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The panicked heartbeat reaches Derek long before the sharp knock; he’s already halfway to the door by the time it comes. He wrenches it back, metal scraping, and barely has a chance to fix the sight that greets him in his mind before Scott is pushing past him, maneuvering Stiles’ limp body like a battering ram he knows he’ll never actually have to use.
He’s right. Derek jumps aside rather than have Stiles knock into him, already sickened by the way his head is lolling limply against his chest.
“What happened?” It’s a bark rather than definitive words, comes out more accusation than concern.
Scott doesn’t so much as pause, hitching Stiles up with the arm he has around his waist. Stiles’ are hanging lifelessly around Scott’s neck and at his side. He’s only careful once he reaches Derek’s bed, cradling Stiles’ neck and setting him down in increments rather than all at once.
Once he’s risen to full height again, he turns around, barely a hitch in his breathing to show the weight he was supporting. “He’s fine. Knocked out, but fine. Deaton confirmed,” he adds before Derek’s eyebrows can even drop down. “I needed him—I have to—Kira’s still out there but I couldn’t leave him there.” A brief flicker of guilt flashes across his face, like he’s afraid someone is going to accuse him of playing favorites with his pack and he doesn’t know how to refute it. “Your place was closest and he just needs somewhere to sleep it off, a safe somewhere.” His eyes are starting to ring red, ready to try out a command if the plea isn’t heeded.
Derek doesn’t need the extra push. He drops his head, rubs at the skin over his eyebrows, grunts out, “It’s fine. He can stay.” He follows Scott to the door, pauses with his hand on it. “If there’s something—”
Scott turns around, looking like the happy-go-lucky kid he was when Derek first met him. Derek’s not sure he’s seen that look on him since before Allison died. “You’re doing it,” he says gratefully and, for a second, there’s no hierarchy between them, no life and death, and Derek can almost imagine this is nothing more exciting than Scott dropping Stiles off here because he’s had too much to drink and can’t go home to his sheriff-father.
It doesn’t last. The easiness bleeds out of Scott’s expression, becomes resolute and hard and Derek offers him a tight grimace before closing the door behind him.
Stiles’ heartbeat is loud with nothing to distract from it, just as it always has been. But it’s steady now, even, at rest. Derek can only read a dozen or so pages of his book on medieval weaponry (left behind, unsurprisingly, by Peter) before he’s dropping it down on the cushion next to him with a sigh.
He can’t resist the urge to look any longer. It’s not an indulgence he’s allowed himself in months, not since he saw that Stiles was looking back. Because that was never what he’d wanted out of it. He looked at Stiles, always had, couldn’t help himself but it was never meant to lead anywhere.
Stiles is kind of a spectacle, and not because of the way he flails or bruises the air around him with his enthusiasm. Those are just symptoms of what really caught Derek’s eye, that he’s so painfully alive. He’s the quintessential example of it and for a while it had just been about staring in awe at this boy who lived so much, who felt everything so fiercely and who charged in even when he was terrified, who had a loyalty and love the likes of which Derek had never witnessed before. It was how he chose to person that intrigued Derek.
He couldn’t say when exactly it had become less about Stiles fearlessly running his mouth and more about the shape of it when it formed his name but it was never more than an innocent attraction either way. Stiles’ heart, his gaze, his head belonged to the idea he had of Lydia Martin. Not the actual Lydia Martin, but the one he’d imagined her into. It was safe to look because Stiles was never going to look back.
Until he did.
Derek hadn’t even realized Stiles had noticed the way his gaze strayed to him more often than not, but he must have. Because at first it’d been a curiosity, a squint to his eyes and a scrunch to his brow, like he was trying to solve Derek’s interest in him. Then it became less scientific and more of a roaming stare, like he didn’t care if he could figure Derek out so long as he could keep looking at him. His gaze took to slipping from Derek’s eyes to his mouth to his jawline to the curve of his ear and Derek had held himself tighter in response, tried to shrink in on himself behind crossed arms and distance, tried to look cold and uninviting because they were never supposed to share this.
He retreated a few more steps, took up with Braeden, tried to keep a sort of space between him and Stiles because the angry, glarey flirting had only been okay so long as Stiles hadn’t known they were flirting. And Stiles had frowned too hard over Braeden to keep her, didn’t like that she was so transitory or her motivation for staying, so Derek had kept having to find nicer girls, ones who could bring out smiles in him, ones he could relax around, ones who cared if he was happy or not and then Stiles would smile at him and Derek would look away and Stiles would look away too.
