i. they said start as you mean to go on
Stiles recognises Derek Hale instantly because he's never seen anyone else with eyes like that.
He's standing there, legs braced and a scowl on his face that Stiles doesn't remember ever sitting so naturally, and growling about just what they think they're doing on private property. Like Stiles doesn't know this is private property, like he doesn't know that the entire Preserve has been abandoned for years, like this isn't the first time a Hale has been seen in Beacon Hills since the fire. He dips his head, scrubs his hand over the back of his hair, and uses the cover to suck in a deep breath because this Derek isn't the slightly goofy-looking almost-teenager he'd had a serious case of hero-worship going for. This Derek isn't even the upperclassman that always seemed a little too big for his skin, bright smiles and all frenetic energy that Stiles didn't think anyone else ever actually understood, just on the brink of adulthood when his entire life burned down around him.
This Derek, Stiles thinks as he looks up and through his lashes without looking right at the man, is all smoke and mirrors and sharp edges. Scott stammers his way through an explanation and Stiles looks up just in time to see the inhaler cut through the air to land in Scott's hand. The shoulders in that leather jacket as Derek turns away are broad and look like the weight of the world rests on them, not comfortably but at least capably, and he's standing under the burden through nothing but sheer stubbornness.
"Dude," he hisses and pushes at Scott as belated adrenaline floods him. The surge pushes aside all the other feelings and the familiar jittery energy makes him bounce on the balls of his feet. "That was Derek Hale."
Scott looks as confused and vague as ever and Stiles is irrationally annoyed. "He's a few years older than us. His whole family died in that fire." He stares at Scott expectantly and Scott just blinks as if to say 'and?'
He clenches his fists and flails a little in frustration as Scott huffs impatiently and turns to leave with a dismissive "Let's just get out of here."
Stiles remembers the day of the Hale fire more clearly than he remembers a lot of what happened at that point of his childhood. He remembers watching through the window from the front desk the way Laura Hale, her face blurry and indistinct after all these years, had clung to her brother. He remembers watching the way Derek's hands had clenched into fists and the tensing of the muscles in his forearms.
He remembers abandoning the comic he'd been reading to go and help Shirley make a cup of cocoa each for Derek and Laura and the way Derek had said "thank you," so quietly that he almost hadn't heard it, when he handed it to him. He remembers the way he hadn't been able to keep his eyes off of the siblings, both looking ten times older than Stiles had ever seen them look before, and the way his father's hand had settled on his shoulder as he led him from the station to the cruiser.
Three days later the only Hale left in Beacon Hills is Peter Hale, comatose and burnt beyond recognition, and the last thing Stiles remembers of them was Derek's eyes as the older boy looked back at him through the glass of the station door.
He doesn't stop thinking about how they're the first thing he sees when Derek comes back, not for hours, and they're still the same. They're still that strange mix of blue and green and grey and gold and they look as lost and scared now as they did then.
ii. and I know the mistakes that I made
Stiles doesn't know where the idea to get Derek arrested for the murdered woman comes from. There isn't a part of him that really believes Derek would have ever murdered someone in cold blood, werewolf or not, and he doesn't have a clue where the anger that has taken up residence in his stomach came from.
There is the faintest hint of recognition buzzing at the back of his mind when the dead wolf turns back into a woman but the high of being right overtakes that quickly. The anger settles into a kind of vicious satisfaction when he sees Derek cuffed and hauled into the back of the cruiser. Not even the unflappably calm expression on his face takes away the thrill or the sense of in your face that part of him wishes he'd grow out of sooner rather than later.
He lies when he tells Derek he isn't scared of him and Derek sees right through it, bares his teeth in a feral grin and snaps them like that alone would be enough to convince Stiles that he really is as dangerous as he pretends to be. All it does is make Stiles less and less sure that the man in front of him is a murderer and make the angry and frightened teenager he remembers with those eyes clearer and clearer.
When his father hauls him out of the cruiser there is an expression that Stiles can't wrap his mind around on Derek's face, well underneath the calm and just below the fury, and it sticks. Stiles can't stop thinking about it.
The satisfaction that Scott seems to get when he thinks that Derek is out of the way seems to be catching because after a little while even Stiles can revel in it. He stamps down the uncertainty and the sour taste of guilt at the back of his mouth right up until he finds out that the dead woman is Laura Hale.
