Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

First off it must be said that Stiles likes his job. He doesn’t love anything more than getting freshly graduated kids in his classes who are still wide-eyed and curious about the whole of college, and who all think Stiles is one of them as he passes them in the hallway, giving him lazy nods and half-waves before returning their attention to their phones. Stiles’ favorite spiel is pretending to be a student and joining the kids on the front row, so that right as everyone is starting to wonder where the professor is, he can jump over the desk and to the front of the class where he has his laptop set up to the PowerPoint of his first day: representation of folklore in world literature.

Stiles had been confused when his request to teach this class had been accepted, simply because he hadn’t been sure anyone was interested in this topic outside of the supernatural company he keeps, and yet his introductory class is one of the most popular ones among freshmen and motivated postgraduates alike. This means he has the most diverse of demographics in his classes, and it also means that he has the luxury of playing around with topics, changing them to his every whim because basically; the board can’t stop him if his lectures are this popular. He can’t deny he relishes in the power this gives him, and he has since taken up quite a few more courses to teach, most of them within the Masters in Folklore, though some of them are available to the Cultural Studies department as a whole.

It also means that his 101 class is probably the only one in the entire college which has a steady stream of supernaturally inclined students. He’s had the honor of teaching about every sort there is, from vampires to kelpies, and he’s even had the odd nymph or two, though he knows they’re not generally the college type. As he understands, nymphs get all their life power from the environment they live in, and so most of them are content to just run around in nature and occasionally get their hands on a passerby who just so happens to pass on their lands. Stiles had received a flirtatious offer from of his students, which he’d kindly but decisively denied, because no matter how ages on consent differ for all creatures, there’ll never be a setting in which he as a professor won’t be taking advantage of his students if they both were to engage in anything but their classroom relationships.

Having such a wide variety of supernatural students has been beneficial in other ways as well. Every time Stiles learns something that seems worth adding to the pack’s archive, he’ll send out the new information to Scott, Chris – sometimes Lydia if she’s not too busy discovering new mathematical rules of the universe, or whatever it is she does. Stiles loves hearing her talk about her research, but he only understands about 3 percent and a half of it on a good day, and so mostly he just smiles, nods, and drinks his oat milk latte in silence, allowing her to chatter away on the other end of the skype call. Sometimes they talk about Beacon Hills too, though never about personal things – only about the scientific side behind the magic, one of Lydia’s eternal pet projects. The lay lines that are spread through the city make it a particularly strong hub of magic, and so over the last few years, Beacon Hills has become a bit of an attraction for young people, especially with the type of younger people that host seances in the middle of the night, or the type that just enjoys howling at the moon.

It’s thanks to Stiles’ intel that Scott has been able to forge connections with all these types of supernatural families that live in and around Beacon Hills, and he’s gotten his little alpha claws on a good dozen or so werewolves to join the McCall pack.

All the abovementioned positive things aside, Stiles is glad it’s Friday. Midterm season is his least favorite time of the semester, since he thinks that midterms in general are a waste of both his and his students’ time. They add so much work to his to-do list that he ends up drinking a little too much and sleeping a little too little for the entire week, and it’s dangerous for him and everyone around him. Which is why when his office hours for the week are finally over, he’s up and out of his seat the moment the clock hits five, diving behind his desk to stuff his laptop and pile of papers to grade into his bag. The top one reads “what is the Minotaur” and he wants to cry a little in preemptive boredom. The chunk of black tourmaline he uses as a paperweight sadly does little to suck up the negative energy from repetitive essays. He’s more than ready to go home and just ignore that he has any work to do until Sunday evening, when he’ll be fueled by enough stress about not hitting his grade submission deadline that he’ll no longer have any qualms about driveling through endless four-page descriptions of the mythical creatures of the first twenty pages of the textbook he uses.

When there is a knock on his door, he inwardly curses everything and everyone, but his voice is still pleasant as he calls out a reply, though he doesn’t bother to look up from his packing, shoving his water bottle in with as much grace as he can muster.

“Unless you’re here to take me out for beers, I am not available. Office hours resume Monday at 3pm and not a minute earlier. If you didn’t hand in your essay just e-mail it to me because I frankly don’t hold respect for deadlines and neither should you, but I do need it by Sunday or I’ll have to make up a grade and I’m starting to think I’m dyscalculic so that might not be your best move.”

There’s no reply to that, and so Stiles gets up with his backpack in hand, frowning lightly at the lack of basic etiquette from one of his students. He’s not one to take things too seriously, but a small “hi professor Stilinski” would have been appreciated nonetheless. When his gaze locks on the person in the doorway, however, he does a double-take and almost drops his backpack and the entire content on the floor. This would indubitably break the touch screen of his laptop for the fourth time, and he really doesn’t have the finances for that, so he holds on to it extra tight even when his fingers suddenly seem to have lost feeling. Because Derek Hale is standing in his doorway, looking a little lost and a lot out of place, shuffling his feet on the long-worn carpet of the humanities building’s hallway. For a moment, Stiles thinks he might just be having an exhaustion fueled hallucination right there. He’s not heard from Derek in months, not since he’d been on a group call for Christmas, and he hasn’t seen the man for years, not since Stiles had left Beacon Hills to go for his PhD, flying across the country, and never looking back. He’s the absolute last person Stiles would have thought would come visit him. Then again, he’d also thought the same of Peter, who had made it a habit to pop by Stiles’ office or flat once every few months, going through his stuff and throwing out old clothes that Stiles then has to go fish out of the containers behind the back of his building. But Peter is weird and a little bit creepy, so even that hadn’t been that much of a surprise. Derek has long lost his creepy factor, and so him standing there simply feels… unexpected.

Stiles stares at Derek. Derek stares back. Stiles carefully puts his backpack down on his desk to close the zip, making sure everything he needs to bring home with him over the weekend is there, and when he looks up, Derek is still staring at him. No matter what Stiles had previously thought, it’s still a little creepy. As far as Stiles can tell, there is nothing wrong with the older man; no pallor, no sweat, no wolfsbane induced smoke, yet he seems frozen in the doorway. It takes Stiles another two heartbeats of awkward silence to realize why he isn’t coming in.

“It’s only right around my desk,” he says, and Derek’s eyebrows rise into his hairline, eyes darting between Stiles and the innocuous dark oak desk that’s stacked with the piles of paperwork, and then he scowls. It is so familiar that despite himself, Stiles smiles.

“Are we not allowed to come in?” Derek asks, and it’s so like Derek to not even bother with a greeting that Stiles almost feels sixteen again, except instead of being intimidated, he’s impossibly fond. He likes Derek, grumpy glare included, and even if they don’t see each other often, Stiles carries a lot of affection for the older man who has been trying so awkwardly to rebuild himself a semblance of family over the last decade. Scott has done a pretty good job of helping him with that, and it shows in the lack of tension in Derek’s shoulders, in the absence of the wary look Stiles knows the older man is so good at.

“It’s more so no one can dive over the desk when I’m focused on my work,” he says, throwing the backpack on his back and tightening the straps so it sits comfortably on his shoulders, “I don’t hear anyone come when I’m focused, and the last thing I want is to be dragged over my desk by a little werewolf assassin or a…” he scrambles to look for an example of something that would be likely to attack him, and sadly comes up with nothing much at all, “I don’t know, a cannibalistic deer.”

“Wolfsbane doesn’t work on not deer,” Derek gruffs out, and Stiles laughs.

“Use that little werewolf nose of you and you’ll notice it’s not just wolfsbane in here.” He gestures towards the legs of the desk, where the shine of the wood is just a little lighter than the rest of it, and to the top, where there’s an indent of runes barely visible under the pile of admin Stiles is decisively ignoring for his own mental health. He shrugs and takes a step forward, towards Derek and the door, “It would be stupid to not protect myself where I can. Also, hello Derek, nice to see you again, you look great.” He says that last bit with a fair amount of sarcasm, but any of the bite his teasing may have held is eased by the warm amusement on his face.

