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It’s been a week since Derek died, and three days since Stiles came back and fixed it.
Maybe he wouldn’t have gone through the trouble (he would’ve, he always would’ve) if Derek had died in any way else, but Derek Hale was not supposed to die (at all, ever) like this.
A shot to the heart, an arrow that didn’t miss (hi, Allison. would’ve been nice if someone had told him about that development), or something quick, something painless, something.
Not.
In front of his son.
Maybe.
But no.
Derek Hale, through no fault of his own, was created in fire. It destroyed him then. And now, through his fault entirely, because he’s a fucking idiot, it killed him.
It was wrong. So, Stiles fixed it.
Stiles always fixes it.
He can’t bring himself to care about how Scott looks as him like he’s done something unforgivable. He figures this makes them even.
-•-
“Uh,” says Eli, looking between them wearily. Definitely Derek’s kid. “Do you… want a drink?”
There are eight drinks on the coffee table between them. There are three of them in the room.
Stiles smiles at him, awkward. “Sure, Eli.”
“Cool, on it,” and he’s gone.
Silence.
For once, Stiles isn’t the one to break it.
“Why did you come back?”
Stiles cuts his eyes in Derek’s direction. “Are you complaining?”
“No, I—“ Derek cuts himself off, frustrated.
Stiles huffs out something close to a laugh.
“Stop deflecting,” Derek says, in what Stiles thinks might be his Dad Voice. “You hate this town, you didn’t come back for the Nogitsune—”
Stiles valiantly does not wince at the word.
“—so, why?”
The fight drains out of Stiles all at once, and suddenly he is so tired. They’re both too old for this. “First of all, no one fucking called me.”
Derek looks guilty, which for some fucked up reason puts Stiles at ease.
Yikes.
“Secondly,” Stiles continues, and then sighs aggressively. “Twenty years, and you somehow still can’t get it through your thick, canine skull, the idea that someone might actually care about you.”
“That’s not caring,” says Derek, watching. “Not just.”
Stiles lifts his chin and smiles. So, so tired. “Than what is it, Derek?”
Something in Derek’s eyes shutters closed, and Stiles nods once, and wonders where Eli went, and also when the kid stole his old shirt.
He wonders what he’s going to do now that he’s— as far as he can tell because he skimmed the ritual enough to figure out how to do it because he panicked and apparently that’s how magic fucking works now— tied to a man who’s in turn tied to a town that’s apparently never stopped fucking them both over.
Not even fifteen years away was enough.
Stiles wonders whether anything would be enough.
Derek abruptly stands, muttering, “I’m going to go find Eli,” before walking away as fast as he can without running.
Stiles figures Derek must be really uncomfortable if he thinks leaving Stiles in his house is a safer idea than sitting next to him.
Luckily for Derek, Stiles is an adult now.
He takes the spare key, not out of teenage impulse, but out of grown man spite.
-•-
“So,” starts Lydia, and oh boy, Stiles knows that tone of voice. “Are all my ex boyfriends secretly bi? Is there an essence I give off? Do I emit a certain pheromone?”
“Please don’t talk about pheromones, I got enough of that from Scott in high school.”
“Hm. Don’t wanna know.” She tosses her hair absently.
Stiles briefly mourns the absence of the old skip in his heart. “Fair.”
“Mone.”
“Wh— Lydia.”
Lydia hums and spins slowly in her chair smugly. They’re currently in her childhood bedroom-turned-office, though Stiles still has trouble remembering that this is her house now that her mom moved away to the Bahamas. “So, are you staying?”
Stiles leans back in his chair. “I don’t know.”
She studies her nails, intentionally nonchalant. “Well, do you want to?”
Stiles looks at her flatly and waits for her to look back up in annoyance. “I’m thirty two, Lyds, I’ve learned not to put my wants out into the universe.”
Her face softens. “Stiles—”
“No.” He flaps his hand once as if to shoo away the topic. Lydia always brought him back to high school, even when she wasn’t really doing anything. “No. We’re not talking about my feelings— not that I have any, about. About this situation— not that there is a situation to— anyway, no feelings talk, as they are irrelevant to this conversation.”
