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Derek dies out of Stiles’ sight, leaning up against a set of rocks. Stiles doesn’t tell anyone he feels it when it happens because he knows they will all look at him as if he is crazy, but he does. He knows the moment Derek takes his last breath, and he feels as if he has taken his last breath too, just like that. Derek stops living and so does Stiles in any way that could ever matter.
A lot of noise starts in Stiles’ mind, rushing and screeching. He hears the explosion go off, the thunder crack in the sky, the ships crash into each other in the middle of the ocean. He hears everything all at once, deafening him. He sees moments flash before his eyes.
Derek is leaving, driving away without a word. Derek is back, as if he had never left. Derek is dead, dead, dead.
Stiles can’t breathe. He wants to scream until his voice gives out but somehow, he can’t make himself do it over the commotion in his head.
And then Derek is alive, and everything goes quiet. The explosion has ended and left the destruction in its wake, the storm is over, the ships have sunk beneath the waves and taken all the screaming with them. Stiles comes back to himself, standing still where he had been for so long, and stares.
“Stiles,” Scott tries but Stiles can’t focus on it, too busy staring at Derek as he looks back at Stiles. He makes this face, and Stiles knows. He knows instantly what the look means, knows what he is losing, and it’s too much.
It becomes apparent what this truly is: it’s the end. The volcano has erupted, molten hot lava flowing down and down towards the city that never stood a chance. It melts everything in its pathway, stone and life alike, burning and charring, leaving nothing but empty shells of what once was as the ash floats in the air.
That is what they are now. Remains of a city decimated by something they had never truly understood. They had been Pompeii, unaware of the horror Mt. Vesuvius was until it was far too late.
They are standing on the beach, watching the destruction take place, waiting for the end to come. Waiting and waiting as the lava gets closer and closer. There are still pieces of the city standing, but Stiles knows that won’t be true for much longer.
“I love you,” Stiles says, because he does. There’s ash in his mouth. He hears the buildings crumbling. “I love you so much it fucking hurts.”
“I know,” Derek replies and there’s a joke about it being a Star Wars reference in Stiles’ mind somewhere, but he can’t seem to make it come out over the impending end heading right for them, “I love you too. I do, more than I ever thought I could.”
A beat, another, and there’s the lava reaching their feet.
“It’s just not enough to make you stay,” Stiles finishes.
And there it is, the final moment. Derek is staring at him, and Stiles is trying not to cry, and everything hurts so bad. They just stand there and stare at each other for far too long before Derek steps forward, pressing a light kiss to Stiles’ forehead, and then pulls away. The younger man’s eyes flutter shut, and he doesn’t open them back up until he hears the car drive away a minute or two later.
When Stiles opens his eyes, all of Pompeii is fully engulfed in the fire. He is standing alone on the beach, ash on his tongue and in his eyes, and the flames finally consume him too.
||||||||||
Stiles doesn’t see or hear from Derek for a very long time. He deals with being forgotten, with being remembered, with getting Lydia and losing her, and Derek doesn’t come back for a moment of it.
Stiles got the girl he always dreamed he would keep and subsequently realized neither of them were meant to be with the other, that he couldn’t love her the way he should, and then he left Beacon Hills because he knew Derek had been right to run when he did.
They both don’t come back until the end of the whole deadly medusa like monster thing that Stiles was really not a part of and really did not wanna be a part of, because apparently in Stiles’ case being forced to be forgotten by everyone you ever loved and who has ever loved you really takes the monster fighter out of you in a way nothing else ever could.
Despite that, Stiles sticks around for a bit after the mostly satisfying conclusion of the mess. His whole family emergency excuse bought him a couple of weeks and he’s missed his dad, so he intends to use all the time he can. Derek sticks around too, but his sticking around seems more permanent, immediately buying a house and moving his very few material possessions in mere days after the fight ended.
For reasons Stiles does not want to admit out loud, this very much pisses him off. He doesn’t say it, but he feels it. Derek seems to sense this and keeps his distance. Scott does not, because he is Scott and werewolf senses can only do so much and so he says, “So, Derek is back. Gonna make your move?”
