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Stiles is trekking through the snowy streets, looking desperately for a restaurant that’s still open. Hunger is gnawing at his stomach, but the storm seems to have closed down almost everything else, except for the stores which sell firearms.

He shudders. The ice cuts through his jacket, worming under his clothing, stealing the little heat he has left.

As he’s following the road, he passes a black, idling SUV with its back window open. It’s gleaming in the low lighting, the engine a dangerous purr, even while it stands still.

God, that thing must be brand new.

Perking up a little, Stiles tries to imperceptibly see if anyone’s in it. A mystery is a mystery, even in a no-name town in a mountain in Wyoming.

It would seem likely that werewolves would enjoy living in the mountains like this. And where werewolves, or any other creature of the night resides, hunters will most likely follow.

And the SUV just screams hunter stereotype.

Just as he’s passing it, he sees that one of the back windows is half open. Too curious for his own good, he slows his trek, pretending to be noticing something interesting on the other side of the road as he discreetly peers inside. A huge black wolf stares unashamedly back at him, his eyes a steady, glowing blue.

It takes almost five seconds for his frozen brain to comprehend what he sees.

‘’Holy shit! Derek ?’’ he exclaims in a muffled voice, stumbling forwards in shock. It has to be. It has to. Stiles has met many a werewolf in the past, but so far he knows of only the Hale line to be able to do the full shift.

The wolf blinks before his eyes round, and he jerks in the seat. His head pops out of the window, scenting the air.

Yeah, that’s definitely Derek. Stiles pulls down the scarf from his mouth. ‘’Dude! It’s me. It’s Stiles .’’

Derek breathes deeply in. The smoke is thick and black, swirling around them as wind spreads it further. The drop is long, with large flames roaring mindlessly underneath. Derek can feel the searing heat already starting to blister his skin, the wolfsbane mixed in making it burn even worse.

‘’Just remember, big guy. All you have to do is get us down,’’ Stiles mumbles through the fabric. He’s calm, collected. There’s not an ounce of fear in Stiles’ scent anymore, his confidence in his own abilities, as well as Derek’s, is unwavering. ‘’I’ll take care of the hunters. Just get us far enough from the heart of the fire.’’

With a long exhale, Derek nods, adjusting Stiles on his back. He covers his own mouth. All he has to do is get away. That’s all he has to do.

‘’Ready?’’ Stiles asks, gripping tighter.

‘’Ready,’’ Derek confirms, nosing Stiles cheek for one last time.

And then he jumps.

The heat is almost unbearable. It burns horribly, the skin of his cheeks aching. Blisters appear almost instantly, splitting the skin, revealing the muscle beneath. His eyes dry up immediately, tears forming in the corners. He wants to rub them. He keeps rapidly blinking instead.

The walls crumble apart with him, as he tries to slow down the fall by clawing at the plaster.

He mostly manages.

The tips of his fingers, his claws, bleed and snap as he holds on, the roaring inferno underneath him explodes greedily, sucking them in. He lets gravity do the work.

Derek closes his eyes.

And falls.

Both of his legs shatter on impact, his knees snapping neatly in half. Stiles’ weight pins him to the ground as he crumbles, his head exploding with pain as it hits the ground. He thinks he might scream.

He thinks Stiles screams too.

The agony is near impossible to comprehend. He can’t move, can’t see where the enemy is, where the attack will come. He feels like the attack is coming from everywhere , burning him, branding him, like he’s the faulty live cattle and now he’s about to be slaughtered.

All he sees are the large flames gobbling up everything, his jacket and his scarf catching on fire. His skin is weeping and peeling off, blood and pus trickling down onto the ground, the mountain ash preventing him from healing. It’s in his lungs, in his eyes, invading all of his orifices, the wounds in his hands. His heart is galloping, up in his throat. Like a living thing, it races in time with the adrenaline in his veins, a hummingbird trying to fly apart from his chest in fear.

There’s just not enough air -

Vaguely, he registers gunshots around him, as his body seizures from the wolfsbane overdose. He writhes and wheezes, trying to get the weight on his back to disappear. His lungs rattle as he tries to catch some air, his chest heavy and impossibly full, but there’s too much smoke and his throat is swollen and useless and it’s such agony -

Something explodes against his side.