“You mean the conversation we’re having about your feelings?”
“Yes. That one.”
Her face hardens. Wow. Duality. “Stiles.”
“Lydia.”
They stare at each other for a bit before Lydia sighs and slumps back.
She blows some hair out of her face. “You know, you used to worship the ground I walk on. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you grew a spine, but that would’ve made getting you to tell me things so much easier.”
Stiles wrinkles his brow. “Wh— you barely even tried. That’s not like you. Are you okay?”
Lydia looks at him flatly. “I don’t know if you’ve been told, but Derek’s not the only one who’s back from the dead.”
Stiles leans back a little. “Right. The bestie. How are you holding up?”
“What an idiotic question.”
“Okay, well, sorry for asking.”
“My best friend came back from the dead after almost two decades and no one has questioned why she’s physically the same age as us. That shouldn’t be possible.”
Stiles tilts his head. “That’s what’s bothering you?”
“She’s technically mentally seventeen.”
Stiles winces. Ew, Scott. “Gross. We’ll come back to that. Are you okay?”
Lydia shrugs, jerkily. “I’ve had time to mourn. You know, I can barely be near her. The death follows her, like a shadow. It’s still making my throat scratchy.”
Stiles almost feels the old itch in his fingers to go on a research spiral for the next eight hours before it goes away and he sighs, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Lydia, we know werewolves. You’re a banshee. Peter has come back from the dead like three times.”
“Yeah, Stiles,” she says, looking impatient. “And have you ever seen me willingly be in a room with him? Also, he always looks exactly the same.”
“Thought the avoidance was a side effect of that time he—”
“Don’t talk about it.”
“—Sorry. And I think the age is a werewolf thing.”
“Kate also looked the same.”
“Okay, maybe it’s an old person thing, I don’t know.”
Lydia smacks her desk with the palm of her hand. “Stiles, what the hell is wrong with you? There’s supernatural knowledge to be dissected, I’m right in front of you, and you haven’t smiled even once. That’s, like, two of your favorite things.”
Something in Stiles cracks a little. “I was done with this shit, Lydia. I’m telling you this, in my own words, okay, so listen to me, please.”
He looks into her eyes, so he knows she knows he means it. “I wouldn’t have come back here if I’d had the choice.”
Lydia flinches almost imperceptibly, but he sees. They both know Stiles will never stop seeing her. She straightens, anyway. “Well. If you didn’t have a choice before, you certainly don’t have one now. Or are you planning to leave Eli with a broken father?”
Stiles thinks about the first time he saw Eli, with his flannel shirt and red-rimmed eyes, so much like himself at that age that it hurts.
It also kind of freaks him out.
He clears his throat. “Derek’s not broken.”
Lydia raises both eyebrows.
Stiles clicks his tongue against his teeth and glares at her boring, home decor magazine curtains. “I fixed it.”
“You brought him back to life, Stiles. ‘Alive’ doesn’t equal ‘whole’.”
“Okay, well, to be fair, it’s not as if he was all there to begin with.”
“I know you wouldn’t know this, since you were gone for so long, but he was better, Stiles. Settled.”
“He set himself on fire.”
Lydia purses her lips, annoyed. “Before that.”
Stiles snorts and runs a hand through his hair. “I’m not a therapist, Lydia.”
“Just a necromancer.”
“No,” he says, sharp. “Not that either. I’m not setting a, a precedent, here, okay. So none of you better start treating death like a fun little game, alright, that you can conquer and then restart, because I’m never doing this again.”
Lydia waits.
When it becomes obvious Stiles won’t elaborate, she asks. “Why?”
Stiles looks directly at her and she suddenly notices how still he’s been. Well, still for Stiles. No fidgeting, no movements that weren’t deliberate. She’s been crediting it to this latest traumatic experience, but, she realizes, she doesn’t think she’s even seen him breathe.
He looks like he did the first time. She knows the Nogitsune is dead, finally, but didn’t they think it was unkillable before? She thinks about the Nemeton.
