will to follow through

by owlpostagain

Chapter 2: Part II

 

 

 

I know you’re busy, but please won’t you come visit me?
You are an aimless ghost, you haunt your bag of bones

---

“Stiles!” Lydia whines, and it’s all the warning she offers before dropping herself bodily into his lap. Small as she is it’s hardly much hassle, but her surprise appearance still startles an “oomph” out of him. He’d been curled in an Adirondack chair in a dark corner of Anderson’s backyard, nursing the single beer he was allowing himself and generally sulking. 

This, of course, would have been like a beacon to Lydia.

“Stiles Stiles Stiles,” she coos, and Stiles wraps a bracing arm around her waist and leans forward to tug at her cup, bringing it to his mouth for an experimental sip. He hadn’t made it deep into the party, didn’t feel the need to push his way into the kitchen when the keg and most of the crowd were on the back deck, but Lydia had clearly found the good stuff, the hard stash of vodka and pineapple juice, heavy emphasis on the vodka.

There’s no reason to keep it from her, though; he personally witnessed her put away three quarters of a hamburger and a full plate of fries not three hours ago and she’s still mostly on her feet. She accepts the drink like she hadn’t noticed him taking it from her, taking a long sip before trying to settle back into him.

The dip of the chair makes him significantly lower than her, perched as she is on his knees, and that clearly isn’t satisfactory at all. Lydia shifts her weight until she’s firmly in the seat of his lap, butt nestling into the cradle of his hips, and they somehow wind up so Lydia’s shoulder is the perfect height for Stiles to rest his chin on.

“You’re sulking,” she accuses.

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees, because there’s no point in denying it, not to Lydia. She’s all-knowing, alcohol be damned; he wouldn’t be surprised if she even knew why.

“Me too,” she admits morosely, taking another sip. “You should have told me earlier, we could have pawned DD duty onto Harley for the night, she owes me one. We could have sulked together.”

“Misery always loves company, intoxicated or sober,” Stiles reminds her. They toast their drinks together, and Stiles feels momentarily overwhelmed with a wave of affection for this girl. It’s completely loving and completely platonic, the way he’s felt about Scott for most of his life, the way he maybe was starting to feel about Allison, when he thought she wasn’t going anywhere, and oh man does that seal the fucking deal on Stiles royal clusterfuck of a situation.

“What’s wrong, Lyds?” he coaxes gently, because at least some of the truth behind misery loving company is that misery loves being distracted by a good old round of schadenfreude. 

“Jackson called today,” Lydia mumbles, and that’s hardly news because Jackson, Stiles learned recently, calls every day. Jackson and Lydia talk for hours every day, apparently, despite their pointedly long-distance relationship, and the weakness of his disappointment at that revelation clearly should have been a red flag sooner.

“Was he a dick?” Stiles prods, “because I will drive to wherever the hell he is and kick his ass, don’t think I won’t.”

“Martha’s Vineyard,” she reminds him, because of course he was. “He told me…Stiles, he’s not coming back.”

“Ever?” Stiles can’t help but ask, because that’s really the last thing he expected.

“Mr. Whittemore put in for a transfer to his firm’s office in Manhattan,” Lydia sniffs, and Stiles tightens the arm he’s still got wrapped around her waist. “They enrolled Jackson in Choate, in Connecticut. They think he got mixed up in something bad here, and he won’t tell them what because honestly, werewolves, and their solution is to just keep him away from it all.”

“That’s…Lydia,” Stiles says softly, because he doesn’t know what to say. The sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach is entirely sympathy for Lydia, because he has no basis for understanding what that must feel like. It’s one thing to lose someone to death; there’s a clear-cut finality to it, a permanent separation. Losing someone the way Lydia is, to know that Jackson is perfectly alive and probably reasonably happy and entirely without her, that’s a whole different monster.

“He said we could still try,” she continues quietly, and he settles back to let her talk. She chases the warmth of him, pressing further into his chest, and Stiles drops his beer on the ground in favor of curling his other arm around her too. “Said we could keep doing the long distance thing, if I wanted to.”

“Do you want to?” Stiles asks.

“N-no,” Lydia admits, shaking her head vehemently enough that three long curls land messily across Stiles’ face. He lifts one hand and brushes them aside absently, keeps his hand in place and starts stroking her hair when she leans back against him again. “He’s never coming back, Stiles. My love life just went from Twilight to an asinine Taylor Swift song, and I’m genuinely not sure which is worse.”

She’s definitely crying now, giving in to the press of tears Stiles had heard hovering the back of her trembling voice, but she doesn’t let it stop her.

“There’s always college?” he suggests gently. “MIT’s in Boston, maybe Jackson’ll wind up liking the East Coast so much that he’ll want to stay, maybe he’ll even wind up in Boston too.”

“That’s two years from now,” Lydia cries. “He’s going to one of the most prestigious boarding schools in the country, where he’ll still be the gorgeous lacrosse star, but there’ll be dozens and dozens of other smart, pretty girls just like me.”

“Lydia Martin,” Stiles says sternly, tugging gently on her hair until she tilts her head enough to meet his eye. “There’s nobody quite like you in the entire world, believe me. There’s not a single girl at that school who can hold a candle to you, I mean it.”

Lydia starts to shake her head again, and it’s the most insecure thing he’s ever seen from this gorgeous goddess of a girl, and he absolutely won’t have it.

“No, I’m serious,” he insists. “Because you’re not just beautiful and talented and brilliant, you’re also fierce and loyal and brave, and even if you weren’t, Lydia, you are the one thing Jackson loves enough in this world to break the vengeance hold the kanima had on him, and that means a hell of a lot. If he gives that up for some stupid fling with some stupid prep school girl then he’s an even bigger idiot than I ever thought, because that moron’s gone from a douchebag to a scaly oversized lizard to a freaking werewolf and you still love him, and he’ll never find another love like that ever again in his life.”

Lydia’s completely silent by the end of his outburst, and Stiles can’t help but feel like he did all those weeks and weeks ago, standing in his room and yelling at Lydia for being selfish in her recklessness. He opens his mouth to apologize, because he can’t believe they’re back there again, when Lydia reaches down and laces the fingers of her free hand through Stiles’.

“I love you,” she says quietly.

Stiles is fairly certain he can feel each and every one of his organs shattering like shards of glass, piercing through the soft flesh of his innards and burrowing between muscles and bones. He’s been waiting for what feels like most of his life to hear Lydia say those words to him, to hear soft warmth and affection and to have her fingers threaded through his and here he is. Lydia’s warm in his lap and pliant in his arms, and it feels like nothing.

No. Of course it doesn’t feel like nothing. It feels like a worn blanket from the arm of the couch during late night movie marathons, like hot chocolate with indulgent marshmallows on snow days, like fingers combing through your hair when you’re tired and half-asleep. It’s comfortable and warm and it feels like family, and that’s never how Stiles had imagined it, had wanted it, not from Lydia, and now that he has it it’s exactly everything he never realized he needed.

“I love you, too,” he murmurs back, tucking his chin back over her shoulder and curling protectively around her as she pulls deeper into herself and caves in to the tears

He still feels it though, the snap and shatter of his organs and bones, the slow reformation as he settles into something new, something different. He’s spent most of his life wanting Lydia, so much so that it became a part of his identity, a part of the very make-up of Stiles Stilinski, and now that he has her, maybe not in the capacity he’d expected but definitely in the capacity he needs, now he has to figure out what to do with himself

---

Danny finds them curled together and half-asleep as the party’s winding down, and from the morose understanding in Danny’s expression Stiles knows Lydia wasn’t the only one to get a phone call today. He doesn’t bother rousing Lydia, just lets Danny help get him upright while supporting both their weights and carries Lydia out to his Jeep.

“My house?” he asks, and Danny just nods, looking grateful. Stiles doesn’t remember until they’re halfway there that he’d left Derek mostly asleep in his room, and he’s not sure what he’s hoping to find when he gets home.

If it was Derek in his bed, he’s disappointed. Lydia wakes up enough to walk herself inside the Stilinski’s house, and she makes her way straight into the kitchen for a glass of water and a hopeful quest for potato chips like Stiles knew she would. Danny heads for the bathroom, quiet on the first floor like they’re not sure if the Sheriff is home or not, and Stiles creeps upstairs.

His bedroom’s empty, bed primly made like it hasn’t been since the day he and his dad set it up (a month ago, as a belated birthday present, because all 5’11” of Stiles was really too much to fit on the tiny twin size bed he’d had since he’d outgrown his crib). The sheets are cool when Stiles experimentally slides one hand between them, and decidedly not the same ones Derek bled all over. His fingers catch when he slips back up towards his pillow and accidentally brushes under a post-it note. It’s gruff and simple and pretty classic Derek, even the thick block lettering spelling out a simple thanks., but Stiles is a sentimental fool and Derek has never thanked him before.

He tucks the note into a dark corner of the bookshelf behind his bed and makes a point of forgetting about it.

Stiles hisses down the stairs that the coast is clear, because even if the Sheriff isn’t home it feels too late, too heavy and quiet to use daytime volumes, and he changes into pajamas while he waits for Lydia and Danny to make their way up. Lydia comes bearing the half-eaten bag of Lays he knew she would find tucked away on the bottom shelf of the pantry, holding it out for him in exchange for the mesh gym shorts and t-shirt he’s pulled out for her.

He feels a renewed sense of gratitude towards his new queen-sized bed as he, Lydia, and Danny all climb comfortably on top of it, Lydia sandwiched between the two boys. Stiles focuses way too much energy on pretending that the pillow doesn’t smell like leather and smoke and wet leaves, and then on hoping that Lydia doesn’t notice.

“Do you think he’ll be okay in Connecticut?” she asks quietly, breaking the lull of silence they’d fallen into. “I mean, not as a person, but as a werewolf?”

Stiles had been wondering the same thing, honestly. He’d given Jackson’s absence a surprising amount of thought in recent weeks, wondering if he was surviving the transition from unaware kanima to entirely-too-aware werewolf, if he’d found a way to weather out the full moon on his own. The Whittemores, well-intentioned as they must have been, thinking they were pulling their son out of a bad situation, absolutely could not have picked a worse time to separate Jackson from his Alpha.

“That’s actually a really good question,” Stiles admits, “and we should probably talk to Derek about it. I was going to go there tomorrow, update him on Jackson’s situation, I can ask if you want?”

Lydia hums an agreement.

“Do you think he would have stayed with Derek?” he asks her. “As his Alpha? Derek did sire him, I guess, but he also tried to kill him.”

“I think he would have stayed with Derek,” Danny answers. “If he’d asked me my opinion I would have said Derek over any alternative. I think it would have been good for him, to have a pack that he felt like he belonged in.”

“Derek tried to kill Jackson because he didn’t think there was a way to save him,” Lydia adds. “Scott didn’t get it, because all he was seeing was Derek trying to kill a kid, but Derek was trying to spare him, in the only way he knew how. Jackson might be a dick, we know that better than anyone, but if he knew he was being used to kill people like that…” Lydia shudders, and Stiles feels it all down his side where Lydia is pressed against him. “If Jackson thought he was going to spend the rest of his life in danger of being used for revenge killing, he would have rather been dead. Derek would have been doing him a favor.”

Stiles mulls that over. They’re right, suggesting that Scott would never have understood that.

“There has to be some way to merge Derek and Scott into one cohesive personality,” he sighs, more to himself than anything else. “Together they’d make the perfect Alpha.”

“Or you,” Lydia suggests, and she’s half asleep again, nodding off against Danny, who’s completely down for the count. “You’re kind of the perfect marriage of Derek and Scott. Lets make you Alpha.”

“I’ll be the Alpha of the human pack,” Stiles agrees, not bothering to hide his sharp grin in the darkness. “Population: you, me, Danny.”

“Grr,” Lydia mumbles, raising one hand in a weak imitation of Gaga Monster Paws before dropping her hand back down to curl around Stiles’ wrist. Stiles stifles a giggle against her shoulder, tugs the blanket up to his chin, and let himself fall asleep wrapped in the combined scents of the deep woods in the fall and Lydia’s apple bodywash.

He wakes up what feels like minutes later, though the weak sunlight pushing through the cracks between his blinds suggests otherwise. His dad is standing in the doorway, still in his uniform, eyebrows raised at the three teens piled into Stiles’ bed like he’s not sure if he should be scolding Stiles or celebrating his son’s return to teenage normalcy.

Stiles slips carefully from under the covers and ushers his dad out into the hallway, closing the door quietly behind them.

“They found out yesterday that Jackson’s not coming home,” he stage whispers, frowning sympathetically like it’ll earn him some brownie points.

The Sheriff takes the bait. “They can’t be too happy about that,” he muses, glancing over Stiles’ shoulder as though he can see through the door and personally gauge the other two teens’ emotional stability.

