hard times for dreamers
part 1
He sleeps better that night than he expects to. Sometimes--times like these--he’s grateful that Somnacin killed his ability to dream while he was still young, because at least there’s nothing in his head but sleep, which offers some reprieve.
Of course the shared dream, the next morning, all goes to shit, because that kind of sleep offers no reprieve at all.
The architecture is one of Derek’s favorites, a network of subway tunnels with trains shooting past, walls embellished with graffiti and skittering with rats. Laura had always questioned his taste, mostly because of the rats, but Derek was an architect, not an interior decorator, and she couldn’t see the maze, the way the tunnels twisted over and under each other, some of them twining together in a double helix, the way, ultimately, everything cycled back and around.
Lydia and Jackson don’t respond to the level in any discernable way, but Derek finds himself weirdly happy to be in it. He and Laura had lived in New York for a time, and Derek always found the subway comforting. And then Kate shows up.
The dream is going well, they’re riding one of the trains and Lydia is talking about how her chemistry works, that on the first level is actually the equivalent of three layers deep.
“It’s like the Wood Between the Worlds,” she says. “Did you ever read the Narnia books?” She shrugs, then shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. From here we can access Limbo without going three layers deep, because we are three layers deep. But since this is where we start, it’s more stable, easier to get back. Does that--?”
Derek shakes his head. His family didn’t typically work with a chemist, because none of the Hales were chemists and Somnacin was usually sufficient for their jobs.
“It’s a completely new formulation,” Lydia says. “Safer, more stable, deeper.”
“What happens if we get killed in the dream?” Derek asks.
“This level?” Lydia raises an eyebrow. “You wake up. That’s the best bit, there, because you can effectively build down from this level if you want to achieve something like inception, and you don’t need to run the risk of accidentally ending up in Limbo.” She shrugs. “This job, though? Once we get to Limbo, if you die you wake up.”
“The way it usually is,” Derek says.
The trains don’t stop, so they need to jump from the subway to the platform as it flies past.
“Heels are so much easier in dreams,” Lydia says as she catches her balance.
“They are, aren’t they?” says Kate Argent.
She looks the same as she always has, she looks like the woman who seduced Derek and the one who broke his heart and the one who killed his family, all at once. She’s carrying a knife. Derek knows she’s carrying a knife; she’s always carrying a knife. She throws them.
“Derek, you brought friends,” she says.
“Derek,” Lydia says, behind him, and Derek steps forward.
“We won’t die?” he asks Lydia.
“What the hell, Hale,” Jackson says.
“It’s cute that you’re worried about them,” Kate says, sliding forward. Her hand’s on Derek’s chest, nails painted red, like they were when--
“It’s cute that you still carry me around in your head,” she whispers across his ear. It’s a dream, he can’t feel her breath, but he knows what it would feel like, if he could.
She stabs him in the heart at about the same time he snaps her neck.
“Well,” Lydia says when they wake up. “At least you’re good at killing her. Just be a little quicker, next time.”
“It’s not like I like her,” Derek grumbles.
“It kind of looked like you did,” Jackson says. “In a masochistic way. I mean, I don’t blame you, she’s hot and you’re weird. But what the hell was that?”
“Kate Argent,” Derek says.
“A shade,” Lydia says, turning to Derek. “It’s generally considered polite to tell people when you have a shade.”
Derek doesn’t like to talk about it.
“I’ll take care of her,” he says.
“You know this means you can’t know the architecture,” Lydia says.
“Laura and I dealt with it,” Derek says. “I dispatch her.”
“You dispatch her,” Lydia says. “She can still come back. She can’t know the architecture, ergo you can’t know the architecture, no argument.”
“So she’s a--projection?” Jackson asks cautiously.
“Yes and no,” Lydia says. “Ordinary projections should only show up in the dreams of the person dreaming. Shades--follow people around.” She stares at Derek. “You should’ve told us.”
“I hadn’t dreamed in a while,” Derek says. “I thought maybe she was gone.”
Lydia snorts delicately.
“You hadn’t dreamed in a while, and in the meantime your sister died. Shades don’t disappear until you address the issue. But addressing issues doesn’t seem to be your strong suit.”
“You still hired me,” Derek says. He suspects both of them wish they hadn’t. But they can’t let him go--without him, they don’t have Peter, and without Peter, there is no job. That’s all of it, that’s why he’s here, even if they’re pretending Derek is capable of being an extractor.
“If we’d been using any other chemistry you’d be in Limbo right now,” Lydia says, staring at Derek. “You should’ve told us before we went under.”
“Maybe I’d like it,” Derek says. “Limbo.”
“She could’ve killed Jackson or I instead,” Lydia says.
“But she didn’t,” Derek says.
“You’re kind of an asshole,” Jackson says.
And, yeah, Derek gets that.
He just doesn’t know what to do about it. He goes up to the basement. Lydia and Jackson don’t talk to him for the rest of the day, and he’s okay with that. He wonders if the fact that Kate’s still in his head means he loves her.
He has to wake up early in the morning to get to the airport for the rest of the team, and it’s kind of a relief not to have Jackson or Lydia around, only then he almost trips over Lydia on the porch with her coffee.
“Jackson’s right, you know,” she says softly, not looking up from the mug in her hands. “You didn’t know my chemistry was stable, you could’ve gotten us killed.”
“It doesn’t matter. She only ever kills me,” Derek says, and goes down the steps and out to the car.
He tries to turn on the radio for the drive down to San Francisco, but just ends up scrolling listlessly through the stations until he finally turns it off, which leaves Derek alone in the cab of the car with the spinning in his head.
He should just quit, retire, go back to the Yukon and never come out.
He must be late, because Scott, Allison and Stiles are sitting on their suitcases outside the terminal. This is confirmed when Stiles taps on the window and says, “You’re late.”
Derek grunts and pops the trunk, and the Scott and Allison put their bags in before sliding into the back. Stiles takes shotgun with his backpack.
“That all you got?” Derek asks.
“I travel light,” Stiles says. “So I hope you like this outfit.”
‘This outfit’ is jeans and a soft looking plaid shirt. Derek really doesn’t care.
“We could go to a store, Stiles!” Scott shouts from the back. “We’re in America!”
Stiles shakes his head and grins a little at Derek, like they’re sharing a joke, but if they are, Derek’s not in on it.
“I have a shade,” Derek says, staring at the road. “Lydia says I should tell people.”
“Um,” Stiles says. “I guess you told us.”
“Stiles used to have a shade,” Scott contributes.
“You don’t just tell people that,” Stiles hisses.
“You were going to tell him,” Scott says.
“I was, but you stole my thunder,” Stiles says, then turns to Derek. “I used to have a shade.”
“Is it my aunt?” Allison asks. “Your shade?”
“Yes,” Derek says, and keeps driving.
A few minutes pass in silence before Stiles says, “So Lydia’s on this job, huh?”
“Jackson Whittemore is also here,” Derek says, just to be clear.
“Shit,” Scott and Stiles say at more or less the same time.
“That guy’s an asshole,” Stiles continues. “Oh my god, I wouldn’t have taken this job if I’d known he was going to be here. You know, he once threatened to take out a restraining order against me?”
Scott is muttering something Derek can’t quite make out, and in the rearview mirror Allison giggles and shoves at him in a way that makes Derek feel like he’s driving around flirty teenagers.
“So your shade?” Stiles asks. “What’s she do?”
“Kills me,” Derek says. “Just me.”
Stiles nods.
“Good to know, I guess,” he says. “Mine used to--die.”
Derek hasn’t heard of a shade that just dies.
“It was worse than it sounds,” Stiles adds. “I mean, I know it doesn’t sound very bad. It didn’t really matter on jobs. Half the people I worked with didn’t even know. But--” Stiles shakes his head. “I’m not talking to you about this. Sorry you have a shade, that sucks.”
“Someone broke into the house and stole one of the family PASIVs,” Derek adds, in the interest of full disclosure.
“Your family has more than one PASIV?” Stiles asks. “Of course you do, you’re the Hales.”
They were the Hales, actually, but Derek doesn’t correct him. Now they’re just Derek and Peter, and the two of them are splintered and cracked and rusted and worn in so many ways Derek isn’t sure if, even together, they constitute a whole thing.
“When?” Allison asks.
“Don’t know,” Derek says. “Sometime in the past year.”
“Not now, though?” Allison asks. “Not while you were in the house?”
“No,” Derek says.
In the mirror, Derek can see Allison nod and rest her head against Scott’s shoulder.
“Thanks for telling us,” she says. She looks like she’s going to fall asleep. She looks like Kate, but just a little. Younger--clearer. Derek doesn’t trust her, but he’s almost inclined to. It’s easy to trust people when they’re sleeping, though. Less so in dreams, even less so when they wake up, but easy when they’re sleeping.
“Tell me about the job in Mongolia,” Derek says to Stiles, because he needs something else to think about.
Stiles complies. It turns out that, given an opening, he can sustain a conversation singlehandedly. It’s kind of relief, because Derek doesn’t feel like talking and, while Stiles pointedly leaves out names and certain details, he’s a decent storyteller and it sounds like an interesting job. And easy, or not easy: smooth. Derek wishes this job would go smoothly. But it hasn’t even started yet, and it’s obviously not going to be. If they got through this, it was going to be one of those jobs people told stories about, one of those ones that achieves success by such a thin margin that it’s kind of a miracle, really.
Derek would rather this be almost any other kind of job, but he doesn’t see how he has a choice--when he was younger he might have wanted to throw himself headlong into glory, thinking himself invincible, but now he doubted he would make it.
“This looks nicer than a warehouse,” Stiles says when they pull up to the house. “Does this mean we get bedrooms? Ariadne had us on cots.”
“Not the one at the top of the stairs,” Derek says, too quickly.
“I wasn’t going to rush in and claim a room,” Stiles says. “And, like, piss in it. As far as I know this isn’t a reality show. Lydia!”
Stiles waves, then lopes up to the porch and envelopes Lydia in a hug. His backpack’s still on the front seat, and Derek grabs it and follows him.
“Stilinski,” Jackson says, coming out of the front door and leaning in the doorframe. “Pleasure as always.”
“Aw, don’t be that way,” Stiles says. “We had fun at New Year’s.”
“We were wasted at New Year’s,” Jackson corrects. “And then you slept with my best friend.”
Derek glances at Lydia. She mouths ‘not me’ at him.
“McCall,” Jackson says as the other two approach. “Allison.”
“We ordered pizza for lunch,” Lydia says. “We can go pick it up now that you’re back.”
“I’ll stay here,” Derek says. He tosses her the keys and she catches them neatly.
Derek ends up lying on the couch while the others settle in upstairs, staring at the ceiling. Tomorrow they’ll start work properly and Derek will need to sort through old family records and figure out how to frame an extraction on Peter. He’s trying to shore himself up. He’s not sure it’s working well. Getting drunk might work better, but he hadn’t bought any alcohol.
“Anything interesting up there?” Stiles asks, coming into the room and sitting down, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. Derek should probably tell him not to scuff it, but Derek’s feet are on the leather couch.
“No,” Derek says.
“Regret hiring me yet?” Stiles asks.
“Yes,” Derek says, and Stiles laughs.
“Can’t blame you,” he says. “So can you not see the architecture, then, because of your shade? We can still talk about it, I mean, but the maze?”
Derek nods.
“You should probably look at some of my older ones,” Stiles says.
“It’s probably better this way,” Derek replies. “I won’t pick up on any stylistic patterns you might have.”
“I don’t have patterns,” Stiles says.
“Everyone does,” Derek says, sitting up and looking at Stiles. Derek may be forbidden from doing the architecture on this job, but he was good once.
“That was a joke, dude,” Stiles says. “I won’t show you my mazes. But I might run some stuff by you, since this is your uncle.”
“And I’m the extractor,” Derek adds.
“And you’re the extractor,” Stiles agrees.
Lydia and Jackson got the pizza from the crappy place in town instead of the good one, but Derek will let it slide because they couldn’t have known any better. Unless they looked it up on the internet, which maybe they should’ve. Either way, it’s kind of comforting to have everyone gathered around the kitchen table, a complete team plus Jackson, and the pizza isn’t good but it is cheese and sauce and grease and dough, which is its own kind of comfort. It sets Derek off kilter to have these people and not his family--but these people are also so different from his family, it’s almost okay.
“Stiles,” Lydia says suddenly. “Derek has a retina scanner you need to look at.”
“You have a retina scanner?” Stiles asks Derek. “Hales.”
“We think someone might’ve hacked it, or maybe coded in a retina that shouldn’t have been there,” Lydia says.
“Alright,” Stiles says. “I can take a look. Dad used to have me fix the ol’ retinal scanner all the time.”
“Stiles--” Lydia starts, and Stiles grins lopsidedly at Derek.
“Just kidding, the Stilinskis don’t have a retinal scanner, because we don’t have any secrets. All out on the surface in the Stilinski household, you know, what you see is what you get.”
“What do your parents think you do?” Derek asks. Most people whose families aren’t in the industry have some sort of cover story, usually to do with banking.
“IT,” Stiles says easily. “You know, ‘Have you tried turning it off and on again?’ Luckily for you, I am somewhat competent at IT stuff. That’s how I put myself through college.”
“Fixing retina scanners?” Derek asks, and Stiles shrugs.
