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The heavy rain from earlier in the afternoon has transformed the unspoiled banks of snow into an unappealing slush of gray and gravel, and left the sky unhelpfully darker than the hour would suggest.
Derek lifts his chin and squints up through the bare, criss-crossing branches overhead and keeps walking. It’s not cool enough yet to turn the snow to ice but it is gradually sliding into it. He scrunches up his red-chapped fingers and shoves his newly balled fists deep into the pockets of his impractical leather jacket.
Since the change in status—since putting Peter down like the wild dog he’d become—some of his finer, lycanthropic abilities have been… off. Hence this dubious trip into a remote patch of woods on the edge of town.
If Deaton wants him dead, Derek supposes he’ll find out soon enough.
The brambles ahead have been cleared away only enough to suggest a path and Derek slips his phone out of his back pocket, checking the GPS against Deaton’s map. Boyd had set it up for him, frowning when Derek’s presets had him pulling things up in Internet Explorer. The icon in the corner that’s meant to be tracking his progress is spinning infinitely, unable to catch.
Of fucking course.
He stomps the packed snow from the crevices of his boots against a downed trunk and shoves his phone out of sight. A deep breath of bone-rattling cold air clears his head and then he’s searching for a sign of life, a hearth or a heartbeat. The sounds come rattling in—scampering feet scraping against a branch—thudding drops of melting snow—screaming gusts of wind through tightly packed trees. They twist together, roaring louder and melding inseparably until it builds to an ear-splitting crescendo, followed quickly by a throbbing ache between his temples.
Not a sensation he’s used to. Or handles well.
He shuts it out with a mental bite, shakes it off with the impermanence befitting accelerated healing (not a guarantee these days) and walks with his head down and shoulders tight around his ears.
“Smoke?” says a crisp voice, sneaking up on him.
Another sensation he’s not used to.
Derek’s head snaps towards the sound, everything else rolling away to zero in on this. He first sees the grinning mouth and orange ember, mirthful eyes above them.
Nimble fingers enthusiastically flick ash from the end of the lit cigarette between them. Shaggy, umber-dark hair spills out from beneath a beanie, thin knit and gray and half-covering an ear dotted with multiple piercings, or the empty holes for them. All of it belongs to a guy who appears to be all bound-up energy, giving the impression of movement even staying perfectly still. He's not quite lanky, but probably used to be back in his teenage years with the clumsy, awkward way he holds himself, his spine an obliquely curved angle meeting up with the near perfect right of the tree trunk he’s leaning on.
His face is dotted with moles and pale, but not half as pale as it should be, the way he’s dressed: snug and faded jeans, styled darker around the hips and thighs to give the impression of creases, a threadbare white t-shirt with a green and black plaid button-down thrown carelessly over it and left open. His lips are still pink, which Derek notices because his lower one turns white when he bites into it and raises his eyebrow with a touch of impatience. There’s a double line of pearl-white scars bisecting it unevenly.
Derek blinks, answers finally, “I don’t.” There’s something strange about this guy. Stranger than popping up in the middle of the woods, alone, far from any possible landmark, and dressed for someplace warmer. Derek doesn’t think he's a creature—doesn't think that his blood runs so warm that the air around him can't make a dent in it. This is something else. Something Derek can’t pinpoint, but the feeling of standing in front of a coiled snake is starting to solidify in his gut, a mix of trepidation and anticipation. Which is when Derek notices it, when it distinguishes itself enough from the ambient noise that he can separate it out.
A steady buzzing.
In the air between them. Or under Derek’s hair, close to his scalp. In his head. Beneath his skin. A buzzing that won’t pause long enough for Derek to get a look or feel for the scope of it.
It’s there though, maybe everywhere, omnipresent.
No matter what: it’s annoying.
The guy gives him a considering look. “Me neither,” he decides, grinning widely. He furrows his brow in an exaggerated frown. “It’s a filthy habit. I confiscated this”—He holds up the smoking cigarette and then looks around him carefully, as though just realizing how isolated he is out here. He flounders for a half-second but recovers with barely a stutter, flicking the cigarette into the snow—“From a shit-talking rabbit, went on an R-rated and sorta speciest tirade about some guy named Elmer, insulted my parentage and then scampered off ready to set the whole place ablaze. It was just lucky I was here.”