He lifts a hand towards Derek’s face, holding his palm out for the man to press into it. Derek hesitates for a moment, looking behind him into the hallway to make sure no one else is watching them, and then positively dives his nose into Stiles’ palm, nuzzling the skin and then carefully stepping closer. There’s an uncertainty that’s always been there with Derek, but there’s none of it with Stiles, who just wraps his arms around the man and squeezes him close, giving plenty of time for Derek to do his scenting thing. As expected, when they are settled into the embrace and Derek’s breathing has evened out, Derek finally says, “Hello, Stiles,” and the ice is broken.

They break apart a moment later, and Derek’s face is more open when his gaze meets Stiles’ again, looking much more at ease than he did before. Stiles takes a moment to just look at him. He does look great, his eyes clear and awake, skin a healthy bronze tan. He looks slimmer than Stiles remembers, wearing a comfortable long-sleeved shirt that emphasizes softness where before there’d been nothing but muscle. Stiles is so, so glad.

“I do mean what I said, though,” he says, when Derek seems content to just take him in as well, and Stiles is left wondering what the man thinks of him, if he likes the way Stiles has let his hair grow enough to curl around his ears, if he notices the new tattoos poking out from underneath the collar of Stiles’ shirt, spilling out onto his neck. “If you’re not here to take me out for drinks, I won’t have it. There better not be any emergency because I have an artisanal pizza party planned tonight and I would so hate to cancel it.”

Derek just blinks at him, “Artisanal pizza party?”

Stiles grins, amusement pulling up his lips as the surprise of seeing Derek makes way for excitement, “I’ll make it worse – artisanal pizza and craft beer. That’s kind of the disgustingly hipster Friday I was going for.”

“It’s a step up from your frozen pizza and mountain dew evenings,” Derek says, and though his face gives nothing away, Stiles notices the twinkle in his eyes, and he gladly goes along with it.

“I replace the sugar with CBD these days,” he says, as he lets his eyes go around the office one more time and then tilting his head to the door, an unspoken question for them to get out and into the beautiful sunny afternoon that’s waiting for them outside, “much better for my anxiety, I can tell you that.”

Derek steps out first, and Stiles locks up behind them with both his key and the strip of fabric he keeps to seal off his door from any spell work, twisting it around the doorknob twice. It seems to glow for a second, before it settles into its usual position, fluttering in their departure and looking for all the world like a silly piece of decoration. They fall into line easily, making their way towards the exit. The hallway is mostly empty, with most people having quit early today in favor of spending time in the sun. Stiles has mostly forgotten about the existence of sun since his office faces north, and the cultural studies building is a dingy place in general, stuffy and dark, but Stiles has always felt right at home. He waves his goodbyes to Sharon at the front desk – which is just a desk in front of the emergency exit leading to a rickety staircase down to the ground floor, but it is a desk, and it is at the front, and Sharon has decorated the wall with clippings from her nieces and nephews, so it is good enough of a front desk for both of them.

“You do smell different,” Derek says, once they’re creaking their way down the stairs, “I couldn’t immediately find you.”

He says it almost accusatory, like it’s somehow Stiles’ fault that he’s no longer traceable by a waft of monster exotic pineapple flavor, and Stiles only snorts in reply, skipping down the last few steps and onto the pavement with a content sigh. He lets the sun beat down on him, and though it’s still only mildly warm, he can tell that spring has properly arrived, and it feels good. He’s ready to stop having to add vitamin D to his every meal just to make sure he can keep teaching. It claims to not have any flavor, but Stiles can taste the oily substance on his tongue no matter how well he mixes is it with his meals, and it’s an unpleasant experience every single time.

“I do carry this with me,” he says then, pulling out the small glass vial he carries around his neck and holding it up for Derek to see the mixture inside. It’s a blend of chili peppers, rosemary and cloves, and Derek scrunches his nose when the vial comes too close to him, the combination of the scent and the powerful warding spell Stiles has used it for making the werewolf’s eyes water, “that’s probably what’s throwing you off. Protection, again.”

“That’s a lot of protection for a college campus,”

“It’s the exact right amount of protection for me to walk around without worries,” Stiles chimes back easily, “All this combined with the Nguyen’s pack’s symbol means I haven’t had a single unwanted encounter in nineteen months, which considering my track record, you will agree is most exceptional.”

“They Nguyen pack offered you protection,” Derek says, more statement than question, and Stiles nods.

The Nguyen pack had been cautious about Stiles, at first, and it had taken a fair few meetings for them to accept his presence on campus without any suspicion, eventually allowing him to get a small rendition of their pack’s symbol on his ankle. An untraditional place for a marker, indicating Stiles as tolerated on their turf but not part of the pack, something Stiles was more than happy about. After all, his left arm bears Scott’s symbol, a smaller version of the ugly two bands of tattoos Stiles had so despised when he’d been younger, and the Nguyen’s had respected that. No matter that he isn’t living with his friends in Beacon Hills, he has no interest in changing packs, not even on a temporary basis.

“They can come to me if they need my help on anything, too,” he explains, “they have a healer but sometimes it’s nice to have a second opinion on plants or magic or were-hamsters or something.”

“ Were-hamsters ,” Derek echoes in a flat voice, but his eyebrows are lifted in amusement when Stiles looks over to him, and so he throws in a grin himself as he shrugs, unapologetic, “I don’t discount anything anymore. Have you watched the movie about the Zombie Sheep? That one has been haunting me since I saw it, and I’ve been worried about encountering something like that for years now.”

They walk across the campus that is mostly empty at this time on Friday, especially on a warm day as today, but Stiles still spots a few of his students coming out of the library. They wave at him cheerfully, wishing him a good weekend, and he does the same in turn, clapping one of his master students on the shoulder when the girl confides in him that she’s barely halfway through the research for her thesis. She gives him a tired grin and a thumbs up, and then she follows after her friends for what Stiles hopes is an evening of completely ignoring all the work ahead of her. Stiles smiles. For all that his students sometimes hand in the most boring essays imaginable, they usually participate in his classes, and he finds he likes most of them, since they all share the niche interest in supernatural creatures and the academic importance of folklore art.

“You look at ease here,” Derek tells him, pulling Stiles out of his thoughts. He turns to look at Derek, who’s walking close enough to them for their arms to bump into each other with every step, and when their eyes lock, Stiles is startled by the absence of the hardness he had once gotten so used to.

“I do?”

He guesses he does feel at ease, despite his surplus of protective magic. The college campus feels like neutral territory to him, since it isn’t built on top of lay lines, and so the only magic present is the one lingering in the limestone of the oldest buildings. Hilariously, the most magical part on campus is the IT building, and Stiles doesn’t have to be anywhere near that on a regular day. They don’t particularly enjoy having him around either, since whenever Stiles comes in to complain about the servers not working properly or the computers in the humanities building needing an update, the coffee maker that fuels the entirety of the IT department always seems to short-circuit, spraying coffee at whoever is unfortunate enough to be near.

“Indiana suits you,” Derek says, and he throws Stiles a genuine smile that warms him all the way through, and has him smiling in turn. In fact, he doesn’t stop smiling as he guides them both to his favorite pizza place, whilst he chatters to Derek about the buildings around them, the origin of the Hoosier demonym, and the recent successes of the college’s basketball team. “It’s not lacrosse,” he says with a derogatory sniff, “but it’s good enough, I guess.”

“I used to play basketball,” Derek protests, but he doesn’t get the chance to defend the sport more, because they have arrived at their destination, and Stiles grabs his arm and tugs him towards a little table outside of the restaurant that is miraculously still unoccupied. The sun beams down on them with full force, and Stiles just knows he’ll be burnt later today, but that doesn’t stop him from leaning his face into the sun whilst Derek browses the menu. It’s still odd to see him sitting here, his face so familiar yet completely out of place in what Stiles has considered home for the last couple years. But the bond between them thrums with contentment in Stiles’ veins, and when they’ve put in their order, the two of them instinctively lean closer to each other to continue their earlier conversation.

