Fic Challenge and mini WIP amnesty!
Firstly, the Idyll Challenge! Because we need more fic about our favorite characters in their happy places. 
dorinda describes idyll fic as stories "in which the characters are stuck in a peaceful, comfortable, well-stocked place, usually with some kind of swimming available".
There's already an AO3 collection set up, waiting for your idyll fic! Check it out! :D
And, uh, speaking of happy places--it had occurred to me a while ago that I'd like to write amnesia fic for Derek Hale because not being aware of every horrible decision he'd ever made in his life would actually, in a sad way, be his happy place. I took a crack at writing some, inspired in large part (particularly the title) by
resonant's post about an acquaintance's experience of Total Global Amnesia.
But I got distracted from the story, as I am prone to do, and wasn't writing very quickly, and then Season 3A of Teen Wolf overtook me and jossed the story in some really unexpectedly fundamental ways. I'd mostly given it up in favor of other stories by then anyway--had actually already started an entirely different amnesia story for
hc_bingo before the worst of the jossing happened--so this one definitely isn't ever getting finished. I'm still fond of the story, though, so I thought I'd do a mini WIP amnesty and share the part I wrote. It was going to a Derek/Stiles place eventually, but it never quite got there.
By the time it was all over--the alpha pack, Gerard, the final twist in Peter's betrayals turning out not to be a betrayal at all, and Peter's departure for points unknown now that, so he said, all his debts were paid--no one felt much like celebrating. They nodded vague acknowledgement to each other and stumbled away to sleep for a few days.
Still, there was no denying that they were a pack of sorts, after all of that. A weird, two-headed, half-human pack, with as many hunters and witches as werewolves and half the werewolves alphas, granted. Stiles had considered the possibility that that made them a team or a gang or something else instead. But whatever they were, they gravitated to each other in ones and twos in the days and weeks after. No one made excuses when Stiles invited them all over for pizza and movies, even though they all knew Lydia was going to make them watch The Notebook at some point.
It wound up sandwiched in between Iron Man and Die Hard. Scott got up to put on The Secret of NIMH after that. Stiles didn't really see any of it, already half-asleep on the couch between Boyd and Lydia.
Stiles half-woke again around dawn, to find that the whole pack was still there, Derek asleep in an armchair while Scott was stretched out as far as possible from him on the living room floor, the rest of them cuddled and curled across the space in between. Stiles looked around, sure something had woken him.
His dad was standing by the front door, travel mug in hand, looking back at all of them.
Stiles smiled sheepishly, raising one hand in a wave, and his dad just shook his head and let himself out.
Derek stirred a little at the sound of the lock clicking shut, but he never opened his eyes, just turned his head and slept on.
Stiles snuggled down in the middle of his pack and went back to sleep.
***
The next time Stiles woke up, everyone but Derek was gone. Derek was still sleeping, and he looked like his strings had been cut. Last night he'd looked like he might spring into motion at any second, but now he sprawled across the armchair, legs spread wide and arms hanging limp along his sides. His mouth hung slightly open.
Stiles grinned and got up to look for his phone--a picture of this was bound to be excellent pack bonding material--but when he came back Derek was awake.
He had his eyes open, anyway, but he didn't look like he was all the way conscious yet. He'd drawn his arms and legs in a little, but he hadn't picked up his head. He was just looking around like the Stilinskis' living room in daylight was fascinating to him, and there was still something slack and soft about his expression.
"Aw, you ruined it," Stiles said, grinning, and Derek--
The guy in the chair, whoever he was, grinned right back.
Stiles took a hasty step back, hand tightening on his phone, heart racing--what now, what is this--
The guy stopped smiling and drew tighter into himself, looking worried. That made him look more like Derek, but there was still something not-quite-right about him.
"What are you," Stiles demanded. "Why are you here?"
The guy blinked, looking convincingly confused. "I'm a werewolf. I don't remember how I got here, but it smells familiar. I don't know why; I can't remember this place at all."
"What," Stiles said, what does that mean, how can it smell familiar if you don't remember it, but then the rest of what the guy just said sank in. "Do you know who I am? Do you know who you are?"
The guy frowned, the most Derek-like expression yet but still not right. "I can tell you're human, and you're scared, but I don't know... Huh."
He blinked a few times, frown deepening--for a second he could have been Derek, just one instant of rightness--and then the frown dropped away into a totally foreign guileless expression. He shook his head.
"I don't know anything."
"You don't..." Stiles shook his head, refusing to get into what that meant if it was actually true, if this wasn't some elaborate trick. "Okay, dude, rule one, you cannot just casually tell people you're a werewolf, okay? That's a secret."
"Not from you," the guy--Derek? Derek with amnesia?--pointed out with unerring and unperturbed logic. "Not here. It smells like pack here. You're pack."
"How can you," Stiles said, and immediately gave up, because he obviously wasn't going to get any useful answers from this guy. "Fuck it, maybe it's a spell or something."
He called Deaton and--of course--went straight to voicemail, which helpfully suggested another vet he could call if this was an emergency. But Stiles knew for a fact that Dr. Rathbone would be no help at all with this kind of emergency, so he just said, "Hey, Derek's at my house, something is wrong with him. Call me back."
He nearly hung up before he remembered the triage system that they'd all learned to attach to messages in the last few crises. It seemed irrelevant now, in the morning light, alone except for Derek sitting there looking confused, but God only knew what kind of disaster this was going to turn into.
"Oh, uh, I guess this is yellow? Maybe orange, even. Call me back, seriously, this is really messed up."
"Derek?" Derek parroted curiously when Stiles hung up. "Is that my name?"
Stiles pocketed his phone and moved cautiously closer to Derek. "That depends on whether you're some kind of changeling or clone or pod replacement thing. Do you feel evil at all?"
Derek actually frowned, looking down at himself--possibly trying to rate the black jeans, gray shirt, leather jacket, and heavy boots for likelihood of evil associations.
"I don't think so," he said after a few seconds. "I don't know what that would feel like. I don't want to hurt anyone," he added earnestly.
He wasn't actually sure that made this guy any more likely to be Derek, but he was doing a pretty convincing job of not being anyone else, either. The pack couldn't have left that long ago; Stiles's magical radar was pretty well honed and the house was warded. He'd have noticed if anything crazy happened--and for that matter, Derek wouldn't have let himself be snatched and substituted without a big, loud fight.
Stiles shrugged. "You're probably Derek, I guess. You look like him, anyway."
Derek looked like it had only just then occurred to him that he looked like anything. He raised a hand to his own face and prodded it curiously.
"The bathroom's over there," Stiles said, waving a hand. "If you want to look. Or wash up."
Derek nodded and got up, but then hesitated. "What's your name?"
Stiles stared for another few seconds and then said, "Stiles. I'm Stiles."
"Thank you, Stiles," Derek said politely, and headed for the bathroom.
Stiles stared after him for a few seconds, baffled, but when he heard the faucet turn on he looked down at his phone again. He didn't want to expose any of the others to Derek--or Derek to any of the others--when he was this blank and helpless. On the other hand, the last six months had taught them all something about not keeping secrets within the pack. What if he was hiding Derek from them and half of them had also been hit with amnesia or some other kind of curse?
Stiles sent out a mass text: Everybody okay? Consider this a roll call. Answer or I will come find you.
Stiles headed into the kitchen with the phone still in his hand, and set it down on the counter while he started making coffee. The phone buzzed a few times before he'd even finished that, and Stiles made himself finish going through the motions before he looked.
When he did, there were messages from Boyd (Present) and Lydia (Don't stage any rescue missions without me.) and Scott (I'm ok, are you?).
That was two out of three other werewolves accounted for, which suggested that whatever had happened to Derek, he was the only one.
Stiles sent back a Yeah, np to Scott and then looked up as Derek walked into the kitchen, frowning down at his phone.
"Oh," Stiles said, realizing he'd just selected the whole pack automatically for the mass text. "Uh, you don't have to answer that. I know where you are."
Derek nodded, but said, "I don't recognize any of their names. Are they all pack?"
Stiles nodded and then said, "Um, it's sort of complicated. We're a weird pack. Do you want some breakfast?"
"I can help," Derek said, coming over to stand by Stiles as he opened the fridge.
Stiles forced himself not to stare. He unearthed the for-emergencies-only real bacon instead, and gestured vaguely in the direction of the pans while he gathered the stuff for pancakes.
Derek got down a pan for bacon and also the two-burner griddle for pancakes. He apparently knew how to operate a stove just fine.
Stiles dumped some flour into a bowl; he'd long since learned to eyeball the proportions, and he even knew how much to cook for himself plus one werewolf, thanks to Scott.
"What's my alpha's name?" Derek asked.
Stiles was pouring milk, and his brain went straight to secret names and reign names--was Derek-as-alpha really Magnus XIV of the Hale Pack, did he have some special magical name only his family had known?--and then Derek's calm, curious expression got through to him.
"Your alpha," Stiles repeated cautiously, reaching for the eggs.
"Yeah. That was him you called to tell about me, right? So he's not one of the ones you had to text to check on."
