[Teen Wolf/Pacific Rim] we are the resistance
Title: we are the resistance [Ao3] Fandom: Teen Wolf/Pacific Rim Pairing(s): Derek/Stiles; Sheriff Stilinski, Melissa McCall, Scott McCall Rating: M Summary: “So,” Stiles says after a moment. “Werewolves.”
“It’s a thing,” Derek murmurs sleepily.
Stiles chokes on a laugh. “Yeah, I realize that now. I just, I don’t know why I expected anything different. We live in a world where giant aliens attack every few weeks through a trans-dimensional portal at the bottom of the Pacific, why wouldn’t werewolves exist?”
Author’s Note: For my Teen Wolf Bingo Square: Sharing Clothes. Obviously the whole sharing clothes thing was supposed to be a bigger part of the fic, but this whole thing kept growing on me, so by the time I got to the clothes sharing scene it was uh, just a couple sentences. Whoops. This story was also largely inspired by the fact that I don't see a lot of parent/child pilots in Pacific Rim AUs and I think that the Stilinski's and the McCall's would be fantastic jaeger pilots.
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Derek has no doubt in his mind that if the kaiju had come two, maybe three, years earlier that he would be piloting a jaeger with Laura. Everyone knew that the best jaeger pilots came from families — the Stilinskis and the McCalls had taken the world by storm when they’d swooped in out of nowhere the summer of 2015 and taken out the first Cat 2 to ever make landfall — and Derek could feel his alpha in the back of his mind even without the drifting technology. They would have fought their way to the top of the program, would have taken apart every kaiju that came at them. But she’d died, ripped apart by their uncle while he was on the east coast. The first kaiju comes crawling out of the ocean the week after his twenty-fifth birthday, while he’s training three new betas in the preserve. Erica’s got her ipod hooked up to some kind of dock, the local radio station its on more talk than actual music, but he’s kept them busy enough that no one has even thought to change the channel. Boyd is the first of them to go still as the laughing jibes of the DJs flips over to the emergency broadcast system. They all listen in horror as a newswoman brings them reports from the bay, and at one point, Erica turns to him and says, “We have to help.” “How?” Isaac asks, chewing on his lower lip like its his life goal to split it apart so badly that he can’t heal it. “I don’t know,” Erica growls, shaking her head back and forth. “But we have to— Derek, we have to help them.” They’re werewolves. They aren’t superheroes. If it was a coven gone bad or a kiss of vampires, then maybe. But they’re just werewolves. They can’t take down monsters the size of skyscrapers with tooth and claw. They’re still listening, a week later, when the bomb is dropped into the bay. The static is somehow worse than the blossom of light on the horizon. . “We’re trying out for the program,” Cora tells him when the first whispers of a solution to their kaiju problem reaches the west coast. She tells him about the dangers, about how they should be among the first to test it, since the radiation can’t hurt them the way it hurts humans. She’s been back with him for three days. Boyd and Erica have been in the ground for a week. He looks at her, eyes fierce and dark. She looks nothing like him and Laura, who’d inherited their looks from their father and their mannerisms from their mother. She looks just like mom though, and has their dad’s impulsive anger worse than Derek does, worse than Laura did. They’re family; the last of the Hales. That doesn’t mean that they’ll be drift compatible. Looking at her now, feeling the stretch of space inside of him that should be her, but is hopelessly empty, he knows that it won’t be possible. There’s enough death and distrust between them to last a lifetime, he won’t add to that. She looks back at him, steady, her teeth bared like she already knows what he’s going to say. “I’ll go,” he says at last. “That’s not how pack works,” she growls back, throwing her arms out and looking around the empty loft. He doesn’t know where Isaac is anymore. Something had broken in him when first Erica, then Boyd, were taken from them. He hasn’t been around much since. “What pack,” he deadpans, and thinks about his claws, slick with Boyd’s blood. . “What are the odds, man?” Stiles Stilinski asks, sauntering up to Derek with a grin on his face and a drink he’s not allowed to be drinking in his hands. He leans up against the wall next to Derek, casual as you please, and regards him with smirking lips. Stiles Stilinski is all long, lean pipe-cleaner limbs. He’s got a healthy amount of muscle to work with, but he’s yet to outgrow puberty. It follows after him like a ghost, visible in the width of his hands and the breadth of his shoulders, like he hasn’t quite finished growing into them yet. He moves