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If pressed later, Stiles would be the first to admit that he'd maybe-sort-of-definitely crossed some boundaries when he'd gone prowling through his dad's stuff looking for Derek's file. He'd had a good reason, he tells himself, because Scott had information that he'd gotten second-hand from Allison's dad and backed up by Deaton, and he'd needed to tell Derek right away. But Scott had been stuck with parental obligations, his mother insisting that they sit down and talk, really talk, about everything. So Stiles had manned up and taken one for the team and gone off to find Derek.
And if Stiles was maybe spending a lot of time thinking about headstones and flowers and all the questions he’d like to ask a certain broody bundle of anger and annoyance wrapped in mystery and leather...well. That wasn’t something Stiles felt like talking to Scott about.
Only Derek wasn't at his house, not that Stiles had checked too thoroughly; there was some weird new graffiti on Derek's door, like a spiky, geometric version of his tattoo, that made Stiles antsy just looking at it. So he'd bailed pretty quickly, (but not before copying the symbol down on the back of an old gas receipt in his pocket so he could look it up later). His next stop was the train depot, but it was empty, if Stiles’ unanswered, echoing voice was any indication. Unsurprising, really, given that the depot is where Gerard’s hunters had cornered Derek after the fight at the warehouse. And Stiles hadn't seen Derek’s car anywhere in town, so that meant he had to be holed up somewhere no one else knew about.
And that was where the sheriff's files came in handy.
Not for the first time, Stiles finds himself thankful for his dad's obsessive habit of copying everything and storing duplicates in his office at home, all tucked into a filing cabinet in the corner. The lock's a piece of crap, and Stiles learned to pick it one afternoon on a whim when he was fourteen; his dad still doesn't know.
Derek's file is pretty sparse, just a copy of his original arrest report and a note saying that he'd barely spoken a handful of words, answering nothing more than basic questions as succinctly as possible. There's a copy of the second warrant for his arrest underneath that one from the time Scott had accused him of murder at the school; there's a big note attached to the top of it that just says, "DROPPED" in the sheriff's blocky handwriting.
The real paydirt is the yellow sticky note stuck to the very back of the file, behind the rest of the papers, containing nothing but a phone number and an address written in vaguely familiar all-caps handwriting. It's neither the Hale house nor the train depot. Stiles grins and grabs his keys.
---
It's an apartment, it turns out, a ground-floor unit on the end of a building that looks sort of like it used to be an old motel before someone decided to let people live there permanently. Derek's Camero is parked out front, looking odd next to the beat up old pickup truck in the next space. The whole place is vaguely run down, paint dingy and dirty, and the windows all look like they could use a good wash.
Stiles stares for a moment, trying to imagine Derek living somewhere so...normal. He can't quite manage it.
It's a step up from tetanus, at least, Stiles thinks, rolling his eyes and getting out of his Jeep. He pauses for a moment right in front of the door, taking a deep breath before raising his hand and knocking twice, quickly. There's silence for a moment and Stiles finds himself holding his breath slightly, wondering if he should knock again. Then the door swings open a crack, startling him into taking a step back.
Derek stands there, glaring vaguely. Stiles can only see half of him, the other half hidden behind the door he hasn't quite opened all the way. He’s shirtless and his hair is oddly flat, like maybe he’d been sleeping and Stiles had woken him up. He stares blearily for a moment, then rolls his eyes.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Stiles grins, flashy and too-wide, just for the disgruntled look on Derek’s face. “Surprise!”
Derek’s eyebrows twitch, looking angry; the rest of his face isn’t much friendlier. “How did you find this place.”
It’s not even a question. If Stiles thinks about it, he’s not sure he’s ever actually heard Derek use a question mark.
Stiles rolls his eyes. “Sheriff’s kid, duh.”
Derek grimaces, but apparently takes that as answer enough. “What the hell are you doing here, Stiles.”
“Well, you know,” Stiles says, casually, “it’s been awhile since I saw you, so I figured I’d come see how you were doing, see if you’d gotten yourself into any other life-threatening situations lately—”
Derek glares at him, eyebrows looking even angrier as he grits out, “Stiles.”
Stiles swallows. “Right, okay. I’m here ‘cause Scott found out something about the other pack. The Alphas? And we figured you should know. Because we’re such team players and everything, even though you didn’t really want to tell us about them in the first place.”
Stiles bites his lip and stands there, trying not to fidget while Derek rolls his eyes and heaves a sigh. “Alright, fine,” Derek says after a moment, stepping back slightly and opening the door further. “Tell me what you know.”
Derk turns away, leaving the door open for Stiles to follow him in. Stiles closes the door behind him, pausing just in front of it to look around. The room is largely bare, plain white walls and a single window without curtains, just cheap plastic blinds that must have been there already. There’s a rather beaten-up couch against one wall, Derek’s leather jacket thrown over the back, and a cheap coffee table in front of it. A low half-wall on the other side of the room divides the living room from the tiny galley kitchen, it’s counters also empty.
Derek’s halfway down the narrow hall leading back towards where his bedroom must be. “Make yourself at home,” he calls sarcastically over his shoulder.
“I love what you’ve done with the place,” Stiles snarks back, dropping down onto the couch. The cushions sink somewhat alarmingly under his weight, springs groaning. Stiles eyes it suspiciously, wondering how much worse it is for Derek, who’s clearly got more than just a few pounds of solid muscle on Stiles.
Derek comes back down the hall a few moments later, tugging a worn grey henley down over his chest. He pushes the sleeves up as he comes to lean against the wall opposite Stiles, reaching up to run a hand through his still-messy hair.
“Okay,” he says, nodding imperiously. “Talk.”
Stiles leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he starts, “but we’ve been operating under the assumption that the alpha pack came here because of Peter and all the murders and everything, right?”