She thinks about the ice baths. “Stiles. What did it take?”
Stiles lowers his eyes quickly and tries for a smile. It looks wrong. “Death magic requires a sacrifice, Lyds, you know that. Don’t look at me like I just killed a baby, okay, I literally did the opposite.”
“Derek’s not a baby,” Lydia says, far away.
Stiles snorts. “Well.”
“Stiles,” she says, suddenly urgent. Her throat hurts. “What did it take?”
Stiles gives up on the smile.
He meets her eyes. “It didn’t take anything I was unwilling to give.”
-•-
[Derek]
“Hey, dad, did you know Stiles fought off a pack of wild hyenas in the Brazilian desert?”
Ever since Eli met Stiles a month ago, he’s talked about nothing and no one else. Derek half thinks he’s just making shit up now.
He’s also ignoring the incredibly complicated feelings he has about his son idolizing a man Derek once saw stick half of Derek’s car’s right side-view mirror into his mouth.
“Brazil doesn’t have deserts.”
“Aunt Cora said it does.”
Eli’s chin is jutting out, stubborn, and Derek knows they’re straining for normalcy but the familiarity of that expression almost brings him to his knees. He raises his eyebrows, instead. “Are you going to believe Aunt Cora, or your father?”
“Depends. Which one of you lived in Brazil, again?”
Derek quickly taps out ‘are there deserts in brazil’ on his phone. He shows the screen to Eli, possibly more smug than he should be. “Aunt Cora is a liar and should never be trusted.”
Eli hands the phone back, face flushed in the way of a teenage boy who was just proven wrong. “I’m telling Aunt Cora you put her in the same category as Peter.”
Derek cuffs the back of his head gently and pulls him into his side. “I’m not scared of Aunt Cora, Eli. And don’t talk to Peter.”
Eli sputters indignantly into his side but doesn’t pull away.
Eli’s been clingier lately, eyes and hands searching constantly, only settling when they find Derek and can make sure Derek is really there. He’s started sleeping in Derek’s bed again, like when he was a baby, scared of monsters in the dark and knowing that his father would protect him.
Derek is constantly working to not let the guilt swallow him whole.
Familiar.
-•-
Jordan only looks at him when he thinks Derek’s not looking. Derek does the same.
They meet eyes only once, after, across the room at the end of a pack meeting.
Jordan drops his eyes immediately, but not quickly enough.
Derek blinks awake on the floor, Sheriff Stilinski (“For the love of god, son, I’ve known you since you were a kid. Call me John.”) looking down at him with tired concern. The room is empty besides them and a glass of water on the coffee table.
Sheriff Stilinski (“I don’t want Eli to think he has an in with local law enforcement.” “I babysat Eli.” “All the more reason to discourage the notion, Sir.”) helps him sit up and Derek mutters his thanks.
He looks around and flexes his fingers to make sure he still can.
Jordan is gone.
Derek is back down to a familiar zero friends his own age. It’s a state he’s been in for the majority of his life, which is something he has unwillingly been thinking about on and off since it was brought to his attention by Peter, of all people. It’s a return to form.
He wasn’t prepared for it to hurt, but that’s not really a new thing for him, either.
-•-
“What on earth are you doing?”
Derek rolls his eyes, not looking up from this stupid book Stiles gave him about fairies. He’s been marking inaccuracies with pen. It drives Stiles up the wall. “Hi, Peter.”
Peter struts further into Derek’s library (which he shouldn’t know about, actually, what the fuck), and looks around, unimpressed. “Derek, what did I tell you when you were fourteen and I caught you reading that book about the cats?”
Derek sighs and looks at Peter, also unimpressed. “‘Reading for fun is for ugly people who can’t get a date.’”
“And?”
“‘And,’” Derek rolls his eyes again, “‘no nephew of mine will have that label attached to him.’ And then you took me to Hooters and when mom found out she made you sleep in the basement for a week.”
