Archive of Our Own ^beta

Stiles is used to not sleeping much. Sometimes, it’s late night hunts and stakeouts that keep him from getting his usual four hours of blissful release. He gets used to it, though, after a while. Priorities insist that his life is more important than being fully refreshed and ready to go. Now he’s more of a “three hours and two cups of coffee” ready to go; it’s his new norm.

But Stiles hates getting woken up in the middle of the night. Any time between one and five AM is when Stiles gets his real rest. On the weekends, he wakes any time before eleven, and his dad has thankfully by this time adjusted to Stiles’s schedule and doesn’t dare wake him.

So when Stiles is woken up one night by someone kicking the back of his leg, repeatedly and hard, Stiles blinks his eyes open, eyes already narrowed in anger. His clock reads four AM past his sleep-blurred eyes (it’s also the worst time for him to wake up because he doesn’t have enough time to catch up on the sleep he’s missed before school) and Stiles doesn’t really know who’s in his bed, but they appear to be asleep. The movement behind him stops and he rubs at his face, agitated.

Stiles spins in his bed, still managing to stay under the covers, and uncovers the face of the person on the other side of his bed.

And makes a noise of sleepy confusion.

Because sometimes Derek falls asleep in the same bed as him, sometimes bloody and sore (and it may be a thing for them that Stiles usually ignores), but he definitely hadn’t been there before Stiles had passed out. And there seems to be something off about him, the soft tilt of his jaw isn’t sharp enough, and he looks stressed, even in sleep. Frantic, even, as if he’s having a bad dream.

Stiles tries shaking Derek awake, to maybe interrupt his bad dream (the guy has them enough, Stiles figures) and all at once Derek stops twitching, going still.

The man opens his eye, squinting into the darkness, and Stiles nearly shoots back at the sight of light grey irises (not green) framed by thick eyelashes. “Um,” Stiles starts. With a similar shockthe man sits up and frantically looks around, hair tossed up on his head. “Oh my god?” Stiles adds, feeling confused.

Because that is definitely not something Derek would ever wear, Stiles thinks, when he sees the velvet, red cloth jacket and tight pants. There’s a necklace dangling from his neck and the gem on it is a deep purple with swirling patterns inside the stone. The cut of his hair is too neat and he looks tired.

He also has a look of confusion on his face, not that the feeling isn't mutual or anything.

“You’re not Derek,” Stiles says, suddenly much more awake than he had been before. The man turns sharply to look at him, eyes going even more wide.

And then he starts yelling.

His voice is so heavy with an accent that Stiles can barely understand anything coming out of his mouth as he gets a face full of a pillow that must have been thrust at him. Stiles screams. He falls completely off the bed, taking the sheets with him. He desperately crawls to the light switch and turns it on, all while yelling gibberish back at the man. He grabs onto the closest thing he can to him--his desk lamp--and brandishes it towards the Derek lookalike that is obviously very not Derek. He’s glad that his dad is working until seven in the morning because otherwise he would have ran in and maybe assumed the worst.

“I can’t understand you!” Stiles yells with his hands out, hoping it will make him stop. Thankfully it works, and he does lower the other pillow he has in his hands, but still seems ready to fight, tensed up in anticipation. “Okay,” Stiles lets out with a sharp exhale, taking advantage of the calm, even momentary.

Derek lookalike looks at him again and there’s a frantic way his eyes are glinting in the light that makes Stiles nervous. He has a pair of pants on that Stiles would expect to see at a renaissance fair and not in his bedroom, and his shirt is ripped in multiple places, along his shoulders, down his sides. Stiles grabs his phone off of his bed, still holding the lamp up in front of his body in a silent threat. And then he dials Derek.

He has a moment of panic wherein he wonders if Derek isn't here at all, as if he doesn’t exist anymore (it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility after all) but then the phone clicks, signalling a connection.

“What?” Derek says, voice quiet and tired, and oh so not amused. Stiles would be grinning normally, but he feels like now isn’t the time for that.

“Get over here now,” Stiles barks into the phone, voice cracking. Other Derek shifts on his feet, eyes flashing with something frightened (and it’s amazing how Derek-like he actually is). “There’s someone in my room."

“What? I’m coming,” He sounds less tired now, and there’s a shifting sound of the blankets that signals him getting up. There must have been something in Stiles’s voice that told Derek just how serious he was, because usually there's more foreplay for this kind of thing.

“I just,” Stiles says, trying not to think of Derek and his foreplay, glaring at the other one, “Hurry.”

“I am, I am,” Derek mumbles. “Don’t hang up, Stiles.”

“Sure thing chief,” Stiles says, flashing a quick smile. “There’s something else, though,” he adds.

“What?”

“You’ve never introduced me to your twin before,” he jokes.

Derek doesn't respond but Stiles can already hear his engine over the phone and looks back to the shadowed corner of his room.

Other-Derek doesn’t look like he’s about to stand around and wait for Derek to get there, and Stiles has to come up with a way to calm him down fast. But then other-Derek begins to move before he can think of anything, eyes flickering an beta yellow (which only proves it’s not Derek) in the low light and Stiles backs himself up into the wall; he knows what's coming.

Other-Derek advances slowly, and Stiles makes a quick noise of surprise in the back of his throat as his hand shoots out and he’s taken down with a tug to his shirt. His phone is tossed across the floor with a clatter (he hopes it’s not broken because he has priorities) and Other-Derek is kneeing him in the abdomen to keep him still on the ground, fangs bared at him. Stiles shrieks, and can hear Derek’s frantic yelling even though his phone is that far away.

“Oh my god!” Stiles shouts. “It’s the Twilight Zone, Derek! It’s the Twilight Zone!” Now that he's fully awake, and other-Derek is actually touching him, it all becomes very real rather than a dream.

“Where am I?” Other-Derek growls at him, so close to his face and he’s furious-looking and terrifying. His accent is heavy, sounds Italian or maybe French, and Stiles only stares at him as his teeth glint in the light. Even Stiles, werewolf expert extraordinaire, can’t help feeling like he’s about to pee his pants. Then Other-Derek unsheathes a dagger from inside one of his boots and nestles it directly under Stiles’s adam’s apple, pressing down into his skin. His breath catches in fear. "I will only ask once again, but my blade will not be as forgiving as my conscience is."

“Please, god, let your blade be forgiving,” Stiles pleads, eyes going wide. “Forgiveth me dear blade.”

“Do you jest with me?” Other-Derek demands, eyes narrowing.

“Why would I do that?” Stiles asks, beginning to stall. It seems to be working because the blade isn’t halfway to his spine yet. He shifts a little bit under the knife, wonders why exactly he isn’t dead, but that’s preferable so he won’t question it. "No way, I wouldn't--"

The knife presses into his throat again, and Stiles cuts off with a choking sound. His eyes are bright, and his lips are sputtering with no sound coming out.

"You blabber," Other-Derek growls. "Explain," he demands, just as Stiles's door slams open.

The knife is pulled away from Stiles's throat far enough for him to choke out "He should be able to explain,"  before Other-Derek is thrown off of him and Real-Derek (the whole thing is confusing to keep track of in his mind) slams him against the wall. One hand clasps around his throat, tight, and presses him back.

Both of the Dereks pause for an imperceptible moment, staring at each other in shock (more so on Other-Derek's part really) and they have some sort of a growl-off, but Real Derek seems to have leverage against the other one, because he never moves to shove him off. Both of their eyes are flaring red, and Other-Derek's eyebrows are twitching with confusion as he looks between the two of them and sniffs Derek with his wolfy senses.

Looking around the room, he seems to try to find a way out, but Derek is blocking the window, and Stiles is in front of the opened door. Before Stiles’s mind can really process anything, the guy is tearing free of Derek’s grip and launching himself at Stiles with scary-fast speed, trying to get past him to the door, or to attack him, he really can’t tell.

Derek moves so fast that in between blinks he has a grip on the guy’s neck and has slammed him to the floor again, hovering over him.

Stiles races over to them, waving his arms to his sides. “We’re not going to hurt you. We don’t know who you are either.” The guy’s eyes are wide but they narrow out at his words. “You have to calm down though.”

“Who are you?” the guy says, and Derek looks up at him, the hand still digging indents into the guy’s neck.

“My name is Stiles. This is Derek,” he introduces, waving a hand between the two of them. He looks down at Derek with a pointed glare, and Derek releases the guy, putting a hand behind his shoulder to help him up. He sits up, rubbing his neck, looking so much like Derek that Stiles’s head hurts just looking at them.

“Get him on the bed,” he tells Derek, who moves quickly, helping him to sitting down.

Stiles, rubbing his own neck, walks closer. "So," he begins with an uncomfortable smile. Both of the Dereks turn his way, eyes flashing. "On a more positive note, no one is dead!"

Derek looks like he's considering rolling his eyes, or saying "not quite" and his claws twitch against Other-Derek's neck. Stiles puts a hand up to stop him before he can.

"Let him go, buddy," Stiles orders with some force. "We're okay now," he adds, placing a hand on Derek's outstretched elbow and squeezing, gently this time.

Stiles looks to Other-Derek, and he nods in defeat. Derek lets go completely and his feet drop to the ground.

"Call Scott," Derek orders. Stiles, rolling his eyes at Derek's command, picks his phone up off of the floor and dials Scott's number.

Scott doesn't answer, and Stiles leaves an aggressive voicemail about emergency calls and their importance to society as both Dereks watch him.  “So call me,” he carries on when he gets too winded. “There are… sort of two Dereks. If you’d answered, I would have explained but now you have to call me and hope I answer you. Bye.” He hangs up his phone and tosses it to the bed.

Other-Derek has his arms tied behind his back, not that it will prevent much. Derek seems to know this, keeps a close watch on him as Stiles calls Deaton in the other room. Other-Derek is way more calm than before, which is good for his tired-headache state, but he’s also incredibly worrying that he’s so silent.

Deaton, tired as he is, agrees to talk with Stiles about the whole fiasco. The only problem is that he’s currently in Mexico looking for some ancient artifacts, so “right away” is actually close to two days.

Stiles resolves that his life is going to majorly suck for that remaining time.

--

After a few thoughtful moments, Stiles can come up with nothing that will particularly help their situation. Derek isn’t doing much else than scowling (as per usual-- it’s a trademark at this point) so they’ve officially got nothing. Scott still hasn’t called him back despite his multiple tries, so they’ve resorted to pacing around trying to think of a solution.

Well, it's actually just Stiles pacing; Derek is watching from the corner.

“Do you have a name?” Stiles asks on a limb, kneeling in front of the man. He motions with a hand to himself, “Stiles,” then motions to him.

“Marcello,” the man answers slowly, as if he’s stepping on dangerous ground just by giving it. Derek has his arms crossed and looks between the two of them, trying to tower over them.

Stiles nods; that means it isn’t actually another Derek. then motions for Derek to step to the side. They turn slightly away from Marcello as Stiles says, “He’s obviously not a doppelganger, dressed like that.” Derek’s hands are shoved in his leather-jacket pockets and it’s way too late to be in this close proximity to him, after all Stiles has been through.

Derek narrows his eyes, suspicious, as Marcello stares at Stiles’s analog alarm clock (he doesn’t really use it anymore butbrings back fond memories of times when he had a regular sleep schedule). “Well. We don’t know where he works.”

A laugh bursts its way out of Stiles’s mouth and Derek’s mouth twists up at the corner in response. Then he schools his expression back when Stiles continues to chuckle.  “Are you implying that your twin works as a Medieval Times extra?”

