This House Has Long Been Over

by ketren

The Hale House is haunted by its past—in more ways than one. When a homeless Stiles lets Peter Hale drag him out there, he knows it's a bad idea. Struggling with visions of residual hauntings, Stiles can't always tell past from present in the Hale House. Still, as he watches Peter hunt the guilty party while Derek rebuilds, he wonders what really happened to the Hale ghosts.

6. The Forest Watchful

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Six - The Forest Watchful

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Peter trails behind Stiles like a shadow, gliding over the new-fallen snow without so much as a sound. Every now and then, Stiles loses himself in his thoughts, in the steady crunch of his own footfalls and the light sweep of snow-dusted wind. But with Peter's presence behind him, and the wolf's keen eyes on his back, it isn't easy to keep focused.

"You can stop hovering at any time," he gripes at Peter. The sound of his voice is a little dampened by the dense woods, disappearing into the oppressive air, but Stiles knows now that Peter will hear it anyway.

"I'm not hovering; I'm supervising," Peter counters, though he does move a little closer so Stiles can see him out of the corner of his eye. More like they're accomplices, and less like Stiles is prey that Peter's trying to catch.

They aren't terribly far from the Hale House, maybe fifteen minutes out at Stiles's meandering pace, though they've been trailing back and forth at this distance for some time. He already regrets that Peter dragged him out so early in the day, before the weak sun has had a chance to fully climb overhead. It casts dappled, flickering shadows across the ground in front of them as they move.

"Are you sure you haven't seen anything new?" Peter asks.

"Nothing since Jason climbing that tree a while back. Dude, everything around here is white," Stiles replies, briefly removing his hands from his pockets to gesture at the frosted leaves of the underbrush and the snow-laden branches of the trees. "If there was anything else to see, I'd see it."

Peter doesn't seem happy with this response, but he doesn't say anything else. And so Stiles presses on.

They've been moving in a loose circle around the house on the off chance that anything Kate-related pops up. Once they manage this, they'll loop around a little farther out, and a little farther, until either they learn more about Kate, or Stiles tries to kill Peter and ends up brutally mauled for his trouble.

"Kate and Laura might have only met up around here once, as far as I've seen," Stiles adds, expressing a thought he's been chewing on for some time—though he's pretty certain it's not true. "Maybe they decided it was too risky to be near you guys. Laura definitely didn't seem to want her around here."

Peter shakes his head. Stiles doesn't have to look at him directly to know his teeth are bared. "No. Her kind of person, Argents...she'd think it's funny to be so close to us without anyone knowing. To taunt us."

Stiles doesn't respond right away. "That's really messed up," he says at last. After a moment, he adds, "How do you know the Argents are involved in all this? Derek said it was officially some kind of accident."

"I know, because I know what they're like," Peter replies testily. "And also because Kate Argent's gun wasn't far from the ashes. The Argents skipped town after that, went underground to avoid suspicion, like rats down a hole," he sneers. "They aren't too happy about police pressure at the best of times. They were gone before the sheriff's department had a chance to ask a single question about what the gun was doing there."

"What did they say about it?"

Peter shrugs. "Without evidence, Kate Argent is just a suspect. And all signs pointed to an accident. An accident where everyone just happened to have stayed in the house to burn instead of leaving it. Mountain ash barrier, something we can't escape. She didn't give any of them a chance."

Stiles gives a low whistle. "You guys really got on the radar of the wrong people, it sounds like," he says with a wince.

Peter gives him a side eye. "It's not a fight we chose," he replies, and there's enough of a snarl in his tone that Stiles lets the topic drop.

They walk around for a while longer, and the silence between them gradually grows less awkward and more thoughtful. Stiles is glad at least that Peter isn't pushing him for results quite as much as he'd been earlier. Stiles has never actively tried to do this (and it doesn't help that Peter's still kind of hovering like a psycho), so he's not really sure what he's meant to be doing aside from covering as much ground as possible. On the off chance that he gets the right vision, in the right place.

It seems like a shot in the dark, in his opinion. But if it means he'll have a roof over his head for while longer, he'll do pretty much anything to stay out of the snow. The alternative is spending the last of his cash on a motel in town, after which he's pretty much screwed and stuck in Beacon Hills.

