He was staying home sick on either the worst or second worst day of his life. Stiles quite enjoyed staying home sick, especially since he was only suffering from a minor fever, so he didn't even feel that bad. Just bad enough to warrant staying home sick and being pampered by the Hales. It was Memorial Day, so George, Peter, and Kiana didn't have work, and Freddie didn't have school. BHHS, since it was chartered by the devil, was still in session, to the annoyance of Stiles' classmates. The point was, Stiles had a lot of company for his convalescence, even if he didn't get Derek, who had a Government test that day. Stiles almost didn't mind, since Derek, who had never been sick a day in his life, always got clingy and fretted overmuch when Stiles got a cold. Like, to the point of wiping Stiles' nose. Unnecessary to the nth degree.
Stiles was feeling well enough that after lunch, he went on a walk through the woods outside. Walking around helped clear his nose, and the warm, late spring air soothed his headache. He ran his hands over the trees he passed, quick pats to say hello. Stiles saw the old hollow tree, and sat underneath it for old time's sake. Their initials had been inexpertly scratched onto it somewhere, and Stiles leaned back to try and find them on the ceiling of the old wooden cave.
And then he fell asleep, because that was what happened when Stiles got put on cold medicine.
Stiles could have gone his whole life without knowing that smelling smoke will wake him up in a heartbeat. He stuck his head out of the tree, then started stumbling his way back to the house. If there was a fire somewhere, he would prefer not to be in the very flammable forest. He'd seen enough forest fires on the news to know that California forest fires could burn long and hot and dry and fatal.
Except, it turned out, there was no forest fire.
Stiles' first thought was "what are the chances?" Callous, maybe, but a good question. How could this happen twice to the same person in less than twenty years? His second thought was "thank god Derek is at school," and his third was "fire department fire department where is the fire department please please please."
The Hale House, burning, looked odd. Considering that Stiles' whole life was currently being destroyed inside of it, the outside seemed pretty intact. It was only the surprisingly loud noises that the fire made as it roared through the interior of the house, and the crimson brightness visible through each and every one of the windows that revealed the destruction taking place.
First, Stiles sprinted in a circle around the house. The Hales had probably gotten out, or there was a fire engine on the other side that he couldn't see, or something. It's not like they wouldn't have noticed the raging house fire.
Apparently not. Stiles finished his lap of the house with a blossoming sense of panic in his chest making it hard to breathe. He frantically dug in the pocket of his pajama pants, hoping that he had forethought to bring his phone with him into the woods.
He had. The 911 operator's voice was so calm was she asked him questions that Stiles felt shaky, like he wasn't quite reaching reality.
"Where is the fire sir?"
Stiles opened the front door, using the sleeve of his red hoodie to keep from scalding his hand.
"Do you know how long it's been burning?"
Everything was smoke. Black and smoggy. To think Stiles had once liked the smell of candles.
"Have the neighbors been evacuated?"
No neighbors. Nobody else who could have been there, could have stopped it. Where was everyone?
"Is there anyone in the house?"
Good question, honey.
"Yes! Yes! My Uncle Peter, I see him!"
Peter, always the one with a spring in his step, was skidding down the stairs, barely on two feet, soot covering most of his face, which looked badly burnt. Stiles hooked two hands under his armpits and started dragging Peter backwards. Get him out, get him out, get them all out.
"Peter! Where is everyone?"
Both Stiles and the operator heard his reply. "Dead... checked... were asleep when..."
The air outside the house was so much cooler and cleaner, but Stiles could barely take it into his lungs.
"I'm... I'm sorry sir," the operator said, even her calm professional voice cracking. "There's a fire truck on the way to your location."
Peter wheezed, and his eyes closed.
"Peter! Peter!"
His heart was beating, but his eyes wouldn't open.
I'm sorry sir.
So sorry.
Looks like everything has been burned away, all over again. Sorry.
