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He wakes up.
There is a thumping in his head and his hands won’t stop shaking. When he opens his eyes the room is dark, and he likes that, that’s good. Dark is good. And then a light is switched on and he screams and screams and screams.
*
They talk in a language he doesn’t know. He grapples loosely with this new consciousness, trying to get his bearings, and vaguely understands a word: “akuma”. He knows this word from his research, from days of scouring for information.
“Demon?” he rasps. His tongue feels wrong in his mouth, like it’s grown too big for him to talk with. They – an elderly woman, a middle-aged man and a young girl no older than fourteen – all stare at him. Again, he tries, pointing to himself. “Demon?”
The man looks to the young girl. She steps forward and says in hesitant English, “No more. You are man now.”
Stiles tries to remember, recalls something on the edge of his conscience, something ugly. Burning pain – I think I’ll take the reins now, kid – and then nothing for a very, very long time. “What day is it?”
“Sunday. Twenty-one,” says the girl. Which doesn’t make sense, because – it had been Halloween even before this all happened, it had passed the thirty-first.
“Of November? I was out for a month?” ‘Out’ sounds so much better than ‘homicidally inclined’ or, you know, ‘possessed by a fucking demon’.
The girl shakes her head. “No. October. It is October twenty-one.”
A strange thought occurs to Stiles. “October twenty-first – of what year?”
“Two oh fourteen,” says the girl, clumsy with the foreign words. “It is two oh fourteen.”
He faints.
*
He’s in Japan, of all places.
He doesn’t know how he got here, and he’s not sure he wants to know. For the first few days he can do nothing more than accept food and try to get his thoughts in order. They’ve put him in a padded room, but he has what he needs, like a bed and a mirror, a toilet and a washbasin.
On the first day he can’t bear to look at his own reflection, so he doesn’t. On the second he drags himself out of bed and stares at himself in the mirror. He’s barely recognisable. His legs and arms are long lengths of muscle, and he actually has abs, now; clearly the nogitsune thought it would do some interior decorating. His hair is shaggy and just past his ears, and he looks older. More worn.
Then he spots something peeking out from under his shirt. A scar.
In a sudden rush, he rips the new clothes from his body until he’s standing naked in front of the mirror. A thick set of scars, like claw marks, run up his torso, and there’s another one across his cheek. He finds smaller ones on his hands, feet, legs, arms, and – particularly disturbingly – on his chest, right next to his heart.
He pulls his shirt back over his head, beginning to feel nauseous. For the first time in months, there is a word in his head. Scott.
Scott. Scott was his best friend.
Is?
Stiles looks at himself in the mirror. He is not the same person anymore. He does not even know if Scott is alive.
Maybe the nogitsune killed him.
Maybe Stiles killed him.
He just manages to make it to the toilet before he brings up his lunch.
*
The girl’s name is Nozomi, and she’s turning fourteen in December. She brings Stiles steamed white rice, soup, and sometimes, if his stomach is feeling up to it, pickled vegetables she calls “tsukemono”. She teaches him some Japanese, and he clumsily helps her improve her English. She tells him about her life, how she’s lived with her grandmother, brother and father since her mother died when she was six, about how her father home-schools her and she sometimes feels so lonely it’s like a palpable thing.
On the fourth day, he asks, “What am I doing here?”
She is quiet for so long he’s sure she’s not going to answer. Eventually, she says, “Myokaasan was killed by a nogitsune. I was brought up to fear the kitsune, whether they are zenko or nogitsune. But when I see you, you are not strong or brave. You are sad. You are alone.”
“You mean that you found me?”
“Yes. There are – reports – of a young man who had been spotted. Doing – bad things. Assaults. Robberies. They call you nogitsune but nogitsunes are not so desperate. They do not steal money; they have purpose to their mischief. We cornered you and plan to kill you. But you – the nogitsune – are a mess. You are feverish. The nogitsune feeds off chaos but it could not wreak chaos while you remained strong, and yet it could not separate you from the body without killing itself. Usually after a year the human soul weakens and eventually, for lack of better word, dies. You were still fighting the nogitsune, and it could not handle it.”
Stiles’ chest scar burns as if in reminder, and he unconsciously fingers it under his shirt. Nozomi’s eyes follow the movement. “You did that to yourself,” she says. “The nogitsune tried to kill us and it had a knife and you turned the knife on yourself. When you look at me, Stiles, bleeding out, I see – absolute clarity. For a moment you in complete control of your own body. You look – what is the word you used? – euphoric.”
“That – saved me?”
Nozomi looks at him like he’s stupid. “Of course not. We brought you back here and made you drink a tea made from letharia vulpina.”
