tricksters make this world
part 1
The next morning, Derek finds Erica sleeping curled up in the armchair, with the werewolf book splayed open on her stomach. He sits down on the couch and waits for her to wake up. When Isaac comes thundering down the stairs she rolls and startles, then looks up at Derek.
“What is it with you and watching people sleep?” she asks.
“You’re going to be late for work,” Derek tells her.
“This book,” Erica says, holding it up. “This book. Derek, it is so good. Isaac, how far are you?”
“Finished it,” Isaac says casually, and Erica swings around in her seat.
“Finished it?” she asks. “That’s it, I’m calling in sick.”
“You are not,” Derek says. “Calling in sick over that. Thing.”
“It’s actually pretty good,” Isaac says. “And--uh--kind of close to right.”
“Right,” Derek says slowly.
“Not completely,” Isaac says quickly. “Not like it was written by a wolf, just not total crap, either.”
“What does that mean?” Derek asks, because most werewolf stories read like they weren’t written by a werewolf but aren’t total crap, either. They carry a grain of truth, just really strange and somewhat arbitrary grains.
“Just read it,” Isaac says. “I finished my copy, it’s upstairs in my room. On the bedside table. Not in the drawer.”
“Don’t look in the drawer, Derek,” Erica says ominously.
“Erica, you’re going to work,” Derek says. “And I’m not reading that book.”
“Derek,” Erica says. “But--pack book club.”
“You think Boyd’s going to read that book?” Derek asks.
“If you do,” Isaac says. “It’s good. Seriously, I know ‘Twilight’ was like a romance novel with vampires and werewolves instead of a kid from the wrong side of the tracks and a rich douche or whatever, but this is like--actual shit going down.”
“Actual shit going down,” Derek repeats. “You’re a teacher.”
“Read it,” Isaac says. “Bedside table, but not in the drawer.”
Derek is never going to look in the drawer. If Isaac is ashamed of it, there is something wrong there. Or they’re trying to trick him, and it’s empty. Derek occasionally regrets the bout of poor decision making in his early twenties that led him to have this particular pack, one that keeps dubious things in the drawers of bedside tables.
But on the other hand, now they’re his pack, and they’re kind of--well, they’re his pack. That’s the end of it, that’s all there is to say. Derek rests his wrists on his knees and looks between Erica and Isaac. If they like this book--if Erica wants to--
“Fine,” Derek says. “Erica, call in sick.”
“Wait, seriously?” Erica asks.
“Isaac, you still have to go to work,” Derek adds, because Isaac’s looking a little squirrelly.
Isaac frowns.
“You’re a teacher. Erica’s a barista.”
“Don’t belittle my work,” Erica says, but she’s already on her way to the kitchen for the home phone. Isaac trails after her and immediately begins scrounging for breakfast while Derek goes upstairs and gets Isaac’s copy of ‘Omega’ from the bedside table.
Once Isaac’s off to work Erica returns to the armchair, and Derek stretches out on the couch and cracks the cover of the book. Because, hell, he could use a day off as much as anyone, and if this book sucks--well, it’s still a break.
The book doesn’t suck.
It kind of surprises Derek how much the book doesn’t suck. Actually, scratch that, it completely suprises him how much it doesn’t suck. And that’s just the narrative, the writing itself. The werewolves--well, the characters fully transform into wolves, which is so typical--but the characters themselves are distinct and well drawn, people Derek wants to spend time with. And considering that Derek wants to spend time with about one in every fifty people, that’s not a small thing. Besides, Isaac’s right, there’s something there, in the pack dynamics especially, that just feels right. Derek doesn’t entirely know what to make of it.
Erica finishes the book with a satisfied sigh shortly before lunchtime, and Derek looks up and tells her to go make lunch and not to talk to him. Erica sits in her chair, staring at him for a few minutes, then shrugs and goes into the kitchen.
She ducks back in thirty seconds later to say, “You like it!” and run back to the kitchen laughing to herself.
“Make sandwiches!” Derek calls back, because Erica has been known not to fuck up sandwiches.
“Fuck you!” Erica replies, which is--unsurprising, really.
She does make them sandwiches. They are not bad. They are also peanut butter and jelly. Erica brings them into the living room on a blue plate and then perches on the edge of the armchair, staring at Derek.
“You like it,” she repeats. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
“I haven’t finished it yet,” Derek says flatly.
“Who’s your favorite character? I like Sara,” Erica continues, unhindered. “You know book two is already out? I would go get a copy now but I told work I was really sick and if I go to the bookstore--this asshole who works there will totally narc on me if I don’t, like, puke on his feet while I’m paying.”
“We can talk about it when I finished it,” Derek says, then eyes her. “There’s still some repotting that needs doing in the greenhouse.”
“Actually, that doesn’t sound bad,” Erica says. “I need to process, and if you aren’t going to talk to me--Okay. Which ones?”
Derek tells her and she heads out back, which leaves Derek with his half-finished book and a second sandwich.
The sandwich is okay, but drier and therefore worse than the first one. The book keeps getting better. It’s set in high school, which is what it is. Derek was sick of high school before his pack was even finished with it, because it started to feel like he was going through the whole thing a second time and he’d been fairly sick of it after he graduated himself. But ‘Alpha’ dwells less on that than on the interactions of the pack over one summer, during which a human teen, Henry “call me Bishop” Bishop, is at the wrong place at the wrong time and becomes enmeshed with the pack’s ongoing battle with--and Derek thinks this part is ridiculous--tree sprites that live in the woods and, based on the descriptions, are something halfway between elves and ents. The tree sprites are, for the most part, marginally insane, but for generations they’ve hunted the wolves as inferior creatures, using arrows and, later, guns. It reminds Derek distantly of the Argents--there’s even the insinuation of a burgeoning romance between one of the sprites and one of the wolves. But the way everything happens, and the questions the book raises about loyalty to the pack--especially when another human is bitten by a rogue omega (another thing this N. D. Whatever got wrong) and joins the pack while struggling with his loyalty to his human family--well, Derek keeps turning the pages.
It’s been a long time since he’s let himself sink into a book so completely, and Derek had forgotten how refreshing it is to live life in a book, where problems arise and are inevitably resolved neatly instead of sloppily, where people die but the good guys never do, where you can kind of see what’s going to happen and you feel okay about that, because being able to see what’s going to happen means the worst probably won’t. All of that maybe explains why he finishes the book and then goes into the hall to get his car keys off the hook by the door (hooks for their keys: instituted by Allison, after Scott lost his for the twenty-seventh time) so he can drive into town.
The bookstore is adjacent to the Java Hut, like it’s always been, and it’s raining lightly when Derek slips inside. The cashier eyes him, and Derek wonders if this was the guy Erica was talking about before finding the wolf-shaped cardboard display that says “‘Alpha’ COMING SOON” and has--yes--copies of both ‘Omega’ and its sequel, ‘Beta.’ The titles, more than anything, make Derek wonder if it was written be a werewolf trying to cover something up--but. It’s hard to believe a pack would allow that; it could be an Omega, but Omegas so rarely settle that it’s hard to imagine one staying in one place long enough to write a book. Derek takes two copies of ‘Beta’ is about to leave when he smells something, and then--
“Derek.” It’s Stiles.
Derek turns around, and Stiles stares.
“You’re,” he says. “Uh--buying those.”
Derek looks at him.
“Yes,” he says.
“Stellar observation, Stiles,” Stiles says. “I was just--” Stiles jabs a thumb towards the coffee shop. “Writing and I saw you so I thought I’d say hi, you know, since Erica wasn’t working. Tell her hi, too.”
“Erica’s sick,” Derek says, slightly too loudly with a significant glance at the cashier. Stiles looks at him strangely.
“Right,” he says. “The other girl who works there told me. Sounds bad. I hope she gets better soon.”
“So I’m bringing her a book,” Derek says, and Stiles winces slightly when he holds up the copy of ‘Beta.’
“Do you really need two copies?” Stiles asks. “I mean, most people only read one book at a time.”
“One’s for Isaac,” Derek says.
“Oh,” Stiles says carefully. “I guess that will be good for the author’s royalties.”
“What’s your problem with these books, Stiles?” Derek asks, looking between Stiles and the book, which Stiles is--staring at. It cover’s fairly innocuous. Like the last one, there’s a wolf silhouette and trees, only this time the background is yellow.
“I told you, my ex?” Stiles says. “Splotchy face? Really miserable break-up? Like, we had to split up our friends miserable.”
“Is that why you came back to Beacon Hills?” Derek asks.
“Yes,” Stiles says, latching on to the idea like a drowning man grasping at a life preserver. “Yes, that’s it, terrible break-up, I hate those books.”
He’s still lying. Derek studies him.
“I know you’re lying, Stiles,” he says.
“You think I didn’t date?” Stiles asks. “I totally dated. I can totally get a date. This isn’t high school, people like the weird ones now, they think I’m cute in a dateable way. I bet--”
“No, about these books,” Derek says, holding up the two copies. “I don’t know why. Care to enlighten me?”
“Not really, no,” Stiles says. He looks down at the mottled carpet of the bookstore. “Would you believe me if I said it was because I just think they’re really, really terrible books?”
“No,” Derek says. “But let me know if you want to test another explanation out on me.”
Stiles looks up at him, and his heartbeat settles.
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll let you know.”
“Do that,” Derek says. Whatever it is with these books, it can’t be--well, there are possibilities, but none of them quite fit in Derek’s head. It’s probably just some strange Stiles secret, and the thing about Stiles’ secrets--if it doesn’t have anything to do with the pack, it’s not Derek’s place to know. So. He’s trying to let that happen, give Stiles the privacy and freedom he insisted he needed when he left, to trust him--a little. With this. They’re just books.
“Well, I should get back to work before someone swipes my laptop,” Stiles says after they both just sort of stand there and--stare at one another?--for a moment. “Which is a piece of shit, but has a lot of very important files on it, and I’m terrible about backing up. Also, intellectual property rights. I don’t want anyone stealing my intellectual property. So. Good to see you. Tell Erica I hope she feels better.”
