So... this is kind of violent and stuff. Nothing too explicit, but there are DARK THEMES AAAHHH and Stiles is definitely not his typical cuddly self. Fair warning. Also, there will be twoish more chapters exploring this relationship, but nothing particularly plot heavy.

XXXXX

Derek... had not been expecting this.

It had been a running joke for so long. Stiles, the breakable human, Stiles, 147 pounds of pale skin and fragile bones, silly Stiles, laughing and joking in times of stress because he couldn't do anything else.

Except, apparently, he could.

Two hunters from out of state, big burly guys wearing T-shirts with beer logos lay dead on the forest floor, matching bullet holes right in the center of their foreheads. Little bleeding stamps, courtesy of one Stiles Stilinski.

All 147 pounds of him, standing, back against a tree, arm still outstretched, gun in hand, just in case one of the hunters turned out to be immune to bullet wounds. Stiles' arm didn't shake an inch, and his eyes were steely, a brown as hard as the set of his jaw. Derek had never seen Stiles like this before, and it was enthralling. He looked like an avenging angel, all purpose and power.

Stiles glanced up, cold eyes catching Derek's. He quirked an eyebrow, a silent challenge for Derek to say something about it. Derek didn't.

A clattering sounded from further in the woods, frantic feet slapping against ground, snapping through twigs, until out of the black night branches, the rest of the pack emerged, panting. They took in the corpses, and the gun, and Stiles, and erupted.

"Stiles, are you alright?"

"Are they really dead? Like, really?"

"You okay?"

"What happened?"

"Rough man. It's not your fault. You had to."

"Are you okay?"

Derek watched as the cold Stiles disappeared in a flash, like a glimpse of a foot vanishing behind a corner as it ran away.

"I... killed two people. Holy shit, like holy shit, I don't even... I mean, they were gonna mount your guys' heads on a wall, but yikes. Just... look at 'em. Crazy. That's... crazy."

Derek didn't think the others were paying attention to Stiles' heartbeat, too distracted by his hysterical show, but Derek could hear it beating, calm and slow. Steady.

"I mean, what do we even do with the bodies?" Stiles asked helplessly. "Do you guys know? Like, have we got to find some shovels? Shovels in the middle of the night? Because that's suspicious as all hell. Holy shit, holy shit."

Derek walked forward. "Head back to my house," he barked, "find gasoline, matches, whatever's there. You can find supplies in the shed out back."

The pack stared at him, pale-faced and wide-eyed for a moment, before Isaac nodded. "Yeah, yeah we'll do that."

They all turned to go, but Derek grabbed Stiles' shoulder before he could leave with them. "You've done enough tonight, Stiles. Sit."

They planted themselves on a nearby log, and Stiles' long, pale fingers followed the crevices of the bark, scraping through pockets of dirt and over fields of lumpy mold.

"Crazy night," Stiles breathed. "Like, wow. Was not expecting. Why don't we ever just go bowling? Wouldn't that be a nice pack bonding exercise? No, never mind, you guys are probably great at bowling 'cause the balls are about as heavy as a ping pong ball-"

"Stop it Stiles," Derek cut in.

Stiles fell silent, and his finger stopped moving. He was so fascinating, this hidden man brought out in stillness. Why had Derek not seen him before?

Stiles smiled wanly, gazing down at the bodies still cooling among the rotting brown leaves. "How much did you see?"

"Enough," said Derek.

He had walked in on Stiles backed up against a tree, shaking and trembling and babbling, protesting his humanity and playing the scared teenager to the best of his ability, his hand inching towards the back of his waistband the entire time. Then, when the hunters were reassured enough to pocket their own guns and simply tie the boy against a tree, up came Stiles' gun, and out the window went the terrified expression. His mouth had quirked into a brief, heart stopping smirk, then the two hunters were dead on the ground, and Derek was enraptured.

"Enough to know that you feel just fine right now," Derek stated. There was no judgement in his tone. Derek would have done the same thing, just with different methods. There would have been more blood than the two circular holes, for one thing.

"Does that make me heartless?" Stiles asked, "To feel fine?" His tone of voice was odd. Not desperate, not pleading for forgiveness or reassuring words. Merely curious.

"Maybe." It also made him beautiful.

XXXXX

They didn't talk about the night of the hunters after that. Stiles snapped back into his chattering, cheerful self, and Derek was left wondering how much of that night had been real. Stiles had been so strong, so capable, so powerful in that moment. Utterly devoted to his task, no room for fear or even anger.

