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Stiles finds the box before Scott does.
It’s lucky, really. He just happened to turn right while Scott turned left, and there it was. A small cardboard box, full of tapes, with an old video recorder sitting beside it. On the side of the box, in black marker, read the words: “Home Videos”. The handwriting was loopy and faded.
The box was caked in ash.
Now that he thinks about it, Stiles and Scott didn’t actually find what they were looking for— or, who, more accurately. Stiles was under the impression that it was impossible to find Derek Hale when he didn’t want to be found. The guy hadn’t been seen by, like, anyone in the past week. It made Stiles’ danger sense tingle, and it made Scott antsy, because everything werewolf related made Scott antsy. Stiles figured something bad had happened, and Derek was out licking his wounds somewhere. Scott kept saying, “What if he’s dead?” which was not helping the situation at all.
All worries about Derek Hale fly straight out the window when Stiles spots the box, though.
When he showed it to Scott, his best friend got a funny look on his face. He had been very careful to not touch anything in the Hale house the entire time they had been searching. Stiles, on the other hand… well, Stiles determinedly marched out of the Hale house with the box and the camera in tow before Scott could protest— and Scott most definitely protested.
“That’s stealing, Stiles!”
“We’re borrowing it!” Stiles opens the Jeep door and slides the box inside. “We can give it back eventually.”
“We are not doing anything.” Stiles turns around and finds Scott with his arms crossed, still standing on the front step of the Hale house (or, what’s left of it). “You should put it back before Derek notices it’s gone.”
“He’s not even here!” Stiles gestures wildly at the house. “Empty, remember? He’s probably off stalking someone or something.”
Scott frowns, obviously not too happy to remember Derek’s unwanted visits to his house in the middle of the night. “Still, dude. It seems a little…”
“A little what?” Stiles raises an eyebrow. “Derek certainly wouldn’t hesitate to take something from me. Plus, like, imagine what we could learn from these.”
Scott’s frown lessens slightly. It’s the small victories. “Like what?”
“Scott, buddy.” Stiles leans on the side of the Jeep and fixes him with a grin. “It’s labeled home videos. We found it in a house that belonged to werewolves. A whole pack. Who knows what kind of inside info we could get outta this?”
Scott tilts his head, still looking conflicted. “But… it’s Derek’s.”
“Exactly,” Stiles insists.
Scott sighs and gives in, because he’s cool like that. Stiles pumps his fist in triumph and gets in the goddamn car.
They take the tapes back to Stiles’ house, and Stiles wastes no time cracking those bad boys open. Scott is hesitant, trailing after him with an air of indecision, but Stiles knows he’s been convinced. The allure of werewolf lore is too tempting for the both of them.
They don’t have a cable to plug the camera into his laptop, so they sit shoulder to shoulder on the floor against Stiles’ bed with the camera between them. He wipes down the tape with the earliest date and pops the camera open.
“Huh.”
“What?” Scott cranes his neck to see over Stiles’ fingers.
“There’s already a tape in it.”
Stiles doesn’t recognize the date on the side of the tape as anything important, some random day in November. Shrugging, he closes the camera and turns it on. It still had charge from whenever it was used last, but only a little.
“Stiles,” Scott says, but Stiles shushes him, and presses play.
Immediately, voices blare out of the tinny little speakers. The image is blurry at first, like the camera was being waved around, and then it clears up. Filling most of the frame is a table with about a hundred kids around it, all crowding a scrawny boy with jet black hair and a ten thousand watt smile.
Derek, Stiles thinks, although he’s barely recognizable. How could that be Derek Hale?
Someone slides a cake onto the table, and Derek’s face shines impossibly brighter. Briefly, his eyes flash like two twinkling lights, but the camera shakes again and it’s gone. The seven mismatched candles on the cake are lit now. The mass of voices condenses, and suddenly Stiles realizes they’re singing happy birthday.
“Happy biiiiirthdaaay, dear Derrrrrr-beaarrr,” crows the person behind the camera, and Derek tips his head back and laughs, laughs like it’s the funniest thing in the world. His ears are flushed with color.
One of the kids next to him, a tall girl with hair down to her waist and a sharp nose, says something inaudible. He swats at her, shuffles forward in his seat, and blows out all the candles in one go, cheeks puffed. A woman comes up behind him and lifts the cake off the table again.
The tape stalls.
Stiles stares into the tiny camera screen. Derek’s young, happy face is pointed upward, toward the woman with the cake. Stiles is struck by how similar the two look. She’s smiling down at Derek with the same flash of teeth and shape of mouth.
“That’s his mom,” Stiles says breathlessly.
Scott is quiet. Stiles taps the camera gently with the heel of his palm. The video unfreezes again, and they watch as the scene changes to Derek eating cake, Derek ripping wrapping paper off of books, CDs, clothes, a stuffed rabbit, Derek covering his ears as the tall girl from before pops a balloon with a single sharp claw, Derek hugging a tall, dark haired man with all his seven-year-old might, Derek sleeping in a pile of limbs with what must be all of his siblings and cousins.
