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Stiles should have known better than to trust the Cheshire grin his father wore as he hustled him out of the house the moment he dropped his bags.
Should have. Which meant, unfortunately, he didn’t catch any possibly-nefarious intentions until they drove straight past the diner on Oak and took a turn that definitely hadn’t existed last time he updated his mental map of town.
Frowning, he ran through a quick list: Scotty’s mom lived closer to Dad’s place, so obviously they weren’t meeting up with Mel. The Argent place was in the opposite direction. Last he knew, Peter had a place downtown, Derek lived in a shoebox and the rest of the pack should be scattered amongst their various colleges for another few days because most of them didn’t own a car.
He squinted at his father. “Diner’s back that way, Pops.”
“Is it? Hadn’t noticed.”
Stiles groaned, sinking further into his seat. “Do you know how long it’s been since I had good curly fries? You wouldn’t even let me shower for Christ’s sake, can’t whatever you’re up to wait until after curly fries?”
His father snorted and checked the rear-view. “Don’t worry, kid.”
“I like hearing that from you about as much as you like hearing it from me, for the record. Which is to say: I very much do not.”
Dad had the gall to laugh.
“Yeah, no, I’m worrying now. I’m worried. Which brings me to my next and more important question; where the hell are we going and why isn’t it the place with the food you promised?”
“We are going to the place I promised. All I said was I’m taking you out, you’re the one who assumed I meant the diner.”
“That’s—” unfortunately entirely accurate but also “—rude, and doesn’t tell me where we’re going.”
Dad huffed and shook his head before he redirected Stiles’ attention with a jerk of his chin. “Why don’t you take a look for yourself?”
The car slowed to a stop before a sprawling house centered on an even more spacious lot. Done in deep greens and browns with a wraparound porch and enormous windows, it looked like it should be on some kind of holiday commercial. Those winter ones with kids running underfoot while the adults looked on indulgently, sipping overpriced coffee or something. There were at least two visible porch swings, for God’s sake. Who needs that many swings?
“Oookay…” Stiles squinted out the car window, taking in the curve of the road behind them. They’d passed absolutely nothing else on the way, and the road itself petered out a handful of meters past the house.
“I need you to know that if it was anyone else driving me out here I’d be worried about getting murdered. Like, this is clearly a murder-house.”
“It is not a murder-house, what is wrong with you?”
“Not a—Dad. It’s the most isolated house in the entire town. Does this even still count as in town, since the road only exists for this one house? That’s a level of weird I don’t even have words for. Whatever, doesn’t matter, murder-house. Pretty murder-house, but still: murder-house.”
“Stop saying murder-house. It’s not a murder-house.”
“If it’s not a murder-house—”
“I said to knock that off—”
“—If it’s not, then,” Stiles gestures toward the supposedly-not-a-murder-house. “You got something you wanna tell me?”
Dad shot him a grin so wide his eyes were nearly hidden in the folds of his face. “Nope,” he said, maliciously cheerful in the face of Stiles’ jet-lagged brain.
Stiles squinted at him. In response, Dad clambered out of the car, and slapped the roof when Stiles didn’t immediately follow.
The double wide driveway held a slew of cars, all as new and unfamiliar as the house. But then again, why would any of it be familiar? Stiles hadn’t set foot in Beacon Hills in a year.
He hadn’t meant to stay away so long. Hadn’t really ever intended to leave at all. It’d just kind of…happened.
Shaking his head to clear away the melancholic rush, he unfolded himself from the car with a groan and knocked the door shut with his hip. He stretched until his spine popped. With luck, whatever Dad was up to wouldn’t last long so he could crawl back into bed and crash for a least a week.
Dad waited at the bottom of the porch steps, glancing from Stiles to the door while rubbing his hands. Literally, actually, rubbing his hands. Seriously, all he needed was some shoulder pads and a shitty mustache or a talking parrot and he’d be a cartoon villain.
When Stiles stopped to stare at him his father rolled his eyes and yanked him forward, clamping a firm hand over the lower half of his face when he tried to complain.
“Come see what I found,” Dad shouted as he manhandled Stiles up the steps and nearly flung him through the door.
Stiles stumbled in, saved from face-planting only by Dad’s iron grip on his arm.
