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Stiles watched as Isaac followed Scott out of Derek's loft, the pair talking about something he couldn't hear. He took his keys out of his pocket before twirling them around his finger passively. The loft was eerily quiet without the chatter that comes from other mouths, the little movements and twitches that come from other bodies. Stiles wished that he didn't understand how Derek tolerated the silence, how he kept his sanity when all he could hear was the hollow beating of his heart, but his father has pulled numerous double shifts over the years and things were still too quiet even when he was there; their house plunged itself into silence after his mother died, the walls turning bitter with the absence of her light-hearted laughter and soft humming.
Stiles couldn't explain how this similarity between the two of them felt more like a connection of sorts. He couldn't help but want to pull at its strings, trace his fingers along their length and see how far they really went. He wanted to stop wherever he felt knots and try to untie them without causing them to tighten. He wanted to find the frays, lick his fingers, and then stick them back together, if only for a little while. Stiles wanted so much, but he'd always been that way, ever since he was a toddler who constantly dragged his smiling parents around and craved their affection more than oxygen itself.
Stiles always wanted too much, asked too much of the people he cared about. He made them tired and weary, exhausted by the end of the day. He pushed them until their knees felt weak and their eyelids felt too heavy to keep open. He loved them to the bone, but too much pressure and weight at the wrong angle can cause bones to snap. He loved his mother with such a heavy weight that it was too much for her to bear. His love wore her out and she passed away in that hospital bed two hours after Stiles had stopped by after school with his dad, while he was eating dinner with Scott and his mom. His father coped with all the extra care and devotion directed towards him by taking more shifts at the station and drinking whiskey straight from the bottle after Stiles went to bed.
A voice yanked Stiles out of his thoughts. He shook his head minutely and blinked a couple times, having momentarily forgotten that he still stood in the middle of Derek's loft. "Sorry, what did you say?" he asked, unsure of who had spoken to him.
"Something on your mind?" Peter asked from his usual perch on the spiral staircase. His elbows were resting on his knees, hands folded underneath his chin. "You've been standing there in a daze for a few minutes now."
Stiles took in a breath through his nose to settle his almost hammering heart. "Yeah, no."
Stiles looked toward Derek, who had stopped reading and abandoned the information on the table. His head was just slightly titled, almost unnoticeably so, but Stiles had learned to pick up on the little things Derek did, like how his fingers twitch whenever Peter talks and how his head just barely tilts when he's trying to understand. Stiles would have to remember to make a dog joke at some point in the future.
"Are you sure you're okay to drive, Stiles?" Peter asked, lips threatening to form a smirk. Stiles shot him a look, a glare that he hoped conveyed how much he wished Peter would shut up. "Maybe Derek should accompany you."
"No!" Stiles shouted quickly and a bit too loud. He wasn't looking at Derek, but could sense the odd look on his face. "No," he repeated at a more indoor-friendly level.
Stiles' fingers twitched, his keys catching against the palm of his hand, the quiet jingling bouncing through the open space. His eyes met Derek's and he had to stop his heart from lurching forward. Stiles noticed, after helping Scott with his tattoo, that Derek's eyes possessed the ability to be more open. They reminded Stiles of Derek's humanity, that Derek wasn't just some abomination or monster, that he was more than some burnt out shell. The fire had closed him off, Laura's death put up the walls and barriers, and Peter's betrayal slid the locks into place. Somehow, Boyd and Erica's absence changed him, brought him back by pushing him further. They acted as the straw that broke the camel's back, or the claw that breached the wolf's defenses, and caused Derek to change. Erica's death shook his new boundaries, but Derek held strong because strength has always stood alongside all that anger.
"You're doing it again." Peter quipped, a smirk now painted across his face. Stiles held back an agitated sigh and turned to leave.
"Stiles." Derek's voice echoed in Stiles' ears, caused his bones to jolt, and his feet to stop - Stiles never thought his name held such power over him. Stiles took a calming breath before turning back to Derek, whose eyes were close to resembling something soft, hidden behind the cage of his eyelashes. Stiles imagined brushing a fingertip along them.
"I'm fine." Stiles replied with a shake of his head and a small shrug. Derek didn't speak, just gazed expectantly, head no longer titled. Stiles wished the look felt intimidating, but a wave of comfort washed along his collarbone and pressed against the tension in his throat and shoulders. He felt pulled to bury his face into the spot where Derek's neck and shoulder meet, to just breathe and fall into a comfortable silence, a silence not filled with ghosts. Stiles sighed. "It's not important."
"Stiles." Derek repeated. Stiles wondered if Derek somehow forgot his vocabulary when everyone cleared out of the loft.
"It's not important, Derek, okay? Don't worry about it. It's nothing." Stiles said, hopefully with finality. He turned back towards the door and had almost made it through when Peter decided to make his presence known again.
"Do you know what just happened?" Peter asked, now leaning on the opposite end of the table as Derek. Stiles stopped for some reason unbeknownst to him. "Derek?" Peter cocked his head at his nephew. Stiles could imagine Derek's arms now being crossed, his face looking emotionally constipated, fingers twitching against his biceps, which no doubt strained against the sleeves of his purple henley. Peter made a noise in the back of his throat before continuing. "Well, since Derek won't tell you, I will. Your heart skipped on the word 'nothing'."
Stiles should have left then, should have kept his mouth shut, but he possesses this reoccurring problem of not always thinking before he speaks. "My heart skipped, so what? Hearts have irregularities just like everything else: they're fragile, needy, and tend to bring more problems than solutions."
"Are you sure you just described the heart?" Peter asked coyly.
"Why are you still here, Peter? Why do you keep talking without permission? Why don't you raise your hand once in a while and wait for someone to call on you." Stiles snapped, his keys making grooves in the palm of his hand.
"Stiles," Derek said. Oh, the man of many words. Stiles turned his focus back to the other Hale and noticed that he was now only a few feet away.
"That's not my name, I'm changing my name. My name isn't Stiles anymore." His muttering went ignored, filed away into a drawer of Stiles' silly little ramblings.
"How do you expect someone to help if you can't say what's bothering you?"
"You want to know what's bothering me?" Stiles' voice came out a little louder than planned, but he couldn't swallow the words once they were spoken. Stiles then realized that he had absolutely no way of putting his thoughts to words. He couldn't just flat out say that Derek was his problem because while that was true, it was also false. Derek was more than just a problem or a nuisance. Derek was someone who wouldn't pity a teenager without his mother, he was a past waiting to be cleansed, a heart ready and waiting to shake off the dust. Derek could be lazy Sunday mornings with the sunlight beginning to drift in, or raining Wednesday nights where the thunder was quieter than the rush of their breaths, or small smiles and caring touches when words no longer sufficed when certain dates rolled around. Or Derek could be a mistake. "Fine."
Stiles, with his keys still digging into the palm of his hand, closed the distance between himself and Derek. He took in a breath through his nose while licking his bottom lip and pressed his lips against Derek's. He felt Derek's hands on the small of his back, gentle and not pressing too hard, as he kissed back. Stiles cupped his hands around Derek's neck, fingers brushing underneath his jaw. The kiss felt like a year, when it was really nothing more than a handful of seconds, and Stiles found himself staring into Derek's eyes as he pulled away, wanting to just stand there in his arms and pick out the different flecks of color; Stiles always wanted too much, though.
He backed out of Derek's arms, whose hands slid along the fabric of Stiles' shirt as he moved. They kept one another's gaze until Stiles turned and left the loft without speaking a word.
"Well," Peter said after clearing his throat unnecessarily. "I think you two could balance each other out. You like to make an entrance, while he likes to make an exit."