And then it’s dark again.

Stiles wakes in the small hours of the morning, just before dawn is about to break. He’s snuggled close to Derek’s frame, blanket bracketing them both as Derek is wrapped around him.

There’s something serene about waking up feeling warm and safe, everything soft and muted around them. Stiles blinks slowly, eyes fuzzy, unsure what woke him up. His body tenses in vigilance. For a moment, he listens intently his surroundings, hearkening for anything out of ordinary.

When things stay utterly still and quiet, he relaxes back into Derek’s hold. He’s alert now though. It’ll take him some time to fall back to sleep.

Inching closer to Derek, he lets himself soak the man’s sleepy soft face in. Derek looks younger, more vulnerable in his slumber. His muscles are lax, his fingers curled adorably where they rest against Stiles’ lower back. Stiles can feel the steady, slow rhythm of Derek's heartbeat through his back, something tangible to affirm to him that Derek is still alive.

Gazing up at him, his own heart in his throat, Stiles whispers reverently, ‘’God, I’m so in love with you.’’

It hurts, the admission. He’s been protecting those words for so long in his heart, carefully guarding his tongue to never let them out. But here, in this quiet moment when he knows for certain he won’t be heard, it feels somehow important to let them out. To make the world hear it, even if it stays within these four walls. He reaches gently, caressing Derek’s lax lips.

‘‘I love you so much, but I have no idea how to tell you,’‘ he whispers. ‘‘Am I allowed to feel this strongly about you? Am I allowed to admit my love for you, without breaking either of us, or scaring you away?’‘

He strokes Derek’s jaw, cupping his cheek. The man’s lashes are long and thick against his grey pallor, though he’s clearly healing. The burn marks on his arms are almost gone, the spasms of pain subdued, quieted. There’s just a small flush pinking Derek’s cheeks, his temperature higher in slumber. The man sighs in his sleep, relaxing even closer to Stiles. 

‘‘I know you love me too,’‘ he continues, his fingers trailing down to Derek’s neck. ‘‘I can feel it as if it is a physical thing when you’re close to me. But is it the same kind of love? Or is it more familial?’‘

He lets out a trembling breath. ‘’I’m far too scared of losing you to ask you.’’

The clock on the nightstand ticks to four thirty. 

Stiles curls himself impossibly closer to Derek’s bigger frame. He places Derek’s arm better around him, his nose resting against the man’s throat. Derek tightens his hold momentarily, his brows creasing with the movement, before it smooths out. 

‘‘I love you,’‘ he whispers to Derek’s skin. ‘‘And tomorrow, when you wake up, I hope you’ve somehow heard me, and that you’ll find the courage to maybe love me too.’’

Derek hums in his sleep, nosing Stiles’ hair. He finds a better position, jostling them both, before Stiles watches him fall deeper into unconsciousness. Before long, Stiles follows him, just as the first rays of sunshine start lighting up the horizon.

They still have time. There’s no need to rush, not this. Not when they’ve both been hurt so many times in the past.

Love is always patient.

Derek discovers the scent trail accidentally. He’s veered off his routinely check up path to hunt down his marker stones that have disappeared from underneath one of his painted trees. The stones regularly shift in place as the curious forest animals are attracted to their glimmer. They’re full of potent magic though, thanks to his and Stiles’ group effort, and their continued formation is vital for the wards to work.

Still. He’s never gone quite as far after one, even though he finds the stone easily. Crows really like to hoard them, unless Derek leaves other shiny things in the forest for them to collect.

As he reaches up to a dangling tree branch to snatch the missing item, all scents around him suddenly disappear. Derek freezes, eyes slowly taking in his surroundings, his instincts perking up in alert.

There’s nothing out of ordinary. The animals are calm and content, the air around him serene. There is no foreboding feeling, no bloody corpses left as warning. It’s just all the scents. They’re gone.

Grabbing the stone, Derek takes full stock of the immediate forest, sniffing carefully. The smells of bark and moss and leaves and animals have vanished, leaving behind just a sense of brisk, freezing air. It’s familiar, oddly. Not in a way he remembers or knows why, just that he knows he’s had this phenomenon happen before.

