Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Property lines.”

“What?”

“What!” Stiles jumped and stumbled a little over perfectly flat asphalt. He honestly hadn’t heard Scott come up behind him; he’d been way too focused on getting to his car and getting out of the parking lot before the after school traffic jam.

Scott steadied him, frowning. “What about property lines?”

“Hale property lines.” That didn’t clear up the confusion. “Nothing, it’s for a case. Maybe. Probably. What’s up?”

Scott raised an eyebrow but moved on. “Right. So, we decided to head up to Lydia’s early for pizza—want to drive together? Hayden won’t admit it, but she’s nervous, so I figured we should all be together, just in case.”

It was Hayden’s first full moon as a bonafide werewolf, and Mason’s first without the Dread Doctors’ control over him, and if the day so far was anything to go by, it wasn’t going to be pretty. Well, Stiles hadn’t actually seen Hayden yet, he was kind of avoiding her because she scared him on a good day, but Mason...

Stiles had been hoping that Mason’s freakish patience and sunny disposition would carry him through like a champ, because Hayden was bound to be a handful on her own, but as it turned out, even Mason wasn't immune to the full moon douchebag effect.

He’d shoved Corey off a balcony for suggesting he maybe go home early.

Honestly, Stiles had kind of been wanting to do the same with the little shit circling in on the pack and angling for an invite, but Mason was dating the guy. Things didn't look good for the people who didn't regularly give him orgasms.

“Can’t.” Stiles tossed his backpack into the passenger seat and turned back to Scott. “I’m meeting my dad at home. But I’ll be there before sundown!”

Scott frowned. “You guys are still working on old cases? I thought you finished.”

Stiles was starting to climb in after his bag, but at that, he had to stop and turn fully to give Scott a sufficiently disbelieving squint. “Dude, have you seen the old file room at the station? We’re not even close—though we are almost done with this one, I can feel it.”

“What’s this one?” Scott looked like he didn’t really want to know.

“Body dumped in the woods back in ‘96. Given our track record with bodies in the preserve, my money’s on a powerplay by another pack against Talia Hale, but my dad’s not ruling out your basic human crime of passion. Now don’t get me wrong, the passion’s there, but it was dumped right on the edge of their property—not legal property,” this was his latest theory, “werewolf territory. It’s a few miles further into the preserve.”

“Right,” Scott didn’t look like he bought it. He was still doubtful of the whole werewolf territory idea, but Stiles had yet to pin down an experienced wolf to ask about it point blank.

Then his face turned disgusted. “Wait, was that what you were working on during study hall? Don’t bring crime scene photos into the library, man.”

“I covered up the bloody parts!” As if he’d let a librarian see them and advise a trip to the guidance counselor again. His confidence and trust in counselors had taken a serious hit after Morrell, and it was more exhausting twisting the truth around werewolves than it was just living with the trauma in silence, anyway.

Probably.

“Still just,” Scott grimaced, “do homework for once, hang out. You’re not a cop yet.”

“But I’m going to be the most prepared when I finally am!” Stiles declared as he clambered into his car and yanked the door shut after him, and then added with a wink through the open window, “Proper prior planning, Scotty.”

Scott rolled his eyes. “You’ve been spending too much time with your dad.”

“It really does prevent piss poor performance.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He started to back away towards the school where his bike was parked. “I’ll see you in a few hours. And don’t be late!”

“I’m not going to be late!” Stiles yelled after him, and then he and his dad argued territory lines and supporting evidence until the sun was setting and he was definitely very late.

They’d set up their “office” in the spare bedroom, stacks of files and photos organized across the bed and covering the floor, the main case of focus tacked up on the wall. The downside of this arrangement was that they kept the curtains closed pretty much all the time due to nosy Mrs. Crabtree next door, so it was pretty easy to lose track of time.

“How is it already getting dark?” He crammed the last of his dinner into his mouth with one hand and used the other to messily search through crime scene photos and files for his phone.

His dad sighed as he picked up the most important of the files to save their organization, shook his head, and reminded him to put the duffel bag of chains in the trunk for the drive up to Lydia's lake house this time.

Stiles still maintained that Deputy Jansen should learn to mind his own business on traffic stops.

"He's a deputy—mysterious duffel bags in speeding vehicles are his business."

Stiles waved that point away with his entire head as he texted Scott that he was on his way.

"You guys be careful tonight," his dad said, stepping over a low wall of stacked files to give Stiles a brief but tight hug. "And call if you need any help."

Stiles nodded and promised he would, but they both knew he wouldn't.

*

Another fun fact of packs with more than one werewolf that Derek had never found it necessary to share with the class: emotions bled. Especially the negative ones.

Which was why Stiles found himself in an isolated lakehouse basement with three monumentally dickish tenth graders and a short tempered Scott trying to keep it in control. But, the more he tried to control it, the angrier Mason got about being contained, which bled into Liam, who already had his own anger issues, on into Hayden, who just wanted to be left alone. She snarled whenever anyone got close to her; Stiles was just leaving her alone.

It didn't help that they'd had to ring the room with mountain ash just to be safe, so tempers were flaring even more than usual with the pressure of being magically contained. The house was officially on the market, and they'd been warned (threatened) that if they so much as scratched even the shitty unfinished concrete basement walls, Lydia and her mother would murder them all and sink their bodies to the bottom of the lake.

She still didn’t trust them not to ruin it somehow, so Lydia was upstairs going over homework with their only backup: Malia, who was officially banned until she heard Stiles scream. She was excellent backup, pretty much as strong as Scott, as far as Stiles could tell with zero testing because she was being cagey about the whole almost killing her biological mother for power thing, but a last resort.

Scott wanted to really emphasize learning control on this first full moon together—less chains and brute force, and that wasn’t Malia’s forte. She had initially been downstairs with them too, but when the new betas got confrontational, she just threw it right back, with claws, in the worst arms race of shitty posturing and attitudes.

Still, she might not be up there for long because the screams were getting harder and harder for Stiles to keep down because, another fun fact they hadn't previously known: Mason was huge.

Not Beast of Gevaudan huge, that pants-shittingly terrifying form had thankfully gone with its creepy French host, but there was just enough of it left that he was definitely bigger than his usual self and just about as strong as Scott—even stronger when he was angry, it turned out. And apparently full moons made him very angry.

So Scott took on Mason, fighting to keep him restrained while trying desperately to find something to anchor him. Mason’s family, Liam, Corey, nothing so far was working, and reminding him of the things he loved that he couldn't get to seemed to just be making him evey more angry. He was snarling and clawing, tearing at Scott as the last gashes healed.

Over at the support pier, where Stiles had Liam reciting the sun, the moon, the truth over and over, he distantly and somewhat hysterically noted that they should've put down a tarp.

*

Not for the first time, Stiles found himself cursing werewolf stamina as he dropped into his seat in AP Lit the next morning, just before the bell rang. Scott was already there and in his own seat, looking nothing like he'd spent the night being torn apart by angry fifteen year olds, while Stiles looked like he'd actually died at some point and spent a good amount of time on a slab in the morgue before he zombie crawled across town.

On his face.

His dad had actually jerked back in surprise when they met briefly in the kitchen; Stiles on his way in, his dad on his way out to work.

Now, Scott looked equally as worried, but before he could comment, class started, and Stiles ducked his head into his copy of Their Eyes were Watching God and tried to remember what he'd read of it.

He definitely nodded off for a good portion of the class, because when he raised his head again, people were packing up their things and someone was standing in front of his desk. He swallowed and dragged his eyes up to the face of not Ms. Goldstein, as he'd expected, but Kelsey, a quiet theater nerd he'd talked to all of twice in ninth grade. She was holding a few sheets of notebook paper in her hands and looking at him expectantly.

He had no idea what was going on.

"Sorry, what?"

She smiled awkwardly and offered the papers. "I noticed you weren't in Calc this morning so I took an extra set of notes for you?"

Stiles just blinked between the neat equations on the pages and her face, trying to figure out what on earth could have provoked this. They literally hadn't exchanged so much as a passing head nod since the history project they did together freshman year, and there certainly hadn't been anything recently that bumped them up to the level of unprompted notetaking buddies.

"Um, unless you don't need them?" She started to take the stack back, looking uncertain and hurt.

He was taking too long to respond.

"No! Yeah, I do," he blurted out, taking the papers and glancing over them quickly. Wow, she took neat notes. They were even color-coded. "Whoa, Kelsey, these are—oh my god, thanks."

She smiled, shaking her head at the compliment. "It was nothing. But oh! Mr. Brown announced a test on Friday, first thing, so if you need me to explain anything I have sixth period free tomorrow."

And then she was gone with a quick wave, leaving a very confused Stiles with very nice notes.

He looked down at them, then up at Scott, who looked equally as confused.

"What just happened?"

Scott shrugged.

*

Things didn't get less weird after that.

By the time they met again at lunch, Sydney had given Scott copies of her notes from AP Bio and offered to study with him if he needed it, some freshman sprinted across the building to give Stiles a textbook he forgot on his desk, and in the lunch line, when Scott realized he forgot his wallet in his locker and only bought chips with the change in his pocket, the kid in front of them in the lunch line turned around and gave him his purchased burger and refused to take it back.

The burger was now sitting on Scott's tray while he stared at it in confusion.

"This is weird, right?" Stiles just wanted to verify. "All these people being weirdly nice, it's...weird."

"Definitely weird," Scott agreed with a nod, so it wasn't just Stiles being paranoid. Even with Scott’s success on the lacrosse team and their ever-growing circle of supernaturally-inclined acquaintances, they were still largely ignored by the rest of the school, and Stiles liked it that way. All this attention was concerning.

"And I’m pretty sure Kelsey has always hated me," Stiles mused through a full bite of apple.

"You did make her fail that presentation."

"Epically." Though in his defense, that was back in ninth grade when they were still figuring out the proper adderall dosage and he'd been in too much of a zombie haze to stay upright in his seat, let alone research and put together half a presentation. They hadn't spoken a word to each other since.

So why the sudden niceness?

"She doesn't like—" He gestured vaguely, Scott frowned in confusion. "Like me, does she? You didn't smell anything?"

God, he hoped not.

"Like arousal?" Scott wrinkled his nose slightly. "No, definitely not. She was just kind of nervous."

"Oh thank god." Stiles collapsed into his hands in relief. She seemed nice enough when she wasn't hating him, but he didn't think he could ever sit through another high school theater production, even out of boyfriendly obligation. The one Shakespeare play he’d suffered through for English class had been more than enough.

He scrubbed at his hair and straightened again, blinking hard against the constant exhaustion hanging on him. The two energy drinks he’d downed in the car out of desperation were doing squat, and might’ve just been making it worse.

"Okay, so what about Sydney? Did she say anything? I thought she pretty much hated all of us for even existing. Scott. Scotty."

Scott was turned away, frowning at the door to the cafeteria seconds before a very wide-eyed and speed walking Liam appeared.

Oh no. Stiles did not like the look of his oh my god, Scott save me expression at all.

He hurried over to their table but didn't sit; he just stood there squeezing his hands and looking stressed and like he had to pee.

"So, I think something bad happened."

Not what Stiles wanted to hear at all.

"What is it? Mason?" Scott straightened, and he glanced around the room quickly for anyone nearby. Stiles' stomach clenched at the thought of a rampaging Mason on campus, but he suddenly felt very, horribly awake. No more exhaustion in sight.

"No, he's home sick, which is part of it." Liam shifted from one foot to the other and ignored Scott's gesture for him to sit down. "Kyle gave me notes from Mason's French class to give him."

Stiles blinked, all that bracing for a disaster floundering and bubbling down with nowhere to go.

"Okay, that happened to us too," Scott said reassuringly, already looking relieved. "Maybe the teachers have started getting people to do it, I don't think it's anything—”

"No, he said it was because he noticed it was a full moon last night!" Liam hissed, finally dropping down onto the bench. "And he winked! He knows! I don't know how, but he knows! What if he's another chimera? Or a kanima? Theo’s gone right?"

"Whoa, hey, don't even joke about that," Stiles cut in, trying to ease some of the kid's stress. Liam didn't do well with stress. He kind of went to pieces, actually, so they just needed to get him settled so they could go panic about this in private. Or not panic, in Scott’s case, because he was looking all kinds of zen at the moment, the bastard.

Liam was not.

"I'm serious! There was full eye contact, and I swear I didn't do or say anything."

Scott put both his hands on Liam's shoulders and said firmly but gently, "It's fine, Liam, I'm sure it's nothing, but I'll talk to him, okay? What's his last name?"

"Dooley."

"Little taller than you? Brown hair?"

"With glasses and braces." Liam nodded.

"Alright, I'll handle it." Scott frowned at him. "Don't you have class this period?"

Liam guiltily scurried back off, and Stiles scarfed down the rest of his apple; if he hurried, he could get in and out of the admin office before Gloria finished her usual smoke break in the woods behind the lacrosse field.

"I'll check him out and meet you outside at the table?" He confirmed as he was already standing to leave.

Scott grimaced at Stiles' mouthful of food and turned up his hands in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"This Dooley kid. I'll look up his record, and my dad can check out his family, I'll shoot him a text." He crammed his things into his backpack, already making to hurry to the front of the building.

"Stiles, no, sit down. I think I know what's going on."

"Okay, but can you tell me after? Gloria's trying to quit, I think she's down to only like three cigarettes at lunch." He jerked his thumbs in a direction; not so much towards the admin office or Gloria, but just in a general sign that he needed to go like now.

"Dude, seriously. Finish your lunch. We don't have to look him up." Scott reached across the table to yank Stiles back down by his shirt, then leaned in and said like it meant something: "He and Sydney were both in the library."

Stiles stared at him, keyed up and waiting for more explanation that didn't come.

"Okay, what library? When? Scott, you're going to have to give me a little more than that."

"The night of the lacrosse game. The Beast followed me into the library and there were a bunch of people there. I tried to get them out quickly, but I'm pretty sure a few of them saw me shift."

Stiles just barely resisted the urge to hit him, hard. Instead he waved his hands around in directionless frustration, then found a direction to aim it in, and hit him anyway.

"Dude, how did you not tell me this a month ago?" he hissed, hitting him again for good measure.

"We were a little busy!"

"Fair! But how many people saw? Did they say anything? What does this—no, how can—what—” He hit him again. He had too many questions all at once and that was the only response that summed up exactly how he felt about it all.

"Stop hitting me!" Scott leaned back out of reach, rubbing his arm like it actually hurt him.

"Stop not-telling me important things!"

"That's the only thing!"

"It's still important!"

"I'm sorry! Did you want me to ask the rampaging werewolf beast to hold off for a second while I texted you?"

"Yes!" Stiles was completely aware of how stupid he sounded, but there was a lot going on in his mind.

Scott gave him a significant look, then glanced to the table next to them. Stiles looked over, and realized there were at least a few people staring at them in vaguely amused confusion.

"XBox. He's a terrible team player," Stiles explained quickly, then grabbed Scott's arm and hauled him out of the cafeteria to the outdoor seating area to seek a higher power. Namely, Lydia.

Lydia was already sitting with Malia at their usual table, which they laid claim to last year because it was set apart from the rest by a couple trees and at least gave the illusion of privacy. Stiles didn’t particularly like sitting there; after Lydia’s scream in the jeep it was getting harder for him to hear conversations outside with so much background noise, but it was better than in the cafeteria and they got yelled at if they brought food into the library.

Malia saw them coming first and started to smile, then quirked an eyebrow in confusion when she saw Stiles was dragging Scott, and was straight up frowning by the time the alpha was manhandled into a seat.

Lydia finally looked up from the textbook she was reading when Scott’s lunch tray bumped it, and she glared up at them in annoyance.

"Do I want to know?" she asked testily, righting her things.

"Yes.” Stiles sat down hard across from her. “Scott forgot to tell us important things."

"Important thing. It was one thing," Scott said to the rest of the table, fixing his food on his tray and standing his drink back up.

"One thing that affects many!" Stiles argued.

"I never said it didn't, I just said we were a little busy when it happened."

"One of you explain," Malia cut in forcefully, and Stiles raised his eyebrows at Scott. He hoped they were his judgiest eyebrows. Like, Derek level of eyebrow judging. His own brows didn’t have this same girth, but he liked to think he made up for it with attitude and enthusiasm.

Looking properly chastised, Scott confessed, "I think a few people saw me shift in the library after the charity game."

"A few people who have apparently banded together to do things," Stiles added forcefully.

"What kind of things?" Lydia immediately asked—not worried yet, just impatient and unwilling to spend any kind of thought or emotion on a problem before she deemed it worthy.

"Nice things, and there was no banding," Scott answered, and the shot Stiles a chiding look. "Sydney gave me some notes from bio, Stiles got some from the Calc class he missed this morning."

"Yeah, and some random kid gave him a burger," Stiles threw in, and then he froze as Scott picked up said burger to take a bite. "Wait, don't eat that!" Scott jumped and stopped. Malia looked alarmed across from him, but also ready to hurl the burger across the patio if necessary. "There could be wolfsbane in there or something!"

Scott's brow crinkled at him, and he could just barely hear Lydia’s sigh of, “Really, Stiles?”

"What? I've never seen that kid before, have you?" he asked Scott, who still looked worried, but not about the burger.

"Dude, he was in junior high with us before he got held back a year."

Stiles’ rampage came to a halt as he paused, scratching absently at the scratches on his arm from the night before while thinking back to junior high and sifting through the people he could remember, which due to his obsession at the time, was mainly Lydia.

Wait—widen the jaw, remove the nerdy glasses and wispy moustache...

"Duncan aged better than expected," he allowed with a sniff, then added mostly under his breath, "Doesn't mean he can't be bought."

Lydia threw a hand out across the table to stop his scratching and then gave him an exasperated but somehow still understanding look.

"Look, last night was hard on everyone and we're not at our best today, so how about we just get through school, take a night to rest, and come back to this tomorrow?" She squeezed Stiles' hand reassuringly. "I, for one, refuse to start panicking about Duncan Phillips without overwhelming proof against him."

The amount of disdain she put into his name was impressive, but more to the point,

"Really? How do you even remember him? Scott, I understand, but you?"

*

Stiles didn't so much "take a night to rest" as "collapse face first into bed and pass out the second he got home". It was his own fault; energy drinks and adderall and not enough food always made him crash hard, but he got through school and that was the goal of the day.

He clawed his way back to consciousness sometime after ten when he heard the front door slam, and his stomach took the opportunity to protest loudly against the lonely apple he’d had for lunch. His dad made an easy dinner and lovingly grilled him about how the full moon went, told him to take it easy for a few days, and Stiles tripped right back up to bed afterwards.

When he jerked back awake in the morning with his alarm, he was pleasantly surprised to find that he wasn't anywhere near as exhausted as he'd been since...probably since Theo stepped back into town. He fumbled off his alarm and the white noise app he used to distract from the ringing in his ear, took a refreshing shower, and had a very nice breakfast with his dad before he left for the station.

He was almost feeling...chipper, when he pulled into the school parking lot, so of course, the first thing he saw when he walked into the building was Mason and Liam wearing twin looks of worry and shame.

Stiles stopped in the middle of the hall, sneakers squeaking on the linoleum and dread growing in the pit of his stomach. Maybe if he just turned around and left, his great morning wouldn't be ruined.

Too late. They were coming at him. He couldn’t outrun them and his emergency mountain ash was in his locker. He should really start keeping it in his backpack too.

"What happened with Kyle?" Liam immediately asked. Stiles grimaced at them both.

"Really? This couldn't wait until lunch?"

"I have second period with him," Mason said with wide, worried eyes. "Should I thank him? Avoid him? Skip class?"

"What? No, go to class!" There was a small part of him laughing at the irony here, given how many classes he'd blown off for werewolf reasons, but hey, do as he says, not as he does. Or something. And then for good measure, because he was suddenly feeling strangely fatherly, he tacked on, "And thank him for taking notes for you!"

If they could keep the people who knew on their side, play nice and be civil, they could control the situation before someone panicked and blabbed and it all got out of hand. Don’t give them anything to fear, be friendly.

He just had to keep repeating that to himself; they could control this.

They couldn't control this.

"Are you okay?" Liam asked, obviously picking up on the flare of anxiety the thought brought with it. Followed by the wave of annoyance at being checked up on.

"Stop that! I thought Scott taught you proper sniffing etiquette," Stiles snapped back, and at this point, Liam barely reacted to it anymore, which was a shame. He liked it better when the kids were still a little scared of Angry Old Man Stiles.

The more he had to deal with young and annoying teenage werewolves, the more he understood Derek's constant grouchy front he'd kept up around them. He understood it a lot more than he cared to admit. If he could vanish into the shadows in the middle of these conversations, he would too. Without a second thought.

The first bell rang and the students around them started to make their way to their classes, milling around. And now Stiles had to take everything with him because he didn’t have time to stop at his locker, across the building in the senior hall. Great.

"So Kyle isn't a problem?" Liam checked once more, just to be sure, and Stiles rolled his eyes, hoping his annoyance combined with his usual general anxiety would cover up the fact that he didn't actually have the answer. Scott said it was fine, but as usual, Stiles wasn’t going to take his word for it.

"No, go to class! Both of you!" He waved them away condescendingly, but only Liam left with a mimicking eye roll. Little shit.

Stiles looked up at Mason, and gave him another dickish wave away.

The kid just opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind and closed it, and then changed his mind again.

"I know you're not really big on touching, you don't really do it much, but..." He winced as he asked, "can I hug you?"

That definitely wasn't what Stiles was expecting.

"What?"

"I know it's weird, and it's cool if you say no, but I've got this weird need to touch you before I leave." He paused, looked past Stiles briefly, then looked back. "I'm sorry. I’m hoping that will go away soon."

Stiles refrained from sighing aloud; he'd thought he was finally free of the weird touching now that Scott had it under control.

It wasn't that he didn't like being touched, he just...wasn't used to it, the casual touching. Hugs from his dad, great. Hugs from Scott: also great, he'd been getting them for years. Touching with intent, in a relationship—fine, totally fine. More than fine, really, he and Malia had never had a problem there. But the hand grazes, neck touching, the weird scent marking thing Scott took a year to get over—yeah, that was where he drew the line and things got uncomfortable. Even from Scott.

But Mason looked so awkward, it would really just save everyone the embarrassment if he said yes and took it.

What's a little weird hugging between two dudes who don't actually know each other all that well?

“What the hell, bring it in here.” He held out his arms in acceptance and Mason moved in—but he didn't really hug him. His arms just...hovered around him, and he patted Stiles’ back and rubbed a little, which was so much worse.

A girl walking by looked confused by it and Stiles tried to avoid making eye contact.

"Dude, this isn’t a hug."

"I don't how much strength to use, I don't want to hurt you."

"Just use a normal amount," Stiles sighed, still standing in Mason's weird not-hold. "You've been doing this werewolf thing for like a month without issue."

Mason pulled back, still without actually hugging him. "Yeah, but after the full moon, it's like I know how strong I really am. I know that I can really hurt people without trying or even realizing it, and you don't heal like Scott does." He pointedly looked down at Stiles' arms, where the scratches were still hidden under his shirt sleeves.

"You’re not going to accidentally kill me with—actually, you know what?" Why was he even arguing with this? Regular hugs from Mason wasn't a thing he craved in life. "Take your time, figure it out. It's cool. I gotta go, to class, over there."

He spun on his heel and picked a direction to walk; he was off kilter after the awkwardness of that interaction, he would find his way to class eventually.

*

Apparently the second day after the full moon was enough time for school to get back to normal, because aside from Kelsey giving him a meaningful smile and nod in math class, which he could only awkwardly wave at in response, nothing weirdly good or even weirdly bad happened. It was just school, which had somehow become weird in its normalcy.

He went to class, turned in his homework, ate lunch with Scott without any food being gifted to their table, and went home. He even got stuck in the after school traffic jam in the parking lot as everyone tried to leave at once.

It was almost suspicious how normal it was, so it really wasn't much of a surprise when shit hit the fan that night.

His phone blew up at 8:13pm, while he was half asleep on the couch watching some shitty tv movie with his dad like they'd done so often before all this werewolf business started. It was warm and calm, he was cozy under a blanket his dad tossed over him, and he'd already missed a third of the plot. Unlike a couple years ago though, his dad didn't bother prodding him awake. He just let Stiles drift in and out in peace—at least until every type of notification on his phone started going off, text message alerts interrupting each other before the ringtone started blaring with a call from Liam.

He was almost surprised there weren't a few emails to go with it.

"Someone better be dying," Stiles groaned as he stretched for the phone on the coffee table, still not quite awake enough to be panicking without reason. He answered the call and could hear snarling before he even put the phone to his ear, followed by Liam shouting as he realized the phone wasn't ringing anymore.

"Stiles? Stiles! Oh god, Mason is losing control and I don't know what to do, and Scott didn't answer his phone, and there are so many people here!"

That certainly woke him up quick. He was up and grabbing his keys before it even registered that he'd moved.

"Where are you? What happened?"

"The bowling alley. Some douche was giving Corey a hard time and Mason just snapped!"

"Corey's there?"

"And Hayden, we were on a double date." What was it with the bowling alley and double dates? Stiles definitely wasn’t bummed about missing that apparent teenage rite of passage.

He shoved his feet into his shoes, nodded in response to his dad's be careful, and was out the door in record time, still on the phone with Liam.

"Okay, have Corey do his invisible thing and get Mason out of the building, away from people. Remember those mantras Derek and I taught you? Try those, just do anything you can to keep him calm or at least contained, I'm on my way."

He dialed Scott and jammed the phone between his ear and shoulder to start his car. Scott's phone wasn't ringing, why wasn't it ringing? Did he seriously have his phone off two days after a full moon with two new werewolves?

Stiles groaned in frustration and switched tracks to try Malia, but the screen said the call was connected to Scott, the timer running under his name and picture.

"Stiles? Stiles!" Scott's tinny voice yelled from the speaker. Oh, it really was connected. Stiles switched the phone to his right ear and backed out of the driveway without looking. "Stiles, dude, what's wrong? I have like six missed calls from Liam and now he's not answering."

"Mason lost control in the bowling alley, I'm heading there now."

Scott swore passionately, and Lydia was talking in the background. "Okay, I'll meet you there. Be careful."

Stiles hung up and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat to focus on speeding across town without dying or getting pulled over, and tried to ignore the fact that he hadn't been able to hear anything from his left ear.

*

Scott beat him to the bowling alley by just a few minutes, but it was apparently plenty of time for everything to go to shit. The one upside was that they'd moved behind the building and out of view of the parking lot, so as long as passersby ignored the loud snarls and obvious sounds of a very violent fight, they would be fine.

Luckily for them, the good people of Beacon Hills had a long and reliable history of pretending they didn't see anything ever at any time.

This particular fight looked about as bad as it sounded, Stiles discovered as he skidded around the corner, mountain ash in his pocket just in case. Scott and a very large and very wolfed out Mason were going at each other with everything. Or at least Mason was going at Scott, who was trying desperately to calm him down without hurting him. Just like the night of the full moon, he was trying to suggest things, talk to him, have him focus on his voice, his heartbeat, his friends or family—anything that meant anything to him in life, but it wasn't working.

Corey was standing nearby, looking like he was ready to jump in and hide them from sight—was about to before he fully recognized Stiles—and Liam was looking woozy on the ground next to a very dented dumpster. Beside him, Hayden's eyes were glowing gold right along with Mason's, and despite how well she'd done on the full moon, Stiles wasn't all that sure she would be able to hold herself back this time.

This emotional bleed thing was a real pain in the ass, it turned out.

He made a mental note to start tracking down more pack members of the non-werewolf variety, because they really needed more supernatural muscle that didn't lose it every month.

Or disappear into the desert for indefinite lengths of time.

Or gain a sudden unpredictable power boost from stabbing their mother with magic claws.

Stiles really just needed new friends.

He took a few cautious steps towards Mason and Scott, then stopped when a warning snarl came from one of them.

"I'd stay back," Liam suggested from his dent, clearly speaking from experience.

"We thought Corey or Liam might help," Hayden explained as her eyes flickered, getting herself back under control, "but they just made it worse. He wouldn’t even let Scott get close to him."

Stiles frowned. That didn't make any sense, Scott was his alpha.

Unless it was still too soon for that to make a difference? It had only been about a month since The Beast was killed, maybe Mason didn’t have enough of an attachment or dependence on Scott for him to trust him, which Stiles now realized was important to work on before the first full moon, and they would have to remember that for the next—

No, not next. Never next. There would be no more freaking brand new werewolves joining this pack. If Scott ever bit anyone again, Stiles was leaving the country.

He threw that horrifying thought from his mind and focused, looking for anything that could help.

Neither mantra had helped Mason on the full moon, his friends and family weren't his anchor, it clearly wasn't his alpha, and for all that Derek had insisted on anger, that somehow didn't jive with the sunny and optimistic Mason Hewitt.

What did Mason care about? Who else was close to him?

No, they didn't have time to look for an anchor right now, it was too long a process, they could worry about that later—at this point they just had to get him calm and out of public.

Mason took a swipe at Scott and caught him in the face. Stiles stepped forward out of instinct, hand gripping the mountain ash in his pocket, and Mason's glowing yellow eyes snapped towards him. He worked his jaw of fangs like it wanted to be around Stiles' very human and very fragile throat.

Oh god, this was just like Isaac at the station all over again. Only this time, Derek wasn't there to—

That was it.

"Scott, you have to force him!" Stiles called, taking his step right back should he need to make a sudden dash for cover.

"What?"

"Just—" Damn it, he actually had no idea what Derek really did that night, just that he'd been very impressive and loud, and showed a hell of a lot of teeth. "Just roar, I don't know, dominate!"

Mason wrenched himself out of Scott's somewhat distracted hold and started to move in Stiles' direction; walking slow, like a predator confident his prey was cornered.

Crap.

"Scott!" He took a few more steps back.

"I don't know what you—"

"Scott, be the alpha!" Stiles cut him off, his voice a little more shrill than he would've liked it to be in front of the kids. They would never be intimidated by him again after this.

But also, he'd kind of earned the right to be nervous about the young and massive beta werewolf stalking towards him—he'd been on the wrong end of that stare just a few times too many in his very short life, this was a perfectly valid reaction to it.

Mason was just a few feet from him now, but if he ran out into the parking lot, the giant hulking, out of control werewolf would no doubt follow him right to innocent people just wanting to go bowling. Who the hell even liked bowling, anyway, Stiles thought somewhat frantically. He really didn't understand this town's obsession with it; the place should not have been so crowded on a Thursday night, and now Mason was practically towering over him, and—

"Scott!"

He didn't get anything else out, because it suddenly felt like the ground was shaking beneath him. Waves of pressure pulsed through him and his left ear throbbed painfully as Scott literally roared Mason into an exhausted and shaking heap on the asphalt.

Stiles certainly didn't remember Derek packing that much of a punch.

He slowly uncovered his ears, staring wide eyed at Scott, who looked just as surprised as everyone else. Scott took a calming deep breath and the red faded from his eyes, but he still didn't move towards Mason. Corey did, rushing forward to his crouched boyfriend, not hesitating a second before wrapping an arm around him.

Stiles worked his jaw, trying to get his other ear to pop to balance out his head, then fixed Scott with a look he hoped conveyed "we are so discussing this on the way home."

Scott just nodded, still looking a little shellshocked. Then he turned towards the building, listening.

Even through the closed back door to the bowling alley and now-louder ringing in both his ears, Stiles heard a chorus of confused exclamations from the people inside. It was time to go.

They bundled Mason into the backseat of his own car, Corey sitting with him and Hayden taking the wheel as the only other licensed child, and then sent them off with a promise that Scott would be by later to check on everyone even if they didn't call.

Just as the little blue Toyota whizzed out of the parking lot, a Sheriff's Office cruiser pulled in, and Scott and Stiles casually made their way towards the jeep with a quick wave to Deputy Jansen. He didn't look convinced, no doubt sure that they were involved somehow, but he headed into the bowling alley instead of stopping to chat.

"Dude, what the hell was that?" Stiles practically yelled as soon as both car doors were closed and the jeep's engine was rumbling loudly to cover their conversation.

"You said to roar!"

"Yeah, roar, Scott, not bump yourself onto the Richter scale!"

"I didn't know what you were talking about, I was just kinda...winging it." He shrugged, and Stiles just couldn't stay mad at that adorably confused and worried face. Especially not when Scott sighed and ran a hand through his hair, resting his elbow on the door and looked so defeated, even after doing something incredibly impressive.

"I just..." He stopped, and Stiles focused on pulling out of the parking lot and into traffic to give him time to collect his thoughts. "I never wanted to have to force anyone," he finally got out, and Stiles knew exactly what he was talking about.

The reason Scott had never wanted to join Derek's pack was that he doled out orders and made his betas submit to his authority, even if it had been necessary then in a way that Scott didn't always want to see. He'd built his own alpha-ness off of being nothing like that, letting Liam run a little too loose—naked, through the streets of downtown Beacon Hills—rather than force anything on him.

Doing that to Mason, forcing him into submission, went against everything Scott believed about himself.

"You know you didn't have a choice, right?" Stiles asked, glancing over at Scott briefly just to make sure he wasn't totally lost in his head. "You couldn't physically control him and he doesn't have an anchor. If you hadn't stopped him, he might've hurt someone."

"Yeah, he might've hurt you."

Stiles shrugged it off, because thinking about it would just make him even more anxious about life in general. Because his life, in general, involved a lot of out of control werewolves. It was really becoming a problem.

"I had mountain ash the entire time. He wasn't getting near me."

Scott just gave him a crooked grin and clearly didn't believe that, but he let it go all the same.

*

The thing about life threatening situations of the supernatural variety was that they tended to bring with them a shot of adrenaline that could keep even Stiles’ sleep deprived body going for hours after. Normally, that was a bad thing and led to hours of staring at the ceiling and obsessing to an unhealthy degree, often followed by nightmares brought on by the obsessing. This time, it gave Stiles plenty of energy to study Kelsey’s meticulous Calc notes for the test in the morning, which he was pretty sure he aced despite running on maybe three hours of half-sleep.

It was with a feeling of exhausted triumphance that he checked no on the extra credit offer of joining the heavily encouraged (all but mandatory) school field trip to the new Oak Creek Internment Museum.

The camp had been covered up and all but hidden for years, but the sudden activity with the nogitsune and a local student dying there drew attention and someone at Beacon Hills University had started investigating, and digging, and interviewing locals, and suddenly there was a fund being advertised, renovations, big donors—it took a shockingly short amount of time for it all to come together.

But it didn’t matter how much renovation they’d done on the old camp to make it nice and welcoming to visitors, or how much extra credit the school offered just for going (which was a lot); Stiles would overdose on adderall and stop sleeping altogether if that’s what it took to study enough to never have to set foot on that property ever again. He’d finally stopped jerking awake to the memory of Lydia’s sobbing scream echoing through the tunnels around them as she felt her best friend die, and he had no interest in starting again.

(Those particular nightmares had been replaced by Donovan’s dead, unseeing eyes staring into his very being, but at least his subconscious was moving forward. Progress.)

He gave a quick nod and a thumbs up to Kelsey’s questioning smile when the bell rang, and got the hell out of there before she could ask any further questions or make conversation of any kind. Scott kept reassuring him that it wasn’t anything to worry about, that he talked to her and she wasn’t being malicious and just wanted to help out, but Stiles still didn’t trust it. He needed more information on these people, all of them, which was why he swung by the admin office on the way out to lunch.

And Scott wasn’t fooled for even a second.

"What's all over your hand?" he asked, as Stiles reached out to take the bottle of water he was offering. Stupid super werewolf vision.

"Nothing," Stiles answered moodily, tucking his hand under his thigh and starting to eat with the other. He would’ve just taken pictures of the files like he’d planned, but he forgot to charge his phone during his study binge last night and it died during the math test from running the white noise app all night.

Scott leaned across the table, cocked his head at it, and of course he was the only one who could actually read Stiles' scrawls, even when there was only a sliver visible past the end of his sleeve.

"You looked up Duncan," he sighed. He didn't sound all that surprised.

"Of course I looked up Duncan!" Stiles hissed back, letting Lydia take his arm and roll his sleeve up to read what he’d written. "And you know what class he's excelling beautifully in? French!"

"I would hope so, he did a foreign exchange in Paris last year," Lydia said flatly, or Stiles assumed she did from what he heard. He was half guessing; she was sitting on his left side and his hearing still hadn’t improved after Scott’s Richter-roar.

"And you don't find that the least bit suspicious considering Gerard was back in town last month? What if they’re going to try to get Mason once and for all?"

Scott’s forehead wrinkled, with either concern or disbelief, but probably more of the latter. “I think Chris would’ve told me if Gerard’s goons were up to something.”

“Scott, he’s an Argent. They treat family like wolves do a pack, he’s not going to tell you everything they’re up to just because you’re kind of occasionally buddies now when it’s convenient.”

“He killed Gerard. I think we can assume he wouldn’t be calling in more people like him for backup.” They’d had this argument plenty of times before; they were both sick of it.

“Yeah, that would be awesome if it were really true, but you didn’t see it happen and I’ll believe Gerard’s dead when I see the body myself.”

“I heard his heart stop.”

“Peter’s heart stopped too! On fire!”

It was a good thing Malia was at a tutoring session; Peter was still something of a sore spot.

“Guys!” Lydia interrupted sharply, digging her nails into Stiles’ arm in a warning and holding on when he tried to pull away. “I’m with Stiles on this particular point. The Beast of Gevaudan was the reason the Argents became hunters in the first place. There’s no way the rest of the family doesn’t know it came back. But—” She emphasized before Stiles could get too smug at having her back him up, and then made deep and understanding eye contact with him that was pretty much impossible to look away from. “There’s no reason to think they would start recruiting regular high school students here.” She tapped a section of scrawled notes on the inside of his elbow. “Especially Kelsey, who’s consistently failed gym and has been taking Mandarin the last three years.”

Stiles totally would’ve caught that if he hadn’t been in such a rush to get out of the office before Gloria got back. More than a few hours of sleep wouldn’t hurt either.

“We’re not dismissing what you’re saying,” Lydia continued, “but you’re all over the place. You’ve got to focus in on something for us to look into. We can’t obsess over every minor inconsistency we find.”

He tore his eyes away from Lydia, glancing at Scott’s badly hidden concern for his mental wellbeing.

Crap, he was freaking them out again.

"Fine,” Stiles conceded, mostly for show, and he could tell Scott didn’t buy it. “But Derek would totally agree with me, and I'm reserving the right to say I told you so when this all goes to hell again."

“Derek’s level of paranoia isn’t something to aspire to,” Lydia said with an eyeroll as she returned to her lunch.

“Derek’s level of being alive is.”

*

After spending the rest of Friday dodging Scott’s questions of whether they were really okay, and did they need to talk about this, Stiles ignored his own promise to chill out and went full paranoid recluse. Half if it might’ve been to spite Scott’s concern-hovering, but he also needed to sort things out in his own head; discard irrelevant information from the files he’d checked, because really, Lydia was right. He had too much unnecessary information that was getting in the way.

Looking back on it, Stiles could see that he’d gotten so caught up on Theo and his sketchy past—the forged signatures from his parents, the death of his sister—that he hadn’t put together any of the larger picture the little bastard fit into. It was a rookie mistake, and he wasn’t going to let it happen again.

He separated out his classmates’ pictures, the ones Scott remembered being in the library and the others Kelsey had told him about, organizing them from most suspicious to least.

Aaron was the most suspicious so far; some computer whiz Danny used to hang out with back in his hacking days who now worked at a computer repair shop across town. He had a minor record from freshman year and nothing since, but that didn’t necessarily mean he stopped, just that he’d learned to cover his tracks.

That was someone hunters would want on their side. They loved doing all that technical hacking stuff, and in theory, they could use him to get one of their own into the school as a new teacher or something. They’d managed to replace their principal, Stiles wasn’t putting anything past them.

Kelsey was at the bottom—hunters were big on fitness, which she didn’t have, and though speaking Mandarin and three summer volunteer trips to China was impressive for a college application, it didn’t raise any supernatural red flags. Her encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Broadway might, because that really was ridiculous, as was her tendency to fight about it on her Facebook wall.

Sydney was down there too (she was smart as hell but a stressed and anxious mess who folded like a house of cards under any kind of pressure), along with a few other kids from other grades with nothing in common. A near-legally blind basketball player who needed to wear prescription goggles on the court wasn’t going to be of much use, and neither was Cooper, the weird loner who wore the same too-heavy jacket all year round and obsessively read books on conspiracies in the corner of the library. Stiles had seen him drawing diagrams of the grassy knoll, but he seemed like a run of the mill nutjob.

Stiles stared at Cooper’s yearbook photo for a minute, taking in his wild eyes and the food in his braces, and moved him a little further towards the top. Not necessarily because of hunters, but because there was no way to tell how a guy like that would handle the big werewolf reveal. He was someone to keep an eye on, maybe talk to about it. Check in with, at the very least.

By the time he’d finished, Stiles fell into bed at four in the morning with very little information, a headache behind his eyes, and a babbling brook playing on his phone.

He woke up at seven to a pan clattering in the sink and his dad swearing in the kitchen, and sleepily wandered towards it like a siren’s song calling him from shore.

He liked spending mornings with his dad, but rarely got to. If their schedules weren’t completely opposite, they were usually both rushing too much to actually sit down at the table. On days like this, when Stiles didn’t have school and his dad had a later shift or the day off, they would make real breakfast food, have coffee and juice, and just generally give each other a hard time. These mornings were a nice pocket of normalcy in their batshit crazy lives in Beacon Hills.

Once he reached the kitchen, Stiles managed to pry his eyes open enough to realize his dad was in his uniform already, which was not the norm for these mornings.

“Rough night?” his dad asked over his mug of coffee. Stiles grunted as he dropped into his chair, and then grunted again and gave it an upward inflection as he nodded towards the uniform. “Ah yeah, I’m going to have to cut this morning a bit short.” He gestured towards the newspaper sitting on the table as he stood and moved towards the stove. “Eggs?”

Stiles grunted an affirmative and pulled the paper towards himself, staring until it made sense.

His dad set a plate of eggs and turkey bacon down next to him and it still didn’t make sense.

“The Buck Naked Bandit?” Stiles read from the front page headline of the Beacon Hills Gazette. The large photo underneath showed the entrance to Oak Creek blocked off with police tape and a few deputies on the scene. He wasn’t overly upset that the museum was temporarily closed for the investigation; maybe now there would be less pressure from teachers to go see it.

Stiles looked up at his dad, back to drinking his coffee while reading the sports section. “Is this what normal people in this town get up to on a Friday night?”

His dad turned a page of the paper. “We'll find out how normal he is when we get the security footage and ID him.”

It was innocent enough, clearly referring to sanity rather than a habit of howling at the moon, but Stiles hadn’t survived this long by taking things at face value. At this point in his life, everyone howled at the moon until he proved otherwise.

He perked right up. “You think he might be one of ours?”