“A fungus?”
“Yes. Commonly used as poison for foxes and wolves.”
Christ. “You exorcised me.”
“Exercise?”
“You ripped the nogitsune from me.”
“That is accurate.”
“Is it dead?”
Nozomi shakes her head. “Merely gone. It has been banished to a place where it will no longer bother anybody, a place not of this Universe. Do not look so worried.”
He tries to relax. The nogitsune is gone. It will not be coming back. Something tugs at his memory. “How did – I had an MRI, I – and it said that my brain, that I had… frontotemporal –”
Nozomi rests a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It was effect of the nogitsune. When nogitsune became a part of you, it wrought havoc on your body. When it left you, you were returned to normal. We did scans, x-rays, tests. You are in good health, Stiles.”
And isn’t that a funny way of saying it? ‘Became a part of you.’ Does that mean Stiles is now missing something? “That doesn’t make sense,” he says. “My brain, it was –”
“The world often does not make sense,” says Nozomi, rising. “I have learnt that it is futile to argue with fate.”
He doesn’t sleep for a long time, even after Nozomi leaves and he is left alone in the darkness.
*
When a week has passed, he feels well enough to leave his room.
Nozomi’s father does not trust him, and her grandmother downright hates him. But her brother, Katsu, who just got back from University the day before, is kind. He’s a year older than Stiles and he shows him the estate’s gardens, laughs at Stiles as he soaks in the sun for the first time in days, spinning in mad circles. It’s cold as balls but he’s alive and he wants to laugh and cry and maybe get a bit hysterical.
He thinks he’s entitled to a bit of hysteria.
When Nozomi, her grandmother and father leave to visit relatives in Tokyo, Katsu stays and keeps Stiles amused. They traverse the estate and then, when that’s covered, with his father’s permission, he takes Stiles outside of the estate, to quaint markets and spanning parks. Stiles can almost hold a basic conversation in Japanese, now. Katsu’s English is near perfect, and he loves it when Stiles uses words he’s not familiar with, demanding Stiles tells him their meaning, and he does the same for Stiles.
(Sometimes, Stiles will wake up screaming in the middle of the night, grappling for solid ground
his hand on a blade, Scott screaming for him to stop, a pair of lips at his ear telling him to run, run, run
and Katsu will come and hold him until screams dissolve into sobs. They do not talk about it in the morning.)
Before he knows it, it’s been two weeks. The others are returning in another week. And Stiles is suddenly reminded that he has a family, too. That this is not his home.
He needs to find out if he’s returning to a welcome party or solemn faces, dusted graves and handcuffs. But he’s not sure he’s ready.
He’s not sure that, if he went back, they would even recognise him at all.
(Stiles likes his body now, the way it moves with grace, the rippling muscle. Katsu teaches him sparring and he exercises until he is sweaty and aching and can’t think at all.)
“What is it like? In this place you are from, Beacon Hills?” Katsu asks.
Stiles’ mouth quirks. “Small. Everybody knows everybody’s business, and there’s always – at least recently – some sort of supernatural business going on.” He frowns when he remembers that his recently is not so recently at all. “It may have changed. I don’t know. I have a pack there – Scott and Isaac and a handful of humans and a werewolf with serious communication issues –” He smiles at the thought of Derek, bizarrely. After what he’s been through Derek is like a puppy in a clown suit. “I miss it,” he says, just realising it.
Katsu smiles sadly at him. “I suppose you will be leaving soon, then.”
“I guess so. I –” He breaks off. The light catches off Katsu’s eyes, and he. He just. He looks fucking beautiful sitting there, and Stiles has nothing to lose. He wants his Adderall. He wants redemption. He wants to forget.
“Okay?” Katsu asks, eyebrows furrowed.
“Okay,” Stiles says, and kisses him.
*
He packs in the quiet of the night a week later and stands in the centre of the room for a while, memorising Katsu’s form on his bed. The man’s legs are tangled in the sheets, his naked body glinting in the moonlight. Stiles wants to stay. God, but he wants to stay.
He leaves before he can change his mind, with a bag of new clothes, his old battered phone and a wallet he does not recognise in his pocket.
He does not say goodbye because he doesn’t remember how.
Stiles checks the balance of his cards on his phone as he waits for the bus and finds it in the 8-digit numbers. He doesn’t know where he got the money, and he doesn’t want to know. But he’s tired, and he’s sad and lonely, and he’s not going to not use money (double negative, hah) just because it was probably stolen. He has long since passed the point where he gives a shit about that sort of thing.