“They’re not,” Stiles shrugs. “No one really is. Jackson’s a pain in the ass, but he’s still a pretty central figure in most our day to day lives, you know?”

His dad gives him a long, appraising look, and Stiles does his best not to squirm under it.

“Got an interesting phone call from Mr. Whittemore the other day,” the Sheriff tells him slowly. “Said Jackson finally admitted he had a bigger part in the whole kidnap debacle than he’d originally suggested. Claimed it was his idea, really, a challenge to you and Scott in an ongoing prank battle, you steal a cop car or suffer mass public humiliation at Jackson’s hands, and you two locking him in the van was your stupid attempt at one-upping him, to which he retaliated with the restraining order. Mr. Whittemore was apoplectic, obviously, but it’s not the first time Jackson’s switched stories on me…” he trails off with a shrug, and Stiles exhales a breath he feels like he’s been holding for months.

“Everything just got so out of hand,” Stiles sighs, scrubbing one hand down his forehead and over the bridge of his nose. “One day, Dad, I swear I’ll tell you everything. Everything. When’s it safe, I promise I will.”

“Are you in danger?” the Sheriff pushes, latching onto the word ‘safe’ like Stiles knew he would.

“No – not any more so than usual,” Stiles admits. “But I’m okay, I really am. Right now it’s just…it’s Lydia, Dad…” he trails off suggestively, blinking puppy dog eyes at his dad, and he is the Worst Son Ever, because he’s officially just graduated from lying to cover up werewolves to lying just to escape an awkward chat.

Good one, Stilinski, A+ Humanity.

The worst part is it totally works; the Sheriff gives him one last long, searching look before nodding. They hug, because there’s always a hug, of course there’s a hug, and Stiles tries not to squirm around too much before he’s safely back behind the closed door of his room.

The noise seems to have woken Danny and Lydia though, the pair of them blinking blearily at him, and from there it seems like the day has begun, early crack of dawn time or not. They make their way to the diner, Lydia still in Stiles’ borrowed clothes, Stiles barely passing for acceptable outside attire in baggy cargos and one of his dad’s old Police Academy tees with a hole in the collar, and Danny stumbles up his front walk looking like he has every intention of climbing back into bed whether he actually falls back asleep or not.

“Are you still going to see Derek?” Lydia asks him, and she sounds more solid than she did last night but still a little small, a little softer than he’d like. Stiles nods.

“Among other things, yeah,” he says, because today is a day for errand running. Haircut and grocery shopping and returning three week overdue books to the library, anything that can maybe provide a healthy distraction from last night’s overwhelming epiphanies.

“Do you want some company, maybe?” she hedges tentatively, and Lydia may be a stone cold ice bitch 60% percent of the time, but her capacity to channel an absolutely adorable kitten explains why she has so many people, Stiles shamelessly included, wrapped around her perfectly manicured finger.

They stop by her house long enough for her to shower quickly, piling her wet hair under a UCLA baseball cap and tossing on denim shorts and an oversized t-shirt that looks about as worn and old as Stiles’. He’s perfectly content with today being a day for bumming it, God only knows he is, and they make a point of ignoring the raised eyebrows they both get as he leads her into the barbershop he’s been going to since forever.

“Stiles,” George calls, jumping out of the black chair he’d been lounging in and beckoning Stiles into it. “Thought you’d be in soon. The usual?”

The usual, a straight buzz cut, takes about a grand total of ten minutes and George spends the vast majority of it giving Lydia significant looks and making proud-grandfather faces at Stiles in the mirror. Lydia’s alarmingly good natured about it, charming and sweet as she settles herself into the vacant chair next to Stiles and prods George for stories about Stiles as a kid. He happily tells her about how Stiles, hyperactive since months before he even came out of the womb, his mother used to say, always had a bit of a problem sitting still for haircuts when he was a kid.

“Kept his hair pretty long for a kid,” George told Lydia, “because his mother was a smart one, she was. But still, every few months or so we’d have to wrestle Stiles into the airplane seat back there,” he nods over his head, pointing out the child-size barber stool in the shape of an airplane, complete with leg holes and a seat belt. “Even then, his Mom’d have to hold him down most of the time, and we were damn lucky if the thing came out even halfway decent.”

“I don’t know why I still come here,” Stiles gripes back teasingly, covering his eyes with one hand. “See if you get a tip now, old man.”

George always gets a tip, of course, because George cuts his hair for free every time. Has since the first time Stiles came in and asked for a buzz cut, sitting still as a statue and watching tufts of hair fall away while firmly blinking unshed tears from his eyes. It’s a longstanding argument between them, George insisting he doesn’t feel right charging a long-time customer for a cut he could realistically do himself at home, especially one that requires monthly visits, and Stiles stubbornly leaving the exact amount the cut should be in George’s tip drawer.

It plays out as expected, Lydia watching with entirely too much interest as Stiles and George bicker back and forth, interjecting when George tried to insist Stiles “use the money to take your gorgeous girl here out to lunch,” laughing when Stiles shoots back that he’s “already bought Lydia breakfast today, can’t go spoiling her.”

She waits until they’re back in the Jeep though, stifling giggles and helping Stiles brush away prickly little hairs that fell through the collar of the cape George had thrown over him, to pin him to the seat with an all-knowing look.

“You did used to keep your hair long when we were kids,” she says, and it sounds like an accusation. “Even when you were definitely old enough to keep still for a quick haircut, you didn’t start buzzing it until middle school.”

Lydia runs a hand over his freshly shorn head, dislodging a few more loose hairs, and Stiles stalls.

“You knew who I was in middle school?” he demands, and she rolls her eyes at him.

“Of course I did, moron, you were a hyper crazy lunatic and most likely my number one competition for valedictorian, provided you could shut up and concentrate on your tests long enough to finish them.”

“We were twelve,” he reminds her flatly. “Twelve, Lydia, what the hell were you doing thinking about valedictorian, I didn’t even know what that word was when I was twelve.”

“Yes you did,” she scoffs, because he’s a liar and they both know it. “Now stop deflecting.”

Stiles sighs, because he knows when he’s been defeated, and nods. “Yeah. My mom started chemo in the middle of seventh grade, and she was pretty bummed about her hair. She had…it was a lot like yours, actually, but this rich chocolate brown and shorter and less perfect curls, and she shaved it all off because she thought it would be easier to lose stubble than to lose all that long hair a little at a time.”

Lydia’s silent in the passenger seat, and even though Stiles is sure she knew this was coming it’s a different thing entirely to hear it out loud.

“I found her crying in the bathroom one morning, and after school I walked over to George’s and asked him for a buzz cut. Went home and told my mom that as long as she was still going through chemo my hair would never be longer than hers, that I wouldn’t grow it out again until we could grow it out together.”

His breath catches on the last word and Lydia reaches across the gearshift, lacing their fingers together and squeezing his hand hard. He squeezed back, because the alternative is pulling over and sobbing into the steering wheel and that’s absolutely not even an option right now.

“Do you ever…have you ever gotten to talk about it? Really?” Lydia prods gently.

Stiles shrugs. “I’ve always had to see someone for my Adderall prescription, they wanted to up the visits to once a week when it happened, but it’s hard for a single dad to get off work to drive his son around, especially when he’s the sheriff.”

“But what about like, Scott? Or your Dad?”

“Nah,” Stiles shakes his head. “Scott and I…a lot goes unspoken, you know? He knows enough to know how I feel about it, we don’t really need to hash it out. And my dad…I don’t think my dad will ever get over it, really. She was the love of his life, and it’s been a few years but he’s still reeling like it’s fresh, and I don’t need to add to that.”

“Well that’s dumb,” Lydia says bluntly, and Stiles can’t hold back the short bark of laughter that explodes out of him. She says it so shamelessly, so matter of fact, and he can’t help but grin at her even now. “Seriously, you should talk about it. Talking’s important. Any time you feel like you need to, tell me. I mean it.”

And she does, and that’s baffling and brilliant, and Stiles wonders when it was, exactly, that Lydia Martin became the best thing that’s ever happened to him. He keeps the question to himself, because there’s no need to get overly emotional right now, not when he’s raw enough that almost anything could be pried out of him with a properly worded nudge.

She squeezes his hand again, like she knows anyway, and they drive the rest of the way to the Hale house in silence.

He’s shocked, actually, properly shocked, to pull up and find a full-on construction site, teams of men in tool belts and yellow hardhats swarming over the significantly sturdier-looking infrastructure of the house.

Derek’s standing on the edge looking for all the world like the human equivalent of a cat with his hackles raised, biceps bulging as he crosses his arm tightly over his chest, clearly doing absolutely nothing more than making everyone nervous. Stiles wants to laugh, wants to pet the center of his triskele tattoo until the tension bleeds from those taut shoulders, wants to sneak up behind him and tackle him to the ground and demand he ‘lighten up, sourwolf.’

And then he wants to brain himself on the nearby pile of cinderblocks, because attraction he could probably deal with but this? Goddammit, where the hell did this come from?

“Derek!” he calls, abandoning the Jeep a few yards behind the Camaro. It’s not really loud enough to be heard over the din of the on-going construction, but Derek’s a werewolf with supersonic hearing, and Stiles swears he sees the harsh line of Derek’s shoulders relax just a bit.

Lydia climbs out and seats herself firmly on the hood, clearly content to maintain her distance from the house. He’ll give her that one; last time she was here, from what he’d heard, she’d raised the dead. So yeah, he’s content to leave her behind as he closes the distance between him and Derek.

Derek hasn’t turned around, hasn’t acknowledged Stiles’ arrival other than the shift in his stance when Stiles’ yelled his name, but he’s got no illusions of sneaking up on the Alpha. He pulls to a stop a step or two behind Derek, propping himself up against the tree Derek’s apparently staked out as his prime vantage point, and waits.

“Stiles,” Derek says finally, dropping his arms and glancing back at the teen. “What are you doing here?”

“Updates,” he announces cheerfully. “Speaking of,” he flails dramatically at the house behind them, “update!?”

“Peter decided he wasn’t spending another night ‘in that death trap of disgust and disease, Derek, this is not an episode of Supernatural, we don’t need to live like fugitives.’” Derek parrots, and Stiles stamps down on the urge to giggle. “He said technically the house is his too, and therefore his right to do with it whatever he wanted, and the money too, I guess, and here we are.”

“Technically,” Stiles points out, “I’m pretty sure Peter was declared legally dead by the town two weeks after he went missing from Beacon Crossing, so I’m not sure he has rights to anything. Also I’m not sure if living under an assumed dead identity makes you a fugitive, but I think there might be laws about that.”

Derek’s lip quirks in a way that hints at a smile, and yup, there it goes. Seems like Stiles’ body is completely incapable of not having something to swoon over, and since Lydia’s apparently out of the equation now he seems to have just transferred the whole thing right on over to Derek and that goddamn smile.

“I’ll let you be the one to remind him of that,” Derek offers. “Besides, I guess…”

He turns back, looks up at the mostly reconstructed frame of the house, and Stiles knows he’s seeing it before the fire, seeing the house in its full glory. Stiles had never made it out this far into the woods as a kid, had never seen it in person, but police reports. Newspaper articles. What he’d seen of it had been beautiful, and maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have it fixed up again.

“You’re not sleeping here, are you?” Stiles says suddenly. “You’re still at the train depot, right?”

Derek shrugs in an entirely too dismissive way. Stiles narrows his eyes, because that’s really just absolutely unacceptable, and Derek cuts him off with another hint of a smile.

“Peter rented a room at a motel in town for the duration of the construction and told me if I he finds out I’ve gone back to the train depot again he’ll take his claws to the Camaro,” he admits, and Stiles doesn’t bother trying to control his laughter this time. Derek looks like a sulky, well-scolded teenager, and for the first time since his resurrection Stiles wonders if Peter’s return might be a good thing. Oh, sure, he’s definitely got some hellfire planned, Stiles has no doubt about that, but maybe it won’t be quite the catastrophe he and Derek have been anticipating.

 “I’m going to keep that in mind,” Stiles says gleefully. “Stick it in my back pocket, save it for later. Next time you threaten to rip my throat out with your teeth I’ll just dangle my keys near your precious paint job.”

Derek growls, but it’s low and light, none of his usual aggression pressed into it, and Stiles thinks this might be what a playful growl sounds like. He nudges his shoulder experimentally against Derek’s and all the Alpha does is look at him, one heavy eyebrow raised.

“I’m onto you,” he mutters, grinning, and Derek rolls his eyes.

“The car can be fixed,” Derek shoots back, “ripping your throat out is a lot more permanent.”

