Archive of Our Own

When Stiles somehow trips over the root that springs into his path to trip him up with malice aforethought, he hops straight back up, calls out, “I’m okay! I’m okay!” and peers around to see if anybody saw his embarrassing pratfall.

Then he remembers he’s on an endless trek through the woods and there’s nobody around to notice.

He huffs a relieved breath out and checks his equipment, checks camera, lens, strap, movements automatic and finicky, and thanks his lucky stars he didn’t bring the camcorder with him today.

His dad’s going to kill him if he fucks up another one, and also, he probably won’t replace it this time, not even with another stupid Sony HDR-FX7.

Which is unfair, because it’s a decentish bit of kit, really; it’s just that all the bigger camcorders in the classroom laugh at it behind Stiles’ back, and sometimes he wants to sit at a different lunchtable and pretend they don’t know each other.

That isn’t the camcorder’s fault; rather, it’s the fault of a cruel universe, and Stiles needs to learn to deal.

Especially since his dad says he can’t have a new camcorder until he’s a senior. Stiles thought for sure he’d cave over the summer, but no dice.

Everything is fine, so Stiles starts to stagger onwards along the worn earth, through the tree-trunks, sun-dappled leaves swaying high above, and he isn’t sure what catches his attention, but suddenly he’s staring at a wolf.

“Shit, holy shit!” Stiles says, scrabbling at his camera, digging back into his pack for the lens, and then he abandons the effort and snaps the picture as is, just this once, just the first time.

The camera shutters, a soft sound in the silence, and they stare at each other in the stillness afterwards, and then the wolf draws itself up, eyes fixed on Stiles, and then it’s gone, lost between two trees.

“Crap!” Stiles says, attempting an awkward dash after it. “Crap, crap, crap!”

He slogs through the woods in the direction the wolf took for a while, probably longer than he should. The trees are getting kind of close together, and the birdsong has died away.

Stiles stops to look around himself, suddenly on alert, but there’s nothing there, no wolf about to pounce, no backcountry paterfamilias with an axe. Well, of course there’s no hillbilly with an axe; if there were, his dad would never have let him come out here.

He changes direction abruptly anyway, wanting nothing more than to get back onto the dirt trail, but he’s disoriented, can’t remember which way he came, and why do all these trees look exactly the same?

He doesn’t know what he was thinking, coming out here. He would have been so much better off sticking with something close to home, even though his professor told him not to, even though his professor watched the first hour of his last assignment and handed it straight back with an illegibly scribbled note that the TA had to explain was something about an unhealthy attachment to domestic objects that surely wouldn’t love him back even if they were capable of it, and Stiles had sworn never again, because the TA was too embarrassed to look him in the eye while reading the evaluation, and that TA is an asshole, so.

Still, he should have—

The trees end and he windmills out into a clearing.

There’s a house! Right in front of him!

He starts running towards it like he’s a wanderer in view of an oasis, but he slows when he reaches the steps, because what if there are crazy murderers out here and his dad just doesn’t know about them yet? Maybe they’re new crazy murderers. It isn’t beyond the realm of possibility; there’s been a lot of moving around in Beacon Hills lately, even Allison’s family have upped sticks and—

And then the front door flies open, and Stiles tumbles back down the steps in startled reaction, landing on his back with a thump.

His pack goes flying, but at least the camera lands on his chest, instead of under his body like that one time nobody remembers because it never happened.

There’s a tall, dark man standing at the top of the steps, glaring down at him, and wow, looks like that oasis was a mirage after all.

“Hello,” Stiles says cheerfully, and his pack is still attached to him like a noose, so he holds out a hand and says, “A little help here?”

The man growls, which is not encouraging, but he stalks down the steps, pulls the strap roughly over Stiles’ head, and yanks Stiles to his feet.

“Thanks,” Stiles says, less sarcastic than he wants to be, and because he always loses the run of himself around people who are intimidatingly hot, he adds, “You look familiar, do I know you?” like a total loser.

“No,” the man says.

“This is the Hale place, right, but they all left last year, they all moved out to Arizona, right before the Argents did, and man, was there ever talk about that, everybody thought there was some sort of hinky car key action going on there, if you know what I mean, but I know Mrs Argent, and she is crazy, so I really don’t think—“

The guy looks like he’s about to headbutt Stiles back onto the main road.

“—and you’re a Hale, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” the guy says.

“Well if you’d told me that I wouldn’t have suggested your parents were swingers, not to your face, not when you look like you’re about to punch me, anyway. This is all your fault, ah—“

The guy’s face is familiar, but Stiles is at a loss until he grinds out, “Derek.”

“Derek!” Stiles says, victorious. “This is all your fault, Derek.”

“This is private property,” Derek says. “You should leave.”

“I’m not leaving!” Stiles says, distracted from Derek by his utter unreasonability. “I’m working!” He waves a frantic hand back towards the woods. “I just saw a wolf in there! A wolf! I need to track it down!”

Derek twitches. “You didn’t see a wolf,” he says coolly.

Stiles blinks. “My Nikon saw a wolf,” he says, and Derek transfers his glare to the camera.

“That’s a shoddy piece of equipment and I wouldn’t trust a pixel it produced,” Derek says.

Stiles bristles. “Hey!” he says, hands clenching on his camera.

“How old is that?”

“It’s still reliable!” Stiles says, and “I’m a filmmaker!”

“Then why are you here with a camera?”

“I’m location scouting!” Stiles yelps. “I didn’t even know if there’d be any animals here!”

“Even if there were,” Hale says, “I wouldn’t let you video them.”

“I don’t video,” Stiles says, pretentiously indignant, even he recognises, “I’m not a videographer.”

And Hale says, “This is private property, and you don’t have my permission to use any footage you gather here. I want that picture.”

And he holds out his hand until Stiles hands over the film.

“This isn’t over,” Stiles says, but the front door is already swinging closed behind Hale and Stiles has to walk all the way back down that stupid road to his car, so maybe it is.

“For now,” he spits at the door before he turns away. “For now, devilishly attractive antagonist.”

And then he sees the curtain twitch, and he bolts.

He’s back the next day, camcorder in hand.

He isn’t really sure where he saw the wolf, so he walks out to the Hale place and tries to trace his way backwards.

There’s no sign of Hale, but Stiles keeps a weather eye out for attack, no matter whence it may come. He’s more worried about Hale than the wolf, to be honest; Stiles had retreated with his tail between his legs, and the wolf kind of had too.

“Come on,” Stiles mutters, moving carefully through the forest. “I know you’re still out here. Where would you have gone?”

There’s a large tree stump lying across the path, and Stiles scrambles over it.

“Success!” he says, not that he’s proud of not falling flat on his face or anything. He lowers his hand from its airpunch of victory and looks around to share his triumph, but the only person there is the wolf.

Stiles turns slowly, breath held. “Hello,” he says, and the wolf cocks its head at him. “Fancy seeing you again.”

The wolf flops down on the ground and puts its head on its paws, looking up at him with a disconcertingly superior expression on its face. “That’s freaky,” Stiles tells the wolf. “Stop judging me, that’s so unfair, I’m the one with opposable thumbs and the ability to—“

The wolf huffs at him, and Stiles pauses, waiting to see if anything else is going to happen. Nothing does; the wolf keeps gazing at him, appearing increasingly bored.

“You don’t know how lucky you are,” Stiles tells it indignantly. “Like I’m not the best thing that could have happened to you. Because you know what else could have happened to you? Derek. Derek Hale could have happened to you, and I think you’d be re-evaluating this relationship then, my friend.”

The wolf blinks lazily, and Stiles mutters, “Stop looking at me like that,” but the wolf doesn’t.

Well, it is a wolf.

“Okay,” Stiles says, “Okay. You know what’s going to happen here? You’re going to keep doing what you’re doing, and I’m going to get things started over here, and when I turn this camera on, you’re going to give—“

Stiles hits the record button frantically, but the wolf is already up and bounding towards him, all teeth and eyes and flying fur, and teeth, holy crap, Stiles is going to die.

Maybe he shrieks a little, but nobody hears, because his imminent murderer doesn’t count. And then the wolf is on him, and okay, maybe it isn’t on him so much as it has one massive paw on his chest and the other clawing at his camcorder-strap, but holy fuck those are claws, and those are some massive teeth bristling in the wolf’s mouth as it advances towards him, reaching for the strap, and Stiles is going to give the wolf what it’s after, because there’s no way he’s dying for his camcorder, or definitely not this one, at least, but before his fingers make contact the weight of the wolf on his chest has knocked him backwards, sending him flying down the slight hill behind him.

And as he rolls slowly but inevitably downwards, his body curls into a miserable ball around the camcorder, and he thinks he feels his skull crack against something on the way down, so maybe he is going to die for it after all.

It only takes seconds for him to reach flat ground and stop whirling, but when he can force himself to stretch out on his back, he just lies there, panting up at the sky overhead.

When Stiles bangs on the front door of the Hale house, Derek Hale yanks it open, and Stiles blinks at him in bewildered surprise, because he’d figured there was a better than even chance Hale would ignore him completely.

“I almost died,” Stiles says, and the frown he can see hovering around Hale’s face emerges fully.

“No you didn’t,” Hale says, and then, “What do you mean?”

“I need to come in,” Stiles says, gesturing to his muddy clothes. “I need to—“

“No,” Hale says, fingers tightening on the door.

“Yes,” Stiles says, adrenaline still in force. “That wolf is on your property, so it doesn’t matter whether you told me to stay away, whatever happens to me because of it is your fault.”

Hale winces, and after a moment he swings the door open, a violent, controlled motion.

“Yes!” Stiles says, staggering past him into the house. “Burglar 101.”

“You can use the bathroom but no other room,” Hale says. “No exploring and no loitering. You get that you’re not actually welcome here, right?”

Stiles is too distracted by the pulsating purple paint in the hallway to pay him any mind.

“Did you do this?” he asks, swaying a little, touching the wall, but it’s the paint’s fault; it’s so incongruous in this place it’s verging on an optical illusion.

“No,” Hale says, but doesn’t volunteer anything further.

