Archive of Our Own

Sisters are annoying. Derek may not be old enough for anyone to call wise, but this is something he knows as a fact.

Sometimes, boy characters on TV get made fun of for being pushed around by girls. It makes Derek roll his eyes every single time. It must be nice being human; Derek's sisters would rip him apart, hang his teeth in their rooms as trophies, and bury him out in the preserve somewhere if they thought they could hide his body well enough.

He has no destination in mind as he storms through the preserve. He is not supposed to be out without permission, and at least one adult supervising, but he is already out and about, so he might as well keep going before he is ultimately caught and dragged back home to be yelled at.

Unlike the main pack house, the preserve is quiet despite the sounds of the forest life. The difference, Derek thinks, is that there are sounds but no noise. Sounds are birds preening their feathers and rabbits chewing on leaves and grass rustling as the wind passes through. Noise is Laura grumbling under her breath as she flickers through random channels on the TV and Cora’s obnoxious chewing. 

It is these sounds of life of the preserve that Derek allows to guide him through the trees. He sniffs curiously at a bush full of red flowers, pokes at moss growing on a tree, steps over a small stream, and then realises he is standing at the mouth of a clearing.

A clearing, he realises with a sudden jolt, that is already occupied. 

In the middle of the clearing is the stump of what must have once been a massive tree, and among its roots is a fairy.

Well, it is a boy fairy dressed in white robes and body curled up tight. Derek can tell from his breathing that he is asleep. 

And it has to be a fairy because there are flowers in his hair and birds resting on his shoulders and a squirrel leaving a pile of nuts in front of his nose.

Not to mention, he smells nothing like any human or werewolf he had come across before. He smells sweet, like flowers and nectar and very fairy-like. 

Derek takes a step out from the shadows and into the clearing and instantly the woodland creatures freeze. The birds begin batting their wings and their soft songs turn into high-pitched cries. The squirrel begins chittering. It places a paw on the fairy’s cheek, then tugs at his hair. 

Derek watches as the fairy abruptly sits up, wide awake. The birds chirp in surprise as they are thrown off, but they settle back on his form as he rubs at his eyes. 

The squirrel frantically tugs on the fairy’s finger, maybe trying to pull him away. The fairy laughs and flicks playfully at its ears, but the squirrel chitters in distress and tugs at his finger again. 

It is obvious the moment the fairy notices Derek’s presence because he lets out an alarmed cry. He turns towards something behind him, something maybe only he can see, before he looks down at the tree stump and darts around it, putting it between himself and Derek. He crouches the best he can in its shadow and digs his fingers into the stump of the tree, peering up at Derek with wide eyes. 

The fairy is scared of Derek, that is easy enough to see. Derek can smell it, too, a sharp, sour smell that threatens to make Derek’s eyes tear up.

The birds fly up into the trees in alarm, chirping loudly, but the squirrel jumps up onto the stump of the tree and arches its back, hissing threateningly. 

Squirrels run from wolves; Derek has never been threatened by one before. He falters. “Uh, hi.”

The fairy continues to stare. 

Derek swallows. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

The preserve is Hale territory. The woods closer to the town see human visitors once in a while, but this deep in, it is rare for anything but wildlife to be around. 

Derek takes a step forward and the squirrel’s tail bushes up. It lets out another hiss and thumps its small paws against the tree stump. 

Derek would not lose a fight with a squirrel, but his mother is very strict about wolfing out outside the house without adult supervision. Right now, the squirrel’s claws appear much sharper than his own human nails. He warily stops.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Derek says. 

The fairy lets out a soft whine. He shuffles closer to the tree stump.

“It’s okay,” Derek says. “Promise.” He takes another step forward. 

The squirrel swishes its tail, then hops off the tree step and darts up the fairy’s leg to settle on his shoulder. 

The fairy continues to stare, eyes wide and unblinking. Derek continues creeping closer until it is only the tree stump between them. He drops onto his hands and knees, and inches around the stump. “Hi.”

The fairy considers him for a moment. “Hi,” he replies promptly.

Derek feels relief flood through him at the response. He grins. “Oh good! You understand me.” 

After a moment, the fairy smiles, too. 

"Are you lost?" Derek asks.

The boy tilts his head, eyes wide. "Lost?"

“Like, where’s your–” pack “family?”

“Family,” the boy says. 

“Yeah. Where’s your family? You’re like, too small to be out there on your own.”

Even though Derek is a whole five years old, he is not allowed out in the preserve by himself. The fairy…the fairy looks like he is three. At best. He is probably around Cora’s age.

“Yeah.”

Derek frowns. Maybe the fairy is too small to understand him well. Derek is definitely bigger and older. He stands up, abruptly enough that the fairy lets out a gasp of surprise and falls backwards, landing on his rump with a soft “Oomph”. He shakes his head and looks up at Derek, who now stands over him. 

The fairy is pretty, Derek thinks. His eyes are big and a colour Derek does not know the name of, but they look like those jewels he had seen a few times in the fashion magazines Laura likes to hoard. Something brown, but gold, and orange, and maybe a bit of red?

He is much prettier than the dolls Cora got for Christmas and kept showing off, that is for sure.

His sisters will be so jealous, Derek realises. The fairy is pretty and can be his pet. Derek will take very good care of him, and feed him, and play with him, and since the fairy is lost, and Derek found him first, clearly he was now Derek's.

Just earlier, Cora had snatched one of his cookies off his plate and declared it was hers because "It's first come first serve!", and stuffed it into her mouth before their mother could take it back from her. Two days ago, Laura had taken the TV remote and when he had asked for it told him no because she had found it first before proceeding to flip to a random channel about cooking even though Derek knows she does not care for cooking.

So it is first come first serve. And Derek most definitely was first.

Satisfied, Derek drops down onto the floor again and scoots as close as he can to the fairy’s side without touching him. The fairy’s eyes follow his movements and stare right into his eyes. 

“You should come home with me,” Derek tells him. “I’ll share my cookies with you if you do.”

He had watched a TV show once, where students kept a class pet. His sisters had demanded a pet after watching the show, and their mother had shot down the request extremely fast, claiming it would just be mean to any pet to keep it in a house of wolves.

But the fairy is not a pet, because pets are cats and dogs and like, turtles, and he is a fairy. He could, however, be Derek’s friend.

“Cookies,” Derek says. “I’ll give you cookies. Cookies are good, right? I love them, and I’ll share 'em with you.”

The fairy blinks once, very very slowly. “Cookies,” he says definitively.

“Great.” Derek climbs to his feet again. When the fairy continues to stare, he holds out a hand. “Come on.”

The fairy stares at Derek’s hand, then lifts his own to stare at it too. After a while, he places his hand into Derek’s and gasps when Derek pulls him up onto his feet. The squirrel chitters in alarm and jumps off the fairy’s shoulder.

“Cookies,” the fairy says. 

Derek nods. “Cookies,” he promises. 

The fairy lets out a soft hum and follows without complaint as Derek begins leading him back towards his house. 

The fairy’s steps are much smaller compared to Derek's. Derek finds himself having to slow his steps so that the fairy does not trip and fall. Even though he is being careful, the fairy stumbles several times, each time threatening to take Derek with him. After a while, Derek tugs the fairy closer to himself to hold him up. 

Fairies fly, right? So maybe his new friend is not used to walking. Derek slows down a little more at the thought. He keeps an eye out for obstacles, too, and kicks away the big branches on the floor and pushes aside the leaves trying to get in their faces, and the fairy stops trying to fall over so much after that. 

The main Hale house comes into sight a while later, and Derek immediately spies his mother, Talia Hale, standing at the door and staring out into the preserve. 

His mother probably knows exactly where he is; she always seems to no matter where he is.

Derek shrinks in on himself; he forgot he had snuck out without permission. The fairy chooses that moment to stumble, falling sideways and straight into Derek, who is not expecting the sudden weight and falls over too. Talia glances towards them, mouth falling open, before immediately snapping shut when she catches sight of the fairy. Derek quickly scrambles to his feet and pulls the fairy up too, before brushing the leaves off of his clothes the best he can. 

“Derek,” his mother says, and the fairy jumps. His head whips towards where the sound had come from and he gasps when his eyes land on his mother. The fairy ducks behind Derek, eyes wide. Derek can feel his breath on his skin as he peeks out from around his arm.

Derek swallows. “Hi, mom.”

“Derek?” his mother is frowning. “Who is this?”

“I found 'im,” Derek explains. “First,” he adds, just in case. 

“Where?” Talia approaches them and the fairy lets out a soft gasp. He takes a step back, dragging Derek with him, and Derek is surprised enough that he lets him. 

Talia stops in her tracks. “Are you okay?” she asks. “Both of you?”

Derek nods. “Yeah.” 

Behind him, the fairy whispers a quiet “Yeah” into his arm. 

Derek cannot quite see the fairy with how he is being held onto but he can sense the apprehension coming off of him in waves. “It’s okay,” he tells the fairy. “That’s my mom. She’s gonna make the cookies.”

“Cookies,” the fairy says. He sticks his head out further from behind Derek and stares at Talia. When Talia takes a step towards them, the fairy does not try to step back.

Soon, Talia is right in front of them and she crouches in front of Derek, hands coming up to his cheeks. “What have we said about sneaking out into the preserve?”

Derek ducks his head. “That it’s not allowed,” he mutters. “I’m sorry, please don’t take the fairy away?”

This makes Talia turn to the fairy, who ducks back behind Derek. “Fairy, you say?”

Derek nods. He tries to nudge the fairy out of his hiding spot but the fairy appears perfectly content where he is. “He was sleepin' next to a tree,” he explains. “There were birds n' squirrels around him. Like in the movies.”

Talia takes a deep breath, then a few smaller ones. Recognising scenting, Derek takes a deep breath too. He can smell his mother and the smell of pack coming from the house. He also smells flowers and something sweet that he knows is the fairy.

Talia frowns. She smiles, however, when the fairy sticks his head out from behind Derek again. “Why don’t we get you both inside?” she says. “Then we can see if we can figure out where your friend comes from.”

Derek frowns. “I found him first.”

The fairy finally steps out from behind Derek, though he keeps a tight grip on his sleeve. He glances at Derek, then at his mother, then towards the house. He does not say anything. 

Talia fondly shakes her head. “He might be lost,” she says. “Maybe his family is looking for him.”

“He doesn’t need them,” Derek says. “He’s gonna to stay with me, now.”

“Cookies,” the fairy says helpfully.

Talia brings them both into the house. Derek sniffs as he kicks off his shoes. “Where’s everyone?”

“Your father took Cora and Laura out to the mall,” Talia says. “I'll be with you two in a moment. Have a seat first, okay?” She closes the door behind them and then disappears into the kitchen. 

The fairy flinches the moment he steps inside and stares down onto the wooden floor. He wriggles his toes. 

Derek takes the fairy’s hand and leads him into the living room. He plops down on the couch and pats the space beside himself when the fairy continues to stand and look around. “Come on, sit.”

“Sit,” the fairy says, then climbs up onto the couch. He takes a moment to wriggle around, trying to get comfortable, before he curls up and lays his head on Derek’s shoulder. “Cookies.”

“Right.” Derek glances towards the kitchen. “Maybe later.”

The fairy hums and closes his eyes. Derek listens as the fairy’s breathing slows and watches as the fairy goes limp in moments. By the time Talia steps out of the kitchen again, the fairy is fast asleep.

Talia crouches in front of them and places a hand first on the fairy’s forehead, then underneath his neck. Derek feels a strange urge to growl and fiercely shoves it down. “What're you doing?” he whispers.

“Making sure he doesn’t have a fever.” Talia leans back after a moment. “Where did you say you found him?”

“In the forest.” Derek shuffles in his seat but freezes when the fairy’s head threatens to tilt off his shoulder. “He was sleepin'.”

“And there was no one else around?”

Derek shakes his head. “I didn’t see, smell or hear anyone. It was just him."

"And did you get his name?"

Derek blinks. "Oh…no. I didn't ask. I think he's a little small, you know? So maybe he doesn't really understand what I'm sayin' all that well."

