Chapter Text
Darkness settles like something tangible, heavy and oppressive over the graveyard. All is quiet but for the intermittent creak of an ancient, bare-limbed oak tree, a whine of agony that echoes before fading into the night. Dim light from a waxing crescent moon wavers between looming pines, cutting cruel shadows that tremble with each passing breeze.
A slow mist rolls over the ground, tendrils curling between headstones, soft as smoke. The tendrils snake around obelisks, whispering promises of something otherworldly as they wrap around long-dead bouquets. Coalescing at the base of a mausoleum, they break against its wrought-iron door in effervescent waves. They swell up in a rush before settling down with a frustrated sigh.
Whispers grow into murmurs as the mist thickens. Distinct voices break free from the swirling mass, plaintive, pleading, pained. The base of the mausoleum is shrouded in a roiling, writhing mass of white, creeping arms climbing up its columns with growing, determined focus. A hand emerges from the mass, fingers firming in opacity as they grasp at the door’s handle, skeletal and spindly. The murmurs swell and crescendo in fervent support, a crowd at once vicious and desperate, and —
“Goddamnit, you morons couldn’t wait until I showed up to get this party started?”
The hand on the handle recoils with a snap back into the mass. A soft whine drifts up through the air.
Stiles slams the gate to the cemetery closed with a clatter. “Oh, don’t give me that. You know as well as I do that if you opened that before I got here, all you’d manage to do would be send half of you off to your eternal sleep, business still unresolved, and nobody wants that, do they?”
The mass swirls and mutters like a reprimanded puppy, all grumbly and petulant.
“Come on, don’t even try with me. I’m the king of impatient and even I know there’s no point in trying to conduct a full-cemetery summoning session with nobody to hear your complaints.” He strides through the mist, whispered grumbles swirling up around shoulder height. “Just because you heard I was coming to town doesn’t mean you needed to get all over-eager on me.”
The mist concedes with a begrudging mumble, opacity fading to allow view of the grass around the mausoleum.
“That’s what I thought.” Stiles reaches the mausoleum and spins on his heels, planting his ass on the steps leading up to the door. He grins and glances around to get a good look at what he’s dealing with for the night. Sorrow, hope, and anger drift in equal measure across the multitude of faces that swarm before him as the ghosts begin to separate into their own spectral forms.
“Alright, folks and friends, my office is open for business. I’m only here for a couple days, and while I’d love to hear every single thought you’ve had stored up in there for the past several decades, I do have a real job, and there’s only so much caffeine I can consume before they put me on mandatory leave again. So step on down, keep it quick, and we’ll see what I can do for you before morning.”
With only a few grumbles, the ghosts of New Hope Cemetery, just outside of Franklin, North Carolina, file forward to settle their grievances, air their complaints, and otherwise convince Stiles to help them find a final end to all their unfinished business.
Stiles balances his forearms on his knees as the first ghost begins to recount her murder, in the stilted, halting way they always do, half story and half repetition of her final words from life. Her death is recent compared to most of the ghosts that Stiles speaks with in graveyards; it’s only been twenty years since her neighbor shot her after mistaking her for a thief, then staged her death and fled the state in a panic.
This one’ll be easy enough for Stiles to take care of, assuming the neighbor had a gun license on file and the cops did their job back when it happened and took note of the bullet caliber. With the resources Stiles has at his disposal — namely Danny and the entire FBI’s database — this shouldn’t take long at all. He nods to her, tells her he’ll take care of it, and waves the next ghost forward.
Over the course of the next four hours, Stiles learns several important things: a) there was a factory explosion in Franklin a hundred years ago, and the great-grandson of the factory owner is still benefitting from how his great-grandfather was able to shift the profit loss onto the families of the deceased, b) all little Polish grandmothers are just as opinionated and crabby as his own, even when they died in 1913, and c) the serial killer his team is in town for has been killing since at least ’04.
The sun is just peeking up over the trees when his phone rings. He answers on a yawn, scrubbing at his eyes.
“Really, Stiles?” Lydia asks irritably. “I told you not to stay out all night.”
“I was getting good stuff,” he protests.
“Such as…?”
“Such as I’ve got the location for two more bodies and a solid physical description for the unsub, thank you very much.”
Lydia doesn’t often admit that she’s wrong, so instead she says, “Director Argent wants us at the precinct in twenty minutes. Pick me up at the hotel on your way; we can discuss how to work that into evidence.”
