I pilled on multiple layers, before wrapping myself up in a cocoon of blankets. I kept my desk lamp on, every time I saw the darkness, I saw him. I couldn't fall asleep.

The next week went by antagonizing slow, since it was the last week before spring break. For me, Spring Break always meant it was getting close to the end of the school year, which was hard to believe. Spring break, then a week later was prom, and then three weeks after that was summer vacation.

I was excited about spring break, even though I didn't have plans. I mean I never went out of town, but I would still usually have plans to go to the pool or six flags with Scott. But still, the hallways were abuzz with excited students, and even the teachers seemed calmer this week. The relaxed atmosphere in the school was definitely appreciated. And I was excited to have a week off. Even if it would be spent wrapped in bed or at Derek's, it would be nice to escape school. Because even though the bullying died down immensely over the semester, it had never truly gone away.

On the Tuesday of that week (which felt like it should have been a Friday) Isaac decided to shake things up in my seemingly ingrained lifestyle. .

I was drawing in my sketchbook, halfway listening to a deep-rooted debate between Danny and Eric over Nike VS Adidas, when I heard something drop down across from me. I looked up to see Isaac placing his lunch tray on the table, and pulling out a chair.

I want to ask him what he's doing here, but all I can muster is a "wha?" with what I'm guessing is an amusing facial expression.

He just shrugs in a kind of shy way that almost reminds me of the old Isaac before he was changed.

"Well, since Derek's practically claimed you as his own whenever you come over, I thought we could bond over lunch."

I smile in gratitude and I don't mention the fact that Derek hasn't claimed me, I just go there to see him. I mean, before seeing Isaac was just plain awkward, and now it's kind of nice. But I still don't trust him with my words the way I trust Derek.

It's so odd, to think that Derek's been my rock. Derek "rip your throat out with my teeth" Hale.

I wonder sometimes if New Years didn't happen, if Derek and I would still be friends. I wont ask him, because Derek's not Scott, and doesn't sit around talking about the depths of his relationships with people. (Depths that apparently mean nothing). Deep down, I know the answer is probably no. Before all this happened he probably saw me as nothing but annoying, and I saw him as nothing but brooding. But I'd realized over the past few weeks that Derek and I had something in common. We put up walls. Telling people "I'm fine" had become my modus operandi, no matter what the circumstances were, while Derek made himself seem apparently void of emotion. And it made sense; Derek had not only faced unimaginable loss, but had faced unimaginable betrayal.

I just wondered what I had done to be deemed worthy to see the real Derek Hale.

And I wondered why I cared so much.

Because the only solution I could think of, scared me.

Isaac doesn't try to force conversation, which is nice. He's been around me enough to understand that my speech is a work in progress, not something that can be coerced.

Instead he devours his lunch in 5 minutes flat, before joining Danny and Eric's riveting debate. (He, much like Danny, was team Nike).

The rest of the week was unbearably slow, but eventually Friday rolled around. I rolled down the windows to let in some of the nice spring weather as I drove to Derek's, my passenger seat hosting a pile of books I had checked out of the library this morning. One, The Brothers Karamazov, was for Derek. The rest were for me, that way I had something to occupy my time over the next week. I checked out some Sherlock Holmes as an ode to myself, as well as some books on the history of contemporary art, because why not, and, tucked into my backpack, was a complete history of Polish cuisine.

I missed my mom.

I slid open the door to Derek's loft, and went straight to his couch, prying open the first Sherlock Holmes book.

Derek came pounding down the steps a few minutes later, his arms stacked with scrolls.

"I need your help." His voice is laced with urgency, and I immediately follow him to the table, where he's spread out the scrolls, some blueprints, some documents.

"You, you cant tell anyone what I'm going to tell you, okay? Not even Isaac." Derek seems frazzled instead of his collected self and I wonder how important the information is. And why he trusts me with it.

"Deaton got word that apparently the Alpha pack has a hostage."

