Archive of Our Own ^beta

 

so i choke on sun

 

When Stiles comes home, it’s a quiet Sunday evening. There is absolutely no fanfare, but he can see how grateful his father is by his huge smile and the relaxed slant of his shoulders, usually so tense and rigid. It smells like the Sheriff might have even cooked a homemade meal. That would be a first, Stiles thinks.

As he opens the door, Sheriff Stilinski says, “Your room’s still the same,” and pats Stiles on the shoulder before he can even get inside. “I didn’t really change much about it. Well, I threw out some of the trash that’s probably been hiding in there since junior year, but I didn’t want to go through your things.”

Stiles huffs out a laugh and nods up the stairs. “Thanks, Dad. I’m just going to,” he says, but he doesn't finish the thought, just half-points one of his suitcases in the direction of the second floor of the house and ducks his head expectantly.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” the Sheriff says. “Well, you know, I’m glad you’re back, Stiles.” There’s a little pause where they both acknowledge how long it’s been. “Stay as long as you want.”

Stiles hugs his dad even though he is totally embarrassed, and then they both pat each other on the back at the same time which, Stiles thinks, is definitely as awkward as he wants it to get, so he heads up to his old high school room. Everything’s still in its place: the bed in the corner of the room, his desk across from the end of it. Stiles drops his bags and takes a moment before he begins to unpack.

Slowly, he unzips every suitcase and rifles through them for the things he knows what to do with. All the clothes into his dresser, the books onto the shelves. He opens his closet and hangs his bright red uniform jackets in a row at the end of the empty hangers, slings the khakis in a row before them. Each belt looped through a latch, his shoes in the organizer his father’s hung for him on the back of the door.

He startles when he hears his dad cough behind him. Stiles turns around and sees him standing in the doorway, hovering for the first time in a long time, like he’s still unsure that Stiles will stay.

“Dinner?” Stiles sighs, relieved, and still entirely unused to family meals again.

“Yeah,” his dad nods. “I made brisket in that slow cooker thing I think you sent me a while ago. There might even be some carrots in there, too.”

"Healthy," Stiles says sarcastically, and he grins at his father as they walk downstairs to the kitchen.

///

Huh, six years, Stiles thinks.

It’s been six years since he’s been back in Beacon Hills for longer than a few weeks at a time. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t plenty of time for all the Beacon Hills bullshit to surface when he was home, it’s just been awhile since it’s been permanent.

Great. That’ll go well.

At Amherst, Stiles had spent the summers working in the admissions office and living in campus apartments to cut down on flight expenses and make some money so that he could study abroad. He gave tours, did a turn as an archival assistant, and one summer he waited tables at Judie’s on the main strip. He worked the closing shift four days a week and stayed an hour later than close just to finish up. On the weekends, he got out of work in the beginning hours of the new day. He quickly got used to wiping down the tables and cashing out before falling into an extra-long twin bed at night and sleeping straight through to the afternoon. The next day, he’d do it all over again. When he wasn’t working there, he took shifts at the local used book store across the street whenever they’d let him.

There was one time that Scott stuck around and lived on an air mattress on the floor of Stiles’ dorm room for a whole summer, sleeping late and eating scraps from the restaurant and spending full moons in the woody mountains of Massachusetts. He and Allison were taking a break from their relationship and Scott didn’t really want to spend a whole summer with the pack and “their hectic, lunar lives,” as he had said over and over again, every time with the air quotes. He kept talking about how it was the first time since high school he didn’t have some harpy or faery or “goddamn werewolf” chasing after him. Stiles always raised an eyebrow at that. He definitely wasn’t going to argue with his best friend, but mostly it meant that Scott sat around eating leftover, half-eaten omelets and disappearing for a few days at a time in between alternate bouts of Call of Duty and moping.

When he did go abroad, Stiles cashed in the piggy bank savings account he’d kept in every underwear drawer since getting to college. He bought his flight to Athens and stayed with a host family, where in between classes they taught him traditional Greek dances and gave him his own tsamika uniform to take home when he left. On weekends, he went to work with rural towns outside Athens and developed his focus on cultural anthropology with a specialty in subsistence patterns; he fell headfirst into the communities and took notes on everything. He came home with binders full of handwritten fieldwork observations and full hard drives overflowing with detailed spreadsheets and he carted them with him from dorm to dorm and kept them through every move, every city he chose to call home.

After Stiles graduated, he spent two years in Philadelphia as a City Year hire. When he’d first gotten to his apartment there, he’d been so young, just fresh out of college. Because he was living in University City, he was afraid of wearing what he foolishly thought would be onesie uniforms (they turned out to be jackets and slacks) and having the ivy-league senior students at Penn judge him with every step. To prepare himself and boost his waning self-confidence, Stiles wore footie pajamas for months; every night during his last summer in Amherst, he wore the footies out a little bit farther - the first time, it was just down the hall to the bathroom, where a super hot pre-freshman girl caught him trying to figure out the zipper after he peed. The next time, he wore them down the front steps of the dorm and right back up again. One very brave attempt was wearing them to the CVS under boots and a down jacket at the end of June. Once it was with nothing over the suit to the pond near the back of campus. That time, at the end of August, he’d used it as a cover-up after he jumped in the water naked and didn’t feel like sticking to fuzzy fabric on the walk back.

The first night he lived on 48th and Locust, two days before he started as a City Year corps member, Stiles sat on the floor of his shared living room watching Chopping Mall and Black Sheep and buzzing his hair down to a quarter of an inch.

Two years later, it’s grown out, a little top-full and wisped strands. He’s not sure anyone will recognize him with it long. He has this picture of his parents from their third date, one he stole from his father’s desk in his office at home, a memento that one of their friends took and now he keeps folded in the corners of his wallet. In high school, he used to hold it up and out, examining it as he stood in front of the mirror, comparing his young face to his dad’s as he rubbed his buzzed head over and over again. Everyone always says he’s the spitting image of the Sheriff. Now, he thinks his long hair makes him look like his dad in that photo from when his parents first fell in love, so he’s keeping it.

///

“Oh my god!” Stiles yells when a form appears at his window on the first night he’s back, laying around in his boxers. It’s still pitch black and Stiles can’t see the moon from his bed, so there’s barely even a profile to go off of.

“Sorry, sorry!” someone who sounds like Scott says, throwing their hands out in front of them and hopping off of the windowsill. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the voice says again, definitely Scott, before he fully launches himself at Stiles and wraps him in a hug that pins them both to the bed.

“What if I’d been naked?” Stiles asks, laughing into his best friend’s shoulder.

“Please. It’s Sunday. I know you don’t masturbate on Sundays,” Scott tells him, totally deadpan, and he lifts himself off of Stiles before making himself comfortable at the foot of the bed.

“Yeah, well. I could,” is all that Stiles has as a response. They just kind of stare at each other fondly, almost dopey with love, before something clicks with Stiles and he asks, “Dude, how did you know I was home? I was going to text you tomorrow.”

Scott looks sheepish for all of a split second before he lets his claws out.

“What do your claws have anything to do with – oh, gross, man, did you smell me out? Did you smell my musk? Is that what you’re trying to tell me with your wolfy talons? Your werewolf senses? Your wolfy nose? Why am I surprised? Why am I surprised anymore?” Stiles tries to sound annoyed, but really he’s just glad that everything’s familiar again and that Scott is showing up on his windowsill even though they’re both 24-years-old. He’s a little weirded out that his scent hasn’t changed in six years, though. He switched his cologne in Philadelphia and everything.

///

Stiles wakes up the next morning to his very confused father opening the door and then shutting it immediately. Too immediately. Very, very immediately.

“STILES?” his dad yells unnecessarily loudly from the hallway. Stiles imagines that he has one hand still on the doorknob, afraid to turn it.

“Dad, it’s just Scott,” Stiles yells back, and he can hear the Sheriff sigh way too audibly.

“I MEAN, I SAW YOU AND I SAW A NAKED BACK NEXT TO YOURS, SO I DIDN’T WANT TO INTRUDE. YOU BOYS JUST CARRY ON,” Stiles hears, still too loudly.

“DAD, YOU CAN COME IN.”

The doorknob starts to turn very slowly, and Scott, who had fallen asleep next to Stiles after he showed up in the middle of the night, wakes up with a smirk on his face as the Sheriff enters the room.

“Alright, well,” he says. “I just didn’t want to interrupt.” Stiles’ dad stares Scott down stoically before he cracks, breaks down, and laughs at how stupid Scott looks. Stiles bets he’s remembering all of the weird mornings in high school when he used to find Scott handcuffed to the end of Stiles’ bed and very pointedly not ask any questions about the claw marks on the footboard. At least once he found out about werewolves he stopped assuming that Scott and Stiles were having sex on the regular, though he still jokes about it every so often. When the Sheriff caught Stiles in bed with his actual first boyfriend, which Stiles still describes as the most traumatic moment of his life despite being threatened with bodily harm almost daily for 3 years, he sat Stiles down in the kitchen to tell him to be honest with Scott and that lying was not something he’d raised his son to do. Never had a sex talk, or a coming out talk – except that aborted attempt that one time at that one club, which Stiles has thus far unsuccessfully tried to block out of his memory, though he tries – but the Sheriff was going to make sure his son was honest.

“Dad, get a grip.”

“Fine, Stiles.” His dad gives him a look that can’t mean anything other than you’re no fun, give your old man a break, but he sobers up and barrels on. “Good to see you, Scott. Listen, boys, Stiles has a job interview later today down at the high school and then I need him to do some grocery shopping for me,” he says mostly to Scott, while Stiles looks totally offended and confused.

“Sure thing, Mr. S,” Scott says. He gives the Sheriff a thumbs up for good measure. “I’ll have him back by dinner time.”

“Do I even get a say in this?” Stiles asks, but he’s smiling as his dad shuts the door and Scott lazily pads over to the closet to start looking at button-down shirts that Stiles can wear to his interview.

