Come find me now, we'll hide out (we'll speak in our secret tongues)

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/28910559.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: Teen Wolf (TV)
Relationship: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Additional Tags: Teen Wolf AU, Alpha Derek Hale, Wolf Derek Hale, Feral Derek Hale,
Mates Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Derek shifted after the hale fire and
never turned back, Hermit Derek Hale, Eventual Smut, Derek Hale to
the Rescue, Derek Hale Takes Care of Stiles Stilinski, Stiles Stilinski
Takes Care Of Derek Hale, Porn with Feelings, Porn With Plot,
Possessive Derek Hale, Wolf Instincts, Derek Hale is Bad at Feelings,
Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, Rough Sex, First Time, Top Derek
Hale/Bottom Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Collections: Teen wolf RC20021997, Saved Stuff
Stats: Published: 2021-01-22 Completed: 2021-05-31 Chapters: 8/8 Words:
23569

Come find me now, we'll hide out (we'll speak in our secret
tongues)
by Gorgeousgreymatter

Summary

It’s not often these days that his wolf and human instincts are at odds -- not when they’ve
been living seamlessly in sync for so long now.

But the wolfish part of him is looking at that boy, pale and too-thin, wearing that ridiculous
red sweatshirt that, for one thing, wasn't nearly protection enough in this weather, and for
another, might as well be a flashing, neon sign that says chase me, and all it appears to see
is want.

Or: Stiles's post-graduation road trip goes terribly wrong, and Derek has to save the idiot
human from freezing to death.

Notes

WHY AM I DOING THIS TO MYSELF AGAIN.

I wanted feral, mountain man Derek, okay? So, I just decided to do it myself. Because I'm a
 masochist that way.

Anticipating three or four chapters total, and a rating change to Explicit.

Enjoy and thanks for reading c:

See the end of the work for more notes

 I

Come find me now, we’ll hide out (we’ll speak in our secret tongues)

This is why people don’t listen to their GPS, Stiles thinks. Because apparently when you do that,
you end up in the middle of fucking nowhere with no actual road signs, or mile markers, or hell,
any recognizable landmarks at all. Which is fine, or would be fine, Stiles thinks, if it wasn’t
turning into a fucking snowpocalypse outside.

He wasn’t an idiot. He’d checked the weather, okay? He knew it rained a lot in Oregon. He’d
expected that -- hence the raincoat he’d shoved into his duffel-bag when he’d packed for this road
trip. But he hadn’t packed snow gear, or snow chains, because he lives in California, okay?

But then again, Stiles should have expected something bad to happen. It’s not like his luck was all
that great, especially lately. He tries not to think about it much, but the pang in his chest is
impossible to ignore. His mother hadn’t made it to his graduation. She’d promised, of course, but
Stiles had never really expected her to. It had been a silly promise anyway, a hopeful one made on
one of her good days that, at the time, were already becoming fewer and far between.

Then fall came and went, and so did most of winter. By December, she hadn’t even recognized him
anymore, so the idea of June, of holding out for sunshine and summer, seemed unfathomable,
nothing more than a pipe dream. It wasn’t supposed to a surprise when she died, considering he
and his dad had been watching her slowly slip away for months and months, and yet when it
finally did happen, it was like a sucker punch to the face, a foot straight to his gut. Like someone
had reached in and shattered his fragile, glass insides like breaking a mirror.

And things that had always made sense to him -- eating, sleeping, god, even breathing -- were hard
enough. The idea of just waking up and going to school, seeing his friends, playing (okay, sitting
on the bench, mostly) lacrosse like everything was fine and normal seemed as foreign and strange
to him as trying to have a conversation in a language he didn’t know. So he’d cashed in his
overabundance of credits, metaphorically, and graduated early.

His father had asked him what he planned on doing, and Stiles hadn’t really had an answer. That
Berkeley acceptance letter had gotten shoved in his desk drawer along with all the other stuff he
hadn’t wanted to think about.

The road trip had been an impulse, one born from too many nights spent staring up at his ceiling
remembering all the things he tried his hardest not to. The way his mother had sung him to sleep
every night as a kid (even though her singing voice admittedly left a lot to be desired, he thinks
fondly). The way she smiled, big, all teeth, in a way that always made her eyes disappear. The
silver-bell tinkling sound of her laughter. Too many memories of all those childhood trips spent in
the backseat of his mother’s jeep (his now, he thinks ruefully), too hot and sweaty, because half the
time the airconditioning didn’t work, as they stopped at every single roadside attraction they came
across. He never quite understood why, but his mother had always loved that crap. Show her a sign
for the biggest ball of twine, life-size dinosaur statues, giant frying pans, and she’d take the nearest
exit. Who needed Paris or Milan, or hell, even Disneyland, when you could visit the world’s
largest yo-yo museum?

So that’s what he’d decided to do. He’d expected his father to balk over an unsupervised road trip,
but oddly enough, he’d seemed to understand the need for it (and Stiles was eighteen, now, he’d
said, sighing. Not like he could stop him anyway). To get away, to get out of the house where that
suffocating gloom had settled over everything like a layer of dust, Stiles’s father included. Surely
he hadn’t expected Stiles not to notice the man could hardly stand to be in the same room with him
for the last three months.

Stiles doesn’t even have to ask why, because he knows. It’s staring straight at him in the mirror
every morning. He knows exactly who he looks like.

So one day, Stiles just does it. Gets in his car and leaves Beacon Hills and everyone else behind.
Not forever, he thinks, eyeing the Now Leaving Beacon Hills sign growing smaller and smaller in
his rearview mirror. Just for now. There hadn’t been a firm plan, just maps mostly. The GPS his
father insisted he take. Mostly, it was roadside motels in between stops at various oddities -- the
Cabazon dinosaurs, the world’s largest lemon, the international banana museum. To be honest,
none of them felt all that spectacular or interesting, but there was something soothing about it.
Stiles almost felt like at every place he stopped, he was leaving behind little pieces of his sadness,
tiny pebbles of grief that had been stuffed in his pockets, weighing him down.

He wasn’t really any less sad, but he did, somehow, feel lighter. A tiny, infinitesimal fraction more
hopeful.

At least until now, because he’s not used to driving in snow, obviously. And it was really coming
down, so thick that even with the windshield wipers on, it was like driving with his eyes closed.
Not like the jeep performed all that well in ideal weather conditions, so frankly, he’s less surprised
and more defeated when he hears the engine grind and stutter to an inevitable halt.

Fuck me, he thinks, letting his forehead hit the steering wheel with a resounding thud.

He allows himself a few minutes to wallow before switching his brain into problem-solving mode.
Like always, there’s a toolbox in the trunk with tools he sort of knows how to use, albeit with a few
nontraditional items (his mother had relied heavily on duct tape, much to his father’s continued
horror). So, he supposes that’s his first course of action, he thinks, taking the time to bundle up as
best he can, layering on another sweatshirt and his raincoat.

It doesn’t really help much with the cold, because he’s pretty much shivering as soon as he gets
out, but his options were pretty limited in that regard anyway. Because if he’s not able to fix it, he
can either try not to freeze to death in his car with no heat, or retrace his path back to the nearest
town, which, after he thinks for a minute, is probably only three or four miles away. His cellphone
would normally be helpful, but a quick glance shows he has absolutely no service, which honestly
doesn’t shock him in the slightest. Either way, if he can’t get the jeep started, he’s going to end up
hoofing it. To find help, or shelter, or fucking cell phone service. So, no matter how he slices it,
that’s going to suck major dick.

Surprise, surprise (not), he thinks, because it turns out, he can’t fucking fix it. Because that would
be way too easy, and why should the universe not continue to bone him, anyway? Why the hell
not?

Fuck.

With a resolute sigh, Stiles starts to walk.

Run, run, faster, faster. Those are the only thoughts that guide him as he flies through the trees, his
paws blurred as he races through the forest. Derek’s been steadily tracking this deer for miles now,
and he knows it's starting to tire, can hear the frantic thump thump thump of its heart, taste the sour
tang of adrenaline on the back of his tongue when he scents the air.

He weaves in between the pines, jumping over fallen trees, logs, boulders, with practiced ease. As
he gets closer and closer, he can hear the animal’s ragged, desperate breathing, hear its hooves
pounding rapidly against the earth. It happens quickly. It always does. A stumble, one simple
mistake, and Derek doesn’t hesitate. He overtakes it, sinks his teeth into the deer’s flank, snarling
as he feels hot blood spill into his mouth. The deer screams and wails, kicks out blindly with its
feet, but it’s already over. No reason to draw it out, so he wrestles it to the ground, locks his jaws
around the thing’s throat, and tears through paper-thin flesh. And there, on the forest floor, his
muzzle drenched and dripping with the blood of a fresh kill, he fills his belly, that ceaseless,
gnawing hunger finally sated. At least for now.

It was easy like this. Simple. When he was hungry, he ate. When he was tired, he slept. Ran when
he needed to, rested when he didn’t. Perhaps that was why he’d stayed like this, lived for so long
now as the wolf. Time didn’t pass the same way as when he was human. It wasn’t minutes or
hours or the impossibly long stretch of days. It was merely seasons that passed in an endless,
repeating cycle. The cold, damp, dead of winter, the triumphant rebirth of a new spring.

Derek’s been wearing the skin of the wolf for so many winters now, he forgets sometimes what
being human felt like. Because it mostly feels like a dream now, that night of the fire when he’d
seen his home burn to the ground, felt the life leave each member of his family as they suffocated
from the smoke and burned from the flames licking their skin, each tie getting severed so
agonizingly slow that it felt like being butchered from the inside out.

He can’t remember why now (instinct probably), but he’d turned around and ran. Ran fast and ran
far, and by the time he was deep into the preserve, it had happened. The power had come all at
once, made his blood feel like it was scorching his veins. It hurt. That was his only thought when
the shift had come, when he’d felt his bones crack and rearrange themselves underneath his skin.
He'd felt the heat of fire blazing behind his eyes, everything flaring white and red and then finally
to black as he fell fully under.

When he'd opened his eyes again, he knew what had happened. He was the last one alive, so his
mother’s power had finally passed on to him.

He would have to be his own alpha now.

Derek has been able to smell it since this morning, the humidity filling the moist air with terpenes
from the pines, the strange way every other scent fell away as everything around him started to
freeze. So he’s not shocked to see the snow starting to fall, blanketing the earth, quieting the forest
around him.

He hardly feels it, the chill of the flakes hitting him through the thick, coarse fur of his coat. The
snow that falls on him doesn’t even melt. He could sleep out here in the open if he wanted to, but
he supposes there’s still some human instinct buried deep down that drives him to find some
shelter from the oncoming storm. He knows where he’s going.

About six months ago, when the dog days of summer had hit and Derek had gone searching for
relief from the oppressive heat, he’d somehow wandered his way onto a small property in a part of
the forest he hadn’t explored much. A cabin, where he’d smelled something he hadn’t for a long
time -- another human. Derek hadn’t been all that eager to investigate further. Humans anywhere
around here hardly meant anything good. It usually, for one thing, meant guns. Derek likely
wouldn’t die from a bullet wound, but he’d been shot enough times to know he wasn’t anxious to
repeat the experience any time soon.
It was the music that had drawn him in. The lyrical strumming of what he’d thought was a guitar.
The woods had its own music, sure, the shrieking caws of the birds overhead, the rustling of
leaves, and the creaking of branches swaying in the wind. But there was something about it, the
vibrating hum of those plucked strings, that had called to him. Maybe because he hadn’t heard it in
so long.

Regardless of the reason, he’d crept his way past the treeline, hiding in the shadows cast by the
coming sunset, and seen the source: a woman, grey-haired and sallow-skinned, sitting on the front
porch of the little house with a battered-looking guitar clutched in her gnarled hands. Night after
night he would find his way back, watch and listen, almost as if he was compelled, like he couldn’t
help it. Sometimes, after darkness fell and the moon came up, he could swear he could feel her
looking at him.

If she knew he was there, she never said anything. Never tried to approach him. Then fall passed
by, and winter came. It was a few weeks after the first frost when Derek had begun to smell it on
her -- death. Living as the wolf, death had ceased to surprise him, meant very little. But something
about watching the old woman deteriorate, become frailer with each passing day, it was like
watching a car crash. For some reason, he couldn’t find it in himself to look away.

On the night she’d passed, the moon had been full, the sky dark and clear, everything swathed in
moonlight. It had been quiet, too, save for those rattling, gasping breaths of a dying woman. She’d
sat on that porch like it was any other night, and Derek could see she didn’t have that same,
desperate look in her eyes that dying animals did. She’d merely seemed calm. Resigned to her fate.

So, even though there’d been no music that night, Derek had kept vigil anyway, and when he’d
heard the old woman’s heartbeat start to falter, grow slower, slower, slower, something compelled
him to come out of the shadows.

To her credit, the woman hadn’t seemed surprised to see him either, so his suspicions that she’d
always noticed him were obviously true.

“I was wondering if you’d show up,” she’d croaked, offering him a weak smile.

Derek had merely whined, paced restlessly back and forth in front of her.

“I came out here to die alone to begin with,” she’d muttered, and Derek had wondered why she
even bothered to try and speak. Perhaps she hadn’t cared about trying to preserve the last of her
energy. No point really, he’d guessed. “But I must admit, I am grateful not to be, at the end.”

Derek hadn’t shifted back since that night of the fire. Hadn’t even tried. Wasn’t even sure he could,
to be honest. And yet, there was something in that moment that he could not name that had
compelled him to do it.

It had hurt much like the first time, letting it overtake him, that same rippling up and down his
spine, the shuddering creak of his bones shifting back into place, raising himself up on two legs in
front of her.

He hadn’t expected much. Screaming, probably as most humans did when they encountered
something they didn’t understand. But she’d merely smiled again and shook her head. “I knew
there was something different about you, wolf.”

Derek had cocked his head, flashed his eyes at her, mostly in confusion. Speaking likely wasn’t
going to happen. It had been so long, he wasn’t even sure his voice would work anymore, let alone
what it would sound like.

So instead, he’d crept forward on unsteady legs, reached out with a hand he’d hardly even
recognized, and placed it gently against her wrist. Then they’d both watched, the woman misty-
eyed, as he’d drawn the pain like a poison out of her and into him, his veins turning black, flexing
and shuddering with effort. It had hurt. It always did, doing that. But it had passed, too, same as it
always did.

It wasn’t long after that when she’d looked at him curiously one last time. Murmured under her
breath, “Now, isn’t that something?”

And then, just like that, she’d gone.

What had compelled him to bother burying her, Derek couldn’t say. Perhaps it had been her
bravery in the face of death that he’d respected. Perhaps he’d felt sorry for her. Maybe, he’d done it
to see if he even could care about a thing like that anymore, dignity in death. Animals didn’t.

Perhaps he’d been making sure he was still human after all.

After it was finished, he’d been curious enough to go into the cabin and see just how she’d been
living. It had been clean and dry inside, just two small rooms. In the first room, a fireplace, a wood
stove with a hot water heater, a small bed. A copper tub. The second room had been a small
bathroom. The only thing that had truly captivated him was the mirror, mostly because he’d
certainly not recognized what was staring back at him when he’d looked in it.

He’d been sixteen when his family had burned, but the face staring back at him had been a grown
man’s, with a full beard, his dark hair longer than he’d ever kept it, and hanging irritatingly down
in front of his eyes. At least, he’d thought, those were the same green they’d always been. There
had at least been something comforting in that.

It had kind of creeped him out, to be honest, so after that, he’d turned tail (literally) and ran, having
no desire at all to stay human.

