Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Stiles had just turned 12 when he first encountered a full-blooded werewolf.

The black animal was almost the same height as him, even in its crouched position on the soaked grass. Its eyes, a crimson red, followed the small boy as he approached him, and a low, threatening growl left his throat.

“It’s okay….” Stiles whispered, “I won’t hurt you.”

But the wolf bared his teeth, the growl turning into a sharp bark when Stiles’ shaking hand stretched out for him. With a scared huff, Stiles backed off, tripping over his feet and stumbling onto the ground.

He rubbed his back and groaned. He breathed through the pain the impact had caused until he finally sat up, his eyes never leaving the creature in front of him. 

“Don’t be afraid…” His voice was a bit too high pitched than he wanted it to sound, but he continued anyway. “You’re hurt. You can’t stay here.”

He had spotted the crushed leg that spread from the dark creature at an unnatural angle right away.His father's lessons popped into his thoughts about how one should react when one accidentally runs into a werewolf alone.

Never look him in the eyes and make no rash movements. Distract him with hard lights from a flashlight if you need to and get the hell out of there , he remembered his father’s voice. Never get near a werewolf. You hear me, Stiles? Never, ever touch one of them!

He had learned a lot about werewolves from his dad. At first he thought he was bullshitting him, telling him scary tales to stop him from being the pain in the ass Stiles knew he was sometimes. 

But the way he was berated. The stern, almost pained look on his father's face, and the rash and swift words that ticked more like a reminder of precaution than lessons had convinced him that maybe there really was something out there he should prepare himself for.

Because even if his dad never touched the topic during his talks about werewolves, Stiles just knew that the pain his dad tried to hide away was connected to his dead mother.

He had never asked about it, but Stiles was sure that the whole werewolf-thing had something to do with him growing up with only one parent.

So every normal person in his right mind would have run for his life when spotting the drenched creature near the woods. But Stiles wasn’t everyone. Definitely not normal and obviously not in his right mind when he slowly stalked up to the black wolf and started talking to it in the most soothing voice he could muster.

“If you stay here and people find you, they will kill you,” Stiles whispered and once again stretched out his hand in the direction of the crimson eyes.

The wolf wrinkled its nose and snarled again, backing his head away from the approaching hand as far as he could. Stiles stilled in his motion, his hand just about 30 centimeters away from the wolf, and looked it deep in the eyes, a slightly crooked, shy smile on his lips.

“Let me just see your leg, okay? Maybe I can help you heal,” he whispered, his other hand slowly expanding sideward towards the wolf’s back. 

He didn’t understand why the wolf didn’t just heal.

According to his dad’s lessons and what he had researched in books and on the internet, werewolves were supposed to be able to heal their wounds, even heavy ones.

The idea of healing had intrigued him because as a kid, his skin collected scratches and bruises in an almost every day routine as a result of being a bit more clumsy and a lot more hyperactive than other kids of his age. He had the consistency of falling and running into things.

Why then did the creature in front of him, who clearly was a wolf of the supernatural kind, not heal itself as all the stories told he could?

To Stiles’ surprise, the wolf stopped growling and instead seemed to sniff his left hand that had slowly but steadily moved closer.

The young boy held still, watching the crimson eyes flicker lightly. He almost held his breath when the creature moved its head in his direction, taking in his scent, as it seemed.

When the wet nose finally touched his fingertips, Stiles let out a stuttered sigh. He felt his face beam up, lips parting in a broad smile, as raindrops fell from his soaked hair.

“See?” he asked, his voice pitched high. “I won’t harm you.”

He let his fingers glide over the wet fur above the wolf’s nose, caressing the spot between those beautiful crimson eyes that seemed to follow his every move.

“Now…” Stiles’ eyes moved to the wolf’s crushed leg and, letting out a careful breath, moved his right hand in its direction, the other hand still soothingly stroking over the animal’s nose.

The wolf let out a pained howl, its head turning to where Stiles had just now touched what was left of his leg. Without really knowing why, Stiles bent over, his fingers curling around the wolf’s head, pulling himself close enough that their foreheads touched, their eyes locking immediately.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I will be more careful. I promise.”

The wolf stared at him, the crimson color so close now that it almost burned Stiles’ eyes. Then, after what seemed like an eternity of stillness, their breaths mingling white in the cold of the autumn air, the wolf closed its eyes and leaned deeper into his chest.

Stiles smiled, nudging the wolf with his nose before turning sideways, watching his hand carefully investigating the situation of the crippled leg.

Seeing it from up close now made Stiles almost wince in pain. An open wound set a red contrast to the black fur, the ripped tissue barely visible under all the blood. 

In between the angry red, Stiles could make out several sharp white splinters, probably from when something had crushed the poor creature’s bone. Remnants jutting out between the tissue and fur. 

“We gotta get you out of the rain. I can’t help you here,” Stiles whispered, his head carefully rubbing against the wolf's head. “I will pick you up, okay?”

He twisted his head, so he could look the wolf in his eyes, hopeful of finding a semblance of approval in its weary countenance.

The wolf let out a sigh, its eyes flickering closed. Stiles swallowed, his hands finding their way beneath the gigantic creature, careful as to not put any pressure on the injured leg.

With a grunt, Stiles pushed his feet into the ground as he lifted himself up. The big creature in his arms grew stiff for a second, a mixture between a growl and a whine signaling its insecurity.

Stiles almost fell over, the wolf a lot heavier than he expected it to be, but he steadied his feet on the slippery ground beneath his feet and started stumbling back to the small road that led through the preserve.

He knew he wasn’t allowed in the preserve, his dad had told him many times that he would be grounded for years if he ever found him there, but it proved to be a shortcut to the small patch of forest where Scott and he had built their tree house.

“Only a few more minutes,” he mumbled, not sure whether he actually was talking to the wolf or trying to cheer himself on. 

The muscles of his legs had become taut after a few hundred meters, the added weight a strain that made his gait unsteady, but the wolf's head leaning against the crook of his neck was enough motivation to keep him stumbling forward.

After making his way out of the forest and through several backyards – the sight of a 12year old drenched boy with a black beast in his arms would not be something that people in Beacon Hills would be able to ignore – Stiles pushed open the door to his home.

His back pushed against the wall of the entrance, he took a measured breath before he glanced around the corner into the living room. 

A relieved sigh left his lips when he noticed his dad wasn’t home. “Guess he’s got a case he can’t leave alone…” he mumbled to himself, and glanced at the creature in his arms.

An exhausted smile formed on his lips; still cold and wet from the rain. He leaned his head forward, nudging the head of the black wolf with his chin and pushed the creature up further in his now trembling arms.

“In my room you can rest for a bit, hm?”

After almost falling up the stairs, a curse leaving his lips as pain struck through the toe Stiles was pretty sure he just broke, he put down the wolf on his bed and patted its back for a short moment before he hopped into the bathroom to get some towels.

When Stiles had returned, he found the wolf stretched out on his comforter, its crimson eyes, half lidded, staring fazed in his direction. 

Stiles sat down on the edge of the bed, right next to the wolf, and in a soft but swift motion, he dabbed the towel on the soft fur, draining pellets of rainwater.

“You know… I… “ He bit down on his lip. “I don’t know much about how to heal your injury… I mean, I thought werewolves healed themselves?”

He looked down at his right hand, his fingers massaging the soft ears of the wolf. An uncertain and poor attempt to calm it down. 

“You are a werewolf, right?”

The animal lifted its head, its nose wiggling when huffing, and then snuggled into Stiles’ lap. The boy's chest felt funny with that slight gesture. A crude joy filling his heart.

“I take that as a yes,” he said, curling down to hug the fluffy creature. “I could put some of the wound cream on your leg? And maybe put a bandage on it?”

Stiles sniffled, possibly having caught a cold in the autumn rain. “But I’m sure you have to see a vet.”

The wolf let out a disapproving growl but stopped immediately when Stiles stiffened and pulled away a little, almost falling off the edge of the bed.

“O-Okay… no vet ,” the boy said. “But your leg won’t heal if we don’t…” The words got stuck in his throat when his eyes moved to the animal's leg.

Where before an angry looking bone fragment had stuck out from the wolf’s leg at an unhealthy angle, it now seemed to have readjusted into a straight line, its prior sharp and angry edges evening out as the bone seemed to grow back.

The wound was still visible. The half dried blood and pink flesh were a strong contrast to the dark fur around it, but it seemed as if slowly but steadily the wound started closing from the inside.

“Wow!” Stiles shrieked, eyes wide and excited, gawking at the scene in front of him. “You really are healing! That’s so cool!”

The wolf nudged its head against Stiles’ torso, tearing the boy’s gaze from its leg and directing it to its face. 

Blinking its eyes open, the wolf revealed its eyes; now a kaleidoscope of colors, so mesmerizing that it made Stiles forget to breathe for a moment.

“You…” the boy stuttered, “You’re… really beautiful.”

And even though it was just for a faint second, Stiles saw the wolf’s mouth twitch in what seemed like a smile before it closed its eyes again and snuggled up against the warmth that was Stiles stomach.

Stiles woke up to a sound from downstairs and it took a few seconds until his brain caught up with the situation at hand.

It was still dark out his window; the moonlight drawing long shadows on the floor. Stiles yawned and turned around to get some more sleep when he noticed the warm breath on his collarbone.

He cracked his eyes open slightly, finding the big, black wolf in his arms, and a smile curled up his lips. Ignoring the sound of footsteps on the stairs, Stiles buried his face in the soft fur and took a deep breath.

No one ever told him werewolves smelled this wonderful , almost sweet. It made his stomach flutter and a warm feeling spread in his chest. 

He felt like he could lie like this forever, face pressed into the warmth of the wolf’s fur, nostrils filled with its smell. Even if time would stop right this instance, he wouldn’t mind… 

But time didn’t stop.

Instead, it seemed to speed up when the door to Stiles’ room flung open and his father stepped into the room.

“Sorry I’m so late,” the older man said as he sat down on the edge of Stiles’ bed. “But there was a huge fire at…”

The sheriff's voice died when his eyes landed on the black bulk next to his son and for a second he just stared at the creature in Stiles’ bed. The color drained from his face and, when he finally tore his eyes away from the wolf, his gaze landing on his son instead, his eyes widened in shock.

“Stiles, what have you done ?!” he screamed, pulling the young boy away from the wolf.

“What? I… I haven’t,” Stiles stuttered, blinking his red-rimmed eyes in confusion before he straightened up, suddenly wide awake. “It’s not… It’s… It’s good !”

But the sheriff didn’t listen to his babbles and instead dragged him out of the room and into the bathroom, the door shutting behind them with a loud bang. Stiles found himself pushed onto the closed toilet seat while his father hastily locked the door.

“ I told you to never go near a werewolf !”

Stiles had known his dad would be angry, had prepared himself for his glare, the vein on his forehead ticking. But something was off…

The sheriff’s voice, while loud and thundering as during most of his scoldings, had a shrillness to it. A frantic lilt that made Stiles’ heart speed up.

His father’s voice sounded not angry, but rather… scared?

“I told you you can’t go near them! I told you it would be dangerous!”

“But it’s not dangerous!” Stiles interjected, having a hard time to stay still and not run for the door, back to where the wolf laid with his fluffy fur, its intriguing smell and its beautiful, beautiful eyes.

“It’s not about the wolf!” his father shrieked and Stiles looked up in confusion. 

“What?” Stiles’ eyes flickered to the door then back to his father’s face, his mind racing. He didn’t understand what his father was so worked up about.

“It’s not about whether or not the wolf itself is dangerous,” his father explained, his face a grimace of fear and pain. “It’s… it’s about the impact this wolf has on you .”

Stiles didn’t know what to say, and really that was rare. He simply stared at his dad, confused and somehow scared.

“It…” his father started, biting down on his lips to steady himself as he pulled his son into a tight hug. “The wolf brings out your true self.”

The words were an almost inaudible whisper against Stiles’ shoulder, but they rang in the small boy’s ears loud enough to drown out everything else.

“My… what?”

Not finding the right words, the Sheriff let out a sigh and pushed his son a few inches away from him. Stiles saw the tears in his father’s eyes as he looked at him. When his father nodded towards the side, Stiles turned to face the mirror next to the shower.

A shriek left his lips when he studied his reflection: His eyes had turned a shimmering yellow, his pupils wider than they should be, and small fangs that definitely should not be there showed between his lips.

“What… What is happening to me?” he asked in a whimper, clinging onto his dad’s arm when his knees seemed to give out. His father’s brows stitched together, a painful expression on his face as he pulled him into a tight hug again, rubbing his back as he searched for the right words.

“I didn’t want to tell you.. especially not like this…” his father started. “You… You’re a half-blood. Half human, half werewolf.”

Stiles didn’t know how to respond to that, his brain rumbling with thousands of thoughts. He was human. Werewolves weren’t real. They were fiction. And he… he was a normal boy. A human. He was Stiles. 

His father’s words confused him. Shocked him. Scared him. 

So while there were so many questions he wanted to ask, the small boy, overwhelmed, opted to cry silently at his confusion instead.

His father started rubbing his big, warm hands over Stiles’ shaking back. He explained in broken words that, while Stiles might not remember much about his mother, she had not only been a wonderful woman, mother, and wife but also a creature of the supernatural.

He told his son in careful, soothing words how a relationship between a human and a werewolf had been frowned upon. How they still had held onto their feelings for each other and how happy they had been when tiny Stiles had presented them with his first dopey smile as his mother held him for the first time.

“Your mother died. It looked like an accident, but I’m sure it was people who didn’t want to live with the supernatural. And… if….” His voice cracked. “If they ever found out that you are a half-blood… That you, too, have the ability to change in you…”

The sheriff looked to the floor, his shoulders heavy and his breath unsteady when he continued, his words nothing more than a whisper.

“I don’t know what I would do if I lost you, too…”

Stiles slung his arms tighter around his dad, knowing he might not be able to take the pain from his father's chest, but trying nonetheless.

“I won’t let them find out,” the boy said firmly. “I’ll never show anyone. I’ll… I’ll be more careful. I’ll be good. I promise.”

When both Stiles and the Sheriff had calmed down, Stiles watched as his father turned the key and opened the bathroom door. He slid the gun out of the holster he was still wearing on his waist and walked towards his son’s room.

“No…” Stiles whispered to himself.

“No!” he repeated in a scream and ran up to his father, tugging at his belt in a frantic attempt to keep him out of his room. “You can’t hurt it! It’s not its fault… It has done nothing wrong!”

But his dad didn’t listen. He threw open the door and immediately turned to the bed, the gun ready in his hands as his eyes searched for the black creature. But the bed was empty, the wolf gone.

Stiles let out the breath he didn’t even notice he had held and stared through the open window at the moonlit sky.

He hadn’t seen the werewolf of that night again, even though he secretly searched for it, strolling through the forest of the preserve whenever he knew his dad wasn’t around.

Even when werewolves grew in numbers and showed themselves more openly, taking over the community over the years, Stiles found himself searching for that particular pair of eyes with its mesmerizing color that made him dizzy with longing through nothing more but a memory.

But even so, he honored the promise he made to his dad, training himself to keep his wolf hidden even in the presence of werewolves.

And when Scott, his best buddy since diapers, was turned by a werewolf, he sighed in relief at finding his training to have been successful as no bearhug, no movie night on the couch or sleepover at Scott’s made him lose control.