When the tape finally stutters to a stop, it’s been over an hour.
Stiles looks up from the tiny screen and finds Scott looking uncomfortable.
“I really don’t think we should be watching these, dude.”
Stiles lets out a hard breath of air. He’s barely processing what he just watched. “Yeah. Yeah, I… you’re probably right.”
Scott gives a tight nod, then, “What time is it, by the way?”
Stiles checks his watch. “Like, 5:30-ish.”
Scott’s eyebrows fly into his hairline. He scrambles to his feet with a surprising lack of grace for a werewolf. “I gotta go, man! I needed to take dinner out of the freezer, like, thirty minutes ago!”
Stiles snorts. “You have fun with that, Scotty.”
Scott skids out of the bedroom, then peers back around the corner.
“What?”
“Don’t watch those tapes, Stiles,” Scott says gravely.
“I wasn’t gonna!”
Scott glares at him for a split second, then beams. “Good. See you, dude!”
Stiles rolls his eyes as Scott thunders down the stairs. His own dinner was going to be pizza rolls and whatever veggies were left in the fridge, since his dad wouldn’t be home until late tonight. For a moment, he considers going to the kitchen, making dinner, and watching TV the rest of the night.
Then he looks down at the box of tapes, and sort of forgets about the entire rest of the world for a while.
Derek is older in the second tape he watches, but not by much. He appears only a few times in the hour and a half of footage. Stiles skips around a lot, looking for him, trying to find a familiar face in a sea of unknown people. It’s at a lake, and all the kids are splashing around in the water. Now and again, one of them shows their claws or a bit of teeth— once, Stiles is caught off guard by an entire wolf that lumbers into the water and lets some of the smallest kids cling to its fur. It isn’t there for long, though.
If he didn’t know the truth about werewolves, Stiles might have thought it was a big dog.
The third tape sets the scene back at the Hale house. It’s the back porch, Stiles thinks, just because it doesn’t look like the front, and the back of the Hale house is currently completely destroyed. Derek’s mom is sprawled in a lattice chair, playing the guitar. The tall girl is sitting at her feet, watching.
Stiles thinks that might be Laura.
She looks different alive.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth tape are all very old. Derek and Laura have to be only three and five respectively. Their mom (whose name is Talia, apparently) and the dark haired man (who Stiles is pretty sure is Derek’s dad) are constantly cradling a newborn baby. These videos are very obviously focused on her— Cora. Stiles sees a baby shower, a room with animals painted on the walls, and smiling faces all around. Aunts and uncles keep making appearances to dote. Derek, Laura, and their cousins crowd around a baby cradle.
Derek looks at Cora like she’s the entire world.
Subsequent tapes show Cora at varying ages, but always with Derek. Stiles rewatches the very first tape and finds that Cora is the little girl in the chair next to Derek. She clings to him, and he, no matter how old he gets, clings back. There’s several tapes in which they’re curled up together on a couch or armchair, fast asleep. Stiles even finds footage of Cora’s birthday, and Derek is right beside her, holding a cousin back from blowing out the candles.
In every moment, he’s smiling that thousand watt smile.
Somehow, it’s hard to imagine that Derek could have ever been that happy.
When Stiles’ dad finally comes home, Stiles has migrated from the floor to his bed, and is still watching the tapes. He turns down the volume and listens as the sheriff climbs the stairs and pauses at his door. As usual, his dad stands there for a few minutes before moving down the hallway to bed.
Stiles looks back at the camera screen and finds that it has frozen again, this time as the camera is being passed between people.
It’s then that he sees Peter.
Stiles lets out a shaky little breath at the sight of the man who had tormented all of them for the past couple of months. That was the man who had bitten Scott. That was the man who had murdered Laura Hale.
That was the man that Derek had killed with his own bare hands.
And he had been behind the camera the entire time. Filming vacations, cozy days, family reunions, birthdays. He had called Derek ‘Der-bear’. He had dated all these tapes. He had written the loopy ‘Home Videos’ on the side of the box.
The camera unfreezes. Someone is singing. Stiles turns up the volume. Peter zooms in.
Derek is curled in his mom’s arms, face blotchy and eyes wet. He has dirt smeared along his right cheek, like he’d fallen in a mud puddle. His mom is singing to him, softly, gently, and rocking him in her arms. He has to be nine or ten years old, too old to be rocked like a baby.
It’s so delicate that Stiles can’t help but trace a finger across the screen as if to wipe away Derek’s tears.
“He’s such a baby.”
Stiles jumps at the loud voice. It takes him a second to realize it’s coming from behind the camera.
“Shush, Laura.”
That’s Peter. Stiles knows it.
“What? He’s crying!”
“It’s Derek, kid. You gotta be nice to him.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Sure you didn’t.” The camera shakes a little as Peter laughs. “Only pushed him.”
“Not my fault he’s being a baby.”
“Shush. He’s got a soft heart, we can’t blame him.”
“He’s got a soft everything.”