That got his dad’s attention. He flipped down a corner of the paper to fix Stiles with a stern look. “Don’t even joke about that. And they’re not yours, not if they’re committing crimes within Beacon County. I’m the sheriff, they’re mine.” He straightened the paper with a stiff shake, and Stiles almost missed the way he added under his breath, “They’re all mine.”

Stiles poked at his eggs, staring at the headline. Now he couldn’t shake the feeling that it really was one of his—yes, his, because no matter what his dad’s jurisdiction said, until he got a squad of werewolf deputies and not just a flighty hellhound, the pack would be handling the supernatural threats in town, and Stiles was a good portion of the pack.

Too bad Scott wasn’t interested in law enforcement in the least; an alpha werewolf deputy would be totally awesome. Liam was definitely a no-go, still too much of a temper even with his control getting...somewhat better. Mason was the actual Hulk, so just no, Malia was still a little too murky on the moral front, Isaac—pft. In France.

...Derek?

“Can I come see the security footage?” He forced his brain to switch tracks from the image of Derek in a deputy uniform. That way lay unresolved feelings he was twenty years from being ready to confront.

“No,” his dad cut in before he’d even finished asking the question. He’d clearly been expecting it.

“Come on! What if it is something supernatural?”

“Then I’ll call you.”

“This is Beacon Hills. You’re going to end up calling me. Might as well save time and energy.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

His dad flipped the corner of the paper down again. “Because you’re still in high school and that needs to be your priority.” Stiles opened his mouth to argue that eighteenth century rampaging werewolves literally always took priority over Calculus, but his dad kept talking over him, now giving up and folding his paper cleanly. “Look, I’ve accepted that you’re going to be involved in this no matter what, but I’ll be damned if I just give in and let it take over your life completely.”

He folded the paper again into eighths and pointed it at Stiles for emphasis; when they got to paper-pointing, he meant business.

“If I need you, I will call you, but until then, be a teenager. Go outside or something,” he added with a flick of the paper towards the back yard.

“And do what, ride my bike around the block?” The thing was comically small after his seventh grade growth spurt, and by then he'd been firmly set in his short lived skateboarding phase. He hadn't bothered to ask for a new one. “Loiter in parking lots? Go wander through the preserve?”

That got him a light paper whack on the arm.

“Do not set foot in that preserve, we don’t need to find anymore long lost Hales. You know what I mean, smart ass—do something fun, don't waste the day obsessing over your board upstairs.” He got up from the table to leave for work, but stopped briefly to thoroughly ruffle Stiles’ bedhead even more. “I will lock you out of that room if I have to.”

“You know I can pick locks, right?” Stiles called after him.

“I didn’t hear that!”

*

Stiles ignored his dad’s orders, but he didn’t have much time to obsess over his board anyway, because just a few hours later, his dad called and told him to bring Scott. He didn’t sound overly happy about it.

“I’ve got something here you guys need to see. Shut the door.” He beckoned them around to his side of the desk, where he had security footage paused on his computer screen. “This is the footage from the Oak Creek break-in.”

“The naked guy?”

“Yes, the naked guy. And I don’t want to hear it,” he added before Stiles could even start to feel smug.

“Did you ID him?”

“Nope, and here's why.” He hit play and stepped back so Stiles and Scott could move in.

At first the screen just showed an empty museum exhibit, glass cases reflecting dim after hours lighting. Then the timestamp hit 02:37am and a nude figure staggered into view, his face obscured by the very familiar eye glare of a werewolf.

For all that Stiles had been insisted it was one of theirs, he wasn’t happy he’d been right.

“Shit,” he said, and his dad nodded. His stomach was already tightening at the thought of another threat so soon after the Dread Doctors and that entire mess. It had been one month. One.

Scott ran the video back to watch it again, studying it closely like he could see through the glare if he focused. Stiles hung back, gnawing at the side of his thumb. By this point in his life, the side of his nail was pretty much permanently chewed up, and if that didn’t say he needed a vacation, he didn’t know what did.

If he didn’t get some real downtime soon, he was going to lose it. Or rip his thumbnail off. It could go either way, or both simultaneously.

“Any ideas?” his dad asked, watching Scott rewind the feed a third time.

“Liam?” Stiles threw out to make himself feel better, and Scott straightened to give him a look. “What? There’s precedent!”

Scott shook his head. He was trying to be a mature alpha, supporting his beta, but he wasn’t hiding his grin very well. “Definitely not Liam. This guy is huge.”

Stiles could tell that much. “Okay, but on a scale of alpha twins to Beast of Gevaudan, what’s your guess? How big are we talking here?”

“Bigger than the twins…” he bobbed his head as he thought, “smaller than Peter’s alpha form?”

His dad’s groan perfectly demonstrated how Stiles felt about the situation—he kind of hated that they could easily rank the horrors of their lives by size in relation to each other.

“Okay, we’ve handled worse than a large naked werewolf, we’ve totally got this.”

He was also firmly in denial about this being any worse than what it looked like: a supernatural streaker, maybe even a frat pledge from BHU getting hazed who just happened to be a wolf. There was enough to worry about with the kids at school and Mason’s control problems, and he was consciously pulling his mind back from jumping to the worst case scenario.

“Totally,” Scott agreed, right there with him in denial.

“And finding him should be easy. Even in Beacon Hills, who wouldn’t call the cops seeing that guy wandering around town naked?”

“I would.”

“Nothing to worry about.”

“Not even a little bit.”

“So we’re fine.”

“Yep.” Scott nodded along, then added hesitantly, “but I guess we should go check it out anyway?” He deferred this to Stiles’ dad, asking for permission to enter an active crime scene.

His dad shrugged. “I can keep the cameras off a few hours tonight, but it’s opening to staff tomorrow morning to get it ready to reopen Monday, so it’s your only chance to have the place to yourself.”

At the thought of going back there, Stiles’ heart must’ve done something wild judging by the way Scott looked at him. His dad noticed Scott’s movement, then turned to him too, confused.

“What?” Stiles tried to act natural.

“What?” His dad looked between them.

Scott realized they weren’t going to be discussing it right then in front of his dad and straightened, failing to seem casual. “What?”

Stiles raised his eyebrows, trying to look innocent.

His dad narrowed his eyes at him, then turned his Sheriff Glare on Scott, who shrugged with wide and too-innocent eyes. Overshot it by half.

“You two aren’t as smooth as you think,” his dad griped, then waved at the door. “Get out and call me if you find something.”

Stiles held his hands out for the keys to the museum with a very straight smile, and then dashed out to the parking lot before there were any more questions.

Scott made it into the jeep and two blocks away before he burst.

“So do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“So it’s about…” He nodded in the significant way they always did when the nogitsune came up, like somehow not saying it out loud made it less horrific.

“Yep.” Stiles shifted gears a little aggressively.

Scott didn’t push beyond that. Neither of them wanted to talk about that night.

*

They still weren’t talking about it hours later, sitting in the jeep in the museum parking lot, staring at the front gate in a heavy silence.

Stiles knew his heart was loud and out of control, but Scott was being a gentleman and not mentioning it.

“So, should we let Lydia know?” he asked instead.

Stiles tried to imagine how that conversation would go. Hey, remember how a demon with my face kidnapped you, and then you felt your best friend die and your entire life fell apart? That thing I know you still haven’t properly dealt with because by now I can spot repressed trauma from fifty paces? Yeah, anyway, want to go back to the place it happened?

He wasn’t the only one working hard to avoid needing the extra credit field trip.

“Only if we find something. She’s having a mother-daughter night tonight.” And based on the little she’d told him, the two of them needed some quality time now that the big banshee secret was out. He had no idea what went on during those mother-daughter nights, but Lydia did always seem a bit lighter, a little less sharp after them.

It was good for her, he could tell, and he wasn’t about to stand in the way of at least one of them finding some way of coping with all of this shit, because he and Scott clearly weren’t, despite Scott pretending he had everything under control.

After another long silence, they actually got out of the car, and Stiles’ stomach swooped with nerves as he looked up at the massive gate that led to the museum, heavy concrete piers on either side and iron spikes along the top. There were two large banners hanging on the piers that stated in large, block letters I am an American, and Stiles knew from the many times his teachers pushed the exhibit, that it was taken from a well-known photo from the war.

Beyond the fence were all the small barracks, and beyond them, the heavy concrete buildings used by the military. The place Allison had died.

Lydia’s scream echoed through his mind.

Scott gripped his shoulder in a comforting squeeze and pulled him into his side a bit.

“Are you sure you’re okay being back here?”

No. “Yeah, of course.”

“It’s okay if you’re not.”

“I’m fine, Scott.”

“You can wait out here if you—”

“I’m going in.”

Because as painful as it was for Stiles, remembering the fear and weakness and guilt, hearing the scream echoing all around him through the tiny concrete passage, and knowing one of his friends was dead because of him—Scott had been right there. He’d been so close, just a moment too late, and he’d held the love of his life in his arms as she died.

If he was going back into Oak Creek, Stiles sure as shit wasn’t about to let him do it alone.

With one last reassuring look between them, they unlocked the front gate and pushed through into the museum.

The first building they walked through was the ticket and info area, set up as a processing station where, according to the large sign of rules, each visitor would be “assigned” a bed in a barrack, and they would move through the museum being faced with the daily reality of the people detained there. It was effective, Stiles figured, as he stood in one of the other rooms of densely packed beds. There were trunks at the foot of each bed, thin blankets—far too thin for northern California in the winter—zero privacy.

Eventually they wandered into the room the werewolf had passed through, one towards the back of the cluster of barracks. Close to the entrance to the tunnels.

It was like a compass pointing north in Stiles’ head, the constant awareness of the exact place it happened. He knew Scott felt the same way, he could tell by the way he’d grown silent and subdued the closer they got to it, no longer looking over the exhibit with interest as he had been.

Especially not since they’d passed an old photo of Noshiko in a group of other women, who looked exactly like Kira back in World War II, it turned out.

They hadn’t heard from Kira since she left for the desert again. She wanted a clean break, nothing unresolved; said it would be easier for everyone because she didn’t know how long it would take her to gain proper control. At the time, Stiles had assumed she meant she would spend a couple years away and didn’t want to hold Scott back from college and living his life. Now, looking at the way Noshiko had barely aged in seventy years, Stiles got the feeling she wasn’t expecting to be coming back anytime soon.

“Picking up on any eau de werewolf?” Stiles asked, trying to get Scott somewhat distracted from his own misery and focused on task.

Scott shook himself a bit, shaking off the brooding like it was a physical substance, and took a deep breath through his nose. He frowned. “Not really. It smells like…” he did it again, “it smells like...formaldehyde.”

Stiles thought back on the route they’d taken through the museum, glanced around the room they were in. There were absolutely no exhibits that contained formaldehyde. Nothing in the museum would ever have been in the same room as formaldehyde; it was mainly personal effects from families, old letters and photos that had been found or donated, some clothing and posters, toys.

“So he...came from a lab somewhere? Maybe he works at the natural history museum?” Stiles knew they used formaldehyde there to preserve animals in their exhibits. “The morgue or a funeral home?”

Scott shook his head. “No, this doesn’t seem medical. It doesn’t have the same sterile smell to it. There’s something else in it, it smells like…” He took a deep breath, mulling it over. Then his eyes widened, which Stiles really didn’t want to be seeing right then. “Oh crap.”

Stiles’ stomach twisted. “No, not ‘oh crap’, don’t say ‘oh crap’. Why would you say ‘oh crap’?”

“Der Soldat,” Scott announced, dread heavy in his voice.

It took a second for Stiles’ own dread and preemptive fear-logged brain to realize those words meant nothing to him, and the confusion was enough to knock it free for a second from its constant stewing in foreboding predictions of doom.

“Um, what?”

“Der Soldat,” Scott repeated, like that was supposed to mean anything, and judging by his tone, it wasn’t supposed to mean anything good. “The Dread Doctors had him. That’s where I’ve smelled this, in their lab.”

Stiles still didn’t know what that meant, but now he really didn’t want to know. Anything involving the Dread Doctors and by extension their lab was something he wanted nothing to do with.

The foreboding predictions of doom were coming back full force.

“Theo told me me about it,” Scott explained. “The Doctors had an alpha werewolf in this huge tank. They were using him to keep them alive, extracting some kind of fluid?” Stiles wrinkled his nose. “He was some German soldier from World War II, so they called him Der Soldat—The Soldier.”

Stiles’ nose dropped out of the wrinkle and he just straight up gaped, his left eye twitching involuntarily. His doom detector was going crazy—flashing red lights, screaming alarms, full immediate evac advised.

“A Ger—there’s a Nazi werewolf in Beacon Hills?” Stiles was yelling now, he couldn’t help it, because what the ever loving fuck was their lives. “A Nazi were—an alpha Nazi werewolf.”

“That’s what it sounded like, yeah.”

“And you’re just mentioning this now?” He was still shouting.

“I thought Chris handled it. He said he would clean things up.”

“Well clearly he didn’t because the alpha Nazi werewolf is on the loose, Scott. Just—take a second and let that sentence sink in. Alpha Nazi werewolf.”

Scott stared at him a moment, then his eyebrows turned concerned. “You’re freaking out.”

“Of course I’m freaking out! It’s an alpha Nazi werewolf.” He should really keep his voice down; they weren’t actually supposed to be there and there were a couple security guards patrolling around somewhere. “Nazi werewolf—Scott, my family’s Jewish! My grandma was the only one of her family who survived the camps, my mom's parents just managed to get out before Poland was invaded, I mean you—you do know I'm Polish as hell, right? I’m literally everything the Nazis hated, what if he knows?”

“Are you planning to start only speaking Polish and wearing a yarmulke every day?”

“Obviously not!” He only knew a few phrases and curse words, and he and his dad hadn’t actually observed any Jewish holidays since his last grandparent died when he was in middle school, but still.

“Then he’s not going to know! And if he does, he’s going to have to go through me first.” Scott clapped him on the shoulder and started to head for the door. “And maybe he’s just a regular, everyday alpha who happens to be German and very old.”

Stiles glared after him, eye still twitching, but followed anyway. The museum was way too creepy to be alone in at night.

“Yeah, a regular, everyday alpha kept in a tank for seventy years! Who knows what kind of weird experiments they did on him, he could be the Winter Soldier of alphas!”

“Exactly! Maybe he’s not a bad guy either.” They paused outside so Scott could sniff the air and try to track their guest.

“He’s a Nazi werewolf.” Again, Stiles just wanted to drive that point home.

“German soldier,” Scott corrected, and headed off towards the back of the camp. “Not all Germans were Nazis. Some of them risked their lives to hide people and help them get out.”

It didn’t even sound like he believed himself. It sounded like he’d read a heartwarming story online and was desperately clinging to it.

Stiles could totally understand why he would.

“Fine, alpha German werewolf, but we still don’t know what the Dread Doctors did to him. If they could make kanimas out of human teenagers, I don’t even want to know what they could do with an alpha.”

“Me neither, but we’re going to have to find out one way or another.”

Scott stopped in front of a giant concrete bunker set into the hill, with a very ominous, very dark, and altogether unwelcoming tunnel leading to nothing. The metal gate across the entrance was ripped out like tissue paper and thrown to the side, right under a No Unauthorized Access sign.

Stiles shone his flashlight into it, the LED beam quickly fading into the darkness and illuminating exactly nothing beyond damp, concrete walls and the promise of death.

That flashing red lights, screaming alarms, full immediate evac advised feeling was back with a vengeance.

He turned to Scott. “We’re going in, aren’t we?”

Scott grinned at him, eyes alight with adventure in the way Stiles’ used to be before the tables turned and he became the one getting dragged into idiotic decisions. Like going into dark and mysterious tunnels in the middle of the night when there was a Nazi werewolf running around town somewhere, when the last time he did just that, he ended up temporarily paralyzed for the fourth time in his life.

Stiles sighed, hoped there weren’t anymore kanimas lurking around, and followed Scott into the darkness, trying to block out the memory of a banshee’s scream echoing through his mind.

*

Lydia took the news of “we found a broken, empty tank that a month ago held a Nazi—sorry, German alpha werewolf and we don’t know where he is now” much better than Stiles had.

“Hold on.” She finished tucking her skirt beneath her legs and sitting on his dad’s office couch. She’d frozen, mid-sit, to stare between them. “Back up. Start from the beginning.”

Though that might’ve been because Stiles blurted out the news with no context or further explanation the second she walked into the room.

Scott gave him a look and then properly outlined the situation. That they’d followed the tunnels through a few more broken gates only to find themselves smack in the middle of the Dread Doctors’ underground lab, which was far more horrifying than anyone had even begun to describe and Stiles couldn’t wait to get back in there and poke around.

(And they all needed to take a course in creative writing if “really creepy” was the only description they could come up with when faced with that pants-shitting level of medical horror aesthetic with a list of health and safety violations a mile and a half long.)

From there, they retraced the alpha’s steps into even darker and more terrifying tunnels, made mostly of mud and moldy-smelling boards that felt like they could collapse at any second and bury them alive forever. Stiles didn’t have to ask to know they were heading out into the Preserve; he could still feel the clenching grip of the Nemeton, growing tighter in his chest with each step he took.

They’d ended up at the old abandoned dam control building, where they found Mason in the Doctors’ improvised lab, Scott explained, only the tank he’d been connected to was empty and smashed open. From the inside. All that was left was a few dangling tubes and a viscous green liquid still pooled in the bottom where the glass hadn’t been completely shattered. It didn’t paint a promising picture, and judging from the size of the tank, they were looking for Frankenstein’s Monster.

Between the long, above-ground hike back to the jeep parked at Oak Creek, the overwhelming unease at feeling the Nemeton’s pull again, and the even louder ringing in his ear, Stiles hadn’t gotten more than an hour or two of weak sleep—but the board in his room had made some excellent progress. It was now split in half; right side for Nazi werewolves, the other crowded with yearbook photos of his classmates.

The side of his classmates was significantly smaller and the least suspicious had been moved to a wall, but they weren’t completely off the hook yet. They’d just been temporarily downgraded below the Nazi alpha werewolf.

(Stiles was still a somewhat deranged kind of giddy over the idea, but that might’ve been the lack of sleep and nerves. His dad kept giving him concerned glances.)

“So without the Doctors there to keep him sedated, he woke up and...walked the four miles of tunnel to Oak Creek?” Lydia frowned. “Why didn’t he just hide in the preserve? Everyone else does.”

“The door to the dam control building was chained up from the outside,” Scott explained, which was apparently the extent of the Argents’ cleaning up these days. “Like, really chained up. It took me a minute to get them open, and if he wasn’t at full strength, going through the tunnels was probably the only way he could get out.”

“Not that I’m complaining,” Stiles added. “The less time I have to spend in the preserve looking for supernatural killers, the better.” The preserve had lost most of its excitement what with all the death and mayhem and his subconscious trying to let him die of exposure in his ex-girlfriend’s coyote den.

His dad didn’t agree. “Well I am complaining, because now we have an unknown alpha werewolf running around downtown with innocent people in his way.”

“Okay yeah, there’s that, but this is Beacon Hills; they should really know better by now.”

Lydia raised her eyebrows at him, then turned to Scott. “So you have no idea where he went from Oak Creek?”

“I couldn’t catch his scent, there have been too many deputies and employees out there since the break-in. He could be anywhere.”

“I put out a BOLO for the clothing he stole from the museum,” Stiles’ dad added, “but he could’ve easily changed by now and we don’t even have a description of his face for a sketch. None of the security guards saw him in person.”

Scott perked up at that. “I did! When we found Mason, he was right there in the tank. I mean, part of his face was covered with an oxygen mask or something, but he was completely bald, no eyebrows or anything. And he was huge, like, ripped, he still had a ton of muscles.”

Of course he did. Even after floating in a tank for over seventy years, werewolves still had muscles. It was just getting ridiculous at this point.

“I can work with that,” Stiles’ dad said, quickly jotting down a few notes. “I’ll get this to Clark, work things from this side, you guys keep looking and see if you can possibly find out a little more about this guy. I want as much information as we can get before we have to deal with him.”

Lydia frowned at him. “And how are we supposed to find out anything about one specific German soldier we don’t even have a name or accurate description of? Even if we had access to the official records, this would be like a needle in a haystack. They’d be worthless.”

“But we’re not just looking for any old German soldier,” his dad explained patiently, and Stiles wanted to kiss him when he realized where he was headed with this. Or buy him a big juicy burger. One of the two.

“We’re looking for an alpha,” Stiles finished, “and there aren’t official records for that.” His mind was already spiraling off into possible approaches. They’d have to get in touch with Satomi, she was the only born werewolf around who would know about the war from a supernatural perspective—hell, she’d lived through it, she probably personally knew other wolves who’d fought—

“And I’ve already called in an expert,” his dad announced, effectively bringing Stiles’ speeding train of thought to a sudden, screeching end.

“An expert? How? What? Dad, we can’t just—”

“Bring in new people, yeah I know.” Stiles took full offense to the way he dismissively waved away the very instinct that had saved their collective asses on more than one occasion. “I know more about your trust issues than I feel completely comfortable with, which is why I didn’t call someone new, I called Derek Hale.”

Stiles reeled back like he’d been physically punched, because it kind of felt like he had been with that left hook out of nowhere.

He sputtered for a second before he finally got his mouth in order. “You called Derek? When? Why? Why? Why on earth would you call Derek?” As bitter as he was that Derek had made a clean break and never contacted any of them again, the guy’s life in Beacon Hills had been, objectively, one shit show after another, and he really deserved to live out his life quietly on a mountain somewhere, chopping firewood in flannel. It was only fair.

Not that Stiles pictured that often, or anything.

His dad looked like he might know exactly what Stiles was picturing.

“I sent him an email the second I got your word vomit voicemail at three in the morning about a Nazi alpha werewolf from World War II, because I figured we were going to need information on him, and werewolves aren’t exactly listed in historical records. As a werewolf from a werewolf family who’s working on his PhD in history, I feel like Derek might be the closest to thing to an expect on werewolf history we have.”

Stiles blinked, processing through the overwhelming number of reactions he was having to this new information. His reasoning made sense, it did, but—

“Derek’s in grad school? Wait no,” that wasn’t even the most alarming thing, “you’ve been talking to Derek? Since when?”

“Since just after he left.” Stiles waved for him to explain further, because this was all news to him, and also a little offensive that Derek apparently preferred his dad’s conversation. Stiles was great at conversation. “Some kids tripped the alarm at his place and he called me to report it.”

“Okay, and since then?”

He shrugged and answered vaguely, “We talk.”

“You talk,” Stiles echoed for lack of a better reaction. He turned to Lydia and Scott, neither of whom looked appropriately surprised by this. “They talk,” he repeated, just in case they hadn’t heard.

“We heard,” Lydia assured him. She still didn’t look amazed at this revelation. More judging or patronizing, if anything.

“Okay fine.” Stiles didn’t have time for her judgment. “You and Derek talk.” He hoped his tone communicated clearly that they would be talking about that talking in the very near future. “What does Derek and his werewolf expertise have to say about all this?”

“That he’ll be happy to help out. He can't just drop everything and come in the middle of the semester, but he can Skype in if we need him.”

“Skype. Derek can Skype.” Stiles felt like his brain was cracking in half. “I’ve never even seen him use a computer.”

His dad gave him a disappointed look. “You know the Hales lived in an actual house, right? And that he went to college before he moved back here?”

“The college part, no, but in my defense, he could barely use his own cellphone. He didn’t even text, it’s a reasonable conclusion to draw!”

“You can’t hear a heartbeat or tone of voice over a text,” Scott piped up, and of course Derek would be listening for lies over basic phone conversations.

It took a second for the implications of that to sink in, and then he just felt oddly violated.

“Wait, you can hear heartbeats over the phone? Their mics can pick that up?”

“I think it’s more the blood pumping through your skin, but yeah, kind of.”

“That’s gross,” Stiles informed him.

“Yeah,” Scott agreed.

*

With his dad and Parrish out looking for their free range Nazi the old fashioned way, and the shifters of the pack putting their noses to the ground, it was left to Stiles and Lydia to try to find anything they could about the mystery alpha. With nowhere else to start, that meant returning to the source of it all: the Dread Doctors’ lab.

When they’d been in there the night before, Stiles and Scott had been more focused on quickly finding the naked werewolf stumbling through town than looking for research notes; Stiles hadn’t been able to get more than a brief glance at it all before they were following the scent further underground. The place had been untouched for the last month with all parties assuming the others would clear it out, so there was no telling for sure what was still down there to find. Body parts in jars, most likely.

Despite his own morbid curiosity and apprehensive excitement over getting to poke around a mad scientist lab, Stiles could admit that he was still totally and completely...dreading it. There was an inner struggle going on between the side of him that loved to poke at dead things and the side that still vividly remembered the horror of being seconds away from sawing off an arm still attached to a live person. This internal conflict outwardly manifested as his knee jiggling uncontrollably until Lydia slapped her hand down on it and announced she was driving.

And Lydia was another concern he had about all of this. The last time she’d been down in the tunnels, specifically in a makeshift lab down in the tunnels, she’d been terrorized by her own mad scientist and had a literal hole drilled into her head that she was still feeling the effects of and dealing with every day. Her usual refusal to back down from a challenge had only increased since then, and it wasn’t that he didn’t trust her to know what she could handle, but Stiles knew a little something about overcompensation for perceived weaknesses.

Still, the one time he’d even begun to suggest that he go with Malia instead, Lydia had shut him down with a glare so cold he felt his testicles recede a smidge, so they climbed into her car and headed off to the preserve.

With a bat, a large jar of mountain ash, and two tasers.

Since the Oak Creek Museum was back open to staff and the tunnel was no doubt locked up again, they had to drive out to the preserve and hike to the dam control building with Malia as their bodyguard just in case. Once she confirmed Der Soldat hadn’t returned, she left them to do their thing with a promise to stay in the area in case of screams. She had no interest in sticking around for their CSI impressions.

They didn’t find anything particularly useful in that first makeshift lab; it was dark and damp everywhere, roots and vines dangled from the ceiling that had grown through cracks in the cement, it smelled like mold, it was supremely creepy. Even though Malia hadn’t smelled or heard anyone in there, Stiles couldn’t help swinging his flashlight around towards every dark corner he swore he heard movement from. And given that he was working with only one fully functioning ear, his localization was a bit off, so he was hearing movement from pretty much everywhere, all the time.

Lydia glared at him, her own flashlight trained on the eerie broken tank while she took pictures with her phone. “Stiles, your jumpiness really isn’t helping.”

“Well I’m not doing it on purpose,” he whispered back. He didn’t know why he was whispering, but it felt like talking too loud would call something to them.

Something like a Nazi alpha werewolf.

“I don’t like this either, but we have to look.” She tucked her phone into her pocket. “Come over here and hold the flashlight for me.”

Stiles frowned, but made his way back over to her, stepping over wires and tubes that crisscrossed all over the floor. By the time he got there, she was wearing rubber gloves and had an honest to god sample kit out of her purse. He stared, and when she raised her eyebrows at him, he nodded towards it.

“I’m prepared,” she said defensively, but with just enough judgment to make him feel illogically bad for not thinking of carrying around a chemistry lab as well.

“What exactly are you going to do with this?” he asked, but he still held the light for her all the same as she bent down to scoop up some of the green fluid from the tank with a cotton swab.

“I’m going to test it, see what it is.” Once she gathered enough in a plastic tube, she dropped the swab in with it and sealed it up again. When Stiles’ face must’ve conveyed his doubt, she rolled her eyes. “My mom’s a chemistry teacher, Stiles. It’s our friends out there tracking this alpha down, so we need all the information we can get on this guy, including what they were doing to him.”

He couldn’t really argue with that.

Once she had her samples and gloves sealed up in a bag in her purse, they finished photographing whatever looked important and moved on through the tunnels.

If Lydia stuck a little closer to Stiles’ side than usual, he certainly wasn’t going to mention it, because he definitely needed the reassurance too. As if it wasn’t creepy enough already, the echoing nature of the concrete tunnels was seriously messing with Stiles’ hearing and every drip could’ve come from anywhere and all around him. Add to that the fact that almost every time he’d been down there lately, chimeras tackled him out of nowhere, and it made perfect sense for him to be on edge. He couldn’t afford any more head injuries that year, Melissa had really stressed that.

It was slow going getting back to the main lab, because they didn’t have a werewolf’s sense of smell to follow this time. They only had a cellphone picture of the shakily drawn path Stiles and Scott marked out on a copy of the official blueprints of the tunnel system, which wasn’t even up to date because half of them were missing. Or intentionally left off, Stiles always insisted as he taped on sheets of printer paper to draw on more they’d discovered.

One of these days he would have to go down there when there wasn’t a crisis and actually map out everything, because with all the time they’d been spending wandering blindly through those stupid tunnels lately, it was a sound investment of his time.

Once they reached the main lab, they split up to cover more snooping ground. Lydia was methodical, moving slowly through the space, stopping to photograph everything and see it from all angles. Stiles was, admittedly, less methodical. He snapped pictures of what interested him (body parts in jars, totally called it), uncovered stuff by kicking at it with his foot, and just generally disturbed everything. The Doctors were dead and gone, it wasn’t like they were coming back. Hopefully.

“Found something!” Lydia called after a half hour of this, and Stiles had to look all around the room before he managed to pick her out amongst all the antiquated lab equipment, crouched behind some control panel that looked like it was straight out of the Cold War. She stepped to the side so he could stand next to her in front of the old grimey binders that were piled on a rusty metal shelf.

Lydia was delicately holding up the cover of one with her very fingertip, wrapped in a tissue. “These look like notes of some kind, but I’m not sure for what yet.”

Stiles glanced over the looping cursive, but for all his A’s in his science classes, this was far above his paygrade. “Maybe something before they came to Beacon Hills?”

“It’s hard to tell. I don’t see a date but it looks old enough. Look at the illustration.”

Stiles leaned to the side to see under the slightly bent cover with his flashlight. It was some old fashioned pen drawing, but he couldn’t even tell which body part that was a dissection of.

Yeah, that wasn’t terrifying at all.

He took a step back to look over the many, many binders stacked on the shelves, each just as grimy and, well, bloody as the last. It was definitely blood stains he could see on some of the pages, there was no mistaking it. When he looked around more of the room, now consciously looking for more notes, he could see loose papers and piles scattered all over, poking out under things, gathering dust on a lot of surfaces.

He sighed. “We’re going to have to read them all, aren’t we?”

“There must be something about the alpha in all of this. He was their big project.” Lydia carefully closed the binder again and wiped her finger on another tissue from her purse. Stiles didn’t want to get cliche and call her Mary Poppins, but he wasn’t certain she didn’t have a lamp in there.

He only wished she would pull out a hand truck next, because reading through all of the binders also meant getting them out of the lab and carting them through the tunnels, because he sure as hell wasn’t going to set up shop down there to do it.

Where would they even put all of them? What was even on all of them?

He reached out, swiped a finger across one, and then could only gag in horror at his own idiocy and desperately try to find someplace clean that wasn’t him or Lydia to wipe the gritty yet also gelatinous goo. Lydia gave him her patented you’re an idiot look, but still handed him another tissue all the same, while advising,

“Never go into the sciences if your first instinct is to touch stuff like this with your bare finger.”

Stiles couldn’t argue with that. “Remind me to see Melissa about getting every kind of shot available.”

“I’ll make us back-to-back appointments,” Lydia agreed, wrinkling her nose at the pile.

“Got any more of those rubber gloves in there?” Stiles asked, nodding towards Lydia’s purse, and a second later she was handing some over, and snapping a second pair on herself.

“I told you, I’m prepared.” She shrugged.

“No kidding. Girl Scouts?”

“Common sense.”

Stiles gave her a side eye squint. This was so far beyond common sense, this was forensic science. She’d even brought a larger pair of gloves for him.

They gloved up and stood there for a moment, staring at the rack of horribly grimey, gooey, disgusting, dusty, and probably infested books, neither quite able to convince themselves to actually pick one up.

Lydia started to say something, closed her mouth, and then tipped her head to the side. “Which superpowered being do you think we can bribe to come carry these for us?”

This was exactly why they were friends.

But who could they call? Scott was busy doing his alpha thing and tracking, Malia was the best tracker of the pack after years as a literal coyote, so pulling either of them off the search was a dumb idea…

“Liam? He’s easy,” Lydia suggested, but Stiles shook his head.

“Nah, he’s finally growing a spine. He’s not even scared of me anymore.”

“That’s a shame. Mason’s off the table after his trauma here,” she said that as if it were obvious, and as if she also hadn’t been traumatized in the tunnels as well, “I could probably get Parrish to do it.”

“He’s out with my dad.” And Stiles would really prefer his dad had some kind of supernatural muscle with him in case he was the one to find Der Soldat. “You know, times like this really make me miss Isaac.”

Lydia nodded and added mournfully, “He made a great patsy. What about Hayden?”

Stiles tried to imagine how Hayden, with her short temper and vengeful streak, would react to that.

“If you want to try, you go right ahead. I’m not asking her.”

“Well I’m certainly not carrying these, and you can’t with your bad elbow.” She gave him a meaningful look, and he felt both retroactively guilty for the lie, and thankful that she wasn’t using this power against him.

(Though karma had its way in the end, because even though it’d been a lie at the time, the scar from Donovan’s bite actually had left his shoulder stiff and sore most mornings. He was falling apart at eighteen and he didn’t even have the excuse of being an athlete.)

Lydia pulled out her phone and started scrolling through her contacts, while Stiles turned back to the pile of books and started thinking logistics. Namely, the disgusting books getting their grime all over the trunk of Lydia’s pristine car.

“Tell her to bring lots of plastic.”

*

Hayden told them to go piss up a rope.

*

Stiles slept very well that night. It was probably because he was totally worn out after hiking all over the place and hauling heavy books and binders out of the lab and into his basement, but once his dad hauled him away from the Doctors’ notes and he fell asleep, he was out.

Unfortunately the alien high of finally getting a solid night of sleep only lasted until lunch, when his sore body seemed to catch on to the fact that it really was sleep deprived and pretty well abused, and started to crash. At that point Stiles retreated to a dark and quiet corner of the library to nap through both lunch and his following Monday free period.

At least that was his intention until someone dropped into the seat next to him and jostled him and all of his belongings until he shot upright in confusion.

“What the—what?” he croaked, rubbing his eyes and trying to figure out if he should be alarmed or not.

Not, he decided once he realized it was just Lydia, thankfully bearing a cup of coffee for him.

She handed it over before saying anything, but she only gave him a brief couple seconds to savor it before she pushed a closed laptop right into his elbow.

“Ow.” He adjusted to save his coffee. “What’s this?” He was too tired to be dealing with this many things being shoved at him so quickly, he needed time to process.

“It’s Allison’s computer,” Lydia said shortly, as she opened it and easily typed in the password. It took a moment to load the desktop, and a number of programs immediately prompted to install updates.

“And why do we have Allison’s computer?” Stiles asked belatedly, still trying to wake up. It wasn’t fair to be throwing around Allison’s name when he wasn’t fully conscious and ready for the hit, but his grogginess softened the blow.

“Because,” Lydia navigated into the computer’s files, clearly knowing exactly what she was looking for, “during her summer in France, she went through everything she could find on her family’s history, and she took notes. This is where I found a lot on La Bete du Gevaudan.”

Her French accent was impeccable.

She clicked through a few more subfolders, typed in another password to a cloud account, and sat back to watch Stiles’ reaction and look smug.

Stiles leaned in as files started loading and his mouth dropped open. “Holy crap.”

He suddenly felt a lot more awake.

Lydia smiled, proud and a little sad. “After Gerard she wanted to find out everything she possibly could about her family, the good and especially the bad.”

“No kidding.” It looked like Allison had not only taken notes, but scanned literally everything she could get her hands on. There was everything from notes typed on a typewriter to yellowed journal pages written in slanting and loopy cursive. It put the family bestiary to shame.

Stiles was so impressed that he even put down his coffee.

“I remember her mentioning World War II before,” Lydia continued, scrolling through everything slowly, eyes jumping around, “and I saw folders for it last time I was in here, but I haven’t looked at them yet.”

“You think Der Soldat would be in here?” Seemed like a longshot to Stiles, but he had no idea what kind of records the Argents kept or what Allison found.

“I’d say there’s a pretty good chance. The Argents were one of the largest hunting families in Europe at the time, and Allison said they wrote down and kept everything they knew to train future generations. Chris would probably know a lot of it too, but I don’t trust any information that comes through him alone.”

Stiles could’ve kissed her right at that moment. “Have I told you that I love you yet today?”

“Yes, when I handed you coffee this morning. But you were half asleep and probably don’t remember, so I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.”

“Well I love you, with all my heart and soul.”

“Then stop breathing in my ear.”

Stiles blinked and realized just how close he was sitting, practically on her chair, fingers itching to take over the navigation.

He forced himself to back off and let her steer, and then went ahead and sat on his hands when she was taking a little too long for his liking. She pointedly ignored him.

“Okay, here it is,” she said finally, and double clicked. The file opened and it sat for a moment, loading, before a shower of subfolders appeared. Stiles could only watch in an amazed and excited horror as the scrollbar on the side got smaller and smaller.

This was going to be such a pain in the ass to search through. Allison had been meticulous in labeling the major folders and the areas that she was most interested in, even adding keywords and quick summaries to some files, but this far down the rabbit hole, it looked like she’d just been trying to get it all scanned and uploaded quickly to be sorted later. There were folders with broad labels, some numbered, some with dates, a couple with the standard asdfasdfas keysmashing placeholders—one massive folder was simply and ominously titled, “To Sort” that Stiles was not looking forward to opening, if she considered everything else sorted.

Lydia, however, was unfazed. She’d obviously spent a lot of time combing through it. “I’ll give you the login to her cloud so you can get started, but I’d make an account and copy everything over immediately before anyone else sees it.”

Stiles frowned, surprised to hear her voice his own paranoid thoughts. He was usually flying solo when it came to those. “You think Chris would try to hide anything?”

“I honestly don’t know with him. I took over the payments for the account from Allison so he shouldn’t know about it, but it won’t stay secret for long and I wouldn’t be able to say no if he asked for it. She started a journal on here about everything that’s happened that I think he should read when he’s ready.”

Stiles didn’t know what to say to that so he nodded and turned the laptop towards himself while Lydia rifled through her purse for paper and wrote down the site and login info. There really was an impressive amount of stuff there, including what looked like official military documents, both Allies and Axis, with known werewolves (among other things) marked off in pen, notes scribbled in the margins.

How the Argents got their hands on those, Stiles didn’t even want to know.

Except that he really, really did.

The only problem: the majority of them were German documents, some French, some even Italian, very few in English. Some typed with a typewriter and easy to read, easy to copy into a translator, but others were completely handwritten.

“You don’t speak German, by any chance, do you?” he asked as he took the folded up bit of paper Lydia handed him and jammed it into an inside pocket of his jacket for safekeeping. Lydia shrugged.

“I never had any need for it. I can do the French easily, but you’ll have to do the rest yourself.”

“Me?” He was having enough trouble with Spanish, even with Scott helping him. “You’re the one who picked up archaic Latin in her spare time!”

She glared at him, and then hissed, “I’m also the one with a hole in her skull and a very temporary fix that needs to be permanent before I leave for college. I can’t very well translate your German if I’m screaming myself to death, now can I.”

Oh. Right.

That certainly shut Stiles up quickly, and they sat in an uncomfortable silence until he worked up the nerve to break it. “So you’re not having any luck with that, then?”

Lydia sighed, clearly frustrated with herself for not having the answer as fast as she would’ve liked, even though it had barely been over a month since it all happened. “Not yet. We’re working on it.”

“Do you still get—”

“Overwhelming screaming voices of death when it’s time to replace the mistletoe?” she snapped, “Yep.”

“Alright, touchy subject.”

He moved to stand and give her space, but she grabbed his hand as he reached for his coffee and took a measured breath to calm down.

“I’m sorry, Stiles.”

“No, no need to apologize. I’d have a short temper too, you must get terrible headaches.” He snapped his mouth shut again and winced when she looked at him, clearly pained by his attempt at levity. Then she smiled a bit.

“We’re looking into everything we can find, but so far my mom and I haven’t found anything to explain why mistletoe helps, let alone come up with a chemical alternative I can take.”

“Yeah, you can’t exactly keep injecting paste into your head the rest of the your life.” She nodded and let that hang, until— “Hang on, when you guys have your mother-daughter nights, you’re...doing chemistry?”

“Obviously, she’s got after hours access to the chemistry lab. What did you think we were doing?”

“I don’t know, manicures? Going out for dinner? Bonding?”

“We are. We’re bonding over chemistry.” She sounded so insulted that he couldn’t even fully appreciate the pun.

“Well sorry, when I bond with my dad we watch bad movies and fall asleep on the couch too early.”

“And here I thought you two obsessed over old casefiles together in your spare time,” she said primly, and he shot back in the same tone,

“Only on Sundays.”

*

It took hours for Stiles to move all of Allison’s files from her cloud to his. Their wifi at home wasn’t the fastest by any means, but he didn’t trust any public and unprotected networks with this kind of thing, so he didn’t have any other options.

Alright, so maybe Lydia’s casual suspicions of Chris had made him a little more paranoid than usual, but this was an Argent they were talking about. They’d managed to replace a high school principal with a literal psychopath when they put their mind to it, there was no being too careful when it came to them.

And speaking of what a determined Argent could do; the sheer amount of information that Allison had compiled in just the four short months she spent in France was staggering. Did she actually spend any time with her family? Sleep? Do anything that wasn’t scanning and photographing documents and pictures?

So he got home, started everything copying over, and then worked on homework while he let his computer do its thing until late that evening, when it had finished enough for him to start poking into the files on the war that he could find.

It was just as mind numbingly tedious as he’d feared it would be, especially when he had to consciously ignore the parts that were interesting but unrelated to the current threat.

There was a file Allison had labeled WWII, and inside she’d begun to sort them by category and year, but the majority of it all was a mishmash of everything from 1935, when the Argents started to grow concerned about what exactly Hitler was doing, through 1946.

He spent over an hour clicking through scanned pages, trying to at least note down what they were about in the comments. He’d copy over a few phrases into Google, try to summarize the page from that and add a couple keywords as Allison has started doing, and then move on to the next. So far, he’d managed to find summaries of meetings with the budding resistance building in occupied France—talking weapons, tactics, etc. which was crazy interesting and he bookmarked it to read later, but it didn’t help the whole Nazi alpha loose in Beacon Hills situation.

He was distracted for another few hours by a journal from a young Argent who didn’t quite understand that hunters were supposed to keep that shit on the DL, because he talked a lot about what he heard around him. And as a man after Stiles’ own heart, this kid liked to snoop and listen in on things he wasn’t supposed to hear. It was handwritten in French, so he had to split his screen to type everything into a translator to read it, but it was riveting as shit. Like a soap opera with more guns and more Nazis.

