Talia

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/1441666.

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Categories: Gen, M/M
Fandom: Teen Wolf (TV)
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, sterek - Relationship
Characters: Derek Hale, Stiles Stilinski, Talia Hale
Additional Tags: A Boy and His Wolf, Wolf Derek, Alive Hale Family, Alternate Universe -
No Hale Fire, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Conversations, Late
Night Conversations, Mother-Son Relationship, Developing Relationship,
Love Confessions, Drabble
Language: English
Series: Part 7 of A Boy and His Wolf
Stats: Published: 2014-04-10 Words: 1,407 Chapters: 1/1
 Talia
by orphan_account, twobirdsonesong

Summary

Derek has an all important conversation with his mother.

Set immediately after the previous fill.

Notes

A Boy and His Wolf is a collaborative project between heavenorspace and myself.

It will be a series of vignettes, out of chronological order, set in a world where Derek, in the
form of a wolf, first encountered Stiles when he was a toddler playing in the woods. Derek is
under strict pack orders not to reveal himself as werewolf to the human boy and must only
interact with him as a wolf. When Stiles is a child, their relationship is strictly platonic and
protective in nature. As Stiles grows older that begins to change.

Each drabble will be accompanied by a piece of art drawn by heavenorspace.

(art by heavenorspace)

When Derek gets home from Stiles’ house, his mom is waiting for him in the kitchen. Derek’s
spine stiffens automatically at the sight of his mother, his alpha, sitting at the table.

“You were with that boy again,” Talia says by way of greeting.
Derek’s shoulders hunch inwards as he slinks over to another chair. “Mom.”

“Even if I couldn’t hear every tick of your heart, I can smell him all over you.” Her hands are
folded on the tabletop, but Derek can scent her frustration and annoyance with him.

“I like him and he gets lonely,” Derek says, but it’s so much more than that. It always has been.

“He has friends,” Talia challenges. “The McCall boy, for one.”

Derek doesn’t ask how his mom knows Stiles’ small group of friends. “Not…” he trails off.

“Not like you?”

The arch of his mom’s eyebrow makes him cringe and Derek worries a scratch into the finish of
the wood with the edge of his nail. He knows his sisters are somewhere in the house, feigning
sleep and listening in on the conversation. He doesn’t care.

“You know you can’t tell him,” Talia continues.

“But why?”

“Derek.”

It’s not fair. The whole thing isn’t fair. He understands that the secrecy of the werewolves
must be maintained, but surely there are exceptions. Surely Stiles is one of them.

“He’s not like other humans,” Derek tries.

“They never are,” Talia counters and for a moment sadness surrounds her.
“He likes me too, okay?” The words are bittersweet on his tongue. Rich, but sharp like cocoa
and he swallows the taste away.

“How can you know?” Talia sits still as stone in her chair and Derek is reminded again why his
mother is never challenged as alpha.

“He told me.” Derek presses his lips together, thinking of the words that fell from Stiles’
mouth, how easy they came when Stiles thought he was merely a figment of his fevered
imagination.

“You’re lying,” Talia counters and her eyes are sharp.

“I’m not,” Derek protests. “He thought he was dreaming, mom. That I was a dream. But that
doesn’t mean it’s not the truth. If anything it’s worth more because he wasn’t… worried about
how I might react. He just…he said what he felt. For me.” Derek presses hand to his chest
where his heart is beating so damn fast.

Talia regards him carefully and Derek knows she’s searching for any tic in his face, any hint
that would tell her he’s not completely committed to this, to Stiles. But Derek also knows that
she can hear the honesty in his heart.

“How do you think this is going to end?” Talia finally asks. “What do you think will happen
when you tell him what you are?”

Derek swallows again and the bitterness has gone sour. “I’m not a monster. He won’t see me
like one.”

“Won’t he?”

“He already knows the wolf,” he says, but that doesn’t cover it either. “He’s already…
comfortable with the wolf. We’re friends.”
“Because he thinks he domesticated you. He thinks of you as a pet.”

“He doesn’t,” Derek snaps, too loudly, but his mom doesn’t even flinch.

“How do you know?”

