If there was one thing Stiles couldn't stand, it was the implication that he was in any way helpless.

"Look, I don't know if you noticed, but I have an arsenal of wolfsbane powder and access to bullets that can kill evil werewolves, pixies, fucking unicorns," he exclaimed, gesturing at himself in emphasis. "If unicorns exist. Which, after seeing the shit we've seen, I don't even have the energy to doubt anymore." But that wasn't the point. As Derek's eyebrows were telling him. Stiles huffed. "Point-in-case, dude. Just because I'm not Terminator-material..." He paused, took a moment to ponder the image of Terminator!Derek, complete with his serious face and a solemn "hasta la vista, baby".

He maybe snickered, and Derek scowled at him (more than his default scowl-y expression, anyway), so Stiles stopped and cleared his throat because fuck what the others said, he'd swear that Derek had some sort of super Alpha mind-reading skills. It would explain some things.

"Doesn't mean I'm entirely helpless," he finished with one last flourish and a stare-down with their mighty broody Alpha.

Derek's eyebrows did that thing they tended to do when Stiles and his stubbornly awesome points (because they were, no one could deny that) were pissing Derek off. Stiles maintained that it was because Derek couldn't win arguments against Stiles by glaring them away, he had to use his words, which was something – Stiles had this on good authority – that Derek tried to avoid as much as possible.

He was probably so relieved that he could growl his betas into submission whenever they got too out of hand, but Stiles was nothing if not an amazing role model and they were slowly picking up hints from his way of handling their Alpha. Stiles wasn't sure if Derek had caught on yet, but he assumed not. If he had then Stiles wouldn't still be here to think about it.

"You're not coming," Derek eventually growled.

Stiles stared at him hard. Derek didn't budge. In fact, he just glowered right back and then moved past him, disappearing swiftly into the tree line after his betas (and Scott). Stiles resisted the urge to kick something, preferably Derek's Camaro which was sitting right there.

He wasn't quite that suicidal though.

So, all things considered, when Stiles hopped into his jeep and headed back home to research what he could on the supposedly murderous tree nymphs the pack was busy sniffing out in the forest (and, seriously, tree nymphs? His life was a goddamn joke), he really should have realised that he'd be reeled in to something regardless of whether or not he was directly involved.

It wasn't until he'd pulled out of the gas station onto the lone route circling this side of town that he realised he was being tailed. It was almost midnight, so the road was empty besides him (not that this area was ever busy during the day anyway, unless someone was going out of town or heading down to Hale property, neither of which the population of Beacon Hills did very often) and hanging around werewolves for so long meant that Stiles payed more attention to his surroundings and senses than he would normally. In another scene, it might have been paranoia, but Stiles had been snuck up on and kidnapped and beaten up enough times that the extra precaution was as almost as handy as the steadily-growing stash of things-that-can-ward-off-the-supernatural that he'd been wheedling out of Deaton.

So, yeah, he was being followed somehow. It wasn't a car – the road was quite empty, and dark, and okay, possibly dangerous for the human to be on alone at this time in this area when there were evil tree nymphs around. Not his fault that his usual werewolf escorts were all busy now.

It didn't pass Stiles the fact that, despite Derek's orders, Stiles would no doubt have been safer sneaking around the forest with one of them than here. For all he knew, it was the nymph tailing him. That was likely. Wasn't it? It was a thing that could very well be happening. Because Stiles was on a road surrounded by forest. And none of them had been able to pinpoint yet where exactly this tree nymph had been residing so who was to say it wasn't slinking along in the dark next to Stiles' jeep right now?

Stiles took a breath and readjusted his grip on the steering wheel. He considered speeding up, then reconsidered that option because tree nymphs might have super-speed and that would be counterproductive.

So he went for his usual option in times of danger when he was alone – pulled out his phone and speed-dialled Scott. Automatically, of course, because after he sat there, on edge, listening to the dial tone ring out, he realised in frustration that Scott had a shitty habit of not answering his phone.

And then he didn't have time to try Derek because a figure, a thing, a person, he didn't even know, barrelled out of the treeline and in front of his jeep. Stiles let out a startled yell and swerved suddenly to avoid hitting whatever that was, then had to brake just as suddenly so that he didn't end up killing himself by stopping the car from killing the- He looked up. Man?

That was a man, a person-human-being-man, and for all the little information Stiles had on tree nymphs he was pretty sure they didn't look like short bulky possibly-mad men.

And yes, that was a plural, because before Stiles could get his bearings enough to do anything, another man appeared next to the initial and what was going on here exactly?