Once it hit midnight, he managed to tear himself away from some family drama about two brothers who enlisted in the Free French Forces against the family’s wishes and Jacques’ (the journal-keeper) feelings about it all. It was fascinating, and he was dying to know more, but he also had priorities. When he actually remembered them.

He went back to sorting files, not letting himself look too closely or get sucked in until he reached anything mentioning loup garou, and when he did, it was a gold mine of some of the coolest stuff he’d never even considered. Like werewolves in the military on all sides and that the Argents had all but gone underground to wage guerilla warfare against Nazi werewolf squads.

Once more for emphasis: Nazi werewolf squads.

Apparently something really did come out of Hitler’s interest in the occult, and not just comic book storylines or Indiana Jones movies.

And if Hitler knew werewolves existed and put them in his military, what else had he done with them? The Nazis were notorious for their experiments on regular humans, what would they have done to werewolves? And given that at least one of the Dread Doctors was German, as parts of their records were written in the language, did that mean that Der Soldat wasn’t just a Nazi soldier, but a Nazi experiment as well? An attempt to create supersoldiers? Had he always been a werewolf, or was he turned into one like the chimeras?

It was right around then, at 4:37 in the morning, that Stiles realized just how epically screwed they probably were. They weren’t just dealing with an alpha from the past who’d been steadily drained of...fluid over seventy years, they could very well be facing the real life antithesis of Captain fucking America.

It was a good thing Stiles had slept the night before, because he sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep after that revelation.

He made himself a pot of coffee, and carried right on reading.

*

When his dad got up a few hours later, Stiles had moved down to the basement, hunched on the floor combing through the stack of the Doctors’ notes he’d manage to find from 1941 with another fresh coffee sitting on his left and his laptop on his right.

He was so engrossed in his reading that he didn’t even hear his dad until he yawned, “You’re up early,” and Stiles jumped nearly a foot in the air.

“Haven’t slept yet,” Stiles corrected a little shrilly, already ramping up with that sudden shock to jumpstart him, “and you will never believe the shit I’ve found out tonight. We’re going to have to step up the search for this guy.”

His dad sighed tiredly, closing his eyes for a second, but instead of reacting to the news, he just said, “You didn’t sleep at all? I thought the white noise was helping.”

“What? It is, this has nothing to do with the tinnitus, this is about the alpha roaming the streets of Beacon Hills. Dad, he’s a Nazi experiment!”

His dad blinked, shook his head to wake up, and then blinked again.

“Come again?”

“It’s in this binder—well, I feel like it is, or at least some of it. I haven’t actually gotten there yet, but there’s suddenly German entries in it when the journals from the 1880s and 1920s were just English and French, and I’m pretty sure they picked up the third Doctor during the war. There are also a few letters in here with the eagle and swastika stamped on it, like official letters. Like, they didn’t just grab a German soldier and run, they were literally working with the Nazis.”

“You think,” his dad clarified, reaching down to take Stiles’ mug of coffee for himself.

“I’m pretty sure,” he immediately shot back. “I just need a few more hours to look more and translate and then I’ll have a better idea, but I’m like ninety percent certain of this.” He tried to take his coffee back, but his dad straightened and held it out of reach like a middle school bully. Stiles scowled from the floor.

“No, you need to eat breakfast, take a shower, and go to school in an hour,” his dad corrected. “This will all still be here when you get back—unless you don’t go eat breakfast, take a shower, and go to school, in which case I will confiscate all of this.”

Stiles instinctively hugged the binder he was working on to his chest, forgetting whatever schmutz was definitely getting smeared against his shirt. His dad just raised his eyebrows as he took a sip of Stiles’ coffee. He had that steely Sheriff look in his eye. That wasn’t a look to mess around with. That was a look that followed through with threats.

“Ugh, fine,” Stiles groaned, marking his place and standing up. His back cracked as he straightened it. “But you have to promise to call if you guys find him! And I mean it dad, don’t assume Parrish will be good enough. This guy was almost definitely experimented on, we have no idea what he’s—”

“Capable of, yes I know,” his dad finished, and guided him back up the stairs with a warm hand on the back of his neck, which felt fantastic after a November night in the cold basement. Stiles hadn’t wanted to contaminate any of their blankets with that stuff. “We’re not going to take any unnecessary risks, but neither can you.”

They stopped in the kitchen, and his dad pointedly turned off the coffee maker, then made meaningful eye contact before he continued.

“No more of this staying up all night business when you’re already having enough trouble sleeping as it is. I know I can’t keep you out of this or tell you to have someone else do all this research, but Stiles, you’ve got to learn to pace yourself, kiddo.” He opened the fridge and started to pull out breakfast ingredients even while still lecturing. “Especially if you’re planning on becoming a cop. I can’t tell you how many deputies I’ve had burn out in the middle of their shifts because they think they have to go full force all the time, and never—”

Stiles was starting to get antsy, shifting from right foot to left and gnawing at the side of his thumb. He’d heard variations of this lecture before, especially lately, and combined with the lack of sleep, too much coffee, and the wired anxiety of a threat in town, he needed something to focus on. Like the records of Nazi experiments sitting in his basement. The result of which was loose in town.

“Stiles.” His dad interrupted the panicked screaming of inaction in his mind, reaching over to physically stop him from biting his thumb. “Go take a shower. I’ll make breakfast and then drop you off at school. I don’t want you driving like this.”

Stiles would have protested, but even he could admit that it wouldn’t be totally safe.

*

Scott came looking for him after Calculus, clearly concerned by the all caps text he got around five in the morning, and then visibly became even more concerned after he found him.

Stiles knew exactly how he looked: wide-eyed, jittery, and practically vibrating with new information to unload. It had been a feat sitting through math, and he knew he’d seriously annoyed the guy sitting next to him with his leg jiggling constantly, but there was too much to talk about and he’d only made it through a fraction of Allison’s WWII folder.

He barely managed to hold out through Scott asking, “What do you mean the alpha’s literally the Winter Soldier?” before he let all of it fly at once, right there in the first empty classroom he dragged Scott into.

Scott blinked hard. “You have Allison’s computer?”

Stiles groaned, fingers itching to grab his friend and shake him violently. “No, Lydia does, but that’s so not the point right now! The point is that this alpha is a Nazi experiment sanctioned by Hitler himself!”

Another blink. “And now he’s the Winter Soldier?”

“Probably! If I know anything about Hitler, it’s that if he knew about werewolves, and he definitely did because there were literal squads of werewolves in his military,” he added again for emphasis, “he would’ve tried to find a way to make them even stronger. And the Dread Doctors could do that.”

Scott processed for a brief second, and then shifted into his focused crisis mode. It wasn’t as crisis-y as Stiles would’ve liked, but one of them had to remain somewhat calm and level headed.

“Okay, did it say that exactly? Did you find him in the Doctors’ notes? Mentions of Nazis?”

“I haven’t found him yet specifically?” Scott relaxed. Stiles was losing him. “But there are letters with the swastika stamped on it, and the German entries in their notes don’t start until 1940. I didn’t get to translate all of them before school, they’re in that loopy old cursive that’s impossible to read in English, but I’d say there’s a pretty good chance they linked up with the Reich for a while there. And the Reich loved experiments.”

The door to the classroom opened and he jumped and whirled around, on edge and paranoid until he realized it was Lydia and Malia.

“What’s going on?” Malia demanded, frowning in concern. “I can hear your heart going crazy from the other side of the building.”

Stiles paused long enough to file away that invasive tidbit about her new super hearing to worry about later, and then started over to fill them in too.

They both listened quietly to his rambling explanation—Malia visibly resisting asking questions until he was done—and by the time he finished, Lydia was nodding along thoughtfully.

“It makes sense that they would side with the Reich,” she pointed out. “Their goal was to resurrect the Beast, but they needed to create the right host. Hitler’s regime probably would’ve supplied the strongest subjects and let them do whatever supernatural experiments they wanted if it meant they could get a leg up in the war with supersoldiers. But,” she turned to give Stiles a dubious look, “we already knew he was experimented on to some degree. How exactly will this help us right now in finding him?”

“I don’t know! But it makes it all that much more terrifying!” Their lack of alarm at the news was making him doubt himself now. At the time, in the middle of the night, completely entrenched in research and collecting new information, it had certainly seemed like big news, but maybe it was just extra information muddying the waters again.

“Okay no, this helps,” Scott quickly jumped in. “It’ll help us understand where he’s coming from when we do find him. He’s been traumatized and experimented on by his own government, and he’s in a foreign enemy country seventy years in the future. We have to be careful when we approach him, and remember that he might not even speak English. We don’t want to freak him out any more than he probably already is.”

“Yes, see?” Stiles touched his nose and pointed to Scott. His buddy. His man. “Relevant information here. Approach with extreme caution—and maybe download a translator app,” he added with less confidence.

There was enough confidence in Scott’s thumbs up for the both of them.

At that, Malia abruptly turned to leave. Stiles and Scott looked at each other in confusion, Lydia called after her.

“Malia, where are you going?”

“I’m going to find the alpha,” she answered, as if it were plainly obvious.

“What, now? What about your English class?” Stiles admired her enthusiasm, he did, but he also knew that while she’d made it to twelfth grade, her writing skills were trailing the national average, and she needed that class more than she liked to admit. Would ever admit, really.

She glared, because she knew he knew that. “English can wait until we have him contained. We don’t know why he hasn’t tried anything yet, and I don’t want to wait until he does.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to try anything?” Scott’s tone said he knew it was a lost cause and he didn’t entirely believe it. “Maybe he just wants to be left alone and we should be careful with this? Maybe not completely overrun him and make him panic?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Stiles saw Malia give Scott the same disbelieving look he did.

“Alright, you can approach with caution, but I’m going to get him before he gets someone else.” She threw open the door to lead the way out, but stopped short when she was met with the eager faces of Liam, Mason, Hayden, and Corey, huddled in the otherwise empty hallway and not looking remotely ashamed at eavesdropping.

Well, Corey did, but he was still kind of new.

“We’ll take the preserve,” Liam offered, gesturing to his litter of puppies.

Scott sighed, and he looked like he was really about to regret condoning the truancy of minors, but he finally nodded.

“Fine. But keep in contact and if you find him, call me immediately.”

*

While everyone with heightened senses spread across the city, Stiles and Lydia returned to the empty Stilinski house to keep reading.

Lydia briefly looked over what he’d begun to find that morning and banished his nervous energy from the basement so she could focus. He couldn’t even complain; science and experiments were Lydia’s realm and most of what he’d found that wasn’t on Nazi letterhead was a lot of science and creepy biology diagrams that went clear over his head. It took him too long to look up everything along the way, even without the language barrier, and they needed to know what they were facing as soon as possible.

Preferably before anyone encountered the Der Soldat and found out the hard way.

But even with Lydia down in the basement, combing through everything from the lab, and Stiles reading more of the Argents’ files and lists, there was way too much information for them to sift through by themselves.

It was at this point that he finally admitted to himself that he needed to call Derek for his history expertise, even if just to help split the load of searching the Argent files.

He’d kept that option in the back of his mind as a last resort, because he really didn’t want to drag the guy back to the place and the people he clearly wanted to leave in the dust. Had left in the dust. The Mexican dust Braeden’s SUV kicked up as they sped off the last time Stiles had seen or heard from him.

Hell, he only knew the guy was still alive because Braeden passed on that much information last time she’d come through town, and that was all she passed on. Very shortly, and then changed the subject, so Stiles was working under the assumption that Derek didn’t want to be contacted or found.

At least by anyone other than Stiles’ dad, or whatever academic community he was a part of now that he was getting his PhD.

Just...what?

It wasn’t that Stiles didn’t think Derek was smart, because he was, incredibly smart, as Stiles had learned over the years, but this was the guy who lived in the burnt out ruins of his childhood home and then upgraded to an abandoned train station. Stiles had never even seen Derek eat before, he was having a hard time imagining him sitting through a lecture on a campus surrounded by eighteen year olds.

Though he had spent a lot of time around their high school, so really, it was a step up for him. Closer to his own age group.

It was just...a lot, to be happening all at once. Until now, Stiles had been able to have his own late night fantasies about what Derek was up to—usually in a peaceful cabin somewhere chopping his own firewood, or reading a book on a private beach in Mexico, since he apparently went there all the time growing up, or hell, back in New York sitting in a hipster bar and reading Vonnegut with a craft beer.

They were good fantasies, and maybe just a tad self-indulgent because if Derek, with his epic shitshow of a life and luck, could leave Beacon Hills and be happy and healthy and successfully have a good life, then maybe Stiles’ own future wasn’t so bleak after all. He wasn’t ready to face the possibility that Derek’s reality wasn’t as optimistic as Stiles had always hoped.

The whole PhD thing was probably a good sign, though. At the very least he wasn’t captured by hunters again.

Now he was just stalling.

He stared at the post-it note of Derek’s Skype information, scrawled in his dad’s handwriting and stuck to the edge of his desk, and took a steadying deep breath to calm his suddenly inexplicably pounding heart.

Before he could second guess himself, Stiles typed in Derek’s information, saw he was online, and hit call.

And then he immediately regretted it.

Why didn’t they ease into this with a phone call? Or a text? Why did he go straight for video chatting? He wasn’t prepared for Derek’s face, he didn’t know what he would do when faced with his...face. He hadn’t seen that face in over a year, he’d probably lost any immunity he’d built up to the attractiveness of that face. He certainly hadn’t forgotten the uncomfortable crush he’d had on that face, and until he was...faced with the prospect of seeing that face, he’d thought he was pretty well over that crush.

What if he wasn’t over that crush?

HIs chest swooped as the fake phone ringing sound stopped, and he could say for certain that he was, indeed, not entirely over it.

And then, because the universe refused to stop messing with him at every opportunity, the very first thing he saw when the video adjusted was Derek wearing a sweater and eating a salad.

A salad.

Stiles didn’t even know what to do with this...this seemingly well-adjusted and soft and cozy looking Derek, so he did the first thing he could think of and apparently reverted right back to lame werewolf jokes.

“No freshly killed extra rare steak?” He already wanted to beat his head against something, but then Derek’s face dropped into its familiar long suffering glare and the universe righted itself.

“Hi Stiles, it’s been awhile, how are you doing?” There was that flat and unamused Derek voice he’d missed so much.

“Hey, you brought this on yourself. The first time I’ve seen you eat and it wasn’t the carcass of a deer you hunted down on your own four paws.” God, why couldn’t he shut up? “This is disappointing for me.”

“I had to meet with a student and didn’t have time to stop by the woods,” he deadpanned in response, and pushed the salad out of sight. This was not how Stiles imagined this going, and yet, it was what he fully expected at the same time.

Except wait—

”Student? You have students?”

“I’m a GSI, I do have students.”

Stiles tried to picture it, failed, and gave up. “Nope, still weird.”

Derek sighed. “Your dad said you guys needed help with something? A...Nazi?” His face scrunched up when he was confused while not trying to be an intimidating authority figure. Stiles never needed to know that, and now he would die thinking of that scrunch.

“Oh man, strap in,” he said instead of blurting out something embarrassing. “What do you know about the Dread Doctors?”

Turned out his dad had been vaguely filling in Derek on everything going on, but leaving out any specifics that might make him actually want to come back. And his dad had always had a loose grasp on the supernatural to begin with, so when he spoke vaguely, it was vague.

So Stiles was left with the privilege and pleasure of summarizing the last few months of absolute hell that Derek had missed out on, as well as watching Derek’s eyebrows furrow more and more until they had practically merged Ethan and Aiden-style into one mutant unibrow.

Derek sat in silence for a beat, processing the admittedly batshit insane story of their recent lives.

“So the Beast—”

“Is taken care of,” Stiles finished. “That was Mason. He’s a werewolf now too.”

“And now your problem is an alpha from World War II.”

“Who’s been held in a tank and experimented on by Doctors for seventy years.”

“Alright,” Derek finally said with a nod, back to business like no time had passed. “What do you need me to do?”

“Hold me while I cry,” Stiles blurted out, straight to the point after glancing back at the massive folders of documents, only .1% of which he’d translated, and Derek raised an eyebrow. “You don’t hablas German, by any chance, do you?” Derek spoke Spanish that one time, it was worth a desperate shot.

“Actually yes, I do.”

Stiles perked right back up. “Are you serious? Don’t joke with me right now, Derek, I’m incredibly stressed and I haven’t slept much in the last couple days, I’m emotionally fragile.”

“I’m not messing with you, I really do speak German. What’s the problem?”

“A bunch of old war documents from World War II that Allison got from her family? Maybe some of the Doctors’ notes if Lydia needs it.”

Derek frowned in confusion at the mention of Allison but didn’t ask. “You think her family encountered him somewhere?”

“Lydia was pretty sure he would be in there. The Argents kept insanely meticulous records of any werewolves they came into contact with during the war, from what I can understand of it, given that I don’t speak a word of French.”

“I can help with the French too.”

Stiles gaped and thanked every power in the universe that Derek wasn’t in the room and couldn’t smell how attractive that was over Skype. “How many languages do you—actually no, doesn’t matter. What is your address? I’m going to send you the biggest Edible Arrangements I can find.”

Derek grinned—grinned! “It’s no big deal. I’m working with a hands-on professor who likes to grade papers, I’ve got a little time outside of my classes and discussion sections.”

It took a moment for Stiles to shake the image of Derek wearing glasses and a sweater leading discussion sections of wide eyed and optimistic undergrads. Was he the type of teacher who made them move their desks into a circle so they could all see each other? Did he sit on his own desk or behind it? Did he come up with all kinds of weird group activities?

“Stiles?”

“What? Oh uh, yeah, sorry. Just trying to picture you leading a discussion group of any kind. Do you just glare at them until they crack and give their opinions?” Nice save. Very smooth.

“Sometimes I growl,” he deadpanned, and okay, it was very good that he wasn’t actually in the room. Yep, that crush was still alive and kicking after a year being dormant, that was an interesting revelation.

“Where are you again? I need to apply there immediately. I have to take this class and see it for myself.”

“Nice try. Just send the files.”

“I’ll find out eventually, Derek. You might as well just tell me.”

“Now where’s the fun in that?”

Clearly he didn’t want to be found, he just didn’t want to say as much. Despite what everyone around him thought, Stiles did know when to back off sensitive subjects. Sometimes.

“Yeah, alright, wait until you see what I’m sending you, then we’ll see who’s having fun.” He quickly typed in Derek’s email—not one from a university—and shared the cloud file. The massive, massive cloud file. Stiles couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when he saw the sheer number of files there were to translate.

He was horribly disappointed when Derek typed in the password, clicked around a bit, and barely got so much as an eyebrow raise in response.

“You said we’re looking for an alpha?”

“Yeah, German, male, bald, the Doctors called him Der Soldat, so I’m assuming he was in the army.”

Derek nodded, already scribbling down something in a notebook next to him. “I’ll get in touch with some older packs in Europe, see what I can find about alphas who disappeared during the war.”

Alright, apparently he could do a lot more than just sort and translate. That was a major resource Stiles and the pack just didn’t have, and he hadn’t even realized it. They didn’t really know any other packs outside of Satomi’s, and they were an elusive bunch at best, especially after so many of them had been killed by that assassin with the stamp pad.

“How much do you think that would narrow it down?” Stiles asked, typing that idea into his own notes. It was a war, a lot of people went off and never came back; there were entire monuments of their names etched in stone in Washington DC.

“Quite a bit.” Derek made a few more notes before looking up and explaining, “Plenty of werewolves joined the army and went to war, on both sides, but if they survived, they returned to their packs anyway they could. This would be an alpha who was never found, but who never died and passed on his power to the next in line in his pack. That’s not common.”

Stiles just stared for a second. Derek literally just pulled that together right there on the spot.

That was the most attractive thing he’d ever seen in his life.

“That’s...wow.” Was all he managed to come up with.

Derek looked up from writing something else, eyebrows raised and genuinely oblivious the effect he’d just had on both Stiles’ mind and his dick.

“You just…there’s so much information and you just cut out, like, all of this unnecessary stuff.” It was amazing how easily he’d done it too—the thing Stiles struggled with the most, an overabundance of information and too many directions to look in, and Derek did it in less than five minutes, while eating a salad.

This time the corner of Derek’s mouth quirked up, and it was as nice as Stiles always feared it would be. “Stiles, I’m getting my PhD in history, how do you think I do all my research?”

“Yeah, well,” Stiles waved dismissively at the screen, and Derek full-on smirked.

It was stupidly attractive.

Chapter Text

With Derek concentrating on translating what files Stiles marked for him, as well as reaching out to packs, Stiles turned his full attention to the lists of known werewolves the Argents encountered. The hunters had been nice enough to mark off who was an alpha, beta, or omega, who was military or civilian—it was just time consuming to sort through it all.

And there were still a hell of a lot of alphas there, and not just German. The Argents listed every pack they found, enemy or not. It was a register, and given the time period they were working in, that was unnerving. Stiles had a quiet urge to start googling everyone, just to make sure they lead a long, healthy life and weren’t tracked down by insane hunters after the war.

Or during the war, that would’ve made a perfect cover. Large group of people all ended up dead in their house in the woods? Nazis.

He might’ve stayed up a little too late obsessing over it while a gentle rainstorm played from his phone.

After school the next day, he and Lydia went straight back to his house to keep working, and Derek joined in a little later after his own classes. Stiles was still a little in shock over that, it didn’t quite compute.

Lydia graciously allowed him back in his own basement, and then immediately put him to work. He set up shop to the side, tucked in a corner and out of her way, but there to relay information between her and Derek if any names came up. He had Derek’s Skype window up, and his earbuds in so Derek’s muttered translations wouldn’t disturb Lydia’s.

Yeah, that was another thing Stiles could’ve lived without knowing but was so glad he now did: Derek muttered to himself in a few different languages while he worked, and it was adorable. And really hot. And also weirdly comforting, having his voice constantly in Stiles’ ear, but without being distracting because he couldn’t understand really anything of what he was saying anyway. Relaxing.

If he ignored the looming threat and reason they were all there together, he could take a step back and enjoy the process. Lydia and Derek passed on any names they found to him, which he added to the list of names and physical descriptions, sometimes pictures, he was compiling that they could cross reference. It was nice, fun working with two really academically competent people, and also with two people he just genuinely enjoyed the company of.

He wished Derek could actually have been in the room, but he would take what he could get of him.

They stayed down there for hours, well into the night. Stiles’ dad stopped in, brought them both dinner and sweatshirts since it was getting cold down there, and the news that the city search still hadn’t revealed anything, and then went back out to continue.

Stiles could feel himself crashing hard once it reached eleven. He hadn’t slept well the night before, still too wound up mentally, and now he was slowing down, losing focus, and making spelling mistakes that frustrated both him and Lydia. She was also tired and cranky; she’d been flipping through old, smelly books for hours, wearing rubber gloves and sitting on the cold cement floor in a flowy dress, and even though she was wearing one of Stiles’ hoodies she was starting to shiver.

They’d both decided against moving upstairs, mainly because the books really did smell and they didn’t want to risk getting anything weird in the main living space of the house, but neither of them were enjoying the process anymore. The thrill of having new information had worn off, and both of them were getting snippy, while poor Derek awkwardly stayed out of it and pretended he wasn’t listening.

The awesome team of friendly research wasn’t so friendly or awesome anymore.

“Here’s a letter from September 5th, 1940, and it’s got a few candidates listed.” Lydia yawned. “It looks like they started taking them from France after the occupation, so there’s probably a good chance the Argents know of them.”

Stiles caught her yawn, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Derek caught his.

“September 5th, 1940,” he repeated as he typed a new section and then nodded for her to list off the names.

“Ernst Mayer with an A,” she started, running a rubber gloved finger down the list, “Ferdinand Desmarais, Noel Halliet, Celeste—”

“Wait, wait, hang on, slow down,” Stiles interrupted, because French. “How the hell do you spell any of these?”

Lydia sighed, not even trying to hide her annoyance.

“Sorry I don’t speak French,” he snapped snottily; he could admit he was being a dick, but he was too burned out to really care.

“F-e-r-d—

“I know how to spell Ferdinand.”

“Be more specific then,” she ground out through clenched teeth. “I want to get this done and go to bed.”

“Well so do I, but just slow down for a second.”

“Just look at it yourself, there’s a lot of names.” She picked up the binder to hand it over and Stiles reared back from it.

“Ew, no, I’m not wearing gloves!” She widened her eyes in pure annoyance, and she looked like she wanted to throw it at him. “I don’t want to catch something! I don’t have a supernatural immune system!”

Lydia glared, but she still settled back down to read it off. “D-e-s-m—”

“Wait, whose name is this?”

“Ferdinand’s.”

“Okay, what was it? D-e-s-n…”

“M.”

He backspaced sharply and stabbed at the M key.

“I’m just trying to make sure it’s accurate,” she said primly, “If we make mistakes now, they’ll throw us off later.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that.”

“Then it would be nice if you could lose the attitude and focus,” was what he was pretty sure she muttered under her breath, but he couldn’t really hear so he pulled out his right headphone. This was shaping up to be a conversation for his good ear.

“My attitude? I’m sorry us lowly humans sometimes make mistakes.”

“Well maybe if lowly humans got some sleep occasionally, they wouldn’t.”

Okay, now he was pissed enough to set his laptop aside. An argument with Lydia required full attention, despite Derek’s clearly uncomfortable expression on the screen.

“Hey, you’re the one who dumped all of this shit on me to deal with.”

“I didn’t just dump it on you, I’m doing the most that I can with all of this.” She gestured to the stacks of papers and books around her. “You said yourself that the science takes you longer, I thought history and records would be better for you.”

“And they are, and thank you, but did you see how much is there? And how disorganized it all is?”

Lydia stood, stripping off her rubber gloves, and a few papers fluttered from her lap. “Because I have such a light and organized job over here?”

“I didn’t say that!” Stiles groaned, scrubbing his hands through his hair. “I’m just saying that to get it done I have to lose some sleep, so just chill out and be patient when I make a few mistakes!”

“Believe me, I have been.” She knelt to close her laptop and start packing up the charger into her purse. Clearly she was done for the night.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” she paused to give him an angry glare, flush of frustration high on her cheeks, “that eventually I‘m going to get tired of repeating everything three times before you even realize I’m talking because you’re too wrapped up in Derek”—she nodded towards his computer, giving Derek a cold and undeserved glare— “to even take out just one of your headphones and give any of your attention to the person in the room with you.”

“Oh come on, it has not been that bad. I’ve just been a little focused on the hundreds of gigs of information here and the two people talking to me at once, so I’m sorry if I’ve missed a couple—”

“Stiles,” she interrupted loudly, still looking at the screen, but she didn’t look angry anymore. She looked sad and confused. “You said your hearing was getting better.”

Stiles’ indignant train of thought screeched to a halt at the sudden shift of topic. “What? It is. Why?” Yes, very convincing.

She looked at him and smiled tightly, but her eyes were angry. “Derek's been trying to get your attention this entire time.”

...and Stiles had taken out his right earbud.

It was another one of those days his left ear wasn’t picking up anything, but he’d put the earbud in out of habit.

“Oh, shi—” Stiles fumbled with his headphones to find the mic at the same moment Lydia stood up to leave, which was the exact opposite of what he wanted. “Hang on, Derek—Lydia, wait!” He practically shouted into the mic before tripping after her and painfully yanking the remaining earbud out of his ear.

“Lydia, stop!” he called, jogging after her up the stairs, and almost crashing into her when she stopped and whirled around suddenly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Oh crap, there were tears in her eyes. He didn’t know what to do with a teary Lydia Martin. His go-to solution was a hug and she looked pretty pissed at him at the moment, and not like she wanted a hug at all.

“I don’t know,” he choked out for lack of a better and more coherent reason, and her face dropped into a glare. “I figured there was enough going on and that you needed another thing to worry about—”

“Like I needed a hole in my head?” she finished sardonically, and it was so unexpected and inappropriately funny that he couldn’t keep the grin off his face. He wiped it off immediately when she started talking again. “I thought we learned two years ago that keeping me in the dark for my own good was a terrible idea.”

“I wasn’t trying to keep it from you, I was just—” He scrubbed a hand over his head; he was way too exhausted to try to put into words all of his fear and denial about the situation, and Lydia didn’t look like she wanted to hang around to wait for him.

“Stiles, let’s do this tomorrow,” she suggested calmly, though it was a forced calm, and she still looked on the edge of distraught.

He wanted to protest, to figure this out right then before she left and it festered between them, or even worse got shoved under the rug.

“I don’t blame you,” he blurted out as she turned. He wasn’t prepared for the full conversation, but he needed to make sure she knew that much.

She smiled wetly, adjusted her purse on her shoulder, and left.

Stiles wanted to beat his head against the wall, go after her, and pass out on the floor, all at once.

Instead, he went back down to the basement to clean up their dishes and get his laptop, and then he remembered that his call with Derek was still going. He walked a little faster and realized that the headphones had been yanked out of the computer—Scott said phones could pick up heartbeats, so there was a pretty damn good chance that Derek had heard all of that wonderful and mostly yelled interaction.

Somewhat reluctantly, Stiles eased himself back down on the ground in front of the camera.

“Heyyy, Derek,” he started awkwardly, and Derek looked just as uncomfortable. “So I’m guessing you heard that.”

Derek nodded.

“Sorry. That must’ve been awkward.” It certainly was from his side of things.

“You’re going deaf?” Derek asked, a little too loud, which was the most endearing thing he’d ever done.

“Just in my left ear, probably. So far, at least.” He certainly hoped it wouldn’t spread to his right; he hadn’t noticed anything off, and it had been perfect at his last appointment. “My right is fine, so you don’t have to yell. I’m not breaking out the ear horn just yet,” he added with a grin.

“Oh, sorry.” It was hard to tell on camera and in Derek’s darkened room, but Stiles was pretty sure he blushed. “What happened? If you don’t mind talking about it.”

Stiles raked his fingers through his hair as he explained, the oversimplified and barebones version of the last couple months. “This actual mad scientist was messing with Lydia’s banshee abilities trying to amplify them, and she uh, screamed directly into my ear.”

The very barebones version.

Derek winced.

“Yeah, it sucked. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

They sat in silence for a little bit, Stiles closing the many, many unnecessary tabs he’d opened through the day and saving documents, and Derek seemed to be doing the same, but stacking dictionaries and books he’d been using.

What a loser, Stiles thought as he yawned widely, using books instead of the internet.

“You should go to bed,” Derek said suddenly, making Stiles jump a bit after the silence. “You look terrible.”

“You know just how to make a guy feel special,” Stiles shot back with a tired wink, but when he looked at his own image in the small box in the corner, yeah, he was horrifying and it was a saintly act for Derek to have been looking at him all night. There were big, dark bags under his eyes, his hair looked greasy from running his hands through it so much, and it looked like he’d actually gotten paler since school ended.

Derek still looked perfect, even while deadpanning, “Imagine how charming I’ll be when you don’t look half dead.”

“I think I might literally swoon,” Stiles returned in the same tone.

“I’ll try to tone it down then. We wouldn’t want you hurting yourself.”

It was a very dry and sarcastic delivery, but Stiles had to try to ignore the irrational swooping feeling in his stomach as he answered, “No, we definitely wouldn’t want that.”

They said their goodnights and Stiles went up to his room, but he didn’t go to bed. He sat in his desk chair, stared at the little summary of Der Soldat on his board, and worried, making some serious headway on chewing his thumbnail down to nothing.

They weren’t moving fast enough.

It was only a matter of time until they ran into Der Soldat, and they still knew nothing about him. They could extrapolate from the experiments on other people Lydia had found notes from, but none of those experiments seemed very...resurrect the Beast of Gevaudan-y. They seemed like more extreme versions of what the Nazis did to humans, testing the physical limits of different supernatural creatures, weeding out the weak.

If the Doctors were creating supersoldiers for the Nazis, they didn’t seem to be putting much effort into it. Stiles had witnessed firsthand what they could do when the put their mind to it, and the scar was still healing.

The problem was that Stiles didn’t have a bigger picture to work from; all he had was details. He had the Doctors’ notes on experiments, and Argents hunting down werewolves in the Nazi ranks, trying real hard to whittle down the pool of candidates the Nazis had to choose from.

What he didn’t have was the plan the Doctors and the Argents fit into, the Nazi endgame. Say they used werewolf supersoldiers, somehow won the war and then, what, revealed to the entire world that the supernatural exists? What would stop the Allies from creating their own supernatural armies to fight them again? What would stop all of Europe devolving into all out supernatural warfare?

It was at this point that Stiles realized he was dreaming up an alternate World War II involving supernatural armies and tried to drag his mind back on track.

He needed to find out more about the Nazi supersoldier plans and what Hitler possibly would’ve done with them, but that meant opening the Pandora’s Box that was conspiracy theory forums and self-published ebooks of the nutjobs who believed in them.

He winced at the thought of it.

Not too long ago, that kind of stuff would’ve been right up Stiles’ alley; conspiracies and secret societies and crazy assassination plots were fascinating...when he wasn’t the one living them. Facing literal assassins had a way of dimming the shiny excitement around them.

He needed someone to pawn this work off on, someone with his level of interest and attention to detail, but with a hell of a lot more time and a hell of a lot less going on.

He swiveled his chair around to face the wall, where the students in the know were still tacked up.

*

“Cooper!”

Cooper looked the wrong direction down the hall, spun around looking confused, spotted Stiles looking right at him, and slammed himself back against the lockers with a clatter, looking positively terrified.

Not the reaction Stiles had been expecting.

Not a reaction he’d ever gotten in his life, actually.

He walked over, trying to look casual and nonthreatening (not easy when he didn’t even know what about him could possibly make him seem threatening in the first place). Cooper’s eyes widened even more and he seemed to be trying to subtly shove his entire body back into his very narrow locker.

“S-stiles.” He stuttered a little bit and looked like he was trying to make himself as small as possible. Oh man, this was not going well.

Stiles backed off a little more and noticed the people on either side were quickly shoving their things into backpacks and making themselves scarce. Huh.

He looked back to Cooper, who was now over a foot shorter than him, practically collapsing in fear.

“Dude, chill out. What the hell?”

“You’re with Scott, right?” Stiles nodded. “He said you might be t-talking to us.”

“Yeah, and here we are, so”—he waved a hand to sum up everything going on in front of him—“calm down.”

Cooper actually flinched and mumbled something quietly, barely moving his lips, that Stiles had no hope of hearing.

“What? You’re going to have to speak up.”

“P-please don’t hurt me.”

Stiles squinted in confusion. “Why would I hurt you?”

“I don’t know how this whole…t-thing works, if you’re his enforcer or whatever, but I won’t say anything so you don’t have to hurt me!”

“Enforce—dude, we’re not the mob!”

“That’s exactly what someone in the mob would say!”

Stiles pinched the bridge of his nose; he didn’t know why, he’d had a headache for almost three years now and it wasn’t going to do anything to stop it, but what the hell did Scott tell this kid? If it was anything the intro talk he’d given Liam...

But then Stiles remembered the way Derek’s pack had roamed the halls in leather jackets, looking intimidating, keeping to themselves, turning up in the middle of trouble and then ending up dead...

“Fine, admittedly it can seem a little mob-like, but we’re not. We’re the least mob-y mob to ever mob.” Cooper didn’t look convinced. “Oh my god, dude, I’m not here to threaten you, I just wanted to ask you a couple questions!”

“What about?” He was still trying to slowly shove himself into his locker, which was so stuffed full that his jacket wouldn’t even fit without him in it. Maybe that was why he always wore the jacket; he literally couldn’t put it anywhere else.

“Conspiracies. Specifically of the Nazi variety.”

He perked up a little at that. “Any Nazi conspiracy in particular?”

Stiles glanced down the hall briefly, and Cooper nervously did the same. “Supersoldiers.”

“You mean the übermensch?”

Stiles had looked through that, but it didn’t really fit the bill. “Less steroids, more full moons. If you catch my drift.”

Coopers eyes widened, this time with excitement rather than pure fear. “You mean werewolves?”

Newbies. Seriously.

Stiles slashed hand across his throat frantically. “Coop, buddy, not so loud. I’d rather the entire school didn’t know about this, if possible.”

“O-oh, gotcha.” He winked obnoxiously, but at least he wasn’t panicking anymore. Stiles just wanted to leave this interaction and get back to work.

“Alright, so supersoldiers. What do you know? What are the nutjobs saying?”

Cooper cocked his head dubiously. “You’re calling us nutjobs when your best friend is—”

“Yes, I see the irony, just talk.” He crossed his arms and took a step forward, trying to be just a little intimidating. Think like Derek, stand like Derek, that dude was threatening as hell back before Stiles realized he was just terrified and socially stunted.

Cooper backed up against the lockers again and turned around to dig through his. Stiles wasn’t sure if he was actually being intimidating or if the guy was just a coward.

“I’d start looking into the Ahnenerbe—yes, like Indiana Jones. That really was Hitler’s department that researched the occult, and they did look for the Ark of the Covenant.” He pulled out some old math homework and a pen and started to scribble against the locker next to his. Stiles had to turn his right ear towards him and lean a little closer to still hear. “Here’s a few good authors I trust who wrote about them, but there’s way more if you know where to look online. I can email you some good forums.”

Stiles winced. “Yeah, here’s the thing. I’m a little short on time at the moment, which is why I came to you instead of just looking it up. Is there anyway you can send me a very concise but thorough summary of this?” He twirled a finger towards the paper, where whatever Cooper had written was barely legible.

The guy was a wreck.

“Oh, yeah, sure!” he agreed quickly, but continued to scribble on his paper for some reason. “And there’s also circles who push the Nazi Zombie theory, that the Nazis were trying to find a way to reanimate the dead,” he explained quickly at Stiles’ very raised eyebrows. “That was too crazy even for me, but now that I know about, hmmm—” he hummed significantly instead of saying the word, and Stiles resisted rolling his eyes “—I’m going to have to check out those forums again.”

Stiles didn’t like the sound of that one bit.

“But you’re not going to tell anyone, right?”

“What?” Cooper looked back over his shoulder, and there was guilt all over his face.

“You’re going to keep all this to yourself, right?”

“O-of course.”

Stiles didn’t need to be a werewolf to hear that lie. He leaned against the locker, getting even closer, to the point where he could see the pizza stuck in Cooper’s braces and the sweat in his hairline.

“Cooper,” he started calmly, trying to emulate a little bit of Peter’s cool and aloof threats that didn’t really sound like threats. “You can’t tell anyone about this. Do you get that?”

“Yeah.” That was weak.

“Seriously.” Stiles lowered his voice a little more, not even blinking, while Cooper started blinking a hell of a lot. “You take this to the grave, because if you blab and someone in my pack dies for it, I will find you.”

He was laying it on a little thick, but it was clearly working.

Cooper nodded so quickly Stiles thought his glasses were going to fly off.

“Awesome.” Stiles clapped him on the shoulder a little hard and he flinched. “See you around, Coop.”

And with that he casually strolled down the hall, feeling kind of cool but also kind of slimy. That was probably how Peter felt all the time, except more evil.

He turned the corner and strolled right into Mason’s disappointed face. He’d been taking lessons from Scott, that much was clear.

“I could’ve looked into that, you know. You didn’t have to threaten him.”

Boy did Scott know how to pick ‘em.

“It was barely a threat, he’s fine. And you’ve got enough to worry about with the whole being a brand new beta, thing. You don’t need to deal with all this crap, I mean, conspiracy theory forums are literally the worst.”

“But I’m getting better at controlling it, so you don’t have to treat me like I’m five. I can help with this.”

“I know you can, but I also know that control isn’t a trophy you earn once and leave on a shelf. It comes and goes, and your’s has gone more than it’s come lately.”

Mason cocked his head at him and Stiles left eye twitched. Not his best choice of words. Kind of undermined a very important point.

“Fine.” Mason gave in, but he didn’t look happy about it. “But let me know next time you need help with research. I’m great at it.”

“Yeah you are, buddy.” Stiles gave him two, admittedly, condescending thumbs up.

Mason didn’t seem to mind, he just pulled him into a very tight hug, again with the back rubbing, and then ran off to his next class.

Right.

One Important Conversation down, one to go.

*

His classes up until the end of the school day were a chore to get through, mostly because he had no idea what to tell Lydia beyond, “I’m firmly in denial and fucking terrified I’m going to go deaf, and found out the hard way that sign language gives me anxiety attacks about being possessed”.

Actually, that was pretty good.

He found her in one of the study corners of the library, laptop open and looking frustrated at whatever she was reading, fingers pressed to her temple. It wasn’t ideal, being surrounded by people for their talk, but the hushed conversations and lack of other noises around him really did make it easier to talk than being outside. He knew he tended to miss things out there, and with a conversation like this, he didn’t want to have to guess to fill in any gaps.

He approached cautiously, waiting until she noticed him and gave him a tense smile before he sat.

“Are you ready for that talk?” he asked, somewhat reluctantly, because as much as he liked to talk, he really didn’t like to talk.

She tipped her laptop screen down, giving him her full attention, and then bluntly stated, “You’re losing your hearing.”

Stiles nodded. “In my left ear, yeah.”

She pursed her lips. “Have you seen someone about it?”

“Of course.” As if his dad would let him get away with not getting his ear checked out when it was dripping blood down the side of his face. “Physically, they think it’s fine. The rupture is mostly healed, there’s no infection, it should be back to normal. But for some reason, because that’s just my luck, it’s not.”

Her face softened and she looked like she was going to cry. “Stiles, I’m so sorry.”

And there was his cue for a hug.

“Whoa, hey, no, it’s not your fault!” He scooted his chair closer and pulled her in gently, and a moment later she pressed her face into his shoulder and he felt his shirt bunch up where she clung onto him. “None of this is your fault, Lydia,” he continued, because clearly she needed to hear it. “You had no control over what he did to you, and you did everything you could to stop it.”

“But you still ended up with unilateral hearing loss.” She sniffled, and Stiles blinked in a startled confusion at the sudden unexpected clinical term just casually thrown in there.

“Y...yes, I did, and you knew that right off the top of your head, which is really impressive, actually, I had to look it up.”

She huffed into his shoulder, then straightened and wiped at her eye. “I looked it up too. I’m sorry I yelled at you last night. I should’ve known—seen the signs.”

Stiles frowned. “What signs? Lydia, how could you possibly have known?” He honestly thought he’d been hiding it pretty well so far, putting off the big reveal until he was ready to have that conversation with anyone besides his doctor and his dad.

Lydia wiped carefully under her other eye. “You miss parts of conversations if you aren’t really paying attention, especially in the cafeteria and outside, and you had localization problems in the tunnels and the Doctors’ lab. I noticed you’ve been leaning in and watching people’s mouths a lot more when they speak.” She sniffed again and shrugged dismissively, as if it wasn’t a big deal.

Stiles just stared, because he hadn’t even noticed half of those things.

“You—what?” He finally got out, and Lydia paused in her dabbing.

“You didn’t know?”

“Know that I’m apparently turning into a ninety-five year old grandpa? No, I thought I was doing pretty well, actually.” He leaned back in his seat and huffed. “Or at least, no one mentioned anything. Maybe I do need an ear horn.”

