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Derek’s spent the last three weeks trusting complete strangers with his life. He doesn’t trust easy. Years being chained and degraded, treated as an animal will do that to a person. Though before his family was captured and sold, even then he was more reserved than his sisters, thoughtful and serious. Laura had always laughed at him, gently ribbing his careful fastidiousness.
Still, it doesn’t quite sit right that his current Safehouse is the home of a local Sheriff, that the man hiding Derek from the slave hunters is a lawman. Derek listens tensely for signs of lies, but everything is steady. Eyes and hands and hearts.
“You’re alright, son,” Sheriff Stilinski says, gentle and firm. “We got you now. You’re safe.” He couldn’t possibly guarantee that, but still there’s no trace of a lie in the rhythm of his heart as he says it and for that Derek is foolishly grateful.
The ‘we’ he speaks of only extends as far as his son, a tall boy with a lively, inquisitive face. Several times he looks like he’s going to say something as the Sheriff leads Derek to a sloping attic room, but each time he stops himself before uttering a word. His eyes are wide and brown, and his shoulders are filling out into adulthood. He may never be handsome, but he is appealing with his slightly snub nose and long eyelashes.
“You got a name?” the Sheriff asks.
“Derek.” He wants nothing more than to drop onto the bed and sleep for a week, but he stays on his feet, head drooping. He sees the son once again open his mouth as if to speak, but still nothing comes out. He looks like a fish.
“I’m John,” is the reply from the Sheriff. “And this is my son, Stiles. He’ll look after you as my job requires me to be out at all hours and I don’t want to arouse suspicion. If anyone forces their way into the house you’ll hear them right away, so hide yourself in here.”
The Sheriff pushes at a wooden panel in the wall and reveals a narrow space just big enough for a man to sit with his legs pulled up to his chest. Derek has seen and used worse in his flight north so he just nods his understanding.
“I’m headed into the station for my shift - I’m pulling a double, so you won’t see me for two days or so. Stiles will be around and he’ll bring you food. You look like you could do with a square meal or two. Welcome to my home, Derek. I only wish it could have been under happier circumstance.” He moves to place a hand on Derek’s shoulder, but Derek flinches and the touch never lands
-
Derek doesn’t sleep for a week as he thought he would, but still he sleeps more soundly in the Stilinski's rickety, iron bed than he has anywhere else on the road.
When he wakes, some twenty odd hours after arriving at the Sheriff’s home, he guesses, there is a tray on a ladder backed chair by his bed. A pitcher of water, cold tomato soup and a cold grilled cheese sandwich. Nothing has ever tasted better. Derek chooses not to think about Stiles visiting the room while he was so dead to the world that the arrival of hot food hadn’t been enough to disturbed him from sleep. Thinking on it too much feels a little like drowning.
Derek thinks maybe it’s mid morning and the meal is from the previous evening. He doesn’t move, except to pull off the flat sheet and adjust his pillow.
If he listens carefully he can hear Stiles, moving around downstairs. The young man mutters to himself a lot, so he’s clearly not mute which Derek had initially suspected him of being. It sounds like he really dislikes someone named Harris and is infatuated with a girl called Lydia.
He stops listening and drifts off into semi-consciousness.
-
The days pass. The Sheriff has been up twice, the last time to say that slave hunters are in town and they can’t move Derek on to the next Safehouse for fear of discovery. Derek makes fists with his hands, trying to stop the shaking. The hunters have been on his tail for weeks ever since his escape, but he’d hoped that he finally shook them off just before he reached Beacon Hills.
“They’re causing real problems,” John says, running a hand over his tired face. “They come into my jurisdiction like they have authority, which technically they don’t but putting up too much of a resistance to their help will come across as suspicious. I know other sheriffs are welcoming of hunters, especially Argents. And Mayor Taylor’s a staunch supporter of the Were’ Act of ‘99, so I have to tread lightly while everyone is jumped up and excited about the hunt. Sorry son, but you’re with us a little longer than we could have predicted.”
Derek nods and says, “Okay.”
Stiles is leaning in the doorway. “Gerard’s a prick.”
“Stiles, language,” his father censures. Derek shivers at the name, recognizing it as the patriarch of the Argent family. Stiles rolls his eyes at his dad.
“Fine. Gerard’s a penis.”