Derek nods. “It seems likely. It drew a lot of attention, got a lot of people interested in us.”
“Right,” Stiles waves a hand. “Like the hunters. Not to mention all the police scrutiny and the media and everyone talking about it. So we figured they were here for damage control or something.”
Derek crosses his arms, staring blank-faced at Stiles. “You think otherwise.”
“Chris Argent thinks otherwise,” Stiles corrects, “and Deaton agrees with him. Apparently they’ve both gotten wind of rumours that there’s a group who’s been roughing up hunters and other people connected with werewolves, like Deaton, looking for information.”
Derek frowns. “Information on what?”
Stiles lifts one eyebrow, smiling grimly. “What do you think?”
Derek’s eyebrows creep up towards his hairline, expression going somewhere between incredulous and irritated. “The kanima.”
Stiles makes a finger-gun with one hand, pretending to shoot at Derek. “Got it in one.”
Derek huffs, expression losing it’s incredulity. “What do they know? Do they know who it was?”
Stiles shakes his head. “No idea. All we know is they were asking about it, so bet’s good that they know it was here, even if they don’t know it was Jackson.”
“But do they know Jackson isn’t the kanima anymore?”
Stiles shrugs, raising his hands in an I don’t know gesture. “Probably not? I mean, the only people who were there that night is us,” he waves a vague hand to indicate more than just him and Derek, “and Chris Argent, and somehow I doubt any of us is going to be blabbing about it to anyone who asks. So it’s likely that they still think it’s out there.”
Derek closes his eyes, raising one hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose like he’s trying to ward of a headache. “Great. So they’re coming here to...what? Kill the kanima?”
Stiles shifts uncomfortably, mouth twisting. “Not exactly...”
Derek drops his hand and looks up, hard gaze pinning Stiles. “What.”
Stiles takes a deep breath and lets it out in a hard sigh. “Mr. Argent says he’s gotten word from some other hunter groups. They’ve heard about Kate and Gerard and Allison’s mom, and they want to know where Mr. Argent stands, whether he’s planning on trying to get revenge for everything.”
Derek grits his teeth, looking away. He’s got one arm stretched across his chest; the other hangs rigidly at his side, hand clenched in a tight fist. “Revenge,” he mutters bitterly. “Because it’s always about revenge.”
“When isn’t it about revenge in this town,” Stiles retorts bitterly. He sighs again, quietly, dropping his gaze to the coffee table, staring at the peeling vinyl veneer.
“It’s escalating, man. Gerard was a big name, the Argents in general are a big name. And now three of them are dead, or supposed dead, and with Allison pulling away from everything, the one who’s left is looking more and more like he’s leaving the business. There’s no one left to keep a hand on the reins. And we know hunters aren’t exactly a balanced group. Plenty of them probably don’t give a flying fuck about the code. They just want to kill monsters, and fuck it if those monsters might actually be people, instead.”
Derek’s silent, but Stiles can feel his gaze on him, heavy and hot. He focuses on his fingers instead until he can’t stand it anymore and he looks up. Derek’s watching him with a strange sort of expression, eyebrows drawn down like he’s angry, but there’s something in the way he’s looking at Stiles that makes him think that he isn’t actually mad. It reminds Stiles weirdly of the way Derek had looked at him that night after Scott pulled them out of the pool.
“Sounds about right,” Derek says finally, and there’s something weird about his voice, sort of hesitant like he’s not sure how to respond. He’s looking at Stiles more like he’s a puzzle, like Derek’s trying to figure him out. But Stiles can’t pick it apart right now, so he files it away in his head under Mysteries To Be Solved Later and goes back to the topic at hand.
“They’re looking to start a war,” Stiles says, clearing his throat. “Gerard started it, and now the hunters want to finish it.”
“And the alphas want to fight back,” Derek shakes his head. “The hunters want war, so the alpha pack intends to give it to them.”
“Exactly,” Stiles nods. “And if there’s a creature out there, something that can be controlled and can do massive amounts of damage to humans and werewolves both?”
“Everyone’s going to be looking for the kanima,” Derek breathes out hard, head falling back and thunking against the wall as he closes his eyes.
“And the alphas want to make sure they get it before the hunters do,” Stiles finishes grimly.
Derek makes an irritated noise, bringing his hand back up to rub through his hair. He’s quiet, but Stiles can practically hear his brain working, going through everything Stiles has just told him.
Watching him, Stiles can’t help but notice the dark bags under Derek’s eyes, the way he seems somehow paler than usual, like he hasn’t been sleeping. It’s weird to think of Derek as someone who needs to sleep. In his more charitable moments, Stiles has sort of gotten used to seeing Derek as something more like a force of nature: powerful and unchanging and immovable.
Most days Stiles thinks of Derek like the ache in his back from spending so long sitting at his computer, or the vague throbbing headache and the buzz inside his head when his adderall starts to wear off, something unpleasant and irritating but also something he’s used to, has learned to ignore or deal with even though it’s a pain.
But even then, he’d still thought of Derek as something constant, more machine than man, subsisting on doom and gloom and brooding anger alone. It’s almost jarring in a way to see the evidence on his face, the proof that Derek is flesh and blood and bone the same as Stiles.
“Okay,” Derek says finally. “So everyone knows about the kanima, but they don’t know that we managed to get Jackson back. So as far as anyone knows, the kanima is still out there somewhere. We can use that. We can lead them on, make them think they’re on the right trail, buy ourselves some time to come up with something else. The question is, how much time can we buy?”
“It’s a good idea,” Stiles admits. “It’ll help that there’s no new evidence of the kanima anywhere. But there’s one problem.”
“What’s that?”
Stiles takes a deep breath and looks up, locking eyes with Derek. “You told me that kanima has rules that have to be followed. Matt didn’t, and he started turning into the kanima himself.”
