Almost before the bullet punches through the double-plated glass living room window, shattering it spectacularly, Derek has Stiles under him on the floor, shouting, "Everyone get down!"
Face-planted on the waxed wood paneling, Derek's arm tensed against his chest, Stiles says, "That was fucking loud." He peers up at the two-hundred pounds of muscle and hypothetical two pounds of fat holding him down and tries not to panic. "That wasn't a prop gun, was it. Oh my god, someone's trying to kill me again."
Derek goes, if possible, even tenser around him. "It was one bullet," he tries. Derek is terrible at reassurances.
"Jessica never tried to kill you," Lydia corrects from her crouch behind Stiles' giant leather couch. "She wanted you to be her boyfriend."
Lydia is also terrible at reassurances.
"With a gun," Stiles reminds her. "She wanted me to be her boyfriend with a gun. And a distinct lack of consent on my part."
If Derek were any tenser, he'd be a steel pillar. Which Stiles isn't entirely sure he isn't already. A huge warm steel pillar. With really amazing arms. And a really amazing chest. And amazing hair. And an amazing, amazing smile. And laugh. And-
"Dude, I think I'm developing a new kink. A you-tackling-me kink. I'm pretty sure my dick thinks this is Round 3."
"Dude," Scott groans, peeking out from behind the giant, incredibly expensive, and hideous sculpture Patrick Adley gifted Stiles for his twenty-sixth birthday. "The sharing. Don't."
"You don't wanna hear the newest development in the long and complicated story that is my journey to sexual self-discovery? I'm pained, man. Pained."
"Fine. Have I told you about that time Allison and me tried-"
"Uncle!" Stiles shouts immediately. "Truce! She's like a sister to me, man, you know that."
"Is no one going to address," Allison speaks at last, "the bullet that shattered Stiles' window less than two minutes ago?"
Derek rises from Stiles, fingers still tight around his gray henley, and looks around warily. Stiles untangles from him and stands to survey the damage.
The window is shattered to shit. Glass shards pepper the floor below. Some have actually embedded in the wall. Not to mention-
"Holy god," Stiles mutters. The giant, hideous sculpture has always been giant and hideous, but it's never had a bullet embedded in it before. (Stiles assumes. Although, who knows? Maybe the whole thing is the result of a shootout at a junkyard.) "Ohhhkay. Okayyy. This is a very real bullet. That is a very real bullet, people."
He knows props. Blanks. He has police procedure down, thanks to six years of playing a troubled but gifted cop with a past. Hardison Dixon took no shit, except for his name, which inspired a wide variety of opportunities for media, fans, and critics to make the same four "Hard Dick" jokes until even they were tired of them. Of course Stiles' bisexuality- and current male/male relationship- did nothing to help matters. Derek's reaction had always been priceless. He knew how to play bodyguard, but boyfriend- or at least, boyfriend of "teen heartthrob" (gag) Stiles Stilinski- was a whole different bowl of minestrone. Luckily, Stiles gets a kick out of seeing his and Derek's names together in magazines. He collects clippings- or rather, has his assistant, Erica, collect clippings- in case he ever decides to recreate The Notebook, or propose, or something. After thirteen years of the guy's company and nearly seven years of dating, maybe it is time to settle down. In fact, he's actually started to plan possibilities, just keeping his options open, which quickly led to him realizing two things:
1. It is impossible to keep secrets from Derek Hale. He hates surprises, and he's Stiles' bodyguard, and they live together, so he's always everywhere. They're practically married as it is.
2. Stiles knows nothing about Derek's family. Forget getting the in-laws' approval. He doesn't know anything about them. Derek doesn't talk about them, and he dodges questions, and Stiles kind of assumes they were shitty about his gayness and cut him off, because really, who but a totally nonsensical bigot would choose to cut Derek out of their life?
But Stiles wants to know. How bad can it be?
Okay. Okay.
Sometimes, Derek has nightmares.
Stiles generally sleeps like a log, if logs sleep incredibly deeply, because sleep is a luxury in this business, not a right. He's pretty much perfected the art of falling asleep in any position, and once he's down, he's dead to the world. But he has one hair-trigger, one stupid tremor left over from the Jessica shit.
Derek could tangle around and over and under Stiles in bed (and often does), and the actor would sleep right through it; anyone short of Erica or Lydia could shout at him and get no response; but cold pressure to his skin gets the actor up like a shot, panicked and unable to go back to sleep.
It was an empty beer bottle that night, and he'd been meaning to throw it in the recycling, but then he got stuck in a Wikipedia black hole and forgot all about it, until he sleep-flailed into it. He was up like and on guard, twisting around to face the intruder, and haha it was just a beer bottle and the panic attack his lungs were amping up for was narrowly averted.
The next few hours, he wrapped himself in a big knit blanket and sat in his huge, squashy armchair and watched DVDs of Doctor Who and drank hot cocoa, because there are certain coping methods you never grow out of.
Billie Piper's mother was forcing tea on Tennant's Doctor when Stiles heard a strangled, "No!" from the bedroom. Derek, he thought, and then he didn't; he ducked into the kitchen, grabbed a knife and a spray bottle of tile cleaner, and slinked off toward the sound.
But, alas, Stiles failed to stab or blind Derek's attacker, because there was none, except maybe in his mind. Stiles was halfway through a double-check when Derek shouted again. "Please-don't," he rambled, breathless. "Please!"
