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1.
He knows what Stiles' bedhead looks like.
It's dumb that this should bother him. It's dumb that he catches himself thinking about what it would feel like to run his hands over Stiles' warm, sleep-muddled head while he's standing in line at the check out at the grocery store. It's dumb that he lays awake at night, staring at his high ceilings and willing himself not to roll over because he knows he won't see what he wants to, won't see Stiles smiling sleepily on the pillow next to him, hair sticking up in every direction, the moonlight through the loft's enormous window outlining him.
It’s dumb, but Stiles fell asleep on Lydia’s couch during a pack meeting, and Derek can’t get that image out of his head, of Stiles sitting up with his shirt rumpled and his face creased from the cushion, looking like something soft, something Derek could sink into.
2.
Stiles is gone a week the first time Derek realizes he misses him like he thinks he would miss breathing.
He’s gone to visit Stanford with Scott, and Derek knows logically that it’s only September and he’s got nine months until graduation in the spring, but he’s pouring orange juice one morning with a hollow sort of ache in his chest, and he knows that his wolf already thinks Stiles is gone.
Derek has gotten used to having that kid in his space. Sprawled out on his couch, blabbering on to Isaac about whatever tv show, bleeding on his newly-installed kitchen counter, sitting folded like a pretzel with all those ungainly limbs in the passenger seat of his Camaro, yelling at him over how best to attack the rabid group of redcaps invading their territory, always in Derek’s periphery right up until now, now when his whole den smells like Stiles, feels like Stiles.
Stiles saved him from drowning two years ago, held Derek up and kept him alive and swam for the both of them, and -
He never stopped.
3.
Derek has heard his incoherent babblings. He’s held Stiles’ hand to mask the fact that he has a finger on his pulsepoint at breakneck speeds in the Jeep on the way to Deaton's, Stiles’ eyes fading and his lips moving on autopilot, “I shoulda told him, before I had to go, shoulda told him I loved him, will you tell him for me - “
4.
He trusts Stiles, more than he’s ever trusted anyone but his own alpha.
It’s just not that his wolf trusts him, it’s that Derek trusts him, he can rest the lives of the entire pack on Stiles’ shoulders and know that they’ll come out alright, he’s done it more than once, he can go to Stiles for help and Stiles will open his den to him and draw him into it and pull out his laptop and Lydia’s archaic Latin dictionary, a stack of looseleaf paper in nine different color pens, and the sounds of the keyboard will lull Derek asleep sitting against Stiles’ headboard, and they’ll be fine.
He’s felt Stiles’ fingers inside him, squeezing arteries together through blood and wolfsbane, he’s gasped and grasped at Stiles’ wrists and left crimson handprints, felt his heart stop and restart again with an imprint of Stiles’ fingers pressed into the muscle.
5.
They drive all night, once, up to Seattle to meet a shaman who knew how to deal with Basilisk poisoning.
Stiles sings the wrong lyrics to Beyoncé until Derek changes the channel, then pouts until he catches Derek humming along to some godawful nineties rap he knows by heart, which brightens his mood right up.
He falls asleep somewhere around one a.m. and Portland, Oregon, his face pressed open-mouthed up against the window, one hand crunched up against his side, the other unfurled on the armrest between them. The highway is dark, empty, and lonely, and the National is crooning over the radio, and Derek lets himself skim his fingers over Stiles’ palm, winds their hands together for the space of a breath before he jerks away, back to grasp the steering wheel.
Stiles shocks awake, and Derek, like a coward, says, “Your turn to drive.”
6.
The thing is, Stiles deserves better than Derek.
Stiles deserves Stanford and a masters in Medieval Literature and a best friend like Lydia Martin, he deserves the best the world has to offer, not a grizzled wolf chewed up and spit out by the world and left for anger and hatred. He deserves everything, anything, and if Derek can’t be the one to give it to him, he’s sure as hell not going to be the one to take it from him.
7.
“You’re my alpha,” Stiles slurs. “You’re our alpha, and we’re your pack, I’m your pack, and that’s all that matters, right?”
Granted, Stiles is trying to talk him into letting him crash off what’s going to turn into a nasty hangover on Derek’s couch, but. It should be all that matters, and it feels like all that matters. Derek can smell the party on him, can smell other sweaty teenage bodies and weed and vodka, and his wolf wants to draw its mate inside and -
“No,” Derek says, sharply. “I’ll give you a ride back to your place.”
Derek hesitates before he gets out of the Camaro. Stiles catches the look on his face, and says, “M’ dad’s still at work. You’re fine.”
