Title: How It Should Be (We Just Have To Fix It)
Rating: PG-13/T
Pairing: Derek/Stiles (pre-slash)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag (2x04)
Summary: Set after the events of Abomination. Derek never did get a chance to finish asking his questions and Stiles is not in the mood.
Author's Note: I was asked by a few people to extend the one-shot and because a) you guys are phenomenal, and b) I'm a serious sucker for morning scenes, I give you a second and final chapter to this episode tag. I hope it's just as much to your liking as the first! :)
This chapter is also unbeta'd (and posted at 3am) but I've re-read it (and changed it) twenty times and I can't do it again so I apologize in advance for any typos/mistakes.
Morning brought with it a significant amount of low-level pain, but also a heat that Stiles felt he'd been chasing mostly unsuccessfully for 23.5 of the previous 24 hours. His precious cocoon had fallen victim no doubt to night-time tossing and turning, and his comforter now only covered his lower back and one of his legs. There was, however, a solid wall of what he'd bet was Derek's back along his right arm and side, and between Derek and the sun streaming in from the window, Stiles felt perfectly cozy. That was his first thought - one of triumph over the elements - as he slowly drifted back to consciousness.
The second was how much easier it was to think after a full night's sleep. Gone was the heady, low-level thrum of panicked thoughts that made it impossible to focus on any one thing for very long (as if he didn't have enough of that on a normal day) and, more importantly, impossible to block the whole out. Instead, the events that had begun to run together were all boxed away in his mind, ready for perusal at his leisure. His leisure was synonymous with an indefinite raincheck. Especially since he was very comfortable sprawled out on his stomach on the left side of his bed and he was having a hard time coming up with a reason for moving or dredging up any overly complex thoughts.
Between his state of early morning drowsiness, the sweet nostalgia of another body in the bed next to him, and the sound of his dad puttering around downstairs, Stiles felt as though he was all of ten years old and waking up from a sleepover with Scott with absolutely zero cares in the world. Unfortunately, he wasn't ten and his dad puttering around downstairs was most definitely a care he should be having. Stiles forced himself to at least crack his eyes open to contemplate that danger, but despite his valiant efforts, they slid back closed. It was fine; he and his dad had come to an understanding when the man had become the Sheriff and his semi-regular hours had become nearly shift-work and emergency calls. Without imminent danger as a motivator, no one was to wake anyone else up on the weekend. Theirs was a sleep and let sleep policy and they held it sacred. So his harbouring of a non-fugitive but definitely adult and shady ass was not likely to be found out this morning. Speaking of which...
He turned his head on the pillow to face the other side and huffed with disappointment when he realized he'd have to actually put effort into moving to see Derek's face over his shoulder, as the man was sleeping on his side. When he did, he saw that his eyes were closed, and his breathing was slow, but Stiles had been with Scott through the majority of his wolfy discoveries and he very much doubted the alpha was sleeping through the cacophony of his dad's past-its-prime percolator in the kitchen. Stiles didn't care enough to call him on it though. He hadn't wanted to move either, after all.
As Stiles sank back down onto his pillow, turning his body gently (and with much difficulty) to face Derek's, he realized that, in his haze of the night before, he'd left his chlorine-soaked tracksuit on the bathroom floor, where his dad would have seen it...coming back from the high school pool's broken skylight incident. He groaned silently and heard the incessant ticking of the imaginary countdown he'd be harassed by for weeks now. It was a countdown to the time when his dad's hand would be forced by too many witnesses to finally call his own son in for questioning, and Stiles would have no one to blame but his own god forsaken curiousity. Present at the scene of a dead body? Check for Laura Hale, check for the school janitor, check for the mechanic. Present at the scene of a violent crime? Check for the janitor again, check for Lydia's attack, check for a certain unconscious deputy as a murder suspect breaks out of jail, really check for any crime that's occurred since Derek Hale came back to town. It was honestly a miracle that he wasn't in jail or in a psychiatric facility right now. ...Or was he? It would explain how he was in bed with an alpha werewolf and not freaking, or doing anything other than basking. No, he really had to get a grip on those kinds of thoughts or he really would end up in the loony bin.
Stiles sighed audibly, told his brain to be quiet and inched closer to the back in front of him, as if Derek could shield him from the externalized form of his mind the way he'd tried to shield him from the kanima. But just as he was busy not thinking about how this morning, tucked away from the rest of the world, would eventually rejoin said world, Stiles noticed the muscles of Derek's sculpted back roll fluidly just a couple of inches from his eyes. He felt a powerful urge to still them with an urgent hand and tell Derek to just...shut up, and just lie there for a while. But he didn't. He let those muscles disappear from view and felt as the mattress bounced softly as Derek carefully turned himself onto his back; they had to face reality eventually.
Or maybe not, because neither seemed inclined to speak and shatter the illusion of normalcy and peacefulness.
