Archive of Our Own

 

 

Stiles is eight years old when his dad brings Derek home.

He’s in his room, doing his lessons with Doctor Deaton, when he hears the door clang shut downstairs, tilts his head to listen until he catches the sound of his dad’s boots on the floor.

He runs down the stairs – on two legs instead of four, because his dad says he knocks things over too much being shifted in the house – and sees a bundle of grayish-black something being carried in his dad’s arms, through the door off the kitchen that leads into the garage. They don’t keep the truck in there because it’s still full of stuff from when they moved, old boxes and things they don’t need or that belonged to his mom.

There’s a spreading puddle of dirty rainwater coming from the pair of kicked-off boots by the back door, and when he comes out of the garage and sees Stiles his dad smiles but says, “Stay there for now, okay kiddo?” like something’s wrong.

Stiles nods, but he still sneaks a few steps forward when his dad goes back into the garage. He can smell something strange now, hear faint noises, puffing and scratching between feet moving on the floor and the whine of the wind blowing outside. He can’t see much because the door’s mostly closed, but the black bundle is up against one corner of the garage, and it’s moving.

Doctor Deaton steps up next to him, puts a hand on Stiles’ shoulder when Stiles tries to walk further into the kitchen again. He asks what’s wrong, and Stiles just shrugs and says he doesn’t know.

Dad comes back out and smiles quickly at Doctor Deaton, there and gone again.

“Alan, good,” he says. “I’m gonna need your help with this.”

Stiles is about to ask what’s going on and why he can’t help too when the black bundle tucked away in their garage starts to howl. It makes him cover his ears, like standing too near a firework show. It’s louder than everything else, blocks out the wind outside and his dad’s voice in front of him, wriggles through the gaps between Stiles’ fingers and rushes into his head. It sounds like the end of the world.

In a way, that turns out to be true.

| |

The first days are rough, and the weeks and months that come after them aren’t much better.

Derek shifts just long enough to tell them – in a flat voice while he looks at the wall or down at his feet - his name and to explain that his whole family, or at least enough of them that it makes no difference, were inside the house when the fire started. He tells them he’s eleven years old, and he gets maybe four of five sentences into explaining that he was outside playing when suddenly there was just flame and smoke where the Hale House should’ve been, that he tried to get back inside but couldn’t and that he doesn’t know how long he’d been stumbling around the woods before Stiles’ dad found him, and then his voice just sort of collapses, falls to the ground in front of him like a dead bird.

He doesn’t shift back out of his wolf shape for a week.

Stiles only gets bits and pieces of his dad’s conversations with Doctor Deaton, but it’s enough to fill in the blanks. There are no other werewolf packs in the state, and even if there were they wouldn’t take an omega kid. He hears his dad on the phone with the guy who took over the Sheriff’s office, saying it doesn’t matter if his bereavement leave turned into early retirement, they still owe him favours. The word “arson” flaps across the air more than once. Stiles asks him one night, after one of those calls when his dad’s sitting at the kitchen table staring into his coffee, if the fire was really an accident, and he won’t give Stiles an answer. The look on his face says it all though.

He’s not supposed to spend a lot of time around Derek, just in case, but his dad’s not always there to stop him.

Derek moves around the house like he’s trying to take up the least amount of space he can, huddled into the corner of whatever room he’s in. His eyes track Stiles whenever they’re together, and the first time Stiles shifts in front of him Derek’s head does a surprised tilt and he takes a step forward before it seems like he means to. Stiles talks to him, rambling about nothing in particular, whatever schoolwork he’d been doing or what he’d seen on TV. Sometimes he thinks it’s just to fill the silence and other times it feels like he should for some reason; you’re supposed to talk to people if you want to be their friend, and Derek really looks like he could use a friend. Derek listens, Stiles knows he does, sees his black ears twitching in his direction, but he never shifts long enough to talk back. It doesn’t stop Stiles from talking to him.

By the time Dad stops making the phone calls, gives up on trying to get anything out of the people he used to work with, Derek’s taken to sleeping curled up in the upstairs hallway, just outside Stiles’ door and across from his dad’s. No matter what they do he won’t sleep anywhere else, and even when Stiles gets him into the room he’s always back in the hallway by morning. Sometimes Stiles hears him pacing.

In the end Doctor Deaton’s advice comes down to one obvious thing: that Derek has nowhere else to go.

“Well,” Dad says, rubbing a hand across his face. He looks at Derek. “I guess he can stay here. For a little while at least.”

Eventually they all seem to just forget about the ‘little while’ part of that.

| |

“Oh my god, could you move any slower?”

Derek’s eyebrow flicks up near his hairline and he starts moving around in deliberate slow motion, picking up his schoolbooks and stacking them, picking up Stiles’ and dropping them back on his side of the room. When he pauses to straighten the corner of his already perfectly straight bedcovers, Stiles makes a desperate noise and flaps a hand at him.

“Dude, that was rhetorical,” he says, whining in a kind of boggled amazement at Derek’s commitment to making Stiles’ life miserable. “I promise it was rhetorical. C’mon, we’re going outside, remember? While there’s still daylight. Or before we’re old.”

“If you’re old then you’ll be allowed out into the woods by yourself, won’t you?” Derek says, totally calm in a way that says he’s enjoying Stiles homework-induced cabin fever and makes Stiles look around for something to throw. Except then he’d just have to wait while Derek tidied that up too.

“Ugh,” Stiles says expansively, flopping back onto his bed and staring at the spattering of glow in the dark stars above him. They’ll probably be lit up by the time Derek’s done being an asshole, and Stiles will be fifty and still stuck in this room, waiting for him. He hears Derek snort and flips him off. One of his socks sails across the room and lands on his chest.

“You coming or not?” Derek asks, probably bored now that Stiles isn’t putting up a fight anymore, resigned to his fate while he blinks at the ceiling.

He flails to his feet and Derek shakes his head. “I guess I’d better walk you before you start chewing the furniture.”

“So funny,” Stiles mutters, over the top sarcastic enough that Derek’s mouth twitches. He catches the other member of that sock’s pair and flings it onto his bed. “Considering which one of us is more dog-like. I told Dad we should’ve dropped you off at the pound.”

"A canid's a canid," Derek shrugs as they reach the stairs, like that's ever settled anything.

"Please," Stiles sniffs, "Mr my-people-were-cursed-into-existence-because-of-a-Greek-dude's-cannibalistic-prank."

Derek turns on the stairs just to quirk another mocking eyebrow at Stiles. "And stealing a pelt and claws from some European folklore trickster is just so much more impressive?"

"Obviously," Stiles says, flicking Derek on the back of his neck as they drop down the last few stairs. "That at least must've taken skill."

Derek swipes at him as they head for the kitchen, and Stiles is grinning as he ducks and dodges Derek's half-assed attempts to punch his arm or whatever. Once it gets to the point that they're sniping over whose creation myth is coolest it's probably best to just accept their mutual dorkitude and be done with it.

"Hey, hey," his dad says when he sees them, "no fighting." It's a weak warning at best. They've never really fought in any kind of serious way, minus the occasional blowup about Stiles being messy or Derek being a dictator with the TV remote. Sometimes Stiles thinks his dad is still hanging onto years-old worries about the whole predator/prey thing, like Derek is actually scary as opposed to just a socially awkward neat freak who sometimes has fur and claws. Seriously, he sheds.

"He started it," they both say at the same time, and then they both make faces that amount to the same thing even if they're put together differently.

“Right,” Dad says, then points at the door. “Just go, before you’re both climbing the walls.” He does the patented parental eyebrow raise, like the expression equivalent of a thunderclap. “Be back before it gets dark.”

Stiles grins at him and bolts outside, Derek following close behind.

He’s still grinning while he yanks his shirt over his head, Derek rolling his eyes while he folds his pants and puts them on the old wooden bench seat pushed against the back wall of the house. Stiles kicks out of his and drops them on top of his shirt.

By the time Derek’s undressed Stiles is already shifted, sat on his haunches waiting, tail twitching against the ground and his head tilted impatiently. He’s totally capable of controlling himself, but they’ve been stuck inside for days getting ready for tests or whatever else from Doc Deaton, and Derek hardly ever lets Stiles get away with his trusty all-night cramming anymore; he says the lamplight and all of Stiles’ fidgeting keeps him awake. So now Stiles is full of restless energy and desperate to move, the itch of not having shifted for too long finally being scratched, and again he’s stuck waiting for Derek.

Still, he’s giving Derek his space for this part. He’s got enough years of practice to know Derek’s always a little twitchy just after he swaps two legs for four. He thought it’d get better over time, but lately it seems to be worse, and as much as he wishes he could blame it on Derek’s unwillingness to just relax, he doesn’t think it’d help. And of course Derek’s not talking about it, clams up even when Stiles’ dad mentions anything close. Some things just are what they are.

The sunlight on Derek’s chest makes him look pale, if not quite so pale as Stiles. His jaw works as he clenches his teeth, neck rolling to the side, and Stiles watches quietly while his ears pick up the change in Derek’s heartbeat and the nasty-sounding rearrangement of Derek’s bones under his skin.

Eventually there’s a big black wolf with yellow-orange eyes standing by the house, sniffing at the air, huge paws spanning against the ground. Derek stretches, back arching. He trots over and butts his head against Stiles’, sniffs along the side of his face and back behind his ear, down his neck.

Stiles stays still and lets Derek get his scent as if he’s suddenly gonna forget it, pretends like it bothers him even though it really doesn’t, hasn’t for years. It’s actually kind of reassuring, knowing Derek could find him anywhere. Not that he plans on disappearing, but still any time he so much as thinks about complaining he flashes back on Derek promising Stiles’ dad he’d look out for Stiles the first time they were allowed out by themselves, like he was taking an oath. He nudges Derek’s jaw with his own once Derek’s done and Derek huffs, disturbingly similar to the way he does without the wolf nose.

Stiles waits a minute, and then yips like you coming? while he ducks his head in the direction of the trees, twitches his legs back then forward like a dare, and when Derek shakes himself out and braces himself to run, Stiles’ own pulse kicks up as he bolts into the woods.

His nose fills with peaty-green-damp smells and the pollen he kicks up as he runs, paws skipping easily over dead leaves and blades of grass pushing between his digits. Excitement streams through his veins and buzzes in his muscles while he leaps up and over fallen logs, dodges around branches. He knows he hasn’t lost Derek, knows he couldn’t and admits he doesn’t really want to, but the chase is awesome just the same, breath heaving in his chest when he tries to speed up, weaves between the tall brown spires of tree trunks and tries to at least make it a challenge.

There’s a barely-visible flash of black to his left. He ducks right and forces his legs to run faster, heart thump-thumping against his ribs, wind brushing his fur and ears back. If he could manage it like this, he’d be grinning, even with the burn creeping down his chest. He can hear Derek’s paws now too, heavy but still barely pausing on the ground, a galloping rhythm, longer and stronger than Stiles’ stride, and just barely under all that there’s the faint rushing warble of the river.

Derek hits Stiles side-on as he’s mid-jump over a huge rotting stump, both of them tumbling and rolling through the air before they crash to the ground, skidding in the dirt and tearing up grass. Everything blurs in a tangle of greens and browns and the bright blue flash of the sky. They come to a stop at the base of a big, old tree, and if Stiles wasn’t struggling to pull in air and get back the sense of the earth being under him, muscles turned to rubber, he might bite Derek on the leg for herding him the whole time to the most obvious place ever.

He flips upright and shakes his head, lying with his belly on the ground and his heart practically punching a divot in the earth, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.

Derek’s disgustingly composed across from him, head resting on his front paws and eyes drifting between Stiles and the woods around them, the familiar opening to the clearing. Since he can’t call Derek a name like this, he settles for an irritated bark and a mouthful of grass he pulls up with his teeth and spits in Derek’s direction, which of course just flutters to the ground right in front of him, a few stray blades coming down on Derek’s head. Stiles lets his mouth fall open wider, the closest thing he can get to a smug smile.

Standing up and stretching, he shakes his coat free of bits of plant and flakes of dry dirt, ambles into the clearing to snag a drink of water where it’s collected in a dip in the plane of the soil. The water’s cold and alkaline-sharp the way only rain or river water can be, perfect as it soaks the fur around his mouth and drips from his chin.

There’s sunlight streaming between the trees, shining through the leaves and landing in patches in the clearing. Stiles shifts back, grunting under his breath while his body remakes itself. He flops down into the closest bit of sun and shuts his eyes, skin warming as he takes in deep lungfuls of air, the world nothing but the pink insides of his eyelids.

“You’re gonna burn,” comes Derek’s voice along with the sound of him dropping down next to Stiles.

Stiles gives a lazy shrug that’s hampered by the ground under his shoulders, grass bending against his skin. “And you won’t?”

“I heal faster,” Derek says, which is true enough, but Stiles’ body still recovers quicker than it would if he was more than half-human, so he’s not complaining.

“If I start to smoke around the edges I’ll change back,” he says easily. He puts a hand up over his face and blinks his eyes open. Derek’s sat next to him with his knees drawn up, arms over them and hands clasped loosely in front of him, face tipped up into the sun. There’s a tiny smile hovering around his mouth.

Sometimes it hits Stiles in an absent way that this would probably be weird if they were anything but what they are, what with the whole casual nudity deal. But in the end he can’t separate himself from the feeling that a human skin is just another shape, like there’s a zipper running the length of his spine. After he’d pulled off a full shift for the first time, his mom had said something to that effect, followed by a long, gap-filled story about the history of shifters on her side of things, the foxes hiding in her family tree.

He dozes for awhile, listening to the birds. It’s a conscious effort to catch Derek’s heartbeat, but he can just about make it out over the slow patter of his own.

“Full moon coming up,” Stiles says, falling about a hemisphere short of casual. He pushes his hands deeper into the grass, winds it around his fingertips.

Derek stays quiet for a minute. “Yeah,” he says, half of it coming out on a sigh. “A few days.”

Stiles flicks his tongue against his teeth like it’s gonna somehow stop the question. “Is there where you come out to?” he asks, waving a hand. “The clearing?” Our clearing.

“Stiles,” Derek says, with a tone, and Stiles flops back down.

“Fine,” he says, “don’t tell me. Keep your secrets.” A long bit of grass snaps off between his fingers. “S’not like we’re supposed to tell each other stuff.” His lips pull between his teeth this time, but it doesn’t matter; nothing ever quite stops the words. “Not like I tell you basically everything.”

Derek’s gone quiet again and Stiles isn’t looking at him, keeps his eyes shut and his face aimed at the blue bowlful of sky above him, leaves rustling like book pages.

“Sometimes,” takes him by surprise, Derek’s voice gone quieter, thinner. Stiles waits like a beggar, imagines his hands held out for more words to drop into. They have pretty much zero secrets from each other, but Derek’s held onto this one like his freaking life depends on it, and Stiles hates it, okay, he does, in a selfish, childish, down-to-his-marrow kind of hate.

He shuts down the urge to see what Derek’s face is doing, to tug and pick at the soft places in his expression until it all unravels. He doesn’t say that Derek shouldn’t have to go off by himself every month, doesn’t bother offering to go with him. He’s already tried everything, save for maybe mentioning how much his dad glances out the windows or puts off going to bed on the nights Derek’s gone, but second-hand parental guilt is beyond dirty pool.

When the unevenness of the ground starts digging at his shoulders and into his back he sits up, stretches his arms over his head. A quick glance at Derek shows him leaning back with his arms behind him, watching Stiles. The tips of his shoulders are turning pink and Stiles doesn’t have it in him to say he told him so.

“Anything interesting nearby?” he asks, because one of them should say something, plow over the last failed attempt at talking.

Derek’s shrug is half-assed, an up-down of his left shoulder. “Rabbits,” he says, head tilting slowly to one side. “Some deer down by the river.”

“Yeah well don’t get any ideas,” Stiles says, scratching at his chest. “You’ll be the one doing all the cleaning and then scrubbing the kitchen if you bring a carcass into the house again.” He shudders remembering the last time.

“You’re just lucky you don’t have to actually hunt for your food,” Derek says, smirking at him. “And you weren’t this squeamish as a kid.”

Stiles makes a yeah well kind of face. “Maybe I’m just sick of hearing that stupid story about the blackbird.” He gives up on griping when Derek cracks a smile.

“Took us an hour to get all the feathers out of your teeth,” Derek snorts, smile getting wider. “Probably twice that long if you count how hard it was getting you to stay still. I wanted to—”

“To wrap me in a towel, yeah yeah,” Stiles says, slapping Derek on the arm with the back of his hand. “I would’ve bitten you or clawed you or something if you’d tried.”

Derek shakes his head. “You could’ve just shifted back.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, wincing, “bird entrails and human taste buds, no thanks.”

“Such a baby,” Derek says, all mock-tragic. He laughs when Stiles tries to shove him over, grabs Stiles’ shin when he tries to kick him, pokes Stiles in the ribs and startles a laugh out of him when he flinches back.

They end up leaning away from each other, parentheses from hips to shoulders, hands held out waiting for the other to make a move or for a vulnerable moment. Stiles feints a kick that Derek doesn’t even try and block, then clasps Stiles’ arm just past his wrist and tugs, almost toppling him. Stiles goes for the side of Derek’s neck, the one ticklish spot he has, and Derek lets go to dodge him. He gets a hand low on Stiles’ ribs and presses with all five fingers, and Stiles yelp-laughs and flings himself away.

He’s grinning as he shifts again, the thrum of it in his body cancelling out some of the discomfort, and he runs in a circle around Derek while he drops down onto his paws and shakes out his fur, orange eyes tracking Stiles’ every move, jaw snapping playful-quick when Stiles darts in and then back again. Stiles offers up one last feint and then darts into the trees.

Derek’s not fooling around this time, chasing Stiles across the woods in a series of long, more or less straight lines, both of them panting and their legs thumping into the ground, claws scrabbling. Every time he tries a new direction he finds himself barrelling towards Derek, waiting for him on top of a stump or actually lying down clearly just to mock Stiles’ exertion.

By the time they’re close enough to the house that Stiles can see the lights in the windows through the trees, the sun’s dropped halfway down the sky, the air getting cooler. Stiles lets Derek catch up with him, snorts when Derek headbutts him in the side, breath stirring Stiles’ fur.

They shift outside the house, not really sweating but still dirty and smelling like they’ve been running around in the woods for hours. Stiles tosses Derek his clothes and grins at Derek’s unimpressed look, pulls his own on and shoulders the door open to get into the kitchen.

“Welcome back,” his dad says, putting plates down on the table. How he times it like that Stiles will never know. Parental superpowers are totally a thing.

“It’s not even dark,” Stiles says, even though twilight probably counts. Derek snorts from somewhere behind him as he shuts the back door, and Stiles valiantly doesn’t elbow him in the ribs.

Dad just points at the table like he's aiming troops at a battlefield instead of directing two teenagers at meatloaf and green beans. Stiles is willing to admit the difference from his dad’s point of view is probably depressingly minimal.

He fistpumps when he snags the last of the mashed potato, hunger suddenly a heavy stone in his belly, and gets two pairs of eyes rolled in his direction.

“How are things in the exciting world of corporate security?” he asks, and his dad shrugs. Stiles knows it’s only a few days a week, and soon enough it’ll be time for something else when they run out of things for him to do, but Dad’s adamant he’s not going back to the Sheriff’s department.

“No car chases, more paperwork,” he says, and Stiles smiles, because how is that not the better way around, really?

They get waved upstairs to shower after dinner, and Stiles pulls out of his clothes again, leaves them on the bathroom floor half out of genuine laziness and half because he gets a kick out of the look on Derek’s face.

He lets the water run hot while Derek dumps their combined laundry in the hamper, and by the time Derek steps into the shower Stiles already has shampoo in his hair. He still can’t decide if it was easier when he just buzzed it all off every so often, but the older he got the faster it grew back, never quite the same length between one shift and the next, a little thing he could never quite control.

They trade places, and then again, Derek washing his hair while Stiles lets the water pour across his face and down his chest. He makes a small noise of not-quite pain when Derek’s thumbs press between his shoulders, tension loosening and uncoiling.

“Dunno how that always happens,” he says, spitting water onto the tile wall.

Derek’s hands push down his back slowly, one bump of vertebrae at a time. “You still tense up too much when you shift,” he says. “You anticipate it hurting and that makes it worse.”

Stiles sniffs, turns under the spray and rubs at his eyes. “I only anticipate it hurting because it does hurt,” he says, flicking Derek on the chest like that proves a point. There’s barely an inch or two between them now, and Stiles still isn’t quite used to that; Derek’s always this big figure in his head. “It’s not like you don’t get all weird when you shift.”

Derek’s face does something Stiles can’t track, and he goes to rinse off while Stiles steps out and grabs a towel before all the hot water’s gone and they’re both only half clean. They pull on sweats and t-shirts, Stiles snagging one of Derek’s that fits loose and comfortable across his shoulders.

Downstairs again, Stiles sprawls on the couch and watches a movie that he missed the first thirty minutes of while Derek sits in the armchair with a book, some dog-eared (hah) paperback he’s probably read a dozen times already. Derek’s not big on modern technology, but one day Stiles’ll get him a Kindle and force him to use it, and on that day his dad’ll owe him twenty bucks.

He’s tired in a nice, worn-out way, no more restless pressure in his gut or under his skin. The occasional shuff of Derek turning pages and the background noise of his dad moving around the house lull him down into a kind of semi-doze, eyes blinking hypnotised at the glow of the TV screen.

When he drops into bed that night he’s asleep in minutes, Derek’s heartbeat tracing his own.

| |

Derek hates lying to Stiles.

It’s just not what you do; packs aren’t built on secrets or half-truths. There is no lying in a pack of werewolves, but Derek’s pack isn’t made up of werewolves anymore, is it?

Telling himself that doesn’t help.

The pull of the moon sets him on edge, skin and teeth and the space at the back of his head where everything’s knitted dark, like woven-together fingers of branches in the middle of the night. He even feels it in the day, for two or three days leading up to the full moon, when he’s out with Stiles or sat with him eating at the table next to John; when he’s doing his best to focus on what Deaton’s trying to teach him. Even when he just tries to sit and read, enclosed in the world of a book, there’s a pull like he’s got fishhooks in his back, like he’s stepped onto a thirteenth stair when there were only twelve to start with, a clumsy lurching in his stomach.

It wakes him up over and over the night before, sleep only sticking to his bones for a few hours at a time. He gasps awake sweating and with burning tingles raking down his skin, darkness melting away when his eyes flash yellow, blood on his lip even as he forces his teeth to be blunt, to be human. His hands are twisting the sheets and there’s a rip from a claw that his finger keeps slipping into. He focuses on his breathing like it’ll distract from his pulse pounding away between his legs, the slide of the covers against his dick.

It’ll be worse tomorrow. It’ll be worse again next month.

All he ever remembers about his dreams is that he’s running – chasing something always out of reach, and a smell in his nose like home that wasn’t really a place. His subconscious is anything but subtle.

Stiles shifts in his sleep, mumbling to himself and rolling over, one foot dangling off the side of the bed. A clot of tension breaks up behind Derek’s breastbone, something in him going quiet knowing Stiles is right there, that he’s sleeping safe and sound. That’s what pack does for pack.

He reaches out until he finds John’s heartbeat, slow and heavy with unconsciousness across the hall. Careful and deliberate, he dismantles the urge prodding at the base of his spine that’s telling him to shift, to go outside and walk the boundaries of the property, pacing and snarling the way he did at thirteen or fourteen when he couldn’t stop it, when he didn’t expect anything from himself.

A pull of air fills his lungs, scents of their room carried along with it, and Derek breathes out resigned as he reaches under the sheets and wraps a hand around his cock.

The drag of fingers on his sensitive skin makes him hiss and arch, precome leaking on his stomach. Between the roar of blood in his ears and the effort of keeping quiet, he tracks Stiles’ heartbeat, the changes in his breathing; they’ve slept in the same room for long enough that Derek’s an old hand at this, just like Stiles is. That doesn’t mean they don’t know when one of them is jerking off, it just means they know not to pay attention, and that Derek can tell when Stiles is deep asleep and when he’s drifting near the surface.

He kicks the sheets down past his thighs, skin pale in what little light there is, dark hair on his belly and above the hard line of his dick standing out. His chest rises and drops as he strokes himself, silver-shiny precome spilling from his slit when his thumb slides across the head.

It’s not easy keeping quiet, hips twitching and bucking into his fist, but he’s biting at the inside of his cheek and swallowing every moan that claws up his throat, legs spreading wider and the arch of his spine pushing him further off the bed.

Derek shivers and jerks himself faster, rougher, twisting his wrist and fucking into his hand. His tongue is heavy and sticking to his palate, fingers spreading precome in sloppy streaks and spirals down to his balls, foreskin slipping over the angry red head. His nipples are almost painfully tight and pebbling in the air. Tightness coils in his hips like an ache and sweat itches from his shoulders all the way down his spine.

He thinks of nothing, a blank gray emptiness, but when his head rolls to the side he can see where Stiles is lying on his front, both hands shoved under his pillow, face turned away. The sheets are down around his waist, all his kicking and rolling around leaving them tied loosely about his hips. His back is pale, smooth, and Derek can just make out the scattering of moles down his ribcage, the dip of his spine collecting shadows like rainwater.

He comes with a stuttered, half-strangled groan, pained as he snaps taut and stripes his belly, his chest with sticky white, eyes clamped shut like he can keep the thoughts out that way. Toes curling against the mattress with come spattering him and dripping from his fingers, Derek lets the tension seep out of him even though his lips are parted around sharp teeth and his eyes are burning orange, flash of swollen lips and a candy-pink tongue in his head, a clever smile painted on the inside of his skull.

A few minutes slide past with him laying in the mess he’s made of himself, and already Derek’s body’s tightening up again, the lack of real relief pushing at his seams.

On the other side of the room Stiles blurts some muffled nonsense and buries his face deeper in his pillow. Derek doesn’t look at him when he opens the door enough to slip out into the hall and across to the bathroom.

His skin looks pallid under the light, eyes pinched at the corners. He looks away from the face in the mirror while he wets a washcloth and cleans himself up. The glances of reflection he catches feel off-angle, a faint wrongness like a painting hanging crooked on a nail.

He mutters, “Pull it together,” as he shuts off the light, padding across the carpet and over the floorboards that always creak.

Climbing back into bed, Derek’s tempted to shift and sleep that way, but it only makes the dreams worse. Besides, that’s not how control’s supposed to work. He’s afraid that if he gives an inch he won’t have a say in loosing the mile.

It takes a long time to fall asleep.

| |

Stiles walks into the kitchen the morning after the full moon and finds Derek sat at the table, wearing the rattiest pair of sweatpants the universe has even seen and turning a mug of coffee in his hands.

“Wow,” he says, “you look like crap,” because he really does. There are dark smudges under Derek’s eyes and his skin’s pasty, but more than that his whole slumped posture is just oozing tiredness and discomfort. Stiles feels run down just looking at him.

Derek snorts. “Well we can’t all be bright orange, can we,” he says, voice slow and off-rhythm, and Stiles can tell how hard he’s working to keep the words distinct and in the right order.

“Jealous,” Stiles says haughtily. “Tragically, understandably jealous.” It’s one of their oldest and favourite arguments to poke each other with: Derek thinks he’s so much more badass just because as a wolf he looks like what happened before decent televisions were invented. Stiles would let it go if Derek would just accept his monochromatic wrongness.

“Jealous of… of looking like a carrot,” Derek mumbles, eyes falling shut again.

“Wow,” Stiles says, lips twisting up into something between a smirk and a smile. “That was terrible even for you. I’m too embarrassed on your behalf to continue now.” He pours himself some juice and sits down, reaches out with a foot and prods Derek in the shin with his toes. “So hey, you’re not like, dying or anything right?”

Derek huffs a breath out through his nose. “No, Stiles,” he drones, disturbingly similar to Stiles’ dad’s patient-but-weary tone. “I’m not dying.”

“Is it like this for you every month? ‘Cause no offense buddy but I think I should win the wolf vs. fox argument based on that alone.”

Derek’s eyes open a tiny fraction, slits of bleary colour behind his lashes. Stiles really does feel bad for him. Plus it’s no fun prodding him when he can’t prod back, when he can’t get a rise out of Derek beyond a half-lidded blink.

“No,” Derek finally says with a sigh. It sounds like an admission of something, but why he thinks Stiles would mind him not looking like death warmed up every single month Stiles doesn’t know. Derek reaches up and rubs a hand over his face. “It’s not—” he sighs again. “I’ll be fine once the moon changes.”

Stiles prods him in the shin again, partly on principle, and also because Derek gets awkward about hugging when he thinks it’s out of pity, and then Stiles gets mad at him for thinking it’s pity, and they’re just really dysfunctional people aren’t they?

“So that’s, what, a day or two?” He looked this up once, back when Derek explained the whole full moon thing to him, but he’s not a hundred percent on the time between full moon and waning… something. Gibbous? Plus he doesn’t know if it’s the one specific moment when the moon’s totally full when werewolves get affected or if it’s the whole phase or what. Derek comes from a confusing people.

“More or less,” Derek says, and Stiles wants to point out that vagueness really doesn’t help when it comes to the facts of your biology, but Derek says, “Can we be quiet now please?” and Stiles winces.

“Sor-Sorry,” he says, switching to a whisper that’s maybe more of a stage whisper halfway through.

Derek huffs through his nose again, says, “Thank you,” in the same overloud voice, mustering enough energy to make a mocking face before he shuts his eyes again.

It’s Saturday, and Stiles’ dad is off doing something with the forestry department, so he decides to melt into the couch cushions and let cartoons rot his brain for a while. Eventually Derek wanders in, pulls Stiles’ legs off one end of the couch and sits down next to him. He looks like he needs to sleep for the next million or so hours, whole body wilting and listing to one side.

He gives Stiles a funny look when he pulls Derek in by the shoulder, drapes him half onto the back of the couch and half onto Stiles’ side, chin nudging the top of Stiles’ head.

“Take a nap,” Stiles says, in a way that makes it clear there’ll be no arguments. He’s learned a few things from his dad. “Before you get sick.” He says it light, because he’s never once seen Derek get anything close to ill, but there’s no way he can avoid it forever by the looks of him.

Derek’s arm wriggles between Stiles’ back and the cushions, curves around his waist and pulls him in, so they’re kind of just mutually collapsing on each other. He slumps down closer to Stiles’ current lack of posture, and the sigh he lets out lasts forever, stutters and catches in his chest. Stiles’ throat is maybe a little dry, and there’s heat creeping up the back of his neck, but he can deal with it.

“No dying on me,” he says, hooking his ankle around Derek’s and putting a hand on the bare skin above Derek’s hip. Neither of them could move now if they tried. “You’re heavy enough as it is.”

The room’s warm, pale sunlight coming in through the slats in the shades, dust motes dancing away in glowing streaks between the window and the floor. The TV fills the gaps between their breathing with voices and sound effects, and Stiles thinks he could probably go back to sleep himself.

“I won’t,” Derek says, picking up the conversation as soon as Stiles thought they were done with it. Typical. He smiles anyway, and only partly because Derek’s need for the last word is like an addiction.

“I know,” Stiles tells him, wriggling deeper into the old familiar squish of the couch. He turns his head to smother his yawn as well as his neon sign of a smile into Derek’s shoulder. “Doesn’t matter now,” he murmurs, letting his eyes shut. “We’re keeping you. Deal with it.”

Derek’s snort ruffles the hair at Stiles’ crown. Neither of them bothers saying anything else.

| |

Stiles’ sixteenth birthday falls on a Tuesday, and when John gets home they all drive into town.

There’s a restaurant that Stiles has loved for as long as Derek’s known him, and the three of them pile into their own section of faded-but-comfortable leather chairs around a table, Derek sat next to Stiles and opposite John.

A flicker of eye contact passes between John and Derek when Derek slows down enough to make sure Stiles slides across the seat first, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Derek should just stop being surprised when John notices him doing things like that, the look on his face showing understanding – too much understanding, if anything.

Loss does funny things to people.

Considering how small the town is Derek wouldn’t expect the number of people eating and talking and walking all around them, but Derek’s not exactly great with definitions of ‘normal’ when it comes to this stuff. He focuses on their little immediate bit of space, the other heartbeats fading to just the two around the table with him, the way Stiles jostles him and passes the salt shaker between his hands with a scraping slide on the table.

Stiles orders the largest burger on the menu while John and Derek stick to steak, and it’s not too difficult to ignore the people that walk past the table, to not feel uncomfortable when eyes flick their way and slide off again. He turns to face into their table more and watches Stiles gesturing with one hand, the fond smile on John’s mouth.

John rolls his eyes when Stiles insists on an immense piece of cake, Derek just tracks Stiles’ grin as he asks their waitress for ice cream on the side too. Of course they all end up pitching in when Stiles slumps back and admits defeat, fork in one hand and the other on his stomach, the plate and the remaining cake pushed into the middle between the three of them. Derek’s normally not a huge fan of chocolate, but he’s laughing at Stiles and John’s fork and spoon duel when John taunts him with how much sugar he’s getting, picking small mouthfuls from under the clash of cutlery. It’s nice, comfortable, and there’s an eggshell-fragile warmth behind his ribs when he lets himself dwell on the fact that they chose to let him in, to make him a part of this. He sometimes doesn’t feel like he’s grateful enough.

Once the cake’s finally finished off, John gets a coffee and Derek lets Stiles pilfer the last of his soda without complaining.

“Happy birthday,” he says, leaning in to talk over the ambient noise, nudging their shoulder together. Stiles grins around the mangled remains of his straw, and taps Derek’s knee with his own. There’s a dark smudge of chocolate on the edge of his mouth, and Derek starts to wonder if he should be sitting on his hands out of self-preservation.

“Thanks,” he says, smile lingering on the corners of his lips, foot tapping on Derek’s as his knee bounces. God, the sugar rush is going to be disastrous.

Stiles is wearing the shirt he got from the John over the tee he got from Derek. He’d changed right at the breakfast table after he’d pulled the wrapping paper apart into streamers around his chair. He’s outgrown most of his clothes in the past six months, even some of Derek’s old ones he’d hung onto, but his main gift is back at the house; the Jeep that had been his mother’s, that John’s had in storage for years and that Stiles has been bugging him for just as long to teach him how to drive.

