Notes: I found the sequence of events in the video a tad confusing, so this is how I interpreted it, but someone who's watched it might have seen it differently.

Polish courtesy of Google Translate. If you speak Polish, please feel free to let me know if it's wrong.

Derek took his time walking down the well worn path from the road to the cemetery, his hands shoved in his pockets. He wished he had his set of keys to the Camaro to bite into the pads of his fingers, but he hadn't driven here, he'd just walked through the preserve in the direction he knew the small groundskeeper's building would be.

And he followed his nose, to the familiar scent he couldn't get out of his olfactory memory if he tried.

He'd been putting this off for months. Well, years, to be more accurate. Now that the deadline was fast approaching, he couldn't pretend he hadn't wanted to see Stiles, talk to him, since their close friendship had ended with an angry slam of a car door at a birthday party.

The neat rows of trees end and they're replaced by neat rows of headstones. Stiles is a lone skyscraper amidst the modest grave markers, his head bowed and averted from the aggressively setting sun. Derek's palms sweat and his mouth goes dry at the sight of him, but his heart beats fast, just like it always did.

Maybe not always. Not at the beginning, but later.

The grass is too well-kept to crunch when Derek approaches, but Stiles heard him anyway. His head snapped up from the words he must have read a thousand times, that Derek was now close enough to see, though he knew what was etched there. Beloved daughter, wife and mother. Teraz w stanie spoczynku. Derek had looked up the phrase in a Polish pocket dictionary he'd found in the library after the first time he'd come to visit Mrs. Stilinski's grave. Now at rest is what he was pretty sure it meant.

He wondered if it still made Stiles feel like a bad son.

"Hey."

Derek startled, then flinched in embarrassment that he'd been so hesitant to start this conversation that he'd zoned out staring at the headstone inscription.

"Hi." Everything Derek had planned to say flew out of his head. He tried to picture the conversation starters he'd written down in his English notebook that morning, but all he could see was Stiles' long fingers twitching at his sides, the nape of his neck bared by the buzz cut he'd sported since his first year of high school.

"So, how have you been?"

"Good." Derek latches onto the open-ended question. Trust Stiles to try and make this interaction easier for him by filling the gaps. "I'm been good. And you?"

Stiles nodded, but didn't say anything. He turned his head back to the gravestone, contemplated it for a few more moments during which Derek wasn't sure if he should try again to speak, then he touched the grey-blue stone and turned to walk back to his jeep.

"Well, this has been sufficiently awkward," he muttered as he passed.

"Wait." Derek reached out a hand, and it hovered over Stiles' shoulder for awhile before Derek retracted it and shoved it back into his pocket. "I wanted to talk to you."

"This is what you call talking? Staring at me while I stare at my mom's grave?"

It should have been mean, but Stiles couldn't keep the smile out of his voice, and Derek was reminded of their shared tendency to offend other people. Derek, through his inability to form flowery words to soften his bluntness, and Stiles, from his brain working too quickly with his mouth to filter anything. They'd decided early in their friendship that neither of them meant it, so forgiveness had never been necessary for feelings that hadn't been hurt by careless words.

"We used to-" Derek broke off.

"That's true. We used to," Stiles agreed, and hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, fidgeting his hands in front of his thighs.

"I'm leaving Beacon Hills. I'm going to live with my sister, in New York."

"Early acceptance to Columbia, right?"

"Yeah." He didn't ask how Stiles knew, though he was dying to. Did you ask about me, he wanted to know. Do you care that I'm going?

"I hear things." Stiles answered anyway. "For real, though. What are you doing here, Derek?"

Derek had always loved his name on Stiles' lips. In Stiles' motormouth, it had always seemed warmer, and more precious somehow, than when the teacher called it out to take attendance at school. When he was 12, he used to keep himself up trying to figure out how it would sound if Stiles said his name the way he breathed Lydia. Like a prayer, like salvation, even at 10 years old.

