Once at Stiles' house, Stiles takes Derek to the kitchen, and asks him, "What do you want?"
Derek replies, "What can you make?"
"You mean... like cooking?"
"Yes. Like cooking."
"I uh... I don't really cook. Besides toast, and it sometimes is burnt."
Derek rolls his eyes, and sighs as he goes to the fridge, taking out the eggs, cheese, and ham.
"Want an omelet?"
Stiles nods meekly.
Derek skillfully makes two ham&cheese omelets, as though he's done it thousands of times before. He sets one down on Stiles' plate, and the other on his own.
"Now let us pray..." he says in a mocking tone.
"Are you serious?" questions Stiles.
Derek just looks at him for a second before saying, "Just eat your freaking omelet."
Stiles, happy to follow this order, starts scarfing it down, finishing it literally minutes before Derek.
After a bit of silence, Stiles breaks it with, "So..."
"So," Derek says in reply, taking the last bite of his omelet.
"What do you normally do? I mean, I go to school, and Lacrosse practice... What do you do?"
"I do whatever interests me to put it simply," he says, seeming to be done with the question, and then he adds, "But... usually I don't have anything to do."
"You can always come and do something with me if you want. I don't do much anymore either since Scott started dating Allison. He's my best friend, but he's always spending time with her now, and I don't want to stop him if it makes him happy."
Derek sees that Stiles is upset, and in his best attempt to cheer him up, tells him, "Uhh.. yeah, we can do things, maybe I can show you this part of the woods that's pretty cool. It has a bridge." Derek realizes that he sounds like and idiot and immediately regrets it.
Stiles doesn't think this though. He has a strange attraction to Derek that he can't explain, and any time with him sounds appealing.
"Sounds good to me. Show me tomorrow, I don't have lacrosse practice then, so we have more time to check it out."
Derek nods affirmatively.
The two sat at the table, not knowing what to talk about. Stiles looks at the clock, and notices it's nearly 8:20.
"I have to shower and change clothes... I guess I'll see you tonight..." Stiles says as he stands up from the table.
Derek nods once more, also standing up from the table, and he walks to the front door, letting himself out and driving back up to the woods.
Stiles showers and gets dressed before going to school for another mundane day.
Derek is actually on the way to the store. He arrives at his destination, and picks something up for Stiles, who will see it later that night.
After a tiring day of school, Stiles makes it home. He cleans up the dishes from that morning. Before leaving, he checks to make sure there isn't anything out of place, anything that will anger his dad. When he feels there isn't, he grabs his keys and walks out the door , gets in his jeep, and makes his way up to the woods.
He walks to the tent, already set up, and calls out, "Derek?"
A moment later Derek pokes his head through the flaps, and pulls it back in. Stiles enters the tent, no longer cautious.
Derek is in the sleeping bag already. Stiles undresses and goes in his side, but there's something there.
"I got you a blanket, because you're always cold," Derek tells Stiles.
"Oh, thanks."
Stiles actually was a bit disappointed, he had hoped that Derek would keep him warm again. Even if he wouldn't entirely admit it to himself, he liked it a lot.
Stiles wraps up in the blanket and is warm, but it just isn't the same.
In the morning, Derek is gone once more, and another note is there.
Sorry to run off again, I would have had breakfast again, but I had something to take care of. Meet me in this same spot when you get out of school, I'll show you the bridge.
Stiles takes the note with him as he leaves the tent and goes home to get ready for his day.
Derek didn't have anything to take care of. He just had to get away from Stiles. He was getting in. He was getting in his life. He had kept everyone else out, but it was something with Stiles. He couldn't leave him under the branch, and he couldn't let him sleep under the tree if it might drop another branch. He even let him sleep in the same sleeping bag as him, and kept him warm.
He wished he never would have helped him out. He'll just lose him. Like how he lost everyone else. Images of his family cross his mind, but he pushes them away.
He watches Stiles as he leaves the tent. He trips over a root, and Derek chuckles lightly, but then he remembers. He remembers that he's not supposed to let him get any closer to him. He loses his smile. That's how easy it is for Stiles to get close.
He sighs, knowing he should stop fighting it. 'Stiles will get close anyway, so why fight it?' he wonders to himself. 'Maybe he won't leave...' he thinks hopefully, 'Maybe he'll be the first to stick around.'
Derek walks to the bridge and looks down at the water. He watches as it gently flows over rocks in one section, and hastily blasts down in another.
He wonders what it's like to be water, to just flow anywhere, with nothing else to do but exist. He ponders it for a moment, thinking that he's not much different from water.
Stiles is in the hallway, coming from the bathroom, when he notices Lydia is crying. He knew this was his chance to get close to her. Considering he's had the biggest crush on her since the 3rd grade, he knew what she liked. He went to the snack machine and bought a Reese's, her favorite candy, and came back to where he saw her. She was still there, and he walked up to her and asked, "Are you okay?"
