Chapter Text
”You'll know,” his mother said when Cora one night asked about mates. She was inquisitive in that way five-year-olds usually are despite being almost eleven, and had gone through their books about the supernatural at an almost alarming speed. ”You'll look at him or her and you'll just... know they're the one.”
”Like dad is yours?”
”Mate is a really old word for it, but yes,” his father butted in. His mother ran a hand through his hair while he wrapped an arm around her waist, thumb casually stroking her side.
”I've always thought soulmate is a better word,” she agreed and smiled at him.
Derek remembers the fondness in her voice, always present when she spoke of his father. She was a born leader, his mom, just like his dad was born for the silent patience his carpentry required, the calm to her usually so intense presence, and it showed every time she spoke of him, even if he was in the room with her. She brought out the best in him, too, brought out his childish side and sometimes even made Derek's bearded, slightly rugged father giggle by tickling him or starting food fights at the breakfast table. Even if life was quite chaotic in such a big family where half of the kids were werewolves, she made sure each and every one of them felt loved. Even Derek, who spent most of his time in the basement with his father, helping him build furniture.
Then Kate swept into his life, like a hurricane of flowery scent, all pet names and heavy lust and her voice just as smoky as the charred remains of his life that she left behind her. He thought she was it, the way she made his normally so steady heart nearly beat out of his chest, and when she ripped it out and stomped on it he couldn't find it in him to fix it.
So he gave up. Or, simply doesn't bother to hope might be a more appropriate way to put it. Everyone he has ever loved has died and while he's surrounded by annoying teens and their even more annoying problems, none of them really care about him, but he can't leave them to fend for themselves, not when he's already caused so much death. Jackson leaves, Scott whines, Isaac slowly slides over to his side, Boyd runs away with Erica who dies. He doesn't go to her funeral, doesn't feel like he deserves to, but he visits her grave later the same night. She reminded him of Laura, little quirks and the way both of them carried themselves with pride and grace despite all the things life had put them through. Somehow it doesn't surprise him that Erica's grave is covered in purple and white dahlias, just like the ones Laura used to bring home from the flower shop she'd worked in in New York.
Derek leaves a single light pink wild rose by her gravestone, because it's the best flower he can think of. It stands out a little amongst the dahlias, but it just makes it all the more fitting.
He fights alpha packs and uncles and geriatrics-turned-zombies, reluctantly teamed up with Stiles who turns out to be magic in the same way his older brother had been, and when it all calms down he gets a one bedroom apartment, dumps all his boxes in the walk-in closet, sits down on his bed and exhales for the first time in over seven years. For the first time since he left New York he's faced with silence, silence and the loneliness of being the last of his kind. It's deafening in a way noisy New York never was, and Derek gets Laura's old speakers out of the boxes, puts them up in the bedroom and keeps the music on to at least keep the silence at bay, then buries himself under all the blankets he can find.
He expects the nightmares when they begin. The jumpiness and the pangs of nausea that hit him when old Mrs Jenkins across the hall uses that perfume, the only scent he dreams nightmares of. The first time she walks up the hall and he smells her he has to remind himself for days that Kate's long gone, has been for almost two years. It's not often it happens anymore, with the way he sometimes doesn't leave the apartment for days on end. Mostly he just lies in bed, weighed down with the absolute numbness that sometimes turns into such crippling grief that he can't even cry. For all that Scott accuses him for being built up out of anger, even the rage is seeping away from him, leaving him tired and drained on the bed in his nearly bare bedroom and the world could fall apart for all he cares.
It doesn't really feel like any of it is worth saving, anyway.
About three weeks into Derek's hibernation there is a knock on the door. He hasn't showered in days and the apartment looks worse than the train station did, but something pulls him to the hallway. The knocking is persistent but not demanding and he doesn't need to open to know who it is. 36 of the 43 ignored texts on his phone is from Stiles and he knows he'd call if it was life or death, so he's not quite sure as to why he finds himself in the hall.
”Derek?”
Derek sighs and quietly slumps down against the wall by the door. The mail slot creaks as Stiles pushes at it, fingertips sticking into the apartment and voice a lot clearer.
”Come on, I know you're home.”
”What do you want, Stiles?”
”To know you're alive, for starters.”
”Well, I'm answering, aren't I?”
”I just...” Stiles sighs and Derek hears him lean his forehead against the door. ”Isaac's staying in our guest room, he's alright, you don't need to worry about him, okay? We've fixed a temporary treaty with Chris Argent and there was a hiccup with a witch but we're sorting it out.”
