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When Stiles told Derek - implausibly de-aged and oddly wide-eyed and innocent, yet somehow as snarky as ever - to stay put, he hadn't expected him to listen. He'd ducked back into the room, fully expecting to find Derek halfway out the window, caught in the act and glaring at Stiles for knowing him so well. After all, this was something that had happened before, too many times to count.
Over the summer, when they were working together to find Erica and Boyd, Derek would camp out in Stiles’s room, hovering annoyingly over his shoulder while he tried to work on his computer, or judging all the books on his shelves. In detail. While unintentionally proving, as he scoffed at the sci-fi and fantasy sections in particular, that he’d read and retained them even more than Stiles had.
Eventually, they relaxed into regular conversation. Derek draped his jacket over the back of Stiles's extra chair, even took off his shoes a few times, wandering around Stiles’s room in his socks, momentarily forgetting that he was supposed to be grumpy and angry and tense. He smiled at Stiles, once, at a Star Wars quip he later tried to pretend he hadn’t understood. But he did. His huff of laughter, and the funny little quirk of his eyebrows, the way his head dipped so he could hide further smiles - it was easy to read, once you had the right grasp on his body language. Stiles got to know Derek that summer.
Nothing happened, though. Nothing concrete. Derek looked at him, often. Listened, more intently than anyone had ever listened to Stiles in his life. Stopped pretending he didn’t trust or respect him, at least when they were alone together and he didn’t have to be an alpha or a mentor or a guardian or anything but Derek.
But Derek was afraid. Of the alphas, yes. Of losing his pack. Of making the same sorts of mistakes with Isaac, or Jackson, that he’d done in driving Erica and Boyd away. When Jackson moved to London with his family, Derek didn’t even try to come up with an excuse for being in Stiles’s room. He slipped in through the window, sat in his usual chair in the corner, and listened, swallowing heavily and holding a thick book that he didn’t read, as Stiles filled the silence with chatter about the interesting things he was finding online.
When Stiles stumbled across a video compilation of animals doing adorably funny things, Derek finally budged from his seat and leaned over Stiles in that horribly annoying way of his, as though he had little to no concept of personal space.
If Stiles was going to be honest, which he obviously wasn’t, it’d stopped being annoying, after a while, and had instead started making his heart jump and flutter in his chest, so loudly that he had to increase the volume of his voice to counter it, to keep Derek from hearing how he responded to the clean, earthy scent of him, to the warmth of Derek's body against his back.
Derek gripped Stiles’s shoulder gently in unspoken thanks before he left that day. They didn’t have to say anything, not about the deeper topics they both understood on an intrinsic level.
After that, things got worse. Or better. It was hard to tell, really. Derek turned it into a game - leaving the room whenever Stiles had just started to get his stupid, breathless hopes up. Derek was afraid of more than physical dangers, Stiles realized. Derek was afraid of mattering to someone. Of having them slot into one of those unshakeable spots in his surprisingly warm, generous, loyal heart. Derek wasn’t prickly because he was an unfeeling douche, Stiles discovered: he was doing his best to protect all the soft, squishy bits of his heart, which was too sensitive and welcoming for his own good.
He jumped out the window the first time Stiles brushed his hand over Derek’s and looked up at him through his eyelashes. The next day, he gruffly explained that he’d heard a noise he’d needed to check out.
He was a giant liar, too.
He started leaving whenever Stiles left the room. Once, Stiles had hurried downstairs to grab the Galaxy Quest DVD, since Derek had snorted at a Star Trek joke and admitted, with a bit of longing in his voice, that he’d never been able to convince Laura to rent the movie with him. He’d nodded, abruptly, when Stiles suggested that he stay and watch it, but his nerves ramped up visibly when Stiles patted his bed and told him to sit down, he’d be right back.
When Stiles got back to the room, DVD in hand, Derek was gone, the window swinging open, letting in the cool evening breeze.
That wasn't the last time; not by a long shot.
It happened, again and again: when Stiles went downstairs to say hi to his dad, or to make popcorn or grab them a snack or a drink, or even when he went to the bathroom. It got to the point where Stiles had to point firmly at Derek and tell him to not budge, you asshole, or I’m locking the window the next time you try to come over - a threat that they both knew was as empty as Derek’s decreasing attempts to snap his teeth at Stiles’s neck until he flinched. He didn’t flinch, anymore. But Derek did, panic in his eyes when Stiles smiled at him or touched him or tried to get him to stay.
Derek wasn’t afraid of Stiles; that much was clear. He was afraid of himself. But as the summer wore on, the expression in his eyes softened into something like affection. Like trust. Like belief in getting to keep something, for once, that was meaningful to him.
But he kept leaping out the damn window because it was a habit, by now, and he thought it was funny. Because of course he did, the damn creeperwolf asshole. Stiles would lean out the window and whisperyell at him, then tell him “goodnight” and “I’ll see you tomorrow,” unable to keep the fondness out of his voice.
Stiles got used to Derek leaving. But he always, always came back.
This wasn’t Derek, though. He looked like him, a little - a younger, less shielded version of him - and had the same dry humor and exasperated expressions. But…he wasn’t his Derek. The Derek who knew Stiles equally well. Who showed up at the graveyard on the anniversary of his mom’s death, with a pile of brightly colored gerbera daisies and the time set aside to sit quietly with Stiles as he wiped away tears and brushed the headstone clean.
His Derek would have rolled his eyes at Stiles’s cautions and had one foot outside before Stiles's entire body was out of the doorway.
His Derek would’ve grinned at him, all teeth and no threat, and maybe come back inside.
But this Derek didn’t know him. Didn’t have a reason to trust him. This Derek stayed put, and looked at him with wide, confused eyes when he flung himself back in the room to follow through with their usual routine.
Stiles had spent a fortune and fought through hell to get Derek back. But he hadn’t gotten Derek back. Not entirely.