So this is my very first Teen Wolf fanfic and yes it had to be Sterek because I'm most familiar with their dynamic and their personalities. Scisaac is next on my list and then Stisaac because if you can't tell by now, slash holds a very special place in my life.

If there are any similarities to Blood Moon by WritingintheCandlelight they are absolutely unintentional and completely coincidental. A friend pointed out the similarities between BM's Stiles and my Stiles but I hadn't read that fic as yet when I started writing this first chapter. I was simply working with the idea of Stiles being fed up and putting his foot down. What that means...you'll just have to read to find out. Hope you enjoy :)

And we all know how to fake it

And we all know what we've done

We must be killers

Children of the wild ones

We Must Be Killers

Chapter 1

Lines and Balance

Stiles hears the sirens. Sees the flashing lights racing down the street. He knows where they're headed. He doesn't move. Doesn't do anything, except heave out a heavy sigh and flop carelessly onto his bed. The ceiling is very intriguing tonight and he wonders if he ever finished counting all the cracks in the lines of the protective wooden shield over his head. He doesn't wonder for too long though as he starts counting again from the furthest corner of the ceiling.

It's been thirty minutes, maybe fifty? He doesn't really know. It's not like he's been counting down the minutes until he hears the familiar tapping against his bedroom window, which he started shutting and locking as opposed to leaving it open like he used to. Another sigh escapes and Stiles just isn't in the mood to deal with this tonight. He doesn't even glance over to see who it is this time. Boyd, Erica, Scott, Issac, he doesn't really care. He stopped caring a long time ago. A man could only take so much before refusing to anymore. And Stiles refused.

The tapping persists again, only slightly louder than the first time.

Stiles rolls over onto his side, facing away from the window, showing his back to whoever would not be getting into his room tonight. He's tired of it and quite frankly if they want to bring their supernatural shit into his town of their own free will then they can just as easily look after themselves or go to one of their own for whatever. He's done making excuses and lying, and covering, and concocting, and weaving so many webs until he's lost in them himself. He decided he wasn't going to do that to his Dad especially anymore, seeing as the Sheriff more than anyone else truly deserved to know just what the fuck was going on in this freaky town of theirs.

He deserved to know about the "residents" that act as homing beacons for just about any and everything to go bump in the night. The ones that pull chaos and slaughter towards them like magnets and then release it out onto whoever gets caught in the fray of the crossfire. And there was, is and will be a lot of crossfire. Stiles has lost count of how many people have died since the wolves reappeared six months ago. Well actually, if he's honest with himself, which has become harder and harder to do within recent times, he stopped counting.

It's pointless. Because the harsh reality is that every time something happens, every time there's a disagreement, or someone develops a grudge, or someone new comes into town, people die. Granted people always die, but in Beacon Hills they're dying before they need to and not by natural causes either. And it's infuriating really because how can you justify the killing, on either side? At the end of the day it's still murder, whether the victims are human or wolf or otherwise. Lives are still being taken, and more times than not it is without true, just cause and that Stiles has a problem with: how they can just explain away murder like it's nothing and lie to everyone around them with such practiced ease.

It's one practice he'll never make perfect.

Of course, being the third party outsider that he is, Stiles sees that the justifications from both sides aren't all that just a lot of the time. But none of it is his concern anymore. He removed himself from the constant daytime night-time drama after things with the Kanima. Yes Jackson was back to normal, relatively speaking of course since he's still his usual pissy, douchebag, jerkface self. But he's just like the rest of them now. And lately it seems like he wants to bring Danny in on it too. Stiles has a huge problem with that.

He likes Danny. A lot.

Danny doesn't care that Stiles is awkward, that he's on the bench all the time, has no brain to mouth filter, is nothing but gangly legs and flailing arms, and is just plain weird. And yes, Stiles can admit it, he is weird, but that's nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about. Everyone else pretty much ignores him in school. Okay maybe Danny does too sometimes, but not as much as the rest of the high school population. He still sort of talks to Stiles, and humours stupid questions about his attractiveness to gay guys, and doesn't slam him into lockers or threaten to do him bodily harm like certain other douchebags Stiles knows. And Stiles knows a lot of them. Therefore Stiles wants Danny to stay the way he is: nice and human. Jackson however, apparently has other ideas, and maybe, just maybe it's because things have changed with Lydia. What that has to do with needing to change Danny however, Stiles hasn't figured out yet.

Lydia is a whole other can of worms Stiles isn't sure he wants to think about right now. Not that he usually thinks about worms, or cans of worms, because that's weird and who does that...but he's going off topic again. He can't remember if he's taken his Aderall as yet so maybe that has something to do with it.

But Lydia Martin is...well, Lydia Martin (ladies and gentlemen, Stilinski reasoning at its finest). Lifelong crushing aside, Stiles can look at this objectively and see all the things that could possibly have pushed them apart. And funnily enough those are the same things that had kept them together all this time, despite the break up and the hurtful words and both of them almost being killed. Why is it that everytime he thinks about someone he knows, killing or the possibility of them being killed immediately follows? There's a pattern there though.

The tapping is louder now and it isn't stopping. If anything it's faster in pace, more urgent somehow. Why hasn't whoever it is left him alone as yet? That's all he wants, to be left alone. Before he really is killed or gets himself killed, or maybe kills himself on purpose. Except he won't do that because he loves his dad too much to leave him out of sheer selfishness, despite the crap that he's been forced to put up with thanks to certain shifters.

"Stiles!"

