Chapter Text
“You have reached the Beacon Hills Animal Clinic. Our office is closed at the moment. If you have an emergency, please hold the line. Your call will be transferred.”
Tinny music. Greensleeves.
“Oh fuck. Come on!” Stiles lets Derek drag him inside the house. “Closing the door won’t stop mist, you know, Derek!”
“I know that, Stiles!”
Why is it always fucking Greensleeves? Greensleeves makes Stiles think of the ice cream truck which, okay, is better than thinking of impending death, but also unnecessarily cruel: Want an ice cream, Stiles? Too bad, because you’re about to get flayed and roasted and eaten instead.
“Dr. Alan Deaton speaking.”
“Doc! It’s Stiles! Derek and I seriously need your help right now, like immediately!” Is that mist he can see seeping under the door? Or is his increasing panic making him see things?
“Stiles?” Deaton’s voice sharpens. “What’s going on?”
“Čudnovata! It’s a Croatian—”
“I know what it is, Stiles.”
Of course he does, praise Jebus. “How do we kill it?”
“Hmmmm. There may be a ritual of banishment. I remember seeing one somewhere.”
“Oh god. It’s here. Now. Now!”
That’s definitely mist. Thin tendrils of it slipping into the house. Underneath the door at first, then through the gaping holes where the windows used to be.
“Oh god.” Stiles can’t breathe. He closes his eyes, and grips the back of Derek’s shirt in his fist. “Please, Doc. Please.”
“Do you have any mountain ash?”
“N-no.”
“Do you have anything?”
“No!”
Deaton makes a worried sound.
Derek is backing Stiles across the floor. Stiles opens his eyes again. His first instinct is to head up the stairs. The second floor might be no more secure than down here, but it’ll buy them some time, right? Except Derek isn’t pushing him toward the stairs. Derek’s pushing him toward…
Stiles stares down at the floorboards.
They’re standing over the exact spot where they buried Peter Hale after Derek ripped his throat out. Stiles’s breath catches in his throat. Where they buried Peter Hale with enough mountain ash and wards and runes and wolfsbane to sink whatever the supernatural equivalent is of the Bismarck. He meets Derek’s gaze. Derek has beautiful fucking eyes.
“Will this work?” Stiles whispers.
Derek doesn’t answer.
“Stiles?” Deaton asks. “Will what work?”
“We’re standing, um, we’re standing where we buried Peter.”
The noise Deaton makes this time is a little less worried. But only a little. “That might hold it. The Čudnovata will feed on your fear. Don’t let it. I’ll be there as soon as I can!” He ends the call.
Stiles figures he doesn’t really want to hear them get flayed alive if he’s wrong about the wards holding the Čudnovata at bay.
“Deaton said—”
“I heard.” Derek turns so that he’s holding Stiles, hands on his hips, their chests pressing together. “Put your arms around me too. Whatever happens, don’t let go.”
“Wh-what?” But it is ridiculously easy to slip his arms around Derek, his palms sliding on Derek’s shirt and then the denim of his jeans. It’s easy to hook his trembling fingers through Derek’s belt loops.
“Close your eyes if you want.”
Oh, okay. Deaton said not to feed the Čudnovata, and if any one of them is going to offer it a big juicy meal of blind fucking panic, then of course it’s going to be Stiles. He closes his eyes, and lowers his head. He rests his forehead against Derek’s shoulder and turns his face toward his throat. Feels the rasp of his stubble against his cheek.
“Derek, I don’t want to die in this house. No offence!”
“You’re not going to die here.” Derek splays a hand against Stiles’s lower back. “Also, no offence? Really?”
“Okay.” Stiles sucks in a breath. It smells of Derek. “That came out wrong. I don’t mean that this place is like the secret elephant burial grounds for your family or anything. I mean, I know none of them meant to die here. And it’s not like I’m too good to die where they did or anything… Fuck. I’m just making it worse, aren’t I?”
“Mmmm.” Derek rubs his back. “Keep talking if you want.”
“Stop being so nice to me. If you’re nice to me, I know you think we’re going to die.” He keeps his eyes shut, but he can feel Derek turning his head from side to side. “It’s all around us, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Keep your eyes closed.”
Stiles can’t breathe. “D-Derek!” There’s a weight pressing on his chest. He’s going to be sick. Can’t breathe. “Derek, I get—I get panic attacks.”
“Shh. It’s okay.” Derek holds him tighter.
Only people who don’t get panic attacks say shit like ‘It’s okay.’ And Stiles would totally tear strips of Derek for being a condescending dick if he could only fucking breathe right now. Hot tears sting his eyes, and yeah, now he’s hyperventilating, and he needs to get the fuck out of here, except Derek won’t let him move, because the only thing keeping them alive at this moment is standing on Peter Hale’s rotting fucking corpse. Panic claws at Stiles’s throat, and he sobs into Derek’s neck.
Then he hears footsteps.
He lifts his head and opens his eyes before he can stop himself.
It’s a girl. A teenage girl. Pretty. Glowing green eyes.
