Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/929934.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Teen_Wolf_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Derek_Hale/Laura_Hale
  Character:
      Derek_Hale, Laura_Hale, OMC
  Additional Tags:
      Threats_of_Rape/Non-Con, Pre-Season_1_fic, New_York, Grief, Mourning,
      Incest
  Collections:
      Rare_Pair_Fest_2013
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-08-17 Words: 5971
****** Kissing is a Comfort ******
by AngeNoir
Summary
     Laura Hale is 18 and is now in charge of her 15-turning-16 year old
     brother Derek Hale. Uncle Peter is... gone. Her family is just...
     gone. She's trying, and maybe it's not perfect, but it works for
     them.
Notes
     I really hope this matches what you were looking for, at least a
     little bit.
What no one ever told Laura – and they’d told her a lot, really, considering
she was most definitely going to be the first pick for the alpha – was that, as
an alpha, you had a low-level emotional connection to the rest of the pack. You
could pick up when they were worried, or angry, or frightened. Not all the
time, and not with all the pack members, because some were very good at locking
their emotions away, but it was possible.
Laura found this out the night her mother burnt alive – the night her mother
died before her two cousins and aunt, and the night that Laura felt their
terror and fear and pain like a knife cutting through her brain.
Later, she’d use that to excuse her failure to notice the person still alive,
the person who was still with her, but she knew deep in her heart that there
was no real excuse for her neglect.
As it was, she was newly-eighteen, less than a semester away from graduating,
and her brother was fifteen-turning-sixteen, and he was a bit less than years
from graduating, and her uncle was thirty-two and not healing. Sometimes, if a
wolf was hurt badly enough, the wolf retreated and all that was left was the
human side. It did something to the mind, to be torn into two like that, and
Laura tried her hardest to use her new alpha powers to bring Uncle Peter back.
She did, she sat at his side while Derek slept in the waiting room of the
hospital, and she concentrated her hardest. If she had felt Aunt Lacy and Jamie
and Heather burning alive, surely she could find Uncle Peter’s wolf, and bring
that wolf back to his heart and his mind so that he could heal.
But she didn’t. And the Sheriff came to her and asked her what she planned to
do – the fire had been ruled arson, but there were no suspects as of yet, and
Derek was looking really hollow-eyed, maybe she should look up family somewhere
else? Get a hotel room, at least – if she wanted to stay with the Sheriff, she
could, for a little while at least. The Sheriff’s kid, nine years old with big
eyes and so solemn, so quiet, sat in the waiting room often enough that his
scent was ingrained in the walls. Sickness clung to him, as did the scent of
death.
Laura turned down the Sheriff’s offer, collected Derek, and holed up in a hotel
room.
That would have been the perfect moment, to notice Derek’s withdrawal, the pain
in his eyes. But she didn’t, wrapped up in her memories of her family’s deaths,
wrapped up in insurance claims and police reports, wrapped up in fear for
herself, her uncle, her brother.
Arson, the Sheriff had said, and there had been trouble, nonstop trouble, from
the Argents for the past year. Packs had come, seeking her mother’s aid, her
father’s strategy, her uncle’s skills. Someone had managed to wipe out all of
her family – her older brother, her younger sister, her mother, her father, her
two aunts, her grandfather, her four cousins, they were all gone—
Laura ended up calling long-distance to New York. There was a wild pack in the
Catskill Mountains, one that hunters knew not to mess with. She and her brother
could hole up there while she tried to put her life back together.
Derek didn’t argue, simply followed her silently into the plane and across the
country. The alpha of that pack didn’t like a wolf moving in with alpha powers
– two alphas naturally fought, over and over, until one established their
dominance over the other – and Laura had to dance pretty around barbs and
insults to keep from being dragged into an alpha fight. Alpha fights ended up
with someone dead; while she was hurting enough to want the outlet, to want to
rip and tear and rend, she couldn’t risk Derek’s future like that, not with his
blue eyes. Blue eyes were a rarity, and many wolves were superstitious of them.
They said that blue eyes reflected a dark soul, a ruthless wolf.
They’d kill Derek, given the chance.
