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Stiles is talking. Again. Or, possibly, he never stopped and has been polluting the air between them all the way from Derek’s loft out to the woods. Derek can hardly be held responsible for retaining every word that comes out of this kid’s stupidly big mouth.
He’s panting, stumbling up the hill that Derek’s sashaying up like a majestic cat. He actually says that – ‘sashaying like a majestic cat.’ Who the hell talks like that? Derek turns to look back at him, let him know he’s actively being judged for that turn of phrase. Stiles doesn’t look like he cares that Derek’s judging him. He huffs, face scrunching up, grouses, “You could slow down, you know?”
Which is basically asking him to do the opposite. Derek widens his strides and Stiles grumbles behind him, using his hands as much as his feet now in order to keep up.
When they crest the top of the small hill, Stiles is holding a stitch in his side and his breathing is ugly and loud. “So, I’ve been trying to rank it.”
Derek perks a dark brow at him.
“On your ‘Terrible Idea’ meter.” Stiles tilts his head to the side, shooting him a challenging look from under long lashes. It’s a remarkably grave expression, considering the way the words twist out jokingly. “Going out into the woods and searching for a… something that’s been making Beacon Hills into its own personal cash cow with no idea what it is or how to stop it.” Derek turns away from him, jaw clenched, and Stiles taps his own chin theatrically. “I’m putting it above ‘living in an abandoned train car’ and below ‘trying to kill Lydia because you thought she was the kanima.’ Fair placement, I think.”
“No one asked you to come along,” Derek growls.
Stiles scoffs, straightening up, offended. “No, and that doesn’t even get a rank on the T.I. meter! You do crap like that too often for it to even register a blip. Let me tell you, trying to keep half your Pack in the dark is idiotic and, also, when has that ever worked for you?”
“You,” Derek hits the word hard, “are not my Pack.”
Stiles feigns an expression of deep thought. “Um, one? Fuck you. Two? Yes, I am. Scott’s too attached to Isaac to abandon him to you and your dumb ass, which puts him firmly in your camp and someone’s got to make sure he doesn’t get himself killed.” He raises his hand. “Which means you get me too.”
Derek glares at him.
Stiles pulls a face. “Try to contain your excitement. Honestly, Derek, you’re embarrassing me here.”
Derek leans into his space, bares his teeth an inch from the tip of Stiles’ nose and enjoys the way it makes his heartbeat skitter. “Keep. Up,” he grits out. He’s not about to admit he’s relieved. It’s not just Isaac who needs Scott and Scott who needs Stiles. He notices the way Erica drifts closer when Stiles and Scott are near, Boyd following more cautiously.
And Stiles can basically goad Jackson into anything, and vice versa, which occasionally works to Derek’s advantage. When it’s not driving him to distraction, that is.
They’ve been trudging through the woods in relative silence – meaning Stiles is talking but not actually to Derek anymore – when there’s a wet thump and his voice drops off.
Derek whirls, claws already extended and the tips of his fingers twinge, making the change so fast always causes more pain than it would otherwise. He rolls his eyes, retracts them with a smirk.
Stiles glowers up at him, getting his hands under him. “Okay, ow,” he says with a wince, raising a hand to his head. It looked like his foot had slid out in front of him and he’d dropped quick and hard, enough that he’d hit his head on the tree trunk behind him.
Derek reluctantly holds out a hand to him.
Stiles stops probing his head, clasps Derek’s fingers and sets his hand next to his hip to propel himself up. “Ew,” he exclaims in disgust, holding his hand up. It’s covered in something sticky and red. Blood.
Derek yanks him all the way up, grabs his other wrist and sniffs. The tense of his shoulders relaxes only minutely. “It’s deer blood.”
Stiles sniffs too. Pulls a face. “Still gross,” he decides.
Derek rolls his eyes harder. His gaze flashes red and he stares down at the small puddle of blood. It doesn’t look natural. It looks like it was gathered and placed there for a specific purpose. He grabs up a handful of Stiles’ shirt and shoves the dazed kid behind him.
Stiles goes willingly, which supports the idea that he actually did some damage with that fall.
Now that Stiles isn’t standing in the way of it, Derek can see they’re on the edge of some sort of oval design. Rocks, branches and red sand are creating intricate patterns inside of it. Blood and herbs that aren’t indigenous to the Preserve meet Derek’s nose. “It’s a witch,” Derek guesses aloud.
