#I'll never get tired of this song | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mrspasser · 2 months

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Never gonna give you up 5+1

I don't think I ever posted this fanfic here, so I'm here to fix that.

Never was too soon for a repeat of tonight’s experience, Derek decided as he braced himself against the sharp corner. The wheels of the Jeep skidded on the gravel, making the back of the car slide out. There was no need for them to drive this fast, not anymore. Leftover adrenaline made for a heavy foot on the gas, apparently. The engine whined as they cut free of the forest, trading gravel for blacktop. Gradually they reduced speed, until they were driving at a pace well within the limits.

“Think you can hit play for me, big guy?” Stiles asked in an upbeat tone. “Without getting blood all over my iPod, if you can.”

The look Derek sent him was cutting, but Stiles was long since immune for any angry stare he received from the werewolf. With all his energy going into healing, Derek decided it wasn’t worth it to get into it with Stiles over something so small. He pressed his left hand against the flap of skin that was only loosely covering his ribs on his right side and reached out with his free hand to the battered iPod crammed into the hole that used to house the radio of the Jeep. The radio was one of the car parts that fell victim to the crash with the Kanima and with some help of Boyd Stiles had hooked up his iPod directly to the car’s speakers.

The Alpha werewolf didn’t bother to check what playlist it was, he just hit the large button in the middle and settled back into his seat, gritting his teeth against the pain the movement caused.

The sounds of an eighties synthesizer filled the car, drums coming in alternately from the left and right speaker, immediately followed by a peal of laughter from the car’s owner. Derek bit through the agony and pushed forward again, cutting off the music abruptly just when the lyrics started. Stiles didn’t say anything, though it took a minute before he stopped chuckling quietly.

When they got to the loft, Stiles followed him inside, although Derek hadn’t asked him to. He hadn’t told him not to either, which was probably why the teen did it. Not that Stiles bothered with doing what people told him to, not when it came to Derek. The boy was pack in all the ways that counted, except for heeding his Alpha’s commands.

Derek let himself fall on the threadbare couch, still holding his skin more or less in the right place to knit itself together again. Behind him, Stiles rummaged around in the kitchen, emerging a little while later with two bottles of water and a couple of energy bars. He dropped the food and one of the bottles on the couch next to the werewolf, easily within reach. Then he sat down on the armrest furthest from Derek, twisting the cap of his own bottle and gulping the contents down eagerly. The werewolf watched the boy’s Adams apple bop with each swallow, his eyes catching on the long line of his throat.

Stiles wiped his mouth and looked down at Derek, intelligent eyes roaming over the werewolf’s bloodied torso. “You going to be okay?” he asked, not really sounding like he needed an answer, so Derek didn’t give him one. “Thought so,” the boy confirmed anyway, and patted Derek’s shin twice as he got up. “I’m gonna give Roscoe a wash. I think there are bits of skin stuck to the passenger seat. Gross!”

“Gonna have to walk a little slower, big guy,” Stiles complained, sounding a little winded as he picked his way through the undergrowth a few paces behind Derek. He grunted dismissively, though he held his step a little anyway.

Derek might have wondered why he was always the one stuck with Stiles on a stake out, if the math wasn’t so easy. Being human, the boy was the weakest of the pack, physically speaking at least. And with Derek as Alpha and therefore strongest, it was only logical that they paired up. Besides, it wasn’t like Derek had his pick of people to go on stakeout with tonight. There wasn’t a clear threat, this was just Derek acting on a hunch. ‘Being paranoid’, Scott had said. ‘I’m not messing up my nails in the woods tonight’, was Erica’s reaction. Boyd had only told him to call when there was trouble. Derek was fully prepared to go alone tonight. It was his idea after all and he was pretty sure he could handle whatever he would encounter. Yet Stiles hadn’t let him. He didn’t offer to tag along, he just did.

