Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s been six months since Stiles has been kidnapped and held captive. Stiles knows it’s been six months because at the end of each one, he's allowed to go outside. 

It’s a peaceful moment, a breath of air that isn’t quite so fresh but definitely better than the old, musty smell of the building he'd been kept in. Stiles is used to the smell of stale urine on concrete, of dank, moldy corners where the shadows sit. Outside, he gets to breathe in the oxygen around him, replenishing himself before hibernating for another thirty days. He gets to smell the fumes of gasoline, the pungent smell of burning oil and the aroma of burnt and bad cooking. He gets to experience the poorly kept neighborhood he’s allowed to be in on his way to the apartment he’s expected at. 

It’s another old building, but this time Stiles gets to use the stairs and he relishes the feeling of lifting his legs and pressing his weight down on his feet with each step upward. He could have used the elevator but he’s been still for far too long. 

He only gets to do this once a month and he’s not going to squander the chance to move as much as he can. He can’t go far, he can never go too far, because if he does, they’ll break something else and his ankle never properly healed the last time he tried to run. 

So now he limps up the stairs, sighing at the pain that shoots up to his knee each time he steps with his right foot. He remembered when he could barely walk on it at first, but Stiles has learned new things, learned how to cope, how to survive. He does what he’s told with no questions and if he’s good, he gets a reward. 

A man he never cared to ask the name of welcomed Stiles in with a flick of his wrist, the door to the apartment already wide open, signaling they were open for business. Stiles steps inside, already knowing the process of removing his shoes and standing with his arms outstretched so the bodyguard can pat him down. When he’s noted as not being a threat, he pads softly inside to see the dealer. 

The air in this apartment is not fresh. It’s stagnant, almost choking the oxygen out and replacing it with the charming smell of drugs and squalor. The dealer smiles at Stiles from behind thick pink novelty sunglasses, his teeth yellow and rotting from behind crusted lips. It used to make Stiles’ stomach churn, but he’s used to the face now, the smell. He doesn’t even have to say a word as he’s tossed a large bag of several different pill packets, bottles and capped needles. It’s a cocktail of drugs purchased at the end of each month, doled out to the hunters that have been keeping him, enough to keep them all going on a high for a good while. 

Payment is required and Stiles knows his place. He drops to his knees, no longer struggling, only content with hurrying the up process so that he can get back to the hunter’s den. The dealer just shifts on the couch he’s melting into, undoing the front of his jeans. He’s already hard before Stiles even has his face in its space. He leans forward and without much pretext, takes the stiff dick in his mouth. He’s used to this but he shouldn’t be. Six months.

“Little bitch.” Stiles can’t see, not with the black hood over his head, obscuring his vision as he’s dragged out of a vehicle and into a cold space. He’s pretty sure he’s far enough from the others that they wouldn’t be able to catch his scent, but nothing else helps him determine where he could possibly be. The floor is just as cold as the space he’s occupying, possibly even colder, but there were so many places with cold concrete flooring that he could be practically anywhere. He might not even be in Beacon Hills anymore.

There’s a few of them, hunters, that surround Stiles, pushing, tugging, laughing as he struggles against the zip tie binding his arms behind his back. He lands on his shoulder and groans at the sharp twinge of pain it causes. He wants to yell, to scream, but his mouth is gagged with some sweaty piece of fabric and he hopes it's not a dirty sock. There’s a hand in his hair, pulling on him through the hood, directing him to stand and move. “Get going, boy.” A voice gruffs from behind, shoving him forward.

Stiles passes through three doorways, hearing each door open before he’s pushed through. When they enter through the third one, he’s tripped up by a foot underneath his own, sending him, again, crashing to the ground. The floor is hard here too, but the jarring motion helps lift the hood a bit. He gets a peek of his surroundings but it’s nothing but a dull, concrete room, fluorescent lights buzzing above him, a steel table sitting off in the corner. 

The hood is ripped off his head and it takes a minute for Stiles’ eyes to completely adjust. There’s three hunters in the room with him, all of various sizes and skin tones. One particularly ugly mother fucker crouches down to him, smirking. Stiles glares at him, because he can’t do much else. The hunter lifts him to sit up. “Now we play the waiting game.” And before Stiles can wriggle or attempt to struggle loose, he’s struck across the face, a fist smashing into his nose. It makes him see black as he falls back on the floor, as he passes out.

The dealer grabs at Stiles’ head, but he’s frustrated at the lack of hair to grab. Stiles remembers when the hunters had shaved it. They’d let it grow long for the first three months but when Stiles didn’t mind them tugging on it, they’d gotten rid of it, given him a familiar buzzcut. Stiles didn’t care. Hair was hair and he was here to finish the blow job and go home.

He felt the dealer tense up, balls clenching beneath his chin, as he came down his throat. Stiles wouldn’t spill a drop, because if he did, the dealer would take something away from the bag for ‘his trouble’. So he swallows it, cleans the dick with his tongue, and when the dealer is satisfied, Stiles stands. He awkwardly tucks his own erection up into the waistband of his pants, because now he gets them when he does things like this. 

Grabbing the bag, Stiles heads on out, stopping to slip on his shoes, and trudges back along the way of the neighborhood path he’s been conditioned to stay put on. In no time, he makes it back to the broken, abandoned building he calls home. He wonders if it will always be home, if Beacon Hills will ever be home again.

Stiles spits at the hunter in front of him when the lights come back on. They’ve left him in the dark for two days, ungagged but still bound by his wrists, pants piss-stained and cold. He was hungry, angry, wild and once he’d stopped crying, clear minded. He wasn’t going to make it easy for the hunters. “Fuck you.” He snarls as the hunter grabs him by the hair, jerking him about on the floor, laughing and wiping at his face. “Fu-”

He’s stopped with a swift kick to his stomach, knocking out any and all air from his lungs, words dying on his tongue as he crumbles against the hard floor. He’s in so much pain, it takes him a minute to realize that the hunter has his hands on his hips, rotating him until he’s on his knees, face pressed into the concrete. His ass is in the air and the hunter is tugging down his dirty pants. Stiles can’t seem to move, in too much pain, shell-shocked from what he knew would happen next. There was only one way this could go and it had Stiles’ heart pounding in his chest, blood rushing to his ears to help block out the sound of the hunter laboring over him, laughing. 

“Sure thing, boy.” Stiles doesn’t know why he keeps calling him boy. He’s been twenty for a good whole month and he’s pretty sure he no longer qualifies for what this sicko is proclaiming. He tries to push himself up with his knees but the hunter pushes him down, pulls up on his bound arms to strain them and keep him in place. 

Stiles grunts from the pain. He wants to yell, to scream for help, but he’s pretty sure the walls are too thick and that the way this room was built was the exact reason why they’d dumped him in it. He can hear the hunter fumble with his own belt, the zipper too loud in the quiet space. He can feel something press up against him, something hard poking against the ring of muscle between his cheeks. Stiles tries again to move away, to struggle and make it difficult but before he can take a breath, the hunter spits on his hand, grabs himself and pushes into Stiles. It takes a few times, because neither were prepared and Stiles feels like he’s dying beneath the weight of it all. The hunter is all the way in now, flush against Stiles’ ass, groaning.

Stiles scrunches up his face, shutting his eyes tight, trying to block it out. He can feel the hunter pull back and slam back into him and it takes everything in him not to scream. He bites his lip and makes it bleed.

He’s met with a slap on the shoulder as he enters the rundown building. One of the hunters, Jimmy, who Stiles now knows by name, smiles at him as he takes the bag. It’s as if he’s almost proud of Stiles and even though Stiles is numb to most things, pride still blooms inside of him. He knows all the hunter’s names by now, having screamed them enough times, and looks around to see everyone else in their expected places. 

Lucas is sitting on the couch, smoking a cigarette and looking off into nowhere. Caleb is busy at a mirror, poking and picking at his face. Off in the corner, drowsily sitting against the wall is Diego, lost on a high. This room stinks, the smell of dirt and grime wafting off all the unclean humans inside, but off to his right sits a woman who tries her best to look as presentable as possible. She’s blonde, young, and has a mouth like a sailor and Stiles loves her for it. 

Her name is Darla and when Stiles was eventually allowed out of the room he’d been kept in, she was his saving grace, the only reason he was still okay with being alive. Stiles walks over to her, nodding at her as Jimmy tosses her the bag of drugs. She smiles at Stiles and while he wishes he could move the muscles in his face correctly to mirror the expression, he just squeezes her shoulder instead. It’s hard to show emotion these days but Darla does it enough for the both of them. 

“Hey babycakes.” She greets him with a nickname every time. No one says his name anymore. It’s as if he doesn’t actually have one. The hunters only call him boy but Darla makes an effort. Her teeth are cracked behind her red painted lips, but Stiles doesn’t shy away from it like he used to. He doesn’t do a lot of things now, like talk that much. 

When he does, his voice sounds foreign and his life plays on a loop before him, as if watching it happen to someone else.

Stiles isn’t sure how long he’s been kept down in this cold room. They keep the lights off to disorient him, confuse him, and it works. His hands are no longer tied behind his back, but instead bound in the front so he at least has a chance to run to the corner of the room to piss and shit in the bucket they provide him. He can’t use food as a system to tell time because they only bring him one meal a day and he’s too hungry to care if it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner before he’s scarfed it down.

He doesn’t think he’s spoken aloud for days now, not sure it would help to talk to himself. He thinks inwardly a lot though, snarky comment here, witty retort there. He’s pretty sure any medication he’s been on has worked itself out of him by now so now he’s reduced to itchy fingers and rapid blinks with an occasional tiny noise that erupts from his mouth when the anxiety gets too high. 

He can hear the lock to the door click and he’s instantly on the floor, sitting and chewing on his nails. His heart beats too quickly within his chest and it suddenly becomes hard to breathe. They aren’t coming in to bring him food, they’d already done that a bit ago. No, now the hunters file into the room, there’s four this time, and without warning, are on him. 

Stiles tries to scramble away but one is tugging him by his hair, the hunter’s pants already dropping to his knees. Stiles gags at the smell of his crotch but there’s nothing he can do as the hunter presses his face against his hardened dick. “Open your mouth, boy.” He grunts and when Stiles doesn’t do what he’s told, he feels fingers prying open his lips, hooking into his mouth until it’s opened wide and ready. He coughs, sputtering as the hunter shoves his dick into his mouth, almost gags when it’s pushed just a bit too far in. 

The hunters around him laugh as he tries to push them away. He’s held in place by his hair as another grabs him by the hips, hoisting him up on his knees. “Get his pants off.” One gruffs, doing just that as he roughly pulls Stiles pants off and tosses them elsewhere. The cold air hits him on his legs, on his groin and it makes Stiles shiver from the drop in temperature. He doesn’t have to worry for long however, as the warmth from the hunter's body is pressed up against him. He can feel wet fingers against his ass, against the tight ring of muscle. 

Stiles grunts as two fingers are pushed inside. He hates this feeling. It makes him feel like he needs to use the bucket, but he’s too busy being forced to give head to the hunter in front of him. He didn’t think that this is what they’d be doing to him while he waited for Scott and the rest to find him, but they’ve done it to him, what he assumes, everyday. He can feel a third finger and then a fourth and then he can’t feel anything at all as they’re ripped away and replaced with the hunter’s dick. This one is bigger than the one in his mouth, and it makes Stiles start to panic as it slowly slides in. He’s at least grateful that the hunter was taking it slow and not slamming into him with reckless abandon. But he thinks it’s more for the hunter’s benefit than his own. 

He’s spitroasted now, between the two of them, filled with dirty, grimy cocks. They don’t work in tandem so Stiles is forced to endure an unsteady rhythm, being rocked forward and pulled back in clumsy fashion. He’s nearly choking on the hunter in his mouth and for a second is given a reprieve to breathe as it slides out. Saliva coats it, runs from his mouth and down his chin, so he breathes through his nose. His jaw feels stretched and sore, mimicking the pain he’s feeling in his ass. He grunts, because his body betrays him. He can already feel himself harden between his legs. 

“That’s right, I want to hear you scream.” One hunter laughs as the one inside him picks up his pace. Stiles doesn’t know what sounds are leaving him now but he doesn’t get much of a chance to catalog them as his mouth becomes preoccupied again.

Stiles watches as Darla doles out the drugs, counting each of them one by one, setting them on her counter. This is her job here. She used to get the drugs but now that’s Stiles’ job. Darla’s job is to make sure it’s all there and that everyone gets a fair share. She even makes a pile for Stiles but he isn’t allowed to touch them, not until he’s earned them. 

As if on cue, Caleb comes up behind Stiles, grabbing at his hips, grey tongue licking up his neck. It makes Stiles shiver and he has to look away from Darla. He’s pulled back to the couch, shoved over what used to be a cushioned arm. It’s been ripped off, exposing the bare wood the furniture is made out of. It presses into his stomach but he’s able to steady himself on the cushioned seats. The clothes he wears now are not the ones he wore when they first took him. He’d been given new ones, ones too big for his lithe frame. The baggy shorts slide off of him with ease, dropping instantly to his ankles. 

Caleb helps him out of them, hoisting one leg up for a better angle and with a slimy giggle, he’s already inside Stiles, already pulling out and pushing back in. He’s used to this. Six months.

At some point, Stiles is hauled from the room, too weak to walk on his own. He tried to escape a week prior, tried to push himself out of the room, but then Jimmy had caught him around the foot, tugged him downward, put pressure on his back, his neck, his leg. In one complete motion, he took both hands and snapped Stiles’ ankle as it was made of wood and not solid bone.

Stiles didn’t run anymore. Now he struggles to walk as Diego holds him around the waist, helping him out of the dark, cold room. He’s not sure where they are going, or why they are even leaving the space, but he quietly watches from beneath heavy eyelashes. They make it down a hallway and then another hallway and eventually Stiles is led into a bathroom. It’s communal, several showerheads lining both sides of the room. Diego props him up against one of the walls, strips him down of his dirty, old clothes, and proceeds to turn the water on. It’s cold, freezing actually, burning his skin like ice as it splashes on him. This is the first kindness he’s been given, a shower and a bar of soap. Diego watches him as he washes up and when Stiles is done, Diego fucks him under the cold spray.

Caleb doesn’t last long, he never lasts long. Stiles thinks it's a blessing when Caleb fucks him, because when Jimmy does it, he takes forever and when Diego does it, he likes to hurt Stiles during. All of these things he’s grown accustomed to. All of these things he begs for, whining and whimpering as he takes pounding after pounding. Caleb is the smallest of them all, but he knows just the right amount of speed it takes to get Stiles to come. 

When they finish, and Stiles has pulled his shorts back up, he makes a beeline for the shower. He strips his clothes, bunching them up and tossing them away in one of the corners. The water still comes out cold, they never bothered to find a way to heat it up, but Stiles doesn’t care. He’s not there for the warmth, he’s there to wash away the dirty deed of Caleb’s seed from between his legs. 

He stands underneath the water for longer than he’d meant to, his body temperature dropping to match it. He shivers and braces his hands along the wall, letting more time pass until the water starts to hurt, burning him in the same spot on his chest that’s turned red. He sighs, shuts off the water, and gets dressed in the same dirty clothes he was wearing before.

Stiles watches Darla converse with some guy who's dealing them drugs, he’s small, fat and likes to wear obnoxiously large glasses. He thinks he’s funny, as evidenced by what he considers to be snarky comments. Darla endures it because they can’t come back empty handed. This is Stiles’ second time outside, accompanying Darla on her route to the dealer’s apartment. He fights the urge to run, his excuse being that his busted ankle prevents him from getting far, but mainly because he doesn’t want to leave Darla behind. 

She’s been nice to him, helped him get used to the life he’s forced to live now. She’d bring him out of the concrete room, sit him down next to her while she shuffled pills about on a tiny table. She’d let him eat as much food as he wanted of whatever they had and in the end, when she’d bring him back to the concrete room, she’d slip him a pill to help him ease the bitterness of pain and loneliness. 

Now, she stands in front of this sleazebag, or rather, kneels, and performs the payment required of her. When she’s just about done, the dealer throws her off. He demands Stiles continue and because he doesn’t want to cause Darla anymore unnecessary hurt, he does as he’s told. From then on, he’s the one who makes the trips to and from the dealer’s apartment.

Stiles wants to go to sleep, now that he’s clean, wants to grab something to eat and sit next to Darla and listen to her ramble on about nothing and everything, but Jimmy catches him by the arm and he’s pulled along to a room he knows by heart. When Jimmy wants Stiles, he wants him privately, wants to keep him all to himself, as if it's romantic. Stiles doesn’t think it is, but he doesn’t tell Jimmy that as he enters his room. 

It’s shabby, much like the rest of the building. There’s four concrete walls and one concrete floor, but Jimmy likes to collect things, likes to lay out a carpet in the center of the room, likes to have too many blankets on his bed, which is just a thin mattress on the floor. He even has a filing cabinet where he likes to store his clothes.

Jimmy likes to push Stiles onto the blankets and laugh as Stiles bounces on them. He likes to cage Stiles in with arms and legs and kiss him like they’re lovers. Maybe they are, Stiles thinks. Jimmy provides for him, he takes care of him, makes sure he doesn’t hurt him too badly and when he fucks Stiles, he tells him sweet things that make Stiles' skin crawl. “That’s right, boy, take it all. I’ll give you more if you beg. Tell me you want it and it's all yours.”

They’re in the middle of things, with Stiles riding Jimmy’s dick, trying hard not to squirm as Jimmy’s arm winds around his middle. Jimmy likes to face Stiles, likes to sit up and thrust upward into him until Stiles is a sweaty mess of incoherent babbles and sounds. He’s not even sorry he’s being loud. Stiles moans with each sharp push, each time the tip of Jimmy’s cock slams into his sweet spot. His own erection bounces between them, rubbing along both his and Jimmy’s stomachs. He no longer cares that his dick does this, that it leaks profoundly the longer Jimmy swells inside of him.

He can feel himself building to release when there’s a loud noise startling them from outside the room. Jimmy stops thrusting but Stiles hasn’t realized it just yet. He keeps bouncing on top, so close to the edge, when Jimmy catches him about the throat and shoves him off. Falling off the blankets and the mattress, Stiles is met with the cold hard concrete floor. It shocks him out of the trance he’s set himself in, sobering him as the sounds from outside the room come closer, get louder. 

It sounds like screaming and gunshots, both of which never bode well. Jimmy hops from the mattress, scrambling to put his pants back on before he leaves to figure out what all the commotion is about. Stiles straightens, wincing at the pain in his hips. Jimmy disappears into the hallway and Stiles pushes himself up, grabbing his shorts. He tugs them on, heading out of the room towards what sounds like a pretty intense shootout. He doesn’t even stop to think and wonder who or what had come in guns blazing. 

There’s shouting from the main room and Stiles rounds the corner just as Jimmy comes flying back against the wall of the hallway. Stiles jumps and rushes to him. “Shit - Ji-” But Jimmy is dead, a gunshot wound straight through his right eye. Stiles stares at him, crouching low to get a better look at the blood pouring from his eye socket. It doesn’t seem real, the man had just been inside of him moments ago and now here he was, dead.

Stiles reaches out to touch him, because Jimmy has been all he’s known for six months. It makes him think of Lucas, Diego, Caleb and he spins around to try and locate them amidst the battle going on behind him. He can’t see much, not with bodies running everywhere. He hears a rumble, feels it through his feet on the concrete floor. It builds, amounting to growling and then two and then it’s an entire symphony of growls and roars and it hits Stiles straight in the heart. 

He blinks, unable to come to terms with what he’s hearing. He tries to pinpoint the noise and finds glowing eyes staring back at him, red, and blue, all aimed at him. He shakes, because he can’t think of doing anything else. His legs only work long enough for him to stand, but he can’t move past Jimmy’s body, can’t take that step forward. He swallows hard, tears springing to his eyes. He can’t believe this because he’s had this dream a thousand times, what’s one more? 

“Stiles?” It’s a familiar voice, one Stiles tried so hard not to forget. His memory is fuzzy but yes, that’s how Scott is supposed to sound like. He watches as the red eyes come closer, breaking away from the crowd behind him. They come close and then flicker back into brown as Scott stands before him. Stiles stares, eyes catching all the dips and wrinkles on his face, the way his hair lays atop his head, the way his jaw sits just a little bit to the side. This is how Scott is supposed to look. 

Stiles does not look how he’s supposed to look. He’s still dirty and grimy, stained with the aroma of the building, skinny with only a bit of fat clinging to him. He’s paler, the moles that scatter his body standing out in a darker contrast. He’s tried to connect them like constellations once, even took a pen to his skin, but the pen is long gone and so is the way he used to distract himself. His hair is short as if it no longer grows. Jimmy likes - liked - it buzzed so Stiles keeps it that way. It shows the scars from the clippers where Caleb did a shit job the first few times, and much like his face, scattered with tiny cuts from the razor when Lucas wanted in, when they wanted to keep his jaw smooth and clean shaven. 

He still thinks this is a dream when Scott reaches out for him. His muscles tense because in his dreams, Scott hurts him. He’s not sure why Scott does this, why anyone from his old life does this in his dreams, but they do. They hurt him. Sometimes it’s a good hurt and sometimes it makes him want to vomit. 

“Stiles?” Scott repeats himself and the sound of his voice, the quiet wobble of emotion that catches in his throat, sets the dam to break inside Stiles. He falls to his knees and grips onto Scott’s hand, clinging to it, willing it to be real. If it’s real, it means they found him and if they truly have, it means he’s going home.

Darla sidles up next to him, pulls him back to lean against her chest. He’d been crying, body sore and raw and utterly useless after the show Caleb and Lucas put on for Jimmy, after Jimmy took the reins and finished him off. He was shaking against her, crumbling against her as she wrapped her arms around him. He sighs against her, his face wet and clammy. Darla is part of his world now, a constant orbit of empathy and sympathy. He loves her for it. 

“Shh sugar, it’s alright. Darla’s here.” She repeats herself three more times and Stiles leans up to kiss her softly, smearing the red lipstick she always wears. She responds with trailing fingers, wandering hands, body and soul for comfort. Stiles takes them all, because Darla let's him. She lets him press against her, inside of her and replies in kind with sweet words, wet words, hungry sounds and a reassuring smile. 

Stiles loves her for it.

Darla is dead. She’s laying up against the wall, her table of drugs knocked over. Pills and needles have spilled out around her, on top of her, as she stares off into the unknown. She’s left him behind and Stiles is angry at her for it. He steps close to her, crouches down to see her face. He reaches out to touch her hair and when his fingers feel her skin, he startles backward. She dies because of a bullet and Stiles wonders which side it came from. 

He feels a hand on his shoulder, fingers squeezing the lean muscle. Looking upward, he sees it’s Derek’s hand and it surprises Stiles. Derek has been staring at him non stop since he’s managed to put faces to the glowing eyes. The pack came to rescue him, Derek, Scott, Malia, Lydia. Even Argent and Peter are here to help. Everyone is here but Jimmy and the hunters are all dead. 

Derek doesn’t remove his hand, instead he pulls on Stiles. “Come on, let’s go.” He’s not pushy, his words aren’t saturated in gruffness. His voice is light, unstable and Stiles wonders if he’s on the verge of tears. Before he moves away, Stiles grabs a blanket and gently places it over Darla, because she deserves to be covered out of respect. His hands shake but before he stands, Stiles pockets a small bag. He can feel Derek watching him but Derek doesn’t say anything. At least, not right now. 

As he’s led out, Stiles stops by a countertop, picks up a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and pockets those as well. There’s nothing else he needs from this place and frankly he doesn’t have much to take home anyway. 

Chapter Text

Derek rubs his face in his hands, something he’s grown accustomed to doing when his brain and senses are fried. He’s not alone in beating himself up. No one’s been able to sleep properly. Not for six months.

That’s how long Stiles has been missing. Derek lets this information sink in because, once again, one of their leads has led to nowhere. He wishes Stiles were here to help, but then he thinks how dumb that thought is, because if Stiles were here, he wouldn’t be losing his shit. Another dead end. Another avenue snuffed out just when they thought they had something solid. 

The Sheriff, even amidst all of this, still manages to remark how good of a cop Derek could be. Noah’s been taking the brunt of it, everything from late nights, to early mornings and all the stress that sits in between. He becomes the anchor to Scott and the pack though, leaves his home open for meetings, takes each and every suspicious activity they report seriously, he even takes long trips out of town based solely on hunches. 

Derek likes to accompany Noah on these trips. He finds himself climbing the walls less when he’s out of Beacon Hills, as if leaving the town behind means he’s one step closer to finding Stiles. He’s combed the entire town, every inch of the school, every shadow of every building, every business and neighborhood. 

When the pack meets at Noah’s, Derek often finds himself alone, wandering upstairs to Stiles’ bedroom. It smells like him in here, the entire room coated in his scent. Derek usually sits on the floor, resting his back against Stiles’ mattress, breathing in copious amounts of air filled with how Stiles smells. 

It’s surprisingly sweet, underneath the scent of sweat and medication. Derek sees the bottle of adderall sitting on the nightstand and he wonders if Stiles is doing okay without it. He imagines Stiles how he sees him bursting into the loft with some wild story of a new big bad in town, or when he complains unabashedly about how Scott and Malia are, surprisingly, too lovey-dovey to be around. His pupils are blown, his hair is a mess atop his head, his lips and nails are eager snacks as he talks, spilling out everything he’s feeling without caring that it's Derek who's listening to him.

When Stiles is taken, it's like a big hole has been ripped inside of Derek. He can’t replace it because it's the spot where Stiles goes and Stiles isn’t here. There’s a light knock on the door, but Derek knows it's Noah. He can’t seem to shift and look at him, too busy staring at the bulletin board off on the wall opposite him. Whatever case Stiles had been working on was still tacked to it, red string wound around the dots his brain connects when no one is looking.

Noah doesn’t push Derek to leave, he just lets him know the rest of the pack has left. Derek continues to sit on the floor, continues to miss Stiles, and sometimes, when he’s really tired like he is right now, he falls asleep. He lays his head back on the mattress, tilts it to bury his face into the comforter, inhales like he’s been drowning and needs that breath to survive.

Stiles is an idiot, Derek thinks. “You’re being an idiot.” He relays out loud. Stiles merely smirks, huffs a chuckle and grabs his bat from the back of the jeep. Derek doesn’t want Stiles to be here, not when it's three omegas instead of the initial one they thought they were tracking, but he won’t say that. He’ll just resort to calling Stiles names because Stiles doesn’t listen to him even when he warns him.

“Hush it, Sourwolf.” Stiles retorts, smiling at the wittiness of a nickname that should never have stuck. It’s just annoying. Like Stiles. Derek resists the urge to hog tie Stiles and throw him in the back of the camaro. He’s there to help after all and Scott is bumbling out of the thicket of trees, waiting for them to hurry up and follow him. 

They manage, with Derek having to hang back every time Stiles gets himself caught on a branch or trips over a tree root - seriously, he has zip ties in his glove compartment, it wouldn't be that hard - but eventually they corner the omegas in a clearing. Because it’s always a clearing, like some shitty werewolf movie. The moon even appears full behind the cliche scene of clouds passing overhead but it's a few days away from being full. Derek can feel it and he’s pretty sure all the wolves in this space are feeling it too. Stiles is the only one who probably doesn’t feel it all and even though it annoys Derek, beyond everything, that Stiles still runs with them into danger, he also kind of admires it. 

He admires Stiles for a lot of things, but he’ll stick with calling him an idiot until those feelings go away. 

The fight with the omegas goes a bit more smoothly than Derek originally thought it would. Eventually, Scott convinces them to leave town, because they want bloodshed and Scott isn’t about that. So they agree to leave, and that part is easy. It even makes Derek sigh with relief, but then it turns on itself in a flash and before Derek can finish the thought process of being able to turn in early for the night, hunters attack.

They attack with arrows, with bullets, with ropes to tie up and drag the omegas away. They loose an arrow and it buries itself inside of Scott’s arm. He’s roaring, pulling it out while Stiles ducks behind a large tree as a few more fly his way. Derek is too preoccupied to notice the hunter with the shotgun but before he’s about to start coughing up shrapnel, Stiles comes flying around the tree, bat ready to swing. It hits the hunter, knocks him over, sends the gun flying. 

It’s a flurry of humans and werewolves, all vying for each other’s life, or survival. Stiles gets himself stuck between two of the hunters, circling him with weapons. Derek calls out to him, but he’s tripped up by a rope lassoing around his ankles. He’s falling, falling and trying to catch himself as two more hunters circle Stiles. They cage him, laughing, and when Stiles swings the bat, one has the audacity to catch it, rip it from Stiles and throw it away like it was nothing. 

Stiles is scrambling, Scott is busy fighting off a hunter and a rogue omega who has decided he doesn’t care who he kills, just that he wants to hurt someone. Derek is trying to get a hunter off of him, one who's practically sitting on his chest and hitting him in the face. He can’t see Stiles anymore, but he can hear him, hear him yelling profanities at the hunters, hear him struggle.

“Get off me! Get off!” He’s yelling and Derek can’t get to him. There’s no rhyme or reason as to why they’d target Stiles. It could be because he’s the only human, the easiest to catch. Maybe they did it on a whim. He roars and tries to toss the hunter off of him, but when he’s able to unwind the rope from his legs, he can’t hear Stiles anymore. Or the laughing hunters. He whips his head around, still catching the sounds of Scott struggling off to his right. 

Stiles is nowhere to be found, no trace except for scent, but it’s waning and fast. The hunters must have him, he thinks. They must be running, booking it from the fight. There’s still a few hunters left and Derek has a mind to capture one, torture one, until someone tells him where the hell Stiles is. Derek doesn’t even bother waiting to see if Scott has a grip on the situation. He can feel the anger and the confidence wafting from the alpha and as he turns tail and runs off in the direction of where Stiles might have gone, he can hear Scott taking control of the chaos.

Finally. Finally something concrete and stable has landed in their laps. Derek is no longer floundering, struggling to simply just exist. Argent has a lead and they’re all coming along for the ride. 

It doesn’t take too long to find the building Argent’s hunch has been tracked too. It takes about a day of traveling out of Beacon Hills to reach it. They barely stop except to gas up, Derek driving like a bat out of hell. They’ve split up the group by two cars, Derek’s suv and Argent’s van so Scott and Malia sit in the back and Peter sits with Derek up front. Lydia rides with Argent because they’ve grown close over their shared grief of Stiles missing, as if it tears at the void that Allison also left behind. 

The building is so rundown, Derek thinks it’s impossible that anyone could be living there. At the same time, it makes perfect sense. If someone didn’t want to be found and needed a lot of space to hide, why not a place like this. There’s no lights on from the inside but there are people milling about the sidewalk in the neighborhood they’ve parked in. It’s seedy, grimy and just the right amount of stink one would think the place would smell like. 

Scott speaks up but Derek can’t hear him. All he hears is blood rushing to his ears, his heart pounding away in his chest at the thought that this could be it. This could be where they find Stiles. Scott doesn’t repeat himself. Instead they all clamber out of the suv, meet up with Argent and Lydia. 

“We have to be careful.” Argent says as Derek stretches his neck to the side, cracking it out of a nervous habit he’s developed over the past few months. He’s more acutely aware of the jacket he’s wearing now, how it feels heavy on his shoulders, constricting on his arms, how it slides against the back of his neck. He notices this to the point of removing it, tossing it back inside the suv. “Derek, with me. The rest of you, there’s a door on the side there. We’ll try our best to distract them while you get inside.” 

Everyone nods, getting into position. Argent and Derek hang back across the street, watching as the rest head into a dark alleyway on the side of the building. Derek shuffles nervously next to Argent, anxious because he hopes beyond hope that this is where Stiles has been and this is where they’ll rescue him.

Scott is busy banging on the loft door, yelling at Derek to open it up, but Derek isn’t bothering to listen. In fact, he hasn’t answered texts, phone calls, or even emails for the past few days. Not since their second lead had fallen through. Peter keeps coming by to talk to him and the Sheriff won’t stop calling so Derek locks himself up. 

He feels useless, worn out and exhausted from being frustrated every second that he’s awake. When he sleeps, he has nightmares. Ones he hasn’t had in a long time. He used to dream of horrible things, things of fire and of family, but now he layers them with Stiles and in most of them, Stiles burns too. 

Scott won’t stop yelling behind the door, but Derek won’t get up to answer it. He’ll continue to sit there, on his sofa, clad in clothes he’s worn for too many days, and listen to the heartbreak in Scott’s voice, in the confusion of unanswered questions and abandonment. He’ll take it as a punishment for letting Stiles slip through his fingers, as if Stiles were his responsibility, his failure. He’ll let Scott pound on the iron door until his hands bleed.

There’s too many things going on for Derek to concentrate. Gunfire starts almost immediately, once one of the hunters recognizes him. 

The entire room erupts into chaos and gunfire, and claws and fangs, and Derek finds himself pinning down a scrawny guy, his hand wrapped around his throat. There’s no sign of Stiles and while he’s at least thankful that he’s not in the room amidst the carnage, it scares Derek to think that Stiles might not actually be here after all. They could have killed him, dumped his body somewhere they’ll never find him. It makes him angry and scared and when the hunter underneath him begins to laugh, Derek doesn’t hesitate to snap his neck.

Everyone seems to have been taken out. There’s no more gunshots or yelling, so Derek stands up, looks around to see everyone is relatively okay. Lydia is bleeding a little from her nose and Peter’s claws are soaked in blood. Everyone, including Scott, seemed to understand the assignment.

That’s when they hear it, when it's quiet and they think they’ve won. It’s the sound of a shotgun, coming from down a hallway that leads to the rest of the building. Derek turns, sees a man barging in, gun aimed and at the ready. Derek sees him, sees him and smells him, because it's too hard not to in this closed off space. He can smell Stiles on him too. He can smell him all over the hunter. He roars, letting loose all the anger he feels surging through him, but just as he’s about to charge the man and not give a shit if he lives or dies, Argent bolts between them. Without pause, he pulls the trigger and shoots into the hunter’s face, sending him flying backward against the wall of the hallway he’d come from. Everyone lets loose a roar of their own and Derek wonders if it's because they too smell Stiles in the air.

Derek thinks he should check on him, claw at him, bite at him until he knows for sure he’s dead, but then he hears it, the familiar sound. He hears Stiles. “Shit - Ji -” And then he sees him, sees Stiles crouching low to the hunter, reaching out to the hunter. He watches as Stiles turns around, eyes searching for something or someone in the room. He’s not looking for them, that much is sure when he finally does see them standing there. He seems surprised, eyes wide and lips parted as if to say something. He stands, but doesn’t move from the body of the hunter and it makes Derek’s heart skip a beat. 

Stiles doesn’t look like how Derek imagines him anymore. Everything about him is barely there, his hair, his body, the way he holds himself. It’s as if they’ve caught a deer staring at them from the center of the road and all Derek wants to do is run to him and run away all at the same time. He can smell the hunter all over him and it makes him sick, so he doesn’t take the first step toward him. Scott does. Scott calls out to him, walks over to him, reaches out to him. Scott stands there as Stiles drops to his knees and sobs as he holds onto his hand for dear life. Derek can’t bring himself to move, so all he can do is watch.

There’s a night when the Sheriff is drowning his sorrows in a bottle of whiskey. He’s halfway through a brand new bottle when Derek shows up to the house. He comes in, even when the Sheriff tells him he’s fine, that he doesn’t have to be here. But Derek tells him he can’t sleep and knows Noah isn’t either. They share the silence together as Derek watches the man gulp down drink after drink, doesn’t tell him to stop or say anything at all. He has no right to tell Noah what he should and shouldn’t be doing to cope with the loss of Stiles. 

Not when he also has an outlet for the pain. It’s mainly aggressive, what he does in the woods. He can’t join a gym and box a stranger, a human one at least, so he gets Peter to fight him because he knows it’s a fair fight. He loses most of the time but only because he fights with anger and anxiety, instead of a clear head or strategy. It’s mainly fists flying in clumsy fashion, or sweeps of the feet that Peter can easily ignore. Peter doesn’t push however, he lets Derek vent and rage until he’s had enough and has to tap out.

Tonight, he lets the Sheriff vent, lets him comment on unimportant things, or snark at the way things are. He lets him rant about Stiles because talking about Stiles in a positive manner only makes it hurt that much more. He complains about the little things, like the state in which Stiles has left his room, as if he’s still a teenager and not a grown man, as if he’s still here and just out of the house and Derek is just a drinking buddy.

Derek wonders what it would feel like to be drunk. He’s never managed to find out, being born a werewolf and never having the luxury of trying it. He imagines it’s what it must feel like to be hopped up on wolfsbane, groggy and wiggly and just a little bit sick to his stomach. If anyone could find a way to get him drunk, it would be Stiles. 

It’s near midnight now and Noah has fallen asleep at the table, fingers still gripping a half drunk glass. Derek sighs and stands, moving to help the Sheriff up. He wraps his arm around his shoulders, hoists him up and helps him walk up the stairs to his room. He’s done this a few times before, knows the way as if it were his house. He drops Noah off on his bed, takes his shoes off and covers him with a quilt that sits at the end of the bed. Derek catches an old scent clinging to it and wonders if it belonged to Stiles’ mother. 

“Thank you, son.” Noah has taken to calling him that now, and Derek doesn’t mind. They’ve grown closer, as some do over grief and loss, almost to the point of family. Derek takes care of Noah, because that’s what Stiles would do. He doesn’t want to replace him, but he doesn’t mind being a placeholder until they can find him.

Stiles is crouching next to a woman Derek doesn’t remember seeing when they first entered the building. He wasn’t even aware that she was there, but she’s dead now and Stiles looks heartbroken. Derek watches him from afar for a moment, watches as Stiles reaches out to her and shies away when he realizes she’s gone. Derek can tell from where he stands that she’s gone, her heart no longer beating in her chest. He can hear Stiles’ heart too, beating rapidly and unevenly. 

Derek takes a few hesitant steps towards him, and notices that Stiles hasn’t noticed him at all. He reaches out, finally, and places a gentle hand on his shoulder. It reminds him of Boyd, and how Stiles had quietly been there for him. He could do that for him now, offer a tiny bit of solace, both to Stiles and himself. He grips his shoulder because he’s unsure at first if this is real or not, if Stiles is really here or just a mere shadow. 