“I can’t imply anything. He’s not my twin. I don’t actually know him.” And the sour demeanor is back again.

Stiles feels the tension in his neck and he sighs, rubbing at it. “Maybe we should ask him who he is. That seems good.”

“Sure,” Derek agrees.

“So, Mark.” Mark looks up and his eyebrows sink down in confusion.  “I’m going to call you Mark. Nicknames are a peace offering,” he adds, speaking to Derek this time. Both Derek and Marcello give him a strange look at that, eyebrows folding down the exact same way, but he ignores it.

A car horn interrupts Stiles’s interrogation, and Derek checks outside of the window for a moment.

He shakes his head at Stiles so Stiles turns back.

But Marcello’s eyes are still sort of fixed on his TV, narrowed.

“Do you know what this is?” Stiles brandishes his phone in front of Mark’s face as soon as the thought hits him, and Derek looks at him like he’s crazy.

“Stiles--”

Marcello shakes his head before Stiles can tell Derek to shut up. Slowly, his kind of grimy hand moves up in front of his face to press against the screen and he flinches as the icon pulls up a page.  Mark pulls the phone out of Stiles’s hand, close to his nose, and stares intently from the screen.

He looks up from his crouch to Derek. Derek’s eyebrows are bent down in confusion and he helps Stiles stand with a hand on his shoulder. “Well. It looks like we’ve got a case of time travel.”

---

“Its okay, we can marvel over how smart I am later,” Stiles says, the ending tapering off as Derek shoves him into the hallway and he trips over his own feet. “Rude,” he adds, glaring up at him as he regains his balance.

Derek peers back into the room and then crosses his arms in front of him, accusing.

“How did I know that?” Stiles guesses, reading his glare after a long moment. It’s filled with attitude, because Derek is seriously assuming Stiles can interpret the meaning of his mood swings. He shrugs, back still pressed a bit uncomfortably against the wall. “I seriously just guessed. He was pretty confused because of the light fixtures.”

Derek raises an eyebrow. “What is he then?”  His eyes bleed dark for a second.

“Well I don’t read minds,” Stiles says, just as confused. “Your guess is as good as mine.” He nudges Derek with his palm against his bicep so he can step away from the wall. Derek moves with a tiny dissatisfied grunt, but goes easily enough. Stiles’s fingers linger too long on his skin and he pulls them back with a snap.

“He’s me,” Derek tells him, eyes flickering away. Inside of Stiles’s room, Marcello is scowling down at Stiles’s phone still.

Stiles snorts, waving a hand towards his scowly-ness. “You’re right.”

“I mean he smells different from me, but.” His nose twitches for a few seconds and he seems to lose his train of thought, “He was in your bed,” he adds, shadows forming under his eyes.

“Another helpful observation,” Stiles snips, feeling the back of his neck tingle at the attention Derek is giving to that fact. “There wasn’t any bad touching or anything,” he adds after a moment of Derek just staring at him, then winces. “He woke up there,” he tries again, which sounds just as bad.

Derek’s eyebrows crinkle like he’s in pain. With a twitch of his nose and a shake of his head, he seems to re-focus on the situation at hand. "Do you think he's dangerous?"

Stiles thinks it's kind of odd how they've gotten to where they are, where Derek openly asks him questions like his opinion matters. Then again, his opinion was always more respected than Scott’s; at least there was always that small comfort.

"I don't see how he could be, honestly," Stiles responds despite his internal realization, "he doesn't understand electronic appliances."

"But," Derek says, and Stiles knows exactly what he's thinking. They both glance back into the darkened room.

"But what else does he know then?" Stiles finishes.

--

Stiles steps back into his room, Derek again a little too close for comfort, just looming over his shoulder. “Let me handle the talking,” Stiles says to Derek. Derek grunts once, not quite saying yes or no, just informing him of how good his idea is.

"So what's going to happen is you're going to come with us,” Stiles starts off with. Marcello stares at him for a long moment. He waits, his expression not changing and Stiles sighs. "Okay, well we don't want to take you by force, but--"

"You think you can order me, place threats my way?" Marcello asks, a dangerous tone laced through his words. Derek stops short. Stiles snaps his fingers in warning and Derek’s chest rumbles with his growl.

“He thinks you’re threatening him,” Derek says.

“I never said anything about a threat,” Stiles answers, and now Derek is growly again when Marcello sits up straighter. Stiles scratches nervously at the back of his neck. “We are in the place to order you around though. So we do think.”

“I do not know anything,” Marcello says in a tight voice when Derek takes hold of his bicep, tugs him up and off the bed. “I cannot tell you what you need to know.”

“He doesn’t know anything,” Derek narrates, voice void of all sarcasm.

Stiles glares back at him. “Derek, I appreciate the play-by-play, but your commentary is unnecessary. I can hear him just fine.”

Derek frowns at him, mouth thinning out. “Stiles.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “What?”

“What do you mean you can hear him?” Derek isn’t looking at him, eyes narrowed in on Marcello.

“I--” Stiles responds in a questioning tone.

“He’s not speaking English,” Derek bites out between teeth that are now pointing out past his lips slightly. He bares them when Marcello bristles visibly at the sight, similar teeth pointed too. They look exactly the same in that moment, and Stiles wouldn’t be able to tell them apart from the side. It’s really disconcerting.

“No comprende.” Stiles shakes his head, waving his hands between the two. Then he points at Derek, pushes him back. “You’ve really gotta stop that, you’re stressing the guy out. Now what are you talking about?”

Derek’s red eyes fade to green again in a blink and Stiles releases his breath. “He’s been speaking in Italian this entire time.”

“Italian?” Stiles turns around. “Can you understand him?” Stiles asks Marcello, and receives a shake of the head in response. He’s still growling at Derek, though.  “How can you understand him?” he asks Derek this time.

“My job in the pack was a translator between our family packs in different countries,” Derek explains lowly. “I know three other languages.”

Stiles tries not to be turned on by that at the worst possible time. He rubs at his temple in frustration. “Well I don’t know why I can understand him; add it to the list of things I’m not getting right now!”

“It’s okay,” Derek says quietly, and it sounds like he’s being hushed.

Stiles shakes his head and narrows his eyes. “How do you know it’s okay?”

Derek’s demeanor changes then, and he’s all of a sudden towering less, more on Stiles’s level when he says “It has to be.”

--

Deaton answers Derek after a few rings and informs them that he, in fact, doesn’t know what had happened. They can’t drop Mark off there either since he’s away for a couple of days.

So Stiles insists that they bring him to the loft. Stiles pulls the Jeep out of his driveway, and Mark is anxiously moving in the back seat, Derek trying to shift away from his claws. “We would have had to tell the pack eventually,” Stiles says, trying to ease the obvious tension in Derek’s shoulders. “Scott too.”

“I know,” Derek answers, but doesn’t say any more.

“Having any version of you sleeping in my house suddenly would raise concerns with my dad, too. Particularly of the bad-touch kind.” And Stiles winces at himself because this is the second time he’s brought up Derek touching him in a non-growly and threatening way. But now he’s brought his dad into it, which is actually much weirder.

Derek looks as uncomfortable as he feels, but just directs his gaze away. “It’s fine.”

“Hey Mark,” Stiles adds, “Do you remember what you were doing before you popped up here?”

Mark looks deep in thought. “No,” he tells Stiles. “Everything is fuzzy.” Stiles nods; he’d figured just as much. “I remember a window.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I am here, and like I am not,” is all Mark says, which is super ominous, so Stiles ends the conversation there.

When they get there, the pack is piling out of the doors, all sniffing in the direction of the Jeep and eyes going gold. Erica advances on them and stops when Mark steps out of the car first, looking slightly sick.

“Who the hell is that?” she asks, teeth beginning to bare.

Derek closes his door next and walks over to Stiles.

Isaac looks between all three of them. “Who is that?” he points at both of them, Mark first, then Derek. Stiles can’t help himself, he laughs. Boyd just watches them and narrows his eyes.

“Meet your new roommate,” Stiles says. “We don’t know where he came from, but we think it’s the past.”

Erica lifts an eyebrow and glares Mark up and down. “I hope he knows how to arm wrestle.”

Stiles smiles in relief. He looks at Mark and nods, assuring him everything was fine. Mark becomes less tense.

“Good then!” Stiles backs up, mind already spinning, needing to read through the bestiary as soon as he can. “He’ll be staying with you guys, keep him here and bring Scott over. Tell him I’m at home. Also, he sort of only speaks Italian. So be nice.” The betas all nod, Isaac less excitedly as Erica and Stiles doesn’t stick around to see what she has planned.

“These are Derek’s betas,” he tells Mark. “Stay here and you’ll be safe.” He claps when Mark nods and gets into his Jeep. Derek gets into the passenger seat and after a quick glare-off, he backs away and heads towards home.

--

They don’t find anything about time travel in the bestiary or anything that can make someone travel through time. They lock themselves in his room, and his dad doesn’t bother him except to call him down for dinner; Derek sits on his bed and waits for Stiles to bring him up some extra food on his plate. Derek leaves at two am before his dad leaves with promises to text him with updates.

The library doesn’t hold much more info, either. Stiles reads through multiple lore books and spends the next two days there for hours before settling on the internet for random searches.

The trip to Deaton’s proves to be more eventful.

“It seems that he could either be a version of Derek from the past, or from a different reality,” he says, shining a flashlight in Mark’s eyes, much to his shock. “Because his clothes are accurate to his time, I would assume the first option is more likely.”

“What, like a reincarnation? How is that even possible?” Stiles asks.

Deaton shakes his head, as if he’s at a loss. “Time travel,” he suggests, “That seems most likely.”

“I didn’t think that was possible.”

Setting the flashlight down, Deaton looks Stiles’s way. “You said you can understand him?”

“Yeah, it sounds like he’s speaking in English.”

Deaton nods and motions towards him. “Well, we’ve found somewhat of an answer.”

Derek’s head turns swiftly at that. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure,” Deaton replies, “But his appearance has something to do with Mr. Stilinski. He could be tethered to Mark in some way, but I’m not sure. That is all I can tell you, besides to keep looking for answers.”

Derek’s jaw goes tense, and he nods once. Stiles’s head feels spinny, because now he’s suddenly connected with the guy in some way. They leave, and Stiles feels more confused than ever.

--

Because things that go bump in the night don’t care what time it is, Stiles ends up being chased through the night by actual goblins that third day. A group of them, ugly and green, who are very mad, if the tiny spikes sticking into Stiles’s calf are any indication. He runs through the bushes and into a clearing where Derek is waiting for him.

He scowls down at Stiles’s leg and Stiles smirks. “Yeah, no fun, but I think they’re off my trail finally. You know the perks of being three feet taller than them?”

Derek raises his eyebrow.

“Longer legs,” Stiles says with a grin.

Derek rolls his eyes and kneels down to take a quick look at Stiles’s leg without a word, fingers lifting the hem of his pants up before his skin runs over his calf, pulling out some of the thinner spikes. “How did this happen?”

Stiles grunts in pain, “They set up a booby trap. It was like a bomb but shot off porcupine spikes, it looks like.”

“They look like wood,” Derek says, pulling another out. He stands up and pulls Stiles’s pant leg back down. It tugs at some of the remaining splinters and Stiles hisses. “Some of the bigger ones can’t come out until we have a way to stop the bleeding.”