His grin is inviting, cheeks round, trying to share the joke with Derek, but Derek can only stare at him, calculating. The buzzing hasn’t gone anywhere, but it’s faded into a part of the landscape of this moment, now garnering all the attention of a refrigerator hum. Eventually the guy shrugs, drops his leg from its bent position against his leaning post, buries his toes in the snow, and pads off between the trees.
Buries his toes in the snow.
He’s barefoot.
Derek blinks stupidly.
Barefoot and seemingly unbothered by it. His feet fall easily and unhesitatingly through the few scant inches of snow on the ground, toes still pink and pace unhurried, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans and almost meandering.
Derek doesn’t so much decide to follow him as find himself trampling through thickets and drowning the toe of his boot in a half-frozen puddle in an effort to keep the green-and-black shirt in sight. He understands enough about it to know it’s instinct, meaning: not to be trifled with, or resisted. He’s firmly off-trail now, weaving through backwoods and following the deep footprints in the snow when the plaid outpaces him. And what exactly is he following? Something real, or an apparition? Is this another way that murdering his uncle has fucked with his faculties?
His half-numb fingers fumble with the zip of his jacket, pulling it up to the base of his throat. He shoves his hands back into his pockets, hunches his shoulders against the bite of the wind, and digs the tread of his boots into the snow, trying to reach the solid footing beneath it.
Twelve minutes later, the apparition debate still unsettled, Derek shelves the internal argument for later consideration because, either way, he’s ended up somewhere real.
Deserted, but real.
The cabin is ramshackle, beams cracked down their middles from the elements, roof sloped towards the center and with obvious weaknesses where the wood is darker, thinner. The windows are long across, like they’re meant for display and not insulation. Derek takes a step up an icy and bowing stair, a loud creak accompanying the settling of his weight, and squints through the permanently fogged glass.
A rusty tin sign hanging above the window closest to the door, a few letters off their angle and randomly tangled up with silvery strands of—Derek sniffs, smells wood rot and—lead reads, an unenthusiastic: ‘Tinsel Town.’ The shelf underneath it is bare, only fallen strands and cobwebs adorning it.
Derek steps up onto the porch; his boot snaps one of the boards and he quickly moves off it and tries the doorknob before any more of the structure can collapse beneath him. The few flakes of gold left come off under his palm.
It swings into the room and Derek instinctively takes a step back at the sight that greets him. Bright, bare bulbs hang down from their wires, looped messily around sturdy, healthy beams beneath an unimaginably high ceiling. Something he doesn’t recognize, but what sounds like a hard rock song, is floating throughout the vast space from an unseen source.
Derek feels him before he sees him, that strange current that seems to hum in agreement with some base chemical in his brain. He knows exactly which way to turn to find him. To the right of the door, sitting on a glass display counter that runs the length of that immediate wall, a lit cigarette hanging loosely from between his slick lips and something deconstructed in his hands, is the man from the woods. His bare heels butt up against the glass beneath as he swings them to the rhythm of the music. He mutters despondently under his breath, cigarette swaying with the syllables, “Busted.”
Derek leans back and shifts his eyes sideways down the exterior of the cabin. Looking through the windows he can see that the interior is dim, mostly sparse but with the occasional piece of broken or forgotten furniture, a rocking chair or a side table, nothing even worth the price of the labor it would take to steal. He faces front again.
The windows are there, but they’re blocked by more huge glass display cases that face in rather than out and hold everything from precious metals to what looks like pieces of a broken motorcycle engine. Everywhere he looks there’s another pile of junk, a box full of baseballs cards and beanie babies, an old Tamagotchi lying abandoned on a shelf, bent spindles and rusted springs, a corner that’s nothing more than mismatched bits of different ceiling fans, loose wires and Christmas lights and yellowing paintings. In the center of the room there are more glass display cases, like a jewelry store that sells wares fit for a yard sale.
There’s a row of glass shelving inside one of the cases that’s nothing more than a pile of nuts, different lengths of string, rusty nails and a pair of pliers that are stuck half-open.
The man on the counter continues breaking apart, or possibly fixing, the thing in his hands and he breathes his poison without anything but the use of his relaxed, parted lips. Smoke billows out his nostrils after he puffs at his cigarette, cheeks hollowing, over and over again. Derek unexpectedly gets caught by the working of his forearms, the way the muscles cord and shift and the veins pop and relax. Fascination over people is not something he’s usually afflicted by. Fascination over men is something he’s never afflicted by. He forces himself to look away.
