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Stiles isn’t expecting to be woken by a hand over his mouth.
He comes awake flailing, trying to fight off whatever assailant is attempting to kidnap him, eyes huge and unseeing as he kicks at his blankets and hears a soft ‘oof’ as his foot hits something soft and squishy.
“Stiles, shh, Stiles, stop it,” a feminine voice hisses above him, and something about it pings as familiar even as adrenaline pumps through him. His chest heaves as he struggles to suck in enough breath around the hand, while another hand holds him to the bed by his shoulder. He’s disoriented; the last thing he remembers it was mid-afternoon and he was sitting in bed with his laptop and latest research spread out around him. He must have fallen asleep. Not overly surprising, since most of his sleep these days came from unintentional naps that ended far to soon to be truly restful.
His room slowly comes into focus through the hazy panic, dim light of the evening hour trickling through his open blinds to reveal two silhouettes standing over him. One is hulking and entirely in shadow, looming over them looking ominous and threatening, but then Stiles’s eyes catch on blond curls spilling over his assailant's shoulder and recognizes the wolves in his room.
Before he can berate them for scaring him half to death, Erica backs off only for Boyd to move forward and sling Stiles easily over his shoulder.
“Hey!” Stiles yelps, flailing and wincing a little at the low impact to his ribs and the way his brain knocks about in his skull at the jarring movement. He blinks the familiar stars out of his vision, irritated as always by their presence.
Boyd barely grunts, simply wraps his arm around the back of Stiles’s calves and pinning them to his body to prevent him from being able to kick.
“What the hell, man?! Watch the goods dude, still a very breakable human here. What are you guys even doing here? I thought you’d be at the loft.”
“Yes,” There’s a displeased moue to Erica’s her lips as she cocks her hip and puts a hand on it as she levels him with an unimpressed look. It loses most of its impact from the fact he’s looking at it mostly upside down. “Which is where you are supposed to be as well. When you didn’t show up for pack night, Derek sent us to get you. Well,” she amends as she follows Boyd out of his room towards the staircase, “Derek said someone had to come get you; we volunteered. And he told us not to take no for an answer.” She grins ferally.
Stiles tries to breath through the tight band clenching around his chest, heart twinging and racing. He swallows hard, trying hard to control the pain and loneliness and guilt that wants to flood his scent and which he’s sure had saturated every surface of his room. He clenches his teeth and breaths through it, pushing it back and locking it up in the back of his mind just as he’s been doing for weeks.
“So, you’re just kidnapping me?” Stiles doesn’t even know why Derek cared in the first place. Why would any of them care if Stiles didn’t show up to the loft? He knew they weren’t meeting about any sort of threat, so they didn’t need his research skills or to make sure he was keeping out of their way (or to ensure he wasn’t the threat). As far as Stiles knows, the only items on the agenda for the evening are movies, pizza, and quality time as a pack. The last thing Derek would want is the mouthy human annoyance butting in on that space. Hell, he’s pretty sure it’s the last thing any of them want.
“Yep,” Erica’s flippant agreement pulls him out of his thoughts as Boyd reaches the bottom of the stairs. Stiles glances towards the living room and is surprised to see his dad in his recliner with the television on, utterly at ease at the wolves carting his son out the door.
“Dad?! Aren’t you going to do something?!” Stiles yelps incredulously.
His dad looks at him with a raised eyebrow and then looks to Boyd instead.
“Have him back by ten, make sure he eats some real food and not just junk, and don’t let him hide away somewhere no matter what he says,” his dad instructs, as if Stiles is a child going for a playdate rather than a teenager being kidnapped by a couple of werewolves and carried around like a sack of potatos. Stiles gapes at his dad.
“In the morning, right,” Erica says, glancing at the sheriff dubiously. He snorts and nods.
“Oh yeah, I don’t want to see him back here tonight unless you’re all here, and I’d really rather not have a wolf pack invading my house. We’d have nowhere to put you all.” The Sheriff finally meets Stiles’s eyes where he’s hanging over Boyd’s back gaping at him. His face softens, eyes gentle and sad. “Have fun Stiles, please. You’ve been cooped up here for too long and you need more than just me. Let someone else look after you for a change.”
And with that said, he turns his attention resolutely back to the television. The Stilinskis never have been ones for long emotional talks.
Boyd and Erica carry him out the front door and down the porch, Stiles attempting to squirm out of the hold. Panic is starting to rise in his chest as the reality of what he’s about to face sinks in.
The pack. Possibly the whole pack. A whole night with the whole pack during what is clearly supposed to be a pack bonding experience. This is going to go so, so wrong. They shouldn’t have to put up with him there! He can think of a few people in particular who certainly won’t want to see his face right now, and why should they have to? It’s already bad enough facing everyone at school. Why is Derek doing this to them?! Some misplaced sense of guilt or obligation?
