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Eight
The first time he met his emissary, Derek was eight and he was fooling around in the stream behind the Preserve, laughing and kicking unsupervised and feeling slightly guilty about it, because Mom would just swat him on the head, but Dad would have his head, if he knew. He took a gulp of water but that was okay. His feet found the rocky bottom and he stopped, hand holding onto the bank, scratching immediately-healed cuts into his skin.
His head came up from the water, his heart stopped beating so loudly and he heard it, then: an odd crooning, coming from the direction of the house at the edge of the woods.
At first, it raised every hair on the back of his neck. The crooning flitted sweetly, blending into the songs of the birds up above and the soft rumbling of the creek down below, so far away a human couldn’t pick it up. It scared him because he wanted to run toward it, like it was calling him from his bones, resonating in his marrow. And his Mom always warned him against the singing of the sirens.
And then he noticed the tadpoles, slippery and slimy looking, swimming against the current and slipping between his legs. Maybe it wasn’t Derek that the siren was calling.
Derek sniffed the cold early morning air. He couldn’t smell them, whoever it was; the wind must have carried the sound of them farther than the smell—only it couldn’t have, because the singing was under-breath and it didn’t make sense for it to have been carried so far.
There was a rustle behind him. Derek looked back and saw his mom.
“Come on,” she held out her right hand to him.
“The tadpoles,” Derek said.
“I know,” she nudged his shoulder. “Don’t you want to see who it is?”
He took her hand for balance and jumped up from the stream. His shorts clung to him.
“Don’t shake,” she warned him, producing a towel from a place only moms must’ve known about, with foresight only moms could’ve had.
“Thanks,” he told her sheepishly. And he went with her toward the sound, because he had a feeling if he did, his dad wouldn’t chew him out for going out to swim alone.
***
Derek expected to see an old, withered woman crouching on the bedrock and rasping to the stream. Instead, the closer they got, the more he smelled boyish sweat and freshly laundered clothes. Hints of something syrupy sweet, mellowed by the midmorning sun.
He squeezed his mom’s hand, inexplicably.
“I know,” she said for the second time that day, but how could she know, this sudden thrumming of his heart, his veins frantic and volatile under his skin.
The singing had stopped for some time when the canopy parted and they saw a boy by the creek, a plastic bag clenched in his hand and looking wildly around himself, and Derek thought the boy knew, though, how Derek felt. Derek imagined the boy’s expression mirrored his own. Bewildered, hopeful, tinged with something like yearning.
He was eight. The boy was maybe six, if not younger. How could they know what yearning looked like? But there it was, a nauseous chasm inside his chest he hadn’t realized existed because it had always been there.
Derek ran to the boy, heedless of his mom’s shouts, because if he could just touch him—a grip on his arm, a palm to his neck—maybe Derek could become complete.
“Whoa, hey,” the boy said, swinging his plastic bag full of pond water and tadpoles, and added, hypocritically, “you’re so weird.”
“You’re,” Derek retorted, “you’re,” and then settled for Captain Obvious, “you’re collecting all those tadpoles.”
“But the Doc told me to. Oh wait,” the boy brought his tiny hands to his head, “I’m not supposed to tell you that. God, you’re messing up my mojo.”
“Who’s the Doc? What for?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” the boy glared, but he was leaning into Derek’s grip—subconsciously, Derek thought.
And then mom said, “Doctor Deaton, right? Let’s see, you’re probably going to have to turn those tadpoles into frogs.”
They both jumped, but not away from each other.
“What,” the boy made a face at her. “I didn’t know that. Ew.”
“Because frogs are so much grosser,” Derek jabbed at the plastic bag.
“D’you know why we dissect frogs instead of cats? Because frogs are disgusting.”
Derek opened his mouth, closed it. “That’s very philosophical of you,” he said, and the boy smiled, a crooked, shit-eating smile that nonetheless liquefied Derek’s insides. Derek coughed.
“You recognize my genius. I like you,” the boy pronounced. And then added, as an afterthought, “I’m Stiles. What’s your name?”
Only when Derek told Stiles his name, Stiles crowed triumphantly, saying that Derek shouldn’t have done that, given him his real name, because names were powerful and Stiles could curse Derek’s soul to hell and back, now.
“So Stiles is not your real name,” Derek pouted.
“Of course not.”
But then a man solemnly emerged from nowhere, the sounds of his approach totally silent, the earthy and ashy scent Derek remembered from when they brought Pope to the vet only suddenly registering now. Derek sniffed, wiping his nose curiously.
“Gah,” said Stiles.
“Deaton,” said Mom.
“Genim Stilinski,” said Deaton, “play nice.”
***
Stiles unsubtly hinted that he might want to come over and play, and Derek said, too enthusiastically, “Yes,” but that turned out to be a mistake because Dad and Laura and Phyllis had all crowded over Stiles and cooed over how big his eyes were, how cool his Tinkerbell T-shirt was, and even Cora had skulked out of her crib to pat Stiles approvingly on the arm. Derek was shunted to the side and very confused over who he was supposed to be jealous of.
Laura snorted knowingly, shoving him into Stiles, who paused in the middle of his DC versus Marvel filibuster—spoiler, it was DC, it was always DC—to say, “Hi.”
Derek took his hand and tried to drag him away, to which his family seemed horribly amused.
“C’mon,” Derek said. “Wanna see my figurines?”
Over the next few weeks Derek learned that Stiles liked Batman mostly because he had a terrible crush on Catwoman, that Stiles drank milk from the carton and probably from the cow if he had to, and that Stiles was magic in a terrifying, unfair sort of way. To Stiles the world was never quiet, and Derek thought he understood that until Stiles took him herb gathering, and Derek asked him what cedar looked like and he shrugged. They’ll tell me, he said, absurdly confident. Derek belatedly realized when Stiles crouched down to the ground and closed his eyes that Stiles meant the herbs, the herbs’ll tell him. They answered when he asked just like the tadpoles came when he called. And werewolves heard everything, Derek thought, but nature spoke a language only Stiles could understand.
They ended up on the property of the Juarez family and bought coriander for cheap because the grandma kept pinching their cheeks and raving about Stiles’ eyes in Spanish.
The coriander was for dinner, not for the healing drought.
“Stiles is more powerful than any druid I know,” Dad told him, after. “And he’s going to be our emissary.”
Derek squirmed. “That a good thing?”
“I don’t know, baby,” Dad hugged him closer. “Some people might try to hurt us while he’s still young.”
“To kill him?”
“No. To poach him away. So, you know,” Dad grinned, “be nice.”
***
“You’re in third grade,” Derek repeated, disbelieving.
“Ouch,” Stiles glared. “Be nice now.”
“You weren’t in Mr. Wesley’s class.”
“Mom homeschooled me.”
“You can’t be older than six,” Derek said stubbornly.
“Dude,” Stiles kicked Derek’s leg hard. “I’m eight years old. Oh God, I’m going to be bullied so bad, aren’t I? Homeschooling is bad enough, now all the other kids can make fun of the way I look because they’re jealous of my baby smooth skin.”
“Your,” Derek stuttered, looking at Stiles’ cheeks and lips reflexively.
They were in Walmart, picking up stationary for the new school year. Laura said notebooks were $.97 because they wanted kids to be able to round up in their heads, and Stiles told her even if she could keep her heartbeats normal she wasn’t fooling anyone with the way her mouth couldn’t stop twitching. Mom laughed and sent Derek and Stiles to go do their own shopping, and to their undying horror, said they were the most responsible out of the lot. Which was when Derek learned that he and Stiles would be in the same class.
