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“Stop wriggling,” Stiles says, and Derek growls under him.
The werewolf is lying on his stomach, his nails digging into an old mattress that has definitely had better days. It’s a good thing the pain is preventing him from changing, otherwise the thing would already have been torn to shreds.
“Then hurry up already,” Derek replies between clenched teeth.
Stiles resists the urge to roll his eyes and stays focused on his task. The only reason he’s straddling Derek’s lower back (almost straddling his ass, to be more exact, but he tries very hard not to think about that) is because it’s the most practical position to do what he has to do without hiding the light from the small lamp. Which involves cutting Derek’s skin with a scalpel to extract the shots lodged in his flesh before his skin closes up again. One of the downsides of werewolf fast-healing.
Stiles’s hands are slippery with blood, and it should really bother him that this kind of thing has almost become routine for him. His fingers slide on the werewolf’s tattoo as he tries to keep the skin stretched tight, and Derek shivers.
“Sorry, I’m doing my best here. I’m not actually a surgeon, you know!”
He wipes his left hand on his jeans before putting it back on the tattoo. The shotgun caught Derek right underneath the spiral on the right, and Stiles is grateful for the landmark of sorts, because Derek’s skin closed up on the shots almost instantaneously. Derek shivers again under his hand, even though the scalpel hasn’t even touched him yet, and Stiles huffs, exasperated.
“Listen, I know that it probably hurts incredibly bad, actually I think I can’t even imagine how painful it must be to have someone open you up and put his fingers inside you to get crushed-up lead shots out while you can feel your skin and muscles closing around them, but seriously dude, stop trembling like that before I even touch you, or we’re gonna be here all night!”
Derek growls again, then sighs. “Sorry.”
Stiles frowns, leans on the side to have a look at the werewolf’s face, because seriously, did Derek just apologize? Oh shit. Maybe these weren’t regular shots after all, maybe they were poisoned, and the poison is draining all of Derek’s aggressiveness and awesome werewolf powers? That’s the only logical explanation.
His thoughts must have shown on his face, maybe not with all of the nuances but clearly enough for Derek to have a good idea of what’s going on in his head, because the werewolf sighs again, like he’s annoyed.
“It’s not your fault,” he explains with a strained voice. “It’s just that every time you touch my tattoo…”
“Your tattoo?” Stiles asks when Derek just trails off. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Curious, he traces one of the spirals with his fingertip, and feels Derek shiver again. He takes his hand off immediately.
“Fuck, sorry! Does it hurt or something?”
“No,” Derek relies, panting. “It’s just… The triskele represents a lot of things, it accentuates some aspects of my werewolf nature. Most of the time it makes me stronger.”
“But not when I touch it?”
“Stiles! Stop asking questions and take these shots out! I can still feel three of them, and it’s extremely uncomfortable.”
“All right, all right,” Stiles replies, throwing his hands up. He knows it’s no use insisting when Derek uses that tone with him.
Stiles presse the skin underneath the tattoo, moves a little until Derek tells him he’s found one of the shots. He’s very careful not to touch the black spirals as he stretches the skin to make cutting in easier.
It’s slightly more difficult with the new no-tattoo-touching restriction, but he manages to get all three remaining shots out from Derek’s back. Stiles watches as the werewolf’s skin closes up before his eyes, strokes a bloodied finger over the skin, once again smooth and perfect. There’s a bowl of water next to him, and Stiles washes his hands before he wets a washcloth and starts carefully cleaning Derek’s skin.
The werewolf lets him, even relaxes a little under the almost-caress of Stiles’s hands. There’s blood on the tattoo and Stiles cleans it too, but Derek doesn’t shiver when the wet cloth touches the dark ink.
Stiles’s curiosity will be the end of him one day, he knows that, but he can’t refrain from brushing a finger against one of the black lines. Derek shivers again, and sighs, but it’s not one of his exasperated sighs. No, this one sounds almost… content?
“What does the triskele mean?” Stiles asks, voice low, following the black spiral with his fingertip.
“Birth, life, death,” Derek replies, almost as softly, and Stiles has to lean down a little to hear him more clearly, his finger still sliding on the tattoo. “Dawn, zenith, dusk. Earth, fire, water. Past, present, future.” All of these meanings Stiles already know from when he’d researched the symbol after he saw Derek’s tattoo for the first time. But Derek doesn’t stop there. “Alpha, Beta, Omega. Wolf, pack, mate.”
Derek’s eyes reopen and he pushes himself up on his elbows, turns his face towards Stiles. It’s the wolf looking at him with red eyes, but he doesn’t look angry, doesn’t look as if he’s about to rip his throat out with his teeth. He’s calm. Waiting.
Stiles’s breath catches in his throat.
“Wolf, pack, mate,” he repeats in a whisper, pressing his palm on the tattoo.
Derek closes his eyes again, a small noise escaping his throat, and it sounds like a happy moan. Fascinated, Stiles leans over, starts tracing the tattoo’s lines with the tip of his tongue.
He’s rewarded by real moans, and seriously, it should be illegal to make sounds like those, because Stiles is just a teenager and his body reacts instantaneously. All right, it started reacting as soon as he put his hands on Derek’s back, but that’s not the point.
He leans up a little and Derek rolls around under him. Stiles ends up with his hands on the werewolf’s chest and Derek’s hands on his waist. He’s now straddling Derek’s crotch, and it seems Stiles’s body isn’t the only one that reacted. Stiles’s breath gets stuck for a few seconds when he realizes that.
“Mate?” he asks in a huff of air.
Derek watches him with human eyes again. He’s looking at Stiles’s face as if he’s seeing it for the very first time. Slowly, he nods.
Stiles should panic. He should panic, and demand explanations, because up until now even though they keep saving each other’s lives it’s only been harsh arguing and wall-smashing between them, and okay, a little bit of sexual tension too but nothing that would justify Derek’s wolf seeing its mate in Stiles.
Instead of panicking, Stiles lets Derek drag him down towards him. Their first kiss is soft and curious. The next ones will be much more passionate as they discover each other with greedy hands and tongues. Stiles doesn’t panic, because he has no reason to. He’s finally found his place in this giant ball of craziness that has become his life.