embers // the line between dusk and night
haletheking:
naughtbutscars:
Well.
That was the fucking opposite of what he wanted to happen. Pendulum swing from ideal. Diametrically averse. Worst Case Scenario.
Stiles is poised, coiled, spring loaded tension running down his forearms, his spark wild and tight. He’s watching too hard. So naturally he doesn’t manage to mask his flinch when the glass shatters, even if his eyes are no longer entirely on the table. He figured he’d been staring long enough, but he can’t untether himself.
At least he heard it.
Quick glances give him only fragments, a napkin pressed to a palm with the stark bright cherry of blood on it.
The wicked edges of the shattered glass, tips like claws.
Derek will heal.
Or he won’t.
Depends on the wolfsbane strain, really.
Stiles is going to fucking strangle him. After he shoves some wolfsbane up his nose.
He studiously refuses to make eye contact. A flick of his eyes to the side, as if the TV hanging in the corner by Derek’s head has caught his attention. The Mets dropping a routine ground ball is hardly news. He knows, if he does look, he won’t be able to look away. And that he’s liable to do something too idiotic to name.
But he can’t help it. Never has been able to when it comes to this damn werewolf, and his eyes slide too far, and he’s gutted.
One, two, sucker punch. Even when you knew it was coming.
It’s like when you first put your hand under the hot water in the kitchen sink. Shocking, then comforting, then quickly dissipating as you snatch your hand back. Derek’s eyes, that disconcerting hazel edged with green, are on him and him alone. Derek’s nostrils flare wide, and there’s a clench to his jaw that looks like pain.
His phone twitches in his pocket, but he can’t look away. Eight years has done nothing to dull the pull.
God, Derek looks wrecked. To any idiot at any bar, he looks like he’s drunk himself six ways from Sunday under the table, like whatever cab takes him home might have to peel him off the seats later. Like he’s easy.
There’s dread, hope, the killer cocktail of betrayal and trust and Stiles takes a deep breath that tears him open as it goes down.
Though he almost splinters the goddamn bar when Derek breaks eye contact, rolls his shoulders, almost like he does before a shift - how can you still remember that? - and takes drink #2 down his throat.
There’s something clinical about the way Derek takes out his wallet, drops an absurd stack of bills on the table, like he’s trying too hard to make his fingers work and christ on a cracker Stiles should really stop staring.
He switches to the depths of his remaining beer, and takes a long, long drink from the pint glass. Leaves only the foam, and watches Derek’s shoulders duck out the door.
‘Think I’m gonna grab his number.’ He winks at the bartender, drops a few singles, and taps the wood. There’s a flare in his fingertips, and he hopes the charm holds for as long as it takes to make it to the alley.
God, he’s so livid he can’t fucking see straight.
Where’ve you been sleeping sourwolf? In the fucking den? Snuggled up tight to those monsters?
Do you have any sense of self preservation at all?
Or was it burned out of you.
He pinches the yew and sage, sewn into the pocket of his boxers. Sparks it, drops it at the entrance to the alley. For privacy, if only for a few moments. The smell of rotten bananas, and decaying cardboard is overwhelming, and he tugs the collar of his flannel up to flank his face.
Just like every other time. Derek Hale manages to find himself connected to the fucking worst people alive.
He’s suddenly, irrevocably blinded and white hot with anger, with something too petty to name.
He almost decks him. Before he even gets close, he’s swinging up, trying to catch Derek’s jaw, a pressure point that with the right weight around it, even Stiles can make him feel. The ‘bane will only make it easier. And Stiles throws his entire body into it, wild. But he only fists into the leather and feels it bunch, creak under his hands, as he maneuvers Derek against the grimy, damp wall of the alley. He watches the bunched napkin, dark with Derek’s blood, fall and turn translucent in the runoff of the gutter above as his own knuckles scrape the crumbling brick.
“What the FUCK WHERE YOU THINKING?” It’s whisper-harsh. He’s heaving under his own panic, lets the tidal wave break.
