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The sheet of plywood sticks stubbornly, but just as Derek manages to yank it from the wall, his phone vibrates against his thigh. He jerks in surprise and drops the plank right on his toe, cursing sharply as he reaches into his pocket for his phone—Stiles.
“What?” Derek growls, in lieu of a proper greeting. It’s silent for a second, and he frowns harder. “Damn it, Sti—”
“Um, is this Derek?”
It’s a woman, her thin, shaky voice transmitting fear easily, and he tenses immediately as his mind sifts through various terrible scenarios. If this has to do with those fucking faeries… “Who is this? Where is he, why do you have his phone?” he asks, heading for his car and swiping his keys off the makeshift table by the door. Whatever this is, it can’t be good.
“My, uh, my name is Susan,” she says, the words spilling from her lips and running together. “There was a car accident, I saw it, a blue Jeep, and a, uh, a black truck. I called 911, but they’re not here yet and then I found his phone and you’re the first name on his contact list.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. If Stiles can’t use his phone, he’s unconscious—or worse. Derek guns the Camaro’s engine and speeds off, paying no attention to the mud spinning under his wheels and the little rocks pinging off the frame. “Where are you?” he interrupts, and she takes a shuddering breath.
“On the edge of the Preserve, on Ridgeside. Just past the gravel road, by the big—”
“By the big tree, yeah,” he says, cutting her off. “I’ll be there in five minutes. Will you, uh—”
“I’ll stay with him,” she promises.
He ends the call without saying anything, which is probably rude, but he doesn’t really give a flying fuck, not when he’s straining to hear Stiles’ heartbeat. He knows he’s too far away, but that doesn’t stop him from trying and cursing himself when he can’t.
He’d been surprised when he got that first text from Stiles, in the middle of his second week at college. Things had mostly settled for the kids’ senior year—save for a few creatures passing through town, including the aforementioned faeries—and while he and Stiles weren’t as antagonized as they used to be, they weren’t really close, either.
The text wasn’t anything serious, just a random rant about Stiles’ roommate and his strange habit of showering in the middle of the night. Derek wasn’t sure how to reply—he ended up saying something awkward about how it was better than his roommate not showering—but it didn’t really seem to matter because Stiles kept texting him, all the time. About his classes, about the cute barista at the library coffee shop, about his sudden interest in Frisbee, about his indecision in choosing a major. Derek had never really been a texting sort of guy, but he got the hang of it, kinda, and they quickly settled into something which he thought he could safely call friendship.
At first, Derek wondered if it was just some kind of desperate search on Stiles’ part for a connection to his hometown, but he didn’t think so. He had Allison and Erica and Lydia with him, after all, and everyone else was still fairly close—Scott and Isaac were still in Beacon Hills, while Jackson and Boyd and Danny were an hour away in the other direction. They never talked on the phone, though, and didn’t talk about seeing each other, even though he was pretty sure Stiles came home fairly frequently during his first semester, considering that he was only about 90 minutes away.
He concentrates hard and is able to pick up Stiles’ heartbeat, finally, when he’s about half a mile away. It’s slow, especially compared to his usual jackrabbit pace, but it’s there, which is comforting enough, and the knot in Derek’s chest loosens a tiny bit. He also smells blood, definitely Stiles’, but tries to focus on the steady thump of his heart instead.
He finally spots the Jeep, nearly wrecked beyond recognition, and screeches to a stop, remembering at the last second to pull off the road to make room for the ambulance. It’s dusk, and as Derek hops out of the car, he almost wishes that his vision wasn’t as sharp as it was. The Jeep is a mangled jumble of metal and glass, the driver’s side door caved in sharply, and he curses as he runs a hand over his hair.
There’s a woman—Susan, he reminds himself—who’s hovering a few feet away. She’s a few years older than him, probably, and the fear and shock are practically pouring off of her. She also smells human, thankfully. “Derek?” she asks, and he nods.
“Did you have anything to do with this?” he asks bluntly, and her eyes widen.
“No, of course not!” she exclaims, and he nods—she didn’t lie.
“Sorry,” he forces himself to say, trying to rearrange his face into a less severe scowl. She’s being helpful, after all, but with all the shit that goes down in this town, he can’t be too careful. “What happened, what did you see?”
She gestures to the side of the road, where a little terrier is tugging against the constraints of his leash wrapped around a low tree branch. “I was walking Freddie, and I heard tires squealing and the crash. I ran and saw the other truck drive off. I, uh, I got a license plate, I think, and I called 911.”
Derek’s only half-listening as he steps closer to the car. It smells burned, from the deployed airbag, and he has to steel himself against the onslaught of memories. “Be careful,” she says, but he ignores her as he wrenches the driver’s side door open. Glass peppers his forearms, cutting his skin through his shirt, but the small wounds start healing immediately. “He’s breathing, but I was afraid to touch him. I saw his phone on the passenger seat.”
