"Do you really think we'd be good together?" Stiles says, out of nowhere, eyes faintly narrowed, nose scrunched."Like, honestly? Because everyone goes on and on about it, and I think-"

"Does this look like a good time to be thinking about that?" He replies, mind blank and teeth long and menacing, clenched with a strength that makes his jaw ache after a few minutes. Body tense, curled like an iron spiral.

Stiles' hands twitch around his gun (the smell of the wolfsbane in those bullets, it irritates every single one of his senses, he just hopes it does the same to their enemy), heart stuttering in that way completely inherent to him, so filled with lively indignation.

"Well, excuse me." He whispers, hands tight on his weapon, long fingers paled from the pressure. "Let's talk about this the next time we get together for tea and cookies, shall we?"

He itches to snark right back, to search his brain for the most obnoxious answer he can give, just to see Stiles' reaction. There's no time, however, because the Alphas descend on them like angels of death, and they have to stick to this plan if they want to have their pack back (with their memories, awake), to get out of this one alive.

He's in front of Stiles in a second, ready to lose his fucking life if it's what it takes to rid the town of these people.

"Now!" Stiles yells into his cellphone, "now, now, now!"

And he listens to Lydia's steady, firm voice on the other side, saying "done", while the Alphas tear at him viciously, lacking much planning and coordination, knowing that something's going on.

As one of them sinks teeth on his shoulder, he listens to the others getting close to Stiles, surely aiming to slash his throat with their claws. He'd snort, if pain wasn't filling every fibre of his body, wasn't taking over him.

Now they won't be able to reach him, he thinks. Now it's over, he thinks. Now theye've won, and he can listen to Stiles firing his gun at one of them, can hear their gasps as the magic flowing from the rune drawn on Stiles' hand (with mountain ash based ink) makes whoever's fallen under the wolfsbane laced bullet's blood turn a vibrant purple.

He can't see it, but he can imagine it, as he makes an effort to bring his claws to this Alpha's neck.

What he can see, anyway, are tiny webs of intricate patterns coming alive under their feet, glowing purple too, for as far as their eyes can go.

It'd taken Stiles and Lydia a few days to finish carving the delicate patterns into the ground of the warehouse, putting effort and belief and so much of themselves, and Lydia'd had to finish the last of the scrawls on her own, because they didn't have any more time, with all the betas drained of their everything, brought to a deep sleep that couldn't help them heal, and thus would continue forever, working on trying to repair them and never being able.

The Alpha who'd been holding him still between his jaws lets him go, gurgling blood of his own, blood that upon touching the ground turns purple, too.

Then he can hear their screaming, as the spell starts to work on them, starts turning them completely human. The skin on his hand is burning, where he has the same drawing as Stiles'.

He can feel it on the ground's vibrations when everyone drops to their knees, in excruciating pain (the spell isn't supposed to kill them, but the blood on them -from wounds that Derek's put on them and aren't healing-, and the slowing of their hearts tells him that they will, once they are fully human). Can feel it when it's Stiles' turn, sliding graceless to the floor, gun in hand, waiting for everything to be over.

Then he doesn't feel much, because with the last round of desperate, pained screaming from the Alphas, comes a searing pain from his hand that is intense enough to make him drop, too, vision blurring.

The last thing he hears before his world fades to black is Stiles' voice, telling him that he's so sorry for this, so sorry.

His last conscious thought is 'I don't know what you're sorry for, other than being a pain on my ass. You could apologize for that'.

He would've liked to say that one out loud, it would've made Stiles sputter and flush in indignation. For maybe a second and a half.

When he comes to, he is at Deaton's, sweat making a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt that are not his own cling to him in uncomfortable places, stuck to him like a second skin.

"You're awake," he doesn't open his eyes to look at Erica, who's sitting next to him. Doesn't need to, feels safe, if slightly off-center. "That's good."

He doesn't answer, doesn't know what he could say that'd be enough. Doesn't know what to say that isn't small and ruined and twisted.

Erica sighs, and starts talking again.

"My name is Erica Reyes, I've just turned sixteen, I want to get my drivers' license this year. I used to have seizures and be a social pariah. But then this guy offered to turn me into a mythological creature and I said 'yes'. And now I'm a werewolf. Graawrr."

At that he opens his eyes, turns his head to look at her, clad in leather with her blond curls and her red lipstick on lips that are curled in little a smile that's more of the Erica that lives underneath her new layers of femme fatale.

"I guess what I'm saying is that we've recovered our memories. That means this is over. We've won. The Alpha pack is gone."

"I'd assumed as much, yeah." He grunts.

"Derek, we're very fucking lucky."

Her eyes are big, stern for the first time since he's woken up, her mouth a little pursed. He doesn't know what's making her so upset right now.