*

“So, Scott has given up on trying to convince me with voice messages and instead sent you over to try and make me come back?” Stiles asks about an hour later, when they’ve made their way through two pizzas, their bellies round and full and cheeks flushed both with joy from food (and in Stiles’ case because of the second lager he’s just finished). Derek had opted for a homemade lemonade, something fresh and gingery that tickled Stiles’ nose when the waitress had brought it to their table. Derek had looked delighted, like it was the best thing that he had ever been offered, and Stiles had laughed. He’d opened his mouth to make a remark about it, but Derek had just smiled at him and any urge he’d had to tease about it had completely evaporated. Now that his tongue is loose with the beer, however, it’s starting to give way to the things that had crossed his mind when he’d first seen Derek appear in his doorway.

If truth be told, it’s not the person he had expected Scott to send to try and convince him, but it’s a clever move. Stiles has always had a bit of a soft spot for Derek, which as a teenager he’d blamed on his confusing crush on the older man, but as they’d both grown older, he’d come to realize that they had a sort of quiet understanding between them that Stiles has with very few other people. Where Stiles had sometimes found himself at disagreement with Scott, who’s kind and soft-hearted and oh-so-eager to always save everyone, he and Derek are both fiercely loyal to their own, and only their own. Both are willing to go perhaps too far to make sure that those they care about are safe and protected. They’ve both killed for this. It’s not your typical kind of bro-bonding, but when Stiles looks at Derek, he sees someone alike to him – for better or for worse.

“Scott worries you don’t care enough to come back,” Derek says, which isn’t an answer to the question Stiles asked out loud, but to the one that’s been running around in his head instead. Stiles closes his eyes. This is another thing Scotty does so well - guilt. Luckily there’s nothing that his childhood friend can involuntarily guilt-trip him for that Stiles himself hasn’t already spent months feeling awful about. He’s been down the road of self-loathing for leaving for college, for continuing his education beyond a grad program, for choosing to accept a job far, far away from Beacon Hills. When he opens his eyes again, he’s gotten a grip on the tightness in his chest, and he knows that even though Derek will know exactly what he’s been thinking, he won’t bring it up.

“And what do you think?” he asks, lifting the beer to his lips and finishing it in one, long gulp. The drink goes down easily, cool liquid in his suddenly dry throat, and he wonders if he wants another one.

The choice is made for him by Derek, who waves over the waitress and orders them the same, with an easy smile that is still so very new, but looks good on him, nonetheless. Like it belongs there.

“I think that Beacon Hills is full of hurt for you,” Derek replies then, and Stiles almost does a double take at the unexpected answer, but he’s grown out of big reactions over the course of the years, and so he only tilts his head to the side in question, feigning confusion. Derek doesn’t buy it – why would he when he can literally smell Stiles’ reaction if nothing else – but he doesn’t say anything else, only finishes his own drink and puts it to the side so that it can be taken back when they get their new order.

“Not going to elaborate on that?” Stiles asks, when the silence continues with seemingly no problem for Derek, but with several problems for Stiles, who still despises long moments of silence between friends – are they friends? He’s not sure. He supposes they are. Reluctant fighters-of-evil-during-high-school don’t sit together drinking beer and pizza, do they? That seems to go against the law of superhero-lore Stiles considers himself intimately knowledgeable of.

Derek hums. “Should I?”

He shouldn’t. Stiles doesn’t think about Beacon Hills if he can help it, after all. Back then he’d made a show of not wanting to leave for college and leave his friends behind, but he knows just as much as they did that it was a performance for both their sakes. He knows that everyone knew how eager Stiles had been to leave the town, to leave the state, really, and to not look back. He’d known that when Scott had told him to visit often, the two of them had known he wouldn’t. The moment Stiles had stepped on that airplane, he had zero intention of visiting at all, let alone often. Stiles had been back in Beacon Hills twice since he left, once for Christmas and once to help his dad out when he’d broken a leg. He’s not been visited by any of them either, though, so he doesn’t feel too bad about it.

Usually.

*                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Their table is silent when their fresh drinks are brought to the table, and from the corner of his eyes Stiles can see the waitress giving them both confused looks. It must seem a stark contrast from earlier, when they’d been full of cheerful conversation about everything from the sunny weather to the essays Stiles is supposed to grade. Now there’s nothing Stiles can think of that he wants to say that is not either going to come across as whiny or angry. He hates Derek a little bit for making him think about his friends, about his dad, about the three voice messages he ignored on Telegram, about the unread mails in his inbox. He’s been doing such a good job at being perfectly okay, that it’s frustrating to be confronted with the fact that behind the ease of his daily life, there’s nothing but mess.

The glass is cold under his fingertips, and even in the warm sunlight, goosebumps appear on his skin. The beer tastes just a little bitter this time.

“I’m not going back,”

“I figured,” Derek says with a shrug, and Stiles’ eyes follow the way the older man stirs his drink, little leaves of mint floating around in the sparkling liquid, “I told Scott you probably wouldn’t.”

“Then why bother?” Stiles asks, and this time he does whine, just a little, because * fuck * if he isn’t both hurt and irritated that apparently his best friend didn’t even dare come see him himself. Rationally he knows Scott has a job, and that it’s not easy for him to fly across the country, let alone cross into a different pack’s territory without forewarning, and that he can’t just leave everyone behind. It’d be chaos if Scott went anywhere alone in general, alphaness aside. Still, Stiles aches with the knowledge that he and Scott are way beyond the trust that they had when they were five. Stiles isn’t even sure they are really friends anymore.

Stiles doesn’t expect Derek to say, “It gave me a good excuse to leave Beacon Hills.”

They both look at each other, and just for a moment Stiles has the feeling no one has ever better understood him than the man opposite him. Derek smiles, and Stiles feels some of the tension in his shoulders seep away before he sighs and returns the smile with one of his own.

“Alright. Fine. Tell me what’s plaguing the damn town this time.”

Derek explains him everything, and halfway through Stiles has to order another beer, because turns out it’s…

“Faeries??”

“That’s what I said,”

Stiles downs the glass.

Derek seems to not be in the least bit concerned about dropping this bomb on Stiles, but then the older man had seemed aloof about pretty much everything they’d talked about, and Stiles thinks that it’s better than the anger that was festering in Derek’s chest before, but he isn’t sure if it’s really better.

“I didn’t even know Beacon Hills had a crossing,” Stiles eventually says, and Derek shrugs, because gods know Beacon Hills has had every possible supernatural creature make a home for themselves in that town. “But I’m not surprised.”

The sky has turned dark as they’d been chatting, and the little restaurant has emptied and filled again, this time with people here for the aperitivo buffet rather than dinner, and Stiles is on his fifth beer. Derek has joined him on the last round, which Stiles thinks is kind even though Derek can’t get drunk nor particularly likes beer. It’s the thought that counts.

“So do you know what they want?” He finally asks when Derek doesn’t seem inclined to offer him anything, and it’s a moment before Derek’s gaze finds his again. There’s a look in the older man’s eyes that Stiles can’t identify, and then Derek shrugs, shaking his head shortly.

“We only know they’re being careless,” he says, “At first it was just babies disappearing, but then in January it was toddlers, and last week a girl from elementary school went to swing from a tree behind her house and disappeared. They just seem to take and are giving nothing in return. I don’t know a lot about the fae, but I’ve never heard of something like this before.”

