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Razzmatazz is the color of Stiles hoodie when he walks to meet Derek in the woods. So close to red it almost passes. Derek can see the differences though, in the color and the boy. The new slope to his shoulders, the cautious distance in his whiskey eyes. He doesn't overbalance the way he used to at the slightest push.
The color makes his eyes hurt and he scowls by wrote. Falling into an attitude so familiar its like a second skin. Stiles gives him that cocky smile, mostly unchanged by the years, and it all settles back into place the way he knew it would. Derek breathes in for the first time since he left.
Stiles takes him to see the house, returned to its grandeur, but, like his old pack, fundamentally differing from memory. The walls are a soft green grey that makes a hidden part of him shiver, Stiles slyly comments that its Timberwolf. Derek wonders what on earth possessed anyone to let him choose the paint. It’s almost a perfect match to the color of his Henley.
They have dinner with whoever turns up. The pack is spread across the state, Derek can feel the tight threads holding them together like a spot at the corner of his vision, not quite focused, annoyingly uncatchable. Stiles keeps their legs pressed together at the knee under the table and he can smell the loneliness on his skin, see it in the way he keeps a measured distance form the others, hear it in the careful way they address him.
He wants to reach out, to fix this unfathomable brokenness, but it is not his to fix.
They scrub the dishes in mutual silence. Derek choked on insecurity and Stiles isolated by choice.
Scott puts the game on and the others all settle onto the couch, lazing around each other with the easy, unselfconscious, camaraderie a pack should. Stiles stands back, against the wall and Derek with him, not sure if he fits in this newly made family, even in his childhood home.
Stiles watches them for a while, then silently takes Derek by the hand. Leading him out of the building and into the forest.
The crescent moon smiles down on them, brushing stripes across their faces between the trees.
Stiles runs his fingers through the underbrush and sets off a flurry of tiny phosphorescent bugs, the sunglow in their abdomens softening the contrast of shadow under the boughs.
They watch the winking yellow lights create constellations of their own design and Stiles fingers become forever tangled in Derek’s heart.
They wake late, the shadow of the trees keeping the bright sun from their faces. Derek watches Stiles’ umber eyes come open, watches the dappled light reflect off his iris and wonders what the warmth in his chest means, the fuzzy wuzzy feeling, if its just from the sunspot, or if it’s generated there, in the depths of his being.
Stiles retakes his hand, but doesn't lead him, simply stands and waits, ready to go where ever Derek does. A part of him isn’t ready to go back, even though he is back, and knows he will be again eventually. It has a lot to do with the cracks in the tight web of connections between Stiles and his family and a lot to do with not coming back soon enough the first time.
They find a stream. Derek knows it runs into a lake, and they splash through its chilly water, following it’s flow into the open. Derek strips off his shirt and collapses into the polished surface, Stiles watches the ripples rush towards the shoreline before joining him. Letting the crispness cleanse the hollow part in his chest, enjoying the vastness of the blue sky, the feeling of infinity, suspended in the water. He realizes this is his absolute zero, his point of genesis.
Their point of genesis.
The start of something new.