Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Okay, so the kissing becomes a thing. No, it becomes more than a thing. It becomes, like, a complication. A problem? A… situation? An addiction. It becomes an addiction, and Stiles is fine with that. After that first kiss (or, well, first couple of kisses… okay the first group of kisses that turn into heavy breathing that turn into them laughing all over each other) it becomes terrifyingly easy to ignore that Derek is dead, that underneath all of the… the kissing and the touches and the laughter there's this, uh, maw of inevitability.

Because this is going to end two ways, as far as Stiles can tell; he goes back in time, he makes it so that the fire never happened, and Derek gets to grow up, moves away, meets someone else, forgets him, or Stiles finds out that he's one of the rare Mediators who can't time-shift at all, and he's stuck getting vengeance for Derek so he can leave. Permanently. So he can rest in peace. So he can be irrevocably fucking dead.

Stiles doesn't like that second option. He doesn't like it so much that he kind of just… doesn't think about it (Stiles is good at ignoring things he doesn't want to think about). He has to go back in time. He has to save the Hales, because even if (when) Derek forgets him, even if the shift means they never speak again, even if it turns out he never sees what Derek looks like when he grows into his limbs, Stiles wants him to live so much.

It's kind of corny—scary? Creepy? Abnormal?—how much Stiles wants Derek to live. He's sixteen years old; he's not supposed to feel so strongly about something like this. He should be, like, bemoaning the state of education or worrying about his extracurriculars or complaining about how he's going to have to get a summer job to help pay for some upkeep on his jeep. Then again, he sees ghosts, so weird is relative, right? That's what Derek said.

"You know I was alive when Firefly was on, right?" Derek is giving him a look. The judgmental one. With the flared nostrils. It's adorable. His legs are tangled with Stiles's though, as both of them lean against the headboard of Stiles's bed, so that makes the adorableness slightly… hotter?

Should Stiles feel weird about being attracted to ghost? Should he feel weird about being attracted to a fifteen-year old ghost? Should he feel weird about being attracted to a fifteen-year-old ghost who is actually supposed to be twenty one?

Fuck, this is confusing.

"Yeah, but did you watch it with me?" Stiles asks. He shifts so that his laptop is resting lower, over his knees, and scratches at his chin, grins as Derek rolls his eyes.

"I watched it with my sister," Derek says. "Laura. She was into Jayne."

"That's—"

"Odd? Laura was odd," Derek says.

Stiles wasn't going to say odd, but hey, he'll run with it. "So it runs in the family?"

"Yeah," Derek says, raises an eyebrow at him. "Pretty much."

"Wow, wow, dude, so sassy, really, you should put a warning on that—"

Derek kisses him to shut him up, lingers to angle his face into the curve of Stiles's neck—Stiles hates and loves when he does that, because it tickles, and it also fulfills the whole stereotypical wolf thing, and if Stiles loves anything, it's fulfilled stereotypes—and mutters something too low for Stiles to hear.

"Huh?" he asks, his voice… breathier, than usual.

"I was twelve when I watched it. I still remember the plot," Derek says.

"Dude you're not exactly fifteen any—ow, I can feel that, asshole," Stiles rubs at the place on his jaw where Derek bit, glares when he grins, teeth sharp and glinting in the light of the laptop.

"Why else would I do it?"

"Right," Stiles says, swallowing.

Derek says stuff like that. It's been a week since the initial kiss, a week of kisses and touching—because Derek doesn't just touch, now, he… plasters himself to Stiles, half over him almost, lays perfectly still next to him when Stiles goes to bed and probably stares at him the whole night (there are allusions that Stiles could make to a certain YA supernatural romance book trilogy, but he's assuming that Derek has never heard of Twilight, and he doesn't want to be the one to introduce him)—and Stiles is both used to it, and… not used to it.

Because for fuck's sake, he's sixteen. In bed. With a guy he likes. Who's plastered up against him, their legs tangled together, Derek's face smashed into Stiles's shoulder and it's all way too fucking domestic.

And yet it's not domestic enough, because Stiles wants more.

Whatever.

It's not like all they've been doing is sitting on Stiles's bed, or in the middle of the room on the floor, or up against the wall underneath the window, watching movies, playing games, talking about stupid shit that Stiles doesn't really remember the specifics of. As much as Stiles wants to do all of that, only that, and as much as he knows Derek wants to, there's still other shit that he needs to do.

Like try to figure out how to shift through time so he can save Derek in the first place.

Like school. Which has been… interesting. Actually, no, no it hasn't. It's been boring and anxiety-inducing because the six and some hours Stiles spends in class could be spent with Derek.

So, the week had passed relatively quickly, and yet, not quickly enough, is what Stiles is saying. The weekend passes by quicker, because of essays and Stiles sleeping a lot to make up for his lack of sleep during the week, and suddenly it's six am on Monday morning and Stiles is sitting in his desk chair, wondering how—and why—the hell he's awake.

"You're staring," Derek says. Stiles startles, almost tips over, and Derek, the fucker, laughs.

"I'm thinking, asshole," Stiles says.

"Why are you even awake? Didn't you say you were allergic to getting up before seven or something?"

"I don't even remember when I said that, but it sounds like me," Stiles says, slouching back and closing his eyes.

"I think you said it on Friday?" Derek asks, like he's trying to remember as well. He's still on the bed, star-fished out, his stare alternating between the ceiling and Stiles. "I don't remember."

"I think I'm so tired I can't sleep," Stiles says.

"If you need a break from—"

"I didn't say it to have you give me a solution, fucker," Stiles groans, "And I can feel you rolling your eyes, ghost-boy."

"I'm not rolling my eyes," Derek says, which is a lie.

"Lies," Stiles says. He stretches until he hears his back crack, and when he stands up, Derek is looking at him with that that face that means he wants. It's a nice face, and Stiles has to wonder what it would look like on an older Derek.

(Stiles thinks it kind of fucking sucks that they can't do more than kiss and touch. Like… he wants sexy times. A lot of sexy times. Sans clothes… but the one time Stiles tried to push Derek's shirt up, there was nothing under it. Which, again, sucks.)

He trudges over, throws himself down next to Derek and shoves his face into his pillow. There's a pause, and then Derek kisses the back of his neck, the skin behind his ears. He kisses down his jaw and his shoulder and then shoves his face against Stiles's arm and stays there, one hand skimming up and down Stiles's back in slow patterns.

Like Stiles was saying; tactile.

(Stiles likes it.)

He stays there until seven-forty, mostly because while Derek doesn't necessarily have a temperature to him, he's kind of a comforting weight that makes Stiles want to just… stay.

So he stays until he has to rush out the door and speed a little to get to school on time. Which is what he usually does, actually.

By the time he parks the Jeep in the student parking lot, it's 8:15 am, and there's no one outside. He doesn't rush, though—chemistry is first period today, and really, fuck chemistry. The ghost with the poodle skirt is sitting on the top step, and as he approaches, she grins, leans back on her elbows and—

"Stiles!"

Stiles turns around (the ghost pops her gum behind him), and sees Allison clamoring out of an SUV, with who he's assuming is her sister or her mom leaning out the front passenger seat window and grinning at him. Stiles waves, wondering if he should go meet Allison or wait for her to come to him, or—right, meet her half way it is.

"Sleep late?" Stiles asks. She grins, points behind her with her thumb.

"My aunt drove in last night, and we were talking—have you seen Scott today?" She seems excited.

"Nah, I just got here," Stiles says. Her aunt's watching him, twirling a finger in her hair—blonde, and lately, Stiles has become increasingly suspicious of anyone blonde—and her grin is, like, predatory.

She looks like she's thirty-ish.

She… she's blonde. She—no, that can't be right. That's not… that's too much of a fucking coincidence. That… but there's an SUV, and…

"Is that… your aunt Kate? The one you were talking about?" Allison never talked about an aunt Kate. Stiles just… needs to know.

"I talked about her?" Allison asks, frowning. "I don't even remember that."

"It was in the morning," Stiles manages to croak out. "I don't even know why I remember." He adjusts his backpack on his shoulder and swallows, suddenly unable to do anything, most of all think, as the SUV pulls away from the curb, and starts making it's way out of the parking lot.

"Wait, were you checking out my Aunt? You know she's twenty-eight, right?"

"I wasn't… checking her out," Stiles says. He feels dirty just thinking about it. He has to… he has to tell Derek.

No, no he doesn't—he shouldn't tell Derek. Derek will want to see her; he'll do something stupid. And Kate; Kate's dangerous.

Holy… holy shit, Allison is dangerous.

Holy shit.

Stiles needs to talk to Deaton.

"Stiles, you're frozen," Allison says; she sounds amused.

"I just realized I forgot my, uh… a thing. I forgot a thing," he croaks, clearing his throat, and when she just looks at him, blinking, he walks past her, already trying to wrestle his keys out of his pocket.

He waits until he's sitting in his jeep to freak out. "Holy shit," he breathes. "Holy fucking shit."

He grips at the steering wheel, trying to calm down enough so he can think about it. Because… because, okay, Kate. Kate Argent. The woman who seduced, raped, and then killed Derek, is in town. Is the aunt of his best friend's girlfriend.

Right.

Okay.

That makes sense.

This doesn't… this doesn't mean anything, though. Not yet. It just means that if Stiles fails to stop her (and it's good, he realizes, that he knows what she looks like now, that he knows her last fucking name, and holy fuck, Argent is silver in French and how had he missed that?) it's going to be easier to bring her to justice.

Yeah, okay, this is a good thi—

"Holy shit!" Stiles shrieks when someone starts pounding on his window, only calms down when he looks and sees that it's Lydia. Fucking of course it's Lydia.

"Stiles," she says, then looks at him expectantly. "Are you going to let me in or not?"

"In the—right, sure, " Stiles says, leans over to unlock the passenger side door. Lydia purses her lips at him, opens the door, and climbs in.

