i.
"Tell me about your first," she murmurs against his skin. All he can smell is her, the scent of her hair and perfume and the intermingling of their sweat.
"My first what?" Stiles laughs, even though he knows what she wants to hear.
She props herself up on her elbow and looks down at him, her cheeks still flushed and her voice still a little bit breathless. "Your first love," she says, her tone a touch mocking, a touch playful. "Your first fuck. Your first heartbreak."
Stiles winds a lock of her hair around his finger and sighs. "Why do you want to know about that?"
"I want to know everything about you," she answers earnestly, settling back down and spreading her fingers over his heart. "And I want you to know everything about me."
The honesty in her voice humbles him, so he takes a deep breath and lies to her, slowly and gently, his voice hazy with sex and the perpetual lack of sleep that seems to define Stiles' post-grad experience. He can't tell her the truth, even though she deserves it. It's still too raw, even after all this time. So he lies.
ii.
It's Saturday, and the rain is falling in sheets, shrouding the old Hale house in near-darkness and deafening white noise. It drums against the roof, splatters through the holes Derek has never even tried to repair.
Stiles is wedged between Derek's legs. He's watching the place where their bodies meet, watching the gentle slide of his cock into that unbelievable heat, that resistance that makes him bite his lip and grunt with effort. He shifts his gaze upward, to the fist he's got clenched around Derek's cock. His hand looks pale, slight, as it pumps in tandem with the rocking of his hips. His movements are slow and achingly gentle. He's savoring this.
Derek squirms beneath him, his back arching and his hips trying almost desperately to quicken the pace, but Stiles holds him down with one hand across his belly (as if he could) and Derek plays along. That's the whole point of this, isn't it? Relinquishing control, if only for a little while.
"Dammit," Derek hisses. His eyes are closed and his knuckles are white as he clenches the bed-sheet, and his toes even curl and release in frustrated rhythm. The sight of that makes Stiles grin, no doubt a little stupidly, and lean forward, changing the angle just so. He doesn't increase the pace. Not yet.
"Dammit," Derek says again, his eyes slitting open. They're dark and heavy-lidded, as needy as his voice sounds when he whines: "Fuck, Stiles...I need..." He doesn't finish that, doesn't need to. His breathing is erratic and his cock is heavy in Stiles' hand. Stiles knows what he needs.
He scoots forward, angling Derek's hips upwards a little and pushing his legs higher, until Derek's ankles are settled on his shoulders. The angle is sharper, sweeter, and now at least he lets himself push into Derek's heat as fast and as hungrily as he's wanted to do all afternoon. He isn't gentle now; his fingernails dig into the flesh of Derek's thigh as his other hand tightens and jerks faster, still matching the snap of his hips.
The synchronicity of these moments never escapes his attention. There's something flawless in the timing of their breaths, their bodies, his pulse and the beating of the rain outside. Derek scratches his nails- his human nails; he's careful with his claws- up Stiles' back, pulling them closer together, and they're both close, Stiles can feel it, the tightening of Derek's body and the quickening of their movements and the build-up of restless energy in his stomach. Close, so close, and then Derek shudders and lets out a cry that he stifles with his palm and paints stripes of cum across their bellies, hot and sticky. His body clenches as he comes, drawing everything out of Stiles too so that for a moment he's only dimly aware of the way he's gone stiff and motionless, a low groan wending its way from his throat.
The fog recedes slowly, letting noise through first: their gasping breaths and the tireless rain, the howling wind, Derek's heart beating just beneath Stiles' ear. He sits himself up on his elbows and presses a sweet, lingering kiss to Derek's collarbone, the rush of chemicals soaring in his blood and leaving him languid.
Derek, apparently, feels no such dreaminess. He pushes Stiles off of him and slides out of bed, yanking on his clothing with a fierceness Stiles finds bewildering. "What did I do?" he asks, sitting up and watch Derek's frenzied movements.
Tugging on a sock, Derek shoots him a glare. "That," he says, unhelpfully. "Don't do that."
Stiles runs his hand through his hair and shakes his head. "Don't do what, Derek?"
"Don't try to turn this into something more than it is," he answers coldly, pulling on his coat and yanking up the zip. His frown is nothing Stiles isn't used to. This reticence isn't anything they haven't been through a thousand times before.
"Ah," Stiles mumbles, letting out a breath. He climbs out of bed, too, and fumbles with his jeans. "Whatever. I'll see you when I see you." He snatches up his phone and his jacket and slams his way out of the room before he can say something he knows he'll regret.
iii.
"Have you ever done this before?" Stiles asks quietly. His fingers trace small circles on Derek's hipbone; his breath fans out across Derek's ribs.
"What? With a guy, or at all?"
Stiles shrugs, shivering a little at the slide of their skin that the motion causes. "Either."
"I've had women," Derek answers, a little evasively. "The predilection for nerdy teenage boys is new, though." Laughing, Stiles punches him gently and wins a rare smile, the kind that reaches Derek's eyes and transforms him entirely. He grabs Stiles' wrist and drags his hand upwards, bringing his lips to Stiles' pulse-point and leaving behind a soft, careful kiss. "What about you? Have you done this before?"
Stiles shakes his head, and some of the light leaves Derek's eyes, turning his smile sad. "What were you waiting for?" he asks, his thumb brushing up and down the lines of Stiles' palm.
