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Chapter Text

'Oh my fuck, werewolves' is the thought flooding Stiles' mind, throwing him out of himself enough so that his opponent - what was the fucker's name here? - has the space to hook a leg behind Stiles’ ankle and pull his legs out from under him. Stiles is too far gone to recover, the thought of werewolves pounding in his head as he hits the floor.

Stiles tries to focus his thoughts on the sound of the wood as his body slams down, picturing the "POW" and "BANG" from the old Batman show. He wonders if he should watch a few episodes again. He sort of misses it.

Around him, the other students are laughing. They should be. He deserves it for falling, for not rolling, for not shifting back and away. For not bloody moving.

But fuck. Werewolves. Not really something he can push away.

A hand is reaching down to pull him up. He stares at it a moment. Blinking and hesitant. This is why he normally forces himself to jump straight back up. To avoid any helping hands. Really though. In this instance, to resist would be futile. Because. Werewolves. His brain is on a loop. The word repeating, the idea of fur thrilling.

How did he not know?

He reaches trembling fingers, allows the guy to grasp his arm, pull, force him to his feet and clasp him briefly on the back, fingers dragging light across his shoulder before stepping back and moving out of the roda. Five seconds. It takes all of five seconds.

But for those five there was solid, grasping contact and Stiles had gotten in. Seen.

He knows that the corner of his left eye is twitching as he moves around the circle, taking a place among the standing, shifting bodies. Feet stamping, hands clapping in a synchronized rhythm. The next two are already playing, taunting one another and flipping in and out of one another's space.

Stiles breaths and replays those five seconds. So much information. He contemplates taking off, just slipping away to try and sort through it. It's usually easy to sort. But normally he has reference. As much as no one ever believes him when he tells them ‘I get what you’re going through,’ he really does understand what its like to be hormonal from a menstrual cycle. Knows what it feels like to be angry with family, miss a sister, be frustrated with work.

But he's never felt the call of the moon on his skin before. Doesn't have a comparison for the feeling of every bone breaking within a moment as muscles bulge with the change. Stiles’ hands twitch, the phantom memory of forming claws making his fingers itch, nails curl, blunt and short into his palms. He runs his tongue over his teeth just to be sure they're still dull. The sensation of needing to check is new. He loves new.

Stiles really wants to know more.

Stiles glances over at the guy, Pijama maybe? Something cute.

The guy looks back at him, eyebrows lifting up. A little like a crowbar. Stiles grins. He loves how ridiculous the look is, adores the pull of the tank-top across the guy's chest. The guy’s pretty. Built in a way that speaks to lots of care, but then almost everyone here is. Usually are with a capoeira group at this level. Stiles has his own muscle definition to be proud of. Although he knows what it's like to move four hundred pounds of flesh on two, tiny ankles.

The person to Stiles left shifts, her bare shoulder briefly bumping his. He gets a flash of thrilled excitement mixed with exhaustion. Her mind twisting her body in a mirror of the guy playing in the center.

It's normal. Easy to discard. Stiles doesn't register it, let's the thoughts go.

The circle moves. One of the drummers is standing and Stiles moves to take her place, taking her rhythm. The woman nods her thanks, moves to the circle, signals in and swings in low and fluid before turning a backflip. Show-offs, every one of them here.

Stiles glances at the guy again, finds eyes on him, expression puzzled. He can see the guy inhaling deeply, wonders if his sense of smell is good enough to pick him out through all of these perspiring bodies. What with everyone dripping on each other there must be a mess of sensation. Maybe that’s why the guy comes.

Stiles wants to touch him again to find out.

He's staring, he knows it and Lydia's noticed. Is glancing over at him with narrowed eyes. He's looked at her thoughts enough times to know he's in trouble. Knows that she's going to interrogate him and inevitably draw correct conclusions. That woman didn't need to read people's innermost thoughts to figure them out. Had certainly read him easily enough in grade school.

So he ignores her, grins at the guy again. Lets a bit of teeth flash for the hell of it. The guy seems. Intrigued. Hard to say from here. He doesn't know the guy well enough. Five seconds gave a lot, but not nearly everything. Just enough to know that he'd registered as human when they'd entered the roda. Seemed odd at the time, but passing surface thoughts so often do.

Chapter Text

The roda ends in laughter, clapping, stamping. Everyone moving toward the changing rooms or pulling open backpacks and bags on the wooden chairs. A few are yanking their cords from their waists, pulling off their white, loose pants and changing into skirts in the training room.

Stiles lets himself be swept along toward the changing room, breathing through the mass. The stretches, the last few kicks thrown, back flips executed to shake out any kinks. People are spreading out on the ground, legs extended at strange angles, some stretched across each other's backs. The room is still vibrating.

Lydia appears next to him, catching his eye before letting a manicured finger brush against the back of his hand, placing a tidy package of a question into his brain. Asking just what he'd seen.

Not words. She knows him too well for that, is too experienced with his particular forms of communication.

She'd taken him apart as a child and reassembled him after all. Herself as well.

She knows that words can detract from meaning, change it. She's practiced how to ask a complete question, transmit the feeling, reasoning, full idea as a succinct package with the brush of a finger.

Here is the sense of curiosity wrapping around the face of the guy. A crude flash of interrogation regarding attraction, a hint of supposition of what Stiles' might have seen. All positive, the sight of Stiles' smile. It can't have been bad. Just unexpected. Enough to be interesting.

And oh, how Lydia loves interesting. She wants to know in a manner similar to her desire for a cup of coffee in the morning.

Lydia's arching brow is just the punctuation at the end of the thought.

Stiles grins behind his hand and shakes his head. Can't really try and tell her here. He doesn't know how well the guy can hear. The memory of the depth, the shading of sounds is still making his ear-drums ache in sympathy.

He wishes again that he could give as much as he got. He wants to share. But, not a possibility. No matter how many psi points they tried, meditation methods, or dream trips. Stiles is no Vulcan.

All he can ever do is try to say what he means. He glances at his hands, makes a twitchy clawing movement and gushes, breathless, "remember your fifth grade costume?"

Her index and middle finger press against his arm, over the pulse just below his elbow. Images of a red cloak, a tiny Lydia, more wolf than girl even as she'd clutched her wicker basket. He moves his head in one short negation to the left. Lydia's eyes narrow, her thoughts shifting smoothly, changing tracks, turning little girls into monstrous cartoon wolves accompanied by songs about big bads. Singers howling about being everything a wolf could want.

Stiles snickers, knows the smile on his face is becoming manic, stretching too wide for polite company.

Lydia's eyes flicker over Stiles' shoulder. Her hand smoothly reaches up, pats his arm just once, an image of the guy standing behind him. Fascination dripping from her mind. She'll see him at work tomorrow.

Her desire for him to find out more clings to his own, coating it, strengthening it.

Stiles blows out a breath, nods to himself. Shrugs. Nods again. And follows the broad back of a werewolf into the changing room. He just has to figure out how to ask really leading questions about something he isn't really supposed to know about, or figure out how to maintain extended physical contact with a werewolf.

Stiles takes a moment to ground himself and pushes open the door.

The guy's already gone. Of course he's gone.

