Chapter Text
The thing about Stiles’ magic is that it’s either completely anticlimactic or involves Star Trek levels of over-the-top dramatics. Occasionally with lens flares included.
This is an instance of the latter.
The power goes out first.
There’s a soft crackle, a smell of ozone, and then the lights flare back to life—blindingly bright, buzzing high and angry for three terrifying seconds before every light bulb shatters, leaving superimposed white starbursts in Stiles’ vision as the room goes black again. Stiles closes his eyes, trying to focus, trusting that if he sets the house on fire or something Derek will handle getting them out safely.
I can do this, he thinks. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.
His head is starting to hurt and he can vaguely hear Erica shout something but it doesn’t feel like anything is happening and
I can do this. He thinks. I can. I have to. I can do this. I can do this. I can—
“Stiles,” Teagan says.
Stiles opens his eyes.
What the fuck. He thinks.
“What the fuck,” Stiles says.
Teagan is awake, illuminated by the light of Erica and Boyd’s iphones, still wrapped in Walsh’s arms, expression placid, like she hadn’t just been dying a few seconds before.
“Tea,” Walsh says, grunts really, into the back of her neck, and Derek makes a concerned noise.
“I need a knife,” Teagan says, and then, when Stiles starts to retreat—“No. Don’t move. You’re making this easier. Keep the bond open.”
Stiles has no idea what that means but he fits his hands back to their respective wolf tattoos and thinks open-bond thoughts.
Boyd hands Teagan a knife.
“We’ve got less than two minutes before Walsh and I are both dead so I need everyone to focus.”
Walsh pushes his face harder into her neck.
“Stiles, I need you to start a basic transference spell with Derek.”
“I thought I needed to concentrate on keeping the bond open.” Stiles says, only a little hysterically.
“That too.”
“Ok? I mean. Ok. That’s fine.”
“Do I have your consent for blood?”
“Of course.”
Derek growls softly, probably unconsciously, and Stiles shushes him.
Walsh’s breathing gets steadily faster, and louder, as Teagan uses the knife to open the skin in the inner elbow of her arm that Stiles is still holding.
“Derek, I need you to do the same with Stiles. I know it’s going to feel wrong but he can’t do it himself and I’m not certain you’ll be able to control yourself if anyone else does it.”
Derek, thankfully, doesn’t hesitate. He takes the knife and makes a quick, shallow, slice on Stiles’ forearm, catching the excess blood that wells after the fact with his thumb, smearing it on the blade with Teagan’s.
“Good,” Teagan say. “Stiles, are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” He asks.
“You can’t fix this, you don’t know how. I can but I can’t do it in two minutes. So I’m going to pull from you as well as Walsh but I need you to take as much as Derek can give you, first. It still might not be enough but—“
Walsh whines, low and long, and Derek moves forward.
“But we’re going to try,” he finishes for her.
“Yes.”
Derek pushes up his sleeve, extending his arm, and the fox tattoo there uncurls, moving to stand on his knuckles, sliding easily to Stiles’ skin when Derek cups Stiles’ elbow with his palm. The fox bounds happily to touch noses with the wolf on Stiles wrist—Derek’s wolf, and the two inked animals curl up together like a furry yin/yang symbol.
Stiles closes his eyes again.
“You have to tell me when to stop, Derek.” Stiles says tightly.
Derek slowly sits, probably feeling light-headed already, fingers still curled around Stiles’ elbow.
“Ok.”
“I mean it. Don’t try and be a martyr, here.”
“Ok.”
Derek leans his head against the outside of Stiles’ thigh.
He rubs his cheek back and forth slightly, a probably unconscious gesture, and the scrape of his stubble against denim is loud in the silence.
“Almost,” Derek says, voice low. “I’m —yeah. Stop.”
Stiles stops.
Derek slumps harder against him.
“You ok?”
“Trying not to pass out,” he says, mostly into Stiles’ leg.
“Are you ready?” Teagan asks.
No Stiles thinks.
Derek squeezes his ankle.
“Yeah,” Stiles says. “Yeah, let’s do this thing.”
***
10 years previous
The problem with oral histories, Teagan had always found, was that it was so damn difficult to get any solid information. Three weeks after her little heart-to-heart with Walsh, Teagan had written several dozen emails and spent a frankly infuriating amount of time on the phone with very little to show for her inquiries. Why she felt it so necessary to find a solution for Walsh’s predicament, she didn’t know. But she’d always found that “following her gut” as her father used to say, was better than the alternative. Unfortunately, her quest to find a solution to Wash’s problem was slow-going. For the most part, more experienced Fae were either unwilling to assist her or not knowledgeable enough to help. And the two Gemini pairs willing to talk to her weren’t helpful resources because they could just do the things Teagan needed runes for.