And he’d had no desire to go back there until now. Like before, some strange instinct he doesn’t
understand propels him forward. There had been a service road leading to the cabin, so it hadn’t
been hard to follow the same path again. Mindlessly, he pads along, unperturbed by the flakes
falling on him, though he occasionally stops to shake the snow built up in his coat, annoyed by the
ever-increasing weight of it.

It’s nice like this, he thinks. When the forest feels deserted. Empty. So, he’s not expecting to see
another living soul, which is why when he picks up a scent, it floors him for a moment. He pauses,
raises his nose to the air and tastes it.

Human. Like the old woman, only not at all, he thinks. Derek had been relatively indifferent toward
her scent because it hadn’t been good or bad necessarily. Just that: human.

This scent though, this scent was different, because this one was mouthwatering.

He’s off and running through the trees before he knows what’s happening.

...

“Go see the giant tree,” Stiles mutters angrily to himself, trudging sullenly through the snow, “it’ll
be fun.” You know where they also have trees? California. Where there was also the sun, glorious
sun. And warmth. But no, he had to be all daring and adventurous and cross state lines into fucking
Narnia.
And now he was going to freeze to death and die a sad, pathetic, virgin icicle. Although, he had
water and snacks in the emergency backpack his father had insisted he take. So, at least when
Stiles dies of hypothermia he’ll be well-hydrated and not-starving.

“If I make it out of this alive, that better be the best, most magical fucking tree I’ve ever seen in my
life.”

He’s probably being a little dramatic, Stiles knows that, but he also feels like he’s earned it, and
it’s not like there’s anyone around to witness his tantrum.

Or at least that’s what he thought. Until he sees the giant fucking black wolf in the middle of the
road, staring at him.

It’s fine, Stiles’s anxious mind assures him. It’s probably not real, because everything’s covered in
snow and people saw all kinds of weird shit during storms. Mirages, tricks of the light. Weren’t
wolves endangered? He tries to calculate, off-the-cuff, the actual percent chance of seeing one in
this part of the Northwest, but his heart is beating too fast and his brain has gone all fuzzy like a
broken tv.

So he just shuts his eyes, which in retrospect is stupid as hell, but he needs to recalibrate at least a
little before he passes out from lack of oxygen. Maybe when he opens them, the wolf won’t be
there.

Of course, that’s not what happens, because when he opens his eyes, the wolf is still right fucking
there, and also somehow closer?

“Jesus christ,” he yelps, because the wolf is just staring at him. Not in a hungry way (well, he
fucking hopes it’s not in a hungry way), with these strange, red eyes.

He’s pretty sure wolves don’t normally have red eyes. Red eyes that glow. Maybe it was just rabid.
Which, when he thinks about it, is also somehow worse.

And now that he’s been standing still for a while, he’s feeling colder than ever.
“I won’t taste good,” he blurts through clenched, chattering teeth. Why he’s trying to talk his way
out of this, reason with a wild animal, god only knows. But what else is he supposed to do? Stiles
might have flunked out of Boy Scouts (okay, he was banned, let’s call a spade a spade), but he’s
not an idiot. Running from a predator is like the worst thing he could do. Might as well wear a
fucking sign on his forehead saying eat me. “I’m skin and bones. An aperitif at best.”

The wolf lets out this sound that Stiles could swear is actually a sigh. And if he didn’t know better,
he swears the thing actually rolls its eyes at him.

For reasons he can’t possibly explain, Stiles is pretty sure he feels kind of offended.

Derek follows the scent blindly until he comes across a car, where the sugary sweetness is slightly
polluted by the acrid bite of burning oil and gasoline. There was no heartbeat that he could hear,
and he could see a trail of footprints leading away from the obviously broken metal box.

Tracking it was easy. Humans were stupid that way, always leaving traces behind. Clumsy and
loud. Thoughtless to everything else around them. Perhaps that’s why it’s so easy for him to sneak
up on the boy. Because that’s what it turns out to be, that deliciously alluring scent, a human boy.

It’s not often these days that his wolf and human instincts are at odds -- not when they’ve been
living seamlessly in sync for so long now.

But the wolfish part of him is looking at that boy, pale and too-thin, wearing that ridiculous red
sweatshirt that, for one thing, wasn't nearly protection enough in this weather, and for another,
might as well be a flashing, neon sign that says chase me, and all it appears to see is want.

We don’t want him, Derek thinks vehemently. Look at him. He’s scrawny.

He’s pretty. He smells good. We want him. He’ll want us. We can take care of him.

Well, they agree on that part at least, the boy obviously needs taking care of. He’s an idiot. He has
to be, Derek thinks, because why else would he be trying to walk like this, alone and obviously
unprepared, in a freaking snowstorm.
Help him.

No.

He’ll freeze to death without us. Look at him, the wolf growls, he needs us.

We don’t need anyone. Survival of the fittest, Derek thinks dryly.

We want him, that annoying voice insists again. Smell him and tell us you don’t.

Ugh, that was annoyingly true. Up close, it’s even more apparent, just how god damn delectable he
smells. And not in a for-eating way. In a different way, a way Derek wasn’t even sure he was
capable of even noticing, let alone feeling anymore.

Derek huffs. Fine.

Good. Better start now, because we think he’s about to faint.

Of course he is, Derek thinks, rolling his eyes. Of course he is.

 II
Chapter Notes

A shorter chapter, but it is what it is.

Thank you for reading and supporting c:

See the end of the chapter for more notes

II.

“Well, if you’re planning on eating me, can you just get it over with?” Stiles grumbles, hugging
himself and shivering violently. “Because if my choices are getting eaten right now, or slowly
freeze to death, I’ll admittedly have to go with the get eaten option.”

Stiles isn’t going to pass out. He’s not, okay? Yes, he maybe, might be feeling a little bit shaky at
the knees, but he doesn’t think he can be blamed for that. Not when there’s a wild animal not five
feet away from him, just staring, which is really starting to creep him out. Mostly because the
wolf’s not really doing anything but what feels like silently judging him. Like, a lot.

“I know,” Stiles says, when the wolf simply cocks its head at him, “I’m as shocked as you are by
this development.”

The wolf huffs and rolls its eyes again. And seriously, are wolves supposed to be able to do that?

And then the thing finally starts moving toward him, and yeah, okay, Stiles might have sort of
provoked it with the whole let’s hurry up and eat me thing, but that doesn’t stop him from yelping
and covering his eyes. Because running isn’t an option unless he wants to go ahead and invite that
wolf to literally play with its food, so to speak, but if Stiles is going to actually get eaten today
he’s, at the very least, not going to watch.

He’s expecting some claws and teeth, maybe some growling and snarling, but that’s not what he
feels or hears. That’s not what happens. Because the wolf’s teeth don’t close around any flesh.
Instead, when Stiles opens his eyes warily, he sees that the thing has the sleeve of his hoodie held
gingerly in its mouth, tugging on it insistently like it's trying to drag him somewhere.
“Hey, leave me alone! Can’t you go find some bunnies to terrorize or something?” Stiles hisses,
yanking back on his sleeve (which is stupid, he realizes this, but he’s not exactly thinking clearly at
the moment okay?). The wolf does finally growl at him, and Stiles is like fully expecting to get his
hand bitten off, but that’s not what happens either. Instead, the animal huffs again like Stiles’s very
existence is annoying him (which, rude, but that’s beside the point), and seems to decide carefully
pulling him along isn’t the answer. Apparently, shoving Stiles in the back is.

It’s not a gentle shove, either, and Stiles pretty much stumbles and faceplants into the snow almost
immediately. And like before, even though it makes absolutely no sense, Stiles thinks, blinking up
stupidly at the gray sky and wincing as he feels icy snow start to soak through his thin jacket, he’s
pretty sure that fucking wolf is laughing at him.

We might as well leave him here, Derek thinks grumpily. He can’t even walk right.

We pushed him.

Well, if he wasn’t so shrimpy, he might’ve been able to stay up on his feet, Derek says. It’s really
starting to irritate him, these two feelings warring inside. The one that’s telling him to run, leave
this dumb, weak little human behind and take care of himself, same as always, and that one that
seems to be growing exponentially with every second he spends next to the kid that’s repeating
mine, mine, mine (ours, the wolf reminds him pointedly) like a fucking mantra.

Not a kid. He smells ripe.

Not the point, Derek sniffs. And it won’t matter anyway if (or when) he freezes to death.

We’re not going to let him freeze to death. We protect what belongs to us.

Except, he doesn’t, Derek insists, sitting back on his haunches. The boy is scrambling to his feet
now at least, and Derek might not be used to being around humans anymore, but he certainly
knows when he’s being cursed at.

He will.
And we’re sure that’s what we want? Him? Derek asks himself in disbelief, even more annoyed by
the fact that he already knows the answer.

Yes.

The boy is stalking away with uneven steps, still muttering under his breath, which, fine, but he’s
walking in the wrong direction. From both town and that metal deathtrap Derek had seen on the
side of the road. Seriously, Derek thinks, it’s like the kid is actively trying to die. With another
snarl of irritation, the wolf bolts in front of the boy, turns, and bares his teeth.

Is he going to have to herd this kid like a sheep, for christ sake?

If Stiles were smart, he would have brought something with him to protect himself. That’s what the
baseball bat under the front seat was for, wasn’t it? But no, he had to be an idiot and leave the blunt
object behind.

Not that it would likely do much good. Because, for one thing, that is like the biggest wolf Stiles
has ever seen. Not that he’s seen any outside of wildlife documentaries, but he’s pretty sure wolves
weren’t supposed to be practically the same size as a freaking horse.

Since it doesn’t seem to act like a normal wolf, either, he just decides to go for it. Not run away.
Just, you know, walk fast and far. Deliberately. And in one direction.

Or he at least tries to, until the thing bounds in front of him and actually shows its teeth. Its big,
sharp, scary, fangy teeth.

“Okay, okay, christ!” Stiles says, throwing up his hands. “Fine. If you insist on leading me
somewhere before disemboweling me, let’s get fucking on with it.”

The wolf snorts and nods its head (no, wolves don’t nod their heads, Stiles reminds himself. It’s
probably just shaking the snow off its coat), before trotting past Stiles looking almost entirely too
pleased with itself. It even pauses, making a point to shove him slightly forward, brushing its
massive shoulder against his hip, though Stiles is quick enough this time that he only wobbles
slightly. No falling down.

He does give the thing the finger, but it’s not all that satisfying.

“I know one of humanity’s distinct failings is anthropomorphizing wild animals such as yourself,”
Stiles calls out bitterly, trudging through the snow, the wolf only a few feet ahead, its steps almost
infuriatingly light and springy against the ground, “but for a wild animal, you’re kind of a fucking
asshole, dude.”

The wolf turns back to look at him, flashing those weird red eyes, and really, it’s starting to feel
sort of uncanny at this point -- that the thing appears to actually not only be listening to him, but
understanding him. Which is weird for many reasons, only one of which being the fact that he’s
having a conversation with an animal (one-sided, but still).

They’ve been walking for a while now, and the sun is starting to go down. That’s not going to be a
problem for the wolf, Stiles thinks, but only one of them can see in the dark and it’s certainly not
him. And it’s not like the path the thing’s been basically dragging him down was all that
pedestrian-friendly. Stiles is thankful he’s in relatively decent shape (bench-warming wasn’t
exactly training, but at least during practice he got to pretend like he was an actual member of the
team), because he’s had to clamber over a number of fallen logs and boulders, which the wolf
scaled easily, not to mention annoyingly gracefully.

“Show off,” Stiles mutters when they reach a particularly steep and rocky hill that the wolf clears
with one leap. Then it turns around, looking up at Stiles expectantly from the bottom.

“Yeah, I don’t know if this is going to happen,” Stiles says, crossing his arms and peering
skeptically down at the ground. The snow was one thing, sure, but add rocky, snowy, icy, and he
thinks, glancing up at the dimming horizon, impending darkness, and the whole situation was far
from ideal.

The wolf huffs and stamps its feet impatiently.

Stiles sticks out his tongue (both childish and pointless, he’s entirely aware) and doesn’t move.
That earns him another one of those long, throaty growls that makes the hair on the back of Stiles’s
neck stand up.
“Fine, god, don’t be such a bossywolf, jesus,” Stiles says, thankful the only person he’s actively
humiliating himself in front of isn’t a person at all. There’s some comfort in that, he thinks, doing
his best to scrabble down the rocky surface without completely biffing it.

With his luck, he should’ve known better. That’s the only thought resounding in his head when the
stone he’d been using for footing gives out underneath him and he trips and stumbles all the way
down, landing with a loud oof in a tangled mess at the wolf's feet.

We thought the shortcut would make it easier.

Clearly, that worked, Derek thinks, glowering down at the boy still lying flat on his back in front of
him. He’s human. He can’t keep up. It was stupid to assume he even could.

The boy is cursing at him again, and Derek is only half-listening. Mostly his attention is on how
the boy is struggling to his feet, the way his teeth are violently chattering, so loud it’s hurting
Derek’s ears like tiny needles getting shoved in there. Then the boy takes a step, and Derek
flinches sympathetically when he hears the boy’s hissing cry of pain, followed by more cursing
(these ones are impressively more imaginative, Derek thinks).

The pain rolling off the boy is enough to make Derek’s eyes water, and it doesn’t take much to
find the source, padding forward to nose at his foot, smelling the blood bruising around his swollen
ankle.

Perfect, Derek thinks, snorting in frustration.

We could carry him.

You mean I could carry him. Only one of us has hands, remember?

You could carry him, the wolf amends. It’d be faster. Safer.
 And would require shifting, which Derek’s not exactly been inclined to do in the last decade, save
for that incident a few weeks ago, which he still doesn’t understand.

Derek had been so wrapped up with this ridiculous inner argument with himself that he’d almost
forgotten, for a moment, that the human was still here. Which was honestly impressive,
considering how fucking good he smelled to Derek. He was, unfortunately, very unforgettable.
“Fucking perfect. Just great,” the boy mutters, hugging his knee and growling (rather wolf-like,
Derek thinks, oddly proud), “but what should I have expected? Follow the possibly rabid --”

Derek rumbles pointedly, and the boy smirks, though it’s decidedly more bitter than amused.

“-- fine, probably not rabid, but definitely moody wolf into the fucking forbidden forest, see what’ll
happen. Couldn’t be that bad, right? No,” the boy rambles on, shivering. “Of course not. That’s
why I’m sitting here with a broken ankle probably, and I’m going to freeze to death like Beacon
Hills’s next fucking Chris Mccandless, and you know what,” he adds, gazing pointedly in Derek’s
direction, “I fucking hated that book.”

But Derek’s not listening. Doesn’t hear a single word of what the kid’s saying other than Beacon
Hills.

He hears his spine start to crack and rearrange before he even feels it start to happen.

Chapter End Notes

IDK if people are finding Derek's inner conversations confusing, but he's been a wolf
for like almost a decade, so it doesn't seem weird to me that he would have needed
someone to talk to, even if it was technically just a different part of himself.

Maybe it's weird, but it's just how Derek in this story translated himself in my brain.
BIG SHRUG.
 III
Chapter Notes

Thanks for coming along with me on this ride. I can't promise it won't be a mess, but I
appreciate the support!

CW: Brief mention of the "Me Too" movement. Not sure if that's worth throwing up a
warning about, but I would rather be cautious than not!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

III.

Just like before, fuck, it hurts, and a pained, strangled howl is still making its way out of Derek’s
throat when he finally manages to open his eyes again. And, just like before, all Derek can think
about as he’s lying there in the snow, curled uncomfortably in the fetal position, is how much it
really, truly sucks.

