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This weeks pack night turns out to be a comedic affair, to put it nicely.
Apparently while Stiles had been caught up in researching vampires the night before, Derek, Erica, and Jackson had been traipsing through the woods and had accidentally run afoul of a gang of pixies.
To be more accurate, Erica had stepped on a pixie, and the rest of the tiny gang had promptly enchanted them with devastatingly accurate but ultimately harmless curses.
“Wait,” Stiles wheezes, before collapsing into laughter. “Explain to me again -“
Erica growls at him. It would be scary, if she wasn’t currently hovering six inches off the ground.
“Little shit said I was heavyfooted and that they could fix it for me.”
And then Derek says something in what sounds like Italian, and Stiles straightens back up, stifling his laughter in order to look at the Alpha without getting his throat ripped out. Derek says something else, shifting on his feet uncomfortably, and Boyd - who apparently speaks enough Italian to understand that last bit - chokes out a noise that could be, if it had been someone else, considered a laugh.
“So what’s his thing?” Stiles asks through giggles, looking at Erica, because he doesn’t understand a lick of Italian and maybe if Erica is laughing about someone else’s situation she’ll be less likely to launch at him with fangs and claws.
She smirks, then. “He growled at them, and they said if he were to live as both man and beast, he needed to speak his mind in human words instead of relying on animal noises. Don’t know why they made him speak Italian, though.”
“Maybe they were Italian fairies,” Scott chips in, to Lydia’s immediate noise of immense disgruntlement.
“Pixies, idiot,” she sighs, “I don’t even have the time to tell you just how completely wrong you are. For starters, pixies aren’t Italian in origin. As for why our Alpha is currently speaking a foreign tongue, that’s pretty clear: pixies are pranksters, but harmless. Being forced to speak his thoughts in a different language minimizes the chances that people would understand him if he said something hurtful or inappropriate, or something he otherwise wouldn’t want someone else to hear. They wanted to fuck with him, not ruin his life.” Then she turns to Derek and smiles one of her classic, “you aren’t going to like what I say” smiles. “My grandmother was Italian, I grew up speaking it. I’d be more than happy to translate for you until it wears off; I can start by telling Stiles what you said earlier, if you’d like.”
The word for “no” in Italian is apparently the same as it is in English. Appropriately, it’s said between growls - at least Derek has found a way to speak as man and beast simultaneously. Which was probably, Stiles thinks, the point of his curse.
“Wait,” Stiles says, “did Jackson get spelled too? Is that why he isn’t here?”
“Yes,” Lydia sighs, sounding equal parts exasperated and fond. “Because he’s an idiot, and doesn’t realize that spells typically wear off faster if you just let them serve their purpose without fighting it.”
“His loss,” Stiles shrugs. “I brought stuff for spaghetti and garlic bread.”
Erica beams at him. “Make me an entire loaf of garlic bread just for myself, and I’ll let you make all the dumb floating and levitating puns you want all night.”
“You’re just as bad as my dad,” Stiles groans, “On the condition that you eat a salad with it. I know werewolves have impeccable immune systems or whatever, but you can’t possibly be invulnerable to heart attacks. Also Lydia gave me a recipe for a kale salad that looks super good.”
Erica rolls her eyes, but it’s accompanied by a playful smile. “Sure, mom, I’ll eat all my veggies like a good girl before I slaughter a loaf of garlic bread. Hey, did you bring dessert?”
The rest of the night is uneventful, but still weird: Derek keeps looking at him and saying things he doesn’t understand, and Lydia occasionally responds with soft “I know”s, and they find that while Erica’s feet can’t touch the ground while she’s standing or walking, she can sit, though her legs float up off the ground; so they stack books and pillows on the coffee table for her, and apparently the pixies were satisfied that as long as her feet weren’t on the ground, anywhere else was acceptable.
Derek’s curse wears off first; he looks at Stiles with this soft, open look on his face, says something, Lydia replies with, “We know, Derek,”, and then suddenly he’s speaking English again.
Erica’s wears off next, when she knocks on Stiles’ door instead of just jumping through his window, and then she says “please” when she asks him for help instead of just demanding it, and one second later she’s crashing to the ground.
