"Stiles, I really can't talk right now."

There was a long, silent pause.

Stiles swallowed the lump in his throat, relieved more than he would ever admit aloud at just the sound of Derek's voice alone. Even if it was a low, hissed whisper that had Stiles wondering just what the hell Derek was doing for a brief moment.

"Stiles?"

Stiles let out the trembling breath he'd been holding in, feeling a little helpless and a little more lost.

"Fuck," Derek growled, and Stiles could hear the faint noise of an engine starting in the background. "Where the hell are you?"

Stiles' mouth opened of its own accord, but any words that might've left it were lost on his tongue. He swallowed again.

"Stiles?" Now Derek sounded more worried than he did irritated, and it was enough to snap Stiles out of his misery. Even if just for a moment.

"A-At home."

They were the only words he could force from his throat. He hoped they would be enough.

"Stay where you are."

Click.

Stiles pulled his phone from where it rested against his ear in something of a daze. His eyes were oddly dry, for the churning feeling in his stomach and the way his chest kept constricting, like a concrete brick was suppressing it.

He was overreacting. That's all. He shouldn't have called Derek. The other man had obviously been busy.

But it was the only thing he could think to do when he saw his dad, sitting at his desk looking worse for wear with a glass of scotch resting limply in his fingers. His features had been twisted into something only to be described as despondency, something Stiles hadn't seen in a long while, and it'd made him feel nauseous.

At the time, leaving the house, sitting on the front porch, and calling Derek had seemed to be the only reasonable thing to do. Now Stiles wondered, distractedly, why he hadn't just called Scott or simply went over to his place, no questions asked.

The thought was fleeting, however, because the action was done and Derek was coming whether he liked it (regretted it) or not.

Not to say it wasn't a bit… weird, when Stiles really thought about it. He hadn't said so much as three words, and here Derek was, dropping everything to come get him.

It eased something in his chest, something that scared him more than a little bit, and so he pushed the thought aside. It didn't matter right now anyway.

Suddenly, a black Chevy Camaro had pulled up right in front of Stiles, smooth and almost silent. The interruption pulled him from his thoughts - and that was rather quick, wasn't it? - and Stiles was standing up before he really had a grasp of understanding on what he was actually doing.

A blanket of relief settled over him without his consent, but he didn't resent it all the same.

He pulled open the door on the passenger's side and slid into the front seat without a word. He didn't even bother asking why the fuck Derek was wearing sunglasses at 9 o'clock at night - and, was that even safe?

Derek, graciously, remained perfectly silent as he pulled away from Stiles' house and just drove. Stiles couldn't find it in himself to give one flying fuck where they were going. If they were going anywhere at all.

The adding stress that was piled high on his shoulders alleviated bit by bit as each minute passed and the comfortable silence stretched.

Tomorrow Stiles would probably be embarrassed and he'd wonder just what the actual hell was wrong with him, but for right now, he'd let the technicalities wash away and be content with this serenity that had ensconced itself deep into his bones.

Only when he opened his eyes - when exactly had he closed them, anyway? - did he realize that the car was no longer moving, and instead sat on the side of the road below a great big elm tree. Moonlight bounced off its shiny leaves and gave it an almost ethereal glow that had Stiles sucking in a sharp breath. But then he reasoned that not everything in Beacon Hills could possibly have supernatural qualities, and so he turned instead to his companion for the first time that evening.

He tried not to be unsettled when he saw the way Derek was already staring at him, sunglasses gone to who knew where. The older man searched his face, his green eyes looking more like hazel from the moonlight streaming in through the windshield.

Stiles had the overwhelming urge to say something all of a sudden, but any words he could think of started clogging up his throat and he thought he might choke. But then Derek only raised an eyebrow, a silent question that could mean any number of things.

What's wrong? Why did you call me? Where are your actual friends? What happened? Why are you such an idiot?

Stiles didn't have any real answers to any of them. His mind was a mess that wouldn't settle and anything that might've been the truth was wrought with more questions that he didn't know how to answer. Didn't want to know how to answer.

Derek sighed audibly, but the sound seemed to hold a significantly less amount of irritation than usual.

"C'mon."

He said it like he couldn't believe he was actually about to do whatever it was that he was about to do. Which in turn only made Stiles nervous. His brain apparently thought it would pick now to catch up with the rest of him and wonder why the fuck he thought this would be a good idea.

