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As far back as Derek remembers, there has always been a duffel bag in the corner of a room, most of his belongings haphazardly thrown in its vicinity. There have barely been places where he bothered finding a rightful place for the contents of that bag. Even in New York, with Laura, no place was long term, no apartment or house anything other than a short rental, both of them ready to move on at the slightest sign of trouble. He left at sixteen, bare essentials packed in that same duffel as they boarded the plane to the east coast, his Dad’s leather jacket way too big for his teenage body, but wrapped around him like a lifesaver anyway.
Derek never felt safe enough anywhere to settle into the place, to gather trinkets for decorative and sentimental purposes unless they were small enough to carry around or tuck into one of the bag’s outside pockets. There are shirts that he’s left behind because they wouldn’t fit in the bag, jeans he exchanged for new ones in places he went to, one or two sweaters that he grew fond of. What he couldn’t fit into the bag sometimes found a temporary home in the trunk of his car -- some special mementos locked away in the Camaro that he’s still renting a garage for in Beacon Hills.
Here, in San Francisco, he feels for the first time like he should start thinking about taking his shirts out of the bag, maybe folding them up after they’re washed and clean. Still, the duffel bag stays in the corner of the closet, most of his clothes either in it or nearby. The walls of the small house are bare, and it’s not because Derek’s worried about hanging up anything that would lose him the deposit -- he bought the place outright, with money left over from his inheritance and the sale of the building he owned in Beacon Hills.
Still, he’s forgotten how to make a place feel and look like home. There’s always the nagging feeling at the back of his mind that maybe he’ll have to leave everything behind again, that nowhere is safe enough to put down roots, to settle. Not even now that he found a full time job, a consultant position with the local police department that allows him to use his senses and knowledge as much as it did with the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department.
It was Sheriff Stilinski who gave him the recommendation -- and who nudged him towards the job in the first place, once Beacon Hills finally stopped being a magnet for everything evil and destructive -- and Derek likes the job. It’s not as dramatic and life-threatening as the one before, some of the officers are in the know, a few even shifters like him, although not strictly werewolves. There are several packs in the area, and while Derek doesn’t belong to any of them exclusively, it’s easier to navigate than not being an Alpha in his home territory has been.
The house does feel like a place he could call home , too. Even if he hasn’t done much to make it look that way, left the furniture simple and practical, and barely managed to get bed sheets that weren’t just the most convenient option.
It’s somewhere he likes coming back to after work, routes to it from various places around the city imprinted in his brain so that he’d find his way no matter what the situation. Or what form he’s in. There have been a handful of times when he did his best impression of a lovable stray -- rather big for a dog, but trying to look harmless -- after a field case that required his wolf shift.
That’s how he came home today, fur soaked with early morning mist and remainders of salty ocean water from a swim he had to take to get back to shore once the team he’s on secured the boat they were tracking down. He resists shaking himself off in the hallway, and instead pads upstairs into the bathroom, only shifting back to human once he’s inside. There are towels on a shelf above the sink, and a heated rack on the side, so he grabs two -- one from the rack to wrap himself into and warm up, another smaller one to rub the water out of his hair -- and then he walks back through the hallway and into the bedroom.
“Hey, didn’t hear you come in,” Stiles greets him, stretched out on the bed in the middle of the room, his eyes glued to the laptop screen a second later. “Tough day?”
“Had to swim back,” Derek says, his voice a little on the grumpy side. “We closed the case though.”
“Nice,” Stiles smiles proudly. “Parrish was saying you were close, but he didn’t say it was that close.”
Derek grins in response, and walks over to the closet, light-heartedly muttering about Jordan’s big mouth and no ability to keep it shut.
Jordan is on the force with him, but on a different team, specialising in explosives that he has experience with. It figures that he’d have talked to Stiles about the case status -- Stiles is a detective and likes to know what’s going on everywhere, and he’s fiercely protective about Derek, so he likes to keep tabs -- even if he wasn’t kept in the loop on the specifics.
When Derek reaches for his duffel bag to find a henley to throw on, it’s empty, and it startles him enough that he has to blink a few times to make sure he’s not losing his mind. He looks up from the floor where it’s folded, and stares at the shelves in the middle. His shirts and pants are neatly folded on one side, accompanied by the pile of graphic T-shirts that Stiles never managed to let go of.
“Stiles?” Derek says quietly, his voice trembling a little. “Did you…?”
