palms nervously against his jeans, because he isn’t sure he should be telling a hunter any of this, even if things have mostly been peaceful for a long time now, and he probably definitely shouldn’t be going behind Derek’s back about it, but they’re out of options.
“He doesn’t?”
“He was pretty young when his family died, and he’d managed to pick up bits and pieces, but not enough.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Mr Argent says, finishing off his coffee and putting the cup on the table so he can steeple his fingers, all the better to make Stiles squirm.
“Have the other members of the pack shown a noticeable increase in attraction towards the alpha lately?” he asks in a business-like tone.
“Uh—“ Stiles says, not sure whether to be baffled or horrified.
“Have there been any unexpected orgies recently with Hale at their centre?” Mr Argent clarifies impatiently, and okay, horrified, for sure.
“Unexpected?” Stiles asks faintly.
Mr Argent smiles. “I’ll take that as a no. Has Hale shown increased aggression?”
“Um.”
“Towards you?”
“Not towards me, no,” Stiles says, relieved, but Mr Argent doesn’t react like that was the right answer.
“Increased aggression towards other people triggered by you? Towards other members of his pack?”
“Kind of,” Stiles admits, oddly reluctant. “He can be kind of aggressive anyway? Not towards Allison! But it isn’t like his kicking Scott’s ass is a stretch.”
“Were you involved with Hale before this began?”
“No!” Stiles says, face burning. “What! Why does everyone think that?”
Mr Argent is amused. “Are you lying to me?” he asks, mouth curling up. “Keeping in mind that I’m not going to tell your father that werewolves exist because I’m outraged that a teenager is having sex.”
“Sex?” Stiles squeaks. “Who here is having sex? Neither of us! Or, uh—not me. Presumably you—are, oh God. Nobody I know is even thinking about having sex, not before marriage, after years of dating and, uh, checks, STD checks, and background and financial, and can I get out of this conversation now?”
“I need an answer,” Mr Argent says calmly.
“No!” Stiles says. “I—He doesn’t even—He wouldn’t even want that.”
Mr Argent hums. “Well, that isn’t true, not if he’s fixated on you.”
“Fixated?” Stiles asks, ignoring the rest of that, ignoring the nervous twist in his stomach.
“If he’s displaying territorial behaviour towards you alone it’s likely. Has he made any unusual attempts to be close to you?”
“Yes,” Stiles says, but doesn’t volunteer anything further.
“Scent-marking?”
“Um,” Stiles says, “not—really? Not—“
“Not yet,” Mr Argent says. “If this is a new relationship he’s more likely to fight it.”
“Can he fight it?”
“He can,” Mr Argent says slowly. “But he won’t succeed, not without help.”
“Okay.” Stiles blows out a shaky breath. “Okay, I can do that. And you’re going to help a guy out, right? You’re not going to tell my dad about any of this.”
Chris Argent lifts his hands in surrender and offers Stiles a quick smile. “I’m not going to go to the sheriff and start raving about werewolves,” he says, and Stiles decides to take that as agreement.
*
It’s always difficult to take Derek by surprise, and he’s more attuned to Stiles than usual, now, so Stiles is a little surprised himself when his plan works—when he walks up to Derek, pushes through his boundaries, breathes through the flare of warmth and panic as he gets as close to Derek’s body as he can and reaches up to pull Derek down into a kiss.
Derek goes from frozen shock to pleased reciprocation like a switch has been flipped, biting at Stiles’ mouth and tongue and licking slowly over the same spots in apology, pulling Stiles into him like he thinks there’s some way they can get closer.
“I’m sorry,” Stiles gasps, but Derek just laughs.
Stiles goes with it for as long as he can, fighting his way into Derek’s mouth, rubbing his hands over Derek’s shoulders and chest as he shoves him back to the wall, testing to see if Derek likes being bitten as much as he likes biting Stiles, as much as Stiles likes it. But then Derek is licking down to Stiles’ shoulder, taking in great breaths of Stiles as he goes, scenting, if not yet marking, and his neck is right there, open and vulnerable as he bends to Stiles’ skin, and Stiles has to reach into his pocket for the syringe.
Derek spasms as it goes in, and Stiles presses down on the plunger immediately. There’s resistance, and he sucks in too much air as he bears down, as the liquid trickles through the needle into Derek and the base snails closer to zero.
Derek’s mouth is still attached to Stiles’ shoulder, his body still hard against Stiles’ as he collapses to the floor. The plastic has left indentations on Stiles’ thumb, but the skin isn’t broken.
“Okay,” Stiles says, “okay,” and gets to work.
*
Stiles is still there when Derek wakes up.
He looks around slowly at the chains holding him in place, at the bare walls of his basement, squints in the halogen lights, and ends up on Stiles, sitting huddled at the bottom of the steps.
Stiles stands up, joints stiff from inactivity. “Hey,” he tries.
“Hey,” Derek says, and Stiles winces at the amount of sarcasm that can be contained in one word.
“Sorry,” he says, knowing it’s weak. “That was safe, I didn’t get it from Mr Argent or anything, Scott gave it to me. It was left over from that thing with the Coach, you remember.”
“Why would you have gotten anything from the hunters?”
“Oh. Uh, I maybe talked to Allison’s dad about—“ Stiles makes a hand gesture that he thinks is meant to signify the Earth floating through the cosmos, but he’s too anxious to really figure it out. “—this whole thing.”
