Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The most jarring part was the lack of scent.

A fine but heavy mist permeated everything until concrete and mortar gleamed darkly, until even the air appeared to be saturated in silver under the glow of the street lamps. Derek shook again, a full-body shiver to dislodge the sheen covering his dark fur, and huffed in irritation when the damp chill almost immediately settled back in place and seemed to work even more quickly at seeping down to his bones. He lifted his head to better take in his surroundings, for all that they mattered here, huffing again after a few seconds of more wet pavement, more empty and generic buildings, more deserted parking lots, all cast more in shadow by dismal, weak light.

There were no street names here, no way to actually navigate the subtly shifting backdrop of a deceptively familiar small town as Derek slunk through an off-putting abundance of alleyways and abandoned businesses. His paws echoed dully as they clicked against the asphalt, no longer concerned if he was spotted by anyone. There was no one else to see him, not here. Not yet. Even the sound of his trek through yet another lot devoid of trash was equally muted yet booming without the white-noise humming of fluorescent lights, the soft sounds of people living in their homes. No breeze stirred the mist or ruffled his coat.

He continued to traverse the expanse aimlessly, knowing by now that trying to navigate these streets was pointless. Finding someone here was almost as much a pain in the ass as when the sounds Derek wasn’t making himself were few and far between, and like hearing them while underwater. Listening for someone’s heartbeat was nearly an exercise in futility; with no real way of determining how close or how far away he was, hearing a constant heartbeat pounding away at the same intensity would have been maddening if he hadn’t learned to disregard it early on.

But even that was better than his inability to smell anything. No mold, no smoke, no defining scents of soap or sweat; nothing. All of Derek’s senses were either tricked or useless. He paused in his aimless search again to shake off another layer of mist, dipping down to lick at the collected moisture between his toes. He let out a low growl when he looked back up, noting the sudden presence of trees where laundromats and flickering lamps had stood just moments before.

Warmer. He turned away from a half-formed alley with yet another huff, his gait now colored by purpose and a sense of wariness. Being able to find someone in here meant that they could find him, too. He kept his footsteps light and his ears perked, not to gauge if the sound of a heartbeat drew nearer, but to brace for any other sounds adding to the background pulse of an erratic metronome.

The way Derek slipped away from lonely business streets to wooded roads was as abrupt as it was seamless, all of the glittering pavement giving way to gravel and dirt that was just beginning to turn into mud beneath his paws, providing a further sense of unease at the absence of petrichor in the air. He moved quickly underneath the pale glare of each street light, now spaced few and far between, and ignored the moon whenever it momentarily broke through the clouds: it was always full here, and never strayed from its position in the night sky. Just like the mist was ever-present; just like the street lamps were never equally spaced and therefore useless for determining distance.

He padded along as silently as possible, braced for the moment when he would no longer be alone, when he would suddenly break through the tree line and find himself in an area he recognized as much more than just a generic shopping district or another forest road. As if summoning him, the clouds parted again, allowing a beam of moonlight to limn a door in silvery shadow. Derek halted where he stood, somehow caught both too close to the house that had sprung up in the middle of a still-shifting forest, and yet also impossibly far away.

Before he could decide whether to move closer or attempt a retreat, the door swung open with a pointed creak, the sound much louder than anything else Derek had heard so far, before revealing Stiles. He took one step out onto the porch, the moon dramatically illuminating the pale skin of his bare feet, his face, the surprisingly corded muscle of his forearms as they leveled a gun directly at Derek and held him in his dark, glimmering sights. Derek crouched down closer to the ground, trying to convey how little of a threat he posed, but Stiles’s frown only intensified, almost grotesque and otherworldly in the unnatural light of his dream.

Just like every other time Derek had managed to reach this point, Stiles stood uncharacteristically still in the doorway, wearing the same threadbare black tee and blue plaid sleep pants. Even his hair was mussed exactly the same, soft and rumpled and wavy without an abundance of product. And also just like every other time, he remained silent, wordlessly cocking the gun in his hands and wrapping his long fingers around to pull the trigger.

Derek only had enough time to let out the beginnings of a howl, the sound mournful and frustrated, nearly as deafening as the crack of the gun going off, and cut off just as fast by the bullet Stiles didn’t hesitate to fire.

Stiles heralded his arrival at the Hale house by banging relentlessly on the door. “Derek! Are you in there?” He paused just long enough to lean as close to the weathered wood as he dared without risking splinters in his face, listening for signs of life within. When he was answered with dead silence, Stiles merely resumed pounding his fist against the door as hard as he could, relying on his signature brand of being as dogged and obnoxious as possible to bring about the desired results. “I know you’re not at the train depot because I already checked there first and there’s no way you’ve had long enough to shack up anyplace else, you suburban Heathcliff weirdo!”

He pounded his fist against the door a while longer until the meat of his hand started to sting a little, then gave up on waiting for someone to let him in and shouldered his own way inside. The frown already present on his face intensified when he was immediately met with the sight of Derek sitting on the decrepit staircase, staring up at him blandly. “What are you doing here, Stiles?”