But Boyd’s arm is like a steel band around the back of his knees and Stiles is too weak to do put up much of a fight. He can already feel what little energy he’d gained from the unexpected nap draining out of him, and he slumps limply over Boyd’s shoulder as they reach a black car parked in the driveway behind his jeep.
“Borrowed Boyd’s mom’s car for the evening,” Erica explains unprompted. Stiles remembers that she doesn’t have her license yet, and that she’d been excited to change that. That conversation feels like forever ago. Before everything went oh-so wrong.
Erica opens the back door and Boyd bends down to carefully place him into the car, setting him in the middle of the seat. Stiles sees his opening as he backs out of the car and tries to dart for the small opening beneath his arm but Erica is there waiting, hand on his chest to gently but firmly press him back into the seat. He barely even manages to glance consideringly towards the door on the other side before she’s climbing in with him and shoving him down. She sits on his stomach before he can get back up and crosses her arms, staring smugly down at him. He glares back petulantly.
While Stiles spends the first half of the car ride attempting to alternate between bitching at them and giving them the silent treatment, it doesn’t take long for him to slip into a more passive silence, not enough energy (or care) to keep up the appearance of his usual banter and assholishness. Erica and Boyd mostly ignore it anyway, stubbornly resolute in their mission to get him to the loft and displeased at him for making them come fetch him in the first place.
Erica stays planted on his stomach the whole ride, unconcerned about the safety risk. Stiles figures if they were to get in an accident, between her being planted on top of him and their quick reflexes, he’s probably just as safe as if he were wearing a seatbelt anyway, if not more so.
Stiles tries not to feel like a prisoner being marched to his execution as Erica and Boyd escort him into the building, hands guiding him as if he doesn’t already know where to go (or is liable to make a break for it if left to his own devices).
Derek’s standing in the middle of the loft when they slide the door open, staring at him with his arms crossed and an unimpressed look on his face. One of his eyebrows quirks as if to say ‘and where exactly have you been?’ Stiles scowls at him, eyes flicking around the room without making eye contact with anyone.
Isaac is sprawled out on the couch across from the TV, Jackson and Lydia on the loveseat perpendicular to it. The coffee table that usually sits in the middle has been pushed off to the side, a huge mound of pillows and blankets (which he knows Derek does not usually have in the loft) piled into a sort of makeshift pallet bed on the floor in its place (though upon second glance he’s pretty sure he spots the duvet that usually covers Derek’s bed splayed out beneath it all). Cora’s flopped on the pile scrolling on her phone. There’s drinks and snacks on the coffee table, though it looks like there’s space for more.
His entrance draws Jackson and Lydia’s attention, Jackson’s eyes scanning over him with a casual aloofness and slight raise of his eyebrow while Lydia peers at him and purses her lips in a tight, displeased frown. Stiles attempts not to whither beneath that look, though he’s sure Derek doesn’t miss the way he sways back unconsciously away from her.
“We got him,” Erica announces needlessly as she flounces towards the bed of pillows and blankets and flops down onto it next to Cora, stretching out and putting her head on the girl’s thigh. Cora simply shifts her arms to accommodate and keeps looking at her phone.
“Why exactly am I here,” Stiles asks, mostly aiming the irritated question at the Alpha in the room. He had, after all, ordered his kidnapping. Derek’s eyebrows quirk even more in exasperation, seeming to say ‘please, you know exactly why you’re here’, but Stiles crosses his arms. No, he won’t say, no he really doesn’t.
Derek seems to read that in his face anyway. His face shifts, eyebrows lowering and arms dropping to his side as he frowns at Stiles.
“It’s a pack night,” Derek says. “I know I haven’t always been the best alpha,” Erica and Boyd make low noises of agreement, Erica’s more an amused huff while Boyd lounges on the couch and watches impassively. Derek ignores them. “And a lot of us got off on the wrong foot, but that changes now. If we want to work together as a pack, we need to learn to function like one, and not just when something’s going wrong.”
Peter descends the spiral staircase at that moment, quirking his own amused eyebrow at Stiles.
“Ah, the wayward beta has returned,” Peter observes breezily, leaning against the metal railing at the bottom. He makes a show of cocking his head to the side, eyes drifting past him. “Ah, and it sounds like our other little wayward beta has returned as well. The whole merry band of misfits is together once again.” Derek sends him a dry look, to which Peter only smirks.
But Stiles barely notices, too busy frowning at the words. He can’t mean—
He hears the steps in the hallway right before the big metal door slides open again, and Stiles feels all of the air punch out of his lungs like a physical blow as he turns to see the last two people he wanted — or expected — to see here.