Jackson’s takes an entire week. Stiles didn’t actually know what his curse was, until he’d seen him at school the following Monday. Jackson had arrived with a scowl and a face full of pimples, shouting at anyone who had the nerve to ask him about what had happened. And then by the end of the week, apparently having had his vanity humbled by his new appearance, he sat with a table of nerd-type kids at lunch that under normal circumstances he’d never have been seen with, and the pimples had cleared up by the end of the night.
•
A couple weeks after the comedic pixie incident, because Stiles’ life is an actual theatrical play in which Thalia and Melpomene reign supreme and the comedy must be balanced by tragedy: there’s a tragedy, obviously.
“I cannot believe that you assholes didn’t call me when you decided to go after a coven,” Stiles yells, and then takes a long, shaky breath, because his friends are hurt and frankly he’s hurt that he wasn’t there to prevent that.
His anger deflates pretty quickly at the round of whines and muffled cries that come out of his packmates, and he tries to keep the panic and hurt out of his voice. “I could have helped.”
“We thought it was just one witch,” Erica says. “We didn’t think there was a whole fucking gang of them.”
“I’m going to yell at you all so much after I patch you idiots up,” he sighs, and then he goes to wash his hands because he can guarantee he’s about to have to put his fingers on at least one of their open wounds in a second.
Isaac’s looking far too green for his liking, shaking and sweating, visibly flinching at thin air, which means he’s probably, definitely been poisoned or maybe cursed. Erica’s ignoring her own less-than-fatal injuries in favor of firmly pressing towels against the back of his shoulder, where he doesn’t have to look to know there’s a gaping wound there. Cora’s limping up the stairs, presumably to shower, and Jackson’s definitely seen better days. Boyd and Scott seem to be resetting each other’s dislocated limbs, if the popping sounds and screaming are anything to go by. And Derek -
Stiles doesn’t even want to look at Derek, who’s pale and sweaty and clutching what is very clearly a fucking dagger still sticking out of his side.
Okay, first priority: Derek. The others seem to be taking care of each other’s most pressing wounds, with some of them even looking like they made it out with only minor scrapes. And also, they can’t exactly be a pack if their fucking Alpha dies on them. Derek’s worst, so Derek’s first, and then he can see to everyone else after.
“Lydia,” he croaks, already moving to where Derek’s on the couch, “I need - my backpack. Grab me sage, woundwort, sandalwood, bracken, a lighter. Eucalyptus oil. Angelica root, just in case. And just, like, a fuck ton of gauze.”
“I’ll see what I can find,” she says, then, “You’ll probably need alcohol to sanitize the wound, too. Do you have any rose hips? Or vervain? I can make a tea - there should be hops and chamomile left in the pantry.”
“That’s why you’re my favorite,” he says, softening a little, because he’s not alone here. Lydia’s probably just as worried as he is, even though she hides her concern remarkably better than he. “I probably have vervain, but I’m not sure about rosehips, you’ll have to see what I have in my bag.”
He’s only vaguely aware of Lydia milling around him, flitting about and grabbing supplies from his backpack and the bathroom, while he kneels in front of Derek where he’s slumped on the couch.
“I’m gonna be so fucking mad at you if you die on me,” he whispers, and Derek is at least conscious and cognitive enough to huff out a breath at him.
And then he leans up and gently presses his hand to Derek’s side, where the dagger is making a mess of his flesh. He can’t pull it out yet, not until Lydia returns and he can stop the blood flow, but he takes the time to examine it - check how deep it is, see if it’s glowing with enchantment or carved with runes or poisoned (yes, no, maybe; the enchantment is probably to hinder his healing ability, and he can’t tell if it’s poisoned until he can see the tip of it.).
And prepare himself, because of all the things he fucking hates, of all the injuries he’s had to deal with - knives are his least favorite. Gaping holes in flesh, blood pouring over his hands? Absolutely the last thing he wants to have to deal with.
When Lydia returns with her arms full of small jars and packages of gauze - and a mortar and pestle, although he’s not exactly sure where she managed to procure that - the first thing he does is call up his spark, because bracken responds wonderfully to his spark; they feed off of each other, amplify each other’s properties. He rubs the bracken between his palms, focuses all of his energy into thoughts of healing, rubs them until the leaves are rolled tightly and his palms burn from the kinetic energy working his spark into the plant.
He only has a few seconds for the next part: he has to remove the dagger, sanitize the wound, and then press the bracken over his open flesh - but not into it - cover it, and then clean and dress the surrounding skin.