Standing in departures at Narita International Airport, he looks at the board. He’ll have to catch a plane to LAX, and then a train or taxi from the airport to Beacon Hills.
At the last minute, standing at the ticket desk, he blurts out, “How can I get to London from here?”
He’s never been to London – never really been out of Beacon Hills before this last year, really – and now he’s got all the money in the world.
He should call Scott, his dad. He should do something.
But there’s one thought stuck on loop in his brain, has been there since he woke up: If they care so much, why aren’t they looking for me now?
It’s been a year.
They’re fucking werewolves.
“You’ll need to catch a flight to Beijing, and then to Heathrow,” says the woman. Her eyes crinkle when she smiles. He almost expects her to ask first time flying? before he remembers that he doesn’t look like a kid anymore. He looks capable. Strong. The thought gives him courage.
“I’ll take it, please.”
*
London is cold. There are Christmas decorations decorating the streets, even though it’s only October, and it’s. It’s so weird, not just because he’s alone in a country, but because he can’t believe he’s lost a year. It’s still October, still just on the cusp of winter, but a whole freaking year later.
To distract himself, he does things. He stays in a hotel next to the Thames. He goes on the London Eye. He visits Buckingham Palace, the British Natural History Museum. He takes an open-top bus around the city, and then at night goes to a club and gets drunk off his face. He’s legal, now, here in England. Not that it’d matter, anyway. The ID in his wallet is fake, declaring him Robert Smitherson-Blake. He’s 23 and he’s from Oklahoma.
Fucking nogitsune.
He goes home with a girl with blonde hair and brown eyes, dimly recognises the resemblance and doesn’t really give a shit, fucks her and leaves in the morning. He had liked her, liked the way she felt pressed against him, but he misses Katsu like it’s a tangible thing. And he misses home, too.
(The nightmares are ever-present, leaving him in a sobbing, sweaty mess most of the time. Sometimes he calls for his dad before he remembers that he’s not there anymore. Once, bizarrely, after a dream about a scar across the torso and a knife glinting in the moonlight, he wakes up and his mouth is closing around the word Derek.)
January brings horrendous snow and reminders. He calls in the New Year with a bottle of whiskey, thinks I missed this last year, and begins to cry just as the ball drops.
He leaves the next day, with a small suitcase of clothes and toiletries and postcards he can’t bring himself to send, and catches the first flight to Los Angeles.
*
Beacon Hills looks, from the outside, as he remembered it. He gets the taxi driver to drop him off outside his house, shoves a handful of money in the guy’s hand and watches him drive away with a sinking gut. He can’t do this.
He walks up the drive. His hands are shaking, so he shoves them in his pockets. His hands shake almost constantly nowadays, but at least he doesn’t have any waking dreams anymore, and he can actually read without wanting to hit something. He considers knocking, but then just pushes the door open and walks right in.
“Dad?” His voice shakes. “Dad?”
No answer. He must still be at work. Stiles walks through the house. Everything looks exactly the same, give or take a few small things. Takeaway containers stack up on the kitchen counter. There’s a coffee maker by the fridge, now, and it doesn’t look that new. A bigger TV. He walks upstairs as if afraid of waking up somebody who no longer lives here, opens the door to his room and doesn’t know what he expects but it isn’t this.
It’s a mess. The bed sheets are strewn across the floor and his computer is in pieces. He wonders why nobody ever tried to fix it. Maybe nobody cared. Maybe his dad couldn’t do it, and there was nobody else alive to do it for him. He walks through into the bathroom and there’s old blood on the tiles. His shower is rusting. There’s a bottle of hair gel lying open on the side.
Suddenly he feels like a criminal in his own home.
As if he can scrub away the unclean feeling, he cleans. He cleans the dried blood of the tiles, scrapes splatters of it from the walls, makes his bed, puts the remnants of the computer in a box (he bought a new laptop in London, anyway) and throws it away, straightens things up, and throws the opened bottles of crap in the bathroom in the bin.
That’s how the Sheriff finds him, rubber gloves on his hands, scrubbing the tiles for all he’s worth.
“Who the –” He has his gun in his hands. Paranoid, Stiles thinks. Safe. Maybe he thinks he needs it now. The gun hits the ground when he sees Stiles and he swears, picking it right back up again.
And pointing it at Stiles.
“This isn’t real,” he whispers. “You’re gone.”
“Dad –”
“Don’t call me that! You don’t get to call me that, you monster. You aren’t my son; you’re that thing –”
“Dad,” Stiles says, hands up, voice gentle. “It’s me. I swear to God, it’s me.”