in sharp, abrupt movements and doesn’t always seem to know where he’s putting his feet. Derek stares at him, wonders how this boy, twenty years old and still baby-faced, became one of the best fighters of his generation, and says, “What.” Stilinski cocks his head, a curious cocker spaniel in disguise, and flaps his hands like he’s trying to say something intelligent with them. “Y’know,” he says. “This. Us. Three jaeger pilots from the same little town. That kinda thing just doesn’t happen.” Derek blinks at him; once, twice, and then he remembers. “Your father was the sheriff there,” he murmurs, half-memories of a deputy with a sad smile draping a blanket around him and Laura emerging from the depths of his mind. Stiles jerks his head in a sharp nod, flashing another too-bright grin in his direction. He sips at his drink, makes a face at it. That’s what he gets, Derek thinks, for ordering gin. “Yep. The McCalls lived there too. Melissa was a nurse and Scott was my best buddy growing up.” “He’s not anymore?” Derek asks curiously, watching as a dull blush spreads across the bridge of Stiles’ nose. He hadn’t meant to say that, probably. Definitely hadn’t meant to use past tense, but he probably hadn’t expected Derek to catch it either. Stiles throws back his drink all at once and shrugs. “Don’t have much time for friends, bro.” Derek thinks about Cora — how its 2016 and Derek is still jumping from partner to partner in the program, a different person in his head every week, none of them compatible enough to last for more than one trip out — and how he hasn’t seen her in months. He can still feel her, a low tug beneath his breastbone, but he’s almost positive that she’s gone to the pack that had raised her for years, that had taken a ten year old in after her family had burned to death. “No,” he agrees, sipping his terribly expensive wine. “I suppose not.” . The next time he meets Stiles at a conference — they call it a conference, he calls it an excuse to get the pilots together and invite the media — he sleeps with him. It probably isn’t smart, because he’s not in a great place. The latest attempt to find him a drift compatible partner had gone worse than normal; the girl not taking the nondisclosure forms pertaining to the wolf-shaped things to be found in his head seriously. She’d blabbed and well, they’d gotten it under control before it went public, but it was too late for her. Derek doesn’t know if they’re suing her or throwing her in jail, but either way, there had been screaming loud enough for him to hear it all the way across the mess hall. He isn’t drunk — can’t get drunk unless he wants to risk aconite wine brewed by a curious scientist who knew about his condition — but when Stiles saunters his way over and sprawls on the couch next to him, legs spread wide, arms migrating to the backrest, he feels it. “You come here often?” Stiles asks him with a steady grin. He’s got a drink in his hands, but its non-alcoholic, probably thanks to his father’s intervention, who is glancing their direction every once in awhile from across the room. “Only when I’m forced,” Derek replies back, his voice flat. Stiles laughs with his whole being, head thrown back to reveal the pale, open expanse of his throat, body shaking as his arms close tightly around his stomach. It’s endearing, as is the way he looks at Derek after, tears in his eyes as he accuses, “Who allowed you to be funny? That’s not fair.” Laura used to say that he had a shitty sense of humor, that he was all sarcasm interspaced with a couple nerdy jokes for good measure, but Cora had shared his enjoyment of biting sarcasm and brutal honesty. “Life’s not fair,” he sighs, twirling his drink as his face adopts a maudlin, pouty look that just serves to make Stiles laugh even harder. They sit together for awhile, pressed side to side on the couch, and talk as people mingle around them. A few times, they’re interrupted, but all it takes is a raised eyebrow and a pointed stare from Derek before they fuck off again. “I’m starting to think that you want to keep me all to yourself,” Stiles teases when he finally notices what Derek’s been doing. He’s curved, slanted so that his body is angled towards Derek, and he’s somehow sprawled loose-limbed and relaxed even though there are fourteen different points of contact between them. They’ve been getting closer and closer the longer they’ve been talking, pulled together as if by some magnetic force. It’s intoxicating, utterly enchanting, and Derek realizes that he wants to be touching him even more — that fourteen points of contact isn’t enough for him. “Maybe I do,” he murmurs, looking at Stiles from under his lashes. Stiles blushes, tongue darting out to wet his lips nervously, and Derek, unabashed, tracks the movement with his eyes. “Oh, that’s— yeah, that’s—” Derek tilts his head and lets himself smile widely, flashing white teeth in something