It’s the longest minute of his entire fucking life. Derek goes stiff and very nearly howls when he removes the dagger, and then actually does howl when Stiles pours vodka over the wound and then presses the bracken against his tender flesh, which, without the dagger and blood to obscure it, he can clearly see is inflamed, lines of black from the enchantment snaking from the wound out. That howl of pain almost breaks Stiles, almost has him wrenching away from him because he can’t stand to be the reason for that pain, but Derek’s death would actually destroy him.
But then the wound is dressed and the worst of the blood is cleaned, and he can already feel the energy of his spark thrumming, working. Derek is slumped and mostly unconscious, and now that he’s not terrified of Derek’s immediate and impending death, he can turn his attention to inspecting the rest of the damage, which, since his healing had been impaired by the enchantments on the dagger, was plentiful.
There’s a shallow, but still bleeding, stab wound on his chest, just above his heart, that indicates one of the witches had probably tried to sink the dagger in there first, but had been thrown off or otherwise unable to complete the enchantment or push the dagger in all the way. There’s a long scratch down his abdomen in the shape of a lightening bolt, where he’d probably gotten in the way of a surge of magical energy, and his right wrist is definitely angled in a way that normal, healthy wrists shouldn’t be angled.
He can’t do much about the wrist at present, but he trusts that the bracken will start working shortly and Derek’s healing should be in somewhat working order for it to heal within a few hours.
The rest he can work with, though. Aversion to blood aside, the wound above his heart isn’t that deep, and the flow of blood is absolutely nothing compared to what had been rushing out when he’d removed the dagger. It takes him almost no time at all to clean the blood and get a clearer picture of the wound.
He’s grateful then for Lydia’s presence of mind to grab a mortar and pestle, because it’s far easier to crush the sage, sandalwood, woundwort and eucalyptus oil into a paste in that than it would have been in his hands, or worse, directly on Derek’s skin. He keeps his spark vibrating under his skin, focuses the energy on light and healing and helping and hoping as he mixes it, so sure that if he’s confident it’ll help Derek that it will.
He smoothes the paste tentatively over Derek’s chest and abs, tapes a strip of gauze over the knife wound. And then when Derek sighs and opens his eyes and seems like he’s only in moderate and not life-threatening pain, Stiles squeezes his hand and turns to where Lydia’s been helping Erica with Isaac’s back.
“Can you check if the dagger tip was poisoned? How’s Isaac? I want to help him but, I. I need to stay with Derek, make sure he’s healing correctly. There should be a jar of calabar beans in the cupboard - I’m pretty sure Isaac was poisoned, and since witches have a permanent hard-on for belladonna-“
“Derek will be fine, Stiles. You should rest, using your spark like this is draining.” She squeezes his shoulder, wipes his hair away from his forehead. “I’ll bring you two some tea after I take care of Isaac.”
Stiles slumps against Derek’s knees then, because she’s right, and he never realizes it until after; calling his spark up from inside of him, using it actively: it’s exhausting. He’d been working on adrenaline, but with Derek looking marginally better than he had been half an hour ago, his adrenaline rush is fading off and the sudden drainage of energy is hitting him like a ten-ton truck.
He’s still sitting at Derek’s knees, spark shimmering under his skin, head pressed to Derek’s thigh, when Lydia comes back a long while later, carrying mugs of tea and looking for all the world like she’s not nervous at all about the current status of their packmates’ health.
“Everyone else is fine,” she says, calmly, “Isaac was poisoned, but I gave him the calabar bean tincture - which smells disgusting, by the way - and he’s sleeping it off. He should be fine by the morning. None of the rest of them had their healing impaired; Erica only had minor injuries, and Boyd and Scott are already nearly healed.”
“Jackson and Cora?”
“Both sleeping. Everyone will be fine, Stiles. Derek looks better already.” She sets the tea on the table, and it admittedly doesn’t smell great - teas made with the magical quality of herbs in mind and not the taste never do - but he reaches out for a mug anyway, because it’s still hot and chamomile puts him to sleep like a fucking baby.
Stiles looks up at her, and he’s not sure what emotion is displayed on his face but he knows it’s probably raw and desperate and terrified, because she reaches down and smooths his hair back from his forehead again.
“I know, honey,” she says, voice low and gentle, “I’m sure Derek would rather a bed than a couch right now, so why don’t you two go get some rest?”