“I won’t let them bully you,” Derek said impulsively because Stiles had yanked his hand and put it on Stiles’ face to show him how soft his skin really was and Derek panicked.
“No thanks,” Stiles made a face. “You’re just going to curl up and sprout needles when anyone goes near. Like a hedgehog.”
“Burn,” Laura strolled by and high-fived Stiles.
Derek would much rather communicate with Stiles not like hedgehogs but like ants, with spit, but he didn’t say it because it sounded weird and nerdy. He wished he could stop thinking about it though.
***
Derek didn’t remember much about the first day back at school, other than how much he wanted to kill Scott McCall and that Stiles didn’t want to go home with him.
“Dude,” Stiles told him at the end of the day, breathless, “see you tomorrow,” and disappeared down the hall with Scott. They’d bonded over magic cards, which was unfair because Derek didn’t even know Stiles was into that.
Laura squinted at him when he got into the car and threw himself down next to her. “Bro,” she drawled. “You look tragic.”
And Dad asked “Where’s Stiles” from the front seat, which didn’t make anything better.
***
The story of how Scott and Stiles became persona non grata in Beacon Hills Elementary went something like this:
On Lydia Martin’s birthday, Jackson Whittemore gave her a new phone in front of the entire class. She gave him a peck on the cheek. Stiles then proceeded to opine loudly about how if Jackson was going to spend that much money, he could’ve at least bought her the new telescope she’d been eyeing ever since that visit to the science museum, and then Heather said “Ooooh,” for no other reason than “ooh” had been her favorite word of the week.
Jackson colored.
“Uh,” said Scott.
Jackson jumped up on the big table Derek shared with Scott and Stiles, scattering the pencils and swinging at Stiles’ cheeks. Stiles tried to dodge and he flinched into Jackson’s fist; they connected.
“Hey,” Scott and Derek both yelled. Scott was closer and tackled Jackson first.
Which was also how they found out Scott had asthma.
***
Scott stayed over—at Derek’s rough estimate—about five thousand nights out of seven at the Stilinskis’ after that.
Derek could be sick and needy too, if that was what it took.
So on one of California’s rare showers, Derek went out the back door and ran in the rain until his feet became numb and his forehead throbbed. When Mom found him, she said softly, “Never do that again,” and herded him inside without another word, partly because she had pressed her palm to his face and hissed, involuntary.
Laura, upon realizing that that meant Derek had the next day off, stomped to his sick bed and said, “Dear diary, today my younger brother became the only werewolf in history stupid enough to get a cold.”
But when Derek got Stiles on the phone, Stiles’ voice was trembling. Scott wouldn’t stop coughing, Stiles told him, and Scott’s dad wouldn’t stop smoking and his parents wouldn’t stop fighting. Hence the codependence, and Derek felt so guilty and miserable on top of the confusion and headache he begged Stiles not to come over, after all.
***
On the first day of the second semester, Stiles crashed Derek’s room and complained loudly about this new girl named Allison and how Scott was a horrible friend. Derek looked at Stiles meaningfully.
Stiles pouted, “Dude, I know I’m exaggerating, but Scott could’ve been more sensitive about it.”
Derek’s left eye twitched.
“Fine,” Stiles threw himself on Derek’s bed and, to Derek’s surprise, tackled him in the stomach and hugged him, abrupt and tight. Stiles’ head was tucked into Derek’s chest when he said, “I’m sorry, alright? I could’ve been more sensitive. You could’ve been less clingy. Are we cool?”
“What,” Derek said faintly.
“Actually,” Stiles peered up at him, sheepish, “I liked it when you got clingy.”
“I didn’t get clingy,” Derek yelped.
***
Ten
By the time they were ten, Derek and Stiles had unofficially adopted all household pets in Beacon Hills.
It started when missing posters of Princess the bulldog went up around town and they found her nesting in Stiles’ bed when they came home from school. Inio the tabby outright trailed after Stiles in the library, down the street, and through the supermarket. Stiles scooped him up and they made identical purrs. A week later Derek was picking Stiles up in the morning—fierce competition with Scott, and all that—and Stiles was cuddling with the one-eyed Mrs. Norris who was apparently scraping so pitifully at the window in the middle of the night that Stiles let her in his bed.
“Are you going to be a vet?” Derek asked Stiles, as they played with Pope in Derek’s room. “All the animals love you.”
“No,” Stiles looked scandalized. “I told you, I’m gonna become a Ghostbuster.”
Derek felt it too. He and all the werewolves were drawn to Stiles, inexorable, preternatural. The part of them that howled at the moon yearned to be near Stiles, to please him and to monopolize him, to miss him like a phantom limb and to never get their fill just looking at him.
Derek wondered, sometimes, whether Derek would even like Stiles if Derek wasn’t a werewolf and Stiles wasn’t an emissary. If Stiles didn’t smell like earth and like rain and like home. But Derek remembered long afternoons and Stiles singing to him, his voice dipping low into rasps and sometimes out of the human’s hearing range but oddly melodic anyway, and Derek would feel as if he was cradled by nature, by home. Being with Stiles made him happy, and he wasn’t really opposed to things that made him happy.
***
Fourteen
Peter laughed hysterically when Derek told him he’d asked out Paige.
“What, you were serious?” Peter asked between delicately wiping his tears off, and then became very serious when Derek, glowering, said yes, and said, don’t be a jerk. “My god, you were serious,” Peter said, and it was the only thing he said for a while, all the way home from school.
The next thing Peter said was announcing loudly to everyone that Derek had a date with a girl, and Dad asked him again and again with what seemed like growing despair if it was true and not another one of Peter’s pranks. Laura shook him until he was dizzy but he didn’t mind because he thought it was a you’ve-got-a-girl initiation of sorts.
Stiles had gone home early because Derek had basketball practice, but if Stiles was here he’d have taken Derek’s side.
***
Stiles didn’t take Derek’s side.
“Are you going to be like Scott with Allison?”
Derek scratched his arm, “No?”
“Right answer,” Stiles said. “Now get over here and help me with the water snakes.”
And Stiles continued to upend every bro stereotype Derek ever gleaned from television, because Stiles didn’t ask him how cute Paige was, what base they were getting on, or really ask him anything at all. Stiles usually kept up a Bob Ross commentary on the draughts, another chicken heart, he said, to offset the sleepiness, and a dash of powder of tiger tooth for good luck, but Stiles wasn’t talkative, today.
“She plays the cello,” Derek said, tentative. “Ouch.”
Stiles didn’t look up, “What was that?”
“One of them bit me.”
“Maybe,” said Stiles, “the snakes don’t like you talking about Penny.”
“Her name is Paige,” Derek examined his finger, which had already healed. “The entire point of it was that I got her name, remember?”
“Nope,” Stiles merrily plucked off the head of a newt. Another snake suddenly latched onto Derek’s arm.
“Ow,” Derek waved his arm. “Ow ow ow ow ow—“
Stiles looked up then. Good, Derek thought. He hated not having Stiles’ attention.
“Stop getting werewolf blood all over my working space,” Stiles yelled, and Derek was still in pain, the snake wasn’t letting go, and why was Stiles suddenly sociopathic? Derek wolfed out a little.
“Dude,” Derek yelled back, “what the hell is wrong with you?”