He keeps his posture stiff and ready to bolt as he takes a few tentative steps back and forth. The cold air has a distinct trail to it, which leads him just twenty feet off his own territory, and into the wild, unclaimed part of the preserve. There, in a budless rosebush, rests an envelope, neatly tucked into a plastic pocket to protect it from the slight drizzle that has loomed over the town for a couple days.

Alpha Hale, the front of the envelope reads, in a beautiful old calligraphy. It sounds official.

With a frown, Derek slides the letter out, clawing it open. It’s short, and on point.

‘’ Dear Alpha Hale,

The Gunilda clan requests a safe passage through your lands.

We are willing to negotiate for a brief stay, under reasonable terms, and on unclaimed territory.

We will await for your reply in a haste, as we are weary of our travel.

Yours truly,

Alpha Friederike von Gunilda ‘’

The tension in his body relaxes. He sighs, deep and tired, and looks up to the grey sky. It looks dark and gloom, like the plummeting feeling in Derek’s stomach. He knows now exactly what they’re dealing with. Looks like he’s going to have to have a conversation with the McCall pack.

Great.

Derek finally decides to try psychotherapy in order to manage his frequently occurring PTSD episodes. He contacts an old family friend and arranges a meeting in a coffee shop to discuss the possibility of getting a werewolf-friendly therapist.

Unfortunately, Scott and Erica are witnesses to his private meet-up, and they immediately jump into the absolute wrong conclusions.

Derek touches the front porch of the debilitated cabin, stepping on a small mushroom that has its family surrounding the house, when he catches the whiff of wolfsbane and mugwort, making his fur stand up, and then the cabin is suddenly gone. He lets out a wheeze when his whole body feels like it has been flung through the air, his frame colliding against something concrete, and then lets out a howling scream when his paws and his back and his neck are suddenly, painfully burrowed into. He thrashes, trying to get away from the blinding pain that’s engulfing his whole body, frantically searching for his surroundings for his attacker. He bows his whole frame, yowling and biting the air, attempting to rid the creatures clamping their teeth into his body.

Once he gives a good twist, bending his neck further up to shake the things off, he comes face to face with a dead nymph. It makes him still his movements, despite the agonizing pain. He blinks dumbly, panting for air, staring at the vacant, half rotten eyes.

The nymph has been bitten in half by the metal claws of a bear trap, the metal smelling of combination of wolfsbane and blood and rotting fish.

Slowly, carefully, he looks down to his own body. Instead of an invisible attacker, similar sharp metal claws are trapping his limbs, making him bleed red and black, the mouths clamping tighter against his frame the more he struggles.

He forces himself to stay in place despite the growing panic, and takes deeps breaths. He fears that once he lifts his head to take a look at his surroundings, he’ll find more dead bodies of supernatural creatures littering his orbit, because it certainly smells so, now that he’s calm enough to concentrate on it. The smell is overpowering all of his senses, the rot and heat and death seeping into everything around the clearing.

He’s sure that he isn’t even in Beacon Hills anymore. The forest surrounding him smells different, and sounds different. Even outside his territory, the preserve smells like the wolves it belongs to. The magic is more contained, anchored to the wildlife and the pack holding dominance over the forest, unlike the untamed shimmering power Derek now feels rumbling underneath the earth’s surface.

He tries shifting back to his human form, deciding to try unclamping the traps from his limbs with his human hands, when he realizes that he can’t. He’s entirely trapped, unable to move into any direction unless he wants more of the surrounding empty bear traps to trigger against him. A familiar burn of wolfsbane around his neck and the sharp teeth of the traps tearing into his flesh cues him to an answer as to why the shift is forced to stay back. It isn’t just regular aconite either. The acrid after smell and the fierce burn against his skin points to Northern Monkshood, a strain that the hunters use when they aim to kill immediately and efficiently. If it reaches his whole heart, blackening the organ from the inside, it’ll kill him within six hours.