It’s disorienting. As a werewolf, Derek’s senses have always been heightened, but when he’s fully
shifted, it’s like they’re on hyperdrive or something. Losing that so suddenly, it makes wearing his
human skin feel like he’s gone blind, deaf, and dumb all at once.

The weight of flesh is suffocating.

“Holy fucking shit, dude -- you’re --”

Derek exhales, breathing deep enough that the boy’s sugared scent hits the back of his tongue.
Everything comes flooding back over him in a rush of sensation. He doesn’t get to his feet yet,
remembering the coltish, unsteady steps he’d taken that night at the cabin, turning instead to the
human he’d nearly forgotten. As if that was actually possible, Derek thinks.

Human, the wolf prompts? Derek says nothing, offers nothing, because like before, his throat feels
dry, locked. Not nearly yet capable of words.

At least the boy isn’t screaming. He is sort of sputtering though, waving his hands wildly around
his head like he’s trying to swat away flies or something.

Is he okay?

Derek cocks his head. I don’t think so. But I think we probably shocked him. It’s like he short-
circuited or something, Derek thinks, because the boy’s eyes (pretty eyes, Derek realizes
miserably, the color of warm chocolate) are practically bugging out of his head.

“-- you’re --"

Did we break him?

Possibly.

“-- you’re -- you’re hot! And naked!” the kid finally spits out. Then Derek watches his skin, as pale
as the snow surrounding them, flush an admittedly alluring shade of pink. “Oh, god, I meant
human.”

Derek blinks again, still dumbstruck, although he’s smirking a little because once again, this boy
doesn’t act like any human he’s ever come across before. It’s been a long time since he’s smiled.
Feels weird.

It doesn’t last though, because he can smell the way the boy’s scent is turning, souring with
adrenaline and panic. He might not be screaming, but he is quite possibly about to hyperventilate.

“Oh my god,” the boy starts, “this isn’t real, is it? I’m still in my stupid car, aren’t I? -- I probably
have hypothermia right now, and you’re just the weird fantasy my brain is using to process my
impending death, which, okay brain,” he gasps, “-- nice, but I can’t believe I’m going to die, and
the last experience I’ll ever have besides freezing to death is the International Banana Museum.
And I hate bananas!"

Why on earth would you fantasize about me? Derek secretly wants to ask. Derek’s not sure if he’s
supposed to be answering these questions anyway (not that he actually would), but he doesn’t think
so. Surely there would be more pauses. More actual breathing.
The boy’s heartbeat is deafening, and he’s shivering so violently that Derek thinks he can hear his
bones creaking.

We should probably --

Yeah, Derek thinks, I know. I got it.

With a resigned sigh, Derek shoots a slightly shaky hand out to grab the boy’s impossibly thin
wrist, wrapping his fingers around the thrumming pulse point there, and closes his eyes.

“Wait -- what are you --”

Stiles isn’t exactly a skeptic. He’s a nerd, and he’s had many years to come to terms with it. As
such, he’s pretty well-read in most fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He’s seen The X-
Files. He wants to believe and all that jazz, okay?

But when he sees that wolf fall to the ground, twist and writhe in a way that makes Stiles want to
look away so badly (but he can’t, of course) because fuck, it looks painful, all he can do is stare,
wide-eyed. All his brain can manage to do is practically blow its circuits trying to come up with a
logical, rational reason that his wolf (and when the hell exactly did it become his, he wonders?)
had suddenly transformed itself into a very large, very naked, man.

Obviously, it doesn’t end well. He may have forgotten he was cold, but his body certainly didn’t,
because now he’s shivering again, shaking, and he can’t seem to stop. He also, apparently, can’t
shut up, either.

He feels like he’s erroring out. As like, a person.

And because he’s Stiles, and even though he’s starting to see spots, he has, like, eight million
different questions. But really, the only one rocketing around in his panic-soaked brain is, what the
everliving fuck?
The wolf, well, man -- Wolfman? Jesus Christ -- is still just doing that staring thing. In fact, the
more Stiles talks, the more he stares, and the more, dare Stiles say, he looks almost amused? It’s
kind of adorable, actually, which, oh god, Stiles should absolutely not even be thinking about that
right now.

Not when he’s like, actively trying not to faint. And sort of failing at it, he thinks, wobbling
slightly.

Wolfman has been eerily still, that same type of stillness Stiles remembers seeing on the predators
on tv in those nature documentaries, right before they lunged at a helpless, baby gazelle and tore it
apart. Which is why Stiles doesn’t think he can be blamed for flinching the way he does when he
feels that hand, impossibly big and impossibly hot, grab him by the wrist and squeeze. Not tightly,
but it’s still unsettling.

“Dude, what the hell are you doing?”

Wolfman lets out one of those moody growls again that still manages to sound impressively
wolflike, even if the man no longer looks like one.

God, Stiles really must be oxygen-deprived. Has to be, he thinks, because when he looks down, he
can see black lines wiggling like snakes up and down Wolfman’s arm. All of a sudden, he feels sort
of warm, floaty. A little like being stoned, but somehow different. Better?

Those predators definitely didn’t roll their eyes the same way his Wolfman did. Nice eyes, Stiles
thinks dreamily. Emerald green and flecked with gold, not a thing like the crimson shade they were
before. That wasn’t bad, but he definitely thinks they’re better like this.

The last thing Stiles remembers saying is, which even as it's coming out of his mouth, he
recognizes how mortifying it truly is: “You have really pretty eyes, you know.”

By the time consciousness returns, before Stiles even opens his eyes, the first thing he notices is
that he isn’t cold anymore. For a brief moment, he panics, because that was definitely part of
hypothermia, right? You get to just sort of drift off, all peaceful and warm. That didn’t sound so
bad, in theory.

But then he notices some more stuff, stuff that isn’t so nice. Like the fact that his ankle hurts like a
bitch again (which actually kind of makes him feel better about the whole, this might not actually
be happening thing), and, and he’s weirdly itchy.

When Stiles opens his eyes, the reason for the latter becomes excruciatingly obvious. He’s naked ,
as in no clothes, though he’s wrapped very deliberately in a wool blanket. Hence, the itchy, Stiles
thinks, grimacing. Scrambling upright, he blinks blearily until his surroundings come into clearer
focus.

It’s some kind of cabin. Small, well-lived in, but it looks and smells relatively clean, if not a little
musty, too, dimly lit by a lantern hanging from the ceiling and the soft glow of a fire flickering in a
wood stove across from the bed (he’d only just realized that’s what he’s been sitting on).

Wrapping the wool tighter around his shoulders, he tries to sit up and move, but this time, it’s not
his ankle that keeps him still. It’s a hand, gripping him by the foot and holding him down so
suddenly that it makes Stiles yelp. When he turns to look, he sees those same eyes ( pretty eyes, he
thinks miserably) of his wolf staring back at him.

“Holy shit, could you please stop doing that?” Stiles says nervously. “You’re going to give me a
heart attack.”

Wolfman rolls his eyes again (which he seems to do a lot, Stiles notes). Stiles hmmphs and tries to
yank his foot out of the man’s grip, but a bolt of pain shoots through it, and he curses. Wolfman
growls and Stiles shivers when he sees red bleed into his eyes. He’s not sure if Wolfman can
actually speak, but the aggressive furrowing of his eyebrows is pretty clear:

Don’t move.

Maybe Stiles should be more scared. No, he definitely should. A normal, sane person would be.
But that ship sailed a long time ago. Now that he’s not actively turning into a human popsicle, it’s
sort of impossible for his brain to forget the fact that god, Wolfman really is almost disgustingly
attractive. And, Stiles realizes, blushing, still naked. And, Stiles’s brain further reminds him, oh so
helpfully, so is he.

Eep. “Where the hell are my clothes?” Stiles hisses, clutching the blanket protectively. “There is
such a thing as consent, you know. Clearly, someone isn’t worried about getting ‘Me-tooed.’”

The wolf’s face is impassive, but he turns it toward the stove, and Stiles sees that he hadn’t even
noticed that it was his clothes that were hanging on a line strung over the top of it. He can see the
bright red of his hoodie, next to that almost entirely useless raincoat.

“Oh,” Stiles says, biting his lip sheepishly. “Thanks, I guess. Although, I would really like it if you
would put some pants on because I literally cannot have a conversation with you unless you put
some pants on. Not that we can even call this a conversation, because I’m the only one actually ta-
-”

He’s interrupted by a distinctly irritated sigh. So, Stiles thinks, glancing up and blushing again
when he realizes Wolfman definitely isn’t deaf (or clothed, his brain screams) because he’s
stalking across the room and picking up a pair of what looks like plaid pajama pants. Which is
honestly so funny in the moment that Stiles can’t do anything but laugh. And laugh. And laugh.

“Oh my god,” Stiles wheezes, covering his face. “I’m sorry, thank you, I just --”

Another growl, but if it’s supposed to be a warning, it doesn’t work. For some reason, Stiles kind of
likes the noise, and it sort of just makes him want to laugh harder.

The hand is back on his ankle, and god, the man’s skin is burning hot like he’s got a fever, and
Stiles can’t help but wonder if that’s how he always feels. Like, is that just normal temperature for
wolfmen? Does the rest of him feel like that?

The warm skin disappears, and Stiles actually has to stop himself from whining because he’s
somehow...disappointed? It’s replaced by something kind of slimy, and Stiles jerks away
reflexively.

“What the hell is that?” Stiles asks, gazing down disdainfully at whatever greenish-brown gunk the
wolf is currently spreading on his ankle which, admittedly, looks kind of swollen and gross at the
moment.

It doesn’t smell gross though. It smells like the herbal tea that Scott’s mom was always drinking.
Lavender and chamomile. It must be some kind of poultice, Stiles thinks, eying the strip of cloth
being clumsily wrapped around his foot. Wolfman doesn’t seem as steady and graceful at the
moment -- his fingers (long fingers, nice fingers) are shaking a little. Like he’s not used to using
them.

And maybe he isn’t, Stiles thinks, watching him. “So are you like an alien?”
 Wolfman scoffs but doesn’t answer, surprise, surprise.

“Am I getting anywhere? Hotter? Colder? Shapeshifter? Skinwalker?” Stiles rattles on, puzzled,
yet undeterred, before adding with a smirk, “Animorph?”

“Do you ever stop talking?”

Chapter End Notes

Yay! Derek finally speaks. More with his POV next chapter c:
 IV
Chapter Notes

Oh god I lied. There's going to be like seven or eight chapters. I don't even know
anymore. I've been suffering some writers block, so this chapter might not be great, but
at least it's here!

And full of obscure pop culture references, sorry.

IV.

“Do you ever stop talking?”

He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but honestly, he’d been sort of shell-shocked just listening to the
boy. It’s been so long since he’s heard anyone talk at all, period, let alone that much. Derek didn’t
even know it was possible for a person to say so many words with so few breaths and not
immediately pass out.

“Almost never,” the boy retorts easily. The laughter is a bit of a shock, too. Derek can’t remember
the last time he heard that sound.

Well, you never talk, the wolf says almost gleefully, so perhaps it’ll work better this way.

Shut up, Derek thinks viciously.

“Well, okay, rude,” the boy says, though he’s still grinning, laughing.

“No,” Derek says, sighs through a frustrated growl, “Not you.”

“Dude, that’s not exactly all that reassuring.”

Nice going. You said that out loud. Now he’s going to think we’re a lunatic.
He just saw me turn into a human being from an actual wolf, and you think it’s talking to myself
that’s going to make him think we’re crazy? Derek thinks skeptically. “Haven’t talked much.” The
sound of his own voice in his ears is grating. Too rough, and his throat burns with the effort when
he speaks next. “Been alone.”

The boy cocks his head. “For how long?”

It’s a tricky question, mostly because after a while, Derek had sort of stopped counting. At least the
way humans did. The boy is watching him, waiting for an answer, and the attention makes Derek
shift nervously, his fingers clenched into his palms. “What year is it?” he croaks.

“Uh, it’s 2013,” the boy says, “do you really not know that?”

What does he expect, Derek thinks sarcastically, that we were pulling pages off our werewolf
words of the day calendar?

Be nice or he won’t like us. We want him to like us, remember?

Hmmph, Derek grouses, but knows this is true, albeit begrudgingly in his case.

For now.

For christsake, shut up! If you keep distracting me, he’s going to think we’re mentally disabled in
addition to just plain crazy. “Eight years. Almost,” Derek finally says hoarsely. “You’re the
second person I’ve seen.”

The boy makes a noise of disbelief, and suddenly he’s talking again, a mile a minute, so many
words coming out at once that Derek nearly can’t follow them. “Holy shit, dude. You’ve been
living in this place for eight years? Alone? Are you a wolf all the time, or can you change any time
you want? Is this your house? What’s your name?”

He’s so earnest with his questions that he’s half-scrambling to his feet in excitement, or at least
attempting to, and Derek growls again in warning, flashing his eyes pointedly at the boy’s ankle.
“Stop moving.”
“Wow,” the boy breathes, “somehow you managed not to answer a single one of those. I’m
actually impressed.”

Still, he’s not able to hide his wince of pain, Derek notes, so, with another put-upon sigh, the wolf
winds his hands back around the boy’s foot and closes his eyes, concentrating.

“Hey - hey, you better not be doing the whammy on me again, wolfman, or I swear I’ll --”

That was cheating, the wolf whispers as they both watch the boy slip into that twilight sleep again.

I’m good with that, Derek thinks disdainfully. Besides, it wouldn’t affect him so much if he didn’t
need the rest.

You’re just trying to rationalize wolf-roofie-ing him again. He’s going to be angry with us when he
wakes.

Look at him. He’s skin and bones. Too pale. He clearly doesn’t take care of himself. Not well,
anyway.

We just need to fatten him up a little. We’ll hunt while he sleeps. He can’t be mad at us with a full
belly.

Derek doesn’t think this is true, but he’s already resigned himself to the fact that he’s going to do it
anyway. Because for some reason, it’s like he can’t not.

I blame you for this. All of this.

We'll see.

...
When Stiles wakes up next, he doesn’t open his eyes right away. Because he’s still pissed at the
wolfman for using that weird knockout mojo on him again, and even more so, because he’s not
actually that upset about it. Because he feels weirdly...good? More well-rested and comfortable
than he has in months, which is ridiculous, or it should be, because he’s basically in a shack in the
middle of nowhere with a (possibly) crazy-wolf-mountain-man. A really, ridiculously sexy,
handsome, (possibly) crazy-wolf-mountain-man.

It was all very, very confusing.

Eventually, Stiles has to move, at the very least to stretch his sleep-stiffened limbs, because he’s
pretty sure they’ve gone numb. His ankle gives him a sharp and painful twinge of protest when he
moves, but he can’t sit in this bed a minute longer or he’s going to go crazy. Also, he really has to
take a piss.

It’s still dark outside, and when he peeks out the window, the snow is even higher than he’d
remembered. He doesn’t imagine he’s going to get out of here anytime soon. Not tonight, anyway.
Walking is out, so Stiles is forced to half-crawl, half-hop his way across the room. The fire is still
going in the stove, so with the glow from the dying embers and the small string of lights hanging
above his head, he can see well enough. At least well enough not to crash into anything.

On purpose, anyway.

Stiles is alone, as far as he can tell, although that doesn’t count for much when he knows now just
how quickly and silently wolfman can move. There’s a not-small part of him that feels slightly
bereft by this fact, the emptiness, which isn’t something he’s willing to examine at the moment.
Because Stiles is hungry and he really needs to pee, so when that’s all sorted, he supposes he can
get down to the brass tacks of what the fuck was exactly going on here.