that isn’t a snarl for once, and cuts Stiles off with a gentle hand on the boy’s knee. “Do you want to come back to my room?” he asks, watching in satisfaction as Stiles’ eyes widen, pupils dilating as his lips part of their own accord. Stiles bites his lips, glancing over his shoulder at his father, who’s busy talking to someone with the standing of a soldier. Derek can see the moment that Stiles decides what he’s going to do, the steel that straightens his spine. “Yeah,” Stiles answers quietly, a soft, pleased smile on his lips. “I think I do.” . (Stiles is gorgeous in bed. He’s got the recovery time of a teenager and the stamina of someone twice his age, and knows what he likes. He likes Derek’s cock; spending half an hour learning his way around it, what makes Derek’s toes curl and his breathing come in strained, raspy pants. He blows him until Derek is red-faced and completely wrecked, and then he pulls off and away long enough to ask Derek where he keeps his supplies. Oh, Derek goes, when Stiles gets three fingers inside of himself and twists in his lap with a bright, mischievous grin. Stiles rides him until Derek shakes apart beneath him and only then does he pull back, getting a hand around his dick like he’s considering jerking off onto Derek’s face. Derek catches his breath, raises an eyebrow, and takes Stiles’ cock in his mouth instead.) . The third, fourth, and fifth times that Derek sees Stiles, neither of them are at a party, but have magically become naked by the time they part ways anyway. The third was in the mess hall, back in the Lima Shatterdome, and Stiles’ had caught Derek’s eye from across the room and invited him with a tilt of his head to come eat with him and his father. Derek had declined and Stiles had given him this searching look before shrugging and moving on. Halfway through his own lunch, Stiles had snuck out to the bathroom after him, and ended up pinning him to the wall and blowing him until Derek cried. The fourth time, Derek is in the hangar, checking up on the status of Blue Moon (“Seriously dude,” Stiles had told him one time. “It’s a weird name for a jaeger — I mean, did they have to get rights from the beer to use it?”) and Stiles finds him there, still in his flight suit and covered in a thin layer of sweat. They make out against Blue Moon until a tech finds them and kicks them out, but that’s okay, because they just end up back at Derek’s room anyway. The fifth time, Stiles just shows up at his door and pushes him back inside before Derek can say anything. After that, he stops counting. . Cora comes down to visit him just after Stiles and his father have been deployed. It’s a Cat 1, nothing they can’t handle, but Derek is a nervous wreck anyways, because he’s grounded — hasn’t had a new partner in over a week — and feels utterly helpless. He spends the first three hours of her visit nervously glancing towards the television, chest tight, nervously wringing his hands in his lap. The McCalls are out as well, and if he’s learned anything since he’s been more intimately acquainted with Stiles, it’s that the Stilinskis work just as well with the McCalls as they do with each other. “We could probably switch it up, have me go out with Melissa and him with my dad, or hell, Melissa and my dad and him and me, and we wouldn’t have any problems,” Stiles had confessed one night, tracing idle circles around Derek’s kneecap. It shows in the way that they fight — that they’re all hopelessly drift compatible. The two jaegers work together almost as well as their pilots do; its breathtaking to watch. “Okay, that’s it,” she says the seventh time that he zones it. The television isn’t saying much, but he hadn’t expected it to. They’re in the middle of the Pacific, so the kaiju hasn’t had the chance to make landfall, which means less media coverage. “What is going on with you?” “What?” he says intelligently. She’s scowling at him, tapping her foot under the table. She smells like frustration now, the earlier happiness at seeing him souring. “You’ve been in your own little world this whole time, I don’t ge—” He jumps to his feet when the door to the mess hall swings open. He can smell Stiles before he’s even in the room, sweat and a faint hint of blood, and there he is, entering the room with his dad. It’s quiet, still early enough that the mess isn’t very crowded, which is fortunate, because Derek is out of his seat and across the room before anyone else even registers the door opening. “Woah there, big guy,” Stiles breathes when Derek barrels into him, wrapping his arms around Stiles’ narrow waist and burying his nose in the other man’s throat. His scent is tired, but there’s a zing of shocked pleasure to it the moment that Derek’s arms are properly around him. “Woah is right,” someone is saying, and Derek barely blinks upon realizing that Scott and Melissa are just behind Stiles and his dad, frozen just outside the