SIAND - PDF - Morning Finds You.pdf

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://download.archiveofourown.org/works/5510843. Rating: Archive Warning: Category: Fandom: Relationship: Character: Additional Tags: Stats:

Mature Graphic Depictions Of Violence M/M Teen Wolf (TV) Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski Erica Reyes, Allison Argent, Scott McCall, Lydia Martin Post-Break Up, somewhat canon compliant, Angst, Christmas, very fucking dramatic Published: 2015-12-24 Words: 51619

Morning Finds You by standinginanicedress Summary

“There is no years where you and Derek are concerned,” mercifully, Erica is jabbing her keys into the ignition. “There's no time passed. It's like the second you're in the same room again, it's – it's just here we go again.” When Derek and Stiles even so much as glance at each other, it doesn't matter how long it's been. It could be centuries since they'd seen each other last, but as soon as the eye contact was made, it'd feel like minutes. Like Derek just left the room for a second instead of vanished off the face of the planet. “Not this time,” Stiles affirms with a head nod. “And never again. There's this thing called lesson learned – you know? Took a few tries, but I think the formula's finally stuck there in my brain.” Derek shows back up (because he's always the one who leaves), and Stiles listens to his friends yell at him for days, and then Derek and Stiles run into each other, and it all adds up to one gigantic fuckery that Stiles tells himself he regrets but maybe he...doesn't.

Notes

the canon in this is "???" but I guess that's okay bc lately the canon in the show also has

been "????" so let's just roll with it lmfao. For a blanket statement, it's canon compliant thru s2, and then the events of s3a happened but minus the alpha pack and Scott becoming a true alpha, and there are some other little things that I just mention, like certain characters dying (no one too major otherwise I'd have the tag) also I've taken to editing and formatting the html in my word doc but currently my word doc's fucking spellcheck is like out of commiss tbh so I bet you a million and ten dollars there are at least 867 spelling mistakes lmfao mock them if you must also wtf this fic is really dramatic and took me 10 years to write so uh enjoy the drama

“You realize how fucking stupid it would be for you to even so much as glance in his direction. You're not an idiot. You are a smart, intelligent person with half a brain in your skull – three quarters of a brain on a good fucking day – and, that said, you know beyond any shadow of a doubt that talking to him, being around him, not turning around and runnning for the hills the second you cross paths with him...like. That's all off the table. I won't have it. I won't allow it.” Erica taps her fingers on her elbow, purses her lips, and gives Stiles the look. It's a look that everyone with an ex-anything and good friends knows. Stiles bears it with little more than a brief glance over her shoulder to where the unmistakable black car – the one with the claw marks on the lefthand door and the busted tail light that he apparently never did get fixed, where somewhere in there among the leather is a carving of Stiles' initials beside Derek's, something he did before he knew how everything would all turn out, in the end – and frowns. What else is he supposed to do, really? At this point, he's amazed he even has any emotions left to give the situation. The car. The person it belongs to. “If I had my way, I'd quarantine you.” Moving his eyes back to meet his friend's, he shakes his head. “He's a dumbass person, all right? Not an infectious disease. I'll be fine.” Vindictively, almost, Erica points a finger in his face, nails long enough to claw him if she so chose. Stiles guesses that after everything herself, and the rest of his friends and ragtag pack went through in The Great Schism, she deserves to be a little vindictive. “The way you act about him, and the way you get about him – it almost is like a disease, I swear it.” Stiles knows that Erica isn't remembering things more dramatic than they really were, or that she's exaggerating, or that she's just being Erica. She has every right to scowl, to shepherd Stiles as far, far away from that car as she can get him, to yell at him for ten minutes straight on the drive back to his apartment about how stupid he would be and how much of a mistake it would be and how she'll cut his dick off if he even so much as thinks about it – he knows all this. “Maybe back then,” Stiles says in a cryptic tone of voice, finally turning around to Erica's shitty little purple car to climb into the passenger seat. “Maybe back then, it was like that, but it's – you know. Years.” She maneuvers herself around the front of the car, pulls open her own door with a glare over the top in Stiles' direction, and then she's inside, and so is Stiles. Their doors slam, Erica drops her keys into her lap, and again, with the finger pointing. “Oh, years. Oh, right. Years have gone by!” “You're saying that sarcastically,” Stiles says slowly, narrowing his eyes, “but it's true.” “Of course years have gone by! Time has passed, and we're all bigger, better people, now, and nothing is the same anymore, and oh, we're adults, and there's nothing left of what used to be anymore.”

“Again with the fucking sarcasm, but it's true.” “There is no years where you and Derek are concerned,” mercifully, she's jabbing her keys into the ignition. A view that doesn't involve that fucking car is somewhere in his future, and Stiles is looking forward to it. Even knowing he's within a mile radius of its owner has his leg tapping up and down again and again, has him pointedly staring straight ahead when he wants to look over his shoulder, to his left, to his right, searching. “There's no time passed. It's like the second you're in the same room again, it's – it's just here we go again.” When Derek and Stiles even so much as glance at each other, it doesn't matter how long it's been. It could be centuries since they'd seen each other last, but as soon as the eye contact was made, it'd feel like minutes. Like Derek just left the room for a second instead of vanished off the face of the planet. “Not this time,” Stiles affirms with a head nod. “And never again. There's this thing called lesson learned – you know? Took a few tries, but I think the formula's finally stuck there in my brain.” Derek shows back up (because he's always the one who leaves), and Stiles listens to his friends yell at him for days, and then Derek and Stiles run into each other, and it all adds up to one gigantic fuckery that Stiles tells himself he regrets but maybe he...doesn't. That's one lesson he's never managed to glue inside of his head. Regret. Stiles wouldn't take it back, none of it, even when everyone around him tells him what a mistake he's gone and made all over again. But, not this time. Not this time. “So what?” Stiles says as Erica's car huffs and puffs along down the road. “I mean, so fucking what? It's been two years, and I haven't heard from him, and I thought he was like, dead or some shit.” Right as they're sliding past Derek's car, Stiles glares at it from the corner of his eye and sees that the air freshener (Hello Kitty coconut blast) that Stiles had hung up there the last time he had ever been inside of it is long gone, replaced by something glittering – beads. A rosary? Stiles could almost laugh out loud. “So what?” “I'm convinced,” Erica snaps, sarcasm so thick Stiles could drown in it. “Let's go through the list, shall we? You guys, me and Derek are so totally over and done,” Erica's Stiles impression is unfair – put upon rasp, a bit of a lisp, barely deeper than her own. “Or, the classic, I never want to see him again, or me and him are just bad for each other or I wish he would go and just stay gone for once, or -” “I remember!” Stiles cuts her off loudly, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “I remember every god damn second of it, okay?” “Sometimes I think you don't.” Her voice is quieting, in a way that suggests that the argument portion of this is winding down, and it'll turn into something far, far worse. Something Stiles fucking hates nearly as much as he thinks he hates Derek sometimes. “Sometimes I think when you look back on everything, you don't really look. You don't really think. You don't – you just...”

she shakes her head, and Stiles feels sad. “...You know I only care about you.” “I know that,” Stiles tries not to bite her head off with a snap, but it's hard. His throat feels tight, and the shock of seeing Derek's car sitting there is wearing off into just hurt and he feels like punching something. “And, fuck him, but I care about Derek, too. As one of your top three MySpace friends,” she winks at him, and Stiles huffs. It's been a long time since either of them, since anyone really, has been on MySpace. But Stiles could pull up his old page, and there Erica would be, sitting right behind Scott, her fifteen year old baby face leering out at him beside the flash of her camera in the mirror. “...I'm obligated to say fuck him. He's a dick, rip his skin off, cut his dick off, all of that. But he's...you know.” The alpha. Big man on top. The dad that only shows up on birthdays and holidays with expensive things and promises that he's sticking around this time just you wait and see and ruins Stiles' god damn life, and doesn't leave a note, and never calls again. He's that guy. Disappointment. “And because I care about the both of you, as your friend, I'm saying, no.” She doesn't have to explain what the no is referring to. “Not this time! Literally, don't. I cannot stress this enough, I can never, ever get through to either of you – but so help me, God, last time, I really thought I was going to have to hunt him down and kill him with my bare hands.” Stiles doesn't want to think about last time. He doesn't want to talk about last time. Last time was years ago, years, and that knowledge doesn't make him feel good. It doesn't feel as though time has passed and he's some adult now who can handle it. It feels like an entire lifetime has gone by and he's done nothing but wait. He hates that about himself – that Derek can still make him wait. “So, this time, let's keep it civil. At best. I prefer you two ripping each other's heads off than you two fucking,” she adjusts her rearview mirror, shifts in her seat. “Unbelievably, only one of those ever ends up with someone actually getting hurt.” Yeah. Only one of those ever ends in fucking carnage and destruction. When Stiles stays dead silent, Erica turns briefly to look at him before looking back to the road and shaking her head sadly. “I'm really god damn sorry about him. God, he's such an asshole.” More silence, and Erica puffs out a breath through her nose. “If I had any say in the matter, you know I'd – I'd say something.” “You always say something.” Which is true. All of them have tried to say something to Derek what must be a half dozen times each, by now – Allison in her soft spoken way, and Scott in his loud but justice-driven way, and Erica just loud. As if Stiles hasn't done the same more times than any of them can ever imagine, but the thing about Derek, is he just doesn't listen. Stiles doesn't know even after all this time if it's selfishness or something else, but it helps him sleep at night if he's able to convince himself that Derek is just a piece of shit, so that's usually what he sticks with.

“Yeah, but you know what I mean. I'd really say something, if I could. I'd go the hell in, if I could.” Stiles doesn't give a fuck. Pack dynamics, whatever the hell. “Yeah.” Silence descends, until Erica is slowing to a stop sign at a four way, and her blinker clicking to signal a left hand turn is the only sound in the car. For moments on end, even when there's no other cars as far as the eye can see, Erica sits and stares with a scowl on her face down the street, clenching and unclenching the steering wheel. Stiles doesn't even look in her direction. He just sits there and jiggles his leg, pointedly doesn't wonder what Derek's doing back, if he's here for just a day or longer, if he's got anywhere to stay, if he ever even for one second thought about calling Stiles. “You know you deserve better.” “Heard that before.” “It never seems to stick in that thick fucking head of yours, so I guess I'm gonna keep saying it until it does. Dumbass. You do. You deserve a healthy, legitimate relationship – not the biannual version of it.” “You know he's not the big bad wolf, right?” She gives him a look, finally steps on the gas, and doesn't answer that. **** “It's funny how Christmas brings out the worst in people,” Allison glares out the diner window and clutches a mug of coffee in her fingers. “Most wonderful time of the year – and yet, it turns people into little monsters.” “It depends on how you look at it,” Stiles says back, pushing the remains of his omelet around on his plate. “I, personally, love Christmas.” She half laughs. “As if I don't know that by now. Has anyone ever told you how weird that is, considering your personality?” Sure. Stiles is the aloof, pessimistic, sarcastic piece of shit of the bunch. Among his friend group, he's probably the last person anyone would suspect to be the Christmas person. Everyone has that one friend, or that one family member, who goes all the fuck in about Christmas, which starts on November first and doesn't end until January first of the following year. Stiles, to the untrained eye, does not seem like he would be that person. He is that person. Just not with Santa sweaters. Stiles likes Christmas cookies and Christmas trees and snow and hot chocolate and Christmas music, but he's not necessarily walking around covered in tinsel waving jingle bells around in the air. He just enjoys it, is all.

Most of the best things in his life have happened around Christmas time. His birthday, for starters, falls right around Thanksgiving every year, so it's always been a crisp and chilly fireplace type of affair. He had his first kiss under mistletoe, he got his first pet on a snowy December day, and he remembers countless nights at Scott's house camped out on the roof with blankets waiting for the first snow fall. Nearly all of his cherished, happy memories are covered in snow and Christmas lights, and Derek always comes back in December. It's been a couple Christmases, now, since the last time he showed up in a coat with a dufflebag slung over his shoulder, but it's half of why it wasn't so much a surprise to Stiles when he saw that car parked on the side of the street. Derek always comes back right on time for Christmas. He had told Stiles once that it has something to do with nostalgia, that being away from Beacon Hills around Christmas makes him sad and unhappy and miserable. Apparently, for two years in a row, not even that could draw him back. Stiles wonders how much time will have to pass until he can just...not care anymore. Derek could come back, or he could not, and it won't matter to Stiles either which way. Two years already, and Stiles still isn't there yet. “Anyone who doesn't like Christmas is weird in my book,” Stiles contends with no real venom, giving Allison a sly look. She does little more than huff – Allison dislikes Christmas because, for her, it just means that droves of family members she doesn't like or even particularly care for show up and invade her house. Apparently, no amount of cookies or presents is enough to cover up the fact that any number of people in that room would, without hesitation, put a bullet through her boyfriend's head. But, no matter. She goes quiet for a moment, stays quiet when the bill comes and she puts her half of the money out, purses her lips when Stiles starts scratching at a patch of drying ketchup on his white t shirt, and finally exhales a long breath. Sitting forward, she drapes her hands across the table, until they're almost reaching out to Stiles in a consoling gesture – Stiles blinks at them, before looking up to her face. He put on his best don't go there expression, but she talks over it. “You haven't brought it up,” she starts in an even, serious tone. The kind of tone that offers no wiggle room to get out of it. “So I guess I have to.” “Or, you could just leave it,” Stiles says under his breath. How he fucking wishes sometimes that everyone would just drop it. Him, most of all. “Oh, that I could.” A solemn smile crosses her face. “I know that we've been down this road and had this conversation a lot, but I think a united front is best.” United front meaning all of his friends ganging up on him, boxing him into a corner, and hypothetically punching him in the face for even entertaining the thought of getting near Derek. Ever again. Never mind the fact that Stiles hasn't even spoken to the dude since he's been back, much less laid eye on him. He hasn't asked anyone else if they've seen him, either. It's always like this whenever Derek gets back, this weird song and dance that's half avoidance and half ignoring the problem. Stiles has

started to wonder who even is the problem anymore – Stiles, or Derek. At this point, it's a coin toss in the air, dependent on the weather, and everyone's mood. Answering the question that he hasn't even asked, and didn't want to know the answer to either way, Allison says, “I saw him the other day, and he -” “Tch,” Stiles holds his hand up and gives her a warning look, at which she presses her lips down. “Don't even tell me.” She taps her fingers on the table top, one after the other in perfect succession, and they have a stare down. “It's been years, Stiles.” “I'm getting a little tired of having that thrown in my fucking face,” he snaps. “Can you really not even stand to hear about him, after all this time has gone by?” Time hasn't gone by, is the thing of it. Time never, ever keeps going where Derek is concerned. In Stiles' mind, it's like a wrinkle around which everything else continues past and ignores. His life goes on, and on, but Derek, even just hearing his name, makes Stiles feel eighteen again, as though he still hasn't moved from that exact spot where Derek left him two years ago. Allison gives him a sad, sad look, shaking her head as she tucks a dark curl behind her ear. “I wish I could give you advice, or something, but, Stiles – I don't know what that's like.” Nobody does. Sometimes Stiles thinks that no one ever will. Abruptly, interrupting Stiles' sad sack moment, Allison is inhaling a sharp breath and then rubbing her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Oh, boy...” she mutters mostly to her self, before peaking through her fingers to glare pointedly past Stiles' head to where the front door of the diner has just ting-tinged open. Already half knowing what he's going to see, Stiles turns around and makes eye contact with Derek Hale. It's funny how he looks exactly the same, just as grim faced and serious eyed as ever, in a black jacket with his hands stuffed firmly into the pockets. He makes a picture that could've been pulled straight up out of Stiles' memories, and for that, Stiles hates him. Stiles hates Derek for dozens upon dozens of things, but most of all, he hates him for the way he never fucking changes. Derek stands there for a moment, holding Stiles' eye contact. Behind him, Allison is chirping about something or other. Experience tells him that it's gotta be along the lines of maybe a talk would do the two of you some good, maybe I should go, maybe you two shouldn't get into a huge god damn screaming match in this very public place, so Stiles more or less just tunes it all out. His body tingles like it does before he makes any kind of rash decision, and then he bolts up out of his side of the booth, sliding his wallet along the top of the table to take it along with him. He

shoves it into his pocket, Allison says wait a minute, and then he's walking. In Derek's direction, yes, but his eyes remain glued to the bell hanging above the door, the festive garlands hanging all around it, and like this he can pretend that Derek is just part of another one of his memories. All red and silver and covered in snow, like every December he's ever held onto. Right as he's walking past, nearly brushing Derek's shoulder, he clenches his jaw. Doesn't even flick his eyes in Derek's direction. He reaches for the door handle, throws it open vindictively, and is walking outside into the chilly morning air. Derek says, like they're already in the middle of a conversation, as though the last they had two years ago hasn't ended yet, “believe it or not, I didn't come here just to torment you.” “You've got a natural talent,” Stiles has always been quick with retorts. Derek should know better by now than to goad him. “You pull it off well without even trying.” The door shuts behind him and he's in the parking lot clenching his fists at his sides. He walks pointedly with his shoulders in a tight line without even a glance backwards, trying to make it look easy. It isn't, is the thing of it, but of course it wouldn't be. It's the first time that Stiles has walked away from Derek instead of the other way around. A part of him tries to convince himself that it feels good, it feels like vindication and triumph or something stupid like that. Honestly, all it feels like is bitter. “I heard what happened,” Scott says as soon as Stiles answers the phone later on the same night. Stiles lifts his shoulder up so he can press the phone to his ear with no hands, rifling around in his drawers for his pajamas. “I can't believe he just showed up like that.” Scott has always been righteously indignant about nearly every thing Derek does or does not do where Stiles is concerned, most likely because he feels it's his duty as best friend to be indignant. I can't believe he did that and what an asshole and unbelievable!!! are all personal favorites of his whenever the situation calls for it. “When has he ever not just shown up,” Stiles says back in a mutter. He doesn't much want to talk about this, or think about it. He already has his sleeping pills out on his dresser next to a glass of water, so he can just go to sleep without having to lie awake staring at his ceiling and thinking. “Aside from all the times we've needed him?” Scott scoffs, smartly using that pronoun we instead of just Stiles. All the times Stiles has needed Derek, he's been miles away, unreachable, vanished. All the times that the pack has needed him, he's come running. Scott knows better, but he also knows better than to point it out. “Where does he even get off, stalking you down like that? Like he just has the right to see you, or something!” Stiles pinches the bridge of his nose and picks the phone up with his fingers again, but he doesn't say anything. “The only thing he has the right to do is fuck off. Right?”

“Right,” Stiles agrees more out of necessity than anything else. He wants this conversation to end quickly, he wanted it done before it even started. On the other line, Scott sighs. “Now I don't know what else to say.” Unlike the girls, Scott never has any deep wisdom on the situation to try and pass down to him. They never much discuss the actual feelings that Stiles might have in regards to Derek, what he thinks about, what he goes through. The only time that Stiles and Scott discuss Derek is when Scott is threatening to do him bodily harm, off on a tangent on how much he really and truly hates Derek Hale with every fiber of his being. In some ways, Stiles prefers talking with Scott about Derek. It's easier, more simple minded. “Not much to say,” Stiles answers, slamming his dresser drawer closed and moving into the bathroom. “Nothing is going to happen this time, and I'm staying the hell away from him.” “If he knows what's good for him, he'll stay away from you.” Staring at himself in the mirror, Stiles wonders if Derek really has any concept of what is or isn't good for him. Selfishly, he thinks that if Derek had any clue, he'd never want to leave Stiles behind. That's wishful thinking, and he knows better, so he blinks and doesn't meet his own eyes in the mirror as he picks up his toothbrush. “I'll tell him so myself.” Conversations with Scott and Derek have always been...strained at best. Neither of them have ever fully trusted the other, for differing reasons of course, but by now they at least know that they're not going to try to kill one another. Stiles is just the one thing they've still got to hate each other about, so they use that to their advantage. “You don't need to talk to him. At any point. I've got it all handled.” “Great,” Stiles says, squeezing toothpaste across the bristles and hoping he accidentally drops his phone into the toilet to get away from Scott. Another sigh from Scott, the long-suffering what am I going to do with you sigh that Stiles knows so well. “I'm – you know. Sorry about all this.” “I'll see you tomorrow,” Stiles says this before he says something else, something stupid. He hangs up before he hears whatever it is that Scott has to say back to that, and then he brushes his teeth. He avoids his own eyes, stares pointedly down into the sink, watches the water as it washes away the mess he makes. When he's done, he slides his toothbrush back into its rightful place, and then grips the edges of the sink with his hands and heaves out a sigh of his own. Truthfully, Stiles doesn't even know what he's going to do with himself. He's sad. Sometimes sad is all poetic and deep and moving, but this particular kind of sad – alone in his bathroom at ten o'clock at night refusing to look at himself in the mirror – this isn't anything. He thinks he might start crying just for the hell of it, when he hears rustling outside his bathroom window. For a moment, he thinks it must be a raccoon running around in the trees or maybe even

a bird, but the sounds get louder, and heavier, almost. The kind of sound a tiny raccoon or bird couldn't make even if they tried. Scrunching his eyebrows together, he approaches the window, wiping his mouth with the length of his arm. If there really is a murderer out there, he does not want his body to be found with toothpaste foam on the sides of his mouth. Picking up the only weapon he can find – the plunger – he wields it like a baseball bat and glares into the night. Peaking out, he sees the empty tree branches jerking back and forth in the wind, the one lone street light that still works on his street flickering on and off, his Jeep parked untouched in the driveway alongside his nosy downstairs neighbor's old car. Veering his eyes to the left, he sees the woods, as dead as they've ever been, no signs of movement. He starts to step away from the window to write it all off as his imagination, when a face thrusts itself right up against the glass. Stiles yells, staggers backwards, and nearly sends his plunger through the window to shatter the glass and jab whoever the hell that is directly in the eyes. Instead, he loses his grip on it and it tumbles into the bathtub, leaving Stiles defenseless and flailing for a moment This all happens in the span of maybe five seconds, and then his brain finally registers the familiar face, and then flips through his mental Rolodex of names to assign Derek to it, and then Stiles is moving. Back towards the window, right as Derek is trying to push it open from the outside. He manages to get an inch, his fingers peaking inside, before Stiles slams his hands down on it as hard as possible so it smacks closed, barely missing chopping Derek's fingers off. Looking Derek directly in the eyes, he flips the lock. Derek grits his teeth, shaking his head from side to side like he's disappointed or disgusted with how childish Stiles is being. Like Stiles could give a fuck. If there's a lesson he's learned since meeting Derek, it's that the worst possible thing to do is let Derek inside of his home. Once he lets Derek inside, Derek starts being Derek. And once that happens, Stiles will start being Stiles. And from there, it truly can only ever end one way. Stiles isn't supposed to be doing that this time. He reaches up to pull the blind down to once and for all lock Derek out entirely, and this is apparently the move that snaps whatever remaining control that Derek was exerting over himself. Before Stiles has the chance to react, Derek is throwing the window open. The lock snaps, goes skittering across the tiles of Stiles' bathroom floor, and the wind blows harsh and cold through the wide open window. Shocked, even though he really should've known, Stiles can only sputter for a moment and stagger back from the window until his back smacks against the opposite wall to rattle the picture frame he has hanging there. Derek is stepping inside, dropping one leg down, and then the other, until his entire body is slithering inside, unwelcome and un-god damn-invited. Like he fucking owns the place. “Get out,” Stiles hisses with as much conviction as he can muster. “Literally, how fucking dare

you? I don't want you here.” Derek adjusts his jacket, fiddles with the collar, and sets his jaw. “I'll pay for that.” “Out.” Stiles points his finger to the window, and when Derek doesn't move, he does it again. He can't say anything else, can't get his vocal chords to form any other words, and really, he shouldn't say anything else. Anything aside from fuck off and all its variations would be very, very dangerous right about now. “You wanna be mad at me? That's fine,” he looks around at Stiles' bathroom, curiously almost, but with that same scowl on his face. “Mad at you,” Stiles repeats, breaking his own rule and giving into the fight. “Mad at you? Fucking mad?” “Stiles -” “I transcended mad by the fifth month you still hadn't called me! Or written! Fucking morse coded! Carrier pigeon!” Derek steps forward, reaching his hand out like he's going to grab Stiles' shoulder or arm or some part of his person, and Stiles staggers backwards so hard it's like the guy has a knife in his hand. “You get the hell out of my apartment before I call my father,” he warns in a low voice, not looking Derek in the face, or the eyes, or even really at him at all. Half a laugh, a startled kind of sound, bubbles up from Derek's throat, and he doesn't exactly look convinced. “Oh, you think I won't do it?” Stiles taunts, reaching for the phone he has tucked away in his pajama bottoms. “Fucking try me.” Again, Derek jerks forward, and Stiles is unlocking his phone and getting ready to speed dial, but Derek wraps his fingers around Stiles' wrist and the phone clatters to the ground. One thing that Stiles has always known about Derek is that he would never, not with a gun to his fucking head, physically harm Stiles in any way shape or form – no matter what Stiles might think of him, that's just something he knows. He has never, however, been above acting like a fucking nutcase in all other senses. Breaking windows and punching his fist through walls and this, right now. “Get off me,” Stiles snarls, and Derek does as he's asked, releasing Stiles' wrist and watching him move away with a dark look on his face. “You think I came all the way back to Beacon Hills after years -” Stiles starts trying to yell something, but Derek talks straight over it, “...just to come back and harass you?” “I'm feeling very fucking harassed right about now!” He gestures to his broken window, his

phone on the ground, the fact that Derek more or less has Stiles backed into a corner in his own god damn apartment. “Seeing as how you won't talk to me any other way, I did what I had to.” Stiles cackles. He cannot physically help it – he fucking cackles. “Oh, and how does one get you on the god damn phone? Shall I take to tracking you down and breaking your windows?” Derek gives Stiles this terrifying look, like any second he's going to shift into an actual wolf and start chewing up the shower curtain. Stiles, having seen the same look a million times before, doesn't even flinch. He just raises his chin in the air and flicks his eyebrows like I honestly dare you. Derek doesn't take the bait. He's been alpha long enough that a fight with his ex-boyfriend, no matter how insane it might turn out, does not push him to losing his cool. He inhales a deep breath through his nose, blinks his eyes a few times, and looks Stiles dead in the face. “I came back for a reason.” “Please don't bore me,” Stiles, not scared in the least even though his entire body is ringing with anxious energy, slides past Derek towards his open bathroom door and walks out. Behind him, he thinks he hears Derek gingerly closing the window as best as he can, and then the cold air stops pouring in and sucking the money straight out of his wallet in the form of a heat bill. In the hallway, Stiles keeps talking. “I just missed everything. I just wanted to come back home for Christmas. I just missed you, baby, I love you so much, I want to build my pack up stronger, I need your help, Stiles, please help me, you're so smart, I -” Derek wraps his fingers around Stiles' upper arm and whirls him around, so they're both standing underneath the one lone ceiling light in Stiles' tiny hallway. In this lighting, the shadows across Derek's face are ominous and eerie. The way they highlight his cheekbones and send his eyelashes in long black lines across his skin, how they make his eyes look. He's beautiful, and it's something Stiles has always known, but never gotten fully used to. “All your excuses, I've heard them a thousand times,” Stiles says in a low voice, right into Derek's face. “I'm tired of you, I hate you, please fuck the hell off.” “I don't have any excuses. You think I'm stupid enough I'd ever try to get you to forgive me this time?” “Then what are you doing here?” Derek's hand is still gripping onto Stiles' arm, and the fingers tighten, just slightly, as though he expects Stiles to whip backwards or slap him in the face at any second. Honestly, Stiles might, and Derek's smart enough to recognize the look in his eyes. Swallowing, Derek looks away, at the wall next to them. He grits his teeth and glowers. “Something bad.”

