Fic: Occam's Razor (12/?)
See the masterpost for disclaimer, summary, and previous parts.
He couldn’t sleep for his eagerness to get started on the concoction that would undo the damage to his scattered mental energy. He ended up leaving the house before sun-up, well before Derek left for work, to track down the ingredients, armed with a google print-out of all the herbal spice shops within an hour’s drive of Beacon Hills.
****************
Stiles was out all day driving around picking up ingredients. Most shops only had one or two of them, if they had any at all, but the proprietor usually had a guess on who else might have some of them, and Stiles would be off again. Stiles had accumulated quite a collection of herb and spice shop addresses by the time it started getting late.
Some of the ingredients were obscure, and he wouldn’t settle for ‘close enough’. He wasn’t risking his marriage on a botched cure with a remedy comprised of kinda-sorta-the-same-thing components. Some were expensive, only grown in Japan or under some rock on the shore of the Red Sea (or near enough as makes no matter). Some went by a different name in America, and it was like pulling teeth trying to get the shop owners to do the research and be one hundred percent certain it was the same thing as what Stiles needed. More than one shop master was cursing Stiles’ pickiness before their business was concluded. Stiles hoped he never needed to do anything like this again, because he had a feeling he’d been blacklisted the minute he walked out the door of several places.
When he finally got home, road-weary and poorer but victorious, it was nearly nine at night.
He took his purchases into the kitchen and laid them on the counter, next to the print-out of Scott’s email detailing the correct combinations thereof, and went searching for Derek.
Stiles found him in the office, holding two pieces of a dissembled crib out and trying to scowl it into assembling itself, Stiles could only assume. There was a changing table and matching dresser shoved toward the corner to make room for Derek to put together the crib. Or attempt to put together the crib. Right now, in the matter of crib versus Derek Hale, the crib was winning.
Stiles had completely forgotten about Mrs. McCall bringing all the stuff over. Sue him, things got crazy.
“Hey,” he greeted.
Derek looked up. “Hey. Did you get everything you need?”
“Yep… it’s in the kitchen.” He stepped into the office. “Want some help with that?”
“God, yes. Mrs. McCall didn’t have any instructions for this, and it was so long ago that she took it apart that she wasn’t much help remembering how it went together.” Derek passed one piece of the crib to Stiles when he was close then he went conspicuously quiet. It said something about how much he’d bonded with Derek since he’d lost his memories that Stiles could tell Derek had something to say, he just didn’t know how to say it. So Stiles waited and sorted crib parts.
Finally, Derek cleared his throat. “I talked to Lydia.”
Stiles looked up at that.
“I told her we still want the baby.” Derek looked carefully at him. “We do, right? I never really asked, I just assumed…”
“Yes, we still want the baby.”
“Even if…” Derek scowled, looking agitated. “Even if Mrs. Yukimura’s cure doesn’t work?”
Stiles froze. He hadn’t let himself entertain the thought that it wouldn’t. But Derek was right… they had to hope for the best, plan for the worst. That’s what responsible parents did.
“Even if it doesn’t work and I never get those memories back, yes, I still want to have a family with you.” Stiles gave a faint shrug. “You’ll just have to fill in the holes on things I don’t remember.” It sucked, it wasn’t ideal, but as far as compromises went it was one Stiles could totally live with.
“I promise,” Derek vowed.
Stiles leaned over and kissed him.
Then they set to work putting together the crib. It felt like they best not fail, because what hope did they have of creating a complex tea remedy if they couldn’t put together baby furniture?
But they did get the crib together. By eleven it was against the wall, flanked by the changing table with the dresser against the adjoining wall. It felt like being a kid and finishing decorating the Christmas tree and standing back with the lights off to admire the sparkle and glow.
Derek had his arm around Stiles’ waist, Stiles had his arm slung over Derek’s shoulders, both admiring a job well-done, when Stiles blurted, “Do we know what it is?”
“A crib…?”
“No, genius, the baby. Do we know if it’s a boy or a girl?”
Derek shook his head. “Does it matter?”
“No… just curious. What about names? Do we have any picked out?”
“Well, I’m pushing for your old first name. I think it could work for a boy or a girl.”
“Oh god, why do you hate our baby?” Stiles groaned. Then he looked thoughtfully at Derek. “What are the top contenders? Top three for boy and girl. Or,” Stiles drew up short, frowning, “no, don’t tell me. By tomorrow morning, I’ll remember.”
