Archive of Our Own

“Well, then, what about that guy in IT with the stubble and those big, muscle-y arms? You know, what's his name?”

Stiles does know, even without a name, exactly who she’s talking about. The guy’s admittedly hot as hell, but he’s also the fifth person in the office Mackenzie’s tried to set Stiles up with. She’s nothing if not persistent.

“Eh, not interested,” he tells her.

“You can’t be serious,” she says with a disapproving frown. “Wait, are you worried if he’s cool with the whole, you know, trans thing? Because I heard…”

“Oh my God, not everything is about that,” Stiles interrupts, pulling a face. The happy hour Mackenzie had thrown for his work anniversary seemed as good a time to disclose as ever, but every once in awhile he remembers why he used to keep quiet about his history, visibility be damned. “I'm just not looking for a relationship. Too young to be tied down, you know?”

Mackenzie groans. “You're already what, twenty seven?”

“Twenty six,” Stiles corrects.

His coworker gives a long-suffering sigh. “Fine, ignore my help. Don’t you have spreadsheets or something you need to work on?”

“I think you mean that you have work to do,” Stiles says, spinning lazily in his office chair. Technically he does have some data to tidy up for a director review, but that isn’t until Thursday afternoon.

Mackenzie rolls her eyes, making a big show of leaning forward to focus on her screen. Stiles leaves her to fiddle with the design mocks, scooting back into his own desk space. He flips through the tabs on his worksheet, trying to remember what he’d been doing before the interruption. Analytics is interesting enough, he guesses, and it certainly pays the bills, but he’d envisioned this job involving significantly less Excel.

Then again, he supposes there’s plenty about his life that he’d envisioned differently.

He's only just gotten his bearings when he's interrupted again by a voice saying, “Stiles?”

He startles, a little guiltily, then turns to beam at his boss. “Yo, Anna! What’s up?” he says cheerily, thanking the stars he’d closed out of the Han Solo teaser trailer he’d been watching before Mackenzie started hassling him about his lack of a love life.

Anna looks uncharacteristically hesitant, and Stiles’ heart gives a syncopated stutter, anticipating something he can’t yet name.

“There’s, uh... Jason says there’s a man in the lobby? He's asking to see you.”

The air punches out of Stiles’ lungs in a sharp huff. There’s no logical reason for the way the words hit him. From the little she’s said, the man could be anyone. But he knows, all the same. He knows it’s Derek.

“Oh, okay,” he says, straining for normal though everything about his office suddenly seems surreal, overbright. When he stands his knees are wobbly, and he shoulders past Anna without meeting Mackenzie's curious eyes. He hopes his expression isn’t broadcasting his tumultuous emotions too obviously.

Derek finding him was always a possibility. He’d changed his number and moved around enough, but he hadn’t gone into hiding or anything. Beacon Hills is only forty minutes or so North and he still visits his dad, chats with Lydia sometimes. Anyone who really wanted to find him could. All the same, he'd assumed Derek wouldn't want to. He’s not even a little prepared for the conversation he imagines they’re about to have.

He pauses at the lobby door to look up at the ceiling, hoping for some measure of poise. There’s no use attempting to get his heartbeat under control; Derek can probably hear it from here. He hates that all his old Pack friends will always be able to read him so easily. Of course, he has a couple tricks of his own. He calls on one of them now, using his spark to tamp down his scent. Then, as prepared as he’s going to get, he opens the door.

Derek is standing at Jason’s reception desk, looking the same as he does in Stiles’ dreams except that he’s breathtakingly real, from the two-day stubble to the jewel-bright eyes to the little cow-licks in his hair he always tries to gel into submission. Derek’s eyes flick to him and their gazes catch. Stiles sees the exact moment Derek realises that he can’t get a scent, because his eyebrows flick up in surprise and hurt. In the supernatural community, scent blocking is rude to the point of hostility. It means you’re hiding something.

Stiles has no idea what his own face is doing, but after the slip, Derek’s schooled his into something so tightly composed it seems like an admission in itself. It hardly feels like years can have passed since they saw each other last, except that propped on Derek’s hip, chubby hand curled at her mouth...

Emily. She’s grown into that distinctive Hale coloring; pale skin and dark hair. She has Derek’s hazel green eyes, too. Two tidy pigtails curl above each of her ears, held with red bubble ties.

“Oh,” Stiles says faintly. He’d braced himself for Derek, but only him. “Her hair’s longer.”

Derek just stares for a beat, expression unreadable, and then he says, “yeah.”

Stiles bites the inside of his cheek, hard. Of course her hair’s longer. Last time he’d seen her she'd been just past her first birthday. What a stupid observation to lead with.

He brings a hand up to rub at his face. “Right. I just didn’t… how did you…?” he breaks off, pressingly aware of Jason sitting right there, pretending he can’t overhear. “Did you really have to bring her? To my office ?”

“I did have to bring her,” Derek says tightly. “And… I thought this would be better. Than your home.”

God damn it. Even now he’s trying to be fucking thoughtful. Cocking it up, as usual, but trying. Which is about ten thousand times more than what Stiles deserves.

“Papa-ah,” Emily whines, jostling in Derek arms. Stiles loses his breath a little, her voice knifing into his heart right through his ribs.

“Shh, just a minute,” Derek says patiently, adjusting his grip. “Grownup stuff, okay?” His tone is gentle as he focuses all his attention on soothing her, as easily as if Stiles wasn’t even there. It’s not a surprise, really, that he’s so good at being a single dad. But still.

“How did you find me?” Stiles asks.

“Lydia,” Derek says. “I know you asked her not to tell, but it was… it’s an emergency. Look, is there somewhere private we could talk?”

Stiles shakes his head, more in response to the prickly tension between the two of them than in refusal. Derek seems to take him at his word, though. He sets Emily in one the two chairs by the door and, digging into a tote by his feet, produces an electronic toy to distract her. Stiles can’t help but notice how big the tote is; it’s practically a weekend bag. Even when she was a baby, she hadn't needed that much crap.

“Stay here for just a minute, okay?” Derek says to the girl. “No trouble.” He’s using his Alpha voice even though he isn’t one - old habits dying hard, Stiles supposes.

Emily nods seriously, then peers over Derek’s shoulder at Stiles. It’s the kind of wide-eyed, unabashed stare that only kids can get away with, and Stiles finds that he can’t look away. In the end it’s Emily who breaks the starting contest, looking down almost shyly at her toy and pressing a few buttons that trigger annoying beeps and whoops.

With Emily all settled in, Derek walks to the far corner of the lobby, jerking his head for Stiles to come with him. Glancing at Jason - who is studiously ignoring the scene - Stiles follows, steeling himself. His eyes keep starting to wander over to Emily, but he doesn’t let himself look again.

Derek angles his shoulders towards Stiles as he opens his mouth, and Stiles flinches back unintentionally. Something sparks through Derek’s eyes - Resentment? Hurt? - and Stiles forces himself to relax. Derek said an emergency, which almost certainly means werewolf stuff. He’s only getting so close so they can talk about the supernatural without Jason overhearing. It’s not about them.

“Okay, so, something’s up?” Stiles prompts in a whisper.

“I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have to,” Derek answers in an undertone. “I respect that you left, I’m not trying to… to pressure you, or make a scene.”

Derek's acceptance should be a relief but feels like the opposite. “Got it. And?”

“And I need you to take Emily,” Derek says.

“ What ?” Stiles yelps, loud enough to startle Jason. “You can not be serious,” he hisses, getting himself under control.

“Not permanently,” Derek growls. “Just... There’s another Darach. He’s been harassing the Pack for months. He’s powerful and he’s smart and he thinks that Emily has some kind of a ‘spark’ he can use.” His eyes flick to the girl, and Stiles’ follow. “He wants to kill her, Stiles. We need everyone in the Pack to go after him, and I can’t just leave her unprotected. I swear if there was anyone else who could keep her safe, I would ask them, but there isn’t.”

“I… I can’t, Derek,” Stiles says. Take care of Emily? Fuck, he can barely take care of himself. Just that Monday he’d been up till three am playing Undertale. He can’t take care of a child.

“It'll be a few days, tops,” Derek says. “Everything she needs is in the bag; toys, clothes, snacks. I wrote down instructions for bedtime and meals. She's really easy, I swear. If there’s anything I forgot, I can pay you back for it.” The requests are earnest, and he’s not just asking anymore, he’s begging.

“I don’t need to be paid to take care of her,” Stiles says defensively.

A sliver of hope finally breaks through Derek’s stony expression. “So you'll do it?”

“Alright. Yeah,” Stiles hears himself say. He knows it’s an awful idea for everyone, but at the moment he can’t think of a better alternative.

“Thank you,” Derek sighs, his whole body sagging in relief, and only then does Stiles really understand what it was costing him to keep calm. He’s terrified. Stiles knows the threat must be serious to frighten Derek. As horrifying as it is to consider, Emily’s legitimately in danger.

Only of course she is. Derek coming to Stiles and asking this of him should have been enough of a clue.

Derek turns and heads back to Emily, almost insultingly abruptly. It leaves Stiles feeling bereft; he wasn’t quite done talking. Don't they have more to say to each other, some huge screaming match to get out of their systems? Not that he wants that. He just wants something more than blunt dismissal.  

But that isn't what he’s getting. Derek kneels down in front of Emily, talking in a quick undertone Stiles can't quite make out. He’s probably explaining who this strange man is and why she needs to stay with him. Stiles hovers. He feels like an intruder just watching. They’re a family, a tight unit of two that Stiles isn’t part of.

Finally, Derek gives Emily a hug and stands her up between his knees to look her in the eye. “You'll be good, right? Be nice for Stiles.”

Emily nods. Her eyes are obediently focused on him, but her mouth is doing a petulant little twist.

Then Derek’s standing back up to his full height and facing Stiles, who gulps. Excuses and deflections for how he’d left are bubbling up in his chest... but this isn’t the time or place to get into what used to be between them. All of that is secondary to what Emily needs. Besides, what could Stiles even begin to say? Nothing that would do any good.

“Be careful,” he manages, for lack of something less pathetic.

“I know,” Derek answers shortly, his expression souring. Stiles realizes too late it sounds like he just doesn’t want to get stuck with Emily if anything happens. Before he can correct the mistake, Derek’s gone.

Leaving Stiles with a fussy four year old who’s 100% his responsibility.

“Right,” he says, carefully. Emily is staring up at him, somewhere between blankly trusting and suspicious. Jason is staring too, somewhere between horrified and gleeful at the prime cut of gossip that just landed in his lap.

Stiles refuses to think about that, leaning over to talk directly to the kid. “So-o...Hi. We can go back to my place in a little bit, I just need to go take care of some grownup stuff, okay?”

“Yes,” she says very quietly. Stiles takes a deep breath, shoulders her overnight bag, and tentatively takes the hand she reaches out towards him before she’ll take a step. It’s such a small, fragile-seeming hand that Stiles is kind of worried he'll hurt her somehow. He’s already regretting agreeing to take her. A deathmatch with a Darach might well be easier, he should have volunteered for that.

They walk back into the office and towards Stiles’ desk, but it’s slow going on her small legs - small legs attached to a very distractible kid. People are staring as they meander by, and Stiles desperately wants to get this over with significantly more quickly than their current pace allows.

“Fuck it,” he says quietly - and then “shit!” imagining Derek’s expression when he comes back to find his daughter cussing every third word - before swooping her into his arms.

She fits there. Even without werewolf senses, he can smell her soap-clean hair and a hint of peanut butter. He has to physically resist nosing into the crook of her neck. God. You can take the Spark out of the Pack, but apparently you can't take the Pack out of the Spark.

He strides down the hall and lets himself into his boss’s office with barely a knock. “Hey, Anna? Really sorry about this, but I need the rest of today off. Probably all of this week.”

Her eyes go wide, looking at him, the kid on his hip, and him again. “Stiles, did that man just… leave his child with you?”

Our child, Stiles thinks automatically. He doesn’t let himself say it, of course. For all intents and purposes, she’s only Derek’s, now. What right does Stiles have to call Emily his child after abandoning her - abandoning both of them?

But regardless of his failings as a parent, she’s undeniably his blood, from the delicate little moles on her neck to the cupid’s-bow shape of her mouth. A thrill of fierce protectiveness runs through him. Maybe he hasn’t parented her, but he’s still her parent. Derek was right to trust him with this; He’s not letting anything happen to her.

“So, is it okay?” he asks, gripping Emily closer. He doesn’t want to lose this job, but he’ll quit if he has to.

“Yes, it’s fine, but…” Anna is still gaping at them, shocked. “ You agreed to take care of a kid ?”

“It’s a long story,” Stiles sighs. “I’ll see you next Monday.”

