Archive of Our Own

Derek finds Stiles at the beach long after the sun has vacated the sky. He’s sat there in the sand near the rocks in just jeans and a t-shirt and Derek shakes his head, already shrugging out of his jacket as he approaches him.

“You complain that you’re always cold and then you come out here dressed like this,” he scolds when he’s in human hearing distance. He drops his jacket over his shoulders before he comes down to sit in the sand beside him.

“I’ll be cold no matter what,” Stiles says, although he snakes his arms one after the other into the sleeves. “I stopped trying.”

Derek makes a face, even though Stiles isn’t looking at him. “Not a fan of that.”

“Of what? That I stopped trying?”

“I like you trying.”

Stiles huffs a laugh through his nose at this. He shakes his head, bowing it down to stare at his bent knees. He returns his hands back clasped underneath them. Then, he says, “I thought you were gonna kiss me yesterday.”

Derek puts his hands in his lap. He presses his nails into his palms. Just blunt, not clawed. “What gave you that idea?”

Stiles shrugs, the sound of creaking leather follows with. “Just sorta got that feeling. I felt the pause.”

Derek dares to glance over at him. To see how the moonlight makes his skin nearly glow, so stark against the indigo backdrop where the ocean and sky meld into one. It’s not like he’s been timing it, but he has been wondering as of late how long he can get away with watching him. He thinks, in this moment, he should’ve been timing it so as to know when was too much. The faint and telling smile on Stiles’ lips says a lot of things.

He swallows. “When?”

Now Stiles looks back at him. Never a linear thing, his gaze. His eyes always wander, restless just like his tapping hands or his bouncing knees in Derek’s car or at the diner or the library, as they track all over Derek’s face, only arriving at his eyes as his last destination. He’s still smiling. “Almost constantly, to be honest.”

Derek scoffs, instinctively, looking away from him and shaking his head. “I think you’re overexaggerating.”

“I think you should actually try it sometime.” He knocks his shoulder into Derek’s. “I bet I’d really want you to.”

Well then. Derek squints at the indistinguishable horizon. He doesn’t answer him because anything he’d have to say would only prove he’s a coward when it comes to something like that.

Stiles’ hand comes up to his face. His fingers are cold—even colder than they usually are—and he trails them down along the curve of his jaw. His thumb brushes against his bottom lip and Derek snatches Stiles’ wrist, pulling his hand away. He rears his head back enough to look at him straight on. “Stop it.”

“Do you really mean that?” His voice is dead serious. He curls his fingers. “I’ll stop if you tell me to.”

There’s an understanding in his tone, in his words. Like Derek saying stop deserves his respect. It makes him feel sad that Stiles can talk like that to him, relate firsthand to him. But then it also makes him feel not so alone about it, even if that’s a selfish thing to like about Stiles.

Derek can’t bring himself to say it. To tell him to stop. There’s things he wants too in all the pauses Stiles mentions. There’s things he wants in the pause right now, with Stiles looking at him like he’s all that matters and his wrist around his cold skin. Stiles really is close to him so it doesn’t take much to lean forward and press his lips to his. They’re cold too, but Stiles’ exhale from his nose against his face is warm, warm, warm.

.

This keeps happening and they keep acting like it’s an accident, it’s just convenient, it doesn’t have to really mean anything. Stiles is constantly cold and Derek drags him into bed to warm him up. That’s all.

It’s an accident in how Stiles will nap in Derek’s hotel bed while Derek sits on the edge reading, and how then Stiles will wake up to shove his hands under Derek’s thigh and Derek will bristle because he’s cold even through the jean, so he’d better put the book down to smother Stiles with body heat.

It’s just convenient in how they know things about each other no one else does, like how certain touches trigger certain memories and no one else would know how to navigate them quite as well as they could. It’s also convenient because Stiles is all alone in San Francisco going to school. There’s no one else he’s really close to here for this kind of thing besides Derek, nevermind the detail that Derek isn’t actually local in San Francisco in the first place. He purposefully makes the weekly drives all the way from Beacon Hills solely for Stiles, but they don’t acknowledge that.

It doesn’t have to really mean anything because they’ve both avoided talking about what exactly they’ve been doing, and if they don’t talk about it then it doesn’t have to mean anything. Simple math.

.

Stiles doesn’t go home for Christmas. Derek comes down to see him and Stiles makes some muttered excuse that he’s just really stressed about school (even though finals are over) so he couldn’t make it home. He already called his dad so his son duties are done for the night and it’s past midnight on Christmas Eve so Stiles wraps himself all around Derek and wishes him happy birthday.

It’s still dark when Derek wakes up again to the feeling of Stiles tracing where he knows his tattoo is with his finger. It’s cold. Cold little spirals being drawn between his shoulder blades.

“Sorry,” Stiles says into the dark when Derek stirs. “I wish I wasn’t so…”

Derek hums, turning onto his side to face him. “So?”

Stiles sighs. “So… corpse-like. Hands of the dead kind of thing.”

He wiggles his hands in Derek’s face and Derek traps them between his. “Nothing to be sorry about. I run abnormally warm. It works out for us.”

“Us?” Stiles teases, his nose scrunching up and Derek likes it maybe a tad too much.

Maybe just too much, period, because he doesn’t even have a jab back at him for it. He brings their hands up and he breathes out warm over them before he rubs them together. He feels Stiles’ eyes tracking every move.