"Why did you tell us a name that's different from your legal name?" Peter asks, out of the blue.

"No one calls me Mieczyslaw," Stiles replies, smiling a little in spite of himself. "It's kind of a mouthful." He considers this for a moment, then adds, "Did it sound like I was lying when I said my name was Stiles?"

"Not exactly," Peter replies cryptically, "which is what was so confusing. Where did your parents get the name?"

"My mom's granddad, I think." Stiles slips a little on an icy patch but rights himself quickly. "They're all Polish, I haven't really met them or anything. And Mom didn't really speak it, but she liked the name."

Peter's distracted by something in the distance. Stiles slows beside him, looking to the werewolf for cues, but Peter only shakes his head. "A deer," he says shortly. "How did she die?"

It's very nonchalant, but Stiles supposes they're like, tragedy bros now, so it's not so strange a question. "Suicide," he says shortly. "Slit her wrists in the bathtub."

Peter turns to him with renewed interest, and then peers back into the forest. "Another reason your father was so quick to think you needed more help than he can give, I imagine."

"Something like that."

The werewolf doesn't say anything else, doesn't pry, and Stiles likes that. They go on for some time in silence, the sun slowly rising to its peak overhead. There's nothing else moving here, vision or otherwise, except the occasional bird flitting through the branches.

"I think she could see things, too," Stiles adds suddenly, apropos of nothing. Peter lets him slip back into the same topic without further question. "Not as many as me, though, 'cause she didn't seem super messed up about it. It was just sometimes that she got confused. She was going to a therapist, too.

"I wonder if she would have been okay if she'd have known she wasn't crazy. And if she'd been able to tell dad." He pauses, thinking, while he shakes a little snow from the collar of his coat. "Mine only got really bad after she died. The visions, I mean. I know it's stupid, but I always felt like maybe her visions, if that's what was happening to her, they came to me when she died. Like, maybe she just passed them down in full.

"And that's why I don't feel so weird about having them, even though they're a pain. Even though seeing her in my house made me feel like shit sometimes. But being able to see her isn't the gift, being able to see is. Because maybe if the visions came from her somehow, it's not such a bad thing."

Peter hums lowly, in agreement or in thought, but he doesn't say anything else. At this point, Stiles is basically following him around the woods, no destination in mind. "I don't know if magic works like that," Peter says, long after Stiles thought he'd let the subject drop. "A gift that's yours is yours from birth. But there's a lot about magic I don't know. Werewolves can't use it, so we've never had a reason to learn much about how it passes through generations."

"Do you think there's like...information about me somewhere? About what I can do?"

Peter shrugs. "I have some feelers out."

"Already? Nice."

By mutual unspoken decision, they begin to circle back to the Hale House a short while later. Stiles has most of the prep work done for a hearty shepherd's pie, and he spends part of the trip back reviewing the recipe in his mind. It's only when they approach the house, maybe a minute or two out, that he sees something unusual among the trees.

Peter seems to catch his distraction almost right away. "Do you see something?" he asks.

Stiles frowns. "It's not Kate. It's just, uh, Olivia," he says softly, watching Peter's face morph into something full of warring wonder and sorrow.

"I see. What's she doing?"

"Just walking."

Peter nods his head slowly, looking around the small clearing. Stiles gestures to Olivia as she treads carefully over an array of roots, hiking up a long, summery skirt as she wanders on. Peter, of course, can see none of this; Stiles can read that on his face. But he stares anyway, as if he can manifest her simply by looking.

After a minute, though, he turns away and moves on. "She's...happy?" he asks Stiles suddenly.

Stiles hums. "Yeah. But she always looks happy, to be honest."

Peter nods and says nothing more. When they clear the tree line and reach the porch of the house, he pauses on the front stairs. Stiles slows to a stop behind him, waiting expectantly, and Peter turns to him and ventures a question Stiles has been expecting for a while: "If you see all of them so often...why don't you see the fire?"

"I've never seen the way someone dies," Stiles says quietly. "I don't know why. I never saw my mom actually do it, even though sometimes I saw her...considering it. In her hands, she'd have…well. Um, I guess she must have thought about it a lot, before..." He shakes his head slowly at his own inability to finish expressing the thoughts aloud. "I think maybe the visions are of people as they were most often. The things they did a lot. Normal, everyday conversations. It's like those habits they did over and over again, those are the things that stick in the world. Sometimes I see stuff that just happened once, something big, so maybe I'll...maybe I'll see the fire happen eventually. But it doesn't happen as often.