“Hey, sorry we’re late! Had to stop at the store to grab a few more bags of chips,” Scott announces brightly, holding up a grocery bag overflowing with family size bags of chips. “Ally didn’t think the two bags we already had would be enough.”
Allison's following a step behind him, moving gingerly with her arm hovering around her waist as if to protect her ribs, but she’s there, face wan but offering everyone a small smile that looks, somehow, genuinely happy to be there.
“I shouldn’t be here.”
Stiles doesn’t realise he’s whispered the words aloud until half the room whips around to face him. Allison and Lydia follow their gazes with mild confusion, though they seem to have some idea of what’s happened. Stiles sways on his feet, feeling suddenly claustrophobic in the big open space of the loft, arms wrapped around his stomach as if to hold all his broken pieces together by sheer force of will. He can’t crumble here, all over Derek’s floor. He isn’t a mess they should have to clean up.
Of all the wolves, Scott’s got possibly the biggest frown, matched only by Derek’s (and really, who can match the frown of Derek Hale?) and he whispers something to Ally — presumably what Stiles had said — before leaving the bags on the floor and quickly approaching. Allison matches his pace with unhappy eyes, a pucker in her forehead as she looks at him. She touches Scott’s forearm when he stops in front of Stiles, stopping him from speaking. He glances over at her and closes his mouth as she gently eases around him to stand in front of Stiles.
Stiles can’t meet her eyes, can’t face her. He finds his eyes instead staring at her midsection. If he stares hard enough, he can still see blood pooling there around a sword.
“Stiles, look at me.” Allison’s fingers catch his chin, lifting it with a soft but sure hold. She makes him to look at her, though he can only hold her gaze for a second before focusing on a spot on her forehead. How she can still look at him with such soft eyes he doesn’t know.
“Stiles, what I am about to say to you is very important, okay? I need you to listen carefully.” She looks at him intently, head shifting around to chase his gaze, determined to meet it. “What happened to me was not. your. fault.” Stiles trembles a little beneath her hand, breathing going shallow, and she gives his chin a little shake. “It was not your fault, Stiles,” she repeats firmly, face resolute. “None of us blame you for it. It was not you. You are not at fault for anything that demon did. Especially not to me.”
Stiles's trembling increases, and she ducks closer again to peer up into his face, releasing his chin to cup his cheeks in gentle hands. Her expression melts into something achingly tender.
“You and the demon weren’t even in the same body anymore at that point, Stiles,” she whispers. “And it was the Oni that stabbed me. But even if you had been the one holding that sword, it still wouldn’t have been you. I know you didn’t want me to be hurt, I know you didn’t have any control over that demon. You were so strong fighting it for as long as you did, and I am proud of you.” Her tone is firm again, though her eyes are gleaming with unshed tears aa her voice gets tight. “I am proud of you, I am proud of us, for surviving. We survived, we got through it. We will get through this too. We will not let that demon take anything else from us, not even you.”
That does it. Stiles’s knees give out and he collapses to the floor, Allison and Scott following him down and enfolding him in their arms, cocooning him as he sobs. All the while they whisper soft assurances to him, telling him that it will be alright, that it wasn’t his fault, that Ally was okay, she had survived and so had he and they would get through it together. But he couldn’t keep shutting them out.
He realises on some level when the last bit of light is blocked out that more people have surrounded them, joining the hug. He doesn’t look up but he is surrounded, a warm press of bodies that feel more like a shield than a constriction. Someone’s hand is on his head, rubbing through his hair, while manicured fingers are stroke up and down his arm. Another hand rests firmly on his opposite shoulder while multiple voices join Allison’s and Scott’s, all with the same reassurances. Stiles sobs even harder, face buried in Allison's shoulder.
Finally, after what feels like an eternity, his sobs peter out, not so much because he’s feeling better but more because he’s wrung out, not enough energy or tears left to cry. He’s sagged in their arms, slumped into Allison’s embrace with Scott wrapped tight around his back. His best friend’s face is buried in the curve of his neck while Stiles’s is pressed into Allison’s collar, loose strands of hair from her braid tickling his cheek and nose. Stiles tries to steady his breathing, ignoring the way it hitches, and rolls his head to the side to take in the sight surrounding him.
