Archive of Our Own ^beta

The scent claws at him like an ancient ache.

Like an over-informed old friend back from the blue, striking dread into the comfort he'd identified as mundane, safe, familiar. It’s sickening and it’s turgid, it chokes all essence of good that he knows should be underlying; the traces of warmth and light and innate happiness he wants to believe haven’t been snuffed out, leaving a dry husk too similar to himself behind.

Derek knows the scent of grief. He's bathed in it, clung to it, wallowed and submitted-- let the accompanying anger anchor his beast. It’s a scent he can never forget, as it follows him always.

Often, when he lets his thoughts wander that way - in his weaker moments, when he gives in and admits to himself how things really are and were - he entertains the notion that something dark in him recognised the same thing in Stiles. The familiar, hollow agony in him; this boy-who-was-not-a-boy, the kid who grew up the moment he learned what 'metastasised' and 'malignant' meant.

Who lived in the only house in Beacon Hills that reeked of loss almost as much as his own did.

“Twenty-three hours,” he says from the threshold, slumped against the frame, “I’m almost impressed.”

There’s another scent, drifting like clouds of acrid smoke across the room. It’s almost choking his quest for that old, comfortable, toxic mix of adrenaline, sugar and self-consciousness that was always so unmistakably Stiles. He throws the door back far enough that it bangs, flips the light switch and throws his jacket on his bed. The too-small, too familiar bed, not slept in for more than three nights' succession in over eight years.

“You’re drunk,” Derek says needlessly, and he gets an exaggerated eye-roll in response

Derek remembers when he would get drunk. He remembers 4am phone calls singing Can't Take My Eyes Off You as he stumbled the sleepy streets to his dorm, because Stiles hated walking alone at night. He remembers incoherent text messages declaring a love of cheese and sneakers. He remembers clumsy limbs crawling onto his lap, despite the crowded party around them, wet lips whispering filthy secrets in his ear. He remembers rum-flavoured kisses and whiskey-coloured eyes stripping him bare with little effort.

“Actually, I’m about a drink and a half away from being drunk. Right now I’m just,” his hand flutters out, as if picking the words from the air. “Comfortably numb.” He sits on the bed and starts taking off his shoes.

He’s right - his movements are stuttered, but not impaired. It’s just like he always moves, actually.

“Scott nominated himself my sponsor, or some bullshit, and decided I’d had enough.” He sits up straight again and holds his hands out, a bitter, artificial smile contorting his face so much that Derek has to look away.

“And here I thought it was a party,” he says, “Get the old gang back together? Wolf Pack Reunion.” There’s a little thwack as one shoe hits the floor too hard and bounces away. “Though I guess, technically, I was the only one missing... and I was never really one of you, so...”

There's an exchange of nothing after that, because Derek doesn't have an argument ready. It's like it always is; going to Stiles with all these intentions and practised speeches before laying eyes on him and feeling each clever word float off into dust.

He stands, then, pulling off his shirt, and Derek forgets himself. Forgets that he no longer has the right to drink in the strong curve of back, the smattering of moles or the light dusting of chest hair he could describe from memory. He's not allowed to watch the ripple of muscles across his shoulders, newly defined, as he throws the garment away, and he shouldn't let his breath thin at the trail of dark hair, framed between slim hips and below natural, almost soft abdominals that he can still feel what it's like to bury his nose against. He forgets because it's been too long since he's let himself remember.

(But he remembered, anyway.)

Stiles' hands reach the buckle of his belt and Derek rips his eyes away.

There's a sarcastic huff of laughter over the clink of metal, the creak of well-worn leather.

"What, so you're not here for that? That's disappointing. I was prepared to put up some kind of fight, man. Tell you that you can't fuck the pain out of me with your magic healing dick."

He lets the words hang in the air, playful jibe on the surface, but designed to wound. Derek wonders when that happened - when the sarcasm transformed from defence to offence; shield to dagger. He wants to think it was a recent thing; that the Stiles he knew back when had survived somehow, but common sense tells him differently. He’d planted the seed of this, all those years back. It had just needed a catalyst to ripen.

Derek doesn't know what to say.

"I wanted to... check," he settles on at last, voice a tight rasp from trying not to inhale the scent of the room.