door. “Hey,” Stiles murmurs to him, tentatively looping his arms around Derek’s neck in return. “It’s okay, we’re back — everything was fine. Cat 1’s are easy mode.” Derek breathes out shakily and pulls back slowly, blushing a bit, embarrassment clouding his veins now that the urge to touch isn’t quite so overwhelming. “Well, that answers one question,” Cora mutters sardonically from just behind him. He makes to pull back, flushing even harder, but Stiles just tugs him in closer, squeezing extra tight. “Jesus,” he hears Stiles dad’s mutter and Cora stifles a laugh. “Sorry,” he says when Stiles finally lets him go, glancing over his shoulder at all the curious people peering at them. His entire face feels hot and he just knows that Cora’s going to give him shit for this later. Guilt churns in his stomach, because they haven’t — him and Stiles haven’t really talked about this, about telling other people much less his dad. He gnaws on his lip, clenching his hands shut tightly when he feels the claws start to come out. “I— yeah, sorry.” Stiles’ father snorts. “Son, if you think that this entire cafeteria doesn’t know about you and my son, you’ve got another thing coming. Lord knows we’ve all caught you two necking all over the place.” Stiles groans, rolling his eyes, whining, “Dad.” “This is my sister, Cora,” Derek says quickly, still hot in the face. Jesus, of course they know. Why wouldn’t they? Just last week, he and Stiles had almost gotten caught having sex in the hangar. They haven’t been particularly discreet. “Pleasure to meet you,” Stiles says, grinning sheepishly as he accepts her hand to shake. She grins back at him, bright and predatory, and purrs, “Trust me, pleasure’s all mine.” “And uh, since this is apparently where we’re going to do our introductions,” Stiles says at once, shifting to the side so that an amused looking Melissa and an exasperated looking Scott can finally edge into the room. “Derek, this is my dad, Melissa, and my best bro Scott.” “We’ve met before,” Scott says, shrugging as he offers his own hand to shake. He grins and its lopsided and endearing. “Though I doubt you remember me.” Derek blinks and squints at the boy, but other than on news sites and talk shows, he can’t place him. Then Scott sends him a filthy grin and offers, “You were both pretty occupied. I showed myself out.” “Oh my god,” Melissa says, and Derek looks at her, but she’s just muffling her laughter into Stilinski’s shoulder, her own shaking. Stiles’ father has adopted a placid, politely disbelieving face, and seems to be trying to filter out everything that Scott just said. “Jesus, kill me now,” Stiles mutters, face a mask of horror. “This is worse than I ever expected.” “Now that’s not true,” Stilinski tells his son with another of those controlled smiles. “I’ve been in your head. I know these things.” Cora laughs so hard at their faces that she has to keep herself grounded with a hand to Derek’s shoulder. “This is the best thing ever, oh my god, Derek. I’m coming to visit all the time. You can’t stop me.” . “Sorry about earlier,” Stiles tells him later that night, after he’s let himself into Derek’s room. Cora’s been given a room down the hallway, which she’d retired to after a few hours of good-natured ribbing that made Derek want to go hide somewhere until she was gone. They’d eaten breakfast with Stiles and his entourage, and Stiles’ father had wasted no time in grilling him about every little thing he could. It was exhausting and had set off so many red flags that by the end of it, Cora had had to drag him away, making excuses for the panic simmering just under the surface of his skin. “It’s fine,” Derek murmurs, tracing constellations between the freckles on Stiles’ back. He’s drowsy and warm, loose and happy with Stiles next to him. “I was— I was worried. I’m sorry too, I didn’t mean to surprise you like that.” Stiles makes a noise, twisting in bed so that he can push his face into the curve of Derek’s neck. A month ago, it would have set off all the wrong alpha instincts. But this is just Stiles, and the part of him that’s more wolf than human is happy enough to let him do it. “I’m okay with it,” Stiles tells him. “I’ve been okay with it — this, us — for awhile now. I don’t care if they know.” Derek goes quiet, focused on the thump of Stiles’ heart beneath his ear. “Yeah,” he breathes after a moment. “Me too.” . Derek doesn’t register the alarms going off at first. He’s been grounded for weeks, since his last partner crapped out on him before they could even go on a proper away mission. Pentecost has been giving him the eye lately and Derek knows that he’s on thin ice. It’s not him, per se, who’s been chasing them off, but they’re never enough — never enough compatibility to do more than just get by. He has no doubts that if it weren’t for his skill, he would have been out on his ass a long time ago. So he doesn’t react when the