“You feel any different?” Derek asks. He asks every year, like he remembers Laura doing with him and Cora, a tradition he hadn’t meant to drag along but can’t bear to throw away.

Stiles shrugs. “Nope,” he says. “How’s older supposed to feel anyway?”

“No idea,” Derek admits and Stiles smiles like a flashbulb. “I don’t think years really do much to age you anyway, not like… not like other things.”

“Right,” Stiles says, soft. Derek gets a brief moment of curiosity about how they look to the people at the other tables, if they look like just a pair of kids to them. He can’t tell what he wants the answer to be.

He puts a hand on Stiles’ knee. Just to stop the jittering.

Back at the house they kick off their shoes and Stiles rummages through the stack of DVDs on the shelf for an action flick he’s seen a hundred times, pre-emptively sticking the remote between his leg and the arm of the couch.

“It’s my birthday,” he proclaims to whatever look is on Derek’s face, the menu music filling the living room.

Derek pretends to look at a watch he isn’t wearing. “For two more hours,” he says, smirking and folding himself onto the couch just the same.

“I’m gonna head up,” John says, stepping up to the back of the couch to ruffle Stiles hair, does it again when Stiles makes a noise in protest and bats at him. He squeezes Derek’s shoulder and Derek half-smiles, nods when John tells them, “Not too late, you’ve got schoolwork to do tomorrow.”

Stiles makes a face and tips his head up to stare at his father upside-down. “You out early?”

“Six,” John says, in the exact same voice Stiles uses to say ‘algebra’. Derek rubs his smile off onto the back of his hand. “I should be back around four though, assuming they don’t find some last-minute menial task for me to do.” He pats Stiles on the chest as he heads for the stairs and Stiles does a bad job pretending to be annoyed.

Derek listens absently to the creak of the fifth stair, the loose floorboard in the hall, the clink of John’s door, the sort of check that he doesn’t need to do but that makes him feel better just the same.

“He’s working too hard again,” Stiles says after a few minutes, a few lines of bad dialogue and an explosion splashing across the TV. The light shining onto Stiles’ face turns everything sharp; glass in his eyes and a dagger in the upturned point of his nose, wide mouth plum-dark and a star burned out like a lightbulb for every mole. There’s a faint groan to the movements of Derek’s heart, like stepping on old wood.

“He does what he has to,” he says, watching Stiles face instead of the screen. He’s seen them both more than once, but only one of them sticks to the script. “For you. For both of us.”

Stiles looks over at him. “He’s supposed to be retired.”

He did that for you too, Derek thinks and refuses to say, steps on it like a bug. He’s scared and won’t let you see it.

“It’s part of him,” Derek says, “to want to provide for his family.” It’s what the Alpha does.

Stiles sighs. “I know,” he says, rolling his lips between his teeth. His fingers are plucking at the loose threads in the couch cushions, pull and flick over and over. “I just wish he didn’t have to.”

Derek moves his hand until it’s on top of Stiles’, stops the nervous motion. When Stiles’ throat bobs Derek takes his hand away again.

“He can take care of himself,” Derek says, gentle, like Stiles doesn’t know that better than Derek does, because John isn’t the only one who’s afraid a lot of the time.

Stiles lets out a long breath and shakes off the mood like a coat of dust, kicks his legs up and plants his feet into Derek’s lap. Derek’s got nowhere to put his hands that aren’t on the skin of Stiles’ ankles, thumbs in spaces between tiny bones, and it’s unfair, he thinks, that he relaxes into his seat like he’s been drugged.

He starts to doze in and out, catching fragments of the movie and snapshots of Stiles’ face, hands twitching each time like they’re looking for a lie.

“Hey,” Stiles is saying, and the room’s dark and a little colder, and Derek’s mouth is dry. Stiles is standing just in front of him and Derek’s hands are folded in his lap like delicate things. “C’mon, up, I’m not carrying your heavy ass.”

Derek mumbles something, non-words, has to pry his tongue from the roof of his mouth and rolls his head around to clear the crick. He gets to his feet when Stiles huffs impatiently and flicks him on the side of the neck and waves a hand at him.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, shaking the tingles out of his leg.

“You can do it, old man,” Stiles says, enjoying this way too much now.

“Not your birthday anymore,” Derek says. “Means I’m allowed to hit you again.”

Stiles just scoffs. “You’re practically squinting through one eye, I’m not feeling all that threatened.”

He follows Stiles up the stairs, pulls his shirt off and flops onto his bed, listens to Stiles shuffling about in the room. The cluster of full and crescent glow in the dark moons above his bed are all lit up that eerie green, and as usual he can’t decide if he wants to threaten to take them down or just smile at the memory of Stiles insisting he put them up in the first place. The safest choice is to just shut his eyes, Stiles puttering around changing for bed across from him.

The frame of Stiles’ bed makes a metallic protesting sound when he flings himself down and scrambles up to his pillows. One day it’s just gonna collapse and Derek’s ‘I told you so’ will be audible in the next solar system over.

“Night,” Stiles mutters, slurred into his pillowcase. “Thanks for my birthday.”

Derek smiles, wants to say he doesn’t arrange the dates of the year but can’t make himself do it.

“G’night, Stiles.”

“Night John-Boy.”

Derek scoffs. “Go to sleep, Stiles.” He can see half a glowing green moon between the mesh of his eyelashes, then a third, then there’s just the two of them breathing.

| |

Fall hits and the leaves go from green to golds and reds and loads of colours in between. It takes longer for the air to warm up and less time for the nights to turn cool, raining more often than not, but there’s no way Stiles is staying indoors for months at a time.

He digs through piles of fallen leaves until they almost cover him, nose pressing into the damp ground and tail kicking up papery scraps of orange and decaying brown behind him. He barks at Derek’s look of judgement, the really? written across his brow, just because Stiles knows how to enjoy the simple things while Derek pretends he doesn’t want to chase the squirrel that ran past them just now. Plus Stiles is exempt from lots of the stuff they do to prep the house for winter, on the grounds that him being on the roof with a hammer or on a ladder propped against the porch is a recipe for doom. He’d protest if winning didn’t mean having to do all that work.

So his dad fixes up the porch and Derek takes care of the roof, and aside from a few simple inside things like sealing windows or doors and checking the insulation in the attic Stiles is left to his own devices.

Once Derek’s been freed from reshingling duty (and Derek totally thinks of this stuff as nesting no matter how hard he rolls his eyes when Stiles says so) they run down to the river, scattering more leaves and crushing rotten branches under them.

Cold water slides over Stiles’ paws, cleans away mud and scraps of bark. Derek drinks and keeps an eye on Stiles like he’s gonna run into the current and vanish forever, so Stiles makes a good attempt at splashing him that he quickly abandons when Derek rubs his cold and damp muzzle on the top of Stiles’ head.

Their breath fogs from their noses when they run, Stiles turning to headbutt Derek in the side and then jackknifing away before Derek can bowl him over. His heart rackets around his chest and in his ears to go along with the familiar thump of Derek’s paws on the ground, the occasional splash of puddles they can’t avoid.

There’s a scattered line of big eroded rocks and stones along the side of the river and Stiles jumps over one, skids to the edge of the water and grabs a drink so cold it stings in his mouth. Derek knocks into his side, standing like a statue and watching the trees, close enough his fur itches against Stiles’ ribs.

They get caught in the rain on the way back, sudden sheets of water pummelling them, the ground turning to slush and the leaves bending towards the ground under the weight of it. Both of them viciously shake themselves once they get under the thankfully now leak-free porch, and Derek rolls his shoulders back as he shifts, spine popping and eyes flaring until they sink into their more human colours. Stiles grimaces and straightens up, trying to think don’t be tense don’t be tense as he changes, like that’s an easy thing to do. The difference is always more stark in colder months: suddenly he’s got goosebumps and he can’t smell the thick blanket of leaves, can’t pick out birds and mice scuttling for cover from the hiss of the rain.

They spend an extra five minutes under the burning spray of the shower to warm up again, jostling each other for the best place to stand. Derek’s tattoo stands out even when the hot water turns his skin pink, and Stiles can’t help but think it’s cool even with the memory of Derek’s face as he got it on his eighteenth birthday, gripping the arm of a chair with clawed fingers while Deaton frowned in concentration over the wolfsbane-and-whatever-else-infused ink, Stiles doing his best to distract Derek without actually looking at the needle.

Derek frowns about a tiny scrape on Stiles’ foot he got before they came into the house, insists on ‘helping’ Stiles with towelling off even though it just slows them down and leaves Stiles with his hair stuck up everywhere. He knows better than to get in the way of Derek’s protective fixation, he just wishes the peroxide stuff didn’t sting so much.

“We all done?” he asks, swinging his feet a little where he’s sat up on the counter. He rolls his eyes when Derek makes a big show of considering it.

“I guess you’ll live,” he says, and Stiles slaps him on the shoulder on his way to their room. He yanks on dry clothes and a mismatched pair of woolly socks.

Derek’s a heathen with no respect for the autumn chill, so he’s barefoot with a t-shirt on that doesn’t even cover the muscle in his upper arms, leaves a strip of skin along his hips on display when he raises his arms.

“C’mon,” Stiles says, coughing and scratching at the back of his neck, “it’s my night to make dinner and you’re helping me.”

He’s totally under control by the time they reach the kitchen. Really, he is.

| |

Stiles wakes up one night and doesn’t know why.

The clock on his bedside table is blinking 2:07 and by the time it clicks over to 2:08 he can hear the strangled little noises Derek’s making in his sleep.

Getting upright isn’t easy; he’s mummified in his own sheets and his body is still mostly unconscious. His feet thump onto the floor and he stumbles, then manages to trip over a shoe. The space between their beds is kind of a minefield a lot of the time.

“Derek,” he whispers, voice rusty. No answer.

He can see where Derek’s lying on his back, almost as twisted up as Stiles had been. Even asleep he’s frowning or grimacing, something unpleasant written across his face. He makes another miserable sound and Stiles flinches on his behalf.

Now he’s reached a crossroads that he recognises: has to choose whether to talk loud enough to wake Derek up or just put out a hand and shake him. Either way he’s yanking Derek out of a nightmare, and either way there’s a risk of misguided claws or a confused fist coming at Stiles from down on the bed, depending on the awful du jour running like a film reel in Derek’s head.

Stiles has always been a tactile sort of guy.

Derek’s skin is sweaty and too hot when Stiles’ fingers wrap around his forearm, as if he’s got a fever – as if he could get a fever.

“Hey,” Stiles murmurs, “don’t disembowel me or anything okay, pretty sure Dad’d be pissed.” He shakes Derek by the shoulder, but all he gets is a groan, a protest mangled at the back of Derek’s mouth.

Derek’s nightmares hold onto him, always have. Time was Stiles used to go get his dad and let him do this, and since he took over he’s had to slap Derek hard enough to wake him up that he felt guilty for it after.

This time he says, “Derek,” louder, firmer, wincing at the sound of his own voice, at the way it carries in the middle of the night when the whole house is meant to be asleep. “C’mon, it’s okay.”

Another shake, and Derek’s eyes are jerking back and forth behind his lids, one hand in a fist that’s thumping faintly against his mattress. He groans, whimpers like he’s in pain and it lodges in Stiles’ chest, all ragged edges.

With the hand he’s not using to shake Derek’s arm, Stiles finds Derek’s heartbeat, palm fitting into the dip between the muscles of his chest, staccato rhythm against his fingers. He pushes down as his other hand hits Derek hard in the shoulder, skin-on-skin sound ringing out, and Derek jerks out of sleep with a grunt like Stiles had kicked him in the stomach.

He grabs the hand on his chest, fingers tight around Stiles’, eyes wheeling everywhere, unseeing. Stiles pushes harder like he’s reaching underwater, like Derek’s sinking, and he hears all Derek’s breath pour out of his chest at once when he finally realises who’s standing over him.

Stiles doesn’t so much as twitch at the grip on his hand, bones creaking and tendons scraping together. He holds onto the eye contact and says, “You’re okay,” or, “It’s me,” over and over, clear and steady, feeling Derek’s pulse slow down.

Tension falls off Derek’s body. He rubs at his face, eases up on squeezing Stiles’ hand even if he doesn’t let go.

“Welcome back,” Stiles says, after a minute, and Derek huffs.

“Yeah,” he says, croaky. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Stiles shrugs, and it really isn’t. Derek sometimes has nightmares like Stiles sometimes has panic attacks, and they’ve built up a nice comfy middle ground of dealing with it through lots of contact and as little direct conversation as possible.

Derek looks over at the clock and sighs. He’s leaning on one hand, the other wrapped sideways around Stiles’, fingers on Stiles’ palm.

“C’mon,” Stiles says, pushing at his shoulder. “Shove over.” It’s dark, so he’s got complete plausible deniability about the bare grateful look that Derek can’t stop.

He slides nearer the wall and Stiles follows him, folds down onto the bed and pushes at Derek’s legs until they’re both more or less free of the risk of falling to the floor. They’re bordering on being too tall for these beds now, and they really aren’t up to holding the two of them comfortably, but they’ve been making do for years and they’ll make do now.

Derek’s facing away from him, hand keeping Stiles’ on his sternum like he had any plans to move it. Stiles slots his chest to Derek’s back and wriggles his cold feet between Derek’s warmer ones. He can feel it when Derek breathes, the way his ribs expand. His heart beats into Stiles’ palm.

“Anything you wanna talk about?” Stiles asks, making sure it sounds optional.

There’s a small dry noise when Derek swallows. “The usual,” he says, pretty much a whisper, and Stiles cringes. Usual means him and Dad in the wrong house that just so happens to be on fire, means Derek outside watching his world fall apart a second time. He tips his head forward and down enough to be breathing on the back of Derek’s neck.

“Just a dream,” he says, words spilling onto Derek’s nape. “Nothing’s gonna happen to you - or us. S’already over now.” He always tries to remember what his mom said to him after he had a nightmare, but all he ever comes up with are phantom flashes, her fingers in his hair or her kissing his forehead; the sound of her murmuring Mój mały lis or humming a made up tune. He’s never totally sure if that’s actually what her voice even sounded like; it’s faded like a lot of other things, become its own kind of dream.

The next time Stiles wakes up there’s sunlight leaking under the drapes and they’re facing each other, Derek’s eyes still shut while Stiles blinks the sleep from his, smiles a little at the blank peaceful expression in front of him, Derek for once looking as young as he actually is.

It’s uncomfortably warm even with the sheets pushed halfway down, but Stiles doesn’t have the will or the heart to move. Their hands are lying limp between them, but at some point Derek’s other arm got trapped under Stiles, and Stiles has his other one thrown up above his head, fingers about an inch from Derek’s hair.

He breathes slow and even, tries to will away his morning wood, which is kind of impossible considering all the bare skin he’s in contact with, with how soft Derek’s mouth is, the dark fan of his lashes against his cheeks. Derek makes a small noise, all breath, and the hand he’s got under Stiles brushes over his ribcage, sends a shiver down Stiles’ back.

Slowly resurfacing into being conscious again, he can’t help thinking that the universe has one hell of a twisted sense of humour.

| |

Stiles honestly doesn’t think about it beforehand. And sure, that could be said about a lot of things he does, but it’s worth stating just the same.

It’s the night of the full moon, and he says goodnight to his dad after an hour of playing cards at the kitchen table, taking the way he loses four rounds in a row after Derek leaves as a sign that he should just give up and go to sleep. At least then he can’t keep on looking out the windows.

His stomach’s doing its typical best to turn itself upside down, and their room’s too quiet, the bed across from his too empty. Fake stars shine on the ceiling.

Stiles hates waiting, hates feeling like he’s hovering on the edge instead of actually doing something. Restless tension and messy energy spread through him, guts to chest and down his legs, like his muscles are goading him.

“Fuck it,” slips out under his breath. His legs kick the sheets away, swing out through the dark and find the floor. His heart beats louder and faster, hollow as a drum. His skin’s tingling and he should really go back to bed, but again there’s that feeling of being balanced so close to something, waiting for it even if he can’t see it and doesn’t have a name for it.

The carpet feels hard and age-flattened under his bare feet. He doesn’t bother turning on the light or pulling his clothes back on, creeps into the hallway like a thief in nothing but his underwear. His dad’s faint snoring drifts out through the gap in his door, the only sound besides Stiles’ heart as he slinks downstairs and then outside.

He’s never snuck out of the house before; he’s never had a reason to. Or he’s just been too busy waiting.

The porch light’s been left on, their version of a candle in the window, and Stiles absently looks down at his forearm under the sickly yellow glow as it roils and changes, darkens and sprouts orange fur, tingles like the tips of knives stroking down him until he’s on four legs and kicking his briefs up against the side of the house.

If he said he wasn’t sort of enjoying himself, he’d be lying. He’s also scared shitless, a blank and adrenaline-soaked kind of unspecific fear. But at least he’s not waiting anymore.

Stiles steps out of the hazy sphere of porch light and runs into the woods like something’s chasing him. He moves quick and quiet as he can. There’s no space in his head to worry about where Derek might be, for him to admit that beyond ‘out’ he’s got no idea where Derek actually goes or what he does every month. Faintly he wonders if that was the whole point.

The woods shouldn’t seem this alien. Things smell the same, feel the same under him as he runs, rounding trees and kicking up leaves, skidding on muddy patches. But even so the calls of birds sound louder, sharper and crueller, and he can’t stop his ears from pricking in the direction of every faint snap or rustle around him.

Above him he gets snatches of the moon like a train on the other side of a tunnel, light flickering between the dark and twisted shapes of branches. He feels almost like it’s watching him, a big blanched face in the sky spilling silver ghosts and spreading long, creepy shadows. An owl swoops down and arcs up again just in front of him, a mouse in its talons, and Stiles doesn’t know whether he imagines the sound of tiny bones cracking.

For once he’s glad he can’t talk; it makes it harder to call himself an idiot. Fuck, what if he gets lost? What if his dad decides to check on him, peering into his room on the way back from the bathroom?

The howl startles him so much that his lips pull away from his teeth, whole body snapping taut. The sound drags across the air like rusty nails, down Stiles’ spine, forces birds out of trees in panicked flutters. For a few seconds there’s no other noise in the woods, no other noise in the world, and in the complete stillness a thought creeps into the back of Stiles’ head.

He darts forward and hopes he can find the clearing in the dark.

Once he’s looking for it there’s a kind of path winding through the woods, combinations of scent and places Derek’s obviously torn through recently. He follows the trail, winding between the trees, noses over scatters piles of leaves and gouges left in the dirt, until he finds what could be a random tree but isn’t. There are deep, parallel lines carved into the bark, obviously fresh from the cloying smell of sap and the way they’re brighter than the moss-covered trunk around them.

Stiles puts his front paws on the tree and leans up, isn’t surprised when under the wood smell and the tang of the tree’s wounded flesh, the scent of Derek hits him like a hammer. He knows where he’s going now.

There’s a sense that builds at the base of his skull, stings through his fur and tastes sour on the back of his tongue. It gets worse the closer he gets, makes every step that much harder, and even though he’s never felt it before he knows it’s a warning, an alarm bell.

And here he thought they’d gotten over the predator/prey thing.

By the time the dark peels back around the weight of the moonlight in the clearing, Stiles is already sure he’ll find Derek here.

A second howl, like a fist or a wall, hits him head-on, and there’s Derek, somehow looking bigger, bright orange eyes swivelling and finding Stiles without the slightest bit of error even though he’s standing still, doesn’t even think he’s breathing.

The stare nails him to the ground, hammers pegs through his feet. He lowers himself down, flat to the earth, turns his head to the side even if it means he can’t see Derek, makes the pounding of his heart that much worse.

There’s no sounds of movement – no sounds at all really, but the fur on the back of Stiles’ neck bends under Derek’s breathing just the same, loud-hot gusts of air down to between his shoulders, over the top of his head, cool rush from every inhale following quickly after. Right then Stiles isn’t a person with an animal shape; he’s just an, animal pinned under a much more powerful one.

He can see a plate-sized paw in front of him, claws cutting lines in the earth. Another breath against his nape and then Derek’s gone, no sight or sound of him, body heat seeping back into the cool breeze.

Stiles raises his head, can’t not, and Derek’s off to the side shifting, or trying to at least. It’s awful, Derek’s body lurching and grinding and twisting upon itself, bone visible against his skin and his face morphed halfway between two shapes, mouth full of razor teeth.

His own change is almost an afterthought, blades of grass clinging to his knees and elbows as he scrambles upright, can’t manage to take a step back or forwards. Derek finally forces his body to cooperate, panting and clenching his hands into fists over and over.

“Holy shit,” just sort of bursts out of Stiles’ mouth. He’s running on so much adrenaline he can’t even feel the chill. “That was—”

“What are you doing here?” Derek spits, one long mushed-together snarl like he still doesn’t have his teeth under control. Again Stiles doesn’t see or hear him move but there he is, right in Stiles’ space like he’d never been anywhere else. He still seems taller, or maybe he’s just that pissed off.

Stiles’ mouth does some rapid fishlike motion. He really should’ve prepared for this part. His hand flaps between them. “I was—I was just—”

“Stiles,” Derek grits out, like it’s hurting him to talk at all, and Stiles can see his jaw muscles twitching. He grabs Stiles’ arm, fingers vice-tight around a bicep. There’s enough light to see just how dark Derek’s eyes are, pupils edging out the orange. “You can’t be here, it’s—it’s not safe.”

“Why?” Stiles asks, even though it’s pretty fucking obvious. “You gonna hurt me?” He steps closer, into the few inches that are left between them. This is such a bad idea, one heavy hope hanging off a spaghetti string, the slightest tug… “D’you wanna hurt me, Derek?” he says, slowly stacking the words up, looking Derek in the face as he does, trying to dig through the instincts to the part that’s actually Derek.

Fingers spread out on Stiles’ arm and his nostrils flaring wide every time he breathes, Derek blinks hard a few times and shakes his head, a deliberate ‘no’.

“Stiles,” he says again, totally different, his grip easing up. “I don’t—I wouldn’t, god you know I wouldn’t.” He’s breathing like he’s been running and there’s a waver in his voice to match the tremor that Stiles can see and feel tracing all down his body.

Relief rushes warm in Stiles’ stomach, pours into his blood, tingles when it reaches his hands. “Yeah, I know,” he says, his voice not exactly steady either. He puts a hand on top of Derek’s on his arm. “Nice to hear it just the same, though.”

“You have to go home,” Derek tells him. “Just turn around and go back the house, okay? Now.”

Stiles is already shaking his head by the time Derek’s finished. “You just said—”

“I said I wouldn’t hurt you,” Derek says. “But—please just go home, I can’t—” He jerks his head to the side, and Stiles can hear the hitch in his breathing.

He reaches up and puts a hand on Derek’s clammy side, just below the ridge of his ribcage. “Derek,” he starts, half a question in it, “I’m not—”

The air blurs sideways, the world dragging along behind it. He makes an involuntary noise when his back collides with a tree, all knocked-loose breath.

Derek’s hands press at him, slide over his skin while his breath spills onto Stiles’ face, his neck. He’s close enough that Stiles can feel his body heat all down his front, scorching like being too close to a flame. This time when there’s no sound anywhere in the woods Stiles thinks it’s just him.

“Stiles,” breaks out of Derek’s throat again, the third or fourth or millionth time, depending when you start counting from.

He’s got Derek’s fingers pushing at the pulse point in his neck, what can only be the hard swell of Derek’s dick brushing against his thigh, and when the kiss happens like a bomb going off Stiles has all the pieces of Derek’s name on the back of his tongue, some assembly required.

There have been lots of moments, piled up like coins across almost half of Stiles’ entire life, where he’s imagined being brave enough for this. Where he’s thought about bruising his mouth on Derek’s and letting the push of their bodies together change them both, reshape them just a little more, one last way they use the other to define themselves. He’s collected all those moments, more and more of them as he staggered through every new year as a teenager, stuffed them in his pockets like something stolen or shoved them under his mattress like skin mags, something he can take out when it’s just him or when it’s dark enough that he can’t see the consequences pasted to the wall above the opposite bed.

He’s thought about kissing Derek at so many points in time you could build a whole day out of them; at breakfast when they’re fighting over the last bit of bacon, when he’s bored with schoolwork. Sometimes for no reason at all. He’s got words saved up for how Derek would taste, the way his hands would feel, if he’d be bossy about it or if he’d let Stiles tilt his head one way or another; if they’d topple onto the couch or a bed and take each other to pieces.

And the reality isn’t like any of them.

Derek’s lips are dry and getting wetter with the pass of his tongue along Stiles’ mouth, soft when Stiles opens up for him. He’s still quaking, maybe they both are, a tiny constant tremor going from one to the other or into the tree at Stiles’ back and into the earth.

Their teeth knock, click, and everything else is burning, Derek’s skin and Stiles’ breath and the two of them clinging to each other. The bones of their hips jar and then slot side-by-side and a rattle goes through Stiles’ chest, something pure and bright flinging up his spine, Derek’s tongue in his mouth and Stiles dirty blunt nails scraping at Derek’s back.

Air slides cold between them when Derek leans away. His hands move to frame Stiles’ neck, thumbs at the corners of his jaw and his pulse cupped in Derek’s palm. He breathes long and unsteady against Stiles’ mouth and drops their foreheads together.

“Tell me no,” Derek says, and fuck, his voice, like ground glass in his throat. “You have to tell me no.” He says it like he’s already halfway to the gallows, pressing at Stiles’ jaw like the words will just fall out of his mouth if Derek can pry him open, looking at him like he’s stolen something, as if Stiles is a locked box he has to pick. As if Stiles has any locks at all when it comes to Derek.

“I won’t,” he says, and for a second he sounds young, like he hasn’t to himself since bright lights in a hospital corridor. He swallows and feels it roll down into his chest. “I won’t say it.”

Derek’s whole expression is crumbling, eroding from the tilt of his eyebrows to the slack give of his mouth, and if he wasn’t holding himself back so much Stiles thinks he could kiss him hard enough to stamp his refusal there, make him feel it. Their eyes connect, slip away and connect again, both of them totally helpless, and Stiles doesn’t have the breath to get in Derek’s face and yell, ask him what the hell point there is in fighting any of this when neither of them wants to, when they might as well be glaring at the sky to stop the sun coming up.

He pulls Derek in, a clasping, desperate mess that doesn’t qualify as a hug, just the two of them collapsing into each other. Derek’s arms stutter and then wrap around him like steel bands, face buried in Stiles’ neck and his breath still coming fast, lips brand-hot and moving silently. Stiles spreads his hands on Derek’s back, between his shoulders and at the base of his spine, chin hooked over the crook of his neck and eyes shut tight.

“I’m sorry,” Derek says, maybe has been saying the whole time, mouth moving across Stiles’ skin, shuddering when Stiles grips him tighter and keeps him there.

He snorts, faint and wet. “You can be sorry for avoiding me,” he mutters, squeezing Derek as tight as he can, like he can wring the guilt and whatever else out of him, or maybe just fuse them together for good. “Especially if that’s why you look more like road kill every month.” His mouth shapes into a sloppy smile when he feels Derek huff a weak laugh, hand moving in restless up-downs on Stiles’ side. “But that’s it, okay? No being sorry for—for anything else.”

There’s an itch behind his eyes that doesn’t quite fade when he shuts them again, or when he turns his face to breath against Derek’s neck in the warm space under his ear.

They’re both still hard, trapped alongside each other between the vice of their hips, but that’s important right now. It’s like it’s all happening to someone else, everything except Derek pulling in the smell of him and the way Stiles can feel the sweep of every blink against his throat, the soft patter of kisses over his pulse. Everything else can wait.

“We can stay out,” Stiles says, murmuring against Derek’s neck. “Or we can go. You’re stuck with me either way.”

Another huff. “Back to the house then,” Derek says. He lifts his head just enough for Stiles to see his eyes, the broken-open look on his face.

Stiles nods and kisses him again, slow and like he’s proving a point, either to himself or to both of them: he’s allowed to do this now, no take-backs.

| |

Things from there get… complicated. Stiles isn’t surprised, and he’s not even against complication if it means that at the end of it he and Derek get to be… whatever it is they are now. They didn’t exactly have a reliable definition even before all the kissing and confessing started.

It’d be a lot easier if Derek would actually talk to him. Instead he clams up like it’s suddenly eight years ago all over again, withdrawn into himself like an angsty turtle and ducking Stiles’ attempts to pry something – anything out of him. Dad’s definitely noticed there’s a problem, even though Stiles is so not ready to explain any of it, and besides he couldn’t right now if he wanted to.

Two days drag by, long and awful and silent, and Stiles has handwaved Derek’s new weirdness to his dad as being moon-related somehow, but that’s not gonna fly past the next twelve hours or so. Plus he’s a terrible liar where his dad’s concerned. Seriously, he stammers and everything, it’s tragic.

So in a fit of desperation he corners Derek in their room the moment they have the house to themselves. Hopefully grocery shopping takes his dad a while. Like maybe a month, judging from the expression on Derek’s face that says this is all somehow Stiles’ fault.

“Okay, this is bullshit,” he says, standing in front of the door. “What the hell is going on with you?”

“Stiles,” Derek says, slow and warning, but Stiles just points a finger at him and barrels right on.

“Nope, not falling for the threats, you love me too much to do anything anyway.” Derek actually flinches at that, and wow this is not a great start is it? “You don’t just—you can’t just kiss me and then act like I killed a puppy in front of you.” He’s breathing too hard and his face is hot, chest heaving. “Did you not mean to do that?” he asks, even though he really doesn’t want to. “Because if I like, moon roofied you or something then—”

“What?” Derek says, and okay, the you’re-ridiculous-why-do-I-know-you face is at least familiar, Stiles can work with that. “Moon—Stiles that’s not a real thing.”

He flails an arm at where Derek’s sitting on his bed, frowning epically. “Well then what? You tripped and fell and kissed me a bunch of times?” He needs to stop saying it, it’s making the blushing thing worse and he keeps flashing back to Derek’s hard dick rubbing against his belly.

A sudden nasty thought hits him in the stomach, twists like a length of razor wire. “You didn’t—you didn’t just do it because I wanted to did you?” His voice is giving out on him already, and he hates how young he sounds, how uncertain when he isn’t, not about this. His breathing hitches, snags against his ribs, and god, that’s totally something Derek would do, hand himself over out of duty or whatever, like he owes—

“Stiles,” Derek says again, and he’s standing up now, crossing the room with his hands held out by his sides, palms facing Stiles. “Stiles, breathe okay? Just—That’s not why, I promise I’d never do that to you.” He puts a hand on Stiles’ shoulder, and grabs one of his hands and puts it on his own chest. Stiles forces his breathing into step with Derek’s, the rise and fall of his ribs through his shirt.

“You can’t shut me out,” Stiles says, and he’s lost all control of his voice, of the crack in the words. “If you don’t—if you don’t want me then just say it, I can’t—Just don’t shut me out, okay, please?”

Derek’s expression does something horrible, implodes around his mouth, and then he’s dragging Stiles in and shushing him, hand on the back of Stiles’ head and his face turned into Stiles’ neck, muttering nonsense.

“I’m sorry,” he says, clutching Stiles tighter. “I shouldn’t have—I got stuck in feeling guilty, for pushing you into—”

“Hey I followed you out there, remember?” Stiles says. “I might not have expected it, but I wasn’t exactly complaining.” He pulls away enough to look Derek in the eye, hopes the proof that he means it is showing on his own. “Still not complaining, here.”

Derek huffs, slides his hand from Stiles’ neck to his cheek, thumb skimming under his eye. Stiles doesn’t really know what to do with the urge to turn his head into it, kiss Derek’s palm or his fingers.

“There are still things I have to tell you,” Derek says, sighing. “You should know everything, before you decide what you want.”

Stiles has to fight not to roll his eyes, to not point out that he made up his mind standing in the clearing with Derek’s mouth laid over his, if not years before that without even realising it, that there’s nothing Derek could tell him now that would make a difference. He knows Derek well enough to see that he’d never let it drop if he thought he had a good reason for Stiles to say no.

They sit - kind of awkwardly, hesitant with each other in a way that they just aren’t, ever- on Stiles’ bed. Derek’s opening line of, “How much do you remember from Deaton’s books on werewolf lore?” makes Stiles groan, because this is what’s holding him up? Still he sits and nods along through the explanations and Derek’s halting gestures, and by the time Derek’s voice trails off ten minutes later Stiles is pinning his lips together to hide the smile.

“So I'm...” he gestures between them with one hand, because ‘your anchor’ just sounds weird, even in his head, a label that doesn’t really fit. “And that's why you've been all squirly lately?”

"Squirly?" Derek says, like really?, but he gives up on it when Stiles just glares. “I've been fighting it,” he says, tone signalling that he knows exactly how counterintuitive that is, how unsafe. Stiles has read enough of Deaton's books and asked enough questions about how werewolves work to be really, really pissed at him.

“You wanna tell me why?”

Derek's stops staring at his hands in his lap enough to look Stiles in the eye. “Because,” he says, “It wasn’t fair, I couldn’t just expect that you’d—”

“Well you could've asked!" Stiles says, flinging himself onto his feet. “Instead of fucking off into the woods once a month and torturing yourself about it. Jesus, Derek, how is that a better option?”

All the steam gone out of him when he sees Derek drop his eyes, he flops back onto the bed, scrubs at his face, and waits Derek out. He'll sit here all night if he has to; he'll bolt Derek to the freaking floor or tie him to a chair until he starts talking, whatever it takes.

“You're too young,” Derek says, stops Stiles with a glance when his mouth opens on a protest. The way he says it sounds practiced, words sitting familiar in his mouth. “Too young to ask that much of you, especially after everything you've already done for me - you and your father.”

Stiles winces, because yeah that's still not a conversation he's not gonna be ready for until the next millennium at the earliest, but still.