Sometimes he even wondered whether his memory had played a trick on him and he actually really was a full-blooded human.

That was until Stiles entered College and ran into Derek Hale…

Chapter Text

“Dude, what’s with the sour face? We’re in College - together !”

Stiles couldn’t share Scott’s enthusiasm. Not really. True, he had been hoping to stick together with his best friend even after High School, but Garnier Academy wasn’t really what he had dreamed of.

Yes, it was awesome that he got into a prestigious college on a scholarship. 

And yes, it was even more awesome that his best friend and some other familiar faces from High School had gotten accepted, too.

But hiding his true self had been hard enough as it was – living in the dorms of a co-ed College amongst a bunch of werewolves was definitely not helping.

“Yeeaaah,” he said in a flat voice and forced a smile on his face, giving in to Scotts’ cheerful smile and providing him with an admittedly rather unmotivated high five. 

Scott still beamed at him before he turned around, looking at the crowd lining up in front of them.

“ Come on , dude. I know you’re not too thrilled about the majority of students being werewolves here, but you’re not the only human one, remember?” 

Stiles sighed and gave Scott one of his polished you-gotta-be-kidding-me-looks.

“Unfortunately, I’m neither an evil mastermind, like Lydia, nor an archery-master slash trained killer, like Allison!” he said and pushed his entry sheet towards the brown-haired girl sitting behind the counter reading “admission”.

The girl pressed a stamp on the upper corner of his sheet, typed something on the laptop sitting next to her, and gave him a blue folder full of papers. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Scott interjected and handed over his entry sheet, too, while waiting for an answer from Stiles.

 “Welcome to Garnier Academy.”

Stiles could very much empathize with the low level of motivation in the girl's voice in front of him, who procured a key from the shelf behind her and handed it to him.

“Your room will be in Building Roser, room 902. You’ll find the house regulations in your folder as well as the schedule for the introduction tour today.” 

Stiles nodded, flipping the key between his fingers.

“You know exactly what I mean,” Stiles snapped at Scott, brows drawn in irritation, and stepped aside to let other students pass, waiting for his friend to receive his key. 

“I mean, you know about my outstanding people-skills , how throughout elementary and high school I hardly was able to keep the hoard of admirers off my back...”

He rolled his eyes to drive his point further. “And you know how wonderfully I got along, especially with our hairy friends … I just say: Jackson?”

Scott put his key with a golden 200 on it in his pocket and gave Stiles a snort.

“Yeah, because all werewolves are like him. I know he can be quite a dick and you hate him even more because he’s with Lydia…”

Stiles wanted to interject, but snapped his open mouth closed and bit down the sarcastic comment that lay on his tongue when Scott raised his eyebrows.

“You know I’m right, Stiles! You can’t know how things will turn out . Yes, there are fewer humans here than in high school, and yes, some of the people here might be douches. But…”

Scott made huge gestures with his hands ending with him stretching out his arms, pointing at their surroundings.

“… we’re in College, dude ! In College! It will be awesome !”

With this, he pulled Stiles by his arm and pushed him off to get their books. 

Stiles still felt like his guts were in a nervous knot, but let himself get dragged off with a sigh and a small shake of his head.

Stiles’ heart felt lighter after Allison had joined the two and all of them left their introduction course. There might be more werewolves around than he was used to, but the introduction had sounded just amazing, not only the curriculum he could choose from, but also the variety of club activities.

And when they had taken a quick tour around campus, Stiles had to admit that the facilities and dorms were modern and clean, even though the architecture might have looked old from the outside.

Stiles smiled to himself. Maybe Scott was right, maybe he could really like it here.

“How about we put down our stuff in our rooms and then meet up downstairs to get the books for the courses we applied for?” Allison suggested with a wide smile after they returned to the classroom and retrieved their luggage. 

Scott nodded, a dorky smile on his lips, as he slipped his hand into Allison’s and shouldered his huge bag.

“Alright!” Stiles picked up his own luggage a bit less gracefully than everyone else, almost falling over when the attempt to copy Scott and swing his bag over his shoulder made him lose balance for a second.

“Then, see you in five. In front of the fountain?” The others nodded in agreement and made their way to the door.

Stiles followed them with his eyes and let out a small sigh.

“College,” he said to himself. “Who says I couldn’t finally find happiness? Would be about time…”

Outside, he waved a quick goodbye and turned to walk into the direction of his dorm. The other two steering towards the monumental building to the right of the gymnasium, Building Falter, where they had been assigned to.

Buckling his luggage, Stiles shuffled through the crowd of sophomores, his eyes on the map in his hands that was already so crumpled it was hard to read.

“Roser…” he mumbled, furrowing his brows and looking around. “Roser… Roser… Hah!” His lips curled up in a victorious grin when he spotted the floral emblem above the entrance of one of the buildings with huge, dark red letters beneath it.

He entered with quick steps and fumbled the key out of his pocket. “902… so…. 9th floor?” he muttered and looked around, searching for an elevator.

But besides the enormous staircase in the middle of the building, there were only dark wooden doors with silver number plates on it.

“Excuse me,” he tried one of the students passing him. “Do you know where the elevator is?”

The boy laughed, his blond locks bouncing off his temples. “Elevator?” he chuckled. “Dude, there is no elevator.”

Stiles’ face must have turned pale. The dread the boy’s words caused was evident, because the blonde couldn’t hold back a laugh. “Which floor?” he asked with an empathetic smile on his face.

“9th…” Stiles groaned and threw his head back. And here he thought his bad luck might just leave him…

The blonde’s smile grew wider, revealing white teeth between bright red lips, and reached for the bag in Stiles’ hand. “I’m on the 7th floor, so until there I can help you out.”

Stiles watched the boy put the heavy bag on his shoulder with ease and add another huge sports bag on top of it with just as little effort before leading the way to the staircase.

“Let me guess…” Stiles followed, eyeing the blond guys back. “Werewolf?”

The blond turned around, a broad grin lighting up his face. “Jackpot. But you could just call me Isaac.”

Stiles shook Isaac’s hand and even though he knew that getting more werewolf-friends might put his secret in danger, he felt a dizzy happiness warm his belly when he gave Isaac his name.

He did have outstanding people-skills after all! And Isaac seemed like a super friendly, awesome guy. Not at all like douchebag Jackson or the other werewolves who had made it an after-school activity to harass him throughout high school.

“So…” Isaac said, putting down Stiles' bag in front of his feet, the wooden floors squeaking under the weight. “I have to turn left here. 710.”

Stiles nodded, his face red and sweaty, as he held his side. These stairs were frickin killing him. What kind of sadist built a dorm with 10 floors without an elevator?

“Alright,” he huffed. “So... hopefully we see each other in world history then?”

Isaac nodded and shuffled towards his room. “Good luck with the last two floors!” Stiles heard him laugh before he slipped around the corner.

Stiles wished he had Scott’s old inhaler with him when he finally reached the 9th floor. His lungs squeaked with every breath he took and his hands were shaking when he tried to open the door with the silver 902 on it.

After a frustrating few moments of struggling, the key slipped into the lock and Stiles could turn it with an unsteady motion of his hand. “Finally,” he sighed and pushed the wooden door open, revealing the room that laid behind it.

The sun shone through the huge window right across the room, the blue sky a pleasant contrast to the walls painted in bright white.

On both sides of the room stood a solid bed with white sheets covered by a red comforter. The one to the right was a bit messy, the pillows crumpled and the comforter pushed to the side, as if someone had just gotten up and not taken the time yet to make the bed.

“Oh, come on,” Stiles sighed as he placed both hands on the side of his bag and with an exhausted groan pushed it into the room. “Shared? Really ?”

He pulled his last strength together and heaved his bag onto the bed to the left and let himself follow at once, his head falling on the soft pillow and his limbs a comfortable mess,  legs hanging over the edge and one arm resting on his forehead.

With eyes heavy with exhaustion, he turned his head to inspect the room further, spotting two bulky desks in front of the window, the nightstands next to each bed.

Stiles’ eyes screened the nightstand sitting next to his roommate’s bed and found nothing but a simple clock and a book about politics, apparently from a higher semester. Stiles raised his eyebrows. 

“Not much of an outgoing personality, huh,” he muttered to himself.

Stiles yawned and looked over to the entrance that was framed by two closets. He was way too exhausted from making the way up to his room, but his curiosity got the better of him. He still swung his feet off the bed and walked over to the closet on his roommate’s side.

“Perfect match,” Stiles huffed as he roamed through the clothes that took up most of the shelves. “Does that person wear anything other than black or grey?”

He sighed. With his luck his roommate most probably was a total nerd-loser, and with high possibility a werewolf to top it off.

Not that he was the center of attention either, but Stiles still had his standards. He silently hoped that his roommate at least would have some basic comic or movie knowledge, so he wouldn’t have to spend his days talking to a wall of irritated silence.

A look at his watch reminded Stiles that he should be downstairs already, meeting Scott and Allison, so he picked up the key he had dropped earlier on the nightstand, peeked his head through the door next to the entrance, nodding at the spacious bathroom and reminding himself to inspect it in detail afterwards, before he left his room and sped downstairs, taking three steps at a time.

 “Sorry,” Stiles squeaked when he finally caught up with his friends, bending over, trying to catch his breath. “9th floor…. Only stairs…. Me…. Totally screwed.”

Scott gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Well… at least you can skip the gym then, hm?” Allison just shot him a sympathetic look, offering the small bottle of water she carried in her purse.

Stiles gratefully accepted the offer, trying to put out the scraping heat in his throat. “Thanks, exactly what I needed.”

Stiles smiled, taking a generous gulp, and wiped some pearls of water off his lips. “So what was the plan?”

Allison shoved the water bottle in her purse and pointed over her shoulder. “We should get our books. You have your list with you, right?”

Stiles' eyes widened in shock, his hands padding down his hips, agitated fingers slipping between the fabric of his pants, rummaging through the contents of his pockets. “Don’t make me run up there again,” he whined, retrieving several papers, a couple of lonesome stripes of gum, the head of a batman figurine and several other useless stuff from his pants and shirt.

“Oh, come on… come on ….” His eyes flickered over the junk he retrieved from his pockets, eyebrows knitted with desperation until… “YES!” Stiles beamed up when he straightened out one of the papers and held it up Allison’s face, a triumphant grin on his face.

“Got it!”

Scott shook his head and started trotting off towards the building with a big sign next to the entrance reading ‘Books’.

“How could the level of Garnier Academy possibly drop so low that even lowlifes like Stilinski get accepted?”

Stiles rolled his eyes with a groan and turned around to face Jackson’s sarcastic smile.

“I hope you are not referring to him being a human?” Lydia pursed her lips and lifted an accusing eyebrow, tapping her bright red heels against the grey stone floor. 

Stiles loved that look on her face: Pretty terrifying if on the receiving end, but with Jackson being the one getting his ass kicked? Pure awesome.

Of course, he knew Lydia did not actually defend him – she always had made it very clear that even though both of them belonged to the same human race (at least that’s what Stiles made everyone believe) they were of totally different levels.

And Stiles, of course, being the lowest of them.

But Stiles, without hesitation, forgave the uncrowned beauty queen of Beacon Hills' every insult, especially as she started actually noticing his presence and talking to him more often since Allison had turned out to be her new best friend.

“Come on, Sweety!” Jackson pulled her in and gave her a small peck on the perfectly painted cheek. “You know that you and Stilinski are far from the same species.”

Lydia threw back a couple of red locks and split her pink lips in a huge smile. “Same species, but point taken,” she commented with a bat of her lashes and turned around to ask Allison about her room and courses.

And before Jackson could fire off a few more insults, Scott hit Stiles in the side and nodded toward the stalls that were erected in the huge hall.

“Wanna check out whether there’s a lacrosse team?”

Stiles just shrugged but followed his friend, anyway. He wasn’t too keen to keep on playing lacrosse. Especially not in a school full of werewolves.

Even when they had been a purely human team, he had spent most of the time on the bench. And when Scott had been turned, even in friendly games, he had beaten the shit out of him, so he really felt like passing and instead finding some after-school activity where he could put his real skills to use: Research, Talking, Multitasking.

He just hadn’t found the time to actually talk to Scott about the whole topic.

“Guys, you better head back. It should be our turn soon,” Allison called out to them, waving her hand in their general direction, and Stiles peeled Scott away from the two big guys he started talking about club activities for the past 10 minutes.

“Books, Scotty-boy, Books,” he reminded him and made his way through the crowd that had filled the hall.

When they finally made it to Allison’s side, Lydia and Jackson were already standing at one of the tables, older students searching the boxes in the back while pointing at titles written on the lists in their hands.

“Don’t give me one of those old things, okay?” Stiles heard Jackson command and rolled his eyes in disbelief, but before any snarky comment could leave his lips, Allison pushed him towards the table to their right, where a girl in a red T-shirt was already waiting.

“Hey.” Stiles tried to straighten out the mess of a list he held in his hands, a nervous laughter leaving him as he eyed the girl in front of him, before laying it on the table.

The girl smiled, her green eyes turning to little crescents. “Hey. Welcome to Garnier Academy!… Oh, history? How cool! I, too, major in history!” she said while getting up to look for his books.

Stiles looked after her with a dopey smile on his face, thinking that maybe College was kind of awesome after all.

The girl, her arms filled with a couple of heavy looking books, returned to her seat and yes, College definitely was great, he decided when she looked up at him again.

“So…” She knitted her eyebrows, her lips mumbling around silent syllables as she was trying to read out Stiles’ name.

“Just Stiles is okay,” he offered, being rewarded with another beaming smile.

“Stiles then. So here are your books…” She continued to read out every title and crossed it off his list, adding a few details to some editions, but Stiles was too mesmerized to listen to all the information she shared.

When Scott greeted him a few steps to the side after a few minutes, Stiles bumped his fist in his friend’s shoulder “College? Awesome !” and grinned.

Scott nodded, half of his face buried in a toothy smile, and signaled a slightly lost Allison their position.

“Wow,” she huffed when she finally made it through a group of tall, broad-shouldered guys. “I didn’t know we would get so many books. Damn they're heavy!”

Stiles watched, slight jealousy heating his chest, as Scott took half of her books – stupid werewolf-strength making it look like they weigh nothing – wishing he, too, would have someone to help him with his own stuff.

But when he noticed the girl in the red T-shirt looking in his direction, he decided that carrying his own books was exactly his style.

“Dude, that girl was so cute!” He beamed at Scott, his free hand making wild gestures to underline his point while they made their way back downstairs. “I swear, she totally flirted with me!”

Allison smiled – a bit too disbelievingly in Stiles opinion – and Scott just grinned, bumping his shoulder. “Told you College would be awesome.”

And just as Stiles was about to agree with him, he tripped over his open shoelace and lost balance.

“Stiles!” Allison and Scott shouted in unison, but it was already too late and Stiles spun around, arms flailing everywhere as his books dropped to the ground. 

He could already visualize himself crashing into the floor face down, when suddenly, something black and huge stopped his fall.

Stiles hissed at the sudden impact and pushed himself back, looking up not at something but rather someone : A tall guy in a black T-shirt pulled taut by muscular arms.

“Uh… Sorry,” was all he brought over his lips with the tall guy staring down at him, nostrils flaring, eyes squinted into sharp, unwelcoming slits.

He must have been not that much taller than Stiles, but from where he was wrapped around the black guy’s torso, arms slung around his hips – how could people build up muscles even there, Stiles had wondered – he looked like a frickin giant.

