Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Derek? Would you like to talk today?”

He sat, stoic, his arms folded across his chest and his gaze aimed directly at the floor. There was no reason for him to be there – to be a part of this group of innocent kids whose parents had died of cancer and whose friends had made avoidable drunken mistakes. They didn’t understand his grief: not because they didn't have their own weighing them down, but because none of them were guilty of doing anything wrong. None of them were responsible for the deaths of their family.

They hadn't let themselves be fooled by an older woman with her long legs and cutting grin – half of them were most likely still virgins, didn’t know what it was like to feel a pair of breasts pressing up against their chests or what sweat and sex and lust smelled like. They would never know the stench of burning flesh or how the weight of their screaming voices still hung in the air even days later. They didn’t know the shame of watching a beloved uncle lying comatose in a hospital bed while an older sister sobbed in confusion, not understanding who or why somebody would do this to their family. They didn’t have to look the Sheriff in the eyes and lie about their relationship with the woman who had murdered their family. To say he had never seen her before in his life.

And he didn’t know how to explain it to them – couldn’t, really; he could barely even explain it to himself. Didn’t know how to even begin formulating the words that would adequately describe his guilt. So, instead he said nothing.  It was better for them that way.

Ms. Morrell, the group leader, had enough sense not to let out the sigh that was probably caught in her throat. He had been attending these sessions for almost two months and had yet to speak to anyone. That was okay though: he liked it better that way.

“What about you, Stiles?”

There was a beat of silence that carried on for just a touch too long – just enough to drag Derek’s eyes away from the floor, his curiosity piqued. It was the name; awkward and foreign, the child in him wanted to know what a kid with a name like that would even look like. He stared openly at the boy across the circle from him.

He was nothing special. A combination of long and awkward limbs with a buzz cut that looked almost dangerously short. The plaid shirt he wore was too big on him, the sleeves precariously pushed up around his elbows slipping as he uncrossed his arms. He still had his thumbnail caught between his teeth, tugging at the raw skin, as he stared up at Ms. Morrell.

“Me? I’m fine.” Derek watched as the kid (kid – he was barely a year younger than Derek himself) let his hand drop to his lap. There was another beat of silence as his tongue peeked out from behind his teeth, dragging across the sweep of his bottom lip. He watched as Stiles glanced around the room until the two locked gazes, “Yeah, aside from the not sleeping. The jumpiness. The constant, overwhelming fear that something terrible is about to happen.”

They were still staring at each other when another kid – about Stiles’ age – spoke out from across the room. “Like drowning. Like what happened to me.” Derek didn’t bother to look over. He had been hearing about Matt’s near death experience since he’d first arrived and the story had lost its drama. But he supposed for him it must have been pretty traumatic.

Drowning. At least that was better than fire.

After the meeting ended, he was sitting out on the curb waiting for Laura to pick him up. She was probably still at work – the job she had taken to prove to the state that she could be trusted taking care of her kid brother.

The thought made him hate himself more. She was doing all she could to be a good sister to him. She had no idea that he was the reason she couldn't go away to college. For them not having a family anymore. Or a home. All because he thought Kate loved him, when all she wanted was a higher body count.

“So, I get the feeling that you’re not a big talker.”

Derek didn’t have to lift his head to know it was Stiles standing behind him. Everyone else in the group knew not to talk to Derek. He stunk like a hospital: death and antiseptics.

Stiles’ bumped his shoulder as he sat down beside him, “That’s all good. No complaints from me. I tend to talk a lot. Like inside? I probably could have gone on but the kid with the weird asphyxiation kink interrupted. Not cool, man. Like, for all he knew, I could have been right on the precipice of this huge emotional breakthrough and he just had to come in and rain on my parade, y’know? You wouldn’t do that though. I can tell. Probably has something to do with the whole not talking thing, but I’m pretty sure that even if you did talk you wouldn’t be a big interrupter. Doesn’t seem your style. Am I right?”

There was a moment there, like Stiles almost expected him to answer. He said nothing, fingering the cuffs of Peter’s leather jacket instead.

“You seem more like the type to intimidate someone into silence with a stare. No talking over someone for you! That’s good – it’s a good way to go through life. My Dad would probably like it more if that’s how I was. But. I donno, man. You gotta like silence to be into that whole thing, right? Which I don’t think I could do.” There was another beat, but this time he was sure Stiles’ didn’t want him to say anything. They stayed sitting next to each other, Stiles’ knee bouncing erratically and occasionally tapping his. Derek was just getting ready to reach out and grab the kids’ thigh to get him to stop moving when he spoke again, his voice barely louder than a whisper, “Not really.”