“How did it go?” Lydia asks carefully when Derek comes back to the Camaro.

He slides into the driver’s seat and slams the door. “He said yes. Emily will be safe.” It’s hardly an answer to her real question - are you okay? -  but living among so many ‘wolves he’s become instinctively adept at using evasion to take the place of straight out lies.

The truth is that he isn’t anything close to okay. Nothing could have prepared him for seeing a snapshot of Stiles’ mysterious new life. It’s hard enough knowing he’s got one without any of them in it, and actually seeing him in the lobby of that slick corporation, wearing a dress shirt and leather belt like some kind of funhouse mirror version of the man Derek had loved? It’s worse.

Stiles’ existence here is so far from anything Derek had imagined he’d want that it’s unsettling. He finds himself wondering what else he has wrong about his ex, what else would reveal itself as unfamiliar if he stuck around. Which, of course, he is not invited to do. He jams the keys into the ignition and gets the car into gear, ready to tear out as if physical distance could put his feelings in the rear view mirror, too.

“You didn’t have to see him, I could have taken her,” Lydia says, eyeing his hand clutched tight around the gear shift.

“Don’t baby me,” Derek snarls, jerking into reverse. “Emily’s my responsibility, and I’m perfectly capable of handling things.” He’s not angry with Lydia, not really. It’s just that his temper’s never been anything but a blunt force weapon. He doesn’t meet her eyes when he twists to check the blind spots.

Lydia gives him a cool “hm,” of acknowledgement, and the car is quiet again as they wait for a break in the traffic. Derek can practically feel her disapproval. When the break does come, he stays in the parking space. He’s not quite upset enough to miss the fact that he’s in no state to drive.

At least Lydia has the grace to not throw it in his face. She’s familiar enough with his moods that she must recognize this one as the type he needs to work out on his own time. Taking a deep breath steadies him a bit, enough that he pries his hands off the wheel. He dips one into his pocket instead, and fiddles with the ring he’d hid there. It’s stupid to still wear it after all this time, but there’s never been a day that felt right to take it off. The day they’re officially divorced would be fitting, but that day has yet to come. There’s never been a right day to serve papers, either.

Derek forces his shoulders to untense, and slips the ring back on his finger. As wound up as he is, he doesn't want to forgo that familiar weight right now. Too much else is happening for him to deal with the finality of the gesture. Maybe once all this is done, he’ll be ready.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes to Lydia. “I do appreciate that you offered. It was just something I had to do.”

“I know,” Lydia says softly. He gets the feeling that there’s something else she’d like to say, but whatever it is never makes it past her lips. An apology, maybe, that Stiles still speaks with her, even though he’s cut the rest of the Pack off cold.

The pain of that, though, is already an old, familiar ache. Now that the tumultuous emotions stirred up by seeing Stiles in the flesh are calming down, Derek mostly just feels tired. He finally pulls out of the parking space when the next break in traffic comes, and navigates the unfamiliar city streets towards the freeway that will take them back to Beacon Hills.

Lydia is quiet, leaving him to his thoughts while he drives. What he’d said to her was true, he had wanted to see Stiles. It was just that he’d wanted it to mean more than it had. He’d gone in with some crazy, half-formed idea that he’d be able to understand what had happened to their marriage if he could only look Stiles in the eye, hear his heartbeat, scent him. Stiles had always smelled headily of cinnamon arousal around Derek, and he’d thought that if they were in the same space he would at least know if that was still true, or if the physical attraction had burned out, or even if there was someone else.

Except Stiles had blocked off his scent, shutting Derek out entirely. The one option he hadn’t thought of. He shakes his head at his naïveté. He should have known. Cinnamon sweetness or some other man’s scent, it doesn’t matter. Nothing is left of their old connection, at this point. Less than nothing.

When they pull up to his house forty minutes later, Derek gives in to the uncomfortable sensation that he’s forgotten something and checks all his pockets, the empty back seat, even the glove compartment. He’s half aware that the feeling is a side effect of leaving Emily, and not due to a missing wallet or phone. But all the same he finds himself double-checking his pockets two minutes later while he’s putting his keys on their hook. On any other day he’d need to be constantly aware of what his kid was getting into, and it feels beyond strange to not have that responsibility. All his parental instincts are going haywire; Emily is his world, and he’s not quite sure what to do with himself when she’s gone.

“Do you want me to hang out?” Lydia offers.

Derek shakes his head, though it’s tempting. The Pack’s planned to meet early the next morning to review their research on the Darach and form a plan of attack, so they should both be preparing for that rather than socializing.

“If you’re sure,” Lydia says.

Derek smiles at her, genuinely touched. “Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She gives him a quick hug before she goes. The two of them are closer than they were before Stiles left, despite the wall that his one-sided silence puts between them. As Emily’s dad, in fact, Derek feels more welcomed by all of Scott’s Pack than he had as Stiles’ mate. Having a place with them even now feels like confirmation he belongs on his own merits, rather than just as a plus one. Sometimes he feels guilty about that, but mostly he’s just grateful to have somewhere to belong.

The house is shockingly quiet, though it’s too full of Emily’s scent and scattered toys to feel empty, exactly. Derek half misses her getting underfoot, but it’s admittedly nice to cook without interruptions, eat on the couch, and to put on a gory horror movie at the volume he wants without worrying what example he’s setting. It’s strange to balance missing her with the excitement at being alone for the first time in years. Humming to himself, he follows dinner with some Rocky Road right out of the carton. Why not?

The newfound freedom is only for a few days, of course. Leaving Emily with Stiles is a quick and dirty stop-gap to keep her out of harm’s way until they get rid of this asshole Darach who wants to use her like a fucking ingredient. Clearly his ex has no desire to be stuck taking care of a little girl on a regular basis; his silence on that issue up until now has been answer enough. The fact that he agreed to take her today was about doing the right thing, not about signing up for an ongoing presence in her life.

That hurts, but there’s a silver lining at the core. Stiles may be a totally different person now, one who wants nothing to do with Derek or Emily; He may have traded his cop’s badge for a corporate keycard and the supernatural for the suburban; but no matter what else has changed, Derek knows he can be trusted with keeping their daughter safe. That need to protect innocents is bone deep with him, a core of who he is no matter what type of life he’s leading. What else could have prompted him to do Derek a favor of this magnitude?

In any case, all that is out of his hands until the Pack takes down the Darach. When the movie wraps up, he gathers the old tomes that he and Kira had decided could be useful, and thumbs through to bookmark the relevant pages. He should focus on what he can control: preparing for their hunt. Again, even more than when he was cooking, Emily’s absence is working wonders in terms of his productivity. Derek shakes his head ruefully at the guilt that comes with that thought. It doesn’t make him a bad father.

The Pack’s plan has two parts: find the Darach, kill the Darach. It’s not hard to guess which part Derek is looking forward to more. Part one is basically taken care of, any way. Between Jordan finding the bodies of the previous sacrifices and Lydia and Kira’s research on the ley lines, the Pack has a pretty good idea where the central hub of power is, and his lair must be near that central spot.

Now all that’s left is cornering the monster and ending it. All of them are agreed that they’ll fight him together, as a Pack, and even Scott’s accepted that Derek has no intention of leaving the man alive. In return for that compromise, he’s insisted they not charge in without a strategy the way Derek is itching to. Scott wants to be sure they take the Darach down cleanly and easily, after finding a way to neutralize his magic. For his part, Derek is fairly confident that the Pack would come out on top even without that. The Darach might be strong and wily, but no one man could hold up against so many shifters.

Probably.

Prep work done, Derek sighs and heads to bed. He’s already a little tense about the activities of the next day, about finding a good enough solution that Scott will feel comfortable attacking. They’ve had recurring dangers in the territory ever since he came back, but nothing as personal as this. It’s making them all a bit over-cautious.

He brushes his teeth and changes without a single disruption, and as peaceful as that is, it’s also sinking in that Emily’s absence makes him deeply uncomfortable in itself, beyond the guilt of enjoying his unusual freedom. In bed, he finds himself wishing he could listen to Emily’s heartbeat to lull him to sleep the way he does every other night. Caring for her keeps his mind off things, focuses him. As much as she’s needed him, he needs her just as much.

She’s safe with Stiles, though, and he has to trust that. When all this is over, Derek can get her and bring her home again, and both of them can go back to their normal lives with the Pack, gingerly avoiding Stiles’ absence.

And Stiles can go back to whatever it is that’s more important than the family he’d abandoned.

“So, here’s where I live,” Stiles says, gesturing around his tiny duplex as if Emily is a prospective roommate rather than, you know, his preschool aged daughter. Suddenly the place looks stupidly over-designed, boring and possibly unsafe. “Uh. I guess we can set you up in the office. I have an air mattress? Er, or you can… have the bed.”

Emily looks up at him, baffled. Ugh. This is not how you talk to a four year old. But how are you supposed to do it? Stiles hasn’t got the first clue. She was easier when she just needed feeding, burping and changing.

Or no, that’s not quite it. It’s just that back when she was first born, he’d been so confident in assuming he had it all figured out. He’d thought that he had already taken everything life had to throw at him, and that the hard part was over.

For a while it had even seemed like he was right. Just after highschool, he and Derek had fallen into the romance he’d hoped for years they were edging towards. It hadn’t been a near-death confession screamed in panic, in the end, but rather a semi-drunken slow dance on Lydia’s lake house porch, a lazy kiss, a feeling that their bodies slotting together was the inevitable culmination of everything they’d survived together.

Being in a relationship had been exactly as good as he’d dreamed - better, perhaps. They’d dated through college, got engaged the August before senior year, and the wedding had been the same week he graduated. It was all part of his perfect plan: marrying Derek, holding down a job at the precinct, raising two kids behind a white picket fence, growing old in Beacon Hills together. Done and done, happily ever after.

It feels like that dream is from a lifetime ago; Those years may as well have been lived by a stranger. In the end, nothing had worked the way they’d hoped, except for Emily. He looks down at her, this living, breathing memory of a different time, and feels a bittersweet smile tug at his mouth. No matter how everything has turned out, he can’t regret bringing her into the world. Not even when she hasn’t been part of his life for years, while he’s become just another twenty-something alone in the big city, all his clear ideas crumbled out from under him.

The kid’s still staring up at him like he’s the adult here and should know what to do, though. She doesn’t give a shit about his existential crisis, she just wants to be fed and entertained. Stiles wishes he could call Mackenzie, who has a five-year-old, for some advice, but they don’t have that kind of relationship. Not having close friends was kind of the point of moving here.

Technically he could call the Pack, but even assuming they’d talk to him, he doesn’t want to risk being a distraction. He wants them fully focused while they’re hunting the Darach. They’re strong, of course they are, but he’s personally acquainted with the vicious and unexpected dangers magic can present. No, he’ll handle this himself.

Somehow.

He sets Emily up in his small living room with the electronic toy that Derek had used to distract her, guessing that it’s a favorite. Luckily, she seems content playing with it and casting quiet looks in his direction rather than exploring. Relieved, Stiles takes the time to go through her overnight bag.

As promised, there's a note explaining the care and keeping of his daughter. Or more accurately, there’s a list. It’s impersonal, almost clinical, complete with bullets and sub-bullets. Derek outlines her schedule: waking up at 7, breakfast right after, lunch at noon, dinner at 6, bedtime at 8. There’s a list of her food preferences, and one of her favorite shows. Stiles reads through quickly and then folds and pockets the note, thumbing Derek's handwriting - neat, all caps, familiar still.

There are three instant pasta dinners in the bag along with the toys and clothes, which is a little insulting. Maybe Stiles isn't a great cook, but he can feed himself, thanks. He tosses the boxes on the counter and sets about making his mom’s fancy macaroni instead. Impressing Derek by adulting good is a mind-blowingly stupid, counterproductive goal, but here he is, trying to do it anyway.

Once the food is cooked to perfection and wafting delicious, cheesy smells, he fetches Emily from the couch and settles her in one of his dining room chairs - using a few old books as a makeshift booster seat. It looks mostly safe? Anyways, it’s the best he can do with one eye on the oven. He can’t help but note, guiltily, that it’s really hard to both watch a kid and do just about anything else.

“So, Papa didn’t say. Do you like mac n’ cheese?” he asks as he sets the pan on a hot pad to serve from, carefully out of reach of burnable fingers.

Emily makes a face. “No broccoli!”

“Who the fu- fudge puts broccoli in mac n’ cheese?” Stiles scoffs.

“Papa,” Emily answers, and well. Duh, Stiles supposes. He swallows back bitterness. It’s been a long time since he thought about Derek’s weird food proclivities.

“Well, I’m not Papa,” he says. He leans over, scooping macaroni into her bowl. It’s gooey and cheesy, the bread crumbs on top perfectly toasted. “Look yummy?” he asks, pleased that it came out so well and that there are no veggies in sight.

