Archive of Our Own

1. It was entirely Derek’s fault.

[SourWolf]
I need you

[User]
derek!
[User]
i had no idea u felt that way!
[User]
u shouldve said something!

[SourWolf]
For research!

[User]
well
[User]
i mean
[User]
im not the most experienced person in the bedroom
[User]
but if ur looking to try new things
[User]
come on over ;)

[SourWolf]
How have I not killed you yet?

[User]
research

Stiles grinned at his screen, but no reply came and he just snickered to himself before tossing the phone aside and turning back to his computer. If it was research, he was sure there was a life-threatening reason behind it that he just knew would keep him awake late into the night.

The life-threatening thing, not the research.

Actually, the research too.

Stiles didn’t sleep much.

He waited patiently for a good ten minutes, typing away at his computer, working on an assignment for class. He thanked his lucky stars his university offered e-commute classes, otherwise he didn’t think he’d have been able to get a university degree. Being away from his dad was impossible.

Mostly on his dad’s side.

Okay, maybe on his side a little bit, too.

Or a lot.

But mostly his dad’s!

Stiles’ fingers paused in his assignment, trying to think of a word before he gave up and opened another tab to attempt to find it. The internet was a wonderful, magical place when it came to things like forgotten words, and after less than a minute, he finally had it and went back to his assignment.

Where he promptly used the word and then typed nothing further because he’d lost his train of thought.

Raking one annoyed hand through his hair, he winced at how greasy it felt and realized he hadn’t really been tending to his hygiene. That seemed to happen when he was working, in university, and attempting to protect Beacon Hills from the various things that tried to kill its inhabitants on a regular basis.

Actually, that reminded him, he hadn’t seen Scott recently. If he had, no doubt his friend would’ve commented on the stench. Not that Stiles smelled that bad.

He paused at the thought, then lifted one arm and very deliberately inhaled.

“Oh wow,” he gagged, letting out a small cough. “Yeah, definitely showering before bed.”

Derek was likely going to comment on it. But it wasn’t Stiles’ fault! He’d spent all week helping rid the town of the stupid Pixies—the teeth, fuck, the teeth!—while also working his part-time job at the town dentist’s office manning the phone and filing paperwork. He barely had time to do his homework, most of the time, so things like hygiene just had to go.

Even now, he was sure his paper was going to suffer because Derek was on his way and how the hell was Stiles supposed to finish the assignment when some life-threatening event was about to happen that required research?!

What good would a paper do if he was dead?!

Why was this his life?

“Speaking of research,” Stiles muttered to himself, glancing at the window. It had been a while since Derek’s text.

Frowning, he picked his phone back up to check when the last one had been and noticed it was over twenty minutes ago. It didn’t take Derek this long to get to his house, even if he was out at the Hale house. Especially if he was at the loft.

Glancing at the window again, he set his phone down and wandered over to it, wrenching it open and looking out into the street. He leaned out a bit, looking both ways, but saw no sign of the Camaro.

Didn’t hear it, either.

To be fair, Derek could’ve been on foot, what with the whole Werewolf speed and whatnot. Also, he could turn into a wolf, so there was that.

Stiles hoped he wasn’t a wolf, because with the way Derek always swung into his bedroom, if he did that naked, Derek wouldn’t be the only thing swinging. Stiles didn’t need to feel any more self-conscious than he already did. Seeing Derek’s dick swinging between his legs wasn’t something his non-existent ego needed.

Hearing a car, Stiles leaned out a bit further, craning his neck to try and see past the tree outside his bedroom. He stood on his toes, squinting and trying to determine if he recognized the engine or not, but it was—

“What are you doing?”

Stiles started so violently that his hands slipped. He was leaning out so far, and his balance had been relying on his hands so much that he just tumbled right out the window, rolling along the slanted roof and letting out a loud shout when he fell over the end.

He landed hard on his side, pain shooting up his shoulder and let out a very loud curse that his neighbours probably all heard. He rolled onto his back with a groan, clutching at his injured shoulder, and opened his previously closed eyes in time to see Derek standing on the roof, staring down at him with the eyebrows.

How was Derek’s entire language just eyebrows?

“What the hell?” Stiles demanded, sitting up and still holding his injured arm. “Where did you come from?”

“The door,” Derek informed him, giving him a look.

“The door? Since when do you use the door?” Stiles struggled to his feet without using either hand, right one still clutching at his injured left arm. “I didn’t think you even knew my house had a door!”

Derek gave him the eyebrows again. Stiles had gotten very good at understanding Derek’s language. The current look read something along the lines of, “Are you done being a moron? I need you. For research, Stiles, get your head out of the gutter.”

It was sad that his eyebrows could convey multiple sentences just by moving a little bit. Stiles envied his power.

“You’re the one who snuck up on me and threw me out the window!”

“You fell out the window,” Derek corrected.

“Whatever!” Stiles stomped all the way to the front door, rubbing at his arm in annoyance. Trust Derek to use the door the one time Stiles was waiting for him at the window.

No, not waiting for him at the window, because that made him sound like a love-sick Juliet, pining for her Romeo.

Derek was no Romeo, unless Romeo was overly broody and secretly a Werewolf.

Actually, he was pretty broody, so he supposed Derek was half there.

Re-entering his house, he trudged up the stairs, muttering angrily under his breath about how rude and criminal Derek was while knowing he could hear every word.

Seriously, who was dumb enough to just walk into the sheriff’s house?! Werewolves. Fucking Werewolves.

Re-entering his bedroom, Derek was sitting on the windowsill, arms crossed and usual scowl on his face. His lips turned down a little more in what Stiles knew was disgust—probably the smell—but he actually kept his mouth shut.

“So, what life-threatening nightmare is on its way to keep me from ever sleeping again?” Stiles asked, still rubbing his arm and falling into his chair, turning to face Derek. “Better not be Pixies again. I still have teeth marks from our last encounter. It’s gonna scar, you know. How am I supposed to explain that to my next non-Werewolf bed partner? ‘Oh, a child came at me and had very sharp teeth’?”

Derek just stared at him, expression closed off but eyebrows speaking volumes, telling him to shut up and get to work. Terrific idea, Derek, if he’d actually opened his mouth to tell him what he was researching!

“Manticore.”

“Dark Angel, Jessica Alba, Michael Weatherly, dystopian. Good premise, bad acting.”

Derek stared at him. “What?”

“Sorry, I thought we were playing movie trivia.”

The scowl he got for that one was far too menacing. Excuse him for trying to keep his winning sense of humour in light of horrible, mangled death. He really wanted to have an open casket funeral, but with the way his life was going, it’d probably be closed casket.

And fifty years earlier than planned.

“I’m insulted you don’t think I already have an entire sub-section on different kinds of hybrid-like things that could kill us horribly and painfully. But, surprisingly, not bloodily.” Stiles had turned back to his computer, and raised one hand, index pointing up in a “the more you know” fashion.

“I never said I didn’t think you had any research on it,” Derek said, scowl clearly heard in his voice.

Was it sad Stiles could picture his angry, grumpy face? Probably understandable, he tended to be on the receiving end of it the most out of anyone.

Ah, to be young and talented at pissing off the Supernatural.

He started just as hard as he had when he fell out the window at the hand that fell onto his shoulder, whipping around, the appendage almost sliding off him at the action.

Derek had crossed the room silently. Like a ninja.

Or a Werewolf, which made more sense, considering he was one.

Stiles stared up at him for a second, then realized his shoulder and arm were starting to feel better. He shifted his gaze to the arm connected to the hand on him and saw black lines snaking along Derek’s skin.

It was hard not to groan and, really, Derek had seen him covered in mud and monster guts, so moaning unabashedly in ecstasy over losing pain wasn’t really something to be embarrassed about.

So, he let out a ridiculously suggestive moan and let his eyes slide shut, the pain seeping right out of him until he didn’t even feel a dull ache. Derek’s hand left his shoulder and he opened his eyes, looking up at him.

Derek was scowling down at him again, as if angry that Stiles would react so filthily at being cared for.

Stiles grinned. “Are you blushing?”

“Shut up before I rip your throat out.”

“Yeah, yeah, with your teeth. You big bad wolf, me puny human.” Stiles waved one hand dismissively at Derek and turned back to face his computer. “Your wish is my command, oh Alpha my Alpha.”

“Not your Alpha.”

“I can call you my Dom, if you prefer.”

“How haven’t I killed you yet?”

2. Scott is a bad friend.

“You know, we should really be waiting for the rest of the pack,” Stiles insisted quietly, looking around nervously while crouched behind Scott. Why they were crouching, he still wasn’t sure. It was just kind of something people seemed to do in movies when sneaking around, and Stiles watched a lot of movies.

And TV shows.