Derek clears his throat when Stiles looks up at him. “Come on, let’s go.” He tries not to sound too rude, because he can see that Stiles is grieving. He’s worried that he’s not just grieving for the woman though, because Derek can remember the look on Stiles’ face when he’d crouched down to the hunter they’d shot. He can still smell him all over Stiles. Stiles puts a blanket over the woman and pockets a bag that was sitting next to her. 

He sees this, can smell the drugs in the bag, but he doesn’t say anything. Not right now, when all he wants to do is get Stiles the hell out of here. He let’s go of Stiles as he stands and once everyone is done surveying the building, they move to the door. He watches Stiles grab a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and still, he says nothing. They make it outside and Stiles stops for a moment, seems to hesitate at being outside. 

Derek steps out in front of him, nods off in the direction of his suv, and waits patiently as Stiles looks from him to the vehicle and back again. He moves, limps on his right leg, but eventually makes his way to the car. Peter offers to drive, which Derek is grateful for. He doesn’t think he’d be able to pay attention to the road. Malia joins Lydia in Argent’s car so Scott and Stiles sit comfortably in the back. Derek rides up front, but he keeps the rearview mirror aimed at Stiles. He’s afraid that if he stops looking at him, he’ll cease to exist. Scott has all eyes on him too but Stiles doesn’t seem to mind. He’s too busy staring off out the window. Eventually he falls asleep but Derek keeps watching him. Just in case.

Derek can hear Stiles enter the loft, can hear him padding quietly over to the bed. He doesn’t move, let’s Stiles think he’s still asleep, that he’s gotten the jump on him. He waits, listening to the shallow breaths Stiles takes, the rapid uptick of his heart beat as he stands at the bottom edge of the bed. Derek tries hard not to smirk or laugh but then he feels Stiles comes up next to his side, can smell him standing there. He feels fingers pressing on his arm, tentatively at first, but then with much more force as Stiles pokes at him harder. “Derek, get up. Get. Up.” He accentuates his words because Derek still hasn’t moved, continues to breathe evenly and find this funny. 

He hears Stiles lean closer and without warning, feels a hot puff of air on his ear as Stiles whispers against it. “If you don’t get up right now, I’m coming in there.” Derek wants to challenge him, because he knows that Stiles knows he’s faking it, but he can’t bring himself to be that daring, especially so early in the morning. He peeks an eye open as Stiles stands back and smirks. He hates to admit that Stiles did, in fact, win, but Derek promises himself that next time, this game of chicken will end a bit differently. 

“What?” He gruffs out, half of his face mashed into the pillow. He can see the sunrise bathing his apartment in yellow and wonders if Stiles woke up extra early or hadn’t even slept at all.

Stiles has a backpack on but he lets it slide off his shoulder, lets it hit the ground by his feet. “Research time dude! I know I’m early but I think I found something last night and -” He trails off, continues to ramble as Derek sits up, trying to concentrate and comprehend what all he is saying. But his assumptions are correct, evidenced by the dark circles underneath Stiles’ eyes. Now that he's closer, he can see wrinkles appear on Stiles’ face. They’re small, the beginnings to what will eventually be deep laugh lines the older he gets, the more he smiles. Right now, they make him seem tired, even though he seems happy talking, in his element. 

Derek finds himself staring a bit longer than he meant to and when Stiles finishes talking, he gives Derek such an inquisitorial look. He doesn’t like it when Stiles studies him because secretly he actually does. He sighs and runs a hand through his wild bed head. “Did you atleast bring coffee?” He won’t kick him out, because it’d be pointless. Might as well let Stiles ruin his life a little earlier than what the schedule intended.

Stiles is smiling again, reaching down to dig through his bag. He pulls out a plastic sandwich bag filled with coffee grounds. “I couldn’t take the whole thing so I grabbed half.” Derek snorts, because - of course - and stands, smirking as Stiles backs up a few feet. They’re close, probably closer than they’d ever been, consensually. Matt and the Sheriff’s station didn’t count. Neither did the swimming pool. 

Stiles watches him like a hawk, gaze pointed directly at his face. He can see how nervous he is by how many times he blinks, but how pink his cheeks turn. Derek is finding all of this very entertaining. “Shower.” He grunts, watching Stiles’ eyebrows shoot upwards, as his adams apple bounce as he swallows, as his lips press together and form that tight line he makes when he’s at a loss for words.

“Hm?” He squeaks out and Derek has to try and hide his smile. He licks his lips to avoid doing so. 

“I’m taking a shower, you go make coffee.” He speaks quietly, but it’s still deep with the last vestiges of sleep still clinging to his unused vocal chords. He speaks simply so Stiles can focus on the words and snap out of wherever he’d gone off to, and lets himself huff a chuckle as Stiles turns and promptly heads over - more like trips - towards the spiral staircase, heading upward to the kitchen that sits above them.

Derek sits outside the hospital room, just out of view of the windows and the door. He sits here because he’s not needed anywhere else. He can see Melissa and Argent speaking, can hear Scott asking his mother what’s wrong with his best friend, and he can see Noah standing at the door to Stiles’ room, peering through the small glass window. He can hear Stiles inside, hear how quiet he is. It’s almost as if he’s not even in there but Derek can hear his heart beat. It’s slow at first but then speeds up, gets tangled in an unsteady beat before calming again. It repeats this process a few more times.

He wants to go in to see him, but Derek sits in his chair and waits until he’s needed. Melissa won’t tell Scott what’s going on with Stiles, at least not medically. She mentions to him and Argent that he’ll have to stay at the hospital for a good while, until he can work out the drugs that are coursing through his system. This seems to be all she’s telling them.

He’d overheard earlier that the doctor had wanted to send Stiles to a facility to detox but the only place available is Eichen House and Noah - and everyone else - is heavily against it. Noah doesn’t mind that he’ll have to pay a higher bill to keep Stiles here, he tells the doctor as much and Derek relaxes a bit.

Derek can’t help but think of what else might be wrong with Stiles, things other than drugs. He can still smell the abandoned building, the stale air that clung to Stiles’ body and the clothes he wore, the stink of the hunter wafting from the room instead of what Stiles is supposed to smell like. 

He watches Noah finally chuck up the courage to enter the room, catches a glimpse of Stiles sitting off of one side of the bed, hunched over and too quiet. The door closes behind Noah and Derek is left with a broken image, cracked in the places of what Stiles is supposed to be and what he is right now. Derek stands because there’s still so much he feels like he should be doing. He walks over to Melissa and Scott and Argent offers a smile before heading out. He’s left feeling awkward in front of them because he hadn't bothered to pay them much mind the past few months. 

“You boys should get home.” Melissa speaks to them in a motherly way but Derek has never taken it to heart. He can see Scott sigh at her words and nod. It was late, nearing three in the morning. “You should probably rest.” She says this to Derek and yeah, maybe he should. He thinks he should go home, sleep off everything that’s happened, but he can’t, not yet. Not until he’s sure that Stiles and Noah are safe. From what, he’s not sure, but still, he can’t bring himself to leave.

“I’ll be fine.” He mumbles and shoots her a small smile. She’s done nothing to warrant a gruff attitude and he doesn’t intend to sound as closed off as he usually does. Melissa offers back a small one of her own and then her and Scott are gone as well. Derek stands in the hallway, feeling like he doesn’t fit no matter where he is. He isn’t family and visiting hours have been over for quite some time. He can’t go home because he feels too guilty leaving Noah here alone. 

So he stands, looks around at the emptiness of the place, and decides to head downstairs to find something to eat. He hasn’t eaten for an entire day, running on adrenaline and hope. He makes a note to get something for Noah and Stiles too.

Chapter Text

Stiles sits on the edge of the hospital bed, tired and worn out. He’s been sitting in this room for what feels like hours, alone but being watched through windows on one of the walls. The wall opposite has windows too but they don’t lead into the hospital hallway, they show the parking lot outside. It’s dark out and Stiles isn’t sure what time it is, he just knows he’s been there for a while. 

He can see from the corner of his eye, Scott and Melissa and Argent talking out in the hallway. He can’t hear what their saying but he’s not stupid. He knows they’re talking about him, about the way they found him, the state of the building, the people inside. A few hours ago, a male doctor came in to access Stiles, to take in any and all injury whether it was physical or mental. Melissa had asked Stiles if he would prefer a female doctor and looked sad when he said he didn’t care. 

He wondered if they were talking about what Jimmy and the rest had done to him, if Melissa had decided to share that information with them. He hoped not. It made him feel as if he were on display, stuck in a museum of oddities and broken things. Stiles felt odd now. He thinks he always felt odd, out of place no matter where he stood, stuck between two worlds and now banished entirely from both, but he can see himself now under the fluorescent lights. He can see his sickly pale skin, his thin, bony limbs. He can feel his joints jut out from his hip, even if he’d managed to keep a bit of fat from youth. 

The room has a mirror and for the first time in what seems like forever, Stiles can see his own face. There’s not much difference in shape, but his cheeks are just a bit sunken and his eyes have dark circles underneath. He looks like he did when he was sixteen, with the exception of wrinkles that also make him look older than he is. Another oddity, displaced from time, an anomaly. Stiles exists here and now but he also exists back at the abandoned building and somehow he also exists in a future he can’t see. He wonders if it’s a good future. 

His father stares at him from the small window in the door to the room. He’s been crying but all Stiles sees now is red rimmed eyes, and wrinkles he doesn’t remember being there before. When Noah enters the room, it makes Stiles tense up because this is what makes him feel weird. Maybe it’s because it’s his dad and he knows what Stiles has been through and Stiles can’t take looking at the broken heart he’s wearing on his sleeve.

“Hey Dad.” His voice is low, gravelly, having been unused for a while. It took them about a day to get home and Stiles didn’t talk the entire way. He’d spent most of it looking out the window, trying to fight back the urge to find a way to escape. The van had felt too small and the watchful eyes had been too much. No one else said much of anything either, they were all too busy shooting loud glances at Stiles. At one point he fell asleep, slouched in his seat, and woke when they’d reached the hospital. 

He insisted he keep the clothes he has on with him, because he wasn’t ready to let go of them just yet. Really, it’s because he doesn’t want anyone going through his pockets, and he looks just the right amount of pitiful that no one questions it. 

Noah smiles back at him, now. “Hey son.” He replies just as tightly as Stiles. It’s awkward, being in the same room, but then Noah reaches out, and hesitates as Stiles shifts back a fraction of an inch. It’s a minor movement, small and quiet but it still speaks volumes and makes Noah’s eyes well up with tears. Stiles’ hands twitch down by his sides, itching to do the thing he’s terrified of doing. If he does it, it’ll hurt and Stiles isn’t sure how much more pain he can take. He does it anyway. 

He scoots off the bed, shuffles a few steps forwards and Noah takes a few steps of his own. Stiles reaches out and then Noah’s arms are around him, holding him. Stiles hugs him, grips his jacket, leans into the warmth of his father. It only takes seconds before both are crying and Stiles wonders why he isn’t sobbing loudly like his father, why he’s quietly shaking against him. He thinks he should be. He thinks he should be sighing in relief but he still doesn’t feel safe, no matter whose arms he’s in. He thinks the second he lets go, Jimmy and them will bust through the door and surprise everyone with not being dead, come to take Stiles back. He shakes from fear, not from comfort, and he cries for the loss of the son Noah thinks he’s hugging.

Diego is rough with Stiles. He likes to fuck him in the most uncomfortable places, likes to choke him until Stiles sees stars, and then laughs when Stiles’ body falls limp from the lack of oxygen. He cuts him, because Diego likes to see Stiles bleed. At first, when all Stiles used to do was fight back, he’d managed to grab hold of the knife Diego had been using on him, managed to stab Diego in the leg with it, but now Diego uses it every time they’re together, likes to remind Stiles who's in charge. 

He runs the edge of the blade along Stiles’ skin, teasingly slow and feather light. Stiles hates it because it makes his dick twitch and when Diego pushes deeper, breaks skin and slicks the knife with his blood, it makes Stiles fully erect. Diego likes to dip his fingers in the blood, likes to bring them to Stiles’ mouth and shove their way between his lips. Stiles laps at them as if the blood is water, cleans the digits until Diego removes them and repeats the process a few more times. 

Stiles hates the way his blood tastes sweet in his mouth, but he can’t help but whimper when Diego licks at the knife wound, gathers the blood on his tongue and licks his way into Stiles’ mouth. Diego’s tongue does not normally taste sweet, but it does when Stiles’ blood is on it. 

Diego cuts him a few more times, deep enough that he can paint Stiles’ body red, and when they’re both sufficiently sticky and Stiles is begging for release, Diego grants it and cuts Stiles while he comes.

It’s late, or early, Stiles can’t really tell. Everyone has gone home, except for his father. Stiles is back in bed while Noah snores in the chair next to him. He can’t sleep however. He’s too busy staring at the lights above him, too busy tapping on one hand with his other. He can’t fall asleep in this bed. He’s too used to the thin mattress Jimmy had him sleep on. He rotates his shoulders and scratches at his jaw because he wants to get out of bed and wander. 

He looks out of the window into the hallway, sees that no one is in sight. Scott and his mother left a long while ago. Stiles peeks at his father again, makes a move to shuffle out of bed, and when Noah doesn’t stir from the sound, Stiles gets up and heads to the door, doubling back to grab at the shorts he was wearing. They’d finally talked him into taking a shower and dressing in a hospital gown. He hates the way the fabric scratches against his skin. He rolls the shorts up and tucks them to his side as he opens the door. When he sees his father still asleep and unresponsive, Stiles leaves the room and heads towards the elevator. 

He’s quick, because he’s not sure if anyone is watching the cameras. He bounces while he waits for the elevator doors to open. When he’s inside, he’s frantically pressing the door close button, even though no one else is out in the hallway. He makes it to the roof in no time flat and bursts through the doors leading outside. Fresh air, true fresh air hits him in the face and Stiles shivers from it. 

It’s light outside, the sun rising in front of him. He makes his way to a spot where he can sit down, lets his legs dangle. Quietly, he unrolls the shorts and pulls out the bag he’d managed to keep out of sight. He stares at it and remembers Darla and it brings tears to his eyes. He can miss her, because she was kind to him. He can miss her because he loved her. He opens the bag and lays out the contents, lining up everything and grouping it by size. It looks better this way, much like how Darla used to do it when she needed to count and divide them.

Stiles stares down at the drugs sitting next to him. He runs his fingers along a few of the needles and idly wonders how many he could use up before someone found him. There’s three pills sitting off in a triangle next to them, and a tiny bag of white powder that sits below that. These would have been his rewards for jobs well done. Jimmy would have finished fucking him, would have given Darla the go head to give him his share, would have told him what all to take in the moment and what to save for later. But Jimmy wasn’t here anymore and Stiles was left alone with the contents, the last items Darla probably ever touched.

He picks up a needle and holds it out in front of him, mesmerized by the way the sunlight shines through the tiny glass tube, how it reflects off the liquid inside. He hasn’t taken anything in days, already getting anxious to use again. He brings the needle to his mouth, ready to take the cap off with his teeth, when he hears the door to the hospital bang open behind him. He jumps, shoving the needle back down where the rest of them lay, and turns to peer over his shoulder.

Derek’s unsure of what he just saw. He bursts through the door to the roof, panic rising from finding Stiles’ room void of him only seconds ago. He woke Noah up and together they started searching the hospital floors, but now Derek simply reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone, sending a quick text that he’s found Stiles and that they’ll be down in a minute. He needs that minute to calm down and clear his head. 

Quietly, he walks over, watching Stiles watch him. He sees Stiles’ hand covering something next to him but he can smell from the door what it all is anyway. He sidles up next to Stiles, stands with his hands in his pockets, glances down at him as Stiles glances upward. “That’s some party you got there.” He comments, nodding towards the drugs underneath Stiles’ hand. It isn’t what he wants to say but he doesn’t want to upset Stiles.

Stiles removes his hand from the pile, turns to look away from Derek towards the rising sun. He squints, wrinkles forming around his eyes. There’s more of them now, Derek notes, as his eyes roam Stiles' face. His own heart is beating quickly in his chest but he tries to remain calm, because he can hear Stiles’ heartbeat and it makes him nervous. 

Stiles' heart used to sound almost like a hummingbird’s, fast paced even when he was calm, but now it's uneven, beating erratically. He can see Stiles’ hands shake in his lap and knows what it means. Derek moves closer, takes a few steps, and stands next to Stiles, leans against the wall Stile is sitting on. He tries to block out the view of the drugs by standing in front of them but Stiles peers over Derek’s shoulder to glance at them, as if to make sure they’re still there. 

“Yeah, like a going away party.” When Stiles speaks it's rough and low and not how Derek remembers it. It’s enough to break his heart but he keeps standing there, waiting to see if Stiles has anything more to say. 

When a short time passes and the sun inches its way upward, Derek sighs and nudges his arm against Stiles’ own. “You know I can’t let you keep that.” He watches Stiles’ face scrunch up, can smell the salt of tears before they even form. They fall quickly and silently and Stiles sniffles at the sudden onslaught of emotion. He cries and Derek knows what that means too.

He wants to reach out to Stiles, to place a hand on his arm or shoulder. If he’s being honest, he wants to wrap his arms around Stiles and hold onto him forever, but he knows he can’t. He has no right to. He waits, watching Stiles’ shoulders shake, and stands up straight. He scrounges up the drugs in the shorts they’re displayed on and wraps them up. He’ll dispose of them later, when no one is around, because he doesn’t want to embarrass Stiles anymore than he already is right now. Derek can smell the change in the air, the shame wafting off Stiles in waves. But Derek waits, waits for Stiles to do something first, because if Derek has to, he’s afraid he’ll break.

Derek likes to watch Stiles while he sleeps, because sometimes Stiles can sleep like the dead and other times it’s as if he’s not really sleeping at all. He’s had quite a few conversations with Stiles while he’s out, conversations Stiles doesn’t seem to remember when he wakes up. Derek doesn’t tell him important things though, like how he really likes watching Stiles sleep, or do just about anything really. 

It’s annoying how fascinating he finds Stiles. At first Derek thought it was mild curiosity, having really never met anyone like the spazz, but eventually and over time, Derek knew he was in deep, too deep. Up shit creek without a paddle or a canoe. Hopelessly in love and floundering. 

Stiles doesn’t stay over often, but it’s late and he’s already crashed on the couch, leg hung up on the backrest, mouth hung open as tiny snores escape amidst a babble of words. It’s comfortable, having Stiles here, sleeping here. Derek can usually fall asleep to the quiet, even sounds of Stiles’ breathing, but tonight he’s having trouble. He knows in some part that Stiles stays over when he doesn’t want to go home. 

He’s turned twenty recently, almost a week ago, and tells Derek all the time how he wants to move out of the house. It’s never for negative reasons, just that he needs his own space, but Derek can tell he’s stalling because he’s too scared to tell Noah; to leave him alone. So Derek let’s him ‘crash’ after all the rigorous studying they do. Really it’s just them silently looking things up on the internet or through old books Deaton let’s them borrow, but Derek doesn’t mind. Usually. 

Tonight he minds, because for the entire time Stiles has been in his space, he’s managed to scent himself on almost all of the surfaces. The couch always smells like him, but now the window does too, the counter in the kitchen upstairs, the spiral staircase, the entire bathroom, hell, even Derek’s bed smells like him. 

He’d ducked into the bathroom at one point and came out to Stiles laying out on the mattress, burying his head underneath Derek’s pillow, groaning for some reason that was probably innocent like frustration at not finding out anything while researching, and not for the reason Derek’s mind immediately and desperately flashes to. 

So now his bed smells like Stiles and it envelopes him, consumes him, as he tries to sleep and fails. He wants Stiles to sleep next to him, because he feels like that’s where Stiles belongs, but Stiles is busy sleeping on the couch, oblivious and spouting nonsense between snorts and giggles. 

Derek hates this because if he didn’t, he’d love it.

Stiles’ room is smaller than he remembers. It’s filled with things he’s left behind, like his bulletin board and his desk, papers spread out as if he’d just been researching and forgot to put it all away. When he enters the room, he inhales the smell of it, of what he used to smell like. It makes it hard to breathe though, painstakingly difficult. 

“I kept it just like you left it.” Noah says from behind, “I didn’t want to move anything out of place.” 

Stiles can’t remember what’s pinned to the board or why he’s connected two photos with a red string, but he turns to peer over his shoulder. He lifts the corner of his lips, tries to smile, but it won’t come across that way. “Thanks.” He mumbles, taking more careful steps inside. 

It’s been a week since he’s been back in Beacon Hills, a week stay in the hospital while the staff did all they could to bring Stiles down during detox. It still sits within him, though, because addiction doesn’t ever really leave, and the doctor made sure to reiterate that Stiles still had a long road ahead of him. He agreed to take the pamphlets outlining outpatient programs just so he could finally leave and go home. 

Home is different, just like his room. It’s small and compact and filled with memories Stiles can’t seem to access. He tries to think of times before but they come across warped, dislodged and fuzzy. There doesn’t seem to be a time before Jimmy and Stiles hates it. He hates himself because he misses the abandoned building, he misses the closed off space, the stink of stale clothing and dirty, unwashed skin. He misses this because his room smells too clean, too much like normal and Stiles really can’t breathe in it.

He can hear his father say something and Stiles grumbles acquiescence in response as if it's automatic. He’s not sure what he’s said yes to but he’s been trained not to say no. No is not in his vocabulary when he’s being told what to do. He hears his father whisper a good night and leave the room. He doesn’t shut the door though, leaves it wide open and Stiles wonders if that’s what he’s agreed to. 

It doesn’t matter though, it feels better, bigger with the door open somehow. The light from the hallway spills in, illuminating it a bit. It’s dark but Stiles doesn’t want to turn on the light just yet. Instead, he walks to the window, unlocks it and slides it up. A small breeze wafts through it, sending the curtains to dancing. It feels nice, letting the air in, because the room feels like it’s getting smaller the longer he’s in it. 

Stiles tries to look around, tries to understand why he left certain things the way they were, and can’t remember. It’s the not remembering that really bothers him. Why did he leave his keyboard sitting askew and not parallel to the monitor? Why does he have three pillows instead of just one? The room feels like it’s closing in on him now, and he can hardly breathe. 

He turns back around to face the window, to bend down and stick his head out to try and gulp down as much air as he can. When that doesn’t work, Stiles climbs out of the window, clambers onto the roof and doesn’t stop until he’s some feet away from his room. He sits on the shingles and tries to calm himself down. Even out here the air feels different than what he’s used to. It makes him sick. 

He lays back, resting his head on one arm while the other digs in his pockets. He pulls out a cigarette and lights it and there it is, what he had been missing all day. He hadn’t had a chance to smoke since he’d left the hospital, and even then only when he busted out of his room again to head back up to the roof to sneak one. Stiles knew his father knew. It was hard to miss with the stench of tobacco embedded in his skin. It was a foul smell but Stiles missed it and he took his time with the one he had between his lips.

Jimmy slams his hand down hard on Stiles' ass, laughs at the sound it makes against the bare skin. Stiles gasps and squirms and glares at Jimmy, wishing he’d had a chance to scream. His mouth is busy being gagged with a piece of his own shirt, his hands tied behind his back. He can only breathe through his nose and sometimes when he’s angled just the wrong way and his face mashes into the pillow, he struggles to breathe at all. 

Jimmy does it again and this time Stiles grinds his hips down into the mattress. He’ll do it a third time, because Jimmy likes to watch Stiles wriggle, he’ll do it a fourth before he slides himself inside and fucks Stiles into the blankets. He’ll think it’s funny and keep laughing and Stiles will whine behind the gag because damn does it feel too good. He’s been here long enough to take the pleasure from the pain because life is already too painful. Existing is too painful. Might as well find some joy in it on the way down. 

He feels hands on his sides and without warning, Stiles is picked up, flipped over and dropped back down on the blankets. Jimmy unties his hands and almost instantly, Stiles is gripping on to the man above him, pulling on him, tugging him downward, removing the shirt gag from his mouth. He ruts against Jimmy, grinds his dick against his stomach and Jimmy doesn’t wait any longer to fuck him into a haggard mess. 

Just as Stiles is about to hit that edge, Jimmy slows himself down. It drives Stiles mad and he peeks an eye open, having closed them to think of other things, to see Jimmy reaching over to grab at something. Stiles tries to catch his breath. He sits up on his elbows, watching Jimmy procure a needle. He uncaps it with his teeth and spits the plastic out onto the floor. “You’ve been so good for me, boy.” His voice makes Stiles' skin crawl, but he’s too busy watching Jimmy bring the needle towards his arm, towards the spot he always takes it. “You want it, don’t you? ”

Stiles nods, holding out his arm for a better angle. “Yes.” He huffs out as Jimmy runs his hand along the bend, traces his fingers down a large vein he can already see beneath the pale skin. 

“Then beg for it, boy. Tell me you want it.”

Stiles shudders because he can’t stand it when Jimmy calls him boy, nor when he pitches his voice high and slow as if speaking to an idiot. Stiles is no idiot. He’s just lonely and very very much in need of release. “Please Jimmy. Give it to me.” He groans, leaning forward, reaching out with his other hand to grip Jimmy’s shoulder, to pull himself closer. Jimmy is still inside of Stiles and when his dick twitches, Stiles whines. “Please - give it to me - then fuck me.”

Jimmy swallows hard and does what Stiles wants. He pushes that needle into his skin, breaking it and making a new hole. He pushes the contents inside, poisoning Stiles, ruining Stiles, and when he’s done, he tosses the glass tube somewhere else and fucks him into the high.

Stiles still isn’t sure what time it is. He hasn’t had a sense of time for a while now, an internal clock. He just knows it's late, the moon riding high in the sky. It’s waxing crescent right now and Stiles smiles a little to himself, proud that he remembers something. He remembers the names for all of its phases, the knowledge ingrained in him as if he’s known it from birth. He remembers always being aware of the moon because he needed to until Scott got the hang of it, could plan his days and nights around the lunar cycle. Stiles usually did. He thinks, with more time on his side, memories will return. They’ll be less fuzzy and maybe even make him happy. It’s hard to be happy right now. It’s hard to be a lot of things right now. Like sober. 

The cigarette buzz only lasts a few minutes and he can’t smoke one after the other or he gets sick. He used to do that before, back when Jimmy finally let him out of the concrete room. He’d lit one up and passed it off to Stiles and he took it, because why the fuck not. Why the fuck would he care about what he put in his body when so many things had already been put there. It helped keep his hands from shaking, helped stave off hunger when he had no strength to get up and eat after late nights with them all. 

But now, Stiles is itching to get off the roof, to get out of the neighborhood, to just go somewhere, because sitting still is aggravating and torture. He sits up, taking a look around the house, out onto the street and at the houses that sit across from him. He can’t see anyone and when he’s confident no one will catch him, he slowly but surely climbs his way off the roof, landing in a small patch of bushes. He stops, waits to listen, and then clambers out onto the street. He makes sure to stay out of sight of the street lights and before long he’s a few houses down from his own.

Stiles zips up the jacket he was given at the hospital, still wearing the matching grey sweatpants they also gave him, and watches for any cars passing by. It takes a while until he’s out of the neighborhood for one to appear and when one does, Stiles flags it down. It's a small black car, with a small looking man driving. He’s wearing half a suit, the jacket flung over the passenger seat, as if he just left work and is heading home. His tie is askew, collar sitting open. The man rolls the window down, leans over to talk. “You okay, son?”

Leaning down, Stiles tucks his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, just looking for a ride.” He tries to smile but he can only manage a slight twinge of the corners of his mouth. The man looks quietly at him for a moment. 

“It’s pretty late.” Stiles nods, agreeing, waiting. “Where’re you headed?” The stranger asks.

“Downtown.” He clears his throat, waits some more but grows impatient. Then the stranger nods and unlocks the door. Stiles slides inside, shuts the door and leans into the seat. “Thanks.” He mumbles. 

The car starts to roll, picking up speed. Stiles glances over and gets a better picture of him. There’s not much to see except for the short red hair and blue eyes. He catches glimpses of the freckles on the man’s skin as they pass under street lights and looks away when the man catches him staring. 

“You got in pretty easily.” The man comments. Stiles knows. He knows the dangers of hitchhiking, of stranger-danger, but he can look past that to get what he wants. He’s not scared of most things anymore. Stiles nods and pops the p on the end of his ‘yup’. The man huffs a chuckle. “I could be dangerous, you know.”

Stiles leans back on the head rest, rolls his head until he’s looking at the man. “You could be.” He wonders where this will go. 

The man stares at him a moment and then laughs, flashing white teeth. “I’m not, though. Trust me, far from it.” When Stiles raises an eyebrow out of curiosity, the man continues to ramble on about how he’s probably never taken a dangerous turn in his life and he would be hard pressed to with a ‘spine like a jellyfish’. “Sorry, I don’t mean to talk so much.” But Stiles doesn’t mind. 

“It’s okay, I like listening.” And he does, because it reminds him of Darla. He lets the man, Roger, continue to tell him about all the things he’s always wanted to do, how boring his job is and how he wishes he’d chosen a different major in college. Stiles thinks it’s dumb that Roger would open up to a stranger, but at the same time, it’s kind of nice. He listens as if he’s an old friend, letting him vent, and there’s a few times Stiles let’s a small smile grace his face. 

The ride comes to an end sooner then Stiles would have liked, but he gets out and thanks Roger for helping him. Roger looks hesitant though, because the neighborhood they’re in isn’t the best to be in so late at night. “Are you sure?” He asks and Stiles just nods, shutting the door behind him. 

He watches the car roll away, misses Roger a bit, and tucks his hands in his pockets. 

Chapter Text

Stiles doesn’t have to walk too long to find what he came here for. He walks along the sidewalk of a street he can’t remember the name of, and eyes someone standing off across from him. They stand in the shadows, hood up to mask their face in darkness. No one notices this person. Anyone who walks by, and there’s been a few, don’t even acknowledge their existence. But Stiles sees them and he crosses at the intersection, nodding in the direction of the alleyway behind them. 

He waits, because it's suspicious for them to walk together. When the stranger joins him, they’re too far back for anyone to see them, so it's safe here. As safe as one can be in the middle of the night, unarmed and vulnerable.

“Whatcha looking for, kid?” The stranger is older, possibly five years or so, maybe older by the sound of his voice. He doesn’t remove his hood, keeps most of his face hidden. Stiles can see the beard though, thick and unruly, poorly groomed and dark in color. 

Stiles comes close, keeps his hands in his pockets. It’s cold out and he has to repress a shiver as the wind hits him in the back of his neck. The man knows what Stiles wants and he tells him so, tells him he’s hurting and would like some release. The man smiles, shows his equally poorly kept teeth. It makes Stiles’ stomach clench in disgust, but he’s not leaving. “I don’t have any money though.” He throws this out last because he knows if he does, there’ll be a bargain. 

He’s proven right when the man steps even closer, making the gap between them even smaller. Here, he removes his hood, showing scraggly brown hair. It sticks every which way, sits across his forehead, even dips into his eyes. At least he’s got nice eyes, Stiles thinks. They’re blue and Stiles has always liked blue eyes. “I’m sure we can think of some form of payment.” 

Stiles nods, takes a look around the alley way just to make sure they are, in fact, alone. “Yup. I’m sure we can.”

Derek can smell the panic as soon as he steps outside of his car. He’d heard it earlier, over the phone, when Noah had called him, woken him up from a restless sleep. Scott’s there too, but he’s already inside, and Derek can hear him trying to calm the Sheriff down. 

He speed walks up the driveway, jostles open the door like he lives there and hurries inside, greeted by Noah pacing back and forth. Scott looks pale. “What’s-“

“It’s Stiles.” Scott’s answers. “He’s missing.” 

Derek can feel his heart skip and drop into his stomach.  “What?” All Noah had said over the phone was that it was an emergency and hung up mid request for Derek to come over. He knew it had to be about Stiles, but he wasn’t expecting this. 

“I helped him to his room a few hours ago, I thought he’d gone to bed. I went to check on him and the window was open.” Noah rambles on but it’s just noise to Derek’s ears. It feels like it did six months ago, the word ‘missing’ ringing in his ears over and over, rising in volume until it blocks out all other sound.

Scott, surprisingly, is the level headed one here. He gets Noah to settle and sits him down on the couch. Then he turns to Derek. “Let’s go look for him.” And before he can comprehend a plan, Scott is leading him out of the house.

Stiles lets the man slam him into the wall of the alley, lets him slide his dick inside without much preparation. It’s spit-slick but still painful because he’s so big, but Stiles groans hungrily all the same, smirks against the wall as he ruts backwards against the other. He tries not to be loud but it's difficult when the pain is replaced by the pleasure and all he can feel is good inside.

“You like that, don’t you, boy?” And Stiles stops, remembers, and grows sick of it. 

He looks over his shoulder, grunts between clenched teeth. “Don’t call me that.” He bites back and the stranger chuckles.

“What should I call you then?” He pushes back into Stiles, leans forward to whisper in his ear, grips his waist and holds them still.

It makes Stiles squirm, not being able to move with the other man’s dick pressing up against his sweet spot. “Anything but that.” He huffs out and shakes between the wall and the stranger. “Please.” He whimpers because he just wants something else. He doesn’t want the memories.

The man laughs again and slowly pulls back, slowly pushes back in and repeats this until Stiles is burying his head in his arms, biting into the sleeve of his jacket to keep himself from getting any louder. He knows they’re outside and if anyone hears him, they’ll probably come looking and he can’t get arrested for public indecency. He can’t do that to his father.

“Come upstairs with me.” He can feel the hot breath on his ear, on his neck, as the stranger leans close once more. “Then you can be as loud as you want, baby.” He huffs and Stiles nods, whimpering at the sudden loss as he pulls out and pulls away. 

It takes Stiles a minute to regain any composure. He fumbles pulling his sweats back up, tries to calm himself down and tugs the front of his jacket over his erection to help hide it. It doesn’t take long before he’s following the guy out on to the main street and into the doors of the building they’d been fucking up against. They climb the stairs all the way to the top and by the time they’re at the man's door, Stiles’ ankle is throbbing. 

The door closes behind him and he’s being pulled along a grimy apartment with dirty walls and a dirty carpet. There’s a yellow hue to the place, dull lights hidden behind dusty lampshades. But Stiles isn’t worried about the décor, he’s paying too much attention to the couch he’s limping towards and being pushed onto.

He falls against it, face mashed against the top of the backrest. His fingers curl over the coarse covering as the stranger tugs his sweats off and tosses them to the floor. Stiles spreads his legs wide, pressing his knees into the cushions. He can already feel the rough, scratchy fabric dig into his skin, but Stiles doesn’t care. Not when the man is pushing back into him as if he’s never left. Not when he pulls out and slams back in and sends Stiles to spill moans from his mouth without the fear of needing to hide them. 

It’s blissful, this experience, because here, Stiles can be whatever and whoever he wants. He doesn’t have to worry about doing or saying the wrong thing, chancing anger or disappointment. Here, he can tell the man go faster, harder - “Yes, fuck me - oh god - fu -“ and it can be all for him and no one else. 

Stiles doesn’t care if it isn’t for love, like how he pictured his first time bottoming being. He’s not looking for love, he’s looking for control. Here, he has control.

Without a phone or car to track Stiles, Derek and Scott spend all night looking for him. They check everywhere they can think of and when they run out of places to search, they check the places they would have never thought to look. 

It’s morning by the time they do find him. It’s a little past sunrise and all the streets downtown are bright and clear. Scott sits next to Derek in the camaro, because when they leave Noah’s, Derek clicks back into place and insists he drives. They leave no corner unturned as they glance at everything while driving down a main drag. It’s when Scott sees Stiles sitting at an outdoor café that he says anything and gets Derek to stop on a dime. 

They park quickly and exit the car with a flurry. “Stiles!” Scott yells as they near the café. Stiles has his back to them, but they know it’s him. Stiles doesn’t turn around, doesn’t even acknowledge that they're there until they come around to face him. 

Derek could smell him from the car and he’s pretty sure Scott can smell the same thing. Stiles smells like sweat, sex and drugs and it makes Derek’s stomach churn. 

“I guess, tag, I’m it.” Stiles laughs behind his knuckles, taking a long drag of his cigarette. He stares at Derek and Scott from behind shades Derek didn’t know he owned, and let’s smoke billow from his nose. “Coffee?” He asks, gesturing to the two empty chairs that sit opposite him at the table. He’s got a full cup of coffee in front of him, steaming and filled with copious amounts of sugar and cream. 

“Where the hell have you been?” Scott yells. When a few other customers, who are also outside, turn to see the commotion, Derek lays a hand on his shoulder and nods towards the seats. They each take one and Scott repeats himself, quieter this time. 

Stiles sits back in his chair and sighs. “Out.” He answers curtly. It makes Derek’s blood boil. He imagines Noah still at home, still upset and waiting for Stiles, so he pulls out his phone and calls him. He watches Stiles’ face, can tell Stiles is watching him from behind the sunglasses. 

“We found him, Sir.” He catches the twinge of Stiles’ eyebrows, the twitch in his lips as if they part with a question on his tongue. “Yes - yes, we’ll be by in a little bit. Yes - he’s safe.” Stiles inches forward in his chair. “Will do.” And Derek hangs up. 

“Everything good with pops?” Stiles asks, as if he hasn’t been worrying everyone. Derek wants to yell at him, wants to tear him a new one, but he feels like he can't. Not with knowing everything, not with knowing what Stiles went through. He doesn’t know all of it but on some level he’s gotten the gist of it and it just doesn’t seem fair to get angry. He feels it anyway and keeps his lips shut tight as he stares at him. It's enough to make Stiles squirm in his seat and Derek is completely fine with that.

Scott, on the other hand, is trying and failing to hold back. Derek can feel the animosity wafting from him as he leans forward. He continues to speak quietly, with hushed tones and puffs of air. “We looked for you all night, do you know how worried your dad is?”

Stiles sighs, flicks ash from his cigarette off to the side of the table. “I was gonna head back after coffee, no big deal.” He shrugs and takes another drag. 