Derek forces himself to breathe steadily as he stands there and looks at Stiles, unconscious and so…so human, so breakable. He’s well-accustomed to adrenaline, the way it makes his blood sing and surge through his veins, but this feels different, and he’s having more trouble than usual controlling it. He shakes his head, trying to dislodge those pesky emotions, and focuses. He checks Stiles’ pulse, just for show since he can still hear his heart. His arm is at a terrible angle, almost certainly broken, and his face is a mess of bruises and cuts, probably from the airbag and the glass.
He blocks Susan’s view and surreptitiously slices through the seatbelt with a claw, knowing that it will look like he just had a pocketknife. He pats Stiles down carefully, looking for more serious injuries, and curses when his hand hits a sticky patch below his ribs. It’s bleeding sluggishly, so Derek tugs off his own shirt and wads it up, pressing it hard against the wound.
“Stiles,” he calls out loudly, putting his face right up next to his. “Stiles, c’mon, wake up.”
“Der’k?”
His eye, the one that isn’t swollen shut, opens just a smidge, and Derek swallows hard, pushing down the feelings that threaten to surge up again. “Yeah. Stay with me. What hurts?”
“Arm,” he gasps, his breathing labored, but then his head lolls to the side as his eyes fall shut again.
“Motherfucker.” Derek exhales sharply and shakes his head, but at least he finally picks up the sirens—about a mile out, he would guess. He turns to Susan, who is standing only a few feet behind him and worrying her lower lip between her teeth. “Are you okay?” he asks, nodding to the sharp line of blood on her arm, and she nods, waving her hand.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just cut it on some glass. Here’s his phone by the way,” she says, holding it out, and he reaches out with his free hand.
“Thanks,” he says absently, sliding it into his back pocket.
Derek is pretty uncomfortable with panic and fear, so he tries to morph it into anger—anger at Stiles for getting in an accident, anger at whatever asshole did this and then ran away, anger at himself for…for what? He can conjure up some ideas—maybe Stiles could have been driving to see him, though probably not—but he knows it’s weak, knows that this actually isn’t his fault. He almost wishes that it was, actually, so he could spend this time being angry at himself instead of panicked about how uncomfortably close Stiles had come to dying. And that’s assuming that he’s going to be okay.
The sirens are loud now, almost deafening to his sensitive ears, and after going to Deaton so many times for various supernatural-related incidents, it feels strange to be waiting on traditional medical care. He exhales a sigh of relief anyway. The ambulance screeches to a stop, right in the middle of the road, and then a man and a woman are jogging toward him, rolling a stretcher. Derek slides one arm behind Stiles’ back, keeping pressure with his shirt on the wound, and lifts him as carefully as he can manage before depositing him on the stretcher.
“What about you, are you okay?” the man asks, looking him up and down, and Derek nods.
“I’m fine. I wasn’t, uh, involved. I think she might need a bandage, though,” he says, nodding to Susan, but she waves them off, shaking her head. “His breathing sounds a little off, his heart rate’s steady. He, uh, he was awake for just a second, but he knew who I was.”
“That’s a good sign.”
There’s a big drawstring bag of clothes in the backseat of the Jeep—Derek remembers Stiles texting him about how the laundry machines at school eat everyone’s quarters and are clearly possessed—and he rifles through it until his fingers land on a long-sleeved shirt. It doesn’t smell too bad, to him, at least, so he slips it over his head. It’s a little small, but not much, and it’ll be better than wandering around the hospital shirtless and bloody. It’s a little cool for late May, anyway.
“You coming?” the EMT asks, pausing before he hops in the ambulance after the stretcher, and Derek nods before he can even think about it. He turns back to Susan, who’s already shooing him away.
“You go. I’ll wait for the cops, tell them what I saw.”
“Could you also tell them to call the sheriff? It’s his son.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you,” he says sincerely, trying to give her a hint of a smile, and she nods.
“You’re welcome. I hope he’s okay.”
Derek climbs into the back of the ambulance, taking the little seat that the woman gestures to, and they’re taking off before the doors even close. He watches, feeling helpless as they slide an oxygen mask on and work quickly to check Stiles’ vitals and patch up his wounds. They don’t seem especially panicked, which Derek wants to take as a good sign, but he reminds himself that they’re professionals—they probably wouldn’t look panicked, no matter how bad the situation.
“Is he, uh—” he asks, waving his hand in Stiles’ direction, unsure of how he should finish that sentence.
The woman’s face softens as she twists to look at him. “They’ll need to do tests for internal bleeding and more severe injuries. But my guess is that it’s a bad concussion and a few broken bones. He should be okay.”
Derek nods. He wants to reach out, wants to touch him and feel for himself that he’s going to be okay, but he resists. He does slouch a bit in his seat, though, and lets his shin rest against Stiles’ thigh.
“Are you two close?” she asks, diplomatically. He nods but doesn’t look up from his study of Stiles’ chest, rising and falling rhythmically.
He finally saw Stiles over his winter break, at a little get-together that Scott hosted at his house. It was strange, watching him tell stories that Derek had already heard, like the one where he got drunk on Halloween in his Batman costume and got a little too confident in his ability to leap off things. The two of them chatted a little bit through the course of the night, sure, but neither of them made any mention of the fact that they’d been talking multiple times a day for the past four months. Derek didn’t know how to mention it—hey, sorry to interrupt, but are we friends now?—and it left him feeling vaguely unsettled.