The thought gives him enough strength to let loose a desperate howl, long and loud and far reaching. He pants, the monkshood forcing his heart to beat faster as the poison spreads in his veins to his whole body, and he hopes fiercely, with everything in him, that Stiles will find him fast enough before his body gives out.

It takes them an hour of silent ploughing through the thick snow before Stiles sees a twinkle of light between the trees.

There’s a lit cabin in the middle, windows alight with warmth and smoke rising from a chimney before the traces of the trail of black soot disappear into the violently beating wind.

The door to the cabin opens, a blurry figure slowly walking to the front porch.

He hears the figure shout a faint, if a little incredulous, ‘’Stiles?’’ and it almost makes him weep in relief.

‘’Oh my god,’’ he mumbles through clattering teeth. ‘’Oh my fucking god.’’

When Derek emerges close enough so Stiles can see him through the blinding snow, he sees that the man is only wearing a soft looking henley and sweatpants, completely unperturbed of the cold. The werewolf is clearly surprised at his sudden night-time visitors, but Stiles has a hard time feeling any sort of glee or smugness about it when it feels like his entire body is one giant frostbite.

‘’What the hell are you doing here?’’ Derek shouts, scowling, immediately grabbing Stiles into a bridal carry. As he does so, the flickering light above him disappears, his goal reached, so his magic shudders back into his core. The wolf’s eyes widen when he sees Scott clambering up the hill as well.

Stiles tries his best to answer the question, but his relief at getting somewhere warm has drained him from the initial energy to push forward, and his teeth are clattering together with such force that he cannot utter a single solitary word to save his life.

‘’Fuck,’’ Derek seethes. He spins around with Stiles in his arms, making his way up the path to the porch, trusting Scott to follow.

The cabin, when they enter it, feels like a small sanctuary to Stiles. It’s warm and small and cozy, with assortments of plush rugs and couches. Everything else is made out of carved wood, the levels dark and thick with different types of species of tree.

There’s a fireplace on the other side of the cabin, in the middle what looks to be a living room of sorts. It’s crackling with hot fire, the glass painted red with heat. There’s a huge box of logs next to it, ready to be pushed in.

Stiles finds himself lowered carefully on one of the plush carpets, unable to move a finger in protest. He sprawls out, shivering and trembling as the warmth starts seeping into his frozen bones.

‘’I’m gonna take your clothes off now, okay, Stiles?’’ Derek mutters, and starts tugging his boots off without hearing a reply, revealing the soaked socks underneath. Derek’s frown intensifies, but he continues to gently pry each wet garment off Stiles’ body, taking care to not jostle his limbs too much as the warmth of the cabin sets all of him to pins and needles. And fuck, does it hurt.

After Stiles made sure that all the doors and windows are locked, he ventures quietly to the bathroom, where the sounds of violent retching have gradually quieted down.

He finds Derek curled up next to the toilet, his henley wet with cold sweat, his hands shaking where they’re resting against the cool porcelain rim. Stiles comes to crouch behind the man, slowly bringing his hand to rest against Derek’s back, rubbing his palm up and down the man’s spine when he doesn't flinch away from touch.

‘’Hey,’’ he murmurs. ‘’How are you holding up?’’

Derek shrugs, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

‘’You still feel like you need to empty your stomach more?’’

There’s a minimal headshake. Stiles continues to make broad moves against the wolf’s shirt with his hand, wishing there wasn’t any barrier of the layers of shirts he’s wearing.

‘’You think we could relocate this to the bedroom?’’ He asks softly.

Derek’s quiet for a moment before he nods a yes, and lets Stiles help him up. The wolf’s limbs are a bit shaky, his steps unsteady, and Stiles feels sympathy for him, knowing just how deeply a bad trigger can shake a person to their core. How long the nonequilibrium stays in a person’s system, lingering the state of shock in the muscles and in the ache of the bones. How it messes with the perception of time, with one’s emotions. He hates that Derek will have to go through that again and again for the next god knows how long.

They get to the master bedroom where Stiles immediately makes Derek sit on the bed. The main light seems too bright for the traumatizing evening, so Stiles snaps the reading lamp on, illuminating the room with a soft, orange glow.