"Do you ever wish things had gone differently? When we were kids, I mean."

Stiles took a long time to answer. His eyes were trained on the golden red glow of the sky from the setting sun. "Sure, I do."

There wasn't even wind to rustle in the trees to fill the silence, thanks to California in September. There was just the heavy, heated air and Derek's quiet indecision. He wished Stiles would turn a bit more so that he could see his whole face, though it probably wouldn't have helped Derek to know what he was thinking. Even straightforward, expressive Stiles could lie with his face if he wanted to, and he could do it well.

"I have to go." Stiles said, and this time Derek didn't try to stop him. Stiles paused of his own accord, just before he reached his beat up jeep. "I'll see you around?" He called, and the bottom of Derek's stomach jumped to his throat with stupid hope.

"You will."

"Cool. One more question. Why are you going so far away? To be with your sister?"

"Yeah," Derek said, which was the truth. He'd never tell the other reason though, which was that he knew New York was about as far as he could get away from Stiles when this whole thing inevitably fell apart.

Stiles shut the door behind him and leaned against it, eyes closed. His heart was still beating faster than normal, his face still warm and the fluttering in his stomach must have gone through several generations of caterpillar to butterfly by this point. All from the hour spent with Derek, sat on the bench under a tree that kept spitting tiny leaves at them, getting stuck in Derek's hair. Derek combed enough product through it that he often couldn't feel when the spiny leaves landed on his head, so it was up to Stiles to pick them out, messing up the artful tousle with every brush of his fingers.

Stiles couldn't ever figure out how Derek knew when he was visiting his mom. It wasn't like he had a schedule. He'd go after school, sometimes, or in the mornings on the weekend. Once or twice he'd gone during his lunch hour when he needed to clear his head. Despite that, Derek had managed to show up across the field at the cemetery every couple of weeks for the last couple of months.

They didn't talk that much, or at least, Derek didn't. But even Stiles never seemed to talk about anything important when he rambled on, about school or videogames or how likely was to get caught if he tripped Jackson on his face while they were running suicides.

They definitely didn't talk about the last 6 or so years.

Stiles opened his eyes when he heard his dad in the kitchen, and pushed off the door to join him.

His dad was at the counter, adding milk to a bowl of cereal and he greeted Stiles as he opened the fridge to see if there was anything inside that could be considered edible for an early lunch. The ice dispenser was making that annoying buzzing sound again, he noted, absently. He'd have to treat it to some percussion therapy before too long.

"How are you, kid?" His dad asked, around a mouth full of cornflakes.

That was a question that Stiles answered truthfully whenever it was posed to him. He'd say he was fine, volley the question back, and they'd both go on with their day, his dad usually off to work, or to sleep in the ancient armchair that made his back hurt every time, Stiles to start his never ending pile of homework.

There were things he could say instead. He could say that he still thought Harris had it out for him more than any other kid in his class, or that he was feeling good about his chances for valedictorian, even though he was still 2 years away from graduation. Or that hazel eyes and tightly clenched fists were making nightly appearances in his dreams.

The problem was that Stiles had trained himself not to bring these sorts of things up, because he was tired of being disappointed when the reaction wasn't what he was hoping for. Quite simply, his dad never seemed to be capable of being proud of him without some sort of caveat. He looked for fault, completely unconsciously, in everything Stiles did. Stiles busted his butt, and made it on the lacrosse team. His dad told him he shouldn't be too broken up about not making first line, before any congratulations. He got As in all his classes except one, his dad asked him what happened in AP calc. He told his dad he was crushing on Lydia Martin, he got a gentle speech about how he should keep his expectations realistic, lest he get his heart broken.

Stiles knew he didn't do it on purpose. He was proud of Stiles' GPA and came to as many games as he could. He was just a pessimist, who found it hard to see the good in things.

Stiles just learned to take the encouraging shoulder slaps and fatherly pep talks when he could get them offered freely, and never to ask for approval outright.

