Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The guy was gaping, Derek noticed, and unattractively at that. He was bug-eyed, hair an unruly mess, and Derek was just about to start walking away from this absolute weirdo when he murmured, “You don’t have any stubble.” If anything, his eyes grew even wider and his voice began to edge into hysteria. “And the leather jacket, where’s the leather jacket?”

Honestly, Derek was starting to get worried. If this guy was mistaking him for someone else, that Derek could understand, but to be doing so in such a strange way was disconcerting. Honestly, he kind of looked like he was on drugs. Though, now that Derek was looking for it, he smelled like it too, though it was less the stench of weed and more that of prescription medication. 

Derek was about ready to reach out and steady the guy, maybe shake some sense into him, when Laura bounced out of the store, carrying bundles of grocery bags and whistling a merry tune. Unseasonably happy- Derek wished she’d chill sometimes. At the sight of her, the boy leaned back unsteadily, swaying side to side, mouth uncomfortably open. Derek had the urge to reach over and shut it. 

His sister stepped next to him, eyeing the guy up and down like maybe his fashion sense was hiding some big secret rather than looking pretty plain, and asked, “Who’s your new friend, Derek?” 

When he didn’t say anything, she turned fully, staring the boy dead-on. He flinched back as if he'd been struck, looking like a deer in headlights. He took a good, long look at Laura. They stared at each other, Derek watching them like a man watching two different species of animals interacting on a farm. 

Just as the moment began to stretch into uncomfortable territory, the boy blurted out, “Oh my fucking God, Deaton, you dick!” before bolting out of the parking lot as if the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels.

Derek heard him whispering, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!” through gasping pants; he should maybe work on his fitness. The stench of medicine trailed after him.  “You sure do attract a lot of crazies, Derek,” Laura commented bleakly.

“Shut up.”

Stiles spent the first week after waking up in the hospital, after apparently having a seizure, freaking out. He asked a multitude of different, hysterical questions that made his dad interrogate him worriedly about how he was feeling. Sometimes, Stiles would see him holding the phone, god-knows-how-many seconds away from calling the hospital and having Stiles recommitted. 

Stiles spent the second week freaking out Scott and cursing Deaton with all the strength he had. The first time they met up after he’d been discharged, Stiles looked Scott straight in the eyes and asked him, very seriously, “Have you, by any chance, been bitten by a werewolf in the middle of the night after finding half of a corpse?”

Scott gave him a long, blank stare, before shrilly responding, “Stiles, what the hell?!” He threw his arms up into the air, the picture of exasperation, looking very much like his mother did when Stiles would drag her son out in the middle of the night for wacky hijinks. “Dude, I have to find out from your dad that you had a seizure and the first thing you say to me when we meet is that?” Scott stared at him expectantly. 

Stiles took that to mean that Scott had not, in fact, been gallivanting off in the woods looking for dead bodies. It probably didn’t say anything good about Stiles’ life that that was the highlight of his week. He was so enthused by this response that he took Scott by the shoulders, smacked a kiss to his cheek, and said, “I am fucking dandy, Scotty-boy! Da-an-dy!” 

Scott pursed his lips, hugged him back, and surreptitiously told Stiles’ dad about his weird behavior when he thought Stiles wasn't looking. Stiles let him get away with the tattling, if only because he knew that no amount of reassurance would ever get Scott to not snitch, especially when it came to anything relating to one’s health. 

Stiles spent his third week out of the hospital pacing back and forth near the Hale house, debating the pros and cons of storming up to the door and knocking. The pros were looking meagre compared to the cons, but when had that ever deterred the absolute, unstoppable force of Stiles’ confidence in his ability to get out of any situation he didn’t want to be in.

Aside from his truly incomparable lack-of-fucks-given energy, they also probably knew he was there, enhanced senses and all that shit. It was a toss up whether it was a good or bad thing that they hadn’t come outside and shooed him away like one does with a stray cat who keeps coming back for food even though it's been fed twice already. 

Stiles spent the fourth week freaking out about the fact that Derek Hale, a man whose first instinct when confronted with anybody was to scowl, was acting…happy. Stiles genuinely saw him laughing just a week ago, and the Derek Stiles knew never laughed unless the stars aligned and maybe some distant planet blew up. The most he ever did was curl his lips into a faint smile, barely there but very distracting all the same. Seeing him outright laugh had almost sent Stiles into cardiac arrest, holy shit, that hadn’t been good for his heart at all. How dare one man have so much power in his grasp- just the sight of him had made Stiles’ pulse pound.

Regardless of the effect it had on Stiles, the sight of Derek expressing loud, human joy had, more than anything, convinced Stiles he’d been transported to some alternate dimension. That and the tiny little black book that he’d found tucked in the back pocket of the jeans he’d been wearing when he’d had his seizure. Deaton had given it to him, and against his better judgment Stiles had chosen to take it. Stiles would like to place all the blame on Deaton, but really, he should have known better; the shifty-eyed look Deaton had given him probably should have rang some warning bell in Stiles’ brain.

Stiles made his move to confront Deaton in the fifth week. As all things in Stiles’ life, the timing could have used some improvement.

Running his finger over the leather-bound spines of the tomes Deaton kept on his shelves, Derek bemoaned his lack of luck in life. To think he was twenty years-old and his mother was still dragging him out on outings that had nothing to do with him. So what if there had been a recent influx of creatures? Derek wasn’t the next Alpha- Laura was and even she looked bored out of her mind gazing at the fish tank as Talia, Peter, and Deaton hashed everything out in the corner. It felt remarkably like being a kid again and having to wait impatiently to the side as your mom caught up with her adult friend. 

Derek sighed, and like a deity hearing his thoughts, the door flung open with a violent jingle of the bell, and the smell of prescription medication came bleeding through. Derek looked up and blinked as the messy weirdo from the parking lot stormed over to Deaton, completely ignoring everyone else, and slammed something down onto the counter. Hunched over and looking like a man ready to froth at the mouth, the guy said, “Take the book, you said! It’ll help, you said! It’s perfectly safe,”- the guy’s voice pitched higher, hysterical- “you said! Deaton, why are you always lying to me?!” He smacked a hand down onto the object, the book, he’d placed on the counter, and stared with saucer-wide eyes. 

In the silence following his outburst, Deaton blinked at the guy, looking only slightly perturbed, before raising an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, who are you?” 

Heaving a sigh and shaking his head, the guy rolled his eyes up to stare at the ceiling like he was convening with God to give him the strength to deal with Deaton. “Stiles,” he huffed, “Stiles Stilinski. I’m blaming this all on you, by the way.” He picked up the book and waved it in Deaton’s direction, coming just shy of swatting him in the face. Intentional, Derek could tell. 

Deaton plucked the book from his grasp and flipped through the pages. “What exactly are you blaming on me?”

“You gave me that book,” -punctuated with a pointed jab at the offending item- “and I’m pretty it’s the cause of my now being in an alternate dimension.”

Derek leaned out to share an incredulous look with Laura, both of them wide-eyed. Laura mouthed, “What the fuck?” at him and Derek shrugged. Maybe the guy was delusional, maybe he was pranking Deaton, or maybe he had actually traveled dimensions. The sci-fi lover in Derek was really hoping it was true- he’d wanted to write a story about this exact premise so many times in his life. It would be all kinds of cool to actually have a first hand account. 

Talia, evidently losing patience, turned her laser gaze to Deaton. “I’m sorry, you gave this teenager, this kid , a book that made him dimension travel?” She looked down her nose at Deaton, all motherly judgment that came from years of having to scold three rapscallion children who frequently gave her gray hairs. 

The newly named Stiles stiffened, turning robotically to face Talia, rigid enough that Derek thought he might actually break in two with too quick a movement. “Alpha Hale,” he said in a squeaky voice, “lovely to see you here.” Nice of him to notice the rest of them, though Derek supposed he couldn’t be blamed for being so single minded; Deaton had that effect on people, especially when he dropped some piece of information on you with little warning. 

Talia cocked her head. “I don’t think we’ve met before.” 

“Oh, we’ve never met.” With one last squirrely look at her, he turned back to Deaton. “So, do you have anything to say to me?” said in the tone of a disappointed parent. 

Deaton only hummed. “It’s a spell book,” he explained, allowing Stiles to snatch the book back from him. “Exactly like the one I have, actually. It even has my initials. So, you’re from an alternate dimension?” 

Stiles nodded. “Some things are still similar but others are…quite different.” This he said with a surreptitious look Derek’s way. When he saw Derek already looking at him, Stiles jumped, eyes snapping back to Deaton. His scent changed, though it was hard to decipher with the medical smell obscuring it, and the tips of his ears went pink. “Some things are significantly worse for my health,” he said beneath his breath, still flushed. 

“Which spell did you use?” Deaton asked, pushing off the counter to go and grab his reading glasses. 

Stiles threw him an unreadable look and replied, “Page 30, incantation 5.” 

Deaton methodically flipped through the book, humming here and there as Stiles impatiently began to tap his foot. He seemed incapable of standing still. Deaton snapped the book shut and handed it back. “Why’d you use it?” 

Stiles sighed and once again, he looked Derek’s way. He was so artless, so unsubtle in his attempt to be discreet that it instantly caught the attention of everyone in the room. “Trust me, I had a good reason to use it,” he said with conviction, a stubborn twist to his lips that spoke of something he didn’t want to return to, as though the memory was too fresh a wound to interact with just yet. “It was important. We had to do something.” 

“What was important? Who’s we?” Deaton asked, tone gentle. 

Stiles swallowed. He looked suffused with grief. “The pack,” he answered, and the pointed avoidance of the former question did not go unnoticed. 

“The Hale pack?” Laura jumped in, peering over their mother’s shoulder to stare at him. 

Stiles breathed in and out slowly, and said, “No,”- he pinched his nose between his fingers- “not the Hale pack.” His breathing sounded a little strangled, and he was staring forlornly at the floor. 

“Then which pack?” Peter asked. 

Tense silence filled in the spaces between them. Derek watched the rise and fall of Stiles’ shoulders and wondered if maybe they had stumbled upon something they shouldn’t be prodding at. The poor guy looked wracked with grief, like he’d had a terrible epiphany, and like his heart had been shattered all at once. It was uncomfortable to see, especially on a stranger, and already Laura was looking away, the same pinched look on her face Derek was sure he too was wearing. This felt like a private moment. 

Deaton moved forward and laid a hand on Stiles’ shoulder. “We’ll hold a meeting some other time.” 

He’d barely finished speaking before Stiles stole one last look at Derek, the longing on his face heart-wrenching in its rawness, and fled the store, book clenched so tight in his hands his knuckles were bone white. The thud of his heart lingered in Derek’s ears, a funeral cry in its own right. Suddenly, dimension travel didn’t seem so cool anymore.

It hadn’t dawned on him. He’d woken up in the hospital and in regular fashion his thoughts had spun a thousand miles a minute, caught up in maybes and could-bes, and Stiles hadn’t realized that all of the people he’d left behind are probably dead, and all the people who used to be dead, aren’t.

It was a strange thing, to be stuck between mourning and elation. Stuck between feeling guilty, for a myriad of reasons, to feeling unendingly relieved. Guilty for having abandoned them, guilty for having not done enough the first time around, guilty for feeling happy. Guilty for catching sight of a smiling Derek Hale and mourning his Derek, and mourning the life his Derek could have had if only Kate Argent hadn’t ruined his life. Mourning and elation; one did not negate the other. In the sixth week following his waking, Stiles spent most of his time grappling with that fact, attempting normalcy even though all he wanted to do was crawl into bed and never leave it.

He’d been ignoring everyone in school, without even realizing. He’d put himself in the frame of mind that only one thing mattered, and after he’d dealt with that one thing, he’d deal with another thing, until eventually all the objectives on the list were ticked off. Except, that wasn’t how life worked; nobody could live their life like it was a list and expect it to not get derailed. It was harder to be single minded when he caught sight of Lydia’s auburn hair and felt sick enough to turn right around and flee from her. Or when he’d turn a corner and Allison would be at her locker, storing away her books, the perfect picture of a normal teenage girl and not the one he’d had a hand in killing. 

He knew Scott was suspicious of something being wrong, especially after he’d fled from Lydia, which was something a younger him never would have thought of doing. He felt like a body snatcher, like an invading alien parasite who’d taken over this teenage boy. How did this Stiles behave? Had he also embarrassed himself in front of Lydia time and time again in an effort to get her attention? Was he also an okay student who got on his teachers’ nerves for fidgeting too much in class? Like a body snatcher, he was learning this Stiles’ regular behavior, and he knew now that this Stiles didn’t bring his dad lunch, which is something Stiles was rectifying immediately. He knew that this Stiles had a pair of glasses in his bedside drawer, that this Stiles had doodled astronauts in the margins of his notebook, and that this Stiles had way more classic rock music on his phone than Stiles had ever had. 

He knew that this Stiles had a monthly reminder on his phone to go visit their mom’s grave and take her flowers, and it was this little notification that did him in. Stiles had stared at it for a long while, feeling ill, and came to the realization that he might as well have killed the guy. After all, if Stiles the body snatcher was here, then where was the other him? Had he been cast out to be possessed, only a vessel for a demon, or had he simply…died? Had Stiles killed himself without even realizing he was doing so? Or had he sent the poor bastard to his own dimension, which was as good a death sentence.

He knew only that this wasn’t some strange fever dream because he had all of his scars, running up his torso and knotted on his back, snarled and faded with time, and his vision remained 20/20, no glasses required. So maybe he wasn’t a body snatcher, but rather a life-snatcher. A good enough look alike to simply take over when one version of him no longer could. A life-snatcher who had done the unforgivable act of stealing this Noah Stilinski’s son, and the man was none the wiser. 

Stiles swallowed back the nausea roiling in his gut. God, what about his own father? Did the man think he was dead? Did this Noah just think his son was being affected strangely by the seizure? Clenching and unclenching his fists, Stiles shoved open his window and panted, filling his lungs with the cold night air. His heart thundered in his ears and the nape of his neck was drenched in sweat. In his mind, the words - life-snatcher, parasite, invader -  rang in his ears. 

In the following week, he tried not to think about it too hard. There was no point in doing this to himself. 

In the beginning of the seventh week, he spotted Erica limping down the hall, the gray pallor of her face a stark contrast to her bright pink shirt. At lunch, it was Boyd, sitting alone in the cafeteria, hunched to look smaller than he was, and Issac, lingering in the back, tense and wary, eyes sliding from person to person like an animal with its hackles raised. He’d forgotten how much worse life had been in some ways before the pack had come together. Well, there was no better way to get his mind off of his troubling thoughts than to focus on a goal. 

He started with Boyd, because it was easy enough to drag Scott over to Boyd’s table and sit with him during lunch. The other boy ignored them as best as he could, until it was no longer possible to ignore the absolute mess of a conversation that sprung up in response to Scott’s off hand comment that he poured his milk first then his cereal, and that really a hotdog was actually just a sandwich. Stiles, never one to miss an opportunity to be righteously indignant, protested, and really by that point Boyd had no choice but to engage, if only to give them both a bleak look over his spaghetti bolognese. 

“Fine, then,” Scott said, before turning to face Boyd, “what do you think? Don’t you think a hotdog should count as a sandwich if a footlong counts as one?” 

“Why are you sitting with me?” Boyd asked instead of answering the very important question Scott had just posed. 

“Because I need a sane friend,” Stiles said cheerfully. “Because this guy,” - he threw a thumb in Scott’s direction- “has really weird tastes and I’ve had to live with that for like ten years. So, you wanna come over and play some video games?” He punctuated the end of his sentence with a luminescent grin. 

Boyd ruminated in silence, and Stiles left him to it, knowing that Boyd always needed some time to come to a decision. At the end of the day, when they bounced up to him, he sighed and followed them back to Stiles’ house, and only rolled his eyes a little as they debated which pizza to order. Boyd was also a deft hand at Mario Kart, which was frankly unfair considering Stiles sucked and was always losing to Scott. Now he just had a second person to lose to. 

After both boys had left, Scott joyfully chattering away to Boyd about something or the other, Stiles cleaned up and stored two slices of pizza into the fridge for his dad, just because he was feeling nice. He worried about the man’s health, but a little treat once in a while was alright. All in all, he counted the day a success.

Erica and Isaac were a little tricker. Isaac’s father was still an issue, one that would be done away with soon if he had anything to say about it, and Erica’s seizures were a more difficult condition he was not equipped to deal with. Regardless, he could still offer his friendship just as he had with Boyd. It was a bit regretful that he and Scott had never branched out to make more friends, but he supposed they were both too socially awkward at that age to even think of doing so. To be fair, he was still pretty socially awkward. 

Erica was easier to start with because the opportunity fell into Stiles’ lap in one swoop of fortune for him and misfortune for Erica herself. A seizure in class landed her in the hospital and it was easy enough to wheedle the room number out of the receptionist, likely helped by the bouquet of flowers in his hand and the teddy bear tucked under his arm. She probably thought he was Erica’s boyfriend or something, what with how she fairly melted. Stiles didn’t correct her on the notion, knowing very well it was the only thing getting him what he wanted. 

Erica greeted him cautiously after a brief burst of pleased surprise bloomed across her face, making her look years younger than she was. Stiles responded jovially, handed her the flowers and the teddy bear, and sat in the uncomfortable chair by her bedside. He regaled her about his day, gossiping in mock-conspiratorial tones about Scott’s attempts to get Allison to notice him, and how Lydia kept trying to sabotage him, though it was really not working cause Allison was super stubborn and seemed to like Scott for some unfathomable reason. 

“But don’t tell him I said that,” Stiles scrambled to say over Erica’s laughter, “he’s my bro, I’ve gotta support him unconditionally.” 

Erica swiped her thumb back and forth over the teddy bear’s ear, grinning, and promised him she wouldn't say a word. 

After that it was easy enough to further that friendship. Stiles began to walk with her from classes, and paired up with her for a project, dragging Scott over to her before the boy could even think about making a move toward Allison. He’d also dragged her over to their designated lunch table with Boyd, who had welcomed Erica with a commiserating nod and told her that if she needed a break from Scott and Stiles, she should run away to the restrooms cause they never shut up. Erica had taken to Boyd immediately, which was heartwarming for Stiles to see.

In an attempt to create a tradition, Stiles turned to her one day, right after their last class, and asked her what she did for fun. Erica paused, startled, and thought about it for a long moment. Finally, she answered. “I go horseback riding sometimes. That’s pretty fun.” 

“Huh,” Stiles said, eyeing her, “I wouldn’t have taken you for a horse girl.” 

Erica swatted at him, doing her best to look admonishing. “You have the unique ability to make everything sound like an insult, Stiles.” 

“Thank you, I try.” Then, he said, “So, this weekend, you, me, Scott and Boyd, horseback riding?” 

Erica beamed. “Sounds great.” 

It went about as well as Stiles was expecting it to go, which was to say that Scott almost fell off his horse twice, Stiles tripped before he’d even gotten on the horse, and all the horses flocked to Boyd, who rode once and then spent the rest of the time petting the horses. Erica laughed at their suffering and called them babies anytime they complained about their balls. Though Stiles came out of the experience feeling a little like he’d lost the ability to have kids, he ignored it in favor of the happiness radiating around him.  

The only one left was Isaac. Stiles had nudged Scott in Isaac’s direction the same day he’d gone to visit Erica in the hospital, and Scott, good buddy that he was, had gone along with Stiles’ machinations with no protest. Slowly, through his general good natured demeanor and puppy dog ways, Scott had gotten closer to Isaac through lacrosse, which this Stiles had apparently never joined and which Stiles currently had no interest in. 

Fortuitously, it was Stiles, rather than Scott, who stumbled upon Isaac after school. Slumped against his locker and holding his stomach, Isaac’s face was scrunched in pain. He panted harshly into the silence of the hallway. When he saw Stiles, he attempted to straighten, face smoothing back into a placid expression that would have been convincing had his eyes still not been pinched in agony. When he took a step, he stumbled and went pale, all the blood rushing so quickly from his face he looked as flimsy as a sheet of paper. 

“Alright, come with me,” Stiles said, stepping forward. “I’ve got bruise cream and a first aid kit at home, c’mon.”

Isaac stared blankly back at him. 

It took some more convincing to get Isaac to his car, convincing that included invoking Scott’s good name. “C’mon, man, Scott will be worried about you if he sees you like this tomorrow.” It was true. More than once Scott had come to him in concern for Isaac’s general wellbeing and had only settled slightly when Stiles had told him he had plans. After more than a decade of friendship, Scott was well versed in the manner with which Stiles dealt with things; he was nothing if not efficient. 

Evidently, the thought of disappointing Scott was enough of an incentive that Isaac got into Roscoe willingly, though he spent most of the ride side-eyeing Stiles and huddled against the car door like he’d sooner fling himself from a moving vehicle than engage in conversation. Graciously, Stiles decided to remain silent.

At home, Stiles led Isaac to the couch, paying no mind to his questioning looks, and unearthed a frankly massive first aid kit that had come from his parents having to contend with their child’s overall clumsiness. Stiles had been bruised more often than not as a child. There were still Spiderman bandaids in the case too. 

“Okay, shirt up,” Stiles said, sitting on the coffee table in front of Isaac. The other boy stared at him, incredulous. “What, it’s not like you’ve got anything I haven’t seen before. You can rub the ointment on your front bruises if that’s more comfortable for you, but you’ll need my help for any on your side or your back.” 

Maybe it was Stiles’ clinical tone, or maybe Isaac had caught sight of the Spiderman bandaids, but he let Stiles treat him, some of his hesitancy melting away when Stiles didn’t flinch at the sight of his bruises. They were centered enough on his ribs that Stiles worried briefly about fractures- there was no swelling though, and Isaac didn’t double over in pain when Stiles’ fingers pressed against his ribs. It was far from foolproof, but Stiles doubted he would be getting Isaac to a hospital anytime soon. 

Of course, just as Stiles’ hand came up to rub the ointment on Isaac’s chest, just shy of his nipple, Noah Stilinski walked through the door in all his tired glory. The man paused, blinking at the scene of his son pressing his fingers to another boy’s chest, a boy who was looking at Noah like he was petrified. He might have thought something more sexual was happening, were it not for their giant first aid kit resting next to Stiles’ hip, and the concerning amount of yellowed bruising on the boy’s torso, some of which was distinctly fist-shaped. 

“Stiles,” he said slowly, as though elongating his son’s name might make comprehension dawn on him faster. 

“Dad,” Stiles responded in kind, hand still pressed to Isaac’s chest. The boy was slowly stiffening under him, trying to press back into the couch cushions like that would stop Noah looking from him to Stiles, then back to him.

“How’d you get those bruises?”

And ah, there it was, his sheriff’s voice. Stiles grimaced as Isaac’s eyes flitted back and forth, looking for answers or some means of escape in the Stilinski family’s living room. 

“Dad,” Stiles cut in, stepping forward smoothly to hide Isaac behind him, “could I talk to Isaac in private real quick?” 

Noah’s brows pulled together, a brief look of defiance crossing his face before he sighed and assented. He sent them another long, assessing look, before vanishing into the kitchen where he’d likely rummage through the fridge or, god forbid, make himself another cup of coffee, which would bring his count up to an unacceptable amount if he’d already had more at work. Stiles watched him go, scowling and determined to talk to him about his caffeine consumption, before he smoothed out his expression and spun to face Isaac. 

“Isaac,” he said, kneeling down beside the boy, staring him gravely in the eyes, “we need to tell my dad about your father.”

Isaac went dreadfully still. Stiles’ knew he looked grim, he could feel the tightness of his face pulling his expression taut. 

“What are you talking about?” Isaac asked mechanically, mouth hardly moving around the words. He looked like some sad, mangled wax statue who’d been put through the wringer. 

“Don’t lie to me, Isaac. You think a sheriff’s son wouldn’t recognize signs of abuse?” Stiles leaned back, out of Isaac’s space, and watched the boy take in a gulping breath. There was sweat beading his forehead, adding to him a feverish look. “Scott’s been worried about you.” 

