
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/8416240.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      Gen, M/M
  Fandom:
      Teen_Wolf_(TV), The_Blue_Lagoon_(1980)
  Relationship:
      Derek_Hale/Stiles_Stilinski
  Character:
      Derek_Hale, Stiles_Stilinski, Peter_Hale, Cora_Hale, Laura_Hale, Sheriff
      Stilinski, Claudia_Stilinski, Scott_McCall, Melissa_McCall, Papa_Hale,
      Talia_Hale, OMC_(James_Hale)
  Additional Tags:
      Growing_Up_Together, Alternate_Universe_-_Shipwrecked, Cousins, Friends
      to_Lovers, Romance, Sheriff_Stilinski's_Name_is_John, Alive_Hale_Family,
      Character_Death_Is_Not_Sterek, Werewolves, Puberty, Hate_Sex,
      Masturbation, The_Hate_Sex_IS_Masturbation, Wet_Dream, Wolf_Puberty, if
      that's_even_a_thing, Slow_Burn, Minor_Character_Death, Near_Death
      Experiences, Skeletons, Survival_Horror, Spark_Stiles_Stilinski, Happy
      Ending, Shapeshifting, Alive_Claudia_Stilinski, Stiles_has_a_bat, Angst,
      Body_Horror, Wolfsbane, Medical_Jargon, First_Kiss, Alternate_Universe_-
      Victorian, Stiles_Has_Panic_Attacks, Sexual_Tension, Sexual_Frustration,
      Stiles_Stilinski_is_Derek_Hale's_Anchor, Mutual_Pining, Anachronistic,
      But_so_is_The_Blue_Lagoon_so, Slight_Creeper_Derek, Kissing, First_Time,
      Frottage, Oral_Sex, Sex_In_A_Cave
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-10-30 Updated: 2017-08-22 Chapters: 13/22 Words: 28365
****** Oh My God, It's a Sterek Blue Lagoon AU ******
by PJVilar
Summary
     Young Stiles, his cousins and his uncle by marriage make the passage
     by ship back to his home in America. After the ship is destroyed in a
     storm, he, Derek and Peter survive together in a strange new world.
Notes
     Oh my God, yes, see the title. Updates about once a week. Eventual
     teenaged love and love making, but not for many chapters. Eventual
     character death, not Sterek, will add at that chapter. Tags will be
     added as chapters are added and the rating will ultimately be
     explicit.
     This will be a long haul so any comments, kudos or cheering on are
     very, very appreciated. THANK YOU.
     In the original Blue Lagoon novel and the film adaptation, the
     children are marooned somewhere in the Pacific Islands en route to
     San Francisco from Australia. Here, Derek and Stiles come ashore
     somewhere in the Caribbean enroute to New York from England. More
     specifics will be revealed about the island as the story progresses.
     Stiles is 9, Cora is 7 and Derek is 11 as our story begins.
***** Shipwreck *****
Chapter Summary
     In which life changes unexpectedly.
Newcastle Port disappears from view and the ship now has no company but for an
overcast sky and an endless sea. Stiles searches the mist for birds and finds
nothing. They are probably blotted out by the clouds.
The three of them stand together on the deck of the ship, their faces dampening
with spray each time the wind kicks up. Cora is on his left, wide-eyed. Her
hand is clasped in his. On her other side, Derek stands with his arm around
her, frowning in the direction of their lost home. Peter beckons them three
times before they finally go below to their cabin.
It’s strange to think they’re on a ship when they’re in the cabin; it’s more
like a lavish hotel room. At least that’s what Derek says. He’d traveled a
little with his parents, before. The only time Stiles had traveled was to make
the trip from Maine to stay with Derek’s family. Before. Stiles can feel the
soft swell of the ocean beneath his feet from time to time but until those
shifts happen it just seems like they’re in a beautiful suite with soft linens
and pastel walls. The sad, hollow feeling of where they aren’t and who isn’t
there echoes through the quiet room, as they try to sleep.
When he wakes again, he’s already on his feet, in his nightclothes. Derek tugs
him along in a dead run, the sound of breaking timber left in their wake. Peter
is so frantic when he finds them, Stiles could swear his eyes are red against
the churning blackness of the sky and the sea. 
They’re on their little stolen rowboat for a day and a night and day. Possibly
another night and day, because Stiles isn’t sure when he sleeps. There’s bits
of food and then none. There’s no water. There’s Peter assuring Derek that he
got Cora into one of the first emergency boats out with the women and children.