She heads off, probably to sleep herself, and Stiles sighs, already hating the idea of having to leave Derek once he’s in his room and not on the couch anymore.
But she’s right, a bed would do Derek wonders. He nudges Derek’s leg, and Derek looks dazedly down at him, half asleep already. Stiles attempts a smile, but he can tell it probably looks pretty sad and grim.
“Hey, big guy,” he says, “thanks for not dying on me. It’s kinda hard to be angry at dead people.”
Derek huffs out a breath. Stiles likes to think he would’ve gotten a half-exasperated, half-fond eyeroll, if Derek had possessed the energy necessary.
“Drink the tea, it’ll help. And then I’m helping you to your room, ‘cause laying on your couch probably isn’t going to expedite your healing.”
Derek groans when he sits up, one hand over the bandage on his side to not pull at it, and Stiles hides his smirk into his own mug when Derek carefully sniffs at the tea he’s handed and makes an extremely disgusted face.
“Tastes better than it smells,” Stiles shrugs, but Derek’s already grimacing and knocking it back like cold syrup. Probably smarter to drink it in one swallow, because Stiles was definitely lying about it tasting better than it smells.
He finishes his own tea, and then stands to help Derek up, supporting his weight with Derek’s arm around his shoulder and his arm around Derek’s waist.
It takes them a good ten minutes to get to Derek’s room, with Derek hissing and grunting all the way up the stairs, and then practically moaning once he’s collapsed on his bed. Stiles shifts on his feet, preparing himself to leave Derek and crawl back to the couch - but then Derek throws an arm out and half-tugs him down onto the bed next to him, and even though he’s uninjured and at this point reasonably certain that Derek’s healing abilities are starting to, if slowly, kick back in enough that Stiles doesn’t have to stick around to monitor him, he sinks into the bed and passes out almost the second Derek gets his arm around his waist.
The next morning, he’s still practically vibrating out of his skin with the nervous energy of having almost lost Derek, so he enlists Kira - who somehow has perfect egg-cracking skills - to help him make breakfast for the pack, because post-fight mornings always have them all tense and ravenous; probably because they’re so happy to be alive that they just want to eat like it’s their last meal. He doesn’t like to think about that too much, so he lets the mindless task of churning out enough waffles and scrambled eggs and bacon to feed a small army work the last of the nerves through his system.
Except for Derek; he makes Derek a steak. And then he makes Erica her own personal plate of cinnamon french toast when she bitches about Derek getting special privileges, and Derek forces all of the wolves to wait until Stiles packs a plate for himself before allowing the rest of them to descend.
•
The supernatural front is pretty calm in the weeks after the coven thing, which Stiles is pretty grateful for, because midterms are around the corner and if he’s learned anything in the last two years, it’s that running with a supernatural crowd while trying to maintain grades at the same time? Not the easiest. He’d prefer to have all supernatural disasters limited to summer - if supernaturals would just consult him before starting shit, that’d be great, thanks - or at least keep them minimal while school is in session.
But supernatural baddies never ask him for his opinion on what times work best for him, which means he oftentimes has to try to cram as much studying in in as little time as possible. Which also means he’s forcing the pack to do the same, because he’ll be damned if he has to balance grades and supernatural disasters if the rest of them aren’t putting in the same amount of work.
So he turns the next pack night into an impromptu study session, complete with healthy, brain-boosting snacks, and with strict instructions to keep the TV off until he’s certain Scott and Isaac will be able to pull at least a B- on their Spanish midterm.
Lydia’s helping Erica with her Algebra assignment, which, of all the things he thought he’d never see that he has now - werewolves, kanimas, banshees, kitsunes, pixies, actual literal magic witches - Lydia helping Erica study, when two years ago Lydia wasn’t even aware of Erica’s existence, - even though they had shared three classes both freshman and sophomore year - is probably the most unbelievable to him.
“I still don’t get it,” Isaac groans, thunking his head down on the table, “if the conjugations of -er and -ir verbs are basically the same, why aren’t they all just -er or -ir? How do I tell if it’ll be -er or -ir?”
“I didn’t get it at first either,” Stiles replies, “but the trick to learning a different language is mostly just memorization. Ms. Flores won’t expect you to know verbs she hasn’t taught you, so just memorize the conjugations of the list she gave you. -Er and -ir verbs are basically only different in the nosotros form, emos and imos. So, for example, if she gives you “tu vives” or “tu comes” and asks you for the infinitive, just try to remember the rest of the conjugations, and you’ll know if it’s -er or -ir.”