“Yus,” she says, maneuvering her spoon into the bowl. “Thank you, Stiles.” She squishes her nose up, glancing at him guiltily. Maybe for doubting the deliciousness? He gives her an encouraging smile. If only she knew exactly how little reason she had to trust him.

Emily is unaware of the distress she’s inadvertently caused, and happily begins to scoop dinner into her mouth. She’s a little sloppy, but he doesn’t have the heart to tell her to be more careful, or to clean up after herself.

Stiles picks at his own dinner, barely hungry. Without Emily, he may well have skipped the meal, or eaten something full of MSG at 10pm. With her here, food is the last thing on his mind. A thousand questions are buzzing at the tip of his tongue, but he makes it until they’re almost done before he finally gives into his curiosity.

“So, what did… what did Papa tell you about me?” he asks.

Emily looks up at him, strangely on edge. She’s reacting as if it’s a pop quiz rather than a casual conversation. Stiles winces; his tone probably clued her in that something was off. He opens his mouth to try and make it normal again, but before he can say anything he’s interrupted by his doorbell.

He groans, rolling his eyes. “Just give me a minute,” he says to Emily, fetching a cookie from the cabinet in hopes that it will keep her entertained and out of trouble.

Stiles already knows who’s at the door. Only one person ever actually visits unannounced, and that person is an earnest Mormon missionary, Jeff. The problem is that Stiles had been having a bad day about a month back and actually admitted to the guy that he was looking for meaning in his life, was hoping for some comforting sense to be made of the random blows of fate. The kid had smelled weakness, and now he comes by every few days to try and convince Stiles of the Good News.

The other problem is that Jeff is sweet and optimistic and happy, and Stiles is never as firm as he should be in turning him away. Apparently he craves company so badly he’ll string along an unsuspecting missionary for a half hour of pleasant conversation every other day.

But today, he already has someone to keep him occupied. “Busy, sorry, thanks,” Stiles says in one quick burst of words as he’s opening the door, then shuts it a second later, right in the kid’s fresh-scrubbed and confused face.

“Was it a friend?” Emily asks when he comes back to the kitchen, slinging himself into his chair with his own cookie.

“Sort of,” Stiles hedges. The last thing he wants to do is discuss his sorry social life with a kid who’s grown up in the closely-knit McCall Pack. “I guess Papa has lots of friends come over, right? Pack?”

Emily looks up at him, and nods. “Yeah. Lydia and Scott and Kira. They don’t talk about you,” she adds softly

“But… Papa does?” Stiles asks, not at all sure he wants to hear the answer.

She squishes up her nose again and kicks back at the chair legs. “When we were leaving, he said you’re gonna take care of me, cause you’re nice.”

Stiles snorts before he can help himself. Just knowing that Derek hasn’t told her what a monster he is should be enough. Pushing for more than that is asking for trouble, that’s why he’s forbid Lydia and his father from giving him any updates. Does he really wanna know when Derek moves on, meets someone new, when Emily starts calling that stranger ‘dad’? But Stiles can’t leave it alone any more than he could leave a scab without picking.

“I’m nice?” he prompts incredulously.

“Mhm! So I gotta be nice, too, b’cause you’re taking care of me. An’ I’m a han’ful.”

Stiles feels himself smile, despite himself. He sees how it is; Derek tells him she’s easy, but to her face she’s a handful.

“And I haveta call you Stiles, now,” Emily continues. “Because you don’t wanna be Daddy, nennymore.”

Stiles sucks in a breath, hands spasming on the table. Daddy. So, she knows who he is, Derek had told her. Or she remembers. He’d wondered about that, what sort of place his absence took up in their lives now. If there were pictures, if Derek had just erased him, if he was the monster in their bedtime stories. He hadn’t thought he’d ever have to know for sure.

“So you know… you know I used to be? Your Daddy?”

She side-eyes him like it’s a trick question. “You’re in pictures when I’m a baby and Papa said it’s Daddy. But you had to go, because not everybody can be a daddy or a papa or mama,” she says easily, like it’s rote. She’s probably parroting Derek word for word, and if so it’s the kindest possible explanation for being run out on that Stiles has ever heard.

“That’s true,” he says thickly. He feels all over again how he's failed her, the knowledge dragging on him like a literal weight pouring over his shoulders. She’s still nibbling at the cookie, oblivious to how much she’s making him squirm. He clears his throat. “But Der- Papa, he's a really good Papa isn't he?”

“Mhm,” Emily agrees. “He does good Papa things. Like he plays Ponies with me, and makes foods, and reads bedtime books, like my favorite with the bag princess,” she lists off. Her lower lip pouts out wetly, and her tone is growing a little pitchy. “He reads it twice if I brush my teeth fast. And he makes my room all nice, and kisses booboos better, and scares monsters under my bed, and… and…”

“Oh shit,” Stiles mutters right before the waterworks start in earnest.

“I want Papa!” Emily bawls.

Stiles hops out of his chair and kneels beside her. “Hey, hey, slow down Tiger. It’s okay. I’m here.” When she shows no sign of stopping, he picks her up.

“You're not Papa!” she wails, and smacks him in the chest with a little fist that barely registers.

“I know, I'm sorry,” he says truthfully. He wishes it was Derek here to help comfort her. He has no idea how to, and at this point the neighbors probably think he's a murderer.

Even though she’s screaming in his ear, he makes a point of keeping her close, rubbing his jaw on her head. With Derek for a father, he bets all the instinctual werewolf things are familiar and comforting to her, regardless of her own status. At the same time, he blabbers on about anything and everything that comes to mind - Derek has his instincts, the Stilinski men have theirs - while bouncing her up and down. Finally, her sobs calm to hiccups as she gets distracted by what he’s saying.

“What’s carbonite?” she asks, blinking wetly at him.

Relieved, he sets her on the couch and puts on Episode One to keep her mind off of anything that might bring on another meltdown. While she watches, he does the dishes, popping his head in every thirty seconds to make sure something dire hasn’t happened. When the kitchen is clean and the movie’s still going, he uses the extra time to set up some scent blocking totems around the house. Even though Emily hasn’t presented one way or the other yet, Derek will come here to pick her up, hopefully soon. Stiles doesn’t want him sniffing about, uncovering stuff he’s not supposed to know.

After the movie ends, he takes her upstairs to change and brush teeth. She's getting a little fussy as bedtime approaches, but mostly she cooperates. He manages to deal with his T injection and his other, distinctly less scientific medicine while she uses the toilet. He even changes his own shirt and slips into sweats, but only barely. There’s no chance of catching up on his favorite blogs, or playing a round of League. Having a kid is… kind of exhausting. Another pang of regret punches through him, thinking of Derek trying to handle all this unexpectedly alone.

But he tamps down the boiling well of feelings that threatens to drown him when he thinks about his not-legally-ex husband. That life is over, and it’s not coming back. Choosing to leave had been 100% on him, and he can’t let himself sink into regrets over it, now. Emily needs him. At least for a little while.

The air mattress is still in the box, and he’s figured out by now that he won’t be able to get it set up while she’s underfoot. Honestly, the least he can do is give her a real bed to sleep on in this unfamiliar place. It’s already past bedtime, so he coaxes her into his room and sweeps her into the bed. She looks amazingly content as he tucks her in with a favorite softie and blankie that he’d fished out of the bag per the instructions on Derek’s list.

“Alrighty,” he says, patting her head. “Everything okay to sleep?”

Emily considers this question seriously. “Can you scare the monsters under the bed?”

“There aren’t any, I promise.”

She gives him the squinty face.

He sighs. “Okay. So, how does Papa do it?”

“You gotta get under the bed close and roar at them,” she says, as if this is obvious.

Stiles feels like an idiot, but he gets on his hands and knees and does his best werewolf growl at his dirty socks. “So, how’s that? I think they’re good and scared, right?” he says.

“Yeah,” Emily agrees, though she doesn’t sound entirely convinced.

Stiles ruffles her hair again and turns to go. He’s already exhausted, and he still needs to inflate his own bed and put some sheets on it before sleeping.

He’s about three steps from the door when a thin little voice calls, “Sti-iles?”

“Yeah?”

“Is the bad thing going to find me here?”

“Oh, honey,” Stiles says, coming back into the room. “No. Of course not, you’re safe.”

Emily looks up at him with big, hazel eyes. “Papa lets me sleep with him if I’m scared,” she says, and sticks her lip out, quite a bit more intentionally than it had happened at dinner.

Definitely a Stilinski: she’s already ID’d his weak spot and using it to get her way. Stiles sincerely doubts her assertion is even a little true, judging by the forced pout and the shiftiness in her eyes. But he doesn’t really have the heart to say no, either way.

“Okay,” he caves. He goes around the bed, and crawls under the covers beside her. Tentatively, he snugs her close to his chest, then reaches over to the switch by the bed to turn the lights out.

“No-o!” she wails. “That’s too dark!”

“Ok, ok,” Stiles says quickly turning the light back on. Is this normal behavior for a kid her age? Or is this something he should be firm about? He’s too tired to argue about it, either way. True, he can’t sleep with the lights on, but then he also can’t sleep with her screaming.

He has a feeling tomorrow will be a long day.

Unlike Stiles, Emily is perfectly able to fall asleep despite the bright overheads. Within ten minutes she’s passed out, falling into dreams between one blink and the next.

Stiles could turn the light off at that point, but he doesn’t. She’s just so… tiny. Obviously she’d been smaller when she was a baby, but he’d forgotten what it was like up close. He still feels as if he’s witnessing a miracle just seeing her little ribs move up and down with each breath.

Deciding to carry Emily himself had felt like making a costly but fair deal with the universe. It spared them the complicated rigors of adoption that might well have revealed the Pack’s supernatural secrets, and the legal complications of gestational surrogacy that had Derek quietly panicking. Stiles had never dreamed of pregnancy, never desired it - but then plenty of people who gave birth didn’t. He wasn’t horrified by the idea, more tentatively intrigued. In the end, it had been something to endure so he could bring his and Derek’s kid into the world.

He hadn’t loved the the hormonal changes, or the unavoidable stares of strangers that had left him hesitant to leave the house most of the third trimester. Still, his having been born with a uterus gave him and Derek a unique opportunity he was happy they’d been able to seize. He’d always been of the mindset that he was male regardless of his physical characteristics, and that by extension what his body did was male, too. Pregnancy fell under that umbrella. Besides, what was nine months compared to happily ever after?

He couldn’t have guessed how the two of them creating this perfect little creature out of nothing but DNA would feel, how the baby stirring to life inside his body would feel like an intimate little secret, tying them inexorably together. He wouldn’t give those memories up for the world, even now, even knowing what he does. Forget his spark, Emily is the real magic.

She’s a heavy sleeper, barely stirring as he ghosts his finger over her tiny nose. She has bunny teeth, he realizes. He wonders if she’ll grow into them or if they’ll always stick out a bit, if her nose will stay round and snubbed like his, or end up like Derek’s. Or maybe she’s got Cora’s cheekbones hidden under those baby-cheeks. Hell, she might look like his own mother when she’s a teen.

He swallows back the lump in his throat, and flips out the light so he can stop looking. It doesn’t matter; he won’t be there to see it.

The Pack meets up at Derek’s old loft early the next morning. He’d kept the place when he and Stiles had moved to a house more appropriate for starting a family, for exactly this type of situation. There are a couple beds upstairs in case people stay too late and want to crash rather than drive home, and a kitchen stocked with nonperishable food options. That’s about it for creature comforts, though. Mostly, it’s a warehouse of research materials, spell ingredients and weapons.

With all of them bustling around the loft amid the smell of musty old tomes and overheating laptops, it feels like old times. It feels like Stiles should be right there with them, helping and snarking in turns. Derek knows he can’t be the only one to think it, but nobody draws attention to the absence. Everyone misses him, of course, especially Scott. Maybe they reminisce sometimes amongst themselves, but if so Derek isn’t party to it. Maybe nobody wants to reopen the wound by reminding him.

The way they tiptoe around it, you would almost think he’d died. Except that John still spends weekends away and stays awkwardly quiet about the trips when he visits Emily upon his return. Except that Lydia falls silent when she gets a text every now and again, or goes to another room before answering a call. Except that Stiles is still out there and can get in touch with them if he wants, and he just… doesn’t.

Derek can’t focus on the research. After seeing Stiles the day before, all the old questions are itching under his skin again. He wishes he knew what he had done to drive Stiles away so thoroughly. If it was just the two of them breaking up, maybe he could understand; he’s never been easy to love. But Stiles ran not only from their marriage but from the Pack, from his home, from everything. What about their life had been so miserable that he’d felt the need to do that?