"With my mom, she was in the kitchen a lot, or singing in the garden, or...yeah. And at Eichen, it was kind of all over the place, but mostly people shouting or talking or fighting or doing all the shitty stuff people normally do in that place. Here, it's…" he shrugs. "I don't know. Everyone's happy. That's the thing that sticks, in all the visions, they're all just talking to each other and being together. No one's sad, or sick, or…" he trails off.

Peter isn't really looking at him, but the words seem to have settled him. He looks satisfied. "That's...good," he says. "Alright." And he continues into the house.

When they get inside, there's a loud clanging of pipes from the bathroom. Stiles shrugs off his heavy coat and hangs it on a hook in the foyer, then works to peel off the pair of snow boots he'd borrowed from Derek.

"I don't know why he still does it," Peter grunts suddenly, having already removed his light coat. It takes Stiles a moment to realize he's talking about Derek, and whatever construction work he's up to. "It's not like we don't have the money for it, of course, but…"

Stiles shrugs. "I think I get it," he replies, shrugging as he digs snow from the hem of his pants. "You kind of find something, and you keep going forward. It's all you can do."

There's an odd half-smile on Peter's face as he crosses into the living room, and a yellow light that bathes his profile. It's only when Stiles steps in as well that he realizes there's a fire going. Derek's made another fire, probably knowing they'd be back soon for lunch. It's wonderfully warm in the room, and Stiles finds himself gravitating toward the hearth almost on instinct.

"Yes," Peter replies, the smile lingering. "I suppose it is."

.

Nothing Kate-related pops up when they go out again in the afternoon. Or the day after.

The visions still come, though. Derek and Laura, younger than he's ever seen them, laugh together over a beer, peering around as if expecting to be caught at any moment. Hailey and Jason and Caleb, their sleeves rolled up against the midday heat, hunt for bugs beside a stream. In a patch of fall leaves, a trio of wolves tussles playfully like dogs. Olivia and Peter stroll past, debating an upcoming teacher's conference over Elliot biting classmates at school.

And then, briefly, Kate and Laura lie silently in a field together, staring up at the sky with their hands intertwined.

Peter skulks behind Stiles the entire time, leaping from curiosity to boredom to impatience as they make their way through the woods. He shuts himself upstairs as soon as they return home each time. With each trip outside he becomes quieter and more moody, less inclined to reply to Stiles's inane attempts at conversation. Stiles doesn't know what to make of the werewolf's frustration, so he tries to give him space whenever they're in the house.

Instead, he spends most of his time working on increasingly elaborate recipes. He's already gone through his own favorites, and his dad's. So with a little online recipe searching, he's working his way through Derek and Peter's requests. Now that Stiles has proven himself an adequate cook, Peter's started bringing back whatever list of ingredients Stiles needs on his usual trips into town.

The thing is, Stiles appreciates the time he gets to spend here in the kitchen alone, listening to the occasional vision behind his back. Like he told Peter, the Hale ghosts practically glow with contentment and familiarity. It makes the house feel full when they're around. And really, it doesn't feel so bad here, a life set against a tapestry of a happy past. He could get used to it. Is getting used to it.

He's also getting used to having someone around to ramble at, that someone being Derek. The werewolf doesn't seem to mind Stiles's stories or his half-baked analysis of pop culture, and he only nominally requires Stiles to make an effort with the construction work when he's lost in his own babble. It's almost like Derek actually likes Stiles's dumb anecdotes, but that might be reading into things a little too much.

"What were we doing today?" Derek asks, checking the position of the stepladder. It's not the first time he's asked Stiles about the visions, but it's a relatively new thing. There's still a lingering tone of hesitancy in his voice when he asks, like he's not sure he's actually ready to hear about it.

"Hm. I didn't see anything in the woods this time," Stiles replies, absently doodling pies in the frost at the window. They've migrated to one of the downstairs bedrooms, previously a nursery for Cece, so that Derek can finish one of the interior walls. "But you and Laura were in the kitchen earlier, talking about school."