"It stinks in here," she says, already rolling the window down. "Allison said you looked like you saw a ghost. Did you exorcise one of the school ghosts? I didn't see Anne—"

"Anne?"

"Poodle skirt," Lydia says. Her eyes narrow. "With the annoying bubble gum."

"Right, no, I didn't exorcise Anne," he says.

"Interesting," Lydia says, raising an eyebrow at him. "Are you going to tell me who you did exorcise, then?"

"I didn't exorcise anyone!" Stiles hisses.

"Then why are you so freaked out?" Lydia asks.

Stiles freezes because… he can't tell her, right? It's not like it would do anything. He has to go to Deaton, and shit, it's not like she would even believe him in the first place. He's in love with a werewolf ghost… who lives in his room. And the woman who killed him is her best friend's sister, and—

"Derek Hale," he blurts out, and damn it, damn it, he doesn't even care if Derek gets pissed at him for this. He needs help. They both need help.

"… is dead?" Lydia crosses her legs, suddenly looking interested.

"Is a ghost," Stiles says, "who lives in my house, and—"

"—if you needed me to help your exorcis—"

"No! No, fuck, it's not like that," Stiles snarls, the panic at the thought of Derek exorcised making it hard to speak. "I need to help him. I need, shit—"

"Words, Stiles," Lydia says, slowly. "They're useful."

"Okay, okay." Stiles takes a minute to hash out what he's going to say. "Derek Hale was a werewolf—the Hales were werewolves." He pauses and waits to see how Lydia reacts; she shrugs.

"Yes, Deaton told me. And?"

"And Kate Argent, Allison's aunt, who just dropped her off today, was the one that burned the Hale family alive."

That makes Lydia freeze. Her eyes go wide, and she rears back, her hands clutching at the straps of her purse.

"But," she says, "Deaton told me they had a truce. That's why no one suspected them! Chris told him he had nothing to do with it!"

"I don't understa—"

"How do you know Kate did it!?"

"It was a pretty safe assumption before," Stiles says, narrowing his eyes, "but now it's kind of even more so. They had a truce? Because that's not the type of truce I'm used to, Lydia, and how do you know about this?"

"Deaton was Mrs. Hale's," —Lydia waves her hand around—"her advisor or something, I don't know. He's like a wise village shaman except without the… shaman part, or the village part. He told me they had a truce—the Argents are supposed to follow a code!"

"Is Allison involved? Is that why you—?"

"No, she doesn't know anything yet," Lydia says, shaking her head. Her eyes glaze over as she thinks, and then, abruptly, she turns to him. "Why are you telling me this now? What does it have to do with… who, Derek?"

"I need to save hi—them," Stiles says, knowing it's true as he says it. "It's that feeling. This isn't right, Lydia. It's not what was supposed to happen. You know the feeling, right?"

"Yes," Lydia says slowly. "You want to… you're going to time-shift."

"Fucking exactly," Stiles says, deflates because he's suddenly relieved. "I just—I just found out that it was Kate Argent who killed them. Derek didn't even know her last name, Lydia. He didn't know it was an Argent; he thought—thinks—it was rogue hunters."

"It was a rogue hunter," Lydia says. "Just one a little closer to home. So you're going to time-shift? Today?"

"Toda—no, I mean, I was going to go talk to Deaton about it," Stiles says, blinks when Lydia shakes her head.

"Not a good idea; he'll tell you not to do it," she says.

"What do you mean, he'll tell me not to do it? That's what we do," Stiles says. "We help people. We right wrongs. Wasn't that what his big speech was about?"

"Deaton isn't a Mediator," Lydia says. "He understands us more than most, yes, but he doesn't know what it feels like when you can't do something that you know you need to do. He's going to tell you that you're letting your emotions get the better of you, that if you go back in time you might change history in horrible and unexpected ways—that won't happen; it's been disproven—and that Derek is dead and the only way you can help him is by getting Kate sent to jail."

"Oh," Stiles says.

"But we're not going to Deaton," Lydia says, "because he's got a full schedule today."

"Oh… okay," Stiles says.

"Instead, we're going back to your house, and you're going to go back in time and save your lover-boy—"

"He's not my—"

"Please," Lydia says, holding up a hand, "you practically reek of angsty ghost love. God, it's like that Sally, Sara—"

"Susannah," Stiles corrects.

"—it's like her all over again."

"It's kind of different," Stiles argues, and when Lydia just looks at him, raises her eyebrows as slowly as possible, blushes. "He's not, we're not—"

"Drive, please," Lydia says.

So Stiles drives. Or he attempts to drive, but he only gets to the school gates before something crashes into his door. Scott. Scott crashes into his door and starts pounding on the window, looking around like he's a robber about to break into a jewelry store, and Stiles wonders what horrible thing he had done in a past life to deserve this.

"For fucks sake," Stiles yells, already opening the door. "Dude, my jeep did what to you? Nothing! It did nothing!"

"Let me in, I'm going with!" Scott says, already clamoring over him and into the backseat and, uh… okay?

"Scott, I don't think—"

"Let him come," Lydia says. "If anyone will believe us, it's him."

Stiles closes his door and starts driving, mostly because he's just… numb about the whole thing. So what if Scott thinks he's crazy. He's going to go back in time anyway, right?

"So… you are drug dealers?" Scott asks, once they're off campus.

"We see dead people," Lydia says, and Scott laughs at first, but eventually, when neither Stiles nor Lydia say anything, goes silent.

"As in…?" he asks, eventually.

"As in ghosts," Lydia says, "Spirits? Phantoms? Apparitions? Spooks? We see them."

It's silent the rest of the drive to Stiles's house.

"You're… less intimidating than I thought you would be," Lydia says, and Derek snarls at her from his corner. She turns to Stiles—Stiles, who brought her here, who brought the other one, Scott, here too—and grins. "I think wolf boy is angry at you, Stiles."

"Yes, I got that, Lydia, thank you very much for your input," Stiles says. He's looking at Derek—Derek can feel his stare, but he won't look at him, can't, because… he doesn't know why, actually. It's nothing as serious as betrayal. Maybe it's envy. Jealousy. Something that he can't really place and might just be an amalgamation of all of them.

"So there's a ghost in here," Scott, who's hovering next to Stiles's door, swinging his hands back and forth and looking uncomfortable, says. "And he's… angry. And a werewolf."

"Dude, it's not as crazy as it—"

"Exactly," Lydia says. "You're handling this well, Scott."

"I don't actually think he's handling it," Stiles says. He sighs, and then Derek hears him walking over. Stiles crouches in front of him, moves until Derek couldn't avoid looking at him if he tried. "I had to," he whispers. "I found her. I panicked."

"You…" he whispers back, confused at first. "You what?"

"Kate," Stiles says. Behind him, Lydia crosses her arms and rolls her eyes. "Kate Argent. She's in town. I'm going back today."

"She was an Argent," is all Derek can say, and something in his stomach squirms, wicked and dark, up into his throat. Derek knows about the Argents. He… there was a fucking truce. "They—we had a truce. I thought… I didn't think it was them. I didn't know."

"I don't know why she's back in town," Stiles says. He reaches out, lays a hand on Derek's shoulder; Derek lets him, even leans into it.

"How did you—?"

"She was... dropping someone off," Stiles says. He turns around. "Do you have a picture, Lydia? Just to uh, make sure?"

"Probably stuff on Allison's Facebook," Lydia says, and walks over to Stiles's computer.

"Allison as in my girlfriend, Allison?" Scott frowns. Stiles's hand, still on Derek's shoulder, squeezes, and he leans closer. "What does Allison have to do with this?"

"Scott didn't know," he whispers, low enough that Scott doesn't hear. "Allison didn't either."

"Your girlfriend is part of a family of hunters," Lydia says, already looking at pictures on Stiles's computer. "They hunt… large game. Mostly werewolves."

"Guys, I know I said in the car that I believe you, but this—"

"Stiles, get wolf boy to do a trick. Scratch the walls. Do the poltergeist thing," Lydia interrupts. "Also here, look"

Derek snarls, just because Lydia grates him the wrong way, but stills when she turns around in the desk chair, laptop in her lap, and there's a picture of Kate on the screen.

He whimpers, and the look in her eyes is… victorious. Stiles grabs at his hand, but he shakes it off, stands up and walks closer to look. He's not so secretly satisfied when Lydia tenses, and underneath her perfume he smells just the slightest hint of fear, but maybe that's just because he needs to find something to cling to, desperately, so he doesn't start tearing down the walls around them.

"Guys, uh, if you're making drugs you can just tell me? I won't turn you in," Scott says, and Derek tamps down on all the memories that are threatening to come back at the sight of her, and walks over to Scott. He reaches past Scott's shoulder, concentrates, and gauges five claw marks into the wall next to his head, slowly, haltingly, wincing at the oddity of not feeling anything at all, even as his fingers come into contact with the wood.

There's a strangled scream, and then Scott is rushing through him—Derek shivers at the feeling, has to fight to keep himself from disappearing—to back up against the wall on the opposite side of the room, eyes wide, heart rate elevated.

"Yup," Stiles says, sighing. He scratches at his chin, and Derek turns to look at the laptop screen, his gaze drawn to it involuntarily. She looks older, weathered, and now the brightness in her eyes looks like insanity, rather than excitement, rather than, what had he thought the first time he saw her? Rather than the promise of a good time.

Derek is suddenly scared, and he's glad that no one else in the room can smell it.

"So what does this mean?" he asks, has to clear his throat to keep his voice from cracking.

"It means Stiles is going back today," Lydia answers, like it's that simple. Derek snarls at her again, just because, and all he gets in response is a raised eyebrow.

"You don't need to go today," he tells Stiles, "you haven't even—"

"He's going today," Lydia says, and her voice is different, softer. "It feels right."

Derek looks over at Stiles; he's glaring at the floor, hands fisted at his hips, smelling of confusion. He looks overwhelmed, or maybe Derek is just projecting.