There’s Derek, sunlit and staring out at the endless sea. It’s blue now, and
his hand rests on top of Stiles’.
He doesn’t remember seeing the island, the way Derek tells it to him later. He
only remembers being knees in the sand, Peter thumping on his back to spit the
last of the seawater out, and they’re alive. They’re alive.
*
Peter kills what he says is a rabbit and then two birds he calls pheasants but
Derek isn’t so sure. He helps Derek drag large tree branches to tip against
each other while Stiles happily fulfills the request to bring back smaller
sticks for kindling. Stiles could look for sticks for hours. It distracts him
and often they need to distract him from the nightmare they’ve found themselves
in.
It’s Stiles who finds the iselet, like a speck of sand amidst the ever-
shimmering blue and green tumult of the sea. 
It’s funny, the first thing Derek finds at all funny since they were
shipwrecked, that he and Peter, two werewolves with supposedly keener senses,
never even noticed there was more land on the horizon but Stiles did. But then,
that’s Stiles.
He finds things.
He found the first of the three trunks that had washed ashore, leading Peter to
search extensively along the shoreline and drag two more back. Derek figured
out how to crack the lock on the first with a sharp downward thrust of a black
stone. The look of pride on Stiles' and Peter’s faces made him think for a
moment he was glad he hadn’t gone down with the ship.
It was Stiles who said they’d find Cora, over and over again, until Derek
threatened him with that same rock, shaking in rage and shame. Stiles had
fallen back into the sand, dread on his face and for a moment Derek nearly ran,
but no. He didn’t know what else was living there with them yet, didn’t know if
he’d come back alive if he ran.
Honestly, he didn’t care that much, except for how much Stiles had already
lost. His mother so ill, being sent to stay with the Hales, and now this. Derek
had his own losses, of course, but somehow Stiles' seemed worse. So he sat and
scowled at the water’s edge instead, pretending not to hear Peter’s
schoolmaster-like instructions to Stiles on building the fire, cooking their
small game enough not to get sick from it, how to tamp the fire down enough to
safely sleep on the sand together, a lump of three shivering souls once Derek
got past his own mistakes, and joined them.
Stiles finds things but Peter comes across the lagoon a few days in, which
saves them in many ways. They’ve found wood and things to hunt, a couple of
trees with fruits that Stiles devours and Derek gags down for his own good. But
freshwater and all the life inside it, easily caught and easily prepared, it
saves them. They have enough stability and strength now to build shelter. 
It’s slow going at first. Stiles is nine and lost and hungry but his energy
rises -- alarmingly, Derek sometimes thinks with a smile -- whenever he is put
to a task. Peter is a natural teacher but hardly a master builder and gets so
frustrated with his own fumbling attempts at construction that he forgets to
give Stiles anything to do, which ends poorly.
Derek learns to bridge them, his uncle and his cousin. Eventually it is second
nature to him to check on Stiles’ progress sifting through the trunks, laying
out things like dry tack and photographs to warm in the sun on leaves wide as
his mother’s serving platters; then to move back to Peter with handfuls of
Stiles’ discoveries -- bolts, tallow -- and in this way keep them both happy.
He finds his own happiness in this mix of caring and servitude. He wonders if
this is what his future might have been like as Laura’s beta, and then he sends
that thought skipping out across the ocean where all the rest of their grief
lies.
*
When Stiles first sees the rowboat, repaired and reinforced, he begins to cry.
“I can’t,” he says. His body is still but his hands begin to shake. He feels
his lower lip tremble. The timber of the ship cracks behind him again and this
time he can pick apart the other sounds. Furniture falling over. People
screaming. Some awful low keening he doesn’t understand, perhaps the ship
falling apart in front of their feet or perhaps the ocean itself. 
“Stiles,” Derek says and Stiles snaps back to the moment, reeling and trying
not to show it. “We’re not leaving. Nobody expects to cross the ocean in that.
Not even Peter.” His smile is warm but measured and Stiles sneaks a look at
Peter through tear-filled eyes.
“No, not even me,” Peter replies as nicely as he can, which is passable.
“Stiles, you spotted that islet. I’m going to take the boat across and explore
it. You and Derek should stay here.”
The sun is high overhead, which Derek has explained means it’s early afternoon,
but Stiles still doesn’t like the sound of this, is wary of Derek holding his
hand tighter as if he knows more is coming.
“For how long?”
“I’ll be back by morning.”