Stiles is about to open up his mouth and say something like it always is with you, but he stops himself at the last second, finally putting together the pieces of this entire scenario. The look on Derek's face, the intensity with which he broke into Stiles' bathroom like it was his only option left, something bad. “What is it?” Stiles prompts, voice going only slightly softer than before. “Are you in trouble or something?” Of course the very first place Derek would come running were he truly in some deep shit would be Stiles' house. Of course. Stiles has always been the person that Derek could rely on but never bothers to except for when it suits him best. Derek's eyes have bags under them. He's exhausted, and he won't look Stiles in the eyes, and his fingers keep getting tighter on Stiles' arm. Nearly like he's very afraid to let go. “We all are.” “What are you -” Stiles tries to move away, but Derek holds him in place. “Derek, you can't just break into my house and yell at me and go all fucking ominous and quiet, look at me!” Derek does, like his eyes are magnetized at Stiles' words. “What is the problem? What do you mean we're all in trouble?” “Something bad happened,” words quiet, nearly inaudible. “I think I really fucked up this time.” Derek is in distress, and Stiles is right there, so he puts his hand on Derek's shoulder and traces his eyes along his face again and again. He shakes his head, tries to make sense of what Derek is saying, that abysmal fucking look in his eyes. “You're scaring the shit out of me.” Like it's being forced out of him, like he's gone around and around with it in his head and finally realized it was his one and only option, he says, “I need your help, Stiles. I wouldn't come here if it weren't – if I had -” “Okay,” Stiles breathes, because what else is he meant to do? History between them is so long and deep that Stiles knows when it's time to push their personal shit aside and recognize that there are bigger things going on. “I – okay.” “I'm so sorry, but I'm – I needed to come back.” He swallows, seems to lean in to the hand that Stiles has put on his shoulder. “If I thought you'd be okay, all of you, then I wouldn't have ever –“ “Derek,” Stiles cuts him off evenly, shaking him once. They meet eyes again, and Derek's seem so far away, in this moment, that Stiles can't help but dread what he's about to say. All the things that they've been through together, not just the two of them but the pack as well, all the monsters, all the sleepless nights, all the fights, all the loss – he's never seen that look in Derek's eyes before. “I don't know what it is,” he begins, and then he clears his throat as if trying to knock the fear clean out of his voice. “But it's here because of me.” ****

“Because you're a piece of shit alpha?” Erica leans over the coffee table in Scott and Allison's house, leering at Derek in a way that suggests she might just flip the entire thing over, books and mugs of steaming coffee and all, just to launch over it to tackle Derek to the literal death. Stiles has often wondered what Erica would be like as an alpha – sometimes, he shudders to fucking think. “Wow. I'm floored.” Lydia makes a face like she doesn't exactly disagree with the sentiment, pressing the edge of her mug to her lips and raising her eyebrows. Yikes, but true, is what Stiles reads in her face. “Let's not go around pointing fingers,” Allison says pragmatically, holding her hands out like she suspects a fight will break out at any second. A fight really is about to break out, no matter how calmly Allison tries to wrangle the group at large – this is the first time most of these people have seen Derek in, again, years, and last time he left...well. To put it simply, he didn't leave on good terms. With anyone. He didn't leave on any terms. He didn't fucking say anything. He was just gone, and gone, and gone still years later. People didn't respond well, and apparently, still aren't responding well to this day. Erica lifts her arm and points a slender finger directly at Derek, giving Allison a blank look. “This is his fault,” she shrugs, dropping her hand into her lap. “Sorry, but it's true.” Allison rubs her forehead, Lydia sips her coffee, Scott sits there glaring at Derek like he's just risen out of the depths of Hell to torment them all, and Stiles tries to vanish deep into the couch cushions. This is not how he wanted his first week of December to go. Not at all. “It's the same story as every other time. Some weird thing with unknown origins wants us all dead, we freak out, do research, oops it's really evil and really powerful, we kill it, Lydia breaks a nail -” “Lydia saves everyone's lives,” she corrects coolly. “...and then it's all over. And we probably do it again.” Erica flips a curl over her shoulder and turns to give Stiles the side eye. He pretends like he doesn't notice. “The only difference here is that now it's not just some random freak occurrence or just the nemeton getting mad again. This time there's a solid and definite person to blame, and for my mental health, I will continue to lay the blame on him.” “I agree,” Scott chimes in. He still hasn't taken his daggering eyes off of Derek for even half a second. “You said it yourself, Derek. None of this would have happened, if you had just -” he doesn't finish, and he doesn't have to. “I admitted it,” Derek says, arms crossed from his spot behind Stiles' head. “I'd like to hear you say it,” Erica raises her eyebrows. “I want to hear, I'm a massive dickbag who doesn't take his responsibilities seriously even though I'm the one who wanted the power

in the first place and bit all those teenagers to begin with -” “Erica...” Allison warns, giving Derek a nervous look. “She's not wrong,” Derek says simply. There's no real emotion there in his voice, no venom or malice or even resignation. It's just out there, like fact. Erica isn't wrong. Derek went and fucked up. Repeatedly, and so fantastically it's almost hard to believe. “I made a pack, and abandoned it.” Stiles sits there, and he tries to feel good about the fact that Derek is getting what he maybe deserves. He tries to feel like he's won, because all those times Derek disappeared and left them (specifically Stiles) behind, he was just fucking up. Now he has to account for it. Stiles thinks that since he's done nothing but scream about how much he hates Derek, he should feel relief that everyone else is catching on, now. He doesn't, though. He feels sorry. Before anyone can start snarling or ruining Allison's furniture, Lydia smacks her mug down ont the coffee table and sits up straight. “And that's a problem.” Derek turns and looks out the window. Stiles wants to throw a pillow at the side of his face. “If I had known it was -” “Sure,” Stiles finally speaks up, and it's the first time in so long that everyone turns to look at him. “The potential hell demon coming to steal the power from a weakened pack, you stick around for, but anything else -” “Can we not have Dr. Phil relationship counseling right now?” Erica hisses, nudging Stiles hard in the side to say shut the fuck up. “Apparently I'm at risk. Like, my life. I feel that takes precedence over the two of you, for once.” Derek and Stiles stare at each other, and Derek is the first to look away, like he's always been. “I was never meant to be an alpha,” Derek continues on, pretending like Stiles hadn't spoken, and that's most likely for the best. “I didn't know how to be one. I still don't. I never knew what would happen if alpha and pack were separated for too long.” “There's a lot of power in wolf packs,” Lydia is reading something off of her phone, maybe research or maybe some stupid text message, it's never quite clear with her, but she can multitask with the best of them, so Stiles doesn't care. “When the proper protocol isn't followed and the ranks get fucked up, all that power is left more or less for the taking.” Allison runs her hands down her jeans and looks at Scott, for moral support most likely. “The pack is weak?” “It isn't a pack,” Lydia says simply, one shoulder rising. “It's power with no structure. Power left unchecked is power that can be stolen.”

“But what does that mean?” Erica shakes her head, like she just doesn't get it. Derek runs his hands down his face, stares out the window some more with his brow furrowed, and Stiles knows the answer. “It means that something wants to take advantage of the situation.” He glares at his hands. “Three werewolves, a hunter, a banshee -” “And an assett,” Allison finishes for him, giving him a tiny smile that Stiles doesn't return. “So, we're like a buffet right now? Just sitting out here like ducks waiting to have the life sucked out of us.” “All that energy sitting in one place, unguarded it's -” Lydia waves her hand in the air like she can't quite find the words just yet. “...hard to resist. Killing one wolf is decent, killing an alpha is great, but an entire pack?” “What kind of creature would willingly try to kill off an entire pack?” Scott asks, looking appropriately petrified, now. “It seems suicidal to me. Nothing would be worth that.” It's quiet for a moment, everyone looking at one another in a very familiar way. It's the way they always look at each other when they find themselves backed into a corner again. Afraid, unsure, but determined, somehow. They're the good guys. This is what they do. No matter how scary something gets, there's no backing away, and there's no hiding. All they can do for a moment is stare at one another and know that they only have one option. “What is it?” Allisons asks, like she really doesn't want to. Stiles doesn't want to know, and he bets that no one else in the room wants to, either. But they have to. Derek sighs through his nose, looks at the ground. “I don't know.” “You saw it,” Lydia points out. “You said it tried to kill you.” “The first time you saw a werewolf, did you know what it was?” He snaps, and Lydia purses her lips at the tone. “I've never seen anything like that, all right? It scared the shit out of me enough to come back to a town full of people who hate me, and that's all I know.” Lydia picks her mug of coffee up again, drinks it down to the last drop. “I guess it's myself, Stiles, and the books again.” “I guess it's life or death all over again,” Allison mutters, rubbing one of her temples and leaning against Scott's shoulder. “Sometimes, I really, really hate this town. Maybe Derek's been onto something all these years.” The difference is, hate it this entire room of people might, but none of them could ever really leave it. Nevermind the fact that Boyd and Isaac are dead, and nevermind that the lot of them have seen their lives flash before their own eyes more times than they could count – they cannot leave. Allison can't because she's sworn in as a hunter, and she's so fucking scared of what her

family would do if she weren't there sometimes to stop them. Lydia can't because every time she's tried, the voices keep her wide awake at night, calling her and calling her. Erica can't because underneath everything, she's terrified to be alone, and always has been. And Stiles and Scott stay because everyone else does. But, Derek. He can leave this place behind without a backward glance, and that makes him other, when compared to the rest of his ragtag pack. It took Stiles long enough, but he think he finally realized that Derek just goes through phases. The way other people go through times where they only listen to one album again and again or only smoke one kind of cigarettes, Derek goes through these with places. With people. It kills him sometimes to think that Derek has only ever seen him as one of those phases. Even if Stiles ever truly was like the moon to Derek, a pull for him, it was only ever for days out of the month, and never the entire length of it. Gibbous or crescent or waxing or waning – it doesn't matter. He only ever comes back when the pull gets too much, and Stiles … he doesn't think he's ever really been the reason. He isn't this time, and he wasn't the last time, or the time before that. “I'm telling you this once, and then I won't say it again, because there are more important things,” Erica stands and adjusts her leather coat, giving Derek a dead-eyed stare. “I'm so fucking mad at you, I really think I hate you, this time.” With those final words, she grabs Stiles by the shoulder, and hauls him off towards the front door. Lydia stands and collects her purse, following them out. “My house has more books, I think,” she says to their backs as the front door is opening. “I'll have mom order a pizza, some pasta. From the shitty place because it's so late, but – carbs are carbs.” “Yes,” Stiles agrees, clearing his throat and going in for a joke, since it's the only thing he ever really knows how to do. “I want to die fat, if I have to die at all.” “Right?” Lydia agrees, shooting Derek one last look. She doesn't say anything to him, and neither does anyone else.

To say that this is not how he imagined spending his first week of December would be a fucking understatement. Erica spearing mouthfuls of baked ziti with one hand while the other flips through pages in an ancient tome, Lydia meticulously looking through her own translated pages of archaic whooseywhatsies about evil, and Stiles slamming back coffee to stay awake while the words on the pages start blurring into one another... This is not Christmas. To put it lightly. “I can't fucking believe this is happening,” he mutters, more to himself than to the girls, but both of them look up from their work. It's the first time any of them have said anything that wasn't could be a soulsucker or a crazed alpha or something that doesn't even have a fucking name in hours, so they're probably excited at the possibility for a brief reprieve. “Nothing like this

ever happens this time of year.” “Monsters are summer,” Erica agrees, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand. “Or during finals week.” “Monsters are not Christmas,” he thrusts his hands out and huffs. “It's not the usual way of things,” Lydia shuffles her papers and looks annoyed. “But, then, since Derek decided to not do things the usual way, I guess that makes sense.” “I hate him,” Erica gobbles more pasta and talks with her mouth full. “I know it was my choice, and I – but do you know how much I sometimes wish I was in grad school?” Feeling somehow defensive, Stiles straightens his shoulders and glares at her. “Do you wish you still had seizures so bad you'd wind up in the hospital?” There's quiet for a moment. It was a low blow, and Stiles knows it, and from the way Lydia raises her eyebrows and widens her eyes he'd say that she knows it, too. Nobody ever really mentions the reasons why Derek picked the kids that he picked all those years ago, and the topic of Erica's former life has always been more or less off limits – all the times they'd rail into Derek for what an ass he is, they never brought that up. Stiles half expects Erica to throw the remains of her pasta at his head and start screaming at him, but instead, she puts her fork down and wipes her fingers on a napkin. “That's fair,” she says it like she only just made up her mind that it is. “I don't know why you'd want to come to his defense about anything, but that's fair.” “I'm not defending him,” Stiles says curtly, staring down at a picture of a green horned monster that apparently has the ability to melt flesh off its victims to get down to the bone. “You don't seem like you're that put out.” “I'm sitting in Lydia's basement with a fucking demon skull staring at me -” he gestures to the object in question, a thing they got out of a fight from years ago that Lydia for whatever reason kept, “reading about all the ways I could wind up getting killed in the next few days, and you think I'm not that put out?” “I just want to know why, when it all comes down to it,” she picks up a new book and slaps it down in front of her, hard enough that Lydia's papers go scattering and she has to collect them with a huff, “you still are on his side, no matter what he's gone and done this time.” “On his side?” Stiles rolls his eyes. “I want to go back in time and take back ever even meeting Derek Hale,” she gestures to him, “do you?” Stiles opens his mouth, the words of god damn course waiting there somewhere in his throat, but

they don't come out. He thinks about the first time Derek left and how he waited, thinks about the second time he left and how he threw a rock through that stupid old house out in the woods, thinks about the last time he left, and...he tries to mean it. In the name of his sanity, he should really, really wish he had never met Derek. But, like most things that Stiles should do where Derek is concerned, he just doesn't. He's never gotten far enough into guilt, or anger, or misery, to ever really despise Derek the way he should. All his friends see it plain as day, Erica and Lydia right now staring at him in pity and disbelief as he stays mute silent, and it humiliates him. “There's a monster out there,” Lydia says in a quiet voice, looking between Erica and Stiles. Erica is staring at him like she doesn't know whether she wants to scream at him or wrap him up in a big bear hug, and Stiles doesn't know if he could really handle either one right now, so he's thankful for the interruption. “Derek seemed pretty scared of it, so maybe we should just focus on that. Okay?” A moment of silence, and then Stiles is heaving out a sigh and turning back to the books. “I haven't found anything.” “Me, either.” Erica has her teeth grit as she says this. She's holding back from a fight. Stiles is grateful. It's not like Derek has given them a whole lot to go on. The most information they have is that Derek is more or less petrified of whatever it was, it tried to kill him, it looked like a human at first and then suddenly wasn't, and it has – as Derek himself put it – finger-legs. As in, fingers that get so long they're like legs. Like a spider, or something. Stiles has tried not to fucking think about it. Lydia purses her lips, gives one last long look at all the pages she has out in front of her. “I'm having a cigarette,” she pushes her chair out and heads for the stairs. “Try not to kill each other while I'm gone.” Erica and Stiles sit there. Erica looks at him like she's only barely holding back from saying something else, and Stiles doesn't want to get into a fight with her. Of all the people that Stiles has gotten into fights with over Derek, Erica is the one he's argued with the most. It must drive her crazy, for whatever reason, that Stiles just simply cannot let Derek go, no matter what he does. Scott and Allison and Lydia, and even Stiles' father, they all get mad, and yell at him, and ask him why – but you'd think Erica takes it personal from how the two of them can go at it. So, deciding to take the moral high road, Stiles pushes his own chair out and follows Lydia up the steps. Outside, Lydia is on her porch swing, pushing herself slowly back and forth. It's dark, and all Stiles can see is the shadows across her face and the orange glow at the end of her cigarette. She turns to him once the door is closed behind them, and gestures to the pack sitting in the empty spot beside her. “Want one?”

“Yeah,” he says, approaching her with a sigh. “Are you scared?” “Scared?” Lydia hands him a cigarette as soon as he's close enough, and he takes it. “My life is in mortal danger all because you and Scott McDumbass went out in the woods one night to find a dead body.” Stiles doesn't even bother feeling offended. All of them always blame that exact moment as the source of literally every single one of their problems, and neither Scott nor Stiles feel guilty about it anymore. What's the point? Shit happens, they live it now, thinking about it is useless. “...typical Tuesday night,” she finishes on a shrug as Stiles lights up. “Are you scared?” He sits down on the seat beside her and it creaks underneath their combined weight – it's the only sound for a mile or so, all the way out here on Lydia's mother's property. “It'd be weird to not be.” “If it weren't us it would be weird,” she shakes her head. “But we are us. Think I'm starting to go numb to terror.” They swing back and forth slowly, just listening to each other breathe and inhale and exhale smoke, watching as it disappears in lines and rings into the yard. “I don't think it's completely Derek's fault.” He says it, and it's out there. “I can't say that to Erica, you know, or even Scott or Allison, but I just...” he doesn't know what he just. He doesn't know what he really even means, not yet. She nods her head. “I have never blamed him for leaving. I mean, I have, but – not like that. I blame him for a lot of stuff, but leaving this town isn't one of them.” “I'd go if I could,” he ashes. “Me, also.” Stiles has always imagined that Lydia would've been the very first to go. The thing is, once you've seen the shit that you see out here in Beacon Hills, you can't go anywhere else and pretend like you're normal. Lydia, least of all. “And he didn't know,” she gives him a look like she's doing him a favor, and she really is. One lone voice of sanity and reason out of the entire pack is really all he needs to not go off the fucking rails. Derek didn't know, couldn't have possibly known. It was not his fault that his family all died, and it isn't his fault his uncle went crazy and tried to kill them all, and all of these events that lead up to this exact moment, Lydia and Stiles on Lydia's mother's front porch smoking cigarettes while something out there might be watching them, he couldn't have predicted the outcome. “Something coming to kill us is, like...it nearly doesn't matter what the reason is. I don't – I don't want to...” She sighs. “You don't want to hate him for this.” She doesn't say, there are so many fucking reasons you should hate him, Stiles, and she doesn't say it'd be best if you did, and she doesn't

say this situation we're in is all his fault and you want to bring personal feeings into it? She just says it like fact, which it is. It just is. “Fine. Don't. But he's still a scumbag.” “He's not a scumbag. He's just a guy.” She snorts quietly to herself. “Right. All guys are scumbags.” “That's not what I mean,” Stiles says, leaning back and away. He ashes the cigarette, glares out into the empty night, the woods beyond. “It means that when this is all over, he's going to go out and find someone, because everyone finds someone, and he's going to be a normal fucking guy, or, like, the best guy ever for this mystery person, and not a scumbag. He isn't some huge fuck up who can't love anyone, you know? He just – can't love me, maybe.” He drags, long and hard, and breathes out the smoke. “That doesn't make him a scumbag. It probably makes him smart.” Lydia blinks steadily at him. Her cigarette has a pile of ash that she hasn't flicked away yet, and she looks as though she's almost forgotten it's in her fingers at all. “That's a load of horse shit.” She stands up from the porch swing, jabs her cigarette down onto the railing, and then leaves it there for the wind to blow away. “After myself, you're the smartest person I know. You're also a fucking idiot.” These types of, for lack of a better word, roasts from Lydia Martin are so commonplace that Stiles can't do much except finish his cigarette and shake his head. No use arguing with her. Lydia has a tendency to be right, but on this particular subject, Stiles can't imagine how she could be. It has to be the reason that Derek kept leaving – he had to have wanted to go out there and find something else, someone else. Be a thing that someone else could rely on. Back at home the next night, after an entire night and half a morning wading through books and websites and ancient whatever the hells with nothing to show for it, Stiles tries to salvage what he can of what was supposed to be the best month of the year. He plugs in his Charlie Brown looking Christmas tree and leaves the rest of the lights off, slicing off circles of his roll of Santa cookies and eating them raw while the television plays in the background. All the same, he finds himself glancing out his window at the dark every few minutes, anxiety ruining his entire night. He doesn't know what he's going to do about anything. About his potentially imminent death, about his friends, about Derek. Nevermind his shopping list. “This sucks,” he says out loud to himself around a mouthful of cookie dough. It really, really does suck. This isn't very fucking festive at all. Those other times that Derek came back, it was never like this. It was bad, of course it was, at first, with all his friends trying to protect him and keep them away from each other, yelling at Derek and yelling at him and making a whole big thing out of it. It was always bad at first. And then it – wouldn't be so bad anymore. Once they gave back in again to what they all knew was inevitable either way, it would be some of the best times of Stiles' life. Snow and presents and hot chocolate and s'mores and sex and movies. Each time, Stiles would convince himself

that this would be the time, and Derek would stay this time, because things would always end up so good that Stiles couldn't imagine how Derek could ever want to leave it. Of course, he was always wrong, and his dreams never quite came true, but they were good to hold onto. This time isn't like that. It just isn't. There's something palpably different this time around, and it's not just because of the finger-legs. At the moment, he doesn't even want to reminisce on the old times, even though last Christmas after Derek still hadn't shown back up it was more or less all he did, scarfing down the leftovers from the dinner and sitting alone in his stupid apartment. All he wants to do now is just not think about it. He wants to kill a monster. Maybe two monsters. Right as he's poking around in his fridge for some leftover lasagna to heat up for dinner, he gets three loud knocks on his door. It sounds a lot like the way Derek knocks, actually, so he's about to ignore it – but then he remembers that if he doesn't open up, Derek will most likely crawl his way in through the window he broke last time he was here, so accepting his fate, he sighs and shuts his fridge. He peers out through his peep hole, absolutely expecting to see Derek glaring right back in at him, but instead sees a teenage girl with blonde hair standing on his stoop, examining the wreath he hung up last week. Figuring her innocuous and probably selling something, he unlocks his deadbolt and opens up for her. The cold air blasts him, so he wraps his arms around his mid section and appraises her. “Hi!” She caws, waving a sign up sheet in his face while the wind blows her scarf around her rosy cheeks. “My school is having a -” “Is it cookies?” He interrupts her, leaning over to try and get a better look at the pamphlets she has in her hands. “Or is it wrapping paper? Cookies, I'll take. Wrapping paper -” he points to the door right down the way from his, “my neighbor will take.” She always buys her wrapping paper exclusively from charity organizations. “It's cookies,” she promises him, smiling wide and friendly. As she tries to open up her catalogue to show him, the wind rustles it this way and that, and she laughs a little nervously. “Peanut butter crisps, dark chocolate peppermint -” she shivers, and her fingers are red raw from the cold. Stiles opens up his door wider, beckoning at her with one arm – she's probably been out here wandering the streets peddling her wares for hours, mindless of the cold. Stiles remembers when he used to sign up to sell cookies in high school, he'd be so determined to win the grand prize of a ski trip he'd nearly kill himself with frostbite attempting to sell more boxes than anyone else. “You wanna come in? I'll probably get a few.” Boxes of cookies are the easiest and quickest gifts to get anyone – his co-workers he doesn't know that well, for starters. Maybe just to be a dick, Stiles will buy a box for Derek and that'll be the only gift he gets. The acquaintance gift. She grins at him, and ducks her head once in a nod. “Thanks.”

Inside they go, and Stiles leads her to the kitchen where a table and a couple of chairs stand waiting for them. She hovers right next to a chair, drops her catalogues down on top of the table, and then just stands there. Stiles clears his throat. “Want some hot chocolate?” “Yes.” “I've got a few different kinds, actually,” he turns his back to her, opening up the cupboard closest to his fridge. “Candy cane, s'mores, mint truffle -” Something clatters to his left, something that sounds suspiciously like the pans sitting in his drying rack collapsing on top of each other, and by the time he's turning around to see what she's doing, he's been clobbered over the head with the back of a frying pan. The hit isn't hard enough to knock him out – nearly, he thinks, if the way his vision goes black for just a second as he goes slamming back against the nearest wall is anything to go by – but it's hard enough to send him sprawling down onto the ground. It's incredibly, incredibly jarring to one second be offering a teenage girl some hot chocolate to warm up and the next be lying on the floor blinking at the ceiling, so it takes him a second to even come back to his own head. He touches the place where he got hit, feels warm blood on his fingers, and groans. “Oh, my God,” he says, pulling his upper half up so he's leaning back against the fridge. When he looks up, he finds the cookie girl holding the pan in one hand, staring at him with no expression on her face. They blink at each other. “Why do I get the feeling there are no cookies?” She drops the pan on the ground with a clatter, steps towards him. “There were never any cookies,” he mutters, attempting to move back and away from her, but he's in a corner. He's got no place to go. Abruptly, she's squatting down and cocking her head to the side in a very inhuman motion – her neck should snap with the ferocity she does it, the way it almost looks like her head is about to fall clean off her body. Stiles swallows, and all he can think about, bizarrely, is that scene in the Exorcist where Linda Blair's head goes all the way round, three hundred and sixty degrees. He used to think that was fucking hilarious, back when he'd watch that on Halloween with his friends. It's safe to say the chuckles are all dying out now. “You wouldn't happen to have...” he clears his throat, scrabbles his fingers on the linoleum trying to get leverage, while she just stares at him, “...like, finger-legs, would you?” When she doesn't say anything, still, he goes on. “I'm begging you for a no, here.” “You know who I am,” she says, her voice still the same from before – but Stiles knows that's not what her real voice sounds like. He highly doubts it's a she, even. “I don't. You're not very famous, I guess, because we couldn't find you in any of the books,” he

raises his eyebrows, blood still trickling slowly out of his head wound, making him feel fuzzy. “Big ego you got.” Undeterred by Stiles' goading, she grabs him by his wrist, Stiles only praying her fingers are still human as she does it, and bodily starts dragging him across the floor. He struggles, of course he does, but it's no use. He kicks his legs, tries using his free hand to grab onto the wall, the floor, the chairs, anything, but he goes all the way through the kitchen and onto the carpet of his living room. He leaves a small trail of blood in his wake, jerky along the floors and looking like a picture from every crime scene he's ever laid eyes on. “I was going to save you for the finale,” she explains conversationally, as though she's not pulling a grown man nearly twice her size across his own apartment floor with little to no effort on her part, “I thought I'd weed all your friends out until it was just you.” She pulls his body against the wall opposite where his tree sits, but keeps ahold of his wrist. Again, he struggles fruitlessly, and she acts like he's not moving at all. “I'm a great closer,” he says somewhat hysterically, “ask anyone, I can end the show like none other, I'm really – not that great as an opener, trust me.” Ignoring him, she pulls a set of handcuffs out from her fuzzy sweater – a demon in a fuzzy unicorn sweater and Hello Kitty scarf, it doesn't get much more fucking Twilight Zone than this – and clicks one onto the wrist she still has. “You're useless,” she states, and Stiles nods along. “I'm pointless! This, right now? Waste of time!” She attaches the other half of the cuffs to Stiles' radiator, and it's burning. He has no choice but to press his arm against it, and it feels like dipping his skin into a pot of boiling water for a second. He thinks about his dad telling him to buy a cover for this thing, and feels like punching himself for not just doing it. It's a stupid thing to think right now. “Your friends are all powerful, and you're just -” she smiles at him, the same way she had when she was just selling cookies, and it's eerie, to know what she is, now. “...what's that word? An assett.” If he wasn't scared before, he is now. She bends down again, getting right into his personal space. Face so close to his that he can feel her breath across his cheeks, and he tries to lean away, but doesn't lower his eyes. “You're the easiest to pick off. In a way, it makes sense to get rid of you first of all,” she presses a finger underneath his chin and examines him steadily, like she's trying to x-ray straight through his skin. “I wanted to save you for last because I knew he'd protect you more than the rest.” There's no need for her to drop names for him to figure out who she's referring to. Stiles grits his teeth. “I think you're a few episodes behind,” he tries to maneuver his chin away from her hand,

“me and him are over.” Like he hasn't spoken, she continues on. “Killing you is easiest. I just didn't realize how important you were. You see -” the finger on his chin turns sharper, harsher, like it's growing a knife out of it, and Stiles feels himself bleeding there, now, as well, “you've got nothing for me to take. I'll drain the power out of each and every one of your friends, Derek Hale last of all, but you...are empty. Useless.” When she pulls her hand away, Stiles very suddenly realizes that Derek...was not wrong. “Oh, God,” he hisses, staring at the tree branch looking things that are uncomfortably close to his flesh. No wonder Derek couldn't think of any other words to describe them as – there really fucking isn't. They move just the way fingers do, is the disturbing bit. Or, the way spider-legs do. They crawl across Stiles' legs for a second, and he's powerless to do anything about it. It feels so, so disgusting, terrifying, and he can't move. His arm is burning against the radiator, he can't free himself, and she's caged him in. “I'll show you.” “I don't want to -” Before he can finish, one of the finger-legs jabs into his leg, like a sword, and he yells in pain. It pulls, and pulls, and his body spasms with the movements. She watches placidly, frowning, before she pulls it out of him and makes a noise of disappointment as his blood floods out of her – finger? Tentacle? Tube? - and across his legs. “See what I mean? Nothing.” “Jesus Christ,” he whines, tears prickling his vision from the pain. He stares at the wound in his leg, and it's gaping. It's a hole. There's a hole in his leg. It must go clean through it, and he's sure that if the lights were on instead of just the colorful glow from the tree, he'd be able to see the carpet underneath his leg as clear as day. “But then I had a thought. I can't take anything from you,” she retracts her whatever-the-hells until her hand is human again, turns it this way and that, “but I can take you from him.” “Oh, my God,” he yells, thumping his head back against the wall. “He doesn't care about me that much, I hate to fucking break it to you!” “I'm going to kill you either way,” a part of him knew it, knew what was happening, but to hear it spoken out loud, it's like the very last of his hope has gone, dwindled away. He struggles against the handcuffs as she stands back up to her full height, which isn't much. “Your friends, as well,” she moves to his coffee table, slides open one of the drawers on the lower left hand side, like she's been here before. For all he knows, she has been. Apparently she's been listening in on their conversations, unbeknownst to them, so who fucking knows what else she's been up to. When she pulls out his bottle of lighter fluid and the book of matches he keeps for emergencies,

he yanks against the handcuffs, putting as much physical strength as he has into it. “Poetic, right?” With a flourish, she douses his tree, splatters the carpet, his couch. “I always love the ones with the tragic pasts, you know? It's so easy to fuck with them.” “You can try the sucking thing again,” he half-yells, not ceasing in his attempts to free himself. “Anything, literally anything, just -” “I could snap your neck as easily as I could do anything else,” she drops the bottle on the ground and lets it spill out, dangerously close to his legs – Stiles retracts his knees and presses his chin into them, shaking. “You're symbolic.” “I thought I was useless,” Stiles mutters. He doesn't know what else he's supposed to do. She laughs, long and hard. “Don't you wish you had kissed him goodbye, first?” With those final words, she lights a match, and then his tree is on fire. He thinks he blacks out. Just for a second. That's the thing about fear, the real kind, the pure unadulterated version of it; you get fucking scared enough, and you numb out, the entire world going hazy for one moment in time. He doesn't move, even though he's about to burn to death, because he's paralyzed. This is hands down the most scared he's ever been. Christ, give him Peter Hale on the lacrosse field right at this second, and he'll take that trade happily. When he comes back to himself, she's gone, and the flames have moved onto his couch, licking around the edges of his coffee table. The television is still playing, which he hadn't noticed before when she was here. A commercial for Macy's holiday sales drones in the background, and his apartment is on fire. There's a metaphor in there somewhere. That's what snaps him back to reality. Although, it doesn't quite feel like a genuine reality, it feels more like a nightmare he's woken up to, but he's here, and he's not fucking asleep. Nobody else is here with him, and nobody else is going to come. It's him, and him alone. It's hard to think straight, so for a moment even though it's useless, all he does it try and rattle himself out of the cuffs. He pulls, and pulls, struggles, tries to slide his hand through – of course, all of it to no avail. It's getting hotter, and hotter, and louder, no one ever mentions it but fire is fucking loud, and in a minute, maybe even less, he's going to be burned alive if he doesn't manage to get out of this. He gives himself two seconds to clear his head. He sucks in a deep breath, and accepts it. Either he gets out, or he burns alive. No use in letting any emotions about that take hold of the situation. That's one second. In the next, he's remembering that he's the son of a Sheriff who has taught him each and every which way to get out of zip ties, ropes, and handcuffs. Stiles never thought in a million years, not after encountering werewolves and things that don't need handcuffs, that he'd be in this situation, but here he is. He could be dead by now, guts ripped out of him, but instead, he gets to die in the worst way possible.

