Archive of Our Own

Stiles is ten. He is lying on Scott's extra mattress, staring at the glow in the dark stars they stuck on the ceiling together. They glow a faint green and are comforting. "Hey Scott," he says, knowing that he isn't asleep. There are some things that after being friends for more than four years you just know. "Are soulmates real?"

Stiles thinks of Lydia Martin and her strawberry blonde hair and green eyes. He hopes he is her soulmate, if they were real. Scott rolls over and looks down at Stiles. He has his thinking face on. "I dunno," Scott eventually decides. "Might be like Santa Claus or the tooth fairy, you know."

"I hope they are real," Stiles tells him. His starry gaze gleams in the darkness. "Maybe...soulmates are two people who always choose each other, no matter what."

Scott frowns. "You're thinking of Lydia aren't you?" He bursts into giggles and Stiles throws a pillow at him, starting what was fast becoming the world war three of pillow fights until Scott's mom bangs hard on the door and tells them to go to bed or else. But Stiles doesn't forget about soulmates and his theory and Lydia's bright smile, so when he gets home he writes it down in a notebook and keeps it carefully in his drawer. 

Stiles is sixteen. He's chanced upon a notebook he had when he was ten when he was looking for a place to stash all the werewolf research he was gathering for Scott. He opens and flips through it, his ten year old self naive and wonderful in the face of the darkness that exists in the world. He stares at the soulmate entry. He thinks of Lydia, sees her with Jackson, and sighs deeply. Then he crosses out Lydia's name in red but writes the bottom part down on a separate notebook, the one filled with questions about wolves. He writes, are soulmates real? 

He still hopes they are. Because Scott's always off gallivanting with Allison, Lydia's found someone she loves and Stiles is Stiles and it seems like it always will be, and he really doesn't want to have no one for himself anymore. 

Derek is seven. He's sitting with his mother on his bed. She smells like lavender. His father comes in while she's reading a story to him, and the two of them air on the edge of his bed and read it together. When they're done, Derek's already lost interest in the story. He's watching his father kiss his mother on the cheek. "Will I ever find my mate?" He blurts, and the question startles his parents. "Are they real?"

His mother purses her lips, but then breaks into a smile and ruffles his hair instead. "I'm sure you will," she says. "A mate isn't just feeling, little wolf. It's a choice."

Derek doesn't understand. He says as much, and his father does his booming laugh that Derek loves hearing so much. "It means that even though things pull the two of you apart, you decide to stay."

"Like you?"

"I was supposed to move to Italy," his father's eyes twinkle. "I chose to stay with your mother. It's how it works."

"But how do you know when you find your mate?" Derek is lonely, sometimes. A house as big as this and a huge family didn't mean you were alone, but it meant that everyone had other people. As the only boy in his family, Derek was sometimes left to fend for himself. "I want them to hurry up."

His parents laugh; his mother scoops him up in a hug. "You'll know," she says solemnly. "You'll know because they choose to stay with you too."

 Derek is sixteen. He sits in the police station, smoke still curling off his body. The burns from where he'd rushed into the house in a frantic fury were already healing. He feels numb.

He thinks of Kate Argent. He thinks of how he thought he was her mate and laughs and laughs until he can't breathe. He thinks of his family and their burnt out shell of a home and decides that mates aren't real, that if he had one, they would never love him anyway. They would never choose him. 

"How did you know that was Derek Hale?" Scott asks once they're home, Stiles gasping like a fish out of water and Scott completely fine. Stiles stares at him, because Scott was the asthmatic here. 

"I've met him before," Stiles says once he's caught his breath. "At the police station, after the fire."

Scott waits. 

"He smelt of smoke, you know? He looked like a wreck so I approached him and gave him a new blanket," he remembers everything clearly. The way Derek had laughed incessantly like someone gone mad, but the laughter had ended with his teeth bared in a snarl. Stiles wasn't supposed to talk to the witnesses, but Derek looked like his dad when his mom died. "The ones we use for shock. It was orange."

"I gave it to him and he looked at me like he didn't even know what I was," Stiles continues. "But he took the blanket, and that was that. He's changed a lot but those eyebrows- recognisable anywhere."

It is half the story. Derek's hand had paused on the blanket. "Why're you giving me this?"

Stiles was eight. "You smell of smoke," he said bluntly. His beside manner was atrocious, as it still is now. "I was...the blanket helps people feel better."

"Is that what your parents told you?" His voice had cracked on the last syllable. 

"My dad's the Sheriff," Stiles puffed out his chest. "That's what he says."

