Derek figures it out pretty much straight away. He can smell it on his skin, sweet and slightly tangy, like a mixture of breastmilk and that newborn baby smell tied up with a whole bunch of hormones, just like how his mom smelt in the months before his younger siblings were born, when she was round and glowing of pregnancy. It's so faint, that warm scent that reminds him of his mom, but it's there, and he knows what it means.
But just because he knows what it means, doesn't mean he can acknowledge that it's true. It shouldn't be. Because that is not a thing that happens, even when you live in a world with supernatural creatures and magic. He tries not to think about it for weeks, pretends everything's fine and normal - at least until that faint hummingbird wing heartbeat starts, and then he can't ignore it any longer.
He leaves before the others figure it out, even if he rarely sees them enough for them to notice anything that's going on with him. It's just too weird, and he can't risk it.
He can't trust Deaton not to spill his guts to the puppy pack, so he goes to the druid he and Laura met when they were living in New York. She must've sensed him coming because she's waiting on her front doorstep when he arrives, her soft face wrinkled with the smile stretched across her mouth.
"Abuela," he greets, stopping at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at her, toying with the strap of his duffle nervously. "¿Cómo te va?"
Rosa lifts the mug in her hand to her mouth and takes a sip. "Muy bien, querido. Come inside."
Derek follows Rosa into her brownstone, lets her sit him at the kitchen counter and set a mug of tea down in front of him. He can't figure out what to say to her, so he just sits there, staring down into the mug, at the dark liquid inside.
"Querido," she says slowly, gently, like Derek is a nervous animal and she's worried she'll spook him. "Lo siento por Laura. Alan told me."
The mention of Deaton snaps Derek out of his reverie, and he lifts his head so fast he swears he hears it crack. "You can't tell Deaton I'm here."
"Querido, I don't know why you're here, no puedo decir Deaton if I don't know what's going on." Rosa's face is pinched with her concern, her hand reaching over the counter to take Derek's. Derek starts to pull away, then thinks better of it. It's easier than having to explain it himself.
Rosa turns Derek's hand over so his palm is facing up and rests her own on it, wrapping her fingers around his wrist. Her eyelids flutter closed and her scent changes, that gentle pineapple sage and the sun in the desert shifting into that ozone smell of magic. When she opens her eyes again they shine golden, before slowly settling back into their normal honey brown.
The first thing out of Rosa's mouth is ¡Dios mio! and maybe that's a bad sign.
Derek snatches his hand back, shoving it into the pocket of his hoodie and away from Rosa's searching fingers.
"It isn't… something I've ever seen or heard of before, Derek, I'm not sure how to help you," Rosa says, shaking her head slowly. "Do you know what you want, querido? Right now, you must make a decision. Nosotros podemos decidir… what to do - what needs to be done - later."
"Decision?" Derek says slowly, feeling the shape of the word in his mouth. He understands the meaning of the word, but context is escaping him.
"There are medicación, brebajes, encantos, we can end it, if that's what you want."
Derek isn't sure what he wants, but he nods his head anyway.
-*-*-*-*-*-
It doesn't work. Any of it. They try pills and a potion that tastes like licorice and bugs, and then a few spells that have a kickback so powerful it throws Rosa across the room. There's powerful magic surrounding Derek, protecting the clump of cells growing inside him. By that time, Derek's not even sure he doesn't want it, and there's a little voice in the back of his head that asks if he should be concerned by that. It's hard to hear, though, because it's drowned out by the word pup bouncing around in his head like the ball in a pinball machine.
From then on, Rosa studies it; the magic, the fetus. Derek lets himself be poked and prodded, drinks the potions he's handed, and eats the food put in front of him. He still feels a bit in shock. He can't understand how this is happening, why it's happening to him.
He's been with her for weeks, and they're no closer to discovering what's going on than they were when he arrived. Rosa starts talking about asking her magical contacts, and Derek can only think of his fear, of the others finding out. He's not really sure why he's so afraid of it, he just knows it can't happen.
"There's a man," Rosa begins to say on a Wednesday morning, while Derek's chewing on a fried egg. "He knows things. He has… La Centella. Spark."
The Spark. A title passed on through each generation, held by the most powerful magical human. Derek met the last one, before she died. She came to Beacon Hills when Derek was just a pup, for a reason his parents never got a chance to explain to him. She was old and grey and wrinkled, and she smelt like lightning and fire, power and destruction. She looked at Derek with sharp, knowing eyes as Derek hid behind his father's legs; like she knew something he wasn't yet aware of.
She'd died while he was living in New York, of just plain old age. He'd known someone had taken the title after her death - someone always did - but not who. Rosa obviously did.
"He lives in Tegucigalpa, but he's not there right now."
"How do you know?" Derek asks.
Rosa shrugs her shoulders. "La Centella is so powerful, it's hard not to notice when their presence is close, and when it is far away. El está lejos. Hard to contact. I will try, or make rastreo spell."
Rosa calls twice; leaves a message warning The Spark that Derek's coming, and then begins working on the tracking spell. She works over a large pot on the stove in her kitchen for a few hours while Derek reads a book he found in her lounge room. He's honestly kind of glad to be moving on because she's got terrible taste in literature (you can only read sci-fi romance so many times before you go completely insane), and he's going completely stir-crazy.
The spell turns from a bubbling black mass of goo to a small crystal ball while Derek's not looking. When Rosa hands it to him, Derek stares down at it, studying his own distorted reflection on its surface.
"You have to crush it," Rosa instructs.
Derek does as told. He crumbles the crystal in his hand until it's nothing but dust and lets the magic wash over him. He watches behind his eyelids as the spell shows him visions of a hand-painted Welcome sign, a dirt town in the middle of nowhere, a building painted a gaudy pink, driving through someone else's eyes
He could almost mistake it all for a place in the Nevada desert, if the plants weren't so vastly different, and the town wasn't called Oodnadatta. America had some strange place names, but that was definitely out of the box.
A quick Google search tells him that Oodnadatta is in Australia, and it wasn't long before he had a one-way plane ticket to Adelaide Airport.
-*-*-*-*-*-
One plane gets him from New York to Sydney, a second from Sydney to Adelaide, and a third from Adelaide to Coober Pedy. He hits a bit of a snag when he gets there and realizes that trying to get a flight to Oodnadatta is apparently impossible, even if he's willing to pay for a private charter.
The concierge at the airport suggests he hire a car, but the car services near the airport get antsy when he tells them he needs to drive further out into the desert. They want him to pay a disgusting amount as a deposit, more than he'll end up owing and non-refundable.
He's standing outside the rental place, weighing up his options and grumbling to himself how predatory it is when a car pulls up in front of him. The man who leans out of the window is old and sun-browned, a leather hat tipped over his face to hide his skin from the desert sunshine.
"You the one headin' out to Oodnadatta, mate?" When Derek nods, the man smiles big and wide and says, "Get'on in then, better than payin' them f*ckers."
Derek very subtly sniffs the man, trying to glean his intentions. A human is nothing to a werewolf, but he feels like sh*t and he really doesn't want to go out of his way to hide a body.
The man smells like dirt and sun and beer, and nothing but kind sincerity, so Derek picks up his duffles and climbs in.
"Thanks," he says, pushing his bags through the front seats into the pickup's cab. "I'm Derek."
"Gary. We'll head into town to fill up the tank and pick up supplies first. There ain't much between here and there."
Derek nods his head in acknowledgment and the man, Gary, nods his head too and shifts gear, pulling the car away from the curb.
Derek pays for the gas (Gary puts up a bit of a fight - he's too proud to take it, and Derek's too proud not to give it), then grabs a few bottles of water and a bottle of soda. He realizes he's starving when he gets to the counter and orders the burger that Gary suggests.
When they pull onto the highway, Garry offers him a beer from the cooler in the cab he bought while they were at the gas station, as he says, "So, what brings you all the way out here then, mate?"
Derek shakes his head at the beer so Gary opens it for himself. He's started noticing the heat now, and he shoves the sleeves of his hoodie up to his elbows, but he can't make himself take it off. "It's complicated," he finally replied, because he's not sure what else to say. "There's a person out here who can help me with something."
"Vague," Gary says with a chuckle. "Must be something important. Where have you come from?"
"California," Derek replies, finally opening the box with his burger inside, pulling it out and taking a bite. Gary was right, it's a damn good burger. "You always lived out here?"
Gary nods his head. "I was born out here and I'll die out here, even if my family have moved on," he replies, taking a pull of his beer. Derek thinks about saying something about drinking and driving, but he decides not to. "Your family back in California?"
"It's just me."
Derek smells the pity Gary feels for him, and he's glad the man chooses to stay silent.
Most of the four hours are spent in relative silence, with nothing but the radio between them, which suits Derek just fine. He finds it difficult to sleep bouncing around on the dirt road, so he mostly just stares out the window, watching the world go past.
-*-*-*-*-*-
The sun has started to go down when they arrive in town, the air becoming cooler. Derek was sure he'd have to go looking for that pink building, but the town's nothing more than a few dozen buildings bunched together, the bright pink building smack in the middle of it. Gary leaves him out the front with a handshake and a promise to grab a beer together if they see each other again. Derek doesn't bother mentioning he can't drink beer.
Derek could smell The Spark well down the highway before they got into town, but it's stronger here, in front of the building, calling him inside.
The place is pretty busy, it's dinner time and everyone's packed inside and talking loudly. It's impossible to miss The Spark, even in the crowd, his power comes off of him in waves, he smells like ozone and he's looking at Derek.
He's sitting by himself at a table by the window, a man younger than Derek with dark hair and the skin visible from his clothing covered in intricate tattoos. He's staring at Derek with these intense golden eyes, his mouth drawn into a tight line, and Derek almost feels himself withering under the man's gaze.
Derek falls into the chair opposite The Spark, dropping his bags at his feet. Neither of them speaks for a long time - Derek is trying to decide what to say and The Spark looks like he's studying Derek, like a rat in a lab.
The Spark must make a decision, because he sits back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest as he says, "I don't usually appreciate people dropping in on me without warning while I'm out on a job."
"Rosa Velasquez called you three days ago and left a message."
The Spark shrugs his shoulders. "I didn't get it. I felt when you used the tracking spell. What's your name, then, Wolfboy?"
"Derek."
The Spark lets out a short laugh, then says, "Well, Derek, you have managed to get yourself into quite the mess, haven't you?"
"Can you fix it? Or, I dunno, do something about it? Figure out how it happened?"
"Probably." The Spark pushes the empty plate in front of him forward and pushes his chair back, climbing to his feet. "Come with me."
Derek does as told.
The Spark leads Derek out of the bar, with a quick wave in reply to the see ya, mate! called from behind the counter. They go behind the building, where a few bungalows sit, some with their lights on, some off. The bungalow The Spark lets them into is painted a cheery yellow and its porch light is on.
Inside, The Spark points to the couch across the room from the kitchenette and Derek sits down on it. He watches the other man pull a chair up in front of Derek, the scrape of metal on the linoleum loud in the room.
"So," The Spark begins. "Start at the beginning. The very beginning."
Derek blanches. "You mean… the preceding circ*mstance."
The Spark laughs. "Sure, that's one way to put it. Go ahead."
Derek reaches up to rub at his forehead. "Uh… he was human?"
"You sure?"
Derek nods his head. "I'm sure. Wouldn't have done it otherwise. It was… normal, nothing weird or supernatural. No weird sensory output, just sex that was a lot less fulfilling than I hoped it would be. And then I left."
"How long until you realized?"
Derek shrugs his shoulders and says, "Not long. I could smell it on my skin, and then I could hear it."
The Spark nods his head. He reaches forward and takes Derek's hand, and Derek doesn't stop him. He smells like a thunderstorm, like wet dirt and rain and trees and fire and lightning. Derel has to stop himself from leaning forward to breathe that scent in. Underneath it all, there's also this faint chemical smell that clings to his skin that Derek can't place. The Spark wraps his hand around Derek's wrist, pressing his thumb to Derek's pulse point, his eyes glowing a gentle purple as he says, "It's elemental magic, something old and arcane. It's not destructive, just… protective. It wants the fetus to exist but not at your expense."