When asked, the werewolf would say he hated being alone with Stiles. The boy was never not moving and only silent when sleeping. Scratch that, even asleep Stiles wasn’t silent. He was a source of constant movement, night or day, always in the periphery of Derek’s attention. It was impossible not to watch Stiles, even more so when they were alone.

Walking through the woods at night and trying to keep a low profile was also pretty much impossible with Stiles, a fact proved when Derek grabbed the boy’s elbow not for the first time that night to keep him upright. If it were up to him, he would’ve gladly let him faceplant in the leaves, but they were making enough noise as it was already.

“Do you think you could be any louder?” he hissed, shoving Stiles along the path.

“Do you think you could be any rougher?” Stiles threw back in a low voice, rubbing his hand over where Derek had grabbed his arm. He wouldn’t bruise, Derek hadn’t grabbed him that hard; chances were he was just sour about missing out on game night with Scott. He’d heard them talking about it yesterday, Stiles lamenting about him and Scott needing a boy’s night with pizza, energy drinks and playing video games in their underwear. Derek didn’t understand why Stiles would choose a night in the woods with him over that.

“Now what?” Stiles stopped at the ridge, looking out into the forest on the hill below them.

“Now we wait,” Derek answered, dropping down into a crouch and tugging the boy down with him. Stiles fell to his butt with a grunt, but pulled his legs under him a moment later, jostling Derek’s shoulder when he came up to his knees.

“You see anything?” Derek didn’t answer that, nor the next question: “Hear anything?”

Stiles rolled his eyes at the werewolf’s lack of communication and then shrugged his backpack off. He pulled the bag in front of him and opened up the zipper. At first Derek ignored the apple that was presented to him, but Stiles only shook it in emphasis until he took it.

For a few minutes, Stiles was as quiet as he ever got. Which meant that the sounds of him chewing on his own apple mixed in with the sounds of the forest.

When the humming started, Derek shut him up at first. It helped for a few minutes, but not long. Because the wind was in their favour, Derek gave up on shushing Stiles: it was easier to just tune him out and concentrate on the sounds that reached him from the forest.

It took a good while before the words showed up in his mind. Bits and pieces of song lyrics just floating around his brain, easy to ignore. It wasn’t until he caught himself starting to hum the same tune that he rounded on the boy next to him. “Damn it, Stiles!”

Stiles simply laughed softly. “It’s quite the earworm, isn’t it?”

“Give me a second, I’m just gonna… Yeah, I’ve got it all right here,” Stiles said through the phone, clicking around on his computer. “Whole list of it, actually. I’ll send you an email right now.”

Derek hung up the phone and grabbed the laptop from the coffee table. It was a refurbished laptop that Stiles had made him buy a few weeks ago, claiming that ‘no self-respectable Alpha in the twenty first century could go without, especially if they don’t want to say goodbye to their frigging flip phone’.

The mockery of his phone by his pack was getting old. The device maybe wasn’t as up to date as the other phones, but it held up in a fight and that was something Derek valued more over the use of the latest social media apps. However, contrary to popular belief, Derek wasn’t completely unaware of pop culture, which was why he immediately recognised the video for what it was.

It was hidden in the list of websites Stiles sent him. Derek was working his way through the links one by one, working up a steady appreciation of Stiles' research skills, when his laptop suddenly started playing music after he clicked the fourth link on the list.

He almost called Stiles to tell him off, but settled for aggressively closing down the browser window.

The other links were all normal, providing him with the information he asked for and then some.

“You want anything, hon?” The waitress directed the question to Scott, who placed his order of a large breakfast spread with an equally large smile. She wasn’t placated by it and Derek resigned himself to giving her an extra big tip for putting up with his raucous pack on her early morning shift.

“I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse,” Stiles said to the table at large, patting his stomach.

“Should’ve ordered something else than bacon then,” Isaac deadpanned from across from him.

Stiles smiled impishly. “My love for bacon is strong, I can’t help it.”

“Can you make bacon from horses?” Scott wondered out loud and that set off a whole discussion about the consummation of horse meat.