At that, Lydia cocked her head. “No one else knows?”

Stiles shook his head. “Just my dad and my doctor. Well, and now you and Derek.”

Then her surprised tone registered and he looked up. “You didn’t think—Lydia, I would never keep something like that from only you. I was just freaking out—am freaking out,” he corrected. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

She smiled, but it was forced. Oh great, she did think that. How had he managed to be shitty enough to make her think that?

“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked instead of answering.

Stiles scoffed it off, but she raised her eyebrows so she was serious. He wracked his brain trying to think of something, because Lydia didn’t like being told there was nothing to do.

“Um, don’t talk quietly on my left side?”

That time, her smile was a little more genuine.

*

It was later that day, during another Skype session with Derek and Lydia from the basement, that they finally got the call from Scott that the alpha had been found.

He’d been able to completely mask himself so far, but someone called in a strange man poking around an old abandoned gas station on the north side of town, and luckily Parrish took the call before anyone else. Now they were locked in a standoff, with no way to actually get him out of the station he was holed up in. When Malia got impatient and tried to impulsively storm in, he threw her right back outside with brand new ventilation for her spleen.

So yeah, the dude was strong, because since confronting her mother, Malia had gotten a serious power boost. Stiles didn’t know the extent of it, because she’d been uncharacteristically quiet about it, but he wasn’t entirely sure she did either.

“Okay, what can I do?” Stiles asked, because there must’ve been a reason Scott was calling him before they caught the guy. When he needed muscle to back him up, he generally didn’t call the human.

“We need mountain ash to contain him in there before the second part of the plan, which you’re not going to like at all.”

Dread curled in Stiles’ stomach; it had to be bad if Scott sounded that reluctant to just say it.

“What is it.” On screen, Derek’s head snapped up at his tone, eyebrows concerned.

“Chris Argent,” Scott admitted after a long pause.

“Scott!” That time Derek winced at the sudden shout, and Lydia also looked up.

“I know! But we need someone with experience to contain him, and you know we’re not the best at containing werewolves.” Stiles really hadn’t needed that reminder of Liam duct taped in a bathtub, but Scott was right. If they couldn’t keep a brand new fifteen year old beta under control, they didn’t really stand a chance against a possibly super powered alpha.

But he also really didn’t want to leave before he found out as much as he possibly could. What if the very next page told them the guy had laser eyes? Or telekinesis? Or, fuck, a third arm with a poison stinger at the end?

It’d started out as panicked hyperbole, but now he couldn’t shake that fear.

Stiles rubbed his eyes briefly, already beginning to feel the looming headache from all of this.

“Fine. I’ll be there in a minute.” He hung up and stared at the back of his eyelids for a moment before facing reality and Lydia. “Coming?”

“I’ll stay and keep working. I have to get home soon anyway. Mistletoe.” She gestured to her head.

Stiles paused at that. He’d noticed that she’d been uncharacteristically quiet all evening, rubbing her temples more and working a little slower, but she hadn’t mentioned that it was banshee related.

“Are you going to be okay getting home?”

She nodded. “It’s not that bad yet. I’ll be fine driving.”

He didn’t know enough about what was happening to not believe her, but he was still concerned.

“Alright, but call me if you need anything.”

“I will. Be safe.”

“You too,” he responded, dropping a kiss to the top of her head in some childish wish that it would somehow help with the pain and screaming voices of death.

It was still hard to force himself to his car, and to actually back out of the driveway, but Scott was waiting for him, counting on him, and he couldn’t leave him high and dry with Der Soldat cornered and violent.

Stiles screeched into the small parking lot of the abandoned gas station before Chris, which filled him with a petty smugness. Scott, Malia, and Liam were gathered in front of the large plate windows, but all of the old faded ads for cigarettes and slurpees kept them from actually seeing what was going on inside. Hayden, Mason, and Corey must’ve been off searching somewhere else.

Liam, bless his heart, had his phone out and was shouting out phrases in horribly butchered German. Stiles didn’t know how to correct it, but after two days of listening to Derek muttering the language, he knew somewhat how it was supposed to sound, and it definitely wasn’t like that.

“He still in there?” Stiles asked as he jogged over to them with his mountain ash already out.

“Yep, we can hear his heartbeat,” Scott answered. “He’s pretty freaked out so be careful. We don’t know what he’ll do once he’s really trapped.”

“Lovely,” Stiles sighed, and didn’t complain at all when Malia fell into step next to him as he began to form the ash circle. Extra protection was never a bad thing these days.

“Wir wollen...euch nicht verletzen!” Liam yelled out haltingly, probably directly from a translater, and really? Even Stiles knew the Ws were pronounced as Vs.

He left Scott to deal with it and took the chance to size up the building, making sure there weren’t any surprise exits where the alpha could come bursting out to kill him. Luckily it was a really old gas station and not one of the nice new ones with lots of lighting and doors and a Subway attached. There were just the windows at the front around the door, which opened straight to the rest of the pack, and some very narrow ventilation windows towards the roof that were probably in the bathroom. It didn’t even look like it had a back door for loading deliveries.

They were almost back around to the start when Stiles started to feel the building pressure of the ash. He’d only started to notice it somewhat recently, as he started to form more circles, but there was a tightening in his chest as it closed, a crackling tension through his body. Werewolves seemed to feel it too, especially on full moons, so there was no way Der Soldat didn’t know what they were doing.

Malia bristled as there was movement inside, and the top of a head briefly poked up over a sign advertising two for a dollar hotdogs.

Stiles picked up the pace as something large inside the store crashed to the ground, and focused all of his mental energy and belief on completing that circle, on picturing it closed and secure.

Almost immediately, the ash left in his palm jumped forward, running through his fingers like sand in the wind, and snapped into place ahead of him, finishing the last ten feet of the circle.

“What the—” He blinked, looking between his empty palm and the line. He and Scott looked up from the unbroken line to stare at each other in baffled amazement. Another conversation they would be having later in private.

Malia just stared at the line, frowning. “How did you do that?”

Stiles shrugged one shoulder. “The power of belief and positive thinking?”

She opened her mouth to say something else, but right then a familiar black SUV pulled in next to them, briefly blinding them all with its super LED headlights.

What a dick.

Chris climbed out of the driver’s side, looking every bit as intimidating and threatening as usual as he walked forward, backlit by the headlights. That explained why he didn’t turn off the car, at least. Just had to be dramatic.

“Is he still in there?” he asked, more demanded as he met Scott halfway.

“Yeah, we’ve got him circled in ash.”

Chris nodded, and without him giving any kind of verbal command, a giant hulking shadow of a man appeared from behind him and hoisted up—

“Hold on, is that tear gas?” Stiles exclaimed, immediately recognizing the launcher from seeing them around the station. Their county had never had any need for crowd control, there wasn’t much to riot about in Beacon Hills, but someone had recently ordered them anyway.

“Wolfsbane flashbang,” Chris answered while the man—possibly some kind of monstrous golem—aimed. “It’ll stun him so he doesn’t realize what he’s breathing in. It won’t hurt him, just knock him out so we can get him somewhere secure.”

Scott glared at Argent; he’d clearly been thinking of more humane measures of containment, but Stiles honestly wasn’t sure what he expected from hunters.

“We don’t even know he’s a threat yet,” Scott said, refusing to move out of the way. “He’s scared enough as it is, I don’t think gassing him is going to help.”

“What do you propose then? Talk to him? I’m guessing Malia didn’t get that gash in her side at school.”

Her lip curled at the mention of her name and tried to cover the large bloodstain in her shirt, but Chris did have a point. None of Liam’s...flimsy attempts to communicate had brought any kind of response.

“He’s getting restless,” the golem warned when they heard a muffled crash.

Chris raised an eyebrow but dipped his head in surrender and stepped back, clearly not expecting it to work but humoring Scott all the same.

“Try asking him to come out,” Scott suggested, and Liam went back to his phone, typing it out.

There was a snarl and the sound of breaking glass.

The waiting for something to happen was probably just making him panic more, Stiles realized. Dragging it out like this was just getting mean.

“Scott, maybe we should just—”

“Let’s just give him one more chance,” Scott said firmly, then added somewhat pointedly, “Breathing in wolfsbane like that is painful and I don’t want to make this any worse.”

Stiles blinked, unaware that he’d gone through it, but Scott just looked back towards the store hopefully.

“Wir wollen euch nicht verletzen!” Liam repeated, still butchering the pronunciation, and then continued slower, staring at his the phone, “Kommen Sie mit Ihren Händen nach oben.” Stiles moved to look over Liam’s shoulder, and winced when he saw that he was ordering Der Soldat to come out with his hands up.

Yes, that was going to go over very well.

This time, instead of silence, they were met with a mighty roar and what sounded like every aisle inside falling like dominoes.

“Cover your ears and close your eyes!” Chris yelled, and his pet Hulk fired.

The canister arced through the air, shattered the front window, and the store lit up with with a piercing bang. There was another furious roar, then silence as clouds of purple gas curled into view over the old posters on the windows advertising fresh doughnuts.

*

With the alpha carted off by the hunters—reluctantly on Scott’s part, but none of them had anywhere else to stash an alpha werewolf—Stiles found himself very much on edge but with nothing to do with all his energy.

Lydia had already finished for the night and gone home, and sent a text when she got there to keep him from worrying. His dad all but locked him out of the basement, insisting that having Der Soldat in custody meant it was time for a brief reprieve from research, so he couldn’t go there. (He could’ve, actually, but he didn’t really want to worry his dad even more.) He was too jittery for the slow and tedious task of translating Argent files, he’d already stress-cleaned his room days before, he was caught up on his homework for the week...

Out of sheer desperation for a distraction, Stiles threw himself into an upcoming paper on Their Eyes Were Watching God and tried to distract himself with the white noise of a city street from his phone.

It sort of worked, and he was able to drift off around three in the morning with a solid rough draft of his essay in the can and ready for some heavy edits. He’d overshot the maximum paper length by three and a half pages, but there was some tired rambling in there that could definitely be cut.

The pack was on edge the entire day at school, waiting for news on the still-unconscious alpha from Chris. They all seemed drawn to Scott between periods, looking for an update as if he wouldn’t text them the moment he had one, before drifting apart again as the bell rang. It was an exhausting routine, and after the second time, Stiles had to walk away because they were all stressing him the fuck out about it. There were only so many things he had the patience for on so little sleep, and four fifteen year olds nagging him for details was not one of them.

Neither was Kelsey asking about how he did on the Calc test, apparently, but he was totally going to apologize for snapping when he was in a better mood.

By the time lunch rolled around, Stiles was one funny look away from losing it, and the only thing keeping him from hiding in the library for the duration was Scott’s concerned frown when he heard Stiles’ stomach during Economics.

So maybe the lack of sleep and ever growing stress was messing with his eating habits. It wasn’t like it hadn’t happened before.

Still, it only took that concerned frown to get Stiles’ ass sitting at their usual table, with a salad and a side of fries in front of him, and a water appearing shortly after when Scott sat down. Stiles would’ve made a joke about alphas providing for their pack, but he couldn’t bring himself to shoot down Scott’s obvious attempt to help him out. Beyond that though, he didn’t feel like talking, so they sat in a comfortable silence while they ate and Stiles totally zoned out.

At least until Scott coughed loudly and Stiles looked up, and realized that Scott very much wanted to Talk. He was making a face. Nothing good ever came of his faces.

“What’s that face?”

Scott blinked innocently, dropping the face. “What face?”

Stiles stabbed a fry at him before eating it. “That face!”

“This is not a face!”

“It is so a face.”

“It’s not a face, I’m just…” This time Stiles made his face, his a-ha face, because he was right and that had totally been a face. “...worried.” Scott finished.

Stiles regretted getting to lunch so quickly, because when the rest of the pack wasn’t at the table, Scott liked to have Conversations. Conversations about feelings. Feelings that Stiles would much rather ignore.

“About?” He was pretty sure he knew what it was about, but he wasn’t about to make this easy.

“You,” Scott answered plainly, and damn his budding emotional maturity. Stiles had liked it much better when they just pelted each other with lacrosse balls instead of have these talks.

“I’m fine,” was Stiles’ automatic response as he crammed more fries into his mouth. If he ate fast enough, maybe he could escape. “We caught the alpha, I’m doing great.”

“Then why are you still freaking out?”

“Scott, how long have you known me? I’m literally always freaking out. It’s called anxiety.”

“This is more than your usual anxiety freaking out. You threatened Cooper.”

“Who blabbed?” Stiles really wasn’t helping his case.

Scott’s jaw dropped “Dude! Don’t threaten people! We need them to like us!”

“It was only a little! And we need them to keep our secret more!”

“Which they would do if they like us and want us to stay alive!”

“Maybe, but they could also run off and tell all their little conspiracy theory friends right there on the internet where anyone could read it!”

Scott raised a doubtful eyebrow. “They’re conspiracy theorists. Do you really think anyone would believe them?”

“Of course, that’s how there’s so many of them!”

Stiles finally put down his fries, and took a drink of water when Scott picked up the bottle and handed it to him, if only to get him to stop glancing down at it pointedly.

“Fine, yes, I’m freaking out, but can you blame me? There’s an alpha Nazi experiment twenty minutes outside of town and we know literally nothing about him or what he’s capable of. Things like that tend to freak me out—actually, why aren’t you freaking out?”

Scott shrugged. “I kind of am. But we might not even have a reason to freak out. I mean, this guy was held by the Dread Doctors for seventy years, for all we know he’s a victim too, and just wants to go home.”

“Yeah, to Nazi Germany!” Stiles squinted at him. “You know, this is sounding really familiar, have we had this conversation before?”

He felt a little bad a dragging this back up, especially when their friendship was finally moving past the awkward rocky phase. Scott deflated and sighed, and looked just as exhausted by the topic as Stiles felt.

“I hear you, I do, and I’m listening. But Stiles,” he looked up and there was full imploring eye contact there, it was impossible to look away, “not everyone is out to get us, and you can’t keep assuming the worst all the time. It’s not healthy, and I’ve seen what it does to you.”

“Because trusting everyone has ended so well for us.”

“I’m not saying that we trust everyone, just that we find a balance? One that doesn’t have you up all night obsessing over your board?”

“Hey, I was writing a paper last night,” Stiles argued weakly, but it was more for show than actual argument.

Scott was right. A balance really wasn’t too much to ask of any other person, but Stiles wasn’t any other person. He fixated and obsessed, and he saw shadows where there might not actually be any, but someone had to. If no one was keeping an eye out for danger, how the hell were they supposed to be prepared for the next one?

Had he been a little more proactive in investigating the Doctors’ labs, they would’ve found Der Soldat weeks ago, still safely sedated in his tank. They could’ve shipped him off to Eichen House and never had to deal with any of this!

And yes, he may have been a victim of the Dread Doctors, captured for experiments seventy years ago, but the chimeras had been victims too, and that certainly didn’t excuse all of the fucked up things they did.

Like try to eat Stiles’ legs.

So yeah, no, he wasn’t taking any chances with a full-on alpha werewolf.

Luckily Malia and Lydia chose that moment to join them. Lydia’s hair was down as was usual these days to hide the shaved portion of her skull and the bandage over it. She looked tired and stressed, her brow pinched as she sat. On Stiles’ right side, he noticed, gratefully.

His one-on-one conversation with Scott sitting directly across for him had been easy enough to hear, and he could watch his mouth if he had to, but once more than one person came in, especially to his left, keeping up got a little more difficult.

“Hey, you okay?” Scott asked, and Lydia nodded before quickly changing the subject, Stiles couldn’t help but notice.

“How’d it go last night?”

Scott took over the explanation while Stiles focused on his lunch. This part wasn’t new to him, it wasn’t vital he hear it over the crunching of the iceberg lettuce and slightly frozen tomatoes their school laughably called a salad. The meal options had always been pretty bad, but they were only getting worse with the predictably falling enrollment, what with all the deaths.

Not that he could blame anyone; if he were a parent hearing about all of the disappearances and murders at the only public school in town, he’d opt for a private alternative too.

Hell, he’d foot the bill for a private school based on this salad alone. Watery vinegar with a single dash of pepper was not a dressing.

Lydia nudged him lightly under the table and he looked up to see Scott’s eyebrows raised at him expectantly.

“What?”

“Do you want to study for the Economics test after school with me?”

Stiles blinked. “What Economics test?”

“I knew you weren’t paying attention.” Scott sighed. “So, studying?”

He looked so hopeful, Stiles had a hard enough time hesitantly getting out, “I’m working on...things,” let alone making it convincing.

Unsurprisingly, Scott didn’t buy it for a second. “We literally just talked about this ten minutes ago.”

“I didn’t mean those things.”

Scott’s face dropped further, this time into disappointed yet unimpressed. “I can hear you lying, Stiles.”

“Yeah, but you’re not supposed to call me out on it!”

Stupid werewolves.

*

They did end up in the library to study after school, because even after all these years, it was still impossible for Stiles to refuse Scott’s sad eyes. Especially when he had nothing but good intentions behind them, and as much as Stiles hated to admit it, wanting him to spend less time obsessing alone in his basement was a very good intention.

Except, as usual in their lives, werewolves.

“It’s Chris,” Scott said as he read the text that just came in after an hour of studying. “Der Soldat woke up and they’re waiting for us before they talk to him.”

Stiles had his textbook slammed closed on his notes and swiped into his backpack before Scott even finished talking. “I’ll drive!” he announced as he stood, his chair scraping back against the tile floor.

Scott blinked up at him, phone still out, none of his notes or anything put away. “You sure? You’re looking a little…”—he dipped his head to the side—”manic?”

“Are you telling me to sit this one out?” Stiles asked, squinting at him in disbelief. Great, he was already being sidelined and he hadn’t even told Scott about his hearing yet.

Scott frowned. “Of course not, I know you. I’m saying that maybe I should drive.”

He had a point there. Stiles was feeling a little jittery. And jumping to conclusions.

“Fine. Just hurry up or I’m leaving without you!”

“No you’re not, you don’t have the address!” Scott whisper-yelled after him as he started to leave.

“I’m sure I can find it somewhere!” Stiles returned at the same volume.

No one in the library batted an eye at the two of them sprinting to and through the doors. That was something to examine at a later time.

“So have you guys managed to find out anything about him?” Scott asked once they were on the road.

Stiles shook his head briefly to wake himself up more and focus. Now that he was just sitting in the passenger seat without at least driving to focus on, he was getting even more tired and jittery. He should’ve known better than to slow down, he was going to be crashing soon. He was reaching blink-one-eye-at-a-time territory to keep his eyes from just shutting completely.

“Um, not really anything about him personally, but Lydia’s translated enough experiment notes that we have some idea of what he possibly went through? I mean, it’s hard to tell because they vary a lot, and the keep calling everyone the specimen like stereotypical mad scientists—which to be fair, they pretty much are so I guess it makes sense they would talk like that—”

“Stiles.”

“But no. Until we get a name, we can’t know for sure what they did to him. Though weirdly enough, there hasn’t been any mention of the Beast of Gevaudan yet.” Scott frowned. “Yeah, exactly. I thought that was like, their entire goal for existing, but so far everything has been pretty...well, not tame, but not what I was expecting.”

“What were you expecting?” Scott sounded like he didn’t want to know.

“Island of Doctor Moreau?” Now Scott just looked disgusted and a little horrified by Stiles’ mind. “Well they’re interested in chimeras, it’s not that great of a leap! And besides, they mentioned using all kinds of creatures in those journals, and half of them I’ve never even heard of.” Which was a horrifying realization in terms of what other horrors could be coming for them next.

He may have had a new list of things to research taped up on the wall in his room.

“That would explain how they could create kanimas and wendigos from nothing.” Scott hit the gearshift a little harder than Stiles felt necessary to downshift as he turned. “I don’t think serum from an alpha alone would do that, even if they were genetic chimeras. They would need genetic material from each creature.”

“Hey, watch the werewolf strength—and exactly. Considering what experiments the Nazis did on ordinary humans, these were...ruthless.” He would be having nightmares about them for a while, probably. “I mean, Lydia tested the green stuff in his tank, and as far as she and her mom can tell, it’s some kind of wolfsbane concentrate mixed with formaldehyde to keep him preserved and from healing completely. For seventy years. Between that and the sedative constantly pumping through him, he wasn’t going anywhere until the Doctors wanted him to.”

“And it must’ve been painful when he did wake up,” Scott mused, barely loud enough for Stiles to hear over his own loud vehicle.

Yet another reason for him to always drive: he could actually hear the passenger with his good ear. As it was, he had to keep his head turned far enough around that his neck was starting to hurt.

“Literally bathing in wolfsbane? Yeah, I would assume so.”

Scott paused, processing as he turned down a deserted dirt road that presumably lead to the Argent cabin. When he continued, it was even harder to hear over the squeaks and creaks of the old jeep on a very bumpy road, and Stiles had to watch his mouth and lean closer.

“So we definitely tear gassed a victim last night.”

“A little bit, yeah.”

*

Unsurprisingly, Chris was holed up in a really nice but incredibly isolated cabin out in the woods, presumably where no one would hear screaming. It was really nice, built to look like one of those really modern log cabins that billionaires keep in the mountains for when they want to feel rustic and rugged without actually being either of those things. There was even stained glass in the front door.

It didn’t fool Stiles for a second.

Sure, the house looked put together and homey, and very welcoming with smoke wafting from the chimney and golden light from the windows, but he knew better. They’d had a really nice house when they dragged him into the basement to beat him, and kept Erica and Boyd strung up from the rafters. There was no telling what horrible things had happened in there.

The door opened and the most heavenly smell of food engulfed them on the front porch. And then Stiles realized what was standing before him and jerked back from the golem glaring down at them from where his hair brushed the top of the doorframe.

He was wearing a nice blue apron with Harvey’s Kitchen embroidered across the chest, and a cartoon thumbs up underneath.

“Are you hungry? My blackened seafood pasta is almost done,” he greeted, in a very deep and reverberating voice. Stiles felt it rattling through his chest.

“Allergic to shellfish, thanks,” he stammered, incredibly confused, and Scott’s own refusal was much more polite.

The golem shrugged and disappeared back into the house as Chris came to the door instead.

“Scott, Stiles, come in,” he greeted, making piercing eye contact with both. He ushered them in and shut the wooden door behind them. It might’ve echoed forebodingly.

“He’s in the basement,” Chris continued as he led them into a comfy living room with very soft looking couches. “We’ve got him in a reinforced cell, with electrified bars so don’t try to touch them.” He gave Stiles a meaningful look—was he being thoughtful of the human who would probably die from it, or just a dick?

“You have him in a cell?” Scott’s disgust came through clearly in his tone.

“It’s just a precaution,” Chris said, somewhat placating. Everything he said always came out a little threatening. “We didn’t know what his mental state would be when he woke up.”

“You mean after you tear gassed him.”

Everyone was already tired of this argument.

“Scott, I know you don’t approve of our methods, but we’ve done nothing to hurt him. Once we talk to him and gauge his intentions, we’ll see about moving him to a room.”

“How about we go talk to him?” Scott suggested in a way that wasn’t a suggestion at all. “He was captured and experimented on by the Dread Doctors for decades, I think he’s been traumatized enough, don’t you?”

Chris gave them an appraising look, but nodded. “We’ll be right up here.”

Coming from a hunter holding a very large gun, it came off as more of a threat than a reassurance.

Still, Scott and Stiles headed down into the basement, and Stiles tried not to wince when yet another door closed behind them.

Scott went first, leading the way to the back corner, where there was indeed a cell. It had a cot, a toilet, a few anchor points for chains; all the necessities. And on the cot, wearing some bland grey sweatpants and a t-shirt was Der Soldat.

He looked up when they came in, but beyond a cursory glance, he didn’t seem all that interested. He just looked back down to his hands, where he was shredding toilet paper out of boredom.

Sitting there on his tiny cot, hunched over and looking pretty sad and dejected with his shredded napkin, Der Soldat looked nothing like the hulking bald monster alpha with the neanderthal brow Stiles was expecting from Scott’s description. He was big, yeah, but he was also a pretty normal looking guy—fairly young actually, with a good head of blond hair and a pretty solid set of cheekbones who could probably model for Abercrombie and Fitch, right along with the rest of the werewolves in Stiles’ life.

Stiles cocked his head to the side as he stopped level with Scott.

“I thought you said he was bald,” he said quietly, and when Scott didn’t answer fast enough, he continued, “That is not bald. In fact, that is a very full head of very Aryan blond hair.”

Scott sighed and whispered back, “Stop calling him a Nazi! And he was bald in the tank! Maybe he could finally heal and regrow it once he escaped.”

“Oh god, you guys regrow hair that fast too?” There was no end to the injustice of being surrounded by werewolves; Stiles couldn’t even grow a solid jaw of stubble without it coming in patchy. “How often do you really shave, do you actually just look like Bigfoot in the morning?”

“Stiles, now really isn’t the time.”

“That’s not a no!”

“What is...Bigfoot?” A new voice interrupted quietly, heavily accented from German, and Stiles jerked so violently in surprise that he elbowed Scott in the side.

“You speak English?” Scott wheezed after the hit, much better at masking his shock.

“Yes, I learned it in school and from films back in Germany.” The alpha paused, then said carefully, “Whoever was yelling last night, your German is very bad.”

“Wasn’t us, but we’ll pass on the message,” Stiles quickly clarified. Liam wasn’t there to defend himself, he was taking all of that blame.

From there, Stiles let Scott take point, talking to the alpha gently and in that comforting way only Scott could pull off. Stiles was dying to ask some questions, namely “on a scale of one to Hitler, how evil are you”, but he was more than aware that he wasn’t the best at this sort of thing. This comforting and understanding thing.

Lydia once told him that he just had an air of impatience that stressed people out, and that was true, he was constantly impatient, but he didn’t care enough to try to change it.

Scott, though, he handled it like a pro.

He got the alpha’s name (Hans Schmitz), where he was from (a small town in the country that Stiles couldn’t pronounce), and even that yes, he would like a bowl of the pasta dish Harvey was making upstairs.

Stiles pulled out his phone and forwarded the info on to both Derek and Lydia, though not the pasta part, and he definitely misspelled the town. But he kept his phone out and continued to take notes on everything Hans was saying to confirm later, snapped a sneaky picture to send to Derek, and kind of enjoyed watching Der Soldat glance over at the cell phone in confusion.

It was weird to put such a mundane name to the terrifying boogeyman of an alpha they’d been chasing for four days.

Hans.

And Hans wasn’t even wearing socks.

Scott talked him through the war, through his recruitment into the army as a werewolf, the recruitment of most werewolves under the Reich.

“The Fuhrer had...an obsession with the supernatural,” he explained carefully, “particularly with werewolves. Once he captured one and discovered us, he didn’t stop searching until he found every pack in Germany and recruited us into his army. He forced our alphas to make more betas, and if they refused, he replaced them with a beta who was willing.”

The catch in his voice was telling.

“Is that how you became an alpha?” Scott asked softly. Their conversation had steadily gotten quieter as they continued, as the topics became harder and harder.

Hans nodded. “I didn’t want to, but they forced me. I was young, I couldn’t stop them. We didn’t see the horrors they committed so far from the cities, they left us alone for so long. I didn’t know what they wanted until it was too late.”

“Then what happened to you?”

“Then I was put on a squad with other werewolves. We were sent all over the place, after high value targets, to negotiations to scare an agreement out of enemies and allies. We were often sent in first to take out defenses before the human army came through.”

Werewolf canon fodder and thugs. Great.

“But then just as I thought the war was ending and I could go home, at least to what was left of it, my squad was sent on a special assignment. It was supposed to be an honor. All of them were killed, and I thought I was too, but then I woke up with these...men, possibly. I do not think they were human.”

“The Dread Doctors.”

Hans met Scott’s gaze briefly before he looked down again, nodding shakily. “They had others too, not werewolves, but creatures like me. I don’t know what they were trying to do, they would not tell us anything, but they killed so many of us. Made me kill so many of them. I can still see them, hear them, smell them like it was yesterday. The reptiles, the selkies, the fox. This one here smells of fox.”

Stiles’ head snapped up from his phone, Kira being the first thing to jump to mind. But Kira hadn’t magically reappeared in the last five seconds and Der Soldat was looking directly at him. He didn’t look so harmless when you were the sole focus of his laser gaze.

“Sorry, human.” Stiles shrugged with forced casual. There was no way this guy could know about that, the nogitsune was gone. It’d been a year. Scott had sworn that he couldn’t smell anything anymore. “Your sense of smell must be off—Maybe you've still got a little green slime up in there. I can get you a q-tip.”

The alpha didn't acknowledge the offer, he just cocked his head.

“You are human, but you are born of fox.”

“Pretty sure I wasn't.”

“You have the eyes of a trickster.”

“My mom’s, actually, but close. She did have a mean sense of humor.” Stiles was really trying not to let the fear show on his face, even though his chest felt ten times too small and his heart was pounding. The fear that the nogitsune wasn't really gone. That he would always be lurking in the corner of Stiles’ mind, waiting to take control again.

It didn’t matter either way, Schmitz was a werewolf, and just like Scott, he could hear and probably smell Stiles’ fear loud and clear. But instead of mentioning it, the alpha just cocked his head the other way when Scott thankfully redirected his attention.

“They had a kitsune there?”

Hans nodded. “An American soldier who was captured.”

Neither Scott nor Stiles asked what happened to him; it was pretty clear that Hans had killed him.

Their conversation was cut short by the golem calling them back upstairs, sounding more fog horn than human.

Scott spent some time arguing with them about the conditions they were keeping Hans in. Again, Chris argued that it was just a precaution, especially after he confessed to killing others (and the Argents had security cameras in their basement, surprise surprise), but he did promise to take him some of the seafood pasta later.

Stiles was going to count the day as an all-around win—no one died, he could finally get some sleep, things were looking up. Maybe this time their lives wouldn’t turn into a clusterfuck of death and destruction for once.

*

Stiles was an idiot, and the universe saw fit to remind him of that with a call from Scott at 7:30am the next morning.

Scott never just called to chat, and certainly not at 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday.

“No,” Stiles moaned into his phone, flopping back into his bed.

“Ms. Martin just called me,” Scott started gravely, and Stiles’ chest was already tightening in dread. “The mistletoe is pretty much ineffective now and they had to induce a coma to keep it from overwhelming her. She thinks Lydia’s body is building up an immunity to it somehow—but don’t panic yet!” He knew Stiles both too well and not enough if he thought saying that would stop him from panicking. “Lydia found something in the Doctors’ notes that could help.”

Stiles took a deep and measured breath to get himself to focus and listen properly.

“Okay, explain. Now. What is it?”

“Well she didn’t explain it to me yet, but it’s something with the Doctors’ masks. They need one.”

Fuck.

“Scott, the Doctors have been dead and gone for over a month, their bodies were destroyed, all of them, and I don’t know about you, but I didn’t keep any souvenirs.”

“No, but Theo did.” Stiles couldn’t keep the reflexive sneer off his face at that name. “He had a mask. Valack was trying to force Lydia to use it and Theo took it from his lab.”

“Oh okay, great, he didn’t happen to give it to you before he got dragged down to hell, did he?” Stiles couldn’t help snapping; he was stressed and worried and feeling totally and completely helpless here, and that was not a feeling he handled well.

“Not exactly, but Hayden said he set up his base pretty close to the Doctors’ lab. Maybe we can find something there.” Stiles could hear keys jingling in the background of the call. “I’m about to leave, so be ready in ten minutes.”

Stiles groaned at the thought of going back down into the tunnels, but rolled out of bed all the same. It was for Lydia, it was beyond worth it.

“Is Hayden coming since she knows the way?”

“Can’t. She’s got soccer practice and she’ll be kicked off the team if she misses another one.”

Stiles stretched and groaned at the stiffness in his shoulder, the crack in his neck, the way his spine popped quietly. “What is it with you werewolves and sports.”

Scott laughed. “Be there soon!”

*

Stiles was getting disturbingly good at finding his way around the tunnels these days, he mused as he led the way back to the Doctors’ lab.

To be fair, he’d started young back in middle school, poking around alone during the years when Scott lived with his dad and had to take the bus directly home from school instead of hanging out, leaving Stiles to entertain himself. But then Scott moved back in with his mom and couldn’t breathe down there with his asthma, so they’d stopped exploring and kept above ground. And then once Stiles found out exactly what lurked around their sleepy town, the dark and creepy concrete tunnels had lost all of their allure entirely.

God, what if all this weird shit had been down there before too? What if the Doctors had been there all along, maybe even watching him skateboard around alone, just out of sight while he failed to learn how to do an ollie?

His skin crawled at the thought and his shivered, retroactively creeped out.

The lab didn’t look any different from when Stiles had been there with Lydia, which was...surprisingly surprising—for some reason he’d been expecting it to be ransacked or something—yet it was also a relief, because it meant there was no one else down there with them. There was still dirty and grimy equipment scattered haphazardly throughout the dark and dingy space, it was still impossible to get through without a flashlight, and Stiles had already smacked his shins on stuff twice.

The difference was that it had rained recently, and the floor was under an inch and a half of water, which had immediately soaked into Stiles’ shoes. There was also water dripping in a pipe somewhere that was seriously throwing him off. He couldn’t completely tell where it was coming from and it had him on edge and jumpy as they splashed through one old operating theater to the next.

Scott stopped them in the largest room yet, with surprisingly high ceilings considering how far underground they were.

“I can still sort of smell them. There’s blood in here,” he announced ominously, and then they split up to search the room.

It wasn’t as bad as the previous labs, so that was a plus. There were no body parts in jars, very few weird monitors and cables and wires—no restraints, which was refreshing. Stiles liked not seeing restraints chained to things. He ducked down to sweep his flashlight around under a couple tables, kicked some garbage aside, but so far there was nothing but old blood stains in the concrete floor.

The mural and The Beast and Parrish was even creepier in the dark than described, so props to the artist.

“Found it!” Scott announced after a few minutes, his voice echoing everywhere in the empty and tiled space. Stiles had to swing his flashlight around the room to find him, yelping when he did find him directly behind him on his left, mask raised triumphantly.

He was already on edge in the terrifying lab, the last thing he needed to see was glowing red eyes staring back at him, which was exactly the dick move Scott pulled.

“Don’t do that!” He hissed over his own pounding heart.. “Make some noise when you walk, splash around—we don’t all have super werewolf hearing!”

“I wasn’t being quiet.” He could hear the frown in Scott’s voice even without looking.

“Maybe not to you. Now let’s get the hell out of here,” Stiles muttered as he started moving again, but he could hear that Scott wasn’t moving with him, which could only mean one thing: Talking.

Stiles walked a little faster. They didn’t have time to stand around having a heart-to-heart, they had to get the mask the Lydia’s mom.

“How’s your ear feeling lately?” Scott asked innocently, now making more noise as he caught up, and damn it, Stiles wasn’t prepared for this conversation. It was one thing to have it with Lydia and all her normal human strength and healing, but it was another thing entirely to have it with an alpha werewolf who could’ve healed from Lydia’s scream in a matter of seconds—probably did, he’d been driving at the time. It was another weakness the lowly human didn’t want to admit to just yet.

“Fine,” Stiles snapped, and even as he did, he knew it was a mistake. Scott would be able to hear that lie a mile away, the bastard.

Oh, Stiles was going to have to watch this resentment creeping up. That wasn’t good.

“Stiles.” Now Scott just sounded tired. “Please don’t lie to me.”

Stiles made himself turn around to face him, but kept his flashlight trained on his feet. A horrifying-looking polaroid was floating in the water, and Stiles really didn’t want to take a closer look.

“It feels fine,” he answered honestly, and looked up to Scott’s face. With his flashlight still angled towards the floor, it was still dark enough that he couldn’t see what he knew would be pity and empathizing, and understanding, and the inevitable request that he hang back for his own good. “I just can’t hear much out of it some of the time, or most of the time,” he amended, knowing his own body’s reactions would give away the lie. “It’s totally muffled when I can hear anything, and there’s been a few days when my hearing was totally gone on the left side.”

Scott started walking closer. “How about the tinnitus?”

“Still there, especially when I try to sleep.”

“Is that why you’ve barely been sleeping lately?”

Stiles snorted. “And the whole Nazi alpha kept in a tank thing, that’s also been a factor.”

This time Scott huffed a laugh, and when he fell into step next to him, it was on his right side.

“Let me know what I can do to help,” he said after a moment, just a little too loudly after walking in silence. “I’ll take notes for you or learn ASL, or whatever you need.”

Stiles didn’t laugh, Scott was being far too sincere for that, but of all people, he would be the one to immediately offer to learn another language at the drop of a hat.

“Not quite there yet, dude. I can still hear just fine out of my right ear.”

“Yeah, but if you need to learn it, you know I’ll be right there with you, first day of class.”

Stiles swung his flashlight around towards Scott and the creepy leather mask in his hands.

“You’re such a sap, you know that?” He used Scott’s offense as the distraction he needed to take the mask from him and see it for himself. He held it out, shining the light directly on it, on the cracked lenses, the mouth bolted shut—was that old blood on it? “God, this thing is straight out of a horror movie.”

“I know, right?” Scott agreed, still talking just a tad too loud. “What do you think they need it for?”

“I couldn’t even begin to guess,” Stiles confessed. “The way of the Lydia Martin mind eludes me, which goes double for her mom.”

“Yeah, but they wouldn’t, like, have her wear it. Would they?”

They both stopped walked abruptly.

That was a horrifying new idea Stiles hadn’t even begun to consider. What if she needed to wear it to...gain control or something?

Stiles looked back down at the mask.

Lydia was desperate enough to fix this; if she thought it would help, she very well might take that kind of risk.

“No,” Scott finally answered his own question, “no, that’s stupid. We’ve been working on this for over a month. If it were that easy, they would’ve tried it before.”

“Wha—” Stiles gaped at Scott’s back as he started walking again. "We? You knew about that?”

“Deaton and I have been helping. You didn’t know?” Scott threw over his shoulder. “She hasn’t exactly been keeping it a secret.”

Stiles jogged forward to take a solid punch at his arm. “But you have! You have not once mentioned working with Lydia on this!”

“I thought you knew! And you were focusing on cases with your dad and it was going so well, I didn’t want to ruin that!”

“That doesn’t matter! You tell your bros when you’re basically doing brain surgery!”

“Craniotomy.”

“What?”

“We’re not doing anything to her brain, it’s her skull. It’s like a craniotomy.”

Stiles punched his arm again.

“Do not get smart with me, Scott, this is not the time. And what the hell are you even doing there? No offense, but a high school senior isn’t exactly qualified for this kind of thing.”

“No, but a werewolf is for pain management,” Scott pointed out. “And if she breaks my hand squeezing it, it heals immediately.”

Stiles flexed his own fingers at the memory of Lydia’s death grip on them as Melissa injected steroids into her throat. They’d been pretty purple for a while after that.

“Fine. Fair point, but still! Do not keep things like this, or so help me I will—” he waved his hands around, trying to come up with a decent threat, and settled for pointing menacingly right at Scott’s face.

Scott’s eyes weren’t on his finger though, they were on the mask dangling from his hand and swaying slowly.

“God, this thing is disgusting,” Stiles sighed, deflating, and he removed it from Scott’s personal space. That was just mean.

“Imagine having to wear it,” Scott said with a wrinkled nose.

“Think Theo actually put it on?” Stiles tried to imagine what it would be like to put hundreds of years old leather on his face, let alone hundreds of years old leather that probably had old blood in it and held the deaths of who knew how many people. It sent a violent shiver down his spine.

“I know for a fact that he did,” Scott answered, and Stiles immediately threw the mask back to him. He caught it easily between two claws, childishly trying not to touch it more than necessary. They should’ve brought a plastic bag.

“Eugh, Theo cooties.”

Scott laughed and led the way back up to the surface, making sure to stay on Stiles’ right side the entire trip.

*

Stiles got dropped back at home before Scott headed over to the Martins’ house.

Scott had straight up told him that it would be better if he didn’t stay, that it wasn’t always pretty, and Lydia didn’t want an audience, but that only made it worse. Stiles had no idea what was going on in that house, why they needed Scott and his pain-draining abilities, or what exactly “not always pretty” meant in the context of a hole in a banshee’s skull, but his mind took it and ran with it to the most horrifying extremes.

That, and there was the overwhelming feeling of helplessness he felt now that he didn’t have anything to do to help. He didn’t know the details of Lydia’s situation like her mother, he didn’t have a science background at all, he didn’t know what they’d already tried and it would be a waste of time to ask anyone to catch him up on things; all he could do was get out of the way, and he wasn’t used to that. Not after years of being the one scrambling to solve problems. Of sometimes forcing himself into problems specifically to solve them

He liked to solve problems. That’s what he did.

What he really needed to do was something else to focus on. Another problem.

Something to keep him totally occupied until he heard from Scott.

Oh right, Hans.

That massive alpha werewolf who was still caged up in the Argents’ basement. Who even though he presented himself as a harmless and confused time traveler, had given Stiles a whole lot of information to verify, because Stiles didn’t trust him for a second.

The second Scott dropped him off, he headed straight for his computer to keep looking. Instead of setting up in the basement with Lydia’s absence looming all around him, he settled back in his bedroom. And it was warmer up there too; his basement really was freezing in November.

He scrolled through the Argent files for a while, looking for the checks Derek made once he’d looked through an entire folder and found nothing of use, and then got to work on the next folder in line.

It was four large folders and about six hours later that he found a minor possible-jackpot: German military personnel records. Normally this wouldn’t have been interesting, because pretty much every man in Germany at that time had been in the military at some point—the joys of total war—but if the Argents had these specific records in with theirs, then these men weren’t human.

There were no photos, which wouldn’t have worked with werewolves anyway, but there were dates of birth, health records (all perfect, obviously), and some notes on where they’d been stationed. If he could get in to talk to Schmitz again, he could probably use some pointed questions to find his file.

By the time an exhausted Scott let himself in that evening, and Stiles blinked up at him standing in his bedroom door in slow confusion for a few seconds, he’d put together a list of possibilities—all soldiers named Schmitz that seemed about the right age.

“Come on,” Scott sighed as he physically pulled Stiles from his desk chair. “I picked up pizza.”

“Scott if you’re here with pizza, I’m assuming that Lydia’s fine, the screams of death are gone, and she’s downstairs sitting in my living room.”

Scott, bless him, took that greeting in stride and didn’t even hesitate as he continued to guide Stiles down the stairs to the kitchen.

“Not quite, maybe in a day or two. Her head will be pretty sore and she’s still recovering from an induced coma.”

Stiles turned at the bottom of the stairs to give him a long look, hoping his face loudly screamed explain further, asshole so he wouldn’t actually have to yell it while his dad was asleep after his shift. At least he probably was, since his jacket was tossed over the newel post and the house was still quiet. Stiles hadn’t actually heard him come in.

Luckily Stiles and Scott had known each other since they were four, so his face did convey that, and Scott understood it perfectly.