Isaac swallowed, gaze darting to the kitchen before looking back to Stiles’ eyes, which seemed then to almost break him. “I can’t,” he gasped, gripping harshly at his hair. Stiles untangled his fingers, holding them tight in his own until Isaac was strangling his hands instead. “Nobody would believe me, they’d call me a liar- fuck, the things he could do to me and- it could get worse, Stiles. Shit, shit, Jackson already tried, please-” His words sputtered and died off but his grip didn’t weaken, only became stronger until their fingers were all twisted up together. Isaac stared at their hands like he’d never held or been held like this before; Stiles knew Isaac hadn’t been for a long time.

“Isaac, Isaac,” Stiles whispered into the space between them, words meant for their ears only, sacred in a space that he had made safe with his unwillingness to allow anything to breach it, and Isaac watched him like one would watch a proselytizing preacher, “you don’t have a single reason to trust me, I get that, but I want you to know that I consider you a friend, okay? I consider you a friend, Scott considers you a friend, and one thing we do, Isaac, one thing we do is we don’t let each other hurt. So, I want to ask you to trust me when I tell you that my dad will listen to every single word you say and he will never call you a liar, Isaac, because he knows I would never befriend a liar. You are not a liar, Isaac.” The conviction behind the words rang true and honest, moulding into the space between them. 

Isaac blinked and the tears slipped down his face, dripping off his chin. He was still holding Stiles’ hands as he said, hushed in the space between them, “Okay,” - he sniffled, blinking rapidly, expression caught between hope and anguish- “okay, okay, I’ll do it.”  

Behind them, hidden in the doorway of the kitchen, Noah pressed his hand to the wall and wondered when his son had grown up into this young man, compassionate and kind, willing to bend to his knees to help a friend. Swallowing around the stone in his throat, he stepped forward into the living room and did his best to live up to the faith Stiles had in him. Noah listened as Isaac spoke, strangling his anger until all that remained was calm reassurance, and did as his son had done and bent to his knees to look Isaac in the eyes and say, “I believe you, Isaac. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he never lays a hand on you again, okay? For now, why don’t you stay here for the night? I’m not so eager to send you home.” He rose to his feet. “You guys finish up here. I have to go make a phone call.” 

Noah left them there in the living room, allowing Isaac the privacy to fall apart without the eyes of an adult on him, knowing that he was in good company as Stiles pressed his hands to Isaac’s shoulders and pulled him close, until the boy’s face was hidden in his shirt. He sobbed quietly, but the fact that he was doing so at all was enough.

With an irked sigh, Talia Hale leaned further back into the velvet cushion of her chair and rolled her eyes pleadingly toward the sky, wondering if it was worth it to ask for divine intervention and wisdom. With the surety of someone who had done this many times before, she knew she would be getting no respite from some higher being, and so turned her gaze to her two children. They shifted guiltily, doing their best to avoid looking straight back at her. Laura fidgeted with her fingers while intently studying the painting above Talia’s head, and Derek held himself still, nerves betrayed only by the way his hand tapped against his thigh in a random rhythm. 

“Tell me, Laura,” Talia began, voice bringing both her children to attention, “why you and your brother decided that stalking the sheriff’s son was a good idea?” 

Laura remained silent, trying to decide if this was a question she actually wanted to answer, or if this was a trap. Knowing her mother, it was likely both. “We were just,” - she stretched the word out, searching for an appropriate finish - “in the same areas as him.” 

“Really?” Talia’s face spoke of how unimpressive she found this explanation. She turned to Derek. “You happened to be in the same places as him on two different days?”

Derek stared at her like a man sitting in the witness box of a courtroom. “Just a coincidence.” 

Deadpan, she asked, “And when you were perched in the tree outside his window, was that a coincidence?” 

Derek’s eye twitched and his gaze ducked down, hidden behind his lashes. She never would have expected this kind of behavior from him. From Laura, it was expected, and from Markus, it would have been stranger for him not to have done so; Cora, thankfully, wouldn’t have been caught dead in this situation. Out of all her children, it was Derek who embodied the quiet and unassuming, always managing to meld into the background. He kept to himself, the outgoing and extroverted part of him somewhat altered after high school, and she had no idea what had beget this change. 

She wondered if some of it was her fault. She’d spent so much time focusing on Laura’s training, wanting her to be ready as the next Alpha, that she had lost sight of her other children. Cora had remained similar enough, but Derek had gone through something that had fundamentally shifted a cog inside him, and he didn’t seem to want to tell Talia about it. She could have pushed him to tell her, but Joseph had been insistent on Derek coming to them. So far, he hadn’t, and she doubted he ever would. In fact, he’d done his level best to run away from them, vanishing after his eighteenth birthday and returning only when called. 

Sighing, Talia pinched her forehead. “You are very lucky Stiles isn’t looking to press charges. That is the only reason we don’t have a very angry sheriff at our door.” She spread her hands and smiled. Her children shuddered. “Of course, while Stiles might not be pressing charges, I am well within my rights to punish you how I see fit.” 

“Oh shit,” said Laura beneath her breath. 

“And your uncle Peter is very willing to help me with that.” 

“Oh shit ,” said Derek, with great emphasis and very much not beneath his breath.

Noah was caught between fury and bewilderment. He stared at his son, who was spinning happy as could be at his desk chair, and wondered why a seizure of all things had shifted the world on its axis. Never before would he have thought that Talia Hale’s kids, who had been perfectly polite in every other interaction Noah had ever had with them, would stalk his son and go so far as to perch on the tree outside of his window to spy on him. Spying on his underage son, who seemed less traumatized and more enthused by this development. 

Stiles sighed dreamily, staring at the window, and murmured, “Always with the window, that one, he just can’t help himself,” which was a statement that Noah wasn’t even going to try and parse out. He’d only seen that look of dazed besottedness on his son’s face when the boy had first caught sight of Lydia Martin. Seeing it now was disconcerting to say the least. 

Claudia, I regret to inform you that I think our son is an absolute nut job, Noah thought to himself and to his late wife. 

“Stiles, explain to me once more why you don’t want to press charges.” Noah rubbed a hand tiredly over his face and mentally prepared himself for his son’s response.   

“Dad, padre, dad-io-” 

“Please just get on with it.” 

Stiles grinned, wide and a little manic. “This is perfect. Now, since they’re approached me first and in the worst possible way, I have a leg up here.” 

“Why exactly do you want a leg up here?” 

“Because if I know Talia Hale, which I’ll be honest, I don’t,” - Stiles waved a hand as if swatting aside that fact-  “she feels responsible enough for their actions that she’ll agree to what I asked.” 

A bit fearfully, Noah questioned, “What did you ask for?”

“Unlimited use of their library,” responded Stiles, eyes wide with glee, “And other benefits, which you don’t need to know about.” Here, his eyes flicked to the window again, and his smile widened. 

Absolute nut job , Noah thought. Any other kid would have been at least mildly afraid, would not have even hesitated to take action, but no, Noah’s kid had decided this was the perfect opportunity to get into someone’s house to ransack their library. And, he thought, his own gaze landing on the window, probably to ogle Talia Hale's second son. Noah banished that picture from his mind, wanting to give as little attention to his kid’s crushes as he could. 

Stiles had been so strange since his sudden seizure. He’d taken to bringing Noah lunch, where before he hadn’t even been able to cook, and Noah hadn’t seen him wear his glasses in weeks. Stiles no longer blasted loud music from his phone and no longer watched space documentaries in the living room; he’d always been so enamored with astronauts as a kid. Now, he hardly seemed to care much for a lot of the stuff he used to like, and he’d spent a good portion of his time in a quiet, somber mood, almost like he had been after Claudia passed away. 

He wasn’t all that different, though. Certainly he was still as clumsy as he had been as a child, always tripping his way down the stairs or knocking into furniture, and he was as good natured as he had ever been, making new friends, which was soothing a lot of Noah’s concern that he would be too lonely when Scott started trying to date. Stiles and Scott still squabbled, and his son was still sarcastic, still capable of delivering a scathing response when he wanted. He was just also a lot more thoughtful, with a habit of falling into contemplative silences, and waking up in the middle of the night where before he slept like the dead. 

Noah knew his son had nightmares. He’d lingered outside of Stiles’ door often enough, struck by the worry that it would happen again and he wouldn’t be able to help. Instead of waking shaking uncontrollably, Stiles woke with gasped, panting breaths that were audible even through his door. Noah would hear him get up and shove the window open, and it was easy to picture him leaning against the window sill, shaky and pallid. He wanted to ask what nightmares were haunting his son but he knew the boy wouldn’t say. Stiles was just as close-lipped about himself as he had ever been.  

He wondered if he should get his son professional help, but that was a conversation best left to a later time, when Stiles came to the understanding that his father was here for him, ready and willing to listen.

“So, how’d you get roped into the Scott and Stiles friendship-circus?” Boyd asked absentmindedly as he shoved a fry into his mouth. 

Isaac shrugged tightly, still a little unused to sitting and hanging out with others without having to be afraid. “To be honest, I just woke up one day and they wouldn’t leave me alone.”  

It wasn’t the truth, far from it really, but Isaac wasn’t ready yet to unearth the entirety of what exactly had occurred in the weeks following up to this moment. He trusted Scott and Stiles, they had more than proven themselves, but he was also observant enough to know that they, particularly Stiles, had quite meticulously planned out how to best help him. He wasn’t used to people expending that much energy on him. Maybe he’d tell Boyd and Erica about it eventually, they seemed nice, but it was still too soon. 

“Yeah, they do that,” Erica chimed in, lounging back languidly. “I figure once they’re fond of you there’s really no way out. Still, we could do a lot worse than them.” 

“If only they didn’t argue like an old married couple so much,” Boyd jokingly griped. 

“We do not,” Scott protested halfheartedly, returning from the kitchen. 

“Uh, yeah you do.” 

Isaac smiled, leaned further back into the cushions, and tried to loosen up to match the atmosphere in the room. It felt a little surreal to be here, surrounded by people who included him amiably and easily into their conversations, who never hesitated to make him feel like he was a part of the joke rather than the butt of it, like his father had always done. They took the opinions he expressed with consideration and never made him feel bad if didn’t want to contribute to the conversation. When they’d been ordering food, they’d let him take his time to come to a decision, and it hadn’t even felt forced because Boyd was also like him, in a way- someone who liked to mull over his choices for as long as he wanted, except with Boyd it came from a place of surety, and of the understanding that no matter what, the people around him wouldn’t hurry him, and Erica and Scott never did. Neither did Stiles, though he wasn’t there with them now. 

“I’ve got plans today I can’t miss,” he’d explained hurriedly, shoving his things into his bag with an unfettered abandon. The sheer chaos of him was overwhelming, and Isaac wondered how Scott had survived so many years around this kind of energy. “Big day today, Isaac, big day!” Stiles spun around, grinned at him, and ran off with only a slap to Scott’s shoulder to signal a goodbye. Scott had hummed, clearly used to this, and turned to invite Isaac back to his place for a movie night with Erica and Boyd.

Isaac had agreed, after a few minutes of mulling it over, and he was finding that he didn’t regret his decision at all.

Huffing out a breath and shaking his limbs haphazardly, Stiles looked up at the immaculate door of the Hale house. He felt a little unprepared to walk into this house, which he had only ever known as the skeleton of a happy family’s past life, an open wound on the few Hales that remained in Beacon Hill, one of whom Stiles had a vested interest in. 

It was a bit of a disappointment, then, that the door opened and Peter Hale stood on the other side rather than his nephew. Stiles blew out a sigh, a little dismayed, and tried to peer over Peter’s shoulder. The man cocked his head, blocking the view behind him, and said, “So, the weirdo shows up at last.” 

“Weirdo?” Stiles rocked on his heels. “Now, that’s just rude.” He pointed a finger at Peter and said, “You know, if this is how you greet people who aren’t pressing charges, I think I should get to keep your library.” 

“Laura’s words,” Peter excused himself, and somewhere behind him someone made a sound of indignation. “Please, come in. We’re a hospitable lot, pinky promise.” When he grinned, he looked very much like the Cheshire cat. Good to know he’d been like this even before the fire.

“Yeah, excuse me if I don’t want my pinky anywhere near you.” Stiles squeezed past Peter, making sure not to touch the man. They’d come a long way in their relationship, but he hardly wanted to spend much time with the guy. 

“Stop antagonizing him, Peter,” Talia Hale’s sharp voice cut short whatever response Peter might have given him. Her mere presence was enough to have Stiles straightening. Something about her demanded respect, some ineffable thing that neither her brother nor her children had ever really had. Maybe it was because she’d been trained from birth to be the quintessential Alpha, while her son had just been stuck with it in a series of devastating events.

She sized him up, blue eyes almost fluorescently bright in the afternoon light. Stiles held himself still under the weight of her gaze, even though all he wanted to do was look over her shoulder into the kaleidoscope eyes of her son, standing just out of sight in the doorway, whose very presence itched at the back of Stiles’ mind, calling him to answer. Ignoring Derek was difficult, but perhaps it would be even more difficult to hold back his reaction at seeing Derek close to his mother, an obedient son in the way Stiles had never gotten the opportunity to see him as.

Talia clicked her tongue and said, “Well, come on then.” 

He followed her through the house, eyes catching on pictures frames of laughing persons and captured moments in time, relics that in another universe would go up in charred smoke, never to be seen again. From somewhere further in the home, a clatter arose, the clang of dishes being washed in the sink, and the muffled laughter of children, faint beneath the sound of a man’s stern voice embroidered through with mirth. Stiles caught sight of a little dark-haired boy in one of the frames, perched in front of a birthday cake with a bright smile on his face, eyes crinkled but clear enough even in the picture that Stiles had no trouble recognizing it was Derek. His heart ached. 

It was a relief when they arrived at the library, tucked away in the back of the house in a cozy little corner. Grand windows suffused the spines of the books in golden rays, warm on leather, linen, and buckram, caressing yellowed pages and lovely mahogany shelves. Loose pages spilled across a small desk, a heavy tome abandoned near the corner, rotted with age and held together only by the strong thread binding it in one piece. 

The sight of it was more brilliant than he had expected, and Stiles stepped forward to run a reverent hand across a shelf. He could suddenly understand why Derek never talked about his childhood home; it must have pained him immensely to have lost not only his family but also such a grand piece of history and so much literature, because even if Derek would never acknowledge it, the man was a book nerd through and through. It was one of his most endearing traits, and one of Stiles’ favorite things was to catch him in the early morning, reading in whatever spot of sunlight he could find. 

Behind him, he heard Talia ushering Peter out of the room. He paid her no mind, letting his thoughts dip away until all that remained was a hum in the back of his mind, tugging him closer to what he needed. 

Come, it whispered, here is what you seek. 

And there it was, nestled in a shadowed corner, almost hidden behind the larger book beside it. The afternoon sun cast a bright shrapnel of light over it, reflecting off the gold detailing on its spine. It looked exactly as it had in his dreams following the seizure he’d suffered. He plucked it from the shelf and held it in his hands, taking in the muddy brown of the leather and the sharp pulse of magic, thrumming like a heartbeat against his finger tips.

Sitting down against the wall under the window, Stiles opened the first page and began to read the journal of the first documented case of dimension travel. On the inside of the cover, written in sprawling cursive, were the words: 

To my beloved Anette Hale, whom I love endlessly. 

I know you will cherish this with the entirety of your beautiful heart. 

With all my affection,

Your love,

Marion  

The beginning of the journal started much the same as Stiles’ own experience had begun, as Marion awoke from her slumber to find herself under the care of an apothecary, who informed her that she had been found convulsing on the grounds of the forest. He settled more comfortably against the wall and fell into the winding story of what he himself was currently living through. If there was any part of this book that could explain whether he had snatched this Stiles’ body, or whether his dimension still existed, he would have to find it.

Markus Hale, cousin of Laura and Derek, peered around the corner of the doorway and asked, “He’s still here?” 

“Clearly.” Laura hip checked him out of the way to look for herself. “He’s been here for like an hour already. When’s he gonna leave?”

“Whenever he wants to, I guess,” Derek replied, leaning next to them. He himself wasn’t so eager to catch sight of the boy, not after the last time Stiles had seen them looking and stared at Derek like he was gazing upon a miracle. It was a little weird to have all that intensity focused on him. “Wonder what he’s reading.” He was curious if it was any of the books he himself had finished, though he doubted it; the library had a way of guiding you to what you needed or wanted in the given moment.

“Whatever it is, he’s pretty fucking absorbed in it.” Laura peered at Stiles harder, as though attempting to see into his soul “He’s so weird.”  

A cough sounded behind them. “Right now, I think you guys are the weirdos,” their father admonished them, shooing them away from the doorway. “I think you all have done enough staring.” He raised a pointed brow, recalling their stalking. Both Laura and Derek looked away. Markus only smirked. “And he’ll leave when he wants to, okay?” 

They all nodded, letting themselves be ferried off, when a phone rang behind them. Stiles cursed beneath his breath, still perfectly audible to all the wolves in the house, and fumbled for his phone. He paused, stared at the screen, and then cursed again, this time complaining, “Ugh, Deaton, why do you keep fucking doing this to me?”

He emerged from the library a few minutes later, bag slung over his shoulder and book in hand. He paused to ask if he could take the book with him, which Talia allowed, before he rushed from the house, pausing again in the entryway to stare once more at Derek, who blinked back at him and cocked his head in confusion. Stiles jolted into motion, ears flushed pink, and whispered to himself, “So bad for my fucking health, oh my god, in every dimension,” while vanishing hurriedly out the door.

After a moment of silence, Laura grinned slyly over Derek’s shoulder and remarked, “You know, I think I’m starting to see what’s going on here.” 

“What’s going on here?” asked Derek blankly. 

“Oh, Derek,” Markus tutted, shaking his head and sharing a knowing look with his aunt. “You’ll figure it out soon.”

Stiles knew he looked obstinate because Deaton was sighing at him, exhaustion clear on his face as Stiles crossed his arms and twisted his lips into something that was definitely not a pout, no, of course not, it was a scowl. A very mean, very intimidating scowl. 

“Stiles,” -Deaton paused, measuring his words- “I know you want answers, but there is nothing in my spell book that explains why exactly you traveled dimensions. You can look it through from start to end, but you’ll find nothing. The spell you used was powerful, yes, but it definitely had nothing to do with you being here.” 

“Then what was it?” Stiles demanded. 

“You’re a spark,” Deaton said, “the strength of your magic comes entirely from belief. It’s likely that you were wishing for something else, wishing with enough potency to bring it to fruition, when you used that spell.” 

Stiles drummed his fingers on Deaton’s desk, feeling antsy. “I don’t remember wishing to dimension travel, Deaton. I think I’d know if I had.” 

“Maybe not deliberately, no, but it’s rarely that straightforward. You’re powerful and you’re relatively untrained- the possibilities of what you can do accidentally are endless.” 

Stiles slumped, elbows on the desk knocking into a stack of books which wobbled precariously, and rubbed his hands harshly over his face. “What do I do?” 

In the stifling silence, Deaton placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled kindly, far more kindly than Stiles had ever seen him do so before. “Don’t give up just yet, alright? Take it a day at a time. You’re here now, you may as well live your life in the meanwhile.” 

“What if there’s no answer?” Stiles asked him desperately. 

Deaton pursed his lips. “Sometimes there aren’t any answers and we have to live with that, but you’ve only just started looking. Worry about that later. For now, keep doing what you’ve been doing and the universe might sort itself out. It generally tends to do that.” He smiled wryly. 

Stiles chuckled past the stone in his throat and said, “You know, you’ve been less cryptic in this one interaction than my Deaton was in the entire time I knew him.” 

“I’ll admit, I’m not the most straightforward of people, but I’ve had to learn to be.” A pensive look of sadness crawled across Deaton’s face, gone as quick as it had appeared. Stiles filed it away to ruminate over later. 

Stiles flashed him a smile and reached for Marion's journal. “Marion Zabette dimension traveled.” 

Deaton hummed, slotting books back into his shelves. “One of the first documented cases we have, where the individual actually managed to recount everything that had happened.” He looked at Stiles out of his peripheral vision as he said, “But you know she didn’t manage to make it back to her dimension.” 

“Yeah, I know.” Stiles flipped through the book and asked, “Was she a spark?” 

“I have no idea, truthfully. She was a magic user, to be sure, but there’ve been debates as to whether she was a spark. It’s all a matter of speculation.” 

“So no one knows for sure why she ended up here?” 

Deaton pulled a book out from a low shelf and unsheathed a newspaper which had been tucked between the pages. He handed it to Stiles, who held it delicately in his grasp, all too aware of how thin the old paper felt in his grip. It was a little hard to find what Deaton wanted him to look at but Stiles caught it quick enough; on the bottom right of the second page was a small picture, in black and white, of two women sitting side by side in lawn chairs in a crowd of other people. The women held hands, looking casual in their summer dresses, and posed in a moment of jovial levity, though even then the woman on the right had a solemn air to her, a certain tenseness to her eyes stiffening her expression. In contrast, the woman on the left was leaning into her with a mischievous smile, some hidden secret in the sweep of her lashes and the way she looked at her companion.

Beneath the picture, typed in fine print, was a caption: two friends enjoy a lovely day out at the Beacon Hill's Summer Fair.

Deaton tapped a finger on the visage of the woman on the right. “Marion Zabette and,” -he tapped the woman on the left- “Annette Hale.”

“Friends, huh?” Stiles said drolly. 

Deaton shrugged. “It was the ‘50s, Stiles, what were you expecting?” Sitting down behind his desk, he said, “But yeah, they were in love. Probably one of the reasons Marion ended up settling down here.” 

Well, it wasn’t like Stiles couldn’t understand how compelling falling in love could be. How often had he fallen over himself over the years, first over Lydia, which had only really been a crush and then a deep seated affection for the friend she had become to him, and then Derek, who even now continued to fluster him immensely by just looking at him.  He recalled the words Marion had written in her journal- the long, rhapsodizing paragraphs about the shade of Annette’s eyes, words that had nothing to do with her circumstances and yet they did not seem out of place in the slightest. 

Stiles remembered his own hands warm with blood, eyes that could always enrapture him pinched in agony, and knew if he were to write his experience down, he too would be writing of a love that lingered with him everywhere he went. He had a feeling he and Marion had more in common than he had initially been expecting.

Despite the supernatural capturing much of his attention, reality had a way of bringing him to heel with very little effort. Erica’s health had taken a nosedive, landing her in the hospital to be committed for longer than any of them would have liked. They made sure to visit her everyday, dropping off class notes and homework, and lounging by her bedside to keep her company. Her parents had seemed grateful for it, telling the reception that they were allowed to visit unless Erica said otherwise. 

Offering her just his company felt lacking. Stiles had magic so powerful it had sent him to another dimension, and yet all he could do was sit by her bedside and offer an understanding ear as she complained about the pain she was in. She deserved to do so, but it would have been better if she had no reason to do so at all, if she wasn’t sitting here, too thin with a sallow complexion that was very slowly improving. 

Erica offered him a smile and patted his hand to get his attention. “You alright?” she asked. “You got kind of quiet there, for a minute.” 

Stiles clasped her hand between his own, ignoring the way she flushed slightly; her crush on him was slowly abating but she still became flustered from time to time. He tried his best not to lead her on. “I just wish I could help you.” He offered her a meager attempt at a grin. 

Giving him a curious look, Erica responded wryly, “That’s a nice thought, Stiles, but there’s nothing you can do to help me, and that’s okay. I wish I didn’t have to live like this either but that’s life for you.” 

Stiles didn’t reply, choosing instead to gaze out of the window of her room at the cloudy blue sky. She couldn’t quite decipher the look on his face, but it was one he had on quite often when he was thinking. It was so unlike him to be so still and silent; he was a well of restless energy, a chaotic tornado that spun into people’s lives and never left. She had never imagined they would actually become friends, for all that she’d fantasized about him noticing her and asking her out, the perfect scene straight out of all those coming of age romance movies she liked to watch, her own little guilty pleasure she’d told no one about. 