Issue one, Stiles does not wanna talk about it. Issue two, everyone is currently at Scott’s house, including Derek. Issue three, werewolf hearing means that Derek definitely heard it. This is only further proven by him, and every other creature in the house, turning to look at them. Scott seems to realize his mistake then.
“Oh shit, man. My bad,” he mutters before sliding away, leaving Derek and Stiles to stare at each other. Stiles doesn’t look away, couldn’t if he wanted to. Now that he is looking, he will never be able to stop, it’s part of the reason he avoided it thus far. He told himself he wouldn’t do this again, fall all over again as if he had ever managed to climb back up.
He couldn’t give in to Derek. Not again.
Scott asked him once why he loved Derek despite how much it hurt. Stiles had shrugged and said, “I just do.”
And that was that, still is. It hurts so much Stiles thinks sometimes he can’t breathe, but love Derek he does. No matter what, it’s Derek. Breathe in- him, breathe out- him, not breathing at all, holding the air in his lungs until he might burst- still Derek. Doesn’t matter what he does, Stiles is utterly consumed by Derek fucking Hale.
And now they’re here again, standing on the ash-covered sand and breathing in the smoke, staring at one another. Watching the fire from the beach as the lava gets closer to them and suffocating as they stand there in view of one another. Danger gets closer and closer and closer and-
This time, Stiles leaves. He wishes it got easier to breathe the further away he gets, but it doesn’t. He has no idea if Derek is strong enough to do what he couldn’t, if he watches him drive away. He never turns around to find out.
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Stiles doesn’t intend to confront Derek at all, let alone today but at 11:56 AM, while doing research on Kate who has conveniently gone missing, something in Stiles snaps. He drives over to Derek’s new house and doesn’t even bother to knock. Derek is standing by the stove, something cooking in the pan in front of him. He turns his head but seems altogether unsurprised to find Stiles there, as if he had been expecting this.
In all fairness, he probably had.
“You fucking left me,” Stiles blurts, burning with anger.
“I didn’t leave you, Stiles, I left Beacon Hills,” Derek argues, turning the stovetop off and turning around completely to face Stiles who is still in the doorway.
“Except that was where I was. Leaving Beacon meant leaving me!” Stiles insists.
“Stiles-“
“You left me! You drove away and left me behind and everything went to shit, and you weren’t here for it!” Stiles interrupts, and there are the tears now that he’s been fighting against for so long. “You left me! I was forgotten, and you weren’t here to remember me.”
“Stiles,” Derek says again, stepping forward. He opens his mouth to say something else but stops, tilting his head. “Come over here.”
“What?” Stiles asks, angry and confused.
“Don’t ask questions! Get over here!” He demands and Stiles knows better than to argue, simply moves over to Derek, allowing the older man to pull him closer by the arm. Derek is standing in between Stiles and the doorway now and Stiles looks at the floor to see liquid spilling into the room from the hallway. He smells the gasoline then.
Someone is pouring gas under the front door.
Panic spikes in Stiles’ chest in the same moment the front door kicks in and when Kate rounds the corner, she’s already let off a shot right into Derek’s arm, then another in his chest, then one more in his leg. He roars out, grabbing the counter to keep himself from hitting the floor, Stiles grabbing his other arm in an attempt to help him stay upright.
She never says a word, just smiles. Stiles watches in horror as she pours more accelerant on the floor.
“Wait,” Stiles says stupidly as she lights the match.
“I think I’ve waited long enough,” she replies, before flicking the match into the kitchen. Stiles doesn’t see her leave, hears it but doesn’t see it. He’s too busy watching as the match meets the gas leaking toward their feet.
It ignites.
It grows quickly, as fire often does, blocking the doorway. The wolfsbane that was in the bullets moves quickly through Derek’s bloodstream and he collapses to the floor. Stiles' eyes begin burning from the smoke, lit gasoline still moving toward them.
Pompeii. Flames growing, smoke billowing, crowds screaming for the ones the love and know they will lose. Derek is trying to force himself up as his house burns and Stiles doesn’t know what to do. His mind isn’t working.
“Stiles,” Derek tries, but it doesn’t seem to register, “Stiles, snap out of it.”
“Not this,” Stiles mutters, throat burning, “You don’t deserve to die this way, not like this.”