Peter laughs again, hard, and then the video cuts to Laura showing off a cartwheel in the front yard of the Hale house. The camera jostles, and now Peter is in frame, jogging towards her. He looks back and says, “Good, Derek?”
“Yeah, good!” It comes from right behind the camera again. Derek is filming. His voice is high and slightly shaky. Stiles doesn’t know why, but all of a sudden this feels different.
Derek held the camera like this, once. Maybe more than once. Maybe if Stiles looked long enough, he’d find another video taken with Derek’s own two hands— before everything changed. Before…
The battery icon in the corner of the screen blinks once, twice, and then the camera dies.
Stiles lays there in the dark for a few minutes before he places the camera gently on his bedside table, rolls over, and tries to go to sleep.
When he closes his eyes, he finds that Derek’s smile is seared onto the back of his eyelids. When he dreams, he dreams of a big house full of kids and running in the woods and birthdays where everyone gets what they want.
In the morning, Stiles knows that he’s gone too far. He puts all the tapes back in the box, delicately closes the camera, and drives it all back to the Hale house. Thank god it’s a weekend. Stiles feels weird as he pulls up the bumpy dirt road and the house comes into view. Now that he’s seen it… whole, it looks wrong, all burnt and broken down. Stiles suddenly notices that pretty much every window on the front side of the house is smashed.
It makes him feel ill.
He parks the Jeep and climbs out, and only then does he see the Camaro. It’s parked in a strange spot, tucked half behind the house, between two trees. Stiles wouldn’t have noticed it at all if it was any darker outside— or if he wasn’t actively afraid of Derek being home.
(Home was a shit word for it. This wasn’t a home. It only used to be.)
But here he was, box in his hands, Jeep already locked behind him, a whole night of watching the Hale family be very much real people on a tiny camera screen in the back of his mind.
Fuck it.
Stiles walks carefully up the front steps and tries the door. It’s unlocked, naturally. Stiles is pretty sure the lock melted in on itself during the fire. He closes his eyes at the thought, sees Derek and Laura wrestling in his mind, and opens the goddamn door.
It’s deserted.
Stiles doesn’t see Derek. Doesn’t even hear him. It’s as silent as the grave. Stiles might have laughed at that twenty four hours ago. Not anymore.
He steps all the way inside and lets the door shut behind him with a click. Maybe he can just put the box back where he found it.
When he turns right, though, he finds out he absolutely cannot do that.
The room has been destroyed— well, it was destroyed before. It looks like a fight had happened in the ash and dust of it all, now. All the furniture has been flipped. There’s blood on the wall that Stiles is sure wasn’t there yesterday. The layer of dirt on the floor is scuffed.
“Fuck,” Stiles says, and that’s when he hears it.
The lightest, smallest sound. A movement. From upstairs.
Stiles spins on his heel and heads straight up. If Scott were here, he’d lose his mind. Reprimand Stiles for jumping into danger. But Stiles knew that if there was something in here that was going to kill him, it probably would have done it while Stiles’ back was turned. No, there wasn’t anything dangerous in here.
But there was something hurt. And Stiles was pretty sure he knew who it was.
“Derek?” he calls out when he gets to the top of the stairs. There’s no more sound— but Stiles sees a sliver of light seeping out from under one of the doors down the hall. When he gets to it, he sees that there’s a picture carved into the wood— a wolf curled at the base of a giant tree, its branches stretching up to the top of the door.
He knows this door. Or, more accurately, he saw this door in one of the tapes.
“Derek?”
Ever so gently, Stiles pushes the door open to Derek’s childhood bedroom.
And there he is. He’s sitting on the edge of a dirty, mostly bare mattress, half poised to stand. The room is mostly clean. There’s a pile of folded clothes and a half empty duffle bag on the floor. Derek himself isn’t wearing his signature leather jacket; it’s crumpled on the mattress beside him. He’s in a tank top and jeans. His eyes are wide and deep green. He’s holding a stuffed rabbit tightly in his hands.
He doesn’t look injured.
Because he’s a werewolf, dummy, Stiles has time to think before Derek stands abruptly, eyes still fixed on him. He not-so-subtly hides the rabbit behind his back.
“You,” is all he says.
“Me,” Stiles says back, stupidly. He becomes aware of the box in his arms again. “Uh, this is yours. I— I brought it back.”
Derek stares at the box, then back at Stiles. Stiles cannot read his expression for the life of him.
“You took it?”
Stiles sucks a sharp breath in through his nose. “Yeah. I…”
Derek just stares.
“I’m sorry, Derek.” And he doesn’t just mean for stealing the tapes and the camera. He saw what Derek had. What he’d lost. He feels like he’s looked straight into Derek’s soul, and witnessed the person he used to be. He feels sick to think of the pain Derek must be in right now, must always be in.
He feels like he’s going to cry, right here, in front of Derek Hale, because he knows exactly what it feels like, and he has no idea how to put that into words.
Derek doesn’t break eye contact as he steps closer. For a split second Stiles thinks he’s about to die, that Derek is going to kill him right here, but all Derek does is take the box from Stiles’ arms with a delicacy Stiles didn’t know he was capable of.