“You're not exactly ancient, Derek,” he says, because he swears sometimes Derek thinks he's forty instead of months away from nineteen. “And I, uh...” He clears his throat when it suddenly tries to close up on him, blood rushing everywhere at once. “I think I’ve been pretty clear that I'd be seriously down with... with this.” He waves a hand between them again. It still seems a little unbelievable that they’re even arguing about this. They’re them, inevitable and as permanent as anything either of them can make themselves believe in.

Derek's looking at him like he's halfway between amazed and terrified, which puts them back on familiar ground again.

“I’m gonna kiss you now,” Stiles says, a little teasing in how slowly he says it, half just to hide the tremble in his hands. “Try not to keel over.”

He sees Derek’s tiny nod just before their lips meet, soft and clinging, and Stiles isn’t even sure which one of them makes the shocky little noise he can feel buzz against his mouth. He swallows when they separate, eyes fixed on how Derek’s tongue passes over his bottom lip.

“Gonna kiss you again,” he says, throat dry as kindling, and Derek pushes forward before him this time, both of them clashing together, mouths sliding wet and open and Stiles’ tongue inexpertly brushing Derek’s. He groans, unsteady and his fingers are pulling at Derek’s clothes like handholds stopping him from falling down the mountain, over the sheer drop he can feel in his stomach.

Derek’s got a hand under the hem of Stiles’ tee and another on the side of his neck, gentle touches of his fingertips mapping the slope of Stiles’ jaw, the shell of his ear and the sensitive skin behind it that makes him shiver. Shaky gouts of breath fall out of them both and get lost outside the warm touch of Derek’s lips, the stubble scratch and the uncoordinated need in how they’re both holding onto each other.

There’s a rush in Stiles’ ears, the room or the bed or maybe just the planet spinning under him, but he can still hear every soft, wet noise and the splintered bits of moans catching on the air. He groans when Derek kisses the corner of his mouth, then his cheek, down to his neck, and even if he’s not actually leaving bruises Stiles can imagine how red his skin’s gonna be, prickle of hairs around Derek’s lips burying more heat between the layers. He wants to ask for the bruises anyway.

He pushes, or Derek pushes, and they fall onto the bed, rolling and stretching until Stiles is leaning up on one shoulder and Derek’s breathing hot and open-mouthed into the dip between his collarbones, Stiles grasping at whatever part of him he can reach.

The hard, trapped jut of his dick in his pants is getting uncomfortable, but Derek makes this shattered little noise when Stiles grinds up, helpless and wanting against the solid muscle of his thigh. He doesn’t even care if he comes in his shorts right now, so turned on he can barely see much less worry about cleanup, but Derek lifts his head and catches his eyes, and Stiles just gets stuck on the way Derek’s looking at him.

“Y'know we could've been doing this all along,” he says, stroking his fingers up Derek's arm. He’s never ever going to get tired of this, he can tell.

Derek makes a face. “Would you believe I was worried you'd say yes out of obligation too?”

Stiles pauses, looks at the embarrassed twist on Derek's mouth, the bemused tip of his head to the side.

He laughs then, a mangled and totally undignified snort, lightheaded with his body shaking against Derek’s and the bed.

"What," Derek says flat, so put-upon, and Stiles just laughs harder, breathy and ridiculous and full of the kind of mindless high that he usually doesn’t feel unless he’s been awake for two days.

He butts his forehead against Derek's collarbone. He's grinning and it hurts and everything's hilarious, their entire lives adding up to a punch line that's only obvious from the outside or in hindsight. “No, it's just—” he takes a breath and forces it to come out slow. He shakes his head. "We're idiots, huh?"

Derek’s still frowning faintly, brows knitted together, and now Stiles doesn't have to think about putting his thumb between them and smoothing out the tension, skimming over an eyebrow and onto Derek's temple. He's spent years touching Derek, and he can't explain why this feels so different, new and unexplored even if the skin under his fingers is the same.

“Maybe,” Derek concedes, finally, “but you're the bigger idiot.”

Stiles' grin breaks free again even with the ache still in his cheeks, and he cups Derek's face one-handed and watches his mouth shape into a smile, and when Derek's soft laugh falls between his lips Stiles is already kissing him. Sometimes laughter has a taste to it. This one definitely does.

“We don’t have time,” Derek says, because he doesn’t need to be a mind reader to be able to see what Stiles is thinking just then. He drops another kiss on Stiles’ mouth. “God, I wish we did,” he says, breath shaking around his laugh, and Stiles is glad he’s got Derek braced over him because he’s not a hundred percent sure he wouldn’t just float off the bed.

“We have time,” Stiles says, swallowing. “Just… not for right now. We’ve got tons of time. Oodles of time. Buckets and buckets of time for… everything.”

Derek smiles, fond and a lot of other things, and Stiles hooks a leg over one of Derek’s and pulls him down so they’re side-by-side, crammed together with not enough space and too many clothes, both still hard. Derek’s hips twitch into Stiles’ with their legs slotted between each other, knees piled on knees, and their faces are so close Stiles can’t focus, Derek just a blur of bright eyes and red lips and pale skin, traces of his smile still showing.

He wonders if there’s something he should say, something to frame this whole thing in neat little words, sum it all up. But Derek’s warm under his hands and he’s brushing his knuckles softly over the side of Stiles’ neck and the wing of his hip, and Stiles honestly can’t think of a thing to say.

They’re gonna have to be presentable when his dad gets back in however many minutes, a countdown to the end of the moment that he doesn’t wanna dwell on. But he meant what he said.

They have time.

| |

Derek walks around for days convinced he’s going to fly apart.

It’s taking every scrap of effort to act like nothing’s changed, to not alter the way he acts with Stiles, especially in front of John.

He’s overthinking and he knows it, feels off-balance and uncertain where he wasn’t before, jumpy when Stiles puts a hand on his shoulder or hip checks him to get to the fridge or the sink when they brush their teeth side-by-side.

The irony is that it’s only now he’s aware of how much they’re always in other’s space that it seems weird, that he wonders if he’s touching Stiles too much or standing too close. He’s got no boundaries prepared for this, no bubble of personal space where Stiles is concerned. How is he supposed to know what’s ‘normal’?

So when Stiles ambushes him the moment their bedroom door shuts between the two of them and the outside world – and more importantly, John – Derek feels something like relief rush up all through him. Stiles’ hands come up and drag him into a kiss so fast it’s a miracle one of them doesn’t loose a tooth, both of them stumbling.

“You—Fuck,” Stiles is blurting against his mouth, fingers scrabbling under Derek’s clothes. “You can’t keep—You’re driving me—” His voice grinds down into nothing inside his throat when Derek lines them up and pulls Stiles tight against him. He thinks his hands are shaking but he can’t be sure, not when they won’t stay still long enough, dragging up and down Stiles’ back under his tee.

“Look who’s talking,” Derek mutters, mouth sliding along Stiles’ jaw. Stiles shivers when Derek bites at the soft-smooth skin under his ear, so he does it again, not quite hard enough to leave a mark, but still he can feel the blood under the skin, the way Stiles’ pulse taps against his tongue.

They’re standing roughly in the middle of the room, rocking and swaying every time one of them grabs at skin or shoves their hips together. Stiles is a long line of heat up against Derek’s chest, the smell of him fogging Derek’s head and turning the press of his dick against the inside of his jeans into a painful squeeze.

When Stiles worms a hand between them and down past Derek’s waistband, there’s what might be a laugh or a moan trapped at the back of his tongue, giddy and wound tight and almost past caring if John hears them. Stiles gets his fingers around Derek’s dick and tugs, sharp and restricted by Derek’s jeans, breathing hard into the curve of Derek’s neck, other hand gripping his hip so hard Derek thinks his knuckles must be white.

He’s gritting his teeth to stay quiet, the insides of his lids bright red when he blinks and clenches them tight. He tries to fuck into the curl of Stiles’ fingers, can’t get much more than quick pulls, the head scraping against denim, but he’s close already, has been since he narrowed down to the smell of Stiles’ cock getting hard and wet in his shorts.

“You can have this,” Stiles says, soft and more than a little raw. Derek’s throat works at keeping down a noise, legs trembling every time he rolls onto the balls of his feet, Stiles’ thumb crooked to catch on his slit, slip under the skin that’s pulled down over the head. Stiles puffs through his nose, a little laugh that’s shaky as hell when he says, “If you think there’s anything you can’t have then you really haven’t been paying attention.”

Derek comes like he’s been kicked in the spine, one knee giving out and locking just before he takes them both tumbling to the floor, mouth open in a silent yell against Stiles’ skin, dragging air like a drowning man into his lungs. He can feel the thick-messy pulses trapped against his dick by his jeans, slick coating everything and sticking to Stiles’ fingers. Stiles twists his palm and a long shudder scrapes between Derek’s shoulders, balls drawn up tight and one more twitch before he feels empty, strung-out.

Stiles shushes him, so he must be making noise even if he can’t hear it. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth and he turns his face into Stiles’ neck and swallows more air, feeling Stiles’ hand run up and down his back.

The next kiss is even less coordinated than the first, but Derek leans into it, warm and wet. It’s not easy pulling apart enough to strip, and when he gets his jeans off, grimacing at the mess, he looks up and Stiles is standing naked watching him, long pretty dick curved up against his belly and patches of blotchy red spread down his chest. Derek’s mouth floods and the next breath he takes almost takes his knees out from under him.

Stiles nods to his bed, one side of his mouth tilting up and his eyes not so much asking as impatient, you coming? Derek doesn’t get how Stiles doesn’t see his own bravery, how daring he is when he spreads himself out under Derek and looks at him like it’s enough, like anything could be enough.

He breathes out Stiles’ name like something he took, whether he meant to or not and no matter that no one tried to stop him. He swallowed Stiles’ name along with so much else and let it burn him up, set light to everything he is. So now it spills past his lips and back into Stiles’ mouth, across his skin or into his ear, pours into every valley and jut of him while Stiles arches and shakes. I did this for you, Derek thinks, loud as pain and just as soundless, Just like I’ll do everything - anything else. I took what you gave me and kept it like the only promise I’ll ever mean.

There’s too much Derek could say, could bleed everywhere, and he knows he could ruin it all by saying it out loud, so his lips make no sound on Stiles’ chest, around his nipples or against the dip of his belly, along the trail of hair that drags Derek down to his cock, inevitable like a story where you already know the ending. So whatever noises he lets escape when the thick-heady smell of Stiles fills him up, when he presses his nose into wiry curls and breathes to refill the dark hollows where Stiles’ name usually gathers; however loud he gets with Stiles’ dick in his mouth and precome tasting like salt and something better and more essential on his tongue, that’s all his fault, the promises he breaks to save the one that matters.

It hurts when Stiles tugs on his hair too hard and it hurts when Derek pushes Stiles to the back of his throat, and he trusts the pain to make it real in a way dreams never are, the sting of sweat and the tremor of muscles where his imagination has blurred all the details and sanded down the rough edges. Derek could never have dreamed this up without losing pieces of it, forgetting the mole on Stiles’ stomach that’s hidden by his palm or the exact sound of the whimpers he makes even with the meat of his hand jammed in his mouth.

He swallows around the head and Stiles’ voice caves in, and there are tears leaking from the corners of Derek’s eyes where he refuses to pull off or blink or look anywhere that isn’t the arch of Stiles’ throat and the shudder of his chest. Drool and precome slide down his chin, lips hot and bruised. He sucks hard and Stiles fucks up into him, over and over in twitching bucks of his hips that he can’t help and that Derek won’t tell him to anyway, and he’s still making sounds from his throat just behind where Stiles’ cock reaches, low-hungry-needy sounds that he imagines leaking over his skin the same as all the sticky-wet.

Derek’s fingers slide down from Stiles’ balls to his hole and press there, the tip slipping inside, Stiles dry and so tight, but he’s coming in filthy gouts down Derek’s throat, another piece of himself Derek swallows, greedy and panting through his nose.

He rubs his tongue against every vein he can feel and others that he just imagines being there, and the last weak pulses spatter his palate and the insides of his cheeks. Stiles is gasping and wheezing, and he’s still clamping down on Derek’s finger, body like fire on the inside, and Derek ruts down into the mattress and comes again, weak pulses against the sheets with Stiles going soft in his mouth.

When he slides back up the roadmap of Stiles’ body, Stiles kisses him and it slips wet across Derek’s sore-swollen mouth, nerves rubbed raw, like his lips are brand new or just remade.

Stiles looks up at him with so much in his eyes, but Derek’s always wanted to give him more than this; more than just the catalogue of himself or whatever he hasn’t already turned out his pockets to find. Something other than the desperation that’s either killing him or keeping him alive.

How much time has he spent pretending? Hiding the want under his skin until it scrapes him raw, a grain of sand to build a pearl around? Put all the hours on a scale next to how many he’s lived and see which weighs the most, because he honestly doesn’t know. Stiles deserves better than he’s gotten, from life, from the world and from Derek, but all he can ever hand over is everything he is, and he can’t even resent Stiles for taking it and accepting that it’s enough.

Stiles flings a casual smile at him, wide and happy, borderless, and Derek's breath hitches in secret, notches the inside-facing part of his breastbone, a tally of times he's been surprised at getting what he wants.

“We’re doing that again,” he says, fingers stroking over Derek’s shoulder, down the arm that’s propping him up. “I might have a list of stuff I wanna try.”

Derek’s laugh is just a snort but Stiles’ mouth stretches wide again, stays that way even when Derek kisses him.

“Yeah,” Stiles murmurs against his lips, a little buzz that goes through Derek’s skin. “We’re gonna be awesome.”

| |

Stiles might be a little addicted to this already.

He doesn’t think he can be blamed. Anyone who had Derek around all the time along with a free pass to touch each other would get addicted.

They’re probably pushing their luck, but with Derek’s hand on his leg under the dinner table or Stiles stopping him to swap messy kisses before they leave the bathroom. He might feel bad about it if Derek wasn’t just as bad, and it’s either the blind leading the blind or just the both of them tumbling through the air after they’ve already jumped off the cliff.

Derek nudges him back against the tiles in the shower and blows him dirtily and sloppily enough that Stiles doesn’t feel at all responsible when he comes in about two minutes, legs shaking like he’s never used them before. He pulls Stiles in at night, both of them piled into one bed or the other, and they grind together using skin and kisses to muffle the sounds they wanna make. He even tags along on a grocery run and somehow manages to sneak lube past Stiles’ dad, and just looks pleased with himself when Stiles looks some mix of impressed and concerned that Derek’s been out shoplifting.

Since it leads to him getting flipped onto his belly with Derek pressing down on top of him, two cool and slick fingers shallowly pushing into Stiles’ hole, spreading them out while he mouths at the back of Stiles’ neck and Stiles’ dick shifts against the mattress, he’s not going to worry about that either. There’s actually something to be said for feeling this out of control. Who knew?

They don’t fuck around much in the woods, but every now and then Derek will fit his chest to Stiles’ back and give him a reach-around, hook his chin on Stiles’ shoulder to watch him swell and tense up and shoot onto the leaves. Stiles gets better and better at getting Derek off with his mouth, and freely admits that his oral fixation is only getting worse.

Derek coaxes secrets out of his body Stiles didn't even know it was keeping: that Derek's mouth on his neck makes goosebumps trail down his chest, and that he'll be groaning by the time Derek gets down to his collarbones. That his dick twitches and leaks when Derek pulls one of his nipples between his fingers or his teeth, and that he can't not buck up when he sucks on them.

He figures out that he likes Derek's fingers in him almost more than he likes Derek’s mouth on his dick, in a boneless way where he can't feel anything but heat creeping up his spine, and that he can come just from that, three of Derek’s fingers crooked in him and twisting, spreading over the spot in him that kicks a whimper off his tongue.

He learns that he gets off on Derek holding him down, which might have something to do with how much Derek gets off on it, the way his eyes go sharp and hungry when Stiles puts his hands above his head, crossed at the wrists, and raises an eyebrow until Derek pins them there. He loves Derek’s weight on him, when he's not being careful because he thinks has to, or holding himself back because he feels like he should.

The first time he talks Derek into fucking him, it’s after a movie he hadn’t been paying attention to anyway. They’re both in Stiles’ bed, which seems to be the common choice for whatever reason, and Derek’s looking down at him with a little crease between his eyebrows.

“You’re sure, right?”

Stiles smiles, not unkind, just kind of brimming up with warmth for how earnest Derek looks. “Yeah, I am,” he says, batting his knuckles lightly on Derek’s cheek, fingers folded along his second knuckles to look like a paw. It makes Derek smile. “Besides, we already live together, we share a room, we see each other naked and touch each other’s junk all the time, and I’ve stolen half your socks. I’m pretty sure this is the only level-up we had left.”

Derek’s eyebrows do a complicated little crumple, tipping upwards like an arrow pointing at his hairline, and his laugh comes out in a really loud undignified snort. Stiles is proud of himself.

“You’re ridiculous,” he says, shaking his head.

Stiles squirms flat under him, grins. “Thanks.”

“Wasn’t a compliment,” Derek tells him, but he’s reaching for the lube with his eyes still on Stiles’ face and proof of his smile still lingering on his own.

By the time Derek’s got three of his fingers slotted into him side by side to the last knuckle, Stiles has been ready for about six billion years. Seriously, planets have formed in less time than it’s taken Derek to be sure he’s not going to kill Stiles with his dick.

The first press of Derek’s cock head against his ass shuts him up pretty effectively, stalls out the curses he’d been aiming at Derek to just hurry up and do it before they run out of time alone or the sun burns out. It’s just… He can feel the way his body’s flexing and opening around it, and the heat shoots in a bolt up his spine, right to the base of his neck.

Derek’s panting before he’s even halfway in, hands leaving behind prints on Stiles’ hips that Stiles doesn’t think he’s even noticed. Stiles does actually feel like he’s being cleaved in two, a little, or more than a little, so the prep might not have been as big a time waste as he thought. He breathes, deliberate and slow, and tries to remember all the little tips he’d gleaned from various Google searches he will never admit to or speak of. The internet can be a horrifying place.

He’s making all kinds of unintentional noises that Derek keeps having to muffle with his mouth and his tongue, which is just no incentive to stop making them even if he could, but he really can’t with the thick weight of Derek’s dick spreading him open, his own going from fully hard to half-mast to hard again, all his blood thudding through him like a stampede.

There’s not a lot of movement, as it turns out. Derek’s trying not to come and Stiles is trying not to tense up, but it all gets a hell of a lot better when Derek tilts his hips and starts rocking right against Stiles’ prostate, until he’s biting his lips and his dick’s leaking in little puddles on his belly.

Neither of them last long, which Stiles had totally expected. Derek pulls out and fucks into him on a few long, really mind-numbingly good thrusts, and Stiles comes with a voiceless yell the moment Derek tries to jerk him off. All his writhing and gripping down on Derek’s cock kicks Derek right over the edge after him, and Stiles doesn’t know if he imagines that he can feel Derek getting bigger and more heat all trapped up inside him as he pulses over and over. He definitely doesn’t imagine the way Derek sounds when he says Stiles’ name, broken and pained into the hinge of Stiles’ jaw.

They don’t do much more than fall limply on top of each other after that. Derek's dozing with his face pretty much buried in Stiles' armpit, and... that's a thing right? He should just accept that it's a thing? He'll keep the teasing ammo in reserve in case Derek ever finds out about Stiles' thing for his chest hair.

“Ugh, I need to shower. Again,” he says, scratching at dried sweat or come or both on his stomach that’s really starting to itch.

Derek hums, “Don't,” nosing up his side to the soft crook of his underarm, pulling until Stiles bends his shoulder and just generally turns limp while Derek breathes him in and leaves a faint bruise just outside of where his armpit meets his chest.

"Pervert," he mutters, disturbingly fond, and Derek snorts against his sternum, leans up and kisses him. He’s okay with it.

| |

When they go out lately they don’t even bother shifting a lot of the time. They just walk into the woods and talk for no reason other than to be in the same space together, so close it makes it hard to walk without stumbling.

It’s cold, the last traces of winter still creeping in at the edges of everything, making the air something crisp and glass-like in Stiles' nostrils and stripping the colour from the woods so they look like something out of a gothic painting, all bare black branches and bare thickets. Derek's wearing jeans and a Henley and a pair of boots that he got as a hand-me-down from Stiles' dad, looking like he’s never so much as heard the word ‘cold’ much less felt it. Stiles has a jacket pulled over his layers of shirts and a pair of gloves that are just a little too small, because even if he runs warmer than a human he still fucking hates the cold when he’s outside minus the benefit of fur.

“Oh c’mon, you must have some idea.”

Derek steps over a thick corded mess of roots, pushes Stiles’ arm so he notices and goes around it. “I really don’t.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Seriously? Nothing? I mean hey, you don’t want to go off to college right this minute then I won’t complain; I kind of like having you around.” He flashes a smile when Derek’s face colours a little. “But you never thought about what you wanted to do?”

Derek shrugs. “Not in terms of a career or anything like that.”

“I bet the forestry department would take you,” Stiles says, nudging their shoulders together. “I can see it now: ‘outdoorsy werewolf seeks employment’. I bet they’d jump at it; Dad’s always saying they’re understaffed.”

“You going to be my reference?” Derek asks, smirking at him. “Tell them how much time I spend corralling you around out here, making sure you don’t eat anything endangered. Maybe I could apply at a fox sanctuary.”

Stiles snorts, and when he goes to hit a gloved hand on Derek’s arm Derek snatches it by the wrist. Stiles swallows when Derek pulls his glove off and sticks it in his pocket, then knits their fingers together, arms hanging between them. Even Derek’s furnace-like body heat doesn’t account for how much warmth spreads through Stiles from his arm to his chest and up his neck. At least he was already pink-cheeked from the cold.

The talking drops off for a few minutes, just the sounds their feet make on the damp ground, leaves and mud squashing into the ground under them, the occasional bird call or rustle off in the distance. The sun slips out around the clouds every so often, not giving off much warmth but still glinting bright when it pushes between the branches.

Derek’s thumb is sliding over the back of Stiles’ hand when he says, “You know I wouldn’t just leave, right?”

Stiles chews on his lip, ducks under the long limb of a branch. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

“Hey.” Derek stops, puts his free hand on Stiles’ shoulder and turns him. He’s aiming an earnest look at Stiles, and with the boots the height difference is more like it used to be, Stiles having to raise his eyes. “I mean it.” His hand goes to the side of Stiles’ neck, burning on the chilled skin above his collar.

He nods. “Okay,” he says, and feels eight different kinds of pathetic and obvious, a few other layers that’re mostly guilt for being so selfishly glad.

Derek huffs faintly through his nose, leans in and kisses him, and his lips are starkly hot where Stiles’ are cold and starting to chap. It’s soft and gentle enough to make Stiles’ other hand fumble out of his pocket and slide up Derek’s side, like he has to hold himself upright.

They stand leaning together, joined hands held between them and Derek cupping Stiles’ cheek, Stiles pressing on the centre of Derek’s chest until he just feels his heart beating through the glove and Derek’s shirt.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Derek says, quiet and intent. “We’re—” He sighs and smiles, a gentle curve spilling along his mouth. “You really don’t have to worry.”

Stiles smiles back, and it makes the next kiss a little uncoordinated, Derek’s breath fanning against his skin. He tightens his grip on Derek’s hand and says, “Okay,” a lot steadier this time. “One day though, okay? For both of us. We’ll figure it out. I’m not letting you go all Sylvia Plath.”

Derek snorts. “Your dad’ll send you to college in a shipping crate if he has to. Or a pet carrier.”

“Funny,” Stiles says, pulling a face that makes Derek’s mouth twitch.

They walk in a slow circle back to the house. It still gets dark pretty early and everything’s turning gray, the occasional flash of pink from the sun sinking in the sky.

“Hey check it out,” Stiles says, using their laced fingers to tug Derek to a stop, pretending he doesn’t see the indulgent-fond look it gets him. He leans over and snags a big leaf off the ground. It's all by itself on top of the dull brown mud, probably a stubborn one that’s just fallen. He holds it up over his face by the stalk like a mask. “It's you,” he says, biting down on a grin. It really does look like a wolf, the top shaping ears and patches of colouration for the eyes and nose.

“You need your eyes examined,” Derek says, but he still laughs when Stiles tips his head up with the leaf held over his face and does a really cartoonish howl.

Stiles slips the leaf into his pocket, careful not to crush it, and nudges Derek back into the tall pillar of a tree.

“I can see just fine,” he says, and licks into Derek’s mouth when he opens it to say something. Stiles groans and Derek’s hands settle on him, fingers clenching in his jacket and hauling him closer. Stiles has still got just the one glove on, too busy pushing his bare hand under Derek’s shirt to take it off. He smiles into the kiss when Derek twitches at the touch of his cold fingers, finds the patch of skin above Derek’s right hipbone that’s always more sensitive and presses his nails across it, bites down on Derek’s lip when he lets out a shaky little moan.

Derek’s fingers card through Stiles’ hair at the back of his head, holding him in the dirty-wet slide of their mouths, tiny low noises going back and forth between them, from Derek’s chest to Stiles’ tongue.

He smirks at the black-blown gape of Derek’s pupils when he pulls away, breathing hard from more than just lack of air.

“C’mon,” he says, hand sliding up Derek’s chest to pluck at his collar, tapping at the base of his throat where his pulse is beating quick and hot. He can feel Derek swallow, the long roll of muscle in his neck. “I wanna blow you, and I’m not kneeling in the mud.”

He walks off, a showy, determined stride in the direction of the house, and grins when he hears Derek scrambling to catch up.

| |

Derek gets up at one point in the night, trying to reach the bathroom without waking Stiles up. He slides down and steps off the end of the bed, Stiles a mess of bedhead and starfished limbs on the other side. Once he’s vertical he can’t help the way he turns and looks at Stiles still asleep, from reaching out and brushing gentle fingers down the soft skin of his back before he draws the sheet up to his shoulders.

Stiles mumbles something, mouthing at the pillowcase where he’s already drooling, and Derek’s still smiling when he tries to quietly navigate the clutter on the floor.

He splashes water on his face, and when he steps back into the hallway he sees the dull glow of lights from downstairs. When he listens there’s John’s heartbeat, sleep-slow.

The light’s coming from the living room, the lamp next to the old, round table covering the carpet in streaks of shadow.

John’s dozing in a chair, glasses slipped down on his nose and body wilted back, shoulders hunched awkwardly in sleep. One of his hands is slack on his leg, the other’s resting loosely on the surface in front of him. The table’s covered in papers, small stacks and loose sheets, all whites and pale yellows.

Derek bends and picks up a pen that’s rolled onto the floor, puts it on one of the topmost pages and tries not to skim past the words Bill or Second Notice, others marked Mortgage and Pension in red like flags planted all over the table. There’s a bottle of Jack and a glass to John’s right, the chemical-strong smell cloying in Derek’s nose when he breathes in, but none of it coming from John’s skin or clothes.

It’s the photo album Derek can’t quite avoid glancing at.

On some level, pictures make Derek uncomfortable. He’s never said anything because he knows it’d just come out sounding jealous or other things that aren’t worthy of being spoken aloud. But his fingers are on the edge of a picture of a woman with red-brown hair and familiar eyes, wide mouth pulled into a smile that’s aimed at the little boy standing next to her. There are others taped to the pages, some falling loose against the inside of the spine. He pauses on one of John in a Sheriff’s uniform, Stiles stood on a chair to be level with his dad while a banner along the upper edge partially blazes the bottom half of Congratulations! Not for the first time, Derek wonders if having all these frozen memories makes it all better or worse.

He puts the cap back on the bottle and moves it with the glass away from the edge of the table, between the stacks of paper like an island before he puts a hand on John’s shoulder and shakes him gently.

“Oh,” John says, blinking fuzzily at the light. “Hey. What time ‘s it?”

“After three,” Derek says, hand still on John’s shoulder. “You should probably sleep upstairs instead of in that chair.”

John’s huff turns into a sigh and then a yawn. “Yeah,” he says. “Good idea.” He looks down at the photo album in front of him and his face twists a little. “One of those nights,” he says, softer, fingers stopping short of a picture.

“Yeah,” Derek says, “I know the ones.”

John looks up at him, mouth pinching in what Derek thinks is sympathy. “Do me a favour, huh,” he murmurs, glances up at the ceiling, “and don’t mention this to him; he worries enough already.”

Derek sighs, nods. “I won’t lie if he asks,” he says, “but I won’t bring it up either.”

That gets him a smile, even if it is a small one. “Fair enough,” John says around a groan as he stands up, knee audibly popping. “I probably don’t tell you this enough,” he says, “but I’m grateful for how good you’ve been with him.”

Derek’s stomach rolls in a quick landslide of he knows, but there’s no accusation or anger in John’s eyes when he braves a look. “I—You’re welcome,” he says, sounding a little bowled over.

John smiles a little wider and squeezes his arm. “When we moved, neither of us were in the place where we were thinking about Stiles finding friends, being a normal kid.” He snorts. “Not that he’s ever been a normal kid. But that town—Claudia and I grew up together, I ever tell you that?”

“No.”

John’s smiles tilts down a little. “Everywhere we went there’d be some memory – some place we’d been. And I couldn’t handle the job after I wasn’t there when she—” He shakes his head. “The point is, I didn’t want him to be isolated, and I was never as good with his gift as she was. So I owe you a lot for that.”

“No you don’t,” Derek says. “Not after… everything.”

“Maybe,” John says, “but it bears saying just the same.”

Derek nods, jerky and awkward. He uses a fingertip to rotate one of the photos that’s dropped loose into the album’s spine. Three people smile up at him, all made up of pieces of each other, blazing with a careless kind of happiness Derek can remember if he tries hard enough.

“She took up so much space,” John says, looking at the picture. The smile on his face is different to the one he’s wearing in the slice of time and glossy paper. “Filled whatever room she was in, just had this energy that—” He huffs. “Stiles has that too. He reminds me so much of her.”

From the way he says it, Derek can’t tell if that’s a good thing. ‘Good’ is probably just too simple a word anyway. It’s all painful, just from different angles, comes at you from around other corners.

John rubs fingers over his mouth. “Then she got so small.” His fingers touch the edge of the photo. “Shrank quicker than you’d think was possible, really. Every time we blinked there was less of her there.”

Derek takes his hand off the photo. “How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.”

John looks at him. “Yeah,” he says, just a breath. “Something like that.” He shakes his head, claps his hand on the table and shuts the album as he gets up. “Okay, that’s enough of my self-pity for one night, huh?”

He steps past and heads for the stairs, the album in his hand, and Derek stands by the table for a minute with his head spinning too quickly to risk walking.

Stiles sighs and rolls over when Derek slides back into the bed next to him. “You okay?” he asks, voice rusty. “Gone a while.”

Derek kisses the edge of his shoulder, puts a hand on Stiles’ hip. “Everything’s fine,” he murmurs, shutting his eyes and breathing in the scent of Stiles’ skin, sweet and sleep-warm. “I promise.”

| |

Stiles is standing at the kitchen counter making pancakes and eating chocolate chips out of the bag when there’s a cough behind him.

“Y’know,” he says, smiling just the same as he flips the contents of the pan with a spatula, “I can handle this one simple meal, hard as it is to believe, without actually causing a natural disaster. You don’t have to—oh.”

His dad smiles, and Stiles is willing to attribute its weird shape and the look on the rest of his face as being down to either his shirtlessness or the bruises on his hips. Thank fuck the kitchen’s always chilly in the mornings and he’d pulled on his briefs before coming down.

“I forgot my wallet,” his dad says,” holding up the little square of battered leather in his hand. “Didn’t realise I was gone that long.”

“Uh,” Stiles says, because he’s brilliant in a crisis. There’s a faint thump from upstairs and Stiles mentally strangles the hysterical urge to laugh at the image of Derek flailing around cleaning up come and hiding the lube.

“Now either that’s Derek,” his dad says, looking at the ceiling, “or someone I should have been introduced to before the… pancakes stage.”

Stiles winces, spins on a heel to take the pan off the stove.

“Derek then,” his dad says, nodding. Stiles had to have a Dad with a law enforcement background didn’t he? “I uh, I think that’s better than the alternatives.”

“Well you already know where he lives,” Stiles says. He’s trying not to step behind a chair or cover his nipples with the spatula.

His dad sighs. “I should be… surprised, right? Maybe pissed off?”

“Uh, well you don’t have to be,” Stiles says, settling for putting down the spatula and crossing his arms. “Not if you don’t wanna be.” It comes out as a blend of hopeful and questioning.

“I want to not have forgotten my wallet when I left,” his dad says, rubbing a hand over his face. “Look, you’re being safe, right?”

“Oh god,” Stiles groans, an actual prayer for help, maybe a lightning bolt. “Yeah, we’re uh—Nothing to worry about.”

His dad gives a huge, give-me-strength type sigh. “I'll just go ahead and assume you know what you're doing then,” he says.

“That's a terrible thing to assume,” Stiles says, but the grin's already broken through, pure irrational relief thrumming in every vein. If Derek’s laughing when he gets upstairs there’ll be hell to pay.

“Right,” his dad says, like he’s steeling himself for battle. “Then I’m going out. I’ll be gone maybe two hours.”

“Okay.”

“And I’ve got my wallet.” He pats his pockets. “And my keys. I might eat lunch in town.”

Stiles nods. “Great idea, really. Fantastic idea.”

“You’re doing your own laundry from now on,” his dad tells him. “Both of you.”

“Fine.” Stiles is already thinking of ways to make Derek to do his too.

“And no details,” his dad adds on his way to the door.

“No details,” Stiles agrees with more emphatic nodding. “None. Not a one.”

His dad’s half outside, fingers around the door’s edge. He uses one of them to point. “Not ever.”

“I promise,” Stiles says, mimes zipping his mouth shut. His dad nods.

“Safety,” he says again as the door clanks shut, the thin glass panes rattling slightly.

“Right,” Stiles says to the empty kitchen, swallowing what could be a laugh or something less controlled. He has no idea what just happened. He tips his head to the ceiling. “We okay?”

He waits. There’s a single thump on the floor. One for yes, Stiles thinks, and decides to sit down for a minute. Two minutes. Three, tops.

Derek complains about the pancakes being cold when Stiles hands them over.