"Oh yeah? What was going on?"

"I wasn't really listening till the end, which I fully regret. Especially after I turned around to see the huge-ass black eye on your face. It sounded like you guys were fighting over something."

To his surprise, Derek snorts in laughter. "Oh yeah—wow, that was...so, I accidentally spilled to Mom about Laura's detention one time. Laura never forgave me for it, I don't think. And she had a mean right hook."

"Wait, she clocked you? I thought you guys had, like, healing factor or something."

"We do. Over time. But that was just more incentive for her to hit even harder."

Stiles grimaces. "Geez, what is sibling life, even."

Derek snorts again. "Basically, having someone around who would kill you in a heartbeat but also kill anyone who tried to mess with you."

"Sounds complicated."

"It is. Was."

They both fall silent, neither of them wanting to comment on the verb tense slip-up. Derek hammers at something for a while. Stiles swipes his hand across the windowpane, erasing every last trace of frost. Outside, Hailey is bent over something on the ground, an anthill maybe, with a magnifying glass to her eye.

"Peter's going to kill Kate when he finds her," Stiles says when the hammering stops. He turns away from the window.

"Yeah," Derek replies, inspecting his work. "It's what he does."

"Do you think that's...going too far?"

Derek pauses. "What do you mean?"

"I guess, just—is it worth it? And now that I'm saying it out loud, this is actually super none of my business and I'm fully aware of it, so just tell me to shut up if you want. But I guess I was thinking, after all this time...I don't know." He can feel Derek's eyes on him, so he adds, "If Kate's as bad as you guys say she is, is it worth it for him to put himself at risk just to take her out?"

"So what, you're worried?"

Stiles shrugs. "I mean, yeah. Kinda."

"Don't be. He can take care of himself."

"Are you going to help him? When we find her?"

Derek gives him a long look. "Yeah, I think I am."

Stiles shakes his head, a little helplessly. "Why? You haven't been tracking her like Peter. And I get that he's the strategist and everything, so it's what he does, but..."

"It's because I don't think Peter should do it alone."

Stiles frowns. "But—"

"He's been the one actually tracking her, sure. But this is...different. For me, I know Kate did it. Nothing will change the fact that it's done, even if she's dead or she's officially charged with it. Nothing will change what she did, or bring them back. But to Peter, it's still important for her to be dead. Peter's pack. He's all the pack I have left now. So for me, it's important, too." He pauses, frowning a little. "So are you going to worry about me?"

"Obviously, you asshole," Stiles says, rolling his eyes. Then, feeling awkward, he adds, "Because if you guys die, I'm gonna have to figure out what to do with myself."

"You'll be okay," Derek says thoughtfully. "I think you're okay now. You seem a little less...lost."

He seems to believe this in full. Stiles doesn't really know how to respond to it, how to respond to any reassurances about his own sanity. So he comes over to help with the extra lumber instead, carefully not saying a word.

.

The focus is on Kate, what Kate did, what Kate knows, but Stiles finds himself drawn to Laura. He doesn't know how to say as much, but it seems like Peter and Derek have forgotten her role in all of this, her agency. Or maybe like they don't want to think about the role she might have played in her own death.

Or maybe they think they know her well enough that there's no reason to delve into her past.

Well, Stiles doesn't know her, but he's getting to. He begins to jump to attention as soon as he hears her voice, as soon as he realizes her presence in a vision. He gets to know her mannerisms, the way she smooths the heels of her hands over her eyebrows in frustration or wrinkles her nose when she's trying not to laugh. He gets to know her usual haunts (no pun intended?), like the front porch where she play-wrestles her cousins, or the back counter of the kitchen where she talks to her father as he cooks.

The thing is, she's never obvious about Kate. She's never obvious about a late-night forest meetup, a date, anything. Stiles isn't sure if anyone could have realized how attached she is to Kate Argent. The only reason he himself knows for sure is because he's seen them together with his own eyes.

What must it be like, then, to love someone only to have them turn around and burn you? To burn your entire family to the ground? What's it like to trust someone that deeply, only to have them betray that trust in the worst possible way?

Maybe it's Kate he can't understand.

How could she have someone like Laura Hale, and just throw her away?

.

Laura is there waiting for him that night when it's time for bed.