“Can’t be that different,” he says.
It turns out that it can be that different, which is what they find out when they’re all gathered around the fusebox in the basement.
“Well,” Stiles says. “This is interesting.”
“That mean you can’t do it?” Jackson asks, leaning forward.
“We could hire Danny,” Stiles suggests.
“Oh my god, Stilinski,” Jackson groans. “Do you secretly want to fuck me? What is with you and developing crushes on everyone I talk to?”
“You never had to share as a child, did you?” Allison says coolly. “It shows.”
“Thank you, Allison,” Stiles says. “Danny has needs you can’t fulfill, Jackson.”
“I can’t believe he slept with you,” Jackson says. “Seriously, I can’t. It doesn’t even compute.”
“I’ll have you know, I’m very good in bed,” Stiles says, overloud.
“Too much information,” Jackson says flatly. Derek realizes that, as extractor, he really should put a stop to this discussion.
“Do we need to get Danny?” Derek asks Stiles.
Stiles blinks at him, then looks back at the fuse box.
“No,” he says after a moment. “If I call him, he can probably walk me through it.”
“Don’t have phone sex with him,” Jackson says. “Just don’t.”
“If I do, it will be just to spite you,” Stiles says. “And because I haven’t gotten laid in awhile, but mostly to spite you. We slept together once. It’s not like we’re in a long distance relationship.”
“See, you shouldn’t let me impact your sex life,” Jackson says. “It’s weird.”
“Your concern about my sex life is endearing, really,” Stiles says. “It’s almost like you’re my wingman. It’s almost like you really, really want me to get laid.”
“Only to keep you from sleeping with my best friend and my girlfriend,” Jackson says.
“I told you, Danny has needs you can’t fulfill!” Stiles says.
“He says I’m not his type,” Jackson grouses, absurdly.
“Oh my god,” Stiles says, throwing his hands into the air. “Scott’s not my type, either, because he’s my best friend. Sorry Scott.”
“No problem,” Scott says, tossing Stiles a salute.
“Point being, it’s not entirely unusual for people to friendzone people they’ve nursed through surprisingly debilitating break-ups,” Stiles continues. “Sorry Scott.”
“Shut up, both of you,” Derek says, and he thinks he hear Allison mutter, “Finally.”
“Stiles, figure out the retina scanner and don’t have phone sex with Jackson’s friend,” Derek continues.
“You can’t dictate that!” Stiles mutter, and Derek glares at him.
“The rest of us are going upstairs,” Derek says, because he has no interest in being placated.
“Good leadership,” Lydia says when they get upstairs, but it sounds placating.
“We didn’t need to all stand around and watch him,” Derek says.
“No,” Lydia agrees. “We didn’t.”
There’s something weird about the whole conversation, though. Maybe because Lydia seems more in control of this job than Derek is, to the point that Derek wonders why he’s even been hired. And Derek’s not entirely comfortable leaving Stiles alone in the basement, but when he turns to go back downstairs Scott asks him a question, and then Lydia does.
They’re probably trying to cover for Stiles having phone sex. Derek doesn’t even want to know--he really, genuinely, has no interest in knowing what Stiles is doing downstairs with his disposable cell phone and the retina scanner.
“He better not break it,” Derek says, mostly to himself.
“He won’t,” Lydia says, and she smiles at Derek.
Stiles doesn’t break the retina scanner, but he doesn’t turn up anything especially helpful, either. He gets back upstairs when everyone else is sorting through some old records and gives Derek a list of numbers written in spiky handwriting in a small notebook.
“So here’s what I can tell you,” he says to Derek, tapping at the list with the eraser on his pencil. “You can’t put in anyone new without someone unlocking the scanner first, which means someone in your family would’ve needed to--and these are the i.d. numbers. Five of them.”
Derek stares at them. They don’t mean anything to him.
“They’re automatically assigned,” Stiles says, and then flips the page. “This is a list of times and dates of access. The last one was in October.”
“Who was it?” Derek asks, and Stiles shakes his head.
“Can’t tell,” he says. “We could figure out yours, but I don’t think that will be any help.”
“Are they in order?” Derek asks, taking the notebook back from Stiles. “Chronologically? Laura and I weren’t put in the system until we were older.”
When Derek looks up, Stiles is staring at him.
“Shit,” he says. “I should’ve thought of that. They’re in order, there, which means you and Laura must be the last two--” Stiles moves so he’s standing beside Derek, and flips the notebook to the page prior. “The last number logged is the first one on the list. I don’t know what that means.”
“Peter,” Derek replies, running a hand through his hair. “It means Peter, somehow.”
He hands the notebook back to Stiles.
“You could say thank you,” Stiles says.
“I could,” Derek agrees.
“Good talk,” Stiles says, slapping Derek on the back. “I’m just going to go over here now and pretend you’re not an asshole.”
“Yeah, no, you’re coming with me to the care home,” Derek says, grabbing him by the arm. “You have a gun?”
“Do I have a gun,” Stiles says, which--isn’t an answer. “But, no, really, I think we should bring someone else.”
“Can’t,” Derek says. “Suspicious if I go visit my catatonic uncle with a bunch of people. Come on.”
“And one stranger with a gun isn’t suspicious?” Stiles asks.
“Two people with guns,” Derek corrects, holstering his. “They won’t know. It’s a care home, not a bank.”
“Okay,” Stiles says. He’s looking at Derek’s shoulder holster strangely. “So we’re doing this.”
“That’s what I told you,” Derek says. “Get your gun, come on.”
Stiles goes upstairs.
“Just some constructive criticism, but I feel like your persuasion could use a little work, here,” Stiles says when he comes back down and follows Derek outside. “You can’t just keep saying the same things over and over again until people go along with it.”
“And yet,” Derek says as he unlocks the car. “Here you are.”
“Yeah,” Stiles says. “Kind of confused on that point, myself.”
But he’s sitting shotgun when Derek pulls out of the driveway.
“So, Peter,” Stiles says.
“Is my uncle,” Derek provides, staring ahead at the windshield.
“Not quite what I was looking for,” Stiles says. “But I can work with that.”
“My family’s off limits,” Derek says, because boundaries are important.
“The job’s your family,” Stiles says, voice suddenly quiet. “Your family’s the job.”
It hurts because he’s right, and it slices like a thin, sharp blade, right into Derek’s center. He doesn’t say anything at all, and Stiles doesn’t, either, until Derek’s parking in the guest lot at the care home.
“You’re my boyfriend,” Derek says across the top of the car when they’re getting out. Stiles stops, grips the frame of the passenger side door with one hand, and turns around.
“I’m your--” Stiles pauses. “Um. Why?”
“Less suspicious,” Derek says. “You can do that, can’t you? Pretend to like me for ten minutes while I talk to the nurse?”
“I can--” Stiles’ voice has gone a little pitchy, and if Derek had realized this would be such a trial he wouldn’t have suggested it, and Stiles could just be his highly improbable cousin or something. He had just figured--Stiles slept with someone named Danny. “I can do that. Yes.”
“Good,” Derek says, and nods once. “Come on.”
He presses a hand to the small of Stiles’ back as they walk through the sliding doors, for authenticity. Stiles glances over at Derek, surprised, then ducks his head so the shadows of his lashes swipe across his cheeks. He reaches through the space between them and loops an arm around Derek’s waist.
“You asked for this,” he whispers across Derek’s cheek. There are long fingers against Derek’s hipbone, and, okay, Derek didn’t ask for that precisely, but he can see how he got himself here.
He slips his own hand into Stiles’ back pocket, and out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he detects the hint of a grin on Stiles’ face.
They pull apart at the front desk, and Derek’s grateful for the space. It’s been a long time since his body jigsawed together with anyone else’s, and Stiles at his side--it’s too warm, too comfortable, to have someone there. Not Stiles in particular, just human warmth--Laura used to press her shoulder against Derek’s when they watched movies in dim hotel rooms, Derek’s father used to muss his hair, Derek’s mother used to squeeze his shoulder, and Derek’s not sure when the last time someone touched him just to touch him was. Kate’s touches always seemed more focus on sex than comfort, and it makes something twist in his gut to realize that this bit of fakery with Stiles is comforting for him, when really it shouldn’t be.
Stiles tangles his fingers with Derek’s while Derek’s talking to the nurse.
Derek kind of wishes they’d gone the cousin route. He reminds himself of that when the nurse is leading them down the hall, and Stiles’ hand is back on Derek’s hip, casually possessive, and Stiles’ body is warm and solid at Derek’s side.
Peter doesn’t look any different from when Derek last visited. He doesn’t look any closer to being awake, either.
“Could you leave us?” he asks the nurse, who’s still standing in the corner of the room. She nods once and goes outside, shutting the door behind her, but Derek doesn’t hear any footsteps going down the hall. Stiles looks at Derek, who steps closer to Peter’s bed. Peter’s eyes are shut. He could be sleeping. Which Derek guesses is the point.
“So,” Stiles says.
Derek circles around to the side of Peter’s bed and takes his hand, feeling for the pulse in his uncle’s wrist.
“Uncle Peter,” Derek says. “I wanted you to meet my--”
“Stiles,” Stiles interjects. He sounds a bit frantic.
“Stiles?” Derek repeats, raising an eyebrow, and pointing to the door.
“It’s a pleasure,” Stiles says. “Derek’s told me so much about you--” Stiles looks up at Derek like he’s waiting for a cue. “--he said how important you are to him. I’m just sorry you’re not awake.”
Peter’s pulse is low and steady, and it doesn’t change through any of--whatever that was. When Derek looks at Stiles, Stiles’ eyebrows are doing a bizarre tango across his forehead.
Derek shrugs and drops Peter’s hand.
“Should we read to him?” Stiles asks. “I think that’s a thing people do.”
“Maybe another time,” Derek says, walking across the room. “Right now I want to--”
Derek doesn’t know what people say in situations like the one he’s somehow play-acted himself into. He feels embarrassed for even trying, but then Stiles flashes him a grin and says, “Of course you do, baby. It means a lot that you brought me here, though. I know how important your family is to you.”
Derek knows the importance of his family is scrawled across his history in capital letters, but it’s still strange to hear Stiles acknowledge it, even if it’s just for a bizarre skit for probably catatonic Peter Hale and his nurse, who is waiting for them in the hallway when they step out of the room.
“Thank you,” Derek says to the nurse, and somewhere Stiles’ hand finds Derek’s and squeezes it. The nurse walks with them to the front desk in silence, and soon enough they’re outside in the clear air, and Derek drops Stiles’ hand and everything he himself has been carrying.
“Baby?” Derek asks when they’re in the car.
“I did improv in college,” Stiles says. “And it saved your ass, don’t act like it didn’t, so you aren’t allowed to make fun of me for it.”
“You did improv in college and that was the best you could come up with?” Derek asks.
“Everyone’s a critic,” Stiles sighs. “So, Peter?”
“No change to his pulse,” Derek says. Stiles rubs his face.
“So we got nothing out of that,” Stiles says. “Do we just assume someone brought him to the house and forced one of his eyes open?”
“I don’t know,” Derek replies. He still hasn’t started the car--he’s staring through the windshield at the parking lot.
“Alright,” Stiles says. “Let’s go, tell the others. Lydia might have an idea.”
“Lydia?” Derek asks, because Stiles is his fake boyfriend now, and it’s reasonable to be concerned about things that might compromise the job.
“Oh, not you, too,” Stiles says. “Lydia’s smart, I respect that in a person. And, seriously, have you heard Jackson? It’s starting to sound like he thinks I’m an actual threat. Don’t listen to him. He grew up crazy rich, and he doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that he can’t just buy people. But Lydia and I have an understanding.”
“An understanding,” Derek repeats.
“That she’s not going to date me,” Stiles says. “Or sleep with me. I accept that, so we’re friends. High school taught me to handle rejection well.”
Derek wonders how Stiles even got into this business, because he apparently did normal things like getting rejected in high school without causing any deaths and college improv. Derek doesn’t ask, because it doesn’t matter, because if he asks Stiles might ask him questions, but he wonders.
“Where’d you guys take off to?” Lydia asks when they find her in the kitchen, and Stiles shrugs.
“Well, Derek needed me to pretend to be his boyfriend so we could visit his uncle, so, you know,” Stiles says, and Lydia stops and stares.
“You went to visit Peter,” she says. “You went to visit Peter. You think the Sheriff doesn’t have that place staked out? They probably called him as soon as you showed up.”
“Wait,” Stiles says, stopping and turning to look at Derek. “Wait. You’re a Sheriff case? Of course you are. Of course no one told me. Lydia.”
“I thought you would know,” Lydia says, and Stiles’ face does something elastic and incomprehensible. He opens his mouth, then shuts it.
“Well, I didn’t,” Stiles says tightly. “Oh god, if they recorded that, and I’m on the footage--”
“The Sheriff wants me,” Derek says, because if Stiles was working with Ariadne on that job in Mongolia he couldn’t possibly be implicated in Laura’s death, regardless of what he’s doing with Derek, so Derek doesn’t understand what the problem is. The Sheriff isn’t known for bringing in people without solid evidence.
“Yeah, and thanks for telling me about that, everyone,” Stiles says. “I don’t know who decided that information wasn’t relevant, but it is, it is relevant.”
“I didn’t kill my sister,” Derek says.