“I did this with someone else before, except it was the other way around. I wasn’t the cold one.” He frowns at their hands. “Or maybe I didn’t do it. Maybe it was someone else. The original Stiles with normal body heat or whatever did it.”

If left alone Stiles will get himself lost with this. He has in the past, Derek’s watched him. So he squeezes his hands. “You’re still that Stiles.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be him,” he says, upset. “That fucker was so delirious he didn’t say no even though he wanted to and ruined it for me. He instigated the whole not saying no means yes bullshit.”

Derek’s hands still. Stiles won’t look him in the eye when he tries. He knows who it must’ve been with.

Then, Stiles blinks, a faint smile spreading on his lips like he’s just come back from somewhere else far in his head and he’s realizing it’s just Derek here. No one else. “Even though this Stiles: Regurgitated Version’s body is kinda faulty, I like it because it’s the one that’s been with you.”

Derek leans forward to hide his grin against Stiles’ collarbone. His skin is always chilled but never goosebumped. “And you give me shit for saying ‘us.’”

.

Stiles jokes that at this rate Derek should just get a place in San Francisco since he’s here so often. Derek tells himself Stiles only says that as a ploy so he can live with him and not pay insane dorming prices, because otherwise they don’t usually draw attention to those kinds of things between them. Like living together. Crazy talk.

Derek’s still here when New Year’s rolls around and he convinces Stiles to come with him back to Beacon Hills to visit his dad. Go and see him. You’ll regret it if you didn’t.

Lydia’s the one who passes it through the grapevine that Scott is throwing a New Year’s party that night. It sends Stiles into a spiral, should he go, should he not go, and Derek asks him what his gut instinct says.

“It says no,” Stiles says, wringing his hands together as he paces Derek’s loft.

“Then don’t go.”

“But Scott…” Stiles says, because that’s what he always says. But Scott will be upset. But Scott will ask why not.

And Derek wants to tell him you shouldn’t dictate your whole life around what is best for Scott. What about what’s best you? But he won’t. The look on Stiles’ face says he already knows this point. It’s one Derek’s been helping him uncover for himself for some time now. Why should he work himself into knots to take care of Scott when Scott doesn’t lift a finger to take care of him in return?

Derek remembers nights back when Stiles was still in high school when he’d come to his doorstep bleeding or crying or both because Malia was breaking into his room every night to make him do things with her he didn’t want to do and using brute force on him when he wouldn’t. And Scott didn’t care to notice too much. Or he’d brush it off if he did. It was a good thing some girl was sleeping with Stiles, right? There was no possible way he could not want it.

Stiles finally says, “I’m pretty sure Malia will be there too. I shouldn’t go.”

This is one hundred percent a valid reason not to, but Derek knows Stiles is still using it to side step the more muddled one pertaining to Scott. Either way, Stiles goes to see his dad instead and insists Derek come tag along.

“My dad loves you,” he says, “of course you’re welcome to come over.”

Derek knows Stiles hasn’t told his father anything about them (because what’s to tell? They aren’t anything in the first place, remember?) but something about the gleam in the man’s eye that night when he looks at how they interact with each other suggests he knows something all the same.

.

Derek presses his mouth to Stiles’ bare shoulder blade as he comes over to the kitchen where Stiles is sat on a bar stool with a coffee in his hands and a tea by his elbow. He smooths his hand down his back, over the rough scars. They’re still there because no matter how much Derek tried to dress those deep gashes back in the day, some things just stay on human skin. They’ve never been ugly to exist as scars on his body, they’re only ugly in the memories they surely drudge up for Stiles.

“Mine always healed over before anyone could see,” Derek mutters against his skin as his thumb runs over one of the claw marks. He thinks of sharp smiles and smoker breath and a morbid fascination with doing things to his body just to see it heal in real time. “I used to think it was a good thing I could hide the incriminating evidence so well.”

“I bet you still felt them though, huh?” Stiles asks, picking up the tea to hand to him.

“Yeah.” He lets go of Stiles to take it. She’s dead in the ground, put down by his own hands with Chris’ help, and he still feels it from time to time.

.

Stiles comes to stay with Derek for the summer because he’s been kicked out of his dorm. Derek kind of wants to ask why he didn’t go back to live with his dad but he won’t because that’ll make it sound like a complaint and it’s not. He’s just curious as to what Stiles said to his dad to explain where he sleeps at night if not in his childhood bedroom.

John cornered him at the grocery store the other day and insisted Derek come over for a barbecue this weekend though, so Derek thinks the man might have an educated guess.

Even though John is probably thinking of it all wrong. Derek is not Stiles’ boyfriend, or whatever. They have sex just because Stiles is always cold and because it’s convenient. The breakfasts and days spent together and goodbye kisses like the one Stiles gave him before he left to go see his dad that morning are just extensions of that.

Derek has his nose buried in Stiles’ pillow (that he leaves in Derek’s bed now) and is nearly back to sleep when his phone goes off. He thinks about ignoring it, really, except when he checks it and sees Stiles’ name on the caller ID.

“Did you forget anything?” he asks when he answers it.

“I cancelled with my dad and I’m coming back home,” he says and Derek is aware he’s upset in an instant.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just saw Scott,” he says and Derek starts thinking, thinking, what bullshit happened this time. “I’m like ninety percent sure he’s sleeping with Allison, and the more I think about it the higher that percentage goes.”

Well, whatever Derek was thinking, it wasn’t that. “I thought he was still with Kira.”