Talia nods slowly. She withdraws her phone from her pocket and begins tapping away at it. 

“Mom, can we have cookies? I wanna  share it with the fairy.”

Talia laughs softly. “Do fairies eat cookies?” she asks, but she gets to her feet. She vanishes back into the kitchen.

“He does,” Derek calls after her. “I think. I told him I’d give him cookies n' he followed me.”

Talia returns soon after with two plates, each with two cookies on it. She places it on the table in front of them. “Here. Share, okay?” She vanishes back into the kitchen. 

Derek grins and immediately grabs one off of his plate. He breaks it in half and then taps the fairy’s cheek. “Hey.”

The fairy breathes out but does not stir. Derek waves one-half of the cookie under the fairy’s nose. 

The fairy snaps to attention. Derek waits for him to come to his bearings and waves the cookie in front of his face again to catch his attention. “Here. The cookie I promised.”

The fairy curiously takes the cookie and peers at it. Derek stuffs his half into his mouth and the fairy stares at him some more before he nibbles on a corner of his cookie. His eyes widen for a moment, then he copies Derek and stuffs his half into his mouth.

Derek grins. “Good, huh?”

The fairy licks at his fingers, where some of the melted chocolate leaves stains. “Cookie.”

Derek grabs a cookie off the fairy’s plate and hands it to him, then takes the second one from his own. He fits the whole thing into his mouth. “Only two for now,” he explains in between bites. “Mom doesn’t let us eat too many at once." Then he whispers, "But you can have two n' a half 'cause I promised you cookies." 

The fairy tries to put the whole cookie in his mouth too, but he appears unable to fit it in. He jerks when Derek tries to take it from him.

"It's okay! I'm not taking it from you. Let me help."

The fairy slowly lets go and Derek helps him break the cookie in half, then hands back both. The fairy stuffs one half into his mouth and lets out a soft sound that Derek thinks is a laugh. He finds he likes the sound and suddenly wishes he had given his second cookie to the fairy too.

"So," Derek says. The fairy finishes the first half of the cookie and begins munching on the second. He does look up, however, when Derek taps his knee. "So," Derek tries again. "What's your name?"

The fairy blinks.

"What's your name?" Derek presses. "I'm Derek," he adds.

The fairy swallows his mouthful and sucks the chocolate on his fingers again. "Cookie," he says.

Derek snorts. "This," he takes the last cookie and holds it out, "is a cookie." He waves it. "Cookie."

The fairy bounces in his seat and holds out his hands. "Cookie," he says, wriggling his fingers.

Derek hands the cookie to the fairy, who takes it and breaks it in half. Derek then points at himself. "Derek."

The fairy hums. "Derek," he mumbles.

Derek nods and points at himself again. "Right, I'm Derek." He points at the last bit of the cookie in the fairy's hand. "Cookie." He then points at the fairy again. "And what's your name?"

The fairy finishes the cookie and licks at his fingers again. Derek reaches towards the box of tissues on the table and takes the fairy's hand to wipe at the sticky fingers. 

"Cookie, Derek," says the fairy. He sticks out his hands and wriggles his fingers again. "Cookie. Coookiiie."

"Mom won't let us have any more," Derek tells him. "Not until dinner." He points at the plates. "See? No more cookies."

The fairy perks at the word but slowly lowers his hands when Derek does not produce a cookie. The fairy sniffs, then curls back up on the couch. He shuffles up and nudges away Derek's hand to lay his head in Derek's lap before proceeding to close his eyes. 

Derek dutifully stays where he is. Talia comes to collect the plates and wordlessly turns on the TV for him. She then fetches a blanket and Derek carefully covers the fairy with it. He mouths a “Thank you,” to his mother before settling into his seat.

Talia immediately calls for what Derek, his sisters, and literally all cousins their age, refer to as an “adult’s meeting”, which is basically a meeting held in Talia’s room where all adults of the main house are expected to drop everything for and attend. Derek’s father is the first to return home. Derek can hear his sisters loudly complaining at the abrupt return even before they are through the front doors.

“You promised us ice cream,” Laura says. “You promised.”

Cora, who is at the age where she agrees with everything Laura says and disagrees with everything Derek says, chimes in with several “yeah!”s in support of her sister. 

“I’m sorry girls,” Frederic says. “Pack emergency. I’ll get you both ice cream to make up for it next time, okay?”

Derek is reminded of their fight from earlier, though if he was being honest he remembers the fight more than he does why exactly they were fighting. He would have left for his room if not for the fact that the fairy was sleeping on him.

So, instead, Derek stays where he is as his father enters the living room and stares for a moment with wide eyes. “Hey, kiddo,” he whispers. “Who’s your friend?”

Derek shrugs. “He’s a fairy.”

“Alright.” Frederic smiles in a way that makes Derek wonder if his mother has already said something to him. “I’m going to go talk to your mother, okay? If Peter or his wife come home, let them know we’re in her office, okay?”

Derek nods and watches his father head off towards his mother’s office. Barely a few seconds after the door softly closes, Laura and Cora come barging into the living room, loudly enough that Derek feels the urge to throw himself at them to shut them up. 

Laura immediately comes to a halt the moment she catches sight of the fairy. “Oh!”

Derek presses a hand over the fairy’s exposed ear. “Shhhhh!” he hisses. “He’s sleepin’, can’t you see that?”

Laura crosses both index fingers in front of her mouth, something Talia had taught her when Cora and Malia were born. She hushes Cora when the younger opens her mouth, then tiptoes over and crouches next to the couch. “Who’s that?” she whispers.

“He’s a fairy,” Derek tells her begrudgingly. “I found him.”

“Right.” Laura sticks her nose as close to the fairy as she can without touching him and sniffs. “He smells good,” she says. “Like flowers and stuff.”

“He’s ‘ute,” Cora says. She is trying to keep quiet, too, Derek can tell, but she is not doing a very good job at it. The fairy does not stir at all, so Derek does not say anything for the moment. “Is he gonna say w’ us?”

“Is he why mom called for an adult’s meeting?”

“I dunno. Maybe? They think he’s lost and that his parents are looking for him.”

“He don’ look lost,” Cora says. She gets two pats in onto the fairy’s cheek before Derek swats her hand away. “Hey!”

“Don’t hit ‘im!” Derek snaps. “He’s sleepin’!”

Cora scowls and looks away, looking chastised. It does not take her long to calm down, however, and she soon joins Laura in staring at the sleeping fairy. “He’s real ‘ute,” she whispers. 

“Yeah,” Laura agrees. 

“An’ he smells nice.”

“That’s what I said.”

Derek actually does not know when Peter and his wife come in through the door, or when any of his other aunts and uncles, and at one point an older cousin, slip into Talia’s office. He doubts either of his sisters noticed when it happened either. He barely notices when Alan Deaton, his mother’s Emissary, arrives at the house and joins the adults. He does not know how long the meeting goes on for, or how long he and his sisters stare at the fairy, but by the time Talia calls for a pack meeting in the living room, surrounding the fairy, and announces that the fairy will be staying with them from now on, he has no intention of letting the fairy go.

For a while, the fairy has no name. Derek’s sisters immediately want to name him something ridiculous, inspired by a character from one TV show they had seen or another. 

Derek saves the fairy from the terrible fate of being named a name that will go out of trend in five years and be horribly made fun of in ten by saying that the fairy should be able to name himself; at the rate the fairy is picking up words, it will not be long before he is able to properly talk. 

At some point, John Stilinski, sheriff of Beacon Hills, who is also in the know of the supernatural world because his late wife had been a creature of sorts herself, is made aware of the fairy’s presence. Derek is not quite sure why, but Laura tells him that it is largely so that they can make sure that the fairy is not actually just a lost child. 

She says he cannot be because he smells like one of them more than he does human, even if he is clearly not a werewolf, and Derek tells himself this as Talia visits the sheriff’s office, then comes home and tells them that the sheriff will be coming over later that day to try and figure things out.

If the sheriff tries to take the fairy away from him, Derek is going to be very upset. 

The man comes by at around dinner. Peter goes to the door to greet the man, and he joins them at a full dinner table. The fairy, who has yet to pick up utensils and appears to have quite a long list of foods he does not like, has a bowl of fresh fruits in front of him.

The first time it happened, Cora claimed it was unfair because she does not like vegetables and yet she has to eat them. Talia tells her that this is because maybe the fairy is a species of supernatural that cannot eat certain foods. 

The fairy takes an instant liking to the sheriff and Derek suddenly can think of a million reasons why he does not like the sheriff. Like–like how he is instantly trying to steal the fairy from him. And there are more, he is sure, but he cannot come up with anything at the moment.

After dinner, Talia chases them all out and the gang move into the living room where the fairy immediately takes up the space next to John on the couch and Derek quickly slips into the remaining space next to the fairy. He scowls at the sheriff the best he can but the man appears to not notice. 

John appears to be a little lost, but he smiles when the fairy leans in towards him, mouth hanging open. “I’m John,” the man says. “John Stilinski.”

The fairy blinks. He stares for a moment, then blinks again. “Sti!” he says. “Derek, Sti! Stilee? Cookie? Sti?”

John looks up, expression bewildered and looking for help. Talia arrives from the kitchen with a jar of cookies in hand and a knowing smile on her face. The fairy’s expression brightens and he makes to join Cora and Laura in running for Talia, but he takes two steps and stops. “Stilee? Cookie?”

Talia hands Laura and Cora a cookie each then reaches over them and hands the jar to John. “Here,” she says. “He loves them.”

John reaches into the jar, the fairy’s eyes are wide and unblinkingly staring at his hand as it moves. “Here you go, little guy,” he says and holds out the cookie. 

The fairy immediately grabs it, making chittering noises in the back of his throat. He then spins around and holds it out towards Derek. “Cookie, Derek.”

Derek cannot help but smile despite the alarming situation where Josh Stilinski may take the fairy away. “Thanks.”

The fairy hums then turns to hold his hands out at the sheriff again. “Cookie? Stilee? Cookie?”

John gives him another cookie and the fairy chows down on it like it is the best thing ever, none of the shyness from his first day in the Hale house present. He has figured out how to fit the whole thing in his mouth, somehow, and he does so once again, face melting into a satisfied grin as he settles to chew his mouthful. 

“Cute fella,” the sheriff says, and he ruffles the fairy’s hair. The fairy leans into his touch, still chewing. 

Derek flinches at the growl that leaves his throat, and he wants to hide when everyone turns to look at him in surprise. 

“Are you okay? Derek?” his mother asks carefully. 

The fairy tries to say something but his mouth is too full to make out what it is. 

“I–” Derek swallows. “You can’t have him!” he burst out and points at the sheriff. “You can’t! He’s mine! I found him!”

The fairy turns away from John and crawls into Derek’s lap. “Drrkk?” he says around his mouthful of cookie. “Drrr?”

Derek wraps his arms the best he can around the fairy and shuffles backwards onto the couch, dragging the fairy with him. “You can’t have him,” Derek says, but he has lost all steam and his voice sounds wobbly to his own ears. 

He does not want to cry in front of his family.

John looks the most surprised at Derek’s outburst. “I’m–Derek, I’m not going to take the–the fairy away from you,” he immediately says. “I promise.”

Derek is horrified when his vision blurs with tears. “But–” he chokes on a sob and cannot get the rest of the words out. 

The fairy has his full attention on Derek, now, patting at his face in alarm as the tears flow. “Derk!” he says. The fairy swallows harshly a few times and manages to get the rest of his cookie down his throat. “Derek! Cookie? Sti, cookie?”

Derek buries his nose into the fairy’s neck and breathes. 

“Oh, Derek.” Talia moves to stand behind the couch and leans in towards him. “Sheriff Stilinski isn’t taking the fairy away. We’ve already gotten confirmation that there is no family looking for him, and the sheriff is here to finalise the fairy moving in with us.”

Laura steps up next, looking upset. “I’m sorry, Der,” she says. “I didn’t know he was already going to stay! I was just saying stuff.”