The guy doesn’t glance up at Derek, even to say, “Admittedly, you are stupid hot, but I’m not accepting walk-ins now.” He frowns thoughtfully, amends, “Or ever.”
Derek squares up his shoulders. That hum has slipped under his clothing, vibrated all over his skin and left him feeling charged and itchy. He’s all reaction and apprehension around this guy.
He steps firmly through the door, given mettle by virtue of knowing he's not wanted inside, and is surprised to find it’s no warmer through the door than it is outside of it. “Deaton sent me,” he grinds out, hoping, firstly, that he’s in the right place and only as an afterthought that his connections can get him more than just through the door.
The buzzing is getting louder, harder to ignore, making Derek's neck shrink into his shoulders.
The guy on the counter sets his parts down, scratches at his scarred eyebrow, rolls his eyes, and hops down. He waggles a screwdriver in Derek’s face. “Let the guy save your life one time, and you never stop paying for it.” As he passes, a brush of warmth infuses Derek’s whole body. He pulls the cigarette from his mouth, and the heat shifts with it, warmer than it has any right to be. Derek’s entire left side feels like it’s on holiday in Bermuda. The guy puts the cigarette back to his lips and the heat is on Derek’s face again as they’re almost the same height. He squints. “You don’t look like you’re in the market for a No-Shed Evergreen, or Mistletoe On My Mind.” He winks. “And not just ‘cause you’re a werewolf.”
Derek startles and hates himself for it. He straightens his spine, skin still unhelpfully broken out in goosebumps and says tightly, “He said you were an authority on certain charms.”
The guy laughs, almost losing his cigarette in the process. There are three bicycles tacked up on the wall high above his head. Derek could look around this place forever and still not see all of it, he feels sure of that. The guy shakes his head, affects an offended expression. “You think I look like Professor Flitwick? You could’ve at least sugar-coated that.” He moves away from Derek, taking his warmth with him, and ducks behind the counter he’d been sitting on, muttering under his breath, “I give you a compliment, you pretend you don’t find me hideous, that’s basic socialization there.” Even more muffled, he adds, “I’m tall and also not ancient.”
Derek stands there, feeling isolated and stupid. He has no idea what this guy is talking about, and he’s colder now than he was before, now that his body has been reminded what it’s meant to feel like. “What,” he says.
The guy pops back up, exasperated, sleeves rolled up above his elbows and forearms bare and pale on the glass counter. They’re dotted with moles too, and Derek’s staring at them. “Come on, dude, Harry Potter?” he says leadingly. Derek blinks. He sighs. “That’s not even an obscure reference,” he grouses. Then digs an index finger into his own chest and says, “Point being, I don’t do charms. I do sigils.”
“I don’t need a vocabulary lesson,” Derek snaps.
The guy gives him a disbelieving look. “Uh huh, disagree. See, one is unfortunately fictional, and inevitably makes me think of horseshoes and red balloons,” he rubs his forehead. Derek’s starting to wonder if he has some version of Tourette’s he's never heard of, “and the other you wear. Permanently.”
It only takes Derek a few seconds to get it. Tattoos. He looks down at himself, then up at the man in front of him, head tilting to the side.
He grins, like he knows exactly what Derek is thinking—Derek hopes he doesn’t possess that particular skill. His mind is his own and he doesn’t share—The guy’s skin is pale. No tattoos. At least none that Derek can see. Shouldn’t a person selling them believe in his product enough to have his own?
He circles the counter, stands in front of Derek and clicks his tongue. He takes a drag from his cigarette, blows out a thick stream above his head, holds up a finger as if asking for patience, and stubs it out on the counter. He reaches up above him, fingertip touching the closest hanging lightbulb. The second he does, it flickers, and then warmth is fusing outward from it, blanketing Derek, and presumably the rest of the space, in heat and comfort. He lowers his hand and shakes his head. Instantly ink begins to cascade down from his hairline like it had been clinging to the strands and it coats every inch of his skin as it falls, reminding Derek of the bucket of pig’s blood in Carrie, drenching him in great, thick sluices of liquid.
Only not all of it stays.