There’s nothing to do but comb through his memories again and again, looking for a clue that isn’t there. No screaming fight or accusing note marked the day Stiles left. He had looked a little frazzled that morning, yes, but he’d kissed Derek goodbye and said “just for a couple weeks or so” with no skip in his heartbeat. He’d claimed there was some training for his spark that he needed to do, something he hadn’t wanted to get into the details of. Derek had kissed him back with no idea that it would be the last time.

That had taken quite a while to sink in, actually. Stiles still skyped with him and Emily every night, cooed at their daughter and read her stories, and then stayed on after she went to bed for delightfully titillating, if not exactly satisfying, cam sessions. Derek had trusted him when he said he needed a bit more time after a week was up. And then the two weeks turned into a month, two months, and the calls petered off to every few days, every weekend.

By the time Derek had started trying to press Stiles on what, exactly, was taking so long he didn’t even have a clue where his husband physically was. They’d argued in circles every time Derek demanded details, Stiles insisting it was his business and Derek shouldn’t worry. So he’d stopped asking, putting aside his growing concern. He thought if he was agreeable enough, supportive enough, it might make Stiles want to come back.

All the while, Stiles had assured him that everything was fine, that he’d been home soon, that he missed him, too. Derek had trusted in that. His husband had kept on promising and promising, his heartbeat unintelligible over the spotty connection. But he hadn’t come home the next month. Or the next.

Derek had taken forever to accept the truth of what was so clearly happening right in front of him. It wasn’t until Stiles didn’t make a call for Emily’s second birthday, almost a year afterwards, that he had cracked. He’d left her with Lydia on the full moon two days afterwards and gone into the woods fully shifted. He’d left his phone behind, foregoing any way Stiles might have had to reach him and make more excuses.

He’d known then that he’d lost his family for a second time, destroyed it anew in some way he couldn’t even understand. It had been too much to handle; He’d wanted to hide from the pain inside his animal mind, to bury it with hunger and cold and fear and any other pressing thing that couldn’t eat at him the way knowing Stiles was gone did. He’d just wanted to forget. He’d wanted to never be human again if it meant facing that torment.

But he’d come back to himself five days later. He’d steeled himself and gone home, gotten dressed, cooked dinner like his insides weren’t a fractured mess. He’d had to. Emily didn’t have anyone else, she needed him to be a parent. So that’s what he did, and what he’s done since. It’s the lifeline that keeps him going.

Derek grits his teeth and tries yet again to read the words in front of him. They may have a clearer view of what the Darach is trying to do, but they still need a way to subdue his magic so they can defeat him without risking too much. This problem is at least one with a useful answer. With Stiles, understanding isn’t undoing, and what’s done is done. Derek’s daughter is his whole world, and if he needs to rip the throat out of this threat to keep her safe, then that’s what he’ll do. With his own teeth if need be.

“What about this?” Kira offers, pushing a book over to Scott. It’s open to a page of illustrated spell instructions. Lydia peers over their Alpha’s shoulder, brows furrowed.

“Pretty fussy requirements, even for magic,” she says. “You think that this is what he’s trying to do?”

Kira nods. “Look, right here.”

Derek leaves his own book to go to the table and read over Scott’s shoulder, too. It’s a note that a sacrifice of parity - which from their other research seems to be what the Spark magic is for the Darach - is most effective on the full moon. He actually grins in relief. That’s still weeks away, gives them plenty of breathing room. There’s no question they’ll be able to take care of the Darach before then. They have time to find his weakness, and bring Emily home safe.

The thought of Emily coming home should be happy, but it tastes bittersweet. Derek can’t help but wonder how she and Stiles are holding up. He wonders if Emily is giving him hell, or if she likes him enough to be good. And, unwillingly, he wonders if Stiles likes Emily. Derek knows she’s grown up since he’d seen her last, developed more of a personality. An amazing personality, one that reminds him of Stiles all the time. Surely his ex will see the similarity too, and at least enjoy the time together while she’s there. Won’t he?

The thought, and the hope behind it, makes Derek’s mouth twist with unhappiness a second later. It’s the same goddamn stupidity that had helped him string himself along for months after Stiles left, the same dumb loyalty that’s left the ring on his finger.

Then, Lydia screams.

Scott’s at her side instantly. “What is it?” he asks, his voice all Alpha authority even as his hand is gently rubbing her shoulders.

Her face is drawn and pale, but she answers quickly. “The Darach, I think he’s going to sacrifice someone. I felt it. Out… out on the line near the railyard.” Her eyes droop closed, and she’s clearly exhausted with the effort of tracing the voices. “We have time, maybe half an hour.”

“But we don’t have a way to stop him, yet,” Liam points out nervously.

“We still have claws, don’t we? We’re not going to sit back and let someone die,” Scott admonishes. “Mason, Liam, Malia - get Jordan and search along the ley line that goes to the rail yard, see if you can find a scent. Derek, Kira, and Lydia, you’re with me. We need to find his lair in case he’s bringing the sacrifice there.”

Derek nods curtly. The distribution of strength says which eventuality he Alpha thinks is more likely.

Derek drives Lydia in the Camaro, and Scott follows on his bike with Kira. Even with their research, they only have a general location, so when they’re near enough they park the vehicles and start to search on foot. It’s not a huge area, but it already feels as if they’re too slow. Derek can tell from the way the others keep checking their phones that they’re worried about Liam’s group, too.

Still, it isn’t long before they locate a back entrance on one of the old warehouses that’s protected with wards. Bingo. Lydia disables them easily, and they file down to where they Darach has been holed up.

It’s an old industrial basement, and it’s undeniably creepy. Bloody knives and trophies from past sacrifices clutter the dusty shelves. It smells like death and suffering.

“Can’t wait to kill this guy,” Lydia mutters. She’s admitted to Derek more than once how she’s as glad as he is that Scott’s accepted the need to end this with finality, for Emily’s sake and for the sake of his past victims.

The four of them freeze at a noise towards the other side of the room, and suddenly the Darach has clambered down another tight stairway to stand in front of them. He has a little blood on his chest, in suspiciously claw-like stripes, but none on his hands. Derek almost can’t believe it, until Lydia gives a satisfied laugh; the other group got there in time. Nobody has died.

The Darach must have realized he wasn’t alone the second he felt the broken wards, so the sound hasn’t given them away. There’s no point hiding, and they step out of the shadows towards where the Darach stands. When he gets a look at them - an Alpha, a born wolf, a Banshee, a Kitsune - he actually looks scared.

Derek roars, a primal need to protect his blood and his Pack urging him on. In full beta shift he moves fast, but before his claws connect the air goes suddenly spongy around his limbs. Every movement is difficult and slow, as if he was encased in molasses. Scott and Kira seem similarly affected, until Lydia screams and the magic’s grip loosens.

Derek’s almost in reach when her voice cuts off and the air turns again into an enemy. The Darach has his hands out, tense, muttering under his breath. Kira and Scott strain against the spell in the corner of Derek’s vision, but even as sweat is standing out on his forehead the Darach maintains enough focus to hold them all at bay.

“So you knew where to find me, very smart,” the old man admits. “But if you’re here… and the rest of the Pack is out there… then the girl’s unguarded, isn’t she?”

Derek snarls, his anger giving him enough strength to break through the hardened air. The spell dissolves, replaced by hasty lashes of defensive fire. Derek weaves through them, and manages to strike a handful of quick, hard punches. The old man takes them better than any mortal should, but as Kira and Scott join the fight they quickly gain the upper hand.

There’s sting at Derek’s arm - a knife, which hardly phases him - and then the Darach leaps back out of range. He casts his hand out with a murmured word, and a tingly-charged blast goes through the room. Derek rocks back, false fireworks bursting behind his eyelids. When he blinks them away, though, there don’t seem to be any permanent ill effects for him or the others.

“As fun as this has been,” the old man simpers, backing away with his hands out in faux surrender. “I must be going.” He flaunts the little ornate blade that’s dripping with Derek’s blood, and disappears, whipping himself away in a twisting blast of foul-smelling air rather than fight the four of them.

“No!” Derek roars, and smashes the shelf behind where their foe had stood in impotent rage. They’d almost had him.

“It’s alright,” Scott says wearily. “We’ll have another…”

“Spell,” Lydia blurts. “That was a spell blade, there are locater spells that use blood, familial ties... with Derek’s blood he can find Emily.”

Derek blinks stupidly at her pronouncement, too amped to digest the words or the logical next step from there. But Lydia is as level headed, as always, and she already has her phone out to call… to call…

“Stiles,” Derek whispers.

“My phone’s dead,” Lydia says.

Derek numbly check his, seeing Scott and Kira do the same. It’s useless, all the phones are about as responsive as bricks. It must have been something the Darach did, to ensure they couldn’t get back-up.

Scott looks as tense as Derek feels. “If he’s going for Stiles, we need to get the rest of the Pack and head him off. Those spells, he’s stronger than we thought.”

“There’s no time to find the others, we need to go. Now,” Derek pleads desperately. Lydia is biting her lip, eyes flicking between him and Scott. Everyone knows it will take the Darach time to get the spell fine-tuned enough to locate to an exact house, especially if he’s expecting her to be still in Beacon Hills. But he can transport himself instantaneously once he’s got the location; It will take them at least forty minutes. And once he’s there, none of them have illusions about how long one Spark can hold out.

Scott realizes this, and nods to Derek’s request. At his assent, the group bursts into action, running back up the stairs to the road.

Lydia piles back into the Camaro with Derek, while Scott helps Kira onto his bike. Derek guns the engine and prays they’re not too late. He can’t lose Emily, he can’t, and as much as his heart is aching for her, his perfect fragile daughter, he’s also terrified for Stiles.

Because even now, Derek hasn’t quite given up on his husband. No matter how much he knows he should, he can’t make a clean break. Mere weeks after Emily's birthday, his resolve to accept that Stiles wasn’t coming back had run out. He’d gotten stinking drunk and he’d tried to get in touch to, who knows, beg probably. Hell, if he thought it would give him Stiles back, he might very well still try.

But he’d been blocked on all the online accounts, and Stiles’ old cell number just gave him apologies for no longer being in service. Their remaining lines of communication were severed, and Stiles hadn’t reopened them even though it was all Derek wanted. Lydia had guiltily assured him that Stiles was alive, but didn’t want to speak with him anymore. Him or Emily, she’d confirmed.

So that had been that. No matter what Derek felt, Stiles was done. At the time it had seemed incomprehensible, but with distance and hindsight, it makes perfect sense. In his heart of hearts, Derek doesn’t have to wonder how he’d ruined their lives. He already knows. It’s because he’d asked for too much. He’d asked for Emily.

Having a biological child had been Derek’s idea, his crazy, selfish hope. Adopting seemed like a wonderful opportunity, challenging as it might be for people with as many secrets as them. Yet having a child of his own blood had felt important too, in some ineffable way that was all tangled up with the fire and Pack and something primal about the way Stiles and he smelled together.

Even before marriage, they had talked about gestational surrogacy, looked seriously into how it might work. Derek had been disheartened about the confused legal precedents, the potential for a stranger to be permanently inserted into the Pack’s life as the baby’s legal mother - or even to end the pregnancy against their wishes. He knew himself well enough to realize that he’d handle that poorly, however he felt intellectually about abortion. They went so far as to ask Cora about it, hoping it would be less complicated to keep it in the family. She had been regretful, but firm. Derek had tried to swallow the disappointment gracefully, but he hadn’t.

It was Stiles in the end who suggested doing it himself. “I technically have a womb,” he’d offered, as if he was cracking a joke. Maybe he had been, even. But Derek hadn’t seen it that way. He’d been too excited about his family line continuing to hold back, and he’d pressured Stiles into following through. Hadn’t he? He’d been so blinded by wanting this one thing to work out how he’d dreamed that he ignored the magnitude of what he was asking of Stiles, not quite twenty-three but already locked into a nuclear family and then coerced into stopping his T on top of that, dealing with the gender dysphoria and hormones of pregnancy, signing up for yet another scar… Derek should have paid more attention. He’d wanted a biological child, yes, but not more than he’d wanted Stiles.

And now, it seems he won’t have either of them.

Stiles wakes up the next morning to a sharp little knee jabbing his kidney. The knee is quickly followed by a foot, then a freak-out that the bed is too high up (Stiles guesses this is more of a “everything is different” melt-down than a real complaint, but the tears are certainly not faked). There is another freak-out over breakfast not being the correct type of cereal. By 9am, the rest of the day seems to be spread out in front of him like a minefield of potential tripwires, ones even Derek’s careful all caps notes cannot hold off. Kids, Stiles is beginning to realise, are way harder than babies.

But still, she’s his kid. He can do this! It’s going to be fine. Absolutely fine.