Derek nods, looking confused, and Stiles continues. “So the real question is: what are the odds that Gerard followed all the rules?”
Stiles sees the exact moment when Derek gets it, the confusion on his face disappearing, quickly replaced with horror. His eyes go wide, shoulders slumping as he leans heavily against the wall. “Fuck,” he says quietly, and then again, more vehemently, “Fuck.”
“We still haven’t found him,” Stiles points out quietly. “And Deaton and Mr Argent have both been looking. Scott’s been looking. But it’s like he vanished in a puddle of black goo.”
“If the bite took,” Derek says hoarsely, sounding horrified, “if it took just enough for the healing factor to kick in, combined with whatever he might have gotten from becoming the kanima...”
“He could have survived,” Stiles finishes for him, mouth twisted into a grim line.
“We have to find him,” Derek grinds out, pushing away from the wall. His hands are balled into tight fists again, jaw clenched as he crosses the room to lean over Stiles, reaching for his jacket. He steps back and shrugs it on, directing a raised-eyebrow look towards Stiles, who’s still sitting on the couch.
“You coming?”
Stiles starts, standing up to follow Derek towards the door. “Yeah, of course. Where are we going, again?”
Derek ushers him through the door, closing and locking it behind them. “My house,” he says. “Call Scott, tell him to meet us there. It’s private enough, and if anyone’s watching it and overhears, they’ll assume we’re trying to find the kanima just like they are.”
“Right,” Stiles mutters to himself as Derek walks away, headed towards the Camero. “Let’s go back to the burned-down murder house with the creepy graffiti on the door for a little chat about how to catch a deadly monster who used to be a deadly monster killer. Because there’s nothing in this plan that could possibly go wrong.”
“It would be worse,” Derek calls back, turning around, and oh yeah, right, werewolf hearing.
“How’s that?” Stiles calls back, hurrying to catch up.
“At least we have a plan this time,” Derek says, eyebrows raised, grinning slightly. Derek swings the door open and ducks into the Camero, leaving Stiles standing next to it, gaping.
“You’re liking this!” he accuses, staring through the window at Derek with his arms crossed. “You’re having fun with this!”
Derek rolls down the window and looks at Stiles, shrugging. “It’s not like I’ve got much to lose,” he says, strangely honest, and Stiles drops his arms, staring, not entirely sure what to say. Derek notices and grins again, just a tiny flash of white teeth.
“Cheer up, Stiles,” he says, reaching across and opening the other door for him. “It can’t honestly get much worse than this.”
Stiles groans, looking skyward for a moment before sliding into the passenger seat and slamming the door closed. He glares at Derek as he reverses out of the spot, engine growling as he pulls out of the parking lot.
“I think I liked you better when you didn’t have a sense of humour.”
Derek just raises an eyebrow at him, mouth a blank, straight line across his face. But there’s amusement in the tiny lines around his eyes.
“Just so you know,” Stiles tells him seriously as they turn onto the road. “When things inevitably go horribly, horribly wrong? I am so looking forward to saying, I told you so.”
---
Scott, miracle of miracles, actually answers his phone when Stiles calls the first time. He can hear Isaac in the background, asking what the plan is. Stiles tries not to feel too jealous; after all, Isaac’s actually a cool guy now that he’s dropped that leather-and-badass act that he’d stolen from Derek and actually found some confidence of his own. Stiles relays Derek’s request (order, really) to meet them at the house to discuss further plans, ignoring Scott’s protests about playing through just one more level of Portal, please Stiles, I’m so close to being done! Stiles hangs up on him, rolling his eyes.
The drive is quiet, the car filled only with the faint strains of rather bluesy guitar music coming from Derek’s radio. Derek himself is silent as ever, eyes on the road and ignoring Stiles as he drives. Outside, the houses go by, tight neighbourhoods giving way to spread-out suburbs and then to open woods as they near the preserve.
Stiles is quiet, too, his usual nervous inclination toward talking left somewhere behind him. He’s been quieter since the night in the station, he thinks. Something inside him that night broke, or got filled in, making him feel strangely older in his skin. His dad’s mentioned it once or twice, more frequently since the night he patched up Derek. He’s clearly worried but unwilling to push, not so soon after clearing the air between them.
Scott hasn’t said anything, but he eyes Stiles strangely sometimes on the occasions when they’re together, less frequent of late, like he’s noticed something’s off but can’t quite tell what it is.
Derek doesn’t appear to have noticed at all, and Stiles finds himself strangely grateful for it.
Scott and Isaac are waiting for them when Derek pulls up in front of the house, sitting on the front steps. Stiles looks around for Scott’s car, but it’s not there. They must have run, he thinks; he’s proud of himself that he doesn’t sound bitter or jealous, even inside his own head.
“You told him everything?” Scott asks as Stiles gets out of the car.
Stiles rolls his eyes. “No, Scott, I left out all the important bits.”
“Just checking,” Scott returns, grinning slightly. “I know you don’t exactly like the dude.”
Stiles stares for a moment. Because, well. It’s true: he doesn’t like Derek. The guy’s brooding and angry and doesn’t like telling the whole truth about things. But back at his apartment, and at Stiles’ house talking to his dad, and even in the station, lying on the floor while Matt threatened Scott, Derek had talked, had told Stiles the truth and given him the details without needing to have them pried out of him with a crowbar.
And Stiles is pretty sure Derek still doesn’t like him, doesn’t trust him even after Stiles saved his life again, but there’s still something about their interactions that makes Stiles think that maybe, if they’d met under other circumstances, they might have gotten along.
He doesn’t let any of that show on his face, though, just shrugs at Scott and says, “Whatever, he needed to know.”
“Let’s just get inside where we can talk,” Derek interrupts, stalking past Stiles towards the house. He steps around Scott and Isaac and opens the door, looking back and nodding his head to usher them in.
