Fic: Occam's Razor (5/?)
See the masterpost for disclaimer, summary, and previous parts.
Stiles slept better just for having his pillow. It wasn’t the same pillow he had at seventeen, of course, but it still had that unnamable magical power to let him sleep.
A good night’s sleep did wonders for his attitude, even if he was still trapped in a world not his own.
It had not, however, gifted him with the password to his laptop.
So he had to find something to do with himself until Derek came to pick him up for dinner.
He got dressed to go out for a walk - even got as far as the front door - when he asked himself what would happen if he ran into someone who knew him. And he probably would. He’d lived in Beacon Hills his whole life. If he ran into someone he’d known in high school, that was fine. He could bluff his way through that. But what if he ran into one of his coworkers from the cancer non-profit? Someone Stiles had met within the last seven years. He couldn’t bullshit an encounter with one of them.
And what if there were other hunters besides the Argents who had moved into town in the last few years that knew he was married to a werewolf? What if there were people he should know to stay away from but he didn’t and he ended up getting jumped and used as bait to put Derek in danger?
What if there were other werewolves in town - like the alpha pack that came through Beacon Hills wreaking havoc his sophomore year - who had a beef with the local pack and would relish the chance to kill Derek’s human husband the first chance they got?
In just a few minutes standing with his hand on the front door handle, he’d worked himself into a quiet meltdown about everything that could go wrong if he stepped outside without an ambassador to the present as a guide.
Nope… venturing outside on his own was not in the cards for Stiles today.
He kicked off his shoes then tried to find something indoors to occupy him.
He briefly lingered over the photo album he’d taken from Derek’s house, tempted to open it and finally peek into this life he had supposedly led. He’d already dealt with Scott’s daughter over the phone, and that wasn’t so bad. Maybe he wouldn’t have some kind of identity crisis meltdown seeing himself in pictures and not remembering any of it.
But it was still so fucking daunting.
He made a deal with himself. If tonight with Derek went okay, he’d look. Why torture himself with the Stiles version of happily-ever-after if he was going to nuke it in this permutation of his existence?
He ended up spending most of the day reading ShineGold, because he was determined to figure out whose book it was. The idea that Stiles and Derek blurred together at any juncture to such a degree that Stiles couldn’t immediately and confidently label something a ‘Derek thing’ or a ‘Stiles thing’ was maddening. It shouldn’t be ambiguous. They were very different people. That should bear out in their interests clear as day.
But it fucking wasn’t, and it was driving Stiles nuts.
Stiles was pretty far into the book when a knock on the door startled him off the couch. He narrowly avoided another ‘falling off furniture’ injury as he scrambled to the door, book in hand with his thumb marking his place, and opened the door.
Derek was standing there in his work uniform, gun at hip, looking like a god damn strip-o-gram. Asshole. Getting a peek of this Stiles’ life was just cruel, because he’d go back to his world and his life where there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d land a guy like Derek Hale.
This is your life, Stiles Stilinski, and it sucks.
His stunned silence made Derek raise his eyebrows questioningly. “You okay?”
“What? Oh, yeah! Sorry… I lost track of the time. Come on in.”
Derek followed him inside, closed the door, then turned to watch Stiles slide a bookmark in ShineGold and set it on the coffee table.
“I wondered where that went,” Derek noted absently.
Stiles rounded on Derek eagerly. “This is yours?”
Derek gave him a look that asked why he was being so weird about a book as he walked over and picked up the tattered novel. “Yeah… why?”
“I just… I don’t know… never pegged you for a scifi fan?”
Derek turned the book over to look at the back. “I like the characters.”
“Really? Who’s your favorite?”
“Sik.”
“Wha… she’s one of the bad guys!”
“You think so?” Derek gave him a look like he was enjoying this, talking about one of his favorite books with Stiles. He gathered from Derek’s keen interest that they’d never discussed this book before. So just a Derek thing, then. That was a new layer of fascinating, since Stiles had gotten far enough into the story to have opinions about the characters.
“She’s totally a villain, dude,” Stiles argued.
“Guess I saw her as more of a victim of circumstance.” Derek shrugged. “I kind of identified with her.”
“How’s that?”
“Everyone judged her for what she was. She had to fight stereotypes all the time.”
From a werewolf’s perspective, yeah, maybe he could see that. But fucking Sik?
Derek smiled and handed the book to Stiles. “Maybe you should finish it.”
