A planet-wide catastrophe occurs in the year of 2018, leaving the Earth and everyone on it with just five years left before The End.
The counter of years is reset; now counting down towards imminent destruction. It is no longer 2018; it is Year Five.
Stiles Stillinski and Derek Hale meet for the first time at the end of Year Five. The next time it's Year Three, then again halfway through Year Two.
The last time there are three months left of Year One. This time, they don't let go of the other.
There is coldness in Stiles, seeped into the marrows of his bones, refusing to let go or let up even for the slightest amount of time.
His father, once the Sheriff of Beacon Hills, only lasted three months into Year Five. The erupting chaos after The End was declared had escalated fast, and even now, nine months into the year, the violence is still ever present.
It had been just another uprising, just another fight over food supplies that would last, and a young boy had gotten desperate. Was getting it for his little sister, he'd said, she's barely a year old. They're all alone, was his excuse, and before Stiles had time to react, the gunshot rung out and his father fell to the ground.
The cold had seeped into Stiles as the blood had seeped out of his father's body, and it had been cold before Scott had managed to pull Stiles away, before he had managed to pry Stiles' stiff fingers off of his father's corpse.
Six feet under and six months later and the pain and loss and cold and shock still fills Stiles, more so than the fear of the world ending.
Because to Stiles, a large part of the world is already over; he only has Scott, Lydia and Mrs. McCall now.
To have them is more than most have, and he counts himself lucky that he's not lost anyone else. Scott's dad haven't even been in touch to check in, or let them know he's alive, but they assume he is, that the family of an FBI agent would have known if he too was buried.
Stiles is okay, though, or so he claims. He's still alive, still fighting to survive in a world that is slowly turning deadlier and more and more egoistical, because everyone knows they're all going to die, so almost no ne tends to the land anymore, because they only have a little over four years left, so people don't see the point in working and making money they won't get to spend anyways.
There is no system for payment, and anyone who needs help better be prepared to offer up food – canned goods in particular – in return.
Some still grow food – Stiles and Lydia tend to a patch of well-guarded vegetables in the McCall's backyard, where the four of them live now.
Stiles meets Derek for the first time in October and at the contact of their palms holding on, shaking, a bit of warmth seems to seep into his marrow.
This is not the electric charge the romantic books and stories talk about; this is not the I-have-met-my-soulmate type of reaction.
But it is hope, and it is warmth, and it is a feeling of don't-let-go-I'm-so-so-cold-please-stay.
Derek doesn't stay, of course. He has people to see, people he arranged to meet in Beacon Hills, the city of his birth. Derek tells Stiles – not knowing why – that while he was born here, it is not a city worthy of his death. The city that claimed his family – his sister, his parents, his uncle to madness, and his girlfriend who set their house on fire – does not deserve the death of the last two Hales, and so he will take his last relative, and Boyd and Isaac and Erica – the latter three who Stiles knows from school – and he will take them away, to better places, to a place where there is no crowd, no killing for food, no remnants of lives lived and lost.
Derek tells Stiles that when he dies, he will die in peace and with friends and his last family and he will greet the inevitable, oncoming storm with his head held high and with happiness because he will see his family again.
Stiles admires the courage in Derek, the courage that fills his being, from the shadows on his cheeks and under his eyes, to the tips of the tattoo on his back that Stiles glimpses when Derek rinses himself with the garden hose after he helps them work in the vegetable garden in exchange for food and shelter.
When Derek leaves, Stiles looks after him, fearing the coldness will seep back into him and make him even colder than before, if that's even possible.
But even as the days and weeks and months pass, the warmth Derek left him with after one handshake stays on.