He would occasionally forget. It had been months since he'd told his dad he'd gotten a 98 on his English test, ("Where did the other two marks go?") and sworn, for the hundredth time to keep his cards close to his chest. Something about the buoyant, happy feeling in his chest, the companionable quiet in the kitchen, and the obnoxious crunching that Stiles was sure his mom would have complained about made him want to tell his dad how he really was, and what he was doing.

Now was as good a time as any. From the single used glass in the sink and the fact that his dad hadn't taken his uniform pants off yet, Stiles figured he'd had a couple of fingers of whiskey, enough to get him relaxed after a long night of work, but not enough to make him maudlin.

"I ran into Derek Hale today," he tried, thinking that he could ease into it.

"Oh yeah? What did that punk want?"

Disappointment bloomed in his sternum, and he closed the fridge firmly, if not loudly. "He's hardly a punk, Dad. He's got early acceptance to Columbia."

"Easy to do if you've got parents who could pay your whole way, with money left over to grease some palms. He wears that leather jacket in the middle of summer, and drives that muscle car around like he owns the place. He's either a punk or a pretentious snob like the rest of his family."

"How are they snobs? Sure, they're pretty wealthy, but it's not like they flaunt it."

"You don't call that gigantic house of theirs flaunting? How many people even live there? What do they need a mansion for?"

"Seven. And it was built by their great grand-something. They did an article in the paper about it last year, remember?"

The cereal bowl landed on the counter with a clunk. "Christ, because they'll never let anybody forget that they're the reason this town exists."

"Why is that such a bad thing? Why are they snobby, self-important assholes because they've got more money than us?"

"You watch your language, Stiles. And I think you better consider whether back talk like that is allowed in this house."

There was no resurrecting this conversation, and Stiles' sparking hope had been replaced by bitter resentment, so he bit off, "Yeah, what the fuck ever, Dad," and left the kitchen, taking the stairs two at a time to get to his room.

He regretted it as soon as he slammed the door.

"Stiles, get back down here. You don't talk to your father like that."

It was probably the whiplash from the high of the afternoon and the harsh crash of reality, but he figured that if he was in this deep, he might as well take the plunge.

"Nah, I'm good up here."

Stiles' pulse skyrocketed when he heard his father's footsteps on the stairs, and he whipped around to ineffectually lean on the door. He stumbled back into the room when his father shoved it open with surprising strength. The collar of Stiles' shirt is in his hands and yanked up to Stiles' chin in seconds, clenched knuckles digging into the soft underside of his jaw. He put his face right up in Stiles' when he started to rant about how the Hales were to blame for every misfortune and disappointment his dad had ever had, starting with the fact that John hadn't been elected Sheriff, completely ignoring the reality that he'd been fired and now worked as mall security, with no help from them. Now close enough to smell his father's breath, Stiles thought he might have made a miscalculation about much his dad had had to drink.

This was the part that Stiles hated the most, because his dad's coherence tended to dissolve quicker the louder he got. It was difficult to keep a blank face when he could feel tiny flecks of spit landing on it and he wanted nothing more than to let the tears come and wash the disgusting moisture away, but he'd learned that "waterworks" only made the rage burn hotter. This time, he tried to defend himself during the small pauses where his dad took a breath, but they were few and too short lived for a real rebuttal.

The fists stretching his T-shirt and pushing him further into the room started punctuating sentences with short jerks, and Stiles thought it might be wrapping up. As he pictured the sequence of events that was likely to follow: He'd be grounded, given the cold shoulder for a few days, then everything would blow over, go back to normal, like nothing had ever happened. His anger flared bright at the fucking predictability of it all.

"They ruined my life," his dad was yelling, with an added twist of his shirt. "They ruined yours!"

"No, dad, you did."

The slap came blessedly fast, with no build-up to tense against. It was only due to luck(and a dominant right hand) that Stiles fell against his mattress instead of into his desk, only chance that he just jammed his ribs with the footboard instead of adding a concussion to the prickling hot pain in his cheek.