He turns to look at Stiles, who’s got a benign smile on his face. It widens when he notices Derek’s confused expression. “Should’ve known you’d get it,” he says, words lazy.
He doesn’t sound sarcastic in the slightest. Derek presses a hand to the back of Stiles’ buzzed head, feels an impressive lump, and watches Stiles wince harder. He doesn’t say anything though, which sends a larger shot of concern tripping down Derek’s spine. “We’ll check you out with Deaton,” he says gruffly, tone uncaring.
Stiles blinks hard, looking slightly lost. He stares down at the place where he’d fallen then flicks his gaze back up to Derek. “Yeah,” he says blankly, “probably not a bad idea.”
Which is not something Stiles has ever said to Derek. What the actual fuck?
“He’s fine,” Deaton says with a slight smile, pulling off his gloves.
Derek stares at Stiles with narrowed eyes. He’s leaning back against the exam table and he looks normal enough. Derek heaves out a heavy breath, shakes his head. “He isn’t. There’s something wrong with him.”
Stiles shrugs his shoulders. “If Derek thinks there is, he’s probably right,” he says, grotesquely earnest and heartbeat steady and none of this is okay.
“See?” he demands.
Deaton’s lips twitch. “I do believe he’s teasing you, Derek.”
“I’m not!”
“He’s not.”
They burst out at the same time and Derek glares at Stiles and the almost adoring look he’s wearing. Gross. Deaton purses his lips, comes back around the table. “Hmm. Do you think you could describe the circle you and Mr. Stilinski disturbed?” He glances over at Derek while tilting Stiles’ head to the side, looking into his eyes. “Or perhaps draw it?”
Derek shrugs uncomfortably, corrects grudgingly, “Oval,” and sighs. “Yeah, I guess.”
He walks out to the front to find pen and paper just as Scott skids in. He’s panting and stupid because he huffs out between strangled breaths, “Is he—how is—” when he could sense it well enough for himself if he just stopped and listened. Derek simply jerks the pen back over his shoulder and otherwise doesn’t bother with him.
Scott nods grimly and goes.
Not wanting to spend even an extra minute with McCall or his drugged out sidekick, Derek takes his time recreating the oval as best he can. He’s retracing the lines when he makes himself go back and hand the thing over with a biting, “Here.”
Deaton doesn’t seem to notice – or simply doesn’t care about – his tone. He frowns over it. “I believe this is Druidic in origin,” he says thoughtfully. “I’ve seen something like…” He trails off, opening one of the cabinets above his sink and pulling out a heavy, grimy book. He flips through the pages, familiar enough with it to know the general section he’s looking for. He skims down and his mouth quirks slightly. “It looks like some kind of binding consent circle.”
“Oval,” Derek corrects gruffly.
“It really was an oval,” Stiles pipes up with an admiring look at Derek. Scott has his confused puppy expression on. Derek ignores the both of them.
Deaton ignores all three, eyes diligently wandering through the information. “It’s meant to be nonviolent.”
Derek’s back, between his shoulder blades, tightens. Stiles had said he thought the death of the security guard had been accidental. Derek had thought it was growing in malevolence. He’d been wrong about that. He’d also been wrong about the witch part.
Stiles points out neither. Doesn’t jump off the table, all flailing, frenetic limbs, stick a finger in his face and say, “Ah ha!” Instead, he swings his feet, lackadaisical expression on his face, and hums to himself.
“It’s meant to make anyone who comes in contact with the subject of the ritual intensely agreeable.” Which explained how someone was going around robbing banks, coffee houses and convenience stores without anyone so much as needing a Band-Aid after. “It was likely still in place because its effects need to be renewed every 72 hours.” Deaton darts a glance up at Stiles and smirks. “However, I believe the spell’s intention… warped some when Mr. Stilinski disturbed the design.”
Derek gives Stiles an uneasy, almost bug-eyed look. “Warped it to what?”
Deaton still looks amused. “To make him into your very own living, breathing, human expression of positive reinforcement. He’s worth nothing to you but a good word while he’s still under the effects of the spell. Or, I believe Mr. Stilinski—were he in his right mind—would more aptly call it a curse.” He taps the left page of the book. “It’s gone a step further with him. He’s not just agreeable, he’s adoring, almost worshipful. I think I can assume you’re the first person he saw after breaking the circle?”
