Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/2745563.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Teen_Wolf_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Derek_Hale/Stiles_Stilinski
  Character:
      Stiles_Stilinski, Derek_Hale, Sheriff_Stilinski, Scott_McCall, Alan
      Deaton, Isaac_Lahey
  Additional Tags:
      Sheriff_Stilinski's_Name_is_John, Angst_and_Humor, First_Time, First
      Kiss, Derek_is_terrible_at_communicating
  Collections:
      wink_wonk
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-12-09 Completed: 2014-12-17 Chapters: 3/3 Words: 22388
****** Balloon Animals Are Awesome ******
by DiscontentedWinter
Summary
     Stiles is totally in love with Lydia. Until one day he's not.
     Fuck his life.
     And seriously? Derek? Derek Hale?
     He can't be in love with Derek Hale. Derek
     hates
      him.
     Doesn't he?
Notes
     This is my first attempt at writing fanfic. I hope it's as much fun
     to read as it was to write.
     Thanks to Emma Sea for beta reading!
     ***
     I do not own Teen Wolf or anything associated with Teen Wolf.
     Please feel free to share and link this fic wherever you'd like.
     Also, I keep forgetting to tell people I'm now on tumblr:
     thisdiscontentedwinter
***** Chapter 1 *****
Stiles has been in love with Lydia forever. Forever. Well, since third grade,
which is pretty much the same thing. It’s one of those epic romances, probably,
that hasn’t got a lot going for it in terms of action yet, but it’s got
longevity. It’s a sweeping grand saga of a love story that will echo down the
ages. Poets will write sonnets about it. Bards will compose songs about it.
It’s the sort of love story that should come fitted with Technicolor sunsets
and an orchestral soundtrack that will swell into a triumphant barrage of noise
when Stiles and Lydia finally get together at the end. With the kissing. And
the other stuff that comes after the kissing. Stiles has spent a lot of time
thinking about the other stuff.
A lot.
Way, way too much time.
He’s pretty much at the point where he’s going through a bottle of shower gel a
week. And he’s not scrubbing his back with it.
So after years of unrequited love that would make a great movie, and almost as
long of Quality Alone Time in the shower – which would make an entirely
different sort of movie. Not the sort that would win critical acclaim,
probably—Stiles is incredibly shocked one day to realize that he isn’t in love
with Lydia anymore.
He’s in love with Derek Hale.
Derek Hale who pretty much hates him.
It could not be any worse.
Oh, wait. It totally could be.
And it totally is.
Derek Hale is a werewolf. A werewolf who has only barely been suppressing the
urge to rip Stiles’s throat out since the day they met. At first Stiles had
thought they were engaging in amusing banter. Everyone loves Stiles’s banter.
It’s charming. And then, one night, Scott drew him aside and said, “Man, you
really need to dial it back with Derek.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way you never shut up.”
“It’s called banter, Scott, and it’s charming.”
“Banter is like the tango, Stiles. It takes two.”
Bantering about banter. For a second Stiles had gotten distracted by the
awesomeness of that, the sheer absurd meta-ness, but then the truth had hit
him: Scott was right. Derek never responded to Stiles’s constant verbal
prodding, except with grunts, growls, and the Intricate Dance of Disapproval
performed entirely with his eyebrows.
So how is he possibly in love with Derek Hale?
Stiles does the only thing he can think to do:
He stages an intervention.
Except obviously he isn’t going to tell anyone about this, so he stages a solo
intervention one night. It mostly involves caffeine, Cheetos, self-
recrimination, and internet porn that is absolutely 100% straight and, even
when it isn’t, definitely does not involve older hot guys with dark hair and
piercing eyes who made growling noises.
No. Definitely not.
Scott sends him a text message a little after nine: Where r u?
“I am wallowing in my bed surrounded by cheesy dust, tissues, and shame,”
Stiles tells his phone.
He types out: Home.
What r u doing?
“Oh, Scott. Scott, Scott.” He sighs loudly. “Scotty McScott-Scott. You really
don’t want to know the answer to that.”
He sends back: Studying.
Scott doesn’t answer for a while, and Stiles feels a little stab of guilt.
Especially since Scott might actually be the one feeling left out for once.
“Studying” has been their code for “pizza and video games and trash talk” since
forever. Until just now when Stiles changed the meaning to “self-loathing and
chronic masturbation”. Which he’s certainly not going to tell Scott.
He flicks a tissue onto the floor, making a face at it as though he had nothing
to do with how it got to be in such a disgusting condition.
R u ok? Scott finally texts back.
Stiles can almost hear the suspicious worry behind the question. Scott has kind
of (by which Stiles means absolutely) eclipsed him this past year. He’s always
been better looking with unfairly awesome hair, and even slightly better at
lacrosse, which didn’t really matter since they were both benched so often, but
suddenly he’s a wolf, and suddenly he’s the best player on the field, and
suddenly he’s got a girlfriend, and he’s even probably (by which Stiles means
absolutely) having sex.
And itabsolutely, totally, unreservedly sucks ass.
Stiles has been feeling a little left out for a while now. He tries to make
himself useful to Scott, to help him through all the wolfy weirdness, but how
useful is he, really? He researches stuff, but it’s not as though that’s
difficult. Everything is only a Google search away, right? He’s certainly
proven that tonight.
Time to delete his search history: free porn gay hot brunet
And… now it’s deleted it never happened.
No, siree. The last three hours never happened at all.
Stiles shuts his laptop and looks at his phone again. He still hasn’t answered
Scott.
R u ok?
Stiles really has no idea how to answer that.
Scott, I am suffering a momentary psychosexual aberration. I hope to be cured
after another box of tissues and a good night’s sleep.
Scott, go and do wolfy things and don’t worry about me. I am okay. I am beyond
okay. I am peachy. 
Scott, for future reference “ruok” is not a word. It is the sound an asthmatic
frog makes.
In the end he goes for a version of the truth that isn’t exactly what’s going
on, but, with the right sort of smooth-talking lawyer, would get him acquitted
on a technicality: 
Just having an early night. See you tomorrow.
***
What it is, Stiles decides the next week, is some weird kind of transference.
Or some other psychological term he’s picked up from daytime television and
possibly never properly understood. Anyway. What’s happening here is clear. He
obviously wants to learn everything he can about wolves, thereby getting more
quality time with Scott with the added ego boost of not always feeling like a
weak, scrawny waste of space, and his brain must have figured out that the way
to be most valuable to Scott is to find a way to ally himself to the closest
thing Scott has to a wolf mentor: Derek. And since Derek obviously doesn’t
enjoy conversation, or have any discernible hobbies apart from brooding and
advanced eyebrow calisthenics, Stiles’s subconscious zeroed in on the one thing
every guy, and every wolf-guy, wants:
Bow chicka bow wow.
So there it is. Mystery solved.
It’s not love. It’s not even physical attraction. It’s purely psychological: he
wants Derek to want him. And, because he’s an emotionally stunted chronically
hormonal teenager, his sixteen-year-old brain can only process that need as
sexual, when it isn’t.
It so clearly isn’t.
As theories go, it’s pretty solid.
Yep. Pretty damn solid.
And it will stay that way, as long as he doesn’t examine it too closely, right?
So now that’s figured out, he can get on with his life.
Right?
So he does.
***
In July, Stiles gets stabbed in the chest in the woods.
“Funny story,” he wheezes in the passenger seat of Derek’s Camaro.
“Shut up, Stiles,” Derek says, which Stiles chooses to believe is just another
way of saying, dewy-eyed with emotion, “Shh, don’t try to talk.” But probably
isn’t. Anyway, if this is Stiles’s action hero and/or death scene, he’s going
to soliloquize the fuck out of it.
“Funny story,” he begins again, doggedly, “but until tonight I didn’t even
believe in dryads. Until one attacked me.”
“In what?” Derek glares at him.
“Dryads,” Styles informs him. “Tree spirits that are apparently nasty and
vengeful and in league with the Alpha pack.”
Derek’s eyebrows do a complicated dance.
“Stabbed me,” Stiles says. “Right here. Dude, it came out of nowhere. So fast.”
“There is no such thing as dryads,” Derek tells him. “You tripped over and
impaled yourself on a stick.”
Stiles reaches out and grabs him, clawing at his knee. “When we tell this story
later, we’re going to go with my version, okay?”
Derek looks down at Stiles’s hand on his knee, looks back at Stiles’s face
again, then glares out the windshield.
“Okay,” Stiles says, removing his hand. Personal boundaries and growly wolves
and whatnot. “So we’re agreed.”
The next morning though, when he’s recounting his tale of dryad-related horror
for Scott, he can’t help but think from his skeptical glances that Derek got to
him first.
What an asshole. 
***
In September, just when Stiles is thinking he’s finally on top of this deeply
disturbing man-crush, he accidentally gets messed up in this thing with a bunch
of hunters. And he’s done. Seriously done. Because even if he thought Derek was
a complete and utter douchenozzle, and, okay, a part of him still doesthink
that, when the window shatters and Derek leaps through looking all vengeful and
wolfed-out and he’s there to rescue Stiles…well, what’s guy supposed to do?
Stiles isn’t made of stone. Well, except for that one part of him.
And now Derek’s looking down at his crotch. Awkward.
“Anyway,” Stiles says brightly. “Thanks for the rescue.”
Or at least that’s what he intends to say. What comes out instead is: “Anyway.
Thanks...” and lots of hitching breaths and gasps and a few things that sound
suspiciously like tears. Because okay, he was legitimately fucking terrified
for a moment there. He’s been terrified before— hardly a day goes by now when
he’s not terrified by something on some level—but these guys were terrifying in
a whole new way. Stiles is almost used to things that want to kill him. He’s
not so used to things that smile at him like they want to violate his virginal
body in unspeakable ways first. And mouth-breathe all over him.
Derek looks awkward. He reaches out, and for a second Stiles thinks he might
actually deign to pat him on the shoulder in a comforting yet manly way, but
instead he withdraws his hand before he makes contact.
“You smell like them,” Derek says, his mouth turning up in a silent snarl.
“Oh, okay,” Stiles says. “Well, next time I’ve been kidnapped I’ll try and
shower and spruce myself up a bit before the rescue, shall I? Maybe spritz a
little Armani Acqua di Gio while I’m at it?”
Derek’s eyebrows shoot up. Seriously, they are like the only part of him that
is able to express emotion. Then they knit together again in a customary scowl.
“Acqua what?”
“It’s a cologne,” Stiles explains, grabbing his hoodie from the floor.
“Apparently it’s woody and herby at the same time. I might have been doing some
early Christmas shopping online for my dad last night, although he’s always
been a fan of Ralph Lauren’s Polo Blue.”
How the hell has this even turned into a discussion about cologne? And why is
Derek looking at him like he’s speaking a foreign language.
“What are you talking about, Stiles?”
“Cologne. I’m talking about cologne. Obviously.”
“Why?”
Stiles waves his hands. “Because this is how conversation works, Derek. Between
people. We talk about the weather, and that new coffee place that’s opened up
where the dry cleaners was, and Obamacare, and who J-Law is dating, and what
sort of cologne I should buy.”
Derek’s eyebrows leap again. “You don’t need cologne, Stiles. You already smell
kind of woody.”
Stiles holds his hoodie in front of his erection. “Well, that happens to be a
fear response that’s perfectly normal.”
Derek actually takes a step back. “I didn’t mean...”
“Can we go now?” Stiles asks. “Before this conversation gets any more awkward?”
He strides for the door.
“I meant you smell like the woods,” Derek mutters behind him. “All of the
time.”
No. No, apparently Derek isn’t quite finished with the awkwardness yet.
It’s going to be a long ride home.
***
“Stiles?” His dad sticks his head around his door. “It’s Friday night. Any
plans?”
The worst part about having a dad who is the town sheriff is that sometimes
Stiles thinks John is using him as an informant. As though Stiles is cool
enough to be invited to the sort of activities the police would be interested
in.
Stiles rolls over onto his back, dislodging the book he was reading. “Yeah, I
was thinking of going to the big secret party over on Miller Street tonight.
Apparently it’s only twenty bucks for all the booze and amphetamines you want.
Ten, if you’re willing to have underage sex with the dealers. It’s not totally
my scene, but you can’t argue with bargains like those.”
His dad takes a moment of silence, during which he’s probably thinking about
where he went wrong. “Actually, I was just wondering if you and Scott are still
hanging out. He hasn’t been around much lately.”
“Since he got together with Allison, you mean.” Stiles glowers, but doesn’t
mention the other big thing that’s taking up so much of his best friend’s life.
Scott has a problem with body hair and fleas when the moon’s full these days,
but Stiles intends on taking that to his probably-early grave.
“Ah,” his dad says with a knowing nod. “And ah…”
“And I don’t,” Stiles confirms.
“You don’t have a girlfriend?”
Stiles sighs, glares, rolls his eyes, and then briefly considers other ways he
could possibly channel a thirteen-year-old girl at this point, short of
listening to One Direction. “Yes. I would think the fact that I’m home alone on
a Friday night, and also the fact that I just said that I didn’t have a
girlfriend when you asked, would both point strongly in that direction.”
His sarcasm isn’t enough to deflect his dad. The man’s been building up an
immunity for years now. He steps inside the room. “So...?”
Stiles does not like where this is going. He doesn’t exactly know where it’s
going, but he trusts his instincts. “So?” he asks, voice low with suspicion.
“Ah.” John wrinkles his nose and rubs his forehead.
Sometimes Stiles can hardly believe his dad is the sort of man who can face off
with bad guys and be all intimidating and shit to suspects when he apparently
can’t ask his sixteen-year-old son a straight question.
“Come on, Dad. Spit it out.” He tries for a grin and it kind of misfires,
because suddenly all he think is what if it’s bad news? What if this isn’t one
of those Awkward Talks About The Sex that he thought his dad was going for by
asking if he has a girlfriend? What if it’s something so much fucking worse
that there’s no smartass comeback in the world that’s big enough to diffuse it?
He had that doctor’s appointment last week. What if it was bad news? What if
this is his dad trying to share all his fatherly wisdom with Stiles in the
short time he’s got left? Stiles can’t hold his grin. “You’re killing me here.”
John looks suddenly contrite. “No, it’s nothing, nothing bad.”
They’ve both spent too many hours of their lives here in Stiles’s room, talking
through the bad stuff. Half of Stiles’s life has been shadowed by it. It’s the
sort of thing that leaves a hole. Even after all this time Stiles can still
feel the empty shape that his mom made in his life by being torn out of it.
Every day.
He’s not the only one.
John looks shaken too.
“Okay.” Stiles taps his fingers along the cover of his book, and tries to
recover his equanimity. “Oh god. You’re not really going to talk to me about
girls, are you? Because I think we already had this conversation when I was
twelve, and I’m only just starting to recover flashes of the memories I
repressed back then.”
His dad laughs. “Well, it’s been a while since I was traumatized as well, you
know.”
Stiles sighs, and sits up. “Okay. Hit me. What are those crazy birds and bees
up to nowadays?”
His dad sits down on the end of his bed. “Okay. The birds and the bees.” He
draws a deep breath, like he’s bracing himself to dive into a cold lake. “Well,
sometimes it’s not about the birds and the bees, is it? Sometimes it’s about
the birds and the birds, or the bees and the bees.”
