Derek looked up at the overcast sky with some relief. It had been a warm and sunny month, and he was glad that the desolate scene across the way wasn't being mocked by persistent brightness.

Derek hurried across the lawn to join the group, pushing through his tiredness. He hadn't slept the whole plane trip and hadn't yet been home to drop off his bag or shower away the grime of 8 hours of travel. Changing into his suit had eaten up all the time he'd had to spare. The stiff and sombre official started talking, so he stood at the back, instead of weaving through the small gathering to find his mother.

It would be difficult to find her, since they all looked the same. Collectively, they made a tiny pool of darkness in the vast cemetery, all with the same bleak purpose: Mourning the death of John Stilinski.

It was a modest gathering. In attendance were a few deputies who'd remembered Stiles' dad well from the BHSD. Some buddies from his sporadic AA visits. Assorted people who'd weighed a ceremony celebrating the life of a man they sort of knew against catching up on sleep on a Sunday morning and made this choice. Stiles couldn't say whether it was the right one. His dad hadn't had many friends, and almost no family. Stiles was an only child from a long line of only children. Mostly, they were friends of Stiles, there to hug him and tell him how sorry they were like that would fix anything.

Stiles had wanted the service to be outside, since his dad had always itched as soon as he passed the threshold of a church. The catholic officiant was in deference to his babcia, who Stiles could picture gasping in horror at the thought of her Januszek not being buried properly.

(Christmas Eve Mass was the worst. Stiles was bored, and every song had a million verses, and only his mom sang them with a pretty voice. Everyone else sounded like a Pokemon. He didn't want to fall asleep like a baby, but he was so bored. When the song finally ended and they all sat down on the hard pews, he felt his dad grab his hand, and he thought they might leave, and Stiles would have to sit through a lecture from Babcia about being good in church, but then his dad's fingers curled around his, thumb on top. Silently, his dad's thumb began to dance around his and Stiles caught on quickly. One, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war.)

It didn't really matter, though. She was dead. Stiles didn't believe in any kind of afterlife, for her or for his dad, or for him. He was alone. Staring at the urn and the spray of flowers he'd picked at random from list of cheapest options, it finally hit him that he was an orphan. If he'd been a couple of years younger, he would have been shuffled into the foster system. Thankfully, he was legally an adult, as of 3 weeks ago, and to his name, he had a tiny, run down house, an acceptance letter to Berkeley and two graves to come back to visit when he was feeling masochistic.

("Make a wish, buddy" his dad urged, setting the plate piled high with devil's food in front of him. Stiles squeezed his eyes shut and wished as hard as he could for the thing he wanted even more than the Gameboy he knew was waiting in the present bag he'd yet to open. He wished for his dad to be home more often. He wished for his dad to not be too tired to come with him and his mom to the park on the weekend. He dug into his cake with a gap-toothed smile and looked up his dad when a big, strong hand ruffled the short hair on the top of his head.)

Scott had looked at him that morning while he helped him tie his tie, like he wanted to say so much. Like he thought Stiles should be weeping and wailing on the morning of his father's memorial service. Stiles had done all his crying at the hospital right after, when the doctor told him his dad had died before they'd pried him out of the twisted hunk of metal that was his car. Harder still, when they'd told him, gently, that no one else had been hurt, though it had been close. Scott never had said anything. He'd just gripped his shoulder comfortingly. They had an agreement, he and Scott. They didn't talk about their dads.

("Break, Stiles, break!"

"I'm doing it!"

The jeep squeaked to a stop at the end of their driveway just as the gas tanker thundered by, way too fast for a residential area. There was a long moment of stunned, grateful silence, then his dad snorted and Stiles cracked up. They laughed until there was tears in their eyes and their ribs ached. They hadn't even gotten on the road and Stiles had nearly creamed them both.)

Stiles' eyes had been dry since he'd collapsed into Melissa's arms in the ugly, uncomfortable waiting room. His sadness had seemed to dry up along with them, when he woke the next morning to a list of preparations he needed to make either before or after he crammed for his Chem final. He'd zombied through those days, feeling nothing, but now he was feeling something.

Stiles was angry. Staring down at the whole in the ground where the urn vault that he'd shelled out a hundred bucks for was going to go, he was furious. All the time Stiles had spent trying to get his dad back on the wagon. All the colleges he hadn't applied to, because he didn't want to be over an hour away or stay in a dorm, in case his dad fell asleep in a pile of his own vomit when he finally passed out for the night. All the things Stiles had ever given up, all the people (person) he'd pushed away, and his father gets in a car after his bottle ran out and wraps it around a lamppost 3 blocks from their house while Stiles was at lacrosse practice.

It was enough to make him want to scream.

