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“Shit. How do you even get blood out of stuff?” Isaac asks, peeling the jacket he’s wearing off his arms and tossing it on the dirty, crusted ground. The leather is slick and red, gashed through where Scott’s claws pierced one of the sleeves and caught on skin. Derek watches as Isaac drops down and crouches over it, knees bent and springing softly, waiting for an answer.
“Cold rinse,” Erica says in the stale silence, “and let it sit. Heavy on the soap, should do the trick. But that's leather,” she clicks her jaw quickly and Derek can hear the snap of the bone in his ears. "Ice water, damp rag, wipe it down. And don't cry if it doesn't work."
Boyd raises an eyebrow at her.
“Periods,” Erica spits, rubbing at her neck. “Get used to it, because I’m not interested in explaining shit for you.”
Derek snorts and grabs a roll of gauze. They still need it, new betas. None of them have learned to focus their energy on healing, so it’s all still too slow and painful like this at the beginning. All dropped fangs and low growls as they set their joints back in place, Erica pulling her long curls out of the way to reach a smashed, clawed spot on the back of her skull that won’t close.
Boyd holds up a hand at the other end of the train car and Derek tosses the gauze to him, watches him set his shoulder with it. They’re sore and halfway to healing, his new pack. They fought well, even if Isaac thinks they lost to Scott. It’s not about a brawl, not about the ways they fell on the ice and left blood to show they were there. Not really about the way Derek put his foot to Scott’s throat and pressed, either, so Derek tries not to think about the acrid feeling digging in his stomach as he replays the moment in his head, the smell of Scott’s blood leaking out of the corner of his mouth.
“It’ll feel better in the morning,” he tells them, walking over and hovering just out of reach.
“Easy for you to say,” Boyd says, eyes sweeping up and down Derek’s sturdy, unbruised body in a quiet assessment.
“Not a scratch on you,” Erica adds.
“You’ll learn,” Derek promises, and even he can hear how it barely lands. He’s already healed from the surface scratches Scott got in, and now he’s standing over a pack of broken new kids telling them to be patient, that it gets better with time. He would have ripped the vocal chords out of someone if they’d said that to him when he was sixteen.
“Does that mean you’re going to teach us?” Isaac asks, pulling it out of him. He’s still picking at the tear in his jacket. Mourning it, maybe, Derek thinks.
“When you’re ready.”
The silence that meets him is hostile and unimpressed. He doesn’t know how to explain that pack makes up for doing it all wrong. He’s not sure he believes it himself, anymore.
“You’re not going to get him,” Isaac says eventually, straightening out his knees and standing up. He’s taller than Derek, even leaning against the rusty old poles next to the rows of broken seats in the train. “Scott. You’re not going to win him.”
“I know,” Derek answers. He blinks, thinks about the panicked look in Scott’s eyes as he pressed his heel down harder, the sweet smell Scott’s blood left on the ice rink afterward. He hates it.
Derek walks back to the other end of the car and pulls an old shirt on over the ash, the dust that settles in on his skin every time he comes home. Isaac and Boyd watch, but Erica’s busy wiping the red from where she was just sitting. Derek breathes in, breathes out again and braces his fists against the cool steel of the train wall.
It’s not really about winning, anyway.
///
Derek’s not surprised when Scott shows up the next day, kicking rocks to announce his presence like the pack of werewolves he’s offering himself to wouldn’t have heard him coming a mile away. Derek presses his lips together and almost smiles. It’s a kind gesture, it’s green. He never did anything like it. Nothing so soft, never anything so blatantly for someone else’s benefit.
Derek was taught to take, not to give.
“What’s he doing here?” Derek asks, jutting his chin at Stiles when he meets them both outside.
Stiles is trailing behind Scott, no more than a foot away, pulling at the broken zipper on his open jacket.
“Don’t ask me,” he says, holding his hands up. “I didn’t ask to be here either.”
Derek looks between them as Scott gives Stiles a look, and he’s beginning to see it: the kind of soft power Scott has over people, the quiet but stable respect he manages from the people around him. His pack, Derek thinks, the family he’s building at the same time Derek’s building his.
“I just came to make sure everyone was okay,” Scott offers, hands held out in front of him with his palms up.
“You’re coming to check on the people you beat up?” Derek asks, and the words sound twisted coming out of his mouth. What he wants to say is, no one’s ever done that before, I would have been proud of the wreckage, why aren’t you afraid of being soft? Instead he smirks and ignores the way he feels stronger when he’s faced with this kid in front of him, begging to be allowed to be good at every turn.
“I woke up with blood under my nails,” Scott answers. He drops his head and closes his eyes and Derek can see the rise and fall of the deep breath he takes.
