
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/2697935.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Teen_Wolf_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Derek_Hale/Stiles_Stilinski
  Additional Tags:
      Mating_Cycles/In_Heat, Omegas, Alternate_Universe_-_Zombies, Post-
      Apocalypse, Road_Trips, unprotected_sex, Canon-Typical_Violence, Threats
      of_sexual_violence, Happy_Ending
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-12-01 Completed: 2014-12-04 Chapters: 4/4 Words: 39275
****** Come with Me and Walk the Longest Mile ******
by DevilDoll
Summary
     "Stiles shouldn't accept rides from werewolves he meets behind
     abandoned convenience stores." In which the zombie apocalypse is just
     one of their worries.
Notes
     Thanks to Bethy and Stoney for beta reading. You guys are awesome! <3
See the end of the work for more notes
***** Chapter 1 *****
How many times have I prayed
That I would get lost along the way? -- "The Regulator" by Clutch
Derek finds the kid behind a convenience store in Nebraska, cornered between
the building and the dumpster. He's pale and skinny, hair cropped short in a
ragged buzzcut that's starting to grow out, and gripping a baseball bat studded
with nails. There are three prowlers pacing back and forth in front of him,
another one beaten into a mushy pile on the ground at his feet. When one of the
prowlers darts in, the kid lifts the bat and waits, steely-eyed and calm, so
patient that for a moment Derek thinks he waited too long, he fucked up, he's a
goner.
Finally the kid swings, connects, tears most of the prowler's face off with one
vicious thwack! It staggers back and falls, thrashing on the ground as the last
two prowlers come at him at the same time, one from each side.
Derek knows better than to risk his own neck to help someone else, but it's one
kid against all those prowlers, and he's already taken down two. It looks like
he'd have a fighting chance if he had a little help.
Derek shifts as he grabs his crowbar out of the truck, joins the fray, and it's
all over in seconds.
~*~
The kid is bigger than he seemed at first glance, his shoulders wide, if a
little boney. There's almost no fat on him, cheekbones sharp over sunken
cheeks, but Derek knows he looks the same, worn down to sinew and bone by
scarce rations and constant vigilance. Still, the kid looks beguilingly
defenseless when he's not wielding the bat, eyes bright and curious in his
young face, the back of his neck narrow and vulnerable.
His name is Stiles, he's sixteen years old, and trying to get back to
California. That seems too coincidental to let pass, so Derek says, "So am I.
You can come with me if you want." He's thinking of the way Stiles handled
himself, and the way he handled the bat. He won't be too much of a burden.
Derek doesn't really expect Stiles to agree. Ever since the sickness, the law
of natural selection has come back with a vengeance, and anyone will fuck you
over to gain one bare inch of advantage in the survival game. Eat your food,
steal your clothes, slash your throat and leave you for the walkers and the
prowlers and the feral dogs. Stiles should be more careful.
Stiles shouldn't accept rides from werewolves he meets behind abandoned
convenience stores. Stiles shouldn't toss his backpack in the truck and
scramble into the front seat and trust Derek not to do something really bad to
him. Stiles shouldn't look so happy to throw in with a guy he just met. But he
does all of those things anyway.
~*~
"So. You're a werewolf, huh?" Stiles says, before they've even driven half a
block. He sounds kind of pleased by the idea, which is a little surprising.
There's always been lot of anti-werewolf bullshit out there, even with all the
laws they passed about discrimination. Most of Derek's kind kept a low profile
even before the sickness, and it's even worse now. Prowlers are a lot faster
and a lot more resilient than human zombies, which has only increased the
hysteria. Plus, there's a rumor that the sickness started with werewolves, and
one of them infected a human. Derek doesn't know if it's true, but it might as
well be—a lot of the people who are left act like it is.
"So you're a human, huh?" Derek shoots back, deadpan.
Some people have a hard time telling when Derek is making a joke, but Stiles,
who has known him all of ten minutes, doesn't seem to have that problem. He
laughs and says, "Touché."
They make good headway the first day, though travel is still slow compared to
how things used to be, before the sickness. A lot of roads are clogged with
long traffic jams of abandoned cars, barricades blocking access to towns, even
the ones that are empty now except for the infected. Once in a while, booby
traps. Pits dug in the road and covered with tarps, that kind of thing. Derek
lost his first truck—and a nice chunk of meat out of his thigh—to one in
Indiana. His leg's fine now, and he likes the Range Rover better anyway.
The Range Rover's a workhorse, and can go around and over stuff when it has to,
so sometimes they make their own road, bouncing across medians, or into fields
full of shaggy, surprised cattle the zombies haven't eaten yet. The main
problem is keeping it fueled. Derek's become an expert at siphoning gas, and
he's got two big red plastic jerry cans strapped to the back of the truck for
emergencies. He hasn't been left stranded yet. Stiles seems impressed by the
Range Rover, and asks if he can drive it. The look Derek gives him makes him
huff in annoyance and put his dirty shoes on the dashboard in retaliation.
Stiles is chatty, and overshares like he can't help it, hands moving constantly
while he talks, so within a few hours Derek knows a lot about him. He doesn't
seem to notice Derek doesn't return the favor.
"How'd you end up behind a convenience store in Nebraska?" Derek asks at one
point, because he's curious, and also because he wants to derail Stiles'
current monologue about the unfairness of standardized testing.
It works. In the blink of an eye, Stiles is off and running on that topic.
He was visiting his grandma in Cincinnati over his summer vacation when the
sickness struck, he tells Derek. Buried her in the backyard, and barricaded
himself in the house, thinking it would be over soon and life would go back to
normal. Everyone had thought that at first.
Grandma had come back, later that night, smeared with dirt, pawing at the back
door. Stiles had seen enough horror movies to know what to do.
As the sickness spread, and with it the resulting panic, Stiles took his
grandma's Cadillac and hit the road. He made it all the way to Omaha before the
car gave out; he had just appropriated another and was looking for supplies
when he got caught out by the prowlers.
He's anxious to get back home. His father survived, he says with conviction.
Derek thinks he's being overly optimistic—what the sickness didn't do, the
zombies later did. The chances are probably slim Stiles' dad is alive, but
they'll know soon enough.
"What about you?" Stiles asks, inevitably. He's chewing on the strings of his
hoodie, which is kind of gross.
"I was living in New York, but I’m from California," Derek says. He shrugs.
"Might as well go there." He leaves out the part about how being one of the few
survivors of a zombie plague isn't the worst thing that's ever happened to him.
~*~
The closer they get to Lincoln, the more clogged Hwy 6 gets, so when Derek
pulls over to refill the truck's tank from one of the red cans, Stiles takes a
brand new Nebraska map out of his backpack and spreads it out on the hood.
"We could try this way," Stiles says, one grimy, chewed finger tracing a road
that branches off the highway a few miles from here. "It'll take us a little
north, but we can come back down here." He taps another road.
It's probably a good idea—Stiles made it this far on his own, so he's obviously
capable of navigating—but Derek isn't really listening. In the pile of junk
spilling out of his backpack is another map, one for California, and on that
one Stiles has marked Beacon Hills with a crookedly drawn red star.
"Is that where you're going?" Derek asks, not quite believing it. He points to
the California map.
Stiles follows Derek's finger, then looks at him and tilts his head curiously.
"Yeah. Why?"
"That's where I’m from. My family--" His family is probably dead. What little
was left of it to begin with. Laura had assured him, during their final phone
call, that she and Cora and Peter were fine, but that was months ago. They're
probably all dead by now, but the only way to know for sure is to go to Beacon
Hills and see for himself. Most days, Derek tells himself he wants to know for
sure. "My family is from there," Derek says. "We have territory there."
"Really?" Stiles brightens noticeably at this connection, as tenuous as it is.
"My dad's the sheriff."
"Your dad is Sheriff Stilinski?" Derek asks, incredulous, and the look on
Stiles' face immediately goes from "bright" to "incandescent."
"You know him?" he asks eagerly. Then his grin turns mischievous. "Did he
arrest you?"
Derek laughs. It's a short, rusty-sounding thing, but it's a laugh. "No. We had
a problem with some anti-werewolf shitheads a few years ago." He's leaving out
a lot of stuff. A lot. But he's under no obligation to share his entire life
story with Stiles, even if it feels like Stiles is doing a pretty good job of
sharing every detail of his with Derek, and it's only been six hours.
"Ah," Stiles says, nodding. He folds the Nebraska map back up. "Well, this is
good! We're both going the same exact place. What are the odds?"
Yeah. What are the odds? Derek thinks. He has no idea how often he'll wonder
that in the coming weeks.
~*~
They drive on, turning away from Lincoln when they come upon a giant roadblock
made of concrete traffic barriers and sandbags, spray painted with dire
warnings that the city is over run. There isn't much else, though, in the
middle of Nebraska, and Derek starts to get nervous about gas. The sun is
already low in the sky, and it's always worse after dark. The prowlers in
particular--permanently shifted zombie werewolves, often roaming in packs--seem
to be more active at night, which isn't surprising. Werewolves are always drawn
to the moon.
Derek's learned that farms sometimes keep fuel on hand for the equipment, so
the next time he sees one off in the distance they drive that way, hoping it's
not just a waste of gas. There's no fuel tank on the property, but Derek
manages to siphon some out of the old pick-up parked behind the barn, which
takes the edge off his worry.
They try another place a dozen miles down the road, with similar results, and
then strike gold at the next one. There's a tank, and it's got more than enough
to top off the truck plus fill both gas cans. Even better, Stiles finds a third
jerry can stashed in an old shed. Derek straps it to the top of the truck and
fills it up.
There's an old rambling farmhouse that looks like it might be a nice place to
spend the night, but as soon as they cautiously open the door they both reel
back, gagging at the smell. There's more than one dead body in there, maybe
more than four dead bodies, even. Derek shuts the door, saliva pooling in his
mouth as he fights the urge to vomit, and they hurry back to the truck.
Sometimes enhanced senses can be a curse, and that's never been more true than
it is now.
Everything smells bad now. Rotting food, rotting animals, rotting people. The
zombies are something else entirely--putrid decay with an undertone of
infection. There's only so much a werewolf can block out. As they walk back to
the truck, Derek discreetly hones in on Stiles' scent instead, trying to fix
his poor overwhelmed nose. Stiles smells pretty good for a guy living rough,
just warm skin and clean sweat, a little hint of Cheeto. It's almost heavenly
after the house.
By now it's getting dark, and who knows if they'll find anything better, so
after a short discussion they pull the truck into the barn and close the door
behind them. Derek jams it closed with a pitchfork, which is just enough of an
obstacle to slow down any infected, but not so much they can't make a quick
exit if need be.
The barn's not bad. It smells like clean hay, and it's dry inside. Derek's
slept worse, even before the sickness.
"Well, this is nice, too," Stiles says, with admirable optimism. He walks over
and sits down on a bale of hay. "This'll make a pretty comfy bed," he says,
bouncing experimentally.
"We're sleeping in the truck," Derek says, opening up the back and reaching for
the rucksack he uses for food. "Safer." Behind him, he hears Stiles sigh, then
get up and trudge over, elbowing his way next to Derek to grab his own stuff.
Stiles has an open bag of stale Fritos in his backpack, now smashed nearly to
powder, and a bottle of Gatorade that has about a quarter inch of sediment at
the bottom. Derek dines on a can of Beefaroni and some water. Gourmet meals by
apocalypse standards.
By the time they finish eating it's full dark and getting chilly, and Stiles is
yawning. Derek folds the seats down in the back of the truck and they crawl in,
wrapping themselves up in snug blanket cocoons. Derek has a couple good
sleeping bags he uses to make a nice little nest for himself every night.
Stiles has a comforter with an obnoxious floral pattern on it and a matching
pillow that Derek suspects came from his grandma's house.
Based on the day so far, Derek expects Stiles to yak his ear off, but Stiles
falls asleep before Derek does, quick, like someone flipped his off switch.
Derek's a little jealous, actually.
It takes him a bit to relax enough to fall asleep, so he spends a little time
laying there, listening to the wind push against the barn, the creaky windmill
by the house spinning. There are no walkers, no prowlers, just the slow, even
rhythm of Stiles' breaths.
Derek drifts off, and sleeps until morning.
~*~
He wakes up a little too warm, another live body making a big difference in
such a small space. Stiles has moved during the night and is now twisted up
like a pretzel with his butt pressed against Derek's leg. Derek nudges him with
his knee, and Stiles makes an annoyed sound and scoots away.
Before the sickness, Derek was a hit-the-snooze-button-five-times kind of guy,
but now when he wakes up in the morning his first thought is all the zombies
who want to eat him, which tends to make him get moving right away. He crawls
out of his sleeping bag pile, and then out of the truck.
The air is chilly, cold enough to see his breath, but it feels good after the
humid warmth inside the truck. He wanders over to the barn door, yawning, and
cautiously opens it a crack when his ears don't pick up anything zombie-sized
moving around outside.
It's early, the sun just barely over the horizon, birds chirping, and the grass
is crisp with frost. No walkers or prowlers in sight, so he takes a moment to
relax and watch the sun come up a little higher. He'd love a big, steaming mug
of coffee right about now.
He'd also love to go for a run, feel his body get loose and sweaty in the crisp
air, feel the sun come up until it's warm on his shoulders. That'd be suicide,
though—nothing attracts the prowlers like the sound of a beating heart, the
smell of a warm body. Derek reluctantly closes the door and contents himself
with some push-ups, some burpees, and some weightlifting in the form of moving
around bales of hay. He's leaned out to nothing by now, his belt barely keeping
his jeans up, his skin stretched tight and thin over his bones. You gotta stay
strong, though, if you wanna live. He does another set of push-ups. Stiles
sleeps through it all.
There's a water tank behind the barn, which probably isn't safe to drink for
Stiles, but Derek helps himself. The water tastes slightly metallic, but not
bad. Once he's slurped up a few handfuls he washes up a little, hissing between
his teeth when he splashes the icy water on his steaming skin. As he scrubs his
wet hands through his hair and his beard, he keeps one ear cocked for zombies
while the other keeps tabs on Stiles, still snoozing away in the truck, but
everything is quiet.
Stiles still hasn't moved by the time Derek's changed into clean clothes and
rolled up his sleeping bags, and Derek's tired of waiting. They need to get
going.
"Hey, rise and shine," Derek says, shaking him a little. Stiles is slow to wake
up, burrowing deeper into his blanket, grumbling, until Derek grabs his ankle
and drags him almost out of the truck, and then Stiles sits up like he's been
electrocuted, all at once and looking ornery. So definitely not a morning
person, then.
"Blarrrgh," Stiles groans, sounding a little zombie-like himself, as he blinks
in the morning light. It's a miracle he's lasted this long on his own, Derek
thinks. All a zombie'd have to do is wait for him to fall asleep, apparently.
"There's water outside, if you wanna wash up," Derek says, by which he means,
Go wash up. He waits to see if Stiles gets the hint.
Stiles does. He yawns so hard his jaw cracks while he roots around for his bag,
but he's awake and alert when he finally gets out of the truck, and he's put
his shoes on. He takes his bat with him, even though he'll be just outside the
door. Kid doesn't take any chances--with zombies, anyway—and Derek approves.
That's probably how he survived this long.
Stiles comes back in shivering, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over his
wet head, looking about as happy as a guy who just bathed with ice water can be
expected to. After he tosses his stuff back in the truck, he walks over to
where Derek is sitting on a bale of hay sorting through his rucksack, and takes
a seat. He smells like flowery old lady soap and cinnamon toothpaste, and he
changed his T-shirt. Derek knows he's out of food, so he hands him some
Twinkies for breakfast.
"Thanks," Stiles says, voice still morning hoarse, as he tears the plastic
open.
They eat in silence for a minute or two, dust moats floating in the sunbeam
that's warming their feet, geese honking somewhere overhead on their way south
for the winter. If Derek's had another moment this peaceful in the last couple
months, he can't remember it.
"I never thought I'd become jaded toward Hostess products, but I was wrong,"
Stiles says forlornly. He shoves the last of his Twinkie in his mouth and
swallows it without chewing. This crap is easy to find, and not rotten, so he's
probably been eating just as much of it as Derek.
"I never thought I'd miss broccoli so much," Derek admits.
"Yeah," Stiles sighs, eyes going unfocused, like he's fantasizing about
vegetables. He slithers down to sit on the floor, leaning back against the hay
bale. His shoulder presses against Derek's knee, but he doesn't seem to notice.
"And lettuce. Man, I can't remember the last time I had lettuce." He tips his
head back as he closes his eyes, maybe imagining a nice head of iceberg. The
sunlight makes his eyelashes look golden.
"Can't make a sandwich without lettuce," Derek says.
"Sure can't," Stiles agrees, without opening his eyes.
"Can't make a sandwich, period," they say in unison, a second later, and Derek
snorts around a mouthful of Twinkie as Stiles grins up at him, squinting in the
bright sun, and says, "Jinx!"
~*~
On their first full day together as travel companions, Derek discovers Stiles
has an iPod and an adaptor he can plug into the truck, so they can listen to
music. Their tastes don't overlap much, but it's better than nothing. Stiles
still talks a lot, but it seems to be fueled by boredom than anything else—the
long hours of sitting in the car make him antsy. Stiles has ADHD, and no access
to meds.
"When we'd go on road trips when I was a kid, my mom used to give me a quarter
for every lap I did around the car at rest stops," Stiles says, when he's
explaining it. "Then I got to spend it on whatever souvenirs I wanted."
"I'm not giving you any quarters," Derek tells him. He hasn't actually seen a
quarter in months.
"Going rate's a buck now anyway," Stiles says airily. "Inflation."
Derek pretends to think about it. "I've got a can of olives and some pork
rinds," he offers. Worth more than money now.
"Deal," Stiles says and tries to get Derek to high five him. It fails
miserably.
The extra stops aren't too annoying, and Derek quickly figures out that even if
Stiles doesn't run laps around the truck, letting him get out and move around
makes him feel better. It's not too much of a hassle to stop a little more
frequently, as long as it's safe.
"I've got an electrical adaptor, too," Stiles says as he scrolls through the
iPod. "I've been trying to find some clippers." He runs his hand over his hair,
which is sticking up like porcupine quills everywhere it isn't mashed down
flat. "I'm way overdue for a cut."
Derek is, too, he knows. His hair and his beard are both long and messy. He
looks more like a werewolf than ever, or a deranged mountain man, depending on
your point of view.
"Same here," Derek says. A trim wouldn't hurt. "I'll keep an eye out, too."
"Cool," Stiles says, then, "Oh, I love this song!" and turns up the volume.
During a lunch break at a burned out truck stop somewhere between Lincoln and
North Platte, Derek learns why Stiles was so accepting of Derek: Stiles' best
friend is a werewolf.
"Maybe you know him!" Stiles says happily, drumming on his knee with his thumb.
"Scott McCall? No? What? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"We don't all know each other," Derek says, irritated. He wads up his Combos
bag and tosses it onto the grass, ignoring Stiles' disapproving glare. Stiles
still thinks it's wrong to litter. He doesn't seem to realize things are
probably going to get a lot worse than this, and not stop getting worse for a
long time. In the grand scheme of things, litter is inconsequential.
"What'd you say your last name was?" Stiles asks, digging the creamy filling
out of a Ding Dong with his finger. Despite his grousing about how Hostess
heavy their diet is, he's got a major sweet tooth, and goes for the sugary
foods almost every time.
Derek never said what his last name was, but he's willing to share it now.
Might as well get it over with. "Hale."
Stiles' face tells all. His eyes widen, his mouth drops open in a soft O. He's
heard the story. Everyone in Beacon Hills has heard the story. Only a few
people know the extent of Derek's culpability.
"It's okay," Derek says. "You don't have to say it." The last thing he wants is
sympathy all these years after the fact. He doesn't deserve it anyway.
Stiles sucks the sugary filling off his finger and goes back for more. "My mom
died when I was eight," he says after he rolls his tongue around his mouth.
Derek usually hates it when people do this, share some tragedy from their own
past in an attempt to bond with him or let him know they understand how it
feels. No one understands how Derek feels.
"I hate telling people about it," Stiles goes on. "They try to say nice things,
but I can always tell they're thinking how glad they are they're not in my
shoes." He looks up at Derek, wry. "So, thanks. For once I'm not the unluckiest
bastard in the room."
Derek can't help it—he laughs. As soon as he does, Stiles' wry look turns into
a grin.
"Glad to help," Derek says, opening his bottle of water. His teeth feel like
they've got about an inch of sugar fuzz on them.
Stiles holds up his Gatorade, motioning for Derek to do the same. "To the Dead
Parents Society," he says.
"Almost everyone left is in that society," Derek points out, but he taps his
bottle against Stiles' anyway, and they drink a toast to family members lost
forever.
~*~
The next morning, Derek wakes up with Stiles' skinny butt inches from his face.
He reaches up and pokes it with one finger, but all that does is make Stiles
snort and snuffle before his breathing levels out again. Derek pokes him again,
harder this time.
"Wake up and get your butt out of my face," Derek snarls, poking him a third
time, even harder.
This time Stiles jerks and the rolls away, mumbling insults and four-letter
words under his breath as he tugs his ridiculous blanket over his head. Derek
finds himself choking back a laugh. Having Stiles around is definitely good
entertainment.
The morning is much the same as the last one: washing up, eating crappy food,
continuing on in the general direction of Beacon Hills. Twice is all it takes
to establish the pattern, so that's how most mornings play out after that.
Things are pretty uneventful the next few days, or as uneventful as they can be
when you're crossing the country in the midst of a zombie plague. Derek and
Stiles get along pretty well, despite being so different, and having someone
else in the truck certainly makes the miles go faster, even when they're
crawling along the shoulders of log-jammed highways.
They don't see many regular people along the way—everyone's learned to keep a
low profile now, because a stranger is just as likely to hurt you as help you.
Once in a while as they pass through a town Derek catches movement out of the
corner of his eye, too quick to be a zombie, or hears people talking somewhere
off in the distance when they get out of the truck to look for supplies, but no
one approaches them. Once they see a car going the other way on a divided
highway, but it doesn't even slow down, so Derek keeps driving. Better that way
for everyone, probably.
Stiles manages to scavenge some clippers and a nice pair of scissors, and they
give each other haircuts while they're parked safely inside a lumber yard
fence. Stiles' haircut takes no time, just putting the right attachment on the
clippers and running it over his head, but he uses the scissors on Derek. It
takes a lot longer, so long that Derek starts to get a little nervous, but when
he checks himself in the truck's side mirror afterwards, it looks amazingly
decent. It's maybe not perfectly symmetrical, but…eh.
Pleased with the results, he lets Stiles get the clippers going again so he can
trim Derek's beard down to what he calls "manly scruff."
"Much better," Stiles say approvingly, when he's done. Derek looks at himself
in the mirror and has to agree. "Now I won't feel like I'm bunking with Charles
Manson."
"Hilarious," Derek says, and cuffs him on the back of the head. It's bristly
now, freshly shorn, and he looks even more vulnerable with less hair, eyes
bigger, cheekbones more prominent. He looks like something a prowler would love
to eat. Derek makes himself think about something else.
"Thanks," Derek says gruffly, when they get all the prickly little hair
trimmings brushed off and are settling down for the night. He feels better
without all the wild hair, a little bit more like his old self. Six months ago,
Derek hated that version of himself. How times change.
"See, I am good for something," Stiles says as he primly adjusts his old lady
blanket.
Stiles is actually good for quite a few things more than that, as Derek
increasingly learns. He's a whiz at finding back roads and alternate routes,
can recap with mind-numbing detail the plot of any sci-fi movie made in the
last twenty years, and has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of numerous random
topics ranging from the history of jousting to different types of bread mold.
