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They head south. There are stops along the way--there have to be, they have to pick up clothes, food, soap, the last little pieces of normalcy that Stiles had been able to count on before. It feels like the end of the world, like everything is constantly two steps away from shaking into pieces, and Stiles can't shake a sense of surprise that he and Derek are the only people who know that.
He listens to his father's voice echo at him, old and worried, over a cheap burner cell phone Derek bought along a back road in some little back road general store, and thinks I might never see you again. He pushes the thought away; he will, he has to. There's so much he has to make up for, still.
His father doesn't ask too many questions: are you safe, and did he--Stiles, did he make you--, and Stiles swallows hard and says yes, and no, Dad, Derek wouldn't. Even though Derek did, technically, and Stiles is so far from safe it's hilarious. But Derek doesn't bear the blame for either, and Stiles wouldn't know who else to blame for it if he wanted to point fingers.
They stop driving eventually. Derek pulls over in some shabby little shore town, the kind with a shuttered main street and not much else. Someplace off the highway.
Derek dips into the life insurance money he's been hoarding since the fire, and they rent a furnished apartment over a dingy pawn shop. The apartment's basically a double bed, a beat-up TV, and what could generously be called a kitchenette. Everything's in dull 70s colors, avocado and burnt orange, ugly and solid and indestructible. It's almost a comfort.
They spent the first two days lying on the bed watching TV, venturing out for good pizza and bad Chinese food from the shops down the street. It's the stuff Stiles' mom used to put on in the morning for noise while she made breakfast, the kind of corny soap operas that his dad always made fun of her for liking.
Derek hasn't touched Stiles consciously since the motel that night--he keeps a careful distance, a solid foot between them on the bed when they're awake. But he doesn't seem willing to let either of them sleep on the floor, so they wake up every morning tangled up in each other, Stiles' face buried in the smooth plane of Derek's shoulder with Derek's hands spread on him, big and warm and possessive.
They don't talk about it, and Stiles is just enough of a coward, still, that he doesn't bring it up. He thinks about it in guilty moments, sometimes, about kissing Derek again. He wants his tongue on Derek's skin, everywhere, wants to hear the noises he makes when he feels so good that his hands curl into fists around the sheets. There's a very real possibility that Derek doesn't feel the same way, though, that whatever happened before was a fluke. Or pity, and wouldn't that sting.
On the third day Derek makes them get up and go down to the pawn shop. It's musty inside, crowded with the unwanted debris of other people's lives. Stiles can't imagine not wanting anything right now. He's never been what he'd call materialistic, but. He feels aimless and empty right now, floating somewhere in no man's land, and he misses having stuff to anchor him down.
He wanders around while Derek talks to the owner, who looks about as worn down and out of date as most of his shop. There's some neat stuff there, actually. Stiles picks up a deer's skull, delicate and yellowed with age, and traces over old newspapers with headlines screaming out scandals that died decades before Stiles was even thought of.
There's a display of ships in bottles by the counter that makes Stiles' breath catch in his throat. He's not sure why.
"They call them impossible bottles, sometimes," the owner says, breaking off from his conversation with Derek to look curiously at Stiles. Derek shifts impatiently--he's been looking at guns, Stiles realizes. Of course he has; it's the easiest way to make sure Stiles isn't totally helpless. "Do you know how they make them?"
"How?" It's Derek who asks the question, and that surprises Stiles a little. It must startle the owner too: he stares for a second before he answers.
"They're a long time in the making," he says. "You can't take the bottle apart; you have to keep it whole and slide the pieces in one at a time. The rigging goes in last, and you have to use a hook to pull it all up. It looks like scrap in there for most of it. But it's magic when it goes up." He ducks his head. "Used to make them before the cataracts," he explains, gesturing at his eyes. "Miss it. But that's neither here nor there. You want one?"
"Yeah," Derek says, accepting the answer and the deflection as one. It's something Stiles has always appreciated about Derek; he lets the lies go. "Stiles, try this one?" He holds a .38 Special out.
Stiles knows guns; he's spent his life around them. It's an inevitable side effect of being a cop's kid, and that's an innocence he let go long before Derek Hale came into his life. It's just not one that he ever missed before now. He takes the gun, cocks it, ignores Derek's silent surprise.
They go out into a field to actually try the gun out, and Derek insists on standing behind Stiles and helping him aim before he figures out that Stiles actually knows what he's doing here for once. Stiles lets him, mostly because he's hungry for the touch; Derek's solid and steady against Stiles' back, and his fingers wrap around Stiles' hand like an apology.
He makes the targets--old green bottles, bought together with the gun--every time. It takes something out of him, the idea that this is real now. There's no escaping, no going back. It hits him like a bullet for the first time that he's never going to be able to play at being normal again.
Once they're back in the apartment, Stiles falls apart. It's been a long time in the making; he's been shuddering to pieces since that night in the Argent's basement. Since before then, if he's honest. He sinks to the tiled floor and tries hard to breathe. I'm dying, he thinks surely, and the knowledge won't be pushed away this time. The idea of Derek seeing him like this is unbearable, somehow, but he can't contain it anymore.
"Stiles." Derek's hands are on Stiles' shoulders, pulling him up; when did that happen? He goes along with it numbly, lets Derek lead him to the bed and lie him down, wrap himself around Stiles.