Chapter Text

Lydia is looking across the playground at Stiles, her eyes boring into his under-sized body. He's barely large enough to make the bottom 10 % of normal for his age-range. He leans on the word 'normal', trying to make it swallow him whole, escape the feeling that he is an exciting anomaly. Because Lydia is staring at him, eyes cutting. Stiles thinks she might dissect him alive, watch his heart beat in his cracked chest, not loosing a strand of control as she does it.

He looks away. Thinks maybe she'll loose interest if he looks pathetic. He's not sure how, but he thinks that might be his normal state anyhow. He looks up.

She's still watching him, her perfect hair moves in gentle waves down past her jaw as she moves her head just so while other little-girl's hair flow wild from running on the play ground. Sitting, ankles crossed, white tights and Mary-Janes completing a delicate picture covering an iron core. Spider's silk woven delicately over a sharp interior. A core of gnashing teeth, a black hole that will spit him out as bits so shredded they might not count as matter anylonger.

The playground seems wide, the teachers too far away to find quickly, for all that they tower over the students. Lydia is standing, brushing off her skirt, walking over to him. He's the pinned bug on the cork-board and he wishes he could grow wings to fly away. Like his mother used to imagine when she hugged him, her thoughts focusing on flowers blooming and wings flapping. Clouds dotting the sky. Once an apple cake.

His mother never quite succeed in covering everything underneath the steady beat of wings. He's just never been an apple cake, doesn't personally know what it's like to bloom and her distractions never stopped him from intimately experiencing the rounds of chemo with her. Stiles has lived sinking despair just barely buoyed by the need to appear strong for a loved one.

Stiles snack is spread in front of him, his hand frozen around a carefully selected raison, the one that's just about the right size to be θ Sco in his snack-sculpture of the constellation Scorpio. His picture's tail of raisons is already swinging out behind its scorpion body.

He isn't moving, except for the press of his lungs in his chest. He's not sure his heart is beating. He is sure he's looking, frozen as Lydia walks over. She stops in front of him and deliberately holds up two fingers. His eyes catch on the press of the middle finger against the index, wonders if she could possibly mean that lovely fuck-off that he's seen in those British shows his next door neighbor watched as a child. But for that she would have to turn her hand, have the back of her hand to him, to mean those vile words he's not supposed to say. And Lydia doesn't make mistakes.

He's still frozen, terrified. Eyes follow those two fingers down as Lydia sets their tips deliberately on the back of his hand. In his confusion, he forgets to flinch away.

There's the immediate rush. Her violent curiosity, her drive, her demand to overrun and rule. He's an experiment, a specimen, a fly in vinegar.

Except the fly is Lydia and expectations are crushing. S/he's an empty frame, trying to fill herself in with bits and pieces. Parents, teachers, friends keep pulling her found bits away from her, leaving her empty again.

And she wants. Wants in a way that burns. To see if Stiles can understand her. To see if someone who understands her can still like her.

She wants Styles to know her plans, to see them upfront. To be aware that Lydia wants him to see her inside and out, to experiment on her in equal measure to her plans for testing him.

The flood is laced with her concern about what this looks like to other people. If she should sneer and move back. He sees her anxiety that this isn't going to work. The emotion crushed under the pleasure of a soft pink room. Colors selected to mirror the sunrise because her room faces West and she rarely gets to see those flushed shades.

A lighter shade than her cheeks after speaking with her mother. Than the angry blush that infused her skin as her mother glanced at her and sighed about disappointments. An explanation that she must never cry except as another tool. Such a slip of composure should only be permitted when the gain would be greater than the loss.

A drop of vinegar had fallen in the cream that she her mother used every morning for her coffee. A vicious spike of pleasure as her mother spits her coffee, disgusted, looking temporarily inelegant. Composure lost with no gain.

She's been watching their class, trying to figure out what it means to be a good girl, a good daughter, a good student. There isn't one answer, everyone reacting differently to her actions. Only so much she can control in this tiny, awkward body. She's putting on a show, tightening control, staying composed. An act. The world is a stage and she's supposed to be manipulating it but she doesn't know all the rules yet.

Lyda wants Stiles to see her. Anyone to see her. Not just the image. She wants to be seen, understood. Liked nonetheless. Despite the fact she's vicious and mean, regardless of the fact she's pretty.

Stiles blinks and looks back at her, knows that his mouth is slightly open as she pushes her thoughts at him, the edges of what she wants to convey bleeding association of passing thoughts. Brain moving too fast to exclude the extra connections.

She lifts her fingers. Her eyes bore into his.

Stiles in gulping for air, grasping after implications, attempting to find the meaning in this for him. Trying to push her aside in his head and find himself. To remember that his mother loved him. Loved. Loved enough to think of birds and supernovas while her body ate itself from the inside out, as the radiation burned through her. She never touched him to show disapproval.

The strength of Lydia's desire to be seen is overwhelming. It's pressing against the he that is him. The emotion, the need is clogging his throat. His eyes move to hers and he smiles, feels the corners of his mouth lifting, offering her what she showed him she craved. The circles of reasoning, of separating the him and her is making him dizzy, but the feeling of being wanted is just as enticing. And he's curious. So curious where this road might take him.

It's new and Stiles loves new things.

Chapter Text

The guy is standing outside, leaning against the building's wall, bag slung over his shoulder, air of impatient inattention. Stiles can imagine him listening to heartbeats, smelling the air. Searching without his eyes.

He turns toward Stiles, too abrupt for it to be anything but intentional, not with eyes immediately searching his out. Stiles stops just outside the door, just to the left, just out of everyone’s way.

Stiles figures that there was the answer about the smells. The guy must have his. It will make it harder to run and hide on the off chance he suddenly feels the need. He wonders if a smell is something you forget. He feels like there was something he read once about smells in humans sticking for ages, but who knows what extends to anyone else.

Stiles twitches his fingers against his thigh, still staring. He toys with the idea of trying to pretend to accidentally bump the guy. Doesn’t think he could make it look like an accident. And a bump won't be enough to get what he wants. What Lydia wants.

To get that, he'll have to maintain contact. Lean in. Hold a hand again.

Stiles' fingers itch at the thought, the phantom feeling of claws clinging inside his knuckles.

There are trees around them, flushed yellow with the onset of cold, ready to drop. The crumpled brown remains of their fallen breather litter the ground. Rotted. Pungent for a human nose.

Stiles' skin prickles. He wants to lean forward and touch the guy, know what the day smells like to him. To someone who can really smell, without the limitations of a human nose.

It might take a lifetime to sort through all the differences in the sensations.

It's having an entire new language presented to you. A new branch of science. And complete understanding is offered. If only you’ll reach out and touch.

The guy is moving toward him, stopping too close, Stiles wants to twitch back, away. He’s conscious of a spike of fear. The guy’s within easy touching range. Stiles' fingers spasm around the straps of his own bag.

Stiles forces himself to look at the guy's face instead of stare at his hands. It doesn’t help and Stiles images placing his fingers along those cheek bones.

Lydia once cursed him for not being more like a Vulcan. Berated him for supposedly having the kinks but not the skills. She had been so disappointed about the psi points.

Breath in and out. Stiles feels like he's back in the roda, having to dodge and weave. He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't really think he should voice his questions straight out.