Laura’s black Camaro pulled up in front of the youth center. She popped the door open, her eyes bright as she took in the sight of him sitting next to someone. She looked as though she was getting ready to say something, but Derek didn’t give her the chance. He pushed himself off the ground and jumped into the front seat before slamming the door without a single glance back at Stiles. Laura looked exasperated but didn’t question it. They were pulling out of the parking lot when he heard the kids’ voice.

“See you next session!”

That night, Derek woke up in the middle of a dream. He was confused at first, until he noticed the tightness in his pajama bottoms and the throbbing from his cock. Shame washed over him. It was the same thing every night. Kate haunted his dreams, her body hot and flush against his and his cock buried deep inside her cunt. He was just getting up to go to the bathroom to take a cold shower when he was hit with a different fantasy – young, nimble fingers wrapped tight around his shaft and hot breath teasing the head of his cock. A pair of raw, red lips parted mere inches away from his cock and two golden eyes staring up at him, blown with lust.

He never made it to the shower.

They did see each other at the session after that.  And the one after that. And slowly, but surely, they worked themselves around the circle of chairs until eight sessions after the first they finally found themselves sitting next to each other.

It was strange how easy it all was. They were almost…friends. Matt would mention his drowning and Stiles would nudge Derek, a cheeky grin playing on his lips as he made a subtle jerking off motion. When Stiles spoke, Derek would notice the way the boy grew more restless; how he would bounce his knee with more intensity and how he would chew at his nails. When Ms. Morrell called out on him to speak, Stiles would take over and shift the focus of the group on to him. And every now and again, when somebody would make some comment about how they were healing or how life was sure to get better, Derek would touch his thigh to Stiles’ and rolls his eyes. It was the closest thing he had to a friendship and he didn’t have to say a single word. 

Sometimes after meetings Laura would drive Stiles home. It was easier for them to talk to each other. They both had made the same assumptions about Derek’s silence, not knowing the guilt that he was too afraid of exposing if he let himself speak. To them it was his way of coping. Like the way Stiles sometimes wore his mother’s perfume, or how Laura would take long detours on her morning run to stare at the wreckage of their old home. They didn’t know they were in a car with a monster. He should have warned them, they had the right to know, but he preferred it that way.

Other times, the Sheriff would drive him home. Or they would all go back to the Stilinski home on the nights that the Sheriff was ordering pizza and Laura was going to visit Peter (Derek wasn’t allowed to go anymore – not yet, the doctors said. Let Peter heal some more before exposing the poor boy to such a sight after how he'd reacted the first time). They would watch old movies where the actors spoke fast, like Stiles, and he would drag Derek up to his room to show him his latest computer game.

He knew better than to sit in the corner seat of the couch or to use the red coffee mug that had been gathering dust on the dish rack since before his first visit.

They both worked around each other’s grief, skirting the edges of too much and too little. Stiles mentioned an arson case his dad was working on before his cheeks blossomed and he stumbled over his words to cover up his mistake. Derek found a photo of Stiles’ mother shoved behind some video games when Stiles told him to pick whatever he wanted – the look on the kids’ face when Derek turned over the frame was more than enough for him to shove it back where he’d found it.

And sometimes, when Laura and the Sheriff were both busy, the boys would walk home together. Stiles would ramble about the jeep he was sure to get when he turned sixteen (his mom’s, though he never called it that) and Derek would point to things he noticed that he thought Stiles would like to see. Like that time they passed Nurse McCall on the street and Stiles had been so distracted he’d almost missed her wave until Derek got his attention.

Sometimes they would walk together in silence, their arms swinging side by side, their fingers occasionally brushing.

The first time they kissed, they had been spending time together for about two months. It was Thanksgiving and the two remaining Stilinski’s had invited the two (conscious) Hale’s to join them for dinner. There were other people there – deputies from the Sheriff’s department with their spouses, a couple neighbors who had brought over homemade pies, not to mention a few of their friends from before. Scott McCall kept trying to get Stiles’ interest, but Derek growled at him under his breath when Stiles wasn’t paying attention and the kid scurried off to find his mom instead.