Derek considered him. He took the blanket and put it around his shoulders. "Thanks."

"Are you gonna be okay?" Stiles was eight, but he was not stupid. He knew what the smoke meant, why he was here alone. 

Derek sighed. "No," he said, and Stiles was stunned because it was the first time someone had been so honest with him. "But I'll manage. My sister will be here soon."

"Okay," Stiles nodded. "My mom- two months ago," it still hurt to talk about it. He trails off but Derek looks at him like he understood. Tears burned in his eyes, he fights them down because whenever he cried it made other people sad, and there was enough sadness in his life. 

Derek stretches out a tentative hand and ruffles Stiles' hair. "We lose people all the time," his voice is smoke hoarse and laden with grief. "So you've got to be a good boy for your father."

"I will," Stiles looks at him seriously. "But they would want you to live, that's what my dad told me. Says they never leave us, they are just harder to see. Like stars in the day."

The door banged open; Stiles scurried off, pretending to be busy with his toy truck on the floor. His dad walked in together with a girl, she was older than Derek and looked like her world had fell apart. When she saw Derek she grabbed him and they stood together, each one holding the other up. 

"His sister survived the fire," Stiles says. He turns his head to Scott so fast Scott was afraid he'd get whiplash. "We should see if she's in town."

"Why?"

"Because Derek Hale lost his entire family and left Beacon Hills- why would he ever come back?"

Derek didn't recognise the kids when he first saw them, but one smelt of wolf and the other like rain, and because of that he knew at once that the kid with the buzz cut was the same kid who gave him a new blanket and sat next to him the day of the fire. He chose not to act on this information. The kid must've been at least around nine or ten when it happened. He probably didn't remember, but whenever things got bad for Derek and Laura he thought of the child and his stars. 

But there is a soft spot for him. He remembers the hospital and Peter and how he decided to go in after him, even though he knew he couldn't win against an alpha. Technically- his alpha. He went in because the kid still had a family to live for and Derek was omega, and Derek could not see even the barest hints of light. Now he was alpha, and he was planning on bonding his small pack and making sure everyone knew that Beacon Hills had HALE written all over it. He planned to ignore the kid and the beta and find something worthwhile in his shitty excuse of a life. 

However, he did not expect to be currently held up in a pool by the same kid. He still smells like rain. It's like it never washes off him, even though the chlorine on his skin irritates his nose and gives him a headache. 

"Why aren't you letting me go?" He asks as the kid-Stiles, his name is Stiles, starts to lug his deadweight to the shallower end of the pool where he could stand. He starts to strip off the red tracksuit he has on, throwing the red jacket and his shirt at a lizard thing currently holding them hostage and snorting when said lizard darted back in fright from the wet cloth. Now he was standing in the pool, one arm around Derek, wearing his lacrosse jersey and red track pants, looking utterly ridiculous. "I'm pretty sure whatever it is is after me."

"Yeah, encourage me," Stiles rolls his eyes and quirks his lips up at Derek. He stops when he sees Derek is being serious. "Wait seriously? Dude, first rule of being a human, you don't leave people behind to drown in swimming pools. Unless you're Jackson, in which case you do. Don't be Jackson. Be Stiles."

Derek sighs; jerks a little when he realises he can move his toes. He says as much and Stiles lets out a delighted sound that echoes around the hall. He's about to say something in return when the lizard starts to scream. It literally screamed like a huge balloon letting out all of its air at once, and Stiles tilts his head at this, ignoring how it knocked against Derek's head, because when Stiles needed to think he either paced around the room, talked incessantly, or tilted his head.  "It's freaking out over that mirror," he muses. Derek stiffens. "Shit, the noise is going to bring people."

 "I get it dude!" He raises his voice and directs it to the lizard, which is still screaming. "I would do the same thing if I saw me in a mirror but for the love of God shut up!"

The lizard smashes the mirror, it falls to the ground in shards of broken glass. Derek can see Stiles' eyes in one piece. The lizard lets out a victory screech and then darts away, climbing up the walls and out of the school the way it came- through the broken window at the top. 

Stiles sags slightly in the water. "Thank fuck," he drags Derek over to the wall. "I was beginning to think I couldn't stand anymore."

The next time Derek sees Stiles, it's when he's tied up in chains and hanging from the ceiling. Stiles eyes him nervously. He's grown out his hair over the summer, it's long and spiked up. His jawline developed too, and now he's taller. He looks good, and Derek almost shudders at that thought. Stiles had become high school jailbait. 