Stiles hovers on the doorstep, staring into the dark interior of the house. He bites his lip and looks around, but doesn’t step inside. He’s been here plenty of times, of course, with Scott, even before all there werewolf crap happened. But he’s never been inside.
Scott had dared him to, once, when they were twelve and Stiles still had days where he couldn’t breathe through the grief and Scott had suggested they hang out in the woods after school.
It’ll be fun! Scott had said, Like a real live haunted house!
But Stiles had stared up at the grey, crumbling windows and could only think about the funeral, seven new headstones in the cemetery and two plane tickets to New York.
He’d babbled something about rotting floorboards and asbestos and, Seriously, Scott, there’s like, mold and stuff in there, we could die of blacklung! and Scott had agreed to stay outside, turning and wandering away back towards the creek down the hill. They hadn’t gone back to the house again after that.
“My house isn’t haunted, you know.”
Stiles jerks his head up, snapping back to reality and away from his melancholy inspection of the warped, charred floorboards to find Derek staring at him with a raised eyebrow, expression almost amused.
“What?”
Derek huffs. “You look like you’re waiting for a ghost to pop out at you.”
Stiles flinches slightly, holding his hands out in protest. “No, it’s not—I mean—it’s just. It’s easier to be here at night.”
Derek’s face scrunches, eyebrows frowning. “Why?”
Stiles shrugs, feeling uncomfortable. “It’s harder to see in the dark. If I squint I can pretend that the back half is just in shadow, and I can try to forget that I know what it looked like right after it burned.”
Derek freezes, turning slowly to stare at Stiles, eyebrows drawn down into a frown. “You—what? You saw?”
“Yeah, I uh.” Stiles clears his throat and looks down at his hands so he won’t have to look up at Derek. “I was with my dad when he got called in.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” Stiles looks up at Scott, who’s staring at him with a faintly wounded expression.
“Like what, Scott?” Stiles says, sighing. “What would I have said? ‘Hey, Scott, guess what I did yesterday, I got to go see the burned-out wreck of the Hale house! It was awesome, now I know what it smells like when someone’s been burned to death! Oh, and then I spent two hours talking to this 16-year-old orphan, trying to talk him out of his catatonic shock, that was really fun.’”
“What? You talked—?”
Derek’s eyes have gone wide again, and Stiles cringes slightly, closing his eyes for a moment. He hadn’t meant to mention that. Scott and Isaac are staring at him as well, but Stiles ignores them in favour of looking up at Derek through his eyelashes, trying to subtly study the expression on Derek’s face. He looks stunned, and the wide eyes make him look younger somehow, more like the kid Stiles remembers. It makes something twist weirdly in his stomach to think about it.
“Guess that answers the question about whether or not you remember,” Stiles says quietly, staring down at his feet. There’s a silence, and Stiles can practically feel Derek’s eyes burning holes in him, silently demanding an explanation. Stiles sighs and looks up. He can’t quite make himself meet Derek’s eyes, so he focuses on the blackened boards just over Derek’s shoulder.
“Look, dude, I was ten and antsy and you were sitting there totally out of it and it was freaking everyone out.” Derek frowns slightly, opening his mouth, but he doesn’t say anything. Stiles continues. “And I figured, what the hell, might as well try to talk to you. So I spent two hours sitting with you in the back of an ambulance and talking about all sorts of shit and trying not think about how I was probably inhaling bits of your family in the smoke and ash in the air.”
“I don’t remember...” There’s a distant look in Derek’s eyes, like he’s not focused on Stiles anymore; like he’s trying to remember. Stiles wonders if Derek’s ever thought about it before, if there’s a weird gap in his memories from that day; he wonders if Derek ever noticed at all.
“You wouldn’t,” Stiles says, shrugging.
Derek shakes his head and looks up, meeting Stiles’ eyes. He opens his mouth to say something but another voice cuts across him.
“Not that this isn’t touching,” Peter says, and Stiles jumps, whirling around to stare at where the other man is standing at the top of the stairs. He’s gratified when Scott jumps too, and Isaac flinches; clearly they hadn’t heard him.
“But I think we have more pressing issues to deal with,” Peter finishes, sauntering down the stairs like he can’t hear the way Stiles’ heart feels like it’s about to beat it’s way out of his chest entirely.
“You know, every time I see you,” Stiles mutters in annoyance, “I find myself hoping, vainly, that you were just a crazy stress-induced hallucination.” Peter smiles and takes a step closer and Stiles shies back a step, curling his fingers into a fist to stop himself from reaching over to rub at his right wrist. He forces himself to look Peter in the face, keeping his eyes on him even as he steps back, away from the werewolf.
“What’s the matter, Stiles?” Peter says softly, a slight smile on his face. “Not happy to see me?”
Stiles swallows, ignoring the way his mouth has gone dry. “Nope. Sorry, can’t say I am.”
Peter frowns, nearly a pout, and sighs. “I will admit,” he says, “we did leave things on a rather, ah, heated note before.”
Stiles grits his teeth and forces himself not to look away, not to close his eyes against the memory of hurling Lydia’s firebomb at Peter’s monstrous alpha form, the stench of burning hair and flesh already too familiar in his mind. Peter smiles like he already knows what Stiles is thinking about.
“But that’s no reason to be cold now. After all,” Peter adds, “we’re all on the same side.”
Derek makes a sound low in his throat and steps forward, effectively blocking Stiles from Peter’s view as he passes. “We need to figure out our next move,” he says gruffly, leading the way into the next room.
Stiles is careful to follow quickly, more than happy to move away from Peter. He hears Scott behind him, he and Isaac keeping close to Stiles’ back. He tries not to feel too warmed by the protective gesture, although he suspects if he felt up to smiling, he’d have a pretty goofy one on his face.