And YouTube videos.

Really, if it moved, Stiles watched it. And some of those YouTube videos were gold. He’d seen a few Vines that were more Oscar-worthy than some movies that had actually won one.

But back to the crouching. Because it seemed like the thing to do while sneaking through a house for sale that was haunted by a malicious Poltergeist.

Or just a Poltergeist, he supposed, since the whole point was that they were malicious.

A regular Poltergeist or a malicious ghost.

Then again, ghosts weren’t meant to be able to move things, so a regularly malicious Poltergeist.

Either way, it didn’t matter, it was a bad, bad thing trying to kill regular people and Scott was the Werewolf version of unbreakable. Stiles wasn’t. Stiles was very, very breakable. Stiles had many breakable pieces.

Like his face. There were fourteen breakable pieces in his face. Just his face! Nevermind the rest of his body that was oh so breakable.

But Scott forgot these sorts of things. Stiles liked to think it was just because he was distracted most of the time, and not because he was a bad friend.

Though he was sometimes. Most times. A lot.

Actually, now that he crouched behind Scott in a house for sale haunted by a regularly malicious Poltergeist and Stiles’ many breakable pieces, it occurred to him that Scott was usually a bad friend.

“Let’s go this way,” Scott whispered and began moving further into the house.

“I really don’t think we should be—Scott? Scotty?” Stiles sighed when his bad friend continued without him and hurried to stand and follow, gripping his bat tightly in his right hand.

He didn’t actually know why he had his bat. What was a bat going to do to a ghost? What had he been thinking? He’d walked into the house with a bonafide weapon that was likely going to be used against him.

Likely in the very breakable fourteen pieces of his face.

Fucking Werewolves. If he got his beautiful, beautiful face broken, Scott was buying him a new one.

He crouched behind Scott by another corner, glancing behind himself for anything ghostly and floaty, but the place was dark and quiet. Well, mostly quiet. Stiles’ breathing sounded like a freight train, but to be fair, he had a cold and couldn’t breathe through his nose.

He wondered what would happen if he died right now. If he died with a cold and became a ghost, would he still have the stuffed nose and have to be a mouth-breather for all of eternity?

Shit, if so, no wonder Poltergeists existed! Stiles would turn into a regularly malicious evil spirit, too!

Maybe this Poltergeist had a cold when he died, too. Now Stiles felt kind of bad for him and wanted to give him a cough drop.

“I’ll check down here,” Scott whispered. “You check upstairs.”

“Or we could not be complete idiots and get out of here until we know more about banishing spirits,” Stiles countered.

Scott just wandered away from him, still crouching and moving silently.

“Or you could ignore me. That too. Not like your plans have ever come back to bite us in the ass. Not like I kept telling people I was the Nogitsune and no one listened.”

Stiles knew he was just procrastinating by voicing his annoyance, but Scott was a bad, bad friend.

“If I die, I’m so haunting you,” he snapped angrily before standing and heading cautiously to the stairs. He gripped his bat tightly in both hands, climbing them almost sideways so he could keep an eye on what was in front of him and what may be lurking behind him.

He felt a chill race up his spine and was positive something had just breathed cold air along his neck, but Stiles convinced himself it was just his overactive imagination. Really, who in their right mind would walk into a haunted house and not assume everything was the ghost?

To be fair, most people in their right mind wouldn’t walk into a haunted house at all. Why was this his life? Why had he allowed his life to become this?

Reaching the landing, Stiles walked slowly down the dark corridor, wishing the electricity still worked because it was dark as shit. Not that Scott would’ve let him turn any lights on, anyway.

He was the one who insisted they whisper and crouch, even though it would literally make no difference! Wasn’t like the ghost didn’t know they were there! No amount of crouching and whispering was going to convince the evil thing that they weren’t in the house!

Though to be fair, lights on in a house for sale would probably have the cops called and Stiles really didn’t want to have to explain this to his dad. It was bad enough that time he and Scott had stolen that police van, breaking and entering when he wasn’t even a minor anymore was just asking for a night in a cell.

His dad would do it, too. Especially since he’d very clearly told them to let Argent handle this one.

Good old Argent. Stiles wished he was there. Literally, it would’ve saved him years of therapy at the knowledge that he was basically re-enacting a bad horror movie. Only morons willingly walked into haunted houses.

Stiles had reached the end of the corridor, light from the streetlamps outside illuminating the area a little more from his proximity to the window. A light breeze drifted past behind him, every hair on his body rising on end.

Not imagining things.

Stiles whipped around, bat raised, and felt what he could only describe as an explosion because the bat fell from his hands, he flew backwards through the air, and slammed straight through the window behind him.

His back screamed in agony at the force of the impact, and he flew through the air like a fucking torpedo before slamming hard into something. He wasn’t entirely sure what that something was, but he knew it wasn’t the ground, and he may have blacked out for a second from the sheer force of the impact.

When his vision cleared again, he was hovering off the ground, two arms wrapped tightly around his torso. He glanced down, feeling like every inhale was a struggle, and saw two lines of uprooted grass.

It took his muddled and agonized brain a few seconds to piece everything together, but he eventually figured out that there was only one person who could’ve caught him at that speed without crashing to the ground or having every bone in his body break.

Stiles felt like every bone in his body was broken. Shit, he felt like his back might be broken. If he lost the ability to walk, Scott was so fucking dead.

Wiggling his toes, and relieved at the ability to do so, Stiles took a second to recognize how hard he must’ve hit Derek given the long lines in the grass, the Werewolf having been forced back despite his strength.

Stiles was still amazed the impact hadn’t just killed him. Hitting Derek and all his muscles should’ve been no different from hitting cement. Not that Stiles was complaining, Derek had very nice muscles, and he was happy he hadn’t just slammed into the ground—which likely would’ve hurt a lot more—but it still kind of surprised him.

He was pretty sure he blacked out for a few seconds again, because when he blinked, he was suddenly sitting in the grass and Derek was bent in front of him. He had that pinched look on his face that Stiles attributed to furious worry.

Stiles really hoped his fury was directed at Scott and his worry was directed at him. Though it was entirely possible that he was furiously worried at and about Stiles, and just furious at Scott.

That was good. Scott was a bad friend.

“Holy shit!”

Speaking of bad friend Scott.

“Stiles! Are you okay?!”

“What the hell were you thinking?” Derek snarled. Actually snarled! Stiles hadn’t heard him snarl before, this was an exciting night.

His eyes travelled down and he realized the reason he wasn’t sobbing in agony was because Derek had both hands clutching either arm in a vice grip, black lines racing up and down his skin. Oh, that was nice. At least Stiles would just have broken bones he couldn’t feel, that was good.

Shit, he hoped he didn’t have any glass in his back, he honestly couldn’t tell with Derek doing his freaky Werewolf pain-stealing mojo.

“We were just—”

“Argent is handling this one! I told you not to go into the house!” Derek almost roared. He managed to keep it down a few decibels, which was good, because police. Then again, Stiles had flown out a window, so they should probably run while they could.

Or, in Stiles’ case, get carried away because running was hard with a broken back.

God he hoped he didn’t have a broken back, or Scott owed him a new one.

“You could’ve gotten Stiles killed!”

A low growl was starting to creep up Scott’s throat, and Stiles saw his eyes beginning to bleed red. Like he was feeling threatened, which was ridiculous, because Derek yelled at them all the time.

Also, ow. How was there even an ow right now?!

“Ow, ow!” Stiles whined, Derek’s hands tightening on his arms the angrier he got. He didn’t realize it was possible for Derek to hurt him while taking his pain. Who’d have thought?

Derek turned back to him quickly, loosening his grip, and Stiles was a little startled to see him in his Beta shift, eyes bright blue and terrified.

Well, furious, but also terrified.

Explained why Scott had started to shift, too.

“Aw, were you worried about me, big guy?” Stiles asked, wondering if Werewolf mojo doubled as morphine. He felt really good. Like he could run a marathon.

Which was crazy, because he didn’t feel like he could run a marathon on a good day, let alone with a broken back.

Before Derek could snap a reply at him, both he and Scott stiffened and whipped their heads to the left. Stiles heard nothing, but he was assuming sirens. Thankfully it was too dark out on the lawn for anyone to really take note of who they were, so as long as they bolted before his dad arrested them, no one needed to know Stiles had flown out the window.

“We need to go,” Scott said quickly.

He started to bend down to grab for Stiles, but the most animalistic sound Stiles had ever heard in his life escaped Derek’s throat and he put himself between the two of them. Without a word, he lifted Stiles into his arms, one beneath his shoulders and the other beneath his knees—well, this was embarrassing—and hurried towards the street.

