Archive of Our Own

---

They’re fighting again; Derek has no idea over what, but it’s probably something incredibly stupid and trivial and worthless. There are no bruises or punches, but their words are brutal and vicious and cold, all the things they’ll regret saying in the morning, and everything hurts in all the places they swore they’d never let hurt again. Sometimes it feels like this is all they ever do these days.

Stiles leaves, face red in anger and with tears in his eyes but the door doesn’t slam behind him like a period or an exclamation point; no, it closes gently, slowly, softly until the lock clicks in place and that makes it feels worse than anything else. Derek ends up destroying a table, venting out all his anger and frustration on it until it’s nothing more than a pile of wooden splinters.

Afterwards, Derek collapses into bed, weary and tired and hurt, and Stiles screams into his pillow until he can’t anymore and his throat is hoarse and raw and hurts so much he thinks it might be bleeding, and he tosses and turns for a long time. When they finally fall do asleep, it’s in a horrible and restless slumber.

In another life, Stiles is four and he’s lost in the woods. He’s soaked from the rain and dirty from the mud and his mama is nowhere to be found. There’s nothing but trees all around him and his throat hurts from crying and his eyes sting from the tears. He’s scared and alone and he just wants to go home. He takes a few steps but slips again, landing in yet another mud puddle and then, all of a sudden, the rain stops.

Stiles looks up and sees that the rain hasn’t stopped after all, but he’s under an umbrella now and the kid holding it up is older and taller and looks like this is the last place he wants to be, but he pulls Stiles up on his wobbly feet, putting the umbrella in his tiny hands while he takes off Stiles’ dirty shirt.

“What are you doing?” he asks, shivering even more now that his pale chest is exposed to the elements.

“Getting you dry,” the kid replies, taking off his own hoodie and wrapping it around Stiles. It’s warm and huge, nearly big enough to completely cover Stiles from head to toe, and it’s probably the best thing Stiles has ever known. “Come on, I’ll give you a piggyback ride.” He turns around and Stiles climbs up awkwardly on his back, wrapping his arms around his neck while the kid puts his arms around Stiles’ legs.

“The entire town is looking for you, you troublemaker,” the kid says with a sigh as Stiles buries his face in his neck. He walks Stiles all the way up to the porch and his hysterical parents wrap him up in hugs and kisses while simultaneously thanking the kid for bringing him home.

(Stiles ends up keeping the hoodie, even when his mama drives them to the Hale house to return it, newly-washed, along with a plate of cookies to personally thank Derek for his troubles, and it’ll never fail to make him feel okay when it seems like his world is crashing down around him.)

---

Another time, Stiles is six when his dad comes home with ten-year-old Derek’s small hand clasped in his, explaining that Derek’s family died in a tragic fire and that he’ll be staying with them for now.

They put Derek in the guest room. Stiles wakes up in the middle of the night to Derek quietly sobbing across the hall and he’ll tiptoe over the guest room and crawl into bed with Derek, wrapping as much of his tiny arms around the older boy as he can. “It’ll get better,” Stiles whispers over and over, because he understands a little bit how it feels to lose a family member, even though Stiles has only lost his mother and Derek had lost his entire family and that must be so much worse than Stiles can ever imagine.

His dad freaks out the next morning when he goes to check on his son only to find his bed empty. He barges into the guest room and breathes a sigh of relief when he sees the two boys curled around each other, Stiles’ hands pawing at Derek’s shirt and Derek’s cheek pressed to the top of Stiles’ head, and he doesn’t have the heart to wake them.

---

Once, Stiles is nineteen and Derek is twenty-two and Stiles has been in love with him since forever. They’re at Derek’s apartment, lazily sprawled out on his couch surrounded by boxes of Chinese food and DVD cases as a movie plays on the large flat-screen. If asked, Stiles couldn’t tell you what movie was playing because he can’t look away from the sharp lines of Derek’s jaw and the way his hair looks so soft without the usual copious amount of gel in it. Stiles’ fingers itch with the urge to tangle them in the dark strands.