Stiles throws his fork at him.

| |

As much as Stiles has never really been into camping – too much damp, bad food and not enough pillows – he doesn’t put up much of a fight when Derek floats the idea. Or at least, whatever fight he was putting up dies when Derek points out the opportunity for fooling around – sex, he makes himself think, he gets to use that word now that he’s having it – without worrying about the bed knocking on the wall like the telltale heart or one of them making enough noise to wake Stiles’ dad.

So on a Friday afternoon they load up a pack with snacks and bottled water, plus the half dozen remaining donuts from the box Stiles’ dad brought home (his defence was that the empty space in the middle cancelled out the actual dough part). Stiles stuffs some spare clothes in, along with their tent packed in its little fabric pouch and sleeping bags that Stiles is totally planning to zip together as soon as they’re unrolled, and finally enough lube to get an SUV through the eye of a needle. He has plans, okay?

“You know we probably don’t need the tent,” Derek says, pulling on his shoes.

Stiles bats his eyelashes at him. “Aw, you wanna camp under the stars with me?” He grins at Derek’s eye roll. “I know you put out more heat than the average industrial furnace, but if it rains I’m not running back here in the middle of the night.” He hip checks Derek when he stands up.

Derek snorts. “A little rain isn’t going to kill you,” he says, rearranging things in the bag in total disrespect for Stiles’ shove-things-to-the-bottom-and-hope-the-zipper-holds method of packing.

“I’m not sleeping shifted in the woods for two whole nights either,” he says.

“Lazy,” Derek mutters, smirk getting wider when Stiles flips him off.

“Admit it,” he says, stepping up behind Derek and putting his arms around his waist. He rocks them side to side. “You have some kinda caveman fantasy about building us a nest in the wilderness.” He noses along the back of Derek’s neck, under his hairline. “You wanna keep me naked and bring me dead animals and sleep with me on a bed of furs.”

“There’s something seriously wrong with you,” Derek says. “I just hope you know that.” But the skin of his neck is turning warm under Stiles’ mouth, and his hands are resting open-palmed on the countertop. Stiles kisses the topmost bump of his spine and slots his hips against Derek’s ass. If he leaned back far enough to look he thinks Derek’s ears would be neon red.

He hooks his chin over Derek’s shoulder. “I think it’s cute how you wanna provide for me,” he murmurs, laughing when Derek bucks back against him in retaliation. He pulls his arms back to fit his palms over Derek’s hips through his shirt. “But raw deer isn’t even an acquired taste, so buy me a burger joint and then we’ll talk.”

Derek turns around, Stiles’ hands skimming along his sides until they’re face-to-face.

“Shut up,” he mutters, kissing Stiles like that’ll work as well as telling him not to talk. Stiles just hums and laces his fingers at the small of Derek’s back, little shivers running up his spine when his half-hard dick slides over Derek’s.

He brushes his lips along Derek’s mouth, feels the shape of the kiss change with his smile. “Depending how long the beef jerky lasts I might let you try cooking a rabbit,” he says, biting down on a grin when Derek tips his face to the ceiling like give me strength. Stiles takes the chance to nip at the edge of his jaw. He’d leave a hickey but it’d be gone in five minutes.

Derek looks at him again. “We should go,” he says, one hand slipping down Stiles’ back to follow the curve of his ass and the other tracing his spine. He drags his teeth over Stiles’ bottom lip and a little noise snaps out of Stiles’ throat. “We need to get the tent up before it gets dark.”

There’s a really good joke about raising tents that Stiles wants to make right here, but he’s breathing in the clean-warm smell of Derek’s skin and his breath’s hitching whenever their hips slide together at just the right angle. He swallows hard when Derek’s fingers catch on his waistband. He’s counting on Derek to pay attention to the sounds of the house and pull them apart if Stiles’ dad decides to walk in, but still giving in to the urge to blow Derek against the counter is probably too risky. Hence the camping.

“C’mon,” Derek murmurs, ducking his head and rubbing his lips down the side of Stiles’ neck, blotting his smile against Stiles’ throat. “I promise not to skin anything in front of you.”

One more kiss and they step away from the counter, Stiles tugging on the hem of his shirt and Derek slinging the bag over his back. Stiles leaves a note on the table for his dad (See you Sunday! Go easy on the takeout!) and does an elaborate little bow as he holds the door open, then watches Derek’s ass in his jeans as they head out.

| |

There’s a lot of fumbling to get the tent up, only about two-thirds of it because they keep stopping to make out and push their hands under each other’s clothes. Stiles’ fingers wander down Derek’s back or along his thigh when he crouches to fix the tent into the ground. Derek sweeps casual touches over the back of Stiles’ neck when Stiles unrolls the sleeping bags and pushes the bag to the ‘bottom’ of the tent near the rain flap. There’s a buzz under his skin and a lightness butting up inside his chest, a smile he can’t and doesn’t want to wipe off all the way.

The tent’s a little silver dome shape in the middle of their clearing, fresh air drifting lightly between the trees. The evening sunlight stretches their shadows into long stick figures that crisscross as they move around, and when Stiles falls limply into the entrance and back onto the makeshift bed, Derek shakes his head all fond and spends a few more minutes checking the pegs just to be an ass who thinks he has to make Stiles wait for things because it’s good for him.

He shuffles to the side when Derek ducks in. They zip the sleeping bags together and flatten them out to cover the floor even though there’s plenty of purplish twilight left, the air just starting to turn chilled. Stiles’ breath pours out with one or two little hitches in it when Derek puts a hand on his hip, kneeling up while Stiles is leaning on one hand. He curls his tongue into Stiles’ mouth, deep and hot, pushing until Stiles ends up flat on his back with Derek’s weight balanced along his body.

For all that Stiles had been raring to go since he’d added up two days and change in a tent with Derek and gotten an answer of fucking where they could be as loud as they want, he’s content to sprawl out under the heat Derek’s pouring everywhere and map the inside of his mouth, groan when Derek lowers down harder against his hips, slots a thigh between Stiles’ legs that he grinds up into in slow rolls.

All he can hear is the wet-hot sounds of their mouths and the faint sliding whispers they make against the sleeping bags, mixed in with the rough scrapes of Derek’s stubble on his skin. His hands are spanned across Derek’s shoulders, feeling the muscles move and the tension shift when his arms slide higher under Stiles’ shirt. He rakes his nails down Stiles’ sides and Stiles arches, a high shaky noise blurting between their lips.

He can feel the thick jut of Derek’s dick against his hipbone, Derek puffing hot little breaths through his nose that scatter down Stiles’ cheek. There’s a tight, stretched feeling under Stiles’ skin that he never wants to let go of, Derek sucking and biting at his mouth in between stroking his tongue over Stiles’ palate.

He’s got no idea how long they lie like that, touching and stroking and kissing as the sun sets outside their thin little bubble and night starts breathing through the unzipped doorway. By the time they pull apart enough to look, Derek’s a solid outline with faint suggestions of features, made up of all different shades of gray, but his eyes are a liquid black.

They don’t talk as they eat a quick dinner, just trail mix, apples and jerky, along with a donut each (flattened under the other stuff in the backpack but still good), and there’s a weird artificial paleness inside the tent when Derek clicks on a little battery-powered lantern.

Stiles watches as Derek pulls his shirt over his head, unbuttons his jeans. Excitement churns his stomach and sets his pulse moving quicker, and he scoots up to the head of the sleeping bag and stands awkwardly hunched to kick his pants off and get out of his tee and flannel shirt.

His momentum stalls out when he sees Derek lying on his back, legs bent up at the knees and a hand stroking his dick lazy-slow, eyes hooded and watching Stiles.

“Fucking hell, dude,” he says. “Warn a guy before you start looking like that.”

Derek’s smirking at him, mouth parted on heavy little breaths. His other hand’s resting in the middle of his belly, nails rubbing back and forth on his skin. “So you’re just gonna watch?”

And that’s… that’s an idea. A really appealing idea. Watching Derek get himself off, jerking it just so Stiles can see him, track all the places he bunches up tight when he comes all over himself. But Stiles has never been good at the hands-off approach, he’s a tactile guy, after all.

So he kneels between Derek’s legs, strokes his palms up the outsides of Derek’s calves, under the crooks of his knees and along the muscle in his thighs. Derek spreads himself out a little wider and Stiles drops down onto his elbows, mouths around Derek’s fingers on his cock, down to his balls and the tight skin above his hips.

Derek makes these low twitching sounds, louder when Stiles slips his tongue between his fingers to the warmer, tighter skin underneath. He catches Derek’s eyes when he sucks the head into his mouth, sees the roll of his throat and the way his lips part even if no sound comes out. His tongue slides along the underside, and Derek’s hand is on his cheek now, thumb pressed to the stretched-out corner of Stiles’ mouth, feeling himself pushing deeper when Stiles bobs down.

He takes it slow, enjoys himself, moving from detail to detail on Derek’s dick, places he knows Derek likes being touched. He gets his tongue between the foreskin and the head and Derek’s thighs start shaking either side of him, spine locked up tight until Stiles goes down again. Derek cards fingers through his hair and down his face, under his jaw or his chin, little gentle touches skimming everywhere.

There’s spit and precome covering Stiles’ lips and chin, making everything soaking wet. He presses his knuckles into the tight skin under Derek’s balls and sucks hard and then lighter, draws him up and up, and when he puts the pad of his thumb over Derek’s hole and wriggles his tongue against the slit Derek shouts and comes, bitter and a little sweet in Stiles’ mouth.

He cleans Derek up with lazy swirls of his tongue, sucking pressure from his lips that leaves more than one little mark on Derek’s skin, bruises that go pale and then fade one after another. His own dick’s hanging heavy between his legs, but when he goes to touch himself Derek grips his shoulder, pulls him up and turns them until Stiles is on his knees and elbows and Derek can spread him open for his tongue, lick at him and make Stiles whine, buck back into Derek’s face.

There’s a tremor rolling up and down his spine and across his shoulders by the time he hears the click of the lube. The air feels cool on the backs of his thighs and between his cheeks where Derek’s eaten at him, pushed his tongue around and in. He kisses the base of Stiles’ spine as he pushes two fingers right into him to the last knuckle, Stiles’ mouth working soundlessly and his cock drooling everywhere. The third finger twists and curls against his prostate as Derek pushes his tongue back in, wraps a hand around Stiles’ dick and jerks him in slow-hard twists that leave him blurry-eyed when he finally sobs, punched-out, and comes into Derek’s palm, a few wet slaps when he twitches against his own belly, body clamping down tight on Derek’s fingers, shaking when Derek hums right up inside him.

He flops out boneless and quaking all over. Derek makes a half-assed attempt at moving and wiping them down before Stiles just tugs at him, gets him to lie back down.

He can hear crickets or some other insect chirping away outside, makes idle shadow puppets on the pointed roof of their tent with the lantern. Derek tangles their legs up and Stiles runs his fingers through his hair.

“Okay so maybe I don’t hate camping,” he says, and Derek’s teeth are silver-bright when he smiles.

“Very generous of you to admit,” he mutters, hands trailing slowly down Stiles’ chest and stomach, fingers bending the wiry hairs below his navel. There’s no real intent behind it, and Stiles’ dick doesn’t do much more than twitch faintly when Derek’s thumb follows the crease of his thigh, but it’s nice being touched, just letting Derek touch.

“Well it’s only the first night,” Stiles says, considering and with a smirk. “If I get bitten by swarms of bugs tomorrow I’ll revise my statement.”

“I’m sure the bugs will be much more scared of you than you are of them,” Derek says, mouth twitching when Stiles jabs his toes into his shin. “Especially once they get to know you.”

“Oh nice,” he says, rolling more onto his side to scrape his teeth on Derek’s jaw, let Derek follow his mouth into a kiss. “Mocking your… your significant other.” He widens his eyes and tries to look hurt, but Derek tweaks his nipple and he makes a noise he’s not gonna label a shriek for the sake of his dignity.

They shove and poke at each other until Derek’s hand wraps around Stiles’ forearm and pushes him down, Derek leaning over him on an elbow and practically eating at his mouth, Stiles hooking an ankle over Derek’s and tipping his head back when Derek moves down to his throat.

He mouths along Stiles’ collarbones, down his chest and slides his tongue in a lazy circle around a nipple until Stiles is twitching and trying to rub his definitely interested cock against Derek’s hip.

Derek works his way down Stiles’ body, lapping and nipping with his teeth to make Stiles let out whines and broken bits of Derek’s name. He buries his nose in the hair above Stiles’ dick and breathes him in, Stiles’ fingers carding through his hair, nails against his scalp while Derek’s find the dips between his ribs and hold onto him. Stiles’ dick brushes down Derek’s cheek when he moves and the rough prick of stubble sends jolts up his back. Derek’s breath manages to be even hotter than the flushed skin leading up to the head where he’s dribbling precome on his belly, and gooseflesh springs up along his chest and peaks his nipples as he spreads his legs, lifts his calves onto Derek’s shoulders. When Derek’s lips part around him and he sucks, Stiles’ spine locks up tight and his heels knock against Derek’s back.

Stiles reminds himself over and over that he doesn’t have to be quiet, doesn’t have to stay still. He groans and rocks deeper and deeper into Derek’s throat, hot-wet suction pulling at him while Derek bobs his head. He tugs on Derek’s hair and Derek moans low and urgent around the head, digs his tongue into Stiles’ slit hard enough it’s like he’s chasing the taste. Derek’s hands wriggle under Stiles’ ass when he fucks into his throat and keep him there, hold him up off the floor and pull him close enough Derek’s nose is back in the wiry brown curls above his cock. He swallows and Stiles makes a noise like a sob at the constriction around the head, fingers on Derek’s cheeks to feel the way they hollow out, pressing until he can feel himself there, hot and hard and swollen on Derek’s tongue. He traces Derek’s lips, burning and slippery with spit and Stiles’ precome, and comes with a long shuddering grunt that punches him in the base of the spine, shooting right down Derek’s throat while he just keeps on swallowing.

He’s useless after that, puts shaky hands on Derek’s back and ass and urges him into rubbing off on Stiles’ belly, sharp ruts of his hips while he knocks their temples together and murmurs Stiles’ name against his cheek, mouth still wet and swollen, voice burned down to a low rasp. He streaks Stiles’ stomach and his chest, body gone taut and trembly, eyes wide open and so black except for a hint of a yellow glow.

They lie pressed together, Stiles stroking Derek’s back up and down, kind of hypnotised by the movements of his own hands and the way Derek’s skin brushes against his fingers. He feels Derek’s chest expanding and contracting against his own, the bony points of their ribs and the sticky mess spreading between them. Derek braves the chill to grab a shirt Stiles hopes isn’t one of his out of the pack and wipe them down, before he slides back in next to Stiles and pulls him against his chest.

“Derek?”

He gets a hum, listens to Derek swallow. He gets a little flash of heat through his blood thinking about why Derek’s throat won’t work quite right.

“Yeah,” he says, just above a whisper into Stiles’ hair.

Stiles pauses a second for effect, feels around the easy, uncomplicated happiness in his chest.

“I definitely don’t hate camping.”

Derek full-on snorts, sudden and loud as hell, his body shaking with it, and Stiles grins against the hollow at the base of his neck.

| |

They wake up slowly, late the next morning. The tent’s lit up by the sun and Stiles is so warm between the insulated sleeping bag and Derek’s skin that he’d be perfectly happy never moving again.

Sleep smoothes out Derek’s face, makes him look almost sculpted with his head turned in profile to Stiles, his jawline and sloping nose made more real somehow by the dark hair on his cheeks and the soft pink of his lips, the fan of his lashes that twitches as his eyes go back and forth. He swallows and the point of his Adam’s apple rolls along his throat. Stiles spreads his fingers in the middle of his chest and lets his head stay full of cotton, eyes half open.

When he wakes up the second time it’s close to noon, the sun balanced up near the top of the sky. Derek’s left the tent open but he’s folded his half of the sleeping bag over onto Stiles.

He scrubs fingers through his hair and mills around getting dressed, looks up when Derek pads into the clearing. Stiles shakes his head, can’t summon enough effort to call Derek paranoid or overprotective with his need to circle around their little campsite, like they’re in some kinda fairytale where Stiles needs guarding in his sleep.

He steps out of the tent and goes up on his tiptoes to work the kinks out of his back, spreads his arms to the side and yawns, drops one hand to scratch at his belly. The sky overhead is smeared with clouds but it doesn’t smell like rain. His stomach rumbles, and he sees Derek tilt his head since he can’t quirk an eyebrow.

Derek shifts back, stands and stretches his shoulders. Stiles watches him move around from his lazy sprawl just outside the entrance to the tent, in the shade of the rain flap. Derek’s comfortable and – Stiles can admit this, with a possessive little twitch in his belly that’s not the tiniest bit unpleasant – sexy as hell in his bare skin, all lean muscle and dark hair and pretty eyes, dick soft between his legs, uncaring about the edge of a breeze. Stiles doesn’t even try to hide that he was looking when Derek catches him, just raises his eyebrows like a dare. Derek shakes his head and goes back to piling together loose brush for a fire, thighs bunching when he crouches and shadow falling into the dip above his ass. A warm thrill unrolls up Stiles’ spine when he thinks about being the only person Derek is this comfortable around, the only one who gets to see him like this.

“Are you helping with the food, or are you just gonna play spectator?” Derek asks, and Stiles cocks his head, considering, eyes moving slowly up, pausing on Derek’s ass before he gets to his face. Which is maybe a little pink. Stiles waggles his eyebrows.

“Either help me cook,” Derek says, “or I’m putting on all the clothes I have here.”

Stiles laughs and gets to his feet. “Don’t lie, you love it when I objectify you.” He crosses in a few quick steps to Derek and kisses him, hands on Derek’s hips. “Turnabout is fair play, dude.”

Derek makes a face like fair enough at that, and Stiles grins again as he starts pulling things out of the pack.

They eat sprawled out on the grass, leaning back on their hands or elbows. The fire dims down to a gnarl of black twigs and thin smoke. Stiles licks the last traces of grainy sugar from the (kind of stale) donuts off the edges of Derek’s mouth, swings a leg over Derek’s hips to settle his weight in his lap. There’s no more smoke trailing up in spindly fingers by the time they separate again, but Stiles can still feel the phantom heat against the small of his back, the rest of him soaking up warmth from Derek’s skin.

He shifts and follows Derek down to the river, and they get something almost close to clean. Camping-clean, where the standards are a little more lax. Derek looks along the water with sharp yellow eyes, body predator-still, like he’s thinking about trying to find fish, but Stiles nudges him and makes plaintive noises until Derek huffs and threads through the trees after him. Stiles flops down on the grass in the clearing, stretches out in a patch of slanted sunlight and dozes, more like a cat than a fox.

Evening drains the daylight and Derek pulls a half rolled-up paperback out of the bag, lies out on the grass with an arm under his head while Stiles messes around until he manages to get a fire going, doing his best I-am-man-man-make-fire face when Derek glances over at his totally justified shout of success.

“Just don’t burn down the forest,” he mutters when Stiles goes about gathering stuff to make s’mores. He seamlessly catches the graham cracker Stiles throws at him without turning away from his page, and looks smug as hell when he bites it in half, book propped vertically against his chest, thumb tapping against the spine. Firelight changes the shape of his features, softens some and makes others look sharper, skin glowing pale yellow-orange and his eyes catching little sparks when he glances at Stiles every now and then.

Stiles stares into the rough circle of rocks and prods a stick into the flames absently, watching tiny bright points fly up into nothing when he disturbs the kindling. He licks chocolate off his thumb and pretends he doesn’t know Derek’s watching him, pretends the heat under his skin is just from being close to the fire. His thumb pops out of his mouth and he spends way longer than necessary digging a sticky-sweet trace of marshmallow off the edge of his lip with the tip of his tongue. He feels powerful, in a weird way that sits as a weight in his belly and between his legs alongside his pulse.

When Derek pushes him back against the grass he grins, and Derek mutters something about him being a distraction as he follows a tendon down the length of Stiles’ neck.

“Just – fuck – just trying to keep you interested,” he mutters, wriggling until his legs are framing Derek’s. The fire crackles on next to them, divides everything in half, light and shadow, makes Derek’s mouth look obscenely wet when he braces over Stiles and stares down at him, that look he gets like every cell and bone and nerve in Stiles’ body is easily visible, plus all the messy feelings with their roots trailing down from his chest to his fingertips, coiled tight around his spine.

Derek’s fingers slide along Stiles’ forehead, over his temple and down his cheek, feather-light brushes that pin him to the ground and kick his heart out of gear, out of rhythm. He follows the shell of an ear down Stiles’ neck and rubs his thumb along the soft skin under his jaw. Stiles can’t get his body to do anything except shiver, hair on his arms standing up like before a lightning strike. Derek’s fingers get to his mouth and his lips are already parted. He lifts his head and gets two fingers sliding along his tongue, salt and skin and maybe sugar as he sucks, Derek watching with his eyes fever-bright, thumb passing back and forth under Stiles’ chin while Stiles lets cleaved-up little groans out around Derek’s fingers, breathing hard through his nose.

“Stiles,” Derek says, stone-on-stone, and his hips nudge along Stiles’, cock burning against his hip, rubbing against his belly. Everything flips easy as a coin into something more urgent, more basic, tied at the top of Stiles’ vertebrae into a humming little ball of need and now.

They’re an ungainly mess of arms and legs and mouths falling into the tent, stripping each other and rolling to the middle of the unmade bed. Stiles spreads his legs and deposits the lube into Derek’s hands with a smirk, then burrows down and makes an impatient face.

“So greedy,” Derek mutters, and Stiles just hums, reaches down to stroke his dick while Derek slicks his fingers, spreads precome around the head and watches Derek bite his bottom lip.

He sighs, head tipping back when Derek works a finger into him on a slow and steady push. He’s flushed all over, can feel it like warm water running down his cheeks and chest, across his shoulders. He plants his feet flat either side of where Derek’s kneeling between his legs and arches into the second finger, lazily works himself down onto them, lets Derek spread him wider.

Derek’s fingers curl in him, rub against the spot that uncorks his breath in a gasp and makes him leak. By the third finger he’s tugging at Derek’s thigh with the edge of a heel.

“M’ready,” he says, slurring like he’s drunk, which is pretty much the truth. He tries for a smirk and licks his lips. “C’mon, fuck me already.”

Derek’s weight settles over him, hands pulling at his calves. He breathes loud and heavy into the curve of Stiles’ neck, licks into his mouth.

“Say it again,” he says, and Stiles can’t move in Derek’s grip enough to push against the blunt head that’s catching on his hole, slippery and blood-hot.

He bites at Derek’s jaw. “Fuck me,” he says, deliberate and making sure to look Derek in the eye, into the black stretch of his pupils. “Want you to fuck me.”

A low little sound snaps in Derek’s chest, and Stiles groans when he lines up and slides in, doesn’t pause until his hips meet Stiles’ ass and they’re both panting, mouthing against burning skin.

“So tight,” he mutters like he doesn’t mean to, still making it sound like high praise. He slips his mouth along Stiles’ lips. “Always so good, Stiles. Perfect.”

It’s just a strangled groan that Stiles answers with when Derek rolls his hips back and then forward hard, heat puddling in Stiles’ belly and his dick jerking in time with his pulse. He love this, every time, the stretch and the way Derek looks at him, the way he knows just where to move to send electric jolts all across Stiles’ nerves.

There’s sweat shining on Derek’s face as he pushes in harder, the muscle in his hips and stomach flexing every time he drags out, the wide head holding Stiles open before he slides back in. The rhythm goes on forever, Stiles’ hands clenching and spreading out against the ground, both of them skidding a little with every thrust. Derek’s hands are tight on Stiles’ legs, holding them wide, and Stiles can’t hold his head up, drops flat and gasps every time Derek’s dick slides right along his prostate.

He comes pretty much as soon as Derek drags one of his legs over his shoulder and reaches for his cock. He stripes his belly as his spine bends up and his throat scrapes a long, cracked moan out into the air.

Derek leans down close, still fucking him steady and hard even if there’s an edge to it now, Stiles still twitching and gripping down on him. He slips two fingers into Stiles’ mouth, salty and slick with his own come and Stiles looks at him through his lashes as Derek goes taut all over, snaps against Stiles’ ass in quick jabs that Stiles feels in his hips, and spills inside him, dick swelling as he comes.

Stiles laps at the webbing between Derek’s fingers, cleaning away the taste of himself, hums when Derek strokes them over the flat of his tongue. He takes a breath that feels cold when Derek pulls his hand away, just before he replaces it with his mouth, teeth pulling at Stiles’ bottom lip. He strokes his hand along Stiles’ thigh and up his side, cups his neck and kisses him deeper, hotter, his lashes brushing Stiles’ cheeks.

He grimaces when Derek pulls out, come and lube trickling out of him and down between his legs. He whines and squirms when Derek pushes those same two fingers back inside him, turning and curling in Stiles’ fucked-out hole, rubbing inside through his own mess until Stiles is breathing hard again even if his dick’s out for the count. Derek’s eyes are hot and fixed on where his hand is pushing at Stiles’ rim, third finger toying around the edge briefly before he slips them out and cleans them up. Stiles gets that Derek likes when they’re all covered in each other, but dried come is just not worth it most of the time, especially when they can’t just hop in the shower after.

He lets Derek play the big spoon, even though how close they are in height now makes it awkward unless he scoots down, which he forgets he can do until Derek’s breath is fanning out against his crown and he’s looking down at the hairy tangle of their legs, the way their feet slot together.

“I figured I’d miss having a mattress after the first night,” he says, fingers toying idly with one of Derek’s hands, tracing veins and tendons. “But the added space seriously makes up for the ground being hard and lumpy.”

Derek’s nose brushes through his hair and he hums, sounding half-asleep. “Not surprised,” he says. “You spread out everywhere when you sleep.”

He snorts. “Just balancing out your octopus clinging,” he says, scratching his nails along Derek’s palm, following muscles up his forearm to his elbow. “It’s okay that you miss me when you’re asleep,” he says, and jolts when Derek digs a finger into his ribs.

“That’s my one refuge,” Derek says, lips moving against the back of Stiles’ neck. His arm slides around Stiles’ waist, hand curled loose up against Stiles’ stomach.

“You shouldn’t run away from your feelings, Derek,” Stiles says, voice warping around a smile. “It’s not healthy.” Derek butts his forehead into the back of Stiles’ head.

“Yes, Stiles,” he hears Derek murmur even if it’s muted by the way his face is turned down along the line of Stiles’ back, breath spilling against his shoulders. “I need you and I wouldn’t exist without you.” It’s flat and as sarcastic as Derek can manage when he’s drowsing, lashes tickling Stiles’ skin with every slow little blink, but his hand goes up Stiles’ belly to his chest, and his hand turns to take hold of Stiles’, thumb rubbing circles into his palm.

There’s a kind of comfortable weight to the dark, to the tent walls that muffle the stirring air and the animal sounds outside. Sometimes it’s nice when you can pretend the world is a much smaller place, when the horizon pulls in close like tugging on a drawstring.

“Mom had a phrase like that,” Stiles says, surprising himself as much as Derek, judging from the slight-but-noticeable way Derek goes still against him for a split-second. “‘Sine qua non’; without which there is nothing. She used to say it sometimes, in place of ‘I love you too’ or whatever.” He snorts, rubs his calf along Derek’s, changes the order of their slotted-together feet. “Or after she and Dad argued and Dad’d ask why she put up with him.”

He doesn’t feel like he’s given anything anyway, removed something from himself and handed it to Derek. They blend together too much for that.

“Without which there’s nothing,” Derek repeats, like he’s weighing it, testing out the shape of the words in his mouth. “It’s a good saying.”

Stiles quirks a small smile. “Yeah it is.” He moves his hand, fingers following the shape of Derek’s arm where it’s wrapped around him, the bumps of bones in his wrist. “Y’know after she died, me and Dad were both—We had no idea how to help each other; there was just this gap we couldn’t get across, so we both ended up alone.” The sleeping bag rustles under his shoulder. Derek’s chest is warm against his back.

“But you weren’t,” Derek says, thumb crooking to catch a hold of Stiles’.

His mouth tips up on one side, and he curls the rest of his fingers around Derek’s thumb and the web of skin next to his index finger.

“No,” he sighs, burrowing back a little more, deepening the curve until they’re a question mark minus the dot, minus the question. “I really wasn’t”

| |

Their last half-day they barely even leave the tent.

Stiles wakes Derek up by sliding down his body and sucking him, waiting until Derek trips out of sleep before he sinks down as deep as he can and sucks hard enough to make Derek arch and groan, loud and sleep-rough. Derek drags him up and won’t stop kissing him until he’s licked the taste of himself out of Stiles’ mouth, then rolls Stiles onto his back and bypasses his dick altogether so he can lap around Stiles’ hole, fingers pressing Stiles’ cock flat to his belly while he wriggles his tongue deeper and scratches the insides of Stiles’ thighs with his stubble, turns his skin red and hot. Stiles comes all over himself, legs shaking and just trying not to swallow his tongue, and Derek cleans him up with biting and sucking presses of his mouth that manage to swap the come for little purple-red bruises.

He demands a nap after that, and Stiles is really in no shape to complain, just tucks against Derek’s side and lets all his breath out like he’s completely deflating.

They cobble together the last of their food for lunch, the novelty now worn off enough that Stiles is fantasising about every fast food he can think of. He’d kill for a milkshake. Actually commit homicide and not feel bad about it. Sleeping outside is messing with his head.

The result of Derek reading and Stiles getting a little bored is that he prods Derek into a half-assed wrestling match that ends when Stiles is on his stomach in the grass with Derek lying flat on top of him, going still for a second when Stiles grinds his ass up into Derek’s crotch.

“Really?” Derek asks, some mix of tones Stiles doesn’t care to decipher, because he can totally feel Derek’s dick fattening up against his ass, his own already totally hard and trapped against the ground.

“You gonna do something about that?” Stiles asks, moving his hips again, and he’s grinning when Derek scrapes his teeth along the back of his neck and grapples at his wrists, holds him there.

“Maybe I shouldn’t,” he says, hot against the collar of Stiles’ shirt. “Maybe I should just leave you to take care of yourself, since you dragged me away from my book.” Even while he says it he’s mouthing along the line of Stiles’ collar, under his hairline until he’s breathing against Stiles’ ear.

“Aw c’mon,” Stiles whines, head turned so his cheek’s in the grass and Derek’s a big blur in the corner of one eye. A hot blur. A blur Stiles would like to get off with in the next little while if at all possible. “You know you can’t resist me.”

Derek huffs and it pours loudly into Stiles’ ear, but he tugs and shoves until they end up mostly in the tent, wrangling Stiles over again and pinning him flat, holding tighter when Stiles squirms.

“Thought you wanted it on your belly?” he says into the side of Stiles’ neck, bare chest burning against Stiles’ back and dick slip-sliding between the cheeks of his ass.

“Fuck,” Stiles hisses when Derek spreads his weight out, lines their limbs up and rocks into him, the stretch fading pretty easily given how much they’ve already fucked this weekend, but still driving up his spine every time Derek pushes deeper, friction knocking the wind out of him. “Fuck, yeah, I do, c’mon. Do it.”

Derek hums, nips his teeth at the hinge of Stiles’ jaw and grips his wrists harder, toes hooking under Stiles’ ankles until he feels like he’s nailed to the ground in a rough X, his body spreading wider around the roll of Derek’s hips, the shove of his cock.

Even if Derek can’t pull back much or fuck in that hard like this, Stiles turns into a shaky mess embarrassingly fast. He whines every time the head catches on his hole, at the sudden fullness when Derek full-body grinds against him. His dick’s rubbing hard into the slippery sleeping bag under him, precome blurting and smearing everywhere. Derek’s hands move up to clasp over the top of Stiles’, fingers between fingers, and when he snaps his hips down at just the right angle Stiles lets out a sloppy moan and comes, mouthing at Derek’s lips when he ducks in close and trying to push back onto Derek’s dick as twitches rattle down his body, hole stretched drum-tight and every other muscle spasming.

Derek’s panting quick and sharp against his shoulder, sets his teeth in and presses deep, so deep Stiles feels it in his belly, and bites down hard when he comes, the burning shot of pain just making Stiles shiver all over.

He doesn’t even feel it when Derek slips out, only rolls over so Derek can clean them – and their bed – up. He’s still losing breaths in trembling little half-laughs, arms and legs feeling spongy and uncontrollable. Derek’s officially broken him. It’s awesome.

“Okay,” he croaks, blinking at the tent roof. “You can go read now.”

Derek huffs and pulls him closer, slots them tight enough Stiles expects to hear a click when they align just right.

| |

They head back once it starts getting dark, stuffing all their trash into the pack and folding up the tent. Stiles empties the last few crumbled and powdery graham crackers onto the grass, thinking feeding a few birds is better than ending up with laundry that includes a gritty mountain of crumbs. Derek does the same for the apple cores and unwanted bits of trail mix Stiles had picked his way around.

Derek shoulders the pack again, and there’s a bruised-looking sky streaked with pink overhead by the time they start the walk back. There’s an unwound feeling in Stiles’ chest despite how much he’s starting to miss real food and the various comforts of an actual house. He knocks his shoulder into Derek’s and smiles like he’s sharing a secret, and Derek grins before he looks back at where he’s walking again, teeth glinting and eyes creased at the edges.

“So maybe not all your ideas are terrible,” Stiles says, still walking close enough that they bump faintly together.

“Be careful,” Derek tells him, “all the flattery’s really going to my head.”

Stiles digs his hands deeper into the pockets of his wrinkled hoodie. He hops up onto a log and back down the other side, leaves shushing the thud of his feet into the ground. “I promise not to let you get too conceited,” he says, laughs when Derek shoves at him. He steps close again and Derek’s hand goes under the back of his shirt, warmth seeping into him.

He forgets just how far from the house their clearing is when he’s not making the trip on four legs, but before long there’s the glimmer of the porch light between the trees. He’s not sad to be going back or anything, but things seemed so much simpler the last few days, just him and Derek and an army of trees spaced out around them. He’s never really needed people outside the little circle of him and Dad and Derek, doesn’t feel like he’s missing out on anything, but there’s a separate level to feeling that and thinking maybe he’s supposed to want something else. Maybe he just lost that when his mom died? How would he know?