They had taken their food up to Stiles’ room earlier and were sitting on the floor beneath the window, their backs pressed up against the radiator. Their empty plates were stacked on top of Stiles’ desk, next to his homework that was due on Monday and the collection of stolen police reports his dad kept pretending not to notice when he was in the room. Stiles rambled, going on about how he and his dad knew everyone at the party.

“…and then there’s Mrs. Jacobson. She kind of scares my dad because she’s weirdly intense about everything she talks about. Like, as if pumpkin pie is a life and death situation right? And I don’t really like her either – she always makes those weirdly cliché comments, asking when I’m going to get a girlfriend or whatever, and I’m just like. Lady! I do not know you. Stop talking about my personal love life, y’know?” He turned to look up at Derek, their faces naturally close together given their position. “But she comes every year because her kids live in New Hampshire or New Jersey or one of the New– whatever states and my m—mom,” he stuttered over the word. “Always felt sorry for her.”

There was a pause after that and Derek knew he was thinking about his mother. Because it was Thanksgiving and they’d all been thinking about whom they’d lost even though neither of them said it. Because even though Derek lost eight people, and Stiles only lost one, it was somehow enough for him to understand. He could see the way Stiles was opening his mouth to try and cover up the sadness of the moment but he didn’t want him to. Sometimes, he liked the quiet. So he slipped his hand into Stiles’, his gaze meeting the other boys’, and he squeezed gently and shushed him softly.

He didn’t want to pretend like he didn’t miss his parents. As if this dinner, in all of its wonder, was somehow better than what he used to have. He would have rather been in his own home with his family up in the woods listening to Peter regale stories about his mom during her wild college years. Or watching his dad spend all day in the kitchen cooking wearing the kitschy apron Laura had bought him as a birthday gift one year. He knew that Stiles had the same sort of memories – the same aches and holes.

He wondered how Laura and the Sheriff did it; how they were able to stand downstairs surrounded by people whose loved ones were alive and not simply fall apart from the emptiness within them. He wondered if they thought they had to be strong for him and Stiles, if they felt like they weren’t allowed the luxury of breaking down and Derek could feel his heart constrict. Not just for Laura, but for the Sheriff and for Stiles and for Ms. Morrell who sometimes spoke of her missing older brother and for fucking Matt who was probably at home jerking off to half-terrified memories of gasping for breath and little Scott McCall whose dad didn’t die but who purposefully ran away.

He was full of so much hurt and so much pain for everyone and it must have shown somewhere on his face because Stiles was suddenly crowding into his space, making plaintive whimpers. He was tripping over himself to climb into Derek’s lap as he buried his face into the curve of his shoulder. Derek’s hands reached up and wrapped around Stiles, his back burning Derek’s arms from the heat of the radiator. They were holding each other now, rocking together. There was a noise too – a high-pitched keen and it sounded so pitiful that Derek was startled to realizes it was him. That he was crying and Stiles was dragging his palms over his face trying to wipe up the tears as they spilt over his cheeks. 

He was desperate then, needy for some physical evidence that he wasn’t damned and alone – not yet, not now. And he couldn’t have stopped himself if he wanted to (and he didn’t want to), but he leaned up and caught Stiles’ lips with his own, melding their mouths together and letting their teeth clash and their tongues meet. It was awkward and different – he knew that Stiles’ back probably ached from the way he was hunched in Derek’s lap, and the kiss tasted like pumpkin pie and salt because of the tears that were still steadily falling down both of their cheeks. Only it didn’t matter now, as Stiles let out a feeble moan and distracted him.

They kept kissing until they got tired. Until Stiles had settled down in Derek’s lap, his shoes kicked off and his legs curled up to his chest and Derek wrapped his arms around him, resting his chin on the other boys’ shoulder looking past him towards the video games where he knew the photo was still hidden. They stayed like that until they could hear the party downstairs start to quiet down and they began to hear people leaving the house and getting into their cars to drive away. Back to their own homes, to their happy and healthy families, where nothing was broken and nothing was burned.

“I miss my mom,” Stiles whispered, his lips seeking out Derek’s neck and pressing a soft kiss to the bend of his jaw. 

Sometimes he wanted to tell Stiles about Kate. She was put in a psychiatric ward, even more fucked up than the two of them. When the police had interrogated her she had gone on and on about werewolves and wolfsbane and the Hale family legend and how it was her duty as an Argent to hunt those who hunted innocent humans. Derek heard there was some suggestion of abuse on the part of her father.

