"Heyy," Scott says. "You didn't say you were coming."

"Got off early," Derek says. "Figured I'd stop by. But I don't have to--"

"Don't be dumb," Stiles says. He nudges Kira with one hip. "We'll scoot over, you can--" which is how he ends up with Derek's warm body pressed all along his side, watching his long fingers catching condensation as it beads and slides down the side of his glass, the soft sweep of his lashes against the cut of his cheekbones, the gentle curve of the corner of his mouth as Scott teases him into smiling. He used to think Derek was tough, and mostly mean, but in the long years since he's learned that that was a lot of cover and bluster, that Derek was curled around his own soft belly so tightly it just seemed he was nothing but spikes. 

Tonight, though, he notices something, too: the way Derek's gaze keeps sliding towards him, drifting helplessly; that when he tugs nervously at the tie's knot again Derek's eyes fasten there, the pupils widening almost perceptibly. Stiles pulls it looser and flicks open the top button on his shirt, and then another, and another. Derek's mouth falls just open. His bottom lip looks heavy, trembling. 

"We're, uh," he hears Scott saying, distant. "We're just gonna-- Isaac-- yeah-- god, you're not not even-- okay." 

"I'm really tired," Stiles says.

"I can go." Derek still looks mesmerized. Stiles doesn't know if it's just that he's been working with magic all day-- his magic, pulling it up from inside of himself over and over again, until his skin was half buzz, half numb, until he was exhausted and sated and spent-- but he thinks can feel it, the heaviness between them.

"You can come with me," Stiles says. "If you want to."

Later, in the sheets, Derek tugs the tie the rest of the way off with his teeth. He opens the shirt and lets it get caught on Stiles' shoulders, his wrists. He pulls Stiles' dick out of his pants and sits back on his heels to admire his work, eyes dark, now, at the mess and wreck he's made of Stiles' neatness. "You like the clothes, huh," Stiles breathes. 

"You've got me," Derek says. "That's exactly what I like."

-

It works between them, mostly. Stiles has long, weird hours with Emissary Perez and Derek has long, weird hours as a line cook at a painfully hip restaurant in the Mission. Every time Stiles comes in there's are at least a handful of people lolling against the counter that affords a view into the open kitchen, watching him work. He doesn't blame them. I've been puzzllng this one out since high school, he thinks, the weight of five baleful stares heavy on his back when Derek emerges, sweat-stained, exhausted, and hooks two fingers through his belt loop so they can walk out together. Trust me, I know, I know what I've got. 

Derek chops jalapenos, one day, and his fingertips prickle across Stiles' skin, careful to keep away from anything too sensitive. It's fucking torturous: he holds him still at the hips and mouths at his dick, the fat head of it pink and wet against his lips. "Hold still," he says.

"I can't," Stiles says. "I can't, you know I--"

"For me," Derek says. When Stiles comes, he comes so hard he cries.

-

The conference is a month into their whatever. "It's advisable to bring someone, if you can," Emissary Perez says. "I understand that your attachment to your current pack runs deep, but until it's formalized-- there will be a lot of packs looking for someone young, and available." 

Stiles rubs an absentminded thumb against the bruise that's blossoming at the back of his neck, one Derek sucked there last night, hips pinning them both to the bed, rutting his way through an orgasm that went on and on and on. "I"m not available," he says.

"All you have to do is let them know."

-

But he can't ask Derek. Derek has come a long way, but after everything he's still jumpy around too many strange wolves, and rooms of power-bright humans, emissaries veined with druid magic. More than that he's shy, and it seems unfair to make him lay claim to Stiles in public, just when things are so new. Scott's just-- it's just-- easier. Scott has power, and he has since he was just a teenager, and he wears it well. He'll meet people and make alliances and no one will doubt for a second that Stiles is his. "I'm going down to LA for the weekend with Scott," is how Stiles puts it. "You want me to bring you anything back?"

Derek shakes his head and kisses him, quiet. "Come home," he says. Stiles doesn't say: that's the whole point. 

