By Any Other Name 4/4
Title: By Any Other Name 4/4
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Pairing: Derek/Stiles
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: 2x12
Word Count: 32,000
Warnings: Amnesia, violence
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: He doesn't know his name, he doesn't know who he is, and neither does the werewolf he's on the run with. But he's pretty sure they hunt monsters, because they seem to be really good at it.
Frain's apartment is in a nice part of town, quiet and upscale. Magic and child-murder apparently pays really well. Or maybe when you go to ground with powerful magical artifacts you didn't want to stand out from the crowd. It probably wouldn't do to have magical symbols daubed all over the walls, a few animated corpses guarding the door. That kind of shit can bring down the tone of the whole neighbourhood.
"He's in there isn't he?" Stiles asks, because even though he can't hear anything, or smell anything, he knows that Derek can.
"Someone's in there," Derek confirms, mouth twisted in a scowl. "The whole place stinks of them."
They make their way round the back, and Stiles is checking every patch of grass, every part of the wall, for the same semi-circle pattern that was in the house. He's checking for any pattern at all, any writing, anything that looks out of place, or that looks like a trap. He doesn't see anything, but he's careful where he puts his feet anyway. He tries to be ready for things he might not be able to see.
"There should be some sort of protection here. I made notes about what to look out for, but there was so much of it. I wish I remembered more about this stuff." Stiles wants to reach out, wants to stop Derek from pushing on ahead. He doesn't know whether that's paranoia or common sense. But it's strong enough to rattle him more than he is already.
"Maybe he doesn't feel like he needs protection," Derek says darkly.
Stiles doesn't want to think about the possibility that this might be a guy who really doesn't need to put up protection. Or leave any guards. If the stone is as powerful as the book suggests. Their plan is fairly simple, kill the witch - but putting it into practice, that's another thing entirely. He wishes he'd brought the gun.
"Or maybe someone broke it already?" Stiles guesses. "You said the place stank of them." The door's not locked. But then maybe witches don't bother with security. Stiles carefully pushes the door open, and Derek holds him in the doorway, doesn't let him go past it.
"I'm going first," he says, hard, grating, and Stiles already knows that there will be no argument about this. Nothing he's going to win anyway. Whether he likes it or not.
-
The whole apartment's dark, and it stretches away, in both directions. Looming shadows of furniture and lamps, the vague outline of doorways. There isn't enough light to get a good idea of the interior. But Derek only gets a foot inside before he stops.
"What? What?" Stiles tangles a hand in the back of his shirt, pulls hard enough to actually get Derek swaying back a step, so Stiles can see past him.
There's a body on the floor. Sprawled at Derek's feet, limbs stretched out on the carpet in a way that says it was trying to drag itself towards the door. Its dry, brown skin is sunken into its bones, and the face looks like it's been melted by something. It's still smoking faintly, though it doesn't smell, at least not to him. Stiles thinks he should be able to smell it. Even though he really, really doesn't want to. He takes a jittery step back, and knocks into Derek.
"Holy crap, it's like he looked into the Ark of the Covenant or something," Stiles says, because there really is no better way to describe it. He knows because he's trying to think of one. But Derek has a hand on his shoulder, turning him slowly. "Jesus Christ." Stiles's voice comes out thin, tapers off at the end. Because there's not just the one body at the door. The bodies are everywhere. They're strewn across the apartment. The messy, half-lit aftermath of what had to have been a fight. Some barely look as though they were touched, others are a mess of broken bones and blood. Some of them are in pieces, and there's another like the man inside the door, next to the shadow of the couch. There's even a statue against the far window, which Stiles has the awful feeling used to be a person. Now hunched in on itself, stony and misshapen.
Stiles can hear Derek breathing beside him, and he wants to reach out, wants to step back, wants to do pretty much anything but venture further into the apartment. But he takes one shuffling, silent step forward, swallows down something hysterical, chokes it back until he can breathe again. He makes himself deal with this.
"Do you think one of them's Frain." Stiles hears himself say, and he has no idea how he can sound so normal standing in the middle of this. For all that he's trying, he still has no idea how he manages it.
"No," Derek says, and he curls an arm round Stiles's waist, pulling him back into the curve of his body, already looking up in the direction of the bedroom doorway.
It's not entirely dark, there's a lamp lit in there somewhere, and Stiles never heard the door open, but it must have done. There's a man standing in the shadows, emaciated, pale and sweaty. His skin looks like it's been stretched over his skull - but too hard, it's already tearing in places. He has no hair, and one of his cheeks is hollowed in, like his teeth are just gone. He's half slumped against the wall, Stone of Echoes burning a sickly green where it hangs against his bare chest. His fingernails are clawed into the wall, as if he's trying to hold himself up, and his chest is heaving. But his eyes are fixed firmly on them.
"Oh my God," Stiles says, he can't help himself. He thinks it's safe to assume that this is Andrew Frain.
"Well, well, more visitors. I am blessed." Frain's voice rustles out of his throat in dry bursts.
Stiles's horror must be obvious.
"I'm not what you expected?" Frain sounds amused, though there's a stiff edge to it, one that says his amusement doesn't always end well for other people.
"What did it do to you?" Stiles hears himself say. Because that's the only thing he can think of right now. Frain looks like he's being eaten alive from the inside.
"It did what it's supposed do," Frain says, like he's not offended at all. "Test its wearer, test their conviction, their determination." Frain takes two heaving breaths, and works his way further along the wall, bare feet soundless on the carpet, like he weighs nothing at all. "But it's so impossibly hungry, all the time. It's never enough." The words are snapped out, in that dry-branch voice. Spit's gathering at the corner of his mouth, the foam of dehydration.
Stiles is pretty sure he still looks horrified, because Frain laughs, a croak that sounds demented and hoarse.
"We always think we can control what can't be controlled, don't we? We lie to ourselves. We always think we're better - think that we're more than we are." Frain uses the wall to take another step forward. It looks painful, he looks like he'll snap if he moves too fast. But his hands are crackling faintly, with slow blue fire. Stiles is afraid to move. Frain's practically a corpse but he's still the most terrifying things Stiles has ever seen. For all that he hasn't had time to see much. "But I still have more than enough power to destroy you," Frain says thinly. "To destroy you in a hundred ways. Whenever I please."
Derek tugs Stiles back a step, and Frain doesn't even gesture - but the door slams shut behind them, hard, in a way that says it won't be opening for them, even if they try. The angry crunch of wood expanding in its frame.
"You've been following me North, I've felt you. Who are you?"
It's such an easy question. But it's one of the only ones Stiles can't answer.
"We don't know," he admits, and it sounds stupid coming out of his mouth. To admit to that of all things, ten feet away from a man that would be happy to kill them both, whether they know anything or not.
But Frain nods like he isn't surprised.
"You met Sebastian, that was always his favourite trick. Steal a person's life, make them yours. I shall assume you're hunters then, though I've never heard of any of them using attack dogs." He sends a pointed look Derek's way.
Derek snarls at him, but Frain simply laughs.
"You stay for the boy then. Curious, if not very interesting. You came here to kill me, with barely any magical protection, no memory, no weapons. Forgive me for judging you both harshly."
"It looks like you're doing a good job of killing yourself already," Derek says quietly, and he's right. Andrew Frain's skin is taking on a paper-thin look.
"But you still hoped to try," Frain says slowly, and it's not hard to see how incredulous he is at the idea. "Do you have any idea how many witches have tried? Not just witches, werewolves too, and I recall a very persistent skinwalker, and a fetch, though they weren't much of a threat after I killed their better half. So many people hoping that greed, and anger, and arrogance would be enough to destroy me and take what was mine. They were all wrong, of course." He stops, stares right at Stiles. "How old are you?"
Stiles tries to move back, instinctively. But there's nowhere else to go. Frain laughs at his expression. A jerky, crackling series of heaves.
"Oh, don't worry, the stone wouldn't want you, the wolf has already ruined you, in all the ways that count." Frain looks honestly disappointed, then disgusted, and Stiles clenches his fists and fucking seethes.
"And the children that you fed to that thing," he says stiffly. "They didn't matter at all. They were just what...resources?"
Derek's fingers pinch into Stiles's arm, like he wants to pull him back, or pull him behind him. Stiles is fairly certain that Derek knows him well enough by now to realise he won't go. Frain looks as brittle as an eggshell, Stiles could probably go over there and push him over, and he'd shatter into a thousand pieces. But somehow he's still terrifying. The way he's crawling his way along the plaster, stick-thin legs folding and moving like the legs of a bird, face made impossibly more hollow by the green glow of the stone.
Even Derek is growling quietly beside him.
"No one has the conviction to go through with things any more," Frain says, voice firmer than before. "We're the last of us a dying breed. The ones determined to do what must be done and not look back." He's still scraping his way along the wall, towards them, bone-thin hands flickering and sparking. "Willing to do whatever was necessary, no matter the cost, to change the world. To mold it in our image."
The click of his teeth is audible now, and low as his voice is, Frain still makes it burn somehow. One more step and he coughs, knees going out of him. He raises his head in their direction, as if deciding how he wants to kill them.
"They were no challenge at all you know. They came to me, to steal from me, but they didn't realise the power of the stone. They didn't realise its potential. What it could do, what it wanted to do. They didn't realise -" Frain is almost close enough to reach out and touch them now, where they're backed up against the door. "They didn't know that it was never meant for anything human." It's soft, distant, like a realisation, and there's a soft, dry sound, like twigs breaking. Stiles thinks Frain's trying to laugh again. Then the witch is sliding down the wall, body folding with dry little cracks. Until he's against the carpet, all shriveled, pale limbs and cracking skin.
In less than a minute Andrew Frain is a dry husk at their feet.
The light on the stone goes out.
Stiles breathes out shakily. Then again, loud and rough. Because they are officially the luckiest people alive. If Frain hadn't emptied himself out fighting whoever had tracked him here. They'd be part of the mess on the carpet.