Scott scoffs. “No big -?“ Derek can feel Scott getting angrier and thinks he should probably step in, but he waits, listens. “Six months, dude - Six months you’ve been missing and you pull -“

Stiles blows another bout of smoke and this time it hits Scott directly in the face, interrupting him. Stiles isn’t playing around anymore. His jaw is set hard and his lips are pursed tight as he blows the smoke. He sits just a little too rigid and Derek can tell from the wrinkles he can see that Stiles is narrowing his eyes at them from behind the shades. “I’m aware. Dude.” They - or rather, Scott - have managed to piss Stiles off and Scott is only getting angrier. 

Derek shuffles in his seat, tries to put a hand between them to signal that they should calm down. He can’t believe he’s trying to play mediator between the two but Derek feels that if he doesn’t, then he’d be siding with Scott and pushing Stiles further away. Someone has to be level-headed here. Scott is too angry and Stiles is too hopped up on whatever he took to properly gauge the situation. Or maybe Stiles knows what he’s doing and doesn’t really care. Derek hopes it’s not that. 

Scott’s nostrils flare but he sits back at the behest of Derek’s intervening. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.” He nods at Stiles’ hand with the cigarette and watches as Stiles takes the last drag. 

“It’s either this or dicks and drugs, Scotty boy.” He answers on an exhale, dropping and smashing his cigarette with his shoe on the concrete below. And that’s it. That’s the tipping point, but instead of Scott launching himself across the table like Derek felt he wanted to seconds before, it’s Derek, to his own surprise, that bolts from the table and grabs at the scruff of Stiles’ jacket. He pulls him upward and out of the chair and without saying much of anything, he starts dragging Stiles back towards where they parked the car. “Hey!” Stiles yells, but there’s also a laugh sneaking it’s way out of his mouth. “Hey - I didn’t get a chance to pay!”

Derek doesn’t care. He’s had enough and even though he’s angry at himself for reacting this way, for not treating Stiles with care and patience, he can’t get the broken image of Noah out of his head from the night before. He’d seen that look so many times over the past six months. It hadn’t been Stiles’ fault, none of this was Stiles’ fault but Derek can’t help but let the anger out now, not with the knowledge that Stiles made this particular choice willingly.

Stiles’ ass throbs as he’s tossed - and shoved - into the back of the camaro, landing in an uncomfortable position on the seat. He hisses because - ow, and tries to right himself as Derek slams the door. He’s alone in the car while Scott and Derek argue quietly outside. He can’t hear much because he doesn’t really care enough to listen. 

The camaro smells the same to Stiles, just as it did the few times he’d actually been in it. It smells familiar, like how Scott and Derek and his dad smell familiar. He didn’t know he’d miss it so much, but he realizes now how much he did. Scott opens the door to the passenger side and Stiles watches Derek walk around the front to climb into the driver’s seat. He lays down in back, resting his head on his folded arms. “Where’re we headed?” He asks as the car starts. 

Derek and Scott are silent now but Stiles already knows the answer. He shuts his eyes, because he hasn’t actually slept at all, not since the night before at the hospital. It isn’t long before he’s out but just as quickly as he falls asleep, he’s jostled awake when the car stops. He tips his head back and sees his house upside down in the window. Derek gets out of the car but Scott stays seated, keeps his back turned on Stiles. He won’t say a word to him, not even when Derek pulls Stiles out of the car. 

Stiles knows he’s been a jerk. He doesn’t think Scott and Derek deserve this view of him but it’s more than just wanting to antagonize them for the hell of it. He’s cynical and bitter because he can’t find any other way to be. He tosses comments out like skipping rocks in a pond because if he didn’t, they’d see just how sad and pathetic he was. He ran away to get high and fuck some stranger without thinking of his own safety, purely because he couldn’t take the disappointment in everyone’s faces when he caught them all staring at him. 

He feels this sadness now, whatever snark he had earlier is left behind at that café. He inches forward, stumbling when Derek won’t let up with pulling on him, and limps because his ankle is just too sore. He feels offended but deserving at the same time and when Derek tugs him along inside the house, he’s met with his father’s welcoming arms in another bone crushing hug. 

Stiles wants to hug him back, wants to cave and reciprocate, but it’s hard and his hands shake as they come up to gingerly tap Noah on the shoulder and back. His father doesn’t know where he’s been or who he’s been with but Noah doesn’t seem to care. He seems just happy that Stiles is here because Stiles hasn’t been here for some time. Stiles sighs into his father’s shoulder, waits patiently for him to let him go. He peeks over to see Derek standing a bit a ways from them, arms folded, scowling at him. It makes Stiles lower his eyes, to look away out of shame and embarrassment. “Dad-” He says after a while. “Dad, I’m okay.”

Noah pulls back, holding Stiles at arm’s length. He looks him over and Stiles can’t stand to be studied so closely. “What happened? Where did you go?”

He wants to remove the sunglasses because it doesn’t make sense to be wearing them indoors, but he can’t or his father will know. He’ll see red rimmed eyes, strained and obvious of what he’d been doing the night before. Stiles licks his lips and blinks a bit behind the shades. “Nowhere - I mean, I went for a walk. Got lost.” He starts to chew on his bottom lip because Stiles knew this was weak, that his father was smart and knew better. It comes off as much as Noah narrows his eyes in suspicion, giving Stiles another once over. “I’m sorry.” He adds hastily, attempting to remove himself from his father’s hands.

“I’ll just head to my room.” He says this and doesn’t stick around to hear any protests, not that anyone is saying anything as he heads up the stairs anyway. He’s within his room in a matter of seconds, shutting the door behind him. He doesn’t care, in the light of day, that it’s closed. He’s not worried about shadows closing in on him. He does open the window however, wondering if his father closed it once he realized Stiles had left through it. 

He sits on his bed and for a moment doesn’t feel as if he’s broken and battered and bruised from a life he was forced to live. For a second, as he runs his hands along the familiar comforter, Stiles feels like his old self and this bed and this room and this air feels just like his old life. But then the fantasy is broken when Derek comes inside without even bothering to knock. Stiles sighs and flops himself down on the mattress, finally removes the sunglasses and tosses them on the floor somewhere. He stares up at the ceiling, feeling Derek's eyes on him.

It’s loud and deafening, so Stiles props himself up on his elbows, looks at Derek, eyebrows raised in curiosity. “Yes?” 

Derek stares for a moment before sighing and shaking his head. “What the hell are you doing, Stiles?”

Stiles huffs a chuckle and flops back down on the bed. “I have no fucking idea.”

Noah tells Derek that he has to leave for a bit, to head into work for a couple of hours and that it’s unavoidable. Derek understands, tells him he’ll stay until he can get back. He’ll watch Stiles for him. Watch him, as if he’s not a grown man but a child. Derek hates to think that Stiles is acting like a child, because he knows why Stiles is acting the way he is. He just wishes it were different. He wishes he could do more to help Stiles because he knows what pain looks and feels like and he can tell that Stiles is drowning in it. 

He walks up to his room, enters without knocking, and watches Stiles lay down on his bed. He looks tired and Derek feels he is a bit too. 

“Yes?” Stiles asks, sitting up a bit on the bed. He sounds annoyed and rightfully so, Derek has no right to enter without knocking. It doesn’t matter that he’d spent time more often than not in this room, sitting, contemplating, sleeping. He has no claim on this room or the man inside of it. No matter how much Derek wants to think so. 

He looks at Stiles face, now that the shades have been taken off, and he sighs at the sight of it. Stiles definitely looks tired. Tired and worn out and high, and Derek can smell the drugs as if they coat his skin and mix with the smell of a stranger. He hates this. “What the hell are you doing, Stiles?”

He watches Stiles fall back again, watches his face scrunch just a bit around the eyes and edges of his mouth. “I have no fucking idea.” He breathes and it breaks Derek’s heart. He nudges at the mattress to get Stiles’ attention again, and waits for him to sit up.

“Your dad had to run into work for a bit.”

Stiles’ face changes. His eyebrows raise in curiosity, he tilts his head up as if to say something, licks his lips as if to contemplate saying it. Derek’s grown accustomed to reading that face, knowing that face. He’d spent so long staring at it, holding the image of it in his mind when Stiles wasn’t here. It may look a bit different now, gaunt and pale and scarred in a few places, but it was still Stiles’ face and Derek was still fascinated by it. 

Stiles stands and Derek immediately feels on edge. He watches as Stiles walks closer to him, takes slow careful steps. He comes close and then bypasses Derek entirely, snorting a laugh as he exits the room and heads downstairs. Derek lets loose a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, and turns to follow Stiles through the house. 

They end up in the kitchen and Stiles is rummaging through the fridge. Derek stands back, leans against the wall as he continues to watch Stiles move about.

Stiles catches this and rolls his eyes. “You can hear anything from any room in the house. You don’t have to follow me to know where I am.” He grumbles, not bothering to look at Derek as he talks to him, long fingers pulling on compartments in the fridge. Derek doesn’t say a thing. “Ugh, nothing.” Stiles comments, shutting the fridge door a bit more forceful than he should have. “Is no one feeding my dad?” 

Derek rolls his eyes and sighs. “I’ll order something.” 

“Wait.” Stiles halts Derek as he pushes off the wall. “Let’s order chinese and hang out at your place today.” He’s smiling but not really. The corners of his mouth are turned upward but there’s still a tightness to it, as if he’s forcing it. Derek stares at him a moment, ready to say no, and it’s as if Stiles knows his answer before he even speaks. “Come on, you don’t want to be here all day and I’m hungry.”

But there’s something else there, an odd desperation behind the simplicity of hunger. Derek narrows his eyes, watches Stiles’ fingers start to tap against his thigh, sees how much he’s struggling not to bounce on his feet. “Tell me the truth and I’ll consider it.”

Stiles' smile falters, his mood dips low and Derek can feel it. He opens his mouth to speak, the words come out slowly and carefully, as if it actually pains Stiles to say them. “I don’t want to be here right now, okay?” 

Derek takes a minute, mulls it over in his head, makes a show of thinking behind a stoic expression. It’s one he's managed to put on over the years, to keep others guessing what goes on inside his head. “Okay.” He shrugs, having already come to this conclusion once Stiles had suggested it. He really didn’t want to be here either, not right now while he was alone with Stiles. He’d be alone with him at the loft too, but at least there he could keep a comfortable distance while still being able to keep Stiles in sight. Perks of a one room apartment. 

“Great.” The tense smile returns but Derek takes it, makes note of it. He thinks Stiles will go upstairs, grab a few things, but all he does is check his pockets for his pack of cigarettes and then heads to the door. Derek wonders if he’ll ever take those hospital sweats off and makes a point to have Stiles take a shower once they’re at his place.

Stiles doesn’t realize how much he’s missed chinese food until he takes his first bite. After crappy hospital food and whatever it was he ate with the hunters, he was swimming in delicious, spicy flavor. Derek had placed the order after they’d left Stiles’ house, met with the delivery guy just as they were pulling up to the loft. Stiles decided against climbing the stairs this time and instead took the elevator with Derek. It’s only after they walk inside and sit down to eat that Derek asks Stiles about his foot. 

Stiles has to actually force himself to stop eating just to speak and even then he has to finish the large mouthful he’d consumed a moment before. He swallows, takes a swig of his drink and notes how patient Derek is with him. He knows Derek’s been doing nothing but watching him from the second he’s been rescued. Stiles doesn’t mind so much. Derek can certainly judge, just like the rest of them, but there’s a sadness Stiles can see. One of shared pain, of understanding. So, Stiles answers his question. 

“Tried to escape, Jimmy broke it. Snapped it.” He makes a show of it with his chopsticks, feigning breaking them, even though he’s aware that Derek would know how to break a bone or two. Derek doesn’t pull a face though, he just glances down at Stiles’ foot. “It healed, obviously.” He adds.

Derek gruffs, looking back up at Stiles’ face. His eyes dart down to his lips and Stiles reaches up to wipe at it with his arm. Derek rolls his eyes and hands over a napkin. “Speaking of that, take a shower before you sit anywhere else. You stink.” 

Stiles snorts, takes the napkin and continues eating until he’s so full, he thinks he might burst. There’s still some food left over and that bums him out a bit. He used to be able to eat so much more but he’d gotten used to eating practically nothing for so long. He sits back in the chair, much to Derek’s disappointing stare and huffs a chuckle. He doesn't know why he feels the need to share more, but before he can stop himself, he tells Derek something else. “Y’know, there were days when I didn’t get anything to eat?”

He watches Derek stop mid-rise off the sofa. He’d been about to start cleaning the table between them, but he halted and slowly sat back down. His eyebrows rose but Stiles couldn’t tell if it was from curiosity or concern. He used to be able to read those damn eyebrows like a book, a language only Derek could convey with each twitch, twinge, or furrow. A language Stiles prided on being the only one who could understand it.

“Yeah.” He sits up, leaning on his knees and letting his hands dangle. “Yeah,” He repeats. “In the beginning, they just kept giving me water until I could barely move and then one day they fed me until I threw up.” He looks to the remnants of a really nice meal and grimaces. “Sorry - not to bring the mood down or any-”

“I’m sorry.” It’s small, more like a mumble than a clear declaration of guilt. Stiles isn’t sure he heard Derek correctly at first, but then he looks at Derek and he’s sure he heard it. He can’t bring himself to say anything, so he just stares. Derek clears his throat and scoots forward on the couch, sitting on the edge. “I’m sorry - for that - for -” He’s stumbling over his words and Stiles sighs.

He can feel his nose start to tingle, can feel the tears start to form and he has to blink and look away to make it stop. Without saying anything, Stiles stands and makes his way quietly over towards the bathroom. He thinks he’ll take that shower now because he can’t stand being around Derek, can’t stand hearing him sound so broken.

The water is warm and it feels nice against his skin. Stiles leans into it, letting the spray hit him in the chest. He remembers the cold showers he’d grown accustomed to and relishes the feeling of good plumbing. He hates the way he left Derek, but the shower feels too good to let a bad mood ruin it. He washes his hair - what little of it he has - with Derek’s shampoo, but he pauses to squeeze the bottle and inhale the scent. It invokes another memory, one from a happier time where he’d spent most of his days here at the loft. 

He’d managed to wear Derek down and let him sleep over a few times. It was always on the couch, but Stiles felt as if he could sleep better here than at home. Just knowing Derek was in the bed - even though it was on the other side of the room - asleep at the same time as him, was enough. It was comfortable. 

Stiles doesn’t think he’ll feel comfortable anytime soon. Here, or anywhere. He washes his hair and then picks up Derek’s body wash. That too has a familiar smell and it clouds Stiles’ senses as he washes his body. He runs a hand down over his arm, watches as the water flushes the soap away. He can see the needle marks track along the bend in his arm. There’s only a few but they’re bruised from being reused so many times. Some have started to scab but there’s a fresh one, the one he’d made from the night before.

The stranger, who Stiles now knows as Leo, had given him his dues once they’d finished fucking on the couch. Leo had wanted to give it to him personally and Stiles didn’t mind, his mind still blown out from the sex. He’d laid back on the couch, arm stretched outward for Leo to hold on to it, to poke at it with the needle. When he was done, he’d called Stiles babe and fucked him again. 

Stiles feels like he wants to hit something, but he knows if he makes any strange noise, Derek will come flying through the door and he doesn’t want Derek to see him like this. So instead, Stiles just sits down in the tub, lets the water wash over him and quietly cries into his hand.

Chapter Text

Derek’s phone buzzes next to him on the table. The screen lights up and Noah’s name and a message icon flashes across it. Derek wants to answer it, but he’s too busy trying not to stare as Stiles walks out of the bathroom completely naked. It shocks him at first because he’s not expecting Stiles to do that, nor expect Stiles not to care that he’s just walking around in the buff. So Derek looks away and contemplates talking to Noah while his son walks around in his loft, nude.  

His phone buzzes again and this time, he unlocks the screen to see a few messages. One asks if Stiles is doing alright and the other is merely Derek’s name and a question mark. 

Derek sighs and responds, letting Noah know everything is okay. He tells him they went back to his place while Noah’s at work and within a few seconds, he gets a reply. Noah thanks him and Derek feels terrible. He feels terrible because he doesn’t feel as if he’s helping. He hears a drawer being pulled open and decides to peer over his shoulder. 

Stiles is busy rummaging around in his dresser and Derek takes the time to let himself look. There’s no surprise to the way Stiles looks. Derek remembers noting that he’d lost a bit of weight when they found him, but now he can see the dips and grooves in the muscles and bit of fat, remembers that Stiles didn’t always look this way. If he looks close enough, he can see some scars scattered about on his body. There’s a few skinny slashes along his sides, a few burn marks on his legs. There’s a few scars sitting dangerously close to his butt and it makes Derek’s blood boil at the assumption of why they’re there.

Derek catches Stiles turning and he has to shake himself out of the thoughts, clear his throat. “What are you doing?” He asks.

“Looking for something to wear?” Stiles replies, pulling out a shirt and some shorts. Derek notices he doesn’t go for any underwear and thank god. He looks away while Stiles gets dressed, looks back at his phone to see another message from Noah. 

He tells Derek he might be later than he thought. So Derek offers to let Stiles stay over, suggests Noah pick him up in the morning and all seems planned and good. Noah thanks him again and this time Derek can’t help but smile. 

“You-“ Derek jumps, because he hadn’t heard Stiles move, hadn’t been aware of his surroundings. He’d been too focused on the phone and it makes Stiles snort behind him. “ - You and my dad seem to have gotten close.” He mumbles, leaning just a bit too far over Derek’s shoulder as he looks at the phone. 

Derek immediately shuts it off and places it on the table. He rotates his shoulders and hopes Stiles picks up what he’s trying to silently say. He sighs when Stiles does and moves around him and the couch Derek has been sitting on. Stiles plops down next to him however, so close their arms are touching. Derek tries to move away but Stiles just inches closer. 

“What are you doing?” He asks and Stiles huffs a chuckle. He realizes he’s already asked that but he can’t read Stiles that well anymore. He can smell him though. He can smell himself on Stiles. 

Stiles presses his arm against Derek’s and looks over at him. “I’m cold and you’re warm.” It was so matter of fact, no feeling, no emotion. That too made Derek’s blood boil.

Derek swallows and moves to stand. “I’ll get you a blanket -” He feels Stiles’ hand - which, he was right, he is cold, freezing in fact - grab onto his arm. He looks back down, sees Stiles staring up at him. He looks so tired. 

“Wait, please?” Stiles asks so nicely, so quietly, that Derek can’t bring himself to leave. He sits back down and lets Stiles take one of his hands into his own. Stiles runs his fingers along the palm, softly tracing the deep creases. Derek shivers from the light touch, but he doesn’t move his hand. He lets Stiles turn it over, study the back, run his fingers over his knuckles. He ghosts them up each finger until they’re tapping on his nails. 

Derek doesn’t know why he does it, but he lets his claws grow and take over and Stiles taps at the tips of those as well. Derek swallows, feels his heart beat just a bit too quickly. He allows himself to listen to Stiles’ heart and is surprised when he hears it beating just as fast. He stops watching what Stiles is doing with his hand. Instead he glances at Stiles’ face and sees the deep concentration etched into each wrinkle, each flutter of those lovely long lashes. 

“Stiles?” Derek calls out, quietly and timidly because he doesn’t exactly want him to stop, he’s just curious. 

It takes Stiles a second to answer. He’s busy forming his hand over Derek’s, curling and uncurling their fingers as if he’s imagining the claws to be his own. “Hm?” He replies, almost sleepily, lost in whatever thought he’s traveling on. 

Slowly, Derek moves his hand out from under Stiles’ own. “What are you doing?” He asks for a third time that day, because he really doesn’t know. 

Stiles lets his hands drop to his lap and sighs. He looks at Derek, shrugs and brings a half-hearted smile to his lips. “I don’t know.” And stands, reaching into the pocket of the shorts he borrowed, pulling out his pack of cigarettes and lighter. He heads to the door of the balcony and opens it, stepping out into the space. He shuts the door but Derek can still see him through the window, watches as Stiles lights up and inhales deeply. A billow of smoke pours from him as he turns to face away and looks out across the balcony. 

Derek doesn’t know what he’s doing either.

The day passes on and Stiles revisits the balcony at least a few more times to smoke. He forgets that Derek doesn’t have a lot of entertainment at his place, that he’s usually the one who brings the research, the movies, the games, when it becomes a group get-together. There’s nothing to do except sit around and smoke and Stiles is bored out of his mind.

He could simply suggest going back home but Stiles can’t bring himself to do it. He watches Derek move about the loft as if he’s walking on literal eggshells. His steps are careful, calculated and he makes sure to avoid being too close to Stiles. Derek cleans, gathering the hospital sweats from the bathroom and setting them up in the washer in a room that’s just outside of the loft apartment. Stiles is left alone for a moment while Derek does this but he knows better than to try and leave. 

He itches with the urge to run, to get away. It’s only been about a day but he’s spent most of it cold and ansty. He tries to sit and bounce a knee or tap his fingers along the backrest of the couch, tries to expel some energy and anxiety through tiny spurts, but he just wants to get up and go. 

Derek comes back in a minute later and Stiles shoots up from the couch. It makes Derek stop suddenly, curious brows set high on his face. “What?” He asks, as if ready for something to drop. He even takes a second to look around as if searching for the reason for Stiles' sudden movement. 

Stiles licks his lips and runs a hand over his hair. “Uh-” He rubs at his jaw. “I’m running low on smokes, mind if we go get more?” He’s aware of just how aware Derek is of his hands. He even tucks one into the pocket of his shorts to hide it.

He waits a grueling minute while Derek seems to mull this over. He thinks Derek is going to tell him no and he already has a rebuttal ready on his tongue. But Derek nods and moves to grab his keys and a hoodie from a hook by the door. “Come on.”

Stiles doesn’t waste any time. He feels a little better once he’s past the threshold of the apartment, a bit more better once they are in the elevator and once they are outside, he feels free. He was starting to go crazy upstairs, but out here, with the cool night wind blowing against his skin, Stiles feels like he can breathe. It’s dark now and he thinks they’re going to need to drive to the nearest gas station but Derek starts walking in the opposite direction of the parking garage. Stiles quietly follows along.

After a few minutes, Derek hangs back and waits to walk alongside Stiles. The nights are getting colder and Stiles regrets not asking for a jacket. He lights up his last cigarette, scrunching his nose up at the small amount of heat the lighter gives off when he uses it. He shivers and tucks his free hand underneath his other arm. 

“Are you cold?” Derek asks and Stiles has to resist rolling his eyes at the obvious. He doesn’t want to be rude so he shrugs. He is though. He was cold upstairs in the loft where he’s sure it’s warmer than it is outside. Now he’s freezing and shaking. Without a word, Derek unfolds the hoodie he’d brought, slung over his arm, and places it over Stiles’ shoulders.

Stiles doesn’t waste time trying to pull it over his head. He struggles, almost dropping his cigarette. Derek huffs a chuckle and holds it for him, and when Stiles gets stuck, he feels both of Derek’s hands come to help him slide it down over his head. He’s welcomed with a sight of his cigarette clenched between Derek’s teeth and Stiles is not exactly hating it.

He snorts, reaches up and takes it from Derek, even though Derek could have just done it himself. “Really trying to look like the baddest of bad boys here, huh?” 

Derek shrugs and tucks his own hands into his jean pockets. “I could never get used to the taste.” He smirks and Stiles spends a bit too long staring at him as he does so. Stiles has always liked it when Derek smiled, because he felt like Derek didn’t do it enough. Now Stiles stares because Derek isn’t ducking his head to hide it. It makes Stiles smile and when Derek catches him, he blinks and his smile grows. 

It drops a moment later though, a frown replacing it as Stiles takes a drag from his cigarette and looks out ahead of them. “I’m sorry for making your clothes stink.” He offers, hearing Derek sigh next to him.

“It’s okay, I don’t really mind.” They walk a bit more in silence until Derek turns the corner. Stiles follows along and soon they’re at the gas station. It’s quiet and no one is around except the attendee at the register. Derek takes a second to look around, staring at the candy bar section as Stiles moves about the isles. He can see the cashier staring at him from behind the plastic barrier and it makes his skin crawl. There’s no logical reason to it, the cashier isn’t leering, isn’t sizing Stiles up, but the act of staring is what sets his heart to hammer in his chest.

He sidles up next to Derek, glancing at the candy. “I - uh I keep forgetting that I don’t have any money.” 

“That’s fine.” Derek gruffs, picking out a few things before moving on to the cooler doors. Here he stands debating on which drink to get and Stiles sticks to his side. He can still feel the watchful stare of the cashier on him. It makes him stand closer to Derek. Derek doesn’t seem to mind or notice, not until Stiles leans forward to rest his forehead on Derek’s arm. “Stiles?”

“Sorry, I - uh you’re just really warm.” He doesn’t want to tell Derek that he’s starting to panic. It's starting to make his stomach churn and his heart beats wildly about in his chest. He thinks Derek knows though, as he slides his arm up and around Stiles’ shoulders. It surprises Stiles, but he leans into it all the same. 

“Pick a drink and let’s go.” Derek speaks softly but Stiles grabs the first thing he sees anyway. It’s just a generic soda, one he probably won’t even drink, but he holds it in his hand as Derek lets his arm fall away from his shoulders, taking the warmth with it. He feels like he can’t move however, like his feet are stuck to the floor, but then Derek is taking his hand into his own, lacing their fingers together as if they belong that way and starts pulling Stiles in the direction of the cashier and the counter.

Stiles doesn’t say a word as he follows along. He waits to say something when he points out which pack of cigarettes he wants. He’s too aware of the cashier looking at him, too aware of the way Derek’s hand feels against his own. He spent time studying it earlier, feeling at the creases and joints and admiring Derek’s claws. But now Derek’s hand feels scratchy against his, too hot and too big and when Derek let’s his hand go to pay, Stiles snatches up the pack of cigarettes, mumbles a quick thanks and bolts out the door. 

The cool air smacks him in the face as Stiles rounds the corner. He finds a wall, leans against it and slides to the ground, all while trying to breathe and feeling like he can’t at all. He doesn’t hear Derek coming up on him, doesn’t know he’s there until he’s kneeling in front of him, hands reaching out to grab onto his arms. “Stiles!” Derek yells and Stiles thinks he’s been yelling for a while. “Stiles, breathe!” 

Then Stiles sees him, sees Derek struggling to help. His heart feels like it’s going to burst, his chest hurts as he tries and fails to find a way to inhale. His throat feels like it’s closing up and Derek won’t stop shaking him, touching him. Derek’s hands feel hot, burning through the hoodie he’s wearing. He can smell the stink of cigarettes on him but he can also smell Derek on him, overwhelming him, owning him and before he can stop himself, Stiles waves his arms about and pushes Derek away. “Get off me!” He screams between shallow breaths. “Don’t touch me!” 

The world starts to go sideways and Stiles realizes he’s fallen over on the ground. Derek is still trying to help him, still struggling with what to do but all Stiles can do is cry as his vision starts to go white and fuzzy at the edges. He’s going to pass out, he knows it, welcomes it. He’s so tired and it hurts. Everything hurts. He hears Derek call out to him again, can feel Derek scoop him up in his arms. Stiles feels as if he’s floating, weightless and flying and before consciousness eludes him, he sighs contently.

It’s been hours but Stiles is still out. Derek wonders if he’s still unconscious from fainting because he looks like he’s just sleeping. Maybe he is, maybe he was just so exhausted that he slipped into sleep afterwards. Either way, Derek stays away and sits by the bed, watches Stiles’ chest rise and lower evenly. He looks peaceful, sleeping. Calm. The blue hue that comes through the large windowed wall of the loft covers him like a blanket. 

He’d tried his best to take away as much pain as possible while carrying Stiles home, but it became too much and Derek had to pull it back, afraid that if he’d kept it up, neither would make it back to the loft.

It’s late and Derek starts to feel his head nod forward. He tries to sit up, rearrange himself in the chair to wake himself up. He wants to be awake and aware but he can’t help but feel tired. He hadn’t slept since the night before, when Noah had woken him up over the phone. He hadn’t been sleeping all that well that night anyway but now he was just as tired as Stiles looked earlier. His head nods forward again and then he’s asleep, arms folded and chin resting on his chest. 

He doesn’t dream, or if he does, he doesn’t remember anything. He just knows he’s startled awake at the soft sounds of Stiles sitting up in his bed. He’s so frazzled, his sense of danger alerts him but it’s nothing. It’s just Stiles sitting, knees pressed to his chest, arms wrapped around them and the comforter that covers him. “H-hey.” He stammers, clearing his throat. He feels like he woke up in the middle of an attack but he realizes he’s feeling the panic second hand. It’s coming from Stiles, even though Stiles appears calm.

Derek can hear his heart beat though, how fast it’s going.

Stiles licks his lips. “Hey.” He responds. It’s tense, awkward. Derek can smell the embarrassment radiate off of him. He moves, carefully, to sit on the edge of the bed, watches Stiles lean away from him and notes the difference from how cozy he was earlier. Stiles looks away from him. “I’m sorry.” 

“No, I’m sorry.” Derek replies. He waits a minute, waits to see if Stiles will look at him again. When he doesn’t, Derek sighs. “I shouldn’t have touched you without asking.”

It’s there, at that moment, that Stiles lets loose a sniffle and only when he looks back at Derek, can Derek see that he’s crying. It breaks his heart and he desperately wants to wrap himself around Stiles. But he doesn’t. He sits there, on the edge of the bed, debating if he should get up altogether; If space is what Stiles needs and not comfort. Then Stiles shifts in the bed, moves over to one side and holds open the comforter for Derek.

He takes the offer without saying anything and climbs in underneath the covers. Stiles leans against him and Derek takes the chance to wrap his arm around his shoulders. Together, they scoot down on the bed and lay there. Derek lets Stiles curl against him, lets him drape an arm across his chest. He huffs a chuckle, thinking it's funny how things have changed. Not just with Stiles, but within himself. He remembers being the stubborn, young wolf who didn’t and wouldn’t take anything from anyone, wouldn’t form close relationships, wouldn’t allow himself the pack he’d wanted all his life. He thinks of where he was and where he is now and never in a million years did he think he’d be sharing a bed with Stiles Stilinski.

Maybe at one point he’d started to harbor those thoughts, but that wasn’t this. This doesn’t feel like attraction right now. Right now it feels like pack, like taking care of one another by providing a comfortable space, a warm space. A safe space. Derek doesn’t realize until just now how much he’s missed this feeling. Stiles slides closer and Derek rests his chin on his head and soon both are asleep.

In the morning, Stiles is, surprisingly, the first one up. His eyes flutter open as he inhales deeply. For a second, he’s forgotten where he is, but as he slides his arm across Derek’s stomach, he remembers. He remembers the night before, when he’d screamed at Derek, passed out and woken to one very sorry looking wolf sitting next to him. Stiles felt so stupid, so embarressed from yelling at Derek, but then Derek had apologized, mentioned that he shouldn’t have touched Stiles without asking and it broke something in him.

He wanted to feel happy by those words but all he felt was sick. He cried, but not because of relief, as Derek must have thought. He cried because he knew deep down that he missed what had been given to him for those six months. He missed the life he had because the survival had meant something. He hadn’t been a toy that Jimmy and the rest had played with, gotten tired of and gotten rid of. He could have died there, could have been killed for any number of reasons, but they made him belong. They gave him clothes, food, a purpose. Darla even gave him love and a way to escape when he felt things too much.

Derek had given him clothes, food, but there was no purpose here, not now. Maybe there was love. It’s not lost on Stiles, the way Derek tries to take care of him, the gentle way with which he treats him. He likes to think that he hasn’t lost the skills that would make him a good detective, that he can see how Derek feels about him. Stiles couldn’t bear the thought of sleeping alone the night before, so he pulled the covers back and hoped Derek would assuage his fear. His heart breaks as he wonders if Derek thinks it is something more than what it is. 

To Stiles, it’s just survival. 

He feels Derek’s muscles flutter beneath his fingers as he pulls his arm over and off of him. Unwinding a leg he’s curled around one of Derek’s, Stiles slowly slides himself out of bed. He trudges over to the table where the bags from the gas station sit. Derek must have put them there and forgotten about them, but sitting next to them is the unopened pack of cigarettes he’d picked out. He snatches it up and the lighter and heads out onto the balcony. 

It’s early, the sun still sitting on the horizon, and it's cold. Stiles is still wearing the hoodie from the night before and as he lights up his cigarette, he buries his unused hand in the adjoining pocket. He takes a drag, pulls it from his lips, holds it between his fingers as he runs that same hand along the top of his head. The hair is still considered fuzzy and Stiles debates growing it back out. Jimmy isn’t here to force it to be shaved. Jimmy isn’t here for a lot of things. 

If Stiles really thinks about it, he’s glad Jimmy isn’t here. He doesn’t miss Jimmy. He doesn’t miss Diego, Caleb, or Lucas. He misses Darla though, and wishes she were here. If she was, she’d be talking his ear off about something and even though he wouldn’t have the slightest idea of what it could be about, he’d enjoy the sound of her voice all the same. Stiles feels like he can’t enjoy much these days. 

He feels lost and unsure about his existence anywhere. Beacon Hills doesn’t feel like home, his house - his room - doesn’t feel like home. He feels like a stranger who barges in and takes over a life that isn’t his. Scott isn’t his friend, Malia isn’t his ex, Lydia isn’t the woman he’s been in love with for most of his life. Derek isn’t his - well, he’s unsure just what Derek really is to him. Derek’s just always been there, but ‘been there’ is not an established place in his heart. ‘Been there’ is just a constant reminder of what he gained and lost, what they all gained and lost. Derek is like a computer virus, undetectable but in every crease, every shadow, every part of Stiles’ being. Derek is just always there. Even when he isn’t.

Stiles finishes with his first cigarette and starts up on a second one as he catches sight of Derek in the corner of his eye. He peers over his shoulder, watches Derek get out of bed and glance his way once before looking towards the loft door. Derek moves around the bed and towards it and Stiles leans against the balcony, watching and flicking ash from his cigarette.

His dad is at the door and Derek welcomes him inside. It takes a moment for Noah to look around, to look for Stiles, before he sees him outside. Noah starts to smile but when Stiles brings the cigarette to his lips, the smile falls and all that’s replaced is sadness and disappointment. Stiles is used to that look, but he doesn’t want to be.

Derek directs Noah towards the couch and talks to him while picking up the bags from the night before. He sets them on the ground and glances at Stiles, jerking his head in a silent plea for him to come inside, to come greet his dad. Stiles stares, takes another drag, holds the smoke in just a bit too long and exhales on the end of a cough. He crushes the cigarette and tosses it elsewhere on the floor of the balcony before he steps back inside. 

It was cold outside so now it's warm inside and Stiles hums in content as he closes the door behind him. “Morning.” He grumbles, walking over to Derek and his dad. Noah starts to stand, second guesses himself, falters as he gets up but ultimately does stand. 

“Hey Stiles.” He greets him and it's tense and awkward and Stiles hates this. He hates that neither he nor his dad know how to act around each other anymore.

But he tries and smiles anyway, reaches out and wraps his dad up in a hug. This time it’s Noah who doesn’t know what to do but within seconds he’s hugging Stiles back, crushing him under the weight of it. It knocks air from Stiles, forces a breathy chuckle from him as he pats Noah on the back. It feels nice and Stiles can do nice for now.

Derek clears his throat and the two break away from the hug to look at him. “I was thinking we could have breakfast here?” He sounds unsure as he looks at the two, as if this isn’t his place with his things. 

Stiles shrugs, looks to his dad and waits for Noah to nod and smile. “That sounds great.” Noah replies and up the spiral staircase they all go.

The morning passes with Derek cooking, Stiles helping where he can and Noah just watching and enjoying a cup of coffee. Stiles catches his father watching, notes the way his dad is comfortable in Derek’s space. It makes him wonder just how close him and Derek had gotten while he was away. Derek could be good for his dad, Stiles thinks. He thinks this a lot actually, as he watches the two of them together, how they laugh or talk, or how sometimes they communicate without having to say much of anything at all. 

He thinks Derek has replaced him as son and a part of him doesn’t mind that at all.

Chapter Text

Breakfast passes and the morning becomes an early afternoon. Stiles hasn’t visited the balcony once since his dad has come over to Derek’s. He wants to, itches to and decides on bouncing his knee until he can get rid of the building anxiety. It’s not lost on Noah however, Stiles can see it in the way he glances at him, watches him, tries to engage him in conversation to distract him. 

Stiles wonders if his dad knows what he’s been up to, if Derek has mentioned anything about the other night. He probably knows he was high when he came home, Stiles thinks. His dad is smart, sheriff after all. But does he know what Stiles did in order to obtain the high? Does he know that Stiles was on his knees more than once that night, that he begged for it like a little bit-

“Stiles? Hello?” 

Stiles breaks from his thoughts, blinks them away and looks around. He’d been sitting and staring, resting his chin in his hand, lost in his own head. “Sorry.” He mumbles, shifting in his chair, leaning back and letting loose a sigh. 

Noah smiles. “It’s okay, I was just saying we should get you a new phone today. I don’t know what happened to your last one.” 

Stiles knows. Jimmy took it from him, looked through his photos, scrolled through his contact lists, read messages out loud to the others amidst chuckles and giggles. He remembers when Jimmy broke it in half because he’d done it while Lucas and Diego had him between them. 

Shrugging, Stiles offers a crooked smile. He’s still bouncing his knee, tapping his fingers along one leg. “Sounds like a plan.” Noah sees this and moves to stand. 

“Great. Meet me down in ten?” He looks at Derek, as if saying something without saying anything and Stiles feels a slight twinge in his chest. The moment Noah is out of the apartment, Stiles makes a beeline down the spiral staircase and out onto the balcony. 

He lights up and takes a drag as if he hasn’t smoked in a few days when it’s only been a few hours. His hands shake and he knows this is more than wanting a cigarette. He’d been feeling all over the place, irritable, emotional with tiny bits of clarity. His anxiety was through the roof and it was getting harder to focus on a single thing. He was either going to have to ride through this or fix it. He hasn’t exactly decided which one yet. 

The door to the balcony opens and shuts and Derek is beside him. He’s quiet, looking at Stiles as he turns to lean up against the edge of the stone railing. Stiles is busy leaning over on it, resting his head on a folded arm, the cigarette in his other hanging down by his side. 

