A/N: Okay so this is my first Teen Wolf drabble. I lovelovelove the show and am trying to get familiar with writing Derek and Stiles.

This fic takes place during 02x12 when Stiles is at home, after his run in with Gerard.

"Get out," Stiles says when Derek climbs through his window that night, when he steps closer instead, when he puts a hand on Stiles jaw to get a look at his face. Derek ignores each feeble demand and fills the air with his own voice, quiet and ominous, like the weather before a record storm.

"Who did this to you?"

Stiles laughs because he can't help it, because isn't it fucking obvious? He closes his eyes to shut out Derek's face and smiles and when he answers, his voice is teasing and bitter. "The muffin man."

He doesn't wince when Derek touches the sore spot on his cheek, but only because he's practiced in pain. He just stands there and shakes, hands opening and closing into fists at his sides, fighting back tears he should have shed a hundred times. It's a losing battle. When Derek steadies Stiles with a hand on his neck and leans in to swab at the cut with his tongue, Stiles tastes like copper, and like salt.

It's absurd, everything about this situation. Stiles is crying in front of a werewolf frenemy that's licking his face, that's healing his face with his fucking saliva because somebody's grandfather thought roughing up Stiles might bring all the wolves to his yard.

He doesn't even begin to analyze it all. He can't. Which is why, when Derek's finished cleaning up his face and his cheekbone is no longer throbbing, Stiles doesn't think much about why he hooks the fingers of one hand into the front of Derek's shirt and turns up his face. When Derek takes the gesture as the invitation it was meant to be and kisses him on the mouth, Stiles doesn't hesitate. He winds both arms around Derek's neck, anchors himself to the alpha and turns what began as something soft and cautious into something almost cruel.

Derek lets Stiles back him up until the inner bend of his knees hit the mattress, and push him off balance. Derek lets Stiles force him down onto the bed and crawl up into his lap and chase after his mouth.

Stiles breaks over Derek like waves against the shoreline, a steady swell of sobs and words, the constant push-pull of fingers and mouths. They're both swept under the current of his grief, but Stiles wants to drown in it. He takes it in by the lungful, sinking, sinking, sinking, until Derek brings him back to the surface with a warm hand on his face.

"I can't fucking do this," Stiles rasps into Derek, tears slipping down his face in earnest now as he digs into the gutters of his collarbones. Derek doesn't disagree, or ask for him to clarify. He just grips Stiles' waist and holds their mouths together when Stiles' rambles go silent and hopeless. He lets Stiles pull and stretch his shirt shapeless, and when his hands go still, when they no longer itch to tear and break, Derek helps to loop them up over his shoulders.

"We have to go now," Derek says a few minutes later, when all of Stiles' fight is gone and he's slumped down against Derek's chest, breathing soft and hot into the bend of his throat. "They need our help."

Stiles knows. He knows that this is life or death, because it always is. Every day he's waiting for the other shoe to drop, for them to lose. For someone to die. And even though he has to, he doesn't want to go. He clutches at the back of Derek's neck and puts his mouth all over the side of his face, wanting the burn of his stubble, the begrudging slide of his lips.

They kiss until Stiles' battered face is only a memory, and only when Stiles pulls away, does Derek drop his hands. He lets Stiles step back and out of his lap, just watches him change into a pair of jeans and lace up his shoes from across the room.

Then Derek lets Stiles lead the way out of the house, and for once he follows, taking the steps one at a time, calm like Stiles has forced himself. At the front door, Stiles stops him on the mat. He turns on him, eyes swollen red and leaking amber, mouth evidence of what they'd just been doing, but with an unblemished cheek, and wets his lips.

"I'm not a hero, you know," he reminds Derek, before kissing him hard. Then he's walking down the steps to his Jeep. Derek watches Stiles go, watches his phone light up as he dials Lydia and waits for her voicemail.

"I'm coming," is all Derek can hear before Stiles is out of range, down the road and into a battle he didn't start, but just might die to finish.