we hold on til we feel that steady roll

"We come in peace?" Stiles tried, attempting to break the tension that had quickly fallen across the door jamb and spilled into the hallway like some overblown metaphor. Or simile. Which one was 'like or as', again? Also, his brain immediately added 'shoot to kill, shoot to kill, shoot to kill' (because "Star Trekkin'" was a great song, okay?) so how helpful his comment actually was to that endeavour…

"Seriously, we just want to talk. Talking is good, right? Talking is a perfectly normal activity between members of super-secret government agencies and members of the supernatural, it means there's less shooting, ripping of throats, general wailing, and rending of garments." He wondered if he should've mentioned pearl-clutching in there as well, but figured he'd gotten the vast majority of his point across. Assuming he had a point. He really should've gotten Derek to swing by his house before the hotel so he could grab his Adderall – or maybe duct tape.

Hawkeye shifted to one side so that he could share a glance with Black Widow without having to actually turn his back on anyone. A moment of nonverbal communication, or maybe telepathy, Stiles didn't know their lives, and Hawkeye moved further to the side of the door and waved them in wordlessly.

Their room was in fact a nice little suite with a sitting area and couch and small kitchenette, and doors branching off to two bedrooms and a bathroom (well, most likely; the doors were closed so Stiles couldn't say for sure, so they could be three torture chambers for all he knew, but that didn't seem like it would come standard at a hotel). The Black Widow had the lone desk chair turned around so it was facing the door, not the desk, and Hawkeye went to loom next to her. Which would be even more threatening if Stiles wasn't pretty sure that of Derek, Scott, and himself, all three of them were taller than his uncle. Plus, there was the fact that Derek almost definitely had a closet full of medals from the Looming Olympics (not a real thing, but Stiles would pay good money to make it a real thing).

"…so, this is awkward and all," Stiles said after a few minutes of silence. Without waiting for an invitation (that would never come), he and Scott had sat down on the couch that was conveniently facing the chair Black Widow had chosen to sit in (and where she was managing to exude far more threat while sitting than Hawkeye did while standing; Stiles felt for the guy, he really did, he knew all about being the least-threatening person in the room, like right now). Derek, no prizes for guessing, was doing his own looming from behind the couch. At least that meant there was a whole couch for him to have to go through first if he decided he needed to escalate the that it would slow him down, but whatever. Stiles was willing to ignore that for his own peace of mind.

Also, he was so proud of himself for not saying 'hawkward'. So proud.

"I dunno, I'd consider 'awkward' to be the fact that all of your names keep popping up in connection with murders," Hawkeye said, apparently equally tired of sitting (standing) around in tense silence. His arms were crossed, and the expression on his face was disturbingly similar to the Sheriff's bullshit-detected face. It was a little weird that Stiles had to keep reminding himself that yes, they were brothers, but hey. He'd spent sixteen years thinking his dad was an only child, adjustments took a while to make.

"That was because of werewolves - not us-werewolves," he added quickly, gesturing to Scott and Derek, before the trained assassins got the wrong idea, "And hunters. And a kamina, but seriously, that's all dealt with. So not an issue anymore." Derek shot him a look for the skip his heart took for that lie, but whatever. The whole thing where they never had found Gerard Argent's body was a crisis for another time. "All the killers have been caught and taken care of, pinky-promise." For emphasis, he stuck out the pinky finger of his right hand and held it out with a hopeful pout.

Now that he thought about it, 'taken care of' probably wasn't the best choice of words if he was looking to convince them that there wasn't anything they needed to look at too deeply in the recent past.

"What about Peter Hale? He's listed as missing from the long term care unit, but I'm pretty sure 'Creepy Uncle Peter' was just fine last night." Clint ignored the outstretched finger, and Stiles pulled his hand back with a bigger pout.

"Peter is… a different, insanely complicated story, that totally isn't the topic of tonight's discussion," Stiles said after a long moment of trying to figure out how to answer. He was oddly reluctant to mention the fact that Peter had risen from the dead not that long ago, and it was only partially because of what Derek might do to him for mentioning it. Evil or not (and the guy had killed his own niece, Stiles was leaning in the direction of evil), Peter was the only one in the area who knew anything about werewolves and was willing to share - being legitimately forthcoming and helpful would probably give Deaton hives, and Derek was allergic to any form of communication that didn't involve broken bones. Plus, there was only so much Derek had learned by the time he was sixteen. The part of him that was the son of a sheriff itched at letting Peter run around like he hadn't done anything, but pragmatism wasn't a bad impulse, per se.