"You talk to that fucking Hale kid again, I'll kill both of you!"

The door slammed and Stiles didn't even jump at the gunshot decibel. Didn't dare move. He kept his hand on his face where it had flown up as a reflex and left his legs twisted awkwardly in front of him. He'd stay there for a little while. He'd focus on the pounding of his blood under the skin of his cheek to keep his mind blank. A little while longer, because once he got up from the end of his bed, got a cold cloth, looked in the mirror, he wouldn't be just a living being who breathed and sweat and counted the beats of their pulse in their zygomatic arch. When he got up to look in the mirror, he'd be a kid whose dad had hit him hard enough to make him taste blood on his lip.

The late afternoon outside was too still and warm for there to be a breeze when the window opened, but he felt the displacement of air anyway, and heard the muted rasp of the window sliding open. There was no squeaking, no places where the wood stuck to the sides, though the paint around the frame was cracked and peeling. Stiles had maintained the smooth glide of the window though the last 6 years, though no one had come in or out of it in all that time.

"I'm not even going to ask how you knew," he said, when Derek shut the window behind him.

It used to happen sometimes when they were kids. Derek always seemed to know when Stiles was upset, and he'd bike over from his house and climb up to Stiles' room to comfort him.

Stiles was on his bed, on his back, staring up at the ceiling and reciting the lines of his favourite movies in his head. He'd tried putting one of them on but it had been too easy to zone out and start thinking again. This way was better, since he could remember five different villain monologues if he really concentrated and it kept his breathing from getting too fast and his palm from creeping up to his face, where his skin felt tight.

Stiles turned his head and watched, impassively, as Derek toed off his shoes and laid his leather jacket over the back of the desk chair. Stiles almost laughed at the sight of it. What a punk Derek was. Running around in that jacket. Sneaking into his friend's bedroom, sitting on his bed, pulling him up by the wrists into a tight hug-

The tears came when his head hit Derek's shoulder, the sobs clawing out of his throat like a parasite, so stifled and guttural that they hurt. Derek's soft shirt soaked up the salt greedily and muffled the minimal noise of his pain, so that anyone passing by outside of Stiles' door would have no clue that his soul was tearing a hole in itself trying to reconcile the father he loved with a stock image from a school assembly about domestic violence. It didn't matter, since they were alone in the house, but Stiles had never been able to cry noisily. He wondered if it would be therapeutic, to rail at the world's injustices out loud.

He wasn't sure how long he stayed like that, but when he'd cried himself out, he became aware of Derek's wide palm sliding smoothly over his shoulder blades. It was warm. And nice. He had a headache, and his eyes were scratchy but Derek's arms around him felt good and Stiles tightened his arms around Derek's middle.

Somehow, between lying on the bed and clinging to Derek like a 5 year old, he'd managed to throw his legs on either side of Derek, while Derek sat back on his heels, kneeling the V they made. It shouldn't have been comfortable. His back was arched awkwardly, and Derek's ankles would probably be hurting from the pressure of both his thighs and Stiles' on top of them, but he never wanted to move.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Derek asked, and Stiles felt the vibration of the soft murmur through his collarbone. It made him want to bare his neck and feel more of the delicious, deep voice that sent pleasant jitters down his spine.

"No." Stiles lifted his head from Derek's shoulder and dragged his hands up to rest on Derek's neck, his thumbs brushing against his stubbled jawline. His hazel-green eyes were so close like this, and so intent that Stiles could could the small flecks of true brown. "I really don't."

"Okay."

Stiles wet his dry lips with his tongue and watched Derek's eyes flick down to watch it, then trail slowly up back to Stiles' eyes. They were both breathing open-mouthed, almost panting, though neither had moved for ages. Stiles closed the distance between their mouths so slowly he thought maybe Derek hadn't noticed him coming closer, like some sort of optical illusion. For a second he panicked, convinced he was reading this all wrong, but then Derek met him in a kiss that was slow and soft.