Stiles had parked the Jeep a few blocks away to avoid it being seen since it was like a neon sign to anyone who saw it, but Derek’s Camaro was only a few houses down. The three of them were inside and driving away long before Stiles heard even a hint of the sirens.

He’d have to go back for his Jeep later. Damn it.

“How could you be so fucking stupid?” Derek snapped angrily, glaring at Scott in the passenger seat. Stiles was laid out in the back on his side, and while he wasn’t in pain, he could feel that something was wrong. He wiggled his toes again, just to reassure himself that he could, and figured maybe he’d broken a few ribs.

Not that broken ribs was a good thing, either, but better than a broken back.

“We were just trying to stop the ghost from hurting anyone,” Scott insisted, voice pathetic and puppy-dog eyes directed at Derek.

Those worked on everyone but him, apparently. Stiles already forgave him and wanted him to put the weapons away, but Derek just growled deeply, turning to flash angry blue eyes at him.

“Congratulations, Scott, you failed spectacularly. What if I hadn’t been there? What if Stiles had fallen to the ground and broken his neck?!”

“Technically, I didn’t fall out the window, I was torpedoed out of it.”

Derek whipped around to give him a look, baring his teeth and Stiles motioned zipping his lips.

“Right. Yeah. Shutting up.”

They were silent for a few moments, the only sound in the car Derek’s very angry breathing. Stiles wanted to joke that he didn’t know Derek cared, but he seemed angry enough as it was. He didn’t need to exacerbate the problem.

Also, he knew Derek cared. They’d passed that stage in their friendship long ago, but it was still fun to tease him sometimes.

Not now, though. Definitely not now. He was legitimately angry and worried, and Stiles liked his throat free of teeth marks and blood.

“You were there,” Scott said quietly after a few minutes.

“What?” Derek barked.

“You were there. You said, ‘what if I hadn’t been there’ but you were. So there’s no reason to get so mad.”

Stiles let out a shout and slammed into the back of both seats when the car jerked to a halt.

“Get out.”

“I’m just sayi—”

“Get out!” Derek roared, eyes flashing blue and fangs descending.

Scott roared back, Alpha red in his own eyes and shoulders hunched, as if ready to attack Derek.

“Boys, boys, you’re both pretty,” Stiles insisted, sitting up and leaning his head between them. “Let’s play nice in the sandbox, kiddies, it’s big enough for all of us.”

“Get. Out,” Derek snarled through his fangs.

Scott was doing that low, angry growly thing again, but he kicked open the door and climbed out. Stiles turned to do the same, except less violently, but Derek grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him back.

“You stay.”

“Oh God, you’ve finally lost it and are going to eat my insides! I have a cold, I’ll probably taste off!”

Derek turned to glare at him again, but he just waited until Scott shut the door and then peeled away, still clutching at Stiles’ shirt with one hand.

Stiles hoped he didn’t get into an accident, because he was likely going to lose that arm with the way it was bent back like that. Also Stiles would probably fly through the windshield, and one trip through a window was more than enough for one day, thank you kindly.

They had just parked at the loft and Stiles was gingerly exiting the car—not in pain, but able to tell something was wrong in his body—when his phone rang. He winced, guessing on who that could be, and pulled it out.

He hoped it was Scott. Prayed it was, actually.

The Sheriff aka Dad aka Food Provider was staring back at him from his home screen.

“Dad,” he said as cheerfully as he could. “Hey, hi, hello. How are you? How’s the night? Any murders to report or drunk people to arrest?”

“Stiles.” Was it bad he could picture his father right then from years of eliciting this response? He felt like it should be bad. Because he could literally see his father as if he were right in front of him, thumb and forefinger of one hand pressing against his eyes, disappointed droop to his shoulders, and barely contained anger.

“What’s the word, Pops?”

“There are five of them. Bat inside a haunted house.”

Shit. His bat.

“Mm, nope. Mm mm. Don’t know them. Haven’t heard of them. Is that a new vocabulary term? You sure it isn’t just one word?”

“Stiles.” Oh, now he was getting the Tone, capital T and everything.

He opened his mouth to retort but the phone was wrenched from his hand rather painfully and, really, ow, Derek! He was already broken enough for one night, what was with the adding to the ouches?

“He and Scott were in the house. I dropped Scott off already.” Stiles noted Derek didn’t comment on where, exactly, he’d dropped him off. It wasn’t a lie, he had dropped him off, just not at home. Or anywhere remotely close to home.

The omission wasn’t missed on Stiles.

“He’s at the loft, I need to check him over.” Silence while his dad spoke. “He did. I caught him.”

“Don’t tell my dad I flew out a window!” Stiles insisted, flailing slightly. The action made something inside shift horribly and he immediately stopped, freezing in place and severely hoping he hadn’t punctured a lung or something.

He didn’t feel anything weird—well, weirder—so he assumed he was fine.

“Yes sir. Good night.”

Derek hung up. Stiles held out his hand for the phone, but Derek just stared at him before pocketing it and turning to head for the entrance to the building.

“You’re not cute, Derek,” he called after him. “You’re really not.”

Sighing and conceding defeat, he followed him towards the door and entered the building. He had to take the stairs slowly, because every step up he took made something in his side shift uncomfortably, but he eventually reached the top and walked into the loft.

Derek slammed the door behind them both and when Stiles turned to ask him what he was doing there, he suddenly found him right in his personal space, hands gripping his arms again and a ring of blue around his irises.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded, only slightly less loudly than he had asked that question earlier.

“Hey, I told Scott to wait, but he walked into the house and I—”

“Do you have superhuman strength? Or senses? Or accelerated healing?!” Derek gave him a shake, more blue bleeding into his eyes. “The answer is no, Stiles! You don’t! If Scott wants to go into a haunted house and get thrown out the window, let him! He’d survive the impact! You wouldn’t!”

“I wasn’t going to let him go in there alone,” Stiles insisted, slightly offended. “And I can take care of myself, you know.”

“You’re only human!” Derek screamed.

Stiles’ head snapped back, more from shock than actual hurt, because he hadn’t noticed until right then.

Derek looked livid, but beneath the anger was fear. He’d seen it earlier, but hadn’t really given it much thought. But now, with Derek gripping his arms, hands trembling, breathing ragged, rage and terror in his eyes...

He never really thought much about Derek’s family. About the many people who had been in that house when the fire had caught. The many Werewolves.

And many humans.

Derek knew first hand how fragile they could be. And while Stiles knew he was breakable—so very breakable, what with the fourteen breakable pieces in his face alone—being around Werewolves often made him forget that they also knew how breakable he was.

Well, Derek knew, anyway. Scott seemed to forget this. And that was probably why Derek had gotten so angry, because Scott hadn’t acknowledged Stiles’ very human body that wasn’t resistant to being thrown out windows.

“Hey.” Stiles reached up and placed one hand on Derek’s chest. The Werewolf looked down at it, as it debating tearing it off Stiles’ body. He ignored that fact and said, “I’m still right here.”

Derek’s eyes snapped back up and he growled low in his throat, releasing his arms and taking a step back, forcing Stiles’ hand to fall from his chest.

“Lie down on the couch, I need to take the glass out of your back,” Derek snapped, then turned on his heel to stomp to the bathroom.

Oh, great, so he did have glass in his back. That was going to feel awesome in a few hours when the Werewolf mojo wore off.

Stiles did as he was told, lying on his stomach on the couch, and feeling something shift again. When Derek came back, he mentioned it offhandedly, and suddenly had gentle fingers pressing against his sides.

Derek said he wasn’t sure, but that Stiles likely had some broken ribs.

Well, wasn’t like Stiles wasn’t going to know for sure in a few hours. He wondered if there was a way to get that Werewolf mojo in a to-go cup.

3. It was entirely Derek’s fault (again).

Stiles didn’t bother knocking. He knew he had a standing invitation.

Well, he probably had a standing invitation.

Who was he kidding, he wasn’t invited at all, but he also wasn’t a Vampire so he didn’t need an invitation.

He slid the large door to the loft open, wondering if Derek made it heavier each time Stiles entered his place unannounced, because he always felt like it got just slightly heavier each and every time he had to pull it open.

“Derek?” he called out, despite knowing it was pointless since he’d probably heard him coming from down the road. Still, it was polite to call out to the house’s occupant.

Or knock, really, but who knocked anymore? Not Stiles!

And certainly not his dad, because the number of times he’d have been walked in on in compromising situations would’ve been embarrassing and scarring for the both of them. Thank God for locks.

Something Derek should really invest in, why didn’t he have a lock? Normal people had locks.

Then again, that probably explained why Derek didn’t have one. He wasn’t normal. Or even a person, really. Was that speciesist? Not to consider Derek a person? Were Werewolves people?