This, Stiles thinks, but he doesn't say that because Derek doesn't want to hear it. So instead he shrugs and turns his attention to the web of cracks in the ceiling. "There hasn't exactly been a line of people outside my bedroom door, if you hadn't noticed."
Derek doesn't say anything to that, just rumbles a noise that could mean anything and drops Stiles' hand on the mattress. "You'd better go," he says, a phrase that Stiles is becoming uncomfortably familiar with.
It's worth it, though, when the payoff means spending a couple of hours like this. So he doesn't question it, doesn't argue. He puts on his clothes and he leaves.
iv.
He sees him once, a few years after leaving Beacon Hills for good. It's raining again- rain and Derek seem to be permanently locked together in Stiles' memories- and his car is acting up, the brakes making a weird sound that he doesn't appreciate. He takes it to the mechanic his dad recommends, because he doesn't know anything about this town anymore and he'd rather not get screwed over, and Derek Hale is standing behind the counter when Stiles walks in with water dripping from his overcoat, puddling on the floor.
"Oh," Stiles says. There's no easy escape from this, no emergency exit. They've made eye contact; Stiles has acknowledged his presence. He's stuck.
"Stiles," Derek says, more warmly than Stiles thinks he has any right to sound. "What are you doing here? Have you moved back?"
"No, just...just visiting my dad." Stiles steps forward, giving Derek a quick once-over. He looks good. Really good, actually- easily as fit as he was in his twenties. "So you, um. You work here?"
Derek nods and looks around proudly. "It's my shop. Opened it a few years back."
Stiles makes a mental note to curse his dad for all of eternity for sending him here- although he can hardly be blamed, considering he's just as clueless as everyone else as to what happened between Derek and Stiles back in high school- and leans back on his heels awkwardly. "That's...great. Really great. Good for you."
"Uh huh." Derek's eyebrows lift marginally. "You having some car trouble?"
Talking about the car is easier, and some of the tightness in Stiles' stomach recedes a little. They get his paperwork squared away and figure out an estimate, and then there's an awkward moment when Derek seems to simply stare at him expectantly, his eyes as pale and intense as Stiles remembered them being. "Stiles," he says slowly. He puts out his hand, palm-up. "I need your keys."
"Oh!" Rummaging in his pocket, Stiles manages to eventually extract said keys and pass them over with only minor shakiness. "Sorry."
Derek smiles at him, genuine and easy. "It's fine," he says, and Stiles doesn't think he's projecting the extra layer of meaning in his words. Derek nods to the waiting room and walks away, swinging Stiles' keys on his finger, and Stiles watches him go with something too tumultuous for words stirring in his guts.
The car is ready in record time, and Stiles drives her home (is it strange that he thinks of the city as home now?) without any more trouble or screeching sounds. He keeps the radio on during his drive, but if someone asked him he couldn't have named a single song they'd played. A thought chases its way around Stiles' mind the whole way: Who put that easy smile on Derek's face, and why couldn't it have been me?
v.
"You want me to act like there's nothing happening here," Stiles grits, anger making his voice thick, "when we both know that's complete bullshit. Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not that guy. I can't just...pretend that this doesn't mean anything when it obviously does."
Derek's eyes are on the window, his expression blank. "Then maybe we should stop doing this," he suggests, as easily as Stiles might suggest going to see a movie or ordering take-out.
It shouldn't surprise Stiles, but: wow, it does. And it hurts, more than he could have possibly imagined. But Stiles isn't as stupid as he looks, and he knows where this is headed. He's seen it happen more times than he can count. And he's not going to be that guy, the one that falls too hard and gives too much. So he lifts his chin and chokes out, "Maybe we should."
If it hurts Derek to hear that, he hides it pretty well. His jaw clenches minutely, but otherwise he's as placid as Stiles has ever seen him. "Fine."
"Fine," Stiles echoes childishly. His nails are digging into his palms and there's a lump in his throat that's threatening to bring tears with it, and no way is Stiles going to stand here and cry like an idiot in front of Derek. He draws in a steadying breath. "When you're done being a fucking coward," he says, perfectly aware of how venomous and immature he sounds, "you know where to find me." He turns around and walks away, and it's the hardest thing he's had to do since God-knows-when because he knows, from somewhere deep down in his bones, that whatever he and Derek had was rare. And it had been good, better than good. It had been brilliant.
Walking away feels an awful lot like giving up.
vi.
"Tell me about your first," she asks, her voice whisper-soft, but she doesn't know what she's asking, not really, so Stiles tells her the lie instead. Because it's easier, yeah, and a hell of a lot less painful. The truth has too many jagged edges.
He tells her the story of Mandy from freshman year and the way they'd shared his tiny twin-sized bed almost every night because his roommate was never home and her dorm wasn't nearly as nice. It's a comfortable lie, a familiar one. He's told it quite a few times now, sometimes even to himself.
What he doesn't mention is Derek and the way his stubble would scratch at Stiles' skin, leaving little red marks all over his body that he had always struggled to explain away. He doesn't mention laughing at Derek's rare, shining moments of humor or trusting Derek with his life when shit got serious. He just can't. It still hurts too much. So he talks about Mandy instead, and the girl in his bed laughs when she's supposed to and aww's when she's supposed to, and it doesn't hurt at all.
He smashes the memories of Derek down again and again, and little by little they begin to fade away.