Derek glanced at him briefly but ultimately decided the ceiling was a safer bet in this slowly rising state of awkwardness. The silence ultimately didn't help; it persisted from the night before and seemed a sticky thing they couldn't get rid of easily. Suddenly, a clanging from the kitchen below made Stiles' eyes swivel to the door out of reflex and he felt the same bouncing of the mattress as Derek slipped out and make for the hamper where his clothes would likely be dry, though wrinkled. When the sounds of Derek getting dressed ceased and were replaced by footsteps inching away from the bed, Stiles' eyes left him to study the sheet covering his mattress. What could he say? This wasn't some one-night booty call for which there was a surprisingly intricate protocol if tv and the internet were to be believed. The only thing that had happened last night was two people who'd nearly drowned together had finally gotten to rest for a while in a warm, safe place. And maybe it had been the presence of the other that had made it a warm, safe place to begin with, and not Stiles' physical bed or the comforter or the house, but it seemed like neither of them was going to bring it up as a topic for discussion or hypothesis.
Despite it all, something inside of Stiles was clawing to get out, something was begging him to just say something, because he knew that if Derek left, this silence they'd built up would follow them. It would stretch to every future meet-up they would ever have until one of them finally broke it, probably in an unpleasant and damaging way. And he didn't want that. Their meetings were already ripe with awkwardness and discomfort as it was and them getting worse was the opposite of what he wanted.
He snapped his eyes back up - his sheer will overpowering his sense of self-preservation and dignity - and opened his mouth to call Derek back, but he shut it with a clacking of his teeth. The now fully-dressed man was barely a foot away, next to his side of the bed (far from the window), in the process of sitting down on the bed beside him.
"How are you feeling?" Derek asked quietly, his eyes gliding to the few limbs that had escaped the comforter after his recent move.
"Sore." Stiles managed. Derek nodded and didn't move away.
"Are we picking up on that interrogation again?" He asked to fill the silence, antagonism completely lacking from his voice. Derek didn't smirk, as he'd been hoping, he just shook his head. He did have the pleasure of seeing a couple of upward-facing stray strands of Derek's bedhead bounce with the motion, though. He wondered how many people were left who had ever witnessed the great Derek Hale in such a state of dishevelment. Stiles was already thinking up another yes/no question when Derek's hand came out slowly to prod carefully at a fading bruise under the dark hair at his left temple.
"Is this from Erica?"
"Yeah." Stiles replied with less venom than he felt entitled to. At this precise moment, in this particular morning, it really didn't feel like that big a deal anymore. Derek nodded again, assertively.
"I'll sort her out." The hushed words felt like a promise and Stiles appreciated it. He nodded back to the alpha because apparently nods were just all-purpose answers on mornings-after.
"I should get going." Derek said after a moment, sounding almost apologetic. "I didn't tell the others I'd be gone all night, they'll probably be worried."
Sad though it may be, the simple acknowledgement that last night had happened made Stiles twitchy with some kind of energy. He tried not to let it show, and instead said, "well, it's not like you knew you would be."
"No." Derek let out, a hint of wonder in his voice as he pinned Stiles in place with his eyes. He'd done it before, but it was usually in anger or disbelief.
Making good on his words, Derek pat Stiles' covered leg, stood and replayed last's night events by opening the window latch. In keeping with those events, as soon as Derek's foot made its way outside, Stiles called him back.
"Hey, Derek?"
The man turned again, looking faintly amused and putting his hand out in the sun as if to indicate that no, it actually wasn't that cold anymore.
"No," Stiles shook his head, his grin wry. "I was just wondering...what did you need from me a couple of weeks ago?"
Derek's eyes narrowed with something Stiles was more used to - defensive confusion.
"The night at the police station with Isaac." Stiles elaborated. "You kept him from tearing my throat out?"
Derek knew the night, obviously, but he still didn't understand the question.
"And then last night, when you got in front of me and pushed me away? What is it you need from me?" Ah ha, there it was. Behind a quickly hidden, self-deprecating twitch of a grin, Stiles could see Derek finally catch on.
"Scott...listens to you, Stiles." Derek spoke with a soul-deep sigh, not quite managing to fully put away that persistent grin you get when you've been caught and you just want to laugh the nervousness away. "I need him in my pack and I think you'll probably be key in getting him to understand that it's for the best."
"Oh." Stiles replied airily. "It's funny because all I heard just now was 'Scott is a lie, Stiles, and this is a lie and this part is too.'"
Derek looked out the window, smile fully captured in the sunlight, and shook his head.
"And what about before you had a pack? Like in the hospital when you got the crap beat out of you trying to save me from Peter and his nurse?" Stiles goaded, his unabashed smirk just owning its place on his face. "What do you need from me, Derek?"
"Nothing, Stiles." The alpha finally admitted pointedly, making a face that successfully conveyed he was accepting defeat but would still be leaving the stand-off a winner because a winner was just what he was. "I don't need you for anything."
And with a smile that belonged in the sunlight - always - Derek slipped out the window, closing it securely behind him as he left. Stiles, meanwhile, leaned back into warm bed in satisfaction, pulling the covers back over himself and drifting back to sleep to the unspoken words of "I just didn't want you to die" building him a vision of a world where this morning happened countless times again; where warmth and safety were actually a topic of discussion and hypothesis as well as the standing theme.