Stiles had missed the politically correct terms class at Supernatural school, which made sense since that didn’t exist.

Damn, would it be useful, though.

He wandered further into the main area, looking around and running his fingers along the back of the couch. He did it out of habit, even though Scott had once told him it was a very territorial Werewolf thing to do. It was like he was leaving his scent around Derek’s place.

He didn’t mean to, he just had a habit of touching things. That was just a very Stiles thing to do.

Besides, Derek didn’t seem to mind.

Derek actually didn’t seem to mind a lot, these days. He was even almost nice to Stiles.

Okay, that wasn’t fair, Derek was often nice. Beneath the grumpy, snarly Werewolf exterior was a giant cuddly teddy bear who showed his love with fangs and claws and the occasional bodily harm.

Hell, after the fiasco of the haunted house a month back, Derek had come over every day to do some Werewolf mojo—apparently there was a to-go cup!—and check in on him. It was nice, but also weird.

Derek had been acting weird. Stressed and overprotective and less tolerant of Stiles’ inappropriate jokes.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d think—well, he did know better, so he didn’t think.

At all.

Ever.

His mind was wonderfully blank in all areas Derek related.

He stopped at the edge of the loft, shoving his hands in his pockets and staring out one of the large almost floor-to-ceiling windows, suppressing a shiver at the cold wind blowing in. It was kind of a shame he didn’t live somewhere else, he’d have a hell of a view if not for the buildings obstructing it.

“Stiles.”

Letting out a shout, said individual whipped around and promptly tripped over his own feet, falling backwards. He waited to hit the window, inhaling to prepare his angry rant about fucking Werewolves and their sneaking up on people skills, but he felt himself falling backwards.

And backwards.

And backwards and holy shit where the fuck was the window no wonder there was a draft!

Stiles felt himself beginning to fall for half a second before his entire body jerked and pain arced through his leg. Claws were digging into his left ankle and he felt his heart stutter in his chest as he stared down at the concrete four stories below.

He was upside down. He was fucking hanging upside down, staring at the ground, with only a grumpy wolf stopping his head from becoming acquainted fairly intimately with the hard concrete below.

“Pull me up,” he breathed. A second later, the real panic set in. “Pull me up! Derek, pull me up!”

“Stop flailing!” Derek shouted, the hand around his ankle tightening, claws digging further into his skin.

Stiles could hear the strain in his voice, the barely concealed panic. Derek was legitimately afraid in that moment that he was going to drop him.

One would think that logic would prevail in the face of imminent death such as this, given Stiles had proved time and time again that he could take any monster the world threw at him, but somehow, for some reason, hanging upside down outside a grumpy Werewolf’s window made it difficult to remain calm. Logically, Stiles knew that he needed to stop flailing. He knew that he had to calm down and let Derek pull him up.

But he couldn’t calm down. He wiggled and scrambled for something to grab hold of, shirt up at his armpits and breaths coming sharply.

“Stiles!” Derek snapped, and somehow that familiar tone of voice calmed him down a fraction of a percentage. “Stiles, I am not going to drop you, but only if you stop flailing before we both go over!”

“Okay. Okay.” He struggled to breathe, still hanging by the ankle out of Derek’s window. He glanced up down the length of his body and saw that Derek’s hair was wet and his chest was bare. He was holding Stiles’ ankle with one hand, half-crouched from having grabbed him so late in his fall, and the other was wrapped tightly around the edge of the window, using it to make sure Derek didn’t fall out with him.

Derek might survive the fall.

Stiles definitely wouldn’t.

The bright blue eyes and strained look on Derek’s face were doing nothing for Stiles’ nerves, but somehow he felt like it was more about how close he was to dropping Stiles than how heavy he was.

“Okay, I’m calm. I’m good.”

Derek grit his teeth and tried to straighten, but his hand slipped and he dug his claws further into Stiles’ ankle.

It hurt. A lot.

But probably not as much as falling head first onto concrete. That sounded extremely unpleasant.

“I can’t pull you up,” Derek said through gritted teeth. “I don’t have a good enough grip. I need you to try and reach up to grab my wrist.”

“Are you serious?” Stiles asked, voice higher than it usually was. “If I reach up and can’t grab you and jerk back to this position, you’ll definitely drop me!”

“I won’t drop you!” Derek snarled. “I’ll just fall with you!”

“Oh, sorry, much more comforting. At least I’ll spend my last seconds on Earth being cursed for my stupidity! Where even is the window, anyway?!”

“Can we not have this conversation while you’re hanging head-first out the window?!” Derek snapped back, the muscles in both of his arms bulging. “Just slowly reach up and grab for my wrist.”

Stiles cursed every deity he could think of and did his best not to look at the hard concrete deathtrap beneath him. He let out a slow breath and then cautiously started bending himself in half, one hand reaching up for Derek’s wrist around his ankle. His core was trembling already, and he cursed himself for not having gone to all those yoga classes with Lydia.

Yoga wasn’t his thing, it was all patience and being still, and Stiles was bad at both of those things. But he kind of wished he’d gone because it was really hard trying to reach for Derek right now.

Gritting his teeth and letting out a sharp exhale when Derek’s fingers slid a fraction more, claws still embedded in his skin, Stiles tried to focus only on the wrist he was reaching for.

Derek’s expression was tight, and Stiles could hear him letting out short little pants that he didn’t think were from exertion. Derek was scared. Somehow, the thought that he could lose Stiles actually scared him.

Puffing out his cheeks, Stiles gave a silent prayer to those same deities he had just been cursing and then made a grab for Derek’s wrist. He managed to close one hand around it and quickly reached up with his other to do the same.

Derek let out the smallest breath of relief.

“I’m going to drop your ankle. Don’t let go.”

“Not a problem,” Stiles managed to get out from his doubled over position.

Derek licked his lips, eyes on the hands around his wrist, and let go. The second Stiles’ legs dropped, Derek’s hand twisted around to grab rather painfully at Stiles’ closest wrist and he wrenched him up and back into the loft so hard Stiles’ shoulders actually popped rather painfully.

He let out a shout when he flew forward, Derek stumbling from the strength of his own pull. The Werewolf fell on his bare ass—very bare, because he’d obviously come out of the shower and lost his towel at some point in the kerfuffle—and Stiles landed on top of him.

For a few long seconds, neither of them moved, Stiles still clutching tightly at Derek’s wrist with both hands, all three trapped between their bodies. Derek’s other arm had wound itself around Stiles’ waist, holding him tightly.

Stiles’ breathing was ragged and painful, and he could feel Derek’s heart pounding beneath him. At least he knew that Derek cared, because it felt like his heart was going to beat out of his chest.

After lying on top of Derek for a good minute, Stiles licked his lips and said, “You’re naked.”

“Tends to happen when you shower,” Derek said dryly.

Stiles took another breath and managed to slowly sit up, releasing his death grip on Derek’s wrist, though the other was much slower at letting him go. He managed to shift off Derek, feeling like someone had injected him with a shot of caffeine. His hands were shaking, and he felt jittery and wired.

“Thanks,” he muttered, sitting with his legs crossed over one another and stuffing his hands under his butt to stop the shaking.

He also dutifully kept his gaze locked on Derek’s face. Because he was a gorgeous specimen and Stiles didn’t need a blow to his non-existent ego by looking down, thank you very much, Derek Hale.

The Werewolf just grunted in response, sitting up and raking a hand through his damp hair, making it stick up. He glanced around, presumably for the towel, then stood to go and fetch it.

Stiles really tried not to look, which was almost impossible when Derek’s dick was right there, but he somehow managed it.

He instead busied himself with pulling up his pantleg so he could look at this ankle. It wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be, and figured Derek had been trying hard not to hurt him.

Tiny pinpricks dotted the area, but they weren’t very deep and only one of them was still bleeding, so he just pulled the material back down over it. He was sure the sting would disappear in a few minutes.

He heard shuffling behind him, and then Derek was in front of him again, towel around his waist and hand outstretched.

Reaching up, Stiles let Derek pull him up off the ground, knees still slightly shaky, but holding his weight. Derek’s entire body looked tense, and Stiles knew if they didn’t try and calm down, they were both going to be sore and achy from the tenseness.

That and Stiles would get a headache, and that was never a good time.

“I’m telling everyone you fell onto your naked butt,” Stiles said with a grin.

Derek stared at him for a second, then let out a small snort and rolled his eyes. Stiles smiled when he saw some of Derek’s muscles relax ever so slightly. That small change made Stiles relax, too and he moved back a step towards the kitchen.

He turned to make sure he didn’t fall out any more windows, and inched a little closer to the one he’d been dangling out of.

A low growl slid up Derek’s throat at the proximity, but Stiles didn’t linger. He just backed away from the window before turning back to Derek and thumbing over his shoulder at it.