“Hey,” Stiles says, straining out a grin. “My head is still spinning like a yo-yo. Do you think—?”

Hale curses, and steers him quickly down the hall, through a large room that’s painted pink and into a cheerful yellow room that Stiles recognises as the kitchen, once he’s sitting down.

“You’re a moron,” Hale says grumpily.

“It’s not my fault a wolf knocked me over!” Stiles protests.

“It’s a wolf,” Hale says, eyebrows scraping his hairline. “You’re lucky it didn’t do worse.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Stiles mutters, because he heard all this last night. He tries to give his stool a defiant spin, but that makes his stomach lurch, so he grabs the counter and pretends that never happened.

“You’re here against the wishes of your father as well,” Hale says flatly.

“Obviously!” Stiles says. “If I didn’t do any of the stuff my Dad doesn’t want me to do I might as well just give up right now and become the nursing home treasurer.”

“Yeah,” Hale agrees, and when he notices the astonishment on Stiles’ face he turns away to pull a first-aid kit from a cabinet.

“I don’t think—“ Stiles starts, but, “Take your clothes off,” Hale says, and Stiles’ hands are pulling his shirt off before he knows what’s happening.

He’s wearing a tee underneath, and when he hesitates his fingers are already under the hem.

“Uh—“ he says. “What, why, what’s happening here?”

“You’re injured,” Hale says evenly. “Let me see it.”

Hale stares at him, perfectly prepared to wait until Stiles does what he wants, and although Stiles is a little spooked, Hale’s eyes are sure and calm, so he lifts the material quickly over his head without letting himself think about it.

“I’m not taking my pants off,” Stiles says, and he’s relieved to see the annoyance return to Hale’s eyes.

“That isn’t what I asked you to do,” Hale says. “That isn’t where you’re injured.”

“How do you know where I’m injured?” Stiles asks, flicking a glance over his discarded clothes. “There are no bloodstains or anything. And I don’t even know where I’m hurt because I hurt everywhere, so what if I’d just whipped my pants off first thing?”

Hale puts down the packet of antiseptic wipes in his hand, takes a step forward, and catches Stiles’ chin between his fingers, tilting Stiles’ face up to his so he can look into his eyes.

“Uh,” Stiles says on a shaky breath, legs trembling where Hale has stepped between them, forcing them open. “What are you doing?”

“Checking for concussion,” Hale says dryly. “Your pupils seem fine, but all evidence supports the presence of a mental disturbance.”

“Oh, ha, ha,” Stiles says, slapping away Hale’s hand, and then his breath catches when Hale grins at him, wide and bright, before stepping back and retrieving the wipes.

“It isn’t serious,” Hale says, misreading Stiles’ nerves. “Just a scratch.”

“It’s fine, then,” Stiles says quickly, “you don’t have to clean it.”

Hale is moving closer, though, reaching down to Stiles’ side, and the wipe stings when it touches his skin, comes away tinted red. Hale drops it on the table and grabs another, bending slightly to dab the drying blood away from the wound.

“It’s fine,” Hale says, and holds a bandaid out to Stiles.

“Nuh-uh!” Stiles says, pointing at the first aid kit. “I want a butterfly strip, look at this thing, I need one.”

He reaches out to grab the box, but Hale slaps his hand away and fishes out a strip himself.

“I can—“

But Hale is already pressing the strip onto Stiles’ skin and pulling the wound closed. Stiles’ fingers curl around the seat of his stool.

“That’s good,” he says, and tries to lower his voice so he sounds a little less like he’s just inhaled helium. “Thanks.” Now he sounds like an Eastwood impersonator. Great.

“You want a bandaid?” Hale asks, stepping back so Stiles can breathe again, and Stiles says, “No thanks, it’s fine,” but Hale is holding the bandaid up and it’s Garfield.

“Okay,” Stiles says, “maybe that might help,” and then he’s getting a close-up of Hale’s collarbone and trying to regulate his breathing while Hale’s fingers stroke over his skin.

“So,” Stiles starts, and then has no idea what else to say.

Hale looks at him curiously, still between his legs, still too close for any kind of comfort, so Stiles shoves him away and jumps off the stool, scrambling over to lean casually against the fridge.

That was totally casual, nothing panicked about that at all.

Hale is watching him, head cocked to the side. He looks amused.

“So,” Stiles says again, needing that gaze gone, “how come you’re still here?”

Hale frowns, arms crossing defensively over his chest. “I like it here,” he says.

“But if your family left,” Stiles says. “You guys always seemed very close, if not weirdly so.”

“There’s nothing wrong with family unity,” Hale says, sounding stern.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, because that’s weird, especially coming from a guy like Derek Hale, a scowling, dark hulk of a man who Stiles has never seen exchange a civil word with anybody, who Stiles has never seen smile before. “But if you’re so tight why are you still here?”

“I work here,” Hale says.

“People design houses other places.”

“I was right in the middle of the Ellison project, I couldn’t—“ Hale gives up on the obvious excuse and exhales sharply. “They went, I stayed. Nothing more to it.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, “but—“

“Why did you come back out here today?” Hale interrupts.

“Oh,” Stiles says, trying to think of a reason Hale will accept. It’s a little strange he hasn’t asked before, that he still hasn’t asked how Stiles got hurt. “No, I got nothing. I need this for school. I’m not going away.”

“Yes,” Hale says, raising an eyebrow. “You are.”

Stiles is expecting him to do something to make that happen, but he just stands there waiting, until eventually Stiles twitches skittishly, says, “What! What?”

“I assumed you’d want to put your shirt back on before I threw you out,” Hale says, and Stiles glances down in horror before diving across the room to grab his shirt from the table, yanking it down his torso quickly, covering up his carefully applied Garfield sticking-plaster, and what the hell just happened here?

“I’m going,” Stiles says, sticking his finger in Hale’s face during his ignominious retreat. “By my own choice. I will be back!”

Hale is grinning when he snaps his teeth at Stiles’ finger, and Stiles makes a truly embarrassing noise as he curls his hand up and dives past the whizzing rainbow of colours on his way to the front door.

“This isn’t over!” Stiles says as he escapes to the porch, “You win this one, but—“

He hears Hale laugh behind him, but when he spins around to glare the door is already closing.

The next day Stiles bypasses his hunt for the wolf and follows the path straight through the woods until he reaches the Hale house.

The car is outside, but then it always is; Stiles isn’t sure Hale has left this place once since Stiles started coming by.

So he’s surprised when there’s no response to his knock on the door. He peers in through the window but he doesn’t see anything, no Hale lurking in the shadows staring at him like a total freak or anything else Stiles might have been expecting.

“Hello?” he calls, “Anyone home?”

He jogs back down the steps and around the house to knock on the back door. No answer there, either, so he comes back around the front on the offchance Hale has left the door unlocked, because—can’t blame a guy for trying, right? There’s something off about Hale, and Stiles intends to find out what it is.

There are shrubs growing at the side of the house, and Stiles staggers through them, stubbing his toe in his rush. “Crap,” he says, pulling the branches aside to see what he walked into.

It looks like a bear trap. Stiles blinks at it through the spike of fear before continuing on.

When he reaches the front porch, he sees a tail vanishing around the other side of the house, and, “Hey!” he yells, the absolute worst thing to do, “Hey!” and bolts after it.

There’s no sign of the wolf when he rounds the corner, but he pants his way all around the house, watching every step, coming back to the porch frustrated and irritated. He props himself up on the railing and curses at the universe, and then the door opens and Hale is entirely too amused.

“Why are you always so happy?” Stiles complains. “Life is not that good.”

“You better come in,” Hale says, and when Stiles does, it has nothing at all to do with the fact that maybe he likes it when Hale smiles at him.

“So I wanted to talk to you about my project,” Stiles starts, when he’s settled in the kitchen with a cup of coffee.

“Is it specifically about wolves or are you just focussing on them because you’ve found one locally?”

“It was supposed to be about the negative effect the loosened hunting laws have had on the local wildlife,” Stiles says. “One of the guys who—ah, a person I know who occasionally uses the woods for social gathering-type things, you know, al fresco dining, the odd tea party—told me he hasn’t seen a single animal around here in months, and I thought I could make a point of that, show the place totally devoid of life, but then I found the wolf, and that’s better!”

“You care about animal conservation,” Hale says, pleased, then inexplicably winces.

“I do,” Stiles says, mostly a lie; before this project he’d never given it much thought. “I support it strongly.” In theory. He doesn’t want to kill kittens or anything.

“That’s good,” Hale says, though he sounds doubtful. “Though the natural order of the food chain does mean that it’s a waste of time focussing on small, fluffy creatures. They’re the ones people always want to save, but really they’re so much hummus.”

“Uh,” Stiles says. “Okay.” And, “Hummus?”

“Tapas,” Hale says. “You know.”

Stiles really doesn’t.

“Are you a hunter?” he asks.

“Yes,” Hale decides. Stiles watches him do it.

“So that trap outside is yours? That’s dangerous. I could have lost a foot or something. Do you have guns?” Stiles looks around, although he isn’t actually expecting them to be hanging above the kitchen table with the saucepans and colanders and such. “Where are your guns?”

“What trap?” Hale asks sharply.

“Side of the house,” Stiles says. “Some other hunter must have set it, though wouldn’t they have to warn you?”

“I don’t use guns,” Hale says after a minute. “I use my natural talents. Which are not with shooting.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, and waits.

It takes a while for Hale to say, “I set traps,” and then he takes a long sip of coffee to cover it, clarifies, “Although that one isn’t mine.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, and although he’s never heard anything bad about the Hales, everyone knows they’re weird, and really, who knows how many bodies they might have buried out back, so he says, “My dad will be really pleased to know how good your coffee is. He knows how tired I was when I headed out here. He wanted me to stay at home, but I told him how much I needed to come today.”

“It’s instant,” Hale says.

“Still good,” Stiles says. “Anyway, would you mind if I got some of your hunting on tape? It would really add something if I could show how humans have an impact on the wildlife surrounding them, and if I could get some interviews with you too it would shade it, people getting to know you as well as the wolf.”