“Hey,” Derek says, fingers skimming over the back of his neck. Stiles looks up, hadn’t realised he’d been staring at his feet. “Where’d you go?”

He blinks, looks how close the house is now. He pulls his shoulders back like a weight’ll slip off. “Out there I think,” he says, nodding his head in the rough direction of the town, the roads, the world and all its people. “Doesn’t matter.”

Derek’s eyebrow lifts. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, breathing out through his nose. He slides a hand up Derek’s arm, under his shirt sleeve to the muscle of his shoulder. “I’m fine. Promise.” He holds his other hand up in a Scout’s salute.

They get to the house as it turns fully dark, minus some lighter gray off in the distance like pencil scribbles.

He turns to say something about dinner and a movie on the couch when he sees Derek staring at the trees, head tipped to one side.

“Hey if you forgot something you’re on your own,” he says, walking a few steps back to Derek. “My legs will unionise if I try to make them do anything else today.”

No reaction, Derek just keeps facing away, something about the way he’s holding his shoulders reminding Stiles of how he looks as a wolf when he’s thinking about trying to catch some random animal.

“Okay, what?” he says, stepping right up next to Derek now, who’s still staring into the trees like he hasn’t heard a word. The smile slides off his face when he sees the look on Derek’s, his own eyes darting towards the woods now. “What? What is it?”

Derek’s aiming a frown into the dark, and as he turns his head along the patch of shadow beyond the house his eyes narrow and turn yellow.

“I don’t know,” he says, faintly, still squinting off into the distance. “For a second I thought—”

They both startle at the snap of a twig, and there’s a guy walking up to the house that Stiles has never seen. He’s older than him or Derek, maybe not as old as his dad, with dark swept-back hair and a red button-down under a leather jacket that shines like an oil spill in the light from the porch. Even before he turns his head enough for the light to shine reflected from the back of his eyes, Stiles knows he’s a werewolf.

“Sorry to startle you,” he says, smiling a little, but Stiles is too busy looking at Derek to care.

He’s heard Derek’s voice every day for years, knows every dip and tone it can make, but he’s never heard it the way it comes out when Derek takes a step towards the guy, hands twitching by his sides, expression blown apart.

“Uncle Peter?”

| |

It’s like one of those dreams that aren’t quite nightmares. You know you’re dreaming, because nothing makes sense, and even the real world isn’t cruel the way these kinds of dreams can be, casual horror everywhere, but no matter how hard you try you can’t wake up.

Stiles stands in their kitchen because he can’t bear to sit still, back pressed to the wall nearest the table where—where Derek’s uncle is sitting like he’d stopped by to borrow coffee or a cup of sugar, and not to—

Derek’s hardly said a word. He just sits and stares, and not like Stiles or his dad are staring. The phrase ‘like he’s seen a ghost’ pops into Stiles’ head and he can’t tell if the surge at the back of his throat is laugher or if he just wants to throw up.

The worst part is how convincing it all sounds. Peter speaks calm and soft about how relieved he was to find out his nephew hadn’t died in the fire, how grateful he is to Stiles’ dad for taking him in and for everything he’s done. It’s all so reasonable and heartwarming and Stiles doesn’t believe a word of it.

“He’s all the family I have left,” Peter says. “When I… step down, I’ll need someone to take my place as Alpha, and I’d rather it be a Hale before turning to anyone else.” He leans back in his chair. “We were one of the oldest bloodlines,” he says. “Centuries of history and tradition, and now… well, it’s just Derek and myself. I’d hate to see it end there.”

“You want him to take over?” Stiles’ dad says, looking between Peter and Derek. “Does he get any say in that?”

“Of course he does,” Peter says smoothly – like a snake, Stiles thinks. “But there’s a lot he still has to learn – about his family and himself. Besides, I’m not planning on going anywhere anytime soon.” His mouth flicks into a small smile. “I’ll teach Derek everything I know.” He puts a hand on Derek’s shoulder. “Things he could never discover on his own or from—elsewhere; things he needs to know. Then when the time comes he can make up his own mind about whether or not he’s ready.”

His dad sighs, folds his arms across his chest. “Derek, you have anything to say?”

Derek looks at him, way more deer-in-the-headlights than Stiles is comfortable with. “I—I’d like to know more,” he says, looking at Peter. “I have a lot of questions.”

“I’ll do my best to answer them all,” Peter says, smiling at him.

“You’re not just gonna take him away, though,” Stiles says. “Right? I mean, he’s got a home here. A life.”

Having Peter’s eyes boring into him makes his pulse pick up, his body tense like he wants to run.

“No,” Peter says, expression changing seamlessly into kind and reassuring. Somehow it’s even creepier than the glare. “We’ll move at Derek’s pace; I’ll stay around for as long as he wants, we won’t even think about… relocation, for the time being.”

Derek shoots Stiles a look, like see? No problem. Stiles just looks back and swallows everything he wants to say.

Peter stands up, makes some noise about having to make arrangements to find a place to stay. He shakes hands with Stiles’ dad, and Stiles doesn’t miss the way he tries to hide the wince at Peter’s grip, or how he angles his shoulders and moves his feet apart – a cop’s stance – before Peter smiles again and steps away, nods at Stiles as the door shuts on him.

Stiles just wishes it would stay that way.

| |

Things go to hell unbearably fast after that.

Derek’s there but he’s not, not really. He eats and drinks and sleeps and sits next to Stiles when Deaton’s going on about ancient shifter history or English lit, acts like there’s nothing going on. But Stiles sees him staring off at nothing at random moments, looking out the window like he’s hearing something or just frowning down at his hands like he doesn’t recognise them.

There are shadows under Derek’s eyes, and when Stiles kisses him it takes a broken piece of a second before he leans into it, his body lagging behind him like some alien thing he’s not really attached to.

They still pile into the same bed at night but Derek’s body doesn’t really unwind the way Stiles is used to. He’s not even sure Derek sleeps at all anymore; he never manages to stay awake longer than him and Derek’s always up and dressed or even gone again by the time Stiles wakes up.

Even if there was a time for a while when they weren’t exactly friends, this is the first time Stiles feels like they’re strangers.

He lasts less than a week before he corners his dad.

“I don’t get why you’re not even putting up a fight,” he says, gesturing at his dad sitting at the kitchen table like it illustrates his point. “We don’t know the first thing about this guy, other than he’s related to Derek. That’s suddenly enough to just let him waltz in and take Derek away?”

His dad sighs. “We’re not ‘just letting him’ do anything,” he says. “And in case you hadn’t noticed, Derek’s still here.”

“Yeah, for now,” Stiles says. “C’mon, this is—He’s gonna leave, and he’ll ask Derek to go with him, probably in a way that Derek can’t say no to – responsibility to his family, like that’s not manipulative as hell - and we’re not gonna do anything?”

“Stiles,” his dad says, looking up at him. “What do you want me to do here? I can’t forbid Derek from seeing him just because you don’t like him – and I’m not saying I like him either,” he adds when Stiles’ mouth opens on a protest. “I’m not exactly happy about this, y’know,” he says, and Stiles feels guilt stab at him for putting that look on his dad’s face.

“I know,” he says, puts his hand on his dad’s shoulder. “Sorry.”

His dad claps his own hand over Stiles’. “You know, after we took Derek in, I expected exactly this sort of thing to happen: that somebody would show up one day and take him away, back to his family. It didn’t matter that there were no signs of other Hales in the States or other packs asking about him; I told myself not to get too close, watched the door and the phone every day for years just waiting for it to happen, and then when it didn’t I let myself start to think it never would.” He huffs, squeezes Stiles’ hand. “I don’t regret the choice I made,” he says, looking at Stiles with a sad smile on his face. “I didn’t regret it then and I definitely don’t regret it now. But this…” He sighs. “This just seems cruel.”

Stiles swallows. “Yeah.”

“I’d do anything for either of you,” his dad says, “but I can’t stop you making your own choices. We just have to have a little faith in Derek.” He pats the back of Stiles’ hand before he puts his back on the table. “We need to trust him. He’s earned that.”

Stiles knows there’s no point in saying it’s not Derek he doesn’t trust.

| |

Something breaks in him when he finds out Peter somehow got his dad to agree to him taking Derek off for two days, and that the first he hears about it includes the surprised look from his dad the night before when he says that, no, Derek hadn’t fucking told him.

“So this is where we’re at now?” he asks, slamming the bedroom door. He doesn’t even remember coming up the stairs.

Derek’s sitting cross-legged on his bed with a book in his lap Stiles has never seen before. He puts it to the side and looks at Stiles like… like he’s the one with the problem.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Derek says. “I meant to.”

Stiles scoffs. “Well that’s alright then, huh? Just like that? This is so fucking—” He digs the heels of his hands into his temples. “What the hell is happening, Derek?” His own voice makes him grimace and he’s just realised he’s pacing, faces the window and screws his eyes tight on a blink, hands held in fists.

He hears Derek get up and move towards him, hears him stop, hears him sigh like Stiles is the one who won’t understand. “I have to do this,” Derek says, and there’s so much pressure in it for Stiles to come around that the anger just bubbles up, burns and scalds him.

“Why?” he asks, rounding on Derek, taking a step towards him. “Why does this matter so fucking much, huh?”

“He knows more than I do,” Derek says. “About my family, about werewolves, about…about everything. I need to know—”

“It’s not just that,” Stiles says, playing down the flinch that cuts into his face when Derek says ‘my family’, feels that dividing line getting thicker, the wall building higher. “You won’t be the same,” he says, and god, he sounds like he’s given up already. “When you get to wherever this whole thing goes, you won’t be you.”

Derek’s arm twitches like he wants to reach out, and Stiles feels the tingle up his shoulder when he doesn’t.

“One day I’ll be the Alpha,” Derek tells him, so earnest Stiles’ stomach turns. “He’s making sure I’m ready, and—Stiles we can be together, okay, we can, as soon as—”

“We were together,” Stiles says, and it doesn’t feel like the words were aimed anywhere, they just crackle off his tongue and unwind down to the ground, pointless as radio static. He turns away and sniffs, looks at the wall like the answer is gonna be scribbled on it somewhere.

For days he’s been telling himself that if he could just talk to Derek, then he could make him understand, that Derek would see it the way he does. The ash of it coats his tongue. The unshakable knowing that even telling him what Peter’s said won’t do a bit of good.

“If you just wanted to know that stuff you would’ve asked Deaton years ago. Hell I’ve borrowed tons of random shit from him, you could’ve asked me if you just needed, what, werewolf trivia?”

“That’s not the point,” Derek snaps, looking anywhere but actually at Stiles. “Stiles, I have to do this.”

“No you don’t!” Stiles says, voice punching from his chest as his arms fly away from his sides. “That’s what you’re not getting! There’s nothing he can tell you that’s more important than—”

“I need to know who I am!” Derek yells, voice climbing right over the top of Stiles’, breaking like it hasn’t since he was fifteen. The words just hang there, stamped onto the empty air, imprinted on Stiles’ chest as he takes a helpless step backwards.

Derek’s face has fallen and he’s still not looking in Stiles’ direction, his mouth tight and small and his eyes gone dim. This is the point, Stiles thinks, where they should get their TV-perfect resolution, where they fix things and all the drama gets neatly resolved in forty minutes, cut to commercial and everyone walks away unscarred. Nothing happens.

“I need to know who I am,” Derek says again, barely above a whisper, and Stiles needs a response, any response, but his throat’s all jammed up and he can’t get enough air. It doesn’t help when Derek finally does look at him, and he seems older, like he’s aged ten years across the length of this nightmare conversation. He sighs. “I need to know if there’s someone I’m supposed to be. Who I would’ve been if—” A tiny shake of his head and his glance at Stiles is full of pleading, for something Stiles apparently can’t give him, could never have given him. Stiles finally places that hollow pinching deep inside his chest, that breaking feeling; it’s his heart.

He’s lost looking into some nonexistent space in the room when Derek sighs again and walks out. He stands there, listening to footsteps on the stairs, and when he blinks there’s a silhouette in muted greens and purples behind his lids, a vague suggestion of Derek like he’d been staring at a lightbulb. A soft patter drags his eyes down between his feet, the carpet getting stained in a tiny wet circle, then another, and it takes him four or five more to bother to reach up and wipe at his face with his sleeve.

The half-shut door stands in blank disapproval when Stiles turns and looks at it. His throat sticks when he swallows, and the words drag clotted and sour from the back of his mouth.

“I know who you are.”

| |

Peter’s staying in – or at least he’s taken over, it’s hard to tell – an old cabin on the far western side of the woods, as distant as you can be from the town and the dotted-around houses before you reach the mountains.

Derek’s seen it once or twice, knows it’s for rent at certain times of the year, but he’s never been inside. It’s used by hunters mostly, the regular kind who come and go with the seasons in bright orange jackets carrying rifles instead of the other kind, the ones Derek tries not to think about if he can avoid it.

He wonders if the choice of housing is Peter’s idea of humour.

There are a few things scattered around: a laptop, books, candles burned down to stubs with wax dried in streaks down their holders and the surfaces under them. A heavy black chest sits shoved against the end of the bed.

He wipes condensation off the window with the heel of his hand.

“There’s a storm coming,” he says looking out and up at the dark, bloated clouds waiting to be wrung out and the thunderheads rolling closer. The air reeks of ozone.

“There usually is,” Peter says. He’s at the small square table tapping away at the laptop. Every now and then Derek catches people’s pictures or names popping up. More than one ending with Argent. He looks at Derek. “You should get some rest.”

Derek nods, even if he doesn’t like the shape of his dreams lately.

There’s only one bed, but there’s a worn couch against one wall that sags when Derek lies down on it, comfortable in how battered it is. He folds his hands on his chest and leaves his feet propped against the thin wooden armrest at the far end.

Fire.

Derek’s head and chest and blood are full of fire. He’s running and falling being dragged to his feet, sounds ripping up his throat with the heat bubbling under his skin, burning always burning with no escape.

The Alpha’s claws leave furrows in his skin, a roar that sounds like Again! detonating in his skull. He gets thrown to the ground, rolling until he hits a tree. The ground is soft and soaking wet but all Derek can feel is the wall of the flames against his face, pain everywhere. He spits blood and the Alpha smiles down at him, a hulking blackness showing teeth and red eyes.

Every hit that sends him sprawling leaves him with more of it – smoke choking his lungs and the sounds of other people screaming, of himself screaming and sounding like someone else. He can hear the children but he can’t reach them. Helplessness. Panic. Rage.

“They’ll pay,” Peter promises when Derek’s past words and snarls, on his knees heaving until he vomits bile on the dirt. The hate clots in his bloodstream, behind his knuckles and between his teeth. “We’ll make sure of it.”

His fingers dig into the damp ground, pulse drumming against every bone. The cry that forces its way out turns into a howl, eyes flashing yellow so fast it hurts, hurts like everything else, fangs slicing up his lips. Nobody can feel like this and still be alive, the weight of it crushing him.

Water runs off his nose and blurs his vision, tears mingling with the rain, and the slats of moonlight between the clouds find the spiral he doesn’t remember carving deep into the bark of a tree, a fresh wound in pale white.

The cabin reforms around him. He’s sitting up, breathing out of control and swallowing around his heart.

He’s alone when it occurs to him to check. There are candles burning that make monster shadows dance on the walls, and the whole cabin lights up when lightning bursts in violent blue-white outside. Rain clatters against the roof, the window, and the thunder rumbling sounds like something living under the world, trying to get his attention.

Derek’s muscles protest every move he makes, but he swings his legs around and plants his feet on the floor. He must have been locked-up rigid every second he was asleep. There’s a tug and he looks down to see his fingers stuck into the couch, embedded to the middle knuckles, white claw marks all over the once-green cushions.

There’s dirt on the backs of his hands.

His stomach lurches but he slaps a hand to the back of his neck, fingers slipping in sweat running from his head to the… Three, four raised marks above his spine, hot and sore to the touch. He tells himself that any smoke he can smell is just a candle going out across the room.

The wind screeches inside the cabin when Peter opens the door and slips inside. Rain turns the faded carpet dark, drips off Peter’s clothes. Derek swallows the urge to ask if he’s been gravedigging.

He puts his hands in his lap, carefully folded, wills his heart to quiet, slow down. “Everything alright?”

“Fine, just fine,” Peter says, barely even paying attention. Derek can smell the mud on the hems of his jeans, dark and rich, and his stomach tries to rebel.

He watches Peter hang his long coat on the back of a chair. He wants to ask. He doesn’t want to ask.

| |

The whole time Derek’s gone with Peter, Stiles feels like someone’s looping razor wire around his organs.

Hours and hours go by where he tells himself not to obsess over it, not to think about it at all, but he still catches himself staring blankly at pages of a book or the TV screen and hearing the voice in his head saying You weren’t enough.

Every time his dad looks at him it's with that crease between his eyebrows and the sad tilt to his mouth, worry bleeding from him everywhere, the sour smell of loss filling the house. And that's the worse part; that it feels like they're in mourning and just not talking about it, a too-familiar downward twisting road that makes Stiles sick with every step. When he's awake he misses Derek with a stabbing ache like a broken rib, and when he fitfully sleeps his dreams are a mashup of memories he doesn't want, things that throw him upright in the bed with the stink of a hospital in his nose.

It should help to tighten his hands into fists and remind himself as hard as he can that Derek isn't fucking dead, that this isn't the same thing at all. But then they sit down at dinner and they're just two-thirds of a full table again, picking over their food, and Stiles feels just like he did right after the funeral, sitting in a diner in a suit that didn't quite fit with his dad hardly raising his eyes, how every mouthful sank heavy to the pit of his stomach and didn't move.

He doesn't mean to, but one night when he's been swiping his fork across the edge of his plate for what feels like hours he says, “We didn't get to say goodbye again.” It just sails out of his mouth and hangs there, an ugly dead thing skewered to the air. He leaves the table so he doesn't have to see the look on his dad's face. He's not hungry anymore anyway.

If he didn’t know better he’d think he was the one who needed an anchor, something to connect him to the world. As it is he walks around like someone’s yanked him up by the roots, untethered from the rest of the world.

He hates that he’s making his dad worry, piling more weight between his shoulders that he catches him stooping under. He can’t seem to stop it though, the sharp gnawing at his stomach or the way the gaping ceiling keeps him awake.

A million plans for what he’s gonna say when Derek comes back form and uniform on the back of his tongue. When he’s here, Stiles convinces himself, things will change back to the way they should be.

He hadn’t planned on Derek coming back different already. He thought he’d have more time.

It’s subtle, which Stiles figures is down to the way Peter does things, but nobody knows Derek like Stiles does, especially not someone who apparently still thinks of him as the eleven-year-old he hasn’t been for a long time. He sees it almost before Derek even opens his mouth.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers doesn’t even begin to cover it. Derek talks but doesn’t say anything and listens without bothering to hear. All their prodding about where he and Peter went and what they did gets nothing but vague answers about shapeshifting exercises and hunting practice before Derek clams up or changes the subject. Stiles baits him but he doesn’t rise to it. He pushes and Derek just goes along until Stiles gives up, gets tired of feeling like he’s trying to divert a river with his bare hands.

“It’s not just me, right?” he asks his dad after Derek tells them he needs to rest because Peter’s coming around again in the morning. “He’s a pod person now?”

“Maybe he’s just distracted,” his dad says, but he’s frowning like it’s all for Stiles’ – and maybe his own – benefit. “I’d imagine having to deal with all that history must be hard for him.”

“Right,” Stiles scoffs, picking at his already bitten-down fingernails and bouncing his knee. “Peter dragged him off for two whole days for a genealogy lesson, lycanthropy night school.”

His dad’s got fingers digging into the corners of his eyes, and Stiles hasn’t missed the dark smudges sitting under them. Probably not enough sleep between the two of them for one person’s full night.

“There’s nothing obviously wrong,” he says, which makes Stiles boggle at him for a second. “Not enough to reasonably deny Peter access anyway.”

“Who says we have to be reasonable,” Stiles mutters, listening to the tap-tap-tap of his foot on the floor. He’s irritating himself at this point. “I’m all in favour of unreasonable if it keeps that creep away from Derek.

That gets a look shot at him. “And Derek?” his dad says. “You planning on just ordering him to steer clear of his last living relative?”

“Well since you won’t,” Stiles snaps, with more heat than he means to, voice punching out of his throat, unscrewing like a pressure valve.

The silence that expands to fill the room is awful. His dad’s expression is even worse.

“Sorry,” he says, pushing a hand through his hair. “God, I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” his dad says, tone loaded up with disappointment. So now Stiles really feels like a sack of shit. “Just—We’re a team, remember?”

“Right,” Stiles sighs, hand scratching at the back of his neck now. “Yeah. I know.” But we’re a three person team, Dad, and we keep on losing people.

“It’s okay,” his dad tells him. “We’re both a little—” He makes a face Stiles takes to mean either pissed off or scared shitless. Maybe both.

“Getting some sleep might help with that,” Stiles points out as he gets up and stretches. He yawns like he needs his body to remind him.

“Yeah,” his dad sighs, getting up alongside him. “I will in a minute.” He glances at Stiles. “Might clean my gun first.”

Stiles’ laugh takes him by surprise, mugs him for his breath.

“You don’t have a spare by any chance?”

“Go to bed, son,” his dad says, smiling a little like he means it for the first time in days, maybe longer, and Stiles throws his hands up in surrender. “Besides, you have claws.”

As he climbs the stairs Stiles thinks yeah, but so does the other guy.

When he gets to their room, Derek’s standing by the window looking out, hands braced on the peeling paint of the frame. Stiles wishes he’d known that before he’d turned the lamp on.

“Jesus,” he says, straightening up with a palm rubbing at his sternum. “That’s not the littlest bit creepy. Thanks for the heart attack.”

“You should rely on your other eyes more,” Derek says absently, like Stiles hadn’t just jumped a foot in the air and yelled at him.

“If I want to use my ‘other eyes’ I’ll do it when I’m shifted,” he says, luckily too busy peeling his socks off to make actual air quotes. “I don’t like stopping halfway between shapes, you know that. Plus not all of us feel the need to be able to slice people up with a wave of a hand.”

Again there’s a delay before Derek even seems to hear him. “It wouldn’t be uncomfortable for you if you’d practice every now and then,” he says, finally looking away from the window even if he does sound like he’s making small talk at the post office.

“That what Peter says?” Stiles asks, a mix of snide and just tell me something anything.

Like a door shutting, Derek’s face goes blank. Stiles is amazed it doesn’t make a slamming noise.

“Fine,” he says, sitting on his bed in shorts and his tee. “Just remember what usually happens when we keep secrets.”

“Private doesn’t mean secret,” Derek tells him, and there’s actual traces of give-a-shit in his voice this time.

“And since when have we cared about privacy?” he asks, snapping. “Either of us? We don’t work when we hide things from each other, haven’t you figured that out by now?” He stands up and takes a step forward, pathetically glad when Derek doesn’t step away. “What can’t you tell me, huh? What could be so bad, or so much, that you can’t tell me about it?”

He thinks suddenly of Derek’s face in the clearing, the way his mouth felt, his skin with the moon hanging over them, and then another burning burst of anger at Peter for the association, like he’s tainted something.

“It’s not about that,” Derek says, face twisted. “It’s not—” He blows out a frustrated sigh, hands balling by his sides.

They’re barely a foot apart but Stiles doesn’t think his hand would touch anything if he reached out, would just pass through the air in front of him that’s arranged to look like Derek, missing all the essential pieces.

“Derek,” he says, and his voice slips out of his control, hurts his ears the way only bare need ever manages to.

The kiss takes him surprise, a punch to the solar plexus. Derek’s hands are fisted in the front of Stiles’ shirt and he can’t tell if he’s actually dangling a few inches off the ground or if that’s just the swoop in his stomach.

He groans, more a butchered and violent noise as he scrabbles fingers against Derek’s sides than one made of anything smoother. Derek’s tongue pushes into him and Stiles bites at his bottom lip, the clack of their teeth noisy in his head, the rest all wet snapping he can’t control.

When is a kiss not a kiss?

They pull apart – drive each other back like magnets facing the wrong way. Stiles is breathing hard and his mouth feels hot, bruised. Derek has both hands on Stiles’ face and his pupils are wide, but the colour around them is still all green-lit rooms with the curtains drawn tight and the doors locked, windows painted shut.

He strokes his thumbs across Stiles’ cheeks and Stiles wants to punch him, wants to bury his hands in him and pull him out of his skin, wants to shred their clothes and fuck Derek into the ground like it’ll solve anything, like it’d make him believe Derek’s someone he gets to keep.

Ever reread a story with an unhappy ending? Ever shout at the middle parts, direct wishes at them like you can rearrange them into something better before the last page barrels down on you again?

“I’m sorry,” Derek says, for all the wrong reasons.

“Yeah,” works its way out of Stiles’ mouth, lips still caught up in the shape of the kiss. “Pretty sure we both will be, by the end.”

Derek sighs and steps away. Stiles tries to find something to look at that isn’t Derek’s back or the ocean between their beds. There’s a knife buried and twisting in his belly or maybe his back, and if he wrings his hands any harder they’re gonna come apart like burned paper shells, flakes of him covering the carpet.

When is a kiss not a kiss?

When it’s a sad story you can’t stop shouting at.

| |

Morning comes because it has to, and Peter shows up because Stiles can’t do anything to stop it.

The light crawling through the window is grayish and Stiles’ skin is grayish too as he follows Derek outside. There’s a chill, and mist hangs threaded between the tops of trees like tinsel. Dew soaks his bare feet.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but then again he’s not sure he really cares anymore.

“Hello, Stiles,” Peter says, sounding the way people sound when all the cards are theirs or the game is rigged. “How’ve you been?”

“Peachy,” he says, gnashes it between his molars, and Peter’s lips twitch. Derek hasn’t looked at him yet, apparently not done looking at his feet.

“Big day planned?” Stiles asks, arms shrugging out before they drop back against his sides. “Lots of important Alpha lessons? Flower arranging, which fork’s the salad fork, that sorta thing?” It’s funny, he thinks, how your voice can just carry on without you when you’ve got nothing under your skin and nothing swallowing up all the stuff behind your ribs. Disembodied and still feeling the cold, how’s that fair? There’s something stuck under his tongue that might be a sob.

“Something like that,” Peter says. “Derek’s a good student, if a little prone to distractions.”

“Maybe you’re pushing too hard,” Stiles says, mouth tight at the corners. Peter gives him a mannequin’s idea of a smile. “You oughta try easing up a little.”

The look on Peter’s face has hardly changed at all, but all the interesting stuff’s going on behind his eyes, a hint of red that’s not a trick of the light.

“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” he says, looking over at Derek. He turns back to Stiles, head cocked at an angle. “You know you share a scent?” Peter says, offers it up casually. Stiles gets an imagined flash of him holding up somebody's head on a big silver plate with the same tone, identical expression on his face.

“Yeah no shit,” Stiles says with bravado he doesn't feel but that he does a pretty good job of showing. “We live in the same house.” Sleep in the same room, the same bed. He crams the thoughts down, like Peter's a mind-reader instead of just... well, whatever brand of damaged he is.

“Oh but it's deeper than that,” Peter says, an amused twist on one side of his mouth. “No wonder you're so determined to keep him to yourself.”

“Peter,” Derek says, and Stiles hates himself for the little firecracker-quick bit of hope. “Maybe we should just—”

He goes quiet under a look from Peter, somehow gets more quiet when Peter’s hand comes down on his shoulder.

“It would be a shame,” Peter says, “if anything unfortunate happened to one of you because of a lack of care – of understanding just where you both belong.” His eyes bore into Stiles. “You should think of your father,” he says. “He seems like a good man, one who just wants the best for his family. I’m sure you wouldn’t want anything to get in the way of that.”

Stiles’ breath catches and whatever he was going to say gets lost in a painful swallow.

“Adjust to the reality of your situation,” Peter says, still calm, casual. “And there doesn’t need to be any unpleasantness.”

Stiles turns on Derek. “You have anything to say?”

Derek’s mouth opens with no sound. His eyes go from Stiles to where Peter’s watching them, like he’s just curious.

Please, Stiles thinks as loud and hard as he can, like he can shove it into Derek’s head. Please just wake up.

“He’s right,” Derek says, voice thin and grating, stumbling on itself. “You should go back inside, Stiles.” The look on his face is totally indecipherable, and suddenly Stiles is afraid, genuinely terrified like he hasn’t been in years, every road a dead end.

“So I guess I’m alone after all,” he says, and turns around before Derek can say anything else – before he has to look at that empty nothing all over his face.

If either Derek or Peter say a word to him before the door’s shutting him in the house along with enough silence to last him a lifetime, then he doesn’t hear it.

Not thinking about... just not thinking, Stiles heads upstairs, strips down and shifts, clothes flung randomly across the floor. In a smooth push of his legs he jumps up onto Derek's bed, the mattress dipping and tilting under his paws. He uses his nose to lift the sheets enough to burrow under them and tucks his head beneath a pillow, shutting his eyes, the smell of Derek everywhere and none of it helping.

| |

Stiles about has it when Derek wakes him in the middle of the night by climbing in the fucking window.

“Are you kidding me,” he hisses, throwing the sheets off and then flinging himself out of bed. He’s never gone from asleep to awake so fast in his life, never veered from confused to pissed off this quickly.

When he doesn’t get an answer he turns and clicks the lamp on, eyes aching as they adjust.

Derek looks… well Derek looks like shit, honestly. Like his skin’s as thick as bible paper and he hasn’t slept in about a decade. His hair’s everywhere and his clothes are all pulled to one side like he’d dressed blind or one-handed or both. The night air makes the curtains flap around, and Stiles gets a snatch of the full moon when the clouds get shoved aside. Right.

“What the fuck are you even doing?” he asks, arms out at his sides as he gets in Derek’s face. He’s not yelling, can’t without waking his dad, but he really really wants to. That he’s worried – scared half to death – about Derek only makes him madder, makes him want to push and kick and throw crappy punches to drag the real Derek out from behind the mask this new version seems to have nailed on.

Derek’s jaw clenches tight and his hands are fists by his sides, and Stiles honestly doesn’t see the kiss coming.

Kiss is the wrong word anyway; it’s a messy painful collision that makes their teeth click and Stiles’ hands flap around somewhere near Derek’s shoulders.

Stiles pushes him, hard, and even though Derek barely moves it gives him the space to say, “No seriously, what the fuck. You can’t just come here and… I don’t even know!” He’s hitting Derek in the chest with his hand on every other word, and all he gets is Derek’s eyes, tight at the corners, watching Stiles prod him in the sternum.

“I had to…” Derek starts, and then trails off like he only had three words in him, his voice dying. He plucks Stiles’ hand out of the air between them, runs his own up Stiles’ forearm, his palm fever-warm. There’s dirt under his nails.

“Are you staying?” Stiles asks, even though he doesn’t exactly mean to. Derek’s eyes tic up to meet his.

“I needed to be here,” Derek says, in a flat and somehow still urgent voice.

Stiles raises his eyebrows. “Because…?”

Derek’s mouth pinches and he gives Stiles a look that he clearly thinks means something, even though Stiles gets absolutely nothing from it except for noticing how pinched Derek’s mouth looks.

Again he’s not expecting the kiss at all. It’s not as rushed, doesn’t feel like it’s about to draw blood, but Stiles still has no idea what’s going on. Derek pulls back, both his hands on Stiles’ face, dropping down to the sides of his neck.

“You’ve gotta give me something here,” Stiles mutters, and apparently the kiss did some damage to his voice, judging from the way it comes out.

Derek’s breath all leaves his nose in a sigh set to fast-forward. “I’m—I’m sorry,” he says, and it’s rough, even rougher than Stiles’ attempt at speech just now.

There’s a long moment drawn out like a length of rope. Stiles has one hand on Derek’s chest and another squeezing his upper arm, and Derek’s got him by the shoulder and neck now, fingers sliding into Stiles’ hair at the back of his head. He can’t read whatever’s showing in Derek’s eyes and it’s not just the thin light in the room.

“You fucking should be,” he whispers, harsh and grating, and at least this time he’s not surprised when Derek’s mouth hits his, and only partly because he’s the one who moves forwards.

Derek takes a step back when Stiles pushes at him, keeps pushing him between kisses with rough edges. He catches Stiles’ hand again when it beats at his chest while Stiles bites at Derek’s mouth, and holds it flat against his chest.

It still feels more like fighting than kissing, and there’s still anger bubbling away behind Stiles’ ribs, but it’s all misfiring and getting redirected into the drum of his pulse between his legs. He wants to keep shoving just as much as he wants to keep kissing and just as much as he wants to fuck Derek through the floor, and he honestly can’t place which one he’s feeling at any given moment.

They end up on the floor, the curtains flickering in and out of his peripheral vision like a pair of wings. Derek’s fingers grip and leave marks on his sides, his hips, and Stiles is losing these guttural sounds into the prickly skin of Derek’s neck, biting hard enough Derek jerks against him every time. He gets carpet burn on his knee and bangs his shin on the leg of the bed, but it’s all distant next to the way Derek’s fingers squeeze around his dick and he mouths at Stiles’ jaw, maybe words of maybe nonsense.

“God you’re—” he grits, fucking into Derek’s hand and trying to get one of his own under Derek’s waistband. “You’re such a—” He gives up with a grunt and jacks Derek’s cock, grips him painfully hard and listens to Derek’s breath catch, bites his mouth raw. I fucking hate you he wants to say, childish and more than once, but he can’t make himself do it, and that really pisses him off.

Derek’s shirt got flung against the wall under the window ledge, and Stiles’ is rucked up under his arms, the hem brushing over the nipple Derek’s dragged between his teeth enough that it’s throbbing. Stiles drags himself upright and looks down at the slick head of his dick going through the tunnel of Derek’s fingers, catching and spreading precome, snapping wet in his palm.

