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And of course witches are real too. Like, obviously. There are werewolves and fairies and gorgon and chupacabras and Scott suspects it’s only a matter of time before some vampires show up to kill them. If something else doesn’t kill them first.
There’s a witch that has been casting wonky spells on people in Beacon Hills. Scott thinks it’s one of the nurses at his mom’s hospital.
At first they were healing spells that didn’t quite work. For example, a patient in the hospital with some sort of rash went home with some very strange ointment. The next day, they woke up and their rash was gone, but instead had developed necrosis where the rash had been. The poor guy had needed some serious surgery. (They managed to save his arm but after all the skin grafts, the scarring will be pretty gross.)
Then there were things like a car with a damaged engine in the mechanic’s shop. When he opened up the morning after it had been dropped off, the engine was a smoldering, twisted metal abomination that should have been impossible to create without heavy machinery. Or the Incredible Hulk. Or Magneto.
A house with a damaged air conditioner suddenly had a winter wonderland inside its walls.
You get the point.
It got so bad that they’d had no choice but to tell the Sheriff the truth. Which is a good story, but it’s not this one. Stiles was so relieved that his dad finally knew, that he could stop hiding. Briefly his dad tried to convince him that it was too dangerous for him to run around with them, but ultimately that had stopped when Derek made a really epic speech about how he’d protect Stiles with everything he had or something like that. It’s a good story.
But, first, the witch. So they track her down and confront her and it is, in fact, a woman that Scott’s mom works with. Not even a witch; just a lady who found a spellbook.
They find her finishing up an incantation because she’d heard there was a blind child in town and she only wanted to help.
--
When they find the woman, she’s in in the basement of a vacant shop, and she’s just finished the spell and is smiling delightedly at them.
Before Stiles can begin to speak, he lets out the most ear-shattering wail that any of them have ever heard and he crumples to the ground, hands clasped tightly over his eyes. He shrieks and Derek moves lightning-quick to catch him and turns murderously at the woman, who looks horrified.
“It… it didn’t work? I failed again? Oh dear, I don’t understand why this is happening, I don’t—“
Derek transfers Stiles, who is shaking and screaming, to Erica before flying across the room, already in his beta form, and pins the woman to the wall, forearm across her throat.
“What. Did. You. Do?” he snarls, more furious than any of the others have seen him before.
“I just—I didn’t—I just wanted him to be able to see! I didn’t—It’s not my fault! I found this book! I just wanted to help!” She coughs against his tight grip, trying not to move, trying not to anger him further.
“I can fix it!” she gasps out. “There—let me just—“
“You’re not going anywhere,” the alpha growls, fighting the urge to kill this woman.
“Derek?” Erica calls from across the room, desperate. “Derek, we need to do something!”
Scott takes over then, because it’s clear that Derek is too furious to be rational and the others need an alpha.
“Derek, let go of her, let her breathe!” Scott orders, and to his surprise, Derek does. “We’re going to Deaton’s. He’s the only person I know who can possibly fix this. Bring her. Do not kill her."
--
Stiles lays on the metal examination table, hands still over his eyes, screaming like he’s being brutally murdered. Derek is pacing, and Deaton is speaking with the woman, more furiously than Scott has ever seen his old boss. The Sheriff is also there, sitting beside the table, talking to Stiles very quietly, probably for his own benefit more than his son’s.
“Magic is not a toy. There are rules to it. Do you understand me?” Deaton says, examining the book she produced as the source of her power.
“Yes!” she whispers fervently. “I’ll stop, I swear, I’ll never touch it again, I just, can’t you help him? He’s in so much pain, I didn’t mean for this to happen, why is it happening?”
“Because when you take away someone’s pain, it has to go somewhere,” Deaton explains. “Healing magic is the most dangerous kind. If you rush into it, it just doesn’t work.”
“What about when we heal the dogs?” Scott asks, curious.