“Your guard dog routine could use some work,” Stiles snipped instead of answering. “Even locking the door would be more of an effort than just sitting there and waiting for anyone to barge in.”

Derek’s responding smile was mocking as his position on the stairs relaxed incrementally. “Maybe I just wanted to time how long you made an ass of yourself. Besides, a lock isn’t keeping out anything I’d actually consider a threat. And again, what are you doing here, Stiles?”

“I don’t think the door is either. Or the house, unless you plan on dropping it on top of someone,” Stiles went on, ignoring his question. “I’m just saying you’re usually out on the porch telling me to go away before I’ve even taken the keys out of the ignition, let alone made it to the door.” He took another couple of steps into the house, moving as close to the staircase as he dared without risking being crushed by a collapsing wall—or being pinned up against one by an irate werewolf and then having it collapse on him. “I noticed Jackson being his usual asshole self today in school—I thought he might’ve been swinging by your place for some more Werewolf Olympics, but obviously that wasn’t the case.”

“Obviously,” Derek confirmed, his tone still lacking any kind of inflection.

“Why isn’t he here? You spent months training your puppies and now you figure one of the biggest douchebags without the joys of the Bite will probably manage to bounce back just fine from everything that happened and get a handle on everything on his own?” Stiles scoffed in disbelief. “Or that everything’s cool because Isaac is there with him? Because I vividly remember psycho-cherub strutting around second-period chemistry with his blonde partner in crime, ready and willing to kill Lydia. Speaking of which, do you have any idea where Erica and Boyd are?”

“What. Are you doing here. Stiles,” Derek reiterated, the bored lilt to his voice gone.

“Are you looking for them at all?” Stiles pressed on. “You spent weeks strutting around telling trees you’re the alpha and now—” he flailed his arms out in front of him in a cutting motion “—that’s it?”

“I think they made it pretty clear that I’m not their alpha,” Derek replied dismissively, a bitter edge just barely creeping in to color the end.

“And?” Stiles scoffed again. “Setting aside the fact that I doubt you never pulled the same stunt in your own pack, that doesn’t change the fact that you are still their alpha and they need you.”

“Are you sure about that?” Derek asked, finally rising to his feet, “I’m sure Scott is more than willing to show them all how to be werewolves.”

“What Scott did has nothing to do with the rest of your pack. You bit a bunch of scared teenagers! What did you expect?” Stiles ran his hand over his hair in frustration. “They’re more in the dark than you are and they think there’s someone who’ll have better, actual answers for them, rather than someone who stands around intimidating people with basketballs.” He hadn’t realized he’d moved further into the house until the toes of his shoes pressed up against the bottom step. “If you are The Alpha, then you’d go out there and find them and actually be one.”

He swallowed when Derek’s face hardened, but he held his ground even as the werewolf descended the stairs until he was only a few feet away, looking down on him. “Why are you here, Stiles?” Derek asked once more, this time giving Stiles the impression that he was on the verge of literally tossing the human back out the way he’d come in. “Why do you care? Why aren’t you bringing this up with Scott?”

Stiles flinched, immediately cursing himself for it, then twisted his features into a sneer instead. “Fine. Maybe if I search for them myself I’ll at least know what the hell’s going on for once.”

A heavy hand clamped down on his shoulder before he could do more than pivot, holding him in place. “You’re not looking for them,” Derek commanded.

“Oh, what, now you’re an alpha again?” Stiles spat out, trying futilely to shrug out of Derek’s vice-like grip.

“Stiles, why do you care? I got Scott’s message loud and crystal clear: he doesn’t want to have anything to do with my pack, fine—tell him his pack can keep out of my business, too.” The shove Derek gave to Stiles’s shoulder was barely forceful enough to do more than herd him back toward the door, but it was still enough to land right on one of the bruises left behind by Gerard Argent, and Stiles’s second flinch was much more noticeable, accompanied by a quiet hiss of pain. Derek’s brows drew down as his hold lessened just enough for Stiles to successfully jerk away. “Wha—?”

“Don’t worry, I will keep well away from you and your pack from now on,” Stiles cut him off, backing up another step to put more distance between them. “I’d rather get the message than be one.” His mouth snapped shut just long enough for his teeth to grind together angrily, before spitting out, “Did you know? Did you have any idea that Gerard had them?”

“What do you—Gerard? Stiles, what—?” Derek followed after Stiles’s backwards retreat, reaching out as if to grab a fistful of his flannel shirt or at least lift it up to see for himself why Stiles was cringing in pain.

“I am aware that it would be only reasonable to assume that I had the slightest fucking clue what Scott had been planning, but I assure you I was just as in the dark as you were—probably more so, considering I’d been getting my ass handed to me by a bad grandpa until a little before everyone else showed up for the smackdown in the warehouse.” Stiles gestured at his face, drawing attention to the bruises and cuts the Argent patriarch had left behind. “My eyes are up here, dude.” He took a few deep, slow inhales to even out his breathing, letting his shoulders relax when Derek remained a pace or two away rather than backing him up against the wall like he’d been trying to avoid in the first place. “Gerard had me in their basement, along with Boyd and Erica.”