“Stiles?”
Derek said his name so softly.
The sound of it clogged Stiles’ throat as he snapped his gaze up.
He froze, caught off guard by the sea of people staring back. The silence was broken only by Dad’s self-satisfied chuckling behind him. At least the baffled faces meant Dad hadn’t clued anyone else in on his plans to throw Stiles to the literal wolves either. Small comfort as he sorted through the stunned crowd for the eyes which matched the house.
“Holy shit STILES,” Scott shouted just as Stiles’ gaze landed on Derek. There was barely time to take in the shock in Derek’s wide eyes before Scott barreled into Stiles.
Scott hefted him up and spun him around like a psycho, leaving Stiles to shriek and clutch at Scott’s fluffy head for balance. “You’re here!”
“Sure am,” Stiles wheezed, patting at his idiot of a best friend. “Can’t breathe, dude.”
But his attention was on Derek, staring back with a crumpled mouth and eyes he couldn’t decode.
Dad’s chuckling bloomed into a delighted cackle as chairs scraped against hardwood and other voices began to shout. Erica launched herself at them, sending all three of them down in a heap.
A laugh burst from Stiles’ tight chest as other bodies piled on, voices muddied into a blur in his ears. Hands and faces nuzzled at him indiscriminately, ensuring he was properly marked for the first time in entirely too long.
Home. Fuck, he’s home.
The house was as airy and open as the windows promised. Fading sunlight splayed through the house as readily as laughter pooled, leaving big pockets of warmth.
Stiles sat at a beautiful wooden table clearly meant for large gatherings like this, surrounded by a waterfall of conversations he didn’t even attempt to follow. Scott and Allison bracketed him on either side, Erica beaming at him across the ridiculous amount of food on the table. He hadn’t felt so full in ages.
Speaking of which—homemade curly fries? He might actually die of a potato overdose.
But even with Scott’s arm slung around his shoulders and Lydia’s wit carving effortlessly through the noise, most of his attention kept slipping.
Derek sat at an angle, right on the edge of Stiles’ vision. Close enough to watch without staring, too far to talk without shouting over everyone else. His fork pushed food around his plate more than it carried anything to his mouth, seemingly due to whatever Melissa and Peter were arguing over. But the way his mouth wobbled and then went thin when he caught Stiles’ gaze meant otherwise.
He tried a smile, a small thing, just for Derek.
Derek’s face softened like it had the night Stiles carved his own heart out of his chest, but only for a breath. Then the space between his brows scrunched up tight in something close to confusion. But even that smoothed away in the next second.
Dad leaned around Melissa, gesturing with his fork, and Peter scoffed loudly. Derek slid his attention back to the adultier adults at the sound, but the faint rise in his shoulders meant he’d only used the noise as an excuse.
If they weren’t essentially in public, he’d lean across the table and make Derek look at him properly. Somehow. Everything else aside, he missed the grouchy bastard.
Christ, he missed him so much. He’d hoped the feeling was mutual. A hollowness grew in his gut as Derek continued to keep his gaze fixed anywhere that wasn’t Stiles.
Question after question shot his way, some more pointed than others. Phones hadn’t worked in most of the places he’d been. He’d tried to send letters, but they were infrequent at best. They’d moved around too much to have any kind of way to send letters back, either.
It may have sucked at the time, but a little bit of isolation in return for what he’d learned seemed more than fair.
“Sounds like one of those cartoons,” Isaac mused, head propped on his hand as he leaned around Allison. “Run into any creepy little tree sprite things since the last time we saw you? Y’know, like that one movie, where their heads sound like maracas.”
“Miyazaki does not make cartoons,” Danny scorns immediately.
The newest kid, apparently bitten by a rouge in Stiles’ absence, straightened. “What wrong with cartoons?”
“No,” Boyd cut in, jabbing his fork through the air. “Shut up, I am not listening to that again.”
“Stop causing trouble,” Allison said, shaking her head fondly as she tugged at Isaac’s curls. When he turned his big puppy eyes on her, she pointedly turned her back to face Stiles instead. “How long do we get you? Or…” Her eyebrows went up expectantly as the noise died down around them.