///

After his interview, which is an entirely surreal experience, if Stiles is admitting the truth, he walks out into the parking lot to find Scott leaning against his Jeep, wearing an awkward v-neck sweater and staring up at Stiles as he walks down the stairs.

“Don’t you have something else to be doing?” Stiles asks, taking off his suit jacket and pulling at his buttoned collar. The jacket was maybe a little overkill. “You look like Michael Schoeffling in the last scene of Sixteen Candles.”

Scott looks confused. “Who?”

“Michael Schoeffling? Jake Ryan? Ultimate 80s hot guy who seduces the nerdy-but-pretty-girl Molly Ringwald? Do you know anything about pop culture?”

“Wasn’t that Pretty In Pink?”

“Wasn’t that Pretty In - oh my god, do I have to - that was Ducky, not Jake Ryan, how do you not know who - you know what?” Stiles waves his hands for emphasis, raking one through his hair. “You know what, nevermind. Don’t even worry about it.” He gives Scott his best incredulous eyebrows and they hop in the car.

At the grocery store, Scott walks next to Stiles as he ignores his dad’s shopping list and heads straight for the produce. Scott babbles about Allison and how she has started making her own crossbows now; his tone is both high reverence and total abject terror. Stiles palms the orange peppers, squeezing their skin softly to see what kind of give they have, and he puts his nose right up against cantaloupe rinds to see if he can smell how ripe they are.

He catches Scott staring at him with his face in a bunch of rainbow chard, a little slackjawed, and offers, “What? My students built a community garden.”

“Yeah, okay,” Scott says.

They make their way to the bulk food aisle, constantly passing abandoned carts where the shoppers have wandered off to find something in another aisle with the intention of being right back. Scott looks like he wants to make a game of bumper cars out of it but is desperately restraining himself for Stiles’ sake.

They pass a cart at the beginning of the condiment and canned vegetables aisle that is full to the brim with Hamburger Helper, some Kraft mac n’ cheese, multiple six-packs of frozen hamburger patties. Stiles can’t see any buns or bread of any sort, but there’s an onion floating on top of boxes of plain pasta and some literal tubs of butter. In his head, Stiles admits that it all looks pretty delicious.

He and Scott meander down to the end of the aisle and grab an economy size jar of bread-and-butter pickles, because they’re perfect, and when Stiles glances back toward the other end, Derek Hale is standing there with the cart that’s full of pasta and butter and staring at him.

“Dude, your face,” Scott says, and Stiles realizes that the color must have drained from his cheeks, and Scott follows his gaze and says, “Oh, wow.”

Derek’s face quickly drops from its neutral position to blank, resigned stare. He lifts his fingers from the handle of the cart in a small, aborted wave, and then he abruptly turns around and walks away, pushing his cart as quickly as possible. Nimble as fuck, Stiles thinks.

Stiles lets out his breath, fully aware that it feels ridiculous to be letting Derek Hale knock the wind out of him all these years later.

There’s a beat where Scott is still looking back and forth between Stiles and where Derek used to be standing and then he says, “Uh.”

“Was that Derek?” Stiles asks stupidly.

“Obviously,” Scott tells him.

“He’s still here?” Stiles asks. And then, “He buys groceries?”

///

A few days later, Stiles is sitting on his couch and inhaling a burrito when he gets a text from Scott asking him to meet up with the pack at the diner. Because he’s holding food while simultaneously thinking about the prospect of eating more, Stiles balks for a minute at the thought of going to such a fine dining establishment as a diner when he’s too full to eat any of the breakfast items. Then he thinks that’s a crazy idea and finishes the burrito, lobbing the tin foil wrapper in the air toward the trash. It misses and he swears at it, like it’s somehow the wrapper’s fault instead of his totally busted aim.

Twenty minutes later, Stiles is en route to the wrong diner. He spends a few minutes standing outside of it with no sign of anyone he knows before he calls Scott.

“No, man, the other one,” Scott says, helpfully, before Stiles drives to another wrong diner. In his defense, he didn’t really have a typical enough high school experience to be one of those kids whose group had a diner that they went to after every school dance, after every break-up, after every first time.

“What the hell is this place?” he asks when, on the third try, he finally pulls up to the right restaurant. He practically slams his car door as he stares up at the unfamiliar sign.

“It’s the diner,” Scott tells him, shrugging. He looks at Stiles like he’s totally insane.

“I don’t understand. We never came here,” Stiles says, trying desperately to ignore both the fact that his friends have a place that they gather without him that he doesn’t even know about and the fact that nobody seems to realize it. It was probably built after he left, which is a thought that makes Stiles feel like an alien.

He trudges inside and sees Erica, Boyd, and Isaac crammed into one side of a booth, a waitress trying to explain that they’d be more comfortable if one of them would just move. They really do look comically stupid. When they notice that Stiles and Scott have walked in, Boyd, who is bookending the portrait of the three little birds, stands and extends his hand to Stiles. They shake hands awkwardly before Boyd pulls him into a brief hug.

“Welcome back,” Boyd says, and it’s the most sincere thing that Stiles thinks he’s ever heard.

“So,” Erica says excitedly before Scott and Stiles can even get their asses in their seats. “We heard you saw Derek.”

“Oh, yeah,” Isaac chimes in. “What’s up with that? We can barely get him to come out of his own house most days, but you run into him at the supermarket? It’s like you’re the goddamn Hale whisperer.”

Stiles almost chokes on the water that the waitress had set down in front of him. “I don’t know,” he spits out. “We were just doing some grocery shopping. So was Derek, I guess,” he finishes, waving his hand around in the air. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Sure it’s not,” Isaac says. “Because when you think of Derek Hale, you think of grocery shopping.”

The waitress interrupts them and they order, but the conversation doesn’t change like Stiles hopes it might.

“Look, we know you haven’t spoken in, like, years,” Erica starts.

“He never lets us forget it,” Boyd adds, which Stiles thinks is odd.

“Guys, come on,” Scott says. “We don’t have to talk about this,” he continues, turning to Stiles. “I told them to leave it alone.”

“Yeah, I’d really rather just eat my fries,” Stiles says, shoving an entire handful into his mouth and staring at Erica as he chews. Every time she opens her mouth to say something he starts humming “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” around his food and she gets so frustrated that eventually she gives up.

At the end of the night, Boyd finishes systematically dismantling and destroying five cheeseburgers and claps Stiles on the back as he’s climbing in the Jeep, and Stiles thinks he probably couldn’t have hoped for his welcome-back-to-town dinner to go better than it did, anyway.

Scott sits next to him as he drives, and halfway home, Stiles’ breath starts coming in shallow inhales. His heart starts to beat too fast, he feels like it’s pounding out of his chest, and Scott reaches out an arm and touches his friend on the shoulder.

“It’s okay,” Scott says.

“You can feel that, right?” Stiles asks, gritting his teeth.

Scott nods. “It’s okay. You’re driving me home. Nothing else is happening. You’re just driving me home and you’ll drop me off and you’ll go home and go to sleep. You’re safe,” he says, and Stiles eases his foot off the gas and starts to relax, breathing steadily through the noise of the engine.

///

It’s self-preservation, Stiles tells himself every time it comes up. After dinner at the diner and after dropping Scott off, he spends the rest of the car ride convincing himself that conversations about Derek are inevitable but that speaking to him should be avoided at all costs. It’s better for him that way too. Self-preservation and Hale-preservation.

Stiles hasn’t spoken to Derek since he left for Amherst, and evidently everybody knows it.

The weekend that he moved, they’d gotten into a fight that was no different from any of the other ones they always used to have: Stiles needed to get the oil in his Jeep changed and Derek was nagging him about it, talking about how he didn’t take care of his things.

Stiles just snapped. He pushed Derek on the shoulder and yelled, “Stop trying to take care of me! I’m not a fucking project, Derek, Jesus Christ, just because you couldn’t take care of your own goddamned family doesn’t mean you can give it another shot with me.”

He knew it was the wrong thing to say even before the words left his mouth, but it didn’t matter. He’d never felt more ruthless and wrong than in that moment, but he knew he’d won, and he bit his lip so hard that it bled. Any other time and they would have ended up at a pack meeting three days later throwing sticks at each other in Derek’s loft, but Derek walked away and Stiles moved across the country and stopped answering his texts. He flat out refused to pick up the phone.

Stiles still hates himself for how desperate he was. He knows that he intentionally blew open every boundary line, purposely tried to break Derek into pieces in case he’d ask Stiles to put him back together. His version of a teenage crush had been trying to ruin a person he cared about, and now Stiles wants nothing to do with it anymore, so he avoids it. He dodges the questions about it and tries to come to terms with the fact that everyone wants to know.

Scott will tell them, Stiles thinks, and he’s relieved that he’s not the one who has to.

///

The next morning, Stiles’ hand starts vibrating on his pillow and he taps his fingers around blindly until he hits the right button.

“You got the job!” Scott yells through the phone.

“What?” Stiles is still asleep and doesn’t remember answering his phone, let alone getting a job offer.

“My mom told me,” Scott says. “Your dad told her when he stopped by the hospital with a suspect or something, I don’t know.”

“How did I get the job? I’ve been asleep all morning. They couldn’t have told me I got it. I just woke up,” Stiles tells him, blearily trying to figure out what’s going on.

“They called when your dad was getting ready for work and told him you got the job. Keep up, dude, you’re a working man now.”

“What? How do you know about this?”

“Your dad told my mom, Stiles, I just told you that.”

“How does my dad know?”

“Get dressed, I’m coming over.” Scott gives up and hangs up the phone and Stiles rolls out of bed and wanders downstairs to make coffee.

As Stiles is cursing himself for not reading the label and accidentally brewing a pot of decaf, Scott bursts in with Allison in tow. They’re holding a banner that’s sloppily painted with what looks like neon green fabric paint on taped-together pieces of construction paper, and it just says “CONGRATS ON JOB.”

“We didn’t have much time,” Allison says apologetically when she sees Stiles trying to decipher it.

Stiles squints at her and then squints at Scott and slowly moves his hand in front of his boxers. “I would have put pants on if I knew she was coming,” he says to Scott, like Allison can’t hear or see him.

