Chapter Text
“C’mon Scott, pick up.” Stiles mutters into the phone pressed tightly to his ear.
The familiar, upbeat message of his best friend’s voicemail has him growling in frustration. He stabs his finger against the touch screen and runs long fingers through his short, brown hair, tugging sharply at the ends.
“Not answering? How unlike him.” The dulcet tone of Peter Hale’s voice is like sandpaper on Stiles’ already frayed nerves and he clenches his hand into a tight fist at his side.
He can’t punch Peter. First of all, he would break his hand on his stupid, granite adjacent, werewolf jaw. Second, Peter is too volatile to provoke. He might laugh at the pitiful attempt the puny human made to injure him or he might rip his throat out in response to the perceived (if negligible) threat.
Not many people would consider Stiles aggressive, especially not physically. Most think of him as jovial, bordering on clownish, much more likely to deflect with humour than swing on someone. Sure, he’d had some trouble with fighting in middle school, but everyone knew he’d lost his mum, that his dad was a bit fonder of bourbon than his neighbours. It was understandable. Expected even. Few outside his trusted inner circle knew just how mercurial the happy-go-lucky teen actually is, how tenuous his control over his more violent impulses are.
The knuckles of his fist are white, his nails biting crescents into his palms. His lips pull back from his teeth in a snarl.
“Shut up, Peter.” He hisses through the clench of his teeth even as he spreads his hypermobile fingers deliberately wide, breaking the shape of swift and brutal urges into tense, unnatural, backward curve.
Those same nimble fingers fly across the touch screen of his phone, scrolling through his contacts. Derek picks up on the third ring.
“What, Stiles?” The werewolf’s tone is clipped and impatient.
Despite the curt greeting, Stiles feels relief slumping his tense shoulders.
“Derek, listen.” He smooths a hand over the architectural plans lying on the dining cum war table before him. His anger already evaporated. “You have to get out of there. Like, now. Like right now.”
“It’s a little late for that.” A crack like muffled thunder echoes through the tinny speaks of the phone.
“Oh my god. You really punched through the wall.” He’s momentarily distracted by the impressive feat of the alpha’s strength.
“Yes, Stiles, I punched through the wall.” Derek’s response is both exasperated and smug. The jerk. “Now explain why I should be leaving.” The demand is delivered in an even tone but it still manages to reel Stiles’ focus back to the problem at hand.
“We couldn’t figure out why they, the alphas I mean, why they were keeping Erica and Boyd alive, right? If they wanted to weaken the local pack they would have just killed them? And if it was a trap, then why take Isaac’s memories? Why try to kill him in the hospital? Why were they waiting so long to spring it? It didn’t make any sense!” His hand buries itself in his dark hair again, ragged nails scratching along his scalp as he rants.
“You’re not making any sense.” Derek’s voice grates.
“It’s a trap!” He exclaims, sounding more excited than worried. “Heh. It’s a trap.” He repeats in his best General Akbar voice.
“Stiles!” He gets the admonishment in stereo from Derek and Peter.
“Ok, ok.” He placates. “So the bank vault is made of this special material called Hecatolite, after the Greek goddess Hecate. Although why it wasn’t named after Artemis, the actual goddess of the moon, I have no- Hey!” He protests as Peter snatches the phone from his grasp.
“Moonstone, Derek, it’s moonstone.” Peter informs his nephew while engaging in a brief, silent struggle for the phone. Stiles capitulates with a glare, nursing the fingers Peter had twisted but thankfully not broken and opts to press his ear to the other side of the device. “It scatters light.”.
“Diffracts.” Stiles corrects automatically. “The light bends around-” His right hand demonstrates, travelling in an arc.
“The point is,” Peter interrupts. “That it blocks the effects of the full moon. Essentially you have at least two werewolves,”
“Who haven’t felt the moon for four months.” Derek finishes heavily. “Shit!”
“Why does that matter?” He can hear Scott in the background.
Apparently the beta (traitor (ha! Rhyming)) can listen in to phone calls that aren’t his but can’t answer his own, Stile fumes silently.
“It’s like the gladiator matches of old.” Peter explains far more patiently than Stiles thinks Scott deserves. “Starve the lions so the beasts are more vicious and blood thirsty.”
There’s a sound of squealing hinges, loud enough that even Stiles’ inferior human ears pick it up.
