Work Text:
Recent scientists suggest that labeling a wolf ‘alpha’ or ‘omega’ is misleading because ‘alpha’ wolves are simply parent wolves. Using ‘alpha’ terminology falsely suggests a rigidly forced permanent social structure.
Stiles studied the words on his computer screen, tucking the tidbit of information away for later use. He just might tease Scott and Derek a little. “Scott, hey, buddy, do you and Allison have something to tell me?” He’d save that for the next time he ate over at the McCall household. Melissa was cool like that. She probably wouldn’t flip, but Scott would nonetheless.
He pursed his lips and scrolled down further, reading a few more facts. He found himself choking on spit at the last fact on the page. “Hey, Deeeerrreeeek….did you know the average size wolf produces roughly 1.2 cubic inches of sperm?”
A sharp buzz dragged his thoughts back to the present as his phone alerted him to a new text. He let out a quiet sigh and stretched before he bothered to check his phone. He’d been researching random facts for the past hour, homework already complete. The text was from Derek. He had a feeling he already knew what the text would say.
Pack meeting.
Typical. It wasn’t like Derek ever texted for anything else. Stiles liked to joke that he didn’t actually know how to text and had one of the betas or Peter do it for him. That wouldn’t be a surprise. He swore that Derek was stuck in the dinosaur ages before technology.
Stiles turned the computer off and grabbed his keys, before heading for the stairs. He took them two at a time, jumping down the last three stairs and landing with a thump. He didn’t bother to tell his father that he was going to Derek’s loft. The sheriff wasn’t home yet from work. He’d texted half an hour ago, saying that he’d be late. Something about a missing teen. There’d been a few reports like that in the past month and he figured he might as well mention it at the meeting. Maybe it was something supernatural?
Rain fell heavily, but it was a welcoming rain of sorts. Granted, Stiles didn’t want to get caught out in the rain, and have his clothing soaked through in seconds, but it’d been so damned humid and muggy lately that there was a good chance the rain would help clear that up. Or, it could make it worse.
The drive to Derek’s loft was rather uneventful, despite Stiles having trouble seeing the road. He blamed the downpour, and actually found himself a few minutes late to the meeting. The whole pack was already gathered, sprawled on the two beat-up old couches that’d no doubt been taken from some old dump or abandoned building, if the stains were anything to go by. Of course, newer bloodstains overlaid that from various escapades on the pack’s part, and, admittedly, quite a few of those stains were from Stiles himself.
“What’d I miss?” Stiles asked, flailing to catch his balance as he climbed over the hulking figure of Boyd, sitting on the floor, legs stretched out. Stiles halfway stifled his yelp of alarm as he all but dived onto the couch, landing across Isaac, Scott, and Erica’s laps. He shoved at them, forcing them to make room, and soon settled between Scott and Erica. Derek glared at him. Evidently, he’d interrupted something. Stiles just shrugged and stretched out a little, making himself comfortable. “C’mon, Grumpy Cat. You’re wasting time. Get on with it.” The teasing had its desired effect. Derek glowered again, before resuming the meeting.
---
The meeting was rather short, but the pack hung around anyway, forcing their company on Derek. Thought he might not say it aloud, it wasn’t difficult to tell that Derek didn’t mind them staying longer. Anyone was better company than Peter, who lurked in the darker corners of the room, silent and morose. He didn’t speak once during the pack meeting and disappeared shortly after it ended. No one complained.
Eventually, Derek closed the loft door, watching as the last of the pack filtered out. He let out a weary sigh and turned around, only to stop. He wasn’t alone after all. How he’d managed to miss the hummingbird heartbeat of Stiles, he didn’t know. Perhaps he’d become so accustomed to it that it no longer distracted him. Stiles remained on the couch, disturbingly still. He’d been deceptively quiet for much of the meeting. There’d been a distinct lack of sarcastic remarks and other smartass comments. He hadn’t done too much of his usual awkward flailing or fidgeting either. If anyone noticed, no one had said a word.
“Go home, Stiles.” Derek barked. The human jolted as if he’d been startled, but he made no move to stand up. Derek approached, but stopped a few feet away, studying Stiles as if trying to figure him out. He repeated himself, this time with an edge of frustration in his voice. “Stiles, go home.”