HE is the last person Stiles wants to deal with right now. He's purposely avoided the pack on a whole as best he could for reasons he doesn't need to share and the least they could do is respect his unvoiced desire for solitude. Even though they've never respected his wishes in the past.

"Go away," the teen mutters in reply, knowing it'll be heard no matter how low his voice is or how muffled.

"Stiles! Open the goddamn window NOW!"

The growl is low but deep and laced with an unvoiced threat that really Stiles is used to and has therefore perfected the art of ignoring. The tapping turns into a sort of pounding that isn't quite pounding because his visitor, and he's using that term quite loosely, wouldn't risk breaking the window and having the neighbours hear.

"I swear to God Stilinski you better open the window before I-"

"Before you WHAT?!" Stiles flies off his bed and stands at the window, yelling at the source of intrusion through the glass, because fuck it all he's had just about all he can take of Derek-fucking-Hale.

Derek halts mid-pound as if he's surprised at the outburst and stares at him with blazing blue eyes. But Stiles is immune enough by now to not be bothered by that. Plus he has...

"WHAT De-rek?" grounding out the name like it's a bitter taste in his mouth that he's being forced to acknowledge.

The surprise doesn't last for long. Derek's eyes flash with murderous intent and he glares at the teen like daggers will come out of his eyes and stab him to death for being so utterly difficult.

" . !" he grits out quite literally as his jaws are pretty much locked down on each other.

"I don't think so. Go away!"

"I'm not going anywhere until you open the goddamn window and let me-"

Yeah, Derek still hasn't caught on to the novelty of asking people nicely when he wants something. Even having a pack to look after still hasn't taught him that. Not that he's obligated to be nice to his pack or speak nicely to them anyways. But Stiles isn't pack and he doesn't have to give in to Derek's demands or commands since those are the only things he knows how to verbalise. Well those and threats of bodily harm, which are his specialty. Stiles absently wonders what specialties Jackson has and if douchebagery can be considered one.

"Let you what? Shove me up against my door again? Throw me into the wall? Or slam my head into my desk? Don't you think you should be over physical threats by now? It's just so six months ago you know? I mean if that's still all you can do after being here for so long I'm not sorry to say there's one more thing you're gonna have to add to that list of your obvious retardations..."

"Fucking hell Stiles, just shut up already and open the window before I-"

"Make me?" Stiles cuts him off again, "I don't think so..."

Derek's eyes flash red this time. Now Stiles can believe he might break the window to get at him.

"...because you see, unfortunately for you, I..."

Derek snarls defensively on reflex as Stiles pulls down a garland of wolfsbane from somewhere above the inside of the window and dangles it in front of the pane. Lips curl back over bared fangs and a sound of what comes across as pure unadulterated rage escapes him. Stiles feels more than sees Derek's fist slam into the wall outside the window. The tremors rattle the posters hanging on the other side of it. He flinches on reflex.

There are some things your body just naturally reacts to in a certain way and this is one of those things. But the slight flinch is the only reaction Derek receives. The window doesn't open. A threat like that will no longer work on this human.

"Don't come to my house again, don't even think about coming here," Stiles says not skipping a beat, voice low and full of intent, though how he manages to sound like he's capable of a threat is beyond him, "don't come around my Dad, and . . "

Every word is punctuated with more force than the previous one. His eyes narrow as he says that last part, in a manner that is very unlike the boy Derek has come to know, the boy he thought he knew.

"Or else I will make you..."

It's nothing like the boy he knows.

"...and believe me when I say I can..."

And in that split second the wolf realises: he doesn't know who Stiles is. He doesn't know him anymore.

"Stiles..." Derek tries one last time, faint traces of pleading lingering in his tone now but Stiles won't be taken in by that again.

The wolfsbane is left leaning against the window pane and Stiles retreats into the darkness of his room. He won't feel sorry for what he's done. He isn't sorry. What does he owe Derek anyway?

Lines should have been drawn a long time ago.

Stiles has officially drawn his.

He won't feign surprise at Derek being the one to make him break his sabbatical from interaction with any of the wolves or their extended pack. Patience and restraint aren't the guy's finer points after all so it was only a matter of time before the Alpha sought him out. Things were just always that way between them.

Later on, when he has time to think over the events of that night, several things come to the fore of Stiles' mind that he didn't notice at the point in time thanks to the heat of the moment hazing over everything else.

There had been something in Derek's eyes just before Stiles turned him away. The furious glare had been reduced to a stunned stare, and maybe more that he couldn't make out in the darkness with only the faint light of the street lamps to illuminate parts of Derek's face. But he also realises one very vital, pertinent and possibly life-threatening fact:

He flat out denied Derek Hale.

Alpha Derek Hale.

Him.

Stiles Stilinski.

And Derek just...retreated. Tucked tail and backed off like Stiles was worthy of consideration as an opponent (for lack of a better word) or at least someone who was not pack. And he has to interpret it like that because given the circumstances, how else can you interpret Derek's lack of reaction?

Pack listened, pack took you in, no questions asked. Well maybe not Derek's pack. They'd ask a million questions and whine and moan but do whatever he asked anyways. Pack didn't reject you, didn't shut the door in your face or, as in Stiles' case, leave you outside on a windowsill in the middle of the night and dangle wolfsbane in your face.

It occurs to him that the balance has shifted.

What the fuck?

So that's the end of chapter 1. The second chapter will be up in about a week's time. This isn't a oneshot (like some people apparently thought lol) so there will be more to come, a lot more. Thanks for reading and reviewing! *fist bump/roar*