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It’s been two and a half years since the world basically ended.
When it happens, it isn’t zombies or some disastrous virus that ends it. No, it’s just a bunch of old white men with too much power fighting against other old men of different races who also have too much power. There’s not even a war to give anyone warning that the end is near. One minute, Stiles goes to college at GWU and is sitting in his Collective Violence seminar. The next, there’s chaos everywhere. He’s still not entirely sure what happened. No one is because social media is one of the first things to go down. Television stations are useless, the radio is unhelpful, and the internet won’t connect anywhere.
In the time since the Attack on DC, as the newspapers started to call it, he’s learned that political assholes had been playing games with a bunch of different foreign powers, and bluffs were called in the form of organized attacks. At the time, he remembers thinking only about getting the hell out of DC because he’d known it definitely wasn’t a place to linger if there was some terrible shit going down, and then he remembers thinking about his dad, being grateful that Beacon Hills is far enough away from any major city that might be another target.
There are still times when he drifts off into thought, remembering the confusion in the streets when he’d recovered much faster than most of his classmates and had been hightailing it to his apartment. Considering his high school years, Stiles has always been a bit of a doomsday prepper, though it had been more of a supernatural angle than world going to hell angle. Still, he’d always kept a bag packed with this necessities, the things he’d grab in case of fire, that type of shit, and he’d also taken his laptop because he had files that might be useful even if there didn’t seem to be any type of Wi-Fi in the city. Not having a car really sucked during all that, but all he’d had to do was linger on the streets for a while, and eventually he came across an abandoned Tahoe with blood dripping from the steering wheel.
Stiles tries not to remember the sticky wet on his fingers as he’d stolen the car and headed out of town.
Even now, he’s grateful for the person who most likely died for leaving their keys in their vehicle and having a full tank of gas.
It’s kind of a blur after that.
There had been so much fear and adrenalin and anxiety rushing through him by the time he managed to get to Virginia that he doesn’t really remember any details. There are flashes sometimes, when he’s having a bad dream, of people freaking out, of chaos and violence, of inhumanity that makes him consider men to be the worst monsters he’s ever come across, and the blur lasts in his memories until it clears up outside of Jackson Hole. That’s where he stops to check on Derek. That’s where he finds out that it’s worse than he realizes. Major cities are destroyed around the world. The newspaper is the only source of news, and most of what is printed is either hearsay or passed on via old-fashioned radios. It’s like all of the technological advances of the last sixty years never happened because none of them are able to survive in this kind of environment.
Derek goes with him when he continues on to Beacon Hills.
They’re not sure what they’ll find there, but Stiles has to go, has to find out, because there’s no way he’s going to ever be able to just escape without having his dad and checking on his pack. The ones that stayed local, at least, because he’s seen the news from Boston, knows it’s been destroyed nearly as badly as DC and Manhattan. Lydia made it, he’s sure, because she’s strong and survivor, and she’ll make her way to her mother if she’s still alive, which is another reason to go to Beacon Hills. They might not have lasted past the summer after graduation as a couple, but their relationship is still strong and important to him.
By the time he and Derek arrive in Beacon Hills, they’ve acted on those feelings that have sort of always been there between them. Knowing that the world’s falling apart around them sort of makes their priorities get reorganized, so they don’t waste what little time they might have left playing games or ignoring their attraction. Having something like this happen sort of makes them embrace the whole concept of carpe diem. Besides, it’s nice having someone to find comfort in during long hours on the road and having to fight for gas and killing people trying to rob them and just all of it. It’s not something Stiles likes to think about, the way so many people embrace their baser instincts when faced with death instead of stepping up and helping civilization survive.
Beacon Hills is barely touched by what’s happening in the world. There’s no internet, no television stations airing, but the town has sort of rallied together and put up security measures and started a process to take in people who wander into the area from other places. His dad’s in the center of it all, alive and healthy and crying when he sees Stiles alive and well. It’s a touching reunion that Stiles thinks made more than a few people cry, especially since his living in DC, the epicenter of the first strike attacks, sort of had everyone thinking he couldn’t have survived.
Life keeps going on.
Derek ends up helping Chris and Jordan with some of the security measures, and Stiles helps his dad control the pandemonium. It’s another three weeks before Lydia shows up with a group of refugees from MIT who have crossed the country with her, and another couple dozen people they collected on the way. At some point over the next couple of months, he and Derek somehow becomes Stiles and Derek and Chris. Chris who doesn’t really like anyone else, but seems to relax when he’s with them. Chris who is difficult and stubborn and just as scared as the rest of them. Chris who turns out to be a great kisser and a needy bottom that likes falling apart under them.
Most of the people in their community don’t care that Chris has become part of his relationship with Derek. That end of the world thing helps change morals, too, because people are just happy to be alive. They’re not interested in who is fucking who or who wants to shack up with more than one person. Some people don’t really understand it, but Stiles can’t say he blames them since it’s surprised him, too. Chris is his dad’s age, after all, and there’s still some bad blood between him and Derek, but it turns out that fucking someone until they beg helps alleviate some of the aggression Derek’s stored up over the years when it comes to Chris. What they have with Chris isn’t romantic, but it is loving. They care about him, and he cares about them. They don’t play house with him; he’s got his own place, and he only comes over a few days a week.
It works for them, though, this arrangement they’ve created together. Stiles and Derek have the romance. They’ve got plans to get married one day, maybe adopt some orphans that are everywhere since the world changed. And they’ve got Chris, who is sort of excited at the idea of them having kids eventually, of being the cool uncle who spoils them rotten. Eventually, the world might change again, might become more normal, or as normal as it can be after everything’s that happened. Chris might decide he does want more than just great sex and companionship. Stiles and Derek have talked about it, and they’re open to it, but they’re also understanding of the fact that Chris might want that with someone else.
Until then, they’re happy how they are now.