The tiny room off the kitchen turns out to be a little bathroom, so at least the latter is easy enough
to take care of. Once that’s done, he’s not really sure what else to do. It feels like snooping, but
Stiles supposes he can’t really be blamed for that. What else is he supposed to do all alone and
stuck in this cabin, if not that?

The place looks well-lived in, and surprisingly clean for being literally in the middle of nowhere,
save for a thin layer of dust on the shelves. Stiles is more surprised to see how full of books they
are, and not just the typical outdoor survival guides or battered copies of The Anarchist’s
Cookbook , which is what Stiles might have expected to find in a place like this. There’s no
obvious system or method to how they’re organized, either. Hemingway beside Austen, Naked
Lunch next to A Brief History of Time. It’s hard to imagine wolfman reading romance novels
(Stiles can’t say he doesn’t laugh outright at the thought), but there are even some Nora Roberts
novels of the airport variety tucked into the corner of one shelf like an afterthought.
Stiles fingers twitch as he runs them greedily over the spines, thinking how easy and nice it would
be to just grab one and sit in front of the flickering fire and lose himself in the pages for a while.
It’s exactly what he’d be doing right now if he was at home, though he guesses the whole remote-
cabin-in-the-snowy-wilderness aspect made it sort of new and exotic. Add in the half-feral
wolfman, and it was practically a fantasy vacation.

Stiles laughs sort of woozily to himself, because none of that made sense, not even to his ADHD
brain, and if he doesn’t eat soon, he may actually pass out for real all on his own this time. No
wolfman required.

Stiles makes his way carefully over to the kitchen area, but he’s not optimistic. There’s the typical
bomb-shelter staples -- a lot of canned meats (no thanks) and packets of what he thinks are actual
MRE meals (also a pass). There’s some rice though, and oatmeal, a collection of various canned
soups. If he can find a pot, he’s in business.

One small mercy of being alone was the fact that no one was around to see how pathetic he looked
trying to find what he needed. There’s more hopping, and possibly some grunting, as he rifles
through the cabinets, the whole time trying desperately not to think about the box of blueberry pop-
tarts he had stashed in his duffle bag (the bag he’d so unfortunately left in the backseat of his
useless, useless car).

Stiles has just found a relatively rust-free saucepan in the back of a cupboard when the door opens
with a bang that, frankly, scares the living shit out of him. He yelps in surprise, the pot clattering to
the floor as he flops backward with a truly embarrassing flail before he falls.

Or, he would have, if someone hadn’t caught him. That someone, Stiles realizes with a hissing
exhale, was the wolfman, whose hands (big hands, Stiles realizes weakly) were locked around his
narrow hips and lifting him gently to his feet.

“Told you not to move,” the wolfman says gruffly.

Stiles is close enough he swears he feels the rumble in his own chest. “I don’t have to listen to
you,” he says, hoping the defiance distracts enough from how shaky his voice sounds.

“So I should let you fall then?”

The wolf lets him go for a split second, and Stiles flails again, but apparently it’s merely a feint.
Those ridiculously large hands find his hips again and put him back upright. Which, so rude, Stiles
thinks, and opens his mouth to say so, but is momentarily distracted by the wolfman's annoyingly
handsome face.

His annoyingly handsome face covered in blood.

“Oh my god,” Stiles squeaks, “whose blood is that?”

Wolfman cocks his head, confused, before reaching behind him and lifting up what turns out to be
a literal dead rabbit by the ears.

“Is that -- um -- are you planning on eating that?” the boy says, eyes wide and mouth twisted in a
noticeable cringe.

Derek shakes his head. “It’s for you.”

“Oh, uh, well -- thank you?”

He doesn’t look happy. We found food for him. Why doesn’t he look happy with us?

Humans don’t eat raw meat. I told you this, Derek thinks huffily. “Calm down. I’ll cook it. I’m not
an idiot,” he grumbles. “Sit.”

The boy snorts. “Wow. Touchy.”

The boy does obey, which shouldn’t please Derek as much as it does, but he’s not willing to
examine it too much at the moment. And it feels strange, cooking, but when he hears the boy’s
stomach growling, he shoves the feeling aside. Instead, he focuses on skinning and dressing the
rabbit (which mercifully doesn’t take long with his claws), ignoring the boy’s noises of distaste.
There’s not much in the way of anything fresh for an actual stew, but there are cans of vegetable
soup that sort of serve the same purpose.

“Okay,” the boy says once Derek slides a bowl in front of him, “this is much better than I expected,
so, really, um -- thanks. Are you not going to eat, too?” he adds, nodding at the obviously empty
place in front of Derek, who’d situated himself in the most optimal place to watch the boy eat.

Derek’s nose wrinkles in disgust. “Ate while I was hunting for you. There were originally two
rabbits.”

The boy chokes a little, his spoon clattering against the bowl, presumably realizing exactly what
Derek means by that. “So, are you ever going to tell me your name? I’ve been calling you
‘wolfman’ in my head, but we’re not in a George Waggner movie, and I’m no Claude Rains, so --”

What the hell is he talking about?

I have no idea, Derek thinks. “Tell me your name.”

“You do realize this is not at all how a conversation goes, right? When someone asks you a
question, you’re supposed to answer it. Not ask them the same question whilst simultaneously
avoiding answering what they asked you in the first place,” the boy says, smirking around another
mouthful of stew. “But if you must know, it’s Stiles.”

What the hell is a Stiles?

Oh my god, shut up, Derek growls.

Ask him! We want to know.

No. God, can you ever just be quiet?

“Derek,” he finally spits out after far too long a silence. “My name is Derek.”

The boy, Stiles, has finished his first bowl, and Derek doesn’t even wait to refill it, disappearing in
a blur of movement. “Whoa, thanks, but I’m not that hun--”
“Eat,” Derek insists.

“So,” Stiles starts, “have you really been out here for like, a decade? All by yourself?”

“Yes,” Derek nods.

“Well,” Stiles says thoughtfully, “you’re a regular Euell Gibbons, aren’t you?”

“Many parts of the pine tree are edible,” Derek answers solemnly.

Stiles grins, and Derek’s stomach squirms at the sight (this boy really has no business looking as
pretty as he does, especially when he smiles). “And this is your cabin? I have to say, the Nora
Roberts were a surprise. Although, it’s been a while since I met anyone who could understand a
good Euell Gibbons reference. So, kudos.”

“This place isn’t mine. There was an old woman who lived here. She died a few weeks ago.”

Stiles swallows with an audible gulp. “ She died? Because -- “

He thinks we ate her, the wolf whispers, chuckling.

“I didn’t eat her, Stiles,” Derek says, rolling his eyes. “She was old. She just died.”

“Like,” the boy goes on, idly swirling the soup with his spoon, “ inside the house?”

“No,” Derek answers seriously, “on the porch.”

“So, you really just lived out here all by yourself? As a wolf?” Stiles shakes his head, laughing
again in disbelief, “For a whole decade? You took that whole, ‘Hell is other people thing,’ really
seriously, didn’t you?”
“I don’t hate people,” Derek answers, “I just feel better when they aren’t around.”

“You’ve read Bukowski?” Stiles asks. And Derek really is trying his hardest not to be offended by
how shocked the boy sounds by this realization.

“I’m a werewolf, Stiles,” Derek grumbles, “not illiterate.”

“Ah, werewolf,” Stiles says, nodding sagely. “I was close.”

“You said animorph,” Derek says skeptically.

“Yeah, as a joke,” Stiles says. “Werewolf was totally going to be my next guess.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“It was!”

“Eat your soup.”

Stiles arches an eyebrow, but surprisingly doesn’t argue, and Derek (and his wolf) fight the urge to
purr in approval.
 V
Chapter Notes

Finally, another chapter! I'm not used to writing a slow burn, but apparently, this is me
trying. I know, you guys. I'm as shocked as you are.

A little short because I'm still shaking off the block, but it's getting better, I think!
(Unless this sucks, then whooooopsy daaaaisies).

Thanks for reading. c:

The soup isn’t the worst thing he’s ever eaten, Stiles thinks, pushing the now-empty bowl away
from him in a way he really hopes is forceful enough for Derek to get that hint that he’s done.
Because he’s pretty sure if he eats any more he might actually explode.

“Are you sure you’re full?” Derek asks suspiciously.

“Ugh, god, no more soup,” Stiles whines letting his forehead thump dramatically on the table, “I’m
going to become soup if I eat any more.” It was slightly unsettling, Stiles thinks, to have his needs
attended to so thoroughly, to be watched so thoroughly. Like there was nothing Derek wanted to do
more than sit here and watch Stiles eat.

Not in like a kinky way (he doesn't think), but like, like -- a satisfied way. Like there was nothing
Derek wasn’t currently more proud of than feeding Stiles dinner. It was weird as hell, but also
somehow strangely flattering? That seemed to be Derek’s effect on him in general.

“Thank you by the way,” Stiles says softly, raising his head just enough to look up at Derek, who's
still looking at him with an almost disarmingly earnest expression.

“For what?” Derek asks. And Stiles might think he’s being mocked, but the guy looks so sincere
it’s actually kind of sweet.

“For the soup, obviously,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes and muffling a snort into his arm. “You
know what I mean, though.” Sighing, he sits upright and crosses his arms. “For not letting me get
hypothermia. Although,” he adds, smirking, “I will say you made me fall off the side of a mountain
and twist my ankle so, maybe I shouldn’t be thanking you at all. I think you kind of owe me,
actually, dude.”
Derek blinks. “You fainted. I had to carry you.”

“Yeah, because you were a wolf and then decided to spontaneously turn into a giant naked guy! I
feel like I was deservedly rattled, okay?” Stiles sputters. “And also, shut up because I’m trying to
thank you for helping me even though I probably would have been fine since I was heading toward
town anyway.”

“You were going in the wrong direction,” Derek says, matter-of-fact.

“No I wasn’t!”

“Yes,” Derek repeats, “you were. Why were you out there anyway? Humans are pretty fragile, or
so I’ve heard. Fairly easy for them to freeze to death, I’d imagine.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. The wolf may have started out all growly and taciturn, but it appears he might
actually have a sense of humor, albeit a dry one. It was unexpected. “I retract my thank you,” he
says, pouting. Derek arches an eyebrow and Stiles sticks out his tongue. Huffing, he shifts in his
seat, wishing his clothes weren’t still soaked, because the wool blanket is still wrapped around his
shoulders, and it definitely hasn’t gotten any less itchy or uncomfortable. The cabin’s previous
occupant seemed to have a wardrobe exclusively full of the unisex-military-supply-store variety,
which would have been fine, but Stiles was too weirded out currently to throw on clothes belonging
to a recently dead woman.

Werewolf or no werewolf, Stiles has been close enough to death lately, thank you.

“You can’t take back a thank you,” Derek says. “That’s like the opposite of how thank yous
work.”

“Oh, was that in your copy of Human Manners for Dummies? ” Stiles asks haughtily.

“No,” Derek says seriously, belied only by a mischievous glint in his emerald eyes. “Was it in
yours?”

“I’m so very glad that you’ve obviously taken to this whole speaking thing just fine," Stiles retorts.
Derek shakes his head and laughs, and the sound is so pretty, that all Stiles can think about is how
to make him do it again.

“So, you’ve barely answered any of my questions,” Stiles says, staring at the wolf. He’d attempted
to limp his way back to the bed, but after nearly wiping out and falling flat on his face again, Stiles
had begrudgingly allowed Derek to help keep him at least semi-upright.

“That’s true,” Derek says, “but that’s because you ask too many of them.”

“You think any question is too many,” Stiles says flatly.

Derek shrugs. Stiles has noticed that unlike before, the wolf is no longer right next to him on the
bed, but a noticeable (and weirdly uncomfortable) distance away on the battered, lumpy sofa. Stiles
isn’t sure why it bothers him so much, that distance, but it does (but he’s not pouting, no, not at
all).

“Play a game with me,” Stiles blurts, since it’s not like they have anything else to do. It’s not like
the snow was stopping any time soon, and it’s the middle of the night according to his near-dead
phone.

Derek snorts, his expression stony. “I’m not doing that.”

Stiles ignores this. “Great! We’re going to play a game called truth. We’ll just take turns asking
each other questions.”

“This just sounds like a conversation with extra steps,” Derek says, suspicious (perhaps deservedly
so).

“It might, maybe, be something like that,” Stiles says, his mouth curled into a soft smile.

Derek sighs. “You’re still going to talk either way, right?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” Stiles says.

Derek growls, which Stiles thinks should in no way be as weirdly hot as it is, but then again, this
whole thing was weird.

So why fight it?

I don’t want to do this, Derek thinks. I don’t even like thinking about myself. Now I have to talk
about myself? I didn’t do it for eight years for a reason.

Big surprise, says the wolf. We want to learn about him, remember? This seems like the perfect
way. That’s what humans do, right? Talk about stuff.

I’m not human, Derek huffs.

Not technically, the wolf hums, but you look like one.

And then...nothing. Silence. Great, Derek thinks bitterly. Helpful.

“Dude, where do you go when you blip out like that? Taking a guided walking tour through your
mind palace or something?”

Stiles’s words bring him hurtling back to awareness like being reeled in on a hook. It’s still jarring,
hearing a voice that isn’t his own, or the rough scratch of wolf. “Is that one of your questions?”
Derek asks, flushed with the sudden embarrassment of being caught again.

Stiles nods.

“Been alone a long time. No one to talk to but myself,” Derek starts, shifting nervously on the
couch, not used to feeling trapped, cornered, by the boy’s analyzing gaze. “I’m not crazy.”
Stiles laughs, and Derek nearly flinches, but he doesn’t think the boy means it in a cruel way. It’s
somehow kind. Warm. “Dude, if talking to yourself means you’re crazy, then I would have gotten
locked up years ago.”

Told you.

Derek just stares at him for a long moment. “So why were you out there. Really? We’re literally in
the middle of nowhere.”

“I was looking for a tree,” Stiles says.

Are there no trees where he lives?

“No trees in Beacon Hills?” Derek asks, arching an eyebrow teasingly (of course he’s teasing
because he knows the answer). “You couldn’t have looked out a window? I bet you could look
outside right now and see at least a couple.”

Stiles rolls his eyes, smirking. “Funny. It’s a special tree, asshole. Supposed to be the biggest
ponderosa pine or something, I don’t know -- I don’t really give a shit, personally, but it’s for my
mom so I --”

At that, the boy trails off and ducks his chin into the arm resting on his knee. Derek doesn’t need to
scent the air to note the shift, that gloomy weight of sadness he’s becoming achingly familiar with
over the years. He doesn’t need to ask either, because Stiles speaks before he can even begin to
form the question:

“My mom, she likes -- liked -- crap like that. You know, Biggest Ball of Twine, World’s Biggest
Chest of Drawers...”

Is this a human thing, the wolf asks curiously? If it is, it’s stupid.

He must have a strange look on his face because Stiles pauses and offers a somber smile. “It’s in
North Carolina. Anyway, she’s dead -- er -- died,” Stiles murmurs, “like three months ago.”
Maybe not so stupid, Derek thinks.

That’s what we’ve smelled on him, the wolf says.

Grief. The human thing would be to offer sympathy, say sorry, say anything. But Derek says
nothing, can’t, because he knows better than anyone there’s nothing to say that would help.
Nothing he would say that would matter.

Strangely enough, Derek’s silence doesn’t seem to bother the boy, because suddenly, Stiles is
smiling, almost laughing.

Is this what humans are like when they’re mad?

No, Derek thinks. Maybe he’s just going crazy again. “Are you -- okay?”