Derek’s responding growl was low, but enough to rattle the permanent layer of dust settled over the room. “But they’re not there now, are they? So, they just left a second time.”

“Do you like sticking around after you’ve been strung up and tortured with electrical wires for hours? Because if so, that actually explains a few things about you,” Stiles snarked. “They were terrified, okay? When I got out I did not hesitate to haul ass away from there, so I’m really not all that surprised they tried to do the same. But see, here’s the thing: when I left, I went home. Where did they have to go? Did they have any reason to think that you’d take them back?”

Derek’s jaw noticeably clenched for a second before he said, “I will look for them. As in alone, because you will be staying out of this.”

“Oh, the hell I will,” Stiles started arguing nearly before Derek had finished speaking. “The last time I didn’t see something coming, I wound up getting up close and personal with the Argents’ floor before driving my Jeep into Jackson, without even getting the satisfaction of doing it while he wasn’t the kanima.”

“Fine,” Derek bit out through gritted teeth, “you can help search, but you don’t do it alone.”

“Same goes for you,” Stiles shot back, pressing forward when Derek’s stupid eyebrow raised. “Hey, by my count, you’ve been abducted or otherwise incapacitated just as much as I have.” At Derek’s barely perceptible nod of concession, Stiles returned it before turning to head for the door. His hand curled around the doorknob at the same time he noticed Derek was literally right behind him. “Whoa, dude, personal space—I’m already on my way out the door, just chill.” He stepped out through said door and half-turned to add more advice about Derek working on his social skills (or crack jokes about his apparent agoraphobia—whichever one came out of his mouth first) but noticed that Derek’s eyes weren’t on him, they were on the trees beyond the property line.

Stiles let out a noise of confusion under his breath, whipping his head around to catch a glimpse of whatever Derek was looking for, but found nothing out of the ordinary. “What…?” He peered back at Derek, who was now back to his usual looking annoyed with Stiles’s existence, eyebrows raised as if they were ushering him to his Jeep. Stiles’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, but instead of asking the question he knew Derek would refuse to answer, he merely said, “You know I’m just going home right now, right? To my house, where I live with my father, the Sheriff?” He rolled his eyes when Derek merely continued to stare at him silently, blocking the entirety of the doorway with his ridiculous arms like he felt the need to barricade it against Stiles’s reentry. “I’m not driving around looking for them now, so feel free to keep a distance between us of six feet or greater.”

He spun back around and walked back to his Jeep, stumbling only a little on the bottom, half-rotted step, and kept his gaze surreptitiously on the tree line for anything that would have Derek Hale on high alert. Because they needed more miscommunication issues. Whatever. He threw yet another crisis onto his mental back burner and put the Hale house in his rearview mirror without glancing back at Derek once. Okay, twice, just to see if he was still hulking sullenly on the porch.

True to his word, Stiles pulled into the driveway of his home rather than trekking further out into the preserve (not only would Derek be more likely to find them out there than he ever could, but he’d already learned his lesson the first time around). The patrol car wasn’t there because of the recent and tragically abrupt staff shortage, but after Stiles’s abduction, his dad was big on Stiles at least being home and checking in for the foreseeable future (especially since his dad was a sheriff and therefore not too much of an idiot to not have an inkling when he was being lied to, repeatedly). Frankly, Stiles was just thankful that he didn’t have to work around being grounded on top of everything else. He hit the “call” button on his phone as he walked up the driveway, opening the conversation with his dad by announcing, “Rest assured, your one and only son is entering the house as we speak.” He punctuated the end of the sentence by holding the phone close to the doorknob as he unlocked it.

He could hear his father already sighing in exasperation before he’d brought the phone back up to his ear. “You’re not under house arrest, Stiles.”

“Yeah, I know,” Stiles said, shoving the door closed with his shoulder. “Just letting you know I’m home. Do you want me to swing by with dinner later?”

His dad sighed again, but with regret this time. “I don’t think so, kiddo, not tonight. I’ll just heat up some leftovers when I get back.” Which was code for “we’re broke as shit, so don’t be spending money on takeout for me.”

“I’ll make something you can take for lunch tomorrow, too,” Stiles offered, skipping steps on his way upstairs to his room. “See if we can make it a whole week without winding up at Rosie’s din—ohmygod!” He nearly pitched his phone at Derek, who’d decided to resume his skulking in Stiles’s bedroom, and slammed himself back against the doorjamb.

“Stiles?” his dad asked, concerned and likely already halfway across the squad room to race home in the patrol car, given the past couple of weeks they’d just lived through.

“I’m fine! Everything’s fine! I just… tripped on the stairs. Oops,” Stiles laughed disarmingly even as he sent a glare in Derek’s direction, then emphasized it with voiceless threats and a violent hand wave when Derek had the audacity to glare back—like he hadn’t broken into Stiles’s room like the creeper he was again.