“I’ll do that,” Derek says. “See you around, Stiles.”
“Sure,” Stiles says.
When Derek gets back to the house Erica is sitting on the steps to the porch and when she sees him she stands up and puts her hands on her hips.
“Seriously,” she says. “Just--seriously, Derek. I go out back to work, and then you just disappear without saying anything, and we were supposed to have book debriefing.”
Derek tosses her a copy of ‘Beta’ and Erica catches it reflexively, then actually looks at what she’s holding.
“Oh, fuck you,” she says, and goes inside. When Derek follows she’s already curled up in the armchair, legs hooked over the armrest, ankles crossed, book open. Derek goes to the couch.
By the time Isaac gets home and Boyd wakes up, they’ve both finished. Erica finishes first, chucks her copy at Derek, and goes into the kitchen to make a lot of noise without actually doing anything.
“This is me getting even,” she says. “Also, you’re supposed to make dinner tonight, so you might want to consider getting on that.”
Which--Derek was supposed to go to the grocery store. He rolls over and looks at Erica, who’s come out of the kitchen to rebuke him.
“There’s some stuff in the freezer that could probably turn meal-shaped eventually,” she says. “Also leftover cabbage, which I can’t endorse.”
“I have one chapter left,” Derek says, and Erica looks vaguely gleeful about the potential for a late dinner.
He ends up making spaghetti and meatballs while Erica chatters away about the book, and how much she can’t wait for the next one. Derek doesn’t contribute much beyond a few nods and grunts of agreement, but he’s left feeling--confused. He’s never been good at labelling his emotions beyond anger, so he’ll settle for confused.
At the end of ‘Beta’, Bishop, the human protagonist, has been inducted into the pack. He almost doesn’t accept the offer to join out of loyalty to his single mother--but then he does, at the end of the book, in the last chapter, and it’s such a joyful thing, it’s hard to believe it’s the ending, because it seems like the second book in a trilogy should end with some sort of significant cliffhanger, not happily. But that doesn’t matter as much as the fact that all Derek can do is think of Stiles, and how he didn’t join the pack, the moment when his face went very still and he said he couldn’t.
Derek understood it, a little. Stiles had learned to lose people. Derek had, too, once, and once you learned to lose people it was a little easier to make the decision, to let a few people slide out of your life so you could protect the few you had, because more loss would be unbearable and more people were easier to lose.
After that conversation, Derek had done the same to Stiles. He couldn’t trust someone who wasn’t committed to the pack, so it was easier to ask Scott to ask Stiles for help and to pretend Stiles didn’t exist, except for that one time with the werepanther, and when that happened--well, of course Stiles would get himself kidnapped even when he was trying to ‘avoid entanglement.’ Derek had hauled him out of the panther’s den bodily and Stiles had just looked at his feet and said, “I guess I owe you one.”
Derek had said, “No, we’re probably even.”
Stiles had given him half a grin, one that didn’t reach his eyes, and then he was waving at Scott and talking too quickly about how werepanthers were even creepier than werewolves, he didn’t think that was possible, and did Scott see the tail on that thing? And also Stiles knew they shouldn’t trust anyone named Sebastian, ever.
When Isaac gets home, Erica pushes a copy of ‘Beta’ into his chest and says, “Look what Derek bought us.”
Isaac looks between Derek and Erica and says, “No shit. So you liked it.”
Then he plucks the book from Erica’s hand and proceeds to read throughout dinner, only occasionally looking up to contribute entirely irrelevant comments to the conversation.
“If I were my mother, I’d tell you no books at the dinner table,” Derek says flatly.
“Good thing you aren’t, then,” Isaac mutters. “Also good thing our dinner table conversation is dead boring ninety-percent of the time.”
“I resent that,” Erica says.
“You resemble that,” Isaac replies. “Also, you got to stay home from work, your opinion is irrelevant.”
Boyd is manfully ignoring them all, probably trying to pretend he doesn’t know and live with these people. Erica gives him a copy of ‘Omega’ before he heads out to work, and Boyd looks at it skeptically.
“Derek read it,” she says, and Boyd turns the brunt of his skeptical face in Derek’s direction. Derek shrugs.
“Just try it, Boyd,” Derek says. Boyd takes the book like he expects it to bite him.
“Also sex,” Erica says. “I’ll barter you reading this book for sex.”
“No sex until you write a book report, Boyd. You’ve been a very bad boy,” Isaac says, and Boyd shoots him a withering glare.
“See, school teacher kink already,” Erica says. “We’ll get you yet, Isaac, you giant perv.”
Scott and Allison are back the next day, come to the house late after they’ve visited both their parents and, from the smell of it, Stiles. There’s laughter, hugs, gifts, everyone permitting Scott to put them in headlocks and rub their hair because Scott thinks it’s hilarious.
Soon they’re all sitting in the living room, Allison and Scott close together, Erica’s head in Allison’s lap her legs up in Isaac’s, Boyd on the floor, leaning against their legs. Derek’s on Scott’s other side--and it’s kind of ridiculous when they all sit on the couch like this, but in a comforting way, all pack upon pack. There’s a lull in the conversation, and Scott twists towards Derek.
“Hey, Stiles invited us over for pizza tomorrow,” Scott says. “So. Um. If you guys want, I’ll text him how many.”
“Sounds good,” Isaac says. “As long as he goes to Sal’s and not one of the shitty places.”
Erica kicks Isaac in the side.
“Sounds good no matter what,” she says.
“It’s my day off,” Boyd adds.
“Derek?” Scott asks, turning to look at him.
“Yeah,” Derek says. “Sure.”
“Great,” Scott says, fishing his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll text him. I’m texting him now.”
“Thank you for that compelling narrative Scott,” Allison says, put she turns plant a kiss on his cheek and Scott grins goofily while tapping at his phone. When Allison turns back she notices the copy of ‘Omega’ on the coffee table and purses her lips.
“Did one of you read this?” she asks, leaning forward.
“We’re all reading it,” Erica says. “Pack book club. Which means you and Scott need to read it, too.”
“Uh,” Allison’s eyes flit towards Scott. “We already have. Pretty good, right?”
Scott elbows Allison and looks vaguely uncomfortable, but he kind of shrugs it off when Erica rolls into a monologue about how great it is, with Isaac contributing occasional well--not insight, exactly, but supplementary commentary.
“Boyd’s not done yet, so don’t spoil him,” Erica says. “Who do you ship?”
“Ship?” Scott looks confused, but that might just be his face.
“Romantically,” Erica says emphatically.
“Oh, uh,” Allison pats Scott’s thigh. “Aria and Ryan, I guess.”
Aria’s a tree sprite to Ryan’s werewolf. It’s kind of an obvious one, when Allison says it out loud.
“They’re sort of like you guys, huh?” Erica asks.
“Sort of,” Allison says, obviously uncomfortable even without tuning in to her heartbeat. “Yeah.”
“I think Bishop’s going to get with the Alpha,” Erica says. Scott starts coughing, and Allison thumps him on the back.
“I hadn’t--uh--really thought of that,” she says. “There didn’t seem to be much build-up towards that in the first two books.”
Erica shrugs, “I thought there was. Subtly. Like they argue because they care, right?”
Allison glances at Scott, who still looks a little blue in the face, then changes the subject.
Part of Derek wonders if Allison and Scott’s strange behavior is tied to Stiles’ similar behavior about these books--actually, he believes they must be related, but he decides to write it off as a strange inside joke. Derek never really got inside jokes. Probably because he was so rarely inside which--sounds pathetic. Derek never wanted to be in the joke, anyway.
When he’s in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner, Allison comes in and leans back against the counter.
“Dad wanted me to tell you,” she begins, speaking carefully..
Derek turns to look at her. The pack’s relationship with Chris Argent is, at best, complicated.
“There’s some activity out by the coast,” she continues. “Sea otter shapeshifters. They function like selkies, pretty reliant on skins, and live in groups--rafts. Normally they stick to the sea otter form, though, but lately they’ve been out of the ocean as humans a lot more and Dad just thought it was something I should--mention. So you’re aware. Dad says they’re pretty harmless, unless you’re a sea urchin, so.”
Derek nods, turning the new information over in his head.
“How like selkies are they?” he asks. “Do they have the same problem, with people stealing their pelts and marrying them? Do selkies even really have that problem? What’s your family bestiary say?”
“Not much,” Allison says. “I think someone in the family way back couldn’t swim or something, because the Argents tend to stick to the land.”
Derek nods.
“Are there any identifying features if they’re in human form?” he asks.
“Other than looking like human otters?” Allison asks. “No, not really. I imagine they’ll smell like kelp or seawater or something to you, though.”
“Did you tell Stiles?” Derek asks. Allison looks slightly taken aback.
“Uh--” she says. “No, we went to Dad’s after we left Stiles’.”
“I’ll go tell him,” Derek decides. Allison stares at him and then shakes her head.
“If you think you need to,” she says. She pauses before leaving the kitchen, then reaches out one hand and squeezes Derek’s shoulder.
“It’s good to be back, you know that?” she says, deliberate. Derek knows a peace offering when he sees it. Or sometimes he does.
“It’s good to have you,” Derek says, and he’s kind of surprised when he realizes he that means it. Allison and Scott are a Hunter and a werewolf, which is strange, but they’re also fierce in maintaining an even keel, in their relationship and their lives, and although it would seem like that would make them suppressed or repressed or something, instead it makes them tempering.
Allison smiles at Derek cautiously before leaving the kitchen, and even once Derek’s done with the dishes he just stands there, leans against the kitchen counter and breathes for a moment.
Allison had agreed to join the pack because Scott did. Scott had joined the pack because there was nothing else for him to do; because he needed them and they needed him and that state of mutual necessity eventually demanded a resolution. Of the betas he’s always been the most withdrawn, but it makes sense--of the betas Scott is the only one with a shadow pack, with the support network of Stiles, Allison, and, weirdly, Jackson, Danny and Lydia. Sometimes Derek feels like he should pressure him to commit fully but--that would break him. Derek knows that, it’s all written in every action Scott’s ever taken. Scott’s presence as a member of the pack is contingent on his ability to maintain relationships with outsiders. He’s sort of like Stiles that way, except Stiles never needed the pack like Scott does, because Stiles was never a wolf. And not being a wolf--that’s something that’s beyond Derek, really.
