3 times this week, Derek has found Stiles sleepwalking.
3 times this week, Derek carries him home.
At least Stiles isn’t the kind to sleep naked.
Derek goes for midnight runs when he can’t sleep.
He can’t sleep most nights.
In wolf-form, he’s less conspicuous, just a dark blur darting through the trees in the forest, and he runs and runs until he’s too exhausted to dream about smoke and ash.
He stays in the woods mostly, but sometimes he ventures closer to the houses at the edge of the trees, just to see the neighborhoods quiet and dark, the streetlights flooding empty roads, and the only sounds are the crickets in their yards.
And sometimes he visits his pack members houses just to see that they’re asleep, so he can know that their nights are at least more restful than his.
Then he runs back home again, to collapse on his bare mattress in his broken house, tired and heaving and human.
So the night that he’s flying through the woods at the edge of BHHS’s soccer field and he sees a figure standing in the center, Derek almost careens into a tree.
He twists and narrowly misses it instead. When he scrabbles his way off the forest floor, the figure is still standing there, arms lifting and swinging in tandem as if casting an imaginary fishing line.
Derek lopes forward cautiously, scenting the air. As he gets closer it grows stronger, the smell of Old Spice, Cheetos, and Stiles. Derek huffs in confusion, until he registers Stiles’ sleep-steady heartbeat, sluggish movements as he appears to dream about playing lacrosse. He’s not even wearing shoes.
Derek listens carefully for any other heartbeats in the area, and when there aren’t any he circles in front of Stiles and whuffs softly.
Stiles’ only reaction is to mumble a stream of incoherent syllables. Derek might guess that he hears the words Scott and first-line though, and then Stiles proceeds to launch another several lacrosse balls halfheartedly over him.
It’s not freezing out, but Beacon Hills at night isn’t exactly balmy either. All Stiles has on is a t-shirt and a pair of bright-red boxers. He barks again, louder this time, but Stiles sleepwalks like the dead apparently, and there’s probably a zombie joke in there somewhere that Stiles would never let him pass up, but he’s a mile and a half away from home and even more defenseless than normal.
Derek circles behind Stiles and nudges his back, pushing him in the direction of home. All it does is make Stiles stumble forward, and then he stands there arms limp and head tipped forward. Derek tries again, to the same effect, and again until he finally gives up and trots in front of Stiles, sitting back on his haunches and scooting into his shins until Stiles loses his balance and flops onto Derek’s back.
His fingers dig into Derek’s fur the instant he lands, and satisfied that Stiles won’t slide off, Derek lopes back into the woods. No sense in alarming the townspeople – Derek’s the size of a small horse in wolf-form, and late-night equestrian activities would probably get noticed.
Over the whistling of the air in Derek’s ears, he can hear Stiles’ soft snores, the occasional mumble about ‘strawberry-blonde locks’ followed by nuzzling into Derek’s fur, and soon enough he comes to a stop in the trees behind the Stilinski house.
The sheriff’s heartbeat on the second floor tells Derek that he’s asleep as well, and since there’s no way to leap onto the roof without knocking Stiles off, he approaches the back door quietly. He huffs as he noses it open – Stiles didn’t even bother to shut it completely on his way out. Derek pads across the hardwood as lightly as he can, slips up the staircase and into Stiles’ room. He winces when the door creaks, loud as a shot to his ears, but the sheriff’s heartbeat stays steady down the hall.
Derek sidles up to the bed and lowers that side of his body, but Stiles has a limpet-grip on his fur and only slides a few inches. He tries again, and gains another few inches, before he finally does a full-body shake and Stiles tumbles onto the covers. Still he doesn’t wake, just turns over and hugs the pillow to himself.
Derek snorts in disbelief. And then he crosses the room, now that there’s no fragile cargo on his back, paws the window open and leaps down to the ground, and takes off back to his own cold, barely-habitable bed.
It’s not until he gets there and shifts back, does he feel the still-drying smear of drool right over his tattoo.
Derek couldn’t keep running with literal blood on his hands, though. The warehouse is drafty, leaking, and Derek holds his hands under the run-off where insulation and wood has been torn away. He cuts himself on his own claws in his vigor.
Cora sniffs, watches, accuses, “You said it was getting better.”
Derek’s lip raises, pointed teeth dragging against soft inner tissue.
Cora attempts to wait him out, gets impatient, huffs. Her feet thud across the floor, tread heavy and defiant. A few boards rattle near the corner, then: “Here’s a radical suggestion, we could talk about it.”
