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The waves of heat that rose off the road nearly rivaled the amount of smoke billowing out from under the hood of his Jeep. Frowning down at his signaless cell phone, Stiles kicked the front driver’s side tire. Cursing, he grabbed his foot and started hopping around. The words flowing out of his mouth grew progressively more creative until the throbbing in his toes stopped. He hesitantly put the foot back down, relieved when it only ached a little bit. At least he hadn’t broken his toes—this time.
Looking to the left and the right, Stiles debated which direction to head. The last town he’d passed had been a good twenty minutes earlier, and he’d been going at a pretty good clip, so he didn’t think he’d reach help anytime soon. He might get a signal on his phone, though. Sighing and running an arm over his forehead to wipe away the sweat dripping into his eyes, he decided to take his chances continuing in the direction he’d been driving.
Thankfully, he had a few bottles of relatively cold water in his Jeep, so he grabbed them. Grabbing his backpack, he dumped out the books and school supplies and replaced them with water bottles. Locking up his Jeep, he took a fortifying breath, choking on the heat that filled his lungs for a moment before taking his first step.
He’d been walking for ten minutes without any signs of life other than a large farmhouse in the distance that didn’t seem to be getting any closer no matter how long he walked towards it. Settling onto the side of the road to rest under the minimal shade of a small tree, he sipped at his water. He fought the urge to chug the bottle, not wanting to run out too soon if he ended up walking for days.
Groaning, he dropped his head back against the trunk of the tree, the bark hot against his scalp, but he couldn’t even muster the energy to move. The heat weighed him down, pulling him towards slumber. He fought to open his eyes but gave up and allowed himself to slip into darkness.
A flash of cold yanked Stiles from his nightmare-filled sleep. Flailing and sputtering, he had a moment of panic, thinking he was drowning. His head knocking back against the tree reminded him that he was actually in the middle of nowhere. The sweltering heat evaporated the cold from his skin and clothes as he tried to wrap his mind around the source of the water.
A low chuckle drew his attention, and he followed the sound to find what could only be a heat-induced hallucination. Dark hair weighed down by sweat pressed to tanned skin above a pair of mirrored aviators. The man grinned, revealing bunny teeth that did not belong on a man with muscles like those straining where he crossed his arms over his chest, empty water bottle clutched in one hand. Behind the hallucination was the most beautiful Harley Stiles had ever laid eyes on, completely blacked out except for a silver wolf howling at the moon on the gas tank. Z bars on the front and dual exhaust on the back had Stiles drooling. He tried scrambling to his feet, but his limbs weren’t cooperating, and he collapsed back to the ground.
Shaking his head, the stranger reached down and firmly gripped Stiles’ elbow and yanked him to his feet. “At least you're not dead,” he said in a voice that did not match the visage. “What are you doing sitting around in this heat?”
Stiles stared up at him, the words not quite making sense to his baked brain. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, but nothing came out. He tried to grab for his backpack and the water inside of it, but the man’s grip on his arm made that impossible.
The man looked up and down the road. “I don’t see a vehicle,” he commented, lips turning down into an even bigger frown, and if Stiles had been in control of his limbs, he would have reached up and tried to push up the corners with his fingers. “How long have you been out here?” Stiles shrugged and then felt himself turn green as he turned and lost what little food he’d eaten before hitting the road. “Yeah, that ain’t good.”
The guy started tugging on Stiles’ arm, dipping to pick up his backpack as he did so. Alarm bells went off in Stiles’ head, but he didn’t have the energy or the coordination to fight off his kidnapper. Even if the guy was hot, he didn’t want to die or live out his days as a sex slave. He glanced at the guy through heavy eyelids. As he slipped into darkness again, he thought he might have to reconsider the second idea.
The first thing Stiles became aware of was the coolness of the air around him. The second was that he was only wearing his boxers. If his head hadn’t felt like a marching band in cleats was practicing the high step, he would have shot up straight and begun cataloging his surroundings. Instead, he blinked against the brightness of the overhead light and groaned.