-

The conference goes well. Scott is, as predicted, a huge hit, and everyone gives Stiles a respectfully wide berth. He does as much as he can every day but still has to sneak out every few hours to sit alone in their room, curled up in a chair near the window, watching the southern California sun burning down white and hot. He's not so good with crowds, either, with loose magic and so, so many people he doesn't know or trust.

-

"Cora!" It's been almost five years, but she looks the same: sleek, tough, forged in fire and still shining with heat. "No one told me you'd be here."

"No one warned me about you, either." She narrows her eyes at him and doesn't offer a hug. "Are you here with McCall?"

"Yeah," Stiles says. "I thought Derek would have told you, we're all living in San Francisco, now--"

"He did," Cora says. She's still looking at him like she can't puzzle something out. "He's here," she says, then, softly.

"Where?" Stiles runs a slow scan of the bar and still almost misses him. He's tucked up in the farthest corner, looking slope-shouldered and hunted and definitely, totally miserable. 

"We thought we'd do a little Hale family bonding as long as I was in California," she says. "He was talking about texting you, later, said you and Scott were on vacation down here, or something."

"Fuck," Stiles says with feeling. "I didn't mean to--"

"I don't care," Cora says. "But, uh, he definitely will."

-

"No, I mean, I get it," Derek says as soon as Stiles sits down at his table. "Please just-- don't. Explain."

"Are you sure you get it?" It's only been a month, but Stiles already has to check the familiar impulse to tug at Derek's shirtcuffs, to smooth his hair through with his fingers, to scent and claim and gentle him with the careful flats of his hands. 

"You look good," Derek says instead of answering. "That tie is--"

"Yeah," Stiles says, already closing the gap between their mouths.

-

Derek is gone in the morning.

-

When he gets back to San Francisco, Stiles waits for him outside of work. It's a slick, blustery day and Derek comes out bundled up in a jacket and scarf, his eyes pale against the dark fabric, the kitchen-rosy color in his cheeks. "What was that all about," Stiles asks, falling into step him with him.

"Nothing," Derek says. "The point was: nothing."

"I feel like I fucked up," Stiles says. "I didn't know you were gonna be there."

"Of course not."

"I would have wanted you to be there," Stiles says. He catches Derek's wrist and stills them both. "If I thought you wanted to be there. I would have asked."

"I didn't want to be there." Derek enunciates every word very precisely. "I hate shit like that."

"So I brought Scott," Stiles says. The wind picks up. His voice already sounds scratchy and impossible and wild. "He loves-- he's good at-- I'm trying, Derek. I'm trying to be good at this."

"You are good at this," Derek steps in, close. Stiles shies away from the promise of a kiss. "I'm a wreck. I'm sorry."

"I'm terrible," Stiles says. He loosens the hand that's still gripping Derek's wrist. "Half the reason to bring Scott was because I couldn't handle it, Jesus, I wouldn't have wished it on you, I didn't even want it for myself." He steps in and leans his head against Derek's, nuzzling the cold tip of his nose against his warm, stubble-rough cheek. "I would have spent the whole weekend in bed with you," he says. "In the bar, in the corner, where it was easy, where it was safe."

"One of us has to be brave," Derek says. "You need someone who can--"

"I want you," Stiles says. 

-

"Just flip a switch?" Stiles' fingertips give off a faint, just-perceptible crackle in the dimness of the air. 

"A druid needs his pack just as badly as a pack needs a druid," Deaton says.

"Don't tell us riddles," Scott growls. His control has been better, lately, but the tip of a canine pierces his lip before he realizes he's dropped them. Stiles' hand on his shoulder steadies him and leans back hard into the contact. "Why didn't you--"

"I didn't know." Deaton manages a tone of distant reprove. "If Mr. Stilinski had been more open with his problem, I could have--"

"I don't trust you," Stiles says. His hand is still on Scott's shoulder; it slides down one arm and loops him in tight against his side. "We don't trust you."

"You don't have to trust me," Deaton says. "This is for your pack to figure out."