*
“I don’t understand,” Stiles says. He knows it’s the eighth time, he’s kept
count, and it’s pretty certain when he gets to ten Derek will lose the false
front of an even temper. But it is black as pitch save for the full moon, so
white and featureless it’s almost more spooky than the sky. It’s the first full
moon they’ve seen since they arrived here, nearly three weeks ago.
The little cabin they’ve managed to scrounge together has open windows for now,
through which Stiles can look out into the endlessness from the mattress he and
Derek share. It’s on the floor and not very comfortable compared to the beds in
Derek’s home in Cheshire, but it’s better than the sand or the bare floors.
It’s clothes they couldn’t use from the trunks stuffed with leaves and tied off
at the ends with twine. Stiles is certain his head is resting on someone’s
stored wedding dress, which is less disturbing than the ladies’ undergarments.
“Why did he have to go all night, Derek? He could have been there and back for
supper. Why leave us alone?”
“Stiles,” Derek says, for the eighth time as well, but this time the rest of
the sentence is different from the vague reassurances that they’d be alright.
“Look. You don’t know Uncle Peter very well, I know. And he’s been very strong
through this whole ordeal. But I’ll be honest with you, Stiles, he’s given to.
. .strange proclivities.”
“Really?” Stiles sits up, the mattress crunching beneath him. He thinks he
hears Derek sigh. “What sorts of proclivities? Seances? Ladies of the evening?”
“No, not -- ladies of the evening? How do you even know what that is?”
“I reeeeeeeeeead, Derek,” Stiles says back. Derek pinches him lightly in the
side over his bedclothes, which are just someone else’s old shirt. Stiles yelps
in response and shoves at Derek ineffectively.
“You read things that don’t belong to you,” Derek says. “I’m guessing things
that belong to James?” he asks, naming his older brother. It’s the first time
he’s said James’ name since this happened, Stiles thinks. Derek’s siblings,
Stiles’ older cousins, Laura and James, back in England, heartbroken? Frantic?
And Cora? 
“Anyway,” Derek continues. It takes Stiles a moment to remember the
conversation. “No, I mean he’s always been a little odd and liked time to
himself. This has been more family time than he’s probably ever had in his
life.” Derek actually chuckles a little and it makes Stiles brave enough to
chuckle a little, too.
 “He just needs time,” Derek says and Stiles presses against him a little more
against him, willing himself to feel safe with just Derek here. He surprises
himself by feeling exactly that, just as he starts to fall asleep.
* 
Derek sits on one of the trunks outside that they’d emptied and not quite found
a use for yet. The breeze is cool and the sun is just breaking. He could hear
Peter’s footsteps when he came ashore at daybreak, several minutes ago. Now he
waits while Stiles snores, rumbling but peaceful, within the little shack.
Peter emerges from between the trees. Although he’s been away for less than a
day, somehow Derek can see how he’s changed in the last three weeks more
clearly than he had before. His hair hangs about his face, his skin is darkened
from the sun. His clothes, like all their clothes, are rumpled and worn,
stiffened in places from exposure to air and seawater.
But even though he looks less composed, less correct than the Uncle Peter he
knew in England, he does look a bit more at ease, a bit more like himself.
So he did change last night.
“Are you well, Nephew?” he asks. He has a rucksack over his shoulder that
appears full, so maybe he found things on the iselet that they can use. “And
Stiles?”
“Yes, Uncle,” he says. “And you?”
“All well, Peter says. He glances at the open window and gestures by pressing
his fingertips together with a questioning look.
 “Still asleep,” Derek says. “He slept fine.” Peter nods, beginning to appear
weary again. He drops the sack by his own feet.
“And the Moon?” Derek asks. It is not exactly proper for children to ask their
elders how their full moon went. It would be so different at home. But here,
where Derek is the only one who knows and there is no estate, no community, no
one and nothing but the three of them and the little sustenance they have,
perhaps it makes it less improper. Perhaps Derek is a little more like a beta
than he realized.
Peter runs his hand down his face but then looks up at Derek and gives a brief
grimace. “Acceptable,” he says. “Definitely safer for you two for now if I’m
there. I can’t get across the water as a wolf.” He kneels down and opens the
sack, pulling out what Derek realizes might be a coconut, then --
“What is that?” he says, just as the figure becomes clear to him. A rough stone
carving of a dog. Or a wolf.