The guy is staring. Stiles thinks he might be listening to the pattern of his heartbeat. He tries to pull together what he's already seen to find the most likely answer.

There's a pause. A delay. A gap in speech. Some form of communication that Stiles' doesn't understand, knows he's missing the cues. He's terrible at reading people, second-guesses himself too often to be right. Relies too much on reading their thoughts.

The guy breaks Stiles' spiral of uncertainly with "Coffee?"

"Yes" Stiles breathes the word, brain filling with the taste, the smell, the love of it. There was a barista once who hated coffee. Cringed internally whenever he had to make a cup. Another who loved it so much she would hug the bags of beans, trying to imprint the smell on herself, draw it in so deep she could call it back up wherever she was.

The guy is turning, walking. Stiles follows absently, words spilling out of his mouth about the feel of running his hand through fresh French roast beans, the color a deep brown-black. The process of roasting. The guy doesn't seem inclined to respond, seems to be watching for something. Waiting for something. He keeps glancing at Stiles, the crinkle of his eyes makes Stiles wonder if he's confused. A lot of people find Stiles confusing.

The guy’s stopping, hand going to Stiles' shoulder draws Stiles up short. Jerks him out of his own thoughts of coffee and into the guy's. Derek. The name is all over his brain. But right now it’s the coffee that the guy is thinking about on the surface. Stiles is something to be examined, but after coffee. Over coffee. There needs to be coffee.

The guy loves the smell of coffee. Loves this particular place's coffee beans, how the strength of the smell of the roasters wraps around him, warm like a sunbeam of smell. It drowns and suffocates, suffuses and clings. The notes of the beans like a rainbow.

Stiles is inhaling, breath syncing with Derek's.

Derek's thoughts are strong, grounding. Stiles thinks his focus on food, his emphasis on the detail of it make the content of Derek's brain delicious. Hunger consuming, thoughts of steak, of rosemary. The depth of the taste makes Stiles wonder if werewolves have extra taste-buds to go with the sensitive hearing and heightened vision. Or, if the improvement is a matter of the neural receptors. The part of Stiles’ brain infused with Lydia wants to test it.

For now, Derek is a steady thrum of thoughts of Stiles and food mixing. The remembered taste of coffee warring with possible marinades.

"Cranberry compote" Stiles breaths out, thinking of the steak's flavor complimented by the tart fruit. He flushes as the guy's thoughts turn curious. The wrinkle of the eyes is definitely confusion now. He thinks Stiles is odd. But he's nudging Stiles forward, toward the door. Hand falls from Stiles' shoulder and Stiles' feels the loss. The phantom taste of the steak dissipating. Stiles wants to demand if there would have been potatoes or soda bread.

He focuses on the immediacy of coffee instead. Lets Derek place his expected order at the counter, adds his own coffee and two bowls of navy bean soup. Snorts to himself as he starts thinks that it wouldn't do to sit across from a hungry werewolf.

Stiles carefully, 'accidentally', brushes their arms together as he digs in his bag for his wallet.

Stiles is a puzzle. Attractive. Interesting. Bizarre. Confusing. Possibly worth taking to dinner. His teeth are nice. Why did he flash his teeth earlier?

Stiles has to move away again. Disappointed. Lydia's sharp, even after years of contact. Her mind like an explosion of light and information. He once tried to describe it to her as a super nova. Stiles can't say at the moment what Derek mind is like, just that he likes it in the same sort of way he learned from that one guy to love warm baths with rosemary oil. He wonders if it's constantly like that, or if the result of the day's earlier games.

He wants to grab Derek and hold on. Look at the full range of thoughts and emotions. He wants to understand Derek like he gets Lydia. And he wonders, for a moment almost desperately, if the desire will be fleeting, or if this one will last.

He pushes that idea away.

The soup is warm, hearty, sage flavoring the beans. Onions drawing the taste down. Stiles talks absently, isn't thinking about his words, focusing instead on trying to meet skin with skin. He manages, steals Derek's napkin from under his arm in favor of the one sitting right next to his own bowl.

Derek's thoughts are following his words, underscored by opinions on the texture and balance of the food, colored with undertones of curiosity of just what Stiles is trying to do with his napkin. But its the smell of the soup rounding in his nose, flushed with rock salt that gets Stiles. The soup’s vegan, but Derek briefly wonders what would happen if bacon were added. His mind supplies the possibility of the taste. The added smoke, the pleasure of the fat.

Stiles' words falter, he bites his lips around a moan at the rush of possible flavor even as he tugs ineffectually at the napkin. Derek's eyes flicker pointedly to Stiles' own napkin. Stiles withdraws his hand in disappointment. Pathetically using his own napkin to wipe his clean mouth. As if that had been his goal all along.

Food finished, bowls and coffee cups clutter the table. Stiles' one-sided conversation lulls. Derek hands rest loose around his own cup, he's watching Stiles with what might be curiosity but he still has yet to say much of anything. Stiles is staring at his hands again, his eyes trailing up his arm, following the lines of his bones. He doesn't know what to do with Derek's missing words, doesn't know how to move the conversation to what he wants to know if Derek doesn't fucking-say-anythign. He wants to touch.

Derek asks him to dinner instead. Next week.

Chapter Text

There are moments when Stiles is reaching out to touch someone, when his fingers are hovering with intent, that he thinks about his dad. What his dad would say about his choices. Whether he would level a disapproving frown or shrug in unconcern.

The memory of his dad’s frown usually makes him pull back.

He hadn’t thought about that frown over coffee, too consumed by the person in front of him.

But he’s thinking about that frown now as he tosses his sweat-soaked, pungent capoeira clothes into the washing machine, throws in a few towels to finish off the load. He pauses as he’s about the add soap. The label of liquid detergent declares that its “Spring Breeze!”, shows a field of daisies on the bottle. He lifts it to his nose and inhales. The smells mix with his impressions from Derek. The guy would hate the scent. Would think the chemical undertones too astringent.

Stiles taps his foot against the side of the washing machine. He doesn’t have anything else and doesn’t really want to head back out. His muscles are stinging from the earlier exertion and he’s hungry again. Left over Chinese in the kitchen is calling, a steady hymn in the back of his brain. The wash could wait, but it seems like a bad idea to put it off, given his status as a master level procrastinator. Lydia had made him an embossed certificate once that still hung proudly in the kitchen.

Cringing internally, Stiles adds the soap, turns the machine on and closes the French door that so sweetly hides the washing machine and gathering of dust bunnies from prying eyes. Heading to the kitchen, he digs his phone from his back pocket and rings his dad while pulling the slightly grimy containers of leftovers from the top shelf of his refrigerator and tossing them in the microwave. His haphazard movements add to the splatter on the interior. Duck sauce joining tomato spots.

His dad picks up with his usual “Stiles” and Stiles breathes in, savoring his voice for a second before answering. The microwave dings and Stiles launches into a flurried description of his day while pulling out chopsticks and inhaling mouthfuls of drunken noodles and bits of duck.

He’d promised his dad, after all, that he would always think twice about relationships, that he would run his crazy ideas by him. So he tells him at length about capoeira, about werewolves, about coffee complimented by navy-bean soup. He finishes off his story and his noodles with a commentary on his own laundry soap.

