#prompt two

It's with him as he interns at the FBI each summer. It's with him as he attends college and as he graduates top of his class with his tearful father watching him cross the stage. It's with him as he heads to Quantico for the 20 week training program that makes him an FBI agent.

He's a good one. There's talk of fast track and promotions and making Agent in Charge before he's 30. His closure rate is excellent, better than anyone else in the New York office, and his speciality lies in interviewing children. Whether they're victims or witnesses, Stiles is able to connect with them even when other agents and department psychologists can't.

He keeps tabs on Derek, as best he can. He buries a few files that relate to the whole Derek is a wanted serial killer thing. He tracks him as he travels the country but loses him in upstate New York.

And then Stiles' world turns upside down.

A bad case. One of the worst. His boss is an asshole. Stiles knows who did it, he knows without a single doubt who did it, and he suggests a 1-1 approach. One agent, wired up, goes in and arrests him. His boss disagrees. SWAT are sent in. The perp dies, several agents die, and there's no way to find the victim before they die too. 

Stiles is devastated. He's angry. He says a few words to his boss that he probably shouldn't, which descends into a very loud and very public screaming match that turns him into the scapegoat.

So he unwillingly takes the blame for the operation failure. For the deaths. He carries them on his conscience anyway, he might as well shoulder it.

Somehow, he doesn’t get fired. Perhaps he should have been. Perhaps he should have quit.

He doesn’t, but emotionally he checks out. He isn’t engaged with the work anymore. He can’t trust his colleagues or his boss. What’s the point?

So he puts in for a transfer. His career is dead in the water now anyway so he requests a field office in a small town and ends up in Portland, Maine.

It's fine. It's all fine. His career is fucked, he lost track of Derek, he barely speaks to any of his friends (are they even still his friends? he isn't even sure he's still part of the pack), and he knows that monsters are real. The human ones, and the supernatural ones. The tangible ones, and the ones in his head.

The ones in his head are the loudest.

He finds a small house to rent on the edge of town. It isn't much; it's shabby and the second bedroom isn't so much a second bedroom as it is a box room. Which is fine. He doesn't have guests come to stay anyway. He shoves some boxes in there, the ones he can't be bothered to unpack, and closes the door.

It isn't much but it's quiet. His neighbours are quiet, the street is quiet; even the neighbourhood dogs are quiet. Everything is quiet.

It's so quiet that Stiles can hear the blood whooshing in his ears. It simultaneously drives him mad and comforts him. It's too loud. Too annoying. Too all encompassing. But he's alive. He's real. 

Sometimes he doubts that. The body he lives in isn't exactly the one he was born with; it’s a construct that he forced a thousand year old demon to give him. He looks in the mirror and he knows it's his face looking back at him but sometimes it feels like a stranger. He doesn’t know who he is anymore.

At the quiet end of the quiet street he lives on now, there’s a trail into the nature reserve. Smaller trails crisscross with the larger trail, giving miles upon miles of different routes. It's a good place to run.

So Stiles does.

Every day, he pulls on his running shoes and hits the trail, along with the shadow that he always carries. Some days it's heavier than others, so heavy he can barely move. He does anyway. He has to. Otherwise he'll never move again. 

Today isn't so bad. It feels like something is behind him. An unseen presence that's watching his every move. Eerie and unsettling like the fog that clings to the trees. But that's better than when it's filling his mind with storm clouds so dark he can't see through them and has to fight his way to the light.

He glances behind him as he runs. The feeling is so strong that he has to keep checking, he has to be certain that there’s no one following him. If there is, they’ve faded into the autumn fog; the trail is empty as far as he can see and it’s quiet enough that he’d hear footsteps if there was anyone there. So there isn’t. It’s just his shadow. With him as always.

At least he isn't alone, he thinks bitterly. At least he has someone. Even though it's this invisible, shadowy presence.

Somewhere around mile three, he glimpses a dark shape in the trees. It’s there and gone, swallowed by the fog and the undergrowth before he can make out what it is. Probably an animal, he tells himself, and he pays it no more mind.

Until he’s halfway through mile four and he sees it again. More clearly this time.

A wolf.

Specifically, a black wolf.

Stiles flails to a stop and stands there, breathing hard but not gasping for air like he would have been doing on a high school cross country run. The wolf turns, hauntingly familiar blue eyes fixed on Stiles for a second that feels like a lifetime before it runs deeper into the trees.