Stiles finally cornered him outside on the porch, after most people had already left, and in lieu of addressing the elephant in the room, Derek brought up the one topic that he hadn’t told him about. “I’ve been fixing up the house.”
Stiles tilted his head and laid his hand on Derek’s arm for just a second as he smiled. “Wow, really, dude? That’s awesome, congrats. What kind of fixing up are we talking about? Some new throw pillows, maybe? Window treatments for the broken windows?”
Derek smiled, in spite of himself, and shook his head. “Tore the whole thing down a couple months ago.”
“Oh, holy shit,” Stiles said, his eyes wide in surprise. “Fresh start, huh?”
He nodded and wasn’t quite quick enough at tearing his gaze away from Stiles’ throat when he took a sip of his beer.
Derek’s quickly dismissed when they get to the hospital, just shown to the waiting room and told to sit tight while they whisk Stiles away. He paces for a little while and then eventually folds himself into a chair when he begrudgingly realizes that they aren’t going to tell him anything.
He tugs Stiles’ phone out of his pocket and spins it in his fingers for a few minutes before he finally gives into the temptation. He thumbs to his contact list, and sure enough, there they are, three asterisked names above the rest.
*Derek
*Scott
*Sheriff
Huh.
“Derek!”
He looks up in surprise—there had been so much noise in the waiting room that he had pretty much filtered everything out—and sags a bit in relief at the sight of the Sheriff. He’s in his uniform, so he must have been on duty when he got the call.
“Hi, sir,” he says, standing up and offering his hand.
“Call me John,” he says warmly, shaking Derek’s hand with both of his own. “Do you know—”
“They won’t tell me anything,” he interrupts, with a shake of his head. “And Melissa isn’t here, I asked.”
John nods. “Let me go see what I can find out, I’ll be right back.”
Derek tips his head back against the wall and forces himself to breathe, trying to relax the tension in his muscles, until he senses John sitting back down next to him. “Any news?” he asks, trying to keep his voice steady. The sheriff is still projecting a fair amount of fear and stress, but no more than he was before.
“Yeah, he’s stable,” he says, exhaling and bracing his elbows on his knees. “They’re still doing some tests, but we should be able to see him soon.”
Derek closes his eyes in sheer relief and nods. “Good, that’s good.” When he opens them again, there are keys dangling in front of his face.
“I drove your car over, you left the keys in the ignition.”
“Oh,” Derek says dumbly, taking the keys. “Uh, thank you.”
“When I heard the call over the radio, that there had been a car accident involving a blue Jeep,” John says, shaking his head. “Man, it was just about the longest 20 minutes of my life until I got there. But after I talked to that woman, I felt a lot better knowing you were with him.”
Derek blinks, more than a little surprised at that. After all, he’s pretty sure that this already is the longest conversation he’s ever had with Stiles’ dad—without being a murder suspect, at least. When could he possibly have found the time to decide that Derek was worthy of trust, especially considering all the supernatural business? He decides not to think about that too much right now and instead pivots to something more pressing.
“She—Susan said she got the license plate…” Derek trails off and tries not to convey the fact that nothing would make him happier right now than tracking that bastard down and ripping him limb from limb. With the way his hands are clenched in his jeans, practically tearing the material, he’s likely not doing a good job. But, hell, the sheriff probably feels the same way.
He nods. “Yeah, we ran it and he has priors for drunk driving. I’ve got some guys looking for him now. We’ll find him—I promise.”
His face is stern, his eyes cold, and Derek believes him. It doesn’t completely negate his own urges, but he feels better knowing that the asshole will be behind bars before the night is over.
They sit there for a little while, mostly in comfortable silence, until a nurse comes over to them and says that they can see Stiles now. Derek is fully prepared to let John go without him, but he stands to follow the woman and gestures impatiently at Derek when he notices that he’s not coming.
There’s a tall, older woman in Stiles’ room, and Derek lets the doctor’s words wash over his head—broken arm, concussion, stitches, cracked ribs, collapsed lung—as he just looks at him. He’s unconscious still, or asleep, his skin unnaturally pale in stark contrast to the bruises, and Derek silently curses him again for the audacity of being human. He would do anything to switch places with Stiles, and that would be true regardless of his supernatural healing abilities.
The closing of the door jars him out of his thoughts, and he steps closer to the bed while John sits down in the chair on the other side. Stiles’ left arm is in a cast from the elbow down, and Derek carefully pushes up the sleeve of his gown so he can lay his hand on the bare skin of his upper arm.
“Holy shit,” John says lowly, and Derek follows his gaze to the black tendrils lacing up his own arm.
“We—werewolves, that is, we can take pain away.”
John nods, his eyes still locked on Derek’s arm. “Do you feel the pain instead?”
“Yeah, but not as badly,” he says, but then he steps back because it really is starting to hurt.
John just nods with a little hum. “I don’t know about you, but I haven’t eaten yet, and the food here sucks. Believe me—I know,” he says, with a little wistful dullness in his eyes, and Derek swallows. “There’s a pretty good burger place down the road, though. You wanna go grab us some dinner?”