And he had a smell to him that almost made Stiles' heart stop for a second, before taking up a rhythm so fast that he feared it might just break through his ribcage and scatter on the floor next to his books.  

“Hands off,” the guy hissed, small lips bearing sharp canines.

Of course… First day of college and he bumped into the possibly most frightening, huge werewolf there was…. and almost shit his pants. 

“Y-Yes.. sure,” he mumbled, eyes still lingering on the guy’s beautiful – scary as shit, but beautiful – face when he peeled himself off his chest, fingers shaking when a weird feeling flashed through his body.

There it was again, that scent… and it made yellow lights dance behind Stiles eyes.

Hurriedly he shut his eyes, trying hard to concentrate and calm his body, bending down to avoid any eye contact. It had been years since the last time he wolfed out, but Stiles was sure that that was exactly what this frizzling feeling was.

Feeling the tall guy’s suspicious eyes on him, he quickly busied his hands with picking up the books scattered all over the floor.

“Don’t be so mean …” He heard a girl’s voice comment sardonically and glanced up, only now noticing that the intimidating werewolf had company.

He was sure he never met the silent black guy who stood in the back, his arms crossed in front of his chest, before but the slender girl with the blonde wavy mane leaning against the railing looked very familiar, though he was sure she wore less tacky clothes before.

“Hey Stilinski,” Erica grinned at him and Stiles let out a huff.

There it was again, his bad luck that made him run not only into Jackson but also into the next exhibit of the “werewolves that made Stiles Stilinski’s high school life a total wreck” collection, just when he had declared College life was awesome.

But hey, at least Erica helped him control his pulse again… so not everything was bad about their encounter. Though Stiles was sure she would make his life a living hell – again.

“Stiles?” Another familiar sounding voice reached his ear and before he could even start wrecking his brain where he knew the voice from, short blonde locks appeared behind the others.

“Who thought we would meet again so quickly!” Isaac beamed up and bent down to help him collect his books.

“Thanks,” Stiles mumbled, a bit confused why Isaac was with this group of ass-wolves.

“Today’s not your day, hm?” Isaac asked, a sympathetic smile pulling on his lips. Stiles answered with a crooked smile and nodded. 

“I don’t think any day is Stilinski’s day,” Erica snorted, her long fingers playing with a string of hair, lips parted around a sneer.

Stiles got up and took the rest of the books from Isaac’s hands, Scott and Allison stepping up behind him.

“Erica.” The black-clad guy gave her a stern look and Stiles would have laughed at how the smirk almost instantly melted from her face if the wolf in front of him was not glaring at him again.

“Isaac,” he growled without looking at the young blonde, his eyes piercing down on Stiles. “How do you know this lowlife of a human?”

In his mind, Stiles threw his books in his arrogant face, clarifying that he would not let himself be called lowlife two times in a row, especially not by an obnoxious stranger who knew shit about him.

But outside of his head, all he managed to do was to clench his teeth and take a small step in the direction where he felt his best friend stand behind him.

“We met in the hallway today and I helped him with his stuff. Why?” Isaac asked, oblivious to the growl that built in the tall guy's throat.

“You know that nothing good comes from interacting with lowlifes like him,” he snarled, and Stiles mentally slapped him in the face. The big guy let out a contemptuous snort in Stiles’ direction and leaned forward, his face stopping only inches from Stiles’.

“You better never show your face in front of me again. Got that, human ?”

Stiles shuddered at how that last word was almost spit into his face, his eyes shutting close on reflex. And then, he felt the group of people leave, clothes rustling in the passing.

“Stiles… you okay?” Scott asked, a warm hand weighing down on Stiles’ shoulders as if to steady him. 

It helped.

Stiles sucked in an unsteady breath and turned around, his face paler than his usual light color. “What the fuck did I do to deserve this?” he whimpered, running a hand over his face.

Scott sighed, eyebrows raised in compassion. “I think that was Derek Hale…” Allison threw in, her eyes following the group of people as they disappeared around a corner.

Stiles jolted, his head swirling around, trying to steal another glance at the tall guy. The name rang familiar yet he couldn’t quite place why. His mind raced, scanning his memories, until his eyes widened with recognition. 

He knew Derek Hale. Not personally, but he had read a lot about him and his family in his father’s files.

The Hale house in the woods of the Beacon Hill Preserve had burned down when he had been barely 12 and everyone besides two of the kids, Derek and Cora Hale, had burned to death.

Cora Hale had been found covered in mud and ashes a few meters from her burning home. Derek Hale had only reappeared the next day when he had picked up his sister from the hospital where she had been kept for supervision.

In the files, it had said the fire was no accident, but someone had set the fire on purpose.

With the whole family trapped inside.

Stiles’ stomach turned just remembering the photo his father was never allowed to know he saw. Up until high School, the Hales had been nothing but a horrifying, dark legend to him, but Stiles remembered seeing Cora Hale walking across campus during his second year.

Rumors had spread fast. And after a few guys had tried to pick on her, circling her in the bathroom, she had wolfed out, kicked their asses, and had instantly become a celebrity throughout town.

It had soon been common knowledge that the Hales were no normal human beings and with their secret spread in the open, more and more people throughout town had confessed to being of the other kind.

Some had begged the wolves to make them one of their kind. Like Erica who hadn’t always been the cynical, evil person she was now. She had been an unnoticed, normal human just like Stiles, only less chatty and lacking the optimistic self-esteem Stiles held.

Rumors said it was Derek Hale who had presented her with the bite, who took her in and made her a new person.

A worse one, if anyone were to ask Stiles.

Not that anyone did.

“You know what?” Stiles eyed his friends, gritting his teeth and added after a second of silence, “Derek Hale scares the shit out of me.”

Allison looked at him with wide eyes, while Scott broke into laughter and patted his back. “I totally get you. He’s one scary dude…”

Allison soon followed with smooth giggles, shaking her head while pushing the boys further down the stairs. “Just avoid him from now on. I mean,” Scott shrugged his shoulders. “…how hard can it be? It’s not like you guys have any classes together.”

Allison nodded in agreement. “Yeah, Scott’s right. He surely is already in his post-grad studies… if you avoid rushing around corners and walk the halls a bit more carefully, things should be fine.”

And Stiles agreed. Things should work out fine. He was in College after all and even though some of his burdens from high school seemed to haunt him still, there was enough space – and enough people who didn’t already think the worst of him – to actually enjoy his coming years.

They sat down on a bench in front of the library and Stiles amazed Allison with his amazing skills as a mentalist - okay, most of the time Scott pretty obviously gave him hints, but still – and they made a contest out of who created the highest building with their books until the sun sank behind the big trees behind the gym.

“Guess we should get going. I want to take a quick shower before we’re heading for dinner,” Scott said, and pushed himself off the bench.

Stiles looked up at him from the spot in front of the bench where he made himself comfortable on the grass. “Good idea, I guess. You guys wanna meet here again in like an hour?” he suggested.

Allison lifted an eyebrow. “Why not meet in the canteen?”

“Well…” Stiles was trying to buy some time, but Scott just knew him too well. “You do not know where the canteen is, huh?” he asked, a smile spreading across his face.

Stiles laughed. “Well… yeah.”

“And you already shredded your map.” 

Stiles offered a wry smile as an answer. Allison let out a disbelieving huff, which would have hurt Stiles’ pride a little if she wasn’t also smiling at him affectionately.

“Alright. Meeting here. In an hour.” And that said, the couple left toward their dorm, while Stiles got up from the floor, patting some dirt from his jeans before heading back to his building.

Nine flights of stairs later, Stiles once again held his aching side as he opened the door and registered the muffled sound of water coming from the bathroom.

So much for his plan to take a dump.

He put down the books on his nightstand and sat down on the soft mattress next to his bags. The bed in front of him was in an even bigger mess than before, clothes scattered all over.

Stiles couldn’t resist and pushed himself up again, throwing a quick glance at the closed bathroom door before leaning over the pile of colorless fabric and holding up a black T-shirt. From the size of it, his roommate was either taller, fatter, or simply better built than him.

Or maybe a mixture of the three, he thought. Though soon after, he gave up the ‘fatter’ when his fingers found the grey jeans next.

“Skinny…” Stiles mumbled and lifted a curious eyebrow when his eyes spotted a pair of black underpants. He lifted them up and stretched them a little, pushing his lower lip forward in admiration.

These shorts were definitely expensive and, as Stiles had to admit, pretty stylish with its small, almost invisible striped pattern on it.

Maybe his roommate wasn’t such a loser after all. He most definitely needed to ask him where he could get some underwear like this, too, to get a bit more ‘adult feeling’ into his collection of mainly shorts with some superhero banner on it.

Of course, his shorts were amazing . But if he wanted to get laid some time soon, Stiles knew he had to make compromises. And those black shorts in his hand looked not only stylish, but comfortable.

“Hands. Off.”

Stiles jerked at the growl from behind him and only then noticed that the sound of water had stopped, a cloud of warm air spreading through the room.

He swallowed hard and prepared to explain why he had both of his arms in his roommate’s underwear by now, pulling on the fabric, testing its flexibility.

Feeling the blood rush to his face, Stiles turned around, only to turn pale white again in an instant. He flapped his mouth open and closed a couple of times, unable to find the words or even breath.

“I said. Hands. Off.” the angry voice repeated.

Stiles tried to free his hands off the werewolf’s underwear, the hectic tugging and flailing moving his whole body, causing him to almost lose balance. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, his voice shaking and heart beating hard enough to rip right out through his ribcage. “Really, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know… I… I really didn’t want to…”

His words were cut off by a low growl that rumbled in Derek’s throat when the older one stepped closer.

“Out. Now.” he spit out, eyes glaring down on Stiles’ pale face.

“Roommate!” Stiles suddenly bursts out, lifting his arms as if to defend himself against any sudden attack from the wolf. “Roommate !”

Derek’s eyes widened in disbelief and before Stiles knew what was happening, he found himself in a tight grip, his feet dangling a few centimeters above the floor.

“What did you say?” he heard Derek hiss and gulped.

“R-Roommate. I’m… I’m your new roommate.”

Stiles was sure Derek would just throw him out the window. Goodbye world, you’ll never know the awesomeness that was Stiles.

But to his surprise, Derek put him down – or rather threw him onto his bed and bags, books falling off the sideboard.

Derek stared down at him in open disgust, breath hitched, eyes nothing more than small crimson slits. After what seemed like an eternity, he blinked away the red in his eyes and turned his back to Stiles, a loud groan escaping his lips.

“ You gotta be kidding me …”

Chapter Text

“Seriously? That Derek Hale is your roommate?” Scott gave him a pitying hug. “So much for ‘Just avoid him’. Dude, god must really hate you…”

Stiles snorted. “Well, thank you . As if I hadn’t noticed until now…”

He really must have done something terrible in his last life for always ending up screwed, no matter what he did or where he went. Living with Derek Hale surely was bad enough, but having been caught wrapped up in his underwear… worst start as roommates ever !

Stiles pouted and rubbed his right hand over his chest, where Derek’s arm had impacted when he had pushed – thrown! Stiles’ brain corrected – him against the wall next to his bed, several threats flowing through his bared teeth.

Okay, so maybe Stiles’ heart had skipped a beat when his eyes had taken the opportunity to steal a glance at Derek’s naked body with nothing but a towel wrapped around his surprisingly slender hips.

And maybe he had made things even worse when his mind drifted off, thinking about how the skin over Derek’s collarbone might taste like… But Derek was so totally out of line to get all physical, calling him a ‘creep’.

“He’s going to kill me, isn’t he?” Stiles buried his head in his hands and bent forward until the tabletop pushed against his knuckles.

Allison patted his back in what was probably meant to be an encouraging manner. “Come on, Stiles, you don’t know. Maybe he’s not that bad when you get to know each other better?”

To express what he thought about this, Stiles banged his head against the table a couple of times until Scott pulled him up by the shoulders.

“Allison’s right… maybe he’s a lot of fluff.… Just covered in a lot of creepy, scary coating?”

Stiles didn’t believe his friend actually just said this.

Aloud.

He gasped, his mouth wide open as he searched for words, his hands gesturing into the direction of the canteen where Derek and his pack sat. Luckily, far, far on the other end of the hall.

“Does… this … look anything like fluff to you?!” His voice shrieked. “Really?”

Stiles shook his head in disbelief before letting out a long, stretched groan. “He’s gonna kill me… like with 18736% certainty!”

Obviously, he hadn’t been able to enjoy his dinner.

It had been hard enough actually to unravel the knot again that had formed in his stomach when Derek and his crew had made their walk through the canteen, passing him and his friends without so much as a second glance.

So yeah: Stiles really, really didn’t feel like going back to his room.

When the clock had struck eleven, he had found himself all alone in the library. The gaunt lady sitting next to the exit behind the counter had told him six times already to get back to his room because she would like to lock up.

So he had let out a deep sigh and put down the book about the different usages of wolfsbane he had been studying the last few hours after Scott and Allison had been stupid dickheads and left him behind, knowing just how screwed and pitiful he was.

He had put the book back from where he got it, nodded the gaunt lady goodnight, scorning the way her eyes had screamed ‘finally’ and made his way over the park-like greenery that filled the vast spaces between the buildings of the school, entering his dorm.

Staring up the seemingly endless stairs that wound its way up through the building, he let out a whine and, with a pout adorning his face, he made his way up.

In front of his door, he took a deep breath. “Please let him be asleep already…” he whispered to himself. ‘Or not be there at all’, his brain added.

He patted his shoulders as if to power himself up before going into the ring. With one slow movement he opened the door, his head entering first, checking out the situation inside.

To Stiles’ relief, he didn’t spot any crimson eyes glaring down at him and no big shadow ready to bounce on him from behind the door or some dark corner.

He slid inside and was just about to turn on the light, bathing in the happiness of Derek not being there, when he noticed the bulk on the bed to his right moving.

With a sigh, he removed his fingers from the switch, stumbled out of his shoes and made his way through the dark until his toes hit something hard.

Stiles bit down on a stifled scream, breathing through the pain that shot up his leg. He bent down, reaching for the toes he stubbed, pressing on them in a poor attempt to lessen the pain.

For the 2849926th time in his life, he hated the fact that even though he seemed to have were-blood running through his veins, neither did it provide him with exceptional night-vision nor with the incredible ability to heal immediately.

Sure, supernatural strength would be kind of awesome, too, but with his kind of clumsiness, he definitely needed the healing ability more than anything else…

And the book he just bumped into would definitely leave him with a blue toenail tomorrow.

Just great.

As silently as possible, he slid out of his shirt and pants and searched for his pajamas in the bags that sat on his bed, still mostly unpacked thanks to Derek scaring the shit out of him a few hours before.

Stiles’ fingers caught cool polyester fabric, and he was just mentally high-fiving himself, when a low growling noise made him spin around, heart stopping for a second.

He readied himself for being thrown onto a wall again – okay. Maybe he exaggerated a little. Derek had just pushed him against the wall, but he was still a dick.

But after what seemed like an endless five seconds, he noticed that the big bad wolf in the bed opposite of him seemed to growl in his sleep, body heavy on the mattress, eyes twitching under their closed lids.

Swallowing hard, Stiles tried calming his pacing pulse while he kept his eyes on Derek’s sleeping face. And even if Stiles would never ever admit it out loud: With the pale moonlight dancing over Derek’s long, dark lashes, his nose twitching at whatever he saw in his dreams and his lips slightly parted, the tall guy in front of him couldn’t be described as anything else but beautiful .