The officiant said the last few words, and most of the people in attendance faded away, Derek included. He walked quickly in a wide circle, knowing his mother would catch up at some point. He knew he should leave, but he couldn't seem to force himself to wander in the direction of his mother's car.

Instead, he prowled through the sea of monuments, tugging and loosening the tie around his neck, feeling like it was choking him, before he unfastened the knot with jerky pulls. He wished it were Stiles' long fingers pulling his collar away from his neck so that there was more room to mark it, own it, like he owned every other part of Derek.

New York was a wide, varied pool of young people just like him. He could go out any night into the teeming masses of girls or guys who wanted to get off, or make a connection or find their other half. He could date. Get marked by someone else. But he doesn't do that anymore. Not since Stiles allowed him to kiss his tears away and twist their bodies together into something that resembled Derek's DNA. Inextricable from Stiles.

Derek's aimless circle brought him back to the interment site, where Stiles sat in the only rickety lawn chair the groundskeepers had provided for the grief-stricken. Stiles stared at the freshly turned ground, his face turned away, but Derek could see the broken line of his body, still with sorrow where it was normally pulsating with life.

Derek remembered the day Stiles' mom hadn't come home from the hospital. Stiles had stayed over at Derek's house, the first of many sleepovers. For the first couple of hours of his visit, Stiles had sat on the end of Derek's bed, gently stroking a soft cotton blouse in his lap.

("Do you want to sleep?"

Stiles shook his head no.

Derek sat on the bed next to him.

"She packed up her clothes," Stiles said, in a small voice. "All of Mom's clothes are in big boxes and she's only got her PJs."

Stiles' voice trembled and Derek's arm came up to wrap around his shuddering chest.

"Derek. I don't think she's coming back.")

Now, as then, Derek couldn't keep his hand from Stiles' shoulder. Stiles looked up, startled, and his eyes blinked wide up at Derek. The chair fell back when Stiles stood, but neither of them spared it a glance.

Stiles' pale, tight lips began to tremble and his hand came up to rest on Derek's chest. He could feel the light pressure over his heart, but the heat that emanated from those fingertips was all in Derek's head. He knew this, yet he reached for Stiles' hand, to see if holding it would somehow transfer that warmth through his veins to the cold pit of his heart. Before he could grasp it, Stiles lurched forward and then they were clinging to each other as hard as they ever had as boys.

("I'm glad we're married now, Derek. That means you can come to my house whenever we want." Derek grinned into Stiles' short, bristly hair, then jabbed his fingers into Stiles' ribs, to Stiles' shrieking glee.)

Stiles' chest heaved, but his face was dry, pressed up against Derek's neck. Derek's mouth was pressed into the tender skin below his ear and the salty, humid space smelled so strongly of Stiles, it made Derek lightheaded.

("And that's Orion." Stiles pointed to the middle of the star map pinned to the roof of their fort. "He was a hero, so he's kind of like you.")

Stiles' long arms wrapped around him like they always had, finding the divot of Derek's hip and the juncture where his shoulder met his neck. Their limbs are drawn like magnets to the places where they fit like puzzle pieces.

(Derek watched Stiles fling his hands in expansive gestures, describing how perfectly he would fit in with what Stiles thought New York would be like, thinking he should inject some sort of opinion, but too bewitched by the merry sparkle of amber eyes to clutter up the conversation with his words.)

Derek tightened his arms on a reflex when Stiles pulled away, clutching retreating limbs with desperate, barely blunted nails. He turned his head to where Stiles was staring, the stony face and hurt-filled eyes restored.

His mother was standing a few feet away, fingering her ring of keys and looking sorry to have intruded. Scott McCall was a few steps behind her, decidedly not sorry. Stiles didn't linger, or look again at Derek. He brushed past Talia and leaned in to McCall's hand on his shoulder as they headed for the entrance.

He barely heard his mother's voice as she brushed a hand down his arm and murmured, "I'm heading out, take as long as you need," but was all the permission Derek needed to turn and run away from the scent of newly turned earth and weighty, draining grief.

Stiles hadn't meant to, but Derek's orbit pulled him in like battered, frozen piece of space junk. He would have stayed there until the sun set, but he'd have recognized Scott's uncomfortable cough from miles away and he was pulling away before it fully registered in his brain that he hadn't wanted to.

He turned, and saw Talia Hale hovering a few feet away. Her presence was an electric shock of suffocating guilt. Everything that his dad had ever said about her and her family, the bitter hatred, the mocking scorn that hid his jealousy so poorly, all those things that Stiles had always disagreed with, came to the forefront of his mind, overlaying her dark, sympathetic form with greed and self-importance and suddenly she was a cartoon villain in the fucked up Disney movie of his life.