“So, that’s dangerous. What the hell?” He left his inquiry at that and Derek snorted, moving forward and crossing his arms.

Stiles wished he’d put on a shirt, or something.

Or at least pants. Definitely pants.

“It broke when those flying lizards were whizzing around last week.”

“Those were fucking mini-dragons, and you know it!” Stiles interrupted, pointing a finger at him in warning.

Derek ignored him, not that that was new. “I didn’t get around to replacing it yet, I just took the whole window off and procrastinated getting it fixed. Wasn’t expecting you to just fall through it. How did you not notice it was gone?” He was scowling again, like Stiles’ presence and fragility was a nuisance.

“I don’t know,” Stiles insisted, waving one arm dismissively. “I just thought the window was really, really clean! Not that I know why I thought that, considering the loft.” He looked around, pointedly ignoring the eyebrows.

Derek seemed to be saying “You’re not one to talk” with his eyebrows alone.

Stiles chose to ignore the hypocrisy of his words.

“You should get that fixed.”

“I should have considered your clumsiness when you visited last time and gotten it done sooner,” Derek said with a scowl. Always with the scowling. Stiles wondered if maybe his face wasn’t just stuck that way. After all, when he was little, his mother had warned him if he pulled a face for too long, it would get stuck that way.

Maybe Derek was the poster child for that happening.

... Maybe Stiles should stop pulling weird faces.

“Did you need something?” Derek asked, annoyance creeping into his tone. “Or did you just come over to fall out another window?”

“I was thrown out that one at the house, and you know it,” Stiles insisted, pointing his finger at him again. Derek kept insisting he’d fallen out of it whenever it came up, but falling out and being thrown out were two very different things. Sure, Stiles had technically still exited the house via a window, and maybe he’d been standing too close to it considering it was a haunted house, but it still didn’t count!

Stiles was staying away from windows going forward. No more windows! Windows were the worst!

“Did you need something?” Derek asked again, snapping Stiles out of his angry musings.

“No, just came by to make sure you were still grumpy and lurking in corners.” Stiles winked at him and did finger guns before turning and waving over his shoulder. “It’s been real, Derek. Thanks for not letting me become one with the concrete and all that.”

Because Stiles’ nightmares didn’t have enough fodder, now he was going to dream about falling to his death.

He pulled open the loft door and had just stepped out when Derek spoke.

“Hey Stiles?”

Turning back to him, he saw a weird look cross his face before Derek managed to smooth it over. Stiles raised his eyebrows, waiting for him to continue, but he said nothing more.

“Gotta use your words, big guy.”

Derek scowled—again with the scowling, seriously!—and crossed his arms over his still very bare chest. He said nothing, just glared at Stiles hard enough to give him anxiety.

“Well, this has been fun. Always a pleasure.” Stiles exited the loft and made a big show of bowing. “Mr. Hale.”

He slammed the loft door shut.

When he was in his car three minutes later, buckling himself in and placing his hands on the steering wheel, he saw that they were still trembling.

4. Roughhousing is not Malia’s forte.

Truth be told, Stiles didn’t even know why he was there.

Years ago, back in the days where he was young and innocent and oh so adorable—not that he wasn’t adorable now, thank you very much—Stiles would’ve killed to be at one of Lydia’s parties. Like, straight up murdered someone.

Probably Jackson.

But now? Well, now it was less exciting. Not that it wasn’t exciting, but he’d seen too much in his very short life, and standing around talking to old classmates and drinking alcohol just didn’t do it for him anymore. He used to only want to come by because of Lydia, but things had changed so much between them that it would be like having a crush on his sister.

Besides, there was the other thing. The whole kind of turned on by big muscles and manicured stubble thing. That he wasn’t telling anyone.

Ever.

Especially the actual muscles and manicured beard thing. Person? Individual.

Man, but those muscles were Godly though, damn.

“Stiles.”

He turned with a red cup at his lips, taking a sip and nodding at Malia when she approached him. He’d made himself scarce from the party, hanging out in Lydia’s room—one of the lucky few who was privileged enough to enter it—and was sitting by her open window, staring out at the party raging beneath him.

It was loud, and the number of drunk people was kind of comical. If the cops showed up, most of them would be screwed.

Not Stiles, though! Because he was over twenty-one and had been drinking a reasonable amount of alcohol.

Reasonable as in not very much, not as in way too much. Reasonable in a way his father would be proud of. Given the alcoholism in his family, Stiles was doing surprisingly well on the whole booze front.

“Hiding?” Stiles asked Malia when she stopped in front of him, dragging Lydia’s chair over so she could sit down. There wasn’t any room left on the sill Stiles had perched himself on, but he had to be impressed by her progress given in the past, she would’ve made space.

“Too much going on,” she admitted.

Malia had come a really long way in the last few years, but sometimes things could still be overwhelming. Stiles figured it was bound to happen when one lived as a coyote for eight years of their life. To be fair, Stiles thought it might just be a Supernatural thing, because he was also hiding out from the rest of the people, and had only even come because Lydia had asked him.

One did not simply say no to Lydia. Just like one did not simply walk into Mordor.

It was probably why Malia was there, too, if he really thought about it. Scott was down below with the new girl of the week, probably getting drunk on Aconite, and completely useless if something were to happen.

Like, say, a Zombie attack. And now Stiles was wondering about the outcome of a Werewolf being bitten by a Zombie. Would it be a Zombiewolf? Or a Werezombie? Would it even affect a Werewolf at all? Now Stiles wasn’t sure. What would be stronger? The Werewolf side or the Zombie side? 

Though wouldn’t it be hilarious if they fought each other to the death inside the host’s body and the outcome was just a regular human? Maybe that was what humans were. Failed Werewolf/Zombie hybrids.

At least it made him feel cooler.

“How’s school?” Stiles asked, turning back to look out the window and bringing his cup to his lips.

He was sitting sideways on the sill, back against one end of it and one leg up and pressed against the opposite side. His other leg was bent at the knee, ankle across his thigh. He recognized it was a precarious position, but he wasn’t going to get startled this time.

Besides, even if he did fall, he would land right in the pool, so all in all, not a big deal. Sure, he’d be wet, but water never killed anyone.

Except the Wicked Witch of the West. Stiles wondered if Witches actually died because of water. If so, rain must be the worst! Imagine a little old Witch had just gone to the store to pick up some more eye of newt, and upon exiting it was raining. Poor thing would be stuck there until it stopped, nevermind screwed if the shop was closing and it was pouring outside. It would be a tough life.

Stiles felt his own life was pretty tough, considering he was now feeling sorry for Witches who may or may not die by being spat on.

“It’s fine,” Malia said, answering his question and likely knowing he was distracted. “Why do we need school, anyway? It isn’t very useful when it comes to staying alive. When has algebra ever saved anyone?”

“We could always use it to confuse a monster and escape,” Stiles offered with a shrug, holding his cup in both hands.

Malia snorted, but she actually looked like she was considering whether or not that would actually work. Stiles just laughed.

They fell into easy conversation after that. They’d known one another a long time, by now. It was easy to talk about things, no matter what they were. Stiles even mentioned the Witch thing and discovered Malia had never seen The Wizard of Oz. He promised he would fix that at the next available opportunity.

It wasn’t necessarily the best movie, but it was wholesome and entertaining.

“So,” Stiles said, having long since finished his drink, “how’re things in the bow-chica-bow-wow department?”

Malia stared at him, and for half a second, Stiles thought maybe the reference was lost on her, but then he figured out she was just unimpressed. She’d been taking facial expression classes from Lydia, apparently, because they looked identical.

“Why, jealous?”

“Would I be friends with Scott if things like that made me jealous?” he countered, thumbing out the window.

“Did you date Scott?”

“Touché.” Stiles toasted her with his empty cup. “You just seem happy. I was just curious whether you were getting laid.”

“I do have copious amounts of sex, yes. But not with any one particular bedfellow, I have multiple. Men are always very eager when I walk up to them and ask them to sleep with me.”

“Bedfellow?” Stiles asked, a grin sliding onto his face. “I’m sorry, did you say ‘bedfellow’? Because that is hilarious.”

Malia scowled, looking very much like her cousin when she did that—probably got lessons on scowling from Derek, why was everyone teaching her things?

“Why didn’t you just say sexual partner? Or even just booty call?”

“Booties can’t call, they are incapable of speech.”

And now Stiles was taking back what he’d been thinking about how improved she’d gotten over the past few years. Then again, he noticed the corner of her lips quirking and he let out a burst of laughter, shoving lightly at her shoulder.

“Holy shit, are you trolling me? I’d be mad if I wasn’t so impressed.”

