hale-of-stiles-heart:

This is one of my favorite tropes! So glad I got to write it! Also on ao3!

Stiles wished he could say it was the first time he had found a dead animal on his doorstep. He really did. But it wasn’t.

For the past few days, five in a row to be exact, he had found all sorts of small, fluffy little woodland animals lying dead and bloody on his front porch. They ranged from squirrels, their furry tails soaked in blood, to birds, their feathers strewn around the doormat, to rabbits, who apparently were not fast enough to outrun whoever or whatever was leaving them on the front stoop.

Initially, he had thought it was one of their neighbor’s cats, the old woman a few houses down who owned a veritable army of feline companions having recently procured two more cat cadets. But on the fourth day, he had walked out of the house to check if they had gotten any mail only to find a large raccoon with its throat slashed open, blood seeping out onto the doormat that they had just replaced.

No matter how fierce those cats were, he doubted they could do such gruesome damage. And so, he had begun considering other culprits who may have been leaving the dead animals.

It had started with a dead bird, a blue jay lying on the top step of their front porch. Stiles had found it while leaving for school in the morning, taking a few minutes out of his morning rush to bury the poor thing in the front yard before heading off to school. He figured it had simply keeled over in exhaustion, no obvious injuries save for a few molted feathers, and moved on.

The next day he had found two dead squirrels, deep claw marks raked down their sides, on the front porch. He had wrinkled his nose at the grisly sight, running back inside to grab a plastic bag to shove them in before tossing them into another shallow grave by the blue jay. That was when he began having the sneaking suspicion that a cat was responsible for the morbid little deliveries.

The day after the squirrels, he found the rabbit. Its throat was open, a hole about the size of a cat’s mouth oozing bright scarlet blood onto the doormat, absolutely ruining it. Groaning, and internally cursing crazy cat people, Stiles held his nose and cleaned up the scene, again burying the poor victim and dumping the doormat into their trash can.

The raccoon was next, sullying the new welcome mat that Stiles had picked up after his last class the day before. Curiously inspecting the raccoon, finding wounds too large to have been inflicted by a cat, Stiles had reached another, new conclusion ― there was some new supernatural threat in Beacon Hills and it was killing poor, defenseless animals and dumping them on Stiles’ porch.

Why he didn’t know, but it was the only feasible thing he could think of. He had taken his theory to others, asking around to see if anyone else had noticed anything strange lately. No one else had.

He had gone to Deaton at the vet clinic to ask if he had any information about anything weird going on with any of the local animals. Deaton had denied that anything unusual was going on with any animals, neither domestic or otherwise, for once actually foregoing any cryptic responses. Though, he did mention that parvo was more common than usual that year.

After talking to Deaton, he went to Chris Argent, figuring the ex-hunter would have information on any supernatural goings-on that Deaton did not know about. Argent didn’t know anything either, indulging Stiles’ curious nature and patiently answering his strange inquisitions with as much patience as someone who had been woken up at four thirty a.m. could muster.

Afterward, he had dropped in to visit his dad at the station, hoping that it wasn’t just happening to them, even though it would be just his luck. The Sheriff let him rifle through recent reports of strange, out of the ordinary activities but all he found were reports filed about suspicious looking teenagers hanging around outside of local convenience stores. There had been no reports of rabies, either, dashing another one of Stiles’ theories.

And, of course, he had gone to the pack as soon as he began to suspect that the dead animals may have a more sinister origin than simply falling prey to some pet cat roaming the neighbor. No one in the pack had noticed anything amiss, no supernatural threats or random dead animals on any doorsteps.

Peter had made some snide little comment about Valentine’s Day coming up soon, pointing out that Stiles probably had a psychopathic secret admirer who thought that leaving dead animals on his porch was the epitome of romance. With Stiles’ luck, it was a disturbingly real possibility, one he wouldn’t discount.

The other betas had dissolved into a bout of raucous laughter, even Boyd chuckling under his breath at the comment, but Stiles hadn’t been very amused. Rolling his eyes at the remark, Stiles had noticed that the tips of Derek’s ears had been burning bright red, a sure sign that the alpha was blushing at something. Probably due to secondhand embarrassment, Stiles figured.

Now, there he was, standing on his front porch in his Spiderman pajamas, looking down at that day’s little ‘gift’ ― a twelve point buck, lying dead on the walkway in front of the porch, a large hole in its chest. Ripped out of the buck’s ripped, its bloody heart lay on the front porch just inches from his bare foot, a single red rose laid beside it.

He almost threw up.

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