Nobody ever came to question his relationship with Kate, so he figured she must not have said anything. He had been a means to an end, no longer important enough to spare a thought on, now that she had achieved her goal.

Out of everything that happened, he figured that was the worst of it. That he had been used as a stepping-stone to kill his family. That he hadn’t even mattered, but that if he had just been more aware of his surroundings he might have been able to stop it all from happening. 

Sometimes when he and Stiles were lying in bed together, their clothes draped across the floor and the Sheriff working a night shift, he would open his mouth about to start and tell the truth. Only then Stiles would look at him and grin and begin to ramble and then it was as if he had forgotten what he had wanted to say in the first place.

And then Kate hanged herself, and Derek almost wanted to cry with relief because he felt like he could breathe again and nobody knew why. 

After that he stopped trying to tell Stiles about her.

His seventeenth birthday was very low key. To be honest, Derek didn’t even think anybody would remember. But then Laura picked him and Stiles up and took them back to the apartment, and the Sheriff was there with homemade pizza that Stiles scolded him for thinking he could eat. There was an ice cream cake in the freezer – his favorite, vanilla and strawberry – and on the small kitchen counter was a collection of haphazardly wrapped gifts.

It was clear to Derek how new they all were to this. How they had all relied on other people to do the little things for them – like buying appropriate wrapping paper so that kids didn’t get birthday gifts with Santa Claus’ face on them. But Derek pushed that thought away as he shyly grinned at the three people who had somehow come to mean so much to him. And if he held Stiles’ hand under the table while the rest of them talked, he didn’t think it was anyone’s business but his own.

He wished the rest of his family could have been there – he did. But this was okay too.

“I don’t know anything about you,” Stiles said.

They were spread out on the floor of Stiles’ room, a slew of comic books laid out around them. Derek had been engrossed in a classic edition of Wolverine when Stiles had spoken. He sat up to stare at the other teen.

He made a face at him, “Oh, whatever! Clearly I know some things about you. Laura tells me stuff. Plus I know you’re a pretty great kisser, which, I’m hoping that Laura doesn’t know. And occasionally I can pick up on what you’re interested in based on the shitastic movies you try to make me watch – I can’t believe you tried to make me watch the new Spiderman movie, man – but that’s not anything important. You don’t talk in any of the group sessions. You don’t talk to my dad. I’m pretty sure you don’t talk to Laura, but what do I know right? For all I know you two could have a gossip session every night at nine to talk about what a dork I’ve been. But – anyway! You sure as hell don’t talk to me when we’re alone. I don’t even remember you from before t—the, y’know, at school because you were a few grades ahead of me. I don’t know anything about you! I mean,” he sat up suddenly, his arms splayed out behind him holding him up. “I know I said you were the silent type when we met, but what the hell, sourwolf! Everybody has to talk sometime, don’t they?”

Derek was still staring at Stiles, his jaw clamped shut and his eyebrows drawn in a fixed line. He didn’t know what to say or how to say it. He thought Stiles had understood. Only now that apparently wasn’t the case.

Stiles looked just as miserable as he felt, his own expression having fallen from the previous one of exasperation to one of frustration.

“I just—I mean c’mon! Dude! Why do you go to meetings? Don’t you want to talk? Aren’t you the least bit interested in ‘getting better’? What about me? Why do you come here?” His expression was stony as he forced himself to pause and take a deep breath.

“There’s only so long I can keep talking to myself before it starts to feel like silence. And I told you I couldn’t do that when we met, Derek. I can’t.”

His own eyes widened as he looked at the other boy. He dropped the comic book to the floor, knew that a page had probably gotten caught on its edge and was going to be creased, but he didn’t care. He was staring at Stiles, his own expression blank as he tried to make sense of what the other teen had said.

He felt his lips part and he swallowed thickly to try and wet his dry tongue. The mechanics of it all felt clumsy and awkward, like he was an out of use water pump and somebody was trying to force something out of him that wasn’t there.

“I—” he started.

Stiles stared back at him, his eyebrows halfway up his forehead and his jaw slack. Derek wanted to make him happy – ached to please him and make him laugh because it was the only bright spot in his life. Stiles made him feel like he didn’t deserve to be punished.

“I—” he tried again.