There's sudden footsteps that creak down the wooden stairs. Stiles makes a face and moves to stand in the shadows. Derek wants to tell him to run, to leave him, because Stiles is Stiles and Stiles is never good at these situations. 

The man comes down the stairs. He peers at Derek. "Look at you," he says when Derek is too tired to snap back at him when he touched his shoulder. "All tamed."

Stiles sighs from behind him. "Wolves can't be tamed," he says, with full intent. The man whirls around, but then Stiles smashes a metallic baseball bat on his head and he drops to the ground. Stiles makes a face at the body and the blood on his bat. "Their nature can only be suppressed. I read that somewhere," he grins a little at Derek. "Is that right, you big bad wolf you?"

He reaches up to grasp the chains almost effortlessly. He pauses on the chains, tilts his head like he doesn't know how to get Derek down quietly. That's when he spots he wolfsbane laced through the chains and sighs. He brings out a lighter and burns it, the wolfsbane catching fire and moving quickly down the chain. It singes the hair off Derek's hands, but then the wolfsbane is completely gone and Derek bares his teeth in an exhausted snarl as he snaps the chains and breathes heavily. 

"Come on," Stiles lets Derek sling a hand around his shoulders and have carries, half walks Derek up the stairs. The door opens with a slight creak, but then they're out of the house and walking and Derek breathes in the smell of Stiles and flowers and he feels like sleeping for a week. 

"How did you get past everyone?" Derek finally finds the strength to ask him when he's seated in the jeep. It smells of pack. 

"I watched their schedule," Stiles gets a wicked gleam in his eyes. "And I set off a grenade just out back."

Derek lets out a bark of surprised laughter; it was such a Stiles thing to do. "What about the rest of the pack?"

"They knew," Stiles says. "But I didn't let anyone else near. They were stalking them, you know? If they were wolves they'd have their scent, but they didn't go after me. Sometimes being the only non-aggressive human on the team really has its perks."

Derek grunts in response, already falling asleep. 

"That being said, you should really give Stiles a gun," he continues, flexing his fingers as if showing he could handle a gun. "The bat doesn't cut it sometimes."

"I am not giving Stiles a gun," Derek mumbles, but then sleep wraps its noose around his neck and he goes under. 

When Derek wakes, he finds himself in a bed, stripped to his boxers. He panics, taking a deep breath- and then stops when everything smells like rain. He's in Stiles' bed. He gets up on shaky legs, swallowing against the nausea, and notices clothes left on the desk. 

There's a note, written in the chicken scratch that is Stiles's handwriting: WEAR THE CLOTHES, HALE. IT WAS HARD ENOUGH UNDRESSING YOU AS IT IS. Then it trails off, the font becoming smaller and smaller. NOT THAT I UNDRESSED YOU. I JUST THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE MORE COMFORTABLE. DON'T KILL ME I JUST SAVED YOUR ASS.

Derek laughs a little; Stiles writes the exact same way he speaks, with little to no filter. It's kind of endearing. He changes into the clothes- they're a little tight on him, but he can tell that they're Stiles' biggest sweatpants and shirt so he leaves it and instead braces himself for the Herculean task of braving the staircase. 

He makes it to the kitchen without fainting and sits heavily in a chair. Stiles looks up from the stove where he's stirring something in a pot. "Hey there big guy," he offers gently. "How're you feeling?"

"Like someone drove a steamroller over me," Derek deadpans. 

"That's rough buddy," Stiles pours the thing in the pot into a cup. He extends out a hand to pass it to Derek, and that's when he noticed his fingers. They're incredibly long and spindly, crooked at the ends. His hands are dusted with a fine covering of hair, and this darkens and thickens up his arm. Derek stares in surprise. His hands don't seem to belong to him. He doesn't even have facial hair; he still has spots. "Derek? You okay?"

Derek jerks, taking the cup. It's tomato soup. There's even little alphabet noodles inside. 

"My mom used to love this when she was sick," Stiles says. He has a cup for himself too. "Sometimes she couldn't manage the spoon, so we put it in a cup. Then it was our thing, you know? It was the only thing she'd eat before she died."

"Mine used to make this Chinese noodle soup she learnt from another pack," Derek offers. He takes a sip, it's surprisingly pleasant. "She used these short and fat white noodles, they looked like mouse tails. It always worked to make people better. My dad told us to drink Coke. The fights they'd have over food," he huffs out a laugh. "Laura used to side with my mother. I was more inclined to my dad."