Stiles banished Derek from the potions room.
“It’s what Deaton does when I don’t behave,” Stiles crossed his arms prissily. Derek slammed the door behind him.
***
The next day was the most terrible day of Derek’s life. First, Stiles refused to go to school with him (“But why?” “No.” “Yeah but why?” “No, just go, Derek, just go.” And the wind was screeching outside, rattling every door in the house, it seemed like, and every “no” and “go” was punctuated by a new wave).
They argued a lot, and poked boundaries a lot, but they never managed to carry their grudges past the next morning.
Second, cats yowled at him from behind the windows and from the top of the vans they were sleeping on—just raised their heads as he walked by and bared their fangs, and gave him the dirtiest glares.
“Let’s see if I don’t tell Stiles you’re all rabid,” Derek shouted at them. “I mean it.”
Third, about ten zillion pigeons pooped on him, even though Beacon Hills didn’t have any pigeons.
Fourth, Stiles sat next to Scott and Allison instead of Derek and Paige in Math, despite looking ill from Scott and Allison’s alternately cheesy and depraved courting rituals.
Fifth, Derek had developed a bad rash on his back by gym period.
“Nothing to see here,” Finstock said, when they retreated to the locker room. “Greenberg, stop making that face, it’s just an allergic reaction. Hale, go to the infirmary.”
Derek wanted to go home, not the infirmary, because Mom told him once that only wolfsbane or mountain ash could cause allergic reactions for werewolves, but Finstock narrowed his eyes and said, “No, go to the infirmary. They’ll put something on it and you’ll be fine.”
“But,” Derek said.
“Look, they have to document what it is you’re allergic to. Don’t be dumb, Hale, go.”
“Can Stiles go with me?” Derek asked, because Stiles was in training and might know about it.
Finstock scratched his head.
“Stiles Stilinski,” Derek rolled his eyes. “No? Bilinski?”
***
Sixth, finally, Stiles was eyeing Derek’s obvious distress with something like a satisfied grin. Again.
“It’s not wolfsbane or mountain ash,” Stiles said. “Can I go now?”
“No,” Derek wished they weren’t at school, so he could tackle Stiles into a lake and shake him silly, or, here was a thought, Derek could check his temperature to see if he was an actual cold-blooded amphibian. “How do you know?”
Stiles rolled his eyes. “I just do.”
“But werewolves can’t get rash from anything but wolfsbane and mountain ash. Stiles, what if it is wolfsbane and someone’s targeting me?
“It’s not,” Stiles scoffed. “And who would want to target you? The rival basketball team?”
“The other packs,” Derek hissed. He felt like Stiles took and hammer to his chest. “Why are you--” Why are you like this, why don’t you care, why are you laughing at me, what did I do wrong. But Derek said, “You know what, forget it,” because his friendship with Stiles had always been oddly lopsided, off-balance. One got clingy; the other tolerated.
The rash on his back burned.
“That rash is harmless,” Stiles said, and he sounded exasperated.
“I said forget—“
“Maybe someone is targeting you, but maybe they don’t want you to die. Maybe they’re just petty,” Stiles’ voice climbed. “Maybe they’re just afraid of being left behind again, by their mom and then their friend and maybe they’re scared because everyone is hooking up and they don’t even know if they like a boy or a girl.”
***
When Derek’s brain did manage to reboot, two hours later, he told Laura, “I think Stiles cursed me.”
She frowned, taking Derek barging into her room in remarkable stride, “With a rash?”
Derek eyed the pigeon poop on his leather jacket. “Among other things.”
“Why do you think that is?” Laura said slowly, as if speaking to their cat, but Derek couldn’t help but appreciate it now when his head was swimming in DOES NOT COMPUTE error messages.
“He thinks,” Derek took a deep breath, remembering their conversation, “he thinks I’m moving on and leaving him behind.”
“Oh,” Laura said.
“Like his mom and Scott did.”
“Oh,” Laura gathered his shoulder with one hand and patted his head with the other. “Oh, that idiot.”
“Don’t say that about Stiles,” Derek’s head whipped up.
“Oh,” Laura narrowed her eyes, “you idiot.”
***
Stiles didn’t come with when Dr. Deaton went to the house to give Derek the antidote to the rash.
“He’s very sorry,” Dr. Deaton said.
Derek gripped tightly onto the small, perfume-like bottle of salve. “Did he ask you to tell me that?”
Derek hadn’t seen Stiles in twenty-four hours, during which time he stayed within five feet of the landline, guarding it so that anyone tempted to make a call while Stiles might be trying to reach him to apologize could be persuaded otherwise.
“No,” Dr. Deaton said. “But he is sorry.”
Dr. Deaton knowing that, Derek thought privately, would require him to know Stiles better than Derek knew Stiles, which was impossible, but maybe it was a magic thing, or a mentor thing, or just an adult thing that let Deaton know too much about other people and reveal too goddamn little.
As Deaton turned to leave, Derek blurted, “Wait, so what should I do? Should I give him the chance to apologize?”
Deaton shook his head. “What if I said your relationship will never be the same?”
“It’s just a bad fight,” Derek said, dismayed. He’d never thought—
“If your relationship will never be the same, you have to figure out what you want, Derek. What you want that relationship to be is how you should approach him,” Deaton reached out and tried to pat his head, which was worryingly the response of most people to Derek these past couple of days, but Derek was no longer listening to him, because he was wrong, they were wrong, and Derek was going to track down Stiles and make everything go back to the way it was.
Derek ran out the door and toward the Stilinski house, then, tore down the path through the woods, supernaturally fast and absolutely terrified. He’d been so confused and bewildered, and everyone seemed to refuse to let him know what was going on, and he’d been afraid of him and Stiles drifting apart ever since the first time they’d played together but he never thought he would be so clueless in the middle of it. This, it was just unfair.
When Derek finally reached Stiles’ front door, he might be a little red-faced, teary-eyed, and a smidgen overwrought.
John opened the door, sighed that exasperated adult sigh when he saw that it was Derek, and bellowed, “Kid, he’s here,” to a strangled screech from upstairs before nodding Derek inside. “He’s going to be down in a second,” John told him. “I don’t know what happened exactly, but it’s probably his fault, so” John smiled encouragingly, “don’t be too hard on him, will ya?”
Derek was seriously getting whiplash from all the contradicting advice from the adults, so he just nodded and filed it away. All of them were working off of past knowledge of Stiles, and both Deaton and John had known Stiles for longer than Derek did but neither of them knew how to coax Stiles when he got too focused, or that Stiles once buried himself in the earth to see how his mom would have felt, or that Stiles felt abandoned and alone and lost, and hated himself for it.
Derek became short of breath when Stiles came downstairs, both of them failing spectacularly to appear nonchalant.
“Hi,” Stiles said, and then winced. He was not so much wringing his hands as performing acrobatic exercises with them.
Derek wanted to say, Can everything just go back to normal, and Stiles, he thought, would have said yes. He said, instead, “Should I break up with Paige?”
Stiles exploded into motion. “What? No. No you should definitely not break up with her, what’s wrong with you? You’re not supposed to enable my bullshit.”
