#tjstanton

Derek cracked open an eye. Stiles, bone-pale skin washed out in the wan yellow light cast by the desk lamp, perched on the edge of the double-bed adjacent to his own, his eyes locked on the privacy latch like he could flip it with his mind.  For all Derek knew, maybe he could.  He’d learned something new about vampires every day for the past year.

Like how Stiles’ accent crept in when he needed blood—prepositions dropping like flies, vowels and consonants scraping sharply over his soft palate—mouth unwittingly molding words of acquired languages into the cadence of his mother tongue.     

Derek rubbed the sleep off his face and pushed up onto his elbows, threadbare sheet pooling at his lower back. Stiles’ eyes tracked Derek’s movements, traced the tattoo between Derek’s shoulder blades, head eerily still. An alarm clock glowed ominously in the near-dark of the room; 4:16 pm.  Too early for Stiles to be awake. The sun wouldn’t set for four more hours. 

“I’ll find a hospital tonight,” Derek promised, pulling his burner phone off the charger. 

Stiles' attention slid back to the door, head cocked, listening.  The world outside their spartan hotel room slithered in through the crack under the door.  A vacuum hummed two rooms over, a baby cried one floor above, drowning out the droning television next door.  Derek pulled rancid fryer oil from the hotel restaurant and cloying pool chlorine through his nose, expelled it over his tongue.

“We can’t risk it,” Stiles said.  “Not this close to Argent’s hideout. Gerald will have eyes and ears on the hospitals.  They know I need blood for strength, the fresher the better, and if any goes missing, it will tip them off that we’re closing in.”

Together they’d cut a swath through the Hunters in California and surrounding states, Stiles drinking his fill as each base fell. Derek raided hospitals during the days and weeks they hid, when fresh kills weren’t available. “So might a dead hotel maid, if she’s drained,” Derek reminded him, tapping on his map app. “If Kate and Gerald are watching the hospitals, they’re watching the hotels, too.”

Cold fingertips traced the whorls of black ink on his back, and Derek jumped, claws popping out on pure instinct, puncturing his phone screen.  “Dammit, Stiles!” Derek rolled over into his back, severing the feather-light contact. “I told you not to sneak up on me.”  For all his superior vision, strength, smell and hearing, without a heartbeat or distinct scent to follow, Derek struggled to detect Stiles’ movements. He held the cracked screen up in front of the Vampire’s face.  “This is the third phone in as many months.”

“I’m five-hundred years old, pup,” Stiles said, batting aside the ruined device like an annoying gnat. “I have self-control.  I can feed without killing.”

Derek shook his head. “If she lives, she’ll go to the police, and Kate will know we’re here. I’m sorry, but it’s a lose-lose situation.”

“We’ll keep her for a few days,” Stiles offered placidly, like he was proposing taking in a stray dog.  “I’ll feed a little today, more before we strike down Gerald and Kate.  We’ll let her go after.”

Derek winced. 

“This bothers you. Why?” Stiles sighed, looking down his nose at Derek, generous mouth a grim line.  “It’s an answer to your lose-lose situation.” Stiles raised his hands, slender fingers forming air quotes, and Derek was once again struck by how human, how young, Stiles could seem when he wanted to.

Feeding from Hunters was one thing.  Their faces frozen in agony, their gurgling screams cut short as Stiles’ teeth sliced through vocal cords and carotid arteries, wasn’t something Derek would subject innocent people to.  “We’re predators.  We don’t have to be killers.” His Alpha’s words tasted like ash and iron in his mouth.

“Kidnapping isn’t killing,” Stiles calmly reasoned.  “A little mangling, maybe, but no death. That's what I call an important distinction.”  Something like humor glinted darkly in the corner of Stiles’ brown eyes.

“If we kidnap a human and hold her hostage, we’re the monsters the Hunter’s believe us to be. And...I’ve watched you feed.” Derek grimaced.  “I’ve seen it.  She’ll wish she were dead.”

A cool hand fell to his bare chest, landing over his heart.  “There will always be some pain, but it doesn’t have to be what you’ve witnessed,” Stiles whispered, sentient and dangerous, words dripping promise, traps laid to lure unsuspecting prey. “I’m hungry, Derek.” 

