a sterek wip tentatively titled “return”
“Scott didn’t give me too much information so – where is Cora?” He was tentative. A little afraid to ask the question because with Derek, who knew what the answer could be?
Derek seemed to sense Stiles’ hesitation and answered, his voice rough from underuse, “She’s fine. I left her back in New York. Last we spoke she was considering heading down to Argentina.”
“Last you spoke?” He repeated. “Is this a new development or are you telling me you left her back in New York a while ago and not just for this trip?”
The set of Derek’s eyebrows seemed to say it all.
“Shit,” Stiles groaned. “I thought you were off bonding with your rediscovered kid sister and now you’re telling me – what? You two parted ways months ago? Be honest, Derek, how long after you both ditched here did you ditch each other?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Derek growled.
“No?” Stiles said, his jaw decidedly tense. “Is this a pattern of the Hales, big guy? Tell me something, Derek – is Cora going to come after you only to find your body in pieces? Why are you here?”
He heard the crack of his shoulder hitting the wall before he felt it and realized that Derek was holding him there.
“I don’t think you have any right to talk about my family and bodies in pieces,” Derek said, his voice pitched low and his eyebrows drawn tight together. He could see the hint of a fang peeking out against Derek’s bottom lip. “Or did you conveniently forget how you dug up my sister and had me arrested for her murder?”
There were a lot of things that Stiles liked to pretend had never happened. Dad not being at the hospital when Mom died was one of them. The time he’d seen Ms. McCall putting on make up to hide a bruise on her cheek was another. And the time he had convinced Scott it was a brilliant idea to go looking for a body, and then to dig it up like it was all for fun, was the last.
There were nights when Stiles couldn’t sleep, because all he could see was Laura’s dead eyes staring up at him. Her cut-in-half body that had been carefully wrapped in tarp with the hair brushed away from her face and the burial site circled in wolfsbane. That should have been enough to make him feel like shit, but there was more.
More, like the thought of Derek driving into town after not having heard from his big sister, his only surviving relative, for days. There was the image in his head of Derek running through the woods, confused and terrified by the fact that Laura’s scent – her blood – seemed to be all over the place, until he’d found her body in pieces. But it’s what came next that breaks Stiles: the knowledge that Derek must have gathered Laura’s severed body in his arms and dug her grave, probably with his own claws, to bury her with a tenderness no one thought Derek Hale capable of.
Some nights all Stiles can think of is Derek with his hands burnt, wrapped in wolfsbane, and holding back the tears as he gave his sister the burial and respect she deserved.
Only to have a couple of teenagers dig her up like she was nothing.
I’m sorry, he wanted to say. I’m sorry for what I did and how I took your loss and made it a puzzle to piece together. I was wrong. I fucked up. Instead he said this:
“I think I can say whatever the fuck I want when you’re staying in my house and endangering me and my dad’s life.”
He pushed Derek away from him, both surprised and not to find how little force Derek had actually put into his stance.