Peter snaps his fingers. “Exactly. And so I ask, dear nephew; why are you in this dusty book room, alone, wearing glasses that we both know you don’t need? As a fellow father who has been resurrected from a fiery demise, I can assure you that appearing nearsighted isn’t necessary for one to be taken seriously.”
“People take you seriously?”
Peter squints at him. “Have you been hanging out with Stiles?”
Derek declines to answer.
Peter claps once. “Perfect! I actually came to talk about our favorite little freckly government agent.”
“It’s weird that you talk about him like that. It’s always been weird that you talk about him like that. It will never not be weird that you talk about him like that.”
Peter looks at him like he’s stupid, which is not a new expression. “I only do it because you don’t like it. Honestly, Derek, it’s like you don’t even know me.”
“I wish I didn’t.”
Peter almost looks hurt for a second before he scoffs. “You try to kill a bunch of teenagers one time and suddenly family doesn’t mean anything to anyone, anymore.”
It was more than one time and also Peter killed Derek’s sister, but Derek doesn’t want to have that fight again so soon after dying, and definitely not in his library, so he refrains from pointing any of this out.
He sighs and puts the book down, pushing the glasses up his nose out of spite. “Say what you want to say and then leave.”
“Is Eli Stiles’s child?”
Derek stares.
Peter stares back, apparently actually waiting for an answer.
Derek stares some more. “What?”
“Okay, so that’s a ‘no.’” Peter squints. “Did you figure out cloning and not tell me?”
“Why would I—?”
“That’s so selfish, Derek, you know I would love a clone.”
Derek holds up a hand in a gesture he knows he got from Peter, and thus immediately regrets. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Peter opens his mouth.
“Not the clone thing.”
Peter pouts, which he has been too old to be doing since Derek was three, though this has unfortunately never deterred him. “I knew Eli reminded me of Stiles, but until he came back I didn’t know how much.”
Derek has been thinking the same thing, but he doesn’t like that Peter’s noticed. “I didn’t clone Stiles.”
Peter looks genuinely confused. “Than why is he like that?”
Derek lets his claws out.
Peter backtracks immediately. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
“Is there a point to this?”
“Derek,” Peter says, looking at him solemnly. If Derek was less used to his bullshit he might be concerned. “Is Eli Stiles from another dimension?”
“Get out.”
“His name is the middle letters in Stiles spelled backwards, you have to admit that’s—”
“Out.”
“Nephew, it can’t just be a coinci— Ow! Alright, okay, touchy subject, I’m going, just think— Hey! Face is off limits, Derek, we have a deal—!”
-•-
It burns. He knows what his family felt now.
After three weeks of no sleep and Eli looking at him with worried eyes, he makes peace with his pride and calls his therapist.
-•-
“Why are you mad at me?”
It’s been seven weeks and Stiles hasn’t looked Derek in the eyes since Derek woke up.
Stiles hums noncommittally and continues reading the nutrition facts on the can of oats he’s holding. He’s done this every day, because even though he’s pretending Derek is invisible, he’s apparently not invisible enough for Stiles to leave his vicinity.
“Stiles.”
“Hmm?”
“Why are you mad at me?”
“You asked that already.”
“And I’ll continue asking until you answer.”
“Hm,” Stiles says, nonchalantly, before slamming the can of oats on the counter. He tries to brush past Derek as he has for the past forty nine days and Derek, for the first time in those forty nine days, doesn’t let him.
He grabs Stiles’s arm.
Almost before he can blink, Stiles has him pinned against the wall.
There’s something wrong.
“Did you think,” Stiles hisses, eyes dark and angry and hollow, “that you could burn yourself alive and I wouldn’t bring you back just so I could kill you myself?”
Derek doesn’t know what he was expecting Stiles to say, but it certainly wasn’t that. “Stiles—”
“No, shhh, Stiles is talking,” he almost coos, leaning in, eyelashes almost fluttering and Derek thinks he might actually kill him. He doesn’t know how to feel about this. “You want to know why I’m mad at you, don’t you? You asked a question, a stupid, fucking idiotic question, granted, but you want to know why I’m mad that you set yourself on fire and died, right? Yeah?”
