When a dueling piano bar by the name of Howl at the Moon opened up twenty minutes outside of Beacon Hills, Derek began to wonder whether or not the karmic forces of the world really were against him.
When the pack decided to make it their new favorite hangout, he decided for certain that they were.
It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the place. It was clean, the design wasn't terrible, and the bar served good drinks at acceptable prices. It was classier than the Jungle but still young enough for the group of barely-legal kids he felt it his responsibility to chaperone around, and better still, it was safe. The place was owned and operated by a group of benevolent wiccan practitioners who had presented themselves to him as the local Alpha when they'd first moved in, all proper protocol followed for a change, and they'd all become rather good friends in the last few months. The witches stocked wolfsbane-spiked drinks just for the pack, and their coven-leader Laeka had become attached to Stiles in particular, teaching the young man all kinds of devilish little tricks and pranks with which to drive Derek and the rest crazy.
But mostly Derek.
Either way, a night out at Howl was a good night.
As long as it wasn't Friday night.
Unfortunately, karma and his uncle clearly wished to see him miserable, and Friday night once again found him sunk low in a booth opposite the bar, brooding quietly while the pack laughed and gamboled back and forth between the table and the dance floor.
Friday night.
Open Keys night.
He could handle other nights without a twinge, nights when the two bands Laeka had hired took requests from the patrons and battled back and forth between the stages, but Open Keys night was different.
Open Keys night was hell.
It had been years since Derek had touched a piano. Werewolves weren't naturally drawn to instruments; making music required a great deal of patience and a delicate hand, things that didn't come naturally to creatures so in tune with their baser, more animalistic instincts. But after Paige…
After Paige, Derek had fallen into the world of music, crashing into it, collapsing into it, tumbling down in a dizzying spiral that had terrified him beyond measure. For a long time he'd been sure that it would kill him someday, somehow.
He wasn't always sure that it hadn't.
It began as a search for solace. Relief from the face of the girl who had haunted his teenaged dreams. He found himself an old record player, spent hours hunting through the bargain bins for scratchy vinyls and even more locked away in his room listening to orchestra and old jazz. When that didn't work he pushed himself one step closer to it and began to teach himself to make his own music.
He'd never been able to bring himself to touch the stringed instruments, not even now.
He couldn't go near percussion either.
But the piano?
He could lose himself in the keys.
It hadn't come easily. It had taken an immense amount of discipline, something he hadn't had much of when he'd first begun, and required a measure of inner calm that he hadn't found for many, many months. Sometimes he still wasn't sure how he'd managed it. In the end he could only credit the music for cutting through all the fear and guilt and misery, the pain that tried to consume him every time he looked in the mirror and saw ice-blue eyes staring back at him.
Later it became a comfort, an escape from the reality that clung to him throughout his painful adolescence. It was something he could do, something he could create, cause, something that remained entirely untainted by the darkness that he felt sticking to his skin. It was liberating, something that he eventually came to take pride in, something that he was good at and that never failed to make him feel connected to the girl he'd lost.
He'd come back to that old comfort after the fire.
It took… time. Too much. Time to feel like he was allowed the respite. He may not have deserved it, but he cracked eventually, broke down and let the music swallow him up once more, throwing everything he had and everything he was into the process until he didn't exist outside of the notes. It kept him sane, kept him tame, repressed the dark desire deep inside his chest to just let go, let go of all the things that kept him human.
He was still ashamed of how close he'd come to losing himself to his instincts, to the moonlight, the baser half of who he was during those years. How close he'd come to falling feral, rabid.
Once again, it had been music to save him.
The time he'd spent with Laura in New York were consumed by what he could only label hobbies, anything and everything he could do to stop himself from thinking, wallowing in memory and grief. He'd studied architecture, gotten his masters, taken a short-lived kick-boxing class, even tried art therapy, but it had all felt dark and sharp and harsh, until finally he'd gone back to the only gentleness he could allow himself, melodies pouring out from the keys beneath his fingers like light. He'd mostly stuck to dive bars, playing all over the city, and then suddenly he'd found himself with a contract offer and a meeting to discuss creating a record of his very own songs.
It had been a shock, one that had him feeling like he was drowning, and Laura's happiness at the news had only served to deepen the heavy sense of uncertainty that hung around his neck like an albatross. His sister didn't fully understand what playing was for him, what the music meant, and it wasn't something he could really explain to her or himself, so he just let it be what it was and agreed to the conference.
That meeting was the reason he hadn't gone back with her to Beacon Hills.
The reason she'd been alone.
He'd planned to fly out after her as soon as it was finished, but he'd never even made it to the office.
The heart-rending, earth-shattering pain of her death had come first.
After that, and after Peter, Derek wasn't sure he could ever touch another piano again. Where playing had once been healing for him, it became just another way to punish himself. Withholding that, refusing himself the inner stillness his music brought him, became a reminder of the things he'd done, all the failures piling up against him.
Of course, he wasn't so bad now.
Not so dark.
The pack he'd created, the family he'd forged out of the ashes of what was left of his old home and his old life, well, they'd done their own part to help heal his wounds. Scott and Allison and Isaac, Erica and Boyd, Stiles, hell, even Peter. They were family. He didn't know how it had happened but they'd bonded, had pack dinners and pack movie nights, and now of course, they had nights out at Howl.