“What do we know about the alphas?” Scott asks as they all group around a long table already piled high with stacks of old books with faded covers and crumbling spines and, oddly, a fairly new silver MacBook at one end of the table. Stiles eyes it curiously.
“Not much,” Peter answers, breezing into the room like he can’t feel the way four sets of eyes follow him, refusing to look elsewhere. “Alpha packs are incredibly rare,” Peter goes on, sinking gracefully into the rickety chair pulled up in front of the computer. He gestures to it with one hand while he boots it up. “I was working on digitizing our family’s archives and records before the fire,” he explains. “I managed to get most of them, including, thankfully, the little information we had on alpha packs.
“The problem with an alpha pack,” Peter continues, sounding more like a lecturing professor, “is that the structure is incredibly shaky. Alphas are leaders, it’s instinctive. They don’t like other people telling them what to do. So in order to form an alliance like that and actually uphold it? That would take an extremely powerful alpha to take charge and be able to keep the others together.”
“So there’s definitely a leader?” Scott asks. “It’s not just a bunch of them working together?”
“They are all working together,” Peter explains. “But there would be a leader, yes. He would have been chosen, or possibly he would have gathered the others to him. Whatever the case, it would have been more democratic than an alpha’s role in a typical pack.”
“Because the rest aren’t betas?” Isaac guesses, smiling slightly when Peter nods. “The head alpha didn’t bite them,” Isaac goes on, sounding like he’s thinking out loud. “And they’re not all from the same pack, so he doesn’t have any other control over them.”
“They’re there because they want to be,” Stiles concludes. “They chose to follow him.”
“Exactly,” Peter says with a smile. Stiles tries to hide the shudder that goes down his spine.
“So this leader,” Stiles goes on, ignoring Peter’s eyes on him, appraising. “Maybe he was the first one to hear about what’s been going on here. And then he told the other alphas, got them to agree to follow him so they could go up against the hunters in a stronger pack, rather than individually with their own packs.”
“Makes sense,” Derek says. “If an alpha makes a pack stronger, a whole pack of alphas would have to be stronger together.”
“And it’s happened before, apparently,” Peter cuts in, pointing to something on his computer screen as Derek comes closer, bending down slightly to look over Peter’s shoulder. “Granted,” Peter goes on, “it was a couple centuries ago, but it’s a similar situation.”
“‘Several hunter families banded together,’” Derek says, clearly reading from Peter’s files. “‘They were determined to wipe out what they referred to as “the werewolf menace” that they saw as infecting the Pacific Northwest.’ Apparently the alphas killed most of them and the rest ran off promising they’d never hunt werewolves again.” He glares at the screen, expression frustrated.
“So if these alphas work the same way,” Stiles says frowning, “we could be waking up to a bloodbath any day now. Fantastic. Can we skip that part, please?”
“Seriously,” Scott agrees, looking worried.
“There have been a few other alpha packs since then,” Peter tells them, scanning down the file somewhat distractedly. “Looks like there were a few who used the mobs in the 20s as cover. Most of those didn’t end well, with the command structure falling apart until each of the alphas was clawing at the others’ throats, trying to be the big dog on campus.”
“This pack isn’t like that, though,” Derek says, straightening and crossing his arms across his chest. “If they’ve been asking questions of other people, it means they’re organised. They’ve been quiet, too, careful not to draw attention. Which means they’ve been able to work together, to plan out their next moves. Whoever’s leading them, he’s been able to delegate and expect that his orders will be followed.”
“Great,” Stiles says, huffing out a breath. “So not only are they a super-powered pack of super-wolves, but they’re a well-organised, well-disciplined super-pack. Wonderful. Any more bad news?”
Derek shrugs, but he looks just as put out by the news as Stiles. “If it helps, the hunters will definitely want them dead more than they want us dead,” he says. There’s a strange note of almost-apology in his voice. “It’s not much, but it might be enough to buy us some time and space to plan.”
“And what about Boyd and Erica?” Isaac asks, quietly. His eyes are downcast, fixed on the floor, so he misses the tight, pained look that flickers across Derek’s face. Stiles catches it, though, and so does Scott, if the confused, worried look he shoots Stiles is any indication.
“I don’t know what happened to them,” Derek says, face going blank to match his voice. “Argent swears he set them free, and that none of his people have them, and for once I believe him. So either they got away and they’re hiding somewhere, or...”
“Or the alphas have them,” Isaac finishes softly, grimacing. “And we don’t have the strength to go after them, not if we want to make it out in one piece.”
Derek nods, jaw tight. “Right.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Scott asks. “Right now, I mean. We need more information, obviously, but is there anything else we could try?”
Derek shakes his head, sighing heavily. “Not about the alphas. They’re too powerful, and we don’t even know where they are. What we need to do is figure out what happened to Gerard,” he says, looking at Scott and Isaac. “I know you’ve been looking already, but we need to find him. He’s most likely dead, but we can’t afford to have another complication running around and making everything harder.”
Scott nods, thinking. “We’ll start back at the warehouse,” he tells Derek. “See if we can pick up his trail again. There has to be something.”
“Then get going,” Derek says, nodding to Scott. “There’s still time to take a look around before it gets too dark, and there’s nothing more we can do here today.”
“We will,” Scott says earnestly, and Isaac nods next to him. “We’ll let you know if we find anything.”
Derek nods, looking faintly relieved, and Stiles wonders if Derek had been worried that Scott wouldn’t help him.
Stiles doesn’t know what happened between them at the warehouse that night before he got there, but whatever it was, it broke the strange, dysfunctional partnership they’d had after the rave. There are clearly two packs in town: Scott’s and Derek’s. With Allison pulling away from everything related to the group, Scott’s pack had shrunk to basically just him and Stiles. But even though Derek’s pack had initially been the bigger of the two, now Derek had lost two of his betas, and Jackson refused to have anything to do with any of them. And while Isaac might not have left Derek, he had clearly taken to spending most of his free time with Scott, leaving Derek alone with Peter.