He doesn't have a bobby pin, or a paper clip, and there's no way in hell he'll ever be able to get one, so he crosses that off the list right as the television cuts out because its wire has melted and burned. He knows his hand is way too big to ever just slip out of it, even with the contortions his father taught him – his bookshelf collapses, sending all his knick knacks and books scattering across the floor, and it's just more tinder for the fire to work with. There's only one option. It might not even work. He's never fucking tried before, doesn't even know if he can physically do that to himself, so he can only hope that the situation he's in right now is incentive enough to at least give it the old college try. “Okay,” he hisses at himself. His voice doesn't sound like his own. “Okay, do it.” He grabs the thumb on his cuffed hand and breathes out, shallowly, once. The crackle of the fire and the roar of it, how he can't breathe and can barely even see, blinking tears out of his eyes, all of that is his only inspiration to do this. He pulls it back, gently, as far as he can go, and even that with minimal pressure hurts. It doesn't matter. His arm is gently burned from the radiator and his leg has a hole in it. This pain is nothing, he tells himself. It's nothing. He yanks his thumb back with as much force as he can muster. And then he does it again, and again, in perfect succession, before getting the bright idea to twist it at the same time and – crack. He pops his thumb clean out of its socket. There's a brief scream of pain he thinks comes from himself, and then another as he forces his injured hand through the cuff, but he's free. He scatters, tries to stand and falls from the injury on his leg, nearly face planting into his flaming couch. It's surreal. One of the most surreal experiences in his life. Right as he's staggering and limping to his window, coughing the entire time with tears streaming down his face, the flames stretch across the carpet to where he had been sitting just seconds before, and he doesn't think about it. He pulls open his living room window with his good hand, nearly vomits over the ledge but composes himself at the last second, and climbs out. He's disoriented and shocky enough that he doesn't even think about it. Just lets his body fall down from the second story.

There are red and blue lights flashing across his face where he's perched on the back bumper of an ambulance, and his father is peering at him speculatively. He's in full regalia, because this is an actual police matter and Stiles is an actual victim of an actual attack. Attempted murder, as a matter of fact. This is not an instance where Stiles and Scott can hatch up some scheme and make something up and evade law enforcement – Stiles' duplex literally burned down, nearly with him inside it. Is still burning, as a matter of fact, while firemen yell at each other and water sprays and the crowd murmurs. “I'm going to make a guess,” his dad says, frowning at the cast on Stiles' hand, “that this is – er – supernaturally related.”

“There's a hole in my leg,” Stiles says blankly, like it means something. He just can't stop thinking about it. “It's more of a chunk, actually.” “It doesn't go all the way through?” Stiles perks up just slightly at that. He could have sworn on every thing he had in him that he was going to walk around for life with a giant fucking hole in his leg. “This is good news.” The Sheriff's fingers tap against his utility belt, and Stiles recognizes it as an anxiety at having to treat Stiles like anyone else, instead of like his son. “I'm taking that as a yes.” “Someone pretended to be selling cookies,” he says, recalling that memory as if it was a dream he had. The edges of it are all fuzzy, now, like it happened to someone else instead of to him, or like it happened ten years ago instead of an hour. “I let them in. They bashed me over the head with a frying pan and I -” he swallows, fiddling with the edges of his cast. Lie, lie, lie. “...blacked out. When I came to, the apartment was on fire. I was cuffed to the radiator.” Stiles doesn't know if his father buys it, or if he's just playing along. “What did they look like?” “Teenager. Selling cookies for the high school charity.” “Male? Female?” “Female.” That gets a pause. “A teenage girl knocked you out, dragged you across your kitchen floor to the radiator, and set your apartment on fire?” “That's my statement,” he hedges, shrugging his shoulders. “And your leg?” Stiles glances at the bandaging wrapped around his thigh, shakes his head. “I have no idea how that happened.” The Sheriff sighs, long and loud. He flips his notepad closed and stuffs it back into his belt, raises his eyes to the sky like he's asking how it ever happened that his son got involved in all this in the first place, and then levels him with a dad look. “You neglected to mention Derek Hale being back in town.” Oh, yeah. Stiles scans the crowd milling about around the scene, mostly neighbors from around the street, family of the woman who lived in the apartment below him, and then off to the side, Derek. He's there with the rest of them, as well, Scott and Allison and Lydia and Erica, and they all look bizarrely out of place, here. They stick out like sore thumbs. “Dad, did I tell you? Derek is back! Huzzah!”

“I'll chalk that up to the head injury,” he says gruffly, moving his own neck to glare in Derek's general direction. His father is always the last to know mostly everything, and while his friends know all the sordid details of what goes on between Derek and Stiles and have always known since they first started going at it, his father only has bits and pieces. It's enough that he hates the guy, either way. “He's involved in this, I assume.” Stiles' head is throbbing from the frying pan, from the fumes of the smoke, so he doesn't even feel like getting into it. “Yes. He set my apartment on fire.” “You know what I meant.” Stiles sighs, long and loud. “He's – protecting his pack. It's the only reason he's back here.” “Great job he's doing,” he gestures to the scene around them, and Stiles doesn't even look around. He can't look. It's bad enough that it happened, he doesn't need to sit there and stare and watch as all his things, some of them deeply personal and dear to him, go down in flames. When Stiles doesn't say or do anything except stare blankly out into the night, not truly seeing anything, the Sheriff shakes his head. “That's the only reason he's back.” “Any other topic for 400, Alex.” “He's going to take care of -” he gestures and ignores Stiles, furrowing his brow. “...whatever this is. Right?” “He will,” Stiles promises. That's one thing that Derek has always been good at. When it comes to the monsters, and the danger, and all of that, Derek can always handle it. Handling it is just what Derek does. “So, I don't have to worry.” “You will anyway.” “Apparently, my son almost burned to death tonight,” he grabs Stiles by the shoulder and gently squeezes, a dark look crossing his face. It's a look that Stiles has seen upwards of two dozen times since he came clean about everything that goes on in Beacon Hills to his father. Being a cop, he used to think that he would always be able to protect his kid, always have the upper hand no matter what came his way. That all went to shit. He's still learning to deal with that. “Like hell I'm not going to worry about you.” With those final words, he leaves Stiles alone with the paramedics and drifts back towards the cop cars and Parrish waiting for him, pulling his notebook out again to relay every thing that Stiles told him. Even though it's all bullshit. Stiles feels guilty for just a second about having to drag his dad down into all this, all the lying and the secrets, but there's nothing he can do about that. As soon as his father is gone, Derek is standing there in his place. He's in the same clothes that

Stiles last saw him in, as though he hasn't slept since then, or showered, or shaved, and he's got dark circles under his eyes that suggest exactly the same. Stiles sighs. “What did it look like?” Derek demands, skirting his eyes up and down Stiles' entire body again and again, mapping out all of his injuries. “Was it a girl?” Stiles nods. He leans his head up against the side of the amublance door, and heaves out a sigh, remembering her. “She looked so...” “I know,” Derek cuts him off, zeroing his eyes in on Stiles' leg. They had cut the leg off of his pajama pants, turning them into a half-pants half-shorts hybrid, and his bandaged injury is out on full display. He grimaces at it, an indiscernible look crossing his face, and then looks up to meet Stiles' eyes. They stare at each other. This is not the time or the place for them to get into a fight. He knows that. But the only things that come to mind when they meet eyes, even with everything else that's going on around them right now, even with Stiles in physical pain and still tasting smoke inside of his throat, are things about them. In the two years since Derek has been gone, he's imagined a lot of scenarios in which Derek would come back, and all the things he'd say. He realizes that he doesn't know what to say to Derek, now, if they're not fighting. So he doesn't say anything at all, and Derek doesn't either. The rest of the pack finally rears the corner around the ambulance, looking just as out of sorts as Derek. Allison is in her pajamas with one of Scott's sweatshirts draped over her shoulders, hair in a messy ponytail, and she's the first to approach him, shoving Derek a bit out of her way. “What happened?” she demands, reaching out to put her hand on his uninjured arm. “Was it – did it say anything?” “Boy, did it ever.” “Is that what it did to you?” Erica points her finger at his leg, raising her eyebrows. “Is that the fucking finger thing?” He sits up straighter. “She demonstrated how useless I am by jabbing a hole into my leg, yeah.” “She?” “That's the form it takes,” Derek says solemnly, not looking at anyone. Just staring down at Stiles' leg with such intensity you'd think it personally offended him, somehow. “Innocent and unassuming. I wasn't sure if it would shift, or not, but if it's kept the same form twice...” “That's probably what it likes to appear as,” Lydia interjects. She's the only one aside from Derek dressed as usual, though her hair is a bit of a mess. “If we know that, we can get a description from the two of you, so if we spot her we won't be taken off guard. Right?”

They all nod their assent, and then the attention is focused solely on Stiles once more. He is the latest victim, after all, and now he gets to bask in the limelight. Allison steps forward even closer than before and leans down to wrap her arms as gently as possible around his neck, patting at his back for a moment. “We were so scared. We heard the police scanner -” she trails off. Stiles can imagine, either way. The scanner that Stiles pilfered from the station and gave to Erica as a birthday gift (sounds weird, but she loves that fucking thing) announcing a house gone up in flames, and then the address being read, and then the three seconds of dead static afterwards as Parrish recognized it as Stiles'. “I'm okay,” he assures her, reaching up with his good hand to pat her in return. “I don't get why it burned your place down,” Scott says when Allison pulls back, watching as the last of the flames finally get doused, leaving nothing but rising smoke and charred remains in their wake. “It came, jabbed your leg, and then just decided to light a match?” Stiles glances down at his hands. “I was sorta still inside when the match was lit,” he hedges, and then sighs when he's met with silence. “...she cuffed me to the radiator. She said I was symbolic.” A longer pause. “It was a message for Derek.” Everyone turns to look at Derek, then. Erica actually looks like she sort of pities him, for the first time in forever, and everyone else has varying levels of the same facial expression. Derek, for his part, has nothing to read on his face. It's blank, as he doesn't meet any of their eyes and stares at the smoke as it rises, and the lights flash across the profile of his face. “She wanted to start with me because I was easiest -” he doesn't mention the fact that she believed that the loss of Stiles would handicap Derek enough to make the fight all that much easier, because he doesn't need to see his reaction to that, “but she made it pretty clear she wants to suck the life out of each of you. She was strong, she was – I've never seen anything like that.” Lydia nods while everyone else stares. She's got her brave face on, but Stiles can tell that she's just as scared as the rest of them are. All of this, of Stiles being targeted in specific, of the idea of trying to burn him alive, of picking them off one by one – it's different from every thing else they've ever faced. It's personal. This thing knows more about them than any of them is comfortable with. And it's using all of that information to its advantage. “Now I'm handicapped,” Stiles continues on after the silence gets to be too much, too heavy. “She didn't kill me, but she's made me even more useless than before.” “We should all try to stay together,” Scott nudges Erica in Lydia's direction as he says this, as though he's pairing them off, “or at least in groups. Stiles should stay with Lydia, and Erica should as well.” “Good idea,” Erica breathes a sigh of relief. She had probably been thinking about spending the night in her shitty little house on the outskirts of town, looking over her shoulder at every small

sound, curling up in bed with her claws out and ready to attack, not getting a wink of sleep. “Derek can stay with Allison and I.” They all turn to gauge Derek's reaction to this, because notoriously, he's the fuck off I don't need help, type. Scott's got this face on like he's ready to fight if need be, because underneath it all, when it comes down to the wire, Scott cares about Derek. Maybe it's because the guy's his pack, maybe it can all be written off as werewolf code, but Stiles knows better. Fight and bicker and punch each other in the face, it doesn't matter. There's a brotherly connection somewhere deep, and it's coming out in the face of danger, like it always does. Derek looks at Stiles. He looks at the bandaging on his head, on his leg, his arm, the cast on his wrist, and makes a face like he's just come to a decision about something. He sucks in a breath, and looks away from them all. “After this is done, I'm giving the alpha power to Scott.” Stiles doesn't know how to react to that. Truthfully, he doesn't know how he feels about that, even. Everyone else just sort of blinks and looks at one another, Scott's face a complete mask of shock, his mouth opening to argue, but Derek is already walking off with a final glance in Stiles' direction, vanishing out into the crowd, then to the woods. **** Lydia has three different guest bedrooms in her house, each one of them nicer than the next, with huge windows and even bigger beds, nice comforters and sheets, and personal bathrooms to boot. Even so, Erica and Stiles wind up in Lydia's bedroom, Stiles on the pink couch wedged against the wall and Erica sharing the big bed with Lydia. Apparently, though none of them are speaking it out loud and will never even so much as acknowledge it, they're too scared to even be in separate rooms. That fear might be the one that keeps them all alive, so Stiles doesn't fight it. He gives into it and accepts. Lydia brought him out some of her mother's pajamas, white and black plaid pants and an oversized shirt that smells like it's been in the bottom of a drawer for the last ten years. He doesn't have any things left to his name – they went through his apartment and salvaged what they could but it's not much. A few books, singed, some small trinkets, and that's all. He hasn't had time yet to think about the fact that he's homeless, but he's just lucky he has good friends. For now, the research has been put on brief hold. Just for one night, while Stiles is on pain medication and loopy, they're just going to go to bed. When they wake up, it'll be command central. Hunters getting involved, Allison screwing together arrows and Scott sharpening her knives, Stiles and Lydia camped out at a table with laptops and books and translations, Derek probably getting mad about something, Erica staring out the window with that far away look in her eyes she gets whenever she thinks too hard about anything. It'll be like they're a pack all over again. Stiles hasn't felt like they've been a pack for years. Not since Derek started leaving. They're just friends, the only people they've got in the entire world, and he doesn't think that's what really and

truly makes a pack. He doesn't think even Derek knows what a pack is, anymore. “I feel like it's the right decision,” Erica says as she fluffs her pink pillow and sits cross legged on the bed. “Don't you guys? I mean...I think it's the first really good decision he's made since he sliced Peter's neck open.” Lydia appears from her bathroom running a brush through her long hair, in her night gown, and she looks at them both, but doesn't say anything. “He's just been a fuck up this entire time. I mean I – he's...” she trails off, looks down at her hands, and Stiles feels sad. “He was like an older brother to me, I don't know. It sounds dumb. I care about him, and I think he's right.” The only real pack, by blood, that Erica has left is Derek. Isaac and Boyd, they both – they're gone, now. She's gotta have someone. Stiles guesses she just doesn't anymore. Lydia looks at Stiles, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn't, so she does. “I think we'll be better off,” she says enigmatically, as though she'd rather be saying something else. None of them say the other part of it. The part that they all silently know together, but are too scared to really say out loud. When Derek gives that power to Scott, becomes a beta, he's going to go and be gone, and that'll be that. They might not ever see him again. They won't ever have to, or want to, or need to. Stiles isn't a wolf, so he doesn't know about the pull to be around pack members all the time, to wait around for an alpha just because he's the alpha. But he knows about waiting around for Derek, in ways that the rest of them just can't imagine or understand. Everyone else might get along just fine if Derek goes and goes for good, but Stiles doesn't know if he can say the same about himself. He blinks at the ceiling from his spot lying on the couch, runs his fingers along the cast on his hand, and says nothing. Erica can smell how miserable he is from all the way over on the bed, but she makes no comments on it, and he hears Lydia climbing into bed beside her. “I think it's the right decision,” Erica repeats, like she's trying to convince herself. “Life goes on.” “Exactly,” Lydia agrees, reaching over and flicking off the light so they're all darkness. “We'll make it through this like everything else and then it's over.” It's quiet for long enough that Stiles assumes they're all going to sleep, but his leg hurts, and his head hurts, his hand, and the pain killers do little to nothing to help him out with all of that, so he just glares at the ceiling and tries not to think. Of course it's impossible, but the lucky thing is that there are just so many things to think about, that his mind can't focus on any one particular topic for too long. He thinks about his things, his house, he thinks about how scared he is, how worried about his friends he is, whether or not Scott will be able to take over as alpha, and in the last little bit of his mind, there's a tiny wedge made for thoughts of Derek. He skirts over that

as many times as he can, but eventually, he finds himself coming back to all of it. What's he supposed to do about any of this? He doesn't know. Breaking the silence, Erica speaks. “I'm really sorry about all of this, Stiles.” Stiles shifts, rustles his blankets. “It sucks, but it's not the end of the world. I can buy new stuff, stay with my dad for a while. Insurance money. All that.” There's a huff of breath. “That's not what I meant. You know what I meant.” He does.

“Incubi and succubi can take the forms of other people, right?” Erica is leaning over a book Lydia has open, cocking her head to the side as she looks at the unfortunate picture of a demon with six heads. Lydia nods her head, flipping the page. “Yes. But it didn't try to seduce either Stiles or Derek. So that rules it out.” “You know, maybe we don't need to know what it is,” Erica huffs, moving away from the table yet again to pace back and forth across the hardwood floors in Lydia's basement. “What do we get out of knowing what its name is?” “Weaknesses,” Lydia supplies in a no shit tone of voice. They've been at this for hours, now, with nothing to show for it. Days of research have gone into this, Stiles nearly died, and they've got shit for it. Everyone's getting a little testy with one another. “Knowing its strong points and weak points will be incredibly helpful in trying to kill it, and we can't get that information without knowing its name.” Stiles feels like he's heard this exact conversation in variations upwards of a dozen times since they started this morning. He's been sitting in this exact chair, eating potato chips and washing his pills down with Dr. Pepper for hours, listening to Erica and Lydia bicker, Allison and the hunters babble on about weapons in the next room, Scott and Derek try to come up with some kind of a scheme, and his head is swimming with it. Lydia is right – without a name, without any idea what they're up against, all of the scheming and weapons in the world won't mean a damn thing. “I can't just sit around for much longer,” Erica says with a note of hysteria in her voice, throwing her hands in the air, and Stiles doesn't exactly disagree with that sentiment. “I feel like a sitting duck.” “Haven't we managed to kill every thing else?” Stiles asks is what he hopes is a bored tone of voice, instead of anxious.

“Not without casualties,” Erica mutters like she doesn't want anyone else to hear it – but in this room with this company, almost everyone does. Stiles doesn't want to talk about that, he never does. This would mark only the second or third time in his memory anyone ever brought that up, and it elicits nearly the same reaction as always. Lydia turning away as if she's been slapped across the face, Allison looking up from her weapons collection with a betrayed expression, and Scott goes silent. “That's not gonna happen this time.” Unbelivably, it's Derek who speaks up. He gives Erica a steady look, a serious one, like he means it with everything he has in him. “It already almost did!” Erica gestures to Stiles in all his glory – in clothes he had to borrow from Scott that don't fit him right, with bandages and casts all over him. He looks like hell. Derek stands up, and crosses the floor. Stiles half expects a fight to break out, claws and fangs to come out and a window to get shattered. He's seen the same thing so many times he doesn't react much except to roll his eyes and pound back some more of his soda, wishing it were something much stronger. “It's not going to happen,” he growls, and she backs down only slightly. “I'm not going to let that happen!” “Then where were you last night? Huh? Since you're so on top of everything, where were you?” Derek doesn't answer, snapping his jaw shut and looking away, at anything and anyone but Stiles. Avoiding me, Stiles thinks bitterly. Across from him, Lydia is continuing on with her research as though none is this is happening right now, entirely focused, and Stiles wishes he could be more like her. “I know I'm the one to blame for what happened last night,” he snaps, “I don't need you to throw it back in my fucking face.” “I think that's exactly what you need,” Erica steps closer to him, and Scott stands up from his spot on the couch, like he's getting ready to rip them apart if need be. “Sometimes I think you have no idea, none whatsoever -” “You think I don't live with the things I've done, every single day?” “You don't have to live with it, you just fucking leave it all behind whenever you get sick of it!” “For fuck's sake,” Derek backs away, shaking his head and laughing humorlessly. “I can't have this conversation with you again.” Stiles wonders just how many phone conversations and other kinds of conversations Derek and Erica have had, concerning this exact subject. How many angry voicemail messages, emails, letters Erica has sent out to him. “Right,” she nods her head, throwing her hands out in agitation. “I'm not even the one you should be having this conversation with.” Almost against his will, Derek's eyes slide to where Stiles is sitting, and then quick as lightning

he looks away again. Stiles taps his fingers on the table top, and tries not to let it bother him. “I'm so happy that this is all finally coming back around to bite you in the ass,” she hisses, “maybe you'll learn to take responsibility, for once.” Derek looks just about ready to launch himself at her, and that's blessedly when Scott finally steps in. He moves just quick enough to block Derek's path, holding his arm out across his chest and pushing him back so hard he stumbles. “That's enough,” he says in a low voice, but with a threat behind it. “We can't do this. We can't get into fights like this. It's probably exactly what that thing wants.” Silence. Erica walking away to cross her arms and glare out the window, Lydia sipping her coffee, Derek breathing angry puffs of air, and Stiles miserable. “We have to stick together,” Scott goes on, “otherwise we have no chance. Got it?” Derek pushes Scott's arm off of him and stalks away. Out of the living room, and then down the hall to where the staircase sits. Scott watches him go with a grim look on his face, shaking his head, and the rest of them just try to go back to what they were doing before. Scott is right about that; they don't have the time to waste, right now. “Someone should go after him,” Allison says from across the room. Nobody moves. The hunters, Chris Argent included, immediately go back to rifling around with their guns and talking in low tones, but it's not like they were ever on the guest list, anyway. Stiles can't even imagine what a heart to heart between fucking Chris Argent and Derek Hale would look like. Lydia and Derek have never had any kind of special relationship – mostly just close proximity to one another, but Stiles can't say they've ever gotten along that well. Allison would be the best bet, but she's camped out with her family and makes no move to go up the stairs. Erica isn't an option, clearly, and so that just leaves Scott and Stiles. Sometimes it feels like with almost everything, it's only Scott and Stiles that are left to deal with shit. Which is fair, Stiles guesses, since they're the ones who got everyone into every single mess to begin with. Scott opens his mouth to say something, probably along the lines of I guess I'll just see if he's okay – but before he can get the words out, Stiles is standing up shakily. “I'll go.” Now that gets some attention. Lydia actually moves her eyes away from her books for once, giving him a look, and Erica looks about ready to pick up a book and lob it at his head for being such a fucking idiot. He shrugs, shuffling and limping along around the table and making his way to the hall. “I don't think that's a good idea,” Allison says cautiously, looking around for some back up. Which is happily awarded.

“Yeah, seriously, I'll go,” Scott grabs Stiles' arm, mindful of the bandages, and tries to gently stop him. “No offense, dude, but I can't really imagine you making him feel any better.” “Erica said it herself,” he challenges, hobbling along against Scott's hold until he frees himself and pushes onwards. “I'm the one he should be talking to, anyway.” “Yeah, but -” Scott tries, but Stiles is already out into the hallway, waving his hand in the air like don't worry about it, disappearing into the darkness of the rest of the house. He swears he hears Lydia mutter here we go again, hears Erica's long exhale, Allison slamming something too hard back down onto her table. The Stiles and Derek show sure has its entertainment value, but it's apparently run for so long that it's lost all of its initial appeal, especially among his friends. They might be right, that he shouldn't go up and talk to Derek, that they should be avoiding each other at all costs, but Stiles is tired of playing that game with him. They don't have time to play that game. Stiles nearly died last night, and he has no home anymore. It's time to address the fucking situation. It hurts to put pressure on his leg, but he makes it up the stairs in one piece. Lydia's house is sprawling and mysterious, kind of like one of those old haunted houses in the movies, but Derek isn't hard to find. He left the door to the study open wide, either because he knew someone would be coming after him, or because he didn't care either way, Stiles isn't sure. It's not like Derek didn't hear Stiles limping from a mile away. Inside, Derek is just standing there, staring out the window just like Erica is doing a floor down from him. They can be so similar sometimes, and he doesn't think they realize it, but that's why they get into it so often. They see themselves in each other, and it drives them insane. “Scott is right,” Stiles opens with, stepping just inside a couple of feet. “We can't all be down each other's throats, you know?” Derek doesn't turn around. Stiles expected as much, so he keeps talking. “I get that we have, like, a thousand and ten unsolved problems, and that doesn't even include the ones that you and I have, but we need to, uh, push them aside,” he makes a gesture with his arms, a sort of miming gesture for clearing a table off. “And for five seconds pretend like we're not some weirdo fucked up family that can't even talk to one another without throwing the turkey on the floor at holidays. Right?” “You guys always get along well enough without me,” Derek says in a dangerous tone of voice. “Um...” Stiles makes another gesture, to himself, and even if Derek isn't looking, he knows he can tell what he's doing. “I think that's been proven very false as of late.” Finally, Derek turns. He looks at Stiles, a long steady look. It's the first time they've really, really looked at one another in years. All the glances they've had, and the short staring contests in the past week have been nothing compared to this. “Erica was right. I should've been there.”