“You’re wonderful,” Stiles tells her, standing with a stretch. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Lydia gives a pleased hum. “I’ll be out front in ten.”
Before she can hang up, Stiles asks, “Anything on your end?”
“No,” she says. “No visions.”
“Good.” That means they likely won’t discover another fresh body today. “See you soon.”
Derek blames the early morning and his uncle’s particularly annoying pestering on the car ride over for the way his tongue trips and speaks without his permission when Stiles and Lydia enter the office together.
“You smell like dirt.”
Stiles slowly lifts his head up from his phone. “That’s a really weird thing to tell someone.”
Well at least Derek resisted the urge to tell him he also smells like dead things.
Peter leans around Danny to level Derek with a raised eyebrow. “Yes, nephew, that is a strange thing to say to someone. Did you perhaps burn your olfactory senses on too much coffee this weekend? You do have such low tolerance.”
Danny snorts, still typing away with one hand as he drinks from his own mug.
“Just because I don’t love coffee doesn’t mean I have a low tolerance,” Derek grumbles. It’s the opposite, and Peter knows it; neither of them are affected by caffeine and while Peter enjoys the taste, Derek only really drinks it when others do. But he’ll take the cover that Peter gives him, and it serves a double purpose: Stiles is now distracted, casting around the room for the coffee machine.
In the two months since Derek left the NYPD and moved to DC to join the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, he’s learned a few important things:
1. Peter is not something a person can get used to with prolonged exposure. He’s just as irritating now as he was when Derek only had to see him at family holidays.
2. His team lives up to their reputation of incredible competence. Lydia Martin manages media relations with an iron fist, and Danny Māhealani can find just about anyone or anything given five minutes and an internet connection. Peter’s surprisingly focused, assuming one ignores his inability to let any opportunity for innuendo pass unspoken, and Chris Argent, their Unit Chief, is fair, focused, and knows how to delegate. And then there’s Stiles. Derek has learned a lot about Stiles.
3. Stiles is smart. He can connect seemingly unrelated facts through strings of dialogue Derek has no hope of following. He’s quick-witted and can match Peter play for play. He’s clever, funny, and able to work with anyone he gets paired with. He’s good with a gun and cares deeply about his team members. He’s everything that Derek could ever want in a partner. And he means that in every sense of the word.
Stiles also has terrible sleep habits and is easily distracted by the siren call of coffee in the morning.
Stiles has found his way over to the coffee machine in the corner of one of Franklin Police Department’s offices. He’s crouched down in front of it with his chin on the counter, eyes glazed, nose practically pressed to the glass as it percolates. He startles when the office door closes and nearly falls onto his ass.
Derek tears his eyes away as Chris strides into the room, taking a seat at the table next to Peter. He pulls a USB drive out of his pocket and slides it to Danny, pointing at the projector screen they set up when they arrived a few days ago.
“Danny?” he prompts, and at Danny’s nod, Chris steeples his hands and addresses the room. “This was just dropped off by Ms. Adams, who we talked to yesterday.”
“The letters she mentioned?” Lydia asks.
“Scanned and uploaded,” Chris confirms.
“She drop off the physical copies too?” Stiles asks through a yawn. “‘Cause we should probably get —”
“—them run through our verification process,” Peter finishes. “Check for discrepancies, confirm paper and ink dating —”
“— crosscheck for handwriting validation,” Derek concludes.
Chris nods. “I’ve got the deputies scanning their local database for fingerprints first.” He pauses. “I think we can get this one wrapped up in the next couple days.”
“Sure thing, bossman,” Stiles says. He goes to salute him with a now-full mug and Derek winces in anticipation. Coffee sloshes out across his wrist and onto the front of his shirt. Derek supposes that Stiles will be grateful: his shirt, black with yellow font crawling up it about a galaxy far, far away, won’t show the stain too badly, and Chris hasn’t yet forced him into the blazer that makes him suitable for appearing in public.
Stiles hisses, bringing his forearm up to his mouth to suck at the burn. And that — that’s a lot for this early in the morning. Derek looks away and naturally finds his gaze caught by Peter’s. Peter smirks at him and Derek sneers back. Peter’s scent curls into smug amusement. Derek rolls his eyes and turns back to Chris.
He very carefully makes sure his gaze doesn’t stop on Stiles this time.
After all, they’ve got work to do.