As far as Stiles knows – and this is the kind of thing he knows a lot about – his dad and Lydia have only two primary points in common: namely their love of him and their immediate belief in what he says (there are lots of little ones, like their shared love of fresh tomatoes).

Lydia had believed him at the studio (and did he need to call her later. She was probably already planning on coming over), and his dad believed him now. He did, however, ask the completely and totally understandable question “You’re sure he’s not crazy and just believes he’s a werewolf?”

Stiles considers, because what his dad says is always worth a moment’s reflection. “It would have to be a pretty complete delusion. There aren’t any breaks or fugues like there are with most hallucinations.”

“And you’d be safe with him?”

Stiles smiles, runs his toes across the kitchen floor tiles, “As safe as with anyone I don’t know well. Nothing about him set off any alarms. Although, they seem to keep it pretty quiet.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you so enamored by anyone.”

“Dad. Dad. His brain is new! And it’s so pretty. I just want to dig my fingers in and hold on.”

“And you want to know my opinion.”

“Always. You’re my go-to-guy. My oracle. My shield in times of …” His dad interrupts with “Remember that he’s a person and not some new toy.”

Stiles huffs. Because wasn’t that just the crux of the matter.

“I’m serious Stiles” the Sheriff continued. “Is this a person you like, you want to get to know, or is he just some body wrapped around experiences you want to feel?”

Stiles nods at the air, pushes away from the counter and tosses his containers in the trash. He’s quiet for a moment, fidgeting, starting to wipe down the counters with one hand, phone plastered to his ear with the other.

His dad sighs, breath rattling mechanically in Stiles’ ear, “think about it son, before you do anything rash." He keeps going quickly, not giving Stiles a chance to start up. "Now, good talk. You go stew, hash things out with Lydia, and sleep on it while I go get some work done and try to reorient my world-view to include the existence of werewolves. I might get crazy and ask Melissa if she’s interested in a drink. Who knows.”

Stiles mouth tilts fondly. “Don’t tell anyone dad.”

His dad snorts something about being nuts and hangs up.

Chapter Text

Stiles' phone rings and Lydia is at the door, telling him to let her in. Stiles stumbles as he pulls his jeans on, his toe catching the hole in the knee, trying to move to the door before Lydia jimmies it open. She's not great on patience. Doesn't think she needs to wait, not for him.

Lydia dislikes any gap and distance. Does not like to live unheard. Sits with her foot resting against his calf, constantly leans his arm against his shoulder.

It's familiar now. Wasn't back when she started. When she was like a fire burning in his head. Back when she was angry. So angry. Like the girl in the song. The one he keeps hearing in his head and can't remember the title to. Doesn't know if it's because he heard someone else listening to it, or if it is his own ears that picked up the sound.

Lydia could have listened to it and it's unlikely he would know the difference. Her thoughts are almost an extension of his own. Like connecting up to an external hard drive that's been indexed on a main computer.

Her impulses and his are hard to separate. She sees conversation as manipulation. Has a rather Hammurabian code of ethnics.

He thinks he's softer than that, but he's not sure. Sometimes he wonders if Lydia's as hard as she is because Stiles made her that way.

Stiles knows that there's a reason the Sheriff still can't decide if he likes Lydia. Why the Sheriff was unsure from the minute she walked into his house and started painting Stiles in her colors. When the borders between the two children broke down and Stiles developed a taste for the kind of pink that flushed the sky at dawn.

Her values are so very different from the Sheriff's. But it's hard to see an enemy in a little girl clearly starved for affection.

But now. Stiles' hip hits the side table he stores his keys on when he's home as he dives for the door. As he throws the door open, his toe stubs against the door jam.

Lydia is standing there, scarf around her throat, her tips tightened. her toe's not tapping, but it could be. It would fit the image of impatience she presents.

She glides past him, brow lifting as he hops, jeans still unbuttoned and toe throbbing.

He doesn't need her to speak, to touch him, to know what she wants to ask. So he starts to talk, telling her everything he's seen, as he follows her back into his own apartment. As she pores herself a glass of the wine she keeps there in his cupboards. As she motions imperiously for him to sit and positions herself next to him, bare foot pressing against his as he continues.

She's the usual burst of information, of connections and flashes of insight. Her new theories of werewolves connecting to Stiles' own capabilities. Of types of transformations. Superhuman or alternative evolution. Dominant and recessive genes.

Stiles' grandmother had, after all, supposedly been able to tell what her son's were thinking with a touch. Four boys with a widowed mother to keep them out of trouble. A woman who, whenever she had found them in scrapes, would grab them by the backs of their necks and shake them.

One good shaking and somehow or another she knew exactly who'd done what. Who'd gotten into trouble. Who was trying out a lie or two. Her boys had learned not to even try. Learned that justice got served. Learned about mercy too.

Stiles' dad rarely talked about her. But every now and again would look at Stiles and remember. Would think about how Stiles would had the same smirk. The one that said he knew more than he was telling.

And the Sheriff wondered if his mother really had been able to read them with a shake. If so, why she'd never said a word about it. Not to him at least.

Stiles wondered too. Thought about trying to pull more information from his uncles. But then he never really saw much of them. They lived on the other side of forever ago and for Stiles figured predominately as young boys in his father's memories.

Lydia had written them off as unimportant, but clung to the grandmother theory as their best bet. Postulated that Stiles had presented a recessive gene. That perhaps it came from both sides of his family. She made educated guesses at possible spreads and gene pools given rumors and stories.

Then had let it go as an impossible chase. There hadn't been enough certain information to continue her study.

Now though. Now with the existence of werewolves. All those old theories and possibilities are resurfacing.

Chapter Text

The sun is sharp, but not warm. Too far away to actually make much of an impact at this time of year. Not with the planet tilted like it is.

Stiles is standing outside of a burger shop, rubbing his hands together in an effort to keep feeling in his fingers.

Derek had called. Had named a location, given a date. Placed the few words into Stiles' ear and Stiles had agreed that the location sounded awesome, the place intriguing. He'd told Derek that he had yet to try the burgers there, but was sure that they were great. That he felt confident that the meat would be of a superior quality and that the cows had not in fact died in vain but in fact contributed to the laudable quest for quality sustenance.

Derek had said "alright" and hung up, leaving Stiles to stare at his phone in annoyance.

Stiles had resented that the conversation hadn't taken place face to face. Felt like he wasn't sure what Derek had meant with that "alright". Or even about the date. Did the date have a significance? Stiles still wonders.

Stiles peers in through the door of . There are no white table clothes. Just wooden tables and chairs. Whenever someone tries to win Lydia, the guy-of-the-moment takes her to a place with table cloths. Perhaps it's a Lydia thing.

He doesn't feel like he has a handle on Derek's meaning. It's a constant niggling sensation whenever a conversation is limited to verbal interaction.

Stiles doesn't date for exactly this reason. He never feels like he has a handle on the other person. Feels like he's being too invasive when he tries.

Still. Derek hadn't actually said much and the basics had been clear. Time and place. Unless Stiles had heard wrong.

Stiles wonders if he heard wrong.

He tries to calm himself by looking around him. He's consumed for a moment by the ginko tree's yellow flush and the few red leaves left on the maple. Rich, decadent. Indecent. The intensity of the color makes Stiles feel unmoored. He shifts his feet.

