Priorities

Okay-- I am extremely pleased and surprised and flattered at how many of you REALLY love the Cartinski (as a reader has dubbed it) dynamic. (You can chime in as to whether you like that or John/Jack, actually-- I've been calling it John/Jack.)

One reader hath gone above and beyond and made me many many memes with our heroes on it, so I need to write at LEAST enough more episodes to use some of those up.  And I'm not arguing with that-- I like my middle aged dads. Have one myself, actually-- it's just nice to see the appreciation runs deep :-)

Enjoy!

* * *

The silence in the hospital room stretched long and thin.  Stiles sat near the head of the bed, arms crossed, glare focused at the top of Jack Carter's blond head.

Jack sat on the other side of the bed, elbows on his knees, blue eyes glued to the pale face of Stiles's father, as John Stilinski breathed steadily in and out.

Derek Hale stuck his head into the room.

"Stiles--"

"No."

"Stiles!"

"No!"

Derek stalked into the room, right into Stiles's body space, and bared his teeth. His canine teeth.

"Stiles."

Stiles's head snapped back and he stared unhappily into Derek's blue eyes.  "Derek, you can't possibly mean--"

"I do," Derek growled. "Can't you smell them?"

Stiles looked away from those bright blue, innocence-killing eyes.  "I don't have your nose, oh mighty wolfen warrior," he snapped.

Derek let out a sigh and leaned his head until his wrinkled brow touched Stiles's.

"Please tell me you're not just being an asshole."

Stiles darted his eyes to where his father lay, heavily bandaged, and fought for breath.

"Derek, it's my dad."

"I know."

"But…"

"But he's not just yours anymore."

Stiles let out a growl that sounded surprisingly like Derek's.  "I do not agree with that assessment."

Derek sighed. "I don't care if you agree or not. I can smell them, Stiles. Like Scott can smell me and you. It's a big deal."

Stiles let out a little whimper. "It was my fault--"

Derek shook his head. "So wasn't."

"It was--"

"It wasn't."

Both of them looked, surprised, to where Carter was still sitting at John's side. Tentatively, like he was afraid of his audience, Carter reached out a battered finger and stroked the back of John's knuckles as they lay on the sheet.

"Wasn't your fault, Stiles," he rasped. "Was mine."

Stiles and Derek let out identical sighs.

"It wasn't," Derek murmured to him.

"No, no--wasn't," Stiles agreed.

"Then you need to leave the room."  Derek wasn't a wolf anymore, but Stiles was actually more impressed than ever.

*  *  *

Stiles was the one who discovered that the boundary between Eureka County and Beacon Hills did weird shit to the supernatural.

He'd been out with the others on his mountain bike while Scott, Liam, and Derek were running in their furry forms.  They were further out behind Derek's property than Stiles, at least, could ever remember being, when Scott leapt over a log in his path…

And sparked blue, landing on the other side of the log in his human form, naked and fucking surprised.

Liam went leaping right over the damned log, but Derek stopped, executing some sort of ninja flip to keep himself clear.

For a moment, the woods were silent, as Stiles stared at his naked friends and they stared back.

"The fuck?"

"I feel…"  Scott mumbled, standing and wobbling a little.  "I feel…"  He put his hand out, like he was leaning on a wall, and howled instead as his hand sparked blue again.  they all watched as his paw turned furry, with claws on one side, and then turned pink and raw and human when he pulled it back.

"Oh," Scott mumbled, looking at Stiles in panic. "This is… bad."

And then they heard the gunshot, and the blue laser came out of nowhere, missed Scott by inches, and blew the log he'd jumped over into splinters.

Stiles and Derek looked at each other, and did the couple-sympatico thing that they did sometimes.  Scott and Liam were naked and confused, and Stiles and Derek were not-- somebody needed to distract fire.

Stiles grabbed Scott's phone from his pocket and threw it across the invisible veil.  "Scott!"

Scott's attention snapped forward and he caught the phone with werewolves instincts, and Stiles shouted, "Call my dad!"

And then he and Derek started screaming and yelping at the top of their lungs, and the blue laser bolts followed them through the forest, towards the rubble of Derek's old house, as they screamed back through the forest.

*  *  *

Carter's cock, thick and wide, was stretching John's ass so wide, so sweetly, he lost the ability to brain words.

"Nungh…"  He pounded on Jack's shoulders, trying to beg for faster, for harder, when Jack was just moving slow as syrup.

Jack chuckled and lowered his head to blow in John's ear.  "You really like this, don't you?"

Oh, Lord. Everything had faded into the pressure and burn in his asshole, the swollen ache of his cock, and the smell and texture of Carter's lovely body as he drove hard and slow into John.

"Ungnungh…"

In John's whole life, he couldn't remember when sex had taken him so far outside himself, immersed him so totally into this other world with the person inside his body.  He clenched Jack's shoulders harder, so physically needy for pleasure, it was like those long years without any joy had never existed at all.

Carter chuckled more, his breath short, and started to move a little faster.

