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Derek knew the moment he agreed to participate that he was going to regret this. He really should have stood his ground and refused, but Scott ambushed him, showing up at his place with puppy-dog eyes that really shouldn’t work so well now that he's a grown man.
It's been years since they reached a place in their relationship that could be called friendship. Everything is calm in Beacon Hills, or as calm as it ever is, at least, and they're fine.
Or at least Derek thought they were fine, until Scott showed up at his door explaining how he had signed up Derek for a reality show when he was drunk, and how Derek had somehow been selected and the Queer Eye guys were going to come help him out.
Derek was going to say no, he really was, and not just because he had no idea who the Queer Eye guys could possibly be. He's fine. He doesn't need help. But then Scott turned all concerned and earnest and started talking about how Derek never came around anymore, how he never left the loft if he could avoid it actually, just showed up when someone clearly needed him, usually to kill or fight something.
How Stiles and Lydia have been accusing Scott of lying about Derek living in Beacon Hills again because they haven't even seen him since they came back, and he skipped the big get-together barbecue, and would he please allow Scott to help him be less of an antisocial hermit because he knew Derek missed having people around all the time.
The subtle note of command in Scott’s voice pulled at something long forgotten inside Derek. The McCall pack is not his pack—Scott has no authority over him—but it's the closest thing he has to it, an ally and someone he can trust, and, at the end of the day and against his own best judgment, Derek trusts Scott to know best. So he said yes and put it out of his head as a problem to deal with in the future.
And that is why he is now standing behind the front door of his building, listening to the cars in the parking lot and very carefully not panicking about what's going to happen, having only a very vague idea of how the show works and who is who on the cast, acquired through a series of increasingly unrelated Google searches.
Derek gave an interview to the production crew, explaining his tragic past in as little detail as he could manage. They were all nice and supportive. And then they asked him about his current routine, and Derek just felt more and more awkward while he explained how he did not, actually, have a job, or hobbies, or friends he had met in the past five years. It really helped Scott’s point sink in.
He is not cherishing the idea of repeating the experience with people there to do more than listen quietly. Especially after Scott texted him to let him know he had talked to the TV people too.
When Derek answers the door he's braced for impact, expecting to be judged and found wanting. What he is not prepared for is for Karamo to take one look at him and swear—like Derek has been warned by the show crew, repeatedly, not to do—and declare that he is having a new Superman problem. Whatever that means.
They all hug him. And pat his biceps. And Jonathan strokes his beard. And then somehow, before he can fully grasp what is going on, he has been dragged inside and Bobby is questioning him about the building.
“So, you are the only one living in the entire building?” Bobby asks him as they all enter the cargo elevator. “Is this even up to code? You really should call your landlord.”
“Um… I own the building,” Derek answers, feeling himself flush and getting the most disbelieving look from Tan, who's been staring suspiciously the entire time.
“You own the condemned-looking building that I’m still half sure you're squatting in?” Tan asks, stepping out of the elevator and into Derek’s actual loft.
His very empty loft. Derek looks over the space trying to see it with the eyes of an outsider. The lack of furniture for such a big space, the bed mostly in the middle of the living room, the grimy window and the single iron staircase.
“Okay, you're definitely squatting here. There is no way this is an actual habitable place,” Tan concludes.
“Hon, why do you live somewhere that looks like a serial killer hideout? How are you even more gorgeous in person? What is happening? I have so many questions!” Jonathan says, shaking his head.
After that none of them seem to need much of his input, leaving him to walk around after them trying to justify his choices while they explore the space.
Antoni finds his kitchen, and then the lack of food in his kitchen. Bobby is really concerned about the big part of the wall he patched up himself. Jonathan asks him about his grooming routine and makes distressed noises about his overgrown beard. Tan looks over his small collection of T-shirts and one leather jacket, unimpressed, before zeroing in on what looks suspiciously like a bloodstain on the leather. Slowly, between close-ups on his exposed beams and using the empty space for a piggyback race, they all seem to form a plan for how to help him.
Karamo is the only one quiet through most of it. After the initial running around and joking, he watches them all silently until he corners Derek by the window, ready for his turn.
“Let me ask you something. When was the last time you had someone over here—friends, or maybe your sister visiting? Or someone to spend the night?”
Derek draws a blank. Cora hasn’t been in the States in years, and he knows no one has slept in his bed since Braeden, and that was over five years ago. Scott was the last one here, but he didn't come up; Derek didn’t invite him in. He didn’t notice that at the time. Before him, he couldn’t actually remember. Probably the last time they were all about to die.