“Yes, well no, I mean --” Stiles starts, just the barest curve of a smile visible. “I’ve just been so
used to people saying sorry, giving me these looks. Like I’m going to freak out and go all Cuckoo’s
Nest right in front of them. You’re the first person who hasn’t pitied me in months.”

One mercy of running away that night, those looks were something Derek never had to experience
firsthand. “Even if I said sorry, she’d still be dead, right?”

Smooth, asshole. Real smooth.

What, Derek thinks indignantly, am I wrong?

Stiles giggles, covering his face with his hands “Thanks, dude. That’s kind of nice, in a super rude
way,” he says, though from his voice, he doesn't sound mad. He sounds grateful.

“I guess I should read that book,” Derek says, feeling suddenly and uncharacteristically shy, “
Human Manners for Dummies?”
“Nah,” Stiles says, winking. “Humans are overrated.”

Derek is thankful for the shadows from the flickering fire hiding what he knows without a doubt, is
a blush.

“Okay,” Stiles says, “My turn.”

“Fine,” Derek says, “but after this, you should rest.”

“I haven’t had a bedtime since I was ten, thanks,” Stiles retorts, rolling his eyes. “And stop trying
to worm your way out of answering me.”

Derek bares his teeth in what could probably pass as a grin but is really more of a grimace.

Stiles's eyes widen, and he gulps visibly but goes on anyway, apparently unruffled enough to
continue. “So, the whole werewolf thing. I thought you only transformed on the full moon. Do all
werewolves turn into actual wolves? Were you like, bitten? Does it hurt, you know, when you
shift?” The words come out rapid-fire, and Stiles only pauses to take a breath, before adding, "You
don’t eat people, right?”

This time Derek is the one who’s stunned. “That -- that’s like six questions.”

Stiles shakes his head. “One question with five parts.”

I don’t understand this game.

That’s because he’s cheating, Derek thinks, irritated. “That’s cheating.”

“Really?” Stiles flutters his lashes innocently, and Derek’s throat constricts. “I don’t remember a
rulebook, Sourwolf.”

Sourwolf? the wolf asks with marked interest.

Don’t ask me. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

Derek sighs. “I wasn’t bitten. I was born like this.”

Stiles shifts, his expression eager, like he’s hanging on Derek’s every word. It’s unsettling, to say
the least, being the focus of someone’s attention like this. “So does that mean the whole bite thing
is a myth?”

“Six-part question?” Derek asks, brow furrowed.

Stiles grins sheepishly.

“It’s not a myth, but only alphas can give the bite, but the gene can be passed down to children.
And we can shift whenever we want, but it’s harder to control on the full moon. The full-shift, what
I can do -- it’s rare. Not everyone can do it, but my family -- my mother -- was sort of known for
it.”

Derek has to hide his wince because it’s been so long since he’s allowed himself to even think
about them, let alone say the words out loud -- family, mother.

Stiles expression shifts to one Derek can’t quite read (he’s out of practice reading faces, especially
human ones). When he opens his mouth to ask yet another question, Derek has the sneaking
suspicion it’s not the one he actually wants to ask. “So what, your family’s special? The werewolf
equivalent of the Cullens, or something?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Stiles throws his head back, cackling. “Dude, oh my god, you don’t know what Twilight is, do
you?”

Derek blinks dumbly at him.

“Oh man, when you find out, you are going to be so pissed.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Derek says.

Stiles is still snickering, but it’s broken by a noticeable yawn.

Derek gives him a pointed stare. “Tired?”

“Is that your question?” Stiles asks loftily.

“Go to sleep, Stiles.” Because humans needed that, didn’t they? Sleep? That’s the reason, Derek
tells himself, that he’s suddenly crawling out of his skin, feels that instinctual need to run and hide.
Because if Stiles is starting with these questions, eventually he’ll ask one Derek really, really
doesn’t want to answer.

Isn’t sure he’s ready or ever will be ready to answer.

“Fine,” Stiles sighs. “But the least you can do is slip me some more of that werewolf GHB. My
foot hurts,” he whines. Maybe it should be irritating, but Derek is somehow only endeared by the
boy’s pouting.

Before the boy can even move, Derek is across the room and pulling the blanket aside just enough
to bare the boy’s foot, still bruised, but looking much better than before. His fingers curl around
Stiles’s bony ankle. It’s quiet, but Derek still hears the boy’s gasp anyway.

“Sorry,” Derek mumbles.

“No, no,” Stiles says softly, “I just wasn’t expecting you to feel so --”

“Warm?” Derek asks, exhaling as he tightens his grip, his veins flexing and shimmering black.

“Yeah.”
“It’s a wolf thing,” he murmurs, but Stiles doesn’t seem to hear him, his eyes already falling
closed.

We could tell him everything, I bet.

If we wanted him to run away screaming, we could, Derek thinks bitterly.

Maybe, the wolf says. Maybe not.

 VI.
Chapter Notes

When will this end?! I'm sorry lol

God, I hate slow burns, and yet... *motions vaguely*

Bless you all for hanging in there. c:

While Stiles sleeps, Derek paces. He’s not used to being inside, and that trapped, walls-closing-in
feeling is starting to get to him. Get to the wolf scratching underneath his skin trying to dig its way
out.

How do they stand it? the wolf growls irritably. Locked inside these...these flesh prisons?

Derek knows exactly what it means by that. Skin, this body, these awkward limbs, useless and
bulky. It’s like someone’s tied an anchor around his foot and he’s stuck, underwater, senses so
dulled he may as well be asleep, too, just like the boy lying in the bed across from him. They don’t
know any better, Derek grumbles, feeling just as tense and cagey.

The itch to shift, to run, he’s used to that. What he’s not used to is the inexplicable pull he feels, to
stay, to watch, to guard. Maybe, he tries to tell himself, it’s just his alpha instincts bubbling to the
surface. Somehow, the presence of this human has triggered his pack mentality. Protect the
weakest member.

Yeah, buddy. We’ll keep telling ourselves that, the wolf bares its teeth. You know what he is, you
know what he smells like. You know what he is to us.

No, we don’t, Derek thinks desperately. No...I don’t. Stop trying to confuse me.

Stubborn, the wolf murmurs.

Shut up! Derek grits. And then he shakes his head as if that could clear it all away. Enough, he
thinks. Enough. His control over the shift appears tentative at best, but practice makes perfect, he
guesses, and this was one way to quiet the warring urges. At least for a little while.
The sky is inky black, the night clear, the woods eerily lit by shafts of moonlight against the white-
washed glare of snow. It’s quiet, so Derek isn’t expecting to find much in the way of game. He’s a
dark blur flying through the trees, and to be honest, he doesn’t exactly have a destination in mind.
It’s more the need to wander, run the boundaries of his territory until he can’t think of anything but
the air in his lungs, the wind in his fur, and the ground under his paws. No room for pale, lanky
humans who were too beautiful for their own good.

Clearly, it doesn’t really work, because he ends up right where he’d picked up that stupid,
mouthwatering scent in the first place -- the boy’s broken, busted up vehicle half-buried under a
blanket of snow and ice. Exasperated, he circles the pale blue hunk of metal. There’s something
about it, more than the fact that it was drenched in Stiles’s pheromones, sweet cinnamon mixed
with the musty, bitter scent of grief gone acrid and stale.

Something familiar.

What are you looking for?

Derek ignores this question in favor of shoving one of the doors until it falls open and climbing
inside.

You broke his car. Are you still actively trying to get him to hate us?

It was already broken, Derek answers simply, nosing around the backseat. There’s nothing much
here. Empty snack boxes and wrappers, a wooden baseball bat tucked under the seat, and a large
duffel bag. The bag’s obviously filled with clothes because that damn scent he’s been desperate to
escape is somehow even more concentrated suddenly.

The wolf perks up with obvious interest, and Derek knows why, because he’s wrestling with the
same urge to rip open the bag with his fucking teeth and roll around in its contents until their scents
are suitably mixed.

Why are you fighting this? It’s natural. He’s our --

No, Derek thinks viciously. It’s truly mortifying, is what it is. But it doesn’t really matter, because
it’s during the midst of this mental disagreement that the words on the side of the bag etched in
faded yellow embroidery finally register:

Stiles Stilinski.

Stilinski. What the hell is a Stilinski?

It’s his last name, dumbass, Derek growls. And Derek’s memory of Beacon Hills might be a little
bit fuzzy in some places, especially after the fire, but he remembers where else he’s seen that
name. On the badge of the cop there that night. The one who’d yelled his name, tried to run after
him as Derek had bolted into the forest, never to be seen again.

He hadn’t thought about it much, the fact that people had seen him that night before he
disappeared. There hadn’t been room left inside him to care. The days after he shifted that first time
are blurry at best, at their worst, too bitter and sharp in his memory to let himself examine. They
got locked away like everything else. It was easier that way. Cleaner. Just like living solely as the
wolf had been.

Now that he’d shifted back, everything was too overwhelming again. Messy. And here he was,
pining over a human, stuffed full of feelings he neither understood nor wanted.

It was sickening.

I could just not go back, Derek muses, pawing anxiously at the duffel like it might spring up and
try to attack him or something. From the snarl of outrage suddenly rattling its way through his
skull, that probably wasn’t happening.

Ah fuck, Derek thinks, fine. With his own frustrated growl, he takes the bag strap gingerly between
his teeth.

What are we doing?

Derek huffs and sighs. Going back.

Going home?
Derek bristles, because he knows what the wolf means when it whispers that word, and it’s not that
dead woman’s cabin. I didn’t say that.

We will . Soon.

...

Stiles's sleep is deep and dreamless. It's been like that ever since Derek touched him that first time,
did that weird wolfy magic hands thing he did. Since he's been here at this cabin, Stiles feels more
rested than he has in months, and there's that voice in the back of his head tickling his brain that is
pretty clear about why.

Stiles doesn't immediately open his eyes when he finally does wake, because he's so strangely
comfortable, and suspicious enough of that fact, to be worried it might not be real, just a dream
(though to be fair, he’s had that fear since finding out Derek was, well, Derek) . And sure, the wool
blanket is still itchy and annoying, and he's still mortifyingly naked, but he's warm. Safe,
presumably.

As far as situations go, Stiles has had it worse.

With a stifled yawn, he sits up slowly, realizing when he flexes cautiously, that his foot doesn't
hurt anymore. Swinging his legs off the bed, he wiggles his toes, unable to squash the disbelieving
grin off his face when he starts to get up. Werewolf mojo. Who knew?

“Your feet say something funny?”

Stiles squeaks, his admittedly still sleep-heavy eyes darting around the room until they focus
enough to realize that it’s Derek’s voice (honestly, who else’s voice would it be?). Derek, who was
currently and suddenly so close in front of him that Stiles can feel the heat radiating off the older
man’s skin, sharply contrasting the cool air that had stung his cheeks only moments before.
“Would you stop doing that?” Stiles hisses, hoping his voice isn’t wavering as much as his heart
rate and his legs seem to be.

Derek merely cocks his head and blinks. “If you fall, you’re going to hurt your ankle again.”

“If you didn’t constantly jump out at me like we’re in a fucking Alfred Hitchcock movie, I doubt
I’d be in any danger of that,” Stiles sniffs, tucking his blanket tighter around his shoulders. God,
he’s desperate to put clothes on, and he sort of wishes he’d gotten out of bed sooner so he didn’t
have to do it in front of Derek. Even though, the voice reminds him, technically (and horrifyingly
so) the man’s already seen him naked.

And yeah, nope, Stiles can’t think of that without internally screeching, so he shelves that for a
moment and moves on. When he drags his eyes away from the floor, he hazards a look at Derek,
who’s staring down at him, bemused.

“I don’t think that’s true. I’ve seen you walk,” Derek says dryly.

Stiles opens his mouth to refute this, but he’s suddenly distracted by more than Derek’s admittedly
impressive abdominal muscles, because he’s realized the werewolf’s got something in his hands,
and it’s not a dead rabbit this time (thank god).

It’s his bag.

His bag filled with his own clothes, his cell-phone charger, his Adderall.

And pop tarts. Glorious, beautiful, non-rabbity pop tarts.

“That’s my bag,” Stiles says, unable to stop himself from automatically making grabby hands
toward the black canvas Derek’s got slung over his ridiculously broad shoulder. “When did you
have time to go get my bag? Didn’t you sleep?”

Derek’s face is blank. “I don’t sleep much.” There’s something in his face that makes Stiles think
it’s not because he doesn’t need it. More like he can’t. Because there’s something strangely sad,
heavy, in his forced expression. Something, Stiles also realizes, that is achingly familiar, too.

“Oh,” he says. “Well, thanks. That was nice of you. I assume my car’s still there? How’s it look?”
Probably not great, Stiles guesses, glancing out the window at the still-mounting blanket of snow.

“Broken.”
“Right,” Stiles says, smirking and shaking his head. “I kind of figured that.”

Derek wordlessly hands him his stuff, and Stiles immediately (and joyously) begins to rifle through
it. He’s desperate for clean clothes, but it’s been days since he’s showered, and that tub is actually
looking mighty appealing, which is saying something because he’s still having a hard time not
adding “dead woman’s” as a modifier to it in his head.

That’s how gross he currently feels.

“Um,” Stiles says, “do you think it’d be okay if I --” and he trails off here, simply pointing across
the room. Derek follows his gesture, and of course, says nothing for what feels like an excruciating
amount of time because the guy is just not well-versed in conversational practices. “Uh, Derek?”

“None of this is mine,” Derek says simply, “you can do whatever you want.”

Ok, well, that solves that problem, Stiles thinks. Padding across the room, it takes him a few
minutes of fiddling to get how the hot water taps connected to the woodstove, but thanks to far too
many episodes of Bear Grylls, he manages to figure it out. Now Stiles is just awkwardly standing
there in front of the distinctly exposed tub wondering if he could telepathically force the wolf out
of the cabin without having to blatantly ask him not to look at (or judge) his very pale and very
naked body.

“I’ve already seen you naked.”

“Hey!” Stiles lets out another one of those horrible squeaky sounds like he’s getting stepped on,
and clutches the blanket somehow even tighter around himself. As if his heart could possibly beat
any faster, Derek’s apparently eager to test that theory, because he’s suddenly all too-close again,
peering over Stiles’s shoulder at the steam rising off the water. “You’re not allowed to use your
weird wolfy powers to read my mind!”

“I can’t read your mind, Stiles,” says Derek, his stupidly perfect mouth twitches like he’s trying
very hard not to laugh ( rude, Stiles thinks). “But I can hear you when you mumble under your
breath.”

Stiles blushes because of course, he’d said all that out loud without meaning to.
“Even If I didn’t hear you, I could still smell you,” Derek says

“...smell me?” Stiles whispers, wide-eyed. “What does that mean?”

Smell what?! his brain screams frantically.

Derek absolutely should not be doing this. Should not be letting himself get this close, period. But
it’s too hard to resist. Feels a little too much like a hunt, a chase, listening to Stiles’s heart beat fast,
fast, faster like a frightened rabbit inside his chest. It sounds so loud, so close, it feels like it could
be coming from inside his own skull.

It’s almost cruel for something to smell this good, the wolf purrs.

Please shut up and don’t remind me.

Because, god, Derek wants to disagree, but this close, it is actually painful being so aware of Stiles,
and even more so to be aware of the effect that Derek’s proximity seems to have on the boy.

“It’s a wolf thing,” Derek says. “Heightened senses. From your scent alone, I can tell where you’ve
been, what you’ve eaten, who you’ve been around. What you’re feeling…”

“Feeling?” Stiles squawks. “You can smell feelings?! What the fuck kind of power is that?”