“Oh, sweet zombie Jesus. Please tell me this metaphor isn’t going where I think
it’s going?” Stiles is pretty sure his eyes are about to bug out of his head.
“You think I’m a bee who likes other bees? Is that why you asked me if I had a
girlfriend?”
“I don’t think anything,” his dad says. “I just want you to know that, if you
were, you know…”
“A bee who likes other bees,” Stiles repeats.
“If you were a bee who likes other bees,” his dad agrees, making a face, “then
that would be okay.”
Stiles wrestles with this for a moment, wondering if he has any right to feel
outraged here. His dad thinks he’s gay because he doesn’t have a girlfriend? He
supposes it’s better than the truth: that he doesn’t have a girlfriend because
he’s a complete and total loser. Yeah, he’s pretty sure that’s the truth… and
he’s absolutely not thinking of Derek Hale right now. Derek is not at all
relevant to this conversation. Not. At. All.
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Okay, so thanks, first of all.”
His dad looks wary.
“Thanks for assuming the reason I’m single is because I’m closeted, not a
gigantic dork who can only get girls to look at him if they’re pointing and
laughing. And your speech? Seriously, Dad, that speech needs some work, but it
may be the coolest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
John’s face softens.
“For the record,” Stiles continues, and then stops. He can’t lie to his dad.
Well, actually, if the past few months have proven anything it’s that he
absolutely can. And does. Constantly. But maybe it’s the sheer volume of lies
that he’s told to cover up all the crazy shit that’s happening in Beacon Hills,
to protect his dad from it, that Stiles can’t bring himself to tell another lie
now. He meets his dad’s steady gaze and regroups. “Okay, so, for the record,
there is some stuff I’m sort of trying to figure out at the moment, and it’s
awesome that, you know, that maybe if I ever did bring home a, um, a…”
“A bee?” his dad asks, his mouth turning up in a faint smile.
Stiles’s face is burning. “Sure. If I ever was to bring home a bee, it’s beyond
cool that you’d be open to that.”
“Okay,” his dad says, and claps him on the shoulder. He looks relieved.
Probably because he’s managed to tackle this subject entirely with euphemisms.
“Well, I would be. That’s what I wanted you to know.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“And…” Uh oh. His dad is looking awkward again. “And, um, about being safe. Do
you know—”
“Yes!” Stiles cut in. “Let’s spare ourselves the safe sex talk for tonight,
please? I’ve taken health classes. I’m up on all the latest theories about
putting condoms on bananas and, trust me, Dad, it’s all theoretical, okay?”
There have been no birds, no bees, and no bananas. Just Stiles, his box of
tissues, and his internet connection.
His dad’s expression looks like it’s caught somewhere between relief and pity.
“Well, it’s good that you’ve waited.”
Waited, Stiles thinks. Yeah, let’s call it that.
Relief. It’s definitely relief on his dad’s face. He clears his throat and
makes for the door again. “Good talk, son.”
“Yep.”
“I’m making dinner,” his dad says. “Come downstairs when you’re—”
“Not as mortified?”
His dad cracks a smile. “Hungry.”
“I will.” Stiles picks up his book again but he can’t actually concentrate.
Good talk.
Weird talk.
For a second Stiles tries to imagine bringing Derek Hale home to meet his dad.
“Oh hey. Dad. You remember Derek? The murder suspect? Yeah, we’re like a thing
now. Oh, and he’s twenty-two. But you’re still cool, right?”
He snorts at the thought of it.
Lucky it’s absolutely never going to happen. 
***
 It happens. 
***
Stiles is running for his life through the woods—must be a day ending in a
Y—when somehow, he suddenly isn’t. He’s lying on his back and the air has been
so completely smashed out of him that he can’t suck any back into his lungs. He
gasps, winded, waiting for whatever the fuck is chasing him to appear out of
nowhere and end him.
Something grips him by the ankle with talon-like claws. Stiles tries to scream,
but the only sound that escapes him is a pneumatic wheeze, and then he’s being
dragged along the forest floor. He scrabbles for something to hold onto, but
only finds a handful of damp leaves and pine needles.
Oh god oh god oh god oh god.
He’s going to die.
He’s so fucking sorry he was ever stupid and reckless and—oh god—this is going
tokill his dad.
Then there’s a flash of moment in the darkness beside him. Something travelling
fast barrels into whatever’s holding Stiles, and it lets go. In the darkness,
Stiles can’t see anything except black shapes. Snarls and the sound of snapping
jaws fill the air.
A wolf.
One of the pack.
But he knows who it is. It’s who always rescues him.
It’s Derek.
***
“What the hell are you doing out here, Stiles? Where’s Scott?”
“I am capable of looking after myself, you know.” Except that’s not very
satisfying to say when he’s lying on his back on the forest floor after almost
being killed by whatever the hell that thing was.
Derek and his eyebrows clearly know it’s a lie.
“Okay, so I can get up, you know.” Stiles’s ankle is bleeding pretty badly, but
it’s only the skin that’s broken. His bones are all still in exactly the right
configuration.
Derek makes a growling sound. His eyes flash as he inspects Stiles’s ankle.
“Still a little wolfed out, huh?” Now that the action’s over, Stiles feels
weird. He’s shaky, and cold, and his heart is still trying to beat out of his
chest. It’s the adrenaline dump, he guesses. Any second now and he’ll crash,
big time.
Derek narrows his glowing eyes. “A little.” He’s kneeling beside Stiles’s feet,
and now he leans down close, like he’s…
“Dude, are you smelling my blood? Because that’s creepy!”
“It smells…” Derek sniffs again. “Like you.”
“Well, that’s because it is me,” Stiles says, drawing his knees up. He
considers the implication of what Derek says for a moment, and can’t stop the
shiver going through him. Because what if it didn’t smell like him? “What the
hell was that thing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Comforting.”
Derek huffs, and climbs to his feet, and holds down his hand. Stiles takes
Derek’s hand and Derek pulls him to his feet.
Stiles winces. “Please tell me you’re parked super close.”
“About a mile and a half.”
“Dude, that is not super close at all.” Stiles rubs his cheeks. They’re cold.
Then he catches the way Derek’s looking at him. “What?”
Derek doesn’t answer. Just shrugs off his leather jacket and holds it open.
Stiles is too cold to argue. He wraps himself in Derek’s jacket. In Derek’s
warmth, and Derek’s scent, and has Derek ever jerked off while wearing this
jacket?
“So, um,” he says. Baseball. Capital cities. The periodic table. Anything to
not think about Derek and his jacket and his dick. “A mile and a half, you
said?”
Derek doesn’t answer, which is par for the course really. Derek hardly ever
answers. Just stares at Stiles for a second, then starts walking.
Stiles shoves his hands inside the pockets of Derek’s jacket and limps after
him. “Ow. Ow. Ow.” He takes a breath. “Ow ow ow.”
Derek stops. Turns. Huffs. Glares some more.
“What, dude? I’m injured, remember? Physically, and, I’m gonna be honest here,
a little emotionally.” That cannot be a packet of gum in Derek’s pocket. Derek
wouldn’t do anything as normal as chew gum. “I mean, you know I’m hurt, and
you’re just striding along like Paul Bunyan. Is a little consideration too much
to ask?”
Sometimes Derek gets this look like he’s trying really, really hard not to
laugh. And sometimes he gets this look like he’s going to punch Stiles in the
face and then rip his throat out. And one day, Stiles swears, he’s going to
figure out the difference between those two expressions.
Derek takes a step toward him, and Stiles takes one back. “You don’t want to
get blood on your favorite jacket, do you? Or is it your only jacket? Same
thing, in that case, am I right?”
Derek tilts his head. “What?”
“Your jacket.” Stiles hunches his shoulders. “It’s a very nice jacket, and it’d
be a crime against fashion to get my blood all over it.”
“Why would…” Derek stops, and shakes his head rapidly like a dog trying to get
water out of its ears. “I’m not going to punch you, Stiles.”
“Are you sure?” Stiles sags with relief. And then sneezes all over Derek’s
jacket. It’s kind of snotty.
“I was,” Derek says. “Now I’m not.”
“Oh, funny.” Stiles sniffs.
Derek steps toward him, jostles against him, and Stiles flails. He’s aware of
heat and strength and a scrape of stubble against his hand that’s gone before
he even registers what it was. Oh shit. He has no idea what’s going on, but did
he just smack Derek in the face?
“Oh, um.” Stiles’s arm is stretched out along the wide plain of Derek’s
shoulders, and Derek’s holding it there. His grip on Stiles’s wrist is firm and
hot. Just like the rest of him. Stiles feels like he’s leaning against an
incredibly ripped radiator.
Also, seriously, what the hell is going on?
“Come on,” Derek says, and oh, okay, Derek is helping him walk. That’s what’s
going on here. Which is kind of nice, really, and would be a hell of a lot less
awkward if his proximity wasn’t doing embarrassing biological things to Stiles.
A mile and a half is a long way to walk with a throbbing… ankle.
Yeah, ankle. 
***
 “So, how’s the pack?”
Derek doesn’t answer. Of course Derek doesn’t answer. Stiles doubts he’d tell
someone the time, even under torture.
“Where are they anyway? Chasing rabbits?”
That’s definitely a growl.
“Well, tell them I said hi.”
Actually, Stiles hates Derek’s pack. Most of the time, anyway. They’re dicks.
Of course they’re dicks. Derek took a bunch of teenage malcontents and gave
them super powers. What else would they be? Sometimes Stiles thinks about how
quiet Erica was before she got turned, and how she told him that he’d never
even noticed her. Of course he hadn’t. He was too busy being not noticed by
Lydia.
Nobody noticed Isaac either, or all his bruises.
Or Boyd.
High school was living hell for Derek’s pack back when they were regular kids,
but making them wolves hasn’t made things better. It’s just made them stronger,
and crueler. And a gazillion times more confident. Stiles is pretty sure
they’re all having sex as well. Loud, aggressive wolf sex. With biting.
At this point, Stiles will settle for any sort of sex he can get. Which is
none, obviously.
God, why does Derek have to be so hot—in both senses of the word—and strong and
muscular and why does helping Stiles to the car involve so much touching?
Stiles feels like he’s about to implode here.
“Oh my god. How long is this walk? I’m going to die a vir—” Holy shit. He
didnot almost say virgin. “Old age. I’m going to die of old age.”
Derek looks at him narrowly. Sometimes Stiles wonders how his jaw doesn’t just
pop right out, he clenches it so hard.
“Awkward silences are my favorite,” Stiles sighs, and they continue on through
the reserve. 
*** 
His dad is on night shift. When Stiles finally limps through the front door,
the house is dark and quiet, and for a second Stiles hates it. He’s tired, and
he’s hurt, and sometimes it would be fucking nice to have someone say Hey, are
you okay? and maybe make him a hot chocolate with a marshmallow in it.
Stiles doesn’t make a hot chocolate. He barely has the energy to climb the
stairs and get in the shower. If he didn’t have half the woods stuck to him,
and that whole bloody ankle issue to deal with, he would probably just collapse
face-down on his bed and crash. The shower revives him a little, but not enough
that he can be bothered go downstairs and fix himself something to eat. He’s
more tired than he is hungry.
After his shower he dresses then dabs antiseptic lotion on his ankle, stings at
the hiss, and hobbles to his room. He burrows under the blankets and drowses in
the warmth. Then he remembers he really should text Scott and let him know he’s
not dead. So that’s exactly what he texts:
Not dead. FYI.
He’s not really surprised when his phone rings immediately. “Hey, Scott.”
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“I was in the woods. This thing happened. And Derek rescued me.”
“Derek did?” Scott’s voice is low with suspicion. He and Derek have an uneasy
relationship. Scott doesn’t want to play beta wolf to Derek’s alpha. He’s not
interested in being in his pack. And that’s before the whole Argent thing.
They’re never going to see eye to eye on that.
“Yeah.” Stiles peels down the end of his comforter and checks. Derek’s jacket
is still hanging off the back of his chair. So he didn’t imagine that part. “He
was pretty cool about it. Not a single death threat.”
Which is right when Stiles spots the glowing eyes at his window.
His stomach lurches and clenches. His skin prickles. His heartbeat races. All
symptoms of being unexpectedly confronted with the supernatural. The erection
suddenly tenting his pajama pants? Not so much.
“So anyway, I’d better go,” he says as his window slowly opens. He ends the
call without waiting for Scott’s response. Derek climbs in his window, and
somehow doesn’t end up in a tangle of limbs on Stiles’s bedroom floor. Stiles
would, if he tried it. Somebody that hot deserves to be as clumsy as fuck.
Also, if he was as dumb as a rock that would be okay too. But of course he
isn’t. It’s just more proof that the universe is patently unfair. Not that
Stiles needed any proof. “Hey, did you come back for you jacket?”
Derek’s gaze flicks to his jacket, then straight back to Stiles. “No.”
Stiles’s heart is beating so fast that he knows Derek can hear it. Shit. Who’s
he kidding? Derek could probably hear it from the other side of Beacon Hills.
He swallows. “Um…”
“Stiles.”
“Yes? Yep? That’s me. That’s my name.” He’s blathering. It’s what he does best.
It’s Stiles 101. Actually, maybe Stiles 102. 101 is flailing. He’s doing that
now too. Somehow a casual stretch just to show how fucking calm he is about
Derek Fucking Hale being in his bedroom turns into a spasm. “Well, not actually
my name in that it’s not on my birth certificate, but seriously, god, my actual
name looks like Satan vomited up a Scrabble set. So we don’t mention it. At
all. Ever.”
Derek moves closer. No, not moves, prowls. He fucking prowls, muscles rolling
smoothly underneath his skin, eyes narrowed, and Stiles has never felt more
like prey in his life. Well, in the last half an hour anyway. He’s felt like
prey plenty of times. Just not the sort of prey that mightwant to get caught.
And great. That awkward erection? It’s wet now. Just a tiny drop of precum
that’s immediately swallowed by the fabric of his pajama pants, but Stiles
doesn’t miss the way Derek’s nostrils flare and his narrowed eyes flash red. He
knows. He can smellit, which is simultaneously the hottest and most disgusting
thing Stiles has ever encountered.
How the hell do werewolf kids go through puberty with their dignity intact if
every other wolf in the vicinity can smell a boner? Stiles has always thought
of himself as pretty cool and easy-going, a realist when it comes to the
awkward teenage sex stuff—his conversation with his dad about bees
notwithstanding—but there’s a difference between making the occasional joke
about needing his special private time and asking if he’s attractive to gay
guys, and broadcasting loudly on every frequency to everyone in the vicinity
that he’s sexually aroused. Stiles is pretty sure he couldn’t have handled that
sort of pressure at thirteen. Actually, he’s pretty sure he can’t handle it
now.
Derek’s gaze drops to Stiles’s crotch. The comforter is hiding any actual sign
of it, but yeah, this could probably not be more humiliating. But it turns out
that maybe Stiles is totally kinky or something, because when every part of his
body should be shriveling up in embarrassment, his erection just keeps on
keeping on. 
He wants to make some joke about still smelling woody, but their weird
conversation about cologne was weeks ago, and Stiles isn’t sure he should bring
it up now. Trying to diffuse an awkward erection situation by referencing an
exchange they had so long ago? By showing that he remembers every word of it?
Why the hell doesn’t he get a My Little Pony journal, start a page entitled
“Squishy and Tingly Feelings I Have For Derek Hale” then read it aloud for
Derek and offer up what sad little shred of dignity he has left? Offer it up
for immolation on the incredibly burning hot altar of Derek and his abs.
“Stiles,” Derek says again. His left eyebrow quirks. Just the left. Seriously,
the amount of eyebrow control he has is amazing. Probably a supernatural thing
too.
“What?” Stiles rasps. His mouth is dry.
