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Stiles is 9 the first time he sees an animal get hurt.
They're in the car on their way back from one of his mom's chemo appointments; he's been to so many by now that the nurses all know him by name. For once Stiles’ mom isn’t coming home with them, though--she has to stay behind for tests that his father won’t tell him about.
A black dog darts out into the road, and his dad doesn't hit the brakes in time.They load it in the back of the car and take it to the new vet in town, a man with careful hands and dangerous eyes. He watches Stiles closely the whole time, and it's scary in a way Stiles can't quite put a name to, yet.
The dog snaps at Stiles' hands when he helps the vet lift it onto the table, and he nearly drops it. Stiles and the dog watch each other with resentment for a moment; I was trying to help you, Stiles thinks at it. Why won’t you just trust me?
"We're all animals in pain," Dr. Deaton says quietly, like that’s any kind of explanation. He looks over at Stiles' father. "Sheriff, I think it's best if he doesn't see this."
Stiles' father shakes his head. "He should," he says, hard-eyed and implacable, angry in a way Stiles hasn't ever seen before.
The dog stops fighting after a few seconds. An unwelcome relief settles in his stomach when it finally closes its eyes, and he tries not to look at that too closely when he finally unpacks the memory years later. Watching something die when you didn't love it in life is uncomfortable; there's a panic of almost-memory there, a sense of wasted tenderness.
"Your father wanted you to understand," Deaton says, holding Stiles back as they're leaving the clinic. He hesitates. “You’ll go through worse,” he says, and Stiles knows suddenly that they’re not talking about the dog anymore.
It's the first time in Stiles' life that anyone's talked to him like he was a grownup. He doesn't like it as much as he's always thought he would.
The next day, he sits numbly in his mother's hospital room as a doctor explains to him with careful, professional kindness that Stiles' mother is dying. Will die.
The numbness holds through the funeral. After that grief takes its place--or what Stiles thinks must be grief. He's always thought of it as a quiet pain, a feeling that let light in around its edges. Something you could take out in front of company, not this sharp-edged howling agony that blots out everything else.
He doesn't sleep for weeks after she goes. He tries to, sort of; gets in his bed and turns the light out every night and waits with a sick sense of dread for the first clink of his father's glass, the first horrible click of the revolver coming apart. He tries not to think about what else he's waiting for: the last noise, the sharp report of the gun. His signal to sleep is his father's unsteady footsteps on the stairs, the sound of his bedroom lamp turning off. It doesn't always come.
There's nothing to do in the end but get through it somehow. Stiles makes sure they both eat, because there’s no one else to do it. He gets up and goes to school and goes to bed every night thinking: maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow things will get better.
In the end, the push-pull of loss brings them closer together. Stiles goes to bed one night and doesn’t hear the click; there’s just a heavy sigh and his bedroom door opening a little, letting in light from the hallway. He thinks his father says something-- “I’m sorry,” maybe, and “I love you.”
When Stiles goes downstairs the next morning his father is at the stove, making breakfast.
They never talk about any of it.
He almost forgets about that day in Deaton’s office for years. He avoids the clinic--makes excuses when Scott gets a job there years later and wants Stiles to visit. When he finally goes back, it's under more or less the same conditions. Derek Hale's still just another wounded animal to Stiles at that point, snapping at anything he thinks he might be able to hit. At least Stiles doesn't have to watch this one go, too.
Derek’s not an easy person to like; on his worst days he’s overly confident, all bravado and threats that aren’t quite empty enough for Stiles’ comfort. On his best days he’s clear-eyed and too careful, and when he looks at Stiles it’s with an understanding in his eyes that reminds Stiles a little too much of the look in Deaton’s eyes that day. No one else ever looks at Stiles like that, like he might actually count for something in all this.
And Stiles trusts him anyway, is the thing. Derek’s not safe, but he’s dependable in a way few people in Stiles’ life are these days. He hates Derek a little for refusing to return that trust in kind, but he can't really blame him for it, either.
Months later, Ms. Morrell leans across her desk and tells Stiles to keep going. He knows what she’s trying to say: this is more than anyone his age could be expected to take. It is unendurable and endless, and it must be endured.
He’s just not sure why he’s the one who has to endure it. He’s still burning with that particular injustice when Lydia shows up, and it goes just about as well as the rest of the night. Stiles lashes out at her and watches her walk away, shock and hurt etched sharply onto her face. He can’t bring himself to do more than shout more than a weak apology after her. What he tells his father later is true: he’s no hero. He’s a wounded animal, snapping blindly at outstretched hands. No more than that.
In the warehouse, he stands numb and forgotten as Lydia catches Jackson in her arms, as Scott and Allison sneak glances at each other.
The truth latches on to him and won’t let him go: it’s what you don’t do that counts in the end.
When Stiles kisses Derek, weeks later, it’s with that truth ringing in his ears. It’s a reminder to him as well as Derek: we could live to see the other side of this.
They manage to get away, barely. Stiles slouches, giddily exhausted, on the leather seat of Derek’s Camaro and prays he’s not bleeding on the seats too much. He feels washed clean, somehow, like he bought back some of his missing pride in that basement--not all of it, he and Derek barely got out out with their lives, let alone any kind of triumph. So it's not winning, but it's living, and Stiles counts that as its own kind of victory.