Whatever it had been that had gotten Stiles to start looking, it had been seemingly just as easy for him to let it slip away. As soon as Derek had stopped letting himself indulge in his favorite pastime – staring at the beguiling force of nature that was Stiles, Stiles had let his own gaze stray away from him barely a week later, as though he’d realized he missed out on whatever this was and let it go. He went back to sitting with his arm around Malia, to being easily pulled in to her confused and often severe expressions as she aped the ones around her. Derek didn’t know what exactly their relationship was, only that it discomfitted him if only because it more closely resembled domesticating a wild animal than dating.
He was still pleased when they showed up with their scents intertwined because it meant Stiles wouldn’t push at Derek for an explanation, for more. Derek wasn’t sure he could withstand that, a resolved Stiles was a near impossible one to argue with and Derek didn’t want him nearly as much as he did. Stiles would be it, Derek knew enough about himself – and enough about Stiles – to know that much, there would never be an after because neither one of them knew how to let go after having had people ripped away from them.
And, put simply, Derek didn’t deserve that kind of unconditional love after all he’d been responsible for. He didn’t deserve Stiles, which is why it had spooked him when Stiles had not only gotten a clue but started reciprocating it.
Now Stiles’ face is soft, his breathing heavy and even and something Derek wants to mimic while laying next to him. There’s no evidence of whatever’s knocked him unconscious, no bruising or bump, nothing to give away any sort of pain. There’s just Stiles lying in his bed, sinking his scent into every fiber and making himself that much harder to ignore.
Derek studies his profile, jumping between moles and the fan of his eyelashes and watches him as he hasn’t let himself in longer than he cares to remember. He resists the urge to occupy the space next to him but allows himself to awkwardly and too tensely sit on the edge of his mattress. He sets his hand down next to his thigh, palm up, thinks about touching Stiles with it because he knows better than to do it.
His phone buzzes in his pocket and it’s Cora, asking how many pints of blood he’s lost this week. He smirks, texts her back zero with a happy face just to annoy her – what else are siblings for? – and looks back to watch the flutter of Stiles’ eyelids only to find them open and Stiles staring up at him.
His voice is sleep-heavy, mouth dragging up into a slow smile, more emphasis on the right side than the left. “Say hi for me.” Derek raises an eyebrow and Stiles props himself up on his elbow with a low groan. “Cora,” he clarifies.
Derek doesn’t ask how he knows, doesn’t want more proof of how well Stiles knows him. He doesn’t need to be reminded. “Brain damage?”
Stiles huffs out a snort of laughter. “I don’t think so. Too soon to be sure though. Quick, softball one at me. Use your best and most gentle lob. I’m mixing sports metaphors, aren’t I?”
Derek ignores that, says a little judgmentally, “You regularly have no idea what the date is, the POTUS isn’t of that much interest to you so I can’t be sure you’d know that even without serious trauma. What was the name of Princess Leia’s home planet?”
“Would you even know if I got the answer right?” Stiles asks, starting to grin.
Derek raises his eyebrows, challenging. “Try me.”
Stiles doesn’t even have to reach for it. “Alderaan.”
“Destroyed by the Death Star in A New Hope,” Derek says nonchalantly so Stiles will know he wasn’t bluffing.
“I knew this film phenomenon couldn’t have eclipsed everyone around me. You, Derek Hale, are a beacon of light in this dark, dark town.” Stiles has pushed himself up on his palm and his tongue darts out, swipes out over his lower lip and he’s looking and Derek abruptly realizes that he’s looking back and they don’t do that anymore. They can’t. This is their form of affection, as far as they’ve gotten into it, and they can’t go back to that. Not when Derek’s so carefully and subtly been inching back from that. In one day, he’s undone nearly everything he’s been working at for months.
He’s bounding back from the bed just as Stiles’ eyes go soft, full of promise, and Derek says, trying not to rush the words out, “I think you’re as good as you ever were. You have the same likelihood of braining yourself on a lamppost as any other day.”
“That kind of bedside manner,” Stiles says with a roll of his eyes, “you should be a physician. Seriously, Patch Adams could take lessons.”
He’s not breaking away from their teasing version of flirting and Derek needs him to stop, to stop looking, to stop doing the thing they no longer do, to stop doing the thing he won’t let them do. He opens his mouth just as a fist bangs on his door, the metal clanging against the frame. He hadn’t even heard footsteps or a heartbeat and this just reinforces why he and Stiles can’t do this, he’s a distraction no one needs.