Or maybe he did. Stiles isn’t really sure what he knows about Derek Hale anymore.
He’s got a soft heart, Peter had said.
Derek isn’t staring at him anymore. He’s looking down into the box with a mix of reverence and grief. Stiles is aware of that much. Stiles is also aware that he should go, because he’s quite sure Derek does not want him here.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, and leaves.
He lets the door shut behind him before he scrambles down the stairs and out of the burnt shell of a house. He’s got the Jeep started in record time and whipping out of the yard before he can register the burn of tears on his face.
When Stiles lost his mom, he was sure that he was going to die, too.
The pain was too much. He could feel it in his chest, and at ten years old, he thought it would kill him. It hurt. It hurt so bad he barely spoke for weeks. It still hurts.
Derek had lost his whole family. His mom. His dad. His sisters and his cousins and his aunts and his— fuck, he had to kill Peter. His own uncle.
Fuck, Stiles had gotten him arrested for Laura’s murder. His own sister.
Stiles parks the Jeep in his driveway, lays his head on the steering wheel, and cries. Cries until he’s sure he can't cry any longer. Cries until his mouth burns with thirst. Then he climbs out of the car and trudges inside.
His dad is leaning against the kitchen counter, still in his uniform. He looks up as Stiles enters, and, seeing Stiles’ red face, asks, “Stiles? What’s wrong?”
Stiles promptly bursts into tears again.
“Stiles!” His dad has his arms around Stiles in two seconds flat, holding him close. Stiles only cries harder. Derek didn’t have anybody to hug like this. They were all—
“Dead,” he heaves out, unable to contain it. “They’re all dead, they’re all dead, they’re—”
“Stiles, what— Stiles. Stiles.” His dad has him by the shoulders. He wipes away Stiles’ tears with his thumbs. “Stiles. Mieczysław. Tell me what happened. Tell me what’s going on.”
Stiles takes a deep breath, stutters, lets out, “The Hales.”
His dad’s brow furrows in confusion. “What?”
Stiles takes another breath, wipes his running nose. “Derek Hale’s whole family is dead, Dad. They’re all— they’re gone.”
There’s a long moment where nothing happens and neither of them say anything and tears just keep rolling down Stiles’ face like they’re never going to stop.
Then his dad tugs him in for another hug and says, “Okay. Let’s talk about it, huh?”
Stiles clutches to the back of his dad’s jacket and rests his head on his shoulder. “It’s awful, that’s all. It’s— it’s awful.”
He can’t think of what else to say, can’t come up with a lie about why he cares, can’t admit that he knows Derek, either. He just cries, and lets his dad hold him, even though it just keeps reminding him that Derek will never get to have this again.
The thought rips another bout of tears from him, and, heaving, Stiles manages to say, “I miss mom.”
His dad lets out a soft, “oh,” and hugs him tighter. All-encompassing. Stiles sniffles and sobs and sighs heavily when he feels a hand in his hair, rubbing over his scalp. A wave of exhaustion hits him, both from the emotion of it all and the long night spent wide awake, bent over that little old camera.
They end up on the couch at some point, with a movie on. Stiles is tucked into his dad’s side, tired and aching. The gentle beat of his heart against Stiles’ ear reminds him of a time when they’d sit like this every night. When Stiles couldn’t fall asleep on his own without nightmares. He’s pretty sure his dad had to call out of work but can’t find it in himself to feel guilty. He wants to stay like this forever and ever and never think about the Hales again.
Except… he can’t. He can’t unsee everything that he saw. He can’t erase the image of Derek with that box, looking into it like it was all he had left. It probably was.
Had the mess on the first floor really been a fight? Or had Derek panicked when he couldn’t find the tapes Stiles had stolen? Had he torn apart the room, looking for the box? Had he cut his palms flipping over furniture or broke his knuckles punching the wall? Had he cried, like Stiles had cried, until his head was pounding and his throat was aching and his lungs couldn’t handle it anymore? Would anyone have heard him, alone in that giant house? Stiles thinks about it all and aches, hurts to his bones and back.
God, the room he was living in was gut-wrenching, too. He had nothing left. What all had been there? Stiles tries to remember. Clothes. A mattress. What else? Nothing?
The rabbit.
Stiles clings to his dad at the thought. The sheriff clings back, lets him pull himself closer, holds him like he’s a little kid again.
The rabbit. Where had Stiles seen that before? Where—
November seventh. Derek’s seventh birthday. Peter, behind the camera, calling him Der-bear. Talia smiling like the sun. Laura and Cora, on either side of Derek. Balloons and cake and presents, and one of them had been a stuffed rabbit with floppy ears and button eyes.
Stiles cries himself to sleep right there on the couch, wrapped in his dad’s arms, thinking of the way Derek had hidden that rabbit behind his back.
The next day, he doesn’t get up until well past noon.
“Are you high?” Scott asks him when they meet up to play video games. Scott’s idea. Stiles wanted to stay in bed all day and maybe cry some more.