It's like traveling with the human version of Google.
The worst thing about traveling with Stiles is that he's a bit of a pack rat.
He grabs a lot of random stuff when they're scavenging, useless and appalling
things like pink lawn flamingos and a ceramic mug shaped like a boob. He grabs
stress balls and fake flowers and novelty keychains, until Derek has to put his
foot down before Stiles completely fills the truck with useless junk. Sometimes
they sleep in empty houses, but when they can't find a suitable place they
sleep in the truck—keeping the clutter to a minimum is a priority.
Even after Derek stops the incoming flow of cheap crap, the stuff that's
already there keeps finding its way under his seat, into his rucksack, under
his butt when he's trying to sleep. It's like Stiles is slowly taking over
every inch of Derek's space, one neon green plastic skeleton at a time.
Derek thinks he should mind that more than he does.
On a day Stiles will probably remember fondly forever, they scavenge a house
outside Cheyenne that's obviously the former home of a comic book nerd. Stiles
ricochets through the house like a humming bird on speed, rhapsodizing over the
boxes of comic books and the shelves of statues, and the giant cardboard cut-
out of Captain America in the corner of the dining room.
"Only what you can carry!" Derek reminds him as he digs through the dresser,
looking for a shirt or two. Derek's two new rules for scavenging are take only
necessities and only what you can carry. Stiles skirts the edges of both rules
constantly. Derek can hear him out in the living room having a joygasm over God
knows what right now. "And don't forget to look for food!" he yells.
Stiles grumbles something under his breath, too low even for Derek to make out,
but a few seconds later Derek hears the sound of cupboards opening and closing.
"You should go check out the clothes," Derek says, when he comes out of the
bedroom and finds Stiles struggling to zip the zipper on his backpack. "All the
shirts have comic book characters on them." Derek isn't exactly picky at this
point in his life, but Stiles will probably appreciate them more.
When they get out to the truck, Derek shoves a pair of newly acquired jeans and
some underwear into the bag with his dirty clothes, where he'll leave them for
a day or two. He hates wearing stuff that smells like other people.
Then he turns to Stiles. "Show me," he says, jerking his chin at Stiles'
backpack.
Stiles rolls his eyes, but Derek was right to insist, because when Stiles opens
it up, it's about half food and half books. Cheap science fiction paperbacks,
it looks like. Derek disapproves. The truck is already more cluttered than he'd
like, and books aren't a necessity.
"Please?" Stiles begs, clutching an armful of the books to his skinny chest,
pleading with his big, baby deer eyes. "I miss reading."
"I've got books," Derek points out. Not many, but a few. He's always liked to
read.
Stiles grimaces. "Yeah, but they're boring and stodgy. I miss reading
interesting books."
Derek should have his head examined, but he glowers and says, "Fine. But you
keep them with your stuff."
"Right, yeah, absolutely," Stiles says, even though they both know the damn
things'll be spread all over the truck in a day or two. Derek will probably end
up using one as a pillow.
That night they find another farm, and more gas, but Derek doesn’t like the
look of the house—not secure enough—so they sleep in the truck again. Stiles is
pissed, and complains about the chilly temps and the hard surface and the way
he can't stretch his legs completely or sprawl out. Which is total bullshit
because by morning he'll have his butt wedged into Derek's armpit anyway. He
doesn't need a whole lot of room. He doesn't even use what little room they
have.
It snows that night, just a dusting that'll melt as soon as the sun comes up,
but it's really cold—or at least feels that way to two California boys--and
Derek drifts to half-consciousness in the night with Stiles pawing at his
sleeping bags, shivering even though he's wearing almost all of his clothes.
Derek groans in irritation but relents, rolling so Stiles can open up Derek's
blanket cocoon and worm his way inside, flattening himself against Derek's
back.
"Jesus, I'm frozen solid," Stiles says through chattering teeth, but he
definitely isn't. He's warm against Derek's back, except his nose, which he
buries in the back of Derek's neck. Derek makes an annoyed sound, which Stiles
ignores. Stiles is snoring again about thirty seconds later, and since there's
nothing else to be done about it, Derek just goes back to sleep, too.
When Derek wakes up again in the morning, they've flipped over and now he's
spooning Stiles. They're pressed together from head to toe, and Derek has his
arm looped around Stiles' belly, holding him against his body. Stiles is using
Derek's other arm as a pillow…and drooling on it.
This isn't what Derek had in mind when he asked Stiles to come with him, and
he's very aware that Stiles is just a teenager, but it feels good to simply
sleep with someone again, share space and warmth. It's something Derek didn't
do much even before the sickness, and certainly not after. He'd forgotten how
comforting it is, curling around a warm body that smells a little like him now,
listening to another heartbeat, and Stiles doesn’t seem to mind the closeness.
He can't keep his butt to himself anyway.
Just having Stiles around in general is already starting to shift from being
convenient to being a welcome change. Derek's a pack animal, and one who's been
living alone too long. It's nice, having someone to think about and take care
of besides himself. It makes him feel less alone, which he's always had a
tendency to be, even around other people.
There's a little voice in the back of his head that whispers that this is
dangerous, nothing good can come of this, remember what happens when you let
people in, but Derek ignores it. Pulls Stiles a little more snuggly against his
chest and ignores a lot of things.
~*~
Stiles reads out loud while they travel, working his way through his new
collection of scavenged books one at a time. They're all Star Wars novels.
Derek has no idea who most of the characters are because he only knows the
first three movies, so Stiles keeps stopping the narrative to explain, and
inevitably that sparks a fight because Derek is a purist with strong opinions
about this so-called expanded universe bullshit. Stiles has equally strong
opinions in favor of it. Derek mocks a lot of the stuff in the books, and
Stiles gets mad and starts changing the details of the stories on the fly,
turning the Ewoks into werewolves, which Derek considers a massive insult.
It's a pretty decent way to pass the time.
One afternoon, they pull over to eat next to a particularly picturesque piece
of Wyoming. It's a little early for lunch, but Stiles' leg was starting to
bounce, which means he needs a break from being in the car, and the weather's
nice, so why not.
They devour about half a dozen Slim Jims while passing back and forth a box of
Cheez-Its, sitting on the tailgate and watching the clouds sail by overhead.
The trees are already turned, a lot of them past their peak, but the sun makes
everything look better, highlights the little splashes of yellow and orange
still left among the brown.
That's one thing the sickness couldn’t take away—the seasons will still come
and go. Derek can remember thinking, after the fire, how mindboggling it was
that the world went on like nothing had changed, when for Derek everything had
changed. It doesn't seem as strange to him this time around.
He's always liked fall, especially when he was a kid and it meant football
games and Halloween costumes, caramel apples eaten out on the front porch
during the full moon. Even back then he'd liked the way the leaves crunched
under his feet, and seeing his breath steaming in the air when his sisters
chased him through the trees behind the house. He hasn't really let himself
think about those things in years, and now that he is he can practically feel
the itch of wool sweaters and the slime of pumpkin guts in his hands, smell the
dead leaves, the inevitable pot of chili on the stove, the candy corn his dad
loved so much.
For years it hurt to think about those things, but now it's only a bittersweet
sting. Maybe Derek's finally gotten enough distance, or maybe things have just
reached the point where they're so terrible in the present that his memories
are a comfort instead of a burden. It only took the whole world going to hell
for that to happen.
"When I was a kid, my dad used to rake big piles of leaves for us to play in,"
Derek says, for no reason he can fathom except that he's thinking about it now
and it doesn't hurt and he wants to share it with Stiles. "We used to bury each
other and try to hide when my mom wanted us to come in for dinner."
Stiles is silent for a moment, like Derek's surprised him, and he probably has.
Derek hasn't said much about his family, holding his tongue of out habit even
though at this point he knows the entire Stilinski family history, right down
to what kind of underwear the sheriff wears (boxer shorts, plaid preferred).
"Just so you know, I'm picturing a bunch of little wolf puppies rolling around
in a leaf pile," Stiles says eventually, turning to smile at Derek. There's
something careful in his eyes, though, like he knows this is a big deal for
Derek to talk about his family with someone else.
Derek scoffs, and accidentally inhales a throat full of Cheez-It crumbs. Stiles
looks annoyingly proud of himself as he whacks Derek on the back a lot harder
than is probably necessary.
"We can't turn into actual wolves that young," Derek says, after he's taken a
few swigs of Five Alive—pickings are getting very slim—and can talk without
coughing.
"Oh," Stiles says, looking genuinely disappointed by this piece of information.
"Can you now?"
Stiles doesn't know that question is like a knife to Derek's heart, and it's
Derek's own fault for even talking about himself in the first place. This is
what he gets for opening his big mouth, Derek thinks. Just because some of his
memories are bearable now doesn't mean they all are. This is still a painful
one.
"It's…pretty rare," Derek says, side stepping a direct answer, but then he
looks over at Stiles' face, the harmless curiosity there, and says, "My mom
could. My older sister can. Mom always said I would be able to, but…"
Derek stops, looks down at the half-eaten Slim Jim in his hand, and his stomach
does an unpleasant somersault.
The fire happened right around the time he probably would have been able to
start going full wolf, so he never got to try. His mother, who would have been
the one to guide him, was gone forever. Laura had offered to teach him, but
he'd refused. He didn't deserve the power and respect that went along with
achieving the wolf shift. He didn't deserve to be like his mom.
"I haven't really tried. Since the fire," he finishes. Stiles already knows
about the fire, so at least he won't have to explain that. He makes a silent
wish that Stiles won't ask him anything about the fire. That'd be too much.
Stiles nods knowingly. "I gave up playing the piano," he says, closing one eye
and using the other to peer deep into the box of Cheez-Its before he sticks his
hand in and brings up the last few broken crackers. "My mom was teaching me,
before she died." He shrugs and the side of his mouth pulls down before he
crams it full of crackers. You know how it is, he's saying. And Derek certainly
does.
Stiles is content to let it drop after that, and they talk about nothing
consequential as they finish their lunch. Once they're back on the road, Derek
gets a little involved in his own thoughts as Stiles reads on beside him. Derek
lost the thread of the story several hundred miles ago, so it doesn't really
matter if he listens now.
Derek hasn't given much thought to what might happen once they get to Beacon
Hills, mostly because his feelings about that place are a tangled up mess of
guilt and shame and self-loathing. Stiles doesn't actually talk about it much
either, aside from his continued insistence his dad is still alive. Right now
they're focused on surviving the trip, which is as it should be, if they want
to make it.
It's way too early to say anything to Stiles, but now Derek's thinking that if
they continue to get along, he and Stiles can stick together once they get
home, too. Despite Stiles' many statements to the contrary, Derek is skeptical
that Sheriff Stilinski survived the sickness, and it doesn't sound like Stiles
has any other family in the area. There's his friend Scott, but who knows if he
fared any better. Derek doesn't really expect to find any of his own family
alive and well, either. His odds are a little higher, but still pretty dismal.
Stiles is tough, and a fighter, but he'd still be safer with Derek than on his
own, even after they stop moving. Derek hasn't set foot in California since he
fled at the age of eighteen, but he knows Laura eventually built a big new
house where the old one had stood. Derek will probably have it all to himself,
lots of room, and Stiles wouldn't be a bother. Maybe he'd want to come and live
there.
Maybe he'd want to come and live there even if Derek's family did make it
through the sickness. It would probably make living in that house a lot more
bearable for Derek, having one person around whose life he hasn't irreparably
ruined.
Maybe by the time they get to Beacon Hills they'll be so sick of each other
they never speak again, but as it stands now Derek's been growing more attached
to Stiles by the day. He's enjoying his company in a way that feels effortless
and probably wouldn't even be noticeable if Derek hadn't spent so many years
being wary of liking anyone too much. But if you can't like your only friend in
the entire world, what use is there in having one?
And Derek does like Stiles. Quite a lot, actually. It's stupid, but just being
in the truck with him, listening to him go on about Darth Maul and the Naboo
blockade and Yanth the Hutt or whatever the fuck this story is about is
enjoyable. His voice is familiar and comforting now, and Derek likes the way
his hands grip the book as he reads. Even better, Stiles smells happy today,
which is kind of a miracle given their circumstances. If Stiles had Derek's
nose, he might even say the same thing about Derek.
He doesn't notice he's doing anything weird until Stiles stops reading. When
Derek glances over, Stiles is staring at him, the corners of his mouth slowly
curving upward, like he's about to bust out a grin.
"What?" Derek asks, resisting the urge to check his beard for stray Cheez-It
crumbs.
"You're smiling," Stiles says.
Derek cocks an eyebrow at him. "So?"
"You didn't used to do that much." Stiles has no idea what an understatement
that is. "Looks good on you."
~*~
East of Cheyenne they find a nice little hobby farm, with a zombified hobby
farmer shuffling around in the empty pig pen. It looks like there were
chickens, too, and maybe a cow once upon a time, but all the animals are either
dead or run off. The grass outside the chicken coop is littered with bones and
bloody feathers.
"Wow, and I thought regular zombies smelled bad," Stiles says, covering his
nose. The farmer—a prowler—turns toward him and snarls, starts plodding in
their direction through the muck. "That was nothing compared to one that's been
hanging around in pig crap for God knows how long." The zombie farmer snarls
again, like he's offended.
"Just be glad you don't have a werewolf sense of smell," Derek says, trying not
to breathe through his nose. It's disgusting. He leans a little closer to
Stiles. He'll take the hint of Cheeto over that any day.
There's a rake propped up against the side of the pig pen, so Derek grabs it
and snaps the handle in two while Stiles opens the gate, which must have blown
shut and trapped the prowler inside, because it's not latched. The weather is
shitty, cold and drizzly, wind whipping at their faces, but they wait patiently
on either side of the gate until the prowler stumbles through it, and Derek
takes care of it with one quick stab.
Derek can't hear or smell any other zombies, but they're still cautious as they
check out the rest of the property. The barn's nothing special, though it does
yield a little gas for the truck. It's when they peek out the back of the barn
that they find the real prize: a greenhouse.
Stiles is literally struck dumb when they walk inside, mouth agape, bat
dangling from his hand. The entire greenhouse is full of vegetables: lettuce,
onions, cabbage, herbs, and so much more, growing out here in the middle of a
gray and brown autumn wasteland. Everything is so fresh and colorful and alive
that for one embarrassing moment Derek feels his throat get tight.
It's not much warmer in the greenhouse than it is outside, and some of the
plants are starting to wilt, so they found it just in time. With no one to tend
it, all this will probably be dead in no time.
Once he shakes off his shock, Stiles wrestles a carrot the size of Derek's
finger out of the raised dirt bed and wipes it on his pants before biting into
it, while Derek snatches a handful of snap peas. They wander through the
greenhouse, stuffing their faces with unwashed vegetables, not caring about the
grit in their teeth. There's a vine with cucumbers on it.
When they finally tear themselves away—Stiles carries a tomato with him that he
eats like an apple—they find the house is small but sturdy, and kept up. A
porch out front with two rocking chairs on it leads into a cramped kitchen with
a table under the window, the wood floor smooth and shiny from years of
scrubbing. A woodstove takes up one corner, a door that leads down to a cold
cellar the other. There's a dog bowl next to the door, but no dog.
The farmer couldn't have been infected too long ago, because there's still eggs
and milk in the cellar that haven't turned yet. They also find some potatoes,
and jars of homemade jam stacked neatly on a shelf. On the floor is a bottle of
champagne, and four bottles of beer. Derek can't remember the last time he saw
any kind of alcohol; booze was one of the first non-necessities to run out in
the stores, either because people were hoarding it or drinking to forget the
horror around them.
"Wow! Score!" Stiles says, after he lights the small candle he found on the top
step and can finally see what Derek sees. Derek isn't sure which of the things
down here he's talking about, but he agrees with the sentiment.
The main room of the house looks like someone's vacation cabin, complete with a
fireplace and a rag rug. On the opposite wall is a doorway with a curtain
that's pushed back just enough to reveal a bedroom. Two comfy stuffed chairs
face the fireplace, one with a soft red shawl draped over the back and a set of
knitting needles with a half-finished scarf attached resting on the arm, so
there was a woman, too.
Out behind the house is a well with a hand pump, and what's left of the woman.
They barely glance at her—just another unlucky stiff in a world packed with
them—as they check to see if the pump still works and take turns drinking from
it. The water tastes good, clean and cold, but even if it didn't, this is where
they're staying tonight. They go back to the truck to get their stuff without
even talking about it.
Stiles shoulders their packs while Derek grabs all the blankets that he insists
have to be folded neatly every morning, much to Stiles' obvious annoyance.
Derek's loosened up a lot of his traveling rules since Stiles came along, but
he's standing firm on this one.
The front door has two strong locks on it and a crossbar that looks recently
installed. Stiles busies himself securing the door while Derek continues on
with the blankets, taking them through the main room to the bedroom without
discussing it with Stiles. The bed looked big enough for two, and they're used
to close quarters.
When he pushes the curtain aside with his elbow, though, Derek pauses in the
doorway and looks at the room. There's a big wooden wardrobe in the corner and
one bed in the middle, neatly made and covered with a wool blanket. An old
wind-up alarm clock sits on a small table next to the bed, with a Bible and a
candle. On the other side of the bed is a matching candle and a little wooden
frame with a piece of fabric in it, a half-finished picture stitched on it.
Needlepoint? Embroidery? Derek doesn't know the difference, if there is one.
The picture is a Christmas tree, for a Christmas these people will never
celebrate.
Derek's seen a lot of bad things, even before the sickness. And he's long since
stopped feeling guilty about helping himself to other people's belongings out
here on the road, but for some reason this cozy little house suddenly gets to
him. These two people were making it. They had food, they had water, they had
shelter, they had each other. He could picture living like this with Stiles,
just the two of them, getting by, depending on each other like these people
did.
But now their home is just another place ripe for the picking. Derek thinks of
all the vegetables, lovingly tended, grown by their hand. The empty chicken
coop, the champagne in the cellar they were probably saving for a special
occasion. Who knows how long they could have made a go of it here, if they'd
managed to escape notice. Two people, out here in the middle of nowhere, where
you can see a car or a zombie coming for miles, still somehow got caught
unaware, and now they're dead. The animals probably attracted a prowler.
"Hey, there's some homemade bread and it isn't even moldy yet," Stiles says as
he comes up behind Derek. He peeks over Derek's shoulder, sees what Derek's
looking at, and shuffles closer until he's pressed up against the back of
Derek's arm. He stays quiet, waiting.
"Maybe we should bury them," Derek says. It's a stupid idea, a waste of time
and energy. Stiles will probably point that out.
"Okay," Stiles says, after a moment.
Derek tosses their blankets on the bed, and Stiles follows him out to the barn.
They find a shovel and a hoe, and a pick-axe that Derek uses to loosen up the
first few frosty inches of dirt. It's sweaty, tiring work, but Stiles is
methodical about it. He's had practice recently, of course; he's the only one
of them who's buried anyone since the sickness started. Even the government
stopped after a while, unable to keep up with the sheer volume of bodies at
first, and then, when they figured out what was going on, the burn order went
into effect.
Moving the bodies is messy business, and they put on gloves they find in the
greenhouse to do it. They put the man in first and then the pitiful remains of
the woman, mostly just bones and hair, scraps of a warm coat, one blue and
white stripped mitten. She probably knitted the mitten herself, Derek thinks,
staring down at it.
Stiles suddenly says, "Wait a sec," and jogs off toward the house. When he
comes back he's got the unfinished scarf, fastened to the ball of yarn with the
needles. It looks like the same bright blue yarn as the mitten.
As Derek watches, Stiles kneels down and gently sets the whole thing in the
grave. They finish filling the hole back in together, Stiles scraping the dirt
in with the hoe while Derek wields the shovel. Neither of them says anything.
What is there to say?
The mood is a little somber after that, but survival is survival, and they have
to eat, and all the food here will go to waste anyway if they leave it. Derek
makes omelettes with lots of veggies—mushrooms and onion and red bell peppers.
Fried potatoes. Toast. The cooking is a little uneven, because neither of them
have a clue how to manage the temperature on a wood stove, but hot, fresh food
never tasted so good.
When that's gone they finish off the bread, toasted and slathered with butter
and raspberry jam. Derek makes himself an actual cup of hot coffee, nearly
weeping over the smell of it. Stiles pours himself a big glass of milk, then
adds about half a bottle of Hershey's syrup he finds in the cupboard.
The temperature drops and the rain picks up as the sun goes down, so Derek
builds a fire in the fireplace and they settle in the chairs to enjoy it for a
while. There's a guitar hanging on the wall, but neither of them knows how to
play, and the crackling of the fire is nice enough. For all that they've
essentially been camping while traveling, they've never dared build a fire, for
fear of attracting zombies.
After a bit, Derek gets up and retrieves the beer from the cellar. It's a brand
he's never heard of, but when he cracks one open and takes a cautious taste
it's pretty good. Stiles is slouched down so far in his chair his butt is
practically off the seat. He holds his hand out for the bottle and for a second
Derek almost says no. He's not old enough to drink.
Stiles knows what Derek's thinking. He rolls his eyes and says, "Dude, if you
can litter, I can drink. Hand it over."
He's right, so Derek does.
This isn't Stiles' first encounter with alcohol, Derek suspects, because he
drinks two of the beers and only gets mildly buzzed. They don't talk much, just
sit and drink and put more wood on the fire until they start to overheat and
have to strip down to their T-shirts. Derek's never seen Stiles in short
sleeves before; his arms are hairier than Derek expected, and he's got tight,
round biceps to go with his strong hands.
"We can actually wash up with hot water tomorrow," Stiles says dreamily,
rolling his head along the back of his chair to look over at Derek as he rubs
his fingers over his chin, which is just starting to sprout bristle. Stiles
still shaves his face when he can—he refuses to grow an apocalypse beard. His
face is flushed pink with the heat from the fire, and probably also the beer.
"Your turn to lug the water tomorrow," Derek tells him. They'd cleaned up their
dinner mess with warm, soapy water heated on the wood stove in one of those
speckled black pans pioneers use in the movies. Derek washed all the dishes and
put them away, hung the dish rag back on the hook above the dry sink. It was
pointless, and no one would ever know but them, but Stiles didn't bring that
up.
Stiles is watching Derek's face, his eyes gleaming in the light from the fire.
"These people made you sad," he says, voice soft.
"Yeah," Derek admits.
"Me, too," Stiles says. He takes another sip of beer, stares into the fire
again. "Been a while since I felt sad for someone I didn't know," he says. "I
was starting to worry about myself."
"Me, too," Derek says.
~*~
The bed is nice and roomy, but they migrate toward each other in the night
anyway, and Derek wakes up the next morning with his arms around Stiles again.
Stiles is snoring against Derek's chest and probably not yet aware that his
hips are flush with Derek's, pressing their hard dicks together through the
layers of blankets between them.
It makes Derek feel things he probably shouldn't about someone he can't just
walk away from, and definitely shouldn't about someone as young as Stiles is,
but what the hell, the world's ending, and the rules of society don't count for
much anymore anyway. As long as he doesn't act on it, no one but him will ever
know. He's really starting to like the way Stiles smells.
Stiles looks more innocent and like less of a smartass when he's sleeping, and
prettier even than some girls Derek's known. His eyelashes are dark and
delicate against the fragile skin under his eyes, and his mouth is really pink.
He's probably lucky it was Derek who found him. There are some bad people out
there.
Derek brings his hand up to rub the back of Stiles' fuzzy head, letting his
thumb stroke the tender skin behind his ear. Stiles' breath skips and he starts
to wake up, but he doesn't pull away, just lets Derek keep petting him,
relaxing even more heavily against his body. Eventually Stiles yawns, muffling
the sound in Derek's chest, and then one of his hands worms its way into
Derek's blankets and hunts around until it finds Derek's shirt, slides under it
and rests warm against his bare skin.