"Stiles?" he asks, not really sure what he's asking except he needs Stiles to look him in the eye.

"What do you mean it feels right? And going back to where?" Scott, apparently, has recovered. He's still leaning up against the opposite wall, though, still tense and stiff.

"People who see ghosts," Lydia says, after no one else says anything, "can do… a lot of stuff, Scott. Including time travel."

"Fucking… are you serious?"

"Do I need to get Derek to show you—?"

"No! That's awesome, is what I'm saying," Scott interrupts. "Don't, uh, no offense… Derek. Just, stay calm."

Stiles laughs, but the sound is hollow.

"So are you going to go back?" Lydia asks. "Or are we just going to play hooky today?"

"Going back," Stiles grits out. He hasn't looked at Derek since the conversation began; Derek doesn't like it. He's starting to smell like he's in pain, which means he's already—

"You're—we need to plan," he says, panicked, walking over, putting a hand on Stile's shoulder so he looks up.

He looks up, his jaw clenched. He's thinking, because his gaze is flitting around, never landing on any feature of Derek's for more than second, his nose scrunched up in thought.

(Derek thinks he looks pretty fucking beautiful, but he can't say anything, because definitely not the time.)

"Tell me something about your family only you would know," Stiles says, finally. Lydia, at the desk, snorts.

"Stiles, you don't need—" Derek panics, because what if it doesn't work? What if this is the last time he sees Stiles? What if he forgets? What if, instead of helping, Stiles is caught in the middle? What if he dies?

"Laura liked Jayne," Stiles interrupts, his hands clenched at his sides so hard Derek can see the vibrations running up his arms from the tension. The smell of pain, of something old and supernatural, intensifies.

It might not be anything, but the air around Stiles is starting to look different. Misplaced. Like an asphalt road on a hot day. Derek gulps, grabs at Stiles's shoulders, grips them as he steps closer just so he can feel his body heat, just to reassure himself that Stiles is okay.

He wants to know what Stiles is thinking that's making it like this. That's making it so intense.

The room is silent for a while, and it's awkward—Derek is aware of it being awkward, of Lydia watching him and of Scott watching Stiles—but he can't look away as Stiles's breathing gets harsher, more shallow, as his eyes glaze over and his face twists in pain. He starts pacing—just three steps this way, three steps back—in short neurotic movements, shaking out his hands and muttering half-realized sentences under his breath.

"Mom's a horrible cook," Derek says, in a rush. Trying hard to remember something—anything—that could help Stiles and coming up blank. "Dad… dad was the one that broke the china tea set she got from grandma, but he blamed it on the wind. Uh, I can't think of—"

"They'll trust me?" Stiles asks, and now he's gasping, and Derek doesn't understand at first. He stops pacing, comes to a stop in front of Derek, staring at him with bright eyes that are wide and bloodshot, the air vibrating around him and it's wrong. This is too— "Derek, they'll believe me, right?"

"Yes, yes," Derek says. He watches, horrified, as Stiles's nose starts bleeding. "Your nose, Stiles—"

"I'm fine," Stiles snarls, brings a shaking hand up to wipe the blood away. "Shit."

"Stiles," Lydia—Derek had forgotten about her—stands. "I don't think this is—"

"I ca—can't stop it," Stiles gasps. He closes his eyes, brings his hands up to grasp at Derek's arms. He mumbles something, breathes in shakily, and then he's choking, the air is rippling, everything is bright light and hot. There's a split second delay—Derek can't look anywhere but at Stiles's face, scrunched up in obvious pain, his skin pale, tears leaking out from the corners of his eyes—then there's a dull roar, a popping and crackling that sounds apocalyptic, and Derek is thrown back against Stiles's dresser.

He's up, standing, in seconds, but Stiles is, fuck, he's already gone. The room is a mess; the furniture pushed up against the walls, in some cases in broken pieces, from the blast—walls that are suddenly singed with dust and smoke. The air is shimmering, hot and acrid. Scott, on the other side of the room, is helping Lydia up from under the desk chair.

"That was… " Lydia says, her voice only slightly shaky. "That was a little more exciting than I thought it would be."

"Shouldn't something be happening?" Scott asks. He's looking at the spot where Stiles was standing with furrowed eyebrows, rubbing at his wrist.

"I don't know," Lydia says, brushing off her jeans. "I've never shifted before."

"So he went back in time," Scott says. "To save… Derek. Who's still in the room? As a ghost?"

Lydia looks at Derek; Derek looks away. "Yeah, they've got a whole love-across-the-grave thing going on."

"I feel like I should be panicking right now." Scott starts pacing.

"Derek, are you feeling anything?" Lydia asks. Derek shrugs, walks over to where Stiles had been standing and stares down at his feet.

"I don't—"

Everything goes dark.

Stiles is still nauseous, still confused, still in a lot of fucking pain, thank you very much, when a disembodied hand—his vision is swimming, so everything is made up of blurry shapes, and he knows it's not technically a disembodied hand, but it sure looks that way—grabs at the collar of his shirt, pulls him up from where he's, apparently, lying prone on a wooden floor, and slams him up against a wall… hard.

Something snarls, and in the little part of Stiles's brain that's not panicking, he knows he did it. He fucking traveled through time, and now all he—

"Who the fuck are you?" It's a girl's voice, deep and dangerous, raspy almost, tinged with a slight lisp that means there's a pair of elongated teeth in the way of her tongue.

The little part of Stiles that's not panicking gets smaller—becomes infinitesimal, really—and even as his vision clears a bit, and he sees the blurry outlines of sharp cheekbones and striking brown eyes and features shifted to look wolfish and monstrous, his throat starts to close up. She snarls and, vaguely, past the roaring in his ears, he hears the sound of multiple pairs of feet stomping on wood—running up the stairs, he realizes, and oh shit, he's going to meet the Hale family, and he has to save them, has to—

"Who are you!?" The girl—Laura?—snarls again, gets a hand around his throat and squeezes for emphasis. He chokes, brings his hands up to grab at her wrists, terrified because he feels practically feeble in comparison to her supernatural strength. He can't have a panic attack now; it's not the fucking time.

"Der—" he starts to cough out, but she squeezes, and he suddenly can't find the breath to even say Derek's name. "Sto—"

She snarls, and then the door—to her room, he realizes; he's in her room—slams open, and suddenly there are a lot of raised voices and snarling and chuffs and movement and finally, finally, her hand is pulled away from his throat.

Stiles collapses against the wall, crouching and closing his eyes, ignoring the presence of another person—another wolf—standing right in front of him, and the others that he knows are behind whoever it is, because the room is full (of shapes, at the moment, because his vision is still blurry) and his heart is beating fast, fast enough that they all have to know he's terrified. He just… he needs to calm down. He has to fucking breathe.

Something drips down his chin, and he wipes at it, cursing when he sees blood.

There's a rustle of fabric, and a woman—he knows because there's dark, long hair, high cheekbones, and perfume that smells like gardenias—crouches down in front of him.

"You smell like the supernatural," she says, and even though her tone is harsh, it's less terrifying than the one before. Maybe because she's not shifted. "So I'm going to assume you know who and what we are, and you're obviously terrified, so I'm going to assume that you're not here to harm us, even though you just appeared out of nowhere in the middle of my daughter's room."

Stiles leans his head back against the wall, squeezes his eyes shut as he rubs at them. He should've prepared for this more, but even if he hadn't come back today, he knows he wouldn't have. Stiles sucks at planning. Always has. And this is what he gets to work with, so he just needs to calm down; he just needs to talk.

(It'd be nice if his vision got better and his nose stopped bleeding, though.)

"Are you—" he croaks, clearing his throat. "You're Talia Hale?"

Snarls meet his statement. If Stiles was less terrified, he would roll his eyes.

"That would be me, yes," the woman—Talia… Mrs. Hale, holy shit, Derek's mom—replies, sounding almost bemused.

Stiles nods. He cracks open one eye, slumps down in relief as the woman in front of him starts taking shape, turning from a collection of colored blobs and angles into… Mrs. Hale. He takes a deep breath in, then out, and glances behind her.

There are at least six others in the room; Stiles doesn't see Derek. A lot of them, though, have the same dark coloring, the same eyes, and are half-shifted, their teeth pulled back in exaggerated snarls as they look down at him.

"This is going to sound fucking ridiculous," he says, when he can talk without gasping for breath. "but I'm from the future."

"The future," Talia says, just as one of the wolves behind her snarls, takes a step forward like he's going to attack.

"I'm a Mediator," Stiles says, eyes on the man. He's seen him before, he just—the pictures. From the articles about the fire online. "You're Peter Hale. You all—Christ, I should've prepared more for this. I… you need to listen, okay? Is Derek here?"

"You see ghosts," Talia says, and now her voice is softer, stilted, like she knows. She swallows audibly, and Stiles hopes she understands so he doesn't have to explain everything. His head is pounding, and now that there's less terror, now that he's not as afraid, everything aches. "You're only supposed to travel back in to—"

"Right, yes, exactly," Stiles says. He eases himself up, wiping at his nose with the back of his hand, then wiping the blood off on his jeans. The wolves behind Mrs. Hale are silent now, confused. "You can hear when I lie, right? Derek told me."

"You know my son?"

Stiles swallows. "In the future," he says, "as a ghost. I just—where is he?"

"Downstairs," Talia whispers. She grabs his arm, squeezes hard enough to bruise. "What do you mean? Why are you here? Who are you?"

"The Argents," he says, "are… fuck, coming to kill you, are going to surround the house with wolfsbane, trap you inside, and… burn you, burn the house down. I need to see Derek, I need—"

All of them start yelling at once. It's too loud, and Stiles doesn't even try to pay attention, just closes his eyes and concentrates on the almost soothing pounding in his head.

Yeah, so, he definitely should've thought this through more.

