Merry Christmas, @mute90!
I hope this is to your liking!
Read on AO3
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'Twas the Full Moon Before Finals
Nick always thought Stiles was weird, but, like, lowkey weird. An acceptable level of weird where Stiles stays up until ungodly hours of the night, but also lets Nick borrow his ecology notes. It all evens out.
After Thanksgiving, though, Stiles started getting so much weirder. And this creepy older guy started hanging out a lot instead of just climbing through the window every once in a while. (See? Creepy.)
Stiles isn’t totally un-creepy, but he’s nice enough. This guy, when he’s not crawling in through the window, sniffs things. Particularly Stiles. Which is…
Where does Stiles find these people? Because all his other friends are like that, too. Just not as bad as the guy whose leather jacket Stiles is currently wearing.
Stiles keeps sniffing the guy’s jacket.
In fact, Nick and Stiles had been in the middle of an argument two nights ago about Batman of all things and Stiles had suddenly stopped, grabbed the jacket off the back of his desk chair, and shoved his face into it.
This intense weirdness is post-Thanksgiving weirdness. Post-Stiles going home for the long weekend weirdness.
Maybe back home, Stiles had finally been sucked into this guy’s evil cult or something.
This morning, Stiles is extra twitchy. They’re just a day from the end of fall semester with winter break coming on so maybe Stiles has been drinking too much coffee but when Nick went to move the stack of papers on the floor, Stiles had growled at him.
And has been on his phone since.
It’s a couple hours after the growling incident that there’s a knock on their door and, lo and behold, who should it be?
The creep.
Nick glances out the window. It’s still daylight, so apparently the guy only likes to climb through the window when he can most easily get away with it—and, likely, get away with Nick’s murder.
Stiles rushes over to the guy and wraps his arms around him. “Oh, thank god, Derek.”
Derek. Huh. Nick had always kind of avoided knowing anything about him.
“It’s going to be hard for you,” Derek is saying, and Nick frowns. “The first time—” Derek stops and looks over at Nick, glaring him down, before he and Stiles have some sort of silent conversation that Nick only really sees through Stiles’s hands and the guy’s eyebrows.
Derek stands, hands in his pockets yet still somehow intimidating, while Stiles starts grabbing his things.
“I gotta go. Derek and I, uh. We need to talk about Beacon Hills things. You know, what’s up with the pa-ah— people. At home. Scott. My dad. Just normal people who do normal things.”
“Stiles,” Derek warns, and he’s got some sort of low, commanding rumble in his voice that Nick swears Stiles responds to with a whine.
“Going,” he tells Derek, then tosses a wave at Nick.
Nick walks over to lock the door and swears he can hear Stiles out in the hallway saying, “O alpha, my alpha,” like some sort of Dead Poets Societyhomage.
Weirder.
~
Nick is slumped over his history textbook when Stiles bursts back into their room a few hours later. He keeps glancing outside significantly. Night has fallen, but the light of the full moon is still bright as it filters through their window.
“Hey,” Stiles greets. “Can’t talk. Meeting Derek. Just gotta—” He shakes his head, freezes for a moment and breathes out in harsh puffs of air, his hand coming up to shield his face from Nick’s view.
Nick has had it. Enough is enough and obviously this Derek guy, besides being creepy, is causing Stiles to make even worse decisions than he already does. He pushes away his textbook and sits up, waiting until Stiles makes eye contact with him. Stiles’s eyes look wild and glassy and, for just a second, Nick thinks they looks golden, but that’s probably just because he’s sleep-deprived. He steadies his gaze on Stiles and Stiles makes an attempt to straighten up attentively.
“Are you on drugs, Stiles?” Stiles’s eyes widen and his jaw drops, starts opening and closing. “Because you can tell me. I can help you. If Derek is forcing you into anything you don’t want—”
Stiles lets out a laugh. “What?! No, no. It’s not like.” His whole body shakes and his hands clench and unclench. “Look, we’ll talk. Soon.” He gestures as he speaks, vibrating with energy. Yeah, totally normal, Nick thinks.
“I’m worried,” Nick says. “Ever since you got back from Thanksgiving break, you’ve been different.”
Silently, lips pursed as he apparently keeps in whatever thoughts he has about that, Stiles nods. Then, he flips around to start searching through his bedside drawer and proceeds to brandish his lube victoriously. No condom, Nick notes.
When he turns back around and sees the way Nick is looking between his face and the lube, Stiles has the rationale to at least look sheepish. “Okay,” Stiles says earnestly. “You’re right. I’m different. I’ve…” He rolls his hands over each other, searching for the right word. “Changed.”
“Is he bribing you?” Nick asks. “With sex?” Nick hates even considering it, but all signs point to yes.
There’s a howl and Stiles whips around three hundred and sixty degrees. He closes his eyes. “Hold on, Der.”