“Oval,” Derek snarks. He nods, shrugs, feeling odd about being the focus of Stiles’ positivity. “So undo it.”
Scott interrupts. “There’s no way Stiles would ever agree with Derek, curse or not. He thinks Derek’s an idiot.” Scott gives him an apologetic look, like he doesn’t agree with basically everything Stiles says, which has Derek rolling his eyes. Hard.
He sighs tiredly and explains, “Not right now.”
He’s nearly drowned out by Stiles’ vehement, “I do not think that!”
Again, he and Stiles answer at the same time. Stiles shoots him an approving half-smile before turning back to glare at Scott.
Scott’s jaw drops. Because he’s an idiot.
Derek turns back to Deaton, whose amusement has only gotten more obvious. “There’s a chance the curse could fade out on its own, after the 72 hours has elapsed. However, that’s not a certainty when rituals go wrong, in which case I’ll also begin working on a way to independently reverse the spell.”
Derek grunts. It’ll have to do. “Take him home,” he tells Scott numbly.
Stiles is very agreeable about the whole thing, probably because it was Derek’s suggestion.
72 hours elapses. Stiles tells Derek how fantastic he is at telling time and offers him a warm smile.
It makes Derek remarkably uncomfortable. Stiles being nice to him.
It’s embarrassing how long it takes Derek to realize that he can actually use someone agreeing with everything he says to his advantage. He blames the fact that it’s literally never happened before for being so slow on the uptake. “Give me the Cinnamon Toast Crunch,” he snaps at Isaac in a rough voice the next morning.
Stiles snorts, tacks on, “If you want to live.” He’s over already, so he can stare creepily at Derek. At least that’s Derek’s best guess for why.
Isaac blinks blearily at the both of them. “I got to it first,” he says around a yawn.
“I bought it,” Derek retorts.
Stiles looks thoughtful, considering, even though they both know who he’s going to side with. “Derek probably deserves it more though, considering he’s letting you stay here free of charge and keeping you out of the system and he has to deal with a witch—” Stiles steadfastly refuses to call it a druid… because Derek steadfastly refuses to call it a druid, “—roaming around his territory. Not to mention, you—”
“Okay, God, just to shut you up.” Isaac shoves the box into Derek’s chest while Derek grins winningly at him.
Yeah, this could definitely be used to his advantage.
“We’re not watching Meerkat Manor,” Boyd says, deadpan. It goes by majority and/or who picked last when none of them can agree on anything. And last was Derek. Which means it’s Erica’s turn.
Stiles walks up, raises his hand when he sees Derek is. “What are we doing? I vote with Derek.”
Derek sinks into the couch with his douchebaggiest grin and Boyd slaps the remote into his outstretched palm.
“Does your personal fan club have to be here for this?” Jackson whines, pressing a clawed hand to his side while he works to catch his breath.
Derek ignores him. He’s one big mountain of constant complaint and Derek’s stopped giving any of it much weight.
Stiles slurps a Big Gulp from behind them, sitting up on one of the crates in the warehouse, swinging his feet and looking at Derek with blank, approving eyes. He grins and offers a sprightly wave when he sees Derek looking at him. Derek discounts the way it makes his stomach swoop, unable to tell if it’s in pleasure or uneasiness.
Erica’s arm is flat across her middle and she pants, hunched over and hair scraggly. “Aren’t we finished yet?”
Derek glances up at Stiles, smirks smugly. “What do you think, Stiles?”
Stiles smirks back. “I think Derek said three hours. It’s barely been two.”
“You’re going to get us all killed,” Derek growls into Scott’s face. He’d done getting stopped at gas stations by Chris Argent and he’s over it. He’s not going to be backed into defending Scott and Allison again. Especially when he agrees with Chris over the whole thing. Which is not exactly a pleasant place to be in. “Break up with her.”
Scott’s face is red, pissed. “You’re not my Alpha,” he bites back.
Derek stops, grins, turns to Stiles. “Stiles?”
Stiles looks up, offers Derek an easy smile. “You are mine,” he says earnestly. The words don’t matter, they aren’t real. They settle warmly in Derek’s gut anyway. Stiles gives Scott an apologetic look. “I think Derek knows what he’s talking about, Scott, you should listen to him.”