Stiles gives him a small smile. It doesn't quite reach his eyes anymore. Derek suddenly feels oppressively old and burdened with the knowledge of lost innocence. The clock on the mantelpiece isn't ticking in rhythm. Derek should tell Stiles. 

"Do you remember?" Stiles asks abruptly, just as Derek's about to tell him. "The first time we met."

Derek looks up from his cup. He's drained it. Stiles pours some more for him. "The police station," Derek confirms. "You gave me a shock blanket."

"Yeah," Stiles says. "I'm sorry if I- if you didn't want to be disturbed, you know? I was eight and my beside manners were completely terrible, they still are, and I didn't know what had happened. You just looked like you needed a new blanket. I'm saying this now so it doesn't come up in a fury later on, you know like some witch curse and then you turn on me cause I gave you a shock blanket while you were grieving and you never forgave me-"

"Thank you for giving me a shock blanket," Derek interrupts his tirade of words. "And for telling me the thing about the stars in the day."

There's stunned silence. "You remember that?"

"It helped a lot," Derek tells him. It feels nice. "Whenever things got real bad, and it happened quite a few times- well. You've saved my life more than twice."

Stiles puffs out his chest, looking for all the world like he was eight again and telling Derek his father was the Sheriff so there. "Did I?" He mumbles, looks up shyly at Derek. "I'm glad then. Cause then there wouldn't be a pack and Scott would still just be Scott and I wouldn't be friends with Lydia or meet people like Isaac even if they did try to kill us on multiple occasions. I wouldn't- I wouldn't have a pack. Wait I am part of the pack, right?"

Derek wants to touch the side of his face and tell him he's been a part of the pack since he was eight. He does not. "Stiles," he says instead, with all the duh he can muster. "What do you think?"

Stiles seems to brighten up. "Speaking of pack, they're giving you an hour to get the wolfsbane out of your system and then I think Erica said something about giant wolf pack welcome back orgy. It even rhymes."

Derek lets out a surprised laugh, it cause Stiles to look up at him in a mixture of amazement and amusement. "So you can laugh, sourwolf," his voice is fond. Derek wonders what happened in the span of half an hour that could incite this change. He'd always assumed that Stiles treated him with vague dislike and intense distrust, but maybe that had never been the case. Maybe there was distrust and even fear but maybe he'd always remembered him at sixteen, ruffling his hair and telling him to be a good boy for his father. "You should do it more often. The wolves seem to really like it when you're happy. Even Jackson is less of a douche. And he's Jackson, his entire purpose is to be a douche."

"I don't have much reason to," Derek raises his eyebrows at him. 

Stiles snorts, rolling his eyes. "You have me. I'm hilarious."

"I hardly ever see you."

"Is this an excuse for you to see me more, Hale?" Stiles gets a wicked look in his eyes. He leans forward and rests his chin on his hands. 

"Maybe it is," Derek smirks at him. He lets his eyes blatantly give him an appreciative look. "Is that going to be a problem, Stilinski?"

"I don't think so," the grin curls its way around his mouth. Derek would've loved to stay there, looking at Stiles and his new hair and jawline and hands but then the door banged open and there are several heavy people on top of him growling and Stiles is laughing and laughing until someone whacks him and tells him to respect pack customs. He laughs harder.

 Pain, Derek thinks, is an illusion. He thinks this because he can feel the nail in his arm and it hurts as its twisted by the hunter. He leers at him with perfect teeth. 

The pack is surrounded. They're surrounded and they don't know what to do. Allison is shackled in the corner, along with Scott and Isaac. They were bait, Derek snarls viciously. They were bait and they took it and now they're in the middle of a mountain ash circle and they couldn't do shit. Jackson looks murderous, his face is twisted up with wolf- Jackson never liked to change, he said it gave him wrinkles, but now he snapped and snarled because he knew that they were probably going to die. Erica kept trying the circle and Boyd kept trying to hold her back because her nose was already bleeding. 

The hunters laugh and Allison tells them her dad, Chris Argent, is going to whoop their asses into next Wednesday, but they continue to laugh. And they are right to do so. They have all the wolves in one place, all ripe for the picking. The anger in Derek makes him want to burst out of his own skin. He struggles to keep his composure. 

"Let them go," Derek grits out, and one of the hunter steps forward almost mockingly. His gun- there's a twinge in Derek's gut at the scent and he knows it's aconite- wolfsbane. 

"Let them go," the hunter has brown eyes, like Stiles'. They're not his shade though. They're cruel. People like that don't become hunters to help those who don't know, they become hunters because they get off on the hunt. There's a difference. "Um, no."