A veritable flotilla of emergency vehicles show up at the scene. Peter was immediately driven off to intensive care, but Stiles stayed behind to get checked out for smoke inhalation and watch the firemen direct water streams at the house. They were filled with frantic urgency as they barked orders back and forth, brandishing hoses and those fireman axes, but Stiles just felt numb. Killed in their sleep. It could have been worse. Of course, they could have also not been killed at all.
There was a squealing noise from the driveway, and Derek's camaro pulled up. He parked the car terribly, and left the door open as he flew out, head whipping back and forth as he ran towards the nearest firefighter, spewing frantic questions. Stiles could tell from where he sat inside the ambulance that Derek was trying very hard not to wolf out. The firefighter pointed towards the ambulance and Derek spun around, then rushed to Stiles faster than was necessarily human.
But Stiles was wrapped up in a reassuring, desperate hug before he could worry about what the emergency responders saw. Derek huffed out shaky breaths against his ear. "Stiles... what... how... didn't even know if you were alive, jesus."
So Stiles choked out one of the hardest explanations of his life, and then he and Derek just sobbed and sobbed hot tears and hung onto each other until one of the paramedics gently pried one of Stiles' arms away to take his blood pressure. There was something reassuring about the methodical way that they did their job. Detached bedside manner, maybe, but no amount of consolations or back pats would make Stiles feel better.
They camped out beside Peter's bedside for two days before Laura showed up, walking into the room dazed and disoriented. Part of it was grief, and part of it was the redeye she'd taken from NYU to get home.
"I'll let you guys talk for a few minutes," the social worker said in the apologetic whisper she used for everything.
Laura watched the social worker go, then collapsed forward so that she could wrap her arms around Stiles, and by association Derek, who hadn't removed his arms from around Stiles' waist for more than a few minutes in the past two days.
"Are you guys okay? Ugh, stupid question. I mean, are you physically okay?"
Stiles nodded tiredly. "Yeah. Derek's been pretty quiet though. The doctors are saying that it's trauma. He hasn't talked since I had to break the news at-at the house."
Laura's eyebrows, almost a carbon copy of Derek's, pulled up in sympathy. "Oh, Der-Bear," she breathed as she ran a soothing hand down the back of his neck.
When she tried to copy the motion on Stiles' neck. Derek growled and snapped his teeth at her. Laura snapped back, red eyes glowing. They would never look right on anybody but George, in Stiles' opinion.
"Sorry," Stiles pressed Derek's head into his shoulder to get him to stop looking Laura in the eyes, "he's been doing that too. It's been worse with people he doesn't know though. One of the doctors tried to touch my shoulder and he almost bit his hand off. It's like having a really dedicated bodyguard that keeps almost getting us kicked out of the hospital."
Laura rubbed at her temples, leaning forward to put her elbows on her knees. "We're going to be having a rough time, I can tell."
The next few weeks found Laura, Derek, and Stiles existing in a sort of limbo. They'd been pulled out of school for obvious reasons, and there was nowhere to go home to, so the three survivors camped out in a hotel room a mile or so away from the hospital, cut off from any semblance of normality.
Laura would sit at the little hotel desk, and use the flimsy Ramada pens to fill out piles of confusing paperwork about insurance claims, custody, lawyers, wills, cremation, invitations to the funeral (a single, combined one for all of the people lost,) medical bills, and an obituary in the local paper. Stiles and Derek would stay in one of the rigid hotel beds for most of the day, staring at the wall because everything on the TV seemed so flat and unreal. As it was, Stiles had Derek's face nestled against the back of his neck, and Derek's wide hands drifting across his torso, making sure Stiles was all still there. That felt more real than the tinny voices drifting out of the TV. It felt more real than the rest of his life at the moment.
When Laura would leave to get food from the convenience store down the street, (Derek freaked out when room service came in,) Derek's hands would verge lower, and he would kiss gently, gently at Stiles' face, working his silent way across Stiles' body like he was made of glass. Stiles wanted the Derek he would trade inside jokes with and poke gentle fun at, but it seemed like too much to ask for when Derek had lost so much. Besides, worrying about Derek's mental state gave Stiles something to do other than think about how his second family had just died, and how if he had gotten onto the scene any earlier, then maybe Laura wouldn't have to be filling out forms for three separate life insurance claims.