The gun doesn’t waver, but the Sheriff digs in his pocket for his phone and shakily dials. “Scott? Yeah, yeah, it’s the Sheriff. I need you to get over here right now. It’s about Stiles.”
He hangs up without another word, levels the gun, and Stiles should be scared, should be worried, but all he can think is Scott. Scott’s alive. His dad’s alive. He’s counting them off, like ticking items off a shopping list. One more I didn’t kill.
“It’s been a year,” his dad snaps. “A year; why have you come back? I think we made it pretty clear you’re not welcome here.”
Stiles says nothing, because he understands there’s nothing he can say that will make it better.
“I should shoot you right now. For what you did to my son.”
“But you won’t,” Stiles says, in the manner of one coaxing a scared animal. “You won’t, because you know, deep down, that it’s me, Dad. You’re just too scared to hope.”
“You think I don’t know how you – you things manipulate people? I’m a cop, kid. It’s my job to pick up on this sort of stuff.”
A door crashes open downstairs, and in a breath Scott’s there, standing in the middle of the room, right in front of Stiles. He has Allison behind him (check) and Allison has Isaac at her elbow (check). Scott grabs Stiles and sends him crashing into the wall, ruthless. He’s changed, muscled up physically, but he also looks somehow more solemn. Serious. Like he’s seen a lot of shit and he’d really rather not see anymore, thanks.
“Scott, for fuck’s –” Stiles dodges a blow, goes on the defensive; knows Scott will only take the offensive as confirmation. “It’s me, Scott – it’s –”
Scott freezes, his muscles locking down. He slams Stiles into the wall again (must be a werewolf thing) and takes a good look at him, probably getting some gage on his aura or something. Then he drops him like a tonne of bricks.
Stiles groans from his spot on the hard floor. “Ouch.”
But Scott is already pulling him back up, into a crushing hug, and Stiles hugs him back just as hard, and it hurts. It hurts, deep down, where Stiles has learnt not to let it. Where he’s shut off any emotion, any acknowledgement of all the people he must have hurt, he must have killed. It fucking aches.
“Stiles,” Scott whispers, and he sounds so broken. “Stiles, this doesn’t make sense. How can –”
“It’s a long –”
Before Stiles can finish, his dad grabs him in a hug, and Allison and Isaac throw themselves at him, and suddenly he’s wrapped up in a cuddly mess of human and werewolf. The shoulder of the shirt where Scott’s pressed his face is wet, and Stiles can feel himself welling up and just can’t bring himself to care.
“I’m home,” he whispers, and he’s not sure who he’s trying to reassure: them or himself. “I’m home.”
*
“You’re making this out to be worse than it was, Stiles. It wasn’t that bad.”
“It was pretty bad,” Isaac says.
Scott growls. “Shut up, Isaac.”
Isaac slumps. Lydia snorts. They’re all in Stiles’ bedroom, and nobody has asked about its cleanliness. Isaac keeps looking at the shiny windows with distrust, but he doesn’t ask. Lydia arrived about ten minutes ago, and had spent five minutes with her head buried in Stiles’ shoulder. At one point Stiles had sworn that he heard a sob, but when she lifted her face Lydia looked perfect as ever.
He looks at her and waits for that familiar tugging, the overwhelming desire. The infatuation. He looks at her and he feels nothing.
“I woke up in Japan,” he says when, eventually, Scott asks. “A family took me in. They knew the – they fixed it.”
“We tried,” Scott said, as if this was an accusation. “We tried, Stiles. We tried so hard, but – you – I mean, the nogitsune – went on a kind of – a rampage and there was the whole showdown thing and then you were just gone.”
“What ‘whole showdown thing’?”
Scott’s eyebrows do this funny thing as if he doesn’t quite know what emotion this response deserves. “We got you cornered. Deaton had this theory, see, that I could just – Alpha the nogitsune out of you. It turns out it was exactly that, a theory. You knocked me out and by that point, Derek was the only one left. He managed to claw your stomach when you attacked him –” Stiles unconsciously touches the scar that runs along his torso. “– and we were worried it might kill you and hopeful it might slow you down but you just walked away, saying something about how it was too difficult, you’d find chaos somewhere else.”
“And you never came back,” says a low, familiar voice.
Stiles jumps off his bed as if burnt, spinning around to look in the doorway. Derek is standing there, feet bare as if he’s just been running through the forest.
Check, Stiles thinks.
“Hi,” he says.
Derek raises an eyebrow. “Hi.”
