Wake Me Up – Chapter 18

God, that graduation ceremony had been torture. The very day no one can expect or demand that Derek keeps his hands to himself anymore and his guide spends the entire time out of reach!

Who fucking hated him? For real? What did he ever do?

Not that it matters anymore now that he’s got his guide in hand. Literally. Derek smirks as he runs his hands over his guide’s entire chest before settling on the line of buttons running down the middle of it.

They had discussed this moment off and on for the last week. It all boiled down to a balance of pressures. Namely, the pressures of being ready to advance their relationship versus having a bond strong enough to face the danger they both know is coming.

So far as Derek is concerned they know and accept where there relationship is going, so it’s Stiles’s choice when they take which steps. He just has two rules and those are strictly for intercourse. First, they needed a good amount of time to themselves for it. Preferably a week but Derek would accept a day or two considering their circumstances. Second, it would take place in their own private space with a bed. Whether that ends up being Derek’s apartment or if Stiles wants to wait until they are moved into a new place together is completely up to Stiles.

Derek runs his nose down along Stiles’s collar bone, inhaling strongly, and then runs his tongue back up toward the younger man’s ear.

The ride from the auditorium to the Lake had been their first time together today since climbing out of bed this morning and their first time alone together ever. Stiles had been fairly determined to give Derek his daily dose of babble in that 20 minutes alone and Derek had been content to let him right up until Stiles confessed to thinking about blow jobs in the forest all day. It had almost been enough to get Derek to pull over right then and there but the wisdom of having Pride members within shouting distance had won out.

He’s just going to keep to the front of his guide’s body. If he wanders to the back they will start a chain of events that neither of them are ready for and they will break both of his rules. Besides there is nothing wrong with building his imprint slowly. As long as he doesn’t destabilize, it’s just extended foreplay, right?

He starts to bury his face Stiles’s underarm but pulls back quickly when his guide tenses in a bad way. Something to add to the list to discuss.

He runs his hands down Stiles’s flanks, enjoying the sensation of skin on skin until Stiles pulls him in for another kiss.

Once Stiles is relaxed again he starts nibbling down his guide’s chin, down his throat and to his nipples. Derek takes his time with them but keeps it light and teasing, making sure they both get equal time under his mouth and fingers.

Fingers tugging on his hair remind him of what they both want. He pulls back enough to watch Stiles’s face as he mouths his way down the guide’s stomach. He waits when he gets to Stiles’s fly. Stiles swallows a few times before giving him the nod to go ahead.

Pulling out his guide’s cock is a gift. His guide in totality is the best gift Derek has ever been given but this just makes it more.

He settles back on his haunches and watches his hand work his mate’s penis to full hardness. The feel of it on his palm, the sight of it in his hand and the smell of it on the air are just- He could probably get off on just being able to touch his guide this way. The warm silk in his hand and the moans in his ears just make his good time more likely.

Derek stops his hand, moves the other one to the center of Stiles’s chest and waits for his guide to stop squirming. Once Stiles focuses on him, Derek leans forward slowly. Stiles keeps his feet when Derek licks him from base to tip, but Derek and the tree end up taking most of his weight as soon as Derek wraps his lips around his mate. A few bobs of his head later, a hand lands awkwardly on his shoulder as Stiles takes back his own weight.

“You taste so good.” Stiles really, really does. He smells amazing too. When they met in September, Stiles had smelled faintly of chemicals, of Adderall. Now, eight months later – after four months, three weeks and 5 days of being bonded – the smell is gone. He only smells of Stiles now.

Soon to smell like Stiles and Derek.

Stiles cries out when he comes and the sound almost takes Derek with him. He settles back to watch his guide recover, already plotting the next time he gets to take his guide apart like this.

There’s that noise again. He frowns at his guide. That sound can’t be coming from Stiles, can it? No, he’s been around Stiles when he got aroused before and he didn’t make this noise then. No human could possibly make sounds like an electronic mosquito. Right?

Derek glances around and inhales deeply. He can’t smell any mosquitoes and they both left their electronics on the cooler they pulled out of the truck.

There it is again! It’s louder this time. Maybe closer? Fuck.