-

That night they face off across Stiles' bed. The Sheriff is downstairs bustling around, and Scott can hear what he's doing if he concentrates: opening the refrigerator, taking out something wrapped in plastic, shaking the contents into a bowl, going to sit in the living room and flip the television on. "It's not weird," he says. "If you don't make it weird, okay."

"It is weird," Stiles says. "It's objectively fucking weird. We outgrew same-bed sleepovers when we were like ten, dude. There's no room in that thing." It's true that Stiles' limbs tend to find their way out of his bed under the best of circumstances, but Scott doesn't have to scent him to know that it's not the heart of Stiles' objection. 

"And now we're growing back into them," Scott says. "Circle of life."

"That's not how it works." Stiles' eyes are dark and hooded, and Scott recognizes the embers at the bottom of them, the ugliness and anger that are walling him into himself. 

"I hate it," he says, before he can stop himself. "I can feel it, okay, I can feel you going away, and you smell-- you aren't yourself, Stiles."

"You think you can fix me?"

"No," Scott says carefully. "I want you to. For me. If you won't hate it."

"Dude." Stiles sits down on the bed heavily, slumping like his strings have been cut. "Fucking-- just-- okay." He arranges himself in one long line, and Scott is careful, too, crawling up next to him, taking care not to touch. "I don't know if this is enough for you," Stiles says.

"Whatever you can give me is enough," Scott says. They fall asleep together in their clothes, with the lights on. 

-

They don't talk about it, but it helps. Scott gets to keep the skin-smell of Stiles' bed on his body all day, wrapped up in the scent of safety and pack, and Stiles comes back into himself, stops losing time. Things inch towards normalcy. The tentative shyness of the first few nights fades and dissolves as the weeks pass: Scott wakes up cradled against Stiles' side, or curled against his back, and eventually, slowly, he starts falling asleep that way, too, permitted to press his face into the curve of Stiles' neck and keep a possessive hand splayed out against his hip.

There's nothing to be done about the way they wake up hard, sometimes, Stiles' dick against Scott's back or his thigh, just another part of his anatomy, like a rib or shoulder. Except. Except that Scott can smell the thickness of it, Stiles' arousal, the parts of his scent that are off-limits and dangerous. He wants to know them. He's greedy for it, all of it, in a way he doesn't recognize and can't seem to understand. He feels fierce and desperate all the time, now, equal parts consuming and consumed.

It's inevitable that something happens: one morning Scott wakes up stiff and aching, and Stiles is already rousing next to him, pink-cheeked from sleep. "'M gonna jerk off," Scott mumbles. Stiles stirs more purposefully. "You can stay," he says. "If you want."

"Um." Stiles' heartbeat is as reckless and wild as the blood in Scott's veins. "I mean. I'm gonna. If you're gonna."

"Yeah," Scott agrees. "Bro stuff."

It is, kind of: they experimented like this when they were just kids, really, pulling their dicks out and comparing them, Stiles tugging gently at Scott's foreskin, smoothing his thumb tenderly down the shaft. They didn't touch each other when they started to get hard, then, and they don't now, either, lying next to each other, fucking split-slick fists. They're in Scott's bed and he's got lotion but he can't bring himself to reach for it. 

Stiles is noisy like he always is: his mouth falls open and he just breathes, air catching in the back of his throat, a hitch in the rush of inhale and exhale. He goes off first, body curling in on itself, shooting onto his hand and stomach, cursing quietly while he comes down. Scott is close but not quite there-- he needs something slicker than his own wet dick can provide him, a little less friction, a little more speed. He doesn't mean to dip his fingers into the mess on Stiles' belly, to rub it into the skin of his cock-- he doesn't think about it, anyway, before he does it, and almost immediately after he's coming white-hot and desperate. 

"Um," he says, eventually, when he's recovered enough to be embarrassed. "Sorry?"

"Ask next time," Stiles says. His tone is inscrutable. He gets up first, takes a long shower, but it doesn't matter: he uses Scott's shampoo and puts on clothes that have been sitting in Scott's room all night, that carry the faint stink of them and their sex, sweat and sleep and want. Scott sits on the edge of his bed and watches, miserable.

