He wakes up and everything feels sharp. Feels bright. Feels wrong.
He’s used to this feeling. To the feeling that there’s something wrong with the world. Something wrong with him.
But…
Something feels more wrong than usual today. Or maybe a different kind of wrong.
He feels the phantom stroke of a gentle hand in his hair. Can almost scent Laura in the memory. The gentle warmth she’d always given him because that was the strength he needed.
It’s her birthday.
And, yes, it hurts but barely a week goes by without a birthday, anniversary, or some other day where he’s forced to grieve over his lost packs.
Twelve people generate a surprising amount of important days.
This pain, though, is familiar. He knows the texture and taste of it. It’s scent.
He uses the toilet and his reflection sends a jolt through his system. Eyes flashing and claws out. It’s wrong somehow.
Except… it’s just his face. Sure, it’s a face he hates almost more than he can express but it hasn’t changed. Even if it doesn’t feel quite right it looks perfect.
As always.
Not for the first time, he wishes werewolves could scar. If they could, his face would be an unsightly mess from all the times he’s clawed his face bloody.
It never works. It’s always… perfect.
Until he’d met Paige, he’d always been happy enough to take advantage of his looks. Cocky and arrogant in the way only the beautiful and young could be. Paige had been the first person outside of his pack to demand more from him.
He’d loved that. And her. Then he’d had to kill her.
Then there’d been Kate…
He shakes his head and refuses to think about that. It doesn’t stop the quick flashes of memory but he pushes them away.
Or tries to, at least. It doesn’t take long before he’s puking into the toilet. It’s another thing that feels wrong. He can usually push the memories away. It’s also been a while since he’d been this upset over it.
He washes his mouth out and gets into the shower. It’s cold, mostly because he doesn’t have hot water. While the loft is a step up from living in the basement of his burnt out home or the abandoned warehouse, it still barely qualifies as habitable.
It doesn’t matter. Not when he feels like all he’s doing is waiting out the minutes until he’s somehow violently killed. He doesn’t seen any other end for himself.
Especially not since he can’t seem to escape Scott’s orbit.
He’s thinking about what he should do today. He, of course, doesn’t have any plans.
Where would he go? Who would he see?
(Not that he wants to go anywhere or see anyone but… he’s a pack creature and he always longs for a safe den and packmates.)
The strangeness is lingering and it’s making him feel restless and edgy. The sense of wrongness makes him want to see out that safe den and his packmates… which only aggravates him because he has neither.
He decides he should probably eat something, considering the puking. On the way to the kitchen he passes by the spot where he’d been forced to kill Boyd, his own beta. His stomach lurches again at the nauseating of exhilaration, power, grief, helplessness, and despair he’d felt in that moment.
Almost more than anything, he hates Deucalion for being right. Hates him, Kali, and the twins for making sure he enjoyed the feeling of killing Boyd.
Of course, no amount of power and pleasure is enough to make him want to do it again.
The disgust, horror, and grief completely overshadows it.
He tries to think of the last time he felt truly safe. The best he can come up with are the few nights he spent at Stiles’ house while hiding from the law. He hadn’t felt safe, not really, but he’d been fairly confident that no hunters were going to bust into the sheriff’s kid’s bedroom to murder him.
To say nothing of the scent and what he’d known it meant. What Stiles could mean to him.
So it’s not a surprise that this lingering sense of wrong makes him want to seek out Stiles and let his scent smooth out his ragged edges.
He won’t.
He still remembers what Stiles had said in the final days of the alpha pack debacle.
His third pack is dead or gone. He’s not an alpha so he can’t try to make another. Not that the thinks he deserves the chance.
Three strikes and you’re out, right?
He’s fairly certain that Scott and the rest don’t know he’s returned to Beacon Hills. He has no reason to be here. No real reason to come back.
Or so they think.
Perhaps his only comfort, at the moment, is that as an omega, he has no responsibilities. For the first time in his life he’s not beholden to anyone. He has the perfect freedom that comes when you have nothing left to lose.
Perhaps if Scott knew anything about being a werewolf, much less an alpha, he’d be obligated to tell him that he’s back. But Scott doesn’t know and wouldn’t learn from him even if he was still inclined to teach.
(Quick flashes of Scott holding him so Gerard could put his disgusting arm into his mouth…)
He sighs when he realizes he has no food. It means he’ll have to go to the store and he hates shopping for food. Particularly at this time of day. House spouses and parents are more likely to be shopping…
Entering the store, he walks quickly towards the meat aisle. Sometimes, if he strides with purpose he can get in and out without any… hassle.
