There was a time when stiles might have made a joke about Derek catching rabbits. Especially if this activity was followed by eating them. Now Stiles is mostly just glad to be fed and before you say it, he actually does have a little werewolf oven to cook them in, or a campfire, same thing really.

It was during his second year at college that stiles was forced to flee the dorms late at night. At the time he didnt really see it as fleeing, he was running towards something rather than away, or at least thats what he thought. Scott had called at some stupidly late hour and in hushed tones informed stiles that there was a troup of hunters in Beacon Hills, Chris didnt know who they were, and they had come into town and set traps. No not for rabbits Stiles! For wolves. It was two days before the full moon. The pack couldn't easily relocate and no one really wanted to so close to the moon. At any rate, the hunters had caught Isaac.

Stiles foolishly didnt realise at the checkpoint outside of town, that of all the deputies standing there, he didnt know a single one. He was too focused on finding his friends. They were all camped out in Hale's new apartment. Scott was pleased to see him, finally had most of his pack and could focus on jailbreaking the last one. "do you know where they've got him?" Stiles cooked up a plan and they were off. Little did they know… if only.

Somewhere in the absolute slaughter house Derek managed to find him, curled around a shot gun staring wildly through an open door. Stiles almost put a hole in him for his trouble. When they finally made it outside, desperately searching all the while for other pack members. There were so many wolves, all lured in to the town by an abducted pack member, unlikely now to ever leave it. Derek said he couldn't feel them, eyes wide open, wild, he couldn't feel Scott, his alpha. Stiles wondered later if the hunters knew about the various properties of foxglove, whether they knew how to create an aerosol. Derek would tell him it's semantics. There was a line of mountain ash and by some weird twisted chance there were no hunters behind it, no bristling guns or wolfsbane ropes. Stiles broke the line and took Derek with him. They ran until Stiles couldn't, and then Derek ran until he broke, choking on his sobs as he left his pack behind. Lost his alpha, his family, his home all over again. Stiles clung to him that night, they clung to eachother as they listened to the crunch of died leaves under boots, heard the soft communications between the hunters. There were hundreds of them, against just two.

But like a single grain of sand falls between cracks, or a droplet of water squeezes from broken tap. The hunters never found them, and they disappeared into the forest. They didnt stop running until Derek couldn't hear any people or smell the taint of civilisation and stiles couldn't remember the date let alone what state they were in. He felt like maybe it should matter that they slept in a stolen tent, in a strangers clothes and lived on borrowed time. But in reality...

In reality, they had so many other things, bigger things to worry about. By Stiles' gestimates they'd travelled maybe a thousand kilometers. If pressed he'd say they were actually in Canada. But he got lost well before they crossed anything resembling a border, and even then after the first five razor wire fences they all started to blur.
They had no pack, and even though most traditional wolfy land owners had moved to big cities, or like Derek's family, come up hard against some Hunters. They were both still hugely at risk. The issue had sparked more than one heated argument. Stiles had taken to stomping off into the trees.

"NO Derek. I Will Not Leave you here. Even if i could actually find my way home, I still wouldn't be leaving you here, I have nowhere else to be. Its not like I could just waltz into beacon hills anymore. No don't you dare start up about University! I don't care if id be perceived as a threat! so goddamn what; I don't care if I'm the freaking Holy Mary! I am not going to piss off just so you can fester in your own misery waiting to be picked up or picked off by the nearest volatile wolf pack! Oh My GOD Derek. Enough. We've had this conversation! Its not gonna happen! i. am. not. going. to go. Any-where... Jesus."
"Stiles... Stiles."
"Oh no you dont, i would not be better off without you, goddamit Derek, i would be dead without you! so stop trying to kick me out! you are stuck with me whether you like it or not, you are the only pack I have left and I'd rather die than have to-" Stiles voice cut off on a sob.

This was how it usually ended, one or the other would come to the realization that they honestly could not function without the other. There would be tears and angry escapades into the unsuspecting and wholly innocent scenery. One, usually Derek, would find the other and life would continue as usual. Stiles found it hard to know what was going on, Derek was so soft with him. They werent physical not in that way. Stiles sometimes wondered if they were too broken. In other circumstances...

In other circumstances Stiles hoped they might have been happy, might have escaped the disaster that had become their lives post Peter, post Kate.
Now there were no friends for them to gross out with too much PDA, no benchtops or sofas to neck on, and no real desire to do any of those things anyway. Not while they were eachothers only choice. Stiles didnt want to be a last resort, and he thought Derek deserved better than desperation. They could comfort each other in other ways. Curled together against a tree trunk or in the mouth of a cave. Gently rocking when the darkness fell and it became too easy to remember what they'd lost. Both before and after...
In the morning they would do eachother the favor of ignoring the tear streaks on their grimey faces.