Stiles can only imagine what kind of strain this new series of issues will have brought on his dad. He then quickly switches to wondering why his dad hasn’t brought any of this up during one of their weekly calls. He thinks he knows, though. Scott wants Stiles to come back to Beacon Hills out of his own volition, and he knows that if Stiles was told about this by the Sheriff, he would be packing his bags to come help for all the reasons that Scott thinks are wrong. And Stiles’ dad would not trust him to not put himself or all of them in danger. And fuck, Stiles never wanted to know any of this in the first place.

At least that’s what he tells himself.

*

Derek insists on paying, which Stiles usually would make a bigger deal about, but he thinks he deserves a little break. The fact that Derek pulls out a sleek black card does help in not making him feel guilty about it.

They don’t have to discuss Derek coming home with him. Stiles knows that if he says his goodbyes, Derek will just go sleep in his car - there’s nothing werewolves hate more than sleeping in hotel rooms filled with scents of strangers - and for better or worse, Stiles is still part of the pack.

He makes a half-assed comment about not sharing his bed as they enter his flat, and Derek hums a vague agreement, attention already on taking in Stiles’ living space. He’s glad he’d cleaned his apartment a few days before, so at least there’s no embarrassing things lying around. There’s no hiding anything else, so Stiles doesn’t even bother, simply closes the door behind them and lets Derek make his rounds of the place whilst he sheds his jacket and shoes, walking towards the kitchen to get them both a glass of water. He returns to Derek running careful fingertips over the many frames scattered on Stiles’ dresser and the loose pictures pinned on the wall. Some of them he took around campus, on the more exciting trips he’s been on for work, and they’re alternated with pictures Isaac loyally sends him every month in what the man cursedly calls Stiles’ Pack-age . Stiles had told him on a rare video call that they did live in the 21st century and Isaac could Telegram him those pictures, but the other man had only grinned at him and shrugged, explaining that Erica had gotten her hands on a polaroid camera and was insistent they needed physical evidence of everything. “Family portraits,” Isaac had called them, and the emotions that had coursed through Stiles at that had shut him up real good.

Derek’s face doesn’t give anything away when he looks up from the pictures, but Stiles feels laid bare in front of him nonetheless, the wall a proof of all the affection Stiles has for his friends. It’s something he can’t argue despite his continued absence in Beacon Hills, and he’s pretty sure Derek can pick up on every conflicting feeling he feels when he looks at them.

He’s saved from any remarks Derek could consider making when the werewolf’s eyebrows suddenly shoot up and he sniffs audibly, his eyes narrowing as he whirls around to the couch, glaring at it as if it has personally offended him. Stiles watches in amusement, and when Derek looks up at him, there’s a look on his face that is clearly demanding an explanation from Stiles, even though it remains unspoken.

“Yes, Derek?” Stiles asks, sitting down on the offensive couch and looking up at the older man.

“Why does your flat smell like my uncle?”

“Because Peter regularly visits my flat,” Stiles says. Surprisingly regularly, even, considering Peter has been living his best life traveling the world, collecting vintage wines and illegal liquors, of which there are an alarming amount in Stiles’ flat at this point. His dad would have an aneurysm or five if he knew about the bottles of Havana under his sink. “He was here last week.”

“And why,” Derek continues, taking a careful step closer to the couch and sniffing it with an expression as if he regrets ever asking in the first place - Stiles knows the feeling - but unable to keep himself from asking it anyway, “does your couch smell just a little too much like my uncle?”

Really, Stiles knows they haven’t been speaking much over the last couple years, but Derek should know better than asking Stiles these kinds of questions. “Because me and Peter had sex on this couch,” Stiles says, without an inkling of shame, “though not last week. It’s been a while since he’s been in the country.”

Derek makes a sound like he’s being strangled, “You are aware my uncle is like sixty?”

“What is that again in werewolf years?” Stiles asks, mockingly curious. He’s long given up on figuring out the werewolf aging system - he’ll leave that to Lydia and her cross-species DNA sequence side project. “twenty? Eighty? Hundred-ten? Also, he’s fifty-eight.”

“He’s sixty in the years that count,” Derek says, nose wrinkled in displeasure. To Stiles’ amusement, the older werewolf makes a show of sitting down in the other couch, the one he deems untouched by filthy thoughts of Peter, and Stiles doesn’t have the heart to tell him he did in fact also have sex in that one. “You’re thirty.”

“Thirty-two,” Stiles corrects, “and I was possessed by a thousand-year-old evil Japanese fox-spirit, so if you’re worried about my body being violated that’s a concern that comes a bit too late.”

It’s a light remark, perhaps too light for the weight of the situation he’s referencing, but at this point Stiles thinks there’s not much more he can do than laugh in the face of his teenage trauma, cackle at it until that darkness fills with bright laughter and amusement rather than the paralyzing fear it still brings him. It’s been a while since Derek has seen him, however, and Stiles can tell that the man doesn’t quite know how to respond to that. So Stiles smoothly changes the topic, and instead shows Derek his collection of supernatural literature, his class plans for the semester, and the cool paraphernalia he’s gathered over the years of teaching a variety of creatures. His favorite has to be a collection of sea glass that shimmers in the sunlight, a gift from a selkie who had been on exchange for a semester. She’d absolutely hated being on land, she’d entrusted Stiles, but she’d liked his class, and had given him the little pebbles on the last day of class. They weren’t magical, but she said they had brought her a lot of peace whilst she was in Indiana, and that makes them impossibly valuable in Stiles’ eyes. Derek runs his thumb over the soft green glass, holding it up so the light can catch on it, and Stiles finds himself thinking distractedly that it’s the same color as Derek’s eyes. Just as beautiful, too.

When Stiles runs out of things to say – it takes a while but not that long, considering that he’s tired and a little tipsy – they prepare for bed. Derek steals one of Stiles’ shirts to sleep in, and then ostentatiously turns up his nose to the offensive couch that smells like his uncle, opting to sleep on the other one, though it’s much shorter and Derek has to lift his feet on the armrest in order to stretch out comfortably. When Stiles points this out to him, Derek fake snores at him, and Stiles rolls his eyes at the dramatics.

Stiles wakes up a few hours later when there’s movement next to him on the bed, a mass of dark fur and wet snout against his cheek, and he grimaces and groans, though he rolls over to make some more room. Derek settles against him, and even in the dark Stiles can feel the smugness radiate of him. He would make a snide remark about spoil-wolves, but he can’t deny it’s comfortable to slip his fingers into the soft fur and hold on, curling a little closer to press his nose against Derek’s neck. He falls asleep again with a smile on his face.

*

Derek being around isn’t weird at all, and that is exactly what makes Stiles feel weird. The older man lounges around whilst Stiles works his way through grading the essays, and when Stiles complains out loud about the ridiculous things his students write, he snorts at the appropriate moments and offers up a variety of insults Stiles could write down on the papers. Sadly, Stiles thinks that if he writes that his students are toeless fish-brained pixie-sticks, he might lose his job, so he just jots it down on a post-it note and sticks it to the fridge. Derek looks as proud as a three-year old whose drawing made it on there, and Stiles’ heart is soft.

Because it seems bad form to force Derek to eat frosted flakes for both breakfast and they go out for a late lunch, where they both end up ordering breakfast food anyway. They don’t talk again about what is going on Beacon Hills, but Derek quietly talks about how he’s finished up his college degree online, and how he doesn’t want to do anything with it. When Stiles then finds out Derek was an applied business major, he completely understands. He can’t imagine Derek in any sort of office environment, and it’s tempting to poke fun at him, but Stiles knows what it must mean to him to have finished the degree at all, and so he doesn’t. Instead of business, it turns out, Derek gardens. He has some pictures on his phone from the vegetable garden he had taken two years to get fully filled. There’s plump tomatoes and crisp lettuce, as well as a variety of other vegetables Stiles doesn’t even immediately recognize. He’s more of a “pre-packaged” type of guy. Still, Stiles compliments him on the work, and Derek’s red ears as he tucks his phone away again are absolutely worth it.