Derek goes to Stiles’. It’s ten or eleven at night--the clock on the microwave is broken--but Stiles has never been the early to bed type, and Derek has trouble believing that changes.
Derek rings the buzzer for apartment 3, presses his thumb hard on the brass button until he finally gets a bleary response from Stiles--”What the hell? Now is not the time to be selling Girl Scout cookies.”
“It’s Derek,” Derek says.
“So not a Girl Scout, then.” Stiles sounds amused.
“Buzz me up, or I’ll pick this lock.”
Stiles buzzes him up.
“You know,” Stiles says when he answers the door. “Visiting hours are usually between nine and five.”
“What is this, a nursing home?” Derek asks, and shoulders past Stiles towards the kitchen. Stiles hurries to catch up with him, and, once they’re in the kitchen, slams his laptop shut. Derek looks at him.
“Well?” Stiles asks. “I’m not feeding you again.”
“Chris Argent says there are sea otters around,” Derek says.
“Sea otters,” Stiles repeats. “Chris Argent is concerned about sea otters now? Are they throwing sea urchins at him? Have they developed a catapult? Because that would be adorable.”
“Sea otter shapeshifters,” Derek says. “Chris says they’ve been taking human form more often than usual.”
“There are sea otter shapeshifters?” Stiles asks, then shakes his head. “Of course there are. Are they like selkies, then?”
“Yes,” Derek says. “How did you--?”
“Thesis,” Stiles interjects. “A comparative study of shapeshifter mythologies. The literature’s pretty dry, but a body picks a few things up. But--are they actually going to do anything? Did you really need to come tell me about this at eleven at night--after eleven at night? I have a phone.”
Derek shrugs. He kind of wants to pursue the subject of Stiles’ thesis, but Stiles is so obviously trying to change the subject that Derek knows he won’t get anything out of him but deflection and babbling and deflective babbling.
“I don’t have your number,” Derek says.
“I know Allison and Scott are at yours, they have my number, don’t give me that,” Stiles says. “Seriously, ‘I don’t have your number’ is like the I don’t know what of excuses. Something stupid. You’re checking up on me. Well, look, I’m safe at home. I was watching a movie on my laptop, okay, and that movie was ‘Watchmen’ because who watches the Watchmen, I do. Now you’ve warned me about the catapult-less sea otters, you can go home, see you tomorrow for pizza. You can tell Isaac I’ll get it from Sal’s, because I know Scott didn’t.”
Derek looks at him.
“You hated ‘Watchmen,’” Derek says. He doesn’t know how he knows this, but he does--he remembers, distantly, a monologue about it when they were on a stake out together.
“Okay, you caught me, I was watching porn,” Stiles says. “And you’re kind of blue-balling me here, so out with you.”
Derek leaves. He’s on the sidewalk before he realizes that it didn’t smell like Stiles had been watching porn.
Stiles lies a lot. To Derek. He’s surprisingly good at it, for someone who Derek can ostensibly tell is lying. Also for someone who used to be such a crap liar, and is still kind of a crap liar.
Derek would like an explanation, but he doesn’t think he’s going to get one, and right now any accusations he tries to make would be, well, baseless. None of the pieces are fitting together in his head--he has his suspicions, of course he has his suspicions, but he doesn’t actually know precisely how to frame them.
He drives home, headlights sluicing through the neon-lit streets of town and then the dark roads in the woods, the moon in the sky just beginning to take shape behind clouds. He wishes it was fuller--his wolf waxes and wanes with the moon, and things are so much simpler to the wolf, so much cleaner. The wolf says Stiles is lying. The wolf says he should stop. Derek thinks--Derek thinks it’s probably none of his business.
He sleeps in Boyd’s bed, because Boyd’s not using it and sometimes it’s just--better, to get out of himself and his space and his head, and sleeping in somewhere not his bed helps. A little. In the morning he remembers that they’re having pizza at Stiles’ and he kind of wants to fake sick, even as he acknowledges that would be ridiculous. His entire pack will be there, there will be plenty of buffer. Maybe Stiles will even stop lying. He seems to keep his lies for Derek, anyway.
Stiles has produced more chairs for the kitchen from--somewhere--his apartment might have a spare room, there’s a door or two that Derek doesn’t know where they lead. There’s a pile of pizza boxes, and there’s some mid-range beer in the fridge, neither especially fancy nor offensively cheap.
It is as Derek expected it to be--loud and raucous and silly, mostly. Stiles talks over everyone, everyone talks over Stiles, Erica tells bawdy jokes and Boyd tells stories laced with bone dry humor. Isaac makes fun of everyone and, in turn, everyone ignores him.
Derek doesn’t realize Stiles is next to him until an arm is thrown across his shoulders and Stiles is leaning into Derek’s space.
“You don’t really know how to have fun, do you?” Stiles asks. Derek turns slightly so he can get a better glimpse of Stiles. He’s still watching the others, his lips turned up at the corners.
“I have fun,” Derek says.
Stiles thumps him on the back.
“Well,” he says. “Let me know how that works out for you.”
Derek should’ve told Stiles that he’s careful, that he needs to be, that when he was in New York he did what he could to make himself feel and forget how to feel and then his sister died, and making sure the people around him stopped dying seemed more important. Instead he watches Stiles insinuate himself back into the center of the group. He watches Stiles and, again, finds himself trying to tease apart him, his motivations. Stiles wanted to protect people--protect himself--but now he’s outwardly free and easy, comfortable and unworried.
Stiles is functionally an omega, and Derek has never understood omegas. But Stiles is also functionally and fully a human, and humans believe they can be omegas without leaving everyone behind. They can take care of theirs without devoting themselves to it fully. Maybe. Derek’s never really understood humans, either. Sure, he can pass for one, but a lot of people can pass for a lot of things they aren’t, and, yes, his entire pack had been human once, but he hadn’t, had never been.
Still, this is his pack. Derek pulls up a chair between Isaac and Boyd. Stiles smiles at him--a slow bloom of a thing that spreads from his mouth to his eyes--but doesn’t stop talking until Scott interrupts him, says something that makes Stiles dissolve into too-loud, open-mouthed laughter.
“No inside jokes,” Erica says, reaching over to pinch Stiles in the side. Stiles paws at her hands, then turns and looks at her.
“It’s not,” he says. “It’s not even funny. It’s just--”
He starts laughing again, and Scott dissolves into giggles.
“You’re high, aren’t you,” Erica says.
“Wouldn’t you be able to smell it?” Stiles asks. “No, sorry--” he starts to compose himself, staunchly refusing to make eye contact with Scott. “It’s just. Um. This happens sometimes? Spontaneous laughter? Because the world is beautiful? Also, pizza.”
“Is there any more left?” Isaac asks.
“If there is, it’s probably in one of the pizza boxes,” Stiles says. “You know, where pizza lives until it gets into your stomach.”
“You’re drunk,” Derek says, taking in Stiles’s flushed cheeks, and Stiles has another minor laughing fit.
“Only a little,” he says, then he looks at Scott at starts laughing harder. “I am such a lightweight. Lydia can hold her liquor better than I can.”
“He is,” Scott pronounces.
“Though it’s really not a surprise about Lydia,” Allison says, leaning forward. “Also, she usually dumps about half her drinks out.”
“Everyone but me,” Erica says mournfully, looking at Stiles.
“It’s not that fun,” Stiles says. “Really. Also you probably don’t get hangovers, which are the worst. Nothing but headaches and shame. Headaches and shame.”
Erica pouts. Isaac rejoins the group with a slice of pepperoni.
“Don’t worry, Erica, you can still have the shame.”
She punches him in the shoulder, and Isaac shrugs.
“Derek, you’re still being a quiet creeper,” Stiles says suddenly.
“He just loses the plot sometimes,” Erica says. “Does this thing where he stops listening to us and listens to, like, the noise down the road.”
“Really?” Stiles perks up. “What’s going on right now? Are any of my neighbors having sex? I never took you for a voyeur, Derek--actually, that’s totally a lie, I always took you for a voyeur, and now I’d like you to share your voyeurtastic exploits.”
“I wasn’t--” Derek says. “I was just thinking, was all.” And--gods--Derek is so much better at talking when he’s training the pack, or discussing a threat, or doing anything other than what’s normal. “It’s been awhile since--since New York, I guess. And this reminded me of that, somehow.”
Stiles nods slowly, and Derek can see the pack looking at one another. He doesn’t talk about his past much with them. There’s a strange balance to being the Alpha, being part of the pack yet apart from it, an authority figure, and Derek’s still not sure if he’s figured out how to straddle that line quite yet. He’s better--he would probably be dead if he hadn’t gotten better--but some things never came easy to him.
“Oh,” Stiles says. He’s studying Derek closely, and Derek’s not sure what he’s seeing. Derek turns away, and catches the time on the microwave.
“Maybe we should go, actually,” he says. “It’s getting late. Wouldn’t want to keep you.”
“Oh, no, you aren’t,” Stiles says. “The party doesn’t end until I brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack, you know.”
But it seems like time, anyway, and Stiles walks with them down to their car and waves, says they should do it again sometime. Derek feels like he should know his own mind better than he does, at this moment, but it’s late and as he navigates the car home--Erica in Boyd’s lap in the front seat, Isaac and Scott and Allison squeezed in the back--everyone’s quiet and his mind settles, just a little, mostly, he thinks, because it’s dark and driving at night is distantly like running as a wolf. Which he does, after they get home, until his mind is clear and empty and he knows the woods are safe.
He had felt human for a hazy period while they were in New York, when his territory was smoky bars and he and Laura had shared a studio the size of a shoebox, but that was partly by virtue of not feeling much at all, by pushing everything that was Derek--his family, his pack, and then the fire--into the furthest reaches of his mind and pretending to be someone else.
It didn’t really work, and then his sister died. Derek tries not to see it as causative relationship, but, well, sometimes that was hard.