"So what is the topic of this discussion?" Black Widow asked, and oh god if they were sticking around he was going to have to stop following a couple of tumblrs ASAP, before she found out and murdered him in his sleep.

Actually, he should probably unfollow all the Avengers-related tumblrs on his dash. Although his followers might be disappointed if he shut down the fyeahmysterioussuitguy blog. Eh, he could give it to someone else to run if it kept his organs from being exposed to the breeze.

"We'll help you with whatever you're in town for if you help us deal with the people who came close to killing those teenagers you saw last night," Stiles said bluntly.

There was some more non-verbal communication between the superheroes, and Scott started shifting awkwardly next to Stiles on the couch, hopefully because of the tension and not because he needed to use the bathroom.

Finally, Black Widow nodded, and when Hawkeye turned back to them it was with considerably less tension in his frame, making the wolves subconsciously relax (well, making Scott relax at least ; Stiles was about ninety percent sure Derek didn't actually know how to relax, subconsciously or otherwise). Apparently they had come to the pretty obvious realization that the whole 'werewolf' thing made good enough blackmail that they didn't need to be worried about them running off with whatever information was handed out. "Loki's up to something in Beacon Hills, we don't know what yet," was all he said, but really, that was all he needed to say.

When he was a kid, Stiles had read a lot of Norse mythology - originally he'd read a lot of Greek mythology, but he got tired of pages and pages of people just banging their relatives, and had looked for something different. Back in those days, when myths were myths and not letting alien hordes loose on Manhattan, Stiles had always kind of felt that Loki got a bad rap. Okay, the Baldur thing was probably going a bit far (and especially the tricking a blind guy to do it; own up to your murders, man!), but it was also very clever. And Stiles had an appreciation for evil-but-clever - just look at how long he'd been in love with Lydia Martin, for one thing. And just everything to do with Vali and Narvi was horrifying overkill in every sense. Also, after reading the myth with the dwarves and Sif's hair, he'd had nightmares for a week about getting his lips sown shut just for tricking someone. That had gone a long way to make him sympathize with the mythological figure.

Then, of course, Manhattan and everything had happened, and Stiles had actually spent a decent chunk of (pre-werewolf, post-alien) time surfing the internet and trying to see if anyone knew how close the myths were to the real thing. The general consensus was that no one knew, although apparently Thor and Loki were brothers in the real world? (That just added a whole new level of fucked-up to the dwarf story, if it was true, because brothers don't let brothers sew their lips shut. Or something.)

Either way, even at his most innocent in any of the stories, Loki caused a shit-ton of trouble. Which was not something they needed more of in Beacon Hills, now or at any time in the near future.

"So, we help you with whatever Loki's doing, and you help us?" Stiles asked after a second of sharing a 'what the fuck are we supposed to do against a Norse god?' glance with Scott. Derek hadn't shifted from his glower - there was a good chance his face had, in fact, stuck that way.

"You never said what it was you needed help with," Hawkeye pointed out.

"There's a pack of alphas that want to wipe out everything supernatural in Beacon Hills. Apparently we've been 'attracting too much attention', but that is so not our fault," Stiles defended. Because it wasn't their fault, not really, except for Peter, but even that was pre-death, crazy Peter. Resurrected Peter was mostly just creepy as hell, not outright crazy and evil. Well, less evil and maybe not crazy. Time would tell on that particular point.

"A pack of alphas?" Sheer confusion from the other side. Sheer implied confusion, anyway, since there was approximately zero percent change on either of their faces.

"It's a pack of werewolves made entirely of alpha werewolves." Derek finally decided to join the conversation. "Alphas are bigger and stronger, more vicious, than beta werewolves."

Stiles nodded emphatically. "It took five of us to take out one alpha the last time," he added. "We don't exactly have thirty people to help this time, as much as Derek tried to fix that." That did get a glare from Mr. Cranky Pants Alpha. "…but that's yet another irrelevant story," he hurried on before Derek could move on to growling. (He didn't actually growl as much as Stiles liked to over-dramatically claim in his own mind or when talking to Scott, but when he did it was pretty intensely terrifying for fragile young humans such as himself.)

"If they want to get rid of all the supernatural beings in town, why didn't they just kill those two from the warehouse? I'm assuming they're also werewolves," Black Widow said suddenly.