Derek frowns. "What does that mean?"
"It's not like a parasite, it doesn't want to live at the expense of your own life. It's… I think he's meant to be a gift."
"A gift?" Derek asks softly. Then, "He?"
"I recognize the magical signature, I think, but I can't place it," The Spark replies, the shine in his eyes growing more intense. It's hard to look at. "Something I knew when I was young, something I could feel."
"Why would whoever - or whatever it is give me a gift?"
"Hang on," The Spark lets go of Derek's wrist, the purple in his eyes dimming. He gently pushes at Derek's shoulder until Derek realizes he's supposed to lean back into the couch. He pushes Derek's hoodie up over the slight distension of his belly and Derek's hand twitches towards him like he's going to stop him, but he doesn't.
The Spark's hands are warm and soft when they press to Derek's skin, and they make his flesh tingle. The purple in The Spark's eyes go dark again, and the ozone smell in his scent gets stronger.
"He's magic, too. Not just wolf. I could differentiate it at first, because it feels the same as the magic that created him, but he has his own magical core, mixed in there with his wolf. It's strong, too. He's powerful."
"What does that mean? A magical wolf? Has that ever happened before?" Derek's voice sounds a bit squeaky.
"Usually," The Spark begins. Derek has suddenly become aware of the gentle swipe of the man's thumbs over his skin. It's gentle and soothing, and Derek can feel gooseflesh washing over his skin. "With parents of two supernatural lineages, the child is born either one or the other. But, I do know of several cases where compatible genetics combine. It's rare, but it does happen."
"Like?"
The Spark looks up from Derek's belly. "Oh. well, there's a little girl in Barbados who's part fae and part banshee and a woman in London who's part druid and part dragon. And now a werewolf with arcane elemental magic."
"Okay, but how is he in there? How did he get there?"
The Spark laughs, full-bellied and loud, and Derek can feel the vibrations of it through where their skin touches. "Well, we know he got there, but what we need to find out is how he's managing in an environment that wasn't made for him."
"So?" Derek prompts.
"Well," The Spark starts, fingers pressing a little firmer into Derek's flesh. "There's a temporary womb protecting him, a bubble of magic with a fleshy placenta feeding him, but I don't think it's actually connected to you, almost like it's its own entity." He pauses for a moment, his face gone thoughtful. "Wait, the magic, I remember why I recognize it-" The Spark's hands pull away from Derek, his eyes wide when he looks up at Derek, the purple of his irises slowly fading back to a golden brown. "Are you… you're not from Beacon Hills, are you?"
Derek sits up straight again. "Uh, I mean yes, I am. But why?"
The Spark lets out an incredulous laugh, his eyebrows raised up on his forehead, close to his hairline. "Dude, the f*cking Nemeton knocked you up."
"Don't call me dude," Derek snaps, no real bite to his words, just shock. "What do you mean the Nemeton knocked me up?"
The Spark throws his hands in the air as he stands from his seat, laughing, like an ancient tree impregnating Derek is funny and not completely insane. "When I was a kid, The Nemeton was just an old, dead tree, then about ten years ago a bunch of dumbass kids woke it back up."
"I-" Derek mutters, looking down at his feet so he doesn't have to look at the man. "Technically I woke it up, seventeen years ago. But it was still in stasis until they brought it back to life."
The Spark laughs again. "Well, I think it's trying to say thank you." He looks at the watch on his wrist for a moment and then down at Derek. "It's late, have you eaten? I can heat up some leftovers from the fridge, or make you a sandwich or something?"
Derek's stomach grumbles at the mention of food and he says, "I don't mind, whatever you've got."
The Spark makes him food, then gives him the bed. When it's dark and The Spark is lying on the couch, tossing and turning to get comfortable.
"What's your name?" Derek asks when The Spark has finally settled, his breathing evening and slowing.
"Oh," The Spark replies. "I haven't told you my name. It's Stiles."
"Thanks, Stiles."
Derek can hear the smile in Stiles's voice as he says, "You're welcome, Derek."
-*-*-*-*-*-
The next morning Derek wakes to an empty room. There's a note on the kitchenette bench from Stiles that tells Derek he's gone out to the desert to do the job he came to Australia to do, and that he'll be back after midday.
He takes his first shower in days, relaxing in the hot water, washing the plane and car smells from his body. He finds clothes in his duffle bag and pulls them on, making a face down at his body when it takes him several extra unnecessary moments to button his jeans over the curve of his belly.
His phone falls out of his bag when he pulls out a shirt and he leans over to pick it up, a hand on the bed to steady himself so he doesn't go over. He hasn't turned over to pick it up. He hasn't turned it on since he messaged the others, warning them that he was leaving for a while, but that he'd be back and not to worry. He thinks about turning it on now, but he's not sure he wants to know whether they actually care that he's been missing for three months. They're good people, and he knows they care about him, but the pack's been different since Gerard and Tamora, and he's not really sure how he fits in anymore.
He leaves the phone, turned off, in his bag and lets himself out of the bungalow to take himself on a walk around town. There's not much to see, but the walk's nice nonetheless, even if it is damn hot.
He comes across Gary again on the other side of town, sitting on a bench outside a mechanic garage with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He waves Derek over, calling his name and patting the bench beside him.
"You find that guy you were looking for?" Gary asks, offering Derek a beer from the cooler in the dirt beside his feet. Derel shakes his head and Gary puts the beer back. "Not a beer drinker, kiddo?"
Derek shakes his head. "No, can't drink. Medications," he uses as an excuse, and Gary nods his head in understanding. "Yeah, I found him. Thanks again for bringing me."
Gary reaches over and pats Derek's shoulder, a kind smile on his face. "Is it that weird American the lads have been telling me about? The aunties think he's magic."
Derek snorts.
"He goes out to the desert before the sun comes up and doesn't come back until after lunch."
"Maybe he's communing with nature or something."
Gary lets out a loud chuckle, clapping Derek on the shoulder again. "They call it going out country, here. Or going out bush."
Derek sits with Gary for a while, listening to him talk, until his stomach growls with hunger, and he's lured back to the roadhouse by the smell of meat cooking. Gary waves him off.
Stiles is already back and sitting in the roadhouse when Derek arrives. Derek orders his lunch and takes a seat at the table with Stiles, who is tying on a laptop and doesn't look up at Derek at first, too involved in his work. Derek doesn't interrupt him.
"I've been looking into your little problem today," Stiles says after a few moments of silence, eyes still on his laptop. "I spoke to someone in Greece, another male pregnancy in the late nineties. It was elemental magic, too."
"What happened?"
Stiles shrugs. "Not much really. Perfectly healthy baby girl, fae like her birthing father. Nothing weird at all." He types something on his laptop, the tapping loud in Derek's ears. When he stops typing, his eyes flick up to Derek's, and then back down to the screen again. "She had to be born via cesarean section. Your healing factor will need to be dampened for that." Stiles looks up at Derek again, and this time he doesn't look away. "If that's what you want."
"Uh…" Derek tries, not sure what he actually wants to say. He's not even sure he's made a decision, though he supposes not stopping any of this is a decision in and of itself. "Yeah, I guess it is."
Stiles nods. "Okay. Well, if that's the plan, you can go home and I'll come to you when it's time, or-"
"No," Derek replies, shaking his head firmly. "No, I'll go back after."
Stiles shrugs his shoulders. "Whatever, dude. Up to you. I'm not much for company, but you could stay at my place if that's what you want. I'm not there very often, so you can have the place mostly to yourself."
Derek doesn't exactly have anywhere else to go right now, so he accepts the offer.
-*-*-*-*-*-
Derek checks out the railway museum the next day, just for something to do, even if it isn't particularly interesting. The horse out front does remind him of the Trojan Horse, though, and that does give him a good laugh.
He finds out that part of the creek on the edge of town has water in it, so he decides to explore it, see if it's worth taking a swim. It's f*cking hot out, and he'd murder to lay in cool water for a while.
He buys a sandwich, a soda and a bottle of water from the general store and takes it down with him. The water is barely more than a couple dozen feet across, but it's enough, and it's shrouded by trees so he'll be shaded from the sun.
He keeps his shirt on, in case someone else has the same idea as Derek, laying in the water and staring up at the sky through the branches of the trees. The pup is sleeping - he's not moving and Derek can hear the gentle thud of his heartbeat - and Derek just lies there and listens.
He must stay a lot longer than he thought, because Stiles comes to find him. Derek hears him calling his name and turns to see him standing on the bank, near where Derek left his clothes and the trash from his lunch.
"Having fun?"
Derek climbs back to his feet in the water, digging his toes into the silt, using his hand to shield his eyes from the sun so he can look at Stiles. "Why did you have to be somewhere so hot? Why am I feeling the heat, I never feel the heat."
Stiles snorts. "Hormones, dude. They suck, believe me." Derek watches Stiles lean over and tug off his sneakers, then start to unbutton his jeans. Derek wonders for a moment why he's said it like that, but he decides it's too hot to even bother. "I haven't actually been out here, yet. It's nice."
Stiles gets down to his briefs and Derek is gifted with the sight of all that pale, freckled, and tattooed skin. Derek catches himself studying the shapes inked on his skin, his eyes tracing over the curves of a raven's wings over his ribcage, the sharp lines of a ship's sails poking out from his waistband on his hip. He's also covered in scars, scattered across his skin, threaded between tattoos. There's a bite in the meat of his shoulder, like from a were, scar tissue all spiderwebbed out from the middle, and two matching scars from a surgery under his chest.
Stiles catches Derek looking and gives him a grin Derek sees from the corner of his eye as he's turning away. Derek hears the splashing of water as Stiles steps into the creek, then the crash as Stiles dives onto his back, arms and legs starfished out.
"Oh, this is nice," Stiles says softly, and Derek turns back to look at him. His eyes are closed, so Derek doesn't feel so bad this time looking his fill. "I've gotta go back out tomorrow morning, but we can leave after that, start driving back to the city tomorrow afternoon."
"What are you doing out there?" Derek asks.
Stiles shrugs his shoulders, the movement pushing water out and away from him in ripples. "There's a monolith, out in the desert. It started spewing raw magical power a few weeks ago. Earthquakes, bushfires, storms, blackouts. I've been containing the power inside the monolith."
"It's not world-ending, is it?"
Stiles chuckles. "It could have been. Anything could be world-ending with enough power if it's not solved quickly enough. But it isn't because I fixed it."
"You do that a lot?" Derek asks. "Stop the world from ending?"
Stiles laughs again, blinking his eyes open and looking up at Derek. "More often than the majority of the world will ever know. It's part of the job description."
"What, preventing the world from ending?"
"Basically. 'Whosoever holds the title of The Spark will take on the responsibility of every creature on earth'." Stiles shrugs his shoulders again, reaching up to shield his eyes from the sun. "Should've brought my sunglasses."
"I met the one before you. Once. I think I was about seven."
Stiles hums his acknowledgment, nodding his head. "Evangeline. Scary old broad. She came to Beacon Hills after my birth blacked out the entire town. The current Spark can always tell when the next is born. So they can be trained."
"Wait, you were born in Beacon Hills?"
"Mm-hmm. My dad's still the sheriff there, but I haven't been back since my mom died."
"Did you know my pack? My first pack?"
"Sort of. I met your mom, the Alpha, once or twice. I don't really remember you, though, but I do remember the sister about my age. My dad told me the oldest two children and the uncle were the only ones to survive the fire. And he told me about the puppies that took over the territory." Stiles makes a face and Derek supposes that's fair. "I've had my dad keep an eye on the Nemeton. It's too powerful a relic to leave in the hands of the group of jebani debile who gave it back its power in the first place. And that Alpha? A damn idiot. No offense."
Derek snorts. "None taken. It was a decision made out of necessity, not desire. And he is a bit of an idiot."
"I would kill for it to rain," Stiles says, effectively changing the subject. "Just once. I miss the rain. Hopefully it rains when we get back to Tegus."