Derek nods, grateful for something to do, and murmurs that he’ll be right back.
Are those PAINT CHIPS??? WTF, dude, seriously.
Holy shit does this mean you’re at Home Depot or something, like a normal person? I can’t even imagine that.
I literally just sent you a picture of it, that should help your imagination.
Omg this must mean that you want my opinion! This is amazing.
Are you deciding which shade of green would best complement your brooding eyes? That’s a tough decision.
Can my room be purple? We all get rooms, right?
I immediately regret this decision.
Hold up, did you just quote Anchorman??? Maybe you’re human after all.
Not sure if you’ve heard, but I’m actually a werewolf.
Oh, one joke and now you think you’re funny? I see how it is.
Do you know how many different shades of beige there are?
You are not painting your house BEIGE, Derek, Jesus.
I’m pretty sure that’s up to me.
Shut up, you’re the one who texted me. Find some blues, you need to paint the kitchen blue.
Why?
Why? Because blue is soothing, okay? Just trust me.
I wasn’t aware that you were getting your degree in interior decorating.
I watch a lot of HGTV, I know what I’m doing.
I don’t care what you say, I’m not letting you come near any power tools.
Are you really going to deny me the opportunity to hold a drill and make screwing jokes??
Absolutely.
But that’s not fair!
Doesn’t matter what’s fair.
Or nailing!
Wait, why are all of the sex innuendos related to construction???
I’m leaving his conversation.
It’s not like you can hang up on me, dude, I’ll just keep texting you.
You’re the worst.
Shut up, you love me.
Derek returns with the requested food, and he and John set up shop in a quiet corner of the waiting room. “Thanks for this,” John says, removing the tomatoes from his burger and adding a squirt of ketchup to the bun. “Stiles was awake for a little while.”
“Yeah?” Derek asks, trying to keep his voice steady. “How was he?”
“Good,” John says. He nods and lets one corner of his mouth creep up in a smirk. “Complained about his cast and that he didn’t have his phone.”
Derek laughs. “Sounds about right.”
They eat in silence for several minutes, and then John looks around them and leans closer. “Do you think there was anything suspicious about this?” he asks quietly, and Derek knows exactly what he means.
“My guess is no, especially if the guy makes a habit of driving drunk. I didn’t smell anything unusual at the scene, but I asked Scott and Isaac to poke around the area, just in case. You could run the guy’s name by Chris, see if he recognizes him.”
John nods. “That’s a good idea, I’ll do that,” he says, then shakes his head. “Scary, isn’t it? You kids survive all sorts of shit, the stuff of nightmares, but there are still drunk drivers out there.”
Derek coughs harshly—suddenly his burger tastes like sawdust and he’s forced to put it down. Fuck. That is a thought he cannot deal with at the moment.
“I’ve been fixing up the old house,” he blurts out, just to redirect the conversation, and John looks up from his burger in surprise. “It’s, uh, not quite livable yet, but it’s getting there.”
“Hey, that’s great, Derek,” John says, looking genuinely happy for him. “I know a lot of people in this town, so if you need anything, permits or recommendations or the like, don’t be a stranger, okay?”
Derek nods. “Thank you,” he offers, even though it feels insufficient.
“You know, Stiles talks about you a lot,” John says, his gaze suddenly fixed on Derek in a fairly terrifying cop/dad combo. “Are you two…”
“Oh,” he says after a second, his eyes widening when it finally clicks what the Sheriff’s getting at. “Uh, no, we’re not—”
“Are you sure?” he asks, one eyebrow raised. His expression is more curious than demanding, and Derek isn’t sure if he’s trying to suss out a lie or—or convince him of something.
“Yes,” he says, honestly, because it’s the truth in either case, and John nods.
A nurse comes over to them then, but she’s smiling warmly and Derek tries not to worry. “Sheriff, your son is awake again. You can see him if you’d like.”
John stands with a nod and starts to gather their trash. “That’s great. You go see him first, son.”
He jerks in surprise at the nickname as much as anything. “You, uh, you sure?”
“Yeah. I need to call and check in on my guys, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Derek nods, awkwardly, and spins on his heel in the direction of Stiles’ room. He knocks twice before he pushes the door open and then hovers awkwardly at the foot of the bed. Stiles is awake, though his lids are heavy, and he starts to fidget when he sees Derek. “Wow, you’re, uh, you’re still here.”
“’Course I’m here,” he says, shrugging, because seriously, where else would he be?
“Dad said the bystander called you.”
“Yeah. You should really put your dad in your contacts as Dad instead of Sheriff so he’s listed first,” he says, but Stiles doesn’t smile like he wanted, he just winces and looks down at where he’s threading the sheet hem in between his fingers.
“Sorry. That they—that you had to deal with this, I mean.”
Oh, fuck.
Comforting isn’t exactly his forte, so Derek awkwardly pats Stiles’ ankle through the sheets and sits down in the chair next to his bed. “Hey, it isn’t—that’s not what I meant, I was just kidding. I’m glad she called, I’m glad I was there.”
“Thank you,” he says, his voice smaller than usual. “For helping.”