“That’s great,” Stiles says. “Really good for you. It doesn’t matter so much as the fact that no one saw fit to tell me that the Sheriff is involved, here. You told us about your shade, but you didn’t think--”
Lydia raises an eyebrow and Stiles sighs.
“Okay, whatever, I’ll deal,” he says. “But I want to talk to you about how you didn’t kill your sister, Hale.”
“Kate Argent’s trying to frame me,” Derek says.
“No,” Stiles says. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the actual facts of how you didn’t kill your sister. Not ‘I’m being framed, my life is hard.’ What’s your case?”
“He went up to the Yukon and moped around for awhile,” Lydia says, and Stiles groans.
“No, wrong, then it looks like you’re in hiding. Do you not have any self preservation instinct at all?” Stiles pauses. “No, don’t answer that, you obviously don’t.”
“My sister died,” Derek says. He can’t figure out why Stiles is stuck on this--why Stiles knows anything about this, actually, because it can’t be that long ago that he was doing college improv.
“And you ran away without doing anything,” Stiles continues. “Look, people die and it’s shit. But running away never fixes it. Never fixes anything.”
And there’s something underneath what Stiles is saying, now, buried in the sad slant of his eyes, in the way they don’t seem to be focused on anything in particular. Derek doesn’t know what it is, but for a moment he sees it. Stiles had a shade who died, Derek remembers.
“Peter,” Lydia says. “Why’d you visit him?”
“He was the last person to unlock the door,” Derek says. “Him or someone using him. But he’s still not awake.”
“How do you know?” Lydia asks.
“No change to his pulse,” Derek says.
“Even when I was telling him how deeply in love Derek and I are, so you know,” Stiles says. “That news should’ve been shocking enough to warrant some sort of response.”
Lydia quirks a brow, but takes this in stride.
“I’m glad you’ve moved on, Stiles,” she says. “I think this will be very good for you.”
“Oh shut up,” Stiles says. “Maybe we should do our little show for Jackson, too. Derek?”
“No,” Derek says.
“I’m wounded,” Stiles says. “Truly and deeply.”
“Well, congratulations, you two,” Lydia says. “But what are we going to do about Peter?”
Derek doesn’t know what they’re going to do about Peter. He had asked the nurse if Peter had had any other visitors, and she had said no, but maybe that was because the Sheriff had come through and told her to say that, or because--there were lots of reasons.
“We’re going to do the job,” he says, finally. “Soon.”
“With your shade?” Lydia says.
“You think she’s just going to go away?” Derek asks.
“Stiles’ shade did,” Lydia says, glancing towards Stiles.
“That was different,” Stiles says. He sounds almost sad about it. “My shade was unusual.”
“Kate Argent is still alive,” Lydia says. “That’s unusual.”
“Not unusual in the same way,” Stiles replies. “Look, let’s not talk about it.”
“Is Stiles Stilinski turning down an opportunity to pry?” Lydia asks, going to the fridge and pouring herself a glass of milk. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
“You know what I’m turning down the opportunity for,” Stiles says. “Not that this hasn’t been great, but I think I’m going to go upstairs and make some sketches. If we’re doing the job soon. Probably should. Besides, I need to call my dad, Lydia.”
“Huh,” Lydia says as she pours herself a glass of milk and Stiles clatters up the stairs.
“What?” Derek asks. He’s still trying to figure out why Lydia would care about Stiles calling his father.
“He’s just usually more open, is all,” Lydia says, examining Derek like she can see right down to his quick. “It’s interesting, when people change their behavior patterns, don’t you think?”
“He doesn’t like me,” Derek says.
“You sure that’s it?” Lydia asks. She rinses her glass and sets it in the sink. “I mean, I don’t know, I’m just asking.”
“I don’t know,” Derek says. “I don’t know Stiles.”
“No,” Lydia agrees. “But he’s a good person to know.”
Scott and Allison show up in the kitchen a few moments later, when Lydia and Derek are sketching out a newly accelerated schedule for this job.
“Stiles says the Sheriff’s on you,” Scott says. He looks like he thinks it’s funny. “Should’ve told us that, dude.”
“The Sheriff’s a fair investigator,” Derek says, even though everyone in the industry knows this. “You won’t be implicated for working with me. Besides, Jackson’s going to deal with him.”
“Nah, not worried,” Scott says, grinning at some unspoken joke. “You just could’ve told us, is all.”
Derek stares at Scott, probably for longer than he should because Lydia taps him on the elbow and says, “Pay attention, Hale.”
Between the four of them they manage to develop a new schedule that’s more or less satisfactory. It’s not like anyone has a choice, but Derek does actually understand that telling people they don’t have much of a choice isn’t diplomatic. So he listens to Scott’s and Allison’s concerns, acknowledges that they need to find an angle, and lets Lydia take care of the rest.
Which suggests that Derek might not be all that diplomatic, after all. Or maybe he is, because he knows he isn’t, and is letting Lydia take care of everything.
It’s Lydia, actually, who sends Derek upstairs to give Stiles the accelerated schedule. When Derek calls for him he finds Stiles sitting on the bed in what used to be Derek and Laura’s bedroom--in what still is Derek’s bedroom, Derek supposes, except he’s not sleeping there. It’s the only bedroom with two twin beds instead of something larger, Derek realizes, and Stiles is the only person sleeping on the second floor who’s not sharing a bed, so he supposes it makes sense.
It doesn’t change the fact that Stiles is sitting on Derek’s old bedspread, the ugly plaid one that’s badly pilled.
“Hey,” Stiles says. He’s fidgeting with a cell phone, mindlessly flipping it open and then shut again. “What’s the new timeline?”
“How was your dad?” Derek asks, looking at the phone in Stiles’ hands.
“On a business trip. Stopped in at a diner he likes. Doing terrible things to his cholesterol. Like usual,” Stiles grins wryly at Derek. “Not that you’re actually interested, but that’s what I’d tell you if you were.”
There’s a desk in the corner of the room by the window, a wooden roll-top from Derek’s father. It was never any good as a drafting table--not enough space--but Derek had used it for one anyway, as a matter of course. There’s a scroll of paper there, now, curled into itself like a dried leaf, and a couple of books that never belonged to Derek.
“You know why I became an architect?” Stiles asks, when he notices what Derek’s looking at. “Instead of anything else? I have trouble--focusing--it didn’t seem like a natural choice. I mean, it took a lot of work to be able to sustain a dream and--I probably shouldn’t be telling you this. I can do it now. But I couldn’t keep my head in one place, and with architecture, with mazes--you don’t have to. Everything’s everywhere, you can make the inside of your head as ambling and rambling as you are.”
Derek nods. It’s not why Derek became an architect, but it makes sense, in a way. Derek always liked the way dream architecture imposed order without actually being ordered in the way real architecture is, and that sounds a bit like what Stiles is talking about.
“You can’t see my blueprints,” Stiles continues. “Of course. But I was thinking--I have, like, a philosophy. An architectural philosophy. Did you? We could talk about that. I mean, I don’t think it would compromise the job.”
“I’m still an architect,” Derek says. Hearing his architecture refered too in the past tense makes something inside him plummet. Stiles shakes his head and frowns.
“Of course,” he says. “Sorry. I didn’t mean--”
“You’ve got a week,” Derek interjects, and then he goes back downstairs.
Stiles voice comes drifting after him: “Okay. Good talk.”
They all fall into patterns over the course of the week: Derek keeps sleeping on the couch downstairs, and he’ll go for a run in the morning, and then have coffee with Stiles and Lydia, because they’re up before the other three. He’ll check in with everyone throughout the day, discuss the logistics of the job as they shift. It’s almost a routine, and it’s almost comforting. As long as he doesn’t think about anything too much. Derek’s not quite good at shutting off his memories--it still seems like Laura’s physically present with him, like she should be alive--and he’s not going to let himself be happy, but he’ll at least allow himself this. And by ‘this’ he means ‘enough peace to get through the job and back to the Yukon.’
Sometime near the middle of the week, or the end of it, Lydia stops coming down for breakfast, which leaves Derek and Stiles by themselves with their mugs of coffee. When he finds himself across the kitchen table from Stiles Derek remembers, too suddenly, their conversation in Ecuador. None of that sharp skepticism had surfaced from Stiles since then, but Derek can’t help but wonder if Stiles is waiting for Derek to fuck up, as he inevitably will. Derek isn’t good at people. He never has been. Kate had seemed almost like a revelation, because of that, but that was Derek’s own fault--she was just another person that he didn’t understand.
The first morning they end up having breakfast together Stiles is quiet. When Derek glances up at him Stiles is looking at the table like it’s something fascinating. Derek knows it’s not, because he’d been looking at before looking up at Stiles; it’s a table. It looks like a table. There are whorls of woodgrain, but they aren’t actually that interesting. While Derek studies it, Stiles starts drumming his fingers across its surface in an uncertain tattoo.
Then Stiles sits up suddenly, and adjusts his posture, and says, “So, do you think you’re ready?”
It’s not the question Derek’s used to be asked, about whether the team’s ready. Derek’s pretty sure he isn’t ready.
“I still have a shade,” he says.
“Oh yeah,” Stiles says. “That.”
Stiles looks at the table again, then shakes his head abruptly.
“Have you ever tried to do something about it?” Stiles asks. “Her?”
“Yes,” Derek says, flatly.
“Of course you have,” Stiles says, shaking his head. “I know it’s not easy, I just--”
“You just,” Derek repeats when Stiles trails off and shows no sign of continuing.
“You don’t have a shade of your sister?” Stiles asks, which is not a question anyone’s ever asked, not a question Derek even thought to ask himself. He doesn’t have an answer--he doesn’t want to answer.
“No,” Derek says, and then he gets up and dumps the dregs of his coffee down the sink. When Derek gets back to the table Stiles is watching him with sharp, canny eyes.
“Mine was my mom,” he says, twisting his coffee mug in his hands. “She died and I kept her around in my head.”
Derek takes a moment just to look at Stiles, because it means something that Stiles is telling him this.
She died in his dreams, Stiles said in the car.
“How’d you get her out, then?” Derek asks.
Stiles’ face twists into a sort of bitter expression, and it looks strange on his face.
“I went to counseling, actually,” he says. “I probably needed it, even if I didn’t need it for the job. The counselor said I had to let her go. I had to accept that I couldn’t have done anything to stop her dying.”
Stiles falls silent again, looks at his hands, then up at Derek.
“She was kind of right,” Stiles says. “But it wasn’t that easy, really. It was more--my mom started to show up less, and then more because I felt guilty she was showing up less. But--that wasn’t her, you know? That was a projection. Everyone knows the difference in their own head, but I started to see the differences, between this person dying in my dreams and my actual mom. Who was, you know, dead.”
Stiles smiles, small and wry.
“I haven’t seen Kate Argent in years,” Derek says.
“Maybe you should talk to Allison about her,” Stiles says, then shrugs. “Or not, I don’t know.”
It’s quiet in the kitchen for a beat, or several, and then Stiles rolls his shoulders and gets to his feet, saying, “I’ve got to--dream levels. And Scott wants to test the forge on me, because I can always tell if he’s being Scott, at least.”
Scott’s forging Peter’s friend Alan Deaton, because everyone agreed it would be best if he didn’t do someone from Derek’s immediate family and because Scott knew Deaton well, which makes the forge easier than it might otherwise be.
Derek nods, and Stiles pauses in the doorway before leaving the room, like he has something else to say. Whatever it was he ultimately decides not to say it, and Derek is left--Derek isn’t sure how he’s left, actually. He’s left standing in the doorway to the kitchen, wondering what that conversation was exactly. He genuinely doesn’t know. It’s the most personal conversation he’s ever had with Stiles--it’s quite possibly the most personal conversation he’s had with anyone since Laura died, and Derek didn’t even contribute all that much to it.
Derek avoids Stiles for the rest of the day. He actually avoids everyone for the rest of the day, so it might not be that significant; instead Derek holes himself up in the attic above the garage, going through battered cardboard boxes of family records. There’s nothing, really, that Derek can imagine being of any use, but at least cardboard boxes don’t expect Derek to talk to them.
Lydia’s not at breakfast the next morning, again, and--Laura would say he’s being paranoid, but Derek wonders if she’s doing it on purpose. He wouldn’t past her to try that, if she thought it would get rid of Kate. Or--of Derek’s shade, more accurately. She’s not Kate, she’s a shade.
“I think Jackson and Lydia have started having morning sex,” Stiles says idly, cupping his hands around his mug. He seems more comfortable today than he was yesterday, if only marginally less fidgety. But Stiles fidgets; it’s something Derek’s noticed about him. “Is there a phrase for that? Like someone’s having a nooner, only in the morning.”
“Not that I know of,” Derek replies, but fails to point out that he isn’t someone who would know, if there was.
“I would suggest that we make one, but I actually have no interest in talking about Jackson and Lydia’s sex life, so,” Stiles says. “I don’t know why I opened with that.”
“You opened with that,” Derek repeats.
“I was trying not to open with questions about your, you know, psyche or whatever,” Stiles says. “After yesterday I realized it might be too early for that. In the morning. And also our relationship.”
Derek hadn’t realized he and Stiles had a relationship. He raises his eyebrows.
“Our working relationship,” Stiles amends. “In case you were thinking anything else. Because your psyche is actually relevant to our work here.”