Stiles's brain actually stopped for a second, gears squealing exactly like a cartoon. Why hadn't he thought of that? Oh god, was Scott's derp catching? Or was he sucking out all of Stiles's logic like a bizarre IQ point Dorian Gray? (Or, probably more accurately, maybe Stiles had just had a lot on his mind lately, and wasn't rolling with the punches as well as he thought he was?) "Freaking Peter and werewolf IRC," he muttered, smacking himself in the forehead. He wasn't comforted by the way that no one else in the pack seemed to have realized it, either - Derek thought the solution to poison spreading up his arm was to get the kid who accused him of murder just the week before to chop off his arm, Erica and Boyd were still unconscious more often than not, and Isaac had at one point decided to murder someone because he wasn't very good at writing.

And yes, Stiles knew that had just been a snarky comment, but whatever.

See, this is why they needed Lydia in the pack. Jackson could come too, but only because he'd probably bring Danny, and then there'd be two logical, smart, good-looking people in the pack! That'd balance out Jackson's doucheyness for sure. But Lydia was very firm on the 'you can all fuck off for a while' front when she and Jackson had left the OK Corral that night - apparently she didn't want to join a pack that included a member who had hijacked her brain to resurrect himself, four members who had wanted to kill her, and all the members left had been keeping her in the dark about things that involved her probably more than anyone else.

Really, it was a mystery why anyone wouldn't want to join such a lovely pack, Stiles thought, heavy on the sarcasm directed at himself.

"So they're here for some as-of-yet-undefined reason that includes torturing people and then letting them go," Stiles summarized. "Either way, the torture puts them pretty firmly on the side of not good."

"They left their mark on the door to my house," Derek added after a moment - and Stiles was never going to get past how light his voice was, especially compared to his looks and overall demeanor. He kept expecting to see a guy who looked like Jackson, not a Neanderthal pin-up model. "As a warning. Otherwise they wouldn't bother putting it up until after we were all dead."

"Cheerful," Stiles muttered to himself. But then, so was everything about Derek.

"We can figure out what they want," Black Widow said after another eye-conversation with Hawkeye. "You'll need to tell us what werewolves are capable of if we're going to be much help, however."

Derek looked like he wanted to object rather strongly, which Stiles got. Handing out laminated placards of your biggest weaknesses, not a very charming idea. But they were superheroes! Maybe he'd spent too much of his childhood with his Batman and Superman and Captain America comics, but he refused to give up his belief that superheroes were good, and could overcome any evil. That thing with the mountain ash had proved the power of belief, hadn't it?

Black Widow seemed to have something very specific on her mind, though. "For example: how did you detect me at the warehouse?"

"You were upwind," Scott said, having (hopefully) worked through his somewhat awe-struck silence. "We could smell you."

She looked minutely taken aback. Stiles could understand that - she was a superspy, probably knew very well not to wear perfume or anything like that, but sadly nothing was a match for the super-sniffers. (Although Stiles had been playing around with an idea to fix that, but it was going to take a lot more research and wheedling information out of Deaton before he could get anywhere with it.)

"What does she smell like?" Hawkeye, on the other hand, seemed to be holding back snickers. Stiles could tell because of the very familiar traces of his dad's 'I'm not laughing at you' face. And man, he needed to come up with a better way of categorizing expressions, this was getting wordy.

"Kinda… like death," Scott said hesitantly, because who wanted to tell a chick they smelled like death? Especially one that could kill you. "I think it was mostly on your outfit, though, because you don't smell like that now," he hastened to reassure her, looking a little anxious. "But you did at the warehouse, and at Deaton's."

"Speaking of, has he said anything about the alphas? Because that would be super useful right about now," Stiles asked.

"Wait, the reason Deaton's giving us the run-around is werewolves?" Hawkeye said suddenly, looking equal parts surprised and annoyed by this information. "He couldn't just tell us about werewolves?"

"I have a theory that when he was younger Deaton was cursed by an evil witch to never be able to just say something," Stiles said. Granted, it was one of many, many equally bizarre theories, and the more realistic one was that he just loved the 'mysterious mentor' trope, but hey. It was a possibility. "Either that, or he's actually a sphinx. I haven't figured it out yet."

Hawkeye snorted, and Stiles liked to think that Black Widow looked amused too.

"Wait, how do you know Dr. Deaton? Is… is he part of SHIELD?" Scott sounded incredulous.

"Retired," Hawkeye said.