It wasn’t an unexpected question. If anything, he was surprised it took this long for someone to ask outright. He left two months before graduation, right before hitting nineteen, whisked away one night by a creature who’d lived through more than one ice age. Sixteen months wandering through forests and history and the kind of insane magical knowledge Deaton wishes he could hoard in his miserly grip. Sixteen months, and the only time he managed to pop in for a visit was on their way to Alaska.
Derek had asked then. If he was staying. He hadn’t looked surprised when Stiles said no. Stiles hadn’t known what to do with the way Derek shook his head when Stiles tried to step in, tried to close the distance, tried to reach out.
Now, on the edge of Stiles’ vision, Derek went tense, head angled so Stiles couldn’t see his expression.
“Well,” Stiles drawled, curling his fingers into his palms to keep them to himself. “You see, the thing is—“
“Oh my god, just spit it out,” Jackson snapped. “Let me guess, same as last time? A day, maybe two?”
“Aw, Jackson!” Stiles slapped both hands to his chest and faked a swoon, toppling back into Scott. “Man, does that mean you actually missed me? That’s so sweet.”
“I hate you.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” Lydia said, flicking a hand dismissively. “You threw a fit when he left.” She pinned Stiles with a narrow stare. “You’re avoiding the question.”
“Am I?”
“Just tell us,” Boyd said in his usual even tone. “Before one of them dies of a heart attack and I have to bury a body, preferably.”
“You know better than to bury a body,” Peter tutted, subsiding when Chris slapped at him.
Stiles laced his hands behind Scott’s head and grinned up at the table full of expectantly annoyed faces.
Scott, though, took advantage of his weakness and dug his fingers into Stiles’ ribs like a traitor. “Tell us!” Scott demanded over Stiles’ howls, “How long!”
“Okay! I’m back, stop, stop, oh god, I’m home, I’m staying!”
Scott’s tickle-assault stopped as Derek’s head snapped up. The rest of the pack dissolved into deafening chaos. A strange, vulnerable look overtook Derek’s face as Stiles stared, breathless for an entirely different reason.
Hope. That’s what it was, like someone gave Derek a reason to get up in the morning. He was slack-jawed and soft-eyed and so unbelievably pretty.
As quickly as it bloomed it was gone, shuttered behind unnatural blankness.
Stiles looked away first, rubbing at his chest with the heel of his palm.
Beacon Hills at twenty wasn’t too different from Beacon Hills at basically-nineteen, except for all the ways it was.
Sprawled over the loveseat alone, Stiles tried to absorb a year’s worth of changes.
Scotty and Allison were off again, possibly for good this time, since Isaac sat at her feet with his eyes closed and her fingers in his hair. For his part, Scott introduced the kitsune he’d met at college, Kira, with stars in his eyes, so the Allison/Isaac shift didn’t worry him too much.
Erica proposed to Boyd, which she recounted with meticulous detail purely to make Boyd hide his face.
“I better be a bridesmaid,” Stiles threw out, dragging over a delightfully velvety pillow to squeeze.
“No shit you’re standing with me, dumbass.” Erica laughed and leaned into Boyd’s chest. “I should make you wear a dress, too.”
Like that was a challenge. “Done, so long as I pick the color. No heels, I will die so spectacularly you’ll die with me. Of shame.”
She snorted, waving away his nonsense. “Red.”
Stiles made a show of thinking that over before nodding. “Hell yes. But what’re you gonna wear? Isn’t it like, against the rules for evil seductresses to wear white—”
He didn’t manage to get his pillow up in time to deflect her shoe. Boyd snatched it out of the air when he tried to sling it back, earning himself a kiss definitely not meant for public spaces.
Stiles hugged his pillow harder.
“White’s boring. I’m wearing black and red.”
Danny laughed. “So your wedding dress is going to match the car Derek bought you? There are other colors.”
Erica threw her shoe again.
“First of all, my car is sexy as hell—”
As the conversation shifted, Stiles twisted to look back into the kitchen.
He found Derek, arms crossed as he took a step back from Stiles’ dad. Derek said something and shrugged. Dad screwed up his face the same way he did when Stiles was being particularly obtuse, and Derek shook his head. Dad reached out, setting a careful hand on Derek’s shoulders, but Derek stepped back again and held up a hand as he spoke. That hand waved toward the couches, and then Derek skulked out of sight.