Derek stalks closer until he’s standing right at the foot of Stiles’s bed, the
fabric of his jeans rasping gently against the comforter. He tilts his head
slightly. “You talk too much.”
Stiles closes his mouth. He’s pretty sure he stopped talking a while ago, but
sometimes it’s hard to tell. And it’s totally possible that Derek is talking in
general terms, since that seems to be most people’s opinion about Stiles. He’s
been getting a variation of that on every report card from every teacher since
kindergarten, except for the year his mom died. The year Stiles stopped talking
because he had nothing to say and he was afraid that every time he opened his
mouth it wouldn’t be words that would come out anyway, but some long-drawn
miserable howl that would put a wolf to shame. The words came back, in time.
Stiles uses them to drown the silence, to fill the hole inside him. He talks
and talks and talks because he’s half afraid of silence and the things he might
hear if he listens to it.
Like his mom’s rasping breath and the beep of the heart monitor that punctuated
all their last hours together. That sound he’d hated so much, each tiny beep a
sharp jab into his nerves, until it was gone and there was nothing left but
that horrible fucking silence.
It’s been wrapped around him ever since, trying to choke him. He talks to kill
the silence, to smother the fear. Words are his only protection.
“I…” Stiles can’t tear his gaze away from Derek’s mouth. It’s downturned.
Nothing new there. He probably traded the ability to smile in some supernatural
deal with a demon to get the most threatening eyebrows in the history of the
universe. Also, that stubble is totally working for him. And those cheekbones
deserve some sort of recognition for everything they’re doing. God. Again, how
is the universe at all fair when people as hot as this are allowed to exist?
People that have all the blood rushing straight out of Stiles’s brain and down
to his dick so fast that it’s possible he could pass out. “I know I do. Talk
too much. Always have. When I was three I almost drowned at my kiddy swimming
lesson because I kept trying to talk underwater. My dad says I was trying to
talk to the mermaids, even though I’m pretty sure there were none in the Beacon
Hills Municipal Pool.” He shrugs. “Although, Beacon Hills. Anything’s possible,
right?”
Derek’s eyes narrow further. “Stiles.”
“What?”
Derek reaches down and grips the ends of Stiles’s comforter and, in one sharp
yank, pulls it off him.
It’s unexpected.
It’s cold.
Stiles’s erection is totally right there.
“Dude!” Stiles pulls his legs up. “What the hell?” There’s a tirade ready to be
unleashed, just on the tip of his tongue, but it dies in a single fucking
heartbeat when Derek drops the comforter onto the floor, and kneels forward so
that his knees are on the end of Stiles’s bed. Stiles can feel the way the
mattress dips toward him like his whole world is about to tip. “Derek, what are
you…”
Derek is on his bed. Walking up it on his knees, and how the hell can he make a
move like that seem smooth and sinuous? Then his hands are closing around
Stiles’s ankles, and he’s pulling his legs straight.
Stiles has no words for this. Apart from “Uh.” Which, while although not a
word, Stiles likes to think contains multitudes. He compiles a short list of
things uh translates to in his head, in a vain attempt to distract himself from
what’s happening—what is happening?—and stop himself from flailing:
Derek, you appear to be touching me. Why is that?
I find this physical contact confusing. It feels sexual, but if it’s some weird
wolf thing please let me know now before I completely embarrass myself.
Derek Hale istouching me!
Please don’t stop. Wherever this is going, please don’t stop.
Oh fuck, I really, really want to come.
With his legs pulled straight, there’s no hiding Stiles’s erection. Stiles jams
his fists on either side of his thighs. The instinct to cover his dick is
strong…and totally pointless. Because not only is he sure that Derek can smell
how aroused he is, Derek’s also staring down at the way Stiles’s erection is
tenting his pajama pants and that mouth of his, the mouth that never smiles,
twitches at one corner as though he really, really likes what he sees.
Fuck.
All this time when Stiles wanted Derek but totally pretended that he didn’t, is
it possible that Derek wanted him too? Because that would be awesome. And, in
Stiles’s history, totally unprecedented. Love is so much easier when it’s
unrequited. He can obsess over it, and let it consume him, but he doesn’t have
to bring anyone else in. He doesn’t have to complicate things by talking about
feelings, by laying them out like cards from a deck and hoping that they match
another person’s. Maybe he should use Scott for this. Have him turn up to
whatever condemned property Derek has moved into with a note in his pocket:
Stiles likes you.
Tick the box.
a)    You like Stiles too.
b)    You think Stiles is gross.
c)     Stiles who?
Then at least he’d know, right? Although the way Derek is crawling up him, his
heated gaze fixed on Stiles’s deer-in-a-headlight wide eyes, should kind of
give him a clue. It might not be chocolates and flowers on Valentine’s Day, but
it’s definitely sexual.
And Stiles is over the fucking moon about that.
Terrified, but also over the fucking moon.
He moistens his lips with his tongue. “Uh.”
Derek looms above him, planting his hands on either side of Stiles’s shoulders.
He’s hot. And not just aesthetically. He’s strong enough to hold himself above
Stiles without touching, and he’s still warmer than the comforter he wrenched
away. And that is definitely the start of a smile tugging at the corner of his
mouth. “Not so talkative now, huh?”
Oh, okay, sure, whereas Derek suddenly wants to play Twenty Questions. Stiles
juts out his chin, stubborn, and not-so-secretly hoping to bring their faces,
their lips, closer together. “You think? I bet I could talk for hours yet.
Actually, I’m hoping you’ll find a way to shut me up.” He leers.
Oh god. That’s probably his first and last attempt at sexy banter, and it’s
incredibly lame. Maybe Stiles isn’t one of those guys who can do suggestive and
flirty. Maybe he should just stop trying and go straight for unambiguous and
filthy: Fuck me hard with your massive cock, Derek. Except there is no way in
hell he can say that with a straight face, is there? God. Maybe he should have
spent less time watching porn, because however informative it’s been in so many
other ways it’s not really great with the dialogue.
But instead of rolling his eyes, Derek’s almost-smile ratchets up a fraction
and he leans closer. His breath is hot on Stiles’s face, and Stiles tries hard
not to wonder if he’s torn any rabbits, or worse, apart lately, but before he
can ask Derek lowers his weight onto Stiles, and holyfuckingchristballsStiles
can feel his dick. Hot, heavy, big, pressing against his abdomen.
Stiles doesn’t know what’s more shocking. The feel of Derek’s dick against him,
or the honest-to-Jebus smile that Derek gives him when he says “Uh!” again.
Okay, so not exactly his finest moment, but Stiles doesn’t care because he’s
pretty damn sure his finest moment is about three or four minutes away. Or
however long it takes Derek to get out of his jeans. Maybe even five minutes,
because those things look like they’ve been painted on.
Not that Stiles is complaining.
“Nothing to say again?”
“To be fair,” Stiles manages, “there is currently no blood in my brain.”
“Mmm.” Derek grinds gently against him. “I noticed that.”
Of course Derek can say something like that without sounding creepy or
ridiculous. He’s Derek Fucking Hale. He’s perfect. The asshole.
Stiles lifts his hands to Derek’s shoulders—I’m touching Derek Hale!—and tries
not to shiver at the overwhelming rush of arousal that lights him up from the
inside. Because this is not some bodice ripper and he’s not some innocent
little maiden whose body will ultimately be seduced into betraying her. No way.
He and his body are absolutely on the same page here. They want to get fucked.
They might not be experienced, but they have enthusiasm on their side and
surely that has to count for something. Stiles is ready to throw himself into
this wholeheartedly.
Derek dips his face closer to Stiles’s, and rubs his cheek against his. The
rasp of stubble against his face makes Stiles’s breath catch in his throat.
Holy. Fucking. Hell. He wriggles, parting his legs slightly, hoping to
encourage Derek to push into the space between them, so that Stiles can hook
his legs around him and eliminate any distance between them. Derek makes a
growling sound deep in his throat, a soft note of warning maybe, and Stiles’s
skin prickles into goose bumps.
“Did you just growl at me?”
“Slow down.” Derek glares at him. “It’s not a race, Stiles.”
Lucky, because Stiles has a feeling he’s a sprint guy, whereas Derek could turn
this thing into a marathon if he wanted.
“Okay.”
“If we’re doing this, we’re doing it right.”
Stiles has no idea how to respond to that. He’ll bow to Derek’s undoubted
experience, he guesses, and actually try and follow instructions for once,
except… unease uncurls in his gut. Except Derek hardly sounds exactly
enthusiastic, so what the hell? Why does Stiles suddenly get the incredibly
ugly feeling that whatever is going on here isn’t exactly mutual? He shifts his
hands, and pushes Derek up. “Wait.”
Derek stares down at him.
“Okay, so why are you here again?” His heartbeat stutters nervously, and he
hates that Derek can hear it.
Derek gets that look that Stiles hates. It’s the one that looks like a cross
between painful constipation and the rising urge to kill fluffy kittens. It’s
Brooding Derek, and he wears it less attractively than he probably thinks.
Slightly. His eyebrows knit together as he scowls. “I’m here because you wanted
me here.”
“Okay.” Stiles regrets starting this conversation when Derek leans back, and
the cool night air rushes in to replace his stolen warmth. “Um, wait, what?”
Constipation, definitely. “You didn’t want to die a virgin.”
Oh.
Ouch.
Seriously fucking ouch.
Stiles pulls his legs up again, and Derek clambers off the bed. He stands
there, glowering at the wall just above Stiles’s head.
“Oh, wow, um.” Stiles scrubs his knuckles over his head and tries to ignore the
fact that it feels like Derek has just ripped him open and pulled his lungs out
of his chest. Not his heart. His lungs, because he can hardly breathe. “Look at
you. I mean, seriously,look at you. Guys like you shouldn’t even exist outside
of magazines, where guys like me can look at you and believe it’s ninety-five
percent airbrushing. But when you have the audacity to go and exist in the
actual world, you don’t even notice guys like me, and I’m pretty sure I’m gonna
regret this for the rest of my life, but here goes.” He sucks in a deep breath.
“Derek, I don’t want to be a pity fuck. You’re totally hot, and I’m, well, look
at me, but it turns out I have just enough self-respect to turn you down.” A
startled, choked laugh escapes him. “Self-respect that I’m sure will be self-
recrimination by tomorrow, but hey. So, you know, thanks and stuff, but I’d
rather save myself for someone who actually has the tiniest amount of respect
for me, okay?”
Derek still isn’t looking at him.
“So, yeah.” Stiles’s throat stings. Humiliation doesn’t feel so great after
all, it turns out. “Thanks anyway.”
Thanks a fucking lot for that kick in the ego.
Derek moves so quickly that Stiles isn’t sure he even sees him leave. One
second he’s standing by the window again, his leather jacket in his hand, and
the next second he’s gone.
Totally gone.
Stiles doesn’t cry.
He decides to save that for if he really does get a My Little Pony journal.
He gets out of bed, picks up his comforter, and closes the window.
***** Chapter 2 *****
Unrequited love is one thing. Stiles has been dealing with that since forever.
Forever. Well, since third grade. He’s gotten really good at it. He knows the
rules. But unrequited love and unconsummated lust together? That just sucks. It
sucks balls. At least he can moon over Lydia from afar. Derek Hale though…
Derek Fucking Hale was thisclose to getting into Stiles’s pants, which,
frankly, lends itself to a whole new level of heartbreak.
“You didn’t want to die a virgin.”
Stiles didn’t want to be anyone’s pity fuck either.
He still thinks of Derek when he jerks off.
But at least he’s got enough pride left to hate himself for it, so that’s
something, right?
“Something you want to talk about?” his dad asks at breakfast, three days after
Derek climbed out of Stiles’s bedroom window, taking his leather jacket, his
scowl, and Stiles’s dignity with him. 
Stiles drops his spoon into his cereal. “No. Absolutely not. Not ever, no.”
He dad sighs over the rim of his coffee cup. “Are you sure?”
Stiles sticks his finger in his cereal and dredges through it searching for his
spoon. “Dad, I have never been more sure of anything in my life. I have so much
clarity right now that my mind is focused like a laser.”
His dad raises his eyebrows. “A laser, huh?”
Stiles pulls his spoon out of his cereal, spraying Lucky Charms and milk all
over the table. “A freakin’ laser!”
“Uh huh. And you’re wearing your hoodie inside out because?”
“Laser,” Stiles mumbles.
“Hmmm.” His dad opens his newspaper.
Stiles shovels Lucky Charms around his bowl. He’s not going to talk to his dad
about this. He’s smart. He can figure this out on his own. Actually, there’s
nothing to figure out, is there? Derek made an offer, Stiles turned him down,
no need to obsess about it. He doesn’t even know why he’s still thinking about
it, or why it still hurts. Stiles didn’t know he had enough pride for it to
bruise like that.
“Okay,” he says at last, staring at the eddies he’s making in his milk. “So
there’s this…this bee.” He looks up quickly, and that had better not be a smile
his dad is trying to hide.
“A bee. Okay.”
“And this bee is really hot, but he’s also kind of a dick.”
His dad’s face grows serious.
Stiles studies his cereal again. “Anyway, we were kind of, um, we were kind of
doing some stuff, and—”
“Stuff?”
“It was all PG-13, I swear.” His face is burning though, because all he can do
is remember the feel of Derek’s cock pressing against his hip, and
holyfuckinghellhe wants that again. Not with Derek though. Nuh uh. He wants it
with some other guy who’s not a totaldouchebag. “But then he said something.”
“What?” His dad’s voice is calm, but Stiles is pretty sure that Angry Papa Bear
is just under the surface. Stiles hasn’t seen Angry Papa Bear since seventh
grade when Casey McDermott smacked Stiles in the face with a skateboard. His
dad had picked him up from the hospital and driven him straight to Casey’s
house where, Stiles was sure, if Casey hadn’t immediately broken down into
tears and started wailing an apology, Angry Papa Bear would have torn him limb
from limb.
“He said, um.” Stiles needs to paraphrase here, because there are certain
truths his dad doesn’t need to know. Like werewolves, and the danger Stiles
gets into on regular occasions, and how three nights ago he camethis close to
getting Derek Hale’s dick up his ass. “I kind of thought he liked me, but it
turns out he was making out with me just because I hadn’t done it before. Like,
you know, he was doing me a favor or something.”
His dad sighs again. “Stiles. You deserve better than that.”
Stiles shrugs, and looks up. “That’s what I thought, but I’m kind of a loser.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, listen. I know I’m smart and funny and all that stuff, but you and Scott
are literally the only other people in the world who know that, and that’s
okay. I mean, it sucks, high school sucks, but college is going to be awesome,
because guys like me come into our own in college, right?” He stirs his cereal.
“I mean, I hope that’s true.”
“You’re a good kid, Stiles,” his dad says steadily. “You’re a great kid.”
Sure, but he’s not a popular kid. When it comes to high school currency, Stiles
has nothing. He jabs at his cereal again. Clearly his dad is not the person to
be having this conversation with, if they can’t both agree, at least
objectively, that Stiles is a hopeless loser. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Okay,” his dad says, his tone wary, his gaze narrow, like he’s not quite ready
to let this go. “A greatkid.”
“I heard you the first time,” Stiles mumbles, and they’re totally not having a
moment here, but if his dad hugs him a little harder and for a little longer
than usual before he heads out the door for work, well, Stiles isn’t going to
make a big thing of it.
 