This startles a laugh from Derek, unexpected by everyone, even himself. The two Stilinski men turn to him in surprise and Derek blushes. He doesn’t know what to say, he’s about to apologise on reflex, but the Sheriff’s soft chuckle stops him.
“My son does have a way with words.” He claps his hands together and makes to leave. “Hold tight, Derek. We’ll wait out this hunter storm.”
Derek says, “Okay” again, because he has nothing else left in him. What comes will come.
-
Stiles can definitely talk. He pretty much never shuts up, Derek’s discovered. It’s astonishing that he’d managed to keep himself silent when Derek first showed up at the house. Probably just goes to show how bad Derek must have looked to keep Stiles’ words at bay so completely.
“You know Gerard Argent?” he asks when he visits Derek with lunch the next day. He’s nosey and Derek’s come to expect the endless questions but this particular one has him dropping his fork on the plate with a clatter.
“Yeah,” he says, aware he’s glaring at his food. “I was property of the Argent’s, specifically Gerard’s youngest. Kate.”
Stiles whistles low. “You escaped from Papa Argent and his devil spawn? Jesus. You have some big, hairy ass balls, dude.”
“Derek, not dude.”
“Sorry.” A pause. “But I still stand by what I said about your balls.” He grins and wiggles his eyebrows, falling way short of actually being sexy. Derek snorts.
“I brought you something,” Stiles says, changing the subject easily. He tosses a small object over to Derek, who catches it on reflex. It’s a book. “Thought you might be bored cooped up here all day every day. The Argents and their posse of trigger-happy asshats don’t look set on fucking off anytime soon. You haven’t read it already, have you?”
Derek looks at the cover, trying to hold back what feels like actual tears of disbelief and gratitude. Too many people assumed he couldn’t read. It’s a slim book, much thumbed through - clearly a favorite with either Stiles or the Sheriff. True Grit. Charles Portis. Derek is surprised at how overwhelmed he feels.
“No,” Derek grinds out, sounding waspish and sullen in an attempt not to let his emotions get the better of him. “I’ve heard of it, but no. You didn’t have to.” He sounds so ungrateful, a real shit, but he’s never been good with words. Stiles shifts his feet around awkwardly.
“No problemo, man. I love that book, always puts me in a good mood. My mom read it out loud to me as a kid, before she… well. I hope you like it too.”
Derek looks up at Stiles who has his hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders tense.
“I’ll read it.” He means it - with all his heart he means it.
-
As he drifts to sleep that night, having read the first chapter of True Grit, Derek thinks that he could have landed somewhere worse than with a Sheriff and his son.
-
The first Safehouse Derek used after escaping the Argents was the home of a preacher. An honest to goodness fire and brimstone man of the cloth, an iron cross swinging from his thick neck and a shotgun in hand. Derek thought he’d been foiled before he’d even made it ten miles from the Argent compound. But the preacher had pulled him into a little clapboard church with surprisingly strong, gentle hands.
His name was Pastor McIvers but that’s all Derek ever really learned. The preacher spoke little, his demeanor entirely stone and flint. He’d pushed Derek towards the vestry, one hand holding his shotgun by the barrel, ready for anything but not threatening Derek with it. A sniff told Derek that the bullets were normal, not wolfsbane. Inside the vestry he’d heaved aside a heavy armoire to reveal a hatch in the wall. Derek climbed into the cramped dark space, the smell of must filling his senses and making him feel drowned. There was a flask on the floor. He shook it and it sloshed; water.
“I’m a Shepherd by code and by calling,” McIvers explained gruffly. “Stay quiet - I’ve seen hunting parties in the area. I’ll come for you when it’s time to go.”
Derek was in that room for nearly three days, just sipping at water and pissing into an empty screw-top bottle. It was hot and dark and suffocating but Derek bore it - anything to escape the hell of Kate.
When Derek had left McIvers’ church he’d been given the directions and name of this next Shepherd; Tiller, a businessman some fifteen miles north-east.
After Tiller - whose wife, Rebecca, had given Derek clean clothes and a sturdy pair of boots - it had been a long string of quiet, dedicated Shepherds who sheltered Derek as he fled. There was Jonny Vickers the chemist who wore polkadot bowties, AJ the tattoo artist with piercings in his eyebrow and tongue, school teacher Paulina Merrison and her daughters, Connie and Beth. Connie had knitted Derek a hat, presenting it with a dimpled smile as they wished him luck in finding his next Safehouse in Beacon Hills.