Derek sniffs. He gently bats away the fairy’s hands trying to wipe at his tears and wipes his face with his sleeve. “Oh. So he’s stayin’? He’s not goin’ anywhere?”

“He is,” Talia confirms, “so don’t cry, honey."

“Okay.” Derek breathes into the fairy’s neck one last time. “I guess you’re stayin’, huh?”

The fairy lets out a soft giggle and slaps a hand, lightly, onto Derek’s cheek. “Derek,” he says and gives him a pat. 

“Yeah?” Derek sniffs. He rubs his eyes and does his best to grin. “What’s it?”

“Derrr!” The fairy gives his cheek one more pat, then plants a hand on his own chest and giggles. “Sti!”

“Stilee” makes its way into the fairy’s limited vocabulary, and soon they start calling him that when he reacts to it. There are quite a few variations even among the pack, however, and the fairy reacts to all of them, and they end up finalising it as “Stiles” when Peter has papers made.

Stiles is…Stiles is cute. Derek hears enough praises for Stiles to know this very well, not that he needs anyone to tell him this. 

He is cute in a way that makes Laura want to pamper him and Cora want to play with him. 

Deek thinks Stiles is unnecessarily patient with both of them; he lets Laura do his hair paint his nails and dress him for the day, and he plays house and dolls with Cora and does not even bat an eye when the scenarios almost always take a dark turn and one or more dolls end up decapitated, at times quite literally. 

It is not only his sisters, either. Derek knows his mother sneaks Stiles cookies she hides from the rest of her children because Stiles then shares with Derek whatever he gets. 

Peter, on the other hand, is more blatant with his favouritism. Stiles picks the movie to watch when Peter is babysitting and decides where they eat when Peter is paying. Stiles absolutely loves it when Peter jumps off the top of the staircase all the way to the bottom with Stiles in his arms and Peter often entertains his request to do it over and over again. 

Derek thinks part of it may be because Derek does not talk much and prefers silence, Laura is old enough to know you cannot trust Peter unless the situation is entirely serious, and Cora is going through a phase where she does not want to do anything with the adult members of the family, whereas Stiles is chatty in the limited way he knows, is wholly trusting of Peter, and is all affectionate and clingy. 

It is not only them, either. Just two weeks ago, Peter’s daughter, Malia, had lured Stiles into her closet with snacks and trapped him inside so that he could not leave. Stiles was understandably freaked out when he found himself unable to open the closet doors because Malia had pushed her bed in front of it. 

He had not been trapped for long; his cries had reached everyone in the house in moments and Derek had shoved aside his snarling cousin, the bed, and had found Stiles curled up and crying in the dark of the closet. 

Talia had later pulled Derek aside to explain that Malia was more wolf than she was human compared to the rest of them, that this had been her attempt to keep Stiles somewhere safe and close to herself because she liked him, and that it was not something she could help. Malia would have better control over these urges as she grew up, Talia explained, and hopefully, this incident would be something they could all look back at in a few years and laugh about. 

Derek sure hopes so, because seeing Stiles so subdued and quiet in the days immediately after hurt. 

Because of the incident, however, Derek begins to notice more clearly just how much his family appeared to gravitate towards Stiles. No one was as extreme as Malia had been, but Stiles constantly received shiny stones and pretty flowers from the youngest Hales, and gifts like food and clothes from those who had their own money to spend. Outside of that, everyone greets him, wants to talk to him, plays with him…

Derek likes that Stiles is so loved but what he loves the most is the fact that, at the end of the day, despite all the love he gives and all the love he receives, it is Derek that Stiles returns to.

Hale children are homeschooled up until they enter primary school. It is so that by the time the ‘wolves are out and about in public without the constant presence of an adult to keep an eye on them, they are at an age where they can control themselves. The human children are kept back too, so that no one questions the difference in treatment.

That means that Derek grows up knowing that he will have to go to school one day. Laura goes five days a week, and she seems to not mind it much, but she does not have the responsibilities Derek has. 

Because Derek has Stiles. 

The thought really hits him when Talia pulls him aside and takes him out to town, chattering about school as she does. 

Derek does not listen to most of what his mother is talking about even as she has him pick out a new backpack, several sets of clothes, and some new shoes. He is allowed to pick his own stationary set and half a dozen notebooks. 

Usually, he might be ecstatic to be getting so many new things at once. This time, however, the occasion stops him from being happy, because if Derek is gone for half a day, what will happen to Stiles? Clearly, his mother is set on Derek going to school, but it does not seem she is thinking about Stiles because Derek is the only one getting school supplies. 

Does Talia expect Stiles to stay at home? He considers talking to his mother about it; she will surely understand that Stiles needs Derek, and so Derek should be allowed to take Stiles to class with him. 

Ultimately, he decides to go with the ambush approach. When Derek grabs a second stationary set, with Batman patterns on it, Talia allows him to put it in the cart with a fond smile and a ruffle of his hair.

A week later, Talia is not as impressed when Derek comes down the stairs with his packed back slung over one arm and Stiles, half asleep and haphazardly dressed, being dragged along by their linked hands.

“Derek, what’s Stiles doing up?”

Derek tugs Stiles closer to himself so the younger boy can lean into him. Stiles does so without any resistance and promptly closes his eyes as though he intends to fall asleep there and then. “Going to school.”

Talia sighs. “Derek, Stiles is not going to school with you.”

Derek frowns. “Of course he is. What else is he supposed to do?”

“He is going to be here, waiting for you to come home.”

“But–” Stiles needed Derek. Derek spoke for him when he could not and brought him to the dining table when it was time to eat. Derek read him books, and opened his snack packets for him, and made sure he did not tumble down the stairs when he was in too much of a rush to watch his steps. Derek reached for things high up that Stiles could not reach, and helped him find the correct channels for the shows Stiles liked watching on TV, and helped him figure out which colours were the correct colours to use in his colouring books. 

Stiles needs Derek, this is a fact. 

His mother, unfortunately, refuses to listen to reason. She forces him to open up his bag right by the door and takes out the Batman stationary set, as well as the snacks he had packed for Stiles’ lunch because he had seen Talia pack a lunch only for him and Laura. 

Peter, woken up by the commotion, comes lumbering down the stairs halfway through, takes one look at the situation, and steals Stiles straight out of Derek’s reach. Stile, the traitor, immediately snuggles into Peter’s chest and continues snoring away. 

“He’ll be here when you come back,” his uncle says. He yawns. “Now, we’ll be catching up on some sleep while you all head off.” He then turns and heads back up the stairs with Stiles. 

Derek has half a mind to lunge after his uncle, but his mother must sense something because she grabs the back of his shirt to keep him in place. “Derek,” she says. “Stiles cannot go with you to school, but he will be right here when you come home. If it makes you feel better, and if Stiles wants to, he can come with me to pick you up.”

There is no winning against his mother, Derek knows this. He slumps his shoulders and dutifully picks up his bag when Talia lets him go. “Stiles will want to come pick me up,” he says.

Talia smiles. “I know he will, baby. Now, we should go. We don’t want to be late on our first day, do we?”

Derek would, he thinks, if he could just go back to sleep and spend the whole day with Stiles. But maybe, if he leaves earlier, he can come home earlier. He grips onto the straps of his backpack and sulks all the way to the car. 

The school day does not get any better, but does not get any worse either, which is all Derek can ask for. The new, unfamiliar scents are almost overwhelming but something he manages to bear with. He is the first out of the classroom during recess, then playtime, and when the bell finally, finally rings to signal the end of the day.

He runs out first. The thought of having to spend five days a week, for the next several years, in school, is a horrible, horrible thought. 

Things, however, do get better the moment Derek steps outside the front gates. 

He immediately catches sight of the family car, though it takes Stiles until Derek has actually reached said gates to see him too. The moment he does, however, is obvious because the car door is being thrown open and Stiles is tumbling out like the inside is on fire. 

“Derek!”

Derek hastens his steps and manages to catch the boy before he falls flat on his face. Stiles immediately pushes himself out of Derek’s arms to peer right into his face. “Derek!”

Derek peers up to see his uncle watching them from the driver’s seat. Stiles notices Derek’s attention is elsewhere and slaps a hand onto his cheek. “Deeeerek!”

Derek turns back to Stiles and crouches so that they are eye to eye. “I’m here,” he says, and cannot help but smile when Stiles lets out a happy giggle. “Come on, maybe Uncle Peter will get us some ice cream.”

He helps Stiles back onto the car, only just then noticing how much of a distance there is from the door to the ground. Not for him, not anymore, but surely for Stiles who is still tiny. He makes a mental note to teach him that he should not jump out of the car like that again, because it is dangerous, but for now, he busies himself with fastening Stiles’ seatbelt. 

Peter is looking at him from the rearview mirror and their eyes meet when Derek glances up. “Hello, Derek. How was your day? Nice? That’s great. What is that I hear? Ice cream? Why, thank you for asking, of course, I’d love to get you some.”

Derek rolls his eyes even as Peter chuckles at his own words and starts the car. 

“Ice cream?” Stiles asks. He sits up like the words have finally been processed in his mind. 

Instantly, Peter turns to him. “Do you want ice cream, Stiles?”

Stiles begins nodding vigorously. “Yes! Ice cream!”

Peter nods sagely. “Very well, ice cream it is.”

Derek rolls his eyes a second time then turns to Stiles, who has reached into his Batman backpack and pulls out the copy of Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters they had started reading last night. 

“Percy Jackson,” Stiles says resolutely. “Derek, Percy Jackson.”

“Right.” Derek takes the book from Stiles and flips to the page he previously bookmarked. Stiles settles into his side as Derek begins to read.

Stiles learns to listen before he fully learns to speak, which is rather surprising considering Stiles always manages to string together what he means to say with the limited vocabulary he manages to get out.

Derek hears his mother talking about it with Peter, then later on the phone to Deaton, about this. Stiles is smart, and yet he appears to struggle with certain things that he should probably not be having any trouble with. 

And so, Stiles still struggles with words. Derek has never been a chatterbox by any means, but he tries to speak more because he has been told, multiple times, that the fastest way Stiles will pick up talking is if those around him spoke to him.

So Derek talks, even though he feels silly sometimes one-sidedly saying things to Stiles without getting a proper reply. That is not to say Stiles does not react, however, because he makes sounds of delight and laughs and claps his hands in response to everything and anything Derek says. 

Stiles appears to be trying too, because he sometimes repeats Derek's words back to him and seems to understand most of what Derek is saying. In fact, most of the time, it is as though the words are on the tip of his tongue, only he struggles to get them out, which leaves his speech a choppy slur of individual words that the listener has to piece together themselves.

"Derek" is by far his favourite word and he says it as much as any other words combined. He is very good with the names of food, and he is just as good at expressing his likes and dislikes with the accompanying facial expression. 

Somehow, Derek understands very clearly what Stiles is trying to say, and Stiles knows this as well as he does. That leaves Derek in a position where he is dragged around left, right and centre by the whims of his younger friend any moment he is not at school. 

Not that he minds, really.

Three months after Derek starts school, Derek and Stiles start reading The Last Olympian. On weekdays, Stiles watches TV while Derek finishes his homework before they pick up the book, and on weekends they do a bit of reading after lunch, then after dinner, then before bed. That is how they spend most of their time, and because Derek has to read slowly and explain things, and Stiles often gets distracted by the small things within the novel that derail them from actual reading, it takes longer than it might to finish a book, especially considering how much time they actually spend reading. 

And on top of that, sometimes, Stiles abruptly decides he wants to do something else. 

Derek is halfway through the third chapter when Stiles suddenly tugs on his sleeve. Derek half-closes the book to show Stiles that he is paying attention. “Yeah?”

“Outside," Stiles says. "Derek, outside." The boy tugs on Derek's sleeve, then grabs one of his hands in both of his. "Dereeeek, outside!"

Derek glances at the clock. "We gotta eat soon."

"We gotta outside." Stiles scrunches up his nose.

Derek rolls his eyes. "We gotta go outside," he corrects.

"We gotta go outside," Stiles repeats easily enough. "Derek, we gotta go outside!"