“Hey, I made the sign, so I came along,” she tells Stiles. “No me, no sign. Those are the rules.”

Stiles glares at her for a minute before shrugging. “Then I don’t care if you see anything inappropriate, because I have a job. What’s up!” Stiles high-fives the air and they don’t respond. “What gives? No air-five?” They shake their heads. “You’re both worthless to me.”

He pours them both cups of coffee anyway and warns them that it will be totally ineffective, but it turns out that it’s one in the afternoon, so he’s the only one who needs the caffeine.

“So,” Allison asks when they’re all settled around the table. “What’s this job, anyway?”

“Well,” Stiles starts, upending essentially the entire sugar jar into his mug, “This summer I’m going to be the Activities Director for the day camp at Beacon Hills, and then they’re going to keep me on over the school year to plan and run the middle school after-school program and the new Environmental Department, which I think essentially means that I’m going to teach thirteen-year-olds how to plant gardens and grow food. Maybe some kind of science-y stuff.”

Scott and Allison look confused. “It’s a lot like what I did in Philadelphia,” Stiles clarifies, and they nod knowingly.

“Hoards of pre-teens,” Scott says sarcastically. “Sounds fantastic.”

“Kids love me!” Stiles retorts.

“I’m entirely unsurprised,” Alison tells him, finishing off her coffee. “You’re a real boy now, Stiles.”

“I wasn’t a real boy before?”

“Of course you were,” Scott says reassuringly.

“Whatever,” Allison says. “Do you guys want to go get lunch?”

///

Stiles spends his summer like that, going to work with a bunch of kids and coming home and collapsing on his bed. He gets his teaching certification and in the weeks leading up to it he falls asleep on every surface in his home. Every time Scott wants to go out on a weeknight, even just for a run or for dinner, Stiles whines in his ear so much that they end up making sandwiches at one of their houses and eating them on the roof. Allison and Scott at least have a patio at their apartment, so it’s a little more dignified when it’s their turn to host, but Stiles becomes something of a homebody and he doesn’t hate it.

A month into his job, he finds an apartment ten minutes from his dad’s place. There’s a working stove, a working air conditioner, and coin operated laundry in every unit. His landlord is mostly nowhere to be found, but that doesn’t necessarily seem like a bad thing.

The Sheriff moves him in on the last weekend in June and the pack starts buying him totally useless kitchen utensils. They all come over for a housewarming party and make him unwrap their presents one at a time so they can feel proud of what they bought him.

Erica gives him a chopping board, which is the first and only useful piece of the bunch. It quickly devolves when Isaac thrusts a waffle iron at him, Allison and Scott hand him an egg poacher, and Boyd gives him an avocado slicer that he doesn’t even take credit for. “It’s from Derek,” he jokes, and it falls totally flat.

Lydia is back in town for graduate school at Berkeley, and she comes over with the most practical gift: an extravagant blender that she swears she didn’t pay for herself, and then Danny suggests beer smoothies and the entire night is over before Stiles realises what’s even happening. It happens so many times that summer that Stiles starts to feel at home again.

He spends his best days learning how to finish them. He maps out epic tournaments of dodgeball for middle school kids where they live and die at the hands of their classmates and queens and kings are made in a broken-down gym. He picks tomatoes out of boxes that he builds in his backyard and eats them like apples. He has dinner with his dad twice a week and they go over cases; the Sheriff is still always looking for another set of eyes to see whatever he can’t.

At the end of July, Scott proposes that they start a weekly basketball game and that anyone is welcome. Every Sunday they flock to the courtyard in the park at the end of Stiles’ street and play a few pickup games; Boyd is the undisputed champion, silent and entirely deadly, but Lydia is surprisingly good at layups. Stiles didn’t think he’d ever live to see the day that she took off her heels to play a stupid game, but they’re 24 years old and she keeps saying that she doesn’t want to waste her best years, so Stiles doesn’t argue. By August, Allison can do a backward, blind, underhanded 3-point shot with scary accuracy, and even Isaac stops grumbling long enough to win a game of H-O-R-S-E one time. Just once.

Stiles falls into the routine of his life and he’s happy. The summer is a quiet one. He hears rumbles of pixies encroaching on wolf territory but he never sheds blood, never breaks a single bone in the pursuit of trying to get out of the way, to protect someone else. It seems that the world has decided that Beacon Hills could use a few months off, and it makes him feel so stable that he’s sure the world will fall from underneath him any moment, but for now he just grows. He plants his feet and digs his heels in and he grows.

///

One afternoon in early August, Stiles leaves the high school after work and Derek is standing outside, leaning against the Jeep like it’s the most natural thing in the world for him to be doing. Stiles walks up to him silently and waits for him to move out of the way. He doesn’t, so Stiles stares at him.

“Why aren’t you talking to me?” Derek asks after a moment of incredibly uncomfortable silence.

“It took you six years to ask me that?” Stiles says, shaking his keys in Derek’s face and motioning for him to step aside.

“No,” Derek tells him. “It took me two weeks to ask you that. I just never got an answer.”

Stiles doesn’t say anything. He shakes his keys again and Derek takes a swipe at them, knocking them to the ground.

“Don’t be a child,” he spits at Stiles. “Why aren’t you talking to me?”

“Didn’t Scott tell you already?”

“No. He didn’t even tell me that you left. Of course he didn’t tell me why you wouldn’t return my calls,” Derek says, voice low and the closest to a calm anger that Stiles has ever heard it.

“Sounds like he was a great beta to you. Why does it matter, anyway?” Stiles asks, defensive. He certainly isn’t interested in telling Derek anything about why it is that he really keeps avoiding everything that has to do with him.

“It matters, Stiles, because you left your pack. You left us here.”

“Well, it seems like you all did just fine without me.” Stiles knows he’s being an asshole so he decides to just go as far as he can. “It’s not like you ever asked me to stay, or anything, so why shouldn’t I have left?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with a real response. Nobody would have ever asked you to stay. You know what you did. You left us here and we needed you. You left us here in the middle of danger, and that’s not what you do to your pack. The number of times we could have used your spells -- ” Derek starts, but Stiles cuts in.

“Good, my spells. You needed my spells. Because I’m not good for anything else,” Stiles says. “I get it, okay? I fucked everything up. I could barely do magic and I wasn’t good at anything and I got in the way all the time and then I left, which seems to be the worst crime, here. I get it, okay? I get it. Look, Derek,” Stiles goes on, “I don’t have time for this. I’m trying to learn how to be a capable adult, here -- ”

Derek gets a bewildered look on his face that quickly turns exasperated. “You were always capable,” Derek says, stopping him.

“What?” Stiles almost yells, out of breath and distracted by his own frustration.

“You were always capable, Stiles.”

Stiles has no idea how to respond to that so he asks again, “What?”

Derek sets his jaw. “You don’t need to try to be capable.”

Stiles goes quiet. “So none of it was ever worth it,” he says.

“No, you already are. I just don’t know why you had to spend six years looking for something that already existed,” Derek tells him, spitting the words out like he can’t believe he even has to be saying them.

Stiles swallows and takes a step back from where he’s crowding Derek into the side of the Jeep. He wonders for a moment if he’s taking too long to realize something that everyone else already knows, like maybe he’s the last one to understand himself at all.

“There’s a pack meeting at my place tomorrow,” Derek says, snapping the stunned silence in two. “Be there.” Derek steps away from the car and opens the door for Stiles, who reluctantly steps in and sits down in the driver’s seat.

“I’m not asking,” Derek says slowly, like he’s not taking any chances. “It’s not an option.”

///

Stiles goes to the meeting because he doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to be looking over his shoulder constantly, waiting for the moment that Derek is going to decide his life is over, and he’s pretty sure that might happen if he doesn’t show up.

He goes with Scott because he’s never been to Derek’s apartment, which he notes is a remarkable step up from the loft, although it still isn’t homey. There’s only a brief awkward moment when they walk into the living room and Isaac literally drops a mug when he sees Stiles behind Scott in the doorway. Isaac has never been subtle, to say the least.

When everyone’s sidled up on the couch or in their places on the floor, Derek barges in from what looks like the kitchen and takes a survey of the room.

“Isaac, sit up,” he says, and Stiles mentally notes that Derek basically has the exact same job as the lead counselor for the pre-school kids at camp. It’s not not funny, but Stiles is pretty sure that if he laughs, he also dies, and avoiding that was the point of coming to the meeting in the first place.

Derek quietly eyes each one of them; when he gets to Stiles, he exhales sharply and nods. There’s something there that Stiles can’t place, an acceptance and relief that he hasn’t ever experienced from Derek. Adjusting to acknowledgement after six years of silence is like breathing through the waters of an unexpected flood.

“Alright,” Derek begins. “Stiles is back. Does anybody have anything to say about that?”

Stiles chokes in protest. “That’s not how this works!” he yells, but Isaac already has his hand in the air like an over-eager teacher’s pet. Boyd gets there first without asking for permission.

“It’s about damn time,” he mutters, and Isaac seconds it and Erica says “it’s not like we were waiting around, or anything,” and Stiles ends up feeling like he might cry.

Scott reaches out a hand, pats Stiles on the back. “It’s because we missed you,” he says, and Boyd nods furiously. Even Erica and Isaac reluctantly give him the least enthusiastic thumbs-ups ever, and Stiles starts to settle back into his skin.

“First order of business,” Derek calls, “is reorienting ourselves to have him around,” gesturing toward Stiles.

“We’re already used to it!” Scott yells out, the blatant implication that Derek is the one who isn’t hanging in the middle of the room.

Derek ignores it and continues on. “You haven’t been a team in six years. You need to be.”

“Jesus,” Erica moans, “it’s like Daddy Derek’s House of Bonding in here.” She tips her head back in exasperation and Stiles wonders if she realizes exactly how terrible that sounded. Probably, he thinks.

“We don’t need mandatory brotherhood lessons,” she says, and Derek flicks a rogue piece of lint from his shirt in her general direction.

“Yes,” he says, “you do.”