“Really,” Derek says, thoughtful, which is a good sign. “And what did he have to say about it?”
Stiles sinks back down to the steps. “He said he doesn’t think it’s anything to be too concerned about!” Stiles says, trying for lightness, but it doesn’t really come off. “He said it isn’t a mating thing, but you’re, uh, focussed—“
“Fixated,” Derek interrupts. “He said fixated, right?”
“Yeah,” Stiles says, mouth dry, and when Derek doesn’t say anything else he continues, “So nobody else is affected, and it’s safe to keep you contained, and it will pass in a couple of days with the moon, but we do need to keep you contained or, y’know. I mean, you know, right?”
Stiles hopes Derek knows, because he doesn’t want to say it, definitely doesn’t want Derek to demand a recounting of the whole agonising conversation that Mr Argent had almost had to force on Stiles, by the end.
“I know,” Derek says.
“Great. So I can stick around for a little while, but my dad’s expecting me home for dinner, and I can’t be around you at all tomorrow, because it’s the full moon, and you’ve already proven you can pull that wall right down.”
He tries not to look at Derek’s arms, at Derek’s tshirt stretched tight over his chest by the position Stiles forced him into, but it’s a losing battle.
“What did Argent tell you about fixation?” Derek asks.
Stiles drags his eyes back up to Derek’s face. “Nothing. He didn’t tell me anything.”
“Okay.” Stiles’ eyes are wandering again when Derek says, “You don’t have to stay.”
Stiles snaps back to attention. “Oh!” he says. “Okay, that’s—“ Expected. “Fine, that’s fine.” He scrambles to his feet. “I’ll just, I’ll get Scott to come over, okay? He’ll come over later.”
Derek is silent, so Stiles bounds up the stairs awkwardly, and he knows Derek is watching him go, but there’s nothing else to look at this time.
*
Stiles goes back over there the morning after the full moon.
Derek is asleep, still hanging from the chains. He looks really tired. Stiles struggles to get the key turned in the lock, but the screech doesn’t wake Derek; he stays asleep until the loosed chain slides through the iron ring and he slumps forward.
“Stiles,” he says, sounding surprised.
All the hardware is still in place, but when Stiles releases Derek’s wrists from the cuffs his skin is scraped and purpled with bruises, half-healed already.
“Sorry,” Stiles says abruptly. “I didn’t want to bring you down and trap you here, but I didn’t have anywhere else to take you.”
“What are you doing here?” Derek asks, and he ignores the apology, of course.
“I need to know—“ Stiles says, and stops, because he does need to know, but he still can’t imagine saying it.
“What?” Derek asks, picking up the bottle of water Scott had left in the corner.
“So, when Mr Argent said the only reason Scott and Jackson and Lydia haven’t been trying to jump you for the past week was because you were into me, was he lying? Because you can say he was lying, but he seemed to be pretty accurate about everything else.”
The bottle is empty, but Derek keeps it held to his lips with his head tilted back for a long minute.
“I was surprised he didn’t take the opportunity to lie to you and try to kill me somehow,” Derek says, screwing the cap back on the bottle. “What else did he say?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Stiles says, because he doesn’t want to think about that yet. “I just want an answer.”
“No,” Derek says. “He wasn’t lying. But it doesn’t matter. It isn’t important.”
“Wow,” Stiles says, stung, and if that is true he never wanted to hear it. “Wow, okay, no.”
Derek pauses, bent over to reach for a clean shirt Stiles left on the floor two days ago. “No?”
“No. You don’t get to pull all this crap on me and then tell me that it doesn’t matter because you’re a werewolf, you get a free pass. You don’t get to climb into bed with me, and touch me like that, and, and kiss me and say it doesn’t matter. It matters to me.”
“I didn’t want to,” Derek says, and Stiles is frozen with the sharp pain of having been right all along. “I didn’t want to make you do that, to make you do something because my biology didn’t give me a choice, because you didn’t think you had a choice.”
“Oh—“ Stiles says, and the relief is a warm rush.
“And,” Derek continues, nervous now. “I wasn’t going to do anything about it before, because—you’re so young.”
“I’m almost eighteen,” Stiles says, and Derek smiles.
“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
“I know what I want,” Stiles says, and he thinks he does, now.
Now that it’s okay to want it, now that he knows he can maybe have it, if he tries, and maybe that’s cowardly, but give him a break, he can’t be brave all the time.
He’s brave a lot, though, if he does say so himself, and it still feels brave when he pushes forward under Derek’s gaze, ignores Derek’s bitten-off protests about Stiles’ age, Stiles’ father, and presses as close as he had when he had known there was no possibility of Derek turning away, presses into Derek’s mouth easily this time.
Derek doesn’t turn away.
Derek’s fresh shirt is on the ground when Stiles pulls away, and Stiles’ shirt is wrinkled from his hands even though Derek gave up his hold on it quite a while ago, pushed his hands under it to splay on Stiles’ back instead, curious against his skin.
Derek’s mouth is curling with happiness as he looks down at Stiles, and Stiles can feel his own face mirroring the emotion in response. He has to breathe in deeply to calm himself and regain a little control.
“Okay,” Stiles says, “let’s go,” and he steps back so he can take Derek’s hand and pull him up the stairs, out of the basement, and into the light of day.
end.