"Boyd?"

"A second hostage," he looks up from the blueprint and stares at me with a look that could only be classified as despair, "my sister, Cora."

I stare at him, mouth ajar, as he elaborates.

"I thought she was dead. But according to Deaton's source, she's been their captive for a little over 2 months. I don't know where she's been, or how they found her, or how she's even survived."

"Derek, say no more. I'll help you however I can, I get it, trust me."

And I did, if I found out there was some error and my mother was alive, I would do everything in my power to get her back. But I held my mothers hand while she died, and saw the monitor flat line, so I know that would never happen.

Derek nods and looks back at the blueprint, "she'd be same age as you" he adds absentmindedly.

We look at the documents for a few minutes before I sigh and get something off my chest.

"I'm all about helping you, trust me. But are you sure I'm the best person to turn to? I mean I can do research and maaaybe get my hands on a police scanner, but my abilities end there. Oh and mountain ash, I can do stuff with mountain ash."

" You're the only person I trust to keep this a secret, the less people that know the better."

I don't ask him to elaborate, because I understand his fears. What if word got to Scott and his hero complex stepped in, and he decided to try and rescue Cora and the mission failed? What if the alpha pack found out that we knew about their advantage?

A million scenarios rushed to my head and I nodded.

"Well, first things first, we need to find out where they're keeping her." I tell him.

I pick up a pen to circle where we spotted them last, before faltering.

"Actually, do you mind if we stop by my house? I have a few things that might help us."

Derek nods, and we head out to his car, during the ride I make a mental list of what we'll need.

He parks in front of my house, my dads cruiser gone, I can tell he's contemplating whether or not to follow me inside, so I make the decision for him.

"I'm gonna need help carrying things." I tell him, and he nods, following me inside.

We go to my dads study first, I head straight for the safe, typing in the password.

"Your dad gave you the password to his safe?" Derek asks incredulously, and I shrug.

"Well, technically no, but he was so predictable in making it my mothers birthday, I think he almost wanted me to know."

Derek raises his eyebrows amused while I grab the spare police scanner my dad kept in here for whatever reasons. I the closed the safe and headed for his filing cabinet, grabbing the one with information on areas that needed to be condemned.

From there we headed to my room.

My room had changed of the course of the past few months. It was neater, mostly because I was a textbook example of someone in dire need of control, but I also had a crime board, linking together different mysteries with spools of thread.

I grabbed my track bag from my closet since my backpack was at Derek's, and started filling it with things we would need. My laptop, some spools of yarn (Derek looked too confused to comment on this), and my Adderall.

I looked at Derek with slight hesitation, "my dads got an overnight shift, if you want I could crash on your couch?"

Derek nodded; he didn't really look like he cared. So I grabbed some sweats and clean clothes for tomorrow, and ran to the bathroom and grabbed by toothbrush.

We drove back to the loft, and when we got there I grabbed the file, the police scanner, and some spools of yarn.

I explained to Derek how I used the yarn to link different cases together. Red is unsolved, yellow is to be determined, and green is solved. Then I showed him the file on places in the city that needed to be condemned. Aka abandoned areas.

"They're most likely hiding her in one of these areas, but we need to figure out which one."

Derek glanced at the yarn and then at the file, "so we need to see if we can find a connection between the alpha pack, and one of these locations."

I nodded and we got to work, keeping the police scanner on, in case anything irregular came from it.

"586 on Maple Ave." The scanners words startled us both.

"Wait, what? 586."

"Illegal parking, don't worry."

Derek raised his eyebrows, "you know the police codes?"

"Have you met my father?"

"Point taken."

We kept flipping through the pages for the next few hours, sometimes googling a specific point of interest, but so far-nothing.

"I've got a 261A, suspect in custody."

Derek perked up and turned to me, but I had already caved in on myself.

"I-it was just an attempt." I told him shakily.

"Attempt at what?"