When he comes it’s in heavy, wrenching streaks that fall on Derek’s stomach and his chest, even daubing the straining lines in his neck, some visceral chord striking low in Stiles’ belly when he sees it, feels the way Derek’s cock jerks in his hand. His grip on Derek goes lax and uncoordinated, but Derek’s wound so tight up against him that he probably hasn’t even noticed.

“Fucking do it,” Stiles tells him, grinds it in the back of his throat. He slips the tip of his thumb into the fragile-feeling skin around the head, presses and rubs under the slit, and Derek sounds like he’s in pain when he locks up and jizzes into Stiles’ hand, onto his own hips, the sticky-shiny mess gathering in his bellybutton and matting down the hair under it.

Stiles feels like he just ran five miles, panting and sweating and still vaguely thinking about throwing something. Derek’s in no better shape,  looking up at Stiles with an expression he can’t read, his mouth open and swollen as he catches his breath. There’s come all over him, finding the dips between his muscles and catching the dim yellow light in the room. The fucking window’s still open, and the room’s getting cold.

“Clean up, don’t clean up, not sure I care,” he mutters as he grits his teeth and stands up, his knee popping and fire easing out of the small of his back.

Derek uses his shirt to meagrely wipe at himself. He’s left standing there like a bit of awkward furniture, and Stiles really resents the pang in his stomach when he sees it.

“You staying?” he asks again, this time like he already knows the answer.

Derek’s mouth pinches for a second, and Stiles sighs longer than he has in his life.

“I’m going back to sleep,” he tells Derek, pulling the sheets up from the foot of the bed. “Do what you want.”

He doesn’t look at Derek again, just kneels onto the bed and turns off the lamp. He lies down facing the wall, curled on himself and his eyes shut like it proves a point. He hears the window shut.

Derek climbs in behind him, the mattress dipping. The bed’s nowhere near big enough for them not be touching anywhere, and Stiles just tries not to react when Derek brushes against his back, his ass and his legs. He still doesn’t react when Derek’s breath touches the back of his neck, or when his hand dents the pillow above his head.

God, he’s just so fucking tired.

| |

If Derek thinks he’s being quiet and unnoticeable when he slips out of bed later in the night, then Stiles is honestly disappointed in him.

He lies perfectly still while Derek steps into a pair of sweats and pulls on a shirt, keeps his eyes barely open in narrow slits, counting out his own breathing in slow two second puffs.

Derek turns with his fingers clasped around the doorknob, sending a look Stiles’ way like… Stiles doesn’t even know. There’s shadow coating everything, hiding Derek’s face, and Stiles’ brain takes the chance to paint his expression in shades of regret and indecision, colours that don’t exist in nature. His shoulders move in a slow roll and Stiles hears him sigh, head sliding away from Stiles and down to the floor. Whatever’s really there obviously isn’t enough, since Derek’s hand turns and the door cracks open and then he’s vanishing into the hall like he’d never been there to begin with, just a trick of the eyes Stiles couldn’t make himself blink away.

With no light coming in the room goes on forever, a black cave or an empty ocean Stiles is floating in. If he concentrates he can feel the leftover strain in his muscles, the dulled throb of bruises he can’t see. And if he concentrates harder he can hear Derek’s gradual steps down the staircase.

The moment of hesitation breaks when his feet find the carpet. There’s real anger funnelling into his chest by the time he gets his own clothes on, burning and ugly as his hand drags the door open wide enough to slip through. It threatens to spill over before he gets to the bottom of the stairs, acid bubbling up. He focuses on it – relies on it, lets it stick to the back of his throat and coat his teeth. His hands pull into fists and his head pounds with variations of every nasty thing he could throw at Derek – and Peter, since that’s obviously where this is heading, a train with just one destination, next stop end of every stupid childish hope he’s been stacking behind a door that never stays shut.

Just how many times is he supposed to do this? Follow Derek out into a night that doesn’t want him? Cross the ocean by himself?

Traces of cold air hang in the kitchen, ragged invisible banners that brush his skin when he passes through them. He forces his feet to move faster, not looking back to see if the door actually shuts when he pushes it behind him and making for Derek at something just slower than a jog.

The night – or what’s left of it – has turned cloudy, humidity coating Stiles’ lungs and the moonlight gruel-thin when it drips between slate chunks of sky. He’s following Derek parallel to the wall of the house, and more anger piles onto him when he figures that Derek’s probably trying to avoid being seen from the windows above them.

Derek turns before Stiles’ outstretched hand meets his back, surprise on his face already melting and leaving behind something between resignation and… worry? Fear? How’s Stiles supposed to know? Obviously he doesn’t know shit anymore, now the rulebook’s been thrown out.

“Stiles, what are you doing?” Derek asks, confused and frowning as he takes a step closer.

Stiles chokes on a diseased laugh. “Seriously? What am I doing? Which one of us just did some kinda bullshit walk of shame away from his own house?”

He doesn’t let the faint wince that flashes through Derek’s expression reach him, refuses to believe— 

“That’s not what—” Derek says, breaking off with a frustrated sigh. His mouth’s pinched and when he glances off to the side Stiles can see the tightness around his eyes. “I shouldn’t have come back like this, not for—” He looks back at Stiles. “I’m sorry.”

A hand, bunched into a pale fist, thuds hard into Derek’s chest and knocks him back. It takes a second for Stiles to connect the fist to his arm and his arm to the rest of him, a jarring rebuild where he suddenly belongs to himself again. His fingers are gnarled in Derek’s shirt.

“I don’t care about sorry,” he grinds out, and even though he knows it’s his voice it still doesn’t sound like him, all ripped up and shoved midway down his spine. “I don’t give a shit about why you came back. I care that you’re just gonna leave again, sneak off like…” A scoff punches past his mouth, and there’s no way he’s hiding the pathetic hurt, it’s probably scrawled all over his face and muddying his scent. “What’s happening to us?” he asks, and god, he just wants the anger back, it was better than feeling this. “This isn’t—isn’t us, at all.”

His fingers are still wrapped in Derek’s shirt, old loose fabric and the lie of the familiar body under it. There should never have been space in or between them to pour secrets into. None of this is fair. Derek just stands like he hasn’t noticed Stiles’ helpless grasp on him, and when Stiles drops his hand back against his side there’s a stinging in his eyes, pain jabbing into his temples.

“Just come back inside,” he says, already given up on tugging that fuelling bitterness back to the surface. The anger’s burned him dry, left him empty and thin, and now it’s all gone. “You don’t have to be anywhere else right now.”

Derek takes another step forward, a messy conflicted look swirling all the colour from his eyes. A brief flicker of moonlight like a dying bulb makes him look scarily insubstantial, just fog trapped under a familiar face.

“I never meant for this to happen,” he says, and Stiles can’t even pinpoint whatever specific thing he means this time, trying to track a snowflake in an avalanche. All he can do is think too late and try to hide the pain like swallowing razors that slices through him.

“So come back,” he says, one shoulder lifting in a helpless shrug. “We can still fix this, okay, we can. You just have to stay–”

Everything rushes away and to the side as his voice mangles down to nothing. His feet scrape the ground in a useless skid, heels to toes, finding only air and loose dry mud. The wall rushes into his back, thumps the air out of him and stuns him. His vision blurs and his hands flail like death throes.

It’s one thing to be convinced that Peter’s earnest, learned uncle routine was just a sham, a mask or a well-tailored suit, but that’s not the same as having it literally stare him in the face, the monster-shaped truth at the front of Peter’s eyes rearing up. The validation doesn’t feel anything like victory.

“Did you know,” Peter says, jaw working as he lifts Stiles a little higher off the ground, “there was a time when your kind were hunted by mine? Certain times of year – equinoxes, religious festivals –Alphas would compete; the winner was whoever brought back the finest skins.” Stiles scratches at Peter’s hand but it does no good. He tries to yell but it won't leave his airway. “Some traditions are a shame to lose.”

Stiles kicks out, hits Peter hard in the knees and not even getting a flinch for it. His eyes wheel, looking for Derek, but Peter’s too close and it’s too dark.

“I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this,” Peter says, fingers like iron around Stiles’ throat. The wall’s cold at his back, leeching away all his warmth except for the burning in his lungs. “Derek's unfortunate obsession with you aside, you’re a resourceful boy, and I hate to see guile go to waste.”

“Gee thanks,” Stiles says, splutters at the end when the air won’t flow back in.

Derek’s voice seeps into the corners of Stiles’ narrowing cone of awareness, everything blurry and spinning. “Peter,” he says, wary, “I don’t think you should—”

“Oh I think we’ve seen enough of the results of your choices,” Peter says, head snapping around unnaturally quick to stare Derek down. His eyes might be glowing or Stiles could just be hallucinating, his oxygen-starved brain misfiring all over the place. He feels weirdly warm, drugged.

“You should learn to take suggestions,” he croaks, again using up everything in his lungs and paying for it with a swallow that feels like choking on stones and a ragged gasp that sends tears leaking out the corners of his eyes.

Peter’s lips quirk and he hums, “It really is a shame. If you were human, it would be a simple matter of turning you, but....” His hand tightens a little, and Stiles can see spots, purple and green, getting bigger in his peripheral vision. “But you've become a diversion I can’t afford. I have far too much left to do to risk losing Derek now.”

“If you—” he chokes, feeling like his head’s about to explode, pop like a squeezed grape. His toes scrape the ground and a little air wheezes into his lungs. “He’ll never forgive you,” he manages, just barely, proud of how much it sounds like a laugh. His mouth shapes a smirk like a thorn. “You’ll lose everything.”

Peter's eyes are dark, unreadable. Stiles feels like his own are bulging, the whites visible. His heartbeat hurts.

“You might be right,” he says, still sounding calm even though there's anger creeping up his neck in lines of tension. “For now. But that only precludes killing you, doesn’t it?”

Stiles’ knees hit the dirt. His chest heaves, throat on fire. He can’t even get out a cough, fingers pressing at his own neck now. He falls when he takes a step to the side, staggers and trips over himself, unseeing and gagging on empty air.

Sparks scatter in front of his eyes, and he realises he’s whirling, tries to steady himself. All it gets him is the sight of Peter shifting, skin warping and eyes laser spots that track the way Stiles’ feet scuff the ground.

He barely even hears Derek’s shout of, “Stiles, run!" as he shifts faster than he ever has, runs faster than he knew he could, pain everywhere and the sound of a low snarl following behind him.

| |

All he takes in of the actual chase is a load of brief flashes, like a flipbook of a nightmare.

Trees blur by so fast he can barely see and snatches of sky go off overhead like an air raid in the flare of the moon with the stars crackling around it.

Panic makes him clumsy, sends him flying until he’s bruised and full of aches. Branches trip him and jab into his sides. He runs faster anyway, aimless until he decides to head for the river. Maybe he can use the water to throw Peter off his trail.

A couple of times he nearly calls for Derek, comes close to throwing noises over his shoulder before he swallows them back down. The only thing he can hear is the heavy, too-close sound of Peter’s breaths and animal-angry growls following behind him.

Even as he gets near the sound of running water he can’t help thinking that he’s being toyed with; if Peter was gonna mow him down, all his talk about not actually killing Stiles aside, then it would’ve happened by now, right? Instead he’s being driven past the places he knows and off into the gray-black unfamiliar woods that seem to go on forever.

The water hits him with a cold shock, goes up to his chest in the first few bounding jumps forward, his paws slipping on the stony riverbed. He pushes against the current that wants to sweep him sideways. When he pauses for a second and looks back, he can’t see anything, can barely hear his own heart over the constant din of the water, but he can smell the dark and thick-threatening scent than can only be Peter, nearby and getting closer.

So he forces his way to the other bank, icy water driving nails into his skin. He slips on the wet grass as he runs, legs trembling with the strain, and when he heaves himself up again he’s already losing his sense of bearing, miles behind him and miles in front of him, neither one a good option. Nothing looks the same at night, especially not yourself.

A heavy splash makes his heart violently skip a beat, and he veers off in a new direction, every thought in his head trampled under more fear, more adrenaline. More running.

| |

At some point, after more hours and miles he can’t count, Stiles admits two things: that he’s lost and that Peter’s not chasing him anymore.

The overcast sky’s turning shades of cardboard blue-gray, the air chilly enough to feel sharp, and Stiles is honestly worried he’ll just pass out and never wake up again. Peter might’ve avoided directly killing him for Derek’s sake – or his own – but that doesn’t mean he isn’t willing to let nature and Stiles’ own exhaustion do the dirty work.

He shivers when the wind picks up, and his teeth chatter to a rattle in his skull.

| |

He has no idea how long he’s been walking when he sees the house.

It starts as a light, faint and yellow between the trees, and he’s already mentally berating himself for hallucinating when he realises how sluggishly his legs are moving, how much his footprints are zigzagging behind him. Everything feels far away, numb, and he can’t remember why that should bother him. Why wouldn’t he want to be numb?

It’s hard to coordinate four legs, takes him longer to stand back up every time he wobbles or fumbles over. He shifts in a cramping bunch of muscles, makes a low grunting moan of pain – all he can manage. Even his eyes ache, refuse to focus on the fuzzy golden glow pushing between the trees, the soft light shining through windowpanes that seem near enough to touch, but when he waves a hand out like he’s mesmerised there’s nothing against his fingers, just more air, more distance.

Managing to stumble over the tiniest dip in the ground, Stiles hisses when everything rushes up to dig teeth into his knee, gritty and sharp, palms getting stabbed with little stony bits and pain shooting everywhere at once.

“Way to go,” he tells himself through gritted teeth, trying to pull from some reserve of energy he doesn’t think he has, just enough to stand. “Get away from the evil werewolf, and what d’you do? You fuck yourself up on some grass.” His snort turns into a laugh that goes sour in his mouth. He really doesn’t feel good.

The world’s been stuck on a carousel by the time he gets his feet under him, spinning slowly minus the tinny music. His blood feels thick when it rushes to his head, fades to a dull rush in his ears as he blinks. He’s dizzy. He presses the heel of one hand to his temple like he can push the throbbing out the other side.

The house is closer now, assuming it’s there at all. He’ll take it either way, but he’d like to think if he was gonna be delusional he could at least conjure up being home in his bed instead of feeling like a paper skeleton, set loose and being carried forward by wind and not much else.

A few steps later he realises some of the blurring is from tears dripping out of his eyes, off the end of his chin, tears of pain and frustration, of exhaustion, and deep down of rage, a red snarl of violent impulses choking him, pointless in the way a child tries to lash out at the world around him.

“Fuck,” he spits, pushing trembling fingers into his eyes. His heart’s beating way too fast and his head’s spinning, he’s afraid he might throw up.

He folds to the ground again, flashing cold and hot and seeing dancing spots in front of his face. His arms wrap around his ribs and he can feel how clammy his skin is, the little quakes along the edges of his ribs.

What little dawn there is shreds around the clench of his lids, vanishes when he buries his face in his knees.

He doesn’t feel cold anymore.

| |

He comes to slowly, floating up out of a warm empty nothing, all soft edges and kind lights.

He’s on a huge, well-worn couch in what’s pretty obviously somebody’s living room.

“Nice to see you awake.”

Stiles cranes around as a woman with an easy smile steps around the side of the couch. She’s got long curly hair pulled into a ponytail and a patient, kind of expectant look on her face, like there’s some cue Stiles has managed to miss already. Considering he’s in her house and he’s not wearing anything except for the fleece blankets pooled in his lap, that’s probably fair enough.

“I guess you’re feeling better,” she says, assessing him with a look that makes Stiles think parent in an instinctive kind of way. He pulls the blankets a little higher.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, frowning and swallowing when it comes out scratchy and uncomfortable.

His mysterious saviour nods at a glass of water and some little white pills – aspirin, sitting on a tiny dark wooden table by the couch’s arm. He offers up a grateful smile and tries not to spill the glass in how fast he downs it or drop the blankets where he’s got them grasped in one hand.

She’s smirking when he puts the empty glass back on the table. “Considering the cuts on your knee and your hands are gone, I’m guessing you’re a werewolf?”

He feels his eyebrows go up. “Sort of,” he says, shrugging. “Close enough anyway.” He’s been caught flatfooted here, no idea how much he’s supposed to – or not supposed to – give away; his mom was always pretty cagey about mentioning this stuff to people they didn’t know.

“Okay,” she says, slowly, head tilted. “We’ll come back to that. You feeling better?”

Stiles nods and she smirks again. “Good. I’m Melissa, by the way.”

“Stiles. Thanks for… for the couch.”

Her smirk turns into a wider smile. “You’re not the first wayward urchin to show up at my door,” she says. “Not even the first naked one.” Stiles is already convinced nothing actually fazes her. He’s appropriately impressed and intimidated.

“Right,” he says with a wince. “Sorry. How long was I…”

“Just a few hours,” she says, something more serious creeping into the tone. “If you’re not nauseas you should eat something; low blood sugar can really mess you up.” She smiles again at whatever expression he’s wearing. “I was a nurse, once upon a time, before we moved out here and I became the hotel manager-slash-den mother for the weird and wonderful.”

“We?”

“My son,” she says. “He’s a werewolf, and… well it’s a long story, so I’ll let him go through that if he wants to, he’ll be back in a little while.”

He takes a guess. “But you’re not?”

Melissa holds her arms out to the sides. “Human as it gets,” she says with a wry smile. He holds still while she checks his pulse, looks into his eyes, either for a concussion or something else.

“Now, I’m not gonna ask if you don’t feel like sharing,” she says, eyebrows pulled up into a significant little stare. “But if you’re in trouble – the kind of trouble that’s not at all your fault – then we can help you.” Her mouth pinches down at the corners. “You had some pretty nasty bruises on your neck when you showed up.”

Stiles flinches, hand automatically pressing at his throat. Melissa wraps fingers around his wrist and draws it away, catches his eyes. “Whatever situation you’re in, you don’t have to stay in, okay? You’d be surprised some of the stories I’ve heard in the last few years, I promise you wouldn’t shock me.”

He huffs through his nose. Something about her exudes an enveloping kind of comfort that upsets him, starts an ache behind his chest. She makes him miss his mom, like something just out of reach or in the corner of his eye.

“It’s not really that kind of problem,” he says, slowly, trying not to latch onto any of the memories of how he got here. “It’s more… family drama.”

She nods, mouth flattening out. “Well I know a little something about that too,” she tells him. She puts a pile of folded clothes on the cushion next to him. “You could probably use these. They’re Scott’s, but he won’t mind, and you look about the same size.”

Then he’s by himself in the room, little slivers of a family life sticking out everywhere around him, pictures on the mantle and things left on the shelves, a pair of sneakers by one wall.

Stiles gets dressed, keeps his eyes on his hands, and tries not to look anywhere else.

| |

He’s not sure what he was expecting from Scott, besides the werewolf label. It’s not like he’d had the time to think about it anyway, but the most laidback Alpha on the planet still wouldn’t have made the list.

Stiles actually thinks he’s pretty awesome.

For one thing, he’s as far from Peter as it’s possible to be. He listens to Stiles’ rambling and uneven recount of everything with intent eyes and a frown, getting more and more pinched around the mouth the closer Stiles gets to how he ended up lost on the wrong side of the forest. He basically spills his guts, even if he doesn’t mean to, and somehow Scott just takes it all in and makes it seem like less than the end of the world.

“I’m really sorry,” he says, squeezing Stiles’ shoulder. “It shouldn’t be like that, being an Alpha. It’s… it’s about more than getting power for yourself.”

“Yeah, well,” Stiles says, “apparently not to everyone.”

Scott shakes his head. “I wish I had some kinda answer.” He looks off at his mom, who’s been standing against the wall with her arms crossed and a far-off look on her face. Stiles met Allison for all of two minutes, before Scott had said something to her about Stiles being chased here by an Alpha and she’d immediately produced a crossbow from somewhere and disappeared outside. Stiles is wondering if he’s in a coma and this whole thing is just happening in his head.

He gets the backstory though, the cliffnotes about Scott getting bitten by a rogue Alpha and then managing to fall in love with someone from a family of werewolf hunters, sees the look on Scott’s face when he talks about Allison turning her back on her family for him, like he’s glad and guilty – or guilty about being glad - and their off-the-wall plan to get werewolves somewhere safe if they’re stuck in dangerous packs or just on their own, and hunters out of the life in a kind of underground railroad combined with a hostel.

Melissa laughs when he says that last part, shrugs. “That’s as good a name for it as any,” she says. “It’s a group effort. Or a pack effort, I should probably say. Scott deals with the actual werewolf aspect, and Allison handles most of the uh, pointy situations.” She sighs as she looks around the room, apparently taking in the whole house. “We just try and cope with things as they happen.”

“Seems to be working for you,” Stiles says, doing his own glance around and ending with a gesture at himself.

Scott smiles, but it’s distracted. “You can totally stay as long as you want,” he says. “But your dad’s probably—”

“Shit,” Stiles says, looking at the sunlight gleaming on the window. “What the hell am I doing?” He throws his hands up. “I have to go home.”

Scott’s hand touches his arm as he goes to stand up. “I think you should tell him the truth this time,” he says, almost gently.

Stiles huffs. “Like what? ‘Hey dad sorry I ran away from home but someone was trying to kill me’.” He flops back down, runs his hands through his hair. “If I tell him, and Peter goes after him…” He shakes his head. “He’d try and stop Peter if he knew, and then—” The air turns brittle when he tries to suck it in, stomach churning.

“Okay,” Scott says, rubs a hand down Stiles’ back. “What about Derek? I mean, if he—”

“He’s not exactly on my side right now.”

Scott’s lips pinch down. “Well it depends how much choice he has,” he says. “Alphas can… it’s not exactly mind control, but it’s not far off, like pressure through the pack bond, persuasion.” He winces, like he’s remembering something. Stiles is scared to ask. “It’s a pretty horrible thing to do to someone.”

“Great,” Stiles sighs, hands clenching and unclenching, watching his knuckles go from pink to white over and over. He can see Derek’s face in his head, the way his expression looked so scraped over, buried under blankness. Like he needed another reason to want to rip Peter’s head off. “So Derek’s under the imperious curse, and I’m exactly where I started.”

Scott’s hand grips his shoulder again. “Let’s just get you home,” he says. “Back to your family. You’ll figure out the rest from there.”

Stiles takes a slow breath that chops up into a kind of strung-out laugh. “You just spew zen everywhere, huh?”

Scott grins and gives an easy shrug. “I’ll even let you keep the clothes, so long as you promise to come back sometime.”

Stiles manages a smile, even if it lists to the side. “How can I stay away?” he asks, nudging into Scott’s side. “When you’ve somehow lived seventeen years and never seen Star Wars? I’ve got injustices to correct.” The smile gets a little wider when Scott laughs and claps him on the back.

He does his best to tell himself that maybe he can do this after all.

| |

“You’re sure you wanna go back by yourself?” Scott asks, for at least the fifth time, standing outside with Stiles, just off the steps that lead down from the house.

Stiles smiles, claps him on the arm. “Yeah,” he says, “Things are still pretty messed up and I, uh…” He tries to think of a way to say more werewolves probably won’t help, or maybe just I don’t wanna get you killed too.

“I get it,” Scott says, and really, he needs to be bottling this whole Mr.-calm-and-capable thing he has going on, he could make millions. “You know where we are if you change your mind. Just don’t do anything too risky, huh?”

“I’ll try my best,” Stiles says, even if Scott doesn’t look convinced.

| |

Peter’s at the cabin looking like nothing happened when Derek finally gives up wandering the woods and heads back there.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he says, dropping onto the narrow couch.

Peter glances up from the laptop, hands stilling on the keys. “I’m afraid I did,” he says, sighing. The lid of the computer shuts with a click and Peter sighs when he looks over at Derek. “I know this is hard for you, and I know it probably seems a little… harsh, but Derek, I’m doing what’s best for you. Someone has to look at the bigger picture here.”

“Stiles is… isn’t a threat,” Derek says, jumping tracks from whatever he was going to say – whatever he wants to say.

“I’m not so sure,” Peter says, standing and walking over. He pulls a chair from the small table and sits in front of Derek, leaning in. “There are certain inevitable things that are going to happen as you grow into your role,” he says. “Things you won’t be able to hold onto if we’re going to succeed at rebuilding our pack.”

“At getting revenge?”

Peter smiles faintly, like Derek’s said something naïve. “That too,” he says, shrugging lightly. “You and Stiles will both be better off if you don’t forget who you really are.”

Derek swallows. “He could get hurt,” he says, “if he’s out there by himself.”

Peter’s hand comes down on his shoulder. “I’m sure he’s at home by now. With his family.” The just like you are goes unsaid, but Derek looks down at the floor just the same.

“I know you… care for him,” Peter says gently, “but you had to know this would happen eventually. Nothing lasts forever.”

Another swallow jams in his throat. “I know,” he says, fingers twisting together and the air feeling like it’s squeezing him, pressure on his skin. “I just thought—” I thought we had a chance. I thought we were enough.

Peter leans forward in his chair, tips Derek’s face up with a hand on his chin. “Look at what you are – what you will be,” he says, and his eyes are flickering red. “Now look at what he is. Did you really think it could end any other way?” He puts his hand back on Derek’s shoulder, sympathy all over his face. “Some paths are chosen for us, Derek,” he says, “no matter what we do to try and change them. It’s not your fault.”

Derek’s breath hitches at that. He can’t make himself believe it, the words warping in his head it’s your fault your fault you left him.

“I promised I’d look out for him; that I’d help keep him safe,” he says, seeing John’s face like a ghost behind his eyes, the trust and responsibility he’d handed over.

Peter nods, fingers squeezing Derek’s shoulder. “If you really want to do that,” he says, “then you’ll leave him alone. I know you don’t think he’s a danger, but see how much he makes you doubt yourself, how he makes you weak. An Alpha cannot have doubt, Derek. Doubt will kill you, poison you, and along with you goes any hope our family has left.”

I’m not an Alpha, not yet, Derek thinks, but when he blinks and sees Peter’s look all he can do is nod.

“Everything will work out for the best,” Peter says, standing with a last clench of his fingers. “Trust me.”

Derek doesn’t look up when the door to the cabin opens and shuts, and he’s left alone. He still doesn’t know where Peter goes, what he does, but he guesses that’ll come with time like everything else.

He rubs his hands over his face, stands up when sitting on the couch just makes the sour twisting of his stomach worse.

There’s not a lot to do or look at in the cabin – almost everything in it belongs to Peter. There’s an old, musty bearskin hanging on the wall next to the window, a few stuffed and mounted stag heads that smell just as dust-coated and look down with fake eyes when Derek glances up at them.

He sighs, absently puts his hands in his pockets, and there’s a crinkle against his fingers that makes him frown.

He digs to the bottom and feels something like paper, dry and raspy, and when he pulls it free he’s not expecting the way his pulse hitches or his breath stutters.

The leaf’s more than a little battered; the stalk’s snapped and flakes of dull brown come off on his fingers, but there’s still the faint suggestion of a wolf’s head. He straightens out the point that resembles an ear, thumb brushing the splotches of colour that look like eyes and a roughly-shaped mouth. The image of Stiles holding it to his face and howling makes him smile, even if it doesn’t stick.

“When did you do this,” he mutters, turning the leaf over in his hand. He tries to imagine Stiles sneaking it into his pocket, wonders when and why, can almost see the smirk that would’ve been on Stiles’ face when Derek reached into his jeans and found it there.

He looks up and around the small space of the cabin again, and the empty room pops whatever bubble had been sluggishly inflating in his chest.

Derek misses Stiles then, sudden and sharp as a bone breaking. His brain throws the way Stiles had looked at him when Peter drove him off against the back of his eyelids, leads him to what John must’ve thought when Stiles went back alone and afraid, upset.

He should just throw the leaf away, he knows. Maybe just put it outside where it can blow away and break apart like all the others on the ground, go back to being no more special than that. He gets to the door and reaches for the handle, but his hand stalls in mid-air until he lets it drop.

An Alpha cannot have doubts.

Derek frowns and turns back into the room. He’ll leave it in the chest, just put it between the pages of one of the old books he’s seen Peter cram in there, and then he won’t have to think about it anymore.

The lid doesn’t creak when he opens the chest, hinges oiled and silent. There’s a smell that drifts up like old leather and paper, something earthier and richer like herbs covering over the dull scent of the clothes folded on one side.

He picks through the chest carefully, shifting clothes and a random collection of objects out of the way, passing them from hand to hand. He squints at a few ancient-looking scraps of paper covered in script he can't read. He picks up a knife with a bone handle inscribed with gold markings like runes, the blade made of pure silver, and pinned underneath it there's a photograph with worn edges, its colouring slightly faded, familiar faces beaming out.

Derek slides the leaf into the middle of a thin book, the lowest one in the pile with the least cracked spine and cover. The book goes back and he straightens as he reaches for the lid.

There's something on the bottom of the chest catching the light, and he pauses for a second before he leans back down to tug it free. It's a fine silver chain, but it's what's attached to it that Derek can't look away from: two lines of gold that curve together, branching out into thinner and delicate half-whorls that end in smoothed-down points to shape a pair of antlers, the symbol for one of the old gods.

It's a little tarnished, an antique, and Derek remembers seeing it the jewellery box in his grandmother's house, and then a lot more recently around Laura's neck when she'd gotten it as a birthday gift. She'd smiled so wide as their grandmother put it on her, and then practically never took it off again.

The necklace sits in Derek's hand, an innocent little timebomb. His thumb follows the shape of one antler without his permission, traces the faintly rough texture of a chipped point, the silvery chain spilling out of his palm and swinging gently, like a noose. Bile clogs his throat.

“I would’ve preferred if you’d asked before going through there.”

Derek jumps, spins and gets uneasily to his feet. Peter’s by the door Derek hadn’t even heard open, much less close again.

“Where did you get it?” he says, holding out his hand. The chain glitters sharply in the light.

Peter gives him a hard look. “Why do you insist on asking questions you already have the answers to?”

He swallows. “She was wearing this,” he says. “I remember.” She’d been helping with dinner, and Derek had seen her tuck it under her shirt when it dangled too close to the stovetop. She’d been laughing at something, one of their dad’s terrible jokes. He’d gone outside to play, and then everything was smoke and flames.

“I was going to tell you,” Peter says. “When you were ready. When things were a little less… precarious.” He steps forward, and Derek doesn’t mean to step back, but he does it anyway. Peter stops and sighs. “Try to separate your emotions from the facts,” he says, like it’s just any other lesson, one more thing Derek has to learn. “The truth is never quite what you think. Truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.”

Derek knows Peter can hear his heart, how fast it’s beating. He knows his face is giving away too much.

“I want the truth,” he says, even though he's not sure he does; once you know something you can't unknow it. Some doors you can't shut. He tries to think, to play to what might work. “I just want to understand,” he says, putting as much genuine pleading into it as he can. “So that it's easier to let go.”

Peter looks at him, stares, and Derek feels as if he's being vivisected one thought at a time, flayed open and examined.

“I tried to reason with her,” Peter says, and it takes more strength than Derek had to stay quiet, to stay standing. “But she was—She just wasn't the same, after everything that happened.” The words warp in Derek's ears, Peter's intent red stare shoving them deeper into his head. He tried to reason with her. She wouldn't listen. She was always so stubborn. It's not his fault, whatever happened. It's not—

“Where?” he asks, packing all the sound trapped in his throat into one little word, as calm as he can make it.

“She was living in New York,” Peter says, and it's—it's like it doesn't even touch him, like he's talking about someone he met once and hasn't thought about since. “You know what being an omega can do; she was irrational, refused to hear me out.” He sighs, a sad pinch around his mouth. “She attacked me, either because of trauma or maybe she just wanted the Alpha power for herself; she always was Talia's favourite, the one being groomed to take over.” He says that last part like he's commiserating – sharing something with Derek. How mighty we are, the fallen.

His hand closes over Derek's shoulder, all easy strength and unsubtle reminder.

"Are you going to be alright?" Again that tone, like he's not talking about Laura, about—and there’s something wrong at the back of his eyes, dark and watching.

"I'm fine," Derek says, perfectly flat as he meets Peter's gaze. "Thank you for telling me.” He counts his breaths, and waits for Peter to step away before he unclenches his hand. There are four red crescents embedded in his palm that go from pale to red, tiny drops of blood welling up even as the skin heals. He puts the hand in his pocket and grips the necklace, his pounding heart all he can hear.

Peter sighs. “I know it hurts,” he says, fingers digging into Derek's shoulder, hard enough they may as well be clawed. "I just hope that eventually it gets easier. Once we have a new pack – a new purpose, the pain will fade." He lets his hand drop. "I have one last thing to do, and then we’ll be free, and there'll be time to mourn. I promise."

Again Derek’s barely aware of the door opening, of the click when it shuts. He looks down at the necklace in his hand.

One last thing to do, and then we’ll be free.

His blood is cold and his heart feels hollow, pounding into his ribs. The breath in his body has turned solid like it’s frozen, but the name slips past his lips anyway:

“Stiles.”

| |

He gets hit with that feeling of being watched almost as soon as he’s back on the right side of the river.

It starts like a prickle between his shoulders, and he’d blame it on Scott’s shirt itching him if his stomach hadn’t suddenly frozen over, everything around him sounding and smelling sharper, adrenaline tingling in his fingertips.

Stiles flicks his eyes around and finds nothing. He pushes his body through a partial shift until reddish fur runs up his arms and along the back of his neck and ears, extends his hearing and smell as far as he can, but there’s nothing. Way too much nothing, actually. There’s not a single tweeting bird or anything rustling on the ground.

You’re being hunted, he feels like a drumming on his nerves or plucking them like strings, every second he stands still making him more and more tense. He needs to – has to get home, but that could just lead Peter right there, and his dad…

He could try and find Derek, but that idea goes sour when he wonders just what the chances are of Derek helping him if it means going against Peter. He glances back towards the river and thinks about making a run for Scott’s place, maybe he’d have more of a chance against an Alpha than Stiles or Derek would anyway.

There’s a crack like a tree coming down, noises that can’t be anything but heavy feet against the dirt, moving around him quicker and quicker, huffs of loud wet breaths.

All Stiles can do is run, even if he’s got no idea where he’s going. Even if there’s nowhere he can go.

| |

No matter how hard he tries, Derek can’t find a scent trail anywhere.