The next day Derek runs into a sea otter when he’s at the hardware store buying potting soil. The sea otter’s in human form; a short brown-haired man with large, round eyes and sleek hair staring at the power sanders, thumbs hitched into the back pockets of his jeans. He smells of salt and fish and seaweed, so strongly that Derek would expect a human could smell it. He wishes everyone that showed up in Beacon Hills was this obvious about who they were.
“Any recommendations?” the otter asks when Derek slides into the space beside him.
“What are you looking to sand?” Derek asks.
“Surfboard.”
Of course a sea otter makes surfboards. What a fucking cliche. Derek glances at the otter sidelong.
“Rotex is usually good,” Derek says.
The otter hums noncommittally.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Derek says. “I’m sure an employee of this fine establishment might be better able to help you.”
“Better than the area’s Alpha?” the otter asks.
“For advice on sanders, yes,” Derek says. “And if you want to talk to me about pack business, I’d prefer we did it outside the hardware store.”
The otter shrugs in one liquid motion.
“Muir Douglas,” says the otter--and, seriously, otters pick the strangest names. “I’m from the Sunday Cove raft.”
“Pleasure, I’m sure,” Derek says.
Muir smiles at him, a slow curl of lips.
“If you want to meet with us, we’re normally there,” he says. “Around Sunday Cove. Thought we’d let you know.”
“Why?” Derek asks.
“Stop by, some time,” says Muir. “The elders want to talk to you. We have a bit of a situation and they think you--your pack--might help.”
“A bit of a situation,” Derek repeats, and Muir shrugs.
“You could say that, yeah,” Muir says.
“You just did,” Derek points out.
“Rotex, you said?” Muir asks, turning back to the sanders.
“I’d ask someone for help,” Derek says.
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Muir says, and after a moment of silence, both of them staring at the sanders, Derek nods.
“Okay,” he says. “Sunday Cove.”
“Thank you,” Muir says, and Derek would kind of like to know what he’s being thanked for.
He gets Boyd to go with him, because Boyd’s the one who’s good for this kind of thing, quiet and sharp and unlikely to do anything inappropriate, and while Scott is sometimes competent, he’s busy with his externship with Deaton. They take the Hale landscaping truck, because between that, the Camaro, and the Boyd’s patrol car the truck is the least conspicuous, which is maybe saying something about the pack’s ability to obtain inconspicuous vehicles. Erica wanted a red convertible, because she was about as subtle as a bludgeon to the head, but they really, really, did not need more cars. Pretty soon they were going to have some up on bricks in the yard, and it would just be downhill from there. Isaac’s already lobbying for a Winnebago for no reason Derek can fathom.
Sunday Cove is a slim crescent of rocks and sand nestled amongest the bluffs. It’s on the far southwest edge of town, not Hale territory, Derek’s not even sure if it’s Beacon Hills or part of the next town over or some weird piece of California that’s going to slough off into the Pacific soon enough and isn’t on the maps. But otters are known to gambol on the rocks there, and when Derek and Boyd arrive--well, no one’s there yet. They sit down on the algae-blackened rocks and wait.
“You sure about this?” Boyd asks. Derek has, in the past, tried to be offended at the frequency with which his pack questions his judgment, but he really can’t blame them given how bad the first few years were.
“No,” Derek says. “But I have a policy about granting favors to people who accost me in the hardware store.”
“Just the hardware store, then,” Boyd says.
“Yeah,” Derek says. “Just the hardware store.”
The ocean is blue-grey-green--the color of the ocean, Derek supposes, when his mind’s not quick to provide another descriptor--and there’s a wind coming in, the water’s peaking into whitecaps. The water’s too choppy and the scents too jumbled for Derek to be able to readily identify anything as a sea otter, but there are some dark spots to the south, near the curving edge of the cove, that could be them.
“You really read those books?” Boyd asks, and Derek knows what he’s talking about immediately.
“Yeah,” Derek says. “Pretty good.”
“Nothing about them seemed strange to you?” Boyd asks. He’s looking out at the water, not at Derek, and when Derek doesn’t respond for a moment he continues. “Too close to true.”
“There have been werewolf stories before, you know,” Derek says. “Even marginally right ones.”
“Too close to us,” Boyd says. “Details altered, obviously, but something about it just felt like someone else telling my story. Our story. With the struggling pack and everything?”
Derek turns to look at Boyd.
“You think?” Derek says sharply. “Who?”
“I don’t know,” Boyd says. “I don’t even, really--I mean, it takes place in Atlanta. It’s possible other packs have had similar experiences. It just felt familiar, and I wondered if you had noticed.”
Derek takes a breath, grips the rock he’s sitting on.
“It’s probably nothing,” Boyd says, but he doesn’t really sound like he believes himself, and Derek’s reeling his way through the plot of those books and--yeah, he can see it.
But then the otters are there.
The first one is an elderly woman with waves of grey hair, and she’s nude, exposing milk-pale, wrinkled skin. The others start to appear, in the water and on the rocks, until there are seven of them total, men and women, the youngest about Derek’s age. The first woman comes and sits in front of them, and someone gives her a blanket, which she pulls around her shoulders. The others are dressed--some of them, not all of them, and oddly.
“Alpha Hale,” says the woman. She has a strange, lilting accent, and speaks carefully, like she doesn’t do it much. Which she probably doesn’t--sea otters, like selkies, are notorious for using their human forms so rarely that many of them don’t even have human names, and, if they do, they make them up themselves. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with the Counsel.”
“Thank you,” Derek says, because apparently this is going to be a formal dog and pony show. “This is Beta Boyd.”
The woman smiles--she and Muir from the hardware store share a soft, curving smile that makes Derek wonder if they’re closely related.
“We’ve asked you to come here because of some trouble our raft’s been having,” the woman begins. “With an Anguilla.”
Derek does not actually know what that is.
“A--sort of--” the woman pauses.
“Snake,” says a man to her left, at the same time as another woman says, “Serpent.”
“That can take human form,” the first woman continues.
Of course it can.
“We wish to ask your assistance,” the woman begins. “And warn you, that this creature might be walking with you.”
“In the town,” provides one of the others, the man who spoke before. “The serpent has been gone for several days, we believe it’s moved to the town. It may be searching for larger prey. It has a lair in the rocks, it collects--things.”
“Bones,” says the woman. “It collects bones.”
Which is charming, really.
Derek glances between the seven, and they’re all watching him, serious and round-eyed.
“Where is this lair?” Derek asks.
“In a cave,” the man answers. “Beneath Beacon Point. It is not--you have to swim.”
Derek nods, and looks between the seven.
“Thank you,” he says. “We will do what we can.”
“We will assist you as we can,” says the woman. “But you must understand, we are--”
“Peaceful,” provides another woman. “We are peaceful.”
“We have contacted other rafts for advice,” the first woman continues. “And the grand council. We will convey what they say to you as soon as we know it.”
“We will do what we can,” says the man. “But--”
“You think this--” Derek pauses. “Anguilla is a threat to the pack?”
“It is a threat,” says the woman. “Otter bones are small. It seeks bigger bones.”
Derek doesn’t really know what to say to that, and he knows if he looks at Boyd Boyd will be quirking his eyebrows in that subtle, strange way that he does when he thinks they’re in another absurd situation.
“Okay,” Derek says. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” repeats the woman, and then the others, one at a time, a series of wavering echoes.
They nod and rise, and move independently yet as a group until they’re slipping into the water.
“I kind of expected otters to be more fun,” Boyd says when they get back to the truck. Derek gives him a questioning glance, and Boyd shrugs. “I used to like the otters at the zoo when I was a kid.”
“They don’t go human much,” Derek says. “Or--a lot of them don’t. It makes them sort of stiff and uncomfortable when they are. Even when they’re otters--sea otters don’t do well on land.”
“I noticed,” Boyd says dryly. “But didn’t you meet one at the hardware store?”
“A few of them are really enthusiastic about humans, and land,” Derek says. “It’s just that they tend to prefer the sea. They--from what I understand they’re closer to being actual otters than a werewolf is to being an actual wolf.”
Boyd nods.
“I’m not sure if that makes sense,” he says. “But it does a little.”
“You know, I usually think of you as the smart one,” Derek says, and Boyd just laughs.
“Speaking of,” he says. “You want my advice?”
Derek looks at him.
“You should probably talk to Stiles,” Boyd continues. “Because I know you had no idea what the hell that thing was when the naked lady first mentioned it.”
Stiles. Of course. The universe is doing its damnedest to throw Stiles into Derek’s path at every turn.
“You mean I should get Scott to talk to Stiles,” Derek says, and Boyd shrugs.
“I kind of thought you should do it, but your call,” Boyd says. “Get Scott to ask Allison about her family’s bestiary, maybe.”
Derek doesn’t reply, just drives and lets Boyd’s advice settle into him. It’s probably sound advice--Boyd’s ideas usually are, though it took Derek awhile to learn to accept good advice when it came to him, and not to cross-examine every motive for sabotage.
“You can’t talk to Stiles?” Derek asks Boyd with a sidelong glance. It’s halfway to being a joke. Boyd shrugs.
“If you really wanted me to,” he says.
Derek has nothing to say to that.
“I don’t trust Stiles,” Derek says.
“I know,” Boyd says.
“I can’t figure him out,” Derek says.
“I don’t think he’s much different from anyone else,” Boyd says. He’s watching the road. Derek’s pretty sure that was some sort of insult about Derek’s ability to read people, but maybe he was being paranoid. Circumstances were conspiring to reinstate his paranoia--Boyd thinking the books were about the pack, this brouhaha with the otters.
“You think those books could really be about our pack?” Derek asks.
“I think it’s something to think about,” Boyd says.
“There aren’t very many of us who could’ve written it,” Derek says. It’s really down to Stiles, maybe Scott or Allison or some ambiguous hunter. Mostly Stiles.
“Yeah,” Boyd says, like he knows what Derek’s thinking. “But I’m not sure. Don’t do anything rash.”