Already he can scent the stirrings of lust and arousal as he makes his way through the store. It disgusts him.
Still… he can feel his lips twitch a little at the memory of Stiles asking if he’d distract the deputy by punching her. He might not like it but he’s perfectly aware of how he looks. One lesson he’d learned from Kate was that beauty could be a weapon.
Stiles had been so annoyed to realize how easily he could distract someone with a pretty smile. A weird contradiction since Stiles had, himself, used his body to get that hacker kid’s help.
Then again, Stiles was full of weird contradictions.
“Oh, my god! Would you look at that ass!” a voice whispers as he passes by an aisle.
“Forget the ass, did you see the checkbones? His eyes?”
“I swear, that is the finest man I’ve ever seen.”
The whispers follow him everywhere. Most of the time he loves being a werewolf. He’d grown up with the hearing and the sense of smell and it’s just him.
But he could live without hearing shit like that. He could definitely live without knowing that a woman older than his mother, just got a little damp in her panties.
“Go ask for his number!”
“And humiliate myself? I don’t think so. Guys like that don’t go for girls like me.”
It’s only after years of trial and error that he’s come to his current strategy. You’d think that he’d try to be less groomed. Try to downplay his looks. The problem with that, though, is it makes him appear more approachable. When his beard is neatly trimmed, his hair done, and he’s wearing reasonably good clothes, most people are too intimidated to approach him.
They’ll still whisper behind his back and smell like desire but they’re a lot less likely to approach him or, worse, touch him.
It’s incredibly frustrating because he hates looking at his face in the mirror. Hates to look at the face and body that turn him into something to be used.
It makes him snort because who wants to listen to beautiful people complain about being objectified?
He figures that being targeted by someone who murdered his entire family gets him a pass on this one. Or maybe being targeted by some witch looking for protection.
A hand trails down his arm, “Excuse me? Could you help me get something off a shelf?”
He shudders.
Of course, it doesn’t always work. Once in a while, someone will gather up their courage and approach him. It might not be so bad if they didn’t almost always touch him.
Now he has her scent on him.
He yanks his arm away and stalks off without answering.
“Asshole!”
It’s not a surprise to find himself at the library.
He nods to the librarian—she’s taken a liking to him because he visits so often. He likes her because he could be an amoeba for how attractive she finds him. She’s never been anything but courteous and polite.
He always sits at or near a particular spot. It’s Stiles’ favourite. Stiles likes to come here while researching, sometimes. He comes often enough that he can always catch traces and echoes of his scent. It’s a way of feeling close without being close.
He has no reason to be around Stiles and certainly isn’t going to start stalking him. He’d found this spot by accident. A happy accident, for once.
He sits back into the chair and breathes deeply. Stiles hasn’t been here for a few days so the scent isn’t strong. But it’s still there.
While it helps, just a little, that sense of wrong doesn’t diminish. He hasn’t felt this out of place in his body since becoming an alpha. It’s a feeling like his skin doesn’t fit quite right anymore. It makes him want to dig his claws under and find what’s wrong.
(It wouldn’t help. It never has before.)
Eventually he leaves. School will be out soon which means Stiles might go to the library and he can’t find him here.
It would lead to questions he doesn’t want to answer.
He’s not sure what to do, now. There are still so many empty minutes, hours until he can go to bed and sleep.
Sleeping is about the only solace and comfort he gets these days. And even that’s interrupted by nightmares often enough.
Tired of being out, he decides to head to the loft. Time to spend his time brooding over his man-angst, as Stiles likes to say. He’d like to deny it… mocking of his grief aside, but the only other place he finds solace is in his memories.
It’s hard to resist on good days, such as those are for him, but it’s Laura’s birthday and, well, he’s not even going to feel bad spending the night remembering her.
Especially not when this is her first birthday without him. It boggles the mind how much crap has happened the past year. It’s possible this year is worse than the one his pack died. Or maybe they’re equally awful. Just in different ways.
Pulling up to the loft he sighs when he sees Scott’s car and a few others parked in the lot.
Great. It’s going to be one of those days.
For all that Scott hates him and the way he and Stiles mock him for being a ‘fail-wolf’, the pack is all too-comfortable using his place. Using him. Using his knowledge while all but calling him stupid.
He supposes this probably means that Scott knew he’d returned but hadn’t reached out. Not that he’d expected a welcome home party.