“Yes, you should have. Matter of fact, you should've always been there.” “Stiles. Don't.” Oh, holy shit, is Stiles used to hearing that. Stiles, don't, let's not, can we not do this right now, I don't want to talk about this, and Stiles is also used to himself heaving out a sigh and going fine, fucking fine, whatever. The difference between then and now is that, back then, Stiles used to drop it because he wanted to not fight, and he wanted to kiss Derek and be with him and not think about the past, just the now. This time, he doesn't have that option. “I want you to explain it to me,” Stiles starts, stepping forward, and even before the words are fully out of his mouth, Derek is shaking his head and stepping away from him. Checking out of the conversation, raising his hands in the air in surrender, as though he'd rather have Stiles win the argument than even bother with trying. “No. I really, really do. I don't ask, you know I never, ever ask you, have never asked you -” and it isn't fair. He doesn't say that part, but he's always thought it quietly to himself. “But I deserve an answer!” Derek runs his thumb over his mouth, maybe tamping the words down behind his lips and teeth. It's a move that Stiles has seen so many times, that at this point he's come to associate it with bad memories. Fights and all that. At this point, it only serves to make him even angrier. “Or am I just not worth it to you?” It's one of those shitty, manipulative things that Stiles has learned to use as weapons in arguments. Even if he might mean it, some tiny little part of him, an even bigger part of him is just trying to whittle an answer out of Derek, pulling out the big guns so Derek feels he has no other choice but to say something. It seems cruel, and it may be, but Stiles doesn't feel merciful much, anymore. “You know that's not true,” Derek snaps, seeing through Stiles' bullshit as clear as day. “Shut up, with that, Stiles, you know it's not god damn true.” “Then, what?” “Then what?” “Where do you go?” Stiles limps closer again, advancing on Derek with his arms away from his body down at his side like they're gesturing to the world at large. This whole great big world, a million places for Derek to go. “Is it – you can say anything. You can honestly say anything right now and I promise I won't get mad or hold it against you...” Derek snorts, rolling his eyes. “A conversation with you where nothing I say is held against me?” “I promise,” Stiles tries. It's a promise he can't keep, no matter how hard he'll try. “I just want to know, it's masochism, okay? It's not an attack against you, it's...this is about me, this conversation. Me and my feelings, and not the pack, and not you, for god damn once, can we do

that?” He looks like he wants to argue that, really really badly, but doesn't. Instead, he sighs through his nose, and he looks away. It's as good an indicator of Derek being honest as anything else is. Whenever he tells the truth, whenever he says anything he really doesn't want to, he looks away. Down, or to the side, or at his hands. After several seconds have passed, he parts his lips and takes a light inhale in. “I hate this place.” “Yeah,” Stiles agrees. He knows that. Who wouldn't hate this place, having gone through what Derek has here? The fact that someone is trying to kill them all out here is proof enough for why anyone would hate this god damn place. “And I really care about you.” Stiles almost says now, that's just debatable, but he bites his tongue. “But I have to be selfish about it.” He glares out the window, jaw clenched, and shakes his head. “Some things, you have to be selfish about.” Stiles doesn't know how long he stands there staring at the profile of Derek's face, waiting for further explanation, waiting for another sentence, another word, another syllable, but it feels like long. “I don't -” “I'm saying you're right,” he shrugs, like it's nothing to him, like he's known it all along. “I'm the asshole, I'm the selfish dick, I'm the one who's ruined everything each and every time, you've never done anything to deserve it, and on and on.” “But -” “I have never for one second pretended like you didn't have every single right to be angry with me. You always act like I don't know what I've done, or something.” Stiles acts that way because he genuinely does think that. He's always thought that – after all three times Derek has gone and fucking vanished, Stiles has been convinced that Derek couldn't possibly know what he's gone and done. Either that, or he just didn't care. Stiles never knew which was worse. “You're never around to see what you've done,” Stiles contests in a snap. “I've heard enough from everyone else.” Stiles' cheeks color in shame, or embarrassment. It's because the fact that Derek has never been there to see Stiles at his actual worst has maybe been a source of comfort, for him. There's something particularly humiliating about knowing that he's heard about it all, before, a sense of vulnerability about being completely and totally open like that. He's never been comfortable with having his feelings just out there for the world to pick at and examine, prefers to shove them down deep until they manifest themselves in uglier ways. Like this fight, right now.

“Then I don't get it. You say you care about me, and you know you're wrong, and you hate to hear about me like that, then why?” Derek shakes his head, moving further away, like he always does. “You're not listening to me,” he says it almost to himself. “If you know how shitty it is and how much it hurts me to wake up and find you just gone, then why?” “I have to!” It's shouted loudly enough that Stiles has to snap his jaw shut and steel himself, snatching his arms away and closer to himself in self defense. Not deterred, Derek continues on. “This place, and being here, it sometimes feels like I could suffocate, and I just have to, I have to!” It feels like Stiles has no cards left in his hand to deal, no dog in this fight any longer. Because a part of him understands – actually, every single part of him fucking understands. He knows Derek, better than anyone else left alive has ever known him. He's had all the pieces of him scattered out before him like a puzzle and he's taken the time to put it all together to make sense of it. Knowing him that way, he can't help but to understand. Beacon Hills is the place where Derek has suffered. Stiles understands. He hates it, hates that he has to understand, has to get it, because when he gets it, that means he doesn't get to be angry anymore. When he doesn't get to be angry, all he has left to feel is hurt. Derek suffers here, and Stiles simply isn't enough of a buffer to make up for it. Nothing could ever be, God, people don't work like that. People are not band-aids. It's not that Stiles ever thought so highly of himself that he ever believed he could be that for Derek, he's always known better. Maybe he just thought, or hoped, that he could be worth it. Funny, then, how Derek thinks he's the fucking selfish one for up and leaving, when Stiles is the one who always wants Derek to stay here just because it's where Stiles is. Stiles wants to be the one to fix him, to do right by him, to the point where he'd be willing to hold Derek down in the one place where he could never fully heal. With nothing left, hugging his arms close to his chest, Stiles says the only thing he can think of. “You never call,” his voice is defeated. “No note. No conversation. You just go.” For the first time since the conversation began, Derek turns and look Stiles directly in his eyes. “If I tried to do any of that, I knew I wouldn't be able to go.” Stiles feels like punching his fist through a wall. He thinks about picking up a chair and throwing it across the room, flipping over the coffee table, breaking a window with his bare hand to add something else to his long list of injuries. It isn't fair that Derek gets to stand there and say shit like that, and mean it, and be so fucking earnest and vulnerable, because it backs Stiles into a corner. Derek isn't doing anything aside from what Stiles fucking asked him to, telling the truth, and Stiles should have known better.

When Derek says things like that, that's always when Stiles' resolve cracks. All the times that Stiles has sat alone in his bedroom during week one or week two or month five or Derek being gone, tearing apart conversations and moments between the two of them and wondering where it all went to shit yet again, he's traced all his mistakes back to moments exactly like this. Derek standing there, all open and sad, saying some shit that makes Stiles think...this time. Every thing could be different this time. Derek could change this time. I could be what he needs this time. This time, this time, this time. Last time, Stiles thinks. And the time before that. And before that. It's never worked. Stiles needs to learn. “I'm staying angry,” he says out loud, half meaning it, praying that his heart doesn't stutter, praying that it isn't actually a lie. “I'm going to be mad at you for-fucking-ever, and that's that.” Derek swallows. “That's fair.” “We talk about the pack, and the demon or whatever the hell it is, and that's it.” “Okay.” “You don't say anything to me, you got that?” He points an accusatory finger at Derek, and Derek just nods back at him. “You can help with this, and you can give away your alpha power, and you can just fucking go again when it's all over, and then – I -” he clenches his hands into fists at his sides and spits the next words out so hard it's like they're coated in blood by the time they make it out into the open, “...I'd like you to not ever come back.” It's silent, and Stiles doesn't look Derek in the face. He doesn't want to know what Derek's face looks like in the wake of Stiles saying something so terrible, but he convinces himself it's not wrong. It isn't about being vindictive, or petty, or angry. Like Derek said. It's about being selfish. Doing what's in your own best interest, because sometimes you have to do that, just to survive. “Stay gone,” Stiles finishes, nodding his head like he's trying to convince himself. “If you really give even half a shit about me -” “I do.” Stiles grits his teeth and reminds himself – no. Not. This. Time. “...then you won't come back.” As Stiles is turning to leave, Derek says, “you'd be smart to leave here yourself, you know.” “I can't do that,” Stiles snaps back quick as lightning, without even thinking about it. It might be true, it might not be, but maybe there's been a part of Stiles that's only ever stayed here in Beacon Hills because he was waiting for Derek. That scares the shit out of him, because how much of his life has he gone ahead and wasted?

If Derek isn't ever going to come back, could Stiles go? He doesn't know. Down the stairs, Erica is waiting. She pulls herself up and away from the floral wallpaper of Lydia's hallway, and approaches Stiles the way she used to walk to gym class before she got turned. Shoulders drawn up tight, face abysmal, and Stiles knows right then and there that she's been standing there a while, and has heard every thing. He learned long ago to stop holding it against the wolves for listening in on his every single private conversation, Erica especially because nosiness is written somewhere in her DNA. Stiles wants to just walk back to his research and leave it all alone, but Erica is walking towards him, so he has to stop and hear what she has to say about all of this. He isn't quite sure what her reaction will be, because for all her personality, she has a tendency to be unpredictable. She zigs some days and zags others, she wants to fight or she wants to not say anything at all. This time, she grabs Stiles by the shoulders and looks him dead in the face. She holds him there for a second, his eye contact, and her fingers digging into his skin not too hard but just hard enough so that he feels it, and shakes him, once. “I know you don't want to hear that you did the right -” “I want to hear that,” Stiles interrupts. “Tell me that, I want to hear that.” Erica sighs through her nose, like she understands and feels sorry about it as her eyes search his face. “That was the right thing to do,” and Stiles nods. “You don't have to feel bad about any of it. Can I say something else even more annoying?” “Please do.” “Unsolicited advice – the things we love are not necessarily the things we need.” She pauses for a second, reaching up to push around some of the longer locks of hair around his ear. It's so familiar and nice, in the wake of Stiles feeling so shocky and cut open and ruined, that he can't help but lean into her fingers just slightly. “Man, that's easy to say, right?” Easy to say, hard to accept, harder to live by. The fact is that there is nothing, nothing about Derek at all, that Stiles needs. Stiles could survive without anyone, he thinks, he could pack his bags and go and leave everyone behind and start over, and then do it again, and again, and he wouldn't need anyone. Derek least of all. This is fact. Falling in love with someone has a tendency to make people see necessities when there's really only wanting. **** Seeing as how his entire apartment burned down with all his things in it and he's currently living

on Lydia's bedroom couch, Stiles isn't exactly in a position to be calling into work sick. Even with his fucked up leg and hand, even with a hell demon intent on killing him and all of his friends, which is a way better excuse than anything else his co-workers have ever come up with, Stiles has no choice but to put on his uniform and drive off to The Bad Place for his usual shift. He started working at Wal Mart first of all because at the time, he was feeling shitty enough about himself that it's what he felt like he deserved. Second of all, because he really, really needed money, and he wanted to move out of his dad's house just to feel like an actual adult instead of a teenager with no place else to go. And last of all, because it's really the only place that would take him. He had no experience, no references, and a 4.0 grade point average from high school. He took what he could get. Besides – the place is enough of a torture chamber that they have to pay their workers decently. It's not all bad. There is something to be said about getting off work and not having to drive off somewhere else to get his groceries, or his shampoo, or anything else. Plus, employee discounts on everything a person could possibly ever need. Did he imagine himself still working here, a year and a half later? No. No, back then, he thought that by this time he'd be long gone. Work is work. The absolute, hands down, worst part about this demonic job is the specific section of the store he's been exiled to – health and beauty. Anyone who's ever set foot inside of a Wal Mart, or KMart, or even a fucking Target, knows how much of a joke the cosmetics aisles are. It's the easiest stuff to steal, and worst of all, the easiest stuff to scatter all over the place. Stiles spends half his days in this place wiping make up off of his fingers because girls love to test things even though there are no testers put out. That's what he's doing when Derek decides to barge in. He's trying to scrape glitter nail polish off of his pointer finger, fruitlessly, crouched down with his pricing gun on the floor next to him, when he hears big booted footsteps making their way towards him. Big booted footsteps in this particular aisle of the store is a little bit off the beaten path, so Stiles looks up – and there he is. Glowing underneath the flourescent lights, looking by all counts bizarre standing in Stiles' domain, right next to a huge ad with Taylor Swift wearing Covergirl lipstick, leering out at them like she's about to write the number one song of the Summer about the fucked up circus act that is Derek and Stiles' relationship. There's a beat of silence. Stiles thinks about getting up and running in the opposite direction, but then he remembers that his leg is all fucked up, and even if it weren't, Derek could outrun him any day. Plus, it wouldn't look good if Stiles was caught limping at top speed down the center aisle away from a customer. “Is this an emergency?” He asks, picking a sequin heart off of his finger and flicking it away. “Am I going to be attacked, again?” “I needed toothpaste,” Derek says back, plainly. Lo and behold, he is holding a box of Colgate in

his hand. Stiles remembers when he convinced Derek into buying the cinnamon flavored stuff, and then the vanilla kind, then the orange kind, and the orange kind Derek actually liked. Stiles liked it too, because it made the whole experience of early morning kisses all the more fruity and fun. “Not everything is all about you.” The tube in his hand is the original, though. Stiles gets irrationally angry at it. “Don't pretend like you didn't know I worked here,” Stiles stands up from his crouch and glares. Derek saw Stiles' Jeep parked out there, he probably smelled Stiles a mile away considering his scent must be all over this place the way it is in his dad's house by now – he fucking knew. Choosing not to respond to that, Derek gestures with his toothpaste box at where Stiles is standing. “This is what you're doing?” Stiles adjusts his vest, shoves his pricing gun into its holster, and asks God for the ten zillionth time in only one short week, why? Just fucking why? “I do love the concept of a steady paycheck,” is what he chooses to say out loud, hyperfocusing on the rows of foundation and concealer in front of him instead of looking anywhere in Derek's general direction. “You work at Wal Mart.” “No, actually,” he grabs something with Maybelline written on the bottle and pretends to scrutinize it, “I just walk around wearing the vest and the name tag – like a Halloween costume.” Derek raises his hand and does something to his face. Stiles can't tell what from the corner of his eye, but it looks like he's running his finger across his eyebrow. That's a move that Stiles recognizes good and well. “I thought by now you would've been...I thought you'd be doing something else.” As if it's personally offended him, Stiles slams the Maybelline something back into its place with a loud clunk, and then turns on his heel to stalk off in the opposite direction. Derek follows him, because of course he does. The only time Derek ever chooses to stick around and be there is exactly when Stiles wants him there the least, it's like a fucking talent of his. “So you didn't just come back to deal with the hell beast. You also came to pass judgment.” Derek's feet clomp along behind Stiles as they go past aisle after aisle – and really, Stiles doesn't have any true destination in mind. He's just walking, past people in pajamas doing late night emergency shopping, babies fast asleep in carriers, the weird midnight crowd meandering about. “I make money. I'm not doing nothing – we didn't all have trust funds waiting for us at age eighteen, you know.” “You could be doing a lot more than this, Stiles.” Whirling around so quick that Derek has to skitter to a stop to avoid smacking directly into

Stiles' body, he takes his price gun out again and uses it to jab Derek directly in the center of his chest. Once, and then again for good measure. “We're not even supposed to be,” jab, “talking. Remember that?” Like Stiles hasn't spoken at all, Derek continues on in his line of questioning. “Did you even apply to any schools? Like we talked about?” He can't help it. Stiles physically flinches at the reminder, like he always does whenever someone mentions – back then. Before. One of those memories from a different time, when things really seemed like they were going to be...better, for the first time in a long time. “...I remember you always wanted to do something.” Derek looks at him, so seriously, at Stiles in this flourescent lighting, in his stupid Wal Mart vest and name tag, the bags under his eyes, the way he looks like he hasn't slept in weeks, at the new scars he has on his arms and even a couple on his face from scrapes with other monsters. For some reason, every thing about this shames Stiles more than anything else ever has. And that makes him angry. There were countless discussions that he and Derek had about all the things that Stiles wanted to do with himself. All of them, every single last one of them, always involved getting the hell out of Beacon Hills at the earliest possible convenience. Worst of all is that all of them always involved Derek, in the back of his mind. He always factored Derek in. He never admitted it out loud, not when he was eighteen, because a part of him might've known even then that Derek would go and he wouldn't be coming back that time. But – dreams are dreams. He grits his teeth and looks Derek square in the eyes. “I wanted to do something,” he agrees, more sarcastically than anything else, “I wanted to get the hell out of here. You remember that?” Before Derek is even finished nodding, Stiles goes on. “I guess I just realized that was never going to be possible for me. All of us grew up and realized that, you just weren't around to see it. That happens when you disappear for two years, people grow up, okay?” Derek's eye twitches, like he's fighting off a growl in public, and he quickly casts his eyes down the aisle they're standing in front of – diapers and baby formula. There's a toddler in Elsa pajamas and a worn down looking mother poking around just fifteen or so feet from where they're having this very public argument, and it wouldn't do well for Derek to start going wolf man all over the place. “This is not what I expected to come back to.” “What did you think was going to happen?” Stiles steps closer, until their faces are just inches apart, and lowers his voice so no one else would be able to hear him. “What you and I are a part of, what all of us know and see – none of that is condusive with a normal life. I had to learn that the hard way, and you don't get to judge that, because you weren't there.” For a moment, they just stare at one another. This close, Stiles can feel Derek's breath across his face, could probably count the guy's eyelashes if he felt like it. Derek blinks at him, three times, and then he steps back, away.

“I told you,” he says evenly, like he'd much rather be saying something else, “I had to go.” “And I told you, I don't forgive you!” Stiles shrugs, like that's that. And really – that is that. To an extent, that's really all they have to say to each other. The fight has boiled down to these two facts again and again, they've been here again and again – Derek had to go, Stiles doesn't forgive him. That's that. “And I told you pretty explicitly not to speak to me anymore, and yet!” Derek fidgets his toothpaste in his hands. It's uncharacteristic of any of his usual mannerisms, so Stiles doesn't quite know what to make of it. “You know I can't do that.” Yet you can vanish for two years without saying a word to me, and you never say much of anything even when we are together, and what do you fucking mean I know that I don't know that how would I know that? Stiles purses his lips, and decides that he won't. He's meant to be the bigger person, now. And bigger people don't get into screaming matches with their exboyfriend while they're on the clock. “Oh, just buy your toothpaste,” Stiles hisses, waving his hand dismissively. “Call me if someone else gets skewered, okay?” Right before he's about to turn to walk away, he whirls back around and points at Derek, right in between his eyes. “And, for the record? I could let you use my employee number for a discount, but I'm purposefully choosing not to.” Derek huffs out a sigh from his nose, and taps his toothpaste box against the palm of his hand as he watches Stiles all but stomp off in the opposite direction. “You should leave, Stiles.” Stiles waves his hand in the air like yeah, yeah,, but doesn't respond. When he gets back home at around six in the morning, meaning back to Lydia's bedroom where a pile of things he's borrowed from his friends or had the money to buy for himself is stacked up in a haphazard lump right next to his couch, Lydia is sitting on her bed chewing on a long purple twizzler. “Where's Erica?” He asks in a tired voice, right as Lydia slaps a post-it note down on the page she's glaring at. “In the shower,” she says back. She swallows her mouthful of candy, holds the book up in the Stiles' general direction, and taps one finger on a picture of a very unfortunate looking...creature. Demon, zombie, witch, whatever. “It's a sifati.” Stiles frowns at the picture and chooses to not stare too long. After every thing he's seen, he still does manage to get nightmares, believe it or not, and that particular image is definitely one of the worst things he's ever seen in his entire life. So, he just looks away quickly and plops down on the couch. “Cool.” She taps her finger more insistently. “The thing that tried to kill you.” Stile's eyes nearly bulge out of his head and he practically pulls a muscle leaning forward on the

couch to get a better look at it. “That? You found it? That's the thing?” She flips her hair over her shoulder and glances at the picture herself, nonchalant as ever, as if finding the very thing that they've spent an entire week searching for on her very own while eating twizzlers isn't a big fucking deal at all. “This is its final form,” she explains, a grimace crossing her features as she examines it up close. Stiles doesn't particularly want to look at it up close – from a distance is really all he needs, and it's more than enough. “After it gets all the power it wants, it looks like this. It's unpleasant.” She moves like she's going to show Stiles the picture again but he holds his hand up in the air to stop her, shaking his head and glaring down at the carpeting. “I don't need to look again. That is – way worse than the teenage girl with the unicorn sweater. Are you positive that's it, because even with the finger thing,” he wiggles his own fingers for empahsis, “it didn't look even a quarter as bad as that.” “I'm positive.” Lydia drops the book down onto her lap and moves her index finger down the paragraphs, like she's searching for a specific passage, and somewhere in the middle of that Erica walks in fully dressed and smelling like lavender shampoo, damp hair dripping onto her plain t-shirt. “The sifati's entire mission in life is to steal blah blah, it wants only what others already have blah blah, looks for weak links blah blah, needs supernatural energy to reach its full potential -” Stiles starts chewing on his thumb nail, tapping his knee up and down. Erica doesn't react to any of this at all – she just digs through her purse, smacking bubblegum between her teeth, so Stiles bets that she must have been there when Lydia first made this discovery. “...then there's a nice little paragraph about how it razes entire packs to the ground which we don't need to hear -” “Where's the part that says how we kill it?” Stiles interrupts around his thumb. Lydia purses her lips together and looks unhappy. Which most likely means that the information that her book provides doesn't include anything as easy as a kryptonite or a simple good claw swipe to the neck. “It says it can't be killed -” “Oh, great -” “- but it can be immobilized.” Stiles rubs his hand across his face. “What does that mean?” “We have to do the same thing to it that it does to us,” Erica chimes in, pulling her wet hair into a tight ponytail with a few snaps of rubber against her skin. “Suck all the energy it's already stolen clean out of it until it's just a shell.” “The problem is we don't know how,” Lydia picks up another twizzler and goes to town on it

somewhat bitterly. “It's not very clear about that.” There's more than just one problem with all this, Stiles thinks, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. There's a half dozen fucking problems with this; Stiles thought that figuring out what it actually is that they're dealing with would make everything that much easier, but evidently, it's just gone and made every thing worse. “Sifatis don't work like regular demons, they don't want to create chaos, and they don't want to do anything just for the hell of it,” Lydia frowns even more deeply, pushing her book aside as if it's personally offended her. “They study their victims, collect information, sometimes over years if they have to.” “This thing could know any number of things about us,” Erica says quietly, crossing her arms. “It listens to our conversations.” Both Lydia and Erica turn to Stiles with similar expressions on their faces – comically startled and horrified, waiting for an explanation. Sighing, Stiles runs his hands up and down his thighs, careful about the big chunk in his leg all wrapped up in bandages. “It said something to me when it was – you know – lighting me up. It repeated something Allison said, like...it knew.” Neither of them look very pleased by this information. Erica starts to pace, the way she does, hair dripping tiny droplets of water along the carpet as she goes. “It could be listening to this right now.” “Okay – please don't fuckin' say that.” Stiles looks up at the ceiling, out the window, at Lydia's open bedroom door, as if he half expects to see cookie girl lurking in the shadows, staring at them, listening. “It could be.” “We don't have the time to sit around debating about this,” Lydia snaps. She climbs down from the bed and storms off to her closet, throwing the door open and pawing around through the jackets and sweaters she has hanging up. “Even with the very limited information I've found, one thing remains abundantly clear – sooner is better than later.” “She's right,” Stiles agrees. He always agrees with Lydia. It's the safest bet to make it out of anything alive. “We have to get rid of that thing as soon as possible. The longer we sit around with our thumbs up our asses, the stronger it gets, the more information it gets.” “How are we supposed to suck the life out of a demon that's so strong an alpha werewolf could barely fight it off?” Lydia pulls a cardigan on and flips her hair out from the inside, giving Stiles a look. Stiles looks back, for as long as he can maintain the eye contact, and then looks down at the ground. He

doesn't know, and Lydia doesn't know, and neither does Erica. The smarts team has no fucking idea, and chances are, the rest of the pack will have no idea either. “We'll figure something out,” Lydia mutters, and without another word, leaves the room with the quiet demand that Stiles and Erica are meant to follow. “And if we don't?” Erica shouts at her retreating back, holding her arms out in a very what the hell is going on way, turning back to look at Stiles like he'd have an answer himself. Lydia doesn't answer, even as Erica grumbles around putting her own jacket on and motioning for Stiles to stand up from the couch. It's not really like any of them need to say out loud what the answer to that question would be. If they don't figure anything out, then it probably means they'll all die. One by one, in the worst possible way. But, then, that's just another day at the office for them.

Stiles rubs his eyes and thinks about curling up on Allison's couch for a nice long nap. He's so used to the sounds of the pack arguing with one another, to Allison's calm and clearheaded voice and Erica's shrill one and the crunch of Scott's stress eating, that he's pretty sure he could sleep through every minute of it even if it turned physical. One time, Scott threw Derek clean through his front door onto the porch, and then Derek tried to use one of the jagged pieces of wood to beat in Scott's head, and Stiles missed the whole thing because he was cat napping on the porch swing. That was another one of those life or death times, when Stiles was sixteen and Derek was nineteen and Isaac and Boyd were still there to break it all up when it got too bad. Without them, the fights always get worse because Stiles goes to sleep, and Lydia usually just lights a cigarette and ignores it, and Erica picks a side and joins in, while Allison is usually left to shoot someone in the arm with an arrow as a last resort. Most of the time, he doesn't like to think about Isaac and Boyd, but something about this particular situation reminds him of them. It could be because the last time things got this bad is the last time Stiles saw them. “Have we considered running?” Scott asks, and the eye rolling in the room can be palpably felt. “Just, like, going to different corners of the world and hoping that it gets over us, or something?” “It won't matter,” Derek shakes his head. “It's not just going to give up, Scott, you know how things like this work.” Scott makes a face, and twists his fingers together. They all know how things like this work. They've never run before, and they probably never will no matter how shitty things get, but Scott always brings it up, maybe just so he can feel like it's even an option. Something about backing out has always been appealing. “We have no choice but to at least try.” Erica pinches Stiles' arm the absolute second he tries to rest his eyes, nudging him in the side of the face until he opens them back up with a grumble.

“Some of us had to work all night,” he bitches, and everyone ignores it. “I mean, we know what we have to do,” she pinches the book, opened up to the page Lydia had slapped a post-it on earlier in the morning, between her purple fingernails and holds it up like the holy grail. “The issue is we don't know how.” “We just have to figure something out,” Allison squints her eyes at the picture of the – thing – from her spot on the couch opposite Erica and Stiles. It really is just that fucking ugly. It's like a train wreck, you know, where you don't really wanna look because there's probably blood and dead bodies all over the place, but for some reason your eyes are magnetized. It's the human condition, Stiles figures, having to look at the things you really would rather not see at all. “I don't see how,” Scott sounds forlorn. “We always figure something out,” Allison looks to Lydia, then to Stiles, and it's the aren't you guys supposed to be the geniuses, here? look that Stiles has really grown to resent. “Right?” It's silent for a moment. Stiles doesn't say anything, because frankly he has nothing to fuckin' say and can barely keep his eyes open even with the threat of his impending death hanging over his head, and Lydia's got an expression on her face that says she either wants to start fighting Allison then and there or she wants to get up and walk out. They've never talked about it before, Stiles and Lydia, but it doesn't need to be said out loud that being the ones who always figure it out is a burden that's only grown larger and harder to carry as the years have gone on. “I might have an idea,” Lydia says caustically, like she's mad about it, and everyone turns to look at her expectantly. “But it's really stupid.” “There are no stupid ideas,” Stiles points out with a sarcastic wave of his finger in the air, and Lydia primly ignores him. “I have this old book on witchcraft that Deaton gave me back in high school,” she smooths her skirt out with her hands and avoids eye contact with everyone in the room. Derek, specifically. She nearly turns her entire body away from where he's sitting, crossing one leg over the other and angling away from him like she's afraid of his reaction to whatever it is she has to say. “I haven't looked at it in a while, and frankly I don't care to look at it now, because it made me feel – strange.” “Creepy Deaton books have a tendency to do that,” Stiles says, remembering a time that Deaton gave him a book about archaic spells, which then led to Stiles spending the night cowered in a corner with his baseball bat because he accidentally read the wrong thing out loud and it sprouted legs and tried to bite him. “But I remember a specific passage about -” she waves her hand in the air, “sucking the soul out of another living thing.” Light reading, Stiles thinks, raising his eyebrows. “You can do it with

anything, like a flower or a dog or a person -” “Or a demon.” Derek's voice is surprising, but Stiles doesn't turn to look at him. “I know what you're referring to.” “Right,” Lydia doesn't look at him, either. “Well. We have to suck the life out of something – I'd say that spell in that book is the best thing we have to go on.” “Well, okay!” Scott's got his hopeful voice on, eyes brightening up again at the prospect of having at least something to go on. “So that's what we do!” Lydia still has that look on her face, with her eyes averted, and she really does not look happy at all, even though she might have just once again solved all of their problems for them. “There's something you're not telling us,” Erica accuses with a finger point. “It can't be that easy – just a simple spell and it's all over.” There's nothing but the tap of Lydia's fingernails against the table top for just a moment, and then she's sighing. “It's magic. It's not just – it's magic.” “Yeah,” Erica agrees slowly, like she's just not getting it. A short cursory glance around the room, and it's evident that no one else quite gets what Lydia is hinting at, here, with the evasiveness. Finally, she lifts her eyes and actually looks directly at Derek, as if he's the only one in the entire room that she's talking to, like there's no one else there. “You know there's only one person in this room who can do magic like that.” It takes a second for what Lydia's getting at to sink in, but when it does, Scott turns to look at Stiles with the single most conflicted facial expression Stiles has ever seen. He looks about ready to either leap up and stand in front of Stiles to keep Lydia away from him, or to grab that spooky spell book and shove it directly underneath Stiles' nose to force him to do what she wants him to. Which is the exact moment Stiles realizes that Lydia is talking about him. “Me?” He points to his own chest and shakes his head. “Me? I've – what?” “That's not an option,” Derek says, leaving absolutely no room whatsoever for argument. He stares at Lydia, so intensely it's like they're having a private conversation telepathically, and Stiles looks between them again and again trying to get what he's fucking missing here. Slowly, like she knows she's treading on very thin ice right now, Lydia begins to explain. “Magic is like wolfsbane to werewolves,” which is very, very true, and something they had to learn the hard way - one time Erica tried to do a locating spell and wound up with burns all up and down her arms for her efforts. “You know I can't do magic like that, my head just won't allow it, and Allison has nothing. It -” “There's nothing in me, either,” Stiles argues, and everyone looks at him like he has ten heads.