“Okay, so you know how the Doctors used electromagnetism to do all their freaky stuff? Harnessing the telluric currents with all their equipment?” He dragged Stiles the rest of the way to the kitchen and pushed him down into a chair. There were already two plates of pizza and salad set up on the table, a glass of water at each.

Stiles frowned but waved him on impatiently. “Yeah, sure, whatever, get to the important part, which is Lydia.”

“This is the important part!” Scott sat in his seat, to Stiles’ right. “Lydia also uses the currents. As far as we can tell, that’s how she senses deaths. They resonate through the currents as extra energy leaving the body, and with the hole in her skull, she lost the last barrier she has against it constantly flooding her.”

Right. Made sense. Mostly. “So the mask…”

“Channels those currents through it to specific points, like the eyes, while protecting the rest of whoever is wearing it.” He picked up a slice of pizza, but Stiles smacked his arm back down.

“Scott, are you saying you guys patched her head with that creepy bloody leather?”

“No,” he answered emphatically, and took a bite, “but we did use some of the metal from the mask. It was already treated against electromagnetic frequencies, so we just used it to patch her skull like a standard craniotomy.” He chewed for a moment. “Metal detectors are going to be annoying, but that should be the only side effect.”

Stiles sighed and picked up his own pizza. “You at least disinfected it first, right?”

Scott’s jaw always got even more crooked when he looked disappointed and insulted.

“Of course we did. It’s all perfectly safe and when I left, she was feeling a lot better, no mistletoe needed.”

“Okay, progress! When can she have visitors?”

Scott grinned. “She’s doing well but give her a few days to rest up. She’ll text you when she’s feeling up to it.”

It took a tremendous amount of willpower for Stiles to not sprint to his car right that very second to see her. Enough that he kept twitching in that direction and pulling himself back, while Scott just sat there watching. Then he grinned, clapped a hand on Stiles’ shoulder.

“I’m proud of you, buddy, that was some real restraint.” He started in on his salad. “What’d you find today?”

Stiles filled him in while he scarfed down his food. He’d forgotten to eat all day and didn’t realize it until he was reaching for a fourth slice and Scott suggested he maybe slow down and drink some water.

“Oh, and Chris asked me to stop by tomorrow, so you can come and ask Schmitz about all this,” he continued while Stiles downed the entire glass. Turned out he was seriously thirsty too. “I was thinking of heading over in the morning before going back to Lydia’s.”

“What does he want?” Stiles asked as he got up to get more water, grabbing Scott’s empty class to refill too.

“Don’t know. He didn’t say.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “He just has to be vague and mysterious, doesn’t he?”

“Who does?” His dad yawned as he wandered in, and then feigned a surprised, “Oh, pizza!” as if the smell wasn’t what brought him downstairs in the first place.

*

When Scott said he was going to the Argent cabin early, he wasn’t kidding. 8am on a Sunday was cruel and unusual, especially after Stiles had been up most of the night trying to find anything else to ask Schmitz about. He hadn’t found too much, but he had been able to rule out a couple of other Schmitzes based on when they died—somehow their buddy Hans didn’t look seventeen.

Cooper had finally emailed what he found, which opened up even more horrifying avenues to pursue once he slept a little more, but from the skimming he did, yeah. Schmitz was a Hitler-sanctioned supersoldier, and he was just one of the planned army.

“We’re here,” Scott chirped, and gently shoved Stiles awake in the passenger seat. Gently for a werewolf, anyway, he still smacked his head against the window.

“Watch the super strength, man,” he grumbled, and let himself pour out of the jeep, dragging his backpack after him.

The Golem—or Harvey, as was apparently his name—answered the door again, a steaming mug of coffee in his hand. He took one look at Stiles, with one eye open, and handed the mug over.

“You need this more than I do. Come on in, I’ve got French Toast on the way.” He waved them in and disappeared into the house.

Stiles looked down at the mug in his hand, looked to Scott for explanation, and received none. He just shrugged and followed the golem into his cave.

Unfortunately for Stiles, his conversation with Schmitz this time did little more than eliminate every single one of the possibilities he’d compiled, but he was very apologetic about it. He was also very understanding about the whole I don’t trust you one bit vibes Stiles was giving off and humored his...increasingly agitated questions with an almost sunny disposition.

By the time Stiles gave up to go fume over some very fluffy and artfully presented french toast, he was looking like the asshole instead of the Nazi.

“How about we let him be for a little while,” Scott suggested as he forcefully pushed Stiles into a chair at the dining table.

Siles scoffed. “Come on, he doesn’t remember anything about the experiments? He’s lying.”

“Maybe he is.” Scott pulled out the chair on his right. “And I’m not saying we believe everything he’s told us, but if we can’t find anything to disprove it, that’s got to count for something, right?”

Stiles continued to fume, drumming his fingers on the table and glaring at the pitcher of fresh squeezed orange juice. Harvey really was ridiculous.

“And we can’t keep him here for months on the off chance that you do find something,” Chris added, much less diplomatically.

“So what the hell do we do with him?” Stiles snapped. “Give him a hundred bucks and set him loose?”

“No,” Scott allowed, “but we can’t keep him locked up forever when he hasn’t done anything.”

Stiles glared at him. “In this century, anyway. We know he killed all those other people with the Doctors, who knows what he did during the war that he hasn’t told us about. He’d probably be tried as a war criminal in any court.”

“And Derek would be in prison for murder.” Stiles couldn’t help flinching at the maybe-not-intentionally-implied you would be too. “We can’t apply the human legal system to this, especially if they really did force him to kill.”

Argent sat forward, pushing his empty plate out of the way to get their attention. “This is actually why I asked you to come. I’ve already been in contact with some people I know. I explained the situation, they have space, and they’re willing to take care of him.”

“Eichen House?” Stiles asked, which seemed like the only place for him, really.

“No, not Eichen House. They’re in North Dakota.”

Scott and Stiles looked at each other, and then back at Argent.

“Look,” Stiles stepped in before Scott could get righteous, “not that I don’t love the idea of getting this guy as far away from me as possible, who exactly are we talking about here?”

“And what are they going to do to him?” Oh, there was some righteousness creeping in.

Predictably, Argent didn’t appreciate it. “Don’t give me that, Scott, we don’t have many options here. He’s a werewolf from the 1940s who doesn’t even know what a cell phone is. We can’t exactly give him a fake ID and a dayjob.”

“I know that, and that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just—who are these people? Where is it? How do we know they won’t just kill him?”

“Because I know them, I trust them. And they’re not hunters.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It was implied. They’re Druids and they’re neutral. They help...” he paused and looked like he was choosing his words, “rehabilitate werewolves.”

Stiles snorted. “And what’s that a euphemism for?” It wasn’t that he didn’t trust him, but he didn’t trust him.

“It’s not a euphemism. They mostly take in feral wolves and help them recover and return to their lives, but they do work with special cases, and I think Schmitz here falls under that category.”

Stiles narrowed his eyes. This was sounding way too good to be true.

“So what, we send him off to North Dakota and he...comes back a good ole American boy?” He threw in a sarcastic salute. “From his side of things, a month ago he was wearing the swastika and marching in parades in Berlin. I don’t think a little farm work can sweat that out of him.”

“Are you suggesting we just kill him instead?” Argent asked mildly, incredibly neutral in a very non-neutral way. He’d really mastered that tone.

“No, I’m not—” He tried to give Scott his trust me, I’m not a murderer eyes in response to his imploring and betrayed eyes. Stiles hated those eyes. “I’m not saying we kill him, obviously, I’m just...is there a place for this guy in the modern world?”

“That’s not our call to make,” Scott said firmly. “He hasn’t hurt anyone yet, and he says he didn’t fight for Hitler willingly. Until we find something to disprove his story, that’s what I’m working from,” he added when Stiles couldn’t keep his reaction from showing on his face. “We have to at least give him the chance to adapt, whether it’s here or in North Dakota.”

Stiles wasn’t going to argue further, so he took a very aggressive bite of toast instead.

*

They stopped at Lydia’s on the way back, just long enough to see her sitting up and say hi before Scott hustled Stiles back into the car, declaring that she needed to rest. Judging by the stink eye she gave him on their way out the door, she didn’t agree, but Stiles literally couldn’t get through him. The guy was all muscle and supernatural strength these days.

“She needs to rest and you need a nap!” Scott shouted out the reminder from his bike, and Stiles waved his off before shutting his front door behind him.

His phone dinged in his pocket with, unsurprisingly, a text from Scott.

I MEAN IT. LET HER REST.

Any other day, Stiles would’ve ignored him and jumped right back in his jeep, but now he had a new problem: proving Schmitz was full of...schmitz before Argent went and sent him off to North Dakota.

They still didn’t know what the Dread Doctors had done to him, but if they had him killing other supernatural creatures as often as it sounded, then he was strong and one hell of a fighter. It didn’t matter how many emissaries and other werewolves were out at this place; if he wanted to, Schmitz could probably kill them all in a heartbeat.

Nope. Stiles was taking him down.

By the time Derek Skyped a few hours later, Stiles was deep into his distraction research binge, so far that he missed the first call and didn’t realize it until Derek texted three times.

“No Lydia today?” Derek asked once the video chat was connected.

“Banshee business. She’s going to be laid up for a couple days.”

“Is she alright?”

Stiles shrugged a little aggressively. Derek didn’t pry.

“Well I saw what you marked off yesterday. Did you find anything useful?”

“No.” He tossed his pen across the desk. “He shot down all of it, in the friendliest way possible.”

“Then we’ll keep looking.” He said it like it was the easiest thing to keep going. “I’ve got a lead, I just need to drive up to Oregon to follow it.”

Stiles squinted. “What the hell is in Oregon?”

“There’s a woman in the Monterrey pack up around Mount Hood who grew up in France during the war. I forwarded the picture you took of Schmitz and she thought she recognized him. They don’t have wifi though, so I can’t Skype with her or show her any of the documents we have.”

Stiles jerked back. “No wifi?”

“Their pack is mostly older. They only have a landline.”

Stiles’ mind broke for a second and his left eye fluttered involuntarily.

“They share a phone?”

Derek raised an eyebrow, looking amused. “My family did. I didn’t get a cellphone until I was sixteen.”

This was getting painful.

“Oh god, stop, just stop! No wonder you just show up places without warning, you grew up with no way to contact people.”

“No, that’s because you were all little shitheads and deserved it.”

Stiles couldn’t really argue with that now that he had to deal with the kids, but he wasn’t going to tell Derek that, so he instead shot back,

“We deserved nothing and you know it.” Derek snorted. “When are you doing this Oregon trip, anyway?”

“Wednesday. It’s a ten hour drive so it’ll be a two day trip.”

Stiles nodded; sounded doable. “Wait, it’s the middle of the semester.”

“It’s two days until Thanksgiving break.”

“What?” That didn’t sound right, there was no way the last week had passed that quickly.

Derek’s eyebrows drew down in concern. “How much time have you been spending on this?”

“A lot, it’s kind of a priority.”

“Has he done anything?”

“Not yet, but now we have a deadline. Chris wants to ship him out to North Dakota, and if you think I’m letting a Nazi go take a bunch of emissaries by surprise and slaughter them all, then you are wildly mistaken!”

Derek’s eyebrows frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Some hippie commune for recovering werewolves or something, I don’t know.” One eyebrow crept up on screen. “He didn’t exactly give me a pamphlet, alright, he just said they help feral werewolves recover. Among other things, apparently.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that. When is he sending him off?”

“Next Monday, and with Lydia laid up, I need to focus. I’ve got…” He had to check the date on his computer and do some quick math. “Like six days.” His eyes widened. Shit, Thanksgiving. I’ve got less than six days.”

Derek didn’t even hesitate.

“I’ll be on break by the time I get back from Oregon. I can stop by and help through the weekend.”

“No, dude, you shouldn’t have to come back here, not when you finally managed to get out.” Freaking martyr types, always sacrificing their happiness for others. And Derek really did seem happy, way happier than he had been in Beacon Hills. In fact, Stiles hadn’t realized just unhappy he was until he saw what he really looked like being happy, and man, he’d been miserable before.

“Stiles, it’s a town, not a prison.”

“Depends on the week.”

*

The next day at school, Stiles was a wired little ball of wildly conflicting emotions, and it wasn’t doing anything for his concentration in his morning classes.

He was anxious and stressed about Schmitz and the looming deadline, excited to see Derek in a few days and in person, and worried about Lydia’s recovery, since she was still stuck at home. Add to that a pop quiz in Calculus and the fact that he forgot to do his Spanish homework over the weekend, and Stiles was a wreck by lunch.

Scott picked up on it immediately, of course he did, and his forehead crinkled in a concerned prompt to explain as he sat down. He moved his second water bottle to Stiles’ tray.

“I’m screwed, Scott.”

He raised an eyebrow. “In what way? Supernaturally? Because Lydia’s getting better, we’ve got Schmitz contained and talking, and no one’s died. I’d call that the opposite of screwed. Like, virginal. Eat your salad.”

Stiles picked up his fork and stabbed at his food. “Okay, but we’ve still got a Nazi werewolf in a cage and a hell of a lot of story to verify by Monday. Lydia’s doing a third of the work, Scott, I can barely understand this experiment shit in English, let alone three other languages, and Derek may be a human Rosetta Stone, but he’s no scientist! Not to mention that this shit isn’t just science, it’s supernatural pseudo-not-pseudoscience, because it’s very much real.”

Scott sat quietly through his mini rant, and said with a shrug, “Then ask Mason.” And took a big bite of his sandwich.

The total non-sequitur threw him off long enough for Stiles’ panic train of thought to screech to a halt.

“Why on Earth would I ask Mason?” As far as he knew, Mason was winging it just as much as he was, if not more, because he was like five years old and still pretty new to all of this insanity.

“Because he’s acing all of his science classes and studies languages for fun?”

Stiles frowned. “Since when?”

“Always?” Scott looked a little concerned, his forehead crinkled over a raised eyebrow. “He and Lydia are in the Merit Scholar club together. Have you really not heard them talk chemistry? It’s insane!”

“When the hell do they have time to do that?” Stiles was honestly having trouble remembering any time he’d even seen the two of them together, let alone heard them have a conversation about chemistry.

“Study hall. Pretty much every week. When you’re usually looking at all your gory crime scene photos,” Scott added with an allowing head nod, as if he were just realizing that himself.

Stiles just gaped at him. “It’s been one month, how have I possibly missed this much while seeing you all every day?”

“Well apparently you can’t hear very well sometimes. And you have been kind of in your own world since the whole law enforcement career realization.” He paused, and looked reluctant to add, “maybe to an unhealthy degree.”

“I’m spending time with my dad, how is that unhealthy?”

“It’s not! It’s the spending so much time with him working on cases that you’re maybe not actually dealing with anything that’s happened in the last couple months and maybe even isolating yourself from the pack with your latest obsession, that’s unhealthy.”

Stiles blinked. Clearly Scott and Lydia had been spending more time together than he’d originally thought.

“Or something like that.” Scott shrugged in a very belated attempt to make things cool and casual.

“Obsessed?” Stiles sputtered indignantly, “Obse—I am not obsessed, this is my chosen career path, Scott. This is what I want to do. I mean, I would never say you’re obsessed with being a veterinarian just because you work with Deaton almost everyday after school, because you want to be that, and how is this any different? Just because I get a little over focused on it and maybe miss a few things around me...like entire conversations, doesn’t mean I’m…”

He slowed to a stop and for once, his mind managed to shut up his mouth before he dug himself even deeper, because yeah, he really wasn’t dealing with much. Like the nogitsune, or Allison’s death, or almost being shot in the head point blank, or Donovan, or his breakup with Malia that they still hadn’t talked about, or—

Scott just looked at him, still as patient as ever.

“Done with denial?” he asked, and Stiles answered a little petulantly,

“Yes.”

“Are you going to try to be less obsessive about cold cases and maybe spend time with your friends during our last year together?”

Stiles slouched down a little further in his seat. “Yes.”

“Are you actually going to ask Mason to help?”

He bobbed his head in a sullen teenager nod.

“Good. Have some water, you look dehydrated.”

Stiles took the offered water bottle, but he wasn’t happy about it.

*

It was weird having Mason in his house.

Aside from Scott, Lydia, and Malia, none of the pack had been over before, not even Kira. Scott’s house was bigger, more central to everyone, and had become the pack’s meeting place by default, so there was no reason for them to have ever been over to Stiles’ smaller house on the west side of town. It wasn’t like Stiles hung out with the kids alone after school for any reason or invited them over for movie nights. They did those themselves in their own little friend group.

Now he glanced around his own home awkwardly, suddenly very aware of the stupid fishes on the wall and that stupid wooden duck on a corner table that his mom had bought as a joke, and the stupid fishing hat hanging from the coat hooks, and why did they have so much fishing paraphernalia? His dad hadn’t gone fishing in at least a few years, ever since his fishing buddy Deputy Meyers moved out of town, this was getting ridiculous.

And it would be stupid not to acknowledge that part of the issue was the fact that Mason had a pretty damn nice house himself, probably without a single decorative fish in sight. Stiles hadn’t been inside, just dropped Liam off on chauffeur duty occasionally, but the outside was nice. Like, Lydia Martin level nice. Probably had a lakehouse of his own nice.

Stiles didn’t know what exactly Mason’s parents did, just that they constantly traveled for big conferences in Europe. In fact, they’d been in Copenhagen last month during all of the mayhem and death and their son being possessed by an 18th century werewolf, which was convenient as hell because they didn’t need to explain anything at all.

So yeah, Stiles was a bit self-conscious about his slightly run down average home with a porch that needed replacing and a singing fish over the couch.

At least, he was until Mason pointed directly to it and said, “hey, my dad has that in his office!”

“Bad to the Bone?”

“I Will Survive.”

“Classic.” So maybe there wasn’t anything to feel self-conscious about after all. He led the way back into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “You hungry?”

“Literally always.”

“Great. We have leftover pizza and my dad can never know.” He dug to the back of the vegetable drawer and pulled out the plastic bag of pizza wrapped in paper towel to hide it. His dad never checked behind the salad fixings.

Mason reheated his, Stiles just took it cold, and then journeyed down to the basement of horrors.

Mason stopped short at the bottom of the stairs and gripped Stiles’ shoulder.

“We’re doing...all of this?” He sounded doubtful, and like he really hoped the answer was no.

Poor, poor Mason.

“Yes. Well, Derek too, but he can’t really help with all this,” he waved a hand to encompass the entire mess in front of them, “over Skype.”

“Derek’s helping? You guys are working on this? Together?”

“Yep.”

“And you’re...okay with that?”

Stiles looked up and frowned at Mason’s tone, because it was a weird tone that implied things that Stiles wasn’t comfortable with the kids knowing or making comments on, specifically in tones.

“Why wouldn’t I be okay with that?” He made sure his own tone implied a lot of things too, primarily that Mason should choose his next words very carefully and also rethink this entire conversation.

He did not.

“I mean, after you two...broke up, and everything.”

“Broke up?” That...was not where Stiles was expecting him to take that.

“Yeah, Liam said you dated? Or he thought you did,” Mason quickly corrected. “On the way to Mexico, he said you guys were…” he waved his hand around to explain, which explained exactly nothing.

“We were…” Stiles aggressively mimicked the gesture. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mason, you’re going to have to give me more than that.”

“He said it seemed like there was still something there,” he rushed out quickly. “Even though you were with Malia.”

Stiles didn’t even know what to say to that—all he could do was wave his arms around in soundless offence, mouth working but nothing coming out.

“Still some—dude, Derek and I aren’t dating. We never dated.”

“Really? Liam said you two were pretty cozy in the van.”

“Liam says a lot.”

“Not about Derek Hale. I think he's a little scared of him.”

Stiles snorted, more fondly than he intended, judging from Mason’s expression. “Yeah, he has that effect on people.”

“Clearly not on you.”

Stiles’ grin dropped off his face. “Focus more on translating and less on me and Derek, how about that.” He grabbed the nearest pile of files and dropped them into Mason’s arms, continuing to mutter to himself, “Like I’m talking about that with a fifteen year old.”

There was quiet for a blissful moment, while Mason got settled, but then he said somewhat cautiously, “You know we’re all sixteen, right?”

“What?” Stiles snapped, a little testily. He just wanted to work in silence.

“You keep saying we’re fifteen, but we can all drive. Even Liam.”

Stiles blinked. “What? No, when the hell did that happen?” Last Stiles checked, he was fourth down the phone tree when Liam needed a ride anywhere, after Mason, Hayden, and Scott.

Mason grinned, and Stiles knew he was only proving his point. “He got it like four weeks ago. He was putting it off, but nearly being killed by psychotic doctors and an eighteenth century beast gave him a new outlook on life.”

“Huh.” Made sense.

“We’re not as fragile as you think we are,” Mason continued.

“You’re all werewolves, I know you’re not fragile.”

“Then why do you always exclude us?”

“I don’t!”

“Um, yeah, you do. You barely let Liam go anywhere with you and Scott, let alone me, Hayden, or Corey.”

Stiles really didn’t want to be having this conversation right then. “Have you seen the size of my car? Liam barely fits in the back seat alone since he bulked up, and you're at least a head taller than him.” Mason just looked at him, not buying it.

“Seriously, Stiles. We beat the Dread Doctors, Theo's gone, I've personally faced a berserker. We can handle this alpha too. We’re basically invincible.”

He put so much feeling and optimism into it, Stiles almost felt bad immediately shutting him down with, “No, you really aren’t.”

They had to crush that mentality as fast as possible. He’d been to too many funerals in the last two years to let that continue.

“Fine, we’re not. But we’re not just useless kids either.”

He clearly didn’t appreciate Stiles’ nickname for the bunch.

“I know you’re not. I’m just…” He stole Mason’s move and waved a hand around instead of putting it into words, because he didn’t actually know how to describe what he was trying to put into words.

“A little closed off?” Mason suggested with a grin.

“Hey, you focus on that.” He pointed to the open binder on the floor in front of him and took a violent bite of cold pizza.

Mason’s grin turned into a little bit of a smirk.

Little shit.

*

They worked silently for the next few hours, occasionally grabbing another snack for Mason (Jesus, the guy really was always hungry), but mostly just sat in focused concentration. Lydia texted for a few minutes, demanding to know any updates, so clearly she was feeling better, but aside from that, the pack let them be.

Stiles blinked hard at his laptop and shook away the exhaustion, letting his eyes roam around the basement just to look at something other than a backlit screen.

Aaand it was already dark out.

They’d been at it for over five hours.

He wanted to beat his head against the cinderblock wall.

“Okay wait, here’s something you haven’t mentioned before!” Mason waved his hand around as if Stiles would somehow miss him among the piles of papers and binders. “You know those talons that one chimera tried to use on Scott?”

“Yeah, Malia used them too. Are they in there?” He’d assumed they were a recent invention.

Mason stood up and carried over his current binder. It was all written in slanting maybe-German that Stiles had no hope of reading, but that didn’t seem to be a problem for Mason.

“It’s right here.” He pointed to a word that meant nothing to Stiles. “That...kind of means talons, but yeah, it looks like when they found someone strong enough, they would beef them up by making them kill others with the talons, and then make them fight, and so on until they got stronger and stronger.”

Stiles frowned. “That wasn’t mentioned anywhere else, which binder is this?”

“It’s from,” Mason flipped back to the front briefly, “1944, so it was a later project.”

“Does it mention the Beast of Gevaudan?”

“Yeah, a few times. Well, not by name, but they keep mentioning their goal and it sounds like their goal was the Beast.”

“And not supersoldiers.”

Mason shook his head. “It sounds like they were just using the people the Nazis gave them for their own research. Or if they were giving them any soldiers, they weren’t as super as they could’ve been, because they kept the strongest for themselves.” He shrugged. “I guess back then they thought power alone would be enough to resurrect the Beast.”

That was a heavy topic Stiles wasn’t qualified to get into, so he kept focused on the problem at hand.

“Schmitz did mention they made him fight and kill a lot of other supernaturals.”

“So if they were doing Supernatural Thunderdome and he was the last one standing…”

“Then he’s used those talons and he’s got a hell of a lot of power.” Yep, that dread was back. “Does it say anything about him?”

Mason quickly scanned the rest of the page, tracing the lines of text with his finger. “Not really. This is talking about a female alpha, so I’m assuming they got her before Schmitz.” He flipped the page, quietly scanned again, and then shook his head. “Nope, not right here. I’ll keep looking though.

Stiles squinted up at him. “Just how many languages do you speak?”

“Speak? Pretty much only English, but I can read and recognize enough to translate...four?” He waffled for a minute. “Six if I have a really good translator.”

Holy shit.

“Must be nice to have that come easily.”

“Oh, it doesn’t, at all. It’s pretty hard for me actually, but all of this stuff is fascinating and you have to know a few languages to read most of it, so...” He shrugged.

How in the everloving hell had Stiles become the pack researcher? He was so unqualified next to everyone else.

He rubbed his eyes, shook off the feelings of inadequacy, and got back to his work. At least until Mason interrupted again.

“Are you expecting someone?”

Stiles looked up from his laptop again and frowned. It took a moment to drag his thoughts away from World War II conspiracy theories, and then a few more seconds to cycle through everyone he knew and where they were supposed to be at the moment.

“No?”

“Well someone’s here.”

“What kind of someone?” He set his laptop to the side.

Mason looked confused and a little offended. “I don’t know? I can’t tell from here.”

“That’s not helpful, Mason!” Stiles hissed, already heading for the stairs. He had mountain ash by the door that he could get to quickly, should the need arise, as long as whoever it was didn’t punch down the front door first.

Whoever it was, who was he kidding—it was the Nazi. Schmitz had finally broken out of the Argents’ cell and now he was coming for them. It was only a matter of time, they’d been lucky he stayed put this long. No Winter Soldier werewolf could be contained so easily. He’d been humoring them all along.

Stiles gestured for Mason to hang back, and ignored the disbelieving face he got in return. Of the two, he was the experienced one, he was the one who could use mountain ash, and he wasn’t going to stand for any sass about it.

And he was the adult, god damn it.

“Recognize them?” he whispered over his shoulder.

“From their heartbeat?”

Right. Newbie.

“Yes, from their heartbeat, everyone’s is unique—has Scott not taught you this yet?”

No, he hadn’t, if Mason’s face was anything to go by. Stiles waved it away and crept down the hall towards the door. He could see the small jar of ash on the second step, half hidden under at least five jackets tossed over the newel post and railing.

The porch outside creaked. The top step always did, and they’d been meaning to fix it for years. Though now he was thinking they should just leave it; it was handy for knowing how close murderous alphas were to the door. And that answer was pretty close, closer than Stiles was.

If he broke in the door first, there was another jar of ash in the kitchen, but it was further away.

The Nazi shifted his weight and another board groaned.

Stiles took his chance, dove for the bottle of ash and poured it out into his hand as he kept moving forward; if he could catch the alpha off guard, maybe he could surround him in ash and keep him contained until Scott could get there. Or at least block off the door and keep Mason safe.

His only defense clutched in his fist, he threw open the door, raised his arm to throw, and froze.

His brain stuttered and tripped over itself for a second.

Derek was standing on his front porch.

It was one thing to see Derek through a screen in poor lighting and slightly pixelated, and another thing entirely to actually see him. Standing two feet away from him. To be able to actually smell whatever aftershave or cologne or whatever the hell he was wearing that smelled so good, and like, see every hair in his artful stubble..

Oh god, he was not prepared for this moment in the least.

This was too real. Derek was too real. And unsurprisingly, he looked even better in person, which was a shame because he looked phenomenal over Skype.

Derek’s eyes flicked to Stiles’ still-raised fist, where mountain ash was trickling through his fingers, and one of his eyebrows crept up in judgment.

“A little on edge?”

“Nazi.” Derek tipped his head to the side in agreement. “Besides, I thought you weren’t coming for a few more days.”

“I was able to get a couple more days off and thought I’d stop on the way to Oregon.” He stepped past Stiles into the house, and it was like everything clicked back into place. Yep, this was Derek.

“That’s the kind of thing you call about, dude!” Stiles chucked his handful of ash out onto the porch and wiped his sweaty palm on his pants before closing the front door behind him. “Especially with everything going on here!”

“I’m old and don’t know how to communicate, remember?”

Stiles punched him in the arm.

And then pulled him into a hug, because adrenaline was pumping and Derek was right there, and the last time he’d really seen him in person, he was dying and then riding off into the sunset.

Derek’s arms came up around him immediately, barely a second of surprised hesitation, and oh god, why was Stiles shaking?

“You okay?” Derek murmured quietly into his ear. His right ear, of course he remembered that.

“It’s the adrenaline,” Stiles insisted, and tucked his face in a little further into his leather jacket. God he missed that leather jacket. Derek squeezed a little tighter.

“Um, hi?”

Stiles felt Derek stiffen at Mason's voice and they broke apart—quite reluctantly, on Stiles’ end. Derek gave really good, solid hugs.

“I'm Mason,” he took the initiative to walk over, arm out for a friendly handshake. “You're Derek, right?”

Derek frowned, but shook his hand anyway. “Have we met?”

“Not directly. I've heard a lot about you though.”

Derek's eyes flicked over to Stiles for the briefest second, and he immediately wanted to set himself on fire.

“Liam's very taken with you,” he cut in quickly, trying to smooth over his total lack of dignity.

“Is he.” Derek didn’t believe him, but at least he could play along.

“Yeah, he got a leather jacket and everything. It’s pretty pathetic.”

Derek nodded and said in a way that suggested things, “Not everyone has the shoulders for them.”

Stiles swallowed.

Mason coughed. “Yeah, I’m just gonna…” He pointed to the door and booked it, phone out and probably texting Liam a boatload of lies.

*

Derek was back, in Beacon Hills, in Stiles’ kitchen, and cooking him dinner.

At least he assumed that was happening. Derek hadn’t said as much, but not many people barged into another man’s kitchen, made a meal, and didn’t bother to share. He didn’t even ask where anything was, he just rifled through drawers until he found what he needed and started throwing ingredients in a pot.

Stiles didn’t even know what to do with that, so he sat in his usual spot on the counter between the fridge and the sink and watched. He assumed some kind of soup was coming together, there was chicken stock involved, but he couldn’t say for sure because Derek had never stopped to ask for preferences. Just told Stiles to get out of the way because he looked exhausted and got to work.

“So are you just sniffing things out?” Stiles finally asked, as Derek found the spice cupboard on the first try.

He got a withering look thrown over his shoulder in reply.

“It’s a valid question, I’m not just being a douche.”

“Where do you think I did all my cooking before I moved into the loft,” Derek shot back as he sorted through the mess of jars and small, hand-labeled plastic bags. There was no tells in his voice as to whether he was kidding or not, and Stiles felt weirdly violated while also very offended that Derek thought he would believe that.

Derek didn’t even check for a reaction; he just kept opening jars, sniffing, setting some aside, putting others back, throwing away a couple bags—until he had whatever he needed and went back to the pot on the stove.

Finally he looked up as he shook some green spice into his concoction. He was smirking. “It’s really bothering you, isn’t it?”

“You’re such a dick, just tell me.”

Derek still paused before he answered, taking his time stirring his soup like he didn’t have a care in the world. Meanwhile, Stiles was about to start yelling. He didn’t enjoy mysteries involving his own house and people being in it without him knowing. There was a line!

Just when he was about to burst, Derek said simply, “I came back to deal with a property downtown and I stopped by to talk to your father about my record. He made me lunch.”

“Your record?” Stiles decided to ignore the part where Derek was briefly back in town and hadn’t told anyone except Stiles’ dad, who had also said nothing. It hurt a little; he could admit it to himself and only himself.

“I was applying to grad school and needed to know if my arrests would be an issue.”

Stiles hadn’t even thought about that, but considering Derek was not only in grad school, but also a TA...

“I take it they weren’t?”

“He wrote a letter just in case.”

“I didn’t realize you were so close to my dad.” It might have come out a tad more bitter than he intended, but he didn’t like when two people in his life were keeping things from him. Especially when he hadn’t even had any way to find out about it on his own! The very least they could’ve done was leave a trail of some kind for him to follow.

Derek gave him a knowing look. “Don’t be jealous, I just helped him out on a couple cases.”

That didn’t help at all. “You’re crime solving buddies now? He barely lets me look at current case files anymore, only the old stuff!”

“You’re in school and a minor.”

“Half a year left and I’m not a minor anymore!” Stiles corrected, probably a little too enthusiastically considering who he was talking to. He winced and bit down on his bottom lip like that would stop him. “God, I cannot shut up right now. I’m sorry.”

Derek was intensely focused on chopping carrots, but he shrugged as if he were relaxed and chill. “It’s fine. I don’t mind it.”

Stiles squinted at him dubiously. “Really? Because I remember you squatting in an abandoned train station because it was quieter than an apartment.”

“It was actually because I was hoping it would keep snotty teenagers from coming over, but you guys are unstoppable.” He said it perfectly deadpan, and with him still looking down, Stiles had no way to knowing if that was the truth or not. Derek continued before he could respond. “After spending a semester trying to force freshmen to discuss assigned readings on the Bolshevik Revolution, I’ve really come to appreciate the people who talk willingly.”

Stiles had to chuckle at the image of Derek glaring at his class as they all sat in a stony silence.

“I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t just glare,” Derek said, glaring.

“Well it makes more sense than you,” Stiles couldn’t even say it, it seemed so wrong, “leading discussions.”

Derek’s mouth twitched up into the barest hint of a smile as he went back to chopping. “If it makes you feel any better, I hate every second of it.”

“You know, actually it does.” Stiles wasn’t even kidding. “Why are you teaching, anyway? You manage multiple properties in town, it’s not like you need the money.” Not to mention the massive fortune his family had left him, but Stiles figured it was better to not bring that up when the night was going so well.

Derek hesitated for a brief second, scraping the carrots into the pot with the back of the knife before saying with a sardonic edge, “Actually my therapist recommended it. It keeps me out of my apartment and interacting with people.”

Stiles gaped. He couldn’t help it. “You—”

“Don’t.” Derek cut him off immediately, wielding his knife.

“I’m not going to laugh.” Stiles was actually a little insulted by the insinuation. “I saw a therapist for years, I’m not judging, I’m just—”

“Surprised?”

“Impressed,” Stiles corrected forcefully, “by your entire life, actually.” Derek frowned and moved onto celery. “Dude, your life has been one shitshow after the next and you just took it, but the fact that you’re actually doing something for yourself and trying to be happy is…” He floundered for something that wouldn’t make him sound like a total and complete dick but still got his point across.

“Surprising,” Derek supplied flatly.

“I didn’t say it, but yeah. A little.” He winced. “You look good, your life looks good. I’m…”—just say it, get it over with, don’t be a dick about this—“happy for you. I’m glad you’re happy. You deserve it.”

Boy, that was awkwardly delivered. He should probably work on his sincerity for conversations like this, but Derek didn’t seem to mind.

“I’m...working on it,” Derek answered carefully. “I don’t think I’m there yet, but I’m working on it.

“More than I can say for myself,” Stiles confessed, and it was supposed to be a joke, but it came out a lot heavier than he meant it to.

He was half expecting some kind of comment on how he should work on that too, be happy, take time for himself, all the kinds of well-meaning phrases Scott would say, but Derek just nodded and went back to his cooking. It was nice, talking to somehow who got the self-deprecating, kind of dark approach to dealing with problems. Sometimes the beating him over the head with optimism helped, but when it came to dealing with his own personal issues, it was just annoying, and it felt like rubbing something in his face that he couldn’t have.

Instead, Derek gave him a warm bowl of soup and sat with him on the couch for a couple hours, talking about the class he was TA-ing for and the planning he was doing for his dissertation.

*

Derek left early the next morning for Oregon, but not even that could put Stiles in a bad mood. Derek was back, and he made Stiles soup, and he gave excellent hugs.

They’d also found another piece to the Schmitz puzzle, and Mason had got a lot more of the journals translated, so that was also good, but Derek.

It wasn’t until Liam waggled his eyebrows at him in the hall at school that he realized he might’ve been projecting a little and reined it in. Scott also cocked his head at him and his nostrils flared, so that was another reason to get it together. There were no secret crushes among werewolves.

Which reminded him that Derek most definitely could tell the night before.

Which reminded him that he was a lovesick teenager and Derek had done nothing to indicate interest in the least.

Crap.

Well, now that he’d rode that high straight into the ground, he could focus on important things, like Schmitz.

He and Mason were planning on stopping by after school for another round of questions. Stiles was hoping that if he asked about the talons, Schmitz might slip up a little or show some sign of being anything other than a happy German boy yodeling in the mountains, or whatever a German stereotype was. Strudel? Beer? Lederhosen?

Stiles couldn’t remember, but the point was that Schmitz hadn’t mentioned the talons before, and in fact he had always made it sound like he used his bare hands and just tore their heads off or something. Okay, not explicitly, but he had omitted them and the thunderdome from the story, and that implied he wanted to keep them hidden. Which in turn, made him suspicious.

Scott nodded along while Stiles outlined this train of thought at lunch. Malia was also nodding along, but frowning.

“So why do you smell like Derek?” she asked instead of addressing his plan at all.

Scott’s eyebrows shot up. “I thought I smelled him! He’s in town?”

“He was last night. He’s driving up to Oregon to follow another Schmitz lead. And no,” he added at Scott’s weird grin, “nothing happened. He made me soup and we hung out.”

“You’re giving off a lot of emotions for hanging out.” Malia’s voice was a little hard, and then her eyes flashed bright blue.

“Whoa, you okay?” Scott asked, glancing around the area to see if anyone else had noticed.

“I’m fine,” Malia insisted, and when she opened her eyes again, they were normal. “When’s Lydia coming back?”

Stiles blinked. “Holy topic change, Batman.”

“She said she was aiming for tomorrow,” Scott answered. “She thinks she’ll be fine for Thanksgiving, but not back for school until Monday.”

“Is Thanksgiving this week?” Stiles asked, and then remembered he and Derek had this exact same conversation already.

“Yeah, it's the last day of classes until next week.” Scott frowned, and pushed his water over. “Maybe you should take a break from all this for a few days. You’re not looking so hot.”

“Nope, we’ve got leads to follow, and I’m going to follow them, damn it!” Stiles downed half the water bottle at once and slammed it down. “I know he’s lying, and I’m going to prove it!”

He swung his leg over the bench and took off to find Mason. He had to confirm their after school plans.

“Dude, your lunch!” Scott shouted after him.

*

His plans to dash into the Argents’ cabin, dazzle them with evidence, and theatrically declare Schmitz a phony was delayed, this time by Harvey.

“I just took him dinner so are you okay with waiting a half hour first? I think this might be the finest Banh Mi that I’ve made yet and I don’t want him to rush through it.”

Stiles had no idea what that was, but he felt his eye twitch.

“That’s totally fine, Mr. Anovsky,” Mason said cheerfully, and how did he even know Harvey’s last name? “We aren’t in a rush.”

“Alright.” He pulled his apron off over his head. “I’m running out to Roseville for groceries. Chris is upstairs on a conference call if you need anything.”

“Why the hell are you going to Roseville for groceries?” Stiles almost didn’t want to know.

“Would you believe it has the closest Indian market?” Harvey shook his head, and was clearly devastatingly upset about this. “I can’t wait to leave this town and find some real food. Oh,” he paused on his way out the door, “there’s a few more Banh Mi in the kitchen if you guys get hungry.”

Mason thanked him enthusiastically but Stiles could only nod, somewhat in shock.

Harvey was, without doubt, the strangest hunter he’d ever met.

So with nothing else to do, they settled on the couch and Stiles pulled out his laptop to go over anything else he wanted to ask in—he glanced at the time—twenty-five minutes. Schmitz was getting half an hour for dinner exactly, and not a second more.

“Is that all of the Argent files?” Mason asked, leaning right into Stiles space to look, and wow, that really was annoying.

“Yep.”

“Mind if I look at it?”

Stiles officially gave up and turned his laptop over. “Knock yourself out. There’s a ton.”

“And the files with checkmarks have been done?”

“Yep.” He yawned and dug around through his backpack for the photocopied notes from the Doctors’ binders. From the word-for-word translation Derek added down the sides in his surprisingly neat cursive, it gave a pretty thorough explanation of the talons and how they used them. Good information to know if Schmitz tried anything funny.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, the only sound in the house the infuriating ticking clock above the mantle. How did anyone get anything done with one of those around? It was so distracting, and the ticking only rubbed in the fact that he couldn’t focus and therefore couldn’t get anything done as the seconds ticked by!

“Dude, have you seen this stuff about Operation Werwolf?”

Stiles looked up from the papers he was reading and frowned. He must’ve misheard that.

“Operation what now?”

Mason grinned. “Yeah, I know. But Unternehmen Werwolf,” he said in pretty clunky German, “was this massive propaganda push at the very end of the war. It was supposed to be this underground guerilla army that would attack and sabotage the Allies, but nothing ever came of it. It was mostly just a tactic to make Germany look like they weren’t completely losing the war.”

Wait, that sounded familiar…

Stiles dug through his backpack again to rip out the folder of research Cooper had sent him, and tossed pages onto the coffee table to get them out of the way quickly.

“What…” Mason started to asked, before Stiles found what he was looking for.

“Here, Cooper found stuff about it. I thought he was just being a dick.”

“No, it’s in here.” Mason’s eyes honest to god twinkled. “It was a cover for actual werewolf saboteurs.”

Stiles stared at him, waiting for the just kidding grin because that was way too cool to be true, but it never came. He narrowed his eyes at him, and Mason’s grin just widened as he nodded creepily.

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true.”

“No way.”

“Yes way.”

“Show me,” Stiles demanded, and scooted closer as Mason turned the computer towards him.

It looked like scans of official Nazi records; lists of names, some with ominous X’s next to them, and notes from Argents in the margins and on the backs. “This is a list of potential candidates being considered for the assignments, and these people were like, the best of best of the best—men and women, all werewolves.”

“So the X’s are…”

“Everyone the Argents had a confirmed kill for after the war, location of their death, hunter family that killed them.”

Stiles briefly scanned down the notes, taking in all of the different cities; New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, London, Liverpool, Leningrad, Omsk, Chelyabinsk, Tokyo, Nagoya...

“These are all over the world.”

“And after the war,” Mason pointed out, and yeah, a lot of the dates were well into the sixties, “meaning it wasn’t such a dud of a program after all. They got their guys all over the place and they managed to lay low for over a decade before they were found.”

“In key cities too. These were all major manufacturing centers for their militaries.” Stiles kept scrolling through until he felt Mason staring, and turned to see his raised eyebrows. “What? I wrote a paper on strategic bombing for Mr. Yukimura last year.”

“I didn’t know key bombing targets were part of the junior history curriculum.”

“They’re not. It was extra credit. To make up for some missed classes,” Stiles added vaguely, because he really didn’t want to go into the nogitsune thing or the shitstorm of makeup work he’d had to spend months on following his stay in Eichen House.

Mason didn’t push, just easily accepted his excuse. “Right, well if everyone on this list made it into the program, then a lot went unaccounted for.”