“What?” Stiles asks, and sniffles. His nose is thoroughly plugged.
Scott raises his eyebrows. “Your eyes are bright red. Are you sick?”
Stiles shrugs. He doesn’t want to tell Scott what happened, but he doesn’t want to lie. “Kinda.”
Scott pouts. “I’m sorry, man. Wanna play Mario Kart?”
“You’re just trying to make me feel better,” Stiles accuses him, because he always beats Scott in Mario Kart, but Scott only smiles and boots up the game.
Halfway through their fifth track, Scott gives him a weird look.
Stiles doesn’t look away from the screen, but he can see it out of the corner of his eye. “What? Why’re you looking at me like that?”
His voice is slightly wrecked and he has to sniffle again to get the snot back into his nose. He’s been trying desperately to get his mind off of Derek ever since he rolled out of bed this morning, and he’s hoping Scott isn’t about to break the spell of calm.
“Nothing, nothing.”
Half a minute goes by.
“What did you end up doing with those tapes?”
Stiles closes his eyes and lets his kart fly directly off the map.
“I mean, do you still have them?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I returned them,” Stiles explains. “I gave them back.”
“Oh, okay.” Scott smiles, then suddenly frowns. “Did Derek notice they were gone?”
“Yeah,” Stiles says simply.
Scott’s eyes go wide. “Shit, dude. What’re we gonna do?”
“Nothing.” Stiles sighs. “I handed them back to him, like, face-to-face. I apologized. It’s fine.”
Scott’s jaw is practically on the floor. “What?”
Stiles throws his hands up and nearly hits himself in the face with his controller. “Look, man, I don’t know how else to say it. I just… gave them back.”
“And Derek Hale was fine with that?”
Derek Hale has a lot more on his mind than a couple of stupid teenagers, Stiles thinks. What he really says is, “Yeah. It’s fine, Scott. Don’t sweat it.”
“Huh.” Stiles can practically hear the wheels turning in Scott’s head, but he has nothing more to say on the matter, so Stiles maneuvers his kart over the finish line and lets his thoughts wander as he hits play on the next race.
He was very certain he needed to talk to Derek. He had woken up with that thought in his mind and hadn’t been able to shake it all day. He needed to. About what specifically, he wasn’t sure. He just couldn’t stand the thought that Derek was keeping all of that bottled up on the inside.
After all, when Stiles lost his mom, he still had his dad. He had Scott, too.
Derek had nobody.
And Stiles, by some miracle, seemed to be the only person who knew. Who understood.
He had to talk to Derek.
Naturally, that meant he went walking in the woods. Of course.
It’s one of those weirdly chilly afternoons with none of the mosquitoes and all of the creepy wind noises. Stiles takes a flashlight, his phone, and his old pocket knife that he hasn’t touched since middle school. Hopefully he won’t need it— really, hopefully he won’t find anything at all and he can just go home and pretend like he had never walked halfway through the Beacon Hills Preserve for the sake of talking about feelings.
But Derek’s car had been parked outside the preserve, and Stiles was not about to give up on finding him, especially after he spent a whole hour driving around, trying to get a glimpse of the Camaro.
He should have guessed he’d end up in the woods. That’s the way it was with werewolves.
He still hasn’t figured out what he’s going to say to Derek when he finds him, but he figures it’ll come to him at some point. He wants to tell Derek about his mom, though he isn’t sure why. There’s just this… connection there. It’s the same feeling he got when he watched the video that Derek filmed. They’d been in the same position, even if the time didn’t overlap.
They’d been the same.
Stiles thinks that’s a good place to start.
“Hello?” he calls into the woods. He’s about to laugh about how often he’s done this in the past few months when he’s answered by a resounding crash a couple hundred feet away. He scrambles towards it, despite his instincts, and finds himself almost falling into a creek.
Derek is pressed flat against a tree, like he’d slammed into it backing away from something. Stiles is almost 100 percent sure that’s actually what happened. He’s about to go help him up when he sees the deer.
It’s standing on the opposite side of the creek. It’s… unnaturally large. It hasn’t got any antlers but it’s intimidating nonetheless. Stiles feels a cold chill run down his spine.
There’s no way that’s actually a deer.
Its eyes are dark and endless. Stiles finds himself mesmerized for a moment— then Derek suddenly has him by the arm and is hauling him away from the creek.
“What’re you doing?” he hisses, and it sounds less like a question and more like an accusation.
Stiles looks at him with wide eyes. “What the hell is that thing?!”
“Don’t look directly at it,” Derek commands. His chest is working like he’s breathing hard, but Stiles can’t hear it. He’s more focused on the fact that Derek’s eyes are very, very red right now. “Listen to me.”
He shakes Stiles by the arm and Stiles nods aggressively, listening.
“Get out of here. Go back to your car. Go home.”
“No,” Stiles blurts out before he can stop himself. “No, I— I wanted to talk to you.”
Derek apparently has nothing to say to that. He looks a little dumbstruck.
“Look, we— I’m—” Stiles tries to work out what he wants to say for a solid ten seconds before he deflates, defeated. “Why can’t you ever be someplace normal?”