“Sounds good,” Stiles readily agrees, starting to feel faint. Scott bursts through the trees at that moment, wolfed out and eyes glowing Alpha red. Following him are Erica, Boyd, Isaac, and Mark. Mark is wearing one of Derek’s shirts and a pair of dark black pants that Stiles has never seen his counterpart in, but he would have liked to.

“What’s he doing here?” Stiles pants, leaning against a tree now that Derek has stepped back and given him room.  

Erica doesn’t even look out of breath at all, the traitor (he finds comfort in the twigs shoved into her hair just a slight bit), and just shrugs. “We couldn’t just leave him in the loft by himself, could we?”

“He could break out,” Isaac adds, sarcastic as always. Mark frowns in his direction like he knows Isaac is saying something negative about him.

“Okay, alright,” Stiles says. “Did anybody figure out anything about these guys?” He leans onto his bad leg, wincing at the slight sting along his skin.

“The gold didn’t work,” Isaac explains, running a hand through his hair, “They weren’t occupied as long as we thought they would be.”

Considering they’d only had access to one of Scott’s mom’s necklaces to use as bait, Stiles can believe it. Stiles huffs and starts walking ahead of everyone else, motioning for them to follow. Before he gets far, Derek growls in warning, but it’s too late. Stiles’s feet hook into another trap, and before he knows it, he’s hanging upside down from the large tree he’d been leaning against.

He can hear Erica and Derek’s matching growl and a sickening slurping sound just before he passes out.

--

His wrists ache when he wakes up, and when he shakes them, he realizes that now he has chains and cuffs holding him upside down. He sighs and tries to turn his head to look around himself.

He’s still in the woods, he realizes, over by the jutting rocks near the cliff overlooking the city, but now none of the pack are there with him. Instead, there are the small, black-skinned goblins pacing around and a few of them fastening restraints on his legs to pull him upward, almost hogtied.

“What did you do with my friends?” Stiles asks towards a huddled together group of them.

Stiles kicks one of them off of him but gets a spike in his shin for his trouble. It’s a small one, but they shove it in so it hurts more. “Ow, son of a bitch,” Stiles curses quietly. “You realize we have no gold, right? You’re in the wrong part of California for that, try a hundred miles south. You’re even two hundred years off.”

His head goes fuzzy from hanging upside down for too long. He sways because the goblins are climbing on him, feels like he might puke. When his vision starts fading out to black, Stiles notices that they all jump off of him in a flash. There’s a melody in his head that he tries to latch onto, something low and comforting, just lulling him to sleep.

Until the rope untethers from his leg and he goes toppling to the ground.

He hits his head slightly on the ground on the way down, but other than that he doesn’t have a broken neck so that’s good. Above him, Mark is kneeling on one leg. “Mark,” Stiles breathes in disbelief, because the tune in his head was Mark singing. It’s an unfamiliar song to Stiles, but it seems to be working as the goblins take off into the forest, tripping over each other in their haste.

“Thanks dude.” The corner of Mark’s mouth tilts up, but he keeps singing, and the rest of the pack is running into the clearing to the sight of them kneeling over each other, Mark’s hand on Stiles’s thigh.

Derek stops in his tracks and Stiles sees him do a double take.

He leans a bit into Mark’s side as he helps Stiles stand up, legs aching slightly from where he’s bleeding everywhere from his pinpricks. All Mark does is take Stiles over to Derek who is still staring at Stiles like he’s something foreign. “Can you help me out,” Stiles wheezes in pain, and that is enough for Derek to get a move on. His hands shoot out and take him by the shoulders, throwing Stiles’s arm around his waist. Stiles leans heavily into Derek’s side, head resting on Derek’s pecs, feeling steadied by Derek’s grip on him.

“Stiles,” Scott says, worried. “Are you okay?”

“They didn’t do anything to me. Besides the spines in my legs,” Stiles answers, looking at Mark. “How did you know that anyhow?”

“My people were plagued by Goblins,” Marcello explains. “They broke into homes and stole our pots and pans, utensils in the kitchen, bread. Things families couldn’t do without.” His eyes went dark. “We didn’t have gold for them to take; it was our punishment.” He holds up the pipe with green blood stained across the surface.

“Singing,” Derek says, voice even. “Goblins don’t like singing.”

“Singing slows them down,” Mark says, and Stiles relays it to the others. They all are watching between the two, confused, like it’s an inside joke they don’t get.  “Iron poisons them.” Mark holds up the pipe.  

Erica holds a fist in front of her face, most likely to keep from laughing. “You have a beautiful voice,” she comments, splaying the hand out, but there’s no hiding her grin.

“Thank you,” Mark says, oblivious. Everyone can understand that, at least.

They bust out laughing, and Stiles can feel Derek bristling under him. “I didn’t know you had such a good voice,” Erica says, turning to Derek. Her lips purse.

“I don’t,” he growls, and that’s that. It doesn’t stop Stiles from quietly shaking with laughter though. Derek must notice because he scowls down at him and lessens his hold, but Stiles tries to lean into him more because he doesn’t think he can stand on his own.

Stiles settles himself down. “Thank you for helping us out,” he says to Mark. He’s starting to feel a headache coming on, probably from having to magically translate Mark’s words. “If you can inform us on any other monsters and their weaknesses, we really need it.”

Mark nods, and Derek stiffens under him. “I’d be happy to help.”

--

“It’s always you and climbing through windows,” Stiles comments, not looking up from his screen.

Derek pauses halfway in and nearly trips over the ledge. Stiles had felt the draft coming in, but Derek’s confused face is too good to look at, like he thought he failed at trying to be quiet, so he doesn’t tell him.

“You aren’t sleeping,” Derek says, toeing his shoes off and padding over to Stiles’s desk. He also shoulders off his leather jacket and tosses it onto the bed, like it’s easy for him to walk into Stiles’s bedroom, like he does it on the daily.

“Couldn’t,” Stiles shakes his hands over his computer screen. “Hands wouldn’t stop moving.” It’s one AM and he knows that Derek isn’t coming for something supernatural because he’d be in more of a hurry and two things never attack at once  so he closes his laptop and turns to face him. “What’s up? Just checking in?”

Derek nods, looking around his room. “Have you gotten all of the spines out?”

“Not yet,” Stiles says. “I was going to before I went to bed.” With a start, he realizes that he’s been sitting in bloody jeans since he’s gotten home. He doesn’t want to say that he can’t reach some of them too, so they’ll probably stay in, but Derek just nods and tilts his head down.

He walks past Stiles and into his hallway and Stiles stares after him for a moment.

Derek returns with a bottle of something in his hand and some paper towels. Then he kneels down at Stiles’s feet. “Um,” Stiles says, voice going high at the end, and Derek takes hold of his leg.

“I can get them out easier,” he explains, tugging the leg of Stiles’s pants up gently, trying not to snag him with them.

“Okay,” Stiles says, but Derek is already snatching one with his claws and yanking it out, so he hisses.

It’s quiet for a moment save for Stiles’s breathing and whispered curses as Derek tears a few more free.

“Do you have a problem with Mark?” Stiles asks to distract himself from the pain of Derek plucking a spine out of his calf, right where his muscle is.

Derek looks up too quickly. “I don’t,” he says, plucks another, “have a problem.”

“Ow, jesus,” Stiles curses. “Careful.” Derek pokes at his leg in apology and feeds the pain. “Are you sure? You don’t seem to be comfortable around him.” He doesn’t know if it’s the fact that there are two alphas encroaching on each other’s spaces or if it’s Derek’s problems with new people.

He tries to watch Derek’s expression, but it’s carefully neutral. “He’s not supposed to be here. He’s me. Of course I feel weird.” Which is more sharing than Stiles had been expecting. Derek dabs the rest of the cuts with alcohol and Stiles hisses.

“I know, I know,” Stiles says, staring at the floor. “This is weird for me. I can hear Mark in English perfectly well, and I don’t know what that means for me.”

Derek hums, but looks concerned at that point too. “It could be your spark,” he says.

Stiles nods, waiting a long while to speak again. “Do you think he’s dangerous?” Stiles reaches, repeating Derek’s question from that first night, hoping the conversation isn’t breaching Derek’s comfort levels. Usually they don’t have conversations this easily, which is enough for Stiles to be suspicious. And they’re in Stiles’s room, the fan running low, calm enveloping them-- it’s all unexpected.

Derek sighs, tossing the towel to the floor, but not angrily. He stares fixedly at the floor. “Shouldn’t we?” he asks, before setting back to work.

When he’s done, Stiles is breathing through his nose, but he isn’t bleeding too badly, according to Derek, which is a good sign. He does finally feel fatigued though, and less high-strung than before.

Stiles stands up and twists his head side to side to crack his neck, legs aching with a twinge. He grabs a pair of pants to change in the hallway, and when he returns, Derek is still there, throwing the little thorns into the garbage. “Was going to watch a movie,” he starts, plopping down into his bed. “You want to make some popcorn?”

Derek stares at him for a few seconds, like he isn’t sure what to say, before he turns and walks out of his room, probably to do just that. Stiles grins.

He returns with a bowl filled with popcorn, and Stiles is flicking through Netflix. He isn’t going to ask why Derek is agreeing to all of this, because it’s something that they do now, for some reason. Sometimes Derek shows up, sometimes they watch movies, and sometimes they fight crime. He figures after all this time, it’s better to just not ask.

Derek hands over the bowl and sits down on the bed, legs coming out to stretch in front of him. Stiles curls up instead and turns on a random movie that has horrible ratings.

They finish the bowl and Stiles is half asleep before Derek speaks next. “Maybe you should sleep.”

“Yeah,” Stiles yawns, stretching his arms up over his head. “Maybe.”

But he doesn’t. They sit there until the sun rises and Derek should probably leave.

He doesn’t.

--

Stiles doesn’t get a call or text from Derek for two weeks after that, or any responses to his multiple calls. When he visits once, Derek isn’t there, but Mark is, and Stiles goes back home soon after.

So he tries not to worry too much.  He’s through five episodes of Deadliest Catch with his dad, not moving from the couch except for bathroom breaks before his dad gets suspicious and suggests he go out somewhere with some friends. Normally he would be offended, but his behavior is odd.

So he gets in his Jeep and heads over to the loft.

Isaac answers the door, and the sight of blood spritzed on his face is enough for Stiles to barrel past him, bumping against his shoulder. “Stiles, don’t--” he tries to say, but Stiles is already fully moving into the loft and looking around hastily, coming to a halt halfway through the living room at the sight that greets him.

Derek has Marcello pinned against the wall and is growling violently, teeth bared at Marcello’s neck. Mark is growling in return in but it’s obvious that it is reactionary, and that Derek had attacked him.

“Derek,” Stiles says, confused, racing over. With no thought, he tugs Derek off of Mark, nearly getting a claw to his neck for it. “What’s going--” he starts, but Derek is nearly throwing himself across the room, staring at Stiles now.

He approaches Derek, looking him up and down. His shoulders are tensed and heaving, teeth bared. “They heard you coming and Derek went crazy,” Isaac explains, twisting his head to the side and stretching the gashes out; they start bleeding again and he winces. “I don’t know what’s going on but something doesn’t feel right. It’s Derek-- he keeps forgetting things.”

At his name, Derek turns to face the two of them and Stiles’s eyes go wide. Because Derek’s eyes are flickering, and it’s not because he’s struggling with keeping control. It’s changing between blue and red, and he looks panicked. Stiles’s gaze flickers to Mark--

And Mark’s eyes are flaring red rather than yellow.