For a moment Stiles is more intrigued than terrified. She’s so beautiful that his breath catches in his throat. She smiles, and Derek growls lowly, the noise rumbling through his chest, vibrating against Stiles, and it almost sounds more possessive than protective. If they were at a club right now and Derek made that noise when some girl smiled at Stiles, it would be totally hot. But this isn’t a club, and that isn’t a girl, so the growl Derek makes is just fucking weird.
The Čudnovata holds out its hand.
Seriously? Stiles might be a hormonal sixteen-year-old boy, but he’s not completely stupid. It’s going to take more than a pretty face to get him to step off Peter Hale’s grave.
“Stiles,” the Čudnovata says. Its smile grows, something like electricity cracks in the air, and suddenly the girl’s gone and it’s his dad standing there. His dad. “I won’t hurt you, son.”
The illusion is good. Good enough that Stiles wishes it was true, but all the wishes in the world aren’t enough to make him forget what it is standing there, whatever face it’s wearing.
This is…pointless. These tricks won’t work on Stiles. And, out of the two of them, the Čudnovata has picked entirely the wrong target. Even if Stiles wanted to step toward it, Derek would never let him. It should have gone for Derek’s weaknesses—this is the place for them—instead of Stiles’s. So why hasn’t it?
And why didn’t it finish roasting the body of its first victim?
There’s something not right here.
Stiles closes his eyes again and takes a deep breath.
This is his brain. This is his brain on Adderall.
It wasn’t scared or distracted with its first victim. What could scare or distract a Čudnovata? It left that body there so it would be found. That body was bait, so who did it catch?
The police? Stiles? Derek?
Derek.
The alpha of Beacon Hills. Stiles doesn’t pretend to know how this works, but he can only presume that the Čudnovata feeds to make itself more powerful. It feeds on fear, Deaton said, but it also feeds on flesh. And how much power does the flesh of an alpha wolf have? Derek is probably chockfull of supernatural mojo.
Electricity crackles in the air again.
“It’s you,” Stiles says, opening his eyes.
Derek frowns at him.
“It wants you.” Stiles pulls one hand free from his belt loops and reaches up to cup his cheek. “I don’t know… I don’t know why it’s trying to get at me, though, why that would help it get at you.”
Derek growls again, and if Stiles wasn’t so afraid of imminent death he would totally be loving that sound.
“A spark thing,” he says. “Maybe it’s a spark thing.”
If it wants Derek’s supernatural mojo, maybe it wants Stiles’s as well. Deaton once said he was a spark, whatever the hell that means. Maybe he’d make a tasty little appetizer to the Čudnovata’s main course of char grilled werewolf.
“Yeah, a spark thing. That’s gotta be it, right?”
Derek’s eyes flash red. “Shut up, Stiles.”
The Čudnovata shifts again.
The dark-haired woman moving around them is beautiful. Of course she is. She’s Stiles’s mom.
“Oh.” Only a tiny sound, but it breaks something inside him, something Stiles didn’t know could be broken again. It’s his mom. “Mom?”
Derek’s fingers dig into his back. “Close your eyes, Stiles!”
No. He can’t do that. He knows it isn’t real, but it looks real and he’s so tired of photographs, of fading memories that crumble into dust when he tries to hold them tight. Just for once he wants this. He wants to see her turn her head and smile. He wants to see the way she moves, and the way that motion shifts strands of her hair, or ruffles her skirt. He wants to see her be alive again.
“Your mom’s dead,” Derek says. “She’s not here.”
He knows that. This isn’t fair. Why isn’t the Čudnovata tormenting Derek? This house is where all Derek’s ghosts belong. This is where Derek is most vulnerable. Why is it picking on him instead?
The Čudnovata’s laughter is full of light. “I’m right here!”
“She’s not here,” Derek repeats.
He knows. It breaks his heart, but he knows.
“We’re not moving,” Stiles tells the thing wearing his mom’s face. He can feel Derek’s fingers digging into his back, and, shit, they’re claws now, jabbing at him through his shirt. “You know this is going to be the most boring standoff in the history of standoffs, right? Because we’re not moving.”
It can’t get to him. Not like this. Not even with that face, or that voice. Wherever it dredged his memories from—the memories of how his mom looked, sounded, moved, smiled—it isn’t her, and it can’t know. It can’t.
It can’t know.
“Stiles,” the Čudnovata says, its voice soft and gentle, strained a little with what might be unshed tears. “Sweetheart. Why?”
***
“Mom?”
His dad wasn’t there.
The machine had stopped beeping, and his dad wasn’t there.
“Mom?”
And suddenly the room was full of nurses and doctors, and Stiles was pushed out of the way.
“Mom!”
Except it wasn’t his mom that came and got him. It was Scott’s mom. And even though Stiles was way too big to get picked up, she picked him up anyway, and carried him outside, and she was crying and making shushing noises and telling him his dad was on his way and he’d be okay, except he wouldn’t, and Stiles started screaming and screaming and screaming until he made himself vomit.
After that, he didn’t talk for a long time.
Not properly.
Days. Weeks. Months.
And when he finally did start talking again, when he discovered that he could distract himself from the silence with chatter, he never did tell his dad the truth.
