Devil of Wolves (Sterek)

Chapter Eight (Chokehold)

Who missed Beacon Hills...You know this is dumb enough that I have to write about that again.

^^^^^^^^

"So..." Cora stares at him from across the table. "Are we gonna talk about last night?" she prods, glancing at Stiles after every bite of her food.

They were all sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast again, both Cora and Derek seemed to have materialized out of thin air when Stiles got out of bed that day.

Derek paused eating his own food to glance at him. Stiles spent the whole morning watching Derek act weirdly domestic, like a normal person, eating cereal.

"What happened?" Derek asked.

Stiles sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Nothing," he said and glared at Cora.

"What happened?" Derek demanded again. His tone sounded off.

"Yeah, Stiles," Cora goaded and bit at her toast viciously. "What did happen? Because right as I was kicked out after you had a mini-panic attack, you ignored me the rest of the night."

Derek's eyebrows did that stupid thing again. "You had another panic attack?"

Another, yeah that was his life now, Stiles thought bitterly and grumbled. "No, well yes, but that's beside the point."

He may have freaked out a little after making Cora leave, throwing his phone into a drawer where he couldn't see it, and tossed and turned the whole night, dreading listening to the voicemail because Scott had never bothered to call him, ever, until now, and it scared the hell out of him.

"How is that besides the point?" Cora interjects. "Whoever that Scott person is was clearly putting you on the edge and I wanna know why."

"Who's Scott?" Derek practically growled.

"Oh god, can you both stop," Stiles groaned. "He's no one and the call was obviously a mistake." He then stubbornly went back to eating crumbs of his protein bar, avoiding all prying eye contact.

"Then I guess you won't mind..." Cora started to say before she reached across the table and snatched his phone sitting beside his plate, "Letting us hear the voicemail."

"Hey!" Stiles tried to grab it back, but stupid werewolves and their stupid reflexes, she had already unlocked his phone. "How the hell do you know my password?"

She grins and jumps from the table when he tries to lean over and snatch it back. "I have my ways," she smirks.

"Cora, I swear to god!"

He ignores Derek's sigh and proceeds to chase her around the kitchen. A flurry of plaid and purple moves around the room until they both slam against Derek who placed himself in their direct line of passage, he snatches the phone from Cora's hands and hands it back to him.

"Derek, you jerk," she growls and slaps his chest.

Stiles clutches the phone against his chest protectively.

"Leave Stiles alone," Derek says and pries her hand off his chest. "It's his phone, his privacy." He sits back down at the table.

"Thank you, Derek," Stiles said loudly and stuck his tongue out at Cora. She huffed but returned to her seat same as him.

Breakfast from then on was quiet. Cora decided that she wouldn't fill the silence with her usual chatter and took to glaring at her food, Derek just awkwardly shoveled the rest of his cereal into his mouth and Stiles glanced at his phone every so often. His stomach churned.