A year had passed since that night. A whole year. Stiles hadn't talked to Derek ever since and Derek hadn't tried to talk to Stiles. Everything was fine this way.
Of course Stiles tried really hard never to think about the asshole: his pretty green eyes and the way the crinkled when he smiled, his long thin nose, his gloriously too thick eyebrows that were probably his main feature and gave him the perfect broody face to go with his stupid broody personality. He obviously didn't think about it, nor his large shoulders, his good built, his arms, the tanned color of his skin. And he especially never thought of the way Derek was always happy to see him but would always hide it behind a snide remark, or his dry humor, his sweet side, his childish way of pouting when he saw that glaring wasn't working on you. Nope. None of that had left any impression whatsoever on Stiles. Didn't miss any of it. Not at all…
Missing Derek would mean he wasn't still angry and hurt as hell. And if he wasn't still angry, he would have no reason from keeping himself to seek the bastard out. He would never be allowing his self to fall that low and forget the little respect he had for his own person to voluntarily act on any kind feeling toward Derek. He would rather be dead.
He had enough mother fucking homophobic assholes in his life, he didn't need to see the only one that had managed to break his heart.

He had been casual about the whole confession thing, but he had been dead serious about it. He had seriously been in love with Derek at the time.
Derek, who had been touchy feely with Stiles from the beginning of their friendship when he wouldn't let anybody else who wasn't his sister touch him in any way. Stiles hadn't even been the one to approach Derek; it was Derek who sat with him that first day in their social sciences class. Who, weirdly, came from the same small town Stiles came from, but was five years older so they had never really been in the same circles. He had made some dry comment that Stiles hadn't been expecting about their weird teacher and how could Stiles leave that unanswered. They clicked weirdly together: Stiles the spazzy, weird, loud and obnoxious guy that couldn't shut up for the life of him and Derek, the broody, silent, stoic dude who only spoke once everything was methodically formed in his head, which made him surprise the room and attract attention more often than he liked. They were a ridiculously compatible duo that even rivaled the brotherly relationship Stiles had had with his friend Scott McCall since they were toddlers. And Stiles, who usually was wary of new people, had welcomed Derek into his life so easily. Derek look sure, sturdy, like once he was standing with you, you had him for the long road, be it being his friend or his lover.
They even had started to sleep in the same bad when one or the other went over. And even for that, Derek had been the first to bring up the idea.
And of course, he had never been clear he if he was gay, bi or straight and Stiles had never asked because he thought that, maybe, Derek didn't care and just went along with how he felt instead of wasting his time looking for the right label. Everything had been so misleading that Stiles had thought that maybe Derek was just into Stiles. That much seemed clear. Or so thought Stiles before everything blew up pretty hard in his face.
So he went on with his life, cramming Derek in the far back of his memory where he could rot, almost completely forgotten. Time would get him there…

.*.*.*.*.

Scott, Lydia, Allison and Stiles were out at the Jungle, the only fun bar in town, to celebrate the start of their summer vacation. They were all back in Beacon Hills until they all had to go back to school, three months later. Stiles and Lydia were both going to the college closest to home and saw each other all the time while Allison and Scott were hours away. They were still friends though, even after the horrendous years they had spent together in high school, and it was enough for them to stick together for life. They skyped a lot. All together at once or one at a time. Because they were missing each other all the time, even after making new friends.
Well, Stiles had made one or two friend since the incident but he wasn't close to them that much and didn't dare to give people a chance after the "Derek fiasco".

So there they all were, all pretty wasted, at 3am, finally ready to go home and everybody proud of Stiles because he hadn't puked that night, which was a pretty rare occurrence since he was kind of a weak drinker but actually enjoyed the taste of his liquor a bit too much. Lydia and him were weakly holding each other up and dragging themselves out of the bar, happily talking about absolutely nothing while Scott and Allison were walking hand in hand behind them, the first with unfocused eyes and the second looking amused by her friends – she was the designated driver – .
Suddenly, Lydia halted and raise her body to stand more or less straight, making Stiles lose his balance and fall on his ass right in front of the dark alley that lead behind the bar.

