Chapter Text
Stiles smells Jackson before he even sees him. His scent leaking into the doorway like designer cologne, new leather, and Irises...sweet but cold. His scent carries an unnatural edge, though, there's a synthetic quality to it as if it's masking something underneath all the sweetness that he doesn't want others to pick up on.
Eli fusses as the smell makes its way to him as well, scrunching up his tiny nose and gnawing at Stiles' knuckles in distress.
“Where's my baby D-bag?”
Stiles instantly notes how arrogant Jackson's tone is, as well as how automatically antagonistic he is to Derek. Stiles had never thought well of Eli's birth father after hearing how he just dropped him off like a DoorDash order, but now he can easily say that he hates him... and he hasn't even seen his face yet.
“You don't get to call him that,” Derek lisps around a mouthful of fangs.
Stiles can clearly see a vein pulsing in Derek's neck and smells his Alpha musk filling up the entryway. Derek stays the same size, but his scent makes him feel more imposing, larger than life...he's drawn a line in the sand, daring the other wolf to cross it.
Jackson takes the bait, but not the way Derek or Stiles might have thought. He shoves Derek to the side with a casual toss of his hand, “I sure as hell do. It was my god damned cunt he popped out of, wasn't it?”
Jackson comes into view, and Stiles instantly hates him a little bit more than he did just a moment before. He's perfect. No, literally, the guy is irritatingly perfect.
Stiles notes his poreless skin and flawless complexion, as well as his immaculate hair, which looks both freshly cut and styled, yet somehow also lived-in. The way he dresses seems to be effortlessly cool and highlights all of his best features, which seems to be everything. He's also incredibly symmetrical and smooth, making him instantly pleasing to the eye, despite how Stiles feels about him viscerally.
Suddenly, it's not so hard to imagine Derek having a careless romp with this guy in the woods. Stiles feels a touch of envy poke at his core as he lets his mind drift, and can even admit that he wouldn't put up too much of a fight if invited to do the same, as long as the asshole didn't have to speak. He feels his gut turn sour as he cradles Eli closer, banishing those thoughts as quickly as they filled his mind's eye.
“Don't come in here talking like that, Jackson,” Derek threatens, shouldering him back across the threshold.
Jackson smirks, looking both oily and satisfied, “Oh, that's right. You weren't there when he popped out, were you?” he flicks Derek in the nose and snickers when Derek responds with a growl, snapping his teeth at the other man's hand.
Jackson narrowly misses losing the first knuckle of that hand to Derek's teeth, but then simply flicks out his hand as if he might be checking a cuticle. “Yeah, don't act like you're the dad of the year here, D-bag. It's not like you were there for me when it all happened; it sure as hell wasn't your asshole that took months to snap back into place after I squeezed him out or waited for the stretch marks to fade. God, you're so damn selfish!”
“ME!?!” Derek snarls, his body shaking with rage, “You left a newborn on my doorstep, Jackson! You isolated from the entire pack! NO ONE was allowed to be there...and he was OURS, not just yours and mine...HE'S PACK! YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT SELFISH?!?! Come in here whining about your literal asshole...my God, Jackson! You are as vapid and ignorant as you ever were!”
“OMPHH!” Derek staggers as he's kicked in the groin with a heavy leather boot. There's a sickening sound, no doubt a testicle rupturing on impact, then beginning to heal instantly, as he drops down to his knees and Jackson steps inside the loft again. Even a werewolf isn't immune to a kick in the balls.
Stiles rises to his feet, clutching Eli close to his chest with both arms, as Derek simultaneously staggers to his feet behind Jackson. He looks absolutely murderous as he stares down the back of the intruding man's head. Jackson, on the other hand, simply looks amused.
“My god! It's barely been a year since you dicked me down and knocked me up, and now you're playing house with another little wolf?” Jackson sneers, eyes locked on Stiles, taking him in top to bottom.
“He likes us young, you know, impressionable...willing. I bet you spread for him like hot butter, didn't you...” he turns to Derek with that oily sneer, “What's this one's name?”
“Stiles,” Stiles answers for himself, earning a bitter laugh from Jackson.
“Funny name...Styles...you surely don't seem to fucking have any. And the anorexic thing...is this a new kink, Der-Bear? You like them visually weaker now, too?”