My eyes met his, and they widened in understanding.

"Oh, um, I think I'm gonna order a pizza. What toppings do you like?"

I smiled at the idea of a pity pizza and requested extra cheese.

We stayed up almost all night trying to at least narrow down where the alpha pack could be keeping Cora, but no such luck. We knew we couldn't just check all the locations, because then they could figure out our advantage.

The next morning we were woken by the sound of Isaac sliding the door open. He looked around loft, with string everywhere, papers littering the floor, me waking up on said floor, and Derek bringing his head up from the table, and just pursed his lips and nodded before retreating upstairs.

That's pretty much how I spent my spring break, about 90% of it at Derek's loft, helping him figure out how to save his sister. Isaac wasn't home much, and thankfully when he was he never brought anyone else over. We were able to deter that the abandoned house on Moore Ave was out because of city inspectors going there only a month ago, the closed down corner shop downtown was also out because of an attempted break in that happened while we were researching.

There were other locations, but we were pretty sure she was either being kept in a former bank, an abandoned church, or a restraint just outside of town that was closed down for health code violations.

The bank made sense because of vaults, the church made sense because it had underground columbarium walls, and the restaurant made sense because of it's isolated location.

When school started back on Monday, everyone seems half depressed, and half excited. Excited because the count down board was officially posted in the hallway (only one month of school left) and prom was this Saturday.

The idea of prom made me sick, not because I wasn't going, but because Lydia was.

With Andy.

I knew I shouldn't, couldn't give up on her just yet and would have to find a way to convince her, but I just couldn't think of how.

Isaac had made a habit of sitting at my lunch table on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Scott no longer gaped in shock, but Lydia still stared. Not at Isaac, but at me.

On Friday, we had another pack meeting. Derek explained how he believed we had narrowed down the alpha packs location, but didn't tell them where we had narrowed it down too. He also conveniently left out the fact that they had Cora.

During the entire meeting, Lydia kept glancing over at me. At the end, when everyone was leaving, it looked like she wanted to talk to me, but she didn't

When I got home after the meeting, my dad was sitting at the table, hunched over some files. If he knew about everything, I would point out how similar we are. Instead, I pulled out the chair across from him and sat down.

"Dad," he immediately looks up upon hearing my voice, "I'm bi."

I think he was waiting for me to jokingly add 'lingual' and when I didn't he got up from his chair and moved to the one next to me.

"Well I'm glad you told me, you know I'll love you no matter what."

I sprang from my seat and immediately hugged my dad. Because honestly he had no idea how much his words meant. I was pretty sure he would accept me, but there was still an underlying fear of rejection. If my only parent decided they couldn't accept me for whom I was, I would probably snap.

"Hey, hey it's okay." My dad tells me, returning the hug.

I hadn't even realized I had begun crying, I guess that was like my thing now.

My dad pulled away, but held me in place so I would meet his eyes.

"Is this why you've been so distant lately? You've been afraid I wouldn't accept you?"

I shook my head, wiping away my last tear.

"No, I'm just really happy you did."

I had always planned to come out to my dad before I told him about New Years, simply because he would have to know I like boys to understand why I would willingly make out with one. And I don't think I would want him to find out through the story of my…assault.

I spent Saturday at home, since I felt less weighed down around my father. Evidently, my sexuality was a little white lie compared to my other secret, but it felt nice to know I had finally been honest with him about a major aspect of my life, and he had accepted it, no questions asked.

On Sunday morning my dad left for a business trip in LA and I drove over to Derek's. We had done most of our research on location, rather then members. So we decided we should try to find a way to link one of the members to one of the locations.

"He greeted me with a head jerk as I sat down next to him on the couch, and pulled my laptop from my bag.

I glance around, trying to figure out if Isaac was home.

"Isaac's at the mall. "Derek told me, as if he read my mind, and I turned to him with a smile.