“Oh shit, sorry, I meant to tell you,” Stiles says in a rush, and Derek can hear him scramble off the bed, the laptop hitting the nightstand with a dull thud. “I did laundry this morning, and figured I might as well empty the thing out since most of your clothes were due a wash anyway.”
Derek can feel the heat off of Stiles’ body behind his back, but he can’t quite move yet, the newness of having his clothes outside of the safety of the bag a little unsettling. It doesn’t feel wrong though, and when Stiles puts his hand on Derek’s back, it grounds him enough to realize that.
“Right, okay,” Derek says with a nod. “It just surprised me,” he adds.
“We’ve been here almost a year,” Stiles whispers, close enough now that his chest is pressed against Derek’s naked back. “It’s time.”
It’s quiet, the only sound in the house is the steady thumping of Stiles’ heartbeat and Derek can barely hear that over the rush of blood in his ears. He glances down at the duffel bag again, and clenches his fists -- not in anger, though -- as memories of the past flood his mind.
It’s been something to hold on to, something to grab on the way out when he needed to run, something he knew he could depend on to contain everything he’d need. And now it’s empty, his belongings outside of the protective cover of the worn out fabric, exposed to the world. It feels kind of like his own hard shell was stripped, like the final wall fell into pieces with the simple act of unpacking.
“I’m not… look, I could apologise,” Stiles talks again, breaking the silence. “I could, but I’m not going to. I know what this means, I know what it was to you. I get that you felt that you needed that safety of being able to leave . And I’m not saying that I can… that either of us can guarantee that we will never need to move again, that the world isn’t shitty and that there isn’t danger. There always will be, but none of it is what you were so ready to run from.”
Derek is listening, and the words seep into his mind slowly, pushing against the last remnants of his self-preservation instinct to run , to escape.
“But even if we ever need to run, it will be different,” Stiles says, and Derek finally looks up and meets his eyes in the mirror at the back of the closet. “It’s not going to be just you, and it’s not going to be without a moment to gather the things we want to keep. Because if you’re running, then I’m running too, and I’m not going anywhere without stopping to take you . No matter what, we’ll make time to ensure we haven’t left anything behind. It’s not just you against the world anymore.”
When Stiles stops talking, he keeps his eyes locked on Derek’s via the mirror reflection, and there’s determination in his face like Derek hasn’t seen in years. Not since the time in the pool, when Stiles was the only thing between Derek and drowning. Not since the nod afterwards when Stiles made it clear that he didn’t think of werewolves as monsters -- that he didn’t think Derek was a monster. Not since Stiles was left to take care of Derek’s only remaining relative, Cora, in the ambulance.
There are more flashing through Derek’s mind as he’s looking at Stiles’ face and tries to find the words to say. None of them seem right, so instead he reaches down to where Stiles’ fingers are warm against his waist, and he links them together with his own.
“I didn’t take out everything,” Stiles says then, in a whisper. “I thought… I know you have photos and stuff, but I figured you’d put those out yourself.”
Derek lets out a breath, and he glances down at the duffel bag one more time before he turns around to finally face Stiles.
“Yeah, that… I’ll do that,” he says, and he doesn’t miss the surprise in Stiles’ eyes. “Help me with it?”
It’s the question that breaks Stiles’ momentary silence and stillness. Before Derek can say anything else, his lips are moving to accommodate for Stiles’, and he wraps his arms around Stiles who’s pressed against Derek’s chest.
“You,” Stiles says breathlessly a moment later when he pulls away from the kiss. “I love you,” he says instead of whatever else is -- Derek recognizes the look by now -- running through his mind.
“Thank you,” finally slips from Derek’s lips, his gratitude for Stiles’ move with the clothes coloring the words with fondness.
It’s then that he looks at the dresser in the corner of the closet, and spots a little plaque that wasn’t there before. He remembers it from the market they’ve gone to a few weeks earlier, and he remembers stopping to look at it. It’s simple, a hint of color that looks like splattered blue paint across the surface, and over it the words that suddenly help make sense of the last bit of confusion about Stiles’ decision.
“Everyone comes with baggage. Find someone who loves you enough to help you unpack. ”
Derek smiles, and then he buries his nose into the crook of Stiles’ neck, thinking about the first few weeks in San Francisco, and about the Jeep sitting in the driveway of the house, filled with boxes that smelled like Stiles, like the Sheriff, and like Beacon Hills. Then, he thinks about how he carried the boxes into the house one night, and how Stiles woke up on the couch, surrounded by them.
“I love you,” he mumbles against Stiles’ skin.
Finally, Derek feels like he’s home .