“What, do you want us to have sleepovers and drink virgin margaritas and talk about how nervous we are to tell you that we’re falling in love with a demon, or something? Give me a break.” Erica rolls her eyes so hard that Stiles thinks it has to hurt.

“You’ll do what I ask you to do,” Derek says, “or you’ll leave the pack.”

“Cool, Stilinksi, want to braid my hair?” she asks, tossing it down her back so that Stiles can see it fall between her shoulder blades.

“I mean, I don’t hate the idea,” Stiles says, reaching out with grabby hands.

Boyd growls, low and a little threatening, and both of them take the hint and retreat.

“You will take this seriously or you will go,” Derek repeats.

Over the next couple of weeks, Derek sets up a series of practices and Stiles feels like he’s in lacrosse season again. It takes everything in him not to make a joke about the time in Men In Black when Will Smith shoots the shady cardboard white girl with the quantum physics book, and he only manages to restrain himself because he feels like there’s something about this that Derek is invested in in a way that he hasn’t been before. There are worksheets involved, some awkward role play games, and scenario questions the likes of which Stiles hasn’t seen since freshman year of high school in pre-calculus class.

They spend weekends doing whatever activity Derek drags them to, mostly in the middle of the woods on foggy, warm days. One day instead of showing up they all ditch and go to play lazer tag. Derek finds them and Stiles steps up and argues that it’s the most bonding they’ve done since boot camp started. Derek shrugs and sits on a wall and watches them die, one by one, shot by their own teammates. The smug look on his face at the end of the day is enough for Stiles to think that maybe Derek was right, after all.

Stiles watches as Derek moves around him, a languid sort of caution in every muscle movement, and a few weeks into their bonding crash course, Stiles asks Scott about it.

Scott shrugs. “He thinks you’re going to leave again,” he says around a mouthful of sandwich. “He doesn’t really trust that you’ll stay, I guess.”

It takes Stiles a few days to process what Scott tells him, but he starts to realize that this reorientation isn’t for the team. They have work to do, yes, but mostly it’s this: Derek and Stiles are learning to be near each other again and neither of them are doing it well. Stiles hasn’t apologized and he knows that Derek won’t let it go, and everything in him has to fight the urge to let himself try to tear Derek down again. To cripple him, to leave. To give him exactly what he seems to expect.

///

A few days later, they’re in the middle of one of Derek’s ridiculous drills when Stiles stands up and walks over to him. Everybody else stops what they’re doing and watches him cross the room.

“Can I?” Stiles asks, reaching out toward Derek.

Derek nods, a short, harsh movement, but his eyes don’t leave Stiles’ hand as he puts it on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry I left, Derek,” Stiles says. He thinks about saying more. He thinks about telling Derek that he didn’t understand that it would feel like his family had abandoned him again, how he didn’t think about silence as a weapon, and how if he had known he would have called. It’s all very dramatic and poignant in his head, but instead of saying any of it, he squeezes Derek’s shoulder once. “I really am,” he adds for emphasis.

Derek stares at Stiles for a minute before shrugging his hand off. “You’re back. Don’t bring it up again,” he says, and Stiles figures that’s the closest he’s going to get to a truce.

///

Things are smoother after that. Sometimes, when Scott shows up unannounced at Stiles’ door, he sighs apologetically and thumbs the air behind him and then Derek follows him in. They fall into a halting routine; the first few times he comes striding in without notice, Derek throws his coat on the floor next to the door and goes to sit on the couch. Stiles picks it up every time, hangs it on the hook on the wall. The fourth or fifth time it happens, Stiles cuts him off before Derek can even pull one of the sleeves off his arm.

“Can I just,” he says, and again reaches out toward Derek.

When Derek gives another nod, this time less stiff, Stiles slides the jacket off of his shoulders. That starts to happen every time Derek comes over: he walks in, Stiles asks to take his coat, waits for permission, and then hangs it up on the wall. It’s almost comical, how Derek doesn’t take the hint to hang his jacket himself. Instead, he waits for the contact that Stiles is barely comfortable giving, that tenuous grasp of connection.

Sometimes they spend a few hours blinking at each other, nothing to say in the growing silence. Sometimes, when Stiles can tell that Scott is getting anxious sitting between them, they listen while he talks about Allison and neither of them roll their eyes.

One day, a hot Sunday morning in late August, just before Stiles’ new job at the school starts, Scott mentions their pickup basketball games and Stiles notices Derek’s eyebrows perk, just slightly.

“You can come if you want,” he offers, and Derek just nods but says, “I don’t want to ruin your fun.”

Stiles has begun to learn when Derek is being self-deprecating and when he’s genuinely afraid of being a burden, so he says, “Nah, come on, we’re all friends here,” and then he watches as Derek’s shoulders relax into the couch.

“Okay,” Derek says.

He shows up at the park later that afternoon, black jacket already gone, and nobody bats an eyelash when he steps onto the court. Boyd passes him a ball and in one fluid motion Derek catches it and goes up for a jumpshot; he misses spectacularly and Stiles goes running after it, bursting through the middle of a group of kids learning how to dribble and yelling “Sorry, sorry!”

“Look,” Stiles says as he jogs back up to Derek. “You just roll it like this. It’s not a throw, it’s a shot, right?” He palms the basketball and turns it toward the sky, lets his fingers roll underneath it as it falls backward onto his shoulder. He shows Derek over and over again, and Derek watches, mesmerized.

“Maybe it’s easier if I just do this,” Stiles offers, holding the ball out to Derek. “Okay, look. Just hold it up like this,” he says, and he haunches his arm up like he’s carrying a tray of food. “Like that, yeah? And then just, here, can I?” His hand reaches for Derek’s wrist and Derek says, “Yeah,” and Stiles puts his fingers over Derek’s and moves them to where they should be.

“Like that, yeah,” Stiles says, nodding to show that Derek’s got it. “Now just roll it like that and aim that way.” He points toward the basket.

“Yes, because I had no idea where to throw it,” Derek says, but he rolls his eyes fondly and takes another shot. He misses again, but not with as much flair this time, and Stiles thinks that’s a pretty good improvement for one day.

///

“So,” Sheriff Stilinski says to Stiles one night. “You’ve been seeing a lot of that Hale boy, huh?”

They’re eating dinner at his dad’s table and Stiles spits out his spinach, coughing with surprise. “What?”

“Well, Melissa told me that Scott had been seeing a lot of Derek, and you’re always seeing a lot of Scott, so I figured you must be seeing a lot of him too.”

“I’m not seeing a lot of anyone, dad,” Stiles tells him as he shoves a veritable mountain of mashed potatoes into his mouth.

“What do you call it,” his dad says, “Uh, the pack. How’s the pack doing?”

“Dad, what are you doing?” Stiles asks, projecting tiny bits of potato into the air with every word.

The Sheriff takes a moment to point it out. “That’s disgusting.”

“I try.”

“You are my son, after all.”

“Well, I should hope so.”

“So, the Hale boy,” the Sheriff says again.

“Yes, dad, we’re all seeing a lot of Derek,” Stiles tells him, and the Sheriff says, “Okay. Just don’t let it get in the way of your new job.”

///

Stiles’ new job turns out to be exactly what he was hoping for.

He starts waking up earlier every day, minutes before his alarm, and somehow his clock lives to see another day every time it happens. Nothing smashed against a wall, no tiny broken pieces of alarm clock plastic littering his floor. He drives to work and is greeted by a classroom of under-eager sixth grade students and his job is to make them care. Stiles teaches them about ecosystems and has them do elaborate group projects with dioramas. He takes them out back to the garden and digs up pill bugs and roots. He ends every day with dirt under his fingernails and muddy knees and gets used to the filthy jokes his friends make.

Sometimes he gets so tired that he drives to Allison and Scott’s apartment and falls asleep on the couch there rather than drive the extra fifteen minutes home. Sometimes he begs Lydia to come and pick him up from work so that they can go get an ice cream cone and he can listen to her talk about her graduate work. Stiles lets her talk about dynamical systems, how she wants to prove the functionality of mathematical chaos, and he decides not to say something stupid about how their high school lives had to have influenced that choice, how chaos can’t be proved or useful, how destructive it all is. She explains her work over and over again, names the most influential theorists in her field, but watching her talk about it is new to Stiles every time. He doesn’t want to stop her when she explains things for a fourth time, hoping that he’ll get it, so he listens to her talk about Anosov flows and diffeomorphisms and smiles and nods when she says, “That makes sense, right?”

Sometimes he comes home and walks into his living room and Scott and Derek are there playing his video games. Derek has finally mastered Assassins Creed II and Scott gets gnarly on snowboarding games, and Scott starts leaving earlier and earlier and Derek starts staying later and later.

One evening in late September, Stiles comes home and Derek is sprawled on the couch reading his old term papers from Amherst that Stiles could have sworn he had stashed away in a folder in his desk.

“You got really wordy in your sophomore year,” Derek says as a greeting, mumbling around a mouthful of highlighter. He’s got one end between his teeth and the cap in his hand and he’s skimming over a paragraph that he doesn’t seem to like.

“How did you?” Stiles asks, an aborted, exhausted question.

“Scott was here. He got bored and left.”

“Does he ever go to work?” Stiles says as he throws his backpack at the end of the couch and collapses on the floor. “Are you editing those?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Derek tells him.

“Sure. Totally normal.”

“I ordered a pizza,” Derek says. “Want some?” He gestures to an open pizza box on the floor next to him. It’s a plain cheese pie and there’s a bite out of every single slice but none are fully finished.

“I think I’ll pass, but thanks,” Stiles says, eyeing the box suspiciously.

“You know, you have a real problem with organizing your thoughts in your academic papers. This conclusion has nothing to do with the themes you set out in your introduction, look,” Derek says, turning it so Stiles can see a highlighted block around the entire last paragraph of his paper about Alessandro Duranti and anthropological linguistics. “Who’s Buckminster Fuller? He doesn’t even belong in this essay.”

“Buckminster Fuller is one of the greatest theorists of the 20th century,” Stiles says, immediately serious. “He belongs in every paper.”