"I came out to my dad." I told him proudly, and then faltered.

"It's just, you're the only person who already knew, except well, Andy. And I dunno, I think this is a step in the right direction."

Derek gave me a calming smile and nodded.

"I think it is too. Maybe a nudge in the direction of telling him?" He stated it as a question, even though I recognized it as a suggestion.

I sighed, "Well, he's out of town until Friday, so I'm trying to figure out how to gain the energy to tell him by the time he gets home, but it's scary."

"You were able to tell me and Lydia."

I snort, "Yeah and look how well things went with her."

Derek sighs, "Stiles, this is your father. Something tells me he would take your side on this."

I closed my eyes and spoke the fears that had been plaguing me for a while.

"He might judge me though, I mean, it is partially my fault."

Derek's eyes practically glowed red.

"How can you even say that?"

"It's just…I made the choice to get in the back of the truck and make out with him. I probably gave him the wrong impression."

"Oh yeah, I'm sure when you were trying to scream and push him away he got the impression you were into it."

I flinched at the harshness in his tone, and he backed down a smidge.

"Look, you can't blame yourself. You know you didn't want it, he knows that too. Your dad deserves to know as well."

"I'm terrified."

"I know."

"Der, he's the only family I have left. If he rejects me…"

"He won't."

"But-"

"He won't, I know it. And deep down you do too. I get that you're afraid, but you can't let this fear hold you back from doing what's right."

Our conversation got cut short by Isaac's arrival, but I feel like he said all that really mattered.

The next day at school, the hallways were abuzz with drama.

Lydia Martin dumped Andy Evans at prom.

There are many rumors as to why, none including me, but the story that everyone agrees with is they had a huge fight in the parking lot, and she got a ride home with Allison and Scott instead of him.

I tried to spy on Lydia throughout the day, during math I watched the whiteboard about as much as I watched her. I almost skipped my lunch session with Morrell just to try and get an edge on what went down at prom, but then decided against it.

I went to Derek's after school, and immediately told him about the revelation.

"But I mean I told her weeks ago, so it can't be that. But still, I wonder, ya know?"

"Wouldn't she have said something to you if that was the case? Like, an apology or an explanation?"

I nod, because he's probably right.

"I guess it doesn't matter though, as long as they've broke up. Even thought I'm mad at her, I'm glad she's safe."

Derek gave me one of his rare smiles, and then gave me something even more rare, a compliment.

"You're a really good person Stiles."

I didn't say anything after that, and neither did he. But the silence that filled the room had calmness to it.

The next morning when I was walking to my locker, I noticed a few people glance at me. Not a lot, but still, it made me curious.

It didn't happen often though, and didn't effect my day, so I decided I was probably just being a bit too anxious.

Like my mind was playing tricks on me.

At lunch I only glanced at Lydia a few times, and she glanced at me a few times as well. Our eyes only met once, and she immediately looked away, with an expression bordering guilt. I decided I should maybe talk to her.

At the end of the day when everyone was packing up, I was heading towards Lydia's locker, when the woman from AP art night stopped me.

"Ah, Mr. Stalmuskine, just the man I was looking for. I'm going to need you to collect the artwork you showed me on AP night, and bring it to the art room."

I smiled and nodded, deciding Lydia would just have to wait until tomorrow.

I headed to the janitor's closet, and began carefully removing my tree sketches from the walls, when I heard the closet door shut behind me. I turned around to see what was going on, and a very angry Andy Evans stared back.

A/N: Thank you again for all the reviews! You guys are the greatest. I'd bring you all out for a thank you dinner, but my car is a sedan and also I'm a college kid, we're broke.

I know this chapter was kind of fast paced, and I hope you guys didn't hate that, but I didn't want to make this story all filler. Also, yay Cora! I was gonna just write about Derek finder her in the epilogue, but then decided I wanted more supernatural shenanigans in the story. But hey, it leads to more Sterek bonding time. ;)