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Derek Hale knows he’s gone too far because he’s no longer nervous waking up to hear someone else’s heartbeat next to him. Derek stays alone, always; it saves him the trouble of having to think about saving someone other than himself if he ever wakes up to another roaring inferno. Derek is good at being alone. It’s never something he’s struggled with, even as a lone wolf without a pack. He still talks to other people on occasion. It’s fine.
He’d thought it was fine. Derek had almost gotten to the point of convincing himself of it, and then he started making mistakes like entertaining himself with someone else, and by the time it occurred to him that he was long past the point of no return, there was no way he could ever end it. So he lives with it, it’s fine. Until it isn’t.
Derek Hale has never been the type to get caught up over a girl. He did it once, then swore it would never happen again. There is the idea of Derek, the lone wolf; Derek, the man with a heart colder than ice. He wouldn’t go so far as to describe himself as a womanizer, but he’s dated not one but two of the women who’ve tried to kill him and the other wolves in town, so maybe he should start thinking about raising his standards.
He did, though. That was the problem. Of all the people in this world, good and bad and outright bloodthirsty, Derek found the one woman capable of waltzing right past his best defenses and laying claim to the very organ he thought would never be bothered with again. Derek has long since assumed that, so long as it keeps beating on schedule, he’d never think about his heart unless someone was actively ripping it out of his chest, but Y/N changed that. She changed everything.
It was nothing at first. That’s what he promised himself the first time he woke up in an unfamiliar room that definitely wasn’t in his apartment complex. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he picked up on the sound of someone else breathing evenly next to him, but Y/N had woken up not long after him so they’d been able to talk things through. They’d both agreed that it was a one time thing, the result of years of rising tensions against supernaturals in Beacon Hills, and would never happen again.
The second time, Derek was no less taken aback, but a little more disappointed in himself. Usually, when he makes his word, he sticks to it for longer than a month. He’d left before she woke up that time. Didn’t stop him from crawling back, though. He can blame it on the alcohol that doesn’t affect him, the battle rush of adrenaline he’s long since learned to master. Excuses are easy. Falling is easier still.
Derek doesn’t fall, though. He won’t. Even if it kills him. Especially if it kills him. Derek can lock himself up and cut away his heart and distrust his mind until any conceivable feeling dies off from lack of oxygen. It wouldn’t be the first time. Somehow, he doubts it’ll be the last.
This is all well and good, but it doesn’t work as well as it should. Even now, blinking the last of the past night’s sleep from his eyes, Derek sits up slowly in his own bed, and the sight of Y/N there next to him isn’t surprising. Not at all. His internal alarm system stopped going off around her a long time ago. Hell, he gets more uneasy the longer he goes without seeing her instead of the other way around.
A year ago, he would have called that a mistake. Hales survive because they trust only each other. Y/N may be an ally in this eternally war-torn town, but that does not make her someone he can afford to keep around. Still, when he carefully lifts himself out of bed to avoid waking her, when she comes out of the room about half an hour later in one of his shirts, when Derek can’t quite tell where her perfume ends and his cologne begins, he wonders to himself if he hasn’t already crossed that line a very long time ago.
It doesn’t matter. None of this is real. He doesn’t make her breakfast, she doesn’t say goodbye. They just go about their lives as if the past night had never happened at all, as if none of the nights before that, all stretching out in one vast line of pale, bedsheet-white dominoes do not exist between them. You cannot topple what you do not see, and Derek’s eyes are snapped shut tight.
He’s started noticing things, though, against his better judgment. The furrows in Y/N’s brow vanish while she’s asleep, but they appear again when she looks around at her house or his in the morning and remembers something she’ll never tell him. Her shoulders always rise and pinch together right before she leaves without a word. Derek has started making himself scarce whenever she wakes up. It’s better for both of them if there’s no opportunity to stay any longer.
Most of all, Derek takes care to ensure that whatever happens at night does not affect either of them during the day. Y/N’s more closely allied with the McCall pack than whatever dregs are left of Derek’s ill-gotten attempt to seize power with his own batch of betas, but he still sees her often enough on wolf business. Derek has no doubt that Scott has caught on to the fact that they’re seeing each other, but neither of them will bring it up so long as it doesn’t become a problem.
A couple of times, Derek has felt Scott’s eyes on him like an accusation, burning holes into his shoulders whenever Y/N shows up late or seems listless during the discussions. Derek wants to throw up his hands and declare to anyone who cares to listen or blame him that he’s doing his best to make sure he isn’t the cause, but he doubts any of the younger pack members want to know that he’s specifically trimming off any stem of feeling before it takes root. He’s doing his best, at least. Surely that counts for something.
Still, he can feel their judgment like a plague, even outside of passing glimpses. When Scott McCall shows up at Derek’s door to ask for his help with a sudden hunter shootout at the hospital, Derek can still see the awareness in the back of the kid’s eyes. Y/N’s got her own thing going, Derek wants to clarify, she’s long past school-crush days just like him. They’re both adults and they can do what they please. High school sweethearts all die by hunters’ arrows. The ones who survive don’t play by the rules.
Scott will never bring it up, though, so Derek won’t, either. Instead, he just accompanies Scott to the hospital, where he slashes and stabs at anyone who tries to shoot at him. These sorts of things are becoming normal occurrences by now; Melissa McCall and the other doctors are probably sick of it, but what can you do?
Derek’s only half paying attention. He focuses enough to keep himself alive, but it’s easy to go on autopilot. The hunters will always attack, and they will always defend. Some will get hurt. They’ll heal in time to start the game over again. Nothing new.