"What?!" Interrobangs were a form of punctuation invented with people like Scott in mind, Stiles was pretty sure. Not that he wasn't having the exact same reaction, or anything, because what the hell, Dr. Deaton was part of SHIELD?! Actually, he didn't know why he was so shocked. It was Deaton, after all.

"So..." Stiles said offhandedly, "Was he ever cursed by an evil witch?"

The Black Widow seemed seriously unimpressed with him, so Stiles quickly shut his mouth. He'd long ago learned to obey the silent commands and wishes of dangerous redheads who could turn him into a fancy hat to wear at dinner parties quicker than he could blink.

He wouldn't make a very good hat.

Hawkeye, on the other hand, shot a quick grin at him. Oh hey, his uncle could look something other than completely terrifying! That was more of a shock than anything else.

"All right," Stiles said, clapping his hands together as he went for the five-hundredth summary of the night. "The breakdown of events: we have Loki, or at least Loki's magic, floating around town doing something that we don't know. Second, we have a group of alphas, probably six of them, but there could be more, who knows, who are in town, and we don't know why. I'm thinking the lack of intel is probably bad," he summed up for the group.

"Feel free to go ask them what they're doing," Derek muttered. Which, hey, was a lot more roundabout and subtle than most of his death threats. So kudos to him, maybe.

"Someone has their grumpy pants on today," was what Stiles said out loud, cheerfully and without regard to his own life. That was another problem with not having Adderall - he hadn't managed to magic any up from nothing in the hours since school, so he had passed through the bitchy period of being off his meds and was well into the super goofy point of his day. The main problem with this? His inner monologues pretty rapidly became outer monologues, and most of the things inside his head were things that would (and should) get him stabbed by people around him. He didn't think that was a problem most people had with Adderall or other legal versions of meth (accurate description, shut up), but it had always been a problem of Stiles'. Probably also had something to do with the way he hardly ever actually slept, and usually relied on his medication to keep him awake for five out of seven days of the week.

Scott, ever the quick puppy, managed to yank Stiles out of the way before Derek could slam him into the wall, though. "Thanks Scott, you're my BFF," Stiles told him, still just as cheerful. Because really, a Stiles-sized imprint in the wall wasn't a good first step to their partnership with the Avengers, as great an attraction as it would be. They could sell tickets!

Scott actually patted him on the head like he was the puppy in the room, because Scott had picked up a lot of condescending behaviors from Stiles over the years (Stiles would feel worse about that, except even Scott agreed that he deserved most of that attitude for his utter derpitude). "Still haven't taken your Adderall?"

"Nyet, nein, nope," Stiles said, bobbing his head in agreement with his friend's statement. Or to the beat in his head, which was an ever evolving list of random pop songs he had maybe heard on the radio and maybe had just made up - it was hard to tell at the best of times, the worst of times, A Tale of Two Cities, wait what?

"I'll take him home. You guys can hammer out the details between yourselves, right?" Hawkeye said, putting his own hand on Stiles's shoulder and starting to steer him towards the door. Which Stiles felt a tad bit insulted by. Sure, he was getting goofy, but that didn't mean his brain didn't work at all. He could definitely be part of this discussion if everyone else kept their murderous impulses under control, okay?

Scott glanced between Derek and the Black Widow. The former was still glowering impotently at Stiles, and the latter's expression hadn't changed other than the moue of shock a few moments earlier at the grand Deaton reveal. "Um, yes?" he said after a long moment, without a single ounce of conviction. Oh Scott. Poor puppy. Stiles would make sure he had Milkbones at his house, yes he would.

Ugh, his brain. Maybe going home was for the best right now, if his grey matter wasn't going to be helpful.

"Good call, uncle person," Stiles said sagely as he was half-pushed out the door. "Although I'll have you know that I'm a great source of unification. Many disparate groups have joined forces together in their grand attempts to get me to shut the hell up already, goddamn it Stiles." And yes, he may have been quoting that last bit.

"I'm shocked," Hawkeye said dryly, angling him to the elevator they had come up in not very long ago, still keeping a firm hand on his shoulder.

"Oh, and Mr. Ian Woon knows about you being my long lost uncle," Stiles said. Probably good to mention that now, while he still remembered that he hadn't mentioned it already. Stiles didn't forget information, but there was a good possibility that he forgot who he'd told it to. Just ask Scott, who got to hear about the veracity of Calvin Coolidge quotes five times one week. "I traded fresh and delicious gossip for the elevator key."

