Teen Vamp

Chapter 3 - I'm Dead On The Surface

***STILES***

"Hunter? Hunt, what are you doing?" I jam my hands in my pockets, reminding myself of my dad - he does that sometimes when he's going into a danger zone. Well, not really his pockets, but inside his bulletproof vest. "Stop! Come back!"

"Come back where?" Hunter whirls around, baring his teeth. "Nowhere is safe from my father!" We both twitch as we hear an engine rumbling, growing closer to us. That's not...what kind of Dragula car does Renard Senior drive?

Not a recently-repaired Chevy Tahoe, I don't think. That's Derek's ride. He drives up to the curb, opens his window, and leans out. "Hunter, you need to come with us." Behind him, Skylar leans forward and waves to us. I unconsciously wave back. What can I say? Both those Renards are pretty charming like that.

"Just Hunter?" I ask. "What am I, chopped liver? No, wait, don't answer that. You probably eat that shit raw."

Derek gives me his "stow your dumb jokes" face. "Stiles, everyone else is gathering at the loft," he says. "Go up there. Your dad probably doesn't want you hanging around his investigation."

"Like that's stopped me before." I stick my tongue out at Derek, fully aware of how immature it is. Then I turn to Hunter, as if I can eyeball him into submission and make him keep going with me.

"Sorry, Stiles," he says. "But I completely agree with your line of thinking." He leans down, pressing his forehead to mine and holding the back of my neck. "Don't die without me, okay?"

"No promises." I stick my tongue out at him, and then he kisses the end of my nose before climbing into Derek's Tahoe and leaving me behind.

So now I'm alone. And I'm probably talking to myself right now as I walk, too. Everyone tells me I have a tendency to do that sometimes when I'm alone. Dad, Scott, Scott's mom, Jackson (he claims he actually has audio proof, but won't produce it, at least not when I ask for it), Danny, and Lydia have all told me so at least once.

I need to walk faster. Hunter's leather jacket, protective though it may be, isn't really appropriate for this weather. Not in a California summer. And yes, walking faster will make me exert myself more, and then I'll sweat more...but then again, all I'll need to do to make up for that is to stand under one of the big old A/C vents in Derek's loft. He's probably keeping Beacon County's PG&E office in business with his industrial-strength climate control.

Which my friends, being inconsiderate teenage jackasses (except Scott and Allison, and Lydia, of course), haven't turned on yet by the time I arrive. And it takes so friggin' long to boot up the system, as it were. So when I'm inside, standing under the big vent in the center of what's basically the living room-slash-kitchen, I'm still sweating my ass off even after taking the jacket off.

Leave it to Jackson to pick up the jacket from the coatrack (haha, I still can't really picture Derek being the kind of guy to have a coatrack), take a great sniff with his recently werewolf-ized nose, and declare to the room at large, "I smell kitty litter."

"Hunter's still a far more civilized and housebroken boyfriend than you'll ever be, you giant trouser snake," I hiss at him. No, seriously. The last two words come out sounding like "troussser sssssssnake."

"How would you know?" Jackson asks with his usual crooked grin, now accompanied by a flash of bright blue in his eyes. "I've never been your boyfriend, and I never plan to be."

Lydia steps in between us. "Derek's trusted us to leave his loft intact. We don't need any supernatural boy-fights, huh?"

"Yeah," Isaac says from the far corner of the kitchen with a pointed glance at Scott. They've been living together for a while. I hear it's a tumultuous arrangement, because Isaac keeps insinuating that he likes Allison (who doesn't, though? She's a sweet girl), and Scott gets all possessive and punchy, almost throwing him through the wall a couple of times.