“If you remember, the bubati or whatever it is -” “Sifati,” Lydia corrects mildly. “...told me to my face that there's nothing inside of me. I'm like an eggshell, cracked open, here! Hollowed out!” “He can't do it,” Derek says. Stiles gives him a dark look, has half a mind to leap up and tell him to get the hell off of his side right now, but takes the high road of maturity instead and just pretends he isn't there at all. “Think of something else.” “There is nothing else. You know that he's the only one -” “What information does everyone else have that I don't?” Stiles demands, cutting Lydia off and glaring at each and every one of his friends. “Okay, so, one time I did something neat with mountain ash, when I was legitimately sixteen years old, so what?” Erica pinches the bridge of her nose. “Remember the book?” “That thing was already halfway to having a mind of its own when Deaton gave it to me,” he argues, somewhat hysterically. “It was halfway there, I did nothing to -” “There's no fucking argument!” Stiles snaps his jaw shut, as does everybody else, because when Lydia starts yelling at everyone instead of just sneaking out the back door, they all know it's getting serious. Stiles glares at his hands, fiddling with his fingers and shaking his head back and forth, again and again. It's really all he has left to do, anymore. “There's nothing else to do, I've looked everywhere! The only way to get rid of it is to take its energy, and the only way to take its energy is to use that black magic, and the only person who can even attempt to perform that kind of ritual is Stiles.” She leans back in her chair, and looks right at Derek once again. “And you know that.” Incensed, Stiles points at Derek, but looks only at Lydia. “Why do you keep looking at him like that, and saying that? What does he know?” Erica stands up and walks away from the couch, walking away from the group with her palm pressed to her forehead, like she just knows things are about to reach brand new heights of ugliness. She's probably not wrong. “Everybody knows you can do magic, Stiles,” Allison says pragmatically, when Derek remains mute silent glaring at the ground like he's going to start punching the floorboards in the face at any second. “Nobody said you were a warlock, but you – you're the only one of us who's ever managed -” “I don't have magic inside of me,” he points to himself. “There's nothing in here. Like the demon

said.” “It's not about having magic inside of you,” Lydia shakes her head and looks like she's only barely holding back from screaming at him again. “It's about your mental abilties, all right? If I hadn't – if Peter hadn't -” she grits her teeth and looks away, out the window, and then quietly begins again. “...I'd do it myself if I weren't the way I am, but I am how I am, and I can't do it.” “Allison's never tried to do magic,” Derek points out, and Allison herself looks scandalized. “I don't have to try,” she looks at Scott, who just kind of nods, like it's obvious. “I -” “If there was one time when you would give it a motherfucking shot, it'd be now,” he growls at her, and Allison doesn't shrink back like anyone else might. She squares her shoulders and sits up straighter, undeterred in the face of an alpha's anger. “Lydia's right. This isn't a discussion.” She juts her chin in Stiles' direction. “It's him, or we die.” Derek gets up, and for a fraction of a second, Stiles really thinks he's going to pick up the chair he was sitting in and throw it directly through the nearest window. He just looks that fucking angry, all puffed up like he's being taunted, as he runs his hand again and again through his hair, and then over his face, and all anyone else does is just sit there. “He can't do that,” he finally says, in a voice more wolf than it is human. “I know he can,” Lydia counters. She keeps her voice level, and calm. It's the best thing to do when a werewolf is about to go off the deep end. The issue is, Stiles has no fucking idea why. “I'm not going to let him!” “Why?” Stiles asks, leaning forward on the couch in Derek's direction. “I'm -” “It could kill you!” Well, that's enough to get Stiles to shut his mouth. The words he was about to say die in his throat, and he looks at Lydia as if for confirmation of this. When she doesn't meet his eyes, Stiles takes that for what it is. That Derek is right, and... “You're human, Stiles, the sifati wasn't wrong about that,” Derek's claws are out, and when he notices, he balls his hands into fists until blood starts pooling out between the cracks in his fingers. “You wouldn't just be taking demon energy into a jar and screwing it shut and burying it in the woods somewhere, you'd be taking it inside of yourself.” “There's not a high mortality rate,” Lydia pipes up, and Derek gives her a look like if she says another word he's going to flip that table over. “For witches who know what they're doing, there's not a high mortality rate.”

“All the instructions are pretty clear. It's not hard, it's just -” “I'm not letting him do that.” Derek has put his metaphorical foot down, and he expects the rest of the room just go along with it. Erica has taken up residence in the doorway, leaning against the wall and not saying a word, which isn't a good sign – silence on Erica's part is never a good sign. “That's it. He can't do it, I won't let him, that's all there is to say.” “Well,” Lydia slams her book closed, and starts collecting all her papers and things into her purse, pursing her lips. “I hope you all have your funeral arrangements written up and ready to go -” “There's got to be something else,” Scott says, “we can't – there's -” he looks across the coffee table at Stiles, locks eyes with him, and Stiles can read what he isn't saying loud and clear, written all over his face. There isn't anything else. Lydia is right. Derek is wrong. They're backed into a corner, and whenever they've been backed into a corner, they've always gone for the last resort. It's always worked. But usually not without its shortcomings. In this case, Stiles already knows what the specific shortcoming of this particular plan would be. He heaves out a great big sigh, raises his eyes to the ceiling. “I'll do it.” Lydia pauses in collecting her things, and gives him a look like she knew it all along. They know each other fairly well, after all. She gets this small smile on her face, like she's proud of him, and Stiles looks away. “Whatever, right?” He waves his hand dismissively, shrugging. “It's worth a shot.” “Stiles,” Derek says, in his I'm not fucking around tone of voice, “you don't understand the ramifications -” “Sure I do. Either it kills me, which is whatever, or I have to walk around with demonic energy inside of me for the rest of my life,” he leans back into the couch and spreads his fingers across his chest, like he's getting ready for a nap. Derek stares at him, a good long and hard one, like he's trying to x-ray vision his way through to Stiles' brain to get inside and see just what the fuck Stiles is thinking about now. What could possibly be going through his head right now to make him even consider doing this. But, really, there's not much to tell. There's no complex thought process behind any of it – he's just doing the obvious, no-brainer thing. For god's sakes, his apartment burned down, he's homeless, he works at Wal Mart, and all his friends are currently staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, just sitting around waiting to be picked off. Whatever. He'll do the spell and take the odds. “You're doing this just to get back at me,” Derek accuses, and Stiles throws his hands in the air,

because here we go. “You're doing this just because I don't want you to, and because you want to prove some asinine point, you always have to prove a fucking point!” Stiles sits back up again, and turns his body in Derek's direction. “You'd like to think every single choice that I make all comes back to you, wouldn't you?” “That's exactly what this is,” Derek's eyes bleed into red and he looks ready to grab Stiles by his shoulders and shake him. “You hate me, and you'd -” “What's it fucking matter to you, either way?” When Stiles stands up, he winces from putting pressure on his leg, but advances closer to Derek either way. “Hey...” Scott starts, moving like he's going to stand up himself. “See, you didn't seem to care so much about what I was getting myself into for the past two years,” Derek sets his jaw and looks away, but Stiles keeps talking. “This isn't about you and me! It isn't, for once!” “Let's take it down,” Scott puts his hand on Stiles' shoulder, because Scott actually did stand up at some point, and starts trying to gently pull him backwards and away from Derek. “It's about you and me,” Derek snarls, shaking his head. “It's always been about you and me, Stiles. If you want to do that fucking suicide spell – I'm not – I'm not taking part in that. I can't sit here and just let you -” “Then go!” Stiles yells in his face, even with Scott trying to pull him back and away, with Allison in the background going now hang on, Lydia digging around for a lighter, Erica saying and doing nothing. Derek blinks back into Stiles' face, like he's surprised, hurt even, but Stiles doesn't care. He just doesn't anymore. He can't fucking afford to give a shit. “If you don't want to be a part of the pack anymore, then go. Like you always fucking do!” With a final flash of his red eyes in Stiles' direction, Derek backs away from the argument. He says nothing, not a single word. He just stalks over to the chair where he left his coat, and rips it off of the cushion like it's personally offended him. “Right,” Stiles yells, gesturing to Derek's back as he makes his way to Scott and Allison's front door. “It's what you're best at!” “We shouldn't be splitting up!” Scott reminds everyone, but it's really no use. Derek flings open the door, momentarily letting cold air spill inside, and then slams it closed, hard enough that the windows rattle and Lydia jumps. “God fucking -” he rounds on Stiles, looks like he wants to punch him in the face. “Why do you two have to be like that? You know? Why do you two have to -”

“Fuck him,” Stiles says resolutely, like he means it. “That's why. He's a piece of shit, and I -” “I'm going to go after him,” Scott talks over Stiles and pushes him, just hard enough that Stiles stumbles. It's the most Scott will ever put into letting Stiles know exactly how fucking angry he is right about now, and even though it seems like nothing, Stiles feels attacked. “He's going to go off and get himself killed, just because you can't for two seconds understand how he feels about this.” “How he feels,” Stiles snorts, crossing his arms and looking away from everyone. “What's that got to do with -” “He would let this entire pack fall apart before he'd let anything happen to you,” Erica says from her spot across the room, while Scott puts his phone up to his ear, most likely trying to call Derek even as he's going out the door to try and track him down. “I've always known that, everyone else has always known it, too.” Stiles doesn't know what to say to that. He wants to argue it, because how could that possibly be true? When all Derek has ever done is leave him, and make him miserable, and take from him, how could it ever possibly fucking be that Derek could care about him that much? “Of course he's a piece of shit,” Allison interjects. “He's just a piece of shit who would do anything to keep you, in specific, safe.” She pauses, and gives him a mom look. “That spell is dangerous, and he only wants to protect you.” It's a bit much to take in, with all three of the girls looking at him like he's just gone and kicked a puppy, and Scott barking something caustic into Derek's voicemail about get back here right now you fucker – it's so opposite to how things usually go that Stiles feels like his head is about to explode. “Why are you all on his side, suddenly?” “For Christ's sake,” Lydia stands, and she has an unlit cigarette in her mouth, her pink lighter waiting in her hand. “I can't take this. I'm going outside.” “He's the one who doesn't want me to do the exact thing that's going to save all our lives!” Stiles says this, in spite of the fact that the room is slowly disbanding, everyone else leaving him standing there all alone. “Why is everyone mad at me?” As she throws her cardigan on, Lydia says, “I'll show you that spell tonight, Stiles,” voice muffled around the cigarette still between her lips, and stalks off in the opposite direction. The only person left in the room after that, with Scott gone to hunt down Derek and Erica vanishing somewhere upstairs to brood, is Allison. She sits on the couch and doesn't say anything, so Stiles doesn't either. **** “It's important to not let it get the best of you.” Lydia levels him with a stare, her face looking

particularly ominous in the dim lighting of the library on the second floor of her house. “You don't know what you're doing, and all of this – it has a way of recognizing that and using it to its advantage.” All of this meaning dark magic. The stuff that Stiles doesn't actually have any power over, doesn't actually have inside of himself at all, but that he somehow is supposed to understand preternaturally. Like he was born with it, or something. Stiles swallows and tries his best to not look overwhelmed, or scared. Lydia sees straight through it anyway. “Okay.” “If you're scared, it'll use that.” “I'm not scared.” “You're very scared,” she leaves no room for a debate. “I would be, too.” “How do I not be scared?” She smiles at him, all benign and forgiving, like she has anything to forgive him for. “I have no idea. Pretend like you know what you're doing, and hope for the best.” Stiles rubs at his neck, glaring down at the spell book Lydia had propped up in front of him, pointing her finger at the incantation he should memorize, using her free hand to briefly run her fingers through his hair as she explained that there's a lot she doesn't understand about it, and it's dangerous, and if something goes wrong no one will know what to do. Something is bound to go wrong, because something always goes wrong. Stiles had thought that he had accepted that a long time ago, around the time that he had to prop Isaac's head up on his lap murmuring it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, again and again, even it when it wasn't. Stiles was usually always that person. While everyone else had the power to do something, to rip someone's head off or jab them through the eye with a particularly pointy knife, Stiles was always only ever there to deal with the carnage. This time, it's a bit different. “What's going to happen to me if I pull it off,” he asks, shaking off the worst case scenario and focusing on the best case. “What's – I mean, if I manage to suck in a quart and a half of super evil demon energy, do I, become the demon, or -” “You don't become the demon,” Lydia nips that train of thought right in the bud. “You...you might wind up like me.” Like her. There are a lot of different conotations to that, some of them super fucking awesome and others – well. “I become a fucking banshee?” Stiles marinates on that. “Cool?” “No,” she straightens herself in her seat. “Taking in dark energy, it's a lot like what I did. I didn't become a werewolf, I just took the power and my body – did what it wanted with it. I think it's different for everybody.”

“Like how Jackson became a lizard.” She gives him a look. Right, Stiles reminds himself, clearing his throat. That's a topic that's never on the table for discussion. “You might change. Don't worry about that, because that's exactly what we want to happen, above all else.” All else. The only thing else that could happen is Stiles dying. That's got to be worse than becoming a lizard, he convinces himself. “This is the right thing to do,” she nods her head. It's said just to convince herself, to make her feel like she's not spiralling everybody into a mistake that she'll have to live with for the rest of her life. People learn to live with a lot, here in Beacon Hills, and Stiles is positive she'd find a way to keep going even with the weight of one of her best friends – if not the very best friend she's got aside from Allison – dying because of something she came up with. “Can I ask you something?” “Why not?” She looks like she knows exactly what Stiles wants to ask anyway, and isn't happy about it. Stiles plays with the edge of the pages on the magic book, and feels tiny little buzzes of electricity on his fingers as he does so. No wonder Lydia kept this in a box at the back of her closet. The thing really is just about as evil as the one that tried to eat Stiles alive in his bedroom. “Do you think I treat Derek as badly as he treats me?” When she gets a sour look on her face, he clarifies. “Be honest.” She puffs out a sigh, like Derek is the absolute last thing she wants to be talking about, but answers if only because Stiles is putting his damn life on the line and deserves to talk about whatever he wants to talk about. “He treats you worse. You deserve to treat him like garbage, but you know – not about that.” “About what.” “Derek is a deeply messed up person,” her voice is relaxed, a country club small talk converstional type voice, even though what she's saying isn't anywhere near that. “He's fucked up, what do you want me to say? But he – very seriously cares about you.” Stiles nods. Maybe, he thinks. “Just about nothing else in this world gives him more pain than a situation in which you're in danger and he can't do anything about it. It's like his worst nightmare. This situation is exactly that. He's – you can be so insensitive to how he feels about you.” Stiles' throat gets all heavy and thick, but he clears it and looks away from her calculating stare. “I guess all the times he just took off and left, he was really giving a shit about what happened to

me, then.” “Do you ever wonder why he has always come back here?” She doesn't even pause or blink after Stiles' outburst. She's heard variations of the same again and again, and has learned to just tune Stiles out when he gets going. “He hates it here so much not even his alpha instincts can keep him around, yet he always comes back. You never think about why. It isn't about me,” she points to herself, “and it isn't about anyone else in this town,” out the open door of the library, where downstairs Scott is cooking dinner in Lydia's kitchen and Erica and Allison are doing god knows what. Then, she points solidly at Stiles, and says nothing. The message is received, loud and clear. “Can I have one of these?” He grabs Lydia's pack of cigarettes out from in between them and doesn't wait for her response as he pulls one out and pilfers her pink lighter as well. “Come get me when dinner is ready, okay?” “Okay,” Lydia says to Stiles' retreating back, her voice sounding tired. It's not the first time Stiles has just up and bursted out of a conversation about Derek, and he doubts it'll be the last. Outside on the front porch, Stiles lights up and leans back against one of the banisters. For a moment, it's easy to not think about anything else but the pull of smoke into his lungs and the way the edges of the forest look lit up from the stretch of lights emenating from Lydia's windows, and then he has to pick between thinking about dying or becoming a lizard or something they don't have a name for, or thinking about Derek. Honestly, it isn't even clear which train of thought sucks less. Lydia was right – she normally is. Stiles doesn't ever think about why Derek comes back. He spends months and years thinking about why Derek leaves, what Stiles did wrong, what anyone did wrong, why Stiles has simply never been enough, but never once has he wondered about why he always comes back. The two times before this time were different, of course. There was no great threat over their heads. He would just show up. The first time Derek left, Stiles was sixteen. His birthday hadn't even come yet by the time Derek was back, all apologetic and kicked-puppy and curling his arms around Stiles before Stiles even had a chance to start fighting with him. The second time, Stiles was seventeen and comfortable with the idea that Derek wouldn't be leaving again, but he did. That was the time that Derek and Stiles almost made it, really, and Stiles used to turn everything he said and did those six months they had together all around again and again in his head. Because of course he was the one who did something wrong, he had to have been. Either way, Derek left, and Stiles threw a rock through the window of his family's house in preserve just because he was drunk and seventeen and stupid. And the last time, the worst time, Stiles was eighteen. It's a story Stiles doesn't know if he can tell, one that no one else has ever dared to tell themselves. Isaac died, and Stiles watched the light go out of his eyes, and that whole night Derek was so distant and silent that Stiles just should've known. He should've known he'd wake up in the morning and Derek would be gone

and graduation would be a week away and – Stiles has to stop, because even just remembering it is like being there again. It was one of the worst times of his life. That's the story. Thinking about it now, Stiles almost can't imagine what it was like to be so fucking heartbroken that he could hardly do anything else but sleep and eat and hate himself. It was one of those low points that Stiles is glad to say he made it through, but not glad to say it ever happened to begin with. Stiles never asked why he always came back. He also never asked why Stiles was always the first one he would go to, sneaking in through his bedroom window in his father's house. At this point, it's too much to hope that Derek always came back just for him, but...maybe Lydia was right about that, too. In some ways, it's a really nice thought, and in others, it really fucking sucks. “I didn't know you smoked.” Stiles ashes into the front yard and immediately takes another drag. “There's a lot you don't know about me, I'd say.” Derek's footsteps are heavy on the wooden porch, the boards creaking underneath his weight. From the corner of Stiles' eye, he's just a shadow moving closer and closer, step by step. “That stuff isn't good for you.” “Hm,” Stiles murmurs, glancing down at where he has the exact object in question wedged between his index and pointer fingers. “If I had a nickel. Scott got you to come back, I see.” “Scott is persuasive,” Derek stops walking closer when he's a good ten feet away, and leans against his own banister. Now, he's bathed in the light from Lydia's living room, all yellow. “He's a good leader. He'll be a good alpha.” “I've always thought so, myself,” he ashes again. “Better than I was.” Stiles snorts. “A stick with a sponge for a head would be better than you were as alpha.” It's a pretty low blow, so Stiles regroups. “Some people just aren't meant for the job. Like, they put me on forklift at work, and that was – just – a disaster like none other. I knocked over entire shelves of online orders and nearly killed my shift supervisor with one of the prongs. And that was even after I took the mandatory class. There's no class for alphas.” “There is. It's called family. My mother, for example.” For the first time since this conversation started, Stiles turns to look directly into Derek's face. He's delivered this information with next to no emotion on his face, just fact. He always gets that look whenever he talks about his family, like he's working so hard to seem passe about it, because he doesn't want anyone to pity him. “I sucked at forklift, you sucked at being alpha. Life goes on. There's other things you're good at.”

Derek nods. “According to you, running away is what I'm good at.” Breathing out a cloud of smoke, Stiles recognizes that this is a conversation he and Derek just need to have. No fighting, no name calling, no being fucking dicks to each other just because they can be – just facts. “I shouldn't have said that stuff,” Stiles says. “I'm sorry about it. Just, like, in the name of everything that's going on,” he gestures to the yard, for some reason, “I just think – whatever. I'm saying sorry, is all.” It's quiet for a moment. Then, “in the name of everything that's going on,” is repeated back to him like the words don't quite make sense. “You know what I mean. Let's not dance around the subject. If something bad happens, I don't want the last conversation you and I ever have to be me yelling at you about how much you suck.” He looks down at his cigarette, grimaces. “I don't genuinely believe that, so.” “Something bad.” Another repeat. “I am just doing what I think is the right thing,” he jams what's left of his cigarette into the railing and watches as the orange embers fly about in the wind for just a fraction of a second before going out. “It's not about you. Okay? I just – my friends. You know? My friends. Maybe that does include you.” Derek stands there in his spot for just another moment, and then he's grumbling something under his breath and approaching Stiles at a much faster pace. Stiles thinks they're about to get into another fight, but then Derek is disappearing out of the light, and entering the shadow that Stiles has shrouded himself into, and he just stands there. A foot, maybe less, away. “You're brave, and a fucking idiot,” Derek says, and then his hands are on Stiles' shoulders. “If something happens to you, I'll -” The sentence doesn't get finished, so Stiles prompts him. “You'll?” Without another word, Derek is pulling Stiles in by his shoulders and kissing him. Stiles is surprised, but he still closes his eyes and leans into it, lets Derek do whatever he wants. It's always like this, the first kiss they have after Derek comes back – Derek initiates, and Stiles is powerless to do anything but follow his lead. It's not particularly heated or hungry or desperate, like the others, but it's something. There's not much else he can think to describe it as. Derek pulls back first, presses his forehead against Stiles' and just breathes for a second – as though he's pulling in Stiles' scent the exact same way that Stiles just smoked that cigarette. “I...” Even if he doesn't finish it, Stiles knows what he was going to say. It's enough to remember how those words sounded in the quiet when they were alone, to vividly recall how Derek's lips would look when he would say them, to hang onto that memory as tight as possible and pretend that it's here, now – it's enough. And then, it isn't, at the exact same time.

“Why do you never say what you really think?” Stiles asks him. This close to each other's faces, when Stiles moves his eyes, his lashes brush against Derek's cheeks. “Why do you just get mad, and yell at me, and evade every fucking question I ask you? Do you know how much easier every thing would be if you just...” Derek shakes his head. “You do the same.” There's no argument, there. All they ever do is fight, and in every single one of those fights, there's not a single word with any backbone said in between them. They fight, and then they're fucking, and it's like nothing ever happened. Derek says what he says afterward, and it might be true, about how Stiles is this to him and Stiles is all he thinks about, but then...it was just never all the way there. It was never all the way anywhere. It might've been that Stiles and Derek have always only half-assed everything. The thing about Derek and Stiles is there was never any real crash or burn, all the times they ended. In a way, Stiles has always almost wished that there had been, because that kind of pain, and that kind of immediacy – Stiles is used to that. Stiles has been stabbed through his gut with the tip of a knife burn, and Stiles has slammed his car into the thickest part of a tree crash, and by now he's memorized both feelings well enough that he almost finds comfort in them. The familiar. But with Derek and Stiles, it was never so fantastical. Nothing with Derek ever was, or is, when Stiles thinks about it. No, Derek wasn't the fucking moon and Stiles wasn't the tides and it wasn't some poetic horror show with romantic declarations or fireworks or any of it – but it was something. And it always deserved to end with a little more than just silence. Instead, Derek and Stiles got give up. That stupid exhalation of breath that just means done, over, fuck off. Derek would be gone, and Stiles wouldn't even get a fight until months or years later, and by that time, every thing they had to say to each other had already gone stale in their mouths. Right now, Stiles tastes smoke and Derek, and there's no better combination, really – like cigarettes and coffee. He pulls himself away, pushes Derek back with a palm pressed against his chest. “You can't stay here,” he says. Derek mulls this over for a second, and then almost impercepitbly, he shakes his head no. No, he can't stay here. He's never been able to stay here, but here is all Stiles knows. Change might terrify him more than he's willing to admit. Derek knows well enough. Not even for me, Stiles thinks, and – Lydia was wrong. Not even for Stiles, Derek can't stay. “You can't stay,” he repeats, and then waves his hands in between them. “Then there's nothing to talk about.” Stiles moves to walk away, but Derek grips his shoulders harder, so hard Stiles nearly winces

from the pressure of it. “I don't want you to do that magic.” “You have made that clear,” Stiles hisses, and unfurls himself out of Derek's hands. “I hate to throw this in your face, but – you ever think this is all happening because you were meant to stay? I mean – fuck me, pretend I'm not in the picture – but this is...your family, and your history...you ever think...?” Derek sets his jaw. No, he doesn't ever think. He has the right to not think about that, because he's suffered, and he gets to decide how to live his life in the wake. Stiles nods his head, reaches out to cup his hand around Derek's neck, and walks past him back towards the front door. “This all happened because you keep running away. You don't even know what it's like to be here, really.” “I know well enough,” Derek counters. It's an old argument. “People I care about die, here. If you die here, I won't ever come back.” Stiles laughs. It's not a very good laugh. He pauses with his hand on the doorknob, and shakes his head, but he doesn't really know how to respond to that. He just knows it's funny to him, for some reason. **** “Only the smaller ones are five for five,” Stiles explains, for what feels like the ten zillionth time since he set foot on the floor. “The bigger ones -” he gestures at the roll of wrapping paper in this woman's hand, “are the same price as labelled.” “Why are they in the same aisle, then?” Stiles takes two seconds. “Convenience.” Imagine a world where the wrapping paper is scattered by price all around the store, or even scattered by design – red paper, in home goods, green paper, cosmetics, gold, the gun aisle. Good luck. She gives him a look like she's seriously considering whacking him directly over the head with the snowman covered wrapping paper, and Stiles feels like explaining to her it's literally a fifty cent god damn price difference. Buying five for five dollars probably gives you double what one giant roll does, but buying two of the big ones is only fifty cents more. It is not this fucking serious. Finally, with only one last threatening glare, she hobbles off with her snowman paper and leaves Stiles to deal with the next asshole. There is nothing, nothing on god's green earth, that is worse than being exiled to the Christmas Shoppe in mid-December. Normally, and anyone who's ever been to a Wal Mart knows this, they don't even put anyone directly in there because even occasionally the managers are merciful. Typically it's just the garden department fending for themselves, but when you piss the wrong person off, it's to the dungeons with you. Stiles wound up on the wrong side of this because he showed up late twice in a row by ten minutes. Excuse

the fuck out of him for the fact that he has to sit around with Lydia trying to save all his friends' lives. “We just need more people out there, Stiles,” Stiles mimics his manager's voice under his breath as he adjusts a light up snowman display, “you know how it is in December, Stiles, it's Christmas Stiles, wear your Santa hat, Stiles.” Stiles adjusts said santa hat and fantasizes about tossing it into Lydia's fire place the second he gets off work. Luckily, it's getting later at night, so all the kids are at least out of his hair. He can only spend so much time telling five year olds that they cannot climb and attempt to ride the plastic yard Rudolph, and they also can't pick Santa up and run off with him into the garden department to hide him amongst the trees planted into pots. Plus, there's just less people in general milling around hassling him about prices and gingerbread house sets, so he actually has five seconds to himself to partake in the free hot chocolate set up they have running in the corner right next to Frosty. It's not the greatest – just the cheapest brand they have in stock made in bulk (and watery, at that) and a bowl of stale marshmallows, but it gets the job done after a long day. He pours himself a bit into a styrofoam cup, dabbles a pinch of tiny marshmallows along the top, and takes a sip. Mmmm...bargain brand! This might just be the most Christmassy moment he gets this season. Or possible his last Christmassy moment of all time – standing next to a rotating Frosty while his theme song blares over the tiny speaker they have set up, drinking shitty hot chocolate and chewing on stale marshmallows. When did Christmas start sucking so much, he wonders, shaking his head. What a fucking mess. Right as he's about to take his last sip, things get even worse than that. A big hand slaps him on the back, hard enough that he nearly spills his coco all over himself, and Stiles chokes on a marshmallow. Coughing up his own lung, he puts his cup down on the tiny table and whirls around to see who's gone and accosted him this time – to find Scott. “Are you okay?” Scott demands, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him, while Stiles continues to attempt to dislodge the wad of marshmallow from his throat. Scott keeps right on shaking him, which really isn't fucking helping anything. “Choking to death,” he manages to squeeze out, jerkily, and Scott finally relents. He keeps his hands on Stiles' shoulders, but watches with rapt attention as Stiles finally swallows what he has in his throat and wipes the tears out from the corners of his eyes. “Jesus Christ! Can you -” “Are you. Okay.” He's got this wild look in his eyes that suggests he's just seen something highly fucked up, and Stiles rights himself and tries to get a grip on the situation. “I'm fine,” he says. He takes note of the fact that Scott isn't alone, but that Lydia is standing there

