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It starts after Gerard tortures him. Derek comes to see him that night, smoothly jumping in through the window and scaring the shit of him.
He hadn’t been asleep, not really. He’s tired, but he can’t sleep, doesn’t want to sleep. His split lip stings and his cheek aches, and every time he closes his eyes he’s back in Gerard’s basement again.
He panics a bit at Derek’s sudden appearance, and bangs his head against the headboard of his bed in an attempt to sit up as fast as possible.
“Ow,” he moans when he sees who it is, rubbing his head. “You asshole, can’t you learn to knock or something?”
Derek pads silently over to the bed and sits on the edge. He lifts a hand almost hesitantly, and slips it under Stiles’, so he’s basically cradling the back of Stiles’ head. Stiles freezes. Is Derek going to eat him? Because that seems unlikely, but still less weird than Derek touching him for non-violent reasons.
Derek’s looking intently at his face. His free hand moves to cups Stiles’ cheek, and he traces just under the puffy scrape. Right. Werewolf sight; Derek doesn’t need to turn on the light to get an eyeful of Stiles’ busted-up face.
“You weren’t asleep when I got here, were you?” Derek says.
Stiles thinks about lying and realizes it would be a fruitless endeavor. “Ah, nope.”
“Why not?”
“Um, I’m not tired?” Oops. Apparently knowing Derek can hear when he’s not telling the truth isn’t going to stop him from trying to get away with it. And that was just pathetic, even Stiles can tell that was a lie, just from the way his voice went kind of high and squeaky at the end.
“Stiles.”
“I don’t want to,” Stiles mumbles.
“Why not?” Derek’s hands are still on his face. When Stiles tries to turn his face away, Derek holds him in place, forcing eye contact. So Stiles obstinately closes his eyes, because Derek’s eyes are this freaky intense hazel color and they practically demand truth-telling.
“Stiles,” Derek says again, and shakes him a little. Stiles knows deep down it’s just Derek shaking him, but with his eyes closed, Stiles can’t see that it’s Derek. In his mind he sees Gerard, pushing him down against a concrete floor and hitting him across the face.
He’ll be embarrassed to admit this later, but he whimpers, actually whimpers, and tries to get away from the hands on his face. They let go almost immediately and he curls up into a ball and tries to hide. The feeling of his soft, comfortable bedsheets under his cheek remind him that he’s at home, in his bed, not on a cold, hard floor, and he snaps out of the instinctive wash of fear that had overtaken him.
“Stiles, I’m sorry,” Derek is saying. “I didn’t- I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Stiles says shakily, sitting up. He goes to rub his hands over his face and winces when he accidentally presses down on a bruise.
“You should ice that.”
Stiles shrugs. “Yeah, whatever.”
He’s not prepared for Derek to get up and leave, but that’s what he does. Did he offend him or something? Well. Derek’s always turning up out of nowhere and leaving just as quickly, there’s no reason why it should be any different now. It is kind of weird that he’s leaving via Stiles’ bedroom door, though.
“Um, Derek?” Stiles says, but Derek doesn’t answer. He’s barely been gone a minute when he returns with a bundled-up dishcloth. He holds it out to Stiles. Oh. It’s a makeshift icepack.
“Thanks,” Stiles says. It feels good on his face, cool and soothing. He leans up against the headboard and holds it over the worst of the bruising. Derek doesn’t seem in any hurry to leave again, but he’s not saying anything either, just sitting in Stiles’ computer chair, idly spinning back and forth. The repetitive motion and the silence are making Stiles sleepy. His eyes start to slide shut and he actually falls asleep for about half a second before he jerks awake, gasping.
“Just fucking go to sleep,” Derek says. “Stop fighting it.”
“I can’t,” Stiles says, a little desperately.
Derek sighs, and gets up, and sits down next to him on the bed.
“I dreamed about the fire for years after it happened,” he says. Stiles turns to gape at him- Derek never talks about the fire- but Derek’s looking off across the room. “Sometimes I dreamed that I burned, too. I dreamed over and over that I was on the verge of saving them, that if I’d only gotten there a minute sooner they all would have lived. Once I dreamed I burned them.”
Stiles sucks in a shaky breath.
“You can’t prevent the nightmares,” Derek continues. “You just learn to live with them.”