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A flurry of loud knocks at his front door jerked Derek awake. He jolted upright, heart pounding, the shift thickening the bones of his face and lengthening his teeth, and nearly tumbled off the narrow couch onto the floor. Caught himself with one hand, claws puncturing the upholstery with a hollow pop, sniffed the air.
It wasn’t the hunters he’d been half-expecting. That might actually have been easier. Simpler, anyway. He flexed his jaw, letting his fangs slide back, shook off the half-shift like water, and went to answer the door with a feeling like he was heading to an execution.
“I’m starting to get the impression that you’ve been avoiding me,” Stiles said when the door slid open. He had on a sweatshirt with the hood down, raindrops still glistening in his dark hair. The faint scruff of a beard shadowed his jaw. “Which, I grant you, brooding alone in your dark apartment is totally on-brand for you, but I also know for a fact that you had lunch with Scott and Malia last week, so this is beginning to feel kinda personal. Can I come in?”
“I’m not avoiding you,” Derek said, which was a lie, and then, “I’m busy. That was pack-related,” which was maybe a third true, and then he sighed, stepped aside, and said, “Fine. But make it quick.”
“You should consider redecorating,” Stiles remarked, slipping past him close enough that Derek could feel the heat of his skin, smell the faint tang of exertion from where he’d run up the stairs. A sudden rush of sense-memory hit him: Stiles gasping against his shoulder, his unsteady voice murmuring, “Fuck, Derek, that’s so hot—”
He jerked away. Stiles caught the movement— of course he did, observant asshole that he was, and his eyes narrowed, but he didn’t comment. He moved farther into the living room, hands in his pockets, observing the bare, dusty space with a critical eye. “Seriously, dude. I know that depression-chic is kind of your thing, but adequate natural light can do amazing things for your mood. Not to mention, like, color. Furniture that doesn’t have blood-stains. Something to consider.”
Derek sighed. “What do you want?”
“Other than to gaze adoringly at your handsome face?”
“Stiles.”
“Fine,” Stiles said, and rubbed a hand over his face. He looked brittle, suddenly, older than he really was. Tired. “I was hoping, I—” he broke off. “I’m an idiot.”
“I’m aware,” Derek said mildly, and waited.
“Scott and my dad are out of town. Something with Chris Argent, a hunters’ enclave down in Pasadena, I didn’t ask for details.”
“They’re fine. Scott said he’d call if they needed backup.”
“No, I know, I know,” Stiles interrupted. “I talked to him earlier. It’s not that. I just.” He laughed suddenly, sharp. “I guess I could use a friend right now. Stupid, huh?”
Derek paused, feeling suddenly off-balance. “That you could use a friend?” he asked carefully. “Or that you came to me?”
“I don’t know. Both? I can’t— it’s not something I can talk to Malia about, and Scott’s not here, and Liam and Mason are, like, basically infants.”
“They’re two years younger than you. If that.”
“Infants,” Stiles repeated, and dropped heavily onto the couch. “So, Lydia dumped me.”
“Oh,” Derek said, and blinked. Stiles wasn’t looking at him, which was fortunate because all he could feel for a second was some selfish mixture of hope and relief that he couldn’t have kept off his face to save his life.
He hadn’t really thought that encounter in the motel was a hallucination brought on by isolation and wishful thinking, but after the past several months of Stiles clapping his shoulder and giving him shit in a more or less friendly way and watching Lydia like she’d hung the moon, the whole thing had taken on a dreamlike quality. But now—
“Oh,” he said again, schooling his expression as well as he could. “I’m sorry.”
Stiles lifted his head and surveyed him with a worryingly thoughtful look in his light brown eyes. “Are you?”
“Yeah.” The lie felt lodged in the back of his throat. “What happened?”
“The opportunity of a lifetime,” Stiles said, and dropped his head back on the couch cushions. “Did you ever see ‘Say Anything’? John Cusak, seduction by boombox and lowkey stalking, that’s probably just about your generation, right?”
“It came out in 1989. I was one,” Derek said. Then, “Yeah, I’ve seen it. Do you have a point here?”
“I’m getting to it. Do you have any alcohol around? I feel like this conversation should involve alcohol.”
“Why the hell would I have alcohol? I’m a werewolf, it doesn’t affect me. Also, you’re eighteen.”
“Nineteen.”
Smartass. Derek rolled his eyes. “I’ll see what I can find.”
He turned his back on Stiles’s sudden startled smile and went to dig through the kitchen cabinets before he could do something stupid like sit down on the couch and wrap his arm around Stiles’s bony shoulders, press his cheek to his hair, breathe in the scent of him, give voice to the rumbling growl in the back of his mind that said, my pack, my mate, mine.