Stiles reacted on instinct to preserve his possibly-dramatically-shortened life, throwing himself out of the drivers' seat and then proceeding to shove his hand into the small pouch hanging off his belt-loops, tossing his hand out to shower the men in wolfsbane.

What, it was an automatic act, they might as well be werewolves for all he knew!

...Clearly, they weren't, because they just spluttered in startled disbelief and started to advance on him angrily. Stiles' eyes widened when one of them – the one who'd jumped in front of his jeep – reached into his jacket towards a very identifiable lump.

"Woah, hey, uh, no need for that, right?" He laughed nervously, raising his hands slowly to indicate his absolute defencelessness.

"I'll be the judge o' that," the guy sneered. He waved his gun at Stiles, who flinched, because fuck they clearly did not know the first thing about gun safety. "Clear out ya pockets. An' no funny business, kid."

"No, no, of course not, I wouldn't dream of any funny business, not me," Stiles' mouth rattled automatically while he slowly pulled his wallet and phone out of his jacket pocket. He thought regretfully that if only he'd had time to at least dial Derek's number, this would probably be over sooner. Stiles seriously wasn't in the mood for everyday criminals. Then he pulled off his wolfsbane pouch, and the guy who'd been silent thus far came closer to glare at it.

"What's that supposed to be?" he demanded, with what he clearly thought was an effectively terrifying glare.

Stiles had faced down Derek's, complete with murderous eyebrows and all. He was not impressed in the slightest. "This?" He shook the pouch a bit, thinking fast – something he rather prided himself on. Unfortunately, he wasn't given time to say anything half-way convincing, because Numbskull there (shut up, they needed names) made the oh-so-smart move of stepping right into Stiles' reach and making a grab for the pouch.

Stiles may not have the skills or reflexes that the werewolves did, but – one, he'd grown up with a cop for a dad and that meant he had a good enough self-defence knowledge, and two, he'd watched his friends train multiple times and learned enough tricks from them to be able to – theoretically – apply them.

Well, not so theoretical now, as Stiles grabbed the guy's arm and twisted it behind his back with all the force he could muster, spinning in the same move so that he was now between Stiles and his partner's gun.

It was a pretty sweet move. Stiles managed to save the preening for later.

"Really, kid?" the guy with the gun sneered.

Stiles didn't attempt to retort however much he would've loved to, because Numbskull was trying to wriggle out of his grip (it was a good thing the man wasn't bulked up like the other guy, and not taller than Stiles either) and Stiles had to wind an arm around his neck so his forearm pressed heavily against the man's throat. It wasn't near enough to sufficiently suffocate him, but it provided a nice pressure that had him struggling for proper breath rather than struggling to get away.

"You confident enough in your skills to shoot me and not him?" Stiles grinned at the gun-toting idiot. He knew for a fact he wasn't. Gun safety be damned, the man wasn't even holding the gun in a grip steady enough to shoot from.

What he neglected to remember, amidst the mental crowing of "oh yeah, who's the helpless human now, bitches?" was that Numbskull – who was possibly not as much of a numbskull as Stiles had originally thought – still had the wolfsbane in his hand. The wolfsbane which Stiles had thrown into their faces and likely got it all into their eyes and hair and clothes and-

Yeah. Stiles now knew what that felt like, and payback was the world's biggest bitch.

He spluttered as the dust hit him right in the face, eyes watering, nose tickling, and reflexively lifted a hand to wipe at his face furiously.

Strike three and he's out.

...Literally.

When Stiles was brought about from his state of blissful unconsciousness, it was with a sharp jolt and a groan because fucking ouch his head.

And then he swore quietly when he cracked his eyes open to a dark musty interior, curled on his side on a surface that was rocking about and jolting with the movement. Of the vehicle. His jeep.

"Why is this my life," Stiles moaned, raising a hand to carefully feel around the bump at the back of his head. His fingers touched the raised welt and he winced, recognising the wet feel of blood matted in his hair. Which was a serious bitch to wash out, he could say that.

Not that that was his top worry at the moment.

No. The problem to take the cake for things fucking up Stiles' life at the moment would be the fact that he'd been knocked out and stashed into the back of his own jeep.

His jeep, which was moving.

"Oh my God." Those morons were in his car, they were in his car and they were driving and Stiles was useless in the trunk and they were probably going to drive out of Beacon Hills to the middle of nowhere so they could kill him and dump his body, maybe in a river or something, and no one would even know Stiles was missing. Not until the morning, when his dad's night shift ended and he realised that his son was most definitely not in his room or in the house at all. And then he'd check to see if he was with Scott, who wouldn't have realised Stiles was gone until the Sheriff mentioned it, and only then would the rest of the pack know and Stiles would be long-dead by then.