Originally she’d wanted to make some sort of shrouding object. A necklace or bracelet that Walsh could wear that would make him invisible to those who might wish to harm him. That, she discarded rather quickly when it became apparent that such an object would only work for a short period before necessitating replacement, and creating such an object would be a massive undertaking in terms of both time and energy—one she couldn’t realistically keep up with while also a student and emissary.
After that she briefly considered a blocking object—something that would render Walsh entirely human while wearing it, thereby letting him remain closeted and capable of competing as a human. But there was nothing she could find that would impact blood tests, only perception—and that seemed more than a little dangerous, as well as ethically circumspect. Walsh was a wolf. He should be able to represent his heritage with his skill, not have to hide it.
Now, nearly a month later, Teagan was relatively certain she knew what to do. If she could create a worn or skin-inked guardian object that demarcated Walsh as under her and the Sawtooth pack’s protection—thereby voiding another Alpha’s responsibility for monitoring him—he could attend Columbia without restrictions.
Teagan knew this for a fact because she called the NYC Alpha the day before and had a very awkward conversation in which the word “hypothetically” was used several dozen times before an agreement was made. If Teagan could reliably prove that her rune, whatever its form, was effective regardless of distance, and could provide adequate advance warning that Walsh was in danger, allowing her to alert the NYC pack in a timely manner—Walsh could enroll at Columbia.
There were, however, two problems with this. One, she was relatively certain such an arrangement would stretch, if not break, the current contract she had with Robert. Making a connection that would monitor Walsh at that distance would take a not insignificant amount of energy and attention that she could otherwise use to the benefit of the pack as a whole. True, Walsh was Robert’s son, so it was likely he could be talked into an arrangement, but she was still anxious and largely unsure of how to present the idea to him, despite already setting up a meeting with him for the following weekend.
The second, and perhaps most troubling problem, was that she still had no idea how to create such a rune. Knowing it was possible was nice, but that knowledge was hardly a consolation if she couldn’t find someone to teach her how to do it.
The third problem was that, despite their little heart-to-heart, Walsh was still, more or less, an intolerable brat. His participation in class was lacking, his work dull, and their car rides were just as silent and passive-aggressive as ever. She was tempted to tell him what she was working on, if only to get him to stop being such a dick, but she didn’t want to get his hopes up and he did, admittedly, have a good reason for his attitude. She just wished he would give her a little more incentive to help him. Because it was hugely time consuming, her research, and it wasn’t like time was something she had in abundance considering that she was teaching, taking her own classes, and working for the pack.
To make things even more difficult, she’d yet to find an anchor. And it wasn’t from a lack of trying. The first candidate she met she knew within a few minutes wouldn’t be compatible. He was middle-aged, entitled, and after spending sixteen minutes talking with him on her porch, she encouraged her sink to flood purely so she had an excuse to cut their meeting short. The second was more promising, and she genuinely tried, like, genuinely, over a series of weeks, to get to know the girl, but forcing the kind of spiritual connection necessary for an anchor bond wasn’t possible and the harder she tried the more difficult it was for her to feel anything. She was supposed to meet the next candidate the following week and she was already exhausted at the prospect.
So Teagan was sitting at her tiny kitchen table, frowning absently at her contact list on her phone, trying to think of someone who could help her fix the Walsh situation, trying to ignore the fact that she should really be focused on writing a paper, or grading her undergrad’s homework, or even renewing the henna pack surveillance tattoos on her left hand. She sighed set her phone down and went to work in the garden. Which was, unsurprisingly, also being problematic.
The first cold snap had hit, meaning the highs were rarely above fifty, and she’d had to focus her attention on her greenhouse plants, letting the outdoor ones follow their natural cycle of winter dormancy. Her greenhouse plants were largely flourishing, the vegetable portion producing exceptionally high yields that the pups took great pleasure in picking after school and bringing up to the main house to give to whoever was tasked with cooking dinner that night. Her berry bushes were similarly heavy with fruit, her small patch of herbs thriving.
The problem, in all of this, was the carrots.
Or, rather, the lack of carrots.
Because someone was eating them.
