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In the grocery store, across three produce tables heaped tall with fruit, Stiles spots him.
Stiles meanders around the greens and fruits, until he arrives right next to Derek in front of the fresh flowers display.
Derek doesn’t move.
Stiles leans forward into his eye line with a grin, not about to miss an opportunity to harass the werewolf. “So, you come here often?”
Derek blinks. “What?”
Stiles laughs. “I said...”
Derek isn’t looking at him.
Stiles frowns.
Derek is standing stock still, both hands gripping the cart in front of him like it might try to get away. The plastic of the handlebar is cracked.
“Everything okay?” Stiles asks. He glances around the store for potential threats that might explain Derek’s weirdness, but everything seems fine.
“I’m waiting,” Derek bites out. His hands wring tighter around the cart. There’s sweat shining along his forehead.
Stiles can’t remember a time that he’s seen Derek so tense and disheveled that death wasn’t immediately imminent. He feels in his pocket for his phone and considers calling Scott.
“Waiting for what?”
“For Laura.”
Stiles freezes, halfway through the passcode on his phone’s screen. “You... Derek, you’re waiting for who?”
Derek blinks slowly.
“Hey.” Stiles reaches out and grips Derek’s forearm. As soon as he touches him though, Derek jerks away and turns a full-force glare on Stiles.
“Cora. I said I’m waiting for Cora,” he snaps.
“Okay.” Stiles takes a step back. “Where is she?”
Derek doesn’t answer, already turning his cart around and hurrying away.
Stiles stands there for a moment, phone still clutched in his hand. “I... okay, then. Catch you later.” He waves, even as Derek disappears down another aisle.
That was definitely weirder than Derek’s normal weirdness, but Stiles shrugs it off and pushes his cart over to the deli counter.
The woman behind the counter looks up and greets him with a relieved grin. “Thank God you showed up. I was about to go over there myself.”
Stiles frowns. “What?”
She nods over to where Derek had been. “He was standing there like that for almost fifteen minutes.”
Stiles turns back, despite the fact that Derek is totally gone. Whatever had spooked Derek had to be something serious. Stiles shudders, not wanting to think about the sort of things that lurk in the depths of Derek’s mind. He definitely doesn’t want to think about anything scary enough to crack the werewolf’s careful composure.
“Is your friend okay?” The woman asks.
Stiles shakes his head. “I really don’t know.”
-----
Once Stiles starts to notice things, he can’t stop. It’s part of the ADD, he knows, the complete inability to not notice things, but it’s pretty useful at times.
He finds himself watching Derek closely, trying to puzzle together his story.
They’ve gone out to dinner, five of them. Cora, Derek, Scott, Isaac, and Stiles crowded into a booth at the Round Table Pizza in town. It had been Scott’s idea, an attempt at embracing his alpha-dom and bringing them together.
It’s normal and good, until Stiles realizes that Derek is being even quieter than usual. When everyone laughs, Derek looks down at his plate, shoulders hunched.
Stiles gestures across the table at him. “What’s up with you?”
Derek looks up and away. “Nothing.”
Everyone has gone quiet, watching them. Scott looks particularly distressed about his werewolf outing having even the slightest hitch. “Is something wrong?”
Derek doesn’t answer, but Cora, sitting next to her brother, reaches over and presses one, delicate finger to the crease between his eyebrows. “Headache.”
Derek sighs and nods into her hand.
“What? How do you get headaches? You’re a--” Cora cuts Stiles off with a look.
“I never get sick anymore,” Isaac says.
Scott nods in agreement.
Cora actually looks offended. “It’s psychological, you idiots.”
She’s replaced her finger with her entire palm, pressed gently to Derek’s forehead. Rope-like black veins curl down Cora’s arm and then disappear.
Stiles watches as Derek, one centimeter at a time, relaxes against her.
“Wait a minute,” Scott smirks. “Are you saying that his headache... is all in his head?”
Cora jabs him with her elbow at the same time that Isaac offers his fist across the table for a bump.
“Real winners. Every single one of you,” Cora remarks, sipping at her Coke.
Stiles laughs too, smiling harder when Derek lifts his head and grins at his sister.
-----
The dinners and hang-outs become a pretty regular thing. Stiles isn’t sure that they would normally be friends, any of them, but they have something in common now, whether it’s missing a lost friend or relative, or war wounds, or lycanthropy in general.
