hard times for dreamers
part 2
They usually eat dinner in randomly overlapping shifts, people drifting in and out of the kitchen, and sometimes watching movies in the basement. When Derek gets down from the attic everyone’s already moved to the basement, but there’s a bowl of chili covered with plastic wrap in the fridge, and Derek microwaves it before going to the basement. Some James Bond movie Derek can’t identify is on, and Stiles turns around when Derek gets to the bottom of the stairs, then slides towards Scott and pats the space he’s made on the couch. Allison and Scott are on the couch with Stiles and Lydia’s sitting in Jackson’s lap in one of the oversize armchairs, and there’s another armchair, empty, but it seems rude to refuse now that Stiles has made a space, so Derek slides in next to him.
Stiles is leaning more towards Scott than Derek, but at some point during the movie he folds his legs up under his body and his feet slide under Derek’s legs. It’s not comfortable at all, but Derek doesn’t move, because it feels like something you do with someone you’re comfortable with and Derek doesn’t know what to make of that.
“Someone should make a movie about this,” Stiles says when the credits start to roll and Bond, as played by Sean Connery, has accomplished whatever he was supposed to accomplish.
“About us watching this movie?” Scott asks, grinning in the silvered television light.
“Meta,” Lydia says.
“And boring,” Scott says.
“About dreamsharing,” Stiles says. “Just because right now it feels like a shitty job doesn’t mean it actually is.”
“They probably will once it goes public,” Lydia says.
“That’ll be interesting,” Stiles says.
“You know Stiles started dreamsharing because the idea of people getting in his head freaks him out too much to not do it himself,” Lydia says, leaning forward in Jackson’s lap.
“Lydia,” Stiles says sharply. “I told you that in confidence.”
“No you didn’t,” Lydia says.
“I was drunk,” Stiles mutters. “You should assume things I tell you when I’m drunk are told in confidence.”
Lydia just laughs, then glances at Derek and catches his eye.
“I also started because it’s cool,” Stiles says, leaning back on the couch and tilting his head up towards the ceiling. “And I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do with real architecture. And then Scott did because I did.”
Stiles rolls his head towards Scott, who punches him in the shoulder. It’s impossible to tell whether that’s a joke or the truth spoken like a joke, but it sounds like a conversation they’ve had before. It seems like if Stiles was in dreamsharing when Scott was training Derek would’ve met him, at least in passing, but who knows.
“And Lydia’s here because nothing could hold her,” Stiles continues. “And Jackson’s here because Lydia is, and the rest of you are in the family business, right?”
“And this isn’t your family business?” Lydia asks, and Stiles goes momentarily still, then laughs uncomfortably.
“My dad’s an architect,” he says pointedly, turning to Derek before looking back at Lydia and narrowing his eyes. “It’s not the same.”
Lydia shrugs, but she looks satisfied and Stiles looks annoyed and Derek is wondering about Stiles’ father, which he suspects was what Lydia was trying to make happen. Derek’s usually good at telling when people are lying, and is seems like Stiles, who’s rubbing his head, was lying, about his father or his father’s job. Derek’s not sure what the expression on Stiles’ face is, but then Stiles gets up very suddenly and leaves, so it seems probable that it’s not a very happy expression.
“Stiles,” Lydia says, somewhat placatingly.
“I have to use the bathroom,” he yells, but it sounds more like a weak excuse than an actual explanation.
“Should we put another DVD in?” Scott asks, looking around. Allison shrugs.
“Isn’t he your friend?” Derek asks, because this is entirely out of character for Scott. He’s usually more concerned when people storm out of rooms.
“It’s not a big deal,” Scott says with a shrug, and Allison nods, and Derek suspects that everyone knows what just happened but him, and that is not okay.
“What was that?” he says to Lydia.
“Ask Stiles,” she says, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “Put in another movie, Scott. One with Timothy Dalton.”
“Timothy Dalton,” Jackson mutters disparagingly.
Derek stares at them: Scott, rifling through the James Bond box set, Allison, who is staunchly not making eye contact, Lydia and Jackson, who have picked up a petty argument about Timothy Dalton. He goes upstairs.
Stiles is coming out of the bathroom, which suggests he at least followed through with his cover story. Or he actually needed to use the bathroom.
Stiles stops in the door and stares at Derek, then wipes his palms on the front of his jeans.
“I washed my hands,” he says, like that isn’t an absurd, unnecessary statement.
“What happened down there?” Derek asks.
“Lydia was just giving me crap,” Stiles says, eyes flitting to the side. “My dad--” he shrugs.
“You’re not telling me something,” Derek says. He takes a step forward. He’s not enough taller than Stiles that it feels like an effective intimidation tactic, if anything, Stiles is broader than Derek in the shoulders. And even as Derek presses forward, Stiles just stands there, staring back.
Derek’s not sure how much more time passes like that, their eyes tight to one another’s. Probably less than it feels like. It’s dark in the hall, and they can hear a muffled James Bond theme from downstairs, and after a few bars of music Stiles sighs and looks off to the side.
“It’s not important,” Stiles says. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It seemed like it mattered,” Derek says.
“Knowing won’t make us a more effective team,” Stiles says. “Probably the opposite.”
He starts walking towards the kitchen, and when Derek stops Stiles says, “Well, do you want to know, then?”
Stiles starts making coffee by the light from the hallway, and Derek watches him and wonders what this is that it needs coffee. Stiles pours two mugs, the mugs they’ve each been using habitually in the morning. He gives Derek the blue one and sits down at the table, looking into the depths of his own coffee.
“Okay,” Stiles says. “It’s probably important for you to know that I don’t think you killed your sister, to start.”
Derek doesn’t know what that has to do with this, but he says, “Thank you,” because that seems like the thing to say.
“I think there are better ways to deal with it than fucking off to Alaska or whatever,” Stiles adds, then looks at his coffee. “Like, a million better ways. And I actually know that, because my dad--” Stiles pauses, looks up. “My dad’s the Sheriff.”
It takes Derek a minute to understand what Stiles is saying, and once Derek gets it he’s not even sure what it means on a larger level. It means--
“So is that why you’re here?” Derek asks, too sharp and loud. He’s pressing his palms against the table, hard.
“No,” Stiles says. “No. Remember when we went to visit Peter and I had to call my dad? Yeah, that. I got reamed, and I had to explain that we were fake dating or whatever, because dad doesn’t like it when I date accused murderers and he finds out from CCTV footage because I don’t bring them home to meet him.”
Derek wants to ask if that’s something that’s happened before. He also--he also doesn’t know what to do with this information. It’s not like Stiles has betrayed his trust, because Derek hadn’t entirely trusted him, but still--they’re running the job the day after tomorrow. Stiles offered to help Derek with Kate, and that seems important in some way Derek can’t quantify.
Derek hits the table, once, loud. It shudders, and ripples run across the surfaces of their coffee. Derek’s cup, overfull, spills over. Stiles looks at the table and doesn’t say anything else. He has to be waiting, though Derek doesn’t know what he expects; forgiveness, maybe, maybe he expects Derek to be grateful that Stiles might be able to get him out of all of this, maybe Stiles expects Derek to be angry.
“I’m going to bed,” Derek says, and goes upstairs. It’s only when he gets to the bedroom that he remembers he hasn’t been sleeping there, Stiles has, and Derek has been sleeping on the couch because that made sense to him at one point. The bedsheets are rumpled. Derek climbs in anyway and pulls them over his shoulders; this is Stiles’ problem, not his. Derek’s going to sleep. He makes himself sleep. When he wakes up he neither feels better nor worse--he just sees Stiles sitting at the table, and the Sheriff, and he thinks he trusts Stiles less, but maybe he should trust him more.
Stiles is sleeping on the couch when Derek gets downstairs, limbs trailing off the ends. Derek doesn’t know what to do with this, with him. He almost feels guilty that Stiles doesn’t seem to know how to make himself small enough to sleep comfortably on a sofa when there’s an extra twin bed in the room upstairs Stiles could be using. Derek skips his run and goes into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, and Stiles comes in when Derek’s halfway through his first mug, rubbing his eyes and wearing rumpled clothes from the night before.
“You stole my room,” he says.
“It was my room, first,” Derek replies, and has the sudden realization that Stiles actually distracted him enough to get him to sleep there, which is--something.
Stiles pours himself coffee and a bowl of cereal, and he’s quiet until sitting down across from Derek, at which point he looks up at Derek and says, “We okay?”
Derek shrugs. He’s not sure they are, but on the other hand he wonders if they were, ever, or if they’d just crafted a simulacrum of two people interacting normally. Maybe they aren’t okay, but maybe they could be now, because at least Derek knows. It’s not like--Stiles said he didn’t believe Derek killed Laura, and for some reason Derek believes that, trusts Stiles more than he should.
“Anything else you need to tell me?” Derek asks. Stiles looks up at Derek, surprised, and then he gives him a quick, honest grin.
“Not at the moment, no,” Stiles says. “I’ll keep you posted.”
Derek finds himself smiling into his coffee, involuntarily, instead of thinking about the job they’re running on his uncle tomorrow until Lydia comes downstairs, pours herself a cup of coffee and sits down between them, saying, “So this job’s going to run smoothly, right?”
“If you’re asking whether Derek’s going to kill me, he’s agreed to hold off,” Stiles says, and he grins at Derek again, that grin that implies they have some sort of joke together. “Which is for the best, because killing me would seriously get my dad on your ass.”