“Or the Argents just didn’t hear about it. Cooperation between hunting families can be pretty spotty now, who knows what it was like back then.” Hunter politics was an entirely different section of the Argent files that Stiles was curious about but also dreading.

There was nothing more boring than politics.

“We can ask Mr. Argent when he finishes his call. Maybe he knows about this stuff,” Mason said easily, and Stiles boggled at how easily a werewolf took to trusting the Argent family. Sure, Chris was cooperative now, but that hadn’t always been the case, and Stiles was counting down the days until he screwed them over yet again for some outdated sense of familial obligation.

“In the meantime,” Mason continued, standing up from the couch, “I’m hungry and that Banh Mi is calling me. Want one?”

Stiles squinted up at him in disbelief. “Seriously? The guy’s a werewolf hunter. Do you really think that’s safe?” It was one thing when they were all eating from the same plate, like the French Toast, and Stiles had chosen his own randomly, but they hadn’t seen him prepare any of this.

“Yeah, but he’s our ally and he follows the code,” Mason said slowly, like Stiles was the one being unreasonable here. “We haven’t hurt anyone, he has no reason to hurt us.”

“Yeah, but you don’t know the Argents like I do, and just because they play nice for a while doesn’t mean they won’t string you up in their basement for nothing.”

Mason frowned at him, hesitated, and then asked, “Are you speaking from experience? Because that was very specific.”

Stiles’ phone, thankfully, started buzzing across the coffee table at that moment, saving him for both having to relive that night and traumatize a tenth grader.

“Just go eat,” he snapped, waving Mason off with one hand and grabbing his phone with the other. He frowned down at the screen, where the very unflattering and blurry picture he’d taken of Derek a couple years ago was frowning back at him.

Derek never called him.

He texted and they Skyped and he sent occasional emails with translations, but he never called.

Stiles swiped to the left and answered. “What’s up man?

“I found out who Schmitz really is and he lied about everything.”

Stiles’ mood plummeted with that greeting and he let his head drop into his free hand. “Of course he did. How bad is it?”

“Bad. I’m coming back now, I’ll be there in two hours.”

Stiles looked up and raised his eyebrows at the sound of the Camaro shifting into a higher gear and a car honking angrily. Derek had definitely said this pack was like six hours north.

“Okay, if you’re breaking the sound barrier to get here, then who the hell is this guy?”

“He’s in journal thirty-four, page three-seventy-two,” Derek explained, “But his name isn’t Schmitz, it’s Herzfeld. Hauptmann Karl Herzfeld. He wasn’t enlisted or forced into anything, he was a captain.

“As in…” Stiles quickly clicked around to the journal and scrolled to the correct page. It looked like another daily report from a hunter squad, but instead of the brief sightings and skirmishes Stiles had seen so far, it was a list of names, all German, and Hauptmann Karl Herzfeld right at the top.

“As in he led his own werewolf squad for the Reich,” Derek finished. “He was decorated, too. They were one of the best and they were well known even outside of the military. Renee recognized his picture from Nazi propaganda glorifying them.”

“So I’m guessing they killed a lot,” Stiles sighed, that familiar coil of dread and fear uncurling in his stomach. So much for Scott’s optimism through it all.

“His team was ruthless, Stiles,” Derek answered gravely. “They killed anyone that got in their way, military or civilian, human or not. They didn’t just kill, they mutilated for fun.”

Stiles stared at the handwritten name on the screen in front of him, suddenly acutely aware of the fact that the very same murdering, mutilating Nazi was directly beneath him in a cell that suddenly did not have a high enough voltage running through it.

Beside his name there was a few sentences in French and a date. “Does this say what happened to him?”

“It says he was shot with a wolfsbane arrow, presumed dead, but they were never able to confirm the kill. Renee doesn’t know anything either, the squad disappeared when the Nazis surrendered.”

“Probably into the Doctors’ lab.” Stiles pulled at his hair in anxious frustration as another car on Derek’s end of the line honked angrily.

“And if he’s the last one of his own team, he was probably the strongest and most ruthless.”

That really wasn’t what Stiles needed to hear at the moment.

“Great, so he’s a pure evil killing machine and exactly what you’d expect of a Nazi werewo—” he was cut off by the china cabinet rattling, glasses clinking together noisily. Then it registered that the entire house was rattling all around him, the floor vibrating up through his legs, and for a brief second he thought it was an earthquake until he realized that it was coming from a deep and earth-shattering roar directly below him.

“Oh fuck.”

“What was that? Is he there? Where are you?” Derek demanded.

“I’m at the Argents’, he’s in his cage in the basement. Mason!” Stiles yelled towards the kitchen. How long did it take to eat, seriously! “Mason’s here, and so’s Chris, and I’m calling Scott right now and putting down mountain ash.” He would infinitely prefer to be getting into his car and speeding off, but he couldn’t just leave Mason and Chris to deal with it themselves. Mason barely knew how to werewolf and Chris couldn’t take him on all alone, not if he was the superwolf everything pointed to him being.

“Call me right back!” Derek ordered as Stiles hung up and Chris rushed down the stairs with the biggest gun Stiles had ever seen.

He took one look at Stiles, wide eyed on the couch, ordered him not to move a muscle, and then disappeared into the basement, slamming the door behind him.

“Ooooh, fucking fuck!” Stiles hissed to himself, hands shaking slightly as he scrolled through his phone for Scott’s contact. He kept hitting the wrong icon, why was he freaking out this much?

And where the hell was Mason?

Stiles felt the presence of someone suddenly standing just to his left and jumped violently before his eyes caught up to the rest of him and he realized that, finally, Mason had decided to join the party, holding a sandwich.

“Jesus, Mason, don’t do that! Right side, please!” He looked back to his phone, taking an angry deep breath to try to get his heartrate back down to normal. “You fucking werewolves are quiet enough without the hearing loss and I’m too young to have a heart attack.”

“Hearing loss?” Mason moved around the coffee table to sit next to him on the right. “Sorry, but what the hell was that?”

“That was our buddy Hans, who, shocker, is a liar.” Stiles hit Scott’s contact name and held it to his ear, waiting for him to pick up as he continued, “He’s a total sociopath, like, Buffalo Bill, lotion kind of sociopath, and we’ve just been—giving him,” he waved at Mason’s sandwich, “Banh Mi every night for dinner!”

Probably really good Banh Mi too. Harvey was like, New York chef-level good at hipster cuisine.

“Hey, man.”

“Scott! Scott, holy shit—” another shattering roar from the basement “—get to the Argents’ cabin, because Hans is not the good German boy he claimed and he’s a total psycho—” he trailed off as he glanced at Mason’s face, at his glowing golden eyes and stiff posture “—path. What’s up, man? Having some control issues?”

Shit, his mountain ash was in his backpack on the other side of Mason, there was no way he was going to be able to get it in time if he couldn’t talk him down.

Mason’s lip twitched, baring a hint of fang, and Stiles realized that no, this was not control issues, this was something else entirely.

“Oh, fuck,” Stiles managed to get out just before the punch connected with his face and everything went black.

Chapter Text

The next thing he knew, the left side of his face was screaming out in pain because someone kept slapping it with their stupid hand.

“Stiles? Stiles, come on,”—slap—”wake up!”

He groaned and tried to slap them back, but he only hit arm because he couldn’t convince his eyes to open yet.

“Okay, point taken.” The face-slapping stopped. “Now open your eyes, come on. I need to make sure you’re okay.”

“Nugh.” He tried to roll over and go back to sleep. There was no need to be conscious when his face hurt that much. Why did his face even hurt? It was probably Scott’s fault—no, Malia’s. Liam’s? He’d been hit in the face by way too many werewolves in his life, was what he was discovering here.

Wait, Derek.

Derek had definitely been there.

“Derek?” Stiles pried his eyes open to Chris Argent’s face directly over him and blinked in confusion. That was not Derek.

He dragged his eyes past Argent to the ceiling, then to the underside of the coffee table he was partially lying under, to the papers sticking out over the edge.

Derek. German documents. Nazi. Mason.

“Nazi!” he exclaimed, and tried to sit upright between the couch and table, but Argent held him down.

“Easy, easy, don’t rush it. You were out pretty good.”

“The Nazi—no, Mason, there’s something up with Mason. He decked me!” He tried to sit up again, and again, Argent stopped him.

“Yeah, I know, he got me too. When I woke both he and Schmitz were gone. Scott and the pack are out looking for them right now.” He was moving his head around but keeping his intense blue gaze fixed on Stiles’ eyes—probably checking for a concussion, Stiles realized, but it was really just making his face hurt even more trying to follow.

“They’re all useless trackers,” Stiles informed him thoughtlessly, and maybe he did have a concussion, because he wasn’t supposed to tell stuff like that to hunters. He tried to push himself up again, slowly this time; maybe he’d be thinking clearer if he wasn’t on the floor.

“That’s why Harvey went out with them. He’s one of the best.” This time Argent let him stand, and eased him up onto the couch with a hand on his back. “Feeling okay? Any nausea? Dizziness? Vision issues? Did you hit your head on the way down?”

“Doesn’t feel like a concussion this time.” And that would’ve been embarrassing after all the weird and badass injuries he’d gotten over the years—concussed from a werewolf punch. From a sixteen year old. “Why didn’t you go out with them?”

Argent looked at him like he’d said something remarkably stupid, which he was pretty sure he hadn’t. It was a valid question, as far as he was concerned. “You were unconscious on the floor, Stiles. I wasn’t going to just leave you there.”

“Why not? You let your dad beat me up in your basement.”

Stiles blinked, eyes wide with horror as what he said caught up to him. Wow, pain really did make him cranky. He hadn’t actually intended to bring up that particular sore spot anytime soon.

Chris just looked very tired, sitting on the edge of the coffee table across from him. He fixed Stiles with his intense look, and asked bluntly, “We’ve both just been knocked out by a werewolf, do you really want to have this conversation right now?”

“Not even remotely,” Stiles answered honestly, and Chris nodded before standing.

“I’ll get you an ice pack. Text Scott, let him know you’re okay.”

*

“How’s the face?”

Stiles glared at Scott around the package of frozen corn held against his eye. He hadn’t moved from his spot on the couch yet; Chris had brought him ibuprofen and told him to wait a bit before driving anywhere, just in case. In that time his face had only started to hurt more, and he realized Mason had taken off with his computer in the big jailbreak, so great.

He wasn’t in the mood for anything right now.

Scott winced, now taking the spot on the coffee table where Chris had been sitting earlier.

“Yeah. Want me to…” He held out a hand, and Stiles only hesitated a moment before taking it. The pain started to ease almost immediately, the cool relief snaking through his veins in the same pattern as the black that spread through Scott’s.

“So Mason,” Stiles started pointedly, because they had to have this conversation even though he really didn’t want to right then.

“So Mason,” Scott echoed with a sigh.

“Any idea what’s up with Mason?”

Scott shrugged, eyes fixed on their hands. “Maybe the alpha was controlling him? We’ll have to ask him when we find him. Wherever they went, they hid their scents well.”

“You didn’t find anything?”

“Just Mason’s cellphone, so we can’t track him with that. The pack’s still out there looking, and Harvey was going to try a few other tricks, but other than that…” He shrugged again, and squeezed Stiles’ hand briefly before letting go.

Stiles couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Scott so down.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just...I was hoping we’d get to help someone for once instead of fighting them.” Scott kept his eyes down on all of the papers Stiles and Mason had been going through, still spread out all over the coffee table. Then he muttered quietly, “I’m so sick of fighting everyone. And being wrong about everyone. I can’t believe I trusted him.”

This was all getting a little too self-hating.

“Hey, no, you didn’t trust him this time.” Okay, so Stiles might not be the best person for this conversation; the whole Theo thing was still a little too fresh. “Not immediately jumping to the worst case scenario isn’t trust, it’s just not being a paranoid freak, as you all love to remind me. None of us knew how bad he was, or that he would...do whatever he did to Mason.”

“How was he controlling him?” Scott asked the otherwise empty room. “Alphas can’t just control any beta, they have to be in the same pack.”

Stiles shifted his corn. “You don’t think he would...switch?” But even as he said it, he know that was a stupid suggestion. Scott clearly thought the same.

“He’s a crazy, murdering Nazi. This is Mason.”

“Yeah, just throwing it out there.”

“You got punched, it’s understandable.”

Stiles leaned his face and corn into his left hand, suddenly too depressed to hold his head up. “I got so punched, Scotty.”

Scott patted his knee in sympathy, because there was really nothing else to be done. Just fall into bed with painkillers and try to refortify what little dignity he had left.

“Okay, I'm going to go home. You guys don't need me, do you?” He wasn't exactly the king of the wilderness survival skills and tracking. He hadn't even made it through two weeks of Boy Scouts.

“No, you go rest. Do you want me to bring you food later?”

Yes. His dad was on shift and he didn’t want to cook anything for himself, but that would involve human interaction, and after being punched that hard in the face, Stiles really just wanted to mope alone with six ice packs.

“Nah, I'm good. I think I'm just going to sleep.”

“Well at least drink some water before you go.” He picked up the still full glass that Chris had left. “Hydration is important when you're healing.”

Stiles gave him a flat look around his ice pack. “Dude, what is with the water?”

Scott was either being intentionally dense about it, or he genuinely hadn’t noticed, because he started to earnestly explain, “Staying hydrated helps keep your blood pressure up, which helps keep it oxygenated—”

“Scott!” Stiles interrupted before he got to full aspiring-medical professional level. “My blood is plenty oxygenated. It's so oxygenated it's probably somehow circled back around to unhealthy, now what's up with all the water?”

“What do you mean?” Scott frowned and put the glass back down next to him when it clicked that Stiles wasn’t going to take it.

“Have you seriously not noticed?” Scott just kept frowning. “The water, dude. The salads at lunch every day, the constantly asking if I'm okay, the body guarding Lydia from everyone—have you really not noticed that any of this is strange?”

The frown deepened.

“Is this some weird alpha instinct now that you have betas? Are you going to start cutting up my food for me?”

Scott's concerned eyebrows dropped down into a half-hearted glare, but at least it was some kind of reaction. “There’s no point, you basically swallow everything whole anyway. And I'm just worried about you guys. The year so far was...intense, I just want to make sure you're all okay.”

“Yeah, obsessively.” Stiles really wanted to make sure that part was clear, because it was starting to get seriously annoying. “Anything you need to talk about? Because I've never peed this often in my life.”

“That's because you don't drink anywhere near the recommended amount of water.”

“See that's what I'm talking about. That's a weird thing to notice about your friend. I have no idea how much water you drink, so explain. Dig deep. Hit me, come on.”

Scott stared just above Stiles’ head for a moment, and Stiles waited patiently for him to get himself together. Then he finally shrugged with faux nonchalance, “I didn't do anything for Kira, and I don't want to make the same mistake again.”

He almost mumbled it, and Stiles had to lean in and play it over in his head a few times to fill in the gaps. Then take a second to realize what he was talking about.

“What could you have done for her? The fox spirit inside her was trying to take over, that sounds like something she needs to deal with herself. In a controlled environment with no swords, preferably.”

“I noticed something was off and I didn't say anything! What if she could've caught it earlier and controlled it? She could've finished senior year with us.”

The with me went unsaid, but was fully implied.

“Dude, how could you have possibly known what was going on? Kitsunes are kind of new to us. If her own mom—a very experienced kitsune, by the way—didn't see it and know what was happening, there's no way you could've either.”

“I should've said something. I should've talked to her about it. I should’ve made sure everything was alright.”

“Okay, maybe you should’ve, but you can’t change that now. And believe it or not, it’s not your job to know everything about everyone and micromanage their meals. I’ve made it this far in life feeding myself, I think I can handle it.”

“Barely. Your weight fluctuates constantly.”

“Again,” Stiles pointed to him, “that’s not normal. Seriously, is this a new alpha werewolf ability, eyeballing your pack’s weights to keep them healthy? Do you weigh me in my sleep?”

“You’re really overthinking this alpha thing.” Stiles tried to make sure his half-showing expression properly conveyed that’s not a no to the sleep weighing thing. “It shows in your face. But if it really bothers you that much, I’ll stop. I’m just worried about you, man.”

“And I’m worried about you. This self-blaming, taking responsibility for everything you didn’t know enough about to stop? Stop it.”

Scott grinned and raised his eyebrows in a significant way that was trying to say a lot of things.

“Sounds like exactly what I've been trying to tell you, with your hypervigilance and obsessive research. You can’t know everything all the time.”

Damn it, not fair, bringing it back on Stiles like that.

“Yeah well you know what they say about seeing your faults in others. Now I'm going home and I'm going to sleep on a bag of frozen corn.”

“Drink your water,” Scott countered immediately, picking up the cup again and handing it over.

“No, seriously, dude. I have to pee like every half hour, teachers are starting to get suspicious.”

*

Stiles sulked through the drive home and all through a large bowl of leftover pasta on the couch, because he really didn’t feel like making anything better, and Derek’s excellent soup was gone.

It wasn’t a pretty sight, with a fresh bag of frozen blueberries pressed to his face, but no one else was around to see it so he sulked as much as he could in the time he had. He’d been punched by Mason, his face hurt, and there was a murderous psycho Nazi werewolf on the loose. Again. He was allowed a little private sulking time while his face throbbed.

He was ignoring it all though, just turning all his attention to the trashy TV he had turned up to distract him from his tinnitus and the lazily surging panic in his mind that he was also ignoring.

So with ringing in one ear, and idiots trying to hunt Bigfoot in the other, and his focus split between a bowl of pasta in his lap and balancing the blueberries on his face, it was only understandable that he’d miss hearing someone come in through the front door.

And given his day so far, his yelp at the sudden shadow appearing in the doorway was expected, really.

“I knocked,” Derek stated, almost accusingly as he walked the rest of the way into the room.

“Try ringing the doorbell next time!” Stiles shouted back, still a little too freaked for volume control, because in all the excitement, he’d kind of forgotten that Derek was on his way back to town. He was the last person Stiles was expecting to appear in his living room—the Nazi was actually higher up on the list, considering his luck.

Derek raised an eyebrow, and said kind of judgingly, “I did, it isn’t working.”

Stiles waved that away, because yeah, now he was remembering that they needed to fix that, or at least put up a sign or something. They kept missing package deliveries even when they were home.

“Just sit down, you’re making my face hurt even more.” He pulled up his feet to make room and moved his bowl of sad comfort pasta to the coffee table. Derek wrinkled his nose at it, but Stiles didn’t give him an opening to comment.

“Are you okay?” Derek asked instead

“Fine,” Stiles answered reflexively with a shrug, and put his blueberries back on his face. At this point, dulling the throbbing trumped his own dignity, even in front of the demigod of chiseled beauty that was Derek.

“You sure about that?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because I haven’t smelled this much anxiety in a room since I asked a freshman to see me after class, and she thought she was about to be expelled for not double-spacing her paper.”

Stiles gaped, thrown off by both the image of Derek asking someone to stay after class (hopefully the anxiety covered up any other reactions) and the fact that Derek was willingly talking about any kind of emotion besides righteous anger.

“Well you’re not supposed to call me out on it!” Stiles finally sputtered. “You never used to, let’s go back to that Derek—threaten me, push me into something. That’ll help me feel better.”

This time Derek’s face dropped into a glare, and something in Stiles settled at the familiarity.

“Okay, now we’re getting there! Just flash some fang and we’re set.”

There wasn’t fang, but there was a bit of a shitty sneer, so Stiles counted it as a win.

“See? I’m feeling better already.”

“I’m so glad,” Derek deadpanned, clearly not believing it, but Stiles actually was feeling a bit better. Sulking off to be alone when he was freaking out and in pain like some kind of pissy cat hadn’t been his best idea, he could admit it, but now that he had someone with him, he was settling down a little. The constant itch under his skin was calming.

It didn’t hurt that it was Derek he was with either. For all their fighting and threatening and near-death experiences over the years, the guy was weirdly calming.

Maybe it was the eyebrows. They were eyebrows that gave you the feeling of safety because they would scare off other predators.

Stiles scooted down in his seat a little more. “Want some pasta?”

Derek looked down in his bowl and raised a judging eyebrow. “I’m fine.”

Stiles clutched the bowl to his chest. “Hey, don’t judge my comfort food! I got punched!”

Derek looked at him for a long moment, staring at his face intently until it almost got uncomfortable. “You’re out of everything else, aren’t you?”

“That’s not the point.”

“I can make you something if you—”

“I’m fine!”

“Do you me want to order some—”

“No!” Yeesh, since when was he surrounded by a bunch of food snobs? “I know it’s sad, but just let me do this. I’ll be fine by morning.”

Derek raised a hand in surrender and turned back to the television. And if Stiles’ chest jumped when his knee lightly tapped his, Derek was gentleman enough not to mention it.

“Are we really watching this?”

He was so not a gentleman.

Of course Derek would be a douche about watching trashy television. He probably only read history books in his spare time, or watched wholesome documentaries on the environment like a loser.

A really endearing and attractive loser, but a loser all the same.

"Yes, we’re really watching this, because I got punched in the face.”

“If I let you punch me, can we change the channel?” Stiles just glared at him with his good eye. “Why do you watch this garbage? You know it’s all bullshit, right?”

“Of course I know it’s bullshit, but it’s nice to imagine that I could someday go wandering through a forest somewhere and not encounter a terrifying monster that wants to kill me on the spot.” Watching idiots traipse around through the woods and not get mauled by rogue, insane alphas was a nice escape. Like an anti-horror movie.

“Well not in that forest, anyway. They’re looking in the wrong region,” Derek said dismissively.

Stiles internally sighed and resisted, resolutely staring at the television where witnesses were emphatically defending what they saw.

His eye twitched and he gave in, turning to look at the werewolf sitting next to him. “You better be kidding.”

“Everyone knows Sasquatch are found in the northwest.”

Stiles narrowed his eye, trying to wait him out into some kind of reaction, but Derek was totally unflappable. He just kept right on watching TV, occasionally making a minor face when one of the “experts” declared something to be fact.

He was such a dick, and he was so Stiles’ type.

*

When Stiles woke up the next morning on the couch, his face was throbbing and he was being smothered to death by three heavy blankets piled on top of him, both of which were new sensations for him.

Well, relatively new.

He’d woken to a throbbing face before, but that was from a geriatric hunter with a mean right hook, not a werewolf who could probably kill him with a pinky flick if he was mad enough.

But the blankets...

The Stilinski men got cold easily and both had an aversion to paying large heating bills; now that they made an effort to spend more time together, it wasn’t uncommon to find them both bundled up on the couch watching television. They liked their layering clothes and their heavy blankets, but they got their heavy blankets so they would only have to use one each and keep extra bulk on the couch to a minimum. So why Stiles was currently sweating through three was beyond him. His dad knew better than this. They were experts.

He kicked them off and reveled in fresh oxygen for a moment. Fresh, cool oxygen, that almost immediately got too cold, but he welcomed it. He was suffocating under all that, his elbows were sweating.

A spoon hit the bottom of the metal kitchen sink, signaling his dad was up and about, so Stiles hauled himself up to go join him.

His dad was just settling down at the dining table, a plate of eggs in front of him and a mug of coffee in his hand, one eye on the newspaper. He looked up, saw Stiles’ eye, and winced over his coffee cup.

“That bad?” Stiles croaked as he dropped into his usual seat and regretted it immediately when the impact jolted through his eye like a second punch.

“It’s not great.”

“Doesn’t feel great either.”

His dad kept staring, looking pained. “Jeez, kid, you’ve got one hell of a shiner.”

Stiles sighed. “Great, can’t wait to hear that rumor at school.” Maybe it would miraculously fade before Thanksgiving break was over.

His dad set his paper down and gave him his full attention. “You know, there was one point in your life when you were excited that there was a rumor about you going around.”

Stiles knew exactly what he was talking about, and there was a big difference between the rumor that he’d kissed Grace behind the tool shed in third grade, and the one saying he was in some kind of fight club and should be avoided at all costs.

Being the weird threatening kid wasn’t the kind of attention Stiles wanted—he didn’t want any attention, in fact, but certainly not the kind that made teachers take notice and send troubling notes home to his dad.

“Yeah, well I wasn’t hiding werewolves back then, just a really sweet TMNT action figure that I stole from Jackson.”

His dad raised his eyebrows, and at that very moment, Stiles remembered the absolute shitstorm Jackson had kicked up in his accusations, that both families were dragged into the principal’s office a number of times over that action figure. Lines had been drawn between factions of the class, and by the time the dust settled, Stiles had been grounded three times and Jackson had a new scar.

Stiles and his dad had let it quietly die with no resolution, and here he had to go dragging it back out again. It was morning, he’d just woken up! His defenses weren’t primed, or—or maybe he did have a concussion after all...

“He tripped Scott during gym, Dad, I couldn’t let that stand.”

“I knew you had that toy,” his dad insisted, stabbing his sheriff point into his face. “I never found it, but I knew. Where did you hide it?”

“I buried it in a shoebox out in the preserve. You think I was dumb enough to hide that in the house of a cop?”

He raised his eyebrows while his dad just narrowed his eyes, shaking his head slightly. “You have no idea the hell Whittemore put me through over that toy. When this is all over, you’re digging up that stupid thing and mailing it off to Jackson. And paying for the postage.”

“What? Dad, no, I won!”

“I will drive you out to the preserve and stand over you myself if I have to. That toy is going back to its rightful owner.”

Stiles couldn’t help sulking a little. “And right after I’ve been concussed too.”

“Oh, you’re fine. But I’ll even get you an ice pack because I’m such a loving father.”

He clapped Stiles on the shoulder just a little harder than necessary on his way out to the kitchen, and Stiles was proud that he only let out a little bit of a whimper. He folded his arms on the table and very carefully put his head down on them.

“God, even the wendigo bite didn’t hurt this much,” he muttered at the table, maybe half at his dad in the kitchen, and that was taking into account the stiffness he still had from the scar.

He felt so old these days.

“Wendigo?” Derek’s voice suddenly asked out of nowhere, and Stiles shot up with a yelp. Derek’s eyebrows, when he found them, barely twitched where he stood through the kitchen doorway next to the coffee maker, a fresh mug in his hand.

“Holy god, how long have you been here?” It was at that moment Stiles realized he didn’t remember Derek leaving the night before, because he’d fallen dead asleep at like 7pm.

“I got here an hour ago,” Derek answered, then continued without pause, “You were bitten by a wendigo?”

“Yeah, why? I’m not going to become one now, am I?” Derek seemed a little too concerned about this and it was making Stiles worry even more than the original encounter had.

“Depends on the legend. Feeling an insatiable hunger for human flesh?” He took a sip of his coffee as he wandered over to the table, now looking a little too unconcerned to be believable.

The guy was impossible to read sometimes—mostly when he was kidding around, because it was such a new development that Stiles didn’t have his tells down yet.

It was just another piece of the puzzle that was Derek Hale, and that Stiles desperately wanted to piece together.

“You really want to take that risk sitting next to me?” Stiles asked, leaning in a little.

“I’m not human flesh,” Derek countered, and effortlessly flashed a fang as he brought his coffee back up to his lips.

Still no tells. Nothing.

Nothing except a very mild attraction on Stiles’ end, but only the most mild.

A twinge, really, and it easily could’ve been hunger.

Hopefully Derek couldn’t smell anything over the coffee under his nose, but again, no tells.

This was getting beyond frustrating—he’d just woken up, he wasn’t prepared for Derek in his kitchen!

“You know what, Derek, it’s unfair to do this when I have a black eye. I’m in pain, I’m not on my game right now.” He pointed to his no doubt ugly bruise, because he wasn’t above pity points at the moment. “And also, being a werewolf won’t get you out of this one, that just means I get infinite snacks as you heal, so don’t look so smug, asshole.”

Derek put down his coffee and frowned. “Does it really hurt that much?”

“It’s a massive, fresh bruise on my very expressive face, of course it does.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Stiles sneered, which hurt, so he just put his face back down in his arms to pout in peace. Or as much as he could pout in peace while still hyper aware of the fact that Derek Hale was sitting a foot away from him at his kitchen table.

It was one thing to have Derek hiding in his bedroom as a fugitive, or in the living room at night when they were alone—and until five minutes ago he’d been half-convinced last night was some kind of stress hallucination—but during the day and with his dad home? That was a new experience. His two worlds had already collided a year and a half ago, but this was a second collision he honestly had never expected to happen and he wasn’t prepared in the least.

Derek and his dad.

Solving crimes and eating lunch together, and having a morning coffee.

What.

He jumped again as his dad’s hand landed in his hair again; he hadn’t even heard him come back into the kitchen.

But then the warm hand moved down to the back of his neck, and the familiar cooling tug of pain leaving his body brought the realization that the hand was not his dad’s, and then his stomach crumpled up as his heart freaked out.

“This okay?” Derek asked quietly, and it took Stiles a second to remind himself that he had to respond if he wanted it to continue.

“How much do I need to pay you to follow me around all day and do exactly this?” Stiles said into his arms, opting for a joke rather than crying from how good it felt to, A. Not be in pain anymore, and B. Remember how solid and comforting Derek’s touch was after a year without it.

It didn’t make sense, how good it felt. Zero. But that didn’t stop Stiles’ skin from breaking out in tingles all over, keep his stomach from buzzing with awareness and...other things.

Especially when Derek’s thumb started brushing lightly against the hairs at the nape of his neck.

It took a shocking amount of self-control to not moan out loud.

“Am I interrupting something here?” Stiles’ dad asked, and Stiles shot up as Derek yanked his hand back. His dad just raised his eyebrows, holding a real cold pack from their first aid kit instead of frozen corn, which explained why he took so long getting it.

“You—” Stiles swallowed, glanced at Derek’s steadily reddening face hidden behind his coffee, and then back to his dad. “What?”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He handed over the cold pack, smirking a little. “Slow down on that coffee there, Derek, wouldn’t want you to choke.”

*

Stiles didn’t like the significant look his dad gave him before leaving for work, so he ignored it and focused on Derek’s laptop, set up on the dining table after breakfast was finished.

“So what are you trying to find in this?” Derek asked, settling down on his right. He had a fresh cup of coffee. He drank it with sugar. It was adorable.

“I don’t know. Anything that might help us find Mason? Tell us about Schmitz?”

“Herzfeld,” Derek corrected, and reached over Stiles’ arm to take over the trackpad. Their arms brushed and Stiles might’ve died for a second.

“Right, Herzfeld. Whatever.” He tried to refocus. “Everyone else is out actually tracking him, and I’m just sitting here, so I might as well try and find something new.”

“They haven’t found anything yet.” Derek opened the cloud file and then let Stiles put in the password. When they both resettled on the table, their elbows were touching. Derek didn’t bother moving. “I don’t know how helpful this will be though. This was all forty years ago on another continent.”

“Well I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know Herzfeld, and I can’t even give suggestions on where to look for Mason because honestly, I barely know Mason at all.”

Derek frowned, and said in an entirely too judging tone, “Hasn’t he been in your pack for over a year now?”

“Oh, not you too!” Why was everyone getting on his case about this? “I’m sorry I’ve been a little more focused on supernatural threats and impending doom than sitting down and having a heart-to-heart with every new kid who wanders within a five mile radius of Scott.”

He didn’t appreciate Derek’s raised eyebrow one bit.

“Okay, fine. I should’ve made more of an effort, but there’s nothing we can do about it now, so shut up and focus. What I do know is that Mason is smart, he somehow manages to smile more than Scott, and he wouldn’t willingly hurt anyone, especially not his own pack. He was so worried about crushing me that he wouldn’t even hug me, and he was the one who asked for the hug in the first place.”

That was still hovering around the middle on his own personal Weird Shit-O-Meter. Not a 9.0 by any means, but probably about a solid 4. People didn’t ask Stiles for hugs. They just didn’t. He was a little prickly and he knew it.

“Has he always been big on hugs?”

Stiles scoffed, because what. “No? I don’t know, I can’t say I’ve noticed. You’ll have to ask Liam.” Then he noticed that Derek had his thinking brows on, and that made him straighten up. “Why?”

Derek thought for a second before carefully explaining, “Sometimes when a werewolf is surrounded by another pack, even if they’re incredibly close allies or friends, they’ll try to spread their own scent, on objects or people. It’s an instinct, unconsciously seeking comfort and home. Making a safe space that smells familiar.”

Stiles violently stomped down the urge to make the very obvious den joke. It was low hanging fruit, he was better than that, but there was also a much more important revelation to address.

“Wait, are you saying Mason isn’t part of the pack? But he is, Scott’s his alpha.”

Derek nodded hesitantly. “Maybe not. Accepting an alpha who didn’t bite you has to be a conscious decision by both parties. There isn’t the same natural pull.”

“And Mason was turned from Herzfeld,” Stiles filled in for himself.

Shit.

“If Mason has never completely accepted Scott,” Derek continued, “if there was any doubt on either side, he’s been looking for an alpha all along, and Herzfeld is powerful and an experienced leader. It’s instinctive for a new beta to seek that out.”

Stiles sighed, rubbing at his temples as he processed. The signs had been there all month and they’d missed them completely; the touching, the asking to be included, always wanting to help. Mason had been right there with them every day and no one had noticed anything off.

Just like Kira.

He closed his eyes. “This is going to crush Scott.”

“He’s still learning.”

“Yeah, but this seems like an Alpha 101 kind of thing, fully accepting someone into your pack. Seriously, is there a manual with all of this stuff in it somewhere?” Can you just stay forever, he didn't actually ask aloud.

“It’s not something most people would look for unless they’ve experienced it themselves. Scott’s always had his pack around him, and he’s always been in his own territory. There's no way he could've known, or even thought to ask.”

It wasn’t hard to read between the lines here.

“And you?”

A small and quick smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “I’m...settling in. College campuses usually don’t have one dominant pack with so many people moving through, so that makes it easier. Every werewolf there is in a similar situation.”

“What about here?” Now that he’d pointed it out, Stiles could see the pattern around Derek’s newfound casual touches. Even now their knees were touching.

“Having a hotel room instead of my own place makes it harder but,” he shrugged one shoulder, “it's not as bad as I was expecting.”

“Because you grew up here?”

His eyes flicked over to Stiles, and after a long considering stare that made Stiles’ heart pound inexplicably, he answered quietly, “Something like that.”

Which made Stiles’ heart trip over itself like that time he tried hurdling in track and field. At least this time he didn’t lose any teeth.

“You know,” he cleared his throat when his voice came out a little rough, “if you ever wanted, Scott would say yes in a second.”

Derek smiled softly—softly, so not fair! “I know he would. Things are better between us, but Scott will never be my alpha.”

Stiles could understand that. He wouldn’t want to be willingly following around Liam either, and unfortunately the little shit had taken over Isaac’s spot as Number Two Werewolf.

What he wouldn’t give for Isaac to come back some days.

Sometimes Stiles wondered what the pack would’ve been like if Isaac hadn’t bolted, if Jackson hadn’t been shipped off, or even if Derek hadn’t given up being alpha and stuck it out, rebuilt his pack. Would Beacon Hills be stronger? Would Scott still have become an alpha if the need hadn’t been there? Would the nogitsune have gotten as far with Derek’s pragmatic approach to eliminating a threat?

Would Allison still be alive?

“Did you ever think of trying it again?” The question came out before he really thought it through.

Derek’s eyebrow quirked up. “Becoming an alpha again?”

“Yeah, if you could? Without the whole...murdering another alpha part, I mean.”

“No.” Derek’s mouth pulled into a grin, but he didn’t hesitate. “I don’t want to.” He must’ve, whatever it was, smelled Stiles’ surprise, because he continued, “I was never meant to be an alpha. Clearly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pack fall apart so quickly.”

Again with the self-flagellation.

“Okay, to be fair, you were constantly under threat by insane alphas and psychotic Argents, but you don’t do so bad with Scott these days, I mean, you’re a freaking teacher.” Derek raised a disbelieving eyebrow. Stiles felt like he was mostly conversing with eyebrows here. “Look, I’d be the first to say you messed up in the past, but I can also tell the odds were unbelievably stacked against you. You’ve really helped us all out, you’ve grown.”

Boy, had he grown. Sometimes it was hard to recognize the Derek who climbed into Braeden’s SUV in Mexico, proudly smiling at the ragtag pack he was leaving behind, as the same scared and angry Derek who nearly concussed Stiles on his own steering wheel.

And his bedroom door.

And almost broke his hand.

“Really grown,” he added, and Derek raised his other eyebrow. “Hey, you were a dick back then, you can’t deny it.”

He huffed out a laugh through his nose, which Stiles took full offense to. “I was a dick. Right.”

“What! Given the situation, my behavior was exemplary.”

“You were an asshole who took every opportunity to get the upper hand that he possibly could.”

He was probably still pissed about the whole basically stripping for Danny thing.

“Yeah, and I still do, because it all comes down to the fact that you have superpowers and I have a bat, when I actually have it with me. I’ll take everything I can get.”

This time when Derek huffed out through his nose, there was more frustration than amusement, and he leaned in.

“You know, you are so—” He stopped.

Stiles raised his eyebrows in a silent challenge to continue with that, and he would’ve verbally demanded it, welcomed it to get another hit in, but then Derek cocked his head to the side like he was listening. And Stiles had learned the hard way that you don’t ignore the Head Cock.

He really needed to rename that move. Especially when referring to Derek.

“Someone’s here,” Derek announced, seconds before the front door burst open and angry footsteps followed. Footsteps in worn sneakers, kind of small and battered, so probably not an alpha of Aryan ideals.

“Where’s Mason?” Corey demanded, storming in through the living room.

Stiles swallowed his heart back down his throat and choked out, “What? What are you doing here? How did you even get in here?”

That was a lot of tension to come back from, and his mind was kind of stumbling over itself the same way his heart was.

“Doesn’t matter,” Corey said defensively, clearly trying to look intimidating, but he also looked pretty guilty underneath that. He always had that wide eyed guilty look.

“You can bet your ass it matters, and you’re paying for any repairs,” Stiles informed him, because his dad was far more understanding of damages now that he knew the crowd Stiles ran with, but understanding didn’t come with an unending bank account to fix those damages.

“Fine, but only after you tell me where Mason is. He said he was going to see Mr. Argent with you, I get an SOS email, of all things, and now he’s not answering his phone. Where is he?”

“Herzfeld took him,” Derek answered shortly, very bluntly, with zero sympathy; it was comforting to know that some things never change. “We’re trying to find him right now. What email.”

That didn’t calm down Corey in the least, and he took a few worried steps closer. “Is that the Nazi? How did he take Mason? Why didn’t you stop him?” He turned to Stiles. "Who the hell is this guy? What happened to your face?”

“This is Derek,” Stiles answered dismissively. “What email.”

“Right. Derek,” Corey repeated snottily, then continued testily, “Who is Derek and why is he here?”

Stiles gaped. One, because he didn’t like Corey’s tone at all, and two, he’d honestly forgotten that there were people in his life who didn’t know Derek. It was jarring, realizing that someone who was there through so many horrible and exciting times in the last few years, who fought with them and literally died for them right before Stiles' own eyes, barely registered as a blip on this kid’s radar.

What a shit.

“Hey, he’s a friend, you little punk, and he knows more about all this shit than you ever will, so zip it and tell us what email you’re talking about.”

“Stiles,” Derek said, and he’d definitely picked up that disappointed-but-somehow-also-patient teacher tone during the last year. That just wasn’t fair.

“What? He’s being a shit, and I get that you’re worried about your boyfriend,” he turned back to Corey, “but breaking down my front door and yelling isn’t going to get him back any faster, so unless you have something helpful to add, either leave or just sit down over there and shut up.” He waved an arm toward the living room, and honestly didn’t even know where he was pointing.

It would’ve been an excellent dismissal if Derek hadn’t totally undermined his authority by cutting in, “No, don’t do that. What email are you talking about.”

Corey finally seemed to pull his head out of his ass and get it back in the game. He took out his cellphone and poked around as he crossed the rest of the room to lean over the table.

“This one.” He held it out for them to read:

pack sos id

Stiles stared at it.

“This email was sent like two hours ago.” He looked from the time received to Corey’s wide eyed face. “Your boyfriend sent you an SOS, did you take a freaking nap before doing anything about it?”

“I had to find your address and take the bus over here! I don’t have any of the pack’s phone numbers except Mason’s and I don’t have a car.”

Stiles could feel Derek’s judging stare on the side of his face. He held up a finger. “Don’t, okay. I don’t want to hear it.”

For once, Derek listened, and instead turned back to Corey. “I’m assuming you understand this email perfectly,” he said in a carefully neutral tone that advised the kid to hurry up and explain.

Like that was all the permission he needed, Corey pulled out a chair and sat down. “He’s at this abandoned Chinese restaurant on the north side of town, it’s on Fifth down by the freeway ramps. We don’t know what it was called, but we call it Iron Dragon.”

Stiles squinted at him. “Are you saying you two willingly hang out on the north side?”

The north side of Beacon Hills was as close to an apocalyptic wasteland it could get without actually having an apocalypse. Everything was rundown, three fourths of the buildings were abandoned, there’d been an arson streak a few years before that still hadn’t been cleaned up—no one went to the north side who wasn’t looking for drugs or to get killed. Going there was essentially very violently assisted suicide, really.

Corey shifted uncomfortably. “Well no one cares about hearing weird sounds up there, and since our parents don’t know about all of this,” he gestured to Stiles and Derek, “we’ve been going there.”

Stiles looked over at Derek, who even though he was trying very hard to keep his face neutral, looked equally as grossed out and depressed at that. Seriously, between the two of them, they couldn’t find anywhere else in town to have sex? Mason had a car! Park it anywhere in the woods and go for it, like literally any other teenager in town!

Derek briefly met Stiles’ eye, then looking horribly pained, said to Corey, “Please tell me you two aren’t—”

“No! Not that!” Corey exclaimed shrilly, finally catching on, “Geez, we’re not—I mean not there—or yet, or—” He actually started to fade out of view before their very eyes. He literally disappeared when he blushed. “We’ve been going there to experiment with our abilities,” the chair mumbled.

“Hey man, you do you, but I don’t want to hear about it,” Stiles said, purely to mess with him.

“Oh my god, it’s not like that,” the chair continued, and Stiles caught Derek’s amused expression out of the corner of his eye. “He’s helping me learn to control...this.”

“He’s not doing a very good job,” Stiles pointed out.

“Trust me, I’m completely in control right now,” the chair muttered mutinously.

*

Despite the lingering tension from their...spat in the dining room, it was nice having Derek back in the jeep’s passenger seat. It felt just like old times.

Or at least the very early, terrifying, life-threatening old times when Derek had been dying of wolfsbane poisoning in that very seat, but old times all the same.

Only this time with kids in the back.

“That’s the place?” Liam sounded absolutely disgusted and unimpressed.

Stiles looked dubiously out through the windshield at the abandoned restaurant down the block, then back to Corey and Liam crammed uncomfortably in the backseat of the jeep.