"I am sorry," he says again.

"You can't use me as your anchor," Stiles says. "I can't-- that's not fucking fair."

"Okay." Scott looks at his hands, which are stupid and useless. "I thought-- I sort of thought it might be mutual. I mean. I wasn't thinking, just then. But I thought, you know, what Deaton said. That you needed. And I know I needed you. I need you. But we can figure out something else. Obviously. You don't have to. You never had to."

Stiles comes over and kneels between Scott's spread thighs and he's lovely like this, dark-lashed, red-mouthed, smelling like clean skin and home. "I need you," he says. "I can't lose you."

"But you can't anchor me."

"I barely knew anyone, after I met you," Stiles says. He leans forward and presses his face against Scott's chest so that his voice is muffled and indistinct. "I never want anyone but you. If we-- if this-- I can't just be your anchor."

Scott gets his fingers in the fine hair at the nape of Stiles' neck and tugs him up so that they're looking at one another, and flashes his eyes alpha red. "You're mine," he says. "That's just-- that's what I want."

The streets wind and the hills are unexpected and steep: there are tiny patches of history twisted up everywhere, cell phone stores jostled up against ancient churches. The Hales were an old family, in Beacon Hills, and the Argents have a longer history in France before that, but the city makes them all look like mewling babies. Derek reads about feuds that were started and settled before the first Argent kissed arrow to bow. He stares at countless illustrations, men with their features twisted, backs bowed, lips drawn into inhuman snarls. It’s strangely comforting to recognize himself on the page. He’s used to thinking of himself as a mystery and a myth, but here amongst the solid promise of so much history it seems possible to believe that his own lineage is less strange, more real.

His last few days he doesn’t even go into the library: Derek walks one end of the city to the other, waits in long lines, sees the sights. He goes to the Pantheon and stands in the shaft of sun that pours down from the ceiling, high and arched and far away, and the light is so white and soft that his vision blurs and his fingers uncurl themselves at his sides. The room goes on around him, and after a moment he’s aware of it again: the sounds and smells, snatches of conversation, voices tumbling over one another, almost familiar, almost—

When he opens his eyes he has to blink and blink, and the body comes together in pieces: the breadth of shoulders, shock of dark, messy hair, the curve of his cheek and then, finally, the tendons in his throat when he leans his head back to laugh. Stiles is dirty and disheveled, carrying a massive backpack, so wholly familiar and unexpected that the plain fact of him seems impossible. Derek doesn’t mean to let himself be seen, but he doesn’t escape the cascade of light quickly enough and Stiles catches him, their eyes meeting, Stiles’ mouth quirking up into a small, pleased smile before he shakes his head and laughs again.

"It’s just a little post-collegiate backpacking," he explains when they escape into the crowded square. "I’m due back in Beacon to start police academy stuff in the fall, so I figured, you know, one last hurrah and all of that." His friends are arrayed nearby, a handful of handsome boys with three days’ scruff. They give Derek a wide berth. "What about you?"

"Research," Derek says.

"I don’t remember research being like this," Stiles says. "But. I mean. Don’t let me interrupt."

"I’m taking a break right now," Derek admits. "This isn’t strictly—"

"Yeah," Stiles says. "Fine. Of course. I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself. Everything’s okay? Back home?"

"Fine," Derek says. There’s an awkward silence. 

"You could come to dinner with us," Stiles says. The words trip over themselves, rushed. "If you have more free time. Later. We’re probably gonna eat cheap, but then we’re going to this club that’s supposed to be— really gay, actually. Uh. So. Dinner."

Derek has thought about it a little bit, since he’s been here: the dark doorways, lines snaking down alleys, the press of bodies inside, letting himself go. “I shouldn’t,” he says. 

"You’d be welcome."

"No," Derek says. "Thank you."

That night, though, he thinks better of it: he can feel desire warming up inside of him, little tentatives licks of want sparking up from the base of his spine. Just once, he decides to give the animal what it wants.