“It’s not inhabited now but it was, once. Others might know of it. There’s -
- kind of a clearing, Derek, and an altar. I can’t make sense of it. You boys
shouldn’t go there for now. We’ll figure out something to tell Stiles so he
won’t be -- you know, Stiles,” he intones, waving his hand as if to show the
full breadth of Stiles’ potential for overexcitement.
Derek nods and stays quiet as Peter rummages through the bag, pulling out some
large, lovely shells, unbroken. Conchs, he thinks they’re called. Inside the
hut, Stiles stirs, his sleep coming to an end.
***** The Best Laid Plans *****
Chapter Summary
     Stiles, Derek and Peter, one year later.
On the wall opposite where their mattresses are kept, there is a series of
small, precise hatch marks indicating the number of days with a cross hatch
pressed through each seventh day. Two hatches through the end of a month. They
remind Stiles of the Patriarchal Cross. The day they reach a year, Stiles
watches silently from his and Derek’s shared bed as Peter pushes his
pocketknife three times along the length of the hatch. He stands there for a
moment, folds the knife up and leaves the hut without a good morning.
Peter has been speaking less and less the last few days. He takes the rowboat
to the islet for day trips now too, maybe once a week. On those trips he comes
back before dark, seeming more dour and quiet than when he leaves. He says he's
plotting out a map of the islet so Derek and Stiles can safely navigate it in
the future, but Stiles hasn't seen any such map. 
It’s beautiful outside today -- the sky is completely clear and the water is a
shade of green that only exists in this place. But the weather seems like
mockery in the face of such an anniversary. Stiles stares at those three marks,
a triple cross. It looks wrong somehow, like a sacrilege.  
He sits up and glances at the spare clothes he has hanging on a peg hammered
into the wall by the foot of his mattress. A year on the island has softened
and blurred the lines of propriety, between the lack of resources and the lack
of need to keep up appearances. But Derek’s peg is empty, so he must have
changed from the clothes of the last day or two. Stiles throws his head back
and casts his eyes briefly to God, and throws himself out of bed toward the
fresh clothes before he can change his mind.
Stiles wears what was once a man’s small undershirt and Derek’s old pajama
pants, cut down to short pants with the old waistband cut out. The nightshirt
he washed ashore in is long gone, the ghost of it still haunting their little
camp here and there as a patch or a rag. He takes a mango from the roughly
carved bowl Derek recently made and bites right into it on his way out the
door, spitting a mouthful of bitter skin into the sand as he goes.
He doesn’t see Peter or Derek but the straight razor is sitting in its little
bowl, a wet patch near it in the sand. Peter has been teaching Derek to shave
and thus Stiles has a new chore: sharpening the straight razor against a
leather strap twice a day now that two people need to use it instead of one.
It was hilarious when Derek started growing whiskers out of his chin. Hilarious
to Stiles, anyway, and the parrots who sometimes imitated his laughter from the
trees. It made Derek angry. Derek seemed angrier in general lately, not
participating in the teasing that had marked their friendship but glowering and
folding his arms in response to Stiles, say, dabbing mud on his face and saying
he was Big Man Derek with a beard.
At least Peter thought it was funny.
Peter had explained to Stiles that Derek’s body was changing, that he was
becoming a man and that he would get taller, grow hair, start to look more like
Cousin James and Uncle Thomas. And Stiles could see that Peter was right; Derek
did look more like them about the body now. His facial features still favored
Talia with her raven hair and strong brow, the incisive way she met people’s
eyes with her own, fearless. Stiles had missed his mother so when he first went
to live with them in Cheshire. Talia was nothing like his mother but he’d loved
her immediately, her directness and fierce protectiveness. Qualities Derek
shared with her, as well.
Stiles had always taken after his mother in looks and, by extension, Uncle
Thomas. He wondered what he would look like when he started to change into a
man, too. He wonders if he’d be able to see his mother or his father in his own
face, since it was so unlikely he’d ever see them again.
He takes a wineskin, long repurposed for freshwater, and a battered bucket from
their places leaned up against the hut and heads toward the lagoon.
*
Derek throws his spear and misses again, but he can see fat silver bodies
scatter in the wake of the impact. He retrieves the spear, using what feels
like all of his restraint to keep from stomping gruffly and scaring the fish
even further away.
This is just practice, he tells himself again. Time spent now will save time
later. It’s the kind of aphorism his father would use to encourage him and his
siblings, highlighting rigour and patience. It’s the kind of thing Peter hates.
