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The silence in the loft stretches uncomfortably between them - they’re both defensive, is the problem, Stiles knows. Derek’s sitting across from him at the table, pressed back in his chair like he’d back it against the wall if he could, arms crossed over his chest, and a scowl on his face. As for Stiles, he’s got the defensive and stubborn body language going strong, too, but can’t help the way that it is mixed with guilt - arms crossed, yes, but hunched in on himself and slumped slightly in the chair.
“If that had been an inch to the right.” Derek’s words are coming through clenched teeth, and his point is accusatory, like it’s Stiles’ fault that he took a knife to the face. “Hell, Stiles, half an inch.”
There’s still some dried blood on Stiles’ cheek from the cut perilously close to his eye. It’s shallow, will heal in a matter of days and definitely doesn’t need stitches, probably just a Band-Aid, but he supposes that it did look pretty bad when it was still bleeding down the side of his face.
“But it wasn’t ,” Stiles snaps, and clenches his hands in the fabric of his flannel where his arms are crossed. “I’m fine . I realize that I’m human, but you can at least recognize that I-”
“That you what , Stiles?” Derek uncrosses his arms to smack one open hand against the table in frustration. The sound doesn’t make Stiles’ jump, instead prompts him to roll his eyes because Derek is still falling back on stupid scare-tactics to get Stiles’ attention, and they won’t work anymore. “You jumped between me and the guy with the knife! I can take a stab wound, you’ve seen me with a stab wound, and you still-”
“Still tried to protect you?” Stiles snaps back, uncrosses his own arms and stands to lean forward against the scarred wood of the kitchen table. He’s full of nervous, angry energy, can’t sit in that chair anymore, settles for drumming his fingers against the tabletop to attempt to release some frustration. “Because maybe you can take the knife wound, but it would still hurt like hell! Forgive me,” he spits, “for instinctively stepping in because I lo-” Stiles stops that sentence in its tracks, damn his filter or lack thereof. His cheeks heat, his fingers abruptly stop moving to press into the table instead, and he looks down at them because he can’t look at Derek.
“Because you what? ” Derek’s voice is low, urging.
Suddenly, it’s not about the showdown earlier with the idiot rookie hunter looking for a notch in his belt. Suddenly, it’s about the way they’ve been falling into bed together and not talking about it when Stiles leaves in the early hours of the morning. Or maybe it’s about the tension that’s between them like a thick fog every godforsaken day. The little hints of truth and emotion and feeling that they let slip when no one is listening, the ones they wouldn’t tell unless one of them is drunk or exhausted or half-asleep and barely paying attention - they’re building, they’ve been building into this excruciating crescendo of pining and longing and “what if” that Stiles is having a hard time handling.
He can’t say it. Derek’s had enough hurt in his life, and Stiles doesn’t need to go adding his issues to that. It’s there, though, unspoken but known, the giant destructive elephant in the room. They’re going to go down in flames, he never should have started this to begin with.
“I wasn’t exactly planning to jump in,” Stiles mutters, and his jaw hurts from the tension he’s holding in it, creeping up his face. He’ll have a headache from this whole mess later, he knows.
“But you did.”
The chair makes a scraping sound when Derek pushes it back to stand, and Stiles can hear him walking around the table - measured, controlled steps. It’s a stark contrast to the chaos that feels like it’s building in Stiles’ core, swirling like some kind of funnel cloud and threatening to burst him at the edges like an overstuffed pillow. He presses his fingers into the wood harder, until the grip hurts, and counts them in his head almost as an afterthought.
A hand, bigger and stronger, covers his left one on the table.
“It was instinct,” he hears himself say, hears himself crack. He knows that if he keeps talking, he’ll damn himself, damn them both really, but he’s never been good at holding his tongue. “I saw the knife… and I just moved.”
“Why?” Derek asks, insistent and almost pleading.