Stiles threw his arms up into the air. “Jesus Christ! What? Just say something!”

Only the words weren’t coming and the pressure to perform was too much for Derek. He felt like a kid again, being chastised for not knowing how to do something far beyond his years. He could feel himself shutting down, his face going slack and neutral as he stood up from the ground, careful this time not to step on any of Stiles’ comics. He made an aborted head shake before rushing out the door.

Derek didn’t go to the session after that. It wasn’t like school. He didn’t have to go. The state had mandated he and Laura attend a total of ten grief counseling sessions each. The only reason he had initially kept going was because Laura made him. After that he went because of Stiles. There was no longer a point for him to go.

Stiles tried to call. He showed up at the apartment a few times. He even left notes in Derek’s locker.  None of it made any difference.

He deserved better than Derek. It was better this way.

In the evenings Laura watched him. He could see the concern etched across her face. It was in everything she did. From the way she cooked dinner, her shoulders tense, to the way she kissed him on the cheek goodnight, her movements jerky and awkward. Before she had been able to delude herself into thinking he would get help from the group. And then, Derek was sure, she had been hoping Stiles would lead him towards the path of miracle healing.

He was hoping they could move on. Forget about the blip that was Stiles because that was what Derek wanted. Only Laura had other plans and when Derek came downstairs for breakfast the Saturday two weeks after he had run out of Stiles’ house, he found her sitting at the kitchen table with her hands clasped firmly in front of her.

Derek didn’t know what face he must have made, but Laura glared up at him.

“Don’t even think about trying to bolt,” she said. “Sit down.”

He hesitated for a moment, but then he glanced at her face again and lowered himself into the chair furthest from hers.

“Dere,” she said. “We have to talk about this. About Stiles and whatever happened. About the reasons why you haven't spoken. You have to talk.” He didn’t know how to respond and so he didn’t, choosing instead to stare at the coffee mug that she had filled to the brim but not drunk out of. She sounded just like Stiles.

“I can’t do this anymore, Dere. I thought—At first—” She put her head in her hands.

“It was my fault. I didn’t—at first I didn’t notice what you were doing. I was too caught up in dealing with Peter and grieving on my own and getting custody. I didn’t see what was happening to you, and I should have. Derek,” Laura raised her head to stare at him, her eyes full of unshed tears. “I should have noticed what you were going through. I should have done more than just send you to those group meetings.”

He wanted to say something – to tell her it was all right, that none of this was her fault. But telling her that would mean admitting to his guilt and he couldn’t bear the way she would look at him.

She shook her head. “I thought Stiles would help. Sometimes the Sheriff would talk to me and tell me about how you two were helping each other and just – God, Derek do you know how happy that made me? I just, I thought maybe. I know things can’t go back to the way they used to be but I thought maybe I was getting my brother back.”

Laura pushed her chair back from the table and stood up shakily. “I can’t help you anymore, Dere. I don’t know what to do. I—I talked to Mrs. McCall – Scott’s mom? She said she knows a therapist. Somebody you can talk to.”

She had made her way around the table and was crouching on the floor next to him. “Please Derek. For me. I just need you to try. You don’t have to tell me what you talk about. I just need to know you’re talking to someone. Okay?” She was pleading now, and the tears had finally begun to drip down the side of her face. In that moment she looked so much like their mother that it physically hurt him to look at her. The same hair, the same nose, the same mouth. He kept his gaze down and nodded his head.

He tried to ignore the way his heart ached when she hugged him.

Derek assumed his therapy sessions would be a lot like his group sessions. He thought his therapist would hound him to talk, that he would try to guess why Derek was quiet. He thought he was ready to make it through another few weeks of uncomfortable psychoanalysis until Laura realized he was a lost cause and left him to fend for himself.

He was wrong.

Their first session was spent in complete silence. So was the session after that and the following one too. Derek was grateful that Mrs. McCall had pulled some strings and that Laura wasn’t paying for the meetings. Some days Dr. Deaton would put on music and others he would bring in paper and pencils and crayons and he would draw at his desk. Derek would join him sometimes, careful not to draw anything personal or too substantial that the therapist could use against him. He thought he’d been doing so well until the fourth session when Dr. Deaton finally spoke.

“Ah,” he said, soundly breaking their silence. “The triskele. Interesting choice.”

He didn’t say anything else for the rest of the hour.

Whenever Laura asked him how the sessions were going he smiled. It was the closest thing to a lie he could tell.