“...Right, we gotta.” Derek bookmarks the page they are on, then hops off the couch. Stiles scrambles off, having learnt that he is not tall enough just yet to jump off like Derek the hard way, and the two of them make their way towards the door. 

“Derek?” Talia calls from the kitchen, loud enough for Derek to hear but quiet enough that Stiles cannot. 

“Just going outside for a bit,” Derek replies. He crouches to help Stiles with his shoes. “We’ll be right outside, promise. We’ll even keep the door open so you can hear us.”

Stiles kicks his legs impatiently and Derek takes hold of his ankle to keep it still while he wrestles the shoe onto his foot.

“Alright,” comes the reply. “Dinner’s soon, so come back in when you’re called, okay?”

“Okay.”

Derek barely finishes securing the velcro before Stiles runs out the door. Derek does not bother undoing his laces as he shoves his own feet into his shoes and quickly follows Stiles outside.

The boy takes around ten steps out into the yard before sitting down on the ground. He instantly begins pulling weeds from the ground and fiddling with them. 

Derek, unsure of what to do with himself and half wishing he had brought out a book to read, joins him on the grass. After a few minutes of blankly staring at Stiles’ work, however, he realises that Stiles is actually weaving the flowers. 

Surprised, Derek sits up a little. Stiles’ movements are confident and sure, and yet his touch is deceptively gentle, as he carefully bends the stems into place. He is very quick with his work, and within a few minutes more he has finished his loop of flowers. He holds it up for Derek to see and says, “hat.”

Derek blinks. “That’s a flower crown,” he says, then frowns because he is not sure if the weeds can really be called flowers in the state they are in. “Not…not a hat.”

Stiles pursues his lips thoughtfully. “Flower crown,” he says after a moment. Nodding to himself, he holds out the flower crown again. “Derek?” 

Derek carefully takes it, not wanting to unravel it by being too rough, and places it on Stiles’ head. 

Stiles pulls back and stares into Derek's eyes for a moment, perhaps staring into his own reflection mirrored in Derek’s eyes. “Hm? Derek?”

Derek has a sudden thought that if he were working with actual flowers, and not weeds more common in the current, cold season, the crowns would be very, very pretty. “You look good,” he says. “It suits you.”

Stiles stares at him for a moment, before the brightest smile Derek has ever seen on his face so far blooms. 

A smile tugs on Derek’s lips, drawn out by Stiles’ obvious joy, and he is so captivated that it takes him a heartbeat to notice that Stiles’ head, or more accurately the flowers, are glowing. Suddenly, green seeps into the weeds like paint dripped into water, and suddenly it is spring, and the crown has suddenly come back to life, as leaves sprout and buds grow and flowers bloom in the span of moments until Stiles’ crown of weeds has transformed into a crown of gold flowers. 

Magic, it has to be.

Stiles appears to not notice anything as he makes himself comfortable on the ground again and begins picking at more weeds. Derek is torn between staying where he is, and asking Stiles about it, and getting his mother or maybe his uncle, or something else entirely, and before he can come to a decision Stiles has finished weaving a second crown and is clambering to his feet. 

“Derek,” he says as he moves behind Derek, and Derek finds himself dutifully bowing his head so that Stiles can put it on his head without even thinking. He feels hard weeds jab at the top of his head and resists the urge to reach up and itch. Stiles ambles back around to crouch in front of him. He stares at Derek’s head, or rather at the crown, while Derek stares into Stiles’ eyes, searching for the same glow. Stile’s eyebrows slowly furrow and his cheeks puff up as nothing happens. 

Stiles makes a face, then reaches out towards the weeds. Derek dips his head so that Stiles can pluck the crown of weeds from his head. Stiles stares hard at the woven weeds in his hands. 

Suddenly, Derek has an urge that he cannot understand, that he finds himself acting on before he can catch himself. Stiles’ cheeks flush a soft red as Derek wraps a hand around Stiles’, the crown of weeds cupped between them. Stiles looks up and Derek does not know what he is doing, but he thinks that he wants Stiles to smile as he had earlier, not frown like he is currently, suddenly the weeds cradled between them begin to glow.

Stiles is magic. Derek feels Stiles slip his hands away, then reach up to place the crown on Derek’s head. Derek accepts it, warmth spreading so fast that it absolutely cannot be natural.

Stiles leans in, all glowing eyes and wide grin, like they are sharing a secret. Derek knocks heads with Stiles and the flowers sprinkle light like glitter, which pulls a laugh of pure delight from Stiles that makes it impossible for Derek to not follow suit.

As a werewolf, Derek is used to wild animals running away from him. His father explains to him that it is because wild animals instinctively avoid predators as it is what keeps them alive, and even though Derek himself has no intention of hunting rabbits, the rabbits run from him regardless because Derek and the rest of the werewolves are the anomalies among predators. 

And Derek is okay with that, because he understands, and it does not bother him at all, up until the moment he realises that the wild animals, the furry bunnies and the feathery birds and the fluffy rodents of a variety of colours, shapes and sizes, all appear to have something against him.

The first time he notices something is when he suddenly notices that Stiles, who had been colouring pages with crayons, is no longer next to him. Derek abruptly sits up, the book he had been reading falling onto the floor, as he frantically looks around. “Stiles?”

There is no reply, but the sound of the doorknob turning catches his attention, and Derek hurries over to the front door just in time to see Stiles shove the door open with a triumphant “Oomph!”.

A brown bird flies straight through and lands on Stiles’ hair. Two squirrels dart in through the door. One scampers up Stiles’ leg to perch on his shoulder, while the other claws at the door while loudly squeaking. Derek spies a colony of brown rabbits peering curiously into the house from a little further away, and right next to them is a racoon.

As Stiles leans down to pet the squirrel, another bird flies through the door. It holds a flower in its beak, and it remains hovering right where it is, only flying backwards when Stiles reaches out to take the flower. Stiles takes a step out the door, then another, then another, blindly following the bird with the flower. 

“Stiles!” Derek calls out, alarmed, and the animals instantly scatter. The squirrels both dart off in different directions while the rabbits and the racoon vanish into a bush. The birds fly off with warning cries, and in the moment it takes Stiles to spin around with a wide grin on his face and Derek’s name on his lips, all the animals are gone. 

“Derek!” Stiles stumbles back into the house and runs into Derek with his arms spread. “Derek, look! Animals, Derek, see—”

Derek almost barrels right into Stiles in his haste to get to him and simultaneously close the door. “What’re you doing?!”

Stiles wraps his arms around Derek the best he can while he is pressed into Derek’s chest. “Derek, the animals!” he complains. “Derek?”

“You can’t just leave the house on your own,” Derek scolds. “It might be dangerous outside.”

Stiles frowns as he finally recognises that Derek is not at all pleased. “But animals,” he says. “They were cute. And you’re–you’re sour!”

“Sour–” Derek shakes his head. “Even for the animals,” he says. “You need to at least tell someone, okay? If you want to go out, I’ll go with you.”

Stiles huffs an “okay,” and grabs Derek’s hand. Instead of leading him outside, however, he begins dragging Derek back into the house. 

“You don't want to go out?” Derek asks. 

Stiles shrugs. “The animals,” Stiles says. “But you scared them away. So we colour, now.”

“Okay.” 

On their way past a window, Derek glares out at the woodland creatures that scatter the moment his eyes rake over them. There is absolutely no way Derek is handing Stiles over to a bunch of tiny things that only eat leaves.

Stiles grows up with the Hales and does not quite understand that being able to wolf out is not normal. So, his own entry into school is pushed back a year as the adults of the pack take the time to explain to Stiles about their world once he is deemed old enough to understand. 

During this time, Stiles’s speaking greatly improves, and once he is able to talk he does not stop. Derek has no idea where he is pulling out all the many words he rattles off, but Stiles manages it, and sometimes Derek worries he might have to remind the boy to breathe because the words just keep coming.

A year later, finally, the day comes for Stiles to go to school. He is put into the same year as Cora and Malia, who swear to protect him. Derek helps him pick out an outfit the night before, and pack his bag. Stiles packs his own backpack under Derek’s supervision, and the last item he puts in is the Batman pencil case Derek had picked out alongside his own.

Unlike Derek, Stiles was arguably more excited, and nervous, for his first day of school. The next morning, as Talia helps Cora fix her hair, Stiles is practically bounding around, unable to stay still. Malia, who had already had her turn, is impatiently waiting by the door. 

“What if no one likes me?” Stiles frets. “What if – what if everyone’s mean to me?”

This has been going on all morning and had gone on all night yesterday, and the night before that, and so many more nights before.

Derek has to stifle his frown at the thought of anyone being mean to Stiles. “You’ll be fine,” he says. 

“Yeah!” Cora says. She jerks around to look at Stiles better and Talia hisses in warning. “I’ll beat up anyone mean to you!”

“Me too!” Malia agrees. “We’ll beat them up good!”

“There will not be any beating,” Talia says firmly, though there is a faint smile on her face. She slips the last pin into place and pulls back from Cora. “Don’t worry, Stiles,” she says. “It’ll be fun!”

Stiles shuffled nervously on his feet. “Right, yeah.”

Talia stands to open the door. Cora immediately makes a run for the car while Laura, who had been sitting in wait for everyone to get ready, jumps to her feet in alarm and quickly gives chase. Malia clearly does not understand what the race is for but joins in. Derek takes Stiles’ hand and tugs him towards the car at a much slower pace. They eventually climb into the back with Malia, a pouty Laura, and Cora in shotgun, wearing her seatbelt with a triumphant grin. 

Talia turns the key in the ignition and Derek gives Stiles’ hand one last reassuring squeeze as the car roars to life. 

Derek will go to school, Stiles will go to school, and they will both come home and tell each other about their day as they spend the rest of it together. Nothing would change from when Derek went to school while Stiles waited at home. 

Everything will be okay.

Half a day later, Derek wishes Stiles had never gone to school. Talia goes to pick up Stiles first, and Derek knows something is wrong the moment it is Talia, not Stiles, who steps out of the car to greet him. 

Derek can see Stiles waving at him with a wide smile on his face from the backseat window, and he frowns as his mother moves forward to meet him, a little distance away from the car. “Mom?”

Talia smiles reassuringly and ruffles his hair the moment she is close enough to touch. “Hey honey, how was school?”

Derek shrugs. He briefly looks past his mother to look at Stiles, now leaning against the window but patiently waiting. “What’s wrong with Stiles?”

“Nothing is wrong with him,” Talia swiftly reassures. “He’s okay.” She begins leading them back towards the car.

Derek frowns some more. “Okay…?”

Talia sighs. "Derek, remember we are in public," is all the warning Derek gets before she opens the door for him.

An unfamiliar scent explodes out towards him and Derek lurches forward. Stiles squeals in excitement as he is bowled over into the car and onto his back. Derek barely notices the door closing behind him, or even his mom getting into the car. 

Nothing matters at the moment, nothing but the pungent smell wafting off of Stiles. Derek rubs his cheek against Stiles’, then nuzzles into the boy’s neck. All the while, he rubs his hands against the inside of Stiles’ wrist, then around the back of his neck, and anywhere else he can touch skin. 

Derek is faintly aware that the car is moving. Beneath him, Stiles does not stop giggling and his attempts to push Derek away are half-hearted at best. After a while, he finally registers that Stiles is actually speaking. He forces himself to focus on the movement of his lips, on the sounds he is making, and suddenly the world becomes clear. 

“Are you okay?” Stiles asks. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah.” Derek slowly pulls back and allows Stiles to sit up. “Sorry.”

Stiles shrugs. “It’s okay,” he says. “I’m glad you’re okay. What happened?”

Derek opens his mouth and then immediately clamps it shut, because how does he explain to Stiles that it is all the different smells of people he does not know and of a classroom he is unfamiliar with that had absolutely set him off? He takes a deep breath and instead asks, “How was school?”

Stiles’ eyes widen in a way that tells Derek that none of Stiles’ worries from the morning even exist anymore. “It was great!” he says. “It was really fun, and we did a lot of cool things. I met this boy, too. His name is Scott and his jaw’s a little…”

Derek really wishes Stiles had not gone to school.