Stiles let his eyes fall closed. In the back of his mind, he thought if he'd been watching from the outside, he might have been embarrassed at the small, wet sounds their mouths made as they met and parted again and again. Stiles had often rolled his eyes and fast-forwarded through frantic French kisses in rom coms he only watched on days he was home sick. Now, the tug of their lips and the cautious slide of Derek's tongue made Stiles' hands grab urgently to Derek's neck.

Stiles let Derek lead, for a while, following when he surged and retreated as the kiss got hotter and more vital. Eventually, Stiles squirmed, twisting his legs back underneath him so he was kneeling up, his body flush against Derek's and his neck tilted down so that they could keep kissing while Stiles rocked his hips, guttural sounds catching his throat again, this time muffled not by a cotton henley but by Derek's teeth clicking harshly against Stiles' in their haste. Derek brought his hands up to frame Stiles' face after that, gentling his working jaw and using his tongue to wring a keening noise out of Stiles.

They broke apart, Stiles' shaky fingers squeezing hard on the broad shoulders beneath his palms, capturing a moment of electrified peace to pant. By silent agreement, Derek grabbed the bottom of Stiles' shirt and tugged it up. Fingernails scratched against the skin of Stiles' ribs as his shirt came off and Stiles was so worked up that that tiny sting was enough to make him moan.

Stiles' shirt hit the floor the same time his back hit the bed, and both pairs of hands reached for the fly of his jeans. The jammed their fingers awkwardly in their hurry and Stiles took over with a silent huff of a laugh. When he finished and looked up, Derek had taken off his own shirt, revealing his chest and Stiles suddenly had no strength left in his arms with which to start pushing down his own waistband. Derek had to help, tugging at the stiff fabric while Stiles pushed his hips up to make room. It took some maneuvering, but eventually Stiles' jeans joined his shirt on the floor.

Derek spent a few moments running his hands over the newly bared skin, then, with an impatient snarl, flipped over onto his back next to Stiles to take off his own pants. Mostly naked, breathing hard and watching Derek as the bed trembled with the force of his undressing, it sort of hit Stiles for real. They were doing this. It wasn't his imagination, or wishful thinking that a bro sleepover would turn into something more.

Derek kicked his too-tight jeans off the end of the bed and turned over, the heat of his skin shocking in its sudden presence, all over Stiles' front, their legs, their arms. They were touching everywhere.

Derek's thumb brushed Stiles cheek as they kissed again, and his lips muffled Stiles' moans as he started to rock his hips down. Stiles got lost in the rhythm and everything that was wrong in his world faded away like a forgotten summer afternoon.

John sat in his car, the rusted junker he'd been forced to buy after he'd turned in his cruiser, outside the Beacon Hills Sheriff Department. His knuckles were white on the crumbling rubber of the steering wheel, leaving powdery black marks on his palms. He could clean them off. Grab a napkin and some hand sanitizer and scrub away the filth but it would only go skin deep, so he kept them, and wished they were red, like they should be.

He'd left his open bottle of comfort at home, and he wanted a drink more than he wanted his next breath, but he had something to do. Something important that he needed to be sober for.

In just a few more minutes, John was going to march himself inside the building and ask to be arrested. He'd give his statement, look into the eyes of the men and women he used to work alongside and tell them that he'd hit his baby boy hard enough to bruise.

John let his head fall to the steering wheel, unable to hold it up under the weight of his sick guilt.

He'd always been prone to blacking out when he drank in excess. He was drinking so much these days that he forgot half his life, and not by accident. When the weekend came and he had two whole days with no job to distract him and keep him tired, he'd drink more than he ever had in college. When Sunday night came, and he had to pull himself together for work the next day, he'd remember snatches, foggy blips after a certain point, but never the whole picture. Sometimes, in his worst nightmares, he'd almost remember wrapping a punishing hand around a skinny arm, or emphasizing a angry point hard enough to bruise.