Outside, a rooster crows. The lone survivor, maybe. Neither Derek nor Stiles
make any move to get out of bed.
Stiles doesn't do anything else, just lets his hand rest against Derek's back.
Derek keeps doing what he's doing, nothing more. It stays pleasant, non-sexual,
and that's good, Derek thinks. More reliable, less likely to end in disaster.
***** Chapter 2 *****
The sickness peaked during the summer, when there weren't a lot of cold-weather
clothes in the stores, and what few there were are long gone by now, much to
Stiles' continued vocal dismay. It isn't even really that cold yet by middle
America standards, but the temperature continues to drop over the next few
days, and Stiles is miserable, nose and hands red and chapped. He shivers,
hunch-shouldered, in the wind every time they get out of the truck.
Derek has a werewolf's metabolism, and has lived through New York winters, so
he tolerates the chill slightly better, but sometimes it feels like knowing
Stiles is cold makes Derek feel cold. It makes him want to fix it. He sits
close to Stiles when they eat, tries to block the wind with his body when
they're walking. It probably doesn't really help all that much, but Stiles
leans into him when he can, so maybe he appreciates the effort.
They've both put on a little weight since they started traveling together,
benefiting from a little less stress, and sharing the workload of simply
staying alive, but Stiles is still woefully short on body fat. He compensates
by wearing a lot of clothes.
"You're like that kid in the Christmas movie," Derek says one morning, watching
Stiles get dressed. He's got about three layers of clothing on, and is still
going.
"I can't put my arms down!" Stiles says, doing a pretty good imitation of the
line Derek's thinking of, and grins at Derek's bark of laughter.
Stiles already hates getting up in the morning, and it's even worse now that it
means crawling out of warm blankets and into unheated air. Every morning, the
first thing he does when he sits up is put on his hat—a black knit beanie he
snagged from a house in Grand Island. He's been saying lately he needs some
boots to replace his sneakers, and they're due to make Laramie today.
"Maybe you shouldn't have shaved your head," Derek points out while watching
Stiles yank his hat down a little more firmly.
Stiles shoots him a dirty look and a middle finger.
"We'll try to find you some boots today, maybe a warmer jacket," Derek says,
cupping his hand over the exposed back of Stiles' neck for a second, sharing a
little of his body heat, before Stiles flips his hood up and they get on with
their day.
The Walmart in Laramie is relatively untouched, which is a miracle. All the
fresh foods are gone, along with the bottled water, and most of the camping and
survival gear, and the batteries and first aid supplies are wiped out, but
that's the case everywhere. There's still a lot of other stuff, including some
clothes, which is what they tackle first.
Stiles does indeed find his boots, and puts them on right there in the aisle,
leaving his sneakers, which are practically falling apart now, behind. He also
finds a pair of earmuffs, which he puts on over his beanie.
Derek looks at them and says, "Really?"
"What?" Stiles asks, adjusting them with a distinct air of defensiveness. "My
ears are cold."
"Those are girl ear muffs," Derek points out. They have Hello Kitty on them.
"Screw your gender normative judgment, dude," Stiles sniffs. "This is the
apocalypse."
Derek's not touching that with a ten foot pole; Laura had a social justice blog
before the Internet went away. He turns and leads the way to the food section,
which still has some decent stuff, too.
Derek busies himself mulling his juice choices—cran-apple or cran-
raspberry?—while Stiles, two aisles over, fills his backpack with instant
noodles and other stuff they can make with just water. At least, Derek hopes
that's what he's doing; sometimes Stiles still gets a little off-track. It
sounds like he's doing what he's supposed to, though, the crinkle of plastic
packaging and the familiar burble of him muttering to himself carrying easily
to Derek's ears over the shelves.
Derek hears the other werewolves before he sees them, and freezes.
"Stiles," he says urgently, under his breath, hoping against hope Stiles will
hear, but he doesn't. Derek hears him move—oh no, oh shit—even further away,
drifting into the next aisle, talking to himself about spaghetti sauce.
The other werewolves—three, Derek thinks—aren't trying to hide their presence
at all, and are almost scarily casual about their approach. They spread out as
they get closer, ambling slowly toward Derek, and he sets his bottle of juice
back down on the shelf next to his crowbar and pivots slowly, tracking them.
Right now he's still between them and Stiles, which is good, so he stays where
he is. He'd feel better if he could see—touch—Stiles, but there's no point in
leading them right to him. They must know Stiles is here, but for now they're
focused on Derek. They've probably decided he's the bigger threat, and that's
fine with him.
Finally, one of the werewolves steps into view at the end of the aisle, a big
solid guy, the kind with a thick layer of fat over his muscles. Derek's
experience is that guys built like that can take a lot of punches. He's wearing
a grimy baseball cap on his round head, and a disturbing grin on his face. His
jacket has an embroidered name tag on it that says Chubby.
Stiles has gone silent now, thankfully, which probably means he's found
something he thinks Derek won't let him have and is trying to stealthily get it
into his backpack. For once, Derek is grateful for that.
As Derek and Chubby stare each other down, another werewolf wanders into view
from the right, another strapping good ol' boy, wearing a faded flannel shirt
with the sleeves cut off, despite the cold. He crosses his bare arms over his
chest as he takes up position behind Chubby, flashing his eyes at Derek.
They're blue, which isn't a surprise. Almost all the remaining werewolves have
blue eyes now, and a lot of the humans would, too, if they were built that way.
Derek doesn't flash his eyes back. He's hoping to get through this without a
fight.
No one says anything as the third werewolf finally makes an appearance, also
taking a spot behind Chubby. She looks like what might happen if a Goth and a
Disney princess collided in the hardware aisle: cotton candy pink hair,
numerous facial piercings, and an inch of black eyeliner. She stares flatly at
Derek, slouching like she doesn't have a care in the world.
"This is our territory," Chubby says, once they're all in place. It's loud
enough that Stiles must hear it.
"Just looking for supplies," Derek replies, friendly as he can make it.
"Passing through."
"Those are our supplies," the male beta says, which explains why there's still
so much left in the store, but not why they haven't spirited it off somewhere
safe by now. Unless it's a lure, and Derek and Stiles just swallowed it whole.
The female beta looks like she's about to chime in but then her gaze sharpens
and she lifts her nose. She's just caught Stiles' scent, Derek's willing to
bet, and now she knows he's human. Derek really hopes Stiles has the sense to
stay out of sight.
"Hey, what's going on?" Stiles says, sticking his head out into the aisle
behind Derek. Derek sighs. He's not sure why he expected anything different. He
gives Stiles a quick glance before focusing on the other werewolves again. At
least he took the stupid ear muffs off.
"These nice people say we're trespassing," Derek explains. He's about to add
that he and Stiles will just be on their way then, like he's a character in a
cheesy Western, but then he sees all three of their noses flare as their
attention zeroes in on Stiles, and he feels his chest burn with a rage so
sudden and intense it makes his hands itch to grow claws. He wants to fight all
of them, flatten them into the ground, make it so they can't ever look at
Stiles again.
"Well, well, well," the male beta says slowly, breathing air in through his
mouth like he's drinking Stiles' scent from it and Derek wants to smash his
face in.
The female beta grins. "I thought I smelled something tasty."
"Looks like you've got a nice little companion there," Chubby says to Derek,
and then licks his lips.
"Ew," Stiles says.
"Might be safer to stay with us," the Goth Princess suggests to Stiles as she
takes a step closer, and before he can stop himself Derek drops his fangs and
growls. The two betas cackle with glee, and Chubby flashes his eyes at Derek.
He's an alpha. Great.
"We'll take good care of him," Chubby tells Derek, hitching up his pants.
"I’m taking care of him just fine," Derek responds through gritted teeth.
"Hey, wait a minute," Stiles says, suddenly indignant. "I'm not some damsel in
distress, assholes. I can take care of myself." He hasn't stepped all the way
out into the aisle, is still peeking around the endcap, and it occurs to Derek
that's probably because he's got his bat in his hand.
Chubby ignores Stiles' comment and lifts his eyebrows at Derek instead. "Be a
shame, then," he says meaningfully. "If something happened to you."
"Your dialogue is super cheesy, dude," Stiles says, sounding like he's gravely
disappointed by this. The male beta huffs out a short laugh, earning him a
glare from Chubby.
"I’m bored," the Goth Princess says as she gives Derek a disinterested glance.
"Let's just kill him and take the—"
Derek charges.
It's a ridiculously stupid move, because there's three of them, one of them an
alpha, but Derek is enraged, gut roiling with aggression, and he couldn't stop
himself if he tried. He doesn't bother with the crowbar—the alpha would
probably take it away and use it against him—so it's gonna be a fangs and claws
fight. Except for Stiles, who Derek sees wading into the fight right behind
him, bat at the ready, face grim.
Derek throws himself at Chubby's midsection, hoping to knock him down, and it's
like running into the side of a building. He's as solid as Derek feared, and
strong, and Derek basically bounces right off him, and then gets punched so
hard he flies backwards and lands on his butt.
Stiles has better luck, using his wait-and-swing move to trick the female beta
into giving him an opening. As Derek climbs gingerly to his feet, wiping blood
from his mouth, he has just enough time to see the butt of Stiles' bat handle
catch her under the chin before Chubby barrels into Derek and they take down a
pretty nice chunk of shelving on their way to the floor.
Juice bottles cascade down around them, and one hits Derek in the head, leaving
him reeling for a moment, trying to blink away the sting of blood running into
his eyes. For one lucky second Derek manages to be on top, but Chubby quickly
overpowers him and flips them, pinning Derek's left arm to the floor next to
his head. Derek gets his other hand up around Chubby's throat, trying to dig
his claws in, but Chubby grabs his wrist and bends Derek's arm backward until
the elbow snaps. Derek barely manages to bite back a scream, bucking under
Chubby, trying to throw him off as the pain burns white hot in his arm.
That's when Derek's crowbar rolls off the shelf and clangs to the floor next to
them.
They both freeze. Derek can hear, almost distantly, Stiles banging his bat
against something metal, taunting the betas. He tries to move his arms, wants
to get the crowbar before Chubby does, but the left one is still pinned and the
right one flops uselessly, all the broken bits grinding against each other when
he tries to lift his hand. It's agonizing.
Chubby's face lights up and he looks Derek right in the eye as he reaches over,
still keeping Derek's left arm pinned, and picks up the crowbar with his other
hand. He hefts it, holding it over Derek's body. Further down the aisle, Stiles
is lobbing canned goods at the betas, connecting with pretty good regularity if
the sounds are anything to go by. Chubby looks over his shoulder at Stiles,
then smirks down at Derek.
"Feisty, isn't he?" Chubby says, and Derek snarls at him before he can stop it,
which just makes Chubby click his tongue like he's scolding him. "Didn't your
mama ever teach you to share?" he asks, shaking his head.
"My mom's dead," Derek huffs, still straining to get his arm free.
"Oh, really? Tell her I said hi," Chubby says, and stabs the end of the crowbar
into Derek's chest.
This time Derek can't hold back the scream, though it turns to a wet gurgle at
the end as blood rushes into his lung. Stiles screams almost simultaneously,
but not from pain—it's Derek's name, high-pitched and panicked.
Chubby laughs as he finally lets go of Derek's arm and bears down with both
hands on the crowbar, pushes it right through until it meets the floor under
Derek's back, grinning down at him as he twists it, and Derek screams again,
weaker this time. His vision wobbles as blood rushes out of his mouth, and he
reaches for the crowbar with his good hand, but it doesn't make any difference,
all he can do is hang onto it and let the pain wash over him as he tries
desperately to breathe.
He thinks he's about to pass out when he sees Stiles suddenly looming over
Chubby's back, bat raised above his head with both hands.
Stiles brings it straight down onto the top of Chubby's head. There's a dull,
wet sound, like a watermelon hitting the floor, and when Chubby's eyes roll to
whites as he starts to slump sideways. Stiles almost goes with him before he
realizes the bat is stuck in Chubby's head, the nails embedded, and he lets it
go. Chubby topples over like a felled tree, face slack, and crashes into the
floor. The impact knocks the bat loose, and it bounces away. Chubby doesn’t get
up.
Stiles stares at Chubby in shock, eyes wide in his suddenly pale face. Derek
knows he's killed a lot of zombies and prowlers over the past few months, but
this might be the first living person he's taken down.
"Stiles," Derek gasps, tugging weakly at the crowbar still sticking out of his
chest. That snaps Stiles back to reality, and he kneels at Derek's side and
helps him pull it out; it feels nearly as awful coming out as it did going in,
and Derek's vision blurs for a second while he clings to consciousness. Now
that it's out he'll heal, but he needs time.
He doesn't get it. The male beta chooses that moment to make his move, coming
up behind Stiles and hooking his forearm across his throat, hauling him to his
feet. There's nothing Derek can do but watch helplessly as Stiles struggles in
the beta's grip, soles of his new boots squeaking against the floor as the beta
starts dragging him backwards.
Before Derek can even sit up, the male beta's dragged Stiles around the end of
the aisle and disappeared. Derek feels almost frantic to get to him, to get him
back. Breathing hurts like a motherfucker, and he still can't move his right
arm worth a damn, but he needs to get Stiles back.
Because he doesn't have enough problems, the Goth Princess starts to stir,
twitching on the floor a few feet away from him. There's a huge flap of skin
hanging off the back of her head, blood smearing the floor beneath her cheek.
Derek fumbles for the crowbar with his good arm, then uses it to help himself
to his feet, trying not to notice it's slippery with his own blood. Gasping
weakly with pain, he limps across the floor to the Goth Princess, dragging the
crowbar behind him, and when she turns her head to look up at him he stabs the
end of it into her eye socket. The other eye looks shocked wide for a second,
and then she goes limp.
Two down, one to go, Derek thinks. He can still hear Stiles and the male beta
somewhere in the store. He yanks the crowbar free and plods onward, feeling a
little stronger with every step. His right arm isn't dangling like it was just
a minute ago, the elbow joint already knitting itself back together. He moves a
little faster, wheezing with the effort but doggedly following the sounds of
struggle.
He finds them two aisles over, in the empty freezer section, Stiles is still
being dragged away, though even with werewolf strength the beta's having a
tough time of it. None of Stiles' limbs are cooperating in the slightest,
catching on everything, knocking over what's left of the displays, and he keeps
swinging his arms up to claw the beta in the face until the guy swears and
tightens his grip on Stiles' throat. Stiles' face starts to turn red.
If Derek had the lung power, he'd roar. He settles for trying to stand up
straight and growling as menacingly as he can.
The beta stops moving. Stiles goes terrifyingly limp everywhere except for
where his hands are fruitlessly trying to pry away the arm cutting off his air.
The beta speaks first.
"Just listen to me, okay?" he says. His voice is tinny with fear and he has a
dent in the middle of his forehead—most likely courtesy of Stiles—that's still
healing. "I could kill him in two seconds, and you're in no condition to fight.
We both know that. So how about you put down the crowbar and I let him go, and
we go our separate ways? No harm, no foul."
Stiles' eyes meet Derek's for a second before they roll away and he paws weakly
at the beta's arm again. He's probably about to pass out.
Derek flexes his elbow, finds it's almost healed. "All right," he says. He
drops the crowbar. "Let him go."
The beta cautiously loosens his arm enough for Stiles to suck in a big,
grateful gulp of air, which he promptly uses to yell, "I said I'm not a damsel
in distress!"
The beta swears and tries to tighten his grip again, but Stiles is thrashing
like a hooked fish and the beta's arm catches Stiles across the bottom part of
his face instead of his throat. Stiles lets out a muffled shout as the meaty
muscle of the beta's forearm mashes against his mouth, and then his eyes narrow
and he bites down, viciously hard.
The beta yells, startled, and Stiles takes advantage of the distraction to
twist enough to elbow the beta right in the nose. The sound is disgusting, a
wet crunch, and the beta abruptly falls to the floor with his hands cupped over
his face, making muffled pain noises as blood starts to leak between his
fingers.
Stiles immediately drops to his hands and knees, coughing and clutching his
throat as he crawls away. Derek strides right past him until he's towering over
the beta, who's choking on the blood from his nose, groaning pathetically.
Derek sneers down at him. He's known other guys like this, big guys who can't
take a hit because they've never actually had to, have always skated by on
looking intimidating.
Derek hunkers down next to him, hands dangling between his knees, and looks the
beta in the eyes. "You scared?" he asks him.
The beta cowers and curls in on himself, eyes wide and terrified. He mumbles
something that might be a yes.
He should be scared. Derek is not, in general, violent or bloodthirsty, just
pragmatic. But there's nothing pragmatic about the way he grabs the beta's
head, and gives it a sharp, satisfying twist. When he lets go, the beta's head
hits the floor with a thump, facing the wrong way.
For a moment, it's utterly silent, except for Derek's harsh breathing and
Stiles' painful coughs as he rubs his throat.
"Holy shit, that was close," Stiles says hoarsely, wiping his mouth on his
jacket sleeve as he staggers to his feet.
"You okay?" Derek asks, turning toward him as he straightens back up, tamping
down the urge to scoop him up into a bridal carry or something else equally
absurd.
Stiles doesn't actually have a mark on him, but he's sweaty and disheveled, and
his face is still pale. He winces as he swallows and then says, "Yeah, dude."
His eyes flit down to the big, bloody hole in Derek's shirt, the gaping wound
slowly healing behind it. "Are you okay?"
Derek nods, eyes still on Stiles, who steps closer, then closer. Derek starts
to reach for him, expecting a hug, but instead Stiles' face suddenly contorts
in anger and he flicks Derek in the forehead with a finger.
"Ow!" Derek says, even though it doesn't hurt that much. Just his feelings,
mostly.
"I can't believe you went on the offensive," Stiles hisses at him. "Are you
nuts? Against three werewolves!" He flicks Derek again. "What were you
thinking?"
"Ow, stop it!" Derek says. He rubs his flicked forehead and tries not to pout.
A little sympathy would be nice—he just got impaled.
And he doesn't want to admit what he was thinking, or that it was because of
the way they were looking at Stiles, and talking about him. Smelling him. Mere
minutes after the fact, it already seems crazy, like he was out of his mind. He
holds his tongue and looks sadly down at the hole in his shirt.
"Don't think looking pathetic is gonna get you out of this," Stiles says
menacingly. "I'm so pissed at you. Let's get our stuff and get the fuck out of
here."
Derek knows better than to argue with Stiles when he's in high dudgeon. If he
tries to stick up for himself right now, it'll probably turn out worse than the
Tobey Maguire vs Andrew Garfield argument from last week.
Stiles trips over his own feet when he turns down the juice aisle and sees
Chubby's still form on the floor, a small puddle of blood next to his head, but
he squares his shoulders and keeps going. He doesn't look at the body again as
he retrieves his bat, and then plucks his backpack from a nearby shelf. His
face is gray and tired, and his hands are shaking.
"I can't believe you bit a werewolf," Derek says to Stiles, partly to distract
him, and partly because he actually can't believe it. Everyone's always so
worried about being bitten by a werewolf. Derek's never heard of anyone doing
the opposite. "I've been sleeping right next to you this whole time, never knew
the danger."
"Yeah, well, I had to do something," Stiles says as he gathers up a few bottles
of juice, too. Derek can't see his face now, but he sounds more irritated than
upset. "No one wants to die in Walmart."
Derek hadn't thought of it that way. He's mildly disturbed by it all the way
back to the truck.
After Derek changes into clean clothes, Stiles uses one of his T-shirts and
some bottled water to wipe Derek's already healed face. Derek could do that
himself, but Stiles is firmly insistent, so Derek gives in, closes his eyes,
and lets him do it. Stiles probably doesn't know what it means to Derek to have
someone take care of him like this, almost like they're a pack. Derek isn’t
sure he wants Stiles to know.
Stiles is achingly gentle, fingers of his other hand resting lightly on Derek's
jaw as he carefully wipes around his eyes, across his cheekbones. When he's
done, Stiles sets the rag aside and then cups Derek's face in both hands and
rests his forehead against Derek's. Derek doesn't open his eyes, even when he
hears Stiles exhale shakily, feels his fingers tremble.
"We should get going," Derek says thickly. Those three clowns in the Walmart
could have been part of a bigger pack. It's not safe to stay here.
"I know," Stiles says, but he doesn't move, and then he doesn't resist when
Derek circles his arm around his ribs. "In a minute, okay?"
"Okay," Derek says, and keeps his eyes closed. "In a minute."
Stiles scoots closer, huddles against Derek's body, holds tight to Derek's
neck, and there's the hug Derek was expecting. There it is.
~*~
After that, they're rarely out of each other's sight, and even start sharing
their blankets outright as soon as they settle in for the night, not even
pretending to sleep apart anymore. Stiles claims it's the only time he's truly
warm. He likes to be the little spoon, and Derek sleeps better with Stiles
nestled safely against him.
Derek would worry about appearing clingy, but Stiles seems to want the physical
contact and is completely unselfconscious about it. If Derek touches him, he
moves into it, and if Derek doesn't touch him, he moves closer anyway,
shouldering his way under Derek's arm, hanging over his back while they read
the map at rest stops. He leans against Derek's side when they sit on the
tailgate of the truck and eat, and butts his head affectionately against
Derek's chin when they go to bed.
Derek probably shouldn't let it happen, given some of the thoughts he's had in
the mornings recently, but Stiles is like a kitten weaving constantly between
Derek's ankles, and just as irresistible. He can't keep his hands off him.
Derek knows they're walking a thin line, and not just on his part. He also
knows Stiles is interested in more than innocent touches, because Derek would
have to be deaf, blind and missing his nose to not pick up on the clues. Derek
thinks if he tried something, Stiles would be more than willing, despite the
age difference. Because of the age difference, Derek's going to have to be the
strong one here.
They're getting close to California. He can make it.
~*~
Stiles goes into heat just before Utah.
The decent-sized towns are few and far between out here, and they have to take
advantage of an opportunity when it presents itself, so even though it's a
little early to stop for the night, they quit driving when they get to the last
town on the Wyoming/Utah border. They need supplies anyway, so they can do a
little apocalypse shopping and then get some rest.
They cruise into a residential neighborhood and find a house with a nice sturdy
picket fence around it, which is usually enough to keep the walkers at bay,
because they aren't very bright. Derek tries the front door, but it's locked,
so he tries a window. While he's doing that, Stiles picks up a flowerpot on the
porch and finds a key. He holds it up, smirking, and lets them inside.
As he walks past him into the house, Derek runs his hand up the back of Stiles'
head, pushing his beanie down over his eyes in the front just to hear his
annoyed squawk.
The house is empty and stale, but corpse-free, and still has a little food in
the cupboards. Derek disables the garage door opener so he can open it
manually, and pulls the truck inside. This draws a small group of walkers, who
shuffle around by the fence for a few minutes before wandering away.
They're busy raiding the kitchen—or Derek is, and Stiles is eyeing a kitchen
timer shaped like a penguin that they absolutely do not need—when Derek sees
something moving outside the window. There's a goddamn zombie in the front
yard.
"Dammit," Derek says, and sets down the box of au gratin potatoes he was
contemplating.
"Whoa, how'd he get there?" Stiles asks, abandoning the penguin. "Over the
fence?"
"Maybe he was already here," Derek says. Could be the owner of the house for
all they know, but it's weird Derek didn't notice him before.
It's just one zombie, though, and he and Stiles make quick work of it, and then
heave it over the fence into the neighboring yard. They're using the bird bath
to wash the muck off their hands when another zombie appears. This one's a
prowler.