Derek was thinking something else, though there’s no reason for him to, and that--disturbs him. He takes a gulp of his coffee, too hot and too bitter, just to clear his head.
“Is your tongue alive?” Stiles asks after Derek swallows. “My coffee is still too hot to drink.”
Stiles looks down at his cup like he might be able to tell the temperature that way, then shrugs.
“I mean, I’m pretty sure my dad scorched his tongue off on bad diner coffee years ago, but, you know.”
Derek doesn’t know.
“Scorched his tongue off?” Derek asks.
“Well, scorched off the part of the tongue that can detect temperature,” Stiles says, flapping his hand. “Whatever, I don’t know.”
They’re quiet for a little after that. Stiles blows on his coffee before he sips it, grinning a little at the riffles it creates in the dark liquid before taking a careful sip. Stiles talks enough that his sudden silence feels almost unusual, or intimate, and Derek finds himself watching Stiles closely enough that when Stiles looks up from his coffee their eyes catch and hold, intractable.
“I could help, you know,” Stiles says. “Or--maybe. I could try, anyway.”
“With what?” Derek asks, because he genuinely doesn’t know.
“Your shade,” Stiles says. “Kate.” He looks away, off to the side. “We could go into a dream, I could try--”
Lydia comes downstairs then. She glances between them, and if this is something she planned nothing shows on her face. Derek’s grateful for the distraction, because what Stiles is offering--there’s no easy answer. It’s something Derek needs to think about.
“Morning,” Lydia says.
“Coffee’s in the pot,” Stiles says, waving his hand towards the kitchen. “Still hot.”
Stiles grins a little at Derek at that, like the fact that the coffee is hot is a joke between the two of them. Derek’s fairly certain that there’s no joke there, but if Stiles wants to share this with him--well. Derek doesn’t know, but he figures he can’t stop Stiles from manufacturing inside jokes for the two of them. After a moment he returns Stiles’ smile, and Stiles brightens. Derek wants to tell him that just because he’s smiling now doesn’t mean he knows what to do with Stiles’ offer, and besides that Derek’s sense of humor is complete shit, really, and just because he thinks something is funny doesn’t mean it actually is.
Laura used to tell Derek that, at least. Derek’s starting to wonder why he doesn’t have her as a shade, where the line between normal mourning and the sort that saddles you with a subconscious hanger-on is. Not that Derek wants--except maybe he does. It would be nice to see her again.
Across the table, Stiles has gone quiet. When Derek looks at him again Stiles is staring into his coffee mug. Stiles looks up when Lydia comes back in, grins at her so his eyes crinkle. Derek wonders how Stiles is so easily, idly happy. He makes a clumsy innuendo about Lydia and Jackson, then dissolves into laughter when Lydia shuts him down, and Derek doesn’t understand it. He wishes he did. He suspects his life would be easier if he did.
He goes out to the garage while Stiles and Lydia are still talking, and he’s surprised when Stiles shows up several hours later with a sandwich and a pickle on a plate.
“Hey,” he says. “You missed lunch. And I’m kind of done with the architecture, so I have nothing better to do.”
Stiles trails off uncertainly, and when Derek doesn’t immediately take the plate he sets it on the attic floor, bracing his hands against his back and stretching as he looks around. From where Derek’s sitting he can see Stiles’ shirt rise up as he cracks his back, revealing a lean stomach and a trail of fine, dark hair. Derek doesn’t know why he notices, but he does. Stiles’ belt is frayed at the end and too loose; he needs a new one.
“So these are the records, huh?” Stiles says, sitting down on the other side of the room and leaning back against a pile of boxes.
“Yes,” Derek says. Stiles grins crookedly.
“I’m just waiting to see if you’re actually going to eat that, because otherwise I want the pickle,” Stiles says, nodding towards the plate. It’s still sitting between them like Derek is an animal Stiles is trying to lure out of its lair with food, and Derek isn’t sure how he feels about that.
“I don’t like pickles,” Derek says, and pushes the plate towards Stiles with his foot. Stiles darts forward like Derek’s going to change his mind, then pushes the plate back towards Derek and sits down again, taking a loud bite out of the pickle.
“So is there anything here that would exonerate you?” Stiles asks.
“No,” Derek says. “That’s not what I’m looking for.”
Stiles shrugs, but his eyes are flitting around like he suspects Derek’s lying and he’s trying to catalogue everything, just in case. Stiles must see something Derek doesn’t, because all Derek sees are unlabeled filing cabinets and boxes.
“There are birth certificates,” Derek says. “Letters. Things like that. I should probably burn them.”
Stiles raises his eyebrows in an unspoken question.
“This house doesn’t belong to the Hales,” Derek explains. “The stuff up here is a really incriminating paper trail.”
“Yeah, that was kind of a terrible idea,” Stiles says. “Especially considering you have a room locked with a retina scanner and this stuff isn’t in there.”
“Not enough space,” Derek mutters. “And the plan was always to burn this stuff if anything happened.”
“Because that doesn’t look suspicious,” Stiles says. “I feel like you guys don’t have a good working understanding of how law enforcement works.”
“And you do?” Derek asks, then shrugs. “We never needed one.”
Stiles just shakes his head.
“Kate,” he says, almost idly, though there’s an edge there that suggests Stiles is uncertain, that he thought this through. “You want to try?”
Derek doesn’t, not really, but he thinks he should. He shrugs.
“You should talk to Allison, first,” Stiles says, then gets up to go.
It’s not until Derek’s halfway through his sandwich that he realizes Stiles never answered Derek’s question about his working understanding of law enforcement. Stiles probably thought it was rhetorical. At the very least, he seems more aware of the dangers of this job than Derek gave him credit for.
When Derek gets back downstairs Lydia and Stiles are at the table, heads bowed over something that Derek can’t see. Stiles looks up first and grins at Derek like he’s happy to see him.
“Are you going to talk to Allison?” Stiles asks. Lydia looks at Derek and raises an eyebrow. Derek shrugs, and they’re all quiet.
“I think it might help,” Stiles says softly. “I know it doesn’t seem--but I think it might help. And then we can try a dream, if you want.”
Derek shrugs again. Stiles being quiet, gentle, it feels strange. Stiles and Lydia both had refused to treat Derek with kid gloves, and now it seems like they are.
“Don’t worry about me,” Derek says to both of them. “The job will be fine.”
Stiles looks away. Lydia looks annoyed. Derek goes upstairs.
He passes Allison on the steps, and she smiles at him, brief and honest. They’d been practicing in the woods, some, but they hadn’t practiced in dreams much because of Kate. Allison is good, and Derek can almost accept that. He wishes, not for the first time, that any of this made sense.
“Can I talk to you?” he asks. When Allison looks startled he says, “Later, if you want.”
“No,” Allison says. “Now is fine.”
She follows Derek into his room--Stiles’ room?--sits down gingerly on Laura’s bed and stares at him.
“Your aunt,” he starts, before realizing he doesn’t know what to ask, and--maybe he should’ve asked Stiles that, but maybe he shouldn’t be taking instruction from Stiles. Derek’s distantly angry with Stiles, maybe because Derek is listening to him, and doesn’t like it.
“Kate,” Allison interjects.
“Tell me about her,” Derek says, finally.
Allison looks uncertain, but then she does.
It has to be at least as strange for Allison to tell as it is for Derek to hear, because the Kate she describes is someone who did what she did to Derek’s family, but it still doesn’t quite mesh with the Kate Derek knew, and he almost wonders if that’s the problem--that he never fully reconciled the Kate he thought he loved with the one that killed his family, that he still doesn’t know how to.
“I don’t think she’s a good person,” Allison says, looking at her hands in her lap. “But she’s a good aunt, sometimes.”
Derek nods once. If there’s something he should say, he doesn’t know what it is. He had expected this conversation to fill him with quietly simmering rage, like some conversations do, but he just feels tired.
“You ever wonder how this happens, in dreamsharing?” Allison asks. “It messes with our heads.”
Derek’s wondered. He doesn’t know how else to be in dreamsharing, though, and he doesn’t know what else to do with himself.
“Yeah,” he says. He wants to say that the Argents and the Hales have more in common than they’ve ever acknowledged, despite being rivals, despite the Argents coming out of the military and the Hales coming out of--well, crime. Derek wants to say a lot of things, most of which he doesn’t. He looks out the window. They’re both silent, and then Allison goes downstairs. When Allison leaves Derek leans back on the bed, and, some time later, Stiles opens the door.
“You talked to Allison,” he says.
“Yes,” Derek says.
“Do you want to--?” Stiles starts, trailing off. Derek tilts his head up towards the ceiling. The job is tomorrow, and he’s hardly gone into dreams at all. He really should.
“I should,” he says, and when Stiles doesn’t say anything else Derek adds, “Okay.”
“Okay,” Stiles says. “Okay, then we should go. Downstairs. And downstairs again. You know.” Stiles gestures, looping a hand through the air.
Derek does know.
“We can use your architecture,” Stiles adds, looking over his shoulder at Derek. “I want to see it.”
Derek wants Stiles to see it, actually. He hasn’t had much opportunity to show his work to other architects, and he finds that the idea appeals to him. Even if he hasn’t seen Stiles’ work--Stiles did work with Ariadne. Derek respects that, at least.
They go downstairs and hook up to one of the PASIVs, using regular Somnacin instead of Lydia’s formula, and Derek queues up his subway architecture, because it’s still his favorite.
“Rats,” Stiles says after he opens his eyes, nodding approvingly. “Thorough.” He shoves his hands into his back pockets and looks around again, watching projections board the train. “So, you going to give me a tour and we’ll see what happens?”
“Yes,” Derek says, after a moment. “But we can wait for the next train.”
The next train comes, roaring into the station, and in the meantime Stiles chatters--not quite incessantly, but certainly continuously. Derek wishes words could come as easily to him.
“My mom,” Stiles is saying suddenly. “My mom, my shade, I just couldn’t--” Stiles shakes his head. “In high school I used to say all these things that didn’t make sense, I thought I grew out of that.”
“It’s hard to talk about,” Derek says.
“For you,” Stiles says, then grins in a way that he might’ve intended to be apologetic. “No, you’re right, it’s hard, just like it’s easy to understand a shade isn’t a person and hard to use that information to make them go away. But where is she?”
“Not here yet,” Derek says, glancing around. “Come on, we have to jump.”
He reaches out to grab Stiles’ hand and pull him onto the train, because the first leap is always a bit difficult. Stiles flails when Derek clasps his hand, but he catches his footing on the train with surprising grace. He doesn’t release Derek’s hand. It’s okay, they’re just dreaming.
They keep wandering through the dream, switching trains and switching trains again. Derek likes tugging Stiles along by the hand, and Stiles--Stiles likes the architecture. He likes the mosaics in some of the stations, and the rats, and the ways the tracks circle back to one another. He tells Derek as much, asks him surprisingly perceptive questions.
“Are they penrose trains?” Stiles asks. “Penrose tracks?”
“Some of them,” Derek says, scanning the new station for Kate. She’s nowhere to be seen, but sometimes she just--isn’t.
There’s a set of stairs in one of the stations that goes up indefinitely. Derek usually steers people away from them because they lead to nowhere, but Stiles spies them and immediately decides they’re climbing. Stiles takes the steps two at a time and Derek trails after, lackadaisical. The projections thin out on the steps, which is maybe why it surprises Derek so much when he feels a knife against his back, a hand on his shoulder, manicured fingernails digging in. Ahead of him, Stiles is still talking.
“Derek,” Kate hisses into his ear. “Replacing me already?”
“So these don’t go anywhere?” Stiles says. “Like a stairway to heaven. Interesting tactic. Does it really do much? Derek--”
Stiles turns around as Kate slides her knife between Derek’s ribs. Derek tries to smile at Stiles, but he knows whatever he manages to contort his face into will come out strange and wan. And Stiles’ own expression has gone into freefall, but the last thing Derek sees before he dies is a flash in Stiles’ eyes, and he looks angry.
Derek wakes up. He looks at Stiles on the cot next to him, breathing lightly. Derek can see his chest rise and fall through Stiles’ thin, dark t-shirt. He’s still asleep, still alive in the dream. Kate only ever kills Derek, anyway. Derek wonders how Stiles is going to kick himself out of the dream, and when, and suddenly Stiles is blinking awake, eyes bleary until they focus on Derek’s face.
“Were you watching me sleep?” he asks, and there’s a grin there at the corner of his lips. Stiles looks happier than Derek expected him to be, given what just happened.
“Waiting for you to wake up,” Derek replies, looking away, towards the wall. “What happened?”
“Interesting shade you got there,” Stiles says, sitting up and bracing his hands on his thighs. “Not exactly the friendliest lady.” Derek snorts.
“Yeah, okay, understatement,” Stiles continues, a bit wry. “But we had a little talk. You know--” Stiles shakes his head. “It’s not easy, to get them to go away. It’s something that she stayed away that long, isn’t it?”
Derek hasn’t had a dream without Kate since his family died, so it probably is a step in the right direction, but Derek isn’t sure how significant this might be. Instead he shrugs and heads upstairs, mutters something about how he should probably get back to the records before dinner, just because. The job needs to go well, Derek reminds himself, or Stiles. Because of the Sheriff. Stiles winces involuntarily, and Derek doesn’t know what he’s afraid of, but Derek is just trying to keep himself together right now.
part 3
He sleeps better that night than he expects to. Sometimes--times like these--he’s grateful that Somnacin killed his ability to dream while he was still young, because at least there’s nothing in his head but sleep, which offers some reprieve.