with him, looking him over just as intensely as Scott is. “Did something happen?” Scott lets go of Stiles' shoulders though he seems reluctant, and turns to look at Lydia. “She had a feeling.” Stiles' eyebrows raise. “About me choking on a marshmallow?” Unamused, Lydia gives him a dark look. “You know what kind of a feeling.” “Oh,” Stiles does indeed know exactly what kind of a feeling. Lydia really only gets one kind of feeling, as mysterious as it all is. “About me?” They nod in unison, that ominous fucking nod, and Stiles nods right back at them. Another thing that's definite about Lydia's feelings, vague and strange and sometimes utterly useless as they might be...they have a tendency to always be right. “I'm still here,” he says, for lack of anything else to say. “Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it.” Fortunately because, hey, not dead, but unfortunately because he's still in his Santa hat in the fucking Christmas Shoppe. Lydia shakes her head, opens her mouth like she's going to say something, and then nothing comes out. Whenever Lydia's got nothing to say, it's more indicative of what's about to happen than even her spooky banshee premonitions are. “Doesn't that mean -” that does mean. It exactly means. Before Stiles can get the words fully out of his mouth, there's a thump from the top of the greenhouse that the Christmas Shoppe is set up inside of. All three of them look up, Stiles and Scott with their jaws dropped, Lydia with her lips pursed tight. “Bird,” Stiles says – and then another loud thump. “Raccoon, possibly.” A third thump. This one more like a strike, actually, as though something is trying to break through the roof. “Maybe a – a bobcat that somehow got up...” he swallows. He knows what it is, and so do Scott and Lydia. “Derek is coming,” Scott says quietly, grabbing Stiles by his upperarm and tugging him into the Frosty display, Lydia joining them, her heels going silent on the soft fake snow underfoot. “Derek will be here in a second.” A louder thump, this one accompanied by the distinct sound of something breaking up there, maybe...scaffolding or glass or insulation, or whatever the hell this greenhouse is actually made out of. “Because using the front door is so – lower level demon, right?” Stiles rises from his crouch behind Santa and takes stock of what innocent people are in here. There's a woman who's just pushing her cart full of garland and a boxed fake tree out of Shoppe and back into the rest of the store, and the few people who are in the adjoining garden department, but other than that, the coast is clear. Stiles can only hope that when cookie girl (or whatever he's going to see when the roof breaks in) comes down from the ceiling, no one else will come back in until...well. Until it

ends. With shaking fingers, he starts unbuttoning his vest. “What are you doing?” Lydia stage-whispers – like it matters whether or not the thing hears them. It already knows they're in here, for Christ's sake. “I am not dying in my Wal Mart vest,” Stiles bitches back, unfurling himself from the article in question and tossing it down onto the ground. His name tag makes a clack noise as it lands on top of Rudolph, the one that has his real name carefully printed on in block letters, but that he used letter stickers from linens and home to plaster STILES over. “Derek's going to be here at any second,” Scott goes on, and at this point, Stiles recognizes this as Scott's mantra to keep calm in the face of danger. As it is, with just Lydia and Stiles and Scott here, there's no chance of any of them successfully managing to pull off the plan as it stands. They have to slow it down, at least, they have to wound it severely enough that it's at least slower and maybe even confused, and only then can Stiles even try to – The glass above them breaks, shattering all over the shelves, knocking over a handful of tiny polar bear figurines that clunk to the ground. All three of them duck on instinct, covering their heads, and by the time any of them is looking back up to assess the damage, cookie girl's foot is kicking one last bit of glass out of her way, and jumping clean through the perfectly sized hole she's made, landing gracefully down on the floor. Scott and Lydia's hands on Stiles' arms turn brutal, as if he's the specific person that's in danger here. He might just be. After all, if she's really been listening in on their conversations, then it's possible that in this fight, he might be the only one they really have to worry about. She's got her eyes on them, without even having to look, so hiding among the life size plastic figurines has done them not a lick of good, but at least there's a couple of things in between them and her. For the moment. There's a second, maybe two, where she stares at them, eyes flicking directly to Stiles himself, and then she opens up her mouth and lets loose the single most petrifying noise Stiles has heard outside of – anything. Horror movies, real life encounters with monsters...that sound tops anything that Stiles has ever heard. It's loud too, pulsing against his eardrums. Lydia covers her ears like she does whenever her powers get too much for her, as though it's affecting her worse than either Stiles or Scott. Stiles wonders what she hears inside of that scream that nobody else can, but there's no time to really think about that. As soon as she's done making her anger known, she's storming towards them, practically frothing at the fucking mouth to get her hands on Stiles. Scott shifts, claws nearly breaking the skin on Stiles' arm, and shoves Frosty out of his way with the clear intent to try and stop her in her path. Stiles' walkie talkie beeps. “Stilinski, was there just a -” Scott leaps over Rudolph and charges at her - “...commotion coming from the Christmas shop?”

Getting into a huge supernatural smackdown in the middle of Wal Mart is bad on its own. But the last thing that any of them need is for Stiles' manager to show up to investigate just what that inhuman demonic scream from the back of the store was, so Stiles fumbles around on his utility belt to take his walkie out. Scott takes a swipe of his claws, Lydia wraps her arms around Stiles' neck and presses her lips right up against his ear, and Stiles holds down the talk button. “Uh – I think that came from electronics. Television malfunction. I don't -” he stops there, drops the walkie down onto the ground, and watches as Scott gets bodily picked up by his neck and slammed into the nearest large object. Which just happens to be a small shelf of Christmas greeting cards. “Stiles,” Lydia says, holding onto him as tight as humanly possible. “Remember what I said. Don't let it control you, control it, okay, you'll be fine, you'll be fine -” While Scott is trying to fight his way through the mound of smiling Santa and baby Jesus cards he's been buried under, the demon makes some kind of gutteral noise of disgust and charges for where Stiles and Lydia are camped out, right underneath Frosty's smiling face. That song is still playing in the background – Frosty the snowman, was a jolly happy soul – and sitting there listening to that while a thing with the pure intent to rip Stiles' head off of his body comes straight for them is one of the most incredible experiences of Stiles' young life. Lydia holds on tighter, trying to shield Stiles' body with her own, and Stiles tries pushing her out of the way. The last thing he wants is for her to get hurt trying to stop the inevitable. “Let go of me,” Stiles hisses, and Lydia doesn't, not even when Frosty is pulled out of the way, thrown on top of Scott as just another thing he has to contend with to keep him away from distracting the demon from its end goal. A tiny human-girl hand is reaching out to pull Stiles up and out of his hiding spot, to wrap around his neck and certifiably snap it, and that's when, as promised, Derek shows up. A silver arrow lodges itself right into cookie girl's hand and she recoils in surprise, snarling. Stiles glances upwards to see that Allison has taken residence up in the exact spot that the sifati had carved out for herself, and she's already loading up a second arrow to send flying. She's pushed briefly aside to make room for Erica, who must've piggy backed Allison up on top of the roof to begin with. Erica glares down at the scene below, curls her upper lip, and drops feet first down without a second thought. Before she reaches the ground, she shifts into full wolf form – all tawny fur and snarling muzzle – and Allison shoots another arrow that misses the demon but makes a very nice impression inside of Santa's head. Erica snarls, circling around the demon with a short bark. Stiles keeps glancing again and again to the entrance of the Christmas shop, at the blow up archway with a half dozen Santa heads leering at anyone who passes underneath, and prays to God that no one is going to walk through it. There are a lot of things that Scott and the pack have managed to lie their way out of...but he doubts this will ever be one of them. There's a five foot tall wolf trying to chew through what

looks like a teenage girl's arm for Christ's sake. Lydia's arms are suddenly no longer wrapped around Stiles' neck, and Lydia herself makes a noise of sharp protest. Stiles looks up to find that Derek is there, pulling Lydia bodily away and manhandling her off towards the fairly sized stage they have set up with all the fake trees. She keeps her protests going, even while the fight continues on with Scott throwing himself back into the picture, but Derek ignores her. “Stay down,” he snaps at her, pushing her in between two garish pink and blue plastic trees, before turning back around to glare in Stiles' direction. There have been dozens upon dozens of moments just like this, fights just like this, where Derek has done the same exact thing he just did to Lydia to Stiles. Tossing him into the safest possible spot he can find, snarling at him to stay put with red eyes for a warning, and then leaving him to be useless. This time, that isn't an option. Derek sets his jaw and walks back over to Stiles, who finally rises back up to his full height and steps out from the display, meeting Derek halfway. “Four against one,” he says, and Derek nods his head. “It shouldn't be hard to at least slow her down, just enough to -” “I know,” Derek cuts him off, waving a hand. “Don't do anything stupid.” Stiles holds his arms up, like isn't this already pretty fucking stupid? The fact that Scott is currently wielding the biggest size Justin Bieber holiday wrapping paper and using it to beat a demon over the head, that Erica has got a paw tangled up in silver star garland but is still using it to get a few swipes in, that Lydia is hiding in a pink fake tree? That's not fucking stupid? Derek gives him one last look, a threatening one, or maybe a terrified one, it's never quite clear with him, and finally turns away with a click of his claws to do what his job in all of this is. Now that Stiles is back out in the open, there's a certain renewed vigor to how cookie girl is trying to fight off her assailants. She manages to pick Scott up, yet again, only this time she chooses a much more effective place to toss him – the metal shelves that hold all of the breakable Christmas ornaments. Scott hits it hard, body slamming with a crunch into a long row of glass orbs, and Stiles knows there's has to be a lot of blood. He looks away, because Scott'll be fine, in a minute. Next up is Erica, who goes in for what looked like it could have been a very intense chomp at the demon's head, but cookie girl manages to catch her mid-air, as easy as catching a butterfly. Erica goes down with a yip of pain, red blood oozing all over her fur from a jab directly to her hind leg, and then that just leaves Derek and Allison. Derek is strong, of course he is, but he's also a fucking idiot. No offense to him, but he has a tendency to be the world's most surprisingly disappointing hand-to-hand fighter. Sure, he's good for beating off assholes at bars and general shit like that, but in actual life or death scenarios? There's enough backlogged evidence that it's not his strongest suit, which is why he's usually not the guy they send into the front line. They don't have any other options. Allison's arrows are

doing jackshit except for vaguely distracting the thing, Scott and Erica are out of commission until the healing kicks in, and Stiles has only one job. “You really think your pack of half-brained misfits is anything against me, Derek?” She goads as they approach one another, Derek gently nudging Erica out of the immediate way of the fight while she whines around her twitching leg. “Can we not do the fucking repartee, and just get on with it?” “I'm going to take great pleasure in ripping the throat out of your human,” she clacks her teeth together, two rows of razor sharp teeth waiting to sink their way into Stiles' neck, and he has to look away. He can't watch, because Derek's not going to be able to fight her off, and then it's all up to him. All he has to do is manage to not get killed until he does the magic, and then he has a shot. Pure, undiluted, unfiltered terror is streaming through every single part of his body, and he can feel himself shaking. Fighting sounds echo against the high ceilings, Scott slowly climbs down from the shelf he had been wedged into with a crack of glass underneath his feet, but anyone can tell he's not going to be worth anything with a dozen or so shards of glass still sticking out of his arm and leg, preventing him from healing as quickly as usual. Worst of all, people have noticed the huge fight going on. There's a handful of people milling about, watching this, the police have most likely been called, and Stiles has no idea what they're going to do about that when the time comes. What's going to happen if his father shows up and finds that Stiles has had what will appear to have been a seizure, or a stroke, or a heart attack? Stiles can't think about that. He doesn't have the time to either way, because in under a minute, Derek is as fucked up as the rest of the wolves are, and cookie girl is shifting into something that looks absolutely nothing like cookie girl. Apparently, she went ahead and saved the sucking the life out of people bit as the finale, pushing it aside for after she kills Stiles and gets her biggest threat out of the way. Stiles starts backing up on instinct, watching as the finger-legs come out, as long and as horrifying as Stiles rightly remembers them from his last pleasant run in with her, even though he has nowhere on earth left to go. They stretch out, branching like a spider crab spreading itself on the ocean floor, and then she's – or it's, looking at its face, all veiny and demonic and just fucking evil, it's definitely an it, now – using them to scatter towards him. He starts uttering the incantation he memorized under his breath, in the strongest, clearest, least afraid voice he can manage. It's not very convincing, what with people screaming in the background, blood everywhere from slowly healing werewolves, and a hell-demon coming at him on ten legs, but he doesn't stop. Halfway through it, one of her legs shoots out and jabs him directly in the arm, pinning him into the glass and cement wall. There's a brief reprieve in the dark magic chanting, then, so he can let

loose a pained shout, and then he starts back up again, even shakier than before. Lydia was very clear. All he has to do is say the incantation, and say it right, and clear, and well, and it'll work. It should work. They didn't exactly have the opportunity to test it out, because he could've wound up losing control and sucking the life out of Lydia or Derek or Scott and that just – would not have been good. At all. So this is his test run, here and now. Right as she finally descends upon him, pushing her body right up against his where she's got him pinned, Allison shoots an arrow through the back of her – its – head. Stiles has to watch as an arrowhead pops the demon's eye right out of its socket, as black blood oozes down the thing's face and drips down onto his own skin. It burns him, the black stuff, and Stiles' voice quakes and wavers. “I should've snapped your neck the first time around,” she hisses, paying next to no mind to the latin gobbledigook he's rattling off, like she's not concerned in the least bit about any of that. It's disconcerting, to say the least, but Stiles still doesn't stop. “Had I known you'd be the problem, I would have.” Another arrow goes through her head, and Stiles feels like screaming it's only a matter of time until one of those goes clean through and hits me, you know!! but he can't. “I dare you to try it,” she goes on, pretending like there's not two long pieces of metal sticking out from different places in her cranium. “It'll kill you before it's even finished, and then it'll all be for nothing.” She's trying to psych him out. That's her master plan. If that were true, is the thing, then she wouldn't be putting so much into killing him, right about now. She should've snapped his neck in the first place, before going for the dramatic flare of it all just to make a spectacle of him. The other thing is that the spell is done, ended on a harsh syllable, and he thinks it's actually going to work. He can feel it, actually, that it's going to work. Not the way Lydia gets feelings, not in that ambiguous, general sense, but in a very specific, literal sense, he can feel magic in his fingertips. For a moment he can't believe it, that he's really gone and summoned dark magic into his own body, but he doesn't have time to celebrate it. She's going to rip him apart with those fucking finger-legs if he doesn't act fast enough – milliseconds, is what he has. He slaps his hand over her mouth, its mouth, and just...pulls. There's really only a fraction of time, maybe two seconds, maybe even less, where he can feel it working, and it hurts, holy shit, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, and then he's blacking out.

“Stiles.” Someone is shaking him. Again and again, hard, too, like they're trying to break his teeth by rattling them together again and again. “Stiles. Stiles. Stiles. Stiles.”

“Stop doing that,” another voice hisses. Beyond the voices around his head there are others, more distant, muted, panicked. Police sirens. Glass shattering. “Derek. Stop doing that! He's alive, we just have to get him -” “I can't,” the voice that must be Derek's says, sounding choked off. “I can't, I can't, not until he -” “Carry him. We have to go. Derek, we seriously can't fucking stay here!” “I'm coming. Fuck off, god dammit, don't touch him, I've got him.” Derek does have him – Stiles is distantly aware, can feel himself being lifted up off of the ground into Derek's arms bridal style, and then they're moving. Quickly, too, like they're running. Stiles can't piece together information like that, can't make sense of the fact that he might've just sucked the life out of a demon and lived to tell the tale, that people saw him do that, that there are police officers swarming the place, quarts of blood everywhere, and a pack of people looking incredibly fucking decent and healthy for the amount of injuries they should have sustained from that amount of blood. It's cold, so they must make it outside, and Stiles sputters something. Some kind of substance starts leaking out from his mouth, something that doesn't taste like blood but feels like it, and he starts choking on it. Derek mutters out a quiet curse, wiping at Stiles' mouth with the sleeve of his jacket, and Stiles tries to crane his neck away. “I'm dying,” he croaks. “Shut up,” Derek says back. “What's that coming out of his mouth?” Another voice says, and Stiles thinks it's Allison. “Oh, my God.” “I'm dying, it's my blood, I'm dying, I'm dying -” even when he opens his eyes, he can't really see anything. Everything is all fuzzy around the edges, Derek's face above him an amorphous blob of colors and shapes, the night sky and all the stars just...nothing. “Shut your god damn mouth, with that,” a car door opens, and then Stiles is being shoved into a seat, delicately as possible but quick at the same time, forgoing the seatbelt. Derek is a good driver. He's never been in an accident before. Stiles remembers that. The busted tail light came from someone hitting him, not the other way around. He doesn't need a seatbelt. “I'm not wearing my vest,” Stiles points out to no one in particular. Mostly to himself. Thank fucking God he took that vest off before dying. Being found in a heap on the cement floor of the Christmas shop in his dumbass Wal Mart vest...god, there's no worse way to go. Thank God. “What?” “His Wal Mart vest,” Scott clarifies, and then the door slams shut and Stiles can't hear them anymore.

When Stiles wakes up, he shoots directly up and then squints against the bright lights of the room he's in. Allison's family's basement. The creepy room with the guns and the arrows and, like, bombs or whatever they've got down here. He's sitting on the edge of a counter, a row of knives hanging up behind his head. The first person he sees is Erica, who's looking at him so expectantly you'd think that he's about to tell her all the secrets of the universe. “You guys,” he starts, holding his hands up. “I've had a revelation. I'm not working at Wal Mart anymore.” There's silence for a second. Stiles scans the room to find that pretty much everyone is there – the whole crew. Deaton included, though Stiles is reluctant to include him as part of the crew, but he's here all the same. “Are you all right?” Scott approaches, cautiously, holding his hand out as if to defend himself. “I'm pumped the fuck up,” Stiles says, and honestly, he is. He feels more alive than he ever has in his entire life, which is funny, considering he literally almost just died. “I've had a near death experience, and certain things have come to light -” “He's talking so fast,” someone whispers, and Stiles ignores it. “What's important, what isn't, how I want the rest of my life to go, and Wal Mart is not included in the line up, I'm quitting first thing. Matter of fact,” he starts pawing around the pockets of his work khakis, splattered in blood and gore, looking for his phone, with the intention of getting his boss on the line right then and there to tell her he's not ever coming back to The Bad Place. He pauses for a second, lifts his head back up to address the room. “Did it work?” Silence. And then, Lydia pipes up. “Yes. You took all the life out of that demon. It – we took care of it.” “I'm so fucking jazzed right now,” Stiles starts drumming his fingers on his knee, and the only thing he can really equate this feeling that he has right now to is when he used to take too much of his medication and fly off the rails for a couple of hours. “Is this what demonic energy does to people?” Erica gestures to Stiles and asks Deaton, giving him a very baffled look. “It's like he just ran 10k, or something.” “I've never seen someone who's done this before,” Deatons explains enigmatically, in that usual shrouded in mystery voice of his. “He's not dead. I'm taking that as a good sign.” “I'm beyond not dead,” Stiles insists, swiveling around to address Deaton directly. “I am sky fucking high.” He pauses again, this time to lean over and vomit all over the floor. Lydia jerks backwards, skittering away in her high heels to press against the wall, while Erica stares down at the black ooze Stiles has just released from inside himself with a grimace. “Oh, man.”

“Is that a good sign?” Scott asks, pointing to the stuff that's literally bubbling up on the floor, like acid eating away at the cement. Stiles wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and then glances down to see get a better look at it. It's just black stuff. It looks a lot like the blood that dripped all over him from the demon after Allison kept shooting it with her arrows. “Just -” Derek comes into Stiles' line of sight, stepping forward but studiously avoiding the pool of Stiles' black vomit. “...should we be worried? Can you answer that?” Deaton gives Stiles a very long look. Stiles stares back, bemused. “I really don't think so. I think he's – well. I think he's having a magic high.” All those drugs back in school, all the weed and the LSD and the psychadelic mushrooms – nothing could compare to the way Stiles feels right now. He believes wholeheartedly what Deaton is saying, nodding his head up and down emphatically. “That, and I just saved everybody's life,” he looks around for some encouragement of this, and Allison at least gives him a smile, tight and awkward, but a smile all the same. “He needs to go back to sleep,” Derek says, approaching Stiles with his hands out like he's going to try and wrestle him back down onto the table, force his eyes shut. “Get out of here,” Stiles pushes him away, and Derek most likely only goes because Stiles wants him to. “What did you guys do with the body?” “The what?” “The body.” Scott scratches the back of his neck. “There wasn't one. Like the book said, we didn't kill it. We just – sent it back.” “Back?” “To, er – Hell, or whatever dimension it's from.” “Oh, my God.” Stiles presses his fist over his mouth, mostly to keep a hysterical laugh from bubbling over. It wouldn't be appropriate. He doesn't know what's so funny about that, but something just – is. “We did it. We really did it.” “You did it,” Derek clarifies, though he's still regarding Stiles with some level of near distrust. Like he half expects Stiles to turn into a winged demon and start eating everyone in sight, like the thing from Jeepers Creepers. “I kinda did,” he agrees, beaming. A smile spreads across Derek's face almost reluctantly, as though the only reason he's smiling is because Stiles is smiling so huge and genuinely that it's infectious.

“Okay,” he says slowly, reaching out to put a hand on Stiles' upperarm. “Can you stand up?” “Oh, yeah,” Stiles immediately hops down off the counter, puts his foot directly down into the puddle of his own vomit, and slips. He topples over, sending a couple of things sprawling across the room from the leverage he tried to grab off of them, and luckily Derek was right there to catch him before he got a face full of his own demon-excrement. “I'm fine.” “Just...” Derek rights him, and then steers him off to lean back against the counter. When he lets go, he holds his hands out like stay there, and then everyone starts crowding around him in a semi circle. They all blink at him, examining him very, very closely, like they're checking that he doesn't have any new demon appendages. “How do you feel?” Erica asks, cocking her head to the side. “Great.” “Lightheaded?” Deaton asks. “Maybe.” “Maybe, or yes?” “Uh. Maybe.” “Maybe we should wait until he calms down,” Allison suggests, taking a single step back that suggests she's not entirely comfortable with the way Stiles is acting right now. “He seems perfectly fine to me,” Deaton reaches out, presses his palm to Stiles' forehead the way his father would to check his temperature. “He's not burning up, he's just...” “He's different,” Derek finishes. He has a mildly sour look on his face. “I can't place it, but he's not – he's -” “He's not entirely human anymore,” Lydia says. She's got her arms crossed, and her fingers tap against the elbow of her opposite arm. “But he's going to be fine. That's all that matters. He smells different, he walks different, whatever. He's still Stiles.” That would be the very subject in question. Stiles knew going into this that if he succeeded he might not (definitely not, actually) come out the other side just exactly as he was before. The question is just how different he's turned out. As it stands right now, he feels just like Stiles, if a little bit like Stiles : The Re-Up. But He doesn't have a brand new forked tongue, and he doesn't feel the need to kill just for the fun of it, and black blood vomiting aside, he's done nothing else strange. “Time will tell,” Deaton says. From the looks everyone gives each other, Stiles is guessing that none of them like the sound of that very much, but at the moment, he could care less. For a while there, he was really thinking that he was going to wind up dead and that all his friends would

ultimately die as well. From where he's standing, the grass is only green, and will be from here on out. Derek pulls Stiles up and off of the counter, and begins guiding him towards where Stiles knows the stairs to be. By the time they're back at Allison and Scott's house, Stiles is certifiably done and down from his magic high. He spent half the ride going haywire in the backseat, demanding the radio be turned up, and up, until Derek finally growled and shut it off completely, and then he started rolling the window up and down, and up and down, and Derek turned on the child locks. The other half of the ride he spent with his eyes slowly closing, dead quiet in the back, with Derek constantly glancing at him through the rear view mirror. The last thing he's cognizant of after being led inside is being deposited on the couch, a blanket draped over him, and Derek's warm hand smoothing the hair away from his forehead. The second time he wakes up, it's much less fantastical. He blinks his eyes open and groans instantaneously, dragging his hand across his face. It feels like he's been through a very long night of drinking, and is now dealing with the hangover. It's the only thing he can think to equate it to. He can only hope that he's not about to lean over and puke up more black blood – specifically because the first thing he sees when he turns over is the back of Derek's head. “Oh,” Stiles meeps, surprised. Derek is sitting there with his knees propped up, resting his arms on top of them, his back right up against the couch. He turns his head, looks Stiles right in the eyes, and frowns. “You weren't there all night, were you?” The question doesn't really need to be asked, since the dark bags underneath Derek's eyes give him the answer. Derek says, “I had to listen to your heartbeat.” “Why?” Stiles should sit up. Like this, their faces are too close together, Stiles' head on the pillow and Derek turned right around to look at him. He doesn't. He stays right where he is. “To make sure it didn't just stop in the middle of the night,” he rubs his eyes. “I wanted to be here first thing when you woke up, too.” “Again – why?” Derek turns his head away to face forwards. He stares out the front window of Allison and Scott's house, to their front yard, and Derek's car parked right along side Allison's in the driveway. “Stiles. What you did...” Since this is shaping up to be a real fun conversation, Stiles sits all the way up, finally, and his body creaks and groans in protest as he does so. “I know what I did.” “You don't understand all the ramifications.” “I understand that -”

“Do you know what you smell like?” Derek's voice is so small as he says this, almost like it's far away, coming from a different room in the house, all the way upstairs. Stiles swallows. “I – I smell like me.” Derek shakes his head, slowly back and forth. “You smell like fire.” Because it's the only sound he thinks he can make, Stiles just lets out a very soft, “oh,” before running his fingers through his hair. Coming from Derek, that is not a compliment, not in any sense of the word. “I'm worried about you,” he says matter-of-factly, scraping along on the carpet so he can turn all the way around to look at Stiles directly. “Stiles – black magic isn't something that you just play around with. People -” he squeezes his eyes shut and pinches the bridge of his nose, shaking his head again. “People die screwing around with it. You smell like you just took a bath in the darkest shit I've ever come into contact with.” “You didn't want me doing this from the start,” Stiles pulls the covers off of himself, swings his legs over the edge until his feet are on the floor. “I know it's dangerous, Derek, but honestly? I'm fine. It's over, I'm fine, we won.” His shoulders bunch up into a tense line, and the look on his face suggests loud and clear that for him, this just isn't over yet. Whatever happened to Stiles, whatever Stiles has inside of him now, to Derek, that's just not fine. Stiles resents him, for that. Add it to the list. “What's it fucking matter?” He stands up, stretches his arms until the bones pop. “Aren't you just going to do some little wolf ceremony with Scott, and then skip town and wash your hands of the entire situation?” “He's staying for Christmas,” Allison interrupts from the kitchen doorway. She's got on oven mitts, arms akimbo, and her tone isn't leaving much room for debate. Both of the men turn to look at her, and Derek looks backed into a corner. He doesn't want to stay, Stiles knows beyond any shadow of a doubt, but Allison and Scott will probaly chain him to the porch if he tries to make a break for it before December 25th. “Right.” Stiles agrees with a head nod, moving towards her, and away from where Derek is still sitting on the ground. “It's Christmas. That means you have to stay.” Stiles feels awkward saying it, mostly because it sounds too much like something that he would have said maybe years ago to Derek, and to echo it back now, when things are how they are, feels wrong. Derek stays with his knees pulled up, balancing his arms on top. He doesn't say anything, so Allison prompts him further. “Christmas eve dinner at our house,” she says, with just a hint of a threat in her voice that if Derek chooses to not show up she will hunt him down using any and all traps and snares she's picked up from her family. “And Christmas morning at Lydia's.”