The whole pack is on the floor huddled around them, Erica and Boyd pressed against either side of him while Lydia’s got her arm stretched between Erica and Allison to stroke his bicep. Derek and Isaac are sat on either side of Boyd, Isaac leaning against Boyd’s shoulder and watching Stiles with sad eyes while Derek reaches over them to keep a steady hand on Stiles’s shoulder. Stiles realises with shock that it had been Jackson scrubbing his hand through Stiles’s hair in an awkward attempt at comfort, like one might treat a younger brother. Cora and Peter are on the outskirts of the circle, not touching anyone but still close. Peter sits the farthest, a few feet back from his nephew and a steady gaze on Stiles, but the very fact that the man is willingly sitting on the floor has Stiles blinking in disbelief.
The pack pulls back when Stiles starts shifting, before he can start feeling stifled and panicked. But they don't leave, watching on as Scott squeezes his arms tighter around Stiles’s waist in a final hug, face tucked into the slope of his neck, and Allison’s hands once again frame his face to pull him down to place a feather-light kiss on his forehead. They whisper a few last reassurances to him before standing to move out of the way of the waiting pack.
That seems to be everyone else’s cue to move forward, moving in one or two at a time to reassure him with either physical contact or murmurs that they don’t blame him, he’s pack, he belongs there with them. Jackson, surprisingly, clamps a hand on his shoulder and, though he won’t look at Stiles while he says it, firmly tells him “it wasn’t your fault, man,” before giving a squeeze and following Lydia back to the couches. Erica and Boyd both give him hugs, Erica’s strong enough to make his ribs ache and Boyd’s surprisingly gentle, while Isaac runs a silent hand down his arm. Cora follows after him, also running her hand down his arm before ducking her head in to rub her cheek and chin up and down the curve of his neck and underside of his jaw before following the others. Peter’s face is serious but his eyes soft as he squeezes the back of Stiles’s neck and goes to claim the lone armchair for himself, picking up a book to studiously ignore the rest of them.
Finally, the only one that’s left is Derek. The Alpha moves to stand in front of him as the pack keeps their backs to them and bicker over movie choices in an illusion of privacy.
Derek’s hand returns to Stiles’s shoulder, grip firm but not too tight as he studies Stiles’s face. He seems to be searching for something, a hint of a question in his eyes. Whatever answer he finds must not be what he wanted, because his eyebrows lower and his lips pinch together. He makes sure Stiles is meeting his eyes before he starts speaking.
“You’re here because you’re pack,” Derek says. “We may not have been a very good one before — I didn’t exactly give any of you a good example of what that was supposed to mean — but that’s why we’re doing this. No more handling things alone. You’re pack, and you are right where you’re supposed to be. Pack looks after pack. So let us look after you.”
Stiles’s eyes burn, though he’s pretty sure his tear ducts are officially dried out. Derek’s gaze flicks between them, trying to see if the message has sunk in, and his face softens just a tad.
“You might not understand yet, but you will. We have time.”
He pulls Stiles in, the hand on his shoulder sliding across his shoulder blades while the other comes up to cup the back of his neck. He ducks his head into Stiles’s neck in a decisive scenting as the others had.
“Ouch, watch the sandpaper there, Alpha,” Stiles grumbles half-heartedly, shifting uneasily as his eyes jump around the room. Derek’s lips twitch as he pulls back and nudges Stiles towards the others.
“Batman!” Erica spins as soon as their moment is done, reaching out to grab his hand and drag him forward. “I call Batman cuddles!” She hustles him down onto the makeshift bed before he can protest, the other betas immediately crowding around them.
Erica and Boyd cuddle up on his right while Scott immediately scoots in on his left, throwing an arm over Stiles’s stomach in an obvious claim. Allison, unable to join them fully in the cuddle pile, sits against the couch with her legs stretched out along Scott’s back, reaching down to card her fingers through Stiles’s hair. Isaac and Cora join on either side, Isaac taking the space behind Erica and Boyd while Cora cues up the movie and stretches out a few inches from Allison’s hip, angled to throw her legs over Scott’s.
Derek settles onto the couch above Erica and Boyd, lounging back and letting his foot bump into Stiles’s shoulder. Lydia stays on the adjacent loveseat, unwilling to spend any more time on the floor in her dress, but Jackson only lasts through the opening credits before shifting to sit in front of her with his back against the couch and legs bumping against Isaac’s.
When Stiles glances to the side a little while later, Cora’s got one arm stretched to the side with a hand wrapped around Peter’s ankle. Neither of them are acknowledging it, Peter focused unseeingly on the book in his lap while Cora’s got her eyes glued to the TV, but some of the ever-present tension in their shoulders is gone.
This is his pack, Stiles realises. Every single one of them. No matter what he’s done or what they’ve lived through, this strange mishmash of people who once couldn’t stand each other, had turned into a family.
With the pull of sleep tugging at him, Stiles lets his eyes drift closed willingly for the first time in weeks. When the nightmares inevitably come, he knows he has wolves to chase them away.