Derek pulls his guide away from the tree they’ve been using as support and hastily leads him back to the Lake and the others.

Stiles is tucking and buttoning with all good speed rather than complaining about Derek’s brutal murder of his afterglow. He’s probably picking up on Derek’s worry.

The sun is about halfway set before they make it back to their group’s tables. Emma and the guides are trying to laugh but are only managing to hold a very stilted conversation. McCall, Harm and Uncle Peter are sitting very still with their heads tilted to one side, listening. So, they must be hearing it too.

“What do you think it is, Derek?” Peter asks as his Alpha stops beside Scott.

“I don’t know.” It seems to be coming from the direction of the cars but all he can see over there is Erica and Boyd. Maybe in the air? He gasps.

In the sky, several miles out, there are four? No, five. Planes? Ships of some sort. Derek has never seen anything like them.

Distantly, he can feel Stiles pressing himself against his back and whispering in his ear. The safety of his guide’s presence is comforting and lets him look further for more detail in safety.

The ships are blue-y gray and about as long as a speedboat. Their edges are violently jagged and they have stubby little wings on either side. They are thicker in the back and come to a distinct point in the front, like something you should be able to puff out of a blow gun.

“Unknown Aircraft, 12 o’clock.” He announces to the group.

“What the fuck.” Peter is always so eloquent.

Three of the dart-things break their very loose formation and start firing on Beacon Hills. A heartbeat later, Derek can smell the fire, pain and blood into the air. He can hear the distant screams.

Boyd and Erica are already losing their minds, snarling a challenge at the invaders as if they can reach them so far away, up in the air.

Derek mentally reaches for Stiles. This is not the time for their Pride to lose their shit. He gets Stiles’s acknowledgement and has just enough time to take hold of the hands resting on his chest so that he can take his turn and anchor Stiles as the guide lets his mind loose on their Pride. Stiles bolsters every guide he can reach so that they in turn can support the surrounding sentinels. It doesn’t help Boyd and Erica because they have no guides but it’s the best they can do. For now.

The ships are slowing down, coming lower. They shoot strange spotlights from their bellies. In the light appear the grossest people Derek has ever seen. Their skin is pale blue or green, waxy and wet. Their hair is white, dirty and knotted. They smell like rotting flesh but also of something earthy and hot.

Derek has the time to see Boyd and Erica charge the newcomers and shout “NO!” before the first spotlight hits the table.

Emma and Sheppard-Rabb disappear in a wash of light.

The second ship, not far behind its brother, takes Chris and Yukimura-McCall.

Derek grabs Stile’s hand.

The light tingles.

-*-*-*-*-

They’re late. Of course they’re late. Two teenagers hitting a grocery store with four toddlers and a newborn is not exactly an ideal recipe for quick and on time! Not even with a ‘Mom of the Year’ medical professional for back up.

On the upside, Malia smells distinctly aroused by the sight of him with her baby brother strapped to his chest.

They are finally, finally headed out of the store, with only one small toy or candy per child he might add, when something screams at him. Jackson really can’t be sure what or how he knows but something is definitely wrong.

And what is that horrible noise?

An aircraft, the likes of which Jackson has never seen, buzzes the store and fires on the town water tower.

Holy shit. Stiles is right. Aliens are a thing.

A hand touches his and he stumbles.

It’s almost what he imagines it would be like if he suddenly got better gear in the middle of some jacked up shooter game and his new sensors kicked on before anyone could warn him about them, but that’s not really a good description, either. Everything is brighter and just, he can’t –

Everything is just more. More sound, more light, more smell, more taste. It’s almost too much but he feels stronger, too. Steadier. He’s grounded and secure.

Jackson turns to see Malia holding his hand. Everyone around them is frozen. No one knows what to do.

“We have to get them to safety,” Malia says. Her voice is soft but intense.

He nods. She’s right. His guide is right.

Momma McCall keeps all four toddlers in the cart and reaches over to take the baby, harness and all, off his chest. “There’s an old World War II bomb shelter just up the road. Across from the library.”

