Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Stiles’ phone buzzes on the bedside table, and he can just make out the shape of Lydia’s name flashing at him in big white lettering. He had to crane his neck to see it – he reaches his hand out to grab it, much to Derek’s evident shock and chagrin.

“You’re seriously going to answer that?” He’s hovering over Stiles’ body on the bed, arms on either side of Stiles’ torso, blinking at him, baffled. It’s not totally unfounded shock, considering that Stiles has not answered a single phone call in just about two weeks, now. And the thing has rang.

It has rang, and rang, and texts have come in, and all of it has been ignored. It got so bad, Stiles let it just go dead after the fourth day of being at Derek’s house in Vancouver. He only charged it so he could play Temple Run one day when he was bored. He hasn’t looked at social media, he has not touched any single piece of the internet, he has not spoken to anyone else aside from Derek in ten entire days. No Boyd, no band, no fans, no one.
Truth be told, he is petrified to know what he would find, right now, if he were to google his own name.

Stiles picks the phone up and shows its face to Derek. He goes cross eyed to look at it, and then frowns. “You’re seriously going to answer that?” He repeats.

“I swore on my mother’s grave that I would answer Lydia’s phone calls,” he says by way of explanation.

Derek looks down, where both of them are naked, where his dick is hard and ready to enter Stiles’ body, and then looks at Stiles again. “You’re seriously going to –“

“My mother’s grave, Derek.”

He frowns, but he stays put and watches, as Stiles presses the phone to his ear and says hello.

“It lives,” Lydia says to him in lieu of a greeting, and Stiles makes a face.

“It’s busy.”

“It is not busy,” she corrects. “Define busy. Busy meaning Derek Hale is inside of you right now?”

It’s eerie how accurate she is. Derek is close enough that he hears this, that he raises his eyebrows and smiles, sort of sarcastically. Derek hasn’t ever actually spoken to Lydia, aside from in passing, and Stiles hasn’t spent copious amounts of time describing her temperament to him. So he’s surprised to hear her say this, only because he does not know her well enough to know she’s crass and rude and will go on to say much more shocking things in Derek’s ear shot.

“Almost,” Stiles tells her, making eye contact with Derek and smirking. “Is there a reason for this phone call or are you just making sure he doesn’t have me chained in his basement?”

“Well,” she starts, so then Stiles knows there is, as a matter of fact, a reason for this phone call. The first one she’s given him since he told her he was getting the hell out of there, wasn’t coming back, not even to give a phone interview, nothing. “…Grammy nominations are out.”

Stiles hacks out a laugh. It is not a ha-ha funny laugh. It is a sarcastic, irritated laugh. “That’s seriously why you called me?”

“Yes.”

Derek leans down and kisses Stiles on his jaw, his neck, his collarbone, and Stiles does his level best to ignore it. “I could not give a rat’s ass less about –“

“I just thought maybe you’d like to at least hear the list.”

That gives him some pause. Just a single iota of pause, even as Derek is sucking on Stiles’ neck to campaign for his attention. “….it’s a list?”

“It’s a list,” she repeats back, and she sounds haughty. Because she knows that she’s piqued Stiles’ interest.

Stiles gives Derek an apologetic look, but he pushes his free hand against Derek’s chest, and he keeps pushing until Derek takes the hint and climbs off of Stiles’ body. He sits down on the edge of the bed and rubs at his face, because two minutes ago they were about to fuck, and now, apparently, they are not. Stiles sits up, cross legged, and grabs one of Derek’s pillows to lay across his naked lap. For some reason, having this conversation with Lydia completely naked feels ludicrous, so he has to cover up.

“Okay,” he says slowly, “I guess I can stand to hear it.”

“Uh huh,” she clucks her tongue and then clears her throat. “It’s long.”

“Christ, can you just fucking tell me?”

Derek presses his chin into his palm and sits there, staring at Stiles, waiting.

“Well, first of all, Nate is up for producer of the year.”

Good for Nate. The guy is a genius, which is why Stiles had chosen him of all people he could’ve chosen to produce this particular record. He knew that Nate, and Nate alone, would be able to take the trauma-induced vomit that Stiles had written and actually make listenable songs out of it.

“You’ve got best alt album,” she begins, sounding bored, “and all big three.”

Stiles blinks across Derek’s bedroom, where his clothes are strewn, his guitar is leaning up against the closet door, his shoes are piled up in a corner. “…all three?”

“Song, record, and album, yes.”

“For fuck’s sake,” he palms his face and then shakes his head, sucking in a great big breath. “They’re only nominating me because they think I got beaten up, is that it?”

“First of all, you did get beaten up, and second of all, no. Believe it or not, in spite of your ire towards it, you made a good fucking album, Stiles.”

Stiles has only been in this particular situation, with the big three, one other time in his life. It was his second album, when he was still all shiny and new and his talents were a lot more novel than they are today. He had won all three, and then some, and he can still call to mind the images of himself carrying all five of his awards in his arms with a great big grin on his face, because all his dreams had just come true. Beyond all his dreams. It was the greatest night of his life, at the time.

Since then, he’s won here and there. He’s won song of the year, and record of the year, and best alternative album. Free At Last was an album that got nominated for album of the year but lost to someone else, in spite of often going down in history as his single greatest work to date. Before this one, at least.

Because before this one, he hasn’t attained this kind of critically acclaimed success. People didn’t take him seriously, like he’s said before. He’s a hack. He writes about men who treat him badly and makes his millions off of running smear campaigns against them all, according to the general masses. In reality, all he does is experience life and then write about it, but then, when he puts it that way, it’s just not that interesting to people.

Since running away, his moods have all been balancing on a hair pin. Sometimes he’s able to delude himself Vancouver with Derek is a fantasy, and they’re two normal people who are just shacking up together because they’re just that madly in love. Sometimes he isn’t, so he spends the day depressed, miserable, snapping at Derek and then feeling like a giant piece of shit for it, because Derek never does anything to deserve it. Other times, he experiences the full spectrum. Today is turning out to be one of those days.

“I don’t want it,” he says to her, very suddenly angry. “I don’t want to think it’s good. It’s the fucking stain on my entire god damn life.”

“Christ,” Lydia huffs, because she is not very well equipped to deal with Stiles’ psychosis. “Well, other people think so. You made something good, and you’re being rewarded for it, and you’re mad about it.”

Stiles laughs. Again, not a funny laugh. “They just fucking feel bad they’ve all spent so long saying what a useless drunk asshole I am, so they’re throwing me a bone.”

“No,” she reiterates, more forcefully. “It’s a work of fucking art. And you know what?” He can imagine her leaning forward in her swivel chair, in her Los Angeles office, “you’re probably going to win. All of it.”

Stiles sees where this is going. He punches the pillow in his lap once or twice, just to get his frustration out, while Derek sits and watches this entire thing, no comment, no facial expression, just listening. “You want me to fucking go, holy shit.”

“The album you made is going to win six god damn Grammy’s, Stiles, you might consider it.”

“You want me to fucking go,” he is laughing some more, raising his eyes to the ceiling, shaking his head incredulously. “Here I am, this fucking walking open wound, barely getting out of bed every morning, petrified of the outside world, and you want me to put on a god damn outfit and brush my hair and go to this fucking thing to be the world’s laughing stock again.”

“Yes,” she spits. “That is exactly what I want. What are you planning to do? Stay shacked up with Derek Hale for the rest of your life?”

“Yup!”

“Derek has a job too, you know, he can’t just –“

“I know that,” he barks, while Derek himself is still emotionless and still, likely because he doesn’t want to pile on anymore than Lydia already is. “I fucking know that! I just wanted a god damn – a fucking – year! Six months! Not, going to the god damn Grammy’s in two months!”

“I think two months is more than enough time to spend wallowing in your own self pity.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Stiles. Think about it. Okay? You could win album of the year again. Two times, Stiles. People don’t do that often, or ever. It’s a fucking honor.”

Stiles knows that it’s a fucking honor. He knows that it’s a dream come fucking true. He knows that it will put him on an elite list of legends, those who have come before him, and he knows it will set him apart from the rest of his peers. This is the sort of thing most artists only ever dream about, and here he is, pissing all over it, because of the way he got to this point.

It isn’t his fault, that this great honor is being bestowed upon him, and all he can think to do is run away from it. It is entirely and completely Matt’s fault. Stiles has been teaching himself to think this, to know it, again and again. When he wakes Derek up in the middle of the night because he’s had another nightmare, he has learned to not blame himself or feel guilty for it. When he physically can’t restrain himself from drinking, he has learned to not blame himself. When he has flashbacks, when he can’t sleep at night, when he stands outside well into the night smoking, and smoking, and smoking, he does not blame himself anymore.

It’s hard work. He does his best.

Through grit teeth he says, “fine. I’ll think about it.”

“You’ve got two weeks to think about it, so think fast.”

He sighs and stares at the floor, pursing his lips together. “Have you asked them about –“

“I have,” she cuts him off, and she sounds uncomfortable already, and so Stiles knows she does not have good news. “…they’re willing to push back the deadline for the next record. If you agree to sign on for another six.”

This is not a surprise. It’s not a surprise at all, that the label would only give him any grieving time, any time to recover whatsoever, on the contingency that he sign away his free will for another twelve fucking years. And the unspoken on the other end of it, is that if he drops this next album and then refuses to sign on for the next twelve years, they will gather up his previous albums and make off with them, lock them in a safe, and refuse to give them back unless he barfs up hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars. Even then, they could just simply choose not to sell them back to him, no matter how much money he offered them.