He wishes he could learn more about the habits of the fish. But that’s not
something Peter knows much about and while Stiles did actually go fishing with
his father when he was younger, that was in Maine, in a rowboat. He was too
little then to remember much of the particulars beyond the joy of sitting
beside his father in calm waters, under overcast skies.
They had found a few books among the trunks. A Bible and a medical text that
has too many Latin-seeming words for any of them to spend much time with. A few
books of poetry and what looks like the journal of one of the crew. They’ve
been too busy staying alive to spend any time reading, but what Derek wouldn’t
give for a book on the plant life of the Caribbean, the mammals, the sea life.
Anything.
As it stands, the fish and the fruit are both plentiful, even if they don’t
always have proper names. There are mollusks in the lagoon that are close to
oysters but sweeter and more like meat, and small beans growing inland that can
be stewed. There is game to hunt -- even recognizable birds in the winter
months that probably migrate here from North America -- but it hasn’t been
necessary with the plentiful food that is more easily found.
There is also wolfsbane. Both on the islet and their main location. Derek
couldn’t believe his eyes when he first found it, early on. Peter confirmed it,
from afar, and warned Stiles away from it, saying it was poisonous to the touch
for all of them. Stiles had nodded solemnly while staring at the plant on the
ground. Memorizing it, Derek thought.
He can hear Stiles thundering through the trees before a human could, although
Stiles would probably be loud to anyone’s ears. He has begun to sprout up
recently and from time to time seems like he’s lost control of his limbs,
smacking them into trees and into Derek when they lay in bed at night. It’s
funny right up until Stiles’ elbow catches him in the eye.
Derek throws the spear again just before Stiles bursts onto the ride above his
spot at the lagoon, trying to get a fish before Stiles frightens them all right
out of the water.
The spear lands true.
“Derek!”
Derek’s eyes widen and he sprints toward the stuck spear while he calls back to
Stiles over his shoulder, “I think I got one!”
He wades further into the water, navigating the slick stones he knows are
toward the right of the spear. The fish is big, maybe the biggest he’s caught
without Peter’s help. It throws a spray of water in the wake of its thrashing
tail.
“That’s amazing,” Stiles says as he hits the water line, his bony legs sloshing
through the water. Derek looks back at him and smiles. Stiles winces and turns
away and Derek realizes why, reaching for the knife he keeps at his hip.
When the fish is dispatched, he pats Stiles on the shoulder, then drops it in
the bucket Stiles has brought.
“Thank you,” he says, “I forgot again.”
“I actually came to gather some mollusks but it doesn’t look like we’ll need
them today,” Stiles replies, inclining his head toward the bucket. He kneels
down in the water and begins to swish one of the wineskins about to fill it.
“But you’re welcome. Nice catch.”
They wade through the lagoon, pausing to kick water at one another. The sun
filters through the trees and Derek notices more moles at Stiles’ neck, more
freckles across his face. He is only ten and so often a silly, carefree child,
but he’s become more solemn sometimes, especially around Peter.
“Do you know what today is?” Stiles mutters. He darts ahead of Derek and begins
to scale the natural rock steps that lead up to what amounts to a natural bath
near a waterfall.
“Not your birthday,” Derek calls ahead. “Nor mine. Nor Peter’s.” There’s
nothing else he could think of to celebrate. He keeps the birthdays of his
family to himself. He assumes Stiles does the same if he even notices their
passing.
Stiles halts at the top of the steps and swings back around to face Derek,
looking down at him. “One year. We’ve been here a year, Derek.”
It is so hard to look Stiles in the face sometimes. It’s been getting harder to
meet Peter’s eyes as well. Is that the enormity of their situation or part of
growing older, or both? Derek isn’t sure and there’s nothing that can be said.
There is no likely rescue ship coming for them, no signs of other human life
beyond Peter’s tales of the abandoned sites on the iselet and Derek can’t even
be sure they’re not embellished stories designed to keep him and Stiles away
from the only safe place Peter can transform. He aches to tell Stiles what they
are but Peter said no, absolutely not. When they’re older. When Derek has the
wolf change, maybe, after the human change he’s grappling with right now.
Derek does his best to hold Stiles’ gaze, to not abandon him, and shakes his
head.
*
After Peter pulls the rowboat ashore on the islet, he pauses for a moment and
then gets back into it and sits back down on the splintering wooden plank that
passes for a seat. He has managed to keep his problems away from the children,
actually go to another piece of land to break down in peace. But it's getting
harder. This is not how his life was supposed to have gone.