There’s no trace of either Stiles or Peter, the decay of too much time and weather clouding whatever’s left of Stiles’ and Peter somehow deliberately masking his own. Figures he has tricks he never planned to share, along with a lot of other things.

He heads for the house first, running so hard he stumbles more than once, paws denting the ground and ribs on fire. Bent and broken branches stick out, unnatural and telling, streaks and carved marks in the mud that could be nothing or could be scars left from an Alpha’s paws.

If Peter gets to Stiles first, or if he follows Stiles home… any anti-werewolf protections they could’ve laid down on or around the house were left off years ago for Derek’s benefit. He’s not even sure if John keeps a gun anymore.

His own breathing’s turned into a tidal roar, plant matter shredding as he leans all his weight forwards and runs harder, joints protesting and jaw clenched tight. Along with the red film covering everything he can’t stop imagining Laura’s face, or John’s the night he found Derek limping along all alone and half out of his mind.

Almost there, it hits him that Peter might still be able to stop him no matter what Derek plans to do, depending how deep the claws really go.

What the hell has he done? What’s he going to do?

The sound of an engine – a familiar engine – pulls him up short, leads him sideways out of the thicker clumps of trees and towards the thin, rough sketch excuse for a road.

John’s truck grinds against loose grit and stones, skids to a stop when he sees Derek run out in front of him. Derek shifts back so fast he barely even feels it, one rushed heave of everything he is, but John still gets out of the cab and makes it over to him before he’s done.

“Derek,” he’s saying when the ringing in his ears subsides. “Where is he? Have you found him?”

Derek frowns. “So you know about–”

“Of course I know,” John says, face rigid-blank, “he’s been missing for over a day.”

Derek’s gut swings open, drops into a pit and out of sight. “Stiles,” he says. “You’re talking about—Stiles is missing?”

John’s expression twists a little more, so far past fear or anger it’s a totally different species. “He’s gone,” he says, the words coming out pressed thin between his teeth. “I wasn’t—He was home and then he was just—”

Over a day. Which means he’s been gone since…

Something on Derek’s face must give him away, because suddenly John’s fingers are wrapped tight around Derek’s arm and he’s staring in a way Derek’s never seen from him before, eyes gone to hard ice.

“Where is he?” John asks. “Derek, where is he?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Peter—Peter’s gone after him, to—” punish me, to break me, it’s all my fault. “I think I can slow him down but you have to find Stiles and get him—just take him anywhere, as fast as you can.”

John’s eyes rove across his face, and Derek can’t stop to let the guilt and the fear buckle him, he can’t, even though it’s pulling at him like chains tethered to the ground.

“Go!” he says, and pushes at John’s shoulder as he turns away, already shifting again. The woods swallow him up and he doesn’t look back.

| |

Stiles is too busy looking and listening behind him to pay attention to where he’s going. He can hear the heavy sounds of Peter chasing him, the snap and rustle of trees and leaves. He trips over a thick length of tangled roots and staggers into a gap between the trees, an opening where there’s more light. He blinks at the sun overhead, looks around for somewhere to go with his pulse thumping in his ears, and now’s really not the best time to be thinking that he's never actually seen the Hale House in person.

It’s a sorry sight, blackened and ruined, a lot of it just plain gone, worn away by time and weather. Vegetation’s moved up one crumbled wall, green lines streaking the stonework like the aimless flicks of a paintbrush, small dull flowers and grass growing up everywhere.

He considers trying to hide inside, but visions of the staircase collapsing under him or the floor caving in to drop him into some dank tomb of a basement kill the thought pretty quickly. His skin crawls just peering into the shadows the old place casts on the ground.

A rustle and then a wooden crash make him jerk back around, and Peter steps out of the tree line. If Stiles didn’t know how easily his imagination runs away from him, he’d swear Peter was smiling.

Where Derek looks like a wolf or Stiles looks like a fox, out of his human skin Peter is a monster, plain and simple. He stands on his hind legs somewhere between a crouch and being fully upright, back ridged with a spine like a gnarled tree trunk and his face stretched into a nightmare's excuse for a muzzle, more teeth than Stiles thinks should fit into his mouth showing and shining wet. His eyes are red, blazing around black and beady pupils, and when they land on Stiles he freezes, stumbles back awkwardly.

He wants to run but his legs won't work right. He can hear Peter breathing, low and grating. There's nowhere for him to go.

A thumping scrape of something against the ground makes him look up, and then his breath’s escaping through his mouth as what he’s seeing registers.

Derek’s standing a few feet in front of him, shifted and snarling more like an animal than Stiles has ever heard from him. His paws are digging into the ground and his hackles are standing up, back bowed forwards with so much solid tension in every line of his body that Stiles doubts a tornado could move him more than an inch.

Peter’s eyes are glowing angry red, and the howl he lets out this time makes Stiles flinch, drives up from the soles of his feet into the gaps between his bones. It fills his head and grinds against his teeth, blocks out the pounding of his heart. Birds dart out of trees and into the sky and the woods go instantly still, silent. Derek twitches, just barely, and stays exactly where he is.

He wants to speak, to say something, but his tongue’s just as stuck as his legs and all he can think in a panicked rush is he’s gonna kill us both and I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry.

When Peter moves it’s so fast he actually blurs around the edges, gouged-up clods of dirt and loose stones clattering to the ground behind him, and when Derek leaps up, claws swiping at Peter’s chest, the sound of the collision cracks the air, explodes out in all directions. He sends Derek sprawling, dazed but already rolling to his feet, shaking his head and darting forward again. Peter gets halfway to Stiles before Derek slams into his side, jaw snapping and rubbed-raw snarls spewing out of his throat.

Again Peter swipes him away, bats him off like a fly with one massive, misshapen paw, and Stiles is tripping backwards even while he can’t look away from the bleeding slash marks in Derek’s side, bright red blood spattering and dripping on the ground. There’s blood oozing down Peter’s side too, but the vicious tears from Derek’s teeth are already closing up, new skin growing across them.

Peter makes an angry, frustrated noise and comes at Stiles again, and the adrenaline finally pushes past the fear wrapped around his legs. He spins and stumbles and runs as fast as he can, terror-clumsy and not good enough, and when pain flares white-hot up the back of his leg, spreads into his spine and washes out everything, he’s not even aware of how loud he screams beyond the faint buzzing in his throat.

He collapses to the ground, turning and trying to push away from where Peter’s looming over him, but the agony in his leg where his clothes and his skin and his muscles have been slashed open makes him dizzy, sets his stomach roiling. Bile burns at the back of his mouth, tears stinging his eyes, and when his vision swims he wonders if he’ll pass out before Peter manages to cut his throat.

There’s another heavy thud when Derek barrels into Peter’s back, clawing and snapping his jaws at the base of Peter’s skull. Peter whirls away from Stiles, turning to grasp at Derek. He slices into Derek’s legs and sides, but Derek’s planted every claw as deep as he can into the muscle of Peter’s back, shredding sick ribbons along with clumps of fur that land all around them. His teeth are buried low down in the back of Peter’s neck, head jerking and tugging with enough strength that any other animal would’ve already dropped dead with its spine snapped apart.

Peter staggers and spits, head craning to try and get his teeth into Derek’s throat or his side. He turns on a heel and drives a curled-up paw into Derek’s ribs, and Derek crumples and falls to the ground with a yelp, legs trembling and giving out one or two at a time when he tries to stand, black fur matted and turning red.

“Derek!” Stiles says, trying to get to his feet with his own leg torn up. “Just go! You can’t—”

The shotgun blast echoes like a thunderclap. The second one follows it, a dull boom that repeats again and again off into the distance, more birds scattering and the noise ringing in Stiles’ ears.

His dad’s already reloading, stepping slowly and steadily closer. The barrel snaps up and he fires again, catches Peter in the ribs, the chest, thwacks of buckshot digging into his flesh. Empty shells rattle hollow to the ground and Peter’s charging at him by the time he gets the gun raised again, the double impact knocking him backwards.

Stiles’ heart stops, stalls and won’t kick back in again. There’s a whine in his ears and his blood’s gone to ice.

The next shot hits Peter in the face, makes him howl as he turns his head and makes pained swipes at his eyes, barely three steps from Stiles’ dad. More blood lands in petal-bright splotches on the ground. Peter staggers and almost falls this time when Derek leaps and hacks at him, teeth ripping at the muscles in his legs. Another shot rings out and Peter drops to all fours, Derek stumbling but still going for his neck, his face.

“Stiles!” his dad yells, and it shakes him out of his paralysed stupor, limping around in a wide arc until he reaches his dad. “Get in the truck!”

“We can’t leave him!” he says, looking at Derek where he’s moving almost in slow motion, scoring every bit of Peter he can reach with teeth and claws. There are ugly marks all over him and god, there’s so much blood.

His dad looks at him, face tight and drawn. “We’re not going to,” he says, “but I’m not risking you.”

“I won’t go,” Stiles says, voice just as shaky as everything else. “I’m not—I won’t leave either of you.”

Peter snarls and tries to stand, but Derek darts around and rips at the backs of his legs, tendons fraying and stringing between his teeth, he ducks away from Peter’s next clumsy swing, but he looks barely conscious, chest heaving while he lists to the side.

Stiles’ dad steps forward, the gun raised, and when Peter’s jaw comes up towards him he fires, both barrels emptying across Peter’s muzzle and into his eyes, face dissolving in gore and the flash of the shots. The sound Peter makes turns Stiles’ guts on themselves, all inhuman pain and rage, and parts of him are changing, bulging and snapping and twisting as he loses control of the shift.

When Peter drops Stiles already knows he’s not getting back up, the way you can tell if something’s dead just by looking, the obvious lack of whatever essential thing makes up life. He’s still not completely human, body sluggishly moving between one shape and another, fur pulling back into skin but the bones are all wrong. He’s almost stopped healing now, staring up at the sky with red-rimmed eyes and a bloodied knife gash for a mouth.

“Stiles, help Derek!” his dad calls. He’s still holding the gun on Peter, finger braced near the trigger, but it’s down near his waist instead of propped against his shoulder; he’s just as aware of how dead Peter is as Stiles.

Derek’s shifted back, most of the wounds on his body gone or at least smaller, but he’s death-pale and there are raised red lines across his back like scores from a whip and blood still trickling out of nasty-looking cuts on his legs and arms, a massive bruise blossoming from his ribs on one side. But if he can still heal like a werewolf then he’s not in hugely immediate danger, Stiles reminds himself, helping Derek stand up as much as he can without putting weight on his own wounded leg.

They hobble to where Peter’s rasping at the sky, and his eyes find Derek when they get close enough, mouth working into a faint smile like he’s got fishhooks at the corners.

“I knew you had it in you,” he says, blood bubbling at the edge of his twisted lips. “I’m proud of you.”

“I didn’t want this,” Derek tells him. His voice is grating, dry. “I never—I’m sorry.”

Peter coughs, red trickling along his cheek. He looks at Stiles and then back at Derek, eyes sputtering into a glow like dying coals. “You’ve made your choice,” he says. His face contorts in pain or maybe anger, or both. “Finish it.” When Derek just keeps looking down at him he snarls and his teeth turn sharp, voice scraping in Stiles’ ears. “Finish it!”

Derek moves in one quick bow forward, hand swiping out with claws instead of nails. Stiles winces as Peter’s throat shreds, a last wet breath sighing out of him. The sun’s still shining down, and that seems wrong, doesn’t it? If this was a movie it’d be night and there’d be rain pouring, maybe a few good thunderclaps for effect.

He turns to look at Derek, watches his eyes go from gold to red, the marks on his body fading and sealing up while his hands clench tight by his sides, veins standing out sharply in his neck and arms. His jaw works until the spasms pass, and when he straightens there’s a difference in the way he holds his shoulders. He looks bigger, somehow, and still too much himself for it not to hurt.

“He was right,” Derek says, looking between Stiles and his dad. “He made me Alpha after all.”

Stiles swallows nervously, and he doesn’t know if the way he’s shaking is shock or adrenaline or something else.

“What happens now?” his dad asks, and if he’s feeling any of the sour anticipation Stiles is then he’s doing a good job hiding it.

Derek looks down at Peter – or what used to be Peter, just so much meat strewn on the ground now.

“We finish it,” he says, sounding distant. He glances up at them again. “We’ll need wood, and something to start a fire.”

| |

The makeshift pyre has dwindled down to ash and charred wood, and that’s as close as Stiles is willing to look at it. The smell of burning flesh – likea pot roast, he thinks and winces at himself – has mostly drifted off on the breeze, even though the smells of smoke and gasoline are probably never coming out of these clothes. He’ll have to apologise to Scott.

It’s probably fitting that Peter goes out in fire, that it takes the last of whatever’s left of who Derek remembers him as – who he wanted him to be. Stiles wants to feel glad that Peter’s gone for good, that the three of them are alive and more or less whole, but it’s just sad, watching the firelight on Derek’s face, family burning in front of him while their house stands like a propped-up corpse behind. Stiles wonders how far he would’ve gone to get some of it back if it’d been him, and can’t come up with an answer he likes.

He’s absently getting a (hopefully last) look at the house, the sun sliding down the sky, when Derek steps up next to him, looking decidedly weird in Stiles’ dad’s spare set of clothes from the truck. They make him look small even though the shirt pulls tight across his shoulders and arms, and he’s barefoot.

“Maybe it's cursed,” Stiles says, eyes following the shape of holes in the roof. He says it because it's what's going through his head and because one of them should say something.

Derek’s faced is mostly closed off when Stiles glances at him, looking into the emptied eye sockets of the building, at the nothing where there should be walls and the charring in the place of a floor.

“It's just a house,” Derek finally says, quiet. Stiles kind of wonders if he's talking to himself. “Not even that.” He looks at Stiles, over his shoulder at Stiles’ dad. “I know where my home is.”

Stiles swallows, blinks and looks at the house. Sometimes it's easier to look at something dead; dead is just another word for hollow, shells without anything that can cut you. “You sure?” he asks the slump of a beam, the gaping fish mouths of doorways.

He lets Derek turn his head with a coaxing hand on his nape, thumb fitting behind his ear. He breathes deliberately steady when Derek catches his gaze and won't let it go.

“I'm sure,” Derek says, and there's a second where Stiles thinks he's going to kiss him, realities where he does paving down in front of him, reactions piling on reactions and no idea where he’ll land. Derek nods them towards his dad, takes a step away, and Stiles follows him.

They're going home.

| |

Derek doesn’t know if he’ll ever get the smell of Stiles’ blood out of his nose.

The power rushing around and through him isn’t anything like he imagined, or like the dreams he’d had while Peter was still the Alpha, still in his head swirling everything around so Derek could never catch the edges of what was really happening.

God, he’s been so fucking stupid.

It’s not a long drive back to the house, but it feels like it just the same. Stiles is slumped next to Derek in the back of the truck, John sending glances at them through the rearview mirror as he drives. He doesn’t know the smell on Stiles’ clothes even though it’s definitely werewolf, and the way that twists something in his stomach just makes him curl tighter on himself, hands digging into his thighs so he doesn’t reach out, teeth closed on his tongue so he can’t spill words and make it worse.

Whatever’s happened is because Derek’s pushed it into happening. He’s got no right to complain about any of it, much less be jealous or possessive.

When they arrive John gets out and goes to prop the front door open, comes back to help Stiles out of the truck, taking his weight while Stiles’ injured leg swings off the ground between them. Derek sits in his seat for a second and tries to swallow what he thinks is probably a scream that’s rebounding around inside his head.

Stiles is looking back at him when he steps up to the house, face lined in pain and streaked with sweat, eyes hazy like he’s drugged. Derek can still smell him bleeding, the old penny stink and the hint of Peter trapped in the gash marks.

John puts in a call to someone, the forestry department or maybe Deaton from the few words Derek bothers to pay attention to. They’ll have to do something with the evidence of the pyre, he thinks, and it sticks as a sour lump in his throat. Maybe he’ll tell them to scatter the last dregs of Peter inside the house; who’ll notice a bit more ash?

“Derek?” Stiles says, and from his frown it’s not the first time. When Derek snaps out of it he says, “Am I gonna get some kind of werewolf rabies from this?” He lifts his leg a little off the ground. Derek manages to shake his head.

“You’re not human,” he says, and can’t help from looking at John. “Not enough for an Alpha’s claws to—You’ll be fine,” he says, and winces at how he sounds. It’s the first time any of them have actually said it.

“Still feels like it’s about to fall off,” Stiles says, grimacing down at his leg. He’s leaning back on the counter, an empty water glass next to his hand, the crumpled foil from a box of painkillers next to that.

“You should clean it,” Derek says. He hasn’t moved far from the door. If they want him to—

“Can you handle it?” John asks, and Derek forces himself into the eye contact even if he can’t quite stall the surprise from slipping across his face. It feels like he’s being asked more than just that one question. He nods, and after a few seconds John nods back, still looking pinched around the mouth.

“Great,” Stiles says, pushing off the counter, and Derek moves in to take his weight before he can think enough to stop himself. Stiles fists a hand in the back of Derek’s shirt – John’s shirt, and grumbles, “This week on supernatural animal hospital,” under his breath as they move through the living room towards the stairs.

There are little pieces of his life scattered everywhere he looks, his own face accusing him from pictures on the walls, and Derek’s stomach twists a little more.

| |

Stiles still hasn’t come up with anything to say by the time Derek’s hauled him upstairs and into the bathroom.

He hisses and swears under his breath while Derek insists on cleaning the claw marks on his calf, which are still bleeding sluggishly. Derek murmured something about wounds from an Alpha taking longer to heal than normal ones, but all Stiles’ effort is going into staying awake and not falling off the edge of the tub where Derek’s sat him.

There’s a lot of noise in his head, unfinished thoughts and things he doesn’t want to look at, and it’s the stupidest thing but the most coherent one is that there won’t be any hot water left if Derek keeps running the tap like that.

Derek’s frowning down at Stiles’ leg, kneeling on the floor and dabbing at it. Every now and then his eyes flicker red, like blowing on an ember. He wraps a bandage around Stiles’ calf and ties it tight, and a few minutes go by of him just kneeling there, thumb pressed to the edge of it where it meets Stiles’ skin. The marks are still throbbing along with his pulse, but he’s mostly too exhausted to care.

“You’ll be okay,” Derek says, and Stiles only jumps a little, lulled into a doze by the silence with his eyelids drooping.

“Yeah,” he says, swallowing when he realises how dry his mouth is. “Amputation would’ve sucked.”

Derek’s frown gets deeper for a second, and he sighs through his nose.

“That was a joke,” Stiles says. “You’re supposed to laugh. Or call me a moron. Something.” His voice is flat, just as worn out as the rest of him.

Without the hiss of the tap running Stiles hears it when Derek swallows, the little hushed breaths he’s taking. His hands are braced on the lip of the tub either side of him, and he can’t overcome his own inertia enough to move them, to put one on Derek’s shoulder.

“Stiles,” Derek starts and when he looks up Stiles just shakes his head.

“Don’t,” he says, and he’s glad he doesn’t have the energy to cringe at the way he sounds. “Don’t apologise. Don’t—” he sighs. “Just don’t, okay?”

Derek’s eyes slip away from Stiles’ face, but he nods. He puts an arm around Stiles’ waist and helps him hobble into their room, steps away once he’s got Stiles sitting on his bed. He wants more than anything to just lie down and sleep for a week.

“Do you hate me?”

Stiles’ head jerks up. Derek’s sat on his own bed, bowed over his knees with his hands clasped tight and squeezing at each other. His knuckles are so white they’re yellow. It almost looks like he’s praying, except for the way his eyes are glass-bright and looking at Stiles.

He swallows and rubs a hand over his mouth, presses at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. When he breathes it’s like sucking down something solid that clunks and bangs down into his lungs, bruises everything.

“I probably should,” he says, just about managing a shrug. Derek does a lousy job at hiding the flinch. “I mean, if I was ever gonna hate someone for something, this’d be a pretty good choice, right?” He puffs that rusted metallic air out of his mouth. “You shut me out,” he says, looking at Derek even though it stings, “like you promised me you wouldn’t. D’you get what it was like? Do you have any idea how we felt, being stuck here knowing you were just—just gone? That we couldn’t do a thing to get through to you?”

He sees Derek’s throat working, the muscles in his jaw. He’s looking down at his hands, and Stiles wonders if he’d even make a sound if he actually went and broke one of his own bones, or if he’d just sit there and let it heal, maybe break it all over again.

“I almost got killed,” he says, even though he has to push it off his tongue. Derek winces, shuts his eyes and turns his head away, and there’s a sick sourness in Stiles’ throat where the cork’s been pulled out of it, pain and anger and a thousand other things all blended together spilling from him, like ink. Like blood. “My dad almost—” he shakes his head, blinking through the pinpricks at the corners of his eyes. “I really fucking love you, you know that? Have done for like, half the time I’ve been alive. Even when I wanted to hate you – when I was sure I did hate you; when I thought I was never gonna fucking see you again. Couldn’t dig you out of me if I tried.”

His hands are shaking so he pins them to the bed, not much he can do about his chest or his heart or the burning wet track rolling down his cheek. “So I should hate you, should blame you at least. Probably shouldn’t want you anywhere near me. But you’re sitting there looking all screwed up and miserable and all I can feel is this—this stupid love all crammed behind my ribs, under my skin. And I could forgive you for all of it, just like that, I know I could, and if I was gonna hate you for anything that’d be it. But I don’t, okay, I—I can’t. I never learned how to hate you.”

Derek says something, or maybe just makes a noise without any words in it, but Stiles just sniffs and scoffs a laugh at himself that isn’t really a laugh. He’s not sure if there’s a word for the sound you make when no other sounds will come, when you can’t reach the tears or the scream and it’s just mangled air and a whine inside your head.

Stiles grinds the heels of his palms against his eyes, balls them into fists and drops them in his lap. He watches Derek unfold and step across the room the way you watch a car wreck, just waiting for everything to be still so you can count the pieces. Derek drops down in front of him, kneeling close to the side of Stiles’ bed. He reaches out a hand and Stiles doesn’t tell him not to; he puts his hand on Stiles’ knee and Stiles doesn’t brush it off.

“I don’t know how to make this better,” Derek says, and Stiles only remembers telling Derek not to apologise when it’s not an apology that comes out of his mouth. “I was wrong and I don’t—It’s not enough; nothing feels like enough. I’d promise I’ll never do anything to hurt you again, but you’re too smart to believe it.”

Stiles snorts, coughs to try and shift the lump in his throat. His eyes are stinging and his head’s aching, and every part of him is so heavy, sand in all his joints.

“I can promise to listen better,” Derek says, thumb fitting into the hollow behind Stiles’ knee. “That I won’t forget where I’m supposed to be – who I am – again.” He swallows and again Stiles can hear it. “And that I won’t ever leave you alone as long as I have a choice.” His forehead drops down onto Stiles’ knee, and when he looks up again his face is intent, eyes not leaving Stiles. “I promise I’ll always choose you.”

He doesn’t know how long they’re frozen like that, just staring at each other, before Stiles nods, puts his hand on Derek’s.

“Okay,” he says, all he can manage to string together, and Derek’s expression splits, so much gratitude it hurts to look at. Stiles grips his hand until it hurts, until it’s the only hurt that really registers. He pulls and Derek gives easily, comes up onto the bed while Stiles shifts backwards. He tugs until Derek’s lying down next to him, watching his face in a fragile way Stiles has never seen, save for a hint of it after that first kiss in the clearing in what he has to remind himself wasn’t years or a lifetime ago.

“Fucking sick of sleeping by myself in here,” Stiles says. He’s still got hold of Derek’s hand between them, like a peg fixing him to the mattress. “So if… if you wanna make things better, you can start with that.”

Derek breathes, one long shudder that taps a rhythm on Stiles’ skin, then he moves so they’re fitted together, Stiles ducking his head until he’s in the space under Derek’s chin. Derek grabs at the sheet and drags it over both of them, exhales sliding over Stiles’ scalp.

The exhaustion winds around him again, body slowly loosening into all the heat Derek’s putting off. He can’t remember ever being as tired in his life, can’t open his eyes or move his limbs or even feel the pain in his leg anymore. The soft numbing blackness takes him, and he feels more than hears Derek murmuring words into his hair.

| |

When Derek wakes up he decides to leave Stiles sleep. It’s closer to afternoon than morning, and he can hear John moving around downstairs.

He pulls on some of his own clothes, and takes the stairs one at a time.

John’s standing at the sink paused in the middle of washing a stack of plates like his batteries had just run down. There’s a mug of coffee next to him, curls of steam rising out of it, and tucked up against the wall by the window their old radio’s playing something, a voice drifting in and out.

Derek’s wondering whether to cough, maybe scuff his foot to make a noise, when John turns around. He doesn’t look surprised. He looks at Derek with a heavy expression, drying his hands on a towel slowly. From the bags under his eyes Derek guesses he hasn’t slept; he’s wearing the same clothes Derek saw him in last.

“Time we had a talk?” he asks, rhetorical and amazingly neutral. He tucks the towel into the bars of the rack and points at the table. “Mind if we sit? My knees are giving me enough grief already.”

He nods, pulls out a chair and sits down. He remembers to breathe but it’s not easy. John sits down opposite him with a faint groan, and like this Derek can see him perfectly as he would’ve been as a town sheriff, hands clasped on the faded and dented wood, a watchful light in his eyes. The comparison to an interrogation room doesn’t settle his nerves much.

“I don’t know where to start,” Derek admits after a long moment. “An ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t seem like enough.”

John’s eyes dip to the table and he lets his breath out slowly. “Try starting from the beginning.”

Another nod, and a sigh, and he tries to decide where the beginning is.

He makes himself go over everything: his time with Peter, Stiles trying to convince him to see what was happening to him; the moment he realised how much he’d been turned around and used, wound up like a toy. His voice is a flat scrape in his ears, faltering in more than one place, and his hands curl tighter around themselves the further into his own mistakes he pushes, like prodding at a wound. He can’t bear more than a glance at John, at the warring contortions on his face and the way he shifts in his chair like he wants to stand or leave.

Somewhere around Peter’s death, at his inheritance of power he can still feel coiled underneath all his vital parts, charged with so much terrifying potential, he has to stop, swallow around a rasp. He’d glossed over what Peter did to Stiles, partly for John’s sake but mostly for his own; if he thinks about what he let Peter do he’s not sure he’d ever want to talk again, but there’s no smoothing past what he’s done himself. John was there, saw it all, even absent some of the context it’s still—

“I took a life,” he hears himself say, like the words are travelling down a long tunnel. “I... I killed someone, and I don't—” I don't know what that makes me. I don't like that I don't regret it. His eyes are itching and he’s still glaring at the tangled mess of his fingers, the skin over his knuckles sickly yellow and red around the edges.

“Look at me, son.”

Derek twitches in his seat, head snapping up. Not once has John called him that, and Derek's never called him anything close to Dad. It’s so heavy, that little word. He’d forgotten.

“You saved a life,” John says, eyes intent but still somehow distant, maybe sad. “Two lives, if you count mine.” He lets a breath out through his nose. “I know it might not make it easier, and I know you… made some bad choices, but you did the right thing in the end – the only thing you could.” His mouth quirks, not a smile, too complex. “You saved my son,” he says, eyebrows lifting. “It’s not in me to be anything but grateful for that.”

He pulls his lips between his teeth. One of his knuckles pops as he unclenches a hand. “I feel like all I've ever done is take from you.”

John’s head tips to the side, eyes showing something Derek can’t trace the edges of. “Then you haven't been paying attention,” he says. “I don’t blame you. I blame Peter, and… and myself, to a point.”

Derek lets that settle, manages a nod. “I know Peter manipulated me, used his power to—But I think I was running away,” he says, hands spreading out on the table. “Not from you, or from Stiles. I think I wanted to just leave some piece of myself behind. The piece that felt guilty for coming into your home and—For Stiles.” He snorts, dry and empty of anything funny. “The piece that thought maybe I should never have made it out of that fire.” John’s watching him when he looks up, and suddenly he looks lined, tired and bending under too much, and here Derek is pushing another weight across the table. He swallows. “I just wanted to run.”

John takes a slow breath, glances away and then back at Derek. “So did I,” he says. Derek frowns, mouth trying to shape words, say something, but John carries on. “I used my job to run from my dying wife, and then I used my pain to run away from my job. I kept running until my son had no one but a father who was only half there.” His mouth twists up, parodying a smile. “It’s too easy to run, sometimes. Staying still is what takes effort.”

Derek swallows, nods. “Yeah.”

“And now?” John asks, leaning back in his chair a little.

“Now…” Derek sighs, leaning back too, imagines both of them trying to get away from the seeping edges of what they’ve upturned across the kitchen table. “Now I learn to be still.”

John nods. “Not as easy as it sounds,” he says, “but it’s worth it.”

| |

Everything that happened to both of them works itself loose slowly, like shrapnel.

Stiles hates second guessing himself around Derek – for the second time now too, but this time everything feels more fragile, more balanced on a knife-edge than when all he had to worry about was their constant messy urge to be all over each other. He catches himself reaching out and snaps back into his own space so hard it jolts his bones, and Derek’s doing the same thing only with glances he tries to hide and the way he spends as little time alone with Stiles as possible.

He’s not stupid, hell when it comes to Derek he’s basically fluent, so he gets what’s going through Derek’s head when he steers clear of conversations, or when he looks at Stiles’ dad like he’s surprised, the way he skirts around the edges of jumping in when they’re all together. When he's not packing his expression into boxes behind his eyes, shoving them into corners Stiles can't see whenever he gets a look at the pink-white parallel scars on the back of Stiles’ leg. It’s poetic, or at least appropriate, Stiles thinks, that he heals so fast but keeps the scars, just like anything else. A slice of life and a slice of flesh, spot the difference.

It’s fucking exhausting, remembering and dealing with all the shit they have to live with, trying to cope with thinking that maybe Derek doesn’t want to be what they used to be before Peter. The guilt all over Derek’s face when he slips up and brushes a hand against Stiles’ hip or says something without meaning to speaks for itself.

Aside from the urge to grab Derek by the shoulders and shake him – or something else – to get in his face and just yell at him for whatever pattern of self-imposed exile he’s got himself stuck in, Stiles is also going out of his mind every night when they do an awkward dance of pretending they want to sleep in separate beds. After they got Derek back, back as himself, and Stiles’ feelings sort of exploded everywhere, he thought maybe they were at least back on the right track. Apparently not, since Derek’s up and conveniently busy or gone outside alone by the time Stiles is even awake.

Honestly he’s getting pretty lonely, and that’s just making their stepping so lightly around each other feel worse.

Whatever Derek talked about with his dad – and Stiles knows there was a talk even if nobody’s gonna tell him what the hell went on, no matter how many times he prods and whines about it – seems to have smoothed things over most of the way, but Stiles still sees his dad giving Derek these sad, frustrated looks every so often, usually after Derek starts to snark back at Stiles and then clams up like he swallowed his tongue.

“He’s like a freaking ghost!” Stiles says, dropping onto the couch next to his dad, glass of milk sloshing a tiny bit over the back of his fingers.

It’s Sunday, and Stiles’ stomach is already turning into twisted shapes about how uncomfortable it’s gonna be to sit through Deaton’s schoolwork with Derek right there.

His dad sighs, shuts off the TV and turns to look at him. There’s a binder on the opposite side of him, and Stiles adds the little stack of papers talking about life insurance for an almost endless list of Hales to the pile of things they’re not talking about.

“He’ll come around,” he says, the same thing he’s been saying to Stiles for nearly two weeks now. “You’ve both been through a lot.”

Stiles makes a face. “How’s he supposed to ‘come around’ if he won’t even talk to me.” He frowns down into his glass, swallows. “Did he say anything to you about—”

“I’m not helping you go around him,” his dad says with a faint twitch at the corner of his mouth, and Stiles deflates into the back of the couch.

“Ugh, fine,” he says. “Maybe it’s just the Alpha thing; y’know he doesn’t even shift around me anymore? Like some kinda supernatural constipation.”

“Why don’t you try asking him?” his dad suggests, eyebrows quirking up and his head tilting. It’s exactly the way he said it when they were kids and Stiles wanted to borrow Derek’s stuff, which just makes him feel a thousand times as pathetic.

“How d’you know I haven’t?”

“By ‘asking’ I don’t mean sticking to his shadow and making pleading faces until he tells you something,” his dad says, giving him a look when Stiles makes a show of being offended. He puts a hand on Stiles’ arm and gets way too much enjoyment out of saying, “Use your words, son.”

“You’re no help at all,” Stiles says, pointing at him.

His dad just shrugs one shoulder. “Relationships are about communication,” he says, like he’s serious but still enjoying Stiles’ pain a little too much. He snorts when Stiles groans and slaps a hand over his face.

“Fine,” he huffs, in a tone that suggests the guillotine is gonna swish downwards any second. “But if he eats me or buries me in the woods you’ll be sorry.”

His dad hums. “But think how much we’d save on groceries,” he says, smiling when Stiles’ hand goes over his heart.

He downs the last of the milk while he tries to imagine that conversation actually going well, winces when he hears himself saying are you breaking up with me? with a straight face.

“You’ll be fine,” his dad says, squeezing Stiles’ shoulder. “You’ve been through worse and made it out okay.”

“What if he’s changed his mind?” just sort of drops into his lap, makes him cringe at himself.

“Changed his mind,” his dad repeats, sighing when Stiles looks over at him with who knows what all written all over his face. “About…that thing we agreed I know nothing about so long as you’re being safe?”

“Ohgod,” Stiles mutters, facing the ceiling. “Forget I said anything.”

“I’ve been trying for years,” his dad says. “It’s never worked.”

Stiles has decided to dedicate his life to gaining the power to sink through the floor at moments like this. “No really,” he says, still looking up at the faint cracks in the ceiling. “I said nothing. I was never here.”

“Stiles,” his dad sighs, and Stiles can hear the face he’s making. “If you – if the two of you really want to work that out, then—”

“Talk to each other?” Stiles guesses. God, that morning in the kitchen feels like so long ago now. So many things feel smaller, pettier.