alarms start going off, even when Stiles sits bolt upright next to him, eyes wide in the red lighting. “Derek,” Stiles whispers urgently. “Wake up.” Why, he thinks about saying. Apparently he does actually say it, because Stiles huffs at him, and says, "Because Melissa and Scott are getting deployed and if I don’t get up to the control room I’m going to lose my goddamn mind.” It’s been a month since Cora left — a month of sharing his bed with Stiles and waking up in the morning to sleep-soft grins and sour kisses. A lot has happened in a month, including two new kaiju attacks, these two only weeks apart. The science side of the Shatterdome are all buzzing about it, what it could mean, but Derek hasn’t cared, because during the last attack, Stiles’ dad was hurt. He wasn’t hurt as badly as he could have been, but he’s still looking at weeks, if not months of recovery time, and the Alaska base has been making noise about not being able to send down a replacement for Shotgun Trickster. With Derek himself out of commission, its been pretty trying. “Right,” he murmurs, shaking the sleep from his head. He uncurls, sliding from the bed after Stiles. . “This is not happening,” Stiles hisses, staring at the footage up on the screen, where Nurse Ratched is getting batted around like a mouse. Derek’s throat is dry and there’s a ball of panic growing beneath his breast. He winces when the McCall’s jaeger goes down hard, sending up a twenty-foot-tall wave around it. Stiles is making these low, terrified sounds in the back of his throat that don’t abate at all when Derek wraps an arm around him. They watch for another moment, listening as Tendo Choi talks in a steady, low mumur to the McCalls, who sound frantic, their hearts beating so loud that Derek can pick out the sounds even through the comm. “I can’t watch this,” Stiles whispers, and Derek turns to him. His eyes are wet, moisture collecting in his lashes, and it sends a pang of agony through Derek, to see him like this. “I can’t watch them die, Derek,” Stiles says, heart beginning to pound erratically. This isn’t something that he can just soothe away with a kiss and a murmur, this is Stiles’ family, and he can’t watch that either. He can’t. Scott and Melissa are great pilots, but this kaiju is nothing like the ones they’ve fought so far. The last time they checked, Gipsy Danger was still hours out, Anchorage about as far from Lima as you could get. Back up won’t get here in time. Derek looks at Stiles and thinks of the countless partners who have paraded through his mind, leaving disturbed memories in their wake, like they’ve dragged their feet through the dust bunnies of Derek’s brain. He thinks about all those people, and how so many of those strangers were compatible enough, just for one mission. His jaw tightens. He turns to Pentecost, hand tightening around Stiles’. “Prep Blue Moon,” he growls, dragging a protesting Stiles behind him. He gets up in Pentecost’s face, but the man doesn’t move, just blinks at him steadily, unimpressed. “Think that’s a good idea? We don’t have time for him to sign the papers,” Pentecost says smoothly, holding Derek’s gaze. “Yes,” Derek snarls, closing his lips around a mouthful of fangs. Pentecost gives the order. . “This is weird,” Stiles says for the third time. He keeps shifting awkwardly, playing with the sleeve of his flight suit, which is the same blue-black that Derek’s been wearing for years, but completely foreign to him, who’s used to the burnt-orange shade of Trickster’s suits. “Stop fidgeting,” Derek hisses, flexing his hands as Tendo reads off a hurried checklist. “No way, dude. Not happening. You know me well enough for that,” Stiles retorts, bouncing a little, as if to test the equipment. “There are some things you should probably know,” Derek says, when they’re getting close to the moment that they activate the drift. “Before you get into my head.” Stiles sends him a wary look, the yellow tint of his helmet making his eyes appear reptilian. Derek wants to kiss him; can’t. “If you’re going to tell me that you’ve murdered someone, this is a bad time, dude,” Stiles says, clearing his throat, voice thick with nerves. Derek thinks of Boyd on his claws, of Erica after the alpha pack was done with her, of Kate, Jennifer, Peter, of his family — there’s a wealth of death in his past, most of it blood on his hands. He stops thinking. “It’s more complicated than that,” he tries to say, hands shaking. “There were papers that you would have had to sign, if we’d had more time. I—” “And neural handshake is a go,” Tendo says, and panic bursts beneath his breast, makes his eyes flare red in the dim light and then— Then he’s neck deep in Stiles’ memories, swimming between his own and Stiles, flitting between the recollection of someone who smelt of violets wiping a cool rag over his brow and the kiss that Laura had pressed to his temple before she’d headed off