He’d hated sitting there hour after hour, listening to that machine.
He’d wanted his mom to hurry up and die.
***
“Careful what you wish for, sweetheart,” the Čudnovata says.
Hot tears slide down Stiles’s cheeks. “Shut up.”
“Oh, honey. Don’t cry. You should be happy. You got what you wanted, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“But you did, baby. You wanted me to die!”
“Shut up!”
Derek growls again.
This is what the silence did to Stiles. This was what he heard from the moment the beeping stopped. You did this. You wanted this. You made this happen. And he’s spent half his life hearing those words in his head, but when he hears them in his own voice it isn’t so bad. Hearing them in her voice rips something open inside him, some old wound that never properly healed. Her voice cuts into him as cleanly as a scalpel, sharp and sudden, and by the time he feels the sting it’s already too late.
“Why, sweetheart? Why?”
Stiles wants to jam his hands over his ears. He wants to scream. It’s not his mom, and it’s not fair that it knows exactly what to say to hurt him. “Shut up! Derek, make it shut up!”
Derek’s growling again, the low rumble vibrating through both of them. He tenses, muscles shifting, and suddenly Stiles understands: this is the trap, right here. This is what the Čudnovata wants. It’s hurting Stiles because he’s the weak link here. It’s hurting him because it wants to make Derek angry enough to attack. It wants Derek to step off Peter’s grave.
“Derek!” Panic spikes in him. He curls his hand around the back of Derek’s neck. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean it. I’m okay.”
This is the trap, and somehow Stiles is the bait.
Somehow the Čudnovata knows what Stiles is only just figuring out: that Derek Hale will always come charging in to rescue him. And maybe that’s always been the case, but maybe it’s not just because Stiles is Scott’s weird friend and Derek wants Scott as a part of his pack. Maybe it’s not just because Derek just always happens to be in the right place at the right time, and saving Stiles would be less hassle than having to explain later why he didn’t. Maybe Derek always being there means more than Stiles has ever really considered. Maybe it means everything, even though Derek can’t say it.
“Oh,” Stiles says. He catches Derek’s gaze and holds it. Derek has beautiful fucking eyes. Stiles can see whole universes in them. “Oh.”
***
Nothing—nothing—is going to make him let go of Derek now.
And Derek’s rescuing him all over again, just by being here.
Just by holding him.
***
Deaton and Scott burst into the Hale house like they’re goddamn action heroes. Action heroes wearing scrubs and smelling of puppy urine, but still, Stiles counts it as a win. Then, screwing his eyes shut as he cops a face full of—is it chalk dust? Why the hell would it be chalk dust?—something, he flinches as the Čudnovata screams.
The Čudnovata, his mom, they sound the same, and his breath hitches and he tries to pull away—he knows it’s not really her, but it’s instinct—but Derek won’t let him move. The Čudnovata screams again, and Stiles remembers that sound from when his mom was in pain and there was nothing he could do except sit there and listen and cry. His mom didn’t scream—she was beyond screaming—but that’s the exact same sound Stiles’s heart made.
He opens his eyes, and tries to twist away from Derek.
“No,” Derek says, one hand on Stiles’s back, and the other cupping his face. His thumb swipes over his cheekbone, sliding through tears. “I’ve got you, Stiles.”
And then, when it’s all over, when the Čudnovata has vanished to fuck only knows where and Stiles is left standing in the Hale house covered in chalk dust, with Derek Hale holding him so close that they’re sharing breath between them, it’s suddenly pretty fucking awkward.
Stiles wants Derek to let him go, but, also, a part of him doesn’t.
But he knows the longer Derek holds him, the weirder it gets.
“Stiles,” Scott says at last, his voice tentative. “Do you want me to take you home, dude?”
That’s when Derek seems to shake himself awake. He stares at Stiles with something like horror in his eyes, and abruptly pushes him away.
It’s so sudden it’s like he pushed all Stiles’s breath out of him as well. It takes Stiles a moment to find his balance again, and longer still to find his breath.
“Yeah.” Stiles looks at Derek, but Derek’s turned away and is stalking up the stairs. “Yeah, Scott. Please.”
***
Stiles has had enough experience with supernatural life-threatening incidents to know that it never quite works out like it does in movies. There’s no big emotional moment where everybody hugs it out, or cries it out, or even fucks it out. Well, maybe some of the others fuck it out, but Stiles has never been invited to that sort of after party. Basically, if eating Cheetos and playing video games doesn’t count as psychological first aid, Stiles is out of options.
There is no outpouring of emotion, no tears, no desperate, magical kiss as the credits roll.
There’s just Stiles, letting himself into his dark, empty house.
So.
Just another moment when Derek Hale saved his life, right? By cuddling him, basically. And technically, Stiles supposes, it was Deaton and Scott who got rid of the Čudnovata. But it was Derek who kept Stiles alive long enough for them to get there.
Stiles can’t sleep when he goes to bed that night.
He sends Derek a text: That night we were gonna do it, did you want to or was I just a pity fuck?
He waits an hour for a reply before he remembers that Derek lost his phone.