Of course, he hadn’t asked her out, and she was observant enough to know he probably wasn’t interested in her. She knew what Stiles looked like when he was infatuated- nearly everybody in school knew about his loud crush on Lydia Martin, who never gave him the time of day, and Erica had resigned herself to it years ago. Though everyone had also noticed how he hadn’t been sighing after her recently, so maybe he’d moved on. Still, Erica was content with only his friendship, though it still made her heart pound when he held her hand or smiled her way, the lingering romantic feelings slow to fade. She knew they would eventually, and it would be a relief not to be so flustered around him.

After a too long moment of his pensive silence, she squeezed his hand and said, vulnerable in a way she never liked to be, “You do enough, you and the guys, when you visit and talk to me.” She never liked to be in the room with someone who was off in their mind, and Stiles frequently was. Scott had shown them all that the best way to bring him back was to remind him you were there. 

“He does that a lot now, after the seizure,” Scott had explained, shrugging, though his cavalier response couldn’t hide the worry in his words. “He just needs a little grounding sometimes, that’s all.” 

Stiles returned to himself, sending her a tightlipped smile that hid behind it a world of secrets he would never say. But that was okay, he’d done enough talking today anyways, and she had plenty to say about all the hospital gossip the nursing staff had been feeding her after Erica had done her best impression of a starved puppy. As she regaled him of the tale of one of the new interns fainting during a standard cesarean section, Stiles slowly relaxed back into his seat, attention now focused on her and not on whatever thought had taken him over. 

Later, when Erica was well enough to be discharged from the hospital, Stiles ambushed Isaac after their last class to walk back to the parking lot with him. He’d been staying at the McCall house for the time being, as Melissa had offered to take him in, and Stiles always dropped him and Scott off on his way home if he could. 

“We’re gonna hang out this weekend, you free?” Stiles asked, though it was mostly out of politeness. He knew, and Isaac knew that he knew, that Isaac likely didn’t have any plans for the weekend outside of whatever Scott or Stiles had planned. 

Regardless of this understanding, Isaac answered anyway. “Yeah. What are we doing?” 

Stiles shrugged, leaning into Isaac’s space briefly to avoid knocking shoulders with a passing student. It didn’t escape Isaac’s notice that Stiles did him the courtesy of not touching him without asking first. “Haven’t decided yet. You got any ideas?”  

Isaac mulled that over. He wasn’t really one to care overly much about what they did when they hung out. Usually, they’d watch a movie, or play some games, or head out to the park if the weather was nice enough. While they always made sure to include each other in the decision making process, Stiles never explicitly pressured Isaac to pick something to do. He seemed to know that Isaac would go along with whatever. Asking him this now seemed deliberate. 

Slowly, hesitantly, he said, “You know, I never learned how to ride a bike.” 

Stiles took the response for what it was, and now there was a zeal to his steps, a quickening that beckoned Isaac to follow. “I can work with that, dude,” he said, bursting out the school entrance. “We can totally work with that.” He bounced down the steps, so excited he barreled right into Boyd, who was waiting for them next to Erica and Scott. 

“Woah,” -he sprung back, then knocked a hand to Boyd’s chest- “man, you are rock solid, huh?” Shaking his head as if to rearrange his thoughts, he continued, “Never mind. Guys, we’re teaching Isaac how to ride a bike!” 

Scott, like all good best friends, caught Stiles’ enthusiasm immediately and returned it tenfold. “Dude, that’s a great idea! We can use my bike, too!” 

They piled into Stiles’ car, and the plan changed quickly from ‘this weekend’ to ‘right this second’. Perhaps catching Isaac’s overwhelmed expression, Erica knocked her shoulder lightly into his from where she was wedged between him and Boyd in the backseat, and said, “Don’t worry, it’s really not as hard as it seems, and falling off doesn’t hurt that bad unless you’re biking on gravel.” 

“Fucking gravel,” Boyd said with vehemence, an entire story told in two words. Erica laughed and commiserated that she too had learned how to ride a bike on gravel. Scott twisted in the front seat and added that when he had first learned how to ride a bike, he’d decided to go down a hill and hadn’t known how to properly stop. He’d ended up being flung off his bike and Stiles had had to help him limp home. 

“But don’t worry,” he reassured Isaac, “we aren’t gonna make you do that. We’ll find a nice flat, grassy space. It'll be way better if you fall then.” 

“Yeah,” Stiles concurred. “Plus, everyone falls at least once, it’s kind of a right of passage.” 

The platitudes were enough to quell some of Isaac’s nerves. The made a stop at Scott’s place to pick up his bike, and then headed off to the woods, to a clearing where Stiles and Scott said they’d first learned how to ride. Apparently, Stiles’ father hadn’t taken them to a park because he’d wanted to avoid them crashing into passerbyers. 

A half hour later, Isaac had fallen six times, almost veered into a tree twice, and had nearly run Boyd’s foot over. On his sixth fall, Isaac flipped onto his back and took a moment to lay there in the dirt, and bask in the sun, before he picked himself back up and straddled the bike once more. Scott held onto the front of the bike, holding him steady, and Stiles stood behind him, his hands light on Isaac’s back to help him balance. It was a little exhilarating to be touched by someone for an extended period of time and not feel the urge to flinch. Right now, Stiles’ hold felt calming rather than stifling. 

“Okay,” Scott said, a well of patience in the face of Isaac’s abject failure at grasping the mechanics of bike riding, “one, two, three, go!” 

Isaac pedaled, wobbling shakily, front wheel swerving back and forth. Scott skipped along sideways next to him, encouraging, and Stiles’ hand straightened him anytime he tipped too far one way. In a spurt of luck, Isaac found just the right balance; Scott whooped, and Stiles’ hands lifted off him. All by himself, Isaac pedaled ten perilous feet, farther than any of his previous tries, before he came to a stumbling, tripping halt, feet scrambling against the ground. Amazingly, he didn’t fall, and in a fit of triumph he whipped around to face his friends with his arms flung up in victory. Erica cheered, clapping her hands, and she and Boyd chanted, “Isaac! Isaac! Isaac!” as Scott and Stiles bounced around hollering like he’d scored a game-winning touchdown. 

It was perhaps the single greatest moment in all his seventeen years of life, even if he was bruised to hell and back from falling so much.

Flushed with delight and beaming, Stiles watched as the other’s clambered into Roscoe, still jubilant from teaching Isaac how to ride a bike. He definitely needed more practice, but he was certainly in good hands; Scott had already started making plans to help him get more proficient. Soon, Isaac would probably be better at riding than Stiles himself, though that wasn’t saying much, he thought wryly, securing Scott’s bike to Roscoe. 

Dusting off his hands, he made to get in the car when he paused, eyes catching on a shock of yellow in his peripheral vision. Inconspicuously looking around, Stiles found what had flashed in the sun. There, kneeling half-hidden behind some shrubbery, was Kate fucking Argent. 

Fucking hell, Stiles thought, long-suffering and loathing in equal measure. Of all the differences in this universe, Kate Argent couldn’t at least be dead already? I really fucking hate this woman.

Chapter Text

Like all of Stiles’ best ideas, the first step to success was to do less thinking and more doing. This first step was not necessarily advised, and if he was to ask any other person in his life if they thought it was a good start, nearly all of them - save, perhaps, Scott- would say that he needed to severely reevaluate his priorities. Fortunately for Stiles, he hadn’t told anyone about what he was doing, and he never would. He didn’t think his father would much appreciate the fact that he was currently stalking a woman who had burnt a family alive without any compunctions.

Any danger aside, stalking Kate Argent was ridiculously easy, and also ridiculously boring. The only way to get through it was to pump himself full of coffee, and subsist off the caffeine and the pure animosity driving him forward. There were very few people he hated as much as this once, and it was blood boiling, watching her try and wheedle what little information she could about the Hales from unsuspecting, underage cashiers, who were oftentimes struck by her looks. 

The poor boy in front of her now seemed a little overwhelmed. Stiles stepped closer, tugged his hat lower and pushed his sunglasses up higher to hide as much of his face he could. 

“You can tell me,” Kate said, nearly crooning. She leaned her elbows on the counter, the move accentuating the curves of her breasts. The cashier’s eyes widened but he didn’t look down into the gaping collar of her shirt. Kate’s mouth twitched briefly like she wanted to frown, before she pasted on a smile and said, “Really, I’m an old friend of Derek’s. I just wanna know if he’s been by recently, I remember he used to come here a lot as a teenager.” 

Stiles gritted his teeth, struck by how much he wanted to bash her head into the glass, and strode forward, purposefully ‘tripping’ at the last moment so as to knock his shoulder roughly into Kate’s. She stumbled, startled, and Stiles threw her a careless, “Sorry,” before tossing a packet of chips onto the counter. The cashier swallowed, eyes flicking between them. 

“Just the one,” Stiles said, digging out some cash from his pocket. He could feel Kate glaring at his back. The cashier took the money and didn’t say anything about the palpable tension between his two customers. 

“Do you want it bagged-”

“No thanks.” Stiles swiped the chip’s packet and turned to leave, knowing the vitriol in his stare was hidden behind the sunglasses. A few moments later, Kate exited the shop, eyes scouring the lot for any sight of him. Stiles’ watched, hidden behind a wall across the street, as she got into her car and drove away. Through the window of the shop, he could see the poor cashier gazing out in bewilderment. 

So, perhaps stalking Kate wasn’t going to work. He had underestimated how much the sight of her would drown him in an unending spiral of rage. To hear her call Derek a friend, as if she hadn’t ruined his life and mangled his health with her actions. God, had she raped him in this universe too? Stiles shuddered, the thought chilling him from head to toe. He banished it from his mind, unwilling to speculate on such a horrific outcome before hearing what had really happened, preferably from Derek himself if he was so inclined. Though, if he was anything like the Derek from Stiles’ own dimension then he likely wouldn’t be, and that was alright. Stiles was well used to deciphering Derek’s silences. 

After three days of stalking Kate and falling behind on his homework, Stiles put it to a rest and turned to the internet instead. He’d learned enough from Danny to be able to hack his way into most private databases. However, it turned out there was really no need to do so. Obituaries were available to the public, and he came upon Gerard Argent’s quick enough. The man had been dead some ten years, having lost his battle with cancer; he was buried in the old Argent family cemetery in France upon the request of his youngest child. Good fucking riddance, honestly. Nobody needed that asshole up and causing trouble. If ever there was a man who deserved to get fucked by cancer, it was Gerard Argent.  

Though the obituary made only brief mention of him, Chris, he knew, was married to Victoria, who was still alive. He’d seen them dropping and picking up Allison from school, and Scott had expressed immense fright at the thought of meeting her parents for dinner. Thankfully for Scott, his meeting had gone a lot better in this dimension than it had in the last, what with his lack of lycanthropy. 

Before he’d left for their house, he’d come to Stiles for one last inspection. Stiles had clapped him on the shoulders and reassured, “Well, you’re fully human, so you’ll be fine.” 

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Scott had complained, drooping in exhaustion at Stiles’ non sequitur. 

Stiles straightened Scott’s shirt collar, pressing it down so it laid flat. “Don’t you worry about it, buddy.” Then, he said, “Your bouquet is falling apart.” 

Scott looked down, exclaimed, “Shit!” and fumbled to get the ribbon secured properly around the stems of the gloxinias he had bought for Allison. He’d wanted to get her roses before Stiles had talked him out of doing so, telling him that roses were, “So average, Scott, c’mon, be a little more creative.” 

“I think roses are nice,” Scott had refuted plaintively, though he’d still listened and picked out the gloxinias instead. For her parents, his mom had helped him buy a classy bottle of wine.

Those gifts and his nicely pressed shirt had probably gone a long way in boosting their impression of him. Stiles knew Scott was fairly friendly with her parents now, and had expressed to Stiles that they seemed nice enough. 

“Any guns in their house?” Stiles had asked him. 

Scott, finally moving past being weirded out by Stiles' strange questions, had only sighed and said, “No. None that I could see, at least. Allison did say her dad used to be in the weapons manufacturing business but he left that when she was a kid.”  

Weapons manufacturing business. Right . Well, good to know, in any case. Especially good to know because Stiles had decided approaching Chris was his best bet. If anyone was going to be responsible for corralling Kate Argent, it was going to have to be her brother. Chris had also been a valuable ally for a man who’d lost his entire family to the supernatural, and Stiles could honestly say he was immensely grateful the man had even bothered to help them time and time again. He knew if he’d lost his everything, he wouldn’t have had the strength to go on. But maybe Stiles’ love was a bit more obsessive, in that regard; maybe he poured too much of himself into others.

When Chris was eleven years old, his mother had vanished from the house for nine days. He’d woken one morning to find her gone, her seat at the dining table absent of her straight-backed posture. There was no sound of her finely manicured nails drumming against the wood, or her even, steady breathing. The light of the sun could not shine off her pearls, or the clear lacquer she liked to wear. The memory of her voice, seldom heard, did not linger in the corridors or in the kitchen. She had disappeared like smoke dissipating, leaving behind only the acrid memory of herself. 

Though her absence was conspicuous, their father offered them no explanation. Even at eleven years of age, Chris had known better than to question him of her whereabouts. They ate breakfast in stilted silence, metal scraping across porcelain the only conversation in the room, and afterwards they took the bus to school, their father watching them from the doorway of the house like he had never done before, eyes insistent upon them.  

Chris remembered that day clearly because he’d stayed behind after school at the behest of a friend, something he had never done before. He’d thought, foolishly, that if his father had said nothing of their mother’s absence, he would not say anything about Chris arriving home later than intended. He had been wrong. If there was one thing his father always noticed, it was when his children broke one of his rules. 

He remembered it in hazy intervals, time having smudged away the finer details. He knew this- Kate had been playing outside in the backyard with her dolls, and his father had been waiting for him in his room, backlit by the sun streaming in through the window. In the shadows, his face had been flat, mouth slashed into a grim line, and eyes flinty. He had never taken his gaze off Chris. 

He’d said, “You’re late, son.”  

Chris had heard the unspoken censure, the callback to the first rule they had ever been taught; their father hated people who were late. 

“I’m sorry, sir,” he’d responded, voice level, hiding whatever weakness he was feeling for he knew his father would pounce upon it like a poacher would a wounded animal backed into a ravine. 

“Are you?” his father had asked, words drawled and lingering in the space between them. The question was rhetorical, and had already been answered before Chris had even opened his mouth. No , the silence seemed to say, you’re not sorry. 

But you will be . 

Chris had not replied, had only been able to watch as his father stood, his height towering in Chris’ memories. He remembered how his father had commanded, “Put your bag away and take off your shirt,” and how the breath had caught up in his chest, a dying thing in his lungs. In that moment, he had yearned fiercely for his mother, though even then he had known there was nothing she could have done. 

Obediently, he had done as commanded, fingers numb and clumsy, slipping off his shirt buttons as his father watched him unblinkingly from his place by Chris’ bed. He remembered how he had turned and slipped to his knees, eyes glued on the chipped wood of his bedroom door, the only means of escape or rescue- a useless hope for he knew no one was coming. He knew, as one knows in the quiet before devastation, that this was inevitable. 

The quiet shik of his father’s belt slipping from around his waist to coil in his hands- hands that had held Chris as a baby, and had smoothed back his hair in comfort as he’d cried- was loud in Chris’ memories. He held himself still, near catatonic, and that first whip which came upon the vulnerable skin of his back shocked him with the intensity of a thousand lightning bolts. 

He had cried, and his father had said, “If only you hadn’t disobeyed me, son, we could have avoided this.” His tone spoke of regret, and it had taken Chris many years to realize the remorse stemmed not from his own actions but from the disappointment that Chris could have avoided it all, if only he had not stepped out of turn. 

His mother reappeared nine days later, returned to her seat at the dinner table, hair slicked back perfectly, nails covered in blue polish, and her custom pearls luminescent against the dark bruising around her neck, the shape of fingers, a mockery of a lover’s touch. Chris had learned, in those nine days, that his father’s love was spoken in the language of ownership. 

He had thought that normal, until he married Victoria. He had thought that understandable- some kids needed punishment to learn- until they had Allison. Then, the thought of laying his hands upon her had felt like a gut-wrenching aberration. Victoria had run her palm down the line of his back, gentle, and told him, “A good father never doles out pain, darling.” 

His own had hurt him regularly, by belt or fist or cruel command. A legacy of hurt and killing, that was what his father had given him. Gerard Argent had reviled the supernatural, and had passed on that revulsion to his children. Kate, who had never suffered under their father quite the same way as Chris, had taken to his doctrine like fish to water. Chris had wavered, hemming and hawing, until Allison was born. He had been 27, married to a woman who’s neck he would never see marred by bruises, with a child he loved so deep within himself it hurt, and he had left it all behind. 

Like a snake shedding its skin, rubbing off on whatever it can find to help it, Chris had left the life of a hunter behind, bit by bit. When Gerard died, he hadn’t attended the funeral. He’d cut himself off from his sister, who resembled their father more and more after every year that passed. The only family he had any contact with was his mother, and they spoke only a handful of times a year; they never spoke about those nine days she had been missing. He knew Kate didn’t speak to their mother. She had no sentimentality for family if they were not useful to her. 

So he was well aware that when she showed up on his doorstep, she did so in an attempt to garner something from him. Chris did the smart thing and didn’t let her in. 

“Oh relax, Chris.” Kate smiled just the way she did when she was younger, when she wanted something enough to coerce and cajole her way into getting it. “We haven’t seen each other in almost ten years, I just wanted to catch up.” 

Chris was unmoved. “You and I have never been the ‘catching up’ kind. Just tell me what you want so we can skip this whole,” -he waved a finger in the air in a circular motion- “nice act that you’ve put on.” 

Kate’s smile wavered, though Chris knew her well enough to see the annoyance seeping into her facade. Finally, her face fell flat, and she blew out a sigh. “Fine. You friends with any of the Hales?” 

“No,” Chris replied shortly. “Goodbye.” He shut the door in her face. Through the wood, he heard her stomp her foot, the surest sign of her frustration, before she marched back to her car. 

He knew perfectly well why she’d asked; he had been aware for years now that they were werewolves, and he’d done his best to leave them be. He had no doubt they knew he’d once been a hunter, the Argent name gave him away as easily as any weapon might have. They had an unspoken truce between them that rested heavily upon the fact that Chris had left hunting behind almost two decades ago. However, he hardly would have said they were close enough to call friends, so in that regard, he hadn’t lied to Kate at all. 

What Chris had not foreseen was Kate’s presence drawing the attention of others, which was why he was absolutely blindsided when the next time his doorbell rang, the person on the other end was Scott’s friend. Chris knew of him in only the vaguest of senses, from Scott’s anecdotes of years of friendship, and he was recognizable only because Scott’s phone background was a selfie of them, shoulder to shoulder, grinning wide into the camera. 

That same grinning boy in the picture was very dissimilar to the one in front of him now. Tall and lanky, with fidgeting hands and messy brown hair, he would have looked unassuming, unthreatening, were it not for the look in his eyes. Men twice his age wouldn’t have had such a heavy stare. 

“Mr. Argent, nice to meet you,” he said, and stuck out his hand for Chris to shake. “I’m Stiles Stilinski, Scott’s friend.” 

Chris shook his hand. “Scott has talked about you. What can I do for you?” 

Stiles didn’t answer him immediately. He seemed to be taking measure of Chris, the way his eyes flicked up and down. When the silence stretched on into discomfiting territory, he finally spoke. “Kate came to visit you.” 

Chris didn’t let his expression fall, but he did tense, shoulders pulling back to make him look broader, bigger, even though the thought of this pale, lanky boy being a threat was laughable. Yet, those eyes were unnerving enough that it did not feel ridiculous to cover more of the doorway, to instinctively guard his home and his family. “I beg your pardon?” he asked, feigning politeness. 

Stiles only shook his head and rubbed at his temples, looking irked. “Can we please not do this whole back and forth.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and said, “I’m from an alternate dimension, your sister is a crazy psychopath planning to kill the Hales, and you’ve apparently left the hunting business.” Then, he said with great relief, paying no mind to Chris’ look of befuddlement, “Thank God Gerard is dead, too. Could not fucking stand the guy.” 

It was almost dizzying, the speed at which he spoke. Chris breathed through his confusion, feeling off-kilter, and said, “You’re from an alternate dimension?” He tried to keep his skepticism up, his suspicion on high, but some heavy foreboding feeling had filled the air. Stiles Stilinski had too wild a look on him for Chris to think this was a prank. 

“Yes,” Stiles huffed. “Look, could I come in? I don’t think this is a conversation we should be having on your doorstep, not with your fucking sister walking around.” 

In his office, Stiles resumed. “Yes, I’m from an alternate dimension. You can ask Deaton all about it if you’re curious,” -he waved a hand, brushing the thought aside- “but that doesn’t matter. I need your help dealing with Kate.” 

Chris grimaced. “Stiles, Kate won’t listen to me. And frankly, I don’t want to get involved.” 

Stiles’ mien darkened, mouth twisting into a snarl that made him look inhuman, almost grotesque. Chris' fingers twitched for the safety of a gun, but just as quickly as that dreadful look had settled on the boy’s face, it was gone, replaced instead by a stillness that was somehow worse. Stiles leaned forward, hands coming up to grip the back of the chair he was standing behind, and said, in a low, chilling tone, “Your sister unflinchingly assaulted a dear friend of mine when he was 16 years old. She ruined his life, time and time again. If I had it my way, Chris, I would have severed her head from her body the moment I caught sight of her. I’ve refrained only out of politeness for you and whatever fondness you might still have for her.” The boy didn’t blink as he said, “So either you help and this ends lawfully, or I find her myself.” 

Chris breathed thinly, swallowed whole by the sheer animosity pouring out of Stiles. It was hard to doubt that he was telling the truth. It was an abominable thought, that Kate had assaulted a child, one who was Allison’s age. Fuck, was it one of the Hale kids? Had she done the same in this universe too? It was a vile thought, and Chris closed his eyes, pained. He thought about Kate as she was now, a vicious amalgamation of all their father’s worst parts, and the young girl she had once been; the girl who’d hold his hand hopping off the bus and who’d played with her dolls in the backyard, blissfully unaware of her brother’s suffering. It was difficult, sometimes, to remember that this woman and that girl were one in the same. 

Looking up, Chris pushed past the ache in his chest and said, “I’ll help.” 

Stiles did not grin. He looked as unhappy as Chris himself felt.

Swiftly catching Gracie under her arms and swinging her up, Derek peered around the corner. The little rascal squirmed in his grasp, as mischievous as one would expect from Peter’s daughter. She giggled, and Markus, who was leaning next to him, shushed her quietly. It didn’t work; their mother had likely known they were there the entire time. 

“Derek, Markus, Laura- in here,” their mother ordered sharply. “Leave Gracie outside, please.” 

Gracie wiggled out of his grasp, still giggling, and ran off into the kitchen, where the warm, mouthwatering smell of chocolate chip cookies floated from. Grand Norma had been on a baking streak lately, and Gracie was probably going to try and wheedle a cookie out of her. She could be very convincing for a four year old.

Laura threw her head to the side and stifled a curse. They’d been in enough shit with their mother that she really didn’t want to be scolded again. Especially not in front of guests, she thought. Stiles, it seemed, could hardly get enough of their house. They shuffled into the living room, and Stiles’ sights were locked onto her brother immediately, running up and down his form in a searching gaze. 

Though it’s probably not just the house, she thought, amused. The boy was so obvious about his crush it may as well have been tattooed on his forehead. Still, her brother hadn’t clocked it at all. Derek had become way less attentive to others’ attraction to him after high school. She wondered if it had anything to do with Paige, his girlfriend who had died; he’d been so broken up after, quiet and sullen for years. She hadn’t known how to express to him that she was worried. Neither had Markus, even though he had always been the most open of them, coming from their father’s side of the family. 

