Adventures in Cat-Sitting
by Sandrine Shaw

It happens so fast that Stiles isn't sure what's going on. One second, Derek is about to attack the witch, all claws and fangs and red eyes and general scary Alpha-ness, and then there's a weird sound in the air and suddenly he's gone.

Stiles stares at the spot where Derek stood, and for a moment he's too confused to even start panicking because shit like that doesn't happen. So maybe he lives in a world where werewolves are real and deadly snake people with paralyzing venom and crazy witches who enslave hapless middle-aged men, but that's cool; he can deal with being thrown into some scary fairy tale. But this? Is not on. People don't just disappear into thin air.

There's a low, angry hissing sound somewhere in the grass, and when Stiles tries to make out the source of the noise in the darkness, he can't find anything. But then suddenly two glowing green eyes stare at him and he yelps, stumbling backwards and almost falling on his ass. It takes him a moment too long to realize that it's not actually a disembodied pair of eyes but a medium-sized black cat, crouching in the grass and looking like it's going to jump at him and claw him open any second now.

There's something familiar about that gaze, and Stiles isn't sure whether this is a good thing or not because 'Derek gets turned into a cat' is probably somewhere on the list of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things to happen, but it's not quite as high up as disappearing into thin air. Probably. Maybe.

He looks at the cat. The cat hisses at him, which seems to be cat-speak for "I'm going to tear your throat out with my teeth". It's startling how alike cats and werewolves are, when you think about it.

He may or may not have said that out loud, which may or may not be the reason why the cat looks even more murderous. Luckily from him, before he can die a feline-induced death, Scott appears, rushing out of the woods to his aid, about five minutes too late as usual.

Scott stops short and looks around frantically.

"Dude, what happened? Where's the witch? Why are you staring at a cat?"

Stiles doesn't really know how to explain this in a way that won't freak Scott out, so he just says it like it is. "That's Derek. The cat. The witch turned him into a cat. I think. And then she disappeared, I guess? But I wouldn't know because I wasn't exactly paying attention since I was a little distracted by the fact that our Alpha sourwolf is now apparently a small feline furball." Maybe he should have been less concerned about how Scott is going to react and more concerned about his own major freak-out he feels coming on sooner rather than later. "Holy shit. Derek is a cat. I can't believe this is happening."

Scott looks a little skeptical. "Are you sure? I mean, you didn't sound sure just then. You said you think she turned him into a cat. Maybe something else happened."

"What else do you think could have happened? One moment Derek is here, and the next moment he isn't and instead there is a cat. Who looks at me like it wants to kill me. I'm pretty sure it's self-explanatory."

"I don't know. Maybe the cat was there before and you just didn't notice because you were distracted."

Stiles closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. "Yeah, well. In that case the witch hasn't turned Derek into a cat but vanished him, which I'm not going to take into account as an option unless there's no other way. Until then, we operate under the assumption that Derek is the cat."

When he opens his eyes again, the cat looks vaguely less murderous.

Scott shrugs. "If you say so, man. But you're going to have to be the one to take care of it... him. The cat."

"What? Why? No! I'm going to grab him, take him to his pack and let them sort it out. He's their Alpha, so they can cat-sit him."

"Not gonna happen. Werewolves and cats... we don't exactly get along. Sorry." Scott, the traitor, doesn't actually sound the least bit apologetic.

And this is how Stiles adopts a cat who used to be a deadly Alpha werewolf who made a habit of threatening to kill him and pushing him against walls and occasionally saving his life. When Stiles picks him up, cat-Derek sinks his tiny, little, but surprisingly painful claws into Stiles' forearm, which reaffirms his belief that yes, the cat is definitely Derek. He pushes it into the passenger seat of his jeep and ignores the way it's glaring at him.

Really, how is this his life?!

Stiles hides Derek the cat in his room which should technically be a lot easier and less conspicuous than hiding Derek the wanted felon in his room. But back when Derek was hiding from the law, he had the good sense to actually hide, whereas his feline alter ego jumps up on Stiles' bed, curls up and doesn't move an inch, not even when his dad comes in when he's back from his shift.

Stiles scrambles to shut the windows on his computer screen before his dad can ask him why he's googling witches and animal transformations (90% of all results are Harry Potter fanfiction and thus probably not relevant at all).