***
 
School sucks.
Scott is as oblivious as ever, wrapped up with Allison in the cozy little world
they inhabit between their regularly scheduled break-ups. Stiles detests their
happiness.
Class sucks. Harris is such an asshole, and he really, really doesn’t like
Stiles. The feeling is mutual. 
Lacrosse practice sucks. Seriously, why does Finstock make him do so much
training when they both know he’ll just end up warming the bench at the next
game anyway? Stiles spends most of the hour trying to catch his breath. Once or
twice he looks across the field to the line of trees, remembering when Derek
used to lurk there threateningly, like something out of an urban legend where
it turns out the thump thump thump is the crazy psycho bashing the boyfriend’s
severed head against the roof of the girlfriend’s car or whatever. So many of
those campfire stories have such logic fails in them that Stiles is usually too
busy pointing out the plot holes to be scared.
Also, this is Beacon Hills. There’s more to be scared of than escapees from
Eichen House. Stiles wishes he didn’t know that for a fact.
Whatever.
He’s not thinking about monsters and things that want to rip him apart. And
he’s definitely not thinking about the wolf who always appears out of nowhere
to rescue him. And he’s absolutely not thinking about his eyes, or his snarl,
or the solid wall of muscle that was pressing against—
“Bilinski!” Finstock bellows.
Oh yeah, he’s supposed to be thinking about lacrosse. He turns toward the
coach, loses track of where all his limbs are, manages to trip over his crosse
and lands on his ass on the field, and how is that even possible?
“Dude,” Danny says as he helps him to his feet, shaking his head. “Dude.”
“You suck, Stilinski!” someone else yells, and most of the team laughs and
hollers and joins in, and suddenly it’s a chant, echoing up and down the field:
“You suck, Stilinski!”
Which is right when he happens to look at the trees again. And there’s Derek,
standing there with his hands shoved into the pockets of his leather jacket,
looking all tall, dark and brooding.
“You suck, Stilinski!” Jackson slams his shoulder into him, almost sending him
to the ground again. He catches himself awkwardly, muscles wrenching. When he
looks up again, Derek’s gone.
Fuck his life. Seriously.
 
***
 
The worst thing—well, apart from his total abject humiliation—is that Stiles
can’t exactly ignore Derek. There are like half a dozen people tops who form
the only line of defense against the evil supernatural shit that goes down in
Beacon Hills, and, of that half a dozen or so people, Stiles doesn’t actually
trust any of them. 
Except Scott. He trusts Scott. Scott is his bro.
And Derek. A little bit. Because Derek might be a dick, and a douchebag, and
Stiles suspects he actually gets off on withholding valuable information when
it comes to supernatural shit, but he’s at least ninety percent sure that Derek
is one of the good guys. Well, eighty percent. Maybe sixty-five. But no lower.
The point is, Stiles kind of trusts him.
He trusts Derek a lot more than he trusts any of Derek’s pack, or the Argents,
and what the hell is going on with Deaton? Stiles is completely over the
cryptic and mysterious shtick he’s got going on. Deaton makes Derek seem like
an over-sharer.
So, as much as he wants to, Stiles can’t ignore Derek.
He tries. He succeeds even, for about two days, but this is Beacon Hills.
He gets the text message at three in the morning: What do you know about the
body in the woods?
He squints at the screen for a moment, then sends back: Who is this?
The answer takes a minute or two to come through. Long enough that Stiles is
already dozing again when his phone buzzes. This is Derek.
Derek knows how to text people? Wow. He could almost pass as a real boy. Stiles
scratches his belly and sends back: Who gave you my number?
Scott.
Of course he did.
“Thanks, Scott,” Stiles mutters, and then remembers that as far as Scott knows
there’s no reason Derek shouldn’t have his number. That weird crush that
culminated in the most humiliating felt-another-guy’s-boner-and-almost-had-sex
moment of his life? Never happened. No way.
He has no idea how to respond to Derek’s text, so he doesn’t. A few seconds
later, Derek texts again: What do you know about the body in the woods?
Stiles yawns at the screen. There’s a body in the woods?
Are you being sarcastic?
Stiles can only imagine what Derek’s eyebrows are doing at the moment. He sends
back: No.
He’s being no more sarcastic than his default setting, anyway. He’s always a
little bit sarcastic. Because otherwise, where’s the fun in anything? His dad
once tried to tell him that sarcasm was the lowest form of wit. Stiles
maintains that’s utter rubbish. When done right, sarcasm is a thing of majestic
beauty.
He gets back: What do you know about the body in the woods?
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Stiles rolls his eyes at the phone, because this is
getting nowhere fast. He dials Derek’s number instead, and jiggles his foot
until it answers.
“Stiles?”
“Derek. No, I’m not being sarcastic, and no, I don’t know anything about a body
in the woods. Want to fill me in, sourwolf?”
Dead silence.
“Derek?”
“A body’s been found,” Derek says at last, his voice more like a growl. “In the
woods.”
“I picked most of that up,” Stiles informs him. “From your earlier contextual
clues. Mostly, you know, that time when you asked repeatedly if I knew anything
about the body in the woods.”
Silence again.
Stiles sighs. “And yes, for the record, that time it was sarcasm.”
And this time that’s definitely a growl. “I’m out by the creek, in the
Preserve. The police have just pulled a body out of the water. It has no skin.”
“What?” Stiles doesn’t need that mental image. Ew. Too late. Gross. “What?”
“I need to know what the police know. I need to know what might have done
this.”
There are those damned contextual clues again. “So you have no idea?”
Silence.
It’s lucky he can text, because Derek obviously doesn’t understand how the
talking part of using a phone works.
“Let me rephrase that. So clearlyyou have no idea?”
“Fine,” Derek grinds out at last. “I have no idea. Can you get some information
for me, or what?”
Stiles wishes he could say that their abortive encounter in his bedroom has
made their relationship strained, and full of both awkwardness and hostility,
but, sadly, they’ve always been like this. Actually, the only thing Stiles ever
liked about Derek was his face. And his abs. And what little he felt of his
dick. It was completely physical and it meant nothing, so why is he still
thinking about it? Instead of wondering what Derek’s skin might taste like,
damp with sweat under Stiles’s tongue, maybe he should be focusing more on the
poor murder victim in the creek who doesn’t even have any skin left.
Again, ew.
“Yes, I’ll find out what I can.” Either his dad will bring the file home to
work on and lock it in his desk drawer when he’s done looking at it—Stiles has
had a spare key for years—or Stiles will go into the station and have a look
there. The station’s been his second home since his mom died. It turns out even
the most grumpy of cops won’t tell the kid with no mom to go and wait for his
dad at home. He doesn’t exactly have free run of the place, but he’s very
careful about making sure nobody’s watching when he sneaks into the records
room.
“When?”
Is he even serious? Stiles’s grandmother used to tell him that manners didn’t
cost anything. Apparently Derek wasn’t brought up with the same values. Of
course, he wasraised by wolves.
“Oh, thanks, Stiles. You’re a great help, Stiles. You’re the best, Stiles.”
Stiles scrubs his knuckles over his forehead. “That was more sarcasm, by the
way.”
“I know.” 
“Well, good for you, Derek. You’re finally getting the hang of this exchange.”
More silence.
“Okay then,” Stiles says at last. “Good talk.”
He ends the call and goes back to sleep.
 
 
***
 
Stiles leaves home early for school, and detours via the police station. His
dad has been at work since he got called out last night, just before Derek
texted. The note on the fridge was part apology and part promise to try and
make it home in time for breakfast. By the time Stiles sees the note it’s
already past breakfast, which gives him the perfect excuse to breeze into the
station with a smile and a box of donuts—it’s a total cliché, but it works—and
nobody even asks him what he’s doing there because, hello, donuts. There are
even a few left in the box by the time Stiles gets as far as his dad’s office.
His dad isn’t there.
But the file is.
Stiles shoves a donut in his mouth and opens it up.
Okay, crime scene photographs straight off the press. Gross. Not only has
something removed all the skin, but it looks like the body is half burned as
well. Underneath the photographs is a preliminary report with not much in it at
all. The victim is a male. Unknown name, unknown anything. Looking at the
photographs again, suddenly it occurs to Stiles that there are worse things
than being humiliated by Derek Fucking Hale. Like having something remove your
skin and dump your body in a creek. That’s gotta suck.
There’s no autopsy report yet. It’s way too early for that.
Stiles brushes sugar off the photographs, closes the file, and leaves the
office.
He takes a photograph of the leftover donuts and sends it with a text to his
dad: You snooze, you lose.
On his way out, he gives the donuts to a deputy.
 
***
 
At school he checks his phone.
You owe me donuts, kid.
He sends back: I’ll make you a salad instead.
No response.
Stiles grins and shoves his phone back in his pocket.
 
***
 
Derek Hale is the king of creepiness. First he was living in the burned out
remains of his family home in the middle of the woods, and now he’s living in a
rundown railway depot on the bad side of town.
“Seriously,” Stiles says as he and Scott walk inside. “What next? An abandoned
amusement park?”
Scott gives him a sideways look that Stiles doesn’t have time to even try to
interpret right now. He’s too busy trying to avoid getting tetanus just by
being here.
Derek jumps down from the rusting-out carriage. He’s wearing jeans…and nothing
else. Holychristfuckballs. He’s been working out or something, because his abs
are shining with sweat, and it should totally be gross or whatever, but Stiles
wants nothing more than to lick them. Really, really slowly. And repeatedly.
Derek’s holding something balled up in his fist. Damn. It’s a shirt. He shakes
it out and pulls it on, and Stiles only has like half a second to admire those
abs—not taking anything away from all Derek’s other muscles, though. They’re
all equally impressive—before Derek gets them covered up. He glares at Stiles.
“What do you know?”
Stiles knows nothing. He doesn’t know what day it is. He doesn’t know his
address. He doesn’t even know his own name at the moment. Which is why Scott
has to say it twice before it catches his attention.
“Stiles,” Scott says. “Stiles!”
“What? Hello, what?”
Scott gives him another weird look.
“Okay, yes, hi.” Stiles wipes his palms on his jeans. “So, yeah, I went to the
station this morning and they’ve got basically nothing. There’s no ID on the
victim yet.”
Derek glowers.
“The autopsy report won’t be in for a few days.”
“A few days?” Derek curls his lip.
“Well, yeah.” Stiles glares at him. Awkward abortive sexual encounter aside,
nobody criticizes the sheriff’s department while Stiles is around. Stiles’s dad
works hard. “This is Beacon Hills, not CSI Miami. So maybe, if there’s anything
you’d like to contribute to this whole exchange of information thing, now would
be the time. Otherwise Scott and I really need to get back to school before
lunch ends, because Harris is an absolute asshole who is just itching for the
chance to give me a detention and, frankly, that’d just be the icing on the
fucking cake that is my week, okay?”
“Stiles, I—”
“Okay then,” Stiles says loudly. Whatever Derek’s going to say, he’s pretty
sure no good can come of it. Fuck him and his stupid hot face and his stupid
hot abs. “It’s been fun. See you again soon. Let’s go, Scott.”
Scott is giving him the side eye.
“Let’s go,” Stiles repeats, and fuck his life. Seriously.
He storms out of there.
 
 
***
 
When the door of the Jeep squeaks open. Stiles doesn’t look up. He’s too busy
knocking his head repeatedly against the steering wheel.
“Anything you want to talk about?” Scott asks finally.
“No.” He just bets Scott’s gone all crinkly-foreheaded and squinty-eyed with
concern. It’s what Scott does. But he’s not going to look, because then he’ll
feel so bad for making Scott look so worried that before he knows it they’ll be
talking it out. And Stiles would rather be subjected to several hours of
medieval dentistry than talk about this.
“Okay,” Scott says, and then ruins it by adding: “Dude, do you have a crush? On
Derek?”
Oh sweet zombie Jesus. No no no no no. He cannot be that obvious. Because
Scott—Scott is oblivious to pretty much everything that occurs around him,
unless it has something to do with Allison. Which means if Scott knows, Stiles
might as well have taken out a front-page advertisement in the Beacon Hills
Herald. He bumps his head against the steering wheel again.
“I mean, he’s…he’s adick.”
“I know,” Stiles mumbles. He straightens up and takes a deep breath. “I know,
but it doesn’t mean anything, okay? It’s just a stupid dumb thing. It’s not
like a—a declarationor anything, okay?”
Scott looks worried. “Okay.”
Stiles turns the key in the ignition. “This is not me coming out.”
“Okay.”
Stiles shoots another glance at him. “Because, FYI, if I was coming out, I’d do
it in style, you know? With a kickass party. With a DJ, and strobe lights, and
beautiful people. And a shitload of balloon animals.”
Scott’s mouth twitches as he tries to hide a smile. “Balloon animals?”
“Fuck, yes. Balloon animals.” Stiles puts the Jeep into gear and pulls out onto
the street. “Balloon animals are awesome.”
Scott beams at him. “They are awesome.”
And that’s what Stiles loves most about Scott. Scott’s his bro. If Stiles wants
to spend the entire drive back to school talking about balloon animals and not
about skinless corpses and unexpected gay crushes, then that’s what they’ll do,
because Scott’s got his back.
Always.
 