Most slides off of him without so much as a trace but some of it catches. On unseen scars in his skin, tracts of design where the ink spreads in familiar patterns. It takes Derek a few minutes to understand it, so much of it covered by his clothes. But then he sees it.
His body is a map.
Mountains, oceans, forests, plains, roads and landmarks, some gridded, some more wild, but all in an outline of dark black ink.
He smirks. “You expected colors, didn’t you?”
Derek jerks. Chastises himself for it again. He’s off-center when it comes to this guy and he doesn’t like it. He also doesn’t like that he’s right, doesn’t like the way he so easily plucks Derek’s thoughts from his face.
He doesn’t seem to need the confirmation either, smirk only widening.
Derek’s breath hitches in anticipation, because somehow he knows what the guy’s going to do right before he does it, like something in the atmosphere is communicating the steps of this dance to both of them, letting Derek in on the fact that this guy is going to move into his space and grab him by the arm. Derek’s hands had fallen from his pockets at the first brush of heat from the lit cigarette, and somehow the guy meets no resistance when his hand shifts around to Derek’s wrist and digs his thumb into the heel of Derek’s palm, making him hold it upright.
He rests Derek’s hand softly, barely there, against his own abdomen and the soft, thin white t-shirt covering it with a quiet, “Here.” The buzzing is so loud in Derek’s head that it’s threatening to send him to his knees. He’s itching to do something, but that something doesn’t appear to be stopping this or pulling away. He’s staring down at his fingers spread on white, the skin underneath warm and breathing, the hand loosely wrapped around his wrist, thumb almost stroking the valley of his palm.
He misses the attack completely.
The free hand that shoots out and wraps around his neck, thumb painfully pressing into his windpipe. The hand around his wrist holds him there and claws sprout independent from his brain, digging into skin, shredding it as they instinctively curl.
The moment he’s broken the surface, the guy’s skin erupts in a riot of color, blooming from the center and exploding outward until he’s drenched in neons, pastels, sepias, the impression of every shade of every color. Derek feels almost like he’s expelled from the other man’s skin and then the cavernous wound is healing, stitching back together, fading into smoothness once again.
The hand around his throat stops squeezing, still rests there but now the thumb shifts from his windpipe up to his jaw, strokes down the line of it to just under Derek’s ear.
Derek shakes him off, skin tight and not feeling like his own. Though he knows it was a demonstration, he feels oddly… guilty to have hurt him. It’s overpowered by a sense of betrayal though. This man had used him, used him to wreak small-scale havoc. And he had no fucking right to do that.
“Fine,” he says, his voice not showing any of the strain just put on him. No ache left behind from either the physical or mental intrusion. He strips off his jacket, considers, then reaches halfway down his back and lifts off his shirt as well.
The guy in front of him blinks, finally seeming like Derek has done something to surprise him. He says blankly, eyes still wide, “I approve of the direction this has moved in.”
Derek rolls his eyes. “Stop talking and do it.” Dismissive, terse. He doesn’t care about this buzzing, this static in his skin, this unbalanced reactive feeling to whoever or whatever this guy is. The way he can’t seem to stop staring at him. He just wants out.
The guy’s mouth purses to one side and he guesses, “Protection?”
Derek almost flushes in embarrassment, but he grinds his teeth and fights it back. “Equilibrium,” he grunts.
The guy’s eyes brighten with amusement, but it doesn’t seem to be any he’s found at Derek’s expense. “Ah. ‘No one man should have all that power,’ right?” Derek raises his eyebrows at him. He deflates a little and whines, “Kanye West? You live in a cave, don’t you?” He looks thoughtful. “A cave where you can apparently still get leather goods delivered. That’s a progressive and hermit-friendly company; I hope you’re tipping big.”
He points a finger gun at Derek and winks again.
Derek ignores him and the pull in his navel he feels when the guy moves closer.
He’s frowning, more serious than Derek has seen him yet. Whatever he sees, eyes tracking over Derek’s unmarked skin, has him saying, “Newly made. Very newly. And violently.” He draws in air through his teeth. “Not the best circumstances to shift into Boss Level Smack-Downery with.”
Derek’s not looking for commentary, or commiseration. “Can you do something or not?” Laura had gotten a tattoo when she turned eighteen. She had said it'd been burned into her with a blowtorch.