Stiles frowned, concentrating on the eggs. There were alarm bells going off in his brain, but he didn't know what to say except the truth. He decided to go with that, although he would do it without getting out of reach of his phone or a clear line to the back door. He glanced as-if-casually around the kitchen before he spoke.
"No, that was Deaton, he's human--a witch, though--and he advises the pack, especially when weird stuff happens."
Derek nodded, but still looked puzzled.
"You're the alpha, dude," Stiles said, not bringing up Scott because it really, really wouldn't help.
Derek frowned, and then looked down and ripped open the package of bacon with a claw that Stiles barely saw, it was there and gone so fast. "Rule one, Stiles, you don't joke about the alpha like that."
"I don't--do I sound like I'm lying to you?"
Derek didn't look up, and his frown deepened as he shook his head.
Stiles stirred pancake batter slowly, on auto-pilot, watching Derek hold his hand out over the pan to test the heat.
"I must have been tricking you," Derek said finally, and he sounded so wary that he almost really did sound like Derek for a second.
But the next second he looked up, worried and nakedly apologetic, and he was a stranger again, more so with every word from his mouth. "I don't know why I would do that. I'm sorry. But I'm not an alpha. Maybe I was pretending? Somehow, I don't know how. You said it's complicated. Did the pack need an alpha? Werewolves can lie to humans a lot more easily than humans can lie to werewolves--I don't know if you knew that. I must have been lying. I'm not an alpha, Stiles. I'm really sorry. I can tell you believed it, but I'm not."
Stiles opened his mouth to say You are, I saw you become one, but he could see how that would go.
Derek would either insist Stiles hadn't seen what he thought he'd seen--and what the hell had he actually seen that night?--or he'd think Stiles was lying and get angry. And even if he didn't believe he was an alpha, he was still going to be alpha-strong and alpha-fast when he decided to throw Stiles through a wall for arguing with him.
"Oh, hey," Stiles said, and grabbed his phone. "I know. I'll take a picture of you--that will show what color your eyes flash, right? Only alphas have red eyes, so that will tell us one way or the other."
Derek nodded slowly. He reached up and rubbed his eyes, and then he looked directly toward Stiles with a stiff, nervous smile. Stiles looked down at his phone, pulling up the camera with shaky fingers. What if Derek freaked out when he saw the picture? Why was Stiles trying to prove his point when the best case scenario for what was up with the guy in front of him was that he was an unstable amnesiac werewolf who had no idea why he cared about keeping Stiles alive?
But when the camera came up he focused it on Derek, made sure the flash was turned on, and hit the button.
And then Stiles just stared. He didn't even have to look down at the picture he'd taken; he'd seen Derek's eyes light up in the flash.
They'd turned a bright, impossible, electric blue.
The awkward picture-taking smile fell off of Derek's face, replaced by that same anxious apologetic look. He darted toward Stiles, steadying him before he'd recognized that he actually did feel kind of dizzy.
"I'm sorry, I'll--I'll still pretend for the others, if--we don't have to tell, right? I can pretend, it'll be okay, I'll figure out how," Derek was saying, almost frantic.
Stiles blinked at him and then patted his shoulder gently. "Yeah, uh. It'll be okay. Deaton will know something."
Derek looked instantly relieved, without a hint of his normal pessimism. "Yeah! Yeah, he'll know."
Stiles nodded again, gingerly, like the broken pieces of his brain might stab him if he moved too fast. "So, uh. Breakfast. We should have breakfast."
***
After breakfast, during which Isaac and Allison sent texts that said I told Scott he should leave a note and You fell asleep first, you're lucky you still have eyebrows respectively, Stiles took Derek up to his room. It was cluttered only with normal stuff, at the moment, unless Derek went digging on his laptop. Derek looked around with the same calm curiosity Stiles had seen on his face right after he woke up, like it didn't bother him at all not to recognize the place.
"Just... stay here," Stiles said, and grabbed a change of clothes before he bolted to the bathroom.
He did not have a panic attack in the shower, although it took some serious mind-clearing and breathing exercises before he was sure he wouldn't.
So Derek had lost his memory and his alpha powers, so what. If the pack needed an alpha that badly there was still Scott--although Stiles really didn't want to think about Scott in charge without Derek to balance him, any more than Derek without Scott to balance him had worked out well for anyone. This Derek wouldn't even fight Scott the way Scott had always fought Derek; this one was a pushover who let Stiles have the last of the bacon and believed whatever the fuck Stiles told him and kept smiling when he should be scared out of his mind. He seemed to trust Stiles for no reason Stiles could figure out.
Stiles realized he was waiting for Derek to barge on into the bathroom and tell him to pull it together, and also realized that this Derek was never going to do that. He slapped the water off and dried himself, getting dressed and hurrying back, half hoping to find Derek just gone through the open window.
But Derek was sitting on the floor by Stiles's bed, flipping through Stiles's Bio textbook.
"What," Stiles said blankly.
Derek looked up. "I remember some of this stuff," he announced. "Even some of the actual sentences seem kind of familiar. But I can't remember reading it before or learning it."
"You probably had the same book in high school," Stiles said. "Maybe a different edition, but it's not like they had to rewrite the chapter on classifying species--why are you reading that?"
Derek shrugged. "You weren't really thinking straight when you brought me up here. I didn't think I should look at anything too personal, in case you didn't mean it."
Stiles clutched at his hair. "Oh my God, now you're polite? Who are you?"
Derek smiled uncertainly, like he thought Stiles was teasing him but he didn't know whether he was supposed to laugh along. Stiles dropped his hands, resisting the urge to punch himself in the mouth.
"Come on," Stiles said instead. "If you want to check out whether you've retained stuff you've learned, let's go fire up some Mario Kart."
***
Mario Kart was actually a good test. All the werewolves had had to learn how to mesh their own reflexes with the reaction time possible through the controllers. The first ten minutes watching a werewolf with a Wiimote in his hand were reliably fucking hilarious. Despite the amnesia Derek sat down, took the wheel, and demolished Stiles from the get-go.
So that meant it really was Derek, down there somewhere, but his brain had been scoured of all the actual stuff that made him Derek--and, not to forget, his alpha power. That had apparently left behind this easygoing dude who steered with his whole body, in big, wild movements. Stiles could almost hear Derek snapping at Isaac and Scott to stop telegraphing your next move. But this Derek just laughed and flailed all over the place and rammed Stiles's car off the rainbow road with machine-like fucking precision.
When Stiles got tired of that he demanded a round of Kirby's Yarn Adventure just to fuck with him, but that didn't work either. Derek played co-op mode like he'd fucking invented team spirit and dragged Stiles through a mini-game he'd never been able to beat on the first try.
Stiles was torn between being unbearably creeped out and wanting to try Derek out on first-person shooters, which Derek usually wouldn't play. But if he didn't have any bad memories of getting shot and almost dying he wouldn't mind, would he? At least until he got his memories back. At which point he would not only mind, he would be mad at Stiles for taking advantage of his amnesia to fuck with him, so--maybe not.
"I'm thirsty, do you want anything?" Stiles popped up, waving Derek down when he made to follow.
Derek said diffidently, "Water?" and navigated back to the Wii menu to look for another game. Stiles left him to it. If Derek wanted to try Call of Duty, it wouldn't be wrong for Stiles to just go along with it, right?
He'd gotten out glasses and was filling one from the fridge tap when Derek yelled, "Stiles," in a sharp, urgent voice that made Stiles whirl instantly in his direction, water splashing everywhere as he bolted back to the living room.
Derek was standing by the couch, looking wary and not-quite-angry-but-considering-it. He was definitely, indubitably Derek.
"What," Derek said, and then shook his head.
"You got your memory back," Stiles observed. "Are you okay? Do you know what did it?"
Derek shook his head again. "I don't--the last thing I remember is going to sleep. Everyone was here, and then--it's like I just woke up, sitting here, and everyone's gone."
"You don't remember," Stiles said blankly. "You got back your memories but now you don't remember--okay, um--" Stiles started to gesture and realized he was holding two wet, empty water glasses. He set them on the end table and wiped his hands on his pants.
"You woke up and you had lost your memory. I called Deaton, but he didn't answer, so I left a message, but he still hasn't gotten back to me. I checked on the rest of the pack--everybody's okay--but I didn't tell them what was going on with you. You didn't seem like--actually you didn't seem like you'd care, but I didn't think they should see you like that, at least until we knew what was going on."
Derek was looking down, frowning with a weird inward expression, like he was trying to glare at his own brain.
"You helped me make breakfast, and then we just hung out," Stiles went on, knowing Derek would be able to hear the truth of that. He hesitated for a few seconds, until Derek looked up, raising his eyebrows, and then said, "Do you--feel okay, now? I mean--whatever did that to you, it might have messed you up pretty bad, Deaton should probably--"
Derek snorted and shook his head. "Deaton doesn't know anything about it."
Stiles opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, trying to think it through. "You don't actually seem surprised by any of this."