Of course the shared dream, the next morning, all goes to shit, because that kind of sleep offers no reprieve at all.
The architecture is one of Derek’s favorites, a network of subway tunnels with trains shooting past, walls embellished with graffiti and skittering with rats. Laura had always questioned his taste, mostly because of the rats, but Derek was an architect, not an interior decorator, and she couldn’t see the maze, the way the tunnels twisted over and under each other, some of them twining together in a double helix, the way, ultimately, everything cycled back and around.
Lydia and Jackson don’t respond to the level in any discernable way, but Derek finds himself weirdly happy to be in it. He and Laura had lived in New York for a time, and Derek always found the subway comforting. And then Kate shows up.
The dream is going well, they’re riding one of the trains and Lydia is talking about how her chemistry works, that on the first level is actually the equivalent of three layers deep.
“It’s like the Wood Between the Worlds,” she says. “Did you ever read the Narnia books?” She shrugs, then shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. From here we can access Limbo without going three layers deep, because we are three layers deep. But since this is where we start, it’s more stable, easier to get back. Does that--?”
Derek shakes his head. His family didn’t typically work with a chemist, because none of the Hales were chemists and Somnacin was usually sufficient for their jobs.
“It’s a completely new formulation,” Lydia says. “Safer, more stable, deeper.”
“What happens if we get killed in the dream?” Derek asks.
“This level?” Lydia raises an eyebrow. “You wake up. That’s the best bit, there, because you can effectively build down from this level if you want to achieve something like inception, and you don’t need to run the risk of accidentally ending up in Limbo.” She shrugs. “This job, though? Once we get to Limbo, if you die you wake up.”
“The way it usually is,” Derek says.
The trains don’t stop, so they need to jump from the subway to the platform as it flies past.
“Heels are so much easier in dreams,” Lydia says as she catches her balance.
“They are, aren’t they?” says Kate Argent.
She looks the same as she always has, she looks like the woman who seduced Derek and the one who broke his heart and the one who killed his family, all at once. She’s carrying a knife. Derek knows she’s carrying a knife; she’s always carrying a knife. She throws them.
“Derek, you brought friends,” she says.
“Derek,” Lydia says, behind him, and Derek steps forward.
“We won’t die?” he asks Lydia.
“What the hell, Hale,” Jackson says.
“It’s cute that you’re worried about them,” Kate says, sliding forward. Her hand’s on Derek’s chest, nails painted red, like they were when--
“It’s cute that you still carry me around in your head,” she whispers across his ear. It’s a dream, he can’t feel her breath, but he knows what it would feel like, if he could.
She stabs him in the heart at about the same time he snaps her neck.
“Well,” Lydia says when they wake up. “At least you’re good at killing her. Just be a little quicker, next time.”
“It’s not like I like her,” Derek grumbles.
“It kind of looked like you did,” Jackson says. “In a masochistic way. I mean, I don’t blame you, she’s hot and you’re weird. But what the hell was that?”
“Kate Argent,” Derek says.
“A shade,” Lydia says, turning to Derek. “It’s generally considered polite to tell people when you have a shade.”
Derek doesn’t like to talk about it.
“I’ll take care of her,” he says.
“You know this means you can’t know the architecture,” Lydia says.
“Laura and I dealt with it,” Derek says. “I dispatch her.”
“You dispatch her,” Lydia says. “She can still come back. She can’t know the architecture, ergo you can’t know the architecture, no argument.”
“So she’s a--projection?” Jackson asks cautiously.
“Yes and no,” Lydia says. “Ordinary projections should only show up in the dreams of the person dreaming. Shades--follow people around.” She stares at Derek. “You should’ve told us.”
“I hadn’t dreamed in a while,” Derek says. “I thought maybe she was gone.”
Lydia snorts delicately.
“You hadn’t dreamed in a while, and in the meantime your sister died. Shades don’t disappear until you address the issue. But addressing issues doesn’t seem to be your strong suit.”
“You still hired me,” Derek says. He suspects both of them wish they hadn’t. But they can’t let him go--without him, they don’t have Peter, and without Peter, there is no job. That’s all of it, that’s why he’s here, even if they’re pretending Derek is capable of being an extractor.
“If we’d been using any other chemistry you’d be in Limbo right now,” Lydia says, staring at Derek. “You should’ve told us before we went under.”
“Maybe I’d like it,” Derek says. “Limbo.”
“She could’ve killed Jackson or I instead,” Lydia says.
“But she didn’t,” Derek says.
“You’re kind of an asshole,” Jackson says.
And, yeah, Derek gets that.
He just doesn’t know what to do about it. He goes up to the basement. Lydia and Jackson don’t talk to him for the rest of the day, and he’s okay with that. He wonders if the fact that Kate’s still in his head means he loves her.
He has to wake up early in the morning to get to the airport for the rest of the team, and it’s kind of a relief not to have Jackson or Lydia around, only then he almost trips over Lydia on the porch with her coffee.
“Jackson’s right, you know,” she says softly, not looking up from the mug in her hands. “You didn’t know my chemistry was stable, you could’ve gotten us killed.”
“It doesn’t matter. She only ever kills me,” Derek says, and goes down the steps and out to the car.
He tries to turn on the radio for the drive down to San Francisco, but just ends up scrolling listlessly through the stations until he finally turns it off, which leaves Derek alone in the cab of the car with the spinning in his head.
He should just quit, retire, go back to the Yukon and never come out.
He must be late, because Scott, Allison and Stiles are sitting on their suitcases outside the terminal. This is confirmed when Stiles taps on the window and says, “You’re late.”
Derek grunts and pops the trunk, and the Scott and Allison put their bags in before sliding into the back. Stiles takes shotgun with his backpack.
“That all you got?” Derek asks.
“I travel light,” Stiles says. “So I hope you like this outfit.”
‘This outfit’ is jeans and a soft looking plaid shirt. Derek really doesn’t care.
“We could go to a store, Stiles!” Scott shouts from the back. “We’re in America!”
Stiles shakes his head and grins a little at Derek, like they’re sharing a joke, but if they are, Derek’s not in on it.
“I have a shade,” Derek says, staring at the road. “Lydia says I should tell people.”
“Um,” Stiles says. “I guess you told us.”
“Stiles used to have a shade,” Scott contributes.
“You don’t just tell people that,” Stiles hisses.
“You were going to tell him,” Scott says.
“I was, but you stole my thunder,” Stiles says, then turns to Derek. “I used to have a shade.”
“Is it my aunt?” Allison asks. “Your shade?”
“Yes,” Derek says, and keeps driving.
A few minutes pass in silence before Stiles says, “So Lydia’s on this job, huh?”
“Jackson Whittemore is also here,” Derek says, just to be clear.
“Shit,” Scott and Stiles say at more or less the same time.
“That guy’s an asshole,” Stiles continues. “Oh my god, I wouldn’t have taken this job if I’d known he was going to be here. You know, he once threatened to take out a restraining order against me?”
Scott is muttering something Derek can’t quite make out, and in the rearview mirror Allison giggles and shoves at him in a way that makes Derek feel like he’s driving around flirty teenagers.
“So your shade?” Stiles asks. “What’s she do?”
“Kills me,” Derek says. “Just me.”
Stiles nods.
“Good to know, I guess,” he says. “Mine used to--die.”
Derek hasn’t heard of a shade that just dies.
“It was worse than it sounds,” Stiles adds. “I mean, I know it doesn’t sound very bad. It didn’t really matter on jobs. Half the people I worked with didn’t even know. But--” Stiles shakes his head. “I’m not talking to you about this. Sorry you have a shade, that sucks.”
“Someone broke into the house and stole one of the family PASIVs,” Derek adds, in the interest of full disclosure.
“Your family has more than one PASIV?” Stiles asks. “Of course you do, you’re the Hales.”
They were the Hales, actually, but Derek doesn’t correct him. Now they’re just Derek and Peter, and the two of them are splintered and cracked and rusted and worn in so many ways Derek isn’t sure if, even together, they constitute a whole thing.
“When?” Allison asks.
“Don’t know,” Derek says. “Sometime in the past year.”
“Not now, though?” Allison asks. “Not while you were in the house?”
“No,” Derek says.
In the mirror, Derek can see Allison nod and rest her head against Scott’s shoulder.
“Thanks for telling us,” she says. She looks like she’s going to fall asleep. She looks like Kate, but just a little. Younger--clearer. Derek doesn’t trust her, but he’s almost inclined to. It’s easy to trust people when they’re sleeping, though. Less so in dreams, even less so when they wake up, but easy when they’re sleeping.
“Tell me about the job in Mongolia,” Derek says to Stiles, because he needs something else to think about.
Stiles complies. It turns out that, given an opening, he can sustain a conversation singlehandedly. It’s kind of relief, because Derek doesn’t feel like talking and, while Stiles pointedly leaves out names and certain details, he’s a decent storyteller and it sounds like an interesting job. And easy, or not easy: smooth. Derek wishes this job would go smoothly. But it hasn’t even started yet, and it’s obviously not going to be. If they got through this, it was going to be one of those jobs people told stories about, one of those ones that achieves success by such a thin margin that it’s kind of a miracle, really.
Derek would rather this be almost any other kind of job, but he doesn’t see how he has a choice--when he was younger he might have wanted to throw himself headlong into glory, thinking himself invincible, but now he doubted he would make it.
“This looks nicer than a warehouse,” Stiles says when they pull up to the house. “Does this mean we get bedrooms? Ariadne had us on cots.”
“Not the one at the top of the stairs,” Derek says, too quickly.
“I wasn’t going to rush in and claim a room,” Stiles says. “And, like, piss in it. As far as I know this isn’t a reality show. Lydia!”
Stiles waves, then lopes up to the porch and envelopes Lydia in a hug. His backpack’s still on the front seat, and Derek grabs it and follows him.
“Stilinski,” Jackson says, coming out of the front door and leaning in the doorframe. “Pleasure as always.”
“Aw, don’t be that way,” Stiles says. “We had fun at New Year’s.”
“We were wasted at New Year’s,” Jackson corrects. “And then you slept with my best friend.”
Derek glances at Lydia. She mouths ‘not me’ at him.
“McCall,” Jackson says as the other two approach. “Allison.”
“We ordered pizza for lunch,” Lydia says. “We can go pick it up now that you’re back.”
“I’ll stay here,” Derek says. He tosses her the keys and she catches them neatly.
Derek ends up lying on the couch while the others settle in upstairs, staring at the ceiling. Tomorrow they’ll start work properly and Derek will need to sort through old family records and figure out how to frame an extraction on Peter. He’s trying to shore himself up. He’s not sure it’s working well. Getting drunk might work better, but he hadn’t bought any alcohol.
“Anything interesting up there?” Stiles asks, coming into the room and sitting down, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. Derek should probably tell him not to scuff it, but Derek’s feet are on the leather couch.
“No,” Derek says.
“Regret hiring me yet?” Stiles asks.
“Yes,” Derek says, and Stiles laughs.
“Can’t blame you,” he says. “So can you not see the architecture, then, because of your shade? We can still talk about it, I mean, but the maze?”
Derek nods.
“You should probably look at some of my older ones,” Stiles says.
“It’s probably better this way,” Derek replies. “I won’t pick up on any stylistic patterns you might have.”
“I don’t have patterns,” Stiles says.
“Everyone does,” Derek says, sitting up and looking at Stiles. Derek may be forbidden from doing the architecture on this job, but he was good once.
“That was a joke, dude,” Stiles says. “I won’t show you my mazes. But I might run some stuff by you, since this is your uncle.”
“And I’m the extractor,” Derek adds.
“And you’re the extractor,” Stiles agrees.
Lydia and Jackson got the pizza from the crappy place in town instead of the good one, but Derek will let it slide because they couldn’t have known any better. Unless they looked it up on the internet, which maybe they should’ve. Either way, it’s kind of comforting to have everyone gathered around the kitchen table, a complete team plus Jackson, and the pizza isn’t good but it is cheese and sauce and grease and dough, which is its own kind of comfort. It sets Derek off kilter to have these people and not his family--but these people are also so different from his family, it’s almost okay.
“Stiles,” Lydia says suddenly. “Derek has a retina scanner you need to look at.”
“You have a retina scanner?” Stiles asks Derek. “Hales.”
“We think someone might’ve hacked it, or maybe coded in a retina that shouldn’t have been there,” Lydia says.
“Alright,” Stiles says. “I can take a look. Dad used to have me fix the ol’ retinal scanner all the time.”
“Stiles--” Lydia starts, and Stiles grins lopsidedly at Derek.
“Just kidding, the Stilinskis don’t have a retinal scanner, because we don’t have any secrets. All out on the surface in the Stilinski household, you know, what you see is what you get.”
“What do your parents think you do?” Derek asks. Most people whose families aren’t in the industry have some sort of cover story, usually to do with banking.
“IT,” Stiles says easily. “You know, ‘Have you tried turning it off and on again?’ Luckily for you, I am somewhat competent at IT stuff. That’s how I put myself through college.”
“Fixing retina scanners?” Derek asks, and Stiles shrugs.
“Can’t be that different,” he says.