“That,” Stiles breathes, “is not good.”

--

They keep Derek and Mark on quarantine, in separate rooms, and Derek finally has a chance to clear his head. “Hey big guy,” Stiles sits next to him on his bed, crossing his leg under himself. Derek is staring down at his own claws. “What’s going on? I heard you’re forgetting things.”

“Stiles,” Derek says in a warning tone, face weirdly ashy and tired looking. Warning Stiles not to pry.

“What is it?” he pries anyways because he can’t not. “Names? Faces?”

Swallowing, Derek’s biceps flex as he tries to focus. “I forget-- I forget where I am sometimes.” Stiles stares at him for a long while, and Derek shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it, Stiles.”

“How should I not worry about it?” Stiles asks, and Derek growls in frustration. “Shut up. It’s obvious that Mark being here is starting to affect you. Both of you. Can you not shift anymore or something?”

After a long moment, Derek shakes his head, scratching at his neck. “I can feel--” he looks at Stiles, like he’s debating not telling him. Then he lowers his chin, says “my power is fading.”

--

Stiles brings a few sprigs of mistletoe as a bribe when he visits Deaton next, but the vet continues not telling him any more information.

But that doesn’t mean Stiles doesn’t continue to try and pry it out of him.

“It’s probably because they’re both alphas,” Stiles points out, tapping at the counter. “There has to be a hierarchy there somewhere where that would be wrong.” He hands over his bribe-- his offering.

“That’s possible,” Deaton answers evenly. He takes Stiles’s mistletoe and puts it in a jar-- the traitor. “But either way, Derek is fading away and there is nothing much we can do for him unless we find a reversal spell.” The last time Stiles had visited, Derek didn’t remember who Scott was and growled at him until he retreated back to the car.

“How?”

Deaton looks down. “Well, based on my assumptions, what sent Marcello forward was a witch. Witches-- at least most of them-- keep books of the spells they’ve cast. I don’t know why the witch hasn’t brought him back yet herself, but wherever the book is, it wouldn’t be here with me. Only the original spell can be used to break it. Most of the spells I’ve seen are close but nothing can be assured unless it’s the same on used to cast it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes,” Deaton sighs. “Unfortunately, time travel is very tricky. The components have to be exact. Your level of magic is not potent enough yet to send him back of your own will, and creating your own spell would probably kill you. I assume that the witch latched onto a soul to grasp extra power.”

“A soul?” Stiles asks.

Deaton nods. “Most spells involve some kind of soul as a tether to keep it from going out of control.” He gives Stiles a meaningful look. About souls. Like it’s not crazy.

A cat howls behind Stiles as Deaton picks up a barrel and unscrews it. It’s a wonder to Stiles that Deaton still has this job and that people don’t notice his absences that much. “What about you then? Can’t you do the spell?”

Deaton hums in humour. “Not me, no. Potions are more of my kind of thing.”

Stiles crumples the paper in his hand up and puts his fist to his mouth. Then he tosses the ball to the table. He hates how pointless all of his digging is starting to seem. “We’ve gotta go find a way to help.”

“I’m sure it will come to you,” Deaton says, “An answer will find its way to you if it is meant to.” It seems like his statement holds more meaning than he’s letting on, and Stiles tucks that away for later-- it’s impossible to get much out of Deaton at once; he’s like an extremely cryptic rubik's cube. Once Stiles figures out one side or one angle, the rest have to be figured out, and it often unravels the first side to find the rest.

He sighs again. Cranes his neck to see how Derek is doing. He’s out like a light again, head drooped down and his arms crossed in front of his chest-- the breaths escaping from his lips are concerning enough as it is, so thin and wispy. Stiles doesn’t like taking him with him to see Deaton because he’s always so weak, but Derek insists every time, like a stubborn bodyguard. “Is it alright for him to be sleeping so much?” Stiles asks, looking at him. “I mean couldn’t that make him forget more?”

Deaton lowers his hands where he’d been filling the serum up and frowns at him. “Stiles, Derek is fighting against time right now. I doubt the order of the universe would be changed by his actions; they’d really be fully dependent on Marcello’s.”

So they’re completely reliant on the guy who doesn’t know how to change a lightbulb. “Great,” Stiles says and goes to wake him up anyways.  

--

Turns out, it’s easier to get information out of Mark than Stiles thinks. After being holed up in Derek’s loft for a few weeks, he has gotten curious about the appliances that he has sitting around, so Stiles knows that he can bribe him. Derek’s not a great guard anymore, but Mark doesn’t seem like he wants to leave anyhow, Stiles notices when he walks in.

He has a pair of Derek’s clothes on (they are acutely comfortable, according to him, and he can feel the air between his legs), the pants a little too long because Mark is slightly shorter than Derek is. He had been flicking between the channels in wonder; Stiles wonders who’d taught him how to even turn the TV on.

“Can I see that?” Mark asks Stiles, motioning towards his phone once Stiles has sat down on the couch.

Stiles raises an eyebrow, sitting up. “Yeah, yeah. You gotta do me a favor though.”

Mark raises an eyebrow, and it’s uncanny how much he looks like Derek in that moment. “Yes?”

Stiles opens Google Maps and then, zooming over Italy, hands the phone over. “If you can name one of the locations nearest to where you lived, you can keep the phone until I leave.”

Mark squints at the phone. Stiles knows that expression all too well, seeing it on Derek’s face-- it’s obvious at first sight that they’re nearly the same person but it still freaks him out a bit. After a few minutes of Stiles helping him move the screen, Mark points to a location on the screen. “There, those forests, we lived along those-- facing the East was the Sea.”

“Awesome,” Stiles says, ecstatic that he has a lead now. “You can keep the phone now.” He puts on the child-block and then opens a game of bejeweled-- it’s his favorite and Mark hunches over over the screen. Stiles stands up and wipes his jeans off. “Don’t stare for too long at the screen, you’ll get a headache. And where’s Derek?”

“He is asleep,” Mark says, glaring at the screen.

“He’s not doing so well, if that’s what you’re wondering,” a voice rings out from down the bedroom hallway. It’s Erica, just coming out of her room, hair mussed, a curly blonde mess. She walks over, motioning with her hand, and Stiles follows her to Derek’s room. “His memories are kind of scrambled. He started asking about his parents again.” Her lips thin out and she bites at her thumbnail.

“Jesus,” Stiles sighs, pulling at his hair. “Well we have a lead now, but it’ll take a trip.” It’s unsaid that they might not make it on time.

“I’m sure that’ll be comforting to him,” Erica says with a snip. She must not be in a good position; with her alpha’s powers fading she is the one that has to step up and be in charge. Stiles knows that there’s no set hierarchy in Derek’s pack, but he knows that in terms of pack stuff, Erica is close to Derek’s assistant, and unlike Deucalion or the other crazies they’ve met, Erica has grown out of her power-hunger stage.

Rubbing at his eyes, Stiles opens the door to Derek’s room, breathing in the musky smell. He can’t see Derek’s face because it’s covered with shadows but the curl of his shoulders is sad enough. “I know, okay?” Stiles looks back to Erica where she now has her arms crossed over her chest. “There’s not much I can do with an ancient spell, if that’s even what it is. And him beginning to disappear is like a timer and it freaks me out, but I’m going to do something about it.” Erica seems satisfied at this and moves slightly out of the way.

“Stilinski?” Erica calls quietly. Stiles turns back. “You-- you’re important to him, alright? If anyone can save him, I know he trusts you to do it. You’re smart.”

Stiles nods once with a sideward slanted smile. “Also?” Erica adds. “Take a nap or something, you look like shit.” Which makes sense; Stiles hadn’t really expected much else after not sleeping more than three hours per night. She offers him a quiet smile in return and reaches one arm out, closes Derek’s bedroom door behind him. It’s hard not to make assumptions about why she’d said it like that, so gentle and unlike her. Maybe Derek’s absence is affecting all of them a little more than they’d thought.

He’s not stupid, he knows Derek is definitely awake by now and has been listening-- he could have been woken up by Stiles’s Jeep crunching the gravel outside. Sure enough, when Stiles rounds the corner of the bed facing the window, Derek’s eyes are open, glistening, and he begins to sit up.

“Hey,” Stiles greets, hands in his pockets. He goes for a smile but it’s a cheap attempt.

Derek sits up, looks troubled. And tired, but that’s a regular state of being for the both of them recently. The window is open and Stiles shivers from the chill. “What Erica said--”

“It’s fine,” Stiles answers before Derek can form his words together. He must have heard one of them say Erica’s name; he hasn’t remembered it on his own for weeks. “We’re going to find a way to help you. We have to go on a trip though.”

“Stiles,” Derek sighs, rubbing at his eyes. “What if we don’t find anything?”

Stiles smiles even though there’s a giant lump in his throat. “Hey, no pessimistic talk; each spell has a reversal.”

That doesn’t seem to reassure Derek much; his head swoops down and he frowns. “I’m not going with you.”

Stiles’s mouth opens slightly. “What do you mean you’re not going with?”

“I’m not,” Derek says.

“Yes you are,” Stiles asserts. “We have to have you both there for the spell to work, if there is something.”

His voice is interrupted by Scott leaning his head in, and Derek growls towards the doorway. “You know Scott,” Stiles says to him, motioning for him to come closer. “And this conversation is over anyways.” Stiles gets up and Derek stares after him. “I’m not letting this happen to you. Get some sleep.”

He closes the door after them, leaning against it. He cracks an eye open and Scott is watching him. “How much did you hear of that?”

“All of it,” Scott says, voice sympathetic.

“Do you think I can fix this?”

Scott looks down at his hands. “Yeah.” He looks up with a small grin. “I think you can. But you’re not going alone.”

Stiles is already shaking his head, but Scott holds up a hand.

“There’s no way I’m letting you go to Italy alone with the two Dereks,” Scott tells him seriously. Then his forehead crinkles and he sighs. “It’s weird that I have to say that sentence and that it makes sense.”

“Yeah,” Stiles chuckles.

“Seriously though,” Scott punches him on the shoulder and Stiles shoves him back-- he’d missed all of this, save for-- well, the whole situation. “I still don’t know Mark’s angle and why he was sent in the first place.” And that’s actually a good point that Stiles files away for later. “Cause that means they didn’t want him in his own time for a reason.”

He lowers his voice so Derek won’t be able to hear (it hurts Stiles a little bit to think that Derek wouldn’t hear him anyways), “Derek can’t help you much anymore either.”

Derek rolls over in his sleep with a displeased noise, just a brush against the air. “I know,” Stiles says, looking away and getting up so he can check on Marcello.

--

Derek sleeps fretfully, hands bunched in the sheets. Holding on, like he’s afraid he might be here one second and gone in the next. But what lacks here now is the way he usually wakes up-- usually grumpy and tired, now it’s replaced with little movement and he buries his face in the sheets like the sun is a physical pain.

Stiles thinks he may not want to savor it anymore.

When he opens the door the next half-inch, the creak makes Derek sit up quickly, hair tossed up on his head, eyes flashing in the dark.

“Hey, you’re up,” he chooses as a greeting and Derek turns away, rolls to his other side so he’s facing the other direction. They have plane tickets for the next day that Derek’s savings had paid for, and Stiles doesn’t know why he’s visiting again, but he doesn’t regret it at all. When Stiles just sits down onto the edge of the bed, Derek doesn’t move.

“Yeah,” he grunts. “Now I am.”