Derek gave a short, sharp nod, still not meeting Stiles's eyes. "It's happened before. Lasted a few hours. Once it wore off I didn't remember what had happened during. Laura--" The pause was tiny but palpable. "--tried everything to figure out what it was, some special kind of wolfsbane or a spell or curse or what. But there was nothing on me or in me and it went away on its own. She got in touch with Deaton to see if it was something that ran in the family, but there was nothing there either. The theory we ended up with was that I had some kind of little stroke, and the memory loss was the time it took for my brain to heal."
Stiles made a choked noise, and Derek glanced up warily. "You were--that whole time you were brain damaged?"
Derek raised his eyebrows. "I couldn't remember anything, could I? What else would you call it?"
"But you," Stiles said helplessly, waving toward the TV. "You were--"
You were okay, you were having fun, you just couldn't remember who you were.
"The parts I needed to react and survive would heal first," Derek explained. "The details took a while. That's all. I'm fine now. I--thank you. For not bringing the whole pack in to stare at me."
"Yeah, no, no problem," Stiles said vaguely.
Could brain damage have messed up Derek's alpha powers for a few hours? Was that why his eyes had turned blue? What were alpha powers anyway, how the fuck were they even transmitted? Where did they live? Maybe there was an alpha-powers node in the brain--but if the most important stuff healed first, shouldn't that have healed right away?
Derek nodded again, turned on his heel, and walked out without another word.
Stiles stared after him for a few minutes and then said, "What the actual fuck," out loud to the empty house before he went into the kitchen to clean up the spilled water.
***
Deaton showed up an hour later looking slightly disheveled but as calm as ever.
"Oh," Stiles said, even as he stepped back from the door to let Deaton in. "Sorry, I should have called. Derek's fine now. He left."
"I know," Deaton said. "He left me a message after yours, saying not to bother looking into it. But I'm curious--can you tell me what happened?"
"He said this happened before, when Laura was alive. He said she talked to you about it?"
"Ah," Deaton said. "The amnesia episodes."
"Epi--episodes? Like, more than one?"
Deaton nodded. "They recurred over a period of several weeks, starting about three months after the fire, not long after they found a place to live and Derek went back to school. I thought there was an obvious explanation there, but Derek insisted on inventing some sort of physical cause."
"Obvious and... not physical," Stiles said. "Like--"
"Think of it as the opposite of flashbacks," Deaton suggested. "Some people, after a traumatic event, they put it out of their mind, and then it will come back to them in a very powerful way from time to time. Derek's brain just did the opposite--made him stop thinking over something that happened by making him stop remembering anything at all. It's an extreme solution, but werewolves are extreme in every other aspect of their lives. Why should their psychology be any different?"
"But it was--he wasn't faking or--"
"Oh, no," Deaton said. "Psychological problems can have very real physical effects. People have gone blind, or been paralyzed, by purely psychological causes, and the condition is entirely real and involuntary. It simply doesn't have a physical cause."
"Could that," Stiles said, but if believing you were paralyzed could paralyze you, couldn't believing you weren't the alpha make you back into a beta? And if it wasn't just that Derek felt like he needed a break from his memories--if he needed a break from being alpha--
Thank you, Derek had said. For not bringing the whole pack in to stare at me.
It was the last thing Derek would want anyone to know, and he definitely wouldn't want Stiles to run around telling other people when he hadn't even told Derek.
Deaton raised his eyebrows, his patient look wearing slightly thin. It occurred to Stiles that Deaton really looked like someone who had slept in his clothes. Or put his clothes back on after picking them up off the floor where they'd been crumpled all night. And he'd had his phone turned off, knowing the pack was safe at the Stilinskis' for the night. Oh.
"Could that happen again? Would it be soon, or...."
Deaton tilted his head. "That depends on how badly Derek needs a break from himself."
***
Three days later Stiles was leaning into the fridge, considering just eating lunch meat straight out of the drawer. That would totally constitute dinner without all the time-consuming cooking steps, right?
His phone rang.
It was Boyd, which was weird. Boyd was downright laconic these days; he communicated mostly in text messages, when he communicated directly with Stiles at all.
"Hey," Stiles said. "What's--"
"Deaton said to bring Derek to you," Boyd said, and he sounded like was on the verge of seriously losing his cool.
"Okay," Stiles said, taking a step back and closing the fridge. "Yeah, that's--"
"Good," Boyd said, and Stiles heard a squeal of tires in the driveway.
He went and opened the front door and watched Derek get out of the passenger door of the Camaro and walk uncertainly toward the house. His shoulders were hunched, and he flinched as Boyd pulled out of the driveway and sped off down the street. Derek stopped where he stood, a few strides short of the porch.
"Hey, come on in," Stiles said. "I was just going to make dinner. You hungry?"
Derek shrugged miserably and said, "I don't remember."
"I know," Stiles said, making himself be calm about it, because obviously Derek had had enough of people who were freaked out by him. "You don't have to remember anything. Are you hungry right now?"
Derek's frown eased from wretched to thoughtful, and he looked up uncertainly at Stiles. "I could eat."
"Come on in, then," Stiles said. He led the way back to the kitchen and dug out all the actual sandwich fixings and a couple of plates.
Derek followed him silently through the process of assembling a sandwich; he took exactly the same number of slices of lunch meat as Stiles did. Was he trying not to take more than his share? He'd let Stiles have the last piece of bacon, too. Had he kept count?
"So," Stiles said, when they were both sitting at the table, the wreckage of sandwich-making left out in front of them so it would be easy to get seconds. "I guess Boyd didn't take that very well."
"He thinks I'm his alpha," Derek said, in a hollow whisper. "He was really scared when I couldn't remember him, he--I couldn't tell him, but--I'm not, Stiles. I'm not--I can't protect him. I can't protect anyone. I'm not a real alpha, I don't know why he thinks I am."
"It'll be okay," Stiles said, taking a bite of his sandwich. He chewed while he tried to figure out how much to tell Derek, when the whole point of this was (probably, according to Deaton) to let him not know stuff for a while.
"This happened before, and it wore off after a few hours. Afterward you were fine, and you knew how to deal with the pack again. None of them had any idea anything even happened. Boyd's been having a hard time, but once you get your memory back you'll know how to help him."
Derek frowned and chewed and swallowed and then said, "You weren't surprised. When I said that, about not being a real alpha. You're pack, but you knew that."
Stiles nodded. "No one else does, but when this happened before you told me. You even let me take a picture to prove it to me."
Stiles pulled out his phone and found the photo, pushing it over to Derek. "See? You stood right in this kitchen and let me see. So I know. And I know that the next day everyone was treating you like the alpha again."
Derek frowned and Stiles wondered if this was making it worse, if knowing what was waiting for him would make Derek's amnesia stretch on for extra hours or days--but it didn't matter. He had to reassure this guy in front of him who didn't know what was going on, who had obviously gotten a pretty unwelcoming reception from Boyd. Stiles wanted the other guy back, the one who didn't know he had anything to be afraid of, who played video games with wild abandon.
He ate the rest of his sandwich, watching Derek eat his. Derek kept his eyes turned down until Stiles stood up and started cleaning, and then he got up and helped.
"Okay," Stiles said with a sigh. "Last time, you know what helped? Mario Kart."
Derek looked dubious, but he didn't argue when Stiles passed him a wheel, and it didn't take that long before he loosened up enough to grin and talk trash. Derek was more like the first time after that, following Stiles agreeably up to his room when Stiles declared it time for homework.
Derek took the chair in the corner and sat flipping curiously through Stiles's English textbook while Stiles worked on math, and then traded when Stiles needed to do English. When Stiles got up to hit the bathroom Derek looked like he was dozing, his head tilted back against the wall, the book sagging in his hands, his legs splayed out.
Stiles grinned and turned off the shutter sound on his phone before snapping a picture, and then ducked out. He was in the middle of peeing when he heard a muffled thump from his bedroom, like the sound of a book falling from Derek's sleeping hands, and he grinned at the wall, picturing it.
He hurried through shaking off and washing up, and when he came back in, he was startled--but not surprised, not really--to see Derek standing in the corner, completely himself again, all drawn up tight and wary.
"Stiles," Derek said, sounding grim. "It happened again."
Stiles nodded. "You, uh, you were with Boyd. So Boyd knows. He seemed pretty freaked--he said Deaton had told him to bring you here, so I guess Boyd called him first. You said he got kind of scared about you being, you know. The alpha but not...."
Stiles trailed off, waving one hand, and Derek's grim look got grimmer. Stiles definitely did not want to explain all of what Derek hadn't been; he hadn't spilled the beans to Boyd about it, so Stiles was still the only one who knew. Two could keep a secret if one of them kept forgetting it, right?
"Any of the betas would be... uncomfortable around me in a weakened state," Derek said. "With Laura it didn't really make a difference."
"Hey, it's cool with me," Stiles said, nailing the casual tone dead on. "It was pretty much the same as last time--we had dinner, played some video games, and then you just kind of nerded out with my books while I did some homework."
The math book, Stiles noted, had been set on the foot of his bed.