Stiles isn’t sure what to make of it that the thought of Derek left in the ruins of his house with his evil, undead uncle makes something twist painfully in his chest any time he thinks about it.
They leave Peter to his laptop and the four of them shuffle out of the room and back towards the door, Scott and Isaac ahead, heads bent together and talking about how best to continues the search for Gerard. Stiles follows behind them, Derek looming over his shoulder as they stand on the porch. Scott and Isaac are already halfway across the yard. Scott turns briefly, walking backwards so he can wave goodbye before turning back around, he and Isaac both breaking into a quick run the moment the hit the trees.
Stiles stands on the front steps staring after him for a moment until Derek nudges him with his shoulder, making him turn.
“Come on,” he says, nodding his head towards the Camero. “Gotta get you back to your Jeep.”
---
Stiles presses his forehead to the window, watching the trees blur past outside and letting the cool glass ease the headache that’d started forming when they were in the house. Beside him, Derek sits without speaking again, ignoring Stiles just as much as he had on the drive over.
“You didn’t mention the kanima,” Stiles says finally, breaking the silence. “To Peter, I mean.”
Derek looks over at him for a moment, eyebrow raised, before turning his attention back to the road. “Neither did you,” he points out.
Stiles frowns. “I guess I thought you would,” he says. He sits quietly for a moment, then asks, “But why didn’t you?”
Derek shrugs, looking vaguely uncomfortable, like he’s not entirely sure how to answer. “Peter is...useful,” he says after a moment. “He knows a lot, more than I do, and he’s got all those files. We need him.”
“But you don’t trust him.” It’s not a question. Derek doesn’t trust anyone, as far as Stiles knows, but he thinks if he were to rank people by who Derek trusts least, Peter would be right at the top of the list.
“He’s probably figured it out already,” Derek concedes, and Stiles can’t help but agree. Peter isn’t stupid; he would have considered all the angles, all the possibilities, the moment he realised Gerard had gotten away. “Doesn’t mean we have to tell him what we think,” Derek continues. “Unless we say something, he might think that we’re working under the assumption that Gerard is either dead or dying. He might not realise that we suspect more than that.”
“Smart move,” Stiles says quietly. He hears Derek snort quietly beside him, almost like a laugh.
“I do have good ideas sometimes,” he says, and Stiles can hear the faint note of amusement in his voice.
“Really,” Stiles says sarcastically, but he’s grinning. “You’ll have to let me know when it’s one of those times.”
Derek looks over at him with a raised eyebrow and a thoroughly unimpressed expression. Stiles can’t help it; he laughs, shaking his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Derek’s answering grin, white teeth flashing more a moment before he turns his gaze back to the road again.
The drive the rest of the way in silence, strangely companionable. Stiles smiles quietly the whole time.
---
It’s not until the next day that Stiles realises that, between talking to Derek about he kanima and then talking to Scott and Isaac and Peter, he’d never gotten the chance to ask Derek about the flowers left on his mother’s grave.
Stiles sits on his bed, staring at his phone in his hands and wondering whether he should call Derek, or text him. Showing up at his apartment out of the blue again seems pretty rude, even if Derek hadn’t honestly seemed all that angry the last time. But then, Stiles had come with information before. The idea of surprising Derek with a visit to talk about Stiles’ dead mother doesn’t seem like such a great idea in comparison.
Stiles sighs, opening a new message on his phone, typing slowly for a moment before frowning, quickly deleting everything. He tries again.
derek i want to talk to you about something, can i come over?
need to talk to you, are you at your apt?
i want to talk to you about the flowers on my mom’s grave
why did you leave her flowers?
Stiles groans in frustration, deleting everything and throwing his phone down next to him. There’s no good way of asking if he can come talk to Derek, not without sounding awkward and weird and possibly freaking the guy out. Because Stiles has never asked before, never bothered with the little niceties whenever he talks to Derek, largely because they’re usually in mortal peril when he calls the guy, but also because, well. It’s Derek. And Derek and politeness don’t really go in the same sentence in Stiles’ head.
Stiles flops back on his bed, glaring at his ceiling, and blows out a frustrated breath. “Okay, fuck this.”
Levering himself upright, he grabs for his hoodie and his keys, tucking his phone into his pocket. Derek’s apartment is a twenty minute drive on the other side of town. Plenty of time to figure out what to say.
---
Stiles is jittery and trying to hide it by the time he knocks on Derek’s door. He shifts slightly on his feet, waiting for Derek to open the door. When he does, a moment later, it’s with an arched eyebrow and a twist to his mouth that’s somewhere between exasperated and outright annoyed.
“Twice in two days, Stiles. You’ve got new information that quickly?”
Stiles shifts a bit more, fingers fidgeting with the strings on his hoodie. “No, actually, I uh. It’s not about the kanima or anything.”
“Please tell me you’re not developing a habit of showing up to bother me when you’re bored.” Derek’s expression goes faintly beleaguered, like he’s already imagining having to entertain Stiles constantly.
“No! No, I mean. I actually wanted to talk to you about something.”
Derek’s eyebrows twitch, inching towards his hairline, but he steps aside and gestures for Stiles to come in. Stiles edges past him, hovering just beyond the door. Derek steps past him and into the living room, perching on the arm of the couch with his arms crossed.
“What did you want to talk about.”
Stiles opens his mouth, but nothing comes out and he shuts it again, looking away, embarrassed blush spreading across his face. He tries again.
“I just. Um.” He falls silent again, shaking his head. He’d rehearsed this on the way over, tried to figure out what he’d say. Because, yeah, there’d been flowers, and he’s certain that it had been Derek who’d left them. But now, standing in front of him, he can’t imagine Derek ever leaving flowers for anyone. He can imagine him visiting his family’s graves, yeah, but flowers? That’s a hard stretch, and Stiles is having trouble figuring out what he’s supposed to say.