Malia smiled, and it was so endearing it reminded Stiles of why he’d fallen for her in the first place. They weren’t like that anymore, and would never be again, but sometimes she did things that reminded him of why they’d been so good together. Problematic, considering how they’d met, but still good.

“And what about you?” Malia asked. “Any sexual partners for you?”

“Nah.” Stiles rubbed the back of his neck. “Been too busy trying not to die. I really need to get laid, though.” He turned to eye her, and grinned. “What do you say? Wanna jump in the sack for old times’ sake?”

Malia snorted and punched at Stiles’ shoulder. Realistically, Stiles should’ve known that the one thing Malia was bad at controlling was her strength, because he’d dated her for months and had gotten a lot of interesting bruises in interesting places.

So really, he knew he had no one to blame but himself when she punched him just this side of too hard and he promptly fell right out the window with a shout. Thankfully, he landed in the pool, almost half on top of two drunk people making out.

They definitely weren’t happy about it when he surfaced, but at least no one had gotten hurt. Stiles sputtered and coughed, wiping at his face with one hand while treading water, Malia shouting down at him, asking if he was okay.

Coughing from the inhaled chlorinated water, he swam to the edge and started to pull himself out when a hand appeared in front of him. He glanced up, expecting Scott, but Derek was the one staring down at him, looking just a little too amused for Stiles’ liking.

“Not a word,” Stiles insisted, taking the offered hand and letting Derek pull him out of the pool. “Not one damn word, Hale.”

Derek didn’t smile as often as Stiles would like, but he was definitely sporting the beginnings of one, the corners of his lips curled upwards while he turned to find him a towel. Stiles just coughed, shaking his arms to try and rid them of droplets. His clothes were drenched, and he cursed when he realized he’d had his phone on him.

He was tapping on the screen after having pulled it out when Derek returned, wrapping a large, fluffy towel around his shoulders and rubbing the material roughly along his arms. It hurt more than it actually dried him off, but he tolerated it because his phone wasn’t working and that kind of had his complete attention right now.

Sighing after a few seconds of useless tapping, he deemed it a lost cause for now and hoped they had some rice at home. He’d heard of that actually working for waterlogged phones, so here was hoping!

“You’re determined to fall out of every window available, aren’t you?” Derek asked, wiping more gently at Stiles’ face with the towel.

“Hey, Malia pushed me!”

“It was an accident!” Malia shouted from up above. Stiles barely heard her over the sound of the party going on around him.

He was kind of annoyed no one was even remotely concerned about him aside from Malia and Derek. Scott was a bad friend, he was probably off necking with his new girl of the week. Lydia probably wanted to pretend she didn’t know him.

“Can you stay away from windows? You seem to have a bad track record with them.”

“Malia’s fault!” Stiles insisted, motioning upwards while Derek continued to brush the edge of the towel across his cheek, despite it very clearly being dry.

“Stop blaming other people for your clumsiness,” Derek said with another small smile teasing his lips. It was actually kind of surreal that he was smiling, no matter how small.

Stiles was busy staring at his lips, a little awed by the action, and jumped when Malia spoke from literally right beside him.

“Get a room.”

“What?” Stiles asked, promptly followed by awkward sputtering and his heart going crazy and fucking Werewolves because they knew his heart was going crazy.

His life sucked. It was the worst. Fuck everything.

“Come on,” Derek said, finally dropping the towel so that Stiles had to grab it to keep it around his shoulders. “Let’s get you home before you get sick.”

“Don’t forget to use protection,” Malia called after them.

Stiles almost didn’t hear the low growl coming from Derek at those words.

Almost.

5. The Sheriff almost commits murder.

Stiles winced as he held his ribs, slowly climbing out of the Jeep and shutting the door as quietly as he could. He knew his dad wasn’t stupid, and would know he’d disobeyed him since Stiles had parked it down the street, but he wouldn’t notice that until the morning and by then, he’d be too exhausted to bother shouting when he found Stiles alive and well.

And really, Stiles wouldn’t have disobeyed him if his dad hadn’t been unreasonable! He was fine! Really, he was!

Mostly. Kind of.

Okay, so maybe his dad was right and he shouldn’t have even considered going out to help with the new problem of the week, but it wasn’t Stiles’ fault! The others were helpless without their trusty human sidekick! And while Mason was great, he wasn’t the best of human sidekicks.

And he knew his dad was only looking out for him. Derek had been pissed when Stiles had shown up. Scott—oblivious, lovable Scott who forgot how human he was—just patted him hard on the back and said he was glad he could make it.

The main reason he shouldn’t have and both his dad and Derek insisted he not go was because Stiles had broken ribs.

Again.

It was turning into a habit, actually. Thankfully this last time didn’t involve any windows! Just regular old broken ribs from a monster throwing Stiles into a tree and cracking four ribs and almost breaking his back. No big deal, he was fine.

Besides, things had worked out. It had been almost a week since they’d broken, and he’d felt mostly fine upon leaving. He’d even climbed down the side of the house and everything! But now, after the actual fighting and the running and the swinging of the bat—which was still in his Jeep—he was starting to feel a little less fine.

He also had a headache because Derek had yelled at him rather angrily before he’d headed home, insisting Stiles had to remember he didn’t heal like the rest of them, he was reckless, he was being stupid, etcetera, etcetera. Derek had gotten really protective lately, and even Mason had mentioned that he was acting almost territorial.

Stiles figured Derek didn’t want to have to find a new research guy. They were so hard to come by these days.

Trudging up his driveway, one hand pressing against his ribs, Stiles stared up at the dark house and sighed. He was going to have to climb that again. It had seemed so easy when he’d left, feeling fine and happy with life. Now, returning after the battle, with his ribs hurting and exhausted, it looked like a lot less fun.

But he couldn’t use the front door, because his dad would definitely know and Stiles didn’t need a lecture right now. He needed a bed. And some morphine.

Or Werewolf mojo in a to-go cup. Stupid Derek, yelling at him, making him storm off and leave without getting his mojo fix. Stiles should’ve just called Scott, but Scott had cleared out of there as fast as possible because apparently he had an exam he hadn’t studied for the following morning.

It was hard being an Alpha and a college student. Harder being a human and a college student, though. At least in Stiles’ opinion. At least Scott’s injuries were healed and wouldn’t impede his ability to study for his exam. If Stiles had an exam the following morning, he’d have a hard time studying right now.

Not that he’d leave studying to the last minute like some people—Scott!—but that wasn’t the point.

Sighing and moving towards the tree closest to his room, he grunted while attempting to pull himself up onto one of the lower branches. His ribs screamed in protest, but it wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it would be. That, or maybe his tolerance for pain had increased exponentially the past few years.

That was a depressing thought.

Climbing upwards until he was about level with the sloping roof, Stiles jumped off onto it, wincing at the bang and the jarring of his body at the action, and waited. He heard nothing from inside the house, and breathed a sigh of relief, walking carefully along the roof to his bedroom. He crouched in front of the window and dug his fingers into the small crack he’d left, lifting it open.

He’d just started to put one foot into the room when his desk lamp suddenly turned on and his father sat staring at him from his desk chair, looking none too pleased.

At least, the split second Stiles managed to catch suggested he looked none too pleased, but he wasn’t entirely sure given the action started him so violently that he lost his footing and promptly toppled backwards off the roof. Thankfully he managed to catch hold of the gutter before falling right off it, like that one time with Derek, but having to hold himself up with both arms was making his ribs scream angrily. If his ribs could speak, they would probably be shouting profanities at him.

He told them to shut up, considering falling off the roof entirely would’ve definitely hurt them more, but he was now kind of stuck. If he let go, the fall to the ground below would jar his body more violently than his small jump from the tree to the roof. If he tried to pull himself back up, he was likely not to succeed given he’d already exacerbated the damage to his injured ribs enough tonight.

Stiles glanced up when he heard a creak and saw that the gutter was starting to sag a little beneath his weight.

That was insulting, he was not that heavy.

“Come on, really?” he demanded of it angrily.

Just when he’d decided jumping down was his only option, two hands grabbed at his waist and a voice said, “Let go.”

And of course Derek was there, because why wouldn’t he be?! Why wouldn’t he be there for the fifth time in ten months where Stiles happened to unexpectedly exit through a window?

He released the gutter and Derek held most of his weight so he could set him down gently. Stiles muttered a thanks when the other let him go and trudged towards the door, reaching the porch in time for it to open and his dad to be standing there, looking relieved but also pissed.

“You all right?” he asked gruffly, eying Stiles, as if for new injuries.

“Fine.” Stiles motioned behind himself vaguely. “My knight in leather armour showed up.”

The sheriff frowned and looked past Stiles, which prompted him to turn.

Derek was gone.