He was everything Derek wanted to be.

Derek could kill like Stiles, but to be so composed while he did it... Derek wasn't built for that. Derek was made of rage and fire. Stiles made violence an art, he carried it out so gracefully.

But Derek could only catch sight of Stiles the boy. Stiles who laughed during pack meetings and dropped witticisms behind him like breadcrumbs. Twitched during chemistry class. Talked to his father over a carefully made, sodium-free dinner, eying him fondly. Even when he puttered about his room, alone but for the humming of his computer, Stiles seemed perfectly normal, his mask tied on so tightly that Derek started to doubt that he had ever seen it slip.

It made Derek all the more desperate to see where Stiles ended and the other man began. Hovering around Stiles' bedroom window became a habit, something he had to do every night before he could go to sleep and dream of blood in perfect circles on a forehead. If Stiles weren't so constantly surrounded by werewolves with perfect hearing, Derek was fairly certain he would be around Stiles constantly. Stiles wouldn't even have to know. Derek just wanted to be nearby.

But he was nearby often enough that one gray afternoon, when Stiles walked into the forest, blessedly alone, Derek could follow. He had to keep his distance, even though the space in between them ached to be filled. Stiles slipped between trees and bushes, following a path familiar only to him.

After a time, he reached a small clearing, at the center of which lay an overturned stewpot. Derek could smell what lay underneath, and his eyes widened in astonishment. Finally, finally, he would see Stiles again. The better one.

Stiles glanced around himself perfunctorily, missing entirely the spot of shadow in which Derek had hidden himself. Satisfied, Stiles flipped over the stewpot, revealing the battered shape of a squirrel, shivering on the forest floor with dozens of straight red lines carved into its body. Derek shifted slightly so he could see Stiles' face properly. There he was, cold and beautiful, lips pulled into a straight line of concentration as he pulled a pocketknife from his coat. With a steady hand, he drew another line straight down the squirrel's spine. Shallow. Enough to keep the squirrel alive, but squirming.

Derek hadn't even realized that he had stepped closer until Stiles glanced up and his hand froze.

Stiles saw Derek taking in the mess scattered beneath Stiles' knees, and Stiles saw something in Derek then. The raging part, the dripping bloody part that Derek usually kept awkwardly tucked away. Stiles knew. "Are you going to tell anyone?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

"No." Derek said quickly. Share this? Was Stiles crazy? This would be a secret that he and Derek shared, and Derek had no intention of letting anyone else have it.

"Good." Stiles nodded, and returned to his work, painting minuscule, delicate lines across fur.

"I," Derek began, tensely "I used to just rip their limbs off." Nothing compared to the masterpiece Stiles was creating, but something.

Stiles looked back up at Derek in surprise, raising his eyebrows.

"Your technique is better," Derek muttered. "I wouldn't have the control for it."

Stiles held out a hand, which Derek took immediately. Stiles pulled Derek to the ground, then handed him the knife. "You want to try?" he offered. "I'll show you how."

XXXXX

Derek was happy.

He was so unused to the feeling that it took him some time to recognize it, and some time longer to trust that it wouldn't come back to bite him in the ass. He'd spent a long time, pre-Stiles, wondering what it would be like to be consistently happy. It wasn't so much a constant euphoria humming through his veins, a need to sing or dance or smile like the world wasn't on his shoulders anymore, it was more a contentment that sat warm in his stomach. The feeling that the world wasn't going to drop out underneath his feet if he looked away from the ground for a second.

And it was all because of Stiles. Wonderful, brutal, Stiles.

Stiles who had taken to staying after pack meetings, draped idly across one of the secondhand armchairs they'd used to spruce up the place, and just... being everything Derek wanted.

"Scott and I used to play cops and robbers," Stiles said on one of those nights. "But our moms made us stop because I would get really violent." He laughed harshly. "Mrs. McCall would always say that I was just too competitive."

"You should have seen me roughhousing with-with my siblings," Derek told the ceiling, "it's a good thing that werewolves heal."

They talked about other things too. When Stiles didn't feel like he needed to disguise himself with floods of words and twists of topics, he was a surprisingly good conversationalist.

"I'm just saying that if Snookie is having a kid, she should get out of the television business," Derek protested one day, when he and Stiles were lounging on the half of the back porch that was intact.