Maybe not really waiting. But that's definitely her, sitting on the living room sofa where he usually sleeps, like she's been expecting him. He hesitates in the doorway, hair still damp from the shower, shivering with chill.

She checks her phone, frowns at her feet, checks her phone again. With a glance around as if to make sure she's alone, she gets up and walks toward the front door. And Stiles suddenly has this weird impulse to follow her, like he's meant to. Like she means for him to.

That's impossible, obviously. It's all in the past. She's in the past. But Stiles can't help but feel like he knows her more now, that she's less of a stranger, and that's why she's here. Maybe that's why he doesn't ask Peter or Derek to come with him, why he feels like it's something he should do on his own.

He mouths a curse (look, there are delicate werewolf ears around now; he can't just let 'em fly if he's doing the whole secrecy thing) and grabs his coat, following her out into the night.

Stiles feels a little out of his element here in the woods at night, though it doesn't slow him down. It's just that it's pretty dark, with only the quarter moon to light his way. And he's usually got Peter around to talk at. Luckily, all he's got to do is follow Laura, and she seems to be growing in confidence the further into the woods she gets. As they go on, she casts fewer cautious glances around at her surroundings, and maybe stands a little taller, walks a little more boldly.

Kate spills out of the trees all at once, shocking the hell out of Stiles. Laura doesn't bat an eye, though, just lets the blonde press against her with open arms.

"Are you going to wait for me?" Kate asks, but the words are a little mangled between her hungry kisses. Stiles rolls his eyes, keeping his gaze on the rattling branches overhead.

It takes Laura a while to answer, and when she does, she's a little breathless. "When will you be back?"

"Now and then," Kate replies, and when Stiles looks back, she's finally pulling away. She drags a piece of misplaced hair from Laura's cheek. "I don't really know."

"Where are you going? You still don't know for sure?"

Kate shakes her head. "I don't," she says, and then her tone grows bitter. "My dad knows, obviously. I'm just…"

"Alright. What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. I'm done with school."

"You said that." Laura has a death grip on Kate's arms. It looks painful, but Kate doesn't make any move to pull out of her grip. "I meant with hunting."

Kate gives Laura an even, considering look. "You don't want to know that."

"No, I really don't."

"Then why are you asking?"

"I don't know. I don't know! I just feel like you're...like you're slipping out of my hands. I want to keep you here, with me. I just don't know how."

Kate looks away, grimacing. "It's not wolves," she says at last, "if that makes you feel less weird."

"Kate, I wasn't—"

"And we'll be on the other side of the country," Kate adds defiantly, a light sneer twisting her mouth, "so you won't even have to hear about it."

Laura's face grows stony. She slowly lets Kate's arms slip from her grasp.

"It's not like that, though," Kate relents. "For now, it's a skinwalker in Virginia, nearly killed a hunter friend of dad's last week."

Laura nods slowly.

"It could kill me, not that you're worried about that."

The glare Laura shoots her could kill. "If you think I'm not worried about that, you're an idiot."

"So you think I can't take care of myself?"

"I didn't—god, Kate, I know you can. Are you trying to pick a fight?"

"No," Kate says, deflating. She pulls her hands through her blonde hair. "I don't know."

Laura easily catches one of her hands. "Whatever you're doing, it's going to be okay. Just come back, that's all. We'll...I can't run away, Kate. You know I can't. But maybe we can figure something out. Something with your dad, to make him stop. We'll work something out when you get back."

"That's it?" Kate asks slowly. "That easy?"

"We'll make it work," Laura replies firmly, bringing Kate's palm to her mouth.

"Good," Kate says, and her eyes flit up and down Laura, as if looking for something. Stiles watches her begin to say something, pause, and shake her head. "I'm going to go," she says at last. "If I'm not back soon…"

"Yeah," Laura says reluctantly. And then she adds, in a rush: "I love you." It's very soft, and from the way both of their eyes widen, Stiles knows it must be the first time either of them has said it. "You don't have to say anything back," Laura adds quickly.

Kate is frozen in place, and it takes her a moment to recover. "Yeah," she says, and then she gives a twisted little grin, leaning forward to kiss Laura on the lips one more time.

After a moment, she squeezes Laura's hand once, hard, and then disappears into the trees, as quiet as any wolf.