Derek let it all wash over him, leaning back in his chair. His pack was fine, all were whole, or whole again at least. Isaac was wearing a track shirt that Stiles had lying in the back of his Jeep, replacing his own shirt that was ripped to pieces. There was blood on his jeans still, Derek could smell it from across the table, but it wasn’t visible against the dark fabric and the wounds were all healed. Erica sported a similar situation, also with mostly invisible bloodstains on her dark clothes, as did Boyd. The blood wasn’t all theirs. Normally, Derek would have told them to go home, wash up, but this Denny’s was closer and growling stomachs had won over the urge to get cleaned up. Or rather, Stiles had strongarmed him into buying his pack breakfast, saying that it was good for bonding and empty stomachs alike.

Not bothering to get in on the conversation, Derek let his eyes glide over his pack members, ensuring himself once again that everyone was in one piece. He got stuck on Stiles, distracted by the way his T-shirt pulled taut when he moved his arms behind his back to stretch. Derek hadn’t seen the article of clothing before, it had been hidden underneath a grey striped hoodie; he guessed that was ruined too. It was a black T-shirt with a jumble of letters and symbols on the front. It looked like computer code, or something equally confusing. Undoubtedly it was some pop culture reference, or a bad pun. He didn’t care enough to ask for the meaning of it, yet his eyes kept returning to the text on the shirt, even after their food arrived.

He recognised a word in the top line from the abbreviations the pack used in their text messages; sometimes it was as if they were allergic to vowels. The letters ‘nvr’ probably spelled never. And below that, was the word ‘annog’, which could be a made up word or it was simply ‘gonna’ spelled backwards. Then it said ‘forgive’, subtract four, and on the bottom something with ‘me’, ‘you’ and ‘splitting soup’. It was complete nonsense, that’s what it was.

Eventually, Stiles caught him looking. “You like the shirt, big guy?” He took a bite of a strip of bacon, cocking his head as he waited for Derek to answer.

“It’s ridiculous. It doesn’t even make sense.”

Stiles grinned. “Sure it does. You just have to figure it out.”

Next to him, Boyd took a look at Stiles’ shirt and scoffed. “Isn’t that joke ancient by now?”

“Classics never go out of style,” Stiles argued, pointing the strip of bacon at Derek’s second. “Besides, I like it. It’s got meaning.”

“Like your stripper mom’s T-shirt?” Erica asked snidely. “Because that one’s just rubbish.”

“Nah,” Stiles smirked and then he winked at Derek. “This one has a better roll to it, doesn’t it, oh Alpha mine?”

It clicked for Derek in that moment and he let out a long suffering sigh. “I should rip your throat out…”

“With your teeth, I know,” Stiles finished for him, happily munching on another strip of bacon.

Up until now Derek had always thought that brownies were something to eat, not annoying little creatures to kill. Or, well, that’s not exactly true. He knew they were mythical creatures, but he’d thought they were just that. Mythical, not real. And how bad could they be if they ended up being real? Pretty damn annoying, it turned out. They didn’t look like much, but they had razor sharp teeth and equally sharp nails that cut through clothes and skin like miniature knives through butter. And like a wolf pack, their strength was in numbers. However, he refused to lose to something small and annoying, so, in the end, the wolf pack won.

Derek looked around at his pack, who were panting and bloody, but otherwise okay. Erica was frantically raking her fingers through her hair, cursing angrily at the loose hairs she brushed out with it. “Those fuckers cut a chunk of my hair!”

Boyd diligently looked at the problem area, declaring it wasn’t so bad. Erica huffed in disdain. “No offence, honey, but you haven’t got a hair on your head. What the hell do you pretend to know about it?”

She turned to the other available girl, Allison, and let the hunter fuss over her hair. Derek was long past the point of wondering how the hell that happened. His pack included a hunter, a banshee and a former kamina, he'd learned to not question it anymore.