Or at least made a tentative plan. As it is, nothing is going to get done, and Stiles doesn't even know what time it is, or if the Argents are going to attack in days, or hours, or minutes, or—

"Peter, check the perimeter," Talia says, and even though she's not yelling, is actually speaking low enough that Stiles has to strain to hear her, everyone else in the room stops talking.

"Tal, this is ridic—"

"Peter, check the perimeter." Talia lets go of Stiles's arm and turns around. "He's not lying—you can hear that—and he doesn't smell right. Laura, you said he just appeared?"

"You heard it, didn't you, Mom? There was a pop, and then some dude fell from the sky, I don't think, though—"

"Just go," Talia says. "Glenn, get everyone down in the basement, they'll be sa—"

"No!" The articles on the fire had said four bodies were found in the basement. "Don't go in the basement, get outside." He straightens and takes a step away from the wall, wipes at his nose with his sleeve one last time—the bleeding is slower, now, barely there. "You… You shouldn't go in the basement. That ends… badly."

"Okay," Talia says, slowly, "then get everyone outside."

"I need—"

"—to see Derek? Yes, you said that already." Talia says. She turns to look at the others, who still haven't moved. "Peter, Glenn, go."

They leave, and then Mrs. Hale grabs his wrist and starts pushing him out of the room. There are paintings all along the walls of the hall, landscapes and portraits, a couple of photos, and a wooden cabinet at the end that looks worn and antique; a family heirloom. The stairs are wider, the ceilings higher, and the house feels warm. If it wasn't for the pounding of feet and the raised voices, the tension that is palpable in the air, the Hale house would be… well, it would be pleasant.

But it's not pleasant, because seriously, the circumstances suck.

"How far did you come?"

"Si—six years," Stiles says, just as Talia starts herding him down the stairs.

"And Derek was the only one that was a ghost? Who killed us? Why?" Talia asks, her voice tense, words clipped and terse. Even so, Stiles is kind of amazed that she believes him so readily.

"I—" Stiles clears his throat. "Derek was the only ghost. And it's Kate Argent. Kate—"

"—the daughter?" Talia snarls, and then they're turning a corner. It smells like cinnamon down here, and the TV is on, with bad 90s music acting as a soundtrack to—holy shit, She's All That, and—

"I hear something, Tali!" There's a shout, loud enough that even Stiles hears even though he can't see whoever shouts it, and as if on cue, the sound of yelling—of snarls and panicked howls, of bodies slamming against bodies—comes from outside the house, from somewhere that sounds terrifyingly close, and then, maybe they're separate, maybe not, but from farther away; from the woods. Talia grabs his arm and pulls him, running at a sprint, towards the front door.

They pass a living room on the way out, and there's Derek, standing in front of a couch, eyes wide and fists clenched, half wolfed out and frozen from fear, and oh god, he's beautiful and alive and—

And Talia is pulling Stiles towards the front door, and it would be funny, how he's just being pulled around, how everything is fuzzy and numb and how he just feels terrified and disconnected and out of touch, like he's in the middle of a dream—a nightmare, really—except it's not.

It's really not.

She pulls him towards the door, then out, and suddenly everything is just… noise. That's nothing new, really, but it's different, when he's outside, when Stiles can hear gunshots, when he can see, just at the tree line, less than a fourth of a mile away, a flurry of movement that is definitely violent.

Talia squeezes his wrist, hard, once, and then she lets go and shifts until she's twice his size, all dark fur and glowing red eyes. She howls, her teeth glinting sharp and deadly in the moonlight, and the noise sends shivers up his spine. Then she's gone, sprinting towards the fray.

Stiles hears the sound of flesh being rendered, of screams, of… fuck, he doesn't know; it just sounds violent. He's frozen to the spot, and he can't see anything except the rare beam of a flashlight or the glinting of eyes, dark silhouettes and flashes as guns fire.

He's so caught up in watching—or trying to watch—the fight, or the… the whatever it is (Stiles wants to say battle, but really, even for something this horrifying, that's a little over the top) that he doesn't see the second group of hunters—three women, two men, his panicked mind supplies, hastily, even as he starts backing towards the still-open front door—until they're ten feet away from the porch, and one of their guns catches the light shining through the front windows.

Stiles scrambles the rest of the way, manages to get inside and slam the door closed just as he hears the sound of boots pounding against wooden stairs. With hands that won't stop shaking, he locks the door—and sure, that won't really do anything if they really want to get in, but shit, it makes him feel better—and slides the deadbolt firmly in place.

And then someone shoots him.

Just… just like that. Someone shoots him.

It's not really painful, more like a sudden pinching in his side, but that's probably more the adrenaline than anything else. And it's not like someone shoots him so much as someone shoots at him—the bullet piercing through the thick wood of the door—and manages (because he's the idiot who's still plastered against it) to hit him.

So yeah, he gets shot at, from behind a door, and the bullet grazes him on his right side, and it's only the pain that gets his head clear, only the sick feeling of too much blood seeping out of his fucking skin that gets him moving, gets him falling forward to crawl away from door on his stomach. More shots ring out, because suddenly Stiles's life is a fucking action movie that he wants no part of, and bits of shrapnel—wood, bullets, whatever—start flying everywhere.

"Fucking—fuck," Stiles sputters. What else do you say, when you're being shot at? He gets to the open archway that leads to the living room just as something explodes behind him—sounds like the porch, or the door, or something—and he scrambles to his feet, gets around the corner just as people start yelling… again.

A hand grabs at his neck, and he's all ready to struggle, maybe lash out, but then he turns, and it's Derek, wide-eyed and terrified, but shit, at least he looks like he's thinking. Which… really, is more than Stiles is doing at the moment.

"Derek," Stiles hisses, already letting himself be pulled along to… somewhere. He doesn't know where. "Aren't you—"

"How the fuck do you know my name?" Derek hisses back, and the hand on his neck squeezes hard, pushes him back against the wall. Something hard and sharp pokes at his injured side, and his head bangs against the wood, and he might whimper. Might. "I've never fucking seen you before in my life. And you—you're bleeding."

"That's what happens when you get shot," Stiles snarls, pushes him away because he's sick of hurting. In the foyer, there's a bang, and instinctively, Stiles crouches, his head hitting up against Derek's as he does the same thing.

"Fucking—" Derek hisses, and then starts pulling him again, keeping a hand on the back of his neck so Stiles stays low to the ground, as they move. "Who the fuck are they?"

"Argents," Stiles says, just as they turn the corner to the… the kitchen, where there's, fuck, a door. God, Stiles just wants out of here.

"We have a truce with the Argents, why would they—" Derek pulls the door off its hinges, which seems to surprise him, because he stops and looks at it.

"Kate Argent," Stiles says, pushes past him. They're at the back of the house, and out here, there's only dark woods and—

"Who the fuck do you mean, Kate, that's not—" Derek's voice is high-pitched; panicked. Stiles turns, and this time it's him who pulls at Derek's arm. He's over the threshold—and something lifts in Stiles's stomach at that—and then they're running. Stiles doesn't know where; he assumes Derek knows.

Or maybe they're just running from the explosions behind them, or the gunfire, or the snarls and howls that haven't gotten any softer, any less abrasive, in however long Stiles has been in this hell. Everything is confusing again. Or, fuck, when has anything not been confusing? It's just that now, the confusion feels different—feels like sluggishness, like pain, like distraction. It feels like the kind of confusion that comes from being shot in the fucking side.

He's still bleeding, and the pain makes his run lopsided, slower than it would be, but at least he's still running, even though every breath feels like goddamned lava.

"What do you mean?" Derek asks, once they can't hear anything except the forest around them. Derek isn't breathless, looks like he's fine, from a physical standpoint, save for the terror in his eyes. "What did you mean when you said Kate Argent?"

"I mean the—" Crap. Stiles doesn't think he's going to be able to make this not sound horrible. "I mean Kate, the girl you're seeing—blonde, smiles a lot, older—" he has to break off so he can gulp a few much-needed breaths in, clutching at the wound on his side for a moment. "She's an Argent, and she wants to kill you. Where the fuck are we going!?"

"She's not an Argent, she's not, she—" Derek stops short, and Stiles crashes into him—he's warm, slightly sweaty, and he's alive—unable to stop himself from letting out an embarrassing high pitched squeak as he does so.

"She is," Stiles gasps out, leaning down to put his hands on his knees. "Listen, dude, I know you—"

"You don't know me. I've never met you in—"

"—in your fucking life, yes I got that when you spit it in my face, but I know you when you're dead, you fucking… assfuck," Stiles hisses, and even past the roaring in his ears, Stiles can hear Derek gulp. "Yeah, you know I'm not lying, right? I know you as a ghost. And guess who killed you? Or,"—he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath in, and lets himself relax for a just a second, "—guess who didn't kill you tonight?"

"That's not what happened. She's from out of town. She isn't an Argent. And even if she was, we have a truce." Derek's eyes are glowing an intense blue, and his hands are fisted at his sides, and it pisses Stiles the fuck off.

"The Derek I know," he says, "burned to death with his family. Kate got close to him to find out when everyone would be in the house, and then she—" Derek has him up against the nearest tree in seconds, fangs out, face shifted into something wolfish, his arm pressing down on Stiles's neck and restricting the air-flow.

"That's not what happened," he says, slowly, dangerously, and it has Stiles's pulse ratcheting up even more.

"I—"

"She wouldn't do that!" Derek snarls, but this time his voice cracks and his expression falters, his eyes not quite meeting Stiles's. "You—you're wrong!"

"Your dad broke your mom's china," Stiles says, grasping for something, anything, that will get Derek's arm off his fucking windpipe. "He blamed it on the wind. And, uh, Laura, she likes Jayne, and shit, Derek I'm not lying. I know you!"

Apparently that's the wrong thing to say, because Derek doesn't take his arm away. If anything it presses down harder, and Stiles brings his hands up, baring his teeth in annoyance as he tries to pry it off.

No dice, apparently, because even though Derek is a year younger than him, even though he's like, two inches shorter and lankier than him, he's a werewolf with super-strength and no injuries what-so-fucking ever, so yup, the arm stays.

