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Life after the Alpha pack is a social wasteland the likes of which Stiles hasn't seen since fourth grade. That year he'd spent following Lydia around like a puppy and getting pushed into lockers (and puddles, and trashcans, and on one particularly exciting occasion, traffic) by Jackson. By the end of that summer, his mother was dead and Scott had moved in down the street. So fifth grade was an entirely fresh kind of hell, but at least having Scott around meant he didn't have to eat lunch alone anymore.
Not until now, anyway. Scott doesn't detach his face from Allison's long enough to eat lunch at all these days. Stiles has started to worry he'll waste away. And when Scott's not making out with Allison, he's whining about Isaac making out with Allison, even though the whole sharing plan had been Scott's idea in the first place. From what Stiles has been able to gather, Scott never thought Allison and Isaac would actually go for it.
Lydia and Danny are both wrapped up with the twins. Jackson's still in London. Derek and Cora are off God knows where for who knows how long, and Erica and Boyd are still dead. That leaves Stiles with a choice between solitude and Peter Hale, and not even Stiles has ever been that lonely.
He tries making new friends. And friends seem willing to be made. Having Lydia and Danny say hi to him in the halls has elevated Stiles from the pit of loserdom to something approaching acceptable in the high school social hierarchy. But it just doesn't work anymore; his intensity dial is broken. Concerns that fall short of life and death barely even register. School seems both easier and more pointless than ever before. Beacon Hills has a magical druid for a vet and the scattered remnants of a werewolf pack for guardians; with that as a conversational baseline, he can't be bothered to talk about tests or PSATs or college anymore.
He stops going to lunch at all after a while. It feels too much like work.
In the afternoons, he goes to the clinic and reads until his eyes cross. Deaton won't let him take any books home with him, which is fine, because Stiles doesn't want to. Not all of them are particularly safe, and he doesn't really want them around his dad. He practices making barriers with mountain ash, then graduates to stronger stuff -- wards and sigils, mostly, ways to protect his turf. He turns his house into a fortress, then does the same for his friends, just for practice. He goes back to the tattoo parlor and gets three concentric circles inked on the inside of his wrist -- they're supposed to be a protective symbol, but once the bandage comes off they remind him uncomfortably of the Nemeton.
Scott and Allison (or Allison and Isaac) invite him to hang out with them sometimes, and sometimes he does. But most of the time he doesn't, and after a while that starts to feel -- okay. He starts to feel protective of his alone time, instead of just wigged out by it.
In May, just before exams starts, he gets a text from an unknown number. It says, Coming home soon, please check on loft. It's not signed, but then, it doesn't need to be.
Stiles texts back, Who is this? and goes to check on Derek's loft.
There's some water damage, and the power's out. The air smells like a serious mold problem. There's not a single stick of unbroken furniture in the whole place.
On the way back to his house, Stiles texts back, You need to move.
Find us something, the next one says.
Stiles says, I'm not your Renfield, dude, but he can't have Derek and Cora living in that dump, not if he ever wants to look in the mirror again.
So. There's an apartment with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a decent sized kitchen for rent above Mrs. Appleton's garage, just a few blocks over. It's tiny, but it's furnished, with hardwood floors. There aren't any holes in the walls, and there's no World War II alarm system; he's not sure Derek and Cora would feel at home there. But he texts back picture after picture, and a few days later a check appears in his mail box for first, last, and security deposit.
He takes it over to Mrs. Appleton, and starts drawing sigils over the windows and the doors.
"Who are you texting to all the time?" Scott asks him as they walk home after the last day of school.
"Nobody." It's not really a lie; Derek never signs his name, after all, and the texts come from an unknown number. But its close enough to a lie to make Stiles feel weird, so he shrugs and looks at the ground and says, "Derek," and waits for the flood gates to open.
But Scott's changed a little, too, since Derek left town. "Really?" he says. "Huh. Is he coming back?"
"Pretty soon, I think. He didn't say when, for sure."
"Tell him he's welcome here any time," Scott says, in his brand new Alpha voice. "Tell him I really mean it."
Scott says you can come back whenever you want Stiles texts later that night. In case that's what's holding you back.
It's not, Derek sends back immediately. But tell him thanks.
~
Stiles is at Deaton's when Derek gets back into town. He gets a text, and his heart beat kicks up out of rhythm.
Derek, at least, will be familiar. Derek is eternal, like a redwood, like the distant past. He's unchangeable. Constant. Stiles definitely needs a little of that back in his life, even if it does come in the shape of a particularly touchy sourwolf. He heads home, planning to change clothes -- planning to look good for a change, and not really thinking about why.
But Derek is already there, waiting for him on the front porch steps. He's wearing jeans and a faded red t-shirt, a little more colorful than usual. But his stubble is still weirdly perfect, and his hair still sticks up in expensive disarray, and he's still Derek. Stiles breaks into a wide grin, and forgets that he's wearing one of his dad's old Black Sabbath t-shirts and a pair of plaid board shorts.
Derek stands up. "Hey," he says. "Stiles. Good to --"
"Derek!" Stiles pushes past the offered handshake and grabs Derek's shoulders, yanking him in close for a hug. "Dude. You're here!"
"I'm here," Derek says, his voice a warm comfort against Stiles's ear. "So are you."
