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Stiles was drifting between blessed unconsciousness and the most pain he’d ever felt in his life. Derek knew this, because he was insisting on trying to take the pain away, and it was a sort of awful that went beyond Kali sticking him through with a rusty pipe and twisting it over and over again for hours.
Stiles jerked with a scream that wrenched through those present. Scott’s face twisted as he struggled to hold Stiles to the table while Deaton prepared a series of instruments that were designed for cutting and digging into skin and muscle. Derek felt sick at the idea of those going into Stiles, despite having experienced them himself more than he could remember.
“Derek, you have to stop taking the pain,” Deaton said. “I have to be able to see where it’s coming from so I can keep it from entering his bloodstream.” Derek growled, but his veins faded back beneath his skin. “Alright,” Deaton continued. “Scott, Ethan, I need you to do your best to keep Stiles still. Derek, you stay near his head. Talk to him. Keep him distracted as best you can so I don’t have to sedate him.”
“I don’t—shouldn’t Scott be doing this? Or Lydia?” Derek was desperately afraid that he wouldn’t be able to do this. “I’m not—they’re more important to him.”
“You’ve been his pack from the very beginning,” Deaton said calmly, preparing to remove the first bullet from Stiles’ leg. “Before either of you knew. He needs you.”
“Derek, do it,” Scott said from Stiles’ feet, where he was holding his ankles to the table.
Derek knelt next to the table and buried his face in Stiles’ sweat-slicked hair for a moment, breathing in as deeply as he could. He could barely find the scent that was pure Stiles under the metallic tang of blood and heavy darkness hanging in the air, which was terrifying. He wondered if this was the beginning of one of the panic attacks Stiles used to tell him about.
He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his mouth to the skin just below Stiles’ ear. “Stiles, can you hear me?” Deaton began to press a knife under Stiles’ skin and a high pitched whine left him. Derek pressed closer, sliding a hand around Stiles’ neck to feel his pulse. “Stiles, I need you to focus on my voice. Can you do that? Just listen to me, don’t think about anything else.” Stiles eyes opened wide and he cried out, straining against the hands holding him down.
Derek ignored the fresh wave of blood that assaulted his senses. “Remember when I was paralyzed, and you held me up in that pool for two hours? You wouldn’t let me go, and when you did it was to save us. And you came back. Well, this isn’t going to take two hours. I’m going to keep you up, I just need you to listen to me. You’re going to be okay, everything’s going to be okay, I promise.”
He just kept murmuring that over and over, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” until Stiles turned his head and his eyes met Derek’s, barely open. “Yeah, yeah, look at me, eyes on me,” he said quickly, cupping Stiles’ face with one hand.
“Tell me something,” Stiles whispered, voice so weak Derek could barely hear him.
“Our moms were friends,” Derek told him, and Stiles nodded even as he cried out when Deaton yanked the bullet from where it was caught in his leg. “I used to get so frustrated because I couldn’t figure out how to say your name, and it made me so mad that Laura could say it so easily.”
“You—you knew me?” Stiles’ eyes fluttered close, head lolling further into Derek’s hand, nose brushing Derek’s cheek just below his eye.
“Yeah.” Derek felt a laugh bubble up in his chest anxiously. “Yeah, when you were born, Mom brought me and Laura with her to the hospital to visit. I’d never been around babies other than my family before, and you were so small. Your mom offered to let me hold you, and I was so scared because I still didn’t have total control over myself all the time. But I think she knew, because she just handed you over and you were there and I just…god, Laura made fun of me for weeks, saying stuff about how six-year-olds aren’t supposed to be able to fall in love, and I didn’t even care because I just wanted to go back and see you again. It’s like, in my head, you were mine.”
Stiles choked out something that could have been a laugh but sounded more like a groan of pain. “Who knew Derek Hale was such a softy?” he muttered.
“You’re going to ruin my reputation,” Derek teased, but he could see Deaton preparing to stitch up the second wound now, and he rushed on. “And then when I met you and Scott again, I recognized you because I got that stupid feeling in my chest again, like I’d had with Paige and nothing how it’d been with Kate, but then you opened your mouth and all I could think was that there was some sort of mistake. No child raised by the sheriff could talk so much without saying anything at all. But it made sense, because your mom talked a lot too, from what I could remember.”
Stiles opened his mouth, maybe to say something, but what came out was a guttural sound that Derek didn’t think he was capable of. Deaton was pulling another bullet out from his abdomen now, and a sickly green liquid was oozing out of the wound with it. One of Stiles hands came up and Derek grasped it in his own, letting Stiles hold it so tightly that it hurt. “Almost finished, Stiles. Just a few more minutes.”
Stiles’ eyes were closing again, but he was saying something. Derek leaned closer to catch it. “So I was right. You didn’t like me when we met.”
“No,” Derek said, touching his forehead to Stiles’. “No, no, I wanted to—I wanted to hate you, I really did. But you kept coming back, you kept saving me and I kept saving you, and Deaton’s right. You’ve been my pack since before Scott, before anyone I turned. More than that, you’re mine. You’re mine and I’m yours and I can’t let you go. So you have to keep listening to me and don’t you dare go to sleep because I will follow you to the dead and drag you back myself.” A sleepy smile was spreading over Stiles’ face, but his body was going lax, and Deaton was saying something and Scott was crying and all Derek could do was press his mouth to Stiles’ pulse and will it to keep going, even as it slowed…
It was a week before Derek saw Stiles again.
Not for lack of trying, of course. But Sheriff Stilinski hadn’t let anyone up the stairs, not even Scott, until Stiles could stay awake for more than five minutes. Deaton had him on some pretty intense painkillers that Derek was almost positive were illegal in the U.S., but no one was arguing. The one time Derek tried to sneak through the window, it was locked, and all he could do was stare at the huddled mass of blankets on the bed and try to make out where Stiles was in it. He couldn’t trust his ears to tell him the truth about Stiles’ breathing.
Stiles was sitting up in bed with his laptop, researching exactly what type of poison had been laced in the bullets that nearly killed him. His hair was messy, like he’d been running his fingers through it, and he had shadows under his eyes, but the color had returned to his cheeks and his hands weren’t shaking like they had been that night. He grinned when Derek came in hesitantly through the window. “C’mere,” he said, grabbing Derek’s wrist as soon as it was in reach and pulling him next to Stiles on the bed. “I’ve found some really good stuff about what I got shot with, including how to get the poison out without Deaton shooting even more painful shit into me.”
Derek just watched his mouth move, let his voice wash over him, and closed his eyes, letting himself relax for the first time all week. Stiles noticed, but then, Derek hadn’t really been trying to hide it. “So,” Stiles teased, “I was pack first, huh?”
Derek looked him in the eye and nodded, and Stiles turned serious.
“So…did you mean everything else too?” He was biting his bottom lip and his fingers were curling in the air like they wanted to touch but were too afraid. Derek carefully pulled on Stiles’ chin so that his lips parted, and pressed himself in.
They were both breathless when Stiles pulled away just far enough to breathe in sharply through his mouth. “Yes,” Derek whispered. “Yes, yes, yes,” over and over, until Stiles was kissing him again and the words were stolen from his lips.