"Guys!" she exclaimed "I have to show my new boyfriend to you" she continued, getting her phone out of her pocket. As she went on, saying how he was the sexiest dude she had dated so far – way more than stupid Jackson –, Stiles got distracted by a bang behind him, coming from the alley.
Curious, he got up and slowly made his way toward the noise. Noises, in fact, which kept coming from the darkness, while his friends called him back. He shut them up, saying he would be back in a second, just checking what that sound was. When he got closer to it, he saw two guys, a tall, bulky blond one and a short, lanky, brown haired one, who seemed to be hitting something behind a trash bin. A bit too drunk to think things through, he went on, instead of stopping and waiting to actually assess the situation, and hit a bottle that had been left there, which got him to unconsciously curse very audibly.
The two guys startled when they heard it and, without even looking to see who was there, they ran the other way. With no intentions of following them, Stiles called back at his friends.
"Guys, call 911, quick!" he shouted when he saw bloody legs poking out from behind the bin. Even in his advanced state of drunk, he didn't hesitate; he took the last few steps separating him from the victim and kneeled on front of her. And then he froze, He knew the girl. Even with all the crimson, deep cuts covering her face and her body, even with the slit on her throat, the bruises on her body, even the weird black goo coming out of her eyes and ears – which was creepy as fuck – he would have recognized her anywhere. He had seen so many pictures of her, smiling brightly or laughing widely at the world, and heard so many stupid and silly stories about her. They had never met but he had always had a found image of her.
And his then mind wandered to Derek, because in front of Stiles was the only relative Derek had left: his big sister, Laura, and she looked nothing like what Stiles remembered.

.*.*.*.*.

Stiles mind flew out of him. Derek was there and he looked so panicked. So sad. Stiles was still too drunk for this. He wanted to go see the fucker and take him in his arms, tell him everything would be alright, make the pain disappear from his face. Derek looked on the verge of crying. Then he followed the nurse who probably was showing him Laura's room.

After finding Laura, everything had fast forwarded in a blur of red and blue lights and police sirens, everything dulled by the booze and the shock. While they had been waiting for the ambulance and the police to arrive, Stiles had taken a look around him and had seen some weird stuff around Laura: a circle of some kind of… dust? Ashes? And tones of purple flowers. He had taken one without thinking. Put it in his pocket and continued to stare at the body… the victim, because, hopefully she wasn't dead – he had checked for her pulse and it had been pretty strong for someone who looked so far from alive – forgetting the flowers almost right away when he heard the sirens get closer.
He knew his statement, along with his friend's, had been taken, but he couldn't remember what he had told them. Once they had all finished making their statements, Stiles had urged Allison to take them to the hospital, because he knew the girl's brother and he just couldn't ignore this because of his resentment, he just couldn't. He threw his phone at Scott and told him to call the contact named "homophobic spawn of Satan". Scott knew the story, didn't need more precisions before he pressed the call button. Stiles didn't listen, was too far in his head to concentrate on anything around him, wishing they could get to the hospital faster.

They had finally arrived and it took everything in Stiles not to just get out the car while it was still advancing in the parking lot. At some point, Scott at told them that his mother was working that night, she was a pretty Latina with brown long curly hair that worked as a nurse at BHH, and it was good to know because Stiles wanted to know what had happened to the poor girl. Why there was black goo running out of her body, and he knew any other nurse wouldn't tell him.
Finally, they got inside. They didn't lose any time; they rushed to the information desk and the lady told him his mother was on her break. They almost ran to the breakroom and startled the shit out of Melissa. They had to use a little bit of coaxing, which was a bit harder than it would usually, with most of them being still drunk, even though they had sobered up a bit, but they managed it. She agreed to show them the rapport of the girl's examination once she had her hands on it, but the might have to wait a while.
Stiles didn't mind waiting, but Allison was dead tired and Scott was sleepy from the alcohol so Lydia told them she would stay with Stiles so he wouldn't be alone. After they both left, Lydia and Stiles went to sit in the waiting room, both sleepy but fighting it by babbling about something else, taking their minds off it. Still, Lydia, who had been the closest to Stiles when he had discovered Laura, took the time to ask him why he had taken the evidences. He had no answer for that other than it was weird and he was curious and they left it at that.

