Chapter Text
"Soooo... what are we gonna do if he doesn't go away?" Stiles asked softly after spitting out the pool water that’d seeped past his lips.
They both knew what he was talking about. Derek was completely paralyzed, and the dead weight of the werewolf was weighing him down. They could both feel Stiles’s strength beginning to wane after two hours of treading water.
"Risk whatever he's gonna do to us if we swim to the edge?" Derek suggested, and Stiles could tell from the look on his face that the werewolf knew that way led a gory, blood-soaked death.
"Think I'd rather drown than be gutted," he muttered.
Derek didn't say anything to that, but he didn't really have to. After two hours of this, Derek had accepted that any minute now, he would drown. He didn't trust humans, especially not Stiles, and he'd been waiting for Stiles to make the decision to save himself. To throw Derek's arm off himself and swim for the edge. To let him sink and leave him to die.
He hadn't yet, and Derek didn't know why, other than the fear of the kanima outweighing his fear of drowning.
"Maybe he'll go away," Derek suggested. "I'm pretty sure someone's controlling him."
"Controlling him to keep us in the pool?" Stiles frowned.
"He's clearly after one of us," Derek shrugged.
"Probably you, after all the times you've hunted him."
Derek agreed, though he didn't say so.
"If that's the case, he'll probably let you leave," he pointed out quietly. "You... you can let me go, you know."
Stiles twisted his head to gape at him in confusion.
"You'll drown."
"Yeah, but you won't," Derek answered seriously. "I know you're tired. If you wait any longer, you won't have the strength to swim to the edge and climb out."
Stiles gave him an indecipherable look, the skin around his eyes tightening.
"You don't have to drown with me," Derek murmured quietly because he was certain they both would if Stiles didn't let him go.
"We don't know for certain that it's after you," Stiles replied evenly, looking away from him before he began kicking a little harder and using the arm not holding Derek up to begin dragging them both through the water toward the shallower end.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying not to drown," Stiles huffed.
Derek knew he was flagging. He could feel the way the younger man's muscles trembled with every circle of limbs designed to keep them afloat. Stiles kept swimming while the kanima circled the pool edge, hissing and flicking his creepy serpentine tail. Despite the lizard skin, he reminded Derek of a cat eyeing a bird it wanted to hunt but couldn't reach.
"The pool is still too deep at the other end for you to touch the bottom," Derek pointed out.
"The disability access steps aren't," Stiles grunted, and Derek's eyes widened, remembering the school had installed a special staircase into the water that would allow those who couldn't use the ladder to still swim.
"He'll be able to reach with his claws," Derek warned.
"Not if I stay right at the edge of them. I should be able to stand up there."
He kept struggling, panting heavily and almost dropping them both under the water several times. Derek hated being so helpless, his limbs completely numb.
"You don't have to save me, Stiles," he tried again.
"Dude, you only got cut and fell into the pool in the first place because you were trying to push me out of the way when he came at us," Stiles disagreed. "I know you're fast enough to outrun that thing. You could have legged it like Erica did. But you didn't. I'm not gonna let you die for me."
The logic floored Derek.
Like, yeah, he had been trying to save Stiles, but he was bigger and stronger and faster, and the creature probably wasn't after the sarcastic teenager.
"Made it," Stiles grunted in relief, and Derek felt it when he got his feet under him on the solid steps and was no longer straining to tread water.
The creature snarled, swiping at them, and it hissed and skittering away when it got wet again.
"It's definitely afraid of the water."
Derek nodded in agreement as Stiles adjusted his grip on him, unfurling Derek's arm from around his shoulders and turning his body to put both arms around his waist, Derek's back to his chest.
He leaned back against the bollard in the middle of the step, installed to ensure no one in a wheelchair using the steps accidentally rolled into the spot that would be too deep. On the step, the water barely cleared Stiles's stomach when he stood at full height - the perfect depth for someone in a chair to keep their head above water. But to keep out of reach of the creature, they had to stay as submerged as possible.
Derek ended up practically in Stiles's lap, the boy using his own thighs to help keep Derek’s head above water, arranging his legs to balance the back of his thighs over Stiles’s knees. The alpha wolf inside his soul hated the position, so utterly vulnerable with Stiles at his back, his warm breath huffing at the side of his neck and cheek, over the top of his shoulder. His arms around his waist supported him.
"Thank you," he forced himself to say while Stiles panted tiredly, his forehead leaning against the back of Derek's head. "For not letting me drown."
