Chapter Text
Derek wants to go home.
The trip to Mexico was long, boring, and too stressful for him to handle. Derek didn’t know it was possible to hate something that much but he now knows that airports and airplanes are the worst things in the world. He has seen so many rude people, smelled the worst things, ate food that tasted like cardboard and then spent hours with his hands against his ears, trying to relieve the pressure against his eardrums that no werewolf healing could fix.
And after all this, they are now stuck in an unknown forest that just feels wrong. The trees are different from the preserve, menacing and unfamiliar. The forest smells of distant sea and rotting plants, like a brewing storm and turned over earth.
With five entire packs gathered in the same little clearing, there are too many unknown werewolves around for Derek to feel calm. The air is too moist and hot for the end of February.
Derek is tired, and he doesn’t want to be here.
Cora has already given up, rolled in a tight ball like a pill bug inside their dad’s coat. Only her hair is spilling out over Derek’s knee and Derek tries to anchor himself on her quiet heartbeats.
At nine years old, Derek has been judged mature enough to have the tradition explained to him.
The mourning under the disappearing sun. The importance of networking and strengthening bonds with other packs. The significance of the tradition, the weight of generations and generations of ancestors crying under the same darkening sky.
At nine years old, Derek is still young enough to hate the whole thing.
The alphas are in the center of the clearing in a loose circle, silent and staring at the sky. His mom is the only one in full shift and, despite his petulance, Derek can’t help also feeling proud of his alpha.
His grandma and dad are standing just behind Derek’s mom, in full shift too. His grandma’s fur is streaked with grey and her muzzle white, as if dipped in snow, but she is still so beautiful.
His dad stares at his mom with so much mushy admiration than, even from this distance, Derek is vaguely embarrassed by them.
Derek’s head turns when he hears Laura’s heartbeats approach. She’s skipping toward Cora and him, smile full of fangs and leaving behind her two betas of the Alvarez pack shell shocked and smelling of frightened arousal.
Derek’s family is the worst.
Laura laughs at his disgusted frown and messes up his hair in passing. She kneels at their side and picks Cora up, still bundled up in their dad’s coat. Cora groggily buries her head in Laura’s neck, lax and trustful. Laura kisses Cora’s forehead before brushing her cheek with her knuckles, encouraging Cora to look up. When Cora finally does, their little sister’s mouth opens up in surprise.
Derek looks up.
The moon is now almost swallowing the entire sun, only leaving a fiercely glowing crescent behind some wispy clouds. The luminosity in the clearing is turning eerie, like a sunset sped up. The temperature drops suddenly.
Slowly, the clearing quiets down. All the wolves are shifted now, eyes glinting gold and red and blue in the growing darkness, all their heads raised toward the sky.
Around them, the world seems to freeze, animals made uneasy by the sudden arrival of night. The insects and birds stop singing. The whole forest sounds dead.
Derek shivers.
When the sun finally disappears completely and the clearing is drenched in dusk light, the five alphas throw their heads backward and start howling.
The howls are hoarse, coming from deep in their chest. It sounds like crying, like a wound.
Derek, after years of knowing only the joyous cries of the hunt, presses his head against Laura’s arm and frown.
Many of the betas join their alphas and, for the long minutes of the eclipse, the wolves sing to the moon.
Against the silence of the world around them, it’s a beautiful scene. A heartbreaking one.
Derek doesn’t howl at the dark sky.
He shivers.
He wants to go home.
—
The light spilling on the hill is starting to dwindle, half the sun eaten up by the moon.
Sprawled on the ground, hands deep in the grass, Derek can already hear the animals of the preserve slow down, hesitate. The birds stop flying to perch in trees.
The world is going still, silent.
Well. Mostly.
A few feet away from him, Lydia, Allison, and Boyd are still sitting on the picnic blanket. The girls, buzzed from all the wine from the picnic, are leaning heavily against Boyd.
The three of them are laughing at the plot of the movie they all saw yesterday during pack night. Lydia is actually giggling, the sound lovely and surprising coming from her; Allison stares at Lydia, eclipse clearly forgotten for a better view. Boyd has his arms around them both, smiling fondly.
At the top of the hill, Isaac is –for some reason— perched on Erica’s shoulders. His elbows rest on top of her head and his head is thrown back so far back that his sunglasses are threatening to fall from his face. Erica’s own head is tilted on the side, resting her temple against Isaac’s thigh.
On their left, Scott has not stopped staring at the sky for the last forty minutes, afraid to miss even a second of it. His mouth is opened in wonder. Despite his werewolf healing, his eyes must be hurting now and he has dry tear tracks on the sides of his face. Nobody has been able to convince him to look down.
Jackson is poking him in the cheek every few minutes and mocking him half-heartedly, bored out of his mind.
Stiles is sprawled on the ground, his head in Derek’s lap and eclipse glasses on his nose.
“These things are ridiculous,” remarks Derek, his hands carding through Stiles’ hair.
“Please. I make them looks good.”
The paper glasses sit oddly on Stiles’ face, too stiff and a little crooked. The tip of his nose and his cheeks are red after hours under the sun, his freckles stark on his skin.
When he smiles at Derek, upside down and mirthful, he’s beautiful.
“You do,” Derek admits simply.
Stiles stares at him for a second, smile melting from amused to fond. He turns his head to kiss the palm of Derek’s hand.Derek cradles the back of his head with his other hand and keeps him as close as possible from him.
The temperature is dropping quickly, deep twilight crawling over the hill. Lydia and Allison finally remember the eclipse and put their own glasses on, Lydia’s face creasing visibly in disgust when the ugly glasses touch her nose. They both rest their chins on one of Boyd’s shoulders before looking up.
Scott is almost jumping up and down, straining his neck to try to look even harder at the last sliver of sun in the sky, his hand grasping Erica’s in excitation. Jackson looks up at Isaac, and they both shake their heads. When Jackson looks back up at the eclipse, he’s smiling.
Their voices are all turn to whispers. The sun is now almost gone.
Derek should shift.
He’s their alpha, and the only one on this hill knowing of the mourning traditions.
This is what brought them so far away from the city. The reason they all took a day off to be together as a pack.
To uphold traditions. To cry at the darkening sky.
But in his lap, Stiles is a warm, reassuring weight. His smell is familiar, blending with the syrupy, electric feeling of his magic bleeding in the air and raising the hair on Derek’s arms. And around him, his pack is vibrating in happiness and excitement.
Finally, the sun disappears completely. For a second, the world is silent, the forest sounds dead.
Derek doesn’t howl.
The silence is broken by Scott whooping, the sound tearing up from his throat in pure excitement.
Erica and Stiles immediately burst out laughing, loud and amused. Isaac, supportive as always, starts shouting too. Lydia and Allison are giggling, uncontrolled chuckles that nobody could make them produce if they were sober.
Amusement and exhilaration spread in the pack, enthusiastic whooping and yells deteriorating in chaos.
Isaac almost falls of Erica’s shoulders when he throws his arms a little bit too vigorously in the air. Scott somehow convinces Jackson to carry him, but they almost overbalance over the slope of the hill.
In Derek’s lap, Stiles is laughing, and laughing, and his magic and joy are almost a physical thing in Derek’s nose, on his tongue.
Derek kisses him, sending the eclipse glasses in disarray on his face, half over his forehead half on his cheeks. Stiles smiles goofily at him.
Derek doesn’t howl at the dark sky.
He doesn’t shiver.
He smiles.
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