He puts on a white tee shirt and tight jeans and goes to a place the internet recommends, somewhere loud and crowded and anonymous. He loses himself in the center of the crowd, too loud to hear, too sweaty to scent, lets hands and hands and hands find him and try to hold him. He keeps looking for the curve of Stiles’ cheek, the sharp edge of his smile, but they never appear to him. He goes home alone, sleeps deeply, wakes refreshed.

-

I know it’s not exactly on the way, Deaton’s email says. But there’s an amulet I need in Thailand. Not exactly on the way is an understatement. Derek flies into Bangkok and arrives grimy and miserable, sleep weighing heavy on his eyes and the bones of his legs. The amulet takes an endless week to track down, and Derek slips down a hundred tiny alleys while he searches, through and through and round and round the city’s secret darknesses. When he has it in hand he takes the credit card number Deaton sent him and books himself three days at a resort on Koh Yao Noi, off the coast of Phuket. Deaton can fucking wait.

It’s easier the second time, to slip into the ease of solitary living, long days in white sunlight on white beaches, the ocean endless, glimmering emerald. Derek finds a slip of beach that curves around itself on his last day and falls asleep with his head pillowed in his hands, naked as he was born. He wakes to the mangled exhale of a familiar yelp. He’s too lazy to cover himself, twisting lazily around to see Stiles looking pale and pink, splotched with blush and the pink beginnings of a sunburn.

"What are you doing here,” Stiles asks. 

"More research?"

Stiles snorts. His eyes keep darting from Derek’s back out to the ocean, to his feet buried in the softness of the sand. “That’s starting to sound like a thin excuse.”

"Recovering from research, then," Derek says. Stiles is so focused on not looking at his ass that he really might as well. "I had to do a thing in Bangkok. It was exhausting."

"Apparently."

"What are you doing here," Derek asks. He does flip onto his back, now, mostly because it’s funny to watch Stiles go impossibly pinker. The flush of him starts high on his cheeks and finds its way down his neck and chest, to the peaked tips of his nipples. Derek should probably be looking less, too. 

"Backpacking." Stiles makes a vague gesture with one hand. "I told you."

"You were in Italy."

"So were you!"

"I had a mission." Derek’s dick is about to start betraying a frankly undeniable interest in the way Stiles keeps taking his lower lip between his teeth, smoothing over and over the swell of it. He sits up and slips on the trunks he discarded an hour ago, shimmying them up over his hips. The crash of the ocean hides Stiles’ heartbeat, and the air is too warm and still and salty to carry any real scent. 

"Evening out your tan lines?"

"This is what it means to be a wolf," Derek intones. He’s embarrassingly pleased by the flash of Stiles’ smile.

There isn’t anywhere to go on the island, not really: the hotel and a few scattered others like it, a handful of dirt roads that lead to local restaurants, tourist traps, shops. Stiles finds Derek after dinner and lures him out to the local bar. “All of my dumb friends are still sleeping off Phuket,” he explains. “Don’t make me drink alone.”

"Only because you’ll probably find a way to get yourself killed otherwise," Derek says.

"That was like one time,” Stiles grumbles. Derek lets the point slide. They’ve all been in and out of enough trouble. He goes to the bar.

The beer they drink is cheap and watery, but with aconite sprinkled in Derek loosens, laxens along with Stiles, both of them flushed and damp with sweat, the heavy air of a brewing storm. “I can’t believe you’re really going back,” Derek says. Things feel distant and fuzzy and nice, easy. “To Beacon Hills.”

"It’s good enough for you."

"Yeah. Me." Derek flattens a palm against his own chest. He likes how he feels, tonight, his own solid, warm body, whole and safe and sound. "Not you."

"Me," Stiles says. He smiles. "What does that even mean."

"I don’t know." Self-consciousness comes brushing up against Derek’s buzzed brain like cold air. He turns and contemplates his beer. "You just. College. You’re smart. You could do other things."

"I like Beacon Hills," Stiles says solemnly. "I like my dad. And the police. Justice. The pursuit of truth."