“Yeah, tell that to Peter,” Stiles argues. He spares a look back over his shoulder, checking on Lydia still perched on the hood of his Jeep, and recoils slightly at the cold, narrow-eyed glare she’s shooting directly their way. It takes him a long, surprised second to realize that her brown eyes are fixed on Derek, glaring at him like he’s personally threatened everything she loves, and other than the one time Derek tried to kill Lydia, which Stiles isn’t even sure she’s ever heard the whole story about, he can’t think of one good reason why.

“Your girlfriend’s trying to kill me with her eyes,” Derek complains, and apparently he’s aware of the death glare too. He’s probably got a built in radar for death glares, a beacon for kindred spirits who practice murdering souls in the mirror.

“I genuinely don’t know why,” Stiles mumbles back, frowning at Lydia. If she notices him looking at her she doesn’t react.

“Why’re you here?”

Derek sounds grumpy again, all trace of light humor gone from his dark features, and Stiles takes a second to mourn the loss.

“Updates,” he says again, this time less enthusiastically. “Specifically of the Jackson variety, hence Lydia.”

“Well?” Derek prompts, and Stiles rolls his eyes at the sudden impatience.

“Jackson’s gone for good. His parents are moving to New York and shipping him off to boarding school in Connecticut. I figure he’s technically an Omega right now, but I’ve been reliably informed that if he’d had any choice in the matter he would have stayed as your Beta, so I thought you might want to know. Also, Lydia was wondering if there’s anything he has to do, as a werewolf moving to a new territory, to avoid getting killed in some misguided turf war.”

“Manhattan’s a big city, territory rules are a lot more lax in cities,” Derek says slowly, running a hand through his hair as he parses through Stiles’ points. “If he’s going to boarding school he should be okay too, packs in the areas of colleges and boarding schools tend to have an open door policy, since most wolves in the areas are so transient. He should reach out to the local pack’s Alpha, as a nicety more than anything else, but as long as he keeps his head down and his teeth to himself he should be fine.”

Stiles nods. It’s a nice reminder that not all werewolves are aggressive dicks, he thinks maybe a few of the ones in this town could stand to have their memories jogged.

“Is he going to be okay?” he asks quietly. “As a pretty new werewolf all alone on the opposite side of the country from what should’ve been his pack?”

Derek turns to look at him, a long, searching look like he’s trying to assemble the mystery puzzle that is Stiles without having any idea what the final product should look like. Stiles runs the question back through his head; he thinks maybe, if you listen to it the right way, it kind of sounds like he’s lumping himself in with that pack.

He might be.

“He’s made it through two full moons,” Derek points out finally. “That’s the hardest part, really.”

Stiles nods. He’s not sure when he started caring about Jackson’s welfare, sometime between the last time he suggested they kill him and feeling Lydia fall apart over Jackson’s move, and it’s a weird feeling. Derek knows it too, he’s looking at Stiles like he’s not sure what lead them here.

Stiles wonders that a lot lately, when it comes to Derek.

“Text me later,” Derek adds. “I’ll ask Peter if he remembers who the predominant pack in Connecticut is, see if we can get Jackson some contact information.” He pauses for a moment, like he’s not sure he wants to say whatever’s left on his mind, but Stiles waits. “Pack isn’t necessarily affected by distance,” he says finally, glancing over Stiles’ shoulder to where Lydia’s sitting. “If Jackson wants to be a member of this pack it doesn’t matter if he’s spending a year or two in Connecticut.”

“I’ll pass that on,” Stiles nods. “Yeah.”

Derek nods back like a dismissal, and Stiles takes the hint. He’s halfway back to his Jeep when he remembers one last thing, turning back to Derek and not bothering to raise his voice over the buzz of a chainsaw ten feet away.

“If the motel room starts feeling small, given your roommate and all, my window’s always open. Even when I’m not home, just keep an ear out for my dad and let yourself in.”

Derek makes no attempt to acknowledge him, but Stiles is satisfied the werewolf heard him anyway.

He lets himself back into the Jeep and waits for Lydia to buckle herself in before shifting gears and pulling the car away from the new construction zone that is the once and future Hale house. It’s just barely faded from the rearview mirror when he turns to Lydia, careful to keep his face void of judgment.

“You,” he accuses, “what’s your deal with Derek?”

“What?” Lydia says defensively. Too defensively. “Nothing. I don’t have a problem with Derek.”

“You are a lying liar who lies,” Stiles sing-songs at her. “I’ve seen you glaring great big daggers of death at him, what gives?”

“It’s silly,” she mumbles, fidgeting with the hem of her oversized shirt. “I just get overprotective sometimes.”

“Overprotective of who?” he laughs, because none of them need protecting from Derek, not as far as he knows.

“You, stupid,” she pouts. “He looks at you like…I don’t know, I just don’t like it.”

“Aw, Lyds,” Stiles teases, poking lightly at her. She swats his hand away, and there’s no doubt in his mind that if she could be, she’d be growling. “Seriously, he’s not that bad. We’re almost even…well, not friends, but we’ve reached an understanding.”

“That’s what I don’t like,” Lydia grumbles. No amount of prodding will get her to elaborate on that though, so Stiles chalks it up to Lydia being Lydia and gives up before they even clear the woods.

---

After he wakes up panting from his third dream about Derek shoving him against a wall/mattress/the Camaro, Stiles finally caves and does some research. He’s thorough, because he’s a nerd at heart, surfing everything from legitimate LGBT-friendly websites to trashy redtube porn to the incredibly detailed PWP archives on AO3 (incredibly detailed. Jesus Christ, half these authors are underage girls, and yet some of those stories might as well be step by step How to Gay Sex guides, diagrams provided by patented Stilinski overactive imaginations). 

And, because Thoroughness, thy bitch is Stiles, he talks to Danny.

It’s one of those nights where there’s actually nothing going on, but Lydia wanted to see the Katy Perry movie, and Stiles’ newfound reassessment of his feelings for her didn’t make him any less whipped, and Danny genuinely had nothing better to do (read: was waiting for an excuse to see it anyway), so they were movie-bound. Danny offered him a ride, Stiles saw the opportunity, and there they were.

Doesn’t mean it’s an easy conversation to start – Stiles has been spinning his phone between his fingers, smearing smudges across the screen and almost dropping it twice, for ten minutes when Danny finally reaches over and slaps his palm flat over Stiles’ hands.

“Just spit it out,” he orders, and Stiles resists the urge to point out that that’s totally what he said, because that joke is both outdated and overplayed.

“We’re friends, right?” he asks carefully, and even though it’s mostly his way of stalling it’s still kind of a fair question.

“Of course we are, idiot, unless you’re going to ask me again if you’re attractive to gay guys.”

“It’s possible,” Stiles says cagily, “that maybe I’m less worried about the entire universe of gay guys in general and have narrowed my focus specifically to one not-so-gay-at-all guy?”

Danny is quiet for a few seconds, but Stiles gets the distinct impression that it’s more his attempt at being properly respectful of Stiles’ revelation than him actually being surprised by the confession.

“To be fair, Derek pays a suspicious amount of attention to his hair. Metrosexuality and manscaping are all well and good, and stereotyping is bad, but I wouldn’t rule him out entirely…”

Stiles is pretty sure he chokes on nothing but thin air.

“Who said anything,” he whines, and it’s in such a desperate, panic-driven falsetto that he’s certain he just confirmed every last one of Danny’s suspicions, “about Derek?”

“I’ve seen the way you turn into flailing, spazzy nerdball around someone you like,” Danny reminds him, smirking knowingly over from the driver’s seat. “So I know it’s not anyone we hang out with regularly. Plus, I’ve watched half a dozen guys and girls hit on you on any given night without you even noticing, and some of them have been Lydia-quality attractive, which means whoever’s caught your eye has to be model-worthy.”

Stiles lets himself panic for a few more minutes, tells himself that Danny has always been uncanny in his observational skills, and that Derek, for all his built in supernatural emotion-detectors, is overwhelmingly obtuse about people. Danny spends plenty of time with Stiles these days, his logic’s sound, and that totally doesn’t mean that anyone else knows.

“This one time,” he finally says tentatively, glancing over at Danny’s carefully neutral expression, “I found a CVS receipt in his car for thirty bucks worth of Garnier Fructis and seriously almost died from laughing so hard. It’s just really hard to take threatening growling seriously when you’re picturing Derek carrying a little red basket and debating between Extra Strong and Ultra Strong.”

Danny finally grins, wide and open and honest, and Stiles can’t help but grin back, laughing quietly and shaking his head. Okay, so that went maybe better than expected. Not that he had any fears about Danny, really, but still. Everything feels a little looser now that he’s told someone – not completely gone, but less. Maybe like unbuckling your belt after a particularly enthusiastic effort at eating an entire Thanksgiving turkey on your own. The stomachache’s still there, and so’s the inevitable tryptophan crash, but the edge is softer.

“Anything in particular you wanted to know?” Danny asks, pausing just a beat too long at the stop sign before Lydia’s house.

“Nah, I know how to use Google,” Stiles shrugs. “Just wanted to tell someone.”

“Well,” Danny offers, pulling into Lydia’s driveway, “if you want to tell someone when you finally get into those super tight jeans of his, I’m all ears. Every delicious, scandalous inch of detail.”

Lydia lets herself into the backseat and wisely doesn’t ask why Stiles is systematically pelting Danny with the entire contents of the Prius’s center console.

---

Stiles opens his bedroom door and finds Derek on his laptop. 

He thinks he takes it in stride, really: flails silently, throws his keys at Derek’s head (misses), and slams the door. 

“Admittedly, I literally invited this on myself, but couldn’t you at least leave the door open or something, text a warning, wave a white flag out the window?”

“Sure,” Derek promises, still with his back to Stiles, “because your dad definitely won’t notice any of that.”

“Five second TXT, Derek, it literally only has to be eight characters. I-n-u-r-r-o-o-m,” Stiles whines. He takes advantage of Derek’s apparent determination to ignore him, shucking his shorts and replacing them with loose sweats.

“Phone’s dead,” Derek grunts, “bullet through the screen.”

Stiles crosses the room so fast he surprises even himself.

“Why was someone shooting bullets at you?” he cries, grabbing Derek’s shoulder and yanking the chair around. Derek looks whole, un-bloody, and entirely unimpressed with the interruption.

“It’s possible someone got the impression that I’m a dangerous and potentially violent animal,” he tells Stiles drily, pulling the expression Stiles privately (when he’s panicking less) refers to as his grumpycat face.

“When, where, who was it, why, do we need wolfsbane, shit it wouldn’t heal with the bullet still in you, right?” Stiles’ hands are skimming the air a quarter inch above Derek’s arms as though he expects to feel bullet holes he can’t see. They’re hovering over the hem of his short sleeves when Derek’s face softens, one hand coming up to cuff Stiles’ wrist gently.

“Stiles, I’m fine,” he says carefully. “I really meant animal. In the woods, it was kind of dark. I think I scared some guys with a bb gun. Besides,” he adds wryly, “you’re looking in the wrong place, considering my phone was in my pocket.”

Stiles, who’s been staring at the place where Derek’s thumb is still pressing lightly into his wrist, the little hollow between bone and tendon where his pulse is strongest, flashes his eyes down towards Derek’s lap. Front pocket or back pocket? Thigh, or…

Stiles flushes red and rears back hard enough to break Derek’s loose grip. He busies himself with swooping down to pick up the shorts he’d abandoned on the floor, waits to speak until he’s got his back firmly to Derek and his hands focused on folding the shorts into perfectly overlapping halves.

“Tell me you got shot in the ass,” he laughs shakily, prays Derek buys the flimsy bravado in his voice.

“Stiles, look at me,” Derek demands softly, and he waits until Stiles (shoving the painstakingly folded shorts haphazardly into a drawer and undoing a solid minute of fussy work) actually looks over. “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t say anything, kicks the drawer shut and pretends the uneven drawstrings on his sweatpants are a travesty of utmost importance.

“Whatever, Hale,” he scoffs, eyes on his knees, “you’re just trying to distract me from the fact that a couple kids shot you in the ass.”

Stiles ignores the weight of Derek’s eyes on him, meticulously tugs on the shorter string and studiously avoids looking up until he hears the telltale squeal of the desk chair pivoting back around. Even then he lowers himself slowly onto his bed, hauls up the stack of books he’s been meaning to reshelf for a few weeks, and stares resolutely at the spine of The Maze Runner.

“You know, the point of password protecting a computer is so that your average Joe Werewolf can’t break into your room and help himself to it,” he says finally, once he’s sure he can open his mouth without giving anything away.

“I actually tried Lydia, before anything else,” Derek admits, back to browsing what looks suspiciously like the Cyanide and Happiness homepage. “Speaking of, did Scott change his password now that they broke up?”