“Maybe I will.” Stiles put the book down on the coffee table. Then he turned toward Derek and asked, “So… any idea where you want to go?”
“Chinese?”
“Sounds good to me.”
***************
Dinner was nice, even if they stuck to safe topics during their meal. It was a verbal tap-dance where Stiles felt like he was warming up to the bigger questions, and he could tell Derek knew that. And yet he let Stiles work up to it at his own pace. Stiles could have kissed him for that. Figuratively, of course. Not, like, literally kiss Derek Hale. Even if he did look dead-sexy in that deputy uniform.
Not that Stiles noticed.
The conversation centered on work at the station and Rene’s kite-flying and sweet and sour chicken.
After dinner, Derek drove them out to the preserve, where they exited the car and set out on a leisurely stroll side-by-side through the trees. This felt familiar, at least. He’d spent more than his fair share of time in the woods with Derek. For other people that might be a strange thing to say, but in this strange universe it was normal to Stiles.
Stiles peered out into the trees ahead of them. “Did you ever rebuild your family’s old house?”
“No. I actually sold the property out here about three years ago.”
“Really? That’s kind of surprising.” Stiles always felt like the Hale land was in Derek’s blood… like he would rather cut off his arm than give it up.
Derek shrugged. “There were more ghosts than anything out here. Guess I was tired of living like that. I wanted to start thinking about my future; stop dwelling on the past.” That was, like, massive personal growth for Derek. Stiles kind of wanted to congratulate him after-the-fact, but he didn’t dare interrupt Derek’s narrative.
Derek stepped on a twig just to hear it snap. “I used a chunk of the money from the sale for the down-payment on our house, but even then there was still enough left over to put in savings.”
It was an opening, and Stiles knew it. He took a steeling breath. “So… how long have we had the house?”
“Two years.”
Stiles did the math in his head. “You say you sold the property three years ago?”
Derek gave him the side-eye and a wary nod.
“That timing seems kind of… not a coincidence.”
“It wasn’t,” Derek conceded lowly. He rolled his neck like he was working out the kinks. “I swore to myself if you made it, I’d make some changes in my life. I’d do better. I’d… be worth you.”
Stiles was flabbergasted. “Whoa… I… I don’t know what to say.” Stiles kind of figured he was always the one feeling not-good-enough in their relationship. Because Derek Fucking Hale. He was the guy all the girls and half the boys in school wanted to get with. Older and mysterious and dark and gorgeous. What did scrawny Stiles bring to the table to even compete with that?
Sarcasm and hyperactivity? Please.
“That’s also when I got the job working with Dad at the station,” Derek added, like an afterthought.
“So is that… did we get married then, too?” Made sense. If that life-threatening injury had Derek turning his life around, selling his old family land and getting an honest job, it would figure that’s when they tied the knot, too.
“No,” Derek smiled, “we’ve been married for five years.”
That made Stiles’ jaw drop and he physically came to a halt. Derek stopped walking to turn and face him. “Five…” Stiles stammered. “Are you telling me I married you just a year out of high school?”
“Much to your father’s chagrin. He never said anything, but I know he thought I was the wolf that climbed into your nursery and stole you out of your crib.”
“Okay, didn’t need that mental image.” Though he was probably right about John’s opinion at the time.
“You were only nineteen.” Derek looked sheepish. “In hindsight, maybe we rushed into things. But it didn’t feel too soon at the time. Honestly, it still doesn’t.” Derek tipped his head in quiet acquiescence to traditional wisdom, even if it wasn’t for them. “But I can see how other people would think that.”
Stiles looked down at his left hand, tracing his thumb along the underside of his wedding band, then looked over at Derek. “So how did we end up together?”
A clouded look came over Derek’s face then, and he started walking again. Stiles caught up and fell back into step beside him. This, at least, was easy. Comfortable. Even when they hadn’t really been friends, it hadn’t been hard to be around Derek. Strange, maybe, but true. You always knew where you stood with Derek. If he wanted to bash your head into a wall, you pretty much knew it.
After dealing with creeps like Peter Hale and Gerard Argent, one grew to appreciate brutal honesty.
“The first part isn’t a very happy story,” Derek started haltingly.
Stiles snorted. “Now that actually sounds about right.” Their lives tended to have an overabundance of suck. Stiles probably wouldn’t have believed a happy story.