to die. He drowns in it, snapshots of Stiles’ childhood — of being a hyperactive kid in a small town, of his mom flatlining next to him, of Scott grinning, watermelon seeds dotting his cheeks. He sees himself, through Stiles’ eyes, in a memory he only half remembers, from just after the fire, when he and Laura were sitting in the police station, blank-eyed and empty. Images of his own life flow by him like water, horror after horror, and he can only imagine how it looks to Stiles in that moment, like some film reel from an old school horror movie. He sees the moon obscured by fog, Erica’s smile, the look on Cora’s face when she’d found him again. Kate taunts him all over again and he smells ashes, Jennifer’s face twists from beauty to horror, and Peter bleeds out beneath him, the red going out of his eyes. Come on, Stiles, Derek thinks. You can take this. For Scott and Melissa. He comes out on the other side reeling, claws at the tips of his fingers and fangs in his mouth. He can taste Stiles’ shock, feel it coating the back of his skull like the nebulous film of an egg yolk. He blinks, catching his breath, and Tendo breathes, “Stable. Fuck, Derek, I’ve never seen a sync rate this good.” Derek stares at his hands and then, hesitantly, lifts his eyes to Stiles, who is staring at him in open fascination. Derek’s just happy that he’s not puking; that had happened before, a couple times, with his partners, despite the warning they’d had beforehand. “You’re a werewolf?” Stiles asks in a reedy, threadbare voice that cracks mid-sentence. “That’s the big secret? Werewolves are real?” Derek waits for the announcement, that they’re crashing, sync rates plummeting as Stiles’ pulse goes through the roof. It doesn’t come. He nods, jerkily, because Stiles seems to be expecting some kind of an answer. Stiles fixes him with a look that he recognizes from whenever Laura wanted him to know that he wasn’t getting out of something easy and says, “You’re an idiot.” Derek sucks in a breath, holds it in his lungs until the ever-present flow of panic subsides. When he comes back to himself, still in the drift, the look has softened. Stiles huffs. “Don’t think you’re gonna get out of this without telling me everything.” “But you—” “It’s not the same, being in your head,” Stiles says, cutting him off with a sharp gesture. “I want to hear it from you. After we rescue the rest of my idiot family.” A moment passes. Derek smiles at him, hesitantly, teeth human again. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Okay.” . Fighting with Stiles at his side is nothing like it had been with his long line of drift partners. For one, they actually flow smoothly with each other. Derek will parry and before he even has time to think a command in Stiles’ direction, the boy is already two steps ahead of him. Nurse Ratched was dead in the water when they’d arrived, standing still and silent above the wave as kaiju designation ‘giant fucking shark what the fuck’ swims steady circles around it. He’d felt Stiles’ immediate panic, had responded to it with soothing words and stated facts, like how the McCall’s jaeger actually seemed to be in one piece, despite the radio silence. “It probably tore some wiring,” Derek had told him and Stiles had nodded and thrown himself into the fight. It takes them seventeen minutes to pull the kaiju apart, ripping it to pieces with their hands instead of their weapons. Blue Moon is the only jaeger that has claws instead of normal fists, because the people who had made it for Derek — because they’d made it for Derek; they even changed the name to Blue Moon after they learned about just what he was — thought they were terribly funny. They don’t use them though, even though it would be easier than slowly, meticulously tearing the creature limb from limb. It surprises Derek, how at this moment, Stiles is just as bloodthirsty as he is — that Stiles even has the capacity for as much violence as an alpha werewolf. After it’s gone, floating in various chunks around them, kaiju blue as far as the eye can see, Stiles makes a grunting noise, and disengages from the jaeger once they’ve come to a stop next to Nurse Ratched. Derek blinks after him as Stiles disappears, popping the emergency release and yes, apparently leaping from Blue Moon to the McCall’s jaeger, like a goddamn gazelle with a death wish. “Dammit,” he hisses, after his heart is done recovering from the massive shock it had received the moment Stiles’ feet left the safety of their jaeger. He’s quick, disengaging from the spinal clamps before Pentecost can so much as think through the comm lines and flinging himself out after Stiles. Stiles is slowly, steadily climbing up Nurse Ratched’s chest, feet finding footholds in the armor deceptively easy. Out here, the spray of salt and the noise of crashing waves is nearly overwhelming, the sun shining down on them as if they haven’t been fighting