Except it’s not fine, actually; It’s amazing. Emily was a pretty good baby, to his admittedly biased memory, but at four years old she is even better. Once she’s settled down about being in a different place, the freak outs are replaced with curiosity. Stiles is still awkward as sin around her (which is to say, himself) but she doesn’t seem to mind that any more than she’d minded the messy, cock-eyed attempt he’d made at replicating Derek’s neat pigtails from the day before. She’s funny, smart and just as easy to be around as Derek had advertised.

Stiles has all the Disney movies in his collection ready as a back up, but they don’t end up needing them at all. They while away the mid-morning and afternoon hanging out, playing together, doing crafts. He turns Jeff away again after lunch, realizing only afterwards that he answered the door with a fingerpaint handprint on his cheek and jam in his hair.

It’s strange and uncharted territory, and Stiles feels more alive as he’s navigating the few hours with Emily than he has in the five previous months of office work and bad tv dinners. She’s clearly Derek’s child, from her serious expressions to her carefulness with her toys, but she has some Stilinski in her too, in the way her mind puts together weird details and half-remembered stories to create her own imaginary scenarios. It’s so fun to just watch her plot out adventures for her My Little Ponies that it almost balances out the pain of knowing that this is only temporary.

Stiles does know that this isn’t for keeps, even though he’s tucking away little observations about her like he might need them for later: Which toys she gravitates to, the turns of phrase she uses. Not even one day with her in his apartment, making a mess, and he can barely imagine she’ll never be back. He keeps catching himself assuming that this is something he gets to have, even though it’s exactly the thing he gave up when he stopped returning Derek’s calls so long ago. He can’t exactly ask to be let into their lives again, not now. And he doesn’t want to be, he reminds himself. Leaving was for the best.

“You can be this one,” Emily says, pushing a pink Pony into his hands. “It’s my favorite.”

“Aw, thanks,” Stiles says, holding the cheap plastic toy and pushing away thoughts of the future. “What’s her name?”

Emily says something that sounds suspiciously like “Pencils.”

“Princess?” he checks.

She shakes her head, annoyed. “All the ponies have things on them that are their powers, here,” she says pointing to the little mark on the toy’s rump. “And that’s their names too, so this is Pencils.”

Stiles is fairly sure that the ‘pencil’ is a wand, but judiciously keeps his mouth shut.

“Okay, so what’s the game?”

Emily sets up the other three ponies in a line next to the shoe box that’s been designated as the castle. “Everyone is at a party and then something bad is after them, like a monster, but not in the castle yet, and they need, uhm, they need a magic hay to make it stay away.”

“Of course,” Stiles says. “Can they make the hay in the castle magic, or do they need to go to where it grows?”

“Go get it,” Emily decides. “Pencils has to go up to the mountain and get the magic. So you have to go over there with Pencils and make her find it,” she says, pointing at Mount Couch.

Stiles feels his heart go squirmy. He doesn’t love where this is headed, not at all. “No,” he says, knowing he’s risking upsetting her. “Pencils isn't going to leave, that’s not what nice Ponies do. Maybe Cupcake can go with her?”

“It’s a quest, though,” Emily insists. “Only one horsie gets to go.”

“Uh-uh,” Stiles says, leaning way over to tromp his horse over with the rest. “No lonesome quests for Pencils. Just nice parties and apples with the Pa- other ponies. Somebody else has to go questing.”

He’s expecting an argument, but Emily’s suddenly focused on something at chest level, not his face or the toys. Stiles’s hand goes to his neck, where the chain he always wears has slipped out of his collar to dangle in front of her. He feels the tug on his neck as she reaches out and grabs it.

“Like Papa’s,” she says, fiddling with the gold band looped through the necklace.

Surprise pulses through Stiles, and he has to take a moment to steady his breathing. “Papa has a ring, too?”

“Mhm,” she hums carelessly.

“On his hand, like this?” Stiles insists, demonstrating by slipping it on his ring finger. He doesn’t know why it’s so important, to know if Derek still wears his wedding ring, but it suddenly is.

“Yus,” Emily says carelessly, grabbing at his hand to look at the chain again. He lets her play with it, and stops himself from grilling her any more. Even if Derek wears the ring, it’s just to ward off awkward questions or unwanted attention, not out of any nostalgia. Stiles left him. Both of them. Just because they haven’t bothered with divorce papers yet, it doesn’t make their relationship less over. He's kidding himself to think there's still anything there but resentment. He doesn’t want there to be anything but resentment.

He gently pulls the ring back and tucks it into his shirt. “Okay, so Pencils goes to the mountain?” he confirms, trying to redirect Emily back to their pony game. Emily starts to agree, and then that the front door blows open, deadbolt and all.

Emily screams and huddles into a little ball beside the couch, and Stiles instinctively puts himself between her and the intruder.

The Darach is an older man who makes Stiles’ skin crawl so intensely there are goosebumps on his arms. Maybe it's his weakened spark pinging on the impure magic, or maybe the guy’s leering expression is actually that creepy. How the fuck did he know to follow Emily all the way here? And if he’s made it this far... where's Derek?

Stiles sets aside the panic that wells up at the thought of the Pack in danger, of Derek in danger; he can’t do anything to help them if he’s dead. In the half-moment while the Darach is assessing him, he throws up a barrier around his daughter. His spark’s not as strong as he’d like it to be for a throwdown like this, but it’ll have to do. For now, at least, Emily is safe from the Darach - though she can’t get away from him, either.

“Well, well. Hello there,” the Darach says lightly, having clocked that Stiles is no ordinary babysitter. He’s faking casual, sizing Stiles and his barrier up with the hungry eyes of predator.

“Where’s the Pack?” Stiles demands, thinking God, no, if something’s happened to Derek...

The Darach, unsurprisingly, doesn’t answer. “Handy that everyone seems to know a Spark these days. Friend of a friend, are you? It’s sweet of you to lend the McCalls a hand, but I think we can both agree their little gambit’s played out. She’s not worth dying over, is she? Just hand her over.”

Stiles meets the Darach’s smirk with one of his own. “Thanks, but no thanks. How about you just leave us alone?”

That earns him a sneer. “Come, let’s dispense with the bluster. You know you can’t beat me, and you’re not even a part of her Pack. You’re...”

“I’m her fucking dad,” Stiles snarls.

“Oh?” the man says, cocking his head curiously. Then he’s eyeing Stiles with renewed interest, like he can see right down to the sparking core of his magic. “I see, you mean her mother. How interesting… You know, in a way I’d be doing you a favor, getting rid of her.” He smirks.

“You can do that favor right over my dead body,” Stiles says icily.

The Darach’s smirk sharpens into an evil grin. “Well, I suppose that’s how this ends either way.”

Stiles knows it’s going to be an uneven fight, with his spark in the condition it is, so he makes his move quickly, before the other man has a chance to start the fight on his own terms. He whips up a spell that blasts all the kiddy detritus off the floor and into the man’s face. The toys bounce off of the Darach’s raised arm easily enough, but that wasn’t the point. Stiles’ fist connects with the man’s distracted face a second later, bloodying his lip. While he reels, Stiles presses the advantage. He gets in two more body blows and is just kindling a fireball in his other hand when the Darach gets his footing again. He punches into Stiles’ stomach with supernatural force, knocking him back and winding him.

Catching himself on a knee rather than tumbling onto his back, Stiles tries the fire spell again, even though it’s a stretch on a good day. He hardly gets started before the Darach has smothered the spell into nothing. He tries the same thing a second time, stupid with desperation, before he’s hit with the Darach’s magic again, a squeezing pressure around his entire body this time.

Stiles manages to break though the spell with his spark, but throwing himself forward is the only other thing he can think to do afterwards. Physically disabling his opponent seems implausible, but his spark’s already down to embers. At least this distraction will keep the Darach from dismantling the barrier around Emily.

Stiles only gets a few steps before another spell catches him and flings him into his own TV with an awful crash. He scrambles out of the mess, heart pounding and legs unsteady. His elbow’s bloodied from where it went through the flatscreen, but he thinks - hopes - it's mostly superficial.

“Daddy!” Emily shrieks, pressing at the barrier from inside.

“It’s fine, Baby,” Stiles lies, pouring what strength he has into holding the defensive spell, tying it off so it will outlive him.

The Darach slinks towards him. He’s enjoying this. Stiles gets his fists up, but the Darach is quicker. He takes a uppercut to the face and rebounds against the wall, leaving a smear of blood. Then he’s laid out on the floor with the Darach pinning him, gnarled hands wrapping tight around his throat.

Stiles flicks the little pocket knife he always keeps on him free from his belt and stabs into the Darach’s arm, a last gambit, but a second later the puny weapon’s twisted out of his hand. With a bloody grin - the only evidence Stiles had managed to do any damage at all - the Darach turns knife against him.

Stiles grabs at the Darach’s wrist, and manages to keep the blade from his throat. Poorly, though - it nicks him the first time, and then cuts deeper as the Darach fights again to slit his jugular. Stiles vision is going black at the edges for want of air. He needs his spark or this fight is over, but won’t take it from Emily, not when the Darach keeps glancing up at the protection every few seconds, waiting for it to waver.

As he edges towards a fatal black-out, Stiles wonders if he could drop the barrier while the Darach is distracted and give Emily a running head start. But he’s not so sure he has the breath to warn her. He’s still slapping and pulling the Darach’s hand, but his vision seems zoomed back, like he’s watching the fight play out from far away. He’s not sure how deep the knife is really biting anymore or how much blood he’s lost. The most pressing thought on his mind is that he doesn’t want Emily to see this. It’s everything he was fighting against, only more violent. Talk about scarred for life.

The broken door slams open again, the knob hitting plaster so hard it punches through and sticks, and four familiar faces come piling into the entryway.

The Pack. Stiles has never been more relieved in his life.

Lydia screams, banshee-style, leaving the Darach stunned. Scott with his Alpha speed gets to the man first, tackling him off Stiles and slamming him back against the wall. Stiles’ barrier around Emily flickers out and is replaced by a strong, fire-orange version from Kira’s Kitsune. Lydia had swooped in before the second barrier formed and cradles the girl, pressing her tiny, tear-streaked face into her sweater and hiding what’s happening behind them.

What’s happening is as brutal a fight as Stiles has ever seen. Scott and Derek both attack the man, expertly teaming up to knock him back and forth, tearing claws into skin and absorbing the few spells the man’s able to throw back. Kira is primarily on defense, ensuring that none of his spells can get through to Lydia and Emily.

Stiles just watches, one hand on his neck and gasping for breath. He had forgotten so quickly what these supernatural battles looked like, how intense they were. He knows that Scott is the stronger of the two, but it’s Derek who swipes a fist into the Darach’s chin when he’s focused on the Alpha, then grabs his head and snaps his spindly human neck.

Stiles jerks upright in surprise at Derek just killing like that, but Scott doesn’t protest. Apparently attempted child murder is the bridge too far for him, or perhaps the last couple years have changed his perspective on morality; it’s hard to say.

With the intruder dead, everything is suddenly still and quiet. Stiles has the loopy thought that if his neighbors didn’t think he was a murderer yet, they certainly do now. And they’re not exactly wrong.

Derek seems to come back to himself a little now that the threat’s been dispatched. His shift drops away as his eyes skate to Emily first - safe and being comforted by Lydia - and then to Stiles, who’s too helpless with relief to look away.

“Stiles,” Derek says, eyes dropping to the blood smeared all over his neck. He stumbles over towards him, even before he goes to Emily. Though to be fair, she and Lydia are already being half crushed by Scott and Kira in a big Pack dogpile.

Derek kneels next to Stiles, reaching out and grabbing his shoulders when he starts to slump back towards the floor. “Are you okay?”

“Mmhm, peachy,” Stiles says, but it’s not very plausible when he sputters the word on the blood in his mouth and starts to cough in painful spasms. Derek looks irritated and concerned in equal measure, easing Stiles into a more comfortable position on his lap while he catches his breath. He even, seemingly automatically, starts drawing his pain. Stiles’ head is still fuzzy with the fading adrenaline and the overuse of his spark, and he decides that he has enough of an excuse to relax into Derek’s arms, just breathe him in for a second. His scent blocking totems are still up, anyways. It won’t hurt anything to give himself this.

“You were using all of your spark on maintaining that barrier,” Derek says. “He was about to kill you, and you didn’t pull back that power and use it to stop him.”

“Couldn’t very well let him get to Emily,” Stiles says, but Derek doesn’t stop looking at him like he’s got a second head. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You couldn’t know what would happen when you let it down. Maybe you’d have had a chance to stop him. Or he was going to bring her back to the nemeton before the sacrifice, like when your dad was taken. But if we had come in two minutes later, you would have...”

“Stop,” Stiles interrupts, sickened. “I wasn’t going to risk that kind of stunt, fuck. She’s my… I thought you trusted me with this. Of course I was going to protect her.”