Derek knows how that feels, but he doesn’t know why it’s a bad thing. It’s always felt like claimed power to him.
“They woke up with blood crusting their cheekbones,” Derek counters after a beat, and Scott winces.
“Whoa, hey, it’s not a competition, asshole,” Stiles chimes in quickly, taking a step forward and putting a hand on Scott’s shoulder. Derek watches as he sweeps his thumb up to Scott’s neck and rests it there. It looks like he’s feeling Scott’s pulse.
“I just meant,” Derek says, raising an eyebrow at the gesture: a human trying to protect a wolf. “That it’s a little ironic that the person who smashed their faces into the ice is the one who’s coming to make sure they’re not hurt.”
Scott’s eyes jump up and dart over Derek’s shoulder, looking for movement. “Did they heal okay?”
“Not that it’s any of your business,” Derek tells him, taking a step forward in the train yard, “but they’re fine, no thanks to you.”
“Yeah, you made your point,” Stiles spits. Derek can see the pure drive in his tight muscles, the way he looks like he might spring at him if he makes one wrong move toward Scott. He looks like a beta.
“Scott’s a horrible, awful werewolf who beats up vulnerable baby wolves for no reason, sure. Now can you shut the fuck up?”
“Stiles, it’s - ” Scott tries before getting cut off almost immediately.
“It’s not okay, Scott, jesus. You came to fucking apologize and this fucknut is throwing it back in your face that you did what you had to do after he had his pack attack you,” Stiles seethes, stepping toward Derek again, fists clenched.
“Down, boy,” Derek smirks, and Stiles lunges just as Scott’s arms shoot out and loop around his waist, holding back his flailing, sharp limbs.
“Stiles, don’t, come on,” Scott grits out as Stiles tries to dive forward again. He’d be foaming at the mouth if he were a dog, Derek thinks, and then he watches them both come down together: Scott’s arms clung tightly around Stiles, eyes locked on each other, unspoken trust Derek’s only ever seen between alpha and beta in his life.
Something twists in Derek’s stomach and he understands, suddenly, what Scott is. What he will be, at least, if he isn’t now, but Derek thinks it’s in him already. Deep in his gut, it’s there and growing.
Stiles gives up and kicks rocks aimed directly at Derek as Scott drops his arms and lets him go free.
“Take a walk,” Scott tells him, nodding once. “I’ll be fine.”
Stiles walks away with one last glance at Derek, and Derek shoves his hands in his jacket pockets. He raises an eyebrow at Scott. “You brought your guard dog with you to apologize?”
“He’s protective,” Scott says, neatly sidestepping the bait. “Give him a break. We’ve all been through stuff.”
Derek nods, short, and finally takes Scott in: smaller than Derek, but fully present. Clean cut hair and anxious hands, clenching and unclenching to keep his breath under control as they face each other. He’s not out of his depth, like Derek hoped he would be; he’s steady and strong, a sure course of grace and good intentions pouring off of him with every step.
“I didn’t come to apologize, anyway,” Scott says, breaking Derek out of his own head. “I came to make a deal.”
“What?” Derek’s caught so off guard that he has no idea how else to respond, how to recover from the breath caught in his throat.
“I don’t like fighting my friends,” Scott answers, voice just on the edge of breaking. Derek can hear the restrained desperation behind it and he’s impressed by Scott’s control, the grit he knows it takes to keep it in; he’s been doing it for years. So long he’s not sure he knows how to stop anymore.
Scott repeats himself, building, and Derek shifts his weight from foot to foot. “I don’t like fighting my friends. I see Boyd every day at lunch. I have chemistry class with Erica and Isaac and I don’t want to sit there with them knowing we might rip each other’s throats out, you know? I don’t want to. I want to protect my friends.”
“They’re not your friends,” Derek says. He takes his hands out of his pockets and cracks his knuckles.
“They are,” Scott insists.
“They’re not.”
“I want them to be.”
Derek’s stomach drops and he takes a step back, hits his heel on a rock as Scott keeps going, voice getting louder and stronger as he speaks.
“And you, too,” Scott says, offering an open palm in Derek’s direction again. “Maybe I’m not in your pack, maybe I’m not your beta. But that doesn’t mean we have to tear each other down. At the beginning, you know, of all this, you said we were brothers. Right?”
“I was wrong,” Derek answers, and his eyes drop to the ground as Stiles comes striding back up to them, taking his place just behind Scott.
“You weren’t,” Scott says. “We just haven’t figured it out yet.”
