Chapter Text
Stiles was practically giddy.
Sure, it's only half a dead body, and normal people don't get a rush out of homicide investigations, but normal people don't live in Beacon Hills. When the dispatch chatter hit the scanner, he'd known the drought was over.
The preserve was dark, an obstacle course of roots snapping at his ankles, but he barely slowed down. Behind him, Scott’s heavy breathing is the only sign he's keeping pace.
"Are we seriously doing this?" Scott asked, sounding winded.
"You’re the one always bitching that nothing ever happens in this town," Stiles shot back, side-stepping yet another root. They were out to get him, he was sure of it.
"I was trying to get a good night’s sleep for practice tomorrow."
Stiles snorted, shaking his head. "Right, because sitting on the bench is such a grueling effort."
"No, because I’m playing this year. In fact, I’m going to make first line."
Yeah.. "That’s the spirit. Everyone should have a dream. Even a pathetically unrealistic one."
Scott swings under a low-hanging branch. "Just out of curiosity, which half of the body are we looking for?"
That brought Stiles to a dead stop, making Scott run into his back with a small oomph. There is no way that Scott thought of that before he did. Shaking off the shock, he kept walking like he hadn't just stopped short in the middle of the woods.
"Huh. I didn't even think about that."
"And what if whoever killed the girl is still out here?"
Scott-2, Stiles-0.
"Also something I didn't think about," Stiles muttered.
"Comforting to know you've planned this out with your usual attention to detail," Scott said it quietly, but Stiles had already picked up his pace like he hadn't heard.
He hated to admit it, but Scott's words did put him a little on edge. Maybe Stiles didn't think this fully through before he ended up on Scott's roof. If they did come face to face with the person who left this body, what were they going to do? Stiles couldn't hurt somebody if he tried, and Scott would have an asthma attack before he even got a full sprint in.
Somewhere behind them, a branch cracked. Not coming from either of them.
Stiles froze. Scott, a step behind and more focused on not tripping over another root, plowed into him again.
"Dude-"
"Shh." He put a hand out, and for once Scott actually listened.
The preserve was silent beside the wind and both of them breathing too loudly. Stiles was about to write it off, chalk it up to deer - it was a preserve, that was sort of the point- when he heard it again, further away. This time there was something underneath it that sounded almost like a voice. Almost like someone biting off a curse, but it cut out before he could be sure.
"Okay, that's a person," Scott whispered.
"Groundbreaking detective work."
"Stiles."
"I'm gonna go look."
"Stiles, oh my god-"
He was already moving again before Scott could finish his sentence, moving toward the sound instead of away from it, because apparently self-preservation wasn't a setting he came with. He heard Scott hiss his name behind him and the start of footsteps following. Then he didn't hear Scott at all.
"Scott?" Whispering was useless, of course, if Stiles was too far to hear the boy's footsteps, Scott wasn't going to hear his whisper. But Stiles tried anyway. "Scotty, this isn't funny."
Nothing.
He should go back. He knew he should go back. But there was a sound up ahead now, and he couldn't keep his feet from carrying him forward, toward a clearing where the trees thinned out enough for moonlight to hit the ground.
There was a guy on his knees in the middle of it.
Stiles's brain did about six things at once. Registered that the guy wasn't old, not much older than him if he had to guess, though it was hard to tell with the way he was hunched over. Registered that the dark soaking through his shirt wasn't shadow. Registered that when his head came up, his eyes definitely were not supposed to be that color, a jolting, 100% impossible, glowing blue. And every rational thought Stiles had ever had promptly left the building.
He must've made a sound, because the guy was on his feet in less time than it took to blink, a growl coming out of him that didn't seem possible to come out of a human throat, let alone that loud, and for the first time in his life, Stiles was too scared to even run.
"Okay," he said, hands up, voice climbing an octave. "Okay, whoa, hi, I'm not looking for trouble, I swear, I'm like a buck-ten soaking wet, I couldn't fight my way out of a wet paper bag-"
The guy in the clearing staggered. That was the only reason Stiles caught it. That the growl had most definitely been bravado, that the arm braced against the tree trunk was the only thing holding him up, and that the blue in his eyes was swimming less with menace and closer to pain. He went down again but didn't manage to catch himself that time, and Stiles barely made up his own mind before his legs were moving toward the lump of man instead of away from it.