“Stiles?” Derek’s voice is quieter, and when Stiles looks up Derek’s face has gone confused, maybe a touch concerned, eyebrows drawn down in a frown.
“You left flowers for her.” It comes out in a rush, words nearly slurred and tripping over themselves, and Stiles winces. Derek just blinks at him.
“What?”
“There were flowers on her grave when we got there,” Stiles goes on, words falling fast from his lips like ripping off a bandaid, the quicker the better. “And I checked, Derek, okay? I checked. They’re the same ones that were at your parents’ grave.”
He looks up. Derek’s eyes have gone wide and he looks...not quite shocked, but maybe something a bit more than surprised.
“You left some at my mom’s grave, too,” Stiles finishes quietly.
A long moment passes in silence, and another, until Derek drops his gaze suddenly, staring at the floor between them.
“...Yeah.”
Stiles frowns, ducking his head to try to catch Derek’s eye again, but Derek doesn’t look up. “Why?”
Derek shrugs jerkily. “I don’t know. Just felt like I should.”
He falls silent again as Stiles stares at him. Derek’s studying his toes with a sort of fierce intensity that makes him wonder if Derek’s trying to set his shoes on fire with his eyes. He’s tense, shoulders rigid around his ears, arms crossed tightly across his chest. He’s hunched into himself slightly, like he’s trying to make himself smaller.
Something about his position reminds Stiles of Isaac, back at the beginning, before he learned to stand on his own. He’d done the same thing sometimes, stood back with his eyes downcast and curled into himself like he was trying to keep out of sight. It always made Stiles want to reach out and pat the guy on the shoulder, maybe, or give him a good hug; seeing it now on Derek nearly breaks his heart.
Because this is Derek, who’s maybe a little lost and a lot broken and so full of anger, but who’s never backed down, never cowered in a corner, never let anyone see that he was afraid.
And he is afraid now, Stiles realises. He’s afraid that he’s losing, that he’s already lost. There are alpha wolves nipping at his heels from one side and angry, vengeful hunters gunning for him on the other, and his psychotic, undead uncle twisting himself around him like smoke. Two of his betas are missing, one won’t talk to him, and one is maybe more Scott’s than Derek’s. He’s been outed to the sheriff, and he’s had to rely on a stupid human kid who doesn’t even like him because it’s all he has left.
He’s been leaving flowers for dead people and grasping desperately at the few connections he has left to try to get a hold on everything that’s happening, and he’s afraid like he’s never been before.
Stiles shifts slightly, leaning back against the wall and staring at the carpet in front of Derek.
“After my mom died, I used to get panic attacks. Like, bad ones, all the time. I didn’t go to school for a month because I couldn’t leave my house without freaking out.”
Derek’s head comes up a little, and Stiles can just barely see Derek looking at him, but he doesn’t look up, doesn’t meet his eyes, just lets the other man stare at him.
“I couldn’t look at pictures of her without crying, but then I’d start worrying that I’d forget the smell of her perfume or the sound of her laugh and I’d start hyperventilating all over again.”
Stiles shakes his head and swallows hard against the sudden lump in his throat. His eyes feel scratchy but he resists the urge to rub at them. It’s still hard, even now, to talk about her, maybe because he never really did anymore, after she was gone. He still remembers the way his dad would trip over her name for the first year after she died, stuttering on the syllables. He couldn’t look Stiles in the eye for the first month or two. Stiles had always looked more like her than like his dad, and it had been too painful to see her eyes looking back at him still. Stiles had avoided mirrors for months.
“I used to climb into her closet,” Stiles continues, swallowing again to try to rid his throat of it’s raspy tone. “Right at the back, and just sit there in the dark, trying to breathe. It helped, sometimes. It still smelled like her, you know? Like her perfume and her hairspray.”
Derek makes a sound, quiet and rough, and Stiles remembers, werewolf senses. Derek can probably still smell the charred wood at the house, even though it’s been years, the smell largely covered by rot and moss and plant life. He wonders if there’s anything left of Derek’s family in the air, a phantom whiff of perfume, maybe, or the lingering smell of food cooking in the kitchen. The thought makes something twist painfully in Stiles’ chest; he forces his mind away from it and keeps talking.
“But sometimes it wasn’t enough. And that’s when I’d remember sitting in the back of the ambulance with you, and I’d wish that you hadn’t left so you could be there sitting with me and talking to me until it passed. And then I’d realise that you wouldn’t remember me, so I wished for Laura instead.”
There’s a silence then, stretching out between them, not quite uncomfortable but not easy, either. Finally, Stiles raises his head to look at Derek. Derek is staring at him with a strange expression on his face, something confused and disbelieving and maybe just a tiny bit awed. It’s the same expression he’d had at the house the day before when Stiles told him he’d been at the house that day, wide-eyed and uncertain like he has no idea what to do with this information.
“I didn’t actually mean to unload all of this on you, you know,” Stiles says finally, breaking the silence. “I just meant to say thank you. For the flowers, I mean.” He laughs, a tiny, rough sound. “Guess I got sort of carried away.”
Derek coughs, clearing his throat. “It’s okay,” he says quietly. His voice is rough, like he hasn’t spoken in ages, even though its’ only been a few minutes, and Stiles wonders if Derek’s been fighting back tears the same way he has.
“I don’t—” Derek swallows. “I don’t mind.”
Stiles looks up at him, eyebrows raised. “Really. You’re cool with me busting in here out of nowhere to talk about my dead mom.”
Derek winces. “Well, when you say it like that.”
Stiles snorts out a laugh, but the tight feeling in his chest is easing, the faint note of panic in the back of his mind receding.