“Thank goodness,” a voice said, and Stiles felt cool dampness on his forehead. Barely lifting his lids, he peeked through his lashes to spot his hallucination dressed now in a white tank top that had seen better days and a severe frown on his face. “What kind of idiot goes wandering around in the sweltering heat?”
“This kind of idiot,” Stiles said, or at least that’s what he tried to say. Instead, he croaked out something that appeared to be more gibberish than English, and the guy frowned harder.
The amount of concern on the guy’s face hurt Stiles more than the marching band behind his eyes. Desperately, Stiles let out another string of gibberish. Frustrated, he tried to slow down, but he still just gave a croak. He closed his eyes again and tried to slow his breathing, although he could feel panic beginning beneath his breastbone.
“¿Hablas español?” The guys asked. Stiles cracked his eyes and tried to form a response. When nothing came to him, he shook his head briefly, cursing the way it increased the already screaming pain in his head. The guy continued speaking in different languages. "Parlez-vous français? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Parli Italiano?”
Stiles' frustration grew with each question. He knew he spoke English; he just couldn’t speak anything at that moment. Each head shake caused more pain, and by the time the man asked a question he recognized, he felt like he was crying, but his face remained dry. “Czy mówisz po polsku?”
Stiles opened his eyes at the question, the light hurting a little bit less. The man gave out a relieved breath and began to speak in rapid Polish. Stiles struggled to follow along, thankful for his grandmother insisting he learned Polish. He did catch that the guy’s name was Derek.
“Stiles,” he managed to gravel out, and the man looked confused. Lifting his hand, Stiles hit himself in the chest and repeated his name.
“To nie jest imię,” he said. That’s not a name.
“Mieczyslaw,” he mumbled and started coughing. Derek passed a water bottle to him, which Stiles tried to gulp, but Derek stopped him.
Derek held the bottle and encouraged Stiles in Polish to slow down while muttering in English about how it was just his luck that he met a cute guy when he was dying in Derek’s front yard. Stiles’ eyes widened, and he wanted to ask if Derek had looked in the mirror when the cool water finally reached his stomach, and it began cramping.
He moaned, curling up on himself and dropping the bottle. The guy cursed and had a phone in his hand the next moment, shouting out instructions to who must have been a 911 dispatcher. Stiles wondered why he hadn’t tried calling before that moment when his stomach lurched, and the water made a reappearance.
Derek sat on the edge of the bed that Stiles hadn’t just thrown up, the phone still pressed to his ear. He alternated between English and Polish, depending on who he was speaking to. Stiles’ head began spinning and mixing up the languages until Derek sounded like he was the one speaking gibberish. Taking as deep a breath as he could, Stiles managed to wiggle his fingers and lifted his hand.
Derek stared at him as Stiles moved his hand to his mouth, snapping it shut against his lips. ‘Shut up’ in sign language, something he’d seen his friend Marcus do on many occasions. Derek appeared to know a lot of spoken languages; maybe he knew this one as well.
“Shit, I think he’s deaf,” Derek said into the phone, eyes wide. Stiles snapped his hand shut again in the sign for “no” and let out a breath of frustration. “Not deaf, but can’t seem to speak.” He looked at Stiles again. “You speak English!” Stiles signed “yes” and would have laughed at the look of horror on Derek’s face if his stomach didn’t twist painfully. “Please hurry,” he said into the phone as Stiles lost consciousness again.
The light was different when Stiles opened his eyes again, brighter and starker and a lot more painful. He squeezed his eyes shut with a whimper. A hand ran over his forehead, and he heard a voice call his name, his real name. Blinking open the eye closest to the voice, Derek’s concerned face swam into focus.
“Hey,” Derek said gently.
“Hi,” Stiles said, his voice still cracked, but the word was intelligible. “Where am I?” he mumbled. “Heaven?”
Derek snorted. “Do I look like an angel?” Stiles thought he did but didn’t think Derek would appreciate a lame attempt at flirtation. “You’re at Sunset Memorial Hospital,” he continued. “I found your wallet and phone in your backpack and called your dad. He should be here in a couple of hours.”