monsters. “You know if you fall you’re going to die,” he calls uneasily, watching as Stiles’ leans back a bit to glance back at him. His helmet is off, probably discarded within their own jaeger. “Even if the fall doesn’t kill you, the kaiju blue will.” Stiles wrinkles his nose at him. They really have brought their jaegers as close as possible — the jump wouldn’t have even been five feet — but with two stories of a drop beneath them, it feels like an endless chasm. “Please,” he calls down. “Like you wouldn’t somehow miraculously catch me — don’t forget, I’ve been in your head now, Hale. I know just how fast those reflexes of yours are.” “They aren’t that much different,” he mutters, and Stiles must hear him, because he barks out a laugh. “They really are,” he tells Derek, casting around for another handhold, and upon finding it, making another gravity defying leap up the machine. He’s almost twenty feet above Derek now, and its terrifying, makes him think of that climbing wall back in Beacon Hills — the one that a human Erica had fallen from, not knowing Scott was there to catch her. What would he do, right now, if Stiles fell? The answer is that he’d probably kill them both trying to catch him, sending them both tumbling back into kaiju blue. “You’ve been holding out on me during sex, haven’t you?” Stiles calls, and Derek blushes. Stiles can’t see him, wouldn’t turn to look down now if he could, but he must take Derek’s silence as an answer, because the next thing Derek knows, he’s laughing, bright and happy. “You’ll have to find some way to make that up to me,” Stiles shouts playfully, and then he’s making a triumphant noise and pulling himself through the McCall’s own emergency release door. Derek scales the jaeger in less than a minute and pulls himself in after Stiles. . Scott and his mother are mostly fine. They’re both battered and shaken up, but neither of them are dead or dying — Derek was right about the kaiju tearing through the wiring — so everyone counts it as a win. They get the McCalls back to base, installing them in the infirmary next to Stiles’ father, who looks torn between relief and fury. It’s Stiles who makes their excuses in the end, dragging them away from his father’s pointed questions about the drift and the fight. Derek is relieved. He has no delusions that the truth about him is going to come out, at least to Stilinski and the McCalls, but its not something that he wants to talk about in the middle of an infirmary. They end up back in Derek’s room, ducking Pentecost and his minions at every corner on their way back, and curl up together on Derek’s bed. Stiles’ heartbeat is strong and steady under his ear; it calms him more than he’d ever say. A snort makes him glance up, where Stiles is looking down at him fondly, hands running through Derek’s hair. He hadn’t noticed. “I get it now,” Stiles says, indicating Derek’s head on his chest. “You’ve had a thing— with my heartbeat. And the thing with the sniffing. I just thought it was a you thing, but uh, werewolves. I get it now.” Derek hums in response, nosing up Stiles’ body so he can bury his face in the junction between Stiles’ neck and shoulderblade. He breathes in deeply, just to make Stiles laugh. “So,” Stiles says after a moment. “Werewolves.” “It’s a thing,” Derek murmurs sleepily. Stiles chokes on a laugh. “Yeah, I realize that now. I just, I don’t know why I expected anything different. We live in a world where giant aliens attack every few weeks through a trans-dimensional portal at the bottom of the Pacific, why wouldn’t werewolves exist?” “Vampires too. And witches.” Derek growls. The Darach wasn’t the same as a witch, but ever since Jennifer, he’s been a little sensitive about people who can use magic. Stiles huffs out a little breath of disbelief and shifts underneath him, maneuvering Derek and himself so that Derek’s sprawled out on top of him, their limbs comfortably slotted together. “I meant it when I said you were going to explain everything. I’ve seen a bit, enough to know that your life was complete shit until you met me, but I, uh—” he hesitates, carding his fingers through Derek’s hair. His heartbeat is faltering as Stiles himself becomes nervous. It worries Derek, a little bit, because after seeing him with fangs and bright red eyes, he’d thought that nothing would phase Stiles. Stiles notices, because of course he does, and pauses long enough to roll his eyes and slap Derek’s shoulder before continuing. “I kind of want to know everything about you,” Stiles finishes in a shy, quiet murmur, reaching down to lock their fingers together. Warmth floods Derek’s chest and he— he has to actually bury his nose back into Stiles’ neck and breathe for a second before he can uncurl the emotion from around his heart. “And I— I want you to know everything about me,” he confesses. Stiles kisses him, happy noises stifled at the back of his throat, and