The wait wasn't too long, but it lasted at least an hour. They took turn to go fetch disgusting hospital coffee or snacks in the vending machine and they also took turn in standing guard while the other took a small nap.
Around 6am, they both got woken up by Melissa who had printed a second copy of the examination, which she was supposed to hand to the police right away, so they had to make it quick. Stiles grabbed it and read it as fast as he could without skipping anything, Lydia reading it over his shoulder. There were traces of poisoning, the cuts on her skin were closer to actually deep burn marks, and she had nothing broken. But nowhere did it explain the black goo and, when he asked Melissa, she told them they didn't know, they had never seen that before.
Out of all the report, what struck Stiles the most was probably the fact that Laura wasn't about to wake up. They had officially stated she was in a coma. They only relative Derek had left was now in a coma and Stiles had a hard time processing it. He couldn't imagine what Derek would do.
That's when he was taken out of his head by the sound of someone running while somebody else tried to keep them from doing it. Raising his head, he saw Derek for the first time in a year and he unconsciously got up at the sight of him, which would have attracted Derek's attention to him if Lydia hadn't stood up too. Without a word, Stiles left the waiting room, nobody taking notice of it since they were all staring at Derek. He couldn't do this. So hid himself and listened in on whatever was about to happen.

He was startled to hear the first thing Derek had to say was "Lydia?" in a deeply confused voice. "What are you doing here?"

Intrigued, Stiles popped his head out to see what the fuck this was about, only to see realization dawn on Lydia's face as she looked down at the report, then back to Derek.
"I…" she started "I was there when she was found…" her voice started trembling and she reached an arm out to take Derek's hand. "I'm sorry babe, she's not waking up… I'm so sorry." And with that she burst into tears and took Derek in her arms. His confused face contorted into something between fear and dread and Stiles saw that Derek thought she was dead. He almost got out of his hiding spot, almost, but Melissa, bless her, probably saw the same thing Stiles did because she spoke to him.

"Derek" she said, like she knew him, and maybe she did since she was already working at the hospital when most of Derek's family burned down, years ago. "She's in a coma, but she's not dead". At that, Derek's feeling seemed to soften a bit, but they stayed there because sometimes, being dead might have been the better option.

Stiles didn't stay long after that. He listened a bit, and then left before he could be seen, unable to stand all the feelings that wanted to surface. Instead he went looking for his father who had been one of the officers present to take their statement. When he found him, he made his presence known and waited for him so they could go home together.
Anything as long as it meant he could go home and avoid Derek Hale a little bit longer.

.*.*.*.*.

Once he got home, Stiles turned his phone off, not remotely interested in any contact with the world outside, too exhausted to even think. He had enough to ruminate at the moment. He went to bed with intention to sleep the whole day through the next. But the second he rested he head on his pillow, his eyes wouldn't close anymore. The sun was already up high in the sky and Stiles brain didn't stop bringing back Derek's miserable face to the surface. That look haunted him. He was sure he had had the same look at some point in his life. Probably around the time his own mother died.
The memory was still fresh in his head, years after she was gone. Melissa had told Stiles and his father the news they had been waiting for months to hear. It hadn't been a pretty year, when his mother had been diagnosed frontotemporal dementia. At first they had traveled between home and the hospital a lot. Then, she had started to forget thing, she became confused about what and who was around her. She couldn't recognize people anymore, nor her house or her clothes. Her brain was becoming treacherous, making up all sorts of lies that had seemed so real to her. Her reality and the real world weren't the same anymore and her fight had gotten too big to be handled only by her her eight years old son and her husband who was consumed by the fear of her loss. Then she became a permanent resident of BHPH and thus the worst part began: the wait. His mom had only few months left to live and all they could do was go see her as often as they could an, when they weren't with her, they would dread the phone call that would announce them that, finally, it was over. For almost six month, not a day had passed in the Stilinski household without either the father or the son panicking because the phone rang.
Then, one day, they both when to the hospital and were greeted by Melissa and they knew it was over from her face alone. And finally, it was over. His mom's pain, his anxiety of the dreaded call, everything had vanished. He had felt relief along with his grief. It was the only thing which kept him from breaking. She didn't suffer anymore. But it wouldn't be the case for Derek.
No, Derek hadn't had even the slightest chance to prepare for the wait. With a coma, you could never know when the person would wake up. Laura could either wake up tomorrow or in ten years, or she could die suddenly while unconscious. Or worse, she could never wake up and Derek would slowly get to a point where there would be no way for the situation to be bearable anymore and he would have to make the decision to kill his own sister. And then, he would truly be alone.