Time passes. The height gap that had been a constant between Derek and Stiles throughout the years begins to shrink as Stiles suddenly hits a growth spurt. It does not bother Derek as much as it amuses Stiles, but Derek makes it a point to hold things just out of his reach to remind him that they are not the same height just yet. 

The two of them spend as much time as they can together when at school. Derek is three years older, so they are rarely together in the same school building. Still, they go home together when they can. When Derek moves up to secondary, then high school, Stiles is still there, waiting for him at the end of the day. 

The boy to whom the unfamiliar scent from Stiles’ first day of school belonged, Scott McCall, becomes Stiles’ best friend in some ironic twist of fate. Every time Derek sees the other boy he remembers the embarrassing way he had acted in the car that day. Scott is nice, and Derek likes him if only because of how much he cares for Stiles and how happy Stiles is around him. They, along with a handful of others, remain close friends as Stiles enters high school, just as Derek himself is about to graduate.

When Stiles enters high school, he joins the lacrosse team. He does it to spend time with Scott more than he does because he actually enjoys the sport, and he seems content enough participating in training and being a part of the team, and if Stiles is happy then no one is going to say anything. 

Even if Derek feels they are losing time they could otherwise be spending together. 

Still, he diligently waits for Stiles on days where lacrosse practice keeps him late at school, and on days training drags on longer than usual he pops into the bakery nearby the school to buy something for Stiles to eat so that he is not running empty until they get home.

Today, chocolate muffins and strawberry muffins sit in the display box. Derek absentmindedly raises his hand to call someone over to place his order, then quickly slams it back into his pocket when a sudden thought sneaks into his head. 

He had been about to order the strawberry muffin because Stiles had been stuffing his face with strawberries yesterday; perhaps he is in a strawberry mood. Derek frowns. Or, because he had eaten so much of it already, he would be sick of it by now and would prefer the chocolate. 

You can never go wrong with Stiles and chocolate. 

He leans closer to the display case. 

Perhaps he should get both. Then Stiles can pick whichever one he wants and could leave the other for later. Or, he can eat both if he is up for it. 

Both sound good. 

He straightens and almost jumps out of his skin when he bumps into someone behind him. He throws a quick “Sorry, I didn’t see you there,” over his shoulder as he looks around for a staff member he can flag down. 

“Oh, don’t worry about it.” A face enters his line of sight and the woman he assumes he had bumped into smiles. “I'm new to town and a little lost at the moment, are you up to help a damsel in distress?”

Derek shrugs. A woman in the bakery uniform dealing with another customer waves at him from the counter to show that she has seen him. Derek lowers his hand to wait. 

“So,” says the woman, “Is that a yes?”

Derek turns to look at her. She is blond, older than him, with blue eyes. She definitely smells like she is not from the area. 

“Uh, what do you need?”

“I’m new to the area,” the woman says again. Her lips are pursed, but she smiles as Derek slowly nods to acknowledge her words. “I’m looking for the post office, perhaps you could tell me where it is?”

“Sure.” Derek turns towards the door to check which direction they are facing. “Turn right after you leave the shop, and just keep going.”

The woman frowns. “I came from that direction, maybe I missed it?” She opens her mouth to continue, but she is interrupted by the cashier from earlier rushing over. 

“Sorry for the wait! What can I get for you today?”

Derek points into the display as he says “One chocolate muffin and one strawberry muffin, please. To go.”

The cashier puts the two muffins in a takeout box and brings it over to the register. Derek pays and takes the box. “Thank you.”

The woman is still waiting for him when he turns around. “Maybe it’ll be better if I had someone to take me there,” the woman says. 

Derek resists the urge to shrug. “In that case, the Sheriff’s office is also to the right. There should be a billion signs pointing you towards it. Anyone on the streets can tell you where it is. Someone at the office should be able to help you.” He steps around the woman before she can continue and leaves the bakery. 

Later, he feels he might have been a little rude, but this is hours later, long after he had met up with Stiles, and he cannot help but not feel bad.

“Hey!” 

Derek looks up at the sudden sound and recognises the woman from the bakery a few weeks ago waving at him. “Hello.”

The woman skips over, smiling, ignorant to Derek's clear frown. “Hi. It’s been a while. Were the muffins good?”

Derek cannot answer that because Stiles had inhaled both muffins. “I was told they were.”

The woman laughs. “You didn’t eat them?”

Derek shrugs. “They weren’t for me. Did you–did you manage to find the…”. His mind goes blank. “Uh…the library?”

“The post office,” the woman corrects with a laugh. “I did, thank you. The people at the sheriff’s office helped me a lot.”

“Right. That’s good.” Derek checks his phone again and stares at Stiles’ I’m almost there!! that he received a few minutes ago. There have been no updates since. 

“Are you busy right now?” The woman asks. “I–” 

Three dots appear on the screen on Stiles’ side. They blink for a moment; before a message appears, I’m just across the street. Derek climbs to his feet and then realises that the woman is now staring at him. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”

Something flashes in the woman’s eyes, too quick for him to grasp. “Not really,” she says. “Are you busy?”

Derek nods. “I'm waiting for someone.” He cranes his neck to try and see the road from where he is by the bench. He cannot. “The sheriff’s office is that way,” he points blindly in the general direction towards it. “I’m sure they can help you again.”

He checks his phone again, where Stiles is now asking him Where are you?? He hurries away from the benches and towards their meeting spot by the flower shop without waiting for a reply.

The Alpha steps into Beacon Hills long before Derek notices something is wrong. The adults certainly do a good job at keeping things hidden, if anything. 

Still, hiding things becomes impossible when the werewolf bites its first victims, especially because of who is attacked. 

Scott and Isaac Lahey, who is also a close friend of Stiles, are attacked on their way home from lacrosse practice. Peter and Laura, who had been out on patrol duty for the night, arrive in time to chase the werewolf away but not before both boys are bitten. 

Later, Peter suggests that they had been intentionally chosen because they both carry the faint traces of the pack on them because they spend time with Stiles, and Talia does not contradict his logic because this werewolf has clearly been challenging the pack since its arrival.

Scott and Isaac are brought over to the pack house, and Deaton is called in to look after them. Only they arrive while Stiles is sitting in the living room and, understandably, freaks out. 

That leads to the pack gathering while Deaton settles the two bitten teens in the guest rooms, where Talia explains the situation to them. “There is a pack-less Alpha in Beacon Hills,” she says. “We’ve been trying to track them, but they’ve eluded us so far. They haven’t done anything up until tonight.”

“The Alpha bit my friends?” Stiles’ eyes. “Are they going to be okay?”

Talia sighs. “We found them early, they’re young, and Deaton is with them now. If anyone survives, it’ll be them.”

That is not a “yes” by any means, but it appears to be enough for Stiles, who nods. Still, he accepts Derek’s hand when it creeps across his lap to take his and gives it a squeeze.

“Now that people have been bitten, this Alpha is clearly a threat,” Talia says. “Moving forward, we will be implementing a pair system in the pack. No one is to be out alone at any given time, i the reason.”

Murmurs of affirmation go up at the Alpha’s orders.

The following day, Stiles is late home from school. Malia, who still has trouble with control, has had to be kept home two days before the full moon. Stiles and Cora should be fine to return home together. Stiles agreed to skip lacrosse practice after all. Derek is not worried.

But then they do not return home. Derek calls Stiles, and then Cora, but neither of them picks up. His mother is out at Deatons, Peter is picking up Laura, and Derek is suddenly very, very worried. 

After the seventh call goes straight to voicemail, he is out of the house and heading for Beacon Hills High School, where he is quickly able to track Stiles and Cora’s scent. He follows it, quickening his pace when the scent of an unknown wolf overlaps it, and when a metalic scent hits his nose he breaks out into a full-on sprint as he darts into the preserve.

The source of the scent of blood is easy to track. Cora is leaning heavily against a tree, hurt, bleeding, unconscious but alive. Derek darts over to his sister, heart thumping wildly in his chest. 

Cora has her phone in her hand, like she had lost consciousness trying to alert someone. 

She is okay. She will be okay.

Derek pats his pockets and realises that he had left his phone in his hurry to leave the house. He grabs Cora’s phone, thanks the moon his sister’s passwords were easy to guess, and shoots the pack chat a message letting them know where Cora is.

He could call someone, but Stiles didn't have that time; the unknown Alpha was still out there, somewhere.

Alive, he has to believe that. 

Derek leans in and presses a soft kiss to his sister’s forehead, knowing that Cora had fought hard and viciously, knowing that she must have tried to get Stiles away. He then drops his jacket over her form, so that whoever of the pack finds her knows that he is near, then takes off further into the preserve.

He travels for what feels like forever before he catches signs that Stiles and the wolf are nearby.

Growls. Shouts. The sound of a scuffle.

Derek breaks out from between the trees and into a small clearing, and it takes him a moment to decipher, through all the red, what is happening before him. 

A man, the alpha werewolf, has Stiles pinned to the forest floor. Stiles is fighting with everything he has, but both of his wrists are wrapped up within one of the werewolf’s massive hands and pinned to the ground. 

The werewolf raises his head from where he had his nose buried in Stile’s neck and laughs when Stiles lets out a soft whimper. 

The sound breaks Derek out of his moment of frozen horror. He sees red. He clears the space between them in a single bound and he throws himself at the 'wolf, not caring that he is a beta and his opponent is an alpha. He catches the other 'wolf by surprise; maybe he had been distracted by scenting Stiles against his will, and they go crashing onto the ground. Derek rolls off the alpha with a grunt and jumps to his feet, planting himself between the other 'wolf and Stiles, who is coughing and trying to catch his breath.

The alpha shakes his head as though to clear the ringing from hitting the ground. He snarls and fixes Derek with red eyes. “A Hale wolf.” His upper lip curls up.

Derek finds his mouth full of sharp teeth; he is currently more wolf than human. Instead of bothering with a reply, he curls his back further and bares his fangs in a threat. 

The alpha laughs. "Stand down, pup." He draws himself up to his full height, easily towering over a teenage Derek, and he enters beta form with a low, threatening growl of his own. “Pick your fights carefully.”

If he were any more collected, Derek might have told the alpha that he is a rogue wolf intruding on Hale pack territory while unlawfully biting innocent humans. All he could hear was the ringing in his ear and the soft sound Stiles had let out earlier when the rogue wolf had pinned Stiles onto the forest floor. Derek is a beta. There is no way, in any universe, where he can take on a fully grown alpha and win. Still, without any hesitation, he throws himself at the alpha with a snarl.

The alpha lets out a bark of delight and turns away from Stiles to face him. Stiles takes this chance to crawl away. It will be impossible for Stiles to actually get away, but it makes Derek feel a little better. He ducks beneath a massive fist, arguably stronger than it is swift, and slashes his own claws down the alpha’s bicep, drawing first blood. The alpha, with surprising gracefulness, smashes an elbow into Derek’s face, easily sending him flying. 

Derek’s ears ring as he crashes into the forest floor. He blindly scrambles to his feet. Derek scrambles to his feet, instincts screaming at him, and it is out of sheer luck that he manages to dodge away from the alpha’s claws that tear through the air where he had been lying.

Regardless, it is not as though it matters; the alpha is clearly playing with Derek. Derek destroys more trees than he has thus far in his life as he is tossed around. Finally, Derek hits the ground hard, and he cannot get up. He hurts all over but his neck in particular burns like lava. He faintly remembers sharp fangs sinking into the vulnerable flesh there and ripping with predatory precision just before he had been thrown backwards like a dog toy being shaken apart at the seams. 

The alpha wipes at his mouth with what remains of his sleeve then takes his time approaching, correctly deducing that Derek can no longer fight back. "Good fight, little Hale. But not one you could have ever won."

Derek does not have the strength to spit at the alpha like he wants to, let alone muster up a reply. Regardless he is distracted by movement in the corner of his blurry vision. Suddenly Stiles is running up to him and crouching over his body.