“Well, when you try to skip over half of them…” his dad pointed out wryly.

“Yeah, yeah,” Stiles brushed off, letting his backpack drop onto the floor and kicking his door closed behind him. “I’ll have something waiting for you when you get back.”

“Don’t suppose it might be something with potatoes in it.”

“It’s good to maintain realistic expectations. See you tomorrow, Pops.” Stiles waited until he heard his dad say goodbye before hitting “end call,” then resumed glaring at Derek. “What the hell?”

“Tell me you weren’t going to start searching for them the moment you got home,” Derek said knowingly, somehow managing to look both annoyed and smug at the same time.

Stiles scoffed yet again but fell into his desk chair all the same and booted up his laptop. “Not the moment I got home, no. Let me maintain the delusion that I’m not a terrible son who’s been regularly using insider knowledge to hack police databases and smuggle home files from the station, or steal armored cars for kanima holding and relocation purposes for the past few months.”

He felt Derek’s eyes on him for the next few seconds, but Stiles kept him resolutely in his peripheral vision as he gave all of his focus to logging into his dad’s newly reinstated job to access missing persons reports. Eventually, Derek’s gaze shifted from his profile to the laptop screen, but the air between them remained charged with tension the longer he refrained from saying anything. Stiles’s fingers tapped away on his keyboard with perhaps a bit too much force, but otherwise barreled through the silence with his usual brand of vehement denial until he found what he was looking for. “Erica’s mom and Boyd’s grandma have filed reports. They’ll both be priorities, considering Erica’s epilepsy and what happened with Boyd’s sister.” He glanced over at the sound of Derek’s questioning grunt before explaining, “Alicia. She went missing a few years ago. They never found her. Doesn’t exactly look great if the brother goes missing, too.”

Stiles worked quickly to pull up and stockpile all of the information he needed, aware that Derek’s attention was back on him again. It wasn’t until he was logging out and reaching into his pocket for his phone that Derek finally asked, “Why are you trying to find them?”

“I don’t know. Survivor’s guilt?” Stiles shot back immediately. He inhaled sharply in a burst of irritation, then exhaled slowly before answering in more detail, “I tried. I tried to get them out and I couldn’t. We were all just… stuck in that psycho hunter’s basement and we knew no one was coming for us: my dad wouldn’t have even thought to look at the high school principal as a suspect. And—” he cut off, waving away the rest of what he was going to say with a shake of his head.

Derek leaned forward minutely, unwilling to let things drop. “And what?”

Stiles’s jaw clenched in tandem with his fists, then he shook his head again and muttered, “We were supposed to be a message, but you wouldn’t have heard it and my dad—Erica and Boyd’s families—wouldn’t have even known to look out for it in the first place. And Scott…” He let out a humorless laugh. “I didn’t want Scott to get the message, so I was let go and then I just basically left your betas there to keep on being tortured.” He finally met Derek’s gaze with his own. “I don’t know who let them go, but… I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Allison.”

Derek’s brows drew together in confusion, but Stiles continued, “I don’t know why, apart from crazy running in the Argent family and Allison getting swept up in it, but I think she had a hand in bringing them to the house in the first place because of what… after what happened in the warehouse. Scott told me she broke up with him—I can’t bring myself to feel too broken up about that, but I also don’t want to…”

“You don’t want to pit your friendship against how he feels about his hunter ex-girlfriend,” Derek finished bluntly, his features set in a frown.

“Look, Gerard was obviously manipulating her—”

“Yeah, just like Kate, and her mother, and—”

“—and now it’s a matter of finding out how much of the Kool-Aid she’s been dipping into. I don’t want her to keep up the family tradition of showing me that I can be abducted literally anywhere, or listen to Chris Argent justify their Code one more time, but maybe with them all out of the picture…” Stiles shrugged. “Anyway, I didn’t want Scott to know where I was that night—I didn’t want either of them to have to choose something like that or… uh… watch Allison find out I was there and not give a damn.” He cleared his throat and sat up straighter in his chair, looking away from Derek again. “So anyway, yeah, Erica and Boyd deserve someone looking for them—they wanted someone to find them; I could’ve been rescued, I just chose not to be.”

“You weren’t the one who chose to run away,” Derek pointed out, surprising Stiles into looking back up at him. “They wanted to find a new pack.”

“Do you think they did?” Stiles asked, his eyes roving over Derek’s expression searchingly. “Is that why you weren’t trying to find them?”

“No.” It was Derek’s turn to avert his gaze, instead glaring at Stiles’s window like it had offended him by allowing him to sneak into Stiles’s room in the first place. “It’s not easy, jumping from pack to pack. Especially when the pack you left is small or unstable.”

“Which is, I’m assuming, usually the case if you’re trying to go pack shopping in the first place,” Stiles supplied, a part of him mildly excited that he was getting some actual answers for once, rather than compiling as much information as he could from unreliable sources and spending hours sifting through bullshit until he came up with reasonable guesses on his own.