Fine print is a bitch. Stiles was a kid, he didn’t know any better, but he hates his naïveté, for the fucking hell it’s gotten him into, now.

Other labels would bend over backwards to get him signed on. Other labels would let him have more agency. Other labels would do anything he asked if it meant he’d sign the contract. Unfortunately for him, he’s indebted to these fucks, and they know it, and they don’t care that he’s in pain. They’re using that pain for their own ends.

No, it’s not surprising. But it hurts more than he’d care to admit. These are people who he used to rely on, who he thought had his best interests at heart, who he thought gave a shit about about him. They don’t. He is a cash cow to them, always has been, always will be. A puppet they force to do their bidding to get another million or two, no matter the cost to Stiles’ well being.

“Okay,” he croaks, because there’s nothing to fight about. No use in getting angry or upset, or any of it. It is what it is. He’d rather die than be stuck with these people for another twelve years, he knows he couldn’t do it, so then that means he’s going to write the next record, and then he’s going to walk, and they’re going to be horrible about it. There’s no other option.

Lydia sighs. “I’m…sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he says, even though it isn’t. “I’ll think about the Grammy’s.”

“What are you doing out there, Stiles? What are you spending your time doing with him?”

“Oh, just –“ he looks over and meets Derek’s eyes, where he’s sitting looking very pensive and serious on the edge of the bed. “…hanging out, mostly.”

She makes a sound like she doesn’t care to know any more than that, because she figures it’s mostly sex. It’s partly sex, but definitely not all sex.

“Just call me when you make a decision,” and with that, she hangs up, not another word. Stiles would expect nothing more and nothing less from her. She’s not a very warm person, after all, so it doesn’t hurt Stiles’ feelings that she doesn’t want to sit on the phone gabbing for hours on end about what a dreamboat Derek Hale is.

He puts the phone down on the pillow in his lap and sucks in a great big breath, and then he lets it out, slow, like he’s a balloon, deflating himself. Derek shifts a bit in his place, turning his full attention onto Stiles, a thin smile on his face. He says, “album of the year, huh?”

Stiles nods, then he shrugs, like it’s no big deal. It’s the biggest deal in the world. It’s the highest award possible, for music. It’s everything. “They just feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” he offers, voice soft, because he can fully tell that Stiles is about three steps away from having another one of his episodes. “You think you’re going to…?”

“I don’t know,” he says, honestly. It would be absolutely insane for him to not want to go when he’s up for that many, and it would also be absolutely insane for him to go. He cannot decide which is crazier, stupider, more detrimental to his mental health. “I don’t know, Derek.”

Derek looks away for a moment. He’s frowning and furrowing his brow, which Stiles has learned to identify as his thoughtful expression, his serious pensive expression. When he looks back, he’s still frowning. “They won’t let you take a break?”

“Not unless I sign for six more albums.”

“Jesus, an ultimatum?” He’s quietly shocked by this information, shaking his head as though he sincerely cannot believe it. “After all this shit you went through, an ultimatum?”

“It’s not surprising.”

But Derek is surprised. He seems to be completely unwilling to believe that there are people who have Stiles under their thumb this tightly, and also unwilling to believe that there are people who could truly be that awful. There are. Stiles shrugs his shoulders again, even as he feels his face scrunch up, even as the tears come, unbidden, unwelcome. His fifteenth mental breakdown since he came to Vancouver, and Derek doesn’t even hardly blink.

He comes fully onto the bed. He pulls the pillow and the phone out of Stiles’ hands and tosses them aside, while Stiles cries and sniffles and swipes at his eyes viciously, as if he could rub his tears away, stop the feelings altogether. Derek pulls Stiles up against his chest and holds him, rubbing circles on his back, silent. There really aren’t very many things that Derek can say to make Stiles feel better, after all.

He’s learned, that sometimes all Stiles ever really needs is someone to give a shit about him. It’s enough, to have someone care about the fact that he’s sad, to try even a little bit to make him feel better.

He cries for a while, and then he just sniffles, and then he’s calm. He hugs Derek tight and melts into him, because Derek is a great big teddy bear that he’s attached to, and he makes Stiles feel like the entire world isn’t a total shitshow.

Derek clears his throat and says, “you wanna see something that might cheer you up?”

Stiles nods silently against his chest.

Derek sits up and grabs at his own phone, pulling it into his hands, then lying back down next to Stiles. He says, “the trailer is out.”

Stiles gasps. “For…?”

“For Quiet Houses.”

That makes Stiles sit up all the way. He rubs at what wet is left on his face, and he motions for Derek to give him the phone, already. Derek smiles, like he knew Stiles would be interested, as he slowly sits up, and then hands Stiles the phone. It’s on YouTube, the video already loaded up and paused, so all Stiles has to do is press play. He hesitates, biting on his finger in excitement – not only is this his favorite book being made into a movie, but his fucking boyfriend is in it. He could literally explode right now.

He presses play, and he watches. He gasps and points with a big grin at the first shot of Derek, and Derek nods and smiles, watching over Stiles’ shoulder. It goes on pretty much like how Stiles would expect it to. He has, after all, read this book only a dozen times, so he’s pretty much memorized it. It seems they’re keeping it as true to the book as possible, and it’s funny, that Stiles never imagined Derek Hale as his favorite character, before.

Because now that he’s sitting here catching a glimpse of him as that character, he wonders why it never occurred to him before. It’s a perfect cast.

The trailer ends with its release date, and Stiles bounces up and down on the bed, leaning over to give Derek a big kiss on the mouth. “It looks so good, holy shit, holy shit. And to think, I’m fucking that guy. Wow. And I fucked the other guy!”

“All right,” Derek snorts, pulling the phone out of Stiles’ hand.

“Oscars, Golden Globes, Emmy’s, Tony’s, you’re going to fucking EGOT for this shit.”

“Right,” Derek smirks. “I’m going to win a Grammy and a Tony for a part I played in a movie with absolutely no musical numbers.”

“Why not? It looks amazing. I can’t believe I’m in bed with a future Oscar nominee.”

Derek puts his phone aside, and then he’s quiet for a moment. He’s got his pensive face on again, rubbing at his jaw and staring at the bed for a moment. When he looks up to meet Stiles’ eyes, he’s serious. “You think you still want to come to the premiere? It’s in just a few months, so I wasn’t sure if…”

Stiles puts his hand on Derek’s chest, and he shakes his head. “Derek. There is nothing on earth that could stop me from going to that with you. Of course I’m still going, Derek, of course I am.”

“Okay,” Derek seems quietly relieved by this, a slow smile spreading across his face.

“You’re going to fucking EGOT. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“I’m not going to EGOT,” he rolls his eyes. “Between the two of us, you’re the one who’s more likely to EGOT.”

“Oh, but I can’t act. They’ll never give me an Oscar. Or, maybe they will, if I get people to feel sorry enough for me.”

“Well, I cant sing, and they’ll never give me a Grammy. Looks like neither of us can EGOT.”

Stiles smiles at him and shrugs his shoulders. “But you’re going to EGOT in here,” he points to his chest, where his heart is, and Derek rolls his eyes again.

Stiles waits until Derek is absorbed in a barbecue competition show, set up on the couch with a bowl of chips and dip in front of him and a beer in his hand. There are two really good ways to distract Derek, Stiles has learned. The first is, of course, sex, and the second is food. Give Derek a sandwich and you’ve bought yourself ten minutes to do whatever it is Derek would not approve of you doing.

He brings the chips in and sets them down on the coffee table, so Derek perks up and immediately grabs a fistful of them, dipping four of them at once into the ranch, shoveling them towards his mouth. “Thanks, baby,” he says, and then Stiles hands him an opened beer. Derek thanks him again, and then gestures to the television to point out that they’re about to start smoking the wings on the show. Stiles nods as though he’s interested.

He is not interested. Derek is obsessed with shows like Diners, Drive-In’s and Dives because he has a fetish for watching people eat. He loves to sit and stare at a piece of meat cooking because it makes his dick hard, or something – Stiles’ interest in food is survival driven alone, so this is a particular fascination of Derek’s that Stiles just does not get.

“I’m gonna run to the restroom really quick,” he points his thumb backwards, down the hall, where the bathroom is all the way on the other side of the house.

Derek swallows what he has in his mouth and says, “want me to pause?”

“Uh, no,” he snorts, gesturing to the food and the show. “Just eat and watch, I’ll be right back.”

Derek is also completely guileless. He has no idea he’s been set up like a baby and a mobile, given distractions just to give Stiles some time to do the number one thing he knows Derek would not approve of Stiles doing.

He turns and heads down the hall, while Snowball’s eyes track him obsessively, as though he’s stalking prey in the wild. He gets to the bathroom, closes the door behind him, and then he closes the lid on the toilet and sits on top of it, pulling his phone out of his pocket and biting his lip.

Frantically, because he’s got this feeling like he’s doing something he really shouldn’t be (because he is), he pulls up his safari and then stares at it. The little text bar blinks and blinks at him, asking him to type in a search or a web address, and Stiles stares.

He glances at the closed bathroom door one more time, as though he thinks Derek will be able to see through walls, or somehow psychically know what Stiles is up to in here. It was Stiles’ idea that he not go looking for things to upset him, but Derek is like Stiles’ fucking jailer, with the way he enforces that rule. One time Derek walked in and caught Stiles about to open Twitter and he slapped the phone clean out of Stiles’ hands.