“Spanish sucks,” Isaac sighs.
Stiles pats his hand and throws him a little smile. “You just need practice. I’m gonna check on Scott, why don’t you write out the conjugations of the list of verbs she gave you and I’ll quiz you in a sec?”
Isaac groans again, so Stiles takes pity and slips him an apple and a granola bar on his way over to Scott.
But when he gets over to Scott, he witnesses something possibly more unbelievable (and heartwarming) than Lydia helping Erica: Derek is sitting with him, quizzing him with flash cards on definite articles.
“Oh thank God,” Scott says when he sees him, “Can you check my work, because I’m pretty sure Derek isn’t as fluent in Spanish as he says he is.”
“Scotty, if Derek’s command over the Spanish language is even half as good as he says it is, that’s still 50% better than yours,” Stiles says, laughing at the betrayed look Scott gives him. “Plus Derek can’t be wrong - I literally wrote those flash cards for you, the answers are all on the back.”
“Oh,” Scott says, frowning. “Right. I forgot.”
“Of course you did,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes. “Hey, Derek, can you check on Isaac? I think he responds better to you.”
“What? You’re the only reason Isaac passed English. He definitely responds better to you.”
“Ugh,” Stiles says, resisting every urge to roll his eyes again. “Just go give your son some attention, pack daddy.”
Derek’s startled flush does something interesting, but not exactly unfamiliar, to his stomach.
When their midterm grades come back a week later and Erica proudly presents an A- and Isaac and Scott both come back with solid B+s, Stiles bakes four-dozen little #1 shaped cookies - knowing Erica will hoard an entire dozen to herself - and Derek makes some dorky joke about Stiles being their number one fan that makes him blush and stutter in return, because he’s totally not wrong.
•
Sometime in December, Stiles realizes he’s fallen in love with Derek Hale.
Well, that’s not accurate. Sometime in December, there is a small series of events that occurs that leads Stiles to the realization that he’s in love with Derek Hale.
It starts with Danny getting his heart broken. Jackson and Lydia are sitting at Derek’s kitchen table spewing impressively hurtful insults about Ethan having the audacity to break up with Danny, and then Derek casually suggests that they should invite Danny, even if he’s not exactly pack, to their next pack movie night.
And then pack movie night comes, and Stiles goes to grab snacks and finds Derek taking cartons of ice cream from the freezer. There’s a tub of mint-chocolate chip on the counter.
Stiles very clearly remembers Lydia mentioning, among a slur of increasingly violent threats concerning Ethan, that mint-chocolate chip was Danny’s favorite ice cream.
And then he sees that there’s a pint of his favorite ice cream, the almond milk cappuccino kind. And there’s double chocolate fudge for Erica and Jackson, strawberry for Boyd, chunky monkey for Scott, cherry garcia for Lydia, cookie dough for Cora, and vanilla for Kira and Isaac.
And then he realizes that they’re watching Spider-man, which Stiles remembers discussing with Danny at length the last time they’d hung out.
Somewhere between the ice cream and the movie, something clicks in Stiles’ brain, and he realizes that Derek cares so selflessly for anyone he considers pack or pack adjacent. And then he thinks about all the times Derek’s risked life and limb for any of them, about all the times Derek’s dropped Isaac and Erica and Boyd off at school, about the time Derek dropped everything to pick Isaac up from school early when he’d started having issues controlling his shift, about the fact that Derek re-built his family home from the fucking ground up and with bedrooms for them all and for guests, and had given them all keys, to boot.
And then he remembers when Derek had had that dagger stuck in his side, and the mere thought of Derek dying had almost crushed Stiles, and that feeling in his stomach when they were helping the pack study was obviously butterflies, and holy shit, how did he not realize.
A little late, he realizes that he’s still standing in the kitchen doorway staring at Derek as he’s having all of these sudden revelations.
Of course, Derek turns to him with this soft, concerned look on his face, which just serves to make Stiles’ heart start beating faster.
“Hey, you okay?” Derek asks him, and he’s in sweatpants like he always is for pack movie night, and he looks so comfortable and trusting, and how did he not realize.
“Yeah,” he chokes out, and he’s not sure if it’s true or not but he knows his heart is beating too fast for Derek to be able to find a slip, anyway.