“Someone’s got a little bit of a historical boner.”

“I just -- I just -- I wrote that thing like three years ago.” Stiles waves his hand at it. “You’re rewriting it?”

“No, I’m just reading it.”

“Sure. Totally normal,” Stiles says again, staring up at Derek. “Do you want to watch a movie or something?”

“Sure,” Derek says, but he doesn’t stop reading.

“I have Bone Sickness, Jeepers Creepers II, basically the whole Evil Dead franchise,” Stiles says, rattling off a memorized list of his go-to movies.

“What the hell are all of those?”

“They’re b-horror movies, obviously.”

“Right,” Derek says, turning to the bibliography of the paper. “Do you have Ferngully?”

Stiles stares at him, eyebrows all the way up his forehead. “Ferngully? You want to watch Ferngully?”

“Uh,” Derek elaborates. He stops highlighting for a minute. “I like the environmental overtones. It speaks to me. As a wolf,” he finishes smoothly, and then goes back to highlighting furiously. Stiles is pretty sure it’s just blank paper at this point.

“Oh, the environmental overtones, yeah. Not the singing or the cartoon bat,” Stiles says.

Derek perks up. “You know Robin Williams does the voice? He’s fucking funny.”

“Tell me how you feel about Mrs. Doubtfire,” Stiles answers, but he reaches blindly for the remote and clicks on the TV when he finds it.

In the middle of the first time that Stiles has seen Ferngully in years, he gets up and walks into his bedroom as Derek fast-forwards through the beginning of the forest fire. He finds his field notes from his time in Athens sitting in the middle of his desk, carefully organized as though they’d been rifled through and meticulously put back in place. When he lifts the top page, he notices pieces of post-it notes stuck into the stack in places where Derek had questions. Some of them are just a series of question marks, some say things like “Ah,” and some are legitimate questions like “What does this mean?” At the back, on the inside cover of the folder, Derek has left one that just says, “You really did all this?”

Stiles meanders back out into the living room and holds up the folder. Derek looks up from the screen and stares at Stiles expectantly.

“Are you surprised?” Stiles asks.

“No,” Derek says without missing a beat. “Not even a little.”

///

“You should have a Halloween party,” Lydia tells Stiles when she swings around to pick him up one day. He waves goodbye to his Jeep as they pull out of the parking lot and then he turns to her.

“Why?”

“Hello,” Allison says from the passenger seat. “You’re friends with a bunch of werewolves and none of you have ever had a Halloween party.”

“Didn’t we grow out of dressing up, like, years ago?” Stiles asks.

“You never grow out of dressing up,” Lydia scoffs. “Absolutely never.”

“Alright, well, what would we even go as?” Stiles wonders.

“Don’t you have any imagination?” Lydia says to him.

“Scott’s going to go as a werewolf and I’m going to go as a hunter,” Allison says, and they both look at her blankly. “It’s ironic,” she finishes, but Stiles and Lydia just squint their eyes at her and shake their heads.

“So I’m hosting a Halloween party. At my apartment?” Stiles asks.

“Unless you want to rent out a banquet hall, yes, Stiles, at your apartment,” Lydia replies, totally dry.

“Okay,” he says. “As long as you’re in charge of getting people there.”

“Oh, that shouldn’t be a problem,” Allison assures him. “Have you seen Lydia’s address book?”

///

The Wednesday before Halloween, Stiles is driving home from having dinner at his dad’s house. He has the radio on and when he parks in the driveway he can feel his heart jump into his throat. It feels like he’s in the middle of a race, heart beating too fast and breath coming too quickly.

He gets out of the Jeep and shuts the door, takes the steps to his door very slowly. In his head, he talks to himself about where he is. You’re at your apartment, he says, over and over again. You’re at your apartment. You’re walking in the door. You’re going to go inside and have a beer and go to bed. You’re at your apartment. You’re walking in the door, he thinks again and again and again.

When he gets inside, Stiles systematically removes his backpack and jacket and hangs them on the wall. He feels detached from his own body, like he’s watching his hands move on a TV screen in front of him. He sees Derek’s coat already hanging there and ignores it as he paces over to the couch and sits on its arm, leaning forward and resting his hands on his knees and trying to breathe as deeply as he can.

It doesn’t work. Tears start to form at the corners of his eyes as his chest heaves up and down, trying desperately to regulate its own motions. He lets his legs give out and he crumples to the floor, leans back against the side of the sofa and tries to breathe.

Derek walks out of the bathroom and sees him sitting there. “What’s going on?” he asks, walking over and kneeling down next to Stiles.

“This kid,” Stiles gasps for breath, “at school.” Derek reaches for Stiles’ arm and Stiles flinches, just slightly, so Derek pulls back. “His mom is dying,” Stiles finishes, tears openly streaming down his face.

He’d been standing in front of his room watching his kids do their work when another faculty member had come in to ask him a question. On her way out, she’d stopped and pointed to one of his students and whispered, “Isn’t it sad about Jason? That kid is going to have so many issues when his mom finally dies.”

“What?” Stiles had asked, unable to manage more.

“Cancer,” the other teacher mouthed, and then she’d walked out the door.

He was so taken aback that he’d almost panicked in that moment, an immediate and visceral reaction to the casual way she’d laid it out, how everything would change in an instant, but another student had raised his hand and asked a question and Stiles had pushed through it.

Now, he clenches his fingers together over and over, fist after fist punching down on his chest, trying to retrain it with whatever shock he can. “Oh my god, I can’t breathe.”

“What do I do?” Derek asks.

“Tell me I’m safe, tell me I’m safe,” Stiles whispers. “Tell me I’m safe.” He feels like he’s going to rip himself open. He feels like he’s a kid again, like he’s in the moment that his father had to tell him that his mother was gone, like he’s going to crack in half and break the earth beneath him. He starts to smell fresh laundry, like the last days in the hospital, and he pinches his nose shut to try to stop it.

“You’re safe,” Derek tells him, but the fear in his eyes says more than it should.

Stiles heaves a quiet sob into the floor, folding himself down even further toward the carpet as he palms it repeatedly, looking for anything stable.

“I don’t believe you,” Stiles tells him.

“Stiles, you’re safe. I promise you’re safe.”

“Get out,” Stiles says, turning his body away from Derek as best as he can. “Please get out.”

“Stiles, let me -- ”

“Get out,” he cries, curling into a ball. “Just get out.”

Derek stands there for a moment and stares down at Stiles on the floor. Stiles can feel his eyes on his chest, monitoring his breathing, and then he hears footsteps as Derek walks to the kitchen and brings back a glass of water. He sets it down next to Stiles’ hands, where he can reach it, and then he leaves, and Stiles doesn’t see him again until Saturday.

///

The night of the party, Stiles paces around his living room. Scott and Allison are sitting on his couch, eyes training back and forth on Stiles as he moves, listening to him try not to hyperventilate.

“I didn’t even say I was sorry for freaking out on him,” Stiles says, and Scott turns his head to the left as he passes again.

“Stiles,” Scott says. “Don’t be stupid. It’s not your fault you had a panic attack about dead mom stuff.”

“Subtle,” Allison says as she smacks Scott on the arm. Their heads turn to the right as Stiles drifts past them again.

“No,” Stiles tells her, “It’s okay. I’d rather he said it that way than some stupid vague thing when we all know what he really means.”

“Fair point,” Allison responds.

“Is he definitely coming?” Stiles asks, finally standing still in one spot in the middle of the floor.

“Yes,” Scott and Allison say in unison.

“Oh my god,” Stiles wails.

“What are you dressed as, anyway?” Scott asks.

“A teacher.”

“Dude, that’s lame. You’re just wearing your regular clothes.”

“It was suppose to be ironic,” Stiles hisses. He glares at Allison who shrugs in response.

“What do I know,” she says, “I convinced Scott to go as a spork with me.”

“Valid.” Stiles takes a minute to take in the two of them, conjoined by a mess of aluminum foil. “It’s going to be a long night, you guys.”

The doorbell rings and Stiles almost jumps out of his skin. He goes to answer it and turns the doorknob so slowly that from the other side Danny yells, “Jesus, Stilinski, are you made of molasses? I’m going to die out here waiting for you to let me in.”

Everybody else shows up after that, streaming steadily into the apartment bearing armfuls of candy and booze in payment for a place to eat and drink it all. Stiles takes to greeting everyone by guessing their costume before they’re allowed to come in. He starts out pretty accurate and then Scott hands him a beer and his guesses wander farther and farther off the mark.

“Bubblegum!” Stiles yells when he opens the door and Lydia’s standing there.

“I’m Anna Wintour,” she deadpans. “I’m not even wearing pink.”

“You look fabulous, darling,” he tells her as he ushers her inside.

The next time the doorbell rings, Boyd is standing on the other side.

“You’re - what are you?” Stiles asks.

“He’s a Freudian Slip,” Erica clarifies, sidling up next to Boyd in the doorway.

“Ah. That explains the nightgown,” Stiles says, sliding his glasses back up his nose from where he’d been using them for skepticism purposes. “You may enter.”

As promised, Lydia fills the house. There are people there that Stiles has never met and they’re standing in corners of the apartment that he didn’t know existed and they’re probably drinking things he didn’t know that he had. He feels his nerves start to slip away and then the doorbell rings again. When he throws it open, ready to guess a costume, Derek is standing on the other side in a suit and tiny round spectacles.

Stiles gapes for a moment before asking, “Are you Buckminster Fuller?”

Derek nods, short and sweet, and pulls his sleeve up to reveal a set of three watches. Stiles just beams at him and steps aside so that Derek can come in.

As he’s passing, Derek turns to Stiles and says, “I’m sorry I didn’t know what to do.”

Stiles says, “Nobody ever does. It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry we’re doing this now,” Derek adds, and Stiles tells him, “I didn’t even think you’d come, so I’m glad we are.”

They shut the door and walk back into the apartment and Stiles sees Scott -- and by extension, Allison -- giving him a thumbs up. Stiles figures that’s probably going to set the tone for the rest of the night, so he grabs another beer and tries to breathe.