(again, his mind supplies, this isn't the first time he's patched you up because he had to)
"Remind me," Stiles says hoarsely. He feels like he's been ripped in half, and Derek's hold on him is the only thing keeping him together right now. "Remind me why I put up with this bullshit."
Derek doesn't respond for a few minutes. "It's who you are," he says eventually, and it's so fucking reminiscent of Ms. Morrell and her stiff upper lip pep talks.
A harsh laugh scrapes its way out of Stiles' throat and leaves him shaking in the tense circle of Derek's arms. "You think so? Have you seen me, these past few months? I've fucked up so many times I've lost count."
"You're not alone there," Derek says quietly. It sounds like the words cost him something. "You're a good person, Stiles."
"I left Boyd and Erica hanging in Gerard Argent's basement," Stiles says harshly, and he's glad when Derek stiffens against his back. The truth might as well come out now. "That's not much of a track record."
"They're fine. I'd know if they weren't." His face is expressionless, but his hand stays, cradled carefully on Stiles' hip. "And I drove them away, right into his trap. We both fucked up, Stiles. Can you live with that?"
"I guess I have to," Stiles says. And it does help, somehow, knowing that; he's not the only person who's not dealing with this. "Don't I." It won't come out as a question. He wishes it would. He stays still, watches the sooty curve of Derek's eyelashes when Derek dips his gaze down to meet Stiles' gaze. He has pretty eyes, pale and clear green like glass; Stiles wonders, idly, if anyone ever told Derek that in better times.
"Yes," Derek admits roughly. "I'm sorry."
"Lying would be super helpful right now," Stiles mumbles. "I can't tell, you know. No magical lie detecting powers here."
"You know I can't," Derek says, and there's a thin line of desperation in his voice, running jagged and dark like coal through diamonds.
"Do it anyway." Stiles must sound pathetic, and he doesn't care--can't, now.
When Derek kisses him, it doesn't really come as a surprise; it's been building between them for days, slow and sure, and Stiles can see that now. Derek slides a hand down Stiles' waist, rubs a thumb against the trail of hair that runs down past the waistband of his jeans, and Stiles can't remember a time when Derek's hands on him, Derek's breath against his skin, weren't Stiles' world. Stiles' lips part without his permission, and Derek runs his tongue over Stiles' teeth, nips at the nearly-healed cut on his bottom lip. It's not absolution, not by a long shot, but it's as close as either of them is going to get.
"If this is a pity fuck," Stiles begins, his mouth still open against Derek's. He doesn't know if he could take pity right now.
"It's not." Derek sounds definitive about that, at least. "Stiles, just. Just let me have this," and this time he doesn't sound definitive so much as he sounds wrecked.
"Okay," Stiles says shakily. It hadn't occurred to him that Derek might need this, too, might need Stiles, and the idea sends a shiver of want through him. He gropes blindly for Derek's fly, runs a hand up the heat of him through his briefs. Derek arches into the touch and makes a small wounded sound, gorgeous and pained.
He runs a hand up Stiles' back, and Stiles jerks at the sharp kiss of Derek's claws against his skin. He looks up at Derek. Derek's eyes meet his steadily, wild but human, still. So control isn't the issue, Stiles knows that much. This is something else, something important, and Stiles wishes he knew just what. "Just don't do that--anywhere else," he says lightly. "Might kill the mood."
Derek's mouth turns up a little, and his claws blunt. He slides the hand that's been flirting at the waistband of Stiles' jeans down and thumbs open the buttons easily, pulling Stiles' cock out. Stiles means to keep quiet, he really does, but he can't; the curl of Derek's fingers around his cock comes as a sweet relief, a slow slide of skin against skin. A shocked moan jolts out of him, and Derek's eyes widen.
"Should've known you'd be noisy," he says, all mock-annoyance, and that's another thing Stiles and Derek have in common: they're both awful liars if someone knows what to look for.
Stiles ignores him in favor of tugging impatiently at the hem of first Derek's shirt, then his own, yanking them off and flinging them into a corner of the dark room. He's letting himself be greedy now, and want is running through him, coursing furiously through his veins.
He sweeps a hand down Derek's back, pulling him close and mouthing at his neck, his chest, the peak of a nipple. Derek actually hisses when Stiles starts jerking him off, tips his head back and bucks into Stiles' hand. He just--lets Stiles do it, do anything. It takes Stiles a minute to realize that Derek's talking, too: an endless stream of filthy, affectionate encouragement, and he groans helplessly against the crook of Derek's jaw.
"Not gonna last long," he warns.
"Don't want you to," Derek says hoarsely, moving his hand again to pull on Stiles' cock with long sure strokes. "You're so--Jesus, Stiles, do you know what you do to me?"
Stiles doesn't get a chance to answer that, doesn't even think about it until later. Orgasm crashes into him like a wave, leaves him panting and breathless. Derek comes a minute later, bucking his hips into Stiles' hand and biting down his neck and the long line of his shoulder.
"We should probably clean up," Stiles says muzzily, tipping his head against Derek's shoulder. Derek makes a vague noise of agreement. Neither of them move.
Stiles' dreams are full of ships being tossed over oceans of jagged green glass. He won't remember them in the morning.