Stiles buries his face in his hands and feels the ragged pounding of his own heart when sleep refuses to come that night. He doesn't think he's ever going to forget the burning fire of betrayal, because he knows what that look was now, in Derek's eyes.
iii. and they call as they beckon you on
Derek's dying, propped up against the wall of the vet clinic, and Stiles doesn't know how to deal with that or have the slightest clue what to do because all he feels capable of right now is curling up into a ball on the ground and having a panic attack.
Scott isn't answering his phone and Stiles is going to kill him if he's busy making out with Allison while Derek gets paler and clammier and closer to not existing anymore with every passing minute. Stiles cannot deal with that train of thought so he closes his eyes tightly, hums under his breath, and grips his phone so hard that the sharp edge digs painfully into his fingers and palm.
"You gotta stay calm," Derek says after a while, breathless and slurring his words, and Stiles blinks and darts a look at Derek to find his eyes are focused on him. "Can't afford you having a panic attack right now."
Stiles' eyes widen. "How do you know I have panic attacks?"
"Y-your heart's going nuts," he says slowly and he blinks. His eyes stay closed longer than normal and Stiles doesn't think he breathes at all until they open again. "Concentrate on your breathing."
"So long as you don't actually stop breathing," Stiles shoots back and his heart is still pounding, somewhere in the base of his throat instead of his ribcage, but he tries to bring it under control. At least one of them has to have all systems functioning and, Derek being long past that, the circumstances have only left them Stiles.
The wet, almost gurgling, sound that Derek makes feels like it should be a laugh. Stiles dials Scott again because there's a flutter, somewhere under his breastbone, that makes a tiny part of him sure that if Derek dies here then life is always going to be just a little bit worse because he won't ever hear his real laugh.
Scott doesn't answer and Derek looks even smaller against the wall as his eyes slide closed again. Stiles crosses the room quickly and grips his wrists, pretending that the sluggish way he jerks at the contact isn't the most frightening thing he's ever experienced, while he tries Scott again.
As it rings out next to his ear he sends up an apology to wherever the Hales might be, waiting for Derek to join them, and thinks that they're going to have to wait a while longer because they can't have him back yet.
iv. do back the things it did to you in return
"Killing Peter wouldn't have made Scott human again, would it?" Stiles asks quietly.
Derek shrugs. "I don't know. I've never known anyone who was turned against their will and ended up wanting to kill their alpha to be human again."
Stiles remembers the gush of blood, the way Derek's eyes had glowed suddenly red, and the way Peter's body had looked so much smaller in that moment like he'd never been a threat at all. He doesn't know when he started associating Derek with safe instead of danger and leaves that potentially disastrous train of thought alone for all of their sakes.
"I'm glad you killed him," he says after a moment and Derek doesn't make a sound. "If it isn't true then Scott would have become alpha and I don't think that would have been good for anyone. You only did what had to be done. Even if I'm kind of glad he got rid of Allison's aunt for you, he was still crazy." He swallows around the lump in his throat and lets the words follow. "Kate killed your family and then he killed your sister. If anyone deserved to be able to end that sort of nightmare it was you."
"You think that makes it any better?" Derek's voice is quiet, a little curious and a lot sad, and completely unfamiliar in the fact that it isn't a growl. "You think I'm going to be better? I was never meant to be the alpha, Stiles, and I don't think things are over."
Stiles doesn't answer out loud and Derek doesn't ask again but, under the silence that they stand there in for Stiles doesn't know how long, he thinks that Derek will fight to the end because he doesn't know any other way to live and they can't really ask for much more than that.
v. some'll laugh and some just sit and cry
Stiles spends the days after Peter Hale kills Kate Argent and then they, mostly Derek, kill Peter thinking about just how drastically his life has changed since the night he decided to go and find the other half of a dead Jane Doe in the woods. He doesn't talk to Scott and he doesn't talk to Allison and he especially doesn't talk to Derek.
He talks to his online friends, sometimes, and watches every werewolf movie he can find because there's something therapeutic about realising just how wrong mainstream media has gone (in so many ways that Stiles only now, after years of online adventuring, has a healthy fear of the internet) with their representations of mythological creatures.
He downloads all four of the Underworld films, tells his father that it's because they have a habit of casting sexy women as werewolves and he's feeling like a horror fix which is completely laughable, and actually makes notes amidst laughter and stuffing his face with buttered popcorn.
After a week of radio silence he comes upstairs to find Derek perched casually on his windowsill. He's grateful, really, that they don't need words overmuch by this point.