Two seconds later, another one joins the party.
"In the house," Derek says, grabbing Stiles' arm, hurrying him a little. It's
just two prowlers, but the memory of their close call in Laramie is still too
fresh, and Derek's still too jumpy.
Stiles doesn't object, so he must be jumpy, too.
His illusion of safety substantially shaken, Derek watches uneasily from the
picture window as another prowler appears, and another. Soon there's an entire
pack of five out front, and with their combined strength and weight they manage
to push the gate in and fall into the yard. All the commotion draws more
zombies, most of them the same walkers from a few minutes ago. With the gate
down, in a few minutes this place will be over run.
"Fuck," Derek says, under his breath. "We're not gonna be able to stay here.
Grab what you can." There must have been a nest nearby for there to be so many
so fast.
Getting the garage door open by hand is tricky with so many zombies right
there, but Stiles manages it, and hops in the truck before Derek floors it down
the driveway. The truck takes out probably half a dozen zombies along the way,
and the rest try to follow the truck but are left behind in seconds.
"Holy shit," Stiles says, looking back at the house as they speed away. "Must
be a nest."
"That's what I was thinking," Derek says, wondering how far they should go
before they stop. A few miles oughta do it, but Derek drives a few more just in
case.
They eventually end up at a gas station on the outskirts of town, where Derek
manages to get some gas for the truck, but the inside is picked clean, not a
single can of Red Bull or bag of Funyuns in sight. He pulls the truck into one
of the repair bays and they have a quick dinner of stale crackers and peanut
butter. It's getting colder, the wind picking up, and they can't waste fuel by
running the truck's engine. Derek thinks mournfully of the house, which would
have been a lot more comfortable. Bum luck.
With nothing else to do, they turn in early.
Derek wakes up because he's cold and Stiles isn't next to him.
He opens his eyes in a panic, but Stiles is still in the truck, curled up in a
tight ball, breathing too fast to be asleep. His back is to Derek and he's
wrapped up in his own blanket, heart beating fast like he's scared. Derek sits
up and it practically slaps him in the face, the warm, enticing smell of
Stiles, but somehow even better than usual, deeper and sweeter. Like every good
smell Derek's ever encountered in his life all rolled up into one person.
Derek's entire body responds and he has to grab hold of his pillow to keep from
rolling over on top of him.
For a second, Derek has no idea what's come over him. It's just Stiles. Why
does he smell so—why does Derek feel so--
"Jesus fucking Christ. You're an omega?" Derek hisses, and Stiles' heart speeds
up even more and Derek sees his head move as he nods and curls up even smaller.
"Fuck!" Derek says, and flings the blankets aside and opens the door so he can
get out of the truck.
He slams the door shut behind him and takes great, heaving gulps of cold, fresh
air, letting the smell of motor oil and old cigarette smoke dull the impact of
Stiles' scent. It's diluted enough now that his head starts to clear a little,
but it's clinging to him, on his skin, in his hair. His dick is hard and
throbbing, but he tries to ignore it as he paces back and forth outside the
truck, swearing as he tries to think rationally despite the blood pounding in
his ears.
What he does think, when he's able to, is that things just got a whole hell of
a lot more complicated.
Derek doesn't have much experience with omegas, but he knows that they're not
quite human and not quite werewolves, and pretty rare. For years they were
ostracized by humans, because it was thought they came from polluted blood, but
they've always been something of a prize in werewolf society. Derek has only
encountered a few others in all his life. What are the odds? What are the
fucking odds?
When he feels like he's more irritated than horny, he stalks back to the truck
and opens the door. The smell hits him in the face again, but he's focused
enough that it doesn't sidetrack him. Stile hasn't moved. Derek tightens his
grip on the door, and braces his other arm against the side of the truck to
stop himself from climbing inside.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks. Stiles has talked about himself all day long
for weeks, and he never brought up this tiny little detail? What the ever
loving fuck?
"I didn't think…" Stiles starts to say, before he trails off. He smells so
good.
"Didn't think what? Didn't think that was important information?" Derek asks.
"I didn't think it would matter," Stiles says, small. "I didn't know this would
happen."
That seems impossible, but Stiles is telling the truth, so Derek has no choice
but to believe him. He forces himself to stay still. Stiles doesn't move or say
anything.
Derek asks, "How long will it last?" It's different for everyone, he seems to
recall.
"I don’t know," Stiles says, and Derek's about to ask how the fuck can he not
know that either when Stiles continues, "This is my first one."
"Fuck," Derek says again, and lets his head drop down to hang between his arms.
He's just in his socks, and the cement is cold. He tries to focus on that. His
erection has subsided a little, but not completely, and Stiles still smells way
too good.
"I just woke up and…I felt weird," Stiles continues in a wobbly voice. "And
then I realized what was happening and I—"
He separated himself from Derek, was what he did, and Derek's stomach caves in
as he realizes that Stiles was afraid of what Derek would do to him.
Despite all the laws and awareness campaigns, there's a lot of propaganda about
there about how brutal and uncontrollable werewolves are; a kid who grew up an
omega probably had that drilled into him from the time he was little. And a
curious teenaged omega like Stiles has probably Googled a lot of really scary
shit.
No wonder, of all the various details of his life Stiles has shared with Derek
over the past few weeks, he left that one out.
"Look, I'm not going to—to force you," he says, after he takes a deep breath,
willing himself to stop sounding angry. "I can control myself. It's not like
that shit you see on the Internet."
"Okay," Stiles says. He sniffles, but Derek doesn't smell tears.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Derek says, for lack of any other appropriate
sentiment, and Stiles cringes noticeably.
"You don't have to take me with you anymore. I can get to California by
myself," Stiles says, but he sounds miserable over the idea of it, and the
thought of leaving Stiles behind is so repellant to Derek he can barely stand
it, though that might just be because he's drugged on Stiles' hormones right
now. "I'll understand if you don't want me around," Stiles says, and his voice
breaks a little, which actually helps Derek re-focus.
He should be worried about Stiles here, who is sixteen years old and scared.
"Hey," he says, finally crawling back into the truck. He reaches to rub the
back of Stiles' head, then hesitates. "Can I touch you?" It's bad etiquette to
touch an omega in heat unless they invite it.
"Yes," Stiles says, but his voice is still shaking a little. Derek touches him
anyway, cups the back of his head, rubbing softly, and Stiles' whole body
shudders and his scent gets even better, even wetter. Derek feels himself begin
to harden again in response, but ignores it. This is supposed to be about
comfort, but it's a little too stimulating for both of them to be strictly
that.
"It'll be okay. We'll just deal with it and in a few days or so it'll be over
and things will go back to normal, okay?" Derek says, trying to be as positive
as possible, which isn't something that comes naturally to him by any means.
"Okay," Stiles says, sounding like he really wants to believe that's true.
"Okay," Derek agrees. He makes himself sit back and stop touching Stiles; it's
surprisingly difficult.
Stiles finally pushes himself up, turning to face Derek, still looking
uncertain, and a little self-conscious, too. His face is flushed a rosy pink,
his mouth looks a little more lush than Derek remembers, and he's breathing a
little heavier than the situation warrants. As Derek watches, the expression on
Stiles' face slowly morphs from cautious to interested as his eyes drift down
Derek's face to his chest, then lower.
Something bangs on the glass door out in the customer service area, and they
both jump, startled.
The truck door is still open, and Derek slowly eases out enough to see.
"Prowler," he says to Stiles. Even though he kept his voice low, the prowler
pauses in its pawing at the glass and cocks its head like a dog. This one is in
pretty good shape, barely decayed at all, which means it's newly infected and
is gonna be a little stronger. As Derek watches, it gnashes its fangs, then
tries to bite the door handle.
"We might as well get going," Derek says. He could go take care of it, but he
doubts either of them will be able to get back to sleep, and the sun will be up
soon anyway. Not worth the effort.
"All right," Stiles says, sounding uncharacteristically meek.
They take turns cleaning up with cold water in the grubby gas station bathroom.
Even that can't kill Derek's hard-on though, and he jerks off quickly before he
comes back out, thinking of one of his favorite porn clips that he'll never get
to watch again. A few minutes later, he sits in the truck and tries to ignore
that he knows Stiles is in there doing the same thing.
The prowler's managed to crack the glass, and is probably only a few minutes
away from getting inside, when Stiles finally comes out of the bathroom. He
looks almost back to normal, not as unsettled. He still smells like he's ready
for sex, and his cheeks still have a splotch of pink on each one, but he's
fine.
They'll be fine.
~*~
When they get on the road, though, Stiles is withdrawn, and seems self-
conscious. Where he used to be a careless, twitchy sprawl, now he holds himself
tense and careful. He turns the music on and then stares out the window as the
sun rises on a day that should be just like all the others they've spent
together before this, but absolutely isn't.
Pretending everything is normal is impossible. They're hyper-aware of each
other, not making eye contact if they can help it, and yet the awkwardness does
nothing at all to dampen the lust sparking off the two of them, like lightning
arcing between their bodies. That quick jerk off session back at the gas
station didn't buy Derek much relief, and it smells like Stiles is in the same
boat--the mouthwatering scent of him slowly fills the truck again until the air
feels thick and sweet with it.
Derek cracks a window. Stiles hunches down in his seat and averts his blushing
face, but doesn't say anything.
Derek's grateful for the silence, because he needs to wrap his head around
this.
What's really galling is that Derek didn't see this coming, even though the
signs were all there: the growing closeness between them, Derek being
affectionate and Stiles eating it up, Derek's sudden appreciation for the way
Stiles smelled. The nighttime cuddling and the morning thoughts, Derek
attacking three werewolves to protect Stiles, Stiles taking care of Derek
afterward.
Looking back, it's all classic omega/werewolf behavior, but neither of them
recognized that for what it was, because it was all new to both of them. Derek
had thought it was some kind of—of bonding or something. That they were
becoming almost like a pack to each other, taking care of each other. But it
was just the hormones. Derek feels manipulated, and disappointed that it wasn't
real, but that's the least of his problems right now. An omega. Christ.
Derek doesn't know if Stiles is fully aware just how popular omegas are in the
werewolf community, where they're practically fetishized in some circles. As a
teenager, Derek had gone through a phase—most young werewolves did—where he'd
been fascinated by them, so he's heard the stories that get passed around, and
read a few of the books that are basically romance novels, though no self-
respecting werewolf would ever call them that under pain of torture.
He's also seen the porn, which he found disappointingly unsatisfying. It was
mostly omegas out of control in heat, practically mindless with it, and
werewolves going crazy with the pheromones, pounding into them as they begged
to be fucked. Now that he's a little older Derek realizes most of those omegas
in the movies probably weren't omegas at all, and all of that stuff was just
for show.
No one knows why omegas smell so good to werewolves, but the theory is it
entices them to reproduce outside their bloodlines, which keeps inbreeding to a
minimum. A werewolf who breeds with a human will always have human babies. The
only way for a werewolf to breed with a non-werewolf and have more werewolves
is with an omega.
The upshot is that Stiles is biologically programmed to go into heat every so
often, and Derek is biologically programmed to respond to it, and this is the
absolute worst time for this to happen.
~*~
Things start to relax a little between them around lunchtime—maybe they're
adapting to the weirdness of their current situation, who knows. They stop to
eat alongside the road up in the mountains, enjoying some rare fall sunshine,
and even manage some awkward small talk before a prowler comes shambling out of
the woods. It's a long-haired guy wearing a pucca shell necklace, one hiking
boot, and nothing else.
"Ugh," Stiles says as he opens a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. Derek has yet to
see him eat a single Cheeto, and yet he smells kind of like them all the time.
It's mystifying. "I do not need to see this. They're bad enough with all their
clothes on."
Derek's in full agreement. "You wanna flip for it?" he asks, digging around in
the food box for the pickles.
This one's in bad shape, moving pretty slow, one arm dangling by a ribbon of
stretched out skin. They do Rock Paper Scissors, and Stiles loses. He is always
going to lose, because he has about four different tells, but he hasn't figured
that out yet. Derek takes advantage of that fact without shame.
"Great," Stiles says, shoulders slumping. He shoves a handful of Doritos in his
mouth and then mumbles something that Derek thinks is, "Gimme the crowbar."
It's propped against the truck's tailgate, next to Derek's leg, so he hands it
over and Stiles takes it, hefts it in his hand a few times as he approaches the
prowler, who zeroes in on him immediately. Derek digs another pickle out of the
jar and crunches on it while Stiles stabs the prowler in the forehead and then
cleans the crowbar off in the long grass next to the road.
"Just another day in paradise," Stiles sighs, when he comes back with the
crowbar and takes a seat.
"Sure is. Pickle?" Derek says, holding the jar out. Stiles takes a pickle, and
proffers the Doritos in return.
"You know, we're probably gonna see a lot of naked zombies eventually," Stiles
says after he finishes his pickle. "If their clothes rot faster than their
bodies."
Derek thinks about that for a second. "You're probably right."
"So we have that to look forward to," Stiles says.
Derek tries to hold back a laugh and ends up sputtering pickle bits all over
the ground. It's not that funny, but it's the first regular conversation
they've had in hours, and it's a bit of a relief they can still manage it.
Those few minutes of familiar lunchtime routine—eating odds and ends, killing
zombies, black humor—seem to help, and things are a little more normal between
them when they get back in the truck. Once they're out on the highway again,
Stiles gets out one of his books and starts reading out loud, though he's
clearly distracted, stumbling over words in a way he never has before.
And maybe Derek's going a little nuts, but he swears Stiles' voice is…huskier
than it used to be or something. Derek's never seen the appeal of phone sex,
never been much of a talker during regular sex, and he's spent the last couple
hundred miles listening to Stiles read from those stupid books, so he's
completely unprepared for what it does to him now. The book Stiles is reading
isn't the least bit sexual or suggestive, but every word he says feels like
fingers running through Derek's hair, a warm tongue dragging up the back of his
neck.
Derek cracks the window again.
Stiles pauses, then turns up the heat and reads on, oblivious.
The window doesn't help. Before long it feels like Derek's dick is being
strangled by his jeans and he's actually sweating, but when he tries to turn
the heat down Stiles objects.
"Hey, I'm just getting comfortable!" he says, even though he's got about four
layers on to Derek's measly two. He immediately reaches for the knob and turns
it back up.
The steering wheel makes a squeaking sound when Derek tightens his hands around
it--his palms are that damp. "Maybe you should—stop reading," Derek says. Now
his voice sounds huskier, too.
There's a moment of silence, and then Stiles says, "Really, dude? Me reading
about Palpatine is doing it for you?"
"Yes," Derek says through clenched teeth. Then he groans, "Jesus, stop," when
there's an unmistakable spike in Stiles' scent.
"I can't!" Stiles says, a little shrilly. "Now I'm thinking about it because
you're thinking about it!"
Derek stops the truck so fast the tires squeal. He kills the engine and they
both bail out onto the road, leaving the doors standing wide open as they pace
back and forth on opposite sides of the truck. After a minute, Derek goes back
to his door, but doesn't get in, just braces his arms on top and closes his
eyes as he takes one steadying breath after another. He feels like his skin is
literally steaming.
He can hear Stiles' boots scuffing on the pavement on the other side of the
truck, but he can't look at him yet. This is turning out to be a lot more
difficult than he thought it would be.
In Derek's limited experience, being around an omega in heat is like walking
past a bakery and smelling the fresh cookies. Derek's felt drawn to them, yes,
but it was mostly just…kind of pleasant. It wasn't like this at all, this
gnawing, nagging need, this unavoidable awareness between them that they want
to fuck each other.
But none of those other instances were with an omega Derek already knew and
already liked. And none of those omegas were like Stiles—young and alone, with
no experience navigating a heat cycle, feeling a lot of things that are
probably new to him. This isn't something either of them have dealt with
before. But they don't have any choice. They need to figure out a way to stay
focused.
Heats aren't usually a big deal in daily life, as far as Derek knows. He
assumes omegas who have been through it a few times can probably deal with it
just fine and not let it interrupt their lives, and werewolves have a pretty
strict code of conduct when it comes to omegas, drilled into every werewolf
from the time they're old enough to understand what omegas are and react to
them.
Or they used to have a code, before the apocalypse. Derek nearly slaps himself
on the forehead when he realizes what really happened in Laramie: those
assholes in Walmart could smell what Derek couldn't, because Derek was with
Stiles all the time, twenty-four hours a day, and hadn't realized his scent was
changing. That was why they were so interested in him.
The thought makes Derek's blood boil, and he has to start all over again with
the steadying breaths.
He told Stiles he can control himself, and he can. He's not worried about that
at all, because he can't imagine hurting Stiles, or forcing him to do anything
he doesn't want. The problem is Stiles does want, and Derek can't pretend
otherwise, because he's broadcasting it loud and clear. If they were both
adults, if Stiles weren't dependent on him…
But there's no use even contemplating that, is there?
"I’m sorry," Derek says, when Stiles comes creeping back, arms wrapped tightly
around himself. So far Stiles' first heat experience has been pretty terrible,
and Derek isn't helping.
"It's not your fault," Stiles says glumly.
"It's not yours either," Derek says, in case that's what Stiles thinks. Stiles
can't help it.
Stiles gives him a grateful look as he gets in and shuts his door, already
shivering just from that short time outside. Derek waits another minute or two,
giving the sweat a chance to dry. His shirt feels plastered to his back.
When they get moving again, Stiles sets his book aside and gets the iPod out
instead. They're both pretty sick of the songs on it by now, but it's the
lesser of two evils.
"Too bad I don't have any Michael Bolton on here," he says as he scrolls
through the menu. "Where's a real boner killer when you need one?"
~*~
Stiles doesn't have any Michael Bolton on his iPod, but he does have some Bon
Jovi, which kills Derek's boner just fine. Enough that the rest of the drive
isn't quite so fraught. The early start combined with practically empty roads
and very few zombies wandering around means they make amazing time through the
eastern side of Utah.
The road into Salt Lake City is marked with signs warning travelers to go
around, but that isn't necessary anymore. In the early days of the sickness the
city was briefly the headquarters of a surprisingly popular doomsday cult that
believed the world was ending and the only way to find eternal salvation
afterwards was to become a zombie now. Anyone with a lick of common sense got
the hell out of town, and the cult died out pretty fast, because eventually
everyone in it was a zombie, and zombies aren't good at grassroots
organization.
Now Salt Lake's a ghost town. Even most of the zombies seem to have moved
on—there aren't nearly as many wandering around as Derek expects from a city
where thousands of people came to be purposely bitten. That's pretty convenient
for Stiles and Derek, because they still need to stock up on supplies before
they head for Nevada.
The first house they try doesn't have much they want. It belonged to a little
old lady living alone, so there aren't any clothes they can use, and the
cupboards are almost bare. The little old lady is upstairs dead in her bed,
rosary clutched in her desiccated hands. The second house has what looks like a
whole family of zombies locked inside, pawing at the front door and hissing, so
they skip it.
The third they try is blessedly empty of both zombies and dead bodies, and
Derek gets a few shirts, a pair of warm boots that are only a little too big,
and some peanut butter. Stiles scores some socks and a new set of clippers. As
they walk out, Stiles grabs what's left of a case of bottled water sitting by
the back door, a dozen bottles or so rolling around in the cardboard and
plastic packaging.
"I can carry that," Derek offers, but Stiles says, "Nah," and uses his knee to
tuck the unwieldy package more securely under his arm. The truck's right out
front anyway, so Derek doesn't argue.
Maybe it's the noise and the smell of the zombies in the other house
distracting them, maybe it's just carelessness, but neither of them notices the
prowlers until it's too late.
Derek's gone on ahead, hurrying to open the truck while Stiles tries to walk
and hold the case of water together at the same time, and it's stupid, so
stupid because they know better. They're smarter than this, especially since
Laramie.
The three prowlers come lurching out from behind a hedge, right in between
Derek and Stiles. There's no way to know if it's a coincidence or some kind of
leftover werewolf instinct, but either way it works: Derek and Stiles are now
separated, with a pack of prowlers between them.
"Fuck," Stiles says, a faint thread of alarm in his voice. When Derek turns
around, all three prowlers are focused on Stiles.
Derek sees what happens next in terrible, heart-stopping slow motion: Stiles
lets go of the water so he can use both arms, but when it falls to the ground a
few of the bottles slip out of the packaging and scatter. As Stiles lifts his
bat and steps backward, pivoting to get his back to the hedge, he steps on one.
His foot shoots right out from under him, like a cartoon character, and he goes
down.
One of the zombies is on him in a second, and he barely gets his bat up in time
to drive it back with a bloody thwack to the face.
Derek drops his pack and sprints toward Stiles, which draws the attention of
one of the prowlers. It turns, dirty fangs gnashing in its rotting mouth, and
Derek sees the faintest glimmer of red in its eyes—it was an alpha. That
doesn't matter much anymore. Derek takes it out with one well-placed stab of
his crowbar.
The third prowler is on top of Stiles now, trying to scratch at his face with
its claws, but he's got his bat braced across its chest, and he manages to
heave it off of him just as Derek puts his crowbar through the back of its
head. The zombie Stiles hit in the face is staggering back toward them,
snarling, lower jaw half gone.
Derek hauls Stiles to his feet and they run for the truck. Screw the water.
"At least they weren't naked," Stiles says shakily, when they're safely locked
in the truck. The last remaining prowler is smearing its slimy face all over
Stiles' window.
Derek runs it over on purpose before they drive away.
~*~
"This one looks promising," Stiles says as they cruise through Salt Lake City
in search of a place to hole up for the night. After the close call at the last
stop, they've mutually agreed to call it a day. "Turn here."
By now they've learned how to suss out the nicer areas of a city, and this time
they've hit the jackpot with a gated community, the gate hanging conveniently
open. A stray cat watches from atop the wrought iron fence as Derek pulls
through and then closes it behind them, bending a couple of the bars together
so it stays put.
They roll up to a big beige McMansion and let themselves in, finding it a
pretty nice place, with lots of big bedrooms and comfortable beds. Derek can
already tell the house is empty, but they open every door, look in every closet
and under very bed, before rummaging through the kitchen. No one likes a
surprise zombie.
There isn't much to eat—either the family tried to hold out here for a while,
or they took most of their food with them--but Stiles gets excited over a box
of Fruit Roll-Ups and a can of gooey fake cheese.
"If you eat those together I'm gonna barf," Derek threatens, before taking the
last of their Ritz crackers out of the food bag and shoving them toward Stiles.
"I might," Stiles says, a defiant glint in his eye. "Since you got me thinking
about it."
He doesn't, though. He puts the cheese on the crackers like normal person, and
offers one to Derek, who declines. He'd rather have no cheese at all than eat
that crap. They've got other stuff that's a lot more appetizing.
Derek gets the maps out while they eat and they hash out their plan for the
next few days. Stiles has kept a running tally of miles left scribbled on the
edge of the California map, and now it's finally under a thousand, which feels
like an accomplishment, or an occasion worth celebrating. Stiles smiles as he
traces the next day's route with a pink highlighter he picked up somewhere.
Once they don’t have that to focus on, though, Derek notices Stiles' eyes
intently tracking his hands, like he's thinking about Derek touching him. It
makes heat prickle through Derek's spine, pool heavy between his legs again,
and he suddenly can't forget that he has hands, which is stupid--of course he
has hands.
But the way Stiles keeps watching them makes everything Derek does with them
feel obscene. And he's not the only one thinking that, because pretty soon
Stiles' teeth are sinking into his puffy lower lip like he's getting turned on
watching Derek open a packet of beef jerky. Derek desperately wants to reach
down and adjust his pants where they're pinching him now, but he doesn't dare.
That would probably blow the lid right off this thing.