Alas, Stiles followed Derek's instruction and got out of the car, walking around the front of it to where the other man stood expectantly. He swallowed once more, this time in anticipation.

Derek's hands were stuffed into the pockets of his leather jacket and his face was twisted in contemplation. Then, he did the unthinkable (well, in Stiles' opinion anyway).

He walked over to the trunk of the elm tree and collapsed, back to bark. Stiles stared wide-eyed and confused, because he couldn't possibly be doing...

"You just gonna stand there?" Derek huffed in exasperation.

Derek wanted to sit with him? That was... weirdly nice. And, therefore, obviously suspicious. Stiles raised a wary brow at which he could tell Derek was rolling his eyes at, even from here.

"Look, Stiles, if I wanted to eat you, I would've done it by now."

Stiles' lips quirked up slightly of their own accord, though that probably shouldn't have been particularly funny. Nevertheless, this was Beacon Hills, and nothing even approached normal here, so he just shrugged.

His legs gave out properly when he reached Derek's side, and then suddenly they were sitting next to each other, their arms touching on occasion whenever one of them shifted. It was strangely comfortable, and had Stiles forgetting all (or most) of his problems in seconds, which, he now realized, had been part of Derek's intentions. The wave of gratitude that swept through him at that was potent by the way his heart started racing.

They sat in silence for long moments (and if it wasn't quite comfortable, than it was content).

Finally, Stiles let out a long breath he'd been holding without even really realizing it and cleared his throat.

"Thanks," he mumbled quietly.

Derek only shrugged, pulling up his right knee and letting his left leg lie straight. He bumped his left foot with Stiles' and that was really all the response he needed.

He still didn't tell Derek what was wrong (as he wasn't entirely sure himself), but he did start conversing with the other man - anything about lacrosse to the weather they were having, with an occasional one or two-worded response, but mostly just eye-rolls and huffs and groans that had him smiling like the idiot that he probably was.

And then suddenly Derek was speaking, too - about nothing overly personal, but Stiles listened intently all the same. He realized that he probably learned more about the man in these however many hours than he had in all the years he'd known him combined.

As the hours passed and the half-moon moved higher in the sky, casting its silver rays upon them, secrets started spilling in the safe haven of their tranquility.

When Derek was but eleven or twelve years old, he'd dreamed of one day making it to the NBA.

Stiles once owned a guinea pig called Bryan that had died when he was six because he'd forgotten to feed and hydrate him properly (something he still actually felt quite guilty about).

Derek wouldn't touch a meatball with a ten-foot pole because once when he was younger he'd vomited throughout the night after eating spaghetti.

Stiles had went to New York when he was a kid, and occasionally fantasized about going back to live a life incredibly unlike the one he led now.

Derek had once taken piano lessons and even liked it a bit, but stopped when Peter and his friends had made fun of him for it (Stiles could hardly believe that Derek had told him this, and promised never to repeat it to anyone, not even Scott).

Stiles sometimes wondered if his dad blamed him for what happened to his mom.

Derek still held a significant amount of guilt for the fire that killed most of the people he'd cared for most.

Soon Stiles found that they were pressed up tightly against one another to ward off the cold that had become more noticeable the more time that had passed.

If anyone asked, he wouldn't have been able to tell them how they'd come to falling asleep leaning against each other. He wouldn't be able to say who'd drifted off first (though he'd bet the PlayStation he didn't have that it was most probably him). He wouldn't know how to explain being wrapped up in Derek's unsurprisingly muscular arms the next morning. And he definitely couldn't justify the warm feeling that filled his chest at that discovery.

But he did know (even if it was just inside his own head) that his and Derek's acquaintanceship had inescapably changed to something else entirely and Stiles tried not to hold too high expectations.

He did, however, snuggle deeper into Derek's firm hold and grinned at the oddness of it all.

Maybe he was actually still at home, on the porch or in his bed, dreaming this all up. Maybe none of this was really happening at all. It would certainly explain the bizarreness of his current situation.

He was able to admit to himself that he hoped not, though.

But watching Derek sleep with an expression of repose on his face that he was sure he'd never seen Derek wear while conscious, Stiles didn't really think his unconscious mind could come up with something like this.

So he (arguably unwisely) relaxed into the arms of a werewolf, and promptly fell back asleep.