“Hey! What’re you-” The line goes dead.
“Damn it!” Peter curses, hurling the phone toward the paper scattered table.
“Hey!” The lanky teen attempts futilely to catch it, (there’s a reason he’s on the lacrosse bench and not the field) but only manages to fumble it in the air a few times before it lands with a thud.
He snatches it up and inspects it for damage before tucking it into the pocket of his jeans and turning back to Peter who has started pacing with agitation.
“What do we do?” He asks, gnawing on an already dangerously short nail.
“Why would you presume I’d know?”
“Uh, because you’re the adult here. And more importantly, you’re the werewolf.”
“If you’d taken the bite we’d both be ‘the werewolf’.” Peter makes air quotes, his expression sardonic rather than censorious.
“If I’d taken the bite, you’d still be dead, I’d be the alpha and no one would be trapped in a bank vault to begin with.” His statement might have been taken for teasing if not for the challenging jut of his jaw.
It’s instinct as strong as the wolves’ weird threat detection thing (spider senses (wolfy senses?)) this need to goad and push. Stiles adores arguing the way some people love chocolate. It lights up his brain faster than sugar, brighter than cocaine. (Well, probably, he isn’t entirely sure. He’s never actually done any drug more exotic than alcohol. His father is the sheriff after all. Also he doesn’t like things messing with his perception. He has enough sensory issues without inducing them on purpose. Beside the point!) He never feels more alive than he does when he sees that spark of temper fire in someone’s eyes, the muscle tick of their jaw. It was probably why he likes hanging around Derek so much.
Peter does not disappoint.
“Is that so?” The older man’s voice has taken on the deep, inhuman gravel that comes with the change and his eyes flash murderous blue.
“Yeah,” Stiles takes a reckless step forward before his brain can engage and scream that squaring up with a werewolf, especially one like Peter, is a very bad idea. “That’s so.”
Peter’s clawed hand twists in the front of Stiles’ grey t-shirt and finally warning bells begin to alarm in his head. He manages to suppress the urge to swallow around the lump of fear lodged in his throat but can’t control the sudden lurch and sprint of his heart.
Peter’s mouth twists into a cruel approximation of a smile, his eyes drifting to Stiles’ chest knowingly. There’s something predatory in that blue gaze that has nothing to do with being a werewolf and everything to be with being a creep. Stiles hates him just a little bit more for that, even if he’s ninety percent sure Peter is just trying to make him uncomfortable and isn’t actually interested in molesting high schoolers.
The grip on his shirt tightens as Peter looms, flashing his eyes again.
“Now, you’re just over doing it.” His bravado shoves down the instinctual fear as he tries to yank the cloth out of Peter’s grip. “It’s intimidation one-oh-one. Less is more.”
Peter, the asshole, lets him struggle for at least ten seconds more before abruptly releasing him. Stiles stumbles back, pulling an admittedly childish face at the older man’s posturing.
While Stiles is pointedly smoothing the stretched fabric of his shirt down his chest, Peter’s bearing abruptly changes from vaguely amused to alert. He turns toward the glass doors of the balcony, pausing only to grin sharply over his shoulder.
“Should have taken the bite.”
“What?!” Stiles rushes after him through the doors just in time to watch him jump over the balcony. “Peter! What does that even mean?” But Peter is already gone, disappeared into the night like he’s freaking Batman.
The electric whir of the elevator motor starting up floods ice into his veins. He snatches up his baseball bat, wishing fruitlessly for even a pinch of mountain ash. His mind is racing, running through, and discarding, escape routes and plans. His phone is already in his hand, dialling first Scott then Derek. Neither werewolf answers, going straight to voicemail in a way that suggests their phones are off or out of service range. He briefly considers calling nine one one or his dad but anything that had Peter running scared probably wasn’t something to involve human police in.
He goes back outside, the rattle of the elevator drawing ever closer, to peer once again over the edge of the railing. Too far to drop, too smooth to climb without claws. His gaze drifts to the spiral staircase but that would just be trapping himself in Derek’s bedroom. And if whatever is coming up doesn’t kill him, Derek probably would. He doesn’t have time to raid the bathroom for an aerosol weapon, has no lighter to ignite it anyway. He dashes to the kitchen, aware he has mere seconds to spare as the beginnings of a desperate plan form. He drops the bat with a clatter on the tiles. His palms are sweaty as he wrestles with the childproof cap of the drain cleaner.