Stiles clearly isn’t looking for an answer as he just grabs Derek’s jaw and nods his head for him.
Derek doesn’t feel very good.
Stiles’s eyes are so cold.
He scrubs a hand through Derek’s hair in perhaps the most uncomfortable form of a petting motion possible.
“Good boy,” he hisses, and Derek is sixteen again and she’s there, and twenty two again, and she’s there and it hurts, and then he’s on the floor of the kitchen and Stiles is here and holding Derek’s hand to his chest with one hand and wiping Derek’s face with the other and the relief of him talking and not being her is so much and Derek wonders how long he’s been down here.
His ears start working again.
“—rek, Derek, I’m sorry, shit, Derek, you’re here, okay? You’re here, in your house, with that stupid sensible minivan in the driveway, okay? You’re literally a soccer mom, now, I hope you know that. Okay, just keep looking at me and breathe, alright? Good job, Derek, I’ve got you, I’m so sorry.”
Derek blinks slowly. “Stop apologizing, it’s fine.”
Stiles looks angry again, but, thankfully, not as angry as before. “I gave you a panic attack. It is, in fact, very much not fine.”
“It’s—,” Derek cuts himself off at the look on Stiles’s face. “You didn’t know.”
Stiles looks tired. “It’s not exactly hard to guess.”
Derek blinks again, shaking his head slightly. His chest hurts. “That, um. Didn’t help.”
“Sorry,” Stiles mutters, holding his hand out to help Derek up.
Derek takes it.
Stiles keeps hold of his hand when he’s standing, swinging them absently. “We need to talk.”
Derek blinks slowly, heart calming. “We do.”
Stiles sighs. “Not right now, though,” he says, and leads Derek to Derek’s bedroom. “You’re napping.”
Derek blinks once more, awareness sinking in. “I’m not four years old, Stiles. You can’t ‘naptime’ me.”
Stiles looks at him again, challenging, and Derek’s heart unclenches. “Get in here before I tuck you in myself.”
Derek makes a face. “Stiles, please don’t talk to me like I talked to my child when he was in kindergarten.”
“Derek.”
“Stiles.”
They stare at each other. Stiles is holding the corner of the coverlet up. This is starting to get embarrassing.
Derek backs toward the door, thumb pointing behind him. “I have to go pick Eli up from school.”
“I saw him take my jeep this morning.”
Derek hesitates, hand just shy of the doorframe. “Other… Eli.”
Stiles covers his face with his one of his hands. “For the love of god,” he says, muffled.
Derek hesitates some more before dropping his hand and stepping further into the room.
“It’s weird that we’re both adults,” he says, abruptly.
Stiles looks up, perplexed. “What?”
“It’s weird,” Derek says, sitting on his bed heavily.
He waits for Stiles to sit next to him.
Stiles gives up the coverlet and does, slowly, squinting. “Are you familiar with the passage of time?”
“I can still rip your throat out.”
“You and your promises.”
“Stiles.”
“Fine,” Stiles sighs, leaning back on his hands. “Why is it weird that we’re both adults? Besides the fact that we should probably both be— hm.”
Derek ignores him. “You remember when we met?”
Stiles snorts. “How could I forget? I started asking Danny if I was attractive, like, that week.”
Derek chokes out a laugh. “I didn’t know that.”
“Well, it’s not like I was gonna tell you.”
“True,” Derek hums. “It’s just. You were so young. You were Eli’s age.”
Stiles’s mouth opens in an ‘o’ shape.
It then closes.
He squints. “Derek, I’m thirty two years old. If this is going where I think it’s going—”
“It’s not. Believe it or not, I’m over that particular hangup, actually.”
Stiles looks at him carefully, and also a little skeptically, which is fair. “Alright. Glad to hear it. Where are you going with this?”
“What did you give up?”
Stiles flinches and shutters closed. “That’s none of your business.”
“You traded it for my life,” Derek says. “It is my business.”
“Why?” Stiles snaps. “You wanna make sure it was worth it? It was. Is. Drop it.”
“I don’t think I will, actually.”