...Shit.

Fuck.

Okay. He needed to calm down. And breathe. Breathing was good. Breathing was vital, it was extremely necessary, he was not going to have a panic attack while stuck in his trunk with his potential murderers-to-be driving out of town.

Out... of... town.

Stiles almost punched the air in excitement as an idea formed in his head, stopped himself just in time to prevent punching into the metal and alerting the men to his state of very-much-not-knochked-out-ness, and settled for a smug grin instead.

They were already on one of the main roads out of Beacon Hills, so they would have obviously turned the jeep and went back the way Stiles had been coming (unless they were idiots and thought it was a good idea to drive a decidedly not non-descript blue jeep through town and hope it wasn't recognised; in that case Stiles just lost faith in humanity and hoped for a sudden thunderstorm and for the idiots to be stuck by lightning. Preferably without hurting him or his baby, somehow) and down that way was the route to the Hale house.

Down there, or in the forest surrounding it, were his many awesome werewolf friends, who would have their senses all perked up in search of the tree nymph (Stiles took a moment to mentally laugh hysterically at the fact that he'd assumed those two thickheads were the nymph trying to attack him) and so would definitely hear the jeep heading down the road. At least one of them would wonder what Stiles was doing back, if maybe he'd found something, and would come down to meet him, hence realising that it was not, in fact, Stiles driving but two strangers and the scent of Stiles and/or his banging on the trunk door would lead them to him. After dispatching his kidnappers, of course.

It was a foolproof plan! (Derek would undoubtedly take this opportunity to state, in that ever-witty dry way of his, that that might be due to the lack of Stiles' involvement in it. Stiles would then shoot back a sassy remark that he'll refuse to regret even if the Alpha's murderous-intent levels were particularly high that day.) Stiles quickly shook away the odd moment of half-wishing that Derek were here, because... what even?

But because this was Stiles, and everything and everyone seemed to be out to make his life is horribly infuriating as possible, his plan didn't get to be put into full action. The car was definitely slowing down, something he saw no reason for at all, and he focused hard when he realised his kidnappers were talking.

"Look at this place, no way anyone comes 'round here..."

"Yeah, I say we get rid o' the kid and hide him under some bushes or somethin'."

"Then get the hell outta dodge."

Okay, well... shit. Okay. No worries. He just had to... improvise. He could do that. Stiles put the pro in improvisation.

Luckily for him, this jeep was his baby and he knew his baby well, inside and out. Which meant that he knew that he had a crowbar in here (better not to ask why, it was a long story, involving Scott and... yeah, you know what? He'd rather not think about it). Well. He knew that, but he only remembered it because it had been digging into his back the whole time but amidst the not-panicking and the scheming, he'd ignored it. Now, though...

Stiles smirked and shifted for a better angle.

The jeep stopped. One car door opened then slammed shut. (Stiles winced.)

Keys jangled, scraped a bit on the trunk's paint (Stiles clenched his jaw in irritation, that was his car goddammit) as the guy (the happy gun-toter, by the sounds of it) swore about lack of light, then the familiar twist and click of the trunk being opened...

Stiles swung with all the power his measly-in-comparison-to-werewolves muscles could manage. The guy never knew what hit him.

"What the-?" Numbskull yelled from the front, swinging his door open.

Stiles quickly scrambled up and over the edge of the open trunk, tripping a bit over the guy he'd knocked out (ha!) before pulling himself upright with a hand curled around the edge of the trunk. He kicked a bit at the guy at his feet – just to make sure he was out cold, of course, couldn't just trust the hard evidence of a lovely swelling bruise on his temple now, could he? – before quirking a sassy grin at the latter man just rounding the jeep.

"How's that plan on killing me going?" he mocked, swinging the crowbar cheerfully.

"What did ya do, ya rascal?!" he demanded once his eyes fell to his partner in crime.

Stiles shrugged and toed at him again. "Want the same treatment?" he smirked, goading the pissed off man to charge at him, aiming low when he clearly tried to tackle Stiles from the waist, under Stiles' crowbar-bearing arm.

Stiles wasn't kidding about learning tricks from his wolfish friends. One of those was the handy skill of reading people in fights. Such as the direction they were going. So Stiles swinging his crowbar low meant that when Numbskull (who, seriously, who even charged at a kid wielding a crowbar anyway?) went for the low tackle, what he got instead for his troubles was a metal bar in his face.

Even Stiles winced at the dull clang that rang out on impact, but it diffused into a smug grin when he came out the victor, standing over two prone bodies with a rather handy weapon.

Stiles crouched to the ground and dug through the mens' pockets, finding his phone and wallet with no problem. He sat back and dialled Derek's number, keeping a watchful eye on the two just in case, and a firm grip on his crowbar too.

