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The first thing Stiles says to Derek, the first word they've exchanged in weeks is, "No." It's stuck a little bit closer to refusal than to complaint, which is odd, since Derek hadn't asked anything, and had even knocked on the front door. Stiles doesn't even look angry about it, whatever it is.
"I don't need anything," Derek says. "Is anyone here with you?"
"No," Stiles says again, definitely an answer this time. Then, "Why would there be? What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Derek says, which isn't true, obviously, but he doesn't know of anyone in imminent danger right this second. It's close enough to true for Stiles's purposes.
"You look tired," Derek says. Stiles smells like pure human exhaustion, like chemical stimulants and sweat. Derek's long past expecting him to be still, but Stiles's fidgets seem muffled, and he's blinking too often and rubbing at his temple with two fingers on his right hand. His left is clenched into a fist, but Derek can't see any reason for it. It makes him want to settle Stiles, to draw the tension out of his body, to hold his hands until they remember how they used to behave.
"How do I-" Stiles starts, but he trails off, lips still parted.
Derek looks past him, into the house, down at his socked feet, counts to five, but no more words march out of Stiles's mouth to meet the first half of the question. "How do you what?" Derek asks.
Stiles blinks. "How do I what?"
He'd say that Stiles is fucking with him, which might be a pleasant change from the yelling and accusations and disdain, except that he looks so genuinely confused.
"I'm not sure if I've been sleeping," Stiles says. "Can I go outside?" he asks.
It's Derek's turn to be confused into silence. "Sure," he says after a few long seconds. "Now?"
"Interesting," Stiles says. "You're more helpful than Lydia. I wish you'd show up more often."
Stiles shifts on his feet, and looks over his shoulder. The house smells like garlic and onion and roasting meat. "My dad's going to be home soon," he says. It doesn't sound like the warning it had once been, but it doesn't sound like an invitation, either.
"Okay," Derek says, and he backs away from the door a few steps before turning around. Stiles swings the door shut after Derek's feet hit the sidewalk, and it's hard to be sure, but Derek doesn't hear Stiles walk away before he's shut inside his car and stops trying to listen back into the house.
Stiles hadn't looked like he should be driving the last time Derek had seen him, and he still doesn't look like it. That's the reason why he pulls a U-turn and follows Stiles back to his house instead of continuing on to the grocery store.
"I was worried" isn't a thing that they say, but it's the thing closest to the tip of Derek's tongue. "Can I come in?" he asks, instead.
Stiles says that he's got homework to do, and he's definitely got enough books in his bag to make that seem true. But he gets Derek a glass of water and five minutes later he sits down on the couch in a long-sleeved t-shirt and sweatpants, and turns on CNN. He doesn't take any notes, but maybe Stiles doesn't need to. He's never seen any evidence that Stiles's brain processes things the same way that Derek's does. It's fucking boring after the first fifteen minutes, though, and that's before Stiles flips over to C-SPAN.
Even the idea of trying to keep track of anything happening more than two hundred miles away from his territory makes Derek's head hurt. He'll make time to worry about other people killing each other when people stop dying in his back yard. He closes his eyes, and if Stiles notices, he doesn't say anything before Derek falls asleep.
Derek wakes up because Stiles is sitting on this thighs. Derek wakes up because Stiles is sitting in his lap, or what passes for it when he's slumped halfway down on the couch. Stiles is stroking his thumbs across Derek's cheekbones.
"Hey," Stiles says. "You're awake."
Derek holds himself very, very still.
"I like the times when you're here," Stiles says. "It's never so scary to start when you're here."
And then Stiles leans closer, and when he's close enough that Derek can feel the exhale of Stiles's breath cooling where he's licked his lips, confused, wary. Stiles lets his hands drop, but not before he draws one thumb down around Derek's mouth, to his chin, holding Derek where he wants him.
This is. Shit. Stiles is kissing him, and something is not right, but Stiles seems absolutely sure of himself in a way that he most definitely was not when Derek pulled into his driveway earlier that afternoon. He pulls back, sucking lightly at his lower lip as he goes, and Derek finally manages to close his eyes for a second. It's a feeble attempt at blocking out whatever the hell is going on long enough to try to think, but all it does is push the sensation of Stiles's warm, solid thighs pressing against his. It wars with the scent that sleep hasn't done anything to cure. There's a, a hum isn't quite right. There's no noise to it. A buzz maybe, something electric, literally and acidic, like the burn of a failed battery. Derek grabs Stiles's wrist, feels the pulse that chases the heartbeat he can hear between Stiles's steady breaths.