“Do you want me to come with you?” Derek asks, watching as Stiles lifts the cigarette to his mouth, puffs of smoke wisping out from underneath his head and arm.

Stiles shrugs. “No.” His answer is short because he doesn’t feel the need to elaborate. Derek sighs next to him and he peeks up over his arm at him. “What?” He sounds irritated and maybe he is. Maybe he’d rather not do anything today instead of doing something like getting a new phone. Who does he have to call anyway? Maybe Scott, maybe Derek. 

Derek’s eyebrows twitch, raise just a bit too high on his head as he looks Stiles over. He knows that look, it’s Derek’s studying face, which he wears often enough around Stiles already. “Are you okay?”

Now it's Stiles’ turn to sigh. He stands, straightens out, finishes off the cigarette and crushes it against the stone. Ash and lit bits of the tobacco float downward, fizzling out before they reach the ground. Stiles loses himself in it for a moment. “No.” He answers, because it’s honest and he still doesn’t feel the need to elaborate. He catches Derek’s face slipping into concern but he bypasses him for the door.

He makes his way over to Derek’s dresser, pulling out a clean pair of sweatpants and a black cotton tee. He doesn’t bother to ask Derek and Derek isn’t saying anything to make him think he’s not allowed to do it. Stiles wonders how far he can push Derek. Maybe he’ll undress right here in front of him, sidle up next to him, drag him by the arm towards the bed they’d shared the night be-

“Stiles.” 

Again, ripped from wherever his mind had drifted off to, Stiles tries to ground himself in the present. He gathers up the clothes and makes his way to the bathroom to get changed without bothering to find out why Derek had called out his name.

The car ride is the worst only because Stiles doesn’t know how to fill the silence. It’s not like before when his dad would have to tell him to take a breath or repeat himself when he spoke too quickly. Now he struggles to find words of any kind to say. It feels like Noah is struggling too. Stiles can see it in the way he grips the steering wheel, curling and uncurling his fingers around the rubber.

The electronics store is a bit better than the car ride. At least here, Stiles and Noah can talk about what’s in front of them. Stiles feels like he doesn’t need top of the line when it comes to phones, even though big, bright screens usually jump out at him. There’s a particularly large phone that could be great for reading or watching movies. He even thinks it’d be good for researching, but the thought quickly passes because the phone is just way too big and way too expensive. 

Instead, he settles on a small phone, the screen just the right size to read messages. There’s not many bells and whistles attached to it and Stiles thinks that’s fine. He doesn’t plan on calling or texting anyone too much anyway. At least not right now. But the basic phone is a good choice and Noah happily buys it for him. 

Stiles holds it in his hands as they exit the store. It happens to be in the local mall, so Noah and Stiles decide to catch an early lunch in the food court. 

It’s crowded and even though it’s a weekday, there’s far too many adults and kids roaming it in droves. Stiles takes a seat at a table in the corner, waits for Noah to bring back some food. It’s burgers and fries - of course - and Stiles can’t help but snort and smile. He takes a fry and looks at it, wonders when the last time he’d actually had fries was and sighs. Suddenly he doesn’t feel hungry anymore. It’s as if the thought of eating literally makes his appetite disappear. 

He drops the fry back into the basket, sits back and tucks his hands into the pockets of the sweatpants he’d borrowed - stolen - from Derek, and plays with the lighter. Noah tries to start a conversation. Tries and fails a few times, because Stiles just isn't in the mood for it all. They resign to sit quietly and people watch. Or rather, Stiles does, because Noah won’t stop staring at Stiles.

Sighing, Stiles puts his new phone on the table and stares at it. He manages to turn it on but it’s empty, a blank canvas with no history of texts or calls. He isn’t surprised, purely because he doesn’t remember anyone’s phone number to put down in the contact list anyway. Noah pulls his own phone out. “May I?” He asks, waiting for Stiles to shrug before picking up the phone. He inputs a few things and slides it back towards Stiles. “Now you have mine, Derek’s, Scott’s and Melissa’s numbers.”

He would expect his dad to have Scott and his mother’s numbers. He kind of expects him to have Derek’s as well, what with how close they’ve become, but it still makes a part of him twinge with annoyance, or jealousy. Stiles isn’t really sure what he’s feeling right now. He offers a tiny smile and takes the phone. His thumb hovers over Derek’s name but he decides against saying anything, turning the screen off and pocketing the phone without much thought.

Noah finishes up his food, makes a point to look at Stiles’ untouched food, and gathers up everything to leave. Just as they reach the doors to exit the mall, Stiles bumps into his dad’s shoulder. He’d been busy looking elsewhere while they walked, and hadn’t expected an abrupt stop. He also wasn’t expecting to run into Scott and Malia, but it was the mall and Beacon Hills didn’t have many places to hang out at.

The last time Scott and Stiles were together, Stiles had blown smoke in his face, said something inappropriate and been given the silent treatment. Stiles isn’t surprised by the look Scott is giving him right now. “Hey Scott.” Noah says, stealing Scott’s attention and earning a smile from him. “Malia, what are you kids up to today?”

Stiles wants to leave. He doesn’t have to be a werewolf or have supernatural abilities to sense how tense the air is around them all. He can’t exactly pay attention to what Scott is saying. His voice seems to get lost in the sea of mall goers as they pass by and have conversations of their own. He gets distracted by a few of them until he hears his name float in.

“Stiles? Did you hear Scott?” Noah asks, breaking Stiles out of his reverie.

Stiles clears his throat and shuffles his feet. “Sorry, no. What’s going on?” He’s aware that he sounds rude. He doesn’t mean to, but his mind is just elsewhere. 

“We were thinking of heading to Lydia’s tomorrow for a get together. Did you want to join us?” Scott’s asking but he doesn’t seem all that invested in Stiles’ answer. Stiles is okay with that. He’s aware he’s being asked as an afterthought. It’s just because they’ve managed to bump into each other, even as Malia tries to follow up by saying how much everyone wants to see him. 

Stiles doesn’t feel the brotherly love he used to when around Scott and maybe that’s okay. He doesn’t need a brother, he needs to get out of this mall before he explodes. Or implodes. He’s not really sure what he wants to do right now.

“Sure.” He replies and that’s that. Plans have been made, pleasantries exchanged and then Noah and Stiles are out the door and heading to the car. He feels a little better outside, like he can breathe and have as much space as he wants. It’s gone though, the moment he climbs into the car. 

It’s quiet again, awkward, but then Stiles clears his throat. “Do you think it’d be okay if I took the jeep to Lydia’s tomorrow?” He sounds like he’s a teenager asking for permission and it makes him cringe. 

Noah takes a minute and sighs. “Stiles, it’s your jeep. You don’t have to ask.” But Stiles feels like he does. He doesn’t feel much like an adult. It took six months and everyone had moved on without him. In the hospital, his dad spent most of their time together updating him on everyone, where they lived, where they were working, how life was between bouts of looking for Stiles. Beacon Hills and it’s residents became something of a show to him, and Noah just happened to be recanting episodes. 

“Thanks.” Is all Stiles gives in reply. 

The rest of the ride is spent in a less awkward silence.

It’s late when Derek sees his phone light up, the buzz of a message yanking him from a daze. He hasn’t gone to bed yet, even though he should. He’s only managed to sit up underneath the covers. He tries to read a book but when he realizes he’s read the same paragraph over and over again, he stops and stares and lets his mind wander. 

He reaches over and grabs his phone, a bit confused on why an unknown number has sent him a message only containing the word ‘hey’, but then he remembers that Noah was taking Stiles to get a new phone and suddenly the corners of his mouth twinge in a small smile. 

Derek responds with a ‘hey’ of his own and then promptly saves the number in his phone, replacing Stiles' old number with the new one. 

‘Dad’s asleep.’

‘And you’re not?’

‘Can’t sleep.’

‘I can’t either.’

Derek taps his phone to his lips in an idle manner. When it buzzes against them, he smiles. 

‘Wanna come over?’

Without a second thought, Derek replies, ‘Be there soon.’ and he’s instantly out of bed, gathering the pants he’d worn earlier and slipping them on. He grabs a few other articles of his clothing, another plain shirt and a pair of sweatpants and piles them into a bag along with the clothes he’d washed for Stiles the day before. 

It doesn’t take long for him to drive over, no cars on the road at this late hour. He pulls up alongside the house and sees one light on, coming from Stiles’ room. He grabs the bag, climbs out and shuts the door behind him. He thinks maybe he should use the door, but in all the time he’d spent here, he’d never asked for a key. So he walks around to the side of the house, scales up to the roof and sees that the window is open.

Derek smiles and climbs through. Stiles is laying on the bed, tapping his fingers along his stomach. He doesn’t seem surprised that Derek’s just come in unannounced. He did ask him over after all, so he’s expecting him.

Stiles leans up on his elbows as he watches Derek climb into the room. He sits up, glances at the bag of clothes in Derek’s hand as it's set down on the floor near his table. Neither says anything, not even when Stiles pulls back the covers on his bed and scooches over. Derek slides in underneath the blanket, holds his arm out for Stiles to sidle into and then they lay there for a few minutes. It feels comfortable, lying in the bed next to Stiles. He let’s Stiles cling to him and finds that he prefers it when Stiles drapes an arm across his chest and wraps a leg around his own.

They seem to fit here, with Stiles head underneath Derek’s chin. He can still smell his shampoo in his hair. There’s a deep rumble in Derek’s chest and the sound only seems to make Stiles lean closer. 

“It sounds like you’re purring.” Stiles mumbles, shutting his eyes as he gets comfortable. There’s a smile there, Derek can hear it shaping around his words. It makes Derek huff a chuckle. Stiles falls asleep almost instantly and Derek let’s his eyes close to the sounds of Stiles’ breathing. 

In the morning, Derek wakes up to an empty bed and wonders how he could have slept-in twice in two days. He’s normally the first one up, usually around dawn, but both times he’s managed to wake up and Stiles is gone. He can hear him though, out on the roof, can smell the cigarette he’s smoking. 

The smell bothers him a little but he’s not going to say anything. He’s not going to urge Stiles’ to quit anytime soon, not when there’s so much else going on. So Derek climbs out of bed, takes a few steps towards the window and stops when he hears a soft knock on the door behind him.

It’s cracked, but it opens a second later. Noah’s surprised to see Derek but he smiles all the same before taking a look around the room. When Derek nods towards the window, Noah nods back in understanding. “I came to see if he’s hungry.” 

“I’ll go get him.” It seems normal, this interaction, as if Noah doesn’t mind that Derek’s here so early. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t spent nights over before, woken up and had breakfast as if it were his house. But Stiles is back and Derek suddenly feels awkward with the normalcy of it all. He climbs out of the window, joins Stiles on the roof. He lays next to him, resting his head on folded arms. Stiles doesn’t say anything, just continues to smoke and look out across the neighborhood. “Your dad wants to know if you’re hungry.”

Stiles takes a drag of his cigarette, finishes it and crumples it against the roof. The smoke pours out of his mouth as Stiles takes his time. It’s a bit entrancing, the way the smoke reflects the light from the rising sun. It’s over the horizon now and Derek thinks it must be a reasonable hour of the morning. He wonders how long Stiles has been awake. “Not really.” Stiles mumbles and it makes Derek worry a bit. He didn’t exactly eat much at breakfast the day before, a stark contrast to how much and fast he’d consumed the Chinese food a few days ago. 

“I can take you somewhere to eat if you want.” Derek offers, but he can sense that Stiles has shut down. The air around him is stiff even though there’s a nice chill wind flowing by. Stiles is different now, shifting to a quieter, sullen mood. Derek can practically feel it.

Stiles shrugs again and gets up to move back inside. “No thanks.” He mumbles again, climbing in through the window. He’s sifting through the bag of clothes Derek brought him by the time Derek is back in the room, picking out the new shirt and sweatpants. Derek isn’t really sure why he brought them, but he sees that Stiles prefers them to his own clothes and he doesn’t really mind. It’s comforting, smelling himself on Stiles, but the feeling is short lived when Stiles speaks again. “I’m hanging out with Scott today, I’ll call you later?”

A sudden realization hits Derek. It feels like a slap in the face, makes his heart drop into his stomach as he listens to not only Stiles’ words, but the flat, emotionless tone he’d said them in. Derek swallows and clears his throat, receiving the message Stiles is sending loud and clear. Stiles doesn’t want him here, not now. He also didn’t want Derek around yesterday, during the day. One is an incident, two is a coincidence - Derek wasn’t going to stick around to see if there was a third. “Right.” He acknowledges and without saying anything else, he walks across the room to leave. Stiles doesn’t try to stop him, just merely watches him go.

It’s hard to go about his day, Stiles realizes. He showers, dresses and lingers in his room for a good part of it. At some point he ventures downstairs and heads into the kitchen to grab something to eat. There isn’t much there and he regrets skipping breakfast with his dad. He waits until it's time to leave for the group hangout and shoots his dad a quick goodbye before he heads out the door. "Just, text me when you get there." Noah calls out before the door shuts.

Roscoe is waiting for him, sitting pretty in the driveway. Stiles wonders if the engine will start, if anyone’s been taking care of her. It feels weird, sitting in the driver’s seat, hands gripping a wheel he hasn’t touched in so long. He remembers so many things happening in this jeep, memories from a life before. She starts with no problem and it makes Stiles smile. It’s not long before he pulls out of the driveway and heads towards Lydia’s.

The drive starts to feel like how it used to, as if he hadn’t been gone for six months. For a moment, Stiles feels like he never left - or rather, like he hadn’t been taken - and it’s just a normal night out, but as he pulls up close to Lydia’s house, the feeling fades. Stiles pulls up to the curb but instead of getting out, he turns the lights off and just sits for a minute. He can see from all the cars that everyone is already there, that they’re all inside. He’s pretty sure they all know he’s coming but now that he’s here, he doesn’t feel like heading inside.

His jaw starts to itch so he reaches up to scratch at the stubble already starting to grow. He hasn’t bothered to shave since coming home from the hospital. He shaved there, because he’d been afraid that if Jimmy or any one of them were still alive, they’d find him and be angry at him for shaving. But now he figures that no one is coming for him because no one has. It took a while for Stiles to think of that as a blessing. 

All he has to do is get out of the car, just climb out and trudge up to the front door. He just has to knock and be welcomed inside and deal with the way everyone will be happy and sad to see him all at the same time. He could even try to patch things up with Scott tonight. This is all a possibility, but Stiles has to get out of the car first. He doesn’t. His heart flutters and drops in his chest, his stomach churns and the world spins out before him. He takes a moment to breathe, to grip the steering wheel for support as panic rises within him. All he has to do is get out of the car.

But he doesn’t. Stiles starts it back up and speeds off down the road, away from Lydia’s in the opposite direction from where he’d driven up from. He drives off and lets the evening carry him away. Before he realizes it, he’s downtown and within a blink of an eye, he’s back in a familiar, shady part. He doesn’t stop however, not here, not where the jeep can be easily recognized. He drives it down a ways, a few streets over, and parks it in a parking lot.

He’s out walking before he realizes it, his heart pounding in his chest. The sun is still setting and there’s people still milling about. It isn’t until he turns the corner that it starts to feel dangerous. It’s a stark contrast from where he parked the jeep, but that’s okay because Stiles knows where he’s going. He knows the building he walked out of the other day, knows to walk all the way to the top to the door he hadn’t bothered to shut behind him when he left.

It feels different though, somehow dirtier in the light of day, but Stiles won’t be deterred. His hands are shaking and his throat feels dry but he doesn’t care, not really. Not until he’s knocking on the door and being greeted by the familiar grimy face of Leo. 

“Baby.” Leo gruffs, a smirk tugging at one corner of his crusted lips. Stiles takes a minute to look away, to look down at his shuffling feet before glancing back up at the other. He swallows hard, scrunching his nose up as he sniffs the stink wafting from the apartment. He doesn’t have to say much before Leo laughs, opens the door a bit more and stands aside. “Come on in, darling.”

All Stiles has to do is turn around and head back downstairs. But he doesn’t.

Leo’s fucked Stiles enough to take it slow this time around. At first it had been rushed, hurried, payment, but now Stiles lays on the bed in the back room atop dirty sheets that match the dirty apartment. Leo lays on top of him, kisses him in natural progression. Stiles let’s Leo run his hands along his body, let’s those fingers run up and under his shirt and back down to the hem of his pants. His skin twitches, quivers,  as Leo’s hand dips below and inside of the sweats. Leo has nice fingers, Stiles thinks, as they wrap around his dick.

There’s no pretense here. Stiles is here for what’s happening, came here to do it himself. He came for the sex and the drugs Leo lavishes him with in return. When Leo kisses him again, Stiles let’s his tongue inside because he has a pill in his mouth, a pill he licks into Stiles’ own, one Stiles swallows without any trouble. He sighs in content and shuffles the sweat pants down a bit more, exposing himself to the stale air of the room. It doesn’t take too long before he’s fully erect. Leo has a nice touch, a good rhythm. It makes Stiles’ hips roll into the motion.

Leo laughs into his ear, trails his lips down Stiles’ neck, scratches him with the roughness of the broken skin layered on top of them. Those lips move lower, Leo’s other hand coming up to bunch Stiles’ shirt high enough to kiss and lick as much skin as possible on his downward descent. Leo’s got a good tongue too, one that wraps itself around the head of Stiles’ dick. That too, makes his hips roll, pushes himself further past those cracked lips until he’s completely engulfed in that warm, wet mouth. 

Stiles lets loose a tiny moan, because it feels good, shuts his eyes and lets his mind wander to other things. He doesn’t picture Leo doing this to him. He never pictured Jimmy or Lucas or any of them during, but he never mapped a clear version of a distinct person before either. Rather, his mind would focus on just the pleasure as a whole, regardless of who was giving it. This time however, as he peeks his eyes open just a bit, just enough to glance down at Leo’s head bobbing up and down on him, face obscured, Stiles can see a familiar resemblance. Once the thought strikes him in the color of Leo’s hair, the blue of his eyes, Stiles lets himself close his eyes and think of Derek. 

He imagines Derek here instead, or rather, that Stiles is at the loft, laying in Derek’s bed while Derek is the one doing naughty things with his mouth. He can see Derek’s tongue, almost feel it, slide along his length. He can hear Derek groaning around him, maybe even that purring growl he’d made the night before. All of this he thinks of as Leo’s fingers tap tap tap along his inner thigh, slide along his skin as he moves Stiles’ legs up and apart. 

Then the high hits, it permeates the thoughts, pokes holes in his imagination, morphs it, skews Derek’s face and suddenly it breaks because Stiles realizes Derek could never do these things. Stiles doesn’t want love, he wants to forget and to do that, he can’t have Derek because Derek loves him and Stiles doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to love anyone ever again. 

Leo pops him out of his mouth, lewd wet noises piercing the quiet sound of the apartment. Stiles feels the heat swell within him, lifts his hips as Leo’s hand ghosts ever downwards, fingers penetrating him without much resistance. He’s been groomed for this after all, to be ready, to be loose. Slick fingers fuck him until he’s good and ready and then without much preamble, Leo is sliding his dick inside and Stiles is moaning his name. 

It may have started off as slow but Leo quickly picks up the pace, now that Stiles’ warmth is completely wrapped around him. Stiles doesn’t mind. He didn’t come here for slow. He came here for fast, sharp, hard thrusts because with each one, he could dive deeper into forgetting; Commingle the pleasure with the high and just float away. That’s where he is right now as moans spill from his throat, as he spurs Leo on with “yes - yes - oh god - fuck - mmm”. He’s far away, somewhere else, not in a dingy, dirty apartment getting fucked by some stranger, not in a room with stale air that sticks to the skin with sweat and tears. 

‘Stiles isn’t here right now, leave a message after the beep.’

Chapter Text

Derek doesn’t know why he’s bothering to call Stiles. He doesn’t want to be that guy, who hangs around when he shouldn’t, butts their way into situations when they’re not wanted. He gets the feeling Stiles doesn’t really want him around and it hurts, but he’s still calling because Stiles said he’d call him later and Derek believed him. He feels worried when it reaches midnight and there’s nothing. No call, no text. 

He can’t revolve his life around this, around Stiles. Even though he desperately wants to. Derek knows this is pretty much one sided. He hates the idea of it in general, because while Stiles was gone, enduring hardships no one should have to go through, Derek had let his feelings blossom under the umbrella of mourning a loved one. It was safe, to let himself think the way he wanted to, to act the way he wanted to. It was safe to love Stiles when he’d been gone because loving Stiles now was utterly heartbreaking. 

Derek turns his phone upside down and places it on the nightstand. He’s not going to call again. He’s going to go to sleep, or try to anyway, and wake up to a new day, hopeful that there will be a message waiting for him. 

It’s almost instantaneous, the feeling of waking up when Derek doesn’t remember falling asleep. But it’s morning, the rising sun shining through and blanketing the loft in a pale golden hue. Derek gruffs against his pillow, cracks an eye open to see the empty space of his bed. He reaches a hand out to grasp at the sheets and sighs before pushing himself up to sit on the edge. 

His phone sits where he’d left it and for a second, Derek debates even looking at it. He can’t help himself though and turns it over. There’s no message or missed phone call. His thumb hovers over Stiles name in the contact list but he decides against being the first one to say anything. Stiles will call when he wants to and Derek can’t let himself just wait by the phone for forever. He will not be that guy. 

Derek can’t help himself though, when half an hour later, the phone rings and he rushes out in the middle of his shower to answer it. He catches sight of an unknown number, but he answers anway. “Hello?” He asks, creating a tiny puddle of water around his feet. Literally, in the middle of the shower.

“Yes, hello. Mr. Hale?” The voice sounds official and it makes Derek’s heart stutter in his chest. 

“Yes?” He answers, hesitant, worried. 

There’s a brief pause and Derek can hear a slew of noises in the background. There’s other voices, sounds of metal sliding across a floor. He can even hear a few short bursts of beeping noises, like a keycard reader being used, keys jangling. This place doesn’t sound familiar to him. Panic rises in his throat. “Mr. Hale, we have someone here in custody that’s requested you as his one phone call.”

Derek swallows hard, tries to move out from the water underneath his feet. It’s gone cold and he’s completely naked. He slowly walks back to the bathroom, grabs a towel and wraps it around himself. “Who?”

“He says his name is Stiles.”

Stiles sits handcuffed to a chair in a precinct downtown. He’s never actually been to this one before, his dad only ever having come here once to pick up paperwork. He’s sure that no one knows who he is, assumptions proven when he gave them his name and nobody flinched in surprise or acknowledged knowing of him. He wouldn’t give his last name though, not yet. That would be a dead giveaway and Stiles desperately doesn’t want his dad to find out he’s been arrested for drug possession and dealing.

The morning had gone by in a flash. He’d simply woken up to Leo talking to someone at the door, rolled over in bed to reach down to his pants on the floor. He’d grabbed his cigarettes and was just getting ready to light one when the door burst wide open and the guy Leo had been talking to started manhandling him. Leo had started yelling and caught Stiles' eye as he was whipped around in the man’s grasp. There wasn’t much time to panic though as another man came in from behind the first and told Stiles to get some pants on and put his hands behind his back. 

It wasn’t until they were both sitting in the back of the police cruiser that it registered with Stiles what exactly was going on. Leo was a mess next to him, crying and blubbering like an idiot, but Stiles merely sat there, body shaking, head hung down in shame. He’d shut his eyes and felt a few tears quietly sneak past his lashes and fall into two drops on his sweatpants. 

When they arrived at the station, Leo and Stiles had been separated, which was for the best. Leo was starting to get on Stiles’ nerves with all the crying and begging he was doing. They sat him in a chair, moved the handcuffs to the front and attached them to the arm before asking a few questions. 

Stiles couldn’t pay attention though. His mind was still fuzzy from the drugs he’d taken the night before. They asked what he was on but wasn’t exactly sure what all he’d taken and soon the voices filtered out to the noise the rest of the station presented and Stiles merely gave them his name and who to call. 

When the officer left him alone to make it, Stiles leaned his head back against the wall his chair sat in front of. He closed his eyes and fell asleep, only waking when someone shook him by the shoulder. 

“Hm?” He mumbled, peeking open to see Derek’s standing in front of him, a frown on his face, eyebrows scrunched together in the familiar look of irritation and disgruntlement. Every line of Derek’s body was straight and sharp and when he jerked his head in the direction of the door, it was quick and tense. 

“Get up.” Derek gruffed, waiting for Stiles to realize he was no longer handcuffed to the chair. When he did, Stiles stood and quietly followed Derek out of the station, more confused then relieved about being let go so easily. Some strings must have been pulled, and the thought of his dad pulling those strings makes Stiles sick to his stomach. 

It had been too noisy in the building to hear anything from outside, so when Stiles stepped past the doors, he was surprised by the smell and sound of rain. The bright morning sky he’d woken up to was now covered by roiling grey clouds, blanketing the sky with sheets of rain. Big, fat droplets fell hard and fast and neither Stiles nor Derek had an umbrella with them, so even though they hurried to the car, by the time they’d reached it, they were soaked. 

The car ride home was absolute hell. It was so quiet it became deafening. Stiles felt exhausted and just wanted to go to sleep but at the same time he felt awake and too aware to actually nod off again. Everything was amplified, the sound of the camaro speeding on down the road, the sound of the rain sloshing against the car. Even the silent sound of Derek seething next to him was too much to bear. The cold had seeped in through his wet clothes and before long Stiles’ entire body was covered in goosebumps as he sat shaking. 

Derek doesn’t offer any hoodie this time. He just continues to drive. He avoids main roads, taking some of the less traveled ones lined with nothing but forests on either side. It would have seemed nice, any other time, but Stiles can’t bring himself to appreciate it now. He clears his throat, glancing at Derek who somehow manages to get even tenser. “I-I’m sorry.” Stiles whispers, but Derek doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at him. “Derek, I-“

“Stupid.” Stiles isn’t sure he hears correctly, so he waits for Derek to speak again. “So stupid, how could you do this?” It’s a shock to hear Derek talk to him this way. It sounds like the old Derek and not the patient person he’s been the past few days. 

Stiles doesn’t know what to say. “I-“

“Stupid and lucky. Did you know that they were going to charge you?” Derek glances over at Stiles once before turning his attention back to the road. The rain is falling even more impossibly harder now, the windshield wipers working doubly fast to help Derek see. “If I hadn’t mentioned you were the Sheriff’s kid-“

Stiles panics, shooting up in his seat. “What did you tell my dad?” He has an idea, one that makes his palms sweat and his jaw itch. “Derek, what-“

Derek shakes his head. “I told him you came over to my place instead of Lydia’s. That you just forgot to text him.”

For a second, Stiles relaxes in the seat, breathes a tiny breath of relief. “Thank you.” It’s quiet again, the sound of the heavy downpour hitting the car in giant globs of wetness. 

“I don’t like lying to your dad.” Derek speaks after sometime. He keeps his eyes forward, focusing on the road and the rain.

Stiles hears the pain in his voice, hiding behind the strain of anger. He should feel terrible that he had to put Derek in that position, and maybe deep down he does, but right now, Stiles is still riding a fleeting high and all that matters is that he skirted by. He left Leo back at the station, hasn’t even bothered to ask about him. It’s horrible but Stiles doesn’t care. Not right now. The guilt can come later. “I bet.” He mutters. The car starts to slow as Derek pulls over to the side of the road. Stiles looks around at him. “What are you doing?” 

Derek’s looking at him now, staring at him unblinkingly. It makes Stiles shiver inside his cold, wet clothes. “It’s raining too hard and I’m too angry to drive through it.”

It takes Stiles a minute to speak. He’s too busy looking at Derek’s face, studying the way it sits, the way Derek stares back at him. “That’s not anger, Derek, that’s disappointment.”

“Maybe it is.” Derek sighs. “Maybe I’m disappointed with the choices you’re making.” 

It’s almost instant, the way Stiles’ eyes start to sting and well up with tears. If he wasn’t so angry, he’d agree, but those words hurt. They make his heart drop, make it hard to breathe. He tries to swallow the anger but it gets stuck in his throat. “Choices?” He replies, his voice slipping out rough between his lips as he struggles to speak. “You think I have a choice?”

Everyone has their breaking point and Stiles thinks this is where Derek’s will begin. “Getting high and having sex with strangers? Yeah?” Derek speaks without thought, only emotion and Stiles can see the confusion and sadness in the lines of his face, in the tightness of his jaw. He can’t stand to see Derek this way so Stiles simply gets out of the car.

The rain is louder once the door is open. It’s falling hard but Stiles doesn’t care. He climbs out amidst protests from Derek to get back in the car, slams the door shut behind him as he takes a few steps away from the car. He’s still close enough to hear Derek get out as well, but they have to yell over the rain for either to hear one another.

“Where are you going?” Derek’s on him, reaching out to grab at him but deciding at the last second not to. 

Stiles scrunches his face up as the rain falls on his face. He has to constantly wipe at his eyes to see anything, to see Derek. “Away from you.” He barks back.

Derek comes close, so close that when the rain bounces off of him, it hits Stiles. “Stiles, please.” He’s trying not to yell but his voice is getting lost. “Please, get back in the car.”

“No.” It comes out as a whisper but Derek can read his lips anyway. Stiles takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to argue on the side of the road with you.” He shakes, not just from the coldness of the rain but from the anger he feels. He turns around and starts walking off towards the tree line, stepping past it to get lost in the trees. He hears Derek following behind him but Stiles doesn’t care. He just wants to get away.

“You think walking into the woods is a good idea?” Derek yells from behind him, stepping over the ground Stiles crushes over ahead of him. “Stiles!” 

He keeps going, stomping over sticks and crashing through brush, winding his way through the copious amount of trees. “Go away, Derek.” He yells over his shoulder. Stiles doesn’t mind getting lost in the woods, he wouldn’t mind getting lost in general. Then he won’t have to look at Derek, or listen to him, or feel anything towards that stupid, dumb, caring wolf-

Derek grabs his arm, surprising Stiles. He didn’t think Derek was that close, so he whips around, wrenches his arm out of his hand. “I’m trying to help you.” Derek yells over the storm and Stiles has had it. If trying to get lost among unfamiliar terrain isn’t a clear signal, then Stiles will have to be more direct.

He rounds on Derek, stepping forward, causing Derek to take a few steps back. “I don’t want your help, I don’t want anyone’s help!” His hands fly up for emphasis and Derek, again, reaches out for him, tries to get him to put his hands down. The impact of fingers on his skin shocks Stiles. He only feels it for a second, the pull of power he assumes Derek must have accidentally done. He sees the black lines appear and disappear in the blink of an eye as Derek whips his hand back.

They’re both panting heavily, the rain adding weight to each of them, emotions making it hard to breathe. Stiles takes a step back, folds his arms across his chest, tucking his hands underneath his arms. “Stiles, you’re in pain, let me help you.” It’s soft but loud and clear at the same time, as if the rain stops for just this moment, to allow Stiles to hear the words come from Derek. 

The anger comes as calming to Stiles then, fills every space within himself as he slowly walks into Derek’s space. Derek isn’t backing away now, just merely watching Stiles stalk towards him. He’s so close that he doesn’t have to yell for Derek to hear him. “Pain?” His voice is low, lips and tongue and teeth carefully shaping each word. “Of course I’m in pain.” It’s eerie, hearing his own voice sound this way, but Stiles is done. He’s exhausted himself and he has nothing left to give. “Every day.” Tears spring to his eyes but the rain makes it impossible to tell. Stiles wonders if Derek can smell the salt from them, or if the rain is diluting them. It doesn’t matter. “Every day for six fucking months, they - yeah, I know pain.” He knows Derek knows it too.

It’s cold and getting colder and Stiles is shaking so much now, but he keeps blinking away the rain, keeps looking at Derek, watching as the fight leaves him. “Tell me what you want.” Derek asks. There should have been guilt, remorse at the sight of Derek looking so fragile, but there isn’t room for it. Stiles knows what he’s doing, just can’t bring himself to stop.

“I want to forget.” Derek stares at him, eyes wide, lips parted in the way his face falls when Stiles surprises him. Stiles takes another step forward, close enough he can feel the heat Derek is always giving off. It’s not much but it’s something. “I want to get high and forget.” Derek looks away and Stiles gets even closer. “I want someone else to fuck me so I can forget what it feels like to have them inside of me.” His voice wobbles with emotion but Derek won’t look at him. He’s pretty sure Derek knows the ‘them’ he’s talking about. “Can you do that for me, Derek?”

“Stop it.” It’s quiet and Stiles almost misses it, but he hears it and decides to ignore it. 

“Can you fuck me ‘til I forget them?” He’s so quiet now but he knows Derek hears him, can see it in the way his throat bobs when he swallows, the way his eyes close as his eyebrows scrunch together. He doesn’t really want to do this, to hurt Derek, but it's as if his own pain has desensitized him to anyone else. Why not let the rest of them burn with him? He’s cruel because if he isn’t, he’d have to care and it was easier to not to. 

The rain is so loud it blocks out all sound by now. It comes down in sheets, pushing them just a little into the mud and muck. They’re beyond soaked now, clothing sticking to every crease, hair matted down on each of their foreheads. “You want to take my pain away?” He lifts an arm and holds it out for Derek. “Then fucking take it.”

Derek lifts a hand, wraps his fingers around Stiles’ arm, and tilts his head to peer sidelong at him. A flicker of a second passes between them before Stiles can feel the pull within himself. He can see the black lines of power forming, trailing, rushing to leave him and enter Derek’s hand. It’s almost blissful, this feeling, as if he’s finally getting a reprieve from the pain. Stiles knows it's only temporary. Derek may help now but it’ll come back. Pain always finds a way back.

He tries not to take this chance to breathe for granted, tries to shut his eyes to enjoy it, but then something feels wrong and he opens his eyes, watches as Derek starts to shake and loses his footing in the mud. He’s falling to his knees but he won’t let go of Stiles’ arm and panic is rising in Stiles’ throat. He can feel how wrong this is, transferring his pain to Derek. No one should feel this, and it's only now that his head is clear, that Stiles realizes his mistake; the many mistakes he’s made to get to this point. 

“Derek, let go.” He tries to pull his arm out from Derek’s grasp but Derek won’t loosen his grip. Derek’s groaning as the black lines thicken and darken and now Stiles is trying to rip his arm from Derek’s fingers. “Let go. Derek! Let go!” He remembers Derek having done this for Cora and it makes Stiles sick. He pushes at Derek, tries to pull himself out, but it feels as if his arm is breaking in Derek’s grasp. He cries out and falls to his knees, tugging on Derek’s shoulder. As a last ditch effort, Stiles brings a foot up and kicks Derek in the stomach. He hates doing it but it works and with the distraction of his own pain, Derek lets go of Stiles’ arm and falls back into the mud.

Stiles acts without bothering with himself. He’s pretty sure his arm is badly bruised, bordering on the thin line of being fractured, but he doesn’t care. He’s rushing to Derek, landing on his knees down by his side. For a moment, Derek isn’t moving a whole hell of a lot. He’s breathing, that much Stiles knows, but his eyes are closed and his skin is a sickly pallor. “I’m sorry, oh god - Derek I’m so sorry.” He’s muttering apologies over and over as if they are the magic words to get Derek to open his eyes. He gently grips Derek’s face within his own hands, trying to wipe the ongoing rain from his eyes. His thumbs run circles on his eyelids, on his cheekbones. Anything, he tries anything. “Derek, please - I -”

Derek’s eyes flutter open, scrunching from the raindrops falling into them. Stiles lets go of his face, removing his own shirt to hover the fabric over his own head, covering Derek’s as well in the process. It’s not much coverage, but it allows Derek to open his eyes all the way without the onslaught of rain. It doesn’t matter to Stiles that he’s freezing and shivering above him. All that matters is Derek.

“Are you okay?” Stiles asks, watching Derek blink back into consciousness and nod. Without the rain to hide them, tears fall from Stiles’ eyes, rolling down his face and dropping onto Derek’s chest. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t-” He stops, breath hitching in his throat as Derek lifts a hand and places it on his face, his thumb rubbing away a few more falling tears. For a second, Stiles is worried Derek might try again to take the pain away, but he relaxes into the touch once he realizes he won’t. “Say something.” Because Derek’s silence is killing him.

But Derek doesn’t say anything, he just slides his hand down from Stiles face to his shoulder, tugs him down until Stiles is laying half on top of him on the muddy ground. Derek reaches over and takes Stiles’ shirt from him, lays it over Stiles’ bare back. The rain washes over them but neither seems to care. Stiles doesn’t care. He just cries and clings to Derek, whispering apologies as he shivers from the cold.

The ride home is silent, the heat on full blast. It doesn’t really help warm Stiles up though, and he’s still shivering when they pull up to the curb next to his house. Derek hasn’t said a word since the woods and it worries Stiles. Derek keeps the car running, the heat on but Stiles doesn’t want to get out just yet. He looks over, meeting hazel eyes looking back at him. The air around them is hot and muggy, the windows having fogged up. 

Derek looks so sad. “Come in with me?” Stiles asks before he can stop himself. He’s not sure why he asks him that, but the words are there and Derek nods before turning the car and the heat off. They trudge through a bit more rain, the storm above them, and the rest of Beacon Hills, just sits and continues to pour on them. Stiles doesn’t even make it two steps inside before his dad wraps him up in a big hug.

The squelching sound of water being squeezed from his clothes is way too loud and if it were any other situation, Stiles might have laughed at it, but now he merely just leans his face into Noah’s shoulder and wraps his arms around him to reciprocate. 

There’s not much spoken between the two, comments about getting caught in the rain, another lie of car trouble with a tire. Noah can tell by just the way Stiles and Derek are standing, the way mud clings to their clothes as much as the rain, that something else is amiss. He doesn’t say anything about it though and suggests ordering in some food, that Derek and Stiles should clean up. Stiles agrees and shows Derek to his bathroom, gathering up some clean towels from a nearby closet. 

“You just turn that to the right and you’ll have hot water.” Stiles mumbles, explaining the shower knobs, even though he just reaches out and does it himself anyway. Derek nods when the spray hits the bottom of the tub, but when Stiles turns to leave, he reaches out and takes hold of Stiles’ hand. It’s gentle, his fingers surprisingly cold against his hand, but the tug towards Derek is anything but. 