“Don't feed into him,” Derek snaps at Stiles, trying to draw Jackson's ire back towards him.
Jackson rolls his eyes and swivels his head back around to where Stiles stands awkward and defensive, “Come on, hand it over...” he snaps his fingers like an irritated customer abusing a service worker, “...Hello! My baby. Jesus Christ, are you dumb too!?!”
“Stiles, get Eli away from him, now!”
Stiles follows Derek's command and bolts towards the door around Jackson, but he's faster and throws out an arm, shoving Stiles back to the couch. Eli screams in his arms at the violent motion, and Stiles immediately snaps into his mid-shift, growling protectively over the crying pup, his Amber eyes bright and dangerous. He's still weak, still emaciated from his ordeal, but his shifted form is bigger, stronger, and drooling feral and menacing over the wailing baby as he stares down Jackson.
“Oh, he's feisty, that's so cute,” Jackson rushes at Stiles, but only manages to crash into the couch, shredding the cushions as Stiles somersaults over him and leaps off of his back up to the second floor overlooking the main living area with Eli securely in his arms.
Derek is across the room and lifting Jackson with a clawed hand around the back of his neck before Stiles' feet hit the floor upstairs, “You DO NOT, come in here and threaten my family!”
Jackson just smiles sickly as he's suspended in the air, unbothered, “Aww, struck a nerve did I? You don't have a family Derek, you have a bastard pup and a simpering skinny bitch-boy and a pack of fucking misfits. If your family hadn't built half this town, you'd be nothing; hell, you are nothing. Sitting up here in this loft above everybody else, taking in the poor and the sickly just so you can what, feel OK about being a billionaire?”
He spits on the floor at Derek's feet, “You're the worst kind of weak...bleeding heart, compassionate, flaccid...barely an Alpha at all, hell, you didn't even wanna top me that night we fucked, I lay there presenting, and you kept trying to roll me over and kiss me. It's a miracle I got knocked up at all, with you acting like some love-sick bitch.”
Derek makes a wounded noise in the back of his throat that doesn't escape Stiles. He growls down at the pair, enraged that anyone would even hint at Derek being anything like that.
“Oh bitch boy has a pair, huh?”
“I wouldn't be so cocky from where you are, Jay,” Derek grinds out between gritted teeth, tightening his grip just as he's slapped across the face with something that sounds oddly fleshy and heavy.
Stiles looks down at a now shifted Jackson, eyes widening as he spies Derek clutching at a slash cut diagonally across his front, and a heavy reptilian tail protruding from the base of Jackson's spine.
'What the fuck?'
“You don't get to call me that,” Jackson seethes as he turns on Derek and rips into his chest, tearing a jagged “X” into Derek's exposed skin with clawed hands. Derek's once white shirt now hangs useless and bloody, suspended mostly from his shoulders. He attempts to get in a hit, but Jackson easily deflects it with his tail.
Every muscle in Stiles' body goes tight as he watches them go back and forth, wounding and healing over and over as they tear each other apart. Razor-like claws shred clothes and flesh alike until they're both standing mostly naked, smeared in blood and sweat with scraps of fabric dangling off their limbs. Stiles doesn't understand how Jackson is keeping up with Derek so easily. He's an Alpha, and Jackson is definitely not...he's amber-eyed like all other Betas...he shouldn't be this strong.
Then Stiles catches an odd smell and thinks back to the oddly synthetic feel to Jackson's initial scent...it's bitter, medicinal, and chemical-laden. He can lock on to it now amid the coppery tang of blood, the salt of their sweat-slicked skin, and Derek's potent Alpha musk, but still doesn't know what it means.
Light catches off of Jackson's claws as he raises them for another strike; they're transparent, which is unusual for wolf claws, and seem to be wet. As he goes in for a rake along Derek's neck, Stiles sees them drip a thick, clear liquid before they cut into their targeted flesh. Derek winces, and not just from the wound itself.
'Oh my god! He's LITERALLY toxic!!!!'
Now that he understands, Stiles can see the stagger in Derek's step, the slight droop to his burning red eyes. He's not losing...he's being poisoned, and it's progressing with every cut and swipe. His werewolf biology is healing the wounds but also sealing inside as it courses through his blood now, with nowhere else to go. Another vicious swipe sends blood splattering across the wall, and Derek's eyes flicker between hazel and crimson, dimmer than they were before.
