Work Text:
He’s only been back a day and a half and Beacon Hills is already trying to kill him with hot people and puppies. Which feels rude, honestly. Like he did his time—four years of out-of-state tuition, three major breakdowns, and one very regrettable mustache experiment—and he came back with a degree and a vague plan to not make a scene. And then the universe throws this at him.
He's walking through the park, because his dad’s house still smells like lemon disinfectant and grief, and he’s pretending he doesn’t care. The coffee’s too hot, his hoodie’s too thin, and his legs are already sore from the airport sprint he pulled yesterday. But it’s fine. He’s fine. He’s handling things like an adult. And then there’s a dog.
No. Three dogs.
Correction: puppies. Of the fluffy, herding-adjacent, unreasonably adorable variety, tripping over their own paws as they wrestle in a pile of chaos. One of them makes a sound like a squeaky toy dying. The man holding their leashes doesn’t even flinch. He just crouches, steady and quiet, and lets the smallest one climb into his lap like it owns him.
Stiles stares.
He doesn’t mean to. He just—goddamn. The guy’s big, but not gym-bro big. More like built-to-lift-you-over-a-fence-then-disappear-into-the-woods big. Broad shoulders, close-cropped beard, dark sweatshirt stretched across forearms that look like they’ve never heard of rest days. He’s got the kind of quiet you feel in your bones. Stillness like a wolf in tall grass. Like he could command a whole room without saying a word.
The puppy sneezes. The guy murmurs something too low to catch. He scratches behind its ear with a tenderness that shouldn’t be legal on a man who looks like he’s probably registered as a lethal weapon in seven states.
Stiles should keep walking.
He doesn’t.
“Okay, so, this is wildly unfair,” he blurts, because he’s incapable of letting a moment be beautiful without adding sarcasm. “Like, there should be a warning sign or something. ‘Hot guy with tactical forearms and baby wolves ahead, proceed with caution.’”
The man looks up. Just looks. Calm, neutral. No smile, no raised brows, just direct eye contact like a challenge he already knows he’ll win.
“I’m serious,” Stiles says, stepping closer because his mouth clearly has no interest in letting him survive this socially. “Do you even know what you’re doing? Bringing those—” he gestures to the wriggling mess of fur, “—out here like it’s not a public safety hazard? I almost choked on my own tongue.”
“They need the exercise,” the man says, dry as dust.
“Yeah, well, I need a defibrillator, so.”
The man glances back at the pups. One is chewing its own tail. Another is attempting to bite a leaf and missing. His mouth softens just barely. Not a smile, but something adjacent. Something that makes Stiles want to see the full version like a puzzle he suddenly has to finish.
“You’re new,” the guy says, turning back to him. Not a question. Just a fact.
“Back,” Stiles corrects, and gives a half-wave like that explains anything. “Home from college. Temporary brain break. Long story involving burnout, bad sushi, and one truly scarring group project.”
“Right.”
That’s it. Just “right.” No name. No small talk. Just an acknowledgment and a glance away like he’s done with the conversation.
But he hasn’t walked away. And neither has Stiles.
“So,” Stiles says, rocking on his heels, “do the puppies have names or is that classified information?”
One of them barks. Loudly. The guy reaches down and scratches behind its ear again. “That one’s Scout.”
Stiles crouches beside her without thinking, letting her sniff his hand. “Hi, Scout. You’re doing amazing. You’re also drooling on me, but I forgive you.”
“She does that.”
“Drool or get forgiven?”
This time, the man huffs a laugh. Just once. Barely audible. But Stiles feels it. Like a gold star on his transcript.
“Well, mystery dog man,” he says, standing back up, “thanks for making my re-entry to Beacon Hills approximately three hundred percent more confusing than I planned.”
The man shrugs. “You’ll get used to it.”
And then he walks past.
Stiles watches him go, heart hammering like he ran a sprint and forgot how to breathe through it. Every step that guy takes is annoyingly solid, like he’s got purpose and emotional repression down to an art form, and Stiles can’t even remember how to exist without narrating his own internal chaos like a full-cast podcast.
He should let it go. Should keep walking. But the second that broad, silent figure starts to fade down the path, something stubborn coils tight in his chest.
He’s not gonna miss his shot.
The man’s maybe twenty feet ahead when a couple rounds the curve toward him—dog on a leash, iced lattes in hand, matching athleisure like they’re living in a wellness ad. They pass him without hesitation, no fear, like they know him. One of them lifts a hand. “Morning, Deputy,” they say, casual, like it’s routine.
The man nods once. Doesn’t break stride. Doesn’t smile. Just that stiff, silent acknowledgment like the world’s made of tolerable obstacles and he’s choosing not to bark at them.
Stiles blinks.
Deputy.
Oh. Oh.
Well that makes things easier.
Not that he was struggling. Please. He could find Officer Puppym on a map, in a nightmare, from memory alone with three broken crayons and a prayer. But now he’s got a job title, a department, and the knowledge that someone in that department is walking around Beacon Hills in government-issued pants with three semi-feral emotional support grenades at his heels.
But now he’s got a job title, a department, and the deeply unnerving realization that someone in his dad’s department is walking around Beacon Hills in government-issued pants with three semi-feral emotional support grenades at his heels.
Which is fine. Fine. It’s not like Stiles has a type or anything.
Stiles grins to himself, sharp and dangerous, thoughts already sprinting ten steps ahead. He’s got a reason to swing by the station. A name to casually drop into conversation. A mystery to solve.
He’s been back one day.
And his dad’s department just accidentally handed him a challenge in tactical gear and quiet disdain.
Beacon Hills has no idea what it just let off the leash.