Derek nodded and started for the door, obviously meaning to brush past Stiles and leave. Stiles took a step forward, into Derek's path, automatically dropping a shoulder a little like he was going to try to block an opposing player. Derek stopped three feet away and raised an impatient eyebrow.
"I need to go show Boyd I'm all right."
"I know," Stiles said. "But you didn't tell me last time that this thing recurs, okay? Two points make a pattern if they're actually points eleven and twelve or whatever you're on now. And since it seems like I'm your designated person to hang out with when this happens to you, could you please put a note in your phone or something, to tell yourself to call me the next time this happens? A Memento tattoo would be kind of drastic, but--something, okay? You can call me, any time."
"Any time I'm not myself," Derek replied in a flat tone that might have been a joke or might not.
"Yeah, you're pretty chill when you have amnesia," Stiles said, trying for a smile. "We can play more Kirby next time, it'll be great."
Derek just rolled his eyes and started forward again, and this time Stiles stepped aside and let him go.
***
Stiles sent Deaton a text (Derek had amnesia again today, same as last time, he's fine now.) and as far as Stiles could tell, that was the end of it. Calling another official pack gathering seemed like a risky proposition, given how the last one had ended, but they made it to the weekend without anything else weird happening. Derek and Boyd showed up for the lacrosse game, sitting in the stands with the girls while Stiles, Scott, and Isaac ran around on the field. Everything seemed okay with them, so Stiles figured they were all back to normal.
His phone started up the frantic continuous vibration of an incoming call during English on Tuesday morning, and Stiles pulled it out of his pocket and checked under the desk. He already knew, really; anyone else would have texted him, and bad news about his dad would come in the form of a deputy at the classroom door.
Derek.
Stiles stood up and bolted from the room, pressing the hand holding his phone to his stomach and his other hand to his mouth; the wave of startled laughter followed him to the hallway. He ducked into the bathroom just as the phone stopped vibrating and immediately called back.
"Hello?" Derek said, and Stiles could hear the easygoing bafflement in that one word, and knew that no one had ruined this round of amnesia for Derek yet.
Stiles wasn't going to think about how happy that made him.
"Hey, man," Stiles said. "I'm guessing you found some kind of note or message telling you to call me?"
"If I couldn't remember, yeah," Derek said, sounding relieved. "You're Stiles?"
"Yeah. You're Derek, in case that wasn't in the note. Where are you now? I'm at school, I can come find you."
"Oh, you shouldn't skip," Derek said, but it was a vague, polite objection with no force behind it, and Stiles grinned. "Uh, I'm in the woods. I don't know where in the woods."
Stiles peeked out of the bathroom doors, checking that the coast was clear, and then made a dash for the nearest exit. That put him out on the practice field side of the school. "Do you think you can hear me? Find my voice and home in on it?"
"I--oh, yeah, there you are," Derek said. "I've got your heartbeat."
"Okay, well, don't come too close, right? I'll come out to the edge--"
Stiles stopped short as Derek abruptly appeared at the edge of the trees. He burst into a grin so huge Stiles could see it from across the field, and Stiles waved like an idiot and said, "I'm gonna hang up now."
Even all the way across the practice field, he could see Derek's amused eyeroll. Stiles pocketed his phone and jogged across the field to Derek, not bothering to look around. If he got busted at this point, there was nothing he could do about it.
Derek threw an arm around Stiles, half a hug, half guiding him back into the woods, entirely unselfconscious. Stiles went with it as calmly as he could, pulling away from Derek's grip in the course of picking his way across the ground.
"How did you know to call me?" Stiles asked, glancing back and forth from Derek to the ground in front of his feet. Derek was looking around curiously, not focusing on anything in particular. He had his jacket on, and Stiles looked him up and down curiously. "You don't actually have a tattoo, do you? I mean, other than the tattoo that you actually do have, I know about that one."
Derek sort of frowned, still smiling. "I have a tattoo that you know about?"
"Yeah, on your back, it's cool--" Derek started twisting around, trying to peer over his shoulder, shrug out of his coat, and keep walking in the same direction all at once, which came out as a weird half-twirl. If Stiles had tried that he would have sprained an ankle at the very least. He swatted at Derek's shoulder. "Stop that, you can't see it. Seriously, though, how did you know to call?"
Derek untwirled and shrugged his jacket back into place, smiling a little sheepishly. "There was a note in my pocket. It just said If you don't remember, call Stiles, and then there was a direct-dial button on my phone to call you, so I called you. That's it."
"So it's been like... five minutes?"
Derek shrugged, glancing up at the sky like he was gauging the time, and nodded. "About that, yeah. I was just walking around and then realized I didn't know where I was going or why, or... anything."
"Huh," Stiles didn't ask him where they were going now. This might be another thing, like Mario Kart, that Derek's body knew even if his brain had forgotten. "Well, you grew up pretty close to here--when you were a kid, the house your family lived in was out in the woods like this. You live in town now, but you still come out in the woods pretty often, especially to, you know--" Stiles bared his teeth and made claws with his hands. "Get your wolf on."
Derek raised his eyebrows in amusement. "Get my wolf on."
Stiles flapped his hands. "I'm a human, okay, I might be in the pack but I don't know exactly what it's like for you guys. But you like to run out here and stuff. Anyway, this is a thing that's been happening to you lately, you get amnesia for a few hours. Then it goes away and you're back to normal. The other werewolves are kind of weirded out by you when you're like this, so you usually hang out with me."
Derek frowned a little. "What about my alpha? Wouldn't they--don't they--did I...."
Because an alpha should want to look after a pack member who was in trouble or weakened, right. And if it were pitched like that to Scott, Scott would totally look after Derek, wouldn't he? Except it would give Scott all kinds of ideas about being The Alpha instead of Co-Alpha, and Derek would stab someone in the face--probably Scott and then himself--once he came around and realized his vulnerable amnesiac self had been asking Scott for protection.
Derek winced badly enough for Stiles to see, which meant Stiles's heartbeat and other tells must have gone wild during that train of thought. "I guess that's an answer."
"It's complicated," Stiles said hastily. "We're a weird pack. We're all young, and you're not only the oldest, you're also the only born werewolf out of all of us. So it's strange for all of us when you're not yourself, and when you don't know the stuff you usually know. If you needed protection, the alpha would protect you, no question, but if you just need to chill out for a few hours and let your brain reboot, it's better for everyone if you hang out with me."
Derek gave him a sideways look, thoughtful, and Stiles instantly started second-guessing even the true part of that. Derek silently raised his eyebrows.
Stiles looked away. "I'm not really your favorite when you do have your memory. We're pack, but we're not friends."
"Huh," Derek said, and then put his hand on Stiles's shoulder, firmly and deliberately. "Well, I don't know why not."
Stiles was startled into a laugh and looked over to catch Derek grinning.
Derek went on, "Anyway, I wrote myself the note and set up my phone when I did know. I trusted you with this when I did know. I wouldn't have handed myself over to someone I didn't want to spend this time with, would I?"
Stiles opened his mouth to argue. For one thing, it was time Derek wouldn't have to remember afterward.
For another, Derek's options were depressingly limited--Scott was maybe the worst idea except for Allison, Boyd and Isaac were definitely both out, and Lydia was... actually possibly more terrifying than the rest of them put together. That just left Stiles.
On the other hand, Derek could have told himself to call Deaton or go hide in the woods. Stiles was preferable to those options, apparently.
***
[Discussion of dubious consent ahoy! Stop reading there if amnesia-impaired consent is a problem.]
And then Stiles wound up kissing/making out with/having sex with successive iterations of blank slate amnesiac!Derek, with suitable protestations about how Derek wouldn't want to do this if he remembered, and Derek being like "...Okay, but I want to now, so why not? I'll write a note so the other me knows it was my idea." And Stiles can't really resist that logic. And Derek gets less and less communicative between episodes, though he obviously does know what's going on when he doesn't remember--and then a time comes when Derek shows up with amnesia and they do the now-routine consent discussion before sex, which gets shorter and shorter every time because Derek can find the photos of his prior yes-I-want-to notes on his phone, and Stiles doesn't know what to make of the fact that Derek never deletes those when he does remember (and has never told Stiles not to have sex with him when he has amnesia) but also doesn't seem to want anything to do with Stiles when he does remember, when having sex with you when you're willing to seems to Stiles like the clearest possible expression of interest.
But something seems a little off when they get down to it, and after a few minutes Stiles convinces Derek to let him take a picture, saying it's something he always does when Derek has amnesia, swearing up and down that he never shows them to anyone else, he just likes having something to remember each of these forgotten Dereks by. And Derek lets him.
And Derek's eyes are red and Stiles scrambles out of bed, but Derek is already pulling away, already reverting visibly to himself, realizing even before Stiles tells him that that was somehow a giveaway. And Stiles demands to know why the hell he was pretending to have amnesia and Derek admits that he wanted to experience what it was like to be with Stiles while he was that other Derek. And also confesses that he figured Stiles only liked him when he wasn't himself.
And then Stiles explains to him the error of his ways, that he liked the other Dereks because they were the closest Stiles could get to him, that he took care of Derek when he had amnesia because he cared about and wanted to protect the Derek he knew the rest of the time, and they have sex for real! And live happily after ever, yay!