Cool fingers brush the nape of his neck. “The whole world isn’t fire and brimstone, Derek,” he says softly, taking a step back to minimize his physical intrusion as he makes his mental one.
Derek tenses. That confirms that, then. He does have access to Derek’s thoughts. Derek wishes he could say it killed this whatever the fuck it is between them but at the first glance of his fingers, Derek had to widen his stance to hide the way his jeans had grown tight. He bares his teeth, snarling, “Stay out of my head—”
“Stiles,” he finishes the sentence for him, not looking chastised in the least, instead his eyes dancing like this is a game. Like he regularly crosses every boundary, personal or otherwise, placed in front of him.
Derek snorts, figuring it for an alias. What kind of a name would ‘Stiles’ be after all? “Sure,” he says, uncaring.
He braces himself for pain, for fire, for the worst that seems to be forever chasing him down. What he gets is a warm gust rolling over his shoulder, drifting softly, comfortingly, over him. He shivers, Stiles’ face close to his when he turns his head, his mouth wet and open and gently breathing heat and ink into his skin. His eyes are half-lidded, eyelashes unexpectedly long and fluttering. The zip of Derek’s jeans is starting to edge on painful against his erection and he grimaces, refocusing his attentions. He can see it over his back, black lines being blown across goosebumped flesh and settling in. He catches Stiles’ gaze and rips away from it quickly, looking anywhere else. His hair is a few shades lighter since the trick with the tattoos and there’s a mole in the dimple of his cheek that Derek has a flash of putting his tongue on.
He jerks away from staring at his full lower lip, closes his eyes tightly. He wouldn’t even know how that worked, a magician, a man, an inconsiderate little twerp who had already proven he used other people without consideration for them.
Derek would never want him. Could never. This is just—he hasn’t had someone this close to him in years. That’s all it is.
They’re still closed when his skin grows cold and Stiles takes a step back from him.
He says, “That seems unfortunately telling.” There’s a frown in his voice followed by a sarcastic, “Healthy.”
Derek opens his eyes. Looks down. From the center of his breastbone, across one side of his chest and digging in just above his armpit is an incredibly detailed and cruelly clawed hand. There are four deep wounds curving over his shoulder, like it’s scraped down to its current spot where it’s clenched its nails in, the tattoo making it seem like the flesh is puckered around the impaling claws. It looks alive on his skin, three-dimensional and menacing. Looking over his shoulder, he sees there’s one matching it on his wing, nails closer to the top and wrist ending at his spine, also trailing scrapes. Like they’re working in concert, trying to tear him open from either side.
Stiles is still close, too close, Derek can feel it, and he looks up to meet his furrowed gaze. Snarls, “Leave my thoughts alone.”
Stiles blinks at him. “I have,” he says after a beat, slightly defensively. “They’re kind of depressing, in case you hadn’t noticed. Where’s your holiday cheer, Grumpy Guts?”
Derek bares his teeth at him, turning and leaning in closer than he means to and his dick brushes Stiles’ thigh. The buzzing in his head gets so loud that he can’t think; he can barely stay upright.
Stiles gasps, slams Derek back into one of the cases and accuses, eyes wide, “You feel it too.”
Derek grabs Stiles’ ass, hefts him onto his thigh and grinds out, “What is it.”
Stiles closes his eyes, groans and lets his forehead fall onto Derek’s bare shoulder, over the ink he had stamped into Derek’s skin with nothing more than his breath. He rocks into the press of Derek’s leg. He’s warm, hard, and full of desire and energy that all revolves around Derek.
And it makes him feel powerful. Which is what he really came here for, isn’t it? He’d become an Alpha and only been given another failure, another mystery, another thing in his life that was constant struggle. He hadn’t felt capable or in command even once but now, now with Stiles digging at his skin with grasping hands, desperate noises falling helplessly from his mouth, he’s all of those things.
And he’s going to make the most of it.
Stiles mouths against his neck and guesses breathily, finally, “Off-the-charts sexual chemistry?”
Derek stabs his fingers against the seam on the ass of Stiles’ jeans, finding his hole through the thick layer of fabric and rubs firmly. The shameless way Stiles cats into him, spreading his legs, has him asking, “Can I fuck you?” It can’t be that different from a woman. It’s still a dick and a hole, and he wants it.
Wants it in a way he never wanted Kate.