Stiles smiles. “Have you been sleeping all day?”

“Now I’m not,” Derek answers, making Stiles roll his eyes.

“Alright, alright,” Stiles says, but his face is hot with embarrassment. He moves to get up, but Derek turns in the bed and barely manages to snatch at his wrist, halting him. His grip isn’t steady enough to really keep him from going, but it stops him nevertheless. Stiles stares down at him, pale, eyes half closed, sits back down. “Do you want me to stay?”

Derek’s eyes slip the last bit closed and he nods once.

“Okay, yeah.” Stiles slips his shoes off. They’ve done this, once when Stiles was sick, and Derek had stalked over his bed because his dad was off on a trip. And again when Stiles couldn’t roll over or he’d break his stitches. But now it’s Stiles slipping into Derek’s bed, the sheets scratching softly, and he steals a pillow from under Derek’s head, but the other man doesn’t make any dissenting noise, just a quiet grunt.

Stiles takes hold of his wrist then, sitting back so he’s leaning against the wall.

It’s the worst feeling; Stiles can’t grip his flesh tight enough to make him feel tangible, like he’s still here. Because he’s not all the way here anymore. None of them were really prepared for Derek not being there anymore.

Stiles sits with him on the bed, Derek drifting off to sleep after a few moments. He doesn’t wake up for a few hours. Stiles spends the time googling hotel reservations and looking down at him.

--

Flying Derek all the way to Italy is difficult; they have to dodge all of the weird looks he keeps getting and comments from older people wondering if he’s feeling all right. Derek begins to grip his seat in the waiting room before they head out, but his fingers don’t make a dent. Stiles wants to tell him that it’ll all be fine, but they don’t really have any idea when he’s going to completely disappear. So it’s hard to say much beyond random comments, but they do seem to help Derek relax a little bit.

It’s harder to rent a car out once they’re there, because Scott and Stiles aren’t old enough, and the representative takes Derek’s ID and looks at him like he’s a kidnapping victim. Eventually, they head down the countryside, Mark watching for familiar mountains, and Stiles feels ridiculous when they head back to the hotel that night with no success.

“It’ll be okay,” Scott says when they lay down in their double bed. “We’ll find something tomorrow.”

Stiles lies awake and thinks we have to.

A couple hours after Scott is deep asleep (he sleeps like a rock, so Stiles isn’t worried), Stiles sits up and walks to the kitchen to grab a water. When he turns the corner and flicks the light on, he halts to a stop, because Mark is coming through the front door.

“Mark?”

Mark stands up and straightens himself out. He looks at Stiles before stepping inside. “Hello. Why are you awake?”

“Why are you awake?” Stiles counters, crossing his arms. “And not in the room?”

“I went for a walk,” Mark says, and Stiles crosses his arms. “A run.”

A growl interrupts them, and Stiles turns to see Derek hovering in the hallway, eyes flickering blue. Stiles snatches the water bottle and glares Mark’s way. “Just stay here from now on,” he tells Mark, and the werewolf nods.

Stiles heads back to his room but stays awake so he can listen for the door.

The next morning, Scott finds a silver spoon hidden underneath the sink, and Stiles tosses it out the window, watching Mark put his shoes on in the other room. Mark lifts his head right after, looking their way, and when he notices the two of them staring back, shoots his gaze back to his feet.

--

“No, no,” Mark says, slapping at the seat behind Stiles, as he drives out past the city and more towards the countryside. “The other way, this is the wrong way.”

Stiles looks at him in the mirror, eyes wide and asks, “Do you know the right way then?”

“Yes, you’re going the wrong way,” Mark tells him, jaw clenching.

Stiles hums, and keeps going straight. “Okay, I have to turn around soon, so let me find a road that we can turn off of.”

Mark seems to shift uneasily, so Stiles keeps going despite his request. Eventually, Scott jabs at him and points as they round a corner and spot what Mark had been trying to avoid. “You think that’s it?”

It’s a castle, high up on a hill, the entrance blocked off by thick foliage, and Stiles comes to a stop, because that has to be it. For the most part, it looks intact, structurally sound, like someone had lived in it within the last forty years, but not any later. There is a small lake behind it, Stiles can see. He turns around and glares at Mark. “You knew it was here.”

“I did not,” Mark says, looking at the grounds. “It doesn’t look the same.” His gaze is piercing as he stares at the faded bricks. Almost reverently.

“Two hundred years will do that,” Stiles comments, unbuckling his seatbelt. “Well, let’s get going. We’re losing time.” This has to be it, Stiles thinks, because he can feel a vague tugging in his gut that started up halfway up the road. This seems like an ideal place for a witch to live, too. It’s a good place to start, at least.

It’s easy enough for Mark and Scott to tear the giant door open, but they all move to the side as a horde of rats race out after it’s opened. The grand hallway is empty, probably robbed long ago of its furniture, but the staircase is still elegant marble, cracking slightly at the corners, so Stiles takes them up and to the right. “There has to be something in the library,” he says, their footsteps and his voice echoing through the hall. “A book, manual, or something.”

They have to circle back when they find only a kitchen and the entrance to a courtyard, filled with overgrown grass and vines intertwining with the bricks. Eventually, one of the the two large split doors reveals a large library, still filled to the brim with books.

“Knowledge doesn’t pay,” Stiles comments, touching at the dusty books. The desk is still there, large and taking up the whole corner, with opened books still sitting there.

Scott and Mark search the desk while Stiles looks through the bookshelf with Derek, handing books to him so it seems like he’s participating. It seems tougher for him after a while, so Stiles settles on setting them on the floor instead.

Stiles can’t find anything after going through three large book shelves. “It can’t be in here. There’s too much here. None of these have anything to do with magic either.” He grunts in frustration, dropping the books in a puff of dust.

Stiles leans forward against the bookshelf and hits his head back against the wood, knocking against a knob. With a jolt, the bookshelf spins and Stiles goes back with it, tripping into a dark room.

“Stiles!” he can hear Scott call.

“Scott, the bookshelf is a trap!” He hits at the wall, and Scott hits back, right in front of him. “There’s a knob! Left side!” He steps away as Scott, Derek, and Mark all fall into the room with him. Scott wipes dust off of his t-shirt and looks around. Stiles motions around the completely dark room with a wide grin. “I found something!”

It turns out a few feet behind them, there is a stairway leading down in a circle. They move slowly down, Scott scratching the wall to make sparks and light the lanterns hanging there. Stiles grabs one for himself, hoping that isn’t booby-trapped too, so they can see.

At the bottom of the staircase is a wide room, almost like a basement. Except it has an ornate bed in the middle of the room and curtains hanging in front of a window. Stiles creeps along the wall slowly, finding a bed and a large bookshelf and not much else. The window only shows the water from the moat, light barely filtering through. He begins searching through the shelf, but some commotion from the other side of the room catches his attention.

“Hey, I think I found something,” Scott says, picking up and showing Stiles a large book sitting on a pedestal in the middle of the room-- asking for trouble.  As soon as he does though, the whole thing starts glowing, and Scott curses as if it’s burning him, nearly dropping it.

Stiles hastily grabs it from him so it doesn’t hit the floor, and both Mark and Derek are just standing there watching them as it stops glowing an angry red and fades to a light blue, pulsing slightly. “I think this might be it,” he says in awe. Stiles feels a drip of water on his shoulder from the ceiling and he looks up, another hitting his cheek. “Let’s go back up.”

In the library, Stiles sets the book down on the dusty desk and opens it, reading to himself. Scott hovers, leaning down to look at the words.

“Isn’t Marcello Italian? How can you read from that book?” Scott asks over his shoulder. He sneezes from all the dust, and Stiles ducks away. It’s easier to read now that the dust is gone, and he leans forward.

“Actually, most sorcerers used Latin still rather than their mother tongue, at least until recently.” Stiles explains. “Latin, I can read.”

“How exactly can you do that?” Scott asks him.

“Helping you out with magical stuff really helped my studying skills. I had Lydia help me out just in case we came across something like this.”

“Dude. Cool.”

Stiles smirks. “I thought so.”

Derek wanders off after ten minutes of Stiles searching through the book, so Stiles sends Scott after him. Mark stays near him, watching as Stiles flips through, spell by spell. It’s really just hope that he’ll find all the info he needs. He just hopes that the person who sent Marcello to the future didn’t intend for him to stay there.

Now that he has reason to suspect, it’s easier to find dirt on the guy in the book. Stiles flips one of the ancient pages and comes across a photo of Marcello. It’s not a page from the book itself, isn’t torn out, but folded up. Stiles nearly destroys it just unfolding it, but the rough sketch is obvious and so is the word below it, Ricercato.Stiles doesn’t need to translate the word to realize what it is.

“You’ve been keeping some secrets from us, Mark,” Stiles says, still intently reading from the WANTED poster, the crudely drawn photo of Marcello staring back up at him. He’s startled by a clattering noise a small distance away. When he looks up, Marcello is just rounding the corner at a sprint, a vase crashing to the ground behind him, and then he’s gone. “Oh-- shit-- Scott!” He cups his hand around his mouth, and tucks the book under his arm hastily before breaking into a run.

He pushes some spiderwebs out of the way and tries to spit them out with a disgusted grunt, but keeps going. The hallway arches lower and lower the farther he goes and he barely catches sight of Marcello as he dashes through a large doorway. “We have a runner-- Scott!”

He loses Marcello on a roundabout that ends up with himself lost in a bedchamber filled with dust and the red bedsheets still made. The frame is covered in cobwebs and is molding slightly from the weather. Stiles kneels down, tucks his body in on itself and tries to catch his breath. It’s not easy with the dust quickly filling the air of the former undisturbed room, and he feels lightheaded for a moment before Scott bursts through the door on the other side of the room. The door hits the frame and dust flies everywhere.

Marcello is hanging from Scott’s hand on his neck, and he growls when Scott throws him down at Stiles’s feet. Derek quickly follows behind, eyes flashing blue rather than red, like a ghost.  “Thanks,” Stiles pants, then uses his knees to stand back up, trying to smile Derek’s way. Scott grins; he’d probably enjoyed catching him-- he doesn’t seem to hold much joy for the guy. “That wasn’t completely necessary, you know.”

“I thought you would kill me once you had the information you needed,” Marcello spits out, a bit of blood hanging from his bottom lip.

“Dude,” Stiles says in disappointment. “Would it be smart in any way to kill you? Besides, I don’t even know what you’ve done wrong yet.” Scott is looking between the two of them in confusion and Stiles just shrugs. He picks the book back up and arches an eyebrow. “Yet.”

“I haven’t done anything,” Mark spits, and it’s oddly calm coming from his mouth-- from Derek’s mouth.

“Not a fan of the law, huh?” Stiles asks, showing the WANTED poster to Mark and Scott. Mark swallows and lowers his head. “My dad’s a cop, so this is a bit awkward for me right now. I feel like I want to arrest you. Is that weird?” Scott shakes his head, eyebrows furrowing.

Derek sidles up to his side and looks at the poster. “The eyebrows are all wrong, I know,” Stiles jokes, and Derek just leaves without any comment, eyes far away. Stiles deflates a little bit and this all is less funny all of a sudden. He focuses back on Mark. “Explain.”

“The king planned on executing me,” Mark rushes to say, mouth moving fast.  His eyes are conflicted as he takes a seat without a care on the dusty bed; Stiles flinches a bit as spiders begin to crawl from the sheets but Mark doesn’t seem to notice. “I remember now. It is true, I was a thief.”