Derek gives Scott a smarmy smile but he hadn’t even turned to Stiles. Instead he’s looking at Derek with revulsion. “That’s fucking sick,” he says darkly, “using him like that. Especially since you know he would never do the same to you.”
Derek swallows. Scott’s not exactly wrong.
So they need to fix him. Looking at someone with so much fight in them reduced to a placid doormat is beyond unsettling, even when said doormat is singing Derek’s praises.
Derek orders the Pack out into the woods to see if they can pick up the scent of the witch. It’s a ‘Terrible Idea’ and Derek briefly wonders where Stiles—the real Stiles—would rank it but he’s done with the litany of agreement and compliments and he doesn’t have a better one. He foists Stiles off onto Scott, not trusting himself not to look to Stiles for a kind – fake – word at some point.
Which, Scott is right, is kind of disgusting.
He takes Erica and they’re the ones who trip the trap the witch has left. A fine, pure gas cloud of wolfsbane engulfs them both.
Erica gets the worst of it and Derek does his best to get them both out of there before he loses consciousness.
He comes to on Deaton’s exam table, the sound of raised voices right outside the door. Stiles’ is obvious. “It wasn’t his fault! If you’d thought it was such a terrible plan then you should’ve said something, should’ve challenged him on it, but instead you want to retroactively call him out for it. You don’t have a monopoly on hindsight, asshole.”
“What would’ve been the point?” Jackson then. “He would’ve put it to a vote and you would’ve done the only thing you know how to do anymore, Stilinski. You’re nothing more than a fucking brain-dead sycophant.”
Derek pushes the door open, interrupts them. “How’s Erica?” he pants, winded just from getting there.
“She’ll live, no thanks to you,” Jackson throws back at him, unbothered that Derek’s overheard them.
Stiles is clearly drawing up to some kind of righteous fury but Derek cuts him off with a blunt, “He’s right, it was my fault.”
Stiles deflates, looking lost. He wants to agree with Derek but agreeing with him would mean Derek was wrong. He grits his teeth, clenches his fists at his sides. “Don’t let him talk you into taking blame that isn’t yours. He didn’t have a better plan and now he’s shitting on yours.” He glares at Jackson, challenging.
Derek shakes his head, leans up against the doorframe to keep himself upright. He frowns at Stiles. “That’s because coming up with the better plan is what you do,” he realizes aloud.
Stiles’ eyes widen. “I would’ve done the same thing,” he says firmly.
No, he wouldn’t have. Derek’s face falls. For a second there, watching him fight with Jackson—something so ridiculously familiar, he’d almost forgotten. It had been… nice, seeing Stiles defend him, believing he could have Derek’s back. But it wasn’t real.
And, weirdly, Derek would rather Stiles call him an idiot if it meant he actually believed the words.
Derek tries to be better, tries to think like Stiles. But no one thinks like Stiles. Derek’s pretty sure it shouldn’t even work for Stiles and it’s just pure luck that it does. He looks over the police files that Stiles had gotten them back when he’d been able to say things like, ‘Figured you might need these. I know you don’t want them because informed decisions are so not your thing but we’re gonna try something new here, Sourwolf.’
The security guard had died out in the middle of the Preserve, rock to the head, but everything else had been tame in comparison. Robberies at a bank, a coffee shop, a 7-Eleven, a movie theater, where people just handed over the money and went about their day afterwards.
Hold the phone. The bank wasn’t the first robbery, like anyone would expect. The coffee shop was. It could’ve been practice or it could’ve been personal.
Derek sits at a too small table in the coffee shop with Boyd. Their knees keep bumping.
It’s very much not okay.
Derek watches the girl behind the counter. There’s something off about her, something familiar somehow. She flirts with her boyfriend, makes cappuccinos and works the register but there’s something not right about the way she smiles, the way she moves.
Boyd doesn’t notice it, even when Derek points it out.
But Derek’s sure now, she’s the witch. Something is pinging, scraping against his instincts. They wait outside the shop for her shift to end. Which leads to them getting blindsided by the actual witch.
It’s the boyfriend. The ‘something familiar’ had been the blankness to the girl’s eyes, the eyes of a person under a consent curse. They’re just like Stiles’ and Derek can’t stand to look at her.