“No,” Hale says, looking kind of apoplectic. “You’re not filming here. You’re not filming the wolf and you definitely aren’t filming me. I thought I made myself clear.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “You did. But you can’t actually stop me, and anyway, it isn’t for commercial use, so.”

“No,” Hale says firmly. “I don’t want you doing that.”

“Well,” Stiles says. “I kind of figured that out? But I really need this. So I’m going to be doing it anyway.”

“Pick something else,” Hale says. “You just told me you changed what your project was going to be about when you saw the wolf, so change it again, do something else entirely.”

“It’s too good,” Stiles says. “And also, I don’t have any other ideas. I am out. I need this. And even if I had another option I wouldn’t have time to switch, because the deadline is—“

“I’m not doing this,” Hale says.

“Okay,” Stiles agrees. “I’ll just shoot the wolf. I don’t need you to be in it.”

“That’s not—“ Hale starts, before cutting himself off abruptly, and Stiles watches a vein pulse in his temple, fascinated.

“Hey, are you hunting the wolf?” he asks. “Is that what this is about?”

“No,” Hale says.

“Because that would actually be really good for me. I wouldn’t do you wrong—”

Hale plucks the cup out of his hands.

“Wait,” Stiles says, woebegone.

“You know where the door is,” Hale says, but then he makes sure Stiles uses it anyway.

He’s out in the forest again later that day, camcorder on an empty bird’s nest, probably from last year, and he’s purposely avoided alerting Hale to his presence, so it’s a surprise when he swings back down to the ground and Hale is staring at him through the lens.

“I told you not to come here,” Hale says, resigned.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, and lowers his camcorder. “And I told you I wouldn’t film you, so.”

“So I just need to follow you around all the time?”

“Preferably not?” Stiles says, ignoring the flutter, and catches his eyes before they get too far in their entirely unauthorised perusal of Hale’s body. “That’s going to make things awkward.”

“Just give up,” Hale says, and it sounds totally despairing, so Stiles is already feeling triumphant when he brightly says, “No!”

“Okay,” Hale says, and turns to leave.

“Hey!” Stiles objects, because that’s no way to celebrate a victory, even if he does get to watch Hale as he goes and has to drag his eyes up Hale’s body when he turns around, and crap, crap, shit, Hale saw him, and Stiles’ dad won’t even have the satisfaction of knowing he was right when he warned Stiles not to come out here, because they will never find the body.

“Giving up?” Stiles squeaks. “I’m taking that as permission to do as I will.”

And Hale is coming towards him, fuck, but—he’s rolling his eyes and dropping onto the trunk of a fallen tree, putting his elbows on his thighs and looking at Stiles in exasperation, which doesn’t seem very murderous.

Stiles’ shoulders unknot so quickly he almost drops his equipment.

“Okay,” he says, giddy. “Great, that’s—“ Hale looks really bored, and he’s just sitting there staring at Stiles. “Are you going to do that all day? Because I’m already over it, dude.”

“Yeah,” Hale says. “Is this really what you do out here all day? Crash around in the brush all day with your camera and freak out over nothing? No wonder you haven’t managed to get anything yet.”

“Hey!” Stiles protests. “That is an unfair and unwarranted slight on my skill, I will have you know.”

“I haven’t seen any sign of skill,” Hale says, “so I wouldn’t know.”

“I am an extremely talented filmmaker, and photographer too, even though that isn’t my main focus anymore and—“

“What do you normally do?” Hale interrupts.

“This,” Stiles says indignantly. “This is my life. This is my passion, and my future, and this is my present and this counts towards my final—“

“What do you normally photograph,” Hale asks impatiently. “Because you’ve clearly never been within a mile of a wild animal.”

“That’s—“ Unfairly accurate. “—A blatant untruth, and—“

“Anything that was here took flight well before you got within zooming distance.”

“Do not presume to know what my camera’s—“

“I should just leave you to it. You’ll give up soon enough when you don’t get anything.”

Stiles considers that. “I’d give up sooner if I did. You know, if you really want me gone.”

And then he watches Hale consider that.

“I could point you in the right direction but you’d still scare everything off,” Hale decides eventually. “Seriously, what do you usually take photos of?”

“I’m a filmmaker,” Stiles stresses again, “and okay, normally I film people, or confessional pieces that may involve myself or my companions, my loyal compatriots and whatsits, like my last piece was about a being I spend a lot of time with, something I understand deeply and intimately, a pet, really, a beloved—“

“You have a dog?”

“I have a cactus,” Stiles says. “And I made a biopic, right, of suitable length, not excessive, no, a contemplative exploration of the modern potplant’s ennui—nay, weltschmerz—his inability to obtain any kind of meaningful agency and his futile passion for fulfilment and achievement—and was it appreciated? It was not.” Stiles shakes his head tragically, and finishes, bitterly, “It was not.”

“Hmm,” Hale says thoughtfully. “How long did you say this was?”

“A suitable length,” Stiles repeats hastily. “And that’s irrelevant, anyway, because the point is that I don’t exactly have a choice about making this work, okay?”

Hale makes a face, and Stiles starts to make one back, before he realises that he probably isn’t going to look as good doing it as Hale had, and converts it halfway into a glance up at the sky and a casual slick of his hand over his buzzed hair, and he totally got away with that.

When Stiles cautiously meets Hale’s eyes again, he thinks Hale is trying not to smile.

“And if all I have to show for this is seventeen hours of empty woods—“

“There’s a burrow about a mile away,” Hale offers, and Stiles lights up, can feel himself doing it, because it’s not the wolf, sure, but it’s something, it’s getting Hale onboard, and they’ll get there, he knows they will. “A doe and three kits.”

“Three!” Stiles says. “Can I record this, can I record you?”

It takes a minute, but, “Yes,” Hale says reluctantly, and Stiles gets moving, waits for the camcorder to get on its feet and says, “Again, say it again!”

“Say what?” Hale asks, baffled.

“About the rabbit,” Stiles explains, though really. “I need you saying it on film before we head over there to get the footage.”

“Oh,” Hale says, and then, an eternity later, “There’s a rabbit about a mile away.” His voice is stiff and halting. “A doe with three kits. I can take you to the burrow.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, and shuts off the camcorder so they can begin the trek. “That’s fine, we can work on that, that’s—“

“Stop,” Hale says, attention sudden and sharp on a point beyond Stiles. “Quiet.”

“What is it?” Stiles hisses, excited. He can’t hear anything. “Is it the wolf, is it—“ Though Hale seems weirdly intense for it to be the wolf, which he seems kind of blasé about. “Is it something else, is there something better out here—“

“Is there something better out here, Derek?” a female voice asks, and then Stiles sees a woman moving through the trees, coming towards them, and when she comes out of the woods and her face resolves it’s Allison’s Aunt Kate.

“Hi, Kate,” he says, though it still feels odd calling her that, since she’s so much older. “What are you doing out here?”

She ignores him, which is weird, and speaks to Hale again.

“What are you two up to? Something wild?”

“What are you doing back in town?” Stiles tries, again.

“Yes, Kate,” Hale says, voice low and angry. “Why are you back here?”

“Just dropping by,” she says, smiling, though she doesn’t sound very friendly. “Wanted to see how you were keeping.”

“You’ve seen,” Hale says.

“I have,” she coos. “Helping the local boys with their homework?” And then she swings around on Stiles. “You should be careful,” she says. “Derek is dangerous. I don’t think you’re going to like anything he has to show you.”

And then she vanishes back into the trees, although at least he can hear her go this time.

“Tell Allison I said hi,” he yells after her.

Hale makes a sound that Stiles thinks is trying to be a laugh, and Stiles turns back to him, bewildered. “I’m twenty,” he says, definite if irrelevant.

“Yeah,” Hale says. “Like she can talk.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Hale says. “You need to leave.”

“But we were going to—“

“No,” Hale says.

“But you said you’d help me—“

“I changed my mind,” Hale says, and propels Stiles through the woods with a hand on his back, looking over his shoulder constantly. They’re back at Stiles’ car faster than he would have believed possible, and then Hale is fishing in his pocket for the keys and shoving Stiles inside.

“Don’t come back,” Hale says, “And lock your doors.”

And then Stiles is watching him walk away again, which is going to end right now.

Or, well.

Tomorrow.

He locks the car doors.

He’s back in the woods the next day, fortified by a conversation with Allison that explained Kate’s presence if not her creepazoidosity, and he spends a couple minutes deciding whether to drop in on Hale or head straight for the burrow.

He decides to go for the burrow, because he won’t be able to find it, but Hale will find him, and that will work out, he thinks.

He trudges around for what feels like forever, and he doesn’t get anywhere in particular, so he was probably going in circles. He’s a little bit convinced these woods only extend for twenty feet in any given direction, and still he would die of dehydration if Hale didn’t keep showing up to guide him back to his car.

He stumbles across a fallen tree that he’s pretty sure is the one Hale was sitting on yesterday, but he has no idea where to go from there, so he sits down to wait. Sitting on a fragile, rotting tree isn’t as easy as Hale had made it look, and after the second branch disintegrates under his weight Stiles decides the mossy ground is a perfectly acceptable alternative.

He’s so bored. He should have stayed at home and watched Friendship is Magic with Jasper; the ponies are Jasper’s favourite, and Stiles is certain they’re the only creatures capable of understanding his deep and meaningful friendship with his cactus. The ponies get them.

That doesn’t help alleviate the boredom, though, so he spends a couple minutes trying to decide whether keeping the camcorder on standby is worth the power usage, checks the tape, wonders where he left his air blower brush, and when he spots the wolf all he has to do is hit record.

Stiles tries not to move, tries not to breathe, even though he hadn’t been trying to remain covert, had in fact been trying to attract Hale’s attention, and surely the wolf knows what he’s like by now.

“Stupid Hale,” Stiles mutters, and relaxes when the wolf inches forward at the sound of his voice. “Making me feel like a raving townie. ‘Nooooo, Stiles, you don’t know how to walk around the woods. You are incapable of lifting your feet and using them to perambulate in a suitably discreet fashion, and only I can lead you to the holy grail of a wild animal sighting.’ Hah. We showed him, huh, buddy?”