Derek snarls. The man puts his hand out over the line and presses the muzzle of his gun against Derek's forehead. There's a menacing click as the safety is turned off. 

"I say we kill you, and see who the alpha powers go to next. Is it the baby one," he motions to Scott, grinning. "Or someone else?" 

Isaac snaps at him. 

Derek closes his eyes and hopes for a miracle. 

That's when he hears it. He hears it in the darkness. There's a heartbeat that he knows, and then the smell of a storm, and Isaac and Scott stiffen slightly because they smell the ozone too. It's Stiles, and by God is he angry.

He comes round the corner with his baseball bat and lowered hood. Moving like water, he turns gently around one of the hunters and brings the bat down on his head. The man drops and Stiles reaches daintily for the gun, twirls around and shoots. 

The gunshots are loud in the room and the wolves wince as one, but then the hunter holding the gun to Derek's forehead drops and screams. There's two holes in his right leg. Derek's amazed- Stiles had gone from pitiful human to their personal deus ex machina in the span of a few hours. 

Stiles smiles at all of them. "Hello," he greets. His voice slides over their skin like razors and he trains the gun steadily on them. "I'm the son of the Sheriff. Unless you want fifty cops showing up and me telling them you kidnapped me and my friends and tortured us for your own sick amusement, before I managed to land my hands on one of your guns and luckily hitting the leader so that I could beg for help from the law, I suggest you leave. And unless you want my pal the alpha and his betas to come at you with their claws, not to mention the terrifying father of that huntress over there with his literal arsenal, I suggest you never come back and never tell a soul. You have an hour before I set the wolves loose."

There's a mad scramble for their bags. "Also," Stiles dangles out the gun. "I'm keeping this. Considering it was probably wolfsbane bullets- did you know that aconite is toxic to humans too? You might want to get that checked out."

The leader snarls; Stiles shoots the ground next to his head from a distance of six feet. The snarl changes to a yelp and then the rest of the hunters are getting him up and lugging him bodily out of the warehouse.

He turns to the wolves, laughs slightly and holds up the gun. "I told you that you should give Stiles a gun," he raises an eyebrow and Derek snorts and concedes. "Was I right or was I right?"

"You make a fair statement."

Stiles watches the hunters go, and it's not until Derek can confirm he can't hear their heartbeats that Stiles walks over to the mountain ash and clears it with a wave. 

He is swamped immediately. Scott tackles him and shoves him against the wall and shouts, "what the fuck!"

Allison offers training lessons over the din, Isaac is staring at the bullet shells on the floor and muttering, "shapeshifter."

Erica and Boyd give proud beams and Jackson looks like he swallowed a whole apple. 

Derek, on the other hand, thinks he's had a religious experience because Stiles firing a gun was literally the hottest thing he'd ever seen. He fights down the arousal, knowing that he's around wolves and they can smell it and he was not in the mood for any questions. Instead he masks it by digging out the nail in his arm. 

Stiles gives them jazz hands and looks unconcerned. He flicks the safety on the gun and drops it on the floor. "I'm the son of the Sheriff," he says, as if they were stupid. "I could shoot before I could write."

"And you chose not to tell us about this...why?" Derek asks him, pulling a still gaping Scott off his best friend. 

"I told you!" Stiles shouts, frustrated. "You never listen!"

"You have a tendency to exaggerate your ability," Isaac says helpfully. 

"You're just unappreciative dicks."

Derek growls and shoves him slightly, but then Stiles is twisting out of his grip and bringing up a hand that hits him right there and Derek is stumbling away from him, gasping and in pain. 

"The son of the sheriff. A paranoid sheriff. A paranoid sheriff who was right to be paranoid and decided to send his kid to martial arts lessons because he could. I hit you in one of your chi points. It's one of the weakest in the body, hurts like a son of a bitch."

"That's where you went every Tuesday," Scott stares. "You said it was tuition."

"You assumed it was tuition," Stiles corrects, picking up the gun and shoving it into his jeans. "I never said anything."

They are all staring at him in shock. Allison comes forward from the back and pulls Stiles into a hug. 

"Welcome to the club," she says. "We give free lessons. You're allowed attend now. We're doing long-range rifle handling tomorrow."

Stiles grins at her. "I suppose I don't need my Tuesday classes anymore?"

"You don't," she agrees. "We're the best."

"I don't doubt that. Show me how to kick Scott's ass when he's annoying me," Stiles demands as they walk out of the warehouse. 

"I can do that if you give me his baby pictures," she nods.