He undresses the man completely, taking his time and doing it slowly, discarding every piece of clothing to the floor. He kisses and caresses every new space of exposed skin, grounding Derek to the present. Even as Derek stays limp and unresponsive, he doesn’t let it deter him. The man’s expression is detached and faraway, and Stiles knows Derek needs the time to put some space between the things that happened. He’s not worried. Not yet, at least. When the wolf is entirely bare, Stiles hastily follows suit, throwing his clothes into the hamper, and then picking up the wolf’s clothes too. He knows himself well enough to predict that his nightly trip to the bathroom might end up with a cracked skull if he stumbles onto the clothes on the floor.

When he’s done, he turns around to face Derek. He opens his arms widely, letting out a soft sigh.

‘’Come here,’’ he murmurs, which catches Derek’s attention. The wolf lifts his head in exhaustion, slowly standing up from the bed and collapsing in Stiles’ arms, letting him wrap them tightly around him, before he nuzzles his face into Stiles’ neck.

Knowing how much Derek needs the anchor to teether him into his humanity, his sanity, he embraces the wolf with strength.

Derek isn’t hard, and neither is Stiles. It isn’t about sex. Not this. Even when their naked groins rub together, Stiles knows there’s no scent of arousal, no desire to any of it. Both of them just need the comfort of a beloved one, the feeling of receiving unconditional love and affection, and fuck if Stiles won’t give all he has to the man he loves. He starts to rub his palm up and down Derek’s back again, finding the continuum of repetition soothing.

Derek responds by melting against Stiles’ chest, the man holding onto him for dear life.

So Stiles gently guides Derek to their bed, gets them situated under the covers and then draws the wolf as tightly close as he possibly can manage, getting as much skin contact as he’s able to between them. He knows Derek will wake up tonight with nightmares. Probably the next month will be nothing but sleepless hours of daylight and moonlight, night terrors and resentful anger that is meant towards the universe, but they will take out on each other.

But it doesn’t matter. They’ll just hold onto each other that much more desperately, unwilling to lose the other no matter the cost.

Because they’re alive, and they’re here.

They’ve survived the abuse, and now they will survive the recovery.

Stiles takes Derek upstairs to his room. The wolf offers a raised eyebrow at the excessive amount of clothing, but doesn’t say anything about it, even when he must realize they’re for him.

‘’So I figured that, should your healing not kick in right away, we should probably clean and re-bandage your wounds and blisters while you can still give consent to it.’’

‘’Oh,’’ Derek says, before he nods. ‘’Okay.’’

Stiles motions him to take off his clothes and to lay on the bed. ‘’I’m gonna hop into the bathroom to get all the things I need, but I’ll be back. I uh, locked the door so that neither my dad nor Meredith can come in uninvited. Is that okay?’’

Something softens in Derek’s gaze. ‘’Thank you,’’ he says as an lieu of an answer.

‘’Cool,’’ Stiles bops his head. ‘’I’ll be back. Just lay down and get as comfortable as you can get.’’

It takes Stiles a couple minutes to gather everything before he goes back to his room to find Derek buck naked, laying on the bed belly down. Stiles has to swallow down his initial reaction, the position the wolf is in almost sinfully desirable, the man’s knees parted and his bottom just slightly lifted up. Almost like he’s presenting himself to Stiles.

And then he focuses on the scarring and the blisters marring the man’s skin, and the low pool of arousal dies immediately. Derek’s muscles are tense with what Stiles depicts as pain, making him feel instantly guilty for even entertaining any other thought than getting the man healed up and healthy.

‘’Hi,’’ he says, and Derek turns his head to look at him.

‘’Hi,’’ Derek responds quietly, his pupils dilated with silent sort of agony.

Stiles drops the stuff onto the head of the bed, letting Derek see what he has. He takes the wet wipes out first. ‘’Is it okay if I clean up the rashes and blisters with this?’’