“Someone” because “something” didn’t make sense. The only animals that could enter the greenhouse were insects, small lizards, and the occasional enterprising bird. There was no way a raccoon could be sneaking in, and, according to the pups, they couldn’t smell anything but Teagan and the various wolves that frequented Teagan’s garden. She didn’t think any of the kids were responsible, but, apart from them, no one else really spent any time in the greenhouse apart from herself. She was, in short, stymied. So, without any other leads and a general irritation at life as support, she set a trap to discover her thief.
The trap was, admittedly, a bit over the top for a carrot-related infraction but considering she had come to standstill with both the Walsh situation and the Anchor situation, this was, at least, a positive avenue in which to express her frustration. The trap involved a simple detection spell paired with perhaps an overzealous amount of beet juice.
Like. A lot. Of beet juice.
She went to sleep pleased.
She was not, however, anticipating waking up at 3am to a very angry, beet-juice covered, werewolf banging on her door.
It was even more surprising that this werewolf was Walsh.
“Oh,” she said, upon opening the door. “Shit.”
“What did you do?” he hissed, pushing his way inside.
He was not only covered in beet juice, she realized somewhat belatedly, but also naked.
“I’m—You. Carrots? You?”
Walsh stomped into the bathroom, turning on the light with a literal growl of rage.
“Teagan, I am pink.”
“You were stealing my carrots! What the fuck?!”
“They taste good,” he snarled, as if that was an acceptable excuse for thievery. As if it was her fault for growing delicious produce.
“That’s—that’s not an excuse!”
Walsh turned on the water, scrubbing ineffectively at his brilliantly colored forearms.
“Why isn’t this coming off?”
“It’s beet juice.”
“And?”
“And I picked it for a reason, it doesn’t just wash off.”
Walsh turned the faucet off and rounded on her so quickly that she took an automatic step back, ramming the towel rod behind her into her ribcage.
“Ow.”
“What the fuck is your problem,” Walsh hissed. “I have class tomorrow.”
“My problem was that someone was stealing all my carrots. And obviously I didn’t know it was you.”
Walsh ducked low, to get into her face, teeth bared.
His fury was only slightly tempered by the fact that his face was magenta.
“Fix. This.”
Teagan swallowed.
“Okay, fine, just—can you.”
She flapped her hands at him and he stepped back, arms crossed, leaning his hip against the counter.
She bolted for the greenhouse.
Luckily the lemon tree was heavy with fruit for the taking and she returned to a furiously scowling Walsh with several lemons, a knife, and a towel.
“This may take a while,” she warned.
“Good thing I’ll have help,” he said.
She considered debating that but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it. There was nothing separating her bedroom area from the rest of the little studio and the light from the bathroom would keep her from sleep anyway.
“Fine,” she said, cutting the first lemon. “You start on your face, I’ll do your, uh. Chest.”
His very naked chest.
His well-defined naked chest.
His eighteen-year-old naked chest, she reminded herself.
Four excruciating minutes passed before either of them spoke again.
Teagan cleared her throat while cutting a third lemon.
“You mind telling me why you were eating carrots naked in my greenhouse at 3am on a Tuesday?
“It wasn’t on purpose,” Walsh muttered.
“What do you mean it wasn’t on purpose? How do you accidentally eat carrots?”
“No, that’s not—I didn’t come hear to steal your stupid carrots.”
“I’m confused.”
“I don’t—“ He stopped, wet a rag to wipe down his face, and started again, the towel clenched in one fist against the counter.
“Sometimes when I can’t sleep at night I let my wolf out to run. He likes your garden. Particularly the spot between the carrots and zucchini. It smells nice.”
Teagan…had no idea how to respond to that.
“Oh.”
“But I get hungry. Or, he does, I don’t—“ Walsh sighed, more tired than angry. “I don’t actually mean to eat anything, it just sort of happens.”
Teagan glances up from where she’s scrubbing at his bicep. She thinks the remaining pink is mostly from friction rather than staining.
“Well. I could leave you something, if you like. In case you get hungry. Like…a snack?”
She winced, afraid he would find the offer patronizing, but Walsh just shrugs, looking uncomfortable.
“I make a sandwich most nights to take for my lunch the next day. I could start making two and leaving one in the Greenhouse.”
He shrugged again.
“Or—maybe some jerky? Sandwiches require hands, I guess, so if you don’t want to change I could—“
“Sandwiches are fine,” he said, rough, and maybe a little embarrassed. “That’s—that would be nice.”
“Oh. Well. Okay, then.”
“Okay then.”