Scott’s so gentle that Derek wants to scream, to ask for more all at once. He wants to teach him how he was taught: fangs in the dark woods and unforgiving, power and more power and more. He wants to forget it and let Scott teach him instead. He doesn’t know what he wants.
“What do I get out of it?” Derek asks, knowing this ground better, this way of challenging.
“Me,” Scott answers immediately, and Stiles’ eyes go wide. “Us, all of us, me and Stiles and Allison and Lydia.”
“Excuse me,” Stiles cuts in, “I didn’t agree to that.”
“We protect you if you protect us. We all fall if we don’t,” Scott adds.
“Oh, good, like mutually assured destruction,” Stiles says.
“Yeah, sort of. Except exactly the opposite,” Scott clarifies.
“I don’t get it.”
“Okay,” Derek cuts in. “We’ll do it.”
Scott exhales, long and relieved, and looks up at him gratefully. “Do you need to ask them?”
“No,” Derek says, noting the fake gagging gesture Stiles makes behind Scott. “They do what I say.”
He’s not sure what he’s doing, just that something in him feels more settled in Scott’s presence. He goes with his gut. Derek was always taught that he should use his instincts and take what benefits him, so he makes good on his training and takes what Scott will give, the protection he offered. He’s using Scott.
If that’s how he needs to justify this to himself, then he will. He will.
///
“A truce?” Isaac asks when Derek goes back inside to find them, long after Scott and Stiles have gone. Derek didn’t need to say anything, just finds them draped over broken steel and torn cushions, waiting for him. They heard everything, anyway.
He nods and squares his shoulders off, pulls his chest up.
“Problem with it?” Derek asks, another comfortable challenge for him, easy footing.
“No,” Boyd smiles, soft and quiet, and Derek knows he made the right choice.
“But if you think she’s going to do whatever you say,” Isaac adds, flicking his fingers in Erica’s direction, “you’ve got another thing coming.”
“It was so much fun watching them chase their tails,” Erica grins, wicked smile glinting even in the dark of the den.
She bares her teeth at Derek and he has no idea how to handle it, the kind of push they shove into the center of his ribcage: the bite they give right back, even when they know he’s looking.
Watching the three of them together, he knows how this has to go. He knows what it will take from him and what he needs to do.
Trust is something that used to come easy to Derek; he used to give himself to other people so readily. He grew up with a built-in net, open arms to catch him as he fell and fell and fell, so he was never afraid of the hard-cracked ground beneath him. When he broke a leg and bone shoved through his skin, he held his mother’s hand and healed. When his sisters were cruel, he ran and ran beside his father until he couldn’t keep up anymore and they’d lay on the forest floor together, quiet but not alone. Before the fire, he flung himself into the world and knew that it would hold him up.
Derek doesn’t have that anymore.
The problem is that he doesn’t think he deserves to ask it from other people, either.
///
A few days later, Scott and Derek exchange phone numbers.
“For better communication,” Derek says as Scott takes his phone and punches in his contact information.
“Sure,” Scott says, shrugging and handing it back. “Text me so I’ll have yours.”
Derek does.
derek hale. he writes, punctuation and all, while Scott’s still standing there in front of him.
“Oh, good,” Scott grins, eyes looking up from his screen and finding Derek’s. “I wouldn’t have known who it was, otherwise.”
Derek almost wants to smile back. He purses his lips and knots his brow instead and shoves his phone in his pocket with a little too much force.
“I was just being thorough,” he retorts.
Scott blinks at him for a minute and then full on laughs until he has tears in his eyes, and Derek walks away and leaves him there before Scott gets to the part where he’s slapping his knee for emphasis. Derek hates that part. He’ll pass.
///
The first text he gets is from Scott on the day Stiles gets paralyzed.
deaton says paralytic venom, do u know what it is? Scott sends.
I will. Derek types out, and he hits send immediately.
“Boss,” Boyd says to Derek, approaching him while Derek’s crouched over an old book of Talia’s, clawing through it for any information he can. “Do we let Scott to deal with this?”
Derek’s eyes flash over to Isaac and Erica, whose heads lift immediately as they listen in and wait for his instruction. He doesn’t know any more than they do, he knows, but they follow him when they think he does.
“No,” he answers, turning back to Boyd. “We follow them.”
Boyd nods down at Derek and offers him a hand.
Derek takes it and Boyd hauls him up, keeps a palm flat on Derek’s arm as he looks at him again.
“We help?” he asks.
Derek nods. “We help.”
///
Derek and Erica find Stiles by the pool, alone and avoiding them and anxious to get back, but they pull the information they want out of him.
“I think I actually saw scales, is that enough? Alright, fine, eyes. Eyes are, um, yellow-ish and slitted, um. It has a lot of teeth. Oh, and it’s got a tail, too. Are we good?”