“Then what should I do?” Derek asked, and for one strange moment it was more practical than desperate, What can I do, name it, and I’ll do it. For one moment Derek thought that anything Stiles asked he would—
“You don’t have to do anything,” Stiles pulled on his non-existent hair. “That’s not—you don’t have to,” and now Derek was desperate, and Derek said, “But you know, you know I would never abandon you or be like Scott, how can you not know?” And he strode over to Stiles, as violently as he could make striding, and Stiles looked tempted to back away but he didn’t, and Derek just crashed into Stiles and held on, breathed Stiles in and squeezed his armful of Stiles until he felt his feet on firm ground again.
***
“I didn’t mean to do it,” Stiles said into Derek’s neck. “It’s like, I’ve been so confused I’m confusing everyone around me. I would kick myself in the ass if my feet could reach it.”
“Yeah,” Derek said, pointedly not disagreeing.
They were cuddled underneath Stiles’ comforter, sharing a flashlight and too little space between the two of them. Derek had an iron grip on Stiles’ sleeve and Stiles was an asshole but Derek was holding on anyway, as if his life depended on it.
“It didn't matter that Scott left,” Stiles continued. “It didn't matter if anyone left because I had you, and I always assumed, it's, you always let me assume that I was going to be like your most important person forever and ever,” Stiles fidgeted, flicking the light on and off once every few seconds. “And I'm sorry because it sounds like you're my safety school or something but that's not true. You're,” Derek's chest tightened, “I don’t know, I assumed you were, like,—“
“What—“ Derek brought his hand up to Stiles’ face, scrabbling.
And Stiles said, “Mine.”
There was silence for a long while, in which time Derek waited for an explanation because surely one was forthcoming, and then watched as Stiles’ face grew red. Derek felt his own face burn to match with it but he refused to break eye contact because you could read so much from Stiles’ face, you really could, if you would only stand to risk being hypnotized by his eyes.
Stiles broke the silence by squeaking, “Oh my God,” his eyes widened and his mouth hanging open like a demented fish, and attempted to run away. There was the problem of Derek’s death grip on him.
“Stiles?” Derek trapped Stiles’ leg with his and tripped Stiles, who stood zero chance against the wrap of the comforter, Derek, and gravity.
“Let me go,” Stiles got up on his elbows.
“No way,” Derek threw one arm around Stiles, smashing his face into Stiles’ frantic, warm back.
“Let me go,” Stiles squawked, his voice an octave higher, thrashing in Derek’s hold.
“No—“
“I’m sorry, okay?” Stiles said. “This is all my fault. No really, God, I’m so sorry, like, I’m going to grovel at your feet sorry, but would you just freakin’ let me go?”
“No,” Derek held on tighter. All his instincts screamed at him to chain Stiles to his side forever.
“You don’t understand,” Stiles babbled. Derek wished he could see Stiles’ face right now instead of his slim back. “Seriously, you don’t get it, you have no idea, because you would want to let me go, okay? Because I might get some ideas and this is what got you into this in the first place and God, I’m victim blaming you, I’m going to apologize for like every day for the rest of my life, alright? But you need to let me go now—“
“Get some ideas—“
“Please, Derek,” Stiles’ voice broke, and Derek would kill someone for Stiles when his voice broke.
“Are you going to hide from me again?” Derek asked.
Stiles’ struggling subsided.
“Just tell me why.”
Stiles made a despairing sound.
“Stiles?” Derek said, carefully turning him over because he had to see his face. It was hard. Stiles wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“Stiles,” Derek said again, this time cupping Stiles’ face. Stiles let out a sad, defeated whimper.
“I can’t win,” Stiles muttered.
“Is it a game—“
“Shut up,” Stiles snapped. “You’re a total busybody and really too freaking sensitive and God, I like you so much.”
“Hey, that just means I’m going to make a great dad—“
“I like you,” Stiles said, hushed, a little stumbling, a lot wondering, like he was trying the words out. “I like like you.”
Derek blushed, confused and pleased, having heard the words but not quite understanding them yet, his head slower than his body—always had been.
“At least I think I do, I,” Stiles babbled. “It makes sense, and I didn’t put it together because I didn’t think I would be so clichéd but apparently, you know, and I kind of figured it was my abandonment issues anyway. Either way it sucks that you were at the receiving end of it and like, I’m really sorry, dude, I swear I didn’t know—“
Which was when Derek reached critical mass, and he blurted out, “I think I like you too.”
It would make so much sense.
It was relief—the sudden and giddy rush of it—that he wasn’t going to lose Stiles, that he was never going to lose Stiles, that he had, at last, words to describe what they were to each other and what they could and would demand from each other.
Succinctly, everything.
But Stiles said dubiously, “No you don’t.”
Derek tried to think about the idea. He looked at Stiles’ lips and imagined kissing them, and he didn’t have much experience but by the size of them he thought he could spend an entire afternoon mapping them out, licking, brushing, biting. His brain short circuited.
“I’ll,” Stiles squirmed. “I’ll just go.”
“You can’t,” Derek rasped.
“I’m sorry.”
“I like you too,” Derek caught Stiles’ elbows, and not for the first time, took note of the strength under the flannel.
“No you don’t.”
“I do too,” Derek grinned.
“No you don’t,” Stiles was exasperated now. “You like Paige and I shouldn’t have told you because it’s made you confused.”
“I’m not confused. You were confused.”
Stiles blushed. “I regret telling you anything.”
“Stiles—“
“Look, before this you never—“
“Before this I never knew it could be like this,” Derek tore his gaze from Stiles’ lips and looked him in the eyes, because this was important. “I don’t know why I like you,” Derek continued, rolling his eyes, “considering what an absolute hypocrite you are. Before this you didn’t know either.”
“No, look,” Stiles said, “no one likes me unless they’re required to. I’m your emissary, you guys have no choice. Scott and I are the losers. He didn’t have any choice. And,” he looked away, “you seem to really like Paige and if you keep insisting on being a, I don’t know, an excitable martyr, you can lose your chance with her.”
“If people could see you like I do,” Derek said helplessly, “they would love you.”
They would love Stiles, who was prickly and carried his heart on his sleeve. Stiles, who didn’t expect to be loved but who threw a town wide shit fit because he was jealous. Stiles, who loved easily and got hurt frequently but continued to love the people he did anyway.
Stiles, who Derek fell in love with ever since they were eight.
“No they won’t,” Stiles said carelessly. “You don’t notice people lining up to be my friends, do you, and the worst of it is I know why, it’s because I’m so fucking off-putting—no, listen, I am, Derek, I am, you just don’t see it because we’ve known each other forever. I’m sarcastic and negative all the time and I don’t made people feel good about themselves or make them feel good in general, and I’m not totally self unaware, I know people just don’t like me and there’s a really good reason as to—“
Derek punched Stiles in the mouth, hard, but not so hard as to be really satisfying.
Stiles fell back and yanked on goddamn blanket, knocking against Derek and bumping his nose against Derek’s forehead and fucking fuck, this wasn’t what he meant to do at all. They both hissed.
“What the hell,” Stiles yelped while Derek held him tight by the waist to prevent any further knocking.
“No one gets to insult you in front of me,” Derek said angrily. “Not even you.”
“Way to make a point. As a matter of fact,” Stiles glared, wiping the corner of his mouth furiously, but he seemed to be hiding what sounded suspiciously like a sniffle, “I’m getting over you really fast.”
“No you aren’t,” Derek snorted, then sobered. He arrested Stiles’ arm with one hand and cupped his jaws with the other, inspecting the damage. “God,” he said, “I’m—“
“How would you know?”
Derek pulled Stiles closer, “Because there’s never been anyone else for us.”