“You would’ve done the same,” Derek says, and he’s pretty sure he’s never uttered a truer statement. “Saving each other’s lives—that’s kind of our thing, right?”
Stiles laughs, though it quickly turns into a hacking cough, and he winces. “I never thought I would ever have to say this to you, but don’t make me laugh. Fuck, that hurts.”
“Sorry,” he says softly, sneaking one hand under the sheets to encircle Stiles’ wrist and draw away some of the pain. The groan he lets out in response is practically indecent, and as Derek shifts in his seat, he’s really glad there aren’t any other wolves around to give him funny looks for his reaction.
“God, that’s better than the pain pills,” Stiles says, his eyes falling shut. “There’s no way my dad’s gonna let me have any drugs when I get outta here, so I’m gonna have to keep you around,” he says, peeking one eye open as if he’s judging Derek’s reaction.
“Okay,” he says simply.
Stiles blinks at him and opens his mouth to respond, but John and Stiles’ doctor walk in. Derek stands out of the way as she checks a few things and talks quietly with John. And sure enough, as soon as the doctor walks out of the room, the Sheriff snatches the pain med prescription off the table and rips it up, making Stiles groan. Derek stifles a smile.
“Oh, don’t give me that, kid. Opioid addiction is serious. And you have your own personal morphine drip right there, it seems like, so you can’t really complain.”
John takes the other chair by Stiles’ bed, and the three of them spend the next half hour or so chatting. Well, it’s mostly Stiles and John talking, with Stiles taking the lion’s share of the work. But it’s more peaceful than Derek can remember ever being in a hospital.
John looks between his watch, his phone, and Stiles, and Derek can tell what he’s thinking.
“You can go, if you need to,” Derek says to him. “I’ll stay with him.”
John pauses. “Are you sure?” he asks, and Derek nods.
“Thank you for talking about me like I’m not here,” Stiles pipes in. “But seriously, Dad, you should go home and get some rest, or work or whatever you need. I’ll pester Derek for a little longer and then make him leave, too.”
Derek rolls his eyes—as if he’s leaving tonight—and John stands up. “Fine. One of the deputies will be here in a few minutes to pick me up.”
“You don’t have your cruiser?” Stiles asks.
“Derek rode with you in the ambulance, and I brought his car.”
“Really? You got to drive the Camaro before me?” Stiles asks, his jaw dropping. “My own father, betraying me like that, are you serious? God, are you two best buddies now or something? I don’t think I’m ready for that.”
“Well,” John says, stretching out the word, “he did buy me a burger, so I think I like him more than you.”
“Traitors,” Stiles mutters, twisting his mouth into a petulant frown. “Both of you.”
Derek laughs and catches John’s gaze. God, when he woke up this morning, he sure as fuck did not expect to be sharing commiserating eye rolls with the Sheriff.
“Call me if anything changes, okay?”
“I will, I promise,” Derek says, and he watches as John leans down to press a kiss to Stiles’ forehead. He returns his wave as he leaves.
“Hey, is that my shirt?” Stiles asks.
Derek looks down needlessly and nods. “Yeah, you bled all over mine.”
“Isn’t that from my bag of dirty clothes?” he asks, his nose wrinkled, and Derek shrugs.
“Didn’t smell bad to me. And it’s not like I had a lot of options, I didn’t want to be here without a shirt on.”
“I would be getting bothered by the nurses a lot more often, that’s for sure,” Stiles says, and Derek rolls his eyes.
“I got you something,” he says, reaching into the bag at his feet. Stiles perks up and struggles to sit up higher.
“Ooh, please tell me that it’s one of those corny ‘get well beary soon’ teddy bears from the hospital gift shop.”
“Unfortunately, no,” he says. “Hopefully a burger and curly fries will suffice.”
Stiles gasps. “Are you serious? Man, that’s even better.”
Derek hides a smile as he moves a nearby tray over Stiles’ bed and deposits the containers on top of it. “Are you sure you’re allowed to eat?”
“Yeah, they gave me something gross a couple hours ago that I’m assuming was supposed to be dinner. But this is way better.”
Stiles’ groan after his first bite is truly obscene. Fuck. “Are you eating that burger or having sex with it?” he asks, and Stiles just glares at him as he takes another gigantic bite.
“Shut up.”
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to bite the hand that feeds you?”
Stiles laughs around his next bite and manages to swallow before he chokes. “Seriously, thank you, Derek. This was very nice.”
“You’re welcome.”
Once the burger and fries are half-gone, Stiles groans, rubbing his stomach, and pushes the tray away. “Fuck, I’m full. It’s all yours, buddy.”
Derek hums and picks up the burger, finishing it in three big bites. “Save the fries. Maybe you’ll want a midnight snack.”
He smiles and watches as Derek packs up the trash. “Thank you. But you don’t have to stay the night, really.”
Derek just shrugs and settles back into his chair, propping his feet up on the end of Stiles’ bed. “Nothing else better to do.”
Holding Derek’s gaze, Stiles’ expression turns calculating for a second before he nods. “This hospital room is probably nicer than the loft, anyway,” he says, grinning, and Derek rolls his eyes.