It turns out that it can be that different, which is what they find out when they’re all gathered around the fusebox in the basement.
“Well,” Stiles says. “This is interesting.”
“That mean you can’t do it?” Jackson asks, leaning forward.
“We could hire Danny,” Stiles suggests.
“Oh my god, Stilinski,” Jackson groans. “Do you secretly want to fuck me? What is with you and developing crushes on everyone I talk to?”
“You never had to share as a child, did you?” Allison says coolly. “It shows.”
“Thank you, Allison,” Stiles says. “Danny has needs you can’t fulfill, Jackson.”
“I can’t believe he slept with you,” Jackson says. “Seriously, I can’t. It doesn’t even compute.”
“I’ll have you know, I’m very good in bed,” Stiles says, overloud.
“Too much information,” Jackson says flatly. Derek realizes that, as extractor, he really should put a stop to this discussion.
“Do we need to get Danny?” Derek asks Stiles.
Stiles blinks at him, then looks back at the fuse box.
“No,” he says after a moment. “If I call him, he can probably walk me through it.”
“Don’t have phone sex with him,” Jackson says. “Just don’t.”
“If I do, it will be just to spite you,” Stiles says. “And because I haven’t gotten laid in awhile, but mostly to spite you. We slept together once. It’s not like we’re in a long distance relationship.”
“See, you shouldn’t let me impact your sex life,” Jackson says. “It’s weird.”
“Your concern about my sex life is endearing, really,” Stiles says. “It’s almost like you’re my wingman. It’s almost like you really, really want me to get laid.”
“Only to keep you from sleeping with my best friend and my girlfriend,” Jackson says.
“I told you, Danny has needs you can’t fulfill!” Stiles says.
“He says I’m not his type,” Jackson grouses, absurdly.
“Oh my god,” Stiles says, throwing his hands into the air. “Scott’s not my type, either, because he’s my best friend. Sorry Scott.”
“No problem,” Scott says, tossing Stiles a salute.
“Point being, it’s not entirely unusual for people to friendzone people they’ve nursed through surprisingly debilitating break-ups,” Stiles continues. “Sorry Scott.”
“Shut up, both of you,” Derek says, and he thinks he hear Allison mutter, “Finally.”
“Stiles, figure out the retina scanner and don’t have phone sex with Jackson’s friend,” Derek continues.
“You can’t dictate that!” Stiles mutter, and Derek glares at him.
“The rest of us are going upstairs,” Derek says, because he has no interest in being placated.
“Good leadership,” Lydia says when they get upstairs, but it sounds placating.
“We didn’t need to all stand around and watch him,” Derek says.
“No,” Lydia agrees. “We didn’t.”
There’s something weird about the whole conversation, though. Maybe because Lydia seems more in control of this job than Derek is, to the point that Derek wonders why he’s even been hired. And Derek’s not entirely comfortable leaving Stiles alone in the basement, but when he turns to go back downstairs Scott asks him a question, and then Lydia does.
They’re probably trying to cover for Stiles having phone sex. Derek doesn’t even want to know--he really, genuinely, has no interest in knowing what Stiles is doing downstairs with his disposable cell phone and the retina scanner.
“He better not break it,” Derek says, mostly to himself.
“He won’t,” Lydia says, and she smiles at Derek.
Stiles doesn’t break the retina scanner, but he doesn’t turn up anything especially helpful, either. He gets back upstairs when everyone else is sorting through some old records and gives Derek a list of numbers written in spiky handwriting in a small notebook.
“So here’s what I can tell you,” he says to Derek, tapping at the list with the eraser on his pencil. “You can’t put in anyone new without someone unlocking the scanner first, which means someone in your family would’ve needed to--and these are the i.d. numbers. Five of them.”
Derek stares at them. They don’t mean anything to him.
“They’re automatically assigned,” Stiles says, and then flips the page. “This is a list of times and dates of access. The last one was in October.”
“Who was it?” Derek asks, and Stiles shakes his head.
“Can’t tell,” he says. “We could figure out yours, but I don’t think that will be any help.”
“Are they in order?” Derek asks, taking the notebook back from Stiles. “Chronologically? Laura and I weren’t put in the system until we were older.”
When Derek looks up, Stiles is staring at him.
“Shit,” he says. “I should’ve thought of that. They’re in order, there, which means you and Laura must be the last two--” Stiles moves so he’s standing beside Derek, and flips the notebook to the page prior. “The last number logged is the first one on the list. I don’t know what that means.”
“Peter,” Derek replies, running a hand through his hair. “It means Peter, somehow.”
He hands the notebook back to Stiles.
“You could say thank you,” Stiles says.
“I could,” Derek agrees.
“Good talk,” Stiles says, slapping Derek on the back. “I’m just going to go over here now and pretend you’re not an asshole.”
“Yeah, no, you’re coming with me to the care home,” Derek says, grabbing him by the arm. “You have a gun?”
“Do I have a gun,” Stiles says, which--isn’t an answer. “But, no, really, I think we should bring someone else.”
“Can’t,” Derek says. “Suspicious if I go visit my catatonic uncle with a bunch of people. Come on.”
“And one stranger with a gun isn’t suspicious?” Stiles asks.
“Two people with guns,” Derek corrects, holstering his. “They won’t know. It’s a care home, not a bank.”
“Okay,” Stiles says. He’s looking at Derek’s shoulder holster strangely. “So we’re doing this.”
“That’s what I told you,” Derek says. “Get your gun, come on.”
Stiles goes upstairs.
“Just some constructive criticism, but I feel like your persuasion could use a little work, here,” Stiles says when he comes back down and follows Derek outside. “You can’t just keep saying the same things over and over again until people go along with it.”
“And yet,” Derek says as he unlocks the car. “Here you are.”
“Yeah,” Stiles says. “Kind of confused on that point, myself.”
But he’s sitting shotgun when Derek pulls out of the driveway.
“So, Peter,” Stiles says.
“Is my uncle,” Derek provides, staring ahead at the windshield.
“Not quite what I was looking for,” Stiles says. “But I can work with that.”
“My family’s off limits,” Derek says, because boundaries are important.
“The job’s your family,” Stiles says, voice suddenly quiet. “Your family’s the job.”
It hurts because he’s right, and it slices like a thin, sharp blade, right into Derek’s center. He doesn’t say anything at all, and Stiles doesn’t, either, until Derek’s parking in the guest lot at the care home.
“You’re my boyfriend,” Derek says across the top of the car when they’re getting out. Stiles stops, grips the frame of the passenger side door with one hand, and turns around.
“I’m your--” Stiles pauses. “Um. Why?”
“Less suspicious,” Derek says. “You can do that, can’t you? Pretend to like me for ten minutes while I talk to the nurse?”
“I can--” Stiles’ voice has gone a little pitchy, and if Derek had realized this would be such a trial he wouldn’t have suggested it, and Stiles could just be his highly improbable cousin or something. He had just figured--Stiles slept with someone named Danny. “I can do that. Yes.”
“Good,” Derek says, and nods once. “Come on.”
He presses a hand to the small of Stiles’ back as they walk through the sliding doors, for authenticity. Stiles glances over at Derek, surprised, then ducks his head so the shadows of his lashes swipe across his cheeks. He reaches through the space between them and loops an arm around Derek’s waist.
“You asked for this,” he whispers across Derek’s cheek. There are long fingers against Derek’s hipbone, and, okay, Derek didn’t ask for that precisely, but he can see how he got himself here.
He slips his own hand into Stiles’ back pocket, and out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he detects the hint of a grin on Stiles’ face.
They pull apart at the front desk, and Derek’s grateful for the space. It’s been a long time since his body jigsawed together with anyone else’s, and Stiles at his side--it’s too warm, too comfortable, to have someone there. Not Stiles in particular, just human warmth--Laura used to press her shoulder against Derek’s when they watched movies in dim hotel rooms, Derek’s father used to muss his hair, Derek’s mother used to squeeze his shoulder, and Derek’s not sure when the last time someone touched him just to touch him was. Kate’s touches always seemed more focus on sex than comfort, and it makes something twist in his gut to realize that this bit of fakery with Stiles is comforting for him, when really it shouldn’t be.
Stiles tangles his fingers with Derek’s while Derek’s talking to the nurse.
Derek kind of wishes they’d gone the cousin route. He reminds himself of that when the nurse is leading them down the hall, and Stiles’ hand is back on Derek’s hip, casually possessive, and Stiles’ body is warm and solid at Derek’s side.
Peter doesn’t look any different from when Derek last visited. He doesn’t look any closer to being awake, either.
“Could you leave us?” he asks the nurse, who’s still standing in the corner of the room. She nods once and goes outside, shutting the door behind her, but Derek doesn’t hear any footsteps going down the hall. Stiles looks at Derek, who steps closer to Peter’s bed. Peter’s eyes are shut. He could be sleeping. Which Derek guesses is the point.
“So,” Stiles says.
Derek circles around to the side of Peter’s bed and takes his hand, feeling for the pulse in his uncle’s wrist.
“Uncle Peter,” Derek says. “I wanted you to meet my--”
“Stiles,” Stiles interjects. He sounds a bit frantic.
“Stiles?” Derek repeats, raising an eyebrow, and pointing to the door.
“It’s a pleasure,” Stiles says. “Derek’s told me so much about you--” Stiles looks up at Derek like he’s waiting for a cue. “--he said how important you are to him. I’m just sorry you’re not awake.”
Peter’s pulse is low and steady, and it doesn’t change through any of--whatever that was. When Derek looks at Stiles, Stiles’ eyebrows are doing a bizarre tango across his forehead.
Derek shrugs and drops Peter’s hand.
“Should we read to him?” Stiles asks. “I think that’s a thing people do.”
“Maybe another time,” Derek says, walking across the room. “Right now I want to--”
Derek doesn’t know what people say in situations like the one he’s somehow play-acted himself into. He feels embarrassed for even trying, but then Stiles flashes him a grin and says, “Of course you do, baby. It means a lot that you brought me here, though. I know how important your family is to you.”
Derek knows the importance of his family is scrawled across his history in capital letters, but it’s still strange to hear Stiles acknowledge it, even if it’s just for a bizarre skit for probably catatonic Peter Hale and his nurse, who is waiting for them in the hallway when they step out of the room.
“Thank you,” Derek says to the nurse, and somewhere Stiles’ hand finds Derek’s and squeezes it. The nurse walks with them to the front desk in silence, and soon enough they’re outside in the clear air, and Derek drops Stiles’ hand and everything he himself has been carrying.
“Baby?” Derek asks when they’re in the car.
“I did improv in college,” Stiles says. “And it saved your ass, don’t act like it didn’t, so you aren’t allowed to make fun of me for it.”
“You did improv in college and that was the best you could come up with?” Derek asks.
“Everyone’s a critic,” Stiles sighs. “So, Peter?”
“No change to his pulse,” Derek says. Stiles rubs his face.
“So we got nothing out of that,” Stiles says. “Do we just assume someone brought him to the house and forced one of his eyes open?”
“I don’t know,” Derek replies. He still hasn’t started the car--he’s staring through the windshield at the parking lot.
“Alright,” Stiles says. “Let’s go, tell the others. Lydia might have an idea.”
“Lydia?” Derek asks, because Stiles is his fake boyfriend now, and it’s reasonable to be concerned about things that might compromise the job.
“Oh, not you, too,” Stiles says. “Lydia’s smart, I respect that in a person. And, seriously, have you heard Jackson? It’s starting to sound like he thinks I’m an actual threat. Don’t listen to him. He grew up crazy rich, and he doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that he can’t just buy people. But Lydia and I have an understanding.”
“An understanding,” Derek repeats.
“That she’s not going to date me,” Stiles says. “Or sleep with me. I accept that, so we’re friends. High school taught me to handle rejection well.”
Derek wonders how Stiles even got into this business, because he apparently did normal things like getting rejected in high school without causing any deaths and college improv. Derek doesn’t ask, because it doesn’t matter, because if he asks Stiles might ask him questions, but he wonders.
“Where’d you guys take off to?” Lydia asks when they find her in the kitchen, and Stiles shrugs.
“Well, Derek needed me to pretend to be his boyfriend so we could visit his uncle, so, you know,” Stiles says, and Lydia stops and stares.
“You went to visit Peter,” she says. “You went to visit Peter. You think the Sheriff doesn’t have that place staked out? They probably called him as soon as you showed up.”
“Wait,” Stiles says, stopping and turning to look at Derek. “Wait. You’re a Sheriff case? Of course you are. Of course no one told me. Lydia.”
“I thought you would know,” Lydia says, and Stiles’ face does something elastic and incomprehensible. He opens his mouth, then shuts it.
“Well, I didn’t,” Stiles says tightly. “Oh god, if they recorded that, and I’m on the footage--”
“The Sheriff wants me,” Derek says, because if Stiles was working with Ariadne on that job in Mongolia he couldn’t possibly be implicated in Laura’s death, regardless of what he’s doing with Derek, so Derek doesn’t understand what the problem is. The Sheriff isn’t known for bringing in people without solid evidence.
“Yeah, and thanks for telling me about that, everyone,” Stiles says. “I don’t know who decided that information wasn’t relevant, but it is, it is relevant.”
“I didn’t kill my sister,” Derek says.