‘’Yeah,’’ Derek says, and Stiles clambers behind the man’s naked backside. ‘’Sorry if this hurts,’’ Stiles murmurs, before he starts carefully wiping the injured skin. As before, the worst of the puss filled blisters are in the creases where the skin is thinnest, and the white wipes come out with streaks of yellow and red. He starts with the bends of the man’s knees, working himself up both legs. The area surrounding Derek’s anus isn’t as bad as it could be, but it still extracts a lot of pus, so he wipes it down, glad that his fingers are long enough to keep the bottom cheeks open without having to constantly pull them apart for access and make the skin more tight, which might hurt Derek more. The wolf can’t quite hide the flinching of his muscles whenever Stiles hits a particularly sore spot. When he’s done with the back thighs and the crack of Derek’s bottom, he quietly asks Derek to turn over so he can go through the front.

The wolf complies easily, instantly hiding his face with his arms, but not before Stiles catches a glimpse of tear stained cheeks.

Fuck.

Deciding to do what he does best to distract Derek from the pain, Stiles starts talking.

‘’Okay, so, there’s like this one girl in my class, Stella, that I’m friends with, kind of. Sort of, more like essay partners, but, you know, the details aren’t all that important. And she’s like, the most bubbliest, happiest person on earth, so I have no idea why she’s in criminal justice, but she is. Anyway, she’s lived in New York for as long as she can remember, and she’s had this job as a cashier for over five years. She loves it.’’

He pushes Derek’s right leg a little further open so he can access the space between his thigh and his groin, the underside of Derek’s testicles badly burned from electricity. He winces, but continues to tell the story cheerfully.

‘’So, like, she tells me these stories about her customers all the time, and one day there was this little ol’ grandma on her line. And like I said, she’s a very happy person, and extremely extroverted, so she’ll basically talk to anyone. So, the grandma comes up to her and she only has a packet of minced meat with her. But it’s not the vacuum sealed kind, but the kind they have on their fresh produce counter. And the containers are apparently very poorly made, so they leak fairly often with products like those.’’

He lets the other leg go and turns his attention to the other, careful not to touch anything too roughly.

‘’And she comes up and Stella asks, ‘’Would you like a small plastic bag with your meat, ma’am?’’ and the grandma just smiles politely, shaking her head, and just kindly responds to Stella, ‘’It’s okay dear, I’ll be eating this right away in my car.’’ and she like. Can’t believe her ears. She’s just like, oh my god, what? Bear in mind, that she’s not in the know of supernatural, and the old granny probably wasn’t a granny to begin with.’’

Derek lets out a quiet huff that Stiles decides to interpret as amusement.

‘’I know, I know. I laughed like half an hour after I heard that particular story.’’

He wipes down the space between the man’s navel and happy trail, as well as the V of his legs. Derek particularly cramps with pain when he touches those two places, even when the wounds there don’t look nearly as bad as the ones in his groin. He wonders if the vulnerability of showing his belly is what made him react as strongly, but decides to not ask.

‘’Okay,’’ he says eventually, after deeming the worst of it over. ‘’Now I’m gonna put some salve on them, okay? It should only feel cool against your skin. If it tingles or stings, tell me and I’ll wash it away, because your skin shouldn’t react to it that way.’’

Derek nods underneath his arms, and Stiles goes back to work. This time he narrates what he’s doing and where he’s going to touch next, kind of mentally kicking himself for not realizing to do that earlier, so that Derek would’ve known where Stiles was headed instead of having to guess.

It takes him fifteen minutes to go through all of it, before he tapes up the bigger wounds on the man’s torso. At the end of it, both of them are sweating, though Stiles is only huffing from exertion while Derek is covered in fine sheen of sweat due the pain.

‘’Alright. You can put your clothes back on. Or, wait. Maybe you should take a fresh pair of sweats and shirt, since your old ones look to be sort of yellowish on places.’’

Derek nods, giving a faint, ‘Thank you’ before he disappears into the bathroom. Stiles sighs, just wanting the day to finally be over.

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Stiles yawns widely, hand covering his mouth as he steps down to the platform of the underground subway. Despite it being late morning, the station is packed. Stiles navigates through the mass of bodies, wanting closer to the yellow line. He grips his energy drink tiredly, taking sips every now and then just to force his brain to keep being active.