“She has the best tree,” Stiles offers awkwardly. “It has an angel on top and every thing.” “That's where the presents are going,” Allison moves her way back into the kitchen like the conversation is finished and Derek is a part of it whether he likes it or not. “So bring them over to hers when you get the chance.” One surprising fact about Derek is that he is an amazingly good gift giver. Mostly because he's Mr. MoneyBags and can afford to get anyone anything they want or need. Lydia isn't as good of a gift giver in any sense of the word, in spite of the fact that she too has money, because she always buys people things they need but don't want. She once bought Stiles' Jeep a day at the shop where they would fix anything they could in the time allotted. The list of problems with his car is long, true, but what it meant was that he was stuck sitting in a car shop for twelve hours on the day before New Year's, drinking shitty, burnt coffee and glaring out the window. From the look on Derek's face, Stiles can surmise that Derek has not thought a single fleeting moment about what he would buy any of the pack for Christmas. Life and death scenario, crazy ex-boyfriend and all – he has not fucking thought about anything else but that. When it's just Stiles and Derek sitting in the living room alone with the sound of Allison puttering around in the kitchen, Stiles rubs his arm and clears his throat. “I better get going. I've got work in a couple of hours -” “I highly doubt that,” Derek says in a low voice. “You called your boss last night and quit.” Stiles freezes in the middle of folding up the blanket someone had draped over him last night, and then heaves out a great big sigh. “Oh, yeah. God dammit.” He doesn't know what the hell he's going to do about a job now. “Well, fuck.” He's got no reason to just up and flee the scene, now, even though if he has to sit in dead silence in this room with Derek for another second he's going to purposefully smack his head as hard as possible on the arm of the couch in the hopes that he'll knock himself out. “So,” he starts, reaching out to fluff one of the couch pillows just for something to do with is hands, “what uh – what else happened last night? I mean, the cops showed up. People, like, saw.” “They didn't see as much as you'd think,” Allison counters around the sound of a pan sizzling. “They saw a big fight. Not necessarily the excess details. Anyone who did see – my dad said he'd take care of it.” Stiles really doesn't know what the hunters do with people who see things that they shouldn't. He doesn't think that they have a memory erasing stick like in Men in Black, and he really doubts that they sit everyone down and tell them that werewolves and all their company are actually real. What they do, Stiles isn't sure that he really wants to know. “Then there's nothing to worry about,” Stiles says mostly to himself, almost in disblelief. After

living two straight weeks in a state of constant nagging fear, it's hard to get a grip on the idea of being homefree. Right on time for Christmas, at that. The one loose end he really has is Derek. In testament to this, he briefly skirts his eyes to where Derek is still camped out on the floor and finds him withdrawn, staring out the window with a look on his face like he's thinking about something important. Maybe he isn't a loose end, Stiles tells himself, moving to walk into the kitchen to start picking at whatever Allison has cooking. Maybe every thing has been settled, and Derek will give the alpha power to Scott, and stay for Christmas, and then be gone before the sun has even come up on the 26th. And then, maybe, Stiles will never see him again. That might tie every thing up nicely. A good ending paragraph for the novel that was Derek and Stiles' relationship. The problem is that Stiles isn't so sure, anymore, if that's really the right thing. **** Stiles starts having nightmares. It's some shit, too. Like, some real Nightmare on Elms Street type of stuff. Not necessarily visions of demons or ghouls or whatever the hell, but just – uncomfortable, in a way that's almost hard for him to explain. Nothing really happens, and he doesn't really see anything like a ritual sacrifice while some demonic voice chants in Latin over and over again. Stiles sometimes wakes up and thinks that he didn't really see anything in the dream except for blackness, but it's really about the feeling that he wakes up with. It's a lot like walking around in the woods late at night all the while knowing that someone's watching you. That's all he can think to describe it as. It feels wrong, like something's wrong. “Is this the thing?” Stiles asks Lydia on the 22nd, watching her wrap a pile of presents. “I mean, is this my super special power, now? Fucked up dreams?” “I never said you were going to get a super special power,” Lydia says back in a bored tone of voice, curling a ribbon with a swipe of her scissors. “I said that you would be different.” “Yeah,” Stiles agrees somewhat morosely. It's not that the dreams are truly so awful, because honestly, like he's said, nightmares are just sort of something that comes with the territory in Beacon Hills, and these dreams compared to others that he's had in the past are nothing. Sure, they're uncomfortable, but it's liveable. “I just – well.” “You don't want anything else to happen to you,” she plops a finished present down and picks up her next nondescript white department store box, poking through her array of wrapping paper colors and styles. “I should be evidence enough for that, don't you think?” Stiles slumps down deeper into the couch, like he's been chastised. It's true. Judging by Lydia's experience, the last thing he would want is for anything supernatural to start bugging him. She

lost all her friends, her status, a couple of points off her grade point average, and she couldn't even go away to college when it's all she ever wanted to do. And let's not even get started with what happened to Jackson. “You're right,” he agrees. There's a beat of silence accompanied only by the crinkle of Lydia working with the paper, and then he goes on. “It's just that Derek acted like I was going to, like, be Satan's right hand man now, or something.” Accepting that this conversation is just something that needs to happen no matter how hard she tries to dodge it, Lydia rolls her eyes to the ceiling. “That's not what he meant.” “How would you know what he meant? Half the time, I don't even know what he fucking means.” “He meant that you're just – different. It's not something that you would be able to sense.” “Because I'm demonic now.” “Because you're not a werewolf,” she slaps a piece of tape down in its rightful place and snaps at him. “You and I and Allison – we don't know what's all over you, but the wolves can smell it. From what I've gathered from the others, you just freak them out.” Stiles narrows his eyes. “Have you guys been talking about me?” “Yes.” Lydia has never been one to spare anyone's feelings or lie just to get out of an awkward social situation. Sometimes her honesty is just a little bit fucking annoying. “Everyone was worried what was going to happen to you if you managed to do this. We're just looking out.” He thinks for a second about how annoyed he is about this – at the prospect of everyone gathering around a table while Stiles is off somewhere else, talking about him and discussing every thing that's happened and analyzing Stiles' every move to inspect it for discrepencies. The answer is : very. Very annoyed. “Fuck you guys.” “Whatever,” she drops another finished present on the pile. “They all say the same exact thing. Everyone says you seem different, but no one can put their finger on what exactly it is.” He huffs out a sigh and scratches at the side of his face. “Do you really think I'm just...not human anymore?” Lydia levels him with a steady look. “I think the next time you get attacked by a sifati, it'll have something to work with.” Stiles decides that Lydia and everyone else is most likely right when he tries to go talk to Deaton and can't even get in the front door of the clinic. It's not even like he opened up the door and then smacked into a solid brick wall, like what happens when the wolves come across mountain ash – he can't even approach the fucking door. He sits in his car with the door open, glaring at the glass door, all the dogs and cats that come in and out with their owners, trying to force himself to even stick his leg onto the pavement, but he can't.

No matter how hard he concentrates, he physically cannot move. What he can do is close his door, start the engine, put it in drive. That's it. It's like his body is telling him to run for the hills, far far away from this place, as soon as possible. About forty-five minutes into this song and dance, Deaton himself appears with a sly smile. “I thought so.” “I really am a demon, aren't I?” Stiles can't keep the terror out of his voice. “No. A demon would have no problem getting inside,” he says, very matter-of-fact, and Stiles feels slightly better for it. “Do you remember the nemeton?” “Uh – the thing that haunted my dreams for three years?” Stiles still, occasionally, has fucked up dreams about dead bodies and evil witches and the like, all revolving around that stupid tree stump. “Yeah, that I remember.” Deaton appraises him for a second. Looks him up and down, and then up and down again. “I think you might have a link to it, now.” Stiles shakes his head. “Absolutely not.” “Most people aren't able to find it,” Deaton looks away and squints into the fading sunlight. “I can't even find it, without the help of someone else. I bet if you went and took a look, you'd have very little problem stumbling upon it.” Stiles gives him a glare, slams his car door directly in Deaton's smug face, and drives away. He does not, for even one second, consider driving off into the preserve to find Satan's tree stump. First of all, because last time they tried to find it, he wound up slipping on a pine cone and braining himself on a rock and had to go to the emergency room, and second of all, because it's the last place he would ever want to go. Bad, bad things happen at the nemeton. Gigantic spiders, and suspect looking squirrels. Not to mention the death and the carnage and the evil. A stump that can rejuvenate a person and turn them into a murdering and manipulative psychopath is not a stump that Stiles needs to actively seek out. Either way, Stiles wakes up at three am that same night after one of his mysterious devil dreams, glares at Lydia's ceiling for all of five minutes before throwing his hands in the air and saying fuck it, throwing his blanket off of him. As he's putting on his shoes, Erica sits up and blinks at him hazily in the darkness. Lydia is sound asleep and snoring lightly. For some reason, even after the sifati went back to hell and the danger had dissipated, both of them still sleep in Lydia's bedroom. At this point, they're just used to it. It'll be a fun Christmas memory years from now, Stiles is sure, all the sleepover talk and movies and fingernail painting parties.

“Where are you going?” She hisses at him in the darkness. Stiles ties his laces. “I'm going to try and find that stupid tree stump.” “The nemeton?” She repeats, voice going above a whisper. Stiles slaps his finger to his lips and points silently at where Lydia twitches in her sleep, shaking his head. Erica lowers her voice and asks, “why the hell -” “It's evil,” Stiles whispers back, standing up and silently pawing on the coffee table for his car keys. “And apparently, as am I.” Erica sits on the edge of the bed for a second, watches as Stiles collects his keys and then his wallet in the dark. “Nobody thinks you're evil.” “Derek thinks I'm the reincarnated antichrist,” he mutters. “Don't go looking for that tree,” she says in a warning tone of voice, as ominous as she can be in a whisper in the dark. “You know that nothing good happens when people get near it.” Ignoring her, Stiles trips his way in the dark towards the door, because he for one doesn't have super sight like Erica, and flings it open as quietly as possible. Apparently sensing that there's no stopping him now, Erica mutters something under her breath and then, “wait for me!” Stiles parks on the side of the dirt road of the preserve, turns on his flashlight, and then both he and Erica are crunching through the underbrush. They both still have their pajama pants on, Erica's feet shoved into her winter boots with her winter coat on, Stiles in half tied shoes and a hoodie, poking around in the dead of night. “We are never going to find that thing,” she says, and she sounds agitated. “You did not have to come,” he says back. She snorts at him. “Oh, yeah. I'll just let you wander off at four in the morning to find the tree that's killed, like, a hundred people in this town, all by your lonesome. Derek will love that story when we find your dead mangled corpse tomorrow afternoon.” “Be that as it may,” Stiles crunches on a twig and shines his light against the trees, searching, “me and the stump apparently have a connection, now.” “Why?” “I don't fucking know. That's just what Deaton said. Remember how Jennifer Blake was in cahoots with it? She got all her power from it? It saved her life so she could do evil?” She lets out a sigh and pushes a few branches out of her face. “Unfortunately, yeah.” “Well, according to Deaton, I'm the new Ms. Blake.”

Instead of just snorting, she lets out a very long laugh, one that echoes against the tree tops and probably startles any number of small woodland creatures. “Deaton has a tendency to be right about these kinds of things,” Stiles reminds her as she keeps right on laughing, like it's the funniest and most ridiculous thing she's ever heard. “He has never been wrong.” “Ms. Blake went on a crazy revenge spree. The nemeton gave her power because she was – you know. Mad.” Stiles purses his lips and keeps walking. “You didn't get your power from the tree itself – you just kinda...have it, now.” “I don't have power.” “You have something,” she says back, finally recovering from her laughing fit. “It doesn't have to be bad, you know?” An owl hoots above their heads and Stiles shines his flashlight on it, startled at first. Its huge yellow eyes blink out at them, and Erica coos at it mometarily. “I think you're taking this too far.” Stiles turns on her, holding his flashlight in between them so both of their faces are illuminated in the darkness, so all he can see all around himself is just black. “I think I'm not taking it far enough. Derek could be right, you know! I could be – wrong, now.” “Derek doesn't think you're wrong,” she throws her hands in the air like she's getting tired of saying it, even though this is the first time she has. “He thinks you're in danger. There's a difference.” “Right. Danger. I could be the danger. We don't know what we did, he was definitely right about that,” he waves the light a bit, so Erica flashes in and out of his vision. “Don't you think it's even a little bit scary, what I did?” Erica purses her lips and doesn't make direct eye contact. Stiles nods his head like I told you so!! and she shakes her head. “It's not that it scares me. I just don't like magic.” “Do I scare you?” “No!” There's a pause. “You just -” “Aha!” He shines the flashlight directly into her face, as though she's in an interrogation room right now. She squints and pushes it away, hard enough that it drops down onto the ground and casts its light on top of the dead leaves and off into a clearing. “I knew you -” “You smell like magic,” she talks over him. “I don't like magic, and that's what you smell like to me, it's hard to explain!”

Stiles throws his hands in the air, officially done with this circular fucking conversation, and walks over to pick his flashlight up. “You think I'm fucked up, now. I just wish you would admit it!” “There's no evidence whatsoever that you are,” she says back, jogging a little to catch up with him. Stiles has just picked up his light, and as soon as he stands up and shines it dead ahead of himself, he freezes. Erica skids to a stop herself, sliding in her boots into Stiles' back with a gentle thud. Stiles scatters forward a bit, knocking the light and sending it sprawling across even more of the nemeton where it sits not ten feet away from them. Stiles swallows. Hard. “Okay,” Erica starts, voice shaky. “That was not there ten seconds ago.” “Oh, my God,” Stiles carefully starts walking in a circle around it, not taking a step closer to it, but walking in a safe ring. He stares at the roots, huge and menacing, at the top of it all cracked and broken, and shakes his head. “I summoned it.” To that, Erica doesn't have a rebuttal. She follows him as he walks, not saying a word. “Deaton was right.” He usually is. Stiles knows that they've tried to find this thing a dozen times before, that it's taken hours and they still would always have nothing to show for it. The only time they did manage to find it is when they entered mental fucking limbo and crossed into some weird spirit channel – even then, it took more than five minutes. Really, Erica and Stiles were too busy arguing to even look. And yet, here it is. After a solid minute of dead silence and staring, Erica clears her throat. “All right. So you and the nemeton are in cahoots. That still doesn't mean something bad. This thing isn't inherantly evil, it's – I don't know what it is.” Stiles lets out a shaky breath and nods his head. “No. I get it, now,” he says in a low voice, not taking his eyes off the stump for even a second. “You get what?” Something about just seeing it in the flesh instead of just in his memory, about standing less than ten feet away, one of his feet nearly touching a root that spreads too far, has him opening his eyes just a bit wider. It wasn't ever really about becoming something else, or being evil, or powerful, or any of it. He didn't take anything from the nemeton, like Jennifer did, and he's not out to murder anyone, and he never wanted any power to begin with. That's the main difference. All the dreams he had, it's like it was talking to him. Calling his name in the middle of the night, just like the voices that Lydia hears, waiting for him to figure it out. It's just like Deaton said. He has a connection to the nemeton. It wants him to stay, and use its power, because no one else

around here is.

He says as much out loud to Erica, who twists her nose up in distaste as she looks between Stiles and the stump again and again. “So, what? You think you're all magical now? You think the tree wants to be your friend?” “You don't have to say it like it's so stupid,” Stiles snaps. He gives one last long look at the tree, and turns back to walk to where the Jeep is parked only half a mile away. “Yes the tree wants to be my friend.” “Clearly you're not interested in the...olive branch it's extending.” She smirks at her own joke, and Stiles just powers right through it as they walk. “Honestly, no. No I am not.” “Well, why? It's not evil, it doesn't want you to be evil, it's...” “It's going to keep me here for the rest of my fucking life,” Stiles hisses, right as his car comes into view. “It's never going to let me leave Beacon Hills.” Which is really just a twist of dramatic irony, in Stiles' opinion. “I can't leave the nemeton, Erica, I can't leave the beacon.” Apparently, Erica doesn't have much to say to that. She stays quiet even when they're inside the car and driving back to Lydia's, casting furtive glances in Stiles' direction but never saying a word. Silence is always odd for her, but this particular silence is much heavier. She isn't angry, or scared, or any of it. She knows that Stiles is right, because he would know more than anyone else what that thing wants from him since he's the one who can feel it now that he's been so close to it. She knows that Stiles is trapped, a mystical pull keeping him here. She feels sorry for him. Stiles hates that more than anything. When he tells Lydia, dawn is just starting to creep inside of her bedroom. She's freshly awoken, still in her pajamas, hair still pulled up in a messy ponytail, but she's alert. She looks in between Erica and Stiles as they relay the story back to her, eyes calculating, and then they focus solely on Stiles. She lets out a long breath and then throws her covers off of her, walking to her bathroom for a shower like no bomb has been dropped whatsoever. “I told you,” is what she has to say as Stiles and Erica watch her retreating back. “You were gonna wind up just like me.” It's true. She did say that, when she taught him the spell to begin with. Stiles really is trapped here now, more than he ever was before, just like Lydia is. Voices calling her, and dreams of being watched, and an inability to ever really escape. Out of all the things that could have possibly happened, this rates low on the scale of bad. Lizard, Stiles reminds himself, pulling his knees up to his chest and balancing his chin on one as he watches the sunrise through the window. He could be a lizard right now. A lifetime trapped in Beacon Hills because a magic tree wants him to hang around? Nothing in comparison.

Erica sits beside him and puts her hand on his shoulder. “What are you going to do?” Stiles shrugs. “Truthfully, I think there's nothing I can do about it.” “That's not what I meant,” she sighs. “I meant, what are you going to do with the magic?” “Learn how to use it, I guess.” She wraps her arm fully around Stiles' shoulders and leans up against him, her eyes droopy with sleep. “But, like Glenda though.” In spite of himself, Stiles smiles. “Absolutely. This is a strict good witch only zone.” More quiet, and then Erica is sitting back up all the way, turning to look Stiles directly in his face. “Stiles.” She begins, all serious. Stiles half expects her to start telling him that someone they know and love had gone ahead and died, with the look she has on her face right about now, so he blinks at her with wide eyes. Then, she very, very intensely says, “you need to tell Derek.” Annoyed beyond all belief, Stiles shakes his head and looks back to the window. “Give me a fucking break, Erica. Derek isn't going to really care.” He glares out at the rising sun and just imagines it in his head – Derek would most likely just be relieved, briefly, that Stiles isn't going to go Ms. Blake all over everyone's asses, and then he'd stand up and say well, my work here is done, and then vanish, and be done with it all. “He doesn't need to know. He can just go, and he never needs to hear a thing about this.” Erica's claws, the normal, human purple ones that she files herself, wrap around Stiles' chin and pull his face so that they're looking each other in the eyes again. “I'm serious.” “So am I. He's not going to -” “You better tell him,” she snaps, and then her face softens again, her fingers losing their grip. “He needs to know that. He – he deserves to know.” Stiles thinks that he doesn't quite get why it would matter, really, but Erica looks so fucking intense and serious, which is not a usual facial expression for her. Stiles figures that she is his second best friend in the entire world after Scott, and that if she wants him to do something, then he better just go on ahead and do it for her, so he makes no further argument on the subject. He spends the 23rd of December wrapping what measly gifts he could get all his friends – really, since his house burned down along with all his things, he didn't have much money to spend any longer, not to fucking mention quitting Wal Mart – and drinking hot chocolate and thinking. Really, it's not that big of a deal. So, he has to spend eternity in BH screwing around with an ancient magic tree. There are much worse fates.

In the back of his mind, though, even when he thought that he would have to stay in Beacon Hills forever, he always fantasized about going. There is a certain level of numbness that comes along with knowing that he'll never be able to. That if he tried, he'd wind up either going insane from the voices in his head or turning back and starting all over again. For the first time, he understands Lydia. And he really fucking wishes he didn't. Derek shows up midday, toting two huge cardboard boxes with wrapped gifts inside of them. Stiles can tell just from looking that he paid the ladies at the department store to wrap them all for him. Derek is good at buying the gifts, but if he had his way they'd all be wrapped in newpaper and tied together with pieces of fishing line, most likely. He awkwardly dumps them all out under the tree and then arranges them a little obsessively, pushing them this way and that so that every thing looks nice and neat. Stiles watches from his spot on the couch, flicking his eyes between the television playing A Christmas Story and the show that is Derek being a huge neat freak. One time, Derek spent an entire afternoon organizing Stiles' refridgerator because, quote, he just couldn't take it anymore. It had to be done either way, because Stiles had about five different moldy cheeses hidden in the back that were making the entire thing smell. When Derek finally steps away from the tree a little to appraise his handy work, Stiles clears his throat to gets his attention. Derek turns, eyebrows raised in surprise. He most likely expected not a single word to be exchanged between the two of them. Stiles wishes that could be the case. This is not a conversation he wants to have, not at all. “Can I talk to you for a second?” He asks, and then has to clear his throat again because it comes out sounding so scratchy and nervous. “Is this going to be a fight?” Derek hedges. “If you have that kind of a fucking attitude, then yes, yes it will be.” Derek mutters something under his breath and starts hightailing it for the front door, so Stiles has to shoot up onto his knees and leer over the back of the couch, waving his arms. “Okay, okay, hold on,” he caws, and Derek slows down a bit. “Come on, I'm serious. It's not going to be a fight. Derek, come on and talk to me. Even if it is a fight, we – we gotta talk.” The werewolf himself pauses, a few steps away from Lydia's foyer and the front door, and then his shoulders bunch up. He goes tense, but resigned, turning back around and slowly approaching the couch where Stiles is propped up. As he gets closer, Stiles turns around and sits back down normally in his seat, reaching forward for the plate of cookies he has there. “Do you want one?” He asks as soon as Derek is close enough to take one. There's a pause, but then Derek is taking one and examining it. “You made these?”

“Yeah.” Derek takes his cookie and sits down beside Stiles. Stiles turns his body so he's facing him, drawing his legs up so he can lean on his knees, his toes nearly touching Derek's thigh. “You make the best cookies.” “You have told me so before,” Stiles says back. There's nearly a ghost of a smile on his face, but then Stiles remembers that that's one of those memories that sting, now. It was another lifetime that Derek told Stiles he made the best cookies, that Stiles felt good about that, that they kissed and Derek tasted like chocolate and caramel. He must be thinking the exact same thing Stiles is, even just the taste of that cookie taking him back to that specific day and that specific place, because he looks away. Stiles sighs and pokes Derek gently in the arm. “You and me really had some moments.” “Stiles, I don't want to -” “After every thing, I think I deserve something of an epilogue, at least.” He leans forward, and Derek closes his mouth. He bites into his cookie, most likely so he doesn't have to say anything, and Stiles takes that as his cue to keep talking. “We really were in love with each other. I don't think I always knew over these years that you loved me, but now I get that you did.” Derek wipes the crumbs off of his hands and onto his pants, and Lydia will probably discover a chocolate chip that ruined the fabric of her mother's couch and go apeshit all over Stiles in specific (because he's a notorious couch and carpet ruiner), but Stiles doesn't even care about that, right now. “You should get that I still do.” A month ago, or fuck even last week, if Derek had said as much to Stiles, it really would have started a huge fight. It would've been all then how can you even think about leaving me, and it wouldn't have ended well, and Derek would've slammed the door as he left. But, here, after every thing that's happened, all Stiles can do is sigh, so tired, and say, “maybe.” “You never believe a word I say.” It's not even said angrily, at all. It's just out there, like fact. “The time has long since passed for me to believe anything you say, Derek. That was – I don't know. Someplace else, somewhere else entirely, when I could trust you, or rely on you.” Stiles says back just as seriously and void of emotion. “Sometimes I think I'd like to get back there. Wherever there even is. I think I want to, but I also think -” he stops, glances at his fingernails. “I think we never will. That sucks.” Derek stares at him. It's a very long, very serious stare. He's good at that. “I don't know what you're talking about.” Throwing his hands out and gesturing at nothing, Stiles huffs and searches for the right words to say. Lots of times, feelings make so much sense inside his own head, but they can be impossible

to get out into anything even resembling sense. “You – you're just a memory to me.” Even staring at him now, in the flesh, instead of some incorporeal figure in his mind, he's not really quite here. Wherever he and Stiles were together, wherever it was that things weren't so fucking horrible all the god damn time...it's just somewhere they will never ever get to, not ever again. Since Derek has always been so literal, he just shakes his head. “I'm right here?” Stiles is sick and tired of having to explain his feelings, most of all of having to be so fucking honest all the time, so he doesn't say anything back to that. It feels like they've had this exact conversation again, and again, and again, going in circles and coming back around to the same moment, both of them avoiding the inevitable. There has to be an ending, and they can't keep going on how they have been all this time, but if he says anything else they'll just keep going and – he can't do that anymore. Some people just belong there – in the shiny, sacred recesses of memories. It can never ever be like it was in memory, never be like it was the first time around, or even the second, or the third, and all this time he's wasted hoping that it would be – what a fucking joke. It might be one of the hardest things in life to accept, but memories are memories, and people are people, and sometimes the two things don't add up the same. Stiles is sorry because there's nothing else he can be. He's sorry for all the things he ever expected from Derek, he's sorry that Derek always looked at their relationship the wrong way, that Derek never committed fully even when he thought he did. Most of all, Stiles is sorry that he ever thought it could be any different. Derek should just be one of those memories. Quietly trapped behind his lips, hot chocolate and fire places and shadows across the floors of the loft in the building that doesn't even exist anymore. And Stiles could go on, and on, and on, but at some point, there's just got be an ending. It just sucks, is all. “You know – I have a lot to fucking live with, Stiles. Hurting you is just another one of them, I just think you should know I live with it. Okay? I don't throw it away.” Stiles feels like crying, really badly, but Derek has seen that enough times that he decides to spare the man, for once. “You're not the only person who has shit to live with, Derek. That's your problem, is that you think you're the only one who ever suffers.” “I don't think -” “This is Beacon Hills, for fuck's sake. Every single person here has something they have to live with. This isn't about comparing pains, like, whose is bigger, or whatever. You know I watched Isaac die -” at the reminder, Derek reacts like he's been slapped, looking away with his jaw clenched. Of course he remembers that night. “...and I was the one who found Boyd's body, and I -” “I don't need the list,” Derek interrupts in a hard voice, staring pointedly down at the floor.

“You need me to tell you that you're not alone.” Stiles reaches out and squeezes Derek's shoulder, just for a second. “You think you are, out here, but you're not. All of us know what it's like to live here.” Where every thing is half ghosts and half alive, and everyone wakes up in the middle of the night sweating from nightmares. Derek doesn't want to argue with that, either because he knows that Stiles is right or because he just doesn't want to do this anymore, Stiles can't be sure. But he deflates into the couch and doesn't start yelling, and Stiles will take that over a fight any day. “I wish you could rely on me.” Derek says. Means it. “I wish – I wish I was different.” “You mean you wish you could stay here. With me.” With a short nod, Derek agrees. “I wish we could go back, too.” Heaving out a deep sigh, Stiles decides that it's now or never. “I've gotta tell you something,” he begins, very quietly, and Derek turns to look right at him, eyebrows raised. “It's – I don't know. It's stupid. I didn't want to tell you, but Erica acted like – well, I don't know.” Derek waits, expectantly. “So, you know how you think I've gone evil, now -” “I don't think you've gone evil, Stiles.” Derek rolls his eyes like it's so fucking ridiculous, and Stiles rolls his eyes right back, because he's the ridiculous one. “Well I've. Done a little research on the subject. And as it turns out, I'm not exactly evil -” “As we all knew,” Derek says. “...look. I'm – I've got some kind of fucked up magic inside of me now, and I have these weirdo dreams, and I'm never going to be the same gain – but, I just...” he thrusts his hands out and tries to find how to word this appropriately. “I'm sort of stuck here. Forever. Now. Because I did that spell, I'm...me and the nemeton are sort of linked.” Derek stares at him, his eyes wide. He opens his mouth like he's going to say something, but nothing comes out. “It's sort of like a magical connection,” Stiles starts explaining, because he can't sit there staring at Derek's face and listening to the silence any longer. “The magic will force me to come back if I ever try to leave, and so – I just won't leave. I always thought I might be a Beacon Hills lifer, but now it's sort of...official. So. I don't know. Just thought you should know, or whatever.” Derek sits there for another second longer, and then he stands up. He doesn't take another cookie, like Stiles was going to tell him to. He just walks out of the living room, walks out the front door, and closes it behind him.