“That’s great,” Stiles says. “Really good for you. It doesn’t matter so much as the fact that no one saw fit to tell me that the Sheriff is involved, here. You told us about your shade, but you didn’t think--”
Lydia raises an eyebrow and Stiles sighs.
“Okay, whatever, I’ll deal,” he says. “But I want to talk to you about how you didn’t kill your sister, Hale.”
“Kate Argent’s trying to frame me,” Derek says.
“No,” Stiles says. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the actual facts of how you didn’t kill your sister. Not ‘I’m being framed, my life is hard.’ What’s your case?”
“He went up to the Yukon and moped around for awhile,” Lydia says, and Stiles groans.
“No, wrong, then it looks like you’re in hiding. Do you not have any self preservation instinct at all?” Stiles pauses. “No, don’t answer that, you obviously don’t.”
“My sister died,” Derek says. He can’t figure out why Stiles is stuck on this--why Stiles knows anything about this, actually, because it can’t be that long ago that he was doing college improv.
“And you ran away without doing anything,” Stiles continues. “Look, people die and it’s shit. But running away never fixes it. Never fixes anything.”
And there’s something underneath what Stiles is saying, now, buried in the sad slant of his eyes, in the way they don’t seem to be focused on anything in particular. Derek doesn’t know what it is, but for a moment he sees it. Stiles had a shade who died, Derek remembers.
“Peter,” Lydia says. “Why’d you visit him?”
“He was the last person to unlock the door,” Derek says. “Him or someone using him. But he’s still not awake.”
“How do you know?” Lydia asks.
“No change to his pulse,” Derek says.
“Even when I was telling him how deeply in love Derek and I are, so you know,” Stiles says. “That news should’ve been shocking enough to warrant some sort of response.”
Lydia quirks a brow, but takes this in stride.
“I’m glad you’ve moved on, Stiles,” she says. “I think this will be very good for you.”
“Oh shut up,” Stiles says. “Maybe we should do our little show for Jackson, too. Derek?”
“No,” Derek says.
“I’m wounded,” Stiles says. “Truly and deeply.”
“Well, congratulations, you two,” Lydia says. “But what are we going to do about Peter?”
Derek doesn’t know what they’re going to do about Peter. He had asked the nurse if Peter had had any other visitors, and she had said no, but maybe that was because the Sheriff had come through and told her to say that, or because--there were lots of reasons.
“We’re going to do the job,” he says, finally. “Soon.”
“With your shade?” Lydia says.
“You think she’s just going to go away?” Derek asks.
“Stiles’ shade did,” Lydia says, glancing towards Stiles.
“That was different,” Stiles says. He sounds almost sad about it. “My shade was unusual.”
“Kate Argent is still alive,” Lydia says. “That’s unusual.”
“Not unusual in the same way,” Stiles replies. “Look, let’s not talk about it.”
“Is Stiles Stilinski turning down an opportunity to pry?” Lydia asks, going to the fridge and pouring herself a glass of milk. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
“You know what I’m turning down the opportunity for,” Stiles says. “Not that this hasn’t been great, but I think I’m going to go upstairs and make some sketches. If we’re doing the job soon. Probably should. Besides, I need to call my dad, Lydia.”
“Huh,” Lydia says as she pours herself a glass of milk and Stiles clatters up the stairs.
“What?” Derek asks. He’s still trying to figure out why Lydia would care about Stiles calling his father.
“He’s just usually more open, is all,” Lydia says, examining Derek like she can see right down to his quick. “It’s interesting, when people change their behavior patterns, don’t you think?”
“He doesn’t like me,” Derek says.
“You sure that’s it?” Lydia asks. She rinses her glass and sets it in the sink. “I mean, I don’t know, I’m just asking.”
“I don’t know,” Derek says. “I don’t know Stiles.”
“No,” Lydia agrees. “But he’s a good person to know.”
Scott and Allison show up in the kitchen a few moments later, when Lydia and Derek are sketching out a newly accelerated schedule for this job.
“Stiles says the Sheriff’s on you,” Scott says. He looks like he thinks it’s funny. “Should’ve told us that, dude.”
“The Sheriff’s a fair investigator,” Derek says, even though everyone in the industry knows this. “You won’t be implicated for working with me. Besides, Jackson’s going to deal with him.”
“Nah, not worried,” Scott says, grinning at some unspoken joke. “You just could’ve told us, is all.”
Derek stares at Scott, probably for longer than he should because Lydia taps him on the elbow and says, “Pay attention, Hale.”
Between the four of them they manage to develop a new schedule that’s more or less satisfactory. It’s not like anyone has a choice, but Derek does actually understand that telling people they don’t have much of a choice isn’t diplomatic. So he listens to Scott’s and Allison’s concerns, acknowledges that they need to find an angle, and lets Lydia take care of the rest.
Which suggests that Derek might not be all that diplomatic, after all. Or maybe he is, because he knows he isn’t, and is letting Lydia take care of everything.
It’s Lydia, actually, who sends Derek upstairs to give Stiles the accelerated schedule. When Derek calls for him he finds Stiles sitting on the bed in what used to be Derek and Laura’s bedroom--in what still is Derek’s bedroom, Derek supposes, except he’s not sleeping there. It’s the only bedroom with two twin beds instead of something larger, Derek realizes, and Stiles is the only person sleeping on the second floor who’s not sharing a bed, so he supposes it makes sense.
It doesn’t change the fact that Stiles is sitting on Derek’s old bedspread, the ugly plaid one that’s badly pilled.
“Hey,” Stiles says. He’s fidgeting with a cell phone, mindlessly flipping it open and then shut again. “What’s the new timeline?”
“How was your dad?” Derek asks, looking at the phone in Stiles’ hands.
“On a business trip. Stopped in at a diner he likes. Doing terrible things to his cholesterol. Like usual,” Stiles grins wryly at Derek. “Not that you’re actually interested, but that’s what I’d tell you if you were.”
There’s a desk in the corner of the room by the window, a wooden roll-top from Derek’s father. It was never any good as a drafting table--not enough space--but Derek had used it for one anyway, as a matter of course. There’s a scroll of paper there, now, curled into itself like a dried leaf, and a couple of books that never belonged to Derek.
“You know why I became an architect?” Stiles asks, when he notices what Derek’s looking at. “Instead of anything else? I have trouble--focusing--it didn’t seem like a natural choice. I mean, it took a lot of work to be able to sustain a dream and--I probably shouldn’t be telling you this. I can do it now. But I couldn’t keep my head in one place, and with architecture, with mazes--you don’t have to. Everything’s everywhere, you can make the inside of your head as ambling and rambling as you are.”
Derek nods. It’s not why Derek became an architect, but it makes sense, in a way. Derek always liked the way dream architecture imposed order without actually being ordered in the way real architecture is, and that sounds a bit like what Stiles is talking about.
“You can’t see my blueprints,” Stiles continues. “Of course. But I was thinking--I have, like, a philosophy. An architectural philosophy. Did you? We could talk about that. I mean, I don’t think it would compromise the job.”
“I’m still an architect,” Derek says. Hearing his architecture refered too in the past tense makes something inside him plummet. Stiles shakes his head and frowns.
“Of course,” he says. “Sorry. I didn’t mean--”
“You’ve got a week,” Derek interjects, and then he goes back downstairs.
Stiles voice comes drifting after him: “Okay. Good talk.”
They all fall into patterns over the course of the week: Derek keeps sleeping on the couch downstairs, and he’ll go for a run in the morning, and then have coffee with Stiles and Lydia, because they’re up before the other three. He’ll check in with everyone throughout the day, discuss the logistics of the job as they shift. It’s almost a routine, and it’s almost comforting. As long as he doesn’t think about anything too much. Derek’s not quite good at shutting off his memories--it still seems like Laura’s physically present with him, like she should be alive--and he’s not going to let himself be happy, but he’ll at least allow himself this. And by ‘this’ he means ‘enough peace to get through the job and back to the Yukon.’
Sometime near the middle of the week, or the end of it, Lydia stops coming down for breakfast, which leaves Derek and Stiles by themselves with their mugs of coffee. When he finds himself across the kitchen table from Stiles Derek remembers, too suddenly, their conversation in Ecuador. None of that sharp skepticism had surfaced from Stiles since then, but Derek can’t help but wonder if Stiles is waiting for Derek to fuck up, as he inevitably will. Derek isn’t good at people. He never has been. Kate had seemed almost like a revelation, because of that, but that was Derek’s own fault--she was just another person that he didn’t understand.
The first morning they end up having breakfast together Stiles is quiet. When Derek glances up at him Stiles is looking at the table like it’s something fascinating. Derek knows it’s not, because he’d been looking at before looking up at Stiles; it’s a table. It looks like a table. There are whorls of woodgrain, but they aren’t actually that interesting. While Derek studies it, Stiles starts drumming his fingers across its surface in an uncertain tattoo.
Then Stiles sits up suddenly, and adjusts his posture, and says, “So, do you think you’re ready?”
It’s not the question Derek’s used to be asked, about whether the team’s ready. Derek’s pretty sure he isn’t ready.
“I still have a shade,” he says.
“Oh yeah,” Stiles says. “That.”
Stiles looks at the table again, then shakes his head abruptly.
“Have you ever tried to do something about it?” Stiles asks. “Her?”
“Yes,” Derek says, flatly.
“Of course you have,” Stiles says, shaking his head. “I know it’s not easy, I just--”
“You just,” Derek repeats when Stiles trails off and shows no sign of continuing.
“You don’t have a shade of your sister?” Stiles asks, which is not a question anyone’s ever asked, not a question Derek even thought to ask himself. He doesn’t have an answer--he doesn’t want to answer.
“No,” Derek says, and then he gets up and dumps the dregs of his coffee down the sink. When Derek gets back to the table Stiles is watching him with sharp, canny eyes.
“Mine was my mom,” he says, twisting his coffee mug in his hands. “She died and I kept her around in my head.”
Derek takes a moment just to look at Stiles, because it means something that Stiles is telling him this.
She died in his dreams, Stiles said in the car.
“How’d you get her out, then?” Derek asks.
Stiles’ face twists into a sort of bitter expression, and it looks strange on his face.
“I went to counseling, actually,” he says. “I probably needed it, even if I didn’t need it for the job. The counselor said I had to let her go. I had to accept that I couldn’t have done anything to stop her dying.”
Stiles falls silent again, looks at his hands, then up at Derek.
“She was kind of right,” Stiles says. “But it wasn’t that easy, really. It was more--my mom started to show up less, and then more because I felt guilty she was showing up less. But--that wasn’t her, you know? That was a projection. Everyone knows the difference in their own head, but I started to see the differences, between this person dying in my dreams and my actual mom. Who was, you know, dead.”
Stiles smiles, small and wry.
“I haven’t seen Kate Argent in years,” Derek says.
“Maybe you should talk to Allison about her,” Stiles says, then shrugs. “Or not, I don’t know.”
It’s quiet in the kitchen for a beat, or several, and then Stiles rolls his shoulders and gets to his feet, saying, “I’ve got to--dream levels. And Scott wants to test the forge on me, because I can always tell if he’s being Scott, at least.”
Scott’s forging Peter’s friend Alan Deaton, because everyone agreed it would be best if he didn’t do someone from Derek’s immediate family and because Scott knew Deaton well, which makes the forge easier than it might otherwise be.
Derek nods, and Stiles pauses in the doorway before leaving the room, like he has something else to say. Whatever it was he ultimately decides not to say it, and Derek is left--Derek isn’t sure how he’s left, actually. He’s left standing in the doorway to the kitchen, wondering what that conversation was exactly. He genuinely doesn’t know. It’s the most personal conversation he’s ever had with Stiles--it’s quite possibly the most personal conversation he’s had with anyone since Laura died, and Derek didn’t even contribute all that much to it.
Derek avoids Stiles for the rest of the day. He actually avoids everyone for the rest of the day, so it might not be that significant; instead Derek holes himself up in the attic above the garage, going through battered cardboard boxes of family records. There’s nothing, really, that Derek can imagine being of any use, but at least cardboard boxes don’t expect Derek to talk to them.
Lydia’s not at breakfast the next morning, again, and--Laura would say he’s being paranoid, but Derek wonders if she’s doing it on purpose. He wouldn’t past her to try that, if she thought it would get rid of Kate. Or--of Derek’s shade, more accurately. She’s not Kate, she’s a shade.
“I think Jackson and Lydia have started having morning sex,” Stiles says idly, cupping his hands around his mug. He seems more comfortable today than he was yesterday, if only marginally less fidgety. But Stiles fidgets; it’s something Derek’s noticed about him. “Is there a phrase for that? Like someone’s having a nooner, only in the morning.”
“Not that I know of,” Derek replies, but fails to point out that he isn’t someone who would know, if there was.
“I would suggest that we make one, but I actually have no interest in talking about Jackson and Lydia’s sex life, so,” Stiles says. “I don’t know why I opened with that.”
“You opened with that,” Derek repeats.
“I was trying not to open with questions about your, you know, psyche or whatever,” Stiles says. “After yesterday I realized it might be too early for that. In the morning. And also our relationship.”
Derek hadn’t realized he and Stiles had a relationship. He raises his eyebrows.
“Our working relationship,” Stiles amends. “In case you were thinking anything else. Because your psyche is actually relevant to our work here.”