“When have I ever done that?” Derek asks, and Boyd chuckles a little but doesn’t dignify him with a response.
part 3
The next morning, Derek finds Erica sleeping curled up in the armchair, with the werewolf book splayed open on her stomach. He sits down on the couch and waits for her to wake up. When Isaac comes thundering down the stairs she rolls and startles, then looks up at Derek.
“What is it with you and watching people sleep?” she asks.
“You’re going to be late for work,” Derek tells her.
“This book,” Erica says, holding it up. “This book. Derek, it is so good. Isaac, how far are you?”
“Finished it,” Isaac says casually, and Erica swings around in her seat.
“Finished it?” she asks. “That’s it, I’m calling in sick.”
“You are not,” Derek says. “Calling in sick over that. Thing.”
“It’s actually pretty good,” Isaac says. “And--uh--kind of close to right.”
“Right,” Derek says slowly.
“Not completely,” Isaac says quickly. “Not like it was written by a wolf, just not total crap, either.”
“What does that mean?” Derek asks, because most werewolf stories read like they weren’t written by a werewolf but aren’t total crap, either. They carry a grain of truth, just really strange and somewhat arbitrary grains.
“Just read it,” Isaac says. “I finished my copy, it’s upstairs in my room. On the bedside table. Not in the drawer.”
“Don’t look in the drawer, Derek,” Erica says ominously.
“Erica, you’re going to work,” Derek says. “And I’m not reading that book.”
“Derek,” Erica says. “But--pack book club.”
“You think Boyd’s going to read that book?” Derek asks.
“If you do,” Isaac says. “It’s good. Seriously, I know ‘Twilight’ was like a romance novel with vampires and werewolves instead of a kid from the wrong side of the tracks and a rich douche or whatever, but this is like--actual shit going down.”
“Actual shit going down,” Derek repeats. “You’re a teacher.”
“Read it,” Isaac says. “Bedside table, but not in the drawer.”
Derek is never going to look in the drawer. If Isaac is ashamed of it, there is something wrong there. Or they’re trying to trick him, and it’s empty. Derek occasionally regrets the bout of poor decision making in his early twenties that led him to have this particular pack, one that keeps dubious things in the drawers of bedside tables.
But on the other hand, now they’re his pack, and they’re kind of--well, they’re his pack. That’s the end of it, that’s all there is to say. Derek rests his wrists on his knees and looks between Erica and Isaac. If they like this book--if Erica wants to--
“Fine,” Derek says. “Erica, call in sick.”
“Wait, seriously?” Erica asks.
“Isaac, you still have to go to work,” Derek adds, because Isaac’s looking a little squirrelly.
Isaac frowns.
“You’re a teacher. Erica’s a barista.”
“Don’t belittle my work,” Erica says, but she’s already on her way to the kitchen for the home phone. Isaac trails after her and immediately begins scrounging for breakfast while Derek goes upstairs and gets Isaac’s copy of ‘Omega’ from the bedside table.
Once Isaac’s off to work Erica returns to the armchair, and Derek stretches out on the couch and cracks the cover of the book. Because, hell, he could use a day off as much as anyone, and if this book sucks--well, it’s still a break.
The book doesn’t suck.
It kind of surprises Derek how much the book doesn’t suck. Actually, scratch that, it completely suprises him how much it doesn’t suck. And that’s just the narrative, the writing itself. The werewolves--well, the characters fully transform into wolves, which is so typical--but the characters themselves are distinct and well drawn, people Derek wants to spend time with. And considering that Derek wants to spend time with about one in every fifty people, that’s not a small thing. Besides, Isaac’s right, there’s something there, in the pack dynamics especially, that just feels right. Derek doesn’t entirely know what to make of it.
Erica finishes the book with a satisfied sigh shortly before lunchtime, and Derek looks up and tells her to go make lunch and not to talk to him. Erica sits in her chair, staring at him for a few minutes, then shrugs and goes into the kitchen.
She ducks back in thirty seconds later to say, “You like it!” and run back to the kitchen laughing to herself.
“Make sandwiches!” Derek calls back, because Erica has been known not to fuck up sandwiches.
“Fuck you!” Erica replies, which is--unsurprising, really.
She does make them sandwiches. They are not bad. They are also peanut butter and jelly. Erica brings them into the living room on a blue plate and then perches on the edge of the armchair, staring at Derek.
“You like it,” she repeats. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
“I haven’t finished it yet,” Derek says flatly.
“Who’s your favorite character? I like Sara,” Erica continues, unhindered. “You know book two is already out? I would go get a copy now but I told work I was really sick and if I go to the bookstore--this asshole who works there will totally narc on me if I don’t, like, puke on his feet while I’m paying.”
“We can talk about it when I finished it,” Derek says, then eyes her. “There’s still some repotting that needs doing in the greenhouse.”
“Actually, that doesn’t sound bad,” Erica says. “I need to process, and if you aren’t going to talk to me--Okay. Which ones?”
Derek tells her and she heads out back, which leaves Derek with his half-finished book and a second sandwich.
The sandwich is okay, but drier and therefore worse than the first one. The book keeps getting better. It’s set in high school, which is what it is. Derek was sick of high school before his pack was even finished with it, because it started to feel like he was going through the whole thing a second time and he’d been fairly sick of it after he graduated himself. But ‘Alpha’ dwells less on that than on the interactions of the pack over one summer, during which a human teen, Henry “call me Bishop” Bishop, is at the wrong place at the wrong time and becomes enmeshed with the pack’s ongoing battle with--and Derek thinks this part is ridiculous--tree sprites that live in the woods and, based on the descriptions, are something halfway between elves and ents. The tree sprites are, for the most part, marginally insane, but for generations they’ve hunted the wolves as inferior creatures, using arrows and, later, guns. It reminds Derek distantly of the Argents--there’s even the insinuation of a burgeoning romance between one of the sprites and one of the wolves. But the way everything happens, and the questions the book raises about loyalty to the pack--especially when another human is bitten by a rogue omega (another thing this N. D. Whatever got wrong) and joins the pack while struggling with his loyalty to his human family--well, Derek keeps turning the pages.
It’s been a long time since he’s let himself sink into a book so completely, and Derek had forgotten how refreshing it is to live life in a book, where problems arise and are inevitably resolved neatly instead of sloppily, where people die but the good guys never do, where you can kind of see what’s going to happen and you feel okay about that, because being able to see what’s going to happen means the worst probably won’t. All of that maybe explains why he finishes the book and then goes into the hall to get his car keys off the hook by the door (hooks for their keys: instituted by Allison, after Scott lost his for the twenty-seventh time) so he can drive into town.
The bookstore is adjacent to the Java Hut, like it’s always been, and it’s raining lightly when Derek slips inside. The cashier eyes him, and Derek wonders if this was the guy Erica was talking about before finding the wolf-shaped cardboard display that says “‘Alpha’ COMING SOON” and has--yes--copies of both ‘Omega’ and its sequel, ‘Beta.’ The titles, more than anything, make Derek wonder if it was written be a werewolf trying to cover something up--but. It’s hard to believe a pack would allow that; it could be an Omega, but Omegas so rarely settle that it’s hard to imagine one staying in one place long enough to write a book. Derek takes two copies of ‘Beta’ is about to leave when he smells something, and then--
“Derek.” It’s Stiles.
Derek turns around, and Stiles stares.
“You’re,” he says. “Uh--buying those.”
Derek looks at him.
“Yes,” he says.
“Stellar observation, Stiles,” Stiles says. “I was just--” Stiles jabs a thumb towards the coffee shop. “Writing and I saw you so I thought I’d say hi, you know, since Erica wasn’t working. Tell her hi, too.”
“Erica’s sick,” Derek says, slightly too loudly with a significant glance at the cashier. Stiles looks at him strangely.
“Right,” he says. “The other girl who works there told me. Sounds bad. I hope she gets better soon.”
“So I’m bringing her a book,” Derek says, and Stiles winces slightly when he holds up the copy of ‘Beta.’
“Do you really need two copies?” Stiles asks. “I mean, most people only read one book at a time.”
“One’s for Isaac,” Derek says.
“Oh,” Stiles says carefully. “I guess that will be good for the author’s royalties.”
“What’s your problem with these books, Stiles?” Derek asks, looking between Stiles and the book, which Stiles is--staring at. It cover’s fairly innocuous. Like the last one, there’s a wolf silhouette and trees, only this time the background is yellow.
“I told you, my ex?” Stiles says. “Splotchy face? Really miserable break-up? Like, we had to split up our friends miserable.”
“Is that why you came back to Beacon Hills?” Derek asks.
“Yes,” Stiles says, latching on to the idea like a drowning man grasping at a life preserver. “Yes, that’s it, terrible break-up, I hate those books.”
He’s still lying. Derek studies him.
“I know you’re lying, Stiles,” he says.
“You think I didn’t date?” Stiles asks. “I totally dated. I can totally get a date. This isn’t high school, people like the weird ones now, they think I’m cute in a dateable way. I bet--”
“No, about these books,” Derek says, holding up the two copies. “I don’t know why. Care to enlighten me?”
“Not really, no,” Stiles says. He looks down at the mottled carpet of the bookstore. “Would you believe me if I said it was because I just think they’re really, really terrible books?”
“No,” Derek says. “But let me know if you want to test another explanation out on me.”
Stiles looks up at him, and his heartbeat settles.
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll let you know.”
“Do that,” Derek says. Whatever it is with these books, it can’t be--well, there are possibilities, but none of them quite fit in Derek’s head. It’s probably just some strange Stiles secret, and the thing about Stiles’ secrets--if it doesn’t have anything to do with the pack, it’s not Derek’s place to know. So. He’s trying to let that happen, give Stiles the privacy and freedom he insisted he needed when he left, to trust him--a little. With this. They’re just books.
“Well, I should get back to work before someone swipes my laptop,” Stiles says after they both just sort of stand there and--stare at one another?--for a moment. “Which is a piece of shit, but has a lot of very important files on it, and I’m terrible about backing up. Also, intellectual property rights. I don’t want anyone stealing my intellectual property. So. Good to see you. Tell Erica I hope she feels better.”
“I’ll do that,” Derek says. “See you around, Stiles.”