Scott brings out Pictionary and they crowd around the coffee table in the McCall living room, sitting on the floor and sofa, drinks and chip bags scattered everywhere.
Stiles gets wedged on the sofa between Derek and Scott.
Scott and Stiles rule Pictionary. It’s no contest. Their brains work on the same wave length.
Allison and Isaac trail them at a respectable distance.
After three rounds in which team Hale has still failed to move from the start space, Cora shoves her drawing in her brother’s face.
“A tea kettle. Obviously. How can you not see it?”
Derek quirks an eyebrow. “Because it looks like a dog.”
“Tea kettle,” Cora nearly roars.
“With a tail,” Derek replies flatly.
“A spout!”
“A tail,” Derek snaps. He rips the little note pad out of her hand and crumples the page, tossing it over his shoulder.
Cora crosses her arms. “I request a new partner. Mine is blind.”
The others have already moved on around them. It looks like a typical sibling spat, but Hales aren’t all that typical about family matters.
Stiles can feel Derek tensing up beside him and can see the way Cora’s face hardens.
When Cora says she wants a new partner, Derek hears that she wants a new brother.
When Derek fails to get her drawing, Cora feels like he doesn’t even try to understand her.
Stiles intervenes.
He claps his hands. “Moving on. Cora, that was a beautiful tea kettle. Derek, way to... creatively interpret that fine work of art.”
Neither of them react.
In fact, they’re still glaring at each other, so Stiles turns it up a few notches.
He throws an arm around Derek and grins. “Hey, don’t worry about it. You’ll get ‘em next time, sweetie.”
Scott and Isaac laugh and Cora finally cracks a smile.
It takes a moment for everyone to settle and when they do, Stiles glances over at Derek.
Derek doesn’t move. At all.
“Sorry.” Stiles nudges his knee with his fist. “Just a joke.”
Isaac looks up from his spot on the floor. “Derek?”
Stiles leans closer and Cora shifts up onto her knees.
Derek’s not even blinking.
“Hey.” Stiles nudges him again. “What is it? I’m sorry.”
Derek’s eyes slide closed. A chill-like shudder runs all the way through him. Stiles tenses, ready to grab him, when he opens his eyes and is back.
He glances around the group and Stiles sees the embarrassment on his face for just a second before he jumps to his feet and disappears into the kitchen.
“Okay.” Scott frowns after him in confusion. “Um, time out, I guess.”
Isaac heads for the bathroom, while Cora pulls out her cellphone. Allison slips outside to call her dad.
Stiles takes their distraction as an opportunity to follow Derek.
In the kitchen, Derek is popping ice cubes out of a tray and into cups.
Stiles shifts on his feet. “Hey. Sorry about that. I didn’t mean anything. I just--”
“It’s fine.” Derek turns just enough to meet Stiles’ eyes.
“Okay. Then what was that?”
“Nothing.” Derek shoves the ice cube tray back in the freezer and hands three of the cups to Stiles.
“Wait.” Stiles is seriously risking his neck by stepping in Derek’s path to stop him, a fact he only realizes after Derek has stopped short in front of him.
“It didn’t look like nothing.”
Derek avoids his eyes and clenches the plastic cups until they bend in his grip.
“You totally spaced out for a minute, like you were thinking, or remembering. Like a, like a flashback.”
Stiles may or may not be spending too much time online researching psychology after Cora’s comment at the restaurant.
Derek’s eyes lock on him like high beams in the dark. “What did you say?”
“A flashback.” Stiles swallows and nods. “A memory. You were remembering something, weren’t you? Something bad.”
Derek goes silent again. He turns toward the counter and sets everything down.
“Does that happen a lot?” Stiles can’t help but ask. “I mean, everyone knows you have enough trauma to last a lifetime, but...” He loses his train of thought.
Up until now, it had been a joke. The nightmare, horror life spectacular of Derek Hale.
Staring at Derek under the dim, yellow light of the kitchen, Stiles can’t find anything funny.
“I’m going to go,” Derek says. “Tell Cora...” He glances for the door, then yanks his keys out of his pocket and presses them into Stiles’ hand.
“Okay.” Stiles nods. “I will.”
Derek brushes past him and out the door without another word.
-----
The Omega they’re tracking through the preserve isn’t that old.
Stiles caught a glimpse of him in town the other day and would put him right around thirty. Older than any of them, but not like parental age old.