They made it about ten minutes into their sixth session before Derek finally thought of Stiles’ words. What drove him away: silence.

“I—I want to get it tattooed on my back,” he whispered.

He had upgraded from loose paper to an actual sketchbook Deaton had given him after their third session. He’d only accepted it when he realized that Deaton wasn’t expecting to keep the book himself. It was for Derek’s eyes only. The triskelion was a common theme throughout the pages he had filled. So was Stiles. His red hoodie. The freckles on his cheek and above his eyebrow. His hands.  

There was other stuff in the sketchbook. Kate’s eyes and Laura’s smile and the Sheriff’s badge and the Hale house both before the fire and after. His family. Fleeting, hurried sketches that he seemed to rush through, as though it was too painful for him to spend more time on their faces. Derek had never been interested in drawing before but it was as if he couldn’t stop now. There was so much he had wanted to say and it was almost as if by drawing it he was able to get it all out there. Even if nobody saw what he had to say. Even if it wasn’t even coherent. It was as though he was finally lightening the load on his shoulders and it felt so fucking good. He relished it.

Deaton made a noncommittal noise as he turned the page in the book on zoology.

“The triskele,” he said, his palms sweaty as he held the pencil and sketchbook in his hands. “I want it tattooed on my back. Between my shoulder blades.”

Deaton looked up and met Derek’s gaze. “A tattoo is a fascinating contradiction. On the one hand, it’s a very public piece of artwork for all to be a witness of. On the other, it’s a very personal design chosen by the individual.” He closed his book gently before leveling Derek with a look. “Why the triskele?”

He hesitated for a moment, wiping his hands on the legs of his jeans before he started to draw again. He swallowed, his throat thick with all the things he wanted to say. “Because it means different things to different people.” He sounded uncertain, but he let himself keep speaking, the words simply falling out of his mouth. “To one person it might mean mother, father, and child. Or to another it could mean birth, life, and death. And so, I could have it tattooed on me but nobody would ever know for sure what it meant. Nobody except for me.”

There was a pause before Deaton asked, “And for you?”

Derek kept drawing, his pencil turning around the curve of Stiles’ cheekbone. “For me I think it would mean past, present, and future. Because.” He stilled, his pencil hovering over the point he was supposed to start drawing Stiles’ left eye. “Because I’ll never be who I was before the fire. That Derek…he doesn’t exist anymore. And if I could lose a piece of myself so drastically, if I could change so much, then I can never be certain of what’s to come in the future. Of what I’ll lose or gain next. So there’s only the now, and…and how you have to appreciate it. Because nothing lasts forever.”

It was the most Derek had said in over eight months since the fire. He stayed quiet for the rest of the session.

 The words just start flowing after that.

Derek wasn’t sure if it was Deaton himself or just the consequence of opening up to a therapist, but after that he couldn’t stop talking. Not during the sessions at least. He told Deaton about Kate – about his guilt and his shame and his self-hatred. He talked about how he’d thought he was in love with her until he’d seen her car still parked in front of the burnt remains of the Hale house, the Sheriff’s department having already carted her away. He told Deaton about the way he’d felt so fucking ecstatic when Laura told him about Kate’ suicide. About the way he still dreamed about her some nights, woke up hard and hot and lost in the memory of her scent.

He also told him about how the nightmares of Kate had slowly but surely almost been completely replaced by dreams of Stiles. And of Laura. And the Sheriff. How sometimes he could dream of his family without waking up crying. And how some were even of Deaton these days. And the people in Derek’s life whom he had somehow come to rely on without even noticing.

He talked about Stiles too but not as much as he thought he would. There were other, more pressing things. Like Derek’s first real visit to Peter’s hospital room. And the money that he and Laura had gotten from everyone’s life insurance and how that made him feel. And his plans for after he graduated, whether college was in his future or not. It surprised him, actually, how little he had to say about the boy in the red hoodie with the new blue Jeep (he’d seen him in the school parking lot pulling up in the old car). Sometimes it made him worry that he didn’t care as much anymore or that he’d moved on – that Stiles was a boy of the past, like the Derek pre-fire and that he wasn’t important anymore. But then he would spot a police car or see a boy with a freshly shorn buzz cut or smell Mrs. Stilinski’s faded perfume and he would remember. And he would understand.