They finish their waffles as they talk about the books they read recently (Stiles has been reading the Memory Police and Derek is elbows deep in a massive fantasy series that he thinks is awfully mediocre but now he is more than halfway through and too committed to stop), and they share a stack of pancakes as they move on to music. Derek still uses the same music player he had when he was a teenager, and Stiles does tease him about that, before demanding an earbud so Derek can share his favorite songs. They order three refills of coffee – Stiles would have gone for a fourth, but Derek steals his cup and puts it down on the seat next to him, out of Stiles’ reach. Stiles isn’t above crawling under the table to grab it, but Derek gives him a look that clearly says something about tearing out throats and these days Stiles is quite fond of his jugular being intact.

*

The weekend spent together is the most natural thing. For all Stiles has been comfortable living on his own and living by his own schedule, it’s easy to slip into a shared living arrangement with Derek. Gone are all the sharpest edges of when Stiles knew him as a teenager, and instead there’s softness spread over all the spots of him that are still hurt. Sometimes when he speaks, Stiles recognizes Scott’s mum in his words, little phrases that Stiles remembers from the weeks and months after his mum died and Melissa would come to visit him and his dad on the regular with homemade casseroles. She was an absolute mediocre chef, and the main reason Stiles had taught himself how to cook, but her presence had been so comforting to Stiles when he’d been terrified and alone. He’s glad that Melissa had been able to help someone else like that, too. Other times, it’s Scott talking with Derek’s voice. Stiles has no qualms pointing that out to him with great glee, but Derek takes it in stride, rolling his eyes and pressing his palm against Stiles’ face to shut him up. If Stiles is an absolute idiot and licks Derek’s palm when he does that, that’s between the two of them.

When Monday rolls around, Stiles half expects Derek to pack up and leave. He’s got classes to teach and papers to grade and he’s busy for far too many hours a day to entertain guests. But that morning Stiles wakes up to a fresh cup of coffee and sandwiches to go, and he’s too sleepy and grateful to really think about it. When he returns that evening to a clean flat and a homecooked meal, he’s too hungry to think about it. He does think about it in the shower, and he wants to bring up to Derek that he shouldn’t feel obliged to do these things whilst he’s staying around, but then Derek has lined up an episode of Batman the animated series, two cups of tea on his coffee table together with some freshly baked cookies that had definitely not been there when Stiles had left that morning. Stiles will think about it later, he promises himself, but he’s tired and has a little pressure behind his eyes from the stuffy office he was cramped in all day, and the cookies just look so damn good. Halfway the episode, Stiles finds himself leaning against Derek’s side with his head on Derek’s shoulder, feet tucked under Derek’s thigh and a blanket draped over the two of them, and it’s ever so comfortable. He’d known that being far away from the pack he considered himself part of would always feel a little weird, their bonds sustained only by irregular calls and the packages Isaac loyally sends him. What he hadn’t known was that having someone from the pack close like this would feel this reassuring . He’s comfortable and at ease, and so it’s only two episodes later that he’s ready to crawl into bed again, at a surprisingly reasonable hour.

It's not until Thursday that it occurs to Stiles to wonweder what Derek fills his days with. He has a longer lunch break that day, so Derek has come out with him to one of the university’s cafeterias. It’s the smaller of the three in his area, and he prefers it much to the other ones, though it is on the more expensive side. It has large red booths to crawl into with your food, and when the cafeteria closes in the afternoon, students often come and sneak in a little nap between their classes. Stiles had been guilty of that as well, he tells Derek as they queue for their food, and Derek laughs when Stiles relays the e-mail he had received that evening with an attached picture of some of Stiles’ advanced Mythology students, posing in front of the red booth Stiles was passed out in. He still has the picture framed in his office, too. They both pick up a miso soup and a Japanese-style curry, accompanied with iced tea and a coin for the coffee machine after, and they settle in the same booth as the one Stiles fell asleep in. Derek smiles again when he cracks open the lid of the miso soup cup, sniffing it, and Stiles is struck with how at home he looks here. Not necessarily at the university, but just here, in this moment, sitting opposite Stiles and having lunch with him. Stiles sort of feels like he’s being stabbed in the gut with a very small, very sharp hairpin. It’s a particular sensation, and he quickly guzzles down half his iced tea to hide his reaction.

“So,” he says, when he’s certain he’s fully composed once more, “you’re not getting bored when I’m gone?”

“Of course, I miss you terribly,” Derek deadpans, and he looks up from his soup with an amused eyebrow raised, “but no, not bored. I spent three hours degreasing your oven yesterday, so that kept me busy.”

Stiles groans, but he can’t help laughing either, though his cheeks heat with embarrassment about the filthy oven he’d ignored for as long as he’s lived in the flat. “Dude, you don’t need to.”

Derek shrugs, “I don’t mind.”

Stiles picks up his spoon and pokes at his curry for a few moments, before he says, “I just don’t want you to feel like you have to do these things for me because you’re staying at my place.”

Derek’s eyes on him are thoughtful, and then he asks, “If I tell you it’s a werewolf thing, would that make you feel better?”

Stiles considers this, before he admits, “A little, yes.”

“It’s a werewolf thing,” Derek says.

“Like, is it really, or are you just saying that to make me feel better?”

“It’s a werewolf thing,” Derek repeats, completely straight faced, and Stiles laughs.

The rest of lunch passes in ease, tension seeping out of Stiles’ shoulders with the combination of Derek’s comforting presence and the knowledge that Derek really doesn’t mind neither Stiles’ busy schedule nor cleaning his apartment. Stiles can’t deny he likes coming home to a house that smells like home, so it works out nicely for them both, he thinks.

Derek leaves again after they drop off their plates, and Stiles maybe watches him go a little too clearly, because the older man turns around at the corner, giving him a little grin and a wave. Stiles pretends he was just casually standing around, but he doesn’t think he fools Derek. Maybe he doesn’t have to.

*

That’s how it goes for another week before the ease of them living together cracks a little. Stiles has gotten so used to the comfort of the two of them, that it comes completely out of the blue when Derek speaks up one morning, when they’ve put on the laundry and are out to treat themselves with a ridiculous amount of breakfast food whilst they wait for it to be done, “You should call Scott.”

Stiles pauses his spoonful of syrup drizzled pancakes in mid-air, and a little drop of syrup slides down, plonking on his plate, and in the sudden silence Stiles thinks he can even hear it, the soppy plop of it as it settles back on the porcelain.

Derek is decisively not looking at him, eyes on his own plate of full English with extra sausage, cutting it into neat little circles that he puts into a pile. Stiles puts his fork back down, no longer hungry. He doesn’t know what to say, because he knows , but that doesn’t make it any easier for him to pick up the phone and actually call the man.

Derek finishes decorating the corner of his plate with the sausage, and then looks up. His eyes are warm and kind as they always are, and perhaps that cuts even more than if Derek would have been accusing him. It’s worse because he knows Derek doesn’t blame him. “Even if you don’t want to go back,” Derek says kindly – so fucking kindly, “it’d be good for the both of you to hear each other. Like, not even good as in, bond-wise, just… As friends. It would be good.”

Stiles swallows, and it’s as if the pancakes he put down are still in his mouth, soaking up all the moisture inside his mouth until he can barely speak. He picks up the coffee to take a sip, tries to flush out the sensation that his insides have shriveled up and died. Then another one. Another. When the cup is empty, Derek flags over the waitress for a refill for them both, and they sit in silence whilst she comes over to do so, giving them both a polite smile before trailing off again.

“I’ll think about it,” Stiles eventually offers, which is all he can do because he doesn’t want to make promises he can’t keep. Derek seems to understand, just like he seems to understand everything Stiles says these days, because he just nods and smiles, and then fills a fork with a little bit of everything on his plate, stuffing his mouth so full that Stiles can’t but laugh.