Derek says they need to talk to him and let him know he’s not welcome here. Omegas, especially in small towns, he says, are almost always on the run and you can almost always expect hunters to follow.
He tells Scott all of this specifically, but Stiles is in the room at the time so he’s totally involved.
Stiles gives Isaac and Cora a ride out to meet up with Scott and Derek and then he’s there and he knows what the guy looks like, so...
Derek glares at him for a solid ten minutes.
When they split up, Isaac and Cora take off together since they have some kind of thing, some orphan, traumatized, old-soul thing going on.
Stiles doesn’t get it.
He moves to follow Scott, but Scott looks at him with the puppy eyes and flexes his claws. “Sorry, man, but I really want to run today. You know, stretch out my Alpha legs.”
Stiles can’t deny that face.
Apparently, neither can Derek anymore. He rolls his eyes and motions for Stiles to follow him.
“Alright.” Stiles rubs his hands together. “Let’s go. Do you have a speech planned for when we find this guy? Please take your leave, kind sir. Something like that?”
“No,” Derek grumbles as he leads the way between trees and under branches.
Stiles used to think he knew what stalking meant, but he never saw it in action until Derek.
The man stalks through the woods.
“Nothing at all planned?” he asks again.
“No. Be quiet.”
For some reason, ‘be quiet’ has always had a Pavlovian type response in Stiles.
The response is that his mouth must open and make words.
“If I were you, I’d have planned out a speech of some kind. I mean what if this guy doesn’t speak english? Hey, are there werewolves all over the world? There must be, I mean, the Argents are French. And Hale, that’s like, Irish, right? Are you Irish?”
Derek makes some kind of low humming noise Stiles interprets as yes.
“Stilinski is Slovak if you were wondering. Everyone thinks Polish, but the suffix -ski is actually really common in surnames throughout Eastern Europe. My dad arrested this Macedonian guy once, his name was Stanofski. Are you familiar with Macedonia?”
Derek doesn’t say anything, but he stops walking, so Stiles figures he must really want to hear this.
“It actually has a really interesting history. Well, most places do, but I mean, we can talk about that later. Macedonia was part of Greece and--”
Derek growls.
Stiles freezes. “Is it the Omega?” He looks around, trying to listen for movement.
For a long moment there’s nothing but the sound of their breath puffing out in the still night air.
“You need to be quiet,” Derek says. The words grate out of him like bark scraped off a tree.
“Is it the Omega?” Stiles asks again, because Derek never just answers his questions.
“No,” Derek shouts, sudden and harsh.
Stiles takes a step back.
“Stiles,” Derek erupts. “I wouldn’t hear the Omega if he was right behind me with you here. You need to shut up. Just... Just be quiet.”
Derek turns in one smooth motion and plows his fist through a sapling behind him. The tree topples over into the leaf cover with a hush.
Stiles takes another step back. “Okay. That was... excessive. Are you having a bad day?”
Derek’s chest heaves like he’s just run five miles. “Stop.”
Yeah, Stiles can take a hint. He raises his hands and closes his mouth.
Derek turns and kicks the tree that he’d felled. Then, he kicks it again. When that doesn’t seem to be good enough, he picks it up and heaves it into the darkness.
In the silence that follows his outburst, a howl rings out, loud and clear through the night.
“Is that--” Stiles starts to ask. He bites his tongue.
Derek takes a deep breath. “It’s Scott. He found him.”
He starts off toward the sound and Stiles hurries to keep pace with him.
Stiles keeps a wary eye on him, but Derek seems fine for the rest of the evening.
They don’t talk about it.
-----
The Omega was dispatched without violence.
But Derek was right about hunters following the wolf into town.
They’re jumped just on the edge of the preserve and before Stiles can even cry human, he’s being tossed into the back of a box truck. Derek lands heavily on top of him and then the gate is slammed shut. The truck is pitch black.
Stiles scrambles to get his phone out as the truck rumbles to life.
The meager light reveals stacks of shipping pallets taking up most of the space, leaving enough room for the two of them in the back of the truck. They’re sitting on bags of dirt.
“Well, this is great. I don’t have a signal in this metal box,” Stiles sighs and thumps his fist against the wall of the truck. “Any ideas wolf-man?”
He turns the phone’s light on Derek, who is perched on a bag of dirt, breathing carefully through his nose.
Derek looks at him with wide eyes. “They came from the coast and they’ve had others back here. Recently.”
“So how do we get out?” Stiles asks.