“Sure,” Stiles says.
When Derek gets back to the house Erica is sitting on the steps to the porch and when she sees him she stands up and puts her hands on her hips.
“Seriously,” she says. “Just--seriously, Derek. I go out back to work, and then you just disappear without saying anything, and we were supposed to have book debriefing.”
Derek tosses her a copy of ‘Beta’ and Erica catches it reflexively, then actually looks at what she’s holding.
“Oh, fuck you,” she says, and goes inside. When Derek follows she’s already curled up in the armchair, legs hooked over the armrest, ankles crossed, book open. Derek goes to the couch.
By the time Isaac gets home and Boyd wakes up, they’ve both finished. Erica finishes first, chucks her copy at Derek, and goes into the kitchen to make a lot of noise without actually doing anything.
“This is me getting even,” she says. “Also, you’re supposed to make dinner tonight, so you might want to consider getting on that.”
Which--Derek was supposed to go to the grocery store. He rolls over and looks at Erica, who’s come out of the kitchen to rebuke him.
“There’s some stuff in the freezer that could probably turn meal-shaped eventually,” she says. “Also leftover cabbage, which I can’t endorse.”
“I have one chapter left,” Derek says, and Erica looks vaguely gleeful about the potential for a late dinner.
He ends up making spaghetti and meatballs while Erica chatters away about the book, and how much she can’t wait for the next one. Derek doesn’t contribute much beyond a few nods and grunts of agreement, but he’s left feeling--confused. He’s never been good at labelling his emotions beyond anger, so he’ll settle for confused.
At the end of ‘Beta’, Bishop, the human protagonist, has been inducted into the pack. He almost doesn’t accept the offer to join out of loyalty to his single mother--but then he does, at the end of the book, in the last chapter, and it’s such a joyful thing, it’s hard to believe it’s the ending, because it seems like the second book in a trilogy should end with some sort of significant cliffhanger, not happily. But that doesn’t matter as much as the fact that all Derek can do is think of Stiles, and how he didn’t join the pack, the moment when his face went very still and he said he couldn’t.
Derek understood it, a little. Stiles had learned to lose people. Derek had, too, once, and once you learned to lose people it was a little easier to make the decision, to let a few people slide out of your life so you could protect the few you had, because more loss would be unbearable and more people were easier to lose.
After that conversation, Derek had done the same to Stiles. He couldn’t trust someone who wasn’t committed to the pack, so it was easier to ask Scott to ask Stiles for help and to pretend Stiles didn’t exist, except for that one time with the werepanther, and when that happened--well, of course Stiles would get himself kidnapped even when he was trying to ‘avoid entanglement.’ Derek had hauled him out of the panther’s den bodily and Stiles had just looked at his feet and said, “I guess I owe you one.”
Derek had said, “No, we’re probably even.”
Stiles had given him half a grin, one that didn’t reach his eyes, and then he was waving at Scott and talking too quickly about how werepanthers were even creepier than werewolves, he didn’t think that was possible, and did Scott see the tail on that thing? And also Stiles knew they shouldn’t trust anyone named Sebastian, ever.
When Isaac gets home, Erica pushes a copy of ‘Beta’ into his chest and says, “Look what Derek bought us.”
Isaac looks between Derek and Erica and says, “No shit. So you liked it.”
Then he plucks the book from Erica’s hand and proceeds to read throughout dinner, only occasionally looking up to contribute entirely irrelevant comments to the conversation.
“If I were my mother, I’d tell you no books at the dinner table,” Derek says flatly.
“Good thing you aren’t, then,” Isaac mutters. “Also good thing our dinner table conversation is dead boring ninety-percent of the time.”
“I resent that,” Erica says.
“You resemble that,” Isaac replies. “Also, you got to stay home from work, your opinion is irrelevant.”
Boyd is manfully ignoring them all, probably trying to pretend he doesn’t know and live with these people. Erica gives him a copy of ‘Omega’ before he heads out to work, and Boyd looks at it skeptically.
“Derek read it,” she says, and Boyd turns the brunt of his skeptical face in Derek’s direction. Derek shrugs.
“Just try it, Boyd,” Derek says. Boyd takes the book like he expects it to bite him.
“Also sex,” Erica says. “I’ll barter you reading this book for sex.”
“No sex until you write a book report, Boyd. You’ve been a very bad boy,” Isaac says, and Boyd shoots him a withering glare.
“See, school teacher kink already,” Erica says. “We’ll get you yet, Isaac, you giant perv.”
Scott and Allison are back the next day, come to the house late after they’ve visited both their parents and, from the smell of it, Stiles. There’s laughter, hugs, gifts, everyone permitting Scott to put them in headlocks and rub their hair because Scott thinks it’s hilarious.
Soon they’re all sitting in the living room, Allison and Scott close together, Erica’s head in Allison’s lap her legs up in Isaac’s, Boyd on the floor, leaning against their legs. Derek’s on Scott’s other side--and it’s kind of ridiculous when they all sit on the couch like this, but in a comforting way, all pack upon pack. There’s a lull in the conversation, and Scott twists towards Derek.
“Hey, Stiles invited us over for pizza tomorrow,” Scott says. “So. Um. If you guys want, I’ll text him how many.”
“Sounds good,” Isaac says. “As long as he goes to Sal’s and not one of the shitty places.”
Erica kicks Isaac in the side.
“Sounds good no matter what,” she says.
“It’s my day off,” Boyd adds.
“Derek?” Scott asks, turning to look at him.
“Yeah,” Derek says. “Sure.”
“Great,” Scott says, fishing his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll text him. I’m texting him now.”
“Thank you for that compelling narrative Scott,” Allison says, put she turns plant a kiss on his cheek and Scott grins goofily while tapping at his phone. When Allison turns back she notices the copy of ‘Omega’ on the coffee table and purses her lips.
“Did one of you read this?” she asks, leaning forward.
“We’re all reading it,” Erica says. “Pack book club. Which means you and Scott need to read it, too.”
“Uh,” Allison’s eyes flit towards Scott. “We already have. Pretty good, right?”
Scott elbows Allison and looks vaguely uncomfortable, but he kind of shrugs it off when Erica rolls into a monologue about how great it is, with Isaac contributing occasional well--not insight, exactly, but supplementary commentary.
“Boyd’s not done yet, so don’t spoil him,” Erica says. “Who do you ship?”
“Ship?” Scott looks confused, but that might just be his face.
“Romantically,” Erica says emphatically.
“Oh, uh,” Allison pats Scott’s thigh. “Aria and Ryan, I guess.”
Aria’s a tree sprite to Ryan’s werewolf. It’s kind of an obvious one, when Allison says it out loud.
“They’re sort of like you guys, huh?” Erica asks.
“Sort of,” Allison says, obviously uncomfortable even without tuning in to her heartbeat. “Yeah.”
“I think Bishop’s going to get with the Alpha,” Erica says. Scott starts coughing, and Allison thumps him on the back.
“I hadn’t--uh--really thought of that,” she says. “There didn’t seem to be much build-up towards that in the first two books.”
Erica shrugs, “I thought there was. Subtly. Like they argue because they care, right?”
Allison glances at Scott, who still looks a little blue in the face, then changes the subject.
Part of Derek wonders if Allison and Scott’s strange behavior is tied to Stiles’ similar behavior about these books--actually, he believes they must be related, but he decides to write it off as a strange inside joke. Derek never really got inside jokes. Probably because he was so rarely inside which--sounds pathetic. Derek never wanted to be in the joke, anyway.
When he’s in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner, Allison comes in and leans back against the counter.
“Dad wanted me to tell you,” she begins, speaking carefully..
Derek turns to look at her. The pack’s relationship with Chris Argent is, at best, complicated.
“There’s some activity out by the coast,” she continues. “Sea otter shapeshifters. They function like selkies, pretty reliant on skins, and live in groups--rafts. Normally they stick to the sea otter form, though, but lately they’ve been out of the ocean as humans a lot more and Dad just thought it was something I should--mention. So you’re aware. Dad says they’re pretty harmless, unless you’re a sea urchin, so.”
Derek nods, turning the new information over in his head.
“How like selkies are they?” he asks. “Do they have the same problem, with people stealing their pelts and marrying them? Do selkies even really have that problem? What’s your family bestiary say?”
“Not much,” Allison says. “I think someone in the family way back couldn’t swim or something, because the Argents tend to stick to the land.”
Derek nods.
“Are there any identifying features if they’re in human form?” he asks.
“Other than looking like human otters?” Allison asks. “No, not really. I imagine they’ll smell like kelp or seawater or something to you, though.”
“Did you tell Stiles?” Derek asks. Allison looks slightly taken aback.
“Uh--” she says. “No, we went to Dad’s after we left Stiles’.”
“I’ll go tell him,” Derek decides. Allison stares at him and then shakes her head.
“If you think you need to,” she says. She pauses before leaving the kitchen, then reaches out one hand and squeezes Derek’s shoulder.
“It’s good to be back, you know that?” she says, deliberate. Derek knows a peace offering when he sees it. Or sometimes he does.
“It’s good to have you,” Derek says, and he’s kind of surprised when he realizes he that means it. Allison and Scott are a Hunter and a werewolf, which is strange, but they’re also fierce in maintaining an even keel, in their relationship and their lives, and although it would seem like that would make them suppressed or repressed or something, instead it makes them tempering.
Allison smiles at Derek cautiously before leaving the kitchen, and even once Derek’s done with the dishes he just stands there, leans against the kitchen counter and breathes for a moment.
Allison had agreed to join the pack because Scott did. Scott had joined the pack because there was nothing else for him to do; because he needed them and they needed him and that state of mutual necessity eventually demanded a resolution. Of the betas he’s always been the most withdrawn, but it makes sense--of the betas Scott is the only one with a shadow pack, with the support network of Stiles, Allison, and, weirdly, Jackson, Danny and Lydia. Sometimes Derek feels like he should pressure him to commit fully but--that would break him. Derek knows that, it’s all written in every action Scott’s ever taken. Scott’s presence as a member of the pack is contingent on his ability to maintain relationships with outsiders. He’s sort of like Stiles that way, except Stiles never needed the pack like Scott does, because Stiles was never a wolf. And not being a wolf--that’s something that’s beyond Derek, really.