*

It still takes Stiles four more days before he’s able to consider Derek’s remark. He knows it’s been ages since he called his friend, but the more time passes, the more difficult it seems to become. At first they had tried to stick to a schedule, making the promise to check in at least once a month whilst Stiles was at college, but that ended when Stiles started a part time job on the side halfway his first year, and it became hard to find a time where he wasn’t either studying, working, taking classes, or being passed out from doing the above. Once a month had become once every three months, and this in turn had become once every blue moon. Scott wasn’t much of a texter either, old school as he was, so that had been a line of communication that went dead fairly quickly. Isaac texts him at least once every week, even when Stiles didn’t answer, so Stiles was kept up to date with some things, but it was different. He hadn’t heard them or seen them in a while, and once he starts thinking about it, he feels bad.

That’s why generally he doesn’t think about it.  

Except now that Derek brought it up, it’s stuck in Stiles’ brain like the worst kind of earworm, the words echoing whenever he’s not doing something else, and by the time they’re having dinner – poké bowls and crispy fried shrimp – on Friday evening, Stiles is about ready to burst.

“I’m thinking I should call Scott,” he says, giving his spicy tuna a little jab with his spoon, “hear from him what’s going on with the fae, ask if he needs me.”

Derek doesn’t glance up from his own bowl with chicken, picking out the little pieces of chili and putting them to the side. “That sounds good,” he says, voice neutral and body language relaxed, but Stiles knows Derek approves. He’s all about communication these days apparently. It’s a full 180 from Stiles’ memories. “You could skype him,”

“Nah, he’ll be able to see my filthy apartment,” Stiles replies breezily, “no one should see that.”

They both know the flat is squeaky clean after Derek’s whirlwind cleaning extravaganza, but Derek takes the light remark as what it is: Stiles isn’t ready to be faced with Scott, nor any of the others. He thinks if they’ll either look delighted or annoyed to see him, he’ll just hang up right away. At least if they’re on the phone, Stiles can pretend he isn’t stressed about it.

Just like that they end up sitting on the couch together after dinner, Stiles’ feet tucked under Derek’s thigh, a bowl of shrimp crisps on the table with two bottles of iced milk tea Derek had picked up on his way home, and the phone in Stiles’ hand, Scott’s caller ID open on the screen, the crooked smile of his profile picture seeming to mock Stiles. Though he can’t imagine Scott mocking him in real life; his friend is too much of a puppy for that.

Derek had told him that around this time Scott would likely be chilling on the computer or outside in the garden, so there’s an almost certainty he’ll pick up the phone. Still, Stiles is staring at the phone like it’ll bite him if he press the call button, and his belly is stirring with anxiety, the tuna swimming around merrily and chomping away at his stomach lining. Derek doesn’t say anything, just looks at him, and gently nudges him with his toe when Stiles doesn’t take action.

Stiles glares at him, and Derek bares his teeth lazily, not even bothering to shift to his fangs. Stiles only sighs and presses the call button. The phone rings once, twice, three times, before it connects.

“Stiles?” Scott’s voice comes crackling through the line, and he sounds worried, “Are you alright?”

“Hey, man,” Stiles says, and it’s so awkward he cringes at himself, and he has a whole moment of wanting to throw himself out of the window of the flat before he says, “Yeah, I’m good, I’m just… I figured I’d call.”

“Oh,” Scott says, and the surprise is deafening in the silence after that one little word. Stiles lifts his hand to tug at one of the nails with his teeth, worrying the thin edge of it that stubbornly loosens itself every few weeks until it rips through into his finger and leaves him with a sore spot for several days. Then Scott seems to get himself together, and when he replies again, it’s cheerful, “That’s great! I mean, that’s so nice, Stiles, it’s good to hear you.”

Scott’s voice has gotten deeper over the years, the stubborn high pitch he picked up during puberty and lingered all through his twenties has slowly started to leave, leaving him to sound a little bit like his dad, though Stiles will never, ever say that out loud. More than that, he sounds calm, confident, like someone you could trust and depend on, and at the sound of his voice Stiles feels the small tug at the pack bond he so dutifully ignores most days. Derek’s toe nudges him again, and Stiles remembers to breathe.

“It’s good to hear you too,” Stiles says, “How’s things?”

“Alright,” Scott says easily, “we’re doing good. I was just out in the garden drinking the world’s largest pitcher of iced lemonade. It’s already hot as balls and it’s barely spring.”

“Ah, the California lifestyle,” Stiles jokes, “reminding me of the days I wasn’t a pale vampire.”

“You’ve always been pale,” Scott replies mildly, “except that one time you fell asleep on the beach and you were a flaky mess instead.”

“My DNA yearns for the Polish chill; I can’t help it.”

Scott laughs, and for a moment it’s nice and easy like it used to be, and Stiles thinks he can do this. For a few blissful minutes, he thinks he can just call and be updated on the pack’s life without feeling weird about it. They chat about nothing much at all, about the difference in weather and the dinner they had and about Stiles’ grading. Scott laughs when Stiles tells him about the seven essays he got about the Minotaur. Stiles coos expressions of affection when Scott tells him about the three legged dog that’s now living in the vet’s office, dumped by his previous owners and who refuses to go anywhere without Scott or Deaton by his side.

Then Scott gives a little sigh, and the ease comes crashing down. The silence stretches for a bit longer, but Stiles knows what is coming before it happens.

“We’re still struggling with the fae-thing,” Scott admits then, and Stiles closes his eyes.

“It’s just weird,” Scott says, “but even when nothing is happening there is this feeling that something is off, you know?”

Stiles knows. Stiles knows all too well.

“I didn’t want to make you feel like you had to come back,” Scott says then, after a moment of silence that Stiles knows is because of him, “but Deaton said you might be able to feel it out, because of your… You know.”

“Demonic possession,” Stiles says, icily despite himself, “yes, I’m aware.”

“Dude,” Scott says, and it’s the same tone he’s always had, so it cuts through the veil of grumpy displeasure hanging around Stiles, “don’t be dramatic, it was just an evil fox.”

It’s said so deadpan, so easy and without judgement or weirdness about it that Stiles snorts, and then he clears his throat, and then he laughs, “oh my god .”

Scott’s grin is audible in his breathing, and Stiles wonders why he’s been so anxious about this. Until all the reasons that he’s been anxious about this come knocking at his brain. He kindly dismisses them. It takes him a little longer before he’s able to reply, but when he does, his voice is steady.

“I’m not sure I can,” he says, which isn’t a dismissal of the request either, which he thinks that for now is all Scott can ask of him, “it’s not that I don’t want to help, Scotty, I’ll do all the research I can, but whenever I’m there…” He shivers at the thought of how the magic of the Nemeton tugs at him when he comes to Beacon Hills, and how it’s uncomfortable at best. Last time, Deaton had told him in a bout of unusual helpfulness that it would stay that way until Stiles took hold of the connection and dealt with it heads on, and Stiles had told him in no uncertain terms he’d rather drop himself in a pit of fire ants. Needless to say, he hadn’t done either.

He doesn’t have words to explain to Scott the way that the tendrils of magic that linger in the fiber of his being sometimes feel like they’re something corrupted, something dark and filthy that was never supposed to be there in the first place. He’s read enough about magic to know that it should feel aligned with the self, like a worn sweater that’s supposed to fit you just right, but Stiles’ magic feels like he’s bought a pair of rubber gloves that are a size to small, yet he can’t help put them on whenever he needs to clean. Using his magic feels like he's scratching a mosquito bite and instead of relieving the itch it just scratches his skin until he bleeds, the itch never-ending.

“I know,” Scott says, in his usual cheerful Scott-way, and it’s worse than if he would be angry about it. It’s Scott trying to accommodate him to the best of his abilities, but it sort of feels like rejection, anyway. He can’t tell if it’s the human or the magic side of things that is doing that to him. They sit silent after that, as Stiles desperately tries to scramble for something, anything to say that would make this easier.