Derek hums. He hasn't thought much about the teens, not as much as he probably should've, but it all seemed too big, too unfixable. It's nice though, to know that nobody would demand he'd fix problems he couldn't even begin to care about when doing the dishes seems too big a task.
”So, do you need anything?”
”No,” Derek gets up to go to the toilet before he crawls back into his bed for another sleepless night, silently hoping the sheets haven't cooled off since Stiles' damn knocking brought him out of it.
”Seriously, I can hear your stomach growling through the door, when was the last time you ate?” Stiles persists, still through the mail slot.
”Go home, Stiles,” Derek sighs and closes the toilet door behind him.
He wakes up to yet another text message.
If I come by with food and promise not to be annoying or talk too much, will you let me in?
Derek stares at his phone, wondering why Stiles is so adamant about feeding him.
I don't have any cash in the apartment. He answers, because it's true. He's not even sure where his credit card is.
Dude, don't worry about it, comes the answer. Derek takes a moment to question the remains of his sanity, sends an okay to Stiles and forces himself to at least take a shower.
Stiles makes his way into Derek's kitchen an hour later and unloads groceries, cleans quite frankly disgusting pots and pans and while Derek watches like a hawk from the doorway.
”You can go watch TV or something, I'll fix this,” he says and furiously scrubs week old food stains from plates as if he belongs in Derek's apartment. As if he isn't the first one to enter Derek's little bubble, not even flinching at the dust and dirty laundry strewn all over the place. He even brought a towel to wipe the plates with. Derek doesn't even know how Stiles found him in the first place, but he has a hunch it might involve Danny. Something distantly tells him that this should annoy the everloving fuck out of him, but he can't even scrape together enough energy to sigh.
”Don't have one.” He shrugs and looks down at his torn sweatpants. It's quite telling how the only luxury he's allowed himself to have is a fast getaway car.
”Well, in that case.” Stiles wipes his hands quickly and hands a backpack to Derek. ”Here. My laptop. Find us a movie or something to watch. Chilli good?”
Derek shrugs again, but Stiles nods and somehow they end up watching Family Guy on Stiles' laptop, sitting on the spare mattress in the living room while eating. It's the first warm meal Derek has had in days and it tastes so good he can't stop himself before he's nearly cleaned the whole pot and how did he not notice how hungry he's been?
”Sorry,” he mumbles later when Stiles lifts the lid to find just about one portion left. Stiles' heart does a weird, drawn out whoomp and he pauses before moving the pot into the near empty fridge. He kind of wishes Stiles would turn around so he'd be easier to read, instead of trying to interpret the tension in his back as he rinses their plates. When he finally does turn around he doesn't look disappointed, like Derek expected him to, but Stiles is smiling. Small and unsure, but it's there.
”I cooked because food is a thing you need, so don't apologize for eating.” There's something more to it, but Derek is much too tired to analyse everything Stiles does. Stiles' whole existence is built out of doing things. Constantly. In abundance. ”Go take a powernap or something, you look like you're about to fall asleep where you stand.” He almost says something about the nightmares, about how he doesn't sleep anymore, but his stomach is full of food and it makes him want to curl up under a blanket anyway, so he does.
Derek falls asleep to the sound of Stiles putting things into his fridge and shuffling around things in the freezer. When he wakes up almost fourteen hours later Stiles is gone, a little note on the kitchen table telling him to text if he needs anything. Derek writes it off as a one time thing and doesn't check what Stiles put into his freezer until what's in the fridge is gone two days later.
It's full of food, food for at least a week, maybe two with how little he eats nowadays, home-made food like casseroles and soups, things Derek hasn't eaten in nearly seven years. If he breaks down over a bowl of chicken soup almost identical to the one his mother used to make, nobody has to know.
He definitely does not expect Stiles to continue coming around. He does Derek's shopping and makes sure the bills are paid when he can no longer get out of bed, when the world beyond the bathroom and occasionally the kitchen is too far out of Derek's comfort zone. When Derek refuses to come out of his room Stiles simply sits down in the living room and does his homework until Derek ventures his way out of his little bubble. The boy smiles softly, but is blessedly silent, and picks a movie for them to watch.
Stiles stays over, too, after their movie nights. He passes out on the giant sofa he somehow wrestled into Derek's apartment by himself, snoring softly. Sometimes Derek shifts fully just to keep Stiles from seeing him this vulnerable, but Stiles never seems to mind the giant wolf hogging his foot space on the sofa. He talks to him, tells him facts and complete bullshit stories, never about what the others are up to, but historic people and anecdotes and weird things his father has seen as a member of the police department. Stiles lines the apartment with mountain ash just in case and brings a flat screen TV (Derek still has no idea where he found it) so they can spend their days going through the IMDB top 250. He still doesn't go outside, but it's routine and it's good, so Stiles keeps talking to him, even if Derek doesn't shift back for days on end. He just traps his cold toes between Derek's furry, warm belly and the sofa cushions and that's that.