Karamo takes his silence as the answer it is, nodding.
“I have two sons, and they had a rough childhood, especially before I came along. We talked to Scott, and you told us about your family and everything that happened. Those things leave scars. My oldest is twenty-two now. He's all grown up, and he's fine, but I can still see it sometimes. If you don’t let anyone in, they can’t hurt you.”
Derek stares at him in silence, the words sinking in slowly. He didn't realize until Scott ambushed him that he was pushing people away, and he didn't realize until right now why he's doing it. He thought he was fine—maybe a little lonely, but fine. It's a lot to take in.
Karamo just nods at him again, patting his shoulder and leaving his hand there, squeezing hard enough to make it clear he's got him. Not really waiting for an answer or promising to fix it. But making it clear Derek's not alone in this.
The rest of the day is taken up by the production crew going over their scheduling plans with him, making sure he'll be available for their planned activities, while the guys shoot reactions on his lonely couch across the loft. He shouldn’t be able to hear them from where he is in the kitchen, but they don’t know about wolf hearing. After n while he stops even trying to pretend he's not eavesdropping. It'll be on TV, after all; he'll hear it sooner or later.
“When we first got here,his neighborhood made us think he might be a serial killer, but a very attractive one, going by the pictures.” He listens as Jonathan explains. “After we came inside, that was still pretty much our impression, but he is somehow even hotter in person, so we decided we can live with possible murder.”
“His place is interesting. It’s a big space, nice open concept. Very… bare. Also, that part of the brick doesn’t match the rest because apparently there was a hole in it? In the entire wall?” Bobby follows up. “And the rest of the building seems to be empty, which does not help convince me he's not illegally squatting in his own building.”
“There is no food in his kitchen,” Antoni explains to the camera, “just takeout menus. I’m not sure how he hasn't died of scurvy, much less how he can keep all the muscle.”
“He has no stable job because he received enough insurance money to never work in his life, but he also doesn’t live like someone who has money. He has no hobbies or reasons to go out. His family lives far away from here. He shuts down his friends but keeps track of them. A lot of his belongings are still in boxes stacked in an empty room. From what I can tell, his daily routine is doing pull-ups in his bare, abandoned apartment building, surveilling his friends from a distance, and staring at the walls,” Tan adds, just for Karamo to conclude for him:
“From what Scott told us, Derek was raised in a big family that he lost too soon, and his first attempt back in Beacon Hills didn’t go that well. So he just pulled himself away from the world. What we want is to help him reconnect with this community and his friends, show him he can have it without any big tragedy happening again.”
The next morning Antoni picks him up and drives him to a farmers' market on the outskirts of town that Derek had no idea existed. They stroll slowly through it while Antoni makes him taste things.
“So what we want to do, Derek, is get an idea of what you like, and get you eating healthier. There is more to life than pizza and Chinese food. Did you used to cook growing up?”
“We all used to help. And when we moved to New York, I had to feed myself and my sister a lot. Laura sucked at cooking, so it was mostly my job.”
“We were thinking you could throw a dinner party for your friends at the end of the week, invite them into your space. Is that something you think you could do? Cook a meal for other people?”
Derek nods, not sure how to articulate the difference between cooking for himself and for others, how much nicer doing it for a lot of people is. But Antoni smiles at him, clearly understanding what he can’t say.
“Cooking can be a very communal experience, about sharing and nurturing those you care about. It's always my favorite part too. Now we just need a recipe. Here, try this.” Antoni holds up a piece of pineapple on a stick.
Derek bends down to bite directly into it without thinking, and that's when he sees Lydia, with a devilish smile on her face, waving at him from across the market. Jackson, looking shady and carrying her shopping bag, is behind her.
After that, all his activities for the show seem to involve increasingly suspicious encounters. He's not sure if the production is coordinating with Scott or if the McCall pack is just that good at being nosy, but there's always someone wherever he goes.
Tan takes him out to buy clothes—tailored pants and button downs, helping him dress in a style Tan calls “neutral but grown up”—and Malia just happens to work at the same store, handing pins down to Tan with a smile as he fixes the fit of the pants and explains the wonders of tailoring for those with large butts.
Jonathan shows him how to take care of his hair and skin properly, trims his beard, and then takes him for a mani-pedi to show him it's okay to pamper himself. And there is Lydia again, getting her nails painted blood red and taking a picture of Derek's face covered in green goo. She has Liam in town this time; Liam waves, completely unbothered by any of it, and asks Jonathan if he can try the face cream.