Stiles is pulled into Derek’s space and before he can lose his footing, he catches himself on Derek’s arm with his other hand. He forgets, sometimes, just how tall yet similar in height they are. He doesn’t feel like he’s equal to Derek, but he’s not looking up, he’s looking straight ahead at eyes that are sometimes green, sometimes brown, sometimes blue. Beautiful eyes that blur in Stiles’ mind, along with the rest of Derek. 

Derek doesn’t exist now, he exists in the past as Stiles remembers him, broody eyebrows and challenging wit. He exists in a future Stiles can’t see, mirrored with his own uncertain timeline. Derek can’t exist right now because Stiles doesn’t.

Stiles isn’t reaching up to touch the rough stubble on that sharp jawline. He isn’t running his thumb along Derek’s bottom lip, or pressing himself up against his body. Derek’s hands aren’t running down to his hips, digging in at the flesh beneath his shirt. They aren’t doing what Stiles wants to do because this is all in his head.

“Stiles.” Derek whispers, pulling Stiles from where his mind has wandered, fingers curling around the hand he’s holding on to. Stiles can hear a low rumble come from Derek’s chest, can feel it from where he’s touching his arm, as if the sound spreads itself throughout his entire body. Derek must sense the shift in the air, the arousal Stiles feels as he steps closer, presses closer until there isn’t much space left. “You’re dad’s home.” Derek comments even as his gaze flicks downward towards Stiles’ lips, droplets of cold water falling from his hair between them, as if he’s trying to convince himself not to do something about it.

Stiles doesn’t say a word. He simply leans forward, pressing his forehead against Derek’s own, shuts his eyes and breathes. He wants to enjoy this moment, not run from it, but it’s all in a fog, the edges of his mind fuzzy. Words are hard to speak because Stiles has forgotten how. Time has eluded him, warped his sense of self and all Stiles can do is hear Derek, feel Derek, smell Derek - Derek Derek “-Derek.” He sighs on an exhale and before he gets a chance to catch his breath, Derek’s lips are on his own with a low groan and growl.

Chapter Text

Derek attacks Stiles’ mouth as if he’s hungry for it, for the taste of Stiles’ lips and tongue. He thinks, at first, that he should stop, that he should definitely stop, because if he’s not thinking clearly, then Stiles definitely isn’t. But then Stiles is leaning into him, hands frantically running themselves up and under his cold, wet shirt and the thought of stopping is crushed under the weight of greed and craving. Derek shivers, because Stiles’ fingers are freezing against his skin, but it doesn’t deter him from replying with touches of his own, from gripping Stiles’ face with both hands. 

Stiles moans into his mouth and it makes Derek’s hair stand on end. He loves this sound, drinks this sound, basks in this sound as if it’s the moon itself. His hands abandon Stiles’ face, reaching down to lift Stiles’ shirt. It forces them to stop kissing but that’s okay, Derek needs a second to breathe, to gauge Stiles’ reaction. He’s answered by fingers pulling on his own shirt and soon they're both stripping down to nothing.

Not wasting any time, Stiles is on him again, kissing, touching, pressing up against him as Derek pulls them backwards towards the shower and the warm water waiting for them. There’s a brief sound of the shower curtain pulling to the side and back again, the spray of the water hitting them like a warm blanket. Derek isn’t paying much attention to anything other than Stiles though. He’s too caught up with how impossibly good this all feels. 

There’s no time to think, not when Stiles pushes him up against one of the walls of the shower, nor when Stiles leaves his lips to press his own across Derek’s stubbled jaw. There’s a sound that escapes his throat as Stiles trails lips and teeth down along his neck and back up to his ear. It’s not one Derek’s ever heard himself make before and he’s definitely sure Stiles has never heard it either. He can tell, when Stiles huffs a breathy chuckle against his skin, when Stiles’ fingers dip low against his hips in haste to glean more of those sounds from him. 

“ Stiles …” Derek shuts his eyes and sighs, overwhelmed with the polarity of warm water, cold fingers and burning lips on his skin. He’s not sure if he wants or needs to stop, not when Stiles’ hand travels south and palms at his growing erection, delicate fingers playing a rhythm to a song Derek can’t hear. When he feels Stiles leave him, he peeks his eyes open, catching Stiles kneeling down in front of him. His lips are parted, tongue slipping out between them to slide and swirl around the head of Derek’s dick.

It’s enough to make Derek forget everything, who he is, where he is, hell, it makes him forget that they probably shouldn’t be doing this in the first place. But as Stiles curls those wonderfully long fingers around the base, slides his lips further on down his length, Derek groans as a knot forms in the pit of his stomach because damn does this feel too good. Too good to actually be good .

Before Stiles can do much else, Derek reaches down to tug on his shoulder, pulling his own hips, along with the rest of himself, back and out of Stiles’ grasp. “Wait, wait Stiles, stop.” And Stiles does. He doesn’t push for why, he doesn’t look upset or angry at having been told what to do. If anything, he looks confused and curious, but he pulls his hands back as if being held at gunpoint and stands. His lips are swollen as he sucks on them and it's all Derek can do to not reach out and grab him and kiss him and forget again that this might be a bad idea. 

The sound of the water crashing down on them is loud and Derek is trying his hardest to get his breathing under control. Stiles hasn’t said a word. “I can’t make you forget the way you want me to.” His breath comes in short bursts as he watches Stiles. At first, he doesn’t seem to react to Derek’s words, as if he doesn’t hear them, but then something shifts between them. Derek can feel it in the muggy air of the bathroom. 

Stiles reaches out and takes hold of one of Derek’s own, steps closer so that there’s no room left between them. The weight of Stiles’ body against him blankets him from the spray of the shower, but the water bounces off of Stiles’ shoulders and tiny cold droplets spit against Derek’s skin. It makes him shiver and it’s not lost on him what body parts are currently pressed up against one another. But Stiles doesn’t make a move to touch him this way, he merely presses his body against Derek’s, takes Derek’s other hand and places it against the small of Stiles’ back. 

It’s almost enough to undo Derek, to pull him apart at the seams. To throw caution to the wind and fuck Stiles anyway. That’s when he realizes it however, that Stiles is giving the choice to him and not making it for him. It’s intimate, to stand this way, with everything literally in arms reach, with no expectations. Stiles is staring straight at him, tilting his head to the side and exposing his neck to Derek. It’s an invitation, one Derek desperately wants to take but instead of pressing lips, tongue and teeth to that glorious, pale skin, he removes his hand from Stiles’ backside, runs it up along Stiles’ body to rest around his throat. He can feel Stiles shake beneath his palm.

“Tell me what you want.” Stiles whispers, mirroring what Derek said to him in the woods earlier. 

Derek licks his lips and pulls Stiles against him, his hand coming up to cradle the back of his head before slinging it over his shoulders in a one armed hug. He won’t let go of Stiles' other hand, not right now. Not when their fingers intertwine like they belong that way. He can feel Stiles bring his free hand up behind him, fingers curling on the muscles of his shoulder. He can feel Stiles’ lips press against the dip of skin where neck and shoulder meet, his chest expanding as he inhales Derek there. “I don’t want you to forget me.” Derek whispers. 

There’s silence between them and Derek can feel another shift in the air that surrounds them. Derek can smell confidence coming from Stiles as he leans back a bit of ways from him. Enough so that Derek can see his face. “I’ll never forget you.” The words are true, there’s no uptick of his heart giving ways to lies, but there’s a sadness in them Derek can’t ignore. His eyes roam Stiles’ face, tries to capture each wrinkle, each sharp curve and gaunt shadows trapped in the hollows of his cheeks. He doesn’t like the way those words send a chill down his spine, or with the way Stiles leans forward to press a soft kiss on his lips before letting go and stepping out of the shower. 

Derek panics for a minute but he sees Stiles wrap a towel around his waist and move to sit on the floor, resting his back against the sink counter doors. Stiles shuts his eyes and after a minute of staring, of making sure Stiles isn’t going anywhere, Derek tugs the shower curtain closed again and finishes up his shower.

Stiles is very tired. He can feel exhaustion seeping into every corner of his body. It happens suddenly, when only moments ago he was so amped up he didn’t think anything could stop him. But Derek did, Derek’s words stopped him and it was almost instant that the fatigue set in. He shuts his eyes, leans his head back against the counter doors, listens to Derek resume a normal shower. 

It’s comforting, just being in the same room, listening to Derek do normal things. It’s the same feeling he gets when they sleep under the same covers, when he’s wrapped around Derek’s frame as if he’s an anchor, as if Stiles will float up and away into the sky without him. The thought makes the corners of Stiles’ lips twitch, amused at the thought of thinking of Derek as an anchor. 

Maybe he is. Maybe Derek is Stiles’ anchor, keeping him weighted down and grounded in the now. Maybe Derek’s always been this. Stiles wants to drift off sometimes, his head stuck in a hazy, drug fueled cloud. He can still feel the effects of them in his system, every touch, every sound amplified almost to the point of physical pain. But the noises Derek was making, noises Stiles pulled from him, it drowned out everything else for a moment. Now that he is sitting on the floor with the sharp sounds of the water, the heavy mugginess in the room, the way his own breathing feels foreign to him, the comfort leaves him and all that’s left is the pain. 

Derek finishes his shower, leaves the water running for Stiles as he goes in search of something to wear among Stiles’ clothes. Stiles has warmed up by now, his body the same temperature as the spray. He turns the knob, waits for it to get a bit colder and then dips his head underneath the showerhead. The water runs down over his short hair, over his ears, his face, running down his body as if he’s still standing out in the rain. 

The storm has moved on to a quiet rumble by the time Stiles finishes up. He makes it back to his room, walking as if on auto pilot, listening to the sounds of light rain coming from his cracked window. He can also hear Derek downstairs talking with his dad, can hear shuffling of various bags. He can smell the food that’s been delivered and it makes his stomach grumble in response, realizing now just how hungry he really is. He needs to get dressed but the thought of rummaging through his own clothes makes him anxious. Luckily, his hospital sweats are laid out on the bed for him and as Stiles runs his fingers along them, he smiles.

“I- all my clothes are dirty, this was all you had left.” Derek speaks from the doorway, having walked up the stairs so quietly Stiles hadn’t known he was there until he said something. “Why won’t you wear your own clothes, Stiles?” 

It sounds like a question Derek’s been dying to ask, so Stiles turns around to answer him, catching sight of the clothes Derek’s borrowed from him. They’re simple really, a logoed shirt that sits just a bit too tightly on him, one of his jackets layered on top and unzipped, a pair of khaki pants Stiles is sure aren’t his. They look like they belong to his dad and the sight of Derek completely wrapped up in Stilinski fashion makes his heart flutter. “I thought it was obvious.” He starts. It’s simple really, the reason why, so simple he thought for sure Derek would have guessed it by now.

Derek shifts from the doorway, calmly walks over to Stiles. He moves the hospital clothes out of the way and sits down next to him on the bed. Stiles can’t bring himself to look at Derek now though, so he simply looks at his hands which he’s placed in his lap, on top of the towel still wrapped around his waist. Derek doesn’t say a word, just sits and waits to listen.

“They took me when I was in them and uhm -” His voice starts to waver so Stiles clears his throat. “- for a week, they kept me in those clothes for a week and they tied my hands behind my back so I couldn’t, couldn’t -” His hands started to shake as he wrung them together. “They didn’t always come to see me every day so sometimes I just had to uhm - you know -” He gestures outwardly with his hands and can feel Derek tense up next to him when he understands. 

Stiles sighs behind tight lips and nods towards his dresser, towards the clothes inside. “I don’t know how to be him anymore.” There’s thunder rolling over the house now, a few raindrops falling on the exposed window sill. Not enough to warrant closing the window however.

“Stiles, I’m-”

“No no.” Stiles turns to Derek, reaches up and places a hand over Derek’s mouth. He forgets for a moment that he shouldn’t do that, shouldn’t touch Derek without checking with him first, but Derek doesn’t seem to mind. Instead, Derek merely stares at him. “Please, stop saying you’re sorry. I can’t stand it.” His words come out harsher than he’d meant them to but it was the truth. “I am not your responsibility, Derek. Please don’t make me your responsibility.”

Derek shifts, turns a little more toward Stiles. He reaches up and takes the hand on his lips and holds it within his own. “It’s my fault.” Stiles can see his nostrils flare, his bottom lip quiver, the muscles in his jaw moving and working beneath his stubbled skin. He wants to kiss that look away because it’s killing him to see it. 

Stiles sighs and stands, removing himself from the vicinity of Derek. He gathers up the clothes from the bed and turns to leave the room, ready to venture back down to the bathroom to change in private. He gave up feeling embarrassed about his nudity a long time ago, but if he has to stay here and deal with how Derek is feeling, then he’ll have to deal with how he should be feeling and Stiles doesn’t want to feel anything. Not anymore. 

Derek doesn’t let him leave though. He can feel Derek’s hand on his arm, keeping him there. So Stiles turns back around to look at him, catching Derek’s eyes roaming his body, stopping to stare at each scar for just a second too long. Stiles removes Derek’s hand and slowly tugs at the towel at his waist. 

“Boys?” Noah calls out, seconds before he rounds the corner to dip inside Stiles’ room. 

Stiles jumps, hands instantly flying away from the towel as he turns to grab at the clothes on his bed. Derek jumps as well, standing and failing to find something else to make it seem like he wasn’t just about to have naked Stiles standing in front of him. 

Noah catches on, Stiles can see it in the way he scrunches up his mouth and lets loose a nervous chuckle. Stiles is mortified, hugging the clothes against himself as if to shield himself from the embarrassment. 

“Sorry.” Noah starts. “Just - the food’s getting cold.”

The night passes on a bit more quietly, and thankfully so because Stiles is still reeling from almost getting caught by his dad. He used to tell his dad everything, but there’s a line he never wanted to cross. Especially any lines concerning Derek. It’s almost annoying now, watching Derek and his dad play off one another, a new dynamic that seems to have blossomed while Stiles had been away. Annoying and endearing.

He wants to feel that close to his dad again but he can’t bring himself to enjoy things anymore. The food smells delicious and he’s pretty sure he has more on his plate then what he’ll actually eat and he wants to dig in, just get lost in the wonder that is food, but he can’t. He spaces out, plays with his fork, even brings the prongs to his teeth to chew on the unbending metal. They quietly clack against his teeth in a daze as he half listens to his dad talk about things happening around town. 

The other half of his mind is not at this table, but instead back upstairs, replaying the moments he and Derek shared. Some were nice. Some were also naughty, but thinking of those moments breaks him. It’s not the sweet ones that make him sick. They should though, because he knows if he really lets himself feel that way for Derek, he won’t be able to stop. But it’s the dirty parts that make him stumble over himself because he knows all too well how to be that way way too easily. 

He’s glad, on some level, that Derek stopped him in the shower. If they had continued, Stiles knows they would have gone all the way and it would have meant nothing. That wouldn’t have been fair to Derek, because Derek should mean everything to him. Maybe he does. Maybe he always has. 

His dad breaks him out of his thoughts, suggests a movie but it’s so normal it feels out of place. He looks at Derek and shrugs when Derek makes a face in favor of the idea. “Sure.” He answers, shoveling some food onto his fork as Derek and his dad finish up with their own plates. 

The movie is unimportant, something his dad picks because Stiles suggests it be something he likes. So they sit and watch it in the living room, Noah in a chair of his own, Derek and Stiles on the couch sitting just enough distance away from one another that it feels safe and not awkward at all. Nope . Noah’s busy watching the movie but Stiles is busy watching his hands. He’s fidgety and wrings them together to try and distract himself. 

It’s been about a full twenty four hours by now, Stiles thinks, since he’d gone to Leo’s place, since he’d taken whatever had been given to him. He doesn’t really bother to ask anymore, even though he probably should. And if he’s thinking like that, he probably shouldn’t even be taking anything in the first place, but that’s a train of thought he missed a long time ago. 

He feels cold again and wants a cigarette, something to hold in his hands, something to do with his hands. He resists flailing them about, something he remembers doing so much before he’d been introduced to drugs. Sometimes they exacerbated it and when Jimmy realized which ones did, he forced other ones down his throat to dull them instead. At first, Stiles remembered it being horrible, like he'd been diluted, numb to the world, but then suddenly it mattered more to feel that way then it did when he was forced to quit cold turkey for a few days of ‘fun’. 

It was Diego’s favourite pastime. 

There’s a hand over the top of his own, warm and familiar. Stiles blinks, phasing back into the present to see that it’s Derek’s. He glances over at him but Derek isn’t looking at him. He scooched closer at some point, just enough that when he reached out, his hand could lay softly on top of Stiles’. Fingers gently part his hands and Derek takes hold of one of them, lacing them together. 

Stiles smiles, because even if his heart has started pounding in his chest, even as panic starts to seep in, this feels nice. It distracts him for a moment and suddenly Stiles doesn’t want to think about drugs or Jimmy or anything else. He wants to think about Derek. He scoots himself closer to Derek then, close enough to move Derek’s arm up and around his shoulders without unhooking their hands. He slides up next to him and rests his head on Derek’s chest. He can hear Derek breathing softly, his chest rising and lowering evenly beneath his face.

Before long, Stiles and Derek are comfortable with each other in the same space as Noah, who’s glanced back more than a few times to smile at them before looking back to the television. Stiles thinks it’s funny that his dad is okay with this, not that Noah wouldn’t be okay with any of this. He’d made it known on several occasions that he was okay with Stiles’ choice of partners. So much so, it actually helped Stiles to come out to him as bisexual more easily than he thought he should. 

His dad was possibly the most understanding person he knew, once he knew the facts that is, and it wasn’t lost on Stiles just how much he was hurting him by sneaking out and doing things he shouldn’t. He’d like to think he kept the worst of it secret enough but Stiles knew his dad was smart enough to see the clues, and nice enough not to say anything about it. 

Noah seemed happy though, in this moment. When he’d peer back over his shoulder to peek at them, Stiles would catch his gaze and try to offer back a smile of his own. It was comfortable. This was comfortable. So comfortable, it makes Stiles itch.

The movie ends and it’s late and the storm over Beacon Hills has left. Derek hasn’t bothered to move since he slouched down on the couch with his arm around Stiles’ shoulders. Stiles fell asleep a bit ago and Derek couldn’t bring himself to move. Noah’s up, moving around the chair to turn the television off and with it goes the only light source. He offers a blanket to Derek but he declines and finally shifts himself off the couch and out of Stiles grasp. 

He doesn’t stray far though, turning to scoop Stiles up in his arms. Stiles mumbles something against his chest, half asleep and half aware and Derek carries him upstairs to his room. Quietly, Derek lays Stiles down on his bed and climbs in under the covers. As if Stiles were waiting for this, he instantly latches on to Derek, head and arm and leg settled in the spaces they’re meant to go. 

Unfortunately, Derek isn’t really that tired, so he spends a good amount of time staring up at the ceiling, a few of his fingers idly tracing shapes along the top of Stiles’ hand. He feels Stiles shift against him, his hand twitching at his side, lips moving against his shirt as he mumbles another incoherent thing. He’s buried in blankets and the hospital sweats because Derek didn’t want to disrobe him without him knowing about it. 

By now, Stiles is a ball of heat on Derek’s side so he shifts a bit underneath him, pulling the comforter off of his free half. He sticks a leg out, lets it dangle off the bed and debates removing himself entirely from Stiles to get some air. He decides to move but Stiles groans and Derek catches the sight of his face scrunching up. Stiles lifts his head and squints at him. “You move too much.” He grumbles and Derek can’t help but smile. 

For a moment, he can forget everything that’s happened, enjoy the view of Stiles blinking himself into awareness. Derek imagines Stiles as he used to, before the trauma, can see a bit of the old Stiles buried in the lines of his face. He’s under there, Derek knows this, drowning somewhere, appearing in the cracks of tragedy as if it were a thick layer of ice. It’s bright, almost blinding, when Stiles pushes himself up and off from Derek, when he smiles a little behind the sleep he’s trying to rub away with his hand.

“Sorry, just got really warm.” Derek speaks softly, sighs halfway through his words as he stares at Stiles, watches as his brows twinge, shooting up just a fraction of an inch. Derek remembers this face, remembers what it looks like when Stiles is about to do something dangerous. His pale cheeks flush beneath his moles, his lips part just a little, just enough to take a small breath before that sneaky tongue comes out to swipe at his bottom lip, pulling it in to chew on it. All of these things Derek remembers, because they’re all the things he can’t forget.

Stiles sits up, folding his legs beneath himself as he reaches down to pull up on the bottom of the sweatshirt he’s wearing. Without a word he simply pulls it up and off himself and tosses it across the room. Derek takes this moment to look, to really see the scars that litter Stiles' body. Can see them even in the dark room. They look like shooting stars, scattered among the constellations of his moles. Derek wants to reach out and touch them, run his fingers along the raised skin. He thinks Stiles knows this too as he reaches out to take hold of Derek’s hand. He brings it to his chest and lays the palm flat against him. 

Even now, Stiles is cold. Even with all the layers and the natural warmth Derek knows he provides. Stiles’ skin is peppered with goosebumps and he shivers beneath Derek’s hand. “Does it hurt?” He asks, wondering if this is what withdrawal must be like. Or parts of it at least. Stiles looks away, nods, but then quickly looks back. He surges forward, panics, hands flying up and accidentally hitting Derek in the shoulders on his way to grip them. 

“Don’t do it.” He begs and Derek knows he’s asking that he not try and take the pain away again. 

He reaches up to take hold of Stiles’ wrists, gently pries his hands from himself. “I won’t.” His thumbs run circles on the sensitive skin underneath. He can feel Stiles’ pulse there, feel it beating quickly and sometimes out of rhythm. His skin warms there, underneath Derek’s hands, parts of him splotching pink even in the darkened room. His fingers tighten around Stiles’ wrists, just enough to elicit a nervous whimper from the other. Derek pauses, thinking he made a mistake, that he shouldn’t have done that even though he doesn’t exactly know why he did it in the first place, but then Stiles pulls himself back, uses Derek’s grip on him to tug him to follow him down back on the bed.

It feels like he’s blinked and missed how he got there but suddenly Derek is kneeling above Stiles as he lays underneath him. Pale arms are pinned above Stiles’ head, held down by Derek’s own hands. Stiles stares up at him, chest expanding and contracting as heavy, deep breaths leave his mouth. Derek climbs over the rest of him, places himself between clothing covered thighs and settles against him. He doesn’t know why he says what he does, but the words leave him anyway, brazenly. “This could be a mistake.”

Stiles’ glorious throat works as he swallows, licks his bottom lip, shakes beneath him. “It could be.” He replies, but he’s already rolling his body against Derek’s. He sighs, a whine caught in the back of his throat. “Please don’t hate me.” He mumbles from behind lips swollen from being chewed on. 

Derek lets a growl escape his throat. The rumble started in his chest, climbed and clawed its way out past his lips. He rolls hips in kind, leans over and downward, and captures Stiles’ lips with his own. “Never.” He gruffs against them. Stiles parts his lips and lets Derek slide his tongue inside.

Chapter Text

Derek’s lips are soft, not rough like Stiles always imagined. They press flush against his own, hot and wet and deliciously soft, just like his tongue. It licks its way into his mouth, spans itself against his own and pulls breathy moans from Stiles. Derek groans against his lips and tongue, pulls back to breathe, to stare at Stiles for a second before repeating a nice, lazy cycle of all of the above.

There’s not much he can do underneath Derek, not with his hands held above his head. Stiles doesn’t mind though because it doesn’t hurt. It used to hurt, with Jimmy and them, but it doesn’t now, not with Derek. Derek’s patient with him, gripping him to hold and not to restrain, hips rolling against his own but not in frantic, selfish motions. It’s more like shared pressure, as much for Derek as it is for himself. 

Derek takes a hand away, slides it down Stiles’ side, fingers dipping just beneath the band of his sweatpants. Stiles moans between the moments they kiss, face flushed and scrunched in concentration. He doesn’t look anywhere else but at Derek and it seems Derek has the same thought. Dark hazel eyes stare back beneath hooded brows, lips swollen, puffs of hot breath filling the space between them. Stiles tries to lean up to kiss him again and when Derek sees this, he lets go of Stiles’ wrists, finds a new home for his hand on Stiles’ other side.

Stiles reaches up, hooks an arm around Derek’s neck, kisses him sweetly and softly and not like how he’s used to. He doesn’t want to do the things he’s used to. He leans on one arm, pushes himself up off the mattress. Just enough to hover over it. Derek takes full advantage of this, slipping his hands down and around Stiles’ backside, dipping them beneath Stiles’ sweats to grip his ass cheeks. His fingers dig into the flesh there, pressing, prodding, kneading until Stiles is whining up against him.

“Fuck.. Der - god, your hands - ” Stiles sighs through his words, mumbling them as they tumble through his lips. He falls back on the bed, lifts his hips as Derek slides the sweats off of him completely. It’s unfair really, that Derek is still fully clothed and Stiles isn’t. He tries to fix that, long fingers pulling on Derek’s shirt, and the jacket he’s borrowed from him, pushing it up until Derek gets the hint and removes it. It’s a quick motion and then Derek is on him like he never left. Hands slide down his chest, fingers fluttering along the patch of hair that trails down from his belly, pressing into the skin there as if Derek’s memorizing him by touch. He’s quiet when he concentrates on Stiles, chest heaving with heavy, slow breaths that pad out softly against Stiles’ neck. 

His hands don’t go any further, leaving Stiles’ dick twitching and untouched. It makes him whine again because god does he want Derek to touch him everywhere. Derek presses a kiss to his throat, leans back to look down at him. He doesn’t say a word, but Stiles can see his eyes map out the scars that start along his collar bone. Fingers find their way back up his chest and follow along where Derek’s eyes go. It makes Stiles shiver beneath him, makes something hurt inside of him as Derek touches each tiny scar, every circle burned into him. Stiles’ stomach churns and suddenly it's hard to breathe. He reaches out to grab hold of Derek’s hand, stops him momentarily from what he’s doing, pulling his attention back to his face.

Stiles doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to form words because Derek takes his breath away. It’s within that pause that Derek dips low, slips his tongue out between those lovely lips Stiles has fallen in love with, and runs it along one of the scars. Stiles swallows as tears start to form. He shakes beneath Derek, lets his hand go and places it on the back of Derek’s neck. 

Derek continues, finding each scar he can see and touch, runs his tongue in the direction of each one until he shifts lower on Stiles’ body, finds himself back at the patch of hair. He buries his nose in it, inhales Stiles, presses his lips there. It’s enough to make Stiles think he’ll break soon, because he can’t handle this amount of tenderness without waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

It’ll be inevitable and heart breaking and Stiles has to shut his eyes in fear of it.

“Stiles?” Derek’s voice is surprisingly soft but it pushes past the quiet of the room until it’s the only sound that matters. 

“I’m okay.” Even though the wobble in his voice gives himself away. 

He can feel Derek moving up his body again, looming over him, kissing him on all the important parts of his neck and shoulder. His tongue and teeth play a dangerous game up to Stiles’ ear, nosing along his jaw and the stubble that’s grown there. “Look at me.” Derek whispers and waits until he sees Stiles open his eyes. 

They’re hidden behind tears that threaten to crest and break. Stiles reaches up and wipes at his eyes, sniffling with the sudden onslaught of emotion. It’s all too much, to be taken care of like this. Stiles doesn’t know what to do with himself. He brings his hands to Derek’s arms, runs his fingers lightly against his skin. He sees Derek shiver, shuts his eyes for a moment as he lets loose a puff of air. Stiles pushes himself up off the bed again, leans himself into Derek’s space, kisses Derek slowly with lazy lips. “Don’t stop.” He mumbles into his mouth and Derek, with a deep rumble in his chest, thankfully doesn’t. 

He eases Stiles back onto the bed, kisses him along his lips, along his chin, down his neck until he’s swiping lips and tongue on a trail down the rest of Stiles’ body. He doesn’t waste any time walking his fingers down Stiles’ side, doesn’t stop until they’re wrapped around Stiles’ cock. He’s already leaking, shaking and shivering beneath Derek’s hands, and without pause Derek takes him into his mouth.

Stiles groans, hips and thighs twitching as Derek pulls him further past those wonderfully soft lips. Has he already thought of them as soft? Stiles can’t remember. All that echoes inside his head is Derek’s mouth, hot and wet and impossibly good. The sounds Derek makes are ones Stiles has never heard before and they vibrate against him in the best of ways. He brings a hand up to rest on the back of Derek’s neck again, fingers carding softly through black strands. Derek groans around him, sending tiny shock waves throughout Stiles’ body and he makes a mental note about this sensitive spot on Derek.

Goosebumps rise on his skin but Stiles doesn’t feel cold anymore. If anything, he feels too warm, heat pooling into each muscle, into the bottom of his stomach, into the place where Derek’s tongue is busy driving him crazy. Derek pops him out of his mouth, kisses him along his length, plays along him with tongue and fingers and Stiles thinks he’s close to losing it.

He tugs on Derek’s hair, just enough to gain his attention. When Derek’s gaze flicks back up to Stiles, he makes a motion with his hand. “C’mere.” Stiles breathes and Derek complies, shifting himself up to lay against his side. Stiles can feel Derek’s dick press up against his thigh, can feel how hot and hard it is even beneath a layer of clothes. “Off, pants-” He stumbles over his words and Derek laughs into the crook of Stiles’ neck, reaching down to undo the button and zipper. The sound of rustling fabric is loud in the quiet room but Derek gets them off quick enough, tosses the pants somewhere into the unknown and Stile sighs at the sight of him.

He’s been struggling to focus, trying to tell himself that all of his shaking is from Derek alone, but it buzzes in the back of his mind, his need for something to quell the ache of withdrawal he’s feeling just underneath his skin. Sometimes when Derek’s fingers touch him, it feels good. Sometimes it hurts and that starts to feel good too. It can distract him for a moment before the need pulls at him again. So when Derek presses his body against Stiles, Stiles springs into action. 

He rolls himself against Derek’s entire form, pushes himself up until Derek gets the hint and falls back on the bed. Stiles positions himself on Derek’s lap, his hips twitching as he ruts down against him. Derek’s hands are on him, running themselves up and down Stiles’ hips and thighs and between the warmth of them and the heat from beneath him, Stiles can thoroughly enjoy the moment for what it is. It’s quiet and intense, sweet with just a little bit of spice. Everything Derek is. Everything he’s meant to be. 

Stiles moans, leaning down to sweep Derek’s lips up with his own. He grinds himself against Derek, revels in the difference in size and feel of each other. He leans back just long enough to lick the palm of his hand and wraps his long fingers around the both of them, then around Derek’s on its own. 

He leans back down, swipes his tongue past Derek’s lips like it belongs there, and Derek gasps into his mouth. “ Stiles- “ He breathes and it’s quiet, almost a whisper, sending shivers down Stiles’ backside. Stiles whines against him, plays with him, let’s himself get lost in the ocean that is Derek. He wouldn’t mind drowning here, above or beneath him, set adrift on the waves of Derek’s body. 

Stiles let’s loose a gasp of his own, feeling Derek’s claws grow against his skin, tiny pin pricks of pressure poking him along the insides of his thighs. Just as quickly as they come out, they retreat, and Derek shoots his body upward, pushing Stiles along with him. “I’m sorry - I -” But Stiles doesn’t let him finish. He kisses him again, rolls everything he has against Derek.

“It’s okay.” Stiles tries to reassure Derek, tries to make him believe it. Derek’s hands hover above his legs, seemingly hesitant on touching him again. He’s drawn no blood, but there’s a few tiny marks dotting the sensitive skin there. “Do it again.” Stiles sighs, letting go of Derek only to grasp both of Derek’s hands, and plant them firmly back in place. Something akin to a growl of his own pushes past Stiles’ lips and it’s enough to light a fire in Derek. 

Derek’s claws spring forward, dig into Stiles’ flesh, shooting white hot excitement throughout himself. He forgets for a moment that he’s supposed to be quiet, that they’re currently in his room and his dad is only a few walls away, but he gets lost in the sudden sharpness in the air and lets slip a surprised, gasped whine. Another rumble in Derek’s chest pushes itself up his throat. He growls as Stiles’ hands shift to wrap around his neck, holding him close until they’re both sitting up and there’s no space left between them. 

He can feel Derek’s fangs drop along his neck, can feel the muscles shifting against his body. He doesn’t have to look to know that Derek’s changed in his arms, but he leans back all the same to catch sight of blue eyes staring up at him from beneath a heavy brow. Stiles brings his hands up to feel at his face, running his fingers along the accentuated features of his beta form. “Beautiful.” Stiles sighs, and it makes a sound escape Derek’s throat. He thinks Derek doesn’t believe him. Stiles can see it in the way Derek darts his eyes down and away, but it’s true. Stiles knew monsters, knew evil, and Derek was neither of those things. “Fucking beautiful.” 

Derek’s claws dig in further, sending more sounds to spill from Stiles’ mouth. They’re quieter this time though, soft exhales and tiny whimpers. Stiles reaches down, takes one of Derek’s hands and brings his fingers to his lips. He doesn’t wait for Derek to retract the claws because he’d meant to slide his tongue along them and down and around two digits. He’s careful though, careful enough to not let the tips of them cut his tongue. Derek seems lost on him, eyes glazed over with a look that sends goosebumps to rise on Stiles’ skin. 

It’s hot between them, so impossibly warm that they’ve begun to sweat. Stiles can taste the salt on Derek’s fingers as he sucks on them. He’s slow with the motions until he feels the claws disappear and then he’s hungrily drooling around them, messy and loud. The rest of Derek shifts back to human as he pops himself out of Stiles’ mouth, as he runs those soaking fingers down and around to Stiles’ backside. 

Stiles can feel the pressure on him, wonderful, slick pressure that teases him. He whines as Derek swoops his lips up in a lazy kiss, pushing back on Derek’s fingers until they slide inside. He moans into Derek’s mouth and forgets where to put his hands so he puts them everywhere on Derek. “Fuck-“ He groans, hips shaking as Derek’s fingers play with him. “Fuck - Derek- “ He wraps a hand around himself, pulls and squeezes in time with Derek’s fingers. Stiles doesn't think he’ll last much longer but he also doesn’t want this to stop. 

“Stiles, I-“ Derek’s quietly moaning his name and Stiles loves to hear it, can’t get enough of it. He’s not sure what Derek’s trying to say, but he interrupts him anyway. 

“Oh god, Derek - fuck me - please.” He begs, gasping as Derek curls his fingers inside of him. “Please.” Stiles whines against his lips. 

There’s a low growl breaking through Derek, it’s quiet but big. It vibrates through his chest, his fingers, and before Stiles has the chance to find release, Derek removes his hand and flips them over on the bed. It’s one quick motion, so fast, Stiles doesn’t even realize he’s laying down until Derek takes his legs and tugs him closer. The mattress squeaks beneath them, which stills them both back into remembering where they are for a moment. Stiles huffs a chuckle and Derek smirks and takes it slow, licks his hand and slides it around himself.

Stiles tries to cool it, to think of other things to stave off coming too quickly. He wants this to last longer because god, the sight of Derek hovering above him, positioning himself against him, pushing into him, it’s busy burning its way into his brain, tattooing its way into his mind so that he never forgets this moment. Even when he’s gone, he wants to make sure to carry the picture of this with him.

Stiles is warm. No, actually, he’s burning hot, wrapped around the head of Derek’s dick. The more he presses inside, the hotter it gets and it’s driving him crazy. He growls behind clenched teeth because he’s still too damn shy to speak, afraid to say anything and mess this up. Stiles is shaking beneath him and with a few more shallow thrusts, he’s buried himself all the way inside. Stiles shoots a hand up to his mouth, stifling the sound of a delicious moan Derek can still hear. 

He stills for a minute, relishing the feeling of Stiles, the smell and taste of him. He leans down, licks a long strip from navel to neck, and Stiles whimpers behind his hand. He wants to hear him, wants to make him scream, but they have to be quiet. Somehow, not trying to make a sound seems way hotter than it should though, but Derek loves seeing Stiles come undone underneath him, trying to keep himself in check and slipping every so often. 

There’s no time to waste, even though Derek wants to live in this moment forever, thrusting into Stiles forever, but their time is finite. Morning will soon come and the house will be alive and then Noah will be awake and Derek definitely doesn’t want him walking in on this. He leans forward, reaching back to nudge Stiles’ legs around his waist. Stiles complies, even wraps his arms around Derek’s shoulders. They pull him down until he’s wrapped around Stiles as well, nosing along his jaw and neck. 

Nothing but rushed, hurried whispers leave Stiles mouth, hot breath puffing against Derek’s ear. He can’t quite make out what all Stiles is saying but the noises, the quiet moans, the tiny whines and whimpers are what he’s paying attention to. He makes sure to roll hips just the right way to elicit more of those sounds, pushes himself deeper until there’s no space left between them, until Stiles is a mess beneath him. 

“So hot - so good Stiles - you feel -“ Derek growls around the words before he can stop himself, whispers them into Stiles’ ears, feels him shudder in response, feels the fingers on his shoulders run and dig into his back. He can feel Stiles’ dick twitch and leak between them and it’s only making the heat impossibly more spectacular. 

Without much warning, a strangled grunt slipping past Stiles’ lips, Stiles comes between them, tightening down around Derek. It pools the heat there and in the bottom of his own stomach and as Stiles buries his face in Derek’s shoulder to help quell the rising volume of his voice, Derek feels his own release cresting higher and higher. It breaks, crashes down on Derek as he crashes into Stiles. He wants to roar, wants to expel the energy of his wolf as he comes inside the warmth of Stiles, but he holds back and lets it out slowly through tired, strained grunts and growls.

They both breathe in the space between them, in the thick air around them, until they both come down. Derek doesn’t want to leave Stiles but everything becomes too sensitive and he has to pull away, has to slip out in such an obscene way that he groans from the sight of it. Stiles lays beneath him, undone and ragged and Derek thinks he’s done such a good job, despite the fact that he’d forgotten to ask Stiles if it was okay to come in him at all. “I’m sorry, I fo-” 

Stiles huffs a chuckle and pats Derek on the thigh. “It’s okay.” It’s as if he can read Derek’s mind and maybe he can. Maybe there’s a lot of things he still doesn’t know about Stiles. He wants to know everything about him. Stiles peaks open his eyes and smiles. It’s sincere, the smile. Something Derek hasn’t seen in such a long time. There’s no malice or awkwardness behind it. It pulls at both sides of his mouth, curling in satisfaction. Derek feels like he’s wearing one of those as well.