Derek looks over at one point and frowns. “What?”

“You uh… got some sauce,” Stiles says because he can’t say I want to kiss you and he grabs some napkins and rubs at the spot where there’s imaginary sauce on his cheek.

“Oh, thanks,” Derek says, shooting him a wide grin that makes Stiles’ heart skip a beat, and he smiles back before turning back to the movie and pretends he’s not watching Derek from the corner of his eye.

Later that night, after the credits were rolling and Derek threw out the empty cartons, and they’ve both crawled into Derek’s ginormous bed like they do every weekend, and they’re facing each other, just staring at the other, Derek says, “I’m gonna ask Kate to marry me,” and Stiles feels his heart breaking into smithereens.

“Yeah?” he says because she’s going to make you miserable isn’t an option.

“I really feel like she’s the one, you know?” Derek whispers and Stiles tries not to cry. You deserve better, he thinks, but he doesn’t know how much of that is simply him not liking Kate. Instead, he teases Derek about being a romantic sap, and they come up with all the ways Gerard will murder him, and Stiles laughs, bitter and hollow, but Derek, who always knows when something’s wrong, won’t even notice.

---

(Sometimes they’re missing from each other’s timelines.)

Once, Stiles is a writer that died sixty years before Derek was born and the sullen teenager only discovers the local legend when he’s forced to read one of his books for his English class and won’t be able to put it down.

Another time, Derek is a world-renowned pianist that’s tragically killed in a car accident when Stiles is two. Years later, when he and his dad put away his mother’s things because it hurts too much to look at everyday, Stiles will find the CDs among them, and end up listening to them for hours on end.

And they’ll never be able to explain the overwhelming loneliness they feel sometimes, like a piece of them is missing and no matter how many other people they’re with, or what other hobbies they try to participate in to get their minds off their depression, nothing quite fits like it should.

---

One time, Stiles is fourteen and he’s going blind and nothing short of a miracle will save him from his fate now, but he smiles and he laughs and he pretends everything will be alright even though he knows that nothing about this situation will ever be alright at all. Still, he takes in his last sights, tries to remember his dad’s smile and his mom’s goofy faces and Scott’s pleading eyes as they schedule his surgery.

(He pretends he doesn’t notice the pain in his dad’s eyes or the tear tracks on his mom’s cheeks or the helpless anger at the world in Scott’s lips.)

“It’s not fair,” he says when they all finally leave, and he doesn’t even sound angry anymore, just tired and resigned. Accepting.

“No, it’s not,” the handsome new intern says as he looks over Stiles’ chart and Stiles lets himself take a good, hard look at him, too, drinking in his fill of dark hair and stubbled jaw and those mysterious eyes that can’t decide if they’re green or hazel or grey, because soon he’ll never see again and he wants this last luxury.

“People just don’t appreciate what they have,” Stiles whispers, words he’d never dare say in front of his parents, and the intern gives him a tight-lipped smile at that. “Maybe if I weren’t in this position, I would take it for granted, too.”

“What would you do?”

“What?”

“If you got through this, what would you do?”

“Don’t they teach you anything in med school? The only way I’d get through this is if I got a donor and I have a better chance of winning the lottery than that happening.”

“Humor me anyway.”

Stiles sighs, stares up at the ceiling. “I don’t know, but it’d be something meaningful. Something worthwhile. I’d go and see everything the world has to offer.”

“Sounds like a good dream.”

“Yeah…” Stiles sighs and closes his eyes, falling to sleep, only to be woken up by his mother shaking him in the morning, tears streaming down her face, telling him they found a donor and that it’s a miracle, Stiles and everything will be alright now honey and Stiles is too stunned to reply at all as they wheel him into an operating room three days earlier and for a different kind of surgery.

A week after the surgery, when they take off the patches over his eyes, the first thing Stiles sees is the beautiful brunette in the doorway. She’s dressed in a black dress and black heels and her hair pulled into an elegant chignon, and he has absolutely no idea who she is.