As it was, as a group, the pack shunned Derek. They accepted her readily
enough, but the pack youths picked on Derek and her normally brash and over-
confident younger brother remained silent and stoic before all of them. She
didn’t know how to fix him, how to fix herself, and she scrambled to try and
get her GED even as she forced Derek to go back to school. She fought of
Fenrir’s attempts to simultaneously woo and defeat her, and she was just
stretched so thin.
She didn’t cry often. Or, at least, not as often as she could have, or wanted
to. Still, when she did, Derek would always slip into bed with her and cuddle
close. She would curl into him and just hold tight, breathing in his scent and
trying to put everything out of her mind. It was impossible to do so – she
still had so much to handle, and she couldn’t stop her brain from racing.
One night, just a few months after they had settled in New York, and five or
six months after Laura had gained the alpha powers, she was shaking in Derek’s
arms again, the black of the room enveloping, smothering, when he tilted his
head down and kissed her.
On the lips.
It was a shock – she had no idea where it came from, what could have prompted
him to – to do something like that – and then he did it again, shifting against
her and running one of his large hands over her shoulders.
Well, her brain wasn’t racing anymore, she thought faintly.
“Derek, what – what are you doing?” she whispered.
He froze, and even thought it was dark she knew his face would have that
curiously blank mask he had on all the time now. He smiled so rarely, she
thought mournfully, distracted momentarily from his actions – and then he was
up and out of the bed, mumbling apologies, and it was wrong, she knew it, but
maybe it was just a comfort thing because he had no one else and frankly it had
soothed her, and so she reached out and grabbed his wrist before he could
leave.
“Stay,” she half-asked, half-commanded.
And Derek stayed.
                                      +++
Things… changed, for lack of a better term. Laura leaned on Derek a bit more,
and Derek withdrew from the rest of the pack. His grades, which had never been
outstanding before, suddenly rocketed as he had nothing to do but focus on his
studies. He came home and helped her balance their budget, place money in
savings and stocks, argue with the insurance company about the money. And as
months passed, and Derek would hold her in bed and they would share lazy kisses
in the dark, Laura slowly got a better grip on the situation, on her position
as alpha, and on her life as a whole.
Derek, meanwhile, did not improve in the least.
For one thing, he always seemed a tad desperate nowadays, clinging to her
instead of just holding, never letting her out of his sight. He refused to even
try to interact with the pack that was giving them shelter, and while his
grades were excellent, Laura was receiving worrying messages from the school
counselor, who thought Derek might be suffering depression.
She could feel, vaguely, an echo of his emotions if she really concentrated,
but he was pretty good at keeping his feelings from bleeding over the alpha
link.
“It’s like – something’s eating away at him,” Laura sighed. She had taken a
small job at the local grocery store, which had actually been horrible when
they’d first moved here since, as an alpha, her senses had become ten times
more sensitive, and the bright lights and multiple scents had exacerbated her
situation. Now, though, it was manageable, and she had become tentative friends
with one of the other cashiers. Not close friends – she didn’t know the local
hunters here, and Catskill was one of the thoroughfares for hunters, in that
they would travel through the city regularly on their way south. She never knew
which human could be a hunter, and if there was one thing she had drummed into
herself and Derek these past eleven months, it was that humans were weak,
humans couldn’t be trusted, any human had the power to kill a werewolf if the
werewolf was caught unaware.
“Maybe he just needs a change of pace,” Theresa said, lifting one shoulder.
“Needs something to snap him out of it. You try talking to him?”
“He’s sixteen years old – he’s got sulking down to an art form,” Laura sighed,
turning back to her register as someone dropped considerably more than the
fifteen-item limit onto her belt. As she checked out this next wave of
customers, bagging because the manager didn’t think the middle of the day was a
busy enough time to have more than two lanes open and a few stockers running
round in the back, she considered Theresa’s words.
It wasn’t as if she had tried talking, though. And with the anniversary of
their family’s death creeping up on them, Derek wound so tight, and Fenrir, the
local alpha who was easily her father’s age, aggressively courting her in his
homicidal way, something had to break soon. She’d rather it not be her little
brother.
                                      +++
It turned out that she was the first to break.
