Derek could feel the sensation of that all too familiar lunar pull. This had become a routine for him, following the exact same set of instructions month after month—come hell or high water. The greyish blues of the autumn sky had long begun to ripen, transforming into a dark and cloudy purple. Along with the dreary sky came the root cause of all of Derek's problems, the thing he had begun to loathe most: a full moon.
The change from man to wolf always affected his senses first. Mid-change, he would be able to smell more in a sudden gust of wind than a human could ever possibly experience. There were the basics, the grass and the sap in the trees, but then Derek would smell specifics. He could smell the pine scented car freshener that hung in a rusted car miles away, the plethora of cheap perfumes in the Beacon Hills mall, or even someone cooking with way too much salt. The smells would attack him one by one. Next to improve would be his vision.
When Derek began to feel the bones and joints in his hands, feet and back loosen for his final transformation; he knew it was time to grab a firm hold of his anchor.
Derek tasted the fog around him with each deep breath he took. His steps were impossibly quiet against the colorful palate of dead leaves covering the forest floor. He was getting as far away from the busy city as he possibly could; leaving behind his chained and protected Betas. Derek knew they would make it through the night by themselves, so the next important person to protect was himself. The best way to do that was to get away, to hide, and to hold on to his humanity. Derek hadn't chained himself during a full moon since Kate had murdered his family. She had been the cause that formed his heavy, fail-safe anchor.
Anger.
Even thinking about something as mundane as the curve of her nose or the rich, almost intoxicating sound of her voice had been enough to keep him nailed to his human form. Kate's recent return to Beacon Hills had only rekindled that tempered flame. He swallowed the strong urge to rip the closest tree straight from its roots when he thought about her. Having to relive the pain of losing his family once a month hurt him, but the damage it would cause was personal—this way, he would never hurt anyone but himself. That was important to him, especially now, with someone as fragile and impossibly human as Stiles in his life.
Derek had spent the last few months of his life taking every possible precaution to make sure that the hyperactive, imaginative and frankly genius boy would always be safe come the full moon. Derek would never admit to it, of course, but Stiles meant a lot more to him than he would ever let on. He was part of the pack, and most certainly not just as their human.
His mind was reeling with thoughts of Stiles by the time he had arrived at his preferred location. Every detail in every object around him seemed to be in high definition and he blinked his eyes to try and rid of it. Before he knew it, there it was—the loose, throbbing feeling in his joints. Derek was walking a thin line between human and werewolf, and he was quickly falling over to the other side.
Derek knew it was time to focus, time to reopen those freshly healing wounds. He sat down on a moss-covered rock, his shoes buried toe deep in a pile of orange and brown leaves. The numbness directly prior to his change had begun, starting at his toes and fingers, moving in closer to his core. He concentrated to the point where he could feel the fervid warmth of the fire that killed his family right there in front of himself—he could have touched it, had he tried, felt the burn for himself. God knew that he wanted to.
Derek thought mainly about loss. He thought about pain and regret and betrayal, furling the anger that hand begun to rise in his chest. He remembered the way he was tortured. Kate had strung him up on the wall like he was a chunk of meat, jolting shocks of electricity licking through his body at just the right voltage to keep him human and in suffering pain.
The anger had already started to weigh him down, elongating that numbing process. But something told him that it wasn't enough. Derek ran his tongue over his teeth; feeling the pointed, rough edges of fangs beginning to appear. He needed to dig deeper.
He thought over every possible way that Kate and the other Argents had hurt him in the past. Pictures of Laura flashed in front of him, catching his breath in his throat as it tried to squeeze closed. Too deep. He pulled back and thought of Gerard, the power hungry bastard who had captured and tortured his Betas. Worse, Derek reminded himself of how Gerard had beaten Stiles until he bled. Someone as innocent as Stiles has been kidnapped and hurt, left to wander his way back to his home.
The numbness began to dilute.