“Mm, no. I think I’ll stay for a little while.” Stiles shifted on the couch until he was reclining a little. “So, didja ever get yourself a TV or do you still live in the Stone Age?” He knew the answer of course, but whenever the opportunity presented itself, he’d antagonize Derek. He placed his hands behind his head before frowning and moving his hands back to resting on his lap. “But seriously, what’re we gonna do now? Cards? Monopoly?”
Derek drew a steadying breath, willing himself not to resort to his old ways and grab up the scrawny human by his shirt, and forcefully drag him out. “Stiles, we’re not doing anything. Just go home.” He gritted his teeth before adding,” Please.” He said the word with disdain. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d used that word when not trying to charm a stranger into doing something.
“Fine. Go back to your brooding or whatever the hell it is you Hales do when no one else is around.” Stiles rose to his feet, grimacing. He didn’t hesitate to move toward the exit though, slipping out through the large metal door before Derek could comment further. The loft was deathly silent, the absence of Stiles’ heartbeat now entirely too noticeable.
Derek heard the distant slam of the door of Stiles’ Jeep, but didn’t hear the familiar stutter and rumble of the engine starting up. Again, it was just silence. It stretched on. A minute. Two minutes. Derek growled inwardly and debated on just ignoring the fact that the human hadn’t left after all, or if he should crawl into bed with that novel Lydia had recommended to him. His phone rang. It was Stiles. What now?
“It’s Derek.” His answer was, as ever, curt. Stiles liked to poke fun at him about how he didn’t answer the phone like a normal person. C’mon, Sourwolf. Who else is it gonna be? Normal people say ‘hello’ when answering the phone.
Even before Stiles began to speak, Derek could tell something wasn’t entirely right. He could hear Stiles’ heart ticking faster than normal. When he spoke, he sounded on edge, nervous.
“Dere-“ He didn't get to finish one word before Derek interrupted.
“What happened, Stiles?” He hoped Stiles didn’t hear the sound of the loft door closing over the phone.
“Ah…it’s nothing. I just…shit, it’s getting worse.”
“What’s getting worse, Stiles?” He got no answer. He was going to kill Stiles if it was something stupid and trivial.
He was outside of his building only a minute after the phone rang, striding toward the sky blue Jeep. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary as he approached, senses straining for danger or some sort of trap. It was dark out, still raining but not nearly as heavy as earlier. He neither heard nor scented anything out of the ordinary.
When he reached the driver’s side door, he spotted Stiles leaning forward, staring at the dashboard. He hadn’t noticed Derek’s approach evidently, for he again jumped when the werewolf rapped on the window. The door opened in a hurry, and the scent of anxiety hit Derek square in the face.
“Come back inside.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Stiles’ shoulders hunched as he followed Derek back up to the loft. He was entirely too quiet. There were no jibes, teasing Derek about being concerned or anything of the sort. It was decidedly un-Stiles-like. It was starting to bother Derek. He didn’t like that someone that he considered part of his pack, even a regular human like Stiles, might be acting out of the ordinary.
Stiles resumed his spot on the couch, Derek sitting a few feet away. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?” Derek was privately annoyed that Stiles, who never shut up, now wasn’t saying a word about what was bothering him.
Stiles leaned forward, hands knotting together restlessly before he gestured toward his face. “You know when a TV is on a dead channel or whatever and there’s that static? The snow? It’s like that’s what my vision is. I can see, but I can’t really see much. Right in the center of my vision, I just can’t see anything. And I have zero peripherals. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Kinda makes driving hard.” He didn’t notice he was rambling. He sounded frustrated, and entirely too wound up, but at the same time, not at all terrified. This was clearly not a new situation.
“So…what exactly does this mean?” Derek didn’t understand the point, unless Stiles was trying to tell him he was going blind or something. The look Stiles shot him was one of impatience.
“Guess you’ve never heard of aura migraines, huh?” Derek’s expression cleared when Stiles mentioned migraines and he leaned forward. Laura used to get those sometimes. He’d be able to smell her pain seeping through the cracks in her door whenever she locked herself in. He awkwardly reached a hand out to Stiles’ arm, trying to draw some of the pain away but nothing happened. He felt nothing and his veins didn’t blacken with the pain he bled away, because there was no pain.