keeps kissing him until Derek’s lips are numb from it. After, Derek tells him. He tells him everything. . In 2017, the Los Angeles Shatterdome officially opens, which means that they’re allowed to move back up the coast, away from Lima and finally go home. California hasn’t been the same since that first attack on San Francisco. It’s emptier now, the big cities almost eerie at night. But it is home — even if Los Angeles is eight hours south of Beacon Hills. It’s nothing like Peru, and he realizes that he’d missed this, the smells of his home state. He wants to take a trip up north, maybe stop by Beacon Hills and see the old place, visit a dozen or so graves, maybe see what Isaac is up to. Maybe he can even convince him to come back with him or give up on being human and go integrate with Cora’s old pack. He tells Stiles as much, when they’re sitting in a mess hall that still smells overwhelmingly of pain, and is rewarded with a bright grin. “That’s a great idea, Der-bear,” he chirps, a hunk of salami tumbling out of his mouth. “I’d say we can all go, but one team would have to stay here, in case of an attack.” Scott looks a little bummed out at that, the ecstatic expression that had been crossing his face quickly vanishing. On Scott’s other side, Melissa snorts. “Don’t be stupid, boys.” Stilinski, who has warmed up to him immensely in the last few months, smirks at them as he takes a vicious bite of the salad Stiles had forced on him. “Mel and I can handle things here,” he confirms. It’s still a bit weird, how they’re all so drift compatible. Derek has seen Stiles go out with Scott and even on one memorable occasion, Melissa herself, so he knows that they all work just as well in any number of combinations. Derek has drifted with Stiles twice more since they rescued Scott and Melissa last year, and each time has been better than the last. Pentecost is already making noises about there being a permanent partner switch in the making, since Derek still has issues drifting with anyone who doesn’t have a last name of Stilinski. (He’d drifted once with Stiles’ father, a few months previous when Stiles was in the infirmary with, of all things, the flu. It was an experience, and after, he hadn’t been able to look Stilinski in the face for hours, but they’d worked well together. Not as well as he and Stiles, but better than anyone else Derek had worked with. “Never again,” Stilinski had murmured, fresh out of the drift. He looked at Derek, face tinged slightly green, and patted him on the back. “I’m sorry, son. We work well together, but there are just some things that I never, ever want to know about my son.” Derek had blanched, and well, that was that.) “You three go on your roadtrip,” Melissa continues, giving them a warm smile. “Get your mind off of things and when you come back, we’ll be waiting for you.” . They go on their roadtrip a few months later. They’d wanted to go earlier, but Pentecost had had things for them to do, paperwork to sign, the first of which being a partner transferral form. They’d both asked Stiles’ dad about it before they’d signed, and he’d just given them this look, like he’d known this was going to happen since the moment he caught them sitting together at a conference. He’s a backup now, for either Scott, Melissa, or Derek, and that’s apparently okay with him. Him and Stiles have started sharing each other’s clothes, scents mixing together into something new the more they drift. It drives Derek crazy, makes him desperate with want, and after, more often than not, Derek will press Stiles down into their sheets and sink back onto his cock, riding him until Stiles is desperate and gasping beneath him, smelling of Derek and sex alone. So they go on their road trip a little later than planned and they all bicker hopelessly over radio stations the entire drive up, but it’s worth it because Derek runs, for the first time in years, through the forest he was born in, snapping playfully at Scott and Isaac’s heels. Stiles is somewhere behind them, walking now that the initial thrill of the chase has worn off. He oozes contentment, which is enough to make Derek circle back, rub up against his legs and whine until Stiles laughs and pets him. “I want this to last forever,” Stiles confesses, sprawled backwards against a tree trunk later that night. He smells of damp leaves and soil, like Derek, because of the henley he’s got clinging loosely to his shoulders. They’re watching Isaac and Scott, who’d taken instantly to each other, play tag past the treeline of the clearing they’re in and Derek’s back in his human skin again, sprawled between Stiles’ thighs. “Me too,” Derek tells him, watching through slanted eyes as Cora leaps out of nowhere and tackles Isaac to the ground. He’s content, surrounded by pack — not all wolves, but family — and rumbles his approval when Stiles scratches his nails against Derek’s scalp. “Yeah, me too.”