Toy Soldiers

By: RavenHeart 101

Disclaimer: I don't own a thing.

Summary: The first time Derek saw Stiles, he was running through the playground with a bright yellow shirt on and dull red pants and he had a smile that was almost wider than his whole face. Derek was ten, and Stiles had just turned three.

A: N- A birthday present for my dear friend Mel. :D And my first story in this fandom.

The first time Derek saw Stiles, he was running through the playground with a bright yellow shirt on and dull red pants and he had a smile that was almost wider than his whole face. His eyes had sparkled in a way that Derek suspected only his could and when he saw them he let out a delighted laugh.

Laura had been holding Derek's hand to direct him over to the swings and she had been holding onto a toy soldier tightly, just as Derek had asked her to as he climbed on. The toy soldier was his favorite and it had been a present from his Uncle Peter on his second birthday. His mother had been against him having one, but once she had seen that Derek never liked playing anything violent she backed off. They sometimes even made a special place for him at the kitchen table.

"Need a starter push?" Laura asked him kindly before sitting in her own swing beside him.

"Yes, please." Derek smiled at her, and she smiled back, brushing her hair out of her eyes before grabbing onto the chains tightly and pulled him backwards before letting go. Derek knew what to do now, so he swung contentedly with Laura next to him and his toy soldier in his lap. He was happy, and his eyes remained their same color without flashing golden like they had started doing more often than usual. He guessed that he was one of the lucky ones in their family – one of the ones that would be stronger, faster, but not better in any sense of the word (because "no one is better than anyone else, Moon Shadow. Not even those with our family gift."). It had only just started a year ago, but his heart still sped up whenever he found his eyes changing, and the world becoming sharper in focus.

The wind flew by his face, musing his dark hair as the little boy came to a stop behind him. Derek wasn't going very high, so he managed not to smack the small boy as his swing flew backwards. "Hey, sweetie." Laura turned to face the small boy, smiling at him in the gentle way she always did.

The little boy laughed again, his hand flying to cover his mouth. "Where's your mommy?" But the little boy didn't answer, giggling again and reaching out a hand to tug on the back of Derek's shirt. "Derek." He turned to look at her, a question on the tip of his tongue, but Laura just nodded to the boy behind him. "Looks like you have an admirer."

Derek turned around to look at him and the little boy smiled at him wide. What Derek could possibly want with a three year old boy was beyond him, but he decided to play along. At least until Laura found the little boy's mother or father or they found him. Derek just hoped it wouldn't take too long. "Hi-ya." The little boy's feet shuffled, his white tennis shoes scuffing at the ground. Though they really didn't look very white anymore, grayed by the wear and tear that only a child could give them in a short amount of time.

"Hello?" Derek answered with a question to his voice and a small smile on his face.

The little boy giggled once more, his already rosy cheeks growing impossibly redder. "I am Gen- Geni- G-Gen…." The little boy paused, thinking through the way to say his name. Suddenly, he decided, instead, to shrug apologetically at the fact that he can't say his own name.

"His name is Derek." Laura supplied with a sugar sweet voice. "I'm Laura."

The little boy smiled shyly, shuffling his feet and biting on his thumb nail. "I… like your sol-er."

Derek looked down at the toy in his lap and smiled a bit. Usually it was only adults that complimented his soldier. "Thanks." Derek hugged him tighter to his chest, trying to ignore Laura's almost teasing smile.

"What is 'is… name?" His thumb nail stuck in his mouth again, his small teeth gnawing at them and his eyebrows furrowed in thought.

"Stiles." Derek held the toy out for the little boy's inspection.

"I like that name." The boy ran a cautious finger down the toy's torso, his finger coming to rest on the gun belt that was around the toy soldier's belt. His eyebrows furrowed in a curious way. "Daddy has one o' those!" His smile startled Derek and Laura let out a tiny, shocked laugh at the pure joy that spread across the boy's face. Derek was more startled by the simple beauty he found staring back at him. It was one that was practically always non-existent in today's society.

"Your daddy's a soldier?" Derek's eyes lit up at the thought.

The little boy shook his head almost frantically. "Daddy is a 'olice ocifer."

Derek opened his mouth to ask the little boy more about his father, the police officer, but a woman's voice cut through their conversation. "Genim! There you are." She came up behind the little boy, her arms grabbing him up and holding him close. She was beautiful, Derek remembered that much. Beautiful with strawberry blonde hair, and full lips, and light eyes – her son's eyes. She held him tighter as he tried to pull out of her grip, seemingly not noticing that Derek and Laura were the ones he had been talking to. "You can't just run off like that! What would your father do to me if you got picked up by some monster?"

Derek tries not to flinch at the words coming out of her mouth because she doesn't know – she couldn't know – that they are, in fact, the monsters of her child's nightmares. Well he wasn't quite there yet, but he would be someday.