"Derek!" Stiles cries. "No, please–"

Stiles you idiot, run, Derek tries to say, but all he manages to do is drip more blood from the corner of his mouth.

"Little red crying for a wolf, now ain't that a picture?" The alpha grabs Stiles by the back of his hoodie and yanks him up to his feet. Stiles shouts in surprise as he stumbles.

Let him go, Derek thinks. Please, leave him alone. 

Stiles continues to struggle despite the futility of the entire situation. He tugs at his hoodie, then suddenly turns the best he can and swings at the alpha.

His fist connects with the alpha chin.

The alpha takes a moment to react, and then Derek senses the sudden rage in the air before he sees or hears any sign of it. The alpha snarls, not hurt but angry at the action regardless, and he snaps Stiles' wrist in retaliation. Stiles lets out a sharp cry alongside the sickening snap that echoes around them. 

Stiles instantly tries to cradle his wrist to his chest, eyes wet with tears, but the alpha does not give him even a moment of reprieve, yanking at his broken wrist and starting to drag him away. Stiles desperately fights against the hold on his limb, but he is no match for werewolf strength. He turns around the best he can, eyes full of fear, Derek’s name being repeated like a desperate mantra that tumbles from his lips.

Stiles is crying. 

The alpha gives a particularly harsh tug that sends Stiles tumbling into him. Stiles is roughly held in place by the alpha, who grabs him by the hair and forcefully turns his head to look directly at Derek. “The little wolf ain’t making it, little red,” he snarls. “But I’m not a merciless alpha. We can stand here and watch him die, hm? So that you know for sure?”

Stiles is crying and the monster making him cry is taking him away. 

“Derek!”

Stiles is calling for him. 

Air suddenly fills his lungs. Derek feels his fingers twitch, then curls into his fist. His body responds. 

The alpha begins to growl as Derek flips himself over onto his stomach, then gathers his limbs beneath himself to push himself up to his feet. Stiles begins saying his name again but is cut off when the alpha roughly shakes him in an attempt to shut him up. 

Derek growls back, surprised that his throat is whole enough for the sound to still sound like a threat and not a gurgle of blood.

Which is good, of course, because Derek does not have time to be dying, not right now. Without a second thought, he hurls himself at the alpha again. 

The alpha shoves Stiles aside and rears back to meet Derek’s attack head-on. Derek ducks beneath the alpha’s clawed swipe and barrels into him claws first and fangs bared. Claws hack into his back, tearing mercilessly into muscle and grabbing onto anything they can hold, but Derek barely feels it—his blood pounds in his ears, colouring his vision, and staining everything red.

When Derek comes to, he is lying on top of damp soil. Stiles is snuggled into his chest, breathing slowly and steadily, as though he had crawled beneath Derek’s arms and curled up and then fallen right asleep. 

The absurdness of it all brings everything back to him instantly. The soil is wet with blood, the same blood that is hardening uncomfortably on his hands, up his arms, and around his mouth. Something is lying directly behind him, something very big and once dangerous and now dead. 

The alpha. The alpha is dead. Derek had killed him. 

Derek slowly sits up. He must have rolled right off of the alpha’s body and fallen unconscious. Or maybe he had been unconscious before that. Either way, Derek is alive and Stiles is alive and the alpha–

Stiles lets out a soft groan and blindly reaches out. Derek instantly grabs at it and is reminded of Stiles’ broken wrist by a shark gasp of pain. Stiles wakes up in the same instant too, bolting upwards in surprise, and Derek grabs Stiles’ elbow to steady him so that he does not hurt himself even more. 

Stiles instinctively jerks on his trapped limb, then freezes, staring at the hand restraining him. His eyes trail up Derek’s arm, up his neck, and settle on his face like he cannot quite grasp what is happening just yet. 

Derek cannot blame him. There is dried blood encasing the entirety of his neck, which had been ripped out just earlier by the werewolf now lying lifelessly behind them. He should be dead, and Stiles–

They surge forward at the same time. Derek’s chin hits the top of Stiles’ head and his mouth painfully snaps shut. That must have hurt for Stiles, too, but neither of them says anything as Stiles dives into Derek’s chest and Derek wraps his arms around Stiles and tries to envelop everything of Stiles that he can touch. 

“I thought you died,” Stiles breathes. “I thought you died.”

“I thought I lost you,” Derek replies. He tightens his hold around Stiles. “I thought he was going to take you.”

Stiles lets out a choked laugh and Derek quickly loosens his hold. Stiles does not pull back, however, and just sighs and melts into Derek’s arms as best he can. 

The high-pitched, obnoxious ringing of Stiles’ phone interrupts whatever moment it is that they are having. Stiles pulls back flailing and yanks his phone out of his pocket. Derek checks for his own phone and realises that it has shattered in his pocket. 

The person on the other end of the phone is Laura. Derek absentmindedly rubs at the dirt smeared across the side of Stiles' face as the teen rushes to fill Laura in on the situation.

“Really!” Stiles says. “We’re okay, promise. Though maybe someone could come–”

Derek can hear Laura calling for Stiles, first in annoyance before her voice gradually changes to worry. Derek looks up, about to ask Stiles if something is wrong, when he sees something that makes him freeze up, too.

Stiles is staring at his face, at his eyes, in wonder, and it takes Derek only a moment to catch sight of the red reflected back at him in Stiles’ eyes. 

Somewhere, Derek makes out the howls of his pack, letting him know that they are close, that they are coming. They must have been calling out for a while, during Derek’s fight with the slpha–the former alpha, trying to find him. Still, it all sounds very, very far away.

Red eyes. He has red eyes. He had killed the alpha, and now Derek is an alpha.

Things are a mess afterwards. They bring a handful of high schoolers, luckily all acquainted with Stiles due to sharing classes, into the know, and the pack works, almost in rotation, to assimilate them into their world of the supernatural. 

Some take to it like they were born to, like Erica Reyes, who absolutely adores being a werewolf, and Lydia Martin, who Stiles explains was simply perfect at everything and apparently had banshee blood in her that the bite awakened instead.

Others struggle a bit more, like Isaac, who seems lost with what to do with the sudden perks of being a werewolf that he now has to get used to, and Scott, who Derek suspects is surviving through only the sheer force of will to be with and support Stiles.

On that end, however, they somehow manage. The pack as a whole is accepting of the unusual number of new wolves in the territory, and the teenagers are all well aware of the dangers of being what they are. The situation in which they had been brought in has clearly helped them understand the threats and do their best to act accordingly. 

Some other things, however, simply do not go back to the way things had been. 

Derek is now an alpha, and that is arguably the biggest problem they face. They try to make it work for a while, but it is as though all the control Derek has spent his life working for has simply vanished, and now the smallest of things set him off. 

His entire family tiptoes around him. His mother suggests he take some time off from school, just to get himself under control. Derek knows she is just trying to help, but the fact that another alpha is trying to tell him what to do annoys him all over again. 

That is when he knows that just “taking some time off” is not going to work and something has to change.

When he brings his suggestion to Talia, the lack of resistance he faces tells him the idea has crossed his mother’s mind as well. Preparations begin the moment the decision is made and within two days everything is ready. There is no party or gathering, where usually there might have been one; even the thought of being surrounded by wolves not his own makes Derek flash his fangs.

A house is prepared for him and there is no argument when the newly bitten wolves join Derek’s new pack. Cora and Malia follow him, too, and Talia has no real qualms when Peter also splits off from the main Hale house to advise Derek.

They are still family, and they will always be a pack. They are just…putting some distance between themselves until things hopefully calm down.

Derek never expected to be alpha; he was not trained for it in any way and has no idea what being an alpha would even entail. Still, as the pack settles around him in their new home, chattering excitedly and carrying the scent of the pack with them as they run around, he feels that maybe, he can do this. 

The teenagers, regardless of being newly bitten wolves, are all good kids. He has his mother on speed dial and the entire pack mere minutes away if it really came down to it. 

Stiles is right next to him, complaining about having to carry boxes when literally everyone but him is a supernatural creature now. 

He can do this. He will do this. For his pack.

The day starts off relatively normally. 

The entire pack is late to school, more so because of the entire pack as a whole as opposed to the fault of a single person. Derek sits on the couch watching TV, ignoring the stampede of werewolves, plus Stiles, as they stuff food in their mouths while grabbing their bags and running out of the door in an impressive amount of time. 

Then he spends the morning tidying up the remnants of last night's movie night, and he is just throwing together for himself a simple lunch when his phone rings. 

A glance at the screen tells him that it is Scott, which instantly sets him on alert because Scott almost never calls him. His entire pack, in fact, all prefer texting and thus rarely call him.

He picks up in two rings, and Scott does not even give him the chance to say anything. “Stiles is kinda missing.”

“What’s kinda?” Derek immediately asks. 

There are voices on the other end. Isaac and Lydia, both speaking too quietly for him to hear . Then, Lydia says, “Stiles is gone,” clearly enough that Derek understands that her words are intended for him. “He left halfway through the class to go to the bathroom, and he didn’t come back. We were wondering if he’s gone to you, or something.”

“No,” Derek says. He swallows, hard, because suddenly his throat is dry. “He isn’t with me. I haven't heard anything from him.”

“Oh,” Scott says, and suddenly the situation is way more serious. “I mean, it isn’t like him to just vanish like this, right?”

Derek swallows a second time. “Yeah.” He immediately heads towards the door, only to stop himself when he realises he does not even know where to start. “What about the pack?” he asks. “Is everyone else accounted for?”

“We’re all here,” Scott confirms. “I mean, not Peter, of course, but everyone else.”

But Stiles goes unsaid, but Derek can feel it echoing in his ears. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. Just–just stick together, okay?”

“Okay,” Scott immediately agrees. “And what about Stiles? Shouldn’t we go looking for him?”

Derek does not know if Stiles is really missing, or if he had just run off to plan another surprise birthday party, though there are no birthdays coming up. He cannot think of any reason for Stiles to slip away, especially without telling anyone. “I’ll get in touch with Peter,” he says. “And mom, see if they know anything. I’ll get back to you as soon as they reply. For now, don’t do anything rash.”

Derek can faintly hear his voice echoing; he is probably on speaker. Choruses of agreement reach his ears, though it is all underlined with dissatisfaction. “We’ll find him," he promises.

“Of course,” Erica chimes in. “And if he’s just run off, he’s going to get an earful!"

Murmurs of agreement go up and Derek cannot help but smile despite his worry; they are a pack, and they would solve this together. “I’ll be in touch,” he promises one more time, then hangs up.

The moment he does, however, his phone begins ringing again. The screen does not display Stiles’ name, as he had hoped, but an unknown number. He has half a mind to ignore it because unknown numbers tend to be scams, but he picks up just in case, and the heavy, rough breathing on the other end of the phone is immediately familiar. Derek listens, holding his breath, but for a while nothing but the breathing comes through.

Stiles, he thinks. “Stiles–”

The breathing is cut off by dry hacking. The phone is then pulled away from Stiles, and there is a shuffling on the other end before an unfamiliar voice begins to speak.

“Time to wake up, Stiles; your Alpha is on the phone.”

The voice belongs to a man. Derek’s brain, as rattled as it is, immediately notes that one, Stiles is with someone, and two, this someone is aware of who exactly he is. 

And usually, that spells nothing but trouble. 

Throat sinking to his stomach, Derek presses his ear harder into his phone, trying to listen to Stiles’ breathing. 

“Apologies for interrupting your day,” the man says. “I assume you’re aware of how this is going to go?”

Now, there are many things Derek can ask, but all he can hear is Stiles’ heavy breathing a little away from where the phone is probably pressed into the ear of the man who had kidnapped him. “Stiles,” he says. “What have you done to him?”

The man on the other end of the line scoffs. 

“I'm fine, sourwolf,” Stiles suddenly says and is immediately cut off by a grunt of pain.

“Chatty friend you’ve got here,” the man notes. “How he managed to play an innocent human for so long is beyond me.”

“Quite a lot of things seem to be beyond you, ” Stiles snarks. “Why don’t you take the hint and give up alrea-"

The next hit is obvious, even to Derek, who is listening through the phone. Stiles lets out another grunt immediately following what sounds like a punch being landed. “Stop,” he grits out. “Just tell me what you want.”