"You might be from the future," Derek says, leaning closer, "but you don't know if it was Kate. You don't know her. All right?"

Well shit, Stiles thinks, this version of Derek is kind of a dick. But… well okay, no, he's not. He's in denial, and Stiles hadn't actually brought any concrete evidence with him to convince Derek otherwise. This is probably how Stiles would react, if some dude from the future came and told him his hot, older girlfriend had only become his girlfriend to kill his family.

… Right. So, perspective. Stiles just has to, uh, remember it.

"Okay, okay dude, just, your arm—can't breathe," Stiles says, calmly. Or, well, somewhat calmly, considering that he can't breathe and has a gash! From a bullet! In his side. Derek blinks, then, and steps back.

"Okay," Derek says. "The… you're still bleeding."

"Wow, great deductive skills, Lassie, why don't you—"

There's a pop—a gunshot—and Derek whines out a guttural, surprised noise, and falls, hard, to his knees. Stiles is frozen for maybe a second, random shit flying through his head (like why he doesn't hear any footsteps, or rustling, or voices, or anything) and then he moves, grabs Derek's right arm—there's a bullet wound in the other one—and starts running.

And that… that's when the rustling starts. The noises. The easily recognizable sound of boots crunching over fallen leaves. Stiles is going to have a panic attack soon, or he's going to bleed out, or whoever shot Derek is going to get close enough to be able to shoot at them again, or some—

"Back to the house," Derek wheezes, suddenly, maybe a thousand years into running (it feels like a thousands years… feels like more than a thousand years). "Mom. We need to get to mom and the others."

"—Isn't that where the shot came from? Isn't that where we've been running from?!" Stiles hisses. Even so, he turns, starts running back towards the house. Derek seems to be recovering quickly, although the wound on his arm is turning black. Which is probably not good.

"Yes," Derek snarls, and speeds up. "You can stay here; I'm going."

Stiles follows, heart pounding, adrenaline pushing his senses into overdrive. Whoever is chasing them is closing in, coming from the right, flashlight beams visible, the sound of their breathing loud enough that even Stiles hears it. There's more than one person chasing them, and from the way their footfalls keep getting louder and louder, they're catching up.

Stiles feels hunted. He feels trapped and in way over his head and he kind of just wants to sit down, maybe take a nap, watch a movie—

There's a whooshing noise, and an arrow embeds itself in the tree nearest Stiles. He abandons any thoughts of napping, and just concentrates on keeping Derek in sight. Which is hard, because Derek is running, fast and silent and determined.

And god, Stiles really hopes he doesn't bleed out before this shit ends.

The howling starts up again, or, they get close enough that Stiles can hear the howling again, because he's pretty sure it never stopped. Derek speeds up, an angry snarl ripping from his throat.

When the house comes into view, Stiles can see that there's smoke—but only smoke, not fire—pouring out of the kitchen windows. The door is blasted off its hinges, the porch half collapsed. In the yard, there's still a fight going on, over on the other side, next to a couple of abandoned SUVs that Stiles is going to bet belonged to the hunters. There are more werewolves not fighting, though, then fighting. Stiles spots Talia—wolfed out, standing on her hind legs, a good six and a half feet of supernatural muscle and glowing red eyes—standing in the middle, staring down at three hunters kneeling, their hands tied, at her feet.

One of them has long blonde hair, and Stiles stops, suddenly feeling… lighter. He sits down right there on the grass, ignoring the pain in his side and his back and his head and… fucking everywhere, and just breathes.

Derek runs up to Talia, takes one look at the woman kneeling in front of her—at Kate—and freezes. Stiles can't really hear what they're saying, but Talia lays a hand on Derek's shoulder, squeezes it, and Derek starts shaking his head, eyes wide and on Kate—who's laughing now, head thrown back, features visible in the moonlight and in the glow that's coming from the lights on in the house—and takes a step back.

Behind Stiles, the hunters that had been chasing them burst out of the trees, and a group of werewolves is on them in seconds. Stiles only pays them enough attention to figure out of he's going to need to move—no, it turns out—and goes back to watching Derek.

Because he's alive, because right now, he looks wrecked, heartbroken, betrayed, angry, in pain, embarrassed… just, he looks like hell, but still, he's alive. Stiles did that. Stiles saved him. As small of a part as he played, Stiles was at least a part of it. And okay, not to blow his own whistle, but he hadn't just saved Derek.

There's Talia, and Laura, and Peter, and uh… the rest of the family, whose names Stiles can't remember and will probably never find out anyway. All of them are going to live, and that… that's pretty fucking awesome.

What's not awesome is that Stiles is feeling sluggish; exhausted. He's tired and scared and strung out, and he doesn't think he's even been here a fucking hour, but it feels like it's been centuries. The wound on his torso has stopped hurting, which is probably a bad sign.

He's probably lost a lot of blood.

Stiles groans, flops down to the ground, glaring up at the night sky. He can't really see the stars because of all the smoke coming from the kitchen, and it's not really peaceful because there are still lots of loud… just, lots of loud noises, because Stiles can't fucking concentrate on any one of them, so they all coalesce into just… noise, and the ground is vibrating from all the movement around him, but hey, it's kind of nice, just to lay in the grass, since it's slightly damp and cools his skin where it's red hot and feverish.

Stiles is pretty sure he's not going to die; he just needs to time-shift back, and then have Lydia take him to the doctor. Right. No problem.

Just… after he manages to find the energy to actually do that, which is easier said than done. Because really, all he wants to do is close his eyes, take a—

—crap he never told them his name.

Well fuck.

Derek doesn't die when he's fifteen. He almost dies, but some guy drops down into Laura's room from the fucking future and saves his life. Saves his family. Gets shot (he gets shot too, but the guy's human… so he can't just have Deaton pull it out and put some wolfsbane on the wound so it heals) and then disappears in an explosion of light and heavy-smelling ash before Derek—or anyone, actually—can even find out his fucking name.

The first few months after the fire—after everything gets out; that he was seeing Kate, that they had sex, that he thought (he really thought) she liked him, that she used him to get to his family, his fucking family—are rough. He wants to die, a couple of times, just to get rid of the heavy numbness that makes it a feat to get out of bed, that's made him start to panic when he thinks about going out in public, with humans. He wants to die because he's ashamed—so fucking ashamed—and scared, because how, how, is he going to keep on living when he knows what could've happened?

Everyone treats him differently after that. Like a child. Like he's going to break. Like he's a liability. Which he is, because out of everyone, he was the one that was fucking idiotic enough to let a wannabe murderer get close enough to ruin his life. He doesn't talk much, and he knows, vaguely, that he's depressed—clinically, probably—but he can't get himself to let go of it. The feeling of shame, of embarrassment, of an overwhelming numbness that sinks into his very fucking bones.

They make him talk in court, though, because that was the deal—the Argents let them handle Kate and Gerard and their accomplices, let them put them in prison, let Dad's connections speed up the process so that they're gone before the year ends, but only if the court says they're guilty. Only if they do it the human way. So Derek talks, tells them how Kate approached him, how she had sex with him in the backseat of her fucking SUV, how she asked him about his family and when they were all going to be home. He tells them everything, because he might as well, because it's not like he's going to be able to like himself any less than he already does.

He talks, and the jury finds them guilty of all charges, and for the first time, Derek can breathe.

It takes months, but shit, he can finally breathe.

He starts noticing small things that have changed since the almost-fire. The blueprint for the gate and property walls that Mom is working on with a local construction company lying on the kitchen table. The kitchen itself, which was remodeled within a week of everything, is larger and airier, and has the side-by-side fridge Dad always wanted. There are runes carved into the wood of the newly rebuilt porch that smell like an unfamiliar type of wood.

Laura's hair is shorter.

Peter has gotten more tactile with Aunt Carol, which is saying a lot, because he was a goddamned leech before. Everyone has gotten closer—pulled together by sheer terror and panic, probably; Derek thinks he read that somewhere, that crises bring people together—except him.

(He feels like an outlier.)

Derek finally notices how obsessed everyone else is about the guy, the Mediator, how they talk about him in low whispers at night, their tones almost reverent. They don't even know his name, and they… it's like they love him. They talk to Deaton about finding him, about thanking him, but there's no way, Deaton says, not if they don't know his name.

And even then, he says, if they approach him, that could change something. Could make it so he never comes back in the first place.

Derek is glad, because Derek is pretty sure he kind of hates him. Everything about him. His eyes. His voice. His ugly upturned nose. The moles that dot his face. Derek hates the way he couldn't wash off the smell of his blood for the first two weeks after… everything, no matter how many fucking showers he took. Hates how sometimes he feels a phantom hand gripping his wrist.

He hates that, apparently, the guy knows him—knew him—and Derek doesn't even know his fucking name.

He goes back to school, eventually, and it's as horrible as he expects. The teachers talk to him in voices that are supposed to be soothing, but all he can focus on is how they smell, cloyingly, like pity and sympathy, and Derek hates that. The students, for the most part, ignore him. Which is good; Derek actually likes that.

They make him go to therapy. Dad drives him to a witch with a PhD in Forensic Psychology who lives over in Sunny Grove. He waits for an hour at the local Starbucks while Derek sits in her living room and watches her watching him.

Eventually, Derek starts talking because he can't stand her staring at him anymore.

He talks about… the usual stuff. And it helps. Fuck. It really helps.

Five months after (should he come up with a special dating term? Like Before Kate, B.K., and After Kate, A.K?), the dreams start.

At first, he thinks it's just another nightmare—another memory of that night, the one he's re-lived hundreds of times already in his sleep—but then it changes, and for the first time, instead of being about Kate or Laura or anyone else, it's about him. About the guy. About his face, and how it had looked when he said Derek's name.

It's a dream, but it's… not, because that happened, because Derek remembers it. Because it actually happened. Because even though he was dreaming it, he could feel everything, could hear and smell everything.