***
 
 
Stiles’s dad has been and gone by the time he gets home. There’s an apology
tacked to the fridge and a load of washing in the dryer. Stiles eats cereal for
dinner. In his underwear. On the couch. Because why the hell not? He’s earned
it. He sits and scowls about Derek for a while, wonders if he has the
inclination and the energy to jerk off, and then decides to pass for now. He’s
too tired.
He watches a movie instead, while he works on his chemistry homework. Then he
gives up on both the movie and the homework, and goes upstairs to get on his
computer. He’s thinking of the crime scene photographs, and wondering what sort
of monster tries to burn the corpse it just flayed. Seems kind of unusual.
And Stiles really wishes he could go back in time to when everything about the
supernatural was unusual. Like, everything,and not just the bits relating to
corpse desecration. This is not a normal life Stiles is living. Shouldn’t there
be some sort of karmic recompense for all the shit he has to put up with?
Meanwhile, he’s not even getting laid. The universe sucks balls.
He texts Scott while he gets his Google-fu on. Scott is with Allison, so his
answers are sporadic and mostly random strings of letters.
Even Scott’s getting laid.
Thanks for nothing, universe.
He stays up too late, finds out nothing, and gets a whole four hours of sleep
before his alarm goes off in the morning. Four hours of very disturbed sleep,
where he is alternatively being pursued by faceless monsters through the woods,
or making out with Derek in the back of his Camaro. The second option is
definitely the best, even if it does lead to Stiles waking up to discover
himself attempting to violate his pillow in unspeakable ways.
“Ugh.” He rolls out of bed and staggers to the bathroom and showers. No shower
gel and Special Private Time this morning. He’s too tired for that. Caffeine
first. Then breakfast. Then Adderall. Then, hopefully, he’ll feel like a
functioning human being.
He heads back to his bedroom to get dressed.
He checks his dad’s bedroom on the way downstairs. The door is open. The bed
hasn’t been slept in. Sometimes Stiles feels like he and his dad are just
strangers occupying the same space, at different times. Sometimes they go days
without any contact at all except text messages and notes stuck to the
refrigerator. Stiles misses him.
He hates his dad’s job. It’s complicated. He’s proud of his dad for doing the
job that he does but, even before he knew about all the weird shit going down
in Beacon Hills, Stiles hated it. There are too many variables, too much that
can go wrong. He can’t watch those TV shows where routine traffic stops turn
into tragedies, where suddenly there is a struggle, and a gun, and a dashboard
camera that keeps recording as some cop falls out of shot.
Stuff like that gives him more nightmares than any bloodthirsty supernatural
creature ever can.
The thing is though, he can’t imagine his dad doing any other job. He’s
just…he’s just so fucking terrified he knows how it will end. That one morning,
just like this one, one of his dad’s deputies will turn up with his hat in his
hands, and he’ll open his mouth and the words that fall out will rip the
universe into so many pieces that Stiles will never be able to put it back
together again.
Ever since his mom died, a part of Stiles has been waiting for the other shoe
to drop.
Stiles has just turned the coffee maker on when he hears the car pulling up out
the front of the house. He knows the sound of that engine. His dad’s cruiser.
The weight he didn’t even know he was carrying lifts from his shoulders, and by
the time his dad walks into the kitchen Stiles is wearing a grin.
“Breakfast?”
His dad gives him a weary smile. “It’d better not be a tofu omelet.”
“Firstly, that was one time, and it wasn’t that bad!”
His dad snorts. “It was pretty bad!”
Yeah, it was, but only because Stiles needs more practice with tofu.
“Come on, kid. I’m taking you to the diner for pancakes. Okay?”
Okay? It’s more than okay. Fuck tofu, obviously. Stiles is having pancakes!
 
***
 
“So,” his dad says as they’re waiting for their pancakes. “How are things?”
Stiles shrugs, and taps his fingers on the laminate table. Then he checks the
pockets of his hoodie to make sure he remembered his Adderall, because he’s
feeling a little bit frayed as the edges, and he can’t remember if he took any
yesterday, so he’s pretty sure he’ll be bouncing off the walls any minute now.
He finds a nickel in the same pocket as the Adderall, and brings it out to spin
on the table in their booth.
“Stiles.”
“Um, what?”
His dad is wearing the same patient face he’s been wearing for most of Stiles’s
life. “How are things?”
“Oh, good, I guess.” He straightens up when the waitress brings over his
strawberry milkshake.
“Hmm.” His dad confiscates the nickel.
Stiles swallows his Adderall down with a mouthful of milkshake. He thinks about
Derek, and his stupid hot face and his stupid hot abs. “How old were you when
you lost your virginity?”
For a second Stiles thinks his dad is having a stroke, but then he manages to
pull himself together enough to choke out a few words. Those words do not
answer Stiles’s question. “Oh Jesus Christ.”
Stiles chews on his straw and waits. 
John closes his eyes briefly, sighs, and then regroups. “Is there any
particular reason you’re asking me that question?”
“Is there any particular reason you’re not telling me the answer?”
“You’re sixteen,” his dad says firmly. “That’s underage.”
“And you’re avoiding the question.” Stiles narrows his eyes. “How old were
you?”
John sighs again. “I was seventeen, okay? I’d just turned seventeen. But you,
young man, are waiting until you’re eighteen.”
Stiles opens his mouth to point out the double standard at play here.
“No!” His dad holds up a finger. “Not a word. Being a hypocrite is the only way
people who were once teenagers can be parents without going out of their damn
minds.”
Stiles is distracted when the waitress arrives at their booth with their
pancakes. Pancakes! Stiles could take all the Adderall in the world and still
be distracted by pancakes. Pancakes are right up there with Derek Fucking
Hale’s abs.
“You shouldn’t be eating pancakes,” he says with a mouth full of blueberry
goodness.
“I can’t understand a word you’re saying,” his dad lies, and digs in.
Stiles swallows. “Pancakes are not a very healthy breakfast.”
“You’re eating them too.”
“I don’t have cholesterol!”
“Everyone has cholesterol. Mine is just a little high.”
Stiles rolls his eyes. He’s pretty sure his dad knows that the only reason he’s
always on his case about his diet is that he’s scared, but his dad has never
called him out about it. He lets Stiles bully him into eating mostly healthy
food, and counts the occasional pancake breakfast as some sort of epic win. And
bacon as the Second Coming of Christ. But mostly, he lets Stiles have this.
This one tiny thing that he can control in a universe where there are no
certainties.
Stiles decides to save the lecture on cholesterol for later, when his dad
doesn’t look so wrecked, and shovels more pancake into his mouth. It’s so
freaking good. “Have you actually had any sleep in the past two days?”
“I’ve caught a few hours here and there.”
“Here and there meaning your desk and your car?”
“My desk and the morgue.”
“Ew.”
His dad snorts. “The waiting room, Stiles, not the drawers.”
“Again, ew. Thanks for the visual.”
John snorts again. “I think we’ve both given each other unwanted visuals this
morning.”
Stiles grins. “Sorry about that.”
“You’re not sorry at all.”
Stiles can’t argue with that. “So, how are you doing, really?”
“Really?” His dad sighs. “I’m tired, kiddo. And this case? I’ve got nothing.”
“The paper said it was a suspected animal attack.” The paper always says
they’re suspected animal attacks. The mountain lion population around Beacon
Hills has been severely maligned in the past few years. Severely.
“Huh.”
“So, um, so it’s not?” Stiles tries to sound at least a little surprised.
His dad sets his fork down and rubs his forehead. “I don’t want you going into
the Preserve until this is all done, okay?”
“Dad?”
John looks around to make sure nobody’s listening before he answers. He leans
forward and lowers his voice. “No, it’s not an animal. It’s some sicko, okay?
Some sicko who took the time to remove the victim’s skin before trying to set
fire to the body to destroy evidence.”
Stiles’s widens his eyes.
“Shit.” His dad’s brow creases. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have told you any of that.”
“No, that’s okay. You need someone to talk about this stuff with, right? To
like, get it off your chest?”
“And burden my sixteen-year-old son with it instead, sure.”
“Dad, c’mon. I’ve been both desensitized and conditioned to violence by video
games, remember? Don’t you watch Fox News?”
“Not when I can help it.”
Stiles snorts.
“Anyway.” John picks up his fork again and stabs a piece of blueberry pancake.
“We’ll get the guy.”
Stiles feels bad for doubting him. If it really was some human sicko, sure,
he’d believe his dad would get the guy. But this is Beacon Hills. Stiles has
the feeling this falls outside his dad’s area of expertise.
“So there’s no, um, no forensic evidence?”
John checks his watch. “I should know the answer to that in a few hours. All
we’ve got so far is a body with no ID, and the craziest witness statement I’ve
ever heard.”
“A witness?” Stiles’s heartbeat quickens. This is new.
John shakes his head. “Says he was walking home—staggering home, more like—and
took a shortcut through the Preserve where, and get this, he saw a pair of eyes
in some mist right where our victim was later found.”
“Redeyes?” God. Not another crazy fucking alpha, please. 
“What?” His dad gives him a strange look. “Green eyes, actually. Green,
disembodied eyes. So, of course, he thinks it’s aliens.”
“Aliens?” Aliens had better not be fucking real. Because Stiles really has no
time for that on top of everything else. “Seriously?”
“This is your brain,” his dad mutters. “This is your brain on meth.”
Stiles grins, but meanwhile his brain has seized on two things his dad said and
is currently backtracking through all the shit he read last night, because
those two things have snagged on something in his memory. Green disembodied
eyes, and mist.
“Weirdest damn statement I ever took.” John digs back into his pancakes.
“Weird,” Stiles murmurs.
Weird.
Holy fuck.
The Čudnovata. A Croatian word meaning The Weird. A shapeshifter. Sometimes a
person, sometimes a cloud of mist, sometimes anything it fucking wants to be,
but with one thing it can’t ever hide: its glowing green eyes.
Fuck yes.
He’s not going to jump the gun before he’s checked all the details—and he’s not
going to cut and run on breakfast with his dad—but this feels right. This feels
like a fit.
He’s focused now. He’s figured this out. He’s cracked the case wide open.
He puts his hand into his pocket and curls his fingers around the blister pack
of pills.
This is his brain.
He grins again.
This is his brain on Adderall.
 
 
***
 
Stiles ditches school. His first class is Econ anyway, and he and Finstock can
probably both do with a break from each other. Really, he’s doing the guy a
favor. He drives to the old railway depot instead.
“Derek? Hey, Derek?”
Because a quick Google search has revealed that yes, it’s the Čudnovata.
Because not only can it be a pair of glowing green eyes in mist, it also flays
the victim and roasts the body alive. The fire that his dad thinks was to
destroy evidence? No. Čudnovata barbecue time.
So far Stiles hasn’t been able to find anything on how to kill a Čudnovata, but
maybe Deaton will have something in his files, or the Argents will. Teamwork,
for the win. Shakiest team in the entire history of teamwork, with worse
communication skills that the guys who built the Tower of Babel, but, growling
and posturing aside, Stiles figures they can put their differences aside for
the greater good. Most of the time, anyway. Well, some of the time, and Stiles
chooses to believe that this will be one of those times.
“Derek?”
The railway depot is empty.
Stiles sighs and pulls his phone out. He texts Derek: Where are you? I have
info.
He waits around for a while, but doesn’t get an answer.
Great.
Just great.
Who the hell is he supposed to show off to now?
 
***
 
“You suck, Stilinski!”
Lacrosse is the same as always.
 
***
 
He texts Scott after dinner: Have you heard from Derek yet?
It’s a few minutes until the response comes through: No.
Stiles doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. It’s not unusual for Derek to
disappear off the radar for days at a time. It’s all part of that ridiculous
mysterious persona he cultivates, after all. But, come on. He asked for
information, and Stiles actually has some, and the least Derek can do is make
himself available to hear it.
“Asshole,” Stiles tells his phone, scrolling through the contacts until he hits
Sourwolf.He sends another text: Seriously, WTF are you?
He’s a little worried as well. Not that Derek can’t look after himself at all,
but—oh, who the hell is he kidding? Of course Derek can’t look after himself.
He’s so determined to drown in his own deep well of man pain that he wouldn’t
ask for help if he was on fire.
Bad example, probably.
Point is, Derek doesn’t ask for help. Because he’s a brooding, mysterious bad
boy.
And also man pain.
Stiles grabs the keys to his Jeep and heads out.
 
***
 
“Stilinski,” Isaac says, and his mouth curls in a cruel smile. Isaac is on the
lacrosse team, and Stiles has no doubt that he’s part of the You Suck Stilinski
Cheer Squad. He’s one of Derek’s betas, and no way in hell has Stiles spent
time wondering how close they got when Derek bit him, and he totally doesn’t
get turned on by that whenever he thinks of it. Because Isaac probably didn’t
at all whimper, trembling, and so what if he looks like a pre-Raphaelite wet
dream with those curls and that mouth? That has nothing to do with anything.
Stiles isn’t going there. No he is not. 
“I need to talk to Derek.”
Isaac gestures. “He’s not here.”
“No kidding.” Stiles peers around the depot anyway. Why the hell does Derek
even live here? Oh, that’s right. Man pain. “Do you know where he is?”
Isaac sits down in an old lopsided recliner that looks like it’s been rescued
from a dumpster. He picks up a packet of chips and rips it open. “No.”
There’s a weird noise coming from the old railway car. Kind of metal on metal.
Sort of a dull thumping. And then a growling.
Isaac crunches on a chip and grins. “But sometimes he goes to his old house.
When he gets sick of Boyd and Erica making too much noise.”
Sweet zombie Jesus.
Stiles’s face burns.
He knewErica and Boyd were fucking. He totally knew it. Because everyone is
getting laid except Stiles. He just didn’t think they’d be doing it quite so
loudly.
“Okay then,” he says, backing away and almost tripping over something. Oh, his
own feet. Great.
Isaac’s grin gets wider. The asshole.
“I’m just gonna…” Stiles makes the universal gesture for ‘Well, this is
awkward’ and bolts. Behind him, he can hear Isaac laughing.
 