The reason he didn’t need to talk about Stiles during therapy was because Deaton wasn’t the one who needed to hear any of it.

“I blamed myself,” Derek said.

He was leaning against the door frame to Laura’s bedroom where she sat in front of her desk with her large makeup mirror propped up against the wall. She was getting ready to go on a date and Derek knew it might not have been the best time, but he was ready.

He was finally ready.

Laura turned to him, her makeup half finished, and gawked at him. He wondered if he should have eased her into this – asked her to pass the peas at dinner one night (even though they didn’t eat peas because Laura hated them) or wished her good night after a particularly long day. But even the Derek before the fire had had little tact, so he supposed she couldn’t expect too much from him now that he was damaged goods.

“What?”

“The fire,” he clarified. “I thought it was my fault. And it was, in a way. Kate Argent would have gotten to us someway because she was dead set on her delusions, but. I made it easier, I think.” He shook his head, closing his eyes as he pressed his cheek against the cool wooden frame of her doorway. “No, not think. I know. I made it easier. I told her about all of you. About the house. About all of our old favorite hide and seek spots and where Dad’s office was and where Mom spent most of her afternoons. I told her about the basement and how you scared me into never going down there after locking me in there by accident when I was a kid.” He let out a deep sigh. “I talked and I talked and I talked and our entire family died because I didn’t know how to just…not talk.”

Laura was still staring at him – there was confusion etched into her face, but understanding too. Realization was dawning on her but Derek was on a roll and so he said what he hadn’t been able to for so long.

“I thought I loved her, you know? I thought she loved me too. I was some no-nothing sixteen-year-old kid and she was this beautiful and older woman and she wanted me. I knew it was wrong so I didn’t tell anyone, but I told myself it was hot and fun and loved coming home and lying to you guys about what I’d done that day. It made me feel special.” He gave a wry, dark laugh. “And then she locked our family in the basement and burned them alive and left us to live. Sometimes I wonder if she did it on purpose. If she loved me at all and knew I’d be at school.” He shrugged, his expression dark. “Other times I remember that she was so fucking proud of her murders that she couldn’t even explain to the cops how she figured all that shit out about our house. And then I wonder if she wasn’t just some psychotic genius because, Jesus, Laura. Leaving us alive and everyone else dead? That’s the cruelest thing anybody could have ever done to us.”

He let his body slide down to the floor and buried his face in his arms. His shoulders shook from the intensity of his sobs, and when he felt Laura’s hands on him, he curled into her body. His hands gripped the fabric of her dress, and he sobbed, “I’m so sorry, Laura, I’m so fucking sorry.”

She shushed him and held him and when her date came to the door, neither of them went to go answer it.

Derek hadn’t been to a group therapy session in over three months, when he finally returned.  

He was late, because he had kept changing his mind about whether or not he was ready to face it. Laura had sat patiently with him in the car for as long as she could, but she had work and they were doing better. She didn’t need to hold his hand through every little crisis now. He had his strength back. He had his words now.

When he entered the room, he saw that there were some new faces in the circle, as well as some old ones gone. Matt had finally moved beyond reliving his trauma. There was a new boy in his spot that Derek recognized from the lacrosse team – a Jackson something-or-other who had recently learned he was adopted.

Stiles was still there, right where he’d always been. The chair beside him was empty.

He was staring up at Derek, his gaze vulnerable and defensive. He looked ready to run off at the slightest sign of trouble. A small smile tugged at Derek’s lips as he moved around the circle to stand beside Stiles. A girl was talking now, something about her mother committing suicide, but Derek was ignoring her. He nudged at Stiles’ shoulder.

“Anybody sitting there?”

His voice came out just as raw as it would have if he’d managed to speak in Stiles’ room all those months ago. Derek had long since decided that the roughness of his voice that day hadn’t been from the lack of use – it had simply been Stiles. And what Stiles did to him. The good and the bad and the beautiful.

The boy looked up at him, his jaw slack and his doe eyes wide. This was the first time he had ever heard Derek’s voice. He nodded dumbly before moving to push his backpack off the chair and watching as Derek sat down.

They were still staring at each other when Ms. Morrell spoke.

“Derek! How nice of you to join us again. Is there anything you’d like to talk about with the group?”

Slowly – slowly but surely – Derek’s face broke out into a smile. He reached out and slid his hand into Stiles’ before turning to look at the counselor.

“Yeah. Yeah I’d like that.”