'I can't lose someone again. I just found him...I can't.'
The need to run tickles at the back of Stiles' mind with delicate, spidery fingers. It's so tempting, even though just days ago he admitted to himself that he was so tired of it, the running. The leaving everything, the losing everything. He just got this, them, Derek, and Eli.
Can he run from this, too?
Stiles swallows hard and makes up his mind. He quietly opens Derek's bedroom door behind him and silently nestles Eli into his laundry hamper just inside the door. He kisses his forehead, “Be good for me, Moonbeam. I'm about to do something really stupid for you and Daddy, OK? And if anything happens to me...” Stiles doesn't finish the sentence, instead wiping away a stray tear and kissing Eli one more time before closing the door.
He leaps from the landing down onto Jackson's back. He knows in a fair fight, he'd lose; he's still too weak, but it's not a fair fight. Jackson is poisoning Derek, and to be honest, he doesn't feel like being fair; he feels like being reckless.
Stiles tightens his arm around Jackson's neck, causing him to drop back a little. As he turns his head to reach for Stiles, the other wolf takes advantage of the opening and hinges his jaw wide and clamps down, biting into his neck. Stiles locks his jaw tight and shakes his head side to side.
Jackson drops to his knees, howling as Stiles is rewarded with a mouthful of blood. Derek rises stiffly to his feet, his face is pale and sweaty, with one hazel eye and one flickering red. He's wearing down, barely able to keep his footing as he steps towards them.
Stiles reacts to seeing his...Derek...this way by pulling harder, growling, and digging his own claws into the perfect skin of Jackson's back. Finally, flesh gives way, and Stiles' head snaps back with a mess of ruined flesh in his maw. He's smiling triumphantly under all of the gore as Jackson drops to his knees, his body trying desperately to heal before it bleeds out.
Derek even manages a small smile at him, his vicious Omega, as he drops another foot forward heavily.
Then his entire world shifts as he's hoisted into the air, five claws, sharp and brittle like broken glass sunk into his sternum. He looks down at the hand buried in his chest as his blood trickles down Jackson's pale toned arm. He's met with a twisted smile from Jackson as he feels the poison leech into him.
His racing heart makes quick work of distributing the toxins in his body. Almost instantly, his toes and fingers feel numb and dull, his joints stiff and swollen. His lungs burn as he feels the lower half seize, robbing him of a full breath, while his mouth grows more and more dry and cottony.
He tries to pull Jackson's hand from him, to no effect. Derek's eyes are wide behind Jackson as he can't help but watch.
“You could have stayed out of this,” Jackson hisses, “I came for what's mine, I'm the father.”
“One of them,” Derek rasps out.
Stiles screams a miserable human scream as Jackson wiggles his fingers inside of him, “The one that matters. I gave birth to him. What are you, the nanny? The help? Or worse, some pathetic wolf happy to take a second-rate Alpha and raise someone else's child with it. You're nothing.”
Stiles coughs on his own blood, feeling his skin cool, and his heart stutter. His whole body is screaming, shutting down but not entirely, not yet. “Just because you gave birth to Eli doesn't mean you're his father, doesn't even mean you're a parent. You're the nothing. Eli doesn't even know you, and if he's lucky, he never will. I've been more of a parent to him in a few months than you have his entire life.”
Stiles spits a mouthful of blood onto Jackson's shocked, speechless face, “And e-even if you kill me now...I'll a-always be...f-family. You'll be nothing but a biological ancestor, a-an incubator in an Armani belt...you're p-pathetic.”
Stiles shoots a satisfied smile towards Derek just as Jackson grabs Stiles with both hands, ripping his torso into ribbons. He screams, causing Jackson and Derek to wince in pain and Eli to start wailing from his hiding spot in the laundry basket.
Jackson's head snaps towards the upper floor as he remembers his intended purpose.
ELI!
“No!” Stiles manages to get out just as Jackson lifts him like a rag doll and hurls him into the brick wall by the dinner table. The wall around him fissures out from the force of his impact as he feels bones shatter.
He drops to the floor, cold, still, with a thick sticky feeling along his face. He reaches back to feel his head, finding an impression that causes black dots in his vision as he presses it. The world around him pulses in and out of focus, his mind stills, as does his heart and his lungs and his limbs.
Stiles goes still.