Stiles’ nervous limbs move the whole time he speaks and Derek tracks the movement until something above them catches his eye and he stops paying attention to what Stiles is saying. Derek knows what it is the second before Stiles looks up and it lunges for them: a kanima, a half-beast, an abomination; a predator that doesn’t care who it’s fighting. All things that Derek’s heard about himself too many times.
Things move too quickly for Derek to react like he’s always been taught. The lizard throws Erica into the wall and knocks her unconscious, and Derek shoves Stiles as hard as he can to get him out of the way, tells Stiles to run just as he feels the sting of the kanima’s tail against his skin.
“Derek, your neck,” Stiles yells, and suddenly Derek’s falling into his arms.
This is the moment, Derek knows immediately, where he has to shatter all the walls whether he wants to or not. He can feel the venom sinking in, he has less movement in his limbs every second and Stiles is losing his grip on Derek’s shoulder as they move as fast as they can around the pool.
Derek barely hears Stiles ask him if he can still see the kanima, where is it, is it in sight? He doesn’t hear himself answering, but he grits his teeth and digs into his gut and tries to steady himself on his feet even though he knows it won’t work. This isn’t something he can push himself through without someone else’s help, and Stiles’ legs are giving out too under Derek’s dead weight.
“Scott,” Derek rasps out through a scratched up, howled-out throat. The name rolls out of his mouth like his tongue is finally finding purpose in the middle of all this destruction. This was the point all along: to believe that Scott would be here if he needed him.
“Call Scott.”
The rest of the night is tipped into the pool with him, a slow sinking and wash of blue chlorine over everything that happens. Stiles holds Derek up until he can’t anymore and he spits something at Stiles about not trusting each other, and then he’s being pulled out of the pool by steady, swift hands. Derek feels the crack of Scott’s howl through the water stuck in his ears, the feeling of eight feet of it still pushing on his chest. It goes through him like an alpha’s should, to his core and through his blood, a call to survive like nothing else ever will be.
It pulls him up and out of himself, and when he comes back down he’s leaning on a starting block and staring at Scott, still dripping wet. The feeling’s starting to come back to his toes.
He’s not sure how long the rest will take, but he can wait.
///
“You didn’t have to do that,” Derek says as he finally straightens his legs out, balancing himself against the lifeguard stand and rotating one of his ankles to test the motion.
“A deal’s a deal,” Stiles tells him, shrugging. “I wasn’t going to let you die in this pool. How tragic would that have been, right? Local Man Dies in High School Pool. Wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that’s happened around here lately, I guess.”
Derek stares at him, trying to figure out if there’s even a correct response to that.
“Plus, Scott probably wouldn’t have talked to me for like a week or something. I’m not into that,” Stiles adds, and then he claps Derek on the shoulder and walks away, leaving him there to dry out in silence.
Derek watches Scott and Stiles talk, hushed voices in the echoing room. They hug, long and tight, and then Stiles walks out with Erica and Derek’s left with just Scott, just this kid that’s knocked him flat and built him back up over and over again, more times than he can count.
Scott walks over and stops in front of Derek, lets his eyes roam over the entire expanse of Derek’s body.
Derek knows he’s just checking for damage, for blood and guts strewn on the floor or an elbow that still won’t bend on its own, but it makes him warm despite the chill of the water.
“Sorry,” Scott says, noticing Derek notice him. “Can I?”
Scott reaches out and takes a step forward, waiting for Derek to answer. He nods, and suddenly Scott’s on him.
No one’s touched him for years, not unless they had to. Not like this. Scott’s hands are deft and sure, roaming with a purpose; he drags his fingers up Derek’s front and rests them on his collarbone, feeling for a steady pulse beating under his skin. Derek shifts his weight and Scott leans closer, wrapping an arm around Derek until they’re pressed almost chest to chest. They’re both still dripping chlorine onto the soaked tile beneath their feet and Derek takes a deep breath as Scott flattens his palm against the back of Derek’s neck. His fingers tap a slow check across the spot at the base where the kanima’s tail hit, and Derek closes his eyes under the touch, too soft, still new.
“Is this okay?” Scott asks.
Derek presses his cheek to Scott’s temple and nods against him.
“You didn’t have to do this,” Derek says for the second time that night.
“A pact’s a pact,” Scott laughs, but Derek knows that it’s more than that. He can hear it.
“That’s what Stiles said,” he counters. He brings one of his arms up and rests it on Scott’s hip, heel of his palm settling close to the dip above Scott’s back and pressing softly.
“I taught him well,” Scott answers, a whisper, and then they’re quiet.