“No.” He’s not Dr. Phil-ing himself into a solution for losing his anchor, that’s not the way this works. Even if it were, Cora’s touch is about as light as her stomp.
“You’re not angry enough to use it as a totem any longer; that’s cause for celebration not—” she jabs a hand at him, “this. Whatever this is.” She smirks, perks an eyebrow. “Aside from the first step on a staircase towards forming an emo band. Third, actually. You’re already white and suburban.”
The animosity rankles, but it’s not entirely undeserved. Cora’s the one who struggles with moderation, the one who leaves shady supernaturals half-dead, not Derek.
Not until recently, that is.
If only it were as simple as that. His claws dig deep into his own palms as he balls his fists—if the blood’s sticking with him, he’ll be damned if it’s anyone else’s. “Anger isn’t the problem.”
“If that’s your anchor then—” She stops, backing up a step in her two-step solution to any potential roadblock: identify the problem, demolish the problem. “That isn’t your anchor.”
For those of you who don’t know, I am currently in the process of organizing my fanfic library on calibre. Here’s a cover for an adorable fic by the incredible @kalira9
yes so this is apparently an entirely different nerd!Derek AU from the one I’ve already written shhhh shhhhhhhh just let it happen.
::
“Okay,” Stiles says to himself, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet to psych himself up. “It’s game time. Top of the ninth. Now or never. Fortune favors the brave. Faint heart never won—”
“Fucking hell,” Lydia groans, slamming her book down onto the table. “If you don’t at least ask Hot Librarian for his name this time, I’m going to have sex with him out of sheer spite.”
Stiles gasps. “You wouldn’t.”
“Watch me.”
“This is the love of my life! The potential love of my life,” Stiles corrects when Lydia gives him a look.
“Yes, be sure to lead with that,” she says, going back to her reading. “He won’t find that creepy at all.”
“Shhh, no talking,” Stiles says venomously as he backs away from their table. “We’re in a library.”
Someone clears their throat pointedly behind him, and Stiles turns around slowly to find that he’s backed all the way into the circulation desk. Hot Librarian’s desk.
“Hello, librarian,” Stiles says, actually waving at him. It’s the single most awkward two seconds of his life; he’s actually kind of impressed with himself.
“Derek,” says Hot Librarian, and then lowers his gaze to his lap again. His eyelashes are ridiculous.
“Derek,” Stiles repeats, and he hopes he doesn’t sound too much like he’s planning on writing that name in his notebook with little hearts drawn around it. He leans on the desk, determined to plant here until he manages to form a coherent sentence, or until Derek tells him to leave. Whichever comes first.
As soon as Stiles leans in, though, Derek jumps and tries to jerk something out of his lap. “Shit,” Derek says softly, and Stiles’ pulse jumps because he likes the way Derek curses, apparently.
“Whatcha got there?” Stiles goes up on his toes, leaning further over. “Looks like—are you sewing?”
“It’s a slow day,” Derek says, defensive. “And I like this cardigan.”
“Me too,” Stiles says, recognizing it. “The argyle is a little much, but your shoulders look awesome in it.”
“Wha—ow,” Derek says, pulling the needle out of the pad of his thumb. “Fuck.”
Stiles shudders. He wants to hear Derek say that all night long. “I gotta ask you something.”
“Okay, just…” Derek tries to lift the cardigan off his lap, only to find that the stitches go right through to his jeans. He heaves a huge, resigned sigh, as if this is a common occurrence. Stiles is absolutely in love.
“Once you pull those stitches out and close up for the night, can I buy you dinner?”
Derek abruptly stops tugging at the thread and looks up at him slowly. “Seriously?”
“Okay, well,” Stiles says, heart sinking as he starts to retreat. “It was worth a shot.”
“No. Yes. I mean, Stiles. Yes.”
“Yes?” Stiles beams. “Okay, yes. Wait. How did you know my name?”
“It’s on your library card.”
Stiles gapes. “You memorize all the patron’s names?”
Derek’s eyes go shifty. “No.”
“Holy god, I am gonna date you so hard,” Stiles breathes, and Derek chokes on his next breath and accidentally rips a bigger hole in the cardigan.
For those of you who don’t know, I am currently in the process of organizing my fanfic library on calibre. Here’s a cover for a short but sweet fic by the incredible @mad-madam-m
theproblemwithstardust 