"Jesus," Stiles says softly and his mouth tastes like tin. "Jesus." He relaxes in Derek's grip, goes to take a step forward.
"Don't touch it," Derek snarls, fingers biting in hard enough to hurt.
"Wasn't going to," Stiles reassures him. "Don't actually want to go near it, if I'm being honest. But we can't leave it there."
*****
The Stone Of Echoes is behind the motel toilet, wrapped in two plastic bags, a shirt and another plastic bag, and then taped up with heavy duty duct tape. It had been an unbelievable pain in the ass trying to wrap it without touching it. The book said it only affected those who had magical ability, But Stiles wasn't taking any chances with it. Not after seeing up close what it could do. He wasn't risking his life on the assumption that he wasn't magical. Derek had been pretty adamant about that too.
Stiles scratches absently at the back of his neck, then winces when his nails encounter the red, raised skin, because he keeps forgetting. Derek hadn't been lying when he'd said it would hurt. Stiles would be pissed at him, but Derek can't stop touching it, can't stop tugging his shirt aside and looking at it, as if he can't believe Stiles said yes.
The TV's on in the background, someone blaring on about some Sheriff's kid that's still missing. Stiles isn't really listening. He's not listening at all when Derek comes out of the bathroom, wearing a very small towel, and water droplets, and absolutely nothing else. He must appreciate the way Stiles is looking at him, because he smirks at him, pulls the pen out of his mouth, kisses him, and then shoves it back in.
"You're kind of rude," Stiles says around the pen. "No manners at all."
"Raised by wolves," Derek agrees, stretching out on the bed beside him, jostling Stiles's typing enough to turn the last two words into nonsense.
"Next you'll be wanting to pee on me."
"Not unless you want me to," Derek says, while flicking idly through one of the magazines he'd found in the trunk of the car. Stiles suspects that was a joke. It's hard to tell, because Derek's joking voice sounds a lot like his ordinary voice. Oddly enough his angry voice tends to sound more like he's joking than his joking voice. Because Derek likes to be contrary, just to throw people off. Or at least that's the excuse Stiles is going for. He hits Derek with a pillow anyway.
"I think we need to talk about the thing we haven't been talking about," Stiles shuts the laptop and looks at him. "Frain's dead - it's - that's what we were waiting for, isn't it? We were waiting until after he was dead. I know you've been really quiet about it." Stiles pauses, but Derek's face is giving him nothing yet. "But I think it's time we phone your friend, Deaton."
Derek frowns. "I don't know him, I don't trust him."
"You don't trust anyone you can't smell," Stiles says, nudging him with a shoulder. "But Frain's dead, there are no witches left to ask about our memories. Not to mention we still need to know what to do with the stone. He's helped us before. We know that much. He knows who we are, he can tell us who we are." Derek has to want to know who he is, because Stiles does, even though he's afraid of it too. He always did, there was just so much going on, so much to finish. But now it's all done, and no matter how easy it would be to get distracted by something else - it's time.
"He might be a witch. He might want to use it," Derek doesn't look at him, but Stiles can read his frown sideways, his uncertainty. He thinks it's the same as his own - thinks it comes from the same place as his own.
"We have to trust someone eventually," Stiles says quietly. Someone other than each other.
"I do trust someone," Derek says, and stares at Stiles until he has to look away.
"Ok, so we ask him how to destroy it. If he wants us to bring it to him we refuse. We find another way, we phone Boyd, or Isaac or Erica. You must have friends we can trust. We have to know, we have to know Derek." They have to know eventually, and the longer they leave it, the harder it will be. Derek has to know that.
"Don't tell him that we don't know who we are," Derek says at last. "Don't - don't give him anything he can use."
Stiles has to wonder what happened to Derek, to make trust so hard for him. To make him expect people to take things from him, if he doesn't hold them tightly enough. He wonders how many skeletons they have in their closets that will hurt like hell coming back. But he can't think like that.
"Dude, I don't think I can fool someone who knows us," he says instead. "We don't even know if our names are our real names. He's going to know we're not right. He's going to know straight away when I don't know who he is. This is - we did what we had to do, and we need to fix ourselves - don't look at me like that, I know we're not broken - but even if we can't trust him, we still need his help." Stiles is already pulling the folded piece of paper out of their bag.
Derek doesn't stop him, doesn't try and convince him not to, and Stiles knows that costs him something. To let Stiles trust someone else.
Stiles dials the hastily scribbled number. It rings four times before someone picks it up. Someone soft-voiced, Stiles was expecting something rougher, no nonsense, kind of grizzled. At least that was the picture he'd had in his head. The voice on the phone isn't like that at all, and it throws him for a second.
"Is this Deaton?" he asks. Not as confidently as he'd been going for.
There's a pause on the other end. Filled with nothing but silence.
"Stiles?" There's surprise there, and a lot of disbelief. But there's familiarity too, and his name, his name is apparently right.
Derek comes closer, maybe so he can hear the conversation better, pick up noise in the background, or maybe just so he can lean against Stiles's back. So he can slide a hand down to curl around Stiles's wrist.
"Yeah," he offers, uncertain what else to say. "We think we need your help Deaton, or I guess it's Mr Deaton? I'm sorry, I don't know."
"Stiles, where are you?" He's expecting the confusion, but not the urgency.
Stiles doesn't answer that. He doesn't need the squeeze on his wrist to remind him not to.
"We have something of a memory situation. Meaning we have very little of it, and I'm phoning you because your number was in Derek's phone. There are notes which I'm pretty sure were made by you, and I think you give us supplies, or something. So you must know things. I think we should trust you but -"
"Derek's with you." That's definitely relief, more surprise as well though.
"Yeah, yeah he is." And his name apparently really is Derek. Which is...kind of unexpected actually. "He's here too, but he - er - doesn't want to trust you."
"That sounds a lot like Derek. But a lot of people are very worried about you, both of you. We all assumed the worst when we didn't hear from you. We thought you were both dead - and it's a relief to know that you're not."
Stiles isn't sure whether to reassure Deaton that they're both ok or not. He's talking to them like he knows them, but to Stiles he's just a strange voice on the end of a phone.
"We don't know who we are." Stiles looks over his shoulder at Derek, but he squeezes his hand, encouraging him to go on. "We know our names, from our ID, but that's about it. We remember things, but nothing about us."
"Did you by any chance encounter an animal statue, something like a jaguar, roughly a foot high," Deaton says hurriedly.
"Yes," Stiles says. "I remember that. I definitely remember that. Is that what did this?"
"I can help, both of you. You need to come see me."
"It's a little bit more complicated than that." Stiles takes a breath. "We have the Stone of Echoes."
There's a sharply indrawn breath on the other end of the phone.
"How the hell - my God, Stiles, please tell me you didn't touch it."
Stiles frowns at Derek.
"I didn't touch it. We need to know how to destroy it." Stiles holds his breath and waits. Waits to see if Derek's friend can be trusted.
Deaton sighs, and Stiles thinks he knows he's being tested.
"You'll have to melt it down, extreme heat will destroy the fixings and the base, and the stone must be smashed. But after that, please, Stiles you need to come home. You have no idea what your disappearance did to - "
Stiles's fingers are sweaty and too tight on the phone. He can barely feel his fingertips any more. He didn't even realise he was squeezing it that hard.
"Where's home? Where's home for us?"
There's a longer pause, and Stiles can't read anything in it, but Derek's hands curl round his arms from behind, and grip tight.
"Beacon Hills. I think you both need to come and see me. I run a veterinary clinic in town."
"You're a veterinarian?" Stiles says incredulously.
"Among other things. Stiles, can I talk to Derek?"
Stiles holds the phone out. It takes Derek a second to actually take it. He watches Derek's face. Deaton does more talking than he does, and Stiles can't hear any of it. He doesn't have the hearing to pick up anything but the steady drone of sound. All he really gets from Derek's face is confusion, before he hangs up.
"Do you think we should trust him?" Stiles asks.
"I think we need to go and find out either way." There's reluctance in Derek's voice, but they both know they have to do this. That they need to do this, find their way back to who they're supposed to be - even if something in Stiles twists sharply at the thought of it. As if he's not good enough as he is, with half his pieces missing.
He exhales roughly.
"So, we destroy the stone, and then go back to Beacon Hills. You do realise the place sounds like it's full of witches? It sounds like it is literally a town settled by witches. It could be, I wouldn't know. I wouldn't be able to tell."
Stiles takes Derek's phone from him, scrolls through the call history to find Deaton's number, he doesn't know why, he doesn't know what he's doing.
"I'd know," Derek promises.
"Of course you would," Stiles agrees. "Because you're a creeper, and you like to smell things with your super senses. Hey, it could just be a hill with a beacon on it, wouldn't that would be hilarious?" Stiles is babbling, too fast and too hoarse, thoughts spiralling together in a way he can't seem to stop.
Derek catches him, before he can start pacing his way across the room.
"You're scared," Derek says simply.
"Dude, yes, I'm fucking terrified." He's not afraid to admit it. Because this is it, this is the end of the road. This is wherever they go home to, if they have a home, family, friends. Or none of the above. "Aren't you?"
Derek doesn't say anything, but Stiles knows how to read his face now.
*****
Beacon Hills is a nice place.
It's more than just a hill with a beacon on it. But it doesn't look like the sort of place anything terrible could start. It doesn't give the impression that anything threatening could live here. It just doesn't feel like the sort of place the both of them could come from. Stiles doesn't know if that's a bad sign or not. It leaves him uneasy, and it leaves Derek quiet - quieter than usual.
They head through town at night, avoiding contact with anyone just in case. Derek still isn't entirely sure if they should trust Deaton this much. But Stiles figures Derek had him in his contacts, and they're going to have to decide to trust someone at some point. They need to be themselves again. If this is really what they do, then they need to remember it. To know how to be good at it, to be better at it. But Stiles isn't going to pretend that the idea doesn't scare the shit out of him. He's not even joking a little bit. The thought of it leaves him shaking in the passenger seat of the car, folding and re-folding the maps, with the sort of attention to detail that would drive a lesser man mad. Derek just accepts the many times Stiles comes close to poking him in the face with an errant corner. But then, Stiles thinks maybe Derek is just as worried as he is. He's just hiding it better.
