Teen Wolf: Sterek: Take Me With You
Title: Take Me With You
Rating: Mature
Pairing: Stiles/Derek
Warning: barely there mention, but heavily implied, suicidal ideation
Summary:Derek sighs through his nose and closes his eyes, counts in his mind with a heart beating too fast to be anything but concerning. “Stiles,” he says slowly, trying not to grind his teeth. “You’re not coming with me.”
As expected, Stiles explodes. “Why not?! I can’t stay here anymore, Derek. I’m just-I’m losing my mind!”
*
Or Derek comes back and Stiles takes a chance.
Notes: Since the timeline on the show is just a tad touchy, I pretty much just put the pieces in a shaker and poured, and let everything fall wherever they wanted.
Stiles is 6 when the fire happened, 7 when his mom is admitted full time to the hospitaland falls in love with a picture of Derek taken after the fire, and probably 8 or 9, a bit after his mom dies, that he falls for Lydia. I think I read somewhere about Stiles falling in love with Lydia in the third grade, so that's where that came from.
-----
“Take me with you.”
Derek jumps and turns to look at the duffel bag dropped by worn shoes, then up to hollowed amber eyes. “What?”
“Take me with you,” Stiles repeats, his voice just barely shaking. His fingers are tapping restlessly at his thighs, hard enough that Derek can every hit the skin makes against denim. “I don’t know when you’re going, but I know you are.”
Derek sighs through his nose and closes his eyes, counts in his mind with a heart beating too fast to be anything but concerning. “Stiles,” he says slowly, trying not to grind his teeth. “You’re not coming with me.”
As expected, Stiles explodes. “Why not?! I can’t stay here anymore, Derek. I’m just-I’m losing my mind!”
“And you think running away is going to make it better?” he asks sharply. “It doesn’t just end when you leave. It will still be there. It will always be there, and you’ll get so used to running that you’ll never stop.”
“I don’t care! I have to go!”
Derek flashes his eyes and let his teeth grow sharp, hands curled into fists at his side. “What about your dad? And Scott? What about Lydia, huh? What are you going to do about them? Are you just going to leave them behind? Do you think they’ll just let you leave?”
Stiles screams in frustration and shoves against Derek’s shoulders hard enough that it should leave behind bruises and forces him back a step. Derek hadn’t even realized they’d been that close, not that it really matters. The lines tend to blur when it comes to Stiles, makes him easy to trust even when every bone in his body is telling him to trust no one.
“They can live without me!” Stiles cries. “Just-Just take me with you! Please.”
There are tears running down his cheeks, dripping from his chin. Derek can taste the salt in the air, the tension and terror that’s run through Stiles for too long electric in the space between them. He wants to curl a hand around the back of Stiles’ neck and pull him forward, let his head rest against Derek’s shoulder and cry it out, but he can’t. They don’t have that kind of relationship - they don’t have a relationship at all. They’re allies, more so now than before, but he doesn’t think they’re close enough to be called friends.
“Even if I could,” Derek says, “You’re still a minor. Your dad - even if you were to runaway of your own free will, it would still be considered kidnapping.”
Stiles shakes his head hard enough he should be dizzy. “No, he wouldn’t file a report. He gets it, okay? He understands.”
“Understands what, Stiles? Understands that if you’re willing to leave that he should go with you? That he should take everyone he cares about and get out while he still can?”
“He understands love, Derek! Okay? He gets how much it hurts, how much you wish it would just go away even when you know it won’t, no matter the recipient, no matter how stupid it is! He gets that you absolutely hate how much you love someone even though they’ve gone and left you all alone! You left,Derek! You left me here, and now you’re going to leave me here again!”
Derek’s eyes are wide, shoulders stiff, as he takes another step back. Now his heart is racing, his ears obviously playing tricks on him even as he watches Stiles scrub furiously at his face. “You can’t love me,” he hears himself say. “You’re in love with Lydia.”
Stiles rolls his eyes. “Yeah, and I always will. But she wasn’t my first love.” He stares at the floor for a moment, crossing his arms before reaching up to run the back of his hand across his nose. “My dad, after my mom first got admitted, used to sit up at the kitchen table with his case files, looking for clues and missing links - anything to help. He never thought the fire was an accident, so he’d sit there for hours, flipping through papers and reports, and I’d be right there with him. I was only seven though,” he shrugs, “so I couldn’t really do much. He’d let me look at the pictures, if they weren’t too bad, but usually, fifteen minutes in and I only wanted to look at one.”
Derek stares, not sure he wants to know where this is going but unable to stop the relentless flow of words coming from Stiles’ mouth. He watches the kid dig fingers into his hair and pull, lips turned down in a shaky grimace.
“When my mom was lucid, I’d talk to her about it, joke about being in love with the only person in the world with luck worse than mine. Didn’t you ever wonder how I knew it was you, that first time in the woods?”
Derek shakes his head, shrugs. “I just figured you were a nosy kid with a good memory.”
Stiles arches his eyebrows and grins a little. “Yeah, that too. But it was you. It was always you. Even when you’re gone, you’re still everywhere, like you’re haunting me, and I just can’t do that anymore.” His breath hitches and his chin wobbles, but he doesn’t look at Derek. “If you don’t take me with you,” he says slowly, “I can’t promise you’ll see me again.”
Derek’s entire body freezes, because he knows - he knows - Stiles isn’t talking about running away, but even so, he’s not sure he can take Stiles with him. “There’s no guarantee, Stiles. Even if you do come with me, what’s going to stop you from worrying about your friends, your dad? Every second of every day, all you’re going to think about is what if. You’re seriously telling me you’d be fine leaving them to fight everything on their own?”
“Of course I’m going to worry. I’ll never not worry. But now? With Scott, with dad, at school, fighting the next big thing… I’m a danger to them, Derek, because my head’s not there - it’s here. With you. And you’re not going to stay, I know that. But if you’re not staying, then I’m not staying either.”
Stiles looks at Derek, and Derek can see the shadows still dark beneath his eyes, the haunted look he had while possessed and just after, his hair a shaggy mess curling against his forehead, and he’s thinner,more worn, beneath clothes that are looser than Derek remembers. And Derek knows, without a doubt, before Stiles opens his mouth, what his decision is going to be.
“So,” Stiles pleads, eyes half hopeful, half hopeless, “I’m asking you, Derek Hale, to please take me with you, wherever you may go, whether it’s to an apartment across town, or a country halfway around the world. Just please let me go with you.”
Derek takes a deep breath, and answers.
*
*
*
Two months later, Parrish sets a manila envelope on the Sheriff’s desk and waits as he opens it. There’s no return address, but the handwriting is the same as all the postcards tacked on to the Sheriff’s fridge, so there’s little guess as to whom it’s from.
A moment later, the Sheriff is pulling out a glossy photo of a chapel with neon lights; Stiles, smiling, is dressed as Han Solo, and Derek, scowling, has Princess Leia earmuffs over his ears, with Darth Vader holding the bible between them, stand out front while the Vegas Strip stretches on behind them in the background.
There are a few more photos after that, and a letter, but Parrish doesn’t wait to see those. Instead, nodding his head at the Sheriff, he closes the office door behind him and heads to his desk, cell phone already in his hands and relaying the information to the rest of the gang.
Notes:
That little epilogue at the end was just a fun little thing. I was going to end it with Derek saying "Okay" - or nothing at all and just leave it up to you what he answered. And I sorta did that, just tacked on a little bit of happy ending.
I was going to have Derek be Chewie in the wedding, but I didn't know what to call the belt-slash thing he wears, and besides, he's totally a Leia.
Crossposted to AO3.