Blinking the thought away, Laura wondered what Chris Argent had to do with Stiles. As far as she knew, the man had been out of the supernatural business for years, preferring instead to live his life as a family man. She’d seen his wife often enough at the market, their mom would even chat with her from time to time, and Laura had also met Allison when the girl had come by the store Laura worked at. They seemed untouched by the hunting business, and certainly they’d never had any issue with Chris trying to come after them. Regardless, he’d definitely never come to their home before. Stiles’ presence seemed to be heralding many unexpected goings-on.

Talia gestured for them to sit, and though the guys obeyed, Laura chose to remain standing behind the couch, looming over them. She’d have to text all of this to Cora soon; she’d been complaining a lot recently that her boarding school was boring the life out of her. Better bored than knee-deep in shit, Laura thought dryly. She would have preferred a nice, calm time after finishing her degree, but no, apparently that was too much to ask of the universe.

“Stiles has some news for us,” their mother said, something heavy in her eyes. Their father was sat next to her, solemn, a certain anguish in his eyes that made Laura worry. She had never seen such a desolate look on his face before, not even when his brother had passed away. He’d always been calm and collected, pragmatic in the face of grief, a man so in touch with his emotions he never lashed out or raised his voice. Even keel, always; except no, now he wasn’t. 

What the fuck did Stiles say to them? 

The boy in question didn’t speak. He was still sitting beside Argent. He was still staring at her brother like he was seeing the sun rise for the first time, a look on his face that did not seem incongruous at all. The sloped affection on him seemed grooved into his face, as though he had spent so many years cataloging every bit of Derek the lines had been etched into the corners of his eyes, into the soft parting of his mouth, into the furrow of his brow. 

Their mother continued. “Mr. Argent’s sister, Kate, has apparently been sniffing around, asking for information about us. She’s still part of the hunting business.” 

Laura frowned. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be rude, mom, but she’s only one hunter.” She cast a look around, seeing grim faces staring back at her. “We can handle one hunter, right?” 

Their father swallowed, leaned forward, and placed his head in his hands. Laura pushed back her concern and didn’t say anything further as their mother placed a hand on his shoulder, her face tight with suffering. 

“She’s much more influential than simply being one hunter.” Argent didn’t look at any of them as he spoke. He swiped a hand over his mouth, looking harrowed, and said, “Stiles can tell you more about her.” His mouth pinched. “He’s got a better understanding of her than even I do.” 

Stiles scowled at him but didn’t refute the statement. He turned back to them, back to Derek, and began to explain. The more he spoke, the more Laura wished he wouldn’t. The words that spilt forth from his mouth were nauseating. She wanted to stride forward and shake him, and demand he take back all the vile filth he was putting out into the room, but she was frozen. She felt ashen, like a gust of wind could scatter her; the only thing holding her up was her grip on the back of the couch. Stiles’ words burned through her like lava, molten and viscous, comprehension slow to seep in but scorching when it dawned. 

Kate found out… gathered others… burned down the Hale house… I’m sorry… there were only four survivors…

No , Laura wanted to say. No, you fucking liar, you’re fucking insane! But she couldn’t. Stiles had become a stone wall, giving nothing away. This was him at his most serious, not a single ounce of humor to be found anywhere on him. Still his eyes remained locked on her brother, though he looked like he desperately wanted to turn away. Something about Derek compelled him not to. 

Wait, Laura thought, scrambling through her memories, wait. 

“Wait,” she said aloud, “you recognised Derek. You- you recognized him, which means he survived, right? Who survived?” 

Four survivors. Fuck. Let it have been the children, let it have been the youngest of them. Shit. If any of them certainly deserved to live, it was the kids. Four out of eleven, oh God . 

Stiles’ grim look told her she was about to be disappointed. “You, Derek, Peter, and Cora survived.” He swallowed, hesitating. Finally, he ripped off the bandaid and said, “You ended up dying sometime before I met Derek. I never knew you. Peter was in a coma for years, and Cora- to be honest, I don’t know too much about Cora. She ran South and some pack took her in.” 

Laura swayed, feeling dizzy. In front of her, Derek had put his head between his knees. She stared at the line of his shoulders, the sparse hair on the nape of his neck, and felt something inside her shrivel and die at the thought of her younger brother and sister alone in the world. At the thought of herself, dead, and her parents, her grandmother, her cousins, her aunts and uncles- all dead. Burning in a fire, choking on smoke, sinew and bones melting in the heat, their deformed and disfigured faces cast in horrifying pleas for help, help, help, help us, please-

Laura twisted to the side, her grip on the couch the only thing holding her upright, and puked.   

“Laura!” 

She swayed, her mother’s hands the only thing stopping her from falling into her own sick. Somewhere over her shoulder, she heard Argent mutter a quiet, “Shit,” as her mother sat her down beside Markus. 

In the silence of the room, punctuated only by her ragged breathing, Laura scrambled to find anything to ground her. It felt hopeless to do so, the only emotion within her grasp a kind of swallowing anguish she had no idea how to deal with. Beneath it, anger fluttered into reach. She looked up, her stare vitriolic on Stiles, and waited until he turned to face her. 

“Why the fuck did you tell us any of that?” she demanded, her words coming out through a snarl. “What fucking purpose did that serve?” 

The admonishment from her mother came quickly, but Stiles didn’t look away. Gaze heavy, he said, “Because it’s not going to happen this time.” He cut a sharp look Derek’s way, something bruised in his expression at the sight of her brother curled in on himself. “She’s never going to get the chance to hurt you again.” 

He said it to the room, yes, but Laura could see every sentiment in it was directed her brother’s way. It was a pledge, deeply felt, one he’d evidently been carrying for a long time; a story lurked there, yet untold. For the first time, Laura thought she might actually have something in common with Stiles, if in nothing else but their shared conviction.

It could have gone worse . 

Stiles scoffed at the thought. Of course it could have gone worse, but that didn’t mean the way it had played out had been any better. You couldn’t give multiple people earth-shattering news and expect them to take it well. Laura’s reaction had been unexpected but not surprising, all things considered. Derek’s had been just as bad, in a quieter, more heart-wrenching kind of way. Stiles recalled the vulnerable curve of his back and felt something inside him shred itself into pieces. He hated it when Derek looked like that. He hated it even more so when it was him who was responsible. 

Poking the spaghetti on his tray, Stiles grimaced. He felt sluggish, body worn down. His nights had been restless, sleep interrupted by nightmares and overthinking. There was an itch beneath his skin the longer Kate ventured around free, unwatched for now. The Hales might have upped their security measures with Deaton’s help, but the knowledge did nothing to quell his stress. He wanted Kate buried, dead or alive, far, far away, where her presence could never encroach upon Derek and his family again. 

Stiles shoved his tray away and laid his head down onto the table, the metal cool against his forehead. If he was taking it this badly, he wondered how much worse it was for the Hales. How much worse it was for Talia and Joseph Hale, to sit in their home, a safe space imbued with so much love, and hear from a stranger about how another version of their family had burned to death in that same house; about how another, younger version of their son had suffered at the hands of the perpetrator, over and over again. 

His fists curled reflexively, nails biting into his palms. It was difficult to remove the sight of Joseph Hale’s horror in the face of such ruinous news. It made him think too much of his own father. 

“Stiles, you okay?” 

Stiles sniffed and raised his head. Erica was seated across from him, a concerned look on her face. Without him having realized, his friends had all been seated for a while. Their trays were pretty much emptied. Stiles’ own remained untouched, though he noticed immediately someone had nicked his pudding cup. 

The longer he stared blankly at his tray, the more worried Erica looked. Boyd leaned over the table, snapped his fingers sharply in Stiles’ face and, when he didn’t so much as blink, leaned back to say, “I think he’s been replaced.” 

Scott hummed around a mouthful of chocolate pudding. “I don’t know, maybe someone finally found his off button-” he choked, sputtering as Stiles’ elbow jammed into his side. 

“Dude, first you steal my pudding cup,” Stiles griped, snatching the cup out of Scott’s hand, “then you insult me right to my face? What happened to being a bro, Scotty?” 

“No such thing as being a bro in the pursuit of dessert,” Scott replied. 

Stiles grinned past his tiredness and slid the cup back into Scott’s reach. The boy took it happily, slapping a hand to Stiles’ shoulder in thanks. Erica sighed, exasperated and fond in equal measure. 

“You good though, Stiles?” she reiterated. 

“Yeah, yeah,” -he waved a hand, brushing aside her concern- “I just haven’t been sleeping well, that’s all.” 

Scott, having finished the pudding, tossed the plastic cup onto his tray and asked, “Wanna ditch?” 

Stiles laughed and shook his head. “Man, you’re the devil on my shoulder, Scotty. Oh, how the turn tables.” 

Scott perked up. “We should totally ditch and watch The Office.” 

“No, we’re not ditching. Your mom would kill us, and my dad would somehow find me in the afterlife to lecture me to death.” 

“Stiles, no offense, but you look like you’re going to pass out,” Boyd pointed out. 

Isaac, who’d been quiet up to this point, spoke. “Go to the nurse and tell her you’re sick. She might let you rest for a bit. You definitely look unwell.” 

“Listen to Isaac, Stiles,” Erica urged. 

It wasn’t a bad idea. His eyes had been falling shut pretty much all day today. A nap outside of his room-but-not-really might soothe some of that awful exhaustion inside him. He’d been having too many thoughts about the boy whose bed he was sleeping in- the boy whose father he had stolen. 

“Yeah,” -he rose to his feet and rubbed his eyes- “okay, I’ll go do that. See you guys later.” 

They waved him off, though Erica looked like she wanted to walk him to the nurse’s office. Boyd rested his hand on hers. She pursed her lips but remained seated. Stiles was grateful for that; he didn’t think he could stomach being around someone right now, not after thoughts of what he had done returned to the forefront of his mind. 

Still a parasitic body snatcher, a little part of him made itself known. A life snatcher, out here ruining everything. 

Unbidden, Talia Hale’s grief-stricken face came to him. The last remnants of his good mood slipped away entirely, leaving him feeling dull once more. Maybe he shouldn’t have told her about Derek, but she was a mother before she was the Alpha. He couldn’t have kept it from her even if he’d wanted to. She and Joseph had deserved the truth. They loved their children so much, and they deserved to know what could have been. 

He also knew himself well enough to know that his reasoning hadn’t been entirely altruistic. He’d gone so many years wondering how they could have missed it. Derek never hid his grief or his suffering well. How could their son have gone through a traumatic experience, something which must have left him visibly affected and vulnerable, and have no one make note of it? How had Kate managed to get so close to him without ringing any of Talia Hale’s Alpha instincts? If it had been his mother-

No. Stiles stumbled into the wall of the hallway, the nurse’s office just two feet in front of him. That was a useless thought. His mother was dead, she had no bearing on this situation. He didn’t remember her nearly well enough to say what she would have done in Talia’s place. Stiles could judge Derek’s parents as much as he wanted, but he knew all too well what it was like to hide things from your parents for fear of making them worry too much. He’d done it often enough with his own father; he did it even now. He hadn’t told dad anything about the nightmares or the restlessness. His dad could sense it- the man lingered outside of his room often enough in the night, but they were so bad at talking about their issues it never came up. Stiles could choose to pursue that conversation with his father but there was no point. He was a sham. 

Talia and Joseph might have missed the warning signs, but that had been in another universe. They may as well have been different people here. Finally, they had a chance to take it seriously, and they were. He remembered how Talia had been brought to tears from words alone. They, at least, had the right to help their family. Stiles wasn’t sure if he could count himself a member of this Stilinski family. 

Pained, Stiles walked past the nurse’s office and out the door. Sleep seemed unlikely now. The day would just stretch out longer and longer, his thoughts more and more frantic. Fresh air would do him some good. He slumped against Roscoe and breathed. When Stiles came back to himself, he opened his eyes and found a pair of black boots staring back at him. They were well worn, the laces dusty and fraying, and there was a smear of yellow paint on the left one’s front. 

Derek’s shoes, he knew, though the paint was different. When he looked up, the man was watching the passing clouds. It was such a Derek thing to do- offer you privacy while remaining close- that Stiles wanted to reach out to him and touch. He wanted to curve his hand around the nape of his neck and feel the sparse, soft hair curling there. He wanted to press his fingers into the curve of Derek’s waist and bring him close, until he could press his lips to the dip of Derek’s clavicle and show him what kind of devotion he’d wrought out of Stiles. 

He did none of that. He cleared his throat, waited for those brilliant eyes to turn to him, and said with a little smile, “You stalking me again?”

Derek shrugged and handed him a to-go cup of coffee. “Nah, I just wanted to talk. Figured this was the best place to find you that wouldn’t have your father ready to arrest me.” 

Stiles huffed a laugh. “Smart, he’d definitely do that.” He swished the coffee around and took a swig of it. The bitterness of it was gentled by a hint of something sweet and almost nutty. It was exactly how Derek liked to take his coffee. Stiles blinked, subsumed by a wave of affection and relief. It was nice to know he wasn’t entirely different.

“Hey,” he said, and Derek turned back to him once more, “you wanna go get some food?” 

Those lovely eyes flicked from him to the building behind him then back again, before Derek shrugged. “Sure, why not?” He cocked his head and peered a little closer at Stiles. “You want me to drive? You look a little sick.” 

Taking another swig of his coffee, Stiles tossed him Roscoe’s keys. He wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t crash if he got behind the wheel. In the car, he rested his head against the window and closed his eyes, a moment of respite and, in small part, a way to prevent himself from staring. He wanted to drink in every bit of Derek, get his fill so that he could call to mind perfectly the way he looked when Stiles was deprived of his presence. However, it was clear Stiles’ staring made Derek mildly uncomfortable, which was never what Stiles wanted. So he closed his eyes, listened dearly to the sound of Derek’s even breathing, and opened them only when the car rolled to a stop. 

This diner wasn’t one Stiles was familiar with, but that was all right. It was a comfort that they were so similar no matter where you went- the checkered floor, the vinyl booths, and the smell of caramelized onions wafting from the back as the waitress at the counter wiped down a stubborn stain that wouldn’t go away. He and Derek slid into a booth near the back and waited patiently for one of the waitstaff to come their way. Sleep evaded him once more, though it was not so frustrating now that he had the smell of good food to distract him. Across from him, Derek flipped idly through the menu. Stiles found he could not move his eyes away from the sight of him, in his burgundy henley which clung so lovingly to his shoulders, and the smooth, shaved skin of his face, free of the stubble Stiles was so accustomed to seeing on him. He looked younger and softer, the way Stiles had eventually come to understand Derek should always look. 

Derek’s eyes cut to him, sharp and assessing as he said, “I’ve noticed the way you look at me.” 

Stiles huffed, amused despite himself. “I haven’t been subtle, have I?” 

“No,” Derek agreed, lips twitching the way they did when he was trying not to smile. “Though it took me a while to really notice.” 

“I could stop, if you’d like.” It was only polite to offer, even if Stiles knew he would never be able to cease his staring. It wasn’t really possible for him, but he would make his best attempt for Derek.

Derek pursed his lips and turned to look out the window. He remained quiet, speaking only to place his order when a waiter came by. Eventually, he said, “How did we… how did we know each other, where you’re from?” 

Stiles swallowed past his grief and desire to answer him. “We didn’t really get along in the beginning. You had little patience for me, which,” - he broke into a tired laugh- “maybe was fair enough considering I accused you of murder.” 

“What?” Derek blinked rapidly, impressive brows furrowing. “Why would you do that?” 

It seemed needlessly cruel to tell him the details of Laura’s murder, so Stiles did not. “Because I was an idiot. It doesn’t matter, I was wrong anyways. We went through a lot of shit together, you and I. Slowly, we started to get along better. The pack grew, life settled down as much as it ever did, and you opened up to me.” Stiles smiled, and couldn't help the way his face gentled in the face of Derek’s wide-eyed curiosity. “You aren’t that different. In a lot of ways. It’s nice to know that no matter what, you’re always just…you.” 

“You must still miss him.” 

“Sure I do,” Stiles confessed. “I miss a lot of things. But it’s not like they’re entirely gone.” He roved his eyes over Derek, and thought of Erica, Boyd, and Allison, and said, “Some things I thought gone have even returned to me, and that’s- fucking incredible.” 

Derek abruptly asked, “Were we together?” 

Stiles sputtered, caught off guard. He coughed into his napkin and took a sip of his water, feeling unsteady under Derek’s even regard. He cleared his throat again and replied, “No, no, we weren’t, we…” - he took another gulp of his water- “we never talked about it.” 

“But there was something there, wasn’t there?” Derek’s keen gaze bored into him. For all that he could be very oblivious, he could also be remarkably astute when he wanted to be. 

Stiles stacked their empty plates to the side just to have something to do with his hands and said, “Yes. On my end, yeah, there was definitely something there.” He stilled and turned to face Derek head on. “There is something there. I’m in love with you. I was then and I am now, that’s never going to change. It just never came up properly.”

Derek bit his lower lip and looked to the table, lashes fluttering low to cover his eyes. “Why not?” 

Stiles grimaced, caught between frustration at himself and the aching to reach out, touch his fingertips to Derek’s mouth, and trace over the indentations left in the pink of his lip. “Because I was a coward.” 

Derek startled at the self-loathing but Stiles didn’t give him a chance to refute it. “I was so caught up in my fear that I never broached the subject. I hate myself for that fear every fucking day.” 

“Well you aren’t the only one who could have broached it,” Derek pointed out sensibly, but Stiles only shook his head. 

“You never would have done it.” He took a minute to order his thoughts, wondering if he should bring it up, and said, “You didn’t have the best track record with people treating you kindly in relationships.” 

Derek paled, breath catching in his chest. Stiles could feel his face fall as Derek pulled himself out of the horrid stillness he’d fallen into. It was all the confirmation he needed. God, what he would’ve given to write a protection charm on Derek, to smear the sigils on him in ink and Stiles’ own blood, the vehemence of his possession a spiritual claim on Derek’s body and soul. Whatever Derek saw on his face had him crossing his arms and his shoulders hiking up to his ears. 

“We never talked about it, but that didn’t affect our friendship,” he said to move the conversation away from a topic which Derek clearly did not want to address. “I know you don’t know me the way I know you. And I know I don’t know you properly either. But I’d like to be friends.” He reached a hand out, palm open and ready for whatever answer Derek might like to give him. 

Derek blinked, still looking a little confused, maybe a little lost, but when he reached out to shake Stiles’ hand his grip was steady and firm, a warm weight that filled Stiles’ heart with hope. 

On the ride home, Derek spoke more of himself at the behest of Stiles. Even if he’d wanted to fall asleep then, Stiles would have resisted, caught in the steady drawl of Derek’s voice as he spoke of his love of classical literature, the way he himself liked to write non-fiction, and the garage he worked at part-time where he enjoyed fixing up motorcycles most of all. Things his Derek had been interested in as well. Then, about things his Derek had not done; how he had toured through the country after high school, learning to cook down in New Orleans and to paint in Santa Fe, and how he’d memorized every winding road and narrow street because he hadn’t wanted to forget. The more Derek spoke, the more Stiles’ understanding of this man’s differences fit into what he already knew stood at the core of him. A man who liked his solitude with his adventure. A man who could spend hours lounging around with a good book or hunched over the parts of an engine, devoting his time and attention to something with a patience Stiles himself could never have. A man who loved to learn. A man who, despite it all, despite how fondly he spoke of this year on the road, had returned to his family the moment he had been called for. Loyal, in every dimension, no matter which pack it was that called for him. 

Also a man who parked Stiles’ car and chose to walk home, hands shoved into his pockets and eyes idle on the passing grey clouds. Stiles watched him go and wondered when again he might see him. To be parted from him after they had decided to be friends felt like torture. It was a torture Stiles would have to endure though. 

It was quiet inside the house, the only sound coming forth from the kitchen. It was always strange to arrive home and find his dad already there- so often it was him waiting for the man, not the other way around. Stepping into the kitchen, Stiles watched as his dad stood at the stove, something sizzling away in the pan. He closed his eyes, overcome by grief, and leaned against the doorway. He remembered the last meal his own dad had cooked for him. Not the food itself; for the life of him, he couldn’t recall what it had looked like or even tasted like. But he remembered sitting at the table, watching his father gesticulate wildly with a fork, and laughing until his sides hurt. He couldn’t even call to mind what they had been talking about. 

A sturdy arm slid across his shoulders, a warm palm cupped the back of his head, and he found himself pulled forward into a strong hug. Like a flower wilting, Stiles hid his face in the warm fabric of his- his- dad’s shirt and willed back the tears building behind his eyes. A thumb swiped behind his ear, such a small action, so tender in its simple comfort that Stiles crumpled like a sheet of paper, fingers twisted tight in his dad’s shirt as he cried. His shoulders shook and heaved, but the man only held him tighter, no sound between them but his hitching breath. 

Finally, his dad said, “I’m here. I’m here.” 

And what more could he say to better comfort his son, Stiles thought. He wasn’t this man’s son, but this man was his father in every way that he had ever been, in this dimension and the next. Even if Stiles had wanted to, he wouldn’t have been able to push him away. It would have broken his heart to do such a thing. It was already breaking his heart to have stolen this man’s son away from him. 

Sniffling, Stiles pulled away. His crying had left a dark wet patch on his dad’s shirt. He frowned and wiped at it as though it could merely be brushed off. His dad held his wrist and pulled him gently away to sit on the couch. Noah knelt in front of him, a strange parody of his and Isaac’s moment from all those weeks ago. Stiles wondered if he’d looked as serious as his dad did now. 

“What’s wrong?” Noah asked. 

It was far more of a loaded question than Noah realized. Stiles scrubbed his hand over his face, his wrist still held in a firm grip. “I don’t know, I’m just-” He coughed and tried to find the right words. Eventually, he said, “It’s just been overwhelming lately.” 

Understatement. It had been more than overwhelming for years now, even before the dimension travel. There had been no time to waste, no moment to simply sit and think of calmer years. Now it was even worse, with all the thoughts inside his head, the what-ifs that wouldn’t leave him well enough alone. 

His dad gave him a sympathetic look. “Is this about Isaac? The seizures? You know you can talk to me.” 

It felt a little deceitful but Stiles said, “Yeah, I know I can, dad. It’s just…everything has been a bit much lately. But I’ll be fine.” It was a shitty thing to lie to your own father because Stiles knew he’d likely never tell his dad even a sliver of the truth, but he couldn’t allow the man to worry needlessly. 

It seemed not to matter much either way, because Noah was worried regardless, and insisted Stiles eat dinner then immediately sleep, whatever homework he might have had to complete shoved to the side in the face of his dad’s concern. Their dinner was a quiet affair, Stiles focused largely on his plate and his dad on him, before he said his good night and went to his room. Someone, likely his dad, had left the window open to allow the breeze and petrichor to air out the room. Sighing, Stiles dumped his bag on his desk chair and decided he’d actually try and take his dad’s advice- some sleep might do him good. 

Of course, because nothing ever went to plan, something smashed into his head, sending him stumbling, eyes flashing with spots. A needle plunged into his neck, a stinging pain that he almost didn’t notice when an arm locked around his throat and started strangling him. Nothing about it was a fair fight, but as Stiles lost consciousness, he thought blearily that that might have been the point.

Chapter Text

There was blood on his face. Stiles could feel the wetness of it on the back of his head too, cold in the chilly air of the cabin he was in, and streaming down into his eye which he had closed in a strange sort of grimacing-wink. Holding the wink wouldn’t matter much either way- his eye was swollen near shut. That, Stiles could admit, was partially his fault. No one had told him to wake up and goad Kate Argent into pistol-whipping him, but he’d done it anyway. He hadn’t been able to stay quiet, mouth running away from him, and he was sure some of the things he’d called her had probably made his mother turn in her grave. 

All the things he’d said about her father at least had made her storm out, which meant he had time to think. Nothing about this situation was conducive to good planning, which kind of sucked because he was ‘the plan guy’, though there was no one around in this universe who would fully understand what that meant. Fucking depressing is what this situation was. 

No, no, fucking get it together, Stiles admonished himself, so not the time. 