Derek hummed in agreement. “It was right around the time you graduated high school, and you and I were both in pretty ugly places.
“You were still raw from what happened with the nogitsune - you kept it from your friends, but I know how bad it was for you for a long time after that. Then your best friend moved to San Francisco, and you were enrolled in your first semester of community college and… struggling.
“Me… my whole pack had fallen apart. Scott, Isaac, and Kira moved away, Lydia left for college, Allison was dead, Peter kidnapped Malia and disappeared with her -”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Back up. Peter kidnapped Malia?!”
Derek scowled and let loose a low growl. “There’s been a missing person’s report out on her since it happened. Peter found out she was his biological daughter and figured that gave him the right? I don’t know, I can’t begin to understand what goes on in that man’s head. That was the last straw with my uncle, though. Even if he came back, I’d run him right out of town. Or kill him, if I have to. We’re still looking for Malia, but it’s been years.” Derek shook his head in disgust. “We all would have been better off if Peter had just stayed dead.”
Stiles couldn’t argue that. Peter was always a creep and a half. A murderer, a sociopath, and now a kidnapper and felon at large. No wonder Derek hadn’t wanted to talk about it before. Stiles wouldn’t either if that was his gene pool.
“Anyway, in a short amount of time, I lost nearly my entire pack. And I’d already gone through that once, so I was…”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say ‘moody’ was an understatement.”
Derek huffed and nodded.
“We started hanging out just because we were the only ones left. Not that we were having fun. That’s not what it was about. It was all… anger and unhappiness.”
“We were wallowing in our misery.”
“Basically.” Derek paused to glance off into the distance, perhaps catching the scent of something, then he continued, “Then one night you just hit your breaking point. You found out you were failing your intro stats class and said you wanted to run away. So we did.”
Stiles jolted to a stop again. “We what now?”
Derek patiently walked back to Stiles and reached out to coax him forward with a slide of his hand along Stiles’ forearm. Stiles shivered and moved forward with him.
“You and I both went home, packed a couple of bags, and hit the road.”
“Oh my god. Where did we go?”
“A little bit of everywhere. Los Angeles. The Grand Canyon. Yellowstone. Vegas.”
“Oh shit, tell me we did not get married in Vegas!”
“No, we didn’t get married in Vegas. We did catch a burlesque show, though.” Derek winked. “Mostly, we just drove. We’d stop for the night when we got tired - usually shared a room, because it’s not like either one of us had much money - and it was… freeing. We just left our lives behind. None of our shit mattered out there.”
It sounded like it.
Derek shrugged. “Somewhere along the way, between the crappy diner food and cheap motels and miles of highway, it stopped being about anger. And we started to become friends. I mean, real friends. In such close quarters, you get to know someone really well. Before long, I’d say you knew me better than anyone in my life ever has.”
Stiles couldn’t speak for his alter-ego, but he could not imagine the sentiment was one-sided.
Stiles wished he could remember that. It sounded transformative. He hoped for moments like that in life. And apparently he’d had one, but he couldn’t fucking remember it.
“We were on the road for almost four months. Your dad was not happy about it at first, you dropping out of school to wander the country with a werewolf, but by the end I think he could hear in your voice when you called home that you were… lighter. And I was, too. We were both healing.”
Derek had a remarkably peaceful look on his face. Stiles wondered if that was what Derek had looked like on the road. He tried to imagine crawling out of a motel bed at the crack of dawn in some no-name town in the middle of nowhere with this man, getting into the car with him, and just going.
Just the notion itself was romantic.
“When we got back to Beacon Hills, you withdrew from school and started working for the cancer non-profit. I started taking on odd jobs, construction mostly. But we made time for each other every single day. You were technically still living with your dad, but most nights you stayed at the loft.
“Eventually, we got together. We were only dating a month before I asked you to marry me.”
“God damn, Derek.”
Derek laughed. Outright, head-thrown-back laughed. “That’s exactly what you said when I proposed. In my defense, it was on a full moon. I was ballsy.”
“That sounds like a terrible time to pop the question.”
“You said that then, too. You told me to ask again in a week if I still wanted to get married. So I did. And you said yes.”
“I wish I could remember all that,” Stiles mused aloud, not even really thinking about the fact Derek was with him and heard him. Maybe he didn’t care. Derek had this amazing story he shared with Stiles, but Stiles didn’t get to have it. He felt the loss of a life that had never been his.