Derek’s whole face goes tender and soft. “You did, you saved her life. Thank you.”

Stiles has to look away, aware that he’s blushing at Derek’s praise and that his heartbeat might give him away. “N-no problem,” he says, over-casual. He squirms awkwardly out of Derek’s arms. “Can you…?”

Derek takes his unspoken meaning as easily as if they had never fallen out of sync, and helps Stiles up with a gentle hand on his uninjured elbow. “Let me see,” he says clinically, tipping his own chin up a hair to illustrate.

Stiles swallows hard and looks up, letting Derek’s gentle fingers maneuver his jaw, trail over the unbroken skin between the cuts on his neck. Emily was right; he’s wearing a ring.

“Not too deep,” Derek murmurs. “Keep pressure here, though. You should get a bandage on this one. Do you have…?”

“Papa? Daddy?”

They both turn to Emily, stepping towards her reaching arms on instinct.

“Hi, Baby,” Derek says, taking her from Lydia and burying his face in her hair. “I missed you so much. Are you okay?”

She nods, scrubbing a tiny fist across her damp cheek. “Daddy, too,” she demands, twisting to seek him out.

“Stiles,” Derek corrects quietly. He’s still supporting her weight, with her knees pinching around his waist, but she’s leaning precariously away from him to grab at Stiles.

Stiles steps in close so she can reach, just to keep her from falling off of Derek entirely, but they wind up in what amounts to a three-way hug.

Emily’s little face is twisted in concern that hurts to look at; he hates that she’s scared for him.

“Are you okay, Daddy?” she asks.

“Stiles,” Derek corrects her again, voice strained.

“No, it’s… I don't mind. It’s been a long day, just let her,” Stiles says. “I mean, she’s not wrong,” he adds wryly.

Derek stares, and swallows hard. “I know. I do know that she’s still your daughter. When you left, I assumed... look, whatever you were running from when you left, if you want to be in her life now, we can work something out. Really. I’m willing to talk about visitation. It doesn’t have to mean any contact between us, even. Lydia could bring her.”

Stiles’ stomach twists, and he shrugs out of reach, carefully righting Emily in Derek’s arms before he steps away. “I don’t want visitation.”

“You don’t?” Derek asks, his brows furrowing in confusion - or maybe anger. “What do you want?”

“Papa?” Emily whines, picking up on his tone.

“C’mere, Sweetie,” Lydia says, having the same realization about the storm brewing and pulling the kid away before it hits. She sets Emily on her feet and herds her towards the kitchen. “Papa’s gotta talk about some grownup stuff, how about we get some snacks?”

Stiles has already started to walk towards the stairs, half thinking about bandages and half about just getting away, but Derek steps in front of him, cutting off his escape.

“C’mon,” Stiles sighs, trying to step around.

Derek’s face is set into something unforgiving, and he steps farther into Stiles’ space, jabbing a finger at his chest. “No, Stiles, I’m really struggling to understand here. You’ll die for her, but you won’t take her to the park for a couple hours on weekends?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Do you think you can explain exactly what the point is, then?” Derek invites sarcastically. “Emily remembers more than you think, she misses you.”

Stiles sucks in a breath and grits his teeth. “This is my life now, okay? Not Darachs, not Werewolves or Sparks or whatever else. Not kids. I didn't ask you to come barge in, remember? The Darach is dead, thanks, so we’re done here!”

Derek’s nostrils flare, gearing up for a harsh reply, but in the kitchen Emily’s started crying at the yelling. Her sobs cut off any further argument.

“Just get her things and go,” Stiles bites out.

Derek shakes his head, clearly disgusted, and turns away. Stiles cradles the elbow Derek had held with his own hand before he can stop himself, then catches Lydia watching him knowingly from the kitchen as she hushes Emily. He looks away quickly.

“Bro, it’s good to see you,” Scott says, coming over with his hands in his pockets, like he isn’t sure if a handshake would even be welcome.

Stiles nods, not trusting his voice, and Scott seems to sense a part of what’s wrong. Alpha mojo or best friend instinct, it’s hard to say. His face goes gentle, his hands come out of the pockets, and Stiles lets himself be enveloped in a big hug. As he squeezes back, some of the hurt eases out of him. He gives Kira a weak smile over Scott’s shoulder, and she gives him a tentative half wave and a genuine smile back.

“I got these,” she offers when Scott releases him with a manful slap on the shoulder. Stiles takes the alcohol pads and bandages thankfully, pulling back his sleeve to check the damage to his elbow.

Behind them, Derek is gathering Emily’s things and dumping them in the bag, removing all traces of her from the house while Lydia keeps the girl herself entertained out of sight of the dead body. Stiles wants to go over and say goodbye, but he can’t even imagine what words he would use. How do you explain something like this to a child?

After she helps Stiles with the bandages, Kira goes out to the car and comes back with a tarp so she and Scott can start taking care of the corpse. They wrap it up and drag it out back to magically incinerate it, Stiles assumes. Gotta love a lifestyle where being perpetually ready to dispose of a body is the norm.

While they do that, Stiles assesses the damage to his living room: furniture knocked everywhere, singed stripes marring the carpet, bloody walls, the smashed TV. Ugh. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees Derek going upstairs.

It’s just to get Emily’s things like Stiles told him to, but the thought of having him in the intimate space of his bedroom squeezes Stiles’ heart painfully. Not to mention the practical concerns he has about the pharmacy of magical cures stashed away in the closet. Stiles sprints after him, and squirms in front to block him halfway up the staircase.

“It’s fine, I’ll get the stuff up there.”

“I don’t need your help,” Derek says coolly. He shoulders around Stiles and keeps walking up the stairs.

Stiles follows him, grabbing at his sleeve. This can’t be happening now, shit. “Look, this is my stuff, it’s personal. I don’t want you up here.”

Derek rounds on him. “Why?” he demands. Any softness from before is well and truly gone and yeah, okay, here’s that screaming match Stiles had so mistakenly thought he wanted. “What do you think I could possibly find that would make a difference? You’re fucking someone else, is that it? You think I care? All that trouble blocking your scent to hide something that stupid?” He storms into Stiles’ bedroom, grabs one of the totems off the nightstand and shakes it in Stiles’ face. “What the fuck is so important to keep from me?”

Stiles gapes wordlessly as Derek destroys the sachet, claws popping out and cutting straight through it. His scent must come flooding back almost instantaneously, because a second later Derek blinks in confusion and his eyebrows knit.

“You’re sick,” he says accusingly. Then, as the chemosignals settle in properly his face shifts from confusion to something concerned and wary. “There’s something wrong with your spark.”

“No, there isn't,” Stiles lies, forgetting his heartbeat will give him away. Stupid, stupid. His spark is still too weak to tamp down the scent without his totems.

Derek’s all up in his space now, trying to get a better handle on what he’s sniffing out. “You’re lying. What is it?”

“Not your problem,” Stiles snaps, shoving him back.

“Fine.” Derek accepts the physical force easily, stops dead and lets Stiles scramble a few steps back for space. His eyes are still determined, though. “But whatever you say, Pack is Pack. Lydia, Scott, all of us, we’ll help if you need us. Just tell us what’s going on.”

Icy fear shoots through him. “No. I’m not part of the Pack anymore, and it’s not your job to take care of me.”

“And there it is.” Derek gives him a derisive little laugh. “I guess that’s the point. All that secrecy so you don’t have to accept help. What, you can’t even show weakness around us? So scared that you might owe us something?”

Stiles lets out a hysterical, cruel-sounding bark of laughter. “Help? Owe you? Please, I hid my scent to avoid exactly this, the whole “oh we’ll fix it for you you” Pack bullshit. Maybe I just didn’t want you acting like the big hero. Maybe I don’t want you at all.” He’s burning with righteous anger now. His heart is going crazy enough it might even throw off the human lie detector, but this time he won’t need it.

“I thought it was pretty damn clear that we are done. Did you not get that from the part where we haven’t talked for the last two years? Stop asking me if I want visitation, or if the Pack can help or whatever else. You think you’re going to pull me back in? No and no. We’re over, finished, kaput. Do you get that? What exactly do I need to say to get it through your. Thick. Skull? I hope I never see you again. Okay? Either of you.” He knows his heart holds steady for that.

Derek flinches. In his wrecked expression, Stiles hears the echo of what he just said, the rebound striking him hard in his own solar plexus.

Luckily, he doesn’t have to keep going. Derek turns on his heel and marches downstairs. Stiles follows afterwards, a little in awe of the destruction that will chain-reaction out from the explosion he just lit the fuse on.

Derek grabs the tote bag, takes Emily from Lydia, and before she can even finish waving ‘bye to Stiles they’re on the front step and Derek has slammed the door behind them.

Stiles feels his body sag. It feels like he’s losing them all over again, but he can’t break down just yet. “You guys should go,” he says thickly to the rest of the Pack. Scott and Kira have come back inside from the yard, but much had they overheard?

Maybe not all of it, because Scott looks at him with understanding as he nods. “Keep in touch, okay?” he says, clapping Stiles’ shoulder. “Just think about it. A little contact goes a long way, you know?”

Stiles nods back, because it won’t be heard as a lie. Scott and Kira let themselves out, leaving only Lydia with him in the house.

“You should just tell them,” Lydia says.

Stiles eyes her, sizing up how likely she is to take this into her own hands. When he left, she’d been only one he’d talked to about why, the one person he was honest with. He’d been hoping she’d be smart enough to help him sort it out, or maybe it was just that he’d been weak enough to want at least one person on his side. He wishes now, with her eyes on him like that, that he’d kept her in the dark with the rest of them.

“It’s my call what they know,” he reminds her in a low, serious voice. “And I’m not going to tell them.”

They match stares for a moment longer, but in the end she nods in acceptance, if not exactly agreement. She won’t spill his secret, not for now at least.

“I really hope you know what you’re doing, Stiles,” she says. And then she’s gone too, leaving him truly alone.

Once he’s out of Stiles’ house, Derek’s anger drops out of him, leaving a vast, hollow space in it’s wake. He’d thought that if Stiles saw Emily and how great she is, it would change his mind, somehow. He’d thought that once he understood that Derek wasn't mad anymore, then maybe... but nothing has changed. Or if it has, it’s in the utter finality of their split. Any confusion lingering from Stiles’ mysterious fade from their life has been resolved into harsh clarity. I hope I never see either of you again.

The car keys are still in the ignition, door hanging open from the rush they’d been in to save the day. At least they’d managed that. He knows he should be grateful to have Emily alive and well. It’s all he’d really expected going into this arrangement, after all. He tucks his daughter in her booster seat, mindlessly comforting her as she sniffles in reaction to all the quick confusion of the last half hour. As he buckles her seatbelt he realizes he’s wearing his wedding ring, was wearing it in front of Stiles. He groans out loud, and smacks his forehead on the roof of the car.

He’s been so stupid, so pathetic to still be in love with someone who doesn’t love him back. Why can’t he get it through his thick skull when it’s right in front of him? Stiles wants him gone, is happier on his own. The ring slides off easily enough, and Derek stares at it while he’s waiting for Lydia, who’s still chatting quietly with Kira and Scott by the bike. He’s not sure what he’s hoping for, if not the strength to throw the damn thing across the street and down the storm drain.

“Papa,” Emily says. “Why is Daddy's on a necklace, but yours is on your hand?”

Derek stares at her. A necklace? Can it be true that Stiles has kept his ring all this time, not just kept wearing it out of habit, but put it on a necklace specifically to keep it close? He’s too confused to even begin coming up with an explanation.

Lydia, having wrapped up her conversation, slides into the passenger seat while Derek is still gaping. She turns to smile back at Emily.

“You ready to come home, sweetie?” she asks, and Emily nods, starting to chatter easily about missing her Dora show. It’s a more than welcome distraction, because Derek still doesn’t have any answers about the ring, not even after thinking his way around her question this long.

He can't figure out why nothing about Stiles’ actions makes sense. Probably, that’s a sign he shouldn’t even bother trying. All the same, he knows that her little comment will keep him wondering and hoping and hanging on, maybe for another couple years. He gets behind the wheel and, after a moment’s hesitation, drops his ring in the cupholder. Going home is the first priority, everything else can come later.

The mood in the car is more dour than it should be, considering their victory, and even with the windows open the Camaro start to stinks of sadness - his own and Emily’s and even Lydia’s - all of it feeding into Derek’s morose mindset.

Had it been awful between them since the start? He’s been trying to think what he did to change Stiles’ feelings for him, but maybe that’s the problem. Maybe he had it wrong all along, and they were never the couple he’d imagined they were. It wouldn’t be the first time he missed something big. No, Derek remembers with perfect clarify the first time Stiles had rearranged his understanding of things, dropped a secret into his lap that he’d never even thought to suspect.