“Um… hello?” he says and the woman walks over to him, somehow managing to look both upset and angry as she stares down at him while he tries not to fidget under the scrutiny.

An older man pokes his head into the room just when the woman’s gaze becomes too much. “Laura? Come on dear, we’re going to be late to the funeral,” he says.

“His name was Derek,” the woman, Laura, says at last, pressing an envelope into his hand. “Don’t you dare forget that.” And then she walks out with the man, wiping her eyes as she goes. Stiles pulls out the letter from the envelope, the paper thick and expensive, and there’s only one line written on it in an elegant script:

Don’t forget, you promised something meaningful. –DH

And Stiles cries because he’s fourteen and he got a miracle, got his vision back, but the Hales lost a son and he doesn’t know how he’ll ever repay them.

---

In yet another life, Stiles is nineteen, and they’re in the middle of a war. There are bullets whizzing past him, missing only by millimeters, as he and Scott jump into the trenches in some semblance that they’ll be safe.

(They aren’t.)

Still, there’s the blast of explosives going off much too close for comfort, and shrapnel flying everywhere. They are surrounded by the broken bodies of their fallen comrades; bodies torn and bloody and some aren’t even whole bodies, but parts and pieces and Stiles tries not to vomit at the sight.

When the shooting finally stops, Stiles’ ears are still ringing, and Scott has a bullet in his leg, the thick blood oozing out and staining his army green pants. He needs immediate medical attention and Stiles keeps telling him to put pressure in the wound.

“I’m going to get a medic! Don’t you dare die on me, Scott! You hear me?”

Scott offers him a weak smile, not believing his words for a second, but nods anyway and Stiles darts off toward where the medical tent was. Of course, he realizes exactly why the shooting stopped when he turns the corner and literally runs into an enemy soldier.

They’re both too surprised at the other’s sight to do anything at first, and then they’re both moving quickly, punching and blocking and trying to disarm the other, when a loud bang echoes through the room, and then Stiles’ topples backward, looking down at his chest that suddenly feels like it’s on fire and there’s a blossom of red that’s steadily getting bigger and bigger.

His shooter walks over, picking up his comrade from the floor, then leans over Stiles, putting two fingers over the pulse point in his neck. Stiles is obviously delirious, because even as he’s wheezing out the last of his breaths, the only thing he can think is that this might be the best-looking man he’s ever seen and there’s no way his eyes are naturally that blue.

“I’m sorry,” his killer says, standing up and drawing his gun, pulling the trigger and finally putting him out of his misery.

(Despite everything, Stiles still prefers the times where Derek kills him to the ones where the opposite happens. The times when he fails, or comes too late, or lets go. The ones where he watches Gerard slice Derek in half, or holds onto his fallen body when the Alpha Pack had ripped him apart, or the ones where he actually takes Derek’s advice for once, and runs when he tells him to, only to find out later that he could’ve saved Derek from drowning if he had just stayed those few extra seconds.

He never forgives himself for those times.)

---

(Sometimes, they’re born in different places, but still somehow manage to find their way back to each other, as improbable as it seems.)

One time, Stiles is twenty and decides to participate in a student-exchange program in Romania.

His host family is huge, three generations of Hales living together in what might’ve once been a castle, and they’re got some amazing set of genetics, like goddamn, all dark haired and green-eyed. Especially the oldest of the boys, one Derek Hale, with whom he shares a room, and is sculpted like a Greek god but always walks around like he’s constantly forced to eat lemons.

He tells them that he’s studying mythology, and that was one of the reasons he chose Romania in the first place, because it’s famous for its folklore of vampires and werewolves. He doesn’t quite understand why the entire family erupts in laughter at that (perhaps he mispronounced some words?), until a month later when he discovers that the folklore he’s been studying was a bit more real than he thought when a vampire breaks into the house in the middle of the night and Derek ends up sinking his fangs into its neck and his claws in its stomach for good measure.

---

(There are times they get it wrong.)

Another time, Stiles is twenty-six and Derek is thirty-one, and they’ve been in love for eons, but they still hurt each other too, with words, with silence, with their actions, with their inactions, with fear, with truth.