Here, she thought she legitimately had an excuse – which she didn’t have for
ignoring Derek’s silence until too late, until it was ingrained in his psyche
and locked his words and his communication up – since she wouldn’t have flipped
out if it hadn’t been for stupid fucking Fenrir. Their family had moved to
California specifically to get away from their wilder, more bestial kin that
lived in the north and in the northeast, and Fenrir was everything Laura hated.
Oozing supremacy and certain that no female could be a true alpha except to a
tainted soul like her brother, Fenrir alternately tried to hand her gifts and
tried to goad her into a confrontation.
She’d moved them here, she thought desperately, trying to keep her temper as
Fenrir crowded her against the wall in their small cabin on pack lands – he’d
walked right in without an invitation, and Derek was still at school, and it
was Laura’s day off and she had just been lounging in a nightgown and panties,
getting herself a cup of cocoa even if it wasn’t very adult to drink something
that had twenty mini-marshmallows in it. She’d moved them here because no one
fucked with Fenrir’s pack, because Fenrir was a demanding and ruthless alpha
that killed wolves who disobeyed him, who didn’t believe in punishment, who had
managed to cow the local hunter population into leaving them alone so long as
the human disappearances didn’t top twenty-five in a single year. She’d come
here for safety and found nothing but harassment.
Fenrir smiled lazily, dark eyes almost black  as he loomed over her, wearing
nothing but goddamn sweatpants and that smarmy smile. “See, Laura, I think it’d
just be a hell of a lot easier to integrate with the pack. Fuck, you could be
my bitch and solve everything right off the bat. Wolves aren’t made to run
alone, werewolves even less so. You’re not exactly trained, and I think I’ve
been extremely lenient, letting you get away with defying me for a full year.
Out of respect for your loss, of course, but that can only go so far, after
all.”
Laura knew her eyes were red, knew she was treading the thin line of anger,
that if she exploded Fenrir held all the cards right now. The cabin was on his
land; he was in the right to walk in. She had approached him to become a part
of his pack, and then refused to submit to his orders (though fuck she’d never
kick her brother out or roll over for this asshole, but she knew it was the
principle of obedience the pack would see, not the unreasonable demands). She
had supplied money to the pack – all pack members had to, of course – but she
hadn’t actually interacted with them beyond that. She knew a few of them by
name but most of them shunned her, and she shunned them in turn. If it came
down to it, no matter what happened here in this kitchen, the pack would back
up Fenrir and turn her out into the cold.
Which, honestly, made the decision to go for Fenrir’s jugular that much easier.
With a snarl, the transformation fast and smooth, she launched herself forward,
one clawed hand going for Fenrir’s throat and the other going for his balls. He
wasn’t expecting it, or he really was that smugly certain of his abilities that
he thought he could take her, and she ended up twisting their positions,
slamming Fenrir against the chin-up bar her brother had installed in the
doorway (Derek would exercise as she cooked dinner, silent, knowing his
presence was more of a soother than any words he could say, and she was pretty
certain he took comfort in her presence as well).
“Listen to me, you piece of filth,” she growled, voice wolf-rough and vibrating
with the force of her snarl, “You may be the alpha here, and I thought you
could protect us, but now I see you’re just a jumped up bully who thinks
everyone ought to bare their neck to you. You do nothing to make your pack
stronger except cull those you think are ‘weak.’ I’m ashamed that I ever
thought your pack was worth seeking sanctuary from. Derek and I are leaving. We
will walk out of your lands unmolested and you’ll never have to hear from us
again.”
“You bitch!” Fenrir snarled, jerking against her hold until she dug her claws
into his dick and he froze, panting hard.
Laura smiled, and it wasn’t a nice smile. “I may be a bitch, Fenrir, but I’m
the bitch who you can’t cow into lifting her tail for you. Unlike you, I don’t
need to terrify people into my sheets, and I’d sleep with a Chihuahua before
I’d sleep with you. It’d be more satisfying, after all.”
With that, she flung him through the doorway and into the living room. It
probably wasn’t a smart idea – she realized that seconds after throwing him –
but she stood in the doorway, hair wild around her head and coating her elbows
down to her viciously sharp claws. “I formally revoke my status as pack member,
Fenrir. I’m leaving, and my brother’s leaving with me, and you have no say over
us anymore.”
