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Derek remembers his mother’s stories sometimes, the kind of fairytales that wolves tell where the Big Bad Wolf wasn’t killed by the hunter at the end. The tales were full moons and packs and howls and paws stamping in the dirt and mates and grass and Derek remembers curling in his mother’s lap as a boy, letting the words, the images, flow over him until he gave into sleep.
“Your heart likes it what it likes,” she’d told him once, fingers stroking though his hair. “And, one day, when you least expect it, it’s going to find someone that it really, really likes, someone that you’d least expect, and they’ll be your mate.” She’d looked pointedly at his father and Derek remembers gagging just a little. Needless to say, he quickly grew out of her tales—much to her disappointment—but the stories stayed with him like a pin on his sleeve that felt like Mom.
He remembers when Jackson twitched back to life on the warehouse floor, eyes opened in that bright, bright blue. He remembers feeling his mother’s fingers, hearing her voice as she whispered about mates and destiny and everything that turned him away from the stories in the first place. Yet, as Jackson rose, roared, in the light of Stiles’ Jeep, there was no denying the pull in Derek’s chest, the want and the need and the mine that took his breath.
It was then he knew that somehow, even dead, his mother was always right.
“Bullshit.”
Derek watches Jackson shift off of him, roll onto his back, and he would’ve been wounded if it wasn’t for the tremors of orgasm still thrumming beneath his skin. “What do you mean bullshit?” he intones gruffly.
Jackson wriggles in the bed of leaves they’d decided –well, more like ended up—fucking in. He grimaces and Derek wonders what’s worse to him: the strange slickrasp of wet leaves, the grit and smoosh of mud, or the fact that he’s pantsless under autumn wind. Disgusted as he is tired, Jackson presses, “I mean, that story’s way too sappy to be more than a story.”
“You think I made it up.”
“Uh, yeah, I do actually.”
Derek turns to his side, props his head up with a hand. He raises an eyebrow. “You think I made it up.”
“So, you stole it, then? That’s even sadder.” Jackson smirks at him, face sweaty and flushed, his hair damp with rain and mud.
Derek rolls his eyes and reaches to thumb away dirt from Jackson’s cheek, chest fluttering when he leans into the touch. “I swear, if you were less of a spoiled brat, I think my mom would’ve loved you. Laura, too.” He smiles sadly at Jackson’s increasing discomfort, his thumb continuing to stroke though the mark’s gone. “My dad would’ve hated you.”
There’s a pause. “You got your shitty sense of humor from your dad,” Jackson accuses finally.
“Look who’s talking,” Derek counters, curling his arm under the other’s neck now. When did that, affectionate gestures, smiles, laughs, become so natural for him? “You’re worse than I am.”
Jackson doesn’t deny it as he yowls low, wriggles closer and Derek is quick to rumble his response, envelop him completely with wrapping arms and claiming legs. They settle in the leaves like that for moment, their breaths, heartbeats easing into complementing rhythms. There’s peace, if only for a moment.
Then, Jackson breaks it with a sigh. “That was pretty fucking good, by the way.”
“The story?”
“No, the sex, asswipe.”
Derek snorts into Jackson’s neck, thrilled by the way his scent dominates everything else. “You really know how to kill a mood, Jackson.”
A strangled noise. “Mood?” Jackson squirms away. “There’s no moo—shit!”
Derek cuffs his pup again for good measure, but quickly soothes it with a firm kiss that Jackson relaxes into with a stiff swear. He hates it, really, that Jackson is a petulant child, that he’d probably never believe him; he hates it that Jackson will probably pretend this didn’t happen when they eventually trudge back to the house, filthy and gross and reeking of sex. He hates it that nothing in his life—or his mother’s—has been anything like those stupid fairytales, even if there are moons and pack and howls and dirt and grass like she said.
But, Derek thinks, those wolf tales always needed a revamping.