“That’s natural magic. It’s part of you, you can take their pain into you without any risk to yourself. You heal it as it comes into your body. If a human tried it, they would take on the other person’s injuries and disabilities. But when she did those spells, she didn’t give the pain anywhere to go, so it imploded in on itself and got worse. Right now, the nerves around Stiles’ eyes are trying to repair themselves at the same time as they’re trying to tear themselves apart.”
“Can’t you please stop it!?” the woman shrieks, terribly upset.
“Yes. But what you’ve done will not be erased. He will never forget the terrible pain you’ve given him,” the vet says. “His body will remember it too. You cannot put magic into a body that works opposite of the magic. Any chance he would have ever had for sight is lost.”
Sheriff Stilinski makes a choked sound, horrified, but he doesn’t say anything. Scott sighs. Stiles has always insisted that it wasn’t important to him to be able to see, but he knows that secretly Stiles hopes that there could someday be a laser eye surgery that could make him able to see even a little.
And now that will never be.
--
Derek paces the waiting room furiously, practically burning a hole in the floor.
Allison and Lydia sit silently, Jackson hand in hand with his girlfriend. Peter is leaning against the wall passively. Boyd, Erica, and Isaac are all cuddled together looking terrified. None of them can block out Stiles’ cries of pain.
It’s so difficult, especially for Derek, who cannot do a thing to help his mate. Derek wonders if it’d be better to scare Stiles off, to tell him he doesn’t want him anymore, to force Stiles away.
But at the same time, Derek knows it’s too late. He’s too selfish to let Stiles go now. He lets out an impassioned roar and throws a fist into the wall, breaking through the plaster.
From somewhere in the back room, Deaton calls, “Please don’t break my office.”
To their credit, no one even reacts to the exchange.
They do react when Stiles suddenly stops yelling.
--
Pain. Everything is pain, burning, icy, stabbing, throbbing, aching, pain, Stiles wants to rip his eyes out and claw his face off, wants to die it hurts so badly, can’t even call for Derek or for his father, for Scott, for anyone, just screams because the pain is so much and he can’t take this, how long has it been like this, why isn’t anyone doing anything to help, it’s awful, unbearable, please, god, someone, anyone, make it STOP!
And then it does. Cool, careful hands are cupping his face, fingertips against his eyelids, Deaton’s calm voice muttering a spell.
And then something strange happens.
He doesn’t know how to explain it but it’s different.
“You guys can come in,” he hears Scott call, and then a shuffle of footsteps as the pack crowds around him. Deaton helps him sit up and open his eyes and—
Holy shit.
Holy fucking shit.
He can see.
--
The world is so bright, so vibrant, so big, he gasps and throws an arm over his eyes. It’s so bright, it kind of hurts.
“What—what the hell happened?” he demands, shaking.
“The idiot with the spellbook tried to repair your eyes with magic. She didn’t do it right,” Lydia says. “Deaton fixed it.”
“Your body is in the process of ridding itself of the unbound magic. Your eyes will revert back to their original state in about twenty-four hours,” Deaton says. “But, Stiles, there’s something… because of what happened, after this, there will be no possible way for you to have vision restored to you. In any capacity. Not with laser surgery or magic.”
Waves of unrepressed agony roll off Stiles again immediately, and the wolves all flinch. But it’s different than before; this agony is also mourning, wailing at the loss of something he never even had to begin with.
Slowly, Stiles lowers his arm and blinks open his eyes.
He looks at them all.
“So, which of you is which…?” he asks. They’re a very good looking group, really. There are the three girls and he’s not sure which is Allison and which is Erica, (Lydia is the shortest one, he knows) but he’s impressed he has such attractive friends. He knows Boyd, because he’s hugged Boyd and it’s hard to not know exactly what Boyd’s body is like after cuddling with him. He also knows Peter, as he looks the oldest. There are two blond guys; the one with the curly hair must be Isaac, which makes the other one Jackson. His eyes flick over to the dark haired, slimmer guy that has to be Scott.