"Stiles," his dad begins, in the tone of voice that implies that he's about to ask something he's not sure he is prepared to hear the answer for. Stiles spins the computer chair around to face his dad and follows his line of vision. "Why is there a cat sitting on your bed?"

"It's Scott's," Stiles says quickly, because the fallback response if all else fails is to blame Scott. Most of the time, it's even true. Except in this particular case, his father will know that Scott doesn't actually have any pets, so he backtracks a little. "Well, not really Scott's. He's from the clinic. The owners abandoned him and Dr. Deaton gave him to Scott until he finds a new home for him, but - funny story - it turns out that Scott is allergic to cats, so I have to take care of him instead."

His father frowns at him, then looks at Derek, who is smart enough to realize that this is the perfect moment to release a tiny broken sound that would probably break Stiles' heart if Stiles didn't know that Derek wasn't actually a defenseless, lonely cat that had been left at the side of the road by its owners.

"You're not keeping it?"

"No! God no. It's just for a few days, don't worry. A week, max. Just until we find a happy new home for him."

"And you're going to buy the cat food from your pocket money," his dad presses on.

Stiles nods. "Absolutely," he says, silently thinking that he's totally going to make Derek pay him back as soon as he's himself again.

After several hours of fruitless research, Stiles is ready to call it quits before he actually falls asleep on top of the keyboard. He staggers into the bathroom for a quick shower and drags himself back to his room, about to face-plant on the bed when he realizes that the bed is still occupied.

He pokes Derek awake until he hisses and claws at him, but fortunately even cat reflexes are somewhat dulled by sleep and Stiles can pull his hand back in time.

"Look, I understand that you had kind of a terrible day, but this is my bed and I need to get some sleep, so shoo."

Derek's response is to either yawn or to bare his teeth at him - Stiles isn't sure which it is.

He sighs. "Could you at least move a little?"

Derek can't, or rather won't, so all Stiles can do, if he doesn't want to concede defeat and sleep on the floor or downstairs on the couch, is to lift the covers and slide underneath as well as he can, at the very edge of the bed. It should be physically impossible for a regular sized cat to take up so much space, but Stiles wakes up twice during the night because he's being pushed halfway off the mattress, so clearly it's possible after all.

In the morning, he wakes up sneezing rapidly because his nose tickles like crazy, and it's only when he opens his eyes and sees black that he realizes that it's because Derek has moved from the middle of the bed up to the pillow and his fur is covering Stiles' entire face.

He pulls away, flailing, instantly more awake than he'd like to be. "Oh my God, you're the worst bedmate ever. First you hog the bed and now you're trying to smother me! Are you actually trying to kill me?"

He pokes Derek again. This time, Derek's reflexes are better - or maybe Stiles is slower because he's had about three hours of frequently interrupted sleep - and that's how he ends up with angry red lines across the back of his hand.

Getting Derek to meet the pack goes about as well as Scott suggested.

The betas wolf out as soon as Stiles lets Derek into the room, and Derek starts hissing and showing his teeth and the hair on his tail rises up like it's electrified.

Apparently, the rumors about cats and werewolves not getting along are not, in fact, greatly exaggerated. Even when the cat in question used to be a werewolf not so long ago.

Stiles sighs and declares the pack meeting aborted.

They develop a sort of a routine. Stiles spends hours in front of the computer, trying to find everything he can about transformation spells. Sometimes he brings books from the library or borrows them from Deaton or, on one memorable occasion, from Allison who nicked it from her dad's shelf.

He tries to do as much research as he can at home, because he hates leaving Derek alone in case... just in case. Something might happen. Also, he figures that life as a cat must be kind of lonely, and he can imagine that Derek would feel helpless and vulnerable being stuck like that, without any of his werewolf defenses (or even regular human defenses) available to him.

While Stiles is reading, Derek is lying on the bed, eyeing the screen across the room and silently but very obviously passing unfavorable judgement on Stiles' research skills. Stiles is pretty sure that if Derek could speak, he would tell him in no uncertain terms that Stiles is an idiot.

"Stop looking at me like that," he tells Derek. "I'm trying, okay? There is nothing. Nada. Nil. You're welcome to have a look yourself."

He takes a heavy tome and puts it next to Derek on the bed. Unsurprisingly, the 'you're an idiot' look doesn't waver.

Sometimes Derek takes a break from judging Stiles because he's hungry, quietly sliding off the bed and disappearing down the stairs into the kitchen where there's a bowl of cat food (he prefers meat to fish, which Stiles thinks is a remnant from his werewolf eating habits) and some water.