And now his new Shepherd is John Stilinski and Stiles, Stiles who gave him a book to read, who brought him food and talked to him like a real person. It humbles Derek to know that there are people who don’t believe that Weres should be enslaved and traded as chattel, locked up like beasts.
He tells Stiles some of what his escape has been like, the people he’s met, and Stiles listens with rapt attention. The boy probably spends more time than is wise sitting in the attic with Derek instead of going out and meeting with friends and living his life. Derek worries over this and finally brings it up one afternoon, eyebrows drawn together in determination. He wants Stiles to keep talking, to keep staying, but not if it puts either of them in danger.
“Naw, dude,” Stiles says carelessly. “I only really have one good friend, Scott McCall, and he’s out of town visiting his dad. No one expects me to be up to much without him. I get way too many conjoined twin jokes when I do, stuff about being joint at the hip which wasn’t funny the first time I heard it. I go to school but outside of that I really just stop by the library or check in on Dad at the station to make sure he’s not eating anything sugary and deep fried.”
Stiles shrugs like it doesn’t bother him to say he’s not got many friends, or that his only family works their ass off and is hardly ever home, that Stiles is clearly lonely. Derek doesn’t press.
-
“Why aren’t the hunters moving on?” Derek asks the Sheriff, who stands at the doorway in a rumpled uniform, arms folded. It’s nearly midnight on a Saturday and the hunters have been in Beacon Hills for a week. Stiles is sitting at the foot of Derek’s bed, homework spread around him in piles and a highlighter stuck in his mouth. He looks suddenly very serious, and much older than seventeen. “Do they suspect I’m here?”
“Unfortunately, I think they do. Not that I’m your Shepherd, but certainly that your Safehouse is somewhere in Beacon Hills County. Gerard is working the town into a froth and I’m worried that they’re going to start demanding we go door to door searching for you.”
“They can’t just search our houses without some kind of warrant,” Stiles says indignantly, arms flailing out in anger.
“Technically no, but Victoria Argent has just arrived in town to help her father-in-law with the trickier politics of this kind of hunt. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mayor Taylor looks the other way - and expects me to do so as well.”
“Victoria Argent!” Stiles sounds incredulous. Derek closes his eyes and breathes, tries not to remember her face and the cold touch of her fingers when they shackled the collar around his neck.
“What the hell,” Stiles continues, shaking his head. “Who are you, Derek? These aren’t just any hunters. This whole business seems very personal to the Argents.”
“Stiles,” the Sheriff chides. “Derek doesn’t have to tell us anything he doesn’t wish to - we are not owed his life story.”
Derek sucks in a heavy breath at this. He knows it would offer clarity if he were to tell them he was a Hale. Everyone knows of the Hale pack and the age-old rivalry with the Argents, knows that the Argents won the feud and the Hales are now scattered across the country, collared and toothless. There are always rumoured sightings of Hales in the newswires and on television, but the public don’t know what’s become of them, not really. They are living, breathing urban legends. Though Derek supposes he doesn’t know if they are all living anymore, he can only vouch for his own continued survival.
But so much of himself has been forced into the light by other people and he’s not quite ready to let go of this part voluntarily, no matter how much he’s coming to trust the Stilinskis. It is the last thing he owns. So he keeps silent about being a Hale. Just for a little while longer, he tells himself.
The Sheriff doesn’t seem surprised by his silence. Stiles tries not to ask more questions, and makes a good effort, though he looks pensive, teeth worrying his bottom lip and eyes worried.
-
It takes a while for Derek to acclimatise to the human force of nature that is Stiles Stilinski; to not flinch at every strange motion, to follow his stream of consciousness chatter without getting lost, to not blush at every throw-away flirty joke to pass his lips. But Derek does get Stiles, eventually. He gets that Stiles is too big for the smallness of what Beacon Hills has to offer.
When Stiles comes home from school with with a bloody lip and a careful hand against his ribs, Derek isn’t entirely surprised. Kids who write entire essays about the male circumcision for economics class rarely make it through high school without a few bumps and bruises.
Derek doesn’t like it, though.
Stiles sees where Derek’s glaring and shrugs.