Derek is of the opinion that nothing good could possibly come from Stiles searching his own name. He is probably right. But Derek does not realize just how far Stiles’ self-destructive tendencies can go.

He types in Matt’s name and watches as several search suggestions pop up underneath. Matt Harding Stiles Stilinski, Matt Harding fired, Matt Harding arrested, Matt Harding Derek Hale. This alone should be warning enough, to make Stiles shut his phone off and go back in the living to watch barbecue shows with Derek – after all, it is Stiles’ rule. And it’s been his rule for a reason.

But Stiles is going insane. Not knowing where Matt is right now. If he’s out walking the streets or if he’s being sued or stripped of his contract or if everything is the same, because no one cares what happens to Stiles Stilinski so long as it entertains them.

His heart is hammering in his chest, but he searches. The articles come up lightning fast, so before Stiles even has a chance to decide what to read and what not to read, he’s already seen it all. One sticks out to him – the article’s thumb nail is a picture of himself and Matt somewhere in New York, holding hands. He clicks it, without thinking twice.

Blown up, the picture is bad. Stiles is frowning, sunglasses on, posture stiff, and it’s evident he’s not holding Matt’s hand – Matt is holding his hand, and not the other way around. Stiles’ hand hangs limp in his, like he barely wants to touch Matt at all.

The headline reads, Matt Harding released by the Yankees, suspended indefinitely by the MLB following Stiles Stilinski controversy.

Stiles reads that over and over again. He puts his hand over his mouth and closes his eyes, breathing in, and out. Okay. So they kicked him out. It’s a controversy, meaning apparently some people don’t agree with that decision, but it’s what they decided. People believe Stiles’ word. Some people, at least. Okay.

But Stiles knows, that if it weren’t for that elevator footage, if there weren’t black and white proof, they’d never have believed him. Never.

He goes to another article, entitled, Following the Timeline of Matt Harding and Stiles Stilinski. It’s a buzzfeed article. That, coupled with the title, should be enough for Stiles to think twice about clicking on it – but all the same, he does. He immediately regrets it, but he keeps reading all the same.

There are pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. The first one is from when he and Matt basically first met, first started going out – Stiles at a baseball game, in a Yankees hat, right by the dugout, sitting with a big grin on his face next to Scott. It’s the weirdest thing Stiles can honestly say he’s ever seen, even though he remembers the day, and he remembers having been there.

In the picture, he looks like a different person. His smile is relaxed and natural, he’s not so thin, he’s drinking a beer for the fun of it, not to get so shitfaced he can’t remember where he is. Stiles stares at it for a long time, and it makes him so sad he wants to stick his head into the sink and pour steaming hot water over himself.

He misses it. Being that person. He wishes he could leap into the photo like the ghost of Christmas Future, grab himself by the shoulders and shake that stupid kid and tell him to run, run as fast as you can, get out of here. But he can’t. He looks at himself and wants to cry, but he can’t do anything to help that kid. He’s just going to have to go through it.

The next one is of him and Matt out in New York, still early in the relationship, Stiles still looking happy. Holding hands and smiling at each other and basking in the glow of the cameras flashing. The next, a bit later. Stiles in long sleeves, the summer sun blaring down on him, but he still smiles and he still leans up against Matt, reliant on him.

The next, Stiles is in deep. He’s got on all black, like he was on his way to his own funeral. He’s miserable, it’s obvious. He’s got a bruise on his face that’s emphasized by the flash of the cameras. Matt grips his wrist hard, hard enough his fingers go white where he’s holding on.

Stiles is just scrolling down to get to the next one when the bathroom door bursts open. He fumbles his phone, so it falls face down onto the tiles underfoot, and gapes when he sees Derek peering in at him, a wry smile on his face. He looks at the scene in front of him.

Stiles, teary eyed, hiding in the bathroom. The phone, the evidence and incrimination of Stiles’ wrong doing. He blinks, and then looks at Stiles’ face. “What are you doing in here?”

Stiles swallows. He shakes his head. “Uh – using the bathroom.”

Derek steps in all the way, and he puts his hands in his pockets. “You googled, huh?”

Stiles’ lower lip wobbles. He does not want to cry in front of Derek, because it’s like it’s all he’s fucking done these past couple of weeks here with Derek is fucking cry his eyes out and make a fool out of himself. And Derek has been so patient and understanding and forgiving, of everything, even the things Stiles does not deserve to be forgiven for. Like when he drank all of Derek’s fancy wine and then puked it in the back yard. Or when he accidentally stepped on Snowball’s paw and he yipped and cried and Stiles felt fucking awful over it. Or when he dragged Derek out here to begin with, to trap Derek in his pool of misery.

Derek sighs, and he squats down, so he and Stiles are about at eye level. He picks up Stiles’ phone and brings it back to life, so there’s a picture of Stiles looking miserable with Matt at his side, staring right back at him. He looks at it for a moment, and then he looks at Stiles. “You okay?”

Stiles swipes at his eyes. “They suspended him,” he says. And Derek nods, like he knew that already.

“I’ve been keeping tabs.”

Stiles had not known this. Derek offers up this information readily and honestly, like he wasn’t hiding it, but he was. Or, maybe, Stiles just hadn’t asked. Or Stiles just didn’t want to know. “You’ve been –“

“Well, I just wanted to know what was going on. I wanted to make sure….because you didn’t press charges or anything.”

Stiles swallows. “I didn’t want to.”

“You didn’t even sue him.”

“I didn’t want to,” he repeats, more forceful. “What good is that going to do? I don’t want his fucking money, I have my own.”

Derek pinches the bridge of his nose, as though Stiles is being difficult. “I just meant that I wasn’t sure anything was even going to happen to him, because you just dumped the video and left.”

“And I wrote my statement,” he reminds Derek, who nods.

“I just wanted to –“ he pauses, looking away, and his jaw is working. It twitches, like he’s angry, like there is a lot he’s holding himself back from saying in this moment. “…I just had to make sure he got something. After what he did to you, he should be locked in a basement somewhere, but fired is good, too.”

Fired is nothing, in the grand scheme of things. They cut off his enormous money funnel yes, but the guy is still a millionaire. Several times over. Disgraced he may be, but money can buy a free man an entirely new life. Like none of it even happened.

Stiles knows this. But he’s tired. He’s not going to fight. He’s not going to drag this out in a courtroom. He’s not going to put himself through that. It is self-destructive to even consider it.

It’s enough of a circus already. Fired is good enough.

Stiles plays with a loose thread on his jeans, to avoid Derek’s eye contact. “Have you read what they’re saying about me?” He queries, nervously.

“Mostly, it’s just people picking apart The Standing Dead looking for references to the abuse. Or going through the pictures of when you were with him,” he waves Stiles’ phone in the air, because Stiles was just looking at one such an article. “It’s not….all terrible.”

He keeps his eyes down. “But it’s some terrible.”

Derek nods. “You knew it would be,” he says in a gentle voice, before straightening up to his full height. He reaches his hand out, for Stiles to take. “C’mon. You’ve seen enough, I think.”

Stiles nods. He has definitely seen enough. More than he ever needed to.

Derek had insisted, over and over again, that Stiles was more than welcome to cancel on going to his house for Christmas to meet Derek’s family. Things were different now, and Stiles was working through his issues and making valiant efforts to not be a humongous piece of shit, and it was hard fucking work, and the entire world was talking about him and what happened to him, and his family was reading it all, every single day. Derek said, seriously, you don’t have to go, in fact, maybe you shouldn’t.

Stiles had entertained the thought of not going. He thought about just going to his dad’s house and doing Christmas with Melissa and Scott and then calling it quits, to go up to his kid bedroom and hide under the covers, like he was ten years old again. But the thought was so fucking depressing it brought the urge to drink on stronger than ever, so he had said he was going.

It is maybe a bad idea. In fact, it certainly is. But after Christmas Eve brunch at his father’s house, where Snowball was released into the yard to chase birds and Melissa was flustered by Derek to the point where she could barely speak, Stiles gets into Derek’s car to drive about twenty-five miles West, where Derek’s mother lives.

Derek turns the car on, then lets it idle. He says, for only the ten thousandth time, “you really do not have to come.”

“They’re expecting me.”

“But if I came and you weren’t there, they would understand.”

“I should go,” he insists, nodding his head with finality. He should go. Derek has put up with Stiles’ nonsense for weeks on end, and he really wants Stiles to go. He’s not going to say that, because then that would put pressure on Stiles – but Stiles can absolutely tell. He wants to bring Stiles home for Christmas. Because it’s the kind of guy that Derek is.

Derek stares at him for another moment, as though assessing him for some sign of a head injury. Then, he nods and puts the car in drive, leaving Stiles’ house behind. Snowball is in the backseat, pacing around and glaring out the window with his tongue hanging out. He pants in Stiles’ ear, barks at other dogs he sees until Derek yells at him to shut up, but he calms down once they’re on the highway.

Stiles chews on his thumb and stares at the foliage out the window. It’s foggy today. There are lots of trees. It’s overcast and gloomy. He cannot keep his leg from bouncing, bouncing, bouncing.

“You’re nervous,” Derek comments, after fifteen minutes of silence.

Stiles swallows the lump in his throat. “I’m meeting your family, so yes, I’m nervous. It’s normal to be nervous. They very well might decide I’m horrible, if they haven’t already. I’m not great at this. I’m not, like, a bring me home to mom type of guy.”