-*-*-*-*-*-
"Why Honduras?" Derek asks when they start the drive back down to Coober Pedy the next afternoon. Derek's feeling pretty sh*t, and doesn't really want to be stuck in a car for several hours and then in planes on and off for two days, but Stiles was ready to go, and Derek couldn't exactly stay.
"I was doing a job there and I fell in love with the city," Stiles replies, reaching his arm between the front seats without taking his eyes off the road, pulling his bag back with it and putting it in Derek's lap. "Go into the front pocket, there should be a wooden box inside with vials in it." Derek does as he's told, reaching into the bag and pulling out the box. "Vial top middle should be a shiny green, smells like peppermint."
Derek finds the vial, uncorking it and smelling it to make sure he has the right one. "What is it?"
"Drink it, it'll make you feel better," Stiles replies, taking the bag back and shoving it onto the backseat. "It's mostly an anti-nausea. I created it for my migraine nausea, but it's safe for both of you."
Derek drinks it without a second thought (which is maybe not his best idea, but he's too sick to care) and then leans against the door with his face pressed against the window until it works. The pup's awake, Derek can feel him moving around, a feeling that makes the rolling in his stomach slightly worse. "Do you speak Spanish?" he asks Stiles to keep his mind off of it.
"It would be pretty sh*tty of me, living in a Spanish-speaking country and not knowing the language," Stiles says with a short chuckle. "At first I was using a translator spell, but I do speak it fluently now. Do you?"
Derek nods his head, smiling at his reflection in the side mirror as he says, "Spanglish is my first language. Didn't even know my family had been mushing together two languages until I started school. My dad's Mexican and my mom's from Spain. They used to argue over the different words for things and the different pronunciations."
"My parents' families were both Polish, immigrated to the US during the war, but only my mom could speak Polish. I struggled with learning both Polish and English so there was a year there when I was a toddler where I only spoke Polish," Stiles replies with another chuckle. "My poor dad was completely out of the loop."
When the road smooths out from dirt to bitumen, and Derek's stomach has settled, Derek takes the opportunity to take a nap. They've gotten into service range of some radio stations, and Stiles puts it on one that mostly plays 90's to 10's pop, and Derek lets the sound lull him into unconsciousness.
-*-*-*-*-*-
They hit LAX at four in the morning, and Derek feels awful. He doesn't remember the trip to Oodnadatta making him feel this sh*t. Derek has made Stiles check everything's okay at least ten times. Nothing's wrong, really. His body has just decided to make his life a living hell.
Stiles gets a call while they're waiting to board the plane to El Salvador, and even though he steps far away enough that Derek can only hear him if he really tries, he can tell by the look on his face they're not getting on the plane.
"I've gotta go to London," Stiles says when he returns. "You can go to Tegus on your own, or come with me, I don't mind."
More plane either way sounds awful, but Derek's not sure how he feels about staying alone in the home of someone he barely knows in a country he's never been to before. So he decides to go with Stiles.
Stiles charms the woman at the concierge desk into changing their tickets to the next flight to England, putting a little of his magic behind it to convince her. Derek doesn't think he even needed magic, not with the moon eyes she's giving him.
They have a few hours until the flight, and they take the opportunity to eat something other than plane food. There's a place boasting The best ramen in Los Angeles! and the smell makes Derek's stomach grumble. Stiles must hear it because he's laughing as he heards Derek in the direction of the store.
"What's in London?" Derek asks once they've ordered, while they're waiting.
"A little bit outside of London, actually. A village with a witch problem. One of my paid gigs," Stiles replies, pulling his laptop from his backpack and putting it on the table between them. He opens it up and turns it on, typing in his password. "Stock standard witch bullsh*t, should only take a few days. Then nothing will stop me from going home to my own f*cking bed."
"I miss my loft," Derek says softly, before he can stop himself, watching the woman at the counter make their food so he doesn't have to see Stiles's face. "And my bed."
"Why won't you go home?"
Derek turns back to look at Stiles. "I… I don't actually know. They're idiots, but they're not bad people. I just miss my mom and dad. My siblings. My betas."
"I'm sorry."
Derek shrugs and looks away from Stiles again. "Maybe it's why I don't find this entire situation completely insane. Or, well, I do find this situation insane, but I've not gone out of my way to stop it." The woman from the Ramen counter appears out of nowhere and sets their food down on the table between them. When she's gone, Derek says, "Maybe that's selfish. Wanting it because I've got nothing left."
Stiles snaps his chopsticks in half and grinds them together to get the splinters off. "Same reason I exist. They love me, it doesn't feel selfish." He gives Derek a gentle smile and reaches into his bowl with the chopsticks for some noodles, shoving them into his mouth.
Derek takes a deep breath to steady himself, taking his own chopsticks. "Sorry for dumping that on you."
Stiles shrugs his shoulders, mouth turned up in the corner. "I don't mind. I'm a good listener, promise. Talk about whatever you want, whenever you want."
Derek doesn't know what to say to that so he doesn't say anything at all, digging into his own ramen.
-*-*-*-*-*-
It's so f*cking freezing in England. Derek's body barely got used to the desert heat of the Australian outback and it struggles with the transition to rain and chilly air. His higher body heat can only do so much, but at least the multiple layers of clothes can hide his belly from prying eyes.
It's past midnight, so they get a hotel room for the night instead of pushing on. Derek's just glad for a shower and a bed to sleep in.
Room service is closed for the night, so they order food online for delivery. Derek takes a shower while they wait for it, almost lulled to sleep by the warm spray. The soap and shampoo bottles left out by the hotel smell awful, so Derek only uses the soap, and only as little as it'll take to get clean. He'll find something unscented - or at least a scent he doesn't hate - when they leave in the morning.
Derek stares at himself in the mirror when he gets out of the shower. He hasn't done it much, looked at himself like this. It makes him feel weird and squirrely, like the body he's in isn't his, almost self-conscious. The only times he can ever remember feeling self-conscious like this were when he crossed paths with Kate and he hates it. His body's mostly the same, other than the steadily growing curve of his stomach. It kind of just looks like a really bad beer belly at this point, which is almost funny to think about.
The hotel towel doesn't quite fit around his hips - mostly because the damn thing is tiny and he's built like a grizzly bear, but he's pretty sure the bulging stomach doesn't help. He has to hold it closed as he leaves the bathroom so he doesn't flash Stiles. Derek shouldn't have worried about flashing Stiles, though, because the man isn't even conscious when Derek steps out of the bathroom. He's still sitting up in bed with his laptop on his lap, but his head's tipped back against the headboard, and his eyes are closed, his heartbeat a slow and gentle thud, thud, thud in his chest.
Derek gets dressed again, in a henley and sweats, and he steals Stiles's phone to keep an eye on their food delivery.
Derek waits until he's gotten back from grabbing the food from the lobby to wake Stiles up. He leaves the bag of burgers on the bedside table between the two beds and leans over Stiles's bed to shake him awake gently. His eyes are silver when he blinks them open, and they're so distracting that Derek can't make himself look away.
Stiles's eyes fade back to his normal golden brown, and it's like he actually sees Derek now, like before he couldn't. He smiles at Derek softly and sits up further against the headboard, shoving his laptop off of his lap as he says, "Food?"
"Yeah."
Derek gets most of the way through his fries before he works himself up to asking Stiles about the silver eyes.
"It happens when I dream sometimes. I have visions when I sleep. All of my magic comes with the eyes, different colors for different kinds of magic," Stiles replies through a mouthful of burger. It's pretty gross, and Derek makes a face at Stiles that the other man laughs at after he's swallowed the food in his mouth.
"What kind of dream?"
Stiles shrugs his shoulders. "It was a baby. Probably yours, I don't exactly know anyone else about to have one," he says with a soft chuckle. "He was damn cute by the way. Little chubby cheeks, dark brown curls. Had a mole above his lip. Had your eyes."
"It was just a vision of him? Why?"
Stiles shrugs again. "Sometimes I dream of things that need to be done. Sometimes I just get snapshots of the future. It was the first power that manifested. I was four. I dreamed of my mother's death."
"I'm sorry," Derek replies. "That must have been hard."
"I didn't understand, I was so little. When my mom died, years later, I remembered that dream. I was so mad at myself for not stopping it. She had frontotemporal dementia, nothing could've stopped that, not even magic. I know that now."
Derek thinks about his own family, then, about how long he blamed himself for their deaths. He blamed himself for being taken in by a pretty face, but when he was older, he knew it was something he couldn't have controlled. He was fifteen and naive and Kate took advantage of him. When he was older he knew that everything she'd done to him she'd done because she wanted to, and he never had a chance.
They finish eating in relative silence. Stiles is asleep again before his head even hits the pillow. Derek lies down in his own bed in the dark, listening to Stiles's breathing and gentle thudding of the pup's heartbeat.
-*-*-*-*-*-
Derek wakes before Stiles in the morning and decides to take the opportunity to go for a walk. He's never been to London before and he wants to take a look around the city before they leave. He leaves a note behind for Stiles and takes his wallet, thinking about breakfast on the way back to the hotel.
Cities are hard for Derek, too many sounds, too many smells, too many people. It takes him a while to acclimate, to block out the too much, too fast, but he manages it eventually.
There are more supes out on the streets than Derek was expecting, more than he can ever remember there being in New York, at least. He can smell them all, the weres and magic users and fae and all the others all rushing past each other without even a second glance. Derek finds it funny, how weird it is for him, like a small town werewolf in the big city.
He finds a store while he's walking that looks like it sells toiletries and goes inside to find a body wash he won't still be making a face at when he smells it the day after he's used it. He doesn't see any of the brands he normally uses, or even any of the brands the others use, so he starts searching the shelves for the the words unscented and fragrance-free.
He smells the were as she turns down the aisle. He thinks she's a tiger, but he's not quite sure because he's never actually met one before. There's only one pack of weretigers in the US that he knows of, but they're in Alaska, and from what he's been told they prefer to keep to themselves. He's expecting her to move on past him like the others did on the street, but she stops her cart next to him. She reaches out to the shelf, pulls a blue bottle from it, and then holds it out to Derek. He turns to look at her and she smiles at him.
"This one's made by us," she says.
"Thanks," he replies, taking it from her and turning it over so he can see the label. It's not outwardly obvious that it was specifically made for weres and other supes with advanced olfactory senses, but Derek can't even smell the chemicals used to make it, so he's pretty sure the manufacturers had a little magical help.
"They also make shampoos and conditioners. Toothpaste. Makeup, too. It's pretty cool," the weretiger says casually. She takes the handle of the cart again, about to leave, but she stops herself. "Congratulations, by the way."
It takes him a moment for his brain to work out what she means, and then he's not really sure what he's supposed to say in reply, but she's already gone before he even worries he's meant to say something. He takes the bottle with him to the checkout, pays and leaves.
He gets breakfast from a cafe, lured in by the smell of coffee and bacon. He's not had coffee in months, and f*ck does he miss it. He gets coffee for Stiles, hoping to live vicariously through him, three bacon and egg rolls, and a couple of pastries.
Stiles is awake when he gets back to the hotel, and their bags are packed again. He looks anxious.
"Hey," he says to Derek, standing up from where he's been sitting on the bed, waiting, picking up his bags from the floor. "No leisurely breakfast this morning, unfortunately. A human died last night in Haverhill. Stakes just got upped."
They check out of the hotel and find a car rental, then are on their way within the hour. Stiles's coffee is cold by that time, and Derek sees him heat it with his magic out of the corner of his eye as he's driving. He also reheats Derek's breakfast rolls and Derek eats them gratefully as he follows the navigator on Stiles's phone.
-*-*-*-*-*-
The directions on Stiles's phone lead them to a huge old house on the outskirts of the city. It's circled by a tall stone wall covered in ivy with an old wrought iron gate and an intercom they have to buzz to let them in.
"Who lives here?" Derek asks as he turns onto the gravel driveway, towards the house, as the gate shuts behind the car. When they get closer to the front of the house, Derek can see there are several small children waiting for them in the doorway, supervised by a disinterested teenager on their phone.