He scans his immediate surrounding lazily, checking for immediate danger. A habit that was forced upon him, but has saved his ass and several coworkers and friends from grievous injury or death more times than he can count. His eyes linger on the few frat boys who spit and curse and are making a general ruckus. They’re familiar in that ‘I’ve seen you a thousand times but I don’t know you’ -way, and they’re just as much of an eyesore as before.

There are wooden benches littering aligned the graffiti painted wall, the few drunkards occupying part of them that are always there during morning rush, but find their way to safer grounds once the night falls. Mostly the benches are filled with people sleeping, stretching their limbs vertical against the surface. So when he sees someone actually sitting on the benches, hiding behind a month old magazine, the man’s arms bare and full of bruises, his feet naked against the freezing platform, alarm bells immediately flare in his mind. He drops his energy drink onto a nearby trash, the can clanging noisily, making another passerby glare at him.

He can see the man shaking, the leafs of the magazine trembling along with the tremors. The man seems to have at least a tank top on, and knee length shorts, an odd combination in the freezing winter of New York. A tuft of black hair peeks out from behind the front page, the same kind of dark pili littering the man’s skinny, black and blue arms.

Stiles takes a step back from the yellow line, trying to see the man better. People are giving him wide-eyed looks, whispering incredulously at the shortage of clothes, looking away with troubled faces.

Making sure his exits are still open, Stiles pushes through the crowd. He sees men in full black gear entering, plainly sweeping over the people, searching. He can see a concealed weapon from a mile away, and these men are packing a bunch of them.

Hunters.

Stiles takes his METS cap off his head as he makes his way through the thick mass, and slaps the cap on top of the black tuft of hair, making the magazine drop instantly, familiar blue eyes flashing for a millisecond.

‘’Derek ,’’ Stiles grits out, because of course it’s Derek. Who else has the shittiest luck in the whole wide world, to be clad half naked in a harsh, bitter winter, chased by men with guns? He rips his own jacket off before the wolf can answer, and Jesus , does his torn body look fucking awful .

Worry makes his voice sound sharper than he intends it to. ‘’I thought you were in fucking South America, frolicking away with Cora and her new pack, finding yourself and all that shit. What the fuck are you doing here?’’

He dumps his backpack on the ground, forcing the thick jacket over Derek’s shoulders, guiding his arms and hands into the sleeves, not without difficulty. He doesn’t actually wait for the wolf to answer, not because he doesn’t think Derek wouldn’t tell him, but because of the thick shock collar the man has hanging from his neck. There are inward spikes in it. Jesus.

‘’Can you walk?’’ He asks, because if Derek can’t, Stiles will grab him into a piggy back ride if nothing else. He won’t allow the hunters to get their nasty hands on Derek, ever again.

‘’Yes,’’ Derek says, softer than Stiles expects him to.

‘’Then follow me,’’ Stiles demands, and wrenches the man upwards.

A warm hand comes to softly pet the fur on his head. It drags him back to present, away from the cold cellars and hot wires of electricity. He blinks his eyes open and looks up, growling in half assed attempt at warning the man away. He doesn’t move though.

‘’I have no idea where you just went in your head,’’ Stiles murmurs, ‘’But it didn’t sound all that good, dude. And I obviously caused that, so, uh, sorry. I can be a little heartless sometimes.’’

Derek lets Stiles caress his head a couple more times before he sighs, shaking himself from head to toe, making Stiles’ hand fall away.

Stiles takes the hint and takes a couple steps back, stuffing his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie. For all that calculative, cold feeling the man emits, Derek thinks Stiles seems a lot like a lost kid that has no place to go and no social skills to make up for it.

He sees a lot of himself in Stiles. Which, seems a little odd since Derek’s fairly certain that in the time he spent passed out in the last 48 hours, Stiles’ idea of ‘being a good host’ involved a lot of dismembering human beings. 

He’s not sure if Stiles has even noticed his white sneakers are completely soaked red with blood.

Stiles is an oddity, a strange twist of something dark and light, a stranger he wouldn’t look twice at during daylight, but would change the side of the road if he ever came across him during night-time. There’s cruelty hidden in the depths of his eyes, a contrast to the gentle hands that had buried themselves into Derek’s thick fur not ten seconds ago.