Derek’s head tilted toward him in assent. “Since their alpha and the rest of their pack isn’t dead, that means finding another one is likely to go one of two ways: they’re either given a window of opportunity to prove their value to the new pack, or they’re a bargaining chip.”

“And you were waiting to see which scenario your betas walked into,” Stiles surmised. Derek nodded again, but not before a brief moment of hesitation that Stiles additionally catalogued for later. “So, no ransom demands?”

“Nothing as of yet, which would be why I’m even here,” Derek pointed out, his relaxing stance drawing Stiles’s attention to the fact that he’d even tensed up in the first place. Stiles’s eyes narrowed into slits as he scrutinized Derek’s profile, but again, he kept his suspicions to himself—the way Derek had searched the tree line, or seemed to be one second away from hurling Stiles off the property, or the way he hadn’t been making any kind of search effort before Stiles announced he’d do it on his own… He knew something. He knew something big, and Stiles’s impending summer vacation was already shaping up to be fully booked.

Except for the part where absolutely nothing happened and the following month into his break totally fucking blowed. Hanging out with Scott was severely curbed by most of his best friend’s time being taken up by summer school, working for Deaton, or losing pathetically at any game they tried to play because at least half of his focus was on Allison. Meanwhile, nothing was popping up anywhere regarding Boyd and Erica (not even a single grainy shot of them in a convenience store or an attempt to leave some kind of message for their families), only strengthening Stiles’s belief that Derek already knew what happened to them, or at least had an idea. To make matters… worse? Or more annoying, at any rate: Isaac and Jackson seemed to know more about the situation than Stiles did, and if that wasn’t an absolute punch in the face…

Not that it was a complete disaster. Scott’s self-improvement plan left Stiles with plenty of time to clear a stupid amount of games, barely lie to his dad, and indulge in self-discovery. Like, a lot of self-discovery. He had so much time alone to himself in his room, with his laptop and what was maybe a disturbing amount of free porn. If some of the actors started to resemble Derek a little (or if Stiles kept accidentally replacing said actors with Derek’s image in his head), that information wasn’t going any further than his bedroom. When Derek wasn’t in it, taking up a ridiculous amount of space with his stupidly developed muscles.

It’d been easier before to disregard how attractive Derek was, on account of Stiles wondering if he was a rogue alpha werewolf who’d bitten his best friend and murdered his own sister—even then, the frequency with which he was slammed into or up against things gave him some of the most confusing fear boners in his life. Now, Derek was materializing dramatically out of the shadows like he usually did, but he was doing things like subtly crack one-liners, or seem to actually listen to other people’s input, or save Stiles’s life on repeat occasions. Sometimes it was almost too much to handle.

“Enough with the euphemisms already,” Stiles whined to himself. He needed a hobby: something to do with his hands while he watched TV. Something else, like knitting.

He was lost enough in his own head that he didn’t notice someone pull into the driveway until they were knocking on the door. “Oh, thank God,” he muttered, not dwelling on the slight groan of effort that punched out of him just from peeling himself from the couch—he was resolutely avoiding cardio for at least the remainder of the week because he was on vacation. Though he did have a flash of regret over his choice of attire and lack of regard for a regular showering schedule when he threw open the door and found Lydia Martin standing on the other side in all of her impeccable glory. “Ah.”

Lydia only gave one unimpressed tilt of her eyebrow before saying, “I need to talk to you.”

Stiles let her in with more nonsensical sputtering, hurrying after her as she led them back to his living room, where he had accumulated a sizeable nest of summer-induced sloth. “Uh…” he uttered in apology and excuse before diving in and trying to at least brush crumbs and stray popcorn kernels out of sight. “What did you, uh, need to talk about? I don’t think it actually needs to be said, but for health and safety purposes do not sit on the couch.”

“I see someone’s been busy,” Lydia remarked wryly, choosing instead to merely lean against the side of an armchair.

“Well, we can’t all breeze through the recommended summer prep work,” Stiles joked, stacking more detritus on top of an empty pizza box.

“We both know you did, too, Stiles,” Lydia said, her eyes knowing as they met his, “otherwise you wouldn’t be trying to become one with the sofa.”

“Not all of it,” Stiles defended half-heartedly, “just enough that I can drag Scott to a passing grade.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually,” Lydia said, straightening and folding her arms over her chest; Stiles followed suit, bracing himself for a less-than-ideal topic of conversation. “Allison’s been putting on a very convincing show of how not broken up she is over Scott, which I can only assume means that Scott has been doing the same, given that I haven’t seen him at any parties this summer—which is odd, to say the least, given that he’s co-captain of the lacrosse team.”

Stiles’s arms uncrossed as he took a step toward Lydia. “Wait, wha—has Jackson been going?” He waved his hands around to illustrate his frustration while words temporarily failed him. “He just stopped being the kanima!”