He doesn’t know why he does it, if maybe he has a death wish or something, but one moment he’s hovering by the bed and the next Stiles is throwing himself at Derek, wrapping him in a tight hug. Derek freezes for a full minute before he relaxes and hugs back, his face warm against Stiles’ neck. “I came back,” Stiles whispers, and pulls back. When Derek takes a step back his limbs move unsure, his posture rigid.
Derek hadn’t even hesitated. Hadn’t thrown him against a wall first (which is definitely a surprise, and maybe Stiles might have enjoyed it from him). Had just known it was Stiles.
Something about the thought makes warmth spread through him.
“You came back,” Derek confirms, a damn sight surer than anybody else in the room, and he smiles.
*
The news spread through town like wildfire, how “that kid Stilinski” the one who “left town after he messed with the town’s electricity and nearly got arrested” is back. Stiles supposes it’s better than being “that kid Stilinski who murdered everybody” but it still kind of stings.
Everybody acts so weird around him now. He lifts his hands to gesticulate and they all flinch. They don’t believe he’s really back, he knows, and he shouldn’t blame them. He shouldn’t feel angry when Scott begs out on a movie night to go on a date with Kira (who watches Stiles, all the fucking time, hands half-outstretched as if to stop him from doing something he’s already done) but he does, he does, he does. He’s furious.
("What about the oni?" Stiles asks on one of those rare moments he gets Scott alone. "I remember...Kira's mom? And the oni. She -"
Stiles had wondered if Scott even knew about the whole Kira's Mom Is a Secret Badass Thing, but he doesn't look surprised, just gets this closed-up lock about him. "Gone," he says. "You - I mean, the nogitsune, it got to - look, nevermind, Stiles. They're just gone, okay?"
And Stiles feels like he's back at the beginning again, wondering how the hell he can fix things if nobody even tells him just what he needs to apologise for.)
Weirdly, he starts spending time with Derek. Derek, who’s thawed a bit while Stiles was away, who tell stories about Cora at college and has laugh lines and who bakes. Stiles goes to Derek’s apartment most days, sick of the emptiness of his own house, of the suspicious looks his dad doesn’t mean to throw him but does anyway. When finally everybody returns to college (near enough to Beacon Hills to protect it but not near enough to visit your fucking best friend every now and then, apparently) and Stiles is alone, except he’s not really alone because he has Derek now, doesn’t he, he makes the decision.
“I’m going to New York,” he says. “Leaving tomorrow.” They’re standing in Derek’s kitchen and Stiles is showing Derek how to make Mama Stilinski’s Beef Casserole, which he’s never told the recipe of to anyone, and that just says something about how much he trusts Derek, really, doesn’t it. It’s almost embarrassing.
Derek freezes, hands halting their slicing of carrots. “You’re leaving?”
“Yeah, see, the thing is,” and suddenly Stiles is clumsy and awkward and sixteen again, standing next to the best looking guy in the world who has the most impossible amount of issues and a near-permanent scowl, “I was thinking. Um. Since your sister’s at college in Virginia Tech so she’s not in Beacon Hills anymore and you don’t really –” You don’t really have anything left here. “Maybe you’d want to come with me?”
Derek visibly relaxes, and then a smile tugs at his mouth, which he hides behind his hand. “I’ll think about it.”
*
The next day, Derek’s at his door bright and early, suitcase in hand.
Stiles positively beams and disappears to get his own luggage. He hugs his father goodbye, tries not to feel too guilty at the “Leaving me again, Stiles?” and they pile into Stiles’ jeep. Derek must have ran here because the Camaro is nowhere to be seen, and Stiles gets a mental image of Derek running wolfed-out through the forest with a suitcase dragging behind him and laughs so hard he has to pull off the road.
They drive until it’s too dark to do so anymore and pull up at the closest motel that doesn’t look like people have been murdered in it. And it’s easy, it’s comfortable; they talk the entire way, the conversation coming and going in lulls, and Derek’s still his grumpy self but he smiles more and sometimes he laughs at Stiles’ jokes and he doesn’t act weird, he doesn’t bring up the last year or the whole nogitsune thing and it’s. It’s.
It’s home.
The only room left is a double, and the second they get in Stiles dibs the shower. He washes the day off him, is again reminded of the fact that he’ll never be able to completely scrub himself clean. He spends ten minutes styling his hair, messing it up and then redoing it, before he realises that he’s working on his hair for Derek Hale and they’re only going to be sleeping, so it’s going to get messed up anyway.
Not – like that. God, Stiles wishes like that.
When he steps out of the bathroom Derek is lying shirtless on the bed on his tablet, and Stiles actually trips over his own feet. Derek looks up and cocks an eyebrow. Stiles blurts, “The bathroom’s free,” as if there’s anybody else who could possibly be in there.