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dorinda describes idyll fic as stories "in which the characters are stuck in a peaceful, comfortable, well-stocked place, usually with some kind of swimming available".
There's already an AO3 collection set up, waiting for your idyll fic! Check it out! :D
And, uh, speaking of happy places--it had occurred to me a while ago that I'd like to write amnesia fic for Derek Hale because not being aware of every horrible decision he'd ever made in his life would actually, in a sad way, be his happy place. I took a crack at writing some, inspired in large part (particularly the title) by
resonant's post about an acquaintance's experience of Total Global Amnesia.
But I got distracted from the story, as I am prone to do, and wasn't writing very quickly, and then Season 3A of Teen Wolf overtook me and jossed the story in some really unexpectedly fundamental ways. I'd mostly given it up in favor of other stories by then anyway--had actually already started an entirely different amnesia story for
hc_bingo before the worst of the jossing happened--so this one definitely isn't ever getting finished. I'm still fond of the story, though, so I thought I'd do a mini WIP amnesty and share the part I wrote. It was going to a Derek/Stiles place eventually, but it never quite got there.
By the time it was all over--the alpha pack, Gerard, the final twist in Peter's betrayals turning out not to be a betrayal at all, and Peter's departure for points unknown now that, so he said, all his debts were paid--no one felt much like celebrating. They nodded vague acknowledgement to each other and stumbled away to sleep for a few days.
Still, there was no denying that they were a pack of sorts, after all of that. A weird, two-headed, half-human pack, with as many hunters and witches as werewolves and half the werewolves alphas, granted. Stiles had considered the possibility that that made them a team or a gang or something else instead. But whatever they were, they gravitated to each other in ones and twos in the days and weeks after. No one made excuses when Stiles invited them all over for pizza and movies, even though they all knew Lydia was going to make them watch The Notebook at some point.
It wound up sandwiched in between Iron Man and Die Hard. Scott got up to put on The Secret of NIMH after that. Stiles didn't really see any of it, already half-asleep on the couch between Boyd and Lydia.
Stiles half-woke again around dawn, to find that the whole pack was still there, Derek asleep in an armchair while Scott was stretched out as far as possible from him on the living room floor, the rest of them cuddled and curled across the space in between. Stiles looked around, sure something had woken him.
His dad was standing by the front door, travel mug in hand, looking back at all of them.
Stiles smiled sheepishly, raising one hand in a wave, and his dad just shook his head and let himself out.
Derek stirred a little at the sound of the lock clicking shut, but he never opened his eyes, just turned his head and slept on.
Stiles snuggled down in the middle of his pack and went back to sleep.
***
The next time Stiles woke up, everyone but Derek was gone. Derek was still sleeping, and he looked like his strings had been cut. Last night he'd looked like he might spring into motion at any second, but now he sprawled across the armchair, legs spread wide and arms hanging limp along his sides. His mouth hung slightly open.
Stiles grinned and got up to look for his phone--a picture of this was bound to be excellent pack bonding material--but when he came back Derek was awake.
He had his eyes open, anyway, but he didn't look like he was all the way conscious yet. He'd drawn his arms and legs in a little, but he hadn't picked up his head. He was just looking around like the Stilinskis' living room in daylight was fascinating to him, and there was still something slack and soft about his expression.
"Aw, you ruined it," Stiles said, grinning, and Derek--
The guy in the chair, whoever he was, grinned right back.
Stiles took a hasty step back, hand tightening on his phone, heart racing--what now, what is this--
The guy stopped smiling and drew tighter into himself, looking worried. That made him look more like Derek, but there was still something not-quite-right about him.
"What are you," Stiles demanded. "Why are you here?"
The guy blinked, looking convincingly confused. "I'm a werewolf. I don't remember how I got here, but it smells familiar. I don't know why; I can't remember this place at all."
"What," Stiles said, what does that mean, how can it smell familiar if you don't remember it, but then the rest of what the guy just said sank in. "Do you know who I am? Do you know who you are?"
The guy frowned, the most Derek-like expression yet but still not right. "I can tell you're human, and you're scared, but I don't know... Huh."
He blinked a few times, frown deepening--for a second he could have been Derek, just one instant of rightness--and then the frown dropped away into a totally foreign guileless expression. He shook his head.
"I don't know anything."
"You don't..." Stiles shook his head, refusing to get into what that meant if it was actually true, if this wasn't some elaborate trick. "Okay, dude, rule one, you cannot just casually tell people you're a werewolf, okay? That's a secret."
"Not from you," the guy--Derek? Derek with amnesia?--pointed out with unerring and unperturbed logic. "Not here. It smells like pack here. You're pack."
"How can you," Stiles said, and immediately gave up, because he obviously wasn't going to get any useful answers from this guy. "Fuck it, maybe it's a spell or something."
He called Deaton and--of course--went straight to voicemail, which helpfully suggested another vet he could call if this was an emergency. But Stiles knew for a fact that Dr. Rathbone would be no help at all with this kind of emergency, so he just said, "Hey, Derek's at my house, something is wrong with him. Call me back."
He nearly hung up before he remembered the triage system that they'd all learned to attach to messages in the last few crises. It seemed irrelevant now, in the morning light, alone except for Derek sitting there looking confused, but God only knew what kind of disaster this was going to turn into.
"Oh, uh, I guess this is yellow? Maybe orange, even. Call me back, seriously, this is really messed up."
"Derek?" Derek parroted curiously when Stiles hung up. "Is that my name?"
Stiles pocketed his phone and moved cautiously closer to Derek. "That depends on whether you're some kind of changeling or clone or pod replacement thing. Do you feel evil at all?"
Derek actually frowned, looking down at himself--possibly trying to rate the black jeans, gray shirt, leather jacket, and heavy boots for likelihood of evil associations.
"I don't think so," he said after a few seconds. "I don't know what that would feel like. I don't want to hurt anyone," he added earnestly.
He wasn't actually sure that made this guy any more likely to be Derek, but he was doing a pretty convincing job of not being anyone else, either. The pack couldn't have left that long ago; Stiles's magical radar was pretty well honed and the house was warded. He'd have noticed if anything crazy happened--and for that matter, Derek wouldn't have let himself be snatched and substituted without a big, loud fight.
Stiles shrugged. "You're probably Derek, I guess. You look like him, anyway."
Derek looked like it had only just then occurred to him that he looked like anything. He raised a hand to his own face and prodded it curiously.
"The bathroom's over there," Stiles said, waving a hand. "If you want to look. Or wash up."
Derek nodded and got up, but then hesitated. "What's your name?"
Stiles stared for another few seconds and then said, "Stiles. I'm Stiles."
"Thank you, Stiles," Derek said politely, and headed for the bathroom.
Stiles stared after him for a few seconds, baffled, but when he heard the faucet turn on he looked down at his phone again. He didn't want to expose any of the others to Derek--or Derek to any of the others--when he was this blank and helpless. On the other hand, the last six months had taught them all something about not keeping secrets within the pack. What if he was hiding Derek from them and half of them had also been hit with amnesia or some other kind of curse?
Stiles sent out a mass text: Everybody okay? Consider this a roll call. Answer or I will come find you.
Stiles headed into the kitchen with the phone still in his hand, and set it down on the counter while he started making coffee. The phone buzzed a few times before he'd even finished that, and Stiles made himself finish going through the motions before he looked.
When he did, there were messages from Boyd (Present) and Lydia (Don't stage any rescue missions without me.) and Scott (I'm ok, are you?).
That was two out of three other werewolves accounted for, which suggested that whatever had happened to Derek, he was the only one.
Stiles sent back a Yeah, np to Scott and then looked up as Derek walked into the kitchen, frowning down at his phone.
"Oh," Stiles said, realizing he'd just selected the whole pack automatically for the mass text. "Uh, you don't have to answer that. I know where you are."
Derek nodded, but said, "I don't recognize any of their names. Are they all pack?"
Stiles nodded and then said, "Um, it's sort of complicated. We're a weird pack. Do you want some breakfast?"
"I can help," Derek said, coming over to stand by Stiles as he opened the fridge.
Stiles forced himself not to stare. He unearthed the for-emergencies-only real bacon instead, and gestured vaguely in the direction of the pans while he gathered the stuff for pancakes.
Derek got down a pan for bacon and also the two-burner griddle for pancakes. He apparently knew how to operate a stove just fine.
Stiles dumped some flour into a bowl; he'd long since learned to eyeball the proportions, and he even knew how much to cook for himself plus one werewolf, thanks to Scott.
"What's my alpha's name?" Derek asked.
Stiles was pouring milk, and his brain went straight to secret names and reign names--was Derek-as-alpha really Magnus XIV of the Hale Pack, did he have some special magical name only his family had known?--and then Derek's calm, curious expression got through to him.
"Your alpha," Stiles repeated cautiously, reaching for the eggs.
"Yeah. That was him you called to tell about me, right? So he's not one of the ones you had to text to check on."
