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The sun had barely begun to climb when Stiles woke up and realized Derek wasn't beside him. That, by itself, wasn't unusual.
Derek slept better than he used to, but there were still mornings when something restless dragged him out of bed before the rest of the world had decided to wake up. Sometimes Stiles found him downstairs making coffee. Sometimes he was outside chopping wood with entirely unnecessary violence. Once, Stiles had found him reorganizing the pantry at five-thirty in the morning because apparently unresolved trauma occasionally manifested as alphabetizing canned goods.
This morning, though, the house was quiet. Stiles dragged himself out of bed, shoved his feet into the slippers Derek pretended he hadn't bought specifically for him, and wandered downstairs. The coffee maker was on, but there was no Derek.
He found him outside. Derek sat on the back steps of the rebuilt Hale house, elbows resting on his knees, staring toward the distant line of trees. The sky beyond them was beginning to glow, deep blue fading into violet and then streaks of pink and orange. Morning mist hovered low over the grass, and somewhere in the woods birds were beginning their obnoxiously cheerful announcement that everyone should be awake.
Stiles stopped in the doorway. There were moments when Derek looked younger than he was. Not physically. If anything, the beard and broad shoulders made that impossible. But sometimes there was something about him that reminded Stiles of the teenage boy he'd first met. The angry one. The lonely one. The one carrying far too many ghosts and pretending they weren't heavy.
Stiles grabbed the blanket hanging over the back of the couch before stepping outside. Derek glanced over his shoulder. "You walk like an elephant."
"You're a werewolf. I could float silently through the air like a supernatural ballerina and you'd still hear me."
"Probably."
Stiles draped the blanket around Derek's shoulders before immediately climbing underneath it with him. Derek sighed. "You could've brought another blanket."
"I could've. But then I wouldn't get to steal your body heat."
"You're wearing my sweatshirt."
"Exactly. I'm committed to theft as a relationship philosophy."
Derek's mouth twitched. Stiles leaned against him, resting his head on Derek's shoulder. For several minutes neither of them said anything.
That was another thing that had changed over the years. Stiles had learned that silence with Derek wasn't something that always needed filling. Sometimes silence was just silence.
The sun slowly pushed higher. Derek's gaze remained fixed on it. "My mom liked sunrise."
Stiles didn't move. Derek didn't talk about Talia often. Not because he refused to. He'd gotten better about that too. But memories of his family tended to come in fragments, offered quietly when something pulled them loose.
Stiles waited. Derek rubbed his thumb along the edge of the blanket. "She used to get up ridiculously early."
Stiles smiled faintly. "Werewolf ridiculously early or normal-person ridiculously early?"
"Four-thirty."
"Psychopath ridiculously early. Got it."
Derek huffed softly. "She said sunrise was the only time the house belonged to her."
Stiles pictured the old Hale house before the fire. Not the burned skeleton he'd known, but the home it had been. Full of people. Laura and Cora and Derek. Peter being Peter. Family coming and going. Wolves everywhere.
"She'd make tea," Derek continued. "Then she'd sit outside. Right around here, actually. The old porch was farther that way."
He pointed. "Sometimes I'd find her."
Stiles tilted his head. "You were voluntarily awake at four-thirty?"
"No."
"Okay, because that would've changed everything I thought I knew about you."
"I'd have nightmares sometimes."
The humor disappeared. Stiles' fingers found Derek's beneath the blanket. Derek intertwined them automatically. "I was probably nine or ten the first time," Derek said. "I came downstairs and she wasn't in the kitchen. I could smell her outside, so I followed her. She didn't ask what happened. Didn't ask about the nightmare. She just lifted the blanket."
Stiles' throat tightened. Derek glanced down at the blanket around them. Stiles did too. "Oh."
"Yeah."
For a while, Derek watched the sunrise. Stiles watched Derek.
"She'd let me sit there until the sun came up," Derek said. "Then she'd tell me that whatever happened during the night didn't get to own the morning."
Stiles swallowed. "That's annoyingly wise."
"She was annoyingly wise."
"Sounds terrible."
"The worst."
Stiles smiled against Derek's shoulder. Another streak of orange appeared over the trees.