Derek held his head firmly between his hands, trying to keep a hold of that last sliver of humanity. The wind around him picked up a little, seeping through the thin fabric of his shirt, making him hyper aware of his surroundings. He kept holding on as he thought about Stiles bruised and bloodied face. The cup in his lip had kept Stiles face in a near constant scowl for the past few weeks, and Derek didn't like that. He loved to see the sunshine bright smile that the teen usually wore.
He ran his tongue over the fangs that had earlier appeared. They had already began to sink back into his gums to their original size, making Derek think. The thought of Stiles smiling had tugged him away from feeling angry, making his body tingle with warmth. The grip he had on his anchor was slipping, so why had he not changed yet?
The bubbling sound of Stiles' laugh boomed in his ear as though he was right beside Derek. The Alpha turned, half expecting to be seeing him there, laughing at his miserable attempt to ignore the full moon. Derek couldn't ignore the urge to just think about Stiles, so that's exactly what he did.
The molten gold color of Stiles' eyes was the first thing to pop into Derek's mind when he began to paint himself a mental picture, but quickly, more…personal details monopolized his train of thought. Derek previously hadn't taken much notice to this, but now he had a vivid mental image of Stiles' lips…or, more specifically, his tongue.
Stiles was always licking his lips. Even in the most serious of situations, Derek could look over at Stiles and find him with his tongue poked out, licking across his lips and teeth like he was on an entirely different planet. Usually, it irked him. But now, thinking about it so clearly, it was kind of arousing, to be honest. Derek inhaled and he could clearly smell the trace of mint toothpaste Stiles tongue would leave behind.
Derek, looking up at the clear and bright full moon, couldn't help the rough laugh that escaped at the thought.
Stiles didn't always smell like mint. No, Derek thought, he smelled of something much warmer. Derek's sense of smell would be abused with the purfumey smell of fabric softener when Stiles would walk through the door. Then, when he got closer to him, the metallic scent of the Adderall he kept in his pocket and pulsing through his veins would overtake him. Then it was the warm, almost earthy scent that was oh so perfectly Stiles. Derek knew that if he closed his eyes and focused, intently searching for that scent, that he could find Stiles anywhere.
To the Alpha's surprise, the ache in his bones was no longer evident to him. Thinking about Stiles, for some reason, must have been helping to keep him there. Derek wrung his hands together, watching with wide, curious eyes as the limbs began to shrink to normal size, his fingernails dulling down.
Another mental image blindsided him, leaving him with nothing but a knowing smile on his unshaven face. The tapping. Whether it was on his steering wheel, on the table, on a wall, or even just with his foot, Stiles was always tapping out a beat. It was like the teen was constantly composing a life long drum solo. It must have been a side effect of the Adderall, that, and the twitching. Derek had always found it annoying, but it made Stiles Stiles, so of course, he was thinking about it. He began to tap his fingers against the ground, letting every little detail about the hyperactive teen fill his being.
And for the first time in years, Derek felt a little bit human.
For the rest of the night, Derek Hale thought about Stiles Stilinski. The red sweater, the shape of his ears, his picked at fingernails—everything. When the full moon began to fade and the sun sent out its army of early morning shadows, Derek was still thinking about Stiles.
Whenever he had explained having an anchor to the other wolves, Derek had always done so just as his mother had done for him. He could remember sitting out on the old wood porch with her, his feet dangling off the edge, legs not yet long enough to let them reach the ground. It was hot, he could remember that. The kind of hot that made your skin stick and your brain melt.
"Find a strong emotion, something that defines who you are or want to be as a person. It has to be something important, something memorable and strong. Cling to it," Derek could clearly hear his mother saying.
All of his life, he had been angry. He was a Sourwolf, as Stiles had so aptly described it. Derek knew anger, he would always remember the anguishing, maddening emotion. But now, after a Werewolf free full moon of thinking of nothing but that hyperactive human, Derek knew that the pain that used to hold him down was being replaced by something that was far from angry.
It was Stiles—happy, jittery, knowledgeable Stiles—the human with the big, warm eyes and the run-down Jeep.
Stiles was his anchor.