Derek can't remember when he's ever been this sexually aroused and in the
presence of someone who wanted him back for such an extended period of time and
not done anything about it. But Stiles doesn't really want him, does he? He
just wants and Derek happens to be the only werewolf available.
Derek's body doesn't care, though. His nose keeps twitching, even when he tries
to make it stop, and if he doesn't focus he keeps zoning in on Stiles'
heartbeat, which speeds up every time Derek looks at him for too long. Every
atom of Derek's being is aware of Stiles all the time, and it's excruciating.
Derek had hoped he'd get a handle on it, but sitting in a dark kitchen watching
Stiles lick aerosol cheese off his fingers—which should be disgusting—knowing
what Stiles is thinking…well, Derek wants to give it to him. Put his hands on
him, run them up under his shirt, down into his pants. Stiles would probably
make some amazing noises, grab Derek's hair with his capable hands…
Stiles is staring at him like he knows what Derek is thinking, breath going a
little ragged as tension crackles between them. Derek looks down at his
applesauce and tries to get control of himself, tune his ears to the wind
outside, his nose to the fading smell of these unknown people and their pets—a
hamster, he thinks. A turtle, too.
They don't talk for the rest of the meal, and Derek keeps himself in his chair
only through sheer force of will and repeatedly reminding himself that Stiles
is a minor.
"We should probably sleep in separate rooms, I guess," Stiles says, not looking
happy about the idea at all, when they make their way upstairs to go to sleep.
Derek doesn’t like that idea, either. But sharing a room—never mind a bed—is
probably an even worse idea. They can't even share a box of Ritz without it
turning sexual.
He takes the first bedroom, which evidently belonged to a little girl who loved
the color yellow. It's the first one at the top of the stairs, which puts him
between Stiles and any unwelcome visitors who make it this far. It's unlikely
that will happen, but Derek's at peace with being paranoid, given their close
call earlier today. Stiles picks the room right next to Derek's—as close as he
can be while still staying separate.
By the time he's gotten his boots off and settled into the narrow, frilly bed
with his crowbar on the floor within reach, Derek realizes he's not going to be
able to sleep this far away from Stiles, and he's seriously pissed about it. He
hates that he's being compelled to behave this way by Stiles and his stupid
heat. After a few minutes of stubbornly trying to convince himself Stiles'
hormones aren't the boss of him, he gets up and grudgingly gathers his things,
wondering if he should bother to make an excuse for moving into Stiles' room,
or just not say anything at all.
He practically gets run down in the hallway by Stiles, who comes bolting out of
his own room with a wild look in his eyes. He smells like anxiety and
strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups.
"I think I should—" Derek starts, as Stiles says, "I can't sleep in there alo—"
They stare at each other for a second before Stiles wordlessly turns and goes
back into his room, Derek right on his heels. Stiles doesn't have werewolf
night vision, so he's got a candle lit, his blanket and pillow in the middle of
the double bed, boots and jacket on the floor at the foot. It's too cold, even
in the house, to take off anything else.
"Are you cold?" Derek asks, trying to justify this in his mind, for his own
conscience. Stiles is used to sharing Derek's body heat at night.
"Yes," Stiles says, hands fidgeting with the pocket of his hoodie as he sits
down on the bed. "But that's not—I don't know what's wrong with me. I just
can't stand being in here by myself." He's not meeting Derek's eyes, like he's
ashamed. "Did you—did you miss me, too?"
"Yeah," Derek admits. "Puberty's a real bitch."
Stiles laughs, bright and uninhibited, like his old self. It warms Derek's
heart. Derek's heart is a real sap.
Stiles snuffs the candle while Derek adds his sleeping bags to the bed and they
arrange them like usual, huddling under them together. When they finally
settle, Derek reaches for Stiles and pulls him close like he used to, and then
wonders if that's a good idea when he hears Stiles' breath catch in his throat.
"Is this making it worse?" Derek whispers in the dark.
"Yes," Stiles says, then quickly, "No. Don't stop. It's better, overall, I
think." He lays his arm over Derek's, like he wants to keep it there, curled
over his belly. "Don't leave."
"I’m not leaving," Derek says, nosing at Stiles' hair, inhaling him. Spooned
together like this, Stiles' butt in Derek's lap, is the closest they've been by
a long shot since Stiles' heat started, and it's probably a really bad idea.
Derek feels himself start to get hard again, which isn't going to help things.
And there's no use wondering if Stiles can tell, because his scent suddenly
gets stronger, richer, even more appealing. He squirms a little, butt rubbing
against Derek's erection, which makes Derek almost bite his tongue in half
holding back a moan. When he tightens his arm to hold Stiles still, a breathy
little whimper comes out of him.
Derek's never going to be able to fall asleep, he thinks. He should have at
least jerked off before he came in here; failing to do so was probably a grave
tactical error.
The next few minutes have Derek clenching his jaw and willing his hips not to
move, but rather than suffering through a night of ongoing torture, something
in him slowly settles at having Stiles so close, right here where Derek's
gotten used to having him. And the same thing must happen to Stiles, because
his heartbeat gradually slows down as he melts into Derek's arms. He falls
asleep almost as quickly as he usually does, and Derek follows soon after.
***** Chapter 3 *****
The next day they try their luck scavenging again, and the results are dismal.
Derek's never seen a city picked this clean of any and all useful supplies--
even the cans of creamed corn are gone. Every store Derek's raided since
civilization went in the toilet has had at least a few cans of creamed corn
sitting on the shelf, like the kid picked last in gym class. Nobody likes that
shit.
And despite the fact that the city seems light on zombies over all, it must be
pretty heavy on prowlers, because even though it's broad daylight outside, when
they should be less active, they're out in force wherever Derek and Stiles
stop. It makes the supply runs a lot riskier than either of them are
comfortable with, and burns up a lot of time and energy they can't really
spare.
They have to keep trying, though. They still need to get across the Salt Flats
and all of Nevada before they hit California, and there might not be a lot of
opportunities to stock up between here and Reno. They drive to a different part
of town, but it's an exercise in futility. The same thing happens at every
stop, the same thing that's been happening since that house in Wyoming.
Prowlers find them wherever they go, like they somehow know they're there, like
they're drawn to--
It's downright embarrassing how long it takes Derek to figure it out.
~*~
Stiles is stunned, and then eerily stoic, when Derek explains it to him: the
prowlers are finding them faster because they can smell Stiles' heat. They're
zombies, but they're still werewolves, and they still act on instinct. Walking
down the street with Stiles is like chumming the water.
"We need to split up," is the first thing Stiles says. "We need to find me a
car, head in different directions—"
"Like hell we do," Derek says, louder than he intended, but there are no words
for how strongly he is against that plan. Viscerally and absolutely against it.
Stiles wandering around alone out there while in heat would be a death sentence
for him.
Dismayed by Derek's reaction, Stiles doesn't give up. His voice is pleading
when he says, "Derek, come on. You know it makes sense."
It does not make sense. It makes the least amount of sense of anything Derek
has heard since back when the sickness first hit and the CDC insisted they had
it under control and there was no need for travel restrictions. It makes so
little sense it's downright stupid.
Stiles is adamant, though, and they fight about it, their first real fight.
Derek tries to play up how dangerous it would be for Stiles on his own, and in
the process unintentionally insults him.
"I survived fine on my own before I met you," Stiles snaps.
Derek politely does not point out that Stiles was cornered by a pack of
prowlers when they met. Instead, he reminds him that he wasn't in heat back
then, and it'll be even worse now. He reminds him that the last house in
Wyoming, the one with the zombie in the yard, was nearly overrun in no time at
all after Stiles went outside for just a few minutes, and that was before his
heat was even in full swing.
"You've seen what it's like out there, Stiles. You won't ever be able to stop
moving, they'll wear you down." They've almost worn Derek down, and he's a lot
more durable than Stiles, just by virtue of being a werewolf. "It'd be
suicide."
Stiles makes an exasperated sound and rubs his hands over his face. "It's not
fair to you," he says, voice shaking.
"Fuck fair," Derek says. Not much of anything has been fair to him in recent
years; he's used to it. "I’m not going to just fucking abandon you."
Stiles steels his jaw. "You're not abandoning me if I leave," he says, and it
sounds like a threat.
"And then I'd have to come after you and it would be a giant fucking hassle, so
I'd rather you didn't," Derek says, and he is one hundred and thirty percent
serious about this. It's non-negotiable.
Stiles mutters something under his breath that sounds like stupid werewolves,
but then he flings his arms in the air in exasperation and says, "Fine!"
"I'm serious. Don't even think about it," Derek warns him, because he's not
sure Stiles isn't above pretending to agree and then sneaking off when Derek's
not looking. "We’re not splitting up."
"Whatever. It's your funeral," Stiles says sullenly. "But if you change your
mind--"
Derek cuts him off. "I’m not changing my mind." Stiles would be prowler chow in
ten minutes. Or maybe something worse. "It's not just the zombies you have to
worry about. There are other werewolves out there who didn't get sick."
"What's that supposed to—" Stiles says, then pauses. Derek can practically see
him piecing it together. "Are you saying that's what happened in Laramie?"
"I'm pretty sure, yeah," Derek admits. "I think they could tell you were
starting to go into heat. I think they sniffed you out."
Stiles looks skeptical. "I know werewolves are supposed to be able to tell, but
how come you didn't know in Laramie, then?"
Derek shrugs and tries to keep his face neutral. This is a sore topic for him.
"I think I didn't notice at first because I was with you constantly," he says,
because he doesn't want to say, I thought it was me, I thought I was the one
who was changing. "I couldn't really tell a difference then, like I can now.
But I think I knew. I just didn't know I knew."
"Okay," Stiles says slowly, eyebrows collapsing down in confusion. "And that
means what?"
Derek's just gonna have to say it, as humiliating as it is. "I think that's why
I reacted the way I did," he says. Stiles stares at him uncomprehendingly. "Uh.
When they were talking about you."
"Whoa," Stiles says, clearly shocked when he finally gets it. "You went all
berserker rage on those guys because you were territorial? Over me?"
"Protective," Derek says testily. That sounds a lot less disturbing. "But my
point is, they picked up on it. They smelled it on you, and they were gonna
take you."
It takes a bit for the full impact of what he narrowly avoided to sink in, and
it's not fun to watch. Stiles' face literally pales, and he kind of shrinks
down into himself. "I thought all that stuff was just, you know, exaggerated.
For the porn," he says after a moment. "Like you said."
Derek had thought it was, but now he's not quite so sure. Or maybe it was true,
once upon a time, but that world is gone. "Things are different now. There
aren't any rules anymore, people do what they want. And like I told you," he
says, trying to steer the conversation back to the original purpose, "The
prowlers know. You smell good to them, and it draws them."
Stiles gives him a nervous look. Derek silently curses the fact that he's so
bright. "Does the way I smell make you feel that way?"
Derek knows Stiles isn't talking about the prowlers, but he goes for the
joking, evasive response anyway. "Like I wanna eat your flesh? No."
It doesn't work. Stiles scowls at him. "You know what I mean, dickbag."
"I would never make you do anything against your will, ever." He could leave it
there, but there's no point in hiding it; it's not like Stiles doesn't know
Derek wants to fuck him. He's seen--and felt--Derek react to him physically.
"You do smell good to me, obviously," he admits. "But you smelled good to me
before that, so. You know." He shrugs. "That's probably another reason why I
didn't notice at first. It was just you, but...better."
Stiles' face practically splits in half around his wide, pleased grin. "Really?
You liked the way I smelled?" He's practically gloating. "What do I smell
like?"
Derek's always hated it when humans ask that question; it's never something he
can put into words. "Unwashed teenager, usually," he says, because "like
Cheetos" sounds ridiculous and Stiles wouldn't believe him anyway. He palms
Stiles' outraged face and easily pushes him aside when Stiles throws himself at
Derek and tries to give him a wet willie.
After that the conversation devolves into insults and teasing, so Derek
considers it a success.
That doesn't change the fact, though, that wherever they go, the prowlers find
them. As long as they keep driving they're fine, but as soon as they stop and
Stiles gets out of the truck, the countdown starts. Even when they try to hide
as thoroughly as possible, they can barely find a few hours to rest and eat
before a prowler comes calling, drawn by the scent of a receptive omega.
"It'll be fine," Derek insists when they're back on the move, bleary-eyed.
Stiles seems to be taking it pretty hard, blaming himself for how much this
sucks; Derek can practically feel him getting ready to suggest splitting up
again. "It's gotta end soon. We'll stick it out and then things will ease up a
bit and we can go back to just being terrified and hunted at the regular level
we're used to." Even as the words come out of his mouth, he's thinking that
sounds like something Stiles would say.
Stiles snorts. "That sounds like something I would say," he says, clearly
pleased by the idea he's rubbing off on Derek.
"Good, then you can't argue with it," Derek tells him.
Stiles chews on his lip and looks out the window, like he's gathering his
courage. Finally, he says, "It'll end sooner if—"
"We'll wait it out," Derek says firmly, because he doesn't want Stiles to
finish that sentence. He doesn't want to acknowledge it, doesn't want to the
words out there. "We'll wait for it to go away."
~*~
Twenty-four hours later, they've finally--barely--got enough supplies to head
out of Salt Lake, but Stiles is exhausted, Derek is exhausted, and they're both
so distracted they almost end up prowler meat again. It's too late to leave
town anyway, so another night in Salt Lake City it is, whether they like it or
not.
They've nearly given up on getting any rest for the night when Stiles spots an
electrical substation, which are always surrounded by strong fencing to keep
animals and idiots from electrocuting themselves. Back when the electricity
still flowed, you couldn't have paid Derek to get this close to one—the humming
of the transformers, the sharp smell of electrified air, and the constant
feeling that every hair on his body was standing on end would have driven him
crazy. Now it's just a secure place with a nice strong fence.
"This has to stop soon, right?" Derek groans, flopping down in a heap in the
back of truck once they're safe inside.
"You know how to stop it," Stiles says quietly, and Derek says, "No,"
immediately, but guilt prickles at him, because he wants it. He wants it so
bad, and wanted it, a little, if he's honest with himself, even before Stiles'
heat.
But Stiles is sixteen years old and this isn't a situation where he's making a
choice of his own freewill—he doesn't have a lot of options. He's backed into a
corner, just like he was when Derek found him, except now he's got every
prowler in the vicinity plus Derek standing just outside of his reach, wanting
in.
Not for the first time, Derek wonders if Stiles can actually sense a weakness
in Derek, or read his mind, or something. Because instead of being put off by
what sounded to Derek like a pretty vehement no, Stiles scoots forward a little
on his butt, eyes keen as he winds up to make his pitch.
"Look, I won't make a big deal out of it," Stiles says, even though his
heartbeat is pounding in Derek's ears. He's not feeling as matter-of-fact about
it as he's trying to appear. "I know it's just something we have to do. I won't
go home and tell my dad we're an official couple or anything."
The thought of Stiles telling his father, the sheriff, any of this is so pants-
shittingly terrifying Derek refuses to think about it for even a second.
"I don't even know if it's true, what they say about stopping it," Derek
hedges. "It might just be a bunch of bullshit." Something people say to trick
omegas into sleeping with them.
"It's true," Stiles says, with surprising conviction. "I had to go to a class,
when I turned twelve. Sex makes it go away."
Derek doesn't know if he's glad to have that confirmed or not. On the one hand,
it takes some of the uncertainty out of the decision, knowing it's a legitimate
solution. On the other hand, it also takes away his last objection.
And it's not just any kind of sex Stiles is talking about, if what Derek's
heard is right. There are a lot of really enjoyable ways to have sex. It's
penetration that ends the heat, satisfies the biological imperative.
Derek's done that before. It's not his favorite thing—blowjobs will always be
at the top of the list—and he can usually take it or leave it, but he's got his
own biological imperative egging him on now and he's never wanted to put his
dick in someone so badly. Just talking about it is making him sweat again.
But he remembers being sixteen years old, putting his faith in an adult he
thought he could trust. Someone he thought cared about him. He was too young
and naïve to know all the ways it could go bad. He doesn't want to be that
adult for Stiles, but then he wonders if, by worrying he might be, he's already
made it impossible that he will be.
He gets caught up in the circular logic of that argument, and takes so long to
hash it out, that Stiles' bravado starts to desert him. Stiles looks down at
his hands, rubs them over his knobby knees. "Unless you don't want to. You
know, with me," he mumbles, shrugging a shoulder like he doesn't really care
one way or the other, but Derek can tell he does care, a lot.
The only thing harder for Derek to bear than a frustrated, miserable Stiles is
a sad, dejected Stiles. "I do want to, but only if you're sure," Derek says
finally. He knows Stiles' body wants to, but Derek wants to make sure he's
mentally ready, too. He ducks down to catch Stiles' eyes. "Tell me you're sure,
Stiles."
Stiles lifts his head enough to meet Derek's eyes and nods. "I’m sure," he says
firmly, though he still reads as nervous to Derek. "Just, um." His eyes dart
away as he hunches his shoulders. "Don't hurt me."
Derek is repulsed by the idea of hurting Stiles in any way. "It's not going to
be like the stuff in porn," Derek says, trying to reassure him. He doesn't have
any firsthand experience to back that up—he's never had sex with an omega--but
he doesn't have even the slightest urge to force Stiles, or dominate him. He
wants to fuck him, yes, but he also wants to take care of him. Mother Nature is
a crafty bitch. "And I would never hurt you."
"Okay," Stiles says, but his hands are twisting anxiously in the blanket now,
knuckles white.
Derek reaches out and puts his own hands over them. He runs his thumbs over the
hard knobs of Stiles' knuckles, and Stiles starts to relax a little. Then he
suddenly tenses again and his pulse picks up, but this time it's not fear.
Stiles looks like he's about to start unbuttoning his pants right now.
"Whoa, just…hold on," Derek says, a little shocked by how quickly things
escalated, just from touching his hands. "We've got a little time." Not much,
but a little. The thought of having sex with Stiles here in the truck, parked
next to a burned out transformer, feels gross and crass. Derek isn't exactly
picturing rose petals and candlelight, but there's got to be something better
than this.
"I don't need time," Stiles says hungrily, inching closer, until their knees
are bumping.
"Well, maybe I do," Derek says back.
Stiles pulls his hands away, looking wary, like he thinks Derek was just
humoring him, or has already changed his mind.
"Hey," Derek says softly. He cups the side of Stiles' face with his hand, and
Stiles' eyes flutter closed as he tilts his head into Derek's palm. "Let's wait
to find someplace where we have some room, and a real bed. And we need to find
some condoms anyway." That's all they need on top of everything else right now
is a damn pregnancy.
"Oh," Stiles says, eyes opening. He looks a little sheepish. "Right, yeah. I
forgot about—and more room, that sounds like a good idea."
Derek gives Stiles' head an affectionate little shake, then lets his hand glide
down along Stiles' arm. Stiles catches it and laces his fingers between
Derek's, and doesn't let go. Derek hasn't held hands with anyone since he was
fourteen years old, but if that's what Stiles wants, that's what he'll do.
Whatever Stiles wants, he'll do.
"If there's anything…" Derek trails off, clears his throat, starts over again.
"If there's stuff you like, or stuff you don't like, you should tell me."
"Stuff…?" Stiles wonders, looking unsure.
"In bed," Derek clarifies. His hands twitch when he says the word "bed," like
they're eager to get Stiles into one. Derek hopes Stiles didn't pick up on
that.
"Oh," Stiles says. His cheeks suddenly flame red and he looks down at their
joined hands. "I haven't actually done anything," he says, sounding
embarrassed.
"Really?" Derek asks, surprised. Stiles is a good-looking kid, and he's bright,
got a sharp sense of humor, and he's an omega. The schools are integrated now,
surely someone his age...
Stiles scowls. "Really," he confirms huffily, so it might be a touchy subject.
Derek chokes on nothing, garbles out an Oh fuck before he can stop himself.
This beautiful little untouched omega is asking Derek to fuck him. Maybe this
is going to be a little more like porn than Derek thought, because he's pretty
sure he's seen this one.
"Sorry," Stiles says, like he's failed Derek somehow.
"Hey. Hey, no." Derek circles Stiles' wrists with his fingers so he can pull
him closer. "That's not what I--it's okay. I don't mind."
"Good," Stiles says, corner of his mouth twitching up wryly. "Because there
really isn't anything I can do about it."
"Guess not," Derek says with a small laugh. Then he asks, "So when you say you
haven't done anything…?"
"Nothing. Zip, zilch, zero, nada," Stiles says cheerfully, a little more of his
usual humor and bluntness coming back, which is a good sign.
"Not even this?" Derek asks, and then carefully takes Stiles' face in his hands
and kisses him.
It's pretty clear Stiles hasn't done even that, based on the stilted kiss that
follows, but he's a quick learner. At first it's just their mouths pressing
together, but he opens up readily enough when Derek nudges his way inside, and
they start out slow and soft. It picks up speed pretty fast, though, especially
when Stiles presses himself against Derek as closely as he can and grabs hold
of Derek's hair, his jaw, the collar of his jacket, like he can't keep his
hands still while his mouth is moving. They kiss until they're both breathing
heavy and grinding against each other, dicks hard in their pants.
"Not even that," Stiles says fuzzily, when Derek finally gives him a little
break. He looks wrecked, just from kissing. Derek wants to put his mouth all
over him. Not yet, though. Not yet.
"Now you have," Derek says, and gives him one last kiss.
~*~
They wake up plastered together a few hours later, both of them overheated and
wincing at how hard they are. This is followed by several difficult, white
knuckle minutes, because there's nowhere private to go take care it on their
own—they just have to ignore it.
Breakfast should be a distraction, but that backfires spectacularly. Derek
can't stop watching Stiles' mouth and Stiles' gaze keeps skating across the
breadth of Derek's shoulders, darting down between his legs and then back up
again. The sexual tension in the truck is off the charts, and that's really
saying something. If Stiles so much as utters the word "Palpatine," Derek might
have a spontaneous orgasm on the spot.
By the time they're ready to get back on the road, Stiles is grouchy and Derek
is snappish, and it doesn't help that they have to go through a big hassle to
get out of the damn gate.
The prowlers that gathered around the fence during the night managed to claw a
hole in it, but the first one through got stuck, effectively corking up the
opening, which was a stroke of luck. Unfortunately, they can't roll the gate
open without shearing her in half with it, which takes a little muscle. Stiles
manages to hold the other zombies back while Derek shoves the gate, wincing at
the sound it makes as it slices the stuck prowler in two. Derek kills two more
before he gets back in the truck, just because he's got to do something with
all this frustration.
Despite all the prowler problems, over the last few days they've managed to
squirrel away some food and water, and the jerry cans are full, as is the gas
tank. If Derek's math is right, they have almost enough gas to get all the way
to Reno, so all they'll need is another can's worth of fuel somewhere along the
way, which hopefully won't be too difficult to find.
They just have one more thing they have to get before they leave Salt Lake
City.
It doesn't go well.
There isn't a condom to be found anywhere. They check the drug stores, the
grocery stores, the free clinics, any place that might have some. Everything's
been picked clean. They start breaking into houses for the sole purpose of
digging through bedroom drawers and looking under beds. Derek finds an expired
package of omega birth control pills, but even if they were still good they'd
take weeks to kick in, so that's no help.
They find a lot of other hidden stuff—some things that Derek can't even
identify much less figure out how to use—but not a single condom. Birth control
was one of the first things people started stockpiling when it became obvious
how bad things were—they might as well be searching for a leprechaun.
"I got some lube," Stiles says after one stop, when they're back in the truck.
He holds up a bright purple bottle that's still shrink-wrapped, thank God.