Derek blinks once, slowly. “Listen.”
“Derek—”
“Go—”
He stops short, takes a sharp breath, and collapses.
“Shit!” Stiles drops down next to him and rolls him over. “Shit, fuck! Derek!”
Derek does not respond. He has mud on his face from landing face-down. Stiles looks around wildly, trying to spot what could have made him collapse— and sees the deer.
Except it isn’t a deer anymore. Not all the way. Its face has warped. It has a giant maw and sharp teeth and glittering eyes and it shimmers, slightly, and Stiles just knows that it’s the deer’s fault that Derek has gone unconscious. He whips the pocket knife out of his pocket and points it right at the deer and—
He isn’t exactly expecting anything to happen, so he screams when the deer vanishes. Just vanishes, poof, into thin air. The scream seems to wake Derek, which is good, but he only groans and grasps at Stiles’ sleeve, which is bad. If Derek is reaching out to Stiles for help, then that means everything has already gone to shit.
“Fuck,” Stiles says again. Derek groans in pain. “Okay, Derek, okay, what do I do?”
Derek is panting. Derek is not responding. Derek is—
“Don’t do that!” Stiles lunges forward and stops Derek from clawing his own neck apart. His face is sheet white and sweaty, but his eyes are wide open. He works his jaw, pants some more, and whines.
It’s a broken, hurt sound. Stiles’s gaze snaps to Derek’s face, and Derek is looking back with wide, watery eyes. He looks younger, so much younger, than he did a few days ago. As Stiles watches, Derek shudders with pain again and— his left eye is watering. As Stiles watches, a single tear slides down Derek’s face, cutting a line through the smear of dirt on his cheek.
Soft heart, Stiles thinks, hearing Talia Hale’s soothing song in the back of his mind.
He isn’t sure if Derek is really crying, but the single tear makes Stiles freeze nonetheless. It makes him wonder, suddenly, what Derek was doing in the woods all alone. Getting thrown around by something dangerous. Without anybody to help him.
“I, I’m gonna call someone,” he stutters out, digging in his pocket for his phone, unable to stay still and watch. A whole array of things come out with it, distracting, and suddenly Derek is heaving himself forward, reaching for the pocket knife.
He gets it open and within an inch of his throat before Stiles can stop him.
He wraps both hands around Derek’s wrist and yanks it back. Even while shaky, sweaty, and altogether looking half-dead, Derek still manages to keep his grip on the knife. His wide, watering eyes look pleading but Stiles has no idea what for.
“I’m not gonna let you stab yourself,” he insists, managing to tear the knife from Derek’s hands— but Derek only grasps Stiles’ wrist in another death-grip. “I want to help, Derek, just tell me what to—”
Derek pulls the knife toward him again, completely ignoring that Stiles is now the one holding it. There’s sweat pouring down his face. He clearly won’t— or can’t speak. Stiles doesn’t know what else to fucking do except keep pulling the knife away, and yet even that doesn’t seem to do anything. Derek just drags Stiles closer, tip of the pocket knife pointed right at his throat.
“Fuck!” Stiles curses as the knife makes contact with his skin. He expects blood, expects the flesh splitting, expects anything other than what happens.
Where the tip of the knife touches Derek’s skin, a single, thin line shimmers into view. It’s like a spidersilk, wrapped tight around Derek’s neck. Derek guides the knife under it, then pulls outward.
It stretches, stretches out and then shatters into a thousand tiny pieces that fly through the air and slice through Stiles’ skin. They sting like a bitch, but Stiles barely registers it before Derek is drawing the pain away from where their hands touch.
“What the hell?” Stiles manages. “Derek— Derek, stop!”
He complies and leans back onto his elbows, looking up at Stiles.
He looks half-dead.
“What the hell just happened?” Stiles asks him, breathless.
Derek swallows audibly, then, finally, “The knife has iron in it.”
His voice is hoarse, like he’s been screaming for hours. Stiles jerks with surprise at the sound of it.
“The deer was… it was a fae. Fae hate iron.” Derek tips his head back. A bead of blood drips from his chin down his neck and into his shirt.
“Oh,” Stiles says, “yeah, that makes sense.”
Derek looks at him. Doesn’t stare. Looks. In the dark, his eyes still shine. Green, and deep, and Stiles misses someone he never knew.
“Thanks.”
Stiles eyebrows raise. He isn’t quite sure what’s going on, this quietness after a panic. “Oh, uh, you’re welcome.”
Derek lets out a breath that sounds a little like a laugh. “You gave it my name, though.”
“Huh?”
Derek sighs, sits up, and rubs the heel of his palm into his eye. He looks suddenly tired. “Fae only have power over you if you give them your name. You called me by my name.”
Stiles grimaces. “Shit, sorry. What did it do?”
Derek looks at him again. Another tear is sitting in his eye, unmoving. “I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
Derek sniffs, looks away, looks back again. “I mean it, though. Thank you.”