"No dude, you can't get as far as Snookie has in TV and just give it all up! It's probably not even a choice for her at this point, she is Snookie, Queen of Reality TV. It doesn't matter what's good for the kid, it matters that Snookie doesn't lose that title, because without the Jersey Shore and whatever, she loses her identity."

"That's ridiculous."

"I'm not saying it's not, I'm just saying that that's where she's coming from."

Derek snorted. "It doesn't matter where she's coming from, I still want to claw her stupid orange skin off whenever I see her on TV."

"Whatever man," Stiles scoffed, "you don't even have a TV."

Stiles, who would wave goodbye to Scott at his door, then text Derek -come inside, I no ur lurking somewhere nearby-

Derek would come, through the front door even, when the Sheriff was out, and sit next to Stiles on the couch as he complained.

"I mean come on! I don't care whether he gets back with his girlfriend or not, but it's getting ridiculous how much time I have to spend sitting next to him going, 'oh yeah man, I'm totally rooting for you.' I have my limits! There's only so long I can pretend to give a damn about people before I want to tear my hair out. Or maybe theirs."

So Derek was happy. Stiles was filling a void in him that he hadn't known he could fill, and so Derek was happy. And fast becoming addicted. He resented the high school for infringing on his precious time with Stiles, as well as Scott, and the rest of the pack. Stiles would laugh at Derek when he voiced those sentiments, but he also ran a fond hand across Derek's cheek when he did it, so Derek wasn't sure what to think.

Obviously, Derek was infatuated, and Stiles knew it, because he was brilliant, but he also wasn't interested. Derek could smell faint tones of arousal coming off of Stiles when Derek pressed especially close, or took off his shirt for one reason or another, but that didn't mean anything. Stiles thought that Derek was attractive, fine. Almost everyone did. But Stiles heart always kept its same steady pattern. A constant reminder that for all Derek did, Stiles wasn't affected by him.

But Stiles would play with him. Little touches; a graze of fingers along his arm, a hand cupping his shoulder, the tap of a sneakered foot against his underneath the table. They didn't mean anything to Stiles, but Derek found them to be a sort of wonderful torture. Worse (and better,) was when Stiles would... say things.

"No, I don't mind you coming around."

"Hey! It's my favorite sourwolf!"

"Come here."

He knew what it did to Derek, he must, but on Stiles went, casually sending Derek into alternating paroxysms of joy and sulks that left him howling alone in his house, carving want want want into the newly painted walls with his claws.

XXXXX

Stiles opened his window and peered out into the blackness.

"Derek!" he called, "come here, I know you're out there somewhere."

So Derek jumped in through Stiles' window. It was quiet, the sheriff gone, the rest of the house dark but for Stiles' room. Only the lamp on Stiles' desk was on, bathing the room in dim light that made Stiles look like he was made of gold. Stiles blinked, looking at Derek and making the shadows of his eyelashes dance across his cheeks.

Then he took off his plaid over shirt. Then the brown T-shirt underneath with the slogan "Don't Tase Me, Bro" peeling off. Then his belt. Then his pants, until Stiles was standing in the middle of his room, bare but for a pair of bone white boxers.

He jerked his head at Derek. "You too."

Derek's heart pounded. Stiles' heart didn't.

When Derek was stripped to his own underwear, Stiles pointed at the bed. "Get in."

Finally. Finally.

Derek slipped underneath the covers, breathing rapidly, watching as Stiles -gorgeous Stiles- turned off the desk lamp, then raised the other side of the blanket and curled up underneath it.

With a foot of space in between him and Derek.

And clearly no intention of moving.

"Well," Stiles chirped with false joviality. "Goodnight!"

"Bastard," Derek groaned.

Stiles just cackled, the vibrations of his shoulders rippling the blanket over Derek.

Derek lay awake the whole night, watching Stiles sleep comfortably, unmoving, on the other side of the bed. It would be so easy to just reach out and touch. Feel the firmness of the slim muscles underneath that skin. Maybe run a thumb over those red lips. Pull down the waistband of those boxers just a few inches, enough to-

But Stiles wouldn't want it. Derek could control himself for Stiles. He would.

Bastard. Sometimes Derek wondered why he even loved the guy.

XXXXX

I hope you liked it! Let me know what you thought. Not creepy enough? Too creepy? Positively adorable? The next chapter should be up in a few days, it just needs some tweaking.