"They're the ones who hired me," Stiles replies as Derek pulls the car to a stop, putting the brake on and turning off the engine. He's waving through the window at the children, smiling wide and bright.
Derek can smell they're wolves the minute Stiles opens the door to climb out. He suddenly feels glued to his seat, unable to move, fingers gripped so tightly around the steering wheel he hears the vinyl creak in his grip.
"What's up?" Stiles asks, leaning in through the open passenger door. "You're anxious."
"You didn't say they were weres Stiles. This isn't exactly something I can hide from them."
Stiles reaches in and squeezes Derek's shoulder comfortingly, an understanding smile on his face. "They aren't going to tell anyone, Derek, or be freaked out, or whatever's got you twisted in knots. They're really cool dude, I've known them for ages."
Derek's not even sure why he's being so weird about this, he just feels like this is something he's supposed to be keeping a secret, something just for himself. "Don't call me dude," he tells Stiles, easing up his hold on the steering wheel. "I feel like it's supposed to be a secret."
"They can keep a secret, too."
When Stiles is finally, properly out of the car, he's attacked by the children; they call his name and clamber around his legs. He's obviously been here before, often enough that they're so familiar with him. Derek manages to get himself out of the car, too, and he flits awkwardly by its side as Stiles greets the children.
One of the children breaks away from the others and finds Derek, looking up at him with her big brown eyes. She can't be more than four or five and she smells like puppy and curiosity. She reaches up slowly with a tiny, chubby hand, and Derek thinks she's going to touch his stomach, and he's not sure what to do. She doesn't actually touch him, though, just holds her hand suspended in the air, waiting. It takes Derek a while to realize that she's waiting for him to take her hand, and when he does, he reaches his own hand towards hers and clasps it gently in his fist.
"My name's Aiya," she whispers to him, like it's a secret.
"My name's Derek," he replies, voice also a whisper.
She smiles at him, little sharp baby teeth and burgundy flush across her cheeks. Her hand in his smells like chocolate chip cookies and ink markers, and the tawny brown skin of her arms and hands are covered in lines of red and purple and green. Part of her shirt is also colored in by markers, and she reminds him so startlingly of Cora when she was little that it takes his breath away.
Aiya brings him back to the present by leaning forward close and whispering, "You smell sad."
He strokes the pad of his thumb across the girl's knuckles and says, "Not sad, sweetheart, just remembering. You got any of those cookies you gobbled up left?"
Her smile brightens even more and she drags him through the front door. There are so many distinct were scents inside that he can't distinguish them all, at least a dozen, though probably well more. He doesn't see any of them at first, though, because Aiya lets go of his hand so she can push a stool up against the island counter where a huge container of cookies sits. She pulls the lid off and reaches inside, taking out two cookies before replacing the lid.
"D'you wan' juice?" she asks as she climbs back off the stool, taking his hand again and leading him over to the fridge without waiting for an answer.
"You're a very good host," he tells her with a gentle smile as she hands him the cookie and a juice box from the fridge. Her face lights up and she hugs his arm tightly in what he assumes is supposed to be a thank you, before leading him into a new room. It's a dining room, with a huge table that stretches from wall to wall, barely leaving any room to move inside. It has twenty chairs around it, each smelling like a single person, like everyone has their set place. Aiya pulls out the chair that smells like her and the one beside it and they sit down together.
She has a mouthful of cookie and crumbs all over her shirt when she leans over and whispers, "Is there a baby in your tummy? You smell funny like SamSam, and she's got a baby in her tummy."
Derek nods his head. "Yeah, there's a baby in there."
Aiya smiles toothily. "I like babies," she says.
"Me, too," Derek agrees.
Stiles appears when the cookies are eaten and the juice is drunk, while Aiya is trying very hard to teach Derek how to play a game she invented that only has rules when she wants it to. Mostly she's just slapping Derek's hands between her own and pretending to be a crocodile.
Stiles is followed into the room by three adults and a young boy who trails behind them. "I'm going to go with Jake and Sasha to look at the body, do you want to come with or stay here?"
"Stay here," Aiya says, tugging at Derek's hand to pull his attention to her.
When Derek looks back at Stiles, he's got this fond smile on his face and it makes Derek's chest feel warm. "Guess I'm staying here, then," Derek says with a shrug.
"Okay. we won't be long. This is the Alpha, Mayer. I explained a little bit, but you can fill her in on whatever you want." Stiles points to a woman who looks like she could be Aiya's twin. She smiles at Derek and Derek smiles back.
When Stiles and the two betas are gone, Aiya drags Derek outside to see their chickens with Mayer following behind them.
"Stiles didn't tell me what pack you were from," Mayer says as Derek's trying to lean over without tipping so he can see inside the coup, at what Aiya's pointing out. God his balance has gone to sh*t, he feels insanely weird.
Derek tries to decide whether he wants to run the risk of the pack finding out where he is by telling her the truth. But lying to an Alpha who's let you into their home is an even worse idea. He decides to split the difference. "I grew up in the Hale Pack. In Eastern California."
Mayer nods her head. He can tell she recognizes the pack name, but she's kind enough not to say anything. Derek appreciates it. "And now?" she asks him.
Derek shrugs his shoulders, taking the two eggs Aiya hands him, still warm from the chicken that was sitting on them. "Complicated," he replies. Then, after a pause, "At the moment."
"Mm-hm," Mayer says. "Would be. Don't stay away too long, though. You know what'll happen."
Derek doesn't bother mentioning he's been alone before for a lot longer than the period of a pregnancy, and he hasn't gone feral yet.
"Know how it happened?" Mayer asks, gesturing vaguely at Derek.
"Same way it normally happens, I guess," Derek replies, standing up again and leaning against the concrete column that stabilizes the coup. "But also a thank-you gift from the ancient druidic entity I accidentally woke when I was fifteen."
Mayer snorts. "I guess that's one way to do it.
When Aiya's done picking eggs she decides they need omelets, and Derek follows her back to the kitchen obediently, holding at least a dozen eggs in a sling he made out of his sweater. Mayer follows them both, amused.
-*-*-*-*-*-
Derek must fall asleep on the sofa in the children's playroom because when Stiles pulls him back into consciousness the sky outside the window is dark and he's pretty sure the children have all gone to sleep. Stiles was gone all day.
"What happened?" Derek asks, pushing himself up so he's sitting, the blanket around him pooling in his lap. He has a vague memory of Aiya putting a blanket over him and tucking him in with one of her toys. He finds the soft pig plush shoved between his hip and the couch. "You only just get back?"
"I got back before dinner, we didn't want to wake you. There's a plate waiting for you in the microwave."
"The body?"
Stiles sighs, nodding his head. "Guy was definitely killed by magic. And he was definitely human. I spoke to the witches' council, they told me I quote-unquote 'have orders to capture, with lethal measures to be used if necessary'." Stiles scoffs. "Orders. I don't take orders from the f*cking witches' council."
"How did the human die?" Derek asks, rubbing his hand over his face to wake himself up more. His stomach growls when he thinks about the food waiting for him in the microwave.
"This is gross - his organs liquified and his blood boiled. He was still, like, intact, but everything but his flesh and bones were liquid," Stiles says, face twisted in disgust. "I recognize parts of the spell used, but the power behind it is what concerns me. The caster was strong, and pissed. Everything before now felt more like a prank, childish games. But this was purposeful. If the magical signature wasn't the same, I would've made it as two completely different users. They're cloaking themselves, it'll take me some time to break through."
"Can I help?"
Stiles opens his mouth, then shuts it again, and Derek gets the distinct impression Stiles is trying to stop himself from treating Derek like he's a pregnant human, rather than a werewolf with a magic bubble protecting the magic were baby inside of him. "When I find them maybe. Might help to have some muscle." Derek's extremely glad that Stiles decided not to treat him as breakable, because he's not really in the mood for patronization, intended or not.
Derek nods his head in acknowledgment before he goes to find his dinner in the kitchen, Stiles trailing behind him.
-*-*-*-*-*-
They share a bed. The pack only has one spare room - they don't get many visitors sleeping over - and Derek won't make Stiles sleep on the floor. Going to sleep is easy because Derek is exhausted, but waking up is weird.
Stiles has moved in the night, gravitated towards Derek, and now lies pressed to Derek's side, his face smothered by Derek's ribcage. His gentle breaths warm Derek's skin, and his hair tickles it. Derek didn't realize how desperate he was for touch until now, and all he wants is to stay here, shove his nose into Stiles's hair and breathe him in. Derek can't make himself get up off the bed, he feels like he's been swallowed up by soft sheets and Stiles's slow breathing. Even when the pup starts to wake, his heart picking up, shifting around inside Derek, Derek doesn't move anymore than to reach his hand up and press it to where the pup is moving. It's sorta weird, it feels like he's never felt before.
He's thinking about going back to sleep when the latch on the door clicks as it swings open. Aiya sneaks her way into the room, shutting the door behind herself again, as quiet as a mouse, like she's trying so hard not to be heard, like she was specifically told not to disturb them. She comes to Derek's side of the bed and leans up to look at him, dressed in her uniform, ready for school, with her curls pulled up into pigtails on top of her head, tied with green ribbons that match the piping on her dress. Derek's honestly surprised she's allowed to go to school; the children in his family were all homeschooled until they all learned how to control the shift. It took most of them until middle school.
"You going to school?" he asks softly, turning his head to the side so he can look at her properly.
"I don't wanna," Aiya replies, her little eyebrows pulled down into a frown, her mouth pouted. "I want to stay here with you."
"You've gotta go learn things at school though. You can come back after and tell me what you did," he says, gently prying himself away from Stiles and sitting up in bed, swinging his legs over the side, careful not to hit Aiya. "Why don't I come down with you?"
Aiya nods her head vigorously and takes Derek's hand, pulling at it until he gets to his feet. When he stands, Aiya reaches forward to poke Derek's bare belly gently. "Is it a boy or a girl or a enby?"
"A what?" Derek asks, amused.
"Issa short'n form of the word nonbinary," Stiles mumbles from the pile of sheets on the bed. Derek hadn't even realized he'd woken. Derek isn't even sure he is awake, because his heartbeat's still at his sleeping rate and his breathing is slow and even.
"It's a boy," Derek tells her, pulling on a t-shirt he gets from his bag. Aiya takes his hand again and pulls him over to the door, and before they step out into the hallway, Derek looks back to the bed to find Stiles is watching him.
The kitchen is bustling when Aiya lets them inside, everyone moving around each other easily, eating breakfast and making lunches. The children are all wearing matching uniforms, all eight of them, the oldest probably close to finishing school and Aiya the youngest. Derek only knows a few of their names, the twins Maya and Mia who are a few years older than Aiya, and one of the teenagers, Thomas. Other than Mayer, Sasha and Jake, he also knows the name of Thomas's father, August, but his knowledge pretty much ends there.
"I think she's adopted you," one of the betas Derek hadn't met yet says with a chuckle, handing Derek a clean plate. She looks a bit like Mayer and Aiya, same general face shape, but her skin is a lot paler than theirs. "There's breakfast on the counter. The hash is vegan if you don't eat animal products."
"Thanks," Derek replies, accepting the plate, letting Aiya take him to the counter. She's chatting away, animatedly explaining absolutely everything she knows about frogs. As Derek's taking a couple of pancakes from the stack on the counter, she explains that her classroom has a tank full of frogs. Apparently, one of the frogs got out of the tank and they found it in one of the kid's lunchboxes.
She sits on his knee in the dining room as he eats, jumping from topic to topic until one of the adult betas drags her away to leave for school. She has to literally be dragged, pouting, and all Derek can do is promise to be here when she gets back. Her big brown eyes go watery, but she goes, waving goodbye to him.
"She's normally very timid with strangers," Adam, one of the betas he hasn't properly met yet but was pointed out to him the day before, says as he takes a seat at the table with Derek. He's got a cup of coffee with him, and Derek breathes in the smell. Underneath it, he can smell the man himself, he smells like AlphaMate, and like Aiya enough to identify him as her father. "Before she started school she avidly refused to talk to anyone who wasn't pack."