Stiles stares after him, blinking. “I hate you two,” Erica says later that night as she dips her marshmallow over the flame from the gas stove in Lydia's kitchen, turning her stick this way and that so that all of the sides get just as singed. “If I never hear about your relationship problems with that oaf ever again I will be a happy person.” Stiles is eating squares of chocolate one by one, seated on top of the marble counter, his own marshmallow stick sitting forlorn right next to him. “You were the one who wanted me to tell him so bad,” he reminds her a bit vindicively, “maybe we never would've had any problems ever again if you hadn't pushed me into it.” “I just thought he should know,” she uses her fingers to squish the half melted sugar pile onto a graham cracker, steals the chocolate right out of Stiles' hand and puts that on top of both. “I had no idea he'd like – vanish into the night.” “The vanishing into the night was a given the second we sat down on the couch. The radio silence, and the disappearing act – all exactly what I expected.” It's true. This is Derek Hale, after all, who would much rather get on the highway and go away for months than he would have a real conversation about his relationships. “Maybe you're right.” She sounds upset about it; which is funny, considering she's currently crunching down on a s'more, a speck of melted chocolate on the side of her mouth while a glob of sugar drips down onto her pajama shirt. Stiles wipes his own chocolatey fingers off on his jeans and leans his head back into the cabinet, staring off into the darkness that stretches out beyond where the light from the kitchen can't reach. “Why did you want me to tell him that? I mean – you had to of known.” “I guess because after all these years I still expect a lot from that idiot,” she finally wipes at her mouth and turns off the stove, shaking her head. “I really gotta learn.” “You and I are in the same boat with that.” Stiles honestly never much thought about that. He's always known that he expected a lot from Derek, always waited around for him to come back, always wanted things from him that maybe he had no right to ask for, but when it came to the rest of the pack, he never considered it. But like he's said, Derek is the only pack Erica has left by blood, and there must be something inside of her that waits and relies on him, no matter what else happens. It sucks. It suddenly makes sense why she was always so adament in her fights with Derek where Stiles was concerned, because underneath the lines of it all, she wasn't even ever really talking about Stiles. She was talking about herself. “I just thought he'd hear that and think to himself -” she pauses, considering her next words very carefully, likely because she doesn't want to sound too honest or put herself too far out on the line, “- I thought he'd think he should stay this time around.” Because Stiles was always going to be here? Because, finally, Derek could have a sure thing? It doesn't matter much, because, clearly, it didn't hold true.

Stiles twiddles his thumbs. “I told him to not ever come back, you remember.” All the promises in the world that Derek has made to Stiles, all the things they ever whispered to each other in the dead of night when they were alone, and of course, this is the one he would choose to keep. “You told me it was the right thing to do.” “Oh, I was pissed off,” she shirks this off like it's nothing. “Maybe I meant it, at the time, but I don't think I do anymore.” “You want him to stick around.” For some reason, this comes out like an accusation. Every thing Erica has done and said up to this point contradicts this exact statement, but she doesn't deny it, now. “He won't, though.” She shrugs, just a simple lift of her shoulder, and she won't meet Stiles' eyes. “I always know he wont, so I just – get mad. It's, like, coping.” Coping. Stiles knows the word very well, the feeling even more. Coping is the stupid, useless, mindless shit that a person does when they can't get what they want. Self-medication, and fighting, and words that mean nothing, and then, silence. And, of course, we convince ourselves it was the right thing, because to think that it might've been the wrong thing is just too much for one person to bear. Deny, deny, deny. “He stayed up all night listening to my heartbeat,” Stiles says, mostly just to say it, to hear how it sounds out loud. It sounds fake, or like something that happened years ago, but it was only days, and he can still remember how Derek's face looked so close to his. Erica sighs, like she knows that Stiles just said that he loves Derek in his veiled, roundabout way. “I am really sorry about him.” She's said it before, again, and again, and again. “But I think it's just about time that we called time of death on all of this.” Stiles thinks about how stupid every thing is, that he's come out on the other side of dozens of life or death battles, that he's seen shit that keeps him awake at night, that he's got to live with darkness inside of him for the rest of his life and that's something he can deal with. But Derek is the one thing, that one fight, that he just keeps losing. It's stupid. Stiles wants to be done. He knows he never will be. Erica will be done, and Scott wil be done, and Allison and Lydia, the town of Beacon Hills itself. That old half burnt house in the woods will rot and vanish, but Stiles will never be able to stop. He feels that he's been very stupid to think that the story would ever, ever have an ending. “You are very evidently a masochist,” Erica says, clucking her tongue, because of course she's gone and read his mind. “I've never seen someone love another person so much, let alone someone that big of a fuckoff.” “God, he's a fuckoff,” Stiles agrees.

“You remember the first day he came back a few weeks ago, when I told you how stupid you would be to go near him?” Stiles half snorts at the memory. It feels like forever ago, now. “I just decided I was wrong about that. In all reality, you two are stupid to stay away from each other,” she reaches out and does that thing to the hair around his ears – scratches at it, then tucks it gently into place. “I wish I could force the universe to keep you together. I really thought that's what the nemeton had done. Mystical forces of love, or whatever.” Stiles laughs again, because it's so ridiculous to think about. Derek being forced to stay here, it's laughable, really. Nothing could keep him here. Hell or high water, he'd find his way out time and time again. It's nice to know that, now, to expect nothing, to want of nothing. At the same time, it's a lot like misery. **** Stiles loves the feeling of winning something, probably more than anything else. There's a particular thrill that he gets out of winning against something that tried to kill him, twice, so when the time finally comes for the Christmas Eve party, Stiles is ready to fucking celebrate. The chunk in his leg still throbs from time to time, still needs to be wrapped up in gauze, plus the one in his shoulder, and every time he feels his wounds aching he gets another stab of vicious contentment, like, ha, I got rid of the thing that did that to me. Granted, the consequences of him being successful are a little more than annoying, but he'll take what he can get. There would be no use in spending his life lamenting the decisions he's made. Scott is probably, and surprisingly, the best cook Stiles knows of, followed closely by Allison, so the food is good. Great, even. The alcohol is better. Looking around himself at all of the other misfits who have gone and gotten themselves trapped here in one way or another, he can't help but think that it's not all bad. He has friends, and time goes on, and maybe it heals all wounds, or whatever the hell. It's just that, in a place like this, as soon as one wound finally closes, another will inevitably be opened up. He's just lucky that he has people around him to help when he can't tend to himself. Christmas is as Christmassy as it would have been even if everything hadn't happened to begin with – Allison still sucks at decorating even though she tries her best, and Scott still can't sing to save his fucking life, and every thing is red and gold and silver, just like all of Stiles' favorite memories. In testament to this, Derek shows up two hours into the soiree when dinner is nearly already cleaned up, and that, Stiles thinks, is how he knows Christmas is just the same as it always has been. When he first walks in, Allison drops the dish she was holding in her hand with a plop into the

water, getting suds all over Scott where he's standing right next to her with his jaw dropped. He looks to Stiles, gauging his reaction to this, and Stiles knows that if there's even a hint of discomfort on his best friend's face, Scott will freak out and force Derek out the door and that'll be that. “Uh -” Scott starts, looking frantically between Stiles and Derek again and again. “We thought you weren't coming.” Nonchalant as ever, Derek drops the pie he brought onto the counter and gives everyone in the kitchen a blank look. “I said I would.” “Okay – yeah, but -” another glance at Stiles. “You left.” “I'm back.” That's all he says. Stiles has heard it so many times that when he tries to conjure up Derek's voice in his head, in his memories, he always thinks of those two words, echoing around in his head. Stiles forces himself to feel absolutely nothing whatsoever about this. True, he doesn't feel the need to pick up that pie that Derek brought and lob it directly at his face, as he did one Christmas, and he also doesn't feel the need to start yelling at anyone about anything, but he does feel...well. Not angry. Decidedly not angry. “We already ate dinner,” Allison says just as nervously as Scott. “That's fine,” he waves her off and focuses his eyes on where Stiles is camped out in the corner by the fridge, sipping on his beer and doing his level best to vanish into the floral wallpaper. “Stiles.” Stiles makes a sound, something like combining yeah and yup into the same word, and then immediately takes another huge sip of his beer. “Can we talk outside?” Oh, Christ. “I think maybe not.” “Maybe not,” Allison chirps. She's likely remembering the Christmas that Derek and Stiles went outside to talk, and next thing anyone knew, Derek had gone and picked up a lawn chair and thrown it through a window. “Stiles, come on,” Derek says, gesturing towards the back door, where the porch waits for them. “We're not going to fight.” Oh, yes they are. At a certain point, when so many problems are mounted up between two people, it reaches a point where whenever one of them tries to speak, all they can ever find is something to scream. Shit like I hate you, and go fuck yourself, and then there's a turkey being thrown and a window breaking and on and on. Stiles sort of thought that he and Derek had reached that point, already, but Derek's got this insistent look on his face like he's not going to let

it up, and Stiles is just drunk enough to go along with it. He pushes up from the wall and makes a gesture like after you, and then Derek is opening up the door and the cold air is all around. The second the two of them are standing out on the back porch, Scott has got his nose literally pressed against the glass of the half window above the sink, leering at them as though he'll come bursting through it at the first sign of distress from either of them. “The person who runs out in the middle of the conversation,” Stiles begins, thrusting his beer bottle forwards with a bit of a slosh, “does not get to show up and demand to start it over again.” “I don't want to fight with you.” “Oh, blah blah. You don't want to fight, you don't want to leave, you don't want to be an alpha, yet you do all of those things.” Stiles feels petty, so he tacks on, “not very well, might I add,” to the end, just for the hell of it. Derek stares at him for a second – it's not the classic way that he stares during arguments, not the teeth gnashing together, eyes glowing red, fangs starting to sprout type of stare. It's just a stare. Stiles feels slightly unnerved for a moment, quickly glances to make sure Scott is still watching this. “I'm trying to tell you something.” “Okay,” Stiles agrees quickly, latching onto an opportunity to not say something he'll wind up regretting. This could be the last real conversation he and Derek ever has and – he wants it to be okay. It'll never be good, maybe not ever again, but it could be okay. “I want you to listen, for once.” It's a barb if Stiles has ever heard it, but he doesn't take the bait. He just takes a deep breath, and nods his head. Derek turns his head so Stiles can only see his profile illuminated from the lights spilling out of Allison and Scott's windows. “I don't want to say sorry anymore.” Clearing his throat, Stiles nods. “I don't want to say how angry I am anymore.” “I can't keep having the same conversations with you, again and again,” as Derek speaks, Stiles just keeps right on nodding. He thinks he knows where this is all going, what Derek is going to say, and he's been preparing himself for this moment for days. This, he can handle. A goodbye, for the first time. It has to be better than nothing, than waking up alone. “I just – I needed to say that I'm sorry, again.” Stiles pinches the bridge of his nose. “I'm used to it. I have finally reached the point of acceptance with your disposition.” “That's not what I meant,” Derek snaps, and Stiles doesn't even flinch at the tone. “I – it's all my

fault.” “We have been over this.” “The reason you have to stay here, Stiles, that's what I'm talking about.” He steps closer to Stiles, until they're two feet apart at most, and actually looks him in the eyes. “It's my fault. It's the worst thing I've ever done.” First of all, Stiles thinks, that is a bold fucking statement to make. Derek probably thinks he's done a lot of shitty things, a lot, and he actually has done a handful of unspeakables, so there's quite a bit to contend with on that front. And second of all - “what are you even talking about?” Derek grits his teeth. “I made a lot of mistakes, with you, but I – I never should have left to begin with.” It's something that Stiles has waited for years, years, to hear, to not hear excuses, to not hear reasons, but to just hear I shouldn't have done it. Hearing it now, though, Stiles just feels blindsided. It's coming out of nowhere, literally nowhere, and inside the house they're revving up the karaoke machine, and it's too – bizarre. “I told you that hurting you is just another one of those things I live with,” he says this like it's being pulled out of him by a string, like Stiles himself has the frayed end, is tugging and tugging it, and Derek has no choice. “I can't live with this.” Stiles reaches out and puts his hand on Derek's shoulder, gives him a gentle shake. “Tell me what the fuck you're talking about, because I really am – like – lost.” “Jesus Christ, Stiles! I kept leaving, and I kept going, and I kept waiting – I just - I wanted you to go, too!” “What?” “I wanted you to leave! I needed you to – I can't -” Stiles blinks, again and again. He swallows, lets go of Derek's shoulder, and then gently sets his beer bottle down on the glass table next to where they're standing with a clink. He does this to get two seconds of time to himself to process, and think, and try to understand, but still his brain is in malfunction and does not compute mode. “I didn't want you to be stuck with me,” he points to himself, shakes his head like he can't even stand the thought of it, “and I didn't want you to be stuck here. I wanted you to get away from me. From here.” “That's not the reason you -” “It isn't the only reason,” Derek agrees, cutting Stiles off effectively. “It was a reason.”

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut, rubs at his forehead. “I don't understand.” “It doesn't even fucking matter now,” Derek clomps across the wooden porch, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I've ruined every thing. I ruined your entire fucking life.” “How are you reaching that conclusion?” Stiles, overwhelmed, finally starts yelling. It may only be a matter of seconds until Scott comes bounding out here to break this whole thing up, but he doesn't care. He wants his answers. “If I had stayed, none of this would have happened. You were right.” Stiles blinks, and all he can really do is let that sink in. He does have a point about that – hasn't Stiles screamed that in his face time and time again? That if he had just stayed, then maybe every thing would turn out okay, actually, and every thing that Derek was so fucking afraid of wouldn't ever come to fruition. “The reason the pack fell apart, and the reason you almost died, and the reason you -” he clenches his jaw, doesn't finish that sentence, like he just can't. For lack of anything else to say and still somehow feeling like they're in two completely different conversations, Stiles tries a different route. “I mean...I was always going to stay here anyway.” Derek gives him a dark look, shakes his head. “It's true,” Stiles defends, shrugging. “Where else would I go?” “Anywhere, Stiles. Anywhere else, but here.” “And yet, you never fucking once asked me to go with you when you'd leave.” “You don't understand what I'm trying to say,” Derek hisses, waving his hand almost like he's about to give up on this conversation completely, but then he just starts talking again. “You deserve more than this place, people who come from here. Me.” Maybe if he weren't so angry, Stiles would take the time to be touched or moved by that, but instead he shakes his head and spits, “everyone deserves more than this fucking place, Derek. Even you.” “Then why -” “Because it's what I know.” A brief pause, and then Stiles is looking away and frowning into the darkness behind Allison and Scott's house. “You're what I know.” Derek visibly deflates at that. All the fight draining clean out of him. To an extent, it's right – there's nothing left to fight about, because Derek knows that that's true. All Stiles knows, all he's ever known, is this place, here, and Derek has been a part of that since Stiles was sixteen years

old. Stiles might be stuck here now, as Lydia is, like the very roots of himself are tangled up somewhere with the nemeton out in the preserve, but he was still trapped here to begin with. Derek should know that by now. “Why does every single thing that happens out here have to be something that you just have to fucking go and kill yourself over?” He doesn't answer that, and there probably simply isn't an answer. It's just in Derek's nature. “I don't blame you, all right?” Stiles picks up his empty bottle from the table and turns to walk back inside the house, to where the party is still in full swing. “Besides, isn't this like closure for you? I'm never going to leave – you get to. It's what you always wanted.” “This isn't what I wanted,” Derek says in a low voice. “I wanted more for you.” “Well, I wanted you to be here.” He swings open the door and turns his back, taking his first step back inside. “Neither of us won, in the end.” Right as the door is about to slam closed behind him, Derek calls out, “I'm staying.” Stiles rolls his eyes to himself, doesn't even bother turning around to look at him. “I've heard that before.” A million times, again and again, in the same tone of voice, in the same situation. He closes the door, and leaves Derek to stand out there. He never does come back into the party, and Stiles knows that the werewolves overheard the entire thing and probably relayed it to Lydia and Allison, but none of them bring it up, even when Stiles is oddly withdrawn for the rest of the night. “That's insane.” Allison says on Christmas morning. She throws a balled up wad of discarded wrapping paper, ripped off of a present an hour or so ago, into the fireplace, and then grabs another to do the same. “Did you tell him how insane that is?” Stiles opens his mouth to answer that, but Scott butts in before he gets the chance. “It's not insane. He was right. This whole thing is all Derek's fault and he should know that,” he shoves a sparkling red bow into his trash bag vindictively. “You're just mad at him,” Allison waves him off. “Yes. I have earned the right to be mad. Forget every thing he's done to my best friend,” he gestures to Stiles, who just sits there and looks like a kicked dog. “He's done some shit to me personally.” “Maybe,” she plops down next to Stiles on the couch and starts hogging some of his new blanket, the one his dad got for him. “Following that logic, you and Stiles are really the ones we should all be mad at.” Scott and Stiles exchange a look. Scott opens his mouth to retort, and Stiles is really looking forward to whatever it is he's going to come up with this time, because lord knows just how

great Scott is at winning arguments. Then, he shuts it just as quickly. Allison picks up her cooling hot chocolate, sips at it, and steals even more of Stiles' blanket – as if to say yeah, that's what I thought. “Yeah, okay,” Scott finally grumbles, swishing across the living room floor with his trash bag to grab some of the papers under the tree that Allison missed. “I guess you have a point.” “I don't see any point in blaming anyone for anything.” She pauses for a moment, looks pensive. “Especially where we live.” Looking at Scott's face, Stiles can tell that even if he knows that Allison is right about this, even if there's no use in getting riled up, that Scott is still going to stay mad at Derek. Derek is the one who went power nuts years ago and stole the alpha power even though it might have cured Scott, Derek is the one who left, Derek is the one who let Boyd and Isaac die, Derek is the one who got them into this situation. All the decisions that Derek has made have likely been the wrong ones. Even so, Stiles sits there and tries to force himself to be mad. He goes over every thing that Derek said the night before, how it's his fault, how he just wanted Stiles to get out of here, how now Stiles will never be able to and that's just another thing that'll keep Derek awake at night. The problem is, he just isn't angry at Derek. He wasn't last night and he isn't now, even on reflection. What's the point? Things turn out how they turn out, and sitting around tracing things back to their origins just to lay the blame on someone or something or one particular event – that's just a waste of energy. It's not ever going to be worth it. “And you don't believe him,” Scott goes on to say, pointing with some sort of accusation in Stiles' direction. “That he's going to stay, now. You're not getting sucked into all that again, right?” “I'm not stupid.” Oh, but he is. He's the most fucking idiotic person in the world when it comes to Derek. “He's a let down, through and through. I've learned.” “He'll be gone before New Year's. Mark my words.” “You could try being a little sensitive,” Allison hisses at him, leaning her body closer to Stiles'. “I'm okay,” Stiles says. “I'll be okay if he goes.” Deep down, Stiles is hoping that Derek won't. But a life where Derek is actually sticking around, keeps his promises, doesn't go running at the first sign of trouble in the water between them, is just one that he can't truly imagine. Fantasies of this are even blurry around the edges. **** When Derek comes back around again, Stiles is packing up his things out of Lydia's bedroom to tote them off to another room in the house. Scott and Allison offered to house him, but he thought that would be weird considering that place is still in its honeymoon stages and Stiles would feel

like an intruder. His father was another option, but that would just be too fucking sad. And then, Erica's house is just fucking depressing and dilapidated, so Lydia's place seemed the best option while he's on his own housing hunt. He's piling what little clothes he has now into one of Lydia's tote bags, and then Derek is in the doorway. Stiles takes one look at him, and then immediately shifts his eyes to the One Direction calendar that Lydia has hanging “ironically” on her bulletin board. “December 28th,” he reads out loud, raising his eyebrows. “Impressive.” Derek stands there, lurking. “I came to talk to you.” Hefting a bag off of the couch and picking up another empty one to start filling it, Stiles rolls his eyes. “I didn't think you came to talk to the dogs. Are you saying goodbye?” “I'm not -” “That's very considerate of you. Maybe you really are changing,” he dumps his Christmas gifts into the bag. It's quiet for several seconds, and then Derek is sighing, long and loud. “You are well within your rights to acts this way, I know that,” he glowers for a moment, “but you're being an ass. I told you I'm not going to leave.” “You will,” Stiles shrugs it off. “All this time I've spent thinking you're the most unreliable person on the planet, I've learned that I can always count on that from you.” He turns around and sees that Derek is still just hovering in the hallway, so he makes a gesture and says, “well, come in, if you're going to convince me.” Derek hesitates. “This is Lydia's room.” “Oh, my God,” Stiles throws his hands up, “she doesn't leave her bras strewn all over the floor or something, just get in here.” Cautiously, Derek steps inside. Once he's all the way in, standing right beside the One Direction calendar and a small pile of stuffed animals from her childhood, Stiles thinks this is the weirdest thing that he's ever seen in his entire life. Derek really has never set foot in here, before. Stiles would bet his life he hasn't been inside of a female's personal bedroom since his family was all still alive. “I don't know what you want me to say,” Stiles says first thing, gathering up his bags into a pile and then leaving them there, figuring this conversation might take a minute. “I really don't know what you expect me to have to say about this.” “I don't expect you to believe me,” Derek says slowly, adjusting his jacket. “I just – I'm trying to be honest. I'm trying to be that.” “Trying to be what?”

He looks away, out the window. “What you need me to be.” Stiles clears his throat. “I only ever needed you to be here. I don't need you to be some perfect person who never screws up and always says the right stuff, like a movie. I don't need, like, The Notebook levels. I just wanted -” want? “...you.” A beat of silence, and then Derek is adjusting his jacket yet again, like it's his new nervous tic that he picked up in Los Angeles or New York or bumfuck nowhere or wherever the hell he's been. “I'm not going to give the alpha power to Scott.” Almost against his will, Stiles' eyebrows shoot up into his hairline in surprise. “That would be quitting. That's all I've ever done and I'm trying to start over.” He glances briefly at a stuffed pig to his left, stares at it a bit awkwardly. “You're not the only person who deserves me trying harder.” Certainly, Stiles isn't. Erica first and foremost deserves more from Derek, her blood brother. Scott second of all, and then Allison, and Lydia. His family's graves, even, deserve more from Derek. “This is a lot,” Stiles says. “What even – what brought this revelation on?” Stiles half knows the answer already – it's what Erica had been hoping for, when she forced Stiles to tell him the truth about what's happened to him after every thing, and it's what Lydia has been trying to drill into Stiles' head for a couple of weeks, now. Still, hearing it out loud, it's like cold water being poured all over him, waking up. “I tried to leave, and I couldn't. Not while knowing...” Not while knowing Stiles would be stuck. Left behind. All those other times Derek left, he must have been half hoping to come back and find Stiles already gone. Moved on, to better things, greener pastures, a brand new life that doesn't involve monsters – the worst of these, in Derek's mind, would be Derek himself. This time, when he tried to leave, he knew it couldn't possibly happen. Stiles would always be here, taken up roots like the trees. Quietly, Stiles can admit to himself that maybe he'd always be waiting, too. “So, what?” Stiles asks, trying to get his handle back on the situation. “You think you can just come back, and be the alpha, and act like nothing ever happened?” “You're making this difficult,” Derek says, like he's actually surprised. “What else would you have expected? I'm difficult,” he reaches down to arrange the pillows as they were before he took up residence in their spaces. “I asked you to leave, if you remember that. I said, I want you to go, and stay gone. What happened to that?” Derek's face sort of changes – goes from drawn up and tense to weary, in just half a second. “If you asked me to go, I'd go.”

Turning around to face him head on, Stiles narrows his eyes. “You just said you couldn't.” Derek takes a single step forward, closer to Stiles, and then stops again. “If you asked me to, if that's what you wanted, I would leave, and I wouldn't come back. It would be -” he swallows, shakes his head, “...I don't know if I could do it, this time. But if you wanted me to, I wouldn't have a choice.” Straightening back up to his full height, he looks Stiles dead in the eyes. “So, tell me to go. You say the word, and I go.” This power has never been afforded to Stiles, in the past. It's always been about what Derek thought was right, what Derek believed would do the most good, what Derek wanted, what Derek needed, what Derek thought Stiles needed. Having it now, the say-so in how the rest of their lives could turn out, Stiles doesn't know if he can rightly handle it. Worst of all, he can't even make himself say it. Before, when he was angry and livid, it was so easy. Angry words always are, because they're meaningless. Words that carry no weight are hollow and they taste like nothing as they come out. But now, he tries to say the exact same thing he said to Derek just a few weeks ago, and he just can't. He can't mean it, and he can't make himself mean it, and – he stays silent. Derek nods his head, then. “I'm staying.” Turning away, Stiles shrugs. “I don't believe you.” “You'll find out, then. I'll surprise you.” Stiles really doesn't know about that. Then, he guesses, that's just the surprise of it all. There could be a million and five other things that they have to say to each other, unsolved problems that'll just mount up into another argument one of these days, but for the time being, Stiles is exhausted, and Derek looks so fucking stupid in Lydia's room, that he just doesn't want to. Instead, he adjusts his own shirt and turns back to his things. “I noticed you didn't give me a present,” he accuses, his voice still sounding a little strained. “Everyone else got one from you except me. I was like, okay. Message received.” Derek scuffs his feet on Lydia's carpet and actually, bizarrely, smiles. “I thought you wouldn't want one from me.” Stiles takes a second to try and picture his face upon getting a gift from Derek. True, he can't imagine what the fuck Derek would get him this time around that Stiles wouldn't just wind up lobbing through a window or at Derek's head in another argument. It might've been the smart thing to do, after all. “I got you something, though.” As he's rifling through his bags to find where he shoved it, Derek says, “now I feel like an asshole.”

“You are one,” Stiles whips back lightning quick as he pulls the gift out, wrapped in silver with a Hello Kitty name card. “Which is exactly why I'm giving this to you – let the social faux pas wash over you, buddy.” He holds it out to Derek, who takes it with a grimace. Stiles always hates having to just fucking stand there, watching as someone opens up what he got them, so he nervously starts babbling as Derek begins to gently tears apart the paper to get to the inside. “See – I mean, I guess I didn't really technically get you anything. It's more of a re-gift than anything else. It's not anything fancy, it's just...” Derek tosses the paper down onto the ground and holds the book in his hands, and then just stares at it for a second. Stiles coughs and starts talking again. “It was one of the few things that survived the fire – at my place. I thought you'd want it back. I don't know. I think it belongs more with you than it does with me.” It's an old, old book. More of a memory for Stiles than it is anything else, and most likely, it's the same for Derek. A charred, old copy of Derek's favorite book. It was one of the only things that made it through the fire at Derek's own house, all those years ago, something that he dug out from the bottom of the rubble and held onto, even though half the pages are unreadable from smoke and water damage and anything else. Derek had given it to Stiles as a sort of token, Stiles always thought, like here, the most important thing I own, the last thing from my childhood, and I bequeath it to you as a symbol. Something along those lines. It was a very romantic gesture, and even though Stiles would go nuts and burn pictures of Derek and throw any and all clothes of his in the garbage, he would always hold onto that book. It felt wrong not to. Now, it's gone ahead and survived a second fire. It's got new burn marks, smells like lighter fluid and fear, but Derek's fingers grip it so tightly it's like he's terrified of having it taken away. “It's dumb,” Stiles announces, unable to bear the awkard silence any longer. “I will just take that right back, if you don't mind.” He moves across the carpeting to tear the book out of Derek's hands, but as soon as he's close enough, within reaching distance, Derek is grabbing him. He pulls Stiles in by his shoulders, bridges the distance between their faces, and kisses him. It's nothing like the kiss that they shared on Lydia's porch that one night; it's not just a kiss for a kiss's sake, not just something Derek felt he had to do because he might not ever get another chance again – but it's harsh. Like if Derek hadn't kissed Stiles, he was going to lose his mind. As soon as their lips break apart, Derek uses his free hand, that smells like ash from holding onto his book, to grab Stiles by the chin. They stare at each other for a moment, and then Derek finally says, “I love you.” Stiles sighs through his nose and nods his head. “That, I believe.” Derek holds onto his book with his other hand, presses it against his chest and then drops his

forehead down onto Stiles' shoulder, breathes him in. “I can't wait to find out what it feels like to stay, with you.” It's not easy to imagine. Stiles knows better what it feels like to wake up in the morning and find Derek gone than it does to wake up and find him still there. Frankly, Stiles is a little terrified that even if Derek really keeps his word this time around, that he'll never fully be able to accept it as the truth. That he'll always, always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. But really, he thinks that he'd rather spend his whole life waiting for Derek to leave again than he would waiting for him to come back. “I want you to stay,” Stiles says out loud. “Fix everything, for me.” Derek curls his arm around Stiles, and holds him, and when he wakes up the next morning, Derek is still there.

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