It should be nothing new. It is, until Derek rounds a corner and he sees one of the hunters shooting at Y/N’s back. She’s distracted taking out someone else. She won’t react in time, Derek knows it, he can feel it in his bones like a bad frost, and Derek– he actually screams, a guttural shout of despair, and he hurls himself at the hunter. The gun goes flying out of the guy’s hands and into a corner of the room, blood spatters following it a second later. It’s alright again. Y/N is fine.
Y/N, actually, is staring at him in confusion. “What was that about?” She asks slowly.
Derek catches a hazy glimpse of himself in the glass panel of a nearby door and realizes that he looks mad. His eyes are wide, startled, glowing; his claws are out and dripping with gore. “He was going to shoot you,” he says, a little unsteadily, “You weren’t paying attention.”
She shakes her head slowly. “I was, Derek. His gun was empty. No more bullets left, I heard the empty barrel click a minute ago.”
Derek stares at her uncomprehendingly, and Y/N has to cross the room, pick up the fallen hunter’s weapon, and pull the trigger several times until Derek understands. She was right, no ammunition was shot. It was a complete misfire on his end, and something that he should have picked up on far before he decided to strike. If Y/N could hear that the gun was empty from across the room, Derek should have known it from where he stood.
He knows what this means, then. It means he’s making mistakes, and mistakes get you killed. They get everyone killed. Derek hasn’t made a mistake like this in a long time, because he never let anyone in, but he has now, hasn’t he? He’s known it for a long time. Y/N means far more to him than a prolonged one night stand. He has feelings for her, of a depth he couldn’t decipher if given a thousand years trapped inside his own head. Derek Hale has fallen in love, but this love will destroy him. It will make him weak.
And, fuck, Derek knows how this is going to end. How it always ends. He is a fire, consuming everything in his path; burning down his family home; choking the last breath from the lungs of anyone foolish enough to love him. If Y/N realizes that he loves her, if she does something so terrible as to love him back, she will fall before the year is out. They always do, and it will be his fault again, his fault like it was for all the others.
He moves before he knows what he’s doing. Y/N is calling after him, he thinks, but Derek is already rounding the corner and out of the hallway. Hunters in his path are killed by a wolf that might be Derek, if Derek was aware enough of what he was doing to act on anything more than animal instinct. Instead, he just keeps going like a bloodsoaked robot until Scott tells him it’s over, and then he leaves. He does not check in with the rest of the pack. He does not check in with Y/N.
In fact, he does not speak with her again. She tries texting him afterwards to see if he’s alright, and then even shows up at his door when he’s unresponsive for days, but Derek just waits silently in the confines of his apartment until she goes away. She can probably hear his heartbeat, but it doesn’t matter. This will benefit both of them. Neither Derek nor Y/N can afford an attachment like this. He’s already started slipping up in the heat of battle. Who knows what sort of deadly error he will commit next?
If he thought the McCall pack’s judgment was bad enough before, they’re downright diabolical now. He can’t speak to them without being on the receiving end of a thousand hateful stares. Every time he so much as crosses their path, you’d think he murdered their entire family. It’s unreal. Don’t they know he’s doing this for the best?
It’s not like Derek enjoys this, anyway. It’s unnatural. He’s started waking up at odd hours of the night, reaching out for someone who isn’t there. Derek rises with the sun and stares at the empty other half of the bed. He starts to get up quietly and then remembers that there’s no one around who’s still sleeping, so he can be as loud as he pleases. It feels wrong when the floor creaks.
He’s started creeping closer to the door whenever Y/N stops by. He hovers right by the threshold, listening; he can tell by the inflections of her voice that she’s starting to give up hope, and then she stops coming. When a week goes by without a single word from her, Derek thinks that he should be pleased because he’s finally saved her from himself, but instead, all he feels is alone.
It’s not a good feeling, this. Derek thought he would be able to shake off any and all feelings for her in a matter of weeks, but even a month later, he’s still in a terrible state. Lydia starts taking pity on him, he thinks, and actually treats him like a normal human being again, which kind of makes it all worse. He doesn’t want her compassion. He wants–
He wants Y/N. Waking up alone again, hands curling into fists around empty sheets, Derek realizes the earth-shattering truth as if from a dream. He wants her. He wants her more than anything. If this is safety, Derek doesn’t want it. He hates not knowing if she’s alright. He hates thinking that he might have hurt her. If this is the cost of keeping them both alive, Derek would rather be dead.
He throws on his clothes, headed towards the door in a flash. He wakes up early, always has; if he can just get over to her place before she leaves to go to work, maybe it would be okay– maybe she would still want him– maybe he would be enough, now that he knows without a shadow of a doubt that she is for him–
Y/N doesn’t open her door at first, which is, admittedly, justified. Derek’s cheeks flush with shame remembering all the times he’d pointedly ignored her visits. However, she’s better than him, always has been, and opens the door eventually. He looks at her, breathes out at last, and says– “I miss you.”
Y/N arches a brow. “You do?”
“I do,” Derek repeats, “And I’ve been– stupid, really, and I shouldn’t have been. I know better than that.”
Y/N folds her arms across her chest. “What made you change your mind?”
“I realized I love you,” Derek says. It’s only five words, but it makes Y/N sway as if she’s been shot.
“You’re just saying that,” she whispers faintly.
Derek shakes her head. “I’m not the type to throw those words around. You know that. You know me better than anyone, Y/N. Tell me if I’m lying.”
He waits. She stares at him, but at last she nods slowly, and says, “You love me?”
“I love you,” he affirms. Then: “Can I come in?”
A ghost of a smile haunts her lips. “Always so forward, aren’t you?”
He laughs a little, actually. It surprises both of them, Derek the most. “I thought you liked that about me.”
“I do,” she admits, and steps aside to let him pass. Derek lingers by her side, he can’t help it. Moments like these were meant to be treasured. He may have messed up too many of them to count, but for once, Derek can start again. He intends to make the most of it.