The pallets shake when the truck bounces over a bump in the road. Stiles grabs for the wall to steady himself.
Derek gestures for the light and then aims a powerful kick at the bottom of the truck gate. It leaves a dent and Derek tries again, the flat of his sole making solid contact with the gate.
It also makes a lot of noise.
When the latch is just starting to look like it could be bending, the truck rumbles to a stop.
Stiles swallows. “Don’t tell me we’re already there.”
“No.” Derek shifts into a crouch and glances over his shoulder. “Get back. Behind something if you can.”
Stiles does as he’s told and slips behind a fallen pallet.
When the hatch slides up, there is scarcely time to breathe before there’s the crackle-snap of a taser.
Derek lashes out with a roar.
Stiles hears the thumps of several more hits before the taser goes off again. Everything is quiet. Then, there’s the rattling of a chain and the clink of metal.
The gate slams shut again. After a moment, the truck starts up.
Stiles creeps out from his hiding place to find Derek cuffed and chained to a bracket near the floor of the truck.
“Did they hurt you?” he pants, searching for injuries with the dim light of his phone.
Derek huffs. “It’s fine. Can you get this?” He rattles the chain where it circles his wrists.
Stiles crawls closer to inspect the bindings. “I texted everyone while the gate was open.”
“Oh.” Derek’s head thumps back against the side of the truck and he sighs. “Good. Smart.”
“Really?” Stiles smirks. “Was that a compliment?”
He can’t see Derek’s face in the dark, but he can hear the slight amusement in his voice.
“Get me out of these and I’ll give you all the compliments you want.”
Stiles snickers quietly.
“Shut up,” Derek scoffs.
Stiles sits back on his heels. “These aren’t standard cuffs. I don’t even see where the locking mechanism is.”
Derek growls and yanks on the chain.
Stiles sighs as he shifts around to sit against the wall beside Derek. “Scott will come.”
Derek rattles the chain again. Then, he groans as he pulls hard on his wrists.
Stiles checks his phone, out of habit mostly. There are no replies, of course, and no signal.
In the dark, Derek continues to pull and struggle against the cuffs.
“You want me to look at those again?” Stiles asks, even though he knows it’s no use.
“Yes,” Derek bites out, sounding a bit breathless.
Stiles pushes up to his knees and uses the light of his phone to inspect the chains again. They’re some kind of manacle, like nothing he’s ever seen at the Sheriff’s Station. It must be a hunter-issue special.
As he’s squinting at the latches, Derek jerks his wrists around violently.
Stiles reaches out to rest a hand on his arm and stop him. “Dude, I’m trying. You need to be still.”
“I need to get out,” Derek growls. He’s definitely panting now.
Stiles sits back.
Derek glances between Stiles and his wrists. “You didn’t even try. Come on. I need out of these.”
His breaths are coming out in short puffs of air as he yanks and pulls at the chains. “Get me out, Stiles. Get me out right now.”
Stiles can see it coming but, just like his own experiences, there’s nothing he can do to stop it.
He swallows over the lump in his throat and speaks as calmly as he can. “I think you’re panicking. You need to try to relax and take a deep breath.”
“I... what?” Derek pants. “Help me with this. Just... just help me. Please.”
Stiles’ heart sinks with his last word. He never wanted to know how desperate Derek would have to be to actually beg for something.
There’s blood beginning to run from Derek’s wrists from his struggles.
Even though Stiles knows it will heal, it’s still an awful sight. He reaches out to hold Derek’s hands still against the wall of the truck. He leans his weight against them and shifts around in front of Derek.
“Look at me. I know you can see everything perfectly in here with your wolfy night vision, so just focus right here.”
Stiles can feel the puffs of air on his face as Derek gasps through each breath. At the end of each exhale, he whines just a little, like it hurts and he can’t help it.
This close, even in the dark, Stiles can feel the strength of his gaze when it lands on him.
“Okay. That’s good.” Stiles shifts again, trying to get more comfortable. He’s kneeling in front of Derek’s crossed legs. “Just you and me right now, okay?”
Derek nods. Stiles’ eyes have adjusted enough to see the movement right in front of him.
“I need out,” Derek moans.
“I know. Trust me, I know. We’re going to get out of here, but for now you’ve got to relax and believe that Scott is coming.”
Derek’s arms tense under Stiles’ hands, flinches and tremors running through him.