Definitely not the time. He huffed out a breath and stilled, willing his heartbeat to calm a little. When it did, he took stock of the situation. It was dark in the cabin but it was a waxing moon, which meant there was just enough light to see in front of himself. His hands were tied to a rusty pipe behind him, the angle awkward enough to be putting uncomfortable pressure on his shoulders. It wouldn’t be anything difficult to magic out of but the focus it would require was a pipe dream at the moment, especially with the concussion he knew he had. Fortunately Kate had underestimated him and left him tied up surrounded by glass shards, likely originating from one of the broken windows he could see boarded up just to the left of him. 

Wriggling down, Stiles felt around behind him until his fingers brushed a sharp edge. It was hard to reach for and there was no way he could physically get it in his hand with the angle he was tied at, but it was close enough that maybe he could- 

Stiles pressed his fingers harder to the edge until the glass bit into his skin and shut his eyes. He pictured the serration of the edge in his mind, the rough feeling of it, and imagined it moving closer and closer until it rested not against the tips of his fingers but right on top of them, in the perfect position to grip. When he opened his eyes and flexed his hand, the shard had found its way into his hold. His head throbbed harder but the satisfaction of this one victory was sweet enough to distract from the pain. 

He didn’t need to saw all of the rope off, just enough to break that last bit himself. It was slow going, his fingers were covered in blood, but the rope was giving, loosening around his wrists a little at a time. Kate hadn’t returned and she’d done herself the disservice of underestimating him. The rope felt thinner now and he imagined that thinness in his mind, the fraying thread giving under the tension, snapping apart until all that remained was two separate pieces falling away from each other. His stomach heaved and he gagged, nauseous, but his hands came apart and the rope fell to the ground. He dropped the shard of glass and scrambled to his feet, feeling like there were a thousand little fish swimming in his gut.  

Stiles paused next to the door. The outside was nature-quiet, bereft of human rustling. He could wait for her here, attack her as soon as she stepped through the door, but the concussion and the swollen eye, as well as the blood loss from his head wound, were all telling him that wasn’t a good idea. Escape was his best bet; he knew Beacon Hills inside-out. Stiles eased the door open, thankful she hadn’t locked it, until just a sliver of the outside could be seen. It was a bad angle, he could only catch a glimpse of the woods, but it was a straight run to them. 

Fuck it , he thought and flung the door open, sprinting straight for the treeline. Everything felt slow and liquefied, his feet punching into the mud, and it was raining, a light sprinkle that pattered cooly off his skin. A shout sounded behind him. Shit . Either she’d been outside this whole time or she had just returned from wherever she’d vanished to but this was his worst case scenario. A bang echoed behind him and bark splintered off a tree to his right, flying into the air. A gun, she has a gun , he thought just as something slammed into his shoulder, sending him sprawling. He scrambled back up, breathless from the agony of it, and had enough time to realize he’d been shot before he was running again. The sound of her behind him petered out. 

He kept going, the trees turning blurry in his vision until it almost seemed as though they were swaying and curling into his way purposefully. He smacked a branch out of the way, the movement sending a bolt of white heat to his shoulder, and stumbled into a clearing. The tip of his shoe caught a rock and he fell with a strangled yell. The ground swallowed him up, splattering him with mud. Stiles laid there for a minute, gasping in air and rain and cold. It was quiet again. 

But not, he realized, nature-quiet. There were no sounds of crickets or birds or leaves rusting. The wind did not whistle and the rain did not pitter-patter against the ground. Stiles looked up and saw the sky flash with lightning but the sound of rumbling thunder never came. His ears rang, his own heartbeat settled heavy in his head. Stiles looked down at his feet to the rock which had tripped him and saw that it was almost ivory white, bright even in the dark, and next to it was another and another next to that. On and on it went, curving, and it was only when he looked the other direction that he realized they were set in a circle. 

Or rather, they were set in a ring . He sucked in a rattling breath, chilled to the bone. His vision whited out, the pain eclipsed everything, and Stiles knew what was going to happen a split second before it did. Around him the world blinked like a hundred eyes. He passed out. 

Stiles woke up kneeling. Everything seemed suddenly distorted- the ground too firm and the air too sweet. When he opened his eyes, he saw first his hands, coated in blood up to his forearms. He was trembling. He could feel himself shivering like a leaf in the wind. Somewhere far away a wolf bayed loud enough to startle the birds in the canopy into flight. Stiles swallowed and looked past his hands to the man lying in front of him, cut open from chest to sternum like a carrion offering to a committee of vultures. 

Derek’s face was screwed in an expression of pain so intense Stiles wished he would pass out. It would be better than this moment, stretching out for an eternity, Derek’s eyes shadowed by torment and acceptance. Where Stiles had put his hands to Derek’s wound and told him, “You’re not dying!” Derek had only put his own over Stiles’ and held them. 

But then Derek’s expression lifted, unwound itself until his face was smoothed of any pain, and the only thing out of place was how wide his eyes became. They were as bewitching as they always were. Derek blinked up at him and reached out to touch Stiles’ face. His fingertips were cold. “Stiles,” he said through blue lips, “what are you doing here? Where have you been?” 

“What?” Stiles asked, catching Derek’s cold fingers with his own, rubbing them between his palms to warm them up. His hands were too slick with blood and his palms slid. The lack of friction didn’t matter- the blood was warm enough for both of them. “I’ve been here this whole time.” 

“No, you haven’t been,” Derek refuted, shaking his head, seemingly less concerned with being cut open than having this conversation. “I haven’t seen you in a long time.” 

Something hovered at the edge of Stiles’ consciousness, a sort of knowledge that his brain felt he should know. A memory, elusive, just out of his grip. He tried to grasp at it, failed, and decided perhaps it would come to him on its own. “Yes, you have.” 

“Have you, Mieczysław?” a voice whispered in his ear, soft like the wind or the sleek underbelly of a cat. Stiles stared into Derek’s eyes, still once more. “Be honest, child. Only the honest may leave the ring.” 

Fine. “Fine,” he said, “no, I haven’t been around in a while, you’re right. I couldn’t bear to see you like this, it hurts me. It fucking kills me inside every time I remember that you’re-” his voice broke and the words crumbled apart like wet sand. 

“An honest hurt,” said the voice and soft lips, soft like flower petals or silk, kissed his forehead. “An acceptable offering.” 

Stiles blinked and found himself on his back in the mud. He was just outside of the ring now, facing the thundering sky. The sound of it was deafening after the silence. The rain slipped in rivers down his face but even through it, Stiles could tell he’d woken up crying. Lips quivering, he scrunched his eyes shut and began to sob. Each heaving cry jostled his wounded body and exacerbated his concussion, but he laid there, muddied and bloodied and soaked, and wept. 

That was how Talia Hale and her family found him. She crouched by his side, her pity clear in her eyes, and pressed her fingers to his pulse. He tracked her with a slow gaze, listless. He wondered how she’d known to find him and whether they’d caught Kate. After a moment, she pulled away from him and called out for someone else. In her place, Derek’s face swam into his line of sight, pinched in concern but no agony. 

Stiles reached up for him, breathless with his own guilt, and said, “I’m sorry.” 

Derek’s brow furrowed. “What are you sorry for, huh? You’ve been shot.” 

He didn’t seem to mind that Stiles was smearing dirt and blood on his face from where he was framing his jaw. Rubbing his thumbs against Derek’s cheeks, Stiles said, “I should’ve been there for you more. I was such a coward, I couldn’t bear seeing you that way. You never should have been hurt so bad.” His finger, nestled behind Derek’s ear, began to trace out a protection sigil. It was instinctive to do so when faced with Derek’s open expression, his warm skin and the lovely hue of his eyes. 

Derek’s face pinched further, almost like he was the one with the concussion, and he pressed a knuckle to his head for a moment. Then, he took Stiles’ hands in his own, a strange mimicry of a moment in time he wasn’t privy to, and tried to rub some warmth back into them. “I’m alright, Stiles. You should be worried about yourself, but it’s okay. The paramedics are here and you’re gonna be just fine.” 

“Don’t leave my sight,” Stiles begged him, gripping his fingers with renewed energy. “Stay by me, Derek, do not leave my sight. Don’t-” He coughed, a hacking splutter that felt like he was throwing up a lung. 

Derek shushed him and brushed back his hair. “Calm down. I’m right here, I’ll stay right here.” 

Stiles fell back down, energy leached from him, and continued to stare. Derek let him do so in silence, the only movement between them the gentle way he combed through Stiles’ hair, fingers delicately working through any knots. When the paramedics came to lift him onto the stretcher, Derek went with him. Stiles couldn’t hear anymore, could hardly bring himself to pay attention to anything besides keeping his eyes open, but whatever Derek said swayed them enough to let him into the back with them. He held Stiles hand and it was this comforting grip that Stiles clung to as he passed out for the third time that night. 

Years ago, before Claudia had passed away and Stiles had turned reticent, Stiles had purloined one of Noah’s blazers and hidden in their laundry pile. Claudia had left for work already and Noah had been entrusted with dropping Stiles off for his first day of kindergarten, a task he’d been failing monumentally at because he’d lost their son. Every door and window in the house was locked- a small blessing- but Stiles was little enough that Noah had spent a good half-hour peeking into closets and under tables looking for him. If he hadn’t noticed his clean blazer in the laundry basket or the suspicious way it was breathing, he likely never would have found his son, who’d been so quiet for so long simply because he’d fallen asleep. Noah should have figured- Stiles was a restless child with little patience. 

That was the first time Noah had lost his son and though the fiasco had been exasperating and vaguely amusing, the second time was anything but. For one thing, he hadn’t even known Stiles wasn’t in his room. He’d sent the boy off to bed and hadn’t for one minute thought that anything else could have happened to him. Noah had washed the dishes, straightened out the house and left for his night shift. He’d sat at his desk for two fucking hours while his son had been bleeding out in the rain. 

He’d picked up the call from Talia Hale of all people and hadn’t even had time to breathe before his world had crumbled around him. She’d been steady as a mountain on the phone, her voice talking him through the motions of getting into his car and driving to Beacon Memorial Hospital. 

“My family and I found him,” she’d explained. “Stiles is alright, Sheriff. He’s unconscious right now but they’re certain he’ll wake soon.” 

“How did he even get out there?” Noah had asked, voice just a croak. 

“I can’t tell you everything, John, because the doctor hasn’t told me much of anything seeing as I’m not family.” Her voice went steely. “But believe me, I don’t think Stiles left his room willingly.” 

And she’d been right. The doctor had said he had blunt force trauma to the head, bruises around his neck and they’d found traces of rohypnol in his blood work. His shoulder was fine, the bullet had gone straight through, and after they’d cleaned and flushed the wound the stitching had been a piece of cake. 

“All in all,” she said, pen tapping against the file, “he was very lucky.” 

Lucky is not the word I’d use when describing a fucking kidnapping, Noah thought but didn’t voice. He brushed past his ire to say, “Can I sit with him?” 

She nodded and opened the door for him. Talia Hale had met him in the lobby and said she’d call her son and tell him to leave the room so Noah could have some time alone with Stiles. At his vacant look she’d described how Stiles had insisted Derek stay with him in the ambulance and Derek had kept that up even after he’d passed out. While Noah appreciated the sentiment, he hadn’t wanted to think about how scared his son must have been to beg for another’s company. 

Stiles was asleep when he entered the room, and Noah sat by his side in the shitty little plastic chair and held his hand. He wished Stiles would open his eyes- Claudia’s eyes- and say something incomprehensible and ridiculous so Noah could hold him close, call him an idiot and ease the hurt in his heart. He’d hugged his son just earlier, hadn’t he? It felt almost like a lifetime ago but he had. Noah had held the boy in his arms as he’d cried; he’d held his son- cradled him, really- for the first time in weeks. The last time they’d embraced had been after Stiles’ seizures, when Noah had been sick with fear and Stiles bleary with confusion. It seemed to be a trend lately- his son worrying him until Noah could hardly think of anything to do but trap the boy in his arms and keep him there. 

It was another two hours before Stiles even showed signs of waking. Noah had vacated the chair to pace around the room, stopping intermittently by the window and taking small swigs from the coffee Melissa had gotten him when she’d taken her break. 

“I was going to call you,” she’d said, staring down at Stiles, “but Mrs. Hale told me she’d do it.” Her arms were crossed around her midsection, an imitation of a hug. She worked in the emergency room, which meant she’d had the distinct displeasure of seeing Stiles be wheeled in as he had been before they’d cleaned the blood off him. 

“It’s fine, Melissa.” He’d moved away from the window to stand by her side. “Wouldn’t have made it easier to swallow even if the news had come from you.” That was something they both knew, as nurse and sheriff. 

Melissa had wanted to stick around for a while longer, but it was late and her own son was sleeping alone at home, and he’d sent her on her way with a gentle hand to the shoulder. That had been about thirty minutes ago. Now, Stiles’ fingers twitched and his face scrunched up like it always did just before he woke up. It was a mannerism of his he’d retained since childhood. When he opened his eyes, he stared at the ceiling for a long while, then lifted his hands and examined them keenly as he turned them this and that way. Noah took his seat by the boy's side and watched him do so silently. In that moment, regardless of his urgency, he felt that Stiles wasn’t to be interrupted. 

Finally, his son gazed past his hands and turned to look at Noah. “Dad,” he said, voice hoarse. Noah fetched him the glass of water by his bedside, inclined his bed so he could sit straight and held it to Stiles’ mouth as he drank. When he was done, Noah set the glass back down and watched him for a long moment, each of them stewing in the unspoken sitting between them. 

“Good to see you awake,” Noah said at last and then cradled Stiles’ face in his hand and pressed his son’s cheek to his chest. His arm went around Stiles’ shoulders and his son pressed closer into him, wrapping his own arms around Noah’s waist. He stood like that for a moment, that silent, insidious fear which had lingered inside him suddenly abating. “Jesus Christ, son,” Noah said, woeful, and held him all the closer. 

“I’m here, dad,” Stiles said, fingers twisting into the fabric of his uniform. “I’m here, I’m still here.” 

He was here, yes, and he was alive and awake. It was all Noah had asked for, all he’d prayed for in the car driving to the hospital, his heart up in his throat. He held his son in his arms, the boy said I’m here , and it should have been enough. You’re still here, Noah thought, but are you okay? It was becoming more and more apparent lately that the answer to that question was no, his son wasn’t okay in the slightest. First his behavioral changes, then his breakdown earlier, and now this kidnapping and the strange, disconnected way Stiles seemed to be acting. It wasn’t the time to ask anything of him though. Noah helped Stiles lie back down, the boy looking wearied and exhausted, and reclined his bed once more. Later, he would get the full truth out of Stiles and impress upon the boy why one shouldn’t tell half-truths to their worried parents. For now, it was enough that he breathed and slept, each rise of his chest the only thing keeping Noah’s soul alive. 

Of course, because they were Stilinski men and it was a Stilinski family staple not to be a good communicator, that talk never ended up happening. By the time Stiles had been discharged and given his statement to the police about what his assailant looked like, as well as any other pertinent bits of information he had, Noah didn’t have the heart to wrangle the truth out of him. Stiles was quiet and taciturn even when friends visited him, always trailing off or falling into contemplative silences that left everyone worried. Noah especially knew nothing good could come of those silences. His son had been named for mischief after all, and Noah had slowly begun to realize that the boy was less traumatized than everyone assumed. 

When Stiles had given his statement about his kidnapper, he’d appeared to the police withdrawn and tense- Noah knew his son well enough to know he’d been furious. In every mention of her, from her description to the chance encounter they’d had in a corner shop, there hid a venomous regard that Noah didn’t know what to do with. It was an anger that passed into a territory Noah could only opine as personal. There was a story there, untold, that he wished would unravel itself to him. It itched that he didn’t know more than what Stiles was telling him, which was a whole lot of nothing. 

When he’d pressed, all Stiles had said was, “That day at the store…she was snooping around trying to get information on Derek.” 

It didn’t shed much light on the level of hatred but Noah supposed he could understand why that in particular made it so personal. His son’s feelings were hardly a secret when he had a crush. He’d been loud about Lydia Martin for many years and it was only recently that he’d stopped speaking of her entirely. Noah didn’t know why Stiles had moved on but he’d thought it was for the best; up until Stiles had started pining after Talia Hale’s only son, then Noah hadn’t really known what to think. It was reassuring, if nothing else, that Stiles didn’t seem to feel the need to hide his sexuality around Noah. 

Derek Hale was twenty while Stiles was seventeen, though Noah was relieved to see Hale had enough sense not to engage in any kind of romantic behavior with his son. None of his overtures ventured past friendly and Noah was glad to see he wasn’t leading Stiles on. When Derek dropped by the hospital, he’d left behind a book from the Hale library for Stiles and a to-go cup of coffee for Noah that had tasted like salvation after two days of drinking hospital swill. Derek had been kind to Stiles, polite to Noah and had left with such good manners it was a wonder this was the same boy who’d practically stalked Noah’s son some few weeks ago. Stiles had stared after him like he was seeing the sun set past the horizon for the very last time. 

“Christ,” Noah had said, feeling a little bewildered, “you never used to stare at that Martin girl like this.” 

“Shut up, dad,” Stiles had replied glumly, still staring. “I’m already a mess, you don’t have to kick me while I’m down.” 

“Far be it for me to encourage this, but you know you could just ask for his number and text him, right?” Why he was helping his son out with this, Noah honestly could not say, but if talking to Hale would help Stiles feel better then so be it. Stiles had evidently not realized he could do such a thing because he’d paused to stare at the wall, looking poleaxed. His kid could be such a dumbass. If only he was as open about his emotions to Noah as he was about his idiocy. 

Stiles dreamed more after the night of the kidnapping. They were never violent or dreary dreams. Mostly they were mundane, if a little strange in how everything seemed to liquefy the longer the dream carried on. He would find himself in his house, or at school, or in a park. He would always be younger than he was now, with his father or his mother, or in a classroom. A sense of rightness would wash over him, as though a voice were saying, “Yes, that’s right, this did happen.” In the dreams he would go about his business with little regard to how the world around him began to melt and contort, signaling the end of the dream. 

That night he dreamt he was sitting in a classroom. It looked familiar, almost exactly how his fifth grade history classroom had looked; the blackboard was in the same spot, and Ms. Faith had decorated one wall entirely with pictures of ancient Greek philosophers and Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was also different; Ms. Faith’s desk was not in the corner he’d remembered it being in, and the student desks had been put into individual rows when they’d previously always been pushed together to form bigger tables that could seat about four kids. Stiles remembered because he could always recall Ms. Faith saying, “Collaboration is key!” 

He was sitting in the back row, right by the window, and Ms. Faith was writing something on the board. It was a sentence written small to fit into the space of the blackboard. Stiles squinted at it; for some reason his vision was blurry. The letters smudged and faded out the more he tried to squint and rub at his eyes, and as Ms. Faith turned to look at the class, he raised his hand and told her that he could not see what she had written. She asked him if he was being blocked and he said no, it was just that the words looked very unclear. Ms. Faith asked him to stand and walk towards her, and he did so, the faces of his peers vague and indistinguishable. As he walked closer to the blackboard, the letters sharpened. 

“Oh, I can see them now!” he exclaimed. She nodded, her face fuzzy in his sight, and as the world began to melt around him in slow candle-wax drips, she explained to him that he might need to get an eye test done. Stiles thought that made sense but he couldn’t understand why she had moved around the desks and wanted to ask her. The classroom peeled and pooled around him as he did so and she canted her head to the side, her face now just a static of features, and did not answer his question.  

He woke and only remembered the dream clearly as he was brushing his teeth. It felt weird to be dreaming about that, and not about Kate and what she had done to him. Stiles had thought for sure the entire experience would worm its way into him but all it had done was brighten his hatred. He was pissed at her for getting the jump on him and pissed at himself for letting her do so. The moment his dad had left him alone in the house, Stiles had thrown up wards and carved protection sigils underneath all the window sills and on all the doors. He’d scoured his room for any hint of her left behind and had found a single strand of blonde hair on his floor, which he had added to the protection ritual to strengthen the magic against her in particular.

An invader of my home, he had imbued into it, an unwelcome pest, a scourge of suffering to be done away with. 

If she tried the same thing again, his house would swallow her whole. When he thought about it, Stiles figured he should find a time to do all this with the Hale house. It wasn’t his home, which would make the imbuing process a little harder, but there was no reason to leave it magically unprotected. Deaton had likely applied whatever security he could but Stiles was stronger than him, his magic holding a greater weight, his devotion a brighter flame. He’d do it as soon as he could convince his dad to let him outside without worrying constantly about his safety and his wound, which Stiles had been slowly healing such that he wouldn’t need months to recover fully. He’d placed enough of a charm on the doctor to not prescribe him physical therapy or further hospital check ups, and another, guiltier one on his dad so he thought the injury hadn’t been as serious as it seemed. It didn’t matter- as long as he could keep dad unstressed and thinking he was okay, everything would work out. 

The day before he was allowed to go back to school, Chris Argent visited him. Stiles had thought he might- Chris’ honor wouldn’t bid him to ignore his sister’s actions, no matter how much he seemed to have washed his hands of her. The look on his face was so pitifully apologetic that Stiles didn’t have the heart to make any sarcastic comments. 

“Look,” Stiles said peaceably, “I’m not surprised this happened. It was always a possibility. You beating yourself up over it isn’t gonna help either of us.” 

Chris didn’t look much appeased by his reassurance, which was probably to be expected. “Well, the Hales and I have decided you should probably stay out of it for a while.” 

“What? No! I’m fine!” Stiles protested, though his conviction was undercut by the jolt of pain that ran through him as he lurched to his feet. He stumbled, narrowly avoiding the coffee table only because of Chris’ staunch grip on his arm. 

The man pulled him closer, expression intense, and said, “I know you wanna shoulder this all by yourself, Stiles, and I will probably never understand the stakes of what this truly means for you, but you have to acknowledge that you’ve done enough for now. We’re not telling you to sit in the background like a child because you aren’t one. All we’re saying is to take a fucking break.” Chris leaned back, the look on his face almost painfully kind and said, “If you wanna take that break lingering at the Hale house, I know they wouldn’t turn you away.” Then, his expression turned wryly amused. “I’m sure there’s plenty there to keep you content.”

“Ugh,” Stiles groaned and slumped back onto the couch, “how do you even know about that? How does everyone know?!” 

“Believe me, kid, you are not subtle.”

“Shut up.” Stiles rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes, reluctant to admit to himself that the thought of someone else dealing with Kate was strangely relieving. He knew he would just fuck it up- the memory or vision or whatever the fuck it had been in that ring had rattled him badly. He didn’t want to go after her only to make a mistake and have her escape again- that would just about kill him. “Fine, alright, I’ll sit out for a bit. Just keep me updated, okay?”

“I will.” A promise solemn enough that Stiles knew Chris would be sending him updates everyday, and what was his life that he had Chris Argent’s number before he had Derek’s? 

At school the next day, his friends crowded around him in a protective circle, physical barriers between him and the gossip mill, which had somehow caught a whiff of his hospital stay and the fact that he’d been kidnapped and shot. The police had also issued a warning and a curfew. People were staring, which was always fun, but Stiles was too occupied by thoughts of Kate, the Hale house and memories he would rather forget to really pay them much mind; Erica seemed to be paying enough mind for both of them, glaring at anyone who so much as breathed in his direction. Boyd joined her, a veritable stoic wall of muscle behind her that dissuaded anyone from approaching. Isaac joined Scott in the quiet support department and it must have shaken them badly because Scott didn’t even bound over to Allison like a jubilant puppy when she waved over to him. 

Maybe Stiles had just become so used to the violence in his life that he’d expected a more subdued response- more emphasis on catching Kate rather than worry over his injury, which probably said a lot about how dismal his former state of affairs had been. Not that you could ignore an injury , he thought grimly, though you could give it your best fucking shot . Scott, however, was not taking any chances and Stiles had found himself on the end of the same concern Scott showed the animals at the shelter; put a wounded creature in front of him and he would pour himself into fixing it. Scott couldn’t fix him but he could offer to carry Stiles’ bag or hurry to open doors for him or corner him during lunch and pry into his mental and physical wellbeing. 