Sometimes, Stiles will accuse Derek of not trusting him with his secrets and Derek will tell him it’s because he wants him to be safe, and Stiles will scream that he’s not some damsel in distress, that he doesn’t need to be protected.

Sometimes, Derek will stay silent when he knows he should say something, but he’s always had trouble with words, with knowing how to say exactly what he means and making Stiles understand. Sometimes, he’ll say something and Stiles will take it a whole different way, and it’ll dissolve into a horrible fight where they say all the wrong things and do all the wrong things.

Sometimes, Stiles will go behind Derek’s back to come up with an alternative plan because Derek’s plans are all shit, and later Derek will ask him how he’s supposed to trust him when he does things like that and Stiles will tell him that he can’t just stand around and watch Derek be a martyr.

One day, Stiles will whisper, “I can’t do this anymore,” after a particularly vicious fight, and Derek will scoff and say, “So leave.”

And one day, Derek will come home, and discover that Stiles did, and Derek will think about all the different ways he could’ve stopped him, all the different things he could’ve done differently, all the things he could’ve said that would’ve prevented this.

(You’ve always known it would end this way, the voice in his mind will remind him, and Derek will think, yes, perhaps, he did, but it doesn’t make the ache hurt any less. On particularly bad nights, when he lies down on the bed that’s too big and thinks about who’s missing, he’ll know that despite everything, their love would’ve been worth it. It would’ve been the greatest thing he would’ve ever had, but now it’s gone and he’ll never get it back.)

---

(And sometimes, their meetings are inconsequential.)

They pass each other on the street every day, and they’ll sometimes acknowledge each other, just small polite nods because they seem familiar, but never actually talk to each other.

Or, Derek buys coffee from the café on Main Street where Stiles works, their fingers brushing lightly together when Stiles hands him his cup.

Or, when he gets a particularly hard case, Stiles will frequent that seedy-looking bar downtown that the other deputies avoid, but Stiles discovers that the surly bartender makes the best drinks and a good drink is exactly what he needs when he can’t deal with the truth that sometimes, humans are the real monsters.

---

(But it doesn’t always end badly, either.)

Stiles is twenty-five and Derek is thirty-three and there is finally peace in Beacon Hills. Their pack is stable and competent and Derek is a brilliant alpha and Stiles has somehow managed to keep his humanity intact despite everything that’s happened.

They bought a house together; a smaller one than the old Hale house, but still with enough room to fit everyone. There are toys strewn all over the floor in the den ("It’s called a living room, Stiles.” “No, no, it’s totally a den!”) for when the kids come over. There’s a vanity full of make-up for the girls and a cabinet full of video games for when they forget that they’re adults. There are walls of photos and a library full of the oddest collection of books anyone’s ever seen.

Stiles wakes up to Derek making pancakes sometimes, and Derek will go to sleep curled around Stiles. They get together for holidays, full of laughter and jokes and teasing, they run together on the full moons and sometimes they’ll wake up with Erica’s hair in Stiles’ face and Isaac’s legs tangled with Derek’s and Boyd crushing them all. There are gold bands around their ring fingers and pictures of Stiles’ parents on their nightstand and Laura’s framed drawings on the walls.

It’s not perfect; they’ll still argue and bitch and moan at each other, they won’t always agree, they’ll give into the dark thoughts plaguing their minds sometimes, but they’re in love and they’re together and they’re happy and they pull through everything, because it’s worth it and that’s all that matters.

(Derek will never admit it, but the ones where everything works out are the ones that scare him the most. They always seem too good to be true, and Derek has lived through enough pain and tragedy and loss to not be scared that tomorrow, or next week, or next year, something will go wrong, something that will away the last of his hopes and dreams. That one day he’ll wake up and this will all be gone, or worse, that he never had it in the first place.

After all, there’s nothing worse than getting everything you’ve always wanted and knowing it could all be ripped away one day.)

---

(And then there are those times when one of them thinks, what if you’re already happy without me?)