"This doesn't change anything," Derek tells him matter of factly, his hands tight on the steering wheel.
There’s a long scored cut running from his shoulder to his neck; Stiles stares at it with uneasy fascination. For someone with supernatural healing powers, Derek sure seems to spend a lot of time getting hurt.
"We’re alive, man," Stiles says. "I think that changes everything." Derek’s eyebrow arches up at that, but he doesn’t say anything.
“They’ll be looking for us,” Derek says finally. “We won’t be able to go back to Beacon Hills for awhile.”
“My dad,” Stiles says, and he knows Derek must hear the way Stiles’ pulse just skyrocketed. “And Scott. Are they going to be okay? If they do anything--”
“I know. I’ll figure something out, Stiles. We’ll warn them.” Derek glances over at Stiles. “It’ll be okay,” he adds with an obvious effort.
No one’s lied to Stiles like that for a long time; there’s a part of him that appreciates it, almost. But-- “What are we going to do?” he asks. He doesn’t expect an answer, not really, and Derek doesn’t give him one.
They stumble into the lobby of a motel about a hundred miles away from Beacon Hills, far enough to be safe and shitty enough to not ask too many questions. Stiles watches the clerk’s eyes shift skeptically between the two of them. Eventually she must decide that it’s not worth asking about the blood and the bruises, and Derek grabs the key she shoves wordlessly across the counter and drags Stiles out.
As soon as they get into the room, Derek’s on him, hands scrabbling at the hem of Stiles’ stained t-shirt and sliding it over his head. Stiles lets himself sway into the stark curve of Derek’s body and squints up at Derek's face, tense in the weak light that’s filtering in through the motel’s blinds.
“I’m okay,” he ventures finally, when it becomes obvious that Derek is in fact checking Stiles for mortal wounds and not making sure he’s ready to eat or whatever. “Derek. It’s just a scratch.” Which is, okay, maybe not entirely truthful, and the face Derek makes at him in response says that he knows that.
“Lie down,” Derek says tersely, marching Stiles over to the bed like he thinks Stiles is going to get lost on the way.
“Bossy,” Stiles mumbles, but he goes anyway; Derek’s hands are careful on him, like Stiles is something valuable and fragile. It’s not something he would’ve thought Derek had in him.
“You said you wanted to live, right?” Derek drizzles disinfectant from the first aid kit he brought in with them on a pad and daubs it on one of Stiles’ (many) cuts. “Throwing yourself between two Alpha werewolves is a really bad way to do that.”
Stiles winces at the burn of the alcohol. “You were losing,” he argues. “I fixed that.”
“Yes, you stopped her.” Derek says, viciously wiping the last of the blood from Stiles’ side. “With your face. Good job. Don’t do it again.”
Stiles scowls up at Derek. “You’re welcome,” he says crankily. “Next time I’ll just hang out and watch you get your lungs ripped out again, does that sound better?”
Derek sets the kit aside and sits down on the bed beside Stiles. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate it. I just don’t want you getting hurt trying to protect me.” He sighs. “You’re sure you won’t take the bite?”
“You’re making it sound like that’s a conversation we’ve had before,” Stiles says. “And no, for the record. Not that I don’t appreciate the thought.”
“Fine,” Derek says, sounding like it’s anything but. “Then we’re going to start training as soon as we get far enough from Beacon Hills. I’m not going anywhere with you until you can keep yourself safe.” And isn’t that typical Derek tact, Stiles thinks grumpily.
“Great,” Stiles says warily. He’s not totally sure what ‘training’ means to Derek, but he can already see a lot of pushups in his future. “Training. Awesome.”
He jumps when Derek slides fully onto the bed, stretching his legs out. “Move over. We should get some rest while we still can,” Derek says, reaching up to tug his shirt off. Stiles’ mouth goes dry, and he swallows hard. It’s not like he hasn’t seen Derek shirtless before (a lot)--but things are different, now.
“Yeah,” Stiles says quietly. “Big day tomorrow.” He reaches out to trace the edges of Derek’s tattoo, the minute shifts of Derek’s muscles underneath. “What is this, anyway?” he asks.
Derek tenses, but he doesn’t move away from Stiles’ hand. “It’s a triskelion. A reminder,” he says. “Alpha, Beta, and Omega; we can all rise and fall to any of them.”
And there it is: unexpected and unlikely hope, written in the stark lines of Derek’s body. A belief in any kind of change is enough for now; they can work on the rest of it later.
“So we rise, then,” Stiles says quietly, curving a hand around Derek’s shoulder, down across his chest.
Derek makes a small wounded noise and turns in Stiles’ arms. “Maybe,” he agrees, and his skin slides smooth and impossibly hot underneath Stiles’ palm when he leans in to kiss him.
Stiles is 16 the first time he understands the hard truth at the heart of what Morrell and Deaton were trying to tell him: there's no way out of pain except through . Hope is the only weapon Stiles has right now.
Maybe tomorrow , he thinks. Maybe. There’s still time.