Stiles went to Scott on stiff legs that felt like they could buckle with one wrong move. The guilt morphed as the stone and wrought iron gate drew closer. How many times had he wanted to tell his dad that he was wrong? That you couldn't paint a whole family with a brush already stained by resentment?

Before he got 20 feet away from Derek, he wanted to go back. He wanted that warmth. He hadn't been warm in so long. It was fucking tiring being so cold all the time.

"I have to go. I'll see you later, bro."

"Stiles? Stiles, come back."

He didn't listen, just headed back to where he came, but Derek wasn't at the grave anymore. He was gone, and so was his mother. Stiles could hear Scott asking him to come back, but there wasn't much point. He had no reception to go to. No one celebrated the life of a man killed before 50 by a drunken car wreck (Before 30 from the death of his wife.) with sandwiches and watered down orange drink. He had all the time in the world.

A weak breeze stirred the humid air as Stiles stood ignoring his best friend and staring at the empty space next to his parent's graves. He felt unmoored. Adrift. For the last few weeks, he'd had one task or another that he'd had to get done, had to check off his list so that he could move on to the next. Now, there was nothing.

Stiles let his eyes drift to the trees where the edge of the preserve butted up against the graveyard, where the tamed grass became wild and carefully cultivated bushes melded with thick underbrush.

(Stiles fell to his knees, then rolled to his back, laughing hard enough to make his belly hurt. The sky was a twirling dream of white and blue. He and Derek had rolled down the hill ten times already, and they had to wait a little longer each time for the dizziness to subside. Derek hit the grass beside him, giggling in his weird, chuffing way that always made Stiles laugh harder. The trip down had been so fast that time, Stiles felt like he'd left his stomach at the top. He reached for Derek's hand without looking and held it like an anchor to keep himself from spinning off of the world into the still whirling sky.)

The sight made him smile, though it probably looked grotesque. A cracked, disused parody of the grin his father had always told him was just like his mother's. His feet started walking toward the forest before he'd even told them to move, then he was running for where the trees were thick and dark even when the sun was high. Dark like a black hole, where what went in never came out.

Derek shifted as soon as he was sure he couldn't be seen. He longed for the wolf, wished he had the ability to shift fully. He wanted what his mother and Laura had spoken of with caution in their voices, the risk they warn of: That his humanity would slip away.

At some point, it changed. He was no longer running from Stiles. He ran into his pain instead of away from it, letting the branches whip his skin and catch his clothes. He felt like he was searching for something. It wasn't comfort. There was no comforting him now. Something in him was urging, go faster, run harder, run toward the pulsing, aching fear of an animal cornered, no other option but…

Derek lost his breath and almost stumbled. Through the trees he saw a dark shape swaying like the saplings that grew precariously at the lip of the deep ravine. The same great crack in the earth that Derek had unknowingly run toward. He used to walk the edge when he wanted to feel his heart beat faster. The drop was enough to kill even him.

A flash of white caught his eye and Derek's quick intake of surprised breath brought with it a scent he knew better than his own. Stiles. In the space of heart beats, Derek was at the edge, pulling him back. They both hit the ground, and Derek held Stiles tight against his chest, even as he struggled.

After minutes of useless writhing, Stiles started crying, with great, wheezing sobs. They grew louder and harsher, until he was screaming into the quiet preserve. When he stopped, his air sputtering out like an empty gas tank, the sound of his agony echoed out into the trees above them and the ravine.

"He's gone, Derek." Stiles' voice was wrecked, and his body was limp in Derek's arms.

"Yes."

"I fucked up so bad." He laughed, wetly, mirthlessly. "I should hate you. He always did. "

"You're not him. He wasn't right all the time."

"He was my dad."

Derek squeezed him tighter. "He was. He was your father, and you love him. You'll always love him, and he loved you. But he fucked up too, Stiles."

They stayed like that a long time. Stiles breathing slowly, but unevenly against his chest, Derek wishing he could turn his veins black with Stiles' sorrow. He didn't ask why Stiles had come out here. Why he'd been so close to - that. They just existed and listened to the sound of the preserve.

"Derek?"

"Yeah?"

"I want to-Can I stay with you?" His voice broke on the last word and Derek grabbed his hand and held it over their hearts. Stiles squeezed back. "All this time, we could have-no more running."

"Yeah, Stiles. No more running."

Stiles' father was dead. They would both mourn for a long time for a broken man who loved his son enough, but loved his wife too much. There was a chasm of hurt between them that would take years to bridge.

They had each other and they had time. A world of time.

Golden sun warmed their skin and spots danced in their eyes. The summer would last a thousand years and their "I love yous" whispered without voice.