He helps Stiles to the front door, Stiles loose against his side, the corner of his mouth pressing into Derek’s collar, his hair tickling the underside of Derek’s jaw, and - Derek could follow him inside. Could fall into bed with him, curl up around him, sleep soundly with the scent of Stiles all around him, be there in the morning to press a washcloth to Stiles’ forehead and murmur assurances into the crown of his head, but -
His wolf growls mate, and he leaves Stiles fumbling with a key at the front door.
8.
Stiles knows Derek likes herbal tea, and he thinks that it’s a ridiculous thing to like, but he brings it to him anyways. Derek has never been in so deep in his life.
9.
He figures someday Stiles will get hurt because of him. He’ll be kidnapped, or tortured, or shot or bitten or stabbed or magicked or brainwashed or beaten or burned, and it will be because of Derek, because Derek was never strong enough to keep Stiles away. Derek’s heart will be ripped out and twisted apart and stomped on and drowned and rolled in the dirt and he’ll never forgive himself if anything happens to Stiles, never in a million lifetimes, a million reincarnations of one man in love with Stiles Stilinski -
It all happens, eventually. Some of it more than once, only Derek can be grateful that the only time he ever has to smell his mate’s burning flesh is when he’s too fast taking the muffins out of the oven.
What he isn’t expecting, is for Stiles to save him, just as often. For Stiles to look at Derek and think, that’s something worth keeping alive, for Stiles to go crashing through the woods, through the desert, through the ocean on one very memerable occasion, with the steady rage of the pack behind him, just to drag Derek back home by the scruff, the ear, the seat of his pants. It’s staggering. He wishes he’d built up his foundations better, but no part of him was ever that sturdy before Stiles came along, anyways.
10.
“I’m not good enough,” Stiles says quietly, and he’s crying. Derek wishes he knew what to do, what he could do without breaching the safe perimeter of space between them. “I can’t bring her back, Der, and Scott - “
“No one’s good enough,” Derek says. “I know that, because you’re the best there is, Stiles. No one expects you to be able to bring people back from the dead. Scott’s an idiot.”
Stiles slumps back against the door to his bedroom. “What am I even worth, then, if I can’t even protect you guys?” His eyes are on the floor, but Derek steps forward, and his rubbed-red gaze lifts to Derek’s face.
Derek takes a deep breath, steadying. “You’re worth everything,” he says, earnest like Stiles will believe him, like it will matter. “I couldn’t do this without you. You’re everything, Stiles.”
Stiles kisses him, hands fisted in Derek’s henley pulling down and in, and Derek lets him. Lets himself open his mouth to him, has no control over how he steps forward to back Stiles up against the door, flush and warm against his body, because it’s March, and who can it hurt but Derek anyways.
11.
It will hurt.
Stiles will leave. Stiles will forget about Derek, he’ll find people smart enough for him, fun enough for him, unsullied and young and optimistic, people who don’t visually check pedestrians for weapons, check buildings for exits, people who have normal lives and normal families and normal friends and don’t have to howl at the moon every month until they forget what it’s like to be human.
12.
He says it because he knows he’s dying.
Scott is holding Derek’s guts in with one hand and pointing a gun at the door with the other, Stiles is flipping frantically through an ancient manuscript, there are fae screeching and cackling outside the door, circling the hallowed den ground, Kira is unconscious on the kitchen table, and Derek can see red at the edges of his vision.
“Stiles,” he groans from the floor.
Stiles looks over his shoulder at him, his eyes watery, mouth pressed into a thin defiant line. “No, Derek.”
Derek wanted to see him grow old. He wanted to be there next to him, he wanted to hold his hand, and his heart, and love him and protect him and breathe the air in his lungs, and he was almost ready to let himself have that responsibility. “Stiles,” he says. “I love you.”
13.
Stiles saves him, and takes him home, and when Derek is semi-conscious, healing slowly, he leans over him, face swimming like a mirage, and murmurs, “I always loved you, dumbass. Don’t you ever leave.”
14.
Stiles grins a dopey, lopsided smile, half of his face obscured by Derek’s pillow, and Derek doesn’t have to stop himself from rolling into him to press his mouth to Stiles’ hairline, to sink his fingers into the unruly mess of his bedhead and breathe him in. Stiles melts into him, and the hollow spot in Derek’s chest is full of moon light, calming and driving and powerful, ebb and flow like the gentle patter of Stiles’ heartbeat against his chest, the soft hum Stiles lets out as Derek rubs a hand up his back.
“You’re my mate,” he says, into Stiles’ skin. “We’re mates.”
He feels Stiles’ face press down into the junction of his neck and shoulder, feels Stiles tangle his ankles in Derek’s, in the sheets that smell like both of them. “What else is new,” he mumbles, sleepily.
Derek smiles.