“Jesus, Scott,” Stiles said, exasperated but fond all the same, “I’m okay, alright?” 

Scott’s face molded into his kicked puppy look, wide-eyed and mouth twisted, and God, Stiles had forgotten how stupidly floppy his hair used to be. Scott really was just adorable, especially when he was trying to be serious. “Dude, you got kidnapped and shot!” Scott gripped him by the shoulders and lowered his voice. “And like, I know I’ve made fun of you for this a little before, but I know how bad you are with blood. No one would blame you for not being okay.” 

Stiles stared at him, unblinking. Bad with blood. Right, right, not his universe, not his timeline or whatever the fuck this bullshit was. This Scott was remembering a boy who was squeamish about something Stiles had grown intimately familiar with in every context, violent and non-violent, done to him and by him. Scott’s concern seemed now a cloying, artificial thing, wrongfully stolen from the one who had truly garnered it. Foolish thoughts, Stiles, foolish because who was he to diminish the goodness of Scott’s being- foolish and clouded by his own imposter syndrome, to look into the brown eyes of the boy who had always been his brother and doubt his honesty. Brother, not-brother, the see-sawing between understanding what and who he could claim ownership of was nauseating and heart-hurting.  

I can’t be here right now, the realization came crashing down on him. What had he been thinking when he’d convinced his dad to let him come to school? 

“Stiles?” Scott asked him, brow furrowed in worry once more. Whatever answer he might have given to assuage Scott was lost in the arrival of their other friends, each of whom had clearly clocked the pallid stillness he had fallen into. 

“Stiles, you good?” Boyd gave him a keen once over. “Do you need to go to the nurse?” 

Stiles stared at him, voice dead in his throat. Erica placed a hand on his arm and the touch was enough to jolt him. “No,” he said and was saved from saying more in his croaked voice when Allison appeared over Scott’s shoulder, Lydia and Jackson behind her. Scott turned to face her but his eyes kept flicking Stiles’ way like a compass drawn to magnetic North. 

“Scott, hey, sorry,” Allison was saying, expression apologetic, “could I talk to you for a second? 

Scott was evidently reluctant, and it was that strange behavior, coupled with Lydia’s pinching gaze boring into him, and worst of all, Allison’s sweet, innocent face, so different than when Stiles had seen her last, ashen and gray, bloodless from the sword he had driven through her, dead by his hand and the hand of the demon which had dwelt within him. It was all too much; Stiles lurched to his feet, knees knocking against the underside of the table, and said, “I’m just gonna go” - he jerked a thumb behind him, knowing he looked wrecked- “get some painkillers from the nurse or something. Don’t wait up.” 

He vanished into the crowd, ignoring Scotts startled cry of his name, and slipped through the doors of the cafeteria. His first thought was to veer toward the toilets but there was always the risk of scaring some poor soul washing their hands with his erratic behavior; the nurse’s office was completely out of the question and the next best place he could think of was the locker rooms, blessedly empty during the early lunch rush. He fell onto the bench, head hitting the wall with a dull thwack, the shock of pain a grounding touch against the feeling constricting his chest. He should’ve been used to the often unassumingly mean way this universe kept knocking him around, his logic falling short in the face of well-meaning friends and a father who was really no different than the one Stiles had grown up with. 

He stared at the farthest wall where someone had stuck up a paper sign about throwing away any trash left in the locker room. There was a cheerful smiley face emoticon capping it off, a jaunty little thing that someone had given a little pair of horns in red ink. It faded into his view a little blurry and he sighed, rubbing at his eyes which didn’t help much at all to make it any clearer. His eyes just felt fuzzy and itchy, uncomfortable in his sockets, and there was a distant part of him that remembered reading about how your eyes were never actually itchy, that it was really just the membranes around them that became irritated. Useless information that this boy had likely never known because he had probably never scoured through medical books and webmd and videos online, pouring out everything within himself to fix what had been broken. 

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Stiles blinked, the little devilish smiley face still blurry, and fished it out of his pocket. Scott had sent him a text - where are you? - and then - are you ok? you werent at the nurse . Both had been sent in their group chat, which meant the other three were lurking around as well, waiting for his response. Inane though it would have been, Stiles wanted to flush his phone down the toilet. He wanted to cast aside whatever thin veneer of humanity he had been hiding behind since the nogitsune had ripped him open. He wanted to kill something. Someone , something inside him said, voice gravel-rough and choked. 

i’m fine, just needed some space, he texted back and shoved the thought of revenge aside. He slid his phone back in his pocket, only then realizing that Scott still had his bag, and exited the locker rooms. He and Scott had a class together, though Stiles knew that even if they didn’t Scott would have been waiting outside his class, stalwart as ever. And Scott was waiting when Stiles got there just before the warning bell rang, with his frowning face and hair falling onto his forehead, Stiles’ bag gripped in his hand. He was picking at a hole in the strap, where the canvas fabric had already been ripped into by Stiles’ jittery fidgeting. 

Scott didn’t press him and Stiles didn’t volunteer anything, and when he parted ways with Scott at the end of the school day, Stiles clapped him on the shoulder and vanished into Roscoe before Scott could express any more well-meant concern. The drive home was quiet, a punishing kind of silence that made it difficult to avoid the bubbling unease inside him. He detoured half-way home to head towards the Hale house; if nothing else, he could start the warding process and that feeling of usefulness might ease the awful waking creature inside him. He pulled into their driveway and Laura was waiting for him on the porch, eyes flinty. 

“Wasn’t expecting to see you today.” 

Stiles stopped at the foot of the stairs, the emblematic nature of their positioning not lost on him- himself below her and ripped open in the sunlight, sweat beading at his forehead, his eyes drawn wittingly to the house behind her. Unlike her mother, she wasn’t quite as tactful. 

“You look like shit,” she said and leant against the post. 

Stiles didn’t refute her statement, too tired for sarcasm, and said, “I’ve had a hard day.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Is Derek home?” 

Laura didn’t respond for a long while. She raked her eyes over him and even as human as she looked, she couldn’t convincingly make the action seem less predatory or other. Any moment now she could burst out of her skin in a flurry of fangs and claws, and wound him gravely, and the only thing stopping her was the humanity she adhered to. Stiles figured they were more alike in that sense than she’d probably like to know. 

Eventually, she replied, “What do you want with him?” Not overly-protective or even very concerned, the way Stiles knew he would sound if anyone asked him about Derek’s whereabouts; the past year had done a number on him. “I thought Argent told you you’re not on the case anymore.” 

“No, I know, he told me.” Stiles scrubbed hard at the back of his head, his hair spiking up in jagged, prickly spires. “I’m not here about that- well, no, I’m kind of here about that. I want to ward your house, make sure nothing can get inside.” 

Laura stared at him, and while Derek’s eyes were kaleidoscopes to be fallen into, hers were icy tundras, bleached of any warmth and glinting white beneath the sun. Cold, barren lands not to be trifled with. “Deaton already did that.” Blunt like human teeth, harmless by choice. “He was pretty thorough actually.”

Stiles did not avert his gaze from hers. “I trust Deaton’s work,” he said, “but mine is more powerful.” Again he looked past her and was winded by the sudden sight of Derek standing in the shadow of the doorway, quiet and watchful. Laura didn’t turn around- she’d likely known her brother was there far before him- but her mouth unpinched. She straightened, spun around without another word to him and vanished into the house. Derek watched her go while Stiles watched him. 

“She doesn’t like me very much, does she?” he said, joking-tone stumbling and falling flat. 

Derek only shrugged and replied, “Laura’s not good with change. She might never come around to fully liking you, but she doesn’t hate you.” His lips quirked into a smile and God if he wasn’t distracting and heart wrenching. “You’d never get two civil words out of her if she hated you.” 

Stiles swallowed, smiled back tremulously, and said, “I guess that’s something. Pretty sure you heard all that about me wanting to ward your house?” 

He held himself stationary as Derek shut the door behind him and came down the steps, posture loose and easy. “Yeah. What did you need me for though?”

It was easier to breathe with Derek close to him, even if the proximity made his throat strangled and his eyes hot. He remembered the easy way Derek had let him speak at the diner, even when Stiles’ words had discomfited him, and wondered why it was that the only man in this universe who could calm him was the same man he had spent so long agonizing over. 

“It’ll be easier to focus with you here.” Not even a lie, only a truth with an entire story left unsaid. “Plus it’s good if one of you knows where the wards are and I’m not really on speaking terms with anyone else in your family.” 

Derek accepted his explanation with little questioning and fell into step beside him easily. “Have at it then. Let’s see if you turn out to be a better teacher than Deaton.” He slid a commiserating look Stiles’ way, half-teasing, and it was apparent that he too had suffered through an hour of Deaton explaining one or other esoteric subject to him. 

Stiles laughed. “Really high bar to beat, huh?” Then, after a moment of comfortable silence, he said, “Could I ask you for something?” 

“Yeah, sure.” Derek cast a curious glance at him, undoubtedly picking up something with his heightened senses, and Stiles wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans and decided to screw it. 

“Could I get your number?” 

Derek paused, chuckled beneath his breath, and replied, “Sure, Stiles. Is that really what has you so nervous?” 

“Shut up, I’m injured; don’t make fun of the invalid, Derek.” 

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Stiles. Here, give me your phone.”

Chapter Text

The look on Derek’s face when Stiles unearthed a small plastic baggy containing one strand of blonde hair was priceless. For however shitty the day had started out, that face and the knowledge that he had one new number in his phone almost made it worth it. He knew how weird it was to be carrying Kate’s hair around in his bag but he’d considered hiding it there in a small pocket a better solution than just keeping it in his room where his dad could stumble upon it. The man wasn’t prone to rummaging through Stiles’ stuff but there was no such thing as being too careful. 

“Do I even wanna know?” Derek asked wryly. 

“Probably not but I’ll tell you anyway.” Stiles grinned. 

The sun was beating down on them harder now, evening late to set as spring eased off and summer began to roll in. Stiles had, after the buoyancy of getting Derek’s number had settled into a liquid contentment, quickly texted his dad to let him know he was out, would be back before night and not to worry, which had earned him an immediate call from his dad who’d settled down slightly only when he’d heard Stiles was at the Hale house and Derek was there with him. Stiles didn’t know when his dad had come around to the Hales but he decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

From his bag Stiles unearthed a lighter and a switchblade- other very worrying things he definitely shouldn’t be taking to school- and Derek eyed them like he was very concerned for Stiles’ sanity but also like he wasn’t bothered enough to do anything about it. He’d likely resigned himself to a participatory role the moment Stiles had asked him to fetch an old bowl from the kitchen - 

“One you won’t mind getting some blood in,” Stiles had said after they’d circled the house and he had marked out all the places to etch sigils into. 

Derek had sighed- “Better hope Nana doesn’t mind one of her bowls going missing,”- before he’d loped off into the house and returned with an old clay bowl, lumpy and misshapen, a child’s best attempt at functionality and art. At his look Derek had said, a little defensive, “What? I was eight, alright. Not all of us can be Michelangelos,” and Stiles had been so endeared by him he’d had to look away just to keep his composure. 

They were both crouched by the side of the porch steps now, bowl between them, heads bent. A bead of sweat slid down the nape of his neck, swallowed by the collar of his shirt, and Stiles ignored it as he ripped open the baggy and snapped the strand of hair in half. He burned it in the bowl until it was just ash- even the tiniest bit could amount to much- and was grateful that it was not a windy day. Then, he flipped open the switchblade and cut a slice across his palm, the skin peeling apart almost softly, like rind from a fruit, until his blood welled up and drained in rivulets into the bowl. Derek watched him keenly but made no move to stop him. 

“The hair,” Stiles began to say, keeping his eyes on the bowl, “is from the woman responsible. In a warding ritual like this, the entire process rests on imbuing each sigil with the weight of your desires. When warding against a foe, the stronger your conviction and hatred the more powerful it becomes and having a piece of them makes it more accurate. When we’re done, the house will become its own living thing in a way, aware of its enemy, and if she comes near you she’ll suffer for it.” Finally, he faced Derek head on and whispered, “Warding is powerful when it's based in loathing, yes, but it’s even more dangerous when it's tied to the protection of something cherished. Something beloved.” 

Heady, the heat between them, and even the pain in his palm could not have pulled him away from the way Derek’s eyes fell shut, not as though he were hiding but rather like he was weighing Stiles’ words. When he spoke, it was to say, “Would it be more powerful with my blood as well?”

“The strength of familial love can rarely be underestimated,” Stiles responded, and so Derek’s nails elongated and he clenched his hand into a fist until his claws bit into his skin and his blood seeped out from between his fingers to pitter-patter into the bowl, combining with Stiles’ blood in an act more sacred than he would ever comprehend without magic burning in him. It did not matter- Stiles could worship it well enough for both of them. 

Derek’s wound healed quickly, his nature forgiving on the flesh, and he vanished again into the house and returned with a towel, a bottle of water and a roll of bandage. His own hand had been washed, and he took Stiles’ hand within his own and poured water over the wound, cleaning until all that remained was the cut, still dripping. Stiles stared at their conjoined hands, swiped his finger against the callus on Derek’s thumb and imagined the skin of his palm knitting itself back together, one slow stitch at a time. When he peered closer, the cut had closed a tender pink and was no longer bleeding. Derek startled but didn’t point it out. Instead, he gingerly patted Stiles hand dry and loosely bandaged over the wound. 

“Anybody ever tell you you’re strange?” Derek said abruptly. 

Stiles fixed a grin on his face and replied, “More people than you can imagine, trust me. I’ve been strange for as long as I’ve been alive.” 

Derek folded the towel and tossed it onto the lowest step. The roll of bandage he stuck in his back pocket. “So what do we do now?” He stared down at the small bowl of blood between them and Stiles was once again struck by how casually he was taking all of this. From his Derek it wouldn’t have been so surprising, but this Derek had likely never encountered half the weird things Stiles had. Then again, Derek had always been the curious sort when he could actually afford to be so. 

Stiles fell on his ass and crossed his legs, gesturing for Derek to do the same, and said, “Now we do the imbuing process.” He cupped Derek’s hands and guided them to the bowl. “Hold it- yeah, just like that, and close your eyes.” Derek held the bowl between them, his elbows on his knees, and Stiles’ hands remained around his. The point of contact between them seemed almost to hum but Stiles was sure that was only his imagination running wild. Derek’s eyes fell shut, his obedience a startlingly sweet thing, and Stiles beheld the steady stillness of his arms and the tranquility of his breathing and said in a sibilant whisper, “I want you to picture very clearly your family inside your home and how much you want to keep them safe. When I do this, it comes to me in words, but for some it can be done with memories or colors- whatever feels right for you.” 

Derek’s brow furrowed, his face smeared in intense concentration. Stiles asked, “What are you seeing?” 

“That day in the living room, when you and Argent visited us,” - Stiles winced, pained at the memory of how much suffering that meeting had caused- “and told us about what…what happened in your universe. I’m picturing that happening to my family. I’m remembering dinners, birthday parties, babysitting my little cousins, Laura graduating college, that time I left-” He cut himself off, swallowing heavily, and in the bowl the sanguine pool rippled with an unnatural sheen. “I’m picturing a wall of fire around our house instead of in it.” 

“To keep interlopers out.” Stiles pressed his hands harder against Derek’s and said, “That’s awesome.” His own imbuing was easier, as easy as breathing, all his love and devotion and anguish, his desperation and fear and loathing, coalescing at the sight of the man in front of him, not Stiles’- not really, never really- but still cherished all the same. “You can open your eyes.” 

Derek took a moment to breathe before he did so. Together they lowered the bowl to the grass and Stiles reluctantly removed his hands, feeling slightly bereft at that lack of contact. Derek sighed and dug his fingers into his temples, his mouth twisting into a frown. 

“Hey, you okay?” Stiles had never known the process to cause pain but what if-

“Just a small headache,” Derek assuaged, dropping his hand and smoothing out his expression. “I’ve been having them on and off for a while now, it’s fine.”

Non-reassuring though the explanation was, Stiles moved on, knowing that Derek likely didn’t want to get into it. Getting him to talk about himself was nigh impossible when he didn’t feel like it and it was weirdly comforting to know that reticence was in his nature and not only a product of a trauma. It had always rankled to be unable to help him, however; Stiles had never handled feeling useless and that had only worsened with time and each gradually growing conflict. 

He stood, groaning as something in his back popped and settled and his wound twinged. Derek stretched next to him, hands grasping for the skies as he arched his back and flexed his shoulders. Stiles watched the concave slope of his spine, the way his shirt clung to his upper back and the sparse, soft hair at the nape of his neck, reddened by the sun and sweat soaked. He wanted to press his lips to the vulnerable skin of that delicate spot and plaster himself against the length of that strong back, snag his fingers through Derek’s belt loops and keep them pressed close. Derek turned, caught him looking and arched a brow, not so uncomfortable with the staring as he had been. 

“Sorry,” Stiles said, only a little apologetic. 

“You really can’t help it, huh?” 

“Looking at you comes very naturally to me,” Stiles defended, though Derek hadn’t sounded accusatory. “I’ve been doing it for like ten years, it’s hard to stop.” 

“Ten years?” Derek asked as he slung Stiles’ bag over his shoulder. “How have we known each other for that long?” 

“I may not look it, but I’ll be twenty-six soon.” Stiles reached out and poked him in the side, beaming ebulliently as Derek flinched and shot an exaggerated frown his way. “Which technically makes me older than you.” 

“Oh great,” Derek said lightly, “so this whole staring thing of yours is very inappropriate then, isn’t it?” He peered Stiles’ way with a sly grin and said, almost jauntily, “Very scandalous, very untoward, to be chasing after a twenty year-old.” 

Stiles spluttered, shocked by his gall, and argued, “Woah, wait a minute! ‘Untoward’? What is this, Pride and Prejudice?” 

“If this was the regency era, nobody would bat an eye at the age difference,” Derek said nonchalantly, which was a stark difference from his Derek tucking away his Austen novel of the week whenever Stiles would enter the room. “Current era though,” - Derek pursed his lips dramatically, immensely distracting- “you’d get a few raised eyebrows.” 

“Well seeing as I look younger than you,” Stiles said, emphasising the final three words, “I think I’ll be fine.” 

Derek shot him a speculative look and stated, “You’re not denying the chasing thing.” 

Stiles shrugged. “Already told you I was in love with you, no matter the universe. That’s pretty unlikely to change.” 

There was a quiet hum of contemplation from Derek but no returning remark. Stiles figured they were fine as Derek kept walking by his side, seemingly less bothered by the declaration and more introspective. They went around the house and painted over the sigils which he had etched in tiny strokes beneath windows and entrances, alternating between himself and Derek until they ended up at the front of the porch again. Then they went inside and did it all over again on the upper floor and the attic, the house startlingly empty save for Laura slumped over a laptop at the kitchen island and an elderly woman resting in the living room, shuffling through documents with a small flashlight held beneath the pages. She didn’t look up as they passed by. 

When Stiles asked, Derek explained, “All the kids have after school clubs, Gracie is at daycare and everybody else works full-time.” 

“What about you?” 

Derek see-sawed a hand and said, “I’m still figuring it out a little I guess, but maybe I’ll go to college. I’m lucky mom and dad aren’t the pressuring kind and that I’ve even got the choice. What did you do?” 

Stiles smirked. “FBI, baby.” 

“No way,” Derek said, disbelief written across his face as he shoved Stiles’ shoulder. “You don’t seem the type, Mr. blood-bowl.” 

“Gross,” Stiles replied, laughing, “but I don’t know, it fit me pretty well. I’ve always loved a good mystery- spent most of high school solving them, I thought I might as well turn it into a career.” He didn’t exactly miss the job so much as the freedom of being an adult. 

“Must suck to do it all over again.” 

Stiles took in the young, unburdened face of the man he’d loved and failed in equal measure and said, a little heartsick, “It’s not so bad.” 

Erica had a general dislike of hospitals, outside of the kind nurses who fed her hospital gossip and the occasional attractive doctor she’d murmur about with her mom, both of them casting furtive glances and whispering up stories of secret nightlives as models. Hospitals meant seizures bad enough to impair her functions and the terrifying overflow of anxiety, compounded by an unsettling confusion that made it difficult for her to think. Hospitals meant hushed, concerned conversations between her parents and her doctor, the debate of whether there were other underlying concerns- conversations she’d have to eventually take part in even when all she wanted was to sleep for a week in her own bed in her own room, away from bright fluorescents and the bitter smell of antiseptic undercutting the floral air freshener the nurses used to try and make the room hospitable. 

This time it was bad; she’d seized three times, one immediately after the other, and when her convulsions had stopped she hadn’t been breathing. Her mom had performed CPR on her while her dad called 911 and she’d come to in the hospital disoriented beyond measure. Her head had felt split in half and was worsened by her crying, she’d thrown up for hours and the weariness in her had felt bone deep. The nurses had darkened the room, encouraged her to drink slow sips of water and her parents had brought her a sleep mask to block out the light even further. Moving was difficult, thinking almost even more so, but after three days in the hospital she’d started feeling human enough to accept visitors. 

Of course, her boys visited her. Erica would never be able to describe how much it meant to her to watch them all crowd into her room with chocolates and starbursts. Behind them, one of her nurses threw her a conspiratorial wink and Erica knew she’d be getting teasing remarks about all her ‘gentlemen friends’. Only a little embarrassing compared to the time Stiles had visited her with flowers and the nurses had thought he was her boyfriend. She’d still had a crush on him then and her protestations had not been convincing enough. She hoped she wasn’t blushing now as Boyd carefully separated out the pink starbursts- her favorite- from the packet and stacked them in little columns on her thigh. Judging from the way Amelia the nurse was failing to hide her smile, Erica knew she was failing. Luckily for her, none of the boys made any mention of it. 

Though with the way Stiles was looking back and forth between her and Boyd, she figured he probably knew about this unspoken thing between them. He’d never spill, she thought fondly as he caught her eye and winked. Stiles had a better understanding of the unspoken than she’d probably ever know. He could be so tightlipped, nothing at all like the mouthy boy he used to be. Erica supposed this was probably what growth looked like on him- everyone had to grow up eventually. Though most people’s growth didn’t include them getting kidnapped and shot. She didn’t think she was ever going to be over that. 

“Luckily you don’t have to do the paper for Econ,” Scott was saying as she tuned back into the conversation. “Not that I would put it past Coach to make you do it anyway.” Scott scrunched his face in distaste and said, “I swear he’s borderline insane.”  

Erica held up a faintly trembling hand and said, “Well I’m shaky, I can barely hold a coherent thought and I spent all of yesterday trying to remember what I had for lunch.” She shrugged in an attempt at casualness. “Might have made for an interesting paper.” 

Isaac snorted. He was at the foot of her bed, unbothered by the way her ankle kept tapping against his thigh, and he had accumulated a mini dragon’s hoard of yellow starbursts in front of him. How he could choose that as his favorite flavor Erica didn’t know but she was happy that he was coming out of his shell enough to take open possession of them without looking on edge. “How is he still employed? Didn’t he call the whole team a bunch of pukes last week?” 

Scott groaned dramatically, tossing back his head in an overt display of exhaustion. He smothered his face in his hands and said in a muffled wail, “We’re never gonna win! I swear he’s trying to kill us!” 

“They should just hire another coach,” Boyd said insouciantly, evidently uninterested in the conversation. Erica knew he’d stopped seeing Coach Finstock as a serious teacher the moment the man had incorrectly pointed out a grammar mistake in his paper. Boyd hated grammar mistakes, which was strangely endearing in a guy who was monosyllabic with most people. 

“Now, now guys,” Stiles chided lightly, in a much better mood than he had been last week when he’d looked visibly ill and vanished on them, “I like coach. If nothing else he’s,” - he threw Scott an unrepentant smirk- “ profoundly hilarious.” 