Deaton isn't what Stiles is expecting. He's smaller, friendlier, and has less beard that he'd been imagining. But the look he gives them - as if he never expected to see them again. This sort of relieved, shaken look. He doesn't look like he wears that expression often, and it's weird to meet someone who knows you so well, when you don't remember them at all. Stiles keeps expecting to find him familiar, for it to suddenly click, like the name of someone you haven't seen in a long time. But he's nothing - he's just a stranger.
"Come into the back," Deaton says, gesturing slowly towards an open door, pushing it slightly so they can see that there's no one else in there. So maybe he does know them as well as he's supposed to.
Stiles throws Derek a look, but Derek just lays his hand on Stiles's back, so he can fist his hand in the material of his jacket, and pull him back if necessary.
"I'm not a threat to you, I promise." Deaton's reassuring tone is good. Stiles wants him to be the sort of man that they can trust. But he clearly understands that they're not there yet. "Though I suppose that doesn't mean much at the moment, to either of you. I can understand how my motives and intentions are a complete mystery to you. But I swear I mean you no harm at all. "
Stiles shrugs, because the alternative is to stand here forever, or leave and try to muddle their way through this town on their own. So he follows Deaton, and Derek comes because he can't do anything else. The room Deaton leads them to is smaller, holding an examination table and some stacked up bags of dog biscuits. Stiles can't help the amused look he throws at him. Because he actually is a veterinarian. It's not just a cover for whatever he does on the side, and Stiles can't get his head around the idea of an evil veterinarian, which helps, a little.
"You both live in Beacon Hills," Deaton says quietly. "I think it'll be easier if I explain what was done to you." He reaches up to take a book from a shelf full of what looks like cat food, then settles it open on one of the silver tables. "Does this look familiar?" He taps his finger on the page, and Stiles goes close enough to see. He can already make out the shape of the animal statue though, the pronged curves of it that ended up in Derek's chest.
Derek nods over his shoulder. "That's it."
"Yeah," Stiles says. "That's one of the first things I saw when I woke up. The witch, Sebastian I think his name was, was trying to put it through Derek's chest."
"Magic that works on memory is very interesting," Deaton explains, and Stiles gets the feeling he has a lot of experience explaining things to people. "Is he still -"
"No, I killed him," Stiles says simply.
Deaton goes very still, like he's surprised by that, but he's trying very hard not to show it.
"I see. Well it's really more of a binding than an erasure. The memories have been... I suppose the easiest way to describe it is 'switched off.' You haven't been able to access them but they're still there."
"Why would anyone even do that?" Stiles asks. "It sounds like a really shitty way to attack someone."
Deaton's hand slides down the page, tapping at a symbol that seems to be related.
"Oh, it's not meant as an attack. It's more of a method of control. Once you no longer know who you are, you could be convinced of anything. The memories gradually replaced with ones that the magic user deemed more...useful. You were lucky Derek was able to discern that his motives were suspect. I doubt he'd ever attempted to control an Alpha before."
"Alpha, we heard one of the rogue werewolves we fought call Derek that. What is it?"
Deaton pauses, the book falling shut when he moves his hand.
"You'll understand when you get your memory back. It would be easier for you if I didn't have to explain everything."
"Easier for us to go through with it you mean?" Stiles guesses
Deaton looks at Stiles, though he doesn't seem surprised.
"Yes," he says at last, and Stiles isn't expecting him to be so honest. He gives him points for it. "I think it will be easier for you that way."
"So how are we supposed to get our memories back anyway," Stiles asks. "More magic? Because I have to be honest, we've both kind of had our fill of that."
"Tea," Deaton says.
Stiles stares at him. "Tea? You're serious?"
Deaton raises his hands apologetically at Stiles's expression.
"I'm aware how it sounds. But you'd be surprised how many ways the body can be convinced to throw off magical influence. Though it'll be easier for you than it is for Derek, some of the herbs involved don't react well with werewolves."
Stiles moves back into Derek, and Deaton watches curiously, though his face is giving nothing away now.
"It won't be dangerous?" Stiles isn't prepared to risk anything without answers.
Deaton shakes his head.
"No, not dangerous, just unpleasant."
"I can live with unpleasant," Derek says quietly.
Deaton looks between then again, as if he's trying to read something, and Stiles tries his best to give him nothing. Because he gets the feeling something about them - something about them has surprised the hell out of Deaton, and he doesn't like that idea at all.
"I have a few things to prepare. Come in when you're ready." Deaton gives them one last look, and then heads deeper into the clinic, through a small door. They both stare after him, until Stiles can't hear him any more.
Derek's leans into his shoulder, grips his waist.
"I'll go first if you want."
"No." Stiles shakes his head. "No, if it's dangerous for you I want to know if it works first. If something goes wrong, you're stronger than me, you're faster than me."
"If anything goes wrong, I'll kill him," Derek says simply. His hands flex tight on Stiles's waist, and they're reluctant to let go when Stiles turns in his grip.
"He's your friend, remember," Stiles says, with a shrug and a huff of laughter. "I'm good, I can do this. This is what needs to happen, right? We get our memories back, we go back to being who we were. Who we are - who we're meant to be. God, it sounds so final like that."
Derek's face isn't trying to hide anything - and Stiles doesn't want to leave him like this.
"It'll be ok, we started this together. We'll be fine." He rubs his hands on his jeans, wonders why it feels like he's lying. He looks at the door. This feels like an end. It shouldn't feel like an end. But suddenly he needs - he needs to make sure that Derek knows.
"Derek?"
Derek moves a little closer, nods like Stiles wanted confirmation that this would be ok. But that isn't what Stiles wants. His throat feels too dry to speak, jammed tight full of things he probably shouldn't say. But he'll never get another chance, there will never be another go at this.
"I love you," Stiles says, quickly, before he can change his mind. He feels a little bit sick, because Derek looks like he's been gutted. "Just, no matter what happens after I'm me again, old me, I mean whoever Stiles Stilinski is. I don't even care, I just have to say that. I won't be me any more after this, not this me. I'll be gone, and whoever I am - I just had to say it. You have no idea how much I needed to say it. Before it happens, and I'm not...who I am now." It hasn't even been two months since - it hasn't even been two months, and this is insane. But Stiles figures if whoever he was before was in love with Derek, then it makes sense. It's not new, it's just something else he'd forgotten.
But something cold and solid in his chest wants to tell Derek he doesn't want to do this. They don't have to do this, they could leave. They could leave and be whoever they wanted to be.
He doesn't say any of it. He doesn't, he just gets up on shaky legs, and goes to find Deaton.
*****
Stiles thinks it'll be gradual. He thinks the memories will come back slowly, maybe he'll remember his name, his childhood, parents, siblings. As if the amnesia is like a fog rolling over the hills, and it just needs to be blown away. But it's not like that at all. It's like waking up from a dream, where you've forgotten who you are, where you've forgotten everything. One moment Stiles doesn't know anything about himself, about his old self.
And then he remembers everything.
Deaton gives him a look that's all sympathy, and Stiles doesn't even know what his face looks like. But whatever's there, it makes Deaton come closer, lay a hand on his shoulder and grip tightly, as if he's afraid Stiles is going to fall.
It's so fucking ironic that he's laughing, and it sounds awful, but he doesn't know how to stop.
*****
Stiles goes home.
He doesn't know what else to do.
His dad looks at him like he's a ghost. He looks old and brittle, and too thin in his uniform. He cries, and hugs Stiles hard enough to hurt, hard enough that he can feel it all the way down to his bones. Stiles feels awful, feels gutted out and horrible, because he didn't know, he didn't even try. It had been so easy when he didn't know anything. When he didn't have to think about the people that might have been looking for him. Stiles feels bruised all the way through, bruised and betrayed somehow, by his old self, by his own stupidity. By the fact that he throws himself into everything so hard, without thinking. Betrayed by Derek, a little.
He sits in his room, eating sandwiches he can't taste, talking to cops he doesn't recognise. He has no idea which parts to lie about, so he lies about almost all of it. He had amnesia, he was out of state, he hung around with some people who were into magic, no, he didn't know any of their real names, they disappeared without telling him. He didn't go to the police because he thought maybe he was on the run. He has no idea if his story is coherent or believable. But eventually they leave him alone. Eventually they leave.
His dad's too afraid to leave him though. He sits next to him on the bed, asks him if there's anything Stiles wants to tell him. But Stiles doesn't know how to explain any of it. Doesn't know how to tell him that he'd killed people, while he was gone, and it was the right thing to do. So he says nothing, he listens to his dad talk in a voice made raspy-hoarse by relief. He stares at the familiar walls of his room, and tries to feel like himself again.
His dad tells him how worried everyone had been, how much it had hurt Scott to not be able to find him.
Scott. Oh my God, Scott.
It's so hard to eat sandwiches when you're crying.
So fucking hard.
*****
The Hale house doesn't look like Stiles remembers.
Someone has been fixing it. There's new wood, new walls, the porch is longer, the stairs have been replaced, and there's a light on in one of the windows. Which is definitely new, new and strange, because the last Stiles remembers there hadn't been electricity. You were more likely to cut yourself on the old wiring than light anything with it. It stops him in his tracks for a minute, because he's not expecting it. You expect to come back to everything the same, and it's like missing a step in your brain when it isn't.
He wonders who it was, who decided to rebuild it. Peter, Scott, Isaac, Erica and Boyd?
Sometimes Stiles forgets it was barely a month and a half. It feels like he was gone for so much longer. It feels like he was gone forever. Trying to put himself back into his life, and finding he doesn't fit the way he used to, edges that keep grating against the outline of who he used to be. It makes him angry, and sad, and it confuses the hell out of him.