Maybe that’s for the best. Maybe he doesn’t really want to know. Maybe what he felt today, what he was sure he felt before Derek pushed him away, was no more real than the sound of his mom’s laughter.
What he saw in Derek’s gaze, what he thought he saw…he doesn’t know anymore. There’s probably nothing between them at all, except Stiles’s wishful thinking, and the simple fact that Derek didn’t want him to die tonight.
He takes a Xanax and finally crashes out.
***
So fuck his life, and fuck that obviously defective Xanax, because less than three hours after he falls asleep he’s awake again, and it’s two in the morning and his dad’s still at work because he’s searching for a psycho killer who removes the skin of his victims, and he probably hasn’t slept in days and Stiles can’t even do him a favor and tell him to stop looking. So fuck everything.
Especially Derek.
Fuck him most of all.
(Stiles wishes.)
He goes online instead, gets involved in an argument about Marvel versus DC, then downloads a bunch of music he doesn’t even like but somehow totally gets stuck in his brain.
He heads downstairs at three to make a chocolate milk. Shut up. He can have a chocolate milk if he wants. Chocolate milk isn’t just for kindergarteners. Then he goes back upstairs, takes stock of what music he just downloaded, and wondered what the fuck he was thinking.
Still, who even cares?
Nobody, that’s who.
Stiles can drink chocolate milk and sing along to manufactured pop songs in the middle of the night, not because he’s sad and pathetic, but because he’s a fucking boss.
***
Stiles wakes up face-down on the couch wearing his underwear and a chocolate milk mustache.
“Tell me you didn’t sleep here,” his dad says.
“I didn’t sleep here,” Stiles says obediently.
His dad shakes his head and wanders back toward the kitchen.
Stiles gets up, stretches, scratches his stomach, and follows him. “Speaking of inappropriate sleep behavior, is there any chance of you becoming diurnal again in the near future? Or are you evolving into some sort of bat?”
John hits the button on the coffee machine. “I’ll grab a few hours now, then I’m going back into work after lunch.”
Stiles pushes past him and turns the machine off.
“Hey!”
“No caffeine for you. I’ll bet you’ve been drinking coffee all night. I’ll make you a smoothie.”
“I want a damned coffee.” There’s no fight in his tone though.
“You’re having a banana and spinach smoothie. With skim milk.”
“Damn.” His dad sits down at the kitchen table. “How about you? You weren’t up all night playing video games, were you?”
Stiles rattles around in the refrigerator looking for the spinach. “Actually, I wasn’t. First I couldn’t sleep so I came downstairs, then I guess I crashed out on the couch.”
“Do we need to talk to the doctor about your meds?”
Stiles shoves a handful of spinach leaves into the blender, and follows it with a banana and milk. He’d totally throw some carrot in there as well, if he even thought for a second his dad would let him get away with it. “No. No, Dad, I’m…”
And for what feels like the first time in his life, he doesn’t know how to finish a sentence. He looks down at his hand on the lid of the blender, and his fingers are shaking.
“Stiles?”
He wants to tell his dad that yesterday he saw his mom’s face again, and heard her laugh, and her voice, and he wants it to be a good thing. He doesn’t want to tell his dad about the things she said that cut him to the quick. The wounds she carved open again.
“Stiles.” His dad’s voice is pitched low with concern, and suddenly he’s right there, hands on Stiles’s shoulders, turning him into an embrace that a part of Stiles insists he’s too old for, but it feels so nice he doesn’t resist. “Hey. What’s going on with you?”
Stiles doesn’t even begin to know how to answer that.
“Is this about that boy?” his dad asks. “Because you say the word, and I’ll—”
Stiles snorts.
“So it’s not about a boy?” His dad pats his back and then asks, cautiously: “A girl?”
Stiles wishes his life was such a teenage cliché that his problems were that simple.
His dad sighs, and for a long time they just stand there in the kitchen, holding one another.
“Do you miss her?” Stiles asks eventually into his dad’s shoulder.
“Every day, kid.” The breath shudders out of him. “Every single day.”
Stiles wants to tell him, but he can’t.
He wants to say “Dad, I wanted her to hurry up and die” and he wants his dad to say, “Stiles, you were a kid. You were a kid who didn’t know how to deal with watching your mom die. It wasn’t your fault.”
But he doesn’t.
Stiles decides that guilt, like unrequited love, is easier borne alone. It’s bad enough it exists at all, but he doesn’t need to share it with his dad. Stiles loves his dad. He doesn’t ever want to do anything that might change that. And it won’t, of course it won’t—this is the man who gave him the talk about the bees and the bees, after all—but that doesn’t mean Stiles can shut out that insidious voice at the back of his head that whispers: But it could.
He can’t risk that.
He won’t.
“I’m okay,” he says, pulling back and forcing a smile. “I guess I had weird dreams about mom or something.”
His dad’s face is creased with concern. “You sure, kiddo?”
“Yeah.” He shakes it off. “Yeah, I’m good.”
He turns the blender on to put an end to the conversation.
Denial is the best thing ever.
***
“Are you okay?” Scott asks him that afternoon at practice.