The rolling door to the loft screeches open and a dark skinned woman with red glowing eyes emerges sinisterly from the shadows. It’s so cliche, he giggles, the sound embarrassingly high pitched and borderline hysterical. She cocks her head and at least three dog jokes spring to mind unbidden. Rolling his shoulders like he’s preparing for a lacrosse match, Stiles faces her squarely, chemical weapon clutched in his right hand and legs coiled to spring into flight.
“I am so sick of being Robin.” He mutters as the unknown alpha advances.
———
He read somewhere that your life flashing before you eyes is your brain’s last ditch attempt to save your life, cataloguing and comparing experiences to find a solution to the unsolvable. The theory seems as good as any. It would explain why he’s suddenly recalling the time he fell out of a tree at his maternal aunt’s, the first time he broke a bone but certainly not the last. He can almost smell it, that cut grass scent he always associates with summer; his cousin Aggie (whose first name was also a Polish monstrosity) hovering anxiously behind his mother, who was running concerned hands over his skinny frame in search of injury. The hot, sick feeling that had risen when she’d accidentally jostled his arm. This doesn’t feel the same as that, though, so his brain casts the memory aside even though Stiles himself would have liked to linger on the unusual clarity of this evocation of his mother.
Injuries, fights, accidents, humiliations, anything that got his adrenaline going is splashed up in technicolour. Recall, discard, repeat.
Has time slowed? Or is his brain fast? He casts his eyes around listlessly, tries not to think about why he can’t feel anything but cold. It should hurt, right? So spinal injury or shock maybe. He’d almost made it, he muses as his mind plays the encounter on loop. Still desperately searching for a way out, a way past, a way through. He tries to sigh but his lungs won’t inflate all the way. Almost made it.
She’d just been so damn fast. He’d swept the drain cleaner in a diagonal arc to cover as much of her as possible while also compensating for her (superior) reflexes and his (inferior) aim. It’d been the smart thing to do and it’d worked. Got her right in the face! He recalls viciously.
She’d screamed then, part pain but mostly rage. He’d tried to dodge around her while she was wiping frantically at her eyes but her senses were too keen, even with the caustic stench of chemicals and burnt hair. Although she’d probably heard him, rather than smelled him. She’d speared him like a fish, aim unerring. He’d never forget the feeling of her claws imbedded in the soft flesh of his abdomen, the perfect horror of it, ripping up with the weight of his body as she’d lifted him with terrifying ease. The squelchy wet sound of it, as she’d flung him like a particularly nasty bug from her fingers. The smell of hot blood, as it ran out of him too dark to not be something vital. His liver, probably, maybe his stomach, hopefully not his intestines. He didn’t want to smell like shit while he died.
And he is, dying that is. This is definitely dying.
He wishes he’d gotten a chance to kiss Lydia. Just once. And if he was being honest with himself, (which he probably should, considering the circumstances)he kind of wishes he’d kissed Danny too. And if he was being really, really honest, the list of kissing regrets should definitely include Derek Hale.
He can’t see much of anything anymore, although he’s pretty sure his eyes are open. Can’t hear much either. That could just be the empty loft, though. He’s got pins and needles in his arms and his legs, which kind of annoys him because he hates pins and needles. Can’t stand that he’s unable to shake them out of his body.
He wishes he was unconscious. He could really use a fade to black moment. Instead he just feels himself flush hot and cold, hot and cold, hears his heart thudding like he’s having a panic attack, even though he’s surprisingly calm, and waits for the inevitable.
He really thought someone would be there when he died, to cradle his head in their lap and tearfully lie to him and tell him he’d be ok. That’s how he’d imagined it, anyway. Being in copious amounts of mortal peril the past few years had found him morbidly imagining his own demise more than once. Maybe Lydia, finally realising what he meant to her. Running her dainty fingers through his hair and kissing his lips with salty softness. At least Scotty, promising to look after his dad (oh god! His dad!) as he cried manly (Wolfly?) tears and held him too tightly. Hell, at this point he’d settle for Peter holding silent vigil- Scratch that, Peter was a dick who jumped off a balcony like a coward. He’d rather die alone.
Still, he really wishes he’d kissed Lydia. Or Danny. Or Derek…