***
 
Stiles hates the Hale house. He hates it enough during the day, but at night
it’s even creepier.
He hates seeing the burned out skeleton of it, and knowing what happened to the
people in the basement. He hates knowing what’s buried under the floorboards.
And mostly he hates the way that Derek haunts the place like a ghost, because
he might be a total douchecanoe, but nobody deserves what happened to him.
Derek’s waiting for him on the sagging front porch when Stiles arrives. It’s
impossible to surprise a werewolf. Derek probably heard his Jeep coming from
miles away.
“Stiles,” he says, his brows drawing together.
“Dude, I’ve been texting you all day. Why the hell didn’t you reply?”
“I lost my phone.”
Stiles stomps up the steps. “And you couldn’t find it with your supernatural
sense of smell, oh wolfy one?”
Derek gives him the side eye. “I lost it at the bottom of the lake.”
“Why were you even—” Stiles throws his arms up. “Ugh. Don’t tell me. I don’t
want to know.”
“What do you want, Stiles?”
“I know what it is! The thing that killed the guy.”
Derek’s gaze sharpens. It could cut diamonds, probably. “What?”
Stiles opens the browser on his phone. “It’s the Čudnovata. I’m probably saying
that wrong. It’s Croatian. It means The Weird. Which, you have to admit, is a
totally cool name.”
“Stiles.”
“Right. Okay. Well, it’s a shapeshifter, and it can be anything, Derek.
Anything. I mean, it puts you guys and your alpha and beta forms to shame. This
thing can be a person, or a cloud, or anything. Anything.”
“I get it.” Derek’s voice is dry. “Anything.”
If Stiles didn’t know better, he could almost be mistaken for thinking Derek
has a sense of humor. “Well, it’s pretty cool, right? For a skin-eating
monster.”
“It eats the skin?”
“I don’t actually know. It roasts and eats the body, but it removes the skin
first. Maybe it’s watching its diet. Except, get this. It didn’t eat the body
by the creek. Maybe it got disturbed or something!”
“By what?”
“I don’t know. Because I haven’t actually found out how to kill this thing yet,
but maybe Deaton or the Argents—”
Derek glowers.
Stiles sighs. “Well, we can try Deaton first, obviously.”
Derek continues glowering.
Stiles shakes his head. What the hell did he expect? That Derek would thank him
for figuring this out? Derek wouldn’t thank him if he offered him his first-
born child. Which is a bad example, probably, because who would thank anyone
for the unexpected gift of a baby?
And great. Now he’s in a weird place where he’s imagining him and Derek and a
baby. Because this crush wasn’t bad enough when it was all about fucking. Now
it’s gone somewhere even more excruciatingly humiliating.
Shit. Why is Stiles holding the baby in his imaginary family tableau? Is he the
mom? Fuck his life, and fuck his subconscious most of all.
He is sixteen years old. He does notwant a baby with Derek Hale.
Or with anyone.
“Oh my god,” he mutters. “Okay, whatever, I’m out of here. Good luck with the
Čudnovata. When you get a new phone, text me and let me know how it goes.” He
stomps down the steps, digging in his pocket for his keys.
“Stiles!”
He stops, turns. “What? Seriously, can we nottalk this out, please? I’ve been
pissy with you, and, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to let
it get in the way of our already awkward working relationship, okay? I’ll keep
helping you out when you need, and you can keep slamming me into walls and
steering wheels, and we won’t ever talk about that whole pity fuck thing again.
Deal?”
Derek is staring over his shoulder.
“Fine, okay. It’s like talking to a brick. Dude, I don’t even know why I care
if you respect me or not, because guess what? Scott’s right. You area dick.”
“Stiles! Get behind me. Now.”
Stiles feels like he’s been doused with icy water.
Oh fuck.
He swallows, and turns to look behind him.
A gray mist is creeping slowly into the clearing.
Oh god. It has eyes. Green glowing eyes.
Stiles stumbles back up the steps. Derek grips him by the shoulder and pulls
him behind him.
“Oh, Jesus.” All Stiles can see are those crime scene photographs, that half-
burned body with no skin. His dad told him to stay out of the Preserve. He’ll
blame himself, probably, for not being there for Stiles. “Oh fuck.”
Derek growls, and usually Stiles feels pretty good about having a werewolf on
his side in a fight, because werewolves are made entirely of muscles, claws,
teeth, and bloodlust. They’re the scariest motherfuckers Stiles has ever seen,
and Stiles gets to stand beside them. Usually that boosts his courage.
But not now.
Because what good are muscles and claws and teeth against mist?
They’re going to die.
 
***** Chapter 3 *****
“You have reached the Beacon Hills Animal Clinic. Our office is closed at the
moment. If you have an emergency, please hold the line. Your call will be
transferred.”
Tinny music. Greensleeves.
“Oh fuck. Come on!” Stiles lets Derek drag him inside the house. “Closing the
door won’t stop mist, you know, Derek!”
“I know that, Stiles!”
Why is it always fucking Greensleeves? Greensleeves makes Stiles think of the
ice cream truck which, okay, is better than thinking of impending death, but
also unnecessarily cruel: Want an ice cream, Stiles? Too bad, because you’re
about to get flayed and roasted and eaten instead.
“Dr. Alan Deaton speaking.”
“Doc! It’s Stiles! Derek and I seriously need your help right now, like
immediately!” Is that mist he can see seeping under the door? Or is his
increasing panic making him see things?
“Stiles?” Deaton’s voice sharpens. “What’s going on?”
“Čudnovata! It’s a Croatian—”
“I know what it is, Stiles.”
Of course he does, praise Jebus. “How do we kill it?”
“Hmmmm. There may be a ritual of banishment. I remember seeing one somewhere.”
“Oh god. It’s here. Now. Now!”
That’s definitely mist. Thin tendrils of it slipping into the house. Underneath
the door at first, then through the gaping holes where the windows used to be.
“Oh god.” Stiles can’t breathe. He closes his eyes, and grips the back of
Derek’s shirt in his fist. “Please, Doc. Please.”
“Do you have any mountain ash?”
“N-no.”
“Do you have anything?”
“No!”
Deaton makes a worried sound.
Derek is backing Stiles across the floor. Stiles opens his eyes again. His
first instinct is to head up the stairs. The second floor might be no more
secure than down here, but it’ll buy them some time, right? Except Derek isn’t
pushing him toward the stairs. Derek’s pushing him toward…
Stiles stares down at the floorboards.
They’re standing over the exact spot where they buried Peter Hale after Derek
ripped his throat out. Stiles’s breath catches in his throat. Where they buried
Peter Hale with enough mountain ash and wards and runes and wolfsbane to sink
whatever the supernatural equivalent is of the Bismarck. He meets Derek’s gaze.
Derek has beautiful fucking eyes.
“Will this work?” Stiles whispers.
Derek doesn’t answer.
“Stiles?” Deaton asks. “Will what work?”
“We’re standing, um, we’re standing where we buried Peter.”
The noise Deaton makes this time is a little less worried. But only a little.
“That might hold it. The Čudnovata will feed on your fear. Don’t let it. I’ll
be there as soon as I can!” He ends the call.
Stiles figures he doesn’t really want to hear them get flayed alive if he’s
wrong about the wards holding the Čudnovata at bay.
“Deaton said—”
“I heard.” Derek turns so that he’s holding Stiles, hands on his hips, their
chests pressing together. “Put your arms around me too. Whatever happens, don’t
let go.”
“Wh-what?” But it is ridiculously easy to slip his arms around Derek, his palms
sliding on Derek’s shirt and then the denim of his jeans. It’s easy to hook his
trembling fingers through Derek’s belt loops.
“Close your eyes if you want.”
Oh, okay. Deaton said not to feed the Čudnovata, and if any one of them is
going to offer it a big juicy meal of blind fucking panic, then of course it’s
going to be Stiles. He closes his eyes, and lowers his head. He rests his
forehead against Derek’s shoulder and turns his face toward his throat. Feels
the rasp of his stubble against his cheek.
“Derek, I don’t want to die in this house. No offence!”
“You’re not going to die here.” Derek splays a hand against Stiles’s lower
back. “Also, no offence? Really?”
“Okay.” Stiles sucks in a breath. It smells of Derek. “That came out wrong. I
don’t mean that this place is like the secret elephant burial grounds for your
family or anything. I mean, I know none of them meant to die here. And it’s not
like I’m too good to die where they did or anything… Fuck. I’m just making it
worse, aren’t I?”
“Mmmm.” Derek rubs his back. “Keep talking if you want.”
“Stop being so nice to me. If you’re nice to me, I know you think we’re going
to die.” He keeps his eyes shut, but he can feel Derek turning his head from
side to side. “It’s all around us, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Keep your eyes closed.”
Stiles can’t breathe. “D-Derek!” There’s a weight pressing on his chest. He’s
going to be sick. Can’t breathe. “Derek, I get—I get panic attacks.”
 “Shh. It’s okay.” Derek holds him tighter.
Only people who don’t get panic attacks say shit like ‘It’s okay.’ And Stiles
would totally tear strips of Derek for being a condescending dick if he could
only fucking breathe right now. Hot tears sting his eyes, and yeah, now he’s
hyperventilating, and he needs to get the fuck out of here, except Derek won’t
let him move, because the only thing keeping them alive at this moment is
standing on Peter Hale’s rotting fucking corpse. Panic claws at Stiles’s
throat, and he sobs into Derek’s neck.
Then he hears footsteps.
He lifts his head and opens his eyes before he can stop himself.
It’s a girl. A teenage girl. Pretty. Glowing green eyes.
For a moment Stiles is more intrigued than terrified. She’s so beautiful that
his breath catches in his throat. She smiles, and Derek growls lowly, the noise
rumbling through his chest, vibrating against Stiles, and it almost sounds more
possessive than protective. If they were at a club right now and Derek made
that noise when some girl smiled at Stiles, it would be totally hot. But this
isn’t a club, and that isn’t a girl, so the growl Derek makes is just fucking
weird.
The Čudnovata holds out its hand.
Seriously? Stiles might be a hormonal sixteen-year-old boy, but he’s not
completely stupid. It’s going to take more than a pretty face to get him to
step off Peter Hale’s grave.
“Stiles,” the Čudnovata says. Its smile grows, something like electricity
cracks in the air, and suddenly the girl’s gone and it’s his dad standing
there. His dad. “I won’t hurt you, son.”
The illusion is good. Good enough that Stiles wishes it was true, but all the
wishes in the world aren’t enough to make him forget what it is standing there,
whatever face it’s wearing.
This is…pointless. These tricks won’t work on Stiles. And, out of the two of
them, the Čudnovata has picked entirely the wrong target. Even if Stiles wanted
to step toward it, Derek would never let him. It should have gone for Derek’s
weaknesses—this is the place for them—instead of Stiles’s. So why hasn’t it?
And why didn’t it finish roasting the body of its first victim?
There’s something not right here.
Stiles closes his eyes again and takes a deep breath.
This is his brain. This is his brain on Adderall.
It wasn’t scared or distracted with its first victim. What could scare or
distract a Čudnovata? It left that body there so it would be found. That body
was bait, so who did it catch?
The police? Stiles? Derek?
Derek.
The alpha of Beacon Hills. Stiles doesn’t pretend to know how this works, but
he can only presume that the Čudnovata feeds to make itself more powerful. It
feeds on fear, Deaton said, but it also feeds on flesh. And how much power does
the flesh of an alpha wolf have? Derek is probably chockfull of supernatural
mojo.
Electricity crackles in the air again.
“It’s you,” Stiles says, opening his eyes.
Derek frowns at him.
“It wants you.” Stiles pulls one hand free from his belt loops and reaches up
to cup his cheek. “I don’t know… I don’t know why it’s trying to get at me,
though, why that would help it get at you.”
Derek growls again, and if Stiles wasn’t so afraid of imminent death he would
totally be loving that sound.
“A spark thing,” he says. “Maybe it’s a spark thing.”
If it wants Derek’s supernatural mojo, maybe it wants Stiles’s as well. Deaton
once said he was a spark, whatever the hell that means. Maybe he’d make a tasty
little appetizer to the Čudnovata’s main course of char grilled werewolf.
“Yeah, a spark thing. That’s gotta be it, right?”
Derek’s eyes flash red. “Shut up, Stiles.”
The Čudnovata shifts again.
The dark-haired woman moving around them is beautiful. Of course she is. She’s
Stiles’s mom.
“Oh.” Only a tiny sound, but it breaks something inside him, something Stiles
didn’t know could be broken again. It’s his mom. “Mom?”
Derek’s fingers dig into his back. “Close your eyes, Stiles!”
No. He can’t do that. He knows it isn’t real, but it looks real and he’s so
tired of photographs, of fading memories that crumble into dust when he tries
to hold them tight. Just for once he wants this. He wants to see her turn her
head and smile. He wants to see the way she moves, and the way that motion
shifts strands of her hair, or ruffles her skirt. He wants to see her be alive
again.
“Your mom’s dead,” Derek says. “She’s not here.”
He knows that. This isn’t fair. Why isn’t the Čudnovata tormenting Derek? This
house is where all Derek’s ghosts belong. This is where Derek is most
vulnerable. Why is it picking on him instead?
 The Čudnovata’s laughter is full of light. “I’m right here!”
 “She’s not here,” Derek repeats.
He knows. It breaks his heart, but he knows.
“We’re not moving,” Stiles tells the thing wearing his mom’s face. He can feel
Derek’s fingers digging into his back, and, shit, they’re claws now, jabbing at
him through his shirt. “You know this is going to be the most boring standoff
in the history of standoffs, right? Because we’re not moving.”
It can’t get to him. Not like this. Not even with that face, or that voice.
Wherever it dredged his memories from—the memories of how his mom looked,
sounded, moved, smiled—it isn’t her, and it can’t know. It can’t.
It can’t know.
“Stiles,” the Čudnovata says, its voice soft and gentle, strained a little with
what might be unshed tears. “Sweetheart. Why?”
 
 
***
 
“Mom?”
His dad wasn’t there.
The machine had stopped beeping, and his dad wasn’t there.
“Mom?”
And suddenly the room was full of nurses and doctors, and Stiles was pushed out
of the way.
“Mom!”
Except it wasn’t his mom that came and got him. It was Scott’s mom. And even
though Stiles was way too big to get picked up, she picked him up anyway, and
carried him outside, and she was crying and making shushing noises and telling
him his dad was on his way and he’d be okay, except he wouldn’t, and Stiles
started screaming and screaming and screaming until he made himself vomit.
After that, he didn’t talk for a long time.
Not properly.
Days. Weeks. Months.
And when he finally did start talking again, when he discovered that he could
distract himself from the silence with chatter, he never did tell his dad the
truth.
He’d hated sitting there hour after hour, listening to that machine.
He’d wanted his mom to hurry up and die.
 