Stiles’ brow furrowed. His dad was at a convention in New York, a lot more than a couple of hours away. “How long…” He trailed off and started coughing. Derek moved to set the head of the bed up a bit higher and held up a foam cup with a straw.
“Slowly,” he ordered and followed with, “ Powoli. ” Stiles wanted to glare at him, but he was enjoying the cool water too much to bother.
As he settled back against the pillows, he took stock of his body. He felt terrible but better than he had the last time he’d woken up. Glancing down, he groaned when he spotted the IV going into his arm. His heart skipped a beat, and his breathing increased. Derek looked at the monitor and then at Stiles.
Reaching out, he took Stiles by the chin and turned his head away from the IV so that Stiles was looking into Derek’s eyes. The swirl of color was mesmerizing, and Stiles found himself humming quietly under his breath. “You’re pretty,” he breathed out, flushing that those were the first coherent words he’d managed in Derek’s presence.
The tips of Derek’s ears burned red when a nurse chose that moment to walk into the room and overheard the declaration. “It’s so nice to see he can still embarrass you after all this time,” she cooed as she moved to check Stiles’ vitals. “It’s also good to see you awake.” Stiles’ brow furrowed again, and he looked to Derek, who shook his head minutely. “How are you feeling?”
“Confused,” Stiles said.
“That’s normal for heat exhaustion bordering on heatstroke,” she said. “Your handsome young man said you were struggling with speech when he called 911.”
Stiles’ jaw dropped, and he looked at Derek, his ‘handsome young man,’ apparently. “Uh...wha...who…”
The nurse patted his arm, mouth turned down in a soft smile. “Relax, sweetie. It’ll all come back in time.” She picked up the cup and held the straw out to Stiles. “Now, take a few sips of water. You’ve gone through a few bags of saline, but it’s time for you to start getting some liquids orally.”
Stiles did as he was told, his eyes still locked on Derek. When the nurse turned her back to Derek, his fingers started to fly through the air. It took Stiles a moment after Derek repeated the motions for a third time to understand what he was being told, but he still struggled with the concept. I told them you were my fiancé.
Stiles choked on the sip of water he’d just taken, and the nurse pulled the cup away before rubbing over his back. “Okay, that’s enough for now,” she said. “I’ll go let the doctor know you’re awake.”
As soon as the door closed behind the nurse, Stiles turned his attention back to Derek. “Fiancé?” he hissed out.
“They wouldn’t let me see you or know how you were doing!” he said, keeping his voice low and glancing over his shoulder towards the door.
“You don’t know me,” Stiles said, the words slowly coming as the thoughts formed in his head. The more he did, the clearer his head became, but the situation was beyond ordinary. He honestly began to question if he’d died, and this really was heaven. He glanced down at the IV again. Or hell. “How long have I been out?”
“Two days,” Derek said, and Stiles gasped. “When the paramedics got to my house, they looked so worried that I couldn’t just let them take you away. Especially since your dad was struggling to get a flight out and ended up renting a car.”
Stiles dropped his head against the pillows with a groan. “So, my name’s Derek,” he said after a few minutes of silence. “I found you under a tree in front of my family’s farm. It took a bottle of water to the face to wake you. I took you inside, but then things got weird.”
The memories were coming back distantly like Stiles had seen them on a television show rather than lived through them himself. “You speak a lot of languages for a farm boy,” he said.
“I speak seven fluently and get by with a few others,” Derek explained. “I had a lot of time in the fields to listen to rosetta stone tapes.”
“And the sign language?” Stiles asked, twisting his hands in his lap, finding the conversation stilted but still comfortable between the two of them.
“I have a cousin who’s deaf. Most of my family learned.” Stiles nodded. “You?”
“My friend Marcus is deaf. I’m not fluent, but I can get by in most situations,” Stiles said. “And my grandmother insisted I learned Polish and refused to speak to me in English.”