Stiles knows his ears have gone bright red, knows Derek can most definitely hear his heartbeat pick up, but he can’t find it in himself to care. He feels like he’s seeing through Derek. Like he’s seeing somebody that Derek has tried to hide, to cover up, somebody that died a long time ago.
There’s a redness to Derek’s face, too. Up by the corners of his eyes, high on his cheeks. It’s half hidden by the dirt and the blood and the tiny cuts that are fading fast.
But it’s there.
Stiles realizes they’ve just been staring at each other for a minute, and checks himself. “Are you gonna be okay? I mean, after…”
He gestures to Derek’s neck and winces. The thread is gone now, but Stiles can imagine what it might have felt like. Suffocating, probably.
“It’s fine.” Derek sniffs again. “It’s my fault, anyway.”
“Huh? How?”
Derek’s eyes narrow briefly. He studies Stiles like he’s looking for something. The furrow of his brow reminds Stiles of his look of focus as Talia taught him the guitar. He wonders if Derek still knows how to play.
Damn it, he needs to stop thinking like that. Like he knows Derek at all.
“I stepped in its nest,” Derek says, interrupting Stiles’ train of thought. “It got mad. That’s about it.”
“I didn’t know fae, like… existed.”
Derek huffs. “Me neither. I’ve never seen one before.”
It’s weird, almost, to hear Derek admit he doesn’t understand something. Stiles doesn’t know if he’s ever witnessed that before. Except, of course, in the tapes.
“And you’re sure you’re okay?” he asks, at the same time Derek asks, “Why are you out here, anyway?”
They blink at each other for a moment.
Stiles answers first, “To find you, duh.”
Derek only shifts, digs his fingers into the dirt. Stiles sees his claws go out and come back in again. “Why?”
“To… um. To talk to you, actually.”
“You said that.”
“I did,” Stiles says dumbly.
Derek tilts his head.
Stiles blinks at him.
“...Well?”
“If I’m going to be honest, I have no idea where to start.”
And suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, Derek is gone.
Or, well, he’s still physically there. But his expression closes, his shoulders raise, the corners of his mouth turn down. It’s like a mask overtakes his face.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, and holy shit.
That is a completely different person.
“What just happened?” Stiles asks, because he’s a dumbass, and he can’t keep his mouth shut.
Derek bares his teeth. Stiles’ eyes go wide.
“That’s— Derek—”
But Derek is getting to his feet with an expression that hurts. Stiles didn’t even know he was seeing what was underneath all that anger until it was gone.
“Bye, Stiles,” he says harshly, and Stiles is scrambling after him before he can think twice.
“Wait, Der, stop, I wasn’t trying to—”
A sound. He stops short.
Derek turns his eyes on him again. His mouth is slightly open. He looks…
Stiles doesn’t know. Doesn’t know anything.
“Don’t call me that,” Derek half whispers, and turns away again.
Stiles takes a second, a split second, really, to gather his bearings. Then, “Derek, I watched the—”
“Don’t!” Derek yells, and Stiles is shoved backward, almost tripping over his own feet. “Get away from me!”
“Derek,” Stiles starts, but he’s shoved back again. Derek is moving jerkily, like he’s not sure if he wants to fight Stiles or run away. He looks scared, under his bared teeth and booming voice and clawed hands. He looks terrified.
“You don’t know me,” he growls.
Stiles stands there for a second, watching Derek heave air into his lungs, and, when Derek makes no move to leave, he speaks.
“I watched the tapes.”
Derek’s nostrils flare. His jaw is trembling. Or maybe his whole body is trembling.
“I watched them,” Stiles continues, “and I want you to know that I’m sorry. I’m sorry that… that you lost them. It’s fucked up. I— you know that, though.”
It’s so deathly quiet when he stops talking, that he can’t help but keep going.
“I get it, you know? You… you probably don’t know, actually. It’s— my mom died when I was ten. She had dementia, frontotemporal dementia.” He pronounces it carefully, the same way he did at ten years old. “I was with her when she passed.”
Stiles isn’t exactly sure why he’s telling Derek this. He doesn’t like talking about his mom, especially how she died.
He doesn’t like to remember it.
“She was only thirty one.”
He rubs a hand across his face. Closes his eyes.
“I get it, okay? I just… I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to know you aren’t alone.”
There’s a long silence. Stiles wonders if Derek has walked away, but he doesn’t want to look. He feels very… very out in the open. More in danger now than with the fae. More in danger now than ever, really.
He doesn’t want to know what that means.
There’s a soft crunch of leaves in front of him. He opens his eyes, chin to his chest, and sees Derek’s shoes. For the first time, he notices that they’re completely falling apart.
He looks up, and finds Derek’s face only inches from his own. His green eyes are tracking across Stiles’ face, searching for something. There’s still dirt smeared across his cheek. Stiles longs to wipe it away.
“I’m sorry,” Stiles repeats, but Derek shakes his head.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “about your mom. That’s awful.”
His hands are clenching and unclenching at his sides. Stiles’ eyes flick to the movement, and then back. Movement, and back. Derek’s jaw trembles again.