Derek nods and grabs a towel before disappearing into the bathroom. Stiles watches his ass the whole way, enjoys the way his back muscles flex as he slips through the door.
God, he’s fucked.
Stiles flicks through the channels until Derek returns and then tries his very best not to look like he’s watching the way Derek’s hair is dripping down his neck too hard. Hard. Shit. Think about puppies. Think about puppies and your grandmother and, like, clowns. Shit shit shit shit –
“What are we watching?” Derek asks, chucking his towel over the back of a chair. He stretches out on the bed beside Stiles.
“I was thinking Mean Girls.”
“No.”
Stiles selects Mean Girls.
Derek dives for the remote control, tackling Stiles to the bed. Stiles snorts, manoeuvring out from beneath him and kneeing him in the stomach, taking advantage of his hesitation to flip them over so that he’s hovering over Derek.
Okay. Maybe not the smartest course of action.
Derek stills under his hands, leaning in until their noses are almost touching. He smirks, and Stiles’ eyes are drawn to those beautiful, beautiful lips, and Derek’s hand comes up Stiles’ side and –
He plucks the remote right out of Stiles’ hand.
“You fucker,” Stiles complained, flopping back onto his side of the bed. He glances at the TV. They are now watching some National Geographic thing about the mating habits of wolves. Stiles snorts. “Hey look, Sourwolf, isn’t that you?”
Derek is watching the show with the utmost concentration, though, so eventually Stiles gets bored and drifts off. He wakes up when Derek switches off the television, suddenly aware that his head is on Derek’s shoulder and not awake enough or caring enough to move it.
The next time he wakes up he’s screaming.
a girl, barely older than Cora, on the end of his knife. Laughing, he’s laughing, but it’s not funny, he’s a monster – how could he do this, how could he –
“Stiles. Stiles.”
Stiles gasps. He doesn’t remember where he is, doesn’t know how he got here. The nogitsune will be back soon, will grab his mind by the reins and yank; he has to run, but he can’t hide, there’s no hiding from –
His eyes fly open and he’s crowded himself into a corner. There’s a figure silhouetted by the dim light of the motel room: a werewolf. Wait – motel?
“Stiles, listen to me. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
Derek.
Anger and fear dissolves into grief, and Stiles buries his face in his hands, his breathing ragged. Derek doesn’t try to move him or urge him up, just sits down beside him. They sit there listening to each other’s breathing until Stiles’ own breaths aren’t so forced.
“I dreamt I killed a young girl,” he whispers. “And nowadays, my dreams are usually real. I’m a monster, Derek.”
Derek is quiet. Finally he says, “I know there’s no point in saying that that wasn’t you, because you won’t listen. We’re all monsters, Stiles. We’re all ugly as hell inside, and we have all done some very fucked up things; some people just hide it better. But you get up and you get over it, and you put up with the nightmares and the guilt because you have to, because you survived. And that means something nowadays.”
“Do you ever wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t? Survived, I mean. Maybe it would have been better.”
Derek sighs. He sounds very tired when he says, “The world would have kept on spinning, Stiles, regardless. You live or die and the world doesn’t give a shit either way. You’ve just got to make sure there are people who will give a shit. That’s what life is about, I guess.”
“Since when did you get so philosophical?”
“Shut up.”
*
Stiles wakes up still on the floor with his face mushed against Derek’s shoulder and drool hanging from his mouth. He recoils, wipes his mouth, and flushes even though nobody can see him. Derek is still fast asleep, head tipped to the side, chest rising and dropping rhythmically. Stiles can’t stop watching before he remembers that it’s a bit creepy to watch people sleep, and he scrambles to his feet and goes to shower.
They have a continental breakfast with lots of coffee (mostly of Stiles’ part). Stiles is halfway through making coffee for both of them when he realises he knows exactly how Derek takes his coffee, right down to the measurements, and stands there in shock until the person behind him demands he get a move on.
They drive until noon and then stop at some greasy diner off the road, topping up on gas while they’re there. Stiles has the most heart-attack-inducing burger with two patties and onions and the most pathetic excuse for lettuce he’s ever seen. Derek has a toasted cheese sandwich and an energy drink (seriously).
They decide to stretch their legs at the grown-over park across the road and Stiles immediately runs for the swings. They have a competition to see who can swing higher until Stiles feels his gut flying up to his throat every time he drops. He feels euphoric. He feels like nothing in the world can touch him.