The wolf looks amused, and Stiles thinks that huff of air sounded like a laugh; that’s going to be great. The wolf is getting closer, so close that Stiles kind of can’t breathe from excitement, and he needs to pan, he needs to—

“Take me to rabbits,” Stiles says, and when the wolf looks tempted by the thought he hefts the camcorder onto his shoulder just in case, but then the wolf is on his feet, staring at the red activity light as if he’s just noticed it, as if he has any idea what it is, and Stiles is scrambling to adjust focus when the wolf bolts.

“Hey!” Stiles says. “Come back, we were just getting somewhere!”

He shuffles forward, adjusting settings as he moves, and he doesn’t take his eyes off his camcorder until he bumps into Derek Hale.

“Hey!” Stiles says, aggrieved. “Watch—Hey. Where did you come from?”

“Where did you come from?” Hale asks. “I told you not to—“

“And I already told you I was,” Stiles says breezily. “Your weird thing with your ex isn’t going to run me off.”

“My—“ Hale says, and stops, apparently at a loss for words.

“Allison told me all about it,” Stiles explains.

“Did she?”

Stiles squints at him. “Yeah. Your voice went weird there, growly and—are you getting a cold?” He takes a long step backwards. “I’m not catching a cold.”

“You’re not catching a cold,” Hale says, like he thinks Stiles is stupid, but that’s totally sensible.

“It’s almost summer,” Stiles says, and his too-dumb-to-live voice is better than Hale’s. He’s probably had more practice. “So since you scared off the wolf this rabbit thing better be something else. We were having such a good time before you showed up and ruined it. Ruiner.”

“I’m not showing you the burrow,” Hale says sharply. “I’m not showing you anything. You can’t be here. You stumbled across a trap yesterday, and who knows how many more there are in the woods—”

“I’m not going away,” Stiles says flatly. “And I’m tired of having this conversation. Like I said, the quicker I get what I need...”

“I hate you,” Hale says, and Stiles flinches a little, when he thinks that might be true, but then he remembers how much Hale has been smiling at him lately, the offer of help before Kate got her crazy everywhere, and he knows it isn’t, says, “So is that your way of saying you want your bandaid back? Because I was actually going to ask you for another, because my dad says he doesn’t love me enough to buy ones this cool.”

Hale doesn’t quite seem to know what to say to that, and Stiles smirks and keeps the camcorder running. It’s totally worth the tape.

“I don’t have any left,” he says at last, which is blatant surrender.

“I saw them yesterday,” Stiles says. “Don’t bogart.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Hale says peevishly, childishly, and Stiles lets the grin that’s been threatening sweep over his face.

“So I can call you Derek, right?”

“No,” Derek says, and turns to lead the way to the burrow.

Derek has given Stiles frequent instructions to be ready to record, and Stiles has been making noises that could be interpreted as agreement—or not, because Stiles has been recording as they walked: the shift of Derek’s shoulders as they passed difficult ground, the twist of his hips as he ducked around an obstacle; and he wants deniability in case Derek catches him.

So Derek has given him certain expectations, but when they reach it, the burrow is not as impressive as Stiles had been hoping.

“Seriously?” he asks again. “That’s it?”

“It’s a new burrow,” Derek says again.

“It’s a hole in the ground,” Stiles says.

“It’s barely that,” Derek says, and moves towards the stupid hole, and before he even gets there there’s a shower of earth and a rush of sound and Stiles just about manages to capture the rabbits in their flight.

“What the hell,” he says.

“It’s a new burrow,” Derek says. “They had to fall back and re-establish due to the advancement of predators in the area.”

“Did we just make them homeless again?” Stiles asks, and Derek shrugs. “And when you say predators you mean the wolf, right? Is there more than one wolf?”

“Not anymore,” Derek says, sounding surly about it, though Stiles has no idea why anyone would want more than one wolf running around their back yard.

“Does the wolf eat bunnies?” Derek shrugs again. “Wait,” Stiles says, “Wait. Does the wolf eat humans? I mean, maybe he hasn’t been trying to make friends with me!”

“He hasn’t,” Derek says.

“Maybe he’s been trying to sneak close enough to eat my face.”

“He doesn’t sneak,” Derek says, and then, an afterthought, “Nobody’s going to eat you.”

“You don’t know that!”

“I—don’t,” Derek says, “but nobody is.”

And then just when Stiles is deciding Derek probably knows more about the wolf than he does, more about animals in general, and anyway, the way it has free run of the place it’s probably an old family pet, it’s probably neutered, Derek realises what he’s been saying and tries to take it back.

“Although I have heard of cases like that, and you never can tell with wild animals. You’re right, you might think he’s going to lick your face and instead suddenly he’s trying to tear it off with his teeth. You probably wouldn’t see much, because once the blood covered your eyeballs you’d be blinking a lot to try and get it out. You’d still feel it though.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “No.”

“And really, I’ve probably only survived this long because sometimes I feed him smaller creatures and he wants a continued supply.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, grinning up at Derek, blinking in the sun. “No.”

“I can’t guarantee your safety,” Derek says quietly, and Stiles cups a hand over his eyes so he can blink at Derek’s serious face in puzzlement instead.

“So show me the stupid wolf,” he says. “And I’ll be gone.”

Derek doesn’t look happy about that either, which is just as well, because it probably isn’t true anyway.

Stiles comes over really early the next day, because no way is he going to give Derek time to change his mind about this again.

“Hey!” he says happily, when Derek opens the door. “This is a good day, this is such a good day, I feel it, I get hunches about these things, but this is not actually a hunch because there is no possible way this day could go badly.”

Derek doesn’t look happy to see him, but Stiles isn’t going to let that bring him down.

“What are you doing here?” Derek asks.

“I brought brunch!” Stiles says, holding up the brown paper bag. Stiles doesn’t normally eat brunch, or any meal beginning with a ‘b’, but when in Rome; if he has to be up this early it should come with some kind of reward.

“I’ve already eaten,” Derek says, but when Stiles amiably pulls the bag back to his chest and opens it to reach inside, Derek snatches it away and jerks his head back towards the kitchen, reluctantly amused.

Stiles has to fight Derek for his fair share, even though it’s Derek’s second meal of the day.

“I haven’t eaten!” he says. “You are stealing the breakfast right from my stomach!”

“It’s too late for breakfast,” Derek says, which is a blatant lie, but he surrenders another scrap so Stiles doesn’t argue.

“Where are you going to take me to see the wolf?” Stiles asks, and Derek chokes on his mouthful of muffin. Derek has an untouched waffle in his other hand, and Stiles gestures at it, says, “You’re supposed to eat that first,” objectively, and totally not because he wants the other half of Derek’s muffin.

“I did not think this through,” Derek says.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Stiles agrees, eyes fixed on his prize, and when Derek puts the muffin down it’s in Stiles’ mouth before Derek even has time to glare. “So where do you think the wolf is right now? Is it going to be a long walk?”

“Well—“ Derek starts, and then just leaves the word hanging in the air to wither and die alone.

Stiles squints at him suspiciously.

“You do know how to find the wolf, don’t you?”

“I do,” Derek says, annoyed. “That isn’t the problem.”

“What is the—“

“There’s no problem!” Derek says, getting hastily to his feet. “Let’s go.”

“But I haven’t even finished your waffle,” Stiles protests, and then has to watch Derek gulp it down.

“You didn’t even want that,” Stiles says. “Spite is so unattractive.”

“It’s going to be a long walk,” Derek threatens, “for me. And I’m not carrying you home.”

Stiles sighs, and can’t quite stop his head from rolling on his shoulders in exasperation, though he manages to restrain his eyes.

“Spite,” he says again, and, “Absolutely,” Derek agrees, and shoves Stiles towards the door.

Stiles narrows his eyes at the familiar blue flower.

“One morning glory looks like another,” Derek offers unprompted, and Stiles isn’t touching that with a bargepole.

“I didn’t even tell you I thought we’d passed those flowers before,” Stiles says, coming to a stop. “Are we going anywhere or do you just think it’s fun to watch me get a sunburn?”

“We’re going somewhere,” Derek says.

“You don’t know where we’re going,” Stiles accuses.

“I know where I’m going,” Derek says. “I brought lunch.”

“These woods are not large enough to require packing a lunch!” Stiles says. “Are they?”

“There’s a place we can sit up ahead,” Derek says, and forges onwards, leaving Stiles to trudge along behind him, muttering unhappily.

When Stiles catches up, Derek is in a clearing, sitting on some old moss under a curving, twisting tree, branches reaching out like fingers. Stiles flops down beside him, and scowls at Derek as he digs through his bag.

He is hot and sweaty and thirsty and, “Sunburnt!” he cries. “I am so sunburnt, and it’s totally your fault!”

“I told you it was a long walk,” Derek says, pausing, sandwich in hand, to slide his eyes over Stiles’ skin. “It isn’t that bad.”

“I think I know how bad my own sunburn is,” Stiles says, patting a finger over his nose unhappily, trying to see how red the tip is, and then he has to ignore the look Derek is giving him, like he thinks Stiles is ridiculous and maybe also cute or something, and Stiles is used to getting the first half of that look but not the second, so he’s probably totally imagining it.

“So,” Stiles says, and then can’t come up with another damn thing, but Derek has mercy and hands him a sandwich. “Thanks.”

Stiles is kind of starving, because Derek ate most of his breakfast and then made him walk for hours, so he gets through his sandwich quickly and then Derek hands him another.

“So,” Stiles says again, licking the last of the sauce from his fingers, “who painted your house?”

Derek barks out a laugh. “My sister,” he says. “She was going to do it all white when the family decided to move, but when I insisted on staying she figured it was fine.”

“Are you mad at your sister for leaving you with pink walls?”

“No,” Derek says, looking at Stiles like he’s stupid.

“You’re mad at your family for leaving at all.”

“No.”

“You sound mad,” Stiles concludes. “And now you sound mad at me.”

“I’m not mad,” Derek says, angrily, and then forces it back in. “You should see my bedroom,” he says, an obvious change of subject, but Stiles is too busy trying desperately not to take it as an offer to discard it as it deserves. “Laura really did a number on it.”