Derek's commentary on the first movie more than makes up for the lack of explanation and avoidance. Stiles doesn't think he's ever laughed so hard and keeps the comment on the tip of his tongue about Derek growing a sense of humour to himself. If he's learned anything over the last few months it's that you take the peaceful moments and you run with them, for as long as you can, because there sure as hell aren't any guarantees you're going to get another.
vi. so I'm going to buy a gun and start a war
Scott throws up when he tells Stiles about what Gerard and Chris Argent and their merry band of hunters do to the omega wolf in the Preserve. He throws up all over Stiles' floor and curls up in the corner, panting for breath and heaving with panic like he would have in the throes of an asthma attack, while Stiles concentrates on his breathing and not the horribly vivid picture his imagination paints for him.
Stiles is still awake, hours later, when Scott has fallen asleep curled in on himself at the foot of the bed. The werewolves are more like dogs than he thinks they'd like to admit, sometimes, Stiles thinks as he shakes out a light blanket over his friend. He pushes his desk chair to a corner, sits in it with his legs spread, and leans forwards with his elbows resting on his thighs and his cell pressed under his bottom lip as he watches the slow rise and fall of Scott's side under the blanket.
He can't say that the actions of the hunters really surprise him, he thinks, when he takes into consideration the things Kate Argent had done to the Hale family without even the motive of any wrongdoing. Not being surprised doesn't make the viciousness any less sickening but he thinks he can at least follow their twisted sense of logic and retribution here. Gerard Argent sounds utterly terrifying, he admits to himself as he turns his cell over and over in his hands and leans back into the corner until his head is bracketed by a wall either side.
It isn't until he's been watching over Scott a little while longer, drawing more dog comparisons than he thinks his friend would be at all pleased with, that he thinks about it from the other point of view. He thinks about how lonely that omega must have been to have ventured here, to Beacon Hills, in search of a pack and an alpha. He thinks about how lonely it must be even with a pack and wonders just what life was like for Derek and Laura in New York after the death of their family.
The train of thought continues to how it must have felt to have been all that was left of a once-great pack. He thinks of the clumsy, heavy-handed way that Derek has tried to help Scott so far even though he'd had nothing to do with his turning. He promises himself, as much as he knows that it really is a futile promise because Derek is basically the most infuriating individual in existence, that next time there's a harebrained scheme going on he'll remember that Derek is at least half as lost as they are.
In the end, Stiles thinks, he sides with the wolves not just because his best friend has become one but because they've got better hearts than the humans they're up against.
vii. if you can tell me something worth fighting for
Derek's eyes are closed, his face slack and relaxed, when Stiles reaches him. Panic gives him a burst of strength as he fists his hands in the front of the thin shirt and kicks off the bottom of the pool as quickly as his burning legs can manage. He takes in a gasping breath as soon as they break the surface of the water and shakes his head wildly to get rid of the water clouding his vision.
He chokes out Derek's name through a mouthful of water and then again, sharper and with a desperate edge, when his head lolls backwards and his eyes don't open. The giant lizard is nowhere in sight when he takes a panicked glance around and makes for the edge of the pool because he can't keep both of them afloat anymore. He refuses to think that it doesn't matter anymore and kicks harder as Derek's entire body sags against his shoulder.
"Don't you dare g-give up!" he hisses right in Derek's ear, damp hair pressed against his nose, and doesn't even entertain the thought that Derek can't hear him. He kicks his legs even harder, despite the fact that they feel like pillars of lead, to keep them afloat as his free arm grapples for purchase on the closest fixture outside the pool.
His fingers slip off the surface of the diving rail when he grabs for it and Derek's face rolls inward, the tip of his nose freezing cold against the skin of Stiles' neck, as the water sucks them under. He's barely had time to hold tighter to Derek and think holy shit this is it before Scott's hand is hauling him out of the pool by the front of his own shirt.
viii. I'm going to buy this place and burn it down
The pack he tried so desperately to make comes crashing down around Derek with the arrival of the other alphas. Boyd and Erica take off and Isaac is blinded with hero-worship every time he looks at Scott to the exclusion of all others. Allison is under Gerard's thumb and Stiles is torn between loyalty to his friend and what he thinks is the right thing.
There is no time for their petty squabbles and idealistic crises, it turns out, because the alpha pack aren't going to wait for them to get over themselves and into a cohesive pack again. Derek's fierce, quiet desperation makes sense when the alphas strike but there is no time for apologies and no time for rehashing alliances and who-is-boss-of-who because the blows rain down too thick and fast for anything but reacting.
Beacon Hills is under siege and leaves them scrambling for cover, so-called enemies and so-called friends, side by side.