It's been a week, and Derek hasn't come to him. Stiles had been angry about that, so fucking angry. Until he'd realised that Derek couldn't come to him. That maybe he was just as adrift and terrified as Stiles was.
He stands on the lawn next to his Jeep, because he can't go any further. It had taken pretty much everything he had just to get here. Whatever he'd had left, after dealing with his dad, and the cops, and Scott. Nothing fits properly any more. He doesn't know what he's doing any more.
And suddenly Derek is just there, in the darkness next to him, shoulders drawn in. Which shouldn't make it easier to breathe and harder at the same time, but it does. Derek doesn't speak. Which is kind of a blessing, because Stiles doesn't know how to talk to him any more. But he figures that's honest without being - without being something he can't say.
"I don't know how to talk to you any more," he admits.
Derek looks like he's trying so hard not to wince at that. Not to feel it. Though his shoulders are hunched up like he's feeling everything else.
"Just talk to me," he says, and Stiles has a sharp, unhelpful memory of Derek saying something a lot like that two weeks ago, curled lazily against his back, fingers digging into the bend of his waist - he shakes it off. Because it's not helping.
"Are you going to talk back? Are we going to have conversations? I don't even know if we're friends. We're not - we're not anything else any more."
Derek turns to stare at the house, before Stiles can catch what's on his face. It takes a long minute before he realises Derek doesn't have an answer to that.
"The house looks good," Stiles offers, just for something to say. For something to keep them both here.
"Isaac." It sounds like it's hard for Derek to say his name. "Isaac wanted to fix it, they didn't know whether I was coming back."
"Are you ok with that?" Stiles asks. "That they've been working on it, I mean."
Derek shrugs. "Yeah, it was - I'm not sure I would have done. Maybe it's better that someone else did. That someone else tore down the parts that needed it, rebuilt the pieces they could." Derek swallows and goes quiet.
Stiles takes a breath, pushes at the conversation.
"I always got the feeling that you wanted to keep it as it was, that you felt...responsible or something."
Stiles looks at Derek, at the soft, uncertain, confused way he looks back. It's a familiar look. But Stiles knows what Derek looks like braced over him now, mouth open, murmuring his name, over and over, and his heart just clenches. He's suddenly staring at the house himself, rather than looking at Derek. Because he can't, he really can't. Derek doesn't say anything about how fast his heartbeat is. About how Stiles probably smells like sweat, and arousal, and confusion - all broken into pieces.
He just stares into the dark, because he can.
"It's -" Stiles wets his mouth, desperately, tries to put his thoughts in order. Because he has to get some of it out, there's just too much of it. "It's like I'm two people now, and I can't be both of them. There's the me that went on a road trip, and killed monsters, and lived out of motel rooms, and had you, and there's the me that's still seventeen, and in school, and trying to deal with the fact that my best friend is a werewolf, and still desperately trying to find something to be really good at."
He clenches his hands into fists and moves, because he has to, faces Derek, shoes shifting in the dirt.
"I can't put them together. They don't fit together. They're both me, and they're both wrong, and I don't even know what that is. How can I feel like a kid when I spent a month and a half not being a kid - I spent that time killing people that deserved it, and not knowing I wasn't supposed to be that person, and then there was you, and I didn't know. I didn't know, Derek. You didn't have a history, I wasn't afraid of you, and you didn't remember either, and it was easy."
Stiles shakes his head and pushes his hands into his pockets. He genuinely has no idea what he's supposed to do. There's a crack right down the middle of - of everything, and he wants to fix it, and he's terrified of it, and angry. Because everything he had was a lie. What's he supposed to say?
"It was my first time, you know," he says, awkwardly, embarrassed as hell, but it just comes out, and he has no idea why. "I had never even kissed anyone, but you kept saying - and I just assumed. I thought I'd just forgotten everything, I thought that was why it all felt so strange. I'm probably the only person to lose my virginity and not even realise it. But I was completely willing, because I thought that was what we did."
Derek looks torn open.
"Stiles, I'm -"
"Don't say you're sorry," Stiles says, so angry he can almost taste it. "Don't you fucking dare say you're sorry, for any of it."
Derek goes stiff beside him, then curls into himself in what feels like defeat.
"God, Derek, I know that it's all different now. I know that your life is more fucked up than we ever could have imagined, and you have Isaac, and Erica, and Boyd, and Peter. I know that we thought everything made sense and we got it all wrong. It wouldn't be the first time we've got it wrong. We've proven how good we are at that. I know that you don't want me -"
Stiles has to stop then and take a breath, and another. The third breath comes out as noise, and he bites down on it, because he won't, he won't.
Derek's hand is on the back of his neck, suddenly heavy, palm hot over the fading marks he'd left there, and Stiles shudders and shakes him off, because there is so much sense memory there, and it's all wrong.
"Don't act like him. I can't - I can't deal with this if you act like him. You can't touch me and not be him."
"I am him." Derek sounds angry too now.
"You're not," Stiles says thickly. "You're really not - but I wish -"
Then Derek's hand is back on his neck, forehead pressed hard against Stiles's temple, and he's breathing so hard, so impossibly hard. Stiles feels like he's drowning, but Derek won't move his hand from the back of his neck. He won't let him go under.
"I knew something bad would happen if I remembered. I knew I wouldn't get to - this is why I didn't want to do it."
"You didn't want to remember?" Derek asks, and there's quiet surprise there, raw underneath the anger.
"No, I wanted to keep you." Stiles doesn't register how honest that is until after he's said it, and he's shaking his head, trying to force words out, trying to explain, to deflect. But Derek's fingers are dragging in his hair, a painfully familiar sensation - and then he's moving him, pressing him back against the hood of the Jeep. Derek kisses him, and it's familiar and different at the same time. Stiles shouldn't know how to do this, he shouldn't be allowed to grip Derek's hair and kiss him exactly the way he remembers, or maybe not exactly, because this is angry, this is desperate, and Stiles is aware, all of a sudden, of all the things that he isn't. But Derek doesn't stop kissing him, doesn't care. Until Stiles's mouth is his own again, and Derek's staring at it like he did something wrong, or as if he doesn't think he's allowed to do that any more.
"What you said, before you left." It comes out gritty and hard.
"Don't you dare use that against me," Stiles says desperately. "You were everything I had. So don't you dare tell me it shouldn't have happened, or you regret it, or we're going to pretend it never happened. Because, fuck you, I'm not even capable of that right now."
Derek grips the back of his neck and shakes, hard.
"I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry for any of it. Don't you get that this is killing me too? I chose you, and I don't regret it. I would still fucking die for you. But I'm not him, I can't be him."
Stiles shakes his head, because Derek is so stupid sometimes.
"Just tell me what you want?" He says, because he's tired and that's the only thing he wants to know right now. "Just be honest with me."
"You," Derek says, without even hesitating. "I want you." Derek's hand slides up his wrist, pushing his shirt up to his elbow and Stiles's stomach stops churning, like it just wanted Derek to touch him. "I want what we had." The words come out in pieces.
"Derek."
Stiles gets hauled against the solid weight of Derek's chest, hands on his hips, pulling him in tight enough that his feet almost leave the floor.
"You're not carrying me into the house you caveman," Stiles says, with a snort that sounds a touch hysterical. But Derek already has his face buried in Stiles's neck, and they're doing this. They're actually doing this. This is insane.
Derek pulls him, in stumbling steps, to the porch.
"Who's in there?" Stiles gets out, because he doesn't want to deal with anyone else right now.
"No one," Derek says stiffly. "When I heard you coming I told them all to leave."
"What did you tell them, about what happened?"
Derek shakes his head, one jerky movement.
"Its not for anyone else," he says firmly, and Stiles feels warm and a little bit broken inside.
Derek tugs him up the stairs, and holds him against the wall, fingers gentle on the edge of his shirt, barely brushing his stomach as he slides it up. Stiles rolls his eyes, and digs his fingers tight into Derek's skin.
"It's not like we haven't done this before," he points out. So many times. Derek scowls at him, like he's made a really awful joke, and Stiles laughs and leans in to press his mouth there. Because Derek is still in there, planed and shredded and bleeding a little, but he's still there.
Derek's bedroom has new floorboards and new paint on the walls, but no bed, just a sad mattress pushed into a corner. They didn't try and make anything of it. Hoping he'd come back, maybe.
"Nothing smells like you," Derek says fiercely. "It's like being gutted, do you have any idea what that's like?"
Yes, Stiles thinks. God, yes.
"Shut up, shut up," Stiles says, and bites him.
He thinks it's going to be strange, that it's going to be awkward, because Derek is Derek again, and Stiles is Stiles. But their bodies already know each other too well. Know how to fit together, know how and when to push. They don't have to be careful. But Derek doesn't seem to know that yet. Because he is careful, stripping Stiles impatiently, but without any force. There's a shaken control about him. Which is the Derek Stiles remembers, not the one he - not the one he knows. That control doesn't leave, it's still there when they press together, when Stiles digs his fingers into Derek's back and hisses encouragement, when he wraps a leg around his waist and takes him, all of him.
"Come on, Derek, come on," Stiles snaps impatiently. "You fucked me harder than this after we killed Marcus."
Derek growls at him, and pins him, and he stops holding back, stops treating Stiles like he's something different, someone different. There are large hands on his thighs, and Stiles fists a hand in Derek's hair, and bites at his shoulder. He braces himself with one hand against the wall, when Derek curls over him and into him, and it's just weight and strength and short, hard thrusts into his body, that make him feel like he's shaking apart.
Until he does.
Later, so many minutes, too many to count, or remember. Derek turns his face into Stiles's neck and exhales, like he hasn't since they came back. Stiles pins him to the mattress with all the limbs that still work. Thoughts a blur of before, and after, and now.
"I didn't stop feeling any of it," Derek murmurs, against his ear, and Stiles knows, he knows.
Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Pairing: Derek/Stiles
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: 2x12
Word Count: 32,000
Warnings: Amnesia, violence
Disclaimer: In no way mine, or anything to do with me, I own nothing.
Summary: He doesn't know his name, he doesn't know who he is, and neither does the werewolf he's on the run with. But he's pretty sure they hunt monsters, because they seem to be really good at it.
Frain's apartment is in a nice part of town, quiet and upscale. Magic and child-murder apparently pays really well. Or maybe when you go to ground with powerful magical artifacts you didn't want to stand out from the crowd. It probably wouldn't do to have magical symbols daubed all over the walls, a few animated corpses guarding the door. That kind of shit can bring down the tone of the whole neighbourhood.
"He's in there isn't he?" Stiles asks, because even though he can't hear anything, or smell anything, he knows that Derek can.
"Someone's in there," Derek confirms, mouth twisted in a scowl. "The whole place stinks of them."
They make their way round the back, and Stiles is checking every patch of grass, every part of the wall, for the same semi-circle pattern that was in the house. He's checking for any pattern at all, any writing, anything that looks out of place, or that looks like a trap. He doesn't see anything, but he's careful where he puts his feet anyway. He tries to be ready for things he might not be able to see.
"There should be some sort of protection here. I made notes about what to look out for, but there was so much of it. I wish I remembered more about this stuff." Stiles wants to reach out, wants to stop Derek from pushing on ahead. He doesn't know whether that's paranoia or common sense. But it's strong enough to rattle him more than he is already.
"Maybe he doesn't feel like he needs protection," Derek says darkly.
Stiles doesn't want to think about the possibility that this might be a guy who really doesn't need to put up protection. Or leave any guards. If the stone is as powerful as the book suggests. Their plan is fairly simple, kill the witch - but putting it into practice, that's another thing entirely. He wishes he'd brought the gun.
"Or maybe someone broke it already?" Stiles guesses. "You said the place stank of them." The door's not locked. But then maybe witches don't bother with security. Stiles carefully pushes the door open, and Derek holds him in the doorway, doesn't let him go past it.
"I'm going first," he says, hard, grating, and Stiles already knows that there will be no argument about this. Nothing he's going to win anyway. Whether he likes it or not.
-
The whole apartment's dark, and it stretches away, in both directions. Looming shadows of furniture and lamps, the vague outline of doorways. There isn't enough light to get a good idea of the interior. But Derek only gets a foot inside before he stops.
"What? What?" Stiles tangles a hand in the back of his shirt, pulls hard enough to actually get Derek swaying back a step, so Stiles can see past him.
There's a body on the floor. Sprawled at Derek's feet, limbs stretched out on the carpet in a way that says it was trying to drag itself towards the door. Its dry, brown skin is sunken into its bones, and the face looks like it's been melted by something. It's still smoking faintly, though it doesn't smell, at least not to him. Stiles thinks he should be able to smell it. Even though he really, really doesn't want to. He takes a jittery step back, and knocks into Derek.
"Holy crap, it's like he looked into the Ark of the Covenant or something," Stiles says, because there really is no better way to describe it. He knows because he's trying to think of one. But Derek has a hand on his shoulder, turning him slowly. "Jesus Christ." Stiles's voice comes out thin, tapers off at the end. Because there's not just the one body at the door. The bodies are everywhere. They're strewn across the apartment. The messy, half-lit aftermath of what had to have been a fight. Some barely look as though they were touched, others are a mess of broken bones and blood. Some of them are in pieces, and there's another like the man inside the door, next to the shadow of the couch. There's even a statue against the far window, which Stiles has the awful feeling used to be a person. Now hunched in on itself, stony and misshapen.
Stiles can hear Derek breathing beside him, and he wants to reach out, wants to step back, wants to do pretty much anything but venture further into the apartment. But he takes one shuffling, silent step forward, swallows down something hysterical, chokes it back until he can breathe again. He makes himself deal with this.
"Do you think one of them's Frain." Stiles hears himself say, and he has no idea how he can sound so normal standing in the middle of this. For all that he's trying, he still has no idea how he manages it.
"No," Derek says, and he curls an arm round Stiles's waist, pulling him back into the curve of his body, already looking up in the direction of the bedroom doorway.
It's not entirely dark, there's a lamp lit in there somewhere, and Stiles never heard the door open, but it must have done. There's a man standing in the shadows, emaciated, pale and sweaty. His skin looks like it's been stretched over his skull - but too hard, it's already tearing in places. He has no hair, and one of his cheeks is hollowed in, like his teeth are just gone. He's half slumped against the wall, Stone of Echoes burning a sickly green where it hangs against his bare chest. His fingernails are clawed into the wall, as if he's trying to hold himself up, and his chest is heaving. But his eyes are fixed firmly on them.
"Oh my God," Stiles says, he can't help himself. He thinks it's safe to assume that this is Andrew Frain.
"Well, well, more visitors. I am blessed." Frain's voice rustles out of his throat in dry bursts.
Stiles's horror must be obvious.
"I'm not what you expected?" Frain sounds amused, though there's a stiff edge to it, one that says his amusement doesn't always end well for other people.
"What did it do to you?" Stiles hears himself say. Because that's the only thing he can think of right now. Frain looks like he's being eaten alive from the inside.
"It did what it's supposed do," Frain says, like he's not offended at all. "Test its wearer, test their conviction, their determination." Frain takes two heaving breaths, and works his way further along the wall, bare feet soundless on the carpet, like he weighs nothing at all. "But it's so impossibly hungry, all the time. It's never enough." The words are snapped out, in that dry-branch voice. Spit's gathering at the corner of his mouth, the foam of dehydration.
Stiles is pretty sure he still looks horrified, because Frain laughs, a croak that sounds demented and hoarse.
"We always think we can control what can't be controlled, don't we? We lie to ourselves. We always think we're better - think that we're more than we are." Frain uses the wall to take another step forward. It looks painful, he looks like he'll snap if he moves too fast. But his hands are crackling faintly, with slow blue fire. Stiles is afraid to move. Frain's practically a corpse but he's still the most terrifying things Stiles has ever seen. For all that he hasn't had time to see much. "But I still have more than enough power to destroy you," Frain says thinly. "To destroy you in a hundred ways. Whenever I please."
Derek tugs Stiles back a step, and Frain doesn't even gesture - but the door slams shut behind them, hard, in a way that says it won't be opening for them, even if they try. The angry crunch of wood expanding in its frame.
"You've been following me North, I've felt you. Who are you?"
It's such an easy question. But it's one of the only ones Stiles can't answer.
"We don't know," he admits, and it sounds stupid coming out of his mouth. To admit to that of all things, ten feet away from a man that would be happy to kill them both, whether they know anything or not.
But Frain nods like he isn't surprised.
"You met Sebastian, that was always his favourite trick. Steal a person's life, make them yours. I shall assume you're hunters then, though I've never heard of any of them using attack dogs." He sends a pointed look Derek's way.
Derek snarls at him, but Frain simply laughs.
"You stay for the boy then. Curious, if not very interesting. You came here to kill me, with barely any magical protection, no memory, no weapons. Forgive me for judging you both harshly."
"It looks like you're doing a good job of killing yourself already," Derek says quietly, and he's right. Andrew Frain's skin is taking on a paper-thin look.
"But you still hoped to try," Frain says slowly, and it's not hard to see how incredulous he is at the idea. "Do you have any idea how many witches have tried? Not just witches, werewolves too, and I recall a very persistent skinwalker, and a fetch, though they weren't much of a threat after I killed their better half. So many people hoping that greed, and anger, and arrogance would be enough to destroy me and take what was mine. They were all wrong, of course." He stops, stares right at Stiles. "How old are you?"
Stiles tries to move back, instinctively. But there's nowhere else to go. Frain laughs at his expression. A jerky, crackling series of heaves.
"Oh, don't worry, the stone wouldn't want you, the wolf has already ruined you, in all the ways that count." Frain looks honestly disappointed, then disgusted, and Stiles clenches his fists and fucking seethes.
"And the children that you fed to that thing," he says stiffly. "They didn't matter at all. They were just what...resources?"
Derek's fingers pinch into Stiles's arm, like he wants to pull him back, or pull him behind him. Stiles is fairly certain that Derek knows him well enough by now to realise he won't go. Frain looks as brittle as an eggshell, Stiles could probably go over there and push him over, and he'd shatter into a thousand pieces. But somehow he's still terrifying. The way he's crawling his way along the plaster, stick-thin legs folding and moving like the legs of a bird, face made impossibly more hollow by the green glow of the stone.
Even Derek is growling quietly beside him.
"No one has the conviction to go through with things any more," Frain says, voice firmer than before. "We're the last of us a dying breed. The ones determined to do what must be done and not look back." He's still scraping his way along the wall, towards them, bone-thin hands flickering and sparking. "Willing to do whatever was necessary, no matter the cost, to change the world. To mold it in our image."
The click of his teeth is audible now, and low as his voice is, Frain still makes it burn somehow. One more step and he coughs, knees going out of him. He raises his head in their direction, as if deciding how he wants to kill them.
"They were no challenge at all you know. They came to me, to steal from me, but they didn't realise the power of the stone. They didn't realise its potential. What it could do, what it wanted to do. They didn't realise -" Frain is almost close enough to reach out and touch them now, where they're backed up against the door. "They didn't know that it was never meant for anything human." It's soft, distant, like a realisation, and there's a soft, dry sound, like twigs breaking. Stiles thinks Frain's trying to laugh again. Then the witch is sliding down the wall, body folding with dry little cracks. Until he's against the carpet, all shriveled, pale limbs and cracking skin.
In less than a minute Andrew Frain is a dry husk at their feet.
The light on the stone goes out.
Stiles breathes out shakily. Then again, loud and rough. Because they are officially the luckiest people alive. If Frain hadn't emptied himself out fighting whoever had tracked him here. They'd be part of the mess on the carpet.