“Yes,” Stiles lies, shoves Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close into place with a little too much force. “How many tries did it take?”

“Lydia, then your mom’s name, then your birthday. It took two tries with ‘derek is a sourwolf,’ though, I wasn’t sure if sourwolf was one or two words.”

“I thought maybe it would be the lack of capitalization,” Stiles shoots back. He’s not even a little bit embarrassed; he’d known it was only a matter of time before Derek helped himself to his laptop, that was the whole point of the password.

“You have an ee Cummings anthology in that pile,” Derek points out, nodding his head backwards towards the pile in Stiles’ lap. “That, and your texts are always entirely lower case.”

“That’s sheer laziness,” because it is, “you’re lucky you even get fully actualized words, Scott gets straight textspeak.”

“Which is appalling. It’s not even shorthand, it’s just the brutalization of the English language.”

“Okay Hipster McEnglish Major, calm down,” Stiles teases. “Besides, you can’t really think Scott could read shorthand.”

“I don’t think you can either,” Derek challenges, and Stiles huffs out a laugh in response.

“I memorized the entire lexicon of Beacon Hills Police Department’s signal codes, standard military call signs, and Morse code when I was thirteen, what makes you think I can’t read shorthand.”

Stiles takes a pathetic amount of satisfaction in the ringing silence from Derek’s side of the room, until he glances over just long enough to notice two fingers tapping lightly against the surface of his desk.

“Now you’re just insulting my intelligence,” he complains when Derek’s finished, because tapping out Stiles is a shameless liar takes a stupidly long time and he’s more than happy to let Derek suffer through the whole thing. “And you can clearly tell I’m not lying, you filthy cheater.”

Derek doesn’t look even slightly perturbed to be called out on it.

“You should have told me sooner,” he does say, though, because even when Stiles is right Derek still has to be slightly more right. “Morse code is handy when you want to communicate with someone with extraordinary hearing.”

“Sign language,” Stiles muses in response. “We should learn that. That could be even handier, pun completely intended. Or do you know it already?”

Derek glances over his shoulder long enough to make sure Stiles is watching before he raises his hand, fingers shifting rapidly – a fist, his pointer finger crossed over his thumb, pinky raised, pointer and thumb extended perpendicular, a looser fist with his fingertips against his thumb, another fist. It’s faster and smoother than anything Stiles had ever managed with his clumsy fumbling, but he remembers enough of the basics to recognize his own name being spelled out.

“Just the alphabet,” Derek admits, “something faster could be better.”

“Baseball signals,” Stiles suggests, because Moneyball is the next book on the pile and if that’s not a sign from the universe then what is. “Finger gun for hunters, Stilinski-esque arm flailing for ‘run like hell,’ helpless writhing on the floor for wolfsbane.”

“You do all of those already anyway, complete with incredibly loud verbal commentary in case we missed the memo,” Derek points out, and maybe it’s a little rude but it’s not entirely inaccurate. “Besides, baseball signals are supposed to be a lot less obvious.”

“What’da you know anyway,” Stiles scoffs.

“Other than nine years of little league? Two seasons as the starting pitcher for the varsity baseball team probably didn’t hurt.”

Derek has the audacity to turn around and shoot Stiles a cheeky smirk that does horrible things to both Stiles’ ability to breathe properly and his will to live.

“Oooh,” he mocks, “I’m so impressed the werewolf has athletic skills. Did you ever accidentally forget you weren’t playing fetch and try to catch the ball with your teeth?”

“Only once, and I bit it clean in half,” Derek says solemnly. Stiles will never admit it takes him a few too many long, drawn out seconds to catch sight of the telltale lilt at the edge of Derek’s lips, but he will happily own up to the surprised bark of laughter that escapes when he realizes Derek is totally joking.

“Werewolf’s got jokes,” he laughs, and that small hint of a smile looks a little stronger when Stiles shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head in defeat. “Come on, though, there has to be some little canine tendency. Inherent dislike of cats? Uncontrollable urge to growl at mailmen? Inexplicable tendency towards kibble over cereal?”

“Well,” Derek drawls slowly, and he’s still twisted around enough that he can pin Stiles with a look Stiles feels straight down to his toes, “I do love a good chase.”

“What, not the kill?” he tries, and if his voice is a little shaky no one ever has to know.

“Oh, there’s definitely fun there too,” agrees Derek, and there’s still something else in his stare. “But the anticipation…”

And Stiles would swear, swear up down left right and with one hand over his heart on the soul of his beloved Jeep, that they’re not just talking about a playful romp through the woods. That something is still lighting the grey green highlights of Derek’s eyes, and there’s the faintest hint of a dimple on the side where one corner of Derek’s mouth is still upturned, and the overall effect is going to get Stiles in capital T-R-O-U TROUble.

His phone’s on vibrate, and for a text it only buzzes once, barely even enough for Stiles to feel where he dropped it against his ankle, but goddamn werewolves and their goddamn supersonic hearing, because Derek jerks like he’s been pinched. Just like that whatever odd tension had been leaking into the air between them is poof, gone.

He waits until Derek turns the chair back to face his desk, closing out of what was definitely Cyanide and Happiness to the even more baffling screen of the collective search results of mens henley on the J.Crew website (J.Crew, Derek? REALLY???), before quietly reaching for his phone and sliding open the text.

impromptu beach road trip tomorrow, harley and co going too, I’ll drive us and danny if you supply the food, say yes

Of course Stiles says yes, because the beach is approximately his favorite place in all of California and he hasn’t been there yet this summer.

try to actually sleep tonight, I’m picking you up at six and will blast nothing but Madonna at top volume if you even think about falling asleep in the car

bring me coffee and then we’ll all be happy

danny’s on breakfast duty, you can place your order with him

Stiles is halfway through a simultaneously demanding and pleading text to Danny when Derek clears his throat, a low rumble that’s not unlike his preferred growl.

“I can leave,” he says hesitatingly when Stiles glances up in surprise. “I mean, I know you’re dad’s on duty all night…” he trails off and gestures at Stiles’ phone, like that’s supposed to mean something.

“So?” Stiles frowns, because he’s never been faced with this oddly awkward-looking Derek before, and he’s not quite sure why his dad’s presence is in any way related to his texting habits. “No one’s kicking you out, it’s just Lydia conspiring to drag my ass out of bed at the crack of dawn.”

Derek still looks extra super shady, and maybe a little bit like he’s just stubbed his toe or sucked on a lemon, something wincing and sour in the creases around his eyes, and Stiles has absolutely no idea.

“Look, I’m serious,” he insists, shoving the last book (The Lightning Thief, and he feels absolutely no shame about it because awesome books are awesome no matter how old you are) onto his shelf. “I’m gonna go brush my teeth and whatever, but I mean it, you should stay. You obviously came here for a reason, and I totally invited you to. My bed’s big enough for two people, or there’s extra pillows and blankets in the hall closet if you’d rather the floor, or even if you just want to keep up your little online shopping expedition, no silly little laptop glow is going to wake me up once I’m out.”

Whatever’s slid under Derek’s skin doesn’t seem to have been soothed by Stiles’ little speech, but he nods once and slinks slowly back around to consider a slate gray henley that Stiles is 85% positive Derek already has three of, so he’s confident enough that if he leaves the room Derek will still be there when he gets back.

The computer screen might not be enough to keep him up, but Stiles is still wide awake with the knowledge that Derek is in his room when the white-blue glow cuts off an hour later, plunging them into darkness. He resolutely keeps his back to Derek, even though he’s pretty sure the werewolf can tell from his heart rate or his breathing or his what-the-hell-ever that Stiles isn’t really asleep. Let him make up his own mind about whether or not he wants to stay.

Stiles feels the side of the bed dip the same moment he feels the comforter shifting against his bare flank, hides his small smile against the arm he’s resting his head on. Derek’s all broad-shouldered and big-armed, but his body tapers down enough at the waist that there’s whole valleys of space between his hips and Stiles’, and Stiles tries desperately to pretend that he’s not hyperaware of last inch of distance between them.

He cracks his eyes open just long enough to catalogue the subtle changes since he fell asleep still staring down the wall and pretending to ignore the heat of Derek’s right shoulder a mere eight inches from his back. Stiles had rolled over at some point, hips and belly and chest facing Derek, shoulders twisted down nearly flat against the mattress, forehead inches from the arm Derek had shoved under his pillow and nose nearly pressed into Derek’s side. It’s slow burn heat, like sitting by a fire, and it washes over him in waves, and if he curls his wrist enough that the back of his hand brushes against Derek’s ribs, no one ever has to know…

The next time Stiles opens his eyes his alarm is going off, 5:30 and hell, and when he stretches an arm across to where he keeps his phone he realizes he’s alone.

There’s a mug sitting on his desk, though, and two minutes later when Stiles finally drags himself over to it it’s full to the brim of coffee, black, that’s still too hot to drink.

---

Considering everyone else’s blatant disregard for things like territory, personal space, and locks, Stiles is kind of surprised when Scott bangs down the kitchen door like he wasn’t capable of letting himself in. It’s early, too early, that hazy half an hour before dawn when everything’s the same flat murky gray, so Stiles will allow for the possibility that Scott forgot his key. And his built-in lock-picking skills. And wall-scaling, window-crawling abilities. 

“Whyareyouatmyhouse,” Stiles mumbles, one long string of syllables stumbling out of his mouth one on top of another. Scott doesn’t answer, probably because Stiles doesn’t quite possess the ability to hear through doors, so he shuffles blearily over and flips the deadbolt.

“Get in get in,” Scott orders, shoving Stiles backwards and throwing himself over the threshold, slamming the door shut behind him. It wakes Stiles up faster and harder than a straight shot of caffeine, though his self preservation appears to still be in bed as he elbows Scott aside and presses his nose against the glass.

“What?” he hisses, “what is it, what’s going on?”

And then he sees it. Laid out on the picnic table at the edge of the patio, neatly arranged with the arms folded serenely at the wrists and ankles pressed together through neat dress slacks, the carefully displayed body of Gerard Argent.  

In pieces. Three of them.

“Holy shit,” Stiles whines, reaching behind him to slap uselessly at Scott’s shoulder. “Holy shit holy shit holy shit shit shit Scott what the fuck is that doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Scott whispers back, high and distressed and pointedly not looking. “I thought I smelled him – it – something – by my house and I was following the scent and it looked like it was leading here but I didn’t think it would actually be here here.”

“Oh my god, is that a bow around his chest?”

It is. A gift bow, big and red and prissily tied right over his ribs, and Stiles knows exactly how it got here and oh my god he’s going to vomit and then he’s going to curl up in a ball and die.

He’s pawing numbly at the pocket of the hoody he grabbed after Scott’s text, yanking out his cell phone after three failed attempts at finding the opening and dialing the number before Scott can even begin to protest.

“Derek,” he hisses the moment the call connects, not even bothering to wait for whatever disgruntled greeting Derek had planned for him. “You need to get to my house now. Be as sneaky as possible, but try to avoid the backyard.”

“What.”

“Yes, I appreciate it’s 5:00am and even you need your beauty sleep, but Gerard Argent’s dismembered body is in my backyard so can you please come over now.” Stiles feels approximately no shame at the high pitched shrill his voice has reached by the end there – what matters is he can tell in an instant it’s effective.

“Stay in the house,” Derek orders. “Keep the doors locked until I get there. Are you alone?”

“Scott’s here,” Stiles admits, and Scott looks kind of pissed but he can deal. “He was tracking the scent and it lead him here. Derek, I think it’s –”

“I know,” Derek cuts him off. There’s an overwhelming amount of rustling that blocks out his voice for a split second, followed so quickly by the slam of a car door that he wonders if Derek hadn’t been sleeping in the Camaro. “I’m on my way.”

The call ends with the rev of an engine, like Stiles might not have really believed him, and Stiles can’t help but roll his eyes as he shoves the phone back into his pocket.

“What,” he sighs, finally caving to the cranky glare Scott’s been leveling him with since the second he hit send.

“Why’d you call Derek?” Scott snaps, low and layered with a soft growl Stiles hasn’t heard from Scott in a while. It’s territorial and possessive, and almost exclusively reserved for threats against Allison.

“There’s a dead body in my backyard,” Stiles reminds him. “A dead body killed by wolfsbane poisoning after a bite you forced Derek to give. Making you one half of the parties responsible for the dead part of the label dead body. I just thought the other half might like to be present while we decided what to do with it.”

Stiles knows it’s a lie the second the words are out of his mouth, and from the tight-lipped, narrow-eyed stare Scott gives him it’s a pretty obvious one.

“You know when we were little and they used to make us play word association games?” Stiles tries again, after a few long minutes of suffering pointed and accusatory silence. “You know, like fire truck, red, sleep, pillow, that kind of thing.”