Derek doesn’t look like he believes him, but he lets it slide anyway, for which Stiles is grateful. “Okay,” he says, “wanna help me take all these bowls out to the living room?”
“Yeah,” Stiles says again, a little distantly.
After the movie, when they’re all starting to turn in or get ready to leave, Derek slips a spare key onto Danny’s key ring, casually mentioning that he’s considered a welcome guest to the pack home anytime.
•
The first week of January, the temperature drops so sharply that Stiles is convinced a Wendigo has accidentally strayed too far from Canada, and brought a harsh winter with it.
It starts snowing. Stiles consults everyone he knows, their parents, their grandparents: no-one can recall the last snowfall, it’s been so long. And it’s not a light snowfall, either. By the end of day two, there’s a solid foot on the ground. There are two-dozen ice-related car accidents by the fourth day, and then they find not one, but three bodies encapsulated in ice by the end of the week, which is what prompts Stiles to really consider it being a supernatural cause.
The pack house is insulated, but they find out pretty quickly (read: the second day) that heat doesn’t get through the entire house sufficiently enough to sustain the sudden freakish weather they’re experiencing, so at the start of the second week he hassles Derek into giving him his credit card, and drags Lydia out to Target to help him stock up on fuzzy blankets until the weather breaks.
Isaac’s teeth are chattering when they get back to the house, and Boyd and Erica are currently cuddling so hard they look like they’re trying to smother each other. Even Derek is still wearing his leather jacket and looking miserable. Stiles doesn’t fault them, because he hasn’t removed his winter coat, beanie, scarf, or gloves, the entire time.
“I’m like, mostly certain it’s a Wendigo,” he wonders aloud, helping Lydia throw blankets over the couch. “Maybe a Yeti? Which one brings snow? It has to be supernatural though, right?”
“It can’t be a Wendigo,” Lydia grumbles. She’s not taking very kindly to the snow, or, her immune system isn’t taking very kindly to the shock of the snow, because she says it through sneezes. “There was a Wendigo last year, and it only brought snow to the immediate area it was staying in - in a cave. It didn’t cover the entire town.”
“Sooo,” Stiles continues, “Yeti? Back me up, Derek.”
“It’s not a Yeti,” Derek grunts.
“That’s literally the opposite of backing me up, but okay.”
“Yetis have never once been spotted in North America. It’s not a Yeti.”
Stiles straightens up from throwing yet another blanket on the couch, puts his hands on his hips, and glares. Or he hopes it’s a glare, but it probably looks more like a small, petulant child under the bundle of clothing he’s wearing.
“...Any other ideas? Bueller?”
“...No,” Derek cedes, sighing. “But it’s definitely supernatural. We’ll have to go looking for whatever it is and fucking kill it. My car wasn’t built for this weather.”
“I’m a human who’s been living in California his entire life, Derek, my body wasn’t built for this weather. Must be nice to have advanced thermoregulation.”
“If that was your attempt at saying you want in on the next puppy pile, Stiles,” Derek smirks, “all you had to do was ask.”
Stiles splutters. “Consider me asking then, Derek. There was a puppy pile and you didn’t invite me!”
He’s vaguely aware of Lydia stifling laughter in the background.
“We’ll go in the morning,” Derek says. “The days are at least moderately warmer than the nights, maybe whatever it is that’s doing this rests during the days.”
“Correction,” Lydia says, “you guys are going. I’m allergic to snow.”
“Oh my god,” Stiles laughs, “you have a cold, Lyds. That’s not an allergy.”
“You should stay, too, or maybe you’ll catch the allergy,” she replies.
“Hell no, I’m meeting a Yeti,” he says, and then he turns to Derek again. “Wait, can we really have a pack pile, because I’ll go get all the pillows in the house right now if you say yes.”
Isaac, Erica, and Boyd, simultaneously shout out a “yes”, while Derek grunts and says, “Go get the pillows, then.”
Turns out, it’s not a Yeti. It’s something Stiles had only seen mentioned in passing and never actually read up on: Yuki-onna.
Derek, Stiles, and Kira - who had been the one to enlighten them of Yuki-onna’s name when she’d seen her - had split off in one direction, while Erica, Isaac, and Jackson, had gone another, and Scott, Boyd, and Cora had gone off in yet another.