Dad stared after him, mouth twisted to one side, hands on his hips. After a moment, he shook his own head and trudged over to Melissa and Chris, the former with a worried pinch around her eyes, and the latter slinging an arm around Dad’s waist.
Stiles blinked. Then he looked back to where Derek disappeared and decided Chris’s comfort invading Dad’s space was a mystery for later. He made some nonsense excuse no one heard and ducked around the couches.
The sliding glass door to the porch was opened, letting fresh air in through the screen. He eased the screen out of the way, stepping out into the first shadows of the night.
A hand shot out, fast enough to blur at the edges, slamming him against the house. Instinct and training meant his hands were upright and burning without conscious thought, the rosy copper turning Derek’s face into a work of art.
Derek was taller the last time they were pressed so close. Now, Stiles had to tilt his gaze down the slightest bit to meet Derek’s eyes.
Wetting his lips, Stiles put that thought into the growing pile for ‘after at least ten hours’ sleep.’
“Hey, hi, what’s up, sourpatch?”
“You,” Derek huffed, hand still twisted in Stiles’ shirt. He didn’t even spare the witchfire a glance. “Of course it’s you. Take it off.”
Stiles shivered and tried to laugh it off. “Um. Take—what am I taking off, exactly? Not that I’m against it. But, y’know. Shouldn’t you buy me dinner first?”
Derek’s grip went tighter, his sneer broken by a lengthening canine. Copper fire reflected off his hazel eyes. “Because that worked so well last time.”
The sarcasm didn’t cover the baffling open wound beneath Derek’s words.
“What?” Stiles’ fire guttered out so he could wrap his fingers around Derek’s wrists. “Derek, what the hell does that mean?”
He grunted, body forced more firmly against the siding.
“No.” Hazel eyes bled to red. “Spell.”
“Holy shit, spell,” Stiles snapped his fingers, fascinated as Derek’s eyes fluttered shut. “I forgot.”
The alpha took a deep breath, mouth open, head tilting another centimeter closer so his exhale ran down Stiles’ exposed throat.
He couldn’t help the shiver that worked down his spine, completely unsure if it was the blatant way Derek was drinking him in or the intimate sensation of his breath. “How’d I go all night without someone saying anything?”
“It’s enough you that they didn’t notice,” Derek rumbled, pulling in another mouthful of Stiles. His eyes opened slowly, red and fixed on Stiles’ mouth.
The implications unspun Stiles’ universe between one heartbeat and the next. His spell dampened his natural scent, obscured the signals his body gave off. It was enough to hide him without making him an obvious deadzone.
Scott hadn’t noticed.
Derek had.
“Say it again.”
“Ha, yeah, okay, I can do that,” he tilted his chin up a little, a thin bolt of heat slashing down from where Derek’s breath puffed against his skin to his gut, splintering into his thighs at the way Derek’s gaze followed the bob of his throat. “Remind me what I’m saying, big guy?”
Was his voice always so weird and buzzy?
Can he still call him big guy if Stiles is taller?
The hand on his chest flexed. “What Allison asked.”
“What Allison what now? Wait. Wait, really?”
Derek’s eyes tracked the way Stiles licked his lips before jerking up to glare when his heart tripped over itself beneath his palm.
“Oh,” he said, sagging against the house. Of course. Derek wanted to be able to hear the truth, or maybe smell it, from the way his nostrils flared. “I’m done,” he said gently, squeezing Derek’s wrists. “I’m back for good. I’m home, Der.”
Red eyes dropped back to his mouth, then lower, down to his chest, and then Derek stepped back and took all of his heat with him. “Don’t hide from me,” he ground out, face mostly shadows. “Don’t lie to me like that.”
Stiles blew out a heavy breath, hands falling to his sides. “I’m not lying by keeping myself to myself, thanks. I’m evening the playing field.”
Derek leaned back in, hands on either side of Stiles’ head. His displeasure was a low growl in his throat. “Yes, you are.”
“The fuck I am, asshole,” Stiles snapped, popping him on the chest with the back of his hand. “Hypocrite much? Just because you can sniff out all sorts of shit about me doesn’t mean you have the right to know those things. Personal! Space! I know you know what that is, you get all pissy if anyone intrudes on yours.”