“Should be thankful for that, I suppose. Although smarter would be to have taught you how to avoid heatstroke,” Derek said, smiling when Stiles gave an offended sound.
He started to say something else, but the nurse returned with a doctor. “It’s good to see you awake,” the doctor said.
When the doctor and nurse left several minutes later, letting Stiles know they’d be keeping him overnight and on IV fluids until his electrolyte levels had returned to a comfortable level. Stiles frowned, realizing that meant they’d taken his blood while he’d been unconscious and planned to do it again. The nausea from earlier returned, and he asked Derek to lay his bed back.
Derek’s concern would have been touching if he hadn’t felt so ill. “Get some more sleep,” Derek told him. Stiles blinked up at him, thinking about nodding and falling back to sleep before his muscles got the message.
When Stiles woke up again, his father sat at his bedside in the chair Derek had occupied. Stiles felt terrible when he saw the bags under his dad’s eyes, but before he could apologize, his dad pulled him into a gentle hug. “Glad you’re alive, kid,” he said. “I never want to get a phone call like that again.”
“Ditto,” Stiles said, although it made him wonder how dire Derek had made the situation sound.
“I’ll do my best,” his father said, smiling as he pulled back and returned to his chair, keeping a hand on Stiles’ arm, occasionally squeezing as if assuring himself that Stiles was really there and alright. “Now, who is this Derek, and why did the nurse call him my future son-in-law.”
Stiles’ face heated up and his heart monitor went a little crazy for a moment. Stiles looked to the door expecting a medical team with a crash cart to come in at any second. It was then he really took in the fact that Derek wasn’t in the room any longer. “Where is he?”
“Your fiancé?” his father asked, clearly not intending to let the situation go until he got a satisfactory explanation. “He headed home for a shower. His number is on the table if you’d like him to come back.”
Stiles stared at the slip of paper, clearly torn out of the crossword puzzle book his father was holding. He wondered how that conversation had gone as he reached out to finger the edges.
“Do you want him to come back?” his father asked, and Stiles shrugged. “He seemed to be genuinely concerned about you.”
“Probably didn’t want me dying on his property,” Stiles mumbled.
His father studied him for a long minute before turning his attention back to the crossword puzzle book. “He had your Jeep towed to his friend’s garage,” he commented. “Said it might be a week before it’s repaired. That number is on the paper as well.”
Stiles leaned back against the bed, frowning. He knew he wasn’t quite back to complete health and that his brain being addled was a side effect of heat stroke, but he struggled to figure out what Derek could possibly want from him. He’d nearly died on his property, and he’d made sure he not only got medical attention but that his father was notified and that someone took care of his Jeep.
He drifted off to sleep while his mind whirled with information, and when he woke up, the sky outside the window was dark. He could hear thunder in the distance and felt a moment of relief that the storm would cut through the horrible heat. Looking around the room, he saw his father dozing in a recliner in the corner of the room. As he continued to look around, his eyes fell on the paper on the bedside table.
Reaching out, he picked it up, unfolding the paper, surprised when he saw several things scribbled in the blank spaces on the page. He spotted the two phone numbers that his father had mentioned, an email address and a website. Reaching for his phone, he smiled at the charging cord; someone had thought to make sure it was charged for him.
He ignored the number of texts waiting for him from his friends, who were probably worried that he hadn’t been in contact for a couple of days to open his web browser and type in the URL that Derek had left him. It brought up a page advertising Hale Farms, a small family farm that raised cattle and other livestock and several different crops. He saw that they sold homemade jams and other canned goods.
As he continued to explore the pages, he smiled at a photo of a family standing on the front porch of a large white farmhouse. As his eyes traced over the faces, his grin grew as his gaze fell onto Derek, standing near the back with his arm thrown around the shoulders of a woman close to his age and with enough similar features that Stiles could tell it had to be his sister.