And then he turns his eyes to his mate and he looks at Derek for the first time.
Their eyes lock together and suddenly Derek looks terrified. “Stiles, can… can you see us?” he asks.
“Yeah.” He says it so quietly, mouth dry and throat hoarse from screaming, and he doesn’t even really believe it.
No one knows how to react.
“Stiles,” his dad says.
Stiles glances over at the source of the voice and sees his father. He doesn’t understand enough words to really describe how his dad looks but he burns the image of his dad into his mind forever. The man who has been his only family for over ten years. This is what he looks like. His father. Sheriff John Stilinski.
“Dad.”
“Stiles!” The Sheriff moves over, pulls his child into a crushing hug, tears of happiness rolling down his face. Everyone begins to relax a little and smile but then it comes to a screeching halt.
Deaton says, “I’m sorry.”
“Wh—but I can see! Why are you sorry, this is—“
“24 hours, Stiles. Like I told you. The lingering traces of the spell are doing what they were doing before, but slowly. Before, your nerves were rapidly healing and decaying. Now it’s on its last round. And then it will be done.” Deaton sounds upset. Apologetic, too.
The dark-haired girl reaches for Scott (must be Allison then) and buries her face against his neck, hiccupping a sob into his shirt. Scott wraps an arm around her but he’s looking at Stiles. Lydia and Jackson have a death-grip on each other’s hands, and the three betas all look like they want to cry.
Stiles pulls away from his dad and looks down at his hands. Sees them. Sees pale skin, short-trimmed fingernails, callouses and cuts from running with wolves. He turns his palms up, looking at the lines he’s traced thousands of times.
“What time is it now?” he croaks.
“There’s an hour until midnight,” Isaac says.
“That’s great,” Stiles says. “I have until this time tomorrow to see everything I’m ever going to see in my entire life.”
Derek takes Stiles’ hands in his.
“Come with me,” he says, and leads his mate outside.
--
They drive for two hours in the Camaro, just the two of them, until Derek pulls the car over and helps Stiles out.
“Where are we?” Stiles asks.
“The beach. The ocean. I thought…” Derek looks conflicted. “I used to come here with my family. Laura and I would stay up all night, and watch the sun come up from over those mountains. We’d spend the day in the sand, and then we’d watch the sun set over the ocean. It’s… always a beautiful sight.”
Stiles smiles a little sadly.
“Thank you,” he says. “I went to the beach once before, but it wasn’t… it wasn’t a lot of fun. Hard to get your bearings in the sand. Can’t really play in the water, either.”
They remove their socks and shoes and then, hand in hand, the two walk out onto the deserted beach.
Stiles stares wide-eyed at the ocean.
“It’s so… it’s huge. It looks like it goes on forever.”
Derek smirks. “Look up.”
It’s a clear night, and the moon is half-full, and the stars are glittering, twinkling bright and endless in the inky sky. It takes Stiles’ breath away.
“Stars,” he whispers. “I’m looking at the stars.”
And then he begins to cry. Not loud, heaving sobs, just quiet, mournful tears, rolling down his flushed cheeks. Derek embraces his mate, holds the boy close. His eyes are red, and a little watery, but he’s trying not to cry too, because he doesn’t want Stiles to see.
“The world is so big,” Stiles cries, tears staining Derek’s shirt. “It’s so big and there’s so much and I want to see all of it, I want to see everything. I want to. I was okay before, but this is… this is…”
“Unfair,” Derek says simply.
“I was okay, I didn’t know what I was missing, I didn’t… I didn’t know it would be like this!” He is shaking now, crying harder, and Derek can’t help it anymore, can’t hold his tears back because this is so cruel, and he can’t do anything to fix it.
“And now I have a day to see everything I’m ever going to see in my whole life.”