He patted his pockets, routinely checking for his car keys. Those he found, though they threatened to fall through a tear in his jeans any minute. He came up short when feeling around for his phone. The pocket on that side was cut clean through, empty of its contents. Derek rumbled in annoyance, getting a quick inquiring glance from Boyd.

"Lost my phone," he explained quickly, already stalking back to the area where he'd been for most of the fight. It was where Stiles was sitting, sagged out against a tree and scrolling through something on his phone. The boy was holding the cuff of his sleeve pressed gingerly against a small cut above his lip, otherwise he seemed fine and Derek didn't have to worry about him.

Sniffing out his phone turned out to be harder than he thought. The ground was covered in quickly disintegrating brownie bodies and while he could appreciate the lack of clean up they would have to do, the smell of decay and blood covered up the other smells in the area.

Derek planted his hands on his hips with a huff, scanning the forest floor around him. His phone was black and pretty small: it could be anywhere. He glanced at the smartphone in Stiles' hand, with its shiny firetruck red cover. Obnoxious and flashy as it was, it would be pretty easy to find.

"What's up, big guy?" Stiles asked from his spot by the tree. "Looking for something?"

"Dropped my phone," Derek sighed, already making plans in his head to drop by the mall in the next town over to get a new phone. He wondered if they still sold flip phones.

"Oh wait, I'll call you so we can hear it ring," Stiles said, clambering to his feet and moving his fingers over his touch screen.

Sure enough, moments later there was a song playing, a few meters to his left. "That's not my ringtone," Derek said sharply, his eyebrows climbing up to his hairline when he recognised the song.

“It is when I call,” Stiles answered gleefully, watching as Derek went off in the direction of the sound. The warm baritone of the singer was cut off when the werewolf bent down to retrieve his phone, buried half underneath a dead brownie. He wiped it on his jeans and then flipped it open.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Stiles called out.

“Figuring out how to delete this ringtone,” Derek bit out, tapping the keys forcefully.

“Hey, no, why would you do that?” Stiles ambled closer and for a moment Derek forgot to tune out his scent. It was a habit that his mother had taught him when he was young; with their keen sense of smell and hearing there was little privacy in a pack: it was common courtesy to try and tune the others out as much as possible in normal, day to day interactions. Derek did it with his own pack too, as much out of self-preservation as in consideration of their privacy. His pack consisted of teenagers, they were generally a whirlwind of strong emotions and unwarranted arousal. He would get whiplash if he’d be able to scent it all. Right now, Stiles smelled of disappointment and vague embarrassment.

Derek frowned. “Because it’s a cheesy song. A joke.”

The smell of embarrassment got a little stronger. “It’s our thing,” Stiles said with a shrug that wasn’t as casual as he probably hoped. “It’s our song, sourwolf” he tacked on with a smirk, also a bit strained.

“It’s a love song,” Derek said slowly, puzzled, his fingers stilling on the phone keys. It wasn’t like he knew how to change the ringtone anyway. Before now he didn’t even know you could add personalised ringtones to a caller.

“Yeah, well…” Stiles cleared his throat and scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. He was also getting quite red in the face, yet still Derek couldn’t look away from him. “It’s the sentiment that counts.”

“The sentiment,” Derek repeated, still confused by the situation.

“The sentiment, you know, the message? The idea the song conveys?”

“I know what sentiment means, Stiles,” he said, more gently than he usually was with the teen. “But still… a love song.”

“I know that,” said Stiles, still with red cheeks. “And I know that we,” he gestured with his hand between them, “are not… that.”

Derek pressed down on the sudden urge to ask what exactly they were, if not that.

“I just think that, it’s just,” Stiles floundered and then he shrugged somewhat defeated. “It’s something that you need to hear, every now and then.” A silence fell between them, one loaded with something Derek couldn’t quite figure out. Not yet.

Stiles took a deep breath and held out his hand. “Give me that, I’ll change it back to your normal, boring ringtone.”

