Chapter Text
Peter was already in the kitchen when Derek and his grandmother came in from their run. He didn't say anything as Olivia bypassed the kitchen in favor of a shower, or when Derek went straight to the sink and washed his hands to the elbows.
By the time Derek was done, there was a bowl of mushrooms on the island behind him with a cutting board and knife.
"Sliced, please. Stems intact. Quarter inch or so."
Derek nodded and set to quietly prepping the mushrooms. Then potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, onions.
It was familiar. Comforting. Peter had gotten used to having kitchen-hands at work, jumping to his whim and doing whatever prep work he needed, so he'd brought the position home to his family. Even Vic had been pulled into learning the differences between knives, types of cuts (with the knife, and of meat), and the best ways to prepare stored food for later.
By the time his parents came down, Peter had a serve-yourself Sunday morning feast set up, and was pulling together the beginnings of a stew for dinner.
His mother leaned against his back while he cored the parsnips his uncle had most recently set aside for him. "Hey kiddo. How did things go?"
Derek frowned down at the vegetable he was very precisely maiming. There were words for this. For feeling empty and full at the same time. Raw, stretched, cored out and completed.
There were words. None of them were right. All of them felt like they'd break.
(He could draw it. White on white, endless overlapping circles. Stop occasionally to throw in a pale tone, but remember to run mostly over it with the white again. And another page for harsh, bleeding scratches in tones of red-orange and soft-red.)
"Oh, kiddo. You don't do anything easy, do you." His mother wrapped her arms around his chest, squeezing until his ribs were creaking in complaint and he slumped back against her strength.
They stayed like that until his father nudged them apart, handing them both plates of food and crowding Derek away from the parsnips.
"Thank you, David," his mother leaned in to kiss his dad's cheek, and Derek didn't bother to hide his eye roll as he fled the scene.
Not that he got far before his mother caught up.
She chuffed amusement and shouldered him toward the little games table in the living room. "We are talking, young man. Even if we have to resort to charades."
So Derek sat, and shoved a forkful of fried potatoes into his mouth.
Which made him think of Stiles, and the french fry trick, and goddamnit.
"Okay," his mother started, leaning forward on her elbow and holding his eyes. "You smell totally love struck. Worse than my brothers ever did, which is pretty damn impressive."
He took another bite of potato. Vindictively. His mother huffed irritation at him. "Even more impressive is how fast this happened. Wednesday, you were normal. Thursday, you were infatuated. Now it's Sunday, and I'm worried you might be in love. What the hell, son of mine."
He fidgeted with his fork and went still when it brushed against where he should have had callouses from drawing.
Words were wrong, sometimes. But Stiles talked to him without them.
His mother growled softly when he stood up, but she didn't try to stop him. It had shifted into a curious burr by the time he returned with his sketchbooks.
He didn't bother trying to explain, just flipped open his previous personal sketchbook to a few pages before he'd started drawing Stiles, and let his mother flip through from there. It was just an occasional sketch every so often at the beginning, he knew, but by the end more than half of it was Stiles.
Derek ate while she flipped through the first book, then offered her the second and growled when she tried to ask a question. There were only about twenty pages completed in that one, mostly detail studies of Stiles and a few of their conversations, so it was only a few moments before he passed over the newest book. The one they were sharing.
Maria huffed a laugh at the image of Stiles and the stegosaurus and shook her head as she turned the page. He wasn't expecting her to frown at the next page, or to hiss and drop the book before her claws came out when she flipped another page.
He'd almost forgotten about the fire, and the emotional abstraction. They'd drawn so much more, after that.
Sighing, Derek reached across the table to turn past the serious part of their evening. His mother relaxed at the light hearted portrait of the youngest members of the pack, and laughed when she moved on from there.
Eventually, she shook her head and gave him a look that suggested she deplored his chances of surviving without a pack to look after him. "Alright. Not so sudden, then. Just you being dense."
He huffed annoyance and his mother reached over the table to rub her hand through his hair as she stood. "Alright. It's been nearly a year and he hasn't run screaming yet, so that's a good sign."