Derek, Stiles, and Kira see her first, floating in the trees, where the snowfall is heaviest. She’s easily 6 feet tall - though she looks 8 feet, as she’s floating a foot above the foot of snow - with shimmering opalescent skin and jet black hair, wearing a stunning white kimono. There’s a constant stream of freezing tears on her face, and the air around her is raining icicles.
Almost instantly, as soon as they spot her, Derek shoves Stiles behind him, blocking him from the woman with his body.
“Don’t look into her eyes,” Kira warns them, and Stiles wouldn’t even if he could; the woman’s eyes are closed, but she also seems so terribly sad that Stiles wouldn’t have been able to look into her eyes had they been open. “Don’t threaten her, don’t attempt to attack her, and if she speaks directly to you, don’t ignore her. Yuki-onna respond well to promises being kept; if we offer her a promise that we can keep, she should spare us.”
“Yuki-musume, moon princess,” she says then, to the woman, “My friends and I can promise that you be allowed to grieve safely in these woods upon full moons, if that is your desire.”
“Ah, you have seen me as I see you,” the woman says, with her eyes still closed. Her voice is hauntingly sad. “Kitsune, a wolf, a pretty boy. I see a beautiful girl, and a loving couple, adoring parents. And I see that you and your friends long for the moon as I do. I accept your offer of protection, and offer you my gratitude in return. I will return to these woods on nights of the full moon, and I will return once more if I find you to break this promise.”
And then she melts into the snow.
Wait, loving couple? Adoring parents?
“She won’t harm us, when she returns,” Kira whispers, “As long as she senses wolves in these woods on full moons, she knows she’ll be protected. If you see her again, approach her as a wolf.”
“Uh,” Stiles says, “I think I’m caught on the adoring parents part? What did she mean, Kira?” Kira giggles, but doesn’t answer. “Kira?”
•
The ice actually did end up fucking Derek’s car up, but, somehow, Stiles’ jeep managed to escape that fate, which is how Stiles finds himself with a car full of teenaged werewolves on his way to school for the next week until Derek’s car thaws or whatever.
“Stop it,” Stiles says, slapping Erica’s hand away from the radio dials. “102.1 stays. And Isaac, don’t think I can’t see you mocking me in my rear view mirror, you little shit. Look at Boyd. Boyd’s perfect. Be more like Boyd.”
“Boyd’s mocking you in his head,” Isaac teases.
“Oh, so now werewolves are telepathic? So help me God I will stop this car and force you all to walk the next five miles.”
That shuts Isaac up.
“Can we get coffee?” Boyd asks.
“See, kids? A genius idea, from Boyd. Yes, my good man, we can get coffee. We can, because you’re my favorite. Isaac and Erica can suffer with no coffee unless they behave.”
“I’m behaving!” Isaac protests.
“102.1 stays,” Erica grumbles. “I’ll behave for a latte.”
Stiles sighs. “If I have to bribe you to behave, is that really behaving?”
“You’re rewarding me. For my good behavior. To Starbucks.”
“Very Pavlovian,” he says, but pulls into the Starbucks drive-thru regardless. “If you preemptively behave all week, maybe I’ll reward you kids with breakfast.”
“Still bribery, mom,” Erica says, “but I can work with those terms.”
•
When Stiles drops them back at the pack house after school on Friday, it happens to be pack night, so he decides to just stay instead of going back to his house just to have to turn around in an hour and drive all the way out back to Derek’s again anyway.
“Jesus,” Stiles says to Derek, the second he walks through the door. “I don’t know how you manage to drive them around all the time, the kids basically drove me insane in a week.”
Derek lets out one of those half-laughs that are becoming eerily familiar and endearing to him. “The trick is to tune them out; honestly, I pretend they don’t even exist when I’m driving. You eat yet?”
“No, figured I’d make dinner here. It’s pack night, right? I can make lasagna. Actually, we probably don’t have enough pasta for lasagna. Steak and roasted veggies? Do we still have sweet potatoes?”
He tosses his keys onto the coffee table and wanders into the kitchen, vaguely aware of Derek following him as he starts to dig through the pantry to see what they have on-hand.
“Hmm,” he continues, “There’s stuff for dough, we could probably make homemade pizza. What do you feel like?”
Erica is giggling somewhere in the background. “I think he’d like exactly what you’d like, mom.”
“Okay, gonna ignore that. Derek?”