Sometimes Derek gets afraid he'll end up losing everything that's human about him, but then Stiles says something like ”I never actually lost any of my first baby teeth, I just kept falling on my face and they just kept falling out,” out of the blue as if they were talking about teeth to begin with and the mix between fondness and disbelief bubbling under the surface is so human that Derek barely can keep himself from shifting back.
When Stiles shows up at the full moon, Derek protests for the first time.
”Why not?” says Stiles, re-stocking Derek's fridge like it's something he does on a daily basis. Which, well... actually. Semi-daily basis. Weekly, at least.
”Stiles.” Derek sighs. The full moon is six hours away and he's starting to feel that familiar tug in his bones, but it's the first time since his anger fully slipped into sorrow that he'll have to refrain from becoming... well, a lunatic. A lunatic with a loose anchor.
”No, really? How come?”
”My anchor isn't as stable as it used to be,” he admits with annoyance and slides down until he's sitting on the kitchen floor, leaning against the cabinet. Derek watches as Stiles closes the fridge and slides down opposite of him, seated by his feet.
”Anger, right?”
”Something like that, yeah.”
”I'm guessing that wasn't your first anchor?”
”Oh God,” Derek sighs and runs a hand through his hair.
”You don't have to tell me,” Stiles says calmly.
”No, it's fine, it's just... Bunnies.” Derek snorts out a laugh despite himself at the look on Stiles' face.
”Bunnies?”
”For born werewolves, being dangerous kind of kicks in with puberty. New muscles, more hormones.”
”And I thought puberty kicked my ass.” Stiles snickers. Since Derek got to know him he's grown even more, more used to his limbs and grown into his skin. He came back from spring break an inch taller than Derek and Derek had to go into alpha mode (Stiles' words, not his) to stop Isaac and Scott from picking on him.
”Laura was the oldest of us. She had a bunny, this old thing called Hazel, but she loved it and cared for it every day for almost ten years. Sometimes she'd get fed up with the rest of us and go sit with her for hours. And then one day Laura got angry over something and couldn't control the shift. She tore Hazel to shreds. Mom found her covered in blood and little bits of fur, screaming.”
Stiles looks shocked, but says nothing, so Derek continues.
”I understood that being an apex predator means you have to be careful. Then after the fire I was too shocked to even shift and we had to keep moving, so I didn't really need one. After that I just didn't want to ki-” He bites back, closes his eyes. Tries again. ”I didn't want more death. Didn't want anybody else to feel how I felt. I was so angry at myself and everything else it ended up becoming my anchor.”
”The five stages of grief,” Stiles nods and sighs. They've both seen it, been through it. Heard them repeated by therapist after therapist. Stiles doesn't say anything, but they both know which one Derek's slipped into by now.
”You know, they have one thing in common.”
”The grief stages?”
”Your anchors. You don't want to hurt anybody.”
”I've hurt people before,” he argues, but it sounds weak even to Derek. Stiles looks at him, really looks at him, and it's a look so fond Derek has to look somewhere else.
”But you've never wanted to,” he says and pats Derek's ankle softly.
Everything feels a little too big, too intense for Derek to handle, so when Stiles gets up he does the same and moves to the sofa, leaving Stiles in the kitchen.
There is not one note of fear in his scent as he cooks them steaks for dinner in Derek's kitchen (How he knows how Derek likes his, he may never find out), and that gives Derek just enough incentive to not shift and run like a feral animal.
It feels a bit like the fear of disappointing someone and their hopes for him, a feeling Derek hasn't felt since Laura started poking around in the ashes of their past lives, but it's more than he has time and energy to analyse and does what he does best nowadays- ignores it and buries himself deeper into the sofa cushions. Stiles is making him watch Nosferatu, the first of tonight's black and white movies, and his running commentary is enough to keep Derek distracted. By the time the moon is at its fullest Marlon Brando is crying for Kim Hunter to come down and Derek feels a little more grounded than he has in a long time. He falls asleep not long after Stiles switches to BBC, wondering if Stiles might want a QI box set for his birthday.
He wakes up at dusk, still on the sofa and wrapped in a duvet that smells like Stiles. The boy in question is snoring softly on the other half of the sofa, covered in a blanket but his feet under the duvet, wedged in under Derek's ankles. Derek flips the pillow, drags the duvet over his head, inhales deeply and falls back to sleep.