"Would you at least think about letting him die? For me?"
Stiles can hear the sincerity in his own voice, and he's an awful person for it, but hey, he came to grips with that one years ago.
Because if Derek is dead, Stiles won't feel that thing anymore.
That thing he feels when he looks into Derek's eyes when they're yelling at each other, faces so close and breath so hot on each other's faces. That thing where he's not quite sure for a second whether Derek's going to kill him or not, whether he'll lean the two inches forward to rip out his throat or maybe just kiss him, and Stiles doesn't know which of those he wants.
So he pulls away, puts his hands up, backs down. Because he's Stiles, and that's what Stiles does.
And okay, so he doesn't actually want Derek to die. Stiles may be awful, but he's not, like, evil.
But God and/or nothing (Stiles is keeping his options open vis a vis a higher power and the great beyond) knows that life is complicated enough already without feeling his stomach drop and his breath hitch whenever Derek strides purposefully through him looking for Scott (always looking for Scott and God, Stiles doesn't even feel bad about admitting to himself that he'd make one hell of a better werewolf than Scott), his shirt becoming progressively more ripped because of course it is.
Because Stiles and Derek, they're meant to be. In an entirely different way than Scott and Allison are meant to be (and Stiles has his doubts about that, anyway, because there's only so many times one of them can almost kill the other before resentment starts to pile up) or the way he still thinks he and Lydia might be. No, he and Derek are meant to be in a way that has nothing to do with tender kisses and walks in the woods and promises of forever, but everything to do with gazes meeting for just a little too long, foreheads only an inch apart and a tiny bit of Derek's spit ending up at the corner of Stiles's mouth when he yells. Everything to do with awkward silences in the car because they're both bad at expressing themselves (though, Stiles knows, for very different reasons, seeing as how his emotional growth wasn't stunted by adolescent trauma, except shit. Because he knows that's not true, and the thought that he and Derek have something in common brings up dread and some popping and crackling heat in the pit of his stomach).
And Stiles doesn't know what to do about it, or, if he ever decided to, how one goes about professing one's sexual attraction to someone while upholding the indisputable fact that one really doesn't like him very much as a person/supernatural being.
Most days—those endless days after about half of everyone Stiles knows is dead and half of those who are left are werewolves—everybody seems to be settling down before the next worst-thing-ever happens. And during those days, Stiles thinks he probably won't do anything. After all, Derek is the Alpha now, and going after him in any sense would just be bad and complicated and more bad and just…bad.
But on nights when the moon shines bright through the slit in his curtains that won't close all the way, just a sliver then a half then arching all the way to fullness, nights when Stiles wakes up hot and panting and twisted in his blankets, he thinks that of course he will. Because of course.