The air is cold, getting colder. Stiles pulls his jacket closer, tighter, impatient. He thinks about going inside, ordering some coffee now. Trying to warm up his hands. He's lost his gloves and needs to buy a new pair. He kicks the ground and the resulting scuff slides in among the marks already covering his worn shoes. He stares at them, wonders if he should have worn newer ones.

A hand descends on Stiles' shoulder, jerking him away from his shoes as Derek's pinky brushes his neck over his scarf. The day abruptly warms, becomes about the smell of ground meat cooking on a grill. The sound of sizzling underneath the passing cars. A passing bike makes his ears buzz and grate for a moment. With the sounds, a flush of pleasure that Stiles is here, waiting. That he came at all.

And then Derek's hand is moving down his arm, over his jacket, pausing at his elbow to nudge him inside.

Stiles resists the urge to take Derek's hand. He's promised himself that he'll reign it in and not purposely touch. That he'll give Derek space. Try to remember that he's a person. An individual.

But, he decides as Derek pulls the door open for him and ushers him in, that doesn't mean that he'll stop Derek from touching him.

Derek doesn't touch him while they eat.

Stiles likes the food. It's excellent. High quality ground meat, grilled so that it's charred on the outside and just short of raw on the in. Fresh baby spinach, grilled shallots, homemade ketchup and sweet mustard. The olive oil brioche is has a lighter taste than it would have with butter.

And heavens. The freshly cut French fries with sea salt. Stiles wanted to cry when he tastes the first one.

But by the end of dinner, Stiles wants to crawl the wall. He thinks that Derek liked the meal. Derek says as much when Stiles asks, in that brief way of his, and his focused concentration while eating was impressive.

But Stiles also suspects that Derek got more from it than he did. That with sharper taste buds there was more there. And, even if there wasn't, Derek is still a different person. Which means that the associations would have been something else.

Stiles desperately wants to reach out and find out. He feels like the conversation over their coffee is too flat. Almost stale. Lacking the depth it could have. That words feel dry, re-cycled, in his mouth.

Derek asks for the check, pays, without asking Stiles if he wants more. Doesn’t him pay. Stiles isn’t sure if it’s a failure.

The entire thing is a disappointment. Stiles eyes slide away, wondering if this whole exercise was pointless.

And then Derek touches Stiles' hand, fingers dragging against the back of it, intending to draw Stiles' attention, wondering if Stiles is alright. Wondering why Stiles seems distracted tonight. He's flipping through possibilities of what is different. The memory of the food pleasant, Stiles presence across the table more important.

He's pausing, his fingers still resting on Stiles' knuckles, wondering why Stiles is suddenly so intent, staring at him now where he seemed unable to focus earlier.

Stiles leans forward.

Derek likes it, the intensity of the gaze. Stiles' focus on him. The wood under his arm and the feel of Stiles' hand under his. He's enjoying the moment.

Derek sits back and Stiles sighs, shoulders drooping.

Stiles is the one to suggest that they do it again.

Chapter Text

Stiles is bouncing on his toes, pivoting his hips to warm his muscles, get range in his kicks. Class hasn't started and his eyes keep moving to the door.

Derek isn't there. Keeps not being there. Presumably because he's somewhere that isn't here. Annoying, that.

It's been two weeks since that first meeting and they've shared only two dinners, the second only slightly less awkward than the first. But Derek has also been visiting the studio now and again. Playing nice with their mestre and helping out with the bi-weekly class.

And that is awesome. It's extra contact without the problem of constantly waffling on what he can say. Should say. Plus, added bonus, they play well together. Work well in each other's space, responding to physical queues and syncing rhythms.

Stiles frowns at the door and Lydia nudges him, touch a burst of mocking laughter. Also a warning, seconds before she kicks at him, forcing him to move. He ducks down in a crouch, swings a round kick from the ground in retaliation before moving into a backbend and flipping his legs over his head. He's back up, on his feet, and Derek is coming in the door, distracting him enough to allow the top of Lydia's foot to slam gently into his bared upper arm, her perfectly balanced Martelo forcing knowledge into his head about just how dumb he was to stop looking at her, how stupid to be wearing short sleeves in the first place.

She maintains her position for a second, letting the contact communicate how adorable she thinks it is that he's so besotted. He feels the shift in her balance, how his movement makes her start to slip, and she finds the cherry color of his cheeks sweet.

Lydia's soft huff of laughter shakes her shoulders and her leg snaps back into her body and down. So ridiculously controlled.

Stiles rubs his arm, skin still stinging with the slap. He's trying not to watch Derek, to not follow his progress across the room as he drops his bag in the corner and moves toward them.

Stiles trembles slightly, anticipating the quick hug. It's part of the reason he's wearing short sleeves today. He's willing to deal with everyone else's flashes of thoughts for this.

Derek has a small smile for them, set in a strained expression. He hugs Lydia first and then arms encircle him. The room stinks. Sweat clinging to the walls, ground into the mat. Alexander hasn't washed his uniform in weeks. It sets him on edge. He like as not shouldn't be here. .The full moon is tomorrow, his temper is on edge. He's feeling fractured, not worried about cracking, just composed of sharp exteriors. Moon light an angry itch under the skin. Has to refrain from scratching it and Stiles is leaning into him. A rush of desire to press his face into Stiles' shoulder, along his neck.

Stiles is caught in the wild rush, the torrent, the feel of desire pressing in on him, pounding. That itch flushing his skin. Unthinking, he starts to press in, to press his face against Derek's shoulder. He starts, moves back, the hug lasting seconds longer than it arguably should have. He's flushed again.

Stiles is not always entirely positive who he would be attracted to if he was someone other than who he is. As it is, he's usually drawn to those that find him attractive, his body responding to their thoughts and imagination.

It's rarely gets much further. After all, it's rarely him that features in other people's fantasies. Even as they look at him, there's almost always the comparison with whoever they dream about, whoever came before.

Even baring comparisons, most don't see the him he sees in himself. Although, in Stiles' limited experience, people rarely seem to be internally faithful to the people they are physically with. Doesn't think that they necessarily need to be. He just doesn't like the if-onlys. The demands for change, however unvoiced.

Lydia adds to the difficulty of course. She figured him out. There is the nagging feeling that other people should get it too. She shows her opinion in the flick of eyes and the snide twist of her lips. It adds to his conviction. The strong sense that these people aren't quite right, not good enough, her eyes showing him manifold flaws while theirs show his.

Potential partners usually find her intimidating. They see her as a bizarre threat. Assume that he must be pining, waiting for her to finally look his way. They think they can't compete. Not against Lydia's smug smile as she runs her hand down his arm.

They're right, in a way, they can't compete. He'll leave - does - when she tells him to. She does the same.

Now though, Lydia is delighted. She all but purrs as Derek steps back from Stiles now. Knocks her shoulder against Stiles to inform him that he needs to get moving already. Wishes Stiles would get over himself already and really touch the guy. Stop with the skimming. She thinks Derek might get tired of waiting. Might bore and disappear.

It helps her opinion of Derek that she wants something from him. That part of her that tries to be mercenary and driven. But her drive is saturated in relief that Stiles actually seems to like the guy. Her desire for Stiles to like him buttressing his own.