Derek shrugs. He’s not all that shocked by the questions anymore. Frankly, he’s surprised those are
the only two that find their way out. And he’s not sure what exactly he’s expecting, but it’s
certainly not what Stiles asks next: “What do I smell like?”

The hiss he lets out feels unplanned, but Stiles never seems to stop surprising him. Because Derek
blinks and suddenly all he can see are brown eyes, the color of earth backlit by the sun, staring up
at him curiously.

And then Stiles does the unthinkable and bares his throat, all demure and innocently fluttering
lashes, like he doesn’t know what it means. Because he can’t, can he? Only an idiot would be
reckless enough to expose himself like that to a predator.

The wolf in the back of Derek’s head howls with delight, practically salivates at the sight of that
long, pale line of flesh dotted with enough moles and freckles to tempt him to trace them with his
tongue.

And...jesus . Derek can practically see the drool pooling from the wolf’s jaws.

Pull yourself together, Derek thinks viciously.

You pull yourself together, the wolf snaps.

“Derek?”

Fuck, he thinks. Like he hasn’t already solidly secured a place in hell anyway, what could one
more sin hurt, really? “Just --” Derek starts, exhaling out a sigh that Stiles must feel because he
shivers slightly (which does nothing to make Derek any less cross-eyed watching him (watching
Stiles tremble like prey he’s cornered, that is), “--just stay still. Don’t move.”

Stiles’s pulse starts racing again. “Why shouldn’t I move? You’re not gonna bi--”

Derek growls and Stiles’s mouth shuts with a dutiful click. He doesn’t expect the silence to last,
but the seconds tick by and the only noise the boy makes besides his deafening heartbeat is from
his rapid, shallow breathing. Derek tries very hard not to notice the wolf practically preening at yet
another small (and probably similarly meaningless gesture of submission). Christ, could he be any
more pathetic?

You’re calling us pathetic?

I’m calling you pathetic, yes.

The wolf snorts. “We’re you, remember? It’s not our fault the boy makes us practically feral. How
are we supposed to --
Shutupshutupshutup.

Derek takes a steadying breath like that might somehow prepare him for this, but it’s a pointless
exercise. If he considered himself teetering off the edge of this cliff before when he ducks his head
and starts to nose his way up the curved slope of Stiles’s shoulder, all the way to the pulse point
throbbing underneath skin stretched so pale and thin Derek can practically see the blood flowing
underneath, it’s like what he imagines free-fall to feel like. Right over the edge.

It’s almost immediately, absolutely too much. There’s the surface stuff -- sweat, snow, dirt,
woodsmoke and wool. Blood. The remnants of some kind of generic and not-too-offensive soap
and laundry detergent. But scents have layers, and peeling that back, it’s the taste of overwhelming
sweetness like a berry bursting on the back of his tongue. And under that, it’s just Derek. His own
scent all mixed up with Stiles’s in a way that is so mouthwatering, it’s cruel.

It doesn’t help things either that when Derek breathes out again, puffs warm air against Stiles’s
collarbones, the boy lets out a noise halfway between a gasp and what he thinks is a needy whine.

“Derek?”

There’s his name again. It’s strange now, to hear it, when there hasn’t been anyone else around to
say it in so long that he thinks he almost forgot what it sounded like. And Derek likes the way it
sounds, the way Stiles says it, the way his lips form around those stilted consonants and the lilting
vowels in between.

“Are you -- okay?” And oh, Derek thinks...he’s pretty sure he likes that, too. The way Stiles’s
voice is all breathless and shaky. Not quite from fear, but something else. Something that appeals
just as much to Derek’s inner predator.

Derek shuts his eyes and opens them, blinking rapidly, but it doesn’t help -- he can feel them
shifted, his vision flickering between disorientingly normal and almost painfully enhanced. There’s
an ache in his jaw from where he’s clenching his teeth so hard he’s surprised they haven’t
shattered. He can feel the points of his fangs itching to poke through.

It’s fine. He’s fine. “I’m fine.”

You’re not.
He’s not.

It’s agony, but somehow he manages to pull himself away, take a few much-needed steps back that
feel too much like severing a limb. It’s not a feeling he likes -- far too reminiscent of what he lost
all those years ago.

When things come back into focus a little bit better, Derek hazards a glance in Stiles’s direction but
sort of immediately wishes he hadn’t. Stiles’s eyes are that glittering brown, but his pupils are
blown and his cheeks are flushed such a pretty, pale pink. His scent is a raw and puzzling mix of
concern and nerves and god, desire.

His or Stiles. Both. The air is too thick with it to tell.

Stiles is biting his lip and Derek tries so hard not to wince. “Oh, um, that bad, huh?” the boy quips
anxiously. “Good thing I’m about to, you know --” and then he motions all awkwardly to the tub
that Derek had forgotten about (surely it couldn’t possibly be warm anymore).

Derek says nothing.

He’s halfway across the room before he realizes it. And he’s got the door mostly open when he
hears Stiles say it all soft and under his breath like before:

“You’re coming back, right?”

Derek swallows loudly, his throat suddenly dry. But he manages, “Yes,” well enough.

Because of course he’s coming back. Because he and the wolf both know...he’s good and collared
now.

Whether he likes it or not.

 VII
Chapter Notes

I'm so sorry to keep you waiting for this! Please forgive me. I have finally slain the
writer's block. c:

Also, slight cliffhanger warning, don't hate me plz.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

VII.

Stiles can’t remember the last time he took a bath, like, in an actual bathtub. It’s just on the cusp of
being too small, and he’s got to tuck his knees against his chest to be only somewhat comfortable.
Still, the water’s hot, and he’s desperate to feel clean, to get back into his clothes, to feel some
semblance of normal because he feels like he’s been reeling since Derek found him. He has the
stray thought as his back hits copper and he sinks as far down into the water as he can, that Derek
definitely wouldn’t fit in here.

The water’s not even steaming anymore, so Stiles can’t really blame the heat for the blush he feels
flaming on his own cheeks. Derek. Swirling the water in idle circles with his fingers, he’s lost in
thought -- in remembering the way the wolf’s breath felt as it brushed across his skin, how Derek’s
growl had sent shivers through him straight down to his toes. Even now, he can’t help curling them
reflexively at the memory.

Fuck, he thinks. How was it possible that he’d only known the man for forty-eight hours at most.
Less than that, even. And yet…

And yet.

Stiles stays in the bath until his fingers are pruney, seeing blood-red eyes gazing straight through
him on the backs of his own eyelids every time he dares to close them.

Stiles is kind of thankful, in a way, that Derek isn’t around to see him stumbling clumsily around
the cabin trying to get dressed without actually killing himself. Mostly because he knows that if he
did, Derek would definitely be right there to catch him. And he’s not sure he can handle that, being
that close to the wolf right now. Not because Derek scares him or anything (because he doesn’t,
and that’s probably weird, right? Not to be scared of an actual wolfman?). It’s the opposite. Stiles
thought he knew what desire felt like -- he figured being perpetually horny since puberty would
have prepared him for that. But Derek, god Derek. It's like any time the wolf gets close, touches
him, looks at him, it’s beyond overwhelming. Stiles guesses he just never knew what it really felt
like --

To crave someone.

At least he feels mostly human now (ha ha, he thinks ruefully), dressed in his ratty team sweats and
red hoodie instead of that dumb blanket. He’s finally warm enough now too from the combo of hot
water, the fire, and clean clothes. Still, he doesn’t feel all that relaxed, because by the time he
collapses on the lumpy sofa, he’s replaying that moment with Derek in his head over and over and
over. Fuck, he’s so turned on that his hands won’t stop twitching.

Because when Derek puts his hands on him, Stiles never wants him to stop. He didn’t really know
it could be like that. That he could want someone so much he could feel it burning, an impossibly
irritating and omnipresent tugging, like a sliver, just there under his skin. And fuck, Stiles, he just
wants so badly to reach in and pull it out.

But that’s the literal worst idea on the planet. Stiles is self-aware enough to realize that. Because
Derek had been pretty clear about the whole ‘ I can smell exactly what you’ve been doing’ thing, so
why put himself through that abject humiliation? The last thing he needs is for Derek to smell him
doing that. Like, a literal world of no.

But god, is he tempted.

So instead, he gets up, resolute, and busies himself with straightening up the cabin (which takes all
of five minutes), before giving up and flopping back down on the couch, defeated. He pops an
adderall and shoves half a pop tart mindlessly in his mouth before grabbing the nearest book from
the shelf, which turns out to be one he’s read before: Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When
We Talk About Love.

Right, he snorts, flipping idly through the pages to the title story. It feels sort of fitting, he thinks.

“I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat
there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark. ”
That’s the last line he remembers reading before he slips under again, this time without any help
from Derek’s werewolf mojo.

Go back.

No.

We promised.

It’s been like this, an endless back and forth in his head since he’d leaped off the porch right into
the shift and straight through the densest, deepest parts of the forest like a shot. Like if he could run
fast enough, far enough, maybe he wouldn’t have to go back. Wouldn’t have to have these...
feelings anymore . Because he doesn’t want them, okay. He doesn’t.

Why are we thinking that, feelings, like it's a dirty word?

It may as well be, Derek thinks bitterly. We were fine before. Why did you make me do this? Any
of this?

We didn’t make you do anything. We would have done it anyway. We didn’t have a choice. We
never did once we smelled him.

Derek refuses to ask why, because he knows the answer already, and it’s the last thing he wants to
hear right now. The literal last thing.

This mental sparring isn’t satisfying in the slightest (Because you’re fighting with yourself,
dumbass. SHUT UP). What he wants, no, craves, is a fight. Because it’s not like he can knock
himself bruised and bloody, and right now, the only thing Derek wants to do is dig his claws into
something, anything. Wants to tear into flesh with his teeth, feel it give under the tips of his fangs.

Wants to replace every sweet note of that human boy’s ridiculous scent with the only thing he’s
cared about in almost a decade -- blood.
The trouble with that was Derek, being what he is, most of the forest's inhabitants naturally
avoided him. Prey animals were easy enough to sniff out for food, but generally the other predators
tended to give him a wide berth. Maybe it was because they could somehow sense it, smell it on
him, whatever old magic it is that makes him turn. They could sense he was more than just a wolf,
some in-between-thing that prompted those natural instincts to make their hackles rise.

The only other animal around here that could even possibly count as a fair fight would be a bear,
which were already scarce, and in the dead of winter, even a mild one (until the snow came, of
course), unlikely to be easily found. Except...

There’s always the --

Please don’t say what we think you’re going to say -- that thing’s a dick, and --

Mountain lion.

Cats, the wolf says disdainfully. Does it have to be a cat?

Don’t be a cliche.

Let’s at least kill him this time. Maybe we can bring him home to Stiles. As a trophy.

We’re not doing that.

We’ll see...Sourwolf.

DON’T CALL ME THAT.

God, Derek thinks, maybe he ought to just let the thing put him out of his misery instead.

…
It’s disorienting this time, waking up. Mostly because he’s still alone, and probably also because
there’s a book on his face from when he’d dozed off reading. Sitting up with an embarrassing noise
of effort, Stiles realizes with a jolt, looking around, that the sun has practically set, meaning he’d
slept most of the day away. Again. Honestly, he’d be a little worried about sleeping this much if he
hadn’t missed so fucking much of it these past few months. Come to think of it, he thinks idly,
flexing his fingers and wiggling his toes, the aforementioned tiredness that had been weighing him
down so much that his bones ached, it was better. Not gone entirely, but better.

Still, there’s a pit in his stomach that wasn’t there before, and Stiles is uncomfortably aware of the
probable reason why.

Are you coming back?

Yes.

Derek had promised. That was a promise, right? Surely he wouldn’t just leave him like this, not
after everything?

But what does he really owe you, anyway?

Stiles can admit that he’s really not the best at dealing with loss, especially lately, and maybe it’s
not healthy the way the wolf is suddenly occupying his thoughts so entirely, but it’s like he can’t
help it. That strange hollow feeling in his chest that seems to directly correlate with Derek not
being near him. (Not touching him, that mortifying voice in Stiles’s head whispers).

It’s a dumb idea, and he’s probably not actually going to do it, go look for the guy out in a blizzard.
But Derek didn’t say he couldn’t go outside. There hadn’t been a moratorium on the porch, Stiles
thinks, not one he could remember ever hearing (and if that had been selective listening, well,
ADHD was a decent excuse for that). That's what he tells himself at least, when he slips out the
front door, his bare feet shoved hastily into his sneakers (snow boots are definitely a thing he’s
never going anywhere without after this, he thinks, teeth chattering), and treads carefully down the
creaky, wooden steps.

“Are you insane?”

Stiles yelps so loudly that sees the few roosting birds nestled into the rafters squawk indignantly in
protest, before flying away in a fluttering of ruffled feathers. It takes him a second, blinking
stupidly around him until he actually sees where Derek’s voice came from.

The sound he makes when he does isn’t much better than the previous embarrassing outburst. Only
this one is warranted, because Derek looks like he’s barely upright, a shadowy figure limping
slowly toward the cabin. It’s getting darker outside, but it’s not so dark that Stiles can’t see the way
the white snow is splattered with red, a steady drip of crimson droplets following each step like a
fucked up trail of breadcrumbs.

Stiles is frozen for far too long, but it doesn’t matter. Derek is close enough now that he’s caught
in the flickering glare of porchlight, and at the sight of him, Stiles feels his stomach fly up into his
throat and he’s pretty sure he nearly pukes it right out onto the snow.

Because Derek looks shredded. Literally. There’s blood all over him, like full-on-Carrie-at-the-
prom covered. And some of it is most definitely the wolf’s because the parts of him that aren’t
stained with red are covered in uncomfortably deep cuts and scratches, almost like something’s
gouged chunks of flesh right out of him. “Derek -- oh my god -- what the fuck -- ?” Words sort of
fail him at that point, adrenaline and fear making everything else sort of go fuzzy as Stiles goes
completely into panic mode.

He can’t die. He can’t. I won’t let him.

Stiles eventually regains feeling in his feet, and he’s able to move enough to get to Derek’s side,
immediately slipping underneath the wolf’s arm to stabilize him at least a little.

“You’re not wearing socks,” Derek chokes out. “I didn’t save your life just for you to get frostbite
and lose your toes.”

Stiles cringes at the sound of the man’s rattling breaths, and suddenly feels so inexplicably angry
that his insides feel like they’re on fire, because of course this asshole would be bleeding out onto
the snow and somehow still nagging Stiles . Like he’s not the one fucking dying here. "What the
hell is wrong with you?! You're lecturing me about socks right now? You can barely stand up, you
lunatic!"

Derek grunts and winces. “You should see the other guy.”

Stiles never gets the chance to ask who this proverbial other guy is, because the wolf promptly
stumbles, through the front door of the cabin and onto the floor in a dead faint.
…

Oblivion has its merits, is all Derek thinks. It’s dark and unfeeling, sure, but the nothingness is
peaceful, a comforting void. Quiet. Or at least it starts out that way. Until that goddamn voice
needles its way back into his brain, trying to drag him by the claws back into consciousness.

Wake up.

No.

Wake up.

No. I like it here.

He thinks we’re dying, WAKE UP.

“I’m not dying,” Derek mumbles, somewhat stupidly, blinking slowly until his vision refocuses.
He’s still on the floor near where he fell (he’s not surprised by this. He would have been truly
shocked if Stiles had been able to lift him anywhere), a pillow shoved under his head. Another long
blink, and suddenly all he can see is golden-brown eyes peering down at him. He breathes in deep,
cringing a little when his lungs spasms with a dull pain somewhere near his likely still-bruised ribs.
The air is a confusing, overwhelming mix of tastes and smells -- the blood, of course, and Stiles’s
sweetness, unfortunately, dampened heavily by the acrid bite of fear and anger. Salty tears.

