Summary: Stiles can't remember his life before he became a boogieman, even though he hasn't been one for very long. Derek/Stiles. AU.
Notes: Written for a prompt over at derekstiles over on dreamwidth. I just like the idea that boogieman!Stiles is more afraid of Derek than Derek is of him. If there's something that doesn't make sense I totally blame the fact that I wrote half of this during an exam and the rest in the middle of the night.
1
Stiles can't remember his life before he became a boogieman, even though he hasn't been one for very long. It's one of the things that's not really discussed, so he doesn't know about the others, but he thinks if they remembered, perhaps they'd be less a cesspool of despair and more like a puddle of desperation.
Stiles is too modern for that old sack-on-your-back crap. Moving people around doesn't really change anything for the better, in his opinion, and he's still not sure where they end up when they take people away. Late at night he wonders if he was one of those taken, and he doesn't want to condemn anyone to this life. Existence. Whatever. Stiles knows himself, and he's not all that wicked, even when he is, because his idea of wicked is switching the salt and pepper and snatching curly fries from the unsuspecting.
Admittedly, he has his moments of vicious jealousy and lust for revenge, but doesn't everyone?
The Hale house hasn't had people in it for years, which is probably why they stuck him there. Stiles is a little lonely without an audience, so when he notices that the furniture has moved around - and this time it was definitely not him doing the moving, nor was it kids on a dare (he dealt with that problem rather spectacularly, if he may say so himself), he's hit with a sudden flash of glee.
His first haunting. His mentor would be so proud.
Through shameless snooping of kitchen-table mail he figures out that the new inhabitant - hauntee, whatever - is called Derek Hale, and he looks to be in his twenties.
And what looks. A slight shiver runs through him as he studies Mr Derek's hiney from the window in the attic, which is sufficiently dark for nefarious purposes even in sunshine. Attics are awesome and Stiles loves yardwork.
He's not sure how long he stands there, but he blinks and discovers the sky has gained a sickly green tint in the dying light, and Derek is nowhere to be seen.
He decides to go back downstairs and find out which bedroom to haunt, so he turns around and-
"Jesus!"
Derek looks very unimpressed. Stiles thinks so, anyway. It's hard to get a read on him.
"Aren't you supposed to be, I mean..." Stiles lifts his hands and wiggles his fingers. "Scared?"
Derek's eyebrows twitch.
What he's sure of is that Derek should be running down the stairs just from looking at his fear-inducing face. (It's a waste, really: Stiles has a handsome face, if he may say so himself.)
"Okay," Stiles says, stepping sideways towards the wall. "I'll just... go now." Maybe if Stiles inches along it in slow-motion he won't notice. "Nice to meet you, I guess, but I'm not really supposed to say hello in a traditional sense, so I'll, uh, see you around. Midnight, probably. Except probably not because I'm- ACK!"
Derek's eyes are kind of glowy up close, Stiles thinks. And the wall is... surprisingly hard, considering he can slide right through it when the lights are off.
"Who are you," Derek growls, and it's not just the regular sort of growl, but the kind where you feel the air vibrate in fear and your instincts are telling you to run because they happen to be smarter than you.
Stiles's heartbeat is loud in his ears, and he can't take the whole glow-in-the-dark glare much longer, so when a cloud obscures the sun he melts through the shadowed wall and gasps for breath or logic or sense in the basement.
When he finally calms down (watching Derek's laundry go round and round and round and round) he tells the concrete walls, "Derek Hale is so not human," and nods to himself.
Stiles manages to avoid Derek for the week and a half before the vernal equinoxe summit, which is a stupidly fancy name for what's essentially a spring meeting, so he finally escapes the walls that have grown so familiar to meet with his mentor and the bosses. Except Stiles isn't actually allowed in, considering what happened last time. (He's not allowed to speak of it, either, so.)
Whatever. He gets to see some of of his peers, and that's enough. He doesn't really care about the formalities as long as Laura gives him the gist of things and doesn't tell him what she's planning. As usual. (He might care a little about that last bit. Except he doesn't.)
Laura greets him with a warm smile and a hug, and for the first time since the disaster of last season he feels warm inside. "It's good to see you," Laura says.
"You have no idea," Stiles manages, despite being surrounded by Laura's bone-crushing arms. "And you're a filthy little liar, saying the house would be empty."
Laura draws back with a frown and holds him at arms length. "What are you talking about? It's supposed to be empty - the family passed on years ago."