“I didn’t have any family, all your friends were busy with their own lives, and we didn’t really want to wait for them to start our life together. So we did a quickie ceremony at the court house with the Justice of the Peace with just Dad and Deaton as witnesses.
“Then we went on our honeymoon at Disneyland.”
“Are you kidding me?” Stiles choked. “Disneyland?!”
“Four days and three nights,” Derek grinned. “Wedding present from Dad.”
“Oh man! I can’t believe I had my fucking honeymoon at Disneyland! Did we go on every rollercoaster? Please tell me we went on every rollercoaster!”
“Several times.”
“Holy shit, that is awesome! What the fuck, I am jealous of me!”
Derek was smiling at him, and Stiles caught himself just staring. He looked happy. And happy Derek was captivating.
Stiles was in trouble.
Derek seemed to notice the tension at the same time Stiles did, because his gaze flicked down to Stiles’ mouth briefly before he cleared his throat and took a half-step back. “So… that’s our story. Full of recklessness, impulsivity, and immaturity enough to turn any parent’s hair white.”
“Fuck you, dude, our story is badass.” Stiles didn’t even care that he’d called it his. For just a little while he wanted to pretend like it was. His life as of a couple of days ago was trying to get through school and hanging out with his friends without letting his cracks show. Because Derek was right. Stiles was having a hard time after the nogitsune. Screaming nightmares kind of hard time. The kind of hard time where he didn’t honestly see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Derek was giving him that light. Showing him that there was an end to the suffering, even if it was in another reality. If this Stiles got a chance, maybe he’d get one, too.
With obvious displeasure, Derek looked down at his watch. “Well, I should get you back. I have work tomorrow.”
“Oh… right.” Stiles didn’t want the evening to end. He was enjoying himself. He was enjoying Derek’s company.
But things were going well. Too well. They probably should take a step back and let the dust settle. Stiles didn’t want to fuck things up for other Stiles because he wanted to taste his life, just for a little while.
So Stiles didn’t ask to go home with Derek, even though he really, really wanted to. Not to have sex with him (although, should the opportunity arise, he wouldn’t necessarily turn it down), but just to get to know this Derek better. He was drawn to this version of Derek. This happy, loving, brighter Derek Hale. Everyone back in his reality thought dark, brooding Derek was sexy, but that’s just because they’d never seen this Derek. It looked so much better on him.
********************
Derek walked Stiles back into his father’s house, mindful of the sheriff’s vehicle in the driveway and the fact that the lights were off upstairs.
In the living room, Stiles turned to face Derek and swallowed thickly. “So… I had a good time.” He kept his voice low so as not to wake John upstairs. And also because something tight in his chest wouldn’t let him speak any louder.
“Me too.” Derek licked his lips. “Maybe again tomorrow?”
“Yeah, that’s… that’d be nice.”
Derek nodded, shifted as if to go… then he looked imploringly over at Stiles. “Could… could I…?”
Stiles gave a wavering smile, trying not to hear the pounding of his heart… and pretending that Derek couldn’t hear it, either. “Need a hit, huh? Sure, go ahead.”
Derek stepped closer. Insanely closer. Hotly closer…
Then he reached out, snagged Stiles around the waist, and pulled the younger man into his chest. He just kind of tugged, and Stiles just went. Derek nuzzled the crook of Stiles’ neck with deep, saturating inhales. Stiles felt like his body just melted into it, despite himself. He figured his scent was becoming a permanent fixture in Derek’s bloodstream from how deeply he was breathing him in. And he could not find any reason to complain.
Derek’s hand on his waist slipped around to the small of Stiles’ back. Stiles whimpered and his hand went up to Derek’s side of its own accord. Like he had that alien hand syndrome. He was blaming Dr. Strangelove for the way his fingers fisted the material of Derek’s shirt, too. Totally out of his control.
Derek pressed closer. Then he stopped scenting Stiles to place a soft kiss on his neck. It was so fucking sweet and gentle and not meant for this Stiles, but Stiles didn’t fucking care. He closed his eyes and let it be for him, just for a moment.
Then Derek was stepping back, his hand sliding along Stiles to hold contact until the last possible moment. Stiles consciously opened his fingers to let go of Derek’s shirt.
“I… goodnight, Stiles,” Derek whispered, voice hoarse and thick with arousal. Laced with things that did a number on Stiles’ insides.
“Yeah, you… you too.”