“Stiles, come on,” Derek tries again, forcing himself up on his good arm and gritting his teeth.
“God, please, not this way,” Stiles continues, his brain a jumble.
“Stiles, baby, listen to me,” Derek orders, and Stiles feels his mind clear just a bit despite the quickly growing smoke, “We have to get out of here. We have to think.”
Stiles looks at Derek, stares at the man he loves despite everything, and knows he’s right. The flames are getting closer, they’ll be on top of them any minute, and Stiles has to fix it.
A glance around the room confirms they can’t make it to the hallway or the door, but they could make it to the window if they’re quick. The fall won’t be pleasant but it’s better than dying and Stiles doesn’t have any time to think of anything else.
So, he takes the pan off the stove with food still in it and breaks the window.
Derek seems to understand the plan as Stiles is executing it, moving towards the window with the kitchen island supporting him. The fire is following behind him, far too close for Stiles’ liking.
“Let me go first, break your fall,” Derek says, flames on his heels, seconds away from engulfing him.
“Don’t be stupid, you can’t even stand on your own. It’s not that high up and I’ll be fine,” Stiles replies and then he sees it, the mountain ash right on the edge of the house. How Kate got it there Stiles doesn’t know and he doesn’t care to find out, “I’ll go, break the ash so you can get out, and then you can jump down.”
“Stiles,” Derek says, but Stiles doesn’t stay to hear anything else, simply jumps out of the window and crash lands onto the ground. He lets out a groan, coughing as he tries to catch the breath that was knocked out of him. He knows he doesn’t have long so he stumbles back upward and straight to the barrier, swiping a break into it.
“Got it!” Stiles shouts, cupping one hand on the side of his mouth as the other grips his painful side. He waits a beat, then another, but Derek doesn’t come to the window. The fire grows brighter, which means it’s getting closer, “Derek! Come on!”
There’s nothing, no movement or response. Stiles can’t see from the height of the window, but he isn’t stupid. He knows what no answer means.
Sirens are coming towards them. “Derek!”
Nothing.
There’s nothing.
The light from the fire leaks out of the broken window.
“Derek! Answer me!” Stiles cries, coughing out again, and the sirens are getting louder and louder. They’re on top of them now, and Stiles doesn’t have to turn around to look, doesn’t have the time as he makes his way back towards the front.
Derek is going to burn to death. Stiles can’t let that happen. Stiles can’t let Derek burn to death, not when fire is what he fears.
Not this way, please.
“Stiles!” Noah shouts, running towards his son as Stiles stumbles up the steps towards the front door, “Stiles, stop!”
Hands wrap around his middle, yanking him backward, “No! He’s still in there! Derek! Derek!”
Noah keeps pulling until they’re off the porch. Stiles fights back to the best of his ability but he can’t see, and he can’t breathe, and everything is falling apart. Noah pulls and pulls until they’re far enough away from the house that the smoke is no longer billowing right into them, and they’ve reached the sidewalk. Stiles collapses under the weight of it all, Noah simply lowering them both to the ground.
Derek is going to burn to death. Stiles is going to lose him. Derek is going to be ash.
The fire has grown higher and higher, making its way upstairs and throughout the whole rest of the house. Everything is on fire, which means Derek has to be on fire, too. He cannot make it out of this unscathed, it isn’t possible.
“Please, no,” Stiles begs still, despite the certainty logic provides, as if it would help, “Don’t take him from me now. Please, don’t take him from me.”
Scott goes flying past them, no hesitation when he opens the front door and flames come flying out, running into them without seeming to fear what they could do to him. Stiles doesn’t even have a chance to call out to him.
“Scott!” Liam shouts despite him already having disappeared, trying to follow after but Theo pushes him back as he keeps going forward.
“Stay with Stiles!” He orders, not giving Liam a chance to argue as he continues off to follow Scott into the fire.
Liam obeys, kneeling down to where Stiles is on the ground in his father's arms, taking his chin between his fingers to look him over. Stiles doesn’t fight, lets Liam do whatever he wants. It doesn’t matter what anyone does to him now.