He keeps having them.

At first, they're just these vignettes of that night. Close-ups of the guy (the Guy?) of things that Derek had missed because he was too preoccupied with staying alive. How he had looked at Derek, mostly, and the way he talked, and these… these feelings that Derek knows, somehow, are his. The Guy's, too. Confusion. Fear. Happiness? Relief.

Then he has a dream where he's standing on top of a counter in the middle of a kitchen that's not his, staring down at the Guy, plates and pots and Tupperware stacked in unnatural piles all around him. He looks down, and his hands are see-through, his body transparent and weightless. He freaks out; wakes up with an aborted gasp that has Laura rushing into his room and demanding to know what happened.

He tells her; she tells everyone else. They take him to Deaton, and he says, in that irking monotone voice, that Derek is remembering what happened in the other timeline.

"He's remembering what it was like to be dead?" Mom hisses, voice lowering into a snarl.

"He's filling in the blank spaces," Deaton corrects, which… that fucking doesn't make sense.

There are bad dreams. The ones where he's staring down at a blackened corpse—he knows it's his—and the ones where he's stuck, standing in the doorway of a burned out house, watching Kate and her father—Gerard—talk about his death. There are ones where he spreads red paint on the walls and screams at whoever he can whenever he can. There are the ones where there are no visuals, just complete blackness, but he feels this utter and endless emptiness, cold and horrible and terrifying.

There are good dreams, and all of them involve the Guy. Or, they're not good at first. They're confusing, because Derek watches him—the Guy—and then he watches the Guy's dad, and they talk, yeah, but he never gets their fucking names. He can't really concentrate on what they're saying, either.

He dreams about the Guy breaking a mountain ash barrier for him—the barrier that had kept his ghost from leaving the house—and then he dreams about walking through the forest for hours, days even, too stunned to even think about shifting.

He dreams about watching him sleep, which at first, is creepy and embarrassing (because seriously), but then it just keeps happening and it turns into… something else. Something he looks forward to, something that makes his days—which are getting better, but could still use some… happiness—better. Derek stops hating his upturned nose, stops hating the way, in his dreams, the Guy's mouth never fucking closes, stops hating his eyes. His moles. His laugh.

He starts liking them. Whatever.

He dreams about the day he goes back (comes back?) in bits and pieces, in looks that last forever and tense words and the presence of two other people that, for some fucking reason, get names—Scott, the guy, and Lydia, the girl, who can see him, who's another Mediator (he tells Mom about the names; she finds a Lydia Martin in the same town, approaches her parents and lets them in on the big supernatural secret… it goes better than everyone had hoped, but Lydia, ten years old and precocious as shit, doesn't know anyone with a buzzed head. Scott McCall is a human, and his parents are going through a nasty separation, so Mom says to wait to tell him).

He gets the feeling that he and...the guy were more than friends, from the looks they gave each other, from the touches and the glances. From the way he feels when he dreams about it.

He dreams about their first kiss—and god, that's corny as shit—the day after he turns seventeen. Wakes up with a boner and comes to the memory of soft lips and a crooked grin and goddamnit he wants to find out his fucking name. Wants to see him in the fucking flesh; wants him to be real, and here, and with Derek.

He dreams about the kisses after, and the touching, the sleeping, the grim determination that the Guy had to shift back in time, to save him.

Derek thinks that, maybe, they were kind of in love. He doesn't know if he likes the idea, yet. He doesn't know if, despite all the evidence, he'll ever be able to trust the Guy if he meets him. No, fuck that, when he meets him. Eventually, fucking eventually, he'll find out his name. And when he finds out his name, they'll find him.

The dreams start repeating, start getting vague and fuzzy around the edges, and then three weeks before he's due to leave for Berkeley, after he comes home from swimming laps in the gym's pool for two hours, Derek dreams about the night they first met, again, when the Guy sat up in bed and glared at him, and he… he gets a name.

Stiles—which isn't a fucking name—who names their kid Stiles?—Stilinski.

He only freaks out a little, and then he runs downstairs and tells the only person in the house, Laura. She freaks out a lot, and then an hour later Mom and Dad are sitting at the kitchen table across from him and the room smells like excitement.

There are no Stilinskis in Beacon Hills. Uncle Peter has to get a P.I. friend to track them down, three counties to the north. Mom says it's him, because the P.I. takes pictures, but Stilinski is a Deputy, and Stiles (not his real name, apparently) is fourteen, so they don't tell Derek the details, lest he… fuck, Derek doesn't know. It's not like he would drive up there and sit in front of his house and—

Okay if he knew his address, maybe he would.

Dad uses his connections to get Stilinski transferred to Beacon Hills

Derek shouldn't feel as petulant about them telling him to wait to see him as he does, but shit, he just… wants to see him. Then again, it turns out that every time he even starts typing Stilinski into Google he almost hyperventilates because of… something. Terror, probably. In the end, he just goes down to Berkeley and concentrates on his course load.

He waits.

For what, he doesn't know.

No, he does; Deaton says that Stiles is going to turn up where he disappeared. So they're waiting for Stiles—the Stiles that knows about all of this (his Stiles)—to replace the Stiles that doesn't. Which… doesn't make sense to Derek, but apparently, it happens.

Or it's supposed to happen; no one is sure.

It happens.

It happens when Derek is in a meeting with his advisor. It's March. He has fucking finals to start studying for, papers to start writing, and social settings to avoid and ignore, no matter how desperately his roommates try to get him to go, and then Laura calls.

He answers because Laura almost never calls… anyone. She texts, so if she's calling, it's something big.

"Hey Der-Bear," she greets when he picks up, smiling an apology at Professor Kendall.

"Lars," he answers, because she hates it as much as he hates fucking Der-Bear.

"Guess who just dropped onto our front yard? From the sky? And is now bleeding all over the kitchen table while we wait for an ambulance?"

Something Derek's stomach swoops. His world shrinks down to the size of the phone in his hand. "Laura, if you're fucking with me—"

"Why would I fuck with you about this?" Laura asks, suddenly serious "I'm looking down at him right now, and he—"

"Why is he still there, then?" Derek hisses, and Professor Kendall blinks at him. He stands. "Professor, I, uh—there's a family emergency. Can I reschedule, or—?" He's out the door before he can get a confirmation.

Professor Kendall's office is on the fourth floor, and he would jump, if it were later, and there was no one else on campus. But it's not later. It's fucking noon, and there are people, and he wants to run—

"Ambulance, Derek, don't you think that's a good idea? He's stable—he's actually talking to Mom."

"He's talking?" Derek asks, dodging a gaggle of freshmen that are taking up the entire fucking corridor, biting his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood so he doesn't snarl at them. "What's he—"

"Oh, ambulance is here," Laura interrupts, almost in a goddamned sing-song, and sure enough, Derek hears a siren on the other end. Derek hates her. He hates her so much. "Should I take a picture so you can prepare yourself, Der-Bear? So you can stroke your phone's screen and—"

Derek hangs up. It's a ten-minute walk to his apartment and a two-hour drive to Beacon Hills.

If he speeds he can make it in an hour and fifty minutes.

"This is so fucking confusing," Stiles groans, for about the fiftieth time. Because it is. Because suddenly he's two people; the Stiles that grew up in another town (the one that moved here less than two fucking months ago, met Lydia, met Stiles, met Derek as a fucking ghost in his room, went back in time); and the Stiles that moved here two years ago, with a newly elected Sheriff as a father and a two year friendship with Scott and Lydia, the Stiles that knew about the Hales but never actually saw them.

God, he's confused.

"Eventually," Deaton says. He's standing next to the hospital bed Stiles is half-sitting up in. "Eventually you'll start forgetting the unimportant parts of the other Stiles. The ones that don't matter. It'll get less confusing then."

"And you're saying my dad knows? That Mrs. Hale—"

"Talia, dear," Talia says, from the chair on the other side of the bed. She has shorter hair than she did last night, or, uh, six years ago. The pixie cut accentuates her cheekbones and makes her look, like, twenty-five. She's smiling at him, dressed in a black pinstripe suit, her hand resting against his side. "Please call me Talia."

"So you and my dad are… friends?" Stiles asks, but he knows it's true even as he asks because… shit yeah, Dad knows, because two years ago, Talia showed up at their front door while they were still moving in and introduced herself by telling Dad that Stiles really did see ghosts.

Then there was the whole werewolf reveal, which Stiles remembers both of them taking well, considering.

And—

"I'm pretty sure you're remembering it right now, Stiles," Talia says, grinning.

"And you never told me I would be—"

"It may have been… detrimental if you found out what was going to happen," Deaton interrupts.

Stiles groans, slumps back into the pillows and closes his eyes. "This is so confusing," he says again.

Two hours ago, he was lying in the middle of the Hale's front yard, staring up at the sky, bleeding out, head pounding, and now he's here. He still hurts everywhere, but, uh, well, things are definitely different. Dad—Dad the Sheriff—is in the cafeteria, getting coffee for Mrs—for Talia. Laura is with him. Laura is a fucking Deputy. A Deputy.

It's in the middle of the day, and Stiles knows—he doesn't know how he knows—that Lydia and Scott are in school, in English, actually, because it's a little past lunch time already, that one of the Hales—Peter's daughter, Laura's niece—is in his grade, and, holy shit, is always staring at him.

He knows that Derek is at Berkeley, majoring in architecture.

He knows that, since he's moved here, he and Lydia have helped about ninety percent of the ghosts in Beacon Hills pass on. The fucker in the boiler room is still there, though. She likes to be difficult.

He knows… he knows a lot of shit. Too much shit. It's overwhelming.

"So Kate—" he starts.

"Is in prison, as is her father," Talia says, voice hard. "Thanks to you."

"Yeah, yup." Stiles nods. "Well that's good. Since that was the whole reason, I uh—"

"Derek dreamed about you," Talia says, and Stiles turns red, which was probably her intent. "About what you did for him while he was a… while he was in the other timeline."