"My mom liked mornings too."
Derek turned his head slightly. Stiles hadn't planned to say it. But memory was strange that way. One person's ghost could reach out and take another by the hand.
"Not four-thirty mornings," Stiles added quickly. "Because Claudia Stilinski was a civilized human being. But sunrise? Yeah."
Derek squeezed his hand.
"When Izzy and I were little, Mom used to wake us up sometimes just to see it."
Derek smiled. "You hated that."
"I hated everything involving consciousness before eight."
"Still do."
"Correct."
Stiles stared toward the horizon. "I remember this one morning. We couldn't have been older than six. Maybe seven. Dad had worked late, so he was still sleeping. Mom woke me and Isabelle up and told us we were going on an adventure."
Derek's smile softened.
"Which, when you're six, sounds amazing. When you're thirty-something and your spouse says that at five in the morning, you should probably ask questions."
"You'd still go."
"Obviously. I'm not a coward."
Derek snorted.
"Mom packed blankets and juice boxes and these little powdered donuts. She drove us out to this hill outside town. Izzy was awake because she was a freak of nature, and I was basically being held hostage."
"Naturally."
"We climbed the hill and sat there."
Stiles could see it. Not perfectly. That bothered him sometimes. There were pieces of Claudia that had faded around the edges. The exact sound of her laugh. The precise shade of her hair in certain light. Little things that time had quietly stolen without permission.
But this memory remained. Isabelle sitting cross-legged on the blanket, blonde hair sticking up because she'd just rolled out of bed. His mother beside them with a thermos between her hands. Stiles bundled in a blanket, glaring personally at the sun for existing.
"Mom asked what colors we could see," Stiles said.
Derek listened.
"Isabelle kept naming normal colors. Pink. Orange. Purple. Gold." Stiles smiled. "I decided normal answers were boring, so I started inventing colors."
"Of course you did."
"'Dragon fire.' 'Alien blood.' 'Zombie peach.'"
Derek turned toward him. "Zombie peach?"
"I was six."
"That doesn't explain anything."
"It explains everything."
Derek laughed quietly. The sound made Stiles smile. "Mom didn't correct me," he continued. "She just kept asking what else I saw."
The smile slowly faded. "Years later, after she got sick, I remembered that morning. I don't even know why."
Derek's thumb brushed across Stiles' knuckles.
"I asked her if she remembered it."
"Did she?"
Stiles nodded. "She remembered zombie peach."
Derek's mouth curved.
"She told me she remembered thinking that morning that she wanted us to always see more colors than everyone else."
Derek looked at him. Stiles shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable beneath the weight of his own emotions. "Which is probably the nicest possible interpretation of whatever the hell is wrong with my brain."
"Nothing's wrong with your brain."
"Debatable."
"Stiles."
"I know."
Derek's voice softened. "She knew you."
That hit harder than Stiles expected. He looked down at their joined hands. "Yeah."
Derek shifted closer.
"She knew Isabelle too," Stiles said. "Different, obviously. Izzy saw things differently than I did. Mom never tried to make us the same just because we were twins. She always..." He paused. "She made room for both of us."
Derek nodded. "My mom did that."
"I think they would've liked each other."
Derek went still for half a second. Then he looked toward the sunrise again.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I think they would've."
Stiles imagined it. Claudia Stilinski and Talia Hale sitting together somewhere, drinking tea and discussing their children. The thought was simultaneously comforting and horrifying.
"Oh God."
Derek frowned. "What?"
"What if they're together somewhere?"
Derek stared at him.
"Think about it. Your mom and my mom. Comparing notes."
"Stiles—"
"Your mom knows everything you did as a teenager."
"So?"
"My mother knows everything I did as a teenager."
Derek's eyebrow rose. "And?"
"They're judging us."
"They're dead."
"That has never stopped anyone in Beacon Hills."
Derek rolled his eyes. Stiles pointed toward the sky. "They're probably sitting somewhere right now going, 'Can you believe it took those idiots that long?'"