It should worry him, but it felt right and Derek felt like he’d just solved a life mystery, that he was always supposed to be here, together, with Stiles, and how many people were so lucky that they knew their exact place in the world?
“I still don’t believe you,” Stiles said shakily, but given the way he fisted his hands in Derek’s shirt he had largely given up. “What about Paige?”
“I don’t know,” Derek said honestly, “but you should take some responsibility.”
Derek kissed Stiles then, careful and tender and life-changing. If you were in love, you would know it and Derek thought, this was how you knew. You kissed the boy of your waking dream and maybe he kissed you back but in the act of it you would feel as if you would lay the world at his feet just to be by his side. You would relish the way you could make him react to you and worry about you and feel for you. You would hold him in your arms and want to explore every inch of him, and at the same time you would be scarcely able to, for fear he would turn into smoke.
***
Sixteen
“Scott and Jackson sitting in a tree,” Stiles singsonged.
“No,” Scott screeched. “Shut up, oh my God, I can’t believe you went there.”
“I didn’t have to go anywhere, baby. I’m always there.”
Derek smiled involuntarily, “It’s true you know.”
“Jackson’s under the impression I do drugs and figures that you were my dealer,” Scott said sadly. “Which notion you happily encouraged, by the way.”
“He stalks you,” Stiles looked ecstatic. “He flexes his muscles at you, he corners you in the locker room when practice runs late one day, and everybody else has already taken a shower, and he presses his body into yours, threatening to fuck you up, or fuck you, you aren’t sure which—Holy fuck,” Stiles said, when everyone became shifty and uncomfortable. “That sounds hot.”
Derek shifted, winding one arm across Stiles’ waist and turning him around. “Do you wanna,” Derek said, lifting his eyebrow up in the way he knew would either make Stiles laugh or make him hot and bothered.
“C’mon,” Stiles grinned, wicked. “I can’t believe we haven’t done that before.”
“Stop talking,” Scott begged. “When I signed up to be a werewolf I didn’t realize it involved so much knowledge about other people’s sex lives.”
***
When Stiles had asked Derek to ask his mom to turn Scott, Derek barely thought about Scott’s wellbeing at all. Stiles had said, “Scott could be cured of his asthma,” and Derek had heard, “Scott could get on with the program that Stiles belonged to Derek.” If Scott was a wolf, Scott would understand what it meant for a wolf to be with someone, and Derek could threaten to rip out Scott throat.
“You’re getting possessive again,” Stiles raked his hand up the back of Derek’s neck, his scalp, through Derek’s hair.
“How do you know?”
“Because whenever you do you go for that spot at the base of my neck. God, yes, don’t stop.”
***
“There are two types of jocks,” Stiles said, as soon as he climbed into the car.
Derek took one hand off the steering wheel and tugged on Stiles’ seatbelt.
“Seriously? It’s five blocks and you drive like an old man on a golf cart.”
“I resent that,” Derek said mildly.
Stiles pouted, but pulled on his seatbelt as he always did, and stole Derek’s water bottle, as he always did.
“So there are two types of jocks,” he said.
“Where is this going,” Derek said warily.
“Have you heard the fable about the frog and the scorpion,” Stiles ignored him.
“Yes—“
“Bzzt, wrong answer, rhetorical question. So, there’s the frog type of jocks, and then there’s the scorpion type of jocks, and it’s in the nature of one type of jocks to be nice and in the nature of the other to be assholes, but they’re both in nature, really, just jocks.”
Derek was tempted to pull over. “Are you okay?” he said cautiously.
“On the other hand,” Stiles continued darkly, “it’s in the nature of a certain emissary-cum-veterinarian to be cryptic and really lame. I mean, who needs to have “The Frog and the Scorpion” explained to them?
“Ah,” Derek said. “But perhaps it is in the nature of Sparks to be ungrateful to their mentors.”
“You always take his side,” Stiles chucked a pen cap he’d been chewing on at Derek’s head.
“Careful,” Derek scowled.
“Old man,” Stiles retorted.
On the way from the car back to the house, Stiles asked, suddenly, “Do you mind it,” but Derek had already forgotten what they were bickering about.
Stiles huffed at Derek’s raised eyebrow. “Do you mind that we have the same conversation over and over?”
Derek looked down. They were holding hands, their fingers loosely tangled together, and Derek was unreasonably content.
“No,” he said.
Stiles grinned. “Me too.”
***
Stiles had been testing Derek for as long as they’d been together. Stiles pointed out this or that guy to Derek and asked him if he was even gay and asked gay guys if they were even attracted to Stiles. If Derek liked them Stiles got jealous, and if Derek didn’t like them Stiles got sad, and Derek couldn’t call out Stiles’ neurotic insecurity because Stiles would just get more self-deprecating and pathetic.
Derek thought, if Stiles didn’t try anything too stupid, he could show Stiles that he loved him by being with him for the rest of his life.
***
“I have a potion for this,” Stiles said. “There’s only like a five percent chance of early onset dementia as a side effect.”
“Stay away from me you freak,” Jackson Whittemore looked wildly around himself, but Lydia Martin wasn’t here, so he had no one to hide behind.
“It just makes you forget the last twenty-four hours, and it tastes just like syrup,” Stiles reassured Jackson, enjoying the opportunity way too much.
“Stiles,” Derek said, “what would Deaton say?”
“No no, let me, let me,” Scott said, clearing his throat significantly. “Genim Stilinski, you still have much to learn.”
“So do you,” Stiles said triumphantly. “You got us into this in the first place. Who’s the hypocrite now?”
They were entirely too cheerful for a pack of werewolves who’d just had their secret discovered by a high school jock, and if Mom was here, she’d have said something about complacency, immaturity, etc., etc., but Derek didn’t really blame Stiles for wanting to take Jackson down a peg. Derek’d been itching to break Jackson’s jaw in lacrosse practice, but Stiles didn’t really want Derek to fight his battle for him, no matter how he pretended to swoon over the possibility.
“C’mon, let’s do it quickly. I don’t want us to get into trouble with the grownups—“
“Stiles—“
“No, seriously,” Stiles threw up his hands, “this is actually what packs normally do when they get made. The human drinks the potion and no one dies of persecution. See? It even rhymes. What, you’re werewolves, like, actual shady as shit creatures of the night, did you think you were a secret society of superheroes?”
“You told me werewolves were like the Avengers when you were selling me on the idea,” Scott squawked.
“I want you to bite me,” Jackson yelled suddenly, over all of them.
“Bite me,” Stiles said immediately.
“No,” Jackson said, this time shakier because he had the attention of all of the werewolves in the room. “I want you to turn me into a werewolf.”
***
Jackson was a shitty werewolf.
Derek might possibly be biased, because all he heard during the day was Stiles going on about what a shitty werewolf Jackson made, and then Laura, who was training Jackson, tried to say that the bite wasn’t totally wasted on Jackson for all the difference it made, and then Stiles said something pithy and they laughed.
Scott was staying mum on it as the other new werewolf and as the one who got caught wolfed out, which irritated Stiles even more, which made Stiles hate Jackson even more, which meant Stiles was still talking about Jackson when Stiles and Derek were making out.
“Is Jackson a turn on for you?” Derek asked, glaring as he pulled back and pulled his hand out from under Stiles’ shirt.
“What?” Stiles said, dazed.
“Because he’s not a turn on for me.”