Oh yeah. He was in so so so much trouble.
Next
Stiles slept better just for having his pillow. It wasn’t the same pillow he had at seventeen, of course, but it still had that unnamable magical power to let him sleep.
A good night’s sleep did wonders for his attitude, even if he was still trapped in a world not his own.
It had not, however, gifted him with the password to his laptop.
So he had to find something to do with himself until Derek came to pick him up for dinner.
He got dressed to go out for a walk - even got as far as the front door - when he asked himself what would happen if he ran into someone who knew him. And he probably would. He’d lived in Beacon Hills his whole life. If he ran into someone he’d known in high school, that was fine. He could bluff his way through that. But what if he ran into one of his coworkers from the cancer non-profit? Someone Stiles had met within the last seven years. He couldn’t bullshit an encounter with one of them.
And what if there were other hunters besides the Argents who had moved into town in the last few years that knew he was married to a werewolf? What if there were people he should know to stay away from but he didn’t and he ended up getting jumped and used as bait to put Derek in danger?
What if there were other werewolves in town - like the alpha pack that came through Beacon Hills wreaking havoc his sophomore year - who had a beef with the local pack and would relish the chance to kill Derek’s human husband the first chance they got?
In just a few minutes standing with his hand on the front door handle, he’d worked himself into a quiet meltdown about everything that could go wrong if he stepped outside without an ambassador to the present as a guide.
Nope… venturing outside on his own was not in the cards for Stiles today.
He kicked off his shoes then tried to find something indoors to occupy him.
He briefly lingered over the photo album he’d taken from Derek’s house, tempted to open it and finally peek into this life he had supposedly led. He’d already dealt with Scott’s daughter over the phone, and that wasn’t so bad. Maybe he wouldn’t have some kind of identity crisis meltdown seeing himself in pictures and not remembering any of it.
But it was still so fucking daunting.
He made a deal with himself. If tonight with Derek went okay, he’d look. Why torture himself with the Stiles version of happily-ever-after if he was going to nuke it in this permutation of his existence?
He ended up spending most of the day reading ShineGold, because he was determined to figure out whose book it was. The idea that Stiles and Derek blurred together at any juncture to such a degree that Stiles couldn’t immediately and confidently label something a ‘Derek thing’ or a ‘Stiles thing’ was maddening. It shouldn’t be ambiguous. They were very different people. That should bear out in their interests clear as day.
But it fucking wasn’t, and it was driving Stiles nuts.
Stiles was pretty far into the book when a knock on the door startled him off the couch. He narrowly avoided another ‘falling off furniture’ injury as he scrambled to the door, book in hand with his thumb marking his place, and opened the door.
Derek was standing there in his work uniform, gun at hip, looking like a god damn strip-o-gram. Asshole. Getting a peek of this Stiles’ life was just cruel, because he’d go back to his world and his life where there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d land a guy like Derek Hale.
This is your life, Stiles Stilinski, and it sucks.
His stunned silence made Derek raise his eyebrows questioningly. “You okay?”
“What? Oh, yeah! Sorry… I lost track of the time. Come on in.”
Derek followed him inside, closed the door, then turned to watch Stiles slide a bookmark in ShineGold and set it on the coffee table.
“I wondered where that went,” Derek noted absently.
Stiles rounded on Derek eagerly. “This is yours?”
Derek gave him a look that asked why he was being so weird about a book as he walked over and picked up the tattered novel. “Yeah… why?”
“I just… I don’t know… never pegged you for a scifi fan?”
Derek turned the book over to look at the back. “I like the characters.”
“Really? Who’s your favorite?”
“Sik.”
“Wha… she’s one of the bad guys!”
“You think so?” Derek gave him a look like he was enjoying this, talking about one of his favorite books with Stiles. He gathered from Derek’s keen interest that they’d never discussed this book before. So just a Derek thing, then. That was a new layer of fascinating, since Stiles had gotten far enough into the story to have opinions about the characters.
“She’s totally a villain, dude,” Stiles argued.
“Guess I saw her as more of a victim of circumstance.” Derek shrugged. “I kind of identified with her.”
“How’s that?”
“Everyone judged her for what she was. She had to fight stereotypes all the time.”
From a werewolf’s perspective, yeah, maybe he could see that. But fucking Sik?
Derek smiled and handed the book to Stiles. “Maybe you should finish it.”