Jackson and Malia both nod. As soon as a solid round of evasive wiggling frees him of the infant, they turn as one and start shouting at people to follow them.

The streets are on fire. Mundanes are panicking. These ships have the freakiest lights that can scoop people up. Or destroy them? Jackson honestly prefers the first option.

They lose more people to the lights than Jackson finds acceptable but his priorities are clear. His guide and the children.

Momma McCall is just a bonus.

-*-*-*-*-

Allison watches horrified as her Alpha, her father and her ex-boyfriend disappear in a wash of white light.

A different sort of plane buzzes in from the southeast. It’s paneled sort of like a B-2 stealth bomber but quite a bit smaller with three distinct thrusters in the back and downward sloping wings. It shoots down the first attacker that light-scooped Emma, Dave and Rabb and all she can think is those must be the good guys as the second attacker punches it for the stars.

A howl of pain breaks the air and she watches her father’s sentinel charge into the group of, well, aliens.

She can feel herself nodding as she walks around to the back of her dad’s SUV and can’t seem to make herself stop. Why is she nodding? It doesn’t matter. Alex is matching her step for step. Their sentinels trail them both, more than a little confused and completely on edge.

She beeps the back of the truck open, spins the knob on the mobile gun safe that she herself had vehemently protested and opens it. Alex is pulling out the carpet flooring and using their dad’s keys to open the other storage compartments. He hands her a bow and quiver. She hands him back a shotgun.

They arm up. It doesn’t take much to get their sentinels to start strapping on everything their guides hand them. Even the stuff the sentinels don’t know how to use.

“What are we doing, exactly?” Isaac asks as the Argent siblings slam the doors of their father’s SUV closed and give it a little beep.

“Helping Peter,” his guide answers, not even breaking stride and she checks a magazine and slaps it into a handgun.

“Is that wise?”

She stops and frowns at him. “Peter is feral and fighting, which means that dad is alive because if dad had died his sentinel would have collapsed. So we are going to watch his ass and assume dad will be back to claim it.”

“Right,” he nods quickly, both intimidated and inappropriately turned on by his guide’s assertiveness.

She just raises an eyebrow and turns toward the fray.

Allison takes aim at the creature holding Erica free of ground with an easy one handed grip on her chin. She does as she’s been trained and puts three in the center mass of the target.

The creature doesn’t stumble, he doesn’t hesitate and he definitely doesn’t put Erica down. He just grins at Allison, flashing teeth that would not look out of place in a shark if they were less rotted and shoves his hand into the center of Erica’s chest.

Erica’s growls go from howls of rage to shrieks of pain faster than Allison can blink. Whatever that thing is doing to Erica turns her into a prop from zombie movie. Allison feels the flame that is Erica get sucked away and ruthlessly snuffed out.

The creature laughs, showing off his hole-less chest.

Allison shoots again. This time she takes out his forehead and the center of both its eyes with her little clover pattern.

The creature stumbles for a second, then falls flat on his back and doesn’t move.

“Head shots,” Allison advises her brother as the rest of the monster squad starts to charge them and their snarling sentinels take guard positions on either side.

“Noted.”

-*-*-*-*-

Lydia knows the moment her Alpha is taken. She doesn’t know how he’s taken or even by whom. Hell, she’s not even sure how she knows he was taken but she is certain of it.

When one of the many planes circling Beacon Hills air space crashes down on main street, she approaches it. She is going to get some answers.

“What is it?” she asks, mostly to herself.

“An F-302,” her sentinel answers.

“What? There’s no such thing as an F-302.”

“That’s what it says. On the little sticking up part. Above the United States Air Force symbol.”

The ground shudders and bucks for several minutes, halting their progress as they struggle to keep their feet. Her sentinel proves himself completely capable of anticipating and avoiding destruction as buildings all around them collapse, the streets fold like paper accordions and light and power poles dance.

The safety dance is exhausting.

She thinks a question really hard at her sentinel as she struggles to catch her breath. What the hell was that?

“Not an earthquake,” he says. “Something exploded. Or collapsed? Something big.”

He’s pointing toward Nevada. Or maybe Colorado? How far can a bonded sentinel detect physical events?