He loved Cora and Derek, of course. He'd even grown to care for Claudia and
John's son while he had come to live in Cheshire but this had never been the
plan. He'd only escorted the three of them on the ship back to America in the
first place out of respect for his sister, his alpha, who had just lost her
home and most of the family's possessions in the house fire. Rumors in the town
were that perhaps they'd been found out by frightened humans or immoral
hunters. If it was other werewolves, no one had stepped up to make a claim but
Peter still didn't rule the possibility out entirely. Talia did, with her
strange faith and trust that was always limned along the edges of her
unshakeable power. 
So the family had made plans to move to America, and be near Thomas' sister as
she continued to recover. Peter was to escort the younger ones first, reunite
Stiles and his parents, and install Derek and Cora with them in Maine while he
worked on finding a home. Talia and Thomas stayed behind with Laura and James
to settle the estate and the finances, the insurance -- the less complementary
reason Talia had sent him ahead, Peter was sure, to put some distance between
him and the money.
Peter had thought to spend some time in New York and then visit Boston, get in
touch with some old business contacts and meet the East Coast packs with Talia.
It was a moment of glorious possibility, quite literally dashed up against the
rocks.
One year. They were never getting out of here and Peter's ability to play
nursemaid was wearing thin. The rum they'd discovered couldn't do anything for
him, of course. They mainly kept it in case of the infrequent tropical rains so
they could still coax a fire from dampened wood. But somewhere around the six
month mark he'd brought one of the casks across with him, along with some jars.
Cut fruit fermented within was extending the rum, and the wolfsbane he'd been
carefully distilling in small quantities was approaching the right amount.
He could leave, for a few hours, for a day, leave his senses and be free of
this horrible tragedy, too many subplots and threads for even him, so given to
the dramatic, to keep up with. 
He just meant to leave again that day, for awhile. To keep Derek and Stiles
safe while he let his monsters free and blotted them out.
He'd always intended to come back.
***** Sparrows *****
Chapter Summary
     In which a new home is made.
Chapter Notes
     Thank you all for following along. My sincere apologies for being so
     late with this update. Trump won the presidency in my country and as
     you can imagine we've all lost our minds. At any rate, it's a great
     time to lose myself in beachy fantasy, and I hope to update more
     frequently going forward. Comments and kudos always appreciated and
     thank you!
 Stiles wakes to see Derek standing at the wall, staring at his new mark, just
as Peter had just three days ago. He sits up and thumbs the sleep crust from
his eyes as he speaks.
 “Are we going to look for him?”
 Stiles can hear the wind and the surf down the shore, and the circling gulls
arguing over their breakfast, then suddenly Derek turns. His face is reddened
around the cheeks, his lips pressed tightly together.
 “No,” he grits out, making for the door. Stiles jumps up from bed, ignoring
for the moment that he’s only in his drawers, and he chases after Derek as he
continues to storm down the pathway,
 “Why?” he shouts. “We’re just to leave him there?” Derek is paces ahead of him
but turns back to scowl at Stiles and that gives him time to race forward and
around to block Derek’s progress out of the trees to here the sand becomes open
and sun-warmed.
 “Derek!” Stiles shouts. His voice comes out as a squeak and any other time he
might be embarrassed. Derek feints in one direction, then darts in the other
and Stiles has had it. He launches himself at Derek, knocking him down purely
with his own forward momentum.
 Derek coughs and turns his head to spit into the sand, but otherwise does not
struggle against Stiles, who sits astride his chest.
 “We have to find him, Derek.”
 “Please get off me, Stiles,” Derek says wearily.
 “Why won’t you talk to me? Peter is-- he’s missing, he’s--”
 “Let me up,” Derek says, looking away. Stiles complies, swinging his leg
across Derek and then sitting cross-legged in the sand. Despite his
protestations, Derek just lies there. Stiles rubs his hands across his knees,
spills a handful of sand from palm to palm while he waits. At last, Derek sits
up and leans his head back to scrub sand from his hair and neck.
 “He’s probably dead,” Derek says simply. Their eyes meet.
 “He could just be hurt,” Stiles says. He wiggles his fingers and brings his
hands to his face, then sets them back on his knees. He sees Derek track the
movement and furrow his brow. Derek knee-walks closer to him.
 “He could,” he admits. “But I don’t think so. I think something happened. And
I promised him we wouldn’t go there. I won’t take you there, Stiles, and I
won’t leave you here by yourself. I couldn’t. . .I couldn’t, okay?”
