"I say it did us a favor," Stiles mutters under his breath.

"Hey!" Scott shouts out indignantly. "A man is dead!"

Peter chuckles from his perch on the staircase.

Everyone else is just standing around in Derek's apartment, looking various shades of uncomfortable.

Same old, same old.

Stiles can't take this anymore. He elbows his way past Derek—ouch! okay maybe it's more of a flinch after an accidental collision—but who's to say, really? Fuck. Right, not the point. He marches, a little bruised, past Derek and up to Scott.

"No," Stiles says, louder and with a little more chutzpah. "A creep is dead, and I, for one, don't really feel like poking around in the woods at night in order to find whatever monster of the week literally crushed him to death." He finishes his snappy tirade, chest heaving.

Kira is looking guilty in the way that means she agrees with Stiles. Allison is sharpening a knife. Isaac, Erica, and Boyd are just standing casually, as if in any minute a photographer for Leather Lovers Quarterly is about to start snapping photos (seriously, you'd think after high school they'd grow tired of the whole there's tragic beauty in my rebellion and dickish apathy vibe?). Derek's flexing. Peter looks bored. Lydia left five minutes ago, dragging Jackson along with her by his balls. Chris is nodding.

"Also," he continues, "I have an exam to study for and a new season of The X-Files to binge."

Everyone groans.

Boyd snorts and crosses his arms. "Didn't that show end, in like, 2002?"

"New to me, Vernon!" Stiles shouts back. "New to me!"

He catches Chris' lips twitch.

Stiles looks back at Scott. His best friend is giving him The Look.

Sighing, Stiles runs a hand down his face. "Look, Scotty, the guy was a crazy conspiracy theorist. He was a weirdo, a smoker, a flat earther. A registered sex offender." Everyone cringes at that. "Yeah, uh-huh!" Stiles waves a finger around the room. "That's right! He was creeper of women, a stalker of teenage girls! He took illicit photographs of them and lurked in their windows!" He puts a hand on Scott's shoulder. "Scott, buddy, bro—he was a lurker. He lurked." Stiles shakes him a bit. "We don't need to do this."

"Fuck, why do we always do this?" Stiles whisper-screams as he trips over a root.

A strong hand grabs him by the bicep before he can faceplant into the dirt.

"Thanks," he mumbles.

Chris quickly yanks his hand back and continues to walk ahead—not a single indication that he had heard Stiles, or that he was likely to slow the hell down.

Dick.

Efficient the guy may be, but definitely, definitely a dick.

Stiles chases after him, one hand waving around wildly so that he doesn't run into a tree, and the other hefting his barbed-wire-wrapped, mistletoe-lacquered, rowan bat.

"Seriously," Stiles says as he catches up with his assigned buddy. "I get why I'm here—I'm a fucking idiot, but what are you doing here?"

Chris lowers his Desert Eagle and faces Stiles. "I'm here because my daughter decided to join your little band of misfits." His eyes scan the horizon. "I'm here to make sure she doesn't die because she makes bad choices."

There's a moment of silence, and Stiles can't help himself. He raises up his tree-finding/face-saving hand for a high-five. "Sick burn on your own daughter, Mr. A."

Chris' usually stoic face deadpans further. Then he walks away, somehow moving through the dark woods without making a sound.

"The 'A' stands for asshole," Stiles mutters under his breath.

Gripping his bat tighter, Stiles stalks after his partner. "Haven't you heard of the Buddy System, I mean, c'mon—"

And then Stiles sees it.

At first glance, it's just a glimmer of light, a reflection of the waning moon in a puddle of water. But when Stiles looks closer, he gets a better picture of what that puddle is pooled in.

That is one big footprint.

"Chris," Stiles says stupidly, eyes locked on the footprint. He whips out his phone and turns on the flashlight.

Shit.

Make that footprints.

"Chris!" Stiles chokes out louder.

"What?"

Stiles screams at the sound of Chris' voice directly over his shoulder.

"Fuck!" Stiles flinches away from the hunter.

In the shadows created from Stiles' flashlight, Chris' face looks smug.

"What?" Chris asks again.

"Look at this." Stiles points down at the tracks.

Crouching, Chris examines the ground. "A sasquatch."

"A sasquatch?" Stiles squeaks.

"A sasquatch," Chris confirms, voice grim.

"Shit," Stiles whispers, "a sasquatch."

"Are they…violent?" Stiles asks, a bit skeptical. Bigfoot doesn't kill people—he just…walks around.

Stiles pictures the crime scene photos he had smuggled from his dad's case files. Jacob Tenenbaum, creeper extraordinaire, was beaten to death. At the coroner's count, the guy had upward of 70 broken bones. They had to identify him with his dental records.

Stiles shudders.

"No," Chris answers slowly. "They aren't." There's a pause. "Not usually, anyway."