“I kind of figured that out,” Stiles mutters, “I went to clean your cuts and half of them had closed.”
Derek’s eyes are more open now, and he can see Stiles’s scowl, the way his sharp jaw is hard and
set. “So I’m guessing werewolves heal?”

Derek’s pretty sure he nods, but who knows, he’s still recalibrating. “Werewolves heal.”

“Asshole,” Stiles murmurs, wiping furiously at his eyes, as if trying to hide the fact that they’re
red-rimmed, his pale skin splotchy and pink.
Derek cocks his head because he just doesn’t understand this reaction. Like Stiles was worried
about him. Like he... cared. Maybe that mountain lion had given him some brain damage to go
along with the internal bleeding. “Were you going to go look for me?”

“I mean -- I -- you said you were coming back. It was getting dark.”

“I did come back.”

Practically in pieces, that damn voice reminds him.

“Half-dead,” Stiles says pointedly. “What’d you do, pick a fight with a mountain lion?”

Derek says nothing.

Stiles's eyes widen. “Oh my god, you did pick a fight with a mountain lion. Why the hell would
you do that? Couldn’t you find some more little bunnies to eat?”

Ew, like we’d eat mountain lions.

He wrinkles his nose. “I wouldn’t eat a mountain lion. They’re really gamey.” Stiles is still
hovering over him, and it’s making his instincts prickle at the uncomfortably submissive pose it’s
forced him into. Wincing, he shifts until he’s mostly sitting upright, batting Stiles’s hand away
gently with a soft growl. Looking down, he notices that Stiles has cleaned a lot of the blood off of
him, so he looks a little less like a horror show. Some of the cuts have closed, just like Stiles had
said, but there’s still an ugly purplish-black bruise over his chest, a particularly deep set of claw
marks down his side, running from his shoulder to his hip. It hurts, but in a strange way, more
irritating than outright painful.

We heal faster with him.

SHUT UP.

Stiles’s arms are crossed in obvious disapproval. “So, why’d you do it, then?”
 Tell him. Say it. Tell him what he is to us.

Shut up.

TELL HIM.

Derek shrugs. Stiles scoffs.

It’s not the thing that Derek intends to say (when does he ever intend to say anything, honestly?)
“Why do you care?”

Stiles somehow flushes an even darker shade of scarlet, biting at his lip so hard that pretty pink
turns white under his teeth. He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

Liar.

Derek’s head tilts again in that unmistakable canine way. “Liar.” This time, it’s Stiles who growls,
and the sound is so unexpectedly silly and somehow enchanting that Derek actually can’t resist --
he smiles.

Stiles groans and makes a face Derek absolutely doesn’t understand. “Asshole," the boy says
again. Actually, that’s all he says or maybe all Derek hears, because things get kind of fuzzy after
that. Because Stiles -- Stiles surges forward, faster than Derek ever thought humans could move --

and kisses him.

Chapter End Notes

Sexy times next, scout's honor!

 VIII
Chapter Notes

This chapter is so much longer than the others, so I'm sorry if that breaks a rule of
multi-chap fics. I don't care, because IT'S FINISHED, YA'LL.

We did it.

We did it.

*collapses from exhaustion*

See the end of the chapter for more notes

VIII.

It happens so quickly that Derek swears he blinks and misses it, which feels unfair, and he has to
actually clench his jaws together to stifle the animalistic whine still tangled in his throat when the
boy pulls away.

Stiles’s eyes are wide and sort of frantic, and his heartbeat is humming so fast in the boy’s chest
that it’s making Derek dizzy. “Fuck, I’m sorry --” Stiles says, rushed and panicked, “I shouldn’t
have -- please don’t, you know, bite me for that.”

Derek barely hears him, because the only thing he can currently hear in his head is the hungry
wolf, scratching, scratching, scratching, and the competing rhythm of their labored breathing.
Then he’s the one reaching out, gripping Stiles by the back of his neck with far less gentleness than
the boy had afforded him, and dragging him forward, crushing their mouths together.

He hasn’t done this in so long, it’s awkward at first, mostly Derek just kissing and biting at Stiles’s
lips until they part for him, finally, and he can lick into Stiles’s mouth to get more of the taste of
him because what little he was gifted before just wasn’t enough.

Stiles’s fingers are digging into Derek’s shoulders, but the wolf doesn’t feel the sting any more
than he might feel a drop of rain on his fur. Paired with the blood he can still taste on the back of
his own tongue and the sugared scent that’s been torturing him for days, Derek feels like he’s
suddenly drowning in it. All of it. It’s too much.
Stiles says his name though, soft and pleading against Derek's jaw, and that’s enough to snap him
out of it. He’s not sure at what point he’d pinned the boy to the floor like this, he thinks, gazing
down, confused, at the blinking golden-brown eyes staring up at him. But the realization that
Derek hadn’t even realized he’d done it in the first place makes him feel slightly sick.

Who knows what else he could do if he can’t even manage to control himself just doing this? Just
kissing. Snarling in disgust at himself, Derek moves so quickly off the boy, he’s a blur, turning
toward the front door, an unabashed plan to flee, but it’s that same small voice that stops him
again:

“Wait! Don’t run away, please?”

Derek growls, takes a deep breath, and turns around. “I shouldn’t have done that either. I’m
sorry.”

“I’m not.”

Derek says nothing, trying to focus on Stiles’s pulse he can see throbbing in his throat, anything to
ignore the way the wolf in his head, apparently incapable of annoying lectures at the moment, is
trying to tear its way out through his skin to get to the boy.

Stiles’s expression hardens into that familiar stubbornness. “Why? Are you not -- is this some
weird gay panic or something? Have you never been with a dude before?”

“No, but I don’t care about that.” Derek huffs indignantly. “That’s a thing humans care about, not
us.” It was true, he thinks. Stiles could be a girl, a boy, a freaking alien, it didn't matter -- the wolf
would still crave, a feeling that is just not something Derek thinks he can explain without Stiles
turning tail and running. It’s just too intense.

“Then why? Obviously you -- “ Stiles starts, blushing slightly, “ -- obviously you want me as much
as I want you.”

“No, I don’t,” Derek shakes his head, and Stiles's face falls. Derek feels his vision flicker,
squeezing his eyes firmly shut before whispering hoarsely, “I want you more.”

…
Stiles had been kissed a few times, sure, gone on a few mostly disastrous dates, but it wasn’t like
he was beating them off with a stick in high school. In fact, rejection was kind of his wheelhouse.
Whatever, he was fine with it. Happy to be one of those late-college-bloomers. Fine.

But this. He’d never expected anything like this, like Derek. Stiles has never even been looked at
the way Derek seems to look at him, let alone touched, or kissed. And kissing Derek was abso-
fucking-lutely not the same as the few liplocks he’d had, all of which could now be summed up as
comparatively underwhelming, to say the least.

With Derek, it’s all teeth and tongue and big hands gripping him (holding him in place). And it
shouldn’t be so hot, the taste of Derek in his mouth (because he doesn’t think wolves typically
brushed their teeth, after all, his brain stupidly reminds him milliseconds before they’re kissing
again), but somehow it is. Somehow the licking-pennies-taste he knows is blood, and whatever
wild ferality lived in Derek’s skin, is a combination that sends Stiles's head spinning, sparks a fever
in his insides he didn’t know he could feel before now.

Because Derek is a wild thing, the way he’s growling deep in his chest, scraping his teeth (my,
what big teeth you have) up and down Stiles’s jaw, and then moving so quickly that Stiles doesn’t
even realize he’s pinned until he’s just there on his back, gazing into Derek’s crimson, hungry
eyes.

Stiles is pretty sure he should be scared. Normal people would be. But Stiles doesn’t feel like
running. He just feels needy, kind of itchy in a way he knows fingers can’t scratch. Which is why
he whines Derek’s name so pitifully in the first place.

But of course, it has the opposite effect, so now they’re just staring at each other, Stiles in the ever-
increasingly familiar position of trying to get Derek not to run away from him. Again.

So the fact that Derek’s saying that. I want you more. It doesn’t quite compute. “Then, why are
you always running away?” Stiles asks softly.

Derek twitches nervously, like a trapped animal, which Stiles guesses in some strangely literal
way, he is. His mouth is set in a hard line, and Stiles doesn’t anticipate actual words coming out
any time soon. It seems too much to hope for.

Finally, after an eternity, Derek mumbles something. “It doesn’t matter. You’re going to leave
anyway, right?”
It’s true. Well, hopefully. But strangely, Stiles hadn’t even considered the fact that he would
eventually go home, that he wouldn’t be with Derek. Which is so fucking stupid of him, Stiles
thinks, feeling his cheeks flame hot at the realization.“You -- you could come with me.”

The words are out before he can even stop them.

Derek winces like they actually hurt to hear. “I can’t go back with you. I can’t.”

“Why not?” Stiles says, hating how earnest he sounds.

Derek sighs. “I just can’t, Stiles.”

“That’s not an answer,” Stiles retorts. Derek says nothing. “Whatever, for all you know, we’ll be
stuck out here for weeks.”

“Someone will come looking for you before then, Stiles.”

“You don’t know that,” Stiles sniffs, indignant.

“Your dad’s the sheriff, he’s already looking for you.”

Stiles blinks, confused, feeling his stomach drop. “How do you know that? I -- I never told you
that.”

Fuck.

Nice one. Smooth.

Oh, now you finally say something, Derek thinks.

We thought you could handle a little kissing without fucking things up completely.

Well, you were wrong, weren’t you? Derek thinks viciously.

“Derek,” Stiles says (and Derek tries not to flinch, hearing how cold the boy’s tone is), “how did
you know that? How did you know my father was a sheriff?”

Derek growls in frustration. It would be so easy to turn around and run. He could shift, be miles
away before Stiles could barely blink. But he won’t, fuck, he can’t. Because even now, he can feel
it, like a collar tightening around his throat, this tether between them. The one Stiles doesn’t even
know he holds the lead to. “My name,” Derek says, “isn’t -- isn’t just Derek.”

Stiles frowns. “I mean, yeah, you didn’t seem like the ‘just Cher’ type.”

We never know what he’s talking about.

For fuck’s sake, SHUT UP.

“My name,” Derek starts, clenching his teeth, “is Derek Hale.”

It doesn’t take long for Stiles to register this. A lot less time than Derek thought it would, before
Stiles’s scent turns sour. There it is. The scent he’s been waiting for. Inevitable. Fear.

“I know what you’re thinking, Stiles,” Derek says, taking a step closer, which Stiles mirrors with a
noticeable step back. “But I didn’t do it --”

Stiles’s breathing is quick like he’s about to hyperventilate or something. “You didn’t burn your
whole family to death?”

Derek figured he'd know the story. In Beacon Hills, he's positive everyone did.
“No,” Derek growls, suddenly feeling a fury in his veins he hasn’t felt since that night he’d fled
because he had tried so hard not to feel it. Not to think about it. “It wasn’t me.”

“Then who was it?”

“Hunters,” Derek grunts. “There was a woman. I’m not saying it wasn’t my fault -- I was, I was
stupid, I thought she --” he trails off here because the shame comes in a wave over him so
completely, he has to swallow actual vomit.

“Oh.” Stiles blinks, a look of dawning comprehension spreading across his face. “She killed them,”
he whispers, “but -- not you?”

“No,” Derek says, baring his teeth at the mere thought of her -- Kate . “That would have been far
too merciful of her.”

Derek’s familiar with it now, the way sadness tastes in the air. Acidic and bitter all the way down,
like drinking vinegar. Cringing already, he waits for the inevitable pity. The proverbial, “I’m
sorry.”

But it doesn’t come.

Stiles is quiet for a moment, which is incredibly nerve-wracking, because the boy hasn't been quiet
since he got here. It’s surprising how unnerved Derek is by this. “Come home with me. My dad --
my dad can help you. You don’t have to run anymore.”

“Stiles --” Derek starts, shaking his head.

“Please?”

Anyone who’s anyone who’s lived in Beacon Hills in the last decade knows the story. Derek Hale
is the stuff of legends. The way people talked about him, the town's very own mass murderer. Like
a teenaged boogeyman. The fact that he was never found, it only made him more infamous.

It was funny (not the story, god, that was about as far from funny as it got, Stiles thinks, feeling ill
at the thought). His dad had been the only one around town who wasn’t convinced that Derek had
done it. Even Stiles hadn’t believed him, but now Stiles was the one with the truth staring him
right in the face.

And it’s so selfish of him to ask, Stiles knows that, but he does anyway. Because he’s weak, and
there’s something like, biologically hardwired, apparently, that makes him desperate to hang on to
the wolf any way he can.

“You can’t ask me to do that,” Derek says, sounding positively miserable. “Please don’t.”

“Why not?” Stiles mumbles. Somehow their positions have changed, and Stiles is the one
crowding into Derek’s space (when had the older man’s back hit the door like that?). “Let me help
you. You could have a life again. You could have something good.” It hurts just to even think
about everything Derek went through, the agony, the loss. Stiles had lost one person, just one --
and it was like the earth had shifted on its axis, like gravity no longer mattered like he was in
constant, horrifically never-ending freefall with no ground to ever break his landing.

But Derek, god, Derek. He’d lost everyone. Everything. His home. His family. His own damn
humanity. If Stiles could help him get it back, any of it, well… "Let me help you.”

Derek’s been avoiding his eyes this entire time, head turned determinedly away like if he doesn’t
look, Stiles will just disappear or something. “I don’t deserve your help. I don’t deserve anything,
especially not -- especially not...you.”

Well that’s just too damn bad, Stiles thinks, feeling that familiar hot flare of stubbornness warming
his chest. “It’s a little too late for that, Sourwolf,” Stiles says, and even though his hands are
shaking a little as he does it, he reaches out to cradle the wolf’s jaw and tip it gently downward. It’s
not like he can actually force Derek to move, but he hopes the intent is clear enough. Please look at
me.

Derek’s eyes are brilliant red, the same color of the blood he’d been splattered with not that long
ago, but he doesn’t look mad. He just looks -- confused. Almost tragically, adorably so.
“I think I’m already yours.”

Derek doesn’t say anything. There’s no definitive yes, no grandiose declaration of feelings. He
doesn’t say he’ll come back either, but all of that sort of ceases to matter, because looking at the
way Derek’s watching him now, with that same feral gleam in his eyes as the first time -- well,
second, technically -- that they’d kissed, it doesn’t seem prudent to expect anything of the sort.

It doesn’t seem prudent to do what he does next either, but Stiles and impulse control didn’t tend to
go hand in hand. That’s the explanation he has for why he leans up on his tiptoes and buries his
nose into Derek’s collarbone, offering a tentative press of lips to the wolf’s throat.

...

The effect is instantaneous, which had sort of been the point, Derek thinks, because why the fuck
else would Stiles do a thing like this. He must know what it means, the unfortunately literal beast
he’s poking.

Derek’s chest heaves with a ragged breath of air that turns more savage. Almost like a warning, but
it’s not one Stiles is going to listen to, clearly.

"It's okay." Stiles's voice takes on a hushed tone, and Derek watches, askance, as the boy reaches
tentatively for the hand at Derek’s side he’s currently got clenched into a fist. Curling his own
small hand around Derek’s, the boy pulls gently until those fingers dug into Derek’s palm are
threaded with Stiles’s instead. "It's okay,” he repeats. This time, Derek isn't sure whose benefit he’s
saying that for, but it hardly matters now.