“Exactly,” Stiles says and oh.

Derek gets out of bed to run the coffee pot and grab Stiles’ favorite R2-D2 mug.

.

“He didn’t technically say anything at all, but I saw him leaving Allison’s bedroom window and I saw a hickey on him.” Stiles got back not even five minutes ago and already he’s downed the entire cup of coffee Derek made him and was now pacing the loft like he so often ends up doing when it’s about Scott.

Derek watches him go, back and forth, back and forth.

Then he stops in his tracks and snaps his fingers. “Hey! What if I brought you over to his house and had you smell him all discreetly?”

Derek pulls a face. “How about we trust your perceptions? They sound convincing enough.”

Stiles stares down at his feet. He flaps his hands at his sides, moving because Derek knows he always has to be. “But what if I’m wrong?” He says it so small, uncertain. “Scott always told me I would overthink things and come up with insane theories.”

Derek sighs, kneading his fingers into his temple. Scott and making Stiles feel irrational and overreactive are a common song and dance. “And how many times did he say those things to you and you were actually right?”

Stiles blinks up at Derek. “Many.”

“Tons.” Derek stands up and crosses the room to hold him by the upper arms. “Don’t listen to the Scott voice in your head, listen to your own.”

Stiles holds his eyes only a moment before he turns his head away. There’s a nervous uptick in his already tumultuous heartbeat. “I don’t know. Mine is pretty stupid.” Derek is just about to tell him no it’s not when Stiles continues, “I kinda said to Scott we’re like… like a thing.”

Derek is left standing there, mouth open, and Stiles won’t look at him.

“And I know that’s… that’s totally stupid because we’re really not, and I think I just said it because of the shock of whatever the hell I thought I saw, and-”

“You said home,” Derek immediately says. It lodged itself into his brain the moment he heard it, and he wasn’t going to mention it but… alas. He swallows. “You said you cancelled with your dad and that you were coming home. Here.”

“I kinda said a lot.”

Shame is so strong in Derek’s nose as Stiles says it and that’s so wrong of him to feel. Stiles’ cheeks are slowly growing the ruddy reddish they tend to get like, and Derek migrates both hands to cup his face over them and turn his head back to him. “You definitely didn’t say anything stupid, you know.”

“No?”

“No.”

Stiles huffs an embarrassed sort of laugh. “I guess I can blame it on me being so cold for only so long before you thaw me.”

Derek leans in to kiss him just to prove that to him, but he’s already talking again, voice dropped to a deathly whisper.

“But what the hell am I supposed to do about Scott?”

Isn’t that the age old question.

.

Derek ends up renting a place for far too much for how big it actually is in San Francisco and Stiles moves in with him to get out of dorming with strangers. Derek calls him a leech and Stiles attaches himself to Derek’s back with all four limbs and kisses his neck and says fondly, “Your leech.”

Derek hasn’t said it out loud to him, but there’s this word that floats around his mind in moments like this that sound like annoying. Oh, and love too. It’s equal parts both and that’s kind of the point, Derek thinks. And says neither to Stiles.

And even though it’s nice to have Stiles all to himself when they’re in the city, the red flags of it don’t go unnoticed by Derek. The isolation of it all. Who can Stiles talk to besides Derek?

He asks Stiles sometimes if he wants to invite Lydia to do things, since she’s the closest person to them in Stanford. And Stiles always makes a face at the suggestion and says he wouldn’t even know what to do with her. They’re not close like they used to be in high school, after the peaceful end of his feelings for her and before senior year bullshit. Derek asks him why not and Stiles shrugs and tells him Lydia started hanging out with Malia and the girls a lot and he ran away.

He didn’t say he ran away, but Derek summarizes. He summarizes with that a lot of the time when he asks Stiles about the friends of his that he left behind. Not all of his friends were Scott and Derek asks him to try again with some of the others. Not all of them, just some. Just try with Lydia. So Stiles does.

.

The thing Derek witnesses with Stiles is that he doesn’t know how to be vulnerable with anyone anymore. He’s only like that with Derek, and everyone else just gets walls and walls. Even with his own dad to an extent, Derek remembers when he’d be over for dinner with John and Stiles.

He’s not necessarily cold with Lydia when she comes up to visit, but he’s definitely not warm. He found a defense mechanism that worked for his survival back in high school, and when he sees these people again it acts up. Derek knows all this because it’s the same shit he did to Laura and everyone around him in New York.

Derek hated feeling vulnerable and delicate around people and he sees it like a reflection in Stiles now. And he’s failed a lot of people in his life. He knows this. He couldn’t fail Stiles.

.

Derek grabs Stiles by the arm so he can’t go storming off to the bathroom for hours again. “Don’t run away from these people.”

Stiles barks a sharp, dark laugh. He can so easily become shoot to kill when he wants to be. “Oh, that’s rich, coming from you.”

“Exactly,” Derek snaps. He tugs Stiles’ arm, never too hard, never to hurt him, just to get him to look him in the eye. “You thought I was an asshole when you first met me, Stiles, you had no idea. I was a fucking asshole in New York because of exactly something like this. From someone who’s been through it, listen to my mistakes and don’t do the same shit as me. Don’t throw everyone out. There’s still good ones in there and they care about you, damnit. Don’t run away from them.”

.

It’s the middle of the night and stiles is sat up awake in bed. Derek reaches out to rub a hand over his thigh. “Something on your mind?”