“Kids accused my dad of being a Shepherd,” Stiles explains with an almost smile. “Can’t have them thinking we’re decent human beings, now can we? They might get suspicious.”
Derek huffs but takes the jug of water Stiles re-filled for him before he climbed up to the top of the house in what’s become their daily routine.
“It hurts?”
“Is water wet?” Stiles eases down on the bed, dropping his bookbag onto the floor with a thump.
“I can… I can make it feel better,” Derek starts, not sure how Stiles will react. Humans tend to fall into two categories: ones who don’t like to be touched by a Were, not even for pain relief, and those that force Weres to draw their pain away until the Were is nearly drained of their own lifeforce. The latter is used a lot in professional sports, like boxing, where they’ve increased rounds from a minimum of twelve to twenty. Kate used to take him to fights, not to participate, just to watch and act as personal bodyguard. She liked to gamble and she was good at it, much to the anger of the bookies.
Stiles grins. “Gonna kiss it better, big guy?”
“If you don’t want -” Derek begins stiffly, but stops when Stiles flaps a hand at him.
“No, no, dude. I’ve heard Were mojo is better than morphine. So do your thing, dope me up!”
Derek rolls his eyes but stretches out a tentative hand to lift the side of Stiles’ clean (I warm the bench, this thing has never even seen mud) lacrosse jersey, placing his palm to warm skin. Stiles looks unmoved but his heart kicks up a beat at the touch and Derek tries not to smirk.
Stiles does gasp at the sight of Derek leaching the pain, dark veins streaking up his arm. His mouth open in surprise and relief, an obscene-looking but very human reaction. Derek grunts; the pain had been worse than Stiles let on, the idiot.
“God,” Stiles breaths when Derek finishes with his ribs. “That was. Wow. You’re a real-life superhero, man. Magic powers of healing and all.” He grins but the stretch splits his lip again, a little bead of red forming in the center of his bottom lip.
Stiles’ eyes grow huge as Derek’s hand comes up to cradle his cheek, allowing him to gently place a thumb against the little wound. It’s not worth using pain-leaching for something so trivial, but Derek doesn’t analyse his motive, just knows he’s willing to offer this to Stiles. There’s barely a tendril of a black vein snaking up his thumb, before it’s absorbed into him. It feels like he’s been pricked by a thorn; sharp, surprising, gone.
-
Derek loves taking showers. He loves being clean, washing away the grime and sweat and fears. It feels like washing away a layer of recent history, a purging. Mostly, he doesn’t get to indulge in this love. If he’s lucky he sometimes gets to wash with a flannel, some tepid water and harsh, acidic soap. But not here, not now. From his second day at the Stilinski safehouse Stiles had allowed him free use of the family bathroom, keeping watch outside the door. Derek can hear his steady heartbeat clearly through the door, even above the spray of the shower. It’s comforting in a way that surprises Derek. He let’s his own heart beat to the same rhythm.
It’s a Tuesday evening and Derek has shucked his clothes - borrowed from Stiles, as his single set is being washed at Stiles’ insistence - and is tipping his face into the hot spray of water, when two things happen at once. The front door crashes open, and Stiles’ heart rate triples in speed, sounding like it’s about to fly out of his chest.
Derek is trapped in the windowless bathroom and for a breathless moment he can’t move.
Then Stiles is bursting into the room, heart still thundering, swearing under his breath. Derek rips the shower curtain back just in time to see Stiles stipping his clothes at full speed revealing long limbs and pale, freckled skin. He’s completely naked in moments, stuffing his clothes and Derek’s borrowed ones into a laundry basket.
“What -?” Derek starts, distracted by the sound of boots pounding up the stairs. They’re so close Derek can almost smell them, smell the wolfsbane and gunmetal. He has to run, he has to flee. He moves to do so but Stiles is in his way.
“Get down, get down, get down!” Stiles whispers viciously. His hand reaches for Derek’s shoulder and pushes. Derek suddenly gets what Stiles is doing and follows his instructions, hunkering down uncomfortably in the bath, hidden from view. Stiles jumps in after him, feet placed on their side of Derek’s shins. Derek tries to breath steady in the heavy, steamy air. Stiles snaps the curtain back across the rod and stands, trembling and naked under the hot water.
Not moments later the bathroom door bursts open with the sound of splintering wood.