Derek drives this time (with Stiles’ distrustful eye observing how Derek treats his baby) and they stop that night at another motel. This one’s pretty seedy, but it was the best they could find on such short notice, and they were too tired to travel any further. The man at reception (lanky and charming) flirts with Derek as he digs around for their key, and Stiles snatches the key off him with a bit too much force.
He can hear the nogitsune in his head whispering mine mine MINE. He storms off in the direction of the room, leaving Derek to stare after him. Then his hands are shaking so much that he can’t get the key in the lock, which is just embarrassing, and Derek has to take over.
“What’s wrong with you?” Derek demands once they’re inside.
Stiles shakes his head, can’t say that he was jealous, settles on a bit of the truth. “Sometimes I get scared that the nogitsune never left. Like, I swear I hear it in my head. It’s…” He runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what to do, Derek. I’m terrified. I lost a year that I’m never going to get back, I have millions of dollars in my bank account and I don’t know where it came from, and my hands!” He thrusts his hands in Derek’s face. “Look at my fucking hands, Derek! They haven’t stopped shaking since I woke up that day. What’s wrong with me? I don’t fucking know.”
Derek’s expression softens, just slightly. “You know what that is, Stiles.”
“Please, enlighten me, because I really don’t. Is this some side effect to becoming the host body of a nogitsune, should I be joining Possessed Anonymous? What is wrong with me?” He tries to breathe, hopes this isn’t the beginnings of another panic attack. Shit.
Derek walks over to his tablet, taps something on the screen, waits for it to load, then passes the tablet to Stiles. Stiles tries to hold it, but it shakes so much he can’t read the writing, so he settles with sitting on the bed with it in front of him.
“Recurring nightmares, emotional outbursts, panic attacks… shaking hands, jerky movement, exaggerated startle responses…” Stiles reads. He jokes, “This sounds like me on a normal day.”
Derek isn’t amused, pointing to the title. “Read it.”
Stiles sighs. “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” He drops his head into his hands. “How can I have a post-traumatic disorder, Derek, I wasn’t even in control when –”
Derek gives him that familiar ‘cut the bullshit’ look. “No, but you were aware. You were aware and there was nothing you could do. I bet you jump at loud noises, too. I bet sometimes the toast pops up when it’s done and you drop like it’s a fucking gunshot.”
Stiles doesn’t meet his eyes. “It’s stupid.”
“It’s real. After the fire, Stiles, I didn’t sleep for days. I would doze for two hours or so, and then wake up suddenly, afraid that Kate would be back and Laura gone. A car would honk its horn and I would throw myself in front of my sister like we were in grave danger.”
Stiles knows this is important, that Derek never shares this shit with anyone, so he doesn’t argue anymore. Instead he just says, tiredly, “Let’s go to bed.”
He cringes at the way it sounds, but Derek just nods and goes off to change. Stiles changes quickly into his pyjamas, and can see the words even when he closes his eyes. Post-traumatic stress disorder often follows a traumatic event that threatens your safety and makes you feel helpless. Christ.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Stiles whispers when they’re lying down and Derek’s breath has evened out. “I don’t know where I’d be without you. In the loony bin, probably.”
An arm snakes around Stiles’ shoulders, pulling him close. Stiles bites his lip.
“No nightmares tonight,” Derek says sleepily. He looks kind of adorable lying there, hair mussed and eyes sleep-kissed. “I need my eight hours.”
Stiles doesn’t dream at all that night.
*
They’re aiming to get to New York by sunset, so Stiles takes the wheel again. He tries to ignore how his hands shake and focus on the road, and he has Derek’s voice in his ears and he thinks I could get used to this.
Stiles is halfway through a story about Japan and he had to wake up Katsu to get rid of a giant man-eating spider when he realises he can’t tell this story without explaining why Katsu was asleep in his room in the first place.
“And I screamed and dived to hide on the bed and –” He stops dead. “Um.”
Derek makes a go on hand gesture. So Stiles does. “I woke Katsu up and made him get the spider, and he didn’t even get pissed at me, the fucker, just got rid of it and told me to come back to bed.”
He swears he hears a faint growl. “You and him – you were –?”
“Yeah,” said Stiles, hands tightening on the steering wheel. “Just for a short while. I. It was nice. Comfortable.”
“You miss him.”
“Of course I do.”
Stiles chances a look at Derek, but Derek isn’t looking at him, his gaze fixed on a far point on the horizon. “You think you’ll ever go back?”
“Not permanently, no. It would be nice to see Nozomi and Katsu again but I would never go back just for Katsu . It wasn’t – like that. I mean, we weren’t exclusive. I fucked people in London, too, it was no different.” God, Derek really didn’t need to know that. He wants to say forget it, I’m just going to stop talking now but he stops himself, wants to see Derek’s reaction.