"It's a deal."

"I'm being ganged up on!" Scott whines from the back. "Stop being friends!"

"We're besties now," Stiles links arms with Allison and starts an elaborate skipping routine that ends with Stiles slipping on ice and falling over, laughing the whole way down.

"Behave!" Derek barks at them. "Motherfucking children!"

"You're just an old fart!" Stiles shouts. "Can't keep up, can you old man?"

Derek flips him the bird and starts to jog. 

Things get quiet again. Derek misses the smell of rain and so finds himself in Stiles' room, watching Stiles type out an English essay. It's terribly mundane. Derek doesn't know how he survived high school. 

He loiters around Stiles' desk, before picking up a hardcover notebook that had been hidden behind a pile of papers. It was so artfully disguised that it stood out, ironically. He looks to Stiles for confirmation that he can read this. 

"That's my questions book," Stiles tells him. "Whole lot of questions about your lot and others. See if you can answer any of them."

Derek raises an eyebrow, but he opens the notebook and flips through it. The first question is: do I need to prepare for a possible zombie apocalypse?

Derek snorts. "Zombies aren't real."

Stiles raises an eyebrow at him. "Have you seen one?"

"No, but they aren't real."

"But you haven't seen one! That means there is a possibility that they could be real."

"How can I see one if they don't exist?"

"I don't make the rules," Stiles puts up both his hands and laughs at Derek's exasperated expression. 

"Dragons are," Derek ignores the entry about the X-Men. "You kill them with a bronze blade."

Stiles frantically scrambles for a pen. In the process, he made finding the pen much harder for himself. Sometimes, Derek didn't understand Stiles. He yells in delight as he grabs a pen and throws it at him. "Write everything down," he orders. "I'm so stupid, why didn't I think of asking you first?"

"You hated me," Derek rolls his eyes as he sits down on his bed and starts to systematically go through the list. 

"I never hated you," he doesn't even look up from the computer. "You hated me!"

"Did not."

"You smashed my face into a steering wheel," Stiles deadpans. He throws another pen at Derek. "Write how you kill them in this colour."

Derek takes the pen. "That was one time!"

"I'm a human, I get concussed."

"You were at a hospital."

"You aren't helping your case."

"You arrested me for murder."

"You had to act all intimidating and psychopathic! If you'd been a little nicer, like how you are now, then maybe we wouldn't think you were killing people."

"You think I'm nicer now?"

Stiles' shuts his mouth with an audible click of his teeth. "You're sitting on my bed with one pink and blue pen, making hurt eyebrows at me and it's been like a month since you've thrown me up against a wall," Stiles covers, but his heart is doing double time. Derek is intrigued. "I consider that nicer."

Derek makes a non-committed noise and goes back to writing on the book. "Now there's an interesting question," he says after fifteen minutes has passed. "Soulmates?"

Stiles turns to him, spinning about on his chair. "Yeah, thought of that one when Scott and I were ten. It was more about Lydia, actually. But the soulmates thing is important."

"My mother used to tell me that wolves had mates," Derek says, while writing something leisurely down. "I suppose they are the same as soulmates." 

"How do you know when you find yours? Is it just like an instantaneous knowledge or instinct?" Stiles sounds way too invested in this question. Derek raises an eyebrow at him.

"It is somewhat of an instinct," Derek tells him, setting the book aside. "You'd feel safe and relaxed around them and they'd smell like something comforting. Mom said that Dad smelt like a clear night. It's confusing to those who don't have a mate, but she also said that there was more, that it was a choice. That come hell or high water-"

"You'd always choose each other," Stiles looks unnaturally serious. "Even though maybe they might not work, the choice is what makes them mates isn't it?"

"Yeah," Derek nods. He holds up the pink pen apologetically. "I can't write how you kill them would be mean."

"Looks like I was right," Stiles shrugs. "That's what I thought when I was ten too. Looks like I am soulmate material, I already know how it works."

Derek snorts. Stiles throws a book at him.

"They need to be able to pull you back," Deaton tells them. Stiles shivers minutely. "Pair up."

Lydia and Allison go together. Lydia squeezes her hand and looks concerned and Allison tells her she's going to be fine. Lydia purses her lips at her. Allison tells her that the banshee isn't screaming so there's that and Lydia laughs.  

Isaac goes with Scott. He pushes Scott up against the wall and threatens to personally visit the underworld if Scott doesn't come back. Scott laughs and tackles him and says that if he doesn't come back it's because he didn't want to see Isaac's ugly face anymore. 