Lydia’s unimpressed look amplified tenfold before she said dismissively, “Derek’s been with him during full moons.” Her gaze subsequently sharpened when Stiles’s mouth gaped in surprise, but she merely continued, “But what I came to find out was what’s had you so busy this summer.”

Stiles gestured broadly at the mess he’d made of his living room. “You don’t exactly have to dig deep to get to the bottom of this mystery.”

Lydia hummed neutrally. “I don’t know… Derek’s been taking a much more vested interest in training Jackson and Isaac than he had before school ended, I’ve noticed all three of them canvassing a lot of Beacon Hills lately. Derek’s pack is considerably smaller than I remember from back when they were trying to kill me…” She drew closer, her eyes fixed on Stiles’s. “Am I going to wind up ambushed in a field again? Are you?”

“Uh… as far as I am aware, no? Hopefully not?” Stiles offered helpfully. “I don’t really know much more than they’re looking for Erica and Boyd. I’ve been taking kind of a supernatural sabbatical.”

Lydia’s gaze evaluated him for a few seconds longer before nodding. “It shows. Though it would probably work more to your advantage if you actually left your house once in a while.” She reached up and flicked her fingers against the side of Stiles’s head when he only continued to stare at her in confusion. “Your hair; it’s starting to grow out. It’s not unfortunate-looking. You should use that to your advantage—show up to a party every once in a while. You are on the lacrosse team, too, in case you forgot. You even helped pull the team through for a win at the end of the season.”

“Why are you trying to get me to crash high school parties?” Stiles asked, rubbing at his hairline where she’d tapped him.

“Because we’re in high school,” Lydia answered simply. “We’re going to be juniors in a few weeks, and I know that you’re going to wind up smack in the middle of something else life-threatening as soon as it comes sweeping in because that’s what you and Scott do. So, in return for everything you did for me, I’m telling you as a… friend,” she was careful to emphasize, “get the hell out of the house and do something with your break.”

So that was how Stiles found himself going to a party instead of mindlessly shooting things (or losing his mind trying to search for someone who just wasn’t turning up anywhere). His dad had been so happy he was venturing out of the house that he’d only cheerfully warned him that he would leave Stiles in a holding cell all night if the cops had to be called in and found him there. Stiles had also tried calling Scott, but he hadn’t wanted to risk running into Allison “just yet,” which actually reminded Stiles that he was also apprehensive about seeing her, but for different reasons.

Regardless, he showed up to a high school party, was not immediately laughed away from the door, didn’t see a hint of Allison, didn’t make too much of an ass of himself, and even managed to dance once with Danny. Tangentially. Adjacently? Either way, Stiles hadn’t been offended when Danny’s eyebrows shot up in surprise after noticing who he was semi-dancing with; Stiles just chalked it up to a victory and moved on in a ‘quit while he was ahead’ move. Apparently, he made the right call, too, because he found himself semi-invited to another party later on that week, and then officially invited to one the week after that.

He had eventually run into Allison at one, and it had been as awkward as he’d been dreading, but by the end of the night (and a couple of trips to the communal “This Is a Bad Idea” punch bowl), they were at least able to talk about something other than the weather. And coincidentally, that was also the one time when Scott called him the morning after to see if he wanted to go out and do something together, and Stiles had stupidly mentioned Allison so they wound up skulking around Beacon Hills like they were Derek. And speaking of Derek…

“Hey, Derek,” Stiles drawled in greeting from his desk, still too wired to sleep after getting home from another party. He’d almost convinced Scott to go with him, but the possibility of running into Allison had Scott signing up for extra early-morning hours at the vet clinic and he’d had to pass. The alpha werewolf finished climbing in through his usual window, his epic bitch face already in place. Stiles merely shot back one in return. “What? I didn’t yell your name into a megaphone, and it’s not like you don’t know my dad isn’t home, you creeper.”

“How much have you been drinking?” Derek asked.

Stiles scoffed. “I’m not drunk. Besides, I didn’t drive, either. Your ass-munch beta took my keys. Fuck!” He swore upon realization and started patting himself down as if the keys would reappear in his pockets, then grinned in relief when he noticed them dangling from Derek’s proffered hand. “Thanks, dude!”

It was Derek’s turn to scoff, throwing in an eye-roll and a disbelieving head shake for good measure. “Idiot,” he muttered, before hulking past him and opening the bedroom door to venture further into the Stilinski household. He returned before Stiles was finished spluttering in indignation with a glass of water in tow. “Drink this,” he ordered, shoving the glass into Stiles’s hand and looking like he would force it down his throat if he didn’t immediately comply.

Stiles dutifully chugged down about half of the water, then went back to sipping the rest when Derek glared at him for pausing. “What? I can’t drink any more water if there’s none left in the glass!” Stiles pointed out when the werewolf continued to frown at him even after the glass was empty. His words seemed to snap Derek out of whatever brooding thoughts he’d been caught up in, his disapproving scowl lightening up into its usual intense smolder. “What?” Stiles prompted again, this time curious to know what Derek had been thinking.