Watching a young man in a sweater-vest and hipster glasses get down from the stage after a positively awful, warbling rendition of The Final Countdown, Derek scoffed under his breath and folded his arms over his chest. Next to him Peter heaved the heavy sigh of the put-upon, raising a hand to signal for another drink as he rolled his eyes.
"You know nephew," he said, practically purring as he accepted the glass of spiked Scotch placed in front of him, "I didn't think you went in for this kind of torture."
Derek raised an eyebrow in his uncle's direction, suddenly wary as his betas perked up at the odd comment, alert and far too curious for comfort.
"Go to hell Peter," he rumbled, his eyes flashing as he offered the older wolf a hint of teeth. His chest was filling up with the sudden surety that this conversation was about to take a left turn into dark territory, and his wolf was battling the urge to fight or flee. "I'm sure they've got a seat reserved."
"Oh did you mean the throne?" the re-animated wolf quipped smartly. "But it makes me rather proud, you know. I didn't think you had the stomach for this sort of thing."
This time Derek just glared.
Because dammit, there wasn't a comeback in this world that would be anything less than half a lie, and mouthing off would only play into Peter's hands.
"Oh for God's sake," Peter muttered. Sliding out of the booth, he grabbed Derek's elbow with prickling claws and dragged him up after him, pressing the glass of Scotch into his hand and shoving him towards the stage. "Go," he commanded, clearly fed up and disappointed that his more subtle urgings hadn't been effective. "Before you start to twitch."
The distance between their table and the stage wasn't all that great, but somehow it felt like walking to his doom. His heart had beat more slowly facing down far greater foes - vampires, a hydra, the alpha pack - this was just a cheap baby grand, a Kohler & Campbell in dark Walnut, but his blood was still racing in his veins, his wolf quivering beneath his skin.
Painfully aware of the eyes of his pack on him, the clean-linen scent of their surprise cutting through the frenetic sweat and alcohol of the bar, he downed his uncle's Scotch in two hard, burning gulps, dropping the glass onto an empty table as he took the two steps up to the piano and sat down at the bench, the instrument spread out in front of him like an offering, a sacrifice. His heart was in his throat, choking him, suffocating him, but there was something else beneath the fear, something that felt almost like hopefulness.
Raising his hands, he let them hover over the keys, his brain whirling through all the pieces he'd ever known, searching for something that would fit this place. He'd always loved the classical, or renditions of old rock, but none felt really right. There was something though, there had to be - they were staring, waiting, and the shock and eager curiosity coming off of them rippled over his skin like water. For just a minute he considered walking away, writing all of this off as a silly one-timer and locking it away again, but it seemed like his fingers were one step ahead of him, finding the keys like they'd never abandoned them, the opening refrain of a song he didn't remember learning flowing forth from the silky ebony and ivory beneath his hands.
I never knew
I never knew that everything was falling through
That everyone I knew was waiting on a cue
To turn and run when all I needed was the truth
But that's how it's got to be
It's coming down to nothing more than apathy
I'd rather run the other way than stay and see
The smoke and who's still standing when it clears
Everyone knows I'm in
Over my head
Over my head
With eight seconds left in overtime
She's on your mind
She's on your mind
The words and the notes came out of somewhere soft and vulnerable in his chest, smooth and even and perfect even though they weren't. He could feel it building up there, like hot light in the vicinity of his heart, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so… content.
Happy.
Let's rearrange
I wish you were a stranger I could disengage
Just say that we agree and then never change
Soften a bit until we all just get along
But that's disregard
Find another friend and you discard
As you lose the argument in a cable car
Hanging above as the canyon comes between
Everyone knows I'm in
Over my head
Over my head
With eight seconds left in overtime
She's on your mind
She's on your mind
He rolled through the song with a practiced ease that he shouldn't have, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth as he sang low and gruff into the microphone. His shoulders swayed easily along with the tune, the lean and reach for the notes that felt so good beneath his hands. The rest of the bar, the rest of the world had fallen away between the clef and the coda, leaving him with nothing but the instrument in front of him and the sounds he pulled from it, no one watching, no one listening, just him, just the notes.
Everyone knows I'm in
Over my head
Over my head
With eight seconds left in overtime
She's on your mind
She's on your mind
As the last of the notes faded away into nothing the bar practically exploded around him, came crashing back in with a burst of cheering and applause, the loudest coming from the back corner where his pack whooped and howled, sending grins and assorted wolf whistles his way. He almost couldn't believe the grins on their faces, the happiness they'd gotten out of something so simple as to hear him play. Even Peter was watching on with something that might've been pride if it hadn't been for the fact that he was, well, Peter.
And Stiles.
He was watching too, and Derek wasn't sure why the look on the young man's face hit him so hard but it was like a punch to the chest, solid and heavy and depriving him of air. It was a fascinated sort of fondness, a soft, wide-eyed smile that showed a bit of pleased surprise, excitement and maybe even a little teasing accusation.
Of course he'd never said, never shown off this little talent, but it felt good - going back to the music after all this time, to be sharing this part of himself with his pack.
Grinning softly to himself, he flicked out his wrists and obliged the crowd with an encore.
Over My Head (Cable Car) belongs to The Fray!