From across the room, Derek looks up at Stiles shyly. Stiles shrugs and makes a come here gesture and Derek walks slowly over to him. There's a sudden silence in the room. 

"Stiles," Deaton says softly. "You have to have a strong emotional attachment to your anchor. Lydia-"

"I know," Stiles shakes his head; looks up at them sadly. "Derek's fine, aren't you, sourwolf?"

Derek snorts, hits the back of his head with his hand. "This is a terrible idea on every level, you know that right?"

"My dad," Stiles counters,  and Derek's gaze softens. He tugs Stiles close and presses their foreheads together. 

"You better wake up," Derek whispers. Stiles can feel the stunned looks that everyone else was giving him. Derek's eyes were blue and green and brown and endless, an infinite expanse of loss and tenderness that made Stiles feel impossibly loved. He fights the feeling down; knocks his head against Derek's. "I'm not losing another one, you got that?"

"I'm not going down without a fight," he says back. "I'm coming back, promise."

Derek huffs but releases him, his eyes bleeding red as he tried to enact his alpha authority on him. "I can't decide if you're brave or stupid," he says instead. 

Stiles snorts. "I'm obviously both," he rolls his eyes claps his hands on Derek's shoulders. 

They were going to be sacrificed to save their parents. But then they were going to come back. It was all terribly confusing and not something that they should ever have to witness in their lifetime. But Stiles thinks of all the times he wished for sacrifice and adventure in his life and thinks he doesn't regret it. He steps into the metal tub.

The cold water seeps into his bones. It weighs him down and makes him feel exceptionally heavy.  He feels like sadness drips from his bones. 

Then there's a brief respite. Derek is placing his hands on Stiles' shoulders. They smell like mint. Stiles reaches up a shivering hand and places it gently on top of Derek's, and Derek gives his shoulders a gentle squeeze.

There's a count of three, but it doesn't prepare Stiles for the shock of cold on his face as he goes under. He struggles and gasps, but Derek's grip on him is like a vice, so he swallows water as his mind goes blank and then he floats, adrift upon a sea of endless darkness. 

Derek feels terrible, holding Stiles under the water.  Every instinct he has tells him to pull him out, he should be protecting Stiles, not killing him. That thought sparks a realisation. Oh my god, I'm killing him, Derek is horrified. I'm killing him, I'm killing him, but then the resistance lets off and Stiles starts to float. He feels sick. Water is not much better than fire. 

He can hear their heartbeats, but only if he concentrated, but then the beats fade out and there's nothing. 

They wait. And wait. 

Derek's anxious and lonely so he sits by the metal tub and tells Stiles about the place where his family used to go camping. It's got its own lake and it's full of these brightly coloured fish that got trapped there after an avalanche cut them off from the river. He tells Stiles how he used to be great at catching them, how the older ones used the fish to train their reflexes. In the summer there were these pink flowers that Laura liked to pick, and his father taught them how to make flower crowns and Cora had been the best at them, even forcing him to wear a new flower crown every morning. Sometimes they went in the winter and played on the frozen lake. One day the ice had cracked under Cora's weight and she'd fallen in. Derek had gone right in and dragged her out and that was the end of their frozen lake escapades. He tells Stiles that maybe he'd take the pack one day because he could, because he was the Hale family alpha now. He tells Stiles that he's lonely sometimes and he's grateful for the pack and did you know you smell like rain and if blue had a scent because you do. 

The minutes tick by. Now he's been waiting for ages and it's too late isn't it because Stiles' lips are turning blue and Allison and Scott are waking up, he can hear their heartbeats stuttering again. Stiles remains silent. 

Derek wants to tear his hair out. He plunges a hand into the cold water and grips Stiles' shoulder tightly. Unbidden, the memory comes to him of Stiles sitting on the floor in his house, placing with chess pieces and telling him he didn't know what he was living for. Derek had made him hot chocolate with extra marshmallows and Stiles had told him he was a nice wolf, that he had to find a new nickname for him because the sourness was rapidly running out. He'd actually said, "you're like a sweet that's coated with the sour sugary thing. And when you put it in your mouth it's super fucking sour and your face gets all scrunchy but after that it becomes super sweet and you're just like this is magical, god bless the sugar industry."

Derek had smacked him and laughed and showed up the next day at his house with a bag of those sour sweets and Stiles had grinned at him and eaten them till he was sick and lazily hitting Derek with his pillow because, "it's your fault that I'm going to get diabetes."