“You’re okay,” Stiles tells him. “Scott and Isaac and Cora are going to come and nothing more will happen.”
Derek bows his head forward. His hair rubs against the side of Stiles’ jaw.
“Sometimes no one comes,” he whispers.
Stiles closes his eyes and moves his hands from Derek’s wrists to his shoulders. “I know, man. I know, but we have to believe it anyway.”
“I can’t.”
“You can,” Stiles says softly, right next to Derek’s ear. “It’s called faith.”
Derek exhales heavily and slumps forward, forcing Stiles to hold tighter to him. When he speaks, Stiles feels the rumble of his words through his shoulder.
“Have faith,” he repeats, like the punchline to a joke.
“Right,” Stiles says. “Like I have faith in the fact that many supernatural creatures exist. That’s easy. I have faith that the sun will rise in the morning. I have faith that my Jeep won’t break down and my dad will come home from work everyday and no one I love will die today. That’s not as easy, but we can still believe it, right?”
After a moment, Derek nods, his forehead dragging against the neck of Stiles’ t-shirt.
Stiles rubs his hands over the knots of Derek’s spine. “It’s going to be okay.”
Derek lets out a shaky sigh and little by little, relaxes.
An hour later, with the truck’s tires shot flat on the side of the road, Allison is the one to pull the truck gate up and find them still there, huddled together against the wall.
-----
Stiles isn’t sure it’s the right way to go about things, but he doesn’t know what else to do.
He talks to his dad. For a solid hour. About a former murder suspect.
Then, he calls said former suspect and invites him for dinner.
Derek shows up in dirty jeans and a long-sleeve shirt with a tear in one elbow. He brings a twelve-pack of Cherry Coke and some tortilla chips.
Stiles guides him through the house and into the kitchen, where the Sheriff is putting the finishing touches on baked rigatoni. Read: more cheese.
“Welcome.” The Sheriff nods. “I hope you like pasta.”
“Thanks. Yeah.” Derek eases into the chair that Stiles points him to at the table. His posture is stiff and he glances uneasily around the room, then stares out the dark back window for a full five minutes while they set the table around him.
Stiles doesn’t know how he ever passed as normal before.
Then again, Stiles doesn’t know how he, himself, ever passes for normal either. Maybe neither of them are as smooth as they might think.
Dinner is quiet, but not awkward. When Stiles collects their plates and stands, the Sheriff shifts over into his chair, the one next to Derek.
Stiles stands at the sink, rinsing plates, and pretends not to listen.
His dad is blunt, but kind.
“My son tells me you’ve been struggling a bit and I want you to know that’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve struggled through a day or two myself.”
Stiles nearly drops a plate at that admission. No one is as strong as they like to pretend.
There’s the dry scrape of a business card being pushed across the table.
“The community center downtown offers free counseling to those that qualify,” the Sheriff explains. “I went ahead and called them up today and got you an appointment for next week. They can help you get to the resources that you need. A job, a doctor, whatever. And the counselors can help make your days a little easier. I expect that you’ll go.”
Stiles holds his breath. The faucet runs hot water in a steady stream over his hands.
“Okay,” Derek says. “Thank you.”
Stiles nearly drops to the floor, but catches himself on the counter’s edge at the last minute. He spins around. “Oh, thank God.”
The Sheriff rolls his eyes.
Derek holds himself very still.
“This is great,” Stiles announces.
“Son...”
“You are the best,” Stiles interrupts, pointing a soapy finger at his dad.
Stiles looks at Derek and though he isn’t smiling, there’s a softness in his eyes that wasn’t there before.
The Sheriff sighs and pushes himself up from the table. “‘The Best’ has to be to work at an ungodly hour tomorrow. It’s time for me to go to bed.”
He claps a hand on Derek’s shoulder, then crosses the room to his son.
“Good night. Don’t stay up too late. And be nice.”
“Wait a second,” Stiles calls to his dad’s back. “Are you telling me to be nice to him? I’m always nice. I’m super nice. He is not nice!”
Stiles drops into the chair beside Derek at the table and turns to face him.
The werewolf is looking at him, one eyebrow raised.
“Uh, it is nice when you save my life?” Stiles offers.
Derek is clutching the appointment card in his hand until it bends and creases around his fingers. He clears his throat. “It’s nice when you save my life, too.”
Stiles reaches over and takes a gentle hold of Derek’s arm. “Anytime, Derek. Anytime.”
---