“You wanna talk about my living arrangements, or you wanna tell me why your dad thinks we’re dating? What have you been telling him about me?”
Groaning, Stiles shuts his eyes and twists his head to press his cheek against the pillow. “Oh, no, wait, what’s that…my concussion? Yep, I think I’m just gonna pass out right about now.”
He’s doing a decent impression of being asleep, his breaths deep and even, but Derek can hear his heartbeat galloping along. “You know I can tell you’re not actually asleep, right?”
“Shh,” he says, his mouth curved into a tiny smile, and Derek laughs as he settles more comfortably into the chair.
A couple months ago, Derek typed out a message and waited a long time before pressing send, not until the day was almost over.
Today is my mom’s birthday.
What was her favorite color?
The response came almost instantly, and Derek frowned at his phone for a second before responding.
Red
For an Alpha, how appropriate. :)
You’re in the house, aren’t you?
Yeah, he sent back, but he didn’t mention that he was laying on the unfinished floor of his parents’ room. Well, in the room that was roughly where his parent’s room had been—he’d changed the layout a bit.
Stiles kept up a steady stream of questions, random ones like what she yelled about most often (Derek and Laura fighting), her favorite breakfast (pancakes), and the best gift she ever gave him (a black bike for his tenth birthday, which she wrapped meticulously). It hurt, at first, and his memory felt creaky as he accessed so many stories for the first time in a long while. Stiles kept asking for more specifics and offering details about his own mother in return, about how much she liked to bake and how she would always yell when he tracked mud into the house.
I would give anything to hear her yell at me again.
Derek knew the feeling.
They texted continuously until the room slowly filled with the hazy, gray light of dawn, and Derek kept his eye on a fleck of dust as it danced lazily through a sunbeam striping the floor.
You should go to sleep. Sorry I kept you up all night.
Are you kidding? I’m in college, dude, I’ve perfected the art of the all-nighter. Hope I helped.
You did.
His back was a little stiff, as were his thumbs, but overall he felt better—lighter than he had in years, probably. And if his cheeks were a little damp, well, no one would know.
Derek’s drifting through a very light doze when a sudden uptick in the heart rate monitor startles him into full consciousness. Stiles is curled up on his side, facing away from Derek, and he’s twitching and moaning in his sleep—Derek can recognize the signs of a nightmare when he sees them.
And before he can think better of it, Derek toes off his shoes and climbs into bed behind Stiles, curling around him carefully. He rests one hand on his chest and grumbles lowly, trying to wake Stiles up without startling him.
He comes to with a gasp and then a pained groan, his eyes darting around as he jerks. “Derek?”
“Shhh,” he says softly, moving his hand to Stiles’ arm to leach some of his pain. “You were having a nightmare, everything’s fine.”
He’s still moving around too much, probably aggravating his ribs, and Derek tightens his grip as gingerly as he can manage. “You need to stay still, okay?”
Stiles swallows audibly and nods. “Shit, everything hurts.”
“Just lean back against me and try to relax.”
Stiles does, lets his weight slump back against Derek, and Derek takes more of his pain.
“Don’t do it too much,” he says quietly, and at least it sounds like the nightmare is gone. “I know it hurts you, too.”
He shakes his head—he’d take all of Stiles’ pain if he could, in a second—but finally takes his hand off when his head starts to swim. Stiles smells wrong, like blood and antiseptic and all the other people who have been touching him, and Derek is selfishly enjoying holding him.
“You want to talk about it?” he asks. Stiles shakes his head and makes a pained noise, but he starts talking anyway.
“It was just—the accident again, but this, this creature with like five heads came out of the other car, and there were so many of them, and you weren’t there, no one was there—”
Derek swallows. “I’m sorry.”
Stiles takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly. “Was this just a normal accident?”
“So far, yes. But everyone’s looking into it, just to be sure. Do you remember anything?”
Stiles shakes his head. “Nothing out of the ordinary. I was just driving along, and—bam.”
Derek clenches his eyes shut as John’s words come back to him— you kids survive all sorts of shit, the stuff of nightmares, but there are still drunk drivers out there. “I’m really glad you’re okay.”
“I was coming to see you,” Stiles says, his voice low, and Derek inhales sharply. “No, stop, don’t do that, c’mon. I may not be some fancy werewolf, but I can feel your guilt. This isn’t your fault.”
“It is, though,” he says, trying to concentrate on Stiles’ steady heartbeat instead of the impending panic in his own head. “If you hadn’t been coming to see me, then you wouldn’t have gotten into an accident. It’s that simple.”
“No, it’s not,” Stiles insists. “Listen to my heart, okay? This is not your fault, and I do not blame you. Do you believe me?”
“I believe you think that,” he says mulishly, and Stiles sighs.
“And I need you to believe it, too, okay? Please.”
“No promises,” Derek says, finally, and Stiles snorts.
His heartbeat speeds up again, but Derek doesn’t sense any other signs of impending panic. He flattens his hand right over Stiles’ heart anyway and tries to slow it with just the power of his mind.