“Stiles, freak,” Scott shoots back, and Stiles rolls his eyes.

“Scott, moron. Anyway. I think maybe somewhere along the way I developed a bit of a…danger, Derek trigger.”

“Yeah, danger, probably caused by so you should stay away from Derek,” Scott mutters hotly.

Stiles shakes his head. “Naw, man, more like oh shit Stiles you’re in danger, call Derek cause he’s got fangs and claws and an excellent track record for saving your life.”

Scott looks like Stiles has just insulted both Allison and his mother all in one shot, and Stiles can’t help but roll his eyes again because seriously, this is even worse than the time Scott got cranky about Stiles hanging out with Lydia and Danny.

“Dude, he literally crawled over broken glass to lead Peter in the opposite direction from my pathetic ass, and we weren’t even friends yet.”

“And you’re friends now?”

Stiles freezes, because there’s no good way to answer that. He thinks maybe they are, actually – not like Lydia or Danny or, obviously, Scott, but still something. Maybe. To admit that to Scott though, when he’s already starting to look a little hairy around the edges, would be a lot. And to lie, after already getting caught in one Derek-related lie this morning…

“Look,” he sighs, “Derek’s an ass, and a dick, and an idiot, and kind of a lousy Alpha. But he’s also kind of great, in his own weird way, and even before that I kind of trust him with my life.”

The buzz of an incoming text stops Scott from answering, though really the thunderous expression on his face is more than enough, and Stiles thanks God and also Jesus for small favors as he fishes his phone back out of his pocket.

outside, window next to the tv

Stiles forcibly shoves aside the immediate realization that Derek definitely just heard what he said to Scott, if he’s standing just outside the house, focusing instead on scuttling into the living room and shoving the window in question as wide open as it’ll go.

“I’m genuinely concerned that you know my house this well,” Stiles hisses as Derek shimmies through the tight space, rolling into a crouch under the sill before straightening up and sliding the window back into place. “Also, did you fly here, because my dad being the Sheriff will not save you from massive speeding tickets.”

“It gets really boring here, when you’re at school and your dad’s working,” Derek grumbles back. He sounds kind of defensive about it, like it’s totally normal to memorize the layout of houses you regularly lay low in.

“Whatever, creep,” Stiles mutters. He purposefully knocks their shoulders together as they squeeze through the kitchen doorway, smirking as Derek snaps his teeth at him, and Scott blinks at them like he’s quite sure they were possessed by demons in the short time Stiles was gone from the room.

“There’s a salt perimeter around the whole property,” Stiles tells him, because even though it’s a lie and he knows Scott won’t get it, someone has to say something to snap the staring contest Scott and Derek have engaged in.

“You’re not exactly Dean Winchester,” Derek mutters, and Stiles can’t decide if he’s more surprised that Derek called him out on the reference or that, for the first time in Stiles’ memory, Derek conceded the staring contest first.

“No, but I’d love to see you and Castiel sit down for coffee,” he muses.

“Do alternate realities exist?” Scott grumbles. “What’s the possibility that I’ve woken up in a reality that isn’t mine? Or that this is a dream?”

“Do you dream about me and Derek often, then?” Stiles says cheekily. His attention’s mostly on Derek, crossing the kitchen to peer out the back door, but he can still see the way Scott’s face runs through a variety of both vivid expressions and fascinating colors.

“Did you get a good look at this?” Derek interrupts, glancing over his shoulder at them. “Either of you?”

“Mostly what you can see,” Stiles shrugs. “It’s been cut at the neck and the waist, someone’s clearly cleaned him up and he’s definitely in different clothes than we last saw him in –”

“You remember what he was wearing?”

“He kidnapped and beat the shit out of me, Scott, I kind of an unusually vivid memory of that particular evening.”

Derek’s growl brings Stiles sharply back to the conversation, shaking his head once and cracking his neck before continuing. “The gift wrap, obvious and freaky, and if you look you can see his right forearm is bared.”

“Meaning what?” Derek presses.

“Bared and healed. No sign of your bite on it. Which means he was alive after he left the warehouse for at least long enough for that to happen.”

Derek nods once, like Stiles is a student he’s proud to have gotten the right answer from, and turns back towards them.

“Why is he here,” Scott snaps, eyes on the window over the kitchen sink. Stiles thinks he’s tempted to double-check the observations but would rather admit ignorance than suffer sharing the same window space as Derek. “Who brought him here, and why?”

“Stiles?” Derek asks, and Stiles knows it’s a power play. Derek already knows the answer, is asking Stiles both as a test to see what Stiles will say and as a test to see how Scott will handle the easiness between them.

“The Alphas,” he guesses, rubbing one hand over his close-cropped hair and frowning at Derek’s affirmative nod. “It’s a reward for good behavior, Derek heeded their warning, you and Isaac called off the search, and they’re rewarding us by tying up one of our loose ends.”

“Good,” Derek nods, and Stiles can’t help the pleased satisfaction that courses through him even if it means a sourpuss from Scott.

“Great, so they’re total power hungry creeps who like dangling their superior advantage over us,” Scott assesses. It’s crude, but not inaccurate, so Stiles doesn’t bother addressing it. “Why here though? Why Stiles’ house.”

Stiles has his own theory about that, too, but he’s not as ready to share that one. It’s slightly terrifying, for one thing, and kind of presumptuous for another. It’ll also no doubt lead to more questions from Scott, questions Stiles isn’t quite sure Derek will want him to answer.

“It’s another message,” Derek answers, eyes thoughtful as he studies Stiles’ neutral expression. “They’re letting us know they’re watching us, they know us. If they’d dropped it at my house it’d be a message to me, your house a message to you, but Stiles’…they know Stiles is between the two packs, that a message sent to him will be delivered loud and clear to both of us.”

There are times, on very rare occasions, that Stiles really, really hates being right.

“Stiles isn’t between the two packs,” Scott says hotly. “Stiles has a place in a pack.”

And oh, he’s even more than right. There were three messages being sent here. To Scott, a message to pay attention to the pack dynamics dividing them, to Stiles, a message that he’s on their radar just as much as any of the wolves are, and to Derek…

“They know you came here,” Stiles says quietly, turning his gaze on Derek.

Derek nods, because of course that’s the message they’re sending Derek. Derek, who’s spent the last six years of his life just trying to find somewhere safe and quiet to lay low and hide, is being warned that no where, not while the Alpha pack is still in Beacon Hills, is a safe hideout from them.

“You should swing by Allison’s,” he tells Scott suddenly.

“She’s not there,” Scott reminds him. “No one is. Why would they have gone there?”

“Because he’s Gerard Argent?” Stiles suggests, and for a very brief second Derek’s lips quirk at the obvious sass in his tone. He fights his own grin as he keeps his eyes on Scott. “Because they’ve gotten everything they could’ve from him, but there’s still two other Argents left here, even if they aren’t here here right now. Didn’t you say she texted you the other day and said they’re coming back soon?”

“What about him?” Scott frowns, jerking his head in a way that makes it unclear if he’s referring to Derek or Gerard.

“Can we learn anything from the body that we don’t already know?” Stiles asks Derek, who frowns and shakes his head. “Then I’m going to, for once, do what a normal person would do if he found a dismembered body in his backyard – I’m going to call the Sheriff, pack a bag, and stay anywhere else in the world that isn’t the house a dead body was dropped off at.”

No one seems to have a legitimate argument against his plan, so cops it is. Scott, who Stiles knew would not be able to leave the Argent idea alone the second he suggested it, quietly slips out a side window as Stiles is making the 911 call.

Derek watches with something like morbid amusement on his face as Stiles adopts a heady kind of panic the second the dispatcher picks up the phone, rambling fitfully about oh my god Janine it’s Stiles there’s a dead body in my backyard I’m not kidding Janine I came downstairs to make coffee and there is a body on the back patio can you please send my dad like now right now.

“Is she new?” Derek asks the minute Stiles hangs up the phone. Stiles, who has already started moving towards the coffee maker, because cover stories are only good when they’re accurate and he really thinks he deserves a cup of coffee, shrugs.

“Worked there long enough that she knows who I am and I recognize her voice, but still new enough that she wasn’t around when I was spending most of my free time at the station,” he explains. “Why?”

“Because the macabre doesn’t make you panic like that.”

“I panic all the time,” Stiles argues, because he totally does. “You’ve seen it, don’t pretend like you haven’t. I’ve even been known to panic over you, once or twice.”

“You panic,” Derek agrees, reaching into exactly the right cabinet for two mugs (because he’s the biggest creeper who’s ever creeped) and handing them over to Stiles. “But you panic about life threatening things, not dead things. Dead things are already dead, you can’t do anything about them.”

It’s a completely fair and completely accurate assessment of Stiles, and he wonders where in the hell Derek got the inside scoop enough to sort that out.

“I told you, I spent a lot of time at the station for awhile,” Stiles reminds him, pouring coffee into the two mugs. He dumps a hefty amount of sugar into one, a splash of the milk he’d pulled from the fridge, and sticks a spoon in it before passing it over to Derek.

And tries not to overanalyze that he knows exactly how Derek takes his coffee.

“Where’s the Camaro?”

“Far enough away that the police won’t notice it,” Derek assures him.

They drink their coffee in silence, Derek propped against the countertop, Stiles sitting on the edge of the sink, until Derek cocks his head to the side and turns slightly towards the front door.

“They’re almost here,” he says, dumping the remains of his coffee into the sink and tucking the mug away into the dishwasher. “I should…”

“Go upstairs,” Stiles suggests quickly, nodding up to where his room is. “None of my windows face the backyard, so they shouldn’t have any reason to go up there. You could even get a few more hours of sleep, if you can block out the noise.”

The red and blue lights from a squad car hit the back wall of the hallway, and Derek nods. He takes the stairs two at a time while Stiles heads for the front door, waiting until he hears the barely audible click of his bedroom door closing before wrenching the doorknob and staring at his dad.

“Backyard,” he says, backing quickly out of the way of the Sheriff and the two deputies on his heels. “Saw it out the window over the kitchen sink, it’s – Dad, it’s…”

The Sheriff stops abruptly, gestures for his deputies to pass him before turning on his son.

“Are you okay?” he asks quietly, gripping Stiles’ shoulders tight with both hands.

“I’m fine,” Stiles nods. “Fine, I swear. It just freaked me out, you know? I was half asleep still, and you don’t really expect to look up from the kitchen sink and see Principal Argent’s face staring back at you, you know?”

“Argent?” the Sheriff frowns, twisting back towards the kitchen without letting go of Stiles.

“Yeah,” Stiles nods. “Definitely. In…you should go look. I’m fine, I swear.”

His dad pulls him in for a hug anyway, squeezing quick and tight before releasing Stiles and stepping back.

“I’m going to have Deputy Forrester come in and take your statement,” he tells Stiles, business-like Sheriff voice back in action now that he’s satisfied his parental concern. “And then I think you should clear out. This is the last place you need to be, they’re going to want to do a sweep of the whole property, and…”

“No, no you’re totally right that I want no part in that,” Stiles agrees, and it’s completely true. “I’ll text Lydia. Or Scott. Or someone, don’t worry about it.”

The Sheriff squeezes his shoulder once more before hustling out the back door, and the deputy that replaces him is one of the few that survived the kanima incident by being on patrol halfway across town at the time. He’s been around long enough to remember when Stiles didn’t have a nickname, long enough to know exactly who he’s dealing with, and is quick and clinical in getting as much of a statement as Stiles can pull together (significantly less of one than what he’d offered Derek and Scott, like that’s any surprise).

Stiles is surprised when he finally stumbles his way back upstairs not even ten minutes later, intent on getting dressed and getting the hell out of dodge, and finds his room completely empty of one Alpha werewolf. His bed, though, was definitely not made when he fell out of it forty five minutes ago, and that’s a classic Derek was here signature.

Sure enough, there’s a note on his pillow when he gets closer.

don’t go to Scott or Lydia, come to the house. it’s safer, for now. wear old clothes, we’re painting the living room.

The we, Stiles has no doubt, is not the royal we of Derek implying they’ve hired contractors and Stiles should take care not to get messy. Oh no, he and Derek are apparently painting today, because apparently they’re at least the kind of friends that help each other paint their houses.

Whatever, it’s not like Stiles had anything better to do today. Besides, he’s not going to say no to enforced one on one time with Derek, he’s way smarter than that.