“Where are you getting this idea that you’re a brooding bad boy from?”

“Brooding bad boy, maybe not,” he frowns out the window, “shitty alcoholic gremlin, yes.”

“You are not a gremlin, Stiles,” but he snorts as he says it, because he has likely never used the word gremlin in this context before.

Stiles turns in his seat, as much as he can against the seatbelt, and faces Derek. For his part, Derek keeps his eyes on the road, but he’s smirking. Like this is funny to him. Everything is always fucking funny to Derek. “They’ve read all this shit about me –“

“Oh, like what? You’ve fucked a lot of guys? It’s not front page news. It’s all you write about.”

Stiles gapes, offended. “That I’m a drunk.”

“They don’t think that. They think you’re a rockstar.”

“Wee-woo, so glamorous,” he rolls his eyes to the back of his head.

“Where is this coming from?” He sounds genuinely baffled, which only makes Stiles fucking baffled – how can he genuinely have no fucking idea why Stiles might be nervous about going to this fucking thing?

“You of all people should know how impossible it is to try to make a good first impression on people who have already gotten six hundred impressions of you from the shit people print about you,” he huffs, crossing his arms over his chest. “All anyone ever says about me anymore is that I’m a maneating alcoholic with no real talent and the cherry on top is that, also, I got beat up for a while. That’s what they think of me.”

Derek is taking the exit off the highway marked with the name of his hometown, the one that Stiles has seen in Derek’s Wikipedia article, and Stiles sinks lower into his seat. “I do know how impossible that is,” he agrees, slowing at a red light. “So do they. It’s not true that you’re a maneating alcoholic with no real talent. Kinda like it’s not true that I’m a psychopathic dickbag,” he raises his eyebrow at Stiles. “They sort of get that not everything that’s printed is the gospel truth, Stiles. They’re related to me, for God’s sake.”

Derek does have a point, there. Him being a megalomaniacal dick wasn’t always the worst thing they printed - there’s a reason it was so easy for Stiles to see all the previous relationships that Derek has had and what people thought about them. Stiles never realized it, not up until this moment, but Derek and Stiles have that in common. Their relationships are always under a microscope, because so many of them have gone up in flames, and people love to eat that shit up. His family has likely stumbled upon dozens upon dozens of articles about Derek’s trysts and flings and what have you. They’ve probably learned not to take them too seriously.

Maybe they’ve learned not to take what people say about Stiles too seriously, either.

Instead of winding up in a wealthy gated community or on a road filled with mansions as far as the eye can see, Derek takes them down a residential street that looks like anywhere else in America. Dogs running in yards, kids riding bikes even in the winter chill, and gallons and gallons of Christmas lights and waving Santas.

Stiles is even more surprised when they pull into a long driveway that leads to a regular looking house. He had figured that maybe Derek grew up pretty average in terms of how much money his family had, but that after becoming rich and famous he would’ve bought his mother a new house. But this is without a doubt the same house that Derek grew up in - it’s not tiny, because eight kids were raised here, but it is no mansion. Not by a long shot. It’s barely bigger than the house Stiles grew up in. It’s maybe had a face lift or two thanks to Derek’s wealth, but it’s got a very well loved and well lived in appearance – the paint is chipping around the windows, the porch swing is squeaking in the slight breeze, and the mailbox emblazoned with HALE in dark red lettering is tilted like a single gust of wind would blow it clean over.

Stiles blinks at it. There are nice cars in the driveway because Stiles was not kidding – Derek buys his sister’s cars like other people buy their siblings sweaters. There’s a half dozen of them, all lined up, and Derek slows to a stop behind the last one. He sets the car in park and then shuts it off, pulling the keys out and setting them down in his lap as he gives Stiles a bit of a once over. Stiles is still terribly nervous, and Derek can still tell. He says, “at least most of them will be too starstruck to do anything but stare at you, right?”

Stiles watches as one of the curtains in the windows shifts, like someone is peeking out at them. He frowns. “That does not make me feel better.”

Derek smiles at him, because he seems to find Stiles’ proclivity to melancholy and general anxieties to be more endearing than he should. “They’re going to think you’re great, because I think you’re great. Trust me.” Snowball yips, because he demands to be set free, exhausted of the car ride. Derek gestures to him and says, “he agrees.”

“He thinks his own tail is his enemy, so,” Stiles unbuckles his seatbelt anyway, taking in one last deep breath as Derek climbs out and moves to the back of the car to pull Stiles’ bag out. Derek lets Snowball out, and the second the door is open, he leaps out of the car and makes a break for it. He runs and runs, around the house to the backyard, likely to sprint around in a great big circle until he tires himself out.

Stiles steps out. He puts his sunglasses on, because it’s a knee jerk habit he has, whenever he’s feeling anxious, to cover his face up as much as he can. Then he stands, watching Derek sling Stiles’ backpack over his shoulders, scratching at the back of his neck, feeling like he’s perhaps made a grave error in coming here to begin with.

In spite of that entire conversation he and Derek had just had, about how Stiles should not give a shit what his family has or hasn’t heard about him, there is one particular subject that Derek hadn’t wanted to touch with a ten foot pole. It’s the elephant in the room, and it’s going to be the elephant in the room the second Stiles sets foot in Derek’s family’s living room. They’re all going to be thinking about it, staring at him and trying to see evidence of it, watching his every move as if to catalogue which mannerisms of his are likely leftover from the traumas he’s endured.

He knows that Derek has talked to them about it. He overheard several hushed, whispered phone conversations when Derek thought that Stiles was asleep. Likely his mother or one of his sisters asking if it was true, if it’s real, if it really happened, holy shit, really? There was another one in Stiles’ dad’s bathroom just this morning, where Derek excused himself the second his phone buzzed with his mother’s name flashing on the screen. Stiles had pressed his ear to the door to try and hear as much as he could, but he didn’t really need to hear much of it, anyway. He knows that Derek had explicitly told them all to not mention it. To not bring it up. To not ask him about it. To act like it doesn’t exist. That would be the best course of action.

But, really, it doesn’t matter whether or not they bring it up. It will be there, hovering in the air, and Stiles sets his jaw and scuffs his feet on the driveway underfoot. It is horrible to be seen. Stiles has made his money off of being a bit transparent and honest, yes, but there is a limit. Stiles is honest and transparent in writing, where he can hide behind metaphors and big choruses and unnecessary guitar solos and instrumental breaks. People think that makes him an open book. They force him to be an open book. They give him no choice, peeking in at every corner of his life that they can get their hands on.

This is just the worst corner. The darkest one. Full of cob webs and spiders and dead bodies, all of them his own. He never wanted it out there, because he didn’t want to be seen for what he really is. Now it’s out there. They all see. It’s horrible, horrible, to be seen.

Derek rounds the corner of the car and sees Stiles is standing there, with his fucking sunglasses on, and he makes a face. He reaches out and rips them off of Stiles’ head, tucking them back into Stiles’ front pocket, because he’s figured out Stiles uses them to hide. “You’ve got nothing to worry about,” he reiterates for only the hundredth time, and then he takes Stiles by his arm with one hand, pulling him forward. “Everyone is going to treat you like royalty. Seriously.”

They’re approaching the front door. It’s big and red, with a brass knob, and Stiles wants to run right up to it and shove his head into it as hard as he can, to knock himself out cold.

“If anyone says anything to you that makes you uncomfortable, I’ll kick them out.”

Stiles doesn’t doubt that for a second, but it does not make him feel better. He can only imagine, truly can only begin to fucking imagine, what sorts of things these people could come up with that would make Stiles uncomfortable. The list is endless.

Derek walks up the steps and drags Stiles with him the entire way, until they’re right at the front door, hovering. Derek turns and looks Stiles in the face, a sardonic smile on his own. “Your hair looks nice.”

“Oh, fuck off,” he grumbles. He had spent a solid hour in front of the mirror after breakfast making it look perfectly tousled, styled just right, and Derek knows that. He’s just buttering Stiles up.

“I mean it,” he argues, big smile on. “You look like the old you.”

The old Stiles. Like the one from those pictures, before Matt ever laid a hand on him. Huge smile, perfectly styled hair like he was always walking off a photoshoot, neat clothes, no secrets, nothing to hide. It makes him feel good to hear that he looks like that again, so he blushes and looks away, to the door, where his fate awaits him.

“Ready?” Derek asks.

“No.”

“All right,” they stand there for another ten seconds, listening to the birds chirp, Snowball going bonkers in the back yard, and then Derek asks again. “How about now?”

There’s no use in prolonging the inevitable. It’s like ripping a band-aid off. The first twenty minutes are going to be the worst, and then it’ll get better, so he’s just gotta go in there and get the first twenty minutes over with. Christ, you’d think he were going to his own execution, not a god damn home cooked meal. “Okay,” he agrees, and Derek pushes the door open.

Inside, it’s warm. It smells like Christmas, because there are candles lit on half the available surfaces that Stiles can see, and there’s a gigantic tree reeking of pine sitting in the corner of the living room, glowing and glittering with a sea of presents underneath it. It is not a fancy house, but it’s very homey. The couches look well loved and there are blankets slung over the back, miles upon miles of pictures of the kids as they grew up covering every free surface of the walls. The staircase is lined with fake pine branches, more twinkling lights, and it’s a bit overwhelming at first – like Stiles’ eyeballs can’t take it all in at once. It’s like Christmas threw up in here.

