Heartbeat // A Derek Hale Love Story (Teen Wolf)

No Stress

Lillian's POV

Derek was convinced we should just drive to Scott's place and see how he was doing, and that there was no need to involve Stiles. I rolled my eyes at his resistance to work with Stiles unless he absolutely had to, but I didn't bother arguing.

We didn't speak much on the drive to Scott's, and for a few moments, all I could think about was how small Derek's car was. I honestly wanted to know what the point of having a car with two doors and practically no storage space was. But I knew he loved it for its looks. I loved my pickup because it was beautifully practical. There was no way you could fit half the stuff I needed to get through the day in Derek's tiny Camero. Its significant utility had come in handy the night Derek almost died, I couldn't imagine having to haul his bloody, unconscious ass into this tiny car.

Maybe I was secretly biased against the car because Derek almost ran me over with it the first time we met. I scoffed softly at that, and Derek glanced at me. "What?"

"I don't know why, but I was just thinking about the time you almost ran me over. Do you remember that?"

"Obviously," Derek laughed. "You didn't seem to like me much, and you'd just seen what was probably the Alpha so I wasn't inclined to stick around and talk to you about it without letting you know I was interested in something so seemingly random."

"Yeah, honestly you were kind of rude to me," I chuckled. "It's amazing you ended up privileged enough to go out with me."

"Ha," Derek snickered. "Indeed."

We pulled onto Scott's property a moment later, and only a few lights were on in the house.

"He's not here," Derek announced.

"How do you know?"

"I can sense when other betas are around, and he's not. He was, but he's not anymore. Stiles is here, though."

"How do you know?" I repeated, eyeing the house as we drove closer and Derek parked.

"I can hear him," Derek said, getting out of the car and jogging up to the porch. I followed as quickly as my human limbs could manage. "Stiles?" Derek called, skipping steps up to the front door. He opened it without knocking. I sighed through my nose. Sometimes he was pretty intrusive when he had an agenda, and I wasn't surprised Stiles wasn't the biggest fan of that.

Stiles appeared at the bottom of the stairs a moment later, eyes wide. "He's gone--"

"Where'd he go?" Derek growled.

"The hell if I know!" Stiles snapped, glaring at Derek. Great. We couldn't just play nicely to accomplish a task. An absolute classic. He turned to me and offered a tight smile. "Hey."

"Hey, what happened, Stiles?" I asked calmly.

"I had him handcuffed to the radiator in his room, he started screaming, I thought it was just to get me to let him out, so I ignored him. I was outside the whole time in case something went wrong. He-- he agreed to this, before it got dark he was saying all day that he wanted me to help him. That's all I was trying to do." He looked at me desperately. "He got all quiet all of a sudden, and when I checked in, he was gone. The handcuffs are broken and there's a bunch of blood on the floor."

"I want to see," Derek said, more to himself than us, and took off upstairs.

I turned back to Stiles before following Derek up the stairs. "It's going to be okay, Stiles. Derek will find him. No stress."

"No stress?!" Stiles nearly shrieked, chasing after me. "No stress?! Have you forgotten that Scott could be running around killing people right now? He's not in his right mind! Allison could be dead by now!"

I set that idea aside for a moment, and pushed Scott's door open a little wider. There was indeed a pair of broken handcuffs next to the radiator, moonlight glinting off the blood on the floor next to them. I could only imagine how badly Scott must've wanted to get out, if he'd managed to break the real, proper handcuffs that I was sure Stiles got from his dad. Desperate animals were known for chewing through their own legs to get out of traps. I shuddered at the thought.

"Do you have any idea what Allison is up to tonight?" Derek asked softly, breathing deep.

"You think that's where he's going?"

"Isn't that what you're worried about?" Derek said. "What you just were screeching to Lillian about?"

"Well, yeah, but hearing you confirm my worst fear isn't exactly pleasant, so I'm giving you a chance to show I'm wrong."

"I don't think you're wrong," Derek replied. "Not if he really loves Allison like you say he does. It's hard to say exactly what he'll do when he's like this, but I think that's a good place to start. And Scott's scent leads that way." He pointed west. "Let's go."

"What, me?" Stiles asked.

Derek pushed past us both on his way back down the stairs. "No," he muttered. "You can wait here and see if he comes back. Lillian and I can go out looking." I raised my eyebrows at that, at Derek willingly inviting me out after that conversation we'd just had before coming over here. I didn't argue though, as I slid into the passenger's seat. I guess I had said something about staying in the car. Or at least trying to. 

A/N: So this chapter is a bit short, but the next one is around 2000 words so far, so hopefully it'll be worth the wait. I'm sorry again for not updating in such a long time, I've been very busy with life recently. 

I hope to have the next chapter up soon, and by soon I definitely mean within a couple weeks rather than months. 

Let me know what you thought of this chapter!

-TAAF_