That depends completely on the size of the event, the reasonable voice in the back of her head supplies. If it was big enough, he could probably detect something happening in Virginia. Assuming such a large event didn’t just kill the planet.

She begins their forward progress once again.

Jordan Parrish is practically humping her, trying to shield her body with his. In any other circumstances he’d probably have to arrest himself for public indecency.

There is a female in a black flight suit crawling out of the fighter wreckage using only one arm, keeping the other held tightly to her chest.

Jordan’s hand on her shoulder becomes firm, stopping Lydia. “Sentinel, identify yourself.”

The woman freezes for a moment before she stands and straightens herself. “Vala. Vala Mal Doran and Major Cameron Mitchell.” The woman turns her back on them and stares sadly at the flattened, burning nose of what used to be her vehicle. “Maybe.”

-*-*-*-*-

Stiles’s first impression of… wherever they are is that it stinks. It’s dark, it’s damp and it stinks. Oh, and it’s hot in decidedly not fun ways.

His sentinel is spooned tightly against him. Their fingers are intertwined and his sentinel’s arms bracket his own where they are crossed over his chest. Stiles knows that, to his sentinel, this is so he can balance grounding through skin contact while not exposing his guide in any ways other than the already exposed flesh on his arms but Stiles finds it extremely comforting.

Derek whispers softly against his neck, “Someone’s coming,” and it’s surprisingly not comfortable any more.

They are standing facing the room’s web-like wall that Stiles has to assume is a door when two creatures like the ones from down by the Lake stop in front of it.

One stares at them with hungry eyes and shark teeth, head tilting this way and that in an obscene parody of a sentinel.

The other one is bigger and doesn’t have a face. Stiles has to swallow a burst of nervous laughter harshly.

Of course it has a face. It’s just wearing the ugliest boney mask ever.

Oh, god, please let it have a face.

Neither creature says anything. Do they talk? Can they talk? Do they communicate telepathically or something? No, not telepathically. Stiles would have picked up on that by now. Right?

The smaller one, the one with a face, reaches out and touches the wall to the left of the door from their perspective. The door opens upwards and the little one enters.

Stiles starts to get nervous as Derek steps back and allows the thing to back him towards the far wall with a lethal smile. Stiles feels his own terror spike as the thing holds up a hand.

It’s fingers are long and don’t get him started on those nails. Women would (might?) pay tons for long talons like these. Three of its five fingers have the most cool looking jointed armor Stiles has ever seen. It almost looks more like jewelry and -. Seriously?

Oh my god! What the fuck! Palm mouth. Like shades of Vampire Hunter D palm mouth. With teeth. Tiny, recurved fucking teeth.

The creature freezes. Its smile is displaced by a look of confusion as blood flows out of its mouth and down its chin.

Derek is kind enough to take the creature to the floor before taking its head in a series of precise slices of his knife.

The other alien is not much more than a broken, bloody mess just inside the door. Stiles swallows and does his best to breath as little as possible. Just when he thought the smell couldn’t get any worse!

Until this moment, Stiles never would have associated a feral episode or even just sentinel combat with stealth or silence. Now, he can.

The long, bulbous thing Derek stabbed Stiles’s attacker with is just laying on the floor while Derek works. Stiles grabs it, figuring his sentinel will want to keep the alien weapon and barely notices a very trigger-like click before Derek has him on the ground.

Derek’s mind is a strange, warm static that Stiles can only think to call ‘white’, maybe ‘blank’. It’s not uncomfortable but Stiles isn’t thrilled to touch it, either. Not that that stops him. It takes several minutes of apologies, reassurances and gentle demands both mental and verbal before Derek will crawl off of him and allow him to stand.

“Well, we know it’s a gun now!” Yeah, he totally deserves the look Derek gives him for that.

They take everything from the two aliens that looks even a little bit like a weapon. He really hopes the pistol-like thing he’s holding is actually a pistol. It would be a real downer to try and threaten someone with a scanner or something.

“What now?”

“We make sure no one else is on board and get off. We need to get back to the Pride.” How exactly they are going to do that is anyone’s guess at this point. “There is.” His sentinel is taking in large quantities of air. Stiles takes his hand but stays alert for threats. “There is. This way.”