Stiles shoves himself up and starts pacing, counting his points off on his fingers. “You’re alive, Hale. Your kid has a dad, still, and you’re not in literal, actual hell anymore. Normally people say ‘thank you’.”
Derek stands and steps in front of him, halting his progress.
“Thank you,” he says simply.
Stiles glares at his eyebrows, for some reason. “You’re welcome.”
“Now, what did you trade?”
Stiles hisses between his teeth and meets Derek’s eyes again, bitter. Resigned. “What the fuck do you think?”
Derek thinks it wasn’t worth it.
Stiles appears to see this, because he jerks back and scoffs in disgust.
He’s careful not to use his hands, this time, but his eyes go back to the coldness from before. “Your guilt disgusts me, Derek. It always fucking has, because of all the things that have gone wrong in your life, okay, none have been your fault. Not one. And I heard you were doing better, right, but clearly no one here can fucking see you because if you had actually been doing as well as people told me you were you wouldn’t have thought it was an acceptable decision to set yourself on fire.”
“You asked about me?”
“Of course I fucking asked about you! God, are you fucking— I thought this was clear, but apparently you need it spelled out: I. Care. About. You.”
“I know that,” Derek says, sharply. “I’ve known that for years.”
“I don’t think you understand, Derek. I have put too much work into keeping your wolfy ass alive for you to— to throw it away for no fucking reason.”
Derek’s hackles raise. “I was protecting my son!”
Stiles scoffs. “By what? Making him watch his father sacrifice himself for him? Did any of you even consider a different way, or do I have to go and try to teach them how to treat you like a person instead of a thing to be kicked and stabbed and stepped on and sacrificed?”
He’s practically spitting by the end.
Derek growls, finally advancing. And he’d been doing so well. “You’re doing a real good job of not objectifying me, you know, implying I had no free will in this decision.”
Stiles sneers and steps toward him. Familiar. “Oh, trust me, buddy, I know it was your decision. You asked why I’m mad, here’s your answer.”
Stiles jerks Derek closer by the shirt so they’re nose to nose and then speaks very quietly, and very clearly.
“You’re part of a very selective group of people I consider to be my people, Derek Hale. You know what that means? It means you don’t get to die. At all. Ever. And you especially don’t get to do it yourself.”
Derek’s voice is hoarse. “You weren’t there.”
Stiles’s teeth clench, audibly. “No one called me. And then you died. And then my list got shorter.”
The room is silent except for their breathing.
Stiles steps away first, and he keeps stepping away, until he’s out the door.
-•-
He comes back hours later with bloody hands and a black eye. He refuses to tell Derek what happened
-•-
Scott leaves town the next day. Derek didn’t even know he was visiting.
-•-
“When are you going to forgive him, son?”
Derek freezes in the hallway.
They’re at the Stilinski place for dinner, a weekly thing since Eli was around six. Eli had lacrosse practice today, so it’s just Derek and the Stilinskis.
Stiles sighs audibly and Derek hears him put down his utensils. “We’ve had this conversation. I know you’re dating Melissa, and I don’t mind, okay, I love her—“
“Good to know,” the Sheriff says. “But I meant Derek.”
Silence.
It stretches so long Derek decides he should probably stop standing in the hallway.
Then, “Derek doesn’t owe me anything,” says Stiles, quietly. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
Derek goes back into the kitchen.
-•-
They’re sitting on the couch, watching a movie Eli picked, and Eli’s already snoring on the squishy chair.
Derek clears his throat quietly. “I have your heartbeat memorized.”
There’s a pause where the only sounds are the protagonist and his weird sidekick trading stock phrase banter.
Stiles starts tapping steadily on the back of the couch.
It takes a minute for Derek to realize what it is. When he does, he looks at Stiles, eyes burning.
Stiles just looks back at him, cheeks flushed, eyes reflecting the light of the TV screen, and keeps tapping out the beat of Derek’s heart.
-•-
At the next dinner, the Sheriff doesn’t let Derek in the house until he calls him John.
Stiles sees him flustered and laughs.
-•end•-