Derek kind of wants to ask about that, about Stiles’ dad and how this might be his family business, too, but Lydia waylays the conversation with plans for tomorrow.
“So are we pretending to be boyfriends again?” Stiles asks, looking across the table at Derek. Derek had kind of forgotten about that, even though Stiles had referenced it the night prior.
“It would be strange if you didn’t,” Lydia says, and Derek nods. The improbable cousins cover story seems like a better one, in light of everything, but Derek knows what they say about hindsight, and there are all sorts of things he would do differently, given the chance. Relative to the others, this one doesn’t loom too large on his consciousness, but he thinks it would just make his life a little easier if he and Stiles didn’t--
“Are you going to want a bed tonight?” Stiles asks, cutting off Derek’s thoughts. “Because there are two in that room, so I was thinking--”
“Roommates,” Lydia says, clapping her hands on the table. “That settles it.”
Derek didn’t actually settle it, but when night comes around it feels surprisingly okay to go upstairs with Stiles, who turns out the light before either of them undress. The moon’s waxing towards fullness tomorrow night, and in the silvered light from the window Derek can see the curve of Stiles’ back as he pulls off his shirt, but he doesn’t look for longer than that.
Since Kate Derek’s been careful about being attracted to people. It’s not that he isn’t, it’s just that he doesn’t allow himself think about it for longer than a few moments, for longer than it takes Derek to get himself off, when he needs to. Derek could be attracted to Stiles, he thinks, because Derek trusts Stiles and he shouldn’t. But maybe he already is--he’s been noticing things, Stiles’ hands and the fringe of lashes around his pale eyes, and now this. It makes Derek ache a little, and curl away from the bed Stiles is sleeping in. The worst part of the thing with Kate, other than the part where everything was the worst, was how aware it made Derek of attraction and attractiveness, and how little it can be trusted. Derek knows what he looks like. It’s a lie, really, a pretty face covering up gross structural flaws. Derek’s gone to bars, seen people look at him like he’s water and they’re parched, and wished he could explain that to them. Attraction--attractiveness--it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t help anything, either.
He goes to sleep, and he’s grateful, again, as always, that he doesn’t dream.
The next morning is busy with last minute preparations. Allison’s out practicing at the shooting range she set up in the backyard, and Scott insists he needs Apple Jacks to function to his full potential, and Jackson’s saying he’s coming with for the job, even though he absolutely isn’t. Stiles is calm, and strangely quiet, and Lydia is making her own plans and sketches on spare sheets of paper, lost inside her own mind. Derek and Stiles are to go to the care facility and check Peter out for the day, bring him back to the house, and then they’ll do the job.
“Easy peasy lemon squeezy,” Stiles says when they’re in the car. Derek raises an eyebrow, and Stiles grins at him, offers a fist, presumably to bump. Derek brushes his knuckles against Stiles’ and starts the car.
When they get to the care facility it’s a lot like it was the first time, right down to the nurse on duty, who walks them to Peter’s room with her heels clicking. She purses her lips into a frown when Derek says they’re taking Peter out, but there’s nothing she can do about it. Stiles’ hand, again, is on Derek’s hip like an anchor.
It takes a little doing to shift Peter into the car, but they manage, and the drive back to the house goes without incident, though having Peter in the car keeps them both silent, like he might somehow hear.
Derek and Stiles carry Peter between them down the stairs when they get to the house, and shift him onto one of the cots in the subbasement. The rest of the team joins them, with Jackson, because Lydia won that argument. It’s Lydia, ultimately, who gets the PASIV out.
They go under.
There’s always a blurry moment, in between falling asleep and the dream beginning, like the moment just before the mists lift off the ocean in the morning. Derek can’t see, and then he can--he’s not on his feet, and then he is.
When he opens his eyes Derek’s not where he expects to be, which maybe shouldn’t have come as a surprise; he knew, if he thought about it, that Stiles’ architecture wouldn’t be what he expected. He’s in the woods--the ones around the old house. Derek knows you aren’t supposed to base architecture on a real thing, and Stiles hasn’t, because these are those trees, but they aren’t arranged like a forest. The trees have been warped and twisted into walls and staircases, so even though now Derek’s standing on a ground, in a clear opening in the forest dusted with snow and dry leaves, he could also climb up through stories of trees.
Stiles is on the other side of the clearing, and he looks at Derek like he knows what Derek’s looking at, and grins like he always does. Really, it just takes a moment, but there’s a flash of something, there, between them, and Derek wants to know Stiles: how he came up with this, and why, what his handwriting looks like on blueprints and along the lines of his sketches, whether his father was actually an architect, what all of this means. It’s a stupid moment, and completely the wrong time, but the realization comes to Derek clean and whole: this is more than attraction, this is wanting. Stiles. As a person.
But they have a job to run, and Derek’s heart is beating hummingbird quick in his chest, and they’re in Peter’s subconscious, beyond Limbo, and they have a job to run.
They have a job to run. Derek recenters himself on that, not on the architecture or Stiles’ mind or whatever it is that’s inched its way under Derek’s skin over the course of--what, scarcely a week. Stiles has gone from being someone who Derek liked touching him to someone Derek considered an anchor, even just for a moment, and Derek doesn’t even know what Stiles wants--if Stiles wants--
But they have a job to run. Derek returns to that and clings to it.
“We need to find Peter,” Derek says, because it’s true. They need Peter if Scott-as-Deaton is going to get any information out of him.
They split up--Jackson with Lydia, Allison with Scott, Derek with Stiles. It makes sense on some level; the plan has always been that they would divide, locate Peter, reconvene at a location everyone had agreed upon but Derek didn’t know. But it feels strange, now, to be walking through the dream with Stiles. Derek wants to discuss the architecture with him, but instead they’re jogging through it, and Stiles has one hand on his holstered gun. The trees open and close around them, and they pass projections but none of the large groups of them that might indicate they were close to Peter. Thay pause in an opening and Stiles spins around, looking for another path.
“Where the hell is he?” Stiles mutters.
“Looking for me?” comes a voice, and Derek whirls around.
Kate’s behind them, on a staircase, wearing a dress that pools around her feet, glimmering. Derek sees a flicker of motion that’s Stiles, looking between Derek and Kate, but Derek is too busy staring at Kate. She looks almost more real than usual, closer to the person Derek used to know. To the side, Stiles has his gun trained on her, but he’s looking at Derek, and Derek can’t imagine he’ll shoot before something happens.
He doesn’t.
Kate’s knife comes at Derek so quickly he hardly has time to react. When he ducks the knife buries itself in the ground, but Kate is already vaulting from the stairs--despite her dress, which ripples and flows behind her--and towards Derek. She doesn’t say anything. She snarls, and her face contorts into something Derek doesn’t recognize. Stiles still hasn’t taken a shot, but it must be because he’s afraid he’ll hit Derek, now.
Kate jumps on Derek, and they both topple over. All Derek can see is Stiles being right, because this isn’t Kate, this isn’t--this person is so far from being her. Derek wants to close his eyes and focus on that, like maybe that alone will make Kate go away, but she’s already pushing her knife into his chest.
It’s disturbing, how used to dying this way Derek is.
When he wakes up he stares at the ceiling for a few moments. At least he knows Kate won’t kill anyone else, and, even though Derek’s the extractor, they probably don’t need him to finish the job. He scrubs his eyes, doesn’t move. He had thought, maybe--the dream with Stiles had made Derek hopeful where he shouldn’t have been.
And then Derek hears someone moving on another cot, and he sits up with a start, and he’s staring down the muzzle of his own gun.
“Hello, nephew,” Peter says. “Looking for me?”
Derek stares at him.
Peter looks gaunt and thin, and there are dark circles under his eyes, but he’s awake. He’s not in Limbo, because he’s awake. He’s not in the dream, either, because he’s awake.
“He killed Kate,” Peter says softly. “He shouldn’t have done that, but how was he to know? I’m surprised you didn’t recognize me, though.”
Peter smiles, sharper around the edges than his old smiles, all bite and snap.
“That was the plan, of course,” he continues. “So good to see you, nephew. It’s amazing I got out of Limbo, isn’t it? And all on my own, too. You and your sister didn’t visit nearly enough, you know. That’s why I had to resort to alternate means of contact. Pity, really.”
‘Pity, really.’ That echoes through Derek’s head, for seconds or minutes, and suddenly it hits him like a punch to the gut. It’s there on Peter’s face, and maybe Derek should have put the pieces together earlier--Peter being out of Limbo, faking; the missing PASIV, Laura’s.
“You killed her,” Derek says.
“She wasn’t strong enough to take it,” Peter says. “Luckily, our mutual friend Lydia--”
“You killed her,” Derek repeats.
“Accident, of course,” Peter says. “Though I could kill on purpose, I think. I’ve worked quite hard for this. Won’t be stopped, you know.”
“Worked quite hard for what?” Derek says, because he can’t imagine what Peter could want that would be worth it, worth killing Laura.
“Revenge,” Peter says, and his smile widens. “You and your girlfriend, nephew. Couldn’t let you--”
Derek takes a deep, shuddering breath, and tells himself this is not Peter. He should reach for his gun--he should do something--but Peter’s eyes are knife sharp and bright, and no one in the dream is going to find him, and Peter’s blaming Derek as much as Kate for this, for everything that happened.
Derek exhales, still unsteady.
Peter laughs.
Stiles’ cot is behind where Peter’s sitting, and Derek sees him sitting up before Peter does, but just barely.
“Don’t shoot, kid,” Peter says without flinching. He’s still staring at Derek.