"Jesus," Stiles says softly and his mouth tastes like tin. "Jesus." He relaxes in Derek's grip, goes to take a step forward.
"Don't touch it," Derek snarls, fingers biting in hard enough to hurt.
"Wasn't going to," Stiles reassures him. "Don't actually want to go near it, if I'm being honest. But we can't leave it there."
*****
The Stone Of Echoes is behind the motel toilet, wrapped in two plastic bags, a shirt and another plastic bag, and then taped up with heavy duty duct tape. It had been an unbelievable pain in the ass trying to wrap it without touching it. The book said it only affected those who had magical ability, But Stiles wasn't taking any chances with it. Not after seeing up close what it could do. He wasn't risking his life on the assumption that he wasn't magical. Derek had been pretty adamant about that too.
Stiles scratches absently at the back of his neck, then winces when his nails encounter the red, raised skin, because he keeps forgetting. Derek hadn't been lying when he'd said it would hurt. Stiles would be pissed at him, but Derek can't stop touching it, can't stop tugging his shirt aside and looking at it, as if he can't believe Stiles said yes.
The TV's on in the background, someone blaring on about some Sheriff's kid that's still missing. Stiles isn't really listening. He's not listening at all when Derek comes out of the bathroom, wearing a very small towel, and water droplets, and absolutely nothing else. He must appreciate the way Stiles is looking at him, because he smirks at him, pulls the pen out of his mouth, kisses him, and then shoves it back in.
"You're kind of rude," Stiles says around the pen. "No manners at all."
"Raised by wolves," Derek agrees, stretching out on the bed beside him, jostling Stiles's typing enough to turn the last two words into nonsense.
"Next you'll be wanting to pee on me."
"Not unless you want me to," Derek says, while flicking idly through one of the magazines he'd found in the trunk of the car. Stiles suspects that was a joke. It's hard to tell, because Derek's joking voice sounds a lot like his ordinary voice. Oddly enough his angry voice tends to sound more like he's joking than his joking voice. Because Derek likes to be contrary, just to throw people off. Or at least that's the excuse Stiles is going for. He hits Derek with a pillow anyway.
"I think we need to talk about the thing we haven't been talking about," Stiles shuts the laptop and looks at him. "Frain's dead - it's - that's what we were waiting for, isn't it? We were waiting until after he was dead. I know you've been really quiet about it." Stiles pauses, but Derek's face is giving him nothing yet. "But I think it's time we phone your friend, Deaton."
Derek frowns. "I don't know him, I don't trust him."
"You don't trust anyone you can't smell," Stiles says, nudging him with a shoulder. "But Frain's dead, there are no witches left to ask about our memories. Not to mention we still need to know what to do with the stone. He's helped us before. We know that much. He knows who we are, he can tell us who we are." Derek has to want to know who he is, because Stiles does, even though he's afraid of it too. He always did, there was just so much going on, so much to finish. But now it's all done, and no matter how easy it would be to get distracted by something else - it's time.
"He might be a witch. He might want to use it," Derek doesn't look at him, but Stiles can read his frown sideways, his uncertainty. He thinks it's the same as his own - thinks it comes from the same place as his own.
"We have to trust someone eventually," Stiles says quietly. Someone other than each other.
"I do trust someone," Derek says, and stares at Stiles until he has to look away.
"Ok, so we ask him how to destroy it. If he wants us to bring it to him we refuse. We find another way, we phone Boyd, or Isaac or Erica. You must have friends we can trust. We have to know, we have to know Derek." They have to know eventually, and the longer they leave it, the harder it will be. Derek has to know that.
"Don't tell him that we don't know who we are," Derek says at last. "Don't - don't give him anything he can use."
Stiles has to wonder what happened to Derek, to make trust so hard for him. To make him expect people to take things from him, if he doesn't hold them tightly enough. He wonders how many skeletons they have in their closets that will hurt like hell coming back. But he can't think like that.
"Dude, I don't think I can fool someone who knows us," he says instead. "We don't even know if our names are our real names. He's going to know we're not right. He's going to know straight away when I don't know who he is. This is - we did what we had to do, and we need to fix ourselves - don't look at me like that, I know we're not broken - but even if we can't trust him, we still need his help." Stiles is already pulling the folded piece of paper out of their bag.
Derek doesn't stop him, doesn't try and convince him not to, and Stiles knows that costs him something. To let Stiles trust someone else.
Stiles dials the hastily scribbled number. It rings four times before someone picks it up. Someone soft-voiced, Stiles was expecting something rougher, no nonsense, kind of grizzled. At least that was the picture he'd had in his head. The voice on the phone isn't like that at all, and it throws him for a second.
"Is this Deaton?" he asks. Not as confidently as he'd been going for.
There's a pause on the other end. Filled with nothing but silence.
"Stiles?" There's surprise there, and a lot of disbelief. But there's familiarity too, and his name, his name is apparently right.
Derek comes closer, maybe so he can hear the conversation better, pick up noise in the background, or maybe just so he can lean against Stiles's back. So he can slide a hand down to curl around Stiles's wrist.
"Yeah," he offers, uncertain what else to say. "We think we need your help Deaton, or I guess it's Mr Deaton? I'm sorry, I don't know."
"Stiles, where are you?" He's expecting the confusion, but not the urgency.
Stiles doesn't answer that. He doesn't need the squeeze on his wrist to remind him not to.
"We have something of a memory situation. Meaning we have very little of it, and I'm phoning you because your number was in Derek's phone. There are notes which I'm pretty sure were made by you, and I think you give us supplies, or something. So you must know things. I think we should trust you but -"
"Derek's with you." That's definitely relief, more surprise as well though.
"Yeah, yeah he is." And his name apparently really is Derek. Which is...kind of unexpected actually. "He's here too, but he - er - doesn't want to trust you."
"That sounds a lot like Derek. But a lot of people are very worried about you, both of you. We all assumed the worst when we didn't hear from you. We thought you were both dead - and it's a relief to know that you're not."
Stiles isn't sure whether to reassure Deaton that they're both ok or not. He's talking to them like he knows them, but to Stiles he's just a strange voice on the end of a phone.
"We don't know who we are." Stiles looks over his shoulder at Derek, but he squeezes his hand, encouraging him to go on. "We know our names, from our ID, but that's about it. We remember things, but nothing about us."
"Did you by any chance encounter an animal statue, something like a jaguar, roughly a foot high," Deaton says hurriedly.
"Yes," Stiles says. "I remember that. I definitely remember that. Is that what did this?"
"I can help, both of you. You need to come see me."
"It's a little bit more complicated than that." Stiles takes a breath. "We have the Stone of Echoes."
There's a sharply indrawn breath on the other end of the phone.
"How the hell - my God, Stiles, please tell me you didn't touch it."
Stiles frowns at Derek.
"I didn't touch it. We need to know how to destroy it." Stiles holds his breath and waits. Waits to see if Derek's friend can be trusted.
Deaton sighs, and Stiles thinks he knows he's being tested.
"You'll have to melt it down, extreme heat will destroy the fixings and the base, and the stone must be smashed. But after that, please, Stiles you need to come home. You have no idea what your disappearance did to - "
Stiles's fingers are sweaty and too tight on the phone. He can barely feel his fingertips any more. He didn't even realise he was squeezing it that hard.
"Where's home? Where's home for us?"
There's a longer pause, and Stiles can't read anything in it, but Derek's hands curl round his arms from behind, and grip tight.
"Beacon Hills. I think you both need to come and see me. I run a veterinary clinic in town."
"You're a veterinarian?" Stiles says incredulously.
"Among other things. Stiles, can I talk to Derek?"
Stiles holds the phone out. It takes Derek a second to actually take it. He watches Derek's face. Deaton does more talking than he does, and Stiles can't hear any of it. He doesn't have the hearing to pick up anything but the steady drone of sound. All he really gets from Derek's face is confusion, before he hangs up.
"Do you think we should trust him?" Stiles asks.
"I think we need to go and find out either way." There's reluctance in Derek's voice, but they both know they have to do this. That they need to do this, find their way back to who they're supposed to be - even if something in Stiles twists sharply at the thought of it. As if he's not good enough as he is, with half his pieces missing.
He exhales roughly.
"So, we destroy the stone, and then go back to Beacon Hills. You do realise the place sounds like it's full of witches? It sounds like it is literally a town settled by witches. It could be, I wouldn't know. I wouldn't be able to tell."
Stiles takes Derek's phone from him, scrolls through the call history to find Deaton's number, he doesn't know why, he doesn't know what he's doing.
"I'd know," Derek promises.
"Of course you would," Stiles agrees. "Because you're a creeper, and you like to smell things with your super senses. Hey, it could just be a hill with a beacon on it, wouldn't that would be hilarious?" Stiles is babbling, too fast and too hoarse, thoughts spiralling together in a way he can't seem to stop.
Derek catches him, before he can start pacing his way across the room.
"You're scared," Derek says simply.
"Dude, yes, I'm fucking terrified." He's not afraid to admit it. Because this is it, this is the end of the road. This is wherever they go home to, if they have a home, family, friends. Or none of the above. "Aren't you?"
Derek doesn't say anything, but Stiles knows how to read his face now.
*****
Beacon Hills is a nice place.
It's more than just a hill with a beacon on it. But it doesn't look like the sort of place anything terrible could start. It doesn't give the impression that anything threatening could live here. It just doesn't feel like the sort of place the both of them could come from. Stiles doesn't know if that's a bad sign or not. It leaves him uneasy, and it leaves Derek quiet - quieter than usual.
They head through town at night, avoiding contact with anyone just in case. Derek still isn't entirely sure if they should trust Deaton this much. But Stiles figures Derek had him in his contacts, and they're going to have to decide to trust someone at some point. They need to be themselves again. If this is really what they do, then they need to remember it. To know how to be good at it, to be better at it. But Stiles isn't going to pretend that the idea doesn't scare the shit out of him. He's not even joking a little bit. The thought of it leaves him shaking in the passenger seat of the car, folding and re-folding the maps, with the sort of attention to detail that would drive a lesser man mad. Derek just accepts the many times Stiles comes close to poking him in the face with an errant corner. But then, Stiles thinks maybe Derek is just as worried as he is. He's just hiding it better.