“You’ll fucking regret this, you—”
Laura had no idea what he was going to say, but he was up off the floor and
launching at her so fast – too fast – and even as she tried to respond she
knew, she knew, she wasn’t going to be able to get the drop on him again, she
was going to die – or worse—
There was a deep roar from the front door, and then Fenrir was slammed to the
side, Derek crushing him into the wall. His bright blue eyes shone like lamps,
teeth elongated, fur curling down his jaw. His backpack was dropped, discarded,
on the doorstep, and Laura realized with a shock that her gawky, gangly little
brother was a lot more muscular than she remembered, coltish limbs more
defined. Not enough to stop Fenrir – Fenrir backhanded Derek across the room
and Derek slammed into the heavy front door with a whimper – but it gave her
the chance to dart forward. She wasn’t fast, she wasn’t skilled with her alpha
powers, even though she had been taught theoretically what was possible she
still hadn’t put the theories into practice – but she could and she did sink
her claws into Fenrir’s chest, curling them around his heart, and held.
“Bad move, Fenrir,” she whispered. “Do you know how long it will take for these
wounds to heal? I know it will be longer than you can afford. How ever will you
keep your pack in line when you’re bleeding from your chest for the next week?
Can’t slink into the forest and heal, not with your pack in the state that it’s
in. I might not know much, but I know what packs like yours operate like. Fear
only breeds hate, and ruling your wolves with fear means they’ll jump on the
chance to knock you down a few pegs. All because you were laid low by a female
alpha and her little brother. They’ll smell the blood like sharks, and you know
it.”
Fenrir stared at her hatefully, but he didn’t really have a choice except to
lie there and listen, with her fingers deep in his flesh. Then again, she was
nineteen, she didn’t know what to do. They needed to leave the cabin, needed to
get moving, but if she let go of Fenrir to check on her brother… well, Fenrir
might have trouble with his pack, but that would be in the future. In there
here and now, it was just her and him.
Behind her, Derek groaned, a sharp whine cut off and harsh panting breaking the
stalemate. “Derek,” she growled.
There wasn’t a reply.
“Derek.”
There was a long pause, and then Derek’s voice came, weak, but came. “L-Laura?”
“Go pack our bags. Five minutes.”
“Laura?”
Concussion, probably – Laura could remember back when Derek was ten, and Jack
convinced Derek he could make it from the roof to the oak tree in the back of
the house – and she made her voice strident, trying to mimic their mother’s no-
nonsense voice. “Derek!”
“Ye-yeah?”
Movement behind her, slow, but present – good, that was good, and she lifted
her upper lip in a snarl, fingers flexing in Fenrir’s chest. His breath left
him in a punch, skin paling dramatically. “Go pack our bags, Derek,” she said,
trying to keep her voice level even as her free hand dug into Fenrir’s abdomen
and tore. He let out a pained gasp, and some of the hatred faded from his eyes
as his body worked to keep alive.
There were slow, stumbling steps behind her, Derek’s gait awkward, shuffling,
as he moved into the back room. It wasn’t as if they had a lot – even with
living here about a year, they still had just a few changes of clothes, she had
a few paperback books, and Derek had his textbooks. They had used to have a lot
of stuff – Laura had loved china tea sets, miniature and full-size, and Derek
had had his sports equipment and his model cars – but the fire had taught them
the importance of material things (namely, that with their family dead and
gone, none of that mattered).
“This is what we’re going to do,” she snarled when she could hear Derek
staggering about in the back room, the bedroom. “Listen to me. We are leaving.
We’re going to leave this cabin and we’re going to walk to the bus stop. We
will get on it and leave, and you’ll never hear from us again. I expect to
never hear from you again. You got that?”
Bravado, sheer bravado, but Fenrir was in enough pain to nod. He was too much
an arrogant asshole to submit, but she didn’t need him to submit, didn’t want
him to submit – she just wanted to leave.
“’M ready, Laura,” Derek whispered from the doorway.
She was worried though. If she let go of Fenrir, if she moved away, would he
still try for her? Her brother?
She didn’t want to kill. There was enough death surrounding her.