“But it’s not the same. It was my fault that they… that they’re dead.”
Stiles has heard this a hundred times before. He’s heard it from his own mouth, from Scott’s, from Peter’s, but most of all from Derek’s.
So he says what’s been aching inside of him this whole time, since he watched that very first tape.
“If it’s your fault that they’re dead, then it’s my fault that my mom is dead, too.”
Derek recoils like he’s been slapped. He actually takes a step back, mouth slack with shock.
Stiles jabs a finger at his chest and, triumphantly, asks, “See how dumb that sounds?”
“I— what?”
“You’re crazy, Derek, you’re crazy if you think it’s your fault. I saw those tapes, I saw you, hell, I saw Peter! You would never have hurt a goddamn hair on their heads, and neither would he, if it weren’t for the fire.”
Derek takes another step back, so Stiles takes one forward.
“It isn’t your fault in the slightest. It’s Kate Argent’s fault, and you know it.”
Derek inhales sharply. That’s it. Just a deep breath in, and silence.
“She was a monster, Derek. You were a kid.”
Derek shakes his head minutely. His eyes are shining again.
“You were just a kid.”
This time, Stiles knows Derek is crying. The tears are streaking through the grime on his face. He’s trembling from head to toe. There’s blood dried on his chin. He makes a sound in his throat like a dying animal.
Stiles thinks he might be in love.
“Derek,” he says softly, “it wasn’t your fault.”
Derek shakes his head violently and Stiles can’t help but step forward, can’t help but try to swallow Derek up in a hug. He tugs him close and holds him to his chest like something precious. Derek is stiff in his arms, like he’s forgotten how to hug back. A sob rips out of his throat. Slowly, his arms come up around Stiles’ waist. He digs his chin into Stiles’ shoulder and says, “I miss my mom.”
Stiles closes his eyes and tells him, “I know.”
And he does.
Derek takes a heavy breath. And sort of… settles. His shoulders relax, he leans into Stiles, he just relaxes. Stiles wonders how long he’s been waiting to tell someone that.
Soft heart, Stiles thinks.
“Hm?” Derek tilts his head, and suddenly Stiles can feel his gentle breath on his neck, and sort of… short circuits.
“I, um…” he stutters out, not realizing he had spoken his thought aloud. “It’s— it’s nothing.”
Derek lifts his head off of Stiles shoulder. His nose brushes Stiles’ cheek as he goes. He steps back, hands still curled in Stiles’ shirt, tears still drying on his face, green eyes searching.
Stiles swallows, and admits, “In one of the tapes I watched, Peter calls you that. Says you have a soft heart.”
Derek, surprisingly, smiles. A small one, but a smile nonetheless. “He wasn’t always bad, you know.”
“I know.”
For a moment, Derek’s expression shutters, and Stiles’ heart jumps with fear. Had he said something wrong? But Derek only asks, “Are you going to… to use this against me or something?”
The accusation is weak, they both know it, but Stiles also knows that Derek has probably spent the last four years on guard.
“No,” he replies firmly. “I won’t. I promise.”
Derek’s expression remains guarded, but there’s curiosity in his voice as he asks, “What… what all did you see?”
So Stiles tells him. Tells him about the birthday party, the lake, the Hale house, the baby shower. Tells him about Talia Hale’s kind face and Laura’s insistent energy. Tells him about all the aunts and uncles and cousins, tells him about Cora, baby of the family, and the soft way the whole family looked at her.
Tells him about how he could barely believe that it was Derek he was seeing in all those tapes, and Derek laughs when he says that. Actually laughs.
When Stiles fixes him with a wide-eyed stare, it tapers off into a sad smile.
“I didn’t recognize me, either,” he says, and Stiles' heart breaks a little more.
They walk back to their cars together, and Stiles lets himself talk and talk and talk, because he knows Derek is listening by the tilt of his head and the frankly gorgeous smile that keeps making an appearance. Stiles can’t help but invest in this whole “in love” idea.
Derek Hale does have a soft heart, and Stiles thinks it's beautiful.
The sun is setting by the time Derek insists Stiles should go home. His brow is furrowed again, but this time with worry rather than anger, worry for Stiles. Stiles wants to hug him again. Stiles needs to separate himself before he starts doing things he’ll regret.
He allows himself a, “I’ll see you tomorrow?” just to test the waters.
Derek’s grip tightens on the door of the Jeep. Stiles is sitting inside of it, leaning out of the window. He feels like he’s in a fairytale. Leaning out of his window to be just a tiny bit closer to Derek Hale. What is his life anymore?
Derek is leaning, too, though, and when his eyes finally find Stiles’ again, he replies, “Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He sounds slightly breathless. Stiles leans a little further and leaves a kiss on his cheek.
“Bye,” he whispers, and throws the Jeep in reverse. As he pulls away, Derek slowly raises his hand and touches the spot where Stiles kissed him. His ears are bright red. And then he smiles, this soft, quiet smile.
Sometimes, Stiles thinks his horrible survival instincts really aren’t all that bad.