Sometimes Derek thought Stiles saw the world in a way that was more interesting than Derek could ever do. Stiles had once spent ten minutes explaining in explicit detail the disappointment it brought stepping on a crunchy looking leaf and but the leaf decided to let down all ten of your generations and not make the crunch sound. He said it was the epitome of false appearances. 

"Come on," Derek urges his body gently. "You haven't thought of a new nickname for me. I need a new place. You said we were gonna go apartment hunting," he knows almost everyone can hear this. His neck burns. Stiles is cold. "Don't you fucking do this to me; you promised."

There's a jerk. A stutter, and then all three of them jerk upright like they'd been branded. Water sloshes over the sides of the tubs, flooding the clinic. Stiles gasps and chokes and says, "I know where it is."

Allison is gulping down air, looking frantically at Scott who is coughing out water and sighs in relief. "I saw it," she says. "I saw it- did you-"

"I did too," he confirms. "The Nemeton- I know where it is too."

Stiles clambers out of the bathtub on shaky legs and grips onto Derek tightly. "We will talk later," he says softly. "I have to save my dad."

"You go be a badass," Derek gives him a little push towards the dry clothes hanging on the side of a metal table. "But you better come back."

"You know it," Stiles gives him two thumbs up and takes the clothes, rushing out of the door with the others. 

Stiles comes back, his face bloody. He's got a split lip and a gash on his forehead, but he dumps an empty gun on Derek's table and opens his arms in a come here and hold me gesture. 

Derek does.  He places his hands on his hips and drags him close. Stiles makes a noise and then his hands are around his neck and pushing up into his hair and he all but collapses onto him. The shuddering of his heart can now be felt against Derek's chest, and the beat it kept is somehow comforting. Derek isn't sure in that moment who was holding up who, but they sag against each other and stumble like drunkards until Stiles' back hit a wall and they stabilised. 

It is a while before anyone spoke, until Stiles pushed his head into the crook of Derek's neck, his hair tickling his cheek. Derek can feel his breath, and his cold lips against his skin. He shivers minutely. "You give great hugs."

"I do, don't I?" Derek says. Stiles can feel the vibrations of his voice. "Are you okay?"

Stiles clings to him like a lifeline. Derek slowly starts to walk him to the sofa. He sits heavily down on it and Stiles follows, settling into his lap and not moving.

Derek takes a shallow breath and the smell of blood fills his senses. Humans like to pretend that blood doesn't smell like blood. It smells like iron, like copper, like metal, because they want to think that the metal in them makes them strong. They're not. Blood smells like blood, it's unmistakeable. Blood smells like death. 

"That was terrible," Stiles says. "We got ganged up on by a pack of wolves. The Nemeton brought them into the area like they were being called. They were just over in the next town."

"Did they have their alpha?"

"No," he shake his head. "They were all betas. And now they're all dead."

"Did you-"

"Yeah," Stiles says. "Yeah, I did. Chris is helping to take care of the evidence."

"Your dad?"

"He doesn't know about that pack. But he knows about werewolves. He knows about you."

"That was unavoidable," Derek traces circles on Stiles' back. "You know that."

"I know," Stiles presses a kiss to his neck. "I didn't get to ask you first though."

Derek pushes Stiles back until he can hold his face in his hands. Stiles looks back at him, his hands still around his neck. His eyes are brown, like coffee, filled with bitterness and adrenaline. At times like these they were molten, but when he got angry they were the colour of rocks in a storm, and they would drown you. Derek stares and comes to the sudden realisation that by God, he loves Stiles, he loves Stiles and he wants him safe, wants to kiss him, wants to make sure that no pack would dare to hurt him. 

Stiles makes a lopsided smile at him. "This is where you kiss the hero, sourwolf."

"Hero my ass," Derek snorts, but he pulls his face down and kisses him. It's short and chaste and leaves the both of them wanting more. 

Stiles kisses his forehead. "I may not be your mate, you know."

"I know," Derek breathes. He runs his hands over Stiles' back. "I don't care."

 "You're jeopardising your future."

"The future has no say in this. I choose you, Stiles," Derek says earnestly, so innocently that Stiles has go make the Pokemon joke because it held him at gunpoint. 

Derek hits him. Stiles laughs. "Of course I choose you too. I chose you a long time ago. You're my Houndoom, you big bad wolf you. Now help me patch up this up," Stiles motions at the blood on his forehead. "And then you come with me to the shower."

"Are you even legal?"

"Yes."

"You are not you liar."

"Shut up!"

"I'll wait outside while you shower."

"Fine, you saint. I'll do it myself."