Stiles crumbles on himself a bit, defensive anger gone to make room for the frustration that comes with vulnerability. He’s weak, he knows - if he looks at Derek, he’ll see that expression on his face, the one that he can’t refuse. It’s the longing gaze that he resolutely ignores when he leaves in the dark of four-thirty in the morning, the almost-hurt gather of brows that Stiles tries desperately not to see when he skirts the subject once again. They don’t talk about it - if he doesn’t acknowledge that it means anything, no one can use it to hurt them, to hurt Derek to get to Stiles or vice versa.
“You know why, Derek. Don’t make me say it.”
If Derek is almost pleading, Stiles is outright begging with his voice, curling his right hand into a fist and then spreading his fingers once more. He doesn’t move the hand underneath Derek’s, even though he should. He should pull his hand away, go get in his Jeep, and drive away, never darken Derek’s doorstep again.
Derek’s other hand slides gently down his back, though, from his neck to his waist, and Stiles closes his eyes. He’s undone, he knows, lost this great battle he’s been fighting with himself for months now. A weakness plain to see, a crack for the darkness to seep in once more if he’s not careful.
“I need to hear it,” Derek says, soft like he’s pressing the words to the skin of Stiles’ neck, instead of standing in the kitchen while Stiles has an internal crisis against the table. “I know,” Derek goes on, and Stiles opens his eyes. “You won’t be telling me anything I don’t already know, Stiles, but just knowing isn’t enough anymore. Not when you’re doing stupid things like jumping in front of knives for me.”
“Derek.” He still can’t lift his eyes to Derek’s face, but he can turn his head away from the table, follow the line of Derek’s arm up to the slightly-ripped sleeve of his black t-shirt, as far as he dares.
“I don’t want the first or…” Derek pauses, takes a fortifying breath, and continues, quieter but firmer, “Or the only time I hear it from you to be when you’re bleeding out in my arms from a knife wound that I could have walked off.”
His lips part of their own volition, and Stiles’ eyes dart up despite knowing what he’ll see. There it is, that damned look on Derek’s face, the one that Stiles will do anything at all to make go away. Derek’s hand on Stiles’ back curls into his flannel, fingers gripping tight, as he stands and waits.
It doesn’t come easy. Stiles has choked the words down so many times, fought them back so that no one but he has power over them, over this, over Derek - power that he has, in fact, denied himself so far. Saying it makes it real, saying it makes it something that can be used as a weapon against them.
“I love you,” he finally manages, drags his gaze from Derek’s lips to his eyes. “It’s instinct, Derek, you know it is, you know that I will always put myself between you and the knife if I can because I can’t help it .”
Derek kisses him, shuts him up with an insistent press of his mouth to Stiles’, tugs him closer until Stiles is pressed between Derek and the table. He breaks the kiss, then, but doesn’t go far - presses his forehead to Stiles’, even as his grip on the back of Stiles’ shirt is loosening.
“Tell me it won’t happen again,” he says, rough and desperate.
Stiles sighs, smoothes his hand down Derek’s ribs and side to rest at his waist. “Derek, you know I-”
“Then lie , Stiles, but just let me believe for ten goddamn minutes that you won’t do something that stupid again.”
Lie. Stiles can lie, that’s for damn sure. It doesn’t feel harmful when Derek asks him to, doesn’t feel like a betrayal when Derek knows he’s lying. Stiles lies to a lot of people, every day, but Stiles tries very hard not to lie to a select few people, and Derek is high on that list. He’s gotten good at lying, is the catch, knows how to make himself believe in the lie just long enough to let it skate by as truth. “I swear it won’t happen again,” he says, easy as anything, and knows his heart skips that beat that gives him away.
It’s Derek’s turn to sigh. “I didn’t buy it for even a second,” he says. “Tell me again.”
“I swear-” Stiles starts, but Derek gives a minute shake of his head.
“The other thing. The truth,” he says, and Stiles closes his eyes again with a fleeting grimace that disappears when Derek adds, “I didn’t say it back.”
“Derek.” Stiles can pack so much emotion into that one name. “You don’t have to. I know.”
“You need to hear it,” Derek insists. “I need to say it.”
It’s easier this time around. Still feels like ripping his own heart out and laying it bare for the world to take a stab at. “I love you.”
A gentle, quiet, almost-relieved sigh, and then, like a secret, “I love you too.”