He moves out from between Stiles’ legs, slides up against him and pulls him back against him. He hooks one arm over his stomach and together they just breathe until their chests are rising and falling in soft synchronicity. That strange rumble fills Derek then, the sound of what Stiles’ called purring. It pulls a quiet ‘mmm’ from Stiles as he shimmies himself as far back against Derek as he can get. Neither seem to care about cleaning up. That can always come later. 

“Stiles?” It's quiet, Derek’s voice. It comes out as a whisper against Stiles’ shoulder. He waits for Stiles to make a noise and when he does, he braces himself. “Stay with me.”

Stiles rotates his shoulders, goosebumps rising where Derek’s breath puffs against his skin. “I’m right here, Derek.” He mumbles in response, long fingers running themselves up and over the arm slung over his stomach. Derek isn’t sure if Stiles is still dazed or if he’s falling asleep.

“No, I mean - don’t go. Don’t leave me behind.” 

The words float through the room, carried on the sticky, heavy air that surrounds them. Stiles stills in Derek’s arms, fingers no longer running themselves along Derek’s skin. He’s made a mistake, Derek thinks, but then Stiles turns over to face him, stares at him like he’s found out his secret because he has. There’s a second where it looks like Stiles is trying to figure out how to speak, an explanation calculating behind his eyes, but then Stiles melts against his arms, presses his forehead against Derek’s and shuts his eyes. He sounds defeated. “How did you know?” He whispers. 

It's the confirmation that pulls at Derek’s heart. He wanted to be wrong, but he’d been paying too much attention all night to Stiles to notice anything else. “Everything you did and said tonight.” He pauses, watching as Stiles' eyes flutter open. “Felt like a goodbye.”

Stiles stares at him, eyes bouncing back and forth to look at each of Derek’s own. “I-“

“I saw you on the roof of the hospital. You had the same look on your face.” It silences Stiles. His throat works as he swallows, but he’s not bothering to look away from Derek. 

“What look?” His voice is soft but strained. 

Derek sighs, remembers the look as if it’s been burned into his mind. It surrounds him, the thoughts. The weight of them crushes him. “You looked at peace.” And maybe he was. Maybe Stiles was ready to just let it all go and leave them all forever. Derek still doesn’t know what all he’d been through. He could only guess what was going through Stiles' head as he sat there with that pile of drugs. But the look on his face before being caught unawares, it was calm. 

Stiles looks away from him then and Derek can see it there, the shame. He can smell it rolling off of Stiles in waves. He wants to lean forward and kiss it away and now he feels like he can, so he does. It's a nice kiss, slow and sweet and brings Stiles back to him. “I was, you know. I planned to, but I didn’t plan this.” Stiles gestures to all of Derek before settling his hand on Derek’s arm. He runs his fingers up along the muscles, makes Derek’s skin shiver beneath his blunt nails. “You don’t deserve this, Derek.”

This time it's Derek’s turn to look away. “I don’t deserve anything.” He mumbles, because anything good in his life comes with strings attached. Nothing lasts forever and people don’t stick around. These past few days feel like a gift to Derek, one he’s sure will slip through his fingers at any moment. It’ll crash to the ground, break into a million pieces, just like his heart does every time he opens it up and let’s it bleed.

But then Stiles is bringing him back with a kiss of his own. Over and over, Derek realizes. They always seem to seek to save one another, bring the other back because they know. They both know what it is to be vulnerable and scared and angry and it's always been Stiles. It can’t be anyone else. “You deserve everything.” Stiles says between peppering kisses along his lips. 

It tears him open again. “You are everything.”

Stiles’ brow twinges upward, his mouth falls open just a bit, just enough to convey surprise. He doesn’t blink, doesn’t look away. He looks at Derek like how he thinks he looks when he stares at Stiles, as if he’s the moon itself. And then slowly, a smile spreads on Stiles’ face and Stiles doesn’t argue with him. He just leans against Derek, nudging him over so he can sling an arm and a leg across his body. He rests his head on Derek’s chest and sighs. “I’m not going anywhere, Sourwolf. Don’t worry.”

Stiles’ words sound reassuring but Derek still worries. There’s no tell from Stiles that he’s lying, or hiding a hint of a lie within a truth, but there’s something forming in the pit of his stomach. It's as if he’s waiting for something to happen, for the dread of expectancy of success chased with the inevitability of failure. It settles in him and he’s glad Stiles doesn’t have the ability to pick up on things like that. Most things, yes, because he’s too smart for his own good, so Derek keeps it to himself, like most things. It’s safer that way.

He maneuvers his foot under the comforter and uses it to tug it upwards until his hand can catch it and covers both of them. Stiles wiggles against him and for a moment, Derek tries to forget everything else. He tries to stay right here with Stiles as they fall asleep together.

Morning comes and Derek wakes softly, breathing in deeply as he cracks his eyes open. There’s light already spilling in through the window, bright and white in a late morning glow. He can tell he’s slept in and turns to reach out for Stiles. When he feels an empty spot next to him, his first thought is to panic and shoot up to look wildly about the room, memories of the conversation they’d had the night before still present in his mind. But then he settles, thinking Stiles must be on the roof smoking only to realize he doesn’t smell anything and the window is shut and locked.

Derek springs from the bed, gathers up the pants he’d been wearing, slips them on and heads out in the hallway. He can already tell no one else is in the house. He can’t hear anyone, but thankfully his phone is still in the pocket of the pants. He pulls it out, presses on Noah’s name first and waits for him to pick up. When he does, he mentions leaving a note downstairs for the both of them, that he’d left for a shift and would be back later for lunch. When Derek asks where Stiles is, Noah doesn’t hesitate to answer that he’d given him a ride to the impound lot for his jeep. 

“He seems better today.” Noah comments and it relaxes Derek as he leans against the wall for support. It feels like his legs might give out on him and his heart races as if he’d run the entire county. “He should be home soon, told him to give me a call.” Noah adds and Derek nods before realizing he must acknowledge verbally. When the phone call ends, Derek thumbs Stiles’ name and presses it. 

A phone rings near him, vibrates on a table back in Stiles’ room. Derek spins and walks to it, sees his name pop up. He ends the call and rolls his eyes. He knows he shouldn’t panic, but that dread that’s been building in his stomach from last night grows a bit more and before he can stop himself, Derek’s grabbing at a shirt on the floor, tugging it on and heading on down outside to his car.

Chapter Text

Roscoe feels good running beneath Stiles. It may have taken a few times for her to start but in the end she comes through, just like she always does. It takes Stiles no time at all to pull out of the impound lot downtown and head on down the road. The jeep needs fuel and Stiles needs coffee and cigarettes, so he pulls into a gas station some ten minutes away. It’s early in the morning so he’s the only one there, parked at the number four gas pump. Thankfully his dad gave him some money to bail the jeep out, having more than enough left over for gas and some snacks. 

He felt good this morning, endorphins from the night before still pumping through his system. It helped a bit, helped with the edge of withdrawal he was still feeling. It was cold out so he didn’t look too odd wearing the sweats he was wearing from the day before. He really needed to do some laundry though, and raid Derek’s drawers again. Stiles snorts at the thought, at the tiny pun he’s made, because he definitely wants to raid Derek’s drawers again. 

“Morning.” The cashier inside breaks Stiles from his thoughts as he enters the gas station. He offers the standard small smile and nod before heading towards the back where the drinks sit neatly in their doors. Stiles wants good hot coffee, but he’s also aware that he looks a mess right now, hunched over and grunge-y looking.

He reaches up to scratch at his stubbled jaw as he stares at his reflection in the door. He’s wearing the sunglasses he’d lost in his room, miraculously finding them sitting in a corner, so he’s also aware he may look hungover and the point is that even though he wants hot coffee, going into a coffee shop looking like this will definitely turn some heads and Stiles doesn’t need people-

Stiles sighs and shakes his head, tries to get out of his own head, tries to focus. He’s standing here to get some cold coffee, so he opens the door and reaches in to grab a few of them. He isn’t sure what flavours Derek likes so he grabs a few more and once he’s got a handful - and an armful - he moves towards the counter at the front. 

He dumps them all, apologizes and tries to right them all before the cashier takes them and scans them. His hands shake so he rubs them a bit, nodding towards the wall of cigarettes behind the attendee. He picks the brand he’s used to and that gets rung up as well.

The morning is going so well, Stiles thinks he can get back before Derek wakes up and surprise him with coffee and a good attitude. He’s excited, something he hasn’t felt in such a long time. Excited and nervous.

“You okay kid?” The cashier grumbles, bagging the drinks and cigarettes, shoving it across the counter. Stiles pays, smiles and nods and gathers up the bag and his change before heading out. 

He doesn’t get too far however, when he’s stopped by someone coming out from behind the building. It startles him, not expecting anyone to be there as he walks across the parking lot towards the jeep. He’s about to just ignore the person but then they speak and at first what Stiles hears has him stopping in his tracks.

“Hey, you're Jimmy’s kid right?” 

It stills him, makes his heart beat quicken instantly. It skips beats and sinks into his stomach as Stiles turns to the stranger. “Excuse me?” Speaking seems to knock all the air out of him. 

The stranger sidles closer. Stiles feels stuck, rooted to the spot he’s standing in. “You know Leo, right?” It clicks in Stilles’ head then, what he thought he heard as opposed to what he actually heard. Also, kid? It doesn’t make him feel much better but at least now he can breathe. “I’ve seen you at his place a few times.” And maybe he has, Stiles can’t exactly remember if anything else went on when he was over at Leo’s place. He was too busy being high.

He blows air out from behind pursed lips, tries to ground himself as he shakes his head and then corrects himself and nods. “Yeah, uh - he got arrested.” And Stiles remembers that this is something he should fix too. He might have been thankful for being let go without anything on his record, but he’d left Leo behind at the jail. “I don’t have anything on me if that’s-“

“Oh no, I’m not looking to buy, I’m looking to sell.” The stranger takes another step towards Stiles but he’s already moving towards his jeep. 

“Sorry, I’m not doing that anymore.” He says it, tries to believe it, but he’s still trying to quell the shaking of his hands and the perpetual coldness he feels even under a layer of thick clothes. He can see the stranger sees it too. It’s his profession after all, to pick up on the subtlety of withdrawal. 

Stiles tries to get inside the jeep but the man inches even closer. It makes Stiles start to panic. “It’ll help.” He begins, nodding towards Stiles' hands. “Just enough to take the edge off, come on. I’m in need of some cash, man.” He pulls out a bag, with tinier bags inside, each one filled with a few or so pills. 

It makes Stiles breath hitch in his throat, makes his tongue feel scratchy, makes his heart race. He wants to say no, begs himself even, to just get in the car, but the stranger has a point and Stiles is just too fried. If he took just enough to level himself out, he could make a good day of it with Derek and ultimately that’s what he wants. Good days with Derek. 

Stiles reaches into his back pocket and grabs the rest of the cash he has on him. “Fuck it, fine.” He grumbles, holding it outward toward the guy, taking what’s given back to him in return. The stranger leaves just as quietly as he emerged from the back of the gas station and Stiles huffs it into the jeep and starts it. 

He doesn’t go anywhere just yet though. He can see the gas station in his rear view mirror but there’s nothing else in sight. He looks down at the tiny bag that holds two unmarked pills in it. He pours them out into the palm of his hand, feels how light they are, sees how small they are, and before he can talk himself out of it, he pops them into his mouth and swallows them. 

The jeep revs to life and as Stiles nears the main road, he tosses the bag out of the window and heads on down the street towards home. Stiles wants to think today will be good. He starts planning all of the things he wants to do with Derek today. Firstly, and most importantly, he wants to crawl back into bed with him until both are tired of sleeping in. Then he wants to go somewhere, anywhere. He wants to go to so many places with Derek that his mind races too fast for him to land on a single idea. 

He taps his fingers against the steering wheel, allows himself a smile as he drives. The weather feels nice, the wind filling up the jeep as Stiles rolls the window down to smoke. He lights up, takes a drag and revels in just how awesome he's feeling. Whatever it was he was given, certainly helped him as the guy said it would, but Stiles thinks he can’t keep using just to ‘get by’. He’ll have to figure out how he’s eventually going to quit. 

He’s going to turn over a new leaf, he can feel it, but he can feel something else too, something just beneath the surface of his happy buzz. It’s coiling in his stomach, breeching upward, makes the cigarette he’s smoking taste bad. Stiles tries to shake it off, but he’s noticing something wrong with his vision as his hand slips just a fraction off of the wheel. The jeep jerks minutely, but enough to pull Stiles back. Something’s wrong, something’s definitely wrong. 

Stiles pulls over, thankful that no one else was on the road because he hadn’t bothered to look before doing so. The drive from downtown was always a bit of one, especially when entering the rural part of Beacon Hills. The familiar road is lined with trees, much like all roads out here, beautiful and secluded. 

As soon as the car stops, Stiles is tearing himself out of it, running around to throw up in the grass off by the tree line. He can’t help but retch up everything in his stomach, which isn’t much to begin with. Food had been on his list of things he wanted to do with Derek today. Instead, even the thought of food makes him dry heave. 

When he’s done, Stiles wipes at his mouth, pushes himself up against a tree and tries to walk back to the jeep. His legs give out halfway through and the world spins above and below him. He lands hard on the ground and starts to see white. He’ll pass out soon, he’s sure of it, but there’s fear there too, crowding the edges of what he sees. The white is blinding and it's getting harder and harder to breathe. He feels like he needs to vomit again but before he can bring himself to roll over, everything fades away.

It’s been a few minutes since Derek left the house. He drives in the direction of the car impound he’s sure Stiles has gone to. It’s downtown and Derek doesn’t like Stiles being downtown. He hasn’t even made it out of the neighborhood yet when his phone starts to buzz in his pocket. He maneuvers himself to pull it out but doesn’t waste time hitting the answer button once he sees Noah’s name pop up. 

“Mr. Stili-“

“Derek, where are you?” Noah sounds calm but he also sounds strained, his voice coming across hard and precise, as if he’s trying to speak clearly and not ramble. “It’s Stiles-“ Derek’s heart skips a beat, it drops into his stomach. He stops the car, not caring that he’s just sitting in the middle of the road. He’s unsure if he can even speak but Noah speaks for him. “Derek, he’s being taken to the hospital. I need you to meet me there.” 

Derek’s hands shake. He tries to focus and finds it difficult with the words ringing in his ears. He’s confused why Noah sounds so restrained but then he figures it must be for his benefit. He feels like he wants to crush the phone in his hand but it’s his only lifeline. “Okay.” He manages to choke the word out. 

He feels he should say more but as he opens his mouth to speak, the familiar sounds of sirens can be heard coming down from the main drag. Derek inches forward in his seat, peering down at the intersection he’s sitting at. He’s heard the sirens before even seeing the ambulance but when it comes around a corner and speeds on by him, Derek hangs up the phone and peels out after it. 

It’s Stiles, Derek knows it. He can feel it, even if he can’t explain it. He follows along after the ambulance, thankful that any of the few cars who’ve pulled over haven’t pulled back into the lane just yet. He’s so close he could be touching the back of the vehicle with his front bumper, and even though he’s panicking, he’s careful not to get too close.

It’s not long before they reach the hospital. Derek even follows the ambulance until it pulls into the emergency drive and parks. He stays back, parks a bit out of the way, but jumps out of the car as soon as it’s off. He’s racing towards the ambulance as the back doors fly open and someone starts yelling at him to get back, to give them room. 

Someone else has their hands on him, pulling and pushing him back as he strains to see Stiles and the gurney he’s strapped to being pulled out of the back. He has so many things already attached to him, even an oxygen mask covering most of his face. His eyes aren’t open and if Derek tries really hard to focus, he can barely catch a hint of a heart beat. 

“What- what happened?” Derek yells. The person holding him back speaks but it’s as if he can’t hear anything. “What?” He yells again. 

“Sir, please step back!”

“Hey hey I got him, go!” It’s a familiar voice, but Derek can’t see that it’s Melissa until she’s right in front of him, taking over to pull him backward. “Derek - Derek? Hey!”

He only looks at her when Stiles is wheeled inside the hospital. Everyone’s yelling about what to do, what they need but Derek is still so confused. He thinks he hears the word overdose amidst all the yelling. “What-“

When Melissa finally gets his attention, she tugs on his shoulders. “Listen to me, okay?” She’s also trying to sound calm and it’s starting to piss Derek off. “Stiles overdosed on something but - but - Derek listen to me.” Because Derek is trying to get out from her grip, trying his best to get past her to follow Stiles inside. “You have got to let them do their job, okay?”

Derek likes to think he can keep himself in check most of the time, that he’s no longer someone who lets their emotions rule them, let’s slip his wolf in situations where baby wolves would, but he can’t stop himself from growling at Melissa. He’s pretty sure he’s flashed those wolfy blues at her because he can also feel his fangs drop as she gives him a look. She doesn’t back away though, which Derek might have found gutsy at any other moment. Right now, he just wishes she’d let him go.

Something small beeps on Melissa’s hip and she breaks eye contact to look down at her beeper. She tries to breathe evenly, in through her nose, out through her mouth. “It’s Noah, come on.” She tugs on Derek’s arm and he lets her, because she’s pulling him into the hospital and that’s one step closer to Stiles. That’s all that matters. 

He must have put away the fangs and blues because as they bypass patients and hospital staff, no one seems to acknowledge them. Derek’s heart is beating so quickly, he can hear the blood rushing to his ears. It sounds like he’s underwater and it feels like he’s drowning, senses dulled. Melissa lets him go and it tears him back to the sounds and smells around them. It’s a bit overwhelming and he has to cover his ears and shut his eyes for a minute until everything’s leveled out. He can feel hands on his arms, pulling them down and off of his ears, and when he opens his eyes, he sees Noah looking back at him.

“Hey there, kiddo.” He says with a smile. But it isn’t the smile that breaks him, it’s the moniker of endearment that pierces him, makes him bleed, makes his eyes water with tears threatening to run. How many times had he heard Noah refer to Stiles as kiddo? Maybe only a handful, or even just once, he’s not sure. It breaks his heart all the same. Noah squeezes his arm. “Come on.” And Derek lets Noah lead him anywhere.

It’s been about thirty minutes, thirty long minutes, that Derek paces in the waiting room as Noah sits and nurses a cup of coffee he’s barely touched. Neither has said anything to one another, too lost in their own thoughts, but Derek keeps glancing back at Noah, trying to gauge anything he can from the way he sits, or the way he keeps his eyes downcast either on the floor or the paper cup in his hands. He seems too calm and it's rubbing Derek the wrong way. For a minute, he’s almost angry at Noah, because he doesn’t understand why, why he isn’t pacing with him, or asking any nurse who passes by what’s going on. He can hear that Noah’s heart is beating fast, but he’s masking it with indifference. 

Derek’s about to sit down, to try and calm himself, when a doctor rounds the corner to greet them. “Sheriff?” He asks, reaching his hand out to Noah as Noah stands, discarding the coffee cup on the small table near him. They shake hands and that must mean it’s a good sign right? Derek wants to stand with them, but knows he’s better standing in the background and out of the way.

“How is he?” Noah asks. 

The doctor gives a small smile. “He’s doing fine, we pumped his stomach just to be sure, but it seems he vomited everything up anyway. His throat and stomach might be sore from the procedure but we can’t give him much to help with the pain, unfortunately.”

Noah’s hand twitches, Derek catches it, flicks his gaze down to his fingers and then back up to the back of his head. “Uhm, why?” There’s something in there, in the back of Noah’s voice, and Derek catches that too. It’s hard not to when he’s so focused on him. 

The doctor looks from Noah, to Derek and then back to Noah again. “Due to his chronic drug use, it would be best to keep him on a small dose. It’s not going to take it away entirely, but there wasn’t much damage done to his throat or stomach so he should heal quickly.” It's so matter-of-fact, so clinical that it drives Derek up the wall. 

Noah nods as the doctor gives him a clipboard and a pen. He needs to sign for something, probably the medication they need to give him, and then the doctor and the clipboard are gone. He thinks he hears the doctor mention the room number they’ve put Stiles in but Derek is still too focused on Noah to notice anything else. He can see his shoulders tense up, but beyond that, Noah is still keeping some semblance of calm as he gestures for Derek to follow him.

Stiles is asleep when they make it to his room. Melissa is standing outside of it, waiting until they come up to the door. “He’s resting now, but you can see him if you want.” She looks to both Noah and Derek but Derek steps back to allow Noah to go on his own. 

It feels too much like before, when they’d rescued Stiles, when Derek was unsure of his place at the hospital. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to go in, to see Stiles this way, so he turns to go and sit down, preparing to wait outside the room. Noah grabs at his arm though and Derek can feel in his tight grip, that Noah doesn’t want him going anywhere. 

They file into the room together, the soft beeps of the machine Stiles is hooked up to the only sounds apart from their footsteps on the tiled floor. It’s ominous, the feeling of the room, like a dark shadow sits heavily on them all. The doctor said Stiles is fine but he’s got an IV line in his arm and an oxygen tube sitting beneath his nose. Beyond all of that, it looks like he’s sleeping. Noah takes a seat in the chair next to the bed. He scoots it forward so he doesn’t have to strain himself to lay a hand on Stiles’ arm. 

Derek stands next to him because he can’t think of anywhere else to be than right next to Noah. Melissa follows them inside, stands on the other side of the bed and looks down at Stiles. She speaks softly and lists the various drugs they found in Stiles’ system, ones they’ve tested for. He can feel Noah tense next to him, but they both focus on Melissa until she’s done. 

She leaves with a sullen smile, because Stiles is okay now, but if he continues on down this path, some day he won’t be. Derek isn’t sure what all happened. It seems every time Stiles is in danger, Derek isn’t there to help him out of it. He feels a sudden surge of anger at this, angry at himself, at Stiles. He doesn’t want to be angry with Stiles but Stiles gave his word and still-

Derek backs away from the bed and from Noah, takes a few steps back towards the door. When Noah looks up at him, Derek shakes his head and leaves without a word. He doesn’t want to leave, he wants to be there when Stiles wakes up but something in him tells him to run. Run and get away as fast as he can because the room is too small for him to be in there. The hospital is too big for him to exist there. Everything becomes too much all too quickly and he’s just got to get the hell out of there.

It takes a while for Stiles to wake up, but when he does, he’s met with a slowly, dawning ache in his throat and chest. His stomach feels as if it’s been punched a few times and his tongue lays heavy in his mouth. It takes him a minute to realize where he is, but as he looks around the room, he can see it’s a hospital room. He can hear the beeping of the ekg machine he's hooked up to, can feel the tiny wisps of air being pushed into his nose from a small oxygen tube. He looks down at his left hand and sees an IV attached to it and when he follows the line upward, he can see the pouch of liquids being pumped into him. 

It’s only when Stiles hears something stir to his right does he look over and notice he’s not alone. Noah’s lifting his head, awakened by the change in the beeping pattern on the ekg machine. Stiles realizes his heart is pounding in his chest, because he doesn’t remember coming to the hospital. The last thing he remembers is leaving the gas station. 

“Da-“ Stiles tried to speak but his voice comes out raspy and hoarse. It’s painful when he swallows so he tries not to do it so often. Noah knows what he’s trying to say anyway.

“Hey, Stiles.” Noah greets him with a small smile, a sad smile and it makes Stiles feel like shit. He watches as Noah sits all the way up, reaches out to grab at his hand to hold it. “How are you feeling, bud?”

Stiles doesn’t want to try and speak so he swallows, winces from it, and shrugs because he doesn’t exactly know how he feels right now. Maybe awful, maybe guilty, to name a few. He gestures to himself, then to the room they're in, hopes his dad understands what he’s trying to ask. 

Noah nods, reaching over to grab a cup of water that sits on the bed side table. He hands it to Stiles, waits for Stiles to take a sip through the straw. “They said you overdosed.” Stiles nearly chokes on the water, coughs a bit as it hits the wrong spot on the way down. He remembers what he did right before he left the gas station. He can’t remember what happened after that, but he can guess. “They have you here under a seventy-two hour hold, kiddo.” Stiles can feel a pit forming in his stomach. It twists and churns and cramps the already sore muscles until Stiles is wincing from the pain. He shoots up in the bed, almost spills his water but Noah takes the cup from him, tries to help him calm down. “Woah, Stiles - hey-“

But Stiles is shaking his head because he knows that three day hold is for suicide watch and he wasn’t - he wasn’t - “Da-ad -“ Stiles chokes out, pushing past the pain he’s feeling. “I didn’t - ry -“ He shakes his head again, tries to get his point across non verbally and he thinks Noah knows, but he’s too busy looking sad. 

When he calms a bit, Noah grasps his hand again and squeezes it tight. “Just get some rest, okay? We can talk about this later.” And even though his heart is racing and his stomach is cramping, Stiles knows he’s right and tries to lay back in the bed, tries to find a proper breath amidst the pain and worry and just rest. 

It takes a full day of resting for Stiles’ voice to come back. It’s still rough and raspy but he doesn’t need to strain it. He can even form full sentences. He tries to talk to his dad about what happened, tells him that it was an accident, that he didn’t know what he was taking, but even though Noah nods and smiles, Stiles can see the doubt and the disappointment in his eyes. He can also see how tense Noah’s being, in the way he moves, speaks. 

Stiles waits until lunch has been delivered before he even brings up Derek. He’s realized the lack of him for the past day and a half and even though he’s asking, Stiles has some sense as to why he’s not here. “I think you boys need to take a bit of a break.” Noah sounds hesitant but Stiles nods all the same, uses his spork to stir whatever food is on his plastic plate. He might have nibbled on something close to potato salad but beyond that, he wasn’t all that hungry. 

“I’ll just call him when I get home.” Stiles sighs, makes this flippant statement, but he catches the way his dad sits up a bit straighter at it. “What?”

Noah sighs, runs a hand through his hair and down over his face. “Stiles, listen. Melissa and I were talking and we think - here.” Noah stands, reaches around in the pocket of his jacket that’s hanging off the back of his chair, and pulls out a pamphlet. 

Stiles takes it, even though he knows what it's probably for. It’s simple, a photo of a nice looking building sitting behind some very impressive landscaping with the words ‘Stepping Stones: Take Your First Step Here’ in bold above it all. He unfolds it with shaky hands, can see how simply it’s laid out with information on the facility, what they offer, what they can help with. 

Calmly, Stiles closes the pamphlet and places it in his lap. “No, thank you.” He says this as if it will end the conversation but his dad seems ready with a rebuttal. 

“Stiles, I really think this can -” He sits back down in the chair, scoots it closer to the bed. 

Stiles shakes his head. “No, I’m not going.” He can feel himself go on the offensive and wonders how much his dad will push the issue. He doesn’t need rehab, he can kick this on his own. He might have been weak the other day but he was going out of his mind with nerves over Derek. This was different. 

Noah sighs and stands, moving to stand at the end of the hospital bed. “You don’t have much of a choice.” He says on a tired exhale. 

“I’m twenty years old!” Stiles bites back, his scratchy voice bursting from him before he has a chance to reign himself in. He feels angry, betrayed. Who was his dad to tell him he had no choice? “You can’t make me, I’m not a minor.”

“Stiles, you’re not in the right headspace to make that decision!” Now Noah is yelling and both of them are heated and upset and angry. 

Before Stiles can stop himself, he grabs the pamphlet and throws it at his dad. It doesn’t go very far, but Noah gets the intent behind it anyway. “Get out.” Stiles folds his arms across his chest, swallows hard and sets his jaw tight. He watches as Noah looks at him then, can see the anger and hurt in his eyes, in the lines of his face, but Stiles doesn’t care. Not right now. It’s probably the first time he’s ever actually yelled at his dad but he’s too angry to be sorry. 

Noah sighs, shakes his head and without a word, leaves the room. Stiles watches him through the small window on the door, watches as Noah hangs his head. When he moves out of view, Stiles gets up out of bed. They removed the pads and connections for the ekg machine that morning, but he’s still attached to the IV pole, so he takes that with him as he walks towards the door.

He’s not sure why he’s up and moving, but he does it all the same, waits until he’s sure his dad isn’t next to the door. Opening it just a bit, Stiles peers out to see if anyone else is in the hallway. When he sticks his head out to get a better look, he catches sight of the back of his dad’s head. Noah’s standing off near the elevators, presumably waiting to board it, but when the doors open and Melissa steps out, Noah’s knees buckle and he falls. 

Melissa catches him without missing a beat, dropping whatever folders she had in her hands, and as she kneels down to the ground with him, Noah’s shoulders start to shake and Stiles doesn’t have to hear him to know his dad is crying. That he’s sobbing into Melissa’s arms. This is what Stiles has done, he realizes. This is what he’s leaving every time he sneaks out, every time he takes his dad’s kindness for granted. He’s leaving him in pieces. 

Whatever flight or fight Stiles was feeling is gone now. He’s deflated and sunk even to a depth he’d never thought he’d go. They’d always been just fine, Noah and him. Just fine was something to live by, but Noah is not fine now. And neither is Stiles. Melissa catches sight of Stiles as he inches his way out of the room. He walks cautiously over to them, watches as Noah hears him and turns to peer over his shoulder. It doesn’t seem as if Noah has anything left to say to Stiles anymore, and that’s okay, because Stiles planned to do the talking anyway. “Okay, I’ll do it. Dad, I’ll go.” 

Chapter Text

It’s on the last day of Stiles’ hospital stay that Scott comes to visit him. He’s busy people watching out of the window in his room, fully detached from any wires or tubes. He’s even allowed out of the hospital gown but he chooses again to wear the alternative sweats provided to him. 

Noah leaves for a bit, once he was confident that Stiles would be okay, and heads down to the cafeteria to grab them some actual food instead of the plates they would deliver that Stiles would barely touch. It’s when Melissa comes to check in on Stiles that he realizes he’s been standing for a long while. He doesn’t remember a time when he ever stood this still, especially since he hasn’t had a cigarette in two days. Or anything else for that matter.

It's surprising, the feeling of just not wanting one at all. He still craves the taste, will probably find a way to get some when he gets out of the hospital, but for now, he can deal without it. 

He’s eerily calm when Melissa comes up next to him, smiles at him. Stiles wishes he could see her at any other time and not just when he’s being admitted to the hospital. She had been a constant in his life once, among other things, now she was only here in pieces. “Scott’s here, are you up for visitors?” Stiles isn’t sure if she’s aware of the small rift between the two of them, but even if she isn’t, she’s still cautious enough to ask him first.

Stiles shrugs, nods and continues to watch people mill about outside in the parking lot. There’s a few doctors and nurses filing into the first floor below, a few non-staff people heading to their cars. Stiles wonders if his jeep ended up back at the impound lot and makes a mental note to ask his dad to save her from there once he gets settled at Stepping Stones.

T-minus eighteen hours and counting until he was allowed to leave, to go home and gather things he was allowed to bring with him to the rehabilitation center. It should feel easy, having things decided for him. Everyone else had done the work, all he had to do was show up. It should have felt easy, but his dad was barely talking to him and Derek was nowhere to be found and it just wasn’t. It was extremely hard for Stiles to let it all go.

He’s lost in his thoughts when he hears a knock at his door. Stiles turns, watches it open, watches Scott step through and into the room. He can feel a shift in the air, doesn’t have to have any special abilities to sense how tense it suddenly gets between them. Scott has a look on his face, a mix between concern and guarding, as if he put up a wall just for Stiles. He can’t blame him though, he’d laid the foundation for it in the first place. 

“Hey.” Stiles speaks first. 

“Hey.” Scott replies.

Stiles sighs and runs a hand through his hair. He can already feel that it’s grown just a bit, along with the stubble that might turn into a full on beard if he keeps it. The silence between them grows too and because Stiles can’t take it, he bursts, “I’m so-”

“ - m’sorry - oh.” It seems Scott has the same idea and Stiles allows himself a smile. Scott returns a smile of his own and even though it’s only a fraction less awkward, Stiles takes it and walks over to the bed to sit on the edge of it.

Scott follows and moves to lean on a spot next to him. He sighs and nudges Stiles’ shoulder with his own. “I am. Sorry. For, oh man I don’t know, a lot of things. Not being around, yelling at you -” Stiles clears his throat, listens as Scott rambles on his apologies. It seems he has so many but Stiles has a few of his own. “I just - couldn’t understand what was going on. I still don’t, to some degree.”

Stiles nods and clears his throat again, chews on the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t have been a dick. I shouldn’t have made you guys worry.” He wants to say these things to Derek too, but Derek hasn’t come by, hasn’t said anything to his dad to pass along to him - that he knows of anyway. It can come later, he’s hoping at least - to apologize to him.

“You can tell me, you know.” Scott starts, his voice low and sullen to match the mood that’s settled over them. “If you want to, that is.”

He wants to, but, “Nah, you don’t need all of that in your head, Scotty.” It’s better this way, to keep it behind locked doors. He doesn’t need another reason to push someone else away. He can feel Scott tense up next to him. “I’m going to be staying at that place Coach went to a few years ago.” 

It takes a minute for Scott to speak and when Stiles finally looks at him, he can see the beginnings of tears in his eyes. It makes Stiles’ own sting. “Oh, that place is nice. Well, I only saw the front sitting room but I’ve heard good things about it.” Scott’s busy trying not to chew on his lip and Stiles decides it's his turn to nudge Scott in the arm with his own.

“You can always visit me there.” Scott nods and Stiles decides to push it. “You and...anyone else.” 

He can see Scott’s mouth curl up in a smirk as he huffs a chuckle. “You mean Derek?” He asks and Stiles turns his head away as if something on the ceiling has suddenly caught his eye.

Stiles shrugs, tries not to smile. “Or you know, anyone else.” 

“I knew it!” Scott yells and when Stiles looks back at him, he winces at the volume of his own voice. “I knew it.” He whispers, as if to balance it out and Stiles can’t help but let slip a small laugh. It feels good, right now. Stiles feels good right now. It’s a small moment, one that he’s sure will pass, but he’ll take as many as he can get. “Tell me everything, or wait - don’t.” They might have more things to work on but for now, the rest of the day is spent in good natured fun.

The drive home from the hospital is a quiet one. The morning is grey and dull as clouds cover the sky. The sun has no chance of peeking out from behind them any time soon and Stiles thinks it’s very fitting that today fits the gloomy mood. They have to make a stop at home first, gather things he’ll need to take with him to the facility, but Stiles can’t really think of much to take. The quiet of the house is just as fitting, as if the mere presence of them is offending the silence. 

Stiles takes his time walking upstairs, entering his room. He looks to the bed and notices the blankets still flung about as if he’d just woken up and gotten out of them. They must have landed this way when Derek got out of bed, when Stiles wasn’t there with him. Stiles sits on the edge of it and looks around the room. There really isn’t much he plans on taking, but sitting neatly on his table is a duffle bag, unzipped and already packed. 

It takes Stiles a moment to realize that it wasn’t his dad who packed it. Noah had stayed with him the entire duration of the hold at the hospital, so it had to be someone else. Of course, when Stiles stands and walks over to it, he can tell from its contents that Derek was the one who packed it, because who else could it be?

There’s a few items of Derek’s clothing folded neatly inside, a few plain shirts, a sweater and a hoodie. Stiles also sees two pairs of sweatpants and wonders if Derek had to buy all new clothes to supplement the ones he’d given to him. It makes Stiles smile though, because he’s still not ready to wear his own clothes, and the thought that Derek was still thinking about him was enough for now.

Baby steps, like the kind he’ll take at the rehab facility. Stiles sighs and walks over to grab a few things like socks and drawers, and stuffs those into the bag as well. He remembers the clothes Coach had worn when Scott and he had found him, plain and with a robe over it all. Stiles wonders if he can continue to wear his own clothes - well, Derek’s. It would definitely make him feel better about all of this. At least, for today, even if the weather outside is shitty. 

When he’s done and ready to go, he grabs the bag and his pillow and heads on downstairs. Noah’s waiting in the kitchen, gripping the back end of a chair. Stiles knows that stance. He sighs and walks over, places a hand on his dad’s shoulder. “You were right, Dad. This is okay.” Noah looks like he wants to say something, object to this idea, but Stiles knows that if he caves and lets his dad say what he wants to say, then they’ll end up staying in the house and not driving him to rehab. He gives his dad a little smile and helps him ungrip from the chair and together, they file out of the house and back into the car.

It takes two days for Stiles to get settled at Stepping Stones. He gets his own room due to a paperwork mix up in the office, but Stiles doesn’t mind. If anything, he prefers it. The room is spacious, but it’s not as if Stiles has a lot of things that take up much of it anyway. He sets his things in the closet provided, hangs his clothes and puts his pillow on the bed. There’s no cell phones allowed here, but there’s a phone he can use during visiting hours if he ever wants to. 

The layout of the place is just as simple as the pamphlet describes it to be. There’s a main building where the patient rooms are kept in, a main office, a kitchen and a cafeteria. There’s even a rec room to sit in and watch television when group or individual therapy isn’t scheduled. Off behind the main building is a small one for a gym and a laundry room. Stiles realizes the term ‘gym’ is used loosely because there isn’t much in there except a treadmill, a punching bag, a stationary bike, and a bench press. It looks more like how the gym is at the high school was and Stiles wonders if he’ll avoid that too like he used to when he was a teenager. 

Stiles is quiet for these two days. He tries to listen, tries to pay attention to what’s being said to him, but he finds himself tossing back and forth between being restless to just wanting to sit for hours and not be bothered. He thinks he hears the word depression being dropped from the clinical staff, thinks he hears them tell his dad it’s normal to feel this way at first, that it should pass soon. Stiles hopes it does.

The third day is a bad day for Stiles. They’ve started him on medication to help with detoxing, along with putting him back on his adderall, and just as he remembers the very first time taking it, he experiences an overwhelming wave of excitability and agitation. It’ll take some time to get used to it all, they told him, but all he wants them to do is shut up and leave him alone. Therapy doesn’t go all that well. He’s withdrawn and antsy, and just wants to go back to his room. They try to help but Stiles just wants to go home.