He's afraid - afraid that the memory of this Stiles - this pained, aggrieved, bitter facsimile - will somehow override the old one. The classic bravado-and-adrenaline brand, who insinuated himself into Derek's life by way of fraternal loyalty to his best friend and refused to be pushed out again.

Until he didn't.

Derek's afraid because, each time he's allowed himself to dredge up an old memory of the person before him, the aura has been of respect and partnership and care and happiness, and Derek's fear - deep down in his bones - is that he can't make Stiles happy again. Or worse yet, that someone else will.

He's sitting back down on the bed now, neck bowed and shoulders hunched, the moonlight painting the edges of him a spectral white. He looks older, Derek thinks, in his face. The laugh lines are deeper, the hair soft and tuggable, the jaw hard and strong. His lips are the same as he remembers. That might be the worst part of all.

A delicate glint in his hand is what pulls Derek's attention down at last, to his grasp, resting on his still-unfastened jeans and to the object plucked from their pocket.

Something in Derek's stomach swoops violently and stays there. It roils like a sickness he hates himself for having - because he asked for this, he made it happen, and it's been so long since he had a right to feel anything about it.

It's an engagement ring.

It's Stiles and he's holding an engagement ring and Derek can't breathe.

"We were gonna announce it at Christmas," Stiles says, quiet and thoughtful, beginning in the middle of a conversation like so many college-age phone calls had. Derek used to relish them; a time when they belonged to each other and he was so familiar with every aspect of Stiles' life that there were no need for explanations. It was only after they became voluntary strangers that he realised how fucking lucky that had made him feel.

"Scott knew, of course. Best man and all," he continues, raising a brow, but not tearing his eyes away from the precious metal in his hands. "I wanted to tell you myself, in private, because I thought we owed each other that much."

Derek presses his lips together, trembling, still, because he knows what Stiles isn't saying. 'I'll always tell you what you have a right to know.'

Because Derek hadn't done that.

"I'm sorry," he responds, hating the words on his tongue, because they'll never be enough; because 'you lost her because of me' tastes like acid in his mouth.

Stiles snorts. "You always are."

"I didn't think--" he starts, and his throat catches, "I was trying to protect you."

"From what? The horror of being with you? The 'torture' of being in your life?" he says, sharp and accusatory. "When did punishing yourself become such an addiction for you, Derek?"

Derek's eyes cast downwards, and he knows that there's nothing in the thousands of words rattling around in his head that will make this right.

"You deserve to get away from this," he finally says, because 'from me' would just be too much ammunition for Stiles' arsenal.

The responding look is incredulous. "I hate to break it to you, man, but I'll never get away from this. I don't want to."

He's right, of course. He usually is. Derek knows Scott speaks to him every day, like they're still teenagers; that Stiles still helps Lydia with research despite being miles away, and that there are pictures of a toddler on his phone with Boyd's eyes and Erica's smirk because he refused to miss out on a single thing going on in their lives.

He knows that there's at least one message from Isaac telling him how Derek's doing, because even when he spent a year hating him, he never stopped asking.

Because, through the warring scents in the air, the clash of history and present, the constant, underlying one grafted to Stiles very essence is Derek's, and that's what almost got the girl Stiles loved killed.

Derek had met her only once. She was a bright, sunny thing, quick with her mouth and lacking inhibition. Perfect for him - and Derek made sure he wouldn't be around when she visited again.

There had been others. The art student, seven months after they broke up, in Stiles' junior year of college. He had come home for Spring break smelling like charcoal and strange cologne and sex, and Derek ripped out the fireplace in the new living-room with his bare hands.

There had been the girl at his internship, blonde and sarcastic and tomboyish, who documented everything they did together on social media and Derek had donated his laptop to Isaac.

There was the DJ after that, the 'hot fling', Erica had dubbed it, who Stiles only saw after 3am and never outside either of their bedrooms. Derek was simultaneously grateful and abhorred the guy for not wanting to commit further, because he had to be a fucking idiot to not realise what he had.

Jaymie was the first one he brought home. She'd been headhunted from a rival games developer, Scott had provided, and Stiles had been assigned to help ease her transition to LA. Derek didn't know much more than that - didn't want to - but the low-lying hate for her in his gut only grew in the three years where they stayed together.