"Right, right," Stiles says. Derek… wouldn't tell his mom about the kisses, right? About all the… all the other stuff? That would be stupid. They don't even know each other. Not really.

"This isn't a small thing you did, Stiles," Deaton says, just as Dad and Laura come back in the room. Dad, who's a fucking Sheriff. With a Sheriff's badge.

"Would you stop staring at the badge, son?" Dad asks, ahh, and at least his put-upon sighs are still the same.

"Dad, you're a Sheriff, though," Stiles says. "Sheriff Stilinski. It's like it was meant to be."

"This is a time thing, isn't it?" Dad asks.

"It's similar to amnesia, I would thi—" Deaton breaks off as the door opens, except it's Ms. McCall, who… also knows. Or… yeah no, she knows.

He feels like he's in the middle of a conspiracy of adults, and it's terrifying.

"Melissa, would you say it's like amnesia?" Deaton asks. Ms. McCall looks at him for a moment, then shrugs, walking over to check on the IV in Stiles's arm and his vitals on the machine beeping at his side.

"I guess," she says eventually, "although instead of no memories he has two sets of them?"

"Exactly," Deaton says.

"God, this is trippy," Stiles mutters under his breath, and both Talia and Laura laugh.

"At least it's not confusing anymore?" Laura asks, and Stiles makes a face at her, even before he realizes that they… they do this. This is what they do. He remembers making faces at Laura, remembers trying to sneak past her to get to Dad's office, remembers annoying her until she snarls at him, remembers—

"No, still confusing," Stiles decides, leaning his head back to stare up at the ceiling, watching out of the corner of his eye as Ms. McCall raises an eyebrow at him, adjusts the pillows behind his head.

It would be nice if he wasn't the center of attention any more. That would be nice.

"Talia, you should go; talk to Matt," Dad says, and Stiles knows that Matt is Mr. Hale; is the mayor of Beacon Hills; is human. "I'll watch over the idiot."

"Oh no, I'm waiting," Talia says, and Laura cracks up. "I've been wanting to see this for years. You have no idea how much I've been wanting to see this."

"See what?" Stiles asks.

"The reunion," Laura all but purrs, and that fucking tone… that's a tone of someone who knows. Stiles ignores the pain in his side and brings his hands up to rub at his face, frustrated and tired and… yeah, and fucking confused. Ms. McCall makes a noise of protest, and goes to write something on his chart.

"You mean, uh…" Stiles trails off.

"I'll leave," Deaton says, clapping a hand on Stiles's shoulder. "You'll come see me after you've recovered a bit?"

"He will," Dad answers for him.

"Right, um, I will," Stiles says, and Deaton nods, walks out of the room.

"So Derek, your son," Dad says to Talia, "is the ghost who was living in my son's bedroom. For months, apparently."

Talia looks positively gleeful. "Yes," she says.

"Stiles will be ready to go home in a couple of hours," Melissa interrupts. "I can get Dr. Mahealani to sign the release forms."

"He shouldn't stay the night?" Dad asks. "He got shot." His face stills at that, even as he says it, and he moves forward, claps a hand over Stiles's shoulder. "So he shouldn't… stay?"

"He got grazed," Melissa says, in a voice Stiles recognizes as the one she uses for flighty patients and even flightier family-of-patients. "He's good to go, unless there's the possibility he's going to go back in time and face a group of rogue hunters again. Stiles? Are you planning on doing that?"

"No, not that I know of," Stiles says.

"Then I'll go start the paperwork," she says, and then, just as she pulls open the door, "Scott's probably going to come over tonight after dinner. Is that okay?"

"That's fine," Dad says, before Stiles. "I'm surprised you managed to keep him in school this long."

Melissa grins. "Ways, Sheriff. I have ways."

The room is silent for a bit after she leaves, and then Dad clears his throat. "So Derek, your son, my kid's room, for months."

Talia grins. "Practically roommates."

"You could've just told me this two years ago," Dad says, taking a sip of his coffee. "And I could've, I don't know, prepared him or something."

"Would've changed something, probably," Talia says with a shrug. "And everything is good now, Sheriff. Your son's a hero; my son's alive. I'm alive. The people who need to be in prison are in prison. Peachy, if I may say so."

Dad takes another sip of his coffee, probably slurping so loudly just to be obnoxious, and Stiles sighs. "You're not allowed to ground me, I was—"

Talia and Laura freeze, and their sudden alertness is noticeable enough that Stiles stops and Dad puts a hand where his gun would be, if he weren't off duty.

"Stiles," Talia says. She leans forward, until her face is inches from his and her hand is gripping at his forearm a little too hard. "You came back in time to save my son, to save all of us," she whispers, low enough that Dad couldn't hear if he wanted to. "Derek dreamed about you for six years—I don't know the specifics, but I know him—so I know what this is. If you use any of this—any of it—to hurt him, to use him, I'm going to make you wish you could travel back to get away from me. All right, hon?"

Her eyes flash red, and he—Stiles doesn't know, at first, the reason for the sudden urgency. He tries to think of an answer, past the sudden nervousness, but before he can even open his mouth, the door creaks open, this time slow and unsteady, and a man walks in.

Derek. Derek walks in.

Of course Stiles recognizes him, of course. He still has the same ears, and the same… the same everything. Except, uh, he's older. He's… he's twenty-one, and he's wearing a goddamned leather jacket, and his hair is all styled and shit. Stiles has never actually met this Derek, despite Dad's apparent friendship with Mrs. Hale, only seen pictures of him, but he's looking at Stiles with wide eyes, rubbing at his thighs in a nervous, unsure gesture that Stiles recognizes from the other Derek, the dead one… and…

And fuck, he's alive, and he's beautiful.

He's… here, leaning back on his elbows in the bed in the middle of the room, heart pounding, smelling of surprise, and he's finally real. Derek only notices the others in the room because he can smell them, can feel their amusement, in the case of Laura and Mom, and the hesitancy, from Sheriff Stilinski, but he's just driven for two hours, and he's exhausted. All he can really concentrate on is Stiles.

Who's real. Finally.

It's terrifying, and exhilarating, and… weird. Because Stiles is a sixteen year old guy. Derek shouldn't owe him his life; he shouldn't have these memories of him. He shouldn't already feel like he knows him.

But he does, and it's real, and—

And he's twenty-fucking-one but he feels fifteen.

"Oh," Stiles says, "so that's why."

Derek is confused, which overrides his terror and makes it so he can close the door behind him and start the long trek (six steps) to stand at the foot of the bed next to Laura.

"Yes," Mom says, pats Stiles on the shoulder, although her eyes are still on him. She's biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing, and damn it, so is Laura. "I have good hearing, Stiles."

That's a threat; that's definitely a threat.

"Right, yeah, the werewolf thing, sure," Stiles says. He clears his throat, and Derek really should say something. He really should, except he doesn't know what to say. It's annoying.

It's—

"You're… uh," Derek says. "Hi."

"Wow, this is so beautiful," Laura comments. "Really, your way with words Derek, is—"

"Fuc—Frick off, Laura," he snarls, and the Sheriff starts laughing.

"Oh man, I'm going to get a refill," he says. "Deputy, come get a coffee refill with me."

"I'll come with as well," Mom says. "I can always eavesdrop on them from outside the room."

"I don't understand how any of you are adults," Stiles says as the Sheriff starts pulling Laura out the door. "Except Deaton, I guess, but he's—"

Mom punches Derek's shoulder when she walks past, raises her eyebrows at him in a gesture that probably means something like 'get your head in the game,' or 'your oratory skills are lacking,' or 'he's adorable and I will definitely be listening in.'

One of those, or all of them.

Derek watches them go, still aware of the other heartbeat in the room and the way Stiles is staring at him, still propped up on his elbows.

"Dude," Stiles says, eventually, "you… grew into the ears."

Derek turns back to him, holding his hands at his sides so he doesn't cover the ears in question. "I don't—" he says.

"This is awkward, isn't it?" Stiles interrupts, squinting his eyes at him and using one arm to gesture between them. It's all very Stiles, and it's all very fucking familiar, even though it's… not. "I know two versions of you, and you… you, uh, dreamed about me, apparently."

"Yeah," Derek says. At least someone gets it. He sits down in the chair that Mom had just been in. "You look better than you did that, uh, night."

Not as good as when he—no, not going there. Not yet.

"I am apparently… averse to time travel, as Deaton puts it," Stiles explains. "And also I got shot. So—"

"Yes you did." Derek remembers the smell of his blood vividly. It's almost as bad as the phantom smell he gets sometimes, during a particularly bad dream, of burning wood and flesh. He winces, picks at the fraying denim of his jeans.

"So you're at Berkeley, huh?" Stiles asks. When Derek looks up, he's arranging himself to sit up straighter, wincing as he crosses his legs in front of him, his fingers fiddling with the edges of one of his pillows. Suddenly, he looks young. Unsure of himself. Not the… not whatever Derek has been picturing him as for the last six years.

Something unattainable and mysterious. Something, literally, out of his fucking dreams.

For fucks sake.

"I was never able to say thank you," Derek says, instead of answering him, "that night. So… thank you."

Stiles takes a little while to react to that, but when he does, he grins. "You were kind of a dick."

Derek winces. "Right, about that—"

"Perfectly understandable, though, dude. Considering the, uh,"—Stiles grimaces—"considering the circumstances."

"Yeah, the circumstances," Derek says. He needs this to stop being so awkward. He needs this Stiles to be the one he knows.

He needs to stop sounding like a fucking idiot.

"Did they leave us alone to talk about anything in particular?" Stiles asks, suddenly. "Or was it more of a… a general thing?"

"I dreamed about everything. I mean, I—I remember everything," Derek tells him, because apparently he's still a fucking idiot.