"Almost grabbed the matching dildo, I’m that desperate, I swear to God."
"Stiles," Derek says, sounding strangled. It was a lot easier to deal with him
when he was still shy and slightly hesitant to talk about sex. That lasted
about twenty minutes, sadly.
"I'd let you watch," Stiles says, sly, then laughs at the look on Derek's face.
~*~
The day's a waste. They're distracted, trying not to obsess over all the sex
they aren’t having. After spending too much time fruitlessly searching for
birth control, it gets dark almost before they know it. It's pure luck they
find a big metal shed behind a house on the outskirts of town, protection
enough for the night. Dinner's the usual apocalypse hodge podge: canned peas,
rice cakes, Pop Tarts. Derek eats his share and tries not to ogle Stiles too
much.
Stiles is clearly very frustrated by now and has no qualms about ogling Derek.
He smells like he's so ready for him, wet and open and wanting. They've barely
finished eating when he makes his move, climbing into Derek's lap, kissing him
eagerly.
Derek groans into his mouth, hands clutching at his skinny little hips. They
probably shouldn't do this; Derek's not sure how much willpower he has left.
It's his own fault, though, for starting it.
"Can we do something?" Stiles pleads into Derek's ear. "Anything, I don't care.
Just touch me." His hand tightens around the back of Derek's neck, and he
shoves his hips forward, grinding against Derek's stomach.
God, Derek wants to. And maybe he's rationalizing, but he thinks it might be a
good idea, and not just because it means his dick will stop being hard for ten
minutes. Maybe it's a good thing they can't do the big deed right away. Stiles
said he's never done anything, but Derek has, so he can show him a few things,
relieve a little tension along the way.
Derek kisses Stiles one more time and then gently tips him back until he's
lying on the blankets, and shifts so he can hover over him and get his pants
open. Stiles' belly is heaving, and his hands keep clutching at Derek's arms.
Derek can see the outline of his dick, straining against his underwear. When he
cups his hand over it and rubs, Stiles makes a startled sound and his hips lift
up off the bed.
"Oh, God," Stiles says, slightly higher-pitched than normal. "Do that again."
"I will," Derek says reassuringly, still touching him, petting lightly with his
thumb. "Tell me if I do something you don't like."
"Fat chance," Stile snorts, catting his hips up again.
Derek stops moving his hand so Stiles will focus on him. "I'm serious, Stiles."
Stiles' eyes search his face, and he must see that Derek means it, because he
curls up to kiss his mouth and says, "I will. I promise."
Satisfied, Derek gets Stiles' underwear pushed down a little and reaches
inside. Stiles' dick isn't nearly as scrawny as the rest of him, and
immediately starts leaking all over Derek's hand. Stiles wiggles against the
blankets, lifting his head to look down at himself, and then whines at the
sight of Derek's hand on him. His hands clench into fists in Derek's shirt as
he thrusts up into Derek's fist and says, "Oh, please. Yes."
It doesn't take much to finish him off, young and frustrated as he is. Derek
holds the back of his head and lets him cry out into his neck, getting come all
over their clothes. Afterwards he stills his hand but doesn't let go, holding
him gently as he softens, kissing his face until his heart stops racing.
"That was great," Stiles says, sounding kind of drugged. His hand clumsily
gropes the front of Derek's jeans. "What about you? You want a turn?"
Derek definitely wants a turn. He sits up and fumbles to get his own pants
open, hands not even close to being as steady as they were before. Stiles tries
to sit up, too, but Derek urges him over onto his belly instead and drags his
pants and underwear down until they're below his ass. Stiles immediately
hitches his butt up in the air, and Derek groans as he straddles the backs of
Stiles' thighs.
Derek's cock looks big and dark and dangerous where it's arrowing over the pale
slope of Stiles' butt. But Stiles—Stiles says he wants it in him, and he'll
like it, Derek will make sure of that, he'll be so careful. As he works his
hand up and down his dick, Derek imagines parting Stiles, easing into him,
moving inside of him until Stiles comes. His body flashes hot all over just
thinking about giving Stiles what he needs, nudging into his hungry body,
making him feel good.
It doesn't take Derek long, either, with those kinds of thoughts running
through his head and the smell of Stiles' heat, of his come, filling his nose
and amplifying everything.The feel of his foreskin slipping over the head of
his cock is almost agonizingly good, the muscles in his thighs burning with
tension that crawls up into his balls, his belly. Stiles looks over his
shoulder at him, eyes glazed in his flushed face, and tries to draw his knees
up under himself, lift his ass a little higher. Derek says, "Yeah," and his
hand speeds up until it's a blur, every breath harsh and raw in his throat now.
The first spasm hits him so hard he curls over himself, trying to keep his
rhythm and failing. All he can do is tighten his grip and fuck into it, hips
straining forward as he comes with a hoarse shout, all over Stiles' ass.
"Oh my God," Derek says, as he pitches over to collapse next to Stiles, his
pants still caught around his thighs. That was easily the most intense orgasm
of his entire life and Stiles didn't even do anything. He was just there.
Derek isn't sure he's going to survive this. But what a way to go.
~*~
By now they're getting far enough into the outskirts of Salt Lake City that
there aren't as many places to scavenge, and there isn't going to be much of
anything between here and the Salt Flats. Civilization is slowly petering out
into a stark landscape of salt evaporation ponds and scrubby grass.
They decide to keep moving, keep heading away from Salt Lake, but stop when
they can to look for condoms and other necessities. With promising places
getting fewer and farther between they cover a lot more distance each day, but
that doesn't fix their immediate problem. And always there are prowlers,
appearing at every turn, and then attracting any nearby walkers.
"Face it, dude. We're not gonna find anything," Stiles says after another
failed search. He flings his backpack into the back of the truck and climbs in
after it, sighing.
"I did find this," Derek says, and takes a dusty box of chocolates out of his
rucksack. It was old even before the sickness—the box is shaped like a heart
and covered in velvet.
Stiles takes it from him and gives him a mischievous look as Derek climbs into
the truck, too, and Derek immediately wishes he'd taken the candy out of the
box first. "Are you wooing me? Am I your Valentine?"
"If you don't want it—" Derek starts to say, reaching for it, but Stiles holds
it away where he can't reach.
"Shut up, of course I want it," Stiles says, and takes out his pocketknife to
slit the shrink wrap open.
The chocolates are old, obviously, but still look okay. Stiles dives in right
away, biting into one and then examining the filling as he rolls the other half
around on his tongue. "Caramel," he says, approvingly, and then holds the
remaining half up to Derek's mouth. Derek drops his fangs as he opens his mouth
to snatch it from Stiles' fingers, and Stiles laughs.
"I’m not afraid of you," he says, grinning cheekily.
Derek retracts his fangs and takes the candy from Stiles' fingers with his
human teeth. He already knows Stiles isn't afraid of him. That's what started
all this in the first place.
"Anyway," Stiles says after he eats a few more pieces. "Getting back to the
complete lack of condoms anywhere, we don't have to use one."
"Yes, we do," Derek says, helping himself to another piece of candy. "Unless
you want to be a sixteen-year-old dad."
"You don't have to come inside me," Stiles says matter-of-factly, rooting
around amongst the empty wrappers for another chocolate. "I trust you."
Derek has a hard time swallowing his mouthful of toffee. He's never had sex
with anyone, male or female, without a condom. The thought of it, sliding into
Stiles bare, nothing between them, feeling him all hot and slick inside. That'd
be…
Risky, he reminds himself sternly. And that's putting a whole lot of faith in
Derek's self-control. He sometimes feels like Stiles already has too much faith
in him in general.
"Or we could just drive around Utah forever looking for birth control,
attracting prowlers everywhere we go," Stiles says. "Up to you."
Stiles does have a point. "If we don't have any other choice," Derek says.
"Let's give it another day or two."
"All right," Stiles says through a mouthful of candy, and then lets the subject
drop.
The truth is, though, that they might have to take the chance. They can't waste
any more time on searching for birth control or they're gonna get stranded on
this side of the mountains for the winter. In the long run, that's a lot
riskier than unprotected sex.
Stiles offers him another piece of candy, but Derek's had his fill; he's not
the sugar fiend Stiles is. He scoots down to lie flat next to Stiles' hip, and
slides his hand up the back of his sweatshirt to touch bare skin. As much as
he's looking forward to having sex with Stiles, so far his favorite side effect
of that decision is that Derek can touch him again, and be close to him like
this. Derek likes that he can just sit with him, listen to his opinions—Stiles
has an opinion about everything--and watch the way he gets his whole body
involved when he talks.
Is he going to feel this way about Stiles once his heat is over? Does he want
to? Does Stiles want him to?
It's kind of pathetic, but for a moment Derek lets himself imagine what it'd be
like if things were different. Maybe if Derek had stayed in Beacon Hills, and
if the sickness hadn't ever happened, they'd be a normal couple. They could go
to movies and cuddle in front of the television, and take walks in the park—all
the things Derek missed out on because of Kate, and Stiles hasn't done yet at
all.
It's all a pointless fantasy, of course, because even if the sickness hadn't
come, even if Derek had stayed in Beacon Hills, what are the odds they'd even
know each other? Even if they did, what are the odds Stiles would want him?
Before everything fell apart, Stiles would have been sought after once he
started his heats, and would have had his pick of werewolves. Derek, so much
older, and with so much unpleasantness attached to his name, wouldn't have had
a chance.
Better to just focus on the now, Derek tells himself, tapping his fingers on
the knobs of Stiles' spine. His skin is warm and soft. Untouched by anyone but
him, Derek remembers, and feels his pulse quicken.
Once again Stiles demonstrates his eerie way of synching up with Derek's
thoughts when he chooses that moment to ask, without looking at Derek, "Did you
have someone? Like a girlfriend or a boyfriend, before the sickness?"
"No," Derek says. He doesn't bother to ask Stiles the same question, since he
already knows the answer.
"Have you ever, you know. Had sex with a guy before?" After he gets the words
out, Stiles turns his head to look down at him over his shoulder. He's got a
bulging cheekful of candy, like a chipmunk.
Derek says, "Yes."
"With an omega?" Stiles presses.
"No," Derek admits, and then is amused to see a little wrinkle form between
Stiles' eyes. "But I'm pretty sure I'll be able to figure it out," he assures
him.
Stiles gets that familiar sassy glint in his eye as he swallows and then probes
his cheek with his tongue. "Well, if you have any trouble, I saw a diagram once
in school," he says, the little smartass.
"Thank God one of us is an expert," Derek says dryly, and then fells
embarrassingly proud when Stiles laughs. Making Stiles laugh isn't especially
hard, but it always feels like a victory to Derek, who went a lot of years
without anyone who appreciated his sense of humor.
"You didn't have to take a class, did you?" Stiles asks curiously. "Like I did?
Is there stuff like that for werewolves?"
"Not really," Derek says. It seems so long ago to him, and most of the time he
feels like he wasn't really a teenager all that long, like he skipped from
being a happy kid to being a broken adult without stopping in between, even
though that wasn't true. He lived through all his teenage years, both before
and after he killed most of his family. Maybe the issue is he'd rather he
hadn't. "It's up to your pack to teach you that stuff, mostly. We watched that
After School Special in health class, though, Where Do Omegas Come From?"
"Oh, yeah!" Stiles says, brightening. "The one from, like, 1989? With all the
weird haircuts?"
"Yeah, that's the one," Derek says. He runs his hand in a broad sweep up
Stiles' back, then down and along his ribs, and Stiles squirms a little, like
it tickles, but keeps talking.
"That was so embarrassing," he says. "I was the only omega in my grade and I
felt like everyone was looking at me the whole time. And then my dad thought I
wasn't getting enough information, so he made me sit down with him and watch
one for omegas called Me and My Hormones and I was traumatized for days."
Derek doubts the veracity of that claim. It's hard to imagine Stiles being
traumatized by much of anything for more than a few minutes.
"When I went to that special class I thought it would be better," Stiles goes
on, "but I think the idea of it is to, like, scare you."
Derek thinks he has a pretty good idea what that means, but he asks anyway.
"Scare you how?"
"Don't walk by yourself at night when you're in heat, don't ever go somewhere
alone with a werewolf. That kind of thing." He gives Derek an apologetic look.
"Basically it's about how to protect ourselves from you guys. They kind of make
you think that being an omega sucks."
"That's not how it is with us," Derek says, giving Stiles' waist an
affectionate squeeze. "We're taught that omegas are special. My parents gave me
a book called The Heat Is a Gift." Stiles groans at the title. "It had some sex
stuff in it, but it was mostly about respecting omegas, and understanding what
they're going through." There had been one short, not very detailed chapter
about heat sex, which Derek had read obsessively as a kid, before he figured
out he could find free stuff to jerk off to on the Internet.
"Understanding what I'm going through doesn't help much," Stiles mutters
darkly. "Unless you're doing it with your hand in my pants." He turns back to
his chocolates and angrily shoves another one in his mouth.
Derek sits up and snugs an arm around him and nuzzles his neck a little while
he's absorbed in the candy box, filling his nose with the delicious smell of
him. Every time they talk about having sex Stiles gets excited, and it makes
him smell even more irresistible.
"You smell so good," he says, nudging the collar of Stiles' shirt aside with
his nose, looking for the back of his neck so he can put his mouth…right…there.
He hears Stiles set the candy box aside, and then his hand comes up to cup the
back of Derek's head, fingers sliding through his hair. Derek opens his mouth
and tastes Stiles' skin, and can't hold back a pleased hum.
"This is exactly the kind of thing they warned us about in that movie," Stiles
says suspiciously, and Derek laughs softly into his neck. "Next you're gonna
try to touch me in my swimsuit area."
"You bet I am," Derek says, reaching around for the button on Stiles' pants. "I
think we should practice a little, make sure I know where everything is."
"Good idea," Stiles agrees, breathy. He shifts a little so he's practically in
Derek's lap. "We wouldn't want you to get lost."
They kiss for a while after that, mouths languid and sugary, and slowly
collapse into a rutting tangle on the blankets. It gets warm in the truck, the
windows steaming up, and Stiles strips out of his sweatshirt, and takes off his
boots. Derek shoves Stiles' T-shirt up so he can mouth at his belly, bite the
flat muscles over his ribs. He's not as scrawny as Derek thought when they
met—solid under his hands and mouth, strong and wiry.
"Ugh, pants, the worst," Stiles says, plucking at the front of his jeans. Derek
takes the hint and opens them up, pulls them down a little, along with his
underwear. Then he coaxes Stiles over onto his belly, and holds him still when
he tries to rub his cock against the blankets.
"We'll get there," he says, petting Stiles' hip. Stiles makes a frustrated
sound, but goes pliant for him while Derek settles between his spread knees.
Stiles' ass is fucking fantastic, round and firm. Derek leans down and squeezes
one side while he bites at the other, just hard enough to make Stiles twitch.
Then he rubs his bristly chin against the place he just bit, and Stiles makes a
disgruntled noise.
"Sorry," Derek says absently, distracted. He puts both hands on Stiles and
spreads him open. He's pink and swollen and wet, and he smells unbelievable.
Derek's mouth waters. He's never rimmed anyone before, but he's suddenly seeing
the appeal.
"You leave beard burn on my ass I'm gonna get the clippers and—ah!" Stiles
says, as Derek drops his head and gives him a long, slow lick. "Oh fuck, oh
holy fucking Christ," Stiles whines, hips jerking under Derek's hands.
The taste of Stiles floods Derek's mouth and he moans before he can stop
himself. It's like all that wonderful Stiles scent that's been teasing Derek's
nose for days, but concentrated, lickable, delicious. Stiles' opening is small
and tight, but yields beautifully to Derek's mouth when he laps with the flat
of his tongue, patient and coaxing. Eventually Derek teases the tip inside
where he's velvety soft, and is rewarded with a trembling cry from Stiles as he
flexes around Derek's tongue.
After he gets him nice and relaxed and loose, Derek backs off enough to watch
while he circles one finger slowly, twice, before easing it inside, and Stiles
bucks in his hands, pushes back onto it. The sound of Derek's finger moving in
and out is obscene, slick and dirty, and the longer Derek does it, the wetter
Stiles gets, until his hips are rolling in a steady rhythm and his hands are
clutching fistfuls of the blanket, Derek's hand wet to the wrist.
When Stiles' cries turn raw and needy, Derek adds a second finger, then helps
Stiles lift his hips up even higher so he can reach around and jerk him off.
"There you go, I've got you," Derek murmurs, mouthing the small of Stiles'
back. He tightens his grip on Stiles' cock, and adds a third finger to his ass.
The next words come out before Derek can reconsider them: "I'm going to take
care of you. I'm going to make it so good for you, Stiles."
Stiles goes crazy for it then, fucking himself back on Derek's fingers and then
forward into his hand, chanting that he's close, he's so close, please. When he
comes, he clamps down so hard on Derek's fingers that Derek can barely move
them, settles for gently crooking them, rubbing him deep inside while Stiles'
dick twitches in his other hand.
When it's over, Stiles flops down face first and doesn't move except to heave
panting breaths into the blankets. Derek gets his own dick out and uses both
hands on it, covering himself with all of Stiles' scent, and almost blows his
load just from that. The noise he makes as he runs his wet hands over his cock
is soft and broken, but he doesn't care, can't be self-conscious about it.
Stiles finally stirs, awkwardly turns over with his pants still down. His eyes
are greedy as he reaches for Derek, peering down to watch him touch himself.
Derek stretches over him and tugs his own shirt up and out of the way so he can
rub his cock on Stiles' wet stomach. It's only a few slippery thrusts before he
comes, his whole body locking up as he spills between their bellies, Stiles'
hands clutching at his shoulders.
"So that's one thing the porn got right," Stiles says, as he's wiping himself
off a little later with one of Derek's socks. "You guys love to come all over
us."
Derek rolls his eyes and feels his face get warm, but screw it, he's not gonna
deny it. He is what he is, and Stiles isn't actually complaining.
~*~
The Salt Flats are beautiful in an alien landscape kind of way, big and empty
and unending, so white it hurts to look at them without sunglasses. What's less
beautiful is that for some reason thousands upon thousands of walkers are
congregating there. It's the most terrifying thing Derek's seen, and that's
saying a lot.
"How the hell did she get all the way out here?" Stiles wonders, when they see
the first one on the road, shuffling along in the middle of nowhere, baked
brown and dried by the sun and the wind, like a walking stick of beef jerky.
The mood in the truck grows increasingly uneasy as they see another, then
another, then a whole group staggering next to the road. Stiles turns the music
off, and they ride in silence.
Derek checks the gas gauge and decides to pull over and top off the tank.
They've got more than enough to make it across the Flats, but filling the tank
can be dicey with too many zombies around. Stiles stays in the truck—out here
his scent will carry for miles—and watches, jumpy, the whole time. It's just
too eerie.
Somewhere in the middle of the Flats they come across what appears to be the
preferred gathering place, where the zombies are the thickest. There's nothing
but walking corpses as far as they can see in any direction, swarming all over
the road in places. The only way out is through, so they go through.
Thankfully, they don't show much interest in the truck, and Derek drives right
over the ones that don't get out of the way. The sound is disgusting, the truck
smeared with gore, but they have to keep going, no matter what. If they stop
here, they're dead.
After a few minutes Derek realizes the zombies aren't just gathered
aimlessly—they're clustered together but in motion, like the penguins on those
nature shows, the ones that constantly swap places in the huddle so everyone
stays warm. Like they've migrated for the winter. Maybe they have. What happens
when a zombie freezes?
 
"You know," Stiles says thoughtfully, as they slowly plow through what seems
like an unending wall of zombies. "It would be pretty easy to take out a whole
shit-ton of 'em all at once here, if you had enough people and the right
weapons. Surround them, use guns and bows to provide cover and catch any strays
while you set the whole herd on fire. Molotov cocktails would do the trick.
Flame-throwers would be even better."
By now Derek should be over being surprised by how coldly calculating Stiles
can be, how easily he problem-solves, how quickly he spots an opportunity he
can exploit, like it comes to him as easy as breathing. The sheer scope of this
plan, though, uttered so casually, makes the hair on the back of his neck
prickle. Derek's speechless for a moment.
Stiles picks up on it, and turns his head to look at Derek. He's smiling.
"Don't look so freaked. I'm a cop's kid, remember?"
"I'm not freaked," Derek says. He scratches his chin, which needs another pass
with the clippers soon. Then he says, "That's a really good plan."
"I know," Stiles says, and goes back to looking out the window.
~*~
It feels like forever before they get out of the Flats. Thankfully, the zombies
start to thin out as they get further and further away from the middle part of
the herd, but Derek's so tense he can barely let go of the steering wheel when
they roll into Wendover. And he'd give a lot for a working car wash; there's
something that looks suspiciously like a lung stuck to the bumper.
This side of Wendover appears to be relatively uninhabited, maybe because of
all the zombies passing through in a steady stream on their way to the Flats.
The streets are thick with them, plodding drunkenly along, but most of them
don't even pay any attention to Derek and Stiles. It's only when they're parked
in front of the hotel and a prowler zeroes in on Stiles that things get touchy,
but they get inside before it even gets within striking distance.
Derek can barely believe their luck: the Montego is in nearly pristine shape,
and is the biggest, fanciest hotel they've seen so far, and has generators in
the basement. Derek worked as a maintenance guy for a while in New York, and he
knows enough to get the them running, which impresses Stiles, who watches the
process with his usual mix of genuine curiosity and hilarious commentary.
The backup power comes on in the hotel section, but the casino stays dark and
quiet, which is a blessing—no need to attract attention by lighting the whole
place up like a Christmas tree.
Next order of business is finding a room. The elevators aren't working, but the
emergency lights are on in the stairwell, so they make their way up to the top
floor and claim the nicest suite for themselves.
"Go big or go home," Stiles says cheerfully, when they find it.
It's big, all right. Stiles gives a low whistle when Derek gets the door open
and the lights on. "Oh, you are definitely deflowering me in this place," he
says bouncing his butt on the enormous, pillowy bed. He gives Derek the hairy
eyeball. "No more excuses."
"I haven't been making excuses," Derek says, miffed. "Pardon me for not bending
you over the hood of the truck and nailing you immediately."
Stiles rolls his eyes. "I'm a sixteen-year-old omega virgin in heat. I wanna
get nailed."
"Oh, you're gonna get nailed," Derek says, and lets his eyes flash and little
growl come into his voice. The instant spike in Stiles' heartbeat is
gratifying.
"Now?" Stiles asks, sounding a little reedy.
"Nope," Derek says, pulling him up off the bed by his hood. "First we're gonna
find something to eat."
"Ugh," Stiles says, slumping. "Fine," but his stomach growls so loud Derek
could probably hear it even if he weren't a werewolf.
The hotel has several restaurants, which means numerous kitchens to raid.
Others got here before them, but they still find enough for a good meal, plus
stuff they can take with them when they leave. This makes Derek, who's been
nervous about food and water, feel a lot better.
The stoves, which are gas, don't work, but Stiles finds a set of portable
burners in a rack of banquet supplies and they haul it up to their room where
they make spaghetti and canned meat sauce for dinner. The sauce tastes a lot
like the can it came in, but it's a nice change of pace.
"That was great," Stiles says, when they've eaten all they can stand. He's
drinking flat Mountain Dew out of the boob mug. "What's for dessert?"
"You," Derek says, and Stiles flails so hard and so comically that he nearly
falls out of his chair.
***** Chapter 4 *****
They shower first, which is so heavenly that at first it distracts Derek from
the fact that he's completely naked with Stiles for the first time. Running
water's been a distant memory for months, and with the exception of their stop
at the hobby farm, most of the wipe-downs they've managed have been with water
that was tepid at best, freezing cold at worst. A hot shower is a forgotten
luxury.