Derek's reckless abandon is what unites them, in the end, when he stands and turns back towards where they wait with an expectant lift to his eyebrows. "Now or never," he says and those three words are enough to set the spark alight as Stiles finally falls into step behind him.
ix. stand here beside me baby in these crumbling walls
Stiles really doesn't want to go to the McCalls' for Christmas dinner when he thinks about it and isn't entirely sure why. His dad goes to the station a couple of hours after lunch and Stiles, choosing not to examine the impulse too closely, finds himself climbing into the Jeep and heading towards the Preserve. The drive is second-nature by this point, another thing he chooses not to think too deeply on, and he stops further from the ruin of the Hale house than he normally does and heads in that direction on foot.
Gone are the days where Derek would tense up when he approached from behind, Stiles thinks as he picks his way across the clearing a couple of moments later, and behold the days where the lines of his shoulders and neck relax instead. The sight makes something he didn't know was tight in his chest unravel a little. The sloppily-wrapped present in his jacket pocket crinkles every time his right arm moves at all and he knows that the sound won't escape werewolf hearing. The thoughts makes him roll his eyes as he gets within a couple of yards of Derek.
"Merry Christmas." He doesn't even turn around as Stiles skirts a particularly slippery looking patch of ground with an odd little hop-skip-jump but when he comes to stand at Derek's side he can see the way the corner of his mouth twitches upwards.
"And merry Christmas to you," Stiles says as he nudges his side. Derek turns his head slightly as he pulls the bundle of wrapping paper, tape and entirely too much ribbon out of his pocket. Stiles lifts his eyebrows and grins. "For reference, just how dead would I be if this happened to be a bone?"
Derek snorts, the corner of his mouth lifting even higher and a brief gleam lighting up his eyes, and nudges him back. "Very." He pulls something similar, except neatly wrapped, in crisp silver paper out of his jacket. "How disappointed would you be if this was full of Adderall?"
"You were cooler when I thought you didn't have any kind of sense of humour," Stiles says but he can't seem to stop the grin from getting wider. Derek's fingers are warm when they brush against his as they swap the gifts wordlessly. He can't stop the steady bubbling of delight in the pit of his stomach either, the one that starts when he realises that Derek had a gift in his jacket just in case he happened to run into him, and his hands are a little unsteady as he takes the package.
"I'm always funny," Derek says dismissively as the fingernail on his left forefinger sharpens into a claw that he uses to slice through the absurd amount of tape Stiles had used. "It just took a while for you to catch on."
"Cheater," Stiles mutters and elbows him in the ribs. Derek hadn't used anywhere near as much tape, though, so when he takes off the piece securing one of the ends it opens easily. The box is thin and flat, rectangular and plain and almost the same shape and size as the one in Derek's hands, and Stiles glances sideways at Derek who is unwrapping the mistletoe themed paper of his own gift slowly. He wants to ask how long he's been out here, staring at what must be the wreckage of basically every fond Christmas memory he must have, but swallows back the question.
He's glad he doesn't ask because a handful of seconds later Derek is laughing. The sound is bright and deep and rings through the trees. He doesn't think he's ever heard Derek laugh like that before and decides, brief and slightly hysterical with a sudden rush of second-hand joy, that he wants to hear that laugh over and over again.
Derek turns to face him fully, the DVD case in his hands throwing off a reflection in the late afternoon light, and his teeth are a bright white against the tan of his face when he grins. "Didn't you get enough commentary the first time we watched these?" he asks and tilts the case so the Underworld Quadrilogy is visible like Stiles hadn't debated for nearly half an hour whether the gift was in bad taste or hilariously appropriate.
Stiles, halfway through opening the box, lets it fall from suddenly trembling hands. Derek's eyes widen a little in confusion and no small amount of alarm, a tiny part of Stiles' brain thinks that his heart must be going like a jackrabbit in that moment, and then Stiles is plastered along his chest with fingers tangled behind his neck and their mouths pressed together.
Neither of them notice the way the well-loved and dog-eared comic book with a post it note, you left this behind once upon a time – D, stuck to the front cover falls out of the box and comes to land near the DVD that fell when Derek's arms came up to hold Stiles against him.
x. blame it on a rush of blood to the head
Later, Stiles will blame his actions on several things. He'll blame it on Derek's laugh and Derek's smile and Derek will raise one eyebrow high enough that he'll break down into giddy laughter. His next will involve Derek's eyes being hypnotic and then a convoluted but completely false allegation of spiked eggnog and Derek won't be able to keep a straight face.
In the end he says it was a rush of blood to the head and Derek just kisses him again to shut him up.