Derek turns abruptly and takes them down a few dark corridors.

“Hale.” A voice calls from the shadows, followed soon by a female guide. She’s a mess, starving thin and so dirty that Stiles can smell her over the ship’s ambience.

“Cadman.” Derek returns the greeting.

“I see you’ve bonded.”

“I see you haven’t. I thought you were on Atlantis.”

“I was, ’til about three months ago. Then, our only ally out there got culled. My team infiltrated this ship looking for the alpha pair of Sateda. The pair wasn’t here but the Wraith captured my team. I’m not leaving without them.”

“But you can leave?” Stiles just has to make sure.

She finally breaks eye contact with Derek and looks to Stiles. She nods. “I have a ship in the Dart Bay.”

“Dart Bay?”

“Yeah, where they keep those little ships for culling.”

“Culling? Is that-?”

“Where is your team?” Derek cuts off Stiles questions.

“Ford and Hoffman were fed on but one of their scientists took Parrish as a pet.”

“Parrish? Jonathon Parrish? The botanist?”

“That’s the one.”

“Where is he?”

“This way.”

They fucking beam to a different level. If they were on any other ship in Stiles’s rather wild imagination it would be the coolest thing ever, but they aren’t and it isn’t.

The halls are really empty, like scary empty but then invading someone else’s planet has got to be labor intensive. Probably more so if you have to gather all of the home team up so you can eat them.

They finally enter a well-lit chamber and find a human male lounging on a bed in an open front robe. Stiles tries really hard to not think about why the guy looks so blissed out and relaxed on a ship full of genocidal aliens.

He’s obviously not the only one. All three ‘rescuers’ stand and stare at the guy for a while. It’s sort of like finding out Princess Leia liked being chained up by Jabba the Hut. It’s just too gross to contemplate.

When the botanist finally notices them, he gets alarmed very quickly. “You can’t be here! How did you get on the ship?”

“We’re here to help you,” Cadman hastens to reassure him. Both guides feel a spike of terror and know it has the immediate, opposite effect on the captive as Parrish scrambles for something on the table beside the bed. Cadman tries again. “Jon! We’re here to help you.”

“Help me? Help me? I don’t need – oh my god. You did something. I know you did something. What did you do to him?” He finds what he’s looking for and holds it up in triumph. A walky-talky.

“No!” Stiles shouts as both he and Derek shoot the guy. He doesn’t stop. He starts shouting at them but he doesn’t stop. They shoot him again. This time a third shot comes from Cadman and her service pistol. Blood blooms on the scientists chest as he collapses, dropping the communication device.

He’s down for the count. A very permanent count.

A red light comes on the walky-talky and a creepy voice they can’t understand enters the room. By the tone it’s asking a question.

“We need to get out of here.” Derek takes Stiles’s hand. “Now.”

-*-*-*-*-

Scott wakes up alone. He’s on a really large bench. Or it could be a small table?

Over the stench of the room he can smell blood. Guide blood. Not Kira’s blood but close by.

He turns his head. He is not alone. One of those things he saw briefly by the lake has Chris Argent up against a wall. It’s playing with the guide. It is obviously not a fun game, for Chris at least.

As silently as he can Scott rolls off the table and approaches them.

Chris and the creature are intensely focused on each other. Neither actually reacts when Scott stops beside them. Scott pulls both of the creatures blades out of their sheaths and gets to stab the damn thing twice before it can react.

He cuts the things hand off when it reaches for him and then its head with the other blade. He feels very Highlander. How the fuck-

Chris whimpers and collapses towards Scott.

The guide’s leg is broken in at least three places. Scott doesn’t know what to do. He’d have an idea of what to do if Chris was a dog but he’s not. He is so totally not a dog and Scott’s afraid to he will make it worse.

Swallowing, he picks up the guide. He can hear Stiles’s heartbeat. The alphas are together, close and closing in on Scott’s position.

Scott gets Chris settled on the table-bench just in time for Stiles, Derek and a female soldier he doesn’t know to stumble through the door. Derek does a sensory sweep of the room before he allows either guide to step all the way inside and the door to close.