They would be rolling in money, apparently. Stiles personally got quite a bit out of George and Kiana's wills, something that, when he found out, made him bury his face into Derek's chest and not come out for a long time. They had been such good people, and had given him so much already.
The weeks dragged on. Laura would have taken them back to New York already, but there was still the chance that Peter would come out of his coma. Still, as time wore on, the hope that he would grew fainter and fainter. They daydreamed about it. Peter miraculously reviving, even though his brain waves showed about as much variation as those of an artichoke. He was a proper adult, not like Laura, terrified and barely out of her teens. He'd come in on a white horse, capable, responsible, as sarcastic as ever, and then Derek and Stiles wouldn't have to move to follow Laura back to college. They'd have a legal guardian that had actually acted as a parent for most of their formative years. Laura herself was just as eager for Peter to wake up. In her words, "not that I don't want to be your mom at twenty, Stiles, but I don't want to be your mom at twenty. Especially like this." Then she reached out to flick his ear like she used to, but Derek clawed at her and she had to withdraw.
Laura was "getting a breath of fresh air" on the hotel balcony when Stiles got a paper cut from a piece of hotel stationary on the desk. Derek was immediately next to him, whining low in his throat and licking at the thin little red slice that had been cut into the pad of his index finger.
"Derek, Derek," Stiles tried to pull his finger away, "this is getting so out of hand I can't even."
Blue-gray-sad eyes flicked up to look at Stiles' face. His voice was rough from disuse."I-you... don't get hurt, okay?" Derek licked again at Stiles' finger. "Okay? No more..."
Oh. If that was all. Stiles wordlessly grabbed Derek's hand, and they went to the bathroom to patch up Stiles' finger with the sparse first aid kit under the kit. Then he walked Derek over to the bed, kissed his forehead, and told him to wait for a second, he had to talk to Laura.
A few minutes later, Laura leaned against the balcony railing and let out a long breath. "Are you sure?"
Stiles raised an eyebrow. It was a habit he'd picked up. "No, I'm asking you because I have no idea what I want. What do you think, Laura?"
"Okay, okay, Mr. Touchy. I've just got to make sure, informed consent and all that."
"Derek's going to freak out, I'm warning you right now."
"I'm his older sister and his Alpha," Laura chuckled darkly, "and you don't think I can take it."
"I've just got to make sure," Stiles mimicked.
"Smartass," Laura grumbled before leaning in and sinking her fangs into Stiles' shoulder.
A howl rose up from inside the room, and the sliding glass door tore open, slamming against its track and rebounding violently. Derek clawed at Laura, opening slashes on her arms that immediately healed over before she slammed him backwards against the railing with a well aimed kick. Withdrawing her fangs gingerly from Stiles' flesh, she pivoted on the ball of one foot to roar in Derek's face until he leaned so far backwards that he was in danger of falling off of the balcony and into the pool.
Once she was certain that Derek had been duly cowed, Laura stalked back inside the hotel room, closing the injured door behind her as she growled under her breath about not signing up for this.
Derek ran a shaking hand over Stiles' shoulder, where a crescent moon of ripped skin was etched.
"I know, I know," Stiles sighed, sitting next to Derek on the grimy, chilled tile of the balcony floor. He nudged Derek with his uninjured shoulder. "Stiles got another boo-boo. But," he said, smirking as he pulled the band-aid off of his finger, "he won't be getting any more."
The pale line of where Stiles' finger had been split open was gone, despite having been cut only a few short minutes earlier.
"Would you look at that," he murmured, rubbing a thumb across his finger, "none of you ever said how weird this felt. Could I jump off this balcony and be alright?"
"D-don't jump off the balcony," Derek choked out.
Stiles rolled his eyes. "My point is that I'm an indestructible werewolf now. Or, on my way. You know, I still don't really know how long it takes for the bite to really take hold. You'd think there'd be a handbook or something, but no."
Derek insinuated an arm between Stiles' back and the railing, and pulled Stiles into his lap.