“I thought you said you had a migraine.” It wasn’t a question, but more of a statement.
Stiles drew a deep breath and shook his head. “The aura usually precedes the headache. Sometimes the pain comes before my vision returns, sometimes there’s a little window of time where I feel perfectly fine before it hits.” He tipped his head in Derek’s direction, squinting at him questioningly.
“Stay until it passes.”
---
Splintered vision and shaking hands. Even against closed eyelids he saw static-y lines that crawled from corner to corner. Stiles was stretched out on the couch, face jammed against the cushions. Derek was on the other side of the room, book in hand. Stiles knew that he wasn’t reading the book. He could feel Derek’s eyes on him without even looking. Hot shards of pain lanced from a point over his left temple, radiating outward. He did little more than try to lay perfectly still, eyes shut tight.
Stiles’ hands, locked in tremors, came up to grasp his skull. Despite the knowledge that it wouldn’t happen, the pain had him convinced that his skull was trying to splinter apart and it was his duty to keep that from happening. A soft squeak of cushions followed by nearly silent footsteps reached Stiles’ ears, but he paid it little mind. Derek was probably tiring of Stiles’ presence.
The couch cushion dipped down unexpectedly as Derek sat down near his feet. Stiles, already dizzy and disoriented, flinched as the sensation increased tenfold. His eyes shot open, though he immediately shut his eyes again, finding the soft yellow lights overhead extraordinarily unpleasant. That was an understatement. It was as if acid had been poured directly into his eyes. Tears welled up and leaked from the corners of his eyes and he had the dim hope that Derek hadn’t noticed that he was crying.
The cushion shifted again as Derek stood up unexpectedly, footsteps muted. Stiles heard the light switch click off before Derek approached again. There was a hesitation in his stride and he stopped a few feet away this time. Stiles had a fleeting chance to wonder what Derek was doing before Derek sank down cautiously at Stiles’ feet again.
The movement rocked Stiles again and this time, he lurched to his feet blindly, squinting in the gloom. He tripped over the beat up little coffee table – a curbside throwaway addition – on his way to the bathroom. Nausea coiled through his stomach like fire and he scrambled for the bathroom, throwing himself down in front of the toilet. He retched unproductively and a pain not unlike railroad spikes splintering his skull occurred. He threw up, tasting again the hamburger he’d spoiled himself with just three hours earlier.
A glass of water was thrust into Stiles’ blurry vision and he accepted it. Cool water soothed the burn of stomach acid in his throat and, tentatively, some painkillers were handed to him. He didn’t register surprise that a werewolf might have over the counter medication set aside for the humans in his pack. He chased them down with a little more water before Derek guided him back toward the couch.
Derek sank down on the couch, Stiles gingerly lowering himself down beside the werewolf with a barely stifled groan. A light pressure against the base of Stiles’ skull drew his attention and his eyes fluttered, tempted to open. He squeezed them shut stubbornly. Even with the lights turned off, there was still a dim, watery sunset light filtering through the grimy loft windows. He became aware quite suddenly that his migraine was rapidly disappearing, leaving behind little more than a dull ache. He almost laughed at the absence of pain but groggily, he realized the reason. Derek was taking his pain.
He opened his mouth to say something but it was as if his mind had blanked out. Nothing came to mind to say. He was gradually growing aware of the fact that he was exhausted. He was always tired after a migraine, unable to concentrate in the slightest, or speak clearly. His mind was slow and his memory, patchy. He wanted nothing more than to sleep and, without bothering to check with Derek, he nestled up against his shoulder.
---
Derek held still, wary of aggravating Stiles’ migraine. His heartbeat had slowed quite a bit now that he seemed more comfortable, and the scents of anxiety and pain had faded considerably. He was all too aware of Stiles’ head resting against his shoulder, and of the way Stiles’ breath whistled out through his nose.
Derek turned the page in his novel, reading another line before Stiles spoke up, voice husky and slurred. “Hey, Derek? Didja know that the average sized wolf produces about 1.2 cubic inches of sperm?”
Derek huffed in amusement and shook his head in amazement. Stiles never ceased to surprise him. “Go to sleep, Stiles.”
“Yeah, okay.”