Switching to the messaging app, Stiles sent off a text to the number that Derek had written for himself, hoping it was for a cell phone and not a landline. He checked the number against the one for the farm on the webpage, and they didn’t match, so he thought there was a good chance. He noticed that it was nearly three in the morning, and he should probably get some more sleep, but he wasn’t tired. He started to switch over to the book he’d been reading on his phone when he saw bubbles appear on the screen.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Derek sent to him. “Do you or your dad need anything?”
“I think we’re good,” Stiles texted back and then thought for a minute. “Did I wake you?”
“I live on a farm. I’ve got chores,” was the response, and Stiles would’ve facepalmed himself if he hadn’t worried about causing more damage to his already addled brain. “Would it be alright if I came to visit after?”
Stiles chewed his lip, glancing down at the phone and over at his sleeping father. He replied, “Tak.”
Stiles ended up staying in the hospital for a few days due to his electrolytes struggling to balance out to a satisfactory point for the physicians. Derek stopped by every day after chores, and everyone played along with the fiancé story. Stiles had overheard Derek explaining to one particularly flirty nurse the story behind how he’d proposed before coming into the room one day.
“What?” Derek asked once he’d entered and found Stiles and his father staring at him.
“I totally proposed,” Stiles said with a huff.
“Neither one of you proposed,” John pointed out. Stiles opened his mouth to argue, but his father continued talking. “I knocked your heads together and told you that if Stiles was moving across the country to live with you, there better be a ring on his finger. Speaking of which…” He looked pointedly at Stiles’ bare hand.
“You know we’re not really engaged, right?” Stiles said, glancing at Derek, who looked a bit shell-shocked.
“All I know is that two weeks ago, you announced you were taking a gap year and going on a road trip to ‘find yourself’ and now you’re in a hospital in a small town in the middle of nowhere with a man, who is just your type, claiming to be your fiancé,” John said, shrugging, his face smug.
“This whole thing is getting way too strange for me,” Derek muttered, running a hand through his hair before offering up the lunch his mom had packed for Stiles and his father, insisting that he wouldn’t be getting better while eating hospital food.
“You wanted to marry into it,” Stiles said as he made grabby hands at the food.
“Yeah, I guess I did,” Derek said, starting to head for the door.
“Where are you going?” Stiles asked, frowning. “You didn’t want to join us for lunch?”
Derek’s smile was shy. “Didn’t want to overstay my welcome.”
Stiles and John rolled their eyes in tandem. “Come on over here and give us the weather report,” John said, pushing the extra chair they’d brought into the room for Derek closer to the bed.
“Still hot as balls?” Stiles asked, and Derek laughed as the three of them fell into easy conversation.
The day that Stiles was discharged from the hospital, he hugged his father goodbye and climbed into the passenger seat of Derek’s truck. “Are you sure you don’t want to go home with your dad? I can bring your Jeep to you when it’s fixed,” he offered, rolling down his window and gesturing for Stiles to do the same on his side. “Sorry, the AC is fried.”
“At least the wind is good. Just make sure you drive fast,” Stiles told him. “And, I’m not ready to go home yet. You did say your mom said I could stay and help out on the farm until it’s fixed, right?”
“What I told you was that you can help out around the house because my mother isn’t letting you out into the heat for anything,” Derek reminded him.
Stiles chuckled. “Mom already likes me better,” he said, smiling and tapping on the dashboard along with the song on the radio. “So, tell me more about your family before I meet them.” He leaned his head slightly out the open window to appreciate the wind, even if it was still warmer than Stiles liked.
Derek’s family welcomed Stiles onto the farm like he really was Derek’s fiancé. They gave him the spare room next to Derek’s and set the same place at the dinner table. Just as Derek had predicted, his mom, Talia, kept Stiles busy in the kitchen, especially when she found out that Stiles was reasonably skilled after years of taking care of his dad.
Every day at lunchtime, Stiles would run out to the fields with box lunches and gallon jugs of ice-cold water in the back of the Kubota. He would leave Derek for last so that they could eat lunch together. He loved speaking to Derek about books, and he started teaching Stiles some of the languages he knew. Sometimes they got so wrapped up talking that Derek’s father, Andrew, would shout at them to get back to work.