Having lost all the fear that had bound his movements just moments before, Stiles took a few shy steps forward and suddenly felt the urge to run his fingers through the fluffy looking, short black hair that hung over the man’s temples.

Stiles held back a whistle when Derek moved and the blanket that tugged around his shoulders slipped down his upper body and revealed a well-trained chest, bulking above what most girls would define as ‘chocolate abs’ – at least it was exactly what he had imagined whenever Lydia used the expression while Jackson had tried hard to convince her that he was the perfect exhibit for the term.

‘No Jackson,’ Stiles thought as he pursed his lips in admiration at what he saw in front of him right now. ‘your abs can suck balls compared to this.’

After his sane side won against his instincts in the argument about whether to check if Derek was in fact naked under his blanket or wore the underwear he had admired before, Stiles stepped away from Derek’s bed and slid his bags under his own, leaving a short note to himself to unpack tomorrow afternoon when the werewolf was out chasing some rabbits or whatever he did to kill time.

He looked at the pajama in his hand, red plaid reflecting the sparse moonlight shining through the window. He huffed out a sigh, his eyes wandering back over his shoulders to Mr. Muscle behind him, and tossed the top under his bed to his other stuff while putting on the bottoms.

Compared to his roommate, his body build was pathetic. He knew that even without looking down at his skinny torso.

Sure, he had been on the lacrosse team for years and had made several attempts to pump himself up in the gym, but it seemed as if his body resented any visible amount of muscle.

Stiles tensed the muscles in his arms and stared at them for a second, then looked back at Derek, let out a sigh and climbed into bed, preparing for sleep. But whenever he was about to drift off into sleep, growls or cryptic mumbles from Derek pulled him right back.

“Gosh, what the hell is that guy dreaming of?” he groaned into his pillow after checking the clock on Derek’s nightstand, which showed 3.24am.

“Just let me sleep, goddamnit!” he whined into the werewolf’s general direction, almost peeing his pants when said one replied with a loud snarl.

“You look like someone chewed on you ten times and then spit you out.” Jackson grinned and sat down opposite of Stiles, next to Lydia, who peeled the paper from her blueberry chocolate muffin.

“Good morning to you, too, asshole,” Stiles grumbled, and rubbed his palms over his face in a weak attempt to get rid of the dark circles beneath his eyes.

“I wanna see how you get any rest when your doom is lying in the bed right next to you!”

Jackson answered with a snort and took a bite from his sandwich. “What?” he asked, his eyes laughing at Stiles. “Don’t like your new roommate?”

Stiles poked the fried eggs on his plate with his fork. “I’m sure you, too, wouldn’t enjoy living with Derek frickin Hale,” he mumbled and to his surprise the smirk on Jackson’s face froze for a second, his eyebrows raised above wide eyes.

“Y-You’re living with Derek Hale?” Jackson asked after shaking off the slightly panicked look on his face. Stiles just nodded, and Jackson, who normally would have feasted on Stiles’ misery, just nodded in silent agreement.

Allison was the first to pick up the conversation again. “Come on, it’s not like he tried to eat you alive, right?” She tried the group, earning only a slow shake of Scott’s head and a groan from Stiles.

“Well… if it’s Derek Hale, I wouldn’t mind being swallowed whole,” Lydia threw in, gaining unbelieving stares from Scott, Allison and Stiles and a shocked gasp from Jackson who almost choked on his coffee.

“What?” She lifted her eyebrows and pursed her lips. “He’s hot! No one can deny that, right?”

Allison let out a stifled laugh while Scott rubbed his temples and Stiles was visibly amused by Jackson trying to find his breath again at this blow.

“What the hell is supposed to be hot about that grumpy prick?” Jackson shrieked, staring at his girlfriend as if she just told she took a dump on his bed.

“His abs,” Stiles found himself answering in unison with Lydia, which earned him freaked out looks not only from Jackson but also from Scott and Allison.

Lydia just smirked at him while taking a sip from her orange juice.

“Oh, come on!” Stiles tried to defend himself, blood rushing to his cheeks, coloring them a dark red. “You have to admit that he looks like a frickin’ underwear model!”

Scott buried his face in his hands. Jackson looked as if he was on the verge of either laughing or retching.

“You’re just jealous of his body and you know it,” Stiles finished, eyes focusing on Jackson as he stuffed his mouth with some more egg.

Lydia nodded in agreement, and Allison seemed to at least think about acknowledging that he was more than just right.

After he had cleaned his plate and washed the last bite down with some grapefruit juice, Stiles’ face had cooled down again, returning to its original pale color.

“Guys, I gotta run.” Scott was the first one to push himself off the table. “My kick-off class is on the other end of campus. See you later?”

And after giving Allison a quick kiss and an encouraging nod to Stiles, he picked up his tablet and disappeared into the crowd of students mingling between the tables.

“We’re in the main building next, right?” Stiles asked Allison, who luckily also had chosen history as a major and hence shared at least the mandatory classes with him.

“Yep. Wanna leave already?”

Coming late and sitting in the front row was really the last thing missing to make Stiles’ day one of the worst in his life, so he took the last sips of his juice in a haste, almost spilling half of it on his T-shirt.

“See ya.” He smiled at Lydia, who simply pulled her lips up as an answer, and received a “Hopefully not.” from Jackson.

When Stiles and Allison entered the lecture hall, he let his eyes wander over the students that already were there, some standing on the side chatting with each other, others already sitting in the rear half of the room, ambitiously scanning the content pages of their books.

Stiles couldn’t say per se but judging by their buff build or for Stiles’ taste too evident self-esteem, he assumed a good half of them were werewolves.

In the midst of all the people talking and laughing, Stiles spotted a familiar looking blonde head and pulled Allison along.

Squeezing himself through two tall boys having a lively discussion about the cheesy portrayal of the supernatural in the media, Stiles stumbled into one of the rows of seats and let himself fall down onto the seat next to a boy about to pull out his books.

“Hey there!” Stiles grinned.

Isaac turned around and smiled back, wrinkling his nose upon seeing the dark circles under Stiles’ eyes. “Dude, you look awful.”

Allison laughed and offered their new acquaintance her name alongside her hand, which Isaac both accepted with a shy smile.

“What happened? Didn’t get much sleep during your first night on campus?” Isaac picked up the topic again and Stiles leaned against his shoulder, pulling his face into a dramatically pitiful grimace.

“Don’t get me started on it... I’m roommates with Derek Hale!”

Isaac’s eyes widened. “For real? They put you in the same room as Derek?”

Stiles frowned, sitting up straight again to give Isaac a questioning look. “What’s that supposed to mean?” But before Isaac found the time to answer his question, Stiles jumped from his seat. 

“Don’t tell me he really killed his last roommate!”

The room turned silent for a second, all eyes on Stiles. A nervous laugh escaping him, Stiles held up his hands, shaking his head as he looked around, which seemed to be enough for everyone to return to their own business.

“What? No!” Isaac snorted. “Not kill. He just… well... didn’t get along with him too well and… the guy changed rooms within less than two weeks.”

Stiles let himself plop onto his seat again. “Now that’s comforting. I’m sure I’m hanging out of our window within the next few days, dangling from my intestines or some shit like that…”

Isaac bumped him in the shoulder, a smile curling up the corners of his mouth.

“Oh, come on. Derek might seem really scary...” Stiles signaled his agreement to that one with vehement nodding. “… but he’s actually a really nice guy.”

And without being distracted by Stiles’ disbelieving snort, he added: “He has been through some shit which provided him with quite some trust issues when it comes to the human species. But really: Deep down, he’s a warm and rather caring person.”

“See?” Allison smiled. “Fluff with creepy coating!”

Stiles groaned.

After Stiles had ventured his anger about Derek for about ten more minutes and the seats slowly filled with students, out of the blue, a dark-haired girl joined their little group and pushed her bag onto the desk next to Isaac.

“Hey,” Isaac greeted her and Stiles noticed his cheeks blush a pale pink.

And just when Stiles thought he agreed with Isaac’s sentiment - the girl was pretty cute - she leaned forward, glancing at him and Allison, wrinkling her nose.

“And who are those two losers?” she huffed, voice heavy with scorn.

Isaac cleared his throat and the introduction that followed explained everything for Stiles: “Stiles, Allison - this is Cora. Cora – Stiles and Allison.”

Stiles frowned before eyes widening with realization. He looked at Isaac with wide eyes, mouth gaping open and hands gesturing wildly in the new girls’ direction. “Cora?! Cora as in… Cora Hale ?!” he squeaked, silently complaining to God about the torture that was his life.

The girl lifted an eyebrow and glanced over at him while putting her hair up in a loose ponytail. “What? You’ve already heard about me?” she asked, unsuccessfully trying to sound indifferent.

Isaac pointed at him and simply offered a “Derek’s new roommate” for explanation. And to Stiles’ surprise, Cora’s face showed something pretty close to sympathy. She sighed in a pointed manner. “Well, good luck with that… Derek can be a total ass.”

Stiles only shrugged his shoulders and sighed. “Tell me about it…”

“How come Derek is such a prick?” Stiles asked, leaning over Isaac and glancing at Cora when he couldn’t hold on to his curiosity anymore.

Cora stopped copying the literature list the professor showed on the screen in the front of the lecture hall and gave Stiles an exasperated look. “He’s my brother, okay.”

Stiles shrugged, not really getting what this had to do with anything, so Allison took over on his behalf. “I think Stiles wants to know whether there’s a reason for his aversion to humans…”

“Well…” Cora started reluctantly. “It’s because of the fire… the one…”

“The one that killed your family.” Stiles finished for her, receiving an elbow in his rips as a response from Allison. “Be a little more sensitive! Gosh, Stiles!” she hissed.

And it shocked Stiles when even Isaac shook his head, giving him a disappointed look. Cora cleared her throat and leaned a little closer to the group, which Stiles noticed made Isaac blush again.

“Some people might still say it was an accident, but that’s bullshit. The fire was set intentionally by someone who wanted us gone, who wanted werewolves gone.”

“How can you know that?” Allison asked, obviously not as familiar with the case as Stiles was, so he interrupted whatever hurtful comment Cora was about to spit into Allison’s face.

“The evidence was pretty clear. They found accelerants all over the place and the family was deliberately trapped inside, doors not only locked from the outside but also blocked by furniture and wolfsbane.”

Cora stared at him and if Stiles had known none better, he would have sworn his broad knowledge about her family’s history frightened her.

“How..?” she whispered, and Stiles cut into her question with a shrug of his shoulders and a dopey smile.

“Sheriff's son.”

Allison frowned and pushed herself onto her desk and into Cora’s view. “But how do you know it wasn’t some rival werewolf family?”

Cora froze for a few seconds, holding her breath before licking her lips and looking at them with a mixture of hurt and disgust. “Because my brother knew the person who did this,” she spat out.

Stiles and Allison were both shocked, their mouths flapping open, unsure how to react to the information. And as if accusing both of them of complicity, she snarled, “That bitch dated my brother for the sole reason of killing us off.”

Stiles felt his breakfast make its way up again.

He remembered the files he had read, the pictures he had seen, the articles he had cut out of papers and magazines describing the incident and its horrifying background.

How come he never had come across any information concerning Derek’s murderous girlfriend? Why had it never been brought up in any of the files? None of the clippings?

He had to admit: If what Cora said was really true, it explained a lot – and he could sympathize much more with Derek having serious trust issues now, than with whoever that maniac was that burned down a house with several people trapped inside.

“What…” he started after the first wave of nausea had left him. “What happened to that girlfriend?” Cora clenched her teeth and turned her eyes back to the front again, depriving him of any answer.

And the look Stiles identified on Allison’s face told him she, too, was too terrified to even think about what Cora’s silence could possibly mean… .

Chapter Text

“Holy shit!” Stiles shrieked, when he noticed the dark shadow in the shower and almost spilled all over the tiled floor.

It was two in the morning and he had gotten up to pee, stumbling his way through the room with only one of his eyes half open. He hadn’t really checked where Derek was when he got up, just assuming that he was silently sleeping in the bed on the other side of the room as usual.

All in all, they hadn’t been in contact too often since the awkward underwear story and Stiles was still scared of what might happen to him when his life got entangled with that of the alpha.

Derek hadn’t really done anything bad. He was broody and glared at Stiles when he came out of the bathroom after singing in the shower or even when he was just sitting at his desk or watching TV on his laptop or… well…

Derek glared at him pretty much every time they met, but the pushing-him-into-a-random-wall and growling-for-absolutely-no-reason-at-all had stopped after a few days.

Instead, it was replaced by Derek ignoring him most of the time, or at least trying his best to, which Stiles thought was a lot nicer than having to fear getting his throat ripped out someday.

Sure, Stiles was still walking on eggshells most of the time the two of them were in the same room, but he figured he could manage living with Derek Hale.

Even if he wouldn’t admit it out loud, he kind of enjoyed being able to see the soft, relaxed face of the werewolf when he slept.

It kind of made him feel like he knew a side of Derek that no one else really knew.

Derek still was scary as shit. Stiles wouldn’t argue with anyone about this. But sometimes when he saw the older one’s sleeping face, he wondered whether maybe Derek really could be a nice guy, as Isaac claimed.

But even though both of them seemed to have found ways to cope with each other, the one thing Stiles simply couldn’t get used to was the werewolf appearing out of nowhere.

With no sound or warning.

All. The. Time.

And this time was worse than anything: Who scares the crap out of a person while he’s peeing? That was just so not cool.

“Dude, find the line! Really! Bathroom is off limits! Even you should have that much decency!” Stiles ranted, pulling up his boxers and flushing the toilet before he pulled back the shower curtain to give Derek a piece of his mind.

But just when Stiles had enough rage in his chest to scream all his dissatisfaction into the wolf’s face, his plans fell apart when he got a better glance at the person crouching in the corner:

Derek looked even paler than usual, cold sweat on his forehead, eyes flickering. His lips were pressed tightly together, only the sharp tips of his teeth showing.

He looked sick and feverish, a lot more pitiful than his usual scary.

“D-Derek?” Stiles asked in a low voice, his hand stretching forward, tipping against the older one’s shoulder. “You… You okay?”

The whimper that slipped from Derek’s throat was enough to melt any anger Stiles had felt before and replaced it with a sour feeling of concern.

He kneeled down and carefully turned Derek’s face in his direction, the black stubble scraping against the soft skin on his fingers.

“Derek? Can you hear me?” he asked again, but Derek was out of it, his red eyes moving behind half-closed lids, unable to focus on any specific point.

Stiles frowned, trying to pull Derek from the corner of the shower and bring him back to his bed, but the older one let out a dissatisfied groan and leaned back against the tiles.

“Derek, you won’t do yourself a favor sleeping here…” Stiles sighed, trying again – without success.

The werewolf pushed his body against the tiles over and over, each time letting out a small huff at the feeling of the cold tile against the skin on his cheek.

Stiles tried a few more times to wake Derek up, get his attention or drag him back, but he finally gave up and left Derek where he was.

He walked back to his bed, laid down and curled up in his sheets, but after a few seconds of squeezing his eyes shut, trying to convince himself that Derek was none of his concern, Stiles let out a long sigh and got up again.

He pulled the sheets from the bed on the other side of the room, dragging it over to the bathroom, where he pushed them over Derek’s huge body.