Laura sends him a look from the corner of her eye – almost as though she knows, and it's kind of absurd that he would assume that she wouldn't. This was Laura after all; she knew more about him than he did half the time. "You have a very cute son, m'am." Laura spoke up for the both of them and the woman's eyes snapped towards her, wide in shock for a moment before she smiled sheepishly.

"Oh my. I am so sorry for not introducing myself!" She held out a hand towards Laura, Derek staring as his older sister shook the woman's hand with a gentle strength. "I'm Diane."

"Laura. And this is my brother Derek." Derek waved at her a bit shyly – she was rather pretty – and looked back down at the toy soldier in his lap.

"It is lovely to meet you two, but we have to get going."

"No!" The little boy – Genim – cried out, his tiny arms reaching towards Derek – his eyes glittering in tears. An odd sort of pull formed at the pit of Derek's stomach and he hugged the doll closer to his chest, hoping it would quell the want to protect.

"Come on, baby. Say goodbye to your friends. Don't leave them on a bad page." She smoothed back his hair, staring into the little boy's light eyes – so much like her own – and smiling gently. He nodded and laid his head on her shoulder, waving goodbye to them with a saddened frown.

"Bye bye."

Derek was ten and Stiles was three the first time they met.

The next time they see each other it's at the funeral of Derek's family. It was a really widely populated event – Derek hadn't expected that, but the fire at the Hale house had turned out being completely devastating to the community at large – and, besides Laura, Derek doesn't have anyone else to hold his hand.

He watches as they lower his entire family – or what's left of his entire family – into the ground and he helps Laura plant a Wolfsbane flower on top of all their graves.

He can't help but feel that this isn't enough to make up for what he did.

He can't help but feel that nothing would make up for what he did.

Still, Derek doesn't let Laura know that he was the one that lead their whole family to death. He doesn't let her know that it was his stupid fault for falling in love with a hunter that was just using him to the ends of her own means.

He kept his mouth shut and stood with his eyes to the ground, gripping Laura's hand in his own as she cries and cries and cries and, maybe, just maybe, a few tears slip out his own eyes too. Usually, Derek chooses to cry at night instead of crying where other people can see. There was a lot of press, and plenty of people that Derek never wanted to see in his whole life, that were standing there hearing the goodbyes of the people that claimed to really know his family. They had been asked to give a speech but they denied. Laura wouldn't be able to do it without crying and Derek wouldn't be able to do it in general with this guilt eating him up inside.

His eyes shifted to the right, where a small boy is in a nice suit, and his eyes on the stone in front of him. There's a tall man standing behind him, his hand on the back of the boy's neck and there are other people – policemen and firemen, Derek recognizes them from the length of time him and Laura had to stay in the station after the fire – walking by, patting the man's shoulder every once in a while and staring down at the small boy with faces of sympathy and pity.

The little boy wasn't crying, he was just sitting there. And then he reached out a hand and touched the stone, his fingers tracing over the letters that were printed there. His lips move, tracing out the name and the words under it and the man behind him moves his hand to the small boy's hair, wiping at his cheeks to try and hide his own tears.

Suddenly, the small boy's eyes snap up to his, and then there's a shaky smile on his face and he's waving at Derek slowly. The smile's a bit sardonic, but Derek can't help smiling a bit back.

It wasn't much, but it was enough to know that the world hadn't ended just for him. His stomach swelled a little bit more, tugging at his damaged heart. A bit of the guilt eased.

Derek was sixteen, and Stiles was nine when they saw each other the second time.

The third time Derek saw him Laura had just died and Stiles hadn't even noticed him.

He was out at a store buying something for dinner because he really didn't feel like cooking when he had to bury half his sister's body in his own backyard.

Derek had tried his hardest to ignore the agony he was feeling – and the anger too, so much anger – and, instead, focused on the task ahead of him.

And then he had seen him – smelled him really. It hadn't been a bad smell, but it was one that Derek was old enough now to recognize. It was dirt and chemicals and pages of books and school and shower rooms and happiness and pain (a lot more pain than he was used to smelling). He was startled, so, of course, he had to investigate. And investigate he did.

Derek looked around the store before he saw him. The only other person there at three in the morning. He was standing in an empty isle, a carton of milk in his hand and his eyes look weary and tired and, honestly, he looks like Derek feels.

He glanced behind him, and he nearly saw Derek, only Derek jumped to hide behind a rather large display of soup. The other boy looked around the store some more before frowning and grabbing the carton of milk to bring it to the counter.

He paid for it and walked out.

Derek was twenty two and Stiles was fifteen the third time they saw each other.