He looks around but still doesn’t see Stiles’ jeep. Despite the teasing, being able to freshly scent Stiles would make going up worth it.
Sitting in his car, he’s indecisive. Most of him just wants to go into the preserve, to his home, and remember Laura, since the loft is filled with people who don’t like him (and, to be honest, who he doesn’t like). Part of him wants to go up and make sure that whatever is happening isn’t happening to Stiles, which is one of the few reasons why he wouldn’t already be here.
Stiles is usually the first to arrive and last to leave. Far more dedicated to the pack than he thinks Scott deserves.
He checks his phone: no messages. Usually Stiles is the only one who’ll contact him when something is happening. So it’s possible nothing important is going on and Scott’s pack is just using his place as a hangout.
Or whatever’s happening involves Stiles.
In the end, it’s not really a decision. Even the smallest chance Stiles could be in danger means he’ll go up.
For all his intention to never mention the mate thing to Stiles, the fact remains and his instincts drive him forward. He might not ever be the one for Stiles but it feels good to help his mate, even in this small way.
“Why are you here?” He growls as soon as he walks into the loft.
Despite the fact that it isn’t home or, well, safe, it’s still his and he has so very little left.
“Did you do something to Stiles?” Scott demands because, of course, it’s his fault. Doesn’t matter what’s going on or that he hasn’t seen Stiles in over a week, it’s always his fault.
“Nothing. I haven’t seen him in a while,” he wants to demand answers but he’s learned better with Scott. The more demanding he is, the more contrary Scott becomes.
Scott looks suspicious and so does everyone else. He just crosses his arms and waits.
“It is true that I couldn’t smell you around his place or room…” Scott says after a long moment—when scent should’ve been his first source of evidence, “The sheriff hasn’t been able to get him to wake up all day. The only thing he’ll do is say your name, when we try really hard to wake him up.”
The news that Stiles might be in trouble sends a jolt through him. Maybe this is why he’s felt out of sorts all day.
“I don’t know anything.”
“You never do,” Isaac mumbles.
He glares, “Did anything happen recently?”
“Well…” Scott says, “There was a witch last night.”
He glares even harder, “And you still thought I had something to do with it?”
“Well, Derek,” Scott snipes, “Things usually are your fault.”
That name…
Derek. It’s his but if feels even more off than the itchy, too-tight feeling of his skin.
He rolls his eyes, “What happened with the witch?”
“We thought he might be up to something, so we went to check it out. Stiles might’ve said something that made him mad and there was some shouting about empathy or something. But it was cool because the witch wasn’t doing anything and, um, is like Deaton’s friend.”
Not for the first time he wants to throttle Scott. That was about the least helpful recounting of the events he can imagine.
“It sounds like the witch cursed Stiles.”
“Nah, man. Deaton vouched for him. That’s why we eventually came here.”
He just stares.
He also decides that he doesn’t have time for this. Without another word, he leaves.
First step is to see Stiles. He’ll assess the situation and go from there.
He swings into Stiles’ room and despite the fact that he’s only done this a few times, it feels familiar. Comforting almost. He can almost hear Stiles calling him a creeper.
He’d be more inclined to smile if it weren’t for the unnatural stillness of Stiles in bed. While he’d only hid here for a few nights, he’d noticed that Stiles never stopped moving. Not even in his sleep.
He also tended to murmur, as if even sleep couldn’t stop his need to babble.
At the time, it’d been irritating because his senses were always alert and on-guard. He’d been in danger, in an unfamiliar place, and sharing a room with someone who barely tolerated him.
Now it worries him because he’s become used to Stiles’ motion and noise. Despite it’s seemingly chaotic nature, Stiles had a rhythm. And these days he found it soothing. He spent a lot of time alone. Both in the dark and in silence.
Stiles’ warm, vibrant energy almost felt like living again. Like he could live again.
It was enough to confirm that something unnatural was going on. Same with the fact he didn’t smell urine nor did Stiles have a catheter. So his bodily functions had been slowed or stopped.
This was more like stasis than sleep.
Almost involuntarily, he took a few steps forward and gently—so gently—brushed a finger down Stiles’ cheek. Just one more deep breath to get his scent and he’d go…
That was his last thought before everything went black.
Stiles gasped and bolted upright in bed.
He felt sleep-drunk. He was confused and disoriented. He’d been dreaming. One of the strangest dreams he’d ever had.
Dreaming that he was Derek or something but the details were already fading like only dreams could.