"Yeah, well, you didn't let that thing gut me," Stiles muttered. "And you saved me when Isaac wanted to eat me on his first full moon."
They fell silent after that, Stiles still panting a little from the exertion - he was going to be sore in the coming days after the strain on his muscles, Derek was sure of it. The creature came back a few times, never getting close enough to the water's edge to reach them again, before eventually, it disappeared.
"He's gone," Derek said quietly, and Stiles jolted against his back, having almost dozed off.
"You sure? He could be hiding to try and lure us out."
Derek listened for the creature's heartbeat, but only the steady thump of his own and Stiles’s met his ears.
"We're alone," Derek confirmed.
"Oh, thank God. I'm freezing."
He stirred beneath Derek, beginning to drag him up the stairs to get them both out of the water.
"I think some feeling is coming back," Derek confided when Stiles had him on dry land.
"Of course it is," Stiles huffed. "Perfect timing."
Derek managed to drag himself into a sitting position right as another heartbeat reached his ears, followed by the drum of rapid footsteps. He whipped his head around, looking for the source, only to see Scott running into view.
"Stiles! Derek!" Scott yelled.
"More perfect timing," Stiles muttered bitterly. "You couldn't have shown up an hour ago, Scott?"
Derek huffed as well because it was annoying that Scott, Erica, Isaac, and Boyd had all left them there. They could have died.
Stiles looked over at Derek when Scott hauled him onto his feet. Derek met his gaze, his legs still weak.
Stiles had protected him. This mouthy, sarcastic spazz had been willing to drown for him, to die with him rather than leave him alone to save himself.
Derek couldn't remember the last time anyone had shown him that kind of loyalty. Maybe Laura? Maybe his parents? All of them wolves, all with blood ties to him. And yet here was this stubborn, smart-ass human who annoyed Derek more than anyone else he'd ever met, and he'd saved him. He'd shown more loyalty than his pack members had.
The bond snapped into place with a crack like lightning, zinging through his cells, his blood, his soul, and Derek grunted at the sting. Stiles jumped like he'd had a fright, and Scott tensed nervously as the scent of ozone and lightning flooded the space between them. Emotion poured through, heat searing along the pathway linking the two of them. Confusion. Curiosity. Worry. Anxiety. Exhaustion. All of it sizzled into him, and Derek had to close his eyes, taking a controlled breath.
"What just happened?" Scott confirmed, sniffing worriedly.
Stiles was rubbing his chest where the bond originated, his eyes fixed on Derek, his mouth opening and closing like he wanted to say something but had no words.
Derek met his gaze steadily, knowing firsthand how overwhelming a pack bond could be when it formed, even for a wolf. For a human, it had to be like being electrocuted, burned alive, and drowned all at the same time. The linking of souls, or mind, or emotions all designed to attune a packmate to another, designed to protect, to connect, to irrevocably link.
"Is... is this... a wolf thing?" Stiles asked and Derek was certain his own resignation, gratitude, confusion, and ever-present underlying anger were all flooding down the bond to Stiles in return.
"What?" Scott asked. "What happened?"
"A pack bond," Derek confirmed quietly, not daring to tell either of them that the last time he'd shared a pack bond with anyone, it'd been Laura. His family. He hadn't bonded with the wolves he'd bitten, and his bond to Peter had been burned out of him like everything else during the fire.
Something unknotted in Derek's belly when Stiles stumbled across the space between the two of them.
"What's a pack bond?" Scott asked dumbly because the boy was an idiot who kept rejecting everything wolfish instead of learning about what he'd become.
Stiles gripped Derek's waist, clinging to him, pushing into his space, and Derek managed to get his arm up, gripping the back of Stiles’s neck in return. He pulled Stiles in by it, burying his nose in Stiles’s hair and breathing in the scent of him, like caramel and sunshine, and the medicinal tang of his Adderall all currently overlaid with the stink of chlorine from the pull.
"Stiles? What's happening? What is this? I thought you two hated each other?" Scott asked, bewildered.
Derek didn't bother explaining it to him, just clung to Stiles tighter and closed his eyes relishing in the complete overwhelm of having a pack bond again, his wolf howling with joy after so long on his own. Stiles burrowed into him, arms curling all the way around him while he buried his head in Derek's neck, clinging to him tightly, hugging him while he trembled.
It might’ve been completely unintentional, and Derek was certain that when the euphoria wore off, he'd resent being so intimately linked with the spastic human, but for now, he had a new pack bondmate, and for the first time in over a year, Derek felt at peace.