Returning the Favor
Sterek | 5k | T
Stiles pays a nighttime visit to his boyfriend in secret, or so he thinks. Unfortunately, the Hale family has keener ears than he realizes.
It’s late when Derek hears the noise at the side of the house. A creak of siding that cuts through the backdrop of cricket song. Just one lone sound, but there’s something cautious about it. Probing.
He lowers the book he’s reading, but no other sounds follow. Derek has been lying sprawled across his bed, drowsy and warm and comfortable, sweatpant-clad legs resting against the wall—but now that he’s conscious of the sound, his focus sharpening, he thinks he’s been hearing quiet noises grow nearer for some time without quite comprehending them. A wild animal outside, maybe, creeping slowly around the foundation of the house. Something large enough that the mulch in the flower bed crunches beneath its weight.
It’s not often that a solitary animal grows bold enough to venture this close to a werewolf pack—the scent always scares them off first. They don’t even get raccoons out here, especially not with the cold this time of year. It could always be their cousin Warren, who’s always thought it funny to startle his relatives with unexpected visits in the dead of night. Or any one of the nasty things in Uncle Peter’s wild stories, supernatural things that creep into the house come dark.
Derek glances at the window, book still resting on his chest, but the house is still.
Maybe it’s gone. That’s just as well: he’s too comfortable to drag himself over to the window to look.
And then another sound comes, an unmistakable creak. Heavy weight settling into place.
Downstairs, his mother sighs. “What was that?” she demands, her voice faint with distance. She and his dad are likely out on the porch swing at this time of evening, even though it’s nearly winter, lunatics that they are. “If Laura and Cora are at it again—”
“I’m sure they aren’t, Tal,” Derek’s father replies, sounding amused. “You put the fear of god in them.”
Mom scoffs. “If we have to repair another door, it’s coming out of their pockets.”
“Not everything is my fault, Mom,” Cora mutters pointedly from down the hall. There’s heavy metal coming from the vicinity of Laura’s bedroom, just low enough to be blasting from her headphones, and she doesn’t pipe up to defend herself.
The thing hasn’t gone away. Metal squeaks a moment later, and then the scrabbling returns, punctuated by a thump and a muffled grunt.
Annoyed, Derek tosses the book aside and clambers to his feet, crossing over to the window. When he hoists up the sash, letting the night chill waft in, he peers down into the dark and finds that the source is worse than anything he could have imagined.
It’s his boyfriend, scaling the side of the house like some deranged cat burglar.
Stiles is hanging onto the drainpipe, having managed to hoist himself several feet off the ground. He’s leaning against the metal awning over the kitchen window, one foot atop the shutter and the other scrabbling for purchase against the siding. At the clatter of Derek’s opening window, he looks up, startled, and nearly loses his balance.
“What are you doing here?” Derek hisses.
“Just returning the favor.” With a moment to catch himself against the awning, Stiles gets his bearing and grins. “What? Don’t make that face. C’mon, you can show up at all hours of the night, but turnabout isn’t fair play?”
With that, he sticks his tongue between his teeth, which he sometimes does unconsciously when something demands his full attention. And the perilous task of climbing should get his full attention, given how often he stumbles when both of his feet are on the ground. God, Derek is about to witness his idiot boyfriend fall to his death or something.
Stiles heaves himself mostly onto the awning, clawing for purchase with a grunt. When he reaches for the window, he loses his grip, nearly sliding backward onto the grass; in a flash of panic, Derek grabs him by his shirt and yanks him forward.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” he demands, aware of their volume and even more aware of their audience.
The awning rattles as Stiles draws up his long legs to slip inside the window feet first, ducking under the sash. He’s panting a little as he pulls himself upright, though he bats his eyes sweetly in the face of Derek’s scowl. “Oh, please. I knew you’d catch me. ‘My hero,’ and all that.”
“Should have let you fall and die,” Derek retorts, shutting the window.
“Probably. Oh man, that was so athletic. Sometimes, I amaze myself.”
Derek doesn’t have anything smart to say to that. He’s only half paying attention, too busy bracing for the discussion sure to follow.
He and Stiles may as well have stomped up and down the stairs blowing air horns as far as the rest of the house goes. Everyone will have heard. Derek is absolutely sure because you can hear a pin drop, like no one’s even moving, like everyone’s waiting with bated breath—either gleeful or judgmental or both—to hear what comes next. Even Laura’s deafening headphones have gone silent. Fuck.
Worst of all…Stiles doesn’t know any of this. He doesn’t yet know about the secret the Hale family hides, or how keenly they can hear, or that every word he says will be seized up and cheerfully dissected and gossiped about in real time.
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For your prompt request: medical drama from when Mary and Neil were on the run?
(also I love you I love your writing hopefully youre able to feel back in the swing of things soon! 💜)
asksjd thank u <3 that means so much ily anon :')
~ ~
"Stop moving. You're making this worse for yourself."
Mary's fingers moved deftly across the broken terrain of her son's skin. It was bruised and scarred, pale between blotches of purple, green, and yellow. But what concerned Mary most was the deep slash across Samuel's abdomen, stretching from his navel to just under his rib cage. She pressed a towel to the terrible wound, but his blood soaked through it in seconds.
"Mom?" Samuel gasped. He raised his head and looked at the mess of his stomach.
Mary seized his chin in her hand and squeezed. "Be still," she hissed with a hard shake. Mary used to fight with her husband when he manhandled Nath—Samuel the way she just did. But she didn't let herself think about that right now. Not when it was his knife that had carved death into her child's stomach.
Beads of sweat clung to Samuel's skin and his complexion was quickly turning gray. He was close to unconsciousness, approaching something worse.
Hospital, the word was like a siren in Mary's head. He needs to go to the hospital. Mary squeezed her eyes closed and shut the thought down. Hospitals were out of the question. She would deal with this herself.
She used the needle and thread she'd stocked in the first aid kit to stitch Samuel's skin back together. Samuel had passed out halfway through, and Mary was both relieved he'd stopped squirming and panicked over how still he was. Between stitches she checked his breathing and pressed trembling fingers to the weak pulse in his throat, terrified she would feel nothing. By the time she was done, her hands were stained and hurting from handling the curved needle. The sutures were uneven, but they held Samuel's skin together well enough, and there was nothing else she could do.
He was so small. So small and gray wrapped in the thin motel blankets. Mary didn't sleep that night. Instead she hovered over Samuel's prone form and watched his chest rise and fall like a hawk. Periodically she checked his bandages. She vowed to herself that she would keep him alive or die trying.
Mary pressed her palm to Samuel's forehead and pushed back his sweat-slick hair out of his face as he slept. He looked so much like his father that it sent a sick shudder through Mary's body. She would dye his hair before they left, and try to find colored contacts for him. But for now, she let him rest.
"Abram," she whispered, brushing her fingers over the faint traces of blood still smeared across his face. "Abram," she said, over and over until morning came.
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