Stiles had been in some pretty terrifying situations in his life. He'd been kidnapped at gunpoint by a crazy stalker who hurt Lydia. He'd been in a four-car pileup avoiding paparazzi trying to run him off the road. (He still sends flowers to the one innocent single mom just trying to pick her kid up from daycare; Derek still bristles when he spots a media car on the road). He'd been in a relationship with Lydia Martin. He'd flown a helicopter. He'd lived through the slow and strangling death of his mom, and the shockingly quick and crushing death of his dad. He'd kissed Derek without knowing how he felt. (Shocked, and then slightly suspicious, and then a flash of something Stiles didn't understand, and then a smile the size of Texas). He'd tried Scott's cooking (not bad, actually, but definitely requiring a leap of faith). He'd come out to his dad. He'd come out in general. (On a scale of Lindsay Lohan to Neil Patrick Harris, the reaction was pretty much a Zachary Quinto: most unsurprised, most supportive, a couple of people a little too excited, insisting he was secretly in love with his Hard Truths costar, Vernon Boyd. And while Boyd liked to keep his options open, Stiles and he have never been more than friends. He's a good friend; he listens, and he never tries to prove anything to anybody, except in acting. He's chill, he'll keep a secret. He won't bury a body with you, but he'll testify for you in court. Hypothetically. Scott is a bury-a-body buddy to Stiles; it's what puts him a rung or five ahead of anyone else on Stiles' friendship ladder.
Derek, Stiles figures, would send Stiles home to find an alibi, then kill the person, then bury him alone. Probably write the dead guy a eulogy, probably come home hours later and take a shower and never mention it again.
(Lydia would stand over Stiles as he digs and criticize his angles.)
Where was he? Right. Stiles'd been through some scary shit, was the point. But Derek was his rock. When Stiles was scattered and panicking because he was sure he'd accidentally pissed off the casting director for that project he'd been going after forever, Derek was level-headed and reasonable and knew just how to calm him down. When the paparazzi swarmed all over him and he couldn't breathe, Derek was at his side, rushing him through the crowd like a pro. When Stiles' dad died, Derek was just there, and that was all Stiles needed (besides his dad. He held the phone, and Derek held him, and he thought, I really wish Dad was here right now. Which was a non-starter, obviously, but since when did wanting have anything to do with logic?). Derek didn't get scared, was the point. At least, not the Derek Stiles knew.
Seeing Derek scared? It was like seeing his dad cry. It wasn't not supposed to happen. It went against the whole concept of them.
And from Stiles' limited experience, it meant his mom wasn't ever coming home again.
But that night started Stiles wondering if he really knew Derek at all.
And that thought was fucking terrifying.
The thing about fame is, it's incredibly isolating. Yeah, there's about a million people hounding Stiles for an autograph or a picture every time he steps outside, and a million more offering him clothes and electronics and alcohol and drugs, not to mention the groupies shoving their tits or six-pack in his face like it isn't fact one on his IMDB page that he and Derek are pretty much already married in all the ways that matter. But real connections are hard to come by in this industry, and near-impossible to keep. Sure, everyone's family on set, (or that's what you say on the commentary tracks, anyway) but then you wrap and never see those people again unless you make an effort to work them into your schedule. Maybe you'll get thrown together again for press, maybe you'll meet at a party, but it's easy to get wrapped up with work, to be so fucking exhausted that you chose Redbull and two hours of sleep over catching up with someone the tabloids swear is saying shit about you. Stiles has clung hard to Scott, his best friend since they costarred as Brad Pitt and Vince Vaughn's kids in that in Keeping It Straight when they were ten, and Scott's the one who strong-armed Derek to go where he was actually needed and keep Stiles safe after that crazy Jessica escapade. The two of them are the most important people in his life, now, and the thought of losing one of them is enough to send Stiles into a panicked tailspin.
Things are good for the two of them. Things are good, and fun, and easy. Derek is the reason Stiles doesn't work himself into the ground, and Stiles is the reason (according to Scott, who's known him the longest) Derek has mellowed out and actually become a guy people want to hang around when they don't need protection. Stiles bristled, defensive for Derek's sake, but it was oddly flattering that he took Derek from Silent But Deadly Secret Service Agent to Derek, master sarcaster of back-and-forth banter. "Stiles is Derek's pot," Lydia said once, in a strangely generous mood, explaining that Stiles made everything funny and a little bit confusing and completely, outrageously profound, and that Derek was so in love with him, it was a little sickening. The thing is (although Stiles went pink and tried to wave it off) the way Derek looks at him sometimes- it's almost overwhelming. And Stiles isn't taking Derek for granted anytime soon either. God, it's been seven years, and they're still blushing honeymooners. The thought of that being wrong, of losing that, is fucking terrifying.
Just about as terrifying as the bullet still imbedded in that hideous artsy statue.
"Okay," Stiles says again, because that is standard protocol when he is thisclose to freaking out. "Just one bullet, right?" He inspects the thing half-buried in the sculpture, and then he sprints around it to hug Scott so fiercely he almost knocks him to the ground. "Oh my god," he says, horrified, "you could have been hit. Oh my god, this thing saved your life. I'm never going to call it hideous again."
Scott isn't as shaken as his best friend, so he tries to calm him down, saying, "Guess you owe Patrick Adley an apology."
It doesn't work.
"Yeah," Stiles says, somewhat hysterically. "Oh my god." But he releases Scott, at least, and manages something like a graceful stagger back to his boyfriend's side. "What do we do now?" he asks, because- this is why Stiles got a bodyguard in the first place, before the bodyguard was Derek and Derek was the love of his twenty-seven year-old life. Holy shit, he's twenty-seven today. He forgot for a second there. As might be expected when your best friend nearly gets shot in your living room. "Some party, huh?" he jokes, and tries not to have a nervous breakdown when Derek, ignoring his comment, quietly says, "I don't know."