“Is it possible that Derek is a somnambulist?” Stiles asked Cora during their lecture two days later.

He had woken up the day after he found Derek in the shower and had found his sheets back on his bed.

When he met Derek on campus later that day, however, he had looked as gloomy and grim as usual, ignoring Stiles completely as he strode by.

And when Stiles had returned to their room after having practiced with Scott, who had officially joined the lacrosse team the week before, there had been no trace of Derek.

Stiles had pretended to read one of the articles for his lecture for almost two hours.

In the end he had decided to give up the pretense and stop wondering where his roommate was wandering around, turning over and switching off the dim light on his nightstand.

Cora lifted an eyebrow at Stiles’ question and glimpsed over her shoulder.

“Why do you ask?” Stiles thought he could hear her voice trembling.

“Well…” He tried to think of a way to not sound too concerned – he wasn’t. Why should he care about a sick bastard like Derek Hale? – and cleared his throat.

“Spit it out!” Cora finally snapped after Stiles had opened his mouth several times, only to shut it again, his face presenting a new grimace every time he did so.

“Okay, okay…” He sighed. “It’s just that I found him sleeping in the shower the other night and… well… he didn’t seem to be in his right mind and no matter how much I tried to get him to move, he just stuck to the tiles mumbling something…”

He stared at Cora in expectation, who had held her breath while listening, only to let out a deep sigh.

“Damn it. I thought he was done with that,” Stiles could hear her mumbling even though she already had turned to the front again.

“Hey, you haven’t answered my question!” he said with just a hint of a whine in his voice, but Cora didn’t seem to make any effort to pay him any more of her attention.

Luckily, Isaac jumped into their little conversation – if one could even call it that.

“Derek’s still sleepwalking?” he asked and Cora gave him a death glare through her dark lashes, which the blonde didn’t even seem to notice.

“Man, I thought he had a grip on his attacks by now…”

Stiles lifted both of his eyebrows, his full attention now on Isaac. “Attacks?” he asked. Isaac nodded and ran a hand through his locks.

“Yeah… since the fire… you… you know…” Stiles nodded in encouragement, hoping for Isaac to spill the beans.

“Well… Derek was in a rather poor condition after the fire… first he didn’t sleep at all and when they finally got him to sleep, he woke up again screaming most of the time.”

Stiles could sympathize with the not-sleeping-thing… he had been the same after losing his mother.

But while Stiles knew he himself had been quite a wimpy kid, it was hard to imagine Derek being weak and fragile.

Then again, seeing one’s own family die could break even the biggest werewolf…. 

“Normally, he sleeps quite relaxed,” Stiles heard himself mumble and, for some reason, felt stupid after doing so.

But even if Isaac thought Stiles was weird, he was too nice to comment on Stiles’ words. Just nodded.

“Yeah, after a few months, everyone thought he had found a way to cope with the things he had seen and heard that night somehow…”

“He heard his parents scream for their life while the flames ate their skin!” Cora hissed, her face distorted with pain and disgust. “It’s only natural that he wasn’t able to forget that easily…”

Isaac looked down, biting on his lower lip as if he himself were being scolded.

When he didn’t continue to tell Derek’s story, Cora picked up again, turning around in her seat to face the two boys.

“Derek was able to sleep again, but he… disappeared every now and then. I found him in all kinds of places: outside in the garden, next to windows, in the bathroom’s corner,…” Now that sounded familiar. “… and when I found him sitting in front of the open refrigerator, I figured out that he was looking for places that were”

“…cool.” Stiles finished her sentence.

Cora nodded with sadness in her eyes. “Yeah. It seems like he still dreams about the fire and when he does, he gets some kind of weird panic attack… his body heats up and it gets harder for him to breathe…”

Stiles chewed on his lips, his mind putting together every piece of information presented.

“So he’s unconsciously searching for cool places…?”

Cora and Isaac nodded, both obviously having had found Derek before. “He did look like he had some kind of fever… but…” Stiles tilted his head. “But why didn’t he wake up when I tried to get him back into bed?”

Isaac turned to face the front of the lecture hall, where the teacher explained about the witch hunts and the first appearances of werewolves.

“He isn’t really himself when he’s having an attack. He’s moving and speaking and sometimes even looking straight at you…”

Isaac seemed to really care about the werewolf, Stiles could tell from the low pressed tone of his voice.

“… but when he’s awake again, he doesn’t remember at all.”

Cora nodded and Stiles could see her hand reaching beneath their desks, finding a rest on Isaac’s knee which made the blonde next to him give a small smile in return.

“It’s his inner wolf acting, I think, trying to save him when Derek’s human conscious self is unable or unwilling to do so.”

Stiles nodded, not sure what to say at first. “So…” he started. “So what do you think I, as his roommate, should do when I find him like that?”

The two werewolves looked at him, Isaac’s face helpless while Cora pulled back her hand from Isaac’s knee and ran it through her hair.

“Just don’t do anything,” she offered as advice. “Just let him be. And don’t talk to him about it. He doesn’t like being seen in that state.”

This made Stiles turn pale, remembering how he had put the sheets on Derek – a clear sign of him knowing about his sleepwalk.

“So... him knowing I know is a bad thing?”

Cora’s eyes turned dark. “If I were you, I wouldn’t push my luck. You don’t know what Derek’s capable of!”

Stiles laughed awkwardly. “Oh, I have a lively imagination…”

Stiles remembered Cora’s words when he found Derek again in the dark bathroom about a week later.

The werewolf looked even paler than the last time, and his breath hitched.

Stiles wanted to ignore him and go back to sleep, just as Cora had advised him. But no matter how much he tried, his mind just didn’t shut up, every single thought circling around the pitiful creature sitting in the cold bathroom.

So Derek woke up to another blanket clumsily wrapped around his body and a snoring Stiles wrapped up in his own sheets, leaning against the bathroom cabinet next to the shower.

Stiles, on the other hand, woke up with a big hand wrapped in his T-shirt and a hot angry breath on his face.

“What the…?” he mumbled, confused, rubbing the sleep from his eye while trying to free himself from Derek’s grip.

The alpha glared down at him, lips pressed together and nostrils flared.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the werewolf hissed, but Stiles’ brain was still groggy and his sense of self-preservation still asleep.

So he yawned and patted the other’s shoulder, a sarcastic smile on his lips.

“ Thank you , dear Stiles, for being such a wonderful being to care about my well-being, even though I’m always such a dick . You’re perfect and handsome and I am so lucky to have you as a roommate.”

Derek answered Stiles’ poor imitation of his voice with a loud growl and a slight shake of his hand, which made Stiles move a little closer to him.

“ What ?” Stiles asked with a groan, not in the mood to take shit so early in the morning. “I was just being nice.”

Derek pulled him closer until Stiles could feel his breath tingle on his skin. “I don’t need a filthy human like you to be nice to me,” the older one spat out. “If you see me - no matter where and when – just leave me be.”

And with this said, Derek let go of Stiles and turned around, leaving Stiles sitting on the floor without as much as a chance to say anything back.

“ Fine ,” Stiles muttered to himself, his mood gone for the day. “Next time, I hope you freeze to death!”

He took back anything nice he had thought about Derek.

He was a dick. A stupid, unfriendly, ignorant piece of shit.

And Stiles wouldn’t give a damn about him from now on, roommates or not.

The next time Stiles found Derek sleepwalking again, he ignored him. It might have taken him about an hour to fall asleep, but at least he had a pleasant morning with Derek being gone before he woke up again.

But when Derek came back into their room later that night, Stiles glanced over his shoulder and noticed the werewolf didn’t look so good.

In the end, it didn’t even take two days until Stiles found out for sure that even though werewolves might heal, even if every single one of their bones was broken and their guts were visible through open wounds, they were just as prone to the common cold as humans (and half-bloods) were.

“Dude, how about blowing your nose from time to time?” Stiles asked, annoyed when Derek had continued to sniff into his book for two hours straight.

“It’s really hard to concentrate on my essay with you making all that unappetizing noise, ya know…”

Derek just glared at him. But after a minute of silent protest, he got up and pulled out a package of tissues from his nightstand.

Stiles gave himself an imaginary high five.

“You look like shit , you know.”

Stiles couldn’t help but poke the dragon. And he knew he could count on Derek’s temper: The alpha got up from his desk and pushed Stiles against the wall within seconds.

Too fast it seemed, as Derek stumbled, almost losing his grip on Stiles’ collar.

“If you’re not feeling well, just admit it and go to bed, damn it. Why do you always have to be so stubborn?”

The answer was a low growl and a red-flashed glare.

Stiles was pretty amazed with himself: Who knew that only a couple of weeks of living with Derek, plus a few werewolves’ stories about the alpha being capable of being nice, could make him so brave?

But maybe it was also the poor state of the wolf in front of him that made his mind give a green light for his mouth to utter snarky comments, as it used to do before all the time.

“I told you before,” Derek huffed, struggling to keep his intimidating posture. “ Leave me be . Mind your own damn business or I’ll rip out your throat.”

Stiles sighed, swallowing down the bitter taste Derek’s threat left. “Too bad for you. I’m a good person who can’t just ignore sick people. And you, my dear friend, definitely are sick, so drop the bad wolf act.”

It was obvious Derek wanted to act on his threat, but fortunately his health acted up, making him topple over and stumble, which spared Stiles a very painful death.

Stiles slung his fingers around Derek’s broad biceps and helped to stabilize the tall guy, whose eyes started to lose focus.

“You really shouldn’t move too fast, you know. You’re obviously coming up with a severe cold, so let’s better get you into bed.”

With this being said, Stiles ignored Derek’s protest and pushed him towards his bed.

(And let’s face it: If Derek really would have fought him, Stiles wouldn’t have had a chance to move the older one as much as an inch, cold or not.)

After sneering at Stiles a few more times and slapping away any helping hand in a poor act of resistance, Derek conceded and laid down, pulling the sheets over himself.

Stiles smiled at the sudden obedience of the werewolf and turned back to his essay. But after only a few more sentences, he got up again and took a quick look at Derek, who tossed in his sheets, having a hard time to feel comfortable enough to get any sleep.

Listening to Derek’s coughs, Stiles’ eyes lit up with an idea and he slipped out of the room, only to return a few minutes later with a steaming cup in his hands.

Derek moaned when Stiles sat down on the edge of his bed, offering him the warm beverage in his hands.

“What the hell is that?” the werewolf asked, pushing himself up on his elbows. “It smells awful.”

Stiles beamed up. “This, my dear sourwolf, is something that will definitely make you feel better tomorrow, an old Stilinski household remedy: warm beer with honey!”

Derek’s eyes moved from the cup in Stiles hands to his face, one eyebrow quirked up as if he thought Stiles wanted to slip him some weird drug or poison.

“I’m not drinking this shit,” he hissed, which made Stiles put on the best offended face he could offer.

“ This shit ? Dude, you obviously don’t know the wonders a Stilinski cough-beer can do!”

And before Derek could say anything bad about the awesome name he had for the brew, he added: “If you drink this, I swear to you: You will feel like a new person tomorrow.”

It took another good ten minutes of Stiles advertising his warm beer before Derek gave in, probably more desperate to get Stiles to shut up than actually believing in the magical powers of the Stilinski household remedy.

He drank half of the beer with one big gulp and grimaced at the taste. “I swear to god, Stiles, if this doesn’t help, you’re dead ,” he hissed and Stiles felt his stupid heart flutter at the fact that Derek, for the first time, had said his name.

When Derek - not without some reluctance - had emptied the rest of the cup, Stiles took it from his hands, put it down on the nightstand and, with a tender push against his biceps, urged the older one back down onto his bed.

“Believe me, in just a few seconds, you’ll be fast asleep.”

Derek gave a disbelieving snort, but closed his eyes nonetheless.

“You’ll heat up a bit, but that’ll help you get better,” Stiles explained with a gentle smile, pulling on the corners of his mouth.He placed his hands on Derek’s forehead to feel his temperature.

To Stiles’ surprise, Derek reacted not with an angry growl but a content sigh and leaned into the touch, which made Stiles’ heart flutter a little.

Clearing his throat, he tried to pull his hands back, but long fingers slung around his hands, stopping its movements after just a few millimeters.

“Don’t,” he heard Derek mumble. “It feels nice…”

Stiles would have been embarrassed if Derek had been awake as the rapid beating of his heart – stupid, stupid heart! – certainly could not be missed by werewolf hearing.

Reluctantly, Stiles placed his fingers back on Derek’s heated skin, earning a content hum in return that made his cheeks flush.

It was just unfair that the guy in front of him could look so cute despite the awful personality he usually displayed.

Even after a few minutes had passed and Derek’s breath had turned low and steady, the wolf did not let go of his hand.

So Stiles tried his best to find a somewhat comfortable position, moving his body this way and another until he opted for a sitting posture, his head resting on the mattress next to Derek’s from where he watched the older one’s sleeping face until he, too, fell asleep.

The next morning, when Stiles woke up, Derek had disappeared again.

Stiles got up and tried to get some life back into his numb legs, trying to ignore the traitorous sense of disappointment that settled cold in his guts.

It’s not that he had hoped to get an actual “Thank you” or anything, but… just being left like that after spending the night sleeping next to Derek’s bed, Stiles felt a little hurt.

But hey, he should have known better… .

It was only later in the cafeteria that Stiles caught a glimpse of Derek again.

Just when he was about to punish Derek with cold ignorance, the group of werewolves walked past them and Derek, for the first time ever, looked at him directly.

The corner of the alpha’s lips pulled up just enough to hint a smile when he let a husky “Good morning” slip.

Stiles was too surprised, too proud and too happy to react. Couldn’t even answer his friends’ shocked expressions and eager questions that followed.

Maybe, just maybe, Derek wasn’t a full-blooded jerk after all. He thought to himself with a dopey grin on his face while stuffing his face with a sandwich.

Chapter Text

Scott almost choked on his orange juice when he heard Derek greet his best friend. 

Allison, too, forgot all about the archery club she had joined the day before and couldn’t stop telling everyone about - She had beaten one of the master students and long-term members in a show off during her trial day and taken the whole club by storm.

“Did… Did Derek Hale just greet you?” Lydia asked, her eyes wide and voice a pitch higher than usual. Jackson seemed to have been put on pause, his jaw hanging open, granting a direct view of what was left of the bread he had chewed on just seconds before.

“I... think so?”

After having regained his composure, Stiles’s face split in a beaming grin and he took another bite from his sandwich. Who knew that getting a simple greeting from a well-known unfriendly prick could feel so damn good?

“How the hell did you get him to be nice to you?” Allison asked with a disbelieving expression on her face. 

“Yeah, dude!” Scott jumped in after having caught his breath again. “Did you put something in his drink or what?”

Jackson rolled his eyes, having snapped back to reality and, unfortunately, returned to the cynical asshole he was.

“Yeah, I’m sure Stilinski slipped him some friendly-pills he bought from some shady guy in a back alley…” He pulled a face and waved his fingers in the air to underline just how ridiculous he thought this idea was. “Get your head out of your ass, McCall!”

Stiles leaned back in his seat and pulled his lips into a fake pout, cocking his head to the side, eyes wide open. “Oh Jackson, you don’t need to be jealous that you’re just a stupid omega, unable to make any friends.”

Allison not so subtly smirked into her drink while Lydia tried to look offended for her boyfriend, until only seconds later she raised her eyebrows and let out a huff, not really giving a damn about it.