Stiles wants to like him. Does like him, standing here, like this, the moon's fury under his skin. Face calm.

Stiles shakes his head at Lydia. She doesn't need to worry about anyone leaving.

This thing with Derek. This whatever. Sties doesn't think it will be stopping. Derek isn't feeling impatient with Stiles for all that tonight he wants to tear the world down and howl at the moon. He's not pushing even as Stiles keeps himself reigned in. Sort of reigned in. While Stiles keeps trying not to actively touch him.

Just let's Derek casually-as-you-please touch him instead.

Derek's doing it on purpose now, makes Lydia snigger when he does, and Stiles needs to stop him if he's going to keep his fiction alive. That claim that he isn't doing anything if he doesn't initiate.

There had been a few accidental small brushes during training. Contact that stopped being so accidental during their third class. Derek had noticed, in an undertone of thought that slowly surfaced, how Stiles fingers would twitch toward Derek, how his movements would abruptly halt, hand awkwardly in the air. Derek had seen it and added it to Stiles tendency to lean in whenever Derek touched him. Noted that Stiles allowed himself to twitch closer, as if shifting while sighing excused the extension of the touch.

Like this moment as they stand to the side of the room, waiting for space to follow the mestre through today's combinations (all round kicks today). Even now, Stiles' fingers twitch and Derek reaches out, brushes fingers against his hand. Derek's focus is on the line of his body, the shift of his bare feet against the floor. His fingers are gone again.

Of course, with every bit of contact, there are those flashes of thoughts as skin brushes skin. The smells are there, the depth perception different, it makes Stiles' eyes un-focus on occasion with the shock of it. The flood of smells is taking time to adjust to. So often makes him want to sneeze. Shake his head. Relieve the intensity.

But the senses are just the undertones. The ones that Derek experiences without thinking. His conscious thoughts are focused intent. HIs job, the moon, and so much in those bits of thought about Stiles.

Derek's curious as to just why Stiles doesn't reach out more. To anyone. Other than to Lydia. The woman who sneers when people got too close.

They watch Lydia follow down the row. They're next. Stiles crowds in, lets Derek bump him, and turn with an internal smile, Lydia immediately dropping from Lydia and centering on him.

Stiles likes that Derek isn't attracted to her, isn't intrigued by her. The lack almost confused Stiles until he could pin-point what it was. Almost everyone is after all. They watch the way her hips swing, legs move, hair falls. Whatever their personal quirk is. For Derek, she is some person who smells constantly like jasmine oil and rarely of cigarettes. Who spends her days in the same lab as Stiles. The same people leaving traces on their skin. The same stale scent of computers and dust. She's interesting only because she's Stiles' pack. It's in that capacity Derek wonders why she allows him to approach unchallenged, even as she watches him like a hawk. Derek appreciates her vigilance. Likes her for it.

Stiles needs to do something. Perhaps tonight. Maybe tonight. Tonight would be bad, what with the moon and two weeks isn't long. He can get away with longer. But he needs to speak soon. He wants to tell. Before touches linger and he sees too much.

Too much more than about how Derek is absurdly pleased whenever Stiles moves in close, brushes against him accidentally. More than about how Derek can tell Stiles' shifting moods from his scent, even if he still can't pinpoint what it means for Stiles particularly.

It's captivating. Flattering in the extreme. Makes Stiles feel a high with own existence.

Derek might not be pressing, might not even be asking for anything but dinner, but Stiles doesn't think he would be able to stay around Derek and refrain from responding. He doesn't want to not respond.

That makes Stiles worry. He's concerned about what happens if they continue this. He doesn't think that they will ever be able to just be friends. He's relatively certain that Derek is falling in love with him, that if he were to study his brain he'd find all the right signals and chemicals. Because when he touches Derek there is that flood of sparks in his system and the elation is possibly going to be addicting. That's part of what's terrifying him right now as he follows the mestre through their forms. He's not positive if those sparks are his too. Or if he's just borrowing them. Learning them as a trained response.

After class, as Stiles pulls a fresh shirt over his head, Derek asks him about coffee as he puts his hand on Stiles' shoulder. There's mildew in the chinking of the shower, Stiles realizes. He feels the buzz and shake of his muscles, the pull in his thighs overlaid with burning energy. A desire to run on legs that don't want to move. His muscles aren't sure if they're tired now.

Derek won't be sleeping tonight. Knows he can't close his eyes on nights like this. He wants to get something out of it. Get away from his burning skin. Stiles remembers the taste of flour less chocolate cakes with Earl Grey infusions he's never had. He wants to concentrate on something pleasant. Wants to get away from these walls. Breath a lungful of fresher air than can he can find on these streets. Stiles turns, moving so that Derek's hand slides from his shoulder, and tells Derek "I can't sleep on nights like this."

Chapter Text

Stiles is walking with Derek back to that café they visited those weeks ago. He's breaking all of his rules - ignoring his dad's advice - and its a little terrifying. A lot horrifying. The mental-glue he keeps himself doused in doesn't seem to be helping much.

He really hopes he's making the right decisions here.

Stiles' shattering boundaries have to do with that second dinner they had. The one that only sort of happened. The one that Lydia remembers more clearly than he does. Gleeful traitor that she is.

What Stiles does recall is getting sick. He almost clearly remembers Lydia promising from the wavering lines of the doorway to his bedroom, her tone so sweet, to text Derek and cancel their dinner. She swore she would tell Derek that Stiles really shouldn't go out tonight, not with a migraine and a head cold. She would stay with him just like she usually did. Sit near him and read medical journals while he floundered about in her brain.

She just had to go get his soup first.

Stiles dozed during the next part, but would later experience Lydia's memories of calling Derek and telling him that Stiles was sick. He needed someone to take care of him and Lydia just had to go out. Stiles really shouldn't be alone. Her pregnant pause had Derek slowly answering that he would be over. If he could get the address.

Lydia was of the opinion that Derek hadn't needed it, not with the awkward pause that spoke of attempts to remember human social norms.

Lydia would open the door while Stiles was sleeping, slip past Derek (who was wearing a ridiculous leather jacket and tight jeans, really the man knew how to dress for a date but not for a sick room) with a condescending smile, and tell him to feed Stiles his soup (oh my, the man had a brown bag in his hand, had he brought soup) and hold his hand. That was really all. Shouldn't be too hard for Derek. He didn't have to worry about getting sick after all. He just needed to keep in mind that handholding was the part that always made Stiles feel just so much better.

Lydia would spend the rest of the evening in fuzzy woolen socks, bent over medical journals, while telling herself that she had done the right thing. Her nightmares would be plagued by a Derek with enormous teeth and even bigger ears eating a defenseless Stiles, who was in turn be powerless to do ought but dream that he was eating himself, blood gushing between his teeth and bones cracking.

Stiles' dreams would also be confused, but they would hardly feature him eating himself in huge chunks. Instead, the haze of his dreams would include sitting next to himself and wondering what it was like to be sick. Curious about the sweat and the burning skin. The pain of his migraine would briefly intensify, making him hiss, and then subside in a patchwork of black on his arms. He would find his room an endless source of fascination, hate the smell of damp sickness. One that reminded him of black mold in the walls.