“I knew it wasn’t her,” Stiles mutters, and Derek wonders how.
“Good for you, kid,” Peter says.
“Do you know who I am?” Stiles asks. His voice has gone quiet and cold, and his hand’s gone to the gun at his hip.
“My nephew’s boyfriend?” Peter asks, but it doesn’t really sound like a question. “I really don’t think you’d like to see him dead.”
Stiles doesn’t reply, but his face twitches. Peter keeps smiling.
And then Scott wakes up, and Allison’s there a moment later.
“What--” Scott starts, and then he sees Peter and falls silent. Allison has a pistol, and that’s already trained on Peter. He can’t make it, not now. Derek just needs to duck and trust that Peter’s reaction time is slower than Stiles’ and Allison’s. It has to be.
“My nephew deserves this,” Peter says, sharply. “Don’t think otherwise.”
“Peter--” Scott starts, staring at him.
“Scott,” Peter says. “I know what you’re here for, I don’t have it.”
Stiles is staring at Derek, Derek realizes. Stiles is staring at Derek, and his eyes are blazing, and he’s trying to say something. Derek doesn’t know what it is, but he trusts Stiles. It doesn’t matter if he should or he shouldn’t--when Stiles nods, Derek rolls to the floor, and Stiles jumps. There’s a gunshot--Allison’s. Derek doesn’t see where it goes, but Peter lets out a yelp. When Derek looks up Stiles has Peter pinned, pulls his arm behind his back, twisting the gun out of Peter’s hands Peter has to be weak from all his time playacting at being bedridden, Derek realizes, and Stiles is stronger than he looks. Derek can see it, now, in the lines of Stiles’ shoulders and his arms.
“The gun,” Derek says, mostly to Allison. She peers at him.
“Missed,” she says. “Stiles had it under control.”
“Citizen’s arrest,” Stiles says, leaning down over Peter. “Or whatever. Scott, can you call my dad?”
Scott reaches into Stiles’ pocket and pulling out a phone, which he proceeds to dial.
“Tell him we’ve got Laura Hale’s killer,” Stiles says.
“Yeah, I got that,” Scott says, dialling. “Hey Sheriff.”
“Is that--” Derek asks, even as he knows it’s stupid, especially now. “His name?”
“No,” Stiles says. “Just what everyone calls him.”
Peter’s twisting in Stiles’ grip, snarling like Kate did in the dream.
“How long?” Derek asks. “Until he gets here.”
“Um,” Stiles says, glancing up at Derek. “He’s actually in town. Should be--fifteen, twenty minutes?”
“He says he arrested Peter’s nurse,” Scott says. “She was following you guys when you left the care facility?”
“Shit,” Peter mutters, as if to himself. “She was the one who kept me under. She reported on you two. Is this one better than the Argent girl, nephew?”
Stiles tugs Peter upwards and hisses in the back of his throat, eyes narrowing.
“Shut up,” he says to Peter, then looks at Derek. “Is there somewhere we can keep him? Can we lock him in here?”
“No,” Derek says.
“Scott,” Stiles says. “Can you get my cuffs?”
“Usual place?” Scott asks easily. Stiles nods. Derek doesn’t think about the fact that Stiles has a usual place where he stores his handcuffs.
“Habit,” Stiles says to the room at large, somewhat defensive.
A middle-aged man who can only be the Sheriff shows up shortly after Stiles cuffs Peter to the boiler in the basement and then insists on sitting there watching him. The Sheriff carries himself like someone who works in law enforcement, like the cops who used to pull Derek over for speeding, but he looks tired around the eyes.
“Derek Hale,” he says, giving Derek a quick, assessing glance. “Where’s your uncle?”
So that’s how Derek meets the Sheriff, who is also Stiles’ father, who stares at Derek for what feels like a full five minutes after handing off Peter to a prison transport vehicle.
“Want dinner before you leave, Dad?” Stiles asks. “We have veggie burgers.”
They do. Derek hadn’t understood why they had veggie burgers, and from the expression on the Sheriff’s face he’s wondering the same thing.
“In case you came to visit,” Stiles says, unrepentant. “They’re lower in cholesterol.”
“Which explains why they taste terrible,” the Sheriff mutters. Stiles just smiles blindingly at him, and then disappears into the kitchen. Derek’s not sure he’s seen Stiles cook anything other than coffee ever, but suddenly he’s rattling around the kitchen with Scott as his assistant, and Derek is left with the Sheriff in the other room, wondering what he has to say to the Sheriff and about how quickly Stiles can revert from cuffing Derek’s uncle, looking dangerous and competant, to cooking veggie burgers.
“So,” the Sheriff says. “You’re my son’s fake boyfriend.”
Derek isn’t sure how he’s supposed to respond to that.
“The job’s over,” Derek says, and adds, when the Sheriff raises his eyebrows: “So we don’t have to be fake boyfriends anymore.”
The Sheriff stares at Derek again, then shakes his head and gets to his feet.
“Stiles!” he calls, walking into the kitchen. “Don’t set anything on fire.”
“Like I didn’t do all the cooking for years,” Derek can hear Stiles say. “Besides, Scott is helping me.”
Derek sinks into the couch and rubs his temples. Allison’s watching him from across the room. Derek doesn’t know where Lydia and Jackson went; he needs to talk to Lydia. But right now he’s okay with just sitting here.
“That was an interesting job,” Allison says, quiet.
“Did you know?” Derek looks up at her, and from the expression on her face Derek can already see that she didn’t. “Do you know what Lydia had to do with that?”
“No,” she says. She sounds tired. “Though Jackson--didn’t entirely make sense.”
They’re both quiet again, and Derek can hear what sounds like a disaster happening in the kitchen. He looks in that direction, but can’t see anything.
“Scott probably has it under control. You and Stiles, huh?” Allison asks, and Derek stops looking towards the kitchen to stare at her.
“Just for the job,” he says, and Allison studies him for a moment too long, then shakes her head and gets to her feet.
“He’s not my aunt, you know,” Allison says, moving towards the kitchen. “He wouldn’t be.”
Derek can’t handle this. He really can’t; he sees what’s happening and it’s--he hadn’t thought he’d been so obvious. And he would’ve thought these people, who care about Stiles more than they care about Derek, would realize it’s not about whether Stiles is good but about whether Derek is, and Derek isn’t good for anyone. He can’t even--this job, which he was supposed to run, wasn’t even his job at all.
He goes to look for Lydia, and finds her with Jackson on the porch. Jackson’s stroking her back, but when he sees Derek he gets up to leave, like either he was looking for an excuse or Lydia told him to.
Derek sits down in the empty chair.
“I needed to,” Lydia says, without looking at him. “You saw--that wasn’t your uncle.”
“What did he do to you?”
“Inception,” she says. “I think. To get you here. But--I knew, kind of a little. Enough, I think. I had to--bring you here, I wanted to extract from him to figure out what he did exactly, but that got you here anyway--” Lydia shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I thought I had it under control.”
Derek’s silent. Peter performed an inception, long distance, on Lydia himself, and he escaped Limbo, and he can’t be the Peter Derek used to know. He looks past Lydia, at the forest, trees without leaves under a grey sky, snow on the ground.
“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s not your fault.”
Saying that comes easier to him than he expected it to. Lydia looks smaller than usual, and there’s less certainty in her eyes.
“Dreamsharing breaks people,” Derek continues.
“A little,” Lydia says. “Some of them. If they don’t have anything to hold them together.”
Some time passes, and they’re both quiet, and Derek feels like he should be a lot of things--angry, or suspicious, or feeling something stronger than he does. Stiles calls them in for dinner.
Dinner isn’t very good, and no one seems to know how to have a conversation. Stiles tries, but it doesn’t quite work, and afterwards the Sheriff drives off into the darkness. He says he needs to do paperwork.
“He always hated paperwork,” Stiles says to Derek when he’s waving at his father from the porch.
“Why?” Derek asks.
“Doesn’t everyone hate paperwork?” Stiles says.
“No,” Derek says, shaking his head because that isn’t what he was asking. The full moon is pulling out of the thin mists of clouds. “Why are you on this side, instead of his?”
“Of course I’m on his side, he’s my father,” Stiles says. “But there were no jobs there, except his, and just because this is technically criminal doesn’t mean it’s actually criminal in practice.”
“But dreamsharing breaks people,” Derek says, sitting down on the steps up to the porch. Stiles sits down next to him, pressing his shoulder against Derek’s.
“Not if you don’t let it,” he says, and Derek--Derek can almost believe him, maybe because it’s Stiles, and Derek wants to believe Stiles.
“Are you broken?” Stiles asks, so quietly Derek almost doesn’t hear him. But his breath is coming out in little puffs, and Derek can see them in the moonlight, so Derek knows he must be talking.
“Probably,” Derek says, looking up to watch the moon through the trees. He wants to look at Stiles but he can’t look at Stiles, and he isn’t sure where everyone else has gone.
“Me too,” Stiles says, and Derek has nothing to say to that. He doesn’t think Stiles is broken, or if he is, it’s in--not the way Stiles thinks he is. If he was broken, Stiles has glued and tapged himself back together.
“No,” Derek says, maybe too softly for Stiles to hear. He’s not sure if it matters. The bare branches of the trees skitter in the wind, and Derek’s broken and Stiles isn’t. Stiles reaches over and squeezes Derek’s hand, then lets go.
“Maybe we should go to bed,” Stiles says, and they go upstairs to their twin beds, undress in the dark and slide under the covers.