Frowning, Stiles knew he’d been there, but didn’t dwell on it and just walked into the house. When the door closed, he braced himself for a lecture, and stood there listening to his dad tell him off for being reckless and stupid.

He ended his tirade with an angry comment on how Stiles could’ve broken his neck falling out the window like he had, and it was extremely difficult for him not to argue that it was his dad’s fault that had even happened.

On a normal day, he’d have argued. Loudly, and at length. Today, though? He was injured, he was in pain, his ego was smarting from Derek seeing him fall out of a window yet again, so he just let his dad have his say and stood there.

When the man finally finished, he eyed his son suspiciously.

“Why are you so quiet?”

“I’m tired and in pain,” Stiles admitted. “Arguing would mean standing here longer.”

The sheriff sighed and rubbed one hand down his face. Stiles felt guilty for how exhausted and worried the man looked. He knew it was his fault, that every time he ran out into danger, it was just adding more stress and grey hairs, but he couldn’t help it. It ran in his blood.

Like father, like son. Really, the only person the sheriff had to blame was himself.

“Get to bed,” the sheriff said with a sigh, motioning the stairs. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

“Can’t wait,” Stiles said before he could stop himself. He heard his dad sigh behind him, but at least he didn’t call him back for another lecture.

Stiles walked into his room and shut the door, wincing and holding his ribs. Turning on the overhead light, he took a step and then jumped, the action making them twinge, when he found Derek sitting in his desk chair, scowling at him.

“Why didn’t you just come through the front door?” Stiles asked, moving to grab some sweats and a shirt for bed.

“Your dad would’ve yelled at me for not having made you go home,” Derek said, watching Stiles’ progress and seeming unconcerned with the fact that he evidently wanted to change without an audience. “I tried, you just didn’t listen to me.”

“Don’t feel bad, I usually don’t listen to you,” Stiles said, turning to offer him wink. That just earned him a scowl.

Stiles found his sleeping clothes and then turned to stare at Derek, trying to make him uncomfortable enough to leave. He should’ve known better, because the Werewolf just stared right back and crossed his arms.

Sighing, Stiles left the room and changed in the bathroom, using the opportunity to brush his teeth and relieve himself. His ribs were still aching something awful, but he tried not to make that obvious with his movements when he re-entered his room and tossed his clothes into the hamper.

“You just gonna sit there all night like a creepy creeper?” Stiles asked, turning off the overhead light and motioning for Derek to do the same to the desk lamp. Derek complied, but only once Stiles had gotten under the covers and rolled onto his uninjured side, which happened to be facing the wall. He didn’t necessarily care that his back was to Derek, but it was weird that he was just sitting there in the dark while Stiles was trying to sleep.

Five minutes later, Stiles said, “Seriously, are you just gonna sit there all night like a creepy creeper?”

When he received no reply, he thought Derek might have left, but then he felt the bed dip and a hand on his injured side. A small breath of relief left him at the feel of pain being pulled from him. Maybe he’d actually be able to get some sleep without the pulsing in his side.

Stiles was not a fan of broken ribs. He’d had way too many of them the past few years, and surprisingly, most of them were this year itself, which was uncool. Uncool!

“Be more careful,” Derek insisted, voice low. Stiles would’ve assumed it was to stop his dad from overhearing, but it didn’t sound like it. It was more just... soft Derek. Derek had a lot of sides, and this one was just... soft. Worried Derek, maybe.

It made Stiles think about that thing he wasn’t actually thinking because he knew better and therefore didn’t think. But still, now he was thinking about it.

Derek’s hand left his side, and he felt the bed shift again, the other standing. Stiles turned his head to watch him, assuming Derek was about to climb out the window, but he instead just plunked down in the desk chair again, bright blue eyes shining in the darkness.

“Go to sleep, Stiles.”

“I can’t sleep with you looming.”

“I’m not looming, I’m sitting in a chair.”

“You could loom from across a continent,” Stiles muttered, but he dutifully turned his back to Derek once more and closed his eyes, attempting to sleep. Every now and then, he would peek open one eye and look over his shoulder, but Derek was still there.

He wasn’t always staring right at Stiles, but he hadn’t moved other than to turn his head to look outside, look around the room as if he’d never seen it before, check his phone for any new messages, that kind of thing.

Stiles eventually fell asleep, but when he woke up a few hours later to use the bathroom, Derek was still there and he did his Werewolf mojo again to take away some of his pain. Stiles passed back out soon afterwards, and when he woke up the next morning, it was to an empty room.

When he stumbled downstairs to find some food and caffeine, he instead found Derek standing at the stove in the same clothes he’d arrived in the night before, making eggs and bacon.

Stiles tried really hard to ignore the suspicious look his dad was giving him.

+1. Stiles makes the best decisions.

Stiles was a smart individual. Really, he was salutatorian in high school—losing out to Lydia, which made sense and was totally fine in his book—and had some of the best grades in his current classes at university. He made the best plans, figured out patterns, helped with the research.

Stiles was a smart guy! A really smart guy! The kind of smart guy who, when being chased by an axe murderer, would’ve run for the front door instead of up the stairs. Because only morons who wanted to die ran up the stairs.

This was a little different, though. Because when fighting a Fire Demon, if it set the entire floor on fire, to the point where running down wasn’t even an option because it was fully on fire, the only real choice here was to run up.

Which was what Stiles did. Run up. Because he was in a falling apart abandoned warehouse made entirely of rotting wood, and the bottom two floors were on fire. As far as he knew, Scott had taken care of the Fire Demon, so that was good, but Scott had also been on the first floor and was likely standing out in the lot watching the building burn down.

Stiles could barely see anymore, his lungs burned and he coughed constantly from the smoke. He knew he was going to end up dying if he didn’t get out of there, but he didn’t really have a lot of options.

The building groaned and shifted, Stiles slamming hard into a wall from the sudden movement, and he coughed again, the sound of fire roaring around him loudly enough to deafen him. He struggled towards a window so he could see how high off the ground he was, and winced.

High. Very high. So very, very high. This made the time he’d been dangling out of the loft look like nothing. If he tried jumping out of here, he was definitely going to die.

His phone rang, making him jump. It seemed crazy that the shrill, piercing sound of a phone could break through the constant crackling and popping of fire beneath his feet, but he supposed there was a reason firefighters used high-pitched noises as alerts of their whereabouts. It was because it was loud enough to be heard over the flames.

Pulling it from his pocket, he felt his stomach sink when he saw Derek’s name flashing back at him. They hadn’t invited him to this fiasco, figuring the rest of the pack could handle this on their own. It was a Fire Demon, after all. They all knew how Derek felt about fire. They didn’t want to do that to him.

Stiles almost didn’t answer, but he grit his teeth and did so, putting it to his ear.

“Stiles, you need you get out of there!”

The words were faint over the sound of burning building around him, but he heard them well enough and his eyes shot back to the window. Through the smoke and rising flames, he could see the rest of the pack a little ways back.

Derek was with them, phone at his ear, in his Beta shift, and one hand tugging at his hair.

Holy shit, Derek was there!

“Love to, big guy,” Stiles said, then coughed roughly, the smoke making his eyes water. “But in case you haven’t noticed, the bottom two floors are on fire, and I haven’t yet mastered the ability to fly.”

“I’ll catch you.”

Stiles just stared out the window at him.

“What?”

“I’ll catch you! If you stay in there, you’ll die! Stiles, I’ll catch you! I can’t—not again! I can’t lose someone like this again! Stiles, please!”

This was insane. Stiles knew it was insane, and he knew there was no fucking way this was going to work. He was going to jump, and even if Derek caught him, he’d just fucking flatten him and they’d both die from the impact!

Then again, the ghost had torpedoed him out of the house at like, fifty miles an hour or something—maybe not that fast, but still fast!—and Derek had managed to catch him. So maybe...

“Shit.” Stiles cursed and hung up, shoving his phone back into his pocket. He knew Derek would understand what that meant.

Pulling his hoodie off and coughing roughly, the smoke beginning to thicken, he wrapped it around one hand and then punched as hard as he could at the window. It had already begun to crack from age and the increased heat, so it didn’t take much to break the glass. He used the hoodie to try and clear off the sharper edges and then pulled away.

He only dared to back up a few paces, worried the floor would give out beneath him considering it was smoking hot under his probably melting shoes, and then let out a harsh breath.

“Shit. Shit. This is such a bad idea,” he muttered.

Letting out one more cough and trying to hold his breath, Stiles took four running steps and then leapt out the window.

It wasn’t exciting like in an action movie, where the moment he jumped the entire building exploded behind him and he was propelled forward into the loving embrace of his one and only, where they would cry over the near-miss and kiss passionately while the building continued to burn and explode behind them.