Stiles lets out a shriek that’s not entirely fake. With a presence of mind that Derek will later marvel at, Stiles pokes his face out of the curtain and starts screaming abuse at the invaders.
“Who the fuck are you? Oh my god! What are you doing in my house?”
“Uh… we’re Slave Hunters. We’ve been told to check for the runaway -” starts one hunter with only a slight hesitation at the sight of a naked teenager glaring at him. Stiles’ grip on the shower curtain tightens. Derek closes his eyes.
“And what? You thought the slave would be in the Sheriff’s house, taking a shower with his underage son?”
“We were just-”
“No! Get the hell out, for god’s sake. Unless you enjoy watching seventeen year old boys shower?”
There is an uncomfortable shifting of feet; the sour smell of embarrassment chokes the steamy air.
“We had orders,” a second Hunter explains awkwardly.
“You had orders to invade my privacy? To cause property damage? To not ring the damn door bell first? Last I checked we were still living in America and you need a warrant to come and search my home - more to the point, you shouldn’t do it when a minor is home alone.”
Someone clicks on their shotgun’s safety and Derek holds his breath, hardly daring to hope.
“Look, we’re sorry kid. We’ll get out of your hair.”
“And my house too, I hope,” Stiles says with heavy sarcasm.
“Move out, men,” the first hunter says with gruff embarrassment. “Nothing to see here.”
“Damn right. My nipples are not for public consumption.” Stiles jerks the curtain closed again and pauses, chest heaving and a hand pressed flat to the tiled wall by the showerhead. The bathroom door closes but neither Stiles nor Derek moves, not for a long time.
Chest still rising rapidly, Stiles eventually flicks his gaze to Derek. There’s a question in the lift of his eyebrows. Derek nods shortly. The hunters have left, not a single one in the house. They’d not even gone to investigate the attic room, so anxious to leave the house and Stiles’ mouth.
The relief seems to overwhelm Stiles and his legs give way until he’s sitting propped against one round corner of the bath, head tipping back and eyes squeezed shut. He doesn’t cry, but it takes a while before his breathing rights itself and he opens his eyes. Derek positions himself more comfortably, allowing them both to stretch their legs a little, but only a little. The bath isn’t made for two. But Derek doesn’t move to leave and neither does Stiles. They sit in silence, the shower continuing to rain down on them, a little too hot for comfort.
“Thank you,” Derek says, the words unexpectedly quiet to his own ears. Stiles meets his eyes for the first time since he jumped in the shower with him. His eyelashes are clumped together from the water, giving the impression of tears and sorrow. Derek’s gut clenches.
Stiles holds his gaze for a long time, face solemn, before he nods his head and looks away. There’s a small flush in his cheeks and he murmurs something about putting clothes on. He shuts the shower off and climbs out of the bathtub.
Derek doesn’t follow immediately, knowing he has invaded Stiles’ privacy enough for one day. Yet he can’t quite help his gaze flickering up for a moment, attracted by the motion of Stiles through a gap in the curtain. Derek can just make out the tuft of hair at Stiles’ groin, his soft penis nestled in it, narrow and uncut, and just above that on his right hip is a constellation of moles, dark against smooth, pale skin.
Derek looks away.
-
The Sheriff is furious about the invasion of his home by the hunters. Derek would never have guessed that such a kind, mild mannered man would ever be moved to such a degree of rage like Derek is witness to. It is quite a thing to behold, and he is glad not to be the focus.
Derek learns that the Sheriff dressed down Mayor Taylor and the entire Argent contingent at the Town Hall the next day.
“It was glorious,” Stiles sighs dreamily, a devilish little smile on his face. Derek can’t help but provide an answering smirk. “Taylor’s a bigot and an ass, but doesn’t like being showed up as a fool. Argents’ hunters made sure of that the moment they searched the Sheriff’s house without his knowledge or consent - especially with is son alone” - Stiles wiggled his eyebrows in glee - “in the house when it happened. The town is revolting and refuses to let the Hunters into their homes.”
“What does that mean?” Derek pokes a toe softly into Stiles’ thigh. They’re facing each other on the little bed in the attic. True Grit is opened at the last chapter on Derek’s lap. Stiles looks up, delighted.