“They’re gonna get him,” Liam says, and Stiles doesn’t respond. Liam doesn’t sound scared, not like he should, because Theo and Scott just ran into the fire to save Derek and they’re all going to die.
Please, Stiles thinks, don’t let them all die. Don’t let them burn.
On cue Scott and Theo both emerge with an unconscious Derek in between them, his arms over their shoulders. Stiles sees them and scrambles from his dad’s arms, running forward to meet them as they begin to lower Derek to the ground.
Stiles' hands cup Derek’s jaw, and he watches to make sure his chest rises and falls.
It does. It shouldn’t, Derek should have been engulfed, but he wasn’t, and it does.
“How?” Stiles asks, not expecting an answer.
“The flames weren’t even touching him,” Scott says anyway, and Stiles looks away from Derek for just a second in bewilderment, “They surrounded him, like a circle, but they never actually touched him.”
Stiles thought back to them in the kitchen as the flames grew closer and closer, and how they should have burned them but never did, as if there was something blocking them. And then Stiles thought about his fears, about how Derek didn’t deserve to die in the one way he feared most, how Stiles couldn’t live if he had.
It’s startling to realize what had stopped them, because the second Stiles takes a real breath after it all, letting go of his fears, the fire explodes as the bones of the house collapse. Everyone is moving them both further away from the house as it crashes to the ground.
He had been the one to save them, had been the one to keep the fire back enough to get them out. Stiles had used the spark, the skill he had never honed, to save Derek without realizing what he was doing.
Once he lets go, once he realizes they’re both safe, the exhaustion hits. All the tension and fear and adrenaline that had been keeping him upright shatters.
He blacks out before he can think about anything else.
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When he wakes, he is in his childhood home, and Derek is asleep next to him, injuries seemingly healed. He doesn’t know how they got here, or why they’re here and not in a hospital, but he doesn’t have the will to question it. He glances around the room before looking back to Derek.
He looks so peaceful, far more peaceful than he should. For the second time his house has burned down in this godforsaken town because of that fucking woman. For the second time he lost everything to her flames. Stiles knows what the outcome will likely be.
Derek will run again, far away, and tell no one where he goes. Stiles can’t even blame him.
“You think too loud,” Derek mutters after a minute, cracking one eye open to look over at Stiles as he stares before closing it again.
“Always have, you know that,” Stiles replies. Derek sighs and opens both of his eyes turning his head to look over at the other man.
“Right,” Derek says, rubbing both his hands over his face before he sits up and looks back at Stiles where he continues to lay, “Wanna tell me what it is you’re loudly thinking about now?”
He doesn’t, but he has to. Stiles can’t do it all over again without saying something first.
He doesn’t want to speak, but he has to, so instead of giving away nothing the way he wants to, he gives away too much.
He just starts talking.
“Falling in love with you was inevitable for me, but being in love with you? That was my choice, that is my choice. I will choose and choose you. I will choose to see the roughest parts of you and soften their edges as much as I can to keep them from hurting you. I will see the softest parts of you and protect them. I will choose you every time, after every good and bad moment. And if I find myself angry with you, I will choose to love you regardless, so please Derek, don’t go.”
Derek’s breathing is heavy and uneven in his confusion. Stiles didn’t even know that was possible.
“Don’t go,” he begs, and Derek’s eyes are full of emotion in a way Stiles is confident he’s never seen before. “Please, don’t go without me. Don’t leave me behind again, Derek, please.”
Derek stares and stares and Stiles stares back as his heart constricts.
He’s begging. He’s begging shamelessly, earnestly, hoping it will work because he’s not sure he can survive if it doesn’t.
“I’m never going anywhere without you, ever again,” Derek answers, because he understands, of course he does. He knows exactly where Stiles’ mind went, exactly how it got there, without having to ask. Derek knows because he always does.
He lays back down and pulls the smaller man into his chest. In his relief, Stiles sobs. His lungs hurt and he is so tired, and he just cries.
The love is unyielding. It is always. It is consistent, continual, constant. No matter what, it is always there. Stiles can run from it all he likes, Derek can run from Stiles all together, but in the end it will still remain.
So, what’s the point of running at all?
They belong together, despite everything. Regardless of the flames, of the threat the fire brings, nothing will ever change that.