“Yeah?” Stiles asks weakly, busy rejecting all the insane attempts at acceptance flying through his head. “You don’t know how to paint?”

Derek shrugs awkwardly. “She did it.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, “I get that.”

He does, even if he doesn’t want to talk about it, even if Derek’s sister isn’t dead and it isn’t the same at all. He thinks it’s the same impulse, to keep evidence of someone you love.

Stiles’ dad has decorators in every few years, but he never lets them do the inside of Stiles’ wardrobe door, where Stiles’ mom used to pencil in his height, even though the paint is yellowing and flaky and the lead traces she’d left have long faded and been renewed.

Derek obviously doesn’t want to talk about it, and Stiles respects that.

“Why didn’t you go with them?” he asks impulsively.

“Because I didn’t,” Derek says. “I couldn’t.”

“Had to break the apronstrings?”

“No,” Derek says. “I want to be there.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not going to—I’m not leaving.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “I have to stay with my dad, and I want to, but I wish I didn’t. I mean—I need to make sure he’s okay, so I have to stay, and most of the time I don’t mind but I still wish I didn’t. You know?”

“No,” Derek says quietly, and Stiles knows he’s lying.

“Yeah,” he sighs.

He watches Derek gather the saran wrap he’d parcelled their sandwiches in, and he has his camcorder by his feet, ready to grab footage of the elusive wolf, but he reaches into his backpack and casually pulls out his camera.

Derek’s eyes are shadowed and wistful, his mouth a hard, resolute slash, and when the camera shutters and Derek looks up sharply his gaze is stark for a moment and then there’s nothing; it all just fades away as Stiles watches, finger itching, wishing he’d gone for the camcorder after all.

“I thought you were exaggerating the length,” Derek says conversationally.

“What?” Stiles asks. “Stop saying things like that, what?”

“Of your cactus movie,” Derek says. “Your friend Jasper the Cactus?”

“The Cactus isn’t his surname,” Stiles says, with dignity. “It’s Jasper Stilinski, but you can call him Jasper, because we’re tight like that.”

“I didn’t watch it all,” Derek says. “I didn’t have seventeen hours to spare.”

“And eight minutes,” Stiles corrects. “Those extra eight minutes were really a mistake.”

“Do you upload everything to youtube?”

“No,” Stiles says.

There’s no reason for Derek to know about the dedicated blog he’s set up for this. So far there’s just photographs of random trees and rotting birdsnests, and the first couple of seconds of footage he’d managed to get of the wolf, eyes and teeth and a blur of fur, very much like it is in Stiles’ memory.

He cut out his tumble down the hill; that was mostly just a shot of his jeans jittering against green and brown and grey as he fell, anyway.

“I don’t really want you putting me on the internet,” Derek says.

“But I—“

“You don’t have to put your project on the internet, do you?”

“No,” Stiles says, disappointed. “No, I don’t.”

“Okay,” Derek says, “good.”

There’s really no way for Stiles to argue with that, but he wants to.

“Okay,” Derek says, rising to his feet. “Stay here.”

Stiles scrambles up. “Where are you going? Are you going to get the wolf?”

“No,” Derek says. “I’m just going to run back to the hou—“

“Hah!” Stiles says triumphantly, pointing his finger at Derek. “I knew it, I knew we hadn’t gone anywhere.”

“I’m running to a neighbour’shouse to get you some water,” Derek says. “Since you’re so hot and sweaty. I’ll be back soon.”

“There’s water here!” Stiles protests, reaching down to where Derek dropped a litre at the base of the tree, and when he straightens up with the bottle in hand Derek is almost to the trees. “Bring me sunscreen!” Stiles yells after him, and picks up his camera to snap, snap, snap away to his heart’s content as Derek vanishes into the trees, calling “Don’t wander off, I’ll be back!” over his shoulder.

He huffs out a sigh as he settles back down. He has no idea where Derek has gone, no idea where he actually is, and nothing to entertain him but a bottle of water, which he drinks, and Derek’s bag, which, once investigated, proves to contain nothing more exciting than their used saran wrap and a change of clothes.

“What does he need a change of clothes for?” Stiles asks aloud. “He didn’t even bring anything to sit on and he needs sartorial options?”

Stiles is feeling kind of jangled, alone in the woods, god knows how far from his car, three minutes or three hours, and nothing more to eat. Admittedly, he has just eaten, but Stiles is a growing boy. And sipping the water is calming his nerves, so soon that will be gone too.

“Derek!” he yells, but there’s no response from the woods.

“Why is he such a useless loser,” Stiles mutters. “I don’t even care how hot he is anymore, if this is the level of crap and ineptitude I can expect in something as simple as bringing me a wolf that seems to be some kind of family pet I don’t even want to know how terrible he’d be at, like, bringing me off.”

And then the curious tilt of the wolf’s head from the treeline catches his eye and he’s scrabbling on the ground for his camcorder, primed and ready to go.

“Hello,” he whispers. “Are you coming to see me?”

Derek is right: he doesn’t know how to do this, probably shouldn’t speak at all, but then the wolf is coming, walking slowly towards him across clear ground.

“Hello!” Stiles mutters crazily, bouncing out of skin in excitement, dodging around trying to keep the shot steady and focussed while he frames the next in his mind.

He zooms out, gets the height of the trees behind the wolf, then back in, steady and close as the wolf settles under the tree where they’d eaten, feet away from Stiles.

“Hi,” Stiles says, hushed, zooming out to get the gnarled branches, the same ones he’d draped over Derek’s receding figure minutes before. And then he zooms back in, a shock of nearness, and then—

“Hey,” Stiles says. “Could you do something for me?”

The wolf’s head tilts.

“Anything,” Stiles clarifies. “Could you do anything for me? Just to—liven this thing up a bit.”

The wolf puts its head on its paws and gives him a look, familiar because—Stiles has gotten this look recently; he thinks the wolf might have given it to him last time, too, but he didn’t get footage so he can’t be sure.

And then it’s suddenly intent on something behind Stiles, Derek, maybe, and Stiles turns his head but holds the camera still, and then the wolf is rushing past him and he’s spinning around to capture the last of the rushed retreat.

“Shit,” Stiles says, happy and disappointed, and there’s still no sign of Derek.

He sits down under the tree again, listening closely, trying to hear the wolf in the distance. He can wait, he thinks. He’ll be fine.

And then he does hear the wolf, ingress less restrained this time, standing in the middle of the clearing staring at him, with something in its mouth.

And that’s how Stiles gets the footage of the wolf trotting towards him and dropping a dead rabbit at his feet, sitting back on its haunches and regarding him with satisfaction, like it doesn’t even need the approval, because it knows how awesome it is.

“Thanks,” Stiles says. “Thanks, dude. Do you have a name, killer? Let’s go with Killer Hale. We just won’t mention this to Derek, though, okay? Just between you and me.”

Killer has something of an attitude when he stalks away.

“Thanks!” Stiles yells after him, and when he disappears into the trees he drops the camcorder to the mangled bunny, and then he shuts it off, because that is gross.

Derek gets back a couple of minutes later.

“You missed it!” Stiles says.

“They weren’t in,” Derek says. “I didn’t get any water.”

“You missed the wolf!”

“Did I?”

“Don’t be so indifferent! Don’t you love him? Don’t you love him as much as I love him?”

“Is it as much as you love your cactus?”

“More,” Stiles vows recklessly. “Don’t tell Jasper I said that.”

Derek rumbles out a laugh.

“And look! He left me a present! A rabbit! He left me a present of a dead bunny-rabbit because he loves me.”

“He does not lo—“ Derek starts, then takes a deep breath, eyes on the sky. “Never mind.”

“He loves me the most,” Stiles insists.

“No need to be previous.”

“Well you’re late!” Stiles points out. “How come you missed the wolf? That was so dumb of you. You’re like—you know what you’re like? You’re like Superman, you’re Clark Kent.”

And then he laughs, because even he realises how ridiculous that sounds.

“Can we go home?” he asks. Derek looks startled, probably unused to seeing Stiles so happy. “I feel like now is a good time to go home. I have had a good day, and—“

He hesitates. He wants to keep going, wants to make a better day; he wants to stop so he doesn’t ruin it.

“I have aftersun at home,” Derek offers, and Stiles smiles brightly, because that’s an offer he knows how to accept.

Stiles isn’t sure what he was expecting when they got back to Derek’s home, but it wasn’t to be handed a bottle of lotion and watched like a hawk while he applied it.

“Do you want some?” he offers.

“I’m not burnt,” Derek says, which Stiles knew, and the observation isn’t uncomfortable, exactly, but Stiles is having trouble not just staring back at Derek in the bathroom mirror, so he wishes Derek would cut it out.

“Cut it out, dude,” he eventually says, shoving the bottle at Derek, who takes it and hops up on the counter beside Stiles, all the better to stare directly at Stiles’ face instead, without the hindrance of the mirror.

“So this cactus thing,” Derek says, because of course he’s still on that. Stiles is finished rubbing the aftersun in, but Derek is still watching him, and Stiles keeps staring at his own reflection, because he isn’t sure what he’ll do if he looks at Derek instead. “Did you mean it?”

“Mean what?” Stiles asks the freckle on his chin. “I said a lot of stuff.”

“But it was for artistic effect, right?” Derek asks. “This isn’t some Lars shit going on here.”

Stiles cocks an amused eyebrow, and tries to cock his head so that Derek can’t see they both rise.

“Shut up, my sister made me watch it,” Derek says, scowling. “So you aren’t actually delusional, right?”

“That’s unfair,” Stiles says.

“I only asked,” Derek says, holding his hands up, swinging foot brushing against Stiles’ leg. “And I haven’t heard a denial yet.”

“I had to move away,” Stiles says, and he doesn’t want to have to explain, but Derek actually seems to be listening, and he wants him to understand. “I wasn’t going to school with any of my friends, and I had to move out of my house, away from my dad, and they wouldn’t even let me get a dog or anything—“

“A dog would love you back,” Derek interrupts.