Derek was thinking something else, though there’s no reason for him to, and that--disturbs him. He takes a gulp of his coffee, too hot and too bitter, just to clear his head.
“Is your tongue alive?” Stiles asks after Derek swallows. “My coffee is still too hot to drink.”
Stiles looks down at his cup like he might be able to tell the temperature that way, then shrugs.
“I mean, I’m pretty sure my dad scorched his tongue off on bad diner coffee years ago, but, you know.”
Derek doesn’t know.
“Scorched his tongue off?” Derek asks.
“Well, scorched off the part of the tongue that can detect temperature,” Stiles says, flapping his hand. “Whatever, I don’t know.”
They’re quiet for a little after that. Stiles blows on his coffee before he sips it, grinning a little at the riffles it creates in the dark liquid before taking a careful sip. Stiles talks enough that his sudden silence feels almost unusual, or intimate, and Derek finds himself watching Stiles closely enough that when Stiles looks up from his coffee their eyes catch and hold, intractable.
“I could help, you know,” Stiles says. “Or--maybe. I could try, anyway.”
“With what?” Derek asks, because he genuinely doesn’t know.
“Your shade,” Stiles says. “Kate.” He looks away, off to the side. “We could go into a dream, I could try--”
Lydia comes downstairs then. She glances between them, and if this is something she planned nothing shows on her face. Derek’s grateful for the distraction, because what Stiles is offering--there’s no easy answer. It’s something Derek needs to think about.
“Morning,” Lydia says.
“Coffee’s in the pot,” Stiles says, waving his hand towards the kitchen. “Still hot.”
Stiles grins a little at Derek at that, like the fact that the coffee is hot is a joke between the two of them. Derek’s fairly certain that there’s no joke there, but if Stiles wants to share this with him--well. Derek doesn’t know, but he figures he can’t stop Stiles from manufacturing inside jokes for the two of them. After a moment he returns Stiles’ smile, and Stiles brightens. Derek wants to tell him that just because he’s smiling now doesn’t mean he knows what to do with Stiles’ offer, and besides that Derek’s sense of humor is complete shit, really, and just because he thinks something is funny doesn’t mean it actually is.
Laura used to tell Derek that, at least. Derek’s starting to wonder why he doesn’t have her as a shade, where the line between normal mourning and the sort that saddles you with a subconscious hanger-on is. Not that Derek wants--except maybe he does. It would be nice to see her again.
Across the table, Stiles has gone quiet. When Derek looks at him again Stiles is staring into his coffee mug. Stiles looks up when Lydia comes back in, grins at her so his eyes crinkle. Derek wonders how Stiles is so easily, idly happy. He makes a clumsy innuendo about Lydia and Jackson, then dissolves into laughter when Lydia shuts him down, and Derek doesn’t understand it. He wishes he did. He suspects his life would be easier if he did.
He goes out to the garage while Stiles and Lydia are still talking, and he’s surprised when Stiles shows up several hours later with a sandwich and a pickle on a plate.
“Hey,” he says. “You missed lunch. And I’m kind of done with the architecture, so I have nothing better to do.”
Stiles trails off uncertainly, and when Derek doesn’t immediately take the plate he sets it on the attic floor, bracing his hands against his back and stretching as he looks around. From where Derek’s sitting he can see Stiles’ shirt rise up as he cracks his back, revealing a lean stomach and a trail of fine, dark hair. Derek doesn’t know why he notices, but he does. Stiles’ belt is frayed at the end and too loose; he needs a new one.
“So these are the records, huh?” Stiles says, sitting down on the other side of the room and leaning back against a pile of boxes.
“Yes,” Derek says. Stiles grins crookedly.
“I’m just waiting to see if you’re actually going to eat that, because otherwise I want the pickle,” Stiles says, nodding towards the plate. It’s still sitting between them like Derek is an animal Stiles is trying to lure out of its lair with food, and Derek isn’t sure how he feels about that.
“I don’t like pickles,” Derek says, and pushes the plate towards Stiles with his foot. Stiles darts forward like Derek’s going to change his mind, then pushes the plate back towards Derek and sits down again, taking a loud bite out of the pickle.
“So is there anything here that would exonerate you?” Stiles asks.
“No,” Derek says. “That’s not what I’m looking for.”
Stiles shrugs, but his eyes are flitting around like he suspects Derek’s lying and he’s trying to catalogue everything, just in case. Stiles must see something Derek doesn’t, because all Derek sees are unlabeled filing cabinets and boxes.
“There are birth certificates,” Derek says. “Letters. Things like that. I should probably burn them.”
Stiles raises his eyebrows in an unspoken question.
“This house doesn’t belong to the Hales,” Derek explains. “The stuff up here is a really incriminating paper trail.”
“Yeah, that was kind of a terrible idea,” Stiles says. “Especially considering you have a room locked with a retina scanner and this stuff isn’t in there.”
“Not enough space,” Derek mutters. “And the plan was always to burn this stuff if anything happened.”
“Because that doesn’t look suspicious,” Stiles says. “I feel like you guys don’t have a good working understanding of how law enforcement works.”
“And you do?” Derek asks, then shrugs. “We never needed one.”
Stiles just shakes his head.
“Kate,” he says, almost idly, though there’s an edge there that suggests Stiles is uncertain, that he thought this through. “You want to try?”
Derek doesn’t, not really, but he thinks he should. He shrugs.
“You should talk to Allison, first,” Stiles says, then gets up to go.
It’s not until Derek’s halfway through his sandwich that he realizes Stiles never answered Derek’s question about his working understanding of law enforcement. Stiles probably thought it was rhetorical. At the very least, he seems more aware of the dangers of this job than Derek gave him credit for.
When Derek gets back downstairs Lydia and Stiles are at the table, heads bowed over something that Derek can’t see. Stiles looks up first and grins at Derek like he’s happy to see him.
“Are you going to talk to Allison?” Stiles asks. Lydia looks at Derek and raises an eyebrow. Derek shrugs, and they’re all quiet.
“I think it might help,” Stiles says softly. “I know it doesn’t seem--but I think it might help. And then we can try a dream, if you want.”
Derek shrugs again. Stiles being quiet, gentle, it feels strange. Stiles and Lydia both had refused to treat Derek with kid gloves, and now it seems like they are.
“Don’t worry about me,” Derek says to both of them. “The job will be fine.”
Stiles looks away. Lydia looks annoyed. Derek goes upstairs.
He passes Allison on the steps, and she smiles at him, brief and honest. They’d been practicing in the woods, some, but they hadn’t practiced in dreams much because of Kate. Allison is good, and Derek can almost accept that. He wishes, not for the first time, that any of this made sense.
“Can I talk to you?” he asks. When Allison looks startled he says, “Later, if you want.”
“No,” Allison says. “Now is fine.”
She follows Derek into his room--Stiles’ room?--sits down gingerly on Laura’s bed and stares at him.
“Your aunt,” he starts, before realizing he doesn’t know what to ask, and--maybe he should’ve asked Stiles that, but maybe he shouldn’t be taking instruction from Stiles. Derek’s distantly angry with Stiles, maybe because Derek is listening to him, and doesn’t like it.
“Kate,” Allison interjects.
“Tell me about her,” Derek says, finally.
Allison looks uncertain, but then she does.
It has to be at least as strange for Allison to tell as it is for Derek to hear, because the Kate she describes is someone who did what she did to Derek’s family, but it still doesn’t quite mesh with the Kate Derek knew, and he almost wonders if that’s the problem--that he never fully reconciled the Kate he thought he loved with the one that killed his family, that he still doesn’t know how to.
“I don’t think she’s a good person,” Allison says, looking at her hands in her lap. “But she’s a good aunt, sometimes.”
Derek nods once. If there’s something he should say, he doesn’t know what it is. He had expected this conversation to fill him with quietly simmering rage, like some conversations do, but he just feels tired.
“You ever wonder how this happens, in dreamsharing?” Allison asks. “It messes with our heads.”
Derek’s wondered. He doesn’t know how else to be in dreamsharing, though, and he doesn’t know what else to do with himself.
“Yeah,” he says. He wants to say that the Argents and the Hales have more in common than they’ve ever acknowledged, despite being rivals, despite the Argents coming out of the military and the Hales coming out of--well, crime. Derek wants to say a lot of things, most of which he doesn’t. He looks out the window. They’re both silent, and then Allison goes downstairs. When Allison leaves Derek leans back on the bed, and, some time later, Stiles opens the door.
“You talked to Allison,” he says.
“Yes,” Derek says.
“Do you want to--?” Stiles starts, trailing off. Derek tilts his head up towards the ceiling. The job is tomorrow, and he’s hardly gone into dreams at all. He really should.
“I should,” he says, and when Stiles doesn’t say anything else Derek adds, “Okay.”
“Okay,” Stiles says. “Okay, then we should go. Downstairs. And downstairs again. You know.” Stiles gestures, looping a hand through the air.
Derek does know.
“We can use your architecture,” Stiles adds, looking over his shoulder at Derek. “I want to see it.”
Derek wants Stiles to see it, actually. He hasn’t had much opportunity to show his work to other architects, and he finds that the idea appeals to him. Even if he hasn’t seen Stiles’ work--Stiles did work with Ariadne. Derek respects that, at least.
They go downstairs and hook up to one of the PASIVs, using regular Somnacin instead of Lydia’s formula, and Derek queues up his subway architecture, because it’s still his favorite.
“Rats,” Stiles says after he opens his eyes, nodding approvingly. “Thorough.” He shoves his hands into his back pockets and looks around again, watching projections board the train. “So, you going to give me a tour and we’ll see what happens?”
“Yes,” Derek says, after a moment. “But we can wait for the next train.”
The next train comes, roaring into the station, and in the meantime Stiles chatters--not quite incessantly, but certainly continuously. Derek wishes words could come as easily to him.
“My mom,” Stiles is saying suddenly. “My mom, my shade, I just couldn’t--” Stiles shakes his head. “In high school I used to say all these things that didn’t make sense, I thought I grew out of that.”
“It’s hard to talk about,” Derek says.
“For you,” Stiles says, then grins in a way that he might’ve intended to be apologetic. “No, you’re right, it’s hard, just like it’s easy to understand a shade isn’t a person and hard to use that information to make them go away. But where is she?”
“Not here yet,” Derek says, glancing around. “Come on, we have to jump.”
He reaches out to grab Stiles’ hand and pull him onto the train, because the first leap is always a bit difficult. Stiles flails when Derek clasps his hand, but he catches his footing on the train with surprising grace. He doesn’t release Derek’s hand. It’s okay, they’re just dreaming.
They keep wandering through the dream, switching trains and switching trains again. Derek likes tugging Stiles along by the hand, and Stiles--Stiles likes the architecture. He likes the mosaics in some of the stations, and the rats, and the ways the tracks circle back to one another. He tells Derek as much, asks him surprisingly perceptive questions.
“Are they penrose trains?” Stiles asks. “Penrose tracks?”
“Some of them,” Derek says, scanning the new station for Kate. She’s nowhere to be seen, but sometimes she just--isn’t.
There’s a set of stairs in one of the stations that goes up indefinitely. Derek usually steers people away from them because they lead to nowhere, but Stiles spies them and immediately decides they’re climbing. Stiles takes the steps two at a time and Derek trails after, lackadaisical. The projections thin out on the steps, which is maybe why it surprises Derek so much when he feels a knife against his back, a hand on his shoulder, manicured fingernails digging in. Ahead of him, Stiles is still talking.
“Derek,” Kate hisses into his ear. “Replacing me already?”
“So these don’t go anywhere?” Stiles says. “Like a stairway to heaven. Interesting tactic. Does it really do much? Derek--”
Stiles turns around as Kate slides her knife between Derek’s ribs. Derek tries to smile at Stiles, but he knows whatever he manages to contort his face into will come out strange and wan. And Stiles’ own expression has gone into freefall, but the last thing Derek sees before he dies is a flash in Stiles’ eyes, and he looks angry.
Derek wakes up. He looks at Stiles on the cot next to him, breathing lightly. Derek can see his chest rise and fall through Stiles’ thin, dark t-shirt. He’s still asleep, still alive in the dream. Kate only ever kills Derek, anyway. Derek wonders how Stiles is going to kick himself out of the dream, and when, and suddenly Stiles is blinking awake, eyes bleary until they focus on Derek’s face.
“Were you watching me sleep?” he asks, and there’s a grin there at the corner of his lips. Stiles looks happier than Derek expected him to be, given what just happened.
“Waiting for you to wake up,” Derek replies, looking away, towards the wall. “What happened?”
“Interesting shade you got there,” Stiles says, sitting up and bracing his hands on his thighs. “Not exactly the friendliest lady.” Derek snorts.
“Yeah, okay, understatement,” Stiles continues, a bit wry. “But we had a little talk. You know--” Stiles shakes his head. “It’s not easy, to get them to go away. It’s something that she stayed away that long, isn’t it?”
Derek hasn’t had a dream without Kate since his family died, so it probably is a step in the right direction, but Derek isn’t sure how significant this might be. Instead he shrugs and heads upstairs, mutters something about how he should probably get back to the records before dinner, just because. The job needs to go well, Derek reminds himself, or Stiles. Because of the Sheriff. Stiles winces involuntarily, and Derek doesn’t know what he’s afraid of, but Derek is just trying to keep himself together right now.
part 3