Stiles exhales from his nose. He’s staring out the window at the city lights with his back to Derek. “I’m feeling very… conflicted.”

“About?”

“Scott.”

Derek sighs.

“It’s just… There’s like a war inside of me. Protect Scott or expose how shitty it is of him to lead two girls on. I don’t know what to do and I’m paralyzed by it.”

“He’s doing a shitty thing. you don’t have to defend him just because you have in the past.”

“Okay, but it’s more than that.” He drops his chin into his palm. “Scott’s my everything. My whole life it’s been him and I. I don’t… It’s like cutting off a limb, I can’t leave him.”

Derek pulls a wry smile. “I think I know a thing or two about that feeling.”

Stiles lolls his head to the side to look at him. “Hah.” He reaches down to pick up Derek’s hand and kiss the back of it.

Derek sits up. “We’ve talked about this before.”

Stiles deflates. “I know.”

“He neglects you when it isn’t convenient for him. He never believes you first.”

“He’s been good to me before,” Stiles says, small, because he already knows what Derek thinks. What’s a few good moments with Scott when most of the time Stiles is too scared to tell him what happened with Malia because he strongly doubts Scott will take his side? Scott helped teach Malia how to control herself after Stiles blocked her in every way he could. She’s one of his first success stories as an alpha, and Stiles is… the fuck up. The one who couldn’t get better after the Nogitsune, and day by day Scott started treating him more and more like a lost cause. There’s no tangible growth, so why keep trying?

“He treats you conditionally,” and Derek only uses that word because it’s a word Stiles used for it once before. Stiles shoves the heels of his palms into his eyes. “If you’re good, he likes you. If you’re not, you’re not a priority.”

“And I’d still hide a body for him if it kept him safe.”

Derek shakes his head. In a way, he gets it. The instinct to defend your pack can be so strong. He once killed Peter and he still mourned his uncle after. To have him back with all the fucked things he’s done conflicts him to the core. He remembers Uncle Peter nagging him as a kid but always being there. It’s a complicated relationship, and maybe things aren’t always as black and white as Scott likes to make them.

“But you do recognize this isn’t very healthy,” Derek tells him, gently prying at his wrists to pull his hands away from his face.

“Yeah,” Stiles admits, miserable. He lets Derek take his hands in his. “I just… What am I supposed to do?”

“In all honesty, you should stop being friends with him.”

This Stiles huffs a laugh at, bitter. “That’s really funny to say after you made a big deal about me not running away from my friends.”

Derek can’t help but smile despite himself. “I believe I said don’t run from the good ones. Scott isn’t a good one.”

Stiles groans because, yeah, Derek’s got him there. He leans forward to smush his face into Derek’s chest. Derek kisses him on the crown of his head.

.

But because Stiles likes to give Scott second chance after second chance, they go back to Beacon Hills for the summer. Stiles tells Derek, okay, here's the deal. Scott gets one more chance to change. There’s a reunion party Kira’s coming home for they’ve heard. If Scott owns up to it and tells both girls what he’s been doing, he’ll give him one more shot at friends.

Derek is not crazy about it. Really, sometimes he fantasizes of picking Stiles up like a sack of potatoes and running back to San Francisco to keep him from Scott. But he goes, alright. One more chance. He’ll come pick him up when it goes to shit (and Derek ran into Scott the other day in the grocery store; he’s of the impression that it’s when this goes to shit and not if).

So it’s not very surprising to get a text from Stiles not even half an hour after Derek dropped him off.

Scott’s not gonna do it. Come get me before I eat his face off

Derek didn’t go home because he expected this. He’s picking up some lunch to-go from the local diner and sends back, I’ll be there in 5.

.

Here, Derek texts where he idles at the end of Scott’s driveway. Stiles is out in less than a minute. He yanks the car door open and slams the buckle in harder than necessary. He quite literally gasps like he’s surfaced from holding his breath under water too long and says, “Holy shit you got food, I love you.”

Derek’s hand hovers with the bag in it, his heart suddenly and immediately loud in his ears. He doesn’t think too hard about it before he says, “Hey, I love you too. I figured you’d be too stressed to wait for cooking.”

Stiles takes the bag from him with one hand, the other slapped over his eyes. Derek can hear Stiles’ heart loud in his own ears too. “Sorry that totally just came out. It was hell in there and you… Oh Christ.”

“You don’t have to apologize for it.” Derek puts his hands on the wheel just to grip something. “I’ve been trying to say it for months.”

“Yeah, me too,” Stiles admits with an embarrassed little laugh. He shoves his hand into the bag to grab a fry and shove it in his mouth. He grabs another and feeds it to Derek while he pulls away from Scott’s shitty party.

“So tell me what happened in there.”

Stiles sighs, exasperated. “Oh, bad. It was all so bad. Kira and Allison hugged. Scott stood at the side and didn’t say a fucking word.”

“Well?” Derek goes.

“Well?” Stiles repeats back.

“Scott’s not going to change,” Derek tells him. Stiles has to know this, deep, deep down. “You gave him more chances than he deserved and he still disappointed.”

Stiles doesn’t answer him. Derek glances over at him at a stop sign and he’s gnawing on his lip.

“Stiles.”

“Okay but I’m just thinking,” Stiles says, batting a hand into the air. “Maybe I judged too quickly? Maybe he would’ve later on in the party, like found a private place to do it?”

Derek sighs. “Stiles. You can’t do this again. Scott’s not going to. You know that.”

