A/N: i'm gonna spend most of sunday morning stuck on a plane, so i don't know if i'll be able to update this before the new years, but i'll make it up to you guys and update two days in a row if that happens ~
happy holidays to everyone!
warnings for descriptions of a panic attack.
After waking up to Stiles blasting Florence and the Machine again - no doubt in an (successful) attempt to make Derek angry and hit him in the face with a pillow -, they each take a quick shower and go out to find something to eat. They end up in the same diner they were in last night and order breakfast, Stiles downing three cups of coffee before he even finishes eating his pancakes.
Adding the caffeine rush to the excitement of going to the Grand Canyon Skywalk, Stiles can't keep still. He is buzzing with excitement in his seat all the way there, and he only stops bobbing his legs up and down when Derek puts his hand over the boy's knee. Stiles just looks at him and grins.
At the moment they are both leaning over the ledge of the skywalk – as they have been doing over the past half hour or so-, as far as the security bar will let them, and staring down.
"This feels…," Derek trails off. He has a hand curled in the back of Stiles' plaid shirt, not trusting him to not somehow find a way to trip on something and fall off the skywalk, even if the security bar and protective glass are on his way.
"Like falling," Stiles completes, and Derek can hear the awe in his voice.
And that's exactly what it feels like, to be standing in suspended glass and staring down at nothing but empty space. Like you're floating on air, and the glass under your feet could disappear at any moment. It makes Derek's stomach flip, like he's been caught doing something that he shouldn't. Like he's too close to something he doesn't quite know what it is yet. He can't explain it. It just feels… like falling.
"We need pictures," Stiles says.
"You mean you need pictures," Derek corrects.
Stiles rolls his eyes. "Come on, don't be such a sourface."
"I don't like this," Derek says.
"You don't have to like it," Stiles says, coming up to him and throwing an arm over his shoulders. He stops a bystander and asks him to take their picture, handing over the camera.
"You have to smile," Stiles tells Derek.
"I don't have to do anything."
"Please," Stiles pouts.
Derek takes a long suffering sigh and turns to the camera, giving it his best smile. In the years after the fire, Laura would tell him he should smile more.
"Your smile is like a fucking ray of sunshine, Derek," she'd say. "You should use it more. Even if it's just to get what you want, or get out of stuff you don't want to do."
So Derek smiles his sunshine smile, and Stiles tightens his hold on him for the picture. Derek finds he likes having Stiles plastered on his side, how he's not hesitant to touch him, hug him, or playfully punch him in the shoulder. He missed this type of carefree affection. And not satisfied with having that one picture of the two of them together, Stiles makes Derek take some more pictures of him and the view from the skywalk so he can send them back to the Sheriff.
"Dad needs to make sure you didn't ditch me somewhere," Stiles tells him.
"I'm trying my best not to, but the idea is so tempting at times," Derek replies.
"Please don't make jokes," Stiles says. "You're not good at them. Or at being funny, like, at all. In fact, you should probably stick to scowling at people and looking intimidating and leave all the joking to me."
"So I should leave being annoying and clumsy to you too, right?"
Stiles narrows his eyes at Derek, but there's a small smile playing at his lips that tells Derek he's not mad. They walk around the skywalk some more, and as Derek takes in the view before him, he can't help but feel a little helpless, like he doesn't belong. After the fire, this feeling of having been torn to pieces and sewn back together wrong was a somewhat constant in his life.
After what Derek considers an exaggerated amount of pictures Stiles starts complaining about wanting to get something to eat, so they decide to bid the Grand Canyon goodbye and go on their way.
It's hard not to think about everything in the context of what it would be like if Laura was here, to not want to curl up in a ball and remain in the fetal position until they reach New York. Or destroy something just to know that he isn't the only one that's broken, but Derek is trying.
Derek says this to Stiles – the part about what it would be like if Laura was here, because he doesn't think Stiles would appreciate the rest of it -, when they find yet another diner to have lunch in.
"Think of it this way," Stiles says through a mouthful of fries. "You're experiencing everything she'll never get to?"
"You don't sound so sure," Derek raises an eyebrow at him.
"Shut up," Stiles says, stuffing more food in his mouth. "It's, like… a tribute or something."