Before Stiles can even answer, he’s tripping over the crosse that some douche has shoved between his ankles.
“You suck, Stilinski,” Jackson says, looming over him once he’s hit the ground.
Stiles grabs Scott’s wrist before he wolfs out.
“You know,” he says, hauling himself to his feet. “Fuck this, I’m going home.”
***
Stiles is not dancing to Ugly Heart when it happens. Not at all. Because he is not the sort of guy who goes looking for validation for his angsty teenage emotions in popular songs. It’s just a crazy coincidence that Derek is cover boy pretty with an ugly heart. (And it is such a pity.)
So he’s not dancing to Ugly Heart, and he’s not belting the lyrics out at the top of his lungs, and he’s not totally absolutely fucking mortified when he spins around to find Derek Hale climbing in his window.
Well fuck his life. Again.
Stiles drops his iPod on the floor. “And we’ll never speak of that again.”
That can’t be the hint of a smile on Derek’s cover boy pretty face, can it?
Stiles tries for a smile of his own. It probably misfires. “We’ll add it to the list.”
“The list?” Derek leans against his wall and folds his arms over his chest.
“The list of things we’ll never talk about,” Stiles informs him.
Derek raises his eyebrows. “Such as?”
“Nuh uh uh. Because we’re not talking about them. There is literally no point in having a list of things we’re not going to talk about, if we then talk about what’s on the list. This list needs to be the Fight Club of lists.”
Derek nods slowly. “But maybe I should know what’s on the list, just so I don’t accidentally bring something up in conversation.”
Stiles almost laughs. “Since when do you accidentally bring anything up in conversation? Since when do you have a conversation?”
Derek narrows his eyes. “Isn’t that what we’re doing now?”
“This is more like banter,” Stiles says. “It’s the conversation we have when we’re not actually having a conversation.”
Derek does something complicated with his eyebrows. “Stiles.”
Stiles doesn’t like the way his heartbeat skips when Derek says his name. He also doesn’t like the way that Derek can probably hear it. “What?”
“Don’t you ever shut up?”
“No. No I don’t. Apart from sleep, I guess.” Stiles bends down and picks up his iPod. Plays with the cord. “Well, I’m not actually sure. It’s highly possible that I talk in my sleep. I’ve never actually recorded myself to find out. Because it would either be weird and a little bit creepy, or incredibly boring. No good can come of it either way.”
“Stiles.”
Stiles swallows. “What?”
“What happens when you’re quiet?”
That was not what he was expecting Derek to say. Okay, he has no idea what he was expecting, but he’s pretty sure it wasn’t anything like that.
“No,” he says, and crosses the floor to stand in front of Derek. “No.”
“No?”
“No!” Stiles pushes him. It has exactly the same effect as pushing a brick wall. None at all. “That’s not how this works. You’re doing it wrong!”
Derek catches his wrists. “What am I doing wrong?”
Stiles stares at Derek’s fingers, wrapped around his wrists. He absolutely should not find that as hot as he does. Any second now he’ll sport an awkward boner.
Derek growls when he doesn’t answer.
And oh, there’s his boner. Fucking great.
Stiles pulls free, absurdly grateful that Derek lets it happen. “No, we’re not talking about the things on the list. And if we were, we’d talk about you and me, okay, not just me. Because that’s how it works. I’d talk and you’d listen, and then we’d swap, and we’d keep doing it until it was all sorted out, okay? That’s how it works.”
“How what works?”
“People, Derek. People.” Stiles groans. “You are fucking impossible! You do this all the time. Just when I think I’ve got you figured out, just when I think we’re on the same page, suddenly you’ve backed the fuck off and I don’t even think we’re in the same book anymore.” He holds up a hand to forestall Derek’s objection. “That was a metaphor. Just go with it.”
Derek presses his lips together and nods curtly.
“Thank you.” Stiles rubs the heel of his hand over his buzz cut. “So tell me, please, if apparently we’re not going to repress it, what was yesterday?”
“Yesterday?”
“Yeah, you remember, when we were pretty much dry humping on your uncle’s grave.”
Derek’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Okay, so maybe that’s not exactly how you remember it. Me neither. But it wasn’t exactly a buddy hug, was it? A hug between buddies? Because I don’t think Scott’s ever hugged me like that.” He holds Derek’s gaze, and exhales slowly. Shrugs. Lets all his attitude out with his breath, and feels suddenly, achingly naked. “It, um, it felt like something else. Was it?”
Derek’s eyes widen slightly. He jerks his head in a nod. “Yes.”
Stile’s heart skips a beat. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
Stiles can hardly hear him over the rush of blood in his skull. “Um. Okay.” His breath catches. He swallows. “No, actually, not okay. You need to expand on that a little.”
Derek narrows his eyes, and says, through gritted teeth, “I have feelings for you.”
“Tingly feelings, or homicidal feelings?” Because at the moment Stiles is afraid it’s the second one.
“Stiles.” Derek looks like he’s about to have an aneurism. “Do not make me say tingly.”