“They wouldn’t let me have one,” Stiles says. “And I don’t love Jasper, he’s a cactus, but he’s mine, you know? And I don’t see—plenty of people love things that don’t love them back. I don’t see what would be wrong with it if I did love Jasper. Don’t you love your tv or your drafting-board or something?”

“No,” Derek says, and Stiles’ heart sinks, but then he admits, “I love the Packers.”

“Right,” Stiles says eagerly. “And anyway, I don’t see the difference between having, like a hamster or a fish and a cactus, just because one is alive and the other isn’t. They’re all just as dumb and heartless, and plus, my cactus doesn’t bite.”

“Hamsters are a starter pet,” Derek explains, smiling into Stiles’ face, too close, and Stiles doesn’t know when his hand landed on Derek’s knee, but Derek hasn’t done anything to dislodge it. “For children. Intended primarily to teach them that the puppy will die if they don’t feed it. Did you have a hamster when you were a kid?”

“I had six,” Stiles says.

“Six,” Derek says, “Wow.” And, kindly, “That explains why you never had a dog, then.”

“You don’t—!” Stiles says, and, “That doesn’t—!”

But that does explain a lot, actually.

“Damn it, Mom,” Stiles mutters.

Derek’s smile slips. “They always know best,” he says.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, though he doesn’t know what he’s agreeing to—never getting a dog? He tightens his grip on Derek’s knee, because Derek looks sad, but then Derek is watching him again, waiting, and Stiles is staring into Derek’s face from inches away and he doesn’t know what to do, so he lets go, backs away, says, “So I’m going to go, I guess. See what I got today.”

And Derek agrees, tells him to come back whenever, walks him out of the orange and turquoise striped bathroom and to the front door, and Stiles’ empty hand spasms, but he keeps going, makes it back to the car and locks the door, and then his hands are clenched on the wheel while he tries not to look in the rearview, while he tries to decide if he should get out of the car and go back. A flash of movement catches his eye, and he has a sudden spike of fear that crazy Kate is coming to get him, but it’s just the wolf, turning to walk back to the woods.

It takes him a minute before he can bring himself to start the car.

So Stiles has a pretty good day, he guesses, even if it doesn’t really feel like it.

He forces his dad to eat something that won’t clog his arteries too much; saves himself from the deathgrip of a Mythbusters marathon; and gets his new footage edited and uploaded, links to it from a couple of wildlife forums. He’s started getting some hits by the time he gives up watching his counter, wandering restlessly around the house instead.

His dad’s at work, and Scott is at school five hundred miles away, which is so far that he might as well have just vanished down a black hole for all the good it does Stiles.

He pulls out his phone, but he can’t think who to text, nobody around that he wants to bother with, really, and he doesn’t even have Derek’s number, so he goes for Allison, sends: does your family see the hales?

Don’t think so, he gets back a few minutes later, we’re pretty close though

did your crazy aunt make you follow them out there, he asks, and gets back, No she didn’t even come and she isn’t crazy stop saying that

Allison seems a little bit irritated with him, so he lets it go, but then he has nothing else to do instead, and he starts thinking about how he wishes he hadn’t left so quickly earlier, about what other shots he wants to get, what else the wolf might do.

And that’s how he ends up heading back out to the Hale place to try and get some night shooting done.

Which was maybe not his greatest idea ever given the camcorder he has to work with, he’s forced to admit to himself once he’s out there. He walks onwards slowly, fiddling with the controls, but it really isn’t good for night, no getting around it.

He’s running down the battery for nothing, so he sticks the camcorder back in his backpack and starts moving quickly in Derek’s direction.

There’s nothing much to see here at night, but Stiles is sure Derek will manage to track down the wolf somehow, and even if he doesn’t—

If he doesn’t—

Something else will happen instead. Stiles will figure something out.

He’s jittery by the time he draws near, speeding along towards his goal, and then when he gets onto the front porch he can’t make himself knock.

Derek opens the door anyway.

“Hi,” Stiles says.

“What are you doing here?” Derek asks.

Stiles hefts his backpack in explanation. “I thought we could try and get some work done now. See what we get in this light.”

“Stiles,” Derek says, and his face softens, which is terrifying.

He falls back and swings open the door, and Stiles doesn’t make the decision to move, but then he’s closing the door behind himself and following Derek to the kitchen.

“Do you want something to drink?” Derek is asking, opening the fridge, and Stiles is right behind him, hand flat on his back, and when Derek turns around Stiles’ hand stays where it is and suddenly they’re much closer.

“Stiles,” Derek says, voice low and rough, “we—“ but Stiles is leaning up to kiss him, because he wants to, because he thinks Derek will let him, and Derek does.

“Stiles,” Derek protests again, but he’s licking into Stiles’ mouth, so it isn’t very convincing.

“Yeah,” Stiles says eagerly, pressing closer still. “Yeah, yeah, come on, come—“

And Derek makes a harsh noise, bites at Stiles’ jaw, and when Stiles lets his head fall back the way it wants to Derek’s teeth are on his throat, pressing lightly, and his hands are on Stiles’ skin, under his shirt.

“Take your clothes off,” Derek growls, and Stiles wants to, same way he’d wanted to the last time Derek had asked, but this time Derek gets there first, dropping his backpack to the floor and pulling off his jacket, stripping his shirt over his head in a hectic rush. Stiles thinks he hears some buttons pop, but he doesn’t have time to think about that, doesn’t even have time to worry about his equipment before Derek is kissing him again, and Stiles is frantically clawing at his back and trying to climb his body at the same time.

Stiles yanks his mouth away and says, “You take your clothes off,” petulantly, like Derek is going to fight him on this, which is patently ridiculous, but then Derek does, says, “We shouldn’t do this, we shouldn’t—“

“Why,” Stiles asks, pressed against the counter by Derek’s body between his legs, edge cutting uncomfortably into his ass, trying to kiss Derek at the same time, but Derek is holding back. “Because of your crazy ex-girlfriend? Because Allison told me about that, and okay, she wouldn’t admit that her aunt was crazy, but I know what I saw, and I can handle it, I can handle her.”

“You really can’t,” Derek says, and Stiles tightens his legs, stops Derek when he tries to step away.

“Unless you can’t,” he says, a sudden sick suspicion. “Unless you can’t, unless you want—“ but then Derek is back, biting at his mouth, at his tongue, and Stiles forgets what it is he was saying.

“No,” Derek sighs, breath passing over Stiles’ lips into his mouth. “No. But I shouldn’t—“

He does, though, kisses turning deep and heady, hands on Stiles’ ass pulling him closer, and when Stiles scrabbles Derek’s tee up his chest Derek lets him, lets Stiles feel him shake as their chests touch.

“You’re really strong,” Stiles says deliriously, because Derek is holding him up as he strides across the kitchen, and then Stiles sees the table as they pass it, and pulls away from Derek nudging at his lips. “There,” he says, pointing peremptorily. “Table.”

Derek stops walking and Stiles is expecting to get deposited on the wooden surface, but Derek makes a face at him instead. “Ew,” he says, “Gross. I ate with my family at that thing every day until they left. That is disgusting.”

“No!” Stiles says, watching his hopes fade. “It’s—“

It is disgusting, he has to admit.

“It’s right there.”

“I have a bed upstairs,” Derek says, resolute, and, “Okay,” Stiles says obligingly, because he kind of does want to make it there.

The random, clashing colours speed by in a lust-fuelled haze, and halfway up the stairs, Stiles mutters, “You’re fast,” mouth sloppy against Derek’s cheek.

Derek stops dead, and they tilt a little before Stiles grabs the railing and Derek sets his foot on the next step and starts moving again.

“But you have terrible balance,” Stiles says. “I suppose the universe had to compensate for the speed and strength somehow.”

“I don’t have terrible balance,” Derek says. “Or speed and strength.”

But then Stiles is on his feet against the wall with Derek’s tongue on his nipple and Derek’s hands on his jeans, so he just says, “Okay,” and steps out of his jeans, because really, why argue?

Derek keeps them moving, and when they get to the next open door, Stiles looks in at the woods.

“Oh,” he says, momentarily distracted. “That’s—“

It’s really something, shadows and light and the sweeping reach of the trees under the night sky. And then he sees the wolf, staring out at him like always, and then he sees another, and—

“Is this your room?” he asks, and Derek stops tracing the waistband of his boxers long enough to glance in.

“No, that’s Laura’s,” he says, and opens the door Stiles is leaning against. “This is mine.”

“It’s the same,” Stiles says, while Derek tries to get him over to the bed, and then he takes another look. “Did your sister paint unicorns in your woods?” he asks incredulously.

“Shut up,” Derek mutters.

“That one is pink,” Stiles says, delighted.

“Shut up,” Derek says, and pushes Stiles backwards, sets him bouncing on the mattress, and Stiles is laughing when Derek comes down on top of him.

“Aw, that’s cute,” he gets out, and laughs harder when Derek bites his shoulder in warning. “That’s adorable, you’re so sweet. You miss her.”

“Who’d miss that?” Derek growls, but it isn’t convincing in the slightest.

Stiles wriggles around under Derek, shucks his boxers, and then he realises Derek is still fully dressed from the waist down and has to get to work on that.

“A little help?” he asks, and thinks he hears fabric tear as Derek kicks his jeans off.

“Okay, okay,” he says breathlessly, as Derek pulls them together, pulls Stiles’ weight off the bed so they’re pressed close, bellies and dicks slipping slickly together, and then Derek just lets him go, puts him back down.

“What do you want?” Stiles asks, and Derek kisses him, light and glancing down his chest to his stomach, but then he comes back up and traces curious fingers down Stiles’ side to his hips.

“Oh, fuck,” Stiles says. “Have you—do—“

Derek’s hands settle awkwardly on his waist, thumbs touching his bellybutton.

“How long were you with Kate,” Stiles moans, trying not to do anything that might make Derek shy away. “When did you two break—“

“I don’t want to talk about Kate,” Derek says, and he’s certain about that, at least.

“Okay,” Stiles mutters, and it’s ridiculous, because Derek hasn’t even done anything, doesn’t even know how, but Stiles is still struggling for breath. “You want to do this, right?”