“London?”
Shit. “Yeah. I was in London for a while. I didn’t tell, you know, Scott and the – pack about it, because I knew they’d be mad. That I didn’t come straight back. That I ran away.”
And thinking about it, that’d probably piss Derek off, too. But when Stiles looks Derek’s face is soft, his lips curving around a smile, and Stiles feels like he’s seeing something he shouldn’t be. He looks away.
“Is this what you’re doing now?” Derek asks. “Running away?”
“Maybe. That bother you?”
“Not at all.”
*
They arrive in New York at dusk, and it’s just coming alive. The city is bustling, so many colours and smells and flavours. Stiles couldn’t have picked any better place to run away to. He could disappear into the crowds here and nobody would ever find him, werewolf or not.
They check in at their hotel, and the receptionist is far too chirpy and emphasises every second word like “and do you want breakfast included” like breakfast is the best fucking thing in the world. Stiles says yes anyway, because, seriously. Breakfast. Food.
The hotel is amazing, looks out right over New York. Stiles sits on the arm of the sofa and just looks out at the lights. Derek comes out of the shower a while later and sits in the armchair, curled up with his glasses (and he wears fucking reading glasses, seriously, Stiles’ dick can’t take much more) and a dog-eared book.
And suddenly Stiles doesn’t give a shit about the view, because Derek Hale is sitting beside him reading a book and wearing glasses and sweats and, forget New York, he’s the most beautiful thing Stiles has ever seen.
*
They visit Central Park and see the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building and push through the crowds of Times Square. Stiles takes pictures of everything and Snapchats them to the pack, and they respond with overenthusiastic selfies and Stiles thinks maybe, just maybe, we’ll be okay.
*
The days slip into a routine. Sometimes they’ll go sightseeing, but mostly they just walk until they find somewhere nice to eat and then walk some more and Stiles will make up stories about the people they meet and Derek will roll his eyes (but totally secretly find it endearing) and it’s nice. It’s more than nice.
Stiles is falling in love with New York City, but he’s beginning to think that’s because maybe he’s already fallen for Derek Hale.
*
After a few days of tension, seeing who will give in first, Stiles gets a Skype call from Scott.
Scott doesn’t even bother to say hello, just launches into this story about how seriously, Stiles, you won’t believe this guy I got partnered with in Econ and Stiles –
Stiles missed this.
He missed it so damned much.
*
They go skydiving on a free day and Stiles screams and nobody can hear him and it’s fucking beautiful.
(When he hits the ground, heart pumping like crazy, legs about to collapse beneath him, he looks down at his hand. It’s perfectly still.)
*
It takes him two weeks before he realises that they’ve gotten domestic. He panics and goes out alone that night, fucks some guy in the toilets and comes home feeling unsatisfied. Derek glares at him when Stiles returns and flops down onto his bed, proceeding to rub himself all over Stiles.
“Um,” says Stiles.
“You smell like sex,” Derek growls, as if that’s an excuse, and fuck him if the way Derek’s tongue curls around the word ‘sex’ doesn’t go straight to Stiles’ dick. “You smell like other people. I don’t like it.”
Stiles could say a great many smooth things right then, but instead his stupid mouth settles on, “Why?”
Derek licks a stripe up Stiles’ neck and Stiles shivers. “Because I want you to smell like me,” he murmurs. “I want everybody to know you’re mine.”
And the nogitsune whispers mine.
“Am I?” says Stiles. “Yours?”
Derek looks at him like he’s stupid.
Before he can second guess himself Stiles grabs Derek by the back of the neck and pulls him into a kiss. Derek, being Derek, doesn’t let him take control for a second; he immediately manoeuvres them so that Stiles is pressed against the bed with Derek’s knee sliding his thighs apart.
Mine, the nogitsune repeats.
Yes, Stiles thinks. Mine.
*
They return to Beacon Hills a week later, repeating their little motel stops and impromptu scenic tours (except this time the second they get into the room, Derek presses Stiles up against the wall and kisses him hard like he’s terrified Stiles is going to leave and then they shower together). Stiles’ dad is pleased to see him – them – and Melissa McCall hugs him so hard he feels like his bones are bending and.
And.
He knows he won’t be able to stay here forever, knows that the nogitsune took something with it when it left, his sense of security. He knows that Beacon Hills was home once, knows that it can never be anymore, not with the memories that hang ever-present.
But maybe, he thinks, looking over at Derek dozing on the bed, admiring the way the sun falls across his back.
Maybe home isn’t always a place. Maybe sometimes it’s a person.