“I should hope not,” Stiles said, mock indignant and unrepentant and Derek found, God willing, that he couldn’t be annoyed after all.
***
And then Jackson went and saved Stiles’ life.
Derek didn’t even see it happen.
“I just thought,” Stiles said, in his panicked babble, “you should know, that I should call you first. Talia doesn’t even, I haven’t called her yet. Deaton hasn’t, God. I’m supposed to be better at this.”
“Stiles,” Derek said, jumping to his feet and prepared to take off running to wherever Stiles needed him to be.
“Fucking Jackson dived in front of a fucking bus because I was a fucking idiot,” Stiles said. “And now he’s carted off to the hospital and he’s going to miraculously recover from bleeding out two people’s worth of blood.”
“Are you okay?”
“I might have said I was Jackson’s brother,” Stiles sighed. “Sorry for freaking out on you.”
“Stiles,” Derek said. “You nearly died. Where are you?”
“On the ambulance. To the hospital. Fuck. Fuck, I don’t want to owe him, Derek. Call Talia for me. I’m gonna call Deaton.”
Stiles hung up.
Stiles told Derek, once, that death didn’t happen to you, it happened to the people around you. Stiles’ death would have killed his dad and killed Derek and killed Scott, and by that measure they were the ones who owed Jackson Whittemore their lives, and Derek was breathing hard and holding the phone to his chest and he was so, so thankful he could burst with it.
***
The pack decided they weren’t going to descend on Room 303 of Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital because the Whittemores and their lawyers and the whole of BHHS were going to do that anyway. Stiles, in the official report, insisted that Jackson was trying to save a cat, which was considerably more believable than Jackson was trying to save Stiles, and when the pack finally came round to visit, Stiles and Jackson were red-faced, screaming at each other.
“It wasn’t a fucking cat,” Jackson levered himself up, arm reaching behind in the familiar motions of rooting for something to throw at Stiles.
“What was I supposed to say to them? That you heroically risked your life for me? That’s not the fucking truth either.”
“So I ended up at the hospital because I was selfish?”
Stiles let out a frustrated arrgh. “That’s not the point. The point is, you wouldn’t have saved me unless you were a werewolf, and you would have done it anyway if it was a cat in my place.”
Derek said, “Stiles.”
Jackson colored, blotchy and dark. “Shut up. Shut up, you retard. This is why I never--”
Stiles’ eyes widened, and Stiles was stubborn and an asshole and a stubborn asshole, but he also wouldn’t stand to be a bigger asshole than Jackson. He said, deflating and looking mortified, “Oh my God,” and, “I’m sorry,” and, “I was out of line.”
“I’m going to punch you,” Jackson growled.
Stiles said immediately, “You would regret it.”
And Derek kept on expecting Jackson to contradict him, right up to the point Derek realized Jackson wasn’t.
Stiles continued, reluctantly, “Thank you.” That was normal, at least, because Stiles was fighting every syllable of the words.
***
Out of Jackson’s earshot, Stiles leaned into Derek and ran a hand up Derek’s arm, told him, “Jackson saved me because I was the emissary.”
Derek shook his head. “What were you trying to do? Stiles, you weren’t—Tell me you aren’t that stupid.”
“He’s not exactly compelled to save me now,” Stiles shrugged.
Derek disagreed. He thought Jackson must have been falling in love with Stiles, but okay, Derek was always falling in love with Stiles and he had a habit of projecting that onto a lot of different people.
***
It became harder and harder to dismiss, Jackson’s thing for Stiles. Right around the time after Jackson got out of the hospital Jackson began to spend a lot more time with them, ostensibly with the family, but most of those times coincided with Stiles’ being there. After that, the aggressive staring started.
Derek knew this because Derek was the connoisseur of staring at Stiles and pining for Stiles, even before he realized he was doing it. He grew self-conscious of it, of every time Stiles looked up and found him, looked across a crowd and found him, turned around and found him, expecting him to be there. Stiles lifted his gaze and smiled absently at Derek now, only it was sharply averted, both of them uneasy at Jackson’s attention.
Jackson managed to tackle Derek the one time, when the pack was play-fighting in the yard. He stood over him, heaving and trying to smirk, his face ugly and maniacal from Derek’s angle. Derek felt scared for the first time in a long time, since that fight he had with Stiles when they were fourteen and stupid. He wasn’t afraid of what Jackson could do to him, but of what they had done to Jackson.
Jackson’s face snapped back, his nose stopped flaring and blue bled out of his eyes.
“What’s happening to me,” Jackson asked.
***
“I told you so,” Stiles said, pacing, a nervous wreck. “And I’m going to tell you that I told you so a hundred times more because you need it. I told you so, I told you so—“
“Alright,” Mom said mildly.
“The difference between Jackson and Scott is that we can trust Scott,” Stiles said. “Now Jackson resents us. There’s no telling what he’ll do.”
“But he asked for the bite,” Scott said, feeble and hopeless.
If Jackson hadn’t asked, if they’d listened to Stiles, if Jackson hadn’t been prying. If they weren’t werewolves.
But they couldn’t stop being who they were, Stiles couldn’t stop being the closest thing to werewolf-nip, and Derek could tell Jackson that it would wear off, after a while, but that would be a lie because Derek had never stopped loving Stiles since Derek laid his eyes on him. Being with Stiles was close to being drugged—an altered state. He couldn’t think straight near Stiles, he was at his simultaneous best and worst in those moments, at his calmest, lulled into contentment by Stiles’ presence, at his most out of control, driven crazy by Stiles’ scent.
The difference between Derek and Jackson was Stiles happened to love Derek back.
***
They never got around to deciding what to do with the Jackson situation, not until Jackson announced he was moving to London and washing his hands of them, and no one said anything because they wanted to wash their hands of him, too. Jackson kept looking at Stiles all the while he was making his announcement, practically begging Stiles to tell him to stay. Stiles wasn’t looking back. All Stiles had eyes for was Derek.
The day Jackson left for good he went to the mansion and pulled Stiles into a room, locking the door behind them. Jackson wasn’t going to try anything in a house full of werewolves, but Derek couldn’t stop eavesdropping shamelessly. Everyone else wasn’t any better. The house went quiet except for a couple of Cora’s rapid what’s and why’s.
The first thing Jackson said almost had Derek breaking down the door.
Jackson said, “Kiss me.”
There was a long silence, then it was Jackson’s voice again, this time ragged and soft, “Once, before I go.”
Derek couldn’t tell if Jackson and Stiles were standing far apart or close together, so his imagination ran traitorously rampant. Maybe Jackson was holding Stiles’ elbow and leaned in to kiss him the way he kissed girls, cheerleaders and Lydia Martin, behind the benches. Maybe Jackson pulled Stiles in by his collar and kissed him desperately, or maybe it was one of those quick, tender kisses that turned slow and lingering, and maybe Stiles kissed back, chased after Jackson’s mouth sloppily. Because however they were kissing, they were definitely kissing. There were wet, delicate noises filtering through the door and reverberating through the house, and they were kissing, but it mattered what kind of kiss it was.
Derek thought, was that hitched breath Jackson’s or Stiles’? It didn’t sound like Stiles, but maybe with different boys, Stiles made different noises. Maybe it as a two-way connection between emissary and werewolf, and maybe Stiles did owe Jackson something, when he saved his life.
Jackson said, “Go to London with me,” and Derek did break down the door, then.
A loud crash, his mother’s disproving call of his name, and Jackson standing as a barrier in front of Stiles, an arm outstretched.