It’s not until he’s pulling on an old pair of shorts from the soccer team he’d played on, summer after eighth grade, that he remembers the conversation he’s absolutely certain Derek overheard between him and Scott.

he’s also kind of great, in his own weird way, and even before that I kind of trust him with my life

Stiles sucks on his teeth before pulling his bottom lip into his mouth, gnawing lightly on it as he reconsiders his words. On the one hand, he’d made it this far without letting the proverbial werewolf out of the bag; managed to avoid a situation in which he’d be forced to either lie outright to Derek or admit openly to trusting him. On the other hand…he thinks that, maybe, given the way things have kind of become between them, maybe it’s not such a secret anymore. Maybe it’s just one of those things, the unspoken secret that goes unacknowledged by anyone involved but is still generally known to be true.

Besides, it’s not like he’s ever been the one to say outright that he doesn’t trust Derek. He’s maybe implied it, once or twice, but Derek was the one to insist that Stiles didn’t trust him any more than he trusted Stiles.

He ignores the white hot flare of anger the memory still drags up, because he’s never been so insulted in his life, and he’s never hated Derek more than he did in that moment, but fine. Whatever. Derek either heard him or he didn’t, and there’s nothing Stiles can really do about it now.

He pulls his dad aside long enough to tell him he’s heading to Danny’s, they’re repainting Danny’s bedroom, then leaves before the Sheriff has a chance to question it. There’s no point bringing Danny in on the lie, the Sheriff will definitely be entirely too busy with the crime scene at his house to worry about checking in on Stiles, but he does consider texting Lydia as he passes the turn off to her street.

Something nudges the memory of Lydia, possessive and angry and staring down Derek like she has several choice words she’d like to hurl at him, and he leaves his phone in the cup holder where he’d dropped it.

Derek’s waiting for him on the front porch, but Stiles is so busy staring that he doesn’t even notice. The house is…Jesus, the house is incredible. It’s breathtakingly gorgeous, all light wood and windows and an open air porch, and the sight of Derek standing there, hands in his pockets and one shoulder against a wooden support column, makes Stiles’ hands shake with want and need and concern and silent desperation.

“Wow,” he says quietly, knowing Derek can hear him. “Wow, Derek, it’s amazing.”

The closer he gets the more he takes in the subtle differences from the pictures he’s seen of the old Hale house. The biggest, he thinks, are the enormous picture windows on both sides of the front door and, from what he can see straight through some of the empty, open rooms, dotting the other three walls at intervals too.

Emergency exits, Stiles’ traitorous mind supplies, and he shakes his head in response because he absolutely does not want to think about that.

“What if the Alphas…” he worries, because suddenly that’s all he can see, the Alpha pack attacking the house, hitting Derek in the soft spots, torching the place and holding him still while they force him to watch it burn. It’s a horrible image, entirely too vivid and entirely too possible, and it terrifies him.

“They won’t,” Derek says firmly, interrupting the runaway train that is Stiles’ imagination. “The Alpha pack sees itself as…law enforcement, at a stretch. They have a code just like any other pack would, and one of the fundamentals of that is that the den is sacred. Besides, part of what they’re interested in is seeing if we have a future as a pack, and rebuilding the house is a declaration of our intent to stay and to stabilize.”

“What if it comes down to a last resort?”

“It won’t.” There’s a new kind of conviction in Derek’s voice, not the cocky confidence that came with the power of a new Alpha, but a quiet determination. Stiles isn’t sure where it came from, when Derek started looking like he had the potential to be a good leader for the pack, but it’s a good look on him.

Derek was apparently serious about the painting thing, but Stiles doesn’t mind. They get to work in this easy, comfortable silence only occasionally broken by Stiles blurting out a question his constantly-whirling thoughts offer up. Derek is surprisingly agreeable to answering almost everything Stiles comes up with (“Laura used to tease me about that all the time,” with a bittersweet smirk, when Stiles finally asks about the disappearing eyebrows. “Whatever you’re imaging, but worse,” when Stiles dares ask how a werewolf obtains a tattoo. “Olive green,” specifically, when Stiles fails to guess his favorite color).

They break for lunch after two of the walls are finished, Stiles elbowing Derek out of the way when he looks like he’s about to start heating up instant mac and cheese. There’s no furniture yet, but the kitchen has a large island in the center that Derek seems to have no qualms about hoisting himself up onto, so Stiles hauls his ass up next to him and serves them both properly made mac and cheese in never-before-used bowls.

“I’m not saying Peter’s not going to turn around and try to kill us all in our sleep,” Stiles mumbles around the plastic fork in his mouth. “I’m just saying that maybe this wasn’t the worst idea anyone’s ever had, rebuilding this house. And your standing around glaring at everyone sure seemed to expedite the process, who knew an entire house could get rebuilt in under a month in a world that isn’t Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”

Derek does not seem even slightly willing to concede the Peter point, but he does look rather pleased with himself for his own contribution. Stiles laughs and shakes his head.

“I’m also not saying anything about your priorities, and the lack of furniture makes sense since you’ve only just started painting, but I do feel slightly confused about your considering bowls and three different kinds of pasta necessary but forks and cups optional.”

“Food is necessary,” Derek protests, like that’s the one Stiles was really judging him on. “Isaac brought the plastic forks over because he said even toddlers don’t get away with eating pasta without utensils.”

“And the bowls?” They’re nice bowls, actually, sturdy white porcelain with a stamp on the bottom declaring them ‘professional grade.’ Stiles thinks this might be a standard for werewolves, good, sturdy housewares, and has a momentary flash of wondering what kind of damage child-size werewolves could do to a home.

“I actually have no idea where those came from,” Derek admits, tapping a nail lightly against the side of his.

“I suspect Peter,” Stiles nods sagely. “Are you gonna growl at me if I say he did a good job picking them out?”

Derek does growl at him, but there’s absolutely no heat in it, so Stiles just laughs again and makes a point of flailing around enough to elbow Derek in the ribs (twice) as he dismounts from the counter.

He appreciates the light banter, the carefully doled out tidbits of information about both werewolves and Derek, but there’s something to be said for the long moments of silence just as much. Stiles has never suffered silence well, even the companionable kind, but in this case it gives him a chance to step back, to spend minutes on end musing quietly on where they are.

It’s not entirely out of the blue. Stiles isn’t sure he’d really have called them friends before, even when Scott point-blank asked him, but he thinks maybe they could be. Thinks maybe they could be more, really, but would settle for friendship at the least. It’s not effortless like the way his friendships with Lydia and Danny just kind of fell into place, but still. Derek shows up at his house on days other than Wednesday, once or twice a week and always when the Sheriff’s on duty. He always seems to show up just in time for Stiles to be thinking about dinner, and he sometimes sticks around long enough to follow Stiles into the living room for whatever random DVD Stiles got from Netflix that week. It’s tentative, stilted at times and awkward at others, but it leaves Stiles feeling warm and content and Derek looking less like the weight of the world is hanging in the crease between his eyebrows, and that’s definitely not insignificant.

He gets a text from his dad a little after four, giving him the heads up that the coast is clear and, so long as he avoids the backyard, he’s allowed back in the house. Stiles doesn’t mention it to Derek right away, even though he looks over questioningly when Stiles’ phone goes off. He tells himself it’s because he wants to finish the wall he’s working on, to say they successfully finished painting the whole room, and it tastes like a lie even in his own head.

They do finish, and Stiles puts painstaking effort into cleaning the paint rollers until they look new again, and then there’s really not much of an excuse for him to stay. He’s futzing with the paint cans still stacked by the doorway, re-grouping them by color and piling them in a neat little line against the wall, while Derek hovers awkwardly on the bottom step of the staircase.

“Stiles…” he says finally, and it’s heavy enough to make Stiles stop where he is and turn around.

“Thank you,” Derek blurts out, and Stiles shakes his head a fraction because he was expecting more, and he shouldn’t have.

“No problem, it was kind of fun,” he shrugs, turning back around to the last two paint cans to be sorted. “Well, I mean. Not fun, like woo afternoon at Disneyland fun, but you know. Relaxing. Refreshing. Something?”

“That’s not what…” Derek lets out a sound that Stiles knows without even looking is accompanied by his fingers raking through his hair. There was paint on Derek’s hand, last time he looked, and he’s tempted to turn around and see if Derek’s black hair had streaks of the warm sand paint in it now.

“I mean, yes, thanks for helping,” Derek tries again. “But I meant earlier. When you were defending me, to Scott.”

“I didn’t really know you were listening,” Stiles admits, wincing. “I guess I couldn’t have, but…”

“I know you didn’t mean it – ”

“Who said I didn’t – ”

“ – I just appreciate you arguing with Scott – ”

“ – I’m allowed to think you’re great if I want to – ”

“ – on my – ”

“Shhh! Shut up,” Stiles snaps, pressing his pointer finger against his lips and shushing harshly every time Derek tries to keep going. “No no no,” he insists, “stop talking.”

Derek finally gives up, heaving a world-weary sigh and raising his eyebrows expectantly at Stiles, but Stiles isn’t fooled. He can see the hint of fondness softening Derek’s mouth.

“You’re either really bad at using your wolf powers or you’re actually shamelessly lying to yourself, because if you were able to hear me and Scott talking then you were definitely able to hear whether or not I was lying,” Stiles points out, giving Derek a stern look that completely belies the way his stomach feels like the floor just dropped out from under him and he’s in that split second before gravity caught up and dragged him down. “Scott can be a stubborn little prick sometimes, once he’s made up his mind about a person, and I think he’s wrong about you, and I reserve the right to challenge him on it whether you like it or not. Capice?”  

Derek’s (failed) attempt at a scowl has lifted significantly by the time Stiles finishes his rant, not really much of a smile but still a definite softness in lieu of the weight normally turning Derek’s lips down. He’s watching Stiles like he doesn’t know what to do with this foreign creature, like he thought he’d caught a fish and suddenly it sprouted wings and made to fly, but he also looks like he doesn’t necessarily hate the surprise.

“Am I allowed to talk yet?” he asks, and there’s gruff amusement in his voice. Stiles nods and gestures one hand graciously towards him. “I meant the trust part.”

“Well then you’re an idiot,” Stiles snaps quickly, and there’s a little something sharp in his voice, a whip crack that snags Derek’s attention like lightning. “I have never, once, not ever, said I don’t trust you. In fact, I’m pretty sure the first time you accused me of not trusting you I threw the treading-water-in-a-pool-supporting-two-hundred-pounds-of-deadweight-trying-not-to-get-us-both-drowned equivalent of a hissy fit temper tantrum.”

“So you…” Derek starts, and Stiles throws his hands sky high in a fit of drama.

“Jesus Christ, yes,” he cries. “Yes, I trust you. You idiot. You make dumbass decisions entirely too often, and sometimes you think with your claws too much and your brain not enough. But you’ve put yourself between me and danger more than once, and I’m not saying that I’d take your word for it if you told me the sky suddenly changed to purple, but maybe I’d go outside and double check just to be sure, because I trust you enough to at least maybe give you the benefit of the doubt. And Holy God, Derek, I really need you to stop looking at me like that.”

Derek, who’d spent the majority of Stiles newest diatribe fighting (and failing again) to keep his expression neutral, finally caved to a small, amused smile, lips pressed together like it’ll minimize the effect of the expression, like the effort to disguise his growing amusement will make any difference to the pathetic way Stiles’ heart is melting to goo and dripping through his ribcage.

“Seriously,” Stiles says desperately, closing his eyes and scrubbing his hand down over his face, “you have no idea. I look at you like that and I just think Jesus, you should smile like that all the time. All the time. If you’re not careful I’m going to wind up spending the rest of my life trying to make you smile, like that, like you mean it. And not because it makes your already delicious face unbearably beautiful, but because it means you’re happy. Because fuck, Derek, you should be happy. You deserve to be happy.”

He finally blinks his eyes open as he trails off helplessly, and it’s small consolation that the smile is gone. Gone, because Derek looks gutted. He doesn’t make a sound, save the slow tensing of his jaw as his lips press into a tight, grim line. Doesn’t move, keeps his eyes firmly locked on Stiles, and it’s a look Stiles recognizes. Derek tracks him like a threat, like Stiles’ every move, every breath, is a potential attack, and that’s more than enough of an answer for Stiles.

“Shit,” he breathes, because he’s said too much, way too much, more than enough. The easy camaraderie, the fond amusement, it’s all shattered like Stiles shot a bullet straight through it, and there’s no way to pick up that many pieces. Derek’s still staring at him like Stiles has gone feral right in front of him, like he’s hyper-tense and bracing himself for Stiles to attack, and Stiles doesn’t have anything left in him to even begin to deal with that.

He lets himself out without another word, pulling the new front door soundly shut behind him, and he can feel Derek’s eyes on him all the way back to the Jeep, forceful and wary even through the glass pane of the picture window.