Derek’s growl faded somewhere during Stiles’ rant. Good. He poked Derek in the chest. “This isn’t gonna work if you don’t freakin’ trust me, dude. I’m not the enemy.”
All at once, Derek snatched Stiles’ wrist and stepped back. “What isn’t going to work.”
“Why do you hate asking questions that sound like questions?” He flexed his wrist, and Derek’s thumb dug into his pulse. “And what do you mean what? The entire point of taking Ainsley up on their offer was—”
“Emissary.” Derek’s voice was so empty Stiles’ jaw clacked shut. “Of course.” In what was clearly an unsavory habit picked up in Stiles’ time away, Derek turned and walked away, into the darkness beyond the lawn without another word.
Stiles stood where he was left, back crushed against the house—Derek’s house, the place Derek made to hold his pack, his family, his heart—with the ghost of Derek’s body lingering along his frame.
“What the actual fuck just happened?”
In approximately two seconds confusion sparked into irritation, and then burst straight into fury. Stiles shoved off the house. The fire of his frustrations bloomed and faded around his hands as he stormed across the yard after Derek.
Behind him, the door thunked open, and Scott’s voice broke through the night.
Stiles flapped a hand over his shoulder, and dove into the woods without hearing a single word.
“Seriously?” he snarled. “Dumbass, you think you can hide from me? Really? In here, no less? Are there any goddamn braincells rattling around in that thick skull?”
He slapped a hand against the nearest tree. In an instant, the forest opened up for him, pulling him in like an elder scooping up a favorite grandchild.
“Yeah, yeah, missed you too. Now.” He closed his eyes and concentrated on the root of his power, his tie to the earth. “Where’d our favorite wolfy idiot go?”
The trees sighed, though the sheer affection he felt overwhelmed the sensation of a shaking head. When he opened his eyes, the night was a little less dark, and the trees showed him the way.
Practice and magic kept his steps soundless, and a snap of his fingers ensured his scent disappeared entirely. He tracked Derek by the traces he left behind: faintly glowing footsteps, and the occasional splash of touch against bark or brush.
The trees hummed behind Stiles’ eyes, happy to have him back among them. They gifted him the feeling of Derek padding the path often, his feet bare against soft earth. It was hard to separate the contentment threaded through the sensation from the snapping in his chest. Derek’s path shifted, leaving the wide trail behind. The red-gold of his passage was thicker here, branches and vines proud of his touch.
When they parted, Stiles found himself drowning in moonlight.
Flowers sprawled along the ground, cheerful even in slumber. A stone path led to a little picnic area on one side, and straight to the stream on the other. Someone—no, Derek, clearly—crafted a waterfall from the stream. Below it, he’d dug out a wider section, allowing the stream to pool in a slow-moving swirl before wandering down its intended path. In the center of the pool sat a little island, too perfectly round to be any more natural than the rest.
The island held a statue. A wolf, beautiful even in the dark, staring back at Stiles with eyes of iridescent moonstone. Its shimmering white gaze seemed to track him, head cocked faintly to one side in what could pass as either amusement or study.
Derek’s red-gold marks didn’t lead to the bench situated on the bank, intended to give someone the ability to study the wolf statue in turn. He let his powers fade, looking over the peaceful little shine with only his own eyes.
Predictably, Derek waited for him in the darkest shadow, stepping out into the moonlight only when Stiles snapped his fingers at him. More irritating was how utterly unsurprised Derek looked to have been found.
Stiles narrowed his eyes and pushed a question at the forest.
The forest pulsed back: no. Derek hadn’t reached out, hadn’t sought for him in turn.
“Good to see you’ve kept up with the whole creepy-ass serial killer shtick,” Stiles snapped, and flung his arms wide. “But newsflash! These woods are mine, too!”
Derek’s eyes didn’t flare, though he half-expected them to.
“Wanna explain what that melodramatic bullshit was just now?” Stiles barreled on, getting up in Derek’s space in turn. “You’ve been weird since I showed up. You’re acting like you’re mad at me, but I haven’t even been here to piss you off!”
Derek’s eyes twitched in the faintest wince, but Stiles memorized his face years ago.