Even in the deepest, darkest moments of hatred he had had for Derek, Stiles would never, ever have wished that to him. Stiles had lost his mother. Derek had lost his entire family, except for one member, and now he might be losing what was left of it in the worst possible way.
The image of Laura, almost dead and entirely disfigured came back to his mind. It made him remember the flower he had picked up from the ground beside her. It was still in his jeans pocket, so he got up and searched for it. When he got his hands on it, he went to sit by his desk and turned the desk lamp on so he could examine the plant. As he had noted the first time, it was purple. It was in fact a branch of small purple flowers, not a single one. If he hadn't known better, he would have mistaken it for blue bells, but there were too many flowers on the branch for it to be. He managed, through some google search, to narrow down the sort to Aconitum – also called wolfsbane or moonshank – which seemed the most likely. And it was weird because he couldn't really get why people would lay this kind of flowers around their victims. It might be some psychopath signature though… but why the ashes? He looked up what he could find about the ashes and their relationship to the flowers, but the only thing that came up was some bullshit about werewolves. So, unless the culprit thought Laura was a werewolf – which was really dumb by the way – well that was the work of a nutjob.

.*.*.*.*.

The next day, he had a hard time waking up and spent his day feeling all sluggish at work. Because, like every summer since he turned sixteen, he had taken a part time job for the summer at a convenience store so he could at least pay for his personal expenses while away to college. It was a small store owned by the Yukimura, a nice Japanese family, and they had strangely liked him enough on his first year to greet him with opened arms the following years, even considering he was clumsy and might have broken a lot of stuff while working there. His costumer service probably had redeemed him a lot in their eyes or he might have thought his bad shots worse than they actually had been.

Like usual during the summer, the family's daughter, Kira, was working with him and they were having fun, even if not many costumers had crossed their door yet. They had gotten along very well since day one, six years ago, when they had realized they were clumsy kindred and also awkward around others. That had kind of lifted up any awkwardness that could have existed between them, as if the double negative had become a positive. Kira was, in fact, a pretty nice girl and her clumsiness and awkwardness were kind of endearing for many regular customers. That and her beautiful dimpled smile, her dark brown eyes, her cute nose and her perfect facial bone structure, combined with her gracious and delicate appearance, which was in fact not to be trusted since she was fit as hell and actually were kind of an ace at kendo, the Japanese art of sword fighting. She had a practice sword with her behind the counter at all time and she wasn't afraid to fend off any thug who thought he could get away with an attempt at a hold up.

As they were refilling their stock on the shelves together, the bell finally rang, announcing a new customer to occupy them for at least five minutes, or so Stiles hoped. He turned toward the door to greet them while Kira went behind the counter to guard the cash and he was greeted with the sight of a scowling Derek who was glaring at him like he was the source of all his problems.
Well, fuck him, thought Stiles. He proceeded with his task like Derek wasn't even there, ignoring the pang of guilt that struck him as he pictured Laura in his head, the way he had found her two days ago. Derek must have a frigging good sixth sense because he advanced dangerously toward him, hissing "what the fuck did you do to my sister" through his clenched teeth. Which: what the heck? Did he think Stiles seriously had something to do with that? Stiles was so surprised by the accusation that he forgot how words worked and only resorted to glaring back. Then Derek shoved him, hitting his shoulder hard while starting to accuse Stiles of knowing something and withholding it from Derek, and that was just unfair.