///

Everyone else has already left the celebrations behind, and Stiles and Derek are standing near the back door taking their time about saying goodnight.

“Thanks for the party,” Derek kind of spits out, scrunching his nose like he doesn’t want to be saying it even as he’s saying it.

“I can’t believe you dressed up as Buckminster Fuller,” Stiles laughs, and says “may I?” He reaches for the lapel on Derek’s suit jacket. Stiles waits for Derek to nod, then tugs it once, straightens the fabric out and pats it down to Derek’s chest. “Where did you find all of those watches? I swear I’ve never seen you wearing even one.”

Derek snorts and pulls the glasses off his face. “The pack all chipped in and leant me one. One’s Boyd’s, this one’s Isaac’s.” Derek unclasps each one as he points to it, the heavier metal ones falling into Stiles’ hands with a soft, muted thud. He pulls a double-wrap leather band away from his wrist, lets it snap back into place. “This tiny one is Erica’s. She was afraid I’d stretch it too much and break it, so I’m looking forward to being pretty smug about bringing it back in one piece,” he jokes as Stiles drops the watches he’s still holding into Derek’s pants pocket. “They never trust me with any of their things.”

“Well, they probably have a little bit of past trauma involving not being able to keep their bodies in one piece, so I think they’re allowed to give you a hard time,” Stiles throws out, and he thinks, you’re a tornado, Hale, and Derek has the good graces to pretend to be offended before he concedes. Stiles can see when Derek winces, though, so he pauses and lets Derek begin again.

“Anyway,” Derek starts, “I just remember you mentioning him -- ”

“Who?”

“Buckminster Fuller.”

“Oh, right. Bucky.”

“Buckminster?

“Bucky.”

There’s a pause from Derek. “Bucky. Yes.” He looks like he can’t help but roll his eyes. “I just remember reading that paper you wrote,” he continues, “so I read Critical Path and I think -- ”

“You read Critical Path?” Stiles asks, cutting him off.

“Yeah,” Derek says, suddenly looking a little worried. “Is that weird?”

“No, no,” Stiles tells him. “No, it’s not weird.”

“Okay,” Derek says slowly. “But I feel like you think it’s weird.”

Stiles shakes his head, smiles a soft little tilted smile. “I really don’t think it’s weird. I promise.” He kicks the cabinet door behind him absentmindedly and says, “Please, tell me more about what you think,” and it’s sarcastic but painfully sincere.

Derek starts talking about the sustainability of consumer culture and limited resources, how he’s amazed that Fuller’s theories are sometimes in direct conflict with what so much of modern educational practices preach. Stiles listens to him talk about how he’s pretty invested in the idea of a moveable dwelling but that he’s glad that we can’t transmit humans around the globe by radio scanning because that would eliminate so much of the safety he has in his senses. Stiles laughs softly and isn’t surprised by how many opinions Derek seems to have. He meanders over to the sink while he listens and starts washing the dishes left from the party, soaping up the mugs and digging into them. He grins over his shoulder at Derek while he talks, watches as Derek moves away from the door and starts slowly picking up the paper plates and looking around for a recycling bin.

“Under here,” Stiles points, stepping aside and opening a door under the sink.

Derek throws the plates away and grabs the roll of paper towels. He slides himself in between Stiles and the wall, starts to wipe down the counters.

“Thanks,” Stiles murmurs, a smile catching the side of his mouth. They work like that in silence for a while, slowly cleaning through the mess that the party guests left. Derek packs the leftover food into tupperware – Stiles inexplicably keeps the empty boxes and lids in the belly of his dryer, warm and dry and constantly clean-smelling – and rearranges to make space in the refrigerator so it all fits. Stiles keeps walking from the living room to the kitchen, carrying countless numbers of red plastic cups arranged around his fingers every time.

It’s a small apartment, and they’re both careful to leave a path for the other person to move. There’s a lot of stumbling, closing hands in cabinet doors in an effort to jump out of the way. Sometimes, as the night goes quietly on, when Stiles moves past Derek he puts a hand on his waist, uses it to ground him to the space – an anchor when there isn’t enough room to fit both of their bodies. He’ll lean up to put a glass away and catch Derek’s ribs, steadying his own imbalance, or he’ll palm the dip in the small of Derek’s back as he’s reaching for the refrigerator door, somehow more solidly confident in his actions. It’s the first time he hasn’t asked before touching Derek in years. He learned young, got his face smashed on a couple of steering wheels for his mistakes. He doesn’t realize he’s doing it until Derek leans into the weight, juts a hip out into Stiles’ palm, keeps it there for a second before reaching up to put a plate away. Neither of them says anything about it. They keep working around each other in comfortable, chosen silence, and Stiles starts to feel Derek buzzing with something new that he doesn’t recognize yet. Before, he might have made a joke about his wolfy senses tingling; now he lets Derek murmur through their friendship, doesn’t break the feeling in half with some hilarious - and it would be hilarious - joke.

When they finish, the apartment is as dazzlingly clean as it’s ever been, which isn’t saying much. There’s a layer of spilled beer on the coffee table, some empties still strewn around the rooms - in the bathtub, on Stiles’ nightstand. Derek offers to keep going, but Stiles just waves his hand gratefully and makes some choked, guffawing nose and starts ushering Derek toward the door, a hand hovering above Derek’s shoulder.

“Thanks,” Stiles says again, “for staying and helping.”

“No problem,” Derek sort of grunts back, quieter, but still there. He pulls the watches out of his pocket and starts putting them back on.

Stiles steps back and wrings his hands around a dish towel that he’s holding. He’d picked it up just so that he’d have something to do with his hands. “Well, I don’t want to keep you here,” he says, but he’s not fishing, and he can tell that Derek knows that.

“I probably have to get back anyway,” Derek agrees, and he smiles with some sort of tired happiness that Stiles is beginning to think is because of him.

“Tell Erica I like her watch,” Stiles tells him, reaches out to snap it against Derek’s wrist as he walks out the door. He doesn’t ask, and Derek lets him.

Stiles stands in the doorway and watches until Derek gets into his car and drives away, a black silhouette against the street lights. It’s cold outside. Stiles likes to stand there and watch his breath light up in the dark, become almost tangible in front of him. He likes knowing that it’s turning into something he might be able to hold.

///

After the Halloween party, they spend entire days doing nothing in each other’s company. Derek comes over every morning and fishes the spare key out of its hiding place. Stiles starts waking up to the smell of coffee and the image of Derek passive aggressively standing by Stiles’ bed, holding a fresh mug of brew under his nose and waiting for him to wake up and join him in the kitchen. They start saving newspapers and doing crossword puzzles together; Stiles can fill ¾ of a Sunday puzzle and Derek prefers the Monday ones, how easily they fill up and he gets to call something complete.

Stiles watches as Derek reads through all of his old textbooks that are left out on the coffee table or tucked into the folds of his shelves. He comes home from work to find Derek looking for all of Stiles’ old political science books and they talk about the political divide in the country, whether it’s as polarized as the media tells them. Stiles just smiles when Derek confesses that he thinks it’s really much closer than all that, how the majority is much more centered but the only voices we hear anymore are the extremists. He sends Derek home with a copy of a Morris Fiorina book and laughs when it shows up in front of his door with a post-it note on it that just says, “This guy knows.”

Stiles thinks about kissing Derek one day, foregoing any explanation, and pulling them both out of the trance they fall into. He thinks about it all the time. He wonders how it might happen, if Derek will be surprised. He guesses that he won’t. He calls Scott to talk about it so many times that Scott institutes a mandatory ban on talking about Derek. Scott doesn’t want to hear about pack business from Stiles unless they’re at a meeting or about to die, he doesn’t want to hear about how Stiles misses Derek when he’s not around, and he definitely doesn’t want to hear about how Stiles wants to make out with the guy who showed him the proverbial supernatural ropes. “That’s gross, man,” Scott says every single time. “I’m glad you’re happy, but please stop talking about this. Forever.”

Stiles thinks about how he's always asking if everything is okay, how he’s still always asking if he can touch Derek. He remembers asking once if Derek thought they were spending too much time together. He meant because they had never talked about what they were to each other, but Derek had dismissed it and moved on so quickly that Stiles didn’t ask again. He wants to stop asking, honestly. He wants to just do something, gently, but he knows too much of Derek’s past to catch him off guard at anything. He worries what the pack will think, too, and there’s too much at stake there. They’re his family, he tells himself, and he’s not wrong.

There are a million reasons that Stiles tells himself he can’t start something with Derek yet, but mostly it’s just this: he loves the sweet little precipice they’re rocking on, warm and blooming like some southern California summer rain.

Stiles thinks about it so much that he starts leaving little hints around his apartment. One day, he watches Derek’s eyebrows shoot up in playful shock when he finds the lipstick kiss-print that Stiles leaves on one side of his coffee mug. When they watch movies, he purposely pauses the DVD on the image of the couple kissing to go get a glass of water, and Derek is left in front of a TV that’s prominently displaying two people in a lip lock, rolling his eyes as Stiles comes back empty-handed. It’s the most understated and respectful way that Stiles can find to say something without saying something. He tests himself over and over again, an exercise in restraint.

It’s as much for him as it is for Derek; Stiles thinks about the times in high school when he was so desperate for Derek’s attention that he crossed any boundary he could just so he might get something in return. It always ended with him falling face-first into a ditch, backhanded across his skull by an angry werewolf. He doesn’t need that anymore. Stiles knows that Derek’s here, now, and he’s not interested in fucking that up. He can go about his day without wondering when Derek will look his way. He’s learned how to press the right buttons; he’s learned how much you get when you learn what you want to give. He can wait for Derek. He can wait.