Derek shook his head and put his phone in his jacket pocket, a pocket that was still in one piece. With a nudge to Stiles' shoulder he started to walk away, towards the spot where they parked their cars. Stiles followed him, smelling content and happy, with his lips pressed together to hide a smile.

Derek hadn’t known he had a first aid kit in his bathroom. Yet there it was, neatly tucked away in the cabinet underneath the sink. The rectangle box felt heavy, like it was stuffed full with all kinds of items a self-healing werewolf would never need.

“Why do I have this?” Derek asked as he walked back into the room, knowing for sure he never bought it, so someone else had to. Someone named Stiles, probably.

“Because you have humans in your pack,” Stiles answered from the sofa, making grabby hands at the kit before Derek was even close enough. He took the box, putting it in his lap and opening it immediately. “There should be ice packs in the fridge,” Stiles directed without looking up.

And indeed there were. Derek grabbed two and a towel, making his way back to Stiles. He carefully sat down by the foot that the boy had put up on the sofa. His sneaker was already off, but he still had his sock on. The werewolf carefully placed the ice packs on both sides of Stiles’ swollen ankle, wrapping them in place with the towel.

Meanwhile, Stiles was wrapping his arm up. It was his lower left arm, making it not too hard for him to do himself; the bandage was a little wonky, but it’d do for now. It was just a large scrape anyway, the bandage was mostly to keep the wound clean.

That left the cut on his eyebrow. Derek watched Stiles feeling around the cut with his fingers of his one hand, while holding a butterfly bandage with his other. It wouldn’t work, but he waited until Stiles grimaced and locked eyes with him, a crooked, bloody butterfly bandage still in hand.

Derek leaned forward and picked a clean bandage from the kit. “This one, right?”

Stiles nodded and kept his eyes on Derek when he scooted closer until he was seated next to the boy’s hip. The cut was already cleaned and disinfected, all that was left was to place the bandage. Maybe two, Derek thought, as he eyed the cut critically. Stiles had said it wasn’t deep enough to warrant stitches and he’d gotten hurt often enough to know, Derek presumed. It didn’t sit easy with him, though. He didn’t like to see his pack get hurt, especially the humans because they didn’t heal as quickly as the werewolves did. And, he didn’t like seeing Stiles get hurt.

Derek carefully placed the butterfly bandage across the cut. Stiles smelled of blood and pain, though the boy assured him the latter was mostly from his ankle. Spraining an ankle hurt, Derek knew from experience, even though for him the pain was always short lived. Stiles closed his eyes as Derek put a second bandage in place and covered them with a larger bandaid. “There, that should do it.”

“Thanks,” Stiles said softly as Derek put everything back in the kit and quickly tidied away the mess.

“Want to watch a movie?” The question came somewhat unexpected for Stiles, yet he smiled and nodded quickly. Derek tossed him the remote so he could select a movie from the streaming services the boy had set up himself a while back and went into the kitchen to grab them something to drink.

When he came back Stiles had a superhero movie lined up, one that Derek hadn’t seen yet but he knew Stiles had. He pulled the coffee table closer to the sofa so Stiles could reach his drink and then sat down, carefully placing Stiles' injured foot in his lap. The boy’s heartbeat ticked up and his cheeks coloured red, yet he didn’t say anything. Derek nodded for him to press play on the movie and gently eased his hand a little ways up Stiles’ pant leg, just above the ice packs, to make skin contact and leach away his pain.

“Thanks for coming back,” Stiles said quietly over the sounds of the opening scene. “And taking care of me.”

Derek glanced at him, at the way Stiles held his eyes glued to the tv screen to avoid looking at him directly. He waited a beat for Stiles to take a sip of his soda. “That goes without saying, Stiles,” he emphasised then. “I wasn’t gonna run around and desert you.”

Stiles made a choking sound and sprayed his drink everywhere. Derek kept his foot in place while the boy flailed and laughed, wiping the soda from his face with his sleeve. “Damn it, Derek! It came out of my nose!”