She looks at him incredulously, "Does it look like I'm okay? Did you really have to ask that?"
"Oh... right..." he responds, "Do you want to talk about it?"
"With you? You wouldn't understand," she looks away, and Stiles assumes she's upset about Jackson.
He offers her the Reese's, as a last attempt to cheer her up.
"Candy? I can't. If I eat it now, I'll be eating it all day," Lydia says as she stands up, "I'll just go cry alone now..." and then she walks away.
The bell rings; school is over. Stiles gets up and walks in the general direction of the parking lot in defeat. He had been so hopeful, that this would be the time he came close to her, maybe even become her friend. But she pushed him away like always. He should have known.
He stops by his house to eat, but the majority of the time he spends picking at his food. He just throws it away and leaves to find Derek.
Stiles sees Derek standing against a tree, and he wonders how long he has been waiting there.
Derek spots him and steps off from the tree, and begins walking to the bridge, not bothering with greetings.
Once at the bridge, Derek turns and waits for Stiles' opinion. When Stiles doesn't say anything, Derek asks, "Is something wrong?"
Stiles debates whether to tell him or not, but decides that if he'd tell anyone, he'd tell Derek.
"Yes, something is wrong. Since the 3rd grade, I've had a huge crush on this girl named Lydia. She barely even knows me, but when I try to talk to her, she always pushes me away or just dismisses me. I know so much about her, more than she could even imagine. More than anyone," Stiles says with great irritation, "Today, I saw that she was crying, and I guessed it was because of her shit boyfriend. So I decide that maybe she'll want her favorite candy: Reese's. I get her one, and try talking to her, but she doesn't want to. I offer the candy, and she doesn't want it because she's worried about her figure."
Stiles leans on the railing, hanging his head. Derek stands next to him, offering little support. Stiles pulls out the wrapped candy and pulls his arm back to throw it, but Derek grabs his arm.
"You know... I like Reese's too," and Derek does something neither of them expected.
When Stiles looks at him, he leans down and kisses him lightly on the lips, making it last for a few moments.
Stiles feels butterflies as soon as their lips meet, but he's confused, and isn't quite sure what to do. In panic, he shoves Derek off of him, looking at him like he's crazy, and runs off.
"Stiles, wait! I'm sorry!" Derek calls regretfully and dejectedly.
Derek, feeling like an idiot, looks down at the water, and sees the Reese's flowing down with the current. It seems he has something else in common with water. He pushes everything away.
Stiles gets into his jeep, and drives off, it's as if he's on auto-pilot; he doesn't come back to reality until a few minutes later, and he's already far down the road. He pulls over to the side, and slams his head against the steering wheel.
"Why am I such an IDIOT?!" he chastises himself. He gets out to walk around.
"He probably feels awful now. No, I know he does. He must feel like shit, and all because I couldn't keep my my head clear."
He sits down in the grass, trying to think of what to do. He looks down at the flow of water on the side of the road, and he notices a Reese's, and wonders why anyone would waste it.
"Maybe he's still there... I hope he is..." Stiles remembers that he shares the tent with Derek at night then, "Shit, I really have to go find him."
Stiles gets in his jeep and drives back up to the woods.
He doesn't know how he can apologize for his idiocy. He doesn't have an excuse, except for one thing he hadn't told anyone else before, ever.
Stiles walks to the bridge, searching for Derek. After a few minutes, he returns to the bridge in defeat.
"FUCK!" he screams, "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!" he slams his fists down on the railing of the bridge. He crosses his arms and rests his head on them.
"I'm guessing something's wrong..."
Stiles looks up to see Derek, who is standing at the very edge of the bridge.
"Derek I'm... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to panic like that. You just surprised me..."
Derek doesn't say anything, doesn't move.
"It's actually more than that..." Stiles says as he slumps down against the railing of the bridge. He pats the empty space next to him; requesting Derek to sit next to him. Derek is cautious, but he makes his way over, and gently places himself next to Stiles.
"One day, when I was really young, I came home from school an hour early, it was a teacher planning day, we always get out early on teacher planning days," Stiles says dully.
"I walked in on my mom about to hang herself. She looked at me with wide eyes. And then she ran over to me and hugged me, and kept apologizing. I didn't get what she was doing. When she finally looked at me, I just had a blank face, and I asked her, 'Can I go watch TV now?' and she nodded. "
Derek had an empathetic look on his face, and he wanted to put his arm around Stiles, but thought maybe now wasn't the time.
"I turned on the TV, but I didn't watch it. I kept thinking about what she had been doing before I walked in. But I didn't understand. I was too young at the time. I thought about it every time I saw her though."
