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Once Derek gets to New York, he gets a job in a shitty part of town at a movie theater that always seems to be about 3 dollars from having to shut down. The pay's awful, but the manager lets him sleep in the projector booth when he's off work (which isn’t much; he doesn't like to spend too much time alone with his thoughts these days). He showers at the Y down the street and ignores the speculative looks some of the men shoot his way, the once-overs he gets in the gym.
They don't get any first-run blockbusters at the theater. Or second-run, for that matter. They couldn't run them even if they did—the projector Derek works with is at least as old as he is.
Mostly they play porn, softcore stuff from the 70s and 80s—all big hair and mustaches, more silly than sexy. Derek learns to tune it out after awhile; it wouldn't have done anything for him before, let alone now.
He only watches what's playing Tuesday nights, when they put on a few of the actual movies that the owner bought a bunch awhile back in a remainder auction in a weak attempt at legitimacy. It's stuff no one else wanted—old sci-fi B movies, Westerns, whatever analog stuff other theaters had around when they made the move to digital.
So he sits there numbly reel after reel for week after week and watches sheriffs with tin stars and two-bit detectives tromp around the screen. It's comforting at first: the hero always wins and the villain always pays. Black and white.
He figures out pretty quickly that that's not always true, even in shitty melodramas; pure evil doesn't make for good stories, and gray gets in everywhere. But crime is never allowed to pay—even the most sympathetic villains still have to buy their absolution with blood and misery.
He's still naive enough, then, to think that the world doesn't work like that. That forgiveness and redemption in life are possible, even for killers and fools. Even for him.
A postcard comes for him at the theater every so often, addressed to increasingly unlikely pseudonyms; Laura's always had a good imagination for that kind of thing. Derek thinks 'Butch Cassidy' might be pushing it too far, though.
Laura misses a couple of weeks every now and then, and Derek doesn't let it worry him too much. When she misses two months in a row, though, he quits his job and makes the drive back to Northern California, worry burrowing deeper into his bones as he goes. He stays in cheap motels along the way, the kind that still advertise color TV like it's something new and exciting and whose owners only take cash.
(There's a kind of hope in fear, he realizes later. You've got to have something to lose before you're afraid to lose it.)
It's not until long after he gets to Beacon Hills, long after he meets Scott McCall for the first time and calls him brother, that he realizes just how wrong he was about all of it. He's no hero. He's not even the hero of his own story.
He's Eddie Bartlett in The Roaring Twenties, dying unmourned and unremarked in the rain, redeemed only by his own blood. If anyone makes it out of this thing, it’s going to be Scott, and Derek doesn't even bother to think of that as unfair at this point. But there it is: he's a bit player in Scott McCall's life, a footnote in a love story. Brother, he thinks bitterly, what a fucking joke. But it’s still true, is the thing: blood’s no bond against betrayal. It’s the oldest story there is; Derek knows that all too well.
And then there's Stiles, always Stiles, who somehow manages to stay perpetually stranded halfway between comedy and tragedy. Derek knows his story, too: the plucky sidekick whose brave death spurs the hero on to victory. He watches Stiles cry, hears him lie about why, and thinks: you idiot, did you ever think you'd get the girl? did you ever think this would end any other way?
Still. They're two of a kind, strays that Beacon Hills doesn’t have a use for anymore. Derek knows that both he and Stiles won't have much more of a role to play in this story after this. It doesn't make him any fonder of Stiles.
Somehow he survives. He's not dumb enough to attach any particular meaning to it this time.
When Peter's second betrayal finally comes, it's not a surprise. Derek thought it would be sooner, honestly—but then again, Peter has a much better sense of timing than Derek. He's always been a past master of the grand finale, the delayed punchline.
He ends up with Stiles somehow, trapped and waiting for the Alphas to break through the door in the cellar of what used to be Derek's home.
"This is the part where the cavalry comes, right?" Stiles asks, drumming his hands against the floor while Derek searches fruitlessly for anything that might actually keep the Alphas out for another few minutes.
"The cavalry doesn't come for us," Derek says wearily. He wants to yell, wants to make Stiles understand just how fucked they both are. Maybe he wants to apologize too; this death shouldn't belong to Stiles, too.
"You mean won't," Stiles says shakily. "Not that that's much better."
"I mean doesn't," Derek snarls. "You don’t get the girl, and I don’t get the glory. That’s not how things work for us." He tosses a piece of rotten wood aside and paces back towards Stiles. The kid's hunched against the wall now, shaking and reeking of fear and desperation.
Above them, Derek can hear voices echoing loudly; they’re planning something. Not much time left.