Derek has still got Stiles’ backpack, with his change of clothes and toothbrush tucked inside of it, on his back, but he guides Stiles forward, toward the end of the hall, where there are lots of voices. Stiles panics, privately, in his own head. He doesn’t try to dig his heels in or put his sunglasses back on or even try to make a break for it, but he fucking panics. He imagines, as he walks down the hall with its creaky wooden floors and even more pictures of the Hale children leering out at him, that he’s going to walk in and they’re all going to just stop and stare at him, like he doesn’t belong here. Or they’re going to be awkward around him, because they don’t know how to treat him, or what to say to him, because they all feel sorry for him.

Or, worse, they all think he deserved it.

Derek pushes Stiles ahead, until they’re standing in a big arch way. It’s this tiny little hallway of space between a dining room with a fully set table and candles lit and more Christmas decorations than Stiles knows what to do with, and the kitchen. It’s a big kitchen, it must be, because it’s stuffed full of people. Women, mostly.

They round the corner and step where everyone can see them, and all hell breaks loose. Immediately. A glass of wine gets knocked over in the calamity, a collective gasp and then everyone talking at once, everyone turning to look and seeing Derek and Stiles standing there. It’s like the king and queen have just walked in. That’s how they act.

There are so many of them it’s overwhelming. They all have dark hair and they’re all tall, even the ones who are shorter, and they greet Derek and Stiles like they’ve returned home from fucking war. Big smiles, lots of hello’s, all at once, so Stiles isn’t sure who he’s even supposed to look at.

Talia emerges from the fray. She’s got a bruschetta in her hand, but she shoves the entire thing into her mouth in one go as he approaches them, chewing it ferociously like she wants to get it down her gullet as fast as possible, so she can talk to them. She goes to Derek first and wishes him a merry Christmas and plants a big red kiss on his cheek, and then she sets her eyes on Stiles.

She walks right in front of him, and puts her hands on his shoulders. She says, “Stiles, look at you,” and her voice sounds tight. Stiles shoots Derek a furtive glance, because what the hell is going on here, and Derek is palming his face, resigned to this. “You are so skinny, look at you.”

“Uh –“

She grabs one of his hands and squeezes it between both of hers, while the rest of the room titters behind them, chatting amongst themselves or moving over to come say hello to Derek. “It’s so nice to have you here,” she tells him, earnest as all hell, like she could only be telling the truth, and Stiles has no clue what to say. Then, unbelievably, her eyes fill with unshed tears and she’s gripping his hand extra hard, like she thinks he’s going to try and free himself, which is a good guess on her part. “…I think that you are so brave to –“

“Mom,” Derek warns her, voice low. “You’re freaking him out.”

“I’m just saying hello,” she challenges, even though she’s openly crying and gripping Stiles like he’s a new born baby she’s going to nurse to health. “We need to feed you immediately. Look at you. All skin and bones.”

“All right that’s…” Derek reaches out and slaps his mother’s hands off of Stiles’, so she relents and finally releases Stiles’ hand from his grasp. “…let me introduce him, for Christ’s sake.”

She obliges, moving out of the way and wiping at her eyes and sniffling. Stiles is shellshocked by that entire thing still, a tight smile frozen on his face, but Derek is onto pointing people out to him. There’s Cora and Laura, tucked away together and smiling at him benign, drinking wine in pretty party dresses. Then Mary and Heather and Stephanie, who are the younger ones that still live in this house, then Cassie who’s married and has her husband there, and he’s beyond baffled at Stiles’ presence, like he only just got used to the fact that he’s related to Derek Hale and now they’re shoving another celebrity at him and he’s not sure what to do about it. The aunts are there, and Aunt Chrissy is about three sheets to the wind and kisses Stiles on the face, while Aunt Molly, the crazy cat lady, just sits there and regards him like she’s looking for the mark of the devil on him somewhere. The last sister is Isabella, who’s giant. She’s taller than Derek, even, and she’s wearing heels and towers over the rest of the room like a statue, in a velvet dress and dark lipstick.

In lieu of a greeting, she holds her arm out and says, “check this out,” revealing the words Free At Last in Stiles’ own handwriting, tattooed on her forearm in black. Stiles has been shown tattoos of himself, his work, his own handwriting, thousands of times, but this one feels different. “It changed my life, man,” she tells him this very seriously, so Stiles takes her seriously.

“Thank you,” he tells her, meeting her gaze. “That means a lot to me.”

She nods, taking a big sip of wine. Then, she jerks her head at Derek and says, “I will kill my own brother with my bare hands if he fucks this up. Trust me.”

The other girls laugh and agree, and then they’re all talking over one another again and thrusting wine at Stiles and then pointing to all the appetizers they have laid out on the kitchen island and encouraging him to eat something, eat some, are you hungry, we have white claws too, but Stiles just turns to Derek with big eyes. Derek reads this immediately as Stiles being overwhelmed and desperate to catch his breath, so he waves them all away and wraps his arm around Stiles’ shoulders.

“We’ll just go get settled in,” he tells them all, much to their evident chagrin. Talia dives at them and puts her arms around their shoulders, guiding them forward towards the stairs and talking a mile a minute as they all head up in a single file line, Talia in the front, Stiles in the middle, Derek in the back.

“I’ve got everything set up for you guys in Derek’s old room,” she’s saying, as they come up to the landing on the second floor. “All the trundle beds were spoken for so you’re going to have to squeeze together in Derek’s bed, but I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

They come to a door at the end of the hall, by a big window with pretty red curtains. She pushes it open and guides them inside, and Stiles had not prepared himself for this. Derek hadn’t mentioned that his old bedroom was, like, an old relic, frozen in time – but it is. It’s got posters on the wall, and bedsheets with sharks on them, and bookshelves with Knick knacks and a closet that still has Derek’s teenaged clothes hanging up. His bags from the past few days he’s been staying here are tucked away into the corner neatly, nothing spilling out, like Stiles’ will most likely be the second he puts it down.

Derek sets Stiles’ backpack down on the ground next to the bed, while his mother keeps talking. “I got some guest towels out here,” she pats a pile of towels on the end of the bed, “and I washed the sheets and tidied up a bit. And I got Stiles a toothbrush in case he forgot his own, it’s in the bathroom,” she points to a shut door to the far left of the room, where the bathroom is likely looming.

“Thank you,” Stiles tells her, and then she sets her eyes on him and she looks like she might cry again.

She says, “you’re more than welcome. You know you’re welcome here anytime, any time you need to –“

“Thanks mom,” Derek says with finality, so she takes the hint and sucks in a deep breath. She leaves them to get acquainted with the space, closing the door softly behind her as she goes. Once she’s gone and her heels are vanishing down the hall, Derek turns to him and says, “she gets very emotional around the holidays. It’s even worse this year because she sort of thinks you’re this, like, injured bird that she’s got to care of, you know?”

Stiles definitely got that impression, but he isn’t offended. It’s a nicer reaction than he’d expect anybody to have, after all. He studies the room some more, in all its ancient glory, and he smirks. It’s like eighteen year old Derek got his first part and just left everything behind, here, stuck in a time capsule. His clothes, pictures of him on little league teams, his shark sheets, the green walls, old school books still piled up on the desk in the corner.

“You know, I would’ve thought you’d bought your mother a big mansion to live in.”

“I offered,” he insists, like it’s a conversation he’s had with her many, many times. “She refused. I guess I get it – this is where she raised all her kids and it’s the house my father bought for her.”

Stiles gets that. When Stiles had told his dad he’d buy him a new house, his dad had scoffed at the sheer idea, because while that house was old and not very big, it was his house. Stiles grew up there and his mother lived there and his dad would not walk away from it, not for the most glamorous house in all the land.

“I did buy her a lake house. It’s where we go for barbecues and shit like that.” He puts his hands on his hips and regards Stiles, up and down, like he’s assessing for any sign that Stiles is about to make a rope out of Derek’s bed sheets and shimmy down the side of the house to escape. “You doing okay? I know that was a bit much.”

Stiles shrugs. It was beyond a bit much. It was like walking in on a slumber party or something. “It went better than I expected.”

“What were you expecting?”

“Um, to be tarred and feathered, I guess.”

Derek laughs, like it’s silly, and Stiles is being silly. “I told you. They think you’re a tormented genius. They like you more than me, trust me.”

“Aunt Molly does not like me.”

“Aunt Molly is fucking crazy,” he says, like he wants Stiles to believe it. “I won’t leave you alone with her. She’ll show you pictures of her cats.”

Stiles smiles, because that’s ridiculous, but from the looks of her, that could only be the truth. “Uh, no, for real. It went better than I thought. Minus your mom crying over me.”

Derek palms his face again and rolls his eyes. “She’s just…like a serious mom, you know? Everyone who sets foot in this house is her responsibility, like you’re her kid, too. She feels upset about what happened to you. I asked her a dozen times to rein it in, but I think she sort of can’t help it.”

“It’s all right,” he waves his hand. It’s been a long time since he’s been mothered, anyway, so even though it does sort of make him uncomfortable, he has to admit that it’s…nice. “She’s a very nice person. I see where you get it from.”

“I’m not nice,” he says, grinning with all his teeth. “I’m an asshole, remember?”