It takes a week for things to level out, for Stiles to get used to the routine of waking up, eating breakfast, individual morning therapy sessions, lunch and rec time before group therapy and then free time before dinner. Visiting hours happen after group, but no one’s allowed to visit Stiles for the first week so during that time he flirts with the idea of the tiny gym. 

He passes through it a few times to do his laundry, watches as others partake in the equipment, debates taking a walk on the treadmill. His sore ankle usually stops him from doing so however, and he goes back to doing laundry and sitting in the rec room, or hanging outside to smoke until dinner. Then it’s bedtime and Stiles gets shuffled back into his room along with all the other residents. 

Noah is the first to visit Stiles, of course, and when he sees him, Stiles hugs him like he used to. All arms and chest and chin. Noah chuckles and Stiles thinks it's the first in a long time since he’s heard that from him. “You look great, kid.” Noah smiles and Stiles can’t help but smile back. He uses this time to walk outside to the pathway that connects the two buildings. It sits between some fancy lawn work, trees and beds of flowers. There’s even a bench Stiles frequents to smoke on. 

He sees the face Noah pulls when Stiles pulls out his pack of cigarettes and lights one up. “One step at a time, daddio.” And even though Noah disapproves, he huffs a chuckle at the nickname and sits down next to Stiles anyway. 

“How do you even get those here?” He asks, watching Stiles blow out a plume of smoke to the other side.

“I made friends with one of the nurses, she gets them for me. They’re allowed.” He flicks some ash onto the ground. “It helps a bit.” He says a bit more quietly than he meant to. Noah doesn’t say anything more about them. Instead, they spend the few hours allotted chatting and catching up, having not spoken for an entire week.

Noah spoke a lot when Stiles had been rescued, tried to catch him up on six months worth of goings on around Beacon Hills, but now, there really wasn’t much to talk about it. The conversation fizzles out near the end and after Stiles has downed three cigarettes, he finally puts the pack away and asks about Derek. “Do you think he’d come visit me?”

He can see Noah tense up, can already hear the answer in his sigh. “I don’t think so, son. He’s-”

“Is he doing okay?” Stiles doesn’t mean to interrupt but he does anyway. It makes Noah smile a bit and Stiles wonders why. Noah nods and Stiles lets loose a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “I’m glad you guys are so close - I mean, not how it happened but -” He smirks, because he can see the sadness blanket over his dad’s face.  “Are you doing okay, dad?” The words come out so quietly, Stiles is worried his dad didn’t hear him, but then Noah smiles again and claps him on the shoulder.

“I’m fine, don’t worry about me, Stiles.” 

Stiles wants to believe him, but he can see the lie in the lines of his face, in the cracks of his smile. He doesn't think his dad has been okay for a long time. He resists the urge to tear into another cigarette and instead stands. “They’re starting family therapy next week and -”

Noah stands as well. “I’ll be there.” And Stiles can certainly believe that.

Before his dad leaves, Stiles takes him back to his room. “Can you give this to Derek for me?” He asks, handing over one of the hoodies Derek had packed for him. 

Noah takes it, a bit confused. “You don’t want it?”

“No, it's -” Stiles shakes his head, tries to think of the best way to phrase what he wants to say. “It smells like me now, figured…” He hopes he’s understood but when Noah raises a concerned and even more confused, eyebrow, Stiles rolls his eyes. “Werewolf thing.” He whispers, even though he’s pretty sure no one is out in the hallway directly outside his room anyway. “Just in case - I don’t know.” He really doesn’t know. Stiles doesn’t know if Derek will accept the hoodie or the gesture at all. He knows why Derek won’t visit him here, especially so soon, but he’d left those clothes for him to take. That had to mean something, right?

It’s Noah’s turn to roll his eyes, now that he somewhat understands. He doesn’t push it though and hugs the hoodie against himself, tucks it under one arm and lifts a hand to squeeze Stiles’ shoulder. “Don’t worry, you both just need time.”

“How was Stiles?” Derek asks before Noah even makes it halfway inside the house. He’s standing in the kitchen, a trash bag in hand and an empty bottle of Jack in the other. The first thing Noah does is put the hoodie on the kitchen table. Derek stares at it a moment, then looks back to Noah.

Noah huffs a chuckle and continues on into the house. “You could always ask him yourself, you know.” He calls from around the corner, hanging up his own jacket and removing his shoes. Derek looks back down at the hoodie and slowly puts the empty bottle into the trash bag. 

At first he was surprised to see it, initially worried why Noah had it in the first place, but then he smelled Stiles all over it and it clicks in his mind the reason why. When Noah comes back around the corner, Derek is in the middle of slipping it on and over his head and smiling. When he notices he’s being watched, the smile slips but he doesn’t take it off. Instead, he turns and continues throwing trash away into the bag.

“Have you been cleaning the house?” Noah asks this now and Derek has to resist some witty retort about him being sheriff. Instead, he gruffs in acknowledgment. “You know Stiles isn’t coming home any time soon.” 

Derek stops, turns and looks at Noah. He could hear it, the pain in his voice. “This isn’t for Stiles.” He answers and when Noah pulls a face, Derek rolls his eyes. “This is for you.” 

It takes a minute before Noah stops looking at Derek with eyes that threaten to water, but then he smiles again, shakes his head. “Thank you, son.” He says and Derek goes back to cleaning for the rest of the day. Noah helps here and there but when it comes to Stiles' room, he lets Derek clean it on his own.

Derek doesn’t mind. There’s not much to clean since it hasn’t been occupied for very long. Stiles had only been home for about a week and only in this room for two days. Derek has to stop and think about that. Stiles hadn’t been back for very long but in that short time span he’d managed to turn Derek’s entire world upside down. 

The room smells like Stiles a bit, a hint of him underneath the stink of cigarettes. Derek wonders if that’ll be his new scent and if he can ever get used to it. The sweatshirt smells like the room, like stale smoke, and clean soap. It mixes with his own scent and makes him miss Stiles. But he’s still too angry to want to visit him. 

After a few hours of much needed cleaning, Derek’s finally satisfied and meets back up with Noah in the kitchen. It’s early evening by now and Derek’s hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast and even then it had been nothing but coffee and a pop tart. Noah suggests ordering in but Derek counters with actually cooking something for the both of them and when Noah agrees with no complaints, Derek tasks himself with running out to grab ingredients.

As Derek leaves the house, he fishes for his keys in his pocket and as he walks to his car, he can’t help but smile at the sight of the extra key that now hangs off the key ring. Noah had given him a key to the house the day he dropped Stiles off at the facility. 

He’d known Derek had packed the duffle bag for Stiles and thought it would be the perfect time to let Derek know he could come and go as he pleased. ‘You spend so much time over here, it's practically your house too.’ And even though Derek greatly appreciated the gesture and was already in full swing of using the key at least once a day for the past week, he wasn’t so sure he’d be coming and going as often when Stiles came back.

Maybe in a month’s time he’ll change his mind, maybe he’ll forgive Stiles for choosing drugs that morning insteading of just staying in bed with him. Maybe in a month’s time, Derek will also forgive himself for being angry with Stiles, but that can come later and tonight he’d focus on cooking.

Family therapy is tomorrow and Stiles is nervous. He says so during the morning individual session with the facility’s resident psychiatrist, Dr. Moore. She’s nice enough to him, even though at first he wasn’t all that willing to talk about most things with her. She was patient with Stiles though, as she probably is with everyone else. She knew what all Stiles had been through, having access to the medical files from after his kidnapping. She tries her best to get him to talk about that time but he chooses to talk about anything else. 

Even at group, he withholds what happened to him and instead tries to focus solely on his drug addiction. That seems to be enough for now. Today though, Dr. Moore tries to push him again. “Do you want to talk about it?” She asks, shifting one leg over the other. Stiles notices that she does this any time she wants to talk about serious, deep stuff, but he shakes his head and she sighs. “Do you remember during our first session, how I said I hope we can get to the root of your addiction, Stiles?” When he nods, she pushes her glasses up to sit on the top of her head and shifts a little forward in her chair. She does this too when she wants to get serious. “I really think it could help to talk about it. It’s where you started using.”

Stiles doesn’t want to talk about it because he doesn’t want to remember it. That could be his root, he thinks, but he knows forgetting isn’t the root, it's just a symptom of getting high. 

“Stiles, listen. You show promise. It takes others almost twice as long to be as open as you have with me, and I think by the end of your stay, there’s a high possibility you could be cleared to go home, but if you don’t talk to me, or anyone about what happened, it’s not going to end well for you out there, in the real world.” Stiles hears her, knows what she’s saying, but his heart flutters and flips in his chest at the idea of talking about it. “I know you’re scared that if you do, they’ll come for you, but you’re safe here.”

Stiles shifts in his chair, chews on the corner of his mouth as he feels guilt settle in the bottom of his stomach. The ‘official report’ from the Sheriff’s office was that Stiles had managed to escape his captors and found a way to contact his friends and family to come and save him. After they dropped Stiles off at the hospital, Argent went back to clear any evidence of the hunters from the abandoned building, to tie up loose ends on mouths whose tongues liked to wiggle. No one asked exactly what Argent did, but Jimmy and them were gone, buried, burned, whatever. No one else knew any of the wiser and Stiles had to lie a little bit to sell the truth.

When the session ends, Stiles makes a beeline to the bench outside where he can sit and smoke and bounce his knee until the anxiety goes away. He’s not sure what to expect from family therapy tomorrow but it's with group so at least he won’t be alone in being so nervous with his dad there. 

He’s halfway into the cigarette when he hears something happening out past the lawn that sits between the pathway and the parking lot. Stiles stands and hovers by some of the landscaped bushes, watching as two nurses come out from the front of the building to greet two people who are getting out of a taxi. One’s a woman, neatly dressed and the other, well he isn’t looking so great. He also looks familiar and as Stiles takes his last drag, it clicks in his brain who it is and he immediately drops the butt and smooshes it with his foot before racing back inside. 

He gets near the front at the same time as they enter through the doors. Stiles stands patiently by a few of the other residents as they watch the ‘new guy’ come in. He looks the same as Stiles left him, disheveled and a mess, but Stiles would recognize those blue eyes anywhere. That color always had a certain effect on him. It takes a minute for the blues to look around at the place, to find him in the crowd, but when they do, he watches as a smile graces Leo’s face and Stiles starts to feel that itch. 

Chapter Text

Stiles doesn’t say anything to Leo for the first two days of his stay. They hardly interact during the initial phase of getting him settled and Stiles is too preoccupied with fretting about family therapy to focus too much on him anyway. The next day comes and Noah shows up at the scheduled time. It replaces the individual therapy session today so now Noah and Stiles both sit on the couch in Dr. Moore’s office. Stiles is busy bouncing a knee as Noah leans forward to shake the doctor’s hand. 

“Thank you for coming in today, Noah.” Dr. Moore says, smiling as she releases his hand and takes a seat in her chair. “I just want to start off by saying that these sessions are to help facilitate anything between our residents and their family members.” Noah nods along, listening as the doctor speaks about what it is they hope to accomplish during these meetings. “I also use these sessions as a way to assess what life will be like for our residents once they leave here.” Noah nods again but there’s a heavy pause between Dr. Moore’s words. She takes a breath and clears her throat. “I understand that your wife passed away some years ago?” 

Noah starts to nod, but Stiles can feel how caught off guard he is with the question. His nod stutters as he immediately begins to fidget with a wrinkle in his jeans. “Yes, Stiles was eight when Claudia passed.” Stiles thinks he knows where Dr. Moore is going with this line of questioning and he thinks his dad knows it too. 

She smiles but crosses one leg over the other and Stiles had to hold himself back from groaning. “Stiles tells me there was some drinking involved.” She’s hit a nerve and when Noah slides his gaze around to him, Stiles’ knee bounces just a bit more. “It’s nothing against you, Noah.” She calmly adds. “I just asked Stiles to think of someone to relate to when it comes to addiction and you are the closest person to him.” She pauses again, as if she really doesn’t want to ask the hard questions. “Do you still drink?”

It’s a sore subject and Stiles thinks the air has been knocked from his lungs. His dad isn’t angry with him though, if anything he looks a bit shocked and betrayed, but it morphs into something more akin to understanding and when Noah nods and looks back to Dr. Moore, Stiles lets loose a sigh of relief. “I hadn’t for a long time, maybe a few here and there. It started up again when Stiles - uh.” He tilts his head, not wanting to finish the sentence, leaving it on a verbal hope that he’s not asked to elaborate. “But Derek’s helping out.”

Stiles sits a little straighter at the mention of Derek, the speed of his knee bouncing slowing to more of a toe tap. He can see Dr. Moore picks up on the change and she smiles at them. “Whose Derek?”

Noah smiles, peeks at Stiles from the corner of his eye before looking back to the doctor. “He’s family.” 

Stiles can’t help the smile that graces his face. He keeps his head down, bites at his bottom lip as if to keep the expression private from the other two. He’s doing a horrible job and he knows that but then the conversation turns to other things and Stiles can park the warm feeling in his chest to the back burner for now. Save it for later when he’s having a bad day or something.

The session ends with paperwork given to Noah, bullet point lists and paragraphed suggestions of how to keep working on things with Stiles once he leaves, things Noah should start doing now to build a foundation of support for when Stiles can come home. Stiles walks Noah to the front doors and hugs him, winds his arms tightly around him and squeezes just a bit. 

Noah huffs a chuckle and returns it with the same amount of love, maybe even a little bit more. Before he leaves, he lets Stiles know that Scott will be visiting next week and that there was something left for him that the nurses put in his room. Stiles watches his dad go, manages to see him get into his car and drive off, before he heads back to his room. 

Inside, resting on a table, is a simple bag. Stiles reaches in and pulls out the hoodie he’d given back to Derek a week ago. He presses it to his face, inhales the clean scent of detergent layered underneath the smell of Derek. Without hesitation, Stiles slips it on over his shirt and pulls the hood up over his head. He’s surrounded now, by the smell of Derek, and within a few days, he’ll wash it, wear it once and shuffle it back again. 

He wishes Derek would come to visit, to give and take the hoodie directly from him, but Stiles knows Derek can be stubborn. He always has been and that’s okay with Stiles for now. This was enough. Baby steps.

Leo is the first to say anything between the two of them. He catches Stiles when he’s outside on the bench halfway into the week. Stiles doesn’t hear him come up so when Leo sits down next to him, he jumps a bit and almost drops his cigarette. 

“Mind if I bum one?” Leo asks. His voice sounds a bit different now to Stiles. But he thinks it could be because his memory was warped from all the drugs he’d been on. It looks like Leo though, maybe with a few minor changes, but beneath the neat appearance, Stiles can see the face of the man he’d gone to get fucked and get high. 

Stiles tries to slow his rapidly rising heart rate. He’s nervous and why wouldn’t he be? He left Leo in jail and simply forgot to do anything about it. Sure, he was distracted with the whole ‘getting his life together’ and all but still, Leo had to be pissed, right? “Sure.” Stiles reaches his hand and the box of cigarettes over towards Leo, waits for him to take one and then offers the lighter as well. 

Leo takes his time lighting it, his hands a bit shaky. Stiles wonders how long it’s been since he’s used, but he keeps the question to himself. When Leo hands him back the lighter, Stiles pockets it and takes a drag of his own. The silence is loud between them, but when Leo speaks, it makes Stiles jump again. 

“So - Jesus, calm down - I was just going to say hey, how’s it going.” Leo sounds irritated, but then he huffs a chuckle, takes a drag and lets the smoke billow slowly from his lips. “It’s been a while, baby.”

Stiles shuts his eyes at the name, mentally kicking himself. “It’s Stiles.” He croaks out, opening his eyes to look at Leo. “My name. It’s Stiles.”

Leo nods. “Hm. So, Stiles, how’s sobriety treating you?” The question sounds like any normal, inquisitive question, but Stiles hates to hear him say his name, as if Leo’s voice is distorting it. By all accounts, he just sounds curious, but Stiles thinks he can feel something is wrong. He can’t sniff it out like Derek could, but there’s tension behind those words, behind that creepy smile Leo keeps sending Stiles’ way. 

He tries to play nice. Takes a long drag of his cigarette, practically finishing it up, drops it and smashes it with his shoe before answering. “It’s okay.” He shrugs, standing. “Really glad you’re here.” He pauses, looking back down at Leo. “I’m sorry, you know, for jail and all.” It’s awkward. Stiles hates this but he feels as if something is owed to the guy. 

Leo smiles again, flicks some ash from his cigarette and leans back on the bench. “Don’t worry about it, baby. I’ve done my time, now all I have to do is this and some community service and then I’m a free man.” 

“That’s great.” Stiles says, meaning it. At least, he hopes it comes across that way. Something about Leo’s posture worries him though. It looks far too casual, but Stiles can see the sharpness of his shoulders that tell him it’s anything but. “Uhm, dinner’s starting soon, I’m just gonna -” He gestures towards the doors with his thumb and when Leo nods at him, Stiles high tails it out of there as calmly as he can. 

Stiles spends the rest of the evening by himself. It’s not as if he hasn’t made friends during his stay, but everyone pretty much keeps to themselves anyway. He keeps an eye on Leo though, watching him chat it up with a few other residents. Nothing looks ominous but Stiles can’t shake the feeling that something’s going to happen. He’s scared.

When it’s time for everyone to head to bed, Stiles books it to his room and shuts the door. They aren’t allowed to lock them here, but Stiles makes sure to keep a lamp on when he goes to lay down. It takes a while for him to get comfortable enough to fall asleep. He makes sure to keep his back to the wall, eyes on the door as he dozes off, just in case.

The room is dark when Stiles snaps his eyes open. It’s the pressure on the bed behind him that startles him awake. That, and the realization that he’s now on his stomach and a hand is smooshing his face into his pillow. Panic is instantaneous and second nature to Stiles. He flails beneath the sudden weight, unable to yell or breathe for that matter, but he knows who it is.

He stills when he feels the pressure on his back change, squeezes his eyes shut as Leo leans forward to whisper something in his ear. “That little trip to jail cost me my business, my home.” His voice is low, slimy and it makes Stiles’ skin crawl. It’s automatic, the response of tears building behind tightly closed eyelids. “All I have left is you, baby.” His breath puffs against Stiles' ear and he begins to shake beneath him. 

His lungs feel like they’re going to burst so he smacks his hand against Leo’s leg, against the knee that presses against the side of his chest. Leo leans back, lifts his hand off of Stiles’ head. He whips his head up, gasping for air, gulping it down with a loud groan. It’s short lived though, this reprieve, when Leo grabs one of his arms and twists it back behind him. 

Stiles gasps, tries to cry out before Leo smacks his other hand over Stiles’ mouth. He’s no longer facing down into the pillow, but looking out across the room as Leo’s hand keeps his head in a very uncomfortable position. It almost feels like his neck might snap, but now he can try to glance sidelong up at him. He wants to convey anger with his eyes but Stiles is sure all Leo sees is fear.

Stiles grunts against Leo’s hand, winces when Leo tugs on his twisted arm. “Shut up.” He twists Stiles’ arm again but this time Stiles doesn't make a noise. He just shuts his eyes again until Leo jerks his face to get his attention again. “Turn over.” It takes a second for Stiles to process what’s been said but then he nods and Leo releases his arm and face.

Quietly, Leo lifts himself up just enough to allow Stiles to turn over underneath him. As soon as he can, Stiles whips an elbow back, colliding it with Leo’s chest. There’s a flurry of limbs, of grunts and curse words as Leo grabs at him to try and contain him. Stiles won’t let him. He turns over, sure, but he’s trying to wriggle out from beneath him, hands coming up to try and pull Leo off of him. He’s too distracted though, to properly see the fist flying at his face. It smacks into his nose with a resounding crack, but it’s the pain that sends him falling back on the mattress. Leo’s a good hit and his fist had been solid. Stiles is pretty sure his nose is broken.

Before Stiles can do much about it though, Leo is over him, caging him in, looming and grabbing at his shirt. He feels himself being lifted inches above the bed but then he’s sent back to it when Leo lands another punch. This time it's his eye and then his cheek, then his jaw and over and over Leo hits him until Stiles sobs, unable to even focus on anything that isn’t pain. 

“Leo -” He gasps out, tasting blood from where his cheek cut along his teeth. He can’t see quite clearly and Stiles is pretty sure he’s bleeding somewhere around his eye too. The room is still dark but he can’t acclimate to it, now that his brain is busy bouncing around in his skull. He feels Leo get off of him, off the bed and finally, Stiles thinks, he’ll leave him alone. But then he feels himself being tugged off of the mattress. “What are you-” His own voice sounds thick, as if he’s drunk, words slurring out into the quiet of the room as he falls to the floor.

Leo grabs at his hair, which still isn’t much, and pulls his head back, scraping his nails along Stiles’ scalp. It feels like fire being added to the flames of his pain. Leo turns him over, props him over the side of the bed, knocks his knees aside on the floor and the panic that had flooded him earlier decides to pool into the bottom of his stomach. It turns to stone and makes him want to vomit. “Wait -” He feels like he’s drowning and floating all at once. He can’t control, let alone feel, his arms and legs. He tries to move his body but his head is pounding and before he can think to say anything more, Stiles feels Leo tug at the hem of his sweatpants. 

Stiles feels Leo tearing into him in mere seconds, feels the pain and pressure that accompanies acts like these. He remembers how it feels, to be taken so aggressively and against his will. He remembers Jimmy and the first of many times. Stiles wants to yell, to scream, but he remembers he wanted to do that then too and hadn’t. 

It had been hopeless then, with Jimmy and the abandoned building. No one would have cared or come to his rescue if he had. Pain explodes from every part of him as Leo assaults him. Stiles is pretty sure he’s bleeding there too. Leo presses Stiles’ face into the mattress and it clicks and slides into place inside his mind. He’s over a mattress and not bent over in a concrete room. He’s not in the abandoned building, he’s somewhere others would hear him, help him, if he yelled for them. 

Stiles reaches back to tap on Leo’s knee again, tries to signal he can’t breathe against the mattress. When Leo lifts his hand away and moves it to Stiles’ hip, to grip at more of him, to take more of him, Stiles takes a slow, deep breath and without warning, screams.

He screams so loud, it startles Leo for a minute. He tries to bring a hand back to clamp it around Stiles’ mouth but he bites at one of his fingers. Leo yells and pulls himself away from Stiles and the bed entirely. He turns, peers over his shoulder at Leo, who’s flinging his hand about to shake the pain away. Stiles can taste blood on his teeth, but he doesn’t stop there. He screams again, screams for help.

The door flies open and the lights flash on as bodies enter the room, at least three or four of them. Leo tries backing away, yelling about something, Stiles is unsure of what, but the staff are on him, grabbing at him and trying to restrain him. One breaks away, a nurse, and comes to Stiles’ side. He can’t quite make out who it is. One eye is swollen shut and the other has a river of blood running into it, blinding him. He thinks he’s smiling though, he’s not quite sure. He can’t feel much of his face anymore. 

He thinks he hears the nurse talking to him, but he can’t make out what she’s saying. There’s a ringing in his head and Stiles is suddenly very tired. Now that the cavalry's here and is dragging Leo out of the room, Stiles thinks he can finally get some peace, just lay his head back on the bed and take a nap, but the nurse is standing and tugging on him, pulling him up and off the floor. She fixes his pants and sits him down on the edge of the bed, but he just falls over. He hears yelling coming from down the hall, fluttering in between whatever the nurse is trying to tell him. 

It’s all just noise in the end, and Stiles can feel himself slipping. Before he passes out, he tries to open his mouth to thank them but all that comes out is a weak groan and then he’s out like a light.

Stiles doesn’t think he’s been out for very long. When he comes to, he’s still on his bed and the nurse, who he now recognizes as the one he’s been making friends with for cigarettes - Barbara - is still by his side. He’s sitting up now and there’s a few more people in the room with him. Leo is thankfully nowhere to be found. 

There’s someone in uniform crouching down next to him, assessing the injuries on Stiles’ face and when he can focus, he sees it's an EMT responder. He has a nice face. Barbara has a nice face. Oh. He’s been given something. That’s why he doesn’t feel any pain at the moment. Stiles reaches up to touch his face but Barbara takes his hand and gently places it back in his lap.

“Let him take a look, sweetie.” It makes Stiles think of Darla. When the man is done looking him over, he stands and holds out an arm for Stiles to grip on to. He can walk, but he’s wobbly and he feels heavier than he should. He’s led out of the room, Barbara trailing behind them, into the main area of the building. They’re near the front doors but they don’t head outside just yet. 

Dr. Moore comes over to try and talk to Barbara and the EMT and Stiles thinks he hears something about his dad being on his way. It settles in him now, now that Stiles is awake. He may not be feeling much pain at the moment, but the memory of everything comes back. It hits him like a brick and he’s stunned to a state of unmoving. He just stands, half listens to the doctor and the facility staff. He stares off into a corner of the building, his mind hopping from one memory to the next.

The most recent one is the one that makes him feel sick, makes him want to vomit, but he’s too busy running through everything in his head; which is still throbbing with pressure along with the rest of his face and body. It’s down between his legs, the pressure that’s making him queasy. It’s happened again, just as it always has. This time is different though, this time feels like the first time.

For a minute, the room spins and it’s no longer white walls and tiled floors but concrete, solid and surrounding him. He’s by himself, then back with the facility staff. Then alone in the rehab center. He feels as if he’s shifting through time, but he knows logically that isn’t possible. It’s his mind playing tricks on him, blending the times in his life when he felt the most vulnerable, suffocating him with the unanswered outcome. Would he ever be able to escape this?

The yelling can be heard first before Noah crashes through the front doors of the center. It jolts Stiles out of his thoughts, but he only has enough willpower to slowly turn his head towards him. He can’t even muster a smile. Noah’s coming at him, fast, but before he can get to Stiles, Dr. Moore and a few technicians come to stand between them. He’s yelling at them to let him through. “That’s my son, let me go!” 

Something else catches Stiles’ eyes by the front door. He flicks his gaze towards the entrance, can see Derek standing by the front, eyes wide, mouth slightly agape. He looks worried, Stiles thinks. They all look worried.

Another commotion sounds off down the hall, blankets over Noah’s voice. It feels like time has slowed. Noah is still yelling, Derek is still standing by the front doors, shocked and quiet. Leo is being dragged in handcuffs from down the hall into the main room and everyone’s eyes, except for Derek’s, are not on Stiles. There’s people between them but Leo still manages to catch Stiles’ gaze, manages to make lewd gestures towards him as he yells to be let go. 

Stiles starts to shake, he can feel his fingers tap nervously on his thigh. Everything comes rushing back and suddenly it’s too much and the room is still small and there’s just too many people. Before Stiles can stop himself, he’s clumsily pushing past everyone in his way. He almost falls but catches himself as he nears Leo, who's now yelling profanities into the air. No one sees what’s going to happen until it happens, until Stiles tackles Leo - and a few unfortunate officers - to the ground.

Leo’s head bounces hard on the tiled floor. He yelps as Stiles inhales a shaky breath, as he catches Leo by the hair. He bangs his head against the floor again and a few more times before anyone is reacting at all. He feels hands on him, pulling on him but Stiles isn’t letting up. He’s gripping Leo’s hair with one hand and wrenching free another from whoever is trying to stop him. He lands a clumsy punch on his face, feels the initial sting of skin breaking on his knuckles as he cuts himself on Leo’s teeth. 

He wants to shut him up, he wants to shut them all up, but Stiles realizes he’s the only one yelling, screaming, as someone wraps an arm around his waist and pulls on him. He won’t let go of Leo though, even though Leo lost consciousness and lays limp in his hands. It’s not until he feels a warmth on his back and a familiar voice in his ear that Stiles finally stops. “It’s okay, it’s okay Stiles. Let him go.” It’s soft, almost riding on a gentle growl. He can feel the rumble of Derek’s voice through his back. He lets go of Leo and Derek pulls him up and away.

It’s a little chaotic after this. Nurses run to Leo to do their jobs, even though Stiles catches sight of Barbara standing in the background purposely not doing anything. The officers who fell, that Stiles can identify as familiar faces seen around the Sheriff’s department, right themselves and hoist an unconscious Leo between the two of them. Neither say a word against Stiles. No one says a word against Stiles as Leo is being carried outside. 

Noah finally gets to him, gets to touch him. Derek won’t seem to let him go and his dad seems just fine with that as he grips Stiles by the shoulders. He’s been crying, Stiles can see, but he’s pretty sure he’s crying too. At least, out of the one eye that isn’t swollen. Noah tries to speak but Stiles just nods and shuts his eyes. He leans back against Derek and feels Derek’s arm tighten around him in response. 

Someone comes up to talk to them, mentions the word hospital, and Noah answers. He feels Derek’s arm slip away, for just a second, before he scoops Stiles up in them. He carries Stiles outside, silent, brooding eyebrows scrunched together in concern, and possibly anger. He deposits Stiles into the ambulance, hesitates to leave him but backs up anyway as Noah takes his place. 

“I’ll meet you there.” He gruffs to both Stiles and Noah as the doors close. 

Stiles doesn’t want to lay down right now, so he sits instead, looks off into a corner of the ambulance. He thinks he hears his dad’s voice but it’s soft and fleeting. He doesn’t react until Noah gets a little louder.

“Stiles?” His voice breaks through clear, as if Stiles’ hearing has been muffled until now. It startles him, pains him and he jolts. Noah puts a hand on his arm to try and settle him. “Sorry - sorry kiddo.” The sounds of the ambulance break through too and suddenly the sirens are too loud and the lights are too bright and whatever he’d been given had only been in a small dose because it was definitely wearing off now. He can feel the pain in his face, in his head, return. Even the pain between his legs. He chooses now to lay down, to not answer whatever Noah is asking him. He just turns on his side and faces away as the ambulance barrels down the road.

It takes some time for Stiles to come back to where he’s gone. He escaped to a time before all of this, thoughts of happiness scattered about, broken like a puzzle needing to be put back together. He remembers laying down in the ambulance but he doesn’t remember walking, or being wheeled into the hospital nor getting set up in a private examination room. At first, he’s unsure of where he is, the ceiling of the room fading into view. It’s when the doctor asks him a question that he snaps back to the here and now. 

Words leave his lips, correct ones he’s sure he’s supposed to say. When the exam is over, a nurse comes in to take Stiles to another room and he lets himself be led around, lets himself be sat on the edge of a hospital bed. He’s here, he can see where he is but he can’t connect the dots, can’t connect to the space. The nurse leaves him sitting there, dressed in the hospital gown he feels could frankly be considered a second skin by now. He’s grown accustomed to it, to the paths that lead him here. 

He hears the door open and shut, feels someone else in the room with him. He looks over, expecting it to be his dad and is pleasantly surprised when he sees that it's Derek instead. He tries to smile but his face hurts so instead he lifts a hand and waves at him. Quietly, Derek walks over but when he reaches Stiles, he’s unsure of where to stand, what to do with himself. He opens his mouth to speak but then the door to the room opens again and Melissa comes in pushing a cart with her. 

Derek moves around to sit in the chair on the other side of the bed. Melissa comes up to Stiles with her tray, tries to smile but fails. “I’m just going to clean you up now, Stiles, okay?” When Stiles nods, she sets to the task of cleaning up his face, patching up spots of split skin, dabbing disinfectant along any open cuts. Stiles hisses as the pain stings across his face, but then he hears Derek move from behind him, feels a hand slide up to gently grip his wrist. The pain leaves him almost instantly as Melissa continues and when she leaves, Derek moves back around the bed. He sits next to Stiles and Stiles leans against him, runs his hand down to take hold of Derek’s own. 

He threads their fingers together as another arm wraps around his shoulders. Derek’s warm. Derek’s warm and he’s here and he’s not Leo, he’s not Jimmy. Stiles tells himself this, because Derek could never be them, would never be them. Neither say anything. Stiles isn’t sure if he even knows what to say. He assumes Derek is thinking the same thing too, so they sit in silence for some time before Stiles feels himself start to nod off. Derek must know, because he shifts himself and Stiles to lay down in the hospital bed. It’s cramped but Stiles drapes an arm and a leg over Derek and suddenly they fit again. It’s enough for Stiles to fall asleep like this, so he does.

Chapter Text

“Dad doesn’t want me going back to Stepping Stones.” 

It takes a minute for Derek to realize he’s being spoken to. He’d nodded off, his head resting back against the chair he’d been sitting in all morning. He would have liked to stay in the hospital bed with Stiles the entire time, but they needed him to leave to talk to Stiles about his examination with an officer from the Sheriff’s station. By the time he was allowed back in the room, they’d brought Stiles breakfast and he was actively eating so Derek sat in the chair, not wanting to interrupt. There was a small television sitting on the wall in the corner of the room, playing some show neither were really paying attention to, but the soft noise of people talking sent Derek into a light stupor.

He’d been up for most of the night as Stiles slept, thinking and getting angry. He entertained thoughts of paying a visit to the jail at the station, to the disgusting piece of filth that was sitting inside of it. Derek wondered if anyone would notice if its occupant went missing, if anyone would care, but the thought of leaving Stiles alone left him glued to the bed, to Stiles’ side. 

Sitting up and cracking his neck, Derek clears his throat and rotates his shoulders. He hates falling asleep in uncomfortable positions, but he’s tired. “Hm?” He gruffs, watching Stiles lay back on the propped up pillows behind him. The sight of Stiles’ face still shocks him, scares him, angers him. It’s only been one night, so the swelling is still there, one eye partially closed, a split lip, a cut above his eyebrow, a broken nose. He’s purple and red and it makes Derek want to be violent. Not towards Stiles, but he fiddles with his car keys and keeps the fastest way to the station in the back of his mind.

Stiles has finished eating by now. They must have taken the tray away while Derek had been sleeping. “Dad, he doesn’t want me going back to the rehab facility.” If Derek follows his first thought, he would say he agrees with Noah, but ultimately he realizes it’s not a smart decision to voice his opinion. 

“What do you want?” He asks, leaning forward in the chair.

“I want to go back.” The answer doesn’t surprise Derek, but it does make his stomach flip and lurch. Stiles runs his hands along the blanket and sheets covering his legs, fingers tapping idly along the fabric. Derek watches them, flicks his gaze back towards Stiles’ face. “I don’t want -” Stiles pauses, looks down at his own hands and takes a breath. “I don’t want this to throw me off.” 

Derek understands, doesn’t necessarily like it, but reaches out to gingerly take one of Stiles’ hands in one of his anyway. Stiles looks up at him, his throat working as he swallows hard. “Then you go back, if that’s what you want.” He doesn’t mean to sound so disappointed at the end but Stiles seems to pick up on it anyway.

There’s a smile there, beneath the split lip and bruised face. It’s small but Stiles is managing it as he pulls on Derek’s hand. “Come here.” He says and Derek doesn’t argue. He sits on the edge of the bed at first, but then Stiles is pulling him down to lean against him. His feet are still planted on the floor, but his upper half is laying against Stiles, his ear pressed against his chest. He listens to Stiles’ heartbeat, and while it flutters here and there, it’s more or less slow and steady. Stiles cards his fingers through the hair at the back of Derek’s neck and even though it’s welcomed and feels really nice, Derek’s a bit confused. 

He doesn’t have any idea what to do or think in situations like this. He never thought he’d have to, but Stiles acting so present and calm, it feels odd. He hadn’t expected him to want to be touched, talked to, hell even have anyone around him. But Stiles holds on to him like Derek’s a life raft and Derek doesn’t plan to let him drown. “How are you so calm?” He asks softly, his body rising and falling along with the breaths Stiles takes. 

Stiles sighs, running his fingers up to the top of Derek’s head. He’s messing it up for sure, but not anymore then the bed head he'd been sporting all morning anyway. “You’re here.” It’s a simple answer, a quiet one.

Derek doesn’t want to, but he moves out from underneath Stiles’ hand and sits up. “I won’t be there though, if you go back.” Stiles looks at him like he’s thinking of what to say or do, as if the truth of Derek’s statement has stumped him.

“I don’t think I’ll be in any more danger there. L-” Stiles’ voice catches in his throat, causes him to pause and look down at his lap. Derek knows what he was going to say, but he doesn’t push it. “He won’t be there either.” He’s struggling, Derek can hear it in the uptick of his heartbeat. It jumps a bit, out of place, before settling into a constant tap tap tap.

“I can’t protect you there.” Derek blurts this before he even thinks to stop himself. It’s true though, something that’s been weighing on his mind since they’d brought Stiles home.

Stiles’ brow twinges, his nose twitches. He looks back up at Derek, a look of confusion blanketed over his face. “You can’t watch me twenty-four seven, Derek.” His words are spoken softly, but there’s a sternness there Derek can hear. He hadn’t meant to upset Stiles, but the words were out there now. 

Derek straightens where he sits. “I didn’t say that.” He tries to think of how to speak, but it all mushes together in his mind in a muddled mess of confusion. He’s afraid they’re going to get into a fight, memories of arguing in the rain by the road rushing back. “I just meant-” He’s not really sure what he means, but Stiles is sitting a little straighter now too and Derek is floundering. “I wasn’t there. Again.”

“You-” Stiles sighs. “I’m going to be at a lot of places you aren’t, it’s not like we live together.” Stiles stills suddenly and Derek notices. He’s got a look on his face that says he’s figured something out. Eyebrows raise as high as they can on Stiles’ over the swollen and bruised skin. “Oh my god, do you want to live together?” He sounds surprised, confused, caught off guard, much like how Derek is feeling right about now.

He stares at Stiles for a minute, because it’s not something he hadn’t ever thought about, but now didn’t exactly feel like the best of times to bring something like this up though. Especially because while he was pretty sure of his feelings for Stiles, whatever was going on between them was still in their early stages, if there was anything at all. Derek swallows, sets his jaw hard. “Maybe someday.” He slips out between tight lips. He doesn’t blink, because he doesn’t want to miss any reaction Stiles might give him, but he’s feeling the urge to run deep within his gut. 

What he doesn’t expect is to see Stiles smile. It’s a wide smile that melts across his face, one that only lasts a few seconds as Stiles wince seemingly in regret. He reaches up to touch at a part of his face Derek thinks he’s pulled too tightly on. He reaches out a hand to touch the spot when Stiles pulls back. “It’s okay. Worth it.” And then its’ concern that wipes away any happy shine. “What’s wrong?”