“I will send you the coordinates. Come alone,” the voice commands. “Now, I understand that the monster part of you wants to run to the rest of your monster friends and cry for help, but I suggest you listen to that part of you pretending to be human, Alpha. The moment I receive any signs of you contacting anyone, Stiles pays the price. Any planning, any plotting, and you might not receive Stiles back whole.”

There is more scuffling in the background. Derek hears Stiles gasp once. “Derek,” he says. “Derek.”

That is Stiles’ listen to me voice, the one he uses right before he tells people, usually Derek or one of the pack, how stupid they are being. And Derek knows this is a stupid idea, knows he should stop and think and get in touch with people, his pack, his mother, his uncle, anyone. 

But he cannot. Because if, if, something happens, if the kidnappers act on their threat and something happens to Stiles as a result, he will never forgive himself, will never be able to live with it. 

So, all he does is spit out an “I’ll be there,” before he cuts the call and waits.

Derek is not surprised when he is jumped, a distance away from the communicated location. Three bullets, all fired from behind in rapid succession, find their way in between his shoulder blades, and he curses his lack of awareness as he crashes forward onto the preserve floor.

Wolfsbane floods his system and he instantly feels sick. He makes out the sound of shifting clothing and crunching leaves despite the sudden cotton stuffed in his ears. Combat boots appear in his line of vision and someone kicks him, hard, in the ribs. Derek groans and tries to lash out but is easily dodged. He receives a second kick for his troubles before multiple hands grab him and drag him forward. Derek cannot find the energy to fight, and he looks up only when he is abruptly dropped. 

Derek instantly recognises the tree, or at least the stump it grew out of. The tree looms over his head; naturally speaking, 10 years wouldn't be enough for it to grow this big.

Still, it is unmistakably the tree where he first met Stiles. 

Stiles sits with his back to the massive trunk of the tree, hands bound behind his back, and when Derek stumbles into the clearing his head shoots up to look at him. Beside him stands a man, much older than him or Stiles, looking far too smug with himself. 

“Something about him not being stupid enough to rush in head first?” the man says, and Stiles turns to glare at him. 

“What did you do to him?”

Right, Derek was starting to really not feel good, but surprisingly okay for the number of bullets he had taken. He wonders if the wolfsbane had been adjusted on purpose so that he would stay alive while being weakened. 

“Wolfsbane,” the man says. “Something to keep him down while we sort through business. Hello, Derek.”

It takes Derek a moment to realise that the man is now talking to him, and he does his best to raise his head and bare his teeth. He does not know how effective it is, and all the man does is laugh.

“We meet at last, Gerard Argent, at your service; it's a displeasure, I’m sure.”

Argent. That is the name of a hunter family.

“What happened to the code?” Derek grits out. 

The man, Gerard, chuckles. “The code? The one that protects monsters like you,” he says. “ Worthless. Hunters exist to eradicate your kind, because you all, beneath your fake human skins, are abominations.”

“Those are some big words you got there, man,” Stiles quips. “Careful, your old brain might not be able to handle you thinking so hard.”

Gerard takes a deep breath. Derek faintly wonders how many he has taken in Stiles’ presence so far.

“Let’s not waste any more time,” he says. “Have either of wondered why we’re all gathered here today?”

“Because you kidnapped me, then Derek’s brain had a whoopsie moment!” Stiles snarks.

Gerard slams a fist into the side of Stiles’ head but otherwise does not acknowledge him at all. Derek seethes but is unable to even move, let alone rip the hunter apart. Stiles rolls his eyes but closes his mouth. 

“Now, I'll ask one more time; why are we gathered here today?” 

Derek wills Stiles to not say anything, to stop trying to antagonise Gerard, and thankfully he does not. 

Gerarld appears to take their silence as some sort of signal because he lightly boots the tree Stiles is leaning against with his foot. “I’m sure we can spare a little time for a short storytime,” he says. “A Nemeton is a sacred tree, you could say. There are many around the world. Some say it maintains the balance of the land. Others will say it protects the land. Either way, it is an existence of unexplainable power.”

As Derek listens, he cannot help but look at the tree at which he and Stiles had first met. Not only has it grown at impossible speeds, but there is also something about it that is calling to him.

Gerard appears to hone in on his sudden interest in the tree. “Worked it out yet, boy? Let’s cut to the chase. As I said, there are many Nemeta around the world, and this,” Gerarld taps the tree again with his foot, “is one of them.”

Stiles sharply breathes in. 

Gerard looks at the tree almost fondly, if not for the utterly insane look in his eyes. “We cut it down, actually, over ten years ago, and look at it now. It took time, effort, and resources to reduce it to what we managed to, and yet here it stands. We tried to uproot it, actually, but we just couldn’t.”

Gerard continues talking, something about trees and magic and abominations but all Derek sees is Stiles go pale, then start shaking, and hears his breathing quickening, before slowly turning into gasps. Gerard seems to notice, too, after a while, but all he does is smile like things are all going according to the evil plan he has going on. “Familiar tale?” Gerard asks suddenly. “It should be.”

Stiles looks up to look at Gerard like he does not quite understand what he is looking at. Gerard opens his mouth, but he is interrupted by a figure stepping out of the shadows behind him. 

Derek must really be weakening if he had not sensed it before a human. 

The new arrival is a woman, and, as she steps out from behind Gerard, one Derek realises he faintly recognises. It is the blonde from the cake store when he was looking to buy Stiles snacks and in front of the flower shop where they had agreed to meet up. 

The one looking for the museum. Or the clinic? 

Not that it matters now.

“I’m sure you’ve met my daughter,” Gerard says, suddenly much less excited. “Kate.”

The woman bats her eyelashes and gives a small wave. “Hey, Derek.”

“She was supposed to get close to you,” Gerard continues, “though she apparently failed at even that.”

Kate scowls. “I–”

“You had one job,” Gerarld says dismissively. 

“It’s not my fault he’s into twinks!” Kate snaps.

“Once we’re done here, your failures won’t matter,” Gerard waves his daughter off. “The Nemeton protected the Hale pack, and once we get rid of it for good, taking care of those monsters will be easy work. Isn’t that right, Stiles?”

Gerard hauls Stiles to his feet by the hair, and Stiles puts up no struggle. 

“Leave Stiles out of this,” Derek grits out. “He has nothing to do with this.”

“Oh, Derek,” Kate sings. “He has everything to do with this. Are you telling me that all these years together and not once did you wonder where your Stiles even came from?”

“The wolves might not have known,” Gerarld says. “But they probably felt something on an instinctive level.”

“What are you talking about?” Derek asks, but all he is really paying attention to is Stiles, who is trying his best to look back at the tree despite being held up by his hair. 

He opens his mouth, but whatever he had been about to say is cut off by Gerarld roughly shaking Stiles and shoving him forward, closer to Derek. 

“You see, Derek, Stiles is the Nemeton. Or, you could say the Nemeton is him. Either way, they are one, two halves of a single being. The reason we couldn’t just kill off the tree was that it wasn’t dead, not really, because half its soul was running around, looking human and being adopted into the Hale pack.” 

Gerarld yanks Stiles’ head back, baring his throat. “And once he is dead, the Nemeton can be eradicated for real, this time.”

Kate withdraws a knife from the inside of her coat and holds it out to her father, who takes a moment to inspect the sharpness of the blade. The metal glints as it is raised and Derek tries to pull himself forward, drag himself forward, even though his arms are as heavy as lead and his legs do not respond at all and there is a hunter pinning him to the ground with a foot. Gerard, without moving his gaze from Derek’s, carves the knife, once, across Stiles’ throat. 

“No-”

Stiles’ mouth falls open like he is trying to say something, but all Derek can hear is the bubbling of blood at his throat, like liquid trying to travel through a straw with a hole in it.

Gerard begins to laugh. He holds Stiles up for a while longer, just watching him bleed out before he releases him, and Derek waits for Stiles to collapse, to bleed out, to die, in front of him as he lies there powerless.

Only, he does not. 

Stiles remains standing where he is, blood gushing out of the wound on his throat. He raises a hand to his throat, fingers hovering over the jagged flesh of where the knife had carved through. He takes a step back, then another, then another, they are uncoordinated but not weak, staggering steps like he cannot hold himself up. Stiles finally stops when his back connects to the trunk of the Nemeton, and he leans into it. He tips his head back and closes his eyes.

Gerard narrows his eyes. Derek watches him draw a gun and fire a shot straight into Stiles’ knee. 

Stiles staggers, but almost instantly straightens himself. He does not even seem to notice the second shot that goes through his other knee. 

Gerard shouts something Derek cannot make out. He stares and stares and stares as Stiles slowly trails his hand up the side of the Nemeton. “I didn’t know,” he says. “I have no idea how I could forget something like that, but I guess I did. I guess that’s one thing I have to thank you for, Gerard.” 

When his eyes open again, they are glowing a bright gold, only if someone were to tell Derek it was red, or blue, or pink, or purple, he would have to agree, because they flicker with something Derek has never seen before, something Derek knows he will never be able to describe with the human language. Stiles speaks again, only this time, suddenly, his voice is coming from his mouth, from the rustle of the tree leaves and carried in the wind snd vibrating from the earth itself. 

“This land belongs to the Nemeton. The grass, the trees, the earth you tread, the air you breathe, the wolves, they all belong to the Nemeton. They all belong to me. These lands are mine, hunter, now and forever, and you are not welcome here.”

Suddenly, the entire clearing comes to life.

Vines shoot down from one of the trees, snatching a hunter and yanking him up into the air. A bush grabs onto another hunter who had backed away from the tree in alarm, thorns ripping into cloth and skin alike and not letting go no matter how much the hunter struggles. He is dragged into the leaves like he is being eaten.

It is not only the greenery; Derek watches in awe as three mountain lions charge out of the shadows and ruthlessly rip apart a hunter, tearing off his limbs and tossing them around like they are playing. A flock of birds go straight for another’s eyes, claws deadly accurate as they pierce through the sclera and tear, leaving the woman bloodied and blind, and easy picking for the hoard of rodents that climb up her legs and up her body and eat her alive.

Somewhere, Kate is shouting for her father. Derek manages to drag himself to his feet and sees Kate yelling something while pointing a gun straight at him. 

She does not even get to fire before something pierces her straight through the chest from behind. It takes Derek a moment to realise that it is a branch, and can only wonder how painful something so blunt being forcefully pushed through can be. Stiles steps into Derek’s line of sight, a hand held up and towards Kate.

The woman opens her mouth, only for blood to spill out. The gun falls from her hand and she hangs there, held up only by the tree branch impaling her. 

“Nope,” Stiles says. “He’s mine.”

Several other branches pierce Kate through, killing her as she hangs.

Stiles makes a sharp, jerking motion with his hand and Kate is dropped to the ground. He turns away from her without a second glance and crouches next to Derek. “Hey, big guy,” he whispers. “Now’s not the time to be taking a nap on the floor, no matter how good it feels.” 

I’m dying, Derek wants to tell him, but when he opens his mouth to do so, his body responds to him so quickly, so easily, that he sits up in shock. 

Sits up. He had barely been able to even keep his eyes open earlier. And now, he is sitting up.

Derek moves his shoulders slowly and realises that the bullet, and the wound, are just gone.

Derek looks around the clearing again, to where most of the hunters lie lifeless as though the forest had reclaimed their life forces. He can hear the sounds of a scuffle nearby, but he also knows that the surviving hunter will soon go down.

There is only one survivor left in their vicinity, and it is Gerard, who has his gun pointed directly at them.

Stiles slowly crouches next to Derek and Derek allows himself to be pulled to his feet. Gerard fires a shot and Stiles swipes it out of the air like he is swatting at a fly. 

“Stiles–”

Stiles hushes him softly. “Later, Derek,” he says softly. “Right now, we have some cleanup to do.” He wraps his arms around Derek’s and leans in towards him. “The land belongs to the Nemeton,” he says, “but it also belongs to you, alpha, and you know what you have to do.”