Stiles remembers himself, and pulls back. He can't pull back the smile on his face, though. It's Derek, alive and whole and real. There's still something wild about him, something that can't be unseen once you've seen it. It makes everything that's happened over the past few years seem real. Having four werewolves and a banshee in his social circle should have done it, but it takes Derek Hale's stupid face to remind Stiles that this is a place where important things happen. Scary things, weird things, sure. But things that matter.
"Jesus, I totally missed you," Stiles says in wonder. "What the hell is that about?"
"Don't look at me." Derek squeezes Stiles's shoulder, his hand lingering maybe a little longer than it needs to. "I didn't miss you at all."
"Lies. You can't live without me. Where's Cora?"
Derek smiles widely, distractingly -- and that's new, who knew Derek's face could do that? "She's back at the new apartment. It's nice. Thanks for helping out with that."
"I was taught to keep my friends close, and my enemies closer. I can never quite figure out which category to put you into," Stiles says, "but either way, Mrs. Appleton's place is only a couple of blocks away. I'm think I'm covered."
"You should come help us move in," Derek says awkwardly. "Hang out for a while."
Stiles beams. "You did miss me."
Derek lifts a shoulder as if to say, who cares? But Stiles knows better.
~
The sigils are almost a hit. Derek and Cora both love the idea, once Stiles gets rid of the one that keeps werewolves out and concedes he got a little bit carried away. Cora steps over the threshold just to make sure she can, but doesn't stick around long; she gives Stiles a quick hug and then takes off to buy sheets and curtains and table cloths and everything. That leaves Derek and Stiles with all the heavy lifting, which Stiles is happy to let Derek handle on his own.
When all the boxes are squared away (literally in square stacks by the appropriate bedroom door; who even does that?) Stiles and Derek kick back on the sofa, staring at all the unpacking they're not doing. Stiles doesn't know what's in half the boxes, but he wants to. He hopes they'll let him stick around long enough to find out.
"I didn't tell anybody else I was coming back," Derek says into the middle of a long, comfortable silence. Stiles was drifting, but the words jerk him back to the moment with his heart hammering in his chest. There's nothing inherently alarming in them, but the tone...that calls for a certain amount of caution.
"I, well, you know I told Scott," Stiles says. "Nobody else, though. I didn't know it was a secret."
"It's not," Derek says patiently. Patience is a new Hale virtue. It looks good on Derek; but then, most things do. "I'm just saying, you're the first person I wanted to tell."
Stiles says, "Oh?" so casually he very nearly swallows his tongue. "That's. Thanks."
"Before I left," Derek says. Then he pauses, and takes a breath. "Before, when I killed Boyd--"
"When the Alpha pack killed Boyd," Stiles says.
"You were -- you helped. After. I've thought about that a lot while I was gone."
Stiles has thought about it a lot since Derek started texting him. Mostly he's thought about how alone he's been, even in the heart of his friends' lives, and how alone he stopped feeling as soon as he saw Derek's first text. Coming home soon, it said, and reading it, Stiles had kind of felt like maybe he was coming home, too.
"I never really thought of you as a person before," Stiles says. Derek flinches, and Stiles keeps going, trying to fix the wrong words with something better. "Just, wait, okay? That didn't -- I mean, I thought of you as a person, of course I did, just -- you were a part of Scott's thing, up until Erica, and Boyd. It hadn't really occurred to me that you could be anything else. After that..."
"You helped."
Stiles shrugs. "You needed it. And you helped me, too."
Derek reaches over, slowly, like he's waiting for Stiles to stop him. There's a look in his eyes that says he maybe wants Stiles to stop him. But Stiles doesn't. Derek's hand on his face is warm and alive and easy, waking Stiles up in ways he didn't expect.
"Maybe you should be a part of my thing now," Derek says quietly. "I'd like that."
Stiles grins. "When you say it like that, it sounds creepy."
Derek laughs. Stiles isn't sure he's ever heard Derek do that before. "You're so weird," Derek says, but to Stiles, it doesn't sound like a bad thing.
"I'd like it, too," Stiles says. Derek's face is so close, Stiles can feel his breath. "Is this why you only told me you were coming back?"
"It's why I came back, period." Derek closes the distance between them, and fits his mouth over Stiles's mouth, and they're kissing, breathing together, hands coming up to touch and grab and hold. Stiles makes a low, wanting sound in his throat, and Derek gets rougher, uses more of his strength. Stiles presses into Derek's hands and stops thinking for a while, stops even wanting to.
When he can breathe again, he's so close to Derek, not even air can get between them. He tilts his head back against the sofa cushions, and Derek does the same, watching him, looking dazed and messed up and happy.
Derek Hale. Happy. I did that, Stiles says to himself, and the rightness of it makes him feel a little light-headed. "Hey, can I tell Scott about this?"
Derek groans. "Do you really have to? He's just going to challenge me for your hand or something."
"Let me rephrase," Stiles says. "Can we do this some more, with fewer clothes on, so I can go make Scott listen to tales of our sexploits in vivid, technicolor detail, until he reaches a point where he can't even look at you without blushing and feeling like a pervert?" He grins, just thinking about it. "Because I owe him that," he says. "You don't even know how I owe him."
Derek laughs, and pulls Stiles closer. "Well, okay, if it's for revenge," he says. "Yeah. I guess I can get on board."
~