“I haven’t even been here,” he repeated slowly. “I haven’t—that’s it? Are you kidding me? I left?”
He stepped back, dragging a hand down his face. He’s hurt. He’s bewildered. He’s ecstatic. He’s fucking incredulous. He’s going to strangle Derek and then throw himself off a cliff. “You told me to go!”
“I asked what you wanted,” Derek corrected woodenly, like that made any damned sense.
Momentarily bereft of words, Stiles dug his fingers into his own face and made a deeply unpleasant sound.
“You wanted to go,” Derek continued, ignoring Stiles’ breakdown. “I wasn’t going to ask you to stay.”
“Maybe you should have!” Stiles shouted, forceful enough that it drove Derek back a step. “You don’t get to tell me it’s fine and then get fucking mad when I follow through! You knew why I went!”
“Did I?”
Stiles bent at the waist and screamed into his palms. When he straightened, he tried to gather the shreds of both his sanity and his dignity. “I thought you did. I thought you agreed. I thought we were good. I left,” he gestured in a random direction purely to work out some of the awful buzzing in his veins, “because I thought you had my back.”
“That’s rich,” Derek said through his teeth. “From where I was standing, you left us behind because you didn’t trust us to have your back.”
“What in the actual hell are you talking about? What? We were getting the shit kicked out of us on the regular and I needed to learn how to help! How to be better, how to use this,” he snapped a hand up, copper fire licking at his fingertips, “to take care of my pack!”
He fisted his hand and the fire went out. Derek hadn’t so much as blinked, staring at him like he’d lost his mind, and maybe he had, because this was as far removed from what Stiles thought was happening it was absurd.
“I asked. I asked you, Derek. You’re acting like I got bored and blew everyone off for the hell of it. You told me to go.” He laughed, and it sounded like broken glass. “Fuck, dude, I thought you changed your mind, that you didn’t want me, and I still nearly killed myself to speedrun that shit to get back here. Because even if you didn’t want me, Ainsley showed me how to be useful for once.”
Derek’s face crumbled into something like hurt but Stiles didn’t understand why.
“You didn’t want me,” he repeated, propping his hands on his hips as he stared down at the sea of flowers Derek planted in his sanctuary. The words ached, but nowhere near as much as the bruising on his heart when Derek stepped out of reach that day.
Derek’s voice may as well have come from the statue for all the emotion it held. “You wanted to go.”
“Oh my god, is that all you can say? No, no I fucking did not,” Stiles seethed at the flowers. If Derek’s face was as dead as his voice, he had no interest in looking up. “I wanted to help. Ainsley’s offer—he taught me how to be something other than a damned liability. I’m not deadweight anymore. I don’t get what you’re not understanding about this.”
“You were never deadweight,” Derek said quietly. “And I never asked you to try and protect us. That’s our job, my job, and you didn’t think I could do it.”
Stiles’ head snapped up. He gaped at Derek, gaze dancing over an inscrutable expression. “What the hell? You think I’m going to, what, sit around and hope no one dies trying to care of the weakest link? Have you even met me? This didn’t have shit to do with what I thought you could do, and had everything to do with realizing I could be an actual resource, and having more resources keeps people not dead!”
Derek snorted. “Right. How’s Clover?”
The change in subject felt like a club to the gut. Stiles had no idea what his face was doing, but Derek’s expression was shuttered tight.
“Clover,” he repeated. “What’s she got to do with…”
Derek’s mouth flattened and dominoes fell in a soundless rush within Stiles’ head.
“Are you serious right now?” All of Stiles’ frustration drained out in an instant, leaving him tired. He shook his head, both hands palm out as he tried to recalibrate his understanding of the last year.
Talk about whiplash.
“Clover was Ainsley’s friend. We ran into her in the Ozark mountains and she hung out for a couple weeks so I’d get a feel for how the fey work. Y’know. Because she’s a literal fairy.” Stiles looped his thumbs together and flapped his fingers in a busted imitation of wings.
“Her partner’s a fox, by the way, and they have approximately fifty million kids, all of whom are like, literal decades older than my dad.” He paused and stared Derek down. “Because they’ve been together for longer than this country’s existed.”