One remarkable time, he caught a mouse and then he spat out the remains right in the middle of Stiles' carpet. Stiles didn't speak to him for the rest of the night, which he's fully aware no one, least of all Derek, would consider punishment, but he's been spared the sight of any mousy leftovers ever since, so maybe he did get the message across. Or maybe there were just no more mice in the house.

The first time Derek jumps on Stiles' lap rather than back on the bed when he returns from the kitchen, Stiles flails so hard that he almost loses balance and falls off the chair.

"What are- Why would you- How- What are you doing?"

Since Derek the cat still hasn't mastered the ability to speak, there is no actual response. He stretches out, looking up at Stiles expectantly.

Stiles tentatively reaches out and touches Derek's furry little head with a single finger, half-expecting to feel claws against his skin any second now. When the claws don't come out, he grows bolder. Derek's fur is soft and warm and he makes small, content sounds when Stiles moves his hands down his sides.

"I don't know which of us is going to be more embarrassed by this once you're back to your grumpy sourwolf self," Stiles tells him, turning his attention back to the screen while his fingers comb through Derek's fur.

"Perhaps he'll change back at the full moon?" Scott suggests.

Stiles hasn't found an indication that the moon phases have any sort of influence whatsoever on magical animal transformations, but Scott's guess is as good as any. "And what if he doesn't? It's almost two weeks now. Maybe the spell won't just wear off, but the witch has to undo it."

"I read that a way to undo a spell was to kill whoever cast it," Erica chimes in, sounding far too excited for someone who's talking about murder.

Stiles narrows his eyes at her. "You read that where?"

"A book," she says defensively, glaring at him. Stiles edges far enough away that she needs to stand up for her claws to reach him, not that it'd do him any good if she actually decided to attack.

Next to her, Boyd chuckles. "A young adult novel," he adds helpfully, and Erica bristles and chucks a pillow at his head.

"Doesn't mean that it's not true."

Stiles throws his hands in the air and walks out. When Isaac calls after him and asks where he's going, he pointedly tells him, "Home. I have a cat to feed. Let me know when you come up with an actual plan to get your Alpha back."

When he comes home, Derek greets him at the door, rubbing against his legs.

The full moon comes and goes, but Derek stays a cat. Stiles' dad has stopped asking if Deaton found a new home for him yet, and a bag with new cat food mysteriously materializes in the kitchen one night when the Sheriff leaves for the late shift.

It's been nineteen days now, and Stiles is starting to panic. They haven't found any trace of the witch who turned Derek into the cat, and not even Deaton knows a way to undo a spell like this. Scott is starting again on how maybe they were wrong and the cat isn't really Derek, and Stiles still doesn't want to hear it. He'd rather think that Derek is stuck forever as a cat than imagine that he was just made to disappear, never to be seen or heard of again.

He's lying awake at 1am on a school night, trying hard to fall asleep and not think about how much the entire situation kind of sucks. It doesn't work, and he's just about to get up again and switch on the computer when Derek uncurls from his place at the foot of the bed, walks across Stiles' body like it's all his territory and lies down again on his chest.

"Um," Stiles says, because it's late and he's tired and Derek has just decided to use him as a pillow, and even he has moments when he's at a loss for words.

They rarely last for long, though. "Dude, you're kind of heavy?"

In response, Derek growls softly and doesn't move.

Stiles sighs. "Okay then. Fine. I hope I make a comfortable pillow so at least one of us can get some sleep tonight."

Derek growls again, though it's a little more like a purr, maybe, and Stiles' hand somehow finds its way to Derek's neck, fingers moving instinctively through the shiny black fur. The purring turns into a deep, continuous sound.

"You're even more high maintenance as a cat than you used to be as a werewolf," Stiles complains, but he doesn't stop petting Derek and there's a small smile on his face.

It only takes ten minutes until he's asleep.

He wakes up because he can't breathe anymore. At first he thinks he's having a panic attack until he realizes that the weight on his chest is real.

His eyes fly open and instead of a small furry cat, there's 200 pounds of fully human (well, as human as he gets) Alpha werewolf spread across his torso. The fingers of Stiles' left hand are tangled in soft dark hair, even though he's pretty sure that this is defying the laws of sleep because surely his hand should have got dislodged at some point last night after he fell asleep petting the cat's fur.