Derek goes to Stiles’. It’s ten or eleven at night--the clock on the microwave is broken--but Stiles has never been the early to bed type, and Derek has trouble believing that changes.
Derek rings the buzzer for apartment 3, presses his thumb hard on the brass button until he finally gets a bleary response from Stiles--”What the hell? Now is not the time to be selling Girl Scout cookies.”
“It’s Derek,” Derek says.
“So not a Girl Scout, then.” Stiles sounds amused.
“Buzz me up, or I’ll pick this lock.”
Stiles buzzes him up.
“You know,” Stiles says when he answers the door. “Visiting hours are usually between nine and five.”
“What is this, a nursing home?” Derek asks, and shoulders past Stiles towards the kitchen. Stiles hurries to catch up with him, and, once they’re in the kitchen, slams his laptop shut. Derek looks at him.
“Well?” Stiles asks. “I’m not feeding you again.”
“Chris Argent says there are sea otters around,” Derek says.
“Sea otters,” Stiles repeats. “Chris Argent is concerned about sea otters now? Are they throwing sea urchins at him? Have they developed a catapult? Because that would be adorable.”
“Sea otter shapeshifters,” Derek says. “Chris says they’ve been taking human form more often than usual.”
“There are sea otter shapeshifters?” Stiles asks, then shakes his head. “Of course there are. Are they like selkies, then?”
“Yes,” Derek says. “How did you--?”
“Thesis,” Stiles interjects. “A comparative study of shapeshifter mythologies. The literature’s pretty dry, but a body picks a few things up. But--are they actually going to do anything? Did you really need to come tell me about this at eleven at night--after eleven at night? I have a phone.”
Derek shrugs. He kind of wants to pursue the subject of Stiles’ thesis, but Stiles is so obviously trying to change the subject that Derek knows he won’t get anything out of him but deflection and babbling and deflective babbling.
“I don’t have your number,” Derek says.
“I know Allison and Scott are at yours, they have my number, don’t give me that,” Stiles says. “Seriously, ‘I don’t have your number’ is like the I don’t know what of excuses. Something stupid. You’re checking up on me. Well, look, I’m safe at home. I was watching a movie on my laptop, okay, and that movie was ‘Watchmen’ because who watches the Watchmen, I do. Now you’ve warned me about the catapult-less sea otters, you can go home, see you tomorrow for pizza. You can tell Isaac I’ll get it from Sal’s, because I know Scott didn’t.”
Derek looks at him.
“You hated ‘Watchmen,’” Derek says. He doesn’t know how he knows this, but he does--he remembers, distantly, a monologue about it when they were on a stake out together.
“Okay, you caught me, I was watching porn,” Stiles says. “And you’re kind of blue-balling me here, so out with you.”
Derek leaves. He’s on the sidewalk before he realizes that it didn’t smell like Stiles had been watching porn.
Stiles lies a lot. To Derek. He’s surprisingly good at it, for someone who Derek can ostensibly tell is lying. Also for someone who used to be such a crap liar, and is still kind of a crap liar.
Derek would like an explanation, but he doesn’t think he’s going to get one, and right now any accusations he tries to make would be, well, baseless. None of the pieces are fitting together in his head--he has his suspicions, of course he has his suspicions, but he doesn’t actually know precisely how to frame them.
He drives home, headlights sluicing through the neon-lit streets of town and then the dark roads in the woods, the moon in the sky just beginning to take shape behind clouds. He wishes it was fuller--his wolf waxes and wanes with the moon, and things are so much simpler to the wolf, so much cleaner. The wolf says Stiles is lying. The wolf says he should stop. Derek thinks--Derek thinks it’s probably none of his business.
He sleeps in Boyd’s bed, because Boyd’s not using it and sometimes it’s just--better, to get out of himself and his space and his head, and sleeping in somewhere not his bed helps. A little. In the morning he remembers that they’re having pizza at Stiles’ and he kind of wants to fake sick, even as he acknowledges that would be ridiculous. His entire pack will be there, there will be plenty of buffer. Maybe Stiles will even stop lying. He seems to keep his lies for Derek, anyway.
Stiles has produced more chairs for the kitchen from--somewhere--his apartment might have a spare room, there’s a door or two that Derek doesn’t know where they lead. There’s a pile of pizza boxes, and there’s some mid-range beer in the fridge, neither especially fancy nor offensively cheap.
It is as Derek expected it to be--loud and raucous and silly, mostly. Stiles talks over everyone, everyone talks over Stiles, Erica tells bawdy jokes and Boyd tells stories laced with bone dry humor. Isaac makes fun of everyone and, in turn, everyone ignores him.
Derek doesn’t realize Stiles is next to him until an arm is thrown across his shoulders and Stiles is leaning into Derek’s space.
“You don’t really know how to have fun, do you?” Stiles asks. Derek turns slightly so he can get a better glimpse of Stiles. He’s still watching the others, his lips turned up at the corners.
“I have fun,” Derek says.
Stiles thumps him on the back.
“Well,” he says. “Let me know how that works out for you.”
Derek should’ve told Stiles that he’s careful, that he needs to be, that when he was in New York he did what he could to make himself feel and forget how to feel and then his sister died, and making sure the people around him stopped dying seemed more important. Instead he watches Stiles insinuate himself back into the center of the group. He watches Stiles and, again, finds himself trying to tease apart him, his motivations. Stiles wanted to protect people--protect himself--but now he’s outwardly free and easy, comfortable and unworried.
Stiles is functionally an omega, and Derek has never understood omegas. But Stiles is also functionally and fully a human, and humans believe they can be omegas without leaving everyone behind. They can take care of theirs without devoting themselves to it fully. Maybe. Derek’s never really understood humans, either. Sure, he can pass for one, but a lot of people can pass for a lot of things they aren’t, and, yes, his entire pack had been human once, but he hadn’t, had never been.
Still, this is his pack. Derek pulls up a chair between Isaac and Boyd. Stiles smiles at him--a slow bloom of a thing that spreads from his mouth to his eyes--but doesn’t stop talking until Scott interrupts him, says something that makes Stiles dissolve into too-loud, open-mouthed laughter.
“No inside jokes,” Erica says, reaching over to pinch Stiles in the side. Stiles paws at her hands, then turns and looks at her.
“It’s not,” he says. “It’s not even funny. It’s just--”
He starts laughing again, and Scott dissolves into giggles.
“You’re high, aren’t you,” Erica says.
“Wouldn’t you be able to smell it?” Stiles asks. “No, sorry--” he starts to compose himself, staunchly refusing to make eye contact with Scott. “It’s just. Um. This happens sometimes? Spontaneous laughter? Because the world is beautiful? Also, pizza.”
“Is there any more left?” Isaac asks.
“If there is, it’s probably in one of the pizza boxes,” Stiles says. “You know, where pizza lives until it gets into your stomach.”
“You’re drunk,” Derek says, taking in Stiles’s flushed cheeks, and Stiles has another minor laughing fit.
“Only a little,” he says, then he looks at Scott at starts laughing harder. “I am such a lightweight. Lydia can hold her liquor better than I can.”
“He is,” Scott pronounces.
“Though it’s really not a surprise about Lydia,” Allison says, leaning forward. “Also, she usually dumps about half her drinks out.”
“Everyone but me,” Erica says mournfully, looking at Stiles.
“It’s not that fun,” Stiles says. “Really. Also you probably don’t get hangovers, which are the worst. Nothing but headaches and shame. Headaches and shame.”
Erica pouts. Isaac rejoins the group with a slice of pepperoni.
“Don’t worry, Erica, you can still have the shame.”
She punches him in the shoulder, and Isaac shrugs.
“Derek, you’re still being a quiet creeper,” Stiles says suddenly.
“He just loses the plot sometimes,” Erica says. “Does this thing where he stops listening to us and listens to, like, the noise down the road.”
“Really?” Stiles perks up. “What’s going on right now? Are any of my neighbors having sex? I never took you for a voyeur, Derek--actually, that’s totally a lie, I always took you for a voyeur, and now I’d like you to share your voyeurtastic exploits.”
“I wasn’t--” Derek says. “I was just thinking, was all.” And--gods--Derek is so much better at talking when he’s training the pack, or discussing a threat, or doing anything other than what’s normal. “It’s been awhile since--since New York, I guess. And this reminded me of that, somehow.”
Stiles nods slowly, and Derek can see the pack looking at one another. He doesn’t talk about his past much with them. There’s a strange balance to being the Alpha, being part of the pack yet apart from it, an authority figure, and Derek’s still not sure if he’s figured out how to straddle that line quite yet. He’s better--he would probably be dead if he hadn’t gotten better--but some things never came easy to him.
“Oh,” Stiles says. He’s studying Derek closely, and Derek’s not sure what he’s seeing. Derek turns away, and catches the time on the microwave.
“Maybe we should go, actually,” he says. “It’s getting late. Wouldn’t want to keep you.”
“Oh, no, you aren’t,” Stiles says. “The party doesn’t end until I brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack, you know.”
But it seems like time, anyway, and Stiles walks with them down to their car and waves, says they should do it again sometime. Derek feels like he should know his own mind better than he does, at this moment, but it’s late and as he navigates the car home--Erica in Boyd’s lap in the front seat, Isaac and Scott and Allison squeezed in the back--everyone’s quiet and his mind settles, just a little, mostly, he thinks, because it’s dark and driving at night is distantly like running as a wolf. Which he does, after they get home, until his mind is clear and empty and he knows the woods are safe.
He had felt human for a hazy period while they were in New York, when his territory was smoky bars and he and Laura had shared a studio the size of a shoebox, but that was partly by virtue of not feeling much at all, by pushing everything that was Derek--his family, his pack, and then the fire--into the furthest reaches of his mind and pretending to be someone else.
It didn’t really work, and then his sister died. Derek tries not to see it as causative relationship, but, well, sometimes that was hard.