“I get it, you know,” Derek says after a moment, looking at Stiles with a weirdly soft expression. “Wanting to talk about her.”
Derek swallows again and looks away. Stiles doesn’t, though; he keeps his gaze on Derek, trying to catalogue the tense, straining lines of him, still perched on the edge of the couch like a bird. His arms are still crossed over his chest like armour, but the hard line of his shoulders has relaxed a little, his face a little softer now that he’s unclenched his jaw.
“Thanks for letting me,” Stiles says, honestly. It sounds too open even to his ears, but Derek’s looking at him again, that same strange expression on his face like he’s waiting for the punchline.
“You’re welcome,” he says softly.
Stiles can’t help the little grin that spreads across his face. He leans forward a bit, reaching out a hand. “Come here.”
Derek blinks at him, eyes darting between Stiles’ hand and his face, and doesn’t move.
“No, seriously,” Stiles repeats, “come here.”
Derek uncrosses his arms and stands slowly, but his eyes are wary. “Why?”
Stiles rolls his eyes and twitches his fingers in a come on sort of motion. “Because,” he says, “this has been an emotionally fraught moment, and emotionally fraught moments require hugs. So, come here.”
Derek stares at him, dumbfounded. “You—what?”
“You ducked out of it the other night,” Stiles tells him sternly. “And I let it go because you were recovering from getting shot and you’d already had to withstand interrogation from the sheriff—”
“It wasn’t an interrogation,” Derek objects quietly, sounding baffled and lost.
“—so,” Stiles continues, waving Derek’s protest aside, “I let you get away with not accepting the awesomeness that is a Stilinski hug. But you can’t get away from it this time. And to be honest, dude,” Stiles finishes, looking critically at Derek, “you sort of look like you could use one.”
Derek’s eyebrows twitch, wiggling weirdly on his face like Derek isn’t quite sure what his face is supposed to be doing. He stares, wide-eyed, for a moment longer before shuffling forward a step, slowly, like he’s waiting for Stiles to duck away at the last moment. Stiles lets him shuffle forward a few more steps until Derek is close enough that he can reach out and snag Derek’s shirt with his fingers, yanking him closer.
Stiles wraps his arms around Derek’s shoulders and pulls him in, not as close as he might if this was Scott, but still close enough to make it a real hug, not those weird, impersonal things that people sometimes do where they hold their arms out so their bodies don’t touch any more than they have to. Stiles hates those kind of hugs, the ones that are empty and don’t actually give any comfort at all. So he tugs Derek in, fitting his arms around the man’s stupidly broad shoulders, and lets himself hold on.
Derek’s hands hover awkwardly around Stiles hips for a moment, like he isn’t sure where to put them. Stiles ignores him, focused on not holding Derek too tightly, not caging him in, but still close enough that he can probably feel Stiles’ heartbeat through his shirt, against Derek’s chest. He sighs, relaxing into it, and feels Derek relax as well, tension bleeding slowly from his arms as he wraps them cautiously around Stiles’ waist. His shoulders drop, just a fraction, but it’s enough for Stiles to be able to lean forward and just barely hook his chin over Derek’s shoulder, fitting them together.
He forgets, sometimes (most of the time) that he and Derek are of a height. Derek always seems so much larger, hulking and looming in the shadows, every inch of him screaming Keep away! There’s no mistaking the width of Derek’s shoulders, especially with Stiles’ arms wrapped around them, or the solid expanse of his chest, the thick muscle on his arms. But he seems smaller, somehow, wrapped hesitantly around Stiles like this, less like something out of a Greek myth and more like something real.
They stand there for a moment, not moving. Stiles lets his eyes close, lets his mind go blissfully blank, focused only on the tiny motions of the muscles in Derek’s back, slowly unlocking one by one as he relaxes further. He sighs once, turning his head to press his face slightly into Stiles neck. Stiles smiles and lets his arms tighten just a tiny bit more.
Eventually Derek pulls away, taking a step back. He doesn’t look at Stiles, eyes trained downwards, but his shoulders are still loose and Stiles thinks he can see a hint of a smile on Derek’s face, so he considers it a win.
“I should get going,” Stiles says quietly. “Dad wants to talk some more, I think, so I should get home.”
Derek nods at the carpet. “Right.”
Stiles shakes his head and watches him for a moment longer, still smiling. He takes a step back, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I’ll see you around, whenever,” he says, reaching behind him and swinging the door open. Derek nods vaguely, and Stiles turns. He’s barely out the door, hand still on the knob, when Derek’s voice makes him turn back.
“Stiles. Wait.”
Derek is looking at him again, expression open and a slight smile on his face. “I can’t—” He pauses, swallowing. “I can’t talk. About them, I mean. Not yet.” He pauses again, mouth open, searching for words for a moment. “But when I can,” he says quietly, fixing his gaze on Stiles. “Would you let me?”
Stiles stares. He can feel his heart beating, just barely too-fast, and he can feel the grin stretching wider across his face, warm and wide.
“Of course.”
Derek’s grin is small, but there’s something about his expression that makes it seem brighter, something light and warm and almost happy, and Stiles feels his breath catch, just for a moment. He stares, wanting to soak in the moment, until Derek looks away again, nodding absently. Stiles shakes his head and takes a few steps backward out the door.
“See you around, Derek,” he says with a little wave before turning and setting off back down the sidewalk towards his Jeep.
Stiles opens the door and pauses, turning to look back. Derek’s standing in his open door still, staring after him. Stiles thinks he can still see the little white flash of Derek’s smile on his face before he closes the door, disappearing from sight. Stiles shakes his head again. The light feeling in his chest is still there, fluttering around his ribcage.
He gets into the Jeep and pulls out of the parking lot, thoughts drifting easily between flowers and perfume and the warm press of Derek’s arms at his back.