Stiles relays this all to Scott, and his expression morphs into open-mouthed shock.

“You stole from a king?” Scott asks in horror.

“Yes,” Mark admits in a quiet, gruff voice. “It was a public ceremony in the king’s throne room.” He sounds spiteful at this, and Stiles kind of understands that. He never really bowed to authority or anything either.  “My charges involved the stealing of food from the royal kitchen and disrespect to his highness. I have also stolen many things for the sake of my village, but that was my price to pay.”

“All that for some bread?” Scott asks when Stiles translates. Stiles inwardly appreciates the joke, but keeps a straight face.

“You seem pretty willing to accept your own death,”  Stiles comments hesitatingly. “Why go to a different time to avoid it then?”

“I did not do this,” Mark motions to himself, a face of disgust gracing his features. “I do not know how I came to be here either.”

Scott keeps Mark cornered as Stiles clicks his tongue, then looks through the book before landing on a page with an excited shout.

This is the spell he needs. In the book are notes in the margins of a spell for time travel. The next few pages describe the steps and, as Stiles flips, out flies a sheet of folded up parchment. It slides to the floor and Stiles picks it up.

As soon as he touches the words, they begin to glow an ethereal blue. The letters keep swimming on the page. “Um. Stop?” Stiles tries to command. “Read? It’s Stiles! English?” At the final command, the words flash a bright orange and rearrange themselves a final time. Beyond his vision, Stiles can see the pages of the book shining also, he assumes translating themselves. Stiles wonders why the whole book couldn’t have done that, but then the letters come into proper view.

“That’s super cool,” Scott mutters behind him.

Stiles turns the page. “I think I know who did this,” he says.

“Who?”

“Well not who, but I know what did it. It was an enchantress.” Which is a totally different ballpark than a witch. Enchantresses are usually badass and terrifying and at Merlin-levels of magic. Stiles looks at Mark who gives him an innocent expression. “So, do you remember a woman named Cecilia?” Mark’s eyes go wide at his question. He looks down at the floor like he’s trying to hold onto the thought that had struck him, and then nods. “She loved you, so she sent you forward to save your life, apparently. That seems pretty nice.” It’s hard to leave out how badass it also is-- Stiles has never seen a spell this organized, and it’ll probably zap all of his powers just attempting it.

“I remember now,” Mark says quietly. “Cecilia.” And it’s not good that Marcello is remembering more because that means he’s zapping more from Derek. Or replacing Derek, at this point.

“Yep,” Stiles says, reading quickly through the letter she’d left. He freezes for a moment, staring down at the writing at the bottom. There is a section, a scrawled note, that Stiles reads over quickly, and not out loud. He looks up at Derek who is watching him and saves the bottom for later. “So, the spell.”

It includes the date and that the spell should be performed on the nearest full moon. “With the help of the werewolf’s innate supernatural power, anyone with a spark shall be able to perform the spell,” Stiles reads.

Stiles continues to read, “Past the first full moon following his arrival, the current version of his soul with cease to be."

“Next full moon is tonight,” Scott supplies.

"That’s not any pressure or anything, Jesus," Stiles breathes.

“Derek?” Stiles calls, and the Derek apparition walks over to him. “How are you feeling?”

Derek gives him a stony glare, but it’s only at fifteen percent power, which is frightening enough as it is. “According to Cecilia, you and Mark are both the same soul, so when he was supposed to die, his soul was put into a new body, then another, and then into yours.”

“So reincarnation?” Derek asks, stunning Stiles.

“Yeah, yeah I guess so-- but see, that’s why you’re disappearing.”

“That’s comforting.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “It’s because one soul can’t exist in more than one place at once!” He can’t help but be excited now, because they can actually fix this. Derek doesn’t look like he shares the sentiment. So Stiles begins flipping through the spell again.

“It’s just dangerous,” Stiles begins, turning hastily through the pages. “You both will begin to disappear if it happens, because you both have the same soul. So you have a chance of being sent back until I distinguish which one of you are going back and which is staying.”

Derek’s eyes lower to the ground. “What then?”

Stiles takes one quick glance back up as he turns the page, shaking his head. “I just have to be really quick.”

--

It’s hell getting the ingredients they need to create the spell. Stiles kneels over in the clearing of the forest (it’s always a forest, Stiles had complained as they searched for the nearest one that hadn’t been cleared in the past two hundred years) and digs an uneven circle with the horn of a bull. Then, he pours the liquid mixture of various bloods of animals into the circle.

He mixes the paste with herbs and grains with the mortar and hopes that he hasn’t forgotten anything, because the sun is going down and this is their only chance. The sweats beads at the edge of his hairline.

Scott has Mark by the neck, and Stiles is glad he’s not at full alpha power yet, because Scott, for this short time, is strong enough to hold him.

Stiles redirects Derek to the middle of the circle with a hand on his back, just as the moon makes its appearance through the trees, lighting Stiles’s way. Stiles takes a blade and cuts Derek’s arm slightly, so his blood spills on the ground.

“You too,” Stiles motions for Scott to put Mark inside too. “The spell will be putting you a few days after your hanging should have been. You’ll be okay,” he says, and Mark nods, swallowing. Stiles hopes they’ll be okay. He gives one last look to Derek who is watching him, gaze not breaking.

Smiling shakily at Derek, Stiles sets fire to the mixture and tosses it to the ground at the trio’s feet. There is an immediate flash of blue light.

Stiles lifts his arms, coughing at the mixture of dust flying through the air, and the blue light rises, surrounding the circle with an almost-orb. He begins the chant, hoping his Latin is correct. It comes out a bit choppy, but it seems to work, because the blue light is getting stronger, brighter. Stiles loses focus for one second to look at Derek, who is still watching him.

And all at once, hell breaks loose.

Marcello, in the time Stiles took to check on Derek, begins to sprint towards the outside of the circle. Stiles should have seen it coming; Mark is a thief. He can only imagine the riches Mark thinks he’ll make in this time. It’s greedy, but smart to stay.

“Mark, no!” Stiles yells, but it’s too late to get a grip on him and pull him back into the circle. All at once, the light fades but the air crackles quietly, like static building in the air.

After the spell breaks its hold, Stiles has no issues grabbing hold of Marcello by the arm. Stiles, one hand in his pocket, tugs his taser out and shoots Marcello right in the neck. Marcello goes down at once, shaking violently. Stiles tucks the taser back into his pants and gets back to work. He throws his arms out and his energy spreads outward like a spiderweb once he tugs Marcello into the circle.  

Like a match, Stiles’s spark lights the circle blue again. He takes Mark’s limp wrist and slices at the skin just as he tries to get up. Stiles tases him again, keeping him on the ground.  

During the fight, Derek collapses to ground with a shout. Stiles can hear Scott shout his name, and he turns frantically, the air blue beyond his eyes, nearly blinding him. The light starts to dim, and Stiles can see Mark nearly crawled out of the circle again.

“Derek! Stay with me!” Stiles yells, voice echoing, booming beyond the roar of the spell taking root.

His hair whips to the side as the wind picks up speed, and Stiles shoves Marcello into the circle again. As he throws more energy into the spell, Stiles can feel Marcello’s eyes flash and he tries to clasp onto Stiles’s wrist with his hand, and Stiles screams as his claws take root in his wrist and tear the skin apart. He has a moment of panic where he thinks Mark is trying to send him back, but Mark’s touch starts to fade as soon as he feels the scratch.

“You have to go!” Stiles yells through the roar of the wind, and Marcello begins to thread apart even as he tries to tug Stiles with him.

Eventually, the claw marks began to fade as Marcello does, and Stiles tugs himself back out of the circle despite the pull in his stomach telling him to stay, stay. Clutching at his arm, he backs up just as the orb grows to the side of a tree, glowing ethereal green and blue in the dark.

The wind quiets.

Stiles shakes his head and looks around, but the orb is-- it’s still there, the light pulsing slowly, but increasing in speed. He feels sick and the tug in his stomach gets stronger before everything explodes, the orb fraying out towards the trees and knocking Scott to the side.

Stiles is blown back as well, side clipping a tree, by the magical force and he curls onto his side to relieve the pain just for a moment. Eventually, the blinding light lessens enough for him to open his eyes. His vision is swaying side to side dangerously, turning his stomach.

And then he blinks into focus.

Derek's back is arched, his face splayed down in the dirt, and Stiles waits. Derek’s yells tear through Stiles’s body, and he can’t touch him or do anything to help-- it must hurt to have your soul returned to you. They don’t last too much longer, thankfully, and then Derek tilts his head back. His eyelashes flutter, then he releases his grip on the ground and he slowly opens his eyes. Eventually, the blue glow dims completely and as Derek's body slowly relaxes, he kneels up and sits on his feet in exhaustion.

Stiles looks as he begins to reform himself, almost as if he's changing from ghost to human. "Stiles?" Derek says in confusion, and his voice is dry, cracks like the leaves around them. His body is still shimmering like mist, but there are parts of him that are beginning to solidify.

"In the flesh," Stiles answers, but his sigh of relief is bone-quaking. His side aches as he sits up but it isn’t unbearable. He approaches and Derek stays put but arches his neck out. Stiles does everything he can to not drop to the ground yet. “That was so much easier for him, I think,” he says in sympathy, dropping to his ass.

Derek's eyes flicker to his wrapped, bloody wrist and they darken for a moment. "I didn't know if you would do it," he says, voice shuttered.

Stiles scowls. The first thing Derek could say, and he says that? "Well you're stupid and non-insightful, then. How could you not?" He knows Derek is fully intact now, though. It would be easy to back away from him, now that he isn’t needed, but he can’t anymore. The back of his neck is prickling with exhaustion, at the pull in his gut and what it had taken to separate himself from Marcello, but all he can think about is how worth it all of this was.

"He would have been a good resource to the pack," Derek defends, like he regrets being saved, and Stiles starts to regret everything.

Stiles nearly kneels up, but the pain in his side flares up dangerously. He sits down unevenly with a huff and points accusingly at Derek. "He didn't belong here and we both know it. You do. You're worth more to me, and beyond the possible repercussions of the past becoming damaged, it's stupid that you think that; I thought you knew better by now."

Derek's mouth is gaping the tiniest bit, and Stiles stares at the ground before meeting his gaze.  

“Besides, his time needs him as much as we need you,” he says without thinking, blinking the dust out of his eyelashes. “I need you here to fight with all the time.”

Derek’s silent for a moment but nods once with a painful-looking swallow. “Yeah?” he croaks out.

"Yes!" Stiles throws his arms up and his dry voice cracks.  “And even if he was useful, he was seriously kind of an asshole. You’re way less of one.” Which isn’t completely the truth, but Stiles likes that Derek is an asshole sometimes-- they’re like wine and cheese that way.

And god-- Stiles has to close his eyes because Derek smiles at that, actually smiles. It’s hesitant and barely there, but there’s enough hope there to make Stiles’s spirits roar in victory. He’s tired looking and covered in dust, and he’s just insanely attractive-- Stiles wants to kiss him, just like this.

“I mean, we’re already soul-married or whatever,” Stiles mumbles, crawling on his knees to Derek, fingers splaying on his bloody bicep, and another hand running through his hair. Derek, eyes sort of drooping with fatigue, looks at him like he’s completely confused and thinks Stiles is just rambling, eyes shining. The world is still circling violently in Stiles's head, but it's not unbearable and he has to look. Stiles doesn't know the repercussions of what they've done but touching him, knowing he's still with him, is really awesome.