He'd chalked them up as just that: Nightmares. Fantasies dreamt up by his brain, perhaps to try and scare him back on the right track.(There was no right track for him any more. He was at the end of his line, speeding toward a wall without Claudia to slow him down.) Now, he had to wrack his brain, trying to remember those dreams to see if he could tell them from memories. And if they were? He figured if he could tell absolutely that all those flashes of violence were more than nightmares, he wouldn't be turning himself in.

He'd be stepping out into traffic.

A knock on the passenger window had John jumping to look. Deputy Parrish waved cheerily on the other side of the glass. John rolled down the window and remembered how young Jordan had seemed when John had cleared out his desk to go. He'd just started with the department and was green as John had been, but he'd looked right in the uniform, comfortable, even then.

"John! Good to see you, sir."

"You too, Jordan. You too."

Parrish had always been a shrewd guy. It had earned him John's respect early on, but now it worked against him. "How've you been keeping, John?" Parrish asked, and it was more probing, more serious than the how-are-yas casually thrown into normal conversation, that never really required an honest answer, or one at all. Parrish hadn't seen him in a couple of years, probably, and had no idea what he looked like on a good day, so for him to be asking in that softly sympathetic tone of voice, John figured he must look like shit. Hell, he felt like shit.

"I'm fine, Deputy." Keep that distance, John decided. Placate his natural curiosity and end this train wreck of a conversation, so he could get on with his fiery plane crash of a life.

"How's Stiles?"

"He's good." God, I hope he's good. If he isn't, it's on me.

"That's good." Parrish thumped the car door firmly, but with enough care that John thought he might be wishing it was John's shoulder he was patting. "Well, tell him I say hi. And don't work too hard. Take care of yourself. You're all that boy has left."

John watched him go with a new wound adding fresh blood to the ones still freely flowing. Parrish was right. He couldn't ask Stiles if all of those dreams had left marks in the physical world. He couldn't. If the answer was yes, John would not be long for this world. It was better to wonder, to numb the pain with drink and keep inching toward a slower death. He couldn't leave Stiles. Not right now. Not yet.

John started the car and drove away.

Derek lay face down on the bed, his boxers riding low on his hips. Stiles traced his fingers up Derek's back, starting all the way down from his ass, and leaving goosebumps all the way up to the nape of his neck. On his way back down, his fingertips paused on the triskele tattoo, which had only just stopped peeling and itching a month ago, despite how quick he usually healed.

"How hard did your mom kill you for this?"

"It wasn't too bad." Derek shrugged, jostling Stiles' palm, which he'd flattened to cover the black spirals. "She was more upset that the guy accepted my obviously fake ID." Never mind that it had been less than 3 months until Derek was 18.

"Hey, it's not the tattoo parlour's fault that you look like you look like you're 30."

It had always been like this. Even when they were kids, they had this banter, could tease each other mercilessly without ever going too far. Derek smiled and nestled his face deeper into the pillow. The dying sun was shining through the window, painting stripes across their legs and the Spider-Man sheets. Stiles was curled up next to him, and Derek wanted to commit this moment, and the heated ones that had preceded it, to his memory, since God knew, it might be fleeting.

"What does it mean? And don't give me any bullshit about it just looking cool, like Jackson's tribal monstrosity." Stiles gave the tattoo one more perfunctory pat, then flipped onto his back, his head twisted toward Derek. "I know you. It's got some deep and philosophical meaning."

"It means past, present and future. It reminds me that everything I've ever done or will do, and everyone I've met, or have yet to meet is a part of me."

"Which part am I?"

Derek lifted himself up on his elbows, leaned over and kissed Stiles on his red, red lips, gently, so he didn't irritate the soft skin any more. "That's up to you."