Scott beats him to it.

“Ally is pregnant,” Scott blurts out, as if it has been on his mind for the entire call and he’s finally given in. Stiles almost drops his phone, and Derek gives him an alarmed expression as his hand shoots out, ready to catch either Stiles or the phone. Stiles waves him off, but not before giving him a wounded look that clearly asks did you know this ? Derek has the decency to look sheepish, which isn’t enough, but Stiles is too busy with imagining the sheer weirdness of Allison being pregnant.

“What?” He manages weakly, baffled, “Already? Scott, aren’t you just a little too young for…”

“I’m 32,” Scott replies, and the laugh in his voice is clearly audible even through the crackling of the phone connection, “you are also 32.”

“Preposterous,” Stiles says immediately, “you are basically 17 and a half.”

“Stiles,”

“18 on a good day, maybe, and only 21 on Saturdays, when…”

“ Stiles ,”

“And Ally?” Stiles continues, growing more and more agitated, his voice rising in pitch as he speaks, “How is she going to have a baby when she’s Chris’ baby? How is she going to…”

Derek’s hand falls on his shoulder, squeezing gently, and the rest of the word vomit that had been pushing to come out just stops, drying up at once.

“Congratulations,” he says instead, and it’s genuine but rings a little hollow nonetheless, marred as it is by the knowledge that he hadn’t even known Scott and Allison had been trying – though he should have, because he’s Scott’s best friend and he and Allison are the sort of fairy-tale perfect that hardly ever happens, and yet… “how long – I mean when…?”

“Six months,” Scott says, and Stiles about sinks through the floor. It had not been six months since he has seen Ally, surely, it has to…

“We didn’t want to tell you because of everything that is going on. We didn’t want it to seem like we were manipulating… I mean we know you would have come running because you felt responsible for her..”

“Because I AM responsible,” Stiles says instantly, voice picking up an octave, “this is all my fault,…”

“Except you are not and we didn’t want…”

“I am. You know I am.”

“We all are,” Scott says, voice so certain Stiles wants to cry. He thinks of Allison in Scott’s arms, blood staining her lips as she whispered how she couldn’t feel anything. He thinks of standing at the edge of it, the Nogitsune looking out through his eyes with the sort of glee that nauseates Stiles to think about. He thinks about Scott screaming in despair. He thinks of Chris, face pale and tearstained holding up the gun to Stiles’ head, thinks about laughing in the man’s face.

“Not like me.” Stiles can vaguely feel Derek’s hand on his back, rubbing what he supposes is meant to be comfort, except it feels like punishment for a crime he will never be able to make up for. His head is flooded with memories that at once are and aren’t his own, of his hands coated with blood and his shirt stiff with it. “I am everything that’s wrong with that stupid town.”

“None of that,” Scott says, and this time the tone of his voice is harder, not harsh but scolding in a way that Stiles quietly understands as Scott using his alpha voice, and both he and Derek straighten unconsciously. When their eyes lock, Derek’s mouth twitches into a smile, and Stiles feels better instantly. Scott continues, “You don’t need to come back if you don’t want to, Stiles, you know that, right? If you’re happy there, you can stay.”

“Derek is here,” Stiles tells him, which is neither a reply to Scott’s words nor part of the conversation they were having, but Stiles feels like he needs to tell him anyway.

“Oh,” Scott says, a little surprised, and Derek’s eyebrow quirks. “That’s good, I’m glad, hi Derek.”

Derek rolls his eyes, but replies with a dragged out, “Hi, Scott.”

“Anyway,” Scott says, “if you want to come back, you’re very welcome, we want you here, but if you can’t make it, we’ll be grateful for your big professor brain to helps us do some research because honestly, mum was holding a child and it disappeared from her arms, and they switched it with the ugliest baby, Stiles, I can’t even tell you how ugly it is. They’re not even making an effort anymore,” He sounds exasperated and worried, and Stiles can tell that this is something Scott carries with him every time he looks at Allison’s belly, knowing that their own child could be next. Stiles shivers.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, but he’s not kidding himself. For all that he’s spent the past fifteen years trying to think up excuses to not have to go back to Beacon Hills, the knowledge that Scott and Allison are having a baby changes the entire game. This is no longer about him or his personal comfort – this is a chance for Stiles to make up for the shit that went down all those years ago, and if he must go through some personal trauma again to do so… So be it.

He’s pretty good at ignoring his feelings, anyway.

*

He says he’ll think about it, and think about it he does. In fact, for the next couple weeks, he barely thinks about anything else. His students graciously don’t bring up just how distracted he is during their classes, how he’s messing up dates for submission and even handed out the essays of the wrong class once. That was the point where he told all of them to go outside and get something to drink because obviously he wasn’t in the right headspace to teach them anything at all. As much as his students enjoy his classes, it was something he didn’t have to repeat twice, students flooding out of the class with easy calls of goodbye, leaving Stiles to lean back against his desk, cursing himself. He had made the promise way back that he wouldn’t let himself be dragged back into Beacon Hills under any circumstance, wouldn’t let the heaviness of his past carry on into his present. Yet here he is, his days flooding with thoughts of Scott, Allison, Isaac, Boyd and Erica, even Liam, a reminder that they need him, need his help and guidance and magic, and here he is refusing to give it to them out of some selfish to protect himself. Has he any right to do so? Shouldn’t he be getting on the first plane back to California to help them figure this out?

He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised when Derek shows up not much later, holding two massive, iced coffees and some weak excuse of being in the neighborhood, when Stiles well knows that Derek must have felt his distress through the bond that has been steadily growing stronger with their shared presence. Stiles wonders if Derek knows that he knows, that the threads of pack and family that he had so carefully kept disconnected in his time away have slowly been twining around themselves, growing more and more ingrained in both his and Derek’s heart. He can feel the man’s presence somewhere under his sternum, a warm pulse of energy that settles next to the coil of magic that Stiles also had been trying his best to ignore. Instead of hating it, as he had vaguely told himself he would, he cherishes it, Derek’s heartbeat thrumming in his veins in addition to his own, strength and comfort and control that he had previously lacked.

Derek helps him gather his stuff and guides him outside the building onto the campus grounds, where the sun is stubbornly fighting her way through the clouds that have been echoing Stiles’ mood for the last couple days. They find an empty bench nearby and settle on it, watching students and staff alike pass by as they work their way through the iced coffee. Ever since he quit Adderall, he’s found that coffee has been much more his friend than it has been before, and with every sip he finds his nerves soothed some more, the effect amplified by Derek’s presence against his side, the steady breathing at his side. Before he’s even halfway his cup, Stiles has sunk down on the bench, his head finding the top of Derek’s shoulder, his eyes temporarily closing. Derek’s arm comes up to rest around Stiles’ shoulder, a warm hand on his upper arm, and it’s a greater comfort than he could put into words.

The campus is loud with students’ chatter and music blasting from someone’s shitty quality speakers, summer heavy in the air as the students are racing towards the end of the semester, weeks counting down quickly. Stiles remembers that nervous excitement, the deadlines looming but at the same time giving him something to work towards, the adrenaline of working through days and nights without ever taking a break. He’s always been good at that, at going on until his very body gave out with the combined efforts of exhaustion, coffee, alcohol, and the multitude of meds he used to take. He remembers the single trip to the campus med center after having been up for forty-eight hours with only a single nap in the middle, and how after that his doctor had carefully suggested they look for alternate methods of treating his ADHD. He sometimes misses it, the thrumming in his veins, the way his entire body would feel alight with energy. Most days, however, he’s grateful for the peace he now possesses, though it’s always a careful balance to make sure it remains there. He knows he needs to take better care of himself, and he also knows that recently, the stress he’s been putting on himself hasn’t been good. There’s only one thing to stop it, though.