"Ah… yes…"  John closed his eyes, afraid they'd tear up.  How embarrassing, crying from pleasure, crying in front of another man.

But Carter grabbed a handful of John's hair and forced his head back. "No hiding," he growled, and John nodded.

"Okay… just… just… don't stop…"

Carter nodded, his jaw set, and the deliciously slow lovemaking that had become their afternoon suddenly sped up, huge and fast. Lightning and thunder, rolled through John's body, blinding him, deafening him, to everything but Jack's harsh pants in his ears and the euphoria rushing through his blood.

Whoosh!

Like wildfire, the climax rushed them both, and Carter whooped just as John gasped.  Carter's cock pulsed with orgasm, and John moaned, spraying cum over his stomach and chest.  The world stopped, for just that breath, and then Carter fell to the side of him, his spend rushing out all over John's ass, and John let out a groan and threw his arm over his eyes.

The sound that issued from John's throat then was pure joy.

"Good?" Jack asked, tracing a pattern between John's nipple and his belly button.

"You've killed me," John laughed, so replete he wasn't sure he could move.

Then Carter licked his nipple and he laughed, pulling his knees up to his chest.  Carter laughed too and continued to play, tickling behind his knees and his ribs and his tender stomach. John rolled to his side, laughing like a kid, and Carter stopped tickling him long enough to rest his chin on John's upper arm.

"I like this," Carter said soberly.

"I'm not complaining."  John smiled into Carter's pretty blue eyes, feeling winsome and young for the first time in forever.

"I'd like more of this," Carter said.  He smiled. "I'm not a smart man…"

"But I know what I like," John finished for him. Yeah, he'd heard all about Carter's job in Eureka. Carter never said it, never mentioned the times he'd seen something that the rest of the world hadn't, but John was truly coming to believe the world would have been destroyed a couple of times over if Carter wasn't doing what he was doing.

"I'd like more of this," Carter said softly.

"How do we do that?"  Seriously.  "I'm up to my ass in werewolves, Jack. You live in a sentient house that would probably try to eat me if I ever came over."

"I don't share," Carter responded, grimacing.  He sighed. "Yeah, I know. Pretty dreams, right? You and me, setting up house. I mean…"

Allison had left him while pregnant with his child. Carter had two stepchildren, Zoe, and a one year old in shared custody, and all of those people were in Eureka.  He wasn't just going to walk out on them--and John didn't want them to.

"It's forty miles too far," John sighed.  He brightened after a moment. "But, you know, Derek and Stiles might move to Eureka, and maybe Scott can move the base of ops--"

Carter was shaking his head. "No-- no, I don't think so. We had this weird influx of druids one year, and Fargo set up this sort of supernatural border patrol--"

John swung his legs over the edge of the bed. "Wait-- what does it do?"

Carter shrugged. "I don't know--but whatever it did to the druids, they left us the hell alone."

John groaned, suddenly seeing all the ways this could go south, just as his cell phone rang.

He picked it up and Scott McCall shouted through the speaker, his voice pitching and yawing as, it sounded like, he swung from form to form.

Carter started throwing on his uniform, which had been strewn around their usual hotel room in anticipation of a long lunch, saying, "Oh man, that can't be good."

John was pulling his writing pad and pen out of his shirt pocket, while he threw the shirt over his shoulders.  "Okay, okay son-- calm down. Now give me the nearest landmark--"  He put his hand over the receiver and glared at Jack.  "They are in Eureka, Carter, and someone is chasing them with a laser, dammit!

"Aw crap," Jack muttered, pulling on his boots.

*  *  *

Jack drove while John conferred with Scott on one phone, and pulled out Carter's other phone to call Parrish.  "The guy with the gun is on the other side of the barrier," he snarled. "But we don't want to shoot him with real bullets if we can help it-- according to… Sherriff Carter, that blue laser will only blow things apart if they're supernatural."

"So Derek's toast?" Parrish asked, as though making sure.

John closed his eyes. "No-- Derek is not toast."  He thought of Stiles, try ing to mountain bike faster than a glowing laser gun.  "My son-- my son is most likely toast."

"Your son is not toast," Carter snapped.  "Here-- give me my phone--"

"You're trying to drive!"

Carter grunted.  "Car!"

"Yes sir?"

"Call Allison."

"Your former wife no longer resides in your resid--"

"She's at the company ruling the world with her husband, dammit. Now poke her, and tell her we need to put that damned border ray on hold!"

"Sir, are you sure she'll take your calls?"

"Tell her my boyfriend's son is in danger, dammit, and use those exact words!"

The car shut up long enough to go have it's conversation, and John looked at him.

"Carter, did you just out yourself to your whole town?"

Carter shrugged. "Allison knew," he said, almost defensively.

"That's really brave," John said, his body remembering the way that possession had rolled through it.  This man was so much more than the dumbest employee in Eureka.

To be continued… 

(Sorry guys-- tired-- I'll continue this next FRiday.)