"Dude," he finally said, putting as much resentment as he could in that single word "as much as I hate your face more than anything in the world, there's no fucking way I would ever do anything that bad just to get back at you" and with that, he went back to ignoring the hell out of his former friend and filling the shelves.

Kira was watching their exchange with a concerned look, so Stiles took the time to throw a reassuring glance her way, not being enough of an ass to have Derek kicked out of the place even if, in fact, he really wished he was.
As Derek was about to say something, Stiles entirely turned his back to him and went to the other side of an aisle just to put distance between them and show the he wasn't interested in anything he had to say to him. Then he heard a thud from behind him. And another one. He was about to continue ignoring it when a loud crash resonated, which startled him enough that he forgot his plan of ignoring his problem 'till it went away. He did a turnabout and his eyes immediately found the source of the sound: a jar of pickles – or what was left of it – which was soaking two boxes of cereals, all of them having been dropped to the ground. When he raised his head to glare at Derek, the guy had another jar ready to follow and was intently staring at him, like his eyes would maybe make Stiles listen to him.

That made Stiles loses his composure. He never had any instinct of self-preservation, so he ignored the fear that wanted to creep to the surface and made his way to creep in Derek space, hoping to be as menacing as possible.

"You're going to leave this place right now and you are never coming back or, God help me, I'm going to call the cops on your ass and no comatose sister of yours will make me have pity on you while you threaten me at my workplace" he spat out two inches from Derek's face. It was like slapping Derek in the face, his eyes going wide and his mouth dropping to the floor, a pained expression creeping up, and Stiles regretted bringing Laura in the talk the moment the words left his mouth. He pushed Derek back and steered away, afraid he would say anything even worse and feeling really bad about himself for it.
He didn't get far though because Derek caught him by the shoulder and pushed him against the shelves, which shook dangerously, his feet not touching the floor anymore, hurting Stiles' back while at it. The second he started feeling his body again, he knew he would see bruises in no time where he had hit the shelves, but couldn't muster any fuel for his anger anymore. He looked down at first, letting out a sad sigh. He had pictured how they would go about this, but nothing that bad had brushed his mind. Derek was breathing strongly in his face and Stiles couldn't anything else than raise his head to acknowledge just how much he had hurt the guy.
When their eyes met though, something started to bother Stiles, like there was wrong with Derek's face that kept from feeling his anger or his sadness.

"Do you know anything about what happened to Laura" Derek asked, half pleading, half menacing.

Stiles was about to answer, he really was, because he didn't know anything else than the weird ashes and flower and how bad she had looked when he had found her, but instead he finally realized what was bugging him about Derek's face. His eyes weren't green anymore; they were fucking blue and shining weirdly, as if they were small lights turned on in Derek's face.
"Your eyes aren't blue" he muttered unconsciously, raising a face as if he was about to touch Derek's face. At that, Derek's whole body froze and his glare zeroed in on Stiles mouth, like he couldn't believe what had just came out of it. Meanwhile, Stiles' wire had started to spin in his head and he thought about all the dumb stuff he had read the night before. Nothing had mentioned weird glowing eyes, so his hunch wasn't even close to something plausible… but here he was, staring back in eyes that didn't even remotely look human anymore. And before he could control it, his defective brains to mouth filter let the sentence "there's no way you're really a werewolf" free itself. He froze, and so did Derek.
When he heard that, Derek's mouth started to open and close, clearly taken aback. Then suddenly, too quickly for Stiles to even register what was happening, he let go of him, dropping him in the puddle of pickle juice, and stormed out of the store like the mad man he was, leaving Stiles and Kira, who had watched the whole exchange and was a push away from dialing 911, dumbfounded. She ran to him, panicked, asking if he was ok, but Stiles barely listened.
He couldn't even believe it. Because Derek storming out was like admitting to Stiles stupid question and Stiles was kind of shocked because: seriously? Werewolves?