Soon he was only left with a deep sense of… compassion and, maybe, understanding. Some melancholy. Stiles’ heart ached with whatever he’d experienced in his dream.
He swiped at the tears he hadn’t noticed were falling and his hand bumped into something. He looked down and realized it was someone.
It was Derek. He was crumpled half on and half off of Stiles’ bed.
Heart pounding he felt a sort of dawning realization, a terrible realization, that maybe his dream hadn’t been a dream.
Because he remembered the witch. How angry he’d been at Stiles’ accusations of evil deeds when all he wanted to do was mourn his partner. His ‘soulmate’. Stiles had scoffed because what kind of adult believed in that sort of nonsense?
The witched had gone still and said that Stiles could use some empathy and more than a little compassion, considering his own soulmate.
Again, Stiles had mocked him because he did not have a soulmate. The witch had grinned a little evilly before leaving, saying he’d go somewhere he’d be left in peace.
Then Stiles had gone to bed and… woke up from a strange dream of being Derek Hale. Woke up with Derek here.
Looking at Derek, he looked almost peaceful. Certainly more relaxed than those tense few days he’d hidden out here.
Dream or not. Stiles couldn’t deny that he felt compassion for Derek. He knew himself well enough to know that he didn’t care much about people who weren’t his people.
He’d gotten over his dislike of Derek and seeing his reaction to Boyd had helped a lot in getting Stiles to move past the first impressions. All that meant, though, was that he didn’t think much about Derek at all.
Especially not since he wasn’t the alpha anymore and there weren’t any crises requiring contact.
Wait… when had Derek even come back? Then again, Stiles wasn’t even sure when he’d left. He’d hadn’t really thought about Derek since the alpha pack.
Now, though… he couldn’t help but think about all that Derek’s lost. All that he’s suffered and survived. It’s… heartbreaking. But also kind of impressive because he’s still here.
And in Stiles’ room, no less.
And he was… waking up.
Derek sprung to his feet. He was tense because something had happened.
Except… the sense of wrong was gone and he felt like himself. Itchy too-tight feeling of his skin and the restlessness were all gone. It was a relief.
“Um… hey, big guy. How’s it hanging?”
Derek turned to Stiles who appeared fine and in his usual humour but Derek knew his bravado. Except…
There was a strange look in his eyes. Every time before, his bravado had been hiding his fear. Now… there was a softness there that was unfamiliar, particularly when directed towards him.
“So… what happened? When you’d come back?”
He’d expected the questions, this was Stiles after all, but they weren’t demanding or insistent.
“A witch did something to you. A curse maybe. I don’t know. Scott wasn’t clear about the details.”
Stiles nodded, “I remember. How long did I sleep? A day, right?”
Derek nodded back. He wanted to leave. He also wanted to stay forever.
“I’m not sure it was a curse. Not exactly. I was…” Stiles looked away, “I dreamt. That I was you.”
Derek felt a lurch in his stomach because… this would explain the odd feeling he had all day.
“Don’t worry, grumpy brows, I don’t remember anything. All the details are gone. I don’t usually remember my dreams, so it’s not that strange.”
The relief is palpable. Derek’s used to not feeling safe. To not feeling like he has control over anything but his mind. He doesn’t blame Stiles but is so happy that this hasn’t been taken from him too.
“How did you wake me up?”
Derek’s not sure what to say. All he’d done was barely touch Stiles’ cheek, so he grunts, “I shook you. To see if you’d wake up.”
Stiles looks at him for a long measuring moment. Derek can tell he knows he lied. Then Stiles does something strange. He lets it go.
Stiles knows Derek is lying to him. He’s not sure what Derek is hiding but it’s not really that important. Stiles doubts he kissed him, in the hopes that ’true love’s’ kiss would break the curse.
Mostly because Stiles seriously doubts that Derek loves him.
But Stiles can’t help but remember the witch’s talk of soulmates. And maybe, just maybe, there’s something there.
He can’t deny there’s always been something charged between them. He used to think it was mutual dislike. And maybe it was. But maybe that wasn’t all it was.
The only thing Stiles is really sure of is that things will change. Whatever happened, he cares about Derek now.
And that means he’s on a very short list. And it means there’s no way that Stiles will let things go on as they have.
Derek’s days as a lone wolf are over because Stiles will always protect those he cares for. Will always be fiercely loyal.
He still doesn’t believe in soulmates. He’s not sure it matters. Maybe they’ll fall in love and maybe they won’t. He can’t tell because he doesn’t know Derek.
But now he does.
Now he will.