“You got it,” his dad says, a little smug Stiles thinks.

“That playbook of yours is kinda just a pamphlet huh?”

His dad snorts. “Maybe there’s a reason for that,” he says, eyebrows arranged into a significant look.

“Great,” Stiles sighs, scratching at his neck. “Just talk. About our feelings. And hope he doesn’t glare me into dust.”

“It’s a risk you’ll have to take,” his dad says.

“You’d avenge me, right?”

“Stiles.”

“Can I go now?”

“Please do,” his dad breathes, slumping forwards a little.

Stiles gets up, leaves his empty glass on the coffee table. When he passes the back of the couch he leans down and plants a kiss on the top of his dad’s head. “Sorry about all the impending therapy.”

“I’ll manage,” his dad tells him, reaching up to pat Stiles on the shoulder. “Now go be a grownup. It’s no fun but it’s all you’ve got.”

Stiles snorts, gives his dad a hug around the top of his chest, dodges back at the attempt to ruffle his hair. “Love you, Dad,” he says, getting upright with his mouth in a crooked smile, maybe a little shaky.

His dad’s reply of, “You too, kiddo,” follows him out the door.

| |

Derek’s not hard to find.

Stiles walks through the woods, following the line of Derek’s sneaker prints, little depressions in the soft ground. He shoves his hands into his hoodie pockets against the breeze. It’s sunny, bright in a thin and brittle sort of way, almost wintery even if it’s near the end of spring, the year taking its time warming up like it’s waiting for something. Or, okay, maybe Stiles is just projecting.

Derek’s facing unerringly in Stiles’ direction once Stiles reaches him. Fucker probably knew he was coming the moment he left the house.

“So here’s the thing,” Stiles says, stepping over a tree root. “We’re both kinda short on friends, so avoiding each other really isn’t doing it for me.”

Derek’s got his arms crossed over an old wrinkled tee that’s stretched tight at his shoulders, mud on the hems of his pants and a pale strip of bare ankle showing at the top of one sneaker. Stiles wonders how close he got before Derek decided to shift back and pull his clothes on.

“You scared to shift in front of me now?” he asks. He walks closer, until he’s maybe a couple of arm’s lengths away. Derek’s face is set in stone, but his eyes are wary and he’s the poster child for defensive body language. When he takes the time to look Stiles can see where Derek’s sightline has to slant upwards just a little to meet his own, where Derek’s got more muscle than Stiles remembers but the circles under his eyes are way too familiar, grayish-purple and etched in, hair flat in some places and stuck up messily in others.

“I’m not avoiding you,” Derek says, hands dropping to his sides. His jaw clenches and unclenches in a quick rhythm. “I’m just… giving you space.”

“Wow,” Stiles says, blinking. “That’s a really neat distinction there, big guy.”

Derek sighs. “I don’t know what you—I don’t know what to do,” he says, while Stiles is busily imagining endings for that first sentence. He looks off over Stiles’ shoulder, a flash of something on his face that makes him look young – he is young, Stiles corrects himself, they both are, or at least they’re supposed to be. He’s not sure how ‘young’ is meant to feel.

He takes a breath to speak but Derek cuts in first.

“I’m the Alpha, but I don’t—” His hand shrugs out at some undefined thing around them. “I’m not a leader,” he says, resigned, like it’s a massive character flaw, like he’s failed a test nobody even set him as far as Stiles remembers. “I don’t know how to be a leader.” His eyes click to Stiles like he can’t stop himself, and not for lack of trying. “I don’t trust myself, not after what I did – what Peter did.” He trips over the name and Stiles can see the way his throat constricts on a swallow. “What I let him do.”

There’s so much tension and misery pouring off him Stiles almost takes another step in, instinct telling him to get close, to distract Derek from the mess inside his head the way they always have for each other. Had. Fuck, even the tenses are killing him at this point.

“I kinda think you’ve made up for that,” Stiles says, voice trailing out gentler than maybe he meant it to. “And I remember being, uh, pretty open about where I stood with—” He waves a hand between them, scratches at his cheek when it itches hot. “With how I feel.” Feel, not felt, he got it right that time.

“That doesn’t excuse any of it,” Derek says, taking one small part of a step in Stiles’ direction. One giant leap for wolfkind, Stiles thinks stupidly. “Doesn’t mean that I’m…”

He shakes his head, and a long list of nothing good scrolls through Stiles’ brain to fill the gap like a painful round of Mad Libs. Doesn’t mean I’m safe? Worth it?

“Still trying to protect me?” he asks, clenching his fingers tight in his pockets and driving himself the rest of the way forwards, doesn’t stop until they’re almost toe-to-toe. “Aren’t we past that yet?”

Derek snorts, but the look he gives Stiles is heavy. He swallows, mutters, “Not sure I’ll ever get past it,” with a fragile creak in his voice, thin an uneven.

He doesn’t duck away when Stiles reach out, doesn’t even look away. Maybe he can’t. Maybe he’s as fly-in-amber trapped as Stiles feels with his fingers brushing Derek’s jaw, rough hairs pricking at his skin.

“You don’t just protect me,” Stiles says with his throat all dried up. The backs of his knuckles go down Derek’s jawline to the side of his neck, and he doesn’t drop his hand until he sees the shiver that spills from Derek’s shoulders, until he’s sure that he didn’t imagine it. “We protect each other. Even if we haven’t been doing such a good job lately.” He puffs a shred of air through his nose. “Even if I have to protect you from you.”

This close he can see all the little chunks of expression Derek’s trying to hide under the painful grind of his jaw, the way his eyes skid over Stiles’ face and then off into nothing. Like he can’t hear the sprint Stiles’ pulse is doing when he raises his hand again and fits his palm to the back of Derek’s neck, fingers in the soft hair at his nape.

“Nothing’s the same,” Derek says, so thin Stiles is amazed it doesn’t crack, doesn’t dip into a whisper. “You were right. I changed without even noticing it.” There’s a dry little tap when he swallows, licking at his lips and looking somewhere in the direction of the ground. His eyes shut when Stiles’ thumb brushes under one of them, over the little veins in the bruise-dark circles, his lashes black and thick against his papery skin, and Stiles imagines a blink that sounds like the shuff of old pages with things written in the margins, little slanted secrets.

“I wish I’d been wrong,” he says. “I wish you could’ve gotten back something… something other than what you got.” He smiles wanly even if Derek doesn’t see it. “I'm sorry too. I guess nobody really wins here, in the end.”

“I promised you I’d do better,” Derek says, another race he thinks he’s lost. “And I know you—But if you wanted to wait, I’ll...” He catches the confused frown on Stiles’ face. “As long as it takes,” he says, struggling to keep his voice on a level plane. “You should know that.”

Stiles’ heart is making way too much noise now, chest snapping tight around it. His thumb trails down Derek’s cheek to the corner of his mouth. “Do you trust me?” he asks, not letting the words pick up dust in his head, just pushing them out.

Derek’s eyes open slowly, heavily. They’re stuck between blue and green when Stiles looks, pale with deep yellow ringed around his pupils. He sweeps his thumb over Derek’s bottom lip before he can think too much about it. Thinking hasn’t gotten them much of anywhere lately.

“Yes,” comes out of Derek’s throat, absent the breath it should take to say it, and an uneven, newborn little smile pulls at Stiles’ mouth.

“So just trust me,” he says, and tightens his fingers just a little on Derek’s skin before he slots their mouths together thinking this is it this is us we are not a mistake.

Needy is one word for the sound Derek makes, for the way Stiles feels. Desperate is another word, and there’s more and more of them queuing up behind the imperfect press of the kiss by the time Derek moves, reacts, and kisses back. He’s got a hand pulling at Stiles’ side, fingers snagging in his clothes, little twitches defining the edges of his body like hasty sketches, and Stiles keeps his eyes open even if everything’s blurry and all he can feel is the chapped slide of Derek’s lips on his, even if he can’t see the burning splinters of light that have to be lancing out of his chest by now.

The kiss blows apart and comes together into another one, again and again with a little more force each time until Stiles is counting down to bloodshed and counting up from bruises, from the hot swollen feeling and the way his blood is bubbling as it careens all through him, blots his cheeks and narrows down into his hips to fill his dick.

“Maybe we should—” he starts, slurs against Derek’s mouth. “The house.”

Whatever Derek tries to say ends up as just a mishmash of consonants and a low hum when Stiles licks deeper into his mouth. “Out here,” he says, nosing over Stiles’ cheek before Stiles chases his mouth down again.

“Perv,” he says, with a little crackling excuse for a laugh, but he gets it, can feel it, the cool air just making his skin feel hotter and the endless open sky adding to the giddy rush that makes him wanna run without ever stopping or cry out and see what answers. The feeling that outside is where they should be, free and together with their trees standing watch.

He laughs again at their ridiculous and ungainly collapse onto the ground, Derek grabbing his shoulder and his hip and rolling so Stiles is braced over him out of the damp grass and mud, hands on Derek’s shoulders and knees digging into the earth. Stiles might’ve made a joke about chivalry not being dead if he wasn’t busy ducking down to fit his mouth around the point of Derek’s Adam’s apple, stubble stinging his already buzzing mouth when he grins at Derek’s full body shudder.

They don’t do much more than get their shirts off and yank their pants open, rut together like the teenagers they’re supposed to be. Stiles is honestly more focused on staring down at Derek’s shifting expression and feeling heat shift in his chest at the way Derek’s eyes are doing the same thing, a mirror of obvious need they’re both holding up.

There are a couple of awkward, halting moments when neither of them can decide what they want to do first or most, and end up trying to do everything at the same time.

“This is the part where you should be kissing me,” he says, figuring start simple, right? Derek ducks down, presses his lips to the edge of Stiles’ jaw, along to the middle of his throat, up to the point of his chin.

It’s – and here's a word Stiles has never had a reason to use in his life – worshipful, like he's something precious and holy instead of gangly and sweating and cursing under his breath while Derek's mouth maps the shape of his chest, up to his shoulders.

“On the mouth,” Stiles says, trying to sound annoyed, but he's still smiling by the time Derek makes it that far, kissing his mouth at each corner then working him open with slow flicks of his tongue, and all Stiles can do then is groan.

He arches up into the skim of Derek's fingers over his belly, his chest, moans when they brush across his nipples. It's like Derek's forgotten the shape of him, with the way he breathes and lets out tiny noises against Stiles’ lips, slowly lets the kisses turn deeper and wetter. Stiles can feel Derek's dick hot and hard against his stomach, rubbing against his own and making him leak.

It’s a lost cause trying to clean up after, but Stiles can’t make himself care. He sits against a tree, rough bark poking him through his shirt, while Derek leans against it with his shoulder, body angled close. Stiles shivers when the wind changes direction.

“Cold?” Derek asks him, hands smoothing up and down Stiles’ back.

“No,” he says, turning his face into Derek’s neck anyway, pulling in a breath and letting it out slowly. He plants a kiss just under Derek’s ear. “You all done hiding now?”

Derek doesn’t answer right away but he doesn’t pull back either, hands only stalling for a second. He nods faintly, nose brushing Stiles’ temple.

“Yeah,” he says, breath stirring Stiles’ hair. “It wasn’t helping anyway.”

Stiles’ hand rests in the middle of his chest, presses over his sternum where his heart’s thumping. Even if Stiles isn’t cold, Derek’s skin is still warmer than his, solid and smooth. Derek watches him wriggle upright, face nowhere near as guarded now.

“Show me,” Stiles says, fingers drifting down Derek’s arm.

Derek looks at him for a second, then he puffs a small breath out of his nose and his lips quirk up the tiniest amount.

The shift snaps over Derek’s body faster than Stiles is used to; instead of a gradual change from his shoulders to his feet it pulls outward from his chest, makes him arch. Stiles sits up and scoots back as Derek’s skin sprouts black fur and his eyes flare bright red, muscles bunching and bones pulling over each other.

He’d been bracing himself for something… well, Peter-esque. But Derek’s nothing even close. He’s definitely bigger, even sat crouched on his haunches, more muscle mass and a longer muzzle, eyes still red even if they’re not glowing, paws probably twice the width they were. He tilts his head at Stiles, nose twitching, and Stiles couldn’t stop the grin if he wanted to.

“Dude, you’re a direwolf,” he says, smile getting even wider when Derek snorts, warm breath brushing on Stiles’ face. He reaches out and buries a hand in the fur on the side of Derek’s neck, and he’s pretty sure that’s thicker too, even more heat coming off the skin underneath. Oh, Stiles is so doing Game of Thrones for Halloween this year.

Derek leans in and butts his head on Stiles’ shoulder, just that tap enough to almost knock him flat. He sniffs behind Stiles’ ear, down and under the pit of his arm until Stiles laughs and shoves at him.

“Okay, okay,” he says, hand patting Derek’s side, “you’re the prettiest wolf at the ball and I’m swooning, now change back. Conversation’s supposed to go two ways.”

He tries to keep track of the way Derek’s wolf shape slots back into his human one, like a puzzle where the whole picture is smaller than the pieces, or one of those ones where you rearrange the tiles, but he can’t. Derek’s eyes are the last thing to switch back, the red fading into green and flecks of gold after his fangs shrink down to ordinary teeth.

“Oh stop smirking,” Stiles says, flicking him on the ridge of a collarbone.

Of course Derek’s smirk just gets wider. “You think I’m pretty,” he says, batting his eyelashes, and that really shouldn’t work, shouldn’t have any effect on how level Stiles’ stomach feels or the way his heart beats. Stiles thumps him on the shoulder purely out of principle, then ends up shaking the pain out of his fingers.

“Nice to know being made of bricks is an Alpha special feature,” he says, opening and closing a fist until the throbbing stops. “Is there an Alpha’s dream house or a speedboat you can buy separately?”

Derek snorts and rolls his eyes, and Stiles hand flaps between them when Derek kisses him before he just puts it on Derek’s side and keeps him close, groans into his mouth.

“Okay,” he murmurs, swallowing, hand moving up Derek’s chest. “How ‘bout we head home?”

| |

Derek has to teach himself to fit in all over again.

Things are… better, but he still snags on moments he wouldn’t have before. Like a gift he’s not sure how to accept, he lets himself reach back when Stiles draws him in, pulls at Derek with that specific gravity of his. He listens to Derek’s awkward unspooling of what went on with Peter, looks at Laura’s necklace in the palm of Derek’s hand with a blank, far-off expression before he meets Derek’s eyes again, gets him to close his fingers around it before he slants their mouths together.

“D’you believe him? About... about your sister?”

Derek sighs. “I don’t know,” he says. “I think there was probably some truth in everything he said. That made it all easier to swallow.”

Stiles makes a face, nods. “Right.”

“He killed her,” Derek says, voice scraping. “Whether it was because she wanted his power or because he went after her for it, doesn’t really matter now. She’s dead. She was out there all that time, and I didn’t even—” He swallows, shakes his head.

Stiles reaches out and takes his hand, thumb sliding over the back of his palm. “But she was out there,” he says. “And if she was then there could still be others.” He quirks a small smile and Derek had nearly forgotten what that does to him. “You’re the big boss man now,” Stiles says, and Derek snorts as he turns his hand over so they’re palm-to-palm. “Who knows, maybe... maybe someone’ll come looking for you.”

He doesn’t know whether or not to hope.

The necklace goes on the table by Derek’s bed, hanging off a lamp, catches the light, turning slowly.

Beyond the added strength, the almost arrogant feeling of power, the awareness he has now alternates between scaring him to death and rushing through his head like a drug. He knows where Stiles is without realising he’s following him with smell or hearing, can’t stop tracking his heartbeat around the house or in the woods, over more distance than he’s ever managed with a careless lack of effort. He hates feeling uncontrolled, like he’s betraying himself again.

When they crawl into the same bed at night the neediness that climbs up Derek’s spine comes close to a physical pressure that only goes away when Stiles mutters under his breath about Derek being a martyr and brings them even more tightly flush together. He pulls Derek in to give him an excuse for the way he buries his face in Stiles’ hair or the soft skin under his arms, anything that makes breathing feel like something his body is supposed to do automatically without him forcing it, without it burning or tingling in his fingers and behind his eyes.

He vacillates like a skipping needle between kissing Stiles with slow soft brushes across his mouth, to dragging them against each other to swallow every noise Stiles can’t stop even when his father’s sleeping across the hall or puttering around in the next room. He leaves bruises he doesn’t mean to and feels his gratitude hollow him out when Stiles makes Derek look him in eye when he says it’s okay, that he’s never minded. The same gratitude and something animal-rough that scores his throat when Stiles bites at his lips or squeezes his fingers around Derek’s wrists when they grind from shoulders to hips to knees until Derek spills, smears a mess between them that makes Stiles’ slide against him, slick and dirty-sounding while they muffle words into whatever skin’s closest.

He wants more, always more, always further, blood gone thick and hot when he thinks about Stiles opening up for him again, about fitting them so tight and snug they turn into a closed circle, and he doesn’t know what’ll happen when Stiles figures it out, when he inevitably holds himself up as a picture of everything Derek wants and feels like he has no right to take. Stiles refuses to let him shut his eyes even when they burn that savage red, pushes him to face himself and know himself and takes it all in with his own kind of hunger, the new Derek disassembled for him to pick through and understand, maybe with a few less scraping edges when he puts the pieces back together.

It’s worse when they go out shifted, in some ways. Derek teaches himself slowly to ease up about how far into the woods Stiles gets before he follows along, doesn’t linger too much with taking in his scent the way his instincts clamour at him to. Stiles runs around him, tail flicking and eyes cunning-bright, goads Derek out of idleness that never feels as much like a safety net as Derek stupidly hopes it will. He learns to not kick and shove at the lazy, contented feeling when Stiles curls up against his side, nose shoved into Derek’s fur and tail tucked around himself; instead he breathes slowly and arranges himself into a half-arc like a barricade, listens to the steady tick of Stiles’ heartbeat.

There’s less of a hunch to John’s shoulders after he notices them bickering – or just managing to occupy the same space without one of them walking away unhappy, and the feeling of normality, of tension lifting, still sometimes halts Derek in his tracks with the way they trust him, let him in. Let him stay. Maybe eventually he’ll catch up with them.

| |

Somehow in the tangled mess of all that, Derek managed to forget the most basic fact, the thing that’s pulled them forward since the beginning, that’s kept them going. He forgot that Stiles is braver than he is.

He stands in their room, close to the door since there’s not a lot of floor space left. He wonders what his expression’s telling Stiles right now, how much he’s broadcasting.

“I know this might be a little, uh…” Stiles says, standing near the wall and scratching at his neck. “And I know you said you’d wait. But we’re… we’re getting there, right? And I just figured, waiting only ever seems to make it worse, so.” He gestures to the middle of the room, the rearranged haphazard stacks of stuff, the desk pushed against the corner, and both their beds connected by a stretched-out double sheet, a big declarative square in the middle of the carpet.

Derek looks from the beds – the bed, you can’t even see the dip between the single mattress – to Stiles.

“I—You’re sure?” he asks even though he doesn’t really want to, swallowing and wishing he was the kind of person who could just accept things like this when they happen.

Stiles lifts a shoulder in a shrug that’s not as casual as he thinks, not when his eyes are so flinty, guarded, waiting for the sound of the other shoe. “I’m not changing my mind,” he says, tipping his chin up, pure defiance, and Derek loves him with such an intensity in that moment that he can’t breathe, can’t make his heart tick over, one skipped beat melting into another.

“Thank you,” is what he says, and Stiles smiles even if he doesn’t know the weight behind it. Or maybe he does. Why should now be any different?

Stiles ducks around the new arrangement of furniture and steps up into Derek’s space. He puts a hand on Derek’s chest.

“There are other people,” Derek says, looking at Stiles' hand on him. “A whole world of them. If you—” He feels like he's pulling his voice out on length of wire, coiling it on the floor next to him. It makes his mouth taste like metal, like fear.

Stiles slants a look at him. “But they're not you,” he says, even. “Which, as it turns out, is kind of a sticking point for me.” His mouth tics up and back down, a little mayfly smile. He sounds fond, exasperated when he says, “And who was I ever gonna love if not you, huh?” He smiles again when Derek can't come up with a response, the cord of all his words still sitting useless by his feet.

“Not sure what that says about your taste,” he says, falling under the wire of the joke.

“It probably says we're both really messed up,” Stiles tells him, mouth still flickering at the corners. He leans in and his lips turn soft against Derek's cheek, along his jaw. “But at least we're not boring.” Derek feels him grin when he can’t stop the surprised little snort.

Stiles pulls back to look at him. “So. You wanna come to bed with me?”

There’s an elated little bubble inflating just below Derek’s neck, like an adrenaline rush that makes his fingers feel cold when he puts his hands on Stiles’ hips.

“It’s early,” he points out, like Stiles hasn’t noticed the light coming through the window, evening seeping in wrapped in slowly dimming shades of blue.

“Not that early,” Stiles says, eyes latched tight onto Derek’s, fox’s eyes and a fox’s smile.

“Your dad’s downstairs.”

A shrug. “Technically I can claim this was all his idea,” Stiles says, then before Derek can ask he says, “Are you really trying to talk yourself out of this?”

“No,” he says, a lie Stiles could spot blindfolded. And to think he used to be so good at this.

“Trusting me,” Stiles says in a little sing-song voice, both hands on Derek’s arms now, sliding down to his wrists. “Remember?”

He loses a breath though his nose in a rush, that bubble threatening to pop. “I remember,” he says, low, and Stiles mouth turns soft at the corners.

“You still want me?”

Derek looks down, drags himself back up. He has to look upwards into Stiles’ eyes and it makes him feel like he missed something somewhere, a milestone he should’ve tripped over. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “Yeah, I do.”

Stiles’ head is cocked at an angle, looking at Derek with so much amused warmth he’s surprised there’s no literal heat to it, no shimmer in the air.

“Then come to bed with me,” he says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. His faint smile gets a little wider. “I put a lot of work into all this I’ll have you know, and I’m kind of running outta maturity here.”

Derek nods, and when Stiles kisses him the bubble finally bursts, lets him move his arms and keep Stiles tight against him, not sure if he’s worried about Stiles stepping back or him. One day you’ll stop, he thinks. You’ll stop sewing me up and I’ll just fall apart for good. But even he doesn’t believe that anymore, and that’s the really terrifying part.

Stiles trips them onto the closest bit of mattress, rolling with Derek until they’re not in risk of finding an edge or the place where the bed is actually two separate pieces under a thin film of sheets and covers and scattered pillows. There’s a metaphor there that he’s not picking up.

The kissing turns heated, turns dirtier until Derek can feel Stiles’ dick against his thigh and his own blood making sweat prickle on his skin, along his hairline. Stiles’ body against him is so familiar, a lithe stretch of territory he never had the sense to evict Derek from, let him get his roots into and his mouth all over. You don’t know what you’ve done and now you’ll never get me out.

Clothes snag around their ankles and across their shoulders, then topple to the carpet in little thumps. Derek licks salt off the skin of Stiles’ neck and Stiles squeezes his sides, his hips, his ass to grind them into each other, Derek grunting at the pressure on his cock, breathing hard at the smell of Stiles everywhere.

Stiles pushes at his shoulder until he’s on his back, tugs Derek’s underwear off his body and takes him in, swallowing with dark eyes and a pink tongue wetting his already shiny mouth. Derek puts his hands on Stiles’ thighs, strokes up to his hips, thinks of all the things he wants and how easy it seems to want them, tries to think of a reason he shouldn’t and can’t.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, kneeling across his hips. “You get it now.” He huffs and shakes his head. “Was wondering what it’d take.” He drags a mostly-empty bottle of lube out from between the mattress and the frame on his side.

Derek’s throat is dry and his hands are sweating, and he’s watching Stiles fuck himself open on his own fingers. He touches everywhere he can reach, gets shoved back flat again when he tries to sit up to get to the places that he can’t. Stiles arches, hips rocking down onto his hand, two then three slippery fingers disappearing between his legs with muscle standing out in his shoulder and forearm, his breath hitching on every exhale. He groans when Derek strokes his dick, hard and flushed dark and leaking strings of cooling precome on Derek’s stomach, his cock.

Derek shivers when Stiles wraps a wet hand around him, slicks him up with the fingers he’d been working deep into himself. He can smell the plastic cloy of the lube and the rich-warm smell of Stiles’ skin, the tang of precome shining on the head of his own dick when Stiles slides his foreskin back, gets him wet and sinks down onto him, body gripping tight but yielding just the same, burning hot.

There’s a taste of greasy pennies in his mouth where’s he’s bitten his lip, and his eyes want so much to roll up inside his skull, but he’s watching Stiles take him deeper and deeper, gravity pulling him closer until he’s seated on Derek’s hips and braced with his palms on Derek’s chest, breathing hard and blushing red all over. He clenches tight and works his jaw and Derek’s just trying not to move, not to buck up or drag Stiles down tight by the hips.

Stiles sits back a little, straighter, with his face slowly turning slack one muscle at a time and his head tipping up to the top of the bed, the wall, the ceiling. He’s beautiful in the way nothing else is beautiful, in the way where imperfections aren’t imperfections and if you changed a thing you’d ruin it all. Derek listens and he can hear Stiles’ heart tapping so fast, faster than his own, but lighter.

The slide of Stiles up the length of his cock makes him bite his lip again, a little lance of pain and more coppery sweetness. He can see where he’s buried in Stiles’ body, thick and stiff, and the stretch around him is obscene, skin pink and tight, the ridge of the head when Stiles slides himself higher with his thighs bunching. He works himself back down with an uneven sigh and Derek braces his palms on Stiles’ sides, keeps him from toppling.

It’s almost unbearable, the way it unscrews every bone in his body and turns his muscles to liquid. He’s rocking into Stiles now, watching the little bursts of pleasure on his face when they get the angle just right. The sheets under Derek’s back are soaked and sweat drips off the end of Stiles’ nose as he watches, mouth bitten red and his soft pink tongue showing as he pants, lashes fanning down. His hands press heavy on Derek’s chest, make his ribs creak when he leans up on them, and Derek’s leaving little red score marks on Stiles’ hips now, nails blunt but still marking skin, slip-sliding over moles while Stiles rides him.

Stiles’ dick taps against his stomach, swollen and leaving little streaks of shiny-silver on Derek and himself, balls drawn up tight. Derek thumbs at the head and Stiles falters, grips him a little tighter. He reaches down and back, cups Stiles’ balls and presses his fingers either side of his own cock slipping in and out, feels the wet coating everything.

“Fuck,” Stiles mutters, hunching over now, circling his hips, dropping tight against Derek’s body. Derek smears precome and lube on his dick and strokes him, awkwardly with the angle but twisting around the head, pressing underneath and into the slit, and when Stiles makes a pained little noise and comes in scalding stripes and spatters he grinds down on Derek’s cock, rippling around him, and Derek shoves up at what he knows is the right angle and lets go of his own orgasm with a groan, rutting and coming against Stiles’ prostate, making him shake and leak a few more messy globs into the hair trailing up Derek’s belly, folded over on himself.

The heat and smell in the room makes it hard to think, to do anything but keep Stiles where he is and let the aftershocks rattle through them both.

Stiles more or less collapses, curls forward until he’s on Derek’s chest and Derek slips free with a wince. He lifts Stiles’ face with a hand on his cheek and kisses him, sloppy and wet, both of them struggling to breathe right. He rolls himself enough to tuck Stiles against his side, tasting salt when he presses a kiss to his temple.

They shower, cleaning each other off and ducking out of the spray to kiss, to murmur things easily covered by the hiss of the water. Derek scrubs soapy hands through Stiles’ hair and Stiles puts his hands around Derek’s waist when Derek steps under the showerhead to wash his own, sucks a bruise into the top of Derek’s shoulder, scraping with his teeth until goosebumps spring down Derek’s spine.

Drying off turns into Derek trailing his hands down Stiles’ chest, across his ribs and over his back, Stiles humming or smirking at him all the while. He kneels and rubs a towel down Derek’s thighs to his knees, leans in and presses his mouth to the soft hang of Derek’s dick as he dries his calves, and Derek twitches, rubs his hand through Stiles’ hair, smoothes it back and watches it fall forwards in damp spikes. He pushes Stiles back against the sink and kisses him, pushes a thigh between Stiles’ legs and huffs when Stiles calls him names for stepping away.

They dump the sheets in the laundry, and Derek shoves the connected beds against one wall. They’ll have to work out how to arrange everything, assuming they ever find the will to pull the beds apart again. He can hear John moving around in the kitchen, cabinets opening and closing, and they’ll have to arrange things there too, make sure there’s nothing left hanging in the air between them.

“You gonna get yourself a pack?” Stiles asks, throwing a sock in the direction of the hamper. Derek’s sweats slide up his ankles when his legs aren’t straight but he doesn’t seem to care. “Now that you're all Alpha-d up and everything?”

“Not sure,” Derek says, trying to get his tone as casual as Stiles’. How does he do that? “I've got a pretty good thing going already.”

Stiles shrugs, giving up on controlling the spread of his grin, eyes bright and creasing a bit at the corners. “Well lemme know, huh? I've got some experience keeping werewolves in line.”

Derek laughs and pushes him in the chest, back down onto the bed, covers Stiles' grin with his own, feels them catch, pull together and grow.

| |

Epilogue – One year later

“Just so you know, if we’re late it’s gonna be all your fault.”

Derek snorts and ignores him, keeps tying his laces at a glacial pace.

Stiles groans and flops down onto the edge of the porch next to him. “Seriously. I was promised food, and if it’s all gone by the time we get to Scott’s–”

“Because there’s no food here at home?” Derek asks, mouth ticking up on the corner Stiles can see.

“You’re just scared of Erica,” he says, lowering onto his back and staring up at the porch where it takes up half his vision, the other half full of blue sky, Derek occupying his periphery.

“Everyone’s scared of Erica,” Derek says, flat. “That’s how she likes it.”

Stiles snorts. “I dunno if that applies to Boyd.” Then he thinks for a second. “Okay if it does then I don’t wanna know about it.” Not that they aren’t hot, and combined they’re even hotter, but if he thinks about them actually doing anything Erica’s gonna know it the second she looks him in the eye, and she’ll torture him with it forever. Great, now he’s thinking about it.

“Stop it,” Derek says when Stiles wriggles against the boards, reaching over to flick him in the knee. Stiles rolls his eyes but he doesn’t bother with the denial. Plus he kind of likes Derek when he’s jealous.

Derek stands and hauls Stiles up when he waves a lazy hand at him. He smirks when Stiles almost overbalances, then leans in and kisses him, deft and quick.

“Now we can go,” he says, hand sliding down Stiles’ side to his hip.

“Nope,” Stiles says. “Forget it. I’m not hungry now. More kissing.” He ducks back in and Derek’s lips are soft, giving under the pressure. Stiles has his fingers under Derek’s shirt when Derek pulls back. He reaches up instead, tucks the peek of golden antlers on a silver chain back under Derek’s collar.

“I’m not explaining why we didn’t show up,” he says.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “As if Scott isn’t making out with Allison right now anyway.” Then there’s Isaac, and the inseparable daunting duo of Boyd and Erica. All Scott’s misfit betas – not that he treats them like it. Stiles still thinks Scott should be teaching a class: Chilled Alpha-ing 101. Derek would probably show up even if he wouldn’t admit that he gets uncomfortable with the power he has sometimes.

They slide into Derek’s car – the one thing he agreed to splurge on with the money that went to him after Peter died, with what he kept after giving more to Stiles’ dad than Stiles wants to think about. He can talk about college funds all he wants, one day Stiles will just split it in half and give Derek no choice but to use it for himself too. It took him long enough to convince Derek he had to keep all the money he gets from his job in town, as if suddenly library work pays millions that he can’t possibly spend.

“You’re sure we’re not waiting for him?” Derek asks again, nodding at the house or maybe the absence of Stiles’ dad’s truck.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, a little wry. “I'm pretty sure he's got something going on that he's not telling us about.”

Derek’s eyebrows go up. “‘Something’ like he’s taken up knitting, or..."

“‘Something’ like he’s on the phone to Scott’s mom every other night, and the other day he was in the kitchen making breakfast, and I swear he was whistling.”

“The horror,” Derek intones. He starts the car, and Stiles catches his hand as he reaches for the gearshift. It’s a nice contrast: neither of them all that tanned despite the summery time of year, Derek with darker hair leading up from his knuckles and Stiles with longer fingers. His eyes catch on his tattoo, still not a hundred percent used to it, months of successful healing aside, the sine qua non in simple black font wrapped around his wrist like a cuff.

“We don’t have to go,” he says, fixing his eyes on Derek’s, green flecked with gold in the light. “I know you hate these things.”

Derek huffs. “I don’t hate them.”

Stiles huffs right back. “You’re allergic to togetherness, it’s okay; it gives me an excuse to act like an asshole to people on your behalf.” He smiles when Derek can’t stop his own mouth twitching. “Seriously, I know seeing Scott with a pack makes you go all—” He waves a hand. Blundering through delicate conversations is an art form. “Just so you know, I’m cool with begging off and ordering takeout and having lazy-yet-awesome sex on the couch.”

“That’s big of you,” Derek says, eyes bright and his teeth showing in a flash of a smile.

“I’m a very charitable person,” Stiles tells him, closing the gap to kiss Derek again, nose along his cheek until their temples butt together.

He feels Derek breathe against his cheek, can visualise in perfect sequence the way the tension seeps out of him. He’s still got a hold of Derek’s hand.

“We’re going,” Derek tells him, a murmur in his ear. He turns his head enough to catch Stiles’ mouth. As substitutions for saying ‘thank you’ go, it’s a pretty decent one. He slants a look at Stiles through his lashes. “And I think I should get a reward for pushing myself.”

Stiles nods, biting down on a grin. “Positive reinforcement,” he says. “Very important.”

Derek nods too, emphatic and over-the-top, and Stiles shakes his head even as the smile takes over. He looks out the window at their shrinking house as Derek gets the car moving, loose ground crunching thin under the tires.

When he shifts the gears Stiles’ hand moves with him, fitted palm to back of palm, fingers overlaid.