“You want to make the antidote now? It’s late. We could wait until tomorrow night.”
Stiles shook his head and dropped his arm from Derek’s shoulders. “I don’t want to wait that long. I want my life back now.” He’d lost enough time.
They were up another hour and a half making the weirdest thing ever put together in their kitchen. They double and triple-checked every item, every measurement, diligent and obsessive-compulsive to a painful degree. There was no margin for error in fixing Stiles.
The last thing they did was brew a cup of kesshu tea and added the antidote to it.
Warned it would drop Stiles like a bear shot in the ass with a tranquilizer dart, he took it into the bedroom and set it on his nightstand. Then he changed and got ready for bed. He was nervous. Tomorrow, everything would be different. Or back to normal, he supposed, but since he didn’t remember normal all he was anticipating was different.
He was happy now. He was missing seven years, but he was happy. It was daunting and scary to do anything to alter that state, even if the afterward would be better. The unknown would always be terrifying. Even if in a good way.
When Stiles came out of the bathroom after brushing his teeth, Derek was sitting on the bed on Stiles’ side, ShineGold in his lap.
Stiles laughed. “Are you going to read me a bedtime story?”
Derek looked down at the book Stiles was still in the middle of reading. He looked just as nervous as Stiles felt. “I… I didn’t want to just be sitting here watching you fall asleep waiting for it to work. I think I might lose it.”
“A watched pot never boils and all that,” Stiles nodded sagely.
Derek smiled feebly and looked down at Stiles’ pillow, fingering the freshly-washed sheets with palpable anxiety.
Stiles chuckled awkwardly. “I feel like this is what our wedding night must have been like.”
Derek snorted. “Our wedding night was nothing like this.”
“Yeah?” Stiles looked up. “Good memory?”
“One of our best.”
Stiles smiled. “Well, then I can’t wait to get it back.” And with that, he took a deep breath and climbed into bed. He crossed over Derek’s side to his own and stretched his legs out in front of him, ready to scoot down into a flat position. He eyed the tea with a grimace. “God, I wish the cure wasn’t almost worse than the disease.”
“Just drink it,” Derek chided.
“Easy for you to say, you never… oh wait, I guess you did taste it. Ass crack and ballsack, right?”
Derek sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Right, right… bigger picture, needs of the many, down the hatch, Mr. Spock.” Stiles reached for the cup.
Derek caught his hand and pulled him forward into a kiss. Stiles returned it greedily, threading the fingers of his free hand into Derek’s hair.
“For luck,” Derek said when they broke apart.
“Hey, don’t worry,” Stiles said softly, voice roughened from kissing his husband. “By morning, everything will be all right.”
Derek nodded slowly and released Stiles’ hand.
With that, Stiles picked up the cup, brought it to his lips, and after a steeling breath he started to gulp it down. He didn’t think it was possible, but it was even fouler with the added crap in it, and his gag reflex tried to kick in more than once. But he kept drinking, face twisted in disgust and other hand smacking against the bed to communicate his unhappiness. He drank until he was tipping the dregs from the cup into his mouth.
“Eeeeeyuucck!” Stiles slammed the cup down and covered his mouth. “Derek, if I throw up in the night, roll me over so I don’t choke.” Then he had the panicked thought that this might not work, what if he died?, and he went, “no, wait, I love you!” Probably nothing bad would happen, but just in case, he didn’t want his last words spoken to Derek to be about vomit.
Derek brushed his thumb over Stiles’ cheek. “How do you feel?”
Stiles took stock. “Kinda… heavy, maybe? Fuzzy. Getting’ kinda sleepy.”
“Lay down.”
“M’kay.” Stiles scooted and shuffled so he could lay down on his back, and the encroaching nothing of sleep was suddenly looming. Wow, that was fast.
Derek opened ShineGold to Stiles’ bookmark and started to read. “In his dreams, he was not Deuar. He knew that wasn’t unusual in itself; Rhin told him about many of her dreams where she was someone other than herself. And yet, he knew his were different. He dreamed he leaned over tight against a racing Erquin’s shoulders, the animal’s back coated with tacky red blood. His and the Erquin’s. He was dying, he knew it…”
Stiles wanted to say ‘ha ha, real funny, Derek’ for the chapter he picked. Talking about someone dying. But then, Derek didn’t really pick it. That’s where Stiles left off. And it was hard to hold a thought, anyway. His mind was shutting down, dragged forcibly into sleep.