“No. Don’t speak. Don’t say anything at all because the only possible explanation for this kind of monumental fuck up is that you weren’t thinking. You weren’t thinking at all. Jesus fucking christ, Derek. You took one look at the fucking ‘functioning’ switch in your brain and said ‘eh, fuck it’ and threw it down the garbage disposal, just like you did every goddamn time, with Beacon Hills, with the pack, with -
And here’s where his voice breaks. And if anything, he only feels more dark and bitter, can smell the bane, and the vodka, and knows Murph is going to be right on their heels in mere moments. But Derek is real. Real and solid under his hands, warm and breathing. And Stiles can’t let him go.
The shove knocks out Derek’s air and pulls his next breath in greedy, drinking in smoke and sour from a thousand intimate moments spent in this spot between strangers. His body goes easy with the movement, shoulders bracing and hips canting, the cool of the brick seeping out sobering through his jacket while the hands at his front fight to pull him further into some hazy dream.
He wants to melt into it.
His eyes feel too big in his head, catching and sliding over the blur-sharp focus of Stiles’ face. A patch of broken lip pulling the skin there darker, too-bright eyes filled up with too-bright emotions, every lash a blade that sweeps dizzying on each blink. Confused beats of breath, bursts of sound and jagged silence. Sharp jaw and sharp words, angry hands pushing and clutching in ways Derek can’t help but roll with, like a ship riding some wild storm.
It feels real. There’s a pulse in the air he’s spent six years searching for and he could lose himself in it, feel it match the dizzy sway under his feet, guide the rhythm of his breaths and burn away the wrong of the Alphas’ touch, their scents clinging to his skin like claim…
But it’s not real. Can’t be.
The world feels hazier suddenly, damp light blurring out the world’s edges. Derek’s breath pulls in sour-smoke and misery –– a thousand nights and a thousand strangers drowning sorrows out here alone –– and wonders what to do with the mental break he’s clearly having. Wonders if it matters at this point, or if it’s better just to fall into it. Does this strain of wolfsbane pull dreams to life for him? Is he really standing out here with some stranger? Or when he lifts a hand to knuckle clumsy across Stiles’ cheek, is he really touching open air?
It doesn’t seem likely, not with the warm soaking out from those fists, the way Stiles’ eyes flash with anger and things not-quite anger, words rising and bursting in fits like something pulling from deep inside him. Hell, if this is some demon-spawn summoning up fantasies to lower his guard before feeding, Derek thinks it might deserve the win. Everything about this is right, down to those snapped out words, familiar in a way he’s never let himself think he was missing…
Except for one thing. One stupid, vital thing that stops this all from being real.
The air smells like everything except Stiles.
“…This a dream?” The words crystalize in the air and hang fragile for a second, until his own huffed breath shatters them. Dreams don’t tell you they’re dreams, and tricks don’t admit their lies either.
But it’s a good dream, if that’s what it is, so Derek lets himself lean into it. Just for a second, hand falling heavy from Stiles’ cheek to his shoulder, head tilting until he’s pulling nothing in too-heavy breaths off the line of Stiles’ throat. He feels loose in his bones, twists slow until his back’s hitting open air, Stiles’ body a warm line between him and the bricks. The heartbeat’s there, Derek’s nose skimming over the pulse point, and Stiles’ shoulder is a shocking sort of broad under the press of Derek’s palm.
“Don’t disappear.” He’d never say that out loud, never bare that much, but it doesn’t matter here. There’s a throb in his hand and a dizzy ache in his temple and whatever lie or delusion this is, he can let himself pretend, “just for a second.” Can let himself have this small spark of weakness.
A hazy image of himself alone in the alley, body curled around nothing, forehead pressed to the wall, has him smirking bitter against Stiles’ collar. His nose drags a line again, a little rougher with some half-formed spite.
“For a second,” he mumbles, “Almost thought you were real.”