Stiles frowned, concentrating on the eggs. There were alarm bells going off in his brain, but he didn't know what to say except the truth. He decided to go with that, although he would do it without getting out of reach of his phone or a clear line to the back door. He glanced as-if-casually around the kitchen before he spoke.
"No, that was Deaton, he's human--a witch, though--and he advises the pack, especially when weird stuff happens."
Derek nodded, but still looked puzzled.
"You're the alpha, dude," Stiles said, not bringing up Scott because it really, really wouldn't help.
Derek frowned, and then looked down and ripped open the package of bacon with a claw that Stiles barely saw, it was there and gone so fast. "Rule one, Stiles, you don't joke about the alpha like that."
"I don't--do I sound like I'm lying to you?"
Derek didn't look up, and his frown deepened as he shook his head.
Stiles stirred pancake batter slowly, on auto-pilot, watching Derek hold his hand out over the pan to test the heat.
"I must have been tricking you," Derek said finally, and he sounded so wary that he almost really did sound like Derek for a second.
But the next second he looked up, worried and nakedly apologetic, and he was a stranger again, more so with every word from his mouth. "I don't know why I would do that. I'm sorry. But I'm not an alpha. Maybe I was pretending? Somehow, I don't know how. You said it's complicated. Did the pack need an alpha? Werewolves can lie to humans a lot more easily than humans can lie to werewolves--I don't know if you knew that. I must have been lying. I'm not an alpha, Stiles. I'm really sorry. I can tell you believed it, but I'm not."
Stiles opened his mouth to say You are, I saw you become one, but he could see how that would go.
Derek would either insist Stiles hadn't seen what he thought he'd seen--and what the hell had he actually seen that night?--or he'd think Stiles was lying and get angry. And even if he didn't believe he was an alpha, he was still going to be alpha-strong and alpha-fast when he decided to throw Stiles through a wall for arguing with him.
"Oh, hey," Stiles said, and grabbed his phone. "I know. I'll take a picture of you--that will show what color your eyes flash, right? Only alphas have red eyes, so that will tell us one way or the other."
Derek nodded slowly. He reached up and rubbed his eyes, and then he looked directly toward Stiles with a stiff, nervous smile. Stiles looked down at his phone, pulling up the camera with shaky fingers. What if Derek freaked out when he saw the picture? Why was Stiles trying to prove his point when the best case scenario for what was up with the guy in front of him was that he was an unstable amnesiac werewolf who had no idea why he cared about keeping Stiles alive?
But when the camera came up he focused it on Derek, made sure the flash was turned on, and hit the button.
And then Stiles just stared. He didn't even have to look down at the picture he'd taken; he'd seen Derek's eyes light up in the flash.
They'd turned a bright, impossible, electric blue.
The awkward picture-taking smile fell off of Derek's face, replaced by that same anxious apologetic look. He darted toward Stiles, steadying him before he'd recognized that he actually did feel kind of dizzy.
"I'm sorry, I'll--I'll still pretend for the others, if--we don't have to tell, right? I can pretend, it'll be okay, I'll figure out how," Derek was saying, almost frantic.
Stiles blinked at him and then patted his shoulder gently. "Yeah, uh. It'll be okay. Deaton will know something."
Derek looked instantly relieved, without a hint of his normal pessimism. "Yeah! Yeah, he'll know."
Stiles nodded again, gingerly, like the broken pieces of his brain might stab him if he moved too fast. "So, uh. Breakfast. We should have breakfast."
***
After breakfast, during which Isaac and Allison sent texts that said I told Scott he should leave a note and You fell asleep first, you're lucky you still have eyebrows respectively, Stiles took Derek up to his room. It was cluttered only with normal stuff, at the moment, unless Derek went digging on his laptop. Derek looked around with the same calm curiosity Stiles had seen on his face right after he woke up, like it didn't bother him at all not to recognize the place.
"Just... stay here," Stiles said, and grabbed a change of clothes before he bolted to the bathroom.
He did not have a panic attack in the shower, although it took some serious mind-clearing and breathing exercises before he was sure he wouldn't.
So Derek had lost his memory and his alpha powers, so what. If the pack needed an alpha that badly there was still Scott--although Stiles really didn't want to think about Scott in charge without Derek to balance him, any more than Derek without Scott to balance him had worked out well for anyone. This Derek wouldn't even fight Scott the way Scott had always fought Derek; this one was a pushover who let Stiles have the last of the bacon and believed whatever the fuck Stiles told him and kept smiling when he should be scared out of his mind. He seemed to trust Stiles for no reason Stiles could figure out.
Stiles realized he was waiting for Derek to barge on into the bathroom and tell him to pull it together, and also realized that this Derek was never going to do that. He slapped the water off and dried himself, getting dressed and hurrying back, half hoping to find Derek just gone through the open window.
But Derek was sitting on the floor by Stiles's bed, flipping through Stiles's Bio textbook.
"What," Stiles said blankly.
Derek looked up. "I remember some of this stuff," he announced. "Even some of the actual sentences seem kind of familiar. But I can't remember reading it before or learning it."
"You probably had the same book in high school," Stiles said. "Maybe a different edition, but it's not like they had to rewrite the chapter on classifying species--why are you reading that?"
Derek shrugged. "You weren't really thinking straight when you brought me up here. I didn't think I should look at anything too personal, in case you didn't mean it."
Stiles clutched at his hair. "Oh my God, now you're polite? Who are you?"
Derek smiled uncertainly, like he thought Stiles was teasing him but he didn't know whether he was supposed to laugh along. Stiles dropped his hands, resisting the urge to punch himself in the mouth.
"Come on," Stiles said instead. "If you want to check out whether you've retained stuff you've learned, let's go fire up some Mario Kart."
***
Mario Kart was actually a good test. All the werewolves had had to learn how to mesh their own reflexes with the reaction time possible through the controllers. The first ten minutes watching a werewolf with a Wiimote in his hand were reliably fucking hilarious. Despite the amnesia Derek sat down, took the wheel, and demolished Stiles from the get-go.
So that meant it really was Derek, down there somewhere, but his brain had been scoured of all the actual stuff that made him Derek--and, not to forget, his alpha power. That had apparently left behind this easygoing dude who steered with his whole body, in big, wild movements. Stiles could almost hear Derek snapping at Isaac and Scott to stop telegraphing your next move. But this Derek just laughed and flailed all over the place and rammed Stiles's car off the rainbow road with machine-like fucking precision.
When Stiles got tired of that he demanded a round of Kirby's Yarn Adventure just to fuck with him, but that didn't work either. Derek played co-op mode like he'd fucking invented team spirit and dragged Stiles through a mini-game he'd never been able to beat on the first try.
Stiles was torn between being unbearably creeped out and wanting to try Derek out on first-person shooters, which Derek usually wouldn't play. But if he didn't have any bad memories of getting shot and almost dying he wouldn't mind, would he? At least until he got his memories back. At which point he would not only mind, he would be mad at Stiles for taking advantage of his amnesia to fuck with him, so--maybe not.
"I'm thirsty, do you want anything?" Stiles popped up, waving Derek down when he made to follow.
Derek said diffidently, "Water?" and navigated back to the Wii menu to look for another game. Stiles left him to it. If Derek wanted to try Call of Duty, it wouldn't be wrong for Stiles to just go along with it, right?
He'd gotten out glasses and was filling one from the fridge tap when Derek yelled, "Stiles," in a sharp, urgent voice that made Stiles whirl instantly in his direction, water splashing everywhere as he bolted back to the living room.
Derek was standing by the couch, looking wary and not-quite-angry-but-considering-it. He was definitely, indubitably Derek.
"What," Derek said, and then shook his head.
"You got your memory back," Stiles observed. "Are you okay? Do you know what did it?"
Derek shook his head again. "I don't--the last thing I remember is going to sleep. Everyone was here, and then--it's like I just woke up, sitting here, and everyone's gone."
"You don't remember," Stiles said blankly. "You got back your memories but now you don't remember--okay, um--" Stiles started to gesture and realized he was holding two wet, empty water glasses. He set them on the end table and wiped his hands on his pants.
"You woke up and you had lost your memory. I called Deaton, but he didn't answer, so I left a message, but he still hasn't gotten back to me. I checked on the rest of the pack--everybody's okay--but I didn't tell them what was going on with you. You didn't seem like--actually you didn't seem like you'd care, but I didn't think they should see you like that, at least until we knew what was going on."
Derek was looking down, frowning with a weird inward expression, like he was trying to glare at his own brain.
"You helped me make breakfast, and then we just hung out," Stiles went on, knowing Derek would be able to hear the truth of that. He hesitated for a few seconds, until Derek looked up, raising his eyebrows, and then said, "Do you--feel okay, now? I mean--whatever did that to you, it might have messed you up pretty bad, Deaton should probably--"
Derek snorted and shook his head. "Deaton doesn't know anything about it."
Stiles opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, trying to think it through. "You don't actually seem surprised by any of this."