"I don't want to die," Stiles says quietly. Whatever fight he had left in him a minute ago is gone now; he's slumped against the wall of the cell, staring blankly at the claw marks on the windowsill opposite him. "I don't think my dad would make it, not a second time," and wow, the kid must be terrified if he's saying this stuff to Derek.
"Nobody wants to die," Derek says shortly. He pulls at a rusted manacle, more to have something to do than because he thinks it'll be of any kind of use. Stiles doesn’t respond.
“We didn't talk much, before my mother died. And after-" Stiles breaks off. "We didn't talk at all for awhile, after that. He was a good dad, don't get me wrong. He still is. But when you watch someone you love go like that, slow and painful—a part of you goes too. It's like gangrene. You have to cut part of yourself off to save the rest."
"But he survived," Derek says swiftly. "And he'll survive this, too." He doesn't know why he wants so badly for Stiles to admit that they're beat, that this is it. Maybe a part of him thinks that if Stiles accepts it, Derek will too.
"The first few weeks after she died, he didn't sleep. He’d wait until I went to bed, then he’d sit at the kitchen table with a bottle of whiskey and his service revolver. There was a rhythm to it—take a drink, clean the gun, take another drink, load the gun.” Stiles lifts his head up, his eyes hard and flat like cheap amber when they meet Derek's. "You'd be amazed at how clearly you can hear that in an empty house.”
Derek doesn't know what to say to that. He settles for nodding. It doesn't seem to make a difference to Stiles either way; he stares back down at his hands and keeps talking.
"And did I do anything? Did I go downstairs and talk to him? Or lift a fucking finger to stop my father from just taking that Magnum and blowing his head clean off?" Stiles does move, then, with sudden and surprising fury, and it takes all of Derek's reflexes to stop him from smashing his hand into the stone wall.
"You were a kid," Derek says, keeping a firm grip on Stiles' wrist. It’s the best comfort he can offer, and he knows it’s no comfort at all. “It wasn’t your fault,” and he knows Stiles can hear that lie. Derek’s never been able to believe it for himself, and he can’t be expected to sell it to someone else.
"For our viewers who are following along at home, the answer is 'no'," Stiles says, choosing to ignore Derek and his weak platitudes entirely. He twists in Derek’s grip and pulls himself up easily; Stiles is stronger than he looks. “And I’m not going to let that happen again, so fix this, Derek. Get us out of here.”
“I don’t know how,” Derek says tersely. It’s the bloody bones of the truth he’s been running from for years.
“Can’t you just try?” Stiles is pleading, now. “Work whatever werewolf magic you have to do to get us out of this. Or I can, I can help. Just tell me what to do.” It’s the only time he’s ever looked at Derek like Derek had any answer at all to any of this. It almost makes Derek sorry that he doesn’t have one.
“This isn’t one of your stories, Stiles,” Derek snarls. “There are no last-minute escapes, no second chances. Accept that.”
“But it is one of yours,” Stiles says slowly. “You’re playing a death scene right now, aren’t you?”
He always forgets that Stiles is capable of this; the kid spends so much time talking that Derek forgets he watches, too.
“I’m not playing at anything,” he says. “This is how it is, Stiles. You have to accept that.”
“I don’t have to accept anything,” Stiles says. He weaves in closer, watching Derek closely.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Derek says flatly. “It won’t work.” He doesn’t want to admit to either of them that it might be working, just a little.
Stiles stares at him. “You’re an asshole,” he says finally. “And a cowardly one.”
"Sure," Derek says easily. He can admit that much, after all. “But when did I ever pretend to be anything else, Stiles?”
“So that’s it,” Stiles says contemptuously. “Some creature of the night you turned out to be; I can’t believe I ever thought you were worth being afraid of.”
Derek lashes out, finally, even though he knows he shouldn’t; Stiles is baiting him, that much is laughably obvious. Stiles doesn't seem to mind, though, doesn't even flinch when Derek's fist hits him. He just stands there afterwards, grinning fierce and bright and beautiful, blood oozing sluggishly from a fresh cut on his bottom lip. Derek can't look away.
“I’ve hated you,” Stiles admits roughly. He flicks his tongue out experimentally and winces a little when it brushes against his cut lip. “And I’ve been afraid of you. But I’ve always trusted you, Derek. And I think you have a choice.”
He steps forward and tangles a hand in Derek’s shirt, yanking him in for a kiss that tastes more like desperation than lust by now. There’s no shivering fog of fear around Stiles now. He smells like iron and smoke and anger, like war, and some part of Derek howls back a response: time to fight.
“Make up your mind,” Stiles says finally, swiping the last of the blood off his lip. It’s the last thing he gets out before the door breaks open.
Derek does.