Derek looked away. It was hard to tell in the dark, but his face seemed flush. Good. Maybe he’d choke on the embarrassment and Stiles could wake up in his own bed without having had to live through this atrocity of a homecoming.
“Christ, that explains so much and somehow also explains absolutely nothing. You’re so stupid. No, don’t give me the bitchface, you are so unbelievably stupid. What about me has ever given you the indication that I’m built for anything other than the long-haul, Derek? I’m obsessive, you’ve said so yourself. Stiles the weirdo! Stiles and his issues!”
Derek’s shoulders were inching up to his ears and Stiles wanted to shake him until his head popped off.
“Maybe we should be talking about Derek and his issues, since you’re the one who kissed me, you absolute dickhead. You fucking kissed me, and then somehow decided that I hightailed it out of here with an ancient elk-god at the first opportunity to what, Derek? What exactly did you think I was trying to do? Get away from you, personally? That I was sending letters, to you, specifically, to tell you about the fairy I hooked up with? Like I’m not going to continue to be ass over tits for you until I fucking die? What kind of asshole do you think I am?”
He paused and rewound that rant. “Fairy-fairy. Fae.” He squinted and then abruptly abandoned that entire thought as a the more important part of his realization set in entirely too late. “Holy shit, you were jealous. That’s insane. You’re insane.”
Derek didn’t answer. His mouth was slack, showing off his stupidly cute bunny teeth. He looked like Stiles hit him with a two by four and Stiles didn’t know if he should laugh or scream again.
“You need so much therapy. Jesus, Derek.” Stiles stepped in until he could cup Derek’s face in his hands. Derek scowled but he allowed Stiles to urge his head up until they were eye to eye.
“Since you clearly need to hear it: I have been into your unnecessarily scary-pretty face for like, an embarrassingly long time. Also? You kissed it, which means you broke it. Therefore, you bought it.”
That strange expression from Stiles’ abrupt entrance was back, but now he had the time to study the minute shifts in Derek’s face. Wide eyes, brows arched the slightest bit… Wonder, Stiles decided as he ran a thumb under Derek’s lower lip. A little bit of wonder, but a lot more confusion, and the distant kind of longing borne of the knowledge that longing would never be fulfilled.
“I wanted to crawl inside your skin before I ever left, which sounded a lot less serial-killer-y in my head, honestly, but the sentiment remains. I rushed through my apprenticeship to come home. To you, if that wasn’t clear enough. I mean, yeah, Dad and the pack and whatever too, but like. You. Specifically. Are a thing I missed kind of a lot.”
Derek staring at him with those bottomless eyes and pretty mouth was distracting as all hell, but Stiles didn’t know if he was allowed to do anything about either of those things yet.
“You said emissary,” he murmured into the scant space between them. “You think I bounced to become another Deaton? Nah, dude. I’m no one’s mouthpiece, and I’m sure as hell not who you want tying the pack to humanity. That’s your job, man, I just spent pretty much two years learning how to not-human, for fuck’s sake. I’m the Lorax, I speak for the trees and the dirt and the blood that makes the world go ‘round. I can fight with you now, I can protect instead of be protected, I can connect with the pack and the forest and take care of the Nemeton when Ainsley’s stasis wears off...”
He couldn’t help himself. Derek’s face squished between his palms, gently puckering up beneath the pressure of his hands. Stiles dropped his head down to Derek’s, forehead to forehead.
“Do you get it yet? I turned myself into a much more effective problem, and I hated every single minute I wasn’t here.”
Derek didn’t pull away, even when Stiles dropped his hands to snake them around Derek’s shoulders.
“C’mon, talk to me. What the hell is going on? Before I panic, please.”
In response, Derek ground his head into Stiles’. “You’re right. I did tell you to go.”
Hands curved over Stiles’ waist, smoothing up his ribs and around his back to crush him against Derek’s chest. The next inhale wobbled, and Derek’s hands dropped away. “I didn’t realize how much I wanted you to stay until you didn’t.”
Stiles tried to hold onto him, but Derek ducked out of the circle of his arms and stepped back. He propped his fists on his hips to keep himself from reaching again. There’s only so many times a guy can handle being brushed off.