With a sharp motion, she dragged the claws in Fenrir’s abdomen to the side,
slicing him open, before releasing him and stepping back. Let him stay down.
Please let him stay down.
Fenrir stayed down, panting and whining.
“Let’s go, Derek,” she said, backing away. He had his backpack, her duffle bag,
and they were almost out the door when Fenrir snarled at them.
“Go on, you bitch! You and your fucked up brother! Not a pack will take you in
once I’m through with you!”
“We don’t need a pack, you whining bag of pus,” she snarled back. “We are a
pack.”
That bravado lasted her until she and Derek walked into Hudson and boarded the
next train heading for New York City. Derek was dazed and extremely docile the
entire trip, and Laura had to fight off panic attacks and terror. She had some
money in savings, the insurance money would be coming through in about a week
or two, but Derek was still in school, still needed to graduate from, fuck,
from tenth grade. She needed a job. Yeah, she could live off the insurance
money, now that they were actually honoring the contract and paying it out, but
she didn’t want to. Besides that, she needed a place for them to stay that
wasn’t a ratty hotel room, and they’d need a place to run. They’d need to steer
clear of hunters – harder to do, in a bigger populated area.
But New York City had been a dream of hers, one that Derek hadn’t seemed averse
to when he was younger. New York City was too populated to have an established
pack, so they wouldn’t have to worry about Fenrir passing along orders to
wolves to have them harassed (killed).
When the train let them out at Penn Station, Laura was more composed – and
Derek was healing, and less dazed. He was still jumpy, though, twitchy, and it
was beginning to worry Laura that something had happened, that there was
something wrong she wasn’t seeing. Laura found a hotel and splurged for the
week, using up the little she had left in savings, even though it meant one
bed.
(To be honest, she didn’t look hard for a double.)
But in a week the insurance money would come in, and hopefully she’d find an
apartment by then, and really right now she just wanted some place safe and
comforting and wanted to check over Derek because something was wrong with her
little brother and she couldn’t lose him, she couldn’t.
Up in the room – which she’d made sure had a full kitchen, a full bath, and a
nice living room area – she dumped her duffle on the couch and turned to Derek.
“Derek—” she began.
“How long has that been happening?” Derek demanded, throwing his backpack on
the floor and stalking towards her – and then abruptly changing his course to
pace towards the terrace and close the curtains.
His anger was highly uncharacteristic, and it startled her into saying, “Derek,
it was never that bad—”
“So it’s been happening the whole time?!” he snarled, but there was – there was
despair, and agony, there. Hurt, deep and buried, and she didn’t understand it.
“Derek, sweetie, he never – it was never like that. You knew he wanted to fuck
or fight me from the beginning.” She stepped forward, putting a gentle hand on
Derek’s arm, realizing that she no longer towered over him; they were the same
height, and he was a bit broader in chest than she remembered him being.
Derek whirled on her, hands coming up to grab her upper arms. For a minute, she
was terrified, flinching from him—
His face crumpled, and he slumped against her, his forehead resting on her
shoulder. She realized, in shock, that he was crying. That he was – he hadn’t
cried, not at the funeral, not when she’d left Uncle Peter in Beacon Hills, not
when she told him he’d have to leave all his friends, not when the kids of
Fenrir’s pack had shunned him and fought with him, not when the school had
treated him like an idiot because he wasn’t in all the advanced classes they’d
offered (though he’d worked hard and gotten into them, so a big fuck you to the
school that thought coming in late in the year meant her brother was a moron).
He was crying now.
“You shouldn’t – he shouldn’t have done that. He can’t force you. He can’t
force you,” Derek whispered, over and over again, clutching her tight.
She found her voice as her hands came up to caress his back – nails still
encrusted with Fenrir’s blood, and abruptly and suddenly she wanted a shower –
trying to soothe Derek’s almost-silent sobs. “He didn’t. He didn’t, Derek, he
didn’t, I’m fine. I can handle myself. We’re fine. We’re free of him.”
He turned his head, burrowing into the crook of her neck and shoulder, and she
could feel the wetness of his tears, the hot press of his mouth. “Mine?” he
asked, and it was a little kid’s voice, an ask for surety, a begging for
reassurance.
“Yours,” she murmured, stroking his hair.