There are so many things Derek wants to say, and it seems like it might be easier with the lights out, when he doesn’t need to look at Stiles or wonder what he’s thinking, when Derek is about to sleep. But he keeps his mouth clamped shut because he’s not sure he should say any of this, and eventually he falls asleep.
When Derek wakes up in the morning the sun is high in the sky, and Stiles is gone from Laura’s bed. Stiles’ backpack is gone, too. The bed is neatly made, and Stiles never makes the bed, and wherever he’s gone Derek thinks he’s not coming back.
When Derek gets downstairs, Lydia’s at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee.
“Stiles went to see his dad,” Lydia says when Derek comes in with his mug. Derek suspects he should feel something more than he does, but at the same time--this is probably for the best. If Stiles is gone, Derek won’t say anything stupid to him, and they can part ways. That’s what people do after jobs, anyway, and that’s probably where this was going, because Derek doesn’t have the words to say.
“Is everyone ready to leave?” Derek asks, because suddenly it’s important that they are. “This morning? Today?”
“We bought plane tickets,” Lydia says, but she looks uncertain about this. “We could go to San Francisco today.”
“I want to close up the house,” Derek says.
It’s the only thing to do. Stiles is with his dad, and whatever Derek thought might’ve been--Derek is too broken for this.
Derek drives everyone else to the airport and gets himself a flight back to the Yukon, where it’s quiet and dark and he has enough wood piled up to last most of the winter.
When he gets to the cabin Derek lights a fire in the wood stove, hot and bright. Then he goes to sleep. This is what he intended to do all along, and now no one’s coming to ask him about Laura, so Derek can just stay here and make the moose in the freezer into so many pots of stew, and not worry about worrying about a thing.
When Derek wakes up he sits in front of the stove, closes his eyes and watches the light play across his lids. This will be okay. Derek will be okay.
He makes a stew the next day, and the day after he chops more wood he doesn’t need. The day after that he puts skins on his skis and climbs the mountain, skis down. The next day, another mountain. This could be his life now, he thinks. It would be an okay life.
It’s the sixth night when he was a dream. He’s riding a train and there’s a hand gripped tight in his, but when he turns around there’s no one there.
This is what happens after Derek has been in the Yukon for thirteen days and eaten most of the moose: he goes into Whitehorse for groceries. His voice is hoarse from not talking, and it sounds so foreign to Derek’s own ears when he thanks the teenager who rings him up that Derek wonders if this is really him getting better or if this is him, somehow, getting worse. He doesn’t know what else to do. He gets in his truck and steers himself back home.
Stiles is sitting on the step when Derek gets back, surrounded by snow, with a scarf looped around his neck and a knit cap pulled low over his ears. Derek stares at Stiles for a moment, fumbling for his totem. But it's real. He--Stiles--is real.
“Lydia told me,” Stiles says abstractly, getting up when he sees Derek. “And I hitched a ride up here from town with a guy with a snowmobile.”
“Are you cold?” Derek asks, and Stiles shrugs.
“It hasn’t been long.”
Derek unlocks the door and shoves it open with his shoulder. Stiles follows him inside.
“Is this about a job?” he asks. “Because I’m not.”
“You’re not,” Stiles echoes. He’s looking around the cabin like he’s trying to capture it all and record it somewhere inside his head, but it’s just the one room, and there’s not much to remember. “Derek.”
Derek turns to look at Stiles. His scarf is still around his neck, and he’s looking at Derek. His eyes catch the glint of flames from the woodstove, glow gold.
“You left,” Stiles says suddenly. “I thought--but you left.”
“I left,” Derek echoes, looking away because Stiles’ eyes are too bright. “I’m broken. You left.”
“I needed to talk to Dad--” Stiles tugs at his scarf. “You were asleep.”
“What are you doing here?” Derek asks. Stiles’ scarf is striped. “If it’s not a job.”
“I just thought,” Stiles says, then shakes his head. “I don’t even know what I thought. It’s pretty here.”
“What did you think?” Derek asks, watching the firelight play across Stiles’ face, his cheekbones, the flare of his nose. It matters, it’s important.
“Your shade, is she back?” Stiles asks. “I just wanted to check.”
“Lydia has my phone number,” Derek says.
“She says you didn’t take a PASIV when you left,” Stiles says.
“It’s complicated,” Derek says. He puts a pot of water on the woodstove to make coffee, like that will solve their problems.
“I don’t understand you,” Stiles says, and he suddenly sounds adamant, but Derek isn’t sure what he’s adamant about. “I don’t understand any of this. You want to know what I thought? That we were getting somewhere, I don’t know where. That maybe--” Stiles pauses and shrugs, eyes flitting across Derek’s face. “Do you get what I’m saying? Sometimes I feel like you get things even when I don’t say them well, but right now you’re just--your forehead’s gone wrinkled.”
“I don’t--” Derek says, and then Stiles takes a step forward, and he’s in Derek’s space.
“Dad said you told him the job was over so we weren’t fake boyfriends anymore,” Stiles continues. If he steps closer, their noses will touch. He’s close enough, now, for Derek to see the stripes of shading in his eyes, framed as they are by long, dark lashes.
“I was asking him--” Stiles continues. “And then you left.”
Derek’s still looking at Stiles, and then he reaches towards Stiles, wraps his hand up in Stiles’ scarf. It’s soft. Stiles looks--soft.
“Not fake boyfriends, anymore,” Stiles says, his eyes dipping towards Derek’s hand. “But we could be real ones? Maybe?”
“I’m broken,” Derek says.
“I told you,” Stiles says, looking up to meet Derek’s eyes. “So am I. We all are.”
Derek pulls Stiles closer. Just an inch--that’s all it takes.
Derek had noticed Stiles’ lips, because you couldn’t not, because they’re--there. On his face, pink and full. So he’d noticed them, but he hadn’t anticipated the soft press of them against his own. Stiles’ mouth is insistent and warm, teasing and nipping, and then his tongue slips into Derek’s mouth, and his hands are gripping Derek’s shoulders, tight, and the kettle on the stove lets out a piercing whistle. Stiles jumps back.
“Coffee,” Derek says. “I was going to make us coffee.”
Stiles blinks at him, eyes dark and liquid.
“Do we need it?” he asks. His voice is a bit hoarser than it was only a moment ago.
“I thought we could talk.” It seems silly, with Stiles here, like this, mouth pink and parted.
“We’ve talked a lot, I think,” Stiles says. “I mean, not now, but before. We’ve talked about Kate, and my parents but not yours, and your architecture but not mine, and the job, and Lydia’s sex life--”
It seems like more than Derek remembers when Stiles puts it like that. Derek takes the kettle off the stove. Stiles sidles up to him and says, “Where were we?”
“Here,” Derek says, pressing his hands to Stiles’ cheeks, then dropping his hands to unloop the scarf from Stiles’ neck. Stiles’ hands, somehow, slide up Derek’s back, along the ridges of his shoulderblades. He peels off Derek’s henley. Derek unbuttons Stiles’ shirt, pushes it off his shoulders. Underneath Stiles is wearing one of those t-shirts, tight and dark, and when Derek pulls that off Stiles is pale and freckled, his nipples are pebbled against the cold, and Derek can’t help but reach up and take one between his fingers. Stiles gasps, leans forward and presses his mouth to the hollow of Derek’s throat.
“You,” Stiles says. “I don’t know what you thought, but you were wrong.”
What happens after that is this: Stiles presses himself flush against Derek, and Derek can feel all of it, all of Stiles, warm and in his arms.
“I always wanted to do it on a bearskin rug,” Stiles says, in between tugging at Derek’s belt loops and sucking on his shoulder blade. Derek buries his nose in the gap between Stiles’ shoulder and his neck. He doesn’t know what to say. He lets Stiles talk him home--talk them both home.
He wakes up in the morning in the sprawl of Stiles’ limbs, and a few minutes later Stiles is blinking at him, and then Stiles’ face is blooming into a slow grin, something new and hopeful.
“How about that coffee?” he asks. And Derek can’t help but return the smile, pulling himself from bed while Stiles watches, lazy beneath the blankets. Once the water boils, Derek tosses him a wadded up shirt, one of Derek’s old ones, then pours the water into the French press while Stiles gets dressed. He wraps his arms around Derek’s waist, rests his head on Derek’s shoulder.
“I have another proposition for you,” Stiles says. “You don’t have to say yes.”
Derek waits.
“You can think about it,” Stiles says. “But when we were in Mongolia I talked to Ariadne, and it seems to me--you’re an architect who could use an extractor, really. And I could be an extractor, maybe.”
“But dreamsharing--” Derek starts.
“Wears people out like the soles of cheap shoes,” Stiles finishes. “But only some of them. Only if they don’t have a good team.”
Stiles tangles a hand in Derek’s, turns him around so they’re facing each other.
“I think we could be a good team,” Stiles says, reaching his free hand up to Derek’s face. It makes Derek feel stupid and foolish and young, but also hopeful, like this might be okay, this time around.
"Let’s wait until spring,” Derek says. It’s not the sort of thing you ask of someone you hardly know. “Let’s stay here until spring.”
“Hibernation,” Stiles says. “Okay. Let’s.”
Derek looks at Stiles, and Stiles looks back at him, eyes slanting down and then up, mouth dipping open. Derek presses a thumb to his lips.
“Don’t kiss me,” Stiles says. “Morning breath.”
Derek does, anyway, quick and close-mouthed. He pulls away. “Thank you,” he says.
“Now pour me some coffee,” Stiles says.