"I'm talking about Derek Hale. Moving into the Hale house. Forgive me for sensing a connection."
Laura sends a look that says don't play coy with me, and he relents, because he respects Laura and, more importantly, she can kick his ass.
"He came a couple of weeks ago. Moved in practically overnight, despite half the roof missing and the burnt-"
Laura scowls.
"-chic look. Which should totally be in right now."
She's spent too much time around him to roll her eyes, but she doesn't even look amused-in-a-superior-way. Instead, the opposite wall seems very interesting all of a sudden, until at last she exhales with a puff and wrinkles her nose. (Laura is adorable. This is a fact he'll never share with her for fear of Laura-related death.)
"This could complicate things," she says, but she doesn't have the time to explain before the summit is called and she has to enter or be locked out. "Stay out of trouble, okay?" Stiles grins helplessly and shrugs, and this time, she does roll her eyes. "I really should know better by now," she says, strangely serious, and then she ruffles his hair and slides through the heavy doors just before they slam shut.
Stiles sits down with his back against the wall, facing the doorway, counting the stars carved into the ceiling.
Laura looks worried when the first summit is finally over, and makes a beeway to where he's sitting - he moved further down the hall before the meeting let out, because he's not particularly fond of being trampled like last time.
"What's wrong?" Stiles says, but Laura shakes her head. Not here. Okay, Stiles can wait. Totally. He's a master waiter, and not the kind that serves food, but the kind that... waits. A lot.
"When?"
Laura sends him that look, the one that says speak and die, oh puny mortal.
He shuts his cakehole.
"I think it might be better if you went back to the house."
There's something about her wrinkled forehead that stifles his protests and makes him nod. She hugs him again, gives him a kiss on the cheek that only serves to make him more worried and sends him off down the hallway.
"And Stiles?"
He half-turns, lifts his eyebrows.
"Don't talk about him. Not to anyone."
He inclines his head and leaves, not asking who he would tell, like he wants to, or the eternal why.
When Stiles melts into the shadow behind the door, Derek's sitting in the dark of the living room with a miniature bonfire on the floor.
"Oh my-" Stiles stumbles out from the dark and flails, almost blinded. "What are you doing, are you trying to set this place on fire, like, hey, history, you're not repeating enough so I'll help you along and-"
Stiles notices his audience is... sleeping.
Derek doesn't really seem the type to sleep, he muses, but it's a good look for him.
Stiles grabs a pillow from the couch to shield the light and sits under the table to keep watch through the night, and this might not be his job, but he thinks he might like it, if it was.
The thought fills him with nostalgia, unfamiliar and sharp-edged. He shifts uneasily and tries not to think of it, until the sun rises and he dissipates.
When he flickers to that night, Derek's already watching him.
"How do you do that?" Stiles asks, morbidly fascinated, and Derek makes a face that might be a smile in a different reality and says, "I know you."
2
Stiles likes sleeping under Derek's bed, dust bunnies and eau de campfire and all. It's just nice. Also, once he stops freaking out every time Derek looks at him, he likes the companionship, the not-quite-friendship that's somehow more intimate than his friendship with Laura.
And maybe he's not supposed to talk to the guy he's sort of haunting, at least not in a polite how-do-you-do way, but Stiles has never been one for social convention, and he doesn't see why he should start.
Derek's supposed to be annoyed, Stiles thinks, because people tend to find him annoying when he talks too much, and Derek's supposed to be sleeping, but Derek just sighs and reclines on his back and lets Stiles's run-on sentences wash across him and doesn't say a word, and when he falls asleep Stiles sings a little ditty about homicidal maniacs sleeping sweetly in their beds and apparently Derek wasn't that asleep, because he growls an aggravated, "Stiles."
"Sorry," Stiles says, and doesn't mean it at all. Derek must be able to tell, because his pillow falls to the floor, followed by his duvet and Derek's glare.
Stiles stares as Derek settles next to him, not under the bed but so close their arms brush, and Derek has this weird expression that makes Stiles think "watcha gonna do 'bout it" and burst into laughter, the giggly kind he's embarrassed to have in his laugh repertoire.
"What?" Derek says, and Stiles is tempted to think he's murderous but he seems more confused.
"Nothing," Stiles says. "Nothing at all, except you're obviously a stellar problem solver." And he's off again, but this time with Derek right beside him, looking at the ceiling with a strangely blank expression, and at some point their hands come to rest half on top of the other's and neither of them make a move to retract it.
It's the first time Stiles doesn't really mind living in shadows.