Like that one time when Stiles is twenty-four and he’s having lunch with Derek at their favorite diner. It’s three months until his wedding to one Lydia Martin, the strawberry blonde goddess of his life, when Derek tells him, “I can’t be your best man.”

Stiles pauses, fork comically suspended in mid-air as he stares, wide-eyed, at the man across from him. “What?”

“I’m sorry, I thought I could do it, but I can’t.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I love you, Stiles.”

“I love you, too, Der—”

“No, Stiles, I’m in love with you, and I can’t help you prepare a wedding or your bachelor party or pretend I’m happy for you when I’m anything but.” Derek offers him a watery smile as he pulls his wallet from his pocket. “I’m an idiot and a coward, and now I’m too late, so I’m going to give all the details to Scott and… yeah. I’m sorry.”

He leaves some bills on the table and that’s how Stiles knows it’s serious, because Derek always pays for dinner and Stiles always pays for lunch and that’s just how they work. Stiles downs an entire bottle of Jack’s that night and when Stiles goes to Derek’s apartment the next day to confront him, because he can’t just say shit like that, Laura will open the door to a bare apartment and inform him that Derek had been planning to move to New York for the better part of a year and now he’s finally got a reason.

Stiles will numbly drive home, betrayed and angry and hurt, and he’ll wonder how he could’ve missed something so monumental like Derek falling in love in him, and he’ll remember that Lydia had been in love with Jackson once, and he’ll understand how bad it must’ve hurt Derek to have the love of your life be happy with someone else and he can’t fault Derek for leaving at all, even if it won’t be until years later when he finally accepts this.

(Derek doesn’t come to the wedding but he sends a gift in his stead. Stiles gains a wife but he loses a friend and Stiles can’t help feeling selfish for thinking he could have both.)

---

(And there are times when they get it right, too.)

Partner detectives working together to track down serial killers and trying to make their city a safer place.

Or, they’re actors working on a new film where they play as each other’s love interest and despite their bad start, somehow end up falling in love for real.

Or, they’re surgeons, saving lives and taking on the difficult cases that any other doctor would have to be crazy to perform, but Stiles is smart and quick on his feet, offering advice at the most stressful of times, and Derek is more experienced and jaded, but always jumps in to fix his mistakes.

---

(Stiles isn’t sure what to believe; he’s not sure if it’s magic or destiny or just the universe fucking around with him. Allison would tell him that there’s no such thing as fate. Lydia would rattle off something about probabilities and chance, maybe even come up with a mathematical formula to explain it all. But somehow, none of those explanations fit.

Because it doesn’t matter how many lifetimes he’s lived, how many different ways they’re separated, how impossible the odds are that they should meet, even if it takes ten lifetimes or twenty or a hundred, he’ll always find his way back to Derek.)

Stiles jerks up in his bed, unable to breathe and his legs tangled up in the sheets. It takes a few long minutes, but he manages to get his lungs functioning normally, and he unwraps the sheets from his legs. He grabs the first sweatshirt he finds and pulls it on before locating his car keys and slipping out of the house.

Derek wakes up drenched in sweat and his claws extended. He pulls them back in and puts on a pair of basketball shorts, not bothering with a shirt. He pauses in front of the mirror for just a second to make sure he’s completely human and heads out. He wrenches the door open with more force than necessary and to his surprise, Stiles is already standing there, holding the keys up like he was about to unlock it himself.

They stand there for long time, confused and blinking at each other, before Stiles finally snaps out of it and launches himself at Derek. Derek catches him easily, squeezing just a little too tight, as he buries his nose in Stiles’ neck and breathes in his scent while Stiles runs soothing hands up and down his back.

“Guess I don’t have to ask how your night was,” Stiles mumbles and Derek grunts in reply. Stiles pulls away slightly, just enough to cup Derek’s face in his hands and place a chaste kiss to his lips.

“I’m sorry,” Derek says softly, pressing their foreheads together.

“Me too, Der. Let’s not do that again.”

“Yeah,” he promises before pulling them back into the bedroom.