The station’s exactly the same. That’s the first thing that hits him—how unfairly the same it all is. Same flickering overhead lights. Same half-wilted plant by the front window. Same old coffee machine rumbling like a dying lawnmower in the corner. Stiles steps through the door and the scent hits like memory: cheap disinfectant, printer toner, and his dad’s cologne undercut with something faintly metallic. Comforting, familiar, terrifying.
He hasn’t been back here since spring break last year. Two days. One awkward lunch. Zero calls after.
The second thing that hits him is that he isn’t here.
Stiles breezes past the front desk like he has every right to be here, which—okay, technically, he does. Sheriff’s kid trumps civilian in Beacon Hills bureaucracy. He nods at dispatch, gives Reyes a half-smile, leans casually against the counter like he’s not scanning every visible corner for a tall, tactical K9 deputy with a growl problem and government-issued forearms.
“He’s not on patrol, is he?” Stiles asks Reyes, like he didn’t come in just to ask that exact question.
She snorts into her coffee. “Who?”
“Officer Puppy.”
Reyes blinks. “What?”
“Tall. Scowly. Three dogs. Quiet like a knife drawer. I met him in the park yesterday and nearly aspirated my latte.”
She gives him a look. “You mean Deputy Hale?”
Stiles straightens like someone just snapped a wire inside him. “That’s his name? Hale? As in—Hale-Hale?”
Reyes is already shaking her head. “He’s in the back lot. Kennel rotation.”
Stiles is moving before she finishes, boots loud against the floor as he winds past desks, past the interrogation rooms, out the back door like he’s not chasing a crush, like he’s not actively making poor life choices in real time.
And there he is.
Same guy. Same broad shoulders, back turned as he kneels by one of the puppies, adjusting a collar with hands too steady for how unfairly attractive they are. One of the dogs rolls in the dirt beside him like a drama queen. The sun cuts across his back and Stiles feels like he’s walking into a movie someone else scored.
“Hey,” he calls, already grinning. “Officer Puppy.”
Hale doesn’t turn around immediately. Just finishes what he’s doing, calm and methodical, then rises with a slow, deliberate kind of posture that says he’s used to being looked at. Stiles watches him turn, all quiet weight and narrowed eyes like he’s reading a manual Stiles didn’t know he was carrying.
“I figured I’d come see if you were real or just the result of me finally snapping under the pressure of small-town nostalgia and emotional repression,” Stiles adds, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
There’s no smile. No real reaction at all, just a slow blink and a brow lift so minor it might be a hallucination.
“Why are you here?” Hale says.
Stiles shrugs. “I haunt here. Sheriff’s kid. Legacy access.”
Hale crosses his arms. “So you’re loitering.”
Stiles grins. “I prefer ‘investigative presence.’”
One of the puppies peels off from the chaos pack and makes a beeline for him—stubby legs, oversized paws, tongue lolling like it’s been running a marathon in its sleep. It reaches Stiles, sniffs once, then flops dramatically against his boot like this is exactly where it belongs. Like his foot was preordained. Chosen.
Stiles stares down at her, slowly crouching. “I think she likes me.”
Hale doesn’t look away from the crate he’s securing. “She eats drywall. She likes everyone.”
It shouldn’t be funny. It is. Stiles bites back a smile as he reaches down to scratch behind her ears, slow and gentle. She huffs out a happy sound and nudges into his palm like she’s spent her whole short existence waiting for him. Which, yeah, okay, probably not true, but he’s gonna take the win. He needs the win. There’s something grounding about the weight of her, the soft heat of her belly against his shoe, the way the world gets quieter when he’s petting something too small to judge him.
Officer Puppy says nothing else. Just clicks the crate shut and checks the latch like silence is his native language.
Stiles keeps his eyes on the puppy, voice casual. “You know, if you tell me your first name, I might stop calling you Officer Puppy.”
“No, you won’t.”
It’s immediate. Dry. Certain.
Stiles grins, looks up without lifting his hand from the dog’s fur. “Yeah, no, I won’t. But come on, give me something. I can’t keep calling you Deputy Growls-a-Lot in my head.”
Hale doesn’t answer right away. Just studies him, steady and unreadable, like he’s trying to decide if Stiles is actually this obnoxious or if it’s a coping mechanism. Which, rude, but fair. His eyes don’t narrow or soften, don’t do anything performative. He just looks. And then—
“Derek.”
Just that. One word. Clean. Plain. Nothing apologetic in it. No fluff. Like he’s not offering a name so much as stating a fact: here I am.
And Stiles—God, he feels it.
Not the name itself. He’s known a Derek or two. But this one. This voice. That low, steady register like it could hold up a wall. Like it has held up walls. He straightens a little, like the sound caught something in his spine and pulled.
“Stiles,” he says back, too quick, but still. “Technically Stilinski, but that’s a lot of syllables and also what people yell when I’m bleeding.”
He holds out a hand before he thinks better of it. Dirt on his palm. Puppy hair on his sleeve. Whatever. It's a decent gesture. Honest.
Derek doesn’t take it. Just nods. Not impolite. Not dismissive. Just—Derek.
Figures.
Stiles drops his hand, dusts it off on his jeans, and pushes to his feet. “Well, Deputy Derek Hale,” he says, smile pulling sharp and bright now, full of caffeine and the kind of boldness that’s going to get him in so much trouble, “it’s been a pleasure harassing you in your natural habitat.”
Derek gives him a look. Blank, but not disinterested.
“You’ll be seeing me again,” Stiles adds, already turning, already backing away with a wink he’s not sure lands.
No answer.
But the puppy barks once, short and bright, like she knows. Like she’s calling the shot for him.
Stiles doesn’t look back. Doesn’t need to.
He’ll be back tomorrow.