The female they introduce as Cadman rushes to Chris’s side. She orders all three of them to find some sort of rope or fabric and straight, study things for a splint.

She knows what to do. Scott can suddenly breath.

No, no he can’t. There’s a pinching sensation in his chest just before Kira’s terror floods his mind.

“No! No. Nonononono.” He feels himself turning and running without ever making the decision to do so.

-*-*-*-*-

Being pushed and held down on the floor by the body of an alien woman is not nearly as fun as being pushed and held down on the floor by the body of her sentinel.

The creature monologues, which is also not fun.

It has horrible breath and, hey, look at that, it’s not fun.

The creature tears open Kira’s shirt and slams her free hand into the center of Kira’s chest.

The creature’s mind brushes Kira’s and she gets an idea. She reaches into the creature’s brain, into the core of her personal identity, and tears at her. Kira’s mental hands transform into paws and she starts digging, pulling at the creature’s consciousness and throwing it out behind her like dirt from a hole.

The Queen’s physical gray matter starts to liquefy and runs out of the Queen’s nose, dripping onto Kira’s neck. She collapses quite suddenly on top of Kira and is just as heavy as she looks.

Kira’s vision is going gray. Her limbs feel weak. There is something wet and warm on her upper lip. She licks it and tastes copper.

With another thought she sends every bit of information she captured from the monster, her alpha’s way. He needs to know it to protect her sentinel and her Pride. He needs to know everything.

The body is thrown off of her and Scott is in her face. “Kitsune. My little kitsune.” He’s crying, crying like his heart is breaking and that is just not on.

With her last breath she pushes the will to live down their connection and into Scott. No matter what happens, he must live. He must fight. He is too strong to collapse. Who knows how many other sentinels will go with him? The Earth needs every single one.

Scott howls his loss and rage as his guide’s last promise brushes his mind.

I will find you again.

-*-*-*-*-

Scott is fucking heavy. Just as he has every few seconds since they stunned his best friend with a vibrating alien penis gun, Stiles wishes his mind gifts were more in the line of telekinesis than telepathy.

“What is that?” Derek’s voice is shocked, awed and more than a little giddy.

Derek is looking at a completely empty section of the Dart Bay. Obviously, exposure to aliens has fried his sentinel’s brain.

Stiles doesn’t have to look, he can feel Cadman’s smirk. “That is a Puddle Jumper.”

Derek gives her wide eyes. “It goes through the gate?”

“Has its own DHD and everything,” The Marine nods. “Colonel Sheppard named them.”

Derek fucking grins, slides under Scott’s other arm and leads them forward in a sideways, uphill walk.

His sentinel is walking on fucking air! His sentinel is disappearing! This is not okay!!

“Duck, Stiles.” He does so and he’s in the belly of a ship. He turns to see Cadman and Chris inching their way up a very solid metal ramp. The very one he couldn’t see five seconds ago. They each have one arm out in front of them and the other around each other because Cadman is still enabling Argent’s locomotion.

Derek reaches out and pulls them into the cabin. Chris first because he’s injured.

“Can you fly this thing?”

“Yeah,” Cadman pushes past them to a section with a view port. “You can, too. They only respond to guides.” She gestures for Stiles to take what he guesses is the co-pilot chair.

Stiles feels something touch his mind. It’s warm and friendly, strangely genderless and incredibly invasive.

Derek’s hand is suddenly gripping his shoulder tightly like he wants to pull Stiles out of his seat.

Relax. It hasn’t hurt a pairbond yet and I’m going to need his help,” Cadman assures.

Stiles can feel her now, too. He knows how to get the ship moving and does so as she switches the cloak for the shield (an aftermarket add-on, she practically fan-girls into his mind.) She opens the drone launchers and he feels her take aim. “Let me show you something we learned in the air above Sateda.”

 

4 Comments:

  1. Pingback: Wake Me Up

  2. An amazing story.
    I love how things start small then the people involved and the enormity of things expands, so there are new challenges and adventures each chapter.

  3. Just re-reading, because this is brilliant!

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