                                      +++
It was later that night, as she stepped out of the tub wrapped in one of the
ridiculously soft and fluffy towels that came from staying at a fairly upscale
hotel, that Derek seemed to catch on to the fact that there was only one bed.
He was sitting on it in nothing but a pair of boxers, fingers twisting
nervously in his lap. The room was dark, the only light coming from the
bathroom behind her, but she could still see him there, anxious and desperate.
She supposed she ought to go to hell for this, for corrupting her brother in
this way, for twisting his need into this.
Then again, as he looked up and his eyes weren’t innocent or startled at all,
but dark with knowledge and with lust and with honest awe that she was allowing
this, perhaps they were corrupting each other.
“Laura,” he whispered, a prayer, a benediction, a surprise, a reverent whisper,
as she let the towel fall onto the chair by the bed and gently straddled his
hips, slowly pushing him back onto the bed and leaning over him, her wet hair
leaving dark dots on the white, white sheets. Derek was dark against them –
dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes that reflected blue and then went dark again.
“Yours, little brother,” she murmured, stroking his cheek, his chin. “If you
don’t want this – if you say no – we’ll stop. You’re still my brother. That
won’t ever change, no matter what happens here.”
Derek swallowed, and she could see the baser desires fighting with the idea
that this was his older sister, the girl who’d teased him when he thought he
had a crush on the girl who sat in front of him in sixth grade, the girl who’d
dumped cold water over his head in retaliation for a prank he’d pulled on her,
the girl who was doing her best to be his alpha.
“I – I want this,” he whispered, so softly, and his hands tentatively came up
to cup her ribs – so gentle, so careful, as if he was holding something
precious in his hands and he couldn’t understand why it was his, why it was
here.
She leaned down – he squirmed under the cold drops of water, until her lips
pressed against his – and this part was familiar, they had shared this often
enough, holding each other through the past months, taking physical comfort in
the other’s nearness. It was hot and wet, Derek more eager now, less chaste,
and she took her time, mapped out his lips and gums with her tongue.
Derek groaned under her, hips bucking up, and she let out a soft chuckle as she
felt his dick press against her cunt. “Unless you have a condom, Der-bear, we
aren’t moving to that part of the event right this evening,” she murmured.
He flushed red – she loved that she could still embarrass him, when no one else
could – and looked aside. But she was having none of that; there were other
things they could do tonight, and she wanted to do them all with him if she
could. So she pushed off of him and gestured for him to lie properly on the
bed, pulling down the covers and making sure the towel was still in easy reach.
Derek was eager, but also nervous, and she could understand why. This was –
new, and different, and she really didn’t want this to happen unless Derek was
completely fine with it, was ready.
“Now then,” she murmured as she got back on top of him (boxers gone, and damn,
her little brother wasn’t that bad in the dick department) and pulled the
covers around them a bit. “I’m going to stop it right here, Derek, if you are
doing this because you thinkI want this. If you don’t want this—”
“I already said I did, Laur – god—” Derek groaned, which, okay, her pussy was
right up against his dick, and he was a teenaged boy, this was probably more
than a bit unfair to him.
She’d have to watch that carefully, though. She did not want to force him into
this, didn’t want him sticking to this out of guilt or because he thought she
needed it or because of some other stupid reason he could come up with (and
she’d lived with him for nineteen years – she knew what kinds of stupid reasons
he could come up with).
For right now, though, she took his hands – clenched in the sheets at his sides
– and placed them on her skin, cupping her breasts. “You can touch, you know,”
she said, a bit breathless as she rocked against him, letting his dick slide
between the lips of her cunt, ride against her clit.
He let out a shocked gasp, eyes wide, and they were lightening, blue reflecting
at her. Impulsively, she leaned down, kissing the corner of one eye. “They’re
beautiful, you know,” she groaned as his fingers found her nipples and
tentatively pinched at them. “Your eyes. You are amazing, Der. You’re mine.”
He whined, short and sharp, mouth gaping open unattractively, and she wondered
what it would be like to have him buried face-first in her pussy, licking her
out. The idea of it, the feel of his limbs against hers, the sheer novelty of
what they were doing, had her kissing him eagerly, sucking at his tongue, while
one of her hands went down to rub at her clit – hitting the head of Derek’s
dick at the same time.