“Maybe I will.” Stiles put the book down on the coffee table. Then he turned toward Derek and asked, “So… any idea where you want to go?”
“Chinese?”
“Sounds good to me.”
***************
Dinner was nice, even if they stuck to safe topics during their meal. It was a verbal tap-dance where Stiles felt like he was warming up to the bigger questions, and he could tell Derek knew that. And yet he let Stiles work up to it at his own pace. Stiles could have kissed him for that. Figuratively, of course. Not, like, literally kiss Derek Hale. Even if he did look dead-sexy in that deputy uniform.
Not that Stiles noticed.
The conversation centered on work at the station and Rene’s kite-flying and sweet and sour chicken.
After dinner, Derek drove them out to the preserve, where they exited the car and set out on a leisurely stroll side-by-side through the trees. This felt familiar, at least. He’d spent more than his fair share of time in the woods with Derek. For other people that might be a strange thing to say, but in this strange universe it was normal to Stiles.
Stiles peered out into the trees ahead of them. “Did you ever rebuild your family’s old house?”
“No. I actually sold the property out here about three years ago.”
“Really? That’s kind of surprising.” Stiles always felt like the Hale land was in Derek’s blood… like he would rather cut off his arm than give it up.
Derek shrugged. “There were more ghosts than anything out here. Guess I was tired of living like that. I wanted to start thinking about my future; stop dwelling on the past.” That was, like, massive personal growth for Derek. Stiles kind of wanted to congratulate him after-the-fact, but he didn’t dare interrupt Derek’s narrative.
Derek stepped on a twig just to hear it snap. “I used a chunk of the money from the sale for the down-payment on our house, but even then there was still enough left over to put in savings.”
It was an opening, and Stiles knew it. He took a steeling breath. “So… how long have we had the house?”
“Two years.”
Stiles did the math in his head. “You say you sold the property three years ago?”
Derek gave him the side-eye and a wary nod.
“That timing seems kind of… not a coincidence.”
“It wasn’t,” Derek conceded lowly. He rolled his neck like he was working out the kinks. “I swore to myself if you made it, I’d make some changes in my life. I’d do better. I’d… be worth you.”
Stiles was flabbergasted. “Whoa… I… I don’t know what to say.” Stiles kind of figured he was always the one feeling not-good-enough in their relationship. Because Derek Fucking Hale. He was the guy all the girls and half the boys in school wanted to get with. Older and mysterious and dark and gorgeous. What did scrawny Stiles bring to the table to even compete with that?
Sarcasm and hyperactivity? Please.
“That’s also when I got the job working with Dad at the station,” Derek added, like an afterthought.
“So is that… did we get married then, too?” Made sense. If that life-threatening injury had Derek turning his life around, selling his old family land and getting an honest job, it would figure that’s when they tied the knot, too.
“No,” Derek smiled, “we’ve been married for five years.”
That made Stiles’ jaw drop and he physically came to a halt. Derek stopped walking to turn and face him. “Five…” Stiles stammered. “Are you telling me I married you just a year out of high school?”
“Much to your father’s chagrin. He never said anything, but I know he thought I was the wolf that climbed into your nursery and stole you out of your crib.”
“Okay, didn’t need that mental image.” Though he was probably right about John’s opinion at the time.
“You were only nineteen.” Derek looked sheepish. “In hindsight, maybe we rushed into things. But it didn’t feel too soon at the time. Honestly, it still doesn’t.” Derek tipped his head in quiet acquiescence to traditional wisdom, even if it wasn’t for them. “But I can see how other people would think that.”
Stiles looked down at his left hand, tracing his thumb along the underside of his wedding band, then looked over at Derek. “So how did we end up together?”
A clouded look came over Derek’s face then, and he started walking again. Stiles caught up and fell back into step beside him. This, at least, was easy. Comfortable. Even when they hadn’t really been friends, it hadn’t been hard to be around Derek. Strange, maybe, but true. You always knew where you stood with Derek. If he wanted to bash your head into a wall, you pretty much knew it.
After dealing with creeps like Peter Hale and Gerard Argent, one grew to appreciate brutal honesty.
“The first part isn’t a very happy story,” Derek started haltingly.
Stiles snorted. “Now that actually sounds about right.” Their lives tended to have an overabundance of suck. Stiles probably wouldn’t have believed a happy story.
Derek hummed in agreement. “It was right around the time you graduated high school, and you and I were both in pretty ugly places.