***
 
“Careful what you wish for, sweetheart,” the Čudnovata says.
Hot tears slide down Stiles’s cheeks. “Shut up.”
“Oh, honey. Don’t cry. You should be happy. You got what you wanted, didn’t
you?”
“No.”
“But you did, baby. You wanted me to die!”
“Shut up!”
Derek growls again.
This is what the silence did to Stiles. This was what he heard from the moment
the beeping stopped. You did this. You wanted this. You made this happen.And
he’s spent half his life hearing those words in his head, but when he hears
them in his own voice it isn’t so bad. Hearing them in her voice rips something
open inside him, some old wound that never properly healed. Her voice cuts into
him as cleanly as a scalpel, sharp and sudden, and by the time he feels the
sting it’s already too late.
“Why, sweetheart? Why?”
Stiles wants to jam his hands over his ears. He wants to scream. It’s not his
mom, and it’s not fair that it knows exactly what to say to hurt him. “Shut up!
Derek, make it shut up!”
Derek’s growling again, the low rumble vibrating through both of them. He
tenses, muscles shifting, and suddenly Stiles understands: this is the trap,
right here. This is what the Čudnovata wants. It’s hurting Stiles because he’s
the weak link here. It’s hurting him because it wants to make Derek angry
enough to attack. It wants Derek to step off Peter’s grave.
“Derek!” Panic spikes in him. He curls his hand around the back of Derek’s
neck. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean it. I’m okay.”
This is the trap, and somehow Stiles is the bait.
Somehow the Čudnovata knows what Stiles is only just figuring out: that Derek
Hale will always come charging in to rescue him. And maybe that’s always been
the case, but maybe it’s not just because Stiles is Scott’s weird friend and
Derek wants Scott as a part of his pack. Maybe it’s not just because Derek just
always happens to be in the right place at the right time, and saving Stiles
would be less hassle than having to explain later why he didn’t. Maybe Derek
always being there means more than Stiles has ever really considered. Maybe it
means everything, even though Derek can’t say it.
“Oh,” Stiles says. He catches Derek’s gaze and holds it. Derek has beautiful
fucking eyes. Stiles can see whole universes in them. “Oh.”
 
***
 
Nothing—nothing—is going to make him let go of Derek now.
And Derek’s rescuing him all over again, just by being here.
Just by holding him.
 
***
 
Deaton and Scott burst into the Hale house like they’re goddamn action heroes.
Action heroes wearing scrubs and smelling of puppy urine, but still, Stiles
counts it as a win. Then, screwing his eyes shut as he cops a face full of—is
it chalk dust? Why the hell would it be chalk dust?—something, he flinches as
the Čudnovata screams.
The Čudnovata, his mom, they sound the same, and his breath hitches and he
tries to pull away—he knows it’s not really her, but it’s instinct—but Derek
won’t let him move. The Čudnovata screams again, and Stiles remembers that
sound from when his mom was in pain and there was nothing he could do except
sit there and listen and cry. His mom didn’t scream—she was beyond
screaming—but that’s the exact same sound Stiles’s heart made.
He opens his eyes, and tries to twist away from Derek.
“No,” Derek says, one hand on Stiles’s back, and the other cupping his face.
His thumb swipes over his cheekbone, sliding through tears. “I’ve got you,
Stiles.”
And then, when it’s all over, when the Čudnovata has vanished to fuck only
knows where and Stiles is left standing in the Hale house covered in chalk
dust, with Derek Hale holding him so close that they’re sharing breath between
them, it’s suddenly pretty fucking awkward.
Stiles wants Derek to let him go, but, also, a part of him doesn’t.
But he knows the longer Derek holds him, the weirder it gets.
“Stiles,” Scott says at last, his voice tentative. “Do you want me to take you
home, dude?”
That’s when Derek seems to shake himself awake. He stares at Stiles with
something like horror in his eyes, and abruptly pushes him away.
It’s so sudden it’s like he pushed all Stiles’s breath out of him as well. It
takes Stiles a moment to find his balance again, and longer still to find his
breath.
“Yeah.” Stiles looks at Derek, but Derek’s turned away and is stalking up the
stairs. “Yeah, Scott. Please.”
 
***
 
Stiles has had enough experience with supernatural life-threatening incidents
to know that it never quite works out like it does in movies. There’s no big
emotional moment where everybody hugs it out, or cries it out, or even fucks it
out. Well, maybe some of the others fuck it out, but Stiles has never been
invited to that sort of after party. Basically, if eating Cheetos and playing
video games doesn’t count as psychological first aid, Stiles is out of options.
There is no outpouring of emotion, no tears, no desperate, magical kiss as the
credits roll.
There’s just Stiles, letting himself into his dark, empty house.
So.
Just another moment when Derek Hale saved his life, right? By cuddling him,
basically. And technically, Stiles supposes, it was Deaton and Scott who got
rid of the Čudnovata. But it was Derek who kept Stiles alive long enough for
them to get there.
Stiles can’t sleep when he goes to bed that night.
He sends Derek a text: That night we were gonna do it, did you want to or was I
just a pity fuck?
He waits an hour for a reply before he remembers that Derek lost his phone.
Maybe that’s for the best. Maybe he doesn’t really want to know. Maybe what he
felt today, what he was sure he felt before Derek pushed him away, was no more
real than the sound of his mom’s laughter.
What he saw in Derek’s gaze, what he thought he saw…he doesn’t know anymore.
There’s probably nothing between them at all, except Stiles’s wishful thinking,
and the simple fact that Derek didn’t want him to die tonight.
He takes a Xanax and finally crashes out.
 
***
 
So fuck his life, and fuck that obviously defective Xanax, because less than
three hours after he falls asleep he’s awake again, and it’s two in the morning
and his dad’s still at work because he’s searching for a psycho killer who
removes the skin of his victims, and he probably hasn’t slept in days and
Stiles can’t even do him a favor and tell him to stop looking. So fuck
everything.
Especially Derek.
Fuck him most of all.
(Stiles wishes.)
He goes online instead, gets involved in an argument about Marvel versus DC,
then downloads a bunch of music he doesn’t even like but somehow totally gets
stuck in his brain.
He heads downstairs at three to make a chocolate milk. Shut up. He can have a
chocolate milk if he wants. Chocolate milk isn’t just for kindergarteners. Then
he goes back upstairs, takes stock of what music he just downloaded, and
wondered what the fuck he was thinking.
Still, who even cares?
Nobody, that’s who.
Stiles can drink chocolate milk and sing along to manufactured pop songs in the
middle of the night, not because he’s sad and pathetic, but because he’s a
fucking boss.
 
***
 
Stiles wakes up face-down on the couch wearing his underwear and a chocolate
milk mustache.
“Tell me you didn’t sleep here,” his dad says.
“I didn’t sleep here,” Stiles says obediently.
His dad shakes his head and wanders back toward the kitchen.
Stiles gets up, stretches, scratches his stomach, and follows him. “Speaking of
inappropriate sleep behavior, is there any chance of you becoming diurnal again
in the near future? Or are you evolving into some sort of bat?”
John hits the button on the coffee machine. “I’ll grab a few hours now, then
I’m going back into work after lunch.”
Stiles pushes past him and turns the machine off.
“Hey!”
“No caffeine for you. I’ll bet you’ve been drinking coffee all night. I’ll make
you a smoothie.”
“I want a damned coffee.” There’s no fight in his tone though.
“You’re having a banana and spinach smoothie. With skim milk.”
“Damn.” His dad sits down at the kitchen table. “How about you? You weren’t up
all night playing video games, were you?”
Stiles rattles around in the refrigerator looking for the spinach. “Actually, I
wasn’t. First I couldn’t sleep so I came downstairs, then I guess I crashed out
on the couch.”
“Do we need to talk to the doctor about your meds?”
Stiles shoves a handful of spinach leaves into the blender, and follows it with
a banana and milk. He’d totally throw some carrot in there as well, if he even
thought for a second his dad would let him get away with it. “No. No, Dad,
I’m…”
And for what feels like the first time in his life, he doesn’t know how to
finish a sentence. He looks down at his hand on the lid of the blender, and his
fingers are shaking.
“Stiles?”
He wants to tell his dad that yesterday he saw his mom’s face again, and heard
her laugh, and her voice, and he wants it to be a good thing. He doesn’t want
to tell his dad about the things she said that cut him to the quick. The wounds
she carved open again.
“Stiles.” His dad’s voice is pitched low with concern, and suddenly he’s right
there, hands on Stiles’s shoulders, turning him into an embrace that a part of
Stiles insists he’s too old for, but it feels so nice he doesn’t resist. “Hey.
What’s going on with you?”
Stiles doesn’t even begin to know how to answer that.
“Is this about that boy?” his dad asks. “Because you say the word, and I’ll—”
Stiles snorts.
“So it’s not about a boy?” His dad pats his back and then asks, cautiously: “A
girl?”
Stiles wishes his life was such a teenage cliché that his problems were that
simple.
His dad sighs, and for a long time they just stand there in the kitchen,
holding one another.
“Do you miss her?” Stiles asks eventually into his dad’s shoulder.
“Every day, kid.” The breath shudders out of him. “Every single day.”
Stiles wants to tell him, but he can’t.
He wants to say “Dad, I wanted her to hurry up and die” and he wants his dad to
say, “Stiles, you were a kid. You were a kid who didn’t know how to deal with
watching your mom die. It wasn’t your fault.”
But he doesn’t.
Stiles decides that guilt, like unrequited love, is easier borne alone. It’s
bad enough it exists at all, but he doesn’t need to share it with his dad.
Stiles loves his dad. He doesn’t ever want to do anything that might change
that. And it won’t, of course it won’t—this is the man who gave him the talk
about the bees and the bees, after all—but that doesn’t mean Stiles can shut
out that insidious voice at the back of his head that whispers: But it could.
He can’t risk that.
He won’t.
“I’m okay,” he says, pulling back and forcing a smile. “I guess I had weird
dreams about mom or something.”
His dad’s face is creased with concern. “You sure, kiddo?”
“Yeah.” He shakes it off. “Yeah, I’m good.”
He turns the blender on to put an end to the conversation.
Denial is the best thing ever.
 
***
 
“Are you okay?” Scott asks him that afternoon at practice.
Before Stiles can even answer, he’s tripping over the crosse that some douche
has shoved between his ankles.
“You suck, Stilinski,” Jackson says, looming over him once he’s hit the ground.
Stiles grabs Scott’s wrist before he wolfs out.
“You know,” he says, hauling himself to his feet. “Fuck this, I’m going home.”
 
***
 
Stiles is not dancing to Ugly Heart when it happens. Not at all. Because he is
not the sort of guy who goes looking for validation for his angsty teenage
emotions in popular songs. It’s just a crazy coincidence that Derek is cover
boy pretty with an ugly heart. (And itis such a pity.)
So he’s notdancing to Ugly Heart, and he’s not belting the lyrics out at the
top of his lungs, and he’s not totally absolutely fucking mortified when he
spins around to find Derek Hale climbing in his window.
Well fuck his life. Again.
Stiles drops his iPod on the floor. “And we’ll never speak of that again.”
That can’t be the hint of a smile on Derek’s cover boy pretty face, can it?
Stiles tries for a smile of his own. It probably misfires. “We’ll add it to the
list.”
“The list?” Derek leans against his wall and folds his arms over his chest.
“The list of things we’ll never talk about,” Stiles informs him.
Derek raises his eyebrows. “Such as?”
“Nuh uh uh. Because we’re not talking about them. There is literally no point
in having a list of things we’re not going to talk about, if we then talk about
what’s on the list. This list needs to be the Fight Club of lists.”
Derek nods slowly. “But maybe I should know what’s on the list, just so I don’t
accidentally bring something up in conversation.”
Stiles almost laughs. “Since when do you accidentally bring anything up in
conversation? Since when do you have a conversation?”
Derek narrows his eyes. “Isn’t that what we’re doing now?”
“This is more like banter,” Stiles says. “It’s the conversation we have when
we’re not actually having a conversation.”
Derek does something complicated with his eyebrows. “Stiles.”
Stiles doesn’t like the way his heartbeat skips when Derek says his name. He
also doesn’t like the way that Derek can probably hear it. “What?”
“Don’t you ever shut up?”
“No. No I don’t. Apart from sleep, I guess.” Stiles bends down and picks up his
iPod. Plays with the cord. “Well, I’m not actually sure. It’s highly possible
that I talk in my sleep. I’ve never actually recorded myself to find out.
Because it would either be weird and a little bit creepy, or incredibly boring.
No good can come of it either way.”
“Stiles.”
Stiles swallows. “What?”
“What happens when you’re quiet?”
That was not what he was expecting Derek to say. Okay, he has no idea what he
was expecting, but he’s pretty sure it wasn’t anything like that.
“No,” he says, and crosses the floor to stand in front of Derek. “No.”
“No?”
“No!” Stiles pushes him. It has exactly the same effect as pushing a brick
wall. None at all. “That’s not how this works. You’re doing it wrong!”
Derek catches his wrists. “What am I doing wrong?”
Stiles stares at Derek’s fingers, wrapped around his wrists. He absolutely
should not find that as hot as he does. Any second now he’ll sport an awkward
boner.
Derek growls when he doesn’t answer.
And oh, there’s his boner. Fucking great.
Stiles pulls free, absurdly grateful that Derek lets it happen. “No, we’re not
talking about the things on the list. And if we were, we’d talk about you and
me, okay, not just me. Because that’s how it works. I’d talk and you’d listen,
and then we’d swap, and we’d keep doing it until it was all sorted out, okay?
That’s how it works.”
“How what works?”
“People, Derek. People.” Stiles groans. “You are fucking impossible! You do
this all the time. Just when I think I’ve got you figured out, just when I
think we’re on the same page, suddenly you’ve backed the fuck off and I don’t
even think we’re in the same bookanymore.” He holds up a hand to forestall
Derek’s objection. “That was a metaphor. Just go with it.”
Derek presses his lips together and nods curtly.
“Thank you.” Stiles rubs the heel of his hand over his buzz cut. “So tell me,
please, if apparently we’re not going to repress it, what was yesterday?”
“Yesterday?”
“Yeah, you remember, when we were pretty much dry humping on your uncle’s
grave.”
Derek’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Okay, so maybe that’s not exactly how you remember it. Me neither. But it
wasn’t exactly a buddy hug, was it? A hug between buddies? Because I don’t
think Scott’s ever hugged me like that.” He holds Derek’s gaze, and exhales
slowly. Shrugs. Lets all his attitude out with his breath, and feels suddenly,
achingly naked. “It, um, it felt like something else. Was it?”
Derek’s eyes widen slightly. He jerks his head in a nod. “Yes.”
Stile’s heart skips a beat. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
Stiles can hardly hear him over the rush of blood in his skull. “Um. Okay.” His
breath catches. He swallows. “No, actually, not okay. You need to expand on
that a little.”
Derek narrows his eyes, and says, through gritted teeth, “I have feelings for
you.”
“Tingly feelings, or homicidal feelings?” Because at the moment Stiles is
afraid it’s the second one.
“Stiles.” Derek looks like he’s about to have an aneurism. “Do not make me say
tingly.”
A laugh Stiles didn’t even know he was capable of bubbles up from somewhere
deep inside him. “Oh, sweet zombie Jesus. You. Just. Did!”
“Shut up,” Derek says, but that’s definitely a smile tugging at the corner of
his mouth. And then it’s gone again, and Derek’s brows knit together. “Last
time…I didn’t mean… I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I said it wrong.”
“You say everything wrong,” Stiles tells him helpfully.
“I know.”
“But you’re doing okay now,” Stiles concedes. “Anything else you want to get
off your chest?”
Derek raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, you don’t suck. Your teammates are just
assholes.”
Stiles grins.
“And…” Derek hesitates. “And if what the Čudnovata said was true—”
“It was.” His stomach hurts. He reaches out and, half-afraid that Derek will
pull away, touches Derek’s hand. He brushes his fingertips over Derek’s
knuckles and shivers when Derek turns his hand so their fingers can entwine.
“It was true.”
Stiles doesn’t need Derek’s validation or whatever. His ego isn’t that fragile.
But it’s more of a relief than he can even hope to articulate when Derek raises
their clasped hands, then dips his head and brushes his lips across Stiles’s
knuckles.
He doesn’t say anything, but that’s okay. Right now, in this moment, Stiles
doesn’t need words. He closes his eyes as Derek’s breath warms his fingers. He
shivers, and then ruins the moment by snorting.
“I take back everything I ever said about having a list of things we don’t talk
about. Because when we talk, dude, look what fucking happens!”
Derek squeezes his hand.
“But also,” Stiles says, “if we can stop the talking and get to the making out,
that would be totally awesome.”
Derek growls, and backs him into the wall.
And itis awesome.
 