Oddly, Hawkeye didn't seem at all perturbed. "You're not mad?" Stiles asked, just to be sure.

"I'm not the one who lives here," his uncle pointed out, pressing the button for the basement-level garage. "I don't know anyone in this town, and I won't have to see them after this op. As long as you kept your mouth shut about my secret identity, I couldn't give less of a shit. How your dad's going to feel about it, I couldn't begin to tell ya."

"You could tell me. I mean, he's your brother. Brothers have, like, a bond or something, I read it in a book," Stiles said, trying for sage again but probably hitting 'vaguely stoned' instead.

"What, my brother who I haven't seen since a couple of years before you were born? That brother? The one who, last time I thought I knew him, left me in an alleyway with both my legs broken?" Oh yeah, that had a definite bitter taste to it. Which made Stiles think of miracle berry tablets, but that probably didn't work for socio-emotional bitterness like it did for tastebuds. Also, trying out that theory would wind up with more mandatory counseling, he could just feel it. And it'd be with Ms. Morrell, too, because all of the private counselors in town had gently requested his father no longer bring him to them – which probably should have been the bigger concern.

The part of his brain that was following the conversation (which, sadly, was not nearly as big as the part of his brain dedicated to other things like listing the reasons he had gotten put in mandatory therapy sessions in the past) decided to speak up. "My dad broke your legs?" (Had he been listening to his voice rather than his brain, Stiles would've hated the childish voice that came out of his mouth. One day he'd learn emotional detachment, he promised himself. Except that day he'd probably turn into a scrawny version of Derek Hale, and... no, just no. So much not a good idea. You needed muscles to pull off that level of brood.)

"No, that was our mentor. Barney just left with him after he snapped my legs," said Hawkeye - well, he could probably call him Clint at this point, couldn't he? What with all the tender sharing of family secrets that was going on. The conversation went on pause while Clint opened the passenger side door to what looked like a boring government-issue sedan for Stiles before circling around to the driver's side. By the time he climbed in, Stiles was buckled up and ready to go. One plus side to his bizarre edition of withdrawal symptoms was that his coordination actually tended to improve - more than once while taking his normal, doctor mandated dose of medication, Stiles had managed to give himself a black eye in the process of buckling his seat belt. People had watched him do it, and swore up and down that they still couldn't figure out how he'd managed such a feat. Spazziness was like his super power.

"He's not like that anymore," Stiles informed his uncle after a quiet moment of fidgeting. Dark family secrets were apparently enough to knock him out of the giddy stage of his medication (and sleep, don't forget the sleep, except that he had and that was why he was like this right now, stupid sleep deprivation). Good to know, except that he'd take being overly goofy any day over what he was learning about his dad now. Sure, it meant that he could feel better about how he was no longer the biggest fuck-up in their household, but he'd prefer keeping the title right now. "I mean, I can't even imagine him doing that to people he dislikes, not now. Well, maybe Ger- the guy who beat me up," he said, cutting himself off before he could utter an incriminating name (because it sucked enough that the pack of puppies knew he'd gotten his ass handed to him by a geriatric, he didn't want to let his superhero of an uncle know exactly how weak he was from the very start) and waving a hand to indicate the mostly-healed damage that was visible on his face. "Right now he thinks it was high schoolers from a rival team, and he was still ready to put the fear of God into them in a fairly violent way. If he knew it was an adult, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to get his gun away from him in time to keep him out of federal penitentiary."

Clint narrowed his eyes at that. "So your dad's in the dark about all this werewolf stuff, then?" He sounded disapproving, which... what?

Stiles gave him a weird look. "Uh, yeah. Even if he'd believe me and not find me a shiny new self-hugging jacket, why would I want to put him in more danger?"

"Because he's the adult who can handle it and you're the sixteen year old kid who's going to end up as puppy chow if you're not careful?" Clint paused. "And probably even if you are careful?"

"Well, that's hurtful," Stiles muttered, drooping a little in his seatbelt and pouting. The pouting was mostly for show, but he wouldn't admit such a thing. "Look, he'd try to keep me out of danger, because he's a good dad. And I'm not letting those idiots - I mean, my friends - go through all this by themselves, so that would just make him more worried and upset than he already is."

Clint was quiet for a while as he drove. "I still think you should tell him, but hey. Your funeral, probably literally." Stiles made a face at him as Clint pulled up in front of the Stilinski house. The lights were all off and his dad's cruiser was gone - another long night, like most of them since the entire department had been slaughtered, Stiles thought with a grimace.