“Seriously?”
Stiles keeps his eyes closed, feeling around as he sidesteps to the door until Nick can’t see his face. “Yeah. I’ll explain later.”
Stiles runs out without another word and Nick sends a series of question marks via text message when an hour passes and no Stiles.
~
Two and a half hours after Stiles’s apparent booty call departure, Nick ventures out for some late night Taco Bell. His brain is fried and Stiles has been pushed to the back of his mind.
The overexhausted part of his mind tells him that if Stiles has been murdered, Nick can probably get an extension on his finals. Or even an automatic A, if the professor is feeling generous. So, really, it’s fine. Nick can identify Stiles’s murderer and live the rest of the year without a roommate.
Most of his brain is currently occupied by how many burritos he can order with the cash he has in his pocket and whether or not he still has a twenty or if he spent it on Red Bulls.
These thoughts, however, are interrupted by the distinctive sound of grunting, of skin slapping against skin, and Nick stops in his tracks about ten feet from his car as curiosity gets to him.
Idly, he remembers that Stiles had gone out to see (read: bang) Derek and that could be happening in the parking lot, but that was a while ago.
He walks toward the sound and has to maneuver toward the back of the lot before he sees moonlight illuminating pale skin through the passenger window of a Camaro.
Pale, mole-dotted skin. Damn it.
And, yep, the other guy has to be Derek, dark beard pressed to Stiles’s throat.
Nick is annoyed enough that he taps the window. “You have a psych final at seven-thirty tomorrow morning!”
The growl he receives in response sends a shiver down his spine, but he’s not going to be intimidated by some—
Something is wrong with Stiles’s face. His eyes are golden. And glowing. His teeth are too big and too sharp. He’s looking at Nick like Nick could be dinner and Nick wishes he had already gone to Taco Bell, could toss Stiles a burrito and run.
“Control,” Derek says. “Look at me, Stiles. Look at me. There. Better, right? Feel me.”
Stiles is obviously focused on Derek, eyes slipping closed.
The window rolls down a couple of inches and Derek’s eyes flash red before going back to whatever normal is for him. Nick’s never paid attention before.
“Don’t run.” Derek grunts as Stiles shifts, bites his lip, and Nick has no idea why he’s still here. “If you act like prey, he’ll see prey.”
“‘Prey’?” Nick repeats. “What? Does that make you two predators?”
The red is back and Derek snaps his teeth. “Yes.”
Nick can’t respond to that. Numbly, he walks to his car and gets in, sitting there for ten minutes with just the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. Then, he peels out of the school parking lot.
~
Nick’s first final is at noon, so he’s still cramming for it as the door creaks open and Stiles walks in.
He hadn’t returned at all during the night and Nick wonders if he and Derek were fucking the whole time or if they just slept in the car.
He’s been questioning what he saw, trying to reason it away, and Stiles seems so nonthreatening now that maybe it was all some crazy caffeine-fueled, stress-driven fever dream.
Stiles takes a seat on his bed and picks at the comforter for a minute before sighing, looking to Nick. “So I said I’d explain.”
The bottom drops out of Nick’s stomach, but he sits up, alert. His heart starts to hammer and he swallows.
Stiles winces and covers his ears, like he’s hungover, but there are no loud noises in the room so it really doesn’t make sense. Stiles doesn’t make sense.
“Explain,” Nick says anyway.
“The day after Thanksgiving, I almost died.”
This is not how Nick expected this conversation to go. “What? Are you okay—”
Stiles holds up a hand. “There wasn’t enough time to get me to the hospital and Derek wasn’t going to let me just die, so...he did what he had to do.”
“That creep saved your life?”
Stiles laughs. “I don’t know why you think he’s so creepy. I mean, I do, but Derek is so soft, he’s not even a marshmallow. Whipped cream, maybe.” Stiles considers it for a moment, then shrugs at Nick. “And yeah. He saved me.” He scratches his neck, some phantom itch that he traces with his fingertips after. “He bit me.”
Dumbfounded, Nick stares at Stiles. Maybe it’s a cult, maybe it’s just drugs, maybe Stiles needs to see a counselor… “Bit you?” he asks instead, for clarification’s sake.
“Yeah,” Stiles adds quickly, “but I totally consented so it’s all good.”
“Stiles, what—”
Stiles dips his head, and when he looks back up, his eyes are glowing again. “I’m a werewolf.”
“Uh-huh.” Nick blinks, but the glow is still there.
“And so is Derek.”
“Okay.” Nick’s head hurts. He should lie down.
“And last night was my first full moon.”
Nick nods until his head feels like it’s no longer connected to his neck.
“Nick?” Stiles’s voice sounds worried, comes the distant thought.
“Werewolves,” Nick says, and promptly passes out.
Definitely weirder.
