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When Stiles heard his window slide open, he curled up into a tighter ball than what his body was already contorted into. He had been expecting a visit from someone since That Night, but so far it'd been radio silence on all fronts. No visitors, no texts. Only his dad had been around, and even then...asides from when he was screaming himself awake, his dad kept his distance, too.
The open window brought in a breeze of cool air, and Stiles shivered violently, his body shaking hard enough that it physically hurt. He curled up even tighter, doing his best to wrap his comforter around his body tightly enough that no air would get to him. Stiles had been cold ever since he had been given a body that felt foreign, wrapped in skin too-fresh for his years or the millennia of memories he now carried, and the rush of air only was too much for this new body.
The shaking stopped after a moment and Stiles sucked in a ragged breath, feeling more worn than he knew how to handle.
There was silence. There was always so much silence, though it sounded different now that Stiles wasn't alone. Less stagnant. Less suffocating. Stiles took a deep breath and let it fill his chest and expand his ribs. Everything felt foreign for he had yet to learn this skin. Steps echoed in the silence and still, Stiles didn't move. He wasn't even sure if he could.
“Stiles—” he would recognize Derek's voice anywhere, but he wasn't sure if he had ever heard it distorted by so much pain. Not when he'd found out Peter was the Alpha or when Scott had forced him to bite Gerard or even when Boyd had been thrown onto his claws. This was different, something that twisted what was left of Stiles' heart and made it ache.
His bed shifted. Stiles made a noise in the back of his throat, something caught between fear and a desperate sort of plea, and a moment later he was being picked up and moved until he was halfway up-right, cradled in the once-Alpha's lap. Arms wound around his shoulder and his waist, holding him so tightly that even if the werewolf's heat wasn't seeping through the blankets and settling somewhere deep in Stiles' bones, he wouldn't have been able to shiver.
Stiles relaxed as soon as Derek had settled them both. His head rose with each breath that Derek took, and he could faintly hear the beating of Derek's heart through the folded up blanket. He focused on the steady beating and let it drown out his thoughts, quieting his mind for the first time since his body was taken over by a demon. It was blissful, such a calm. Stiles let out a noise of pleasure as he shifted, uncurling the littlest bit as he felt warm for the first time in days.
Another noise came from his window, but Stiles didn’t worry. Derek wouldn’t let someone into his room who would hurt him. With everything that they had been through, everything that they were to one another and everything that they had never dared speak, Stiles knew he was safe. That he would always be safe with Derek.
His mattress shifted again, and a moment later he was moved. Stiles didn't bother opening his eyes or protesting. He kept himself limp and allowed his body to be manipulated until he was pillowed between two bodies and laid over two sets of thighs. “Darling,” Peter said softly, his voice just as hurt as Derek's had been. Stiles' eyes burned, then a moment later they were spilling over with a flood of tears he hadn't yet let himself spill.
Peter shushed him, making quiet noises of comfort as one of them rubbed his back. Stiles kept his eyes closed as he cried, grief pouring from him in salt. It did nothing to make him feel better so he cried on, feeling like he was being torn apart as he finally allowed himself to feel something more than the continuous nothing he'd been wallowing in until now.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Peter murmured sweetly. Stiles made another noise even as his heart continued to ache, and he moved for the first time in more hours than he knew to count. His bones protested as he shifted, curling onto his other side in a desperate bid to get closer to Peter's voice, to his warmth, to the safety he offered alongside Derek.
Peter did not let the way Stiles was wrapped up stop him from reaching into the pile of blankets and grasping the back of his neck. Stiles went completely boneless, a sense memory that was not his own of another time Peter had been this close to his neck and the victory that had come with it. Derek made a noise, a low whine that Stiles echoed until the wolf was curled up against his back as Peter cradled them both closer.
Peter's voice was no more than a whisper when he said, “Darling, we are here. We are always here.”