Stiles drops his head back against the headrest. “Yeah, I know.”

“You gotta let him go.” Derek watches him from the peripheral, dejected. He sees it just beyond his eyes, the ruminating and mind whirring and Derek says, “Hey. With me, breathe in.” He breathes in and Stiles follows along. “Breathe out,” they do so together, Derek saying on the exhale, “now let him go.”

Stiles’ exhale is shakier but he gets through it. “I’m letting him go.”

.

Apparently Stiles runs into Allison while getting them coffee and donuts because he comes stomping into Derek’s loft with the cup holder in one hand, the bag death gripped in the other, saying, “So Allison absolutely knows Kira and Scott are still together.”

Derek’s only been awake for maybe twenty minutes tops, so all he can respond with is, “What?”

Stiles slams the drinks and donuts onto the table. It’s a marvel nothing spills. “I saw her and when I said Scott’s name she got this look in her eye. And then, then she tells me him and Kira are complicated, like that suddenly makes it okay and…”

“Okay,” Derek says back. He’s gotten up mid-rant and come over to drop his hands down onto Stiles’ shoulders. Derek knows he’ll start pacing again if he doesn’t hold him in place. “Let’s calm for a second.”

“I can’t calm for a second, this whole thing is different now. it’s not Scott leading two girls on, it’s Scott and Allison screwing behind Kira’s back,” Stiles tells him. “I thought it was something that would implode in on itself. This isn’t that. This is gonna implode on Kira alone.”

“Okay,” Derek says again, gently pushing on his shoulders to make him sit on one of the barstools. He grabs the cup labeled coffee - black and pushes it into his hand. “And now you know too. So what do you want to do about it?”

Stiles thumbs at the little green stick stuck into the hole in the cup to keep from spills in transit. He frowns down at it. “Scott’s always done this. He’s always done stupid or shitty things and then left the mess for me to deal with. I’ve taken the fall for him to hide his secrets, I’ve apologized for things he’s done.”

Derek knows what he means. It was Stiles who sought him out one summer day years ago, not Scott. He had a bandage on his face and had just dropped his Jeep off at the mechanic’s to buff out the large dent from his front bumper he swore was from a deer and not from a human-like lizard creature. He had said he heard what Scott did. And that he had no idea that that was the plan, or that there even was a plan. And that he was sorry Scott did that to him. Scott had nothing to say himself.

Stiles sighs, huffy. “Why am I the one who always has to do something about it?”

“Because you know Scott won’t,” Derek tells him.

Stiles pulls the stick out and chews on the tip. “Yeah, it’s really fucking annoying of him.”

.

Running into Kira at the gas station was a mess. Kira left a mess, Stiles the rest of the day was a mess, and now Derek had Stiles’ phone in his custody because this makes five missed calls from Scott and Derek does not trust Stiles to not answer at least one of them should he be left alone with it.

Scott is like an addiction Stiles is trying to break, Derek thinks. Stiles knows how bad he is for him, but he just can’t quit. Because Scott was always there.

Stiles told him he was a lonely kid growing up. And there was Scott. When his mom died. When his dad drank too much and worked too long. There Scott was. Maybe, even now, he’s scared to be that lonely kid again. So he’ll make excuses for Scott and protect him and stay with him even though Scott has not been good for him for a long, long time.

It’s still too easy to slip back into defending him and taking care of him so Stiles doesn’t have to be that lonely kid again. It’s not quite as simple as just saying fuck Scott, you have better people around you now, Derek supposes. There’s logic and then there’s emotion. You can’t strong arm emotion.

Derek tells him he did the right thing telling Kira but Stiles is restless all night.

.

Stiles comes home from taking the Camaro in for an oil change and he says, “Guess who I ran into?”

“Who?” Derek goes, hoping he doesn’t say Scott.

“Kira,” he says, and Derek’s eyebrows go up. Well, best case scenario.

“Did she say anything to you?”

Stiles dumps Derek’s keys into the little bowl for them by the door. He wrestles with taking off his Converse and Derek again wonders why he doesn’t just ever undo the laces. “She kind of said she wanted to be my friend.”

Derek holds his hands up like, well, best case scenario, part two.

But Stiles’ face seems to say different. “And I’m kind of thinking… Can we start our roadtrip early? Like say tomorrow morning? Please?”

Derek shakes his head. “You’re doing it again. Don’t run away from the good ones, Stiles. It sounds like she’s trying. You should try too.”

“I don’t like trying, not with this.”

Derek makes a come here gesture with his hand. Stiles comes over to him, only semi-reluctantly. Once he’s in reach to where Derek is sat at the table, he loops an arm around his middle, saying into his shirt, “I like you trying. Please.”

So Derek suggests they invite Kira over for dinner. Stiles agrees to it. Just one dinner at home. That shouldn’t be too bad.

.

Dinner devolves into a mess as well. After Derek listens to Kira’s car drive away, he gets up from the table and heads down the hall to the shut bathroom door. He knocks with his knuckles. He doesn’t get a go away so he opens the door.

Stiles is sitting on the toilet lid, head dropped into his hands, and he does not look up to Derek entering. Nor to Derek coming to sit down across from him on the edge of the shower tub. He offers up his hands, extended out to Stiles, but Stiles does not take them or even look at them. He only says, down into his arms, “It’s been years. I didn’t think… just her name would…”

Trauma doesn’t care if it’s been years. Derek sometimes still feels phantom nails digging into his skin and hears her raspy laugh against his ear and it’s been a decade.