“I think I want to go,” he says eventually, and he knows he doesn’t need to specify for Derek to understand.

“You don’t need to,” Derek says instantly, the same thing he’s said every time when Stiles had said these words out loud. They never ring hollow, and Stiles appreciates it even now when he has practically made the decision.

“I want to,” he says, not moving from the comfortable position he’s found, even tucking himself into the cradling embrace a little better. He knows there’s people around that will know him, will be watching them and he’s sure to get at least a few more comments about Derek’s presence before the end of the year, but he finds that in the grander scheme of things, he really doesn’t care all that much. Let his students think that he bagged an incredible hot man, what’s really the harm in that? “If I can help, even just a little, wouldn’t it be worth it?”

Derek is quiet for a little moment, and then he says, “You know that once you dip your toes back in, no one is going to let you go back to this, right?” Stiles knows what he means. If Stiles returns, allows everyone to bond with him, the same way Derek has been, there’s no going back to pretending to be on the edges of the supernatural world. Going back to Beacon Hills means embracing everything all over again, means allowing the magic in his body to take hold of him. That spark he’s been so carefully keeping compressed into just a little flicker in his chest will develop into the wildfire it had been before he left, and he’s not sure if this time round, he’ll be able to work with it. It’s one thing to make little charms and infuse them with power, to protect himself and to occasionally use it to help the local werewolf pack, but it’s another to accept the magic to burst out of him, to flood through the lines of tattoos he’s gotten done just in case . Waking up the magic is waking up to the pain that comes with it. It’s not a decision to be made lightly, which is why he knows Derek emphasizes the choice he has in the matter. No one wants him to do something he doesn’t want to do himself, and they trust him to make the right decision. He’s not sure he deserves their trust, though.

“I think it’s time,” he says, and he’s not sure if he means it’s time to go back home or if he means it’s time to stop running, or perhaps it’s time for him to stop pretending that he could simply stay away. Perhaps it’s all the above. Perhaps Peter was right, and there’s only so much escapism you can do before it all catches up to you.

Perhaps the worst of it all is accepting that Peter might have a point.

Derek nudges him until Stiles sits up straight, their gazes locking as they did so many times, except there’s no smile on the other man’s face this time. “If you’re certain,” Derek says, “then everyone will be more than happy to have you.” It’s the warm invitation of home, Stiles thinks, and he wants to answer it right then and there, to crawl into Derek’s lap and let the man embrace him until Stiles can forget every part of him that ever felt like it didn’t belong.

“I can’t leave until the holidays,” he says, his voice sounding a little distant to himself, and though it sounds like an excuse to him, Derek only nods.

“I won’t tell anyone you’ve made a decision,” he promises, the weight of the words settling under Stiles’ ribcage and curling up like a content house cat. “And you can change your mind at any time, alright? You know that.”

Stiles knows. But he won’t.

*

Derek goes home the next week. Stiles knew that it wouldn’t last and that he would, but still the moment he’s gone, the flat feels disgustingly empty. After the warm comfort of his presence, not to mention the ease of their shared meals, Stiles feels unsettled and lonely. Right before leaving, however, Derek mentioned that he had bought some ice cream to tide Stiles over the weekend which was said to be awfully hot, and so after waving the older man off in his cab, he goes looking for it. He does find a box of his favorite magnums, but more than that he finds a neat stack of labeled boxes, filled with a variety of meals. On top of the box of ice-cream is a post-it note in Derek’s neat handwriting, simply saying; Please take care of yourself. See you soon.

Stiles takes one of the magnums and goes to crawl into his bed, which still smells like Derek, fuck, and tries to ignore the way his eyes burn with tears he refuses to shed.

Once he has made up his mind to leave for Beacon Hills over the summer, things start suddenly rolling fast. He books a plane so he can get the cheaper rate and after careful consideration upgrades to a comfort status for the extra leg room and the complimentary drinks. He changes his exam requirements to an individual project of their choice with an accompanying short essay, to great joy of his students. He personally doesn’t hate written exams, but they’ll take up much more of his time, and if he’s going to spend weeks hunting faeries, he doesn’t want to bother with having to stick around to grade them. He adapts his teaching plan so he can finish early, and then plans in a movie-afternoon instead of the final class, opting for a classic American monster movie, a Japanese horror and an Iranian abstract movie that beautifully blends mystery, folklore and magical realism by one of his favorite directors. He places an order for pizza for that class much ahead of time, stocks up on drinks, and that’s his year all prepped and done for. He’s already prepared the class content for the rest of the semester, and he knows most of it like the back of his hand at this point, so he can focus on getting himself ready for returning to Beacon Hills instead. He spends most of the time he’s not teaching in the mythology department of the university’s library, almost as much as he used to do during his PhD years, except this time he’s working his way through every single book about the fae he can find. Some of which he’s already read, but there’s always works that he hasn’t explored yet, and though many of them endlessly rehash the same content, sometimes there’s a single line or paragraph that sheds a new light on the whole thing.

The old librarian, Mrs. Lee, is used to him always being there, and so she doesn’t even bother sticking around when he’s lingering around closing time. The evening before Stiles is planned to leave for Beacon Hills, she just walks right up to where he is sitting at one of the heavy desks, with a lanyard holding the library’s key and a bottle of cold milk tea which she puts on top of the desk before she pats his head and goes home. The little token of trust still warms his heart after years of it, and he takes a moment to run his fingers over the little beads adorning the keychain. The glass catches the light and sparkles gently, and Stiles thinks of Mrs. Lee’s grandchildren, their little hands working diligently on the decoration. The simple affection between her and her family nudges at his brain, has his chest feel a little tight in the relative darkness, and he’s glad for the shelter of the books, hiding him and his fragile emotions from the world.

The bottle is sweating in the warmth of the library, and Stiles runs it over his shirt to get rid of the moisture before holding it against his forehead to cool himself down. The days have been getting steadily warmer, and especially in the stuffy library, it’s hard to get comfortable. He turns his attention back to the paragraph he’d been reading about changeling children. Every book he reads mentions them being stolen as babies, exchanged with what is described as odd children with bright eyes and persistent silence. Of course, now he knows that many of these descriptions in historical texts have simply been a way for people to deal with what they didn’t understand – autistic kids who communicated in much different ways than their surroundings expected of them, children who talked too much or too little, who didn’t make eye contact or who spent their days piling rocks near the river as ways of organizing their world into something they could understand. He knows this in the same way that he knows that most of the “witches” living together in the forest refusing to marry were simply lesbian women getting the fuck out of a shitty environment, but sometimes there is an actual witch hiding in plain sight. His job is to read between the lines and to find out where the supernatural and the non-magical world intersect. Today he’s not having any luck, however. The milk tea is a welcome refreshment, and he takes a few moments to lean back and let his eyes rest. He wonders if the type of situation they’re having in Beacon Hills has even ever happened before. How is he supposed to find information on something that might be purely local? A one-of-a-kind happening because of the unique intersection of ley lines and a bunch of violently magical events? Stiles knows his field and he knows his research, but he’s not afraid to admit to himself that he’s struggling. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to the entire thing, and Stiles hates when there’s no patterns. An absence of patterns implies coincidence, and if there’s one thing more irritating than supernatural bullshit, is supernatural bullshit without a reason.

The sky is pitch black outside by the time he throws in the towel, staring ahead of himself and wishing that the solution would just offer itself up to him. When it doesn’t, he sighs, runs a hand over his face and closes the book. There’s nothing more he can do as long as he’s not on location, so he might as well go home, finish the final two bottles of beer in his fridge and try to catch some sleep before he needs to leave for the airport. “Buckle up, Stilinksi,” he mutters to himself as he straightens, puts the book on top of all the other ones Mrs. Lee will need to organize when she comes in in the morning, and gets about closing the library, “it’s sure to be one hell of a ride.”