Because Stiles saying those words, it’s like a trigger being pulled. The cage door being busted
wide open.

The only cogent word he can make out in his head anymore is the gleeful howling of mine, mine,
mine, mine. Ours, ours, ours.

With a hiss, Derek grabs Stiles by the hip with his other free hand and pulls him roughly to his
chest, leaning down to claim his mouth again. It’s too easy. The boy doesn’t even fight, just melts
against him like this was exactly what he was angling for. Exactly what he wanted.

Stiles opens for him instantly, parting the seam of his lips and letting Derek slide his tongue
against his, whining when the wolf’s blunt teeth dig into the swollen flesh there. The voice in his
head is mercifully, blissfully silent, and the only noises Derek can hear are Stiles’s breathing, his
thundering heartbeat mixed with Derek’s own.

It’s a good rhythm, one he can focus on. Anchoring him enough not to completely lose control.

Because the only thing Derek wants is to cover Stiles’s scent with his own, blanket him with it
until there’s no doubt from any creature alive with the senses to notice that he belongs to someone.
That someone belongs to him.

“Come on, Sourwolf,” Stiles hisses into Derek’s ear, hot and breathy, tearing a well-deserved
whine from the wolf’s throat. “Take me to bed, come on, please.”

He wants us. Mate. Take him. Make him ours.

Derek growls, deeply, possessively.

No. I’m making him mine.

Derek is as gentle as he can be, which isn’t very, unfortunately, as he lifts Stiles up into his arms
and carries him across the room to the bed. Funny, he thinks, that this is the first time he’ll have
been in one in almost ten years. If Stiles hadn’t said something, there isn’t a doubt in Derek’s mind
that he would’ve simply thrown the boy down onto the floor and taken him right there.

They fall back gracelessly onto the messy nest of blankets Stiles had slept in that morning, Derek
pinning Stiles to the mattress by the hips with his hands, thumb rubbing insistently against the
sharp bones he can feel through the boy’s sweats.

Stiles’s breathing is as labored as Derek’s, his eyes wide, his pupils dark and dilated. His mouth is
all pink and swollen from where Derek’s been nipping and sucking at it. Pretty. Too pretty.

Derek feels his claws come out, digging them into the mattress on either side of the boy’s head. “I
haven’t done this in a while -- I might --”
Stiles shakes his head. “Don’t worry,” he mumbles, sliding a hand up to curl his long fingers
around Derek’s wrist. “I haven’t done this ever.”

Derek sighs, squeezing his eyes shut and biting down hard enough to feel the tips of his fangs
poking through his gums.

“You really shouldn’t say stuff like that to me,” Derek says. The way the wolf’s voice is raspy, all
gravelly and rough, it sends ripples over Stiles’s skin, making him shiver.

His expression is sort of unreadable, and for a minute, Stiles is sure that he’s ruined this. That
Derek is going to stop and pull some noble preserve-Stiles’s-innocence crap. But that’s not at all
what happens. In fact, it’s kind of the exact opposite reaction.

Because there’s the sound of threads ripping and Stiles cries out in surprise, shocked by the sudden
cold, coupled with the realization that he was now, in fact, entirely and completely naked. Jesus.

And god, Stiles doesn’t even get the chance to feel the slightest bit self-conscious, because Derek
pounces -- his hands, his mouth, all of him, seemingly everywhere and all at once. It’s too much,
but also Stiles can’t help the repetitive thought of ‘ how did I live without this’ every time Derek
pulls himself away from Stiles’s throat (or his belly, or his thighs) to kiss him thoroughly. Like
now that he’s realized he can, he doesn’t want to let any opportunity go to waste.

Stiles is so hard, every time Derek digs his hips into his, it sends shockwaves through him, forcing
greedy noises from his chapped lips. And Derek, he doesn’t even seem to notice or care about his
own obvious erection, just keeps nosing around Stiles’s groin, tasting the insides of his thighs with
these kittenish licks that sort of tickle as much as they are driving Stiles absolutely crazy. It’s
almost pitiful, the way Stiles hisses weakly when Derek licks a long stripe up his cock and lets out
this noise, this rumble of approval like the taste is his favorite fucking flavor or something.

“Oh my god, if you don’t fuck me soon I’m going to die,” Stiles whispers, groaning when Derek
takes him all the way back into his throat, sending the boy’s hips flying off the bed. Or would
have, if Derek wasn’t so insistently holding him down.

Derek goes suddenly still, pulls away, releasing him with an audible (and obscene) pop, and Stiles
can only whine in protest, vigorously shaking his head no no no. The wolf says nothing at first, just
sits back on his heels, head tilted in that infuriatingly canine way. And Stiles, god, Stiles can barely
look at him without wanting to die, because the wolf’s beard is all wet and damp with sweat and
spit and Stiles. The sight of Derek’s mouth is quite literally the dirtiest thing Stiles thinks he has
ever seen.

“You want that? You’d really let me --?”

Stiles smirks and rolls his eyes. “Is the way I’m literally spreading my legs for you not an obvious
enough answer for you?”

Derek’s eyes flash.

It’s entirely too much sensation to deal with. Overwhelming him with tastes and scents, the way
Stiles’s skin feels like silk under Derek’s rough hands. The way he blushes so pretty, pink enough
for Derek to see (and smell) the blood pooling underneath. “I don’t -- what if I hurt you? I haven’t
done this in a long time. With anyone. Not since --”

It’s not something he wants to think about, to sour this moment, the way Stiles is looking at Derek
like he could break him to pieces with a single word, a single touch.

“You won’t,” Stiles says firmly. And there isn’t a single skip in the boy’s heartbeat to suggest
otherwise.

Derek’s never fucked a guy before, but he’s not worried about the mechanics. He’s fairly certain
between his instincts and Stiles, he’ll be just fine. It’s the accidentally completely losing control
part that terrifies him. His claws have absolutely no chance of going away at this point. The fangs
are hit and miss.

Of course, Stiles doesn’t seem the slightest bit concerned about the whole having sex with a
dangerous predator thing, which is as enthralling as it is confusing. Currently, it’s taking every bit
of his self-control just to sit here and watch, his back against the headboard and Stiles straddling
his lap. Because he smells heavenly, mouthwatering, perfect, the boy’s spine a perfect sloping
curve against Derek’s palm as he holds him up.
This was the part that Stiles was having to do himself because Derek is in no state to assist with
any of that. So instead, he’s just forced to watch, listen to Stiles’s little moans as he works himself
open. “Does it -- does it feel good?” Derek asks, unable to stop himself, mesmerized by the way
Stiles is rocking back and forth on his own fingers, slick with the lube that Stiles had apparently
deemed a road trip necessity.

Stiles’s breath hitches, his eyes heavy and half-lidded. “Yes, but you’ll feel even better.”

Derek shuts his eyes because if he doesn’t, he’s going to lose it.

The next time he opens his eyes is when he feels Stiles’s tentative fingers slipping past the
waistband of those ridiculous pajama pants that Stiles had somehow managed to pull up and over
his legs when he’d patched Derek up. His hand is sticky with lube, and Derek throws his head back
and snarls when the boy wraps his fingers around his cock and works him gently until he’s slick
enough to take.

Derek doesn’t think he’s ever stayed as still as he does when Stiles, trembling all the while, sinks
down on him, agonizingly slow. The wolf is actually shaking with the effort of it, a low,
continuous growl reverberating in his chest until Stiles finally takes him to the hilt with a soft,
slightly broken-sounding wail.

Stiles isn’t sure how this happened. How he managed to be the one with the wild animal
underneath him, letting him be the one in control (but for how long? that voice in his head
wonders). Probably, he should be more freaked out about this. Have more doubts, right? His first
time?

And yeah, he’s a little nervous, because while Stiles has enthusiastically engaged in all manner of
self-pleasuring, an actual dick inside of him is a first. But somehow, with Derek, he feels...safe.
Which is absurd to think about, considering he’s letting someone with razor-sharp claws and
blade-like teeth fuck him, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.

“Fuck you, I knew your cock would be stupid big,” Stiles hisses when Derek’s finally fully seated
inside him, and all he can do for a minute is hide his face against the wolf’s chest and breathe as he
gets used to the stretch. The fullness.
“Stiles,” Derek growls desperately, and all Stiles can do is nod, because he understands what he’s
saying even without him needing to say it. Move.

Stiles’s eyes are tightly shut, tears prickling at the corners, not because it hurts exactly. It’s just
because...fuck, he’s so goddamn full. There’s a steady stream of nonsense coming out of his mouth
now, he’s sure of it because once Stiles starts the slow rise-and-fall rhythm as he rides Derek’s
cock, he doesn’t recognize any of the words he’s actually saying.

Derek hasn’t stopped growling since Stiles had started fucking himself on his own fingers. It’s a
steady vibration under his palms from where he’s been digging his nails into Derek’s shoulder, the
other tangled in that ridiculous mess of black hair.

It feels endless, feels like it’s been somehow a hundred years and barely a second since he’s taken
Derek inside him, but it’s simply too much. He’s gasping for breath, sweat beading at his forehead,
more desperate unintelligible whimpers slipping out, unbidden, from his eager mouth.

“Stiles,” Derek groans, “I need to -- let me --”

Stiles doesn’t quite know what he means until he opens his eyes again, sees Derek’s blazing as
bright red as he’s ever seen them, like actual fire, and his fangs are jutting out of his mouth in a
yawning hiss. “Are you -- going to bite me?”

“Not like that.”

Stiles's lips curve up into a dreamy smirk, satisfied. “Then you can do whatever you want to me,”
he murmurs, his little teeth nipping at Derek’s ear. “I trust you, big bad wolf.”

Derek snarls, and it’s with all the gracefulness his supernatural strength allows him when he
manhandles Stiles just the way he wants. When his cock slips out of the boy, they both groan. “No,
please --” Stiles whimpers, digging his nails into Derek’s back like he’s protesting the sudden
emptiness.

“Shhh,” Derek soothes, but that’s all he offers before grabbing Stiles by the hips and flipping him
onto his stomach.
“Fuck,” Stiles curses, but he doesn’t fight a bit when Derek grabs his hands and pins them by his
head, mounting his hips and burying into him from behind.

Like this, there’s almost no chance of Derek holding back, his instincts flaring to life with such a
pretty, perfect prey (no, the wolf reminds him, mate) underneath him. It’s just too good, the way
Stiles grips him, hot and tight and the most perfect thing Derek has ever felt.

Stiles comes first with a rattling, strangled cry that Derek swallows with a harsh bite to the boy’s
bruised mouth. Derek smells it before it even happens, so that’s when he starts to pound into him,
not far behind. It’s a tight, coiling feeling in his gut like a snake about to strike. When it happens,
finally, his insides feel a lot like they’re shattering, when he rears back one final time and digs
blunt teeth into the back of the boy’s pale and slender neck, roaring as he spills inside him.

Derek has enough sense not to completely collapse on top of the boy, falling onto his side and
dragging Stiles along with him, manhandling him until he’s tucked against Derek’s chest.

Stiles is barely conscious, but he smells good. Happy, sated. Perfect. And just like Derek, all
Derek, the scent of wolf dripping out of every pore.

Stiles protests weakly but doesn’t bother trying to squirm away as Derek licks at his skin, the little
scratches, nips, and bruises he’s left behind all over the boy’s delicate flesh, the cum drying on his
thighs. “Is this a wolf thing?” Stiles grumbles, batting uselessly at Derek’s face when he tongues
determinedly at some mysterious place behind his left ear.

“Yes,” Derek rumbles like he couldn’t be more pleased to admit this.

When Stiles opens his eyes, the first thing he notices is the satisfying soreness weighing down his
limbs, the sensitive skin rubbed raw from Derek’s beard (and his teeth, he thinks, grinning at the
memory), snaking a hand behind his head to feel the bruising teeth marks left behind by Derek’s
thankfully blunt human ones that he’d sunk into Stiles’s neck last night. He flushes at that flesh
memory, too. Because it’s good.

It’s all so good.

Until he realizes that the bed is empty, and suddenly all he feels is a cold, all-consuming dread.

“Do all humans sleep this much, or is it just you?”

And just like that, all the tension leaves Stiles’s chest where it had previously been strung tight and
painful. He turns his head to see Derek standing over him with a curious, if not slightly frustrated
expression on his annoyingly handsome face.

“Sorry, did I ruin your little morning werewolf plans?”

Derek huffs. “Not if you hurry up and get dressed,” he says, flashing his eyes like Stiles wasn’t
going to do exactly what he wanted. Even though they both know it’s entirely unnecessary at this
point.

“What’s going on?” Stiles asks, wincing slightly as he sits upright.

Derek’s eyes narrow, and before Stiles can protest, there’s Derek’s hand winding around his hip
and squeezing, until all the aches and pains fade away in a pleasantly warm tingling numbness.

“You didn’t have to,” Stiles starts to say, but Derek just growls.

“Hurry up!”

“All right, all right. Jeez. Such a fucking bossywolf,” Stiles grumbles, yanking the clothes that
Derek throws at him -- a thick sweatshirt and jeans, his thick coat. “Are we going outside?”

“You’ll see,” Derek hums.

...
Derek does lead Stiles outside and down the porch steps, clutching his hand firmly in his, heading
determinately into the forest. It’s not as cold. A thaw is coming -- Derek can feel it, smell it. The
sky is more blue than grey, the sun shining resolutely down on them. Bright enough for the snow
to be slightly blinding from the rays bouncing off of it.

Eventually, Stiles gets tired, but Derek doesn’t mind. He just hoists the boy up on his back and
carries him that way instead.

It’s not that far, but it’s just faster if he does it.

“Where the hell are we going?” Stiles yells into his ear, but Derek doesn’t answer, just moves
through the trees, a blur, until he stops suddenly in the middle of a clearing.

Stiles slides off his back with an oof , and looks around, blinking in confusion. “Where are we?”

Derek says nothing, just takes the boy by the shoulders and shoves him forward until he’s only a
few inches from the trunk of one of the massive surrounding trees.

“Look up,” Derek says.

Stiles does.

And Derek hears it, the little gasp that slips out of the boy’s mouth when he sees it, that little
plaque nailed to the trunk.

Big Red -- The World’s Largest Living Ponderosa Pine.

“You found it,” Stiles murmurs.

“I did,” Derek says, “but I had help.”

Stiles turns to look at him, and Derek’s heart breaks a little, seeing the boy’s eyes welling with
tears. He doesn’t smell all that sad though, and he’s smiling, so Derek’s not so worried he’s fucked
 things up entirely yet. “I asked the birds.”

Stiles eyes widen. “You asked the -- you can talk to birds? What did you say? What did they say?”

Derek blinks. “Stiles, they’re birds. Their brains are the size of peanuts. ‘Big tree’ and ‘That way,’
were kind of the extent of it”

“You,” Stiles says, chuckling in disbelief, “are so weird.”

“Yes,” Derek agrees, burying his nose in Stiles’s hair when the boy steps willingly into the cage of
his arms.

“Thank you,” Stiles murmurs softly, pressing the sweetest kiss to Derek’s chest. For a long
moment, he says nothing, until he finally speaks, his voice the softest Derek’s ever heard it.
“You’re mine, too, right?”

Derek doesn’t hesitate with his answer, couldn’t lie even if he wanted to. “Yes.”

And the wolf in his head is silent, finally satisfied.

Chapter End Notes

Thank you all for reading this tiny pocket in my Sterek universe. The support I've
gotten has been so lovely and appreciated. Hope it lived up to any expectations, or at
the very least, did not disappoint too terribly.

c:

End Notes
 Love me! Let me know what you think lol

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