“Not really,” he shrugs, because he really has no memory of a time Derek was a genuine asshole, not since they’ve known each other. Derek has been nothing but patient. Kind. Thoughtful. Cautious. He is a bit on the nuttier end of the spectrum, but then, Stiles is also fucking crazy, so it all works out, in the end. His eyes catch something familiar, lurking underneath a handful of papers on Derek’s desk, and he lunges at it, clearing the papers away, revealing his own face staring back at him. “A-ha!”

It’s Stiles’ first album. The self-titled debut that he wrote when he was still in high school, full of songs about guys he never even fucking thinks about anymore, songs he hasn’t played in years and years.

He waves the thing in Derek’s face and smirks. “More evidence of you pining away for me all these years.”

Derek does not deny it. He just shrugs and says, “I used to listen to that shit all the time.”

Stiles opens the jewel case and pulls the album booklet out, holding it in his hands, reverent, delicately turning the pages. “Christ, look at how young I was.”

“Yeah.”

He looks fresh faced, innocent, naïve, and stupid. The pictures are low budget, but he stares at them, at himself, and he sighs through his nose. “Oh, young Stiles. There’s so much to warn you about, but tragically, I cannot.”

Derek takes the CD and the booklet away, putting them all back together and setting it back down on the desk. He meets Stiles’ eyes and smiles, taking Stiles by his chin and cocking his head to the side. “I love you, you know.”

Stiles isn’t used to hearing this just because. He’s used to hearing it to get things out of him, or to get him to do something, or to manipulate him. But Derek just says this, all the time now, out of the clear blue sky, and it always makes Stiles blush and look away, because he’s just not sure how to handle love without strings.

“Do you ever wish you had met me before?” Stiles asks him, and Derek makes a face, like he’s confused by that question. “Like, around Free At Last. When I was younger and not so shitty and none of those bad things had happened so I wasn’t a head case, and I was just…better. Do you ever…?”

“No,” he says, emphatic. “No, I never for one second wish that, Stiles.”

Stiles looks at the floor. “But I was so much more, like, worthy of love, then.”

“Who says you’re not worthy of love, now?”

Thousands of people, every day, across every single corner of social media, across every channel on television, in ads, on the radio, everywhere. They think he’s used up, even more so now that they know what’s happened to him. You cannot love a used up, broken, alcoholic, piece of garbage. That’s what they all say.

Derek takes Stiles by his shoulders and holds him there, so he has no choice but to meet Derek’s eyes. “Stiles, I do not love you in spite of all that shit that’s happened in the past few years. I love you with all of that shit. That’s the deal.”

Stiles needs to get used to hearing it, he guesses. Part of him still tries to resist it, to pull away, to tell Derek to stop, he doesn’t deserve it, can’t Derek just hit him and get it over with? But he does his best to squash that part of him down, to smother it, so it grows smaller, every single day. “Well, I love you even though you punched a hole in someone’s car, so we’re even.”

They go back downstairs where everyone has gathered in the living room. He gets handed cookies and wine and is sat down on the couch next to Derek, while everyone sits around and talks, and the food cooks in the oven. The Hales are a rag tag bunch, wherein some of them are over the top, extroverted to the extreme, talking over everyone else to be heard like Stephanie and Heather, while some are more reserved, sitting and watching and only commenting when it’s necessary for them to say anything, like Cora and Derek. Stiles just watches and keeps to himself, eating what’s put in front of him and trying not to take up too much space.

Derek excuses himself to the restroom at one point, leaving an empty space next to Stiles on the couch. Stiles figured it would only be a matter of time before one of the girls leapt at the opportunity to sit next to him, like Heather, who has a crush on him and keeps staring at him whenever she thinks he’s not looking, or Isabella, or even Talia – but it’s Cora who winds up coming over.

She smooths the back of her dress out as she sits, and then crosses her ankles in front of her. “Hi, Stiles.”

“Hey, Cora,” he sips his wine. “You look pretty.”

She blushes a bit, and then she smiles. “Are you excited for your Grammy nominations?”

“Oh, those,” he shrugs, drinking some more. Truthfully, the sheer mention of them makes his head hurt, but he doesn’t want to be rude to her, so he just nods and shrugs some more. She’s intuitive, so she reads this gesture for what it is, as avoidance.

“I think you deserved it. I mean, I know I’m biased, especially now,” she gestures around the room, because here Stiles is, in her home, with her brother, home for Christmas. “…the album was incredible. You really…you made something other people couldn’t.”

“Well, other people should get abused, then they could make it, too, because it’s not that special. To tell you the truth, I think it’s the saddest piece of shit I’ve ever made, and they’re only nominating me so they can pat themselves on the back for being nice to the resident abuse victim.”

Cora seems taken aback by his tone, his posture, the words he’s saying, because she has only ever really known or spoken to the Stiles who’s trying to be charming and nice. She’s never met the real him, who’s…horrible. But she pushes forward, furrowing her brow and shaking her head, “you only say that because you see it as like, this…memento, of what happened to you, instead of what it really is.”

“Which is what?”

“A piece of art that reaches people, you know? You think people only loved Nashville because they like when you’re hurt. People loved Nashville because it resonates with them,” she observes him, up and down, “you’re going to go, aren’t you?”

“To…?”

“The Grammy’s.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he looks away, being evasive, and she’s perceptive. She narrows her eyes and huffs a bit, shaking her head.

“It seems to me like not allowing yourself to be rewarded for your work is some weird form of self-punishment.” It’s the last thing she’s able to say before Derek comes back into the room. She stands up immediately, leaving room for Derek to sit, and just walks away to her original seat next to Laura, without glancing over her shoulder at him once.

Derek sits next to him and seems perplexed. He says, “what was she saying to you?”

Stiles figures if he tells Derek the truth, that Cora was sort of badgering him about going to the grammy’s, he’d get upset with her and it would cause an entire thing. He shrugs, instead, and bites into a cookie instead of answering that. Truthfully, what Cora had said sits in his head for the rest of the night, even as they’re sitting at the dinner table eating with Christmas music playing over their heads. It’s all he can think about.

Is not going just his own way of believing he doesn’t deserve any kind of award? Is not going just some other twisted way that Matt wins? Lydia is under the impression that Stiles is going to clean house at that stupid fucking awards show, and she usually is right about these things, and part of Stiles just knows. They’re going to bestow those awards upon him like he’s a god, because fuck it, maybe he is.

Maybe he is. Matt had spent their entire relationship breaking him down and making him smaller, smaller, smaller still, until he believed he was worthy of nothing, not even love, until he believed he deserved nothing, not even credit or recognition for his work, until he believed his work was garbage, not worth fighting for, until Stiles was willing to just let the label take all of it.

Is he going to keep the cycle going, or is he finally going to stop it?

After dinner, they all go back to the living room and Talia says they should all open one present, as is their Christmas Eve tradition, so Stiles settles into the couch next to Derek and just watches. They’re all animals about ripping the paper off and sending it flying across the floor, so it’s entertaining to see it. There doesn’t seem to be a single tomboy among the Hale women, so all the presents are things like makeup, shoes, handbags, clothing, all in a sea of pink and purple and glitter that spills across the floor and everywhere else like a disease. It’s a wonder Derek didn’t go insane growing up with this much feminine energy around him at all times, but then Stiles thinks that’s probably why he is the way he is.

He’s this big chocolate ball with a hard candy coating. Stiles feels immensely fond of him, and maybe it’s just that he’s surrounded by Christmas lights which always makes him happy, or maybe it’s the wine, or the fact that everyone in this room is so giddy and excited, and it’s infectious, but it doesn’t matter.

Stiles figured there wouldn’t be anything for him to open at the Hale house, so when it gets to be his turn after Derek opens his own, he just drinks his drink and expects nothing from anyone. He had gotten Derek presents, yes, but he wasn’t sure if Derek had gotten him anything, and he didn’t want to put any pressure on Derek by shoving presents at him in front of his entire family, so he left them at home.

To Stiles’ surprise, Derek turns to him and says, “it’s your turn,” with this mischievous glint in his eyes. Stiles blinks at looks around the room to find that they’re all staring at him and smirking, like they all know exactly what the present is because Derek had told them all, and are now waiting in anticipation for Stiles to see it and open it.

He says, “I left your presents back at my dad’s house,” in a hurried whisper, but Derek waves him off.

“I know,” he stands, grinning from ear to ear, and vanishes down the hall to the closet at the end of it. Stiles watches him step all the way in, digging around in the back until he gets his hands on something. He steps out, and even from all the way on the couch, even though Derek is just a silhouette in the dark, from the shape of it alone, Stiles can see what it is.

It’s a hard present to wrap, so it’s just got a big red bow on it, and it billows a bit as Derek brings it into the living room, so it’s finally out in the light, and Stiles sits and stares at it. It’s a guitar, an electric guitar, a Fender, and Derek holds it by the neck as he brings it over to Stiles and offers it to him, smiling. It’s chrome, shiny, brand new, and as the light catches it, Stiles can see that it’s iridescent, a rainbow sheen glowing across it.

Stiles puts his glass of wine down on the end table beside the couch, reaching out with both hands to grab the thing and take it, wrap his arms around it. No one has ever bought him a guitar before. Stiles thinks about all the times that Derek was backstage, seeing Stiles’ fleet of guitars being moved around, and those were just the few he was using on this particular tour. Derek has never seen Stiles’ entire collection, only bits and pieces of it, but he’s seen the few in New York, and the handful in Malibu, and the one he brought along with him to Vancouver, and he knows that Stiles used to never go anywhere, nowhere, absolutely nowhere, without a guitar.

