Stiles Stilinski

In hindsight, this wasn't his smartest idea ever. Not the rescue op; that was pretty genius, if he did say so himself. A loud conversation with Scott in his bedroom while half the Alpha pack was home about Isaac being hurt in the woods, some BS about Derek being missing, Scott running off towards the preserve...half an hour later, every Alpha they'd seen enter the house that day was gone again. At that point, Stiles and Alison broke in the back door to see what was happening, along with a totally not hurt Isaac. It was pretty brilliant, and actually worked. They found Boyd and Erica, bound with wolfsbane and silver, bruised and barely breathing in the basement, broke their bonds and hauled them upstairs. It was so easy. He couldn't stop being surprised about that.

Too bad they hadn't counted on the twins. Two alphas, lying in wait for this very reason. Just in case. They jumped the bunch of them at the top of the stairs, Isaac dumping the much-larger Boyd on top of Stiles to take the brunt of the attack. Alison made hauling the mostly-unconscious Erica while working a crossbow one-handed look almost effortless, and Stiles was trying to drag Boyd towards the door, but Isaac could only hold two of them off for so long. As he went flying into the wall, Alison made the door, and Stiles had to make a choice. It was stupid, made no sense at all, was based entirely on a dumbass idea and desperation. Grabbing one of Alison's silver arrows, he dumped Boyd back on the recovering Isaac and told him to leave. He didn't stop to see if Isaac listened, because if he stopped he'd have to think about what he was doing, running past the two snarling werewolves and yelling anything he could to get them to follow. He just wasn't planning on both of them actually following him.

He almost made it. All those layers of his working in his favor for once. They'd grab him, he'd wriggle out of another layer of clothing. Coat, hoodie, flannel... he was at the back door when they finally grabbed him for good. His resistance bought the rest of them maybe five minutes at most, but hopefully that was enough for Scott to make it back. Not that he could think or worry, after everything went black.

When he finally came to, with the worst migraine and blurry vision, Stiles was alone. Down in that same basement they'd just grabbed the others from. Alone was probably good, but being tied to a chair? Probably less good. Yeah, not his smartest idea ever. All he could hope was that Scott and Derek had managed to get the three alphas into the trap in the woods, and that the others had actually made it to the clinic. And maybe that this was just a concussion, and not actually brain hemorrhaging. He couldn't think beyond that. Probably a good thing, because nothing good was coming of this.

He's gotten used to seeing Derek every day, or at least hearing from him. A call, a text, a now-familiar set of shoulders shoving its way through his window or curled up on the floor of his room cross-legged. They make plans and cross-sections of town for search grids, discuss whatever Derek's managed to pull from Peter, argue about Stiles' latest harebrained scheme for drawing out the alpha pack. He very carefully doesn't think about how much time all those nights add up to, just like he doesn't think about the little touches and comforts and that growing sense of familiarity he feels with the taciturn older man. He carefully, deliberately doesn't mention Scott. Neither of them does.

Of course, that still doesn't mean he's expecting to see Derek leaning against his Jeep that late September afternoon as he heads out of the school and towards the parking lot. And he sure as hell isn't ready for Derek's incredibly good James Dean impersonation, swallowing heavily at the sight of tight jeans, white shirt, leather jacket and frantically stuffing every last hormone back into that overflowing box of NO in the back of his mind. The outfit just makes him more aware of his worn Avengers shirt, the slightly holey flannel, the stain on his grey hoodie from lunch. Stupid sexy Derek.

"Dude, what are you doing here? Thought you didn't want Scott knowing about all this Alpha pack stuff. You start meeting me at school, he'll have questions." Not that the lack of Stiles in his life had seemed to register so far, he thought sourly.