It's comforting, he guesses, to think of it that way. He grabs the camera Stiles left on top of the table and takes a picture of him as he is taking a sip of his drink. Stiles startles at the flash and looks up, managing to spill some of his drink on the table. Derek just offers him a napkin and takes another picture of him cleaning up the mess.
"Not that I don't mind," Stiles says when the table is dry again. "But what's with all the pictures?"
"You told me your dad needs to know I didn't leave you on a ditch somewhere," Derek shrugs. "I thought it would be nice if he saw you weren't starving to death too."
Stiles huffs at that, and then calls the waitress over to order dessert.
"Can we have some chocolate ice cream, please?" he beams at her. "Oh! And some more fries?"
The waitress tells them she'd be back shortly with their order, and when Stiles turns back to him Derek asks, "Fries? You sure you need some more?"
"They're not for me, dumbass. They're for you."
"For me?"
"Yeah," Stiles nods. "You told me you liked to eat fries with your ice cream, right? So I asked fries with our ice cream."
"You remembered that."
"I remember lots of things," Stiles says, and there's that underlying sadness on his tone again.
After wasting the day walking around in the city, Stiles seems anxious to hit the road and put some serious mileage behind them, so they head down to Albuquerque. He drives all through the night, and when he thinks Derek is asleep, he slips in some Bon Jovi.
Derek drifts in and out of sleep until some point in the night when he opens his eyes to Stiles singing You Give Love A Bad Name under his breath, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. Derek watches him for a while, amused, and then looks out the window.
When Stiles notices he's awake, he stops singing and turns down the radio. "I need to gas up," he says.
"Okay," Derek's voice comes out all thick and rough from sleep. "Are we there yet?"
Stiles swings into a gas station, climbs out and fills up the Jeep's tank. A minute later he yanks the pump out and heads inside to pay. Derek unbuckles his seatbelt and reaches for the urn placed between the front seats, still wrapped up in the middle of the blankets Stiles brought. Derek pulls it out and into his lap, brushing his fingers across the cold marble. All of this time he's been avoiding the urn, afraid of – he doesn't know. Afraid, he guesses, that looking at it will make this real. And that's what all of this has been about – being afraid of the fact that Laura is gone. She'd gone and that's permanent. Derek can't pretend otherwise when he's looking at her remains.
The driver's door pops open and Stiles gets back into the Jeep, throwing a bag of Reese's cups at Derek.
"Me too," Stiles says, pulling out of the gas station.
"What?" Derek turns to look at him.
"I miss her too."
Derek quickly places the urn back on the seat, wrapping it up tightly with the blankets. He then picks up the Reese's cups and opens one, before opening another and offering it to Stiles.
"Hand. Palm up." Derek tells him.
Stiles takes one of his hands off the steering wheel and extends it like Derek said, and Derek places the cups on the boy's hand.
"Thanks, man," Stiles says, popping the chocolate is his mouth.
The sky gradually lightens as they drive on, deep midnight blue giving way to flaring orange and dusky pink. Outside the landscape is flat, and everything looks dead. It'd be easy to be lulled back to sleep by the monotony, but Derek's too keyed up at the moment for that.
He never told Laura he loved her. Not in the years after the fire, not as far as he can remember. Sure, whenever she'd tell him that he'd usually answer "Me too" but he doesn't think he ever said the actual words. Derek knows Laura loved him, but he's far less certain that she knew he loved her back. The bottom line is, maybe this is all Derek's fault. He didn't love her enough, wasn't there enough, didn't do enough. He wasn't enough.
Derek presses the heel of his hands into his eyes while Stiles replaces Bon Jovi with something else. Derek takes his hands off his eyes and stares at the volume knob for a moment, before turning on his side to face Stiles.
"What's this?"
"It's Blue Mink," Stiles explains.
"Why are we listening to it?"
"Don't you like it?" Stiles asks, tilting his head a little bit to the side.
"It's…," Derek doesn't really know what to make of it, so he settles for, "happy."
"I thought it would be fitting, considering where we are going and all," Stiles shrugs.
"Fitting? Where we are going?"
"Yeah, you know. Albuquerque," Stiles says, and at Derek's blank look he adds, "Breaking Bad."
"Isn't that a tv show?" Derek is still very much confused about where this is all going and how everything is related. And he's kind of amused by the way Stiles seems to get more and more aggravated as more time passes when Derek doesn't know what he's talking about.