"Okay, okay, you're bleeding a lot, that's like a concerning amount of blood."
"Get away from me." It came out as more of a growl than words, but he didn't move as Stiles took inventory of him. The man's eyes had gone back to normal, and Stiles didn't miss it a bit, preferring the hazel green looking up at him filled with pain much more. Yeah, he couldn't say that out loud.
"Believe me, I would love to, this is not how I pictured tonight going, but well, you're kind of dying, so." Stiles crouched. "What happened? Who did this? Are they still around?" He shot off in quick succession.
His jaw worked. "Hunters."
Clearly, again, this guy lost a lot of blood. His words were barely making sense anymore, and Stiles started to internally freak out more than he already was. He needed to come up with a plan to get this man out of here.
Then, light swept through the trees ahead of them, several of them, moving in a pattern too coordinated to be his dad's usual two deputies stumbling through a crime scene.
The guy heard it before Stiles did. His whole body went rigid, and the blue flickered back into his eyes for half a second before it vanished again.
"You need to leave," he said.
"Yeah, no, see that's the thing, I don't think I can do that, given you're bleeding out onto the ground." Stiles couldn't stop more of his usual personality from slipping out, although he was trying to rein it in. Really, didn't this guy realize the horrible situation he was in?
"They're not looking for you."
"Cool, cool, and yet somehow I don't feel like ditching the bleeding guy is an option here."
He tried to push himself up and made it about six inches before his arms gave out. Stiles caught him somehow, one hand fisted in his jacket. Up close, the guy was heavier than he looked and very so clearly not okay.
"They're coming," he ground out, slurred at the edges.
"Okay, yeah, noted, thank you, very helpful." Stiles got an arm under him anyway. "We're moving. You don't get a vote."
Stiles didn't know how he managed the weight, being half the guy's size, and thought loosely to some article he read a couple months ago about adrenaline and how a mother lifted a car off a child, or finally the lacrosse drills he's been doing with Scott were paying off. He really hoped Scott was nowhere near any of this. Stiles shoved the thought down before it could turn into a full-blown spiral. One crisis at a time.
Slower than the guy would've liked, if his quiet slurred mumbles were anything to go off of, they made their way through the forest. There was a drainage culvert somewhere near here. Stiles was pretty sure, anyway, a distant memory of it from when he would ride his bike when he was a kid. He spotted the mouth of it and dragged them both toward it, blessing his memory for once.
It was barely tall enough to crouch in. He shoved the guy in first because he was bigger and slower, and if Stiles went first, there was no way he got him in after, and then he crammed in behind him, both of them breathing too loud in the three-foot concrete pipe. Unfortunately, the people who had those flashlights earlier were closer than he expected, their lights swept past no more than twenty feet away.
A hand closed around Stiles's wrist, pretty hard for a guy who could barely stand on his own. When Stiles turned around to whisper curses at him, the guy's eyes silently communicated, 'Don't move. Don't speak.'
He didn't need telling twice.
Neither of them moved, it could've been hours or minutes. Stiles couldn't tell, but what he could tell was his knees were killing him.
"Okay." Stiles breathed, once the quiet felt like it stretched long enough to trust it. "You wanna tell me what the hell that was?"
"You should forget you saw me."
"Yeah, that's - that's not how memory works, my dude, gonna need a little more than that." Stiles twisted to look at him and even in the dark could see how bad the wound at his side looked, could see him going grayer by the minute. "You're not gonna make it home like this. Where do you even live?"
Something flicked across his face, "Doesn't matter."
"Kind of does, actually, given the whole bleeding-out-in-a-pipe situation."
He didn't answer that. His head tipped back against the concrete, shutting his eyes, and for one horrible second Stiles thought he was just going to die right there, two feet away, and he was going to have to explain that to his father.