“You were still raw from what happened with the nogitsune - you kept it from your friends, but I know how bad it was for you for a long time after that. Then your best friend moved to San Francisco, and you were enrolled in your first semester of community college and… struggling.
“Me… my whole pack had fallen apart. Scott, Isaac, and Kira moved away, Lydia left for college, Allison was dead, Peter kidnapped Malia and disappeared with her -”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Back up. Peter kidnapped Malia?!”
Derek scowled and let loose a low growl. “There’s been a missing person’s report out on her since it happened. Peter found out she was his biological daughter and figured that gave him the right? I don’t know, I can’t begin to understand what goes on in that man’s head. That was the last straw with my uncle, though. Even if he came back, I’d run him right out of town. Or kill him, if I have to. We’re still looking for Malia, but it’s been years.” Derek shook his head in disgust. “We all would have been better off if Peter had just stayed dead.”
Stiles couldn’t argue that. Peter was always a creep and a half. A murderer, a sociopath, and now a kidnapper and felon at large. No wonder Derek hadn’t wanted to talk about it before. Stiles wouldn’t either if that was his gene pool.
“Anyway, in a short amount of time, I lost nearly my entire pack. And I’d already gone through that once, so I was…”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say ‘moody’ was an understatement.”
Derek huffed and nodded.
“We started hanging out just because we were the only ones left. Not that we were having fun. That’s not what it was about. It was all… anger and unhappiness.”
“We were wallowing in our misery.”
“Basically.” Derek paused to glance off into the distance, perhaps catching the scent of something, then he continued, “Then one night you just hit your breaking point. You found out you were failing your intro stats class and said you wanted to run away. So we did.”
Stiles jolted to a stop again. “We what now?”
Derek patiently walked back to Stiles and reached out to coax him forward with a slide of his hand along Stiles’ forearm. Stiles shivered and moved forward with him.
“You and I both went home, packed a couple of bags, and hit the road.”
“Oh my god. Where did we go?”
“A little bit of everywhere. Los Angeles. The Grand Canyon. Yellowstone. Vegas.”
“Oh shit, tell me we did not get married in Vegas!”
“No, we didn’t get married in Vegas. We did catch a burlesque show, though.” Derek winked. “Mostly, we just drove. We’d stop for the night when we got tired - usually shared a room, because it’s not like either one of us had much money - and it was… freeing. We just left our lives behind. None of our shit mattered out there.”
It sounded like it.
Derek shrugged. “Somewhere along the way, between the crappy diner food and cheap motels and miles of highway, it stopped being about anger. And we started to become friends. I mean, real friends. In such close quarters, you get to know someone really well. Before long, I’d say you knew me better than anyone in my life ever has.”
Stiles couldn’t speak for his alter-ego, but he could not imagine the sentiment was one-sided.
Stiles wished he could remember that. It sounded transformative. He hoped for moments like that in life. And apparently he’d had one, but he couldn’t fucking remember it.
“We were on the road for almost four months. Your dad was not happy about it at first, you dropping out of school to wander the country with a werewolf, but by the end I think he could hear in your voice when you called home that you were… lighter. And I was, too. We were both healing.”
Derek had a remarkably peaceful look on his face. Stiles wondered if that was what Derek had looked like on the road. He tried to imagine crawling out of a motel bed at the crack of dawn in some no-name town in the middle of nowhere with this man, getting into the car with him, and just going.
Just the notion itself was romantic.
“When we got back to Beacon Hills, you withdrew from school and started working for the cancer non-profit. I started taking on odd jobs, construction mostly. But we made time for each other every single day. You were technically still living with your dad, but most nights you stayed at the loft.
“Eventually, we got together. We were only dating a month before I asked you to marry me.”
“God damn, Derek.”
Derek laughed. Outright, head-thrown-back laughed. “That’s exactly what you said when I proposed. In my defense, it was on a full moon. I was ballsy.”
“That sounds like a terrible time to pop the question.”
“You said that then, too. You told me to ask again in a week if I still wanted to get married. So I did. And you said yes.”
“I wish I could remember all that,” Stiles mused aloud, not even really thinking about the fact Derek was with him and heard him. Maybe he didn’t care. Derek had this amazing story he shared with Stiles, but Stiles didn’t get to have it. He felt the loss of a life that had never been his.