He keeps seeing the pack around, going to the same stores, the same restaurants, until it becomes a running joke and the guys start trying to guess who he knows at each location, although they just always pick the “unfairly attractive ones” out of a crowd.
The final day is the one he's most anxious about. Karamo picks him up early and drives him all the way out of town, to the land Derek owns. It's close to where the old Hale house used to be, an empty open space where the show has built what looks like a obstacle course for survival training, all ropes and tires and what looks like a lot of mud.
He hasn’t been here in while, not outside of the full moon. The fresh air feels good and clear, making him feel more alive than he has in months. He's not sure what Karamo is planning; the other guys are also there, but it's clearly Karamo's show to run.
Derek eyes the course, mentally calculating how slow he'll need to go to be believable, but when he turns to Karamo, he is smirking at Derek.
“So, Derek, Scott told us when you first moved back to town you used to help him and others train. And since the rest of the guys have told me you've been accidentally reconnecting with your friends all week, I thought this could be a good chance to reconnect with the community.”
And that's when Derek spots the school bus.
Karamo explains, very earnestly, how helping others going through similar issues saved his life, and how being a social worker gave him perspective and made him a better person. And how giving back like this will help take Derek out of his own head. Derek isn't completely sure how that translates to him teaching twenty high schoolers with behaviour issues how to get through the course, but he has learned to just go with the Queer Eye guys' ideas by now.
He's not even surprised Scott is the one in charge of the kids, since he does teach at the local high school and has a soft spot for the kids who keep getting in trouble. The fact that Stiles is with him is slightly more surprising.
Stiles walks over to him while Scott rounds up the kids. He's the one person Derek hasn't seen around during the week; he was starting to suspect he wasn’t in town after all.
“What are you doing here?” Derek asks, missing nonchalant by a couple miles.
“Chaperone,” Stiles deadpans back at him, cracking up laughing once he sees Derek's face. “Don’t act so surprised, I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to see you wrangle teenagers you can’t threaten with death or ripping their throats out with your teeth. You're gonna have to use nice words, sourwolf.”
Stiles' eyes are shining with mirth and his face is as expressive as always. Derek catches himself smiling at him, their past looking less traumatic when Stiles can mention it so casually. Stiles winks at him and walks away to join the Queer Eye cast. Derek feels like someone is squeezing his chest from the inside out.
The way the circuit is set up, Derek realizes, it has to be a team effort to get through. There are climbing ropes and high walls. It will be all about teaching those kids to rely on each other and work together. Karamo hand him a whistle.
“Your show now.” He takes a step back and joins the others messing around in the background.
It's a ridiculous setup, and probably great television. Not at all subtle about the lesson it's supposed to teach. But looking around at the surly teenagers, Derek can’t avoid smiling.
After they’re done recording, Derek completes a last lap on the circuit, slowly checking all the equipment and ropes, making sure nothing got messed up during the day. It was a fun day, messy and chaotic, but the kids went from blasé to competitive pretty fast, and by the end of the day they actually bonded, chattering happily between themselves. Derek was feeling good about having helped them all enjoy themselves for a little while.
When he’s done almost all the cars have cleared out. Only Stiles' old Jeep still sits in the makeshift parking lot, its owner perched on the hood watching him.
“Wanna give it a go? Think you can beat the kids' time?” Derek asks, walking over to him.
Stiles looks down at himself and raises an eyebrow. His clothes are neat and clean. Derek feels incredibly envious of it, sweating through his T-shirt and half covered in mud.
“I think I'll give it a pass. Besides, I haven’t seen you do it properly either.”
“You saw me do laps for the show. Under five minutes and all. Don’t use me to justify how you've become lazy.”
Stiles rolls his eyes at him and Derek feels like they've gone back in time, like the person standing in front of him is the awkward teenager he met all those years ago.
“I saw you holding back to not clue everyone in to the whole superpowers thing. Taking a leisurely walk, by wolf standards.”
Derek could leave it at this. Stiles is only teasing him to avoid doing the course himself. But something inside him, something that sounds suspiciously like all the cajoling the Queer Eye guys did about allowing himself to be happy, makes him stop.
Maintaining such careful control for the cameras was frustrating. He wants to see how far he can push himself, how fast he can go. His wolf wants the exercise. And, if he lets himself admit it, he wants to show off. The way Stiles openly stared at Karamo and Antoni when they tried the course sat uncomfortably with him.