Derek’s laugh sounds broken.

“Okay,” Stiles says, “Okay, that’s fine. Just—“

He picks up one of Derek’s hands and puts it down right on his dick.

“Okay?” he asks.

Derek doesn’t answer, and his movements are still hesitant, but he’s doing it, tracing his fingers over Stiles and tightening his hand into a fist, and when he gives the first jerking tug Stiles moans deep and raw in his chest.

“Yeah, yeah, like—“ he moans, even though surely Derek knows how to do this, doesn’t need instruction on turning it around.

And he doesn’t, motions gradually getting smoother and surer, and by the time Derek asks, “What do you want?” Stiles is a sweating, moaning mess just from a handjob.

“Fuck,” he exhales, thinking about everything he wants to do with Derek, everything he wants to show him, but he doesn’t think they’re getting to any of that tonight, not when Derek is still asking what Stiles wants in that uncertain tone, so Stiles just flips Derek onto his back, surprised at how easy Derek goes, and puts his mouth on Derek’s cock.

The sound Derek makes is pained, and that makes Stiles’ mouth water, so he slides down quicker than he’d planned, which is fine with him, but Derek arches up, stomach muscles bunching, and the staccato noises that echo around them sound so desperate already that Stiles is a little concerned.

He pulls off, swallows quickly, habit, trying to get the taste out of his mouth even though it never works. “This is okay, right?” he asks, senselessly worried that it actually might not be, and Derek reaches down to touch his head lightly and then pulls his hand away like he’s been burned.

“Yeah,” Derek says, strained. “Yeah, it’s—“

His head is tilted back on his shoulders, but Stiles can see his face, and he looks lost, looks gone, which is good for Stiles’ ego, but not exactly reassuring.

“It’s good,” Derek says, voice thick. “Don’t—“

But his hips are shifting restlessly, and he’s asking for it, and Stiles can’t refuse him, so he decides he’ll figure out what that’s about later and reaches out to grab Derek’s hand, puts it on his head as he goes back down.

Derek almost bucks him off, but Stiles is expecting that kind of thing from him now, and although Derek is too heavy for him to hold down he manages to ride the wave, and then he closes his eyes and goes to it, taking Derek as deep as he can, sucking as hard and tight as he can manage, and moaning around Derek likes he loves it, because he does.

Derek starts cursing when the vibrations hit, nothing that makes any sense, and his hand tightens on Stiles’ skull, but not enough that Stiles minds, and then his hips are jerking up into Stiles’ mouth as he comes.

He’s on Stiles as soon as Stiles removes his mouth, hands still shaking as he touches Stiles carefully.

“Hey, okay,” Stiles says, though he’s primed himself, “okay, just—“ and then Derek is ducking down to drag his lips over Stiles’ hard cock, and Stiles might wish he were a better man, but he isn’t. “Yeah, just be careful, okay, just not too rough,” he tells Derek, letting his fingers stroke into Derek’s hair. “Just watch your teeth.”

Stiles thinks Derek laughs, but he’s too distracted to really be sure.

“Oh, babe, yeah, that’s good,” he says, as Derek progresses from licking to sucking, and he rolls the head of Stiles’ cock between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. “Just take a little more, just—“

And Derek does, because Derek takes instruction really fucking well, and it isn’t long before Stiles can feel Derek’s throat, soft around him, and he pets Derek’s head, doesn’t push though he wants to, wants to so much, and he says, “That’s enough, that’s good, that’s really—“ but Derek swallows, swallows and swallows until he gets Stiles down, and he doesn’t even choke.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, dreamy, though he’s about to go off like a rocket. “Yeah, that’s so good, you’re so good, that’s exactly what I want, do you like that?”

And when Derek tries to answer Stiles spasms, chokes on the air in his throat, sees his vision start to waver and distort as he comes and comes and—

When Stiles is back, Derek’s chin is digging into his stomach, which is uncomfortable, but also really nice, and he drags his fingers slowly over Derek’s cheek in appreciation, until they reach his lips, and then he fights his own sloth and awkwardness until he can kiss Derek.

Derek seems a little surprised, but he’s open to it, his mouth opens for it, and he’s stretching out over Stiles on the bed, body settling down heavily, when the kiss breaks abruptly as Derek lifts his head to the window.

“What?” Stiles asks, bewildered.

Derek is at the window already, looking out.

“Did you hear something? Is there something there, is it the wolf?” Stiles considers that while Derek throws on some clothes. “The wolf can wait,” he says lazily, smiling. “Come back to bed, don’t—“ Derek is out the door. “Hey!”

Stiles struggles to his knees. “Where are you going?” he yells.

Derek’s head pops back in. “Wait here,” he says curtly. “I’ll be back. I’ll—Wait here, don’t move. And lock the door.”

He vanishes again, and Stiles gapes after him disbelievingly.

He sputters, unable to come up with a decent shout, and then scrambles off the bed, but his feet get tangled in the sheet and he trips painfully to his knees on the wooden floor.

“Fuck,” he says, stumbling up, hobbling over to grab his boxers, and then he realises his clothes are strewn between here and wherever he’d lost them along the way, and says, “Fuck,” again.

Derek had fresh clothes here, the fucker. And he still does, so Stiles borrows some. Derek won’t mind.

Well, Derek wouldn’t mind, if he hadn’t just told Stiles not to leave the room under pain of whatever. A scowl, probably.

The front door is wide open, and Stiles grabs his backpack on his way out, even though he’s getting worried; if Derek’s taken off after the wolf he’s damn well going to make it worth Stiles’ while, but he wouldn’t leave the door open, he wouldn’t leave Stiles alone in bed with the door open.

“Derek!” Stiles yells, but there’s no answer.

The floodlights reach the edge of the woods, but he can’t see a thing.

He thinks he can hear something, some kind of struggle off in the woods, so he runs towards them, frantic, no idea what’s happening, what he’s running towards, and this is dumb, so dumb, he knows it is, but he runs into the woods anyway, can’t stop himself, and then Kate Argent steps into his path.

“Jesus Christ!” Stiles yells, falling flat on his back. He’s too freaked out to be embarrassed. “Where did you come from!”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Kate says. “You weren’t supposed to be involved in this. Derek should never have let you get dragged in.”

“Into whatever stupid relationship drama you think you have going on?” Stiles asks. “I don’t think he wants to get back together, okay? Because—“

Kate laughs.

“Oh, honey,” she coos. “I really don’t care what it is that Derek wants.”

Stiles stares at her, baffled and upset; he can still hear crashing noises in the woods behind here, and then there’s a howl that prickles his skin and raises the hair on his arms, and he’s started towards it unconsciously when Kate puts a restraining hand on him.

“Stiles,” she says, and smiles kindly at him, eyes crinkling, warm if he doesn’t pay too much attention. “You don’t want to get caught up in this. Let me take you back to your car.”

“No,” Stiles says, stumbling away from her. The noises are getting closer. “No, I want to—“

The wolf crashes out of the trees, and Stiles’ camcorder is in his hand before he realises he’s moved, and he hits record, starts the countdown to the machine powering up automatically, and then freezes, because he can see the wolf clearly in the faraway light from the house, can see the changes as it skids to a stop in front of Kate, can see the stretch and splinter, can hear the cracks, and then he can see Derek, standing naked in front of her.

He hears a weak, frightened noise, and he thinks he made it but he can’t be sure, and Derek is growling, saying, “Don’t touch him,” so he has other things to worry about, probably.

“Ah, Derek,” Kate says, sorrowful, reaches out to stroke his face, and Stiles flinches when he realises how close it is to the touch he’d given Derek just minutes ago. “I wouldn’t have to do this if you hadn’t touched him. You should have known better.”

And Stiles remembers Derek saying that, that he couldn’t protect Stiles, that they shouldn’t, and maybe if Stiles had known this was what Derek had been talking about he wouldn’t have, so thanks for nothing, there.

“Don’t get into this with him,” Derek says. “He’s the sheriff’s son. You won’t get out clean, it isn’t worth it.”

A man appears behind Derek, rifle thrown over a shoulder, something buzzing with an electrical current in his hands, but Derek ignores him so Stiles does too.

“We need to get this done,” the man says nervously, but Kate ignores him too.

“Sucks to be you,” Stiles says to him, mostly out of pity, and then everybody ignores him.

“He’s in this,” Kate says sharply, and for a minute she sounds so much like a wounded ex that Stiles’ heart leaps hopefully, but then she says, “He’ll just have to stand in for your family, since they ran from me like the cowards they are,” and nods, and the man steps forwards and lashes Derek hard behind the knees with that buzzing thing, and Derek falls to the ground on all fours. It takes him a minute to struggle back to his feet. Kate nods again.

“You were threatening them,” Derek says, “you were threatening us,” and Kate laughs, throaty and joyous. “What were they supposed to do?”

“My brother says they’re doing well in their new home,” Kate says. “Not causing any trouble. He’s keeping an eye.”

“We never caused any trouble here,” Derek says, and Kate hums.

“He’s always been weak,” she confides. “I really think I’m going to have to see about relieving him of his duties, if this is how he sees fit to carry them out. Years, we wasted on this. Do you know, he actually called me yesterday and asked me why I was hunting you, what you’d been doing? Why! Like I need a reason.” She steps close to Derek and smiles, and it looks sexy and wrong on her face, and Stiles feels sick. “Like your pretty little head isn’t reason enough on its own. Like you deserve anything other than to be put down. You’re going to come with me now so I can do that. I’m tired of wasting my time on you, fun though some of it was.”

Derek’s eyes slide halfway towards Stiles and back to Kate, and that’s when Stiles realises Kate’s henchman is pointing a gun at him.

He puts his hands up, belated though it is, camcorder swinging from its strap around his wrist.

“Back to the house,” Kate says, and Derek starts moving, so Stiles does too. He doesn’t even need the shove the henchman insists on giving him.

“You know, this would have been so much easier if your family’d just stayed put until the hunting laws changed,” Kate says, all friendly liveliness. “I wouldn’t have had to do this at all if they had.”

“You would have done it months ago,” Derek says.

