Disclaimer: I own nothing

Author Notes: Set after season two's finale. Title is from the song 'Welcome To My Nightmare' by Alice Cooper.

WE SWEAT AND LAUGH AND SCREAM HERE

After his Mom passed away, Stiles got nightmares all the time. They weren't the kind of vague bad dreams that disappeared from memory by morning. His nightmares had him thrashing out of his covers, screaming and throwing punches and every time, his Dad was there, talking, calming him, and holding him afterward. The dreams lasted for months. It was something Not Talked About in the Stilinski household. Even now it was packed away neatly in the attic of Things That Happened When Mom Died So We Won't Speak Of It.

After Gerard, Stiles started getting nightmares again. Similar but different. He woke up violently, heart pounding, body sweating, mind whirling at a million miles an hour. He smelled blood and vomit and all he could hear was Gerard and those words that dug in worse than glass splinters. Bruises faded eventually. Words didn't.

"So here we are, boy. I thought you were part of the pack. Somebody they cared about enough to follow your scent here. Guess not."

But he must not have cried out this time because his Dad didn't show up once, armed with a glass of water and a seriously upset expression. So that was good.

Focus on the positive.

The thing was though; the negatives were kind of overwhelming.

The nightmares were coming every night so Stiles wasn't getting all that much sleep and therefore his attention wandered even more than usual. He tried staying up even later, burning the midnight oil, researching until he could barely keep his head up, because maybe then he'd just drop into sweet dreamless sleep and nothing would poke at him or rattle his brain. Maybe Gerard's voice would actually stay silent.

"An Alpha doesn't care about a pack. It cares about staying on top. You could all butcher each other and all an Alpha would care about is proving its own dominance. Animals are all the same."

Yeah, it didn't work. He couldn't go to the doctor without his Dad finding out and Deaton would almost certainly tell Derek or Scott.

And now the bags under Stiles' eyes were getting really pronounced and he almost fell asleep at school several times. Even Scott noticed.

Stiles brushed aside his friend's concerns. He had to keep it together. He had research to do for the pack, homework to complete, and a father to keep away from full-fat take-out. He couldn't just crumble. He slept a little, that was enough. And if Derek stared at him a little more than usual, then Stiles just joked about the Alpha being seriously bored if he suddenly found Stiles interesting. He was the king of deflection. He had so much practice.

"You can't fight instinct. Eventually, you'll be taken apart by wolves who just see prey, nothing more. Because that's all you are to them in the end - so much meat."

Stiles fought, cursing and clawing, but his hands were slippery with blood and he could hear Erica and Boyd shouting in pain and Gerard seemed to be everywhere at once. It wasn't fair. Stiles felt that familiar dip in his guts, like the start of a panic attack. He had to stay alive, he had to save them. He couldn't ever do enough. He wasn't enough.

Suddenly there were warm hands on his shoulders. Hesitant but then firm and urgent. They weren't trying to tear him apart or punch his ribs out. That was new. They just held him, soothed him even, like they were trying to pull him away from Gerard and his basement of horrors. Definitely new.

Stiles leaned fervently into the touch. It was familiar somehow, as was the new lingering smell. Who was it? Gerard's voice seemed to come in and out like bad TV reception; his hard unbreakable words futzed by white noise static. Stiles felt his chest ease and his breath come back and the wolves weren't howling in pain anymore. He slid into something that could almost have been restful uninterrupted sleep. In the morning, he tried to make sense of it. Who had been holding him? How had they known what to do when he was panicking? Whoever his subconscious had cooked up, Stiles was wildly grateful. He'd actually gotten more than three hours sleep. Score.

He didn't expect the strange presence to turn up again. Once was a miracle. Miracles didn't tend to do repeat performances.

"Who do you have, Stiles? The rest of the pack all have somebody. But who do you have?"

The touch was there again and Stiles turned wildly, trying to make sense of it. Why couldn't he see who was doing that? It was like knowing somebody was behind you but then turning round and finding nobody there. It sucked.