That earned a snort from Derek, since he was relatively certain that if he'd been nicer or friendlier, Stiles wouldn't have stuck around to begin with. Maria rolled her eyes but continued undaunted, "You know the rules, brat. He needs to know what we are if you're serious, and before you start having sex."
Derek covered his eyes with one hand, making a distressed noise in the back of his throat. But his mother was just as impossible as Laura, so she just scratched her nails through his hair. "Yes, I know he isn't legal yet. And if I had even half a leg to stand on, I'd tell you to wait. But between me and Paul I really, really don't. So instead I'm just telling you to be smart about it, okay?
"No sex until he knows. Preferably no sex until he's eighteen, but he definitely needs to know before then. And we're going to have to have a talk about his dad. Okay?"
Whining, Derek nodded.
-----
"Hey Derek. Catch."
Derek turned back toward the house and darted to the side just in time to catch a shrieking tasmanian devil of a cousin. Gwen twisted in his arms as soon as he had her securely, growling and sinking her teeth into his arm. Wincing, Derek frowned down at her and pinched her nose firmly before glaring up at the second story window Gwen had come out of.
"What the hell, Laura," he muttered, glaring up at the empty window his sister had vanished back into.
Laura shrugged as she reappeared in the window, then jumped out to land nearby. "You were handy, and it was that or drag her through the house."
Gwen let go of his arm to gasp in a breath, and Laura ducked in, shoved a knotted rope toy into her mouth. "Here. Chew on that."
Derek cautiously removed his grip on their cousin's nose, letting Gwen snarl and bite down into the rope to her hearts content. Laura wrinkled her nose and stepped around Gwen to look at his arm. The bite was already healed, but... "Sorry about your shirt, though. Hope you weren't heading anywhere." Then her eyes narrowed and she stepped in closer, inhaling softly. When she spoke again, her voice was flat and unimpressed. "Have you even slept?"
Derek grunted and grabbed the far edge of the knot, tugging on it to work the lingering soreness out of his arm and make Gwen sink her teeth in and growl. "Talked to Tania yet?"
Laura narrowed her eyes at him but let it go after a moment with a curt shake of her head. "No. I just came in to wake her up, since the others were already at breakfast. Figured running her first would be the best bet, but I've only got so long before I head in to work."
"I'll do it. I need to think anyway."
Laura smiled and punched him in the arm. Lightly. For them. "Thanks. I was almost worried I was going to have to call out sick and miss all those Sunday morning oil changes."
She gave an exaggerated roll of the eyes and he snorted in response. "You'll let Tania know where her little monster is?"
"Of course."
Her hand was soft on his shoulder as she walked past him. Derek waited until she was out of sight before sighing down at Gwen.
Then he dropped her, holding her up just by her grip on the rope until her thrashing let him steal the rope away. She howled and lunged after him, giving chase as he set off into the woods.
His family threw six year olds out second story windows in order to manage their mood issues. How did you explain that to a human?
-----
It took hours to wear Gwen down to a panting wreck, and she still didn't shift back to human. Derek carried her back to the house thrown over his shoulder, ignoring her tired little growls and the occasional kick.
He hesitated just inside the trees, feeling and smelling for any trace of other, but only the welcoming scents of family greeted him. The scent of his father was strongest, so he followed it around to the back. It wasn't a surprise to see him ready with a hose and a worried smile.
"You're a mess, son."
Derek unceremoniously lifted Gwen and held her up in front of him, and his dad nodded. "Yeah. She's worse." He grimaced, sniffing warily at his niece. "Is that..?"
"She found a dead raccoon," Derek admitted. "And I didn't hear her veer off fast enough."
His dad grimaced. "You are astonishingly unsanitary, princess."
Gwen chuffed happily at the recognition, feet kicking and trying to wriggle out of Derek's grip.
Her happiness turned to shrieks of betrayal when David finally turned the hose on and sprayed them down.
-----
Derek left Gwen with his dad, for a real bath and then breakfast, before running off again. He could hear his mother and Peter bickering back and forth in the kitchen, and he wasn't sure he felt up to actual words on the Stiles issue yet. Which his mother might understand for a bit longer, but Peter wouldn't.