A laugh Stiles didn’t even know he was capable of bubbles up from somewhere deep inside him. “Oh, sweet zombie Jesus. You. Just. Did!”
“Shut up,” Derek says, but that’s definitely a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. And then it’s gone again, and Derek’s brows knit together. “Last time…I didn’t mean… I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I said it wrong.”
“You say everything wrong,” Stiles tells him helpfully.
“I know.”
“But you’re doing okay now,” Stiles concedes. “Anything else you want to get off your chest?”
Derek raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, you don’t suck. Your teammates are just assholes.”
Stiles grins.
“And…” Derek hesitates. “And if what the Čudnovata said was true—”
“It was.” His stomach hurts. He reaches out and, half-afraid that Derek will pull away, touches Derek’s hand. He brushes his fingertips over Derek’s knuckles and shivers when Derek turns his hand so their fingers can entwine. “It was true.”
Stiles doesn’t need Derek’s validation or whatever. His ego isn’t that fragile. But it’s more of a relief than he can even hope to articulate when Derek raises their clasped hands, then dips his head and brushes his lips across Stiles’s knuckles.
He doesn’t say anything, but that’s okay. Right now, in this moment, Stiles doesn’t need words. He closes his eyes as Derek’s breath warms his fingers. He shivers, and then ruins the moment by snorting.
“I take back everything I ever said about having a list of things we don’t talk about. Because when we talk, dude, look what fucking happens!”
Derek squeezes his hand.
“But also,” Stiles says, “if we can stop the talking and get to the making out, that would be totally awesome.”
Derek growls, and backs him into the wall.
And it is awesome.
***
Derek’s hands are hot, almost as hot as his mouth, and they’re everywhere at once. Not in a creepy way; Stiles is totally on board with this. Every pass of Derek’s hands up Stiles’s sides, under his shirt, his fingertips following the ridges and dips of his ribcage, makes him squirm. Derek’s stubble rasps against his collarbone as he lays a trail of hot kisses around Stiles’s throat. He sucks on Stiles’s throat for a moment, and it’s hot and a little bit dangerous—jugular, meet wolf—but it’s so fucking incredible that all Stiles can do is moan and try not to slam his head too hard against his wall. Because ouch.
“Derek. Derek!” Stiles grabs him by the hair, because as incredible as it is to have Derek’s mouth on his throat, he needs Derek’s mouth on his mouth. Right now. Immediately. “Here. Here.”
Derek makes a low sound in his throat, and licks a stripe up Stiles’s neck.
“Oh, fuck.”
Derek is not playing fair. No, he is not.
Derek slides his hands down Stiles’s lower back, and then lower still, and suddenly—Stiles isn’t entirely sure how it happens, but it probably has something to do with werewolf strength—he’s lifting Stiles, and it’s the most obvious thing in the world for Stiles to wrap his legs around Derek’s hips and try and get some friction on his dick. On both their dicks, hopefully.
“Nuh uh.” Derek grins at him, showing fangs. He pushes Stiles against the wall again, keeping one hand under his ass. His other hand catches Stiles’s wrists and shoves them up above his head, and Stiles is suddenly helpless. And, if his dick has anything to say about it, totally happy about that.
“Derek, c’mon!” Stiles juts his chin out, his mouth seeking Derek’s, and Derek relents at last.
His first kiss. It’s a lot less romantic comedy and a lot more porntastic than Stiles had imagined, but he’s not complaining. At all. Actually, he might be complaining. He’s making a sound that’s embarrassingly like a whimper, not because he doesn’t like what’s going on here, but because he wants more. Whatever Derek Fucking Hale is selling, Stiles is buying.
Derek’s mouth is hot, the press of his lips firm. The slide of his tongue, first against the seam of Stiles’s lips, easing it open, and then pushing forward into his mouth, is intense. Stiles squirms, moans, and embarrasses himself in a million minute ways as they kiss, and he doesn’t even care. Maybe later he’ll be mortified at being such a totally awkward virgin—he might as well wear a flashing neon sign—but for now he’ll just ride this crazy train as far as it goes.
Not that Derek’s a crazy train.
Stiles absolutely wants to ride him though.
He wrenches his mouth free. “This whole time, did you like me?”
“Yes.” Derek’s breath is hot against his face.
“Wow.” Stiles really wishes he had that My Little Pony Journal after all. Because right next to the page entitled “Squishy and Tingly Feelings I Have For Derek Hale”, there should be a page entitled “Squishy and Tingly Feelings Derek Hale Finally Admitted He Has For Me.” And maybe, just maybe, Derek didn’t mean to be a total dick this whole time after all. Maybe he’s just seriously god-awful at communicating with anything apart from his eyebrows. “Really?”
Derek gives a frustrated growl. “Yes!”
“Right,” Stiles says, panting. “More kissing, yes.”
Because even if he didn’t mean it Derek was a total dick, and Stiles is not giving him a pass on that, but it’s certainly something he can put aside for now and deal with later, when they’ve got their other pressing needs, like Stiles’s erection—and fine, sure, Derek’s too—out of the way.
“More kissing, Derek, and then I want you to fuck me.”
Well, look at him prioritizing like an adult.