It’s a start.
They usually eat dinner in randomly overlapping shifts, people drifting in and out of the kitchen, and sometimes watching movies in the basement. When Derek gets down from the attic everyone’s already moved to the basement, but there’s a bowl of chili covered with plastic wrap in the fridge, and Derek microwaves it before going to the basement. Some James Bond movie Derek can’t identify is on, and Stiles turns around when Derek gets to the bottom of the stairs, then slides towards Scott and pats the space he’s made on the couch. Allison and Scott are on the couch with Stiles and Lydia’s sitting in Jackson’s lap in one of the oversize armchairs, and there’s another armchair, empty, but it seems rude to refuse now that Stiles has made a space, so Derek slides in next to him.
Stiles is leaning more towards Scott than Derek, but at some point during the movie he folds his legs up under his body and his feet slide under Derek’s legs. It’s not comfortable at all, but Derek doesn’t move, because it feels like something you do with someone you’re comfortable with and Derek doesn’t know what to make of that.
“Someone should make a movie about this,” Stiles says when the credits start to roll and Bond, as played by Sean Connery, has accomplished whatever he was supposed to accomplish.
“About us watching this movie?” Scott asks, grinning in the silvered television light.
“Meta,” Lydia says.
“And boring,” Scott says.
“About dreamsharing,” Stiles says. “Just because right now it feels like a shitty job doesn’t mean it actually is.”
“They probably will once it goes public,” Lydia says.
“That’ll be interesting,” Stiles says.
“You know Stiles started dreamsharing because the idea of people getting in his head freaks him out too much to not do it himself,” Lydia says, leaning forward in Jackson’s lap.
“Lydia,” Stiles says sharply. “I told you that in confidence.”
“No you didn’t,” Lydia says.
“I was drunk,” Stiles mutters. “You should assume things I tell you when I’m drunk are told in confidence.”
Lydia just laughs, then glances at Derek and catches his eye.
“I also started because it’s cool,” Stiles says, leaning back on the couch and tilting his head up towards the ceiling. “And I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do with real architecture. And then Scott did because I did.”
Stiles rolls his head towards Scott, who punches him in the shoulder. It’s impossible to tell whether that’s a joke or the truth spoken like a joke, but it sounds like a conversation they’ve had before. It seems like if Stiles was in dreamsharing when Scott was training Derek would’ve met him, at least in passing, but who knows.
“And Lydia’s here because nothing could hold her,” Stiles continues. “And Jackson’s here because Lydia is, and the rest of you are in the family business, right?”
“And this isn’t your family business?” Lydia asks, and Stiles goes momentarily still, then laughs uncomfortably.
“My dad’s an architect,” he says pointedly, turning to Derek before looking back at Lydia and narrowing his eyes. “It’s not the same.”
Lydia shrugs, but she looks satisfied and Stiles looks annoyed and Derek is wondering about Stiles’ father, which he suspects was what Lydia was trying to make happen. Derek’s usually good at telling when people are lying, and is seems like Stiles, who’s rubbing his head, was lying, about his father or his father’s job. Derek’s not sure what the expression on Stiles’ face is, but then Stiles gets up very suddenly and leaves, so it seems probable that it’s not a very happy expression.
“Stiles,” Lydia says, somewhat placatingly.
“I have to use the bathroom,” he yells, but it sounds more like a weak excuse than an actual explanation.
“Should we put another DVD in?” Scott asks, looking around. Allison shrugs.
“Isn’t he your friend?” Derek asks, because this is entirely out of character for Scott. He’s usually more concerned when people storm out of rooms.
“It’s not a big deal,” Scott says with a shrug, and Allison nods, and Derek suspects that everyone knows what just happened but him, and that is not okay.
“What was that?” he says to Lydia.
“Ask Stiles,” she says, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “Put in another movie, Scott. One with Timothy Dalton.”
“Timothy Dalton,” Jackson mutters disparagingly.
Derek stares at them: Scott, rifling through the James Bond box set, Allison, who is staunchly not making eye contact, Lydia and Jackson, who have picked up a petty argument about Timothy Dalton. He goes upstairs.
Stiles is coming out of the bathroom, which suggests he at least followed through with his cover story. Or he actually needed to use the bathroom.
Stiles stops in the door and stares at Derek, then wipes his palms on the front of his jeans.
“I washed my hands,” he says, like that isn’t an absurd, unnecessary statement.
“What happened down there?” Derek asks.
“Lydia was just giving me crap,” Stiles says, eyes flitting to the side. “My dad--” he shrugs.
“You’re not telling me something,” Derek says. He takes a step forward. He’s not enough taller than Stiles that it feels like an effective intimidation tactic, if anything, Stiles is broader than Derek in the shoulders. And even as Derek presses forward, Stiles just stands there, staring back.
Derek’s not sure how much more time passes like that, their eyes tight to one another’s. Probably less than it feels like. It’s dark in the hall, and they can hear a muffled James Bond theme from downstairs, and after a few bars of music Stiles sighs and looks off to the side.
“It’s not important,” Stiles says. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It seemed like it mattered,” Derek says.
“Knowing won’t make us a more effective team,” Stiles says. “Probably the opposite.”
He starts walking towards the kitchen, and when Derek stops Stiles says, “Well, do you want to know, then?”
Stiles starts making coffee by the light from the hallway, and Derek watches him and wonders what this is that it needs coffee. Stiles pours two mugs, the mugs they’ve each been using habitually in the morning. He gives Derek the blue one and sits down at the table, looking into the depths of his own coffee.
“Okay,” Stiles says. “It’s probably important for you to know that I don’t think you killed your sister, to start.”
Derek doesn’t know what that has to do with this, but he says, “Thank you,” because that seems like the thing to say.
“I think there are better ways to deal with it than fucking off to Alaska or whatever,” Stiles adds, then looks at his coffee. “Like, a million better ways. And I actually know that, because my dad--” Stiles pauses, looks up. “My dad’s the Sheriff.”
It takes Derek a minute to understand what Stiles is saying, and once Derek gets it he’s not even sure what it means on a larger level. It means--
“So is that why you’re here?” Derek asks, too sharp and loud. He’s pressing his palms against the table, hard.
“No,” Stiles says. “No. Remember when we went to visit Peter and I had to call my dad? Yeah, that. I got reamed, and I had to explain that we were fake dating or whatever, because dad doesn’t like it when I date accused murderers and he finds out from CCTV footage because I don’t bring them home to meet him.”
Derek wants to ask if that’s something that’s happened before. He also--he also doesn’t know what to do with this information. It’s not like Stiles has betrayed his trust, because Derek hadn’t entirely trusted him, but still--they’re running the job the day after tomorrow. Stiles offered to help Derek with Kate, and that seems important in some way Derek can’t quantify.
Derek hits the table, once, loud. It shudders, and ripples run across the surfaces of their coffee. Derek’s cup, overfull, spills over. Stiles looks at the table and doesn’t say anything else. He has to be waiting, though Derek doesn’t know what he expects; forgiveness, maybe, maybe he expects Derek to be grateful that Stiles might be able to get him out of all of this, maybe Stiles expects Derek to be angry.
“I’m going to bed,” Derek says, and goes upstairs. It’s only when he gets to the bedroom that he remembers he hasn’t been sleeping there, Stiles has, and Derek has been sleeping on the couch because that made sense to him at one point. The bedsheets are rumpled. Derek climbs in anyway and pulls them over his shoulders; this is Stiles’ problem, not his. Derek’s going to sleep. He makes himself sleep. When he wakes up he neither feels better nor worse--he just sees Stiles sitting at the table, and the Sheriff, and he thinks he trusts Stiles less, but maybe he should trust him more.
Stiles is sleeping on the couch when Derek gets downstairs, limbs trailing off the ends. Derek doesn’t know what to do with this, with him. He almost feels guilty that Stiles doesn’t seem to know how to make himself small enough to sleep comfortably on a sofa when there’s an extra twin bed in the room upstairs Stiles could be using. Derek skips his run and goes into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, and Stiles comes in when Derek’s halfway through his first mug, rubbing his eyes and wearing rumpled clothes from the night before.
“You stole my room,” he says.
“It was my room, first,” Derek replies, and has the sudden realization that Stiles actually distracted him enough to get him to sleep there, which is--something.
Stiles pours himself coffee and a bowl of cereal, and he’s quiet until sitting down across from Derek, at which point he looks up at Derek and says, “We okay?”
Derek shrugs. He’s not sure they are, but on the other hand he wonders if they were, ever, or if they’d just crafted a simulacrum of two people interacting normally. Maybe they aren’t okay, but maybe they could be now, because at least Derek knows. It’s not like--Stiles said he didn’t believe Derek killed Laura, and for some reason Derek believes that, trusts Stiles more than he should.
“Anything else you need to tell me?” Derek asks. Stiles looks up at Derek, surprised, and then he gives him a quick, honest grin.
“Not at the moment, no,” Stiles says. “I’ll keep you posted.”
Derek finds himself smiling into his coffee, involuntarily, instead of thinking about the job they’re running on his uncle tomorrow until Lydia comes downstairs, pours herself a cup of coffee and sits down between them, saying, “So this job’s going to run smoothly, right?”
“If you’re asking whether Derek’s going to kill me, he’s agreed to hold off,” Stiles says, and he grins at Derek again, that grin that implies they have some sort of joke together. “Which is for the best, because killing me would seriously get my dad on your ass.”
Derek kind of wants to ask about that, about Stiles’ dad and how this might be his family business, too, but Lydia waylays the conversation with plans for tomorrow.