Derek realizes now that his face is all hard lines and furrowed brows. “Aren’t you angry?”

“At you? No, why would I be?” Stiles shifts in the bed, sits up, crosses his legs beneath the sheets, tugging on them. Derek moves to stand, shakes his head and sighs.

“No, I meant -” Again, he’s not sure what he’s trying to say. He doesn’t want to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing. Talking seems too difficult when it should seem easy. Things should seem easy with Stiles. He sits back down on the edge of the bed. “Doesn’t this bother you? Doesn’t this -” He gestures to Stiles’ face. “- make you angry? Why are you smiling again?” It’s driving him crazy but Stiles is actually smiling again. 

It’s a small smile, but it’s still not what Derek expects. Stiles shrugs. “It does. It does bother me.” The smile fades and Derek wishes he hadn’t said anything about it. He preferred it to the sullen look that settles on his face now. “It bothered me last night, it bothered me six months ago. It bothered me so much I made mistakes to try and forget it.” Derek regrets saying anything, but he listens as Stiles hangs his head, looks into his lap where his fingers are busy fiddling with one another. “I don’t want to make those mistakes again, so I’m choosing to smile because I didn’t do enough of it the first time you rescued me.”

“Stiles-” Stiles looks up at him, reaches out for him and as Derek moves to lean on him, Stiles moves aside so that he can fully climb up onto the bed with him. Stiles lays against him as he always does and now it's Derek’s turn to run his fingers along the other. He trails them up and down Stiles’ arm, feels goosebumps rise beneath them. 

Stiles sighs against him, taps his fingers against Derek’s chest. “I’m going to go out on a heavy limb here and say that I didn’t handle it all very well.” Derek’s quiet, curious as to where Stiles is going with this. “They’re all dead. All of them.” Derek nods along, aware of who Stiles is talking about. “I didn’t get a chance to make them suffer.”

Derek’s hand stills on Stiles’ arm. He thought Stiles should be angrier than he was, but the words still throw him for a loop. “Y-you wanted them to suffer?” To be honest, Derek did as well. 

There’s a heavy pause, as if Stiles is deciding what and how to say it. “Legally. I can put Leo away for this, I couldn’t do that with Jimmy. He’s dead, gone, he doesn’t get to see me, but Leo does. He gets to see me getting better. He gets to suffer.”

Derek’s fingers begin trailing Stiles’ arm again. “I think you tried to handle it any way you could.” He sighs. “There’s no rule book on how to deal with trauma.” He speaks from experience and Stiles gives his body a little squeeze in acknowledgement. They’re quiet for a moment, just listening to the sounds of the hospital. 

Derek can hear people walking about outside in the hallway, can hear the ding of the elevator as people get off and get on it. Life seems to move on around them, around this room, but Derek feels stuck in time. It’s a bubble with Stiles, a private place that he’ll have to leave soon and desperately doesn’t want to. 

“I didn’t rescue you, you know.” Stiles shifts, leans up and looks at Derek with confusion. “I was there, I helped, but Argent found you, Scott-“

Stiles places a hand gently over Derek’s mouth. He shakes his head. “I know you feel guilty, Derek. Like this is somehow you’re fault-“

With the same gentleness, Derek removes Stiles hand from his mouth, grasps it within his own. “If I had done something more-“

“Like what?” Stiles moves to lean up on his elbow, takes his turn to interrupt the other. This bed really is too small, but he manages. “We didn’t know hunters were going to storm the woods. Hell, we didn’t even know if the omegas were going to leave peacefully or not.” Derek doesn’t speak, doesn’t think he can because Stiles is studying him, looking for an answer Derek isn’t sure he wants to give. Stiles figures it out though, just as he always does. “You feel guilty because you’re mad at me.”

Derek nods, slow and deliberate. Stiles doesn’t look away, doesn’t move. He just stares as if he’s waiting for an explanation. So Derek sighs and bites the bullet. “You should have stayed in the car.” 

The room rings loudly with the silence that follows those words. They’d been weighing on his mind for so long, but it wasn’t relief that he felt when he spoke them, it was heartbreak. It was guilt ten times over, crushing him further as if to push him out of existence altogether. Derek feels sick to his stomach and Stiles won’t stop looking at him and the heavy quiet is bursting his ear drums. He’d been trying to avoid this, because it wasn’t Stiles fault. None of this was Stiles’ fault, but the thought had crawled into his mind a few days after Stiles had gone missing, when there was still hope in finding him. He thought Stiles would be found sooner, that he would have the chance to yell at him for being an idiot because Derek had simply been scared for him.

No one knew it would be as bad as it was and when Derek started to lose hope, the thought of blaming Stiles came back, dragging the guilt for thinking of it along with it. 

Stiles sighs but instead of getting up or pushing Derek away, he lays back down on him. “Maybe you’re right, maybe I should have stayed in the car.” Derek stills beneath him. “Maybe I should have stayed home, but then where would that have left you and Scott?”

Derek shifts a bit underneath him. “We could have handled it.” He feels Stiles tense against him and now is when Stiles chooses to push himself up and off of Derek. 

“Against three omegas and a pack of hunters?” He had a point. Derek sits up as Stiles climbs off the bed. He seems agitated, unable to sit still when only seconds ago he was rather content to just lay in Derek’s arms. “You guys would have gotten seriously hurt!”

“You got hurt.” Derek says, even though he feels like shouldn’t need to state the obvious.

Stiles paces slowly at the end of the bed. He can’t go very far and has to hold on to the edge of it while he does it, wincing in pain with each step. “There’s always the potential-”

“No.” Derek stands, walks over to Stiles and stops him from walking by just standing in his way. “No, Stiles. You got hurt. There was no potential, this wasn’t a scrape on the knee or a black eye. They took you. They took you right in front of me. Don’t you dare act like this isn’t a big deal.” Derek isn’t aware that he’s raised his voice until Stiles shrinks back a little. He shuts his eyes, and sighs, shoulders dropping. Talking, standing, feeling, is all too exhausting for Derek. 

Derek thinks Stiles knows this. He feels a hand take his own and when he opens his eyes, Stiles is staring at him, standing closer to him, lacing their fingers together. “I’ve already been through the worst of it, Derek. I know what it feels like to want to die from it.” Derek hangs his head but he can see Stiles tilt his own to catch his gaze. “I’ll never just stay in the car. And you can’t protect me all the time, Sourwolf.” Derek sniffles and realizes a little too late that he’s started to cry. They’re silent, the tears. They feel foreign to him, but they fall all the same as they did the few times he allowed himself this much grief. 

This is what it feels like, he tells himself. This is what it feels like to actually grieve the loss of someone or something. It’s only now that he recognizes it as what ultimately laid beneath it all, beneath the anger, the guilt. Stiles is standing right in front of him, but Derek’s grieving the loss of the man he’d known before, the innocent yet dangerous boy he’d met all those years ago in the preserve. He’s not sure Stiles will ever be the same again.

“Teach me to fight.” The words are whispered from Stiles’ lips and it takes Derek a moment to realize he’s said anything at all. Stiles lifts Derek’s head with both hands, wipes away the streak of tears on his face. 

Derek reaches up, grasps both of Stiles’ wrists. “Really?” Stiles nods and Derek lets out a shaky breath, thumbs rotating in tiny circles on the skin he’s touching. “Okay.”

It takes a few days for Stiles to get settled back into the rehab facility. He went straight from the hospital back to Stepping Stones, welcomed back with open, supportive arms from Dr. Moore and the staff. Barbara’s there and it makes Stiles feel a bit better. They wanted to move him to a different room but he’d have to partner up, so Stiles chooses to keep his old room. They manage to clean it up for him, so clean that when Stiles steps foot back inside, he’s surprised to see that it looks as if the assault hadn’t even happened.

It’s hard to sleep in it however and so he doesn’t for the first night. Instead, he stays awake and let’s his mind wander to plans he’s made with Derek. He’d been serious when he asked to be taught to fight. It’s not as if he doesn’t know how to throw a punch or swing a bat, but he wants more. Being prepared is always better than running in blind. Stiles had done too much of that before, so now, in spite of Leo and Jimmy and all of them, he was going to learn to fight, because he could. 

Staying up the night before cost him though, evidenced by his midmorning nap on the couch in the rec room after therapy. Dr. Moore had insisted he wait until the next day to continue his routine, to give him a break, but Stiles stood firm with his decision to keep going because he wasn’t looking to stay there forever. He ended up sleeping through lunch and almost missed group but Barbara was there to wake him up and send him on his way.

The second night was a hard one. Stiles had resigned to sleep in the room, in the bed he’d been avoiding. He tries to think of other things this time, but his mind keeps coming back to what happened with Leo and it makes him sick. It affects him so much he decides it's probably better to sleep on the floor, so he grabs his blanket and a pillow and picks a nice solid wall to lean up against and fall asleep on. This is when the nightmares start. 

He jolts awake, unsure for a second where he is. He thinks he’s back in the concrete room, because the wall is cold against his back and the floor is hard against his thighs. It takes a minute for the room to fade back into view, for Stiles to gain his bearings. He tries to calm himself, breathe in - breathe out, as he notes things around the room. There’s the bed, the night stand, the closet. The floor is tiled and the walls are painted white. Leo isn’t here. He’s here by himself. Stiles tells himself these things over and over until he feels okay enough to stand. 

It’s still dark out. Stiles doesn’t think he’s been asleep for that long. He sits down on the bed, runs his hands over the clean linen and wonders if they threw out the sheets Leo had assaulted him on, or if the officers had taken them as evidence. Stiles wishes Derek were here. He wishes a lot of people were here, like Darla. It may not have been much, but there was love. There might be love with Derek but Stiles is still worried that he might be too broken to give any back. He wants to have room to love Derek but the pain and the fear keep filling him up, even now when he wants to give himself purpose again.

He doesn’t get much sleep after this but in the morning he decides to tell Dr. Moore everything.

Stiles is fast asleep on Dr. Moore’s couch as she enters the room. He thinks he hears her but doesn’t stir until she taps him on the knee with her pen. When he snorts and grumbles himself awake, she huffs a sigh and sits down in her chair. Stiles tries to wipe the sleep from his face as he rights himself, having miraculously flung his limbs about as if he owned the couch in such a short amount of time. 

“Not getting enough sleep, Stiles?” She asks.

Stiles runs a hand through his hair, down over his face and the scruff that hugs his jaw, and yawns. “No, not really.”

The doctor shifts in her chair. “We can have you switch rooms if you think it’ll help.” 

Stiles shakes his head. “No, it’s okay.” He’d rather have the privacy than share a room with a stranger. “Nightmares, that’s why I’m so tired.” He grumbles, clearing his throat.

Dr. Moore crosses a leg over her other one. “Do you want to talk about them?” She seems guarded asking the question, as if she expects Stiles to say no and brush it past it onto some other topic, but he nods and sits up as best he can. She simply stares for a moment before letting a small, acknowledging smile grace her face. “Alright, tell me about them.”

So he does. Stiles tells her about the recent nightmares, about how he keeps waking back up in the concrete room, back in the abandoned building as if he never left. He talks about how sometimes he’d dream of the first time Jimmy had attacked him and before long, everything he’d ever been through was gushing out of him. He spoke so much that the doctor seemed inclined to hold off asking any questions until he was finished. 

Stiles realizes he’s been talking nonstop for almost half an hour, but Dr. Moore is still listening, still paying attention to him, no matter the subject. He pauses when he talks about drug dealer he’d been tasked to service for their monthly supply, takes a breath and runs his hands over his face. “I should have run then, when they let me out.” He sighs, hangs his head in his hands. 

There’s a few seconds of silence before Dr. Moore clears her throat. “Stiles, do you know what Stockholm Syndrome is?” He looks up and nods. She seems to expect this answer, but she explains it anyway. “It’s a response victims experience with their captors. They form a bond with them for survival. You didn’t run away because you were smart enough to know that they would break more than just your ankle and you stayed because you wanted to live.”

Survival, sure, but he didn’t have to like what they did to him. Before Stiles can stop himself, he tells the doctor that very thing. “I - I liked it.” He winces as if it physically hurts him to say it. “What they did to me, after a while. I didn’t fight back, I-” His hands start to shake and his knees start to bounce and suddenly it's very hard to breathe in this room.

Dr. Moore leans forward and places a hand on Stiles’ knee. It’s only for a second, a tap of sorts to get his attention, before she pulls away. She sits on the edge of her seat though, the notebook and pen she’d kept in her lap now sitting on the small end table next to her. 

“Listen to me, Stiles.” She waits for him to look at her. His hands are still shaking but he’s rubbing them together, trying to focus on her. “It’s normal to respond to things of that nature. Sometimes our bodies have an automatic response, so do our minds. In situations like these, even without the use of drugs, our minds will help us bear the weight of suffering and warp it into what we think is a sense of control.” 

Stiles feels like he knows all of this already, but it still feels good to hear someone say it to him. He takes a deep breath and continues on, telling the doctor about everything that happened over the course of those six months. He can’t tell her the ultimate truth of how it ends, however, because a story of werewolves coming to save the day wouldn’t exactly convey sanity, so he tells her what little lie he’ll keep up to protect them all and soon the session ends.

It ends with a good note and Stiles feels a bit lighter for it. He walks out into the main entry, set on making a beeline to the cafeteria to grab breakfast, when Barbara catches him at the front desk. “Phone call for you, sweetie.”

Intrigued and in a good mood, Stiles smiles at her and takes the phone, and the pack of cigarettes she slides across the counter. “Hello?”

It’s familiar, the voice on the other end. Familiar and comforting. “Training starts tomorrow.”

Chapter Text

Morning came quickly and with it, the first day of Derek’s training. He came around visiting hours, the few hours between lunch and dinner time, and brought with him a bag of clothes for Stiles to change into. There were a few pairs of shorts, a couple of plain shirts, another hoodie and a pillow case. All of them smelled like Derek and Stiles eagerly dressed in one of the shorts and plain shirts for the day right away, packing away the other items in the closet of his room. “Have I completely emptied out your drawers?” He asks, fitting the pillow case over the one on his own pillow. Now it smells like both of them.

Derek huffs a chuckle. “Just about. It’s okay though, I buy double of everything now.” 

Training was limited here, in the tiny gym space provided by the facility. Others were using the equipment as well so most of the time was spent by using one machine or another. It was hard to concentrate, especially when walking on the treadmill. Stiles has to start slowly because of his ankle and by the end of the walk, it’s sore and throbbing something awful. 

“I thought you were going to train me to fight.” He mumbles, limping to the bench outside. Derek stands in front of him, blocking the now setting sun as Stiles pulls his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He lights up and sits back, blowing smoke out to the side to try and be considerate. 

Derek crosses his arms and frowns at him. “Gotta start somewhere, does no good to teach the actual fighting if you get winded walking on a slight incline.”

Stiles pulls a face at him, takes another drag and lets the smoke billow from his nostrils in response. Derek moves and takes his shadow with him, settling himself on the bench next to Stiles. Visiting hours will be over soon, so they only have a few minutes left to chat. “I don’t want to push, but those-” Derek nods towards the cigarette in Stiles’ hand. “-they’re going to make things harder, you know that.” He does, but he sighs and flicks a bit of ash onto the sidewalk beneath them.

Visiting hours end and Derek leaves, mentions he’ll be back tomorrow, and Stiles heads off to eat and contemplate quitting smoking. When bedtime rolls around, Stiles stops by the front office to talk with Barbara about getting a shaving kit. He scratches the scruff on his jaw and she tells him she’ll see what she can do.

Sleep is still hard to want, even with a face full of Derek’s pillow case invading Stiles’ nose. He keeps a lamp light on and tucks his back against the wall as he tries to lay down on the bed. He knows Leo isn’t there and tells himself he’s in a room in the rehab facility. “There’s no concrete walls or floor. You’re on a bed in a white walled room. There’s tile on the floor and Barbara is right outside.” He tells himself these things a few more times until eventually he’s so exhausted that sleep takes him easily.

The nightmares return and startle Stiles awake. This time they are of the shootout, of the rescue. Except in the nightmare, Jimmy gets his shot off, blows Scott and everyone else away. Stiles is left standing in the middle of their bodies, covered in their blood. Jimmy’s just off in the corner, laughing, but it’s when he shoves Stiles to the floor, lifts his hips and hovers over him, that Stiles jolts awake, covered in sweat and hyperventilating well into a panic attack. 

He rolls off the bed, landing himself on the cool tiled floor, and repeats over and over where he is, what’s around him and who’s nearby. He does this until his breathing slows and his heart beats a bit less frantically. “Fuck.” He mutters against the floor, the side of his face pressed up against it. Being aware of everything again is like a constant wave crashing into him, jarring him from the numbness he had settled into. 

Stiles talks about this in his morning therapy session with Dr. Moore and she suggests a few techniques to help with the anxiety. She also mentions that quitting smoking would help with that too. He mulls it over again as he sits outside and smokes. He’s aware of the irony and tries his best to only have one before heading back inside for breakfast. 

He’s tired and irritated and even though Derek senses these on him, he doesn’t let up on his training time with Stiles. By the end, Stiles is completely worn out and bordering on a painful headache. He sits in silence as Derek talks about all the things they need to do before they can actually start fighting. Stiles almost loses his patience, but he listens and reminds himself why he’s here doing this in the first place.

He forgoes a smoke while Derek talks but regrets it later during dinner when he’s uninterested in eating whatever the facility has offered. He picks at his food, fingers and throat itching, heart racing as the anxiety builds. It crests and crashes halfway through meal time and eventually Stiles ignores his food and heads back outside. 

It’s crisp outside, the air cool and dry. The cigarette tastes like a god send and Stiles hates himself a little bit for it. Today was a bad day, he thinks. He’ll probably have more like this, and he’s right. The next few days go along smoothly. Walking gets a little bit better, his ankle a little less sore. He’s managed to get a shaving kit from Barbara so he’s able to shave and look a little like his old self. It helps, until one day it doesn’t.

Morning breaks through and Stiles is already awake, having caught only a few hours of sleep. Another nightmare hits him and turns his world upside down and for the first time in the few weeks he’s been here, Stiles feels like he wants to run away and get high. As sick as it is, he misses Leo, and the mere thought of it crushes him with guilt. He’s so wrapped up in it that he can’t do anything beyond sitting on his bed, back leaning up against the wall, disassociating well into missing his morning therapy and breakfast.

It’s on days like these that Derek simply sits with him until Stiles comes back from where he’s gone. Sometimes it takes minutes, sometimes the entire day, and after the first time Derek witnesses these episodes, he brings books with him during the rest. He leaves a few behind when he has to leave before Stiles comes back to him, a simple way to let him know he’s been there with him. 

There’s some days where Derek doesn’t visit at all, and instead spends his time with Noah. It’s gone beyond it being awkward to being slightly less awkward that Derek stays for long periods of time around the Stilinski household. He’s there to do the things with Noah that Stiles would normally do, including making sure to take care of the guy the way Stiles normally would. He’d already cleared out any substances that weren’t prescribed, emptied and disposed of all the liquor, even went so far as to grocery shop just to keep the fridge stocked. 

He realizes he should have done things like this more, instead of letting Noah drink as he turned a blind eye, or rather, ignored him to fight with Peter in the woods. He thinks of this while cooking dinner one night, while Noah is bent over the table looking at reports from work. The silence is comforting and makes Derek miss things like this, things like family co-existing without having to say or do much. He doesn’t get much of that at the loft. Peter visits from time to time but he has his own place and Cora isn’t even in California any more.

By the time dinner is ready and set, Derek and Noah are in full swing with talking about their day. Noah talks about work and how he wishes he had more time to visit Stiles, to which Derek replies, talking about how Stiles is doing when he sees him, both the bad and the good. When dinner is done and they’ve had their fill on talking, Noah offers Derek to stay the night. 

Derek surrounds himself with Stiles, sleeping in his room, in his bed. He misses the other sleeping next to him but he can make due with his scent on the sheets for now. Derek spends a few more nights here and finally comes to the decision to sell the loft and buy a house. 

He tells Stiles so when he visits him next. It’s a few days shy of the evaluation to determine if he’s healthy enough to leave or not, and Stiles is busy fretting over the smallest of things. He’s aggravated and snappy but Derek doesn’t take it personally. He’s noticed that Stiles isn’t smoking as much as he used to. 

“Come on, they said we can go for a walk.” He pats Stiles' bouncing knee and takes his hand to lift him up. Stiles just quietly follows along as they walk past the front desk and out the two front double doors, pushed into silence by mere irritation alone.

The weather’s nice outside, getting colder with each day, but the sun is shining in a cloudless sky, warming them up as Stiles and Derek walk around the perimeter of the facility. “So what’s gonna happen to the loft?” Stiles asks as they round their first corner, staring down at his shoes. 

Derek shrugs. “Sell it, or keep it and rent out the apartments.” They're both sound choices but Stiles can’t stop thinking about what kind of house Derek would want to buy. Big and packed with rooms? Or small and cozy? He can see Derek in both and it makes him smile. 

They round another corner in silence, Derek picking up the pace a little. Stiles’ ankle doesn’t really hurt all that much anymore, not unless he really strains it, but he’s able to keep up now. He thinks they should be rounding another corner any minute now, if his memory of the building from the inside is any good - it is, he mapped it out once while trying to distract himself from having a cigarette - but when he looks up from his feet, Stiles realizes they’ve walked a bit of ways from the path they’d set. 

There’s a small patch of trees that sits off a bit from the parking lot. They don’t provide much cover, but when they walk inside, it feels a little more private, like a bubble that blocks out everything else around them. At least, that’s how Stiles sees it. He feels like he can breathe a little better here and takes the chance to sit on the ground, leaning against a large tree trunk. Derek comes and sits next to him, knees touching.

They sit in silence for a bit before Stiles leans over, lays his head on Derek’s shoulder. It’s warm, like his knee. A breeze passes by, ruffles their hair and clothes, makes Stiles shiver as it rushes up through his oversized sleeves. Derek shifts, puts an arm around Stiles’ shoulders and sighs. Stiles knows Derek can sense his shift in moods. He flutters between being content and anxious the more they sit there, not talking.

“What if they think I should stay?” Stiles asks, breaking the quiet. “Dr. Moore said I was making progress but -“

Derek takes one of Stiles’ hands into one of his own. “Then you stay and keep working on it. I’ll visit all the time, so will your dad and Scott and when you get out, you’ll help me look for a place.” 

Stiles leans back a little, sits up a little straighter. “You really want my input?” He’s a little surprised but it makes him smile. 

“Of course.” Derek replies then pauses. “Just nothing too crazy.”

“A treehouse.” Stiles blurts out, removing his hand from Derek’s to splay ten fingers out before him as he rambles on about the benefits of having the higher ground amid an intricate bridge system that could interconnect several treehouses over a large expanse of forest. He takes a breath as Derek huffs a chuckle and shakes his head, but when Derek rolls his eyes playfully, Stiles lets loose a laugh. It draws Derek’s attention, tilting his face upward to look at Stiles. Bushy brows rise high on his head, eyes wide and attentive. “What?” Stiles asks at the end of a chuckle. 

Derek smiles but before he can say anything, Stiles moves about, climbing on top of Derek to settle in his lap. His knees hit the tree trunk but he doesn’t mind, not when Derek’s hands come to encircle his waist and draw him closer. “I've missed that.” Derek whispers. 

“What? My butt?” Stiles asks around a smile as Derek’s hands dip low enough to grasp his backside. 

Derek snorts. “No.” But he squeezes it anyway, smiling when Stiles laughs again. “That, I’ve missed that.”

Stiles takes a few seconds to look at Derek, to study the way his face looks right now. It’s calm, bright and hopeful. It makes his heart flutter and his stomach flip. He leans forward and presses his lips lightly against Derek’s own. It’s a chaste, sweet kiss, but when he pulls back to smile down at Derek, Derek leans up to steal one for himself. They trade kiss after kiss until suddenly it goes beyond simply sweet to bordering on passionately disabling and once Stiles’ brain is fried with nothing but thoughts of Derek, Derek leans back and huffs a chuckle as Stiles tries to chase him with his lips. 

“Visiting hours are almost over.” He grumbles as Stiles leans his forehead against his own. They take a minute to breathe each other’s air before Stiles inhales sharply, nods and stands up. He holds out a hand and helps Derek up and together they take another minute before leaving their tiny grove of trees. Stiles feels a little less nervous about the evaluation.

The meeting with Dr. Moore about Stiles’ status at the rehab facility comes and goes and just as Stiles assumed, she feels he could benefit from them just a little while longer. Why kick a gifted horse in the mouth when Stiles could continue to use them as a much needed crutch on moving up and on with a sober, and thankfully less traumatized lifestyle? 

Stiles doesn’t have the heart to correct Dr. Moore on the ‘less traumatized lifestyle’ comment when she doesn’t exactly have all the facts of the type of life he already led. Or the one he would continue to lead. 

As disappointing as the news was, Derek had been right in the notion that they’d make the best of it, him, Scott and his dad. Even Malia and Lydia came to visit during the next month of his stay. Training had surmounted to building stamina, focusing on strengthening things like his ankle, building back some muscle mass he’d lost. He even managed to quit smoking. Learning to fight would come later, something to look forward to.

Almost everything seemed to slot into place for Stiles, but he’d still have bad days, especially when he’d have a nightmare the night before. There was one day that Stiles was especially huffy towards Scott. He was tired from lack of sleep, hungry even more so because his appetite returned in full force and couldn’t eat much more than the facility offered. He wanted a cigarette, space. Hell, he wanted out of here, but he could only go so far as the perimeter of the building and parking lot and it was driving him crazy.

He was irritable when Scott suggested a walk, but he did it anyway, just to get out of the building. Scott spent most of the time talking, telling Stiles everything he was missing while being in this place. It was saving his life but it also felt like a prison most days. Like today. 

Scott talked of moving onward and upward in his life with Malia, finding a place to call their own now that they both had stable jobs. He talked about Lydia and how she decided to finally head off to college, now that things were dying down around Beacon Hills, now that there was a secondary pack of baby wolves and supernatural folk to help Scott watch over the town. 

It makes Stiles think of wanting to leave too, of just up and going and not stopping until there was someplace he’d like to call home. Beacon Hills didn’t feel like home anymore. “So where would you go?” Scott asks him as they make their second lap around the buildings. He sounds sad and Stiles would guess that he is. They thought they would be running Beacon Hills by now, the two of them.

Stiles shrugs. “Maybe somewhere with a beach.” He’d always liked beaches. It was rare to have the time to go to one and Stiles always took advantage of it when he hit open water. Talking about these things makes Stiles feel better, distracts him from the itch of addiction he sometimes still feels when he lets his guard down and mind wander.

“Derek mentioned something about treehouses?” 

Stiles snorts and the rest of the afternoon is spent in light conversation and shared snacks Barbara snuck for them.

“It’s nice to officially meet you, Mr. Hale.” Dr. Moore reaches out to shake Derek’s hand as he reciprocates in kind. Stiles stands in the background of the doctor’s office, stressing to the point of speechlessness as they exchange pleasantries. Derek had managed to make friends with the nursing staff during Stiles’ stay, but he hadn’t actually been privy to one of Stiles’ therapy sessions. Until today. And only because he was going to be ‘instrumental’ in today’s session, or so Dr. Moore says.

She goes to take her seat, gesturing to both Derek and Stiles to follow along to the couch across from her. Stiles sits, fingers already fiddling with themselves. Derek sits calmly next to him. It makes Stiles anxiety skyrocket, especially when he sees the duffle bag sitting next to Derek’s feet on the floor.

Today, Stiles is going to try and get dressed in some of his old clothes. Derek’s brought some and they’re sitting there, in that duffle bag. When he’d mentioned he’s aversion to his old clothes during a session a few days ago, Dr. Moore said she wanted to try something and well, here was the something.

“Derek, I’ve asked you here today to help Stiles with this.” She gestures towards the bag with a nod of her head. She’s aware that Derek’s aware of his reluctance to his old clothes but the doctor still made a point to talk it over with Stiles, to see if it was okay to share information with him pertaining to this particular ‘family therapy session’. He agreed faster than he’d meant to, if only because of the mention of Derek and family in the same question. 

“Happy to help.” Derek smiles and for some reason, Stiles wants to knock it off his face. He hates it when Derek gets all smiley towards others. He stops to think about how possessive that thought is but he’s too focused on today's therapy session to garner any room for what should probably be talked about during his next one.

In no time at all, Dr. Moore explains the simplicity of what they’re trying to achieve: have Stiles get dressed in his own clothes. It’s been way too long, Stiles thinks, and he’s grown accustomed to wearing Derek’s clothes. But it’s a milestone, Dr. Moore explains, a speed bump in his road to recovery. Stiles thinks it’s stupid and exhausting but he didn’t exactly wake up with the best of moods this morning.

Another nightmare, another moment of panic as he tried to ground himself and failed. He hated mornings like these ones where he’d shake and try so hard not to sob into his pillow. Everything else seemed like a distant memory, something he could move past, but these nightmares would bring it all back all over again. The pain and the fear and the self hatred. He’d spent most of the morning doubting everything until Derek came to visit. Then he just pushed it all down and locked it behind doors he was familiar with. Later, he could deal with it all later. \

Today was stressful enough. 

Dr. Moore explains the process and politely excuses herself. Derek is not far behind, but when the doctor leaves, he steals a moment with Stiles, helping him stand and hugging him. “Take your time, just remember, it’s nothing but fabric. Clothes don’t make a person and personally I wouldn’t mind it if you wore my clothes all the time.” He chuckles as Stiles winds his arms up and around Derek’s shoulders. He can feel Derek’s purr-like growl enveloping him in a blanket of warmth and safety. 

Stiles leans back, just enough to catch Derek’s lips in a quick kiss and then Derek is gone and Stiles is left alone with the black duffle bag. There’s a large standing mirror nearby and Stiles sighs, moving to stand in front of it. He’s supposed to look at himself now, see how he stands, how the clothes hang off of him. Then he’s meant to see himself with nothing on before getting dressed in his old clothes. 

He stares at himself now, notes the difference a few months in this place can make. His hair is a little longer, at its awkward stage between a buzz and the length it used to sit at. It hangs forward and soft on his forehead, makes the skin there itch from time to time. He’d always been pale but being kept inside the abandoned building for so long had drained whatever color he had clinging to his sickly pallor. There’s color there now though, faint, like a whisper of a tan. It’s not much, but it’s something. 

The clothes he wears belong to Derek and they don’t resemble the ones he’s been used to for so long. With Jimmy, he’d been given shorts too big for him, made for easy access, and large shirts that hid any sort of curve or loss of weight. Now he wears sweatpants and shirts that are just a mere one size up, made for fitting Derek so he could wear them, scent them and hand them over to Stiles for comfort. Neither of those styles were what he’d grown up on. There were no flannels or flashy logos Stiles thought he could get away with when no one was looking.

Not yet, anyway. 

Slowly, Stiles removes his shirt, shivers at the coolness of the room, and tosses it towards the couch. He takes a look at himself again, at the light scars that scatter his body. The skin on them is pink and raised, bumpy underneath the pads of his fingertips as he trails his hand across his chest. That too makes him shiver, if only because it had been so long since he’d actually seen his own reflection. He remembered looking into the mirror at the hospital when they rescued him, but he had only managed to see his face at that time. Same as whenever he shaved. He avoided looking at the rest of himself as much as he could, so he was surprised to see it all now.

Again, taking his time, Stiles slips off the sweatpants. He leaves his boxer briefs on however because he doesn’t think it beneficial to be nude in Dr. Moore’s office. Plus, he’d seen that part of himself plenty lately. There weren’t any scars in that particular region, thankfully. Diego had managed to always keep the knife out of that place. He’d mark Stiles anywhere and everywhere, except there. The scars pick back up on his thighs and as his eyes travel southward, down his lean legs and knobby knees, he sees them disappear in the hair that grows on them. 

It’s nothing compared to the hair that covers Derek’s legs, but that’s another thought for another time. Stiles shakes his head and turns to crouch and reach behind him for the duffle bag. It's then when he stops himself, when he catches a glimpse of his back. He can see the scars there now too. His body doesn’t look the same, will probably never look the same, a constant reminder of tragedy and trauma. Stiles clears his throat, distracts himself from crying by turning all the way around to rummage in the bag. He blindly pulls the clothes out and sets them on the couch, taking the time to sort them into three piles, one for shirts, one for the flannel overshirts, and one for pants. 

Derek packed a few of each and it makes Stiles smile as he gingerly reaches out for the right combination. It feels weird, under his fingers, the feel of the fabric. It isn’t any different then he’s felt before and he chants the words Derek spoke to him moments ago, ‘nothing but fabric, clothes don’t make a person’. He could do this, he had to do this.

The pants aren’t much, just black jeans, but it's the way they sit just a bit too tight on him that makes Stiles’ heart skip a beat. He remembers them being pulled down in jarring thrusts because no one had bothered to unbutton them. He remembers how it hurt his thighs because they’d all been rough with him. He buttons them and looks at himself in the mirror and sighs. 

The shirt is something because it had been the last bit of clothing they’d afforded him before they decided to strip that of him too. He’d been left in the dark for two days after that, nude and cold, before they chucked dirty clothes at him. The shirt sits on him, not too tight, not too loose, but it allows his body a bit of anonymity with the way it hangs off of him. 

“So far, so good.” He sighs, taking a minute to collect himself before reaching for the flannel. This should be easy, he tells himself, he hadn’t been captured in flannel. It was a last minute decision he’d made, to forgo the extra layer in case of grabby werewolf-y hands. He slips it on, over his shoulders, looks at how his fingers peek out at the bottom of the long sleeves before he starts to roll them up. They could sit either way, but Stiles has always liked his arms and hands. 

There he is. There’s the Stiles he’d grown to appreciate over the course of his life. His hair may be shorter, he may look a little older, weathered by trauma, but his old self nonetheless. Stiles doesn’t think he’d get emotional but he feels the tears forming, sees himself through blurs and patches of color. Before he can think much else, there’s a knock at the door and Derek’s peeking inside. 

“Stiles? Are you-“ He’s cut off as Stiles turns to respond. He can see the surprise on his face as his eyebrows raise high on his head. Derek looks shocked and speechless and there’s a little bit of color flushing beneath his scruff. 

Stiles isn’t sure what to do or say, so he just stands there and waits until Derek comes into the room. He still doesn’t say anything, just looks at Stiles as if he’s seeing him for the first time. “What?” He asks quietly. He can feel his own cheeks flush and avoids looking in the mirror to confirm it. 

Derek shakes his head, comes close and looks Stiles over. “Nothing, just -“ He smiles and a contented sigh deflates his chest. It makes Stiles tear up all over again and before he can stop himself, he surges forward, into Derek’s arms. An audible huff escapes Derek’s lips but he winds his arms around Stiles without skipping a beat and holds him. 

Dr. Moore enters a moment later, clears her throat to announce herself. Stiles pulls away from Derek, wipes at his eyes with arm. She smiles at him. “You look great.” She comments, holding the door open. “Come on.” She gestures with a nod for them to leave. Stiles is confused, but Derek is smiling so he follows quietly behind out of the room.

There’s a hallway from the office that leads to the front area of the facility and as Stiles walks it, his heart starts to flip and sink. Derek reaches back and takes hold of his hand but it does nothing to quell the rise of anxiety inside of him. It’s moments like these that he craves a cigarette but at the same time, he’s proud to recognize that that’s all, to only crave cigarettes and not anything else, not drugs or mindless sex. 

They round the corner and Stiles sees his dad standing by the front double doors. He’s smiling, big enough to crinkle the skin near his eyes. Still confused, Stiles looks from him to Derek to Dr. Moore. “What’s going on?” He asks, breaking away from Derek to hug his dad. 

“It’s time to go home, Stiles.” Noah says as he hugs his son tightly. 

Stiles whips his head around, looks at the doctor with wide eyes. “What? Really?” It was only a few days away from his next evaluation and even though he was kind of expecting to be deemed worthy of release by then, these turn of events catch him off guard.

Dr. Moore smiles and nods, explaining that he still had a lot more to do. “I would still like to work with you on outpatient sessions, if that’s alright with you.” And of course, Stiles nods in agreement. The next few minutes seem to fly by. Noah had already gathered all of his things from his room, packed them up and had them ready in the car, so there wasn’t much of a reason to linger.

He did visit Barbara one last time, however, to thank her for all the things she’d done. She gave him a hug and a smile and sent him on his way.

Leaving felt big, as it should. It felt like Stiles could finally breathe. He settled in his dad’s car, next to Derek in the back seat, and watched as the building faded from view the further they drove down the road. It sat behind him now, like everything else did, behind but not forgotten. Derek sits next to him, hands clasped together, fingers laced as if they belonged there and Stiles lets himself lean against him, rest his head against his arm and shut his eyes.

It would be sometime before Stiles was back in the fold of going up against supernatural baddies with Scott and the rest of the pack. When he did, and even though he felt more prepared than ever, he still stashed a baseball bat in the back of the jeep for just such occasions. It helped complete him, in some way. Scott and Derek had claws, Stiles had a bat. Just as it should be. 

Derek rounds Roscoe, brows bushy and bold and sitting far down over his eyes in an attempt to get his message across. Stiles smirks, shuts the back door and rests his bat across his shoulders. “What’s up, big guy?” He asks, already knowing the answer. Derek looks like he wants to tell Stiles to stay behind again, but instead, Derek surprises him. 

Gathering a bit of Stiles’ shirt in his hand, Derek tugs him close, making Stiles lose his grip on the bat. He’s still brooding, still looking as if he wants to vault Stiles over his shoulder and take him far away to where it’s safe, but rather than doing that, he simply leans close and presses his lips against Stiles’ own.

It’s sweet, makes Stiles melt against Derek, makes his arms come up to grip Derek’s shoulders as he flushes his lips against his in kind. Makes him part them slightly in an unspoken invitation. Derek licks his way inside and just before it starts to get good , Derek grumbles and pulls back as Scott bumbles his way over from his bike.

“Are you guys going to do this every time?” He asks this, as if he grossed out, but Stiles can see the smile plastered on his face and it makes him smile in return.

“It’s either this or dicks and drugs, Scotty boy.”