Stiles licks his lower lip and nods his head. He drags himself away. He can only manage it when Derek voluntarily lets his fingers fall away. He’s aching for it, and it’s all over his face. He walks bow-legged towards the counter Derek had first seen him sitting on, rounds a corner that consists of an upright kayak and oars, to the open door they’d been hiding.
Stiles’ bedroom is sparse comparatively. Not sparse by definition, but when contrasted against his store room, it’s positively spartan. Multiple floor to ceiling bookshelves, a few small tables with various debris on them, half-wood paneling and half-floral wallpaper. His bed almost looks like it belongs on a ship, with the wooden platform built-in beneath it.
He’s knocked off his beanie, stripped off his over shirt, and unbuttoned his jeans by the time he’s through the door. The tee follows, the jeans drop. He’s naked beneath them.
Derek kicks off his shoes, socks helpfully clinging to them and sloughing off too. His jeans and boxer briefs also come off together, and then Stiles is against him, warm, warm, warm skin, electric contact everywhere they touch. When their cocks slide together, Derek catches them both against the wall near the door and throws his head back.
It shouldn’t feel this good. Nothing is meant to feel this good, otherwise nothing else but this would ever get done.
Stiles’ nose digs in behind his earlobe, and he breathes deeply, asks on the breath out, “Have you done this before? The parallel penises thing?”
Derek feels cold sluice down his spine. Embarrassment and apprehension creeping into his cheeks and gut respectively. “Is it not good,” he says. Is he that obvious in his inexperience? It’s almost painful how good this feels with Stiles and he’s mortified by how much he wants this, almost afraid of what he’d do if this ended before he gets Stiles on that bed.
Stiles pulls back and stares at him, askance. “Did you hit your head on something when I wasn’t looking?” He cranes his head around, frowning in concern. “‘Cause that door frame can be a bit—”
Thank fuck.
“Then shut up,” Derek snaps at him, and this time when he grabs Stiles’ ass, it’s smooth against his palm and the urge to squeeze is undeniable.
Stiles huffs out a short breath, a muffled, “Fuck,” and throws his hand out against the wall to steady himself.
Something tickles Derek’s ear, his shoulder, and he looks around to see the floral wallpaper on the wall has burst from its two-dimensions to greet the third, petals brushing his skin and vines climbing to the ceiling.
He turns back and perks a brow at Stiles, who grins, shrugging. “You’re inspiring,” he offers, unembarrassed. He pulls his hand away when Derek lifts him by his thighs, and the flowers go flat, stamped into the wall once again.
He drops Stiles on the bed, leans over him and Stiles reaches for him, his neck, his waist, and he sees bruises forming where his hands are. Purple-black on his skin everywhere he touches, spelling out—
Derek jerks away from him, furious enough that he’s not quite human when, jaws snapping, he growls, “Stop.”
The ‘Cora’ on his shoulder, and ‘Laura’ at his hip begin to heal into tan skin again.
Stiles shakes his head, looking dizzied. “Sorry,” he says breathlessly, “sorry,” and Derek doesn’t think he’d been probing his wounds purposefully, just reaching out for more of this connection between them. “I’m not—” he licks his lips. “You make—it’s a surplus,” he says, fumbling the explanation out.
Derek glares at him. “Then do something else.”
It promptly starts snowing.
Derek looks up, fluffy, cold flakes falling onto his cheeks and into his hair, looks down at the naked, powerful, impossibly beautiful man beneath him, dotted with white and dark from his moles and likes the hard, lean edges of him, the big hands and the way they fit on his skin.
He lets them meet it again. Nothing but chills left in his wake this time, and Derek knows that has nothing to do with Stiles’ magic.
He’s all gripping, guiding strength and want, and Derek crashes into him, thrusting against him. He could come just like this, against his warm skin, legs wrapped around his waist, the heft of Stiles’ thigh resting perfectly in the curve of his palm.
“I have—I have—” he pants, and rolls them over and Derek splashes down, water rushing up fast over his head, swallowing him whole, Stiles falling with him. He sinks and keeps sinking before his brain kicks in and he knows he has to swim now, swim up towards the rectangle of light that is Stiles’ bedroom. He strokes up towards the surface on autopilot before catching sight of his surroundings. The lake beneath and around them is endless, dark and warm and cocooning.