The long fingers in his would spasm, trembling, and he would begin to massage the hand, pressing his thumb into the muscles, testing the callouses and examining the texture of the skin. He couldn't quite remember what his mother used to claim about the lines in the palm. Which was strange. Stiles was sure that he knew that. There had been that one fortune teller. The one who had read his palm while he had read her in case she really was psychic. Lydia had clung to his arm next to him, her own hopes trembling as she criticized the way the woman had tied the silken-turban around her head.

The psychic didn't have any sight into the future, but did love her job. Telling people about vague, nebulous futures based on the love lines at the top of their palms and the life lines down the center. Stiles' was deep, but short. She had told him that the depth meant he would live a full life while she'd wondered if it was true he would die young.

But now, now he couldn't remember what his mother had told him as she had cradled his hand, careful around the claws. He could remember his grandmother snorting and claiming that those skills didn't run in their family. That no one could really see the future. Only occasionally possibilities.

The hand in his was warm, curling around his softly, for all its sickly stench. The breath in the body had evened out, slowed down. He took his own, deep breath experimentally and felt his eyebrows climb when the body matched his inhalation. The eyebrows on the other face twitched upward.

There had been more. Questioning thoughts about if he should wake up to eat the soup he had brought, or if sleep would be better. Curiosity as he stretch out on the bed as to why certain humans (associated scents filtering through his memory) knew about werewolves. Lydia (musk and jasmine tonight) had been after something. She wasn't a witch and certainly wasn't a hunter. Didn't have the right smell for either group. There weren't many others that would need a grown werewolf for anything.

Curiosity had rolled into thoughts about dinners and cooking. Possibilities for chicken soups with leeks and potato. Considerations of bowls of soda bread with mussel chowder. He could use local mussels with cream from Cora's dairy up the road.

Stiles would open his eyes in the morning to Lydia's relief that he wasn't in a werewolf's belly.

He's pretty sure, walking next to Derek now, that his memories from that night aren't entirely made up of hallucinations. He just can't quite separate the bits that are pure fantasy, him, or Derek.

Chapter Text

It's clear Derek knows these streets, or at the least can see these streets. Stiles isn't sure of his reasons at the moment, not with their distance, but he's herding Stiles past the well lighted places and along back paths running through the trees. Stiles buttons the top button of his pea-coat, struggling with his mittened hands.

He's swathed in material, head to foot. A woolen scarf pulled around his neck and chin, a hat around his ears. The sweat-dampened hair on his head threatens to freeze in whispy-chunks where is escapes out from under the woolen brim of the cap.

Derek takes Stiles' mittened hand in his own bare one and Stiles stares at it for a moment, curious about how Derek experiences the cold.

He also wonders if he would allow such prolonged contact if his own were un-gloved. He feels that familiar stab of giddy-guilt at the thought.

As it is, all Stiles can do is smile at Derek and start a rambling story about legends claiming that a god once shot arrows into trees in order to create people. Not nymphs though. Those lived an ocean away.

Pieces of his brain wander away as him mouth rambles onward. He's used to - too used to - carrying on a conversation unrelated to his focus. He's thinking about his problem. His ongoing, endless problem of actually talking. Sharing.

There was someone once who'd had the lines : 'Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/ Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,/ And by opposing end them,' running through his thoughts as he'd brushed by Stiles at a bus stop, in such a hurry to get on the bus first.

Stiles always wondered if he'd stolen the lines from the man, because they got stuck in Stiles' brain. Sometimes looping over and again.

Derek is staring up at the sky, eyes flicking from Stiles to the moon and back, his hand warming Stiles' through his knitted-llama-patterned-mitten. Derek's not even wearing a scarf and Stiles feels colder for looking at him. He steps closer, feeling warmer for walking next to him.

Stiles mouth moves on to the effort the Greek gods had to go to in order to get Orion hung in the sky. He thinks about how his dad always covers himself so completely. He's been wearing long sleeves since he understood what Stiles is.

At first it was because his dad was worried that his tiny baby boy would see how vicious the world is. That he would see beaten faces and broken bodies and think that the world was nothing but cruelty.

Then it became habit. A habit that had his dad drawing back, double checking to make sure that his sleeves were rolled down and buttoned. A glancing check for any holes, for lines of bare skin before giving a hug, hands landing carefully on Stiles' clothed back.

Stiles understood that his dad tried. Appreciated that he tried so hard to make up for those second-glances in many other ways. He knew that his dad cared.

After all, he's felt it in those moments when his dad's hand brushed his skin, before his dad jerked away again. But also that time in high school when Stiles had broken an arm and his dad had, mercifully, forgotten all about telepathy for a few moments.

Stiles had never felt his dad's love quite as he had during that painful ambulance ride as case after case filtered through his head alongside his father's flare of determination to take on the world if it meant making his son alright again. The tree Stiles had fallen from and the forest in its entirety would have withered from afar if his dad's internal curses had been effective.

As it was, Stiles had clung harder with his good hand and dug in deeper than he'd meant. He'd later tell himself it was to keep himself from feeling his own pain. If that has been his sole goal, his ploy was effective. Instead of sharp, grating pain, the Sheriff's case memories were riveting, seeing how his dad made connections. Pieces slotting together into whole pictures. The fluctuating images were more interesting than experiencing the ingrained rut of his dad's daily routines. The boring paper work. The tooth brushing. The screech of sirens that still had his dad taking a steadying breath every time.

And through everything, there were constant flickers of his mother. Her smile. The reflection of her in Stiles' eyes. The time she'd thrown a glass at the his head in a fit of temper. Stiles' shied away from the memory of the way she'd kissed. He refused - refused - to walk down that path.

The images of her he did look at were clearly worn. The memories had all the signs of carefully replay, of repainted, faded magnetic tape. They didn't have smells any longer. They were too often considered, the details of how her hair fell etched deep and sharp, but the background lost in focus.

His dad had glanced at the EMT and a flash of the last accident flashed through his head. A thread to another case, another call of sirens. The cases were why his dad still didn't touch him now. Even though Stiles knew was death looked like. He wanted to keep him out of police work and away from passwords. To keep other people's secrets away from him. Mostly, he wanted to stop his son's getting involved, getting in trouble. From getting hurt just like he was now.

Stiles knew that. All that. Understood that.

Still, he resented that. Felt Lydia's sneer of anger when she watched his dad's habitual glance at his arms, his careful monitoring of his hand placement whenever he reached out.

But, the hugs were awesome.

He's worried though. Worried that Derek's could have a similar response. He can imagine Derek's soft smile accompanying efforts to make sure Stiles stays permanently covered, just like he is now. Derek would move him to Alaska and wrap him in gauze. Kiss him through cellophane like the main characters in that show Lydia and he had cried over.

Derek pulls Stiles closer and he blinks, realizes his story ended, and shakes his head to scatter his hesitations and suppositions. Whatever happens, he's likely to have guessed wrong anyhow. He's usually wrong when it comes to people.

He focuses instead on how dark it is. Stiles has never been able to see in the dark. He wonders what it would be like to be able to. He'd tried to find out from a series of animals as a child, but he had never been able to pick up anything. He would guess it's not like the look of infrared cameras. Or, at least, not for a werewolf. Derek has a full range of normal-human-colors during the day. He likely has the normal three cones. But then. Stiles thinks he must have so many rods. His ability to see and track movement is absurd.