Derek could see the moment when Stiles closes up, but he chose to ignore it. He brought his hand up to stroke Stiles' cheek with his thumb, even as Stiles' body went tense and his eyes shuttered. Stiles' hand closed around Derek's and pulled it to his chest, cradling it between both of his palms. Derek wanted to kiss him again, harder this time, pin him down and make the tension leave his body for just a little longer, but they were both spent, and Derek had, apparently, overstayed his welcome.

"My dad could be back any time," Stiles murmured, staring down at the hand clutched to his chest, instead of in Derek's face.

Derek nodded. He could take the hint. Stiles let go of his hand and he left the ruined bed, locating the clothes they'd abandoned earlier. By the time he'd pulled on his shoes, Stiles was somewhat presentable as well, and stood by the window, holding it open.

Derek gave in to his urge and kissed him one final time before he left. It was easy to pretend for a moment that this was the first of many goodbye kisses, quickly stolen or freely given when one of them had to leave, a brief token of affection to tide them over until the next and the next and the next.

Stiles didn't react to this kiss like he had all the ones before. He stood frozen and allowed Derek to touch his lips to his, with none of the warmth or surging responsiveness. The stillness chased away any fantasies he had running around his brain, and closed up his throat with disappointment, but as he pulled away, Stiles' lips clung to his a little longer than was necessary, leaning forward just a tiny bit into Derek's retreat.

Derek was out the window and dropping down from the eavestrough in seconds, shaking his head to clear it of visions of lazy mornings, shared showers and hectic family dinners.

Stiles lobbed the ball to his dad and held back his wince at the tiny twinge in his ribs. When he'd fallen yesterday after-he'd hit the footboard pretty hard. It hadn't bruised much, but Stiles had poked the fading yellowy brown marks in the bathroom that morning, and he was being extra careful.

He could have begged off, told his dad he was too tired to throw a ball around, but he didn't have the heart. For one, the last time Stiles' dad had asked if he wanted to go outside and do something so stereotypically white middle-class family had been approximately never.(Not true, actually. Just under 8 years.) For another, Stiles' dad might be mall security, now, but he'd been a damn good cop. He could sense a lie, if Stiles was telling one, and could piece together the true reason for his refusal, as well as a few back up excuses, each worse than the next.

So, Stiles grabbed his crosse and a ball he'd shoved in the corner of his gym bag and they drove out here, a small field of flat grass on the edge of the west side of the preserve, both of them studiously ignoring how close this plot of land was to the cemetery. It was steps, really, if they cut through the jutting wall of trees, like Derek always did.

It was easy to avoid conversation when they were 15 feet away from each other, so Stiles threw himself into their game. The sun was pretty warm this time of day, so his skin felt uncomfortably moist, and his heart rate spiked every time his dad tossed the ball back at him, but he had to admit it was kind of nice. He could lose himself in the rhythm of the back and forth of the ball and forget that they had ever been anything but a father and son who loved each other just hanging out.

Which, of course, was why Derek Hale's ostentatious black Camaro had to roll up to the edge of the field. Don't turn off the car, Derek, Stiles pleaded, silently. Just drive away. I can't deal with you right now.

No such luck. Derek unfolded from the driver's seat and, mercifully, hovered awkwardly by the open door. Stiles tore his eyes away from the picture he made, leaning by that gorgeous car, in his stupid leather jacket, the sun casting shadows in the hollows of cheeks, smooth from that morning's razor. His dad's hand was clenched tight around the ball that he still held, and his shoulders were tensed in that way Stiles knew led to nothing good.

"It's fine, Dad," Stiles rushed to say, and raised his hands placatingly. "Just give me a minute."

Stiles jogged over to the car, feeling like the world was in slow motion. He stopped at the passenger side of the car. He needed the barrier the car made between them, or it would have been too easy to fall forward into another long embrace, and let go all the tension he was carrying in his shoulders.

He'd never do that, though. His dad was behind him, and he knew every move they made was being watched by those eagle eyes. There was no choice being made, here. Stiles didn't have to weigh any pros or cons. It didn't matter what kind of home life he had to look forward to, subtly and carefully trying to keep his father from drinking himself to death.