"Everything, huh?" Stiles asks, and he sounds calm, a little curious, but he's suddenly not meeting Derek's eyes and his hands are gripping at the pillow harder. He smells like something bitter and tangy; embarrassment. Derek concentrates on that, concentrates on the idea that this is as weird for Stiles as it is for him, and forgets to be nervous.

"Everything," Derek says, "I feel like I know you but I don't know you."

"Took the words right out of my mouth, man," Stiles agrees, laughing. He scratches at the back of his head, and Derek has seen that gesture so many times (in his dreams) that he has to laugh.

"Good to know," Derek says. He nods, and Stiles nods, scratches at the underside of his elbow this time, and Derek really shouldn't be doing this—he should let Stiles adjust, give him time to figure out what's real and what's not, give him time to heal—but he's a selfish guy, and Stiles is… fuck, he's Stiles, and his eyes are that same goddamned gold that haunt Derek… a lot, in various situations. "So we should hang out some time," he says, clearing his throat.

Stiles starts blinking, and he very audibly swallows. Derek pretends he doesn't know why.

"Uh, yeah, sure," he says. "I mean, I won't be much fun with the whole injury thing, but we could, uh, play some games. You could meet Sco—"

"I meant go out," Derek interrupts, before he can overanalyze it. This is Stiles. The Stiles who he kissed (who kissed him), the Stiles who… his fifteen-year-old (ghost) self fell in love with. He wants this. A lot. "Like on a date."

Stiles blushes, his eyes going wide. Oh god, and Derek wants to kiss, or—he wants to touch. He can touch, right? It wouldn't be too awkward. Or it would—will be—is—as Derek reaches forward, rests his hand on the bed so that his fingers are just brushing up against Stiles's hand. It's awkward, definitely, but he doesn't care, because Stiles is warm. He's solid, and he's here, and he's real.

"Oh," Stiles says, clearing his throat and using his hand—the other one, not the one that Derek is touching, the one that both of them are staring at—to wipe at his nose. "I, uh—you want to? On a date? With me?"

Derek grins and looks up at him. "No, I was fucking with you."

"Wow, yeah, so you're into the sarcasm, huh?" Stiles says, voice a little rough. Derek shrugs, freezing when Stiles moves his hand so his fingers are threaded with Derek's. So that they're holding hands. It shouldn't feel like anything big, but it does, even more so when Stiles grins at him, tightening his grip.

There's something familiar about that, and Derek remembers another time they held hands, when Derek was still a ghost, throwing tantrums in Stiles's kitchen. He had been amazed by how warm Stiles was then, amazed by the feel of touching someone just for the sake of touching. Now, though, it's more like he's amazed at the feeling because it's Stiles he's touching. It's Stiles's hand that he's holding, and it makes him far too happy and far too nervous at the same time.

"I'm into sarcasm, yeah," Derek says.

Epilogue.

So, Stiles is freaking out. Which is allowed, at least he thinks it is, because he has a date. With Derek. Who's a werewolf. Who was dead, but is now alive.

He's also kind of amazing. Stiles suspects that even without their… uh, past, he would be freaking out.

Thus, Stiles is decidedly in the freak-out stage. He's sitting on the porch of his house (he lives two streets down from Scott and ten miles from the Hale house) waiting for Derek— Derek, who's alive and is made up of sarcasm and deadpan humor and a not-so-secret affinity for leather—to pick him up.

For dinner. And a movie.

For a fucking date.

As far as dates go—as far as potential relationships go—Stiles figures that, so far, this is the weirdest way to meet, like… ever.

Ever.

It's been two weeks since… everything. Two weeks since he got out of the hospital, two weeks since he's even seen a ghost. For that first week, he was holed up in his room per Dad's orders, sleeping off his pain meds. Scott came over a lot, as did Lydia. They didn't really talk about much except school stuff, which was—is—fine by Stiles, because he couldn't hold an intelligible conversation until last Saturday, when his prescription ran out.

He went back to school after a week, went over to the Hale house for a, uh, dinner. Laura had called it the 'thanks for traveling back in time so we all didn't die in a fire' celebratory feast. Derek had been there, had sat next to him at the table, had grabbed his hand during dessert and kept it there for a good half hour.

But this is their first date.

A lot of the stuff from the other time (Stiles doesn't know what else to call it) is starting to fade away, just like Deaton had said it would. Unimportant shit like homework assignments and meals and everything. But Derek… Derek isn't.

Which—Stiles doesn't know what that says about him, about them, but he likes it.

It feels… weird and natural all at once, and Stiles doesn't really want to think about it as anything more than that, yet.

(he also wants in Derek's pants, but, hey, patience, apparently.)

When Derek pulls up in his Camaro (and Stiles is sitting on so many jokes about that), Stiles is still freaking out, but less than before. Now it's more a matter of "oh god I seriously hope I don't fall on my ass or cough in his mouth when (if?) he kisses me" more than "oh god I'm going on a date with a werewolf who I met six years ago when he was a ghost."

… less well-adjusted people would probably be catatonic by now.

Stiles watches Derek lope up the front walk, hands in his pockets, a small grin on his face. Derek plops himself down on the step next to him before Stiles can get up, close enough that their sides touch.

Tactile. He's still tactile.

"I'm late," Derek tells him. "I'm not always late."

"I never said you were, dude?" Stiles says. "I'm friends with Scott. He runs on Scott-time, which is thirty to forty-five minutes behind actual time."

"That's adorable, really," Derek says, voice dry. "The bromance thing you've got going on with Scotty McScotterson."

"Scotty… McScotterson? Wow, no Derek, that's adorable," Stiles says. "Nicknames for my best bro. Adorable."

"I'm a werewolf," Derek points out, "I'm not adorable."

"Agree to disagree," Stiles says. This is flirting. They're flirting, right? "I saw you when you were a wee lad of fifteen and shorter than me."

"We're the same height," Derek says, glaring at him in what is probably annoyance. Even so, he's edging closer. And—huh…

It's one in the afternoon on a Saturday. Dad is at some human resources meeting at the station, had told Stiles not to do anything that would make their neighbors think he was even weirder than they already did, but… but Stiles doesn't care, really.

(and hey, Dad was elected in spite of his weirdness, so maybe he's on to something.)

Because he can't look away from Derek's eyes, which are, as promised, even more mesmerizing now that they're not slightly transparent. Because Derek is edging closer, for fucks sake, with his eyes on Stiles's lips. And Stiles might be horribly inexperienced in this, but he knows what want looks like on Derek. And he knows what want feels like.

Except now, if he kisses Derek, he's actually going to be kissing him, and not some… mass of intense energy that is a suggestion of Derek. There's going to be teeth and tongue and the wet warmth of Derek's mouth on his, and the weight of Derek's hand on… wherever he decides to put it. And Stiles… fuck, right, fine.

He leans forward the last inch or two between them and presses his lips to Derek's, and yup, they're warm and, actually, slightly dry. Chapped, even. But they're real, and the sound that Derek makes—surprise, humor—is even more so.

It turns out that Derek puts one hand on Stiles's knee and brings the other to rest at the back of his neck. The leather of his jacket brushes against Stiles's arm, bunches under his hands when he grabs at it to keep Derek in place. The kiss turns into two, three, four, all of them dry and almost searching… hesitant, and Stiles keeps his eyes closed, so he doesn't know if Derek is looking at him or grinning or… something.

And it's nice. It's really nice. It's more than nice. It's—

Stiles isn't sure which of them turn the kiss into something else. Might be him, might be Derek. Who knows, who cares? What's important is that one moment, it's tentative, strange even, and then the next Derek is pressing into his mouth, tongue wet and hot against his, stubble rasping against Stiles's jaw, little hums of something—pleasure, satisfaction, arousal—vibrating in the back of his throat and holy crap it's fucking awesome.

Just… yeah.

"So," Stiles manages to rasp out, when he pulls away so he can breathe, resting his forehead against Derek's and using the downtime to stare at his lips—swollen, red, wet, hot, "dinner and a movie, huh?"

Derek's hand travels up, slowly, until he's gripping at the back of Stiles's head, fingers kneading in the hair that Stiles is trying to grow out…"Yeah, dinner and a movie."

"Is that part of the werewolf courtship ritual? Or are you waiting for that part?" Stiles asks.

"You'll know when I start doing werewolf shit, Stiles," Derek says, flashing his fangs. Stiles doesn't know whether to roll his eyes or bite at the corner of Derek's lip.

He does both.

"That's fucking corny," he says. "But I'm cool with it. There's not, like, uh… weird kinky shit, right?"

"I—" Derek blushes—blushes—the fucker. "Jesus Christ, Stiles, no. Whatever you're thinking, no."

"Cool," Stiles says, kisses him again (because he can, obviously). He stands, even though he would be fine with just sitting here and getting more acquainted with Derek's mouth, and kicks at Derek's calf. "Dinner and a movie. Come on, before Mrs. Pindle calls my dad and tells him we're making out on my front porch in broad day light."

Derek balks, starts sniffing the air surreptitiously as he gets up and wipes the dust off his jeans. "I don't smell anyone."

"Yeah, that's cool. And weird. Do you smell all emotions?" Stiles asks, already walking towards Derek's car. If he does, then… shit.

"You don't smell the emotion, you smell the body chemistry, and only if you concentrate," Derek says, closer than Stiles expected. "You practically exude sarcasm all the time, so that's not hard—"

"But you're into sarcasm," Stiles says, pulling the passenger side door open. Eventually, he's going to fucking drive the thing. Maybe get Derek drunk. Can werewolves get drunk? Huh.
"So I'm like goddamned catnip."

"I'm not happy about it," Derek says, and lies. Obviously a lie.

"Sure, dude," Stiles says as he sits, fiddles with the seatbelt until it clicks into place. Derek walks around to the driver's side, and Stiles waits until he puts the key in the ignition before he speaks again. "We should make out in the movie theatre. That's proper date behavior, right?"

Derek looks over at him, blinking. "Okay?" he offers.

"Cool," Stiles says, leans back in the seat. "Looking forward to it."