He cradles it against his body and sighs, overwhelmed. No one has ever dared to buy him a guitar before. He already has so many – but that’s not the point. It’s an expensive guitar, but a few thousand dollars is penny change to Derek, and to Stiles too, but the cost also isn’t the point.

He thinks about how Matt smashed one of Stiles’ most beloved guitars on the ground one night even as Stiles begged him to calm down, to please not break his guitar, how much he fucking hated when Stiles made music, thought about music, did what he loved the most. Now, here’s Derek, handing him a brand new shiny guitar that he picked out himself, because Stiles loves guitars.

It’s not about the cost, how many he already has, the brand, the color, any of it. It’s about the gesture. Now, Stiles has a guitar in his collection that represents Derek. He has a guitar that every time he touches it, he’ll think about Derek.

“Do you like it?” Derek asks him, and Stiles nods. Fervently, he nods, again and again, because his throat is tight, and he doesn’t think he can speak. He touches it, reverent, feeling the strings under his fingers, the knobs, the neck, the body. “Look, I even got you a new strap,” he says, picking the thing up itself as evidence – it’s shiny like the guitar itself, unlike anything Stiles already owns, and Stiles nods, because he likes that, too. “Do you like it?” He asks this again, a slight laugh in his tone, because Stiles had said nothing, not a word, since he brought the thing out.

The girls are all tittering because they can tell he likes it, and likes it a lot, and wow, what a grand romantic gesture, that Derek went out of his way to go buy something for Stiles. Something he knows dick-all about. He probably had to go into the store and be talked through picking this thing out with the sales guy, probably stood there scratching his head because he has no fucking clue what a tremolo is, what a pickup is, any of it.

Before Stiles knows it, he’s crying. It’s quick – one second he’s cradling his new guitar and the next, he’s crying. It sneaks up on him, because it has been so long since he’s cried over something that wasn’t pain, wasn’t hurt, wasn’t pulled out of him by someone’s words or someone beating him. It comes organically, out of him alone, because he’s so…happy. He hasn’t cried over being happy in so long it feels foreign, and also, he’s in front of a ton of people and this is embarrassing.

They do not laugh at him. They’re excited for him, because he likes his present, clapping and smiling. He swipes at his face to remove the evidence and sniffles, shaking his head like he’s being ridiculous, but Derek is smiling at him. He says, “baby,” all soft and gentle, squatting down in front of him so they’re at eye level.

“I love it,” Stiles tells him, wiping at his face some more, “I love it, I love it, words cannot express.” He hugs it against himself and smiles, so Derek smiles at him even bigger than before. “It’s shiny.”

“Well, you already had every other color under the sun, I figured I’d get you the rainbow one.”

It’s completely not in line with any of Stiles’ previous albums, to have an iridescent rainbow guitar. He has no idea how this guitar fits into his image at all, or if it does, but it does not matter. He’s going to play it. Obsessively. Next tour, he’s using this guitar exclusively. Whether it matches or not, who cares? Something about this moment, sitting in Derek Hale’s mother’s living room clutching a brand new guitar that glitters in the Christmas lights, makes him feel like his life has done a complete 180, from the last Christmas he had.

Alone. In Malibu. Drinking. Dreading the album’s release. Puking in his toilet at midnight because he ate too much chocolate and paired it with bourbon and nothing else.

But it’s not just Christmas. It’s his entire life, every piece of it, radically changed. And he knows that it’s not all because of Derek, because people are not band-aids, and that’s not how life works. He knows that it’s because Stiles worked, and he crawled on his hands and knees, to become a person again. To become someone else, not that fucking person Stiles couldn’t even stand to look at in the mirror. He did the tour, and he thought he was going to die, but he didn’t. He played the songs and he took pictures with fans and he even went back to Nashville. He even went back to fucking Nashville.

And he told everyone what happened to him. He ran away immediately after, yes, but he did it. It was not easy. Not one single part of it was easy.

Stiles cannot stand the thought of leaving his guitar downstairs, so he insists on bringing it up to bed with them, even though it will only sit in the corner, not being played at all. He stares at it from the doorway as he brushes his teeth with the toothbrush Talia bought for him, stares at it as he strips down to his underwear, as Derek talks to him about what’s going to happen in the morning.

He doesn’t think he’s been so obsessed with a guitar since the very first one his dad got for him when he was a kid. Man, he played that fucking thing until it literally fell apart, and he, no joke, had a funeral for it in the backyard, where it is still buried in pieces. That’s how much he loves his new guitar, too. Like it’s a member of the god damn family.

They climb into bed together and Derek’s mother was right. It is not big enough for two grown men, but they make it work, pressing against each other’s bodies and staring at one another on the pillow. “You like your present,” Derek says, smirking.

“Like is an understatement. If it were possible to make love to an inanimate object, that would be the one, my friend.”

“How about making love to the person who bought you the inanimate object?”

Stiles laughs, reading that as a joke – he scrunches his nose up and moves to burrow into Derek’s chest, but Derek stops him. He takes Stiles by his chin and leans in for a kiss, but Stiles guffaws and pulls away, shocked. “You were serious?”

Derek blinks. “Why not?”

“You wanna have sex with me?” His voice goes shrill, a panicked whisper. “In your kid bedroom? With your mother down the hall?”

“You’ll just have to be quiet, for once.”

“No, we can’t,” he pushes Derek away, and Derek laughs. “Derek. Your sisters will hear. It’s too humiliating for me to bear.”

“I used to jerk off in this bed every single night for eight years,” he says. “They never heard a thing. Trust me.”

Stiles bites his lip, because there is very rarely ever a time when he does not want to have sex with Derek. He is, after all, the zombie killing guy from Dead By Sunrise, which instantly makes him fuckable on about ten different levels – and beyond that, he is hot. Like, Stiles could bake a dozen cookies on his abs hot. As soon as they got to Vancouver, they were fucking like rabbits, all over his house. In the upstairs shower, in the downstairs shower, in the kitchen, in the living room, in the bedroom, on and on. They’re still not tired of doing it.

“But what if they do hear?”

“What if?” He raises his eyebrows in challenge. “You know, I’ve jerked off to the thought of you in this bed, before.”

“Oh, what?”

“Yup,” he nods, grinning. “To pictures from that CD you were looking at earlier.”

“Oh, yuck. Those pictures aren’t even sexy like, at all, Derek.”

“I was a nineteen year old boy. Looking at pretty much anything could get me going,” he leans in and kisses Stiles on the neck, in just the right spot, so Stiles’ breath catches and he bites his lip again. “I used to fantasize about how you’d fall in love with me and write songs about me and then we’d fuck, obviously.”

Stiles looks at him, and a slow smile spreads across his face. “You’re serious.”

“Yes,” he insists, deadass. “I have absolutely scorched my dick, thinking about being inside of you. In this bed.”

Stiles’ dick twitches. There is nothing quite like the way that Derek wants him. It’s this organic honest want, that comes from nowhere else but Derek’s deep desire to fuck Stiles into oblivion. Not about the money, or the fame, or any of that. Just the carnal desire and attraction. It makes Stiles hard just to think of it, to think of Derek in this room staring at that CD and jerking off to it.

“Okay,” he agrees, and Derek immediately reaches over Stiles’ body to the bedside table, pulling out a bottle of lube that has likely been there since he was fourteen years old. Stiles snickers when he sees it, but Derek is serious, slathering his fingers up with one hand and tugging on the waistband of Stiles underwear with the other. Stiles obliges, sliding them off and then tossing them to the side on the ground.

He wastes no time in fingering Stiles; two fingers first, working quickly, leaning up to kiss Stiles on the mouth and then locking eyes with him. He says, “you’ve gotta be quiet,” as a reminder, and Stiles nods. He knows he has to be quiet. Him and being quiet during sex don’t necessarily mix, but he can try, at least.

Derek sets Stiles up on his back, with his head on the pillows, and Stiles hitches his legs back, opening them up, so Derek can climb right on top of him. He lines himself up, and then pushes in slowly, leaning his body over Stiles’ – Stiles presses his heels into Derek’s thighs, reaches up and touches Derek’s chest, smoothing them over the hard skin, panting.

Derek goes slow. He presses his hands into the bed beside Stiles’ head and they meet each other’s eyes, as Derek pulls in, and out, again and again. Stiles bites his lip and then has to surge up to press his lips against Derek’s, to keep himself from being too loud, so then his moan is swallowed up into Derek’s mouth, softer and quieter as Derek kisses him.

He pauses for a moment, adjusting himself a bit, so Stiles has to widen his legs as Derek straightens up. “You okay?” He asks, breathy.

“Fine,” he answers. “Just – it’s hard to not –“

“Yeah,” Derek agrees, like he knows, even though he doesn’t. He, for one, is not loud in bed. He moves some more, and Stiles scrabbles his hands against Derek’s chest, reaching up and cradling his face in both of his palms, squeezing his eyes shut and whining. “Oh, fuck, you’re so hot.”