“No, no,” Scott immediately groaned, “don’t start talking like him, Stiles, for the love of God. I swear I hear that word in my nightmares.” He shoved at Stiles’ grinning face, eyes wild, and they tussled like children as Scott shifted from attacking Stiles to pillaging his chocolate pile. Stiles squawked, sounding remarkably like a chicken, and batted Scott’s hands away with violent flaps. 

“Relax, children,” Boyd said amusedly, still carefully picking through the starbursts, “there’s plenty to go around.” Suddenly he paused, then slowly said, “Technically we got this chocolate for Erica.” He leveled them both with a deadpan stare and in unison they froze. “Neither of you is Erica.”  

Stiles and Scott took a moment, looked from Boyd to her then to each other before apologizing profusely and dumping the chocolate into her lap. Erica laughed, trying to shove it back to them, but they kept refusing in increasingly hyperbolic ways. Finally, she relented. “Fine, alright, I’ll keep the fucking chocolate.” She beamed and said, “You guys are such weirdos, as if we haven’t shared snacks before.” 

“Don’t argue with an invalid, Erica,” Stiles said, waggling a finger in her direction. 

“Oh please,” she shot back, “I’m also an invalid.”

Beneath his breath, Isaac said around a mouthful of candy, “Invalid v. invalid showdown, may the most feeble invalid win.” He threw up his arm as if waving a flag and Erica held her fists in front of her in a mock-fight position, not caring that they were still shaking. 

“Woah, alright,” Stiles backtracked, flinging up his hands in defeat, “how can I possibly win this fight when I stand before the most fearsome warrior in all of hospital land?” 

“That’s right,” Erica declared smugly, fighting her smile to look at him from down her nose as she tilted her head imperiously. “I know this place like the back of my hand, you can’t ever hope to win.” 

“I yield.” Stiles slumped back in his chair dramatically, hand draped over his forehead like he was a swooning maiden. Isaac fanned him half-heartedly with a tiny yellow wrapper. 

Erica held up her hands, cupped full of chocolates and pink starbursts, and said, “And to the victor go the spoils!” 

“Huzzah,” exclaimed Boyd, dry as the desert. 

“Huzzah!” Scott was just a smidge more jubilant. 

It was a lovely moment, one she knew she’d be recalling to mind for weeks to come, but her fingers spasmed, the confectionery tumbled into her lap and her stomach roiled. She slapped her hand to her mouth, hunched over and screwed her eyes shut to breathe through the sudden nausea. Nobody touched her but someone placed the bin in her hand and she gripped it hard enough she was sure her knuckles were bone white; she panted into the dark interior of it, willing her body to stop betraying her. “Fuck,” she spat out, suddenly pissed off beyond measure, “fuck, I hate this.” The anger swam in tandem with misery in her gut. 

None of the boys tried to quell her with platitudes, which she was grateful for. She couldn’t handle that kind of softness or condescension when she was fighting to orient herself. Three days and still she felt like shit and there was a dawning wave of foreboding cresting over her- she hadn’t been feeling great since last night and there was a general agreement from the nurses that she was showing signs of an oncoming fever. There was nothing she wanted less than to be feverish and seizing at the same time. 

Eventually the nausea rolled away again and she uncurled her spine. Boyd gently tugged the bin from her loosened grip and set it on the ground next to her bed, close by in case she needed it again. In its place he handed her the bottle of water on her bedside table, which she appreciated even if she didn’t really feel like drinking. She took a few small sips anyways, knowing it was important, especially since they’d removed her IV drip and encouraged her to keep hydrated. 

“Probably time to call it in guys,” she said, keeping her eyes closed for a moment. “I’m not gonna be up for much now.” 

They all murmured their agreements and when she opened their eyes they had slowly started to move; Isaac hopped off her bed, the yellow wrappers stuffed into his pockets, and Boyd and Scott began to pile her gifts on the bedside table. Stiles stood at the foot of her bed, his hand tight around the railing, and watched her, his eyes heavy with a sucking sort of weight she couldn’t properly describe. She stared back, not knowing what to say, and wondered why she felt like she was being examined inside and out

“Later,” he said, his voice severe enough to stop all movement in the room, “after you’re discharged, we have to talk. All of us. There’s something I need to tell you.” 

“Stiles?” 

“Later.” His tone brooked no arguments. He strode over to the window and pulled the curtains closed, paying no heed to their visible confusion, before he swept back and hugged her goodbye. “Just focus on getting better.” 

Above head the birds swooped through the canopy like a living wind, shuddering the leaves as they chirped in eerie unison, unnatural in the pitch of the nighttime gloom of the forest. Laura heard a squirrel scuttle up a tree to her left and knew if she really tried she could define the bristling of its fur, the thump of its heart, the sound of its claws sinking into soft tree bark. Her mom had made her do that often enough as a child but now she was focused on something else; an old, abandoned shack loomed in her vision. Squat, a slanted roof, broken and boarded up windows, rotted planks- abandoned in every sense of the word, as though someone had tried their hardest to purposefully leave the building barren and disregarded. 

Her mother prowled into the building ahead of her, unbothered by the smell in the air that was making Laura’s nose wrinkle- musty and moldy, layered deep. Argent’s sister had left the place almost as if she’d never been there, save for where a thick bundle of shorn rope lay in a pile, consumed by the smell of motor oil, sweat and dark coffee which followed Stiles wherever he went. The police had never heard about this building- it had been up to them to find it. Thorough and capable of evasion, and no wonder Argent had been so grim about their prospects of finding her. It had been a month since the kidnapping and they hadn’t seen hide nor hair yet, though Stiles had offered to perform a tracking spell with Deaton using the remaining strand of her hair he had; Laura couldn’t even describe how unsettling she found him having that. 

Laura found a lot about Stiles unsetting. She hated the change he’d wrought in their life and the revelation he had dropped into their laps that she would have been better off never knowing. He was painfully honest but his bitten-off words and deep, fathomless eyes always on her brother were signs of his perfidy. Information slunk out of sight still, untold, and she found herself wishing for it to stay there. Helpful though it had been, it was more than harrowing to know what could have been. There was no way to step around it- a boy walked and lingering around her brother, and had seen the aftermath with his own two eyes. His mere presence wouldn’t let her forget it. 

“Laura,” her mother said, reeling her from her thoughts. She was crouched by a desk which was shoved up against the wall, dust streaked across the surface as though something had recently been dragged across it. Laura went and knelt beside her. A glint of something caught her eye, the linkage of a thin chain with a coin at the end of it, caught half-beneath the rotted back left leg of the table and slipped partly into the floorboards, elusive to those without a wolf’s superior vision. Talia tipped the desk up, unencumbered by its heavy weight, and Laura snagged the necklace into her grasp. She swung it up and held the coin between her thumb and pointer finger. 

The engraved figure of a werewolf in agony, struck by arrows, caught mid-transformation. The words nous chassons ceux qui nous chassent ringed around the entire, dreadful image. Laura didn’t have to be a genius to know who it belonged to. Her lips curled into a derisive snarl. 

“Argent’s sister seems to have left something behind,” her mom said, accepting the necklace with none of Laura’s open fury. Talia stared down at the coin, mouth cut into a grim slash across her face, looking more grieved than angry. Laura watched her pocket the thing and sigh, suddenly aged a thousand years. “Let’s go home.” 

Another bit hidden from her, known only by her parents. Words of a story describing another universe told only to her parents, words that bespoke of another layer of suffering. Laura watched her mom’s hands clench and unclench and wondered if she should ask. To question it would bring it into existence. To leave it would mean not having to acknowledge that it was anything other than a half-formed suspicion. Quietly, she pushed the postulation aside. She deserved at least another month before she could handle any more soul-sucking news. 

In the warm light of the setting sun, her skin seemed almost gilded, her hair spun like gold threads. Beautiful, the kind of woman his friends on the basketball team would have called a bombshell; where they might have felt smug pride as she blew a kiss his way, he could only feel vaguely off. The world felt strangely tilted. He flexed his hand against his thigh and felt the phantom touch of her’s over his, guiding it where she wanted it, her nails scratching against the nape of his neck. The way she’d pressed her lips to his chest and bitten down hard; the way he’d squirmed, aroused and uncomfortable, and she’d shaken him by the nape and said, “Don’t be such a baby. You can handle a little pain.” The way that had made him feel almost small within himself but in a different way than he did when his dad reeled him in by the crown of his head to hug him or his friends, back when he’d had them, would jostle him playfully between them. This felt like looking down at your hand and seeing a smear of black, the fragile remnants of a translucent wing- he felt like that wing, the only remaining part of what had once been a larger whole. 

He watched her car drive away and wondered why he felt a little helpless. He’d be seeing her in class soon. The same way he used to see Paige in class, how she’d twist around in her seat to smile at him, the curve of her lips sweet on her face, and then in the music room, her smirk sly against his jaw, the perfectly restrained strength of her grip tugging his hair, her keen understanding of what was pleasure and what was pain. When his stomach dropped with her it never felt as though it took his heart with it. His soul remained tucked within him, a candle flame casting wide, luminous light to illuminate the empty chamber of his rib cage. They were young, but he had never doubted that she would keep him as safe as he would keep her. 

Of course , he thought disjointedly, you didn’t keep her safe , and the memory returned of the ancient tree and her body, the rapid rigor mortis turning her stiff, his panting sobs choked in the thin, hazy dark of the night. He turned around and returned home- but no, the scenery had changed entirely, the night was fully set but his face was illuminated by a scalding light. A skeletal house stood before him, ablaze, and through the heat haze it looked almost as though it were screaming. His senses were assaulted- his eyes stung and his ears ached with the sound of crackling wood, in his nose the acrid smell of smoke and something worse, something like bubbling fat and burnt hair and metal and melting plastic- 

Derek awoke heaving, his throat a desert as he hurled himself out of bed and fled for the bathroom. His knees hit the checkered tile. The next few minutes were blurred moments of misery, vomit and tears, head throbbing as that awful, human-suffering stench lingered in his nose and his mind. Unfathomable to think such a thing could feel so real when it had just been a dream. Derek spat into the toilet and rested his forehead against his wrist, panting, his body slow to realize he was in a cool bathroom. Even now he trembled, sweat-soaked. He wiped his face against his arm, though it did little to help. 

The light flicked on. Derek blinked the spots from his eyes- he hadn’t even realized it was dark. Strong, sturdy hands moved him up and towards the sink, and as the lid hit the seat with a clink and the toilet was flushed, Derek began to move towards his toothbrush. He cleaned his mouth, washed his face and splashed water on his neck. The memory of the heat was overwhelming. He whipped off his shirt and stumbled into the shower, shorts still on, and turned the water on to the coldest setting. 

“Derek?” 

He huddled against the wall, seeking the chill of the ceramic tiles against his skin to pierce through the heat veil. His thoughts were muddled and he felt as though all the blood around his brain had gone viscous and sticky. He only realized he was violently shivering when his dad extricated him from his feeble huddling to wrap him in a towel. 

“Come here,” dad said. “It's okay, I’ve got you.” 

Derek let himself be pulled and pushed without much thought, his mind and body seeming to exist in entirely separate planes. In his mind’s eye the fire grew and fattened, devouring wood and oxygen and grass, and the smoke haze thickened further until the night sky seemed permanently smeared gray. His dad was holding him, toweling him off, but it seemed almost as though there were two pairs of hands on him; his father’s, sturdy and broad, and another pair, smaller, no less familiar but difficult in this moment to parse out who exactly they belonged to or why he was feeling them. They tugged on him urgently, demanding his attention and his movement, and so shaken was he that he started tipping in the direction they pulled him. 

“Woah, woah, no,” dad said over the roar and crackle of the inferno. “Derek, please, stay still. I’m just going to get you dry and help you change, okay?” 

Feeling like an unraveled spool of thread, Derek stared past his dad’s shoulder towards the door, where the darkness of the hall lingered out of reach. He wished the light was off. He wished the house would be flooded by an onslaught of water, a river pouring forth through the windows and the doors, washing cooly over his skin, seeping in through his pores until the fire in his mind was doused. The doorway vanished suddenly, hidden behind the soft fabric of the towel passing over his hair, his dad scrubbing his hair less dry and more into a wet, cowlicked mess. Derek let him do so without protest, slowly coming back to himself under his father’s concern, the smell of smoke and tangible ghastliness fading over sharp aftershave, sweat and the distinct note of his dad’s favorite lotion, something clean and bright with hints of a citrus fruit of some kind. A gift from Laura, after he had complained a time too many in her vicinity about the dryness of his hands.

He closed his eyes and breathed in for five and out for five, exactly the way Deaton had taught him. 

“There’s no one way to do this, Derek,” Deaton had said, crouched down before him not unlike how his dad was now. Derek had stared down at the pile of books he’d knocked over, the gilded lettering on the side of one marking it as a grimoire of some kind. There was dust on his fingertips from where he was pressing them into the unclean floorboards of Deaton’s study. “You just always have to remember to breathe. Take it in, hold it, then release it. Feel it in the bottom of your stomach, really focus on that, and imagine your mind floating down to the earth like a feather falling from the sky.” 

The feather descended; when he opened his eyes he was in his bedroom, ensconced beneath the covers. It dawned on him, a little ridiculously, that his dad had gone and tucked him in, an act Derek had become too old for when he’d turned nine, though he supposed dad had never wanted to stop doing it. Between his parents, Joseph Hale was undoubtedly the more emotional, capable of depths of nostalgia for their childhoods that Derek would likely never be able to fathom. Any other time he might have protested being treated like a child but tonight was shaping up to be one of the worst ones he’d had in a while- there was a headache beginning to bloom behind his left eye, the same persistent ache that had been around for almost a month now. He burrowed his face into the blanket until only the top of his head was visible and groaned, loud and long from deep within. A large hand carded through his hair, gentle.  

“What happened, hm?” dad asked, voice a low timbre, hushed out of courtesy for Derek’s miserable state. 

Derek breathed into the blanket and kept his eyes closed. There was a looseness to him now, a strange state of malleability he knew was born not from ease but rather from vulnerability. He felt both too old and too young, and unnervingly bereft. It was that feeling which spurred him to speak the truth. 

“I had a nightmare.” A part of the truth, he decided, and refrained from revealing that which had long remained hidden. “Of our house on fire.”  

The hand stuttered and stilled. Derek did not have to look up to know that his dad was wearing that same horrible expression of agony he’d had on that day Stiles had spoken to them. It permeated from his scent, something muddied and dull, the same smell that had lingered around him after Derek’s uncle had died all those years ago. He’d been too young to fully grasp the nuances of it, but the association between the scent and his father’s grief had formed quickly even to his immature mind. He wondered at such grief, grief he also felt, and its legitimacy in whether it could be applied in a universe where such a tragedy had not taken place. How different was their family in that other dimension and did those differences mean they didn’t deserve to be mourned? Derek didn’t think it mattered; he felt his sorrow so strongly every time he thought of them, as though the act had really been done to him in his own plane of existence. 

He withdrew from his thoughts as his dad spoke. “I’ve been thinking about it too. Even just hearing about it was… difficult.” 

“He told you guys something else, didn’t he? Something other than the fire.” 

A moment of quiet, the hand on Derek’s head still unmoving. He and Laura had talked about it, though neither of them broached the subject of the fire or Argent’s sister in any depth, the wound still too raw, and Derek hated to think that every time he spoke of it he was reminding her she hadn’t lived. They kept it out of sight, like an unwanted picture frame knocked face down. What they did speak of was their parents’ ill-hidden secrecy. There were only so many deep, searching looks that could be turned your way before you began to notice them. Derek had been getting a lot of those looks lately. He wondered how bad the revelation was; Stiles did have a habit of dropping intense, world-shaking news in the sober light of day. 

“I’m in love with you,” he’d said. 

“Don’t leave my side,” he’d begged. 

Had all but confirmed that he could picture himself with no other, that he had bound himself to Derek to such an extent that no matter the universe Stiles was called to him. It was hard not to believe him; he stared so keenly, so often, that Derek would turn and find him looking already, his gaze relentless, the desire in him so clearly written across his face and etched into his scent. Nobody had ever looked at him like that before, like they would have gladly spent hours and days, years even, just sitting across from him to- to bask in his presence, of all things. Derek could count on one hand the number of people in his romantic life who had wanted that with him. The list had started and ended with Paige. After her it had been something of a spiral, though he had a feeling Stiles knew about that too. 

Strangely, Derek liked him. Stiles was comfortable to be around, even if he could be very unnerving. He knew subtle things- little things- like how Derek liked his coffee and how he loved to read old romance books, and he had a quality to him that was almost Puck-ish at times, though it was tempered by a deep well of sadness and a steely resolve. Less the type to go replacing a man’s head with that of a donkey’s, more prone to sarcasm, to teasing and flirting, though it stood to question whether that flirting was for everyone or just for him. Derek remembered Stiles smirking at him, the way he’d called him baby, a little heady, always wanting and trying his best to mitigate it by giving Derek the space to do as he pleased. Again, not a thing he was used to, but it was nice. 

“He did tell us something else,” dad said, breaking him out of his thoughts, “but it’s nothing your mother and I are ready to discuss with you guys.”

“That bad, huh?” 

“Well, everything he said about what happened was bad.” Dad huffed an unhappy laugh. “How have you been holding up? Have you been getting these nightmares often?” 

The truth slipped out of him, not necessarily easily but his words were honest all the same. “My dreams have been weird, I guess, but the nightmares aren’t any more common than they used to be. This one just felt particularly real.” So real that even now the sensation of the smoke stinging his eyes lingered. Then, after a brief hesitation: “I’ve been getting headaches.” 

He could almost hear his dad frown, his displeasure was so loud. “How long?”

“‘Bout a month now, maybe a little more.” As though it were a sentient thing which heard Derek talking about it, the ache spiked, jagged. He winced deeper into the blanket, knowing his face was pinched in a grimace of pain. “I’ve got one now. They’ve been on and off this whole time.” 

“That’s not normal.” 

For a regular man it might have been normal or it might have been a cause for concern, perhaps a hospital visit, though Derek knew very few people who would go to the hospital for something they didn’t think was immediately life threatening. For a werewolf, such persistent pain was a sign of something different, something very unnatural for the supernatural. His nature healed him quickly, one of the aspects of being a werewolf that was actually helpful rather than something to be controlled and trained. When it wasn’t doing its job properly, that usually spelled a hidden issue at work. 

His dad sighed and the hand began to move again, scrubbing his hair back and tucking it behind his ears, affection doled out indiscriminately now that he knew his son needed it. “We’ll talk to Deaton about it. Make sure it’s nothing serious.” 

Derek was familiar enough with Deaton and his ways to know that he could have gone to the man with this of his own accord, and Deaton would have kept it a secret for him from his parents. It was a relief that he didn’t have to. It was a relief that there was one less thing he had to hide from his parents, and that there was one less thing Deaton was aiding him in hiding. Idly, before he dropped off to sleep, Derek wondered how Stiles might react if he knew how serious these headaches were becoming. Probably not well. He’s never been very good seeing his friends hurt, Derek thought, conviction sure in that thought. 

He drifted off to sleep with his dad still sitting beside him, combing softly through his hair.

Chapter Text

It was in freshman year that Scott had decided he was going to try out for the lacrosse team. There was no discernible reason why, other than that his mom didn’t want him playing football, he wasn’t much of a swimmer, and he knew he wanted the cool points that came from being on a sports team of some kind. He hadn’t necessarily factored in that trying out was going to involve him having to be fit enough for the team; until, of course, Stiles had pointed it out to him during the summer holidays. 

“You can run, Scott,” he’d said, “but your hand-eye coordination is pretty shit, dude.” 

So they’d spent the summer building up Scott’s skills until he was a passable enough lacrosse player that even coach Finstock couldn’t find a way to refuse him a spot on the team. Every day they would meet up and Stiles would make him run through drills like it was his God-given mission to turn Scott into a decent player. Up and down he’d run from one tree to another to build up stamina, and Stiles would toss a ball his way for him to practice his catching while he moved. They’d rigged up a goal out of two small logs and Scott would try scoring, though the difficulty was hindered by Stiles absolutely refusing to play goalie. 

“No way am I putting myself in the line of fire,” he’d argued, rolling the log back into place from where it had fallen over after Scott had stumbled into it. 

It was tiring but fun, and when Scott went to the try outs, Stiles went with him in support. Coach Finstock had sighed so explosively when he’d seen only Scott in his gear that Scott had felt offended on his friend’s behalf. Sure, Stiles wasn’t the most athletic person, definitely not when it came to competitive sports, but he could be a hell of a sprinter when the situation called for it- like when they’d tp’d Jackson’s house on halloween during the seventh grade and had to run away when the door had flung open. Jackson had thankfully never figured out it was them underneath the spirit halloween Scream masks, which was likely the only reason they had remained among the living. 

Despite Scott’s indignation on his behalf, Stiles had never wanted to play lacrosse- he’d never had much of an interest in it outside of trying to follow along for Scott’s sake. He’d come to every one of Scott’s matches, even after Scott had taken a ball to the face and broken his nose, and Stiles had gone with him into the locker rooms only to end up fainting at the sight of the blood. It hadn’t been so funny during the event, but the hilarity of it all had swiftly dawned on him afterwards and he had never let Stiles forget it. Stiles maintained to this day that he had only fainted because he hadn’t eaten anything that day; a blatant lie and one often betrayed by how Stiles would grimace at the mere mention of blood. 

Scott wondered often where that boy had gone. Stiles was still himself in a lot of ways, if quieter and more prone to bouts of out of pocket behavior, but not wholly different. His sarcasm remained, as did his proclivity for joking, but he’d stopped wearing his glasses, he never stared longingly after Lydia anymore, and at some point he’d stopped telling Scott things. They used to share everything with each other, always the first to hear whispered secrets and confused emotions, and when Scott had started dating Allison, he had told Stiles everything. He’d sought out Stiles’ advice and his new found steadiness, and even in the midst of his anxiety, he’d been befuddled by his friend’s mature response to Scott dating and his offhandedly worrying questions about Allison’s family. 

Any guns in their house? What kind of question even was that? 

He’d thought maybe it was the seizures or the kidnapping after, but there was something deeper to it, a secret that Stiles had left obscured. Scott wasn’t entitled to all of his secrets but he’d become used to being the only one who would hear them. To be without such confidence hurt. What aren’t you telling me? he thought. Why do you look at me like you don't even know me?  

The truth was what Scott wanted. He wanted revelations, for the cloth to be pulled from his eyes so that he may see again. Of course be careful what you wish for, he knew. Be careful because your oldest, most dearest friend might sit you down and say, “I need to show you something.” He might sit you down and say, “I need to tell you something.” He might sit you down and break your understanding of reality with a revelation so unexpected you felt dizzy. 

Scott felt dizzy. He stared at the cup in Stiles’ grip, once on the kitchen counter and now in his friend’s hand. He stared at the cut on Stiles’ palm, once an open wound, now a scar that Scott had watched stitch itself up in real time. He stared at the pale terror on Stiles’ face and thought, how long have you been hiding this from me? How many people had ever been sat down by their oldest, most dearest friend and told he was magic? 

“What the fuck?” he whispered. “What the fuck?” 

Erica was looking at Stiles like she was dreaming, and Isaac had foregone whatever caution he might have had to bring Stiles’ palm close to his face so he could stare at the wound from an inch away. Boyd hadn’t looked away from the knife, at the bloodied edge of the blade. Scott felt breathless because he knew Stiles- he knew Stile s - and they were stupid fucking teenagers who thought everything was cool and none of them were religious, and this wasn’t the 17th century where Stiles could be burnt for witchcraft if he was found out. So if Stiles had that look on his face, then that meant something else, something far worse than this. 

Stiles caught his look and his mouth screwed into a frown, conflict in his furrowed brow and his begging eyes, every inch of him saying, please, Scott, don’t push this. And Scott had become good at not pushing, in this past month- even before this past month- but when had their friendship not involved pushing past every barrier the other erected? When had their friendship not involved being partners in crime to the edge point of insanity? Stiles was the pusher in this friendship of theirs, but Scott thought he could be pardoned for being the one to flip their roles now. After all, this was the boy who’d been his brother from the moment they’d met; if Scott couldn’t expect candor from him, who could he expect it from? 

