Sleep, sweetie, let your floods come rushing in
and carry you over to a new morning...
Stiles wakes up before Derek.
An electronic watch reads 5.40 a.m., dawn is trying to get through the closed draperies, while a refreshing morning air has already got through and now is trailing on the floor. Stiles turns over, squinting sleepy, and smiles a little bitterish: Derek frowns even in his dream. A crease between his eyebrows remains the usual stitch – a scar on Stiles himself. Derek looks like he is ready to jump on at a slightest sound, and he doesn`t just look this way: he indeed has been rising up every half an hour during the night, every time tighter squeezing a slim pale hand. Stiles cannot blame him, but himself – easily.
But Derek is not the mighty God; he wears out, gets exhausted. Therefore he always misses a moment, when Stiles gets up, awkwardly scratching his back, takes a glass of water from the night table and goes downstairs.
Light slaps of the bare feet on the stairs are more like muffled gunshots.
Cold tea – minimum sound; Stiles gets on a sofa with the tea cup, rests his elbow on the back of the sofa and stares into huge, divided by a frame windows. The sun lights the abandoned district, glints in window glasses and reflects in side mirrors of motorcycles.
Stiles bites a trembling ceramic edge and tries to calm his fingers. He cannot feel them.
Two hours on a tablet PC, which he has foreseeingly placed on charge near the sofa. Facebook is filled with posts and videos about a dog pound, a dozen of messages remain unread (Scott suggests arranging a movie-marathon in the loft, Lydia states, that she will bring some new stuff and an apple pie, Malia sends a message, that she will come with Peter). Two hours on a game - he makes it to cool levels in Cut the Rope, on sorting the mail – to send the right notes to the editor and tease Lahey about his column "The Sight from Paris".
Two hours until Derek runs downstairs, skipping stairs, and freezes, all disheveled and tousy, in the middle of the hall, groping Stiles with his eyes.
- You did it again? – he moves a hand back and clenches his fist, hiding anger on himself behind resentment. – Sorry. I didn`t hear.
- Hey, wolfy, - Stiles squints archly, putting the tablet aside, - that`s the point of the game. And I always win, as you know. Come here.
Derek kisses dry lips, briefly, but thirsty, imperiously, affirming his property rights: to be honest, Stiles hardly holds not to laugh and scratches the wolf`s ears.
- I want an omelet, - he nods, pressing his lips against the stubble edge; Derek shakes his head a little and gets up with some reluctance on his face.
- Juice first, - unappealable answer from the kitchen; soft lounge pants lower a little more, and in his mind Stiles licks the strip of light skin, bat then suddenly wrinkles. Damn juice, apple- celeriac, it makes his inside twist, and Stiles is ready to puke, about which he informs Derek every morning. Only Derek – the heartless bastard – doesn`t care.
Derek shows a million of articles about the benefits of this juice, and Stiles wakes off and drinks. Not for himself, for Derek.
And then they finally eat the burned omelet, get dressed and go their usual route with a compulsory stop at sheriff's in the end. John makes the best chocolate pancakes in the town, moreover, absolutely free.
Stiles wakes up before Derek.
He lays for a long time, watching the wolf sleeping, memorizing the look of his face, steady movements of his chest, little hair on his arms. Then he gets up, awkwardly take a glass of water from the night table and goes downstairs again, getting on the sofa.
Stiles loves dawns.
He tries to draw them; predictably fails. A pan trembles in his hands. Stiles presses it too hard, so that his nails become white, but he cannot feel them.
After all it`s easier to tap sensor buttons on a screen, record phrases from a head – ever more so.
Stiles sends finished articles to the editorial office at half six and smirks to himself, imaging the face of his boss, when he receives a notification.
Derek gets up at seven. In answer to an archly glare he mumbles:
- I`m just bored.
- Yeah, sure, - Stiles moves, making room for Derek; the man gets behind his back, hugs him with his legs and presses closer. – Admit I, little fluffy wolf, you just cannot sleep without me.
- Get off, dumbass, - breaths Derek in the back of the boy`s head, making him grin and sniff.
- Soft wolfy, warm wolfy, little fluffy nubble…
Derek bites the withers, and Stiles affectedly trembles from fright, then he simply trembles – from cold. Derek hugs him closer. It`s warn in his arms.
Stiles contentedly purrs right until the moment, when Derek stand up to make that damn juice.
Stiles wakes up before Derek.
He slowly steps down the stairs, trying not to spill water from a glass: hands are shaking mercilessly. He falls on the sofa, rests his head on an elbow and stares through the divided window at the dark twilight sky. 3 in the morning. It`s far from a dawn.
He tries to compose an article, but gets tired from holding the tablet ovehanging. He bites his lip, throws away the device and clearly curse up to the ceiling, into the learned by heart cracks. Then he closes his eyes with an arm – to feel the heat on his wrist.
Derek puts his fingers aside, kisses him again and again, softly and repeatedly, every birthmark, every point. He slips his rough tongue by the nose line, smiling. Stiles`s lips stretch in smile as well, he expressly chortles, rubbing the wet track.
- Ew, you slobbered me again, God. Lousy wolf.
- What wolf? – he raises his eyebrows, tickling the prominent ribs, and Stiles narrows his eyes.
- Okey, beloved. Loved. Damn it, I already said that!
Stiles doesn`t throw up after the juice anymore: he is out of the material. Derek thins down the porridge for two of them and protests, when Stiles secretly adds a slice of lunch meat into his plate. Then they get dressed – they have to cut off the strings from the gumshoes, gummy legs are disgusting, - and go their usual route.
Only that they don`t stop at the sheriff`s.
Stiles is afraid to see his father.
He gets too tired after all these endless procedures, his veins are a live dream of an addict. Doctor, let`s hit more morphine, I`ve always dreamed, just like those folks from the "Hunger Games", but they died in the end after all. Derek will lick clean new livid spots, ew, not slobber again.
Stiles falls asleep too early, it`s not even midnight. He rests his head on a special warped pillow, squeezes Derek`s hand and whispers:
- You`re fucking awesome, when you sleep. Only that you look like a murdered. Relax, okay?
- It`s a game, remember? – Derek looks straight in the eyes, intertwist their fingers; there is too much pain in that crease between the eyebrows. – And tomorrow I`m gonna win.
- Hell no, wolfy, - Stiles smiles weakly. – You are fucking awesome, wolf. The best. Come here.
Derek moves closer and views Stiles, until the boy gets blurry in the exserted moisture.
Derek is not the mighty God; he cannot take this plague from the thin pale body, and cannot help feeling the smell of inflammation and decay. And he cannot leave as well.
- Sleep, - he weightlessly kisses in the forehead, strokes a bald temple: they take off his bandana at nights, its` bundle rubs.
Derek lies down, trying to breath steady and to fall asleep to groans by the strangled with water lungs.
He should make a double-juice. Should get up earlier. Surprise. Perhaps, he should order a pizza? He likes with pepperoni…
Derek opens his eyes, sees the thin body beside him and smiles victoriously, hanging over the man.
The watch reads 7 a.m.
The first time, when Derek gats up earlier, Stiles doesn`t wake up.