“I wanna scream so bad right now,” he whispers, fumbling his hands into Derek’s skin mindlessly. “I can’t be quiet, I can’t, I can’t…”

Derek leans back over Stiles’ body, so their faces are close, pushing himself in all the way, all the fucking way, so Derek’s pubic hair tickles his own skin. Stiles opens his mouth to let a cry spill out, but Derek kisses him just in time, so it goes down Derek’s throat instead of into the open air. When he pulls away, he’s smirking, like he’s enjoying this – likely, he is. Stiles is used to fucking and not giving a shit if people hear him or not, because he’s Stiles Stilinski and everyone knows he’s a massive slut anyway. He has never been in a scenario where he’s been fucking someone and he had to be quiet. When he’d fuck guys in high school, he’d just wait until his dad was out of the house and have them climb in through his windows. When he was living with Scott, briefly, at the start of his career, he just didn’t give a shit if Scott heard him or not.

Now here he is. In Derek’s mother’s house. And he is having a hard fucking time, because he has never had to try to be quiet before.

Derek bears down over him, gets the angle right, and fucks him. It’s quick, hard thrusts, so the bed shakes, the wall rattling a bit, and Stiles keens. He can’t help it. He slaps his hands over his mouth as his body jerks, as Derek mercilessly hits the right spot, again and again – whimpers and cries spill from between the cracks in his fingers, his eyes screwing shut, because he knows if he looks at Derek while getting fucked this good he’s going to come. Loudly.

Derek stops, again, probably just to prolong this even more. He breathes out, “fuck,” and then breathes back in. “I love you,” he says, pulling Stiles’ hands away so they can kiss. Quick pecks, open mouthed, breathy kisses. “I love you so fucking much, baby, I love you.”

“I love you,” Stiles says back, immediate. “I can’t be quiet. I’m going to scream.”

“Shhh,” Derek presses a finger to his lips and grins. “You’re okay.” He moves again, making Stiles cry out and then turn to bury his face in the pillows. “Christ, you’re so fucking sexy.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying this,” he says, muffled by the fabric.

“So are you.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Derek adjusts himself, into a better angle with better leverage, so he can finish. Stiles can tell just from the way his face goes serious that he’s trying to finish – he fucks into him, hard, hard enough that Stiles gasps and bites his lips to keep from moaning. It doesn’t really help. Derek keeps going, that same speed, that same strength, and Stiles almost lets loose.

Derek slaps a big, sweaty hand over Stiles’ mouth. He keeps going, Stiles’ noises muffled by his own hand, the bed shaking, until he finishes. He pounds his orgasm into Stiles’ body, and Stiles wonders if he’s thinking about all the times he imagined doing this, in the past. In this exact fucking bed. Stiles wonders if it’s as good as he imagined it would be.

Or, maybe better. Stiles knows he’s hot. He had forgotten for a while, but now he remembers, he’s as hot as Derek says that he is. It’s nice to feel that way again.

Stiles is still hard, because it’s pretty difficult to allow an orgasm to come when you’re focusing so much energy on something else – like trying to be quiet. Derek pulls out of him and pats him on the belly a couple of times, an exhausted smile on his face. He’s whispering when he says, “I’ll make you come, but you have to be quieter.”

“I can’t,” Stiles insists, shaking his head against the pillow. “I can’t, for real. I don’t know how. I’m a slut, sluts can’t be quiet, don’t you know that?”

“Jesus Christ,” Derek laughs, running his hands up and down Stiles’ bare legs affectionately. “So, you don’t want to come.”

“I didn’t say that,” he yell-whispers, sitting up onto his elbows.

“So, you’ll be quiet.”

“Derek,” Stiles hisses, narrowing his eyes. “I’m going to remember this. I’m never going to forget it. And someday, I’m going to torment you like this, and you’re going to be sorry.”

“I doubt that, but all right,” he smirks some more, while Stiles frantically hefts himself up, turning so he’s on his hands and knees, pressing his face down into the pillows.

His voice is barely audible when he says, “okay. I’m ready.”

“Okay,” Derek agrees. Two big hands are on Stiles’ backside, as Derek knees his way up onto the bed behind him. There’s a pause, maybe just Derek thinking about what he wants to do to him, which is torturous, absolutely the meanest thing Derek has ever done to him, and then there’s a wet, slick hand on Stiles’ dick.

It’s just a fucking handjob. A reacharound, at that. But something about the fact that he cannot make any noise just makes him want to….start yelling and screaming. At the top of his lungs.

“I’m going to scream,” he says for the twentieth time since they started, and Derek strokes him harder. Faster, more fervently, so Stiles digs his face as deep down into the pillows as he can get, practically eating the fucking things, pounding his fist onto the mattress.

Derek stops, almost right before Stiles is about to come. “You’re so fucking loud, holy shit, I’ve never really noticed before. I mean, I noticed. But this is…”

“I need to come,” he barks, and Derek fumbles to comply, hearing the no-nonsense in Stiles’ tone. He grabs onto Stiles’ dick and pumps it, aggressive, leaving Stiles in a whimpering, slobbering mess in the pillows.

When he finally does come, he can’t help it. He makes good on his promise to scream, because it spills out of him like water, immediate and fast, as he comes onto the sheets Derek’s mother washed for them. Immediately after it’s over, he sits up, pulling his face out of the pillows, and looks at Derek. In a quiet whisper he asks, “you think anyone heard that?”

Derek is fighting a smile off of his face, but he’s failing. He says, “um…yes. I definitely think someone heard that.”

Stiles flops back down onto the bed and covers his face with his hands. It’s red, beet red, and hot to the touch. “Oh, I’m so embarrassed,” he mutters, and Derek laughs and pats him on the back. “This is so embarrassing. I can’t help it. I’m terrible. I’m like the porn star who doesn’t know how to shut it off when she gets home.”

“I enjoy it,” Derek tells him, settling down beside him. “Come on. If anyone heard it, it was probably Laura, and she’s probably…well. She’s probably laughing.”

Stiles burrows deeper in to the bed.

After a few moments of silence, Derek clears his throat. He says, “baby, come here,” and wraps his hands around Stiles’ waist. He pulls him up, back into the position they started in – facing one another with their heads on the pillows, close, because the bed is so small, they don’t have a choice. “I love you,” he repeats, leaning forward to kiss Stiles on the nose. “Even though you can’t shut up.”

Stiles blushes again, but he decides to not let himself be too embarrassed. So, Laura probably heard him getting fucked by her own brother. Big deal. She’s probably heard much worse things coming from this side of the hallway, Stiles would bet money on that.

“You like your present?” He asks again, even though he knows Stiles fucking likes his present.

Stiles nods. “Yeah. It’s…no one’s ever gotten me a guitar before.”

“Really?” He’s surprised. “That’s weird. You love guitars.”

That, Stiles does. They lay in quiet for a little while. Derek’s eyes start to close, and he’s going still, hands wrapped around Stiles’ body. Stiles watches him for a while, breathing in and out, and he’s happy, again.

It comes and goes. But he’s not a miserable piece of shit anymore, at least.

“Derek,” he says, and Derek opens his eyes and blinks blearily at him. “I think I’m…I think I’m gonna go. To the Grammy’s.”

“That’s great,” he smiles at him, genuine and true.

“And I think I’m gonna make another record and meet the deadline and then…and then try to get my music back, but I wanna sign to someone else.”

“That’s great,” he repeats, smile going bigger.

“I had this fantasy for a long time where I, like, made The Standing Dead and then just disappeared and fucked off on the contract and let them take everything, my money, my music, all of it, and just…vanished into the woods somewhere, never to be seen again. I thought that was the only way to ever be happy again.” He turns and stares up at the ceiling. There are glow in the dark stars up there, from years and years ago. “That’s not how you fix things.”

“No,” Derek agrees sleepily. “It isn’t.”

“I think I’m going to call the producer I worked with for Free At Last and work with her again. That’s your favorite album.”

“So?”

“So. This one’s probably going to be mostly about you, so I may as well make sure you like it.”

“Me?” He grins, ear to ear, eyes closed, half asleep.

“And this shitstorm of a tour. Just…making things, it’s what I do. I couldn’t live with myself if I wasn’t creating, you know?”

Derek pats him on the stomach, but he’s almost completely asleep, by now. Seconds later, he’s snoring, right into Stiles’ face, but Stiles doesn’t mind. He turns and looks back up at the glow in the dark stars again, and he drums his fingers on his bare chest.

Yeah. He has another album in him already. He can have it finished well before the deadline, if he starts right after the Grammy’s and after Derek’s movie premiere. He’ll have it done and polished up. He’ll go on the fucking tour and do press and he’ll do it all with a smile on his face, and he will likely have to stand there and endure countless questions about Matt Harding, even in spite of Lydia screaming at people to under no circumstances bring him up ever again.

There are other labels who have been hounding him, because they know his contract is almost up. He’ll go to meetings with them and he’ll sign with one of them and his current label will go apeshit on him, he knows that, but fuck it.

They can eat shit, for all he cares.

He does not know what’s going to happen to Matt. There’s this part of him that’s desperate to know, because he has to know, because the chapter will always feel unfinished until he knows that Matt will never be able to hurt him again. But then Stiles remembers that Matt…really can’t hurt him, anymore.

Stiles has Derek. And Derek would rip Matt limb from limb if he ever came near Stiles again, Stiles is certain of it. Stiles doesn’t have nobody anymore, like Matt succeeded in doing the first time. Stiles has his friends, and Derek, and Derek’s family, and these are all people who care about him, and they won’t let it happen again.

It will never happen again. Stiles realizes this by himself, staring up at Derek Hale’s childhood bedroom ceiling, and the glow stars, and he smiles. It will never, ever happen to him again. Free at last.

Fucking free at god damn last.