Stiles waits until he’s a safe distance away, and never in his life has he been more grateful for the time he and Scott specifically tested the exact distance necessary to be out of hearing range from the Hale house, pulls the Jeep into park, and slams both hands hard against the wheel. It does nothing but make his palms sting, angry, frustrated tears pricking the corners of his eyes, and Stiles refuses, he absolutely refuses to cry over Derek fucking Hale.

He throws himself out the door, because the Jeep is too small, too enclosed, and he can’t take another second of it, and stalks off in a direction that won’t bring him even remotely close to the Hale property line.

---

“A little bird told me that you had a little run in with a dead body this morning.” 

Stiles pulls the phone back away from his ear to look at the caller id again, to check that it really is Lydia who called five consecutive times until he gave up and answered his phone without a word.

It is.

“Stiles?”

He quickly raises his cell back up to press against his ear, swiping his free hand across his face like it makes a damn difference.

“The same little bird told me you then spent the day hiding out at the newly rebuilt Hale house.”

“You know some very talkative birds,” Stiles complains, and he knows immediately that it’s a mistake. His voice has that definitive hoarseness to it that is only achieved by an extended amount of angry screaming and maybe a few discretely shed tears, and Lydia is smart enough to narrow in on that like a vulture.
“Stiles,” she demands quickly, “what’s wrong.”

He offers a derisive snort in response, because Lydia’s an idiot if she thinks she’ll get it out of him that easily, and over the phone no less, and he can hear her frustrated exhale back.

“How far are you from your car?”

“Maybe twenty minutes,” he admits, because there’s really no point in asking how she knew.

“Great, you have thirty to get here,” she informs him, and it’s not a suggestion. Stiles is already turning on his heel towards the quickest route to his Jeep, because it’s better to go along with it than to argue, and because there’s also no point in denying that he really needs Lydia right now.

“Are you good to drive?” she asks, and Stiles nods a few times before remembering she can’t see him.

“Yeah.”

He makes it there in twenty-five, and Lydia’s waiting for him at the front door with her arms crossed and a stern expression on her face. Stiles is halfway towards the front porch before she catches a good look at him, and by the time he’s made it up the steps she looks almost as heartbroken as he feels, and he doesn’t protest as she reaches out to pull him into a wordless hug.

“Mom’s out for the night,” she tells him, shifting her grip to tug him inside and straight up the stairs. “Which means we are going to sit on my bed and drink the wine I stole from Lucy’s stash and you’re going to give me a list of hopefully unconvincing reasons why I shouldn’t go rip Derek Hale to pieces. Also, should I call Danny?”

“No. At least not yet, but maybe later. Shit, when the hell did you become my best friend?” Stiles mumbles back, tossing himself bodily onto Lydia’s thick pillows. It’s genuine wonder, not disagreement, and from the all-knowing look Lydia flashes him he’s confident she picked up on the distinction.

“Right around the time that you stopped trying to get into my pants,” she reminds him, handing him the already open bottle of Pinot Grigio that had been waiting on her dresser. “Which, incidentally, I think probably coincides with the first time you actively realized that you want to lick Derek’s abs.”

“I don’t remember saying anything about Derek,” Stiles grumbles, taking a swig straight from the bottle because glasses are for leisurely drinking, not heartache-induced alcohol binges. “And I also didn’t realize you noticed.”

“That you stopped trying to get into my pants?” Lydia repeats, reaching for the wine and pouring a glass for herself. “I dragged you to a party, got drunk, sat on your lap, and told you Jackson wasn’t coming back and we were never ever ever getting back together and it still didn’t even occur to you to make a move.”

Stiles remembers that night vividly – remembers having the same epiphany in the midst of his crisis over Derek. Somehow he’s not entirely surprised Lydia picked up on it too.

“Have you ever seen Derek smile?” he says in response, pushing further back into Lydia’s rich pillows and reclaiming his bottle of wine. “Like, not a smirk or a sneer or a fake, pretend smile, but an actual, proper, something just amused me I am pleased smile?”

“No?” Lydia frowns at him like he doesn’t make sense for even considering the question. “Has anybody?”

He watches the realization dawn on her fair features, another wave of sympathetic understanding lighting her eyes.

“You have,” she supplies. Stiles nods unnecessarily.

“I mean, aside from the fact that it’s like stupidly breathtaking,” he admits, twisting his fingers around the glass neck, “it’s also like one of the saddest fucking things you’ve ever seen. Because he smiles, and it’s so noticeable because he’s got a face that’s just made for smiling, and then you realize that you wouldn’t have noticed it as being anything extraordinary if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s normally so miserable.”

“I know he’s not exactly the poster boy for happy happy joy joy,” Lydia says gently, “but is he really that miserable?”

“Yeah,” Stiles breathes, and it breaks him all over again. Lydia squirms her way next to him, nestling into the valley between pillows that Stiles has wedged himself into. He worms his arm out from where it’s pinned between their torsos and curls it around her back, pulling himself a little tighter against her. “Yeah, Lyds, I think he really is. And it’s not fair, because he deserves to be happy. He really does, he deserves a fucking break, just for once, and I just…”

“You thought maybe you could give him that,” she finishes. He carefully toasts his bottle against Lydia’s delicate wine glass, helping himself to another long swig before pouring more into her now empty glass. Yeah. He did. Or he’d hoped, at least. He’d hoped that maybe they were building something, something that Derek could trust, or rely on, or maybe even something that just gave him a second to breathe every now and then.

“He’s an idiot, Stiles,” Lydia says gently. He rolls his eyes, and she doesn’t even have to look at him to know he’s protesting.

“No, I mean it,” she insists, shoving herself upright and turning to look him in the eye. “He’s an idiot, because you’re absolutely right that he could use some good in his life, and you are nothing if not good.” She exhales a frustrated sigh and takes another sip of wine, and Stiles knows better than to think that means she’s finished.

“He changes around you,” she tells him finally. “That’s how I knew it was Derek. He looks at you like you can fix him, like you’re his solution.”

“Sure,” Stiles snorts, “it’s called a punching bag for werewolf anger management.”  

“No,” Lydia shakes her head vehemently. “It’s because you ground him. He needs you, and I thought maybe he knew that, but I guess not. I knew you were going to get burned by it, and he is an idiot.”

Stiles stays quiet for a minute, lets himself dissect that one a few dozen times. He’d thought about it, in some of his less self-depreciating moments. Thought about the way he’d offered Derek an outlet, a safe zone, that maybe he’d become something for Derek to rely on.

Well. So much for that.

Maybe Lydia catches the way he’s drifting off on a tangent, or maybe she’s just smart enough to know when he can’t talk about it anymore, because she doesn’t say another word. She twists around and leans back off the bed, straightening up again with an iPad connected to a stupidly long HDMi cable, and her TV remote.

Stiles is only a little surprised by her choice of Heathers, and even if it does ultimately lead to a perfunctory discussion of Gerard’s body it also sparks a twenty minute long comparison of the Heathers and Veronica versus Regina George and Cady Heron. The debate leads to an extremely critical viewing of Mean Girls and a competitive round of who can accurately quote the most lines in a row (a dead tie, Stiles is unashamed to admit). They’re halfway through a third bottle of wine when the second movie ends and Lydia throws his abandoned phone into Stiles’ lap. 

“Call your dad,” she orders. “Tell him you’re spending the night.”

Stiles shrugs, because honestly he shouldn’t be driving anywhere right now, and his dad can just deal. And maybe commend his excellent decision making skills. Besides, Lydia may as well be his sister for all the sexual attraction he’s feeling for her right now, and hell how weird is that feeling still.

“Stiles?” whoops, he can hear his dad frowning. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t I text you about coming home hours ago?”

“You are so right,” Stiles agrees. “I got a little…sidetracked. Yeah. Sidetracked.”

“Sidetracked,” the Sheriff repeats flatly, like he doesn’t believe a word of it.

“Well it sounded better than brutally got my heart crushed into little pulpy pieces and spent a solid hour or two stomping around the woods sobbing like a little kid until Lydia convinced me to come to her house,” Stiles grumbles, and Lydia’s hazy brown eyes narrow sharply at him. Er.

“Clearly I missed something,” his dad says carefully, “since last time I checked Lydia was the only person with the power to break your heart, so I can’t really imagine why you’re at her house right now.”

“Oh that,” Stiles waves his free hand dismissively. “Somewhere along the lines Scott started cheating on me with Isaac Lahey because they’re all wolfy bros or whatever and Lydia kind of became like my best friend and go-to source in cases of extreme emotional emergencies, and it’s possible that she coaxed me out of the woods and into her house and let me lay on her bed and cry into a bottle of wine and watch chick flicks. Apparently that’s the thing to do when a boy breaks your heart.”

There’s a long moment of silence on the other end of the line, long enough for Stiles to start wondering which of the many revelations tripped his dad up - Scott befriending yet another one of the police department’s past suspects, Scott and Stiles being on the outs, Lydia and Stiles being on the in (?), or Stiles having his heart broken. By a boy. Man. Wolf?

“I’m guessing there was actually more than one bottle of wine involved, yeah?” the Sheriff says finally. Oh yeah. That one too.

“Possibly,” Stiles says cagily. “Possibly enough that I’d be much better off spending the night here instead of trying to drive home?”

“Are you sure the Martins don’t mind?”

“Positive,” Stiles spares Lydia half a glance, she nods without question. “And I’ll come home first thing in the morning, you won’t even notice I was gone.”

“Don’t think we’re not going to talk about this, Stiles,” his dad warns, but Stiles has already moved on, checked out of the conversation now that he’s fulfilled the necessary checking in responsibility.

Lydia’s still giving him that look when he hangs up, something gently scolding and accusatory, and he shrugs guiltily without really knowing what he’s done.

“An hour or two, Stiles?” she says softly, and oh. Well yeah Stiles did say that, didn’t he?

“Maybe closer to two,” he admits. “It wasn’t really…I mean, he triggered it, more than anything else, but it’s been coming for a while. You know? Like when you have a totally shit day and you get detention for something someone else did and make a stupid mistake on a test and the entire day goes by without a single person talking to you and you go home to an empty house and make dinner for yourself and drop a glass and it’s just a fucking glass it doesn’t mean anything you can buy another one but all of a sudden you’re losing your shit all because you dropped the stupid glass. You’re not really crying over the broken glass, it’s just the match that lit the fuse.”

Lydia gets up and fumbles with the blu-ray player under her TV, firmly keeping her back to Stiles as he drains the last few drops of wine from their third bottle lets it fall to the floor. When Lydia climbs back onto the bed and crawls across the mattress to curl up next to Stiles something that looks suspiciously like tear tracks stain her cheeks.

She presses right up against him, elbowing him this way and that until they’re both on their sides, Stiles hugging Lydia back against his chest and her arms bracketed over his. He doesn’t know how she manages it, but even casting him as the unquestionable big spoon she still somehow arranged them so Stiles feels like he’s being held just as tightly, just as securely as she is.

“When I was little and my parents would fight, my big sister would put this movie on for me to watch,” she tells him quietly, the ghost of each word brushing over the bare skin of his bicep. “She told me to always remember that no matter what other shit we think is going on in the world there is always, always true love out there.”

Stiles knows she’ll never admit, at least not out loud, how much she misses Jackson. Just like he’ll never admit, not again, how much hope he’d had riding on Derek, more than even he knew. So maybe they can’t be with who they really want. And maybe their supposed best friends are too busy with other people, or sometimes too busy with each other, to really notice. But Stiles has Lydia now, and Lydia has him, and sometimes they have Danny too, and maybe it’s not everything they want, but they’ll do the damn best they can with what they have.

Stiles falls asleep with the weight of Lydia heavy and warm in his arms and the sound of Westley and Buttercup fighting through hell and high water to prove that true love reigns supreme, and it’s a start.

---

He keeps his promise to come home as early as he can possibly manage to drag himself from Lydia’s bed, pressing a kiss to her temple and letting himself out, but his dad’s already left for the day by the time Stiles ducks under the crime scene tape and shuffles in through the front door. There’s a large glass of water and three ibuprofen waiting for him on the kitchen table, a note propped against the glass promising that they’ll discuss the terms of your grounding when I get home. 

Stiles washes down the pills with half the glass of water, chugging down the rest before refilling it to the top and stumbling towards the stairs. He can’t say he’s ever gotten drunk on exclusively wine before, and holy hell is it a hangover unlike any he’s ever experienced. Stiles is more grateful than he’d ever thought he’d be over the fact that Scott will likely be way too distracted by Isaac to spring a surprise visit on him today – he has every intention of climbing right back into bed and sleeping til 2:00.

Except, Stiles notes dully, elbowing his bedroom door open and zeroing in on the crumpled blankets on his bed, that might be difficult since someone else is already in it.