Deaton isn't what Stiles is expecting. He's smaller, friendlier, and has less beard that he'd been imagining. But the look he gives them - as if he never expected to see them again. This sort of relieved, shaken look. He doesn't look like he wears that expression often, and it's weird to meet someone who knows you so well, when you don't remember them at all. Stiles keeps expecting to find him familiar, for it to suddenly click, like the name of someone you haven't seen in a long time. But he's nothing - he's just a stranger.
"Come into the back," Deaton says, gesturing slowly towards an open door, pushing it slightly so they can see that there's no one else in there. So maybe he does know them as well as he's supposed to.
Stiles throws Derek a look, but Derek just lays his hand on Stiles's back, so he can fist his hand in the material of his jacket, and pull him back if necessary.
"I'm not a threat to you, I promise." Deaton's reassuring tone is good. Stiles wants him to be the sort of man that they can trust. But he clearly understands that they're not there yet. "Though I suppose that doesn't mean much at the moment, to either of you. I can understand how my motives and intentions are a complete mystery to you. But I swear I mean you no harm at all. "
Stiles shrugs, because the alternative is to stand here forever, or leave and try to muddle their way through this town on their own. So he follows Deaton, and Derek comes because he can't do anything else. The room Deaton leads them to is smaller, holding an examination table and some stacked up bags of dog biscuits. Stiles can't help the amused look he throws at him. Because he actually is a veterinarian. It's not just a cover for whatever he does on the side, and Stiles can't get his head around the idea of an evil veterinarian, which helps, a little.
"You both live in Beacon Hills," Deaton says quietly. "I think it'll be easier if I explain what was done to you." He reaches up to take a book from a shelf full of what looks like cat food, then settles it open on one of the silver tables. "Does this look familiar?" He taps his finger on the page, and Stiles goes close enough to see. He can already make out the shape of the animal statue though, the pronged curves of it that ended up in Derek's chest.
Derek nods over his shoulder. "That's it."
"Yeah," Stiles says. "That's one of the first things I saw when I woke up. The witch, Sebastian I think his name was, was trying to put it through Derek's chest."
"Magic that works on memory is very interesting," Deaton explains, and Stiles gets the feeling he has a lot of experience explaining things to people. "Is he still -"
"No, I killed him," Stiles says simply.
Deaton goes very still, like he's surprised by that, but he's trying very hard not to show it.
"I see. Well it's really more of a binding than an erasure. The memories have been... I suppose the easiest way to describe it is 'switched off.' You haven't been able to access them but they're still there."
"Why would anyone even do that?" Stiles asks. "It sounds like a really shitty way to attack someone."
Deaton's hand slides down the page, tapping at a symbol that seems to be related.
"Oh, it's not meant as an attack. It's more of a method of control. Once you no longer know who you are, you could be convinced of anything. The memories gradually replaced with ones that the magic user deemed more...useful. You were lucky Derek was able to discern that his motives were suspect. I doubt he'd ever attempted to control an Alpha before."
"Alpha, we heard one of the rogue werewolves we fought call Derek that. What is it?"
Deaton pauses, the book falling shut when he moves his hand.
"You'll understand when you get your memory back. It would be easier for you if I didn't have to explain everything."
"Easier for us to go through with it you mean?" Stiles guesses
Deaton looks at Stiles, though he doesn't seem surprised.
"Yes," he says at last, and Stiles isn't expecting him to be so honest. He gives him points for it. "I think it will be easier for you that way."
"So how are we supposed to get our memories back anyway," Stiles asks. "More magic? Because I have to be honest, we've both kind of had our fill of that."
"Tea," Deaton says.
Stiles stares at him. "Tea? You're serious?"
Deaton raises his hands apologetically at Stiles's expression.
"I'm aware how it sounds. But you'd be surprised how many ways the body can be convinced to throw off magical influence. Though it'll be easier for you than it is for Derek, some of the herbs involved don't react well with werewolves."
Stiles moves back into Derek, and Deaton watches curiously, though his face is giving nothing away now.
"It won't be dangerous?" Stiles isn't prepared to risk anything without answers.
Deaton shakes his head.
"No, not dangerous, just unpleasant."
"I can live with unpleasant," Derek says quietly.
Deaton looks between then again, as if he's trying to read something, and Stiles tries his best to give him nothing. Because he gets the feeling something about them - something about them has surprised the hell out of Deaton, and he doesn't like that idea at all.
"I have a few things to prepare. Come in when you're ready." Deaton gives them one last look, and then heads deeper into the clinic, through a small door. They both stare after him, until Stiles can't hear him any more.
Derek's leans into his shoulder, grips his waist.
"I'll go first if you want."
"No." Stiles shakes his head. "No, if it's dangerous for you I want to know if it works first. If something goes wrong, you're stronger than me, you're faster than me."
"If anything goes wrong, I'll kill him," Derek says simply. His hands flex tight on Stiles's waist, and they're reluctant to let go when Stiles turns in his grip.
"He's your friend, remember," Stiles says, with a shrug and a huff of laughter. "I'm good, I can do this. This is what needs to happen, right? We get our memories back, we go back to being who we were. Who we are - who we're meant to be. God, it sounds so final like that."
Derek's face isn't trying to hide anything - and Stiles doesn't want to leave him like this.
"It'll be ok, we started this together. We'll be fine." He rubs his hands on his jeans, wonders why it feels like he's lying. He looks at the door. This feels like an end. It shouldn't feel like an end. But suddenly he needs - he needs to make sure that Derek knows.
"Derek?"
Derek moves a little closer, nods like Stiles wanted confirmation that this would be ok. But that isn't what Stiles wants. His throat feels too dry to speak, jammed tight full of things he probably shouldn't say. But he'll never get another chance, there will never be another go at this.
"I love you," Stiles says, quickly, before he can change his mind. He feels a little bit sick, because Derek looks like he's been gutted. "Just, no matter what happens after I'm me again, old me, I mean whoever Stiles Stilinski is. I don't even care, I just have to say that. I won't be me any more after this, not this me. I'll be gone, and whoever I am - I just had to say it. You have no idea how much I needed to say it. Before it happens, and I'm not...who I am now." It hasn't even been two months since - it hasn't even been two months, and this is insane. But Stiles figures if whoever he was before was in love with Derek, then it makes sense. It's not new, it's just something else he'd forgotten.
But something cold and solid in his chest wants to tell Derek he doesn't want to do this. They don't have to do this, they could leave. They could leave and be whoever they wanted to be.
He doesn't say any of it. He doesn't, he just gets up on shaky legs, and goes to find Deaton.
*****
Stiles thinks it'll be gradual. He thinks the memories will come back slowly, maybe he'll remember his name, his childhood, parents, siblings. As if the amnesia is like a fog rolling over the hills, and it just needs to be blown away. But it's not like that at all. It's like waking up from a dream, where you've forgotten who you are, where you've forgotten everything. One moment Stiles doesn't know anything about himself, about his old self.
And then he remembers everything.
Deaton gives him a look that's all sympathy, and Stiles doesn't even know what his face looks like. But whatever's there, it makes Deaton come closer, lay a hand on his shoulder and grip tightly, as if he's afraid Stiles is going to fall.
It's so fucking ironic that he's laughing, and it sounds awful, but he doesn't know how to stop.
*****
Stiles goes home.
He doesn't know what else to do.
His dad looks at him like he's a ghost. He looks old and brittle, and too thin in his uniform. He cries, and hugs Stiles hard enough to hurt, hard enough that he can feel it all the way down to his bones. Stiles feels awful, feels gutted out and horrible, because he didn't know, he didn't even try. It had been so easy when he didn't know anything. When he didn't have to think about the people that might have been looking for him. Stiles feels bruised all the way through, bruised and betrayed somehow, by his old self, by his own stupidity. By the fact that he throws himself into everything so hard, without thinking. Betrayed by Derek, a little.
He sits in his room, eating sandwiches he can't taste, talking to cops he doesn't recognise. He has no idea which parts to lie about, so he lies about almost all of it. He had amnesia, he was out of state, he hung around with some people who were into magic, no, he didn't know any of their real names, they disappeared without telling him. He didn't go to the police because he thought maybe he was on the run. He has no idea if his story is coherent or believable. But eventually they leave him alone. Eventually they leave.
His dad's too afraid to leave him though. He sits next to him on the bed, asks him if there's anything Stiles wants to tell him. But Stiles doesn't know how to explain any of it. Doesn't know how to tell him that he'd killed people, while he was gone, and it was the right thing to do. So he says nothing, he listens to his dad talk in a voice made raspy-hoarse by relief. He stares at the familiar walls of his room, and tries to feel like himself again.
His dad tells him how worried everyone had been, how much it had hurt Scott to not be able to find him.
Scott. Oh my God, Scott.
It's so hard to eat sandwiches when you're crying.
So fucking hard.
*****
The Hale house doesn't look like Stiles remembers.
Someone has been fixing it. There's new wood, new walls, the porch is longer, the stairs have been replaced, and there's a light on in one of the windows. Which is definitely new, new and strange, because the last Stiles remembers there hadn't been electricity. You were more likely to cut yourself on the old wiring than light anything with it. It stops him in his tracks for a minute, because he's not expecting it. You expect to come back to everything the same, and it's like missing a step in your brain when it isn't.
He wonders who it was, who decided to rebuild it. Peter, Scott, Isaac, Erica and Boyd?
Sometimes Stiles forgets it was barely a month and a half. It feels like he was gone for so much longer. It feels like he was gone forever. Trying to put himself back into his life, and finding he doesn't fit the way he used to, edges that keep grating against the outline of who he used to be. It makes him angry, and sad, and it confuses the hell out of him.