He never found out if dream-Deuar died before his world went black.
Next
He couldn’t sleep for his eagerness to get started on the concoction that would undo the damage to his scattered mental energy. He ended up leaving the house before sun-up, well before Derek left for work, to track down the ingredients, armed with a google print-out of all the herbal spice shops within an hour’s drive of Beacon Hills.
****************
Stiles was out all day driving around picking up ingredients. Most shops only had one or two of them, if they had any at all, but the proprietor usually had a guess on who else might have some of them, and Stiles would be off again. Stiles had accumulated quite a collection of herb and spice shop addresses by the time it started getting late.
Some of the ingredients were obscure, and he wouldn’t settle for ‘close enough’. He wasn’t risking his marriage on a botched cure with a remedy comprised of kinda-sorta-the-same-thing components. Some were expensive, only grown in Japan or under some rock on the shore of the Red Sea (or near enough as makes no matter). Some went by a different name in America, and it was like pulling teeth trying to get the shop owners to do the research and be one hundred percent certain it was the same thing as what Stiles needed. More than one shop master was cursing Stiles’ pickiness before their business was concluded. Stiles hoped he never needed to do anything like this again, because he had a feeling he’d been blacklisted the minute he walked out the door of several places.
When he finally got home, road-weary and poorer but victorious, it was nearly nine at night.
He took his purchases into the kitchen and laid them on the counter, next to the print-out of Scott’s email detailing the correct combinations thereof, and went searching for Derek.
Stiles found him in the office, holding two pieces of a dissembled crib out and trying to scowl it into assembling itself, Stiles could only assume. There was a changing table and matching dresser shoved toward the corner to make room for Derek to put together the crib. Or attempt to put together the crib. Right now, in the matter of crib versus Derek Hale, the crib was winning.
Stiles had completely forgotten about Mrs. McCall bringing all the stuff over. Sue him, things got crazy.
“Hey,” he greeted.
Derek looked up. “Hey. Did you get everything you need?”
“Yep… it’s in the kitchen.” He stepped into the office. “Want some help with that?”
“God, yes. Mrs. McCall didn’t have any instructions for this, and it was so long ago that she took it apart that she wasn’t much help remembering how it went together.” Derek passed one piece of the crib to Stiles when he was close then he went conspicuously quiet. It said something about how much he’d bonded with Derek since he’d lost his memories that Stiles could tell Derek had something to say, he just didn’t know how to say it. So Stiles waited and sorted crib parts.
Finally, Derek cleared his throat. “I talked to Lydia.”
Stiles looked up at that.
“I told her we still want the baby.” Derek looked carefully at him. “We do, right? I never really asked, I just assumed…”
“Yes, we still want the baby.”
“Even if…” Derek scowled, looking agitated. “Even if Mrs. Yukimura’s cure doesn’t work?”
Stiles froze. He hadn’t let himself entertain the thought that it wouldn’t. But Derek was right… they had to hope for the best, plan for the worst. That’s what responsible parents did.
“Even if it doesn’t work and I never get those memories back, yes, I still want to have a family with you.” Stiles gave a faint shrug. “You’ll just have to fill in the holes on things I don’t remember.” It sucked, it wasn’t ideal, but as far as compromises went it was one Stiles could totally live with.
“I promise,” Derek vowed.
Stiles leaned over and kissed him.
Then they set to work putting together the crib. It felt like they best not fail, because what hope did they have of creating a complex tea remedy if they couldn’t put together baby furniture?
But they did get the crib together. By eleven it was against the wall, flanked by the changing table with the dresser against the adjoining wall. It felt like being a kid and finishing decorating the Christmas tree and standing back with the lights off to admire the sparkle and glow.
Derek had his arm around Stiles’ waist, Stiles had his arm slung over Derek’s shoulders, both admiring a job well-done, when Stiles blurted, “Do we know what it is?”
“A crib…?”
“No, genius, the baby. Do we know if it’s a boy or a girl?”
Derek shook his head. “Does it matter?”
“No… just curious. What about names? Do we have any picked out?”
“Well, I’m pushing for your old first name. I think it could work for a boy or a girl.”
“Oh god, why do you hate our baby?” Stiles groaned. Then he looked thoughtfully at Derek. “What are the top contenders? Top three for boy and girl. Or,” Stiles drew up short, frowning, “no, don’t tell me. By tomorrow morning, I’ll remember.”
“You want to make the antidote now? It’s late. We could wait until tomorrow night.”