That earned him a genuine laugh. Stiles grinned. There it was. The sun finally broke over the trees. Golden light spilled across the grass, catching the mist and turning everything warm. Derek stared at it. Stiles felt the shift in him. Not sadness disappearing. Grief didn't work that way. But something settling.
"My memories of her used to hurt," Derek said.
Stiles didn't interrupt.
"After the fire, every good memory felt..." Derek searched for the words. "Ruined."
Stiles understood. Because remembering someone alive meant remembering that they weren't anymore.
"I'd remember her laughing, and then I'd remember the fire. I'd remember her cooking, and then I'd smell smoke." Derek's jaw tightened. "Everything ended there."
Stiles rested his cheek against Derek's shoulder.
"For a long time, I stopped trying to remember anything before it."
The admission was quiet.
"But now?"
Derek looked toward the morning. "Now sometimes I can remember something and that's all it is."
Stiles squeezed his hand. "A memory."
"Yeah."
No fire afterward. No screaming. No ash. Just Talia Hale sitting beneath a blanket while the sun rose, lifting one side so her frightened little boy could crawl underneath.
Stiles understood more than Derek probably realized. Because sometimes he could remember Claudia laughing without immediately remembering the hospital. Sometimes he could remember powdered donuts and invented colors instead of medications and confusion.
Maybe healing wasn't forgetting the terrible ending. Maybe it was refusing to let the ending swallow everything that came before it.
Stiles looked at the sunrise. "Zombie peach."
Derek groaned.
"I'm bringing it back."
"Don't."
"That's absolutely zombie peach."
"It's orange."
"That's depressingly unimaginative."
"It's literally orange."
"My mother would be disappointed in you."
"You never met your mother before eight in the morning. Maybe she'd agree with me."
Stiles gasped dramatically. "You take that back."
Derek smiled and pulled him closer beneath the blanket. Stiles settled against him. The house behind them was quiet.
Their house. Not the Hale house that had burned. Not the Stilinski house where Claudia's absence had once seemed to occupy every room.
Something new. Something built afterward. Stiles wondered whether their mothers would understand that. He thought they would.
Derek kissed the top of his head. "What?"
Stiles looked up. "I didn't say anything."
"You got quiet."
"Sometimes I do that."
"Rarely."
"Rude."
Derek waited. Stiles sighed. "I was thinking they'd probably be happy."
Derek didn't ask who. He knew. "Yeah."
"Your mom because you rebuilt this place."
Derek's eyes drifted toward the house.
"And mine because I finally found someone willing to tolerate me."
"I don't tolerate you."
Stiles blinked. Derek looked completely serious. Then his arm tightened around Stiles. "I love you."
Stiles stared at him. "Well, shit."
Derek frowned. "What?"
"You can't just casually destroy me emotionally during sunrise."
"You started it."
"I was talking about our dead mothers."
"Exactly."
"That is not a defense."
Derek kissed him. It wasn't desperate or heated. Just warm. Familiar. Home.
When they separated, Stiles rested his forehead against Derek's. "I love you too."
"I know."
"Oh, fuck you, Han Solo."
Derek smiled. The sunlight climbed higher, warming their faces. Neither moved to go inside.
Somewhere in Stiles' memory, Claudia Stilinski sat on a blanket beside two sleepy children, asking them what colors they could see.
Somewhere in Derek's, Talia Hale lifted the corner of a blanket and made room for a frightened little boy.
Neither memory hurt quite as much this morning. Stiles tucked himself closer against Derek. "What do you think your mom would call this color?"
Derek studied the sky. "Gold."
"That's boring."
"Sunrise."
"Still boring."
Derek glanced at him. Then, with the resigned expression of a man who knew exactly what kind of person he'd chosen to spend his life with, he looked back toward the horizon. "Wolf fire."
Stiles slowly grinned. "Oh, that's good."
"Don't make a big deal about it."
"Too late. Claudia would approve."
Derek shook his head, but Stiles caught the smile. They stayed there until the sun had completely cleared the trees, wrapped together beneath a blanket carrying memories of two mothers who had loved them long before Derek and Stiles had known how much love could hurt. And how, eventually, it could become something warm again.
Morning came anyway. This time, they were ready to meet it together.