It's been a week, and Derek hasn't come to him. Stiles had been angry about that, so fucking angry. Until he'd realised that Derek couldn't come to him. That maybe he was just as adrift and terrified as Stiles was.
He stands on the lawn next to his Jeep, because he can't go any further. It had taken pretty much everything he had just to get here. Whatever he'd had left, after dealing with his dad, and the cops, and Scott. Nothing fits properly any more. He doesn't know what he's doing any more.
And suddenly Derek is just there, in the darkness next to him, shoulders drawn in. Which shouldn't make it easier to breathe and harder at the same time, but it does. Derek doesn't speak. Which is kind of a blessing, because Stiles doesn't know how to talk to him any more. But he figures that's honest without being - without being something he can't say.
"I don't know how to talk to you any more," he admits.
Derek looks like he's trying so hard not to wince at that. Not to feel it. Though his shoulders are hunched up like he's feeling everything else.
"Just talk to me," he says, and Stiles has a sharp, unhelpful memory of Derek saying something a lot like that two weeks ago, curled lazily against his back, fingers digging into the bend of his waist - he shakes it off. Because it's not helping.
"Are you going to talk back? Are we going to have conversations? I don't even know if we're friends. We're not - we're not anything else any more."
Derek turns to stare at the house, before Stiles can catch what's on his face. It takes a long minute before he realises Derek doesn't have an answer to that.
"The house looks good," Stiles offers, just for something to say. For something to keep them both here.
"Isaac." It sounds like it's hard for Derek to say his name. "Isaac wanted to fix it, they didn't know whether I was coming back."
"Are you ok with that?" Stiles asks. "That they've been working on it, I mean."
Derek shrugs. "Yeah, it was - I'm not sure I would have done. Maybe it's better that someone else did. That someone else tore down the parts that needed it, rebuilt the pieces they could." Derek swallows and goes quiet.
Stiles takes a breath, pushes at the conversation.
"I always got the feeling that you wanted to keep it as it was, that you felt...responsible or something."
Stiles looks at Derek, at the soft, uncertain, confused way he looks back. It's a familiar look. But Stiles knows what Derek looks like braced over him now, mouth open, murmuring his name, over and over, and his heart just clenches. He's suddenly staring at the house himself, rather than looking at Derek. Because he can't, he really can't. Derek doesn't say anything about how fast his heartbeat is. About how Stiles probably smells like sweat, and arousal, and confusion - all broken into pieces.
He just stares into the dark, because he can.
"It's -" Stiles wets his mouth, desperately, tries to put his thoughts in order. Because he has to get some of it out, there's just too much of it. "It's like I'm two people now, and I can't be both of them. There's the me that went on a road trip, and killed monsters, and lived out of motel rooms, and had you, and there's the me that's still seventeen, and in school, and trying to deal with the fact that my best friend is a werewolf, and still desperately trying to find something to be really good at."
He clenches his hands into fists and moves, because he has to, faces Derek, shoes shifting in the dirt.
"I can't put them together. They don't fit together. They're both me, and they're both wrong, and I don't even know what that is. How can I feel like a kid when I spent a month and a half not being a kid - I spent that time killing people that deserved it, and not knowing I wasn't supposed to be that person, and then there was you, and I didn't know. I didn't know, Derek. You didn't have a history, I wasn't afraid of you, and you didn't remember either, and it was easy."
Stiles shakes his head and pushes his hands into his pockets. He genuinely has no idea what he's supposed to do. There's a crack right down the middle of - of everything, and he wants to fix it, and he's terrified of it, and angry. Because everything he had was a lie. What's he supposed to say?
"It was my first time, you know," he says, awkwardly, embarrassed as hell, but it just comes out, and he has no idea why. "I had never even kissed anyone, but you kept saying - and I just assumed. I thought I'd just forgotten everything, I thought that was why it all felt so strange. I'm probably the only person to lose my virginity and not even realise it. But I was completely willing, because I thought that was what we did."
Derek looks torn open.
"Stiles, I'm -"
"Don't say you're sorry," Stiles says, so angry he can almost taste it. "Don't you fucking dare say you're sorry, for any of it."
Derek goes stiff beside him, then curls into himself in what feels like defeat.
"God, Derek, I know that it's all different now. I know that your life is more fucked up than we ever could have imagined, and you have Isaac, and Erica, and Boyd, and Peter. I know that we thought everything made sense and we got it all wrong. It wouldn't be the first time we've got it wrong. We've proven how good we are at that. I know that you don't want me -"
Stiles has to stop then and take a breath, and another. The third breath comes out as noise, and he bites down on it, because he won't, he won't.
Derek's hand is on the back of his neck, suddenly heavy, palm hot over the fading marks he'd left there, and Stiles shudders and shakes him off, because there is so much sense memory there, and it's all wrong.
"Don't act like him. I can't - I can't deal with this if you act like him. You can't touch me and not be him."
"I am him." Derek sounds angry too now.
"You're not," Stiles says thickly. "You're really not - but I wish -"
Then Derek's hand is back on his neck, forehead pressed hard against Stiles's temple, and he's breathing so hard, so impossibly hard. Stiles feels like he's drowning, but Derek won't move his hand from the back of his neck. He won't let him go under.
"I knew something bad would happen if I remembered. I knew I wouldn't get to - this is why I didn't want to do it."
"You didn't want to remember?" Derek asks, and there's quiet surprise there, raw underneath the anger.
"No, I wanted to keep you." Stiles doesn't register how honest that is until after he's said it, and he's shaking his head, trying to force words out, trying to explain, to deflect. But Derek's fingers are dragging in his hair, a painfully familiar sensation - and then he's moving him, pressing him back against the hood of the Jeep. Derek kisses him, and it's familiar and different at the same time. Stiles shouldn't know how to do this, he shouldn't be allowed to grip Derek's hair and kiss him exactly the way he remembers, or maybe not exactly, because this is angry, this is desperate, and Stiles is aware, all of a sudden, of all the things that he isn't. But Derek doesn't stop kissing him, doesn't care. Until Stiles's mouth is his own again, and Derek's staring at it like he did something wrong, or as if he doesn't think he's allowed to do that any more.
"What you said, before you left." It comes out gritty and hard.
"Don't you dare use that against me," Stiles says desperately. "You were everything I had. So don't you dare tell me it shouldn't have happened, or you regret it, or we're going to pretend it never happened. Because, fuck you, I'm not even capable of that right now."
Derek grips the back of his neck and shakes, hard.
"I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry for any of it. Don't you get that this is killing me too? I chose you, and I don't regret it. I would still fucking die for you. But I'm not him, I can't be him."
Stiles shakes his head, because Derek is so stupid sometimes.
"Just tell me what you want?" He says, because he's tired and that's the only thing he wants to know right now. "Just be honest with me."
"You," Derek says, without even hesitating. "I want you." Derek's hand slides up his wrist, pushing his shirt up to his elbow and Stiles's stomach stops churning, like it just wanted Derek to touch him. "I want what we had." The words come out in pieces.
"Derek."
Stiles gets hauled against the solid weight of Derek's chest, hands on his hips, pulling him in tight enough that his feet almost leave the floor.
"You're not carrying me into the house you caveman," Stiles says, with a snort that sounds a touch hysterical. But Derek already has his face buried in Stiles's neck, and they're doing this. They're actually doing this. This is insane.
Derek pulls him, in stumbling steps, to the porch.
"Who's in there?" Stiles gets out, because he doesn't want to deal with anyone else right now.
"No one," Derek says stiffly. "When I heard you coming I told them all to leave."
"What did you tell them, about what happened?"
Derek shakes his head, one jerky movement.
"Its not for anyone else," he says firmly, and Stiles feels warm and a little bit broken inside.
Derek tugs him up the stairs, and holds him against the wall, fingers gentle on the edge of his shirt, barely brushing his stomach as he slides it up. Stiles rolls his eyes, and digs his fingers tight into Derek's skin.
"It's not like we haven't done this before," he points out. So many times. Derek scowls at him, like he's made a really awful joke, and Stiles laughs and leans in to press his mouth there. Because Derek is still in there, planed and shredded and bleeding a little, but he's still there.
Derek's bedroom has new floorboards and new paint on the walls, but no bed, just a sad mattress pushed into a corner. They didn't try and make anything of it. Hoping he'd come back, maybe.
"Nothing smells like you," Derek says fiercely. "It's like being gutted, do you have any idea what that's like?"
Yes, Stiles thinks. God, yes.
"Shut up, shut up," Stiles says, and bites him.
He thinks it's going to be strange, that it's going to be awkward, because Derek is Derek again, and Stiles is Stiles. But their bodies already know each other too well. Know how to fit together, know how and when to push. They don't have to be careful. But Derek doesn't seem to know that yet. Because he is careful, stripping Stiles impatiently, but without any force. There's a shaken control about him. Which is the Derek Stiles remembers, not the one he - not the one he knows. That control doesn't leave, it's still there when they press together, when Stiles digs his fingers into Derek's back and hisses encouragement, when he wraps a leg around his waist and takes him, all of him.
"Come on, Derek, come on," Stiles snaps impatiently. "You fucked me harder than this after we killed Marcus."
Derek growls at him, and pins him, and he stops holding back, stops treating Stiles like he's something different, someone different. There are large hands on his thighs, and Stiles fists a hand in Derek's hair, and bites at his shoulder. He braces himself with one hand against the wall, when Derek curls over him and into him, and it's just weight and strength and short, hard thrusts into his body, that make him feel like he's shaking apart.
Until he does.
Later, so many minutes, too many to count, or remember. Derek turns his face into Stiles's neck and exhales, like he hasn't since they came back. Stiles pins him to the mattress with all the limbs that still work. Thoughts a blur of before, and after, and now.
"I didn't stop feeling any of it," Derek murmurs, against his ear, and Stiles knows, he knows.
Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4