***
Fifteen minutes later they’re tangled up on Stiles’s bed, Stiles’s shirt is on the floor, and if Derek doesn’t get Stiles’s jeans off immediately, there will be trouble. Big trouble.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Stiles grunts, and pops the button on his fly. “It’s not that hard!”
Derek stills above him, and grins. “Are you sure about that?”
He puts his hand on Stiles’s jeans, right over his dick. And somehow puts a few thousand volts of electricity through him. Stiles almost jack-knifes off the mattress.
“Derek!” He flops back down again, gasping for breath. “Holy shit! You might want to take it easy, I think I’m on kind of a hair trigger here.”
Derek leans down over him and nips at his bottom lip. “Wanna see you come.”
“Oh.” Stiles’s breath whooshes out of him. “In that case, carry on.”
Derek rubs his jaw against Stiles’s cheek, and the rasp of his stubble is just insane. Seriously, Stiles has no idea why something like that should set his whole body alight, but there’s no point questioning it. It’s apparently a thing that exists, like gravity. It’s inescapable.
“Oh my god,” Stiles whimpers. This is going to be over embarrassingly fast. Like he’s thirteen years old and just discovered Redtube fast.
Derek tugs Stiles's zip open, and that tiny rasp of metal teeth has never sounded more laden. Stiles will probably never be able to take his jeans off without thinking right back to this moment. Then, suddenly, his jeans are around his thighs and—holy crap—so is his Batman underwear.
Derek leans up suddenly. He grabs the hem of his Henley and pulls it over his head.
“Holy shit,” Stiles whispers, awestruck, because who has abs like that? Those shouldn’t exist outside of fantasy. Then Derek is unfastening his own jeans and Stiles’s brain just shorts out.
Gone.
Popped like a light bulb.
Nothing but static.
He’s staring at Derek Fucking Hale’s dick.
Sweet. Zombie. Jesus. He wants it. He wants it in every conceivable way. To touch it, to taste it, and to take it all the way inside him. Shit. Is he ready for that? He doesn’t know. He also doesn’t want to overthink it, because it seems that right now would be a really good time to keep his brain offline and just work purely on instinct. He doesn’t need anything else—like worrying about how much it might hurt, or how he has no fucking idea what he’s doing and will probably be terrible at it—getting in the way.
“Stiles?”
“Mmm?” Oh, that’s right, eye contact. Derek has eyes too.
Derek hooks a finger under Stiles’s chin, and angles his face up for a gentle kiss. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes. Fuck, yes. Or, yes, fuck.”
“Have you got lube?”
He’s a hormonal teenage boy who’s in charge of the grocery shopping. Of course he’s got lube. “Top drawer. Condoms too, if, um, if we need them.”
“I can’t catch or transmit STIs, so it’s your call.”
“I am totally good with no condom.” Stiles does not need his dad finding a used condom in the garbage. Not that his dad roots through the garbage looking for such things, but why risk it?
Derek leans over to haul the drawer of the nightstand open, while Stiles wriggles the rest of the way out of his jeans. Then Derek’s lying beside him, holding the tube, and shit just got totally real. A part of Stiles would prefer that Derek not hold his gaze while his fingers are heading south, because it’s a bit weird. Why can’t things like preparation happen in some sort of magical haze, and they can jump straight from foreplay to fucking without any awkwardness between? He flinches when Derek’s lube-slippery fingers graze his pubes—should he have shaved? Waxed?—then bypass his dick and balls, and hone in unerringly on his hole. Stiles can feel his face burning.
“Are you sure?”
Stiles nods. “Yeah.”
The first press of Derek’s finger inside him just feels weird. Like weird enough that Stiles wonders if all porn that has ever existed has lied or, more likely, if there’s something wrong with him. Wouldn’t that be just his luck? He gets turned on in a stiff breeze, but he’s so defective it turns out he doesn’t like sex. He’ll be doomed to jack off for the rest of his life which, although it’s great, Stiles had hoped wouldn’t hold a candle to the real deal.
Just when he’s wondering how he’s going to fake some enthusiasm for this, Derek twists his finger in deeper, and curls it or something, and holyshitfuckchristballs that’s gotta be his prostate. “Jesus!”
“You like that?”
“No, I just picked now to find religion,” Stiles mutters, because fuck Derek’s stupid hot smug face. And Derek actually smiles. Honest-to-god smiles, and when he leans down to press his mouth against Stiles’s he huffs out a breath that might almost be a laugh. And Stiles did that. He kisses Derek back more fiercely, bravely, because he made Derek Hale almost laugh, and that’s like a legit fucking superpower. “Come on. Do more dirty things to me.”
And this time it’s definitely a laugh, and Stiles beams in response. For a moment, at least, because then Derek’s working a second finger inside him and things are getting totally serious. It feels weird. Good weird. Each press of Derek’s fingers lights Stiles up from the inside, and he squirms, and before he knows it he’s actually rocking back and forth a little on Derek’s fingers, and he can’t quite catch his breath. Derek is stretching him, and it aches, but it also feels like the best thing in the world.
Sex is complicated. Good complicated.