Derek tries to keep his breath steady as Scott lets his hands roam; they dip below the collar of his shirt and up underneath the hem, ghost over his shoulders and his arms and his ribs. Scott lets his claws out and drags them against Derek’s skin softly, then lets his veins take the pain from his aching limbs.
“I didn’t know,” Scott says as he cards his fingers through Derek’s almost-dry hair. “I would have come sooner.”
“I believe you,” Derek tells him, finally opening his eyes. He looks straight down Scott’s back and doesn’t lift his eyes from where they land on a spot on the tile.
“Good. I’m glad you do.”
Scott drops a hand to the back of his neck and they stay like that, breathing together, until Derek thinks he’ll accidentally give himself away. He picks his head up off of Scott’s shoulder and they detangle, steady silence, until they’re both just looking at each other with their arms straight down at their sides. Scott’s eyes are bright, lit up and staring at Derek in the still-green haze of the room.
Derek looks back, steady and unafraid, and knows how much has changed.
///
They train together and they fight together, after that. The common enemy keeps the packs glued to each other, and it starts to feel like a plan set in motion.
Everyone moves forward together and it feels right.
Slowly, slowly, the knot in the bottom of Derek’s stomach starts uncurling, and it blooms into something lighter and softer than Derek’s used to living with. It feels different than anything he’s known before, and he chases it as fast as he can with his arms outstretched for more and always reaching farther.
With Peter, everything he ever learned was sharp and dangerous. Everything was selfish and cold and ready for a fight at all times, the wrong kind of family born from of the wrong kind of blood. It was always something desperately savage and it never felt right to take the kinds of things he learned to take from people, the kinds of things he took from Erica and Isaac and Boyd. He knows he did. He wants to let them take it back from him, so he gives it any way he can: he listens to them, he trusts them, he lets them grow the way they want instead of the way he was taught. Being the kind of alpha he thought he should be always exhausted him, but it was the only choice Derek had if he wanted to stay alive, so he did it.
But this, the soft kind of gentle reassurance he watches Scott give him over and over again even when he knows he doesn't deserve it, it scares him less. Scott pulls something out of him every day that he didn’t know existed: someone who can remember what it feels like to stop running and stand still, even for a moment.
It’s a different kind of power, he realizes, the kind that doesn’t come from fear.
It's a power that comes from knowing his place in the family of things, of finally trusting himself enough to give the world what he can. No more, no less. It’s enough, just like this.
///
“I can’t believe you’re making us do team building exercises,” Erica says, eyeing Derek up and down in the middle of the clearing in the preserve where he and Scott have gathered everyone together. "What, are we going to do trust falls? Because Stilinski's not getting anywhere near me."
“Pack bonding,” Isaac corrects, intently studying his nails instead of looking anyone in the eye.
“Are we the only ones who are excited about this?” Stiles asks the collective group. “I use ‘we’ in the broadest sense of the term, of course,” he adds. “I’m not excited. But, like, the royal we.”
“Don’t hurt yourself, Stilinski,” Isaac throws out, and Stiles makes a mocking face at him before Scott breaks everybody up and sends them to their respective corners to train, to talk, to learn how to be near each other without wanting to tear apart their throats.
Even from twenty feet away, Derek can see the small smile Boyd gives Allison as she teaches him how to hold her archery gear, and the corners of his mouth lift in surprise.
“Watch,” Allison says, drawing her compound string back with two fingers until it rests by the apple of her cheek, then releasing and waiting for the trill of the air around it. She hands over the bow and moves Boyd’s hands into the right position, lifts his back elbow up to show him how taut he should feel before he shoots.
Derek breathes out when Boyd lets go, and he feels at home in this.
“They’re doing pretty well,” Scott says, coming up behind Derek. “She never could teach me how.”
Scott laughs and Derek leans into it; the sound is sweet and rocks through him down to the tips of his fingers. He takes a step closer and knocks their shoulders together as they stand, watching their packs side by side. Less parallel paths, now, and more a mess of people holding each other up the best they can.
“Is this how you thought it would look?” Scott asks.
Derek takes a sharp breath in and considers just how different this is from anything he thought he was allowed to have, and in the space between the question and his answer, Scott reaches down and takes Derek’s hand in his.
“No,” Derek says on an exhale. He feels strong, steady and sure. Something close to happiness, maybe, something settled in his heart and growing louder with each beat.
“Me either,” Scott tells him, and Derek smiles.
Maybe neither of them are sure what it looks like from here on out, Derek thinks, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s what it’s always been: to trust the person walking next to you into something new and not let go of their hand through it all. To trust yourself enough to hold on.