“I mean, hey,” Stiles starts, his voice a little too casual, “we’re in bed together and you’re cuddling me. This turned out even better than I was hoping for when I left for your house.”
Derek freezes, and Stiles’ heart thumps even harder against his hand. “Cuddling?”
“This is like a grade-A cuddle, dude. Some might even call it a snuggle.”
After an awkwardly long pause, Derek’s brain finally starts working again. “At least I get to be the big spoon.”
Stiles huffs, but he clutches harder at Derek’s arm around his chest and his heart rate slowly starts to return to normal.
One night a few weeks ago, Derek was stumbling back to bed after going to the bathroom when he checked his phone out of habit. It showed three texts from Stiles, the most recent of which was 15 minutes ago.
If you’re awake, could you call me?
If not, or if this wakes you up, don’t worry about it.
I mean, obviously if you’re not awake you won’t call. Fuck. Actually, please don’t call. Sorry. Go back to sleep.
Derek scratched at his beard and flopped back into bed, tapping Stiles’ number to call him. Of course he was going to call—3 am texts usually weren’t about anything good. It only rang once.
“Hey,” Stiles said, far quieter than usual.
“You didn’t wake me up,” Derek replied, clearing his throat when it came out croaky.
“I don’t believe you.”
He sighed, biting his lip to hide his smile before he realized that his bedroom was dark and empty, he didn’t have to hide from anyone. “My bladder woke me up, promise. But I wouldn’t have cared if you had. You can call me whenever you want, you know that.”
Stiles hummed non-committedly and fell silent again. The sudden urge to fill the silence felt foreign to Derek. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Just a really shitty nightmare.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Absolutely not.”
Derek laughed, he couldn’t help it, and Stiles chuckled, too. “Do you get nightmares often?”
Stiles sighed. “More often than I’d like but less often than I would expect. You know, considering…everything.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right.”
“You get nightmares?” Stiles asked, sounding a little surprised, and Derek scoffed.
“Of course. Not all the time, but—yeah.”
“Do you know why our dreams are such a weird mix of familiar things and completely batshit scenarios?”
“Tell me,” Derek said, pulling the blanket back over his body and letting his eyes fall shut. Stiles started talking about dreams, something about inactivity in the part of the brain that processes reason, but Derek paid more attention to the lilt and timbre of Stiles’ voice than the words.
“Have you fallen asleep on me?” he asked a few minutes later, and Derek smiled.
“Almost,” he murmured. “What about you? Can you go back to sleep?”
“Yeah. I think I can.”
“Good.”
“Thank you,” Stiles said softly, and Derek clenched his eyes shut.
“Always,” he said finally.
Two days later, Derek’s carefully putting on a second coat of paint in the half-bathroom off the kitchen. He has the radio on, loud enough that he doesn’t hear the car until it’s nearly all the way up the driveway.
He steps out the front door just as Stiles is carefully making his way up the porch steps, holding his ribs. “My dad’s sleeping all day, hopefully, but he’s gonna be super pissed when he wakes up and sees that I took his car. I’m not supposed to be driving yet.”
“Then why are you here?” Derek says, not unkindly. He reaches out for Stiles’ good arm and sneaks away a bit of his pain under the guise of guiding him through the door. “You should be home, resting.”
“I can rest here.”
“I don’t really have any furniture yet,” Derek says apologetically, hovering a little awkwardly. But Stiles just waves his hand.
“Don’t worry about it. I just wanted to see you, see the house, finally,” he says, moving through the living room and into the kitchen. “It looks amazing, Derek. Seriously.”
Derek leans against the kitchen wall—painted Sherwin Williams’ Bluebird Feather—and watches Stiles trail his fingers over the countertops that he had picked out when Derek sent him pictures of the catalog. “Thank you.”
“Look at you, you built yourself a home.”
He ducks his head. “It’s getting there, I guess.”
“And thanks for the bear, by the way,” Stiles says, one corner of his mouth lifted in a grin, and Derek can’t help but smile back.
“I thought you would appreciate it.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I would have preferred to wake up with you, but the bear was a close second.”
Derek decides to sidestep that terrifying thought for the time being. “How are you feeling?”
“Better, I guess,” Stiles allows. “Just sore all over.”
“You want me to…?” Derek asks, stepping closer and lifting his hand, but Stiles shakes his head.
“Nah, I took some Tylenol right before I came. But thank you,” he adds, and Derek nods. “Can I tell you something embarrassing?”
“Always,” Derek says dryly, trying to making Stiles laugh. He’s probably more proud than he should be when it works.
“I had to sit in the car for about 10 minutes before I got up the courage to actually drive over here. Isn’t that insane? I wasn’t scared of those faeries a few months ago, but now driving, something that I’ve done probably a thousand times, practically gives me a panic attack.”
“That isn’t embarrassing,” Derek says, shaking his head. “At least we know what we’re up against with stuff like that, and we usually get a chance to prepare and defend ourselves. This—accidents are fucking terrifying.”
“It makes me less scared of other things, though,” Stiles says, his gaze determined.
Fuck. Derek tenses immediately and takes an instinctive step back, putting more space in between them. “Um.”