The next day Derek runs into a sea otter when he’s at the hardware store buying potting soil. The sea otter’s in human form; a short brown-haired man with large, round eyes and sleek hair staring at the power sanders, thumbs hitched into the back pockets of his jeans. He smells of salt and fish and seaweed, so strongly that Derek would expect a human could smell it. He wishes everyone that showed up in Beacon Hills was this obvious about who they were.
“Any recommendations?” the otter asks when Derek slides into the space beside him.
“What are you looking to sand?” Derek asks.
“Surfboard.”
Of course a sea otter makes surfboards. What a fucking cliche. Derek glances at the otter sidelong.
“Rotex is usually good,” Derek says.
The otter hums noncommittally.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Derek says. “I’m sure an employee of this fine establishment might be better able to help you.”
“Better than the area’s Alpha?” the otter asks.
“For advice on sanders, yes,” Derek says. “And if you want to talk to me about pack business, I’d prefer we did it outside the hardware store.”
The otter shrugs in one liquid motion.
“Muir Douglas,” says the otter--and, seriously, otters pick the strangest names. “I’m from the Sunday Cove raft.”
“Pleasure, I’m sure,” Derek says.
Muir smiles at him, a slow curl of lips.
“If you want to meet with us, we’re normally there,” he says. “Around Sunday Cove. Thought we’d let you know.”
“Why?” Derek asks.
“Stop by, some time,” says Muir. “The elders want to talk to you. We have a bit of a situation and they think you--your pack--might help.”
“A bit of a situation,” Derek repeats, and Muir shrugs.
“You could say that, yeah,” Muir says.
“You just did,” Derek points out.
“Rotex, you said?” Muir asks, turning back to the sanders.
“I’d ask someone for help,” Derek says.
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Muir says, and after a moment of silence, both of them staring at the sanders, Derek nods.
“Okay,” he says. “Sunday Cove.”
“Thank you,” Muir says, and Derek would kind of like to know what he’s being thanked for.
He gets Boyd to go with him, because Boyd’s the one who’s good for this kind of thing, quiet and sharp and unlikely to do anything inappropriate, and while Scott is sometimes competent, he’s busy with his externship with Deaton. They take the Hale landscaping truck, because between that, the Camaro, and the Boyd’s patrol car the truck is the least conspicuous, which is maybe saying something about the pack’s ability to obtain inconspicuous vehicles. Erica wanted a red convertible, because she was about as subtle as a bludgeon to the head, but they really, really, did not need more cars. Pretty soon they were going to have some up on bricks in the yard, and it would just be downhill from there. Isaac’s already lobbying for a Winnebago for no reason Derek can fathom.
Sunday Cove is a slim crescent of rocks and sand nestled amongest the bluffs. It’s on the far southwest edge of town, not Hale territory, Derek’s not even sure if it’s Beacon Hills or part of the next town over or some weird piece of California that’s going to slough off into the Pacific soon enough and isn’t on the maps. But otters are known to gambol on the rocks there, and when Derek and Boyd arrive--well, no one’s there yet. They sit down on the algae-blackened rocks and wait.
“You sure about this?” Boyd asks. Derek has, in the past, tried to be offended at the frequency with which his pack questions his judgment, but he really can’t blame them given how bad the first few years were.
“No,” Derek says. “But I have a policy about granting favors to people who accost me in the hardware store.”
“Just the hardware store, then,” Boyd says.
“Yeah,” Derek says. “Just the hardware store.”
The ocean is blue-grey-green--the color of the ocean, Derek supposes, when his mind’s not quick to provide another descriptor--and there’s a wind coming in, the water’s peaking into whitecaps. The water’s too choppy and the scents too jumbled for Derek to be able to readily identify anything as a sea otter, but there are some dark spots to the south, near the curving edge of the cove, that could be them.
“You really read those books?” Boyd asks, and Derek knows what he’s talking about immediately.
“Yeah,” Derek says. “Pretty good.”
“Nothing about them seemed strange to you?” Boyd asks. He’s looking out at the water, not at Derek, and when Derek doesn’t respond for a moment he continues. “Too close to true.”
“There have been werewolf stories before, you know,” Derek says. “Even marginally right ones.”
“Too close to us,” Boyd says. “Details altered, obviously, but something about it just felt like someone else telling my story. Our story. With the struggling pack and everything?”
Derek turns to look at Boyd.
“You think?” Derek says sharply. “Who?”
“I don’t know,” Boyd says. “I don’t even, really--I mean, it takes place in Atlanta. It’s possible other packs have had similar experiences. It just felt familiar, and I wondered if you had noticed.”
Derek takes a breath, grips the rock he’s sitting on.
“It’s probably nothing,” Boyd says, but he doesn’t really sound like he believes himself, and Derek’s reeling his way through the plot of those books and--yeah, he can see it.
But then the otters are there.
The first one is an elderly woman with waves of grey hair, and she’s nude, exposing milk-pale, wrinkled skin. The others start to appear, in the water and on the rocks, until there are seven of them total, men and women, the youngest about Derek’s age. The first woman comes and sits in front of them, and someone gives her a blanket, which she pulls around her shoulders. The others are dressed--some of them, not all of them, and oddly.
“Alpha Hale,” says the woman. She has a strange, lilting accent, and speaks carefully, like she doesn’t do it much. Which she probably doesn’t--sea otters, like selkies, are notorious for using their human forms so rarely that many of them don’t even have human names, and, if they do, they make them up themselves. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with the Counsel.”
“Thank you,” Derek says, because apparently this is going to be a formal dog and pony show. “This is Beta Boyd.”
The woman smiles--she and Muir from the hardware store share a soft, curving smile that makes Derek wonder if they’re closely related.
“We’ve asked you to come here because of some trouble our raft’s been having,” the woman begins. “With an Anguilla.”
Derek does not actually know what that is.
“A--sort of--” the woman pauses.
“Snake,” says a man to her left, at the same time as another woman says, “Serpent.”
“That can take human form,” the first woman continues.
Of course it can.
“We wish to ask your assistance,” the woman begins. “And warn you, that this creature might be walking with you.”
“In the town,” provides one of the others, the man who spoke before. “The serpent has been gone for several days, we believe it’s moved to the town. It may be searching for larger prey. It has a lair in the rocks, it collects--things.”
“Bones,” says the woman. “It collects bones.”
Which is charming, really.
Derek glances between the seven, and they’re all watching him, serious and round-eyed.
“Where is this lair?” Derek asks.
“In a cave,” the man answers. “Beneath Beacon Point. It is not--you have to swim.”
Derek nods, and looks between the seven.
“Thank you,” he says. “We will do what we can.”
“We will assist you as we can,” says the woman. “But you must understand, we are--”
“Peaceful,” provides another woman. “We are peaceful.”
“We have contacted other rafts for advice,” the first woman continues. “And the grand council. We will convey what they say to you as soon as we know it.”
“We will do what we can,” says the man. “But--”
“You think this--” Derek pauses. “Anguilla is a threat to the pack?”
“It is a threat,” says the woman. “Otter bones are small. It seeks bigger bones.”
Derek doesn’t really know what to say to that, and he knows if he looks at Boyd Boyd will be quirking his eyebrows in that subtle, strange way that he does when he thinks they’re in another absurd situation.
“Okay,” Derek says. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” repeats the woman, and then the others, one at a time, a series of wavering echoes.
They nod and rise, and move independently yet as a group until they’re slipping into the water.
“I kind of expected otters to be more fun,” Boyd says when they get back to the truck. Derek gives him a questioning glance, and Boyd shrugs. “I used to like the otters at the zoo when I was a kid.”
“They don’t go human much,” Derek says. “Or--a lot of them don’t. It makes them sort of stiff and uncomfortable when they are. Even when they’re otters--sea otters don’t do well on land.”
“I noticed,” Boyd says dryly. “But didn’t you meet one at the hardware store?”
“A few of them are really enthusiastic about humans, and land,” Derek says. “It’s just that they tend to prefer the sea. They--from what I understand they’re closer to being actual otters than a werewolf is to being an actual wolf.”
Boyd nods.
“I’m not sure if that makes sense,” he says. “But it does a little.”
“You know, I usually think of you as the smart one,” Derek says, and Boyd just laughs.
“Speaking of,” he says. “You want my advice?”
Derek looks at him.
“You should probably talk to Stiles,” Boyd continues. “Because I know you had no idea what the hell that thing was when the naked lady first mentioned it.”
Stiles. Of course. The universe is doing its damnedest to throw Stiles into Derek’s path at every turn.
“You mean I should get Scott to talk to Stiles,” Derek says, and Boyd shrugs.
“I kind of thought you should do it, but your call,” Boyd says. “Get Scott to ask Allison about her family’s bestiary, maybe.”
Derek doesn’t reply, just drives and lets Boyd’s advice settle into him. It’s probably sound advice--Boyd’s ideas usually are, though it took Derek awhile to learn to accept good advice when it came to him, and not to cross-examine every motive for sabotage.
“You can’t talk to Stiles?” Derek asks Boyd with a sidelong glance. It’s halfway to being a joke. Boyd shrugs.
“If you really wanted me to,” he says.
Derek has nothing to say to that.
“I don’t trust Stiles,” Derek says.
“I know,” Boyd says.
“I can’t figure him out,” Derek says.
“I don’t think he’s much different from anyone else,” Boyd says. He’s watching the road. Derek’s pretty sure that was some sort of insult about Derek’s ability to read people, but maybe he was being paranoid. Circumstances were conspiring to reinstate his paranoia--Boyd thinking the books were about the pack, this brouhaha with the otters.
“You think those books could really be about our pack?” Derek asks.
“I think it’s something to think about,” Boyd says.
“There aren’t very many of us who could’ve written it,” Derek says. It’s really down to Stiles, maybe Scott or Allison or some ambiguous hunter. Mostly Stiles.
“Yeah,” Boyd says, like he knows what Derek’s thinking. “But I’m not sure. Don’t do anything rash.”
“When have I ever done that?” Derek asks, and Boyd chuckles a little but doesn’t dignify him with a response.
part 3