“Because.” Derek thinks about Stiles. He thinks about their walks through the woods and the
way Stiles talks to him like he’s a person. The way Stiles doesn’t question it when Derek just
shows up in his room, as though a normal wolf could somehow get into a house unnoticed the
way he does. He thinks about the way Stiles has never been afraid of the wolf, not even when
Derek hit his growth spurt and was suddenly waist high with the then smaller boy. “Because I
know it.”

“But you aren’t just the wolf,” Talia points out, as though it’s something Derek hasn’t already
thought about.

But he’s seen the way Stiles looks at him when they cross paths; the way Stiles was always
catching his eyes in the hallways at school. It’s not just the wolf that Stiles likes and Derek
knows it. “I can smell it on him when he’s near and I’m just me, when I’m not the wolf. And I
can hear it in his heart.”

Talia sighs. “Attraction and desire are not the same things as love.”

“I know, god I know.” Derek fists close on the table and he shifts restlessly. He wants to get up
and pace about the kitchen. He wants to shed his human skin and disappear into the woods, run
to escape and burn off the building energy and hope and fear inside him. But he can’t. “Mom,
there’s…there’s something else there. Between us. He likes the human me too. I know he does.
And I have to try. He deserves to know. After all this time.”

“We have our laws for a reason.” Talia’s voice is close to lecture-mode and Derek remembers
being a young pup and listening as his mom told him and his sisters all about their history and
their laws. “You can’t just go around telling every person you have a crush on.”
“Why don’t you want me to be happy?” Derek implores and finally the smooth, controlled
mask of his mother’s face cracks. Faint frown lines edge her mouth and her brows dip down.

“Oh, Derek. I do.” Talia reaches a hand out across the table towards him. “But I’m your
mother. I have to protect you. And this pack.”

“Stiles isn’t a threat,” Derek points out.

“He’s human and his father is the sheriff.”

Derek shakes his head. “But not a hunter.”

Talia leans back in her chair, dropping her hands to her lap. “We hoped you’d grow out of
this.”

“Well, I didn’t.” Derek can’t imagine growing out of the way he feels for Stiles, the way the
sight of his moles makes his fingers tingle or the way he could listen to Stiles talk for three
days straight.

“No, you didn’t,” his mom agrees, and for the first time all night a trace of smile walks across
her lips. “Do you love him?”

Derek’s hands clench and so does his heart. “I want to.” He can’t just as the wolf, it’s why he
needs Stiles to know him as a man too.

“Derek, you’re still so young and-”

“Don’t tell me I’ll find someone else,” he bites out. “I don’t want someone else.”
Talia shakes her head, a little wistfully. “I wasn’t going to. Have you thought about what you’ll
do if you tell him and he…” his mother trails off, but she doesn’t need to say anything more.

“Freak out?” Derek fills in. “He won’t.”

“He is only human.”

“No, he’s not. Not to me.”

But Derek has thought about it. Thought about it often. About letting the words fall from his
tongue and seeing the fear fill every cell in Stiles’ body. The way the scent of him would
change as the terror rose.

Derek shakes it off.

“You never should have been out in the woods alone that day,” his mother says with a heavy
weariness, tempered by something like smells like acceptance. “This never should have
happened.”

“But it did.”

“It did.” Talia nods and then she folds her arms across her chest, staring at Derek from across
the table. “He’ll need to understand. What pack is. What it means.”

“I’m not turning him,” Derek almost growls. He’s pretty sure his eyes flash at his mom because
she briefly bares her teeth at him.

“Easy,” she soothes. “We’re not suggesting it. But wolf or human, if you do this, if you…he’ll
be pack.”
Derek hearts flutters with the thought. “I know. That’s what I want.” Stiles as his pack, his
family. As his.

Talia sighs deeply. “You always were so very stubborn,” she said, but kindly, and Derek finally
breaks a smile.

“So…you’re ok with this?” He might be over the age of consent, but his mom is still his mom
and she is still his alpha.

Talia shrugs. “There was never going to be any stopping you.”

“I just – I know what I want, mom.”

Talia rises from the table and moves to stand next to Derek’s chair. She rests her hands on his
shoulders and Derek leans into the touch.

“Be cautious, sweetheart, and be sure of what you are going to say. You’ll only get this one
chance at him.”

“I know.”
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