Stiles pulls his hands away. They’re rigid with his fingers curled. His voice is wet and miserable. “God, and why even… I’ve said her name before and not had a panic attack about it. Why now? Why tonight?”

“We weren’t exactly expecting her name to come out of Kira’s mouth when you asked,” Derek tells him.

Stiles continues like he doesn’t even hear him. “And she said the exact same shit Scott always said. The exact same. She didn’t know any better, you can’t fault her for that. She didn’t know how strong she was. Forgive her. Like, why can’t they ever take my side? Maybe she just shouldn’t hurt people. Maybe it wasn’t my job to have to sit there and take it all.”

Derek almost remembers this word for word back in the day. Stiles coming over after school with a black eye, bruised and swollen all around the socket. Stiles saying, Scott told me I shouldn’t have been in her way when she got mad.

“Or am I just being unreasonable?” He’s staring down at his hands, still rigid, still curled. “Am I just being overreactional about it again? I am. Scott and Kira are both right. I am.”

Derek slowly reaches out, making sure his hands are in Stiles’ field of vision before he cups them around Stiles’. They’re tense and he flinches. They must be feeling like pins and needles again like he’s described it feeling like before and Derek gently holds them and presses his thumbs into his palms. “You’re not. You’re not being unreasonable or overreactional. Whether she knew better or not, that doesn’t erase the crap she put you through.”

Stiles stares down unseeing at their hands. “It all still feels vaguely like my fault. Like… I didn’t say no enough or- or I didn’t give her enough time to understand why I wouldn’t… I could’ve said more to make it stop. That’s on me.”

“Don’t you remember what you always tell me?” About Kate, when he still wakes up from nightmares with soot in his mouth and lungs. “It wasn’t my fault. It was never my fault that someone else abused me. Can’t you extend that same kindness to yourself?”

Stiles lifts his head to finally return Derek’s gaze. His eyes are shadowed with the fluorescent bathroom lights behind him, but still shiny. He smiles a little, despite himself, and sniffles. “I can try.”

“You can try,” Derek echoes, leaning forward to cup the back of Stiles’ head and press his lips to his temple. Against his skin, he says quietly, “Kira said a shitty thing but she’s not a shitty person like Scott, you know. Scott didn’t care, Kira didn’t know. There’s a difference.”

Stiles sighs. “It doesn’t matter. I already blew it twice with her.”

“She said she was sorry. She said she wanted you to know that. That doesn’t sound like a person who wants to quit on you.”

“Maybe,” Stiles says, and it’s better than a flat out refusal.

.

Their planned roadtrip along the Pacific Coast Highway goes much better than expected. That’s probably because they can for once treat leaving Beacon Hills as a vacation and not an escape.

Stiles came home with lunch the other day and informed Derek the friendship with Kira was back on.

Scott and Allison have fucked off to do whatever it is they’re doing. Scott hasn’t called or texted Stiles in weeks.

Malia has stayed her distance.

The roadtrip is all just good food and good scenery and good sex and they take turns driving. Clearly they took the Camaro because Derek knows if they dared take the Jeep it’d surely stall on a particularly tight turn and send them into the Pacific Ocean. And Stiles can’t even argue this because he knows it’s true too. Plus, besides. Sports car up the coast of California? It just barely edges out a Jeep on the bucket list.

As planned when they reach San Diego, they meet up with Cora who’s come up from Peru to see them.

Cora wasn’t very surprised when Derek told her him and Stiles were together on one of their monthly phone calls. Her exact words, Derek believes, were, “Oh, of course. That one.”

That one indeed, Derek thinks now while fondly watching Stiles choke from accidentally inhaling some of his Sprite from drinking it too fast.

They spend three days in San Diego with Cora. Day two Derek takes them to the beach where Cora and Stiles think it’s very funny to team up against Derek and use his dislike of seaweed against him.

“I’m not scared of it, I just don’t like it,” Derek insists. He almost wants to growl at the disgusting long strip Stiles is holding up and wiggling like an eel.

And he distracts Derek well enough Derek doesn’t notice Cora slapping one onto his bare foot before it’s too late. Derek doesn’t growl, but he does scream. The hysterical laughter from the peanut gallery is a little excessive.

They do make it up to him. Cora buys them all snow cones from a cute little street vendor as an apology and Stiles presents Derek with a sea turtle stuffed animal he picked out for him and kisses him and says, “We’re sorry. We’re done tormenting. We love you, we’re sorry.” And how could Derek not forgive them?

On the last day Cora says she’s sticking in Peru up until the end of her lease and then she’s coming up to see them again in Beacon Hills. As for long term, she asks Derek what’s up with the property in New York?

“We still own it,” he says. “Is there a specific reason you’re wondering?”

And Cora shrugs. “I dunno. I’m just thinking of a change of scenery.”

Stiles sits up to say, “You know, we actually have a friend who lives there. Or, well, she’s in Beacon Hills for now, but then she’s going home to New York. If you’re interested in knowing someone in the city.”

And Cora does seem interested. So Derek starts planning.

.

Kira is leaving soon and Cora is arriving soon, and Derek and Stiles think a dinner, part two, is in order for the two girls to meet each other. Cora’s been kind of on her own a long time and she seems excited to make friends. Stiles tells Kira he won’t have a meltdown this time, he swears.