Stiles isn't as distracted by the shower.
"Whoa," he says, standing, owl-eyed, gaping at Derek as water droplets cling to
his eyelashes. Derek can't remember when he's ever noticed another guy's
eyelashes as much as he notices Stiles'. "I knew you were good-looking, but
you're like—" he waves his hands up and down in front of Derek's face, his
torso. "Beautiful."
Derek thinks he might be blushing. No one's ever called him that before.
Usually people say he's "hot" or "really hot" or "really hot but kind of a
dick." Derek's used to compliments, but this is the first time in a long while
he hasn't brushed one off as meaningless. Stiles thinks he's beautiful.
"And hairy," Stiles adds.
That surprises a laugh right out of Derek. "I could shave it all off before we
start," he teases, lifting an eyebrow as he rubs his hand across the hair on
his chest, tracing the narrow line of it down his stomach to his groin. "If you
don't like it."
Stiles' eyes follow Derek's hand, and he gulps, "Um, no." His voice cracks a
little, which Derek tries not to preen over, and probably fails. "No. I like
it." He reaches out and takes the same route with his own fingers, but more
tentatively, lightly tracing the line of slicked down hair that bisects Derek's
belly.
Derek grabs him by the hand and uses it to reel him in until their dicks bump.
Stiles makes a startled sound and his eyes go, impossibly, even wider.
"Good," Derek says, leaning in to mouth at his jaw. "I like the way you look,
too." He doesn't think he's ever told him that, and that's a shame. "You're
beautiful," he says, and kisses him, drags his fingers down Stiles' back,
making it curve into his hands. Stiles is long-limbed and sleek, pink where he
isn't pale. Derek wants to lick him everywhere.
They spend the next few minutes simply standing under the spray together and
kissing, rubbing against each other, enjoying the novelty of both the shower
and being naked together. Eventually they try to wash themselves and each other
at the same time, hands skimming everywhere, getting shower gel all over the
place. Stiles seems fascinated by Derek's cock, running his soapy hands over it
until it's so hard it's standing up straight against Derek's belly.
That's when the appeal of a hot shower starts to rapidly lose ground to the
appeal of sex with Stiles. Derek manages to wrestle his way free from Stiles'
hands long enough to shut the water off and throw a towel at him, but by the
time they stumble to the bed they're back to kissing and groping again.
Derek feels like all his senses are heightened, zeroed in on Stiles, and he
drinks it all in--every tiny sound Stiles makes, every trace of emotion in his
scent. Lowering him onto the sheets makes Derek's heart surge in his chest,
ache with how trusting he is.
Despite his constant assurances to Stiles, Derek did worry a little he'd feel
frantic, and get too excited, or forget he was supposed to be gentle, but if
anything it's the opposite—he can't help but be soft and sweet with him. It's
nothing more than an accident, a twist of fate that put him in Stiles' path,
but he feels like he's won a prize all the same. Stiles is his, at least for
tonight, and he's going to make this as good for him as possible.
He isn't a saint, though.
"Okay, now what am I supposed to do?" Derek asks Stiles when they're stretched
out on the bed, Derek hovering over him but not touching. He keeps his tone as
sincere as possible, and Stiles falls for it for a fraction of a second, jaw
literally dropping in disbelief. But Derek can't keep a straight face, and when
his mouth starts to twitch Stiles figures it out. His eyes narrow and then he
strikes, digging his fingers into Derek's armpits, either trying to tickle him
or twist all the hair off, Derek's not sure. He's kind of doing both.
Derek tries to pull his arms in to protect himself, and lands on top of Stiles
with a grunt. Somehow, his dick doesn't drill a hole right through Stiles' leg;
it feels hard enough to.
"You're an asshole," Stiles fumes, fingers digging into Derek's ribs, making
him yelp.
Derek captures Stiles' hands and pins them to the bed above his head. "So are
you," he says, bumping his nose against Stiles'.
"I know," Stiles grins. His hands twist until their fingers are intertwined.
"It's like we were made for each other. It's so gross. I'm grossed out. Now
please put your dick in me before I get sappy."
"Pffft," Derek says. He can't picture Stiles ever being sappy—the constant
sarcasm would get in the way every time. He's on board with the dick part,
though. He gives Stiles one more kiss on the mouth before he starts working his
way down his body.
Derek licks a drop of water out of the hollow of Stiles' throat, rubs his chin
against the tiny patch of hair in the middle of his chest. Stiles' nipples are
puffy and pink, and sensitive when Derek uses his mouth on them, but Stiles
squirms awkwardly like he's not sure he likes it, so Derek keeps going,
trailing little bites to his bellybutton and dragging his tongue down the dark
line of hair below it. He skips right over Stiles' stiff dick, and huffs a
laugh against Stiles' thigh when he grumbles with frustration.
Derek's got another target in mind, though, and Stiles knows just where—he
spreads his knees and tilts his hips when Derek slithers down between his legs.
He's already wet down here, and he parts easily, legs twitching against Derek's
shoulders as Derek sinks his fingers into him. Stiles doesn't really need much
prep, but Derek takes his time anyway, nipping at the skin stretched around his
fingers, then soothing it with his tongue. Stiles shoves himself shamelessly at
Derek's face, straining for more when Derek holds him back, pins him down and
eats him out until they're both wet and sloppy.
When Derek finally lifts his head, Stiles is a quivering mess, held to the edge
of orgasm by nothing more than Derek's patience. Derek leans up and swipes his
tongue across Stiles' belly, wet from where his cock's dripped all over it. The
taste is sharper than what's dripping out of him further down, and when it
spreads over his tongue Derek growls low against Stiles' stomach. There's an
answering hitch in Stiles' breath as it vibrates through him.
"Derek," Stiles says, pleading, lifting his hips to bump Derek's chin with the
wet tip of his cock.
"I know, I know," Derek says as he slips his fingers into Stiles' body again.
He doesn't move them, just holds them deep as he takes the head of Stiles' cock
in his mouth, sucking softly. Stiles jerks like he's been shocked, hands
clutching at Derek's head, and he comes like that, caught between Derek's hand
and Derek's mouth, choking out Derek's name again. Derek swallows, looking up
at Stiles through his eyelashes to watch his face as he throbs in Derek's
mouth.
It takes Stiles a few minutes to recover, lying limp on the bed until Derek
eases his fingers out. Derek's dick is achingly hard now, the head glistening
wet, trails of pre-come all over his belly and thighs, but he can wait. He
levers up to lie next to Stiles and take him in his arms, and they kiss lazily,
Stiles openly curious about Derek's mouth now. Stiles doesn't flinch away when
Derek puts his wet fingers in his mouth and lets him taste himself there, too,
but he doesn't seem to like it as much as Derek does. He strokes Derek's cock a
little, spreading the wet around, but Derek can tell he's distracted and antsy,
his own dick starting to get hard again already.
"Come here," Derek says, turning Stiles away from him and pulling him back
against his chest. Stiles lifts up a little so Derek can slide one arm under
his ribs, hold him tight with it. Spooning, like they usually do when they
sleep, except this time, they aren't going to sleep. "You ready?"
"I'm fifty miles past ready, get on with it," Stiles says, sounding a lot
bossier than a virgin—a virgin who just had an awesome orgasm, thank you very
much--should, in Derek's opinion, but that's Stiles for you.
Derek feels fifty miles past ready himself. It's only been a few days since
Stiles went into heat, but Derek feels like he's been waiting for this forever.
He rubs his face in Stiles' damp hair and breathes him in for a moment,
savoring all the skin-to-skin contact, and the way Stiles fits so perfectly in
the curve of his body. Stiles' hands come up to rest on Derek's arm across his
chest, petting lightly, and he nuzzles back for more kisses.
While they're kissing, Derek grips his own cock by the base and eases his way
between Stiles' cheeks, rubbing the tip against where he's slick and open. It
makes Stiles hold his breath, but he doesn't tense up or pull away. Derek can
feel his heartbeat thudding under his palm.
"Breathe. Relax," Derek says softly against Stiles' mouth, and pushes with his
hips a little. Stiles' body opens for him, and the head of Derek's cock slides
in.
Stiles makes a broken little sound and his face scrunches up, kissing
forgotten. Derek kisses his ear, his cheek, his softly open mouth. "That's the
widest part," he assures him, embarrassed a little by how gravely his voice
sounds. His body is trembling with the effort to not move at all, not even
twitch. This is affecting him more than he thought it would. More than it ever
has with anyone else. "Is it bad? Does it hurt?"
"No," Stiles says, almost a sob. He blindly reaches back to wrap a hand around
Derek's hip and urges him to keep going, so Derek does, hitching in and in and
in while Stiles shakes in his arms and says, "Oh God, oh God, oh God." He
sounds like he's falling apart.
Derek feels the same. He's never been inside anyone like this before, with no
barrier between them. Stiles is silky and soft inside, slippery and hot. It's
almost too much.
By the time he gets all the way in, flush against Stiles' butt, they're both
shaking. Stiles is tight around him, and the backs of Derek's legs tingling,
his mouth dry. He stills for a moment and gives Stiles time to adjust,
physically and mentally. Derek believes him that he isn't hurting him, but
having someone inside your body for the first time is strange, even when you
want it so badly.
Stiles uses the lull to experiment, arching his back, grinding his hips,
tightening up inside until he's squeezing Derek so hard he whines into Stiles'
neck. Through it all, every sweetly agonizing second, Derek holds still and
lets him play. It's his first time, and he's curious, and Derek wants him to
remember this as a good experience, despite the circumstances.
Stiles finally settles with a little shimmy of his hips, so Derek rocks his own
just a little, just enough to move in and out a tiny bit. When he hears Stiles
suck in a strangled breath he does it again, and again, until pretty soon he's
easing in and out in long, slow thrusts that have Stiles shuddering against his
chest. Before today Derek would have scoffed at the idea of fucking somebody
tenderly, but there's no way to deny that's exactly what he's doing, and it
feels right, exactly what they both need.
"You're doing so good," Derek says in his ear. Stiles is so loose-limbed and
pliant that his whole body rocks forward and back with every thrust. "How does
it feel?"
"It feels good," Stiles says in a shaky voice. "Does it feel good to you, too?
Do you like it?"
Derek's heart cracks open a little bit at that, and he has to hide his face in
Stiles' hair and swallow hard before he answers.
"Yeah," he says hoarsely, hips flexing. "Yeah, it's--" He stops himself before
he gets sappy. "It's really good. You feel so good, Stiles."
Stiles tightens his grip on Derek's hip and says. "Can you do it faster?"
Derek does it faster. A little faster, and a little harder, but still careful,
still focused. After a minute he can tell that even though Stiles is enjoying
it, it's not what he really needs, and Stiles is too inexperienced to know what
his own body wants. He shifts restlessly in Derek's arms until Derek uses his
hand to lift Stiles' leg up a little, tilting him, and that must be the magic
angle because Stiles practically wails, an amazing sound that makes all the
hair on the back of Derek's neck stand up.
"Yeah, there you go. Come on," Derek says, switching to deeper, measured
thrusts that push hitching little cries out of Stiles every time Derek rolls
his hips. This is what he needed. Derek adjusts his grip a little, slotting his
fingers comfortably behind Stiles' knee, and starts to slide his other hand
down Stiles' belly toward his cock.
"No no no," Stiles says instantly, grabbing onto Derek's arm with both hands
and mashing it against his ribs. "Hold onto me, hold onto me."
Derek falters for a second, then starts moving again, curling his arm tighter
around Stiles' body as Stiles clings to it.
"Shh, it's okay," Derek says, leaving kisses on his cheek and ear, the edge of
his jaw. His face and neck are red, his hairline damp with sweat, his eyes
half-closed. "I will. I won't let go. Can you touch yourself? Can you do that
for me?"
Stiles nods jerkily and fumbles a hand to his dick, giving himself a few clumsy
strokes. "Oh. Good idea," he breathes, before he mashes his face against the
pillow and starts to come.
It's intense and long, and Stiles is almost shocked silent by it, a cry
stuttering weakly out of his open mouth. He stiffens in Derek's arms, back
bowing as his hand stops and he just holds himself, moaning quietly into the
pillow as come starts to leak from between his fingers, drip onto the bed.
Feeling Stiles contract around him, seeing him lost in his orgasm, nearly
pushes Derek over the edge, but he bears down and hangs on, gently fucking him
through it, waiting until it's over to pull out, almost too late, and wrap his
hand around his cock. It only takes a few tight strokes and he's shooting all
over Stiles' sweet little ass, pinked up now from Derek's hips slapping against
it.
As soon as he's done he pulls Stiles back to him again with both arms, so close
it feels like their hearts are thumping against each other through their ribs.
While they catch their breath, Derek noses his way into the space between
Stiles' neck and shoulder, presses his face there, and closes his eyes. He
needs a minute, and for once Stiles is quiet and patient, fingers stroking
slowly up and down Derek's arm where it crosses over his chest.
But Stiles doesn’t stay quiet for too long—that's not in his nature. "Wow, the
heat really is a gift," he says, sounding half asleep already, but not too
sleepy to make jokes. "That was even better than I thought it was gonna be."
Derek says, "Same here."
~*~
When Derek wakes up in the morning, Stiles' heat has broken. The bedding and
the room reek of what they did, and lingering traces of Stiles' heat scent, but
Stiles is back to normal. He still smells good, but it's the old hint-of-Cheeto
good that was regular Stiles. Derek likes it just as much as he always did,
maybe even more now.
Stiles is already awake, which is rare, and cuddled up to Derek's side. Derek
is pleasantly hard, and they're conveniently in bed, but the agreement was to
break Stiles' heat. Once is all it takes, and that's what they agreed on. Derek
tells himself to be happy with that.
"How do you feel?" he asks, rubbing his hand across Stiles' shoulder blades.
"Great," Stiles yawns, stretching out long and then curling back into place.
"Like, more clear-headed, I guess. I slept a lot better." His hand drifts down
to Derek's thigh and Derek puts his own hand over it and presses down.
"We don't have to do it again," he says.
Stiles squirms his hand away and slides his whole body up and over so he's on
top of Derek. Stiles is hard, too. "I know. But I kinda want to." He looks down
at Derek's chest and chews on his lip for a second. "I think I went into heat
because of you. I wanted to do this with you, before my heat. I think that's
what triggered it."
"I didn't know that could happen," Derek says. It makes him feel better to hear
that, less like what they did was the best option in a no-win situation, more
like something they both did willingly. "Did you learn that in your class?"
Stiles nods and nuzzles his face into the middle of Derek's chest.
Derek touches the back of Stiles' neck, runs his fingers along the edge of his
ear. He wants to be as tactful as he can, but there's no easy way to say it.
"Are you sure it wasn't—I've heard that an oncoming heat can--I mean, now long
before it starts do you start to…act different?" Which came first, he's
wondering. It's possible Stiles doesn't really know.
It's been bugging him a little, in the back of his mind, all this time. He's
been wondering just how far back it went, and if he'd unknowingly been dragged
around by his nose since the beginning. Maybe that was why he decided to ask
Stiles to come along with him, way back in Nebraska. How do either of them know
how much of what happened since they met was real and how much of it was just
hormones?
Stiles is pretty intently petting Derek's chest hair now but he shrugs and
says, "Everyone's different, but they say anywhere from a few hours to two
days, I guess, is when all the--" Stiles wrinkles his nose "--lovey dovey stuff
starts. But I wanted to way before that." He turns his head and bumps his nose
against Derek's left nipple, and Derek makes an involuntary noise, but he's
only half focused on that. His mind is stuck on the words two days.
Two days. A lot of the stuff that happened between them, a lot of the things
Derek did and felt, happened well before that. Which means it wasn't Stiles'
hormones influencing them. Stiles snuggling with him at night, Derek telling
him stuff about his family--that was all pretty early on. It was all real.
"I wanted it, too," Derek confesses. It feels safe to tell him that now.
"Before your heat. Before the two days."
Stiles' lifts his head and his smile is blinding. "So can we? Again?"
Derek should say no. "Yeah, absolutely."
Stiles slides down and settles between Derek's legs, and Derek certainly isn't
going to stop him. He has a serious look on his face, studying Derek's dick
like he's gonna get quizzed on it later, running his fingertips up and down the
length of it, toying gently with the foreskin. Derek feels like his brain is
liquefying.
When Stiles takes him into his mouth, Derek groans and grabs hold of his head,
fingers slotting behind his ears. Stiles obviously isn't skilled, and he plays
around a lot, stopping and starting, mouthing here and licking there and
sucking here, unknowingly making it the best and worst blowjob of Derek's life.
He's so earnest, and teasing Derek without even realizing, drawing it out until
Derek's so hard he aches.
"Stiles, enough," he groans, when he's close to coming completely unraveled. "I
can't—let me come."
Stiles pauses and looks up at Derek, his pretty little lower lip still teasing
at the head of Derek's poor, twitching cock. Derek sees the knowledge sink
in—it's right there in the way his eyes change when he realizes the power
inherent in sucking someone's dick, and how he's in control at that moment, and
Derek knows he's fucked. He's so fucked. Stiles is going to be a terror in bed.
He takes Derek in again, lowering his mouth until Derek feels the back of his
throat, and then he gags. Stiles comes up for air, coughing a little, and then
takes a deep breath, looking determined, before he goes down again. His eyes
flutter closed over his hollowed cheeks, and his pink mouth slips lower and
lower, and then lower still, lower than last time. Derek slaps his hand over
his eyes. This kid is going to kill him.
Feeling dizzy, Derek takes deep breaths and wills himself to hold still, to not
fuck up into Stiles' tender throat. A few agonizing minutes later Stiles has
figured out how to use his hand and his mouth at the same time, and Derek is
clutching the sheets and digging his shoulders into the bed. "Coming," he
hisses through clenched teeth, just in time for Stiles to get out of the way
and finish him off with his hand. The sound Derek makes is more werewolf than
human, and Stiles doesn't even bat an eye.
Before Derek's even stopped coming Stiles levers himself up to straddle his
stomach, ass brushing against Derek's softening dick, making desperate little
noises in his throat. He grabs Derek's hand and guides it to his dick, and uses
it to jerk himself off.
"Me now, please," Stiles pants, voice a little rough, because Derek's dick was
in his throat oh God.
"I should make you wait," Derek grumbles as he takes over, but he's feeling too
full of affection and post-orgasm happiness to follow through with that threat,
and in no time at all Stiles has striped Derek's chest and collapses forward
into it, gasping into Derek's ear.
"I think we should start the day like that every morning," Stiles says when
they've both recovered a little.
Derek wraps his arm around him and squeezes. "So do I," he says, the closest
he'll let himself come to saying what he really wants. Stiles smiles as he
kisses Derek's mouth, sleepy and gentle.
So that's that. They're together now.
~*~
It's obvious Stiles is reluctant to leave Wendover, and Derek can't say he
blames him. This is the best set-up they've had in a while: hot running water,
hot food, comfortable bed, no daily zombie attacks. The generators won't last
much longer, though, and then what?
"I know," Stiles says, worming his way under Derek's arm. They ended up back in
bed after breakfast. "But maybe we could stay one more day?"
Derek understands—he likes it here, too—but it doesn’t seem like a good idea to
tempt fate, and they've already burned up more time than they should have in
Utah. "We have to get over the mountains before it snows," he says. "The roads
won't be plowed."
"Oh yeah," Stiles says, deflating a little. "We don't wanna end up like the
Donner party." He cuts a mischievous look over at Derek. "You don't taste that
good."
Derek gives him a fang-filled grin and says, "You do," and feels slightly smug
about the little shiver he feels racing through Stiles' body.
It's another hour or two before they finally hit the road, but Derek feels more
relaxed than he has in years and Stiles is practically glowing with
satisfaction, so it was worth it.
They don't see many more zombies in Nevada, and the ones they do see are headed
in the opposite direction—probably to the Flats—and not easily distracted from
their goal. The few prowlers they come across aren't any more interested in
Stiles than they are anyone else now, which makes life a lot easier.
Derek, though, is more interested in Stiles than ever, and Stiles is a horny
little thing even when he isn't in heat, curious and eager to do more, try
different things, learn his way around sex.
"You should let me ride you," Stiles says, kneeling over Derek's thighs. "We
don't have to worry anymore. You can come inside me."
They're in a run-down motel somewhere between Wendover and Reno, and it's late,
and they need to get up early tomorrow and get moving again, but how can Derek
say no?
This time it's different than it was when they were being driven by the
hormones, and Derek isn't so focused on being so careful with him—Stiles is
anything but fragile, and this isn't his first time. It's more playful, and a
little leisurely. Stiles' eyes practically sparkle with happiness, and he
grins, and laughs as they roll around in the sheets in the flickering light of
the candle.
Derek's never had sex like this in his life, like it's a joy to do. Stiles
makes no secret of the delight he takes in Derek's body, and in making Derek
feel good, and in making him crack up with laughter while they're messing
around. Before they get down to business, Derek spends some time working his
fingers slowly into Stiles' body, with plenty of lube from the purple bottle,
because there's no heat to ease the way this time, and he doesn't want to hurt
him.
Stiles does ride him, face smiling and blissful at first, then biting his lip
in concentration as he figures things out, finds what feels best for him, and
starts rocking, fingers digging into Derek's ribs. Derek watches him and
watches him, tells him how good it feels and how amazing he looks, and then
wraps his hand around Stiles' cock, nice and snug, when Stiles starts rolling
his hips with intent. He can't remember why he ever thought sex like this was
something he wasn't all that interested in—that seems unbelievable now.
After long minutes of trying, Stiles comes all over Derek's belly, squeezing
tight around his cock in a quick rhythm, and then when he opens his eyes he
blinks down at Derek, panting.
"Wow," Stiles says. Derek doesn't think he's ever seen anything more gorgeous.
It hurts to look at him.
There's an urban legend that once you have sex with an omega you get attached,
that in exchange for having their body, you give them your heart.
Derek doesn't know if it's true or not, but he thinks it might be true for him,
with Stiles.
~*~
And okay, Derek thinks later, maybe that stuff in the movies about a werewolf
pounding frantically into an omega while they beg for it is a little bit true
sometimes, too.
~*~
There's snow on the roads closer to Reno, but not enough to stop a Range Rover
yet. Every once in a while they see tire tracks, signs of other mysterious
survivors, but no actual people. No one bothers them, human or zombie. Even
abandoned cars are few and far between here, which makes the driving a lot
easier.
They barely stop in Reno, just long enough to siphon some gas and find some
food and water, get a little sleep. Stiles is obviously anxious to press on,
now that they're so close to California, wondering out loud if his dad's eating
healthy and doing his cardio. It'd almost be cute if it weren't so
heartbreaking.
Derek, on the other hand, has had to have a few increasingly stern
conversations with himself about time being of the essence. The closer he gets
to California, the less enthused he is about arriving there. Living on the road
is rough, but he's used to it now, and for all the inconvenience and
uncertainty of it, spending all day traveling with Stiles, and a good part of
the night having sex with Stiles, isn't half bad. It says a lot about Derek's
life before this that he's perfectly happy with the way things are now.
It stings a little that Stiles isn't, and he won't be until he's back in Beacon
Hills. But maybe after…maybe. Derek's tempted sometimes, when Stiles is talking
about his dad and about how much he can't wait to get back to Beacon Hills, to
say, What about me? Where do I fit in? He's tempted sometimes to tell him about
the house on the old Hale land, and that he's welcome there, if he wants.
Stiles is something near elated when they cross the state line. Derek holds his
tongue.
~*~
Susanville is unlike any other place they've stopped so far. It's not a huge
town, but it has two enormous, sprawling prisons in it, right next to each
other, that the survivors have turned into a secure, zombie-free compound.