It takes him a moment to get over the shock that Derek - human Derek, actual Derek, not-a-cat Derek - is back, just like that, when Stiles had all but given up hope that this was ever going to happen. He's too caught up in the baffling transformation to register that Derek is awake, but at some point, the fact that Derek's eyes are open and staring at him makes itself known to his brain. It would be enough to make him jump if he wasn't currently held down by the immobile body on top of him.

He pulls his hand back so fast that he accidentally hits his elbow on the bed frame.

"Whoa, you're awake! And you're human!" He flails as much as it's possible in his position. "And I was petting your hair. Oh my God, please don't kill me. You were a cat when I took you to bed with me. Wait, that sounds bad. I mean-"

"Stiles," Derek says, effectively shutting him up. Derek's voice sounds rough and scratchy, as if he had too much to drink last night or is recovering from a bad cold or spent the last week stuck as a cat who didn't exactly talk much beyond purring and hissing and the occasional growl. He also sounds like Derek: perpetually grumpy and put off and commanding. Stiles had no idea how much he missed that voice.

He waits for Derek to say something else. When he doesn't, Stiles takes it as permission to speak again.

"Derek," he begins, trying to mimic Derek's grave tone and probably failing terribly. He does his best to sound matter-of-fact and not at all like he's freaking out, even though he totally is. "You're human."

"You said that already." Derek sounds vaguely amused, though, and he barely raises his head off Stiles' chest without making a move to get up, so Stiles figures he's probably not going to get eaten. Squished to death, maybe, but that doesn't sound like the most terrible death.

"You realize you're saying this out loud, right?"

Stiles snaps his mouth shut, but that does nothing to quiet the voice inside his head that keeps telling him that despite the fact that Derek's weight is crushing him, lying under him is not nearly as uncomfortable as it should be. That line of thinking is disturbing for a long list of reasons but especially because Derek was his cat until a few hours ago and Stiles has troubles associating sexual attraction with feline furballs.

"Well, excuse me for being stressed out a little. This is confusing, okay?"

"What is?" Derek asks, leaning on his arm and lifting himself off Stiles' chest, and Stiles is surprised when he feels an acute sense of loss as soon as Derek shifts away. He has to force himself not to reach out and pull Derek back down, because he's sure that wouldn't go over well and he'd like to keep his arm attached to his body.

And wait, Derek asked him a question, didn't he? He mentally rewinds the conversation.

"You. You're confusing. Last night you were a cat and you were all cuddly and soft and it was okay to touch you. At least I think it was? I mean, you didn't claw my hands open again, so I figured you didn't mind. And now you're..." He gestures helplessly at Derek, waving his hand around. "You. And don't get me wrong, that's good. It's great. Not gonna lie, I'm going to miss cat-you a little, but I totally approve of having you back as a one hundred percent non-feline being. But I'm kind of used to touching you all the time and I still want to do that even when I know that I'm not allowed because you'll totally-"

"Stiles."

Derek has this way of saying his name that's so much more than just his name. He says 'Stiles' but what it sounds like is, 'You're going to shut up now if you value your life'. Even now, when he doesn't look or sound particularly angry - though Stiles doesn't really understand whyhe's not angry, considering what he was just telling him - the "shut up" is clearly implied.

And then Derek leans forward and Stiles thinks oh shit, he was wrong because clearly Derek is angry enough to rip his throat out. He screws his eyes shut, expecting teeth. Instead, there's a soft, insistent press of lips against his and his mouth opens in a surprised oh, and then he's being kissed, slowly and thoroughly and with more gentleness than he ever would have thought Derek was capable of if he had thought about Derek in that way at all. (Which of course he had, and maybe now it's okay to admit that.)

It takes him a moment to get with the program and kiss back, and when he does, the kiss grows all heated and intense and all kinds of amazing. Stiles reaches up and lets his fingers tangle in Derek's hair in a way they didn't when he was a cat, and the sound Derek makes when Stiles tugs a little is definitely not a purr but some sort of deep, wolfly growl that goes straight to Stiles' groin.

He breaks away a little, gasping for air.

"That means I'm still allowed to touch, right?" he asks, breathlessly.

The way Derek chuckles against his lips does funny things to his body.

"Only if you shut up," Derek says, and then he kisses him again before Stiles can utter the smart-ass reply that was already on the tip of his tongue, and Stiles thinks that maybe he isn't going to miss cat-Derek at all.

End.