Despite the waves of emotions Stiles is feeling, in the midst of it all, he feels right. Lying in Derek’s arms, he knows it’s where he’s supposed to be. He doesn’t need anything else, doesn’t need some long-drawn-out love confession because that isn’t who Derek is. Right here, right now, it’s alright.
It’s everything.
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Stiles quits his job over the phone and gets absolutely reamed for it. He can’t bring himself to care. Derek gets some company to go pack up all his stuff and haul it back to Beacon.
He doesn’t have a backup plan, no idea what to do next, and it feels good. He feels like he can breathe freely in a way he’s never had the right to do before. Derek goes to work at the Sheriff’s station and Stiles spends his days researching or bothering Derek and his dad at work or fucking with Scott.
Derek and Stiles sleep on Stiles’ childhood bed, they make his dad healthy food he pretends to like but absolutely doesn’t, and they live for themselves and no one else.
Derek and Noah find Kate holed up in a warehouse that had once been owned by her father. Stiles knows that she died, but he doesn’t ask how. He doesn’t want to know. They are safe from the flames and the person who had caused them, and that’s all that he cares about.
A month into the new normal, they go back to the house they almost died in. Stiles thought that it would scare him to be here, that he would panic, but he doesn’t. Derek stands next to him, hand in hand, as they look at the remains. He isn’t afraid.
The house is gone, burnt to the ground, but they’re both still standing. The ashes billowed up with the residual smoke.
The house is gone, but they’re not, and that’s what matters.
It’s early, the sun hasn’t even come up yet, and they’re both standing on the front porch of the place that could have killed them but didn’t. Stiles doesn’t know if it was luck that he was there to save the man he loves, doesn’t know if it was fate, doesn’t know much at all.
What he does know is he drew a line and crossed it. Said he wouldn’t give Derek the light of day and then gave him so much more. He thinks Derek may have done the same because they’re both here. After all the running, they’re face to face on the porch of a burnt house.
Derek is kissing him before he can think of anything else. Even after they pull away, their foreheads remain touching.
When Stiles was a child, he told anyone and everyone he could that his favorite animal was a phoenix. He insisted on it for years, talked countless people's ears off about them, until he turned 8 and learned they weren’t real around the same time his mother was sentenced to death. He never got the time to grieve the loss of innocence that comes with no longer believing in what you can’t see, he was too busy grieving his mom.
When he learned of the existence of werewolves he wondered if maybe he had been wrong to give up on the idea of magic, wrong to grow up and stop believing in the existence of a creature that burns so it can come alive again stronger than before.
He only really wondered about it in some of the quiet moments, the ones where his mind would run and run until it didn’t have anything left. He tried not to dwell on the existence of fairies and unicorns, or of fiery birds that only die so they can live. If he did, he would fall down one of those rabbit holes that take far too much climbing to get out of, so he forced himself to let it go.
He doesn’t know if they’re real or not, never managed to find that answer, never truly looked. Here is what Stiles does know for sure: he thought he and Derek Pompeii, the ash left behind by the volcano.
He was wrong.
The phoenix may or may not be real, frankly, Stiles doesn’t give a shit either way, because he can the phoenix for himself. He and Derek can be the ashes reborn.
“We can rebuild it,” Stiles says because Derek deserves that, deserves to have at least one home he loved lost to fire built again. Derek pulls back to look at Stiles, and he doesn’t smile but there is something there and Stiles recognizes it. Stiles had wondered once or twice growing up what it would be like to stand on the moon, to stare at the Earth in a different light.
The dawn breaks where the house had once been, lighting up the future. Stiles looks over at Derek who looks back at him, and Stiles knows, standing here and watching the sun come over the trees, that this was better than that could ever be.
Derek had hope in his eyes, and Stiles had never seen a better thing than that. Nothing could compare, not even the Earth's light from space. Not a single damn thing could be greater than Derek having hope for the future shining in his eyes.
“Yeah, we can,” Derek says, taking Stiles’ hand back in his again and looking at him with all the love Derek has.
They can rebuild it, and they will. Make choice after choice, make it theirs. They can and will do so many things and they’ll do them together.
They have all the time in the world.