.

It's not helpful. Or maybe it is. Stiles goes back and forth on it all the way back to the Hale House, stumbling on roots and stones in the darkness. Kate is going somewhere, with her father, though she doesn't know where. He replays the entire conversation in his mind, over and over again, wondering what Kate was thinking. What she feels—no, felt—for Laura. Her face had seemed so open at the time, but now Stiles thinks it must have been like a mask.

Peter meets him partway there. "You idiot," he says flatly, boxing Stiles solidly on the ear.

"Ow—what the actual hell, dude?"

"Do the words 'don't go alone' mean nothing to you? Or maybe you remember the part about 'the woods are dangerous?' Maybe you could have done a little more—are you still wearing pajamas?"

"Yeah, but the woods are dangerous because you guys are in them," Stiles retorts irritably, rubbing his ear.

"Kate was here once, too," Peter reminds him angrily.

"Yeah," Stiles begins, wincing. "On that note…" On the way back, he fills Peter in on what he'd seen, all that had passed between Laura and Kate.

Peter isn't exactly enthusiastic about the results, and he certainly grills Stiles with enough questions to make him feel like squirming. "Next time you go strolling through the woods at night, bring me with you," he snarls, throwing the front door open. "Virginia? Skinwalkers? That's all you have?"

"Dude, that's all I have because that's all that happened. You think anything would have been different if you were there? You can't see or hear anything from the past anyway, so there's literally no point to me getting you." As Stiles strips his coat off again, he catches the look of sheer fury Peter throws over his shoulder. "Okay, okay—you want to be involved, I get it. But can we remember that I'm just trying to help? I'm just following whatever the visions are giving me, and it doesn't always help to have someone hovering behind me playing twenty questions when I'm trying to focus."

There's really no argument Peter can put to it, but he still looks pissed. "You're right," the werewolf says at last as they enter the living room, flicking the overhead light on. "We can't help. There's nothing we can do to help you squeeze more information from whatever happened in the past. But take one of us with you into the woods."

He storms off, probably to follow the new lead (thanks, Stiles!), leaving Stiles alone. Irritable and bitter, Stiles throws himself at the sofa, pulling the blanket over him as he goes.

.

Hail binds them all inside the following day.

Peter is more impatient than ever, swooping in for quick meals and then locking himself upstairs. Stiles figures he's probably working on any leads from the info—though the passage of years since Kate's trip, whenever it was, makes it hard for him to imagine that the werewolf will have any luck. More likely is that Peter wishes he could get his feet on the ground, questioning his contacts or whatever he does on the long days when he's out of the house. Or maybe he just meant to head to town on a run for more provisions, which are getting kind of low.

Neither Stiles nor Derek is willing to brave his fuming mood to question him about it, though. Instead, Derek finishes the nursery room wall, and Stiles helps him move his supplies upstairs to tackle the next project, laying down some laminate flooring in two adjacent rooms.

Sometime in the afternoon, Stiles catches himself in the middle of a rant about the unfairness of standardized testing for college prep. "Hey, wait," he says. "Actually, I don't even know: did you do college or anything? Laura was talking about scholarships with Talia this morning."

Derek shakes his head. "No, actually. A while ago, I did a few hours at this vocational-technical school, for construction and architecture. I was thinking about studying architecture, before the fire, and it seemed like a good way to get my feet wet. But I ended up not following through. Basically, I just learned enough to do stuff like this. I guess I figured that in the time it took me to build the house back up again, maybe I'd figure out what I wanted to do. I still don't know."

Stiles hums, sorting through the pile of laminate wood. "Are you done with architecture, then?"

Derek shrugs. "I don't really know. I guess I just was done with school for a while. I had a hard time focusing; I think it was a little too soon. Laura and I always talked about going to school together, being at UCLA, maybe. But I couldn't really imagine going alone." Wistfulness had crept into his voice, but as he wedges the next piece of flooring in place, he shrugs self-deprecatingly. "Now, I just sit around Beacon Hills, waiting for something to happen."

"How's that going for you?" Stiles asks instantly, then immediately regrets it.

Derek, to his surprise, doesn't seem offended at all. "Surprisingly okay," he responds, smiling a little. At Stiles. It's a weirdly glowy kind of smile, and it takes Stiles aback, leaving him suddenly speechless.