Thankfully, Erica and Jackson had been watching out for them from across the road – at Stiles’ suggestion – so it’s easy enough to incapacitate the guy, call Chris Argent and get out of the wolfsbane ropes.
The curse will fade from the girl just as it’s meant to, Derek’s sure of it, and he tells the sheriff to take her home to wait it out.
He stops Chris as he frogmarches the wit—druid off. He’s conscious again and spouting off about how he can’t be blamed for a fat guy tripping over his own feet and braining himself on a rock when all he said was, ‘take a hike.’ Derek ignores the tirade, jerks his chin towards a serene-looking Stiles. “How do you undo it?” he demands.
The guy just smirks, says, “Carefully.” And laughs.
Derek slams his head against the side of Chris’ car, hard, grins. “Watch your head,” he tells him while Chris rolls his eyes, shoving the guy in the back of his SUV.
The curse wears off on the girl like Derek predicted. Stiles tells Derek how clever he was to figure it out and Derek’s skin crawls. He tells himself it’s not the same, that he hadn’t asked for this. But he’d done the same thing the druid had done to the girl. He’d used Stiles, reveled in his inability to say no.
Shame isn’t an unfamiliar emotion for him. He hardly even notices how much heavier it gets.
“I think we should ask Derek,” Stiles says, turning to look at him with eyes that glitter adoringly.
Derek’s skin feels tight and he snaps at Scott, “Find a way to make him stop, I mean it.” He doesn’t look at Stiles again, can’t handle the dead approval there. He growls out, “I don’t want him here, I don’t want him near me, not while he’s like this so just—keep him the hell away from me.”
Scott frowns, more empathetic than judgmental. “He’s not doing it on purpose,” he defends.
Stiles follows as Derek goes to storm out because of course he follows. He looks abashed, face crumpled in. “Did I do something wrong?” he asks, already looking gutted by the very idea.
Derek’s ratcheted up, miserable and angry and guilt-ridden, and he snarls, “You are not Stiles. Stiles fights me, on everything. He tells me I’m an idiot and he makes me try again, do better, work harder. He’s a constant challenge and you are a fucking agreeable doormat. If you’d been you the wolfsbane never would have happened, Boyd and I never would’ve been caught because you wouldn’t have let me—You just—I need the real one back.”
He finishes his storm out, goes to Deaton’s and hovers over his shoulder while the man fails to come up with a way to reverse Stiles’ obnoxious adoration.
“I wonder.” Deaton stops three days later, turns to stare at him. “Do you think you would be able to match scents to what you smelled in the woods? There are a few ingredients here that are changeable, depending on the caster’s preference and the availability of certain herbs. I’ve been going on a trial and error basis but none of the results have been viable.”
Derek shrugs. “I could try.”
Rose Root. Vervain. Juniper. Yarrow. Deaton says it’s a perfect recipe. Derek just hopes it works.
Stiles wrinkles his nose, holding the lumpy-looking drink.
“Drink it,” Derek says, as gently as he can.
Stiles looks up at him with the blanket acceptance that Derek hopes he’ll never have to see again. He smiles brightly, shrugs, and says, “Okay.” He swallows the whole thing down, screws up his face, looks at Derek with eyes still squinty with distaste and scrapes his tongue against his teeth. “Seriously, it took you, what? Like two weeks to fix this? Drag your feet a little, did ya?”
Derek hugs him so hard Stiles’ ribs creak.
Stiles obligingly doesn’t hold it over Derek’s head that he missed fighting with him, that he wanted back the Stiles that thinks he’s an idiot. Which is good, because Derek does not want to think about what it means that he actually prefers Stiles exactly as he is. By unspoken agreement, they don’t mention it.
At least, he’d thought they had an unspoken agreement. The muscles in his back go tight when Stiles turns to him with an earnest expression that means he’s about to get serious. They’re alone, watching a Mets game, and Stiles says, “There is something I wanted to say to you, when I wasn’t mind-whammied into sycophantic adoration so you’d know I actually meant it.”
Derek swallows. He doesn’t want things to change. Maybe they’ll get there eventually but right now they’re good how they are and he is not ready for—
“That was totally a fucking oval.”
Derek laughs so hard it hurts.