Evenings were spent relaxing in the house’s main room, watching movies and playing board games before turning in early. Derek and Stiles realized pretty quickly that the wall between their rooms was thin, and they could hold quiet conversations until one or both of them nodded off for the night. It became clear pretty quickly that Derek was someone that Stiles wanted in his life. He was confident that Derek felt the same about Stiles but didn’t know how to ask him to be sure.
Stiles’ Jeep only took about two weeks to fix, and when Stiles went to pick it up, he felt a heavy weight in his chest. When he’d first gotten out of the hospital, his plan had been to grab his Jeep and continue on his road trip. He’d had no destination in mind, telling himself he would know when it was time to stop and when it was time to head home. Frowning at the waves of heat on the road as he drove behind Derek’s truck back to the farm to get his things, he wondered if Mother Nature had made that decision for him.
When they pulled in front of the house, Talia greeted them both and ushered them inside to a table full of delicious food. A banner made by Derek’s nieces and nephews hung at one end of the dining room that said, “Miss you, Stiles!”
“That ready to get rid of me?” he joked, but the words fell flat as he choked on his own tears.
“Never,” Talia said, pulling him into a hug. “You’ll always have a place with us.”
Stiles sniffled and buried his face in her neck to hide his tears. The emotion quickly turned to laughter when the rest of the family piled around them and echoed her sentiment. “You really mean that?” he asked when the hold loosened enough for him to raise his head, his eyes meeting Derek’s over his mother’s shoulder.
“Of course, we do,” Derek said, gaze steady as his lips twisted into a tight smile and his eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “Zawsze będziesz rodziną.”
Emotion welled inside of Stiles, and he extricated himself from the Hale Family Hug and bolted out the door and into the setting sunlight. Heat still hung heavy in the air as Stiles tried to decide which way to run so that he could shed his tears in peace. Blindly, he allowed his feet to guide him until he collapsed, barely able to catch a breath. His sobs echoed through his brain and around him, and he wasn’t even surprised when a few moments later, he heard footsteps behind him.
The person who’d found him didn’t say anything, and eventually, Stiles’ tears tapered off, but his breathing remained ragged in the heat. He dropped his head into his hands and struggled to catch his breath as sparks of light exploded inside of his head. The feeling was almost too familiar as his stomach clenched. “No, no, no, no,” he muttered as the world spun around him.
Forcing his eyes open, he found Derek carrying him, a concerned look on his face. “If you are going to stay on the farm, we need to teach you how to avoid heatstroke, or Mom is going to chain you into the cellar where it’s nice and cool,” he said, rolling his eyes at Stiles’ outraged squawk.
“Who said I was staying?” Stiles asked when his brain finally caught up to everything, and he relaxed in Derek’s hold.
“I was hoping you’d say it,” Derek said, his ears burning red as they had when he’d told Stiles he’d claimed to be his fiancé.
Smiling, Stiles pressed his face into Derek’s neck, inhaling the scent of the farm and even the heat he hated but had to thank for dropping him into Derek’s life. “I’d like to stay,” he muttered.
“Good,” Derek said, setting Stiles down on his feet on the front steps of the porch. “Although, just to warn you, I plan to be the one to propose.”
Stiles’ eyes widened, but Derek leaned down and pressed a kiss to Stiles’ mouth before he could speak. The kiss was gentle and way too short, but Stiles remedied that by throwing his arms around Derek’s neck and chasing his lips until he got the proper kiss he’d dreamed of since waking up in the hospital to see an angel at his bedside.
A throat cleared behind them, and they broke apart to see Talia studying them with a fond smile on her face. “Just so you know, until there are rings on both those fingers, you’ll still be staying in the spare room.”
Derek and Stiles shook their heads, laughing before sharing one more kiss. Talia pulled them both into a hug when they reached the top of the stairs. She started admonishing Stiles about his lack of self-preservation and lecturing him on proper outdoor safety. Stiles chuckled, smiling and nodding as she talked and realized that not only was it time to stop, but he was already home.