“Well you’re soul-married to both of us,” Derek grumbles.

Stiles rolls his eyes, “It’s not like I liked him though,” he says. His lightheadedness must have gotten to him more than he’d thought, but Derek doesn’t seem to mind all that much, it would seem. His eyes are opened wide and Stiles reels forward, and before he can think of the consequences, kisses him.

Derek doesn’t react right away save for a quiet intake of air, and Stiles tries to move back and save his dignity or whatever sliver of it he has  left. Before he can, though, Derek’s palm comes up and grasps his neck softly, with little strength, keeps him there. His palms burn and it’s startling how real he feels.

They separate after a few moments, Derek leaning his forehead against Stiles’s before kneeling upward completely. “I’ll kind of miss him, though, the bastard,” Stiles adds with a hesitant chuckle.  Derek huffs out the tiniest laugh, a sound that gives Stiles goosebumps, and then he slumps his shoulders. The dark circles under his eyes are more prominent now that he doesn’t have a ghostly appearance anymore. Stiles gives him a wry smile and asks,  “Oh! How do you feel anyways--”

His voice is muffled by Derek’s mouth crashing into his. This shocks Stiles into nearly collapsing into Derek; he figures that wouldn’t be good for them staying upright considering how tired Derek is. Derek is holding his neck with fingers digging into his skin desperately but his mouth is gentle and searching. "Wait a second," Stiles tries to say, but then is blocked by Derek's mouth again, and his concerns about Derek’s health are overwhelmed.

"This's good," Stiles's voice muffled against Derek's lips. It's not the most comfortable kiss, dirt and gravel digging into his knees, he's still probably bleeding onto the ground, and he's sure there'll be a smoke smell he won't be able to get out for weeks, but he stays still and breathes Derek in, like he won’t be able to ever do it again, in--

Derek hums in agreement. He backs up, and for a second there's a flash of his eyes, red.

“Is it safe to come over there now?” comes Scott’s voice through the trees. Stiles and Derek both straighten up in shock, and Stiles bursts out in a laugh at his best friend’s poor timing. Scott steps through the trees and catches sight of Stiles holding Derek up by the face, and Stiles realizes just then how much Derek is leaning on him.

“It worked!” Stiles says victoriously. Derek nods in agreement and huffs when Stiles lets him go. “I still can’t believe your twin turned out to be like an asshole Robin Hood. I’m sure he’s got his looks going for him, at least.” Derek rolls his eyes and drops to the ground on his ass, rubs a hand through his hair.

When they find the energy to get up, he picks up the bowl quietly as Derek covers the ash lines with dirt, coating his hands with it.

Stiles is too weak to walk at a pace faster than a snail, and Derek doesn’t seem to be in a much better condition. He stays against Stiles’s side to make sure he doesn’t fall, which is actually pretty thoughtful. So through the night they walk, side by side, as Scott pokes at Stiles’s arm every once in a while to get him to talk. It’s not hard to, it never really is, so Scott and Stiles pick up conversation as Derek follows along quietly. Their shoulders bump together as they look up at the moon together; Stiles wonders if there’s a full moon on this day in the past and if Marcello is doing fine. Derek is still intact so far, and the hair on his arms prickles against Stiles’s in a very real way when he meets back up, so he tries to stop worrying as much.

They finally clear through the underbrush and get to Derek’s rental car. Derek uses some old water bottles (Stiles left them there, most likely) to wash their hands of dirt, and Stiles’s of the powders and ingredients he used.

Stiles passes out in the passenger’s seat halfway to the car rental place with his face smashed against the window and a hand splayed on Derek’s thigh as he drives.

--

Derek wakes him up when they arrive at the shop, and Stiles feels much more rested than before, even though his hair is all up on one side and his eyes are nearly crusted shut. Derek opens his door for him and Stiles tries to hail a cab as he pays the car owner. Then there’s a long taxi ride with an old Italian man that Stiles can barely understand, and he’s pretty sure half of the words are actually in Italian rather than just broken English. Derek just gives him a cocky sideways grin and speaks back fluently, making Stiles scowl but it’s satisfying to see that his memory is more intact.

Scott is there in the waiting area when they get back from buying waters for the plane ride. “Ready for a 17 hour plane ride?” he asks Stiles sarcastically, shouldering his duffle bag and throwing the other arm around him. Derek is hovering nearby, reading from a magazine and drinking from his water.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Stiles shrugs.

They walk through the little hallway, Stiles bumping into Derek every once in a while and then they’re being seated.

“Okay, I’ll see you guys when we get home,” Scott says before stepping into his aisle and going to his own seat. Stiles waves and travels to their seats in the back of the plane. The only two they could get together on short-notice were all the way in front of the bathroom and the stewardess area.

Stiles is still half-asleep when they get on the plane, but once they’re seated and they’re about to take off, he can’t stop his knee from bouncing and his mind from traveling aimlessly. The truth is that he hates plane rides-- the ride there had been easy and assisted by the urgency of the situation, but now he has the opportunity to pay attention more and he remembers his distaste. He sits back in his seat and sighs in agitation, scoots to the side so a young woman can pass both of them and sit by the window in her seat.

Stiles starts tapping at his knee thoughtfully and starts to play with the TV remote on the arm of his seat as the plane goes up and passes by the last bit of turbulence.

“Stiles,” Derek mumbles in the seat next to him in an exhausted voice. His eyes are starting to close when Stiles looks at him, and he blinks them open, a hand sliding to cup his hand over Stiles’s knee and press it down gently. He keeps it there after Stiles stops moving, tilting his head back slightly and sighs.

“No that’s fine, I’m fine. You just--” Stiles quiets down as Derek’s breathing evens out, “go to sleep then.” His mouth twitches and he turns his head the other way, fingers running softly over Derek’s. He knows they’ll talk about everything later, but at least they’re not dead.

--

Derek offers to drive Stiles home even as Scott tries to convince him that he’s closer and that it’s not a big deal. Stiles eventually intervenes and tells Scott to just head home; he really wishes he would’ve brought his Jeep to avoid the back-and-forth about this. He doesn’t really want to ride on the deathtrap bike, anyhow.

“Alright,” Scott relents eventually. He pats Stiles and Derek on their shoulders. Picking his helmet up, he tucks it under his arm and runs a hand through his hair. One shoulder slumping, he turns to face Derek. “Hey. Derek-- I um. I’m really glad you’re not dead.”

Stiles snorts, but Derek seems to get it, just nods with a small smile. Stiles remembers back to the beginning, Derek living in a shell of a home, Scott trying all he could do to become different than him. Now he can see that Scott looks to him for advice and Derek is more willing to give it; it’s weird how much things have changed.

Derek puts a hand on Scott’s arm and then Scott moves on to hug Stiles. “Oh! You too,” he says loudly into Stiles’s ear.

“Yeah, I know,” Stiles grumbles, patting at his back, but he’s smiling in relief anyways as Scott gets onto his bike, “You’d be lost without me. Good talk.”

Scott rides off into the night and then Derek sighs as he unlocks his car and opens Stiles’s door for him. Stiles gets in and buckles himself in, pushing his seat back so he’s in a slightly reclined position before they drive off.

When Stiles last checks his clock, it’s almost 3 in the morning, and there’s a span of time during the hour-long car ride from the airport where his mind goes blank-- and he doesn’t quite sleep, he won’t sleep unless he’s in a bed at this point of his over-exhaustion, but he isn’t quite conscious either.

The next thing he knows, Derek is pulling up to the loft and is waiting for Stiles to get up. Stiles wonders if he should go home, but finds that he really doesn’t want to all that much. He figures he’s due a power-nap or two before having to go home and face the music (the music is his dad-- to the tune of the scariest horror movie in existence). So he unbuckles his seatbelt and follows Derek through the dark rather than asking him for a ride.

Stiles has enough presence of mind to get changed but then he doesn’t remember much else about the night. He sleeps on the couch, Derek’s comforter wrapped around his shoulders and he curls onto his side before almost immediately passing out.

--

Stiles wakes up with a slight crick in his neck but he feels the most rested he’s been in the past week. When he finally brings himself to crack his eyes open, he can see that the sun looks like it’s setting, so it must be close to nighttime again. Derek is in the kitchen, making clattering noises every once in a while as Stiles watches him rinse some cups out and dry them before putting them away. It’s a good view, he has to admit, but he also feels really creepy.

“Hey,” Stiles says. “Thanks for letting me crash here.”

Derek turns around quickly, like he hadn’t realized Stiles was awake just yet. “Good morning. And it was no problem.” Stiles tosses the sheets off of himself and gets up to go to the bathroom. He brushes his teeth with his toothbrush that he left in there once that Derek actually kept.  

He’s wearing a pair of Derek’s sweatpants and they’re a little too big around the hips but are the perfect length for him. “So how are your memories doing?” Stiles asks, kneeling up on the couch and leaning over the back, watching as Derek digs into his fridge for a bottle of water.

Now that Derek’s slept off some of the exhaustion on the plane and even more during the night, his eyes are brighter and his smile is less forced. The lines of Derek’s body are solid, the slope of his back curved sharply, even with his lazy and relaxed stance; it all looks more real. Derek shrugs. He tilts his head back and takes a chug from the water, neck on display. “I remembered my passcode to get in,” he answers with a sigh, and that’s actually a big step. There are still shadows under Derek’s eyes that are bruise-like and look painful, but that’s just his appearance. As far as Stiles can see, everything else is fine.

“That’s good, that means whatever memories you lost are back, so they’re not gone forever.” Stiles doesn’t know what he would do if he lost all of his past memories and had to restart with a clean slate-- it’s horrifying enough to think about.

Derek’s expression says that he’s thinking the same. “My thoughts are-- they’re still scrambled sometimes. I still don’t feel like I’m here all the way. All I’ve done is sleep though, so.” Stiles stands up and crosses his arms. He doesn’t know whether he should advance or not, but then Derek tilts his chin down. It’s an obvious invitation for Stiles to speak.

“It must suck. What-- do you need something?” he asks, wishing his words wouldn’t stumble. He treads slowly over the carpet, it still rasps quietly under his feet anyways. Derek’s eyes shine in the low light as he looks Stiles up and down, and Stiles lets his hands fall to his sides. “I don’t know what I can do, but just tell me and I’ll make do. I’ll improvise.”

He’s answered with a rush of air and Derek crowding into his space. Stiles, already two hundred percent on board with this course of action, meets him halfway-- though it’s less “meeting” and more frantically tripping over his own feet. Derek doesn’t seem to mind all that much, just huffs against Stiles’s mouth for a moment and then breathes in once.

When their mouths meet, he presses forward until Derek’s back is touching the counter behind them-- it probably digs in at one point, painfully, because Stiles can’t stop himself from pressing closer and closer--

“Wait,” he blurts out. Stiles tries to push himself off, but Derek’s hands, hot against his lower back, keep him from going far. Derek’s mouth traces along his jawline as Stiles pants, “I really-- listen though.” And eventually, Derek stops moving.

“You know, it’s not like I’m not on board for this,” he begins, and no, because now Derek is pulling back like Stiles has signed a letter of discontent and a restraining order all at once-- like he’s saying no. “I really, really am on board. Kind of have been for years now, you know.”

At this, Derek seems to relax, even minutely. “Then what is it?”

Stiles takes a deep breath in, wondering when he’s gotten to the point where he’s the one making adult decisions, and Derek’s the one being impulsive.