Derek gave a short, sharp nod, still not meeting Stiles's eyes. "It's happened before. Lasted a few hours. Once it wore off I didn't remember what had happened during. Laura--" The pause was tiny but palpable. "--tried everything to figure out what it was, some special kind of wolfsbane or a spell or curse or what. But there was nothing on me or in me and it went away on its own. She got in touch with Deaton to see if it was something that ran in the family, but there was nothing there either. The theory we ended up with was that I had some kind of little stroke, and the memory loss was the time it took for my brain to heal."
Stiles made a choked noise, and Derek glanced up warily. "You were--that whole time you were brain damaged?"
Derek raised his eyebrows. "I couldn't remember anything, could I? What else would you call it?"
"But you," Stiles said helplessly, waving toward the TV. "You were--"
You were okay, you were having fun, you just couldn't remember who you were.
"The parts I needed to react and survive would heal first," Derek explained. "The details took a while. That's all. I'm fine now. I--thank you. For not bringing the whole pack in to stare at me."
"Yeah, no, no problem," Stiles said vaguely.
Could brain damage have messed up Derek's alpha powers for a few hours? Was that why his eyes had turned blue? What were alpha powers anyway, how the fuck were they even transmitted? Where did they live? Maybe there was an alpha-powers node in the brain--but if the most important stuff healed first, shouldn't that have healed right away?
Derek nodded again, turned on his heel, and walked out without another word.
Stiles stared after him for a few minutes and then said, "What the actual fuck," out loud to the empty house before he went into the kitchen to clean up the spilled water.
***
Deaton showed up an hour later looking slightly disheveled but as calm as ever.
"Oh," Stiles said, even as he stepped back from the door to let Deaton in. "Sorry, I should have called. Derek's fine now. He left."
"I know," Deaton said. "He left me a message after yours, saying not to bother looking into it. But I'm curious--can you tell me what happened?"
"He said this happened before, when Laura was alive. He said she talked to you about it?"
"Ah," Deaton said. "The amnesia episodes."
"Epi--episodes? Like, more than one?"
Deaton nodded. "They recurred over a period of several weeks, starting about three months after the fire, not long after they found a place to live and Derek went back to school. I thought there was an obvious explanation there, but Derek insisted on inventing some sort of physical cause."
"Obvious and... not physical," Stiles said. "Like--"
"Think of it as the opposite of flashbacks," Deaton suggested. "Some people, after a traumatic event, they put it out of their mind, and then it will come back to them in a very powerful way from time to time. Derek's brain just did the opposite--made him stop thinking over something that happened by making him stop remembering anything at all. It's an extreme solution, but werewolves are extreme in every other aspect of their lives. Why should their psychology be any different?"
"But it was--he wasn't faking or--"
"Oh, no," Deaton said. "Psychological problems can have very real physical effects. People have gone blind, or been paralyzed, by purely psychological causes, and the condition is entirely real and involuntary. It simply doesn't have a physical cause."
"Could that," Stiles said, but if believing you were paralyzed could paralyze you, couldn't believing you weren't the alpha make you back into a beta? And if it wasn't just that Derek felt like he needed a break from his memories--if he needed a break from being alpha--
Thank you, Derek had said. For not bringing the whole pack in to stare at me.
It was the last thing Derek would want anyone to know, and he definitely wouldn't want Stiles to run around telling other people when he hadn't even told Derek.
Deaton raised his eyebrows, his patient look wearing slightly thin. It occurred to Stiles that Deaton really looked like someone who had slept in his clothes. Or put his clothes back on after picking them up off the floor where they'd been crumpled all night. And he'd had his phone turned off, knowing the pack was safe at the Stilinskis' for the night. Oh.
"Could that happen again? Would it be soon, or...."
Deaton tilted his head. "That depends on how badly Derek needs a break from himself."
***
Three days later Stiles was leaning into the fridge, considering just eating lunch meat straight out of the drawer. That would totally constitute dinner without all the time-consuming cooking steps, right?
His phone rang.
It was Boyd, which was weird. Boyd was downright laconic these days; he communicated mostly in text messages, when he communicated directly with Stiles at all.
"Hey," Stiles said. "What's--"
"Deaton said to bring Derek to you," Boyd said, and he sounded like was on the verge of seriously losing his cool.
"Okay," Stiles said, taking a step back and closing the fridge. "Yeah, that's--"
"Good," Boyd said, and Stiles heard a squeal of tires in the driveway.
He went and opened the front door and watched Derek get out of the passenger door of the Camaro and walk uncertainly toward the house. His shoulders were hunched, and he flinched as Boyd pulled out of the driveway and sped off down the street. Derek stopped where he stood, a few strides short of the porch.
"Hey, come on in," Stiles said. "I was just going to make dinner. You hungry?"
Derek shrugged miserably and said, "I don't remember."
"I know," Stiles said, making himself be calm about it, because obviously Derek had had enough of people who were freaked out by him. "You don't have to remember anything. Are you hungry right now?"
Derek's frown eased from wretched to thoughtful, and he looked up uncertainly at Stiles. "I could eat."
"Come on in, then," Stiles said. He led the way back to the kitchen and dug out all the actual sandwich fixings and a couple of plates.
Derek followed him silently through the process of assembling a sandwich; he took exactly the same number of slices of lunch meat as Stiles did. Was he trying not to take more than his share? He'd let Stiles have the last piece of bacon, too. Had he kept count?
"So," Stiles said, when they were both sitting at the table, the wreckage of sandwich-making left out in front of them so it would be easy to get seconds. "I guess Boyd didn't take that very well."
"He thinks I'm his alpha," Derek said, in a hollow whisper. "He was really scared when I couldn't remember him, he--I couldn't tell him, but--I'm not, Stiles. I'm not--I can't protect him. I can't protect anyone. I'm not a real alpha, I don't know why he thinks I am."
"It'll be okay," Stiles said, taking a bite of his sandwich. He chewed while he tried to figure out how much to tell Derek, when the whole point of this was (probably, according to Deaton) to let him not know stuff for a while.
"This happened before, and it wore off after a few hours. Afterward you were fine, and you knew how to deal with the pack again. None of them had any idea anything even happened. Boyd's been having a hard time, but once you get your memory back you'll know how to help him."
Derek frowned and chewed and swallowed and then said, "You weren't surprised. When I said that, about not being a real alpha. You're pack, but you knew that."
Stiles nodded. "No one else does, but when this happened before you told me. You even let me take a picture to prove it to me."
Stiles pulled out his phone and found the photo, pushing it over to Derek. "See? You stood right in this kitchen and let me see. So I know. And I know that the next day everyone was treating you like the alpha again."
Derek frowned and Stiles wondered if this was making it worse, if knowing what was waiting for him would make Derek's amnesia stretch on for extra hours or days--but it didn't matter. He had to reassure this guy in front of him who didn't know what was going on, who had obviously gotten a pretty unwelcoming reception from Boyd. Stiles wanted the other guy back, the one who didn't know he had anything to be afraid of, who played video games with wild abandon.
He ate the rest of his sandwich, watching Derek eat his. Derek kept his eyes turned down until Stiles stood up and started cleaning, and then he got up and helped.
"Okay," Stiles said with a sigh. "Last time, you know what helped? Mario Kart."
Derek looked dubious, but he didn't argue when Stiles passed him a wheel, and it didn't take that long before he loosened up enough to grin and talk trash. Derek was more like the first time after that, following Stiles agreeably up to his room when Stiles declared it time for homework.
Derek took the chair in the corner and sat flipping curiously through Stiles's English textbook while Stiles worked on math, and then traded when Stiles needed to do English. When Stiles got up to hit the bathroom Derek looked like he was dozing, his head tilted back against the wall, the book sagging in his hands, his legs splayed out.
Stiles grinned and turned off the shutter sound on his phone before snapping a picture, and then ducked out. He was in the middle of peeing when he heard a muffled thump from his bedroom, like the sound of a book falling from Derek's sleeping hands, and he grinned at the wall, picturing it.
He hurried through shaking off and washing up, and when he came back in, he was startled--but not surprised, not really--to see Derek standing in the corner, completely himself again, all drawn up tight and wary.
"Stiles," Derek said, sounding grim. "It happened again."
Stiles nodded. "You, uh, you were with Boyd. So Boyd knows. He seemed pretty freaked--he said Deaton had told him to bring you here, so I guess Boyd called him first. You said he got kind of scared about you being, you know. The alpha but not...."
Stiles trailed off, waving one hand, and Derek's grim look got grimmer. Stiles definitely did not want to explain all of what Derek hadn't been; he hadn't spilled the beans to Boyd about it, so Stiles was still the only one who knew. Two could keep a secret if one of them kept forgetting it, right?
"Any of the betas would be... uncomfortable around me in a weakened state," Derek said. "With Laura it didn't really make a difference."
"Hey, it's cool with me," Stiles said, nailing the casual tone dead on. "It was pretty much the same as last time--we had dinner, played some video games, and then you just kind of nerded out with my books while I did some homework."
The math book, Stiles noted, had been set on the foot of his bed.
Derek nodded and started for the door, obviously meaning to brush past Stiles and leave. Stiles took a step forward, into Derek's path, automatically dropping a shoulder a little like he was going to try to block an opposing player. Derek stopped three feet away and raised an impatient eyebrow.
