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“You’re doing what now?” Derek asked.
“Braiding your hair,” Stiles repeated.
Derek would have tipped his head back, but he didn’t want to mess up Stiles’s braid. “You know how to braid?”
Stiles lightly flicked his ear. “Hey now. I’m a man of many gifts. I’m surprised you let your hair get this long. What, like they didn’t have barbers while you were off road-tripping to find yourself?”
Derek closed his eyes at the feeling of Stiles combing through his hair. “Wasn’t really a priority.”
“Yeah, I suppose living off the land and writing bad poetry on the hood of the Camaro doesn’t really lend itself to stopping for haircuts.”
Derek laughed softly. “I thought I had spent two years raising horses in Argentina with Cora. Or was it acting in off-Broadway shows?”
“What can I say, I have an active imagination,” Stiles said.
Derek hesitated for a moment, then asked the question that had been niggling in the back of his mind since he’d returned. “Why haven’t you asked where I was?”
Stiles’s fingers didn’t miss a beat in the braid. “Because you haven’t wanted to talk about it yet. Besides,” he cleared his throat, “where you were really isn’t as important as where you are, you know?”
Derek settled more firmly against Stiles’s legs. He felt calmer and more grounded than he had in years. “Yeah. I know.”