And dinner turns out a lot better this time. Derek divides his time between overseeing Kira and Cora chatting in the living room and helping Stiles out in the kitchen. The girls seem to be getting along swimmingly and Stiles isn’t so abrasive to Derek being gentle with him in front of other people anymore.

The walls are coming down. Stiles is learning maybe it’s okay to be vulnerable with other people besides Derek again. Derek squeezes his wrist to tell him how proud he is of all the healing and Stiles smiles.

Over the meal Cora explains her interest in New York. Derek reminds them where the Hale property is in the city and Kira bubbles with excited laughter when she hears the street name.

“I know where that is, actually. That’s like two blocks from where my grandma lives.”

The girls exchange numbers and promise to stay in contact once they’re both settled back in the city.

With Cora and Stiles spending the night, Derek only has Kira to walk down to her car. He feels bad about letting her go last time all alone.

Kira stands poised in the open V of her driver side door and smiles at Derek. She says, “You know, I always wanted to be friends with you.”

Derek raises his eyebrows at that. “Did you?”

“Yeah. You always seemed so cool. When I first met you, that was what I first thought of you. And now I see you’re also just a good guy.” Her eyes flicker up to the loft. “You take care of them.”

Derek sort of nods because, yeah, he supposes that’s true. He’s never been good at accepting nice things people say about him still. Stiles has been good practice at building his tolerance for it, though. “You’re included in that, just so you know.”

She just keeps on smiling, cocking her head to the side. “Scott used to bad mouth you a lot, when I was with him. I kind of got the impression you were some asshole twiddling your moustache in a tower planning your nefarious deeds.” She laughs at her own image. “I mean, there was some artistic liberties I sprinkled in there, but that was the gist of it. Now I see it was all made up just because he doesn’t like you very much.”

“Well, I don’t really like Scott either, so I suppose it’s only fair.”

“I suppose.” She winks at him and bids him goodnight before she gets in her car.

.

Derek ends up being designated driver to the airport when the time comes for Kira and Cora to head back to New York. Stiles too tags along and takes the front seat, which Cora doesn’t actually complain about because she chooses to sit in back with Kira and chatter and such.

Stiles gives him eyes from the passenger seat when both girls convince Derek to give them control of the music the whole drive. They either have made the greatest feat or the gravest mistake upon bringing the two together.

At the airport Derek and Cora share an awkward hug with one another. It’s something they both wordlessly miss from childhood. The thoughtless physical touch that happened in the pack. How much it meant to them. They’re trying to reinstate it but something like that was burned out of both of them, for two different reasons, and it’s still not natural yet.

They hold out on the yet so they keep trying.

Meanwhile Kira holds Stiles by the wrists as their level of physical affection and gently shakes them, urging that they keep texting. She says, “I wanna play WoW with you once I get back to my computer at home. And I really need to get you into League of Legends. I just know you’ll love it.”

He’s smiling and nodding at her and he means it when he says, “Yeah, you’ve already sold me on it, I’d love to play with you,” and Derek is glad.

Back in the car going home Stiles has reign over the radio again (does Derek ever get to have a say in his own car? The answer is no) and says, “Stop smiling over there.”

“And here I thought you were always trying to get me to smile more.”

“Yeah, but you’re just being smug,” Stiles says, pulling one leg up under his other. Because he can never sit normally in a car, or really anywhere. “Yeah, I like Kira. Yeah, maybe having decent friends for a change is… nice.”

“Then I’m not being smug,” Derek says back. “I’m just feeling happy for you.”

“Okay,” Stiles goes, faintly smelling like embarrassment because Derek’s learned he too doesn’t really know what to do with sentiments like that. “Do you know what’d make me really happy? If we stopped at In-N-Out for lunch.”

Easy request for Derek to agree to.

.

They go back to Derek’s apartment in San Francisco for Stiles’ next semester of school. It’s actually a new apartment, the last he ended the lease on so he wouldn’t be paying for nothing all summer. The new one’s slightly cheaper, slightly less square footage, and slightly closer to the San Francisco State campus.

Stiles is very happy about not having to dorm all over again. John is too, now that they’re not paying for dorming on the student loans bill. Although Derek was also there for the conversation about Stiles pulling his weight, paying for part of the rent while living with Derek down there.

Stiles had slipped an arm around Derek’s waist then and said, “Dad, don’t you know I’m only with him for his money?”

John blinked, slow and unbelieving, and sipped his beer. It sort of made Derek think, in that moment, what about them reads too earnest to even joke like that? He doesn’t want to know.

(He kind of really wants to know. He might ask John next time, as long as he doesn’t freeze up and get distracted by the way John’s taken to calling him son.)

It’s alright though, Derek tells Stiles. He wants him to focus on his mental health and his school work. Derek really does have the money for it. Derek pays rent and Stiles cooks. It works very well for them.

.

Sometime in the afternoon before Stiles is back from class, Derek gets a call from Kira.

“You said I was included in the taking care of people thing before, right?” she says. “I thought… maybe I’d like to give you a call.”

“What’s wrong?” Derek asks, because he can tell as much by her tone of voice. Not quite wet like she’s crying or been crying, but stressed. High strung. She talks very fast like that.

“Scott tried to contact me through Instagram because I completely forgot to block him on it.” Ah. “I’ve now blocked him on it.”

“Oh yikes.”

Kira hums a little laugh in response. “You sound a lot like Stiles sometimes, you know.”

Yeah, Derek knows. It’s scary how strong Stiles’ silent eyebrow game has been getting in return.