“They need you,” Jackson shouted. “They’ll never let you go, see?”
“Don’t be a hypocrite,” Derek said. “You hated Stiles, remember? You spat in his food and always tried to break his leg in the field. Stiles, if you go with him—“
“I’m not,” Stiles said.
“—he’ll just—“
“What about you?” Jackson snarled. “Stiles is a loser. You’re a jock. Let’s face it, if you weren’t a werewolf you would never have looked at him twice. Did you ever choose him or was it decided for you?”
“Jackson,” Stiles said, low and dangerous before Derek can shout back, “Shut your mouth about things you don’t know shit about.”
“Is that right,” Jackson turned around, facing down Stiles. “You don’t know what it’s like for us. You’re never going to. Ten and twenty and fifty years from now you’re going to be wondering if Derek Hale really loved you or if you kept him from his true love. What was that girl’s name—“
Stiles’ face was open and horrified. It got worse and worse with each word out of Jackson’s mouth. Derek wanted to punch Jackson, pummel him into the ground, he would, if he weren’t rooted to the spot, too.
“Paige,” Jackson was still talking, venomous. “The whole school thought they made a really good pair right up until Derek broke up with her two weeks into it. You know why people say you two make no sense together? It’s because you don’t.”
“Jackson,” Mom said, from behind Derek. “Mr. Whittemore, that’s enough.” But she didn’t say it in her Alpha voice, so Jackson continued.
“See?” he said. “Your mom just wanted you two to seal the deal and keep the powerful emissary in the family. Maybe she doesn’t even do it consciously. Maybe it’s just werewolf instinct again.”
“Miss Carpenter is waiting for you to check in with her pack in London,” Mom said, no indication that she had heard him. She stood aside and Derek, taking cue from her, moved himself out of the way too. They were showing Jackson the door.
***
The first time Derek met Stiles, he remembered, it was like meeting his destiny. You didn’t choose your destiny, you found it and you fought it and you surrendered to it. Derek had surrendered because it’d been easy, only it had not been, not really, because Stiles had never been easy. Stiles had been stubborn and smug and an asshole and Derek didn’t remember ever choosing because he chose Stiles every day.
When he informed Stiles of this, Stiles just looked sad.
“It just means you don’t like me,” Stiles explained patiently. “You don’t technically have consent while you’re under the influence.”
“I do like you,” Derek said. “You can’t tell me how I feel.”
“Apparently I can make you feel like you love me even if you don’t.”
“I like,” Derek began, and stopped abruptly. He liked that Stiles always tried to do the right thing. He liked that Stiles thought he knew better than everyone else and how often that proved to be the case. He liked most things about Stiles and the things he didn’t he could forgive, but maybe, maybe his preferences have been molded around this boy he met when he was eight and when he was eager to please, hungry for something he couldn’t even identify.
“I like being near you,” he settled.
“That’s my point,” Stiles became even more miserable. “There’s probably some kind of sick supernatural system that’s rewarding you for being near me.”
“Then maybe that’s what matters.”
“Your free will doesn’t matter?”
Derek shook his head. “Maybe there’s no free will in this. Maybe there never has been.”
“It matters to me,” Stiles broke away from Derek. “It makes me feel dirty, so it matters to me.”
“You didn’t,” Derek moved toward the door, blocking the exit, because Stiles’ life philosophy was running away and Derek couldn’t let him, this time. “You didn’t force me.”
Stiles’ voice cracked. “I did.”
“Shut up,” Derek growled. “Shut up. It was a happy memory for me. You confessing to me is one of the happiest memories I’ve ever had. Don’t fuck with it, I swear to God, if you don’t stop this right now—“
“Derek, Stiles,” Mom’s voice came from down stairs. “Your shit can wait. We have trouble.”
***
When they were maybe twelve they had a horrible fight and it had been the worst Derek had felt about himself. They weren’t even screaming, which was where those fights tended to lead—it was just quiet and final and they didn’t say the things that they felt, they said things they thought would hurt the other the most.
For once it had been almost entirely Derek’s fault. Even now Derek wanted to go back in time and strangle his younger self for being so stupid and every time he and Stiles fought after that, he was afraid of Stiles bringing that time up, or Stiles remembering how shitty Derek was and leaving him anyway. Stiles never did either, to the point that no one else in his family even knew that Derek told the jocks about Stiles and Scott’s secret spot they escaped to every lunch break. It was their short reprieve from the casually cruel streaks of boys who didn’t know anything better and who were probably beat up by their fathers, and Stiles told Derek once, it was their only bright spot in the day and Derek thought, what about me. What did it mean that Derek wasn’t Stiles’ bright spot?
The jocks dumped four cans of Pepsi all over Stiles and Scott’s place, made it sticky and smelly and gross. Stiles had heard him laughing about it with the lacrosse team, after.
It killed Derek that that might have been what started Stiles’ paranoia with their relationship being an unequal one, which wasn’t so much paranoia as reasonable concern because it was goddamn justified. It was one of the staples of their relationship: Derek would be disgustingly and irrevocably in love with Stiles, and Stiles would never completely trust him.
Stiles probably thought that the Jackson fight was inevitable.
Only it wasn’t a fight. If they were in the fight they could just go through a life threatening experience and selectively forget all about the bad blood when it ended, too grateful and exhilarated to stay mad for long. This wasn’t a blow to their relationship—it was a careless wave to a sandcastle—and after it would be a mirage in the desert, they would wonder which part was a trick nature played on them, and which part was a lie they told themselves.
***
Scott was missing.
They heard Scott before they found him.
The first thing they taught Scott was to call for help. A text message, preferably; howling, if the situation called for it; and as a last resort, Scott could hurt himself, so badly that the pack would feel as if one of their own limbs was cut open and falling apart. It was the last resort because it made wolves easy to trap.
Laura scouted it out first; she was point, and even if she couldn’t be trusted to tie her own shoes she could be trusted to make good decisions on her feet. When she came back, she said, incredulously, “It’s just one girl,” and, “Scott’s not healing because she doesn’t even know he’s a werewolf. I think,” Laura said slowly, sadly, “I think she’s Jackson’s girlfriend.”
“Was,” Stiles said.
Mom, Derek, and Laura charged in the Martin residence and they went carefully, room by room and plastering themselves to the walls because Lydia Martin was a human girl who caught a werewolf. Her voice was impatient and dangerous when they heard it, and she was a human, but she was really obviously an alpha.
She said, “You did something to him. He was following you and suddenly he was your friend. He was spending a lot of time at the Hales and suddenly he was in the hospital for jumping in front of a bus, and now he says he’s moving away, but he’s not really moving, is he?”
Scott gasped wetly.
“He’s running,” she hissed. “His family is the most powerful in Beacon Hills and he’s running, McCall. He found out something about you, didn’t he? What was it? What was it that he couldn’t tell me? What was it that took him from me?”
And God, they did take him, didn’t they, because when they turned Jackson they took the human Jackson away from his family and friends, and they didn’t know if he could handle it, didn’t even know if he would survive the bite. They didn’t realize it would turn out to be such an unnavigable mess.
“I’m sorry,” Scott said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you.”
“Why? Why can’t you tell me?”
“I,” Scott began, and stopped.
Her voice became softer. “What is it, Scott? Just give me something to go on. Please.”