“Nothing.” Derek’s brows drew together, and he drew in a shallow inhale through his nose before making what Stiles realized was a grimace. “You just… smell different.”

Stiles sniffed himself, lifting up his arm, then holding his hand up in front of his mouth for a breath check. “Too much body spray? Nobody threw up on me this time.”

Derek’s grimace turned into outright disgust. “This time?” Before Stiles could regale him with the tale of Cynthia Whitebush and her determination to prove how well she could hold her liquor, Derek shook his head again and explained, “Your scent is buried under cheap beer and smoke, and a lot of different perfumes and… It just takes a minute to adjust, that’s all.”

“I could shower?” Stiles offered, lifting the collar of his shirt away from his neck and sniffing himself again. He heard an odd, abortive sort of grunt come from Derek. When he looked up, he found Derek’s glare had returned and was now fixed on Stiles’s exposed hip bone. Stiles let his shirt drop back down, feeling suddenly self-conscious. And pale. “What?” Stiles said yet again, wondering if Derek would suddenly start quoting Sam L. Jackson at him in retaliation. “Look, some of us didn’t see the appeal of being burdened with a rippling physique, all right? I am bony. Deal with it.”

Derek’s brows drew together for a moment before he rolled his eyes and started turning back toward the window. “Don’t expect me to drive that death trap you call a Jeep back here for you every time you feel like being stupid.”

“I didn’t even expect you to drive it here this time,” Stiles pointed out, before adding, “but thanks: Jackson would have absolutely made me pay for my keys later.” Derek nodded in acknowledgment, then as he was in the process of hunching over to crawl out onto the roof, Stiles asked, “Hey, how did you know I didn’t drive my Jeep back, anyway?”

Derek more or less froze in place so he was stuck crouching awkwardly over the windowsill, but he didn’t offer up an explanation either, so Stiles guessed, “You were watching the house like the big ol’ alpha creeper you are, weren’t you?” He snorted at Derek’s continued silence. “Yeah, you were. Keepin’ an eye on your wayward betas while impending doom keeps on pending.” Derek’s figure tensed up, still filling up the frame of the window, and Stiles warned, “I don’t know what’s coming, dude, but sitting on this for too long is only going to bite you in the ass.” He realized he was more or less actually staring at Derek Hale’s ass, then promptly choked and almost upended himself out of his chair at the same time Derek finally launched himself out into the night and away from revealing what had him so spooked all summer.

Because his vacation was rapidly drawing to a close (and because Stiles couldn’t seem to catch a break), his opportunity to spend the following day examining his growing interest in Derek Hale–and whether or not it was solely physical–was sidelined by not only a text from his longest childhood friend inviting him to her birthday party, but also his best friend appearing at his front door out of the clear blue and announcing that he wanted to get a tattoo. Evidently, Stiles’s reaction didn’t meet Scott’s anticipated levels of enthusiastic camaraderie, as he proceeded to explain all of the pros of stabbing himself rapidly and repeatedly during the entire trek from the porch to Stiles’s bedroom. “Come on, dude, I don’t want to go by myself to get my first tattoo! We’ve barely gotten to hang out all summer!”

Before Stiles could so much as gape in righteous indignation, Scott stopped abruptly in the doorway and peered into the room with a puzzled expression scrunching up his face and tilting his head to sniff at the air. “Why does your room smell like Derek?”

“Why are you sniffing around my room?” Stiles deflected, hoping to put off discussing any of what had happened before the end of the school year (besides Allison and Scott breaking up) until they absolutely had to. Namely, when Scott felt like having anything to do with Derek again. “I mean, have at it, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Scott’s eyes narrowed on him but he otherwise remained unmoving in the doorway, as if not wanting to come into contact with Derek’s scent. “Stiles, why has Derek been here?”

Stiles sighed and collapsed into his desk chair, scratching the back of his head as he admitted, “Because I’ve been helping him. Sort of.”

“Helping him? With what?” Scott demanded, irritation giving him the final push necessary to fully step into Stiles’s room and close the door. “How can you just… after everything he did?” His jaw jutted out stubbornly before he spat out, “I told him he’s not my alpha!”

Stiles moved his hand from scratching the back of his head to rubbing his face. “It’s not like he’s my alpha either,” he muttered before leaning forward so his elbows rested on his knees, looking up at his best friend. “Aside from that time we thought he’d murdered his sister, and when he and his betas were set on Project Kill Lydia, what exactly are we hating Derek for?” He plowed on through Scott’s instant spluttering, “Because all I can come up with are the times when he didn’t let Victoria Argent kill you, and when he had to murder his own uncle.”

“It could’ve cured me!” Scott blurted out, his hands clenching into fists. “I could’ve been human again, but—”

“Scott,” Stiles said sharply. “Scotty, you are my best friend, I’ve got your back, but I need you to actually think this through for a minute. Setting aside the fact that your asthma might come back with a vengeance or that you would likely suck at lacrosse again and draw a lot of notice for the wrong reasons, actually think about it.” He made sure he had Scott’s attention before asking, “Would you have been able to kill someone in cold blood? Even Peter Hale. Could you have looked him in the eyes and ripped his throat out just so you could be human again?”