"My youngest sister was the same," Derek says, nodding his head, chewing on a mouthful of pancakes. "She reminds me of her a lot."
"Is it just you, now?" Adam asks gently. "Mayer told me you're a Hale. Heard about the fire through the grapevine."
Derek doesn't like talking about it to pack, let alone strangers. He barely survived the stilted explanations he gave Stiles. He sighs. "My uncle, my older sister and I survived. My uncle killed my sister, so I killed him. Yes. it's just me." Maybe it's a bit snappish, but it's straight to the point, impossible to be misunderstood.
Adam doesn't blanch at his words or his tone. In fact, he looks like he understands in a way that only someone who's lost their family understands. That gentle, sorrowful smile. "We're a pack of orphans, here, we understand. Probably better than most."
"What do you mean?"
"Stiles didn't tell you?" Derek shakes his head. "The majority of us are the last of our packs, mostly due to hunters. Sasha's pack were killed by an Omega. Jake was pushed out of their pack after coming out to their family. Maureen's the only beta whose pack is still in her life. She married in."
"Mayer and her sister?" Derek prompts curiously.
"Kilan. They grew up in this house, huge pack. Killed by hunters when they were ten and eleven. Kilan's maternal human grandmother raised them until Mayer was ready to take over as Alpha." The beta smiles at the thought. "They started taking in strays pretty much straight away. I was just passing through on my way to London, and I never left."
It reminds him of Boyd, Erica and Isaac, even if his reasons for turning them weren't nearly so noble. God, he misses them. It makes his chest hurt and his throat tight.
Adam opens his mouth to say something, he can probably smell Derek's sadness, but Derek is saved from it by Stiles, stumbling into the room with a coffee mug and bed hair.
-*-*-*-*-*-
Stiles works out in the garden's greenhouse, and with nothing better to do, Derek sits with him. It's raining slightly, the soft pitter patter of it a gentle soundtrack to Stiles's incantation. He's working over a table of random things that make no sense to Derek - like a bowl of herbs, carved bones, a few different kinds of feathers, and a map. A Spark's magic is innate, tied to the elements and to the power of their own soul, so Derek assumes he's using witchcraft to dismantle the witch's warding.
"You told me in Australia you'd kill for it to rain," Derek says. "Do you have something you need to tell me?"
Stiles lets out a startled laugh, cutting off the incantations. "If I don't tell you, you can't be arrested as an accomplice."
"Good thinking," Derek replies, nodding his head, reaching down to rub at a place on his stomach where the pup's kicking him. Which is just rude. "Plausible deniability."
Stiles's eyes are crinkled in the corners when he looks up at Derek, grinning brightly. Derek's pretty sure that's not the pup's heart thundering in his ears, but his own beating traitourously in his chest.
The bowl of herbs spontaneously combusts between the two of them, completely out of nowhere, drawing their eyes down to it. Stiles curses creatively, flicking his hand at the flames to smother them.
"What was that?" Derek asks, peering curiously into the bowl, at the singed plants. When Derek looks up at Stiles, the man's ears are pink. "Did you do that?"
"I wasn't paying attention, I'll have to start again."
"Sorry," Derek says, suddenly realizing he's the one who distracted Stiles.
Stiles smiles again, softer this time. "Don't be."
Stiles starts again.
"Scrying is so stupid," he announces after at least a half hour of silence that Derek spends mostly drifting off. When he looks up at Stiles, the man is glaring down at the items strewn across the table in front of him. "Human magic is so stupid."
"Can I help," Derek offers.
Stiles makes an annoyed, confused sound. "I've never been really good at the spellcasting. I can just as easily do whatever I need to do with my magic. But they've cloaked themselves with witchcraft, and only witchcraft can break it. It's so dumb." He sighs, shaking his head. "Witchcraft isn't innate - like druid magic - it's learned. It's about the ability to manipulate words, because words are power. I've never been able to properly manipulate words, but they're good at manipulating me."
Derek watches Stiles start all over again.
Something happens the third time, a spark of magic between Stiles's hands as he whispers his incantations. Green smoke spills from between his fingers, curling over the table until it spills over, dissipating as soon as it hits the floor. Derek leans closer to watch, he notices the burnt patch on the map at the same time Stiles does, and they both turn to look at each other.
"I think that worked."
Stiles laughs. "You know, I think it did. Now we can track this asshole."
-*-*-*-*-*-
Before Stiles can start tracking the witch, the witch kills several properties worth of plant life in one neighborhood. They're standing in the kitchen, Stiles standing in front of the coffee machine as it bubbles away when Sasha finds them, dropping her phone into Stiles's hands. When Derek leans over to look, there's a tweet on the screen from a couple hours before, with several pictures of the front yards of different houses. Everything looks dead, like it hasn't been watered ever, or the sun's been burning it or something - like Derek can remember every magically dead plant looking from every sh*tty supernatural movie ever. Above the photos, the poster has written someone spraying herbicide on peoples gardens in haverhill like a TWAT or summat?????.
"And now we're back to the dumb sh*t," Stiles says with a sigh, handing the phone back to Sasha. "I'll go take a look."
Sasha nods her head. "Need backup?"
"I'll go with you," Derek says.
Stiles nods his head. "Me and Derek will go, check it out, be back in an hour or so. If anything else comes up just give me a call."
Sasha nods again.
They're not exactly sure where the neighborhood is, but Stiles tells Derek it's pretty easy to follow the magic, and as they get closer, Derek can smell it. It doesn't smell like Stiles's magic, or really any magic he's ever smelled before. It doesn't smell like ozone and the undercurrent of the magic user's own scent.
No, it smells like a house fire. It's a scent Derek is - unfortunately - all too familiar with. Like ashes and charred wood and smoke and sulfur. It smells dark and wrong. Twisted.
Whatever Stiles is feeling must be similar to the smell, because when Derek looks over at him his eyebrows are pulled down into a frown and his mouth is pinched.
They find the neighborhood. It isn't every house, it's not even every other house. It's just five houses on one street and another two a street down. There's no order or pattern to them - at least not one that's obvious - it seems random.
Derek climbs out of the car first so he can get a better smell, while Stiles is parking it behind a white SUV with one of those obnoxious stick figure family stickers in the back window.
The entire street smells off. Wrong. He can't quite put his finger on it, but it's just not right. Underneath that strong burning smell is something close to the rotted smell that dead leaves on the ground of the preserve get in the fall, when it's been raining for days. It's not necessarily unpleasant, and maybe not all that unusual after the weather in the area lately, but to Derek it seems out of place. It doesn't fit.
"What does it smell like?" Stiles asks when he comes up beside Derek. When Derek looks over at him, he's sliding the car keys into his front pocket and leaving his hand there.
"Wrong," Derek replies, because he's not sure how else to really explain it. "It just smells wrong." Derek looks at the garden in front of him, studying the flowers lined up against the fence all gone brown and wilted and burnt. He thinks they used to be Petunias. His mom grew Petunias around the side of their house. "What does it feel like?"
Stiles breathed out heavily through his nose. "I can feel the emotion behind the curse."
"And?"
Stiles sucks his teeth. "Anger, mostly - rage - but they were afraid too. Terrified. A fear so pervasive it sunk its claws deep into their magic and holds on still."
"Fear of what?" Derek asks, turning back to look at Stiles.
"I dunno, but I don't like it. I know what you mean about it smelling wrong. It feels wrong too. Why go from murdering someone to ruining gardens? Why go from childish tricks to murder?"
"What did they do? Before we got here?"
Stiles makes a dismissive gesture with the hand not still in his pocket. "Neighborhood blackout. Guy lost a mouthful of teeth, a woman found toads in her bathroom, a store in town was flooded, lightning struck a tree and narrowly missed a guy standing underneath. No one was hurt, the magic user didn't seem like they wanted to hurt anyone, not until that guy. It's weird. They're all over the place."
Something clicks in Derek's brain. "They're traumatized." That smell, that stench of burning house, that's Derek's trauma. He's smelling their terror - it permeates the entire street, the entire neighborhood - and when he could immediately identify it he inserted his own fear into it to force his brain to understand it.
"They're taking their revenge." Stiles posits. "I bet if we find out who lives in these houses, we'll find out who's doing this."
Derek lets momentum push him forward towards the front gate. He lets himself through it with a gentle squeak of its hinges, Stiles rushing behind him, stage whispering his name. There's no one inside, he can only hear one human heartbeat on the entire street, and he wants to go inside. He needs to know.
When they reach the front door, Derek turns to Stiles and says, "Stiles, unlock the door. If I do it, they'll know we were here."
Stiles makes a face, but he does it anyway, touching his fingers to the door handle, waiting for the gentle snick of the lock before he wraps his hand around it, turns it, and pulls the door open.
There's nothing immediately wrong with the inside. Everything looks in its place, it's clean and tidy and smells faintly of last night's dinner. There's the scent of two humans, a man and a woman, and under that, the very faint scent of a third, pressed into the walls but on none of the furniture. Whoever it was hasn't been inside the house for a long time. The photos on the walls and lines up on free surfaces only contain an elderly white couple. A few also contain what must be friends and family, but the man and woman dominate the space. No recurring third.
Derek is still looking at the photos when Stiles starts up the stairs, mouth set into a hard line. "Where are you going?" Derek asks, leaning against the banister to watch him go. Stiles doesn't answer, so Derek starts following him up.
At the top of the stairs, Stiles presses his fingers against the wall, trailing it across as he walks. His eyes have begun to glow faintly, Derek can just see it at the corner of his eye when he leans to the side to watch him as he follows.
That wrong smell starts to get stronger the closer they get to the end of the hallway, closer to the last door on the right. Stiles stops in front of it, fingers still pressed to the wall beside it, hesitating before he finally presses his hand to the wood. He goes into the same comatose, unseeing and unhearing trance Derek saw in him that night he woke Stiles from one of his visions, his eyes shining silver.
It's barely a few seconds before Stiles snatches his hand back fast like he's been burned, stumbling backward a few steps as his eyes fade back to normal. He's gone pale, skin white with shock, and he snatches Derek's wrist, dragging him downstairs.
"Stiles, what the f*ck?"
Stiles doesn't say anything, not until they're back at the car, the house locked again behind them. He's hyperventilating, hand shaking against Derek's skin, heart jack rabbiting in his chest.
Isaac used to get panic attacks after everything his father put him through. When Derek turned him, after the first attack in his presence, he did all the research, learned all the coping strategies, and it comes back to him easily as he pulls Stiles down into the grass of the median strip, sitting down with him on the edge of the curb.
"Stiles, listen to me. You're having a panic attack, I need you to slow your breaths down or you're going to pass out," Derek says, taking Stiles's face into his hands. "Slowly, in and out," he continues, breathing with him, counting five seconds out in between each. "Tell me three things you see right now. Doesn't matter what they are, just look around and find something."
Stiles very pointedly does not look back at the house. "The car. That cat over there. The stupid cow-shaped mailbox in the yard across the road." He must know the drill already because he keeps going before Derek even starts to continue. "The wind in the trees. The bird singing in the tree. You breathing." He starts by moving his hands then, lifting them between their bodies and stretching out his fingers, then tucking them back in again. He rolls his shoulders back a few times, then turns his head from side to side.
Stiles's breathing has settled back to normal and his heart rate is quieting in his chest, the stench of panic settling so it's not quite so pervasive. He pulls away from Derek and collapses back onto the grass, staring up at the sky, letting his body settle back to its normal state.
When he's finally ready, he opens his mouth, then shuts it again, swallows audibly, and speaks. "Her name's Anna. Her parents live in that house. And I use the term parents incredibly loosely. Her magic started manifesting when she was quite young. Her parents tried to abuse it out of her. I saw the murdered man, too. A family friend. I would've killed him for what he did to her in that room, too."
Derek leans back against the side of the car and stares up at the sky, too, watching the grey clouds roll by, threatening rain but not quite delivering it. "What do we do?"