“Jealous?” Jackson shrieked, his fingers tightening around the handle of his knife, muscles tight as if ready to throw the sharp object at the smirking boy in front of him. “Of whom? You?!” He snorted. 

“Yeah right! Believe me, Stilinski, even if you had tons of alpha-friends around you, owned a castle made of gold and your shit smelled like lilies, I still wouldn’t want to be you!”

Stiles brushed him off. “Yeah, handling as much awesome as I am, indeed would be too much for a fragile character such as you are… We don’t want you to get any more narcissistic than you already are, now do we?”

They exchanged a few more snarky comments before Jackson gave up, pushed his seat back and left the group with angry stomps, Lydia following behind him while giving Stiles an acknowledging wink.

That alone would have been enough to make this morning one of the best Stiles ever had, but Derek’s greeting – and the smile! Stiles definitely was hooked on that faint smile! – topped just everything there was.

“What the hell was that this morning?”

Stiles almost fell from his chair when Cora plopped onto the seat next to him. She threw her hair back and pursed her lips, studying Stiles’ face as if she tried to read his thoughts.

“Wha-?!” he stuttered and flailed his hands, his ball pen slipping from his fingers, causing it to fly in her general direction. “You’re not in this seminar…?!”

Cora waved him off. “As if anyone gave a shit about who’s in the seminar… Now spill it: What happened between you and my brother?”

Stiles was unsure how to answer this question, because really: What had happened?

All he had done was provide a sick person in need of a warm beer…. Not that he hadn’t hoped things between him and his roommate would lighten up someday, but that his efforts would pay off that early came as a joyous surprise even to him.

“You didn’t slip him some weird drug, did you?” Cora looked at him, eyes drawn into small, calculating slits and eyebrows raised. Stiles let out a strangled huff, throwing his hands in the air in frustration.

“Why the hell does everyone seem to think people can only be nice to me if they’re on some weird drug?!”

Cora snorted. “Not ‘people’, Stiles. We’re talking about my brother here… Don’t get me wrong, I love him and all, but he is not nice to people. Not to people he doesn’t know very well. And especially not to humans, as you should know by now, too.”

Stiles let out a huff and folded his arms in front of his chest. “Well, no way I could have missed that…”

Cora lifted an eyebrow, signaling him to speed up his talk – something that made Stiles a little happy as he hardly ever got encouragement to talk. Most people were more desperate to get him to shut up instead.

But at the same time, he was at a loss about what to tell her….

“I didn’t do anything weird , okay? He was sick, and I helped him get better. That’s all.”

Cora watched him with narrowed eyes and tipped her index finger on his desk. “Don’t give me shit, Stiles. There must be more going on. So spill it!”

At this point, Stiles gave up. 

“Nothing, okay? I was just being a normal good roommate and… it seems he finally realized that not everyone who is human is a psycho who wants to kill him and his entire race!”

This earned him a grim look from Cora before she spat out an “Alright. If you don’t want to tell me anything, I guess I’ll have to ask Derek himself!” and left the room, ignoring Stiles’ frustrated moan as well as the lecturer who almost got run over by her on his way into the room.

Stiles was lost in his thoughts, wondering how Derek might explain his sudden change in attitude to Cora when the title of one of the slides the lecturer presented caught his attention.

‘Half-bloods and World War II’, it said in big letters on the top.

Stiles had heard before about half-bloods having been used as weapons during wars. His father had told him the stories more than just once to make sure his son would never be as stupid as to reveal his true form to others.

So there was no real new information for him when the lean man in the front told the class the basic information about half-blooded werewolves:

How they were almost as rare as True Alphas, as about two third of the kids between a werewolf and a human would turn out as werewolves and the other third nearly all as humans.

Less than one percent would turn out as mixtures of both races – Stiles flinched when the lecturer used the word ‘bastards’. He had always hated that word.

The lecturer continued to explain how half-bloods were feared creatures, as they were said to be unable to control their inner wolf.

Stiles just rolled his eyes at that “fact”, as they called it. After all, he himself was living proof that half-bloods were more than able to control themselves.

No sleep-over at Scotts’ or blood rushing anger at being treated like shit from most of his classmates had ever made him lose control.

Sometimes he could feel his fangs trying to expand or his eyes about to flicker yellow, but he could always keep his true form hidden as long as he just concentrated on not turning.

So when the lecturer continued to tell the tales of the Second World War and how two half-bloods had been going berserk, perpetrating several massacres in the enemies' territory, Stiles was more than sure that it was not the half-bloods and their inability to control their true form who committed the murders.

To him, it was a much sounder theory that the troops behind them most likely had used some drugs or whatever on them to make them lose their mind.

But the stories seemed to stick: All the other students nodded their heads in agreement as they, too, without a doubt all had heard the same kind of stories in school before.

It made Stiles furious to think that this was considered common knowledge by now.

“There is no actual proof it were half-bloods that were the perpetrators in those killings, is there?” Stiles interrupted the languid discussion that followed the presentation.

“To be frank, there’s not even enough proof to say with certainty how many werewolves existed at that time. So considering that even less is known about the existence of half-bloods, it seems pretty lurid to present these tales as if they were factual truth…”

For a split second Stiles thought he had seen the lecturer’s eyes light up in excitement, but then the lean man in the front clenched his teeth. 

Maybe the topic, in his opinion, was too sensitive to challenge the common view publicly without getting into trouble.

He undoubtedly didn’t know Stiles was the master of getting himself in trouble. After all, Stiles had years of experience.

“Mr… Stilinski, correct?”

Stiles nodded.

“I see you are sympathizing with the poor creatures that half-bloods are, but even if there is not much written in the official books, one can’t deny their blood thirst during that time of unrest.”

Stiles gave a scornful snort as an answer – by the looks of it, the lecturer would have been happy to strangle him for that.

“ Blood thirst ? Even if we assume that there actually were half-bloods involved in the war, how can you put all blame on them? That’s just unfair and… sorry for the language but: It’s bullshit.”

Stiles ignored the raised eyebrows of his lecturer, too busy talking himself into a rage. 

“I’m sure they weren’t the ones to start the war? And who says they lost control because they’re half-bloods – and were not made to lose it by very sane and full-blooded humans and werewolves?”

Noticing how his classmates’ faces turned darker, Stiles cleared his throat. “I just mean that, in my opinion, there’s not enough proof to support these very incriminating statements.”

Lucky for him, the bell rang, signaling the seminar was over. The students started to pack up their stuff and hurry to get some coffee before the next lecture or seminar began.

Before Stiles had all his belongings stuffed in his bag, the lecturer came up to him and placed a thin book on top of his notebook.

“If you’re so interested and well read on the topic, maybe you could write your semester essay about half-bloods?” he asked. “Given the subject matter, it might be easier for you to write about it than openly start a discussion with the class, don’t you think?”

Stiles accepted the hinted apology – after all, the lecturer hadn’t shut him down or expelled him from his seminar for challenging his presentation. It just wasn’t very welcomed to talk about the topic in general.

No matter how many people were taught about history, the one thing that never changed was the fear of things not well known. Expressing itself in nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism or, in this case, incrimination of a not well known mixed species.

But Stiles would happily make use of his research skills to at least try to make a slight difference.

It wasn’t as if he had to reveal his true self… Writing one of his papers about the topic wouldn’t break the promise to his father.

“Thanks.” Stiles smiled, lips a thin and tense line, and got up to change rooms. “I’ll think about it.”

The rest of the day went without further incidents, so Stiles let himself be distracted by the memory of Derek’s faint smile again.

He wondered what it would look like if those lips would curl up in an actual smile, all flashing teeth and happiness.

Stiles started to draw little Derek’s in his notebook, but because of his rather poor drawing skills, they all looked more like creepy little demons who got eaten by their own huge, grinning mouths.

As his doodling didn’t serve the initial purpose of getting Stiles’ vivid mental images on paper, he started drawing fluffy tails and cute wolf-ears on the crooked figures to at least contribute to his amusement.

Scott had waited for him after the second seminar of the day to go eat lunch together.

They ended up sitting in the cafeteria’s corner, Scott munching on some lukewarm fries while he listened to Stiles’ tale of how he heroically saved his whiny sick werewolf of a roommate by preparing one of the most difficult breweries known to the world.

Okay. It was just warm beer with honey. Nevertheless, Stiles was awesome . No matter how unimpressed Scott looked…

One lecture later, Stiles found himself in the library looking for some books that contained information about half-bloods.

He knew his father would disagree with the idea of Stiles writing a paper about this topic.

The sheriff for certain assumed it was too much danger for Stiles to get involved with this matter. Risking that people might see a link between him and his engagement regarding half-blood stories.

But there might be no one who knew more about the topic than he did.

He had done research all these years already. Way before it presented as an opportunity to get easy credit points for his studies.

He picked two rather old and dusty books from the shelves in the library and booked them out of the system before strolling over the courtyard and up to his room.

Derek must have skipped one of his lectures as Stiles heard the muffled sound of the shower when he pushed off his shoes and threw his bag on his bed.

He picked the half empty bottle of water from his nightstand, took a few big gulps and started his laptop, which sat on the desk by the window.

Waiting for the login screen to pop up, he looked out of the window, watching the already orange sun move behind some clouds.

The photo of him and Scott that popped up on his screen caught his attention again and he turned towards his laptop, typing in his password.

Sitting down on his chair, Stiles opened his browser and pulled up his search engine.

He had researched quite a lot about half-bloods when his puberty had kicked in and his inner wolf had surfaced more often. But his link collection still amounted to a pathetic total of six websites.

But Stiles knew every internet search was a new chance to stumble over information one had missed before, so he cracked his neck and typed in several keywords.

“What are you doing?” Stiles heard Derek’s husky voice behind him before he smelled the scent of coconut shampoo in the humid air.

“Studying or porn?” Derek leaned over his shoulder with a smirk on his lips, water dripping from his bangs onto Stiles’ T-shirt, leaving small dark spots on the blue fabric.

“As if I could jerk off in peace, living with a werewolf who can basically hear and smell what I did two weeks ago!”

Stiles rolled his eyes, trying to push back the heat that rose in his cheeks. “I’m just doing some research.”

Derek dried his hair and pulled his shorts in place, his muscles rippling with the motion.

People with a body like his should not be allowed to walk around wearing practically nothing – it had to take its toll on pretty much every living creature there was on this planet.

“Research?” the alpha asked and pushed back the top of Stiles’ laptop a bit to get a better look at the results shown on the page.

“And what are you researching about?” He squinted at the titles of the search results. “… Half-bloods?”

In the blink of an eye Derek’s eyes turned dark, and he grabbed Stiles by his shoulder, turning him around in his chair.

“I thought it was weird when Cora asked me all these questions about you!” He gritted his teeth, looking about to rip Stiles’ head off.

Stiles looked at him, eyes wide and mouth gaping. “I… I really don’t know where you’re going with this, but…”

Before he got to finish his sentence, however, Derek had him by his collar again.

He should have been used to it by now, but Stiles still felt his breath hitch at the sudden movement.

“Hands. Off. My. Sister.” Derek spat out, eyes shining blood-red in order to stress how serious he was about this matter.

It took a second before Stiles’ brain put the pieces together, and his eyes turned even wider, cheeks colored a bright red.

“What?!” he shrieked, not sure how the older one even came up with the idea that his research on half-bloods had anything to do with Derek’s sister.

Yes, Cora was pretty, but she was a psycho!

Okay, he had had a crush on Lydia for years and she perhaps was one of the worst psychos he knew, but Cora was a new league of psycho.

The werewolf league.

And she was Derek’s sister.

So no. Definitely no!

“How the hell did you come up with that crazy idea?” he asked, voice high-pitched and strangled.

Derek’s eyes wandered to the laptop screen and back to the boy in his grip again. “When I heard from Isaac that you guys share a lecture and sit next to each other, I thought little of it.”

He glowered at Stiles, his hand fisting tighter into the worn out fabric of Stiles’ shirt.

“But then she keeps pestering me to tell her about you and asks me what I think of you and then this… .?” His free hand gestured towards the screen, almost smashing the laptop in the process.

“You better not plan on making a bastard with my baby sister, you go that?”

Stiles pulled a shocked grimace and pushed Derek away.

“ Come again ? How do you get from me researching for a paper to wanting to make sweet, sweet love to Cora?”

Okay, he got why Derek would growl at this one.

“And could you stop calling half-bloods bastards ? That’s rude. And racist!”

Derek snorted. “That’s not rude, just what they are.”

Hearing this, Stiles forgot all about him seemingly having the hots for Cora and jumped headfirst into this fight.

“A bastard is what you are, you stupid little prick!!” he screamed, face hot with anger.

To Stiles’ surprise, Derek was speechless for a second, his eyebrows raised high over wide, surprised eyes.

Most probably, no one had talked to him like that since he became an alpha.

“What did you just say?” Derek hissed when he finally found his composure again and glared at Stiles with narrow eyes.

But Stiles felt the blood rush to his head, making him forget any fear or other sense of self-preservation.

“How can you talk shit like that? Have you even met a half-blood before?” Stiles asked, his voice vibrating with fury.

Derek let a growl rumble in his throat. “What?” he asked, his lips twisting up in a cynical smile. “ Have you ?”

Stiles’ heart stopped beating for a second before he stumbled over his words, trying to not put weird ideas into the werewolf’s head.

“N-No? But I’m sure they are someone’s beloved kid, too. And just because they have mixed blood doesn’t make them lesser beings compared to any of the full-blooded races.”

He crossed his arms in front of his chest and glowered at Derek. “After slavery and the Second World War, I thought we finally were done with ideas like this.”

Derek looked like he wanted to rip out Stiles’ throat for real this time, and the younger one just went for the kill.

“Racism always is born from fear . From stupid people fearing whoever is different, whoever they can blame for their own shortcomings. You’re not better than any of the people of the past!”

He huffed out an angry breath. “You fear half-bloods because you don’t know what they’re like! Because you’re scared of what they’re capable of, you put them down by calling them names and treating them like a sickness!”

“ Scared ?” Derek cut in on Stiles’ ramble. “Scared?! As if! They’re accidents! Disfigured creatures, unable to be neither human nor werewolf!”

An angry vein ticked on his temple as he spat the words in Stiles’ face. “Half-bloods are born from misguided people blinded by fleeting attraction. They’re threats to the safety of society by their lack of control over their superior side. They’re…”

Before Derek could finish his sentence, Stiles’ flat hand collided with his face, forcing it to twist sideways.

Both of them froze for a second, needing time to grasp just what had happened.

Stiles was the first one to snap back to reality, jumping up from his chair and racing out of their room, down the stairs as fast as he could.

He knew that if Derek indeed was to go after him, he had no chance to escape, no matter how fast he ran. Derek being a werewolf and all.

But to his surprise, he reached the first floor without a panting werewolf jumping his back and biting off his neck.

So he slowed down when he left the building, seeking refuge on the bench behind the library.

He was dead.

He was so dead.

No way Derek would let this just slip. Stiles would die at the tender age of nineteen. His father would mourn in front of a gravestone saying ‘Stiles. Stupid guy who bitch-slapped an alpha.’

Too scared of going back, Stiles stayed huddled up on the bench for a couple of hours until the sky had already turned dark and his body shivered from the cold.

It was the beginning of autumn and the days were warm enough to leave the house in a T-shirt, but the evenings still grew cold. Colder than Stiles liked right now.

