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It happens again.
Not the next day or even the next week. But some time later, Stiles wakes up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and when he switches the lights on, he sees Derek Hale lying on the floor next to his bed.
He's awake. He must be. He's a goddamn alpha wolf and Stiles' waking up, moving around and switching on the light must have woken him up, but he still looks like he's sleeping, pretends to be.
At first, Stiles wants to say something. He has his mouth open already and the words forming in his throat. But at the last second he decides against it. Shrugs his shoulders and gets out of his bed. He does his business quietly, washes his hands and pads back under the covers. He doesn't throw another look at the figure huddled on the floor in his room. He simply turns off the light and closes his eyes, goes back to sleep.
It's not the last time.
It's not like it's becoming a habit or anything. Most nights Stiles will sleep the sleep of the frightened and constantly in danger all on his own.
But Derek comes back eventually.
This time it's a pretty cold night and Stiles wakes up to the sight of the poor man huddled into an almost fetal position. He's definitely sleeping this time, dreaming. He's making little jerky movements with his head and his brows are drawn tight.
Stiles fights with himself for a moment. They haven't talked all that much, there hasn't even much threatening been going on, so basically, Derek is still a dangerous, very unpredictable stranger who Stiles wants to kill one day and has to save the other on a nice weekly circle.
And this very man is sleeping on his floor. Freezing. Having nightmares.
Stiles sighs and gets up eventually, digging one of his old blankets out from the bottom of his drawer, and then he carefully wraps it around the sleeping man. Werewolf. Whatever.
If Derek wakes up during it, Stiles doesn't know. Derek instantly gets calmer though, the trembling vanishes and his face smoothes.
Stiles watches him for a moment. There it is again. The kid who had been thrown into a nightmare and then left behind to figure it all out on his own. There are days when Stiles hates this guy. Days when he fears him. Days when he wants him to die even.
But then there are moments like this when he feels something tugging at his heart, whispering in the very back of his mind, and he feels this crushing sympathy for him.
Stiles swallows heavily, straightens his back and crawls back into his bed. He also decides never to listen to this fleeting moment of sympathy for the devil. It will bite him in the ass eventually, he's sure.
And then he tries not think about Derek biting him in the ass.
They almost never talk during these visits. (Stiles refuses to call it sleepovers. Nope. Not happening.)
Most times Stiles sleeps through it, only notices that Derek must have been there when he notices something different with the floor. His sweaters moved or the blanket Stiles totally does not keep available but never comes around to put it back in the drawer folded up neatly in the morning. Little things like that.
Sometimes, when Stiles is still awake and Derek makes his sneaky, gracious way through the window, they share a quick glance, sometimes a nod, and then Derek just drops to the floor, turns away, and he's gone before Stiles wakes up the next morning.
And then there's the time when everything's suddenly different.
There's not a very good reason for Stiles' floor to be so clustered. Yes, there's a biology project he doesn't want to talk about because he can't seem to get the hang of it. Yes, Stiles missed the laundry day. Again. And yes, there might or might not be some books about ancient Greek lore lying around who technically belonged ... not on his floor, but with all the my-best-friend-is-a-werewolf-and-my-other-friends-are-kind-of-something-else, Stiles figures he deserves a little break.
So when Stiles hears the familiar noise by the window and switches on the light by his bed, he first catches the stressed out look on Derek's face and then his eyes traveling over the mess on the floor. Where he usually sleeps.
There's a moment when their eyes meet. A moment where none of them moves. Stiles can see the indecision on Derek's face, can see precisely when he shuts off completely and turns back to the window, ready to leave again.
It's then when Stiles probably makes the biggest mistake of his life. Or the weirdest. Or ... whatever.
It doesn't matter anyway in this moment. Fact is, Stiles is tired as hell - did he mention that his best friend is a werewolf? - and he kind of really doesn't like that look on Derek's face, you know, the one where he doesn't look like the stone cold killer machine; so Stiles just shifts to one side of the bed, throws the comforter back enough for another person to climb in and switches the light off again.
It's as clear an invitation as it gets. But Stiles doesn't really want to see how Derek's deciding, doesn't want to think too much about what the actual fuck he's doing here, so he buries his head in his pillow and tries to go back to sleep as immediate as possible.
Of course he can't. Of course he listens with a jackhammering heart to every sound in his room.
Derek doesn't move at all at first. Not into the room, not out of the window.
But then he does move. And holy shit, Stiles really underestimated the guy's ability to see in the dark, because Derek makes it to the bed without a single painful yell from tripping over some of the things covering the whole damn floor.
He hesitates again at the bed. Stiles can feel his own little hairs stand up in the back of his neck, as if he can feel Derek watching him, and ohmygod, what was he thinking? What is Derek thinking? What the hell are they doing here? They're enemies, they hate each other, and Stiles just invited Derek fucking Hale into his own bed.
Just. Not like that. No, really. That's not the reason at all, right? Right? And Derek's not thinking that it is, is he? Oh god, what if he's thinking that's the reason?
It wasn't that kind of invitation. Not an invitation invitation. It's not like he ...
Stiles gets interrupted with his minor - no, scratch that - major, freakout when the bed dips and Derek crawls under the covers.
They're not touching or anything. The bed is big enough and Stiles kind of has to concentrate not to fall off his end, so no danger there.
Derek doesn't move next to him. Stiles imagines him lying on his back, staring up the ceiling, wondering what the hell he's doing.
(And Stiles thinks that Derek should share with the class once he figured that out.)
But then Derek does this shaky, kind of relieved sigh. It's quiet, but not quiet enough for Stiles not to hear it and see? This is worse than the look, this is much, much worse. Stiles doesn't want to know that Derek has ... you know, feelings. He doesn't want to know the side where Derek is still almost a teenage boy who lost his whole family way too young and is probably in over his head with everything that's going on lately.
Stiles doesn't want to care, damnit.
But with Derek finally settling next to him, in his bed, and falling asleep as if this wasn't the most awkward situation in the history of ever, but the only place where he actually could sleep, he kind of can't help it.
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