"Yes, Derek, it's a tv show," Stiles says, sounding annoyed. "It's an awesome tv show. A tv show in which this song played. That's why it's fitting, and that's why we're listening to it."
Derek hums in acknowledgment, fighting off the urge to chuckle at the boy next to him. The next song that comes up and Derek is suddenly assaulted with memories of his childhood. Here Comes The Sun is playing through the Jeep, and Derek's mind is focused on those warm mornings his mother would make breakfast, Laura would wake up to find them dancing around in the kitchen, and she would tackle Derek to the ground and tickle him until he was crying from laughter. The only reason he didn't stay mad at her was because she'd always let him have extra pancakes. All of a sudden anger bubbles up in his chest and he can barely breathe.
He wants that back, he wants it all back. He wants Sunday mornings with the family, his mother's cooking, Laura being a brat, his cousins running around the house, and his dad and Uncle Peter reading the newspaper or talking about baseball. He wants getting high in the woods with Laura, and going on road trips in the Camaro, and watching reruns of The X-Files.
It's not fair. It's not fair that he doesn't have Laura here with him anymore. It's not fair that she did this to him, that she left him to deal with this mess on his own. Because that's how he feels: completely and utterly alone.
Hot tears prick behind his eyelids. The feel of them surprise him – because he doesn't cry, he hasn't cried since the fire – as much as it does Stiles.
He glances over at Derek, confused. "Hey. What's-"
"Shut up," Derek says.
He turns to face the window and watch the ground slip by, trying to keep himself under control. He can't get Laura out of his head. A minute later the headlights wash over a sign indicating an upcoming rest stop. Derek tries to blink the wetness out of his eyes, and to control his breathing so it doesn't come out in the short gasps as it is now, but it doesn't work.
"We need to stop," Derek says, his voice wavering.
Without a word, Stiles pulls off at the next exit.
Derek can hear the blood ringing in his ears, feel his heart beating a mile a minute, his lungs don't seem to be working at the moment and his fingers feel numb. He feels like he's drowning. He also feels a hand at the back of his neck forcing his head forward, so it's in between his knees, and he has a vague notion that someone is talking to him. He can't make out words, but he can focus on the hand rubbing small circles on his back. It takes a while for him to make out that Stiles is the one talking to him.
"Derek, you're having a panic attack," Stiles says, calm. "I know it feels awful but I need you to know that it's okay, that you're going to be okay. I'm right here."
Derek tries to hold onto the sound of Stiles voice, but he still can't get his breathing to go back to normal.
"We're going to try something, okay?" Stiles tells him. "I want you to try and hold your breath for two seconds, and then let it all out for another two, okay?"
Derek does as Stiles says while the boy counts down the seconds, and he's a little surprised when it starts to work. He doesn't feel much like he's dying anymore, and soon all that's left is the exhaustion from what just happened. He slumps back in his seat and turns to look at Stiles. He wants to ask how he knew exactly what to do to make it all stop. Something must show in his face, because next thing he knows Stiles is talking to him again.
"I used to have them," Stiles says. "Panic attacks. After my mom died."
"I'm sorry," Derek says, because he is. He can't imagine what it must have been like for an eight year old to feel this way.
"I'm sorry too."
Everything is starting to feel a little more normal now; his breathing coming easier, his voice a little steadier. He's exhausted, which maybe is a good thing, because he can't muster up the energy to feel embarrassed about breaking down in front of Stiles.
"Everything is so fucked up," Derek finds himself saying. "I'm doing this all wrong."
Stiles looks pissed at him at that. "You need to give yourself a break," he says. "There's no right way to do this. No, scratch that, there's no way to do this. You see, death doesn't happen to you, it happens to everyone around you. We know that. It happens to all the people left standing at your funeral, trying to figure out how they're gonna live the rest of their lives without you in it. But that's the thing, there's no magical way to stop us from hurting or missing the people that are not here anymore. That stays with us, forever. That marks us, leaves us broken, and changes who we are, and there's no way to stop that from happening. The only thing we can do is try and give them life again, through our memories, or doing things they used to do, or going on a fucking road trip to New York because that's what they would have wanted. So no, Derek, you're not doing this all wrong, because there's no way to do this at all."
And with that, Derek kisses him.