He pulled his legs close to his body and laid his head on his knees, a deep sigh leaving his throat. “Maybe I really have no control at times…” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

He sighed and pushed his forehead against his cold jeans, hating himself a bit.

But he hadn’t been wrong.

Derek had been.

It wasn’t like Stiles had never heard all those hackneyed phrases before. Almost all people talked like that.

And because half-bloods still seemed to be extremely rare in numbers and those who actually existed most probably hid their true form, just like Stiles did, no one challenged those tales.

But hearing it straight from Derek’s mouth like this? For some reason, it had made his mind go blank with anger, unable to hold back….

Stiles felt a bit guilty for hiding. He bitch slapped Derek for talking bad about half-bloods, but was he really that much better?

He himself kept the truth about who he was hidden after all… and to be frank, sometimes he, too, was scared of the abilities that might be hidden inside of him.

Maybe somewhere deep within he was afraid of going berserk someday, just as the stories told: Going on a rampage, unable to distinguish between friend and enemy, maybe even killing Scott or his dad while doing so.

Maybe he, too, sometimes felt like he was ‘unfinished’ somehow….

“Stiles?” a low voice tore him from his thoughts.

He lifted his head and looked right at Derek standing in front of him, a black T-shirt stretching over his firm chest and grey jersey covering his legs.

It took a second for Stiles to process the image before he let out a scared shriek and jumped back, falling off the bench, hitting his head on the ground hard.

But instead of rubbing the aching spot, Stiles’ instinct told him to get up and run for his life. So he pulled himself up on all fours and opted for a jump start.

Before he was even fully on his legs, however, strong arms slung around him from behind.

“Chill out, Stiles…”

Derek’s voice sounded different from usual: Lower, a bit more hoarse and somehow pained. And Stiles really calmed down, his flailing arms coming to a halt.

Both of them stayed like this for a second, probably both waiting for the other person to say something. It was Derek who finally broke the silence first. “You didn’t come back.”

Stiles was confused. Was this the Hale version of an apology? Or simply a statement of fact before ripping out his throat?

Unsure of how to react to this, Stiles just swallowed hard, hands sinking to his sides, arms dangling over Derek’s bicep.

“…you slapped me.”, the older one continued and Stiles rolled his eyes.

“As if I would be able to forget about this….”

The words slipped from his mouth before he even knew it and, being sure that it was snarky comments like this one that would kill him some day, Stiles pressed his eyes shut, waiting for Derek to finish what he came for.

But to his surprise, Derek loosened his grip on him, arms still placed around his hips. The pressure was just strong enough to signal him to not make a run, but to just stay there, listening to whatever Derek was about to tell him.

“…you want to tell me what exactly got you so upset?” Derek asked, his voice a little pressed, which made Stiles nervous again.

There was no way he could come out and tell the werewolf that he got pissed because he was a half-blood himself and Derek hence called Stiles himself a bastard and basically denied his very existence.

“A half-blood…”

Stiles held his breath. Did Derek find out? Had he been too obvious? He must have been.

Wonderful job, Stiles, really, he thought to himself. They would put him in shags, drug him to freak out and put him on display so everyone’s awful stories could be rendered as the truth.

Or Derek would just kill him right now, right there in a very bloody and painful way.

“…. You really do know one, don’t you?”

Stiles’ thoughts raced.

Maybe he hadn’t blown his cover after all! He just needed to…

“There was this half-blood girl I liked.” he heard himself lie before he even finished his trail of thought. Unsure about whether or not Derek ate his lie, he turned around, trying his best to keep his face neutral and his heartbeat steady.

The werewolf stared at him for a few seconds, then he let out a deep sigh, pulling his hands back from where they still had held on Stiles’ body.

“I shouldn’t have said what I did back then… It’s just that…” Derek sat down on the bench, his eyes fixating the dark ground below his naked feet.

“…talks about bas-…half-bloods remind me of a girl, too.”

Stiles awkwardly shifted on his feet, not sure how to handle a Derek who all of a sudden seemed almost talkative and about to open himself up to him.

Or not, Stiles thought after he had been waiting for Derek to talk about that certain girl – most probably the one that screwed up his entire world by using him to kill off almost all of his family – for what seemed like an eternity.

But the older one stayed silent, lost in thought, while staring down at the ground.

“How about we both admit we acted a bit rash and get back to our room?” Stiles suggested after a few more minutes of silence. “To be frank, I’m super cold. … …and really need to pee.”

This apparently got Derek’s attention as he lifted his head and looked at Stiles, one side of his mouth pulled up. Not enough to call it an actual smile, but Stiles took it anyway.

“Alright. Let’s go back in…”

Stiles’ eyes jerked open when he felt his mattress bent down to his right. And even before he could turn around to catch a glimpse of the intruder’s face, he felt strong arms sling around his chest and hot breath tickling the skin on his neck.

“D-Derek?” he whispered, breath hitched. “D-Derek… what..?”

But the words got stuck in his throat when the werewolf pulled him close, his chest and hips pressed firmly against Stiles’ back.

Stiles started to panic, his mind running through all the reasons why Derek would crawl into his bed at night. And for some reason, he was sure the older one was about to make his usual threat –to rip out his throat. With his teeth. – come true.

Probably late revenge for the slap this afternoon.

He would bite out his neck, slice open his chest, pull out his heart, eat his brain… Okay. Maybe not the last one, but Stiles was sure Derek was about to make sure Stiles could never again bitch-slap him like that.

But after a few seconds Stiles noticed that besides hot breath on the skin on his neck and long fingers clinging almost desperately to his torso, the werewolf did nothing to him.

No threats, no snarl, no bite, no crush of bones. Just a warm breath sending shivers down his spine and making it hard for Stiles to keep the overwhelming, ticklish feeling in the depth of his stomach locked away.

“Derek... please don’t scare me like that…” Stiles whimpered, trying to wind himself out of the firm embrace. But all he did was turn around enough below the other’s biceps as to look him right in the face.

To his surprise, Derek seemed to be asleep, low breaths lifting his chest in a steady movement. His lashes twitched as he pushed his chin towards Stiles, fangs pointedly sticking out between his lips.

And suddenly all the half-assed strength Stiles had put into getting out of Derek’s arms melted away, dissolving into electric sparks that set his nerves on fire.

Derek Hale was lying right next to him in his bed.

He was hugging him.

And his face was so close to Stiles’ that with just a slight tilt of his head, their lips would touch – not that he would ever think of doing so.

(At least that’s what he tried to tell himself, even though his eyes had a hard time to pull away from the mesmerizing pale red of Derek’s lips.)

Stiles noticed cold sweat on Derek’s forehead and, on second thought, his face was paler than usual, too.

Stiles frowned as Derek’s breath turned rugged. “Dreaming of the fire again, hm?” he whispered. He pulled his hands free of Derek’s firm embrace and moved them in an awkward motion between their entangled bodies.

With featherlight touches, his fingers traced the alpha’s jawline before Stiles let them rest on Derek’s temples, feeling the skin beneath the tips of his fingers burn up.

He watched Derek’s lashes flicker, red eyes flashing up in the dark for a split second. Then the werewolf pulled himself closer to Stiles’ body again, a content sigh rumbling in his throat. “… feels good…”

A dopey smile forming on his lips, Stiles found himself easing against Derek’s body. He buried his face in the crook of Derek’s neck and breathed in the strangely addicting scent, musky but at the same time incredibly sweet. Alluring.

Whatever the reason for Derek crawling into his bed was, he could live with it. And where his heart at first had jumped with fear - and maybe, just maybe, had fluttered a little when taking in Derek’s face in the moonlight - , it now turned into a steady beat, adjusting to the rhythm of the werewolf’s.

And when Derek’s fingers started moving over his spine, Stiles couldn’t control the feeling bubbling up in him anymore. He felt Derek’s sweet scent pull at his nerves, clouding his mind, painting the back of his eyelids with bright yellow sparks. He could feel dull pain spreading through his jawbone, fangs eager to expand.

And against his actual will, he pulled himself closer to the heated body slung around his own, his breath unsteady and his heartbeat suddenly too fast for him to concentrate on anymore.

Stiles knew he had to get away, he had to hide, to calm down.

But his fingers dug deep into the skin on Derek’s back, as if he was holding on for dear life.

Chapter Text

When Stiles opened his eyes after the first night Derek had sneaked into his bed, it was still dark outside. He had fallen asleep, his head resting on the alpha’s biceps, and when he turned his head around, he looked directly into the other one’s sleeping face.

Derek’s lips were parted, his breath tingling on Stiles’ skin. He looked calm and gentle. Nothing like the gruff, angry wolf he had been when the two of them had first crossed ways.

It must have taken a few minutes of Stiles just staring at Derek before he remembered how critical his situation actually was and panic took over.

He slipped out of Derek’s embrace in a haste and pushing himself up on shaking limbs he climbed over the other one’s huge body, making his way to the bathroom.

When the door closed behind him with an almost inaudible click, Stiles took a deep breath and turned on the light.

Taking in his reflection in the mirror above the sink, Stiles let out a sigh of relief: He looked normal. Human . No fangs, no yellow eyes anymore. And for a second, he wondered whether he had just imagined things.

But even if his perceived shift had just been his mind playing a trick on him, Stiles knew he had to be more careful.

Living together with a werewolf – an alpha on top of that – was riskier than he had admitted to himself until now. He had never had problems controlling himself before, but then again, the only alpha he ever had been around was Scott.

And as Scott, above being his best buddy from kindergarten on, had turned because of a rogue werewolf’s bite, his inner wolf might have less effect on Stiles’ compared to a born wolf like Derek.

With the older one suddenly getting so close to him, an unwanted shift wouldn’t be a surprise. He had to be careful. A lot more careful, he decided.

When he heard muffled noises from behind the door, Stiles’ mind went into high-speed-mode. Derek had come to. He was about to wake up noticing he was lying in Stiles’ bed.

This was the worst.

There was no way he could explain to Derek what actually had happened.

Sure, Derek knew about his sleep-walking condition, but from what Stiles had learned from Cora, he didn’t remember anything that happened during his sleepwalks.

So when Derek woke up in Stiles’ bed, he pretty sure would not believe that he had been snuggling up to his roommate with whom he just had gotten to an I-greet-you-when-we-meet-basis and certainly nothing more.

Stiles tried to come up with a good explanation as to why Derek was waking up in another bed – and in Stiles’, on top of all.

But when his mind struggled to find an explanation that sounded less implausible than Derek’s sudden need to cuddle, he blanked completely – and went genius.

Because for some unknown reason, Stiles opened the door and stepped out, looking straight into Derek’s bewildered face, and he quickly grimaced.

“What the-?!” his voice cracked nervously as he stared down at Derek in his bed. “Derek? What the hell are you doing in my bed?!”

The werewolf blinked around in sleepy confusion before jumping out of Stiles’ sheets.

“Dude, is that why you don’t have any roommates? Because you steal their beds when they’re taking a piss?”

Derek’s face first went pale, then bright red – which was incredibly cute, Stiles admitted to himself – and gasped for air.

“No. I… I don’t…. I…?!”

Stiles lifted an eyebrow and bit down on a laugh. God, he loved his evil mind sometimes. Seeing Derek so confused and desperate to find words was better than anything Stiles could imagine.

(And the bed hair sticking up from the back of his hair was the cherry on top of it all.)

“Let’s just pretend this didn’t happen...” Stiles said, doing his best sound judgemental. Derek ran his palm over his face, trying to hide his embarrassment. “…Thanks… and… sorry…”

Two apologies from Derek freaking Hale in less than 24 hours?

Stiles really felt like on Cloud Nine now.

Grateful that his tactic had worked out, Stiles pulled a pair of boxers and a T-shirt from his wardrobe and went back into the bathroom while Derek buried himself in his bed, pretending to be right back to sleep.

Stiles took a long shower.

In a school full of werewolves, he hardly could walk around with Derek’s scent all over him. Even though pretty much no one besides his few close friends normally cared about him enough to spare any thought on what he smelled like, the scent of one of the most famous alphas in the area would definitely draw people’s attention.

And this he couldn’t risk.

So he scrubbed hard and, besides using double the amount of body soap, he also added some layers of deodorant on top of it before leaving the steamy bathroom.

“Dude, did you get a new aftershave?” Scott leaned over the table and wrinkled his nose while taking in Stiles’ scent.

For a split second Stiles thought his heart stopped, fear taking over. He knew werewolf’s senses were a lot more sensitive than human’s, but he really had thought that his shower efforts freed him of any trace of Derek on his skin.

(Though somewhere deep down he felt sad about how he couldn’t wear his scent like a trophy: Stiles Stilinski tamed the red-eyed beast!)

Scott sat back in his seat and squinted for a second in thought before a smile spread across his face.

“I like it. Is it Dior?”

Stiles’ heartbeat kicked back in and he let out an inaudible sigh before taking a sip of his juice. “Na, I don’t think so. It’s just some sample I got the other day in the drugstore. Don’t really remember the name…”

Scott nodded and took a bite of his bread, honey dripping over his fingers and onto his plate. “I think you should buy it. It suits you.”

Being basically told that sleeping in Derek’s arms made him smell great, let a weird feeling spread through Stiles’ chest.

There was embarrassment about the fact that he had cuddled up and slept like a puppy in his roommate’s embrace. Pride that most likely no other – especially no officially human – dude would ever dare to do so. Fear that if Derek ever found out about this night, he would kill him for good. And a bad conscience about lying to his friend.

Until now, Stiles had told himself that not letting Scott in on his secret was just him giving the truth a bit more space. Not telling something differed from actually saying something that was untrue.

And even though pretending Derek’s smell was nothing but a cheap sample was a rather small lie, it still was exactly this: Stiles lying to his best buddy in the whole wide world.

And it made him feel horrible.

The morning went by in a flash, Stiles almost falling asleep in his second lecture. And during lunch he laughed so hard at Jackson ruining his favorite shirt by dropping a meatball on it that he almost fell from his chair.

All in all, Stiles considered it a quite normal day after what had been a definitely not normal night.

He waved his friends goodbye and made his way to his afternoon lecture, only to find a note on the door telling him it was canceled.

“Wish I had known this earlier…” Stiles heard a voice behind him and turned around to find a dark-haired guy standing behind him, eyes on the note.

“I ran all the way here… didn’t even eat lunch yet.”

Stiles nodded in sympathy. “Well, you can still buy something from the convenience store in the main building?” he suggested.

The other one stayed silent and simply looked at Stiles. An intense and long stare that made Stiles shift on his feet.

“You…” the boy started, a smirk forming on his lips. “You’re friends with Derek Hale, right?”

Stiles felt himself turn cold, all the blood draining from his face. “What?!”

The other one’s grin turned wider and, in Stiles' opinion, kind of creepy.

“I’ll keep an eye on you.”

And with this, the boy turned around and left.

It took Stiles a few minutes until he could shake off the goose bumps the strange guy had caused and he sighed. He always had a talent to get into trouble. And this guy definitely was trouble.

But for now, Stiles had to find a way to spend the next two hours somehow. So after buying a coffee from the convenience store, he walked over to the library, continuing his research about half-bloods.

“You’re going to write a paper about half-bloods?” Allison threw herself into the chair next to Stiles.

They were sitting in the back of the library between huge folders of newspapers and boxes full of microfilm. Stiles hoped he would find some new information that the internet and common literature hadn’t provided him until now. But the dim light and dusty air made research less fun than he had hoped it would be.