Derek pulls back the door, expecting Scott and finding the sheriff. His hands are resting on his duty belt and his jaw is jutted out to the side and he looks the picture of someone who’s reached the end of their patience. “My kid still alive?”
Derek feels his palms start to sweat. There’s something about the father of the underage boy he regularly fantasizes about showing up that always seems to provoke this skittish reaction in him, and it’s not just because his uniform is literally incomplete without a handgun. “Yes, sir.”
“So he’ll only wish he was dead then,” he says with a slick smile that looks a lot like one Stiles often wears.
“Daddy-o!” Stiles says brightly, grimacing at overselling it.
“Uh huh, car, downstairs, now.”
Stiles salutes rather than arguing and, to Derek’s horror, stops in front of him before leaving. He subconsciously rocks forward on the toes of his shoes and says, “Thanks for… Well, let’s leave it at ‘thanks.’ I’m pretty sure I’ve still got a backlog left to get through so probably shouldn’t specify, let them work for any and every favor.”
Derek’s eyes dart to the sheriff, who looks far too invested in this conversation, and he growls out, “I haven’t done you any favors.”
Stiles’ brow furrows in genuine confusion and then he’s clapping Derek on the shoulder, smiling, saying, “Keep telling yourself that, bud.”
The sheriff grabs him by the scruff of his neck as soon as Stiles gets close enough while Stiles raises his hands in surrender. He gives Derek a stiff but genuine nod and Derek closes the door behind them. He doesn’t even have a chance to catch his breath before the sheriff is talking.
“I believe we said full disclosure. Full disclosure means you fully disclose all the stupid, idiotic, harebrained, suicidal schemes you and Scott think up.”
“Well, before this the meaning was a little vague so I erred on the side of letting you get a good night’s sleep, you are a sheriff with enough worries on his plate so—”
“Stiles.”
“Yep, yeah, our definitions—” the sound of hands slapping together “—are all… meshy now so I’m sure there will be no more miscommunications in the future.”
There’s a pause in the conversation, like the sheriff is staring Stiles down for how much that sounded like bullshit and then he’s sighing, stopping, starting, saying, “It seemed like you and Derek were having a moment there.”
Derek’s heart lodges in his throat and he really does not like the emphasis the sheriff had put on ‘moment.’
Stiles’ voice sounds just as high and uncomfortable as Derek’s undoubtedly would be. “Yep, that’s me and Derek, having all the moments. Time passes, moments happen, it’s a well-known phenomenon. Nothing fancy or special or, ha, momentous ab—”
He cuts himself off and Derek’s not sure why but he can guess it’s whatever knowing expression the sheriff has on his face that derails him. Stiles clears his throat. “We might not have, uh, definitions that are all… meshy when it comes to a ‘moment.’”
“I think we do.”
“Right, of course. Working from the same dictionary, the Stilinski men.”
“Stiles.”
“It was a—It was my moment. One-sided. Kind of the king of that, right? I think I, um, missed my window when it came to sharing those, at least with him.”
So Stiles had noticed then, and thought Derek was over it. Over him. That was—good. That was good.
“He’s older than you,” the sheriff puts in sharply.
Stiles sounds so obnoxiously stout. “Most people are,” he says with a sniff. “Though there are few who are more worldly than I, father man.”
“I suppose that’s true, kid.” They’re finally off Derek’s stairs, down in the parking lot, but he can still hear them crystal fucking clear and it’s a rather insidious and understated form of torture that he can’t not listen. “Which means I should probably let you know, that was not a one-sided moment.” Derek’s lungs stop inflating and the sheriff jumps back in quickly, like he’s afraid he’s going to be interrupted. “And before you tell me I’m wrong, let me remind you that I may not have the werewolf, banshee, kanima, time travel stuff down but this? This, I’m the pro at.” His tone goes a bit stern. “Though I was under the impression you were still seeing Malia.”
“Yeah, I am. She’s—that’s… easy.”
“I like to think I’ve earned some credit when it comes to recognizing when my kid’s mooning over someone, I spent over a decade watching you do it with Lydia Martin, who is 5 foot 3 inches, strawberry blonde and going to win a Fields medal someday,” Stiles makes a sound of either embarrassment or pride, Derek can’t interpret it, which is annoying, “and I would say with Malia you’re not exactly gaga.” He purposefully hits both syllables on the word like he’s trying to make it sound exactly as ridiculous a word as it is. There’s a significant silence and then, “Stiles?”
“Yeah,” he says back quickly.
“She is. And if you’re not where she is, I would like to think I raised someone who knows when to cut ties rather than dragging that poor girl’s feelings through the confused ones you have for Derek.”