 “But.” Stiles draws his knees up to his chest and grips them as hard as he
can. The feeling of his fingertips boring into his skin staves the tears off
for a moment but still, they’re welling up and there’s nothing he can do. The
sand goes blurry as do Derek’s hands, reaching for him.
 “He wants us safe. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I want to, I swear to you. But we
have no boat. We’re not ready. We’re not--”
 Big enough, Stiles’ mind supplies. He tumbles forward into Derek’s chest,
knocking them both back to the sand as he begins to cry in earnest. They’re not
big enough, and now Uncle Peter is lost to them too.
***
It comes suddenly, the rain.
It’s happened before. It knocked down their first lean-to, their second shack.
It forced them inland and uphill and Derek clutches Stiles in his arms as he
realizes this one is possibly done for as well. 
The wind whips through the shack, rattles the walls. Sometime in the night they
make it over to the trunks and Derek manages to push them together like a short
wall. They duck behind them, still soaked but with some respite now form the
howling wind. Derek covers Stiles with his body as much as he can, tries to
stay awake and aware of the feeling in his hands and fingers, to not lose his
body to the storm.
In the quiet of the morning they find the roof is mostly gone.
The sun moves in like a cruel joke and the island is idyllic in its beauty
again. It’s a matter of hours, once daylight returns, for their clothes and
blankets to dry. So Derek, shoving his own despair deep down into himself where
all his terrors are banked, sits Stiles on the beach. He’s naked, wrapped in
two blankets, but at least he’s stopped shaking. Stiles stares vacantly out at
the ocean, placid and unmoving.
Sometimes it seems like all roads lead back to the day Stiles came to live with
them. He was like this, so like this.
Derek had only the faintest memories of Aunt Claudia to begin with, a visit
with her American-accented husband and the baby with the unpronounceable name.
That was when Derek was three. All he could recall was she was kind and so
obviously his father’s sister. That part was fascinating, seeing his father
lean into her and play argue with her in the familiar way of his own siblings.
It was six years before he met Stiles again: a sullen, frightened boy with
moles across his face who didn’t look or seem anything like the family he’d
been sent to live with.
It happened to rain in the few days after he arrived, single suitcase at his
feet and a pillow under his arm that was at first his constant companion.
Stiles did nothing then but stare at the window. Derek asked his father if
Stiles had never seen rain before but his father laughed gently and explained
that, no, Maine had rain, too. Stiles, he said, had been through so much. His
mother was ill, his father now had to attend to getting her the best treatment
possible, and now he was living amongst virtual strangers.
“You can help him, Derek. Include him. Show him he has a home with us.”
Stiles had been just like this. Slowly, Derek and his siblings had drawn him
out. A year gone he was practically their brother, just as loved and just as
welcome.
Stiles stares out at the ocean. Derek checks on him regularly, places a canteen
at his lips and is slightly gratified when Stiles takes a small sip. He has no
reaction to food, or soothing words. So Derek forces himself to continue on,
sorting out what they can save from what is rotted or destroyed. Every so often
he goes back to Stiles’ side, checks to make sure he’s awake and not shaking.
He leans against him. Wills him to come back from where has mind has taken him,
understandably, out of sheer terror.
They sleep on the sand that night on top of all their blankets. Derek holds
Stiles and for the first time since they washed ashore, he prays.
***
A faraway bird has been circling the sky for sometime in the dawning light.
Stiles isn’t sure what it is. It’s terrible to be without the names for things
or the means to find them. There are very few books here and he hasn’t really
wanted to read them except for the occasional bible stories, and then only the
ones he favored when he was small. Arks, animals. Miracles.
Peter is gone. They’re too small to go find him. Their house was washed away by
yet another storm. They’ve been living from tragedy to tragedy for a long time.
Stiles turns these facts over and over in his mind as he watches the bird do
falling loops, then ascend again.  
“I think I know what to do,” he says.
“What?” Derek mutters from behind him.
“Back at home, in Maine, Scott and I used to build treehouses.” Derek must
still be awake because he huffs a small breath at the mention of Scott’s name.
Admittedly, Stiles tells a lot of stories about Scott and the fun they used to
have -- and the trouble they used to get into. “They weren’t much, at first,
but we got better at it. My, um, my father helped.”
The bird plummets down and then swoops back up again, perhaps aloft on some
unseen current. Derek shifts around and places a hand on Stiles’ shoulder. The
tears hold back and Stiles continues.