It had been early after they’d gotten together, maybe two weeks into the flurry of need and want, of seven-hour dates and heavy petting. In the loft, Stiles had push-pulled him into bed and crawled top, and soon they were making out more intensely than they’d done before. But strangely Stiles was getting anxious rather than aroused as Derek palmed his ass and pressed them tightly against each other. Derek had tried to slow down, then, to get them back onto safe ground. But no matter how much he backed off, Stiles just got more and more anxious, until finally he’d sat up over Derek’s hips and said in a breathless rush, “Okay, so, I’m trans.”

“Okay?” Derek had said. He’d known that the statement was a big deal, would have from the nervous patter of Stiles’ heart if nothing else, but most of his blood was in his dick at the moment so it was hard to form good, coherent thoughts.

“Okay,” Stiles echoed, nonplussed.

“Yes?” Derek had said, more a question. “You’re… I’ll support you either way. Does this mean you’re uh, are you going to transition? To being female?”

Stiles snorted. “I’m honestly flattered I pass well enough that that’s your first question. But no, this is me. I’m a guy.”

Selfishly, Derek was a little relieved. Since Stiles had already transitioned, he could keep the man he’d fallen in love with first, all lean muscles and deep voice and easy masculinity. “Does everyone else know?” he had asked, still a little hesitant, a little concerned he might be doing this wrong.

“No, just Scott,” Stiles said. “Figuring things out pretty young didn't hurt in terms of keeping it private, and Dad was always great about advocating for me. I’ve been on HRT since I was twelve so I’ve got, you know, the voice, facial hair, the works. Not that I think I needed that, or any medical intervention, to be a guy, but it’s awesome to match how I feel inside you know? For the record, I don’t regret being trans, or hate myself or anything.”

“That’s good,” Derek had said, then winced at the blandness of saying something so obvious. He knows the stats, Stiles is beyond lucky if the worst thing he’s experienced is a concern that he himself might be too hung up on the external expression of his identity.

“I just wanted you to know,” Stiles had said quietly, “Before, uh, anything happened. That I might not be what you expect downstairs. Or upstairs, actually. Just in general.” he’d flicked his eyes to Derek, nervous and searching.

But whatever he was worried about seeing, he didn’t find it. Derek had been too full of relief for anything else to sneak in. He’d feared Stiles belatedly realizing that Derek’s host of issues was an insurmountable turn-off, or revealing that their new relationship wasn’t as easily mutual as it seemed. Instead, it was this declaration of trust.

Words were never his strong suit, but with Stiles’ tentative admission still in the air he wanted to be equally honest, to convey exactly what he felt, what he’d been feeling for years even though they’d only been together less than a month. He swallowed, and with a hitching little breath he let himself finally say it aloud.

“I love you, Stiles,” he’d said, for the first time. “For yourself. I just want to be with you, however you are.”

Stiles had gasped, toppled back down into his arms and they’d kissed even harder than before. Later, Stiles had been the opposite of anxious when Derek pressed a thigh between his legs. When sex was on the table, in another few weeks, they’d figured out how to make it work for them. It had been amazing, perfect. Derek hadn’t understood every aspect of Stiles’ identity right off, but he read the articles Stiles sent him, tried to really hear what his boyfriend was talking about, and to suss out his own prejudices as they arose. It had been good between them in spite of, or because of, the unexpected revelation.

Except that it hadn’t been, had it? Because Stiles left.

The only problem is that now Derek is wondering. After what Emily said about the ring, he can’t help but remember that Stiles was evading straight statements when they were upstairs, like Derek himself does when he doesn’t want to be caught in a lie. I hope I never see you, not I don’t want to see you. Maybe I don’t want you at all, not I don’t want you.

Derek smothers the hope. There’s no reason to start splitting hairs about how exactly his ex had told him off. He’d said that they were over pretty damn directly, hadn’t he? Besides, Stiles knows how to reach him and he doesn’t want to, hasn’t for years. Because Derek fucked it up, drove him off. Not with Emily after all, who Stiles would have died to save, but with himself.

“I just don’t know what I did,” he blurts in a frustrated burst. “Why is he… Lydia, he must have told you. What did I do?”

“Not everything is your fault,” she says sharply. “Maybe it’s not about you at all. Or have you not considered that? Stiles’ leaving is his own damn responsibility, it is not because you did anything wrong. He…he wouldn’t want you to think that way.”

Derek takes his eyes off the road to glance at her, baffled. She’s not looking at him, eyes focused grimly on the horizon, but she seemed sure when she said it. Stiles wouldn’t want him to blame himself, as if he cared what happened to Derek? But she’s the one who knows him best, even now, so it must be true. And Stiles kept his ring. And Stiles saved Emily. And Stiles told him to get out and never come back. And Stiles hid his scent. And Stiles left and never came back. The competing thoughts churn uselessly in his mind, finding no purchase or answers.

“Papa,” a small voice comes from the backseat.

“What is it, Baby?” he asks, happy to be distracted with her needs rather than what’s in his own head.

“Papa, I didn’t say bye to Daddy. Can we visit tomorrow so I can say bye this time?”

“Maybe,” he lies, hating himself a little. “And he’s Stiles, now, remember? Not Daddy.”

“Can I have Pencils?” Emily asks, in a wobbly whine.

Derek makes a face, realizing where this is going. A meltdown is the last thing any of them need right now. “Lydia can you… ?”

She twists in her seat so she can reach back and starts going through the bag. “Okay sweetie, she’s here somewhere, just hold on... uh... Just hold on one more minute.” She sits back right in her seat and says quietly, “Derek, I can’t find her. Do you remember putting Pencils in the bag?”

“...No,” Derek grits. He’d been a little preoccupied.

“Pencilllsssss!” Emily wails, her burgeoning temper tantrum unsuccessfully avoided. This is not a toy that can be replaced. “Pencils is gone and I want Pencils and I want my Daddy-y-y!”

“Great,” Derek mutters. He clenches his jaw and starts looking for an exit. At least he knows how to get her one of those things.

Not an hour after the Pack leaves, Stiles is wincing his way to the couch in his favorite pajama shirt with a freshly bandaged neck and a double of scotch. The couch is all askew from the earlier fight, and when he hip-checks it back into place, he trips over something. He crouches down to look, and something turns out to be Pencils.

He stares down at the grubby pink toy, sucks in his lower lip, blinks, and then he loses it.

All the emotion that’s been building up since Anna first said there was someone to see him just pours out. For the last year he's found something like acceptance in pretending he never had a chance at this at all, but now that peace is gone. He wants Emily and Derek and his Pack, wants them back so badly it’s like a physical ache.

But no matter how much he wants them, he’s alone. There’s nobody left here to care for him, and nobody for him to take care of, either. The only upside is that it doesn’t matter if he just sits in the middle of his living room and lets himself cry like a child.

There’s a tentative knock on the busted door, and his hurt takes on an edge of rage. Fucking missionaries with their simple, unshakable faith. He’s in just the right mood to scream at Jeff, that pubescent know-it-all, that no, he hasn't found God’s mercy in any of this, and by the way he's a homosexual transgender wiccan so the Elders can stuff that up their their tight, judgy asses.

But he opens the door and it’s not a missionary. It’s Derek.  

“I’m really sorry to come back and bother you like this, I didn’t mean to, just Emily forgot her favorite toy and she won’t stop crying and Lydia... wouldn’t…” he trails off, having rattled off the first part of his spiel before he really saw the state Stiles is in. He blinks, obviously surprised enough to lose the thread of what he was saying.

Then he looks down and realizes that the thing Stiles is crying over is Emily’s stupid toy. And that he’s wearing Derek’s threadbare NYU tee, the one he’d taken with him the day he left. It seems to click that Stiles is not as heartless as he pretends, that seeing his child and estranged husband hurt him exactly the way you’d expect.

Stiles scrubs a hand over his face, worried about the tear streaks first. Stupidly, he’s thinking about not wanting to look weak. But the tears are only embarrassing; he should have been planning the ways he could explain wearing this shirt without telling the truth or lying outright.

“Here. Just leave,” Stiles says, shoving the horse at Derek.

Derek takes the toy in both broad hands, but he doesn’t leave. Instead he hesitates, head quirking as he turns Pencils over thoughtfully. Stiles realizes that his ring finger is bare, now. Then, as decisively and irrevocably as leaping off a cliff, Derek looks up again and meets Stiles’ eyes.

Stiles freezes. Derek’s eyes are bright and beautiful, and his expression is one of settled calm. He’s not forcing an appearance of control any more. Stiles would shut the door if it would prevent what’s coming, but he knows with a sinking surety that it won’t. This is it, he realizes. Derek’s letting go, of the anger and resentment and of the hope, too. He’s going to say goodbye for good, move on from the last vestiges of their marriage. This is the last time Stiles will see him, ever.

It’s what Stiles wanted, of course. He’s just not sure he’ll survive it. Derek opens his mouth to say the words, chest rising with indrawn breath, and Stiles braces himself.

“Do you still love me?”

Stiles’ heartbeat leaps into panic territory, caught by surprise.  

“What the fuck, Derek?” he yelps, wrangling the emotion back under control. It doesn’t make any sense. After their fight and the things he said, there’s no way Derek could ask that. Flailing for a defense, he snarls, “isn’t it obvious?”

“No,” Derek says. He reaches out and hooks a finger on the chain at Stiles’ neck, tugging it out over the collar of the shirt so the ring hangs over the Y of NYU.

“I...” Stiles starts abortively, covering the ring in his fist. They’re both silent, and Stiles looks away. Derek’s just waiting. “What’s that supposed to prove?” he says finally, low and angry.

Derek shrugs. “I want to hear you say it. Just tell me to my face that you hate me, and I’ll go. You’ll never have to see me again, either of us.”

“Jesus, is this is some kind of… of pop quiz?” Stiles demands. His voice is thick with forced sarcasm, with cruelty that he hopes is enough. “I left, I changed my number, I…”

“If it’s so obvious, this should be easy for you,” Derek interrupts, heat creeping into his tone. “Say it. Say you don’t love me anymore, Stiles.” He’s too close, and his familiar smell is engulfing everything. It’s been years since the shirt smelled like this. Stiles has been pretending it still had some faint whiff of him, but it hasn’t for years and now faced with the real thing he has no defenses.

“I can’t believe you want me to do this,” he says, playing for time. “I know you’ve got a martyr complex and all, but this here is some next level masochism.” He’s backing up like a trapped animal, he can’t meet Derek’s eyes.

“Maybe so, but how I feel isn’t your problem anymore, is it? Just tell me. Say you don’t love me. Those words, no evasions.”

Stiles opens his mouth, looking for a way around the demand, but there isn’t one.

“I don’t love you,” he says, knowing he’s kept his voice even and firm and willing it to be enough. But can feel his heartbeat trip over the blatant lie, clear as a bell.

The two of them stand chest to chest, as a new type of tension builds in the wake of the unspoken admission. Stiles closes his eyes. He’s lost, and he can’t even tell if he’s sorry or relieved.

“All this time, I thought you hated me,” Derek says slowly, wondering. “I thought starting a family so young was too much for you, or that I had pressured you into stopping T and putting off surgery to have Emily and you resented me for it, or that the pregnancy had brought on gender dysphoria and I wasn’t supportive enough about your feelings, or…”

“Stop,” Stiles interrupts, heart aching. “It wasn’t like that, I wanted to have Emily. We talked about all that, shit.” His mind goes skittering through the memories, all the doctors visits and careful compromises - when had he given the impression that he was an unwilling participant? “You didn’t pressure me at all, you were perfect.”

“If I was perfect, you wouldn't have left,” Derek says, flat and heavy.

Stiles flinches. This isn’t what he wanted, how had he not seen this coming? “No, Derek, You are, you're perfect. I could never hate you, look at you, raising our daughter alone and… and you're not even mad at me. You offered me visitation, no questions asked. It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he admits, voice breaking. “You were supposed to hate me.”

“I don’t,” Derek says.

“I know,” Stiles admits in a tiny whisper. He doesn’t understand how, but he does know that isn’t the case.

Derek’s face finally cracks open to reveal his desperation and longing. “Why didn’t you come back?”

The laugh that bubbles out of Stiles’ throat is sad and desperate. Why didn’t he? But when he ruefully shakes his head, his vision swims dizzily. He stumbles a little with the sudden vertigo and has to grab the couch.

Derek’s hand is on his shoulder instantly. “Are you okay?”

Stiles can’t come up with an evasion fast enough, because of course the answer is no, not at all. Instead he just wags his head noncommittally, fighting down nausea.

Derek blinks, nostrils flaring again. “I can barely smell your spark at all. It’s already been an hour since the fight, it should be coming back by now.”