Derek is fast asleep and dead to the world, one arm shoved under Stiles’ pillow and his feet, still in his heavy black boots, dangling off the end of the bed. If Stiles cared enough to guess he would assume that Derek hadn’t meant to fall asleep, had been waiting there, maybe, and nodded off before Stiles made it home…but he doesn’t care. And he’s way too hungover for this.

“No way,” he snaps, depositing the glass of water on one of the shelves that made up his headboard. “Get up, and get out. I mean it, Derek, I’m not in the mood for this. Hey!” Stiles shoves one hand against Derek’s shoulder, pressing hard, and the werewolf moves all at once.

He surges half-upright with a sudden inhale, bracing himself on the forearm still under Stiles’ pillow and twisting his torso to bring him face to face with the unimpressed teen. Stiles makes a halfhearted attempt at raising an eyebrow that he abandons almost immediately after the dull throb of a headache; he settles instead for crossing his arms over his chest and looking as stern as possible with bloodshot eyes and still wearing yesterday’s paint-splattered clothes.

“Great, you’re up,” he snarls, “now get out.”

Derek blinks confusedly at him, only half-awake and clearly still fuzzy with the warm haze of sleep, and the combination of the soft, half-lidded look, the outrageous bed hair, and the overall warmth of Derek in his bed makes Stiles’ stomach churn. He closes his eyes in a poor effort to block out the image, like it isn’t already burned permanently into his memory, and resists the urge to just put his face in his hands and scream into his palms.

“You smell like sour grapes,” Derek tells him, heaving himself the rest of the way upright and twisting until he’s seated normally on the edge of Stiles’ bed, “and Lydia.”

“Your deductive skills are unparalleled, Sherlock,” Stiles grumbles. He doesn’t wait for Derek to finish his apparently complicated process of getting the hell out of Stiles’ room; he shoves his way into the space Derek just abandoned and tugs the covers out from under him, pulling them up and over his head.

“Stiles…” Derek starts, and Stiles is just not.

“Nope!” he says loudly. Too loudly. Ugh. “I’m hungover, and exhausted, and at the moment looking at you makes me feel like my internal organs are shriveling into dry husks and crumbling to pieces, so I just can’t right now.”

He can feel Derek hesitating, hear the unspoken words hanging off the werewolf’s tongue and the soft creak of floorboards as he indecisively shifts his weight, but Stiles promised Lydia last night that one emotional breakdown over Derek Hale was the absolute limit, and he’s too damn tired to fight it now.

“Please, Derek,” he whispers quietly, and that does the trick.

He’s asleep before Derek even lands on the soft grass outside his window.

Stiles is out cold for a solid two hours, and while it doesn’t feel like much, it’s enough to settle most of the pounding in his head and the way his stomach twists. He’s still shaking like a leaf, and his brain feels like it’s been wrung out like a sponge and left to dry, and his tongue feels like sandpaper in the desert of his mouth, and…

…his room smells like cheeseburger.

His room smells like grease and cheese and bacon and curly fries and oh my god there comes all the saliva that he’d been missing from his mouth, all back in full force drool attack because oh my god his room smells like heaven.

Stiles sits up and throws the covers off himself and promptly freezes. Derek is perched on the edge of his desk chair, holding a grease-stained take out bag from Mel’s in his hand and directing the faintest hint of puppy dog eyes at Stiles.

“I’m feeling very conflicted right now,” Stiles says carefully, tugging just the sheet back over his lap and trying not to care that he’d apparently pulled his shirt off in his sleep. “On the one hand, you’re here, and I’m pretty sure I told you to get the fuck out. On the other, you’ve come bearing the best thing I’ve ever smelled in my entire life. Also, I’m not sure if a burger at 10:00 am is entirely socially acceptable, but I’m trying really hard not to give a fuck about what you think.”

Derek stands up and crosses the room in two quick strides, holding out the bag like a peace offering. He hovers for a beat too long, glances down at the mattress next to his knee, and Stiles rolls his eyes and gestures over-dramatically for Derek to sit. He perches himself on the very edge of the bed, as far from Stiles as he can manage while still being on the mattress.  

“Technically you didn’t say I couldn’t come back,” Derek finally shrugs, scratching his now-free hand through the hair at the nape of his neck. “And I have it on good authority that greasy diner burgers are the absolute best hangover cure.”

“Thought werewolves couldn’t get drunk,” Stiles mumbles, gathering up the absolutely dripping burger (so rare it’s practically still mooing, just the way he likes it). “Oh my god, is that a fried egg? Is there a fried egg on this burger? I’m not sure if that’s brilliant or disgusting.”

“Taste it,” Derek urges. “It’s a brunch burger…the egg makes it an acceptable breakfast meal.”

Stiles takes a bite, and it’s entirely not his imagination that his porn-worthy moan is the reason for the small quirk of Derek’s lips. It hurts in the worst way possible – Stiles is selfish in his desire to claim that smile as his own, after he’d made such a point about wanting Derek to smile for himself and not for anyone else’s benefit. It’s just…it’s a lot, sitting in his bed feeling lousy and vulnerable, eating the (best damn) food Derek brought him specifically for the purpose of helping him feel better, and not dying to know why it can’t be more. Why they can’t be more.

“Werewolves can’t really get drunk,” Derek tells him, still almost smiling at the way Stiles is going to town on his brunch. “Not without a substantial amount of effort. But I did go to college, it’s hard not to pick up a few basic alcohol-related life skills.”

“Did you really?” Stiles stops fawning over his burger long enough to glance up at Derek, both eyebrows lifted in surprised. He hadn’t really given much thought to what Derek and Laura must have gotten up to in the years between their departure from and subsequent return to Beacon Hills, but he never would have guessed college was Derek’s top choice.

“Education was always important in our family,” he says quietly. He’s not looking at Stiles anymore, but Stiles doesn’t hold it against him. “College was a big deal, Laura and I both went. I was working on my Masters when Laura…”

He trails off, and Stiles clears his throat, replacing the remaining half of his burger in the Styrofoam tray.

“You should finish,” he suggests. “See if you can finish up from home maybe, or transfer somewhere closer.”

“Yeah,” Derek nods. “Maybe.”

Silence falls awkward and heavy, Stiles picking at his fries and Derek twisting a napkin between his fingers. It’s the first time in a while they’ve been this uncomfortable around each other, since the beginning of the summer, really, and Stiles can’t help but feel guilty about it.

“Why are you here?” he asks softly, keeping his eyes trained on the fry he was slowly uncurling. 

“I needed to…” Derek sighs, shifts his weight, tries again. “I…you left before I really had a chance to figure out what to say.”

“I got the idea anyway,” Stiles mutters, tossing the broken halves of the fry back into the tray and lifting the whole thing out of his lap. He settles it carefully on the floor by his bed before straightening up again, fixing his eyes somewhere near Derek’s right knee but still not quite looking straight at him.

“I don’t think you did,” Derek says quietly. “At least, not the right one.”

“Come on,” Stiles scoffs. “Everyone likes to act like you’re this emotionally constipated wolf who doesn’t know how to use his words, but you can’t fool me. I’ve heard entirely too much mumbo jumbo feelings mumbling from you, I know you’re capable of putting words together and expressing yourself.”

Stiles is certain he doesn’t quite mask the lie that sits in that middle bit, but Derek’s kind enough not to call him out on it.

“You make me happy,” Derek tells him, sudden conviction like steel in his voice. “You said I deserve it, but I need you for that. It’s selfish and unfair and that doesn’t stop me from wanting it. From wanting you.”

Stiles mulls that over, busies himself with wiping the greasy remnants from his fingers onto the sheets he was planning on washing today anyway. When he finally looks up Derek’s stuck somewhere between apprehension and resignation, and Stiles tries to stamp down on the sudden need for him to be so much closer.

“And what stopped you from saying that yesterday?” he asks instead, because it seems like a pretty dramatic difference from Derek’s defensive stance from the day before.

Derek growls in frustration, soft enough that it sounds more like a particularly harsh sigh than anything wolfy. It’s kind of cute.

“Yesterday I wasn’t really, I mean,” he runs a hand through his still-tousled hair, pouting at Stiles like he doesn’t understand why the teen doesn’t just get it. “I might have still been under the impression that you were in love with Lydia. Possibly dating her. And that what you were saying and what I wanted were two subtle but very different things.”

“Your information is out of date,” Stiles says firmly, even though the logical corner of his brain is doing some fast-acting connect-the-dots and he can kind of see how Derek drew that conclusion. He’s had entirely enough miscommunication though – he pushes himself forward on his knees and loops a hand around Derek’s arm, tugging until the werewolf falls in closer towards him.

“So I’ve been told,” Derek admits. “By Lydia herself, actually. Aggressively.”

That’s a story for later, Stiles muses, because Lydia mentioned no such thing but he’s sure Derek’s telling the truth. He focuses on moving forward instead, because Derek still hasn’t gotten the hint on where Stiles would like him, and he drags himself forward until both his knees are pressed to Derek’s thigh, fingers dropping lower to curl loosely around Derek’s wrist.

Derek makes an aborted move towards Stiles, free hand twitching like he’s not quite sure if he’s allowed to reach out and touch.

“Lydia has somehow landed herself into the much-coveted position of Stiles’ Best Friend,” he elaborates. “It’s shockingly platonic, all things considered. You’ll have to take my word for it.”

Derek moves more decisively now, dropping his palm flat to Stiles’ thigh and curling his fingers tightly into the fabric of the teen’s shorts.

“Don’t worry, I trust you.”

Stiles freezes, staring at him with wide blown eyes. That’s a huge thing for Derek to say to him, somewhere up there with a love confession (which Stiles isn’t entirely ready for, so really, this might actually mean more), and the steady expression on Derek’s face means he knows it.

“But you – you always – since when?”

Derek’s hand slide up further to find the curves of Stiles’ bare hip bones, thumb pressing into the dip where skin pulls taut and fingers stretching out to curl back around his flank.

“The animal hospital,” he admits. “When I asked you to cut my arm off. You were scared out of your mind, but if it meant saving my life you were absolutely going to do it. I knew you would, could see it all over your face, and that was it. You’ve never given me a reason to second guess it, even if I’ve lied about it.”

Stiles is speechless for all of about thirty seconds before he realizes there is a perfectly legitimate, perfectly viable response that doesn’t require him to find a way to verbalize the overflow of emotions threatening to break him. He curls his free hand around the side of Derek’s neck, cradling his jaw and brushing the pad of one thumb over Derek’s bottom lip in a deliberate warning as Stiles guides him forward.

Derek does nothing but pull him closer, wrapping his arm fully around Stiles’ hips and tugging until the teen is nearly seated in Derek’s lap, and when they meet in the middle it’s because they both moved with intent.

It’s careful and mostly chaste, a deliberate catch of lip between lips, the barest graze of teeth and a curious slide of tongue. Stiles holds Derek firmly still even when they break apart, keeping their faces close.

“Just so we’re on the same page,” Stiles whispers, leaning into it as Derek shifts to press their foreheads together, scant inches between their mouths. “This means I like you. A lot. And not in a friendly, platonic bros sort of way.”

“Yeah,” Derek nods and Stiles can feel it more than he can see it. “Yeah I got that this time.”

And there it is. Small and soft, a gentle quirk in one corner, a hint of teeth. Stiles pulls back enough that he can see as he brushes his thumb carefully over the curve of a dimple in Derek’s right cheek, feeling it grow more pronounced as Derek’s smile morphs slowly into an all-out grin.

“Good,” Stiles breathes, and he can’t help a stupid grin of his own, slumping limp and boneless under the weight of Derek’s smile, because Derek’s happy and Stiles did that. “Good, yeah, I’m glad we got that all cleared up –”

“Stiles,” Derek sighs, leaning in close again. “Shut up.”

And Stiles can still feel both of them grinning even through the kiss.
  

---

 

 

 

 

hold on to who you love
we are trying to blow like dust since we were young
(what we invented I am now ending)

 

 

---

(Fork and Knife)
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Notes:

Teen Wolf and everything that encompasses belongs to MTV, the gift that is Jeff Davis, professional life-ruiners Tyler Hoechlin and Dylan O'Brien, and the rest of the world's most irritatingly flawless television cast and crew.

pop culture references include, but are not limited to: The Princess Bride, Mean Girls, Heathers, Twilight, Harry Potter, Brand New, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Moulin Rouge, Titanic, The Matrix, The Amazing Spider-Man, Greek Mythology (does this count as a pop culture reference? too bad.), A Separate Peace, Supernatural, AO3, Katy Perry, Garnier Fructis, J. Crew, Cyanide and Happiness, ee Cummings, The Maze Runner, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Moneyball, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and probably a dozen other things.

the most ownership I can possibly claim of any of these things is that I paid for my particular copy of Microsoft Word for Mac that I typed this monster on. yup.

thanks for reading!