“It means the Mayor is under pressure to kick the Hunters out of town and no amount political of finessing from Victoria Argent is going to save their bacon. They’re being asked to fuck off, effective immediately. Besides, it’s not like they even found evidence that the slave they’re looking for came through Beacon Hills, let alone stayed.”
Derek closes his eyes briefly and lets out a long breath. Stiles is beaming at him when he opens his eyes again.
“I better finish this, if I’m going to be leaving soon,” Derek says, tapping a finger to True Grit. Stiles’ smile falters a little but there’s still something soft about the look in his eyes as he puts aside his school work and crawls up the bed to sit beside Derek. They’re touching along one one side, arms and hips and thighs. Derek doesn’t even flinch.
“Here,” Stiles says quietly, “let me read out loud for a while? This is the kind of book that needs to be read out loud, or so my mom always said.”
Stiles is a great reader. He does all the voices, hamming up the southern drawl of Rooster Cogburn and the serious, tenacious Mattie Ross. Derek listens and Stiles doesn’t stop reading until the final word of the book.
"I liked it," Derek concludes.
"It's a good book," Stiles agrees. He sounds sleepy, heart slow and steady.
“Hale,” Derek whisper-blirts into the quiet. Stiles yawns before drawing his face into a confused expression.
“What?”
“I,” Derek takes a breath, “I am. A Hale that is. My name is Derek Hale.”
And now Stiles is very awake. His heart thumps, pumping out adrenaline which has him rocketing upright in the bed. Stiles turns to look Derek full in the face. Everything about him expresses bafflement, surprise and maybe a little awe. He mouth is hanging open and Derek kind of wants to reach out and nudge it closed.
“Wow,” Stiles murmurs, head nodding unconsciously as he no doubt counts up the clues that never quite added up in the first place. “No wonder the Argents sent the big guns after you. Shit. you must have been their most prized possession.” His voice sours at the last comment, lips turn down in a frown.
“Wow,” Stiles repeats. “A living Hale.” He sounds so reverent and Derek can feel his own face flushing under the scrutiny.
If he knows Stiles at all, he knows he must want to ask him a thousand questions but isn’t saying a word. He’s practically vibrating off the bed with curiosity, but still he just watches Derek with his big, intelligent eyes. With a hesitant hand, Derek reaches across the blanket. Carefully he strokes along the blade of one of Stiles’ fingers with the side of his own, carefully ignoring the sound of Stiles’ racing heart, the smell of his arousal, and curling their fingers together in a small but intimate link.
With their combined warmth steadying him, Derek tells Stiles everything he doesn’t ask.
The Hale’s family home, located in Southern Oregon, was attacked and set fire to on May 8, 2003. Derek was fourteen. He was clubbed over the head with the butt of a rifle, or so Laura told him later, as he was crawling from a window in the basement, coughing and retching as his lungs suffocated with acrid, poisonous smoke. He doesn’t remember much of the night, just that he’d been so, so scared.
He woke up again some time later in the back of a bullet-proof paddywagon. Laura was there, shackled to him on his right, tear stains on her face. Shackled to his left was his cousin Joanne who was chewing her thumbnail bloody, face blank.
Derek had been taken to a slave market somewhere in Arkansas, then sold. Him and Laura together; he’s not seen his parents or the rest of his family since, the ones who’d survived the house fire had all gone to separate buyers. He heard rumor that his Uncle Peter had escaped south to Mexico, but that was all hearsay. Derek and Laura were separated two years ago when the Argents had bought Derek at an auction, realising who he was and mistakenly thinking he was worth more than Laura. He’s been alone ever since.
He doesn’t like to think about it. He only keeps one particular memory close to his chest, that he’d promised Laura that he’d escape. That’s what he’s doing. Derek is so close he can almost taste the freedom, the cooler air of the freed North tangible in Beacon Hills.
He tells Stiles of his promise to Laura and of the Shepherds who’ve sheltered him along the way, helping him keep his promise.
“And you and the Sheriff, you’ve helped me too. More than you can imagine. I’ll never forget.”
He really couldn’t, not Stiles, not ever. It had been Stiles who’d opened the door to him when arrived at this Safehouse. He remembers that moment clearly. Crossing the street of a residential neighborhood to a modest little house surrounded by yellow euonymus bushes, with a beat-up Jeep in the driveway. He’d felt exposed and obvious walking up the front path, even though he’s been rid of the slave collar since McIvers plied it free weeks before. He remembers that Stiles was wearing plaid and his feet were bare.