Derek doesn’t know what to say to that, so he stands barefoot on the beach holding the boy he’s going to be with forever, and they cry together.
--
Derek gets a towel from his car and they sit on the beach as the tide comes in, foam just reaching their feet. They sit quietly for hours, Stiles looking up at the stars and out at the ocean and over at Derek’s face.
The sun comes up over the mountains and Stiles gasps as the colors bleed into the sky, pinks and oranges and reds and blues, and Derek can’t help but feel butterflies at that; it may be the only sunrise Stiles ever sees, but it’s a beautiful one, and Stiles looks beautiful in the early morning light, big brown eyes catching every color greedily.
“They’re going to want to spend the day with you, you know,” he says.
Stiles answers, “Can we spend it here? I like it here. Let’s call them.”
They make their way back to the empty parking area and Derek gets his phone out of the car. Stiles stares at his reflection in the glass.
He takes into account his buzzed hair, the upturned curve of his nose, the plush bow of his mouth, the freckles and moles that mark up his pale skin, the flush of his cheeks, his tall, narrow, lanky frame, and he doesn’t really know what to think. This is his body, this is what he looks like, but he’s never seen it before. He’s never seen anyone before.
Derek walks back over, slipping his phone into his pocket.
“They’ll be here in a few hours. They’re bringing food. Your dad’s driving; I think we’re going to have a barbecue on the beach.”
“That sounds nice.”
Stiles looks out at the beach. At the colors. He’s always sort of understood colors, but now he really gets them.
“What color are your eyes?” Stiles asks.
“They’re green. Well, some people might say hazel. But they’re green,” Derek replies.
Stiles decides that out of all the colors, hazel-green must be his favorite.
--
They spend the day at the beach; Stiles is fascinated by how different each of his friends look; he likes Erica’s yellow-blonde hair and Lydia’s lovely red curls, Allison’s sweet smile and Isaac’s grin. He likes how tall and powerful Boyd is, and, to his own surprise, he doesn’t mind Jackson’s appearance either.
But of course, he likes Derek the best.
They all spend the day playing on the beach. Well, Derek, Peter, and his dad don’t play. They watch, although Derek does come to splash around in the water at Stiles’ insistence. The guys strip down to swim trunks and the girls run around in their brightly colored bathing suits and overall Stiles decides that the human (or, technically, werewolf) body is a marvelous thing in any form.
Wanting to see them wolfed out, he looks at Scott’s fangs and glowing eyes and claws and decides that the werewolf thing is exactly as awesome as he thought it would be.
Scott makes sure that Stiles sees every color he can find on the beach—“so that you’ll know what I mean when I say something’s blue or orange or whatever”—and the sheriff shows his son how to grill burgers.
It’s the best day Stiles has ever had, and it’s also one of the worst.
They eat dinner together, leaning up together in a puppy pile on the beach, and Stiles watches the sun set over the sea.
“Last time I’ll ever see the sun set,” he says very quietly. Naturally, all the werewolves can still hear him and wisely, they say nothing. “Thank you for today. For every day.”
Wordlessly, they all cuddle up and watch the sun set until there’s nothing left to see but stars.
--
As they pack up their stuff, John pulls his son aside.
“I want to show you something,” he says. He pulls out his wallet and extracts a slightly worn photograph of a beautiful, smiling woman. She has honey-brown eyes and freckled, mole-spotted skin and shoulder-length brown hair.
Stiles knows who it is without a doubt.
“Mom,” he says. He takes the picture in his hands and studies it as closely as he can, memorizes the lines of her face and the color of her cheeks and he thinks that if he only remembers what one person looks like after today, he’ll remember her, crystal clearly.
--
They all drive back to Beacon Hills. Stiles is absolutely exhausted, having not slept the night before, but he can still see and he’s not going to waste any of the remaining time closing his eyes. He goes home with Derek to his recently acquired apartment.
“There’s something I still haven’t seen, that I want to see more than anything else in the world,” Stiles says.
