A/N: So, since S4E1 I couldn't stop wondering: how is it that Stiles recognized wee little teen Derek when no one else did? So this is how it was in my mind's eye. One-shot
Word Count: 746
It was hard to recall a time before all of this; before Scott, before Allison, before Derek; Derek's creepy Uncle, Jackson, the Alpha Pack, the No… the Nogitsune. Thinking back on it, he couldn't believe it's only been such a short time—less than two years. At least five had to have past. He had to be at least five years older. It had to have been at least five years since he met a lurky, emoish stranger with an attitude problem in the Beacon Hills Preserve.
But it hadn't—it's only been a year and a half.
It was Derek's first time, but it wasn't Stiles'. Back in the woods, when he and Scott had set out to find Laura—or, well, half of Derek's older sister. Stiles remembered. Just barely—the memory sat dormant in the depths of his hyperactive mind, overshadowed by information far more compelling and important. It was only a moment, a fraction of a second as he wondered through his father's precinct, paper bag of the man's lunch in hand; he had forgotten it at home again.
Those days he hardly found the initiative to get up in the morning to go to school, much less stay all day. Before, he had tried to throw himself headlong into everything that made him think, everything that took his mind off it and on something busying. It didn't help; somehow everything always got back to home, to Mom.
He looked up from the tiled floor—didn't really take note of his surroundings because who gave a crap about a bunch of cops if none of them could do anything to save his Mom? The boy sat with his head in his hands, supporting himself on his knees, back concave outward and he could see him shaking. He buried his tears in his palms. The bench his Dad's coworkers sat him on looked too big for the (despite his athletic built) tiny boy curled up tightly and trying to disappear on it. A young woman sat next to him, dark eyes fixed on a point in space invisible to anyone but her.
The boy looked up for a fraction of a second to take a breath and just as soon as he dove back into the closure and security of his own self Stiles forgot him, passing by to give his Dad the lunch. It was Wednesday. Or no, it was Tuesday. Every day was the same now: a gray blend of white noise and irrelevant things that didn't matter anyway. It was raining. It was the first and the last time Stiles saw the scared teenage boy with the tear stained face.
Somehow he felt that up until the most recent year and a half, it was the last time he cried.
Who could have known that the black-haired boy on the bench would come to play such a vital part of Stile's life? How could anybody have guessed that despite of everything—in spite of it—because of it, a loner with unresolved PTSD and a much too talkative teenager would be pushed to the same side of a playing field as unwilling accomplices, reluctant allies, tentative confidants, something… something he couldn't put a name to quite yet… something good?
It shouldn't have been possible, was unreal. Derek's family, Stiles' Mom… it was just a matter of timing that the chips fell as they had, that either was in that precise place at that precise moment. If Stiles had gone to school that day, if the cops had taken longer to bring the news to the last surviving member of the Hale family. If his Dad hadn't forgotten his lunch again, if the fire happened the next day or the day before, if Stiles hadn't looked up from the floor…
But he was glad—he'd not say it out loud, at least not for years to come but he was glad for that fraction of a second when he caught a glimpse of the man his life would one day be so closely wound to. He was glad for all the details that had fallen into place for Stiles to walk into the station that day and see the sobbing young man.
Looking now, at such a familiar face—the face of a stranger—the face of someone he wouldn't dare to call a friend out loud, though it didn't make it any less true, Stiles wished that Derek remembered, too.
A/N 2: You know how the disclaimer goes; TW ain't mine. This is just my own thoughts on how Stiles knew the teenager that Kate had made of Derek in Mexico, while others didn't. Not necessarily accurate or the only variation as I'm sure there have been many other speculations, but this is how I think it happened and it happened sadly :((