The desire wasn’t new, but it had been worse than ever since Brazil. And now Lydia was apparently out of the picture, just like he’d known she would be eventually. The opportunity of a lifetime, Stiles had said, and he could fill in the rest of the blanks from that steamy motel room outside of Macapá, a conversation that was almost a year behind him and still months in Stiles’s future.
Self-restraint had never really been Derek’s strong suit, but this was sure as hell not the right moment. He could be patient. He would be patient. At least for now, the least he could do was act like a decent fucking friend, and a decent fucking friend would give Stiles a drink and a sympathetic ear and keep his stupid greedy hands to himself.
His mom had always kept a few bottles of wine on hand for guests, and his dad had liked the occasional cold beer on summer nights, but Derek himself had never really got the taste for it. He had an old, queasy memory of Kate leaning over the center console of her truck to kiss him, the hot flavor of whiskey on her breath, three hours before his whole world had gone up in flames; that wasn’t the only reason, but it was one of them. The association had stuck.
There was a bottle of some kind of sweet liquor in a high cabinet, though, something that might have been there since Isaac had been living with him, possibly even earlier. He brought it out, along with a juice glass, and deposited it on the coffee table in front of Stiles.
“Pulling out all the stops, huh?” Stiles asked, leaning forward to inspect the label. “Oh, I’m so going to regret this.”
“Go steal your father’s whiskey if you don’t like it,” Derek said acerbically, dropping down onto the far end of the couch. He made a face as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Something about Stiles always set him on off balance, sharpened his tongue in a way that almost nothing did anymore. Stiles, of course, seemed unbothered as he poured his glass full to the brim of cherry-sweet brandy that smelled gag-inducingly cloying even from the other side of the couch. Derek cleared his throat. “What happened?”
“Really?” Stiles said, raising the glass to his lips. “I thought we were just going to sit here and drink in manly silence. Or, well, I can drink, and you can be silent. And manly. Oh, god, that’s disgusting. Where did you even get this? Are you sure it’s not poison?”
“Stiles,” Derek sighed. “What happened?”
“Lydia dumped me,” Stiles said, and took another, longer drink. Amber droplets lingered for a moment on his lower lip before he wiped them away with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry, no, we’re ‘taking a break’,” he added, making finger quotes with his free hand. “She was very clear on that. She’s not dumping me, and I should stop saying that. It’s just a break.”
“Because she’s going to England.”
Stiles peered at him. “You really did see ‘Say Anything’. Secret crush on Ione Skye? Or was it John Cusak? I mean, I can see the appeal…”
“I had two sisters,” Derek interrupted. That, and you told me, once upon a time that hasn’t happened yet. “And you’re stalling.”
“I’m not trying to, honestly,” Stiles said. And then, baldly honest, “I’m really fucked up about this. It’s stupid.”
“It's not stupid.”
“Careful,” Stiles mumbled into his glass. “You keep being nice like this, and I’m going to start forgetting what a dick you are.”
Derek snorted before he could help himself. “I doubt that.”
“I don’t know. You’ve been slacking. You haven’t even threatened to murder me in, like, months.”
“I could, if it would make you feel better.”
“Thanks. I think.” Stiles drank again. Derek watched his throat work as he swallowed, then tore his eyes away before Stiles could catch him. “No, I just…” he sighed. “We were both very mature about it. We’re going to stay friends. She’ll keep in touch. We’ll see how things go when she gets back to the States next year. But it’s… I don’t know. I’m almost more fucked up over the idea of it than anything, isn’t that messed up?”
“No. Not really.”
“Like, I just know she’s gonna meet some hot genius at Oxford and that’ll be it.” He stared at his glass, swirled the contents thoughtfully. “It sucks.”
Derek shrugged. “Maybe you’ll meet someone else while she’s gone.”
“Like who? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of an acquired taste. And that’s without all the...” he waved a hand vaguely. “Werewolves and hunters and magic, oh my.”
“I’ve noticed,” Derek said dryly. “Believe me. But still. It could happen.”
Stiles lifted his head. The waning orange light coming in the west-facing windows caught in his light brown eyes as he moved, lending them an illusory flash of beta-gold, but his scent was all human, his heartbeat steady and slow, the alcohol lending a flush of heat to his cheeks and hands. His damp hair was drying curly, and his lips were parted, and it would be so, so easy right now to close the space between them, to lick the flavor of cherries and alcohol from his tongue, to press him back against the couch and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt just how perfect and beautiful and wanted he was—
The worst part, of course, was that Stiles would let him. He knew that. Had known it for a while, really. For a moment, Derek allowed himself to imagine how it could be, how Stiles would sound murmuring his name, how he would kiss him and touch him and take him apart with quick clever hands.
Just for a moment. Then Stiles flashed him a quicksilver grin and dropped his head, and the moment was broken. “Thanks, man. I appreciate your faith.”
Derek let out a slow breath. A couple of months. Just a couple more months, and they’d be on the same page. He could wait until then. “Anytime.”