“What’s that?” Derek asks.
“I want to see you smile. You haven’t really smiled all day and I know why but you know, being sad about something, that doesn’t make it not happen. And I want to see you smile before it’s too late.”
Stiles sits on the edge of Derek’s bed and the alpha reaches for one of Stiles’ hands, presses his lips against the boy’s fingers sweetly. Stiles is brave, so brave, even though this is the best and the worst thing that’s ever happened. He wants a smile, and Derek can give him at least that.
So he thinks of Stiles, of his laughter, the delight on his face when he learns something new, his expressive nature, his brilliance, his courage, his strange humor, his adoration for the pack, his devotion to the Sheriff, his great vocabulary and his fierce, unrivaled loyalty to everyone he cares about.
It’s at this moment when Derek, who of course has known for so long that Stiles is his mate, realizes that he is really, truly in love with him.
And so Derek, with this fact suddenly unavoidable and tremendous in his mind, smiles broadly at Stiles, smiles brighter than he has in many years, and Stiles can’t help but return it with one of his own.
“Erica was right,” Stiles says. “You have such a beautiful smile.”
“So do you,” Derek answers. “And you know, today I’ve realized something, something important.”
“What’s that?”
“I love you.”
Derek watches Stiles’ face shift from an easy smile to shock and then to unparalleled delight and the boy surges up, hands cupping Derek’s jaw, and kisses him.
“I love you, too,” Stiles breathes against his mouth, and Derek pulls him closer, eases him back on the bed. “Derek, can we… I don’t… Can we just lay here, like this?”
Derek presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “We can do whatever you want. Always whatever you want.”
What Stiles wants is to watch a movie.
So they watch it, Stiles staring at the screen, Derek staring at Stiles who has seen this movie many times but has never actually seen it.
When the movie ends, Derek gets up to pull out the DVD and turn the screen off when Stiles makes a panicked sound and whispers, “what time is it!?”
"...It’s a little before midnight."
“I’m like Cinderella,” Stiles says, a little manic. “Spell wears off at midnight and I go back to being a pumpkin.”
Derek flies back to the bed, holds Stiles’ face in his palms.
“Look at me,” he says gently, and Stiles does, eyes blown wide, fighting to keep looking at his mate.
“I’m—I’m, Derek, why, it’s not fair, why did she do this to me, it’s getting darker, I don’t want it to—Derek!” Stiles heaves powerful, aching sobs as his vision dims and the panic attack hits him like a freight train.
“It’s dark, I can’t see, it’s gone, Derek, Derek, make it come back!”
“I can’t,” Derek whispers, pulling Stiles against his chest in an all-encompassing hug. Stiles grips the back of Derek’s shirt tightly and wails his misery into Derek’s skin, etching it there so Derek will never be able to be fully rid of it.
“I’m sorry,” Derek says, mouth and nose against Stiles’ buzzed-short hair. “I’m sorry, Stiles.”
He rocks the weeping boy gently, holding on through the panic and the sadness, and finally he arranged them so that they’re lying down, chest to chest, with Stiles wrapped warm in Derek’s arms. Derek is rubbing small circles on Stiles’ back, and Stiles doesn’t say anything.
Derek is, somewhere in the back of his mind, furious at the woman who had found the spellbook. But that’s off somewhere and he’ll deal with it later.
For now, he holds Stiles, who is finally asleep, and he remembers the wonder on Stiles’ face when he first saw the stars.
--
Stiles always dreams in color now.
And perhaps, in the future, there could have been a laser-eye surgery that could have given Stiles his vision back. Perhaps there could have been a spell, cast by a competent witch that could have given him that. But perhaps there never would have been medicine or magic. Perhaps there could never have been color.
He holds onto this thought and decides that, if that were the case, he’s grateful for the night sky and the sunrise and the picture of his mother and for Derek’s hazel-green eyes.