He straightens up and turns, expecting to see Derek sitting on one of the barstools at the breakfast counter.
But, no, that’s not what happens, he straightens up and turns right into Derek, who had apparently just been standing right next to him the whole time.
“Uh, Derek?”
“Erica,” Derek says, not turning at all from where he’s looking straight at Stiles, “go join Boyd and Isaac in the living room.”
Erica pops open a bag of chips, slowly, the noise shockingly loud in the open space. “And miss this? No way, dad.”
“Erica,” Derek says again, but with a little of that Intimidating Alpha, Listen To Me Now, tone dripping into his voice, “Now.”
Erica rolls her eyes, but gets up anyway. Stiles...almost misses having her as a witness, because the look on Derek’s face kind of makes him feel like prey. Like he’s about to be devoured.
“You know why they keep calling you mom?” Derek asks, low, and wow, he’s super close. Stiles’ heart and stomach are not entirely under his control right now.
“Um,” Stiles squeaks, “No?”
There’s some noise in the background that indicates Boyd, Erica, and Isaac are voicing their own commentary, but he can’t hear them clearly through the sound of his heart pounding in his ears.
“Because,” Derek says, slowly, as if Stiles should already understand, “You act like an Alpha’s mate.”
Stiles’ heart is clearly beating so hard that it’s disrupting his ability to hear things properly, because, um, what?
“Um,” Stiles says again, “what?”
“You cook for us,” Derek starts, “take care of us after fights - you saved my life. I let you sleep in my bed, Stiles. You helped them study. If you were a wolf, you’d be able to see it: the way they glow when you praise them, encourage them to do better, help them succeed. You reward them when they make you proud. They listen to you, look to you for direction. You moderate their arguments. You fucking nested in the living room when the Yuki-onna was in town. Jesus, Stiles,” he breaks off, groans, and Stiles isn’t sure when it had happened, but his face is hovering in the crook of Stiles’ neck. “The reason the Yuki-onna didn’t kill us on sight was because she thought we were already together. She sensed that we acted like a married couple, like parents.”
“Oh,” Stiles says, still pretty sure that he’s having an intensely long auditory hallucination.
“You call them “the kids”; you referred to Isaac as my son and called me pack daddy. Not ten minutes ago, you asked what “we” had for groceries. You drove them to and from school for the last week, because I couldn’t.”
“Oh,” Stiles says again, dumbly. Then, because his brain is broken, “Congratulations, it’s puppies?”
Derek huffs a laugh into his neck. Stiles is momentarily pretty disappointed in his ability to notice things happening - because on top of not realizing he’d fallen in love with Derek, he also apparently didn’t realize he was co-parenting the shit out of a half-dozen wolfy kids with the Alpha, and then he didn’t realize Derek had tucked his face into Stiles’ neck, and then he didn’t realize, just now, that Derek had snaked an arm around his waist.
Jesus, his head has been so far up in the clouds that he’s been completely ignoring his surroundings.
Derek breathes into his neck for a long minute, no doubt smelling the mess of emotions that Stiles is currently exuding: love, because obviously; confusion, because again, obviously; happiness - for someone so oblivious, all of these things seem to be so fucking obvious right now; and probably a fair bit of arousal, because, like, Derek’s face in his neck, his arm around his waist, his body pressed up against his? Obviously.
“Remember the pixies? When I was forced to speak Italian?”
Stiles nods, not trusting his voice to work properly right now, and definitely not trusting his brain to produce words.
Derek presses a single, feather-light kiss to the juncture of his neck and shoulder.
“The first thing I said was ‘It makes me happy seeing you laugh, I want to kiss your smile.’. The last thing I said was ‘I’m in love with you.’.”
Stiles melts, a little bit.
“You kept trying to say a lot of things to me,” he says, when he finally gets his brain back online, “I’m gonna need to hear all of them in English. Later.”
He can feel Derek smile into his neck before he sees it, when Derek lifts his head and looks at him, and his face is so relaxed and open and carefree and happy.
And then Derek presses the softest, shyest kiss to his mouth, and Stiles melts a little more.
“I’ll tell you all of them, everyday. Forever, if you want.”
And Stiles is officially a puddle of melty heart-happy goop.
They end up making pizza, and when Boyd forgoes his usual seat next to Derek at the table to keep it open for Stiles, Stiles beams with happiness and makes Boyd’s favorite cheesecake for dessert.