"Now there's the manhandling Derek I know."
"Well, here's the impulsive Stiles I know."
Stiles shrugged. He wasn't going to apologize.
"Seriously, Stiles. Big life decisions shouldn't be made because you think I'd like the result."
Punching Derek lightly on the chest, Stiles said calmly, "hey, I always say I don't do enough for you, don't I?"
Derek shook his head ruefully, then pulled Stiles in so he could stick his tongue in Stiles' mouth.
Laura's annoyed voice filtered out of the room. "You're going to give everybody a show if you stay out there!"
Her little brother groaned, thudding his head against the railing behind him.
"Ah well," Stiles stood up, and pulled Derek with him. "Let's go inside. We could pretend it's our den, what do you say?" He winked.
Derek grimaced. "Old reference."
"I've always been a fan of retro."
"Stiles, that isn't even retro, it's just a kind of outdated and obscure throwback to a game-"
"-seduction tactic!"
"I was five!"
"You planned ahead!"
"Boys!"
Their neighbors complained about the shouting, but nobody cared.
The funeral was held almost a full month after the fire, partially because it took a while to rally all of the attendees that George and Kiana and even Freddie would have wanted there, but also because it had taken poor Laura a while to put the service together all on her own, while Derek and Stiles lazed around in their shared depressive fugue state.
The service was held in the church that George and Kiana were married in, and subsequently never attended. Three urns, the smallest one in the middle, were laid out on a table in the center of the dais, and those that had known the departed took turns standing at the podium and spilling out memories and platitudes into the squealing microphone that echoed around the drafty chapel.
It hurt, not that Stiles expected any less. He squeezed Derek's hand and they sat, dressed in black, on the first bench. They stood and sat when they were supposed to, and they burst into tears like everyone else when Freddie's best friend, all of eleven, sniffled out a few words from where he stood, propped up on a stool behind the podium.
Peter wasn't there, but Stiles saw Scott, Allison, Boyd, Erica and Isaac sitting in a solemn row on one of the pews. Laura must have invited them, because Stiles was just realizing that he hadn't talked to them in months. It didn't feel right, but Stiles didn't even know what he would say now. Hey guys, I'm doubly orphaned and also a werewolf now. What have you been up to?
"I thought that all funerals were supposed to be accompanied by rain," Stiles said tonelessly as they filtered out of the church, and looked up at the bright June sky.
Derek just shook his head. His stubble matched his suit. He looked like he had been swallowed up by a shadow, and only his hands and face had been spared. Stiles, had he not known him, would have pegged Derek as a brooding anti-hero from a mile away.
Finally, he replied, "There'll be more rain in New York."
Stiles snorted humorlessly. "Appropriate."
They packed up the belongings that they had, some salvaged, most newly bought, not long afterwards. It was faintly ridiculous that they had to buy suitcases to put their things in, because they didn't even have those anymore. Not that Stiles was too bothered by it. Possessions weren't exactly number one on his list of priorities. The fire had burned away everything that wasn't essential, until all that Stiles cared about was that the people he loved were happy and alive.
Derek and Stiles were returning from one last visit with Peter when Stiles' phone rang. It hadn't done so in weeks, there was nobody who would call him that he wasn't constantly surrounded by.
"Stiles? Is this still your number?"
"Allison? Yeah. What is it, homegirl?"
"Um," her voice shook, and Stiles gripped the phone tighter, casting a dubious look at Derek, who could hear every word. "I, uh, I have something to tell you."
"Yeah?"
"So, my family... well, hold on, you probably know some of this. Well, maybe. I don't know. I'm not even sure if they're crazy or I'm crazy, but a whole bunch of them just got out of prison -long story, has to do with gun smuggling, it doesn't matter- and they started going on about how I needed to get involved in the family tradition of -God this sounds crazy- the point is, they think you're werewolves-"
"We are."
Derek shot Stiles an exasperated look, and Stiles just gave him a "what?" expression back.