“When you visited,” Derek started, only to allow his voice to fade. His face creased, upper lip bulging as he ran his tongue over his teeth. When it retreated, the muscle of his jaw flexed. “You were happy. Better.”
“No shit? I hadn’t seen you guys in months.”
But Derek shook his head. “No. Like… like being somewhere else was good for you.” He met Stiles’ eyes. “I hated it. Wanting you to come home when it would’ve been better for you if you didn’t.”
“See, from where I’m standing that’s more of the whole Derek Has Issues thing, and also the Derek Trying To Make Choices For Other People thing. Dad’s here, there’s no way I wasn’t coming back.”
Derek continued like Stiles hadn’t spoken.
“And then Clover. I made some assumptions.”
“Yeah, I got that.” Was this what they meant with that one phrase, leading horses to water?
“It was easier. For me,” Derek echoed Stiles’ vague gesture at the world. “If I thought you weren’t coming back. But you did.”
Derek’s fingertips skated along Stiles’ cheekbone before he curled his fingertips into his palm.
“I did come back,” Stiles repeated, putting entirely too much effort into keeping his own hand from covering the tingling skin of his face. “And you yelled at me.”
“You came into the house smelling like nothing,” Derek snapped. “I couldn’t pick your heartbeat out, I couldn’t feel you through the bonds, I couldn’t tell if you were full of shit when you were talking. What else am I supposed to get from that other than you’re hiding? You don’t trust me?”
Stiles’ laugh was meaner than he meant it to be, but he couldn’t quite keep the edge from his voice as he said, “Oh, I dunno, maybe that that’s how not-chronically-furry people operate every day? That you missed me? Maybe, even, that it’s weird you spent the whole time I was gone looking for a reason to be mad at me?”
Derek looked sightlessly into the night. He blinked, a slow closing of his eyelids for much too long before he turned back to Stiles. “Angry’s easy,” he confessed. “I think I just needed it to not be my fault you left.”
The frustration coiled in his limbs drained away in a rush, leaving him limp. Stiles stepped forward, hooking his arms over Derek’s broad shoulders, and trusted him to take his weight. Thankfully, Derek didn’t so much as make a face, arms curling automatically around his waist.
They stood in the dark, Stiles’ head resting on Derek’s shoulder. The forest was a steady rhythm in the back of Stiles’ head, Derek’s pulse a metronome against his skin, and further back, the pack and his father a cluster of warm notes all blended together.
One of Derek’s palms slid up, until he cupped the back of Stiles’ head. A mouth brushed over his ear.
“Stiles?”
“Mm.”
“Stay.”
Snickering, Stiles twisted to shove his face into Derek’s throat. “Want me to sit and roll over too?”
He yelped when Derek flicked his ear with a too-sharp nail.
“I’m serious. I should’ve said it then and I didn’t, so I’m saying it now. Stay. With me.”
“That’s a life sentence, you know. Think you can handle it?”
Derek hummed. “Yeah. I do.”
“Good, ‘cause you’re stuck with me now. Once I shower and sleep for a week, anyway.”
“You can do that here,” Derek offered, voice tucked into the space below Stiles’ ear.
“I could. Kinda rude to bail on my old man like that though. We should head back.”
Derek laughed, the sound more of a rumble in his chest than anything else. “Trust me. He’s counting on you staying here for at least a few days. He can’t figure out how to tell you he’s planning on moving in with Melissa and Chris.”
Stiles pulled back very slowly. He put his hands on Derek’s cheeks and squished his face again. “I need you to run that by me again, in words that make sense. Small words.”
“John. Melissa. Chris.” Derek grinned, teeth flashing in the moonlight. “If it’s any consolation, they haven’t told Scott yet either, but I think they thought he’d have caught on by now. Allison thinks it’s hilarious.”
“I have to go,” Stiles said abruptly, spinning on his heel only to have Derek snatch him up from behind. “Let go!”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I have no idea. How do shovel talks work?”
“Stiles. Your dad’s a grown man.”
“So?”
“So leave him alone. Stay here a little bit longer.”
Stiles sighed, leaning back against Derek’s chest. He looked up at the sky. The moon was a thick crescent, slowly being consumed by passing clouds. Derek’s nose pressed into the base of his neck, and Stiles grinned. “Yeah, okay. I can stay a little longer.”