///

One weekend in early November, Stiles comes down with a fever so high that he can’t leave his bed. He hates hospitals, so he calls Derek. Derek calls the Sheriff and tells him not to worry. Derek calls Scott and tells him that if he wants to come over he had better bring hydration. Derek strips Stiles down to his boxers and lays him on top of the sheets and listens to every foggy word that Stiles says, gets him everything he asks for. He carries Stiles to the bathroom when he needs it and waits patiently outside the door to carry him the ten feet back. At night, when Stiles has nightmares, Derek presses himself against Stiles’ bare chest to keep him grounded in reality. When Stiles comes out of his haze, he blinks himself alive and reaches a hand out to Derek, who is awake and lying next to him in the bed. He pauses, and Derek leans into the fading warmth of Stiles’ touch, a cool, rough, stubbled cheek in his palm. He feels Derek sigh against his fingers, a short burst of air and all concerned relief. Derek smiles and welcomes him back to the world of the living. After that, Stiles never asks before touching him again.

///

Two weeks later, they’re bundled up and trudging through the sorry excuse for a downtown that Beacon Hills has when Stiles realizes that Derek is no longer actually walking beside him.

“Wha - where?” He stops and throws his arms out. “Derek?”

Stiles turns around and sees Derek standing with his arms crossed in front of the local comic book shop, quietly seething at the full-window display of Wolverine. He walks over and sighs audibly in Derek’s direction. “Again?”

“It’s not even realistic,” Derek says, deadpan, and Stiles grabs his arm and jerks him inside the store.

“Look, he’s not even supposed to be a werewolf,” Stiles tells Derek as he pushes him in front of one of the life-size cardboard cutouts. He gestures at it, pokes his finger into one of its dead cardboard eyes. “He’s a mutant, not a werewolf. It’s not the same thing.”

Derek’s eyes flash something soft and warm for a second before he juts his jaw out again and pouts at the display.

“Stop that. Stop pouting,” Stiles says, punching him lightly on the arm. He waits for a minute before Derek picks up one of the Wolverine comics and flips angrily through the pages. “Fine!” Stiles tells him. “I’m going over there,” he points, “just don’t rip out any of the pages like you did last time.”

They spend about an hour at the store, quietly moving around each other. Stiles flips through old Iron Man comics looking for War Machine’s first appearance while Derek subtly claws at the corners of every Wolverine comic page he touches. When Stiles finally comes to find him, he gently puts his hand on Derek’s shoulder and asks, “Do you take some sort of satisfaction from plummeting the selling value of these things?” Derek doesn’t answer.

They manage to make it out without an incident, which is more than they can say for the last time they were there, and the two of them head back to Stiles’ apartment. They walk in the door and Stiles, without slowing, pulls Derek toward the sink, grinning and grinning about something that seems to give Derek more pause with every step.

“Look what I bought!” Stiles says, excited and beaming. He pulls a page of temporary tattoos out of his back pocket, all pink and yellow and blue Care Bears, and he sees Derek grimace, but he’s also seen worse. He jumps at the opening. “Come on. Please?”

Stiles reaches out and wraps his middle finger and thumb lightly around Derek’s wrist and he squeezes, a small Cape Cod silver circle around a sturdy arm, and he tugs it toward the faucet. He turns on the water too quickly, a cold, sharp blast over Derek’s veins, and Stiles blushes pink as he blots the skin.

“We’ll do matching ones, I promise,” Stiles tells him.

“Okay.” Stiles can feel Derek uncoiling, happily giving in. “Okay.”

Stiles turns the water on again and lets it run over Derek’s wrist while he grabs a dish towel, wrapping it around his fingers.

“Do you want to choose your bear or should I?”

“You can choose,” Derek says, a shy smile pulling up the corners of his mouth.

“Excellent. You get Tenderheart Bear,” Stiles tells him, pointing to an orange bear with a huge heart on his stomach. “I think it’s fitting.”

“Do you,” Derek says sarcastically.

“I do,” Stiles answers.

“You already had that picked out, didn’t you?”

“I did. I really did.”

Derek hops up onto the island and extends his arm, staring down at Stiles patiently; when Stiles pauses for a beat too long to admire the view, Derek pulls him into the gap between his knees. Stiles feels his hips settling into Derek’s space, a firm grip holding him pressed there, flush up against the edge of the table. He’s inches from Derek’s chest. Stiles pauses again, lets his breathing match up with Derek’s, and then rips the tattoo off of the page and positions it in the middle of Derek’s inner wrist. He uses his thumbs to smooth it over, soft pressure on Derek’s blood flow, before he dabs it into dampness with the dish towel. He does it for so long that the water cools and falls in droplets off of Derek’s skin, pooling on the floor between their feet. They’re both quiet the entire time, and Derek knocks his feet against Stiles’ calves, tapping out a rhythm to fill the silence.

When he’s done, Stiles bunches the towel in his fingers and gives it one more swipe over Derek’s wrist. He looks at the bear smiling up at him, orange and flexing against Derek’s muscle, and then he leans down and presses his lips to it, a quick little heated kiss.

In a moment, Stiles is back up and huffing out a quiet laugh, like he’s surprised even by himself. “Man, I thought our first kiss would be way smoother than that,” he says, and he chuckles a nervous tune as he brings his eyes up to meet Derek’s.

Derek stares at him like he’s deciphering some delicate puzzle, and where Stiles is still gripping his wrist, smudging the new tattoo, he can feel Derek’s heart rate slowing to something relaxed and calm; it’s the most at rest as he’s ever felt it. Derek smiles. He leans forward and dips his face into the curve of Stiles’ collarbone, rests his scruffy chin softly against Stiles’ neck. He squeezes his legs a little bit tighter and keeps them both there, motionless save for their breathing.

“You know I’m here, right?” Stiles says after a few minutes. He brings his hand up to the back of Derek’s neck and digs his nails in for a second, watches it heal where he wishes it wouldn’t. Derek’s face is still buried in him, so Stiles talks to the air behind him and Derek breathes along.

“I’m not going anywhere this time. I’m here.”

Derek is quiet for a moment and then he pulls back, cups his hands around Stiles’ face.

“Okay,” he says, nodding his chin upward. “Okay.”

///

“You kissed a Care Bear,” Boyd says, totally flat.

“On his wrist?” Allison asks.

“You told them?” Stiles moans, glaring at Scott.

“He tells us everything,” Erica adds, and Stiles glares even harder.

“I swear, I really don’t,” Scott says. For his own sanity, Stiles chooses to believe him.

It’s a Sunday afternoon and they’re all sitting on Scott and Allison’s couches; Danny is lounged across Scott’s lap, Allison and Lydia are tangled together at the legs, and Erica’s managed somehow to sit on top of both Isaac and Boyd simultaneously. Erica and Isaac barge on, teasing Stiles for something that will inevitably go onto the running list of “Most Embarrassing Things That Anyone Has Ever Known About Him.” Stiles gets up to grab another beer and brings a round back for everyone who yells for one, and when he sits down they’re debating what color his skin might have been when he blushed. Isaac offers “a nice crimson” as an option and Danny yells out “how about as scarlet as a letter?” and snorts and then Lydia cuts into the conversation.

“Really, I think it sounds quite suave,” she says. That shuts everyone up.

Erica gapes her mouth for a few seconds and rolls her eyes, and then she takes an annoyed, passive-aggressive swig of beer. Stiles appreciates the reprieve and he kisses Lydia on the forehead as he hands her a drink.

“You think I’m suave,” Stiles calls. He tilts his bottle toward Lydia. “A toast to Lydia, who thinks I’m suave!”

Lydia smirks and Scott lobs a used napkin at Stiles’ head; it rebounds and Danny catches it, starts tossing it in the air over and over again.

“Old habits die hard, huh, Danny?” Scott asks.

“You would know,” Danny answers.

“Whatever, LAX bro,” Stiles says.

“We were all LAX bros. You were a LAX bro,” Isaac adds, but nobody seems to care.

“I forgot you were here,” Lydia says, turning to Isaac as if to drive home the point.

Allison looks appalled and reaches out to Isaac, her hand flung out in the middle of the air between the couches. “She didn’t forget you were here,” she tells him. “She’s just being a bitch.”

“That’s so rude,” Lydia mutters, but she smiles at Allison anyway and grabs her hand, pulling it back to her lap. “Listen, Stiles,” she continues, squeezing Allison’s hand in her own. “You have our blessing. Just don’t screw it up, because we’ll all know about it if you do.”

“Good, no pressure,” Stiles laughs, but inside he feels approximately like he’s going to die, so he keeps drinking his beer while everyone else wonders what it would be like to kiss Derek and he gets quietly drunk enough that the flush on his cheeks doesn’t just have to be from embarrassment.

///

When Stiles gets home that evening, Derek is lounged across his living room floor with a bottle of glue in one hand and pieces of a diorama spread out in front of him. “I broke your greenhouse,” he tells Stiles, looking sheepishly up at him.

“Were you trying to eat the tiny tomatoes?” Stiles asks. “You know I have a carton in the fridge,” he tells Derek, and then immediately after he dodges a handful of tiny plastic potted plants that Derek launches at him. “How’d you break it?”

“Well, you left it in the middle of your floor,” Derek says, “So I stepped on it.” He holds up a totally crushed cellophane and popsicle stick wall of windows that flops sort of sadly toward the ground.

“Cool,” Stiles says, nodding his head as he walks over and lays down on the floor on the other side of the ruins, staring at Derek’s hands and his concentrated face in equal measure. He catches a glimpse of what’s left of Tenderheart Bear and smiles to himself. “Can I help you rebuild?”

“Sure,” Derek agrees, and he smiles at Stiles over the wreckage.

They spend the evening like that, carefully placing the plants in the right spots and creating a miniature model of a working greenhouse so that Stiles can show it to his kids in the morning. At some point over the course of the night, they get in an argument about the legitimacy of referring to pack mentality as a subculture. Stiles quotes Sapir at Derek, who has already read all of Stiles’ papers about Sapir so he already knows all of Stiles’ opinions, so Derek just laughs at him and says, "Oh, well if we can only use pre-war linguistic theory, Stiles, if those are the rules."