He takes a step back and shrugs off his shirt, smirking at Stiles' surprised face before throwing the shirt at him and turning to the course.
“Time it for me, would you?” he adds carelessly over his shoulder, walking back to the starting line and hearing loud and clear in his head the way Jonathan would have added a “Yasss, queen” in the background if he could see him right now.
The moment Stiles signals him to start, he's off, jumping over obstacles and ignoring the handholds and steps he had to use on the recorded version, all the while counting the time in his head. When he hits the end he's slightly out of breath and absolutely sure it didn’t take him more than a minute to finish.
When he gets back, Stiles is staring at him, at his chest, mouth hanging slightly open and eyes glazed over. Derek feels a lot like the cocky asshole he was when he first came back to town, secretly delighted by teenage Stiles' very obvious lustand demanding his attention at all times.
Derek scratches his chest hair and smiles when Stiles snaps his eyes up to Derek's face, blushing at being caught ogling.
“How did I do?” he asks in a amused voice, just to see Stiles roll his eyes again and throw his shirt back at him, aiming for his face.
“Shut up. Show off!” Stiles push off the car hood, still smiling. “And get in the car. Bobby asked me to drive you home.”
Derek follows him inside the Jeep, much more satisfied now for reasons he's choosing to not look too closely at.
They drive back, the silence comfortable between them. Derek slowly comes down from the rush, both of the physical activity and of getting a reaction from Stiles.
When they stop at his street, Derek doesn’t want to leave. He wants to invite Stiles in, even though he doesn’t know what his place looks like right now, or maybe take him out for a meal somewhere nice. It feels both like a new feeling and like something that has always been there between them.
“So…?” Stiles asks, smiling.
“You wanna come up?” Derek blurts out, hurried, and feels his face heating.
“Um. I mean, you still have company?” Stiles points to the big TV van on his driveway.
“Oh.”
“Another time, maybe?” Stiles touches his arm, still smiling at him.
“Yes! Soon! I'm going to cook dinner for everyone!” Derek realises what he just said and backtracks. “I mean, I'll also cook dinner just for you. It doesn’t have to be everyone. I can cook more than once!”
Stiles bursts out laughing.
“It's a date,” Stiles answers, amused. “You'll be cooking multiple times.”
Derek nods and runs away from the car before he can do anything stupid. He tries to be dignified about it, but he can still hear Stiles laughing all the way to the front gate.
Bobby is waiting for him upstairs. It’s their last time together, and time for Derek to be allowed back into his own place.
“Ready for this?” Bobby asks with one hand on the door.
“Is anyone ever?” is all Derek manages to say before Bobby slides the door open and Derek goes a little speechless with the change.
The grime and darkness are gone. The apartment is now open and airy, the exposed brick and beams looking like an actual feature and not an unfinished renovation. Bobby guides him through the space, the other guys hanging back while he explains what he's done.
“So I tried to keep the character of the building. You've hung on to it for so long—it clearly appeals to you. We recovered the original floor and brick, painted the exposed beams a nice dark tone for contrast, and I got you some actual furniture. Your bed lives upstairs now, where there's an actual bedroom, not in the middle of the open space.”
Derek stares flabbergasted at his brand new couches and television, at the sturdy dining table and chairs, at the nice desk and shelves close to the big window. It looks like a completely different place.
“And that is the best part,” Karamo says, turning him around.
Bobby hasn't actually fixed the mismatched brick from his botched repair, but painted it a soft color that makes it look like it was designed that way. Attached to it are two long shelves, with two dozen portrait frames. Karamo guides him closer to look at them. Some of the ones on the lower shelf are empty, but the top shelf is full of pictures of him, some of which he's never seen before. There are a couple of him and Laura in New York, one of him reclining against his old Camaro in a leather jacket, and several of his family from before the fire.
“We reached out to your friends and those who knew your family before, asked them to send us whatever pictures they had,” Karamo explains.
Derek can’t look away from the pictures. His eyes flit around, spotting his mom holding a baby, all his siblings at the dinner table, a teenage Laura hanging onto his back and pulling a face. It’s mesmerizing.
“The past is important. It made you who you are, made you strong and resilient, and showed you how you can survive anything. But it shouldn’t be a prison. You are allowed to build a future. You're not betraying them or yourself by letting other people in. That's why we left a few empty ones. You can fill them as you go, make new memories. You get to choose what will go in them.”
And that is how Derek Hale ends up crying on national TV.