"I would leave," Stiles starts. "If I didn't think the Witches Council would just find someone else to kill her. Someone who didn't care why she was doing it. We have to find her and we have to make her leave. We'll tell them she left town before we could find her."
"We have to do it now, before she kills someone else."
Stiles nods. "Yes." He pushes himself back to his feet and reaches out a hand for Derek, which he takes gratefully, using Stiles and a hand against the car to stand. "I need you to drive while I track her."
-*-*-*-*-*-
They find her in an abandoned factory building on the opposite edge of town to the pack's house. Stiles covers their entrance, so she doesn't know they're there until Stiles is in front of her and Derek's behind her.
She's sitting at a small rickety table, staring down at a book, her dark hair in curtains on either side of her face. When she finally notices them, her head snaps up and she stands so fast the chair falls with a clatter behind her.
"Who the f*ck are you!"
"Your knight in shining f*cking armor kiddo," Stiles says, waving his hand in the girl's direction, blocking a curse she starts mumbling at him with an ease that is both incredibly impressive and slightly terrifying. "Get your sh*t, we're leaving before you get yourself dead."
"Who the f*ck are you?" Anna repeats, a little more hysterically this time, looking back at Derek like she's finally realized he's there too. Derek's heart sinks to the pit of his stomach when he sees the pink scar burned into the side of her cheek, marring her pale, freckled skin.
"I'm here to save you from the bitches council so let's go, vámanos, pack your sh*t and get in the car."
"I don't understand, just tell me who you are!"
"Hey," Derek says softly, catching her attention. "I'm Derek, that's Stiles, we're not here to hurt you. We know why you're here, and we know what you've done and why. But now you need to leave."
Anna shakes her head. "No," she says, stinking of fear and adrenaline, but also, underneath it all, determination. "I'm not done yet. I'm not leaving until I'm done."
"You've killed in a pack's territory using magic," Stiles replies. "For godsakes, they called me here. You're done. I'm asking you, right now. But I will make you if I have to."
"You don't know what they've done."
"I do," Stiles replies, face softening. "I know what they've done, I know they deserve it. But not at the expense of your own life. No one will be as forgiving as I am. And know I won't be nearly as forgiving the second time."
"I'm not done," she repeats. Her voice wobbles and her eyes have gone shiny with unshed tears, but she's still strong, still determined. "I'm not done."
"It won't make it go away," Derek says, and her head swivels to face him so fast he can hear her neck crack. "It'll make you feel better for a while, but it doesn't make it go away. It'll still hurt. It won't even feel worth it because it'll still hurt so much."
The first tear drops and she rubs it away with an aggressive fist swiping across her cheek. "You got yours, why can't I have mine?"
"Anna, I wasn't given a choice," Derek says, shaking his head. "Mine had to die, for the safety of others."
"I killed him because he was doing it to others," she says, voice barely above a whisper. Stiles hadn't told him what the man had done, but Derek can take a guess.
"Great, you've stopped that, it's done, time to leave," Stiles interjects, waving his hand dismissively. "Time to get your sh*t and go."
"Why are you helping me?" Anna asks, turning a stern look over to Stiles. "Why bother, the Witches' Council want me, why go against them? They'll destroy you."
Stiles scoffs so hard Derek's sure he hurts himself, his eyes rolling as he says, "Believe me I am not f*cking scared of a bunch of bitches who perform magic by f*cking talking. Now do as you're told so we can get you the f*ck out of here. The next time I won't ask."
Anna and Stiles glare at each other for a long time. Anna eventually breaks, turning around and stomping over to the mattress pressed into the corner, shoving things into a duffle bag. She hasn't got much, so it doesn't take her long to pack. Derek wonders how long she's been living like this.
They take her back to Mayer's pack house; it takes a bit of convincing for Mayer to let her in, but always one to take in strays, she does. Anna gets sat at the kitchen counter with a cup of tea and a plate of cookies, watched over by Adam while Mayer, Stiles, Derek and Kilan discuss next steps in the dining room.
“At minimum she has to leave Haverhill, but I think it would be in her best interest to leave England,” Mayer says after Stiles gives her the briefest of explanations about Anna's situation, not revealing any more than is strictly necessary. “And she'll need someone to supervise her to prevent her from returning.”
"I've got lots of favors I can call in, I just need to know where to send her," Stiles says.
Derek hates to admit it, but, "I think you should send her to Deaton. He's unnecessarily cryptic, but he's a good teacher, and the McCall pack are idiots, but they'll look out for her."
"Actually, America is a good idea," Stiles agrees, nodding his head. "The Witches Council don't have as much control in the states, especially in California with three ancient Druidic Artifacts and a damn Hellmouth. That's perfect." The wide smile Derek earns from Stiles makes Derek's stomach grow unreasonably warm.
"How will you get her there? Does she even have a passport?"
"That… is a good question." Stiles walks over to the door that leads into the kitchen, pulling it open so he can call into the room, "Do you have a passport?" Anna calls back a yes and Stiles shuts the door again. "Settled. I'll book the next flight, we'll head back to London tonight."
-*-*-*-*-*-
Derek ends up staying with Mayer's pack for the extra few days it takes Stiles to get Anna to Beacon Hills and then get himself back again. Aiya's thrilled to have him all to herself, hoarding most of his time outside of her school hours, dragging him around the house, leading him through the garden by the hand.
On Derek's third morning there on his own, Aiya manages to convince Mayer and Adam to let Derek walk her to school. The other children are being driven to school, so they have to leave a little earlier than the rest to get there in time, stuffing down breakfast and rugging up in coats and hats before they head out the door. It's not a far walk, about fifteen minutes, and Aiya sings most of the way, swinging their joined hands back and forth, her curls bouncing around her face as she skips.
They're about ten minutes into the walk when Aiya stops singing so she can ask, "Are you gonna stay?"
"Stay?" he asks, turning to look down at her. "I wish I could, sweetheart. But I do have a pack I have to get home to."
"You could stay in our pack?" Aiya says, voice small, fist gone tight around Derek's like she's trying to stop him from being able to get away. "We could take care of you."
Derek stops and squats down so he can talk to her face-to-face, holding her hand tight against his chest. "I know you would, sweet girl, but I have to take care of them. Who's going to take care of them if I'm not there?"
"The alpha is supposed to take care of them."
Derek smiles at her gently, squeezing her hand gently. "And who takes care of him? I have to make sure he doesn't go and do something stupid."
Aiya's face scrunches up in thought, then she nods once, decisively. "You have to look after him. But I'll miss you."
"I'll miss you, too."
Derek stands again, and they continue walking towards Aiya's school.
The school building is one of those places Derek keeps seeing in England that he's pretty sure is older than the entirety of the US, all uneven brick and huge wooden doors with a roof that looks like it was probably thatch before they tiled it. He means to stop at the gate and let her go, but she drags him along with the kind of unbridled strength only a werewolf child could have, taking him inside the school grounds.
He's just about to tell her he can't come to class with her when she's bodily dragged away by another little girl with big blonde curls who's managed to already smear dirt across her cheek before school has even started. She doesn't smell human, not quite, but he can't figure out what she is if not human.
Aiya's suddenly disinterested in him, now that her friend is with her, and she leaves him with a wave goodbye and a huge smile as she's dragged towards the playground.
Derek intends to walk again, follow the pack's smell back to the house, but Sasha's waiting for him at the gate, leaning up against the car. She's on her phone, but he knows she's noticed him.
"Thanks," he says, as they get into the car together. "She tried to take me into class with her, I think."
Sasha laughs, turning away from the footpath and onto the street. "Yeah, sounds like Aiya. And then she let you loose when Willow dragged her away?"
"Blonde curls?"
Sasha nods. "Oh yeah, force of nature that one. Her and Aiya are absolute terrors together. They tried to separate them into the two first year classes but they were worse without each other. Willow's the only reason Aiya has any friends at school really, she didn't give Aiya much of a choice."
"What is she?" Derek asks.
Sasha shakes her head. "You genuinely do not want to know."
That, of course, only makes him more curious, and he says, "I do."
Sasha shakes her head again, sighing so heavily Derek starts to wonder if he actually does want to know. "Okay, I'll tell you, but just know, Stiles will not be pleased I told you." Derek agrees, urging her on. "Okay. Willow is the reason we met Stiles. He arrived in town after she was born."
Derek has the horrible feeling he knows where this is going, so he says, "She's the next Spark."
"Don't freak out," Sasha says, too fast, her voice a little too high.
"I'm not freaking out," Derek says, because he honestly doesn't think he is, but his own voice is a little too high compared to how it is naturally and he feels sort of like everything in his head is covered in a thick cloud of cotton.
"You smell like you're freaking out," Sasha says, and Derek supposes he is then. "Listen, this should be something you talk to Stiles about, but not all Sparks die when the next comes of age, sometimes they just pass the mantle, or sometimes a new Spark doesn't come of age until they're much older. So don't automatically assume Stiles is going to die."
"I'm not freaking out," he says again, and he's certain he's lying now. "I have no reason to freak out, I barely know him, and I know how the Spark works."
Sasha gives him a concerned sort of look out of the corner of her eyes that Derek only sees out of the corner of his own, cause he can't make himself look at her. "Listen," she says carefully, voice soft like Derek's a frightened animal. He definitely does not like that, and he tries not to let it raise his hackles. "I don't mean to imply you're stupid, or anything else, but you do know the two of you reek of mates, right?"
Derek turns to look at her so fast he swears he can hear his neck crack. She's mostly still focusing on the road, but every now and then, she'll turn to look at him, an unreadable expression on her face.
When Derek doesn't say anything, Sasha breathes in sharply through her nose and says, "I'll take that as a no. Derek, you're supposed to be able to know."
Derek feels a bit indignant at that, and he can't stop himself from snapping, "Just completely baring the fact I haven't had any idea what's going on with my body for the last five f*cking months, my history with platonic, familial and romantic relationships has been so beyond f*cked that at this point I'm surprised I can feel anything at all."
"I'm sorry," Sasha says, voice quiet.
Derek rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands until bright spots spark in the dark. "I'm sorry for yelling. All of this is really f*cking hard, and I'm over it. I shouldn't have taken my frustration out on you."
"I don't really like being yelled at, but I'll forgive you this once," Sasha says, just as they're turning into the pack's driveway, and when Derek turns his face to look at her, she's looking at him with a soft, understanding smile. "Pregnancy in and of itself sucks beyond compare, so the frustration is understandable." She pulls the car to a stop in its spot next to the others and turns off the ignition. "Stiles knows, by the way. I think he's just waiting for you to say something, or decide what you want."
"I haven't known what I've wanted for a long time."
Sasha pats Derek on the shoulder - in a way that she probably meant as comforting, but feels kind of condescending - before climbing out of the car. Derek follows her.
-*-*-*-*-*-
Adam drives Derek back to the airport to meet Stiles for the flight to the US, waits with him while he checks in, then hugs him goodbye. Derek's not really expecting it, but surprisingly, he doesn't mind it at all.
Stiles is waiting by the gate like he told Derek that he would be, sitting on one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs with his laptop balanced precariously on his knees and his body hunched over it. Derek's trying so hard not to think about what Sasha said to him that all that's left is 'why does he always sit like he has no spine?'
The smile Stiles turns up at him is brilliant, and trying not to think about it doesn't work anymore cause he's right there.
Derek falls into the seat next to him, dropping his duffle and backpack by his feet. "Hey," he greets. "You get her off to Deaton alright?"
Stiles's face changes for a second, and he smells anxious. "Oh yeah, all good, but I have to tell you something and you have to not freak out."
Derek is fairly certain he does not want to know what Stiles is going to say, so he says, "No promises."
"Entirely fair. Okay. Your Alpha figured out you'd gone to Australia and went looking for you."
Oh f*ck.
"He was back in Beacon Hills when I went, but he and Deaton have been trying to track you," Stiles says, chewing on his bottom lip. "Listen I know you have your reasons for not wanting to go back, or not even telling your Alpha you were leaving, but maybe you could just tell them you're alright? So they can stop looking?"