Stiles shook his head and dropped his arm from Derek’s shoulders. “I don’t want to wait that long. I want my life back now.” He’d lost enough time.
They were up another hour and a half making the weirdest thing ever put together in their kitchen. They double and triple-checked every item, every measurement, diligent and obsessive-compulsive to a painful degree. There was no margin for error in fixing Stiles.
The last thing they did was brew a cup of kesshu tea and added the antidote to it.
Warned it would drop Stiles like a bear shot in the ass with a tranquilizer dart, he took it into the bedroom and set it on his nightstand. Then he changed and got ready for bed. He was nervous. Tomorrow, everything would be different. Or back to normal, he supposed, but since he didn’t remember normal all he was anticipating was different.
He was happy now. He was missing seven years, but he was happy. It was daunting and scary to do anything to alter that state, even if the afterward would be better. The unknown would always be terrifying. Even if in a good way.
When Stiles came out of the bathroom after brushing his teeth, Derek was sitting on the bed on Stiles’ side, ShineGold in his lap.
Stiles laughed. “Are you going to read me a bedtime story?”
Derek looked down at the book Stiles was still in the middle of reading. He looked just as nervous as Stiles felt. “I… I didn’t want to just be sitting here watching you fall asleep waiting for it to work. I think I might lose it.”
“A watched pot never boils and all that,” Stiles nodded sagely.
Derek smiled feebly and looked down at Stiles’ pillow, fingering the freshly-washed sheets with palpable anxiety.
Stiles chuckled awkwardly. “I feel like this is what our wedding night must have been like.”
Derek snorted. “Our wedding night was nothing like this.”
“Yeah?” Stiles looked up. “Good memory?”
“One of our best.”
Stiles smiled. “Well, then I can’t wait to get it back.” And with that, he took a deep breath and climbed into bed. He crossed over Derek’s side to his own and stretched his legs out in front of him, ready to scoot down into a flat position. He eyed the tea with a grimace. “God, I wish the cure wasn’t almost worse than the disease.”
“Just drink it,” Derek chided.
“Easy for you to say, you never… oh wait, I guess you did taste it. Ass crack and ballsack, right?”
Derek sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Right, right… bigger picture, needs of the many, down the hatch, Mr. Spock.” Stiles reached for the cup.
Derek caught his hand and pulled him forward into a kiss. Stiles returned it greedily, threading the fingers of his free hand into Derek’s hair.
“For luck,” Derek said when they broke apart.
“Hey, don’t worry,” Stiles said softly, voice roughened from kissing his husband. “By morning, everything will be all right.”
Derek nodded slowly and released Stiles’ hand.
With that, Stiles picked up the cup, brought it to his lips, and after a steeling breath he started to gulp it down. He didn’t think it was possible, but it was even fouler with the added crap in it, and his gag reflex tried to kick in more than once. But he kept drinking, face twisted in disgust and other hand smacking against the bed to communicate his unhappiness. He drank until he was tipping the dregs from the cup into his mouth.
“Eeeeeyuucck!” Stiles slammed the cup down and covered his mouth. “Derek, if I throw up in the night, roll me over so I don’t choke.” Then he had the panicked thought that this might not work, what if he died?, and he went, “no, wait, I love you!” Probably nothing bad would happen, but just in case, he didn’t want his last words spoken to Derek to be about vomit.
Derek brushed his thumb over Stiles’ cheek. “How do you feel?”
Stiles took stock. “Kinda… heavy, maybe? Fuzzy. Getting’ kinda sleepy.”
“Lay down.”
“M’kay.” Stiles scooted and shuffled so he could lay down on his back, and the encroaching nothing of sleep was suddenly looming. Wow, that was fast.
Derek opened ShineGold to Stiles’ bookmark and started to read. “In his dreams, he was not Deuar. He knew that wasn’t unusual in itself; Rhin told him about many of her dreams where she was someone other than herself. And yet, he knew his were different. He dreamed he leaned over tight against a racing Erquin’s shoulders, the animal’s back coated with tacky red blood. His and the Erquin’s. He was dying, he knew it…”
Stiles wanted to say ‘ha ha, real funny, Derek’ for the chapter he picked. Talking about someone dying. But then, Derek didn’t really pick it. That’s where Stiles left off. And it was hard to hold a thought, anyway. His mind was shutting down, dragged forcibly into sleep.
He never found out if dream-Deuar died before his world went black.
Next