"Hey. Hey, no, eyes open, come on-"
"I'm fine." He didn't sound fine.
"You are extremely not fine, you are the opposite of fine, you are…" he trailed off, "Whatever, new plan." Stiles was already moving, hauling the guy's arm back over his shoulders, ignoring every protesting muscle in his own body. "You don't have to tell me where you live. But you're not staying in a pipe."
Stiles thought about his Jeep. Thought about his dad, somewhere in these woods. Thought that'd officially run out of good options.
"My house," he said, before he could talk himself out of it. "My dad's the sheriff, he wont be home for hours, and I have a first aid kit and no idea what I'm doing with it, but it beats a pipe."
The guy went very still. For a second, Stiles thought he was going to fight him on it, but whatever he had left after tonight apparently wasn't enough for the argument.
"Fine."
"Great. Fantastic. Love that for us." Stiles got them moving, albeit slowly, roughly toward where he thought he'd parked. "I don't suppose you have a name, or is that need-to-know too?"
There was a long pause, long enough that he didn't think he'd get an answer.
"Derek."
"Derek. Great. I'm Stiles, but I'm guessing you knew that already- no wait, how would you know that? Ignore that." He was babbling. He babbled when he was terrified. "Okay, Derek. Let's not die in a ditch, that's the goal for tonight."
Derek didn't answer, which was to be expected. It didn't seem to Stiles like the man was much for conversation.
They continued moving on but didn't get far.
Stiles heard boots on the trail behind them a second before a flashlight beam found them dead-on, and his stomach dropped through the forest floor, because he'd know that voice calling his name anywhere.
"Stiles?"
His dad.
Derek's whole body locked up beside him, and for one whole second Stiles thought he was going to bolt, bleeding or not, drag them both into the trees rather than be seen. His grip on Stiles's shoulder tightened instead.
"Dad." His voice cracked. "Hey. So. This is gonna sound worse than it is."
His dad's flashlight swung from his face to Derek and stayed there, and Stiles watched him do the math. The blood, the way Derek could barely stay upright, the fact that his son was apparently hauling a wounded stranger out of a crime scene at eleven at night, and none of the numbers were adding up to anything good.
"Get behind me," he said, and it wasn't a request, and it wasn't aimed at Derek. It was aimed at Stiles.
"Dad, he's hurt, he's not - "
"Stiles."
He didn't move. He wasn't entirely sure why, stubbornness probably, and something underneath it that didn't want to let go of the guy currently using his shoulder as the only available support.
"He needs a hospital," Stiles said instead, "or at least, I don't know, something, and there were people out here with flashlights who weren't you, and I really think that's a bigger problem than whatever trouble I'm about to be in-"
"What people?"
And there it was, the thing Stiles didn't have an answer for, not one that didn't end with him trying to explain glowing blue eyes to a man with a gun on his hip. He opened his mouth, but nothing useful came out.
Derek answered instead, voice low. "I don't know. I was already hurt when they found me."
It wasn't the truth. Wasn't even close. But the sheriff looked at him for a long moment, taking in the blood, the way he was swaying, the fact that whoever this was, he was clearly the injured party and not the threat, and something in his shoulders eased a smudge, from sheriff toward dad.
"Okay," he said slowly. "Okay. We're getting you looked at, and then you- " the flashlight swung back to Stiles "are explaining every part of this to me, starting with why you're out here at all."
"That I can do," Stiles said, and mostly meant it. He could explain the body, the scanner. He could explain Scott, still out there somewhere in these woods, and his stomach twisted at the thought of him lost in the dark while Stiles had been busy keeping a man from dying.
What he couldn't explain, not tonight, maybe not ever, was the blue. He wasn't even 100% sure he didn't make it up.
That was a problem for later. Right now there was a bleeding guy named Derek leaning most of his weight into his shoulder, his dad's flashlight cutting an anxious path back toward the trail, and somewhere behind them in the dark, people with flashlights of their own who were very specifically not looking for Stiles.
He had a feeling the drought had just ended in a much bigger way than he'd planned for.