"Oh. Oh, okay. I wasn't going to ask, but... hm. So I guess you'll take me seriously when I say that my Aunt Kate just told me that she burned down your house because it was full of werewolves."
"Stiles? Are you there?" Allison must have gotten irritated with the silence on the line. How long had it been since Stiles said something?
"W-yeah. Yeah. Um, I think we're going to have to postpone our move to New York."
So it was that the next day, Stiles and Derek went to meet Allison, who brought Scott, who brought Isaac, who brought Erica, who brought Boyd to the library, where they staked out a study room and pored over microfiche, an honest to god book on werewolf hunting that Allison's crazy grandfather gave her, (which led to everybody else finding out about werewolves in the most awkward way possible,) and the bits of police reports that they could access legally.
Eventually, Stiles got frustrated with the limited nature of the police reports they could read, and called Lydia, asking her to bring her hacker friend Danny. Danny brought Jackson for some reason, but it turned out that the guy wasn't too much of a jackass when Lydia was around to glare at him until he calmed down.
Together, they read until their eyes hurt, tossed theories back and forth until the librarians opened the door to their room and asked them to keep it down, and ate the junk food that Scott would bring in at regular intervals until they overdosed on it. It was the most fun Stiles ever had investigating a felony.
Actually, multiple felonies, since as they went over the evidence they managed to compile, it was looking more and more like Kate was also behind Stiles' house burning down all those years ago. Stiles' father had arrested her brother and dad, and she, a woman who had never been playing with a full deck of cards and a tendency for pyromania, burned down the house in revenge. She moved away, but then, knowing that her family would be getting out of prison and wanting to be near them, moved back to Beacon Hills over a decade later, when she realized that there was a family of werewolves living in the town. Her hunter upbringing wouldn't let that stand, and the rest is bloody, terrible history.
They didn't tell the Sheriff that version when they brought their evidence to the station. Sheriff Mills heard the story in which Kate Argent, fueled by vengeance and insanity, realized when she came back to Beacon Hills that a member of the Stilinski family survived, and decided to finish Stiles off, but missed and just got most of the Hale family.
Either way, four months later, Kate Mary Argent was arrested for two accounts of arson, and five counts of murder in the first degree. Stiles and Derek still have a copy of the official indictment (given to them illegally by an old friend of Stiles' father) framed in a corner of their apartment somewhere.
On the day that Kate was convicted in court, Derek found Stiles outside the courthouse, leaning against one of the lighthouse statues by the entrance and hyperventilating.
He ran his hands over Stiles' face and neck, looking no small amount of terrified. Seeing Derek's big broody face scared made Stiles laugh, but it came out high and breathy and quick.
"Stiles, Stiles what is it?"
Stiles shook his head mutely. "I just... my family was murdered. Both of them. It just sort of hit me when they were reading the sentence. It's like," Stiles waved a hand hopelessly, "like there was this part of me my whole life that was really angry that I never knew why my parents died, and now it's been filled and," Stiles huffed out a hysterical breath, "what do I even do now?"
Derek pulled Stiles against his chest. "First of all," he said, the rumble of his chest already working to calm Stiles down, "breathe slower."
He waited until Stiles was less in danger of passing out, (could Stiles even pass out anymore? Was he capable? There really should be a handbook,) then continued, "then we do whatever we want with the rest of our lives."
Derek seemed surprised when Stiles started laughing raucously. "Seriously, that's all you've got? Vague, man. Very vague. I will give you credit for making a grand romantic statement though."
Derek scowled halfheartedly. "Here's something specific: I seem to remember some plans to get married when we grow up."
That shut Stiles up. "Oh."
"How's that for a grand romantic statement?"
"Pretty good," Stiles squeaked.
That's Stiles' story about how Derek proposed. If you want, you can listen to Derek say that his official proposal was on top of the Empire State Building, after a day of traipsing around their favorite spots in the city, but that's totally not the right version. Stiles prefers his, honestly. It came first, and he never needed an Empire State Building to convince him to say yes. He just needed Derek.
XXXXX
I'll post an epilogue, then that's all, folks. Tell me what you thought!