Stiles thinks Derek notices when he shivers. He definitely notices when Stiles adjusts his scarf with his free hand to cover the tiny gap near his throat where the cold is stabbing at him. Derek moves them back toward those lighted places, toward coffee houses and food.

It's at the table, coffee mug clutched in his mittenless-hands that he finally works up the courage to speak about himself.

"Look," Stiles mumbles to his coffee cup, "Look, I'm not the best with words. You know, not the easiest things when you are trying to communicate something."

Derek agrees. A slight grunt under his breath. A twitching nod of acknowledgment. Derek's bare hand is half way across the table, Stiles swears to himself that it's slowly shifting towards him. Teasing him. Definitely taunting.

"Just. Look. I just may be a touch-telepath. And I may be reading some of your thoughts every time we touch. And that may mean that you don't want to actually. You know. Keep touching me." Stiles pauses, looks pointedly to where Derek's hand lay, even closer to Stiles' own fingers. Stiles thinks if he had waited another five minutes, they would have been on his.

Derek's brow quirks slightly. He looks Stiles steadily in the eyes and turns his hand deliberately over. Leaves it open, fingers curling gently. An invitation. A challenge perhaps. Definitely still a taunt.

Stiles hates backing down from a dare. He reaches forward, bringing his fingers down on the heel of Derek's hand, running them up his palm. He rests his hand on the table, leaving their fingers resting tip-to-tip.

Derek likes the feeling, the nerve endings igniting and sending shivers up his arm. He's wondering if firmer contact makes for a stronger connection, would make him easier for Stiles to read. He's curious if he can pull Stiles' further in by curling his fingers, drawing Stiles' in until his dry knuckles rasp against the palm of his hand.

The feeling of the whorls of his fingers is distracting. Callouses between his index and middle fingers. Pen, most likely. Heartbeat in his ears. Slightly nervous. It doesn't match his own, steady in his chest. He wonders if he expects him to run.

Derek takes a deliberate breath and twin inhalations fill both their chests, oxygen flooding their lungs, seeping into their blood, sending that strange burst of euphoria to their brains. Stiles can feel Derek's smile, feel the upward tilt of his mouth and his own tilts with it. Derek likes seeing him look happy.

Stiles doesn't think that he's ever read a person so aware of and in-tune with their own body, of the reach of their senses.

Derek's not trying to direct his thoughts or Stiles', not attempting to any kind of control. He's just. Being. Letting his thoughts caress and wander. Not thinking hard and trying to cover up a constant drum of thoughts like mother often did. Not trying to make sure he knows everything like Lydia. Just curiosity and enjoyment.

Stiles' doesn't know what to think of it. Not of this calm contentment. The sleepy flow of thoughts, moving with a solid pace. He's looking at his face in relief, vision picking lazily at the pores across his brow, thinking that is eyes are quite beautiful. The individual lashes surrounding his eyes make them look huge. His gaze moves down, crosses their hands, highlighting the details of Stiles' knuckles. He's passively curious again about what Stiles sees. How deeply he can go?

Stiles clears his throat, air scratching the walls of his esophagus. Derek wonders if he needs water. His free hand moves automatically, nudging his glass in Stiles' direction. There is a pleased flutter of feeling when Stiles takes it. The bob of Stiles' atom's apple fascinates as he swallows. The interest makes Stiles splutter a bit, drops of water spilling on his chin. Derek's amused.

"So, you're not so much concerned about it?" Stiles asks, watching the answer.

A humorous, slow flush of memories concerning tales about seers and mind readers as a child. Stories about old, hunched men and women reading palms. Derek has never met one, but his mental images of bright-looking crones and pan-creatures makes Stiles' grin.

The gruff "No" is accompanied by curiosity on why Stiles thought it might be an issue. Unsure of why Stiles' might have been concerned. Does he think that Derek had terrible secrets. He probably would, but there are so few secrets in a house of werewolves.

There's a memory of Stiles' flash of teeth during their first meeting. Derek's conviction that Stiles somehow already knew about the werewolf-issue. Coincidences simply didn't exist in Derek's world-view and a human flashing teeth at a werewolf? Meant Stiles must know something, be part of something. Derek thought he have been a spark. Hadn't expected a touch-telepath, hadn't known that they, specifically, existed. But then rows of faces and specific-smells, variations of various types, people physically demonstrating their personalized genes. People did have a habit of evolving. Of being delightfully individual.

Stiles' fingers twitch, contact lost for a second. He didn't know how he was supposed to tell Lydia all of this. Explain the rows of people with different skill sets when Derek's primary memory of each was their smell. But he could imagine her delight, the burst of thrilled, intensity of excitement associated with planning.

His fingers reconnect, pinky finger dragging against the blunt nail on Derek's hand. Derek's looking at their hands, feels him shiver. Is interested in that shiver.

"You know, calm acceptance is rather anti-climactic" Stiles voices, surprised he's actually capable of being on topic at the moment. Lydia so often feels that he's needs to learn to use a better, more precise vocabulary.

There's amusement, curiosity about exactly Stiles expected him to do. Detached considerations of what Stiles might think Derek would be like in a rage. Derek's memory of the last time he lost control features a small, hungry werewolf tearing a pillow to shreds.

"You really are a giant puppy. It's like you're this weird werewolf golden lab" there's a disgruntled snort and images with over enthused dogs. That happy, happy dog from Pixar's Up plays a central role.

----
Stiles dreams of running, of the crunch of twigs under foot, of chases. Of the excitement of following a smell. Loosing himself to his surroundings.

He wakes to the press of his body against his chest, weighing him into the bed. The beat of his heart is thumbing in his ears, pleasant, ticking up slightly indicating that the body is waking up with him. Breath brushing over the hairs on his skin. His left leg is cramping, the muscles relaxed. He feels too warm, comfortable. He's breathing in sync with his own breath, the air cascading out of his lungs and over his skin. His hands are trapped under his chest, he moves his other hands to his hips to stop the slight twitching, squirming of the body draped over him as it slowly wakes up.

He likes this game. This unraveling of selves.

He definitely needs to brush his teeth. He's sure of that, he clings to that. Uses his nasty breath as a base from which to unwrap, to find the boundaries between the two of them. To tries to convince himself that he is not a 32 year old born-werewolf with a large pack back in a home he visits every week.

It's a hard sell at the moment. There's not much to prove he isn't the werewolf.

Maybe, he's pretty sure he's the one thinking, he shouldn't have slept on someone else's chest. But it's such a common reoccurrence. He doesn't know if he wants the side of ham in the refrigerator or if he should be considering to what extent he needs to clean the flat today before Lydia shows up.

He pokes at the desire to not get up, to not move now that his twisting has stopped. He enjoys having his hands on the waist of warm body that he thinks is him. He's relatively sure that he knows out who's arms are who's when he tries to move the pair at his waist. He tries to wrap them around him, to hug himself, and succeeds in an odd shudder, his own trapped arms twitching with confused muscles.

He's pretty sure its not his nose smelling the bakery down the street, even if it makes his stomach twitch in interest.