And Derek does know. He can feel it in the gentle tickling of the grass at his ankles, hear it in the blood that rushes through him. He can see it in the narrowing of his vision, can smell it in the sudden fear that permeates, and can taste it in the air.

Gerarld stands no chance. He fires bullets, some of which hit, but Derek ignores them all as he throws himself at Gerard and rips his throat open.

And as Derek stands triumphantly over the body of the final enemy, as Stiles slips into his space and slides right up to him so that he can bury his face into his chest, Derek knows that the threat towards his land has been eradicated, at least for the night. He slumps forward and leans into Stiles, though not literally lest he crush him, and breathes. 

It has only been mere hours since they last saw each other, but it feels like it had been much, much longer. Surely, surely, they deserve a moment to themselves. 

Stiles, however, seems to think otherwise. He spreads his arm out towards the clearing and the entire forest starts humming as though it is reacting to whatever it is that he is doing. Stiles closes his eyes, and when he reopens them they are glowing the same bright, mythical gold from earlier. Slowly, one by one, the ground beneath the bodies cracks open and swallows the corpses alive.

Stiles lowers his arms once the only remaining traces of the fight are the bloodstains and the weaponry of the hunters. Derek then feels a sudden pulse of energy from the Nemeton and turns to watch as it gives a small shudder, then starts growing again before his eyes. 

“The Nemeton is protection, and it is balance,” Stiles says. “And in balance, life and death are equals. The lives of the hunters are the final piece for it to return to its former glory.”

“The Nemeton is protection and balance,” Derek says slowly. “And it’s also you.”

Stiles hums. “I guess–yeah, it is.”

“How–” Derek swallows thickly. “I…”

“I remember everything now,” Stiles says. “Well, mostly everything. Some of it is still coming back to me. The day you found me out in the preserve, I think I’d actually been wandering around for a while. I found comfort in the Nemeton but I didn’t know why. Then you were there, and I think maybe the tree got better as I got better, and I got older as it got bigger.”

Stiles is the Nemeton. Stiles, somehow, is also standing before him. But is this Stiles his Stiles?

Derek does not know what to say and Stiles appears to be in no rush to continue talking. He stretches and turns towards the tree. 

Suddenly hesitant, Derek reaches towards Stiles’ sleeve and snags it with what he realises is a claw only after it pierces through the fabric. “Let’s go home?” he whispers. 

What if Stiles refuses? He is no longer the Stiles from yesterday, or even this morning, right? He is the Nemeton, and what does that even mean? What if he wants to stay out here, with the tree? What if–

Stiles steps right up to him and yawns. “Uhh, yeah, let’s do that. Oh god, what time is it? It’s gotta at least be midnight, right? Do you think I have to go to school tomorrow? And oh crap I had homework for first period English tomorrow, oh fuck. I got kidnapped, do you think Lydia will let me copy her? Scotty boy would for sure, but we'll probably just end up failing together!” 

And suddenly, Derek feels silly. This is definitely the Stiles he knows, worrying about homework when he is apparently a tree. He wraps his arms around Stiles’ smaller frame and cradles him. Stiles flails but goes with it. “Oh! Okay, um, you okay there?”

No, not really, Derek thinks. There is so much to do. He has to get in touch with his pack, and then his mother, and that means getting back to his pack house. He should probably get checked, because while he no longer feels anything he did get shot earlier, which means Deaton’s. He has to figure out what Stiles being the Nemeton really means, and that means research. 

Derek tightens his arms around Stiles and feels him raise his own arms to wrap them around him, too, and they stand there for a moment longer.

Derek takes Stiles’ hand and leads him back to the main Hale pack house. He does not have his car because he ran all the way, and no phone because he tossed it somewhere the moment he confirmed the meeting coordinates. 

Stiles rolls his eyes. “I’m going to need you to use your brain more, dude,” he says. “You coulda at least told someone, you know? Maybe like–like Lydia. Or Peter. They’d probably have come up with a better rescue plan that you had, in a shorter time than you did.”

Derek allows Stiles to scold him without resistance because he knows but is currently giddy with the fact that they are alive, and together, and maybe things do not have to change so much, to take it to heart.

“Really,” Stiles is saying, “like really. You got shot before you even arrived! Really gonna need you to use your brain. I understand that you’re like, 97 per cent muscle, but you gotta work that three per cent worth of brain cells and–huh. Maybe you could like, howl, to let the pack know we’re okay. Maybe, just an idea.”

And Derek feels his entire face light on fire with embarrassment as he does just that. He gets a reply almost instantly, and it is Malia they run into first because apparently, she had been the closest to their location when Derek sent out his howl.

His cousin bowls Stiles over in a hug and gives him two whole licks on his face before Derek pulls her away by the back of her collar. Malia does not even seem to notice as she makes grabby hands at Stiles.

“Hey Malia,” Stiles says. He takes her hands and allows Malia to pull him in closer again. “Glad to see you too.”

“You smell weird,” Malia says. She sniffs right at Stiles’ neck. 

“We’ll explain everything once we’re at the pack house,” Derek says. He releases Malia and she scrambles to her feet. “It–a lot of things happened.”

Malia shrugs. “With all the blood I smell on you both, I wouldn’t be surprised.” Then, she adds, “Scott got in touch with Talia so everyone’s really pissed. Worried. But pissed.”

Derek is not surprised, not really. So, he simply offers a nod, takes Stiles’ hand again, and they follow Malia back to the pack house.

Now and forever, Stiles had said in the clearing, and that turns out to be a little too true. 

Deaton takes one look at Derek and goes, “What have you done?” and apparently there are a hundred and one rules among the druids about messing with longevity and immortality, and Derek cannot get a word in to ask what the Emissary is even talking about until Stiles walks into the vet and Deaton nearly faints. 

Because Deaton can immediately tell Stiles is no longer the Stiles he knew.

Deaton confirms that he has no upcoming reservations and flips the Open sign. The three of them settle in his office and Deaton immediately starts talking. “Derek,” he says. “Are you aware that you are now immortal?” 

Derek blinks. “I’m what?”

“Immortal,’ Death says. “Undying, ever-living, some might call it–”

“No, I mean, I heard you.” Derek closes his eyes and counts to ten. When he opens his eyes and Deaton is still looking at him all seriously, he closes them again and counts up to ten a second time.

Deaton is still there when he opens his eyes. “Fine okay, say…say that I am. What does that mean?”

Deaton looks at him a little strangely, like he is the one-off of his rockers, “To be immortal means that one cannot die.”

“But–” Derek trails off.

“What does that mean?” Stiles chimes in. He is grinning, but Derek can see that he is doing his best to conceal how freaked out he is. 

Derek settles on “How?” instead.

“That,” Deaton says, “might be a better question for Stiles.”

“The Nemeton?” Stiles immediately says. “It’s got to be, right? Oh my god, did I make Derek immortal?”

Deaton looks surprised at Stiles’ outburst. “You were unaware?”

“Duh! Why would I make Derek immortal? Like, him not being able to die even if he’s shot by hunters is a good thing, I guess, but–” Stiles swallows thickly “–it’s really lonely, you know? I wouldn’t…I couldn’t do that to him.”

The Nemeton is immortal, it makes sense for Stiles to be, too. Derek suddenly wonders how old he is. They grew up together, essentially, but how many times has Stiles gone through the process of growing up?

Deaton considers Stiles for a moment, then turns back to Derek. “During your interaction with the hunters, after Stiles awakened to his powers, did you perhaps get injected with any part of the Nemeton? Or Stiles?”

Derek does not know what that entails; he certainly did not go around chewing on leaves or eating bark. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I smelt Stiles’ blood, but I also don’t think I got any of it in my mouth.”

In the exact same moment, Stiles says, “Nope, no exchange of saliva going on here.”

There is a moment of silence as Deaton looks at Derek, Derek looks at Stiles, and Stiles looks anywhere but at either of them. 

“Uhhh, right, no blood drinking happening, nope.”

Deaton is kind, or uninterested, enough to not comment. “How about any other form of interaction?” he asks. “Any strange or eerie feelings? Voices?”

“I healed him?” Stiles says before Derek can even think. “He was shot. Wolfsbane. I…I actually think he was going to die.,”

“He healed me,” Derek confirms. “He saved me. And I was dying. The wolfsbane had already spread and I could barely move. I think it reached my heart, but then suddenly it was gone. The bullets, the wounds, the poison, all of it.”

Deaton is nodding. “That…that would definitely do it.”

“Do what?” Stiles asks. 

“The Nemeton, you, brought Derek back from certain death, but I suppose you could say Derek did die in the preserve that night. What I suspect you did was overwrite the natural laws of a mortal werewolf with that of the Nemeton.”

“What does that mean?” Stiles presses.

“I mean that the Derek standing before you and me right now is Derek, but is not the same Derek as before.” 

“The Nemeton,” Derek says. His mind is whirling, trying to understand. “Am I a part of the Nemeton now?”

“No,” Stiles says suddenly. “No.” He turns to face Derek and places a hand on his chest. Derek watches as Stiles places his palm over where his heart is beating. “The Nemeton now makes up a part of you.”

“Yes,” Deaton confirms. 

“What beats inside your chest right now is the Nemeton–” Stiles says. “–is me.”

And maybe Derek is an idiot, maybe his brain has been completely fried by the wolfsbane and he is absolutely insane, but those words suddenly make him very, very happy. He places his hand over Stiles’ still on his chest, then places his other on Stiles’ chest and listens. 

“They’re beating at the same time,” he notes.

Stiles is looking at him like he is not quite sure what he is looking at. “I…are you happy? I think you should be freaking out? You should be freaking out! You’re like, part tree now!”

“And you’re wholly a tree,” Derek replies. He pulls Stiles into a hug.

“Is this the thing where you freak out much later?” Stiles asks. His voice is muffled by Derek’s chest. “I don’t think it’s smart to postpone it. Right now Deaton is also here to help; can you freak out now so we don’t have to worry about it later?”

“You said now and forever,” Derek says, and Stiles instantly goes quiet. “You also said being immortal is lonely. Doesn’t this just mean I can make you less lonely?”

“Oh, Derek.” Stiles wraps his arms around his middle and hugs him right back. “Everyone will leave you behind.”

“Not you, and now I don’t have to leave you behind either.”

“You’re gonna get sick of me.”

“You couldn't annoy me to death even if you tried.”

It takes Stiles a moment to understand the joke, that he means it literally, and Derek takes the smack with a grin on his face. 

Stiles buries his face back into Derek’s chest. “What will your family say?” he asks. 

“Laura will be jealous, she'll be getting wrinkles while I’ll look like this forever.”

Stiles laughs, but it sounds a little wet. Derek pretends to not notice the liquid soaking into his shirt. “I don't deserve you.”

“If you didn't, you wouldn't have me,” Derek instantly replies. 

“And I do?” Stiles looks up. He is crying. 

Derek debates between continuing to hug Stiles and wiping at his tears. He decides to attempt both and rubs his cheek into Stiles’. He does a horrible job at it, but he cannot bring himself to care. “Of course.”

“Good,” Stiles says. “Good, 'cause you got me too.”

Derek is content to stay there for a while, but the sound of clattering metal forces him to look up. Deaton is busy cleaning out an empty cage, and Derek can imagine the man asking them to have their moment anywhere else but here. Fortunately, the man does not say anything as he continues scrubbing away.

Stiles let out a nervous laugh but he does not pull away. “Maybe we should, uh, head out. Yeah.”

“Maybe,” Deaton agrees without looking up. “Though I suggest you come back at a later date with Talia so that we may properly talk about these…turn of events.”

“That’s one way to refer to it.” Stiles grabs Derek’s hand. “But yeah, later, I like the sound of that.”

Derek gives Stiles’ hand a squeeze and when Stiles yanks him towards the door, a skip in his steps and their plans for the rest of the day flooding from his mouth, Derek allows himself to be pulled along. 

He is long used to it, from the moment he had met Stiles in the preserve as a child, and he is sure it will continue to happen for a very, very long time.