They've got what look like gardens, dormant now for the winter, and herds of
livestock. It's the hobby farm in Wyoming on a community scale.
An actual welcoming committee rides out to greet Derek and Stiles on horseback,
like something out of the Old West.
There's five of them—three men and two women, all armed--to greet two
strangers. They're friendly but politely wary, and if they can tell Derek is a
werewolf they don't seem to care. The horses look fat and shiny, just as
bright-eyed as the people, so they must be doing something right in Susanville.
The guy who appears to be the head welcomer introduces himself as Judd. "We
don't get many new folks up here anymore," he says. "Most people are already
dead, settled, or moved on. You see a lot of infected?"
"Not recently," Derek says, and Judd and the others nod like that's the answer
they're expecting. Then he tells them about the Flats and what they saw there,
and how it seems like most of the zombies they've seen recently are headed that
way.
"If you had the firepower, that might be a good place to go and wipe out a
whole bunch of them all at once, for good," Stiles pipes up, when Derek's
finished. "I've got a plan."
Judd and a guy with a crossbow strapped to his back exchange a look that tells
Derek they've definitely got the firepower, but don't want to say that to just
any stranger.
"Let's hear the plan," one of the women says, giving Stiles a somewhat
skeptical look. The Hello Kitty earmuffs don't exactly lend him an air of
strategic mastermind.
Stiles happily obliges, and the version he rattles off has a lot more detail
now, which means he's been working it over in his mind since he brought it up
the first time. When he's done, a few of the people in the welcoming party look
a little like Derek felt when Stiles first told him the plan—slightly spooked
that someone so young and goofy-looking could so shrewdly plan a mass
extermination.
"He's a cop's kid," Derek says, lest these nice people think Stiles is a
budding serial killer.
"Sounds like a damn good plan, though," Judd says after a moment, resting his
forearm on the horn of his saddle and leaning on it. He gives Stiles a nod of
approval. "You fellas interested in helping?"
"We can't," Derek says, a little regretfully. He wouldn't mind watching all
those zombies burn. "We're trying to beat the snow."
Judd's eyebrows go up. "Where you headed?"
"Beacon Hills," Stiles says, before Derek can stop him. These people seem okay,
but Derek wasn't the most trusting person even before the sickness. He'd prefer
not to give people they don't know any information.
"Good luck with that," the guy with the crossbow snorts, and Stiles pales.
"What's that mean?" Derek asks, a little too sharply.
"Sealed up," Judd says, pushing his hat back to scratch his forehead with his
thumbnail. "Has been since the sickness started. There's a militia in charge,
is what I hear. No one in or out unless they say it's okay. They got every road
into the town blocked off. We had a fella here who was kind of a troublemaker,
and when we told him to shape up he decided he was gonna move to Beacon Hills.
He came right back with a butt full of buckshot. I hear it's real nice there,
but they don't take just anyone in."
Stiles has regained some of his color. In fact, he seems almost cheered by this
news.
Judd offers them a hot meal before they carry on, but Stiles is plainly eager
to keep going. Derek, not so much.
"Give us a sec?" Derek asks Judd, and he and the others politely move their
horses a short distance away and start talking amongst themselves.
"You still wanna head that way?" Derek asks Stiles.
"Yeah, of course," Stiles says, looking bewildered by the very question. "Why
wouldn't we?"
Derek's bewildered he has to explain it. "Listen, it looks like they've got a
pretty good set-up here. And if there really is a militia in Beacon Hills…" He
lets the sentence trail off.
"I bet that's my dad," Stiles says excitedly. "He was in the army before he
joined the sheriff's department. He would totally organize something like
that."
Derek is not so sure the militia news is something to get excited about. He's
never had the same confidence Stiles does that his father is still alive, and
even before the plague Derek wouldn't have been too thrilled to run into any
kind of militia—the history of his kind and armed civilians is a nasty one.
He's willing to bet that post-sickness they're probably in the business of
killing any werewolf they see.
Derek has always been silent, up until now, when Stiles talks about his dad,
because Stiles acts like it's a given he's alive, and Derek thinks the chances
of that being the case are very, very low. He thinks the chances of his own
family being alive are just as low, but it's not like he had anywhere else to
go once he started driving.
Stiles is no dummy. He narrows his eyes shrewdly at Derek. "You don't think
he's alive, do you? You don't believe me."
"I think there's a good chance a lot of people in Beacon Hills are gone," Derek
says carefully, trying to be gentle about it. "I think it's a good idea to be
cautious." To not get your hopes up is what he means, but it's far too late for
that, really. Stiles' hopes have been through the roof this whole time.
There's no way to be gentle enough, though. Stiles looks utterly betrayed by
Derek's lack of faith in Sheriff Stilinski. Derek stares at him for a moment,
but Stiles doesn't say anything else, just nudges a rock around with the toe of
his boot. Derek turns and walks over to the welcoming committee.
"Thanks, but we're gonna keep going," Derek tells Judd. "We've got people
there. Or had people, anyway. We gotta at least try."
"Fair enough," Judd says, nodding. "Don't dawdle, though. You get there and
they won't take you in, you can always come back, but you'll be racing the
snow."
"I know," Derek says. Behind him, he hears the truck door open and close.
Stiles is ready to leave. "Listen, if Beacon Hills pans out, we might come back
next summer, if we can, bring some more people, take a trip out to the Flats."
If Stiles' militia theory is right, maybe they can form an alliance with these
people and wipe those fuckers on the Flats off the face of the Earth.
"Hell yeah. Go out to the Flats and burns us some zombies," the crossbow guy
says, sounding like he's ready to go right now. One of the women gives him a
fond look.
Judd tips his hat at Derek before they leave, and sincerely wishes them luck.
If Beacon Hills isn't an option, maybe they will come back here, where
civilization seems to be gaining a little ground again.
Things are quiet in the truck as they leave Susanville, cruising slowly past
another mounted patrol that waves them through the city limits. Stiles doesn’t
play music, or read out loud. Derek hates every blessedly silent second of it.
"I'm just trying to be realistic," Derek says after a while. "I hope everyone's
fine, but you never know."
"Well, at least I'll know for sure soon," Stiles says. His voice is flat, that
little spark of positivity he's had in him this whole time snuffed out. Derek
feels like shit for doing that to him, but Stiles needs to face reality.
Stiles is mostly silent after that as the truck winds its way through the
hills. He's probably mad at Derek, and Derek feels bad about that, but he was
just trying to temper his hope. If the sheriff really is dead, Stiles is in for
a big letdown, so big Derek can barely stand to contemplate it.
The sheriff might actually be dead and if that's the case Derek will be there
to see Stiles find that out, and for the days after that, too, when Stiles is
broken and grieving. A sixteen year old kid with no parents.
"I bet he's fine," Derek says, giving the back of Stiles' neck a reassuring
squeeze, because he suddenly wants to believe that. He wants to believe it just
as fiercely as Stiles does.
~*~
According to Stiles' scribbles, it's two hundred and fifty-five miles from
Susanville to Beacon Hills, a distance they can make easily by the end of the
day if the roads are clear—which Judd seems to think they are—and their luck
holds.
Their luck doesn't hold. An hour outside of Susanville it starts to snow.
It's not too worrying at first. What's already on the roads isn't very deep,
and the snowfall isn't particularly heavy, but it does slow them down a little.
Derek doesn't actually have much experience driving in the snow—he never had a
car in New York—so he's probably being overly cautious, but the road's twisty,
steep and only two lanes wide in some places. They've come too far to get
careless now. Stiles, without being told, turns off the music so Derek can
concentrate on driving.
The snow doesn't stop, though. It just comes down and down and down, and the
road in front of them transforms into a featureless expanse of unbroken white.
It's impossible to tell exactly where the edge of the pavement is, so Derek
tries his best to keep the truck in the middle of what he thinks is the road.
He's regretting those jokes they made about the Donner party.
As the snow continues to fall and the light starts to fade, they still have a
hundred miles to go, and Derek knows they aren't going to make it to Beacon
Hills tonight. The visibility is shit, and his shoulders are so tense he thinks
he can hear them creaking when he moves his arms. Eventually, when they drift
too far over and the tires on Stiles' side drop off the shoulder, Derek
wrenches the truck back onto the road and carefully hits the brakes.
"We're gonna have to stop for the night," he says as he puts the truck in park.
Stiles doesn't take the news well. He holds up the map he's had in the lap for
the last several hours while he carefully ticked off the miles. "We're so
close!" he protests. "Derek, c'mon. We can't stop now!"
"It's not safe," Derek says. He lets go of the steering wheel and rolls his
shoulders, cracks his neck, flexes his stiff hands. His heart's still pounding
from the close call. "I can't see where I'm going. We have to wait 'til it's
light."
For a moment Stiles looks like he's tempted to get out and start walking, but
then he slumps and says, "We're so close." His eyes actually well with tears
and Derek feels something akin to panic at the thought of making Stiles cry.
Fuck it, he thinks, he'll keep driving. He'll carry Stiles on his back if he
has to, anything to keep him happy.
Luckily, before Derek can actually do anything that stupid, Stiles takes an
unsteady breath and swipes at his eyes with his sleeve. "Sorry," he says,
sniffling. "I'm being dumb."
"No you're not," Derek says, and uses his own sleeve to help, even though he
doesn't see any actual tears on Stiles' face. "I know you're anxious to get
home. But if we go in the ditch, we're fucked."
"I know," Stiles says, nodding. He smells miserable.
Derek unbuckles Stiles' seat belt so he can pull him into an awkward hug across
the console. Stiles comes willingly, and hides his face in Derek's shoulder for
a minute while Derek rubs his back.
"We'll sleep a little, and as soon as the sun starts to come up, we'll get
moving again," Derek promises. They'll hopefully drive out of the snow before
too long—it almost never snows down in Beacon Hills, and they're steadily
losing elevation as they drive. When Stiles doesn't say anything, Derek plays
his trump card: "I've got peanut butter cups."
Stiles' reaction is immediate. He stiffens in Derek's arms and practically
yells, "What? Since when?" He untangles himself and sits back in his seat. His
expression is outraged. Derek tries not to laugh.
"Since Nebraska," Derek says, and then barely ducks his head out of the way in
time when Stiles starts thwapping him with the rolled up map.
"You know those are the Holy Grail of post-apocalypse candy finds," Stiles
accuses, after Derek wrests the map away from him. It's got a big tear in it
now, but it doesn't really matter. "I can't believe you didn't tell me."
"I've been saving them for a special occasion," Derek says. They both look out
the window, trying to decide if being stranded in the snow constitutes a
special occasion.
"Eh," Stiles says with a shrug. "Close enough."
The peanut butter cups are a little dry and old, but it still taste plenty
good. Derek and Stiles curl up together under their blankets in the dark and
split the pack, each taking one. Stiles eats his in small bites, savoring it;
this might be the last peanut butter cup in the country. His mouth still tastes
like peanut butter when he kisses Derek.
The kissing goes on for a bit as the snow continues to fall outside. When
Stiles' hands start wandering around under Derek's clothes, Derek rolls him
onto his back and climbs on top of him. Maybe it's selfish, but Derek's glad
for just one more night together. Whatever's waiting for them in Beacon Hills
probably isn’t going to be pleasant for either of them. Hell, the militia might
shoot Derek on sight.
It's too cold to get naked, so they settle for sticking their hands down each
other's pants. Derek comes first, biting softly at Stiles' bared neck, sliding
slick and dirty through his clenched fingers. It takes longer for Stiles,
because Derek draws it out for a while, thinking this might be it, this might
be the last time he can touch Stiles like this, and listen to him whimper his
name. It might be the last time Stiles snuggles up to him after sex, sleepy and
relaxed. It might be the last time Stiles is Derek's little spoon.
Derek burrows his face down into the space between Stiles' neck and the pillow.
It's a long time before he falls asleep.
~*~
The road into Beacon Hills is barricaded, as promised, and there are armed
sentries waiting behind a jerry-rigged gate. They lift their guns to their
shoulders as Derek brings the truck to a stop. Stiles is already scrabbling at
the door, but Derek grabs his jacket collar and holds tight until Stiles stops
and looks at him.
"Slow," Derek says firmly. "They're probably trigger-happy."
"Okay," Stiles says, swallowing hard, but his eyes keep flicking away and he's
tense as a piano wire.
"Hey, look at me," Derek says, shaking him gently, and then when Stiles is
focused on him he says, "Slow. I mean it."
This time it seems to register and Stiles nods. "Right. Got it."
"Let me get out first," Derek says. If they're going to shoot on sight, Derek
has a better chance of surviving it, unless they've got wolfsbane bullets. He
really hopes they don’t have wolfsbane bullets.
Slowly, very slowly, Derek opens his door and gets out with his hands raised.
No one shoots him immediately, which is slightly shocking.
"We're not armed," he calls, which is essentially true. Derek's always armed,
and Stiles' bat is in the back as usual, but they look unarmed anyway.
He hears Stiles get out on the other side and say, "Please don't shoot me. I'm
too young to die."
There's a moment of tense silence and then one of the sentries says, "Stiles?"
and Stiles says, "That's me!" and Derek hears someone else say, "Holy shit! Let
'em in! Someone call Sheriff Stilinski!"
Stiles hears it and he drops his hands to grab at the truck door like he needs
it to stay upright. Derek lowers his own hands and walks around the front of
the truck, watching the gate out of the corner of his eye, but the sentries
don't take exception. They're too busy scrambling to get the gate open and
talking amongst themselves.
"My dad's still alive?" Stiles asks, but Derek isn't sure the sentries hear
him. His voice is a hoarse croak and they're too far away, and human. Derek
puts his hand on Stiles' shoulder. Stiles grabs a fistful of Derek's shirt,
twisting it until Derek hears a seam start to give way. Stiles is shaking,
knuckles rattling against Derek's sternum.
Derek hears someone thumb a radio and practically shout, "Someone get the
sheriff down to checkpoint four! His kid's here!" Then, lower, to someone
nearby, "He swore if his kid was alive he'd find his way back here. I thought
he was nuts."
"Your dad's alive," Derek says to Stiles, and Stiles buries his face in Derek's
neck and lets out a wrenching sob. "It's okay," Derek says, rubbing his back.
"He's alive."
~*~
The sentries open the gate and let Derek drive through. He parks on the side of
the road and they wait, Stiles gripping Derek's hand like his life depends on
it. He slowly composes himself, but that all goes out the window again when his
dad arrives minutes later in an SUV with Beacon County Sheriff emblazoned on
the side.
Stiles flies out of the truck and into his dad's arms, and there are more
tears, some of them from the bystanders. Derek looks away, toward the trees
next to the road, and blinks until his own eyes stop watering.
Sheriff Stilinski looks older and more haggard than Derek remembers, but of
course it's been five years and a zombie plague since they've seen each other.
Once everyone regains their composure, Derek gets out of the truck but stays
near it, staring at the asphalt, feeling awkward. He doesn't want to intrude on
their moment.
He hears Stiles ask about Scott, and get an affirmative answer, and there are a
few more tears from Stiles. Then Stiles asks about a few more people, some he's
never mentioned to Derek, and not all of the news is good, but he handles it
well. Finally, Derek dares to look over at them again.
Stiles senses it, and turns to wave him on over.
"Dad, you remember Derek Hale?" he says. When Derek gets close enough, Stiles
grabs his arm and pulls him even closer, then slips his hand into Derek's,
which isn't a good idea in front of his dad, Derek thinks. Civilization may be
in tatters, but he's guessing the rules still apply in a town run by Sheriff
Stilinski, especially any rules in relation to his underage son.
"Of course," the sheriff says, not missing the handholding, but not saying
anything about it, either. "Thank you for helping him get back home."
He holds out his hand to shake Derek's free one, an act that feels foreign and
quaint—Derek hasn't shaken hands with anyone since before the sickness, and had
pretty much forgotten people did that kind of thing. The sheriff has a firm
grip, but his hand is trembling a little.
"No problem," Derek says. He wants to say that Stiles helped him as much as he
helped Stiles, maybe even more, but he gets flustered and holds his silence
instead.
"We ran into each other in Nebraska, isn't that crazy?" Stiles tells his dad.
"He was coming here, too, so we—" Stiles abruptly goes silent, looking abashed.
He's just remembered that Derek was coming here for a reason, too. Derek had
family here, too. "The Hales?" Stiles asks the sheriff, face so hopeful it
makes Derek ache. "Are they…?"
Derek knows the news isn't good, because the sheriff's face takes on an
expression he recognizes instantly, sympathetic and paternal. The last time
Derek saw that expression, most of his family had just burned to ashes.
"I'm sorry," the sheriff says to Derek. "Not all of them made it through the
sickness." Not all? But some? "We put everyone we could in quarantine, trying
to stop it—" he starts to explain.
"Who's left?" Derek asks, cutting to the chase.
"Cora and Laura are fine," the sheriff says, and Derek's knees almost buckle.
It's so astonishing he can barely comprehend it. He fully expected Sheriff
Stilinski to say no one. He never really thought he'd get a happy ending, too.
Laura and Cora are fine.
"Peter?" Derek asks, his voice not quite steady.
The sheriff shakes his head sadly. "He's around here somewhere, but..."
"He's a prowler," Derek guesses. Figures. Derek's mom always said he'd end up
no good.
"He's the only infected still left in the town," the sheriff says. "Your
sisters have been trying to find him for months." Kill him, he means. "He's
wily, especially for a prowler."
"That's Peter for you," Derek says though a watery laugh, and realizes he's
still holding Stiles' hand, clinging to it, really. He should let go, because
he shouldn't be doing this in front of everyone, but he can't make his fingers
unclench.
"I’m sorry," Stiles says, soft, and hugs Derek, who lets himself hug back
tightly for a few seconds before he composes himself. He sees the sheriff's
eyebrows twitch up, and knows there are going to be a lot of questions later.
"It's okay, Stiles. I'm good," Derek says into Stiles' hair. He's better than
good. "Laura and Cora—" He can't finish the sentence without embarrassing
himself.
"They'll sure be glad to see you," the sheriff says to Derek. He gives him an
encouraging smile, like he somehow knows Derek needs to be reassured. Then
again, he's Stiles' dad, so maybe he does know. Maybe reading Derek like a book
is a family trait.
"I should go find them," Derek says, because Stiles is still trying to squeeze
all the air out of him. When he finally eases up a little, Derek sees the look
on Stiles' face, like he's torn between going with Derek and staying with his
dad, so he makes it easy. He drops Stiles' hand and turns toward the truck and
says, "I'll get your stuff."
He doesn't want Stiles to ever have to choose between him and his dad. Of
course, that might not even be a problem—Stiles' dad might make that choice for
him. Stiles is just a kid, and there's a chance his dad won't let this
continue.
He makes it to the truck before he hears Stiles say, "Just a sec," and trot
after him.
Derek opens the back and starts digging through the stuff in there for
everything that belongs to Stiles. His backpack, his bat, his books. The ugly
blanket that's technically Stiles' even though they've been using them all
together. The stupid boob mug rolls into view and Derek hastily covers it up
with his pillow. He does not want the sheriff to see that.
Everything smells like them, the both of them together, and when Derek yanks on
a blanket he gets a faint, lingering whiff of what Stiles smelled like when he
was in heat. It makes his stomach swoop.
He turns around and there's Stiles himself just inches away, looking unsure as
Derek hands him his backpack, which he slings over his shoulder. After a
moment's hesitation, Stiles reaches past Derek into the truck and picks up the
bat, but ignores the blanket. He's probably got his own at home. He's going
back to his old house, all of his things that were there when he left for what
was supposed to be just a week. Everything Derek owns is in this truck.
"You're not ditching me, are you?" Stiles asks, mouth curved up at the corner
like he's teasing, but there's an undercurrent of anxiety in this voice and he
smells nervous.
"You have a lot to talk to your father about," Derek says carefully, aware that
they're being watched. He never said a word to Stiles about his vague plans for
their life once they reached Beacon Hills, and he's not going to start now.
Everything that happens next is up to Stiles and his dad.
Stiles looks annoyed by that answer. "Yeah, well, fuck you, I'm not doing it
alone," he says.
Derek tips his head back to look at the sky and groans. It might sound a little
like a whine. Stiles telling his dad the details—hopefully not all of the
details, please God—is an uncomfortable enough thought as it is, but to
actually be there for it? Agony.
He brings his gaze back down to look at Stiles, who is looking both determined
and worried, and knows it's a lost cause. Whatever protective mojo he thought
Stiles' pheromones worked on him seems to actually be a permanent fixture in
Derek's psyche, because he's going to do it. He's faced down zombies and
werewolves for Stiles, and he'll do this, too, even though the sheriff is about
three times scarier. Derek's going to try his damnedest to win him over,
though.
"Okay," he tells Stiles. "You're right."
Stiles' shoulders drop about two inches as he relaxes. "Damn straight I am. You
break it, you bought it," he says cheerfully and Derek cringes inside.
"I didn't break you," he hisses, darting a glance over at Stiles' dad, who is
watching them, his thumbs hooked over his gun belt, face impassive.
Stiles wiggles his eyebrows at Derek. "You break it in, you bought it," he
says, with absolutely no shame at all. Derek is really, really glad Sheriff
Stilinski doesn't have werewolf hearing.
"I made it all the way across the goddamn country during a zombie apocalypse
and now you're gonna get me killed in my own hometown," Derek grumbles, but he
can feel a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and he's probably not
going to be able to suppress it much longer.
"Dad, can Derek come over later?" Stiles yells, never taking his eyes off
Derek. "We need to tell you he's my boyfriend."
"Kid hasn't changed at all," someone in the checkpoint group mutters.
Derek drops his head and hides his face in his hands. What the hell is dignity
and did he ever have any? He's not sure at this point. "You told me you weren't
going to do that," he groans, thinking now would be the perfect time for a
zombie to wander by.
"Sorry," Stiles says, sounding the least sorry anyone has ever sounded in the
history of the world.
The sheriff coughs like he's trying to cover a laugh and says, "Sure. Seven
o'clock. And as long as he's there, we can talk about how much I appreciate him
volunteering for night patrol duty."
Derek lifts his head and glares at Stiles. One of the guys clustered near the
gate snickers.
Stiles looks sufficiently contrite for a second before he rallies. He smiles at
Derek and says, "Awesome."
"You're impossible," Derek tells him, but that only makes Stiles puff up with
pride, rocking back on his heels and grinning. Derek gives in and grins back,
feeling only slightly ridiculous.
"Stiles, let the boy go already," the sheriff calls, just before things get
completely humiliating. "I'm sure he wants to go see his family."
Stiles darts forward and grabs the front of Derek's jacket and kisses him on
the mouth, quick, then again, not as quick. Derek feels incredibly self-
conscious, aware everyone is watching this, but his hand comes up to cup
Stiles' elbow anyway. He can't help himself.
"One two nine Woodbine," Stiles says against his mouth. "Bring your sisters,
okay?"
Looks like they're going all in, then, him and Stiles. That's not as terrifying
a thought as it probably should be. In fact, Derek can't wait.
"We'll be there," Derek promises, and gives Stiles one more quick kiss before
he pushes him away. He's got family to go see.
Stiles winks at him and then jogs across the road to where his dad is waiting.
Derek gets in the Range Rover and starts the engine, waving to Stiles as he and
his dad pull away. He takes a deep breath, lets it out.
They did it. They made it.
The End
End Notes
     You can find my transformative works policy (podfics, translations,
     etc) for my stories here_in_my_AO3_profile.
  Works inspired by this one
      [Podfic]_Come_with_Me_and_Walk_the_Longest_Mile by readbythilia_(thilia)
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