When all Scott could do was stutter out the beginnings of a half-hearted protest, Stiles added, “And what if you could? What if you killed Peter and you didn’t become human again? What if all you did was become an alpha, complete with the ‘I’m the alpha!’ power trip? When, up until that point, you hadn’t even wanted to be a werewolf.” Stiles slumped against the back of the chair again, stretching out his arms as he chuckled humorlessly. “Because if that was why you made Derek think he was giving his worst nightmare the Bite, then I didn’t think you could be that petty. Me? Yeah, sure.” He shrugged. “Either way, don’t worry. Derek got your Declaration of Independence, loud and clear.”

“So why are you helping him, then?” Scott muttered, no longer looking at Stiles as he shifted his weight back and forth on his feet uncomfortably.

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Because knowing our luck over the past few months, we’re bound to stumble into a new shitshow pretty damn soon and I thought it’d be easier to handle if we weren’t already caught up in a free-for-all. Again.” He heaved another shrug, then stood up and clapped his hand on Scott’s shoulder, shaking him a little. “I’m not saying we have to join his pack—he’s not saying that anymore either, but… I don’t know. We’ve got to find a way to work together, Scott; it can’t just be us, not anymore.”

Scott finally looked up at him again, his eyes fixing on where Stiles’s bruises had been after his stint in the Argent basement, and took in a shaky breath before blowing it out in a short burst and giving himself a full-body jolt. “Okay, so how do we do that, then? I’m not going in there like he was never wrong about anything because Lydia and Jackson would probably both be dead by now if we hadn’t stopped him.”

Stiles snorted. “Yeah, I don’t know. You could just do what I did and barge in without giving him an opening to throw you right back out.”

“Wait, what? You went to him?” Scott was back to glaring in the blink of an eye.

“Scott. Focus. So, a tattoo, huh?” Stiles joked weakly, then he sighed and explained, “I wanted to know if Derek had any idea of where Erica and Boyd were.”

Scott was the type of person who looked like he’d been possessed by someone else when he tried to scoff, and this time was no different. “He’s the one who drove them off in the first place.”

Sometimes Stiles wished he had the ability to view the world through Scott-colored glasses. “Okay, see, no. No, Scott, this is where you absolutely need to pull your head out of your ass. The Argents drove them off. And I’m sorry, you know how I feel about Allison, but she hunted them down and gift-wrapped them for her grandpa to torture.”

“But—”

“You’re gonna want to avoid justifying any of what went down in that basement to me, buddy,” Stiles interjected, his voice flat. “I love you, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to resist punching you in your adorable face.” He waved his arm between them dismissively at the first sign of Scott’s huge puppy eyes of regret. “I’m not pinning blame on anyone here—I’m actually actively trying to not do that, in fact. I’m trying to say that the end of sophomore year was a clusterfuck that we all managed to claw our way out of, and we all did something we probably didn’t think ourselves capable of. I’m personally thankful my dad got his job back—and even then, it was at the cost of a lot of people I knew getting killed.”

“Shit,” Scott swore, startling a laugh out of Stiles—Scott McCall almost never swore, to the point that it sounded even more alien coming from his lips than a scoff. “I didn’t… I didn’t even—it’s just… Derek. And you.”

“Uh, what about me?” Stiles asked, gesturing to himself for good measure.

“Like… you went from asking why we couldn’t just let him die to saving his life,” Scott said.

“To be fair, the two are not mutually exclusive,” Stiles quipped with a snort. “But… it also goes both ways, right? I mean, yeah, Derek was a total dick about trying to make you join his pack, but he didn’t let either of us die either.” He clapped Scott’s shoulder again. “Dude, I’m not saying you show up at his place expecting to play Mario Kart. Just wait for the next bout of mutual life-saving incidents and be ready to get your search and rescue on.”

“The last dog joke of our summer vacation,” Scott pretended to sigh sentimentally, seemingly ready to move on from the topic of Derek Hale for the time being.

“Dude, you’re a werewolf working at a vet clinic,” Stiles pointed out. “If you think I’m not going to be sending at least ten more your way after making me sit there and watch you get a tattoo, with needles and blood, then we spent a lot more of the summer apart than I realized because you have forgotten who I am.”

Scott laughed and gave a returning clap to Stiles’s shoulder before pulling him in for a bro-hug. “I’m sorry,” he said softly as he moved away.

Stiles shrugged. “Me, too. So, what were you thinking of getting stabbed into your body?” he asked as he grabbed his keys.

“Um… I don’t… uh… I’m not…” Scott waffled, looking shifty when Stiles glanced back at him on their way out the door.

“This is about as solid as any of our other plans so we’re off to a great start so far,” Stiles announced wryly.