“No,” Kate says. “I would have had someone else do it for me months ago. Someone like you, so eager to please. Or maybe someone like your little boy here, huh?”

She looks at Stiles for the first time, lip curling before she catches it, and Derek’s shoulders hunch.

“Maybe he still wants to,” she continues thoughtfully. “Do you? Now that you’ve seen what he really is? He didn’t tell you he was a monster, did he?”

“No,” Stiles says, and he isn’t sure which question he’s answering, because Derek hadn’t, hadn’t told him any of this, had fallen into bed with him and left him in the dark, and Jesus Christ, if he turns into a werewolf after a fumbled blowjob and a couple of friendly bites he is not ever letting his dad find out his lycanthropy was sexually transmitted. He still feels sick, thinks he might actually vomit.

“Of course he didn’t! Doesn’t it disgust you thinking of whatever it was you were letting him do to you in there before we interrupted? He’s an animal.” Kate’s voice thrills under the surface revulsion, and Derek isn’t looking at anybody anymore, staring at the quickly rising house, face blank and empty. “Doesn’t it make you sick when you remember his hands on you?”

“No,” Stiles says, “I don’t want to.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to kill him,” Stiles says.

“Shame,” Kate says regretfully.

“Why would I?”

“You’re as bad as Chris,” she spits. “You don’t need a reason! After I settle up with you two I’m going to have to head out to visit my brother. It’ll be so nice to see your family again.” Derek is still a walking waxwork. “I’ve missed your mom’s shortbread. I’ll get her to make me some, and we’ll have some of her chamomile tea, and then maybe I’ll have her watch as I kill her children one by one.”

Derek spins around at the threat, and his face is changing, malleable and soft like play-doh, though Stiles doesn’t remember his childhood imagination ever coming up with something as gross as this.

Kate clocks him in the head with the butt of her gun, and cocks it. “You’re scaring your boyfriend,” she says, and that’s when Stiles realises that he’s panting as he watches Derek’s face move like it’s about to turn liquid and slide off his skull, and fuck, Stiles really hopes he isn’t a werewolf now, doesn’t stop his hands when they reach blindly for the places Derek bit down, feeling with numb fingers for broken skin. “And if you don’t stop that I’ll put a bullet in your head right now.”

Derek stops.

“Get inside,” she says, gesturing to the door with her gun.

“No,” Derek says.

“You really aren’t in a position to argue, sweetheart,” she says, smiling, and gestures at Stiles. “In.”

Stiles is shuffling forwards reluctantly, tripping over a rock on the way to his death, naturally, when, “No,” Derek says, stepping in front of him.

Stiles thinks Kate is going to lose it for a second, but then she says, “Fine. Stay here and in just a tick you can watch me shoot him in the head instead.”

She moves to the side of the steps, keeping a close eye on Derek, bends down and comes back up with a glass bottle, liquid sloshing around inside.

Stiles wants to ask if they’re having a party, because he could use a drink, but Derek is looking alarmed, sniffing the air, though he doesn’t say anything. Kate throws the bottle, glass and liquid a shining arc through the air before it smashes against the wall by the open door, spilling down the wall and onto the porch.

“I always loved this house,” she says reminiscently. “I love cherry wood. Hank.”

The guy at Stiles’ back steps past him to hand Kate a lighter, and then Kate jogs up the first couple of steps and turns to grin at Derek before falling back a little.

“Don’t want to get too close,” she says. “This is going to be big.”

Hank has his gun trained on Derek now, although his eyes are on Kate, and Stiles can see Derek coil, poised for a spring, though Stiles isn’t sure who he’s going to go for until his eyes flick backwards, away from Kate, and when she turns her attention back to the house and the lighter in her hand Stiles bends over, and he only hears the whoosh as the porch goes up in flames, because he’s hitting Hank in the head with a rock.

He’d expected Hank to fall to the ground unconscious, but he just staggers, turning slowly towards Stiles, and Stiles has to hit him twice more before he slumps down in a messy heap as Derek roars and pounces on Kate, and Stiles takes a step to the side so that when he pukes it isn’t on Hank’s body.

They’re struggling, and Stiles is still thinking about Hank, wondering if he should hit him again just to be safe, but he’s afraid that might kill him, if he’s still alive.

And then Derek and Kate crash down beside him, Derek on top of her and half-gone, half—animal, Stiles thinks wildly. She’d called him an animal.

“Don’t,” Stiles says desperately, reaching out but not able to touch Derek, too afraid of what Derek would do, afraid Derek is beyond recognising him. “Let me call my dad, let me call the fire trucks, Derek, please. You can’t—“

Stiles wants to say Derek can’t kill her, but he doesn’t think Derek would be very receptive to that, and Stiles can’t exactly blame him, but he can’t kill her.

“My dad’s coming out here, and he’ll arrest her, but if you kill her he’ll arrest you instead. Derek, please.”

And Stiles watches as Derek’s head twitches towards him, watches as his claws retract, and Kate starts laughing harshly, says, “You’re all such fucking—“ before Stiles hits her with his rock, his new best friend, and then he has to call his father while he’s clinging to Derek to stop him from rushing into the house, has to worry that he’s killed two people while he talks Derek out of going into an uninhabited burning building because he thinks his mom has a fire extinguisher in a drawer in the kitchen, and then finally, blessedly, the cavalry arrives.

They hang around until the fire is out, because Derek refuses to leave, and then he insists on staying longer, apparently so he can stare glumly at the blackened front of his home, and that’s when Stiles realises Derek has nowhere else to stay.

“They said the back is fine,” he says again, hoping Derek will hear him this time. “But—“

And then the van with the prisoners drives away and Stiles’ dad comes towards them, and Stiles has to surrender his camcorder, with its uninterrupted audio of everything Kate had said from the time he’d hit record, from the time Derek had shown up.

“This is good,” his dad says again. “This is good, Stiles.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, because it’s good for the case.

He’s just glad, shockingly, electrifyingly glad that he’d been using his cheap camcorder with the power off, that there’d been a delay of several seconds before it had actually started recording, and he can hand it over to his dad without worrying that he’s going to have to explain to his dad why Derek changes from wolf to man, because Stiles does not have that kind of special effects budget. Stiles does not have any budget, and his dad knows it.

“So,” his dad says, “Derek,” and Stiles is expecting some variation on the licensed-revolver-and-shovel-in-the-trunk talk, but his dad says, “Why were you running around naked in the woods with your ex-girlfriend, a petty criminal, and my son?”

“Hah,” Stiles says, “Funny story,” and then he says, “Hey, dad, Derek’s staying with us tonight, okay?” because he may as well give his dad something else to gnaw on, even if that is going to be Stiles’ last nerve.

The look of surprised gratitude Derek throws him is kind of terrible, but the pleasure that chases it is nice.

Later, when they’re curled up in his bed, his father still down at the station, Stiles asks, “So, how long did you say you were with Kate?”

“Ten years,” Derek says, and Stiles tries not to do that math, because he doesn’t like the answer his brain is supplying.

“You can rebuild the house, right?” Stiles asks. He knows he’s changing the subject, but he’s had a difficult day, okay? “It isn’t that badly damaged, and considering it’s kind of supposed to be your job I’d be a little concerned if you thought it was too much for you.”

“It isn’t,” Derek says.

“Unless—“ Stiles says, striken. “Unless you’re going to move to Arizona now. Now that you’re not being chased away, or you don’t have to worry that Kate’s going to follow you out or whatever, I mean.”

“No,” Derek says. “I’m not going to Arizona.”

Stiles manages to keep his shaky exhalation of relief quiet, but Derek is looking at him like he heard it anyway, which is something Stiles is going to have to ask about, some time that isn’t now.

Stiles turns his face to Derek’s just in time to see his eyes slide closed, the strain on his face relax into weariness, and Stiles is so glad that he didn’t get that footage, that he doesn’t have to find out what he would do with it if he had it.

“So,” Stiles says, when he can speak, “You’re a werewolf.”

“Yes,” Derek says, eyes still shut.

“Did not know werewolves existed,” Stiles says, like he’s talking about the wooly-haired mammoth, thought millennia extinct but recently discovered alive and well up in the north pole, kept as pets by Mrs. Claus, something everyday and comprehensible and imaginary like that. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Derek asks, opening his eyes so he can squint suspiciously.

“Okay,” Stiles reiterates. “Unless—“

“Unless what?”

“You aren’t going to eat me, are you?”

“No, Stiles,” Derek says, though it sounds like it pains him to admit it. “I’m not going to eat you.”

“Good,” Stiles says, “Okay,” and bumps up against Derek gently, and then he realises, “So you’re the wolf!” and Derek groans.

“No, no!” Stiles insists. “This is awesome! This is so awesome for me.”

“It is?” Derek asks, baffled.

“Yes!” Stiles says. “Do you realise what this means?”

“I do,” Derek says dryly. “You, on the other hand, were worried you were going to become a werewolf because I gave you a hickey.”

Stiles brushes the irrelevancy aside. “It means that I get to write my own final and have you perform it for me,” he says, ecstatic, and when Derek groans this time it sounds like genuine despair, but whatever, Derek is an old grump with no artistry in his soul.

He hasn’t even seen the comments on Stiles’ blog entry yet.

“I still don’t want to be on tv,” Derek says.

“I know,” Stiles says, biting back the impulse to protest that he is not Nature Channel, but rather dvd boxset material. “And I’m not going to put you in. I’m not going to use any of this. I’m never going to film you changing.”

“Yeah,” Derek says.

Stiles doesn’t want to have to say this, but he needs Derek to know. “And you’re never going to let me film anything about this,” he says quietly, insistent. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” Derek says after a pause, “Okay,” and he lets Stiles tip closer to his warmth, settle down on his shoulder.

“I don’t need any of that,” Stiles says, and he mostly means it.

“They’d just think you were a hoaxer anyway,” Derek says, which is true, and lifts Stiles’ spirits like they’re a helium balloon.

“My film is going to be awesome,” Stiles says, radiant with it. “This is going to be awesome.”

And it is.

end

Thanks so much for reading, and don't forget to check out the fantastic art! There's way more, because I am totally spoiled! :D