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Derek woke alone, and for one heart-stopping moment, he thought for certain Stiles had left. But no, the other side of the bed was still warm, and now that he was more fully awake, he could hear the electric kettle click off.
He slipped his feet into his fluffy wolf slippers--they had been a gag gift, but they were comfortable--and headed down the hall into the kitchen.
Stiles sat at the table, hands wrapped around a steaming mug of tea. Peppermint tea, by the smell of it.
Derek wasn't entirely sure of the protocol here. They were friends, and they'd been dating for just over a month, but this was the first time they'd slept together--in every sense of the word--and now he felt adrift. What if Stiles was regretting this?
"Are you okay?" Derek asked.
Stiles jolted, blinking like he hadn't even realized Derek was there, and then his face lifted in a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Hey. Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up."
Derek shook his head and waved the apology away. "It's fine. I just didn't know where you went."
He thought he did a good job of keeping his voice even, but Stiles raised his eyebrows. "Did you think I left?"
Derek shrugged. "I didn't know."
Stiles shook his head and smiled again, but this time it was softer. "I don't want to leave you."
"Good." Derek took a chance and sat at the table next to him. "I don't want you to leave."
Stiles snorted and tapped the tea mug. "I just had a nightmare," he said. "You know how it goes."
Derek did. He reached over and rested his fingers on Stiles's wrist. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Stiles took his hand off the mug and laced their fingers together. "Before now, I would've said no. But..." He trailed off and looked away, and Derek caught the faint scent of salt underneath the peppermint. "But I don't think I'm going to have it again."
Derek nodded and waited for Stiles to speak.
After another minute, Stiles wiped his eyes, and then took Derek's hand again. "So ever since the beginning of junior year, I've been having this nightmare. And it's the same thing every time. I'm trapped in this maze, and it's dark, and I can't find my way out. At first it was all of us, you know? Like, I'd find you or Dad or Scott or Allison in there as well. But these...horrible things kept happening." He swiped at his eyes again. "The first night I had it, a couple of months after we got Erica, Boyd, and Cora back, I saw Erica dead."
Derek squeezed his hand. "It was just a dream," he said, half to remind himself, even though it had been years ago and he’d just had lunch with Erica and Boyd yesterday. "We got them back safely."
Stiles nodded. "I know, I know, but...it's been like every night, I go back into this maze where that isn't the case. I saw it happen to Erica, and then Boyd, and then Allison..." He took a deep, shaky breath. "And it's not like they came back the next night. I saw them die and they stayed dead. And every night, it was just...who am I going to lose next?"
Derek rubbed his thumb over Stiles's hand and listened.
"And other people just...vanished." Stiles bit at his lip. "Jackson, Isaac, Danny, Cora, Kira, you...just gone. Like you'd never existed in there, like you hadn't been through any of it. Hell, even Peter vanished. By last year, it was just me and Scott and Lydia, and Dad and Melissa. We were all that was left."
Derek's heart clenched, feeling the loss of his family--his pack--anew. "Stiles."
"There were other people, and I feel like I should've known them, but I didn't know them, you know? It was just, like, random kid from school. Some guy who tackled me once during a lacrosse game. A dude Scott and I were friends with in elementary school for all of three months. Not anyone I knew." Stiles looked at him, eyes bright with tears. "You know?"
Derek kept rubbing his thumb over Stile's hand. "Yeah, I know."
Stiles let out another shuddering breath. "I just...I saw horrible things happen in there, and I lost almost all of my friends, and even when I was awake and they were here and everything's fine, I keep spending every night in this fucking awful place where nothing's fine and I just..." He shook his head once, hard, like he was trying to shake away the memories of the dream.
"It makes it hard to remember what's real," Derek finished. That was a feeling he was intimately familiar with.
"Exactly," Stiles said.
"Why haven't you talked about this before?" Derek asked.
"It's just a dream," Stiles said with a snort. "So I've been having a recurring nightmare since I was seventeen, which should come as a surprise to precisely no one given all the shit we've been through." He shrugged. "Nobody else needed to worry about it."
"Stiles."
"What? I'm telling you now!"
Derek sighed. It was probably best to let it go. "So why do you think you won't have the dream again?"
"Because tonight, I found the door." Stiles's eyes were wide, like he couldn't believe it. "I found a door in the maze, with light all around the edges, and we walked through it, those of us who were left in there. And that's when I woke up."
Derek smiled. "You got out."
Stiles laughed. Actually laughed, with tears streaming from his eyes. "Yeah, I got out. We got out. Thank fucking God."
Derek tugged him close and kissed his temple, and Stiles turned in his chair so he could rest their foreheads together. They sat like that for a moment, just breathing, Derek silently thanking anyone who would listen that Stiles was in his life for real.
"You're out," Derek said again, because he had a feeling Stiles needed to hear it a few more times to believe it. "You're out, and you never have to go back. And if you ever do, I'll be right there beside you to bring you home."
Stiles choked out a laugh. "You're such a sap." He reached up and scratched his fingers through Derek's hair. "I like that you're a sap."
"I like that you let me be sappy," Derek said. "Do you want to come back to bed?"
"Do you mind if we cuddle on the couch for awhile instead?" Stiles asked. "At least until I finish my tea?"
"I don't mind." Derek kissed his temple again. "We can do whatever you want."
"Good. I just..." Stiles sighed and sagged against him. "I need to be reminded that you're really here and we're really us for just a little while longer."
"Okay." Derek pulled him close and breathed in the smell of them that he was already starting to fall in love with. "We can definitely do that."