“Stop fretting,” Stiles sighs, waving his hand over Derek’s complaints.

“How am I supposed to do that? Maybe the Darach did something to your spark, it could be a spell.”

“No, it’s not. It’s been this way for a long time.” Stiles feels his whole body tense at the admission. Fuck, he’s over-tired and he’s played his hand all wrong. His face probably shows he knows he slipped up, too.

Derek stands there, frozen, as he slowly puts things together. “It’s what I smelled before, upstairs. But then… How long is ‘a long time’?”

Stiles shakes his head.

“How long,” Derek grinds out.

Stiles closes his eyes. The truth can’t hurt, not now. “About a month before I left.”

“You left because you were losing your spark?” Derek says, voice loud with disbelief. “That’s why you can’t you come back? I don’t care if you’re sick, or if your spark…”

“I’m not sick, I’m dying.”

There’s a long, vertiginous pause. And then Derek snarls, “no, you’re not.”

“I am,” Stiles says calmly.

“What... What the fuck!” Derek curses, starting to pace. He’s flashing his eyes, even, losing control. Stiles wishes there was something he could say. “But why didn’t you… If you really thought something like this was happening, why didn't you tell me what was going on? Did you think I...” Derek gulps. “Did you think I wouldn’t be there for you?”

“No, I… I just freaked out, okay?” Stiles snaps back, ashamed. “There was no master plan, I just freaked out! What’s happening to me is what happened to my mom. Finding that out scared the shit out of me. Deaton explained what it was, and I could barely think straight, much less admit it to you. It would have made it real, and I thought if I took a little time to get my head around it, I could find some cure, or I could...”

“You found out you were dying, and your first thought was to lie?” Derek is reeling, looking around but not really seeing.

“I was going to tell you when I came back,” Stiles admits. “I swear, I wasn’t lying to you about that, the trip was supposed to be temporary, so I could find a cure. I thought if I could have some hint of a solution first, I could tell you. But then I didn’t find anything.”

He shakes his head, remembering the creeping desperation he’d felt growing at every dead end, how he’d forced himself further, promising himself he’d come home with good news. How it had felt, months in, that he could only come back if he had good news, a worthy excuse for having left for so long.

“If you’d told me, I would have been there,” Derek insists quietly. “Even after you missed her birthday. Even last week.”

Stiles takes that in, tearing up again, but all he can do is shrug.

“Okay,” Derek says, audibly gearing up to fight the unfightable. “Okay, you know what, it doesn’t matter. I know now, we’re doing this together. There’s nothing that doesn’t have a cure,” he says, steady and sure. “With you and Deaton and the Pack, we can…”

“Find a magical solution that I somehow never stumbled on?” Stiles laughs, has to. “We won’t. It doesn’t exist.”

“How can you be sure? This has happened to someone else, there must be research that they started working on, or…”

“No, Derek. The problem is that everyone with this disease already knows the cure.”

Derek blinks at him, narrowing his eyes in confusion.

“But, that cure is something I can’t use,” Stiles tries to explain. “And all the research just leads back to the same thing.”

“I’m not letting you die when there’s a cure out there. Whatever it is. I’ll help, I promise,” Derek says increasing urgency in his voice. “What is it?”

“Killing Emily.”

Derek’s face goes blank with shock. “What?” he whispers.

“It’s the spark. My mom’s, mine, Emily’s it’s all the same magic. The second I had her, my mojo passed to her. No more magic fuel, see? What spark I have left is burning through the rest of me to keep itself going.” Stiles hates to tell this to Derek, let him in on the horror show. But it's also such a relief to share the truth at last.

“Do you get it?” he presses. “I killed my mom. I watched her lose her mind, I watched her body waste away. Because of me. And that was going happen to Emily, too. What happened to my dad was going to happen to you. Only worse, because you’d know that it was happening because of what we did. And Emily… how could she understand? She’d blame herself. I couldn’t make either of you go through that,” Stiles says. It’s the one thing he’s been sure of since he admitted to himself he wasn’t getting better. “Everything I researched just confirmed I would go faster than my mom because I used my magic more. There’s no way out of this except for taking the spark back from Emily and, like, how the fuck would I even say that to you? That you have to pick?”

Derek opens his mouth to say something, but Stiles plows on, drunk on finally unburdening the secrets. He’s envisioned this scenario so many ways, and now it’s actually happening it’s nothing like any of them.

“I wanted to find a cure before I came home and told you I was sick, but while I was going out of my mind searching for it, I fucked everything else up. I missed our anniversary, and her second birthday, and who knows what else. And I never even told you why. For literally months we’d been going on cryptic phone calls, we hadn’t even seen each other in person because I was so scared of you smelling my spark dying, or hearing me lie... but I shouldn’t have been scared of that,” Stiles admits, deadened. “I should have been scared of what I was doing to our family in the meantime.”

Stiles shakes his head, at his past self’s stupidity or maybe at the situation as a whole. He clears his throat to finish the story. “By then I’d been gone for so long that you had to have known I was lying about something. After the birthday, you didn’t even pick up my calls so I could apologize. I figured we were as good as done, already. I thought, hell, I can’t fix this. I’m going to be a goddamned corpse in five years anyways. Why fuck you guys over twice?” Derek flinches at his casual mention of death, not inured to it like Stiles has become.  

“I thought it would be better if Emily just didn’t know me, the Pack forgot me, if you hated me,” Stiles says quietly, looking at the floor. “I told Lydia to warn Emily, if she was going to have a kid, so it wouldn’t happen to her.”

“So you had it all planned out,” Derek says, and the hot anger in his voice makes Stiles look up at him. “You were what, going to die alone? You do know that as your next of kin I would have been notified when they hospitalized you, right? And your dad? What did you think this would do to him? Unless you told him, like Lydia,” he adds with bitterness.

Stiles tries to keep his chin up in the face of Derek’s withering disapproval. ”I only told Lydia, and I made her swear not to tell any of you. I didn’t want my Dad to feel responsible for what happened to my mom. And with the hospital… When it got bad enough, before they had to do any of that, I thought I’d... take care of it.”

Derek shakes his head, horrified.

“It's not the worst thing to die like that, Derek,” Stiles insists, his voice growing louder. “I never want to look at Emily and not even know who she is, or tell her I hate her, fuck! You don’t know what it was like with my mom. I don’t love the idea of being alone for this, but it’s better than making her watch. Maybe this is the best thing I can give her as a parent, you know?”

“You're wrong,” Derek growls with that stubborn Hale scowl. “It doesn’t matter how it was with your mom. It won’t be like that with us, I won’t let it. So what, you couldn’t find a cure yet? Once all of us are working together, we’ll do it. You can’t have tried everything. Emily might be a werewolf, right? Who knows what that changes. This isn’t over.”

It’s sweet, how sure he is, but Stiles knows better than to get his hopes up. “Derek, it is. I swear I’ve looked into every possible way to make that not true, but there’s no happily ever after for me.” Derek shakes his head, opening his mouth to argue, but Stiles ploughs on. “No, listen. What’s happening to me is a done deal, but you don’t have to let it destroy you, too. You can still find someone, you can still have a big family, grow old with them, everything you wanted. That’s what I was trying to give you. I want you to get that happily ever after.”

“No,” Derek says. “Stiles, you’re my happily ever after. Okay? Just you.” He steps in close, reaching out to take Stiles’ hand. “In sickness and in health, I meant that when I said it. Come back to Beacon Hills. Come home with me, for however long that is.” He pulls Stiles in, so they’re chest to chest, and tentatively ducks his head to press his nose to Stiles’ neck, scenting him. It feels like home already.

“But,” Stiles starts, not sure what argument he really has besides I don’t deserve this. As much as he wants to reject the comfort, his hands are on Derek’s shoulder blades, clutching him tightly.

“I want Emily to know you,” Derek says against his skin. “You’re too amazing for her to miss out on. And when it gets bad, we’re going to be there for you. Like it or not. I’ll find you if you try to leave again and I’ll take care of you. Even if it means what you said before. You’re not going to be alone for this.”

“Why?” Stiles manages. “I ran out on you, I left you alone with a toddler. I made you be a single parent because I couldn’t handle my own shit or let you in to help.”

“You did,” Derek agrees with irritation finally coloring his tone. “But I understand. With what happened to your mom and… and the way that Emily factored in. I do get it.”

“You’re a fucking saint, if you do,” Stiles mutters, aiming for a bit of levity.

He feels Derek shake his head. “No, just relieved. I thought you hated me. Anything else is better than that. At least this we can fight against. Together.”

Stiles lets his head tip against Derek’s, rubbing his cheek into those stupid gelled spikes. He curls his fingers even more tightly into Derek’s back and says, “Okay.”

It’s like he’s been freezing his heart by pieces since he left and it’s only now melting with relief and beating properly again. Painful as they are, the emotions flowing through him now feel pure in comparison to all the festering uncertainty and solitude. He hadn’t realized how much of the torture over the last years had been the fear, as much as the sickness, had been caused by his avoidance of this very moment. He takes a shuddering breath, stupidly glad that he at least has a little time left to make things right before the disease runs its course.

“Okay,” he repeats, “I’ll come home.”

15 years later

“This is beautiful,” Derek says, brushing a wistful hand over the tree trunk and looking out over the preserve. “Stiles would have loved it.”

“Yeah,” Emily says. “I wish he had survived.”

“I am right. Fucking. Here,” Stiles pants, dragging himself up the last bit of trail. “I do not have werewolf stamina! That was a long hike, it’s normal to be tired!”

“Sometimes I can still hear him whining,” Derek says as he gazes off at the view, a hint of a smirk coloring his tone.

“I hate both of you,” Stiles huffs, finally making it to the rest of the family and plastering his sweaty side up along Derek’s.

“Don't you cops have fitness tests?” Emily teases.

“Har har,” Stiles says.

Derek laughs for real and slings an arm around Stiles’ shoulder, follows with his nose and scents his sweaty neck. Stiles grunts in annoyance, but at this point he’s far from surprised that being all stinky is some kind of turn on for his husband. He tips his chin for better access.

“Don’t be gross,” Emily chastises, narrowing her eyes and pointing.

Stiles makes a point of kissing Derek sloppily, complete with tongue and gratuitous moans.

“Ugh!” Emily exclaims, stomping off to the other side of the viewpoint while Stiles and Derek sit down on a bench for Stiles to get his breath back before the descent.

Emily sets about trying out new spells while they wait. She’s better than Stiles ever was, though he guesses she actually got training and he shouldn't be too offended.

“Do you miss it?” Derek asks, nodding at where their daughter is using her spark to draw the tree branches out around her, weaving them into patterns and encouraging them to sprout little, unnatural flowers.

Stiles gives him a healthy side-eye. “Sure, we traveled to three continents, spent literally thousands of hours researching in musty basements, and started from scratch after more dead ends than I wanna remember to get rid of the damn thing... and I miss it.”

“Just because you needed to give it up doesn’t mean you can’t be sorry it’s gone,” Derek says, perfectly reasonable.

Stiles sighs. Emily tires of the plant game and lets the tree snap back to its original shape. Unlike him, she’s perfectly aware of what bearing children will mean for her, and at the moment she says she has no intentions to ever do it. It’s like, the literal embodiment of every metaphor about parenthood taking away your personality, is how she puts it. I did it for you, Stiles always points out. She doesn’t buy it. On accident, she always reminds him. Worth it, he says. Ugh, she answers, rolling her eyes to cover a smile.

“I miss it sometimes,” Stiles admits. “Can’t say I love being the useless human again.”

Derek nuzzles him. “You’re not useless.”

“Hey, you started this pity party,” Stiles gripes. “You don’t get to rain on the parade now.”

“I'm being supportive,” Derek corrects smugly. “You've got at least four more years before you're over the hill.”

“Gee thanks, Babe,” Stiles says flatly.

“Welcome,” Derek says, amping up the nuzzles to little nibbling kisses.

Stiles sighs and relaxes into it. He doesn’t think of the Freakout Years much these days, and Emily barely remembers except for stories. Still, he feels like it gave him an extra appreciation for Derek and the love they share. Or maybe the appreciation is just from knowing he’d have sulked off to an early death if Derek hadn’t pulled him back into the Pack and forced him to keep looking for a cure.

“Love you,” he says soft in Derek’s ear, maneuvering him up for a proper kiss.

“I can smell you being gross from here,” Emily shouts.

“We can't help it,” Stiles shouts back. “We’re one of those Notebook couples, gonna die together in bed when we’re like 80. While having sex, hopefully.”

“Dad, oh my God!” Emily screeches. “I can’t believe this is my family!”

Stiles smiles at her sideways, resting his head on Derek’s shoulder. “Me neither,” he says softly.