“So are we pretending to be boyfriends again?” Stiles asks, looking across the table at Derek. Derek had kind of forgotten about that, even though Stiles had referenced it the night prior.
“It would be strange if you didn’t,” Lydia says, and Derek nods. The improbable cousins cover story seems like a better one, in light of everything, but Derek knows what they say about hindsight, and there are all sorts of things he would do differently, given the chance. Relative to the others, this one doesn’t loom too large on his consciousness, but he thinks it would just make his life a little easier if he and Stiles didn’t--
“Are you going to want a bed tonight?” Stiles asks, cutting off Derek’s thoughts. “Because there are two in that room, so I was thinking--”
“Roommates,” Lydia says, clapping her hands on the table. “That settles it.”
Derek didn’t actually settle it, but when night comes around it feels surprisingly okay to go upstairs with Stiles, who turns out the light before either of them undress. The moon’s waxing towards fullness tomorrow night, and in the silvered light from the window Derek can see the curve of Stiles’ back as he pulls off his shirt, but he doesn’t look for longer than that.
Since Kate Derek’s been careful about being attracted to people. It’s not that he isn’t, it’s just that he doesn’t allow himself think about it for longer than a few moments, for longer than it takes Derek to get himself off, when he needs to. Derek could be attracted to Stiles, he thinks, because Derek trusts Stiles and he shouldn’t. But maybe he already is--he’s been noticing things, Stiles’ hands and the fringe of lashes around his pale eyes, and now this. It makes Derek ache a little, and curl away from the bed Stiles is sleeping in. The worst part of the thing with Kate, other than the part where everything was the worst, was how aware it made Derek of attraction and attractiveness, and how little it can be trusted. Derek knows what he looks like. It’s a lie, really, a pretty face covering up gross structural flaws. Derek’s gone to bars, seen people look at him like he’s water and they’re parched, and wished he could explain that to them. Attraction--attractiveness--it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t help anything, either.
He goes to sleep, and he’s grateful, again, as always, that he doesn’t dream.
The next morning is busy with last minute preparations. Allison’s out practicing at the shooting range she set up in the backyard, and Scott insists he needs Apple Jacks to function to his full potential, and Jackson’s saying he’s coming with for the job, even though he absolutely isn’t. Stiles is calm, and strangely quiet, and Lydia is making her own plans and sketches on spare sheets of paper, lost inside her own mind. Derek and Stiles are to go to the care facility and check Peter out for the day, bring him back to the house, and then they’ll do the job.
“Easy peasy lemon squeezy,” Stiles says when they’re in the car. Derek raises an eyebrow, and Stiles grins at him, offers a fist, presumably to bump. Derek brushes his knuckles against Stiles’ and starts the car.
When they get to the care facility it’s a lot like it was the first time, right down to the nurse on duty, who walks them to Peter’s room with her heels clicking. She purses her lips into a frown when Derek says they’re taking Peter out, but there’s nothing she can do about it. Stiles’ hand, again, is on Derek’s hip like an anchor.
It takes a little doing to shift Peter into the car, but they manage, and the drive back to the house goes without incident, though having Peter in the car keeps them both silent, like he might somehow hear.
Derek and Stiles carry Peter between them down the stairs when they get to the house, and shift him onto one of the cots in the subbasement. The rest of the team joins them, with Jackson, because Lydia won that argument. It’s Lydia, ultimately, who gets the PASIV out.
They go under.
There’s always a blurry moment, in between falling asleep and the dream beginning, like the moment just before the mists lift off the ocean in the morning. Derek can’t see, and then he can--he’s not on his feet, and then he is.
When he opens his eyes Derek’s not where he expects to be, which maybe shouldn’t have come as a surprise; he knew, if he thought about it, that Stiles’ architecture wouldn’t be what he expected. He’s in the woods--the ones around the old house. Derek knows you aren’t supposed to base architecture on a real thing, and Stiles hasn’t, because these are those trees, but they aren’t arranged like a forest. The trees have been warped and twisted into walls and staircases, so even though now Derek’s standing on a ground, in a clear opening in the forest dusted with snow and dry leaves, he could also climb up through stories of trees.
Stiles is on the other side of the clearing, and he looks at Derek like he knows what Derek’s looking at, and grins like he always does. Really, it just takes a moment, but there’s a flash of something, there, between them, and Derek wants to know Stiles: how he came up with this, and why, what his handwriting looks like on blueprints and along the lines of his sketches, whether his father was actually an architect, what all of this means. It’s a stupid moment, and completely the wrong time, but the realization comes to Derek clean and whole: this is more than attraction, this is wanting. Stiles. As a person.
But they have a job to run, and Derek’s heart is beating hummingbird quick in his chest, and they’re in Peter’s subconscious, beyond Limbo, and they have a job to run.
They have a job to run. Derek recenters himself on that, not on the architecture or Stiles’ mind or whatever it is that’s inched its way under Derek’s skin over the course of--what, scarcely a week. Stiles has gone from being someone who Derek liked touching him to someone Derek considered an anchor, even just for a moment, and Derek doesn’t even know what Stiles wants--if Stiles wants--
But they have a job to run. Derek returns to that and clings to it.
“We need to find Peter,” Derek says, because it’s true. They need Peter if Scott-as-Deaton is going to get any information out of him.
They split up--Jackson with Lydia, Allison with Scott, Derek with Stiles. It makes sense on some level; the plan has always been that they would divide, locate Peter, reconvene at a location everyone had agreed upon but Derek didn’t know. But it feels strange, now, to be walking through the dream with Stiles. Derek wants to discuss the architecture with him, but instead they’re jogging through it, and Stiles has one hand on his holstered gun. The trees open and close around them, and they pass projections but none of the large groups of them that might indicate they were close to Peter. Thay pause in an opening and Stiles spins around, looking for another path.
“Where the hell is he?” Stiles mutters.
“Looking for me?” comes a voice, and Derek whirls around.
Kate’s behind them, on a staircase, wearing a dress that pools around her feet, glimmering. Derek sees a flicker of motion that’s Stiles, looking between Derek and Kate, but Derek is too busy staring at Kate. She looks almost more real than usual, closer to the person Derek used to know. To the side, Stiles has his gun trained on her, but he’s looking at Derek, and Derek can’t imagine he’ll shoot before something happens.
He doesn’t.
Kate’s knife comes at Derek so quickly he hardly has time to react. When he ducks the knife buries itself in the ground, but Kate is already vaulting from the stairs--despite her dress, which ripples and flows behind her--and towards Derek. She doesn’t say anything. She snarls, and her face contorts into something Derek doesn’t recognize. Stiles still hasn’t taken a shot, but it must be because he’s afraid he’ll hit Derek, now.
Kate jumps on Derek, and they both topple over. All Derek can see is Stiles being right, because this isn’t Kate, this isn’t--this person is so far from being her. Derek wants to close his eyes and focus on that, like maybe that alone will make Kate go away, but she’s already pushing her knife into his chest.
It’s disturbing, how used to dying this way Derek is.
When he wakes up he stares at the ceiling for a few moments. At least he knows Kate won’t kill anyone else, and, even though Derek’s the extractor, they probably don’t need him to finish the job. He scrubs his eyes, doesn’t move. He had thought, maybe--the dream with Stiles had made Derek hopeful where he shouldn’t have been.
And then Derek hears someone moving on another cot, and he sits up with a start, and he’s staring down the muzzle of his own gun.
“Hello, nephew,” Peter says. “Looking for me?”
Derek stares at him.
Peter looks gaunt and thin, and there are dark circles under his eyes, but he’s awake. He’s not in Limbo, because he’s awake. He’s not in the dream, either, because he’s awake.
“He killed Kate,” Peter says softly. “He shouldn’t have done that, but how was he to know? I’m surprised you didn’t recognize me, though.”
Peter smiles, sharper around the edges than his old smiles, all bite and snap.
“That was the plan, of course,” he continues. “So good to see you, nephew. It’s amazing I got out of Limbo, isn’t it? And all on my own, too. You and your sister didn’t visit nearly enough, you know. That’s why I had to resort to alternate means of contact. Pity, really.”
‘Pity, really.’ That echoes through Derek’s head, for seconds or minutes, and suddenly it hits him like a punch to the gut. It’s there on Peter’s face, and maybe Derek should have put the pieces together earlier--Peter being out of Limbo, faking; the missing PASIV, Laura’s.
“You killed her,” Derek says.
“She wasn’t strong enough to take it,” Peter says. “Luckily, our mutual friend Lydia--”
“You killed her,” Derek repeats.
“Accident, of course,” Peter says. “Though I could kill on purpose, I think. I’ve worked quite hard for this. Won’t be stopped, you know.”
“Worked quite hard for what?” Derek says, because he can’t imagine what Peter could want that would be worth it, worth killing Laura.
“Revenge,” Peter says, and his smile widens. “You and your girlfriend, nephew. Couldn’t let you--”
Derek takes a deep, shuddering breath, and tells himself this is not Peter. He should reach for his gun--he should do something--but Peter’s eyes are knife sharp and bright, and no one in the dream is going to find him, and Peter’s blaming Derek as much as Kate for this, for everything that happened.
Derek exhales, still unsteady.
Peter laughs.
Stiles’ cot is behind where Peter’s sitting, and Derek sees him sitting up before Peter does, but just barely.
“Don’t shoot, kid,” Peter says without flinching. He’s still staring at Derek.
