good for your age
ao3!
i have not watched teen wolf in 3 years (including the finale) but i’ll be damned if i’m not still invested. so like. here have some vague future sterek that conveniently avoids any mention of the last 5 seasons of mythology
Stiles learned to believe, sometime in his childhood, that things didn’t die. They just went dormant. His mom would forget his name again, no matter how easily it had come to her today. He would have another panic attack, no matter how deep he felt like he could breathe right now. Another boy would make him blush and stutter, no matter how in love with Lydia he felt this week.
There were some exceptions to this rule. Good things, mostly. Good things could die and be buried and stay there.
He believed this at sixteen, when Scott nearly died of being an actual werewolf. When he lost the ability to confide in his dad or in Scott’s mom. In any of the people, really, that he’d slowly allowed himself to depend on after his mother’s death made everyone he loved look fragile. A supernatural best friend was fun until he realized that he had no reason to believe the crises would ever stop. This was life, now, narrowly avoiding death until you were too tired to fight much.
Stiles was exhausted, but he still felt young. When Derek Hale appeared near-silently from the woods, his body reacted in every way it possibly could, and that felt right for a kid. Was he turned on? Pissing himself? Having a panic attack? Later, in Stiles’ room, Scott threw a hacky sack at Stiles’ head to get his attention. “I forgot Derek was even around, dude. Are we sure the Hale fire didn’t happen, like, fifty years ago or something?”
Stiles, who had not been getting anywhere on the research, threw it back. “Yeah, sure, Derek Hale is sixty. He just looks really good for his age.”
He believed this at twenty-two, curled into himself on the couch in Derek’s new apartment. Derek’s world had always been full of things that rested in his veins, waiting to wake up again; Derek understood. The lives of werewolves did not do much to disabuse him of the idea that bad things, bad people, bad selves were patiently milling just out of sight, ready to duck back into his life.
The couch was one of the few things that made it to each of Derek’s new homes. It was almost definitely a biohazard, which only meant that Stiles could lie down on it covered in blood and guts and Derek couldn’t get mad. From its home in this apartment, he could see Derek looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. The couch, the cramped space-- Derek didn’t bother living anywhere all that nice when their lives were like this. Derek was also covered in dirt and blood and probably a second person’s blood. “Looking at himself” was really a generous term, Stiles thought. It looked more like a staring contest.
It hadn’t been the worst or the easiest day. He found himself more than once wandering through hallways in a hunter’s lair alone, listening for the echoes of a fight that he could hardly get involved in. Listening for Derek’s screams or howls or even his last breath. Stiles knew somehow that he would be able to hear that. Instead, he had rounded a corner to come toe-to-toe with Derek. His heart nearly gave out.
Derek looked up, made eye contact with Stiles through the mirror. Something thrummed through him, bright and hot, like a match finally catching. That was another something that he thought would probably never really die. Derek laughed, somewhat hysterically, and Stiles forgot to feel hurt by it. “How long have we been doing all of this for?” Derek said, plucking at the ruined t-shirt on his torso. “It has to be at least a century.”
“Definitely,” Stiles said, hazarding a smile back. “You know, you look really good for your age.”
At forty, Stiles might believe other things. He hasn’t really tested it out yet. But some of the most familiar bad things have quieted. His last panic attack had been about driving in the snow, but now it was September, and he couldn’t remember if it had happened last winter or two winters ago. Beacon Hill didn’t get a lot of snow, so it must have been a ski Christmas, which-- he can’t remember when they were supposed to go to the mountains next.
He hooks his chin over Derek’s shoulder, staring with him at the sleeping computer screen. In the blackness, he can see their reflections. Derek looks the way he does just after waking up-- bewildered, fond, like the first thing he knows about the world is loving Stiles. Derek makes a vague questioning noise. Stiles forgets what he came into the office for, adjusting slightly so that Derek’s glasses aren’t stabbing into his temple. “Whatcha lookin’ at?” Stiles asks, wiggling his eyebrows at Derek in their reflection.
“I think I’m old,” Derek replies. He doesn’t have crow’s feet, exactly, but the suggestion is there. Stiles can see a few silver hairs over Derek’s ears.
“You’re not even close to fifty yet,” Stiles points out, draping his arms over Derek’s shoulders to take some of the pressure off his back.
Derek looks at him apprehensively. “I don’t know why it feels weird,” he says. “I think for most of my life I just didn’t think I’d get to be much older.”
They have that in common. Sometimes Stiles sees himself in the mirror and is surprised he lasted long enough to get a little pudge around his stomach, to get smile lines. He’d been certain for so long that he was meant to die as a bundle of skin and bones and buzzcut.
Stiles angles sideways just enough to kiss Derek’s cheek, right where it joins his left ear.
Derek understands the unspoken request and turns his head enough to be kissed. This has changed both massively and not at all. Derek reaches instinctively to cup Stiles’ shoulder, and Stiles remembers how Derek used to place his hands uncertainly all over Stiles’ back, never sure how to get him closest. Derek catches Stiles’ bottom lip in his teeth, just slightly, and Stiles kisses him deeper, tongue sliding briefly and promisingly against Derek’s. He is sure Derek remembers clashing teeth, accidentally drawing blood, knocking heads into walls. But Derek tastes exactly the same, under chapstick or rain or red wine or soot. He feels the same, too, solid and definite and giving.
Stiles kisses him once more, open-mouthed, just to make sure, before he pulls back. Derek’s glasses are slightly askew, so he straightens them. Stiles isn’t breathing heavily. “You look good for your age,” Stiles says.
He closes his eyes, and opens them, and Derek is still there, and Stiles knew he would be.