He hadn't even known Stiles was planning to propose.

"How is she?" Derek asks, because guilt is an old friend who never abandoned him.

Stiles' eyes meet his at last, cold and sad, and his mouth twists frustratedly. "Alive, as far as I know. She won't talk to me."

Derek nods, eyes ticking away on a gulp.

"Her family thinks I got sucked into some gang thing," he volunteers, voice hard. "Like it could ever be as simple as that."

"She'll be safe, now."

Stiles rolls his eyes, a disbelieving head-shake pulling his gaze away. "Yeah, because you're so concerned with that."

"I never wanted this to happen," he retorts defensively. "She's human, and you loved her, she didn't deserve this."

"It's so easy for you to say that now, huh? Now that she's gone. You hated her, Derek, don't pretend otherwise."

"I never hated her," he mumbles. I hated that you loved her.

"She's been here four times, and you met her once, and even then you barely acknowledged her. Don't insult me by pretending that was a coincidence," he bites back, angry and alive and Derek hates that he's revelling in the passion, in the attention focused solely on him after so long without it. "There's only so many out-of-town 'trips' you need to take before I call bullshit."

"It was just easier if I--" he sighs, wetting his lips. "I was dealing with it, okay?"

"No, not okay," Stiles frowns. "You don't get to wallow here. You broke up with me. You told me we couldn't be together anymore, that we needed to cut ties and you broke my heart--" he says, stopping short and clenching his jaw, like the words weren't meant to come out. "She defended you. She said you needed space and that we should respect that. So no, it's not okay that I felt guilty for trying to move on because you weren't dealing with it."

"I was trying to," Derek says, pathetically. 'I was failing', his traitorous mind contradicts.

"It shouldn't even surprise me," Stiles says, stiff and acidic. "You always did run away when things got too real. Throw you in a pit with five homicidal alphas, fine - ask you to suck it up and be happy for me and you just fuck off at the first available opportunity."

"I was trying to make it easier," Derek repeats, hoping that soon, he'll start to believe it.

"You were avoiding. Like you always do. I didn't even have a way to ask you for help. Don't sit there and pretend that this was any different, because I learned a long time ago that you're not going to be there just because I need you to be."

Derek's wolf whines, ashamed and dejected. Stiles needed him. He needed him and he wasn't around - there's no bigger failure than that.

"I should have been there," he begins, but Stiles cuts him off.

"You should have told me," he counters. "Maybe knowing that I still smelled like I belonged to your pack, that I was practically broadcasting it to anyone who wanted to challenge you would have made me a little more cautious."

"Smelling like pack is safe," Derek says, trying to explain. "It's a ward, and it usually warns potential threats away, but..."

But it didn't work, because you don't.

"I was too far away?" he challenges, daring Derek to throw leaving town back in his face, because it's because of Derek that he did.

Because you smell like mate.

Because you don't smell like ours, you smell like mine.

Because you're more precious than Pack, and they knew the very idea of harming you in any way would bring me to my fucking knees.

"Maybe."

"Fuck you, Derek. You told me to leave. You said you didn't--" he huffs out a sigh and stands, throwing the ring at the nearest wall so hard that it dents it, diamond meeting worn-paint, and clatters to the ground. "Just go. I'm tired and I can't-- Go. Please."

Derek nods, because he can't deny him anything else; can't take anything Stiles wants away from him because he feels like such a fucking failure already.

He's sliding the window up the frame, when Stiles speaks once more.

"The shittiest part of the whole thing?" he says, facing the cork-board pinned with photos and mementos and memories of laughter, "When that thing took us... When it told me why - because I still belonged to you..." He looks over at Derek, eyes open and sad and wanting. He squeezes them shut. "To your pack, I mean.. For a second - a whole stupid second - I was happy."

He pulls a photo off the board. It's of the two of them, hair messy, grinning, cheeks and clothes spattered with paint the same shade as Derek's bedroom. Stiles' arm is around his shoulder and he's turned, paintbrush poised threateningly in front of Derek's nose.

"I think," he says, soft and private, "Maybe I still could be."

Derek's heart staggers with a traitorous hope, turning away, and he looks out at the first traces of dawn coming over the trees. He lets go of the window frame, drinks in the sight - the symbol of new beginnings - and he lets himself breathe.