“It’s not as creepy inside as it looks?” Corey tried, but Stiles had a hard time believing that. The place was just as post-apocalyptic as the rest of the north side, with large sheets of plywood over the windows and graffiti all over them, and small mountains of trash that had blown up against the building from the street and settled there.

Stiles turned around in his seat to give him a proper look.

“Dude. I’ve been in abandoned underground train depots more welcoming than this.”

Derek’s foot slipped right into his shin, and he hit him right back in the thigh.

“What do you guys even do here?” Liam asked, so judging yet so innocently that Derek turned around too. Stiles squinted at him.

“I told you, it’s not like that!” Corey snapped at them.

“Uh huh.” Stiles rubbed a hand over his mouth to hide his grin as he turned towards his window, toward Scott, on his way over from Hayden’s car that had been following them. An Argent SUV pulled in a second later.

Stiles rolled down his window as Scott reached them. He still looked grim and guilty, and he’d taken the news about as well as Stiles predicted, so, horribly.

“If they’re still in there, I can’t hear or smell them at all.”

“You wouldn’t be able to,” Derek spoke up, and they both turned to look at him. “Werewolves in the military back then were trained to erase all traces of themselves from other supernatural beings. He won’t let himself be heard until he wants you to know where he is, and he can force Mason to do the same.”

“Does he know we’re here?” Corey asked quietly.

“Without a doubt.”

“Alright, let’s stick to the plan,” Scott ordered with a decisive nod, and Stiles returned it with a dorky salute.

They all split up from there. Stiles grabbed the large bag of mountain ash from the small trunk of his car; he was going to be on trapping duty again, but this time much quicker since he had more ground to cover. It wasn’t a huge restaurant, but it was definitely bigger than the gas station.

Scott, Derek, Liam, and the Argents would cover the two exits of the restaurant, and once they were in, Malia and Corey would get in, get Mason, get invisible, and get back out to Hayden’s running car so they could get Mason as far from Herzfeld as fast as they possibly could. If anyone could handle an angry and possibly controlled Mason, it was the newly supercharged Malia.

They did all of this silently, not wanting to give Herzfeld anything beyond their heartbeats to go off of; that alone was bad enough, but they hadn’t exactly had time for a crash course in Completely Hiding Yourself from Werewolf Senses 101.

Stiles, Derek, Chris, and Harvey broke off around the back, leaving a thick line of Ash behind them, and the others headed for the front door.

Derek, Chris, and Harvey positioned themselves around the door, poised to bust in, and Stiles nodded at them to check before continuing on. And definitely didn’t react to the light brush of Derek’s fingers on his arm as he moved past. Not in the least. He definitely didn’t feel it tingling all the way up to his shoulder and down to his fingertips.

But he did let his gaze catch on Derek’s as he turned the corner.

You know, for team communication’s sake.

Stiles didn’t hear the actual signal to enter the building, but he did hear both doors crashing down in unison. There was an earth-shaking roar that he was unfortunately familiar with by now, Scott’s answering roar, two quick bursts of gunfire, and Stiles picked up the pace.

By the time he got back around to the front, Malia and Corey had followed inside and Hayden’s car was screeching into the parking lot. She briefly nodded to Stiles for no reason he could find other than acknowledgement, and then pushed open the back door closest to the building, waiting.

Stiles closed the ash circle, threw down the rest of the bag, and crouched next to the line to wait for the signal. Which came what felt like a few seconds later in the form of Malia shouting, Stiles break the damn line as she came hurtling through the plywood-covered doors, eyes glowing vibrant blue with fury.

He scrambled to comply, wiping a finger through, and Corey and Mason shimmered into view as they crossed over after Malia. Mason roared and tried to fight his way back into the restaurant, threw Corey off at one point, but Malia was too strong now; they wrestled him into the back seat, Malia holding him against herself, they slammed the door, and Hayden sped off with squealing tires into the distance.

Mason was safe. Malia and Hayden were safe.

Stiles looked back towards the restaurant as another roar rattled what glass was still left in the windows.

Now what about the rest of his pack?

Scott was still in there, Derek was still in there, and Derek wasn’t an alpha anymore. Hell, he wasn’t even part of a pack, there was no way he would be able to take on Herzfeld as an omega, when even the Berserkers...

It still crept up in Stiles’ nightmares; back in Mexico, watching Derek struggle to speak, to even breathe, a bloody hole in his chest, and there was nothing he could do. There was no time to pause or say anything because Scott and Kira could still be saved if they hurried, and they all knew Derek was going to die either way.

But Derek survived, somehow, whatever the hell happened there, and Stiles got him back. He got a second chance.

Like hell he was going to sit in the metaphorical van again.

As dictated by The Plan, Stiles resealed the ash circle, feeling the hum through his chest that told him it had formed a barrier. There was no way Herzfeld was getting through it, not with his force of will and belief behind it.

Then he threw The Plan out the window, got his bat from his car, and ran into the restaurant after them.

*

Herzfeld got away.

All it took was one well-aimed Harvey tossed into the ash line and not even Stiles’ power of positive thinking could hold it together. He tried, he felt the line bend and stretch in the center of his chest, and he also felt the second it finally broke like a kick to the sternum, but Herzfeld took off into the city, and with the way he could mask himself, they had little hope of tracking him down the traditional way.

The guy had been trained in werewolf stealth during a world war; even Derek and his lifetime of knowledge couldn’t find any trace of him out there.

It was an inconvenience and a major concern that he was out and about again, and this time seriously pissed off, but they had Mason, everyone was alive, and they’d avoided any serious injuries that couldn’t be healed. Well, Herzfeld had made off with Stiles’ computer again, which he personally counted as a great loss, but no one else was anywhere near as concerned about that. They were, rightfully, far more concerned about Mason, and his roars of fury making a solid attempt to shake down the house.

They’d regrouped at the Argent cabin where they knew they could properly restrain him should the need arise; they had no idea how strong the alpha’s pull on him would be or what they would need to do to break it. After an intense conversation, Scott and Derek disappeared down into the basement, and while the roaring stopped, the yelling was perfectly audible through the floor.

Judging by the rattling china and the sullen, worried silence everyone sat in around the living room, not making eye contact, Herzfeld's hold turned out to be pretty strong.

“Any news yet?” Lydia demanded, suddenly storming down the stairs like a queen in her castle. Her hair was still down, but she looked rested, the dark circles under her eyes were gone, and she’d put together one of her outfits, and she just looked like Lydia again.

“What—” Stiles stood from his seat, wincing at the pull in his shoulder. “Lydia, what are you doing here? Are you okay?”

Her eyes called him an idiot, but she let him hug her with his good arm all the same. “Of course I’m okay, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.” She squeezed him again before stepping back. “Hayden told me what happened and I’m here to help.”

“That’s awesome,” Stiles started a little uncertainly, “but I don’t know what you can really do. This is kind of an alpha-beta issue.”

“I brought him back before, maybe it’ll help this time.”

Stiles stepped a little closer and lowered his voice. Corey, Liam and Hayden were right there in the living room, but they were more focused on their own conversation and Corey was just plain freaking out.

“Are you sure that’s safe? You just had metal put in your head to keep death from completely overwhelming you.”

Her head cocked to the side a little sharply. “Well I won’t know unless I try.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary anyway,” Malia cut in, also coming down the stairs. “Sounds like things are calming down in the basement.”

Stiles blinked. “Where did you come from?”

“Bathroom.” It was just a beat too late to be believable, but before he could say anything, she continued a little too loudly, “Something smells good!” And she swung around the banister and disappeared into the kitchen.

Lydia quickly followed but Stiles really just wanted to sit down again, so he dropped back into his chair and ignored the lovey young couple in the corner. Liam had his shirt pulled up while Hayden fretted over the large cut in his side.

Liam brought out all kinds of sides of her personality; apparently she wasn’t just an angry hardass. Stiles wasn’t entire sure she wasn’t about to kiss it to make it feel better.

He didn’t want to see it, so he turned back to look towards the kitchen where Harvey was baking what seemed to be shaping up as apology cookies. Or apology bread, maybe scones—possibly all three. He seemed to feel really bad about being thrown by a psycho super werewolf Nazi, something no one could really blame him for, because everyone had gotten thrown by him at least once.

Stiles rubbed his newly sore shoulder not even trying to hide his openly jealous glare towards Liam as his side gash visibly stitched itself back up. Stiles was going to be sore for two weeks and the little shit could be back at lacrosse practice the next day if he wanted.

Unfair.

He jumped when something touched his shoulder, and then again when the cold registered, and he whipped around (painfully) to Derek holding out an ice pack.

Jesus, he hadn’t even heard him come up the basement stairs.

“You should ice that,” he said, and pressed it to Stiles’ shoulder again.

“Oh, uh, thanks,” Stiles said haltingly, and reached back to hold the pack in place. But Derek didn’t let go of it, and instead started to probe around the joint with his other hand.

“It wasn’t dislocated, was it?”

“Uh, no? I think there would’ve been more screaming in pain if it was.” Stiles had never done it personally, but just from what he’d read and seen online during a somewhat morbid search binge, it wasn’t enjoyable.

Derek nodded but continued his inspection. Stiles had no idea what to do here, but he didn’t want it to stop. Derek’s hands felt really good, warm in contrast to the cold pressed against his back. And just because Derek, to be honest.

“How’s the range of motion?”

Stiles raised his arm to carefully move it around, feeling the stiffness that was usually there with the new soreness of freshly forming bruises. And also Derek’s hand sliding down to the elbow, helping support his arm like he was worried he was seriously hurt. Oh man.

Derek was gentle.

Someone coughed and Stiles jumped violently, jarring his shoulder like an idiot.

“You two want some privacy?” Hayden asked dryly, as if she could talk.

“Come on.” Derek gently pulled Stiles up. “We should check for bruising.”

“Yeah, sure, bruising,” Liam muttered to Hayden as they left the room

“Dude, seriously, it’s not that bad,” Stiles protested, a little weakly because Derek’s warm hand was still on his back and he didn’t want it to go anywhere. “It’s just a little sore, nothing I haven’t gotten from lacrosse.”

“There’s a big difference between falling in lacrosse and being thrown into a wall by an alpha werewolf,” Derek responded, and pushed him into the first empty room with a door they found. It looked like Chris’ study, the shelves lined with books and a solid desk in the center of the room—the same setup he’d had in his old apartment, almost exactly.

“Sit down and take off your shirt,” Derek said, pointing to one of the chairs as he closed the door, and there was no way he couldn’t hear the way Stiles’ heart started beating a little faster and the implication.

Why had he worn a pullover hoodie for this? He should’ve worn a t-shirt, at least then he could’ve just pulled up the sleeve and called it a day, but no, he had to want to be warm that morning like an idiot.

When Derek turned back and Stiles still hadn’t moved, he sighed. “Would you be more comfortable with Lydia or Malia?”

That got him moving, quickly pulling off his shirt before he could over think it even more. “Nope! No, this is fine!”

Lydia still hadn’t seen him shirtless before, and he was perfectly fine with that continuing given the totally ripped hunks she’d dated in the past, and Malia...well, the one time he’d pulled a muscle with her, she tried to punch it back into working order. First aid wasn’t her forte.

“So how do you even know what to look for here?” Stiles asked through his shirt as he somewhat struggled to get it over his hurt shoulder. Mobility was a little limited—something to take note of. “I mean, have you ever even had a bruise before?”

There was a pause while Stiles continued to struggle, but he was pretty sure he heard a quiet, “I just looked it up,” through the fabric pressed against his ears.

He finally whipped his shirt off. “What?”

“Turn around,” Derek said instead of repeating anything. Damn Stiles’ bum ear and his bum shoulder, now he would never know! All he had to go on was Derek’s slightly pink ear tips—were they always like that? That was kind of adorable—and the way he was staring very intently at Stiles’ shoulder instead of meeting his eyes.

“No need to get bossy,” Stiles muttered as he shuffled around. The sleeves of his shirt were still stuck around his wrists, pulled inside out over his large hands, so he focused on untangling all that and not the prickling all over sensation of knowing Derek was staring at his bare back.

Bareback.

Stiles focused a little harder on his shirt, but Derek still wasn’t saying anything so that was only going to last so long. Stiles’ mind really liked to poke at the things he repeatedly told it not to, so it was only a matter of time before it stormed into thoughts of full on—

“Is it that bad?” he joked weakly, cutting off those thoughts right there.

Derek was silent for another long few seconds, then,

“Is this—” Stiles jumped at a light touch on his shoulder, but not where he hit the wall. It was higher up, closer to his neck. The scar from Donovan.

It was a little lighter now, more fresh pink skin than an angry dark red scab, but it was still very clearly a funky looking bite that healed strangely. Neosporin could only do so much with something like that, and he was honestly just glad it hadn’t gotten infected.

“Wendigo, yeah. Provoked the wrong person, you know how I am.”

Again, Derek didn’t say anything. Instead he brushed his finger over the scar, and Stiles’ shoulders immediately erupted out in goose bumps, washing down his arms to his fingertips. He shivered and Derek immediately stepped back.

Holy shit, he was just as...nervous? about this as Stiles was. Maybe nervous wasn’t the right word, but very aware of the tension between them, and clearly Stiles wasn’t alone in not being entirely confident about how to proceed.

“Sorry, still sensitive. Scar tissue and all.” Stiles glanced over his shoulder to see him smirk.

“Again, I wouldn’t know.”

And they were back in familiar territory.

“Yeah, you just love to rub that in, don’t you? Now do your job. How’s the bruise?” Stiles turned back around briefly to let out a relieved sigh at another heavy moment survived without actually combusting on the spot out of sheer...fluster? Was that even a word? Because Stiles was definitely flustered.

Derek cleared his throat and said, voice a little rough, “It’s not too dark yet, but it looks like it’ll get big. You can move it alright?”

“There’s a little restriction, but nothing to be concerned about yet. I told you, it’s nothing worse than I’ve had in lacrosse.”

Derek nodded, looking satisfied and a little bit awkward, especially now that he had nowhere to put his hands. Oh man, he was just as flustered about this as Stiles! Suddenly everything didn’t feel so intimidating—Derek wasn’t the smooth and experienced older man, he was freaking out a little bit too!

“Be honest, you just wanted to get my shirt off.”

Derek opened his mouth to respond, and Stiles couldn’t wait to hear how he would take it, but instead of that, he just got Scott’s muffled voice through the door groaning very much loud enough for even Stiles to hear, “Oh come on, guys, really?”

That was all the warning they got before the door opened to Scott’s disapproving frown, which then turned grossed out when he saw that Stiles did not, in fact, have a shirt on.

“Dude.”

“Dude,” Stiles returned, because Scott was totally...not a cockblock, that definitely wasn’t on the table for the immediate future, but a snarkblock? Stiles genuinely just wanted to see what Derek would say to that.

“Dude.” Disappointment, a lot of judgment at their bad timing. “Mason’s okay and ready to talk, so if it’s convenient for you…”

“Oh! Shit, yeah!” Stiles scrambled to get his half inside out shirt back to rights and jammed it over his head, throwing his arms kind of through armholes. “We’re all good now?” he asked through the fabric, “officially pack and everything straightened o—ow!”

Yep, definitely some restricted movement in that shoulder.

“Take your time.” Scott did not sound all that pleased, but Stiles couldn’t see his face to tell for sure. He was kind of stuck and his shoulder didn’t want to move again. “It’s not like we’re in a rush to find a Nazi or anything.”

Stiles regretted the day he introduced Scott to sarcasm.

“Oh, and if you need help getting your shirt back on, I’m sure Derek would be more than happy to volunteer.”

At least Stiles’ sweatshirt was covering the violent blush all over his face.

*

Mason looked exhausted but happy, sitting on the couch with Corey holding his hand. There was a plate of muffins on the coffee table in front of him, and he was already going to town on them. Liam and Hayden were squeezed in next to them, Malia and Lydia were sharing a large armchair, and Scott and Derek were standing on either side of the last remaining empty chair.

Stiles dropped into it carefully, suddenly feeling both tiny but also kind of intimidating with his werewolves standing guard.

“Now that we’re all clothed,” Scott started a little tetchily, and Stiles shifted a little closer to Derek on his left. There was going to be a Conversation in their future.

Hayden grinned and nudged Liam. Stiles sent them his best stink eye.

“Mason? You ready to talk about Herzfeld?”

Mason nodded and put down his muffin. Next to two other discarded wrappers. Man, he worked fast.

“Yeah, he wants to find the rest of Operation Werwolf,” he said with a frown, and then explained what exactly that was to the rest of the room. “He heard me and Stiles talking about it through the floor before. I think he was supposed to join it before the Doctors got him, or he was told he was joining it? I’m not entirely sure. He was talking to himself in German a lot and I’m not great without the words written in front of me.”

“No, you did great,” Scott assured him immediately, and Mason smiled back.

“Okay, wait,” Stiles interrupted the love and positivity moment, “if he heard us, then he would know they’re pretty much all dead by now.”

Mason nodded. “I tried to tell him that, but he made me keep looking. He’s convinced they’re still out there somewhere.”

Hayden frowned. “Even if they are, wouldn’t they be over ninety by now? I don’t think they’re going to be launching an assault on the Allies from a nursing home.”

“They might be over ninety, but they wouldn’t be in a nursing home,” Derek cut in. “Werewolves live longer and stay perfectly fit well past a hundred. Our bodies don’t break down like humans’ do, especially born wolves.”

Stiles straightened at that and looked up at him. “Wait, so you guys don’t actually age differently, you just live longer? Cora made it sound like it was a whole different thing.”

Derek smirked. “Cora was messing with you constantly, she thought it was hilarious.”

“Must run in the family,” Stiles muttered a little grumpily, remembering literally every conversation he’d ever had with Peter. All he did was try to help, and all the Hales did was be difficult. Every last one of them. It was probably a good thing he’d never met Laura, she probably would’ve been exactly the same, and he could barely handle three of them as it was.

Well, four counting Malia, but she was too straightforward and literal about everything to actually mess with him, which was refreshing.

Also a bit boring, if he was being honest. Or as boring as Malia could possibly be—she definitely made up for it in other ways.

Derek, however, just smirked. The bastard.

Scott rolled his eyes at them and redirected the conversation. “So you’re telling me there could still be members of Operation Werwolf just waiting for an order to strike?”

“Assuming they still believe in the cause,” Derek pointed out. “They know the Reich fell, and if they’re still in the cities they were assigned, they’ve been living among very different societies for decades. Some might still be waiting, but others might’ve reformed by now.”

“As much as Nazis can reform,” Stiles muttered, then asked louder, “What exactly is he hoping to do if he finds them? They don’t report to anyone, they don’t have a country to fight for anymore, I mean, Germany isn’t exactly the murdering powerhouse it was back in the day.”

“Maybe he’s just looking for someone like him,” Scott suggested. “The war didn’t end for him and he’s on enemy soil. I’d be looking for someone on my side too.”

Mason pointed to him in agreement and added, “He’s lost and lonely, and he’s not going to find his people in the US, they were all killed during the Cold War before they could even really start their missions. Apparently their orders were to plant themselves in their assigned cities and build a pack so they’d have numbers and be ready when the time came.” He bobbed his head a little awkwardly. “He couldn’t build one here, so he’s looking for a pack, and the closest Nazi operative who might still be alive is in South America.”

Stiles felt his eye twitch. “You didn’t tell him that though, did you?”

“Um, yeah?”

“Dude, he’s got my laptop! Why would you tell the Nazi with my laptop to cross the border?”

“He was controlling me, I did everything I could to stop him!” Next to him, Scott raised his eyebrows in his he’s got a point face. Stiles hated that face, because he was totally right.

“Well—fine, that’s a fair point. But still! Replacing that is going to be expensive, and I can’t exactly go get it, because my dad still has my passport on lockdown from the last surprise trip to Mexico!”

Mason looked like he was talking crazy, which he was most definitely not. Not everyone had super wealthy parents who could buy laptops left and right.

“Dude, you don’t have to. We can track your computer.”

“No we can’t,” Stiles snapped testily, “I have location turned off.” See: his steadily compounding paranoia.

“Yes we can, I turned it back on,” Mason returned in an exact copy of Stiles’ tone.

Stiles blinked—both at the unexpected attitude from Mason, and at being caught off guard by how impressed he was. He was rarely impressed by anything these days.

Except maybe Derek, but that was a different story to be examined later when he wasn’t in a room full of werewolves with intrusive noses, Derek included.

Mason continued with a smirk. “He had no idea what I was doing on that laptop half the time. He couldn’t even turn it on himself until I stepped him through it. He knows he needs wifi to get to the files he wants, or look up any of Operation Werwolf, so it’s only a matter of time until he gets online again.”

Lydia reached over to smack his leg fondly, “Nicely done.”

Yes, it was nicely done, but now all Stiles could think of was Nazi little fingers all over his keyboard

He’d never be able to watch porn on that again.

*

From there, the day became a waiting game. Stiles’ dad checked-in regularly, confirming no sightings or sudden and gruesome murders had been called in. Mason kept glued to Argent’s computer in the study, watching for Stiles’ computer to come online, and Corey was pretty much glued to his side. Scott kept giving Stiles looks, Malia was anxiously/angrily pacing because waiting was not her thing, Lydia looked like she wanted to hurt all of them for bothering her, and Harvey was still baking.

The coffee table was practically piled with baked goods, everything from scones to eclairs, but he just kept on baking. There seemed to be an infinite supply, which Liam and Hayden had no problem scarfing down.

Basically everyone was going stir crazy—except Derek, who was seated calmly on the sofa, his laptop open in front of him on the coffee table (in the small space he managed to clear of desserts). Every once in awhile he would type something, but mostly he seemed to be scrolling and reading.

It was an island of peace in a ridiculous and high strung situation, so Stiles plopped himself down down next to him for some quiet.

Derek shifted slightly to make some room, and Stiles tipped into his side, too tired and sore to really do much about it. Derek didn’t seem to mind, he just adjusted his shoulder so they fit better. Two years ago, the thought of...cuddling with Derek on a couch would’ve sent Stiles to his knees laughing. Now, it was just...nice.

And he could snoop easily.

He squinted at the dimmed screen, ignored his sore eye, and frowned.

“Are you grading papers?”

As if to prove it, Derek highlighted a sentence and added a comment about needing a source to back it up. He even suggested a source right off the top of his head, and a couple alternative authors.

“I have to finish all of them by Monday’s class,” he responded, and scrolled down to the next page. “Part of the agreement for leaving campus early.”

Stiles watched him mark a few glaring grammatical errors and add a couple more comments.

“I know you told me all about this, but it’s really weird seeing it in person.”

Derek’s shoulder jumped slightly with a quiet snort. “You should see me lead a discussion.”

Stiles shook his head as much as he could without lifting it up. “Nope, still too weird.”

That time Derek didn’t answer, but he did lower his shoulder just enough that Stiles’ head fit a little further into the crook of his neck.

Oh no. Derek was comfy too.

That just wasn’t fair.

Stiles blinked sleepily; it was starting to get dark and he’d had a long day of stress, borderline maybe-romantic tension, and getting thrown into a wall. He just wanted to drift off right there on Derek. All he needed was a light blanket and he would have perfect sleeping conditions—he wouldn’t even need to layer up with the way Derek radiated heat.

He blinked again, hard, this time trying to stay awake, and dragged his eyes away from the screen, looking around the room.

Lydia was on her phone, Liam and Hayden had finally stopped eating and were whispering quietly, being all coupley, and Malia...she’d stopped pacing for a moment and was staring straight at Stiles, a blank and unreadable expression on her face. Her eyes flashed blue briefly.

Oh, damn.

Should he stay where he was? Slowly back away? Was she about to fight her own cousin for territorial rights? He had no idea what to expect here, she’d never looked at him like that before.

Before he could make any kind of questioning face back, she looked away, and resumed her pacing.

Lydia sighed and turned her phone to the side to play a game.

But it wasn’t much later that Scott burst back into the room, eyes on his own phone.

“Guys, I think we’ve got him!” He waited until Stiles clumsily pushed himself back upright before continuing. “Remember all those kids at school who saw my shift? I gave them all my number, you know, just in case they wanted to talk or had questions.”

Stiles waved his hand impatiently, urging him to get to the point already. He’d taken his head off of Derek’s very comfortable shoulder for this, after all.

“Well Aaron just texted me, Aaron Mackie? He found Herzfeld.” Scott held out his phone so everyone could see the slightly blurry picture of their Nazi, standing menacingly over what looked very much like a dead body, and behind him a sign that said Hanover Computer Repair.

The accompanying text read: IS THIS ONE OF YOUR THINGS???

*

“He couldn’t figure out how to use a computer so he took it to a repair store and killed the owner?”

Mason nodded, and Liam looked depressed by his own question. “He’s like my grandma.”

Derek raised his eyebrows.

“Minus the killing part,” Liam quickly elaborated. “She just can’t use a computer.”

“Thanks for clarifying, we never would’ve guessed otherwise.” Stiles couldn’t help the attitude that snuck through.

“Guys,” Scott sighed, “focus. He’s got Aaron, one person is already dead, we don’t have time for arguing. We don’t know how much longer Aaron can stall.”

Mason honest to god raised his hand. “We’re logged in remotely here, we could probably make trouble. Mess around with Stiles’ computer just enough to slow them down without being too obvious about it.”

“Good.” Stiles gaped at Scott’s quick acceptance. That was his life they were talking about destroying from within! “Anything we can do to keep Aaron useful to him and alive.”

“I can do that,” Hayden volunteered. “I know I’m not the best fighter yet, and I’m the newest to all of this, so unless you need me for numbers”—it looked like it was physically paining her to admit this—“I think it would be better if you didn’t have to worry about me.”

“I’ll stay too,” Lydia piped up, “I’m still recovering and I know Stiles’ computer, I can wreak havoc on it.”

Stiles felt both that surprise and betrayal like a kick to the chest. "Dude, could you maybe try to sound a little less thrilled about it? That’s my life you’re talking about, and I’d like it back intact after all of this!”

“You have it backed up, right?” He had to admit he did, and she immediately waved away his concerns. “We’ll pull together and buy you a new one before college, you’ll be fine.”

A second kick to the ribs was everyone else half-heartedly nodding their agreement.

“Wow, see if I ever help any of you ever again.” Stiles crossed his arms and sat back on the couch, brushing against Derek. He shifted slightly, pressing back into Stiles like silent support.

Stiles didn’t know for sure if that’s what it was, but that’s what he was taking it as.

“Stiles.” Scott had his earnest face on, jaw charmingly crooked and sincere. “We’ll get it back. Don’t worry.”

It was hard to hold it against him when he really did believe that.

“Corey,” Scott continued, and Corey looked both elated and terrified to be included in this. “We need you to get Aaron out. Get in unseen and get him to safety. Herzfeld already killed one person, we don’t want to give him another hostage." He got a confirming nod in response.

“Mason, you ready?” Scott gripped his shoulder, and it was like the sun shone directly out of both of them from all the goodness and belief focused in their radius. “You’re strong, we’re going to need you in there.”

Mason looked like he was psyching himself up for a football game, practically vibrating with energy and a determined enthusiasm in his eye. “I’ve got it. I can control it.”

Man, whatever talk he and Scott had in the basement must’ve done wonders.

Then his confidence faltered a bit. “But, are you sure we can take him? He’s basically invincible. Like, for real. The Dread Doctors made sure of it.”

“Yeah, I’d just like to remind everyone real quick,” Stiles started helpfully, “that they made him fight every kind of supernatural being they had, take their powers, and he was the last wolf standing.”

“Thank you, Stiles,” Scott said a little testily, but Stiles just wanted to make sure everyone remembered that frightening little detail. “So how do we beat someone insanely stronger than all of us?”

“Probably combined,” Stiles inserted again—just as a reminder. Most of the room glared at him. Someone had to say it.

“What if we don’t have to beat him with power?” Malia spoke up. “I still have those talons you gave me; if I wear them, could I steal some of his power? Make him weak enough to kill?”

“Oh!” Stiles pointed to her. “That’s how they created him, do we think it would work against him too?”

Derek was the one who answered. “I can’t imagine them creating a monster like him without having some way to take him down.”

“And he wasn’t a True Alpha,” Stiles added, and Derek bobbed his head in agreement, almost smiling. “He said he killed for his power. We should be able to take it.”

Scott’s voice brought them back to the general conversation. He was turned to Malia. “Do you know where the talons are exactly? Can you get them quickly?”

She nodded. “I’ll go now and meet you there.”

“Okay, we’ll take three cars,” Scott continued, now addressing the rest of the group, “Mason’s, Stiles’ and Derek, your SUV—”

“Wait!” Lydia interrupted sharply, and everyone stopped mid-scramble towards the door. “Malia,” she said meaningfully, “isn’t there something you want to mention right about now?”

Everyone’s heads turned in unison to look at her. She narrowed her eyes at Lydia and said stonily, “No.”

Lydia raised her eyebrows and Stiles couldn’t believe Malia wasn’t backing down from that expression. No one stood up to that expression, not even Derek.

“Malia, what’s wrong?” Scott asked, voice soft and understanding in the way Stiles knew just pissed her off. She was already starting to bristle under the attention.

This was not going to end well, and the last thing they needed was an intrapack conflict with an audience right before facing down a super Nazi.

“Alright, okay,” Stiles stepped in, taking charge. He pushed himself up from the very comfy chair, grabbed Scott’s arm and Malia’s, and dragged them both into the bathroom down the hall. Lydia followed and shut the door firmly behind them while Stiles flicked on the old noisy overhead fan. He looked Malia dead in the eye. “Talk.”

She glanced at Scott briefly, like she wasn’t sure how he’d handle it, then said quickly, “Ever since I stole my mother’s power, my control’s slipping. I think it’s too much.”

“She was barely keeping it together today after fighting with Mason, and on the full moon,” Lydia continued when Malia didn’t, and then added a little quieter, “I had to use mountain ash.”

“That’s why you came here?” Scott maintained his composure much better than Stiles, who openly gaped while Lydia nodded.

“What? Why didn’t you say anything? I could’ve helped, I’m your…” He waved his hands around trying to imply anchor without coming off as an egotistical douche.

“We’re not together anymore, Stiles,” she responded bluntly. “I need to learn to do this on my own. I shouldn’t have relied on you as much as I did.”

Alright, fair point, if a little brutal to hear to his face with an audience.

“Why didn’t you come to me?” Scott asked, and Stiles could tell he was hurt by her and Lydia keeping such a major secret the last month. “I’ve been through this after Allison and I broke up, I could’ve helped you.”

“You’ve got enough to worry about with the new guys. I can handle it.”

“Not by yourself,” Lydia said a little testily. Stiles could tell they’d been having this argument for a while now, especially when Malia shot a very familiar glare at Lydia.

“So you can’t control what you have,” Stiles summarized for clarification and really drive it home how stupid this was, “and you were volunteering to take on more?”

“Who else?” Malia demanded. “Whoever takes his power becomes an alpha, and do you really think Liam is ready for that?” Stiles grimaced involuntarily at the thought. “Mason and Hayden are barely holding it together as it is, and we have no idea what more power would do to an alpha.”

“Derek could do it,” Scott suggested, but Stiles was already cutting him off.

“Derek doesn’t want it. He hated being an alpha.”

“Well he might have to anyway. We don’t have anyone else, unless you want to wait for Isaac to catch a flight.”

“Seriously, Scott? You’re still—” Stiles swallowed the rest of that sentence and rubbed his forehead instead. Now was not the time for a talk on treatment of Derek. “There’s no other way? What about Corey? What does he do, anyway?”

Scott’s face was already scrunched at the suggestion. “We don’t even know what he is. Do we really want to give him more power?”

Lydia made a humming sound in agreement. “Derek’s our best option.”

“Have you guys actually talked to him about this recently? He doesn’t—”

They all jumped at a knock on the bathroom door, and they had to reshuffle around the sink and toilet for Stiles to pull it open. Only to be met with Derek’s silently judging raised eyebrows.

“I’ll do it,” he said in typical martyr fashion, with no hint as to his personal feelings on the matter, and then he added to Stiles, “it’s fine. I can handle it.”

“You shouldn’t have to—”

Derek looked to Malia. “You’ve used them before? Can you control it?”

“It’s a lot at once, but yeah, you can stop.”

That was an interesting point Stiles had never considered. He thought the talons were an all or nothing kind of deal, but that didn’t make sense with the Dread Doctors and Herzfeld. If they took everything from him, they lost their work and their power source.

Derek turned back to him with a told you so kind of face.

“Could you all—” Scott started to ask, gesturing to his ear while Derek shouldered his way into the bathroom, and also directly into Stiles’ back so he could close the door.

“No, they’re all too new to this to focus their hearing properly. But if you’re planning to use this tactic in the future against other packs, don’t.”

Derek was so close behind him that Stiles could feel his words brushing against his hair and ear, and Malia frowned at him. He didn’t want to know what he was giving off, especially when his fairly recently ex-girlfriend was picking it up.

“Duly noted,” Lydia responded dryly from where she was crammed in between the pedestal sink and the wall. There were now five mostly grown adults crammed into this stylish half-bath.

“And if you’re still wondering about Corey, I would start looking into Fae, with the way he can vanish like that. I’ve seen types of Fae do something similar.”

They all stared at Derek in silence, until Lydia made a considering noise from the back.

That seemed to break the shock, because Scott asked a little defensively, “Are you calling Corey a fairy?”

Derek looked so close to rolling his eyes.

“F-a-e,” Stiles clarified, “less Tinkerbell, more...well, Lydia.”

“It’s a good start,” Lydia mused, “I hadn’t even considered it since none of the other Chimeras exhibit those behaviors, but it’s worth looking into. Thank you, Derek.”

He nodded.

“Now, with that settled,” Lydia continued, a little more impatience in her voice, “could you please open the door and let us out of here? I can’t feel my left leg.”

*

Hanover Computer Repair was in the most bland, beige, 1980's stripmall in town. That served a dual purpose: being so incredibly mundane that this entire situation was almost funny and kept Stiles’ spirits up, but it also made it damn near impossible to use mountain ash to the maximum effect.

Totally impossible, actually, because not even Stiles’ wild imagination and belief could stretch his bag of ash around a computer repair shop, a halal market whose name was written entirely in Arabic, a small craft store, and a frozen yogurt shop that had been trendy five years ago. He could make a line across the front of the computer shop, but that was about it, and he was half expecting Herzfeld to bust through the wall of yogurt machines into Very Berry.

They all paused outside of the repair shop; the windows were dark, the sign said closed, and it didn’t look like anyone was there. Most of the parking lot was empty, in fact, it was getting late and it was the night before Thanksgiving. These stores weren’t about to be having Black Friday sales.

“Can you hear them?” Stiles mouthed to Scott, mountain ash ready all the same.

“Both in back,” Scott whispered back, “Lydia has them distracted with your computer.”

Thanks for that reminder, Scott.

Scott looked to Corey, eyebrows raised in a silent question. Corey nodded, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then vanished from sight.

Derek opened the front door—left unlocked, probably Aaron’s doing—and closed it quietly again, presumably once Corey had crept through. Stiles really couldn’t tell either way. He could only watch the faces of the werewolves around him as they listened to what was happening inside.

He was the only human this time around; bullets and the usual traps hadn’t done anything against Herzfeld before, so Argent and Harvey stayed back, parked in the back of the lot, mainly on cleanup or emergency backup. Which just made Stiles all the more horribly aware of his own mortality among werewolves.

They sat in silence for another couple minutes, with nothing but Scott and Derek’s listening faces, and then—

Scott winced at the same time Herzfeld roared inside, and Derek wrenched the door open as the signal for them to move in.

Scott, Malia, Liam, and Mason all rushed inside, wolfed out and ready, and Stiles followed. He stepped to the side so Derek could move in, and held the door until he felt it being bumped by an invisible force. When he saw Corey and Aaron appear on the sidewalk outside, Aaron’s uniform shirt stained with blood, he pulled it shut and put down a line of ash.

Corey nodded, grabbed Aaron, who looked totally and completely shellshocked, and hauled him off to Mason’s waiting car. Their job was to get the hell out of there and somewhere safe. Stiles’ job was just beginning.

Armed with ash, this time with no bat, he crept around the counter and towards the back of the store, following the snarls and crashes of an all out brawl. While the front of the store and neat and tidy, looking very futuristic and Apple store-esque, the back was an entirely different story.

Back there, the store was a maze of metal shelves with all kinds of computers and components stacked haphazardly, packed in so tightly it was impossible to see more than two feet from any location. There were hundreds of laptops, ranging from seemingly new to the massive boxy ones from the 90s, large beige computers with floppy disk drives, and old monitors covered in dust that were over two feet deep and bent the shelving underneath them. The store was a graveyard for the last twenty-five years of computers.

And its owner, Stiles realized when he saw the body lying in a pool of blood.

He was very dead.

An orange Clamshell iBook smashed into the wall three feet from Stiles’ head and he hit the deck.

He had to get somewhere closed off—like down one of the aisles of shelving—put down ash around himself, hold onto the talons, and lure a psychotic Nazi alpha werewolf right to him. Then he would toss the talons to Derek, who would be coming up right behind him, and get the fuck back in his ash circle, duck, and hope there wasn’t much blood splatter.

It wasn’t ideal, but they needed the talons protected; if Herzfeld got his hands on them, he would only get stronger from this encounter.

“Hey, over here!” Liam yelled, trying to distract Herzfeld while Stiles scuttled behind him to duck down an aisle. “Germany sucks! Hitler was a coward! You lost the war!”

He just barely ducked in time to avoid losing his entire face to a single punch, but the punch definitely made it through the drywall into the halal market next door. Luckily it was already closed so no one came to investigate.

Herzfeld snarled and wrenched his fist back out of the wall while Liam booked it.

“I will kill you all!” he shouted, German accent shining through like a classic movie villain. “I’ve killed True Alphas before, Scott McCall, and they were no match for my power!”

Stiles crouched down and quickly laid out the circle around himself. He still had more ash, so if someone got seriously hurt, he could wall them off until it was safe.

“Do you know the downfall of every True Alpha?” Herzfeld continued, stalking back to the middle of the room, eyes eerily trained on Scott’s every move to Stiles’ right. “They are too good to fight to win. They cannot with their pure morals and strength of character.” He spat the phrase out like it was poison, and hell, to him it probably was.

“You want to know strength of character?” he continued, “Strength is fighting for your country, it’s sacrifice.” He totally had the bad guy stride down; one step forward, head snapping to the side to check down the aisle for anyone else he could kill on the way.

He was only two aisles down from Stiles. If he ducked down a little, Stiles could see him between a large old monitor and the shelf above it. It wouldn’t be long until he saw him now.

Mason leapt out of nowhere, full Beast size, roaring with everything—but still Herzfeld caught him by the throat and pulled him in until they were nose to nose.

“It’s loyalty to your leader,” he hissed.

From his ash circle, Stiles could just see Mason’s twisted face twist into fury and rage—very new emotions coming from Mason.

“You’re not my leader anymore.”

Herzfeld roared in anger, and Mason roared right back into his face, glass shattered from the front of the store. Scott launched himself back into the fight, just as Malia did the same from the opposite direction.

They had him distracted. Perfect.

Stiles dug through his pocket, gathering together the talons. He was ready and waiting, he just needed…

There, directly across from him, crouched under the repair desk, was Derek. His eyes glowed blue, waiting for an opportunity, for the signal. He had to keep out of sight until then—Herzfeld probably knew he was there, but as long as Malia and Scott kept him distracted...

Stiles nodded to him, Derek nodded back. They just needed the opening, but they were so close.

At least until Herzfeld apparently had the ability to throw out a shockwave of red—probaby pure alpha power and throw everyone off with unbelievable force, which, really?

Really.

Scott was launched through the drywall back into the front of the shop, Mason straight through into the yogurt shop, and Malia crashed right into one of the computer shelves, which tipped and took down the one behind it, right on top of Liam.

So much for overwhelming him and distracting him with numbers.

Stiles caught Derek’s eye and saw his plan a fraction of a second before he put it into action. He just barely had to to violently shake his head about it, then Derek’s apologetic expression registered, and there was nothing he could do to stop him. Derek was faster, he was stronger, he was infinitely stupider when he came to being a self-sacrificing idiot.

He dashed out from under the desk, kicked off the ground, and slashed down right into Herzfeld’s face.

Only to be caught by the throat, all his own weight forced down on it, crushing his windpipe and probably breaking a lot of things no human could survive. His hit landed, straight through to skull, but it healed even faster than Scott.

He choked quietly, Stiles heard a crack, then something cracked in his own mind, and he was moving before he really thought it through.

He wasn’t going to lose Derek a second time, not to some fucking Nazi whose shitty people and ideals had tried to wipe out both sides of Stiles’ family. Who just threw Mason and Scott through walls, tried to crush Liam, there were thick old shards of monitor glass sticking out of Malia in some terrible turning of the tables from the scar Stiles still had in his chest—

They weren’t going to have another shot.

So Stiles made a very quick and very stupid decision.

He swiped up the talons, jammed them onto his fingertips, sprinted out of his mountain ash barrier while Herzfeld was still distracted with Derek, and stabbed straight into pure Aryan muscle.

And nothing happened.

His fingers kind of hurt from stabbing straight into hard stomach, Herzfeld was still holding Derek by the throat and growling impatiently in that I’m about to murder you violently kind of way, but there was no surge of power or anything to suggest anything was happening at all.

It didn’t work.

Oh god, he was such an idiot.

Humans couldn’t do this shit, there was a reason no one had suggested this before.

He should’ve distracted Herzfeld and thrown the talons to literally anyone else—Alpha Liam digging himself out from under a cracked flat screen would’ve been preferable to being torn apart by a Nazi. Stiles’ grandparents hadn’t escaped Poland for him to die by Nazi, in California of all places, seventy years later.

Next to a computer that was probably from the 80s.

Derek kicked out, trying to get his attention back on himself but it didn’t work.

Herzfeld bared his teeth down at Stiles in a sadistic smile.

“Oh, fu—”

He tried to pull his arm back, at least get some kind of pitiful distance between them, but he couldn’t move his fingers. The talons wouldn’t withdraw from Herzfeld’s body, and Stiles’ fingers wouldn’t slip out of the talons. It was like they were magnetized. He was stuck.

This was such a stupid way to die.

But then he felt it.

Power.

Heat rushing through the veins of his right fingertips, through his arm towards his heart, seizing his lungs, gripping at his throat until he thought he would suffocate.

Herzfeld’s eyes glowed red with fury, boring into Stiles’ as he dropped Derek to the side like a forgotten toy and raised that same arm for the final blow.

The red flickered for a second, and the smirk faltered.

Stiles’ chest burned, and all he could do was close his eyes and scream.

There was a thud somewhere, more yelling, but he couldn't hear it past the roaring through his ears, the rush of pure power racing through his veins.

Someone was calling his name.

He forced his eyes open to Scott's worried eyebrows, the ones the made his entire face scrunch with concern, even when he wasn’t wolfed out. This was another level of worried brows, one that Stiles' rarely saw, and that meant that he was probably screwed. Everything was tinted red. That definitely wasn’t good.