He doesn’t know how his body betrayed him like this. He meant to fucking deck him. But the werewolf had gone too easy - syrupy slow with the movement as he met the wall. Derek’s chest is heaving against Stiles’ forearms, desperate panting breaths hot as they break against his face.
Just like you did with the pack. With me.
There’s a moment of ringing silence, but for the drip of dirty rain water and the muffled distant music from the bar.
Even as Stiles breathes ragged and shattered, head hanging between his arms as if to put some illusion of distance between them he feels Derek shift unsteadily and his anger flares again, solar and searing.
“How the fuck-” He stills, caught off guard and instinctually frozen like prey as Derek lifts a marionette hand, eyes wide so Stiles can see the sliver ring of the summer green around the blank blackness of his pupils.
It’s bitterly gentle, a little clumsy as his fingers skim the hollow of his cheek and the edge of his jaw. Dazed and hazy, even as blood drips down his wrist, and Stiles grits his teeth so hard he thinks he cracks a crown. This is not the Derek Hale he came for, and it only serves to heighten his barely sheathed panic.
Start the car, or I’m gonna rip your throat out. With my teeth.
There’s a thin whisper instead, delicate and cautious and Stiles aches in confusion, his sternum tight as his anger starts to fall out of him. A dream, not a nightmare.
“Wha— no. Derek.” But Derek shakes his head and exhales, like he’s sloughing off water, trying to shake himself back into reality. Stiles crumbles a little more, narrows his eyes. Acutely aware of how Derek’s body is canted towards his. Easy.
Dereks’ hand falls and his body seems to follow it of its own accord as he twists them, as he curls forward, nose pulling up Stiles’ throat like he’s doing a goddamn line of cocaine off his larynx. Stiles swallows convulsively as he’s forced to tilt his head up. He drops his grip, not needing to tether them so tight, as Derek is clearly not letting him go.
The whole moment has thoroughly fucked with Stiles’ brittle equilibrium. He was cresting on righteous indignation, but he’s adrift as Derek curls tight around him. Their knees press together, and the press of his palm on his shoulder softens.
“Derek.” He shakes the werewolf, tries to rattle something loose in his primal canine brain.
“Derek...”
Derek’s panting hard, and Stiles doesn’t fight it, can feel Derek leaning his whole body weight on him like a drunk on the subway. He presses one hand against the back of Derek’s skull, fingers twisted in ink-dark hair, a sorry attempt to ground him against the effects of the ‘bane.
He knows what Derek’s missing. And he knows he can’t. He can’t risk it here, in this alleyway, their sneakers picking up the froth of tossed dishwater. Even if the scent would dissipate over the next few hours. The moment stretches thin, and snaps slowly.
“You’ve got some fucking nerve.” He shoves, far harder than before, though the ‘wolf is heavier than he looks. He feels sharp, knife-ready. “Don’t disappear. Don’t disappear, he says. You’re telling me -” He finally wriggles his way out, leaves Derek half propped on his shoulder, ready to carry him out of the alley if he has to. But Derek seems to be moving of his own volition, though Stiles can see the effort it takes.
His phone buzzes in his pocket - 3 texts, and goes silent.
“Jesus christ. I’m right here, you asshole. They haven’t managed to kill me yet, though Beacon Hills really did try. Flesh and blood. Pale skin and sarcasm. I’m like a gnat. This is what you get for irresponsibly downing drinks with suspicious characters.” But the retort has far less bite than intended. And Stiles ruthlessly compartmentalizes the residual ache in his chest at the empty loneliness in Derek’s sigh.
Almost thought you were real.
They only have a few more moments of peace before the sigil wears off. 250 different species of aconitum, and they’re all locked up in the safe house. Or in Stiles’ kit, but that’s blocks away.
“C’mon, big guy.” He eyeballs the mouth of the alley, onto a street where most people have parked their cars for the night outside their apartments. “Don’t tell me you still have the Camaro...”