Well, the touch itself didn't. That really helped. Stiles closed his eyes and tried to focus on the phantom touch. It felt so good. Gerard's voice was fading again, as was the smell, and Stiles could breathe properly.

It started happening more frequently. Stiles started looking forward to it. Which was so screwed up because the nightmares were still there, shredding him nightly. Sometimes the touch didn't arrive and sometimes it didn't work. But most of the time it was really helpful. He was getting dependent on his own subconscious.

"Dude, you've been sleeping."

Scott sounded pleased and Stiles grinned back. Maybe the pack would stop harassing him now about how crappy he looked, because wasn't that just what everybody wanted to hear when they weren't feeling hot? Derek was still keenly staring at him more often than before. Stiles stared back – how could he not? Derek was like something out of a really good magazine and Stiles could appreciate art, just like everybody else. That was all. And that was all Derek was going to discover if he started prying into why Stiles' heartbeat got suddenly way too rapid whenever the Alpha looked at him. King of deflection. He could do this.

Then a voice joined the touch. Stiles felt like he should recognize it.

"He can't hurt you anymore."

It was so familiar, and Stiles clung to it when Gerard's vicious verbals got to be too much for even the comforting touch to handle. The combination of voice, hands, and smell worked even stronger than the touch did alone. Stiles sighed happily and held on.

It was getting more vivid – the words, the arms around him. His subconscious was working overtime. Assuming it was a dream and not actually real. Stiles stared at his bedroom window in sudden horror. Did he have a nightly intruder? That made a change from Derek.

Derek. Stiles froze for a horrified second, his heart lurching in recognition. Then too many things clicked heavily and painfully into place. Derek. The voice, warped by dreams, could be Derek. So could the touch. Who else was a creeper frequently in and out of his bedroom? Yeah, it all felt extremely familiar.

God, Derek had seen him during his nightmares, needy and pathetic and broken. Stiles rested his head in his hands. He was more than tempted to lock the window.

But Derek had kept on coming back, night after night. He'd held Stiles; he'd been gentle and caring and had known what to say. If it was duty bringing him back each time, he'd have said something and gotten the pack to help out. Instead, he'd said nothing. He'd given Stiles privacy. He'd given Stiles peace when he'd really needed it and he hadn't asked for anything in return.

Stiles left the window unlocked.

The touch and voice continued to frequently surround him in his sleep. Stiles arched into it. He was sure that he felt a kiss on his temple one night – when Gerard was gouging into him with blades and knife-sharp mocking about what Alphas did to humans stupid enough to follow them. It was a brief press of lips, but Stiles definitely felt something. Derek had kissed him. And he'd been asleep at the time. Damn it.

"You look so much better, Stiles," Allison startled him out of a zone-out during lunch. "Scott says you're sleeping more now."

Right. More sleep. Some of what was happening in his dreams would be nice to experience when fully awake and functioning. He managed a smile and rubbed at his temple.

He started watching Derek more at meetings. Derek looked right back. It made heat prickle up Stiles' spine. There was intent in Derek's gaze, intent that Stiles hadn't noticed there before. Intent that made Stiles want to sleep right the fuck now and feel that familiar touch. Boy, did he have problems.

He wanted to say something. He wanted to say thank you and why and how can you keep coming back when I'm in a million different pieces and it hurts so much? It made an aching kind of sense. If anyone was going to understand nightmares, it'd be Derek. His life was full of ghosts. His dreams probably were too.

God, what if Stiles said Derek's name in his sleep now? That would be completely mortifying. He wasn't going to do that. He wasn't. Fuck, his body probably reacted to Derek's closeness anyway, to Derek lying beside him in bed. Derek had likely already smelled exactly how much Stiles liked having him near.

He couldn't stop clinging to the person he couldn't see in his dreams. Now that he was almost sure it was Derek, it was incredibly obvious. The familiar smell of Derek cut through the grossness of Gerard's basement. There was the sort of mossy smell of the forest and fresh wood shavings from the Hale house renovations and the Camaro's oil. It was Derek. He was curled protectively and possessively around Stiles. Maybe knowing who it was helped even more. Maybe the idea that Derek was that invested in keeping him safe did something for Stiles. Okay, there was no 'maybe' about it. It definitely did something for him, several things.