***
 
Derek’s hands are hot, almost as hot as his mouth, and they’re everywhere at
once. Not in a creepy way; Stiles is totally on board with this. Every pass of
Derek’s hands up Stiles’s sides, under his shirt, his fingertips following the
ridges and dips of his ribcage, makes him squirm. Derek’s stubble rasps against
his collarbone as he lays a trail of hot kisses around Stiles’s throat. He
sucks on Stiles’s throat for a moment, and it’s hot and a little bit
dangerous—jugular, meet wolf—but it’s so fucking incredible that all Stiles can
do is moan and try not to slam his head too hard against his wall. Because
ouch.
“Derek. Derek!” Stiles grabs him by the hair, because as incredible as it is to
have Derek’s mouth on his throat, he needs Derek’s mouth on his mouth. Right
now. Immediately. “Here. Here.”
Derek makes a low sound in his throat, and licks a stripe up Stiles’s neck.
“Oh, fuck.”
Derek is not playing fair. No, he is not.
Derek slides his hands down Stiles’s lower back, and then lower still, and
suddenly—Stiles isn’t entirely sure how it happens, but it probably has
something to do with werewolf strength—he’s lifting Stiles, and it’s the most
obvious thing in the world for Stiles to wrap his legs around Derek’s hips and
try and get some friction on his dick. On both their dicks, hopefully.
“Nuh uh.” Derek grins at him, showing fangs. He pushes Stiles against the wall
again, keeping one hand under his ass. His other hand catches Stiles’s wrists
and shoves them up above his head, and Stiles is suddenly helpless. And, if his
dick has anything to say about it, totally happy about that.
“Derek, c’mon!” Stiles juts his chin out, his mouth seeking Derek’s, and Derek
relents at last.
His first kiss. It’s a lot less romantic comedy and a lot more porntastic than
Stiles had imagined, but he’s not complaining. At all. Actually, he might be
complaining. He’s making a sound that’s embarrassingly like a whimper, not
because he doesn’t like what’s going on here, but because he wants more.
Whatever Derek Fucking Hale is selling, Stiles is buying.
Derek’s mouth is hot, the press of his lips firm. The slide of his tongue,
first against the seam of Stiles’s lips, easing it open, and then pushing
forward into his mouth, is intense. Stiles squirms, moans, and embarrasses
himself in a million minute ways as they kiss, and he doesn’t even care. Maybe
later he’ll be mortified at being such a totally awkward virgin—he might as
well wear a flashing neon sign—but for now he’ll just ride this crazy train as
far as it goes.
Not that Derek’s a crazy train.
Stiles absolutely wants to ride him though.
He wrenches his mouth free. “This whole time, did you like me?”
“Yes.” Derek’s breath is hot against his face.
“Wow.” Stiles really wishes he had that My Little Pony Journal after all.
Because right next to the page entitled “Squishy and Tingly Feelings I Have For
Derek Hale”, there should be a page entitled “Squishy and Tingly Feelings Derek
Hale Finally Admitted He Has For Me.” And maybe, just maybe, Derek didn’t mean
to be a total dick this whole time after all. Maybe he’s just seriously god-
awful at communicating with anything apart from his eyebrows. “Really?”
Derek gives a frustrated growl. “Yes!”
“Right,” Stiles says, panting. “More kissing, yes.”
Because even if he didn’t mean it Derek was a total dick, and Stiles is not
giving him a pass on that, but it’s certainly something he can put aside for
now and deal with later, when they’ve got their other pressing needs, like
Stiles’s erection—and fine, sure, Derek’s too—out of the way.
“More kissing, Derek, and then I want you to fuck me.”
Well, look at him prioritizing like an adult.
 
***
 
Fifteen minutes later they’re tangled up on Stiles’s bed, Stiles’s shirt is on
the floor, and if Derek doesn’t get Stiles’s jeans off immediately, there will
be trouble. Big trouble.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Stiles grunts, and pops the button on his fly. “It’s not
that hard!”
Derek stills above him, and grins. “Are you sure about that?”
He puts his hand on Stiles’s jeans, right over his dick. And somehow puts a few
thousand volts of electricity through him. Stiles almost jack-knifes off the
mattress.
“Derek!” He flops back down again, gasping for breath. “Holy shit! You might
want to take it easy, I think I’m on kind of a hair trigger here.”
Derek leans down over him and nips at his bottom lip. “Wanna see you come.”
“Oh.” Stiles’s breath whooshes out of him. “In that case, carry on.”
Derek rubs his jaw against Stiles’s cheek, and the rasp of his stubble is just
insane. Seriously, Stiles has no idea why something like that should set his
whole body alight, but there’s no point questioning it. It’s apparently a thing
that exists, like gravity. It’s inescapable.
“Oh my god,” Stiles whimpers. This is going to be over embarrassingly fast.
Like he’s thirteen years old and just discovered Redtube fast.
Derek tugs Stiles's zip open, and that tiny rasp of metal teeth has never
sounded more laden. Stiles will probably never be able to take his jeans off
without thinking right back to this moment. Then, suddenly, his jeans are
around his thighs and—holy crap—so is his Batman underwear.
Derek leans up suddenly. He grabs the hem of his Henley and pulls it over his
head.
“Holy shit,” Stiles whispers, awestruck, because who has abs like that? Those
shouldn’t exist outside of fantasy. Then Derek is unfastening his own jeans and
Stiles’s brain just shorts out.
Gone.
Popped like a light bulb.
Nothing but static.
He’s staring at Derek Fucking Hale’s dick.
Sweet. Zombie. Jesus. He wants it. He wants it in every conceivable way. To
touch it, to taste it, and to take it all the way inside him. Shit. Is he ready
for that? He doesn’t know. He also doesn’t want to overthink it, because it
seems that right now would be a really good time to keep his brain offline and
just work purely on instinct. He doesn’t need anything else—like worrying about
how much it might hurt, or how he has no fucking idea what he’s doing and will
probably be terrible at it—getting in the way.
“Stiles?”
“Mmm?” Oh, that’s right, eye contact. Derek has eyes too.
Derek hooks a finger under Stiles’s chin, and angles his face up for a gentle
kiss. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes. Fuck, yes. Or, yes, fuck.”
“Have you got lube?”
He’s a hormonal teenage boy who’s in charge of the grocery shopping. Of course
he’s got lube. “Top drawer. Condoms too, if, um, if we need them.”
“I can’t catch or transmit STIs, so it’s your call.”
“I am totally good with no condom.”  Stiles does not need his dad finding a
used condom in the garbage. Not that his dad roots through the garbage looking
for such things, but why risk it?
Derek leans over to haul the drawer of the nightstand open, while Stiles
wriggles the rest of the way out of his jeans. Then Derek’s lying beside him,
holding the tube, and shit just got totally real. A part of Stiles would prefer
that Derek not hold his gaze while his fingers are heading south, because it’s
a bit weird. Why can’t things like preparation happen in some sort of magical
haze, and they can jump straight from foreplay to fucking without any
awkwardness between? He flinches when Derek’s lube-slippery fingers graze his
pubes—should he have shaved? Waxed?—then bypass his dick and balls, and hone in
unerringly on his hole. Stiles can feel his face burning.
“Are you sure?”
Stiles nods. “Yeah.”
The first press of Derek’s finger inside him just feels weird. Like weird
enough that Stiles wonders if all porn that has ever existed has lied or, more
likely, if there’s something wrong with him. Wouldn’t that be just his luck? He
gets turned on in a stiff breeze, but he’s so defective it turns out he doesn’t
like sex. He’ll be doomed to jack off for the rest of his life which, although
it’s great, Stiles had hoped wouldn’t hold a candle to the real deal.
Just when he’s wondering how he’s going to fake some enthusiasm for this, Derek
twists his finger in deeper, and curls it or something, and
holyshitfuckchristballsthat’s gotta be his prostate. “Jesus!”
“You like that?”
“No, I just picked now to find religion,” Stiles mutters, because fuck Derek’s
stupid hot smug face. And Derek actually smiles. Honest-to-god smiles, and when
he leans down to press his mouth against Stiles’s he huffs out a breath that
might almost be a laugh. And Stiles did that. He kisses Derek back more
fiercely, bravely, because he made Derek Hale almost laugh, and that’s like a
legit fucking superpower. “Come on. Do more dirty things to me.”
And this time it’s definitely a laugh, and Stiles beams in response. For a
moment, at least, because then Derek’s working a second finger inside him and
things are getting totally serious. It feels weird. Goodweird. Each press of
Derek’s fingers lights Stiles up from the inside, and he squirms, and before he
knows it he’s actually rocking back and forth a little on Derek’s fingers, and
he can’t quite catch his breath. Derek is stretching him, and it aches, but it
also feels like the best thing in the world.
Sex is complicated. Good complicated.
“Derek. Derek, Derek.”
“Okay.” Derek draws his fingers out, and Stiles grumbles at their loss. Then
Derek’s hands are on his thighs, pushing his legs up, opening them more, making
space for Derek to kneel between them.
“Oh shit.” When he feels the hot, blunt head of Derek’s cock pressing against
his hole, Stiles has a momentary panic-flail. Derek soothes it away with a line
of kisses up his throat and jaw, until Stiles is sinking into the mattress.
Then Derek presses in, and holyjesusfuckstick there’s no going back now. Derek
Hale’s dick is in his ass. This is momentous. This is life changing. He should
tweet this. Where did he leave his phone?
“Stiles.” Derek narrows his eyes. “Focus.”
Busted.
Stiles pulls him close for a messy kiss. “You have my undivided attention,
sourwolf.”
And then he really does, because the ache sharpens a little, and it’s an actual
hurt, and Stiles sucks in a quick breath.
“Okay?”
Stiles doesn’t know if he wants it out, or further in. “Just, um, just go
slow?”
Derek goes fucking glacial, each tiny increment of forward movement accompanied
by a kiss, or a touch, or some indistinct comforting murmur. And slowly, so
fucking slowly, the ache loses its sharp edge of pain, and transforms into
something else. It’s want. Stiles’s dick hardens again, and suddenly everything
is right with the world, and they’ve fallen into a rhythm that even Stiles’s
uncoordinated body can follow, and it feels good. Really, really good. He wants
more.
“Oh, fuck. Derek, fuck.”
Luckily Derek can read between the lines, because he picks up the pace. And
wow, werewolf stamina is going to be fun to explore. Stiles works a hand
between their bodies and wraps his fingers around his dick. Each thrust jolts
his prostate, jolts his hand, and jolts his dick. He could do this for hours,
except he’s so fucking close already.
When Derek growls and bites his throat, he’s done.
Seriously done, in a shuddering mess of flailing limbs and explosive bodily
fluids. When he clenches around Derek’s dick Derek is done as well, and holy
crap, it was his first time and they both came pretty much together. He is
clearly a sex god. High five!
“High five,” he mumbles, and tries to raise a floppy hand.
Derek just growls gently into his throat before rolling off him.
They lie there, limbs tangled together still, and Stiles tries to remember how
to breathe. Then he tries to remember how not to freak out. Because he just had
sex with Derek Fucking Hale.
“Stiles.” Derek rubs his chest. “I can hear you freaking out.”
“Actually, this is a pre-freak out,” Stiles tells him. “When it’s the real
thing, you’ll know it.”
Derek lifts himself up onto one elbow and glares at him. “Stop it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Stop it.” Derek’s glare darkens. “You’re not allowed to freak out about this.”
“Oh, and you’re somehow going to stop it, are you? With your scary
sourwolfiness?”
Derek huffs. “Yes.”
It’s the most ridiculous thing Stiles has ever heard.
He laughs so hard he completely forgets to freak out.
 
 
***
 
They don’t talk.
Not exactly. But after Derek gets dressed he kisses Stiles so slowly that he
almost melts, and then says he’ll see him tomorrow.
So they don’t talk. But it doesn’t matter.
Sometimes they don’t need to talk.
It turns out silence isn’t always as scary as Stiles thought.
 
***
 
At school the next day, Scott gives him a weird look in homeroom, followed by a
slow sniff, and then vanishes. He’s back before lunch, when he presents Stiles
with an embarrassed grin and a balloon animal. It could be a giraffe. Or a
poodle. Stiles isn’t really sure.
“A balloon animal, really?” Stiles can’t help his grin. “Thanks, Scotty.”
Scott gives him the tightest bro-hug known to mankind, and then ruins it all by
saying, “I still think he’s kind of a dick.”
Stiles smacks him on the head with his giraffe-poodle. “Hey, that’s my kind-of-
boyfriend you’re talking about.”
Scott grins. “And how are you going to break it to your dad that your kind-of-
boyfriend is an ex-murder suspect in his twenties?” 
Fuck Scott.
And fuck his life.
Stiles figures he needs some time to adjust to all of this before he even
thinks about breaking it to his dad. Probably about a decade or so. Yeah, a
decade should do it.
 
***
 
It takes Derek another week to get around to buying a new phone.
Derek is in Stiles’s room, in Stiles’s bed, when he turns it on and all his old
text messages start coming through.
Stiles hears when Derek makes a noise caught somewhere between hurt and
surprise, and he remembers, his face burning, the text message he sent the
night that Derek saved him from the Čudnovata: That night we were gonna do it,
did you want to or was I just a pity fuck?
His own phone buzzes. His heart races as he looks down at the screen.
You are the best thing in my life.
Stiles is absolutely not choking up. He looks up and smiles at Derek, and Derek
smiles back at him, and then Stiles is climbing into his lap, twining his arms
around his throat and kissing him.
He’s so happy he could...
No. He’s not going to cry.
But he might have to invest in that My Little Pony journal after all, because
it turns out he’s got a lot of feels right now and maybe, just maybe, they’re
worth recording.
“You’re not so bad yourself, Derek Fucking Hale,” he says, and Derek grins,
laughs, and buries his face in Stiles’s neck.
 
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