His name on Stiles’ tongue, all hard E’s and rolling R’s, made Derek sit up in bed and toss the blanket to the carpeted floor. Every letter licked across his skin like fire. “Drink from me.  Not her.”

Stiles assessed him, gaze cool.  “You?”

Derek nodded, wiping damp palms over the blown-out knees of his cotton pajama pants.  He’d resisted this inevitability long enough. “I can handle pain, and if we do it now, we’ll learn how fast it takes me to recover from the blood loss, figure out the optimum time for both of us if you need to feed again before we attack the Argent base.”

“Is this a science experiment, pup?”  Derek bristled at Stiles’ laugh. “Are you donating your body to my cause? A little trial and error, then we can analyze the outcome.”

Muscles and bones ached to shift, to maim, to kill. “Kate Argent deserves to die. I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen. Me, not an unsuspecting human.” The words rushed through clenched teeth. “I asked you to help me. Will you?” 

Derek found himself on his feet in one long sleek motion, yanked hard and sharp by a fish-hook in his gut more so than Stiles’ rangy limbs. Stiles ran his tongue over needle-like incisors, one cool hand landing at the small of Derek’s back. The fine hairs on Derek’s neck stood on end, responding to the electric pulse zinging up his spine at the contact, out through his arms and legs, sizzling over his cheekbones.   A long-fingered hand fisted in Derek’s hair, tugging his head back, exposing his neck.  “You’re sure about this?  I’ll only ask once.”  

Derek had already made enough impossible choices in his life to recognize the fork in the road; he tossed his sister’s imploring eyes, his mother’s words of caution, and Stiles’ dire warnings out the window, leaving them to litter the hellish highway he couldn’t—he wouldn’t—stop traveling. There was no going back. “Yes.”

His first thought as teeth sliced through his skin—soft, like razors through silk, so different than the snapping jaws and tearing flesh of a wolf bite—was that he was on fire.  He burned.  Miles away a voice shouted; his own? His Alpha’s? Derek struggled, arms rising to push at Stiles’ shoulders, his head, anything he could reach.  But as quickly as it began, the flames blistering the backs of his eyelids extinguished. 

It wasn’t heat after all.  It was cold. 

Strength—power—sucked out of Derek so fast his vision blurred. It slipped like a tonic through the wound in his neck, poured down Stiles’ throat.  His skin turned to goosebumps, every hair standing on end as his body stiffened: bare toes curling into the carpet, fingers flexing, cock hardening. 

Pain and pleasure mixed, chased each other around Derek’s brain in an endless, euphoric feedback loop. For a minute or ten, the ringing in his ears and the soft suck of Stiles’ mouth made Derek feel like they were the only two people—the only two creatures—in the universe.  The fabric of Derek’s reality rippled, a shift in the light, and the world distorted in his misty vision, faded away. It was a savage comfort, one he could become addicted to.  In that cold, black space between the stars Derek didn’t need to think about his dead family, about Kate and his stolen innocence. He was water behind a damn, barely constrained, churning out energy, nothing more than the pounding lifeblood in his veins.

Stiles’ hand slipped from Derek’s lower back to cup the curve of his ass, one thin thigh slipping between his legs.  Derek’s hips pumped forward once, twice, a whine slipping through his lips, rising in pitch as he frantically rubbed himself with abandon against Stiles until he exploded with a choked-off groan.

Teeth detached from his abused skin with a wet pop.  “I told you,” Stiles slurred, blood drunk,“it doesn’t have to be all pain. You don’t have to hurt.” A river of red spilled down Stiles’ chin, soaked into the neck of his shirt.  

He slid an arm around Derek’s upper back, the other still cradling his neck, and slowly lowered him to the mattress. Derek’s sticky sweatpants were peeled off one leg at a time, Stiles’ slick tongue a balm to his skin as he licked Derek clean.  

“Rest now, pup.  Let’s see how long it takes you to recover.” A smirk played at the corners of his bloody lips, smug and sated.

The room stank of blood and sex, scent circulating endlessly on a stale, air-conditioned breeze. Never, Derek wanted to say as he closed his eyes. He was drained, half-dead.  He was alive.