If the nightmares ever stopped, would Derek stop turning up? Stiles watched Derek out of the corner of his eye, his heart jack-rabbit fast. The idea of his bed suddenly becoming Derek-free was an extremely distressing one. It wasn't something he felt exactly comfortable telling Derek though – hey, you know how snotty and freaked-out and gross I get almost every night and how you're somehow there to ease me through it? How about we keep on doing that once the nightmares stop?

Yeah, he could see that going well. Derek had made a clear point of not talking about their night-time weirdness; in fact he ignored it completely during the day. Maybe he'd do the same when the nightmares stopped – just pretend that they'd never happened at all. Maybe he'd go back to staring at Stiles without any intent. Stiles rubbed at a vague spot on his chest; that thought wasn't supposed to hurt so much.

He frowned down into his drink and tried hard not to stare at Derek. He was pretty sure that if he started looking at the Alpha, he wouldn't be able to stop.

Pack meetings felt weirder after that. Stiles still talked and interrupted, but he didn't interact so much with Derek. It was better that way, right? Maybe it'd sever the dependency thing that Stiles had going on. Or not. He twitched and fidgeted and longed to sit closer to Derek. He'd feel calmer within touching distance probably.

Boyd nudged his shoulder, wearing an expression that said he knew way more than Stiles was comfortable with. Great, because he needed a reminder that he was surrounded by people who could smell his mood and interests. That wasn't embarrassing at all. What about his right to privacy?

Stiles was caught between two very hard places. He wanted to distance himself from Derek, to prevent the inevitable embarrassing fallout, but it was like trying to resist the pull of a black hole - too much to resist, too dangerous to get close to. Something Derek himself clearly believed, if the brooding and 'ignoring night time visits to Stiles' attitude was any indication.

It was all building up.

It broke wide open when Stiles found himself swathed in a nightmare that included Gerard's most pointed jeers and physical blows, Derek falling away somewhere and Stiles knowing that Derek was somehow just within reach if he could only work out where, and endless soul-scraping wolf howls that bit at his flesh. Stiles woke himself up when he yelled Derek's name.

As soon as the word left his lips, he was panting, trying to get enough air into his lungs, trying to see wildly into the dark, to check that Gerard had gone and that Derek was okay. Sweat was making the sheets stick to his skin as he shook. And Derek was holding him.

Derek.

Stiles' fingers dug into the skin surrounding him. Derek was here. He hadn't fallen. He was here. Derek started moving. Blindly, in that place just after waking when dreams seemed completely and nightmarishly real, Stiles clung to him, heart racing fast and mind blurring with slaughtered wolves and Gerard's words.

"Don't leave. Don't leave."

Derek paused. Yes, that was good. And then Derek's fingers slowly started running over Stiles' body in silent soothing strokes, something he vaguely remembered happening before. It felt wonderful. Derek nosed at his jaw, shoulder, and neck, an almost comforting noise escaping his throat. Stiles melted into the touch.

He turned clumsily and kissed Derek's bare chest. "Don't leave."

Derek seemed to still, but then wrapped himself fiercely around Stiles, continuing to comfort him with careful touches and soothing noises until Stiles fell asleep again and this time found peace in his dreams.

When he was woken early the next morning by his alarm, Stiles realized, with a horrifying rush of all-too-vivid recent memories, exactly what he'd done. As total mortification filled him, he realized something else – Derek was still sharing his bed and was completely naked.

And he was awake, watching Stiles with intent jade eyes, looking for something, his body tensing up. There was a yearning in his expression too and his hands twitched. Stiles couldn't help zeroing in on Derek's mouth, then realized that Derek was doing the exact same thing to him.

He swallowed hard, and thought if this is a dream...

Before following it up with fuck you, Gerard.

And he boldly wrapped a hand around the nape of Derek's neck, pulling him in for a desperate needy kiss.

-the end