“Derek. Derek, Derek.”
“Okay.” Derek draws his fingers out, and Stiles grumbles at their loss. Then Derek’s hands are on his thighs, pushing his legs up, opening them more, making space for Derek to kneel between them.
“Oh shit.” When he feels the hot, blunt head of Derek’s cock pressing against his hole, Stiles has a momentary panic-flail. Derek soothes it away with a line of kisses up his throat and jaw, until Stiles is sinking into the mattress. Then Derek presses in, and holyjesusfuckstick there’s no going back now. Derek Hale’s dick is in his ass. This is momentous. This is life changing. He should tweet this. Where did he leave his phone?
“Stiles.” Derek narrows his eyes. “Focus.”
Busted.
Stiles pulls him close for a messy kiss. “You have my undivided attention, sourwolf.”
And then he really does, because the ache sharpens a little, and it’s an actual hurt, and Stiles sucks in a quick breath.
“Okay?”
Stiles doesn’t know if he wants it out, or further in. “Just, um, just go slow?”
Derek goes fucking glacial, each tiny increment of forward movement accompanied by a kiss, or a touch, or some indistinct comforting murmur. And slowly, so fucking slowly, the ache loses its sharp edge of pain, and transforms into something else. It’s want. Stiles’s dick hardens again, and suddenly everything is right with the world, and they’ve fallen into a rhythm that even Stiles’s uncoordinated body can follow, and it feels good. Really, really good. He wants more.
“Oh, fuck. Derek, fuck.”
Luckily Derek can read between the lines, because he picks up the pace. And wow, werewolf stamina is going to be fun to explore. Stiles works a hand between their bodies and wraps his fingers around his dick. Each thrust jolts his prostate, jolts his hand, and jolts his dick. He could do this for hours, except he’s so fucking close already.
When Derek growls and bites his throat, he’s done.
Seriously done, in a shuddering mess of flailing limbs and explosive bodily fluids. When he clenches around Derek’s dick Derek is done as well, and holy crap, it was his first time and they both came pretty much together. He is clearly a sex god. High five!
“High five,” he mumbles, and tries to raise a floppy hand.
Derek just growls gently into his throat before rolling off him.
They lie there, limbs tangled together still, and Stiles tries to remember how to breathe. Then he tries to remember how not to freak out. Because he just had sex with Derek Fucking Hale.
“Stiles.” Derek rubs his chest. “I can hear you freaking out.”
“Actually, this is a pre-freak out,” Stiles tells him. “When it’s the real thing, you’ll know it.”
Derek lifts himself up onto one elbow and glares at him. “Stop it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Stop it.” Derek’s glare darkens. “You’re not allowed to freak out about this.”
“Oh, and you’re somehow going to stop it, are you? With your scary sourwolfiness?”
Derek huffs. “Yes.”
It’s the most ridiculous thing Stiles has ever heard.
He laughs so hard he completely forgets to freak out.
***
They don’t talk.
Not exactly. But after Derek gets dressed he kisses Stiles so slowly that he almost melts, and then says he’ll see him tomorrow.
So they don’t talk. But it doesn’t matter.
Sometimes they don’t need to talk.
It turns out silence isn’t always as scary as Stiles thought.
***
At school the next day, Scott gives him a weird look in homeroom, followed by a slow sniff, and then vanishes. He’s back before lunch, when he presents Stiles with an embarrassed grin and a balloon animal. It could be a giraffe. Or a poodle. Stiles isn’t really sure.
“A balloon animal, really?” Stiles can’t help his grin. “Thanks, Scotty.”
Scott gives him the tightest bro-hug known to mankind, and then ruins it all by saying, “I still think he’s kind of a dick.”
Stiles smacks him on the head with his giraffe-poodle. “Hey, that’s my kind-of-boyfriend you’re talking about.”
Scott grins. “And how are you going to break it to your dad that your kind-of-boyfriend is an ex-murder suspect in his twenties?”
Fuck Scott.
And fuck his life.
Stiles figures he needs some time to adjust to all of this before he even thinks about breaking it to his dad. Probably about a decade or so. Yeah, a decade should do it.
***
It takes Derek another week to get around to buying a new phone.
Derek is in Stiles’s room, in Stiles’s bed, when he turns it on and all his old text messages start coming through.
Stiles hears when Derek makes a noise caught somewhere between hurt and surprise, and he remembers, his face burning, the text message he sent the night that Derek saved him from the Čudnovata: That night we were gonna do it, did you want to or was I just a pity fuck?
His own phone buzzes. His heart races as he looks down at the screen.
You are the best thing in my life.
Stiles is absolutely not choking up. He looks up and smiles at Derek, and Derek smiles back at him, and then Stiles is climbing into his lap, twining his arms around his throat and kissing him.
He’s so happy he could...
No. He’s not going to cry.
But he might have to invest in that My Little Pony journal after all, because it turns out he’s got a lot of feels right now and maybe, just maybe, they’re worth recording.
“You’re not so bad yourself, Derek Fucking Hale,” he says, and Derek grins, laughs, and buries his face in Stiles’s neck.