“You literally almost turned to vapor yesterday-- today? Is it still today? It doesn’t matter-- but really, I just don’t know if you’re completely here. I don’t want to undermine your decisions--before you get all defensive-- but I just want to make sure this is what you want.”

Stiles blinks in what he hopes is a convincing way-- it must work by the way Derek’s gaze goes soft again. “Because dude. I really, really want this. This is what I want. Your mouth on me is highly recommended.”

Derek’s shoulders completely collapse, then his head ducks down slightly to the side and just out of view. Stiles’s hackles rise because that’s not the reaction he’d been hoping for. He turns his gaze away and fixes it on the cabinets and Derek takes in a deep breath-- Stiles can still feel him moving under him. But then after a few moments, Derek lifts his face up and Stiles can finally see that--

“Are you laughing?”

There’s no mistaking the stress lines along Derek’s eyes and there’s no smirk on his face but it’s so obvious-- “You bastard,” Stiles says, but he’s smiling too.

“You’re-- you’re so worried about me not wanting this,” Derek says rather than a proper response, the jerk.

Stiles scowls. “No. I want to make sure this is you talking. And not any kind of side effects of almost, you know, dying.” Derek’s out of character laughing certainly doesn’t help, either.

Derek’s expression goes a little more serious at that. “Stiles. This isn’t new.” His bottom lip drags along Stiles cheekbone as he backs up. “If I-- even if I wasn’t myself, I would still be sure about a few things.”

He doesn’t finish, but Stiles gets it anyways. That this is one of those things.

Stiles takes a breath in, waits. Derek waits too, and Stiles jerks his chin down. “Well, full speed ahead then.”

It’s all a rush after that; it’s like Derek was waiting for just those words, because soon Derek is pushing him back and biting his way down Stiles’s neck and then back up as Stiles clutches at the fabric of Derek’s shirt. They somehow make their way up the stairs-- Stiles hip checks the banister painfully and Derek makes him trip over his own feet on the way up but his back hits the door eventually. He makes a displeased noise as Derek lets go of his hip to open the door and push him inside.

The way Derek’s palms run over his lower back makes him shiver minutely, and all he can do is hold on. Shuffling back, Stiles’s knees hit the bed and he goes down with an oomph. Derek following close behind and muffling Stiles with a quick press of the mouths.

“Let me--” Derek tries to say past Stiles’s mouth, but breaks off. Resiliently, he pulls back again and pushes Stiles’s hands away from his head and to his sides on the bed. His voice cracks with frustration and it’s deep with control, “Let me-- I need to touch you.” The way his hands hold against Stiles’s wrists feel like brands against his skin, and Derek uses one of them to push himself up, the other runs down Stiles’s chest before Stiles can think to even breathe-- it’s all going glacially slow but Stiles’s brain is malfunctioning in some way, only registering touch and not time.

“Okay,” he whispers, throat bone-dry, trying to arch his neck to reach Derek’s mouth. Derek seems to understand, meeting him halfway and at the same time that he kisses him, a hand traces the outline of his zipper slightly. Stiles curls his back and digs his fingers into Derek’s hips with a sharp hiss-- it’s unreal and amazingly hot how much muscle Derek has.

Stiles wiggles under Derek and mumbles, “The order is wrong here,” until Derek lifts himself up, and when he notices Stiles trying to tug his own shirt off, his expression shifts from fond annoyance to something way heavier-- something that Stiles is on board with, especially when Derek returns the favor. He strips off his shirt and reveals his bare chest, drags it against Stiles’s in a fluid flush. “Order is restored, this is better. Back on track.”

“Stiles, shut up,” Derek sighs in exasperation, lips dragging wetly along Stiles’s neck and stubble leaving a slight burn in its wake. Stiles huffs out a laugh that turns into a choked off noise when Derek’s hand presses down harder and palms over Stiles through his sweatpants. Stiles sucks a breath in and arches up once.

“You know I haven’t done anything right?” Stiles blurts out once Derek’s completely on top of him and his mouth is numb. Derek goes still against his neck at his question, beard rasping against his skin. “Not like that’s a selling point but I figured I’d let you know. Don’t want anything going wrong or you know, accidents.”

Derek brings his head up from Stiles’s neck and seems to just breathe him in when Stiles breaks off. He levels Stiles with a look of undeniable importance, his eyes scanning the length of his face. “Are you worried about anything?”

Stiles looks him in the eyes and then down at his hand where it’s covering his own. “No,” he answers honestly.

Then Derek’s expression changes to something more sarcastic looking. “Good, neither am I then. You’ll be fine.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “You’re so romantic, did you also leave me a poem on the nightstand already?”

“How’s this for romantic: get your pants off, now,” Derek demands, and Stiles feels his chest flush at the slight force in his tone.

“Well alright,” Stiles says quickly, tucking his hands under the band, then shimmying to kick his sweatpants off the end of the bed. There’s an awkward moment of Stiles elbowing him in the side and a pillow smacking Stiles in the face but eventually Derek gets a hand down Stiles’s boxers and around his dick.

He sucks in a breath and tries to thrust up, but Derek’s hand wraps around his waist and pushes him to the bed. His other hand squeezes lightly once and drags up to the head before following the same pace back down.

“I like when you use your words,” Stiles comments on the thought, breaths coming fast. “It doesn’t happen often.”

Derek grins with a bite to his stomach. “I like when you don’t use words.”

“Yeah, like that’ll happen.”

“I can only hope,” Derek jibes, licking his hand and then reaching down and giving Stiles’s dick a few more tugs. Stiles does go quiet for a bit at that, mind going clear at the mental image and not just the feeling.

Stiles scratches at Derek’s shoulders, trying to tug him upwards, and Derek comes easily, rolling down once. Shimmying his hips, Stiles shoves his boxers all the way off and Derek follows suit-- soon their cocks are lined up perfectly and Stiles makes a low groan in his throat, skin heating up at the touch.

Derek shoves his face into Stiles’s neck to bite at his skin. His other hand is used as support as he thrusts, shoving Stiles up the bed, but then he just-- keeps going, one hand coming to clutch at Stiles’s neck and Stiles has enough consciousness of mind to wrap a leg around Derek’s calf and hold on for dear life, but not much else.

The noises between the two of them are filthy, but Derek’s are muffled by the bruised skin he keeps mauling with his mouth and tongue. Stiles can feel his cheeks heating up and he tosses his head back just so Derek can bite at his collarbone. He reaches down without thinking, and the noise Derek makes when Stiles wraps a hand around both of them sounds deprived.

“I like your butt,” Stiles murmurs tenderly, squeezes it.

Derek growls in agitation and snaps playfully with his fangs before he continues moving.

It’s hard to keep up with Derek’s frantic motions and reaching around both of them completely is simply impossible, but Stiles moans at the pressure nonetheless. He kisses Derek and tries to increase his speed. Derek growls into his hair and shudders, his hand moving down to join Stiles’s and that’s it-- that’s it--

“Here I go,” Stiles gasps and comes all over their hands. Derek keeps going when Stiles’s body goes limp. He makes a noise of too much, too much, but it still feels so good-- his back arches up and Derek bites him once on the neck like he can’t help it (the marks on his neck are going to suck tomorrow, he thinks), it must be a thing for him.

When Stiles’s mind clears, he realizes Derek is still hard and leaking against his stomach, but Derek isn’t asking for anything. “Geddup,” Stiles demands, smacking at Derek’s bare ass. Derek, looking confused, complies.

As soon as they’re up, Stiles uses all of his measly strength to push Derek down so he’s half lying and using his arms to lean up and watch as Stiles kneels between his legs.

“Stiles,” is all he says in a growl before Stiles takes him in hand.

“I’m going to do this for you,” Stiles tells him, because Derek never asked, never asks-- but the way he nods and lowers his head to the bed seems like he’s begging for it.

So Stiles strokes him, alternating his speed to try and see what Derek likes. There’s a moment where Derek’s thighs begin to twitch, and Stiles takes that moment to lean over and lick over the head of his cock once. Within a few seconds, Derek’s body stills and then he is coming over Stiles’s hand and a few drops on his bottom lip. Stiles licks it off and Derek groans at the sight, head falling back heavily.

Stiles, kneeling up and crawling over Derek’s body, grins down at him. “Not bad, huh?”

Derek, still breathing kind of heavy, rolls them over so Stiles is under him and smirks. “Not bad,” he repeats, leaning down to kiss him.

-

Stiles draws the pattern of a random constellation on Derek’s chest. Derek’s chest is like rock but is weirdly soft at the same time, steady. “There’s something I didn’t tell you,” he blurts out, face smashed against his skin. “Earlier, about the spell.”

Derek, one arm bent behind his head, looks down at him and his hand ceases the steady rubbing on Stiles’s lower back. “What?” He sounds paranoid that Stiles hits him on the chest once as a lame reassuring gesture.

He waits for a moment to talk. “The book. What the witch said, it was that people’s souls were connected. So you were actually just a future version of Marcello, right? Like it passes on after he dies, and goes to the next guy as soon as he’s born.”

“Yeah. What’s this about?”

Stiles kicks the blankets off of him and sits up, crosses his legs. He sucks a breath in, bracing himself. “It’s just that, with the way the spell works, it sent Marcello to the safest place your soul would be, but there’s a part about happiness and that it wasn’t just physical safety. So since the spell tethers to souls, it found the safest soul to send yours to. Mine must have been the best option.”

Derek’s mouth opens a tiny amount and he sits up too, the blanket falling down to reveal his stupid v-line and the slight dusting of dark hair on his lower abdomen. He has stupid bed-hair that’s sticking up everywhere and he has sheet-lines along his left cheek.

“Here,” Stiles grunts, leaning over the bed to reach for his jeans. He pulls the note out of the pockets and commands it to translate. Then, he hands the torn sheet to Derek to read.

To whomever houses Marcello in the future, your soul is the link between the past and the future. Where he appears is the safest place he, and his future self, could be. The same soul has various souls it connects with in time; you are the most important one. Treat his soul well, and please return him to me.

All Stiles can do is shrug after his huge confession, and when Derek finishes, he looks up. “If that means anything,” he adds, rubbing at his neck.

Derek’s hands reach out lightning-fast so he can pull Stiles into a kiss, softening his grip once Stiles is there and adjusting his jaw. Stiles grunts in surprise; he wonders if Derek’s ever going to not surprise him with makeouts. Not that he’s not one hundred percent on board with that. Stiles kisses back, crawling clumsily over Derek’s hips to sit down on his lap. Stiles pulls away first and is about to question Derek before he’s shushed quietly.

Derek’s mouth presses against the curve of his collarbone. “I know I haven’t said about how I feel--”

“Yeah,” Stiles huffs a nervous laugh, “You don’t do that often.”

“Stiles,” Derek bites at the skin in agitation with a low growl. Stiles’s train of thought breaks and he meets Derek’s serious gaze.

“I’m trying to say-- what you said. It matters. A lot.”

Stiles closes his eyes for a moment and settles down on Derek’s lap with a huff. He tightens his hand where it had been resting on Derek’s neck. “You like me a lot,” he says with a grin.

A hand runs up his back, then another, trailing up and then down. “Sure,” Derek breathes out a content sigh. He noses gently up Stiles’s wrist and the presses his mouth to it, breathing him in.

Stiles doesn’t know if there is such a thing as soulmates, but Cecilia would probably disagree with him, and Stiles feels like he may change his stance in the future too.