Derek let out an embarrassingly high-pitched squeal and came over his abdomen
and chest, and her belly.
Teenagers.
He was blushing profusely, the red high in his cheeks and traveling down his
throat and into his pecs, but she pinched his nose. “We’ll just have to
practice a bit more,” she laughed, teasing, and got off him to lie on her back.
“Want to get me off?”
For a moment, he froze, and there was a flash of something buried – something
she had suspected, since his reaction to Fenrir’s unwanted advances on her, but
she had no proof for and, honestly, no idea how it could have happened to him,
how her family had missed something like that – but then he was smiling that
big, goofy smile of his, teeth flashing white and dark eyes warm with lust and
easy attraction.
Something to think about, later. Muchlater, because Derek was lying between her
legs now, lapping almost delicately at the short hair on the edges of her cunt
before making longer, deeper licks in the center. She gasped, one hand going to
his hair to stroke his scalp, and he shuddered, arching into her touch.
She’d have to remember that his head was an erogenous zone, for other times.
But he was curling his tongue around her clit, sucking and biting lightly, and
he was really skilled at this, since when had he had sex before, she’d have to
– oooh – have to ask him about that later—
“Derek!” she gasped, hips bucking against his mouth, and he let her ride it,
and she could feel his smug smile, the little bastard, and then she was coming,
the stress and adrenaline of the night culminating as her pussy convulsed and
contracted, and she was dimly aware that she was gasping like a porn star (ugh,
really?), little ‘oh, oh, oh’ noises, her hand fisted in Derek’s hair.
Derek arm-crawled up the bed, pulling the blankets with him, but didn’t curl up
around behind her, like he had every other night for the past year, give or
take. He instead wrapped around her middle, head resting buried under her arm,
one of his big hands curled around her waist, holding her tight. “Mine,” he
whispered, breath tickling the top and side of her left breast, and she curled
her arm around to stroke his hair.
He was hard again – teenager refractory periods were nonexistent, she knew, but
damn, that was, like, barely a minute or two after he had come – but he didn’t
try to get off. Hell, he didn’t even hump or twitch or anything. He just held
her tight, and she held him.
“You’re going to have to tell me what happened, eventually,” she murmured into
the dark.
He tensed against her side, not saying anything, and then said very quietly,
“When I’m ready?”
She ruffled his hair, just a little, drowsiness overcoming her. “When you’re
ready.”
                                      +++
(They found an apartment within the week, Laura decided to go to a community
college for her Associate Degree while working at a daycare center, and Derek
went back to school.)
(Derek graduated with a 3.85 GPA, and they celebrated by going out to a club
and dancing as if they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Derek had been pleased
for weeks to come.)
(Derek got into New York University, and dreamt of becoming a nurse or a
pediatrician.)
(Laura graduated from the community college and bought herself a black Camaro
as a treat, which Derek teased her mercilessly about, because who buys a car in
New York City, where the hell did she think she was going to park it, the
subway system was faster, hell the taxi system was faster – Laura put him in a
headlock and kissed his breathless and told him that sometimes girls liked to
buy themselves nice things and the appropriate response was to praise the thing
and not speak about its impracticality.)
(Derek coveted the Camaro fiercely. She teased him for it but gave him the keys
to it on the weekend and they would drive together into New Jersey or Boston or
even Vermont once and just get away from the city for a while.)
(He never told her who, but he told her what had happened to him. The anger
from hearing his stuttering and his quiet belief that ‘I never said no, I just
didn’t want to all the time, that’s all, it wasn’t like what… what Fenrir
tried’ was what spurred her into learning how to transform into a full wolf.)
(When, about six years after the fire, she could feel another wolf in their
pack, and she got a call from the long-term care nurse that Uncle Peter was
starting to move and respond to stimuli, she told Derek to finish up his
midterms, that she was taking vacation days and flying out to Beacon Hills.)
(Her last, last thought was of Derek, and how Derek would find out about her
death by feeling it, all the way across the country, and she mourned fiercely
for leaving her brother alone when he was just starting to find his feet and
make a new life for himself.)
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