Minutes pass as Stiles stares at the spot where Derek disappeared just moments before. His heart gallops against his ribcage and Derek must be able to hear that and probably smell Stiles’ confusion, but he’s gone. He’s still gone.

So Stiles shrugs and carries on running. If Derek is wolf shaped then he clearly doesn't want to make contact and that's fine. It's fine. It's really fine. After all, no one else wants to be around Stiles either. Why should Derek be any different? It's not like Stiles would have died for him back then. (And still would.)

His legs are like elastic, barely holding him up under the weight of the shadow that has enveloped him. But he finishes his run. The ever present shadow has now been joined by the back-of-the-neck prickle of unseen eyes watching him. Following him.

The sensation should frighten him. Terrify him. But Stiles has faced the worst life has to offer and besides, it’s vaguely comforting knowing that Derek is there and still his usual creeper self. He’s always been good at lurking in the trees.

Some things don't change.

Like Stiles' temper which finally snaps loose after an entire week of a wolf shaped Derek stalking him on his morning runs.

"Oh my god, you're an asshole!" he shouts into the trees. He knows Derek's there. The prickly sensation has its hooks into the back of his neck. Ok, so maybe he's shouting at the wrong patch of undergrowth and if anyone else is out here, they'll think there's a weirdo in the woods who's shouting at nothing, but Derek will hear him. "Stop fucking stalking me and just come out and talk!"

There's no answer. No movement. And that's fair, really; if Derek shifts so he can speak, he won't have any clothes and while the woods are generally devoid of people, they are on the main trail and it's entirely possible someone will walk past and then it's indecent exposure and he might get arrested and -

Stiles makes an indeterminate sound of frustration because Derek could at least show his wolfy face properly, and then he runs on.

Maybe tomorrow.

But the rest of his run is hollow, somehow. The only invisible presence following him is the shadow that he can never leave behind. There's no comforting-yet-prickly Derek presence to counter it and now it feels heavier than ever. Like it isn't just dark and shadowy, but the total absence of light.

The rest of his runs that week pass in the same way. Empty. The same way Stiles feels. 

He's fucked up.

He should have been more patient, given Derek more time, but his mouth ran away from him in a way it hasn't since he was a teenager. 

So he gets to work early, almost an hour before his shift and he absolutely definitely doesn't use the FBI database in a highly questionable manner which absolutely definitely won't get him fired if anyone finds out. 

Ten minutes later, he has Derek's address.

He lives out towards the coast, on the opposite side of the preserve to Stiles' house. Only a couple of miles away as the crow flies. Or the wolf runs.

An uneasy feeling settles over Stiles again. Is this a coincidence? Derek has been living there for over a year, since before Stiles left New York City. Did something draw Stiles here? Is it one of those weird things that happens sometimes or is it some unseen force acting on them, pulling them together like magnets?

(Will the same force switch and push them away from each other again?)

There's no time to worry about it during his workday but Stiles mulls it over that night when he's trying and failing to sleep because the dark is too dark and the quiet is too quiet.

Eventually, he decides to put it to one side. It's not like he made a choice to come to Portland; it was the only available posting to a smaller office. So if it is an unseen force, some sort of karma or chaos or something, then it's acting on the entirety of the FBI which means there's no point at all in worrying about it. Or, given that worrying about things is deeply ingrained into Stiles - deeply - at least making the choice to not worry about it when he should be sleeping.

So he worries about how to apologise to Derek for yelling at him instead. 

That's marginally easier to sort out and he finally gets to sleep in the early hours of the morning.

Food seems to be the best way to make it up to Derek so before his shift, Stiles stops by the bakery and picks up a selection of pastries. He isn't sure which ones Derek likes - he's never even seen the guy eat before but presumably he does and who doesn't like pastries, right? Right. 

He drives over to Derek's house, which is in completely the wrong direction and he'll probably be late and get fired but fuck it, this is more important. He scrawls a message on the top of the box of pastries - Sorry. Call me - adds his cell number and leaves the box on Derek's doorstep.

He doesn't bother knocking. If Derek is home, he knows Stiles is here. So he's either out or avoiding him 

Stiles has done what he can so he gets back into his car and drives away.