“I’m glad,” Stiles begins into the silence, eyes lancing into Derek’s, “that I could help you keep your promise to Laura. Promises are important.” He whispers the last, the ghost of them soft on Derek’s lips where they’d moved towards each other, as inevitable as gravity.
“Can you make me a promise, Stiles?” Derek whispers back, braving a hand to Stiles’ neck, feeling the pulse under his palm.
“Anything. God, anything.” Stiles is panting. There’s the tiniest of contact as his upper lip bumps Derek’s lower and then pulls away again.
“When you graduate high school - get out. Leave Beacon Hills. You're too big for this place, Stiles. Promise me.” He can’t ask Stiles to leave Beacon Hills just to find him, to live with him in his so close he can touch it freedom, he’s pretty sure he’s not Stiles’ grand destiny, but he can advise and show Stiles that the loneliness he feels here is temporary, finite. More than anything he wants to live in his freedom knowing Stiles will achieve a measure of his own.
“Okay,” Stiles says after a pause where he searches Derek’s face with heavy-lidded eyes. “I promise.”
It’s nothing then, to lean forward and kiss him.
And oh, Stiles is so beautifully responsive, an aching sigh slipping out of him and hanging close in the hot, sticky air between what little space is suddenly left between their bodies. The sound of it causes Derek to shiver and the little hairs on his forearms to stand. It amazes Derek that such a small noise could have such meaning and intent behind it. Stiles is leaning into him, lips gentle but body trembling with a desperation that makes Derek’s head spin and his dick swell.
Derek’s own hands shake a little as he frames Stiles’ face, guiding him to better the angle of the kiss. Their noses bump a little. Tongue touches tongue, hot and brief. Derek rubs a thumb across Stiles’ cheekbone, petting and trying to calm the tide rising in between them.
They shift. A little at first, then a lot. Without a conscious decision being made, Derek finds himself lying on top of Stiles, chest to chest and thighs between thighs. He can feel the length of Stiles’ arousal hard against him and squeezes his eyes shut.
“I want -” Stiles breaths out, pausing for a moment to press sloppy, burning kisses to Derek’s wrist. “I want.” He can’t seem to say much more than that, pupils blown wide and black. His cheeks are flushed red and he says it again, that he wants, as his hips cant upwards and his neck arches back to reveal the pale column of his skin.
Derek groans and licks up Stiels’ neck, while his hand unzips and unbuttons for what seems like days and months and years before both their dicks are free and touching, hot. Stiles bucks under him and Derek moves in counterpoint. The rickety bed wheezes dramatically, like the sheer force of their need is shaking off the rust on each spring. The iron headboard thumps the wall and Stiles flings an arm away, fingers splayed white against the wall as if trying to ground himself in something solid and knowable. The room smells of something salty and bitter, something dark and private and just between them.
They slide together, no longer kissing but breathing into each other. Stiles whimpers; he whispers and chokes and cries out. He never stops saying that he wants, he wants.
And Derek wants too.
-
“Shepherd Gershwin is in Del Norte County,” says the Sheriff, pointing to the topmost corner of the California map, right by the Pacific and Freed Oregon. “You get to him, he’ll take you over the border.”
“Another Sheriff,” Derek says with a slight smile.
“Yeah.” Stilinski says ruefully. “We went to the Academy together. Go way back. You can trust Gershwin, he’s as a good a man as they come.”
Derek doesn’t say it, but he thinks Stilinski fits that description rather well himself. Better than most. He’ll be sorry to say goodbye.
“Thank you,” Derek says quietly.
“An honor.”
They shake hands briefly, nod, and that’s that. Derek is ready to go, a small sack on his back with a change of clothes, a sandwich made by Stiles and the battered copy of True Grit. Despite his protestations, Stiles was stubborn on the subject and would not be moved. He insisted the book now belonged to Derek.
Derek turns to look over a shoulder as the Sheriff unlatches the back door. Stiles is standing in the hallway, the overhead light dim and casting long, dark shadows on his face. Derek wants to say something but doesn’t. Stiles is still, though his heart gallops deafeningly.
Just as Derek steps out into the cool night air he hears Stiles’ voice, like a benediction, whisper: “I promise.”