Confused, Stiles furrows his brow. "What do you mean not—"

"Stiles look out!"

A throaty roar fills the night.

Chris grabs his hoodie and pulls him down.

Stiles catches a glimpse of thick fur and massive limbs.

Shots ring out.

Stiles scrambles up, swinging blindly as he senses a giant presence at his back. He makes contact and the creature lets out a shrill scream. With the force of his momentum, Stiles finally whirls around—coming face-to-face with a sasquatch.

He swings again.

It roars.

"Stiles!"

He drags his eyes over his shoulder in time to see Chris being dragged away by his legs, arms scrambling for purchase and forehead bleeding.

"Chris!" he shouts.

But Chris is already done, disappearing in the forest's overgrowth.

Being carried off by a sasquatch.

A sasquatch.

Wait.

Smash!

Pain blooms in the back of his head, forcing him to his knees.

Crack!

A second blow knocks him flat.

Make that sasquatches.

And then he, too, is dragged off into the night.

The first thing Stiles hears upon regaining consciousness is the puff of Chris' steady breaths. Stiles can feel grass tickling the palms of his hands. He can smell some sort of meat, sharp and metallic. He widens his eyes further, taking in his surroundings—especially the fact that Chris has him cradled in his lap, and a hand running lightly through his hair.

Remembering their situation, Stiles can't help but tense up—but the soothing repetition of Chris' strokes helps him unwind.

"Feels nice," he slurs out.

Chris pauses in his petting, only to resume once Stiles huffs in annoyance.

"S'good," he purrs.

"That's just the head trauma talking," Chris murmurs.

"Mus' be," Stiles says. "Yer voice sounds, hmmmm, fond."

"Definitely the head trauma, then."

Stiles lolls his head to the side to get a better look at Chris, but he ends up staring into the eyes of a mini-sasquatch.

A sasquatchling, if you will.

It snuffles at him, nose scrunched. The little furry creature steps closer and slowly—ever so slowly—reaches out and pokes Stiles' furless arm.

Upon contact, the sasquatchling chirps in…delight? and scampers away. Stiles follows its route with his blurry eyes, watching as it ducks behind two very large, very threatening looking sasquatch.

One tears into a hunk of raw meat while maintaining direct eye contact with Stiles.

"You know that question you were about to ask me before we were attacked?" Chris mutters, lips barely moving.

Stiles rolls his eyes upward to meet Chris'. "Yeah."

"It's when they protect their young," Chris continues. "That's when they're violent."

Stiles groans.

The sasquatches all pause at the sound. Their ears twitch.

He moans again. "Fuck, this is'all starting t'make a lot of sense."

Chris keeps a watchful eye on the sasquatch family as they start to move—oh look, they have two kids—and asks quietly, "What do you mean?"

"Tenenbaum," Stiles grunts, head throbbing. "The flat earther fuck. He was a—a crazy conspiracy theorist with a—a, an obvious lack of moral bound'ries an' a penchant fer making question'ble documentaries've people without their consent."

Chris still looks a bit lost.

"A d'stroyed video camera wassa found under the body," Stiles grits out, "along witha gun an' a shitload've shotgun shells." He pats the hand that's still petting his hair. "I'd bet mah liver that that stupid fuck was out tryna find himself a bigfoot." Stiles winces. "And then when he actually found one—he tried-a capture it."

Chris nods slowly. "Makes sense." He watches as the four sasquatches stand up from their little dinner party. "They're a pretty transitory species. It's a wonder that he even spotted them at all."

"Why d'you think they didn't kill us?" Stiles asks.

The curious sasquatchling breaks away from its parents and wanders back over, snuffling up and down Stiles' body. It boops Stiles' nose with its own. Dark eyes gaze at him intently—with an intelligence that makes Stiles' already roiling stomach flip.

Then it chirps again and wanders back to its family. The parents give Chris and Stiles one last look, and then they calmly walk away with their children—footsteps unnervingly quiet for such large creatures.

"Their kid liked you," Chris says once the forest falls silent around them. Stiles meets his gaze. "That's why they didn't kill us."

Huh.

Stiles' feet twitch as he feels his body leave the ground.

Chris picks him up carefully, and Stiles tucks his head against his shoulder.

"Why would it like me?" he asks, more of a rhetorical what the fucking hell just happened sort of question than anything else.

With the threat of the sasquatches gone and the pounding inside his head increasing, Stiles' brain begins to shutdown.

"Who wouldn't?" he hears whispered back, almost an afterthought.

Stiles hums—lips brushing gently against Chris' neck, fingers curling into the soft cotton of the man's t-shirt.

The grip around him tightens minutely.

He smiles to himself, warm skin against his lips.

Stiles will have to think about what that means a bit later.

Because right now, the world fades—and everything goes pitch black.