"Here's your stop, kid," Clint said, taking off his own seatbelt and opening the driver's door.

"What, I need a personal escort to the front door?" Stiles snarked as he got out (well, okay, fell out) of the car.

"Pretty sure you need an escort to go more than a foot without hurting yourself," was Clint's calm response as he watched the boy nearly land on the ground before righting himself.

Stiles grumbled to himself. "Oh shut up, Robin Hood."

Before they could get anymore banter going, however, something shot out of the darkness. It landed on Clint, knocking him to the ground, and started to tear into him - Stiles froze for a split second, recognizing the glowing red eyes of an alpha (and not his alpha, because he knew what Derek looked like and this was not it), before he yanked the packet of mountain ash out of his back pocket.

His uncle was attempting to struggle with the beast, but there was only so much you could do against a creature that was more than twice as strong and twice as fast as you - which made the way Clint managed to execute a kind of twist-and-roll to get the thing off of him even more impressive, some part of Stiles's brain thought as he tore open the packet and poured some of the ash into his hand.

Believe believe believe, he chanted silently to himself, before throwing the palmful of ash at the alpha who was getting ready to launch itself at Clint again.

It worked like he had hoped, but hadn't had the chance to practice yet (Scott was becoming more and more reluctant about being Stiles's guinea pig for werewolf experiments after the time Scott wound up sneezing non-stop for three days). The wolf flew backward, and shook its head like it had been clocked in the face by something much stronger than even it.

Clint rolled to his feet, bleeding profusely but - from what Stiles could figure in a half-second glance - not from anything too deep. And all the wounds were from claws, not fangs, thank god. A werewolf secret agent superhero was not something Stiles wanted to think about too deeply.

"I'm guessing this is one of those fabled alphas?" Clint asked as he started pulling out a few of the myriad of weapons Stiles had noticed him carrying the previous day - apparently they were a usual thing, good to know.

Stiles opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off by a small pricking in the back of his neck. Knowing what he was going to find, but not being able to stop himself, his left hand flew to the back of his neck and pulled out, yep, a poison dart. And here he thought that was something you only saw in movies.

"Pluralization is a bitch..." was all he managed to get out before dropping to his knees. His vision was still fine, and he wasn't passing out - oh shit, this was exactly the same as every time he had been hit with the kanima venom, how the fuck did the alphas get that? Had they been in town before Jackson had his coming-of-age arc? Well shit. He collapsed to the ground fully, yelling at his unmoving limbs mentally because he had landed face first in the dirt. This was going to be a fun few hours.

Clint immediately flipped his prone body over, cursing as he found the little dart still held in Stiles's hand. "Don't worry," Stiles started to mutter (and he'd never been able to figure out why the venom didn't paralyze vocal cords), "This has happened before-" but then Clint got tackled again by the same wolf as before - he'd apparently managed to recover from his face full of mountain ash.

His uncle was back in his life-and-death struggle, helped out by the fact that he'd managed to get his knives out before the second attack but still outmatched. (Given a longer distance, or more experience with over-powered wolf people, or any kind of warning, Stiles would bet on Hawkeye coming out ahead. Right now, though...)

Stiles missed the rest of the fight, because someone seized him and threw him over their shoulder before dashing away from the scene at, yes, alpha-speed. Oh crap. He was putting a new rule of the universe into effect, ASAP - two weeks between kidnappings, at the very least.

Clint managed to push away from his attacker for a second, but when he went to dive back in - this time with an angle he picked - the thing's head whipped up. And then he was off, faster than Clint could hope to run. "Shit," he muttered to himself. He'd noticed Stiles being dragged off by one of the things (situational awareness was one of his better skills), but he was also pretty freakin' sure he wouldn't be able to track them.

His cell phone rang suddenly, breaking the silence with an insistent beeping. The display informed him that it was Natasha, so he accepted the call quickly. "Coulson called-" Natasha started to say, but Clint cut her off. Something he was probably going to pay for later, but more important things were happening right now.

"The alphas took Stiles," he said sharply.

"Where?" Natasha's tone was pure business.

"In front of his house," Clint supplied, digging through the trunk of the car for the industrial-sized first aid kit that came standard with the unmarked cars SHIELD provided.

There was a pause from the other side of the line. "I'm getting the other car," she said, "McCall and Hale will get there first."

"I'll be waiting," he said, and hung up.