I Will Run You Like A Thread (Fem!Stiles x Derek)

Bite chunks out of me (you're a shark and I'm swimming)

Stiles is pretty familiar with the whole cause-and-effect thing. In fact, she's getting to be rather an expert at digging her own respective grave and/or bed and just jumping right on in, foresight be damned. Well, well, well if it isn't the consequences of my own actions might as well be her fucking catchphrase at this point. It's not even Derek that's going to be the one who kills her this time.

It'll be herself. And this god damn heat. Because Stiles can handle a lot of things, but when the temperature has the audacity to reach levels rivaling the surface of the sun, can she really be blamed for losing it a little? It's been three days of record-breaking highs, and even the concrete walls of Derek's building aren't enough to stop her brain from feeling like it's melting out of her ears.

Three days of tossing and turning and sweating. God, so much sweating. Because she can't ever sleep when it's hot like this, so she's just been getting crabbier and crabbier. Being awake feels like torture, every nerve ending spinning and itching and getting all tangled up inside her and she feels like she can barely regulate her own body temperature let alone her own damn mind. She wants to unzip her skin and crawl out of it.

Guilt makes her stomach churn, heavy and rotten, as she slumps against the tile wall in what feels like her hundredth cold shower of the day. Derek's still not back yet — he's been running every fan they own nonstop for her, so the noise of all that plus the fact that every single Beacon Hills resident is doing the same, pushing every aging, ancient AC unit in town to the brink, well it hasn't exactly been easy for him either. Derek told her it sounded a little like what he imagined standing in the middle of a massive beehive must. Three straight days of that (plus having to deal with her) would drive anyone to the woods.

She gets it.

But she's also tired. And irritated. Anxious. Lonely. Horny. All of the above times a thousand. Stiles hears the strangled little noise come out of her mouth before she realizes what it is, a sob, and it's followed by another clutching wave of guilty feelings. Blech.

Why can't she just be a normal person who deals with normal things in completely normal ways?

"Honey, I think normal left the building when you opened the door and let the werewolf in."

For a second, just a second, she thinks she's wishfully hallucinating that gravelly voice she loves hearing so much, but then she feels a blissful rush of cold air, doesn't dare turn around just in case she's wrong –

But then she feels it, feels him – the solid weight of his hands sliding around her waist, and for the first time in days, she feels like she can breathe. Like the fire on her skin, the bad kind, has been snuffed out. Fucking finally.

"I – I wasn't talking about you," Stiles mutters, her breath staggering when Derek pulls her back against his chest, dipping his head down so she feels the scratch of his beard sliding over wet skin. She protests with a hushed little hmph until she feels soft lips instead, the slightest pressure of teeth.

"Because I'm the normal one?"

"Yes," Stiles says. "Because I'm a mess."

Derek is quiet for a minute. Quiet but not still, she notes thankfully, his hands (big, broad, the strangest contrast of heat against flesh chilled by the cold water still falling around them) smoothing over her flanks like he's trying to soothe a horse about to spook. It's a comparison she can't really fault him for since she's been like this for days now. "Maybe I like mess," he offers.

Stiles huffs damp hair out of her eyes. "You don't."

"Hmm, I guess. But I love you." She can't see the grin, but she can feel it. "And I don't mind the mess if I'm the one making it." The way his voice darkens sends another chill through her that has nothing to do with the temperature. "Why won't you just let me be nice to you?"