“Stiles, you have to let it go!” He was saying, but the words weren't quite registering as making sense.

Let what go? The talons? They were probably fused to his fingertips at this point; there was no way the human body could withstand that much heat and not fuse to something—it was a good thing he'd worn a sweatshirt he liked because it was probably a part of him now. He would be buried in it.

“You took in too much, your body can't handle it!”

Stiles wanted to argue that point, he'd been working out sometimes occasionally when he felt like it and was up from insomnia. His body could totally handle it.

But he couldn't get his mouth to move beyond clenching his jaw so hard he could feel it through his entire skull.

“Stiles, remember what Deaton said? Energy doesn’t just disappear, it needs somewhere to go. You have to let it go.”

That was jogging something in his memory—Mason, chimeras, energy wasn't destroyed, it had to be transferred. Somehow he didn't think he could just shoot all of this into a nearby MacBook Pro like a cartoon wizard.

He forced his mouth to open, forced the air from his lungs through his throat,

“That doesn’t help me, Scott, I don’t know where to put it!”

Scott’s voice hesitated at that, and Stiles knew exactly why. Mason and Liam weren’t ready for this kind of power, they were barely hanging onto control as it was. There was no telling what more power would do to Scott, already an alpha and scared of what he might accidentally do, Malia was still constantly having to check herself—

“Me!” Derek’s voice shouldered in between them, and his familiar hands on Stiles’ shoulders felt blessedly cold against the heat—like a cool window in the dead of summer. “Give it to me, I can handle it.”

Stiles shook his head against the voice. It was rough, still hadn’t healed from being choked by Herzfeld. “But that would—”

“Stiles, do it!”

“You don’t want it!”

“Not as much as I don’t want you to die!”

“I don’t know—”

How, he was going to say, since the talons were really more for stealing power than giving it, and he really didn’t want to stab Derek in the stomach, but he couldn’t really say anything with Derek’s lips on his own.

Derek was kissing him.

There was a part of his mind thinking that it couldn’t possibly be that easy, that a kiss wouldn’t do shit when his entire body was on fire. But that part was very loudly overpowered by the rest of him reveling in how fantastic it was to be kissing Derek.

And it was really, really fantastic.

Aside from the fiery pain, anyway, and even that was easing. Evening out.

Fading to a warm red glow behind his eyelids.

Derek’s lips moved away, and Stiles waited two deep breaths before he opened his eyes. The pain was gone, aside from the soreness that came with a really hard workout and also supernaturally clenching his entire body. Even his butt cheeks hurt. Morning was going to be rough, he could already tell.

But not in that electrocuted for ten minutes straight kind of rough, so he was counting that as a win.

He wasn’t going to implode after all.

At least he didn’t think so. He stared at his hand, talons, still fused onto his fingers and glowing an ominous red. That couldn’t be good.

“Derek?” Scott’s voice broke through his dazed fog. Stiles dragged his gaze from the talons to Derek crouched on the floor, eyes squeezed shut but still glowing red through the lids. His face was pulled into a frown of concentration, carefully measured breathing through his nose, shaking fists clenched in front of him and blood dripping through his fingers. His entire body was shaking, vibrating with restrained energy.

“Derek?” Stiles breathed a little frantically, dropping down to his knees. He put a hand on his shoulder, like he could somehow draw the power back out of him, undo this clusterfuck that he’d caused. “Derek, are you okay?”

Derek growled.

Honest to god growled, and when he opened his eyes, they flared pure burning red into Stiles’, and then he transformed into a giant black wolf.

Fur rolled down his shoulders, down his arms, his face elongated into a snout, and even before he fully shifted, he took off on four legs in a streak of black and glowing red. The rest of the pack quickly stepped out of his way as he skidded out to the front of the store. Stiles felt that same pressure in his chest as the mountain ash resisted, but he breathed, let it go, and there was a crash of the glass front door shattering.

All that was left was Derek’s clothes, his same old tennis shoes he’d been wearing when he left from Mexico a year ago.

What.

“We can do that?” Liam’s very shocked voice called from behind a shelf, also sounding pained, but Stiles was already scrambling to his feet and stumbling after him.

“Derek!”

He was still a little shaky on his legs after everything, but Scott caught him before he hit the ground too hard.

“Stiles, he’ll be fine!”

“But I—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Scott said with quiet sincerity that was clearly only meant for Stiles to hear. “Let him be and he’ll come back when he’s ready.”

Stiles slumped back into him while his limbs kind of sizzled internally. He felt fried, but his chest felt broken.

“Oooh, Scott, I fucked up.”

Scott hugged him a little tighter, but he didn't deny it.

*

It didn’t take long for them to clear out of Hanover Computer Repair.

Argent and Harvey burst in shortly after Derek booked it, guns at the ready, only to find Stiles still lying pathetically in Scott’s arms and wincing every time Malia roughly yanked a thick shard of glass out her side. The memory of his own glass shard in his chest was still a little too fresh.

Herzfeld was alive, slumped against a truly massive old computer monitor that not even the force a fully grown man could budge, but he wasn’t moving. Whether he was unconscious or in a coma, Stiles couldn’t tell and really didn’t care either way.

The general consensus, confirmed by Scott with a final nod of authority, was that he would live out his final days in Eichen House, however long that may be. He couldn’t regain his alpha spark, he was barely even a werewolf anymore—they had no idea how long he would live with such a key part of his physiology from birth ripped away. Maybe he would live another seventy years and die of old age like any other human, maybe he would fade away in a week or two.

Either way, he would die in a six-by-six cell like the horrifying war criminal he was, locked away in a country he loathed. Hell, if they were lucky, maybe he’d get the cell next to Peter. Really make the rest of his life suck.

That made Stiles feel a little better as he poked around his poor laptop. Physically, it managed to survive the brawl with just a couple minor dings; it fell off the back counter, but as far as his files and software went…

Lydia and Hayden really did a number on it.

Not to mention that he felt a tad slimy knowing a literal 1940s Nazi from Nazi Germany had used it.

He couldn’t Purell away that kind of moral decay.

They cleaned up the scene as well as they could, Stiles’ dad and Parrish came out to help make it look more like some kind of crazy burst pipe than a supernatural smackdown, and Chris and Harvey hauled the still mostly unconscious Herzfeld into the back of their SUV.

There was a very awkward and heavy moment when Stiles handed Chris the login to Allison’s cloud account and explained what it was—that she’d started her own journal in there about her time with the pack, what she’d learned about werewolves along the way that took on a very different tone than the rest of her family. Stiles hadn’t actually read beyond the first page, when he realized how in-depth she got about her thoughts and feelings; it felt like an invasion of privacy.

So, feeling sore, frazzled, scraped out, and emotionally raw, Stiles shuffled out to his jeep, his laptop wrapped up sadly in a plastic shopping bag like dog poop.

Scott was driving home Liam, Malia, and Mason in Derek’s SUV, and Stiles would’ve offered to help, but he really just wanted to go straight to bed. His entire body ached, his shoulder was still iffy, and his face was still bruised.

Also there was the whole ruining Derek’s life again, so that was great.

The guy finally managed to pick up the pieces and was starting to be happy with himself for the first time in years, and Stiles had to go and fuck it all up, force yet another thing he didn’t want on him.

He eased himself into the driver’s seat, and then had to close his eyes for a long minute when slamming the door sent a shockwave of pain through every single one of his muscles.

There hadn’t been any electricity involved in any of it, so why did he feel like he’d just been electrocuted?

“Stiles!”

He jerked in surprise, regretted it immediately, and turned to glare at Malia. She didn’t look all that guilty and started tapping on the window impatiently.

Winding down the window felt like too much effort, so he just opened the door a crack.

“Drive me home?” she asked, and how was he going to so no to that when she’d had a good portion of a 1990s computer monitor in her side? She looked straight out of a zombie apocalypse movie with blood staining her shirt like that.

“Didn’t want to go with Scott?” Stiles asked once they were on the road. Every gear shift made his arm ache, but as long as he kept moving, he could make it home.

He was so close to a wallowing in self-pity shower and his bed, and after the long day he’d had, he couldn’t wait. He was even going to use his special fruity and flowery body wash, because it was relaxing as hell and he didn’t plan on seeing any werewolves for at least two days, so there would no no one to call him out on it.

“Derek keeps his car very clean. I didn’t want to get blood in the seats.”

Stiles opened his mouth to point out how little she thought of his own seats, but then he remembered just how many bleeding werewolves had been crammed into this tiny car in the past and let it go.

Derek at least deserved clean upholstery anyway.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Malia said suddenly, after a long silence.

Stiles blinked at the road. “His clean seats?”

“You and Derek.”

So this ride home wasn’t just about the clean seats. Stiles probably should’ve seen this coming.

“I don’t want to start a whole conversation about this,” she continued, “I know it makes you uncomfortable, but I do want you to know that I’m fine with it. And if you’re holding back because you’re worried about me, you shouldn’t.”

That was a very nice thing to say, probably expected, but somehow it didn’t feel sincere.

“You didn’t seem fine with it earlier.” The look she gave them back at the Argents' cabin had definitely been one of her I’m not fine with this but I haven’t decided how to express that yet faces.

“I was confused. I’d forgotten about your...thing.”

Stiles glanced away from the road to frown at her. “My thing?”

“You and Derek’s thing.”

“Our thing.” He still wasn’t following.

“Lydia calls it sexual tension.”

Anytime before that afternoon, Stiles would’ve found a drink to spit out and vehemently deny the suggestion. But now...

“We never had that,” Malia stated it matter of factly, but somehow it still felt like an accusation. Stiles winced.

“That’s because we were easy.” He let slowing down to turn distract himself enough to not look at her. “We didn’t have to fight everything and each other constantly.”

On paper, they worked. They were similar in a lot of ways, but different enough in others.

They had a similar approach to problem solving (even if Malia’s tended more towards blunt force), but Malia liked to go out and get Stiles out of his head, and he helped her slow down and focus on work. They were both impatient, but Stiles would find an alternative while Malia would push harder. They liked similar foods, they both liked bad action flicks, they were both competitive, neither of them liked dealing with emotions—hanging out with her was always fun and, well, easy.

“But you don’t like easy,” she said bluntly. “You like fighting with him. It’s fun for you.”

“We don’t fight. Not really.” They yelled and snarked but they weren’t fights. Stiles never felt bad after them like he did with fights. With Derek, it was a rush; it was exhilarating and cathartic and most importantly, fun.

“You play fight. Like wolves.”

Stiles turned again, this time down the dirt road to Malia’s house. “Is that another Lydia term?”

“No, that’s my own observation. I didn’t realize it until today, but we don’t play fight. We never did.” She waited until he was stopped right in front of her house before delivering the last punch. “You held back with me. You weren’t honest and we weren’t happy.”

“Hang on.” Stiles put the car in park, since this clearly wasn’t going to be a quick drop off anymore. “Are you saying it’s my fault that we—”

“I’m saying don’t blow this with Derek because I can tell he makes you happy. Don’t hold back, don’t be timid.”

“Hey!” Stiles just took down a superpowered alpha, he didn’t count that as timid by any means.

“You need to hear this.” She didn’t actually hit him, but she looked like she wanted to, and Stiles blinked in surprise at her forceful tone. “You hold back because you’re scared of hurting or inconveniencing the people you care about, but it just makes them feel unimportant.”

Ah, crap.

“Malia, you were never unimportant.”

“You didn’t tell me about Peter, you never talked to me about Theo, you didn’t tell me about Donovan, and now your hearing too?”

Stiles was about to ask how she’d found out about his hearing, but that would really just be proving her point.

“Those are things you tell the important people in your life.” She took a deep breath, like she was ramping up again. “I had to take all the first steps in our relationship, and I know you didn’t want to pressure me into anything, but you took it too far and it made me feel like you weren’t interested. Don’t do that to Derek.”

And with that, she climbed out of the car and waltzed into the house like she hadn’t just ripped open a large part of Stiles’ personality to dissect. And then left a mess of it all over the table, guts and organs hanging out.

So much for a fruity shower and sleep; now he was going to be up all night obsessing over six different things on top of wondering how he blindly became the asshole in their relationship when he’d been so certain is was Malia all along.

*

With his dad still on duty, Stiles trudged into their empty house feeling like, well, like straight up dirt. It wasn’t a literal comparison, but somehow he was really identifying with the dirt he kicked off his shoes in the front hall.

He felt sore and walked on, kind of ripped out of the ground where he’d been, and...he didn’t actually have anywhere to take that, but his body hurt too much to take another step so he stared down at the little cakes of dried mud on the hardwood floor and felt sorry for himself.

Eventually his stomach started rumbling though, and he realized he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He should’ve had some of Harvey’s bakery fest, but at the time none of it looked appealing. He should’ve at least thrown some in a bag and brought them home for later, because all of the grocery shopping his dad did during the day was reserved for Thanksgiving, and it would take him all of ten seconds to realize Stiles ate so much as an asparagus spear early.

That left only the leftovers from his leftover pasta, and a bag of premade salad on its last legs.

He took the pasta because he needed some comfort, trudged to the couch, flipped on the television, and wrapped himself in two blankets because the house was kind of cold.

Ten minutes in and he was forced to admit to himself that Bigfoot hunting shows and sad pasta were way more enjoyable with Derek judging it.

And then as if summoned by the thought: “Is this show on every night?”

Stiles jerked around at Derek’s voice, spilling pasta all across his lap along the way.

“Oh come on! I know you didn’t knock that time!” he yelled, purely on instinct, and then remembered that he was actually really concerned about Derek this entire time and that he probably shouldn’t be yelling at him. “Wait, no, are you okay? Where’d you go? How’d you go—why were you a wolf?”

Derek just barely smiled as he walked around the couch to sit down in his spot. He’d only sat there once, but somehow in Stiles’ mind, it was already his spot.

He watched the TV for a long quiet moment, but he looked like he was bracing himself rather than ignoring the question, so Stiles gave him time and picked penne out of his crotch. He was a real catch here.

“I’m sorry I ran off,” Derek finally said carefully. “It was more overwhelming than before, with Peter, and I panicked.”

Stiles blinked. “Um, I don’t think you have anything to apologize for, dude, except maybe not ever telling me you can turn into a wolf.”

This time his smile was a little bigger. “It happened in Mexico. We didn’t exactly have time to get coffee before we parted ways.”

“So text that shit!” Stiles exclaimed, “Call! Communicate! I know you can, you just called me yesterday!”

“This time I will.”

Stiles frowned, and then realized Derek still hadn’t taken off his shoes or his jacket.

“You’re leaving.” It shouldn’t have been a surprise; the danger was over and he had papers to grade before Monday after all, but that didn’t stop it from hurting. Or temper the crushing disappointment. And after the day he had, it was more crushing than it should’ve been. He wasn’t emotionally prepared for Derek to leave. “You should stay another day.”

“Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, I don’t want to intrude.” And he probably had no one to spend it with.

“We do it on Friday anyway, always have.” His dad liked to give as many deputies the actual day with their families as he could. “You should stay.”

“All the hotels are full. I was lucky to get a room through last night.”

“So sleep here. You look exhausted, and even a werewolf can fall asleep at the wheel,” he added when Derek hesitated.

“Your dad wouldn’t mind?”

“Nah, it’s not like the guestroom gets much…crap.” He winced as he remembered the boxes on boxes of case files scattered around the guestroom, the pages and pages of notes and photos organized into very specific stacks all over the bed. There was an entire system in there, and disturbing it would undo weeks of work.

Derek raised an eyebrow at him.

“We’ve been going over old cases together and it’s all over the guestroom and the bed. I totally forgot with all of this going on.”

“I can sleep on the couch.”

“You don’t want to sleep on the couch, trust me. My dad’s a morning person and he’ll be making all kinds of noise way too early, and it’s impossible for even me with my one working ear to sleep through it. You’ll never get any rest down here.” He waffled for a second, thinking back on whether or not his other set of sheets for his bed were clean. “You sleep in my bed, I’ll take the couch. I’m used to his morning chaos.”

“You just said you can’t sleep through it, and you need sleep too.” Stiles opened his mouth to argue, but Derek cut him off. “Stiles, I’m not going to take your bed. I need to get back to campus anyway, and I don’t want to impose on your holiday.” He reached into his jacket pocket as he stood and pulled out his keys, which Stiles immediately jumped up to grab out of his hand. He would feel smug over the insulted and confused look on Derek’s face later.

“Except you might fall asleep on the road and die, and it’s Thanksgiving, so colleges aren’t even open! You’re not going to miss anything, so we’ll share my bed like two grown-ass adults who’ve saved each other’s lives too many times to count, and we’re going to sleep so well, god damn it.”

He sucked the car keys into his blanket burrito to really emphasize how strongly he felt about this matter. He’d heard enough of his dad’s lectures on safe driving in his life, and especially the ones about tired driving lately, so really, this was the responsible solution to their problem. Bunk together for road safety.

Derek’s eyes flicked down to about Stiles’ hands were, and he looked like he might be considering going after his keys (and probably would have just two years ago), but when he looked back up to Stiles’ face, he just looked tired. He rolled his eyes a little, like it was a habit he was trying to ease back into, and sighed.

“Fine. But you get to be the one to explain to your father why I’m sleeping in his teenage son’s bed.”

“I would just like to point out for the sake of argument and with no ulterior motive that I am, in fact, eighteen, and this is all significantly less creepy than you’re making it sound.”

Derek didn’t look like he agreed.

*

As much as Stiles liked to think he was a mature adult who could do things like share beds with others, the reality of sharing a bed with Derek was turning out to be significantly more stressful than he’d thought when he suggested it. And shockingly, it wasn’t because of Stiles.

He’d expected awkwardness, that was a given; being unable to get comfortable with someone new next to him, being self-conscious about the white noise app and whether or not it would be annoying for Derek, worrying about his inevitable fidgeting, probably hitting Derek in his sleep, morningwood—there was plenty that could go wrong here—but all of that fled from Stiles’ mind when faced with the stiff board that was Derek Hale laying next to him.

It didn’t make sense. Until the light clicked off, Derek had been his usual blunt and to-the-point self—he stripped down to his t-shirt and briefs, asked which side Stiles preferred, and then made himself comfortable, thankfully not with Stiles’ pillow, so he didn’t have to explain that. But now that it was dark and quiet and they were actually going to sleep…

Yeah, Derek was basically a marble statue of tension and unease, and Stiles didn’t know what to do about it.

He was already on the very edge of the bed, back to Derek, giving him as much space as he possibly could, he wasn’t fidgeting or breathing too loud, he’d made no suggestive comments or done anything to give Derek any kind of ideas—he was at a loss, and the tense, heavy silence was bringing his tinnitus for the forefront of his mind, loud and clear.

“Dude,” he started softly, finally reaching the end of his tolerance, “is everything o—”

“Do you mind if I turn on music?” Derek interrupted quickly.

Stiles blinked at his dark room, deciding whether or not he’d misheard that. His right ear was open to the room, so he didn’t think he did, but...

“Music?” he whispered, but Derek didn’t correct him, so, “yeah, sure. Go for it.”

He had no idea what Derek considered music to sleep to, but at this point, Stiles would take anything to ease the tension and hopefully distract him from the ringing at the same time.

The bed shifted as Derek stood, and Stiles watched his shadow move across the room to where he’d folded the rest of his clothes on the desk. His cellphone lit up in his hands, illuminating his tired but stern face, and then Stiles frowned in confusion when soft piano filled the room, followed by what could only be described as a crooning saxophone.

Once more for emphasis: crooning saxophone.

He didn’t want to be a douche and squash the moment Derek was sharing with him, because he was clearly nervous about it, the way he was carefully avoiding looking at Stiles as he walked back to bed, but what on earth was happening? When Stiles thought of Derek playing music, it was usually never, and if he possibly did play it, it would be like, classic rock or grunge. Maybe angry metal if he was in the Camaro. Not jazz.

Derek ignored the very obvious confusion that had to be streaming off Stiles in waves. He just stiffly crawled into his side of the bed and continued to avoid looking at Stiles completely, turning away onto his side.

“My therapist suggested it,” he finally murmured, voice so quiet Stiles had to turn his head to make sure he was hearing him correctly. “Helps distract me from other sounds that keep me awake.”

Stiles could relate to that all too well. Even before the tinnitus, the crushing silence of his bedroom had made him hyper aware of every creak and groan of the house, and something as simple as a neighbor closing the lid of their garbage can could have him on edge for ten minutes after. Between that and the nightmares, he’d been a sleep deprived mess for the last two years.

But as supernatural crises calmed down in the last month, and things continued to improve with his dad, as he kept talking to him and spending time with him, he started sleeping a little better. And once he got the white noise down to the right level, so that it wasn’t blaring in his ears when he woke up in the middle of the night, he’d started feeling a little more balanced.

He couldn’t imagine trying to block out sounds from supernatural hearing through.

“I use a white noise app,” he responded just as quietly. It felt like speaking too loud would burst whatever careful moment they were having. “I’ve had tinnitus since I blew out my eardrum, and it gets bad at night.”

Derek shifted slightly, but didn’t turn back all the way. “Will the music bother you?”

Stiles shrugged one shoulder against his pillow. “Don’t know. Never tried jazz before.”

He’d tried music in the beginning, calm indie songs, singer-songwriter kind of stuff, and even some new age Enya types on some particularly bad nights, but that just kept him awake because he focused too hard to the music to drown out the ringing. It became a conscious task that kept him from sleeping anyway.

This song though, whatever it was, it was soothing and quiet, so quiet that Stiles could barely hear it. Just occasional bass and saxophone fading in and out of his awareness, no lyrics to focus on or strain to understand.

He wasn’t sure if it would work, but he was willing to give it a shot if it helped Derek.

“I tried white noise for a while,” Derek said after another long pause. “It was too constant.”

Made sense when Stiles thought it through; it would probably be no problem for a werewolf to hear distant car doors slamming or pedestrians walking past through quiet rain coming from a very small speaker.

“What made you try jazz?”

“My parents played it a lot. I hated it at the time, but…” The bed shifted as he shrugged.

“My mom had a weird fascination with Rod Stewart,” Stiles offered, staring up at his dark ceiling. He’d spent every morning on the way to school begging her to play something that wasn’t a corny ballad, and now he could never bring himself to change the station when he came up on the radio.

Stiles knew way too many Rod Stewart songs for an eighteen year old male in the twenty-first century.

Derek snorted quietly. “What a terrible thing to have an emotional attachment to.”

“You’re telling me. Just try finding a way to explain why you have so many of his CDs without making it awkward. Trust me, it’s not possible.”

“A Sidney Bechet cassette tape,” Derek said nonsensically, and Stiles frowned at him as he rolled onto his back. Now Derek was the one staring up at the dark ceiling. “They preferred records, and they had a huge collection, but my dad’s Sidney Bechet tape was in his car when the fire happened.”

Stiles blinked in surprise, taking in Derek’s profile and totally at a loss as to what to say to that. He’d never heard Derek openly talk about the fire, or about his family, for that matter. Whenever they came up before, it was related to the crisis of the week.

Stiles...really didn’t know what to do with that, so he just laid there.

Then Derek turned his head to look back, and his eyes started glowing red.

He didn’t make any noise, didn’t move beyond that, they were just glowing. Like that’s just what they did. He wasn’t even blinking.

“What?” It was starting to get...intense, in more ways than one, and Stiles wasn’t sure how to proceed.

A beat of silence, then Derek said with confusion, “Your eyes are red.”

“Probably, I’m tired."

“No,” he responded, “they’re alpha red.”

Stiles stared at the red looking back at him. “What?”

The two red dots moved in an arc as Derek sat up, then he reached over Stiles to turn on the bedside lamp. He didn’t move back to his side of the bed, though; he propped himself up on one elbow and stared down intently, directly into Stiles’ eyes. Which were apparently glowing red.

No big deal.

“What do you mean they’re red,” Stiles demanded, maybe starting to panic a little. “Are you saying I’m a wolf? Did using the talons turn me into a wolf?” Yep, panicking. “I can’t be a wolf, Derek, I can barely keep it together as a human, you realize this, right?

“Stiles,” Derek interrupted firmly, pressing a warm hand to his chest, and it was like he pain drained the panic right out, only that wasn’t how it worked at all. Stiles knew that much. “You’re not a wolf.”

Stiles widened his eyes up at him and hoped they were glowing pointedly. He really couldn’t tell, he didn’t think he could feel a difference either way, but that was the intention. “Explain.”

“I can’t, but you don’t feel like a wolf. You still feel human, just...more.”

“More human? I can’t get more human than human.”

“More powerful.” His thumb tapped twice against Stiles’ sternum. “I saw them right after it happened, but I thought I was seeing things. I was confused.”

Stiles laid there for a minute, processing, enjoying the weight of Derek’s hand on his chest.

“So, what, I’m an alpha too?”

Derek tipped his head to the side, considering. “It could be possible. I’ve never heard of it, but you do tend to defy convention.”

“I’m an alpha,” Stiles repeated to himself, not all that seriously. Then he smirked, met Derek’s eyes, and said in a gravely voice that was one hundred percent supposed to be Derek, “I’m the alpha.”

Derek just looked at him flatly, then reached over again to turn out the light. Stiles definitely wasn’t disappointed that he removed his hand. Whatever he was giving off, which was probably a lot, Derek ignored it and turned over in a huff, leaving Stiles with only his...unfairly broad back.

And his thoughts. His now swirling and chaotic thoughts because his eyes were red and so were Derek’s, and neither of them had wanted this, but now there were a billion more variables to their lives. Like what the hell was Stiles now, and how was this going to affect Derek’s life in at school?

Would it be easier? Harder? Would being an alpha without a pack make him a target?

“Stiles, calm down,” Derek muttered into his pillow. “I can hear your heart pounding.”

“Sorry.” Stiles shifted around, trying to get comfortable before adding lamely, “for this and, other things.”

“Don't be. I don't regret it.”

“But you said you could’ve controlled it and not become an alpha.”

“I don’t know for sure, this could’ve happened either way.

“But—”

“Stiles.” His tone made him pause, even though he couldn’t see Derek’s face. “I would choose to be an alpha every day for the rest of my life rather than lose you.”

Stiles’ breath caught in his throat. Derek didn't take it back or even move. Now was his chance.

“When you”—he swallowed, suddenly glad Derek wasn’t looking at him—“kissed me…”

Derek’s red eyes turned towards him, glowing softly in the dark. He didn't say anything, Stiles felt too awkward to continue that sentence now that he had Derek's full attention. They just laid there in the dark, jazz playing quietly from Derek's phone.

It was almost too loud when Derek finally shifted against his pillow, hesitated, and the closed the distance between them to press his lips softly against Stiles’. Just a light pressure for a moment before he moved back again, and when Stiles opened his eyes, it was to that alpha glow, a second before it faded back into darkness.

For once, Stiles didn't have a smart comment or something to ease the tension—and it wasn't really tense, not really. It was loaded, unbreaking eye contact and a happy swoop in his chest, but it was like the tension had finally broken and left just...comfort.

Stiles smiled, half into his pillow, and inched a little closer. His knee bumped Derek's thigh; Derek's hand brushed his, and impossibly soft fingers tangled with his own.

Derek was the first to look away, turning his head on the pillow, and Stiles scooted a little closer to tuck his head into the space it left.

His eyelids drooped close as stubble scraped gently through his hair and the next song with gentle saxophone floated over from his desk.

*

“Am I doing it?”

“Not yet. Try unclenching.”

Stiles’ face dropped into a full glare at Scott.

“You are so not being helpful. Derek! How do I do it?”

“Try unclenching,” Derek repeatedly flatly from where he was leaning against a counter, and his face didn’t change in the slightest. There was a poster heralding the merits of spaying and neutering pets directly behind him. Stiles was resisting petty jokes.

“You guys can go wait in the car,” he sneered back, “and don’t forget to crack a window.”

Okay, he wasn’t resisting very hard.

“No, seriously, dude,” Scott said, this time without the shitty grin. “It’s the opposite of what you think. It’s like a conscious effort to keep the red from showing, but when you release control and let it go, it just comes out. You unclench.”

Stiles gave him a side eye, but closed his eyes anyway, focused on relaxing—not unclenching. He cocked his neck around, loosened up his shoulders, pointedly ignored Derek’s unappreciated snort from the corner, and just all around tried to relax. Let go.

It wasn’t a feeling he was overly familiar with. Ever since his diagnosis with ADHD in middle school, his life had been careful study of control and trying to keep somewhat on track with his schedule, even around all of this werewolf shit. It was all trying to force himself to focus, to sit down and read that book even when it took an hour to get through a page because his mind kept wandering. It was all about control.

Control is overrated.

He opened his eyes and Scott’s face split into a wide grin. Even Derek looked proud, and when Stiles turned to look towards the glass jars of swabs and popsicle sticks, two shining red bursts of light reflected back.

“Well.” Stiles jumped at Deaton’s voice, blinking hard, and the red reflections in the glass disappeared. “This is a new development.”

Deaton wandered over with a placid smile on his face but concerned brows; it was a worrying combination.

“I didn’t get bitten, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

His concerned brows jumped up to surprised as Scott launched into the tale.

Stiles sat quietly (mostly) through a quick examination, tests of various substances that Deaton didn’t explain but had him hold in his hands, and even a quick eye and ear exam. Shocking to Scott and Derek but wholly unsurprising to Stiles given his luck in life, his left ear was still just as deaf as it had been before.

“It looks like you’re an alpha,” Deaton announced, stepping back and putting his hands in the pockets of his veterinarian's coat like he’d just diagnosed Stiles with a sore throat.

“You don’t seem all that surprised by this,” Stiles pointed out.

“Oh, I’m surprised.” He looked even creepier when he smiled. “I can’t say this is common, but theoretically, it is possible.”

Stiles gestured to his eyes and hoped they were glowing again, just to prove his point. “Obviously. How.”

Deaton’s mouth twitched into the barest hint of a smile. “From what I can understand of him, based on what you’ve told me”—so Stiles didn’t want to just hand over binders of creepy research to the guy with a medical degree, he still didn’t quite trust him—“Herzfeld was essentially a superpowered werewolf. The Dread Doctors kept feeding power into him to make him as strong as possible. Even after they failed to bring back the Beast in him, a stronger werewolf would be able to fuel them for longer, and continue to heal through everything they did to him.”

“Yes, Winter Werewolf, Captain Deutschland, we know.” Stiles waved him forward. This was nothing new and there was something going on with him and he wanted answers, damn it.

“Well what do you think that much power would do to someone the Dread Doctors hadn’t altered to withstand it?”

“Probably burn them up from the inside out,” Stiles answered impatiently, from horrible experience, and then added somewhat casually, “just a guess. Continue.”

“Right.” Deaton looked a little concerned about him. “No human or werewolf could take all of that on by themselves, so you two unconsciously split it between yourselves. You’ve essentially taken the spark that made him this...impossibly powerful alpha and divided it in half.”

“So I’m a half alpha?”

“I’m not entirely sure you’re an alpha at all.”

“But you just said—”

“I said it looks like you’re an alpha, but you haven’t mentioned anything that comes with it beyond the eyes. You can’t feel your pack, your hearing isn’t enhanced, your eye is still bruised so you’re not healing at a faster rate—those abilities are closely tied in to werewolf physiology.”

“Which I don’t have because I’m human,” Stiles finished. “So I’m a freaking glowstick.”

Deaton held up finger. “Don’t dismiss yourself so quickly, you’re not entirely human either.”

“What?” Three voices demanded, all in very different tones, and Stiles jumped when it realized Scott and Derek had joined in on his surprise.

Deaton smiled, that doctor I’m about to give you uncomfortable news smile.

“For all intents and purposes, you are human, but your fully human body was destroyed with the nogitsune.” Stiles shifted uncomfortably, because while those thoughts had definitely crossed his mind before, he always shoved them back out of sight quickly; he hadn’t really thought about it in that intentionally ignoring it kind of way.

“He couldn’t kill you because he wasn’t strong enough to survive without you, so when you fought back against him,” Deaton continued, “he had to expel you to maintain control, but to do so, he had to create a place for your energy to go.”

“So I’m not real?” He found himself quickly tapping his fingers together where his hands were pressed between his thighs out of nerves, counting off silently. It’d been a couple months since he felt the need to check; but this was probably going to reset him back at zero on the recovery scale.

“Quite the contrary. You’re entirely real, just with a little extra magic flowing through you. I believe that’s why you can withstand an alpha’s spark in you when most humans couldn’t.”

“Okay, so I’m magic.” That felt incredibly stupid to say. “Can I do anything?”

“I honestly can’t say,” Deaton said with a shrug. “Like I said, this isn’t exactly common. I’ve never read anything about it. You’re not an alpha, but you have an alpha’s power.”

Scott frowned. “Wouldn’t that mean he can do what an alpha can do?”

“I said power, not powers. He’s taken in the spark that pushes a beta to an alpha, but his body doesn’t have those abilities for it to enhance.”

“Glowstick,” Stiles muttered to himself. Of course. He would get phenomenal cosmic power and have no way to use it.

“You just need to find other ways to use it. That could be as a glowstick”—Deaton gave him a chiding look, like he didn’t think Stiles was taking this seriously enough—“or it could be something else entirely. You’ll have to experiment to discover just what it is.”

Scott’s face lit up at the suggestion while Derek sighed heavily, putting his face in his hand. Deaton ignored them.

“I’d be happy to help you with this, but I suggest you take some time to look into it yourself. That’s the best way to find what works for you personally.”

“Please be flying,” Scott whispered, fingers crossed.

*

“Saturday, noon, lacrosse field!” Scott called loudly over his shoulder as he headed for his bike, once Deaton had firmly reminded them it was Thanksgiving and kicked them out.

“Oh no.” Stiles did not like the sound of that. He’d done way too many dickish things to Scott over the years for that to be anything but painful. “Scott, no, not like that, I can’t heal!”

Scott spun on his heel, helmet in hand, arms out in offense. “I’m not gonna hurt you, dude, we’re just going to see what you can do.”

Like he would believe that. “With lacrosse balls, right?”

“Only a few.” Stiles really didn’t like that guilty pause. Then Scott quickly added, “I won’t throw them hard.”

“Not fair, dude.” And because Stiles still wasn’t above pity points, he pointed to his now very much black eye. “I got punched.”

Scott rolled his eyes, clearly mocking him because he knew full well that it still hurt to do that. “You can’t keep using that!”

He pulled on his helmet and started his bike, but Stiles knew he could still hear him over the engine.

“I can and I will! And I’m not going!”

Scott gave him two thumbs up, pretending he hadn’t heard, and then sped off down the road like the dick he was.

Whatever. His stupid bike sounded like a fart.

A hand landed on Stiles’ left shoulder and he jumped. Derek smirked.

“Okay seriously, have you actually gotten quieter since last night? Make a sound when you walk!”

“I made a lot of sounds.”

“Yeah, then make a few more, the glowsticks didn’t fix my ear.”

“So I think we can rule out healing.”

“Yeah, how about laser eyes?” Stiles squinted at him, and tried to imagine cartoonish red beams shooting directly into his stupid, smug, attractive face.

Derek just flared his own eyes mockingly.

“You guys are such dicks, you know that?”

Whether he did or not (he definitely did, and he enjoyed it), Derek moved his hand to the back of Stiles’ neck and guided him towards the jeep. Oh man, his hand was warm.

“We should work on your eyes first. Make sure you can control them before you start on the lasers.”

“Hey man, if it’s about relaxing, then I’m all set! I’m the most wound up, anxious, and clenched individual this side of the Mississippi. These puppies aren’t coming out for—”

Between one second and the next, Derek reeled him in by the hand on his neck and planted one right on him. First a little hard, unexpected, but then he backed away a little, and came in softly for another one. Nothing excessive, none of the frantic and overenthusiastic kisses of everyone else in Stiles’ school, but calm, like they had all the time in the world.

Derek pulled back, serene and cool, while Stiles found himself blinking frantically, trying to reboot his entire brain.

“There they are,” Derek murmured with a smile. It was a dazzling smile but also a little big smug, and the combination made Stiles’ heart pound almost more than the kiss. The smile widened to show a hint of fang.

Oh, he knew exactly what he was doing.

“That,” Stiles pursed his lips. They felt like they were buzzing, and his eyes felt weirdly warm. “Was playing dirty.”

Derek’s eyebrows jumped in a cocky show of consideration. “Proving a point. You don’t have as much control as you think.”

“Okay, but unless you’re following me around all day and doing,” he waved a hand at him, “that, then I don’t think it’s going to be much of an issue, especially since you’re going back to Berkeley in a few hours.”

That made Derek pause, his hand fell away from Stiles’ neck, and the playful atmosphere was shattered. “How’d you know?”

“Not many universities use GSI instead of TA, and you got here a little quick to be coming from Michigan.”

Disbelieving eyebrow raise.

“Fine, I googled you and you're listed as a grad student in Berkeley's history department. Whatever.” But he’d also looked into the GSI thing, so he did get some credit.

Derek’s face was kind of frozen; that one eyebrow still raised, and otherwise worryingly blank.

“That’s uh, that’s not a problem, is it?”

“No.”

That sounded like a problem.

“Because it if is, I should tell you that I, uh, applied to Berkeley. Like two months ago, so way before I even knew you were back in the country, I swear. But just in case, you know,” he waved a hand between them, hoping that adequately summed up everything between them, because he had no idea what to call it. Especially if Derek wasn’t on the same page and didn’t want him anywhere near his campus.

“I mean I haven't heard back yet, obviously, won’t for a few more months, but I just thought I'd give you a warning—or an invitation,” he added, because he was being honest, damn it. Someone had take this particular first step, and Derek had initiated all three kisses so far, and Stiles wasn’t about to make Derek feel unwanted here. Derek was going to feel so fucking wanted.

So long as he—well, wanted it.

But right then there was really no way to tell because his face was still saying nothing, holy shit, how could a face be that blank in a situation like this?

“Because if I get in,” Stiles continued weakly, “or maybe even if I don’t, I wouldn’t be opposed to...maybe continuing with...this...thing, we might have.”

He winced at his own pathetic attempt to be emotionally available and open and didn’t meet Derek’s eyes for probably a solid thirty seconds. God, he was an idiot. It was honestly a miracle Malia had put up with him as long as she did. He should buy her flowers.

When he finally did drag his eyes back to Derek from squinting at the grey morning clouds, he was surprised to find his face had softened to just...fond. If that was even the word to describe it. He’d seen that face on his dad before, on Scott, recently on Lydia a few times; maybe a little fond but also that tired acceptance of knowing he was an idiot, of knowing they couldn’t actually get rid of him.

Whatever it was, that wasn’t a face he ever expected to get from Derek.

That had to be a good sign, right?

Derek took a step closer and his eyes flicked back and forth between Stiles’.

“We’ll have to work on those eyes, then.”

Stiles swallowed. “Are they red?” They didn’t feel warm again, but he couldn’t really tell because his entire face felt like it was on fire. His face was molten lava. He was going to combust if Derek didn’t give him some kind of response, and then he might just go ahead and combust anyway, depending on how it went.

“Not yet,” Derek answered, and leaned in for another slow and thorough kiss. When he pulled back, he looked smug, so it must’ve worked, but Stiles’ face was still too on fire to tell.

“That’s cheating.”

“Just checking.” Derek smirked.

“So does that mean you want to continue this? Because you never actually answered my—”

Derek leaned in yet again for another peck, cupping his hands around Stiles’ jaw.

“Okay, now you’re just,” again, “being,” again, “difficult.” One more time.

“I’m answering your question.”

Just in case it still wasn’t clear, he brushed his thumbs over Stiles’ cheeks, and Stiles realized that was the only thing he wanted to feel on his face for the rest of his life. Derek’s hands were so soft. Stiles’ hands were full of calluses from lacrosse and lately going to the batting cages to work on his accuracy, but Derek’s hands, man. Derek’s hands.

Maybe Stiles could make his magic thing just having really soft hands, because Derek only needed the softest of hands touching him.

“Not very well. I’m still a little hazy on—”

Derek rolled his eyes, but obligingly pulled him in for another kiss.

The noisy old light above the clinic’s front door started buzzing obnoxiously as it turned on, then went silent as it turned off again.

On.

Off.

On, off, on—the pattern started getting faster. They broke apart to stare up at it flickering violently, and it took a moment to register that it wasn’t some stupid magic ability of Stiles’ manifesting, but Deaton telling them to stop making out in his parking lot.

They were probably lucky he hadn’t set off the alarm on his nearby car, the way he’d been quietly annoyed about Scott calling him in for an emergency on Thanksgiving, only to find Stiles perched on his exam table, very much not dying at all.

“We should get back,” Derek said reluctantly, moving towards the jeep so Stiles had to follow. “I need to be on the road soon.”

Stiles waffled over it for the amount of time it took them to climb into the jeep and pull out onto the main road, but by then he’d worked up the courage.

“Stay a couple more days.”

Derek sighed. “I still have twenty-eight papers to grade by Monday.”

“And I have a bunch of homework I ignored the last two weeks so I won’t even distract you! That much,” he added at Derek’s expression. “Besides, if I’m going to figure out this laser eyes thing on Saturday, I want you to be there.”

Derek nodded slowly a few times, like he was thinking it over, and just when Stiles thought he had him convinced,

“If you think I’m not going to throw at least two lacrosse balls at you, you are so wrong.”

Stiles pulled to a stop at a red light and gaped at him.

“You—of all, how could you even—”

“Stiles,” Derek looked like he was trying not to smile more, “are you really trying to tell me you wouldn’t do the same if the positions were reversed.”

“That’s not fair, you can heal! I got punched!” He pointed to it again, in case Derek had somehow missed the massive bruise curving around the socket.

“You’re an alpha now, you can take it.”

“Hey, I’m not an alpha, I’m unique.”

A car honked. The light was green.

“Yes, you’re very unique,” Derek assured him condescendingly. “Now drive.”

Stiles did, and considered his next tactic very carefully for the next block and a half. It was going to involve physical pain, but it would probably be worth it in the end.

“Okay, fine, if you stay until Sunday, you can hit me with two lacrosse balls.”

“Four.”

“Three. Don’t push it.”

“Four, but I give you a kiss after each one.” Yep, that still made Stiles feel giddy inside. That probably wasn’t going away anytime soon. “You know, to check your control.”

“Sounds fair, that is the entire point of it all.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“So we have a deal?”

Derek pretended to consider it for a moment. “Deal.”

Stiles waited, but Derek didn’t continue. He glanced at him, back to the road, back to Derek, back to the road.

“What, no kiss to seal it?”

“Is this going to be a regular thing?”

Stiles grinned. “At least until I get sick of you.”

He puckered up obnoxiously, holding it through a few glances back towards the road because he was still driving, after all, until Derek finally gave in and kissed him.

“Excellent.” He wasn’t wasting any time. “Now that I’ve got you, I’ve got this old case I want to run by you. What do you remember about a body in the preserve back in ‘96?”

Derek didn’t actually groan, but the way he let his head thud back against the seat translated his mood perfectly.

Stiles just smiled.