“I knew it wasn’t her,” Stiles mutters, and Derek wonders how.
“Good for you, kid,” Peter says.
“Do you know who I am?” Stiles asks. His voice has gone quiet and cold, and his hand’s gone to the gun at his hip.
“My nephew’s boyfriend?” Peter asks, but it doesn’t really sound like a question. “I really don’t think you’d like to see him dead.”
Stiles doesn’t reply, but his face twitches. Peter keeps smiling.
And then Scott wakes up, and Allison’s there a moment later.
“What--” Scott starts, and then he sees Peter and falls silent. Allison has a pistol, and that’s already trained on Peter. He can’t make it, not now. Derek just needs to duck and trust that Peter’s reaction time is slower than Stiles’ and Allison’s. It has to be.
“My nephew deserves this,” Peter says, sharply. “Don’t think otherwise.”
“Peter--” Scott starts, staring at him.
“Scott,” Peter says. “I know what you’re here for, I don’t have it.”
Stiles is staring at Derek, Derek realizes. Stiles is staring at Derek, and his eyes are blazing, and he’s trying to say something. Derek doesn’t know what it is, but he trusts Stiles. It doesn’t matter if he should or he shouldn’t--when Stiles nods, Derek rolls to the floor, and Stiles jumps. There’s a gunshot--Allison’s. Derek doesn’t see where it goes, but Peter lets out a yelp. When Derek looks up Stiles has Peter pinned, pulls his arm behind his back, twisting the gun out of Peter’s hands Peter has to be weak from all his time playacting at being bedridden, Derek realizes, and Stiles is stronger than he looks. Derek can see it, now, in the lines of Stiles’ shoulders and his arms.
“The gun,” Derek says, mostly to Allison. She peers at him.
“Missed,” she says. “Stiles had it under control.”
“Citizen’s arrest,” Stiles says, leaning down over Peter. “Or whatever. Scott, can you call my dad?”
Scott reaches into Stiles’ pocket and pulling out a phone, which he proceeds to dial.
“Tell him we’ve got Laura Hale’s killer,” Stiles says.
“Yeah, I got that,” Scott says, dialling. “Hey Sheriff.”
“Is that--” Derek asks, even as he knows it’s stupid, especially now. “His name?”
“No,” Stiles says. “Just what everyone calls him.”
Peter’s twisting in Stiles’ grip, snarling like Kate did in the dream.
“How long?” Derek asks. “Until he gets here.”
“Um,” Stiles says, glancing up at Derek. “He’s actually in town. Should be--fifteen, twenty minutes?”
“He says he arrested Peter’s nurse,” Scott says. “She was following you guys when you left the care facility?”
“Shit,” Peter mutters, as if to himself. “She was the one who kept me under. She reported on you two. Is this one better than the Argent girl, nephew?”
Stiles tugs Peter upwards and hisses in the back of his throat, eyes narrowing.
“Shut up,” he says to Peter, then looks at Derek. “Is there somewhere we can keep him? Can we lock him in here?”
“No,” Derek says.
“Scott,” Stiles says. “Can you get my cuffs?”
“Usual place?” Scott asks easily. Stiles nods. Derek doesn’t think about the fact that Stiles has a usual place where he stores his handcuffs.
“Habit,” Stiles says to the room at large, somewhat defensive.
A middle-aged man who can only be the Sheriff shows up shortly after Stiles cuffs Peter to the boiler in the basement and then insists on sitting there watching him. The Sheriff carries himself like someone who works in law enforcement, like the cops who used to pull Derek over for speeding, but he looks tired around the eyes.
“Derek Hale,” he says, giving Derek a quick, assessing glance. “Where’s your uncle?”
So that’s how Derek meets the Sheriff, who is also Stiles’ father, who stares at Derek for what feels like a full five minutes after handing off Peter to a prison transport vehicle.
“Want dinner before you leave, Dad?” Stiles asks. “We have veggie burgers.”
They do. Derek hadn’t understood why they had veggie burgers, and from the expression on the Sheriff’s face he’s wondering the same thing.
“In case you came to visit,” Stiles says, unrepentant. “They’re lower in cholesterol.”
“Which explains why they taste terrible,” the Sheriff mutters. Stiles just smiles blindingly at him, and then disappears into the kitchen. Derek’s not sure he’s seen Stiles cook anything other than coffee ever, but suddenly he’s rattling around the kitchen with Scott as his assistant, and Derek is left with the Sheriff in the other room, wondering what he has to say to the Sheriff and about how quickly Stiles can revert from cuffing Derek’s uncle, looking dangerous and competant, to cooking veggie burgers.
“So,” the Sheriff says. “You’re my son’s fake boyfriend.”
Derek isn’t sure how he’s supposed to respond to that.
“The job’s over,” Derek says, and adds, when the Sheriff raises his eyebrows: “So we don’t have to be fake boyfriends anymore.”
The Sheriff stares at Derek again, then shakes his head and gets to his feet.
“Stiles!” he calls, walking into the kitchen. “Don’t set anything on fire.”
“Like I didn’t do all the cooking for years,” Derek can hear Stiles say. “Besides, Scott is helping me.”
Derek sinks into the couch and rubs his temples. Allison’s watching him from across the room. Derek doesn’t know where Lydia and Jackson went; he needs to talk to Lydia. But right now he’s okay with just sitting here.
“That was an interesting job,” Allison says, quiet.
“Did you know?” Derek looks up at her, and from the expression on her face Derek can already see that she didn’t. “Do you know what Lydia had to do with that?”
“No,” she says. She sounds tired. “Though Jackson--didn’t entirely make sense.”
They’re both quiet again, and Derek can hear what sounds like a disaster happening in the kitchen. He looks in that direction, but can’t see anything.
“Scott probably has it under control. You and Stiles, huh?” Allison asks, and Derek stops looking towards the kitchen to stare at her.
“Just for the job,” he says, and Allison studies him for a moment too long, then shakes her head and gets to her feet.
“He’s not my aunt, you know,” Allison says, moving towards the kitchen. “He wouldn’t be.”
Derek can’t handle this. He really can’t; he sees what’s happening and it’s--he hadn’t thought he’d been so obvious. And he would’ve thought these people, who care about Stiles more than they care about Derek, would realize it’s not about whether Stiles is good but about whether Derek is, and Derek isn’t good for anyone. He can’t even--this job, which he was supposed to run, wasn’t even his job at all.
He goes to look for Lydia, and finds her with Jackson on the porch. Jackson’s stroking her back, but when he sees Derek he gets up to leave, like either he was looking for an excuse or Lydia told him to.
Derek sits down in the empty chair.
“I needed to,” Lydia says, without looking at him. “You saw--that wasn’t your uncle.”
“What did he do to you?”
“Inception,” she says. “I think. To get you here. But--I knew, kind of a little. Enough, I think. I had to--bring you here, I wanted to extract from him to figure out what he did exactly, but that got you here anyway--” Lydia shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I thought I had it under control.”
Derek’s silent. Peter performed an inception, long distance, on Lydia himself, and he escaped Limbo, and he can’t be the Peter Derek used to know. He looks past Lydia, at the forest, trees without leaves under a grey sky, snow on the ground.
“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s not your fault.”
Saying that comes easier to him than he expected it to. Lydia looks smaller than usual, and there’s less certainty in her eyes.
“Dreamsharing breaks people,” Derek continues.
“A little,” Lydia says. “Some of them. If they don’t have anything to hold them together.”
Some time passes, and they’re both quiet, and Derek feels like he should be a lot of things--angry, or suspicious, or feeling something stronger than he does. Stiles calls them in for dinner.
Dinner isn’t very good, and no one seems to know how to have a conversation. Stiles tries, but it doesn’t quite work, and afterwards the Sheriff drives off into the darkness. He says he needs to do paperwork.
“He always hated paperwork,” Stiles says to Derek when he’s waving at his father from the porch.
“Why?” Derek asks.
“Doesn’t everyone hate paperwork?” Stiles says.
“No,” Derek says, shaking his head because that isn’t what he was asking. The full moon is pulling out of the thin mists of clouds. “Why are you on this side, instead of his?”
“Of course I’m on his side, he’s my father,” Stiles says. “But there were no jobs there, except his, and just because this is technically criminal doesn’t mean it’s actually criminal in practice.”
“But dreamsharing breaks people,” Derek says, sitting down on the steps up to the porch. Stiles sits down next to him, pressing his shoulder against Derek’s.
“Not if you don’t let it,” he says, and Derek--Derek can almost believe him, maybe because it’s Stiles, and Derek wants to believe Stiles.
“Are you broken?” Stiles asks, so quietly Derek almost doesn’t hear him. But his breath is coming out in little puffs, and Derek can see them in the moonlight, so Derek knows he must be talking.
“Probably,” Derek says, looking up to watch the moon through the trees. He wants to look at Stiles but he can’t look at Stiles, and he isn’t sure where everyone else has gone.
“Me too,” Stiles says, and Derek has nothing to say to that. He doesn’t think Stiles is broken, or if he is, it’s in--not the way Stiles thinks he is. If he was broken, Stiles has glued and tapged himself back together.
“No,” Derek says, maybe too softly for Stiles to hear. He’s not sure if it matters. The bare branches of the trees skitter in the wind, and Derek’s broken and Stiles isn’t. Stiles reaches over and squeezes Derek’s hand, then lets go.
“Maybe we should go to bed,” Stiles says, and they go upstairs to their twin beds, undress in the dark and slide under the covers.