“I didn’t have any family, all your friends were busy with their own lives, and we didn’t really want to wait for them to start our life together. So we did a quickie ceremony at the court house with the Justice of the Peace with just Dad and Deaton as witnesses.
“Then we went on our honeymoon at Disneyland.”
“Are you kidding me?” Stiles choked. “Disneyland?!”
“Four days and three nights,” Derek grinned. “Wedding present from Dad.”
“Oh man! I can’t believe I had my fucking honeymoon at Disneyland! Did we go on every rollercoaster? Please tell me we went on every rollercoaster!”
“Several times.”
“Holy shit, that is awesome! What the fuck, I am jealous of me!”
Derek was smiling at him, and Stiles caught himself just staring. He looked happy. And happy Derek was captivating.
Stiles was in trouble.
Derek seemed to notice the tension at the same time Stiles did, because his gaze flicked down to Stiles’ mouth briefly before he cleared his throat and took a half-step back. “So… that’s our story. Full of recklessness, impulsivity, and immaturity enough to turn any parent’s hair white.”
“Fuck you, dude, our story is badass.” Stiles didn’t even care that he’d called it his. For just a little while he wanted to pretend like it was. His life as of a couple of days ago was trying to get through school and hanging out with his friends without letting his cracks show. Because Derek was right. Stiles was having a hard time after the nogitsune. Screaming nightmares kind of hard time. The kind of hard time where he didn’t honestly see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Derek was giving him that light. Showing him that there was an end to the suffering, even if it was in another reality. If this Stiles got a chance, maybe he’d get one, too.
With obvious displeasure, Derek looked down at his watch. “Well, I should get you back. I have work tomorrow.”
“Oh… right.” Stiles didn’t want the evening to end. He was enjoying himself. He was enjoying Derek’s company.
But things were going well. Too well. They probably should take a step back and let the dust settle. Stiles didn’t want to fuck things up for other Stiles because he wanted to taste his life, just for a little while.
So Stiles didn’t ask to go home with Derek, even though he really, really wanted to. Not to have sex with him (although, should the opportunity arise, he wouldn’t necessarily turn it down), but just to get to know this Derek better. He was drawn to this version of Derek. This happy, loving, brighter Derek Hale. Everyone back in his reality thought dark, brooding Derek was sexy, but that’s just because they’d never seen this Derek. It looked so much better on him.
********************
Derek walked Stiles back into his father’s house, mindful of the sheriff’s vehicle in the driveway and the fact that the lights were off upstairs.
In the living room, Stiles turned to face Derek and swallowed thickly. “So… I had a good time.” He kept his voice low so as not to wake John upstairs. And also because something tight in his chest wouldn’t let him speak any louder.
“Me too.” Derek licked his lips. “Maybe again tomorrow?”
“Yeah, that’s… that’d be nice.”
Derek nodded, shifted as if to go… then he looked imploringly over at Stiles. “Could… could I…?”
Stiles gave a wavering smile, trying not to hear the pounding of his heart… and pretending that Derek couldn’t hear it, either. “Need a hit, huh? Sure, go ahead.”
Derek stepped closer. Insanely closer. Hotly closer…
Then he reached out, snagged Stiles around the waist, and pulled the younger man into his chest. He just kind of tugged, and Stiles just went. Derek nuzzled the crook of Stiles’ neck with deep, saturating inhales. Stiles felt like his body just melted into it, despite himself. He figured his scent was becoming a permanent fixture in Derek’s bloodstream from how deeply he was breathing him in. And he could not find any reason to complain.
Derek’s hand on his waist slipped around to the small of Stiles’ back. Stiles whimpered and his hand went up to Derek’s side of its own accord. Like he had that alien hand syndrome. He was blaming Dr. Strangelove for the way his fingers fisted the material of Derek’s shirt, too. Totally out of his control.
Derek pressed closer. Then he stopped scenting Stiles to place a soft kiss on his neck. It was so fucking sweet and gentle and not meant for this Stiles, but Stiles didn’t fucking care. He closed his eyes and let it be for him, just for a moment.
Then Derek was stepping back, his hand sliding along Stiles to hold contact until the last possible moment. Stiles consciously opened his fingers to let go of Derek’s shirt.
“I… goodnight, Stiles,” Derek whispered, voice hoarse and thick with arousal. Laced with things that did a number on Stiles’ insides.
“Yeah, you… you too.”
Oh yeah. He was in so so so much trouble.
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