"I mean, yeah," Stiles flounders, once his words start working again. "You literally rebuilt your house. It kinda makes me feel like you can do anything, really." He snaps another piece of laminate into place, pressing down hard. "This is actually really cool," he adds suddenly. "Like fitting puzzle pieces together...I don't know. A lot of this stuff is cooler than I thought it would be."

"It is, isn't it?"

"I kinda get why you like it so much."

They work for a minute in silence before Stiles's mind suddenly circles back to the previous topic. "Man, you've really got your shit together," he laughs, wiping his forehead. "I have to catch up. I'm going to be so behind in school. I used to be, well, not top of the class, 'cause that was Lydia Martin. But really close. Now, I guess I'd have to repeat a grade or something. I haven't been keeping up with my year level schoolwork." He snaps one of the last pieces of laminate into place, not quite sure why the idea bothers him so much.

Derek tilts his head, studying him. "You know," he says slowly, "I still have some of my old school books. I don't know why I kept them. I wasn't at home when the fire happened; I hadn't gotten back from practice after school. I still had all my books, and...it's stupid but I never actually tossed any of that stuff."

"It's not stupid," Stiles reassures him. "And actually...if you don't mind, that'd maybe be a lifesaver."

.

Derek's room is a weird mixture of lived-in and bare: there's nothing on the walls, but the desk is swimming in papers bearing measurements, sketches, and plans. The furniture's pretty sparse, but there's a stack of books under the chair in the corner, with dog-eared pages and worn bookmarks.

Stiles has been here in Derek's room a couple times before, but it's always been sort of an in-and-out deal. Mostly, it's been for small things, like asking a quick question or grabbing something for Derek when he's busy wrestling with the plumbing.

But it feels a little different, sitting on Derek's bed with the door closed, a math textbook between them. Not bad, though. Comfortable.

"Is this even the right stuff?" Derek asks curiously. He's leaning down to flip through the pages, scanning the formulas in each chapter. "You're a junior, right?"

"I was a junior," Stiles reminds him. "And I think it's right, but...to be honest, I don't really remember what we were doing. I wasn't in the mindset to pay attention even while I was at school this year. But maybe we can look online."

Derek hums in agreement. "Even if these aren't right for you, I bet there are some websites to tell us what you can be doing to keep up. If you're gonna get your GED."

"Yeah," Stiles replies slowly.

There must be something in his voice, something significant to werewolves, because Derek catches something and looks up. "What is it?"

Stiles shrugs, caught between feeling awkward and bashful. "I don't know. It just used to feel like that wasn't actually possible. To get my GED, I mean. But I guess...if I can stay here with you guys, and not have to worry about camping in the woods, and if I have time to study, maybe..."

"You can."

Stiles pauses. "Why are you so sure about it?"

"I know you now," Derek says easily. "I know it's important to you. And for what it's worth, I'll help, if I can. I don't really remember much from all of the subjects, but I'll probably be able to help with math if you need it. And the rest, we'll just figure out as it comes."

Something wells up in Stiles's chest, and he has to be careful not to let it spill over. "Thanks," he replies, a smile growing uncontrollably across his face.

The air feels charged as Derek stares back at him, full of electricity or heat or something. Stiles isn't sure what makes him feel like something is building up in the room, something alive, but he thinks for a moment that Derek feels it too.

And then the moment passes. Stiles realizes he's staring, that he's been staring, probably for way too long. He clears his throat. "Oh, I guess I should…" he jerks his thumb awkwardly at the door. "It's getting late, so I should get out of your hair."

"Oh—Okay," Derek says.

Stiles picks himself up, gives Derek a weird half-shrug, and rolls his eyes at himself the minute he's on the other side of the door.

.

.

.

A/N: Since you asked, yes, they are both idiots.

Just a reminder (in case it's been unclear), the timeline is altered from canon here. The fire took place about five years ago, and Derek and Stiles are five years apart, meaning that Derek was a high school junior when it happened, same as Stiles is now.

I didn't want to get too much into pack structures in this fic, and I didn't explain it earlier, but I imagine Peter's role as the classic fanon "left hand" job, something like a spymaster/intelligence role, which he's keen on continuing even now that his pack is just the two of them.