“I can’t,” Scott said, anguished. “Stiles told me that smart people could get anything out of me if they got me talking. I can’t. I—“
They burst in. Laura knocked Lydia Martin unconscious.
***
BHHS was having unusually high injury rates, this school year.
Lydia Martin recovered at the hospital the next day and she gave Derek and Scott a suspicious look when they came in with the rest of the sophomores but in the end, she said nothing.
Lydia had chosen to forget, when given the choice between equally shitty options and it was still the kindest thing they could have allowed her, the illusion of control. She could either forget or remember and be bound to them and there was no doubt that she was smarter than Jackson Whittemore, considering she took the path of least resistance. They watched her now, imperiously accepting gifts and well-wishes from her unlikely throne.
Before Derek and Stiles left, hiding in shame in the throng of people, she called them back, scrupulously nonchalant. Derek raised an eyebrow at Stiles. It said, did you mess up your potion again. Stiles gave him a back freaked out face, oh my God, do you think she told someone.
“You’re never allowed to ask me about this again,” she said. “I have no idea why I’m telling you this stuff either, other than,” Derek breathed relief, because she wasn’t telling them what they were afraid of, but he couldn’t help but feel what she was trying to tell them was more life-changing than that. “Other than I thought you two needed to get your heads out of your ass.”
Stiles smiled at her. “What else is new?”
Derek was hit with the memory of that time Stiles trailed Lydia around school, puppy crush in tow, and Stiles, Derek thought, could be normal with Lydia. They could love each other on equal terms because they had no sinister supernatural forces telling them now kiss.
“Shut it,” Lydia said. “Never ask me about this again, are we clear?”
“Okay,” Derek said.
“Did you know how Jackson and I got together?”
It was too terrifyingly on point to be random.
“You were blackmailed into it,” Stiles hedged, while Derek was still trying to figure out what she wanted them to say.
“No,” she scowled. “The short of it is he was horny and I was horny.”
“How romantic—“
“I love him.”
Derek looked over at Stiles and saw the same guilt on his face. Stiles didn’t want Jackson’s affection but he couldn’t help but feel he stole it.
“Complicated biological processes made us sexually attracted to each other,” she said. “A fucked up sociological heritage made us king and queen bee. We didn’t have any choice, being attracted to each other and ending up together, and yet I love him.”
Derek was jolted out of his guilt. Lydia Martin was really the smartest person in this corner of the world.
“And yet you love him,” he repeated.
“We never had a choice in the first place,” she said. “And yet I love him.”
Lydia was talking to Stiles now. She had heard the story from them, the day before, and she decided she didn’t want to remember it but she must have been supernatural herself, or the strength of her exasperation with them was.
“No one has any choice and love is not sacred. It only matters that we were happy,” she told Stiles. “Get you head out of your self-obsessed ass. It’s like that with everyone.”
Stiles was frowning. Derek took his hand. “It doesn’t matter how it began.”
“I—“ Stiles said.
“I love you,” Derek said.
Stiles thought about it, an uncertain smile on his lips as he locked eyes with Derek. “I don’t know, I don’t really understand it yet. Maybe love is a learned behavior, and maybe that’s romantic too, I don’t know. I just—“
Derek took mercy on him. “Would you stop being so damn flighty now?”
Stiles narrowed his eyes and squeezed Derek’s hand hard. “It’s called not taking you for granted.”
“It’s really not,” Derek said, and there they were, and there it was, what they nearly lost back again and what they had, maybe it wasn’t world-ending anymore but it was stronger, now that they knew how fragile it really was.
They left Lydia morphine happy and power happy, which sounded scary but was actually terrifying. Several of her suitors glared at them as they made it outside; they thought Derek and Stiles’d offered her a threesome.
“They’re resentful because it would work,” Stiles said. Resentfully. “You could have anyone you wanted.”
“They’re resentful because you and Lydia are different from the rest of us,” Derek corrected. “You’re both too smart.”
And too otherworldly, he thought.
“I’m not,” Stiles blushed. “I’m a homey fishwife who sometimes curses innocent young werewolves.”
“That’s not all you are,” Derek growled. “Look, would you just drop—We’ve just been over this and I, I can’t—“
“This is me saying it’s your last chance,” Stiles stopped and ran his palm up Derek’s chest and kissed him, right there in the sickly bright hallway of the hospital and if he meant it as a parting gesture, it was no good at all.
“Promise me,” Derek said, with one hand cupping the back of Stiles’ neck, when he finally deigned to let Stiles put two inches of air between the spaces of their mouths, “promise me you’ll fight to keep me.”
Stiles groaned, wide, wet eyes looking helplessly back and so pretty it hurt. “How would I know when to let you go?’
“Fight for me,” Derek said, “for so long as you’d keep me.”
Derek leaned back into Stiles’ mouth then, drank him in and drank in the rest of his words, too. They might have been “I can do that,” or a string of expletives, or “Oh, Derek,” but they were willing and sweet and warm and can’t have been anything but the most ardent of affections.
Twenty
The most ridiculous offer Stiles’d ever received—as Stiles delighted in telling Derek—was when the Botticelli pack drove two hundred cattle and ten maidens up to Northern California and the whole Preserve had smelled of dung for months after. The shadiest one was a pack who offered him early admission to Stanford, which Stiles politely declined on the basis that he could make it happen using his own magic anyway.
“Like, my magic magic, not my academic magic,” Stiles grimaced. “The thing with the Nemeton made my grades that last senior year really abysmal.”
Derek groaned, thunking his head on the bars. “When are you going to stop making me apologize for that?”
“Oh,” Stiles squeezed Derek’s hand, “I didn’t mean—“
“You know I’m always going to feel guilty—“
“Is that taboo now? Are we not going to be able to—“
“Stiles! Derek!” John yelled from his desk. When they turned to look at him, he wore an expression of exquisite pain. “If Stiles is going to stay here would you two please make this less awkward for me? Please?”
“Well,” Stiles glared mutinously. “This wouldn’t have happened if someone didn’t hire an overexcited new deputy.”
Derek, as the first arrest of said deputy, elbowed Stiles and said hastily, “No, sir, he didn’t mean that. It was my fault, sir, completely. I was too careless and I should have known better. That succubus, I should’ve—“
“No, son,” John scratched his head. “We let you boys get complacent with the exceptions we keep making for you, and you were only trying to do the right thing. It’s not your fault,” he conceded, “any of you.”
Stiles grinned triumphantly. “That’s what I—“
“Shut up, Stiles,” Derek and John said together. Derek smiled involuntarily, ducking his head even though Stiles had his back against him and couldn’t see it anyway.
It was nice. It was an absurdly positive first time experience with the criminal justice system, Derek thought, because he was, at the time of the arrest, temporarily too mortified to say much of anything in his own defense, but Stiles had turned up and made a scene at the station on Derek’s behalf, and when that inevitably didn’t accomplish anything, marched into the holding area and located Derek’s hand through the cell bars. Held it tightly and defiantly. Even while Derek hid his face behind Stiles’ chest, ever more mortified but so, so happy.
They had settled into a more comfortable position since, their backs both pressed against the bars so Stiles could face outside and properly chastise the new deputy, who seemed to have been drafting a transfer request in his head the entire diatribe. Derek nudged Stiles once in a while, rattling the bars, if Stiles happened to squish his fingers too hard making a passionate point about past record and what if Derek wasn’t able to leave the country now, what if they wanted to honeymoon in Spain or spend their golden anniversary in Thailand, then where would they be.