There are so many things Derek wants to say, and it seems like it might be easier with the lights out, when he doesn’t need to look at Stiles or wonder what he’s thinking, when Derek is about to sleep. But he keeps his mouth clamped shut because he’s not sure he should say any of this, and eventually he falls asleep.
When Derek wakes up in the morning the sun is high in the sky, and Stiles is gone from Laura’s bed. Stiles’ backpack is gone, too. The bed is neatly made, and Stiles never makes the bed, and wherever he’s gone Derek thinks he’s not coming back.
When Derek gets downstairs, Lydia’s at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee.
“Stiles went to see his dad,” Lydia says when Derek comes in with his mug. Derek suspects he should feel something more than he does, but at the same time--this is probably for the best. If Stiles is gone, Derek won’t say anything stupid to him, and they can part ways. That’s what people do after jobs, anyway, and that’s probably where this was going, because Derek doesn’t have the words to say.
“Is everyone ready to leave?” Derek asks, because suddenly it’s important that they are. “This morning? Today?”
“We bought plane tickets,” Lydia says, but she looks uncertain about this. “We could go to San Francisco today.”
“I want to close up the house,” Derek says.
It’s the only thing to do. Stiles is with his dad, and whatever Derek thought might’ve been--Derek is too broken for this.
Derek drives everyone else to the airport and gets himself a flight back to the Yukon, where it’s quiet and dark and he has enough wood piled up to last most of the winter.
When he gets to the cabin Derek lights a fire in the wood stove, hot and bright. Then he goes to sleep. This is what he intended to do all along, and now no one’s coming to ask him about Laura, so Derek can just stay here and make the moose in the freezer into so many pots of stew, and not worry about worrying about a thing.
When Derek wakes up he sits in front of the stove, closes his eyes and watches the light play across his lids. This will be okay. Derek will be okay.
He makes a stew the next day, and the day after he chops more wood he doesn’t need. The day after that he puts skins on his skis and climbs the mountain, skis down. The next day, another mountain. This could be his life now, he thinks. It would be an okay life.
It’s the sixth night when he was a dream. He’s riding a train and there’s a hand gripped tight in his, but when he turns around there’s no one there.
This is what happens after Derek has been in the Yukon for thirteen days and eaten most of the moose: he goes into Whitehorse for groceries. His voice is hoarse from not talking, and it sounds so foreign to Derek’s own ears when he thanks the teenager who rings him up that Derek wonders if this is really him getting better or if this is him, somehow, getting worse. He doesn’t know what else to do. He gets in his truck and steers himself back home.
Stiles is sitting on the step when Derek gets back, surrounded by snow, with a scarf looped around his neck and a knit cap pulled low over his ears. Derek stares at Stiles for a moment, fumbling for his totem. But it's real. He--Stiles--is real.
“Lydia told me,” Stiles says abstractly, getting up when he sees Derek. “And I hitched a ride up here from town with a guy with a snowmobile.”
“Are you cold?” Derek asks, and Stiles shrugs.
“It hasn’t been long.”
Derek unlocks the door and shoves it open with his shoulder. Stiles follows him inside.
“Is this about a job?” he asks. “Because I’m not.”
“You’re not,” Stiles echoes. He’s looking around the cabin like he’s trying to capture it all and record it somewhere inside his head, but it’s just the one room, and there’s not much to remember. “Derek.”
Derek turns to look at Stiles. His scarf is still around his neck, and he’s looking at Derek. His eyes catch the glint of flames from the woodstove, glow gold.
“You left,” Stiles says suddenly. “I thought--but you left.”
“I left,” Derek echoes, looking away because Stiles’ eyes are too bright. “I’m broken. You left.”
“I needed to talk to Dad--” Stiles tugs at his scarf. “You were asleep.”
“What are you doing here?” Derek asks. Stiles’ scarf is striped. “If it’s not a job.”
“I just thought,” Stiles says, then shakes his head. “I don’t even know what I thought. It’s pretty here.”
“What did you think?” Derek asks, watching the firelight play across Stiles’ face, his cheekbones, the flare of his nose. It matters, it’s important.
“Your shade, is she back?” Stiles asks. “I just wanted to check.”
“Lydia has my phone number,” Derek says.
“She says you didn’t take a PASIV when you left,” Stiles says.
“It’s complicated,” Derek says. He puts a pot of water on the woodstove to make coffee, like that will solve their problems.
“I don’t understand you,” Stiles says, and he suddenly sounds adamant, but Derek isn’t sure what he’s adamant about. “I don’t understand any of this. You want to know what I thought? That we were getting somewhere, I don’t know where. That maybe--” Stiles pauses and shrugs, eyes flitting across Derek’s face. “Do you get what I’m saying? Sometimes I feel like you get things even when I don’t say them well, but right now you’re just--your forehead’s gone wrinkled.”
“I don’t--” Derek says, and then Stiles takes a step forward, and he’s in Derek’s space.
“Dad said you told him the job was over so we weren’t fake boyfriends anymore,” Stiles continues. If he steps closer, their noses will touch. He’s close enough, now, for Derek to see the stripes of shading in his eyes, framed as they are by long, dark lashes.
“I was asking him--” Stiles continues. “And then you left.”
Derek’s still looking at Stiles, and then he reaches towards Stiles, wraps his hand up in Stiles’ scarf. It’s soft. Stiles looks--soft.
“Not fake boyfriends, anymore,” Stiles says, his eyes dipping towards Derek’s hand. “But we could be real ones? Maybe?”
“I’m broken,” Derek says.
“I told you,” Stiles says, looking up to meet Derek’s eyes. “So am I. We all are.”
Derek pulls Stiles closer. Just an inch--that’s all it takes.
Derek had noticed Stiles’ lips, because you couldn’t not, because they’re--there. On his face, pink and full. So he’d noticed them, but he hadn’t anticipated the soft press of them against his own. Stiles’ mouth is insistent and warm, teasing and nipping, and then his tongue slips into Derek’s mouth, and his hands are gripping Derek’s shoulders, tight, and the kettle on the stove lets out a piercing whistle. Stiles jumps back.
“Coffee,” Derek says. “I was going to make us coffee.”
Stiles blinks at him, eyes dark and liquid.
“Do we need it?” he asks. His voice is a bit hoarser than it was only a moment ago.
“I thought we could talk.” It seems silly, with Stiles here, like this, mouth pink and parted.
“We’ve talked a lot, I think,” Stiles says. “I mean, not now, but before. We’ve talked about Kate, and my parents but not yours, and your architecture but not mine, and the job, and Lydia’s sex life--”
It seems like more than Derek remembers when Stiles puts it like that. Derek takes the kettle off the stove. Stiles sidles up to him and says, “Where were we?”
“Here,” Derek says, pressing his hands to Stiles’ cheeks, then dropping his hands to unloop the scarf from Stiles’ neck. Stiles’ hands, somehow, slide up Derek’s back, along the ridges of his shoulderblades. He peels off Derek’s henley. Derek unbuttons Stiles’ shirt, pushes it off his shoulders. Underneath Stiles is wearing one of those t-shirts, tight and dark, and when Derek pulls that off Stiles is pale and freckled, his nipples are pebbled against the cold, and Derek can’t help but reach up and take one between his fingers. Stiles gasps, leans forward and presses his mouth to the hollow of Derek’s throat.
“You,” Stiles says. “I don’t know what you thought, but you were wrong.”
What happens after that is this: Stiles presses himself flush against Derek, and Derek can feel all of it, all of Stiles, warm and in his arms.
“I always wanted to do it on a bearskin rug,” Stiles says, in between tugging at Derek’s belt loops and sucking on his shoulder blade. Derek buries his nose in the gap between Stiles’ shoulder and his neck. He doesn’t know what to say. He lets Stiles talk him home--talk them both home.
He wakes up in the morning in the sprawl of Stiles’ limbs, and a few minutes later Stiles is blinking at him, and then Stiles’ face is blooming into a slow grin, something new and hopeful.
“How about that coffee?” he asks. And Derek can’t help but return the smile, pulling himself from bed while Stiles watches, lazy beneath the blankets. Once the water boils, Derek tosses him a wadded up shirt, one of Derek’s old ones, then pours the water into the French press while Stiles gets dressed. He wraps his arms around Derek’s waist, rests his head on Derek’s shoulder.
“I have another proposition for you,” Stiles says. “You don’t have to say yes.”
Derek waits.
“You can think about it,” Stiles says. “But when we were in Mongolia I talked to Ariadne, and it seems to me--you’re an architect who could use an extractor, really. And I could be an extractor, maybe.”
“But dreamsharing--” Derek starts.
“Wears people out like the soles of cheap shoes,” Stiles finishes. “But only some of them. Only if they don’t have a good team.”
Stiles tangles a hand in Derek’s, turns him around so they’re facing each other.
“I think we could be a good team,” Stiles says, reaching his free hand up to Derek’s face. It makes Derek feel stupid and foolish and young, but also hopeful, like this might be okay, this time around.
"Let’s wait until spring,” Derek says. It’s not the sort of thing you ask of someone you hardly know. “Let’s stay here until spring.”
“Hibernation,” Stiles says. “Okay. Let’s.”
Derek looks at Stiles, and Stiles looks back at him, eyes slanting down and then up, mouth dipping open. Derek presses a thumb to his lips.
“Don’t kiss me,” Stiles says. “Morning breath.”
Derek does, anyway, quick and close-mouthed. He pulls away. “Thank you,” he says.
“Now pour me some coffee,” Stiles says.
It’s a start.