Stiles lets out a harsh breath. “And if they end up amounting to nothing? Then I’ve given up something easy, something I enjoy, for no reason.”
“Hey now, your feelings are not dependent on whether or not Derek returns them, all right? They have merit all their own. I saw that look. It was the way you looked at Lydia, only without idealizing it, with a bit more maturity maybe,” he says leadingly. “Lydia, I knew that one wasn’t going to last.”
“So this is the wrong time to tell you we eloped last weekend in Vegas?”
“Ha ha,” the sheriff says back dryly and Derek knew it was a joke when it came out of Stiles’ mouth, his heart it still pounding stupidly over it. “You didn’t look at her and see her, flaws and all. You saw her cons and found a way to turn them to pros. That’s not accepting a person and loving them as they are, that’s changing them to suit the image you’ve got of them in your head and when you do that, the real thing? It can only let you down. Seems to me, you and Derek, you’ve seen each other at some of your lowest points and yet you still look just as enchanted with him as you ever did with Lydia. That’s not a small thing, that’s not a bad thing and that doesn’t change regardless of how he feels.”
“I guess.”
“Well I know,” he fires back and it’s smug and sure and Stilinski-ish. Derek can’t help the way it twitches up his lips. “I’m going to need a list of absolutely everything that’s deadly to werewolves when the time comes.”
Stiles laughs substantially enough that Derek can hear it. “It’s pretty much the same as the werecoyote one, Rambo. Though I still say you never would’ve used any of it on Malia.”
“Hey, you hurt my kid, man, woman, person, non-person, you’ve got me to answer to.”
“Very intimidating, old man.” But Stiles’ voice is warmer than Derek’s ever heard it as he says the words.
Derek leans up against the back of his door as the sheriff finally starts the car and backs out of his parking lot. Stiles at least believes things are one-sided and that will make it that much easier to get back the distance he’s been so carefully cultivating. And if that leads to the sheriff showing up on his doorstep with a shotgun full of wolfsbane pellets, well, it’s not like Derek doesn’t deserve it.
Stiles won’t stop looking at him. They’ve been not looking at each other for so long that the increased attention is making Derek’s skin feel too small for his body. It’s not their angry flirting anymore either, not anything Derek knows how to handle. Now it’s an intense searching look Stiles sends his way every time Derek’s not facing him, like he’s trying to find where Derek’s hiding his feelings, and he can’t take it. Not only because Stiles will eventually see that his affections are just as reciprocated as they ever were but also because Derek has been denying himself this nearly from the moment he and Stiles met and it’s never been easy so for Stiles to make it harder? It’s beyond cruel.
“Just fucking stop already, Stiles.”
Stiles goes still behind him and Derek rounds on him. They’re creeping through the powerplant alone – not Derek’s idea – and Stiles has been unsubtly staring and the hair on Derek’s neck feels like it’ll be permanently prickled.
“Stop looking at me, stop loving me, stop because I don’t want it. I don’t want you.” His heart hammers against his ribcage as he voices the lie and his vision flickers red and he has to look away from the shock, the hurt, on Stiles’ face because he wears it so openly, so shamelessly. And Derek hadn’t been sure, hadn’t known how far Stiles’ feelings for him went. It had been a shot in the dark, really. Now he knows it was an accurate one and somehow that hurts worse, makes his breaths come in shorter pants.
Stiles falls back a step and his hand tightens into a fist at his side, almost absentmindedly, and then a look of resolve, completely out of place, comes over his face. He squares his jaw, says, “You have to hurt me like you mean it. You really want me to stop? You have to mean it.”
His voice is wavering but he’s not. His fists are clenched and he’s not backing down from this and Derek can do this. He’s spent his entire adult life pushing people away, he can do it again. He’s given Stiles up once, all he has to do now is make a clean break. He parts his lips and no sound comes out.
Stiles takes a step closer, lips tentatively twitching to the side. “Yeah. If you could then we wouldn’t be here.”
“Stiles, you shouldn’t—”
Stiles looks down but the smile slowly spreading across his lips, small as it is, is much less uncertain. “I get it, if you’re not ready. But I am. And I’m good at waiting. Have this whole ten-year plan in my back pocket, just needs a few tweaks to get workable for you.”
Derek’s reaching out for him, cupping his jaw, dragging a thumb over his lower lip and looking his fill before Stiles has even managed to fully turn away because if he can’t shake this, if the only choice is between Stiles now or Stiles later, he knows which he prefers.