Stiles must have caught the resolve in his expression because he closed his eyes and tipped his face down, resigned, before he looked up again. Not now, his eyes said. His gaze flicked to their friends, still caught up in their surprise and astonishment. Not in front of them. Scott subsided with an imperceptible nod. 

“Oh my God,” Erica breathed, “is this real? This is real. You’ve got fucking magic. You’ve got-” She put her head between her knees and stared at the space between her shoes. Scott wondered why he didn’t feel as punched-out breathless as she looked. 

“Have you” - Boyd tore his attention away from the knife and Stiles quickly twisted his hand; it blurred between the blink of an eye and Scott watched in his peripheral vision as it reappeared near the kitchen sink- “always been like this?” 

“Is this a thing you are or a thing you can do?” Isaac murmured, still gripping Stiles’ hand, and fuck, that was actually a good question. 

“I’m pretty human, I’m sure,” Stiles said and the implication of that statement was enough to have Erica’s head popping up to stare at him again. “This is something I’m capable of-” 

“How long?” Scott asked, and the words stumbled out jagged and sharper than he’d meant them to. Stiles winced. 

“I…” He wavered, indecision written across his face. “That's a harder question to answer than you realize.” 

“What does that mean?” Isaac dropped Stiles’ hand but didn’t move away, too busy examining Stiles’ face like something there might reveal to them more than their friend was saying. “You weren’t born with this?” 

No , Scott thought instinctively, answering the question himself with an immediacy that was almost shocking. For however tilted he felt, he knew that he was right. It was a gut feeling backed by a decade of friendship; if Stiles had always been like this, Scott would have known. Stiles would have tripped through his window or shaken him awake during a sleepover or accosted him between classes. He would have spilled the beans the moment this came to him, the way he always used to come to Scott with everything- before the hospital, his kidnapping and his sudden reticence.  

“No, I wasn’t born with this.” 

“So when did you find out then?” 

Stiles stared down at his hands twisted in his lap, traced his fingers over his knuckles and nails, down to his wrist, skimmed over his veins. He took his time to answer the question, and none of them rushed him, though it was clearly taking everything in Erica’s power not to vibrate out of her seat. 

“I- fuck, I wasn’t planning on revealing it this way.” He wavered, still looking away from them. “Not that I had a proper plan but shit. When did I find this out? I knew for sure when I was eighteen.”  

“When you were eighteen?” Boyd repeated the words slowly, as if elongating each syllable might reveal within it something more than what was being said. “You’re not eighteen. You are seventeen, you don’t turn eighteen until…” 

“October,” Scott supplied when Boyd faltered. He knew the date as well as he knew his own. “October 3rd, which is three days before mine and we always celebrate it together. We have since we were kids and you never let me forget-” 

“That I’m technically older than you.” 

“Only by three days,” Scott protested weakly. “And I’d have remembered if we turned eighteen.” 

“You haven’t turned eighteen, you’re right,” Stiles said and finally he turned to face them, but his eyes were solely on Scott. Erica and Boyd shared an uneasy look. “I did turn eighteen. And nineteen, and twenty. All the way to twenty-six, Scott, because I’m not from here.” 

Alternate dimension…some things there that haven’t happened here…woke up in this body after the seizure…woke up in this body…woke up in this body…this body…this body…this body…

It was like standing under the cresting wave of a tsunami, watching the shadow of an unrelenting onslaught loom over you until you were crushed, organs bursting, senses overwhelmed, lungs compromised. Scott stared into the brown eyes of the boy who had been his brother for a decade- eyes that now held behind them a different soul and fuck, wasn’t that a kick to the chest- and felt so bowled over he lurched to his feet and staggered right out the backdoor. Nobody followed him. Scott collapsed onto the porch and buried his face in his hands, shuddering like he was sobbing except there were no tears to go alongside the sudden hollow ache in his chest. He felt like Stiles had gouged out a bit of him now. He felt like his mother had looked all those years ago, when grandma had called to tell her about uncle Anthony’s car crash, the way her face had fallen between one heartbeat and the next. How strange that words could tear right through the fabric of your reality and rebuild it within seconds to create an absence of a person who had once been there, a perfect chalk outline that you were just expected to accept was now a part of the scenery. 

Of all the things Scott had been expecting, this had never once crossed his mind. Why would it have? Alternate dimensions were a concept that existed only in sci-fi media and science videos online of experts talking about the ‘what if’s’, the percent probabilities of a duplicate copy of yourself somewhere out there doing the exact same things you did everyday except maybe in that universe your hair was a different color or you didn’t have anxiety. Stupid, inconsequential day dreams that you knew would never mesh with real life because such things simply weren’t possible to prove. Like magic. Like hearing that in that other universe you weren’t human anymore. Like body-swapping horror stories. Like boys who you knew but didn’t know in equal measure, and how much of the love that he had felt for Stiles- his Stiles, fuck, fuck, fuck- could be transferred over to this other Stiles who may still in some way be his Stiles? 

His head hurt. It was painful to think of all that Stiles had said and almost equally as painful to think of all that he had left unsaid, all his faltering sentences that spoke of his reluctance to cause them more mental turmoil than he already was. It stung in an unspeakable way to know that Scott could still read his thoughts so easily. 

He didn’t know how long he sat there, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes until stars burst like supernovas behind his eyelids. The wind ruffled through his hair, pleasingly cool on his skin, and he focused on the feeling of it as he breathed in and out in slow, measured counts, the same way his mother had taught him after she’d thrown dad out of the house and Scott’s anxiety had manifested in staticky panic attacks. After another long while, the door behind him slid open with a quiet shik and familiar footsteps came to a stop beside him. 

At last, Scott spoke. “I don’t even know where to begin with all of this.” When he looked up and blinked the spots out of his eyes, he turned and saw Stiles sit down a little ways away from him. 

“Well that’s understandable,” Stiles said, huffing out an unhappy laugh. “I didn’t know where to begin with any of it either.” 

Scott got the feeling he was talking about more than the awful conversation they had just had. He wondered what it was like to be yanked into a space where everything was the same but just a little off, like walking into your home and seeing all your picture frames tilted at a forty-five degree angle, knowing that it was you in the pictures but the whole thing was still wrong. He wondered where his Stiles was, if he was somewhere looking out and thinking ‘Why is everything so tilted?’ and the thought was so gut-wrenching he had to put it away. Scott hoped he was out there, still the same clumsy boy he had always been, and that the Scott of that universe was taking care of him. 

God. he pinched his forehead. Even imagining another him, one who was older- one who was a fucking werewolf- was enough to collapse his brain. 

“Do you think he’s- my Stiles, do you think he’s back where you came from?” Scott couldn’t help but ask. “Is there a chance you guys just swapped bodies?” 

Stiles’ expression wasn’t helping him foster much hope. “There’s a chance,” he said slowly, though it was apparent he didn’t believe it. “Deaton and I never reached a conclusive discovery. It’s entirely possible he’s back in my universe and in my body. My Scott and Deaton would have noticed immediately.”  

“But you don’t think so.” 

There was a brief moment where Scott could see Stiles toying with the idea of obfuscating information from him, but he ultimately decided against it. “As far as documented cases go, most of the travellers don’t fully recount how they travelled and what they did. We have one case where she does, but she never managed to go home. Not that we can rely entirely on her account because she stopped trying particularly hard after a while.” 

“Have you been trying to get back?” Scott shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m asking you this, what the fuck.” 

“At the current moment, there’s not much to be done.” Stiles gave him a sad look, just shy of pitying. “Trust me, I’ve been thinking about your Stiles a lot.” 

Scott twisted to stare back at the yard, watching the grass ripple and dance in the wind. What a lovely day to be handed some of the most dismal, mind-bending, reality-shattering news. “I feel like I should’ve known.” 

“How could you have? You didn’t even know this was a possibility until just now.” 

“No, I know, I just-” Scott scrubbed his hands across his thighs. “You’re the same but you’re not him. Not really. Like you’re shifted a little to the left or something, I don’t know how to put it. You started acting differently and I thought maybe it was just the seizures or the kidnapping, but you started asking weird questions and- and you stopped wearing your glasses.” 

“I didn’t need them.” 

“I figured. He- he’s been wearing them for a long time, they’ve been a part of him since like fifth grade or something. I remember it, you know-” 

“Ms. Faith had him walk up to the board,” Stiles finished for him, voice grim and heavy with some revelation only he understood. Scott whipped around to face him, caught on the familiar lines of him, his youth so at odds with the weight he seemed to constantly carry. “I remember. He’s sitting in the back of class, squinting at the board, and she calls him up and he can’t see shit until he’s right in front of her. All the desks are in separate rows, she’s the history teacher. I remember.” 

“What?” Scott struggled to find the words. “You said you didn’t need them.” 

“I didn’t. I haven’t needed glasses for twenty-six years, but for a while now things in the distance have been a bit blurry. I had a dream of that day in the classroom, and ever since then I’ve been having sight issues.” 

“So what does that mean?” 

Stiles heaved himself up and shoved his hands into his pockets. “It means there’s more to this than we previously thought. If my memories are merging with your Stiles’, then that means it’s unlikely he’s been transported to my universe. There’s a good chance he and I might just be sharing this body.” 

Scott wasn’t sure he understood. “What, like you’re two separate souls or- or two minds in one body? Wouldn’t you be hearing him like an internal monologue or something?” 

“No. I’m not sure but at the core of it, he and I are the same person. We’ve experienced different things and we’ve got different personality traits, but if I looked at the filigree of his soul, it would probably be the same as my own. There’s no struggle for power of this body. I just don’t know enough about why or how I arrived here to know for sure why I absorbed him instead of him absorbing me.”   

“What happens if you fully remember?” Scott wasn’t sure what kind of friend it made him that he was only capable of feeling a little numb and a lot confused. He wanted to go home and rest his head, maybe hug his mother. 

“I don’t know. But I have to talk to Deaton.” 

Still wild to think his boss was a fucking Druid, whatever the fuck that was. Scott remained seated. His feet felt glued to the floor, his legs weighed like lead. Stiles didn’t touch, didn’t pat his shoulder in comfort or jostle him playfully. He only looked down at Scott with another sad, aged look on his face. 

“I’m sorry. I know how shit this is. If I could give him back to you, I would do it in a heartbeat. Nothing hurts more than losing someone you love.” 

Scott thought about saying, but you’re still him. You were him for the past couple of months and I loved you for every moment of it. I haven’t lost him, really, have I? The words died in his mouth. Everything was still too fresh. He thought of uncle Anthony’s car crash, the sudden collapse of his world, then imagined being told uncle Anthony wasn’t dead but in a coma. Would that have made his grief any different if he didn’t know when the coma would come to an end? Of course, that was only speculation. Uncle Anthony had in fact died in that car crash. Stiles was gone and not-gone, in some strange nebulous way outside of Scott’s understanding. Stiles- the one that remained- nodded and vanished back into the house. The moment was lost. 

Scott returned to staring at the wild, carefree grass dance in the wind, and imagined another him, older and world-weary, sitting in the exact same spot on the exact same porch, a copy of a million moments in time. 

Before Stiles exited his house, he left the back door open with a pointed glance at the three in the kitchen. They watched him, still wide-eyed and pale, young in their fear and confusion. Stiles wished he could give them some kind of comfort but it would be misplaced coming from him. After all, he was the one who had broken their perception of not only what was possible in the world, but of the boy- the friend- they had thought him to be. 

Driving to Deaton’s was strangely soothing. There was no music to be played because there were no thoughts that needed distracting. He felt alien and empty like a vessel which had been poured clean. There was only one man left who deserved the truth but that was a conversation that could only be had after this first storm had settled some. There was no easy way to tell a man his son was gone, but Stiles had resigned himself to doing it anyway. He tapped his fingers against the wheel and wondered if this was what derealization felt like. 

Deaton had said to build a life, but what life could one build when the foundations were made of lies and instability? The longer he pretended he was this boy whose skin he wore, the harder it all would hurt when reality dogged him down and clamped its jaw around him, vicious and unrelenting, an animal which never tired, never slept, never wavered. Tell your dad now or risk losing him forever. Tell him now or risk allowing him to be hurt even worse than you have already hurt him. Tell your father you are not his son. 

This isn’t gonna end well, he thought, but the conclusion was less worried and more resigned. What he would have given to spare any version of his father pain. 

Deaton met his insensible state with frank concern. What a marked difference from the man Stiles had known, the one who hid his care behind a mask. 

“What happened?” 

Stiles sat in the corner chair of Deaton’s study and knocked his head back against the wall, grateful for the dull pain. “I told Scott, Erica, Boyd, and Isaac the truth. They deserved to know.” 

Deaton didn’t refute this statement. “How did they take it?” 

“Scott was upset.” Understatement. 

The other three had been a little less affected. Confused and fearful, but not necessarily hurt. Not grieving, the way Scott had been. They had never really known the Stiles before him properly, so as far as they were concerned, he was the only Stiles there had ever been. Scott had lost his best friend and brother in one fell swoop, and then Stiles had evidently broken him even further with the knowledge that there was little chance he would be getting the boy he loved back. Scott needed time. He might need longer than Stiles could ever understand to come to terms with this. 

“He’ll come around.” 

Stiles wasn’t so sure. “In any case, he knows you’re a Druid now, so expect some weird looks, I guess.” He straightened and leaned his elbows on his knees to fix Deaton with a piercing stare. “He also confirmed a suspicion I’ve had for a while now. I’m getting this Stiles’ memories in the form of dreams.” 

Deaton’s brows furrowed. “Interesting.” 

He went and flipped open the journal Stiles had gotten from the Hale house. Stiles didn’t watch him, already having memorized the entire thing back to front, just as he had done with the little black book he had arrived with. He had gleaned no new information from either item. As far as he could tell, they were dead ends. Stiles had been so mired in the entire issue of Kate and the Hale family, then Erica’s seizure, that he hadn’t even thought to seek out new sources to solve this problem. The more honest answer was that he had become complacent in this universe. Having so much returned to him had blinded him a little. Scott’s grief-lined face had been a slap to the face today. 

“There’s something here that we are just not seeing,” Deaton said at last, snapping the book shut and placing it back down with a dissatisfied mien. “We don’t know enough of what happened prior to this, we’ve just been jumping to conclusions and speculating. You said you couldn’t remember exactly what happened before you arrived here?” 

It was true. There remained a dark swathe of missing memories from just before he had travelled. Maybe a few days or so, he couldn’t be sure, but it was noticeable when he could remember so much of the year before the dimension-trip with a clarity that had come from a mix of grief and steely determination. “No. Everything is pretty fucking hazy.” 

With the expertise of one familiar with his own organizational mess, Deaton rummaged through an overflowing drawer at his desk, unearthed a plain brown book and tossed it Stiles' way. He thumbed through it, seeing only blank pages. 

“Write down everything that happened in the months before your memory becomes hazy. Every creature you encountered, every spell you used. If you need help recalling, I’m sure I don’t have to teach you what rituals to do.” 

“Bit hard to forget the smell of burning gingko, forget-me-nots and zinnias,” Stiles retorted. The amount of burning that happened during rituals could be a hassle at times, especially when one had to be in a dark, enclosed space, meaning the smoke from the flowers and incense had nowhere to go but right to your throat and sinuses. 

“You can handle a little smoke.” 

Stiles sighed, tired. He’d really thought that by now he’d be past having to do homework. Growing up really wasn’t as amazing as everyone always said it would be. Though most people weren’t capable of the stupid kind of shit Stiles and his pack got caught up in. 

“I swear, I need a break-” 

The door banged open and hit the wall with a resounding thwack that had both of them jolting. Stiles shot to his feet, immediately on guard, but it was only Derek in the doorway. He was chalk-pale, lips pursed tight, eyes wide and wild, pupils dilated such that only a thin ring of his usual color remained. There was something clenched in his fist, though his body quaked so hard it was difficult to tell what it was. Whatever had rattled him had evidently crumbled the very foundations of his composure.

“Derek,” - Stiles stepped forward, hands outstretched, but Derek only flinched away from him- “what’s wrong? What happened? Talk to us.” 

He glanced at Deaton but the man was calm, worried but not overtly so. Whatever this was, Deaton was familiar with it. 

Derek sucked in a breath, held it, released it. He did this over and over again, until his shaking lessened and his eyes lost the flickering madness of a cornered animal. He backed himself against the wall and sank down to the floor, pressing his fingertips into the dusty floorboards until his fingers were bloodless. Stiles knelt with him but didn’t attempt to close the distance between them. 

After a long moment of silence broken only by his quiet, hitched attempts at breathing, Derek held up his clenched fist and unfurled his fingers. Something dropped from his palm in a freefall until it jerked to a stop and began to spin lazily, caught by its attachment to a thin chain. It was a necklace, gold all over with a coin pendant. Stiles was too far to be certain, but it looked vaguely familiar. 

Derek stared at it, eyes glued to the way it swung from his fingers, like it could go liquid hot at any moment and burn him, or perhaps like he was seeing more than what was there. Finally he said, voice reedy, “I’m the reason my family burned in that fire, aren’t I? I’m the reason she managed to kill everyone. I led her right to them.” His voice cracked and broke, and his face crumpled like a flimsy sheet of paper.. 

“No, no, no, Derek,” Stiles was saying, words spilling out in any way to make the situation better, but Derek wasn’t listening, and it was apparent, in the most achingly obvious way, that nothing Stiles could say to him now would fix what this necklace had broken in him. 

He remembered her in hazy intervals sometimes, smoke screens his brain threw up in an attempt to help him sort through his emotions, his triggers, the little things that could throw his body and mind into a disarray. Other times he remembered with a clarity and sharpness that was icey around his lungs, breath-stealing, devious in its crystal clearness, as though his brain had forsaken him to say, “You need to see this,” and there was nothing Derek could do but surrender and allow the memory to play through his mind like a particularly hated movie. 

He couldn’t always remember the exact shade of her eyes or even the cut of her face, but he could remember the precise length of her nails digging into his neck, the smell of her perfume, the cold drag of her necklace across the bare skin of his chest, the way she caged him in even though he was going through a growth spurt; getting taller, broader, a mirror reflection of his father without the beard or the towering height or the missing pinky finger on his left hand. Strange things to remember, Derek thought, gulping in heaving breaths. 

Sometimes he hated his curiosity. Sometimes he wanted to go back in time and slap himself upside the head, tell himself, “No, don’t, you’ll be better off without this,” but Derek had known for years that second chances were hard to come by. The cold bite of the pendant dug into his palm. He tumbled into his car, fleeing from the unbearable warmth of his home like a fugitive on the run, like a cowboy in one of those stupid westerns his mother liked to watch in the middle of the night. He fled and the chain of the necklace coiled around him like a noose around the neck of a condemned man. 

To think that you could be fine for years. That you could carefully uncoil the tangled threads of trauma in quiet corners hidden from the prying, worried eyes of keen family members, and all it took was walking into your mother’s study and seeing a fucking necklace for that to all go down the drain. You should have stayed in your room. You should have never been fifteen and stupid. You should have never let her put her hands on you, should have never let her tell you it was okay, should have never let her kiss you. You didn’t even know her. To think he had made the mistake twice over, in this universe and the other (and probably countless more), and had only been two steps from the fate of the other-him had it not been for the coincidence of Deaton seeing him in her car and getting worried enough to say something. 

She could have parked further down the road and his house would have gone up in flames. She could have parked further down the road and there would be no more dad with his missing pinky finger, no more mom watching westerns late at night, no more Laura agonising over job applications in the kitchen, no more Markus falling asleep in the library, no more Gracie tumbling out of her room in search of a cookie- 

He swerved to a stop, car rolling into the dirt by the road, and flung himself from the car just in time to be sick. Puking on an empty stomach was hellish but it couldn’t compare to the way he felt in his heart, his viscera, like someone had taken a hot poker to his insides, held it there and let the metal meld to his fleshy innards. His head pounded, a vicious, unrelenting thing that had lingered with him all day as if to herald the suffering that would continue to follow. There was a pounding rush of go go go go ringing through his head, the instinctive urge to curl protectively around a festering wound because even an ineffectual shield was better than no shield. Deaton- he had to get to Deaton’s office. He needed to press himself to the floorboards and hide in the corners, he needed the taken-for-granted understanding that Deaton knew by now when to push and when to retreat. 

Of course, being there wasn’t very helpful if there was more than one person to greet him. Derek tuned Stiles out and watched the sway of the necklace, each linkage of the metal chain catching the light and shining like little supernovas, each one a stinging reminder of her hands on him, her tongue in his mouth, her whispered words of comfort that had felt like salvation until he had realised she was only poisoning him as she fed the starving pit inside him, the one that was ravenous for affection, for attention, for a kind word after Paige had died in his arms. The dream from before slunk back to the forefront of his mind- the unending blaze of a house fire and the stench of agony- but it was all worse now. Now he knew that he had been the one responsible for it. There were only four survivors, Stiles had said before. It was a fucking travesty that Derek had been one of them. She should have killed him too. He knew the other-him would have wished for it too, knew the other-him had probably felt it so much more viscerally than even he was feeling it now. 

“Derek,” Stiles was saying, crouched down in front of him, “it wasn’t your fault, okay? Listen to me, it wasn’t your fault.” 

Derek unglued his mouth, unwound his tongue and ripped open his throat to ask, “How the fuck wasn’t it my fault?” He felt his twenty years now, young and still naive. He felt older too somehow, with a deep well of exhausted pain that seemed depthless. 

“Derek, Kate groomed you. She’s the one who’s responsible for her actions, not you. You had nothing to do with it, okay? You were a kid. Derek, you were just a kid.” 

Stiles’ eyes were kind but there was nothing he could have said that would have made Derek listen to him. To think she’d done all that to him, that she’d left him scarred over for so many years, and he hadn’t even known her actual fucking name. To think that Derek had sat across this boy- man, whatever he was- and Stiles had proclaimed to love him and hadn’t for even a second thought that maybe this was something Derek should know. It felt sudden and abrupt, completely out of left-field, but anger tripped through his veins in an overwhelming flood. 

“You knew. You knew all along that she was the one who did this to me, that she’s the one we’ve been hunting down, and you didn’t think to say anything? You didn’t think maybe I deserved to know that she’s the one who burned our fucking-” He doubled over and gagged again, the horrific smell of melting flesh and plastic and metal searing into his nose again. He sobbed. “It’s all my fucking fault and you didn’t think I should know?” 

“It wasn't your fault, it’s not your fault,” Stiles said like a broken record. 

“I deserved to know.” How many times had he had the choice taken away from him? How many areas in his life had he grasped for freedom of choice- putting distance away from her, from his family, from the constant reminders of Paige- to find who he was as a person outside of abused child and son of Talia Hale. Now he had been condensed down into the boy who got his entire family killed because he couldn’t tell the difference between love and grooming. Would it have been better if Stiles had told him earlier? Yes, he thought, even if the anger still felt strange and out of place and weirdly old. At least then it wouldn’t have felt like he’d been blindsided. It wouldn’t have hit him over the head in the middle of the day in the form of her necklace. At least then this weird sting of betrayal and hurt wouldn’t be paining him as much as it was now. 

Derek flung the necklace to the far wall, watched it bounce off the wall and fall with a clatter. It lay on the dusty floor, no longer a pretty, glinting gold thing that it had been in his hand. He lurched to his feet, shying away from Stiles’ outstretched hands. The anger simmered alongside the hurt. He hated feeling this way. As he stumbled out, he said, “I just- I need some space. Give me some space.” 

He remembered his parents’ looks, the way they watched him sometimes, the sudden realization that this was the piece of information they had known all along. He couldn’t go home. Going home felt like an undeserved clemency and a deserved punishment all at once. What he needed was the woods. What he needed was to press his forehead to the dirt and pretend that if he pushed hard enough the soil and roots and insects would envelop him entirely and drag him down below.