"I…" Derek starts, then realizes he's got no idea what he actually wants to say. He could tell Scott and Deaton he's fine, even tell them where he is, but he'd had this awful feeling like he shouldn't for so long he's suddenly surprised when it's no longer there.
Derek reaches down and pulls his backpack into his lap, unzipping the pocket where he's kept his phone for the last several months, digging around for it. He zips the bag back up and drops it back by his feet, holding his phone in his cupped hand in his lap. The curve of his belly is visible in the way he's sitting, and he narrows his eyes at it. Either the Nemeton or the baby itself decided to kick his ass out of Beacon Hills and he's going to figure out why. And honestly, something tells him Scott has the answer.
So he turns his phone on. It takes a few extra seconds, like it's mad at him for being turned off for so long, but when it does finally blink to life, he's bombarded with notifications; calls and texts, mostly from Scott, Deaton and Lydia, but from the others as well.
He has to log into the airport's WiFi to call Scott over the internet, because when he tries with his roaming plan it won't work, and when he dials, Scott picks it up after it only rings twice.
"I'm going to f*cking kill you, you asshole," Is the first thing he says, which is probably entirely fair. "We thought you'd gone off into the Australian desert to f*cking die or something. Where the hell are you?"
"Airport."
Scott makes a loud, frustrated noise on the other end. "Bro, which f*cking airport? And when are you coming back? Last time you left we found you fifteen and in a f*cking tomb in Mexico, you're making me seriously anxious."
Stiles must be able to hear Scott over the phone (not that Derek is surprised, his voice is loud and shrill, the man standing at the ticket desk can probably hear him). His eyebrow raises dramatically, and Derek guesses he'll be explaining the whole Mexican tomb thing when he's off the phone.
"Heathrow, and I've got something I need to do first."
"Derek," Scott whines. "You have to come back. There was a whole thing and we all almost died and holy sh*t did you know the Sheriff knows about magic and werewolves and sh*t? He saved our asses."
Derek looks over at Stiles pointedly and Stiles raises his hands in surrender. "I only found out when I dropped Anna off, I was going to tell you after I told you about your Alpha following you to Australia. You just kinda beat me to it."
"He had this glowing orb thing," Scott continues without even stopping to take a breath. "It worked kinda like a contained bomb. He still won't explain where he got it. Wait, who's that talking? And where the hell is Heathrow?"
"Scott," Derek says, interrupting Scott's breathless tangent. "I'd like to circle back to the part where you almost died."
"Okay but don't freak out."
"I really wish everyone would stop telling me that."
Scott makes a distressed noise in the back of his throat, like a wounded puppy. "Okay, we kind of rubbed a neighboring pack the wrong way?"
Derek tilts his head back to look at the ceiling, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Which one?"
There's a long pause before Scott speaks, and when he does, it's so fast and quiet that Derek almost doesn't hear it. "Saitomi's."
"Scott, I'm going to kill you."
"It wasn't Saitomi herself! It was Mark, her second? We did a bad thing in werewolf customs, but how were we supposed to know, you weren't here to stop us from being idiots! Saitomi understood, but Mark and the others did not. Mark killed a human, too, so really it's his own fault, but I was literally dying before Sheriff Stilinski got there, like bleeding-out-and-not-healing-dying. It was bad."
"Scott, what the f*ck?"
Scott makes an embarrassed noise. "Sorry? Can you come back now, please? I'm sorry if we did something that pissed you off or upset you, but Derek we miss you, and we need you."
When he looks at Stiles, the man has an eyebrow raised, and Derek's not really sure what to do. Could the Nemeton sense the impending danger of a disgruntled pack? Could the baby? Would it have happened even if he was there, was his life in enough danger that the magic inside him pushed him all the way to a completely separate continent? Was he supposed to go back now that it was over?
"Where's the layover?" Derek asks Stiles, holding his hand over the receiver and speaking in a whisper even though Scott can probably still hear him.
"New York."
"Who is that?" Scott asks again.
"Sheriff Stinlinski's son, just give me a moment," Derek replies to Scott offhandedly, before turning his attention back to Stiles. "I'll transfer onto a flight to San Diego when we get to New York. What do I do about the… situation? Call you?"
"Hey, what situation? Why are you with the Sheriff's son? You still didn't tell me where Heathrow is!"
Stiles shakes his head. "Nah, man. I might as well come back with you. I don't think my dad would be mad about me spending a few months sleeping in his spare room and eating his food. But are you, like, good about going back? You were super reluctant before."
"Yes. I don't know why that was, I'll figure it out later. And who else is going to make sure those idiots don't die?"
"Hey!" Scott says. He's trying to use his Alpha voice, but he's never been very good at it with Derek. "What's going on?"
Derek takes his hand away from the receiver. "I'm in London, about to take a flight to New York. I'm coming back to Beacon Hills. Don't burn it down while I'm gone. I'll… explain everything when I get there."
"But Derek-" Scott tries, but they're calling for boarding and Derek has given his update, so he doesn't feel bad about hanging up on Scott and turning his phone onto airplane mode.
-*-*-*-*-*-
"This is f*cking awful," Derek announces to Stiles through the bathroom stall door after barely making it out of the airport gate and to the nearest bathroom before throwing up into the first available toilet. The nausea has been constant, but this is the first time he's actually vomited and it's disgusting. "No more f*cking planes. No more f*cking babies. You couldn't f*cking pay me to do this on purpose. Why does anyone?"
Stiles laughs, and Derek hears a gentle thud as the man falls back against the wall across from Derek's bathroom stall. "An age-old question that will forever go unanswered. I've probably got some anti-nausea left, hang on." Stiles starts rifling in his bag and Derek throws up again for good measure.
The little jar with the green liquid is slid under the stall door towards Derek and Derek takes it gratefully. He's worried if he takes it now he'll just throw it all up again, so he holds it in his sweaty palm as he leans over the toilet bowl. "God, you have to go transfer the flights, we were only supposed to be here an hour."
"I'll do it in a moment," Stiles replies. "Don't worry. I'm not going anywhere. Take the potion."
"When I get home, I'm chopping that motherf*cking tree down."
Stiles laughs. "I think we're well beyond that now, Derek."
When the throwing up stops, Derek chugs down the vial of anti-nausea and leans his head back against the wall of the stall, waiting for it to set in."I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Afterwards."
"What do you mean?" Stiles asks.
"After he's born, what I'm supposed to do with him, how I'm supposed to take care of him. I don't exactly have anyone who can teach me," Derek admits, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead to the stall wall. God only knows what's never been cleaned off of it, but he finds at this point he honestly doesn't care. "I've never wished my mom was here more in my entire life."
"Not that I speak from personal experience or anything, but I think even parents with help have no f*cking clue what they're doing," Stiles replies, making a noise like he's sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. "If you've got any burning questions, you could probably ask my dad. I don't think he'd mind at all, and I can tell you that even alone, with no partner or parents like you, he did a pretty damn good job." There's a pause and then Stiles chuckles. "Don't tell him I said that, it will go straight to his head."
"I don't think your dad likes me very much. I mean, he did try to arrest me for murdering my sister. It wasn't mostly Scott, ironically, but he did slap cuffs on me and drag me into the back of his police cruiser."
"He doesn't usually hold a grudge. Plus he knows he let the Alpha manipulate him on that one quite a bit."
"You know about that?"
Stiles hums an affirmative. "The man tells me everything, and he's always watching. He knows everything that goes on in Beacon Hills, and in turn, so do I."
"But not about the Mexican tomb?"
"Whatever happened, I don't think he knew anything about it."
Derek chuckles. "We didn't tell him anything at the time, obviously, but he did arrest and fingerprint me when I was in my fifteen-year-old body, Scott managed to smuggle me out of the police station and his friend Danny managed to wipe the system of me."
Stiles laughs too. "Oh, I do know about the kid he arrested whose fingerprints fried the system and who disappeared from his cell within two hours of being in the police station. That one got him, he could never figure it out. That was you?"
"Oh yeah, that was me."
"That killed my dad, he had no idea what had happened," Stiles replies, voice still amused. "You feeling any better?"
"Mostly."
Derek finally manages to get up, flush the toilet and push his way out of the bathroom stall. Stiles is sitting against the wall across from the stall, and he climbs to his feet to meet Derek as Derek washes his face and hands in the sink.
"C'mon," Derek says when he's done. "We need to transfer the flights."
-*-*-*-*-*-
Derek has Stiles drop him off outside Scott's house when they get back to Beacon Hills. He offers to go in with him, but Derek knows this is something he has to talk to Scott about on his own.
He can smell Scott inside, and Malia with him, but thankfully no one else, and he heads over to the door to announce his arrival.
Scott is there in an instant like he's teleported to the door, swinging it open wide with his mouth turned up into a wide smile. Derek's not a hugger, and Scott knows better than to pull him into one without even asking him first, but Derek can tell he's bursting to do so.
"I'm really glad you're back, Derek. Come in."
Derek steps inside, shutting the door behind him, and follows Scott through the halls and into the kitchen. Malia is already there, they seemed to have been halfway through eating dinner.
"Hey, Derek!" Malia says, smiles wide and bright, sitting at the kitchen table, scoffing down her food. It's been well over ten years but she still kind of eats like a wild animal and it's almost endearing, in a disgusting way. "Want some dinner?"
Derek doesn't really get a chance to say anything (though honestly, he was planning to say yes because he's pretty sure he'll starve to death if he doesn't eat in the next sixty seconds) before Scott is at the stove, scooping pasta into a bowl for Derek.
"Okay," Scott says when he and Derek have both sat down and Scott has handed over the bowl. "Explaining time."
Derek swallows down at least three mouthfuls of food first, in quick succession, then says, "It's hard to explain-"
Malia must smell it first, because her fork stops halfway to her mouth, which is left open on an 'o' in shock. "Oh my god," she says. "How the f*ck did that happen?"
"Wait, what? How did what happen?"
Derek shrugs his shoulders. "Same way it normally happens - or not really, I guess. Just had a little help from the Nemeton."
Malia shrieks in delight. "Dude, no way!"
"Can someone please fill me in?" Scott asks, pouting.
Malia elbows him. "Can't you smell it?"
"Smell what?" Scott says, looking back and forth between the two of them before he stops to actually take in a breath through his nose, which scrunches up in confusion when the smell finally hits him. "What the hell is that? Why do you smell like that?"
Derek can't ever think of a time when Scott was exposed to a pregnant were, so he's not really surprised Scott can't recognize the smell.
Malia must notice Derek floundering, because she puts a gentle hand on Scott's shoulder, leans close, and says, "That's what weres smell like when they're pregnant."
"I still don't understand."
Derek launches into as much of the story as he knows, he briefly glosses over the event that started it, explains the Nemeton's involvement, how he woke up one day and just knew. Then he explains the awful feeling the magic forced him to leave Beacon Hills and how he made his way to Stiles.
"That's the most I've ever heard you speak," Scott admits, and Derek supposes he's not exactly wrong. He thinks that's the most he's ever spoken in fifteen years. "Wait, important segue - does this mean I'm going to be an uncle?"
Derek can't help the laugh that bursts out of him as he says, "I guess?"
Scott thumps his hand on the table and yells, "Yes! This is the best day of my life!" At Malia's raised eyebrow, he backtracks. "Second best! But I'm going to be the best uncle, holy sh*t Derek!"
Derek gets the hug then, when he's not really expecting it, Scott flinging himself across the table and landing in Derek's arms, which he barely managed to outstretch in time. He hugs Derek so tight Derek knows he can feel the extra roundness in his belly and Scott pulls back just so he can say, "Holy sh*t you're pregnant-pregnant, how have you been hiding that, that's like a whole watermelon!"
Malia snorts. "Jesus Scott," she says, shaking her head. "You could have definitely worded that better."
"Have you told anyone else yet?" Scott asks, ignoring Malia's chastising.
Derek shakes his head. "We came straight here from the airport."