"Very noble."

"Do you want to go somewhere else?"

Derek pauses, caught up short. He’s never really imagined it: where else he might be able to go. He’s felt for so long that he owes Beacon Hills so much. He lit a match when he was just a kid, really, and the embers of that fire are still smoking, the ash of it smudged in the darkest parts of Stiles’ eyes. “No.”

"It’s crazy seeing you here," Stiles says. He takes a long, deliberate sip of his beer. "Out in the world."

"I used to be afraid of disappearing," Derek says. A bead of moisture drips from the lip of his bottle, down the neck and the rounded belly of it: he traces its path with one finger. "A wolf without a pack. It felt insubstantial. I felt— like nothing."

"Like no one would miss you."

"Like I wouldn’t miss me. Like I might not even— like I wouldn’t notice, really. Without someone else to pay attention. Or something."

Stiles pays their tab and herds Derek out of the bar; they walk the winding path back in soft, easy silence. The stars are thick in the sky. “I would miss you,” Stiles says, when they come to the turn that takes Derek away and towards his own room. “I have missed you. While I was away.”

"I like being drunk," Derek says. Stiles’ mouth quirks into a funny, clipped smile. "I like my body telling me things," he says, as if to clarify, though he doesn’t think it really helps.

"Stephen’s probably snoring," Stiles says. Apparently they’re both going to talk in non-sequiturs now, which is fine by Derek. "The guy I’m sharing a room with."

"You can," Derek says, and nods down his leg of the path. "If you want."

"Yeah." Stiles nods. "I’m just— I’ll be right there."

Derek expects to think better of it but he doesn’t, really. He slips off his jeans; it’s too hot for anything but boxers and his bare chest, so he sits and drinks ice water in the dark until Stiles arrives. They negotiate it all in near-silence. Derek means to do something, maybe, but instead he falls asleep so slowly that he isn’t even aware of it: the tide of himself drifting out, unafraid, already secure in the knowledge that tomorrow it will be pulled right back in.

-

When it happens, Derek is glad that it’s happening in Beacon Hills: he crowds Stiles up against the baby blue side of his Jeep and kisses him in the Ralph’s parking lot so thoroughly and extravagantly that eventually Stiles is the one who has to call a halt to the proceedings. “I’m an officer of the law,” he says, like he’s really scandalized, like his dick isn’t hard against Derek’s thigh already.

"Do you want me to stop," he asks.

“No,” Stiles says, and laughs as they’re kissing, greedy, like he can’t get enough. Derek’s body trembles in the firmness of his grip but it doesn’t shake apart. Stiles touches his skin and whispers to him, when they’re in bed together, later, how good it is, how much he wants it, and Derek flashes him fang and claw and Stiles just keeps fucking him, steady, inexorable, relentless. 

"Look at you," he says, rubbing Derek’s come against the thin skin at his hip. 

"Look at me," Derek agrees. 

-

"I read a lot in Italy," Derek tells Deaton when he stops by a few days later. "You were right, plenty of interesting lore there."

"It’s nice to go to the source," Deaton says. "Get a feel for the context of some of the stories." 

"There was some weird stuff," Derek says. "All kinds of druid myth, too."

"I’ve never been." Deaton’s tone is impossibly mild.

"I didn’t realize they used to be so involved in mating rituals," Derek says. "Matchmaking, all of that."

"Ensuring the strength of a pack line," Deaton says. "Sometimes it’s useful to have a neutral party to mix up the elements, create something unexpected."

"Thank you," Derek says. "I mean, fuck you, actually, but also—"

"That’s sufficient," Deaton says, holding up his hands.

"Bangkok, though," Derek says. "That’s not—"

"It was an educated guess," Deaton says. "I wasn’t sure what you would do after, but it seemed reasonable."

"Did you even need the amulet? Or was that just a wild goose chase?"

"I didn’t need it," Deaton says. "I thought it might prove prudent to have one of you collect it on the way."

"Is it a protections spell?" Derek asks. "Or a binding charm, or something?"