“But that’s not even what I’m all upset about,” Kira continues, “because fuck Scott. He tried to excuse his behavior by claiming now that I realize I’m a lesbian it shouldn’t matter. I can’t even wrap my brain around logic like that, and I’m not going to bother to anyways. He’s not worth my time anymore. The only part that made me upset was… He said, he…” She sighs so it blows breath into the microphone. “He brought up Malia.”

Oh, worse.

“And now I’m just… I still don’t really even know how to talk about it. It was all so… It was like a fever dream. It was all so good so fast, she was so good. But then the way she reacted when I told her no more. Oh my God, it was…” She pauses, lingering like she’s lost herself in a thought or a memory. There’s some minor shuffling sounds like blankets in the background. “I can’t even imagine what it must’ve been like for-”

She cuts herself off. They both know well enough what she means. Derek remembers resetting Stiles’ shoulder one night, long ago. And being sworn to secrecy to not tell anyone about it.

“The worst of it all is that I still- it’s so awful to admit, but, I still feel love for her. I loved her. And I don’t know what to do about it because now I know who she really is and… and… I don’t want the love still there.”

Then she sniffles. It hits Derek in the chest the same way it did when it was Cora who was crying because she dropped Mr. Fluffy Tail out of her crib and couldn’t reach it.

Maybe that’s why Derek tells Kira, “When I was sixteen, this woman pretended she loved me. She made me feel special and separate from my family so I never told any of them about her because it was something all for myself. I liked that. Granted everything about it was a little wrong, and not just because she was several years older than me and a werewolf hunter, but I thought the wrongness made it real. I was in love with her.”

Kira is quiet on the other end. Still there, listening.

“I was in love with her so I told her everything. I told her everything she wanted to know, and then she took that information to set a house fire that killed my whole family.”

“Oh Jesus,” Kira goes, aghast.

“And I don’t say all that to… to guilt you or…” He waves a hand around, even though she cannot see. He waves a hand around to clear the imaginary smoke that likes to linger in his nose and lungs anytime he thinks too much about this. “I say that because falling for someone who wasn’t who you thought they were? I can understand where you’re coming from. Loving someone who turns out to be an awful person is… There’s no guide book on how to cope or deal with feelings like that. After. The feelings you have don’t just vanish.”

Kira is quiet for another moment. “What did you do to cope?”

“Bad shit,” Derek admits, staring out the window over the city. He wonders how similar Kira’s view is to the one he once had there. “I buried myself in jobs I could never keep with my aggression. I lashed out at people because I never wanted to sit and have to think about things in myself. When I finally wore myself out, I just withdrew. From everything. None of what I did was very good for myself. I really didn’t learn how to cope until recently.”

“With Stiles?” Kira guesses and it makes Derek smile.

“Actually, with therapy,” Derek corrects. Kira’s silence sounds surprised, unexpected. Not at all judgemental. “It takes time. It’s okay to acknowledge that those feelings are still there, even for bad people. They snuff out in their own time. Just don’t run from feeling them.”

“They make me feel guilty, ” Kira says. “Like how dare I love someone so cruel.”

“You’re not a bad person for feeling something as earnest as love for someone you thought was different. You’re not responsible for the cruel things they did just because there’s still love.”

“Yeah.” She sniffles again. “Yeah, maybe.”

.

Derek is sipping a mug of hot chocolate and considering adding another dollop of whip cream to it while Cora texts him pictures of potential things to get Kira for Christmas. It’s only barely November but she’s very insistent about it and making sure Kira likes it.

She sends a picture of a stuffed animal of what Derek thinks might be a Pokémon, but he sadly suffers from what Stiles deems ‘early old man syndrome’. He is not very good at staying up to date on all the new things kids are into these days. That’s Stiles’ job to be translator for him.

But Stiles is busy in the other room on a voice call with Kira. They’re playing some game, and he’s yelling something about coming to heal Kira. Derek can’t go ask him his opinion on this maybe Pokémon so he texts back it’s cute and calls it good.

Cora is resolute, it can’t just be cute, it has to be perfect, and not for the first time these past few weeks Derek thinks he might have to have a very awkward older brother talk with her about pining and crushes and feelings quite soon.

It’s not that bad. They’re also trying to get better about talking about anything and everything alongside the physical touch. That’s what the monthly phone calls are for. That’s what the silly one off texts are for. They’re doing really well with it these days.

Stiles laughs from the other room. “One more game, Kira. One more!”

And it makes Derek smile to himself. He doesn’t believe he’s ever told Stiles how nice joy smells.

Derek gets up to go to the kitchen with his hot chocolate. He thinks he will have that extra whip cream. Because Stiles bought two containers of it for a reason, and maybe Derek just wants some more. He adds another dollop into his mug, careful not to splash, and then scoops another just to eat directly. He’s stopped feeling guilty about doing that because Stiles brands it as self-care, and Derek’s been taking to calling it that too.

Sitting back down, he sees Cora’s sent him another picture. This one is of a lightsaber. And it’s not that cheap, plastic kind either. It looks heavy and well made. It glows. Cora says, I THINK I FOUND IT. Now I gotta get Stiles one too hell yeah.

And her excitement and Stiles happily chattering with Kira over call just make Derek feel… content. He’s not technically an alpha anymore, but this is his pack and they’re all healing. It settles something deep in his core to know that that’s true, himself included.

They’re all healing.