"We? That guy, Stiles, the Spark, he's here with you?" Malia says, and she's got this malicious glint in her eyes that she gets sometimes when she knows something and is about to use it against someone. Her teeth - human, but slightly too sharp to be normal - glint in the yellow light of the kitchen. "Does he reek like
matefound as much as you do?"
"Wait, what?"
"I honestly can't tell," Derek admits. "Hormones are a pain in my ass. The people I met in England said yes."
"Hang on, the Spark? The short guy with the bad attitude I met at Deaton's when he threw that girl at us, he's your mate?" Scott's voice is a little higher than normal, and his face is twisted into a confused frown.
"Does he know?" Malia asks, ignoring Scott.
"Anna coming here was my idea," Derek tells Scott first, then turns to Malia to say, "Yes. And I think we both know the other knows, there's just… a lot going on."
"Oh man this is so great," Malia exclaims. "This is so, so great. The minute anything happens, you have to tell me."
Derek snorts. "You'll be the first to know."
Malia shrieks gleefully and Scott just falls back into his dining chair in defeat.
-*-*-*-*-*-
"You're starting to look like a mountain man sporting that beard," Stiles says on a Tuesday afternoon while Derek is trying to nap off a headache in the living room of his apartment. Technically Stiles is staying with his dad while he's in Beacon Hills, but he's been over at Derek's every day, and he barely goes home to sleep. Derek is starting to wonder if it means something.
Derek doesn't bother opening his eyes to look at him when he can smell him, ozone and honey shampoo and rosemary, standing in the doorway.
"You need a shave."
Derek is very much aware, but he's also at the point where anything other than necessary hygiene is just too much effort. His beard is twice as long as it is normally and his hair has started to curl around his ears and at the nape of his neck. "Can't do it," he admits. "Too pregnant."
Stiles starts stinking like fondness, and there's a gentle chuckle and a thud like he's fallen against the doorframe. "I could do it."
Derek opens his eyes just so he can give the man's bare face a skeptical look. "Can you actually grow facial hair?"
"Yes, I can grow facial hair!" Stiles defends indignantly, and Derek gives him a raised eyebrow before closing his eyes again. "That's so mean, you're being so mean to me. I can grow facial hair, I'll have you know! It's just insanely f*cking itchy!"
"Fair," Derek drawls eventually. "Fine. You can shave my face, but in like thirty minutes when my head isn't about to explode."
"So magnanimous," Stiles snickers as he leaves the room again.
Derek naps for a while then goes to find Stiles when he feels less like sh*t warmed up. Stiles has taken to the tiny garden (or lack thereof) he has out behind his apartment, and when he's not hanging around Derek like a bad smell, Derek usually finds him out there. He's managed to find some plants that aren't completely calcified and brought them back to life, even though they came with the place and Derek didn't really have an issue with them dying. Sometimes Derek will just find him sitting out there, staring at nothing.
Stiles is leaning over a bush no taller than his knees, and he's talking to it. It's not necessarily something Derek's seen him do before, but it's not necessarily a surprise, either.
Stiles looks up at Derek when he appears, smile bright. "Hey, feel better?"
"Mostly. You talking to plants out here?"
Stiles shrugs. "They grow better if you do. And this poor asshole needs all the help he can get living in your backyard."
"I've never been good with plants. I just don't bother anymore," Derek admits, shrugging his shoulders.
"Shave time?"
Derek shrugs again.
Stiles drags Derek back inside and to the upstairs bathroom, sitting him on the toilet seat and leaving him there with a stern warning not to move. Derek does as he's told, but mostly because he's too tired to do anything else, let alone argue.
"You can't really f*ck up a trim," Stiles is saying as he rifles through Derek's bathroom storage closet for his shaver. "I mean, you could probably f*ck up the edges, but it's not like a straight shave where you could f*ck up your face."
Derek snorts. "Please don't f*ck up my face."
"No promises," Stiles says, but he smells of amused fondness. He finally finds the shaver and pulls it out of the closet, taking a towel with it. "What length?" he asks, rifling through the box of comb guards. "You look like you do a two."
"And a one under my chin and on my neck," Derek confirms, nodding his head.
Stiles plugs the shaver into the wall above the sink, next to the toilet Derek is sitting on top of, pulling the safety cap on so he can clip the number 2 guard over the blades. Derek watches him closely, admiring the way his hands move. Stiles puts the shaver down on the side of the sink and picks up the towel so he can wrap it around Derek's shoulders, using Derek's own hand to clamp it together at his neck.
"Okay," Stiles says, a firm nod of his head as he picks up the shaver again, turning it on, and reaching over to lift Derek's head back gently so he can start under Derek's chin. "No f*cking up of faces, got it."
Derek snorts again, shaking his head before setting it still so Stiles can work.
Stiles works fast, but carefully, holding Derek's face in his hand gently as he slides the shaver through Derek's beard, letting the cut hair fall onto the towel and down around them on the tiled floor. Derek watches his face, sees the concentration and the way his tongue flickers out the side every now and then, and can't stop the fond that is probably seeping out of every one of his pores.
He's been trying to push it back, the way he feels about Stiles, and the knowledge that the universe literally made them for each other. He's got enough to deal with, and frankly so does Stiles, but every time he looks at him, all he can think about is how much he wants him, how much he wants this.
"Does it weird you out?" Derek eventually asks, the question out before Derek's even realized he's wondering it. "The baby and the mates thing." He realizes it's the first time either of them has ever said it out loud in front of each other, and realistically he doesn't actually know for a fact that Stiles knows, but Stiles doesn't even bat an eye, just keeps shaving.
"I knew you were going to be a werewolf from the moment I had my first vision of you. I couldn't see your face, had no idea what you were going to look like, but I could feel your wolf." Stiles chuckles softly. "The whole magical pregnancy with a baby that isn't mine is a bit of a surprise, but not necessarily an unwanted one. And that vision I had of him, I was there with him, he was in my arms. So no, I don't mind."
"Are you going back to Honduras?" Derek asks, a sudden burning need to know.
Stiles slides the shaver across Derek's cheek. "No, I don't think so."
"Stiles," Derek tries to say, reaching up to wrap his palm around the wrist attached to the hand holding the shaver.
Stiles smiles. "I'm almost finished, just wait."
Derek barely makes it, but when Stiles finally turns the shaver off and puts it down on the countertop, he finally gets to wrap his hand around the back of Stiles's neck and pull him in. Stiles makes a surprised noise in the back of his throat, but he doesn't pull away, in fact, he dives right in and meets Derek halfway, pressing their mouths together in a way that makes his heart beat faster and has the pup kicking into his ribcage.
Stiles kisses like he's starving for it, and Derek's more than happy to feed the hunger. He tastes like coffee and lightning and Derek's so desperate for it he makes a sound he'd never expected to come out of his mouth, something high-pitched and close to a whine. Derek stands up just so he can shuffle them towards the bedroom. He's desperate to get Stiles's clothes off and get his hands on all that smooth, pale, tattooed skin, and Stiles seems more than happy to oblige.
Stiles's shirt disappears first, pulled up under his armpits so Derek can press his palms to Stiles's skin, then pulled over his head when Derek realizes it's not enough. Everything follows suit until they're standing together in nothing but their briefs, kissing so hard Derek's mouth feels hot and red and Derek's so hard it actually hurts. Derek can't press his body right up against Stiles like he really wants to, cause the damn belly gets in the way, but he's got as much of Stiles pressed up against him as he can.
Derek gets gently shoved down to sit on the edge of the bed and Stiles kneels in between his thighs. Derek thinks if he looks down at Stiles like that, on his knees in front of him, for much longer, he's actually going to explode, so he stares up at the ceiling, trying to calm down, his heart hammering in his chest.
"Is this okay?" Stiles asks, his hands wrapped around either side of Derek's waist, his thumbs stroking along the sides of Derek's belly. All Derek can do is nod, swallow the lump in his throat, and try not to come before Stiles has even touched him.
Stiles gets Derek's briefs down and his co*ck out and holds it in his hand. There's a pause where neither say anything nor do anything, and Derek has to look down to see what's happening, only to find Stiles ruddy-cheeked and glassy-eyed and like every wet fantasy Derek's ever had.
Stiles isn't patient and he isn't slow, he barely licks up the length and around the head before he's swallowing Derek down. A shiver runs down Derek's spine and he reaches forward to take the back of Stiles's head into his hand, to hold him there, stop him from moving any further while he gets used to the feeling.
Stiles doesn't seem to like being held back, he presses his tongue against the vein on the underside of Derek's co*ck and looks up at him in a way Derek knows means he'd be grinning if he could. He swallows around Derek and hollows his cheeks until Derek's brain melts out of his ears.
Derek would almost be embarrassed about how fast he comes if he weren't completely blinded by his org*sm and unable to do anything other than whine.
"f*cking hell Stiles," Derek says, a bit indignant. "I think you actually broke me."
Stiles's grin is bright and full of teeth as he pulls away from Derek, wiping at the corner of his mouth. Derek is sure he's actually going to be the death of him. "So quickly? You'll let it go to my head."
Derek groans, collapsing back onto the bed. "Give me a minute to catch my breath."
"Don't lay on your back," Stiles tells him, pushing him so he's just on his side. "One-minute water break. I'll be right back."
Derek takes the water he's handed when Stiles comes back, leaning up on his elbow to gulp it down. "I feel like I should be explaining that I've not had sex since that man I met at Jungle, and masturbation is basically impossible right now."
Stiles laughs, loud and rough in his throat, and Derek has to fight the shiver it sends down his spine. "Oh, I'm so taking it as a compliment."
Truthfully, Derek gets a bit of a shock when his bones finally rearrange themselves and he gets Stiles laid out on the bed and crawls in between his legs. When he gets Stiles's briefs off, he's honestly expecting to find Stiles's dick, but that's not what's in front of him. He tries to wrack his brain, remember if Stiles ever said anything, but Stiles having a vagin* doesn't change the fact Derek's honestly having trouble thinking when Stiles is this close and warm and wanting.
Stiles leans up on his elbows and Derek realizes he's probably been staring for a while and he tears his eyes away to meet Stiles's gaze.
"You didn't know," Stiles says.
"I… well no, but a lot of things make sense actually," Derek finally manages. Stiles stinks of anxiety and Derek hates it. "Can I blame my obliviousness on being pregnant? What's it called? Baby brain?"
Stiles snorts, but it's mostly blase, cause he's started turning in on himself, and he's trying to sit up, get away. Derek is having absolutely none of it, and he wraps his arm around Stiles's thigh to stop him from wriggling away.
"If it's not clear enough, I don't f*cking care," Derek announces. "In fact, at this point, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't care if you were a serial killer or something."
Stiles snorts again, but this time he actually sounds like he means it. "Have some standards, Derek. No serial killers."
"Fine, no serial killers," Derek replies, nodding solemnly. "Can I eat you out?"
Stiles groans. "God, please."
It's uncomfortable on his front, so he turns onto his side and wraps his arm around one of Stiles's thighs, resting his head on his forearm. He pulls Stiles close and presses his face into Stiles's body, liking a gentle, tentative swipe through Stiles's folds. He circles the tip of his tongue around Stiles's cl*t, eliciting a shudder from Stiles, and does it again just for the sound that tumbles from Stiles's mouth. He sucks Stiles's cl*t into his mouth, gently scraping his teeth against the mound of it.
Stiles's hand slides into Derek's hair, but he's gentle with it, he doesn't pull, just pushes his fingers through the threads and scratches at his scalp. Derek leans up into it, enjoying the gentleness of Stiles's touch.
Stiles lasts just about as long as Derek had, thighs tightening around Derek's head as he comes on an exhale of Derek's name.
"I think you gave me beard burn," Stiles says with breathless laughter, rubbing at his thigh where Derek has left him a bit red. "I need a nap, now."
"These days I never say no to a nap," Derek replies, untangling himself from Stiles so he can drag himself up the bed towards the pillows. He lays out on his side facing Stiles, slick with sweat and still flushed and breathing hard, and says, "Is it sappy to say the Nemeton gave me two gifts?"
"Probably," Stiles says, smiling softly over at Derek. "But I don't mind."