He tries standing up, but when he tries to relay on his left hand to take some of his body's weight, it sends a bolt of pain up his arm and straight into his nape.

He looks down at his palm, where there's a bandage. Under it, he can smell burnt flesh, can guess that there's lacking skin and dried blood, and the remaining traces of a rune that's carved itself a place there.

"Deaton says it'll heal at human pace." tosses Erica, standing up and turning to leave.

She's clutching the door when she makes a last dramatic statement (he has to keep reminding himself that he's called this on himself, biting a bunch of high schoolers).

"You should go see Stiles."

"I killed a guy."

He's barely gotten inside the room, when Stiles throws that at him.

"I mean, I know I've been playing around on the vast grey areas of the moral spectrum for quite some time, at this point. I've broken the law in many creative and different ways. I've set someone on fire. Never mind that he was a psycho and he came back to life.

"But now I killed a guy. Actually shot him, and watched him die. And felt relief as I did."

The kid's lying on his bed, looking at the ceiling, with eyes that don't betray a single thing. Not for the first time, he gets fustrated at Stiles for being the most honest and still most closed off person he's ever met.

It's not even relatively close to being the only thing about Stiles that frustrates him, but it makes top five, under his utter lack of survival instincts and above the way he always makes Derek want to react, in one way or another.

He sits on Stiles' desk chair, looks around the room, finding traces everywhere of the kid Stiles must've been at some point: a tactless, nosey, messy teen with a boner for comic books and video games, and a frankly terrible taste for clothing, and- is that a nerf gun?

He raises his eyebrows, and then he looks back at Stiles, at his form on the bed, hunched even though he is lying down.

For a second, Derek can see a glimpse of himself in Stiles. And it scares him. It scares the hell out of him to see this determined person in front of him who'd do literally anything to protect the ones he cares about, because he also sees the bitterness, the guilt, the mountain of shit that could consume Stiles, bury him forever.

It's also fucking scary that he wants to preserve Stiles, that somewhere along the line he started trusting the kid; and even worst, started caring about him.

He talks, in an effort to get away from himself. Tries to string something together that can put Stiles at ease.

"In your defense, he wasn't much of a nice guy."

Stiles looks at him then, assessing something. They lock eyes for a few seconds, as Stiles somehow manages to get inside his head without saying a word, getting under his skin so easy that Derek can't really tell if he's ever been unable to.

Whatever he finds in him (either in the deepest hiding places inside him, or in his eyes) makes him relax, brings a little quirk to his lips that is amused and annoying and so purely Stiles that it makes him want to respond in kind.

"Yeah, you're right. He wasn't that nice. In fact, he was a total dick. The most monumental one I've ever seen."

Stiles' eyes are fixed on him as he speaks, big and hazel and soft, and telling him things that they're both too stunted to express in words. And that's scary, too.

Erica comes to him, unprompted, announcing in her rich voice, 'Derek, we're very fucking lucky'. His brain provides what Erica didn't say, what she left unspoken and for him to decode on his own: the plan could've gone horribly wrong, and we could've died. We still could die at any fucking moment.

'You should go see Stiles', the Erica inside him repeats. And he.

He can't believe he's this stupid. And he can't believe he's letting fear paralyze him like this.

Stiles keeps looking at him, soft, almost placid; suddenly it crosses Derek's mind that he's never seen Stiles this quiet, this focused. He licks his lips, opens and closes his wounded hand, feeling the give of the skin that surrounds the charred flesh, under the wraps.

"Maybe," he starts, and he hasn't felt this exposed (this stupid, this reckless) since Kate, fuck (even though there's no possible point of comparison between that and this). But fuck letting Kate keep ruining his life, too. "Maybe we could have tea and cookies now."

It sounds so moronic, that he scowls at himself the moment the words are out there. When Stiles blinks at him a couple of times and simply starts laughing (head thrown into the pillows, mouth wide open; he can't help but notice that this is the first time he's seen Stiles laughing), however, he can't find it in himself to take it back.

In the end, when Stiles reins in his mirth, there's no tea to be had.

There's coffee that Derek drinks with sugar and milk, under Stiles' affronted gaze (and it makes so much sense that Stiles is one of those coffee conservatives that frown at mixing it with anything that he has to smile a little), and a few cookies, yes, but they have raisins and are going a little stale ("Sorry, dude, if I kept any other cookies anywhere in the house my dad would find them and inhale them in a second. Next time we can go to a bakery and get some.").

There's that and Stiles, who looks at him with crumbles on his lower lip and asks, feigning nonchalance, "Do you really think we'd be good together?"

And because right now he's feeling bold and tired of being afraid, and really fucking lucky, there's him, saying "yes, we'd be good", letting his cookie on the counter and putting both hands o Stiles' face, to guide him into a tentative kiss.