Stiles’ face shutters, and he starts to edge around Derek. “Okay. You don’t have to say anything else, that’s—that’s clear enough.”
Goddamn it, he is the fucking worst.
“Wait,” he says, reaching out to grab Stiles’ wrist as he passes. Stiles twists from the momentum and then immediately grimaces, bending over to hold his ribs, and Derek lets go as if his skin is on fire. He flees to the far wall—okay, now he is the worst.
“Derek,” Stiles says, then again more firmly. “Derek. Stop it, I’m fine. My ribs are just sore when I move like that. Get your ass back over here.”
“I hurt you,” he says miserably, and Stiles rolls his eyes.
“Not on purpose, dumbass. Come over here and use your wolfy morphine to make me feel better.”
Eager to actually do something to help, Derek creeps closer and gently lifts Stiles’ shirt. The bruises there make him wince, and he fits his hand over the curve of Stiles’ ribs as carefully as he can manage. Stiles sags in Derek’s hold, and he tightens his grip.
Standing there, looking into Stiles’ eyes with one hand on his hip and the other under his shirt, Derek suddenly remembers what brought them here.
“Just forget I said anything,” Stiles says quietly, gazing off to a spot over Derek’s shoulder. “It was stupid.”
Derek swallows. “It’s not stupid.”
Capitalizing on a sudden burst of reckless courage, he ducks down just a scant inch—when did Stiles get so tall?—and presses their lips together. He forces himself to remember that Stiles is markedly breakable right now and barely manages to keep his grip light. He does, though, and makes the kiss even lighter, just a heady, firm brush of their lips. It feels like an everyday type of kiss, and Derek lets himself enjoy it for a few seconds before the whole thing disappears. He finally pulls away and keeps his eyes closed for an extra second.
“You’re really shit at words, aren’t you?” Stiles asks, but his smile is impossibly fond and Derek ducks his head. “But don’t get me wrong, I am totally in favor of the light on the talking, heavy on the kissing plan.”
“This probably isn’t a good idea,” he says, but he can’t quite make himself let go of Stiles.
“This is a fucking great idea,” Stiles corrects. “Tell me one thing—do you, Derek Hale, like me in any kind of a non-platonic, vaguely sexual way?”
Derek grits his teeth. “Yes,” he admits. “But you should—”
“Should what? I’m really shitty at doing things I should do,” he says, grinning, and Derek can’t help but laugh.
“Date other people, for one. At school. Where there are people your own age.”
“Oh, come on.”
“You’re only 19,” he says softly.
“And what, that means I don’t know what I want? I stopped being a kid when Scott got bitten.”
“Yeah, but that’s not fair.”
Stiles shrugs, his gaze steady. “I seem to remember someone telling me that it doesn’t really matter what’s fair.”
“You probably shouldn’t listen to that guy,” he says wryly, and Stiles throws his head back on a laugh.
“I usually make a point not to. But he’s pretty smart, actually, so—”
“Stiles.”
“Derek. I know you’re just trying to give me the opportunity to back out of this, or whatever, but I’m not gonna,” Stiles says, decreasing the space between them even more. “As long as you actually want to be with me, which I think you do, I’m not gonna let you guilt yourself out of this. Because I like you a lot, dude. I have for a long time.”
“You’re not lying,” he says, listening, and Stiles just rolls his eyes.
“Obviously. Is it that hard for you to believe that I actually want to be with you?”
“Yes,” Derek says, before he can even think about it, and Stiles’ eyes widen.
“Okay, I’m going to try your method now,” he says, and Derek barely gets a chance to take a breath before Stiles is tangling fingers in his hair and tugging him closer. This kiss is way more intense than the last one, with Stiles moving against him and uttering a truly shameless moan into his mouth. Derek grins into the kiss—maybe he can believe Stiles—and slides his palm along Stiles’ neck, tilting his head for a better angle.
“This is all a dream, right? From the pain meds? Or maybe this is still the nightmare, and you’re about to kill me or something.”
“Shut up,” Derek offers, only letting Stiles pull away for a breath before reeling him back in. One or both of them is laughing now, he can’t really tell, and he slides the fingers of both hands into Stiles’ hair.
“I mean, just kissing me isn’t enough to—”
Derek bites at his lower lip, making Stiles moan, and he swallows it eagerly with another deep kiss and swipe of his tongue.
“Okay, okay, it works, god, I’ll stop talking, will you just—”
“Just what?” Derek asks lowly. He’s trying so very hard to be gentle, but Stiles grunts in frustration and yanks him closer by fisting his good hand in his shirt. “Stop treating me like I’m gonna break.”
“But you did break,” he pulls away to say, his voice strong enough that it surprises even him. “I saw it, two days ago.”
Stiles pants, spots of color high on his cheeks, and Derek spares a thought for how fucking pretty he is. “I’m thankful for that. That I’m okay, obviously, but also because if that hadn’t happened, we probably wouldn’t be here right now. Carpe diem and all that shit, you know?”
“How romantic,” Derek says dryly, and Stiles grins at him.
“Plus, I have you to protect me.”
Derek rolls his eyes at that—what a ridiculous notion—but hauls him in for another kiss anyway.