You would expect it to have happened in the moonlight, only it didn't. It was in the sunlight, actually. And it was the middle of winter, like so many clichés. Scott had run off with Allison to do their thing and Stiles' car had broken down so he was doing the walk of shame across the side of the road on his way home from school.

It was freezing out, but Stiles wouldn't bring himself to complain. Well, he would. It's just that he really didn't have anyone to complain to at the moment but himself.

Briefly, he wondered if it would have been smarter for him to have walked back from the school and called his dad to pick him up or something. But he hadn't. And now he was half a mile away from home where he could sit by the oven and have a nice hot cup of hot cocoa and think about how much his life has sort of stopped sucking so much and how in the world he was going to get Isaac and Boyd to stop fighting over Erica.

A car roared down the street and snow was kicked up against his boots and he may have squealed when an arm wrapped around his waist and pulled him away from the curb just as some asshole decided it would be fun to drive onto it but he could just blame that on the car tires and not his fear of being killed by something shinny and silver.

Which was actually sort of ironic since he wasn't the werewolf.

Stiles recognized the grip that was around his waist and even though Derek was impossibly warm, that didn't stop him from pulling out of the other man's grip and straightening out in a way that was so dignified the Queen should be paying him for pointers.

Okay, so maybe he slipped on a patch of ice prompting Derek to catch him again, but that was beside the point.

"Thanks." Stiles said with a small cough.

Maybe walking three miles in the snow wasn't a smart idea after all.

Derek just grunted, which was Derek-speak for "you're welcome".

Stiles figured that he was pretty fluent in Derek-speak after knowing him for four years now. Going on four years now. Wow, had it really been that long?

"Why aren't you driving?" Derek finally grunts out – because Derek grunts everything out. That's actually a bit more sexual than Stiles originally thought. Derek more growls. Yes. Derek growls everything. That's a bit better. – following Stiles down the sidewalk with his hands stuffed into his leather black gloves.

Stiles shoved his hands into his pockets a bit more, huddling down in his coat farther as a harsh cold wind blows by. "It broke down."

"Maybe it's time you got a new car." Derek pointed out – without a growl this time. Stiles liked to call that progress.

"Why aren't you driving?" Stiles threw out in the open because, you know, it wasn't fair to pick on him for not driving when Derek was doing the same damn thing.

Derek raised an eyebrow at him. "I don't need to."

"Well…." He didn't need to. That pretty much killed Stiles' argument. "Okay."

They walked in silence for a while.

Stiles hated doing anything in silence.

"This frickin' jacket isn't helping my coldness at all." It was just an out of the blue observation. He wasn't trying to get Derek to offer his or anything. No. Stiles was not that crafty. Or was he? Maybe he was craftier than anyone ever assumed. Yes, he liked the sound of that. He was craftier than a craft store.

Derek didn't offer him his jacket.

But he did slip one leather gloved clad hand into the pocket of Stiles' own jacket and grab his hand, pulling it out and linking their fingers together.

His heart totally did not jump into his throat.

And, with no one around to see, he didn't really bother pulling his hand out of Derek's either. Because Derek was warm where Stiles was cold. Yes, that is the only reason he was walking down the street with his palm pressed against Derek's.

"Can I ask you a question?" Derek didn't answer more than just a nod of his head but, really, that was more than Stiles had expected from him so he defiantly could roll with that. "What are we?"

"What do you mean?" Derek actually sounded genuinely confused, and that's something that Stiles has learned the Alpha usually is not and he usually is so… it's a bit odd to be on the other end of the spectrum with this guy.

"I mean…." Stiles wet his lips. "You pick me up from school sometimes; I'm always with you when I'm not with Scott or Lydia. And she keeps giving me this weird look whenever I say that I have a text from you or something and... I was just wondering… what we… are?"

He glanced sideways at the man beside him but there was nothing about his posture that gave his thoughts away. Derek sure was some master actor or something.

Derek turned to look at him, pulling them to a sudden halt in the middle of the sidewalk. A girl behind them made some disgruntled noise, pushing her way behind Stiles and back onto the path. "We're us."

"What?" And there was that familiar feel of confusion he got so often around Tall-Dark-and-Handsome-Derek-Hale.

"We're us." Derek repeated.

"So what you're saying is… that you're Derek and I'm Stiles? Because I'm pretty sure Scott could have told me that."

"No." Derek shook his head, standing so close that their toes were touching. Stiles felt Derek's hot breath against his lips and his eyes fluttered unintentionally. "We're Derek and Stiles."

"And what does that mean?"

"It doesn't have to mean anything," Derek paused. "To anyone that's not us."

And, you know what? That sounded perfect.

Derek was twenty five and Stiles was eighteen the first time they kissed.

A: N – Happy birthday Mel! Hope you enjoyed your present. XD

Did anyone else enjoy reading it? Should I write more for Teen Wolf? :D