So he left his wet and dirty shirt behind and took off into the preserve.
The woods were a balm. Quiet and green in a way that was just as chaotic and messy as any city. The noise was still there, in the shifting of branches and leaves and everything that ran, scurried, flew, buzzed, called, or burrowed, but it was a collection of noises he was accustomed to. It was soothing.
He ran for miles, curling through the preserve before veering off toward somewhere familiar.
The walnut was a giant. They'd estimated its height at over seventy feet when he was younger, and their father had been teaching Laura about angles and comparisons.
It was also as familiar as a friend.
Derek jumped up, hopping from branch to branch until he'd found a spot that felt right. He settled with his feet still braced on the branch below him, crouching low and leaning to let the trunk take his weight.
He had to tell Stiles. If it was serious.
How the hell was he supposed to figure that out? Were the rules different if it wasn't serious? Did his mother want the sheriff to be in the know?
What would Stiles think? How would he react? How would his father react? How likely was it that guns would be involved?
Derek didn't know the Sheriff. He'd been worried about threats already, just over the age difference.
And they still didn't know what was going on with Gwen. Why she was such a terror sometimes, and wouldn't settle. Could he risk exposing Stiles to that?
"What's on your mind, pup?"
Derek startled and leaned forward so he could look down at his grandmother, where she was smiling up at him. "Want a friendly ear?"
It took him a few moments to decide, but Grandmother Hale was nothing if not patient. She waited until he nodded before jumping up, scaling the tree as he had until she was perched by his side. Like they were sparrows instead of werewolves.
This was another of those things that would seem strange, he realized. His grandmother was well into her seventies, looked to be in her early fifties, and could out-run and out-jump most Olympic athletes. Without shifting.
She watched him for a few moments before scooting over and pressing up against his side, squeezing him between her warmth and the trunk. "So?"
"Mother thinks I should tell Stiles about the family."
Olivia nodded, unsurprised. "You smell disgustingly in love, grandson. And it snuck up on you to boot. That can't be helping." Derek snorted but didn't bother to reply, so his grandmother continued, softer and more sympathetic. "It doesn't entirely explain this behavior, though. What is it you have twisted up in your head?"
"Is it fair to bring him in to all this? With Gwen, and the hunters, and his father."
"That last one sounds like it's more about you than him," she pointed out, and Derek huffed. He let his weight sink back a bit, his head dropping between his shoulders. His grandmother laughed, leaning over to nuzzle his hair. "It's true. And Gwen hasn't hurt anyone who couldn't heal from it yet. And she's had plenty of chances."
"Niq, Matt and Stacia know how to deal with an out of control wolf."
Olivia snorted. "And Stiles could learn. Not telling him is what puts him in danger."
One corner of Derek's mouth twitched, trying to curl up. "I'm not sure he could. It involves staying still."
Olivia snorted and butted her head against his. "He still needs to know about the danger if he's going to protect himself against it, grandson."
It was hard to think that way. Hard to think of it as anything other than asking Stiles to spend more and more time in danger. Even if the danger was his six year old cousin. (And Gregory, whenever he began to change. And possibly Erin, eventually.)
"The hunters aren't much better, as an excuse." Olivia blew an amused laugh against his cheek. "Not after that stunt your mother pulled. I swear Edgar's probably still rolling in his grave over that. Having the Argents back in town?" She swayed away and back, bumping against him. "I know you don't like it, but it makes us even safer. You know that."
He really didn't want to think about that. Not now.
"I'm scared, grandmother. What if he's scared of us? What if he leaves?"
"Better to find out sooner rather than later, don't you think?" She curled an arm around his shoulders and dropped her head against his. "You remember Thomas."
He remembered the aftermath of Thomas. He remembered Laura methodically ripping apart tree after tree, and breaking her car down into its component parts.
"That's part of what scares me."
His grandmother hummed agreement and stood up. "And that fear will rule you, until you tell him."
She jumped down through the branches and left him to think.