Chapter Text
“Ow ow ow ow ow, fuck,” Stiles said as he got himself up on his elbows, and then, as Derek whirled around, “whoa, Jesus, you look like shit,” and then Derek was crouched by him, wild-eyed, dropping his phone on the floor and running his hands lightly all over Stiles’s body like he was checking for damage -- which made sense, actually, because Stiles could smell something burning, and he didn’t recognize the bathroom they were in, and also he was pretty sure he had a nosebleed.
“Did you hit your head?” Derek's fingertips settled gently on either side of Stiles’s jaw, and something about that plus the way he was looking at Stiles was really starting to freak Stiles out.
“I don’t know, man, what happened?” Definitely a nosebleed, thick warmth dripping over his lips.
“I’m not --” Derek picked up his phone from the floor, said into it, “He’s awake,” and then, “I don’t know, just get here,” and hung up.
“Cool phone,” Stiles said, and Derek gave him a strange look. It was cool, though. It looked -- Stiles turned his head and spat a mouthful of red, sucked another slimy load down from his sinuses and let that splatter onto the tile as well. Sucked and spat one more time.
When the back of his throat felt less clogged, he pulled up his t-shirt and wiped his slick mouth and chin. No reason not to; the shirt was already a lost cause, which was too bad, because it was obviously borrowed, nothing he recognized. Derek was watching the whole expulsion process with a weird, intense expression, and Stiles grimaced at him as he let the torn, blood-soaked cotton smack wetly onto his belly. It stung. He lifted it back up and frowned at the messy gouges on either side of his sternum. Claw marks, fantastic.
Carefully, he lowered the shirt again. “So this is disorienting and unpleasant. Are we in run-for-it danger?”
Derek shook his head, then visibly considered and amended, “I don’t think so.”
“Cool.” Stiles sat up all the way, legs splayed in front of him, and let his head tip down. “I’m just gonna hang out for a minute and try not to hurl.” He closed his eyes, and then, a moment later, stiffened up and opened them again at the sensation of -- okay, yeah, that was Derek’s hand, settling warm and heavy around the curve of his leg, just above his kneecap, what the hell. Feeling his femoral pulse? Maybe Derek had been the one to claw him and now he felt bad?
He wasn’t even doing anything, just holding Stiles’s leg like he was trying to be reassuring or something, which it really wasn’t.
Stiles licked his lips, then wished he hadn’t, because the tacky blood was a little nauseating. He wiped his fingertips on his jeans and carefully felt his own forehead and skull with his fingertips, carding through his hair to touch his scalp. Hair needed washing, but nothing hurt; no ache of new bruising or palpable contusions, and yet... “Okay, walk me through this. What were we doing?”
“You don’t remember?” Derek’s hand tightened briefly on Stiles’s leg. Stiles wished he would take it away. It was putting him on edge, the last straw adding to the surreality of the whole situation.
“Not a thing. I mean, lots of things, but not why I’m, you know, here.”
“There was an alpha,” Derek said. “She wanted you. To give you the bite.”
Stiles considered that for a moment and concluded that he was pissed off. “I’m getting kind of tired of you guys and your inability to accept a simple no.”
Derek’s hand tightened again, almost enough to hurt. “Most of us -- I would never --”
“Yeah, I know, you’re big on consent, the bite is a gift yada yada. Learn to take an unfair generalization, would you?” Stiles reached down and pushed Derek’s hand off. “Who’d you call? Peter?”
“Are you sure you didn’t --” Derek rose up on his knees and reached for Stiles’s head.
Stiles shoved his hand away. “Quit touching me.”
Derek’s face went sort of terrible for a split second, and then blank. “Sorry.”
“I don’t have a head injury. My name is Stiles Stilinski. I’m from Beacon Hills. Hironaka positively solved the resolution of singularities in characteristic 0.”
The corner of Derek’s mouth rose. “What’s Kanye’s first album?”
Stiles rolled his eyes. “College Dropout.”
Derek was actually smiling a little now. “Who’s the president?”
Fed up with the tickling, Stiles pulled his shirt up to wipe his face again while he answered.
Derek’s body went still. “Did you say --”
Behind his shoulder, a girl burst through the door. She stopped short and sniffed the air, then zeroed in on Stiles. “You’re hurt.”
“You changed your --” hair, Stiles didn’t finish saying, because it was more than that. Erica was --
“Let me see.” She was already hauling Derek out of the way by one shoulder and leaning over to look. Stiles let her get an eyeful of the divots on his torso. Four each side, dug deep enough that they were starting to pull nastily with his breaths.
“Shit, that’s nasty,” Erica said, cut her eyes at Derek. “Yours or hers?”
“Hers,” Derek said.
“Anything else?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think?”
“He hasn’t been checked over.”
Erica exhaled furiously. “She had him for almost a whole day, Derek, we need --”
“I know that,” Derek snapped back, tense. “There hasn’t been time.”
Erica turned back to Stiles. “Strip.”
Stiles gaped. “Seriously?”
Erica just snapped her fingers impatiently, glaring down at him, so, with a shake of his head, Stiles reached behind his neck and hauled his ruined t-shirt off by the collar, dropped it on the floor. His nipples pebbled up in the cold air of the bathroom, and he resisted the urge to cross his arms over them. Instead, he continued, bloody fingers slipping on the button of his fly, until he had his jeans unzipped, then got up on his knees and -- paused. It wasn’t that he was generally a self-conscious guy, even if he wouldn’t necessarily have picked being covered in blood in a cold bathroom as the first circumstances under which he exposed himself to a girl, but --
“Why are you being weird?” Erica demanded. “Are you hiding something fucked up? Just show us so we can take care of it. Jesus, you’re worse than Derek.”
“I’m not hiding anything, just --”
“Then get naked, dipshit. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“Good for you, but you haven’t seen it on me, so give me a freaking second and quit flipping your shit.”
Erica drew a startled breath. “What do --”
“Erica,” Derek said quietly, reaching up and closing a hand on her arm. There was something easy and instinctive in how she stilled and bent to him, in the way he leaned up as well, the two of them curved toward one another. Stiles could tell Derek was murmuring something into her ear, but his mouth was hidden, and it was too soft to hear.
Erica drew in a sharp breath, said, low, “You’re sure? What if --”
Derek murmured something else, then rose gracefully and took a few steps away, not looking at either of them. Erica watched the tense line of his shoulders for a moment, then turned to Stiles. “Derek says you don’t think you have a head injury. Do you mind if I check?”
“You can check out whatever you want as soon as you tell me what the fuck is going on,” Stiles said, and he could hear the kind of bright, hard cheerfulness in his own voice that meant the countdown to actually losing it and yelling was well and truly under way. The only thing he hated more than automatic software updates was being kept in the dark, and he was pissed that they seemed to be moving backward on that issue.
Erica directed an unreadable look at Derek’s back, then met Stiles’s eyes. “Stiles, how old are you?”
“I’m seventeen,” Stiles said, and even before she said anything, the way Erica’s face looked told him it was the wrong answer.