“How d’you hear about it?” Stiles asked, looking up from the yellowed paper spread below his fingers.

Allison threw back her hair and leaned closer, studying the article Stiles had concentrated on.

“Scott,” she answered flatly. “Found anything yet?”

Stiles stretched his arms over his head and yawned. “Well... most of the sources have the same information. And all in all, it’s close to nothing. So I was hoping to find something in the papers…”

Allison nodded absently, finishing the paragraph she was scanning. “You know…” she said, looking up at Stiles. “I joined this club last week...”

“Archery, I know.” Stiles interrupted, causing Allison to click her tongue and roll her eyes. “I joined Archery right after coming here, Stiles. No. I mean the Culture club.”

Stiles raised an eyebrow, unsure what Allison was aiming at. “Culture club…” he repeated stupidly, to which Allison groaned in annoyance.

“Yes, Stiles, Culture Club. It’s an after-school club on Tuesdays where werewolves and humans learn about each other's culture. One of the assistant teachers, Deaton, runs it. I think he knows more about werewolves than anyone else… Maybe he also has some information about half-bloods?”

Stiles hadn’t been too eager to join any clubs until now. He had been in lacrosse during High School, but he was man enough to admit to himself that the reason he sat on the bench for pretty much every game they had was that he sucked at it.

He had been thinking about joining some kind of gaming club. Or maybe debating. But he just knew that most of the people, for some reason, didn’t like him very much.

Garnier Academy being packed with werewolves was one more reason to be careful with whom he mingled. He couldn’t risk being found out.

And maybe, just maybe, he didn’t want any club activity to cut short the time he spent in his room after his lectures, bickering with Derek about what to watch on TV, who was to blame for the mess in the bathroom or whichever other topic they were disagreeing on.

He had grown fond of the short time they spent together, which made him feel like he knew a side of Derek Hale that no one else knew existed.

“Why don’t you just join us next week?” Allison interrupted his thoughts.

“I don’t know…” He hesitated, scratching his neck. Maybe Deaton really could help him out with some information that wasn’t to be found in textbooks or newspapers. But if that guy knew as much about the supernatural as Allison said he did, maybe he could also see right through Stiles’ charade.

Because even though Stiles wanted to tell himself that the fact that no one had ever found out about him was all because of his amazing secret-keeping-skills, he knew it was mainly thanks to him being almost invisible to pretty much everyone around him.

And those who did notice him most likely were annoyed and decided to ignore him.

“Oh, come on!” Allison nudged his shoulder. “It’ll be fun! And if not, then you can just decide to drop it again….” Stiles thought for another second and then gave in with a surrendering shrug, which made Allison beam up.

The upcoming nights Stiles was restless, waking up several times and studying the bed across the room. But most of the time Derek seemed to be sound asleep, his breath even and steady.

Only on Saturday Stiles could hear his breathing speed up and a whimper dripping from the werewolf’s lips.

Once again Stiles found himself in Derek’s arms, the alpha’s huge body pressed up against his back. He could feel his jaw hurt, canines eager to break free. But he kept his back to Derek, which made it easier for him to keep his inner wolf under control.

Even though the warmth of Derek’s body wrapped around him made his heart calm and fuzzy, the werewolf’s long fingers ghosting over the skin on his stomach, Stiles had fought the need to fall asleep until Derek had finally cooled down.

He had to gather every bit of self-control to detangle himself from the muscular arms weighing him down. After having stolen another glance of Derek’s sleeping face, he steadied his feet and pulled the alpha’s sleeping body up.

When he felt Derek’s full body weight on his shoulder, he almost felt his knees give in. How heavy was that guy?!

The one or two meters between their beds seemed almost insurmountable, but Stiles pulled all his strength together and took a few slow, wobbly steps forwards until he could let Derek slide down and into his own bed.

Making sure his movements were careful enough as to not wake him, Stiles pulled the sheets from below the alpha’s bulky body and – not without taking in the incredible sight of Derek’s abs once more – tucked him in.

He was thinking about spraying some deodorant on the wolf in order to cover his smell on him, but the possibility of him waking up catching Stiles red handed was too big.

So he decided to only weaken their mingled scents on his own body, wiping down his body with a washcloth and putting a good layer of deodorant over his sheets.

After giving a satisfied nod at the result of his cover up, he laid back down, fighting to keep himself from pushing his nose into his pillow in search of any lingering hint of Derek’s smell.

The next Tuesday rolled around with just one further nightly incident and Stiles joined Allison for the Culture Club.

Even though he had been skeptical at first, he found the club to be quite nice. He even saw some other classmates he remembered from high school he hadn’t met on campus before, like Danny or the twins, whose name Stiles had to admit he had forgotten.

Deaton was a nice guy who always was surrounded by an aura of calmness. There was something about him that made Stiles nervous, like he could see right through Stiles’ cover and at his inner wolf.

But even if he was, Deaton said nothing.

He just smiled in this mysterious, knowing way while listening to the club members discuss what rules they were still missing in a mixed school like Garnier Academy in order to accustom both the humans and the werewolves best.

Stiles enjoyed the atmosphere and when Allison finally pushed him towards Deaton to ask about half-bloods, the man smiled. “Why are you so interested in the topic?”

Stiles swallowed around the nervous lump in his throat and gave an uncoordinated shrug.

“I’m writing a paper for Mr. Langley’s seminar about half-bloods and I found it’s rather hard to get accurate information about them. Most of the information in the texts is based on hearsay and rural tales – If you ask me, one hardly can say they’re facts…”

Deaton’s smile turned wider as he nodded. “I see you’re open for new insights. Maybe I have something for you… I’ll have to look through my stuff, but if you want to, I could give you what I find in a few weeks?”

Stiles beamed up and nodded his head in excitement. “Yes, please! That… that would be amazing! Thanks!”

So yeah, Allison’s idea turned out to be quite promising. He didn’t really know what exactly it was that Deaton was going to provide him with, but the spark in his eyes had told Stiles that he must already have had something in mind that came close to exactly the source of information he needed…

Stiles heard the floorboards squeak in the dark and opened his eyes, blinking at the red eyes glowing in the dark, approaching his bed.

A few weeks had passed and by now he had gotten used to Derek’s sleepwalking and his weird sudden need to feel Stiles’ body next to him.

It had taken a few nights of adjustment and a pillow filled with moonstone powder to keep Stiles’ inner wolf calm and hidden under the surface even when the alpha’s scent was so intriguingly sweet, alluring to the extent that all common sense left him.

“Come on, big guy….” Stiles felt his lips curl up in a sleepy smile as he pulled back his sheets. Derek accepted his invitation, the mattress slowly dipping under his weight.

It was routine by now how the alpha’s arm slung around his torso and pulled him close. How Stiles answered the gesture by guiding his hand over Derek’s broad shoulders to his neck, burying his fingers in the other one’s hair.

Stiles loved Derek’s hair.

It was thick but still soft and stroking it triggered some memory deep within him he wasn’t quite able to decipher, that just didn’t want to surface yet but lingered just below his ribcage, spreading a nostalgic, fuzzy warmth through his body.

How Derek looked for him, of all people, to cool himself down was a miracle for Stiles. Especially when he himself felt like his skin was burning hotter with every touch of the werewolf’s fingers on his skin.

Derek hummed, his until now ragged breath slowing down and his heartbeat adjusting to Stiles’. This was the moment Stiles liked the best: when their heartbeats aligned and he could feel Derek pull him so close that it almost felt like they were turning into one being.

He nuzzled Derek’ neck, as he had done the other sleepless nights before, taking in more of his wonderful scent. It was like a drug to him and the only thing keeping him sane was his trained self-control supported by the moonstone he had gotten from Allison, who most probably thought it was for him defending himself against his alpha-roommate.

He wondered what kind of face she would make if she ever found out that he had needed the moonstone for himself, to keep him from wolfing out while extreme-cuddling with the guy he used to fear like nothing else in this world.

The image he painted in his head of Allison’s wide eyes and open mouth made him chuckle, seemingly stirring the interest of the werewolf in his arms.

Derek pulled his head from Stiles’ collarbone where he had pressed his nose against the bared skin and his red eyes studied Stiles’ face in the dark. And Stiles found himself unable to do anything but stare back.

It was weird, he had to admit. But for some reason, he just had to look at Derek’s face. Searching for something he didn’t quite know he was looking for in the red glow of the older one’s eyes. Watching the dark shadows of the night dancing over the alpha’s sharp cheekbones. Eyes tracing the line of his jaw.

And Derek, too, just looked at him through clouded eyes.

It was an unfamiliar sensation, a recent addition to their nightly routine that Stiles didn’t quite know whether he could get his heart used to.

Right now, the heavy pounding of his heart was almost painful. He could hear the blood rush through his veins. And just when he thought he couldn’t take the other one’s intense stare anymore, Derek’s eyes fell shut again.

But instead of giving Stiles’ poor heart a break and just returning to pressing his cheek against Stiles’ as usual – giving him a slight stubble burn which Stiles found out he loved – , Derek turned his face slightly until Stiles could feel his breath on his chin.

And then, without further warning, Derek closed that last bit of space between their lips and kissed Stiles with more care and tenderness than Stiles had ever thought possible.

His eyes went wide with surprise, not sure whether Derek hadn’t actually ripped out his throat and this was just some weird afterlife.

He thought it perfectly believable that this was not reality, but after the first seconds of shock, he decided he didn’t care: If this was what waited for him after death, Derek’s lips gently pressing against his own was more than worth dying for.

He had always expected Derek to be a rough guy. Someone who would pull hair and bite lips and push his tongue in with force, claiming what was his.

But instead the kiss was shy. Sweet. Just a brush of lips.

Again. And again.

And when their lips connected a fourth time and Stiles found himself drunk on the sweet scent coming from Derek, Stiles’ eyes, too, finally fell shut and he leaned in, closing his lips around Derek’s upper one.

He could feel the werewolf’s canines, a hard contrast to his incredibly warm and soft lips. And without quite knowing why, Stiles tipped his tongue through his slightly parted lips and licked hesitatingly over one of the fangs, causing Derek to huff out a suppressed moan.

And then things speeded up: Derek’s hand spreading over his neck, pulling him in with a quick motion. Their lips crushing against each other, parted. Hot breath mingling while eager tongues explored the inside of each other’s mouths.

There were hands covering every inch of skin they could find beneath the hem of their T-shirts. Fingers fisting tightly in dark hair. The faint taste of minty toothpaste setting Stiles’ taste buds on fire as he sucked it from Derek’s lower lip.

Every touch was intense, sending sparks through Stiles’ body. And with every second he felt the smell coming off of Derek in waves growing stronger, more intense, clouding his senses until he hardly could form any clear thought anymore – nothing on his mind but the sheer need to feel more, taste more, smell more of the man in front of him.

Stiles felt Derek’s legs tangle with his own and absent-mindedly tried to keep his body from rubbing against the older one with little success.

He felt his erection brush painfully against the inside of his pajamas as it grew harder with every second he felt the other one’s body so close to his own.

He had fantasized about kissing Derek. Yes, he admitted that. Who wouldn’t, seeing him undress that lethal body every day? It was just natural to get interested in a person so beautiful and intriguing as Derek. Especially when one didn’t exactly have a lot of luck in the love or sex department.

Fantasies were the only thing Stiles had. He still was embarrassed about how desperately he clung to the alpha’s body, how he moaned into Derek’s mouth as the older one pushed his tongue between his lips, licking his gums.

But it didn’t matter anymore as not even a second later Derek’s hand had a firm grip on his butt, pressing him against his hip and Stiles could feel that Derek, too, was hard.

When the hot bulges between their legs collided, a satisfied rumbling vibrated in the alpha’s chest, his eyes fluttering slightly, sprinkling the darkness of the room with flashes of red and Stiles, too, could not bite back a surprised moan.

Stiles could feel his inner wolf howl in frustration, the moonstone powder making it too hard for him to break loose.

He could feel yellow sparks behind his eyes when Derek stopped bruising his lips with heated kisses and moved on to scraping his fangs over Stiles’ light skin. Kissing the spot behind Stiles’ ears.

Derek’s arm found its way around Stiles’ hips and suddenly Stiles was lying on his back, the other one’s hip weighing heavily on his, spreading his legs apart to accommodate him.

An embarrassingly frustrated whimper slipped from Stiles’ lips before his mind suddenly found some clarity, telling him that this was a terrible, terrible idea.

He placed his hands on the alpha’s shoulders and gave them a gentle push. “Derek, please… we shouldn’t…”

But before he could find the right words, Derek’s fingers wrapped around his wrists and pinned them over his head. He looked down at Stiles, eyes deep red and pupils wide with lust, and everything Stiles had been about to say got sucked right out of his mind when Derek kissed him again.

Having lost all common sense by now, Stiles thrust his hips up, rubbing against Derek’s adulthood as if his life depended on it. 

“Derek,” he moaned, and the alpha leaned down again, spreading hungry kisses across his neck. Stiles slung his legs around the other one’s hip and pulled him as close as he could.

Derek let out a satisfied, deep groan and bent down, his hot breath dampening Stiles’ T-shirt before he bit down on his nipple, his fangs scraping across Stiles’ sensitive skin.

With a strangled moan, Stiles threw his head back, baring his throat. The alpha’s pupils widened in excitement at the sight of Stiles’ pulse underneath his tender skin and within a split second Derek was sucking on his pulse point.

As Derek’s grip loosened on Stiles’ wrists, the younger one pulled his hands free and slung his arms around the alpha, pulling him close in a desperate attempt to leave just as many marks on Derek as he probably did on him. But to his frustration, every dark spot he left on Derek’s broad chest started to disappear right after he had created it.

When Derek’s lips found his own again, his frustration was quickly forgotten, every roll of their hips bringing him closer to the edge.

After a few minutes, both of them had obvious trouble focusing on their kisses, both of them merely breathing into each other’s open mouth as they watched the other through clouded eyes, their hips crashing against each other in quick and intense thrusts.

Stiles lost it first, his nails digging deep into Derek’s shoulder blades as his shuddering body clung to the other, his toes curling and his head buried deep in Derek’s neck.

His hips twitched uncontrollably as he felt spurts of cum turn his boxers into a sticky mess. He swallowed hard, trying to breathe himself down from his orgasm.

Meanwhile, the thrusts of Derek’s hips sped up and just a few seconds later the alpha’s muscles tensed and Stiles could feel his cock twitch against his own, separated by nothing but wet, sticky fabric.

Stiles felt himself press a kiss on Derek’s sweaty temple, and the alpha hummed in appreciation while he sunk down on Stiles’ body.

Derek was heavy and sweaty on top of him, but Stiles liked the confinement.

One of the few movements Stiles was capable of now was his fingers stroking through Derek’s hair. So he did just that.

Eyes closed, he listened to both of their heartbeats, their breaths slowly settling down as they came down from the rush of their orgasms.

Gradually, his mind started working again, and the more he came back to his senses, the more panic took over.

What the hell had happened just now?!

His dry humping uber-alpha Derek Hale must have been the most stupid thing he ever had done. Why hadn’t his mind stopped him ? And how would he ever be able to cover up this incident?

It had been hard enough to cover their cuddle-caused mixed smell until now. Getting rid of the smell of both of them having sex with each other would be close to impossible…

He was screwed.

Gosh, he was so, so screwed.