Stiles refuses to admit that Derek has a point, ever, so when they stop laughing they fall into another comfortable silence and they glue flower petals onto pipe cleaners. At one point, Derek glues his fingers together and Stiles jumps up to get some nail polish remover and makes it a point to tell Derek not to ask why he has it. He takes a dish cloth and smoothes it over Derek’s hand, carefully pulling the glue apart so that Derek has full use of his fingers again. “Thanks,” Derek says, squeezing Stiles’ hand with his own for a beat too long.

Later, when Derek is leaving, they linger just outside Stiles’ door staring at each other and not saying anything, like somehow they’re pretending not to see what’s happening there.

Derek breaks the silence first. “Okay,” he says.

“Okay?” Stiles asks, mouth smirking up to one side. “Okay.”

“No,” Derek says, bringing his hand up to close around the back of Stiles’ neck. He traces his fingertips there and Stiles leans into the motion, a figure eight over and over again. “Okay,” Derek says again, and he steps forward and presses his palm against Stiles’ neck as he brings their lips together in a soft, light kiss.

Stiles is caught so off-guard that he stumbles forward when Derek pulls away. He throws a hand out, braces himself against Derek’s shoulder and murmurs, “Okay.” He leans up, mouth kind of fumbling, eyelashes fluttering ridiculously. He knows he probably looks like an eager child, but it feels like he's finally been given permission to love what he loves, and he has no idea how not to show it at every moment. Stiles tries to follow Derek’s mouth but ends up kissing mostly his cheek, leaving it wet and red, and he wipes it off with his thumb because he's afraid the wind will be too cold against Derek's face when he finally leaves for the night. He tucks a hand into Derek's pocket and just nods and grins, and suddenly he knows he's in a place where someone else could break him. Stiles looks at Derek, standing there with the stupidest grin on his face, blown wide open, and trusts that he won’t.

///

“So,” the Sheriff says to Stiles over another Wednesday night dinner. “The Hale boy.”

“I feel like we’ve had this conversation before,” Stiles deadpans.

“Stiles.”

Stiles takes a bite of his dinner. “I’n gunna kill Scah,” he mumbles around his food.

“What did you just say?”

“I said,” Stiles says, swallowing his food and making sure to enunciate his words, “I’m going to kill Scott.”

“Good,” his dad tells him. “Death threats are much more effective when your mouth isn’t full.”

“Seriously, Scott is dead,” Stiles says again. “Did he tell his mom? Is she the one who told you that Derek kissed me?”

“Whoa,” the Sheriff says. “He kissed you?”

“I mean, what?” Stiles says casually. “Nobody said anything about kissing.”

“Melissa definitely didn’t say anything about kissing,” his dad says, putting down his fork and staring at Stiles. “He kissed you? Are you dating?”

“I don’t know, dad!” Stiles is bright red. He ducks his head and stares at his dinner plate, barely finished, which is a rarity. “We haven’t even talked about it yet.”

“Listen, Stiles,” the Sheriff says, and Stiles moans, “Oh my god.”

“No, listen. I mean it.” His dad swipes a napkin across his mouth, puts it down and lifts his elbows onto the table as he laces his fingers together. “This Hale boy, Derek, he’s,” the Sheriff says, and he pauses to look at his son.

Stiles lifts his head in the silence, looks back at his dad. It’s been the two of them for so long that Stiles imagines that the Sheriff has no idea how else it could be.

“Derek, well,” his dad starts again, holding out his palms, and Stiles braces himself for a lecture.

“You’re alive because of him,” the Sheriff finishes. “That’s all I know.”

///

The next night when Stiles opens the door for Derek, he finds himself immediately backed into a wall, Derek’s mouth on his neck and fingers carding through his hair.

“Hi,” Stiles laughs. Derek’s lips mouth at his collarbone and they press themselves together, Derek's hand palming at the small of Stiles’ back under his shirt. Stiles almost folds in half, lets his knees buckle under him, but he manages to stay upright and conscious. “Hello to you too,” he breathes again.

In response, Derek murmurs, “I didn’t want to forget how you taste,” against Stiles’ jaw, and Stiles’ brain all but short circuits.

He recovers, grabs Derek’s hair and pulls it back sharply. He watches as Derek rolls his eyes upward and leaves reality for a second.

“Good to know,” Stiles says, observant, and Derek flicks him on the shoulder as he steps back, thumbing at the corner of his mouth with a glint in his eye. “Good to know,” Stiles repeats. He squeezes Derek’s hip as he saunters past him into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water.

“Is that supposed to be a metaphor?” Derek asks, pointing to the cup.

“What?” Stiles says.

Derek shakes his head. “Nevermind, I was trying to make a joke.”

“Okay, sure. You know,” Stiles says, leaning idly against the doorway and looking at Derek, who is standing in the middle of the living room. He hasn’t even taken his jacket off yet, just rolled the sleeves up to get his hands free. Efficient motherfucker, Stiles notes.

“I like that you’re here,” Stiles tells Derek, all self-satisfied bravado.

Derek raises his eyebrows, crosses his arms over his chest as he looks Stiles up and down. “Do you?”

It sounds like such an honest question that Stiles softens. “I do,” he says. “Yeah, I do.” Stiles puts his glass of water down and walks into the center of the room, lines himself up flush against Derek’s body as he circles his arms around Derek’s waist. He anchors himself, leans back so their hips are touching and he can look up just slightly at Derek standing there in front of him.

Derek sighs and Stiles watches as his eyes fall shut. Slowly, they lift open again with some bright question.

“What?” Stiles asks.

“I know it’s been a long time,” Derek starts, and Stiles snorts and asks, “Are we talking about this?”

Derek exhales through his nose, tense, and Stiles immediately retreats.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says.

“I know it’s been a long time,” Derek starts again. “I’m glad we’re here. I know you didn’t want -- ”

“I did want -- ”

“No, I mean,” Derek says, cutting Stiles off. “I know you let me do this on my own terms.”

He bends forward and curls his spine toward Stiles as he leans down to kiss him. Stiles pushes up into him, slides their mouths together for a moment and hums a happy noise. He pulls away from Derek and cups his hand around Derek’s elbow.

“Derek,” Stiles says, serious. “I spent way too long not understanding what you wanted. This was always going to be on your terms.”

Derek nods. “Okay,” he says.

“‘Okay,’” Stiles mimics. “Is that our catchphrase now?” he asks, and Derek snorts.

“Do we have things now?” Derek asks.

Stiles shrugs and puts a palm on Derek’s cheek, swiping his thumb along Derek’s jawline. “Maybe,” he says.

Derek agrees. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I think we do.”

///

They spend days making out. They make out in the morning before Stiles goes to work and they make out in Stiles’ Jeep the minute the bell rings after school and Stiles can hurtle himself out the front door and across the parking lot to where Derek is waiting for him. Derek develops a penchant for straddling Stiles and sliding his shirt up, leaving faint clawmarks down his belly and sucking on his hip; Stiles finds out how incoherently he babbles when Derek’s mouth traces down his neck and lingers near his collarbone. Stiles tries desperately to give Derek a hickey; he starts, considerate and subtle, he thinks, in a place that’s usually covered. He sucks a mark onto Derek’s ribs only to watch it fade as soon as he pulls away. After that, he stops caring about courtesy and starts trying to drag his teeth so hard over Derek’s body that it will leave any mark at all. Derek laughs at the thought until Stiles bites into his shoulder hard enough to break skin, and as it heals Derek comes all over himself in his jeans, bucking up into Stiles’ hand through the fabric. Stiles is predictably pleased with himself, and he does it over and over again until Derek threatens to reciprocate.

Neither of them answer any texts or phone calls from anyone except when Stiles breaks down to let Scott and his dad know that they’re both alive, but otherwise they’re just a mess of mouths and limbs and quiet little contented sighs.

There are days in between their tangled nights when Stiles wonders how he got here, to this place that feels like he’s finally built something he can hold onto. One morning when they’re laying in bed, he tries to explain to Derek that he never thought he’d be here like this. Derek tightens his grip and pulls him closer, murmurs something about being just the right fit in his arms. Stiles thinks no, that’s not what I mean, but he doesn’t correct him, just shuffles himself further under the covers and presses closer against Derek’s chest.

Stiles still spends every moment of their time together trying to make up for the years he was away, stepping out of himself to try to calculate out each risk and every single reward. He learns quickly that all of Derek’s reactions are trying to tell him that he doesn’t need to do that. That he’s forgiven, that it’s okay, that he’s come home. Stiles cooks their eggs together and they eat them in the back yard with grass between their toes. Stiles talks to Derek about his work, about maybe going back to graduate school, and Derek only asks questions about what Stiles wants instead of what he thinks is best. Sometimes Derek mentions his family and Stiles feels like a weight has lifted off his shoulders; sometimes Derek hooks a finger through the belt loop on Stiles’ jeans and Stiles leans in, no question in his mind that he’ll be safe. Sometimes Stiles wakes up in the early dawn, breathing fast into the darkness, and loops his fingers around Derek’s wrist. He squeezes so hard that Derek wakes up every time and sits with him until it passes.

Most of the time, Stiles feels unready for the happiness that he has. It feels unwarranted and undeserved, some overwrought gift that he doesn’t want to take. He tries not to let anything scare him: the ease with which Derek has opened himself up, how much he feels like he’s grown into himself, how his life is quietly turning into what he’s learned how to need. He tries to breathe through it, to dig his fingers into the dirt as much as possible. He builds his life from the ground up and lets it happen like that, a twisting upward, always reaching for more sun.

///

Eventually, after that first week, Stiles texts Scott and asks if they can all meet up at the diner even though he suspects that everyone knows what’s up by that point. He and Derek show up hand in hand, and when they walk in together the waitress scowls and points toward the back of the room.

As they get closer, Stiles can see that everyone -- Scott, Allison, Lydia, Boyd, Isaac, Erica, and Danny -- are all shoved into one side of a booth and holding a crumpled banner. When he and Derek walk up to the table they hold it up and it says, “CONGRATS ON BOYFRIEND,” in puffy green fabric paint.

“Smooth, guys,” Stiles says, sliding into the other side of the booth with Derek in tow. “Really, really smooth.”

 

END