Stiles swallows, and then scoots forward. The crotch of his sweatpants pulls taut against Derek's hips, holding him back from coming any closer, and he chuckles. If there's anything funny about this, Derek has no fucking clue what it might be.
"That's new."
It's all new. Shit. "Stiles, what's going on?"
Stiles blinks, and freezes, and then moves back in a graceless scramble when Derek raises his eyebrows. His left leg slips off the couch and he almost loses his balance, but then he's curled up against the opposite arm of the sofa, a good four feet between them, and he won't meet Derek's eyes.
"I think I'd like it if you go," Stiles says.
No one wants to tell Derek what's going on. He gets a non-answer from Scott about the texts he'd sent - we figured it out, dude. it's fine and Isaac warns him to stay away from Allison, but not the same way that Scott used to. Well, a little bit the same way as Scott used to, but he doesn't think that's the point.
It puts him back at Stiles's door on Sunday afternoon, twenty minutes after he passed the Sherriff's cruiser parked outside of the hardware store on the far side of town.
Stiles looks clearer, but no less cautious. He smells like stale coffee, but less like the old books that used to accompany it. "Whatever it is," he says, "can we not?"
"Whatever it is," Derek shoots back, "I think we need to." He's not much for staring contests, but he can more than hold his own, so he's not surprised when Stiles backs down after a few tense seconds and leads Derek into the living room.
"I've been seeing things," he says, long pauses between his words. "As long as you're not here to rip my throat out, we're good. And if you are here to rip my throat out, it's probably not real. Terrifying, but probably not real." He waves a hand, dismissive, and when he continues, his words gain pace, accelerating towards his usual pace when he's trying to explain something. "Not like I could do anything about it either way. When I'm awake, of course people are telling me I'm awake. And when I'm asleep, the great whatever that's fucking with my brain tells me that I'm awake. Maybe I'm just always awake. It feels like I've been awake for years.
"So I'm sorry about. I'm sorry about what I did the other day. I fell asleep, and you were here when I woke up, and that's never, uh. That's never really happened before, so I got confused for a minute. But now that you're back, I'll remember."
It's a lot to process, but it's not like anything in their lives is ever simple anymore. "So, if you're awake, and I sit here, and nothing awful happens. You can sleep. And that would help?"
Stiles looks down at his lap, where he's drumming his fingers across this knees. "I guess so, yeah."
"Then I can be here," Derek says. It's not like there's anything else he can figure out how to fix, and if he can fix Stiles, maybe that will help instead.
"I've been watching a lot of TV," Stiles says. "49ers are playing."
Stiles wakes up around the end of the third quarter, when the sun is slanting low through the window and trying to blind Derek unless he holds his hand up in front of his eyes to block it. It's warm, and he's got the volume on the tv turned down low enough that he could hear every time Stiles exhaled, his head tipped back across the arm of the couch.
When Stiles sits up, rolling his shoulders and then stretching out to the tips of his fingers and toes, he settles closer than Derek would have expected, but then he looks down at his hands, and when he looks up, he looks, well. Not great, but he looks okay, and he's not doing anything to make Derek worry about him. He still smells like the wrong end of a terror bender though.
Derek still holds very, very still.
"Maybe you want to go take a shower?" he asks. Stiles is up and off the couch before Derek draws another breath, and by the time he says, "Yeah, good idea," he's out into the hallway and nearly out of sight.
Derek listens as Stiles thumps up the stairs, down the hall and into the bathroom, but only closely enough that he'd be able to hear if Stiles slipped or fell. The less he thinks about Stiles, upstairs, naked and maybe still unsteady on his feet, the better for everyone.
The water shuts off after about ten minutes, but then there's nothing, and some more nothing, and now that he's invited himself into Stiles's problems, he might as well keep up with it.
Stiles is passed out on his bed with just his towel more or less around his waist, curled up on his side on top of the covers and clothes in a pile on the floor. He's hardly in any danger of freezing to death, but Derek thinks he'd probably be happier at least under the sheets, if he's going to keep sleeping. After a moment of consideration, he crouches down next to the bed and pats Stiles on the shoulder. Then he does it again, harder, before gripping and giving him a gentle shake that finally gets Stiles to open his eyes.
"This is different," Stiles says. "Why aren't you in bed?" he asks, but it's quieter, like he's talking to himself again.
"You fell asleep after your shower," Derek says. "You should probably get dressed."
Stiles's eyes drift closed again, and then he folds his arm across his chest so that his hand catches Derek's, still on his shoulder.
There's a chasm between good to each other and good for each other that Derek hasn't figured out how to cross yet. But he does know how to be decent to people, and that's something Stiles needs. So he pulls his hand free and tugs Stiles's quilt up and over him, and slides down to sit on the floor and wait.