Because movies. They were so realistic. Not like standing that close to an exploding building would have them walk away without burns. Stiles himself had many burns along his exposed skin, the only areas faring better than the rest being his arms because of the hoodie he’d previously been wearing.

But with regard to the jumping, there was no explosion. No crazy action stunt, no magical flying carpet, no nothing.

Stiles jumped out the window, windmilling his arms and cursing Derek Hale’s stupid, stupid ideas even though he acknowledged that he was the one who’d decided to listen to him.

He could see Derek bolting forward, obviously having thought Stiles would’ve gotten a bit more distance from the building, but again, no explosion so nothing to propel him forward. The building behind him just continued to burn lazily, as if it weren’t in any hurry.

Stiles would’ve appreciated that more if the damn thing had been slower to engulf the bottom two floors.

Derek was waiting for him on the asphalt, and Stiles was absolutely positive he was about to break every bone in both their bodies, but Derek braced himself and when he caught Stiles, he shifted slightly so that he bent with the momentum of the fall and managed to stop him from hitting the ground at break-neck speed.

It still made every inch of his body ache at the impact and when he was caught, he was pretty sure he blacked out for a second, but the next thing he knew he was being carried and Derek was bolting away from the burning building. It made sense, because Stiles could see burns beginning to form and heal along Derek’s skin, and it made him wonder how much adrenaline was going through him that he couldn’t feel how much pain he was truly in.

Stiles stared at his hands, and saw them red and blistering. He was definitely sporting some good burns that would hopefully not scar.

There were sirens in the distance, someone obviously having called the fire hall, and Stiles was actually surprised when Derek and the rest of the pack stopped a little ways from the building.

“Why aren’t we running?” Stiles asked, hands still held out in front of himself and Derek’s grip on him almost painful. He was getting tired of being carried damsel-in-distress style, but figured it was the most comfortable position for Derek when he had to run with him.

It was sad that Derek had run with Stiles in his arms like this on multiple occasions. Fucking Werewolves.

“You need medical attention,” Derek grunted.

“And what’ll we say about the fire?” Oh, now the adrenaline was wearing off, and yeah, he hurt. Oh, he hurt a lot. This was bad. This was so, so bad.

“Don’t worry about the fire,” Derek snapped. “You could’ve gotten killed! What were you thinking?!”

“Are you seriously lecturing me right now?” Stiles managed to get out, feeling the pain slowly intensify. Every now and then it would ebb, and he could see Derek’s arms darkening with black lines, but he could only assume the pain was too intense for even Derek to take much of it because it only left him in brief moments before returning full force.

Scott interrupted them before they could get into a screaming match, and when the firemen arrived and started on the fire, the medic ambulance quickly took Stiles from Derek and began to work on him while strapping him into a gurney.

Stiles could tell Derek wasn’t happy about them being separated, but no one was allowed into the back since there wasn’t space—this was a medic ambulance, not an actual ambulance so the space was more limited. The sheriff was called while Stiles was being driven to the hospital, and that was really all he needed right now. His dad freaking out and giving himself a heart attack.

He figured they must’ve given him something, because he passed out not long after the driver radioed the police station and when he woke up, he was already lying in a hospital bed with an IV drip in one arm and a heartrate monitor beeping steadily beside him.

He turned his head to find his dad, but the room was empty. He lifted both hands and saw them bandaged, which worried him because how badly was he injured? He hadn’t felt badly injured when he’d been running around in the warehouse, but maybe he’d just been so panicked he hadn’t felt it.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Jesus fucking holy ghost Mary and Joseph Christ almighty!” Stiles shouted, whipping around and seeing Derek lurking in a dark corner of the room. “Why can’t you just be sitting in a chair at my bedside like a normal fucking person?” He demanded, resisting the urge to massage his heart, but only because he didn’t know if his hands would survive the action.

“I’m not supposed to be in here,” Derek said, glancing at the closed door before moving forward a few steps. “No one’s supposed to be here. It’s after hours. They even made your dad leave.”

Trust Derek to completely disregard any and all establishment rules. Stiles was used to it. Derek had been breaking into his house for years, after all, so this wasn’t exactly a surprise to him.

He shifted a little, feeling okay, but wondered if something being pumped into him was morphine. He didn’t feel like he was on morphine, but what did he know? He didn’t feel like he was in any pain, but now that Derek was there, it kind of explained it a bit more.

“How bad is it?” he asked quietly.

“Not as bad as I’m sure you’re going to feel in a few hours.” Derek shifted closer and, after one last glance at the door, he sat down in the chair beside the bed. “Your hands were the worst, but the rest is okay. Your face is a little red, but nothing serious. Melissa said you shouldn’t be here longer than overnight, and then you can go home with some antibiotics and a burn cream.”

Better than he’d thought, so that was good. He shifted a little in the bed to get more comfortable and turned to look at Derek. The other was staring at him exceptionally hard, eyebrows down in a frown and lips pressed together.

“How mad are you?” Stiles asked slowly. “On a scale of one to ten?”

“Four-hundred.”

“That’s... pretty high.”

“Yes it is.”

Stiles nodded, making a small popping noise with his lips before staring at the ceiling. “If it happened again, I wouldn’t have changed anything.”

“Stiles—”

“I wouldn’t,” Stiles said, interrupting what he was sure would be an amazing animal impression from Derek. He turned to look at him and found him slowly turning into his beta shift. “Your family died in a fire, Derek. We didn’t want you to come. It wasn’t right.”

“And how do you think I’d have taken you dying in a fire?” Derek demanded angrily, voice only slightly quieter than a dull roar. “Stiles, don’t you get it?! Don’t you understand?! I can’t lose you!”

“I know,” Stiles said quietly. “Because we’re pack.”

“Because I love you!”

The second the words left him, all the anger melted from his face and it looked like Derek was trying to figure out if he’d actually said those words aloud. It was very clear by his expression he hadn’t meant to say them, they’d just come out.

He stood so fast the chair toppled backwards, but before he could disappear and go off into hiding for ten thousand years to brood—because, let’s be real, Stiles knew that was totally what Derek was about to do—Stiles grabbed the back of his jacket, tugging hard and ignoring the slight twinge in his hand and arm from the action.

Derek didn’t try to pull away, but he didn’t turn around, either. His hands were clenched at his sides, and Stiles could see blood. His claws had obviously broken skin. He was probably still wolfed out, so Stiles could only hope no one had heard the chair fall over. He didn’t want anyone investigating right now.

“Derek,” he said quietly. He winced at the growl he got in response. “Derek. Come on, big guy.” He tugged a little, trying to make him come back, turn to face him, sit down. “This is me. Come on.”

He tugged twice more and Derek finally glanced over his shoulder, eyes bright blue and snarl on his face. Stiles wasn’t sure what Derek thought was going to happen, but he was acting like he had to defend himself from a threat. Like he was about to be badly injured.

Stiles sighed. “What are you doing here, huh? This is private property.”

That was enough for the snarl to drop, but the eyes stayed electric blue, Derek staring at him. “What?”

“What are you doing here, huh? This is private property,” he repeated. “Those are the first words you ever said to me. That was the first time you ever spoke to me. I’ve never forgotten it. That conversation, or any other we ever had.” He released Derek’s jacket, but hoped he would stay.

He did.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Derek asked, turning slightly so he didn’t have to crane his neck quite so much in Stiles’ direction.

“Because, dumbass.” Stiles rolled his eyes. “Do you know what the first thing Scott ever said to me was?”

“No.” Derek frowned.

“Me neither. He’s my best friend, and I know it was a long time ago, but I can’t remember what he said. But I remember what you said.”

Stiles looked up at him, wondering if he’d have to spell it out. If it was someone as stupid as Scott, probably. Someone like Lydia would’ve understood the second Stiles parroted back the first words spoken between them.

Derek, thankfully, was somewhere in the middle. Because as soon as Stiles looked up at him, Derek turned back to him, took two steps, and bent over him. One large hand slid carefully across his cheek and Derek’s lips were on his.

Stiles grabbed at the front of Derek’s jacket, trying to pull him closer, sucking insistently on his bottom lip. He was sure things would’ve gotten a lot more interesting, except the door opened then and an outraged nurse demanded to know what Derek was doing in there, and how he’d even gotten in.

Never before had Stiles wished so badly for superpowers that could freeze time, because he wanted to freeze everything around them except for himself and Derek so they could just kiss and kiss for hours until Stiles couldn’t breathe anymore.

As it was, Derek pulled away when the nurse yelled that she was getting security. He stared down into Stiles’ face, thumb brushing lightly along the skin of his cheek.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he breathed against Stiles’ lips. “We can talk then. Try not to fall out any windows while I’m gone.”

“Only if you’re there to catch me.”

END.