"I need to go show Boyd I'm all right."
"I know," Stiles said. "But you didn't tell me last time that this thing recurs, okay? Two points make a pattern if they're actually points eleven and twelve or whatever you're on now. And since it seems like I'm your designated person to hang out with when this happens to you, could you please put a note in your phone or something, to tell yourself to call me the next time this happens? A Memento tattoo would be kind of drastic, but--something, okay? You can call me, any time."
"Any time I'm not myself," Derek replied in a flat tone that might have been a joke or might not.
"Yeah, you're pretty chill when you have amnesia," Stiles said, trying for a smile. "We can play more Kirby next time, it'll be great."
Derek just rolled his eyes and started forward again, and this time Stiles stepped aside and let him go.
***
Stiles sent Deaton a text (Derek had amnesia again today, same as last time, he's fine now.) and as far as Stiles could tell, that was the end of it. Calling another official pack gathering seemed like a risky proposition, given how the last one had ended, but they made it to the weekend without anything else weird happening. Derek and Boyd showed up for the lacrosse game, sitting in the stands with the girls while Stiles, Scott, and Isaac ran around on the field. Everything seemed okay with them, so Stiles figured they were all back to normal.
His phone started up the frantic continuous vibration of an incoming call during English on Tuesday morning, and Stiles pulled it out of his pocket and checked under the desk. He already knew, really; anyone else would have texted him, and bad news about his dad would come in the form of a deputy at the classroom door.
Derek.
Stiles stood up and bolted from the room, pressing the hand holding his phone to his stomach and his other hand to his mouth; the wave of startled laughter followed him to the hallway. He ducked into the bathroom just as the phone stopped vibrating and immediately called back.
"Hello?" Derek said, and Stiles could hear the easygoing bafflement in that one word, and knew that no one had ruined this round of amnesia for Derek yet.
Stiles wasn't going to think about how happy that made him.
"Hey, man," Stiles said. "I'm guessing you found some kind of note or message telling you to call me?"
"If I couldn't remember, yeah," Derek said, sounding relieved. "You're Stiles?"
"Yeah. You're Derek, in case that wasn't in the note. Where are you now? I'm at school, I can come find you."
"Oh, you shouldn't skip," Derek said, but it was a vague, polite objection with no force behind it, and Stiles grinned. "Uh, I'm in the woods. I don't know where in the woods."
Stiles peeked out of the bathroom doors, checking that the coast was clear, and then made a dash for the nearest exit. That put him out on the practice field side of the school. "Do you think you can hear me? Find my voice and home in on it?"
"I--oh, yeah, there you are," Derek said. "I've got your heartbeat."
"Okay, well, don't come too close, right? I'll come out to the edge--"
Stiles stopped short as Derek abruptly appeared at the edge of the trees. He burst into a grin so huge Stiles could see it from across the field, and Stiles waved like an idiot and said, "I'm gonna hang up now."
Even all the way across the practice field, he could see Derek's amused eyeroll. Stiles pocketed his phone and jogged across the field to Derek, not bothering to look around. If he got busted at this point, there was nothing he could do about it.
Derek threw an arm around Stiles, half a hug, half guiding him back into the woods, entirely unselfconscious. Stiles went with it as calmly as he could, pulling away from Derek's grip in the course of picking his way across the ground.
"How did you know to call me?" Stiles asked, glancing back and forth from Derek to the ground in front of his feet. Derek was looking around curiously, not focusing on anything in particular. He had his jacket on, and Stiles looked him up and down curiously. "You don't actually have a tattoo, do you? I mean, other than the tattoo that you actually do have, I know about that one."
Derek sort of frowned, still smiling. "I have a tattoo that you know about?"
"Yeah, on your back, it's cool--" Derek started twisting around, trying to peer over his shoulder, shrug out of his coat, and keep walking in the same direction all at once, which came out as a weird half-twirl. If Stiles had tried that he would have sprained an ankle at the very least. He swatted at Derek's shoulder. "Stop that, you can't see it. Seriously, though, how did you know to call?"
Derek untwirled and shrugged his jacket back into place, smiling a little sheepishly. "There was a note in my pocket. It just said If you don't remember, call Stiles, and then there was a direct-dial button on my phone to call you, so I called you. That's it."
"So it's been like... five minutes?"
Derek shrugged, glancing up at the sky like he was gauging the time, and nodded. "About that, yeah. I was just walking around and then realized I didn't know where I was going or why, or... anything."
"Huh," Stiles didn't ask him where they were going now. This might be another thing, like Mario Kart, that Derek's body knew even if his brain had forgotten. "Well, you grew up pretty close to here--when you were a kid, the house your family lived in was out in the woods like this. You live in town now, but you still come out in the woods pretty often, especially to, you know--" Stiles bared his teeth and made claws with his hands. "Get your wolf on."
Derek raised his eyebrows in amusement. "Get my wolf on."
Stiles flapped his hands. "I'm a human, okay, I might be in the pack but I don't know exactly what it's like for you guys. But you like to run out here and stuff. Anyway, this is a thing that's been happening to you lately, you get amnesia for a few hours. Then it goes away and you're back to normal. The other werewolves are kind of weirded out by you when you're like this, so you usually hang out with me."
Derek frowned a little. "What about my alpha? Wouldn't they--don't they--did I...."
Because an alpha should want to look after a pack member who was in trouble or weakened, right. And if it were pitched like that to Scott, Scott would totally look after Derek, wouldn't he? Except it would give Scott all kinds of ideas about being The Alpha instead of Co-Alpha, and Derek would stab someone in the face--probably Scott and then himself--once he came around and realized his vulnerable amnesiac self had been asking Scott for protection.
Derek winced badly enough for Stiles to see, which meant Stiles's heartbeat and other tells must have gone wild during that train of thought. "I guess that's an answer."
"It's complicated," Stiles said hastily. "We're a weird pack. We're all young, and you're not only the oldest, you're also the only born werewolf out of all of us. So it's strange for all of us when you're not yourself, and when you don't know the stuff you usually know. If you needed protection, the alpha would protect you, no question, but if you just need to chill out for a few hours and let your brain reboot, it's better for everyone if you hang out with me."
Derek gave him a sideways look, thoughtful, and Stiles instantly started second-guessing even the true part of that. Derek silently raised his eyebrows.
Stiles looked away. "I'm not really your favorite when you do have your memory. We're pack, but we're not friends."
"Huh," Derek said, and then put his hand on Stiles's shoulder, firmly and deliberately. "Well, I don't know why not."
Stiles was startled into a laugh and looked over to catch Derek grinning.
Derek went on, "Anyway, I wrote myself the note and set up my phone when I did know. I trusted you with this when I did know. I wouldn't have handed myself over to someone I didn't want to spend this time with, would I?"
Stiles opened his mouth to argue. For one thing, it was time Derek wouldn't have to remember afterward.
For another, Derek's options were depressingly limited--Scott was maybe the worst idea except for Allison, Boyd and Isaac were definitely both out, and Lydia was... actually possibly more terrifying than the rest of them put together. That just left Stiles.
On the other hand, Derek could have told himself to call Deaton or go hide in the woods. Stiles was preferable to those options, apparently.
***
[Discussion of dubious consent ahoy! Stop reading there if amnesia-impaired consent is a problem.]
And then Stiles wound up kissing/making out with/having sex with successive iterations of blank slate amnesiac!Derek, with suitable protestations about how Derek wouldn't want to do this if he remembered, and Derek being like "...Okay, but I want to now, so why not? I'll write a note so the other me knows it was my idea." And Stiles can't really resist that logic. And Derek gets less and less communicative between episodes, though he obviously does know what's going on when he doesn't remember--and then a time comes when Derek shows up with amnesia and they do the now-routine consent discussion before sex, which gets shorter and shorter every time because Derek can find the photos of his prior yes-I-want-to notes on his phone, and Stiles doesn't know what to make of the fact that Derek never deletes those when he does remember (and has never told Stiles not to have sex with him when he has amnesia) but also doesn't seem to want anything to do with Stiles when he does remember, when having sex with you when you're willing to seems to Stiles like the clearest possible expression of interest.
But something seems a little off when they get down to it, and after a few minutes Stiles convinces Derek to let him take a picture, saying it's something he always does when Derek has amnesia, swearing up and down that he never shows them to anyone else, he just likes having something to remember each of these forgotten Dereks by. And Derek lets him.
And Derek's eyes are red and Stiles scrambles out of bed, but Derek is already pulling away, already reverting visibly to himself, realizing even before Stiles tells him that that was somehow a giveaway. And Stiles demands to know why the hell he was pretending to have amnesia and Derek admits that he wanted to experience what it was like to be with Stiles while he was that other Derek. And also confesses that he figured Stiles only liked him when he wasn't himself.
And then Stiles explains to him the error of his ways, that he liked the other Dereks because they were the closest Stiles could get to him, that he took care of Derek when he had amnesia because he cared about and wanted to protect the Derek he knew the rest of the time, and they have sex for real! And live happily after ever, yay!
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