"It wasn't until middle school that I found out about killing yourself. We watched a video about it... When I got home, my mom smiled and asked me how school was, but I didn't answer. I just asked, 'Mom... were you going to kill yourself?'" Stiles tells Derek despondently.
"She stopped smiling, and sat me down at the kitchen table. She told me that she was sick, and that it hurts every day. That she wanted to just end her suffering. But when I walked in, she remembered that she has to protect me, and so she deals with the pain every day because she loves me so much."
"We had to check her into the hospital the next week, we found her on the floor of the living room. Turns out she had breast cancer, that spread to her ribs, causing bone cancer, and even spreading. To her collar bones. She went terminal, and they put her on chemo, and gave her morphine, and she kept fighting."
"I would visit her every day while she did chemo, to get her mind off it. I'd tell her everything, even things that were so dumb, like when I saw a butterfly, or a bug, and I couldn't catch it. She loved it though..." he trails off for a moment.
"Then I saw you, and you were so cool in your nice car, leather jacket, great body, perfect hair... I told her about you, and she was interested right away. She told me I should talk to you, but I had to explain to her that someone as cool as you wouldn't talk to me," Stiles says, and then he scoffs as his own words.
"I started seeing you more often, and developed a crush on you like Lydia. But you were different, something attracted me to you more, I didn't understand it. But I still talked about you all the time. I didn't tell her that I liked you yet," he looks at Derek, who was already looking at him.
"One time I saw you in town, and I followed you," Stiles looks away then, "I saw you kiss a guy. I didn't know who it was, and I didn't care, but it surprised me."
Derek was also surprised. He thought no one had ever seen him with a guy, he only used them as a quick fuck, so it didn't really matter, but it still surprised him.
"I told my mom about it, and she didn't really care. Things continued like that for a bit, until I saw you running one morning, and you were so muscular, perfect abs, pecks, arms... I told her about it, and she said you must work out like a freak to stay so perfect," he laughs lightly, but his eyes are watering.
"When you fought Jackson that one time, and gave him a messed up face for making fun of your family, she thought you were great. She was glad that you could protect who you cared about. She wanted to do the same herself, because she knew about how he would pick at me and Scott," another laugh, but this time his tears brim over.
"I started talking about you so frequently, she would stop asking how my day was, and just ask what you did today. One day when she asked, I finally told her about my crush on you. And that I thought I was gay. She didn't say anything, she just sat there. Like she was thinking about, if I was gay. But then she just changed the subject like I hadn't said anything."
"She died a few weeks later. The doctors didn't understand why at first, but they figured it out. She had started taking her IV out during chemotherapy; successfully killing herself," Stiles' voice cracked, and he stayed silent for a moment.
"The last day she was alive, she asked me if I still had a crush on you. When I said yes, she just nodded, and we carried on like normal," Stiles states in tears.
"I knew she had killed herself because she didn't want to be alive knowing she had a gay son. I stopped paying attention to you after that, even ignoring you. Until a few days ago, when you helped me out from under that branch. My old feelings started coming back, and when you kissed me, it just made me remember why my mom killed herself, "Stiles finishes hysterically.
Derek pulls Stiles into an embrace then, and takes in all that Stiles just poured out. Then he thinks of something.
"Stiles, you said that your mom stayed alive to protect you right?"
Stiles nods into his chest.
"And that she was glad I protected those I cared about?"
Stiles nods again.
"And how she asked you if you still had a crush on me before she died?"
He nods once more.
"Stiles, did you ever think that maybe she stopped fighting her cancer because she knew that I would protect you when she was gone?"
Stiles doesn't move, he keeps crying, but he's stopping, and he looks up at Derek like he's the best thing in the world.
"You really think that's wh-why she did it?"
"Yes, I really do."
Stiles is quite again, but he rests his head on Derek's chest. Derek doesn't say anything, just let's him lay there as he cries his eyes out. For the second time.
When Stiles is silent, he dries his eyes and says, "I think I need some time. Before we get into anything."
Derek just nods. He didn't expect to get all of this baggage with Stiles, but he couldn't turn back now, and he didn't plan to.
"It's getting dark," he says.
Stiles looks up and notices how dark it had become, "Oh, it is."
"We should should probably head back and set up the tent."
"Yeah," Stiles agrees as he gets up, Derek following him.
Derek had to grab the tent from his car before they could set it up. Stiles mainly chatted away while Derek did all of the work.
Once finished, they undress and get in the sleeping bag.
Derek notices he forgot the blanket for Stiles, "Crap, I forgot your blanket."
"It's fine, you're way more comfortable anyway," Stiles replies as he snuggles up against Derek.
Derek smirks as he wraps his arms around Stiles, "It's more comfortable sleeping like this for me too," and he nuzzles his head against Stiles.
They fall asleep in mere minutes, perfectly content with each other.