Derek answered on the second ring. "What is it, Stiles," he gritted out. He sounded tense and strung-out, and Stiles spared a moment to wonder how hard catching a tree nymph would be.

"No luck, yet?" he said conversationally, leaning his back against his jeep and stretching his legs out in front of him comfortably. He snickered as Derek growled into the phone, then continued before he cut the line in Stiles' face (which he did not appreciate, thank you very much). "So I need a couple of extra hands here."

There was a short suspicious silence on the other end. "...what for?"

"Oh, y'know, the usual," Stiles answered cheerfully, poking at Numbskull with the jagged end of his crowbar. "Couple of bodies that need moving, that sorta thing."

"What?"

Stiles had the world's biggest shit-eating grin on his face and he knew it. He just wished he could see Derek's face. "I dunno, man, they just came outta nowhere and tried to kidnap and kill me," he said with the most innocent tone he could muster. Which, considering, probably wasn't too innocent sounding.

"Don't go anywhere, where are you?" Derek demanded.

Stiles relayed his approximate distance from the Hale territory, then added, "You're totally my hero, aren't you? Coming to save the poor human."

Derek shut the phone in his face. Stiles grinned to himself, satisfied.

It didn't take long. Stiles was staring at his failed kidnappers in contemplation one second, then his eyes were jerking up at the sudden shadow that fell over him. Derek stood there, in all his glowering broody glory.

Stiles gave him a lazy wave from his seat on the ground.

Derek frowned. "What happened." He didn't ask it, asking wasn't a thing that Derek did. He just sort of said sentences that should be questions but weren't, and expected people to answer regardless.

Stiles sighed and got to his feet, waving at tweedledee and tweedledum with the crowbar. "Got ambushed by these idiots, realised they weren't werewolves or anything, y'know, not human and then they got the drop on me and stuffed me in the trunk and started driving out here so they could kill me and drag my body out into the bushes where nobody would find it," he rattled off. "Which, you know, would've been stupid because this is pack territory so one of you guys would've known right away, and even though they clearly don't know that, someone would've realised I was missing by-"

"Stiles!"

Stiles stopped rambling and raised his eyebrows at the glowering Alpha. "Derek?"

Derek's eyebrows pulled together in a long-suffering expression, which Stiles resented. "Are you hurt," he said flatly.

"Nope," Stiles said, popping the 'p' just to see the intriguing eyebrow-raise he knew it'd get.

"You smell like blood," Derek told him, looking angry at the fact. But Derek generally looked angry, so.

Stiles blinked. "Right." He raised a hand to the bump on his head. "Lucky I've got a hard head, huh."

Derek narrowed his eyes at him, then crowded right into his space (did this guy not know the concept of personal space and boundaries, at all?) and lifted a hand to brush at the bump, which- yeah, ow.

"Dude!" Stiles whined, trying to move but finding he couldn't thanks to the proximity. "What are- oh." The throbbing headache that he'd managed to ignore due to the adrenaline rush from attacking his kidnappers ebbed away and Stiles stopped himself from relaxing right into the heat of Derek's body at the last moment. Stupid soothing werewolf healing powers. Derek left his hand there for a moment more than he needed to, staring at Stiles in an inscrutable way that had long ago stopped being creepy. Or maybe Stiles had just gotten used to it. He wasn't sure which was worse.

"Also," Stiles added after clearing his throat and stepping back, staring hard at Derek. "Useless human?" He waved his free hand at himself. "I think not."

Derek rolled his eyes, but didn't argue. (That's right, because he couldn't argue with that. Damn straight.)

"And I think this whole debacle just proves I was totally right, by the way," he tacked on smugly. "I would have been in so much less danger if I'd been in there with my wolf buddies, as opposed to getting jumped by kidnappers and potential-murderers." He nodded with certainty.

Derek didn't agree, or concede to his point or anything, but his eyebrows did a furrow-y dance which meant he was actually thinking about it, and his mouth pressed into a thin line until his expression read reluctant concurrence. Stiles was sure he kept the victorious smirk off his face, but Derek huffed a growly breath at him anyway.

Oh well, Stiles couldn't please everyone.

...At least he now had his crowbar for the next dangerous person he managed to piss off. There was that.

And... for once, I have nothing to ramble about here. Hope that entertained you. Stiles being a badass mofo is the best ever, we need more of that in the show ;)

And I swear that vaguely Sterek-y moment at the end there was not planned, it just snuck up on me while I was writing. *innocent wide eyes*

Let me know what you thought and I will love you forever :P
Cheers~
iz.