Stiles is grinning, twisting around in disbelief and then he sees Derek looking back and lunges at him and they’re kissing, unstoppably, clashing smiles and laughter between the seal of their mouths. They break the surface together, bedspread a rippling sheet of waves and Stiles swims out over the edge, tumbles down with a graceless thump to the floor and pops back up in front of his nightstand. Derek follows him and, as soon as he’s off the bed, out of the water, there’s no water left to be out of.
He experimentally presses his palm to the coverlet and it stays scratchy cloth. The snow has stopped too.
Stiles shakes out his hair, drops springing from it. It’s longer on top, undercut beneath showing off his piercings and creamy skin.
Derek puts his thumb over it, tracing the shell of his ear and following the mountains and valleys all the way around the bend. Stiles swallows convulsively, pressing close, just as sparrows swoop down over their head, flying from one end of the room to the other before hitting the wall. There’s a brief, astonishing smack as they ram into it and then a slurp of a sound as they’re sucked in amongst the flowers, trapped in the wallpaper and weaving their own paths between the vines and their new two-dimensional existence.
Derek shakes his head, in awe or disbelief. “What are you doing?” he asks.
Stiles mirrors his expression and says, “You think this is just me?”
Derek has no answer for that. Just looks back at Stiles, loving the shape of him, the make of him. He’s stubborn and defiant but he’s not immovable. As long as Derek makes him want to be moved. He reaches between them, wraps his smooth fingers around Stiles’ shaft and strokes hard, once, twice. That’s all it takes before Stiles is whimpering and pulling them down onto the bed together with Derek on top of him. Stiles bats his hand away and replaces it with his own. He has lube and determination as he works into himself, fingers disappearing between them as he thrusts inside. Derek watches his face raptly, the way his teeth pull at his lip, his head shifts and turns into the mattress, his muscles shudder at longer thrusts.
He’s otherworldly in his pleasure, enticing and inspiring, and he’s the one who guides Derek inside him. The walls bloom again, the smell of the flowers so strong that Derek feels dizzy from it, though that may just be the bone-deep good of being inside of Stiles.
He wrenches a hand around Stiles’ waist, fingers bruising his hip, pulling him up so that Stiles is sitting deep on his dick, in his lap. He presses his mouth under Stiles’ chin and he’s not… contained. Everything’s bleeding together, pleasure and pain but also wolf and man and his teeth are too long for his mouth, his nails sharp.
Stiles pushes him down, hands insistent on his shoulders, until his back is one with the mattress and then he’s a rhythmic, impossibly intense rise and fall on his cock, riding him like his quarter is about to fucking expire. His fingers are digging in, knees gripping Derek’s hips, and the pressure in Derek’s head intense. His muscles are all strain, his breaths short and panting, brow broken out in sweat and, when he comes, he’s braced over Derek and lost to it. Derek feels it every way it can be felt and he follows with a gasping roar, his hands clawing at Stiles’ back, dragging down either side of his spine.
He bites down on Stiles’ bicep when he comes and the colors detonate right from Stiles’ navel, explode outward and cover his entire body. It’s intensely beautiful, so much so that Derek almost has to look away from it.
They lay panting together until Stiles pulls away from him, drops down and hitches the comforter up over his drawn knees. He looks down at Derek, eyes sliding over the marks he’s made in his skin tonight and says, informatively, “That’s a stopgap.” Derek knows that. Deaton had said it to him enough times. “You shouldn’t get too reliant on it, you need—”
“An Emissary,” Derek finishes. “I know.” That was his problem, actually, short-term solutions for long-term problems. He glances towards the door with a thoughtful frown. “‘Tinsel Town.’ That’s seasonal, isn’t it?” Stiles is staring at him. It’s probably not smart, what he’s about to say, but he’s also sure he’s going to say it anyway. “Want a job?”
Stiles smirks, opens his mouth. Whatever he’s about to say, he swallows, then comes back with the much more reasonable, “Fucking your Emissary is highly discouraged.”
Which is actually true. It’s more than just frowned upon in a number of circles, Derek knows. Says, “We’ll keep it professional.” He can do that. For Boyd and Erica and Isaac. Even for Scott. They need Stiles more than Derek needs to fuck him. (Every part of him is denial even as he thinks that.)
Stiles’ eyes brighten and Derek knows he’s poking around at all those contradictions, considering. After a beat, he grins, says, “I do love a challenge.”