He would always choose his dad. If it meant that he had to cut Derek loose as finally as possible, then he would do it.

"You have to go."

"Why?"

Derek didn't try to hide the fact that he was angry, and Stiles could appreciate that. He would be angry too, if someone he cared about and had had awesome(tender, beautiful) sex with threw him over for their deadbeat parent.

"You just have to. Don't talk to me anymore."

"Stiles."

"Stop. I can't-" What couldn't he do? He couldn't keep sneaking around with Derek when he'd never be able to acknowledge him in public. He couldn't just be Derek's fuckbuddy when the mood struck them. He couldn't entertain the fantasy that his life was just his own.

"I can't be seen with you anymore," he finally decided on, and he didn't wait to see Derek's reaction. He turned away from him and walked quickly back to his dad.

"What did he want?" His dad asked, with way too much venom for such a simple question about a teenager.

"Nothing." Stiles' chest hurt as he heard Derek's car start behind him with a rumble. "He didn't want anything I could give him."

Derek sped away, wishing the spitting of loose gravel was loud enough to cover Stiles' words. He could smell the salt of unshed tears when Stiles had told him to go, but he heard no stutter in Stiles' heartbeat as he assured his dad that Derek wanted nothing. Was nothing.

Going to see Stiles had been stupid thing to do. He'd been high off the possibilities of the day before, and had foolishly hoped that Stiles might start making up for 6 years of being voluntarily under his father's thumb and make a choice that would make him happy.

Derek wouldn't tell his mother or any police officer about what John had done to Stiles. He had no proof, and Stiles would deny it to his last breath. Plus, Stiles would never forgive him, and Derek wasn't selfless enough to be able to hand that.

Derek pulled into his spot at the end of their long driveway and was less than human before he'd cleared the car door. He could hear Cora calling his name from the porch, but he was too far gone to care. He'd made a gamble and lost, and he needed time to heal from his stupid mistake.

Stiles knew when Derek entered the cafeteria on Monday, because he felt the weight of eyes on him. Or maybe he'd just developed a sixth Derek-sense after all these years of them orbiting each other.

He could picture Derek, unashamedly unpacking the lunch his mother made him and packed with care in a brown paper bag every day, exchanging manly nods with Boyd and Isaac, his fellow seniors. Stiles didn't want to look, but he wanted Derek to be watching him out of the corner of his eye. He wanted Derek to pine, though it was selfish. Stiles wondered if selfishness could be hereditary. He had too small a pool to go on.

Lydia sat next down to him, dropping her salad-laden tray on the table and ignoring him completely. Painfully aware of his potential audience, he turned his chair toward hers and straddled it, leaning obviously into her space plastering on a dopey smile. She rebuffed him, as she always did, so he turned his chair back and slouched, accepting Scott and Allison's sympathetic smiles with a fake self-deprecating one.

His ritual performed, he finally looked over to Derek's table. Derek was staring at them, his face set in his default serial killer blankness. But Stiles could see the cracks in that mask, because his was just as flawed.

"Do you want to go?"

Scott's voice, and his steadying hand on his shoulder, startled him out of his staredown with Derek. He was looking at Stiles with his trademark concerned puppy face.

"Nah, I'm good. Thanks, bro."

Stiles had never told Scott why he and Derek weren't friends anymore. He'd just given him the barest details. We grew up together. Some things changed, now we don't talk. He'd allowed Scott to assume some things, so whenever they were in the same place as Derek, Scott glared in his direction, took Stiles' shoulder in his brotherly grip and tugged them as far away as possible.

Stiles let him do it, never said 'it's my fault. I'm the shithead who can't tell his dad to fuck off for once in his life.' It was nice to have someone worry about his feelings and give him concerned puppy dog looks. Plus, the comforting hand on his arm served the other purpose of holding him back from running into Derek's arms and never letting go.