Stiles thinks about the times when, all too often, he himself says I'm good in that particular way, and thinks about how it actually means everything in his life is currently lighting up like a dropped match landing in a trail of gasoline.
In the space of a single heartbeat, he knows he would somehow harness the contents of an entire fucking lake to dampen down that metaphorical trail for Derek, murdering the thought of the lost little boy playing Hide-Go-Seek in Derek's pale eyes.
Only he isn't about to start talking about things being on fire. Not to Derek, not ever.
Instead he says, “I always had this rule, you know, where I’d flat out ignore a problem and wait for it to—and I used to swear to myself that this would actually happen—” His lips drag themselves up one side of his face as he sweeps an arm dramatically through the drizzling rain and the pressing twilight. “—just go away.”
He then allows his arm to fall unceremoniously to his side, and the sound of hand slapping khakis rings out through the sparse and quiet branches of the preserve's stripped bare trees.
“Okay.” Derek says the word with an infinitesimal shake of his head, looking as if he wants Stiles to stop talking.
Thing is, if Derek wanted Stiles to stop talking he would say Stiles, stop talking.
“And it kind of worked, a little bit. For a little while, at least. ” He takes a hit of chilly November air. Releases it slowly, enjoying the crazy plume of breath-smoke it creates. “Until I met you,” he shrugs.
Derek blinks and it's a betrayal, giving away his hard-won secrets.
Stiles briefly wonders who else—who left in the world—would know this about the werewolf standing opposite of him. Stiles doesn't need to be a ʼwolf to know this stuff, not when it comes to Derek Hale.
He tries not to look at Derek's lips when Derek licks them before asking, “What are you talking about, Stiles?”
“Magick,” he answers, his feelings and other things shifting underneath the layers of his skin, crackling away like a hundred tiny Roman Candles traversing his bloodstream and manifesting as gooseflesh.
Rolling his hoodie sleeve, he lifts a cold hand between the two of them and allows a miniscule fraction of whatever beats like a heart at the earth's core to flow up through the ground and into his feet and up his legs and down an arm, warm and thrilling, to then spring free out of his right palm.
A small sphere of pure light around the size of a tennis ball now glows about an inch above his hand, kind of like an oversized firefly—and just as alive.
“Cool as fuck, huh?” Stiles mutters, basking in its incandescence, super-proud of himself. Then he gets to his point. “Deaton showed me how to harness my spark, yeah? But I would never have found it in the first place, if you hadn't followed Scott and I into the woods that day.”
Derek blinks again. His jaw ticks like a clock.
“Stiles, that's a little like saying one, two miss a few, ninety-nine, a hundred,” he deadpans, and Stiles can't help but bark out a laugh.
Then he steels himself for one anticipatory moment before daring himself to take a step closer to Derek.
“Doesn't make it any less true,” Stiles shrugs.
Derek just stares at him for a moment, before peering down properly at Stiles's little orb, for the first time since Stiles summoned it.
“You've been practising,” he says simply, his eyebrows doing their thing.
He's now staring at Stiles's effort as if he wants to sink his fangs into it, like you would a quarter to test if it's real.
“Is it freaking you out?” Stiles asks.
“No,” he answers flatly. “I think it's cool as fuck,” and he looks up at Stiles like he might want to keep looking.
Stiles wants him to never stop.
“Then here, you can have it,” he says.
He takes another step closer to Derek.
They are toe to toe, now, and still Derek doesn't bolt, nor pounce, nor warn Stiles off.
So, Stiles—really slowly—reaches for Derek's hand.
Stiles then transfers the light to Derek's palm, cupping his hand around Derek's to ensure it keeps hovering there. He directs their hands to Derek's chest, stopping right over his heart and flattening them both there, he and Derek watching as Stiles's spark dissipates into Derek's body, leaving behind a few wispy tendrils of light that Stiles guides back into himself with a couple of waves of his free hand.
“Now, whenever you're good, I can be right there being good with you, even if I'm not around,” Stiles says, and then he hopes and hopes when he asks, “Is that okay?”
Derek smiles, and it's the first truly happy-looking smile Stiles has been privileged enough to witness blooming on that beautifully angled face of his.
“It's better than okay, Stiles,” he says. “It's magick.”
unedited, soz! this is for @dontcallpanic (pip knows why) <3
...edited version now found HERE on ao3 if you want to drop me a comment xp