“We could do that. A treehouse. Up in the hills a bit but near the lagoon. It
would have to be so, so strong. And lashed, somehow, to the branches. But we
can figure it out.”
“Stiles. It sounds a little. . . “ 
That tone of voice is so annoying, especially coming from Derek. The tone of
grownups, telling you it can’t be done. “Our houses keep blowing over, Derek.
Like the three little pigs. The trees could shield us from the wind, and if
we’re up high we don’t have to worry about getting flooded.”
Derek pulls back abruptly and sits up. Stiles does the same and turns to face
him. Derek looks older, and angrier. He has every day since Peter disappeared.
“How could we begin to do that? A treehouse? Peter wouldn’t--”
“Peter is dead!” Stiles yells, jumping to his feet in the sand. He glares at
Derek just as Derek stands to glare back, his hands clawing at the air as if to
ball into fists. “He left us! And he’s dead! And if we keep making those stupid
little shacks we’ll die! I don’t care if it sounds crazy, or impossible, we can
do it! And we could have gone to the islet, too! Peter isn’t here anymore to
tell us what we can’t do, Derek!”
For a moment Stiles is sure Derek is going to hit him. Derek, his favorite
cousin, his protector. And although his fists are now balled and his face has
gone red with anger, instead he drops to his knees.
Stiles watches helplessly as Derek grits his teeth and screw his eyes shut and
lets out what can only be described as a howl.
***
They find several groves of catalpa trees. Only when they find the oldest,
tallest and closest together grouping does Derek nod his head in acquiescence.
Stiles is pleased at the choice because the have the twistiest, swirliest
trunks. He says that. But Stiles liked any of the groupings, had good things to
say about all of them.
After that, his instincts are better. Once he has permission, Stiles’ natural
predilection for pinpoint focus comes to the fore. He spends days scouting
fallen wood, which isn’t that difficult because of the storms. He also
scavenges most of the wall Peter kept the marks on and he adds a couple for the
storms he can remember the approximate dates of.
“We’ll see if there’s a pattern,” he tells Derek sagely, as Derek puts his back
into tying hitch knots into thick, splintering rope. The splinters are
immediately rejected. Stiles still doesn’t notice.
 When will his claws come in, Derek wonders. When will that change begin? When
will Stiles notice?
“Because if there’s a pattern,” Stiles says, “storm season or something, you
know, we can fortify before it comes.”
“If we don’t blow off the branches,” Derek says. He tosses the rope to fall
across a low thick branch, then throws himself to the sand when it misses and
comes falling back down.
Stiles laughs, high and clear.
They get into a rhythm of climbing trees, hoisting wood. They get a bottom
frame tentatively assembled, start to put down a floor. Derek’s neck is often
sore for hours before his healing is complete. Stiles has wood pulp under all
his fingernails from scraping the sides of various branches to see if they’re
too rotted for good support.
He tells stories throughout the process. A lot of them involve Scott or Stiles
nearly concussing themselves on a branch; in one John Stilinski actually
catches Stiles in his arms as he falls headfirst out of a maple. Derek’s
favorite, one he actually makes Stiles tell again and again, is how Scott came
face to face with a sparrow’s nest. He nearly smacked it to the ground, but
then whispered Stiles to his side and they watched as the two sparrows came and
went with twigs and leaves. Stiles would have liked to build their own
treehouse right there as planned so they could see the eggs laid and hatched,
but Scott insisted on leaving them be.
Derek thinks he might have liked Scott.
It takes a month, but a new home starts to take shape. Stiles comes alive in a
way he never was when Peter was there. It’s very odd. Stiles never disliked
Peter, was amused by him sometimes and found him stern and strange others. But
it’s like all of sudden he is a grownup, or a child playing very convincingly
at being one.
They have a frame, and then they have walls. The house is larger than Derek
thought they could manage. The roof will take a while to complete. It’s the
kind of detailed work Stiles loves and Derek hates, but Derek knows Stiles will
eventually goad him into it.
“Can we have two beds?” Derek blurts out. It’s midday and they’ve gorged
themselves on jackfruit. Derek feels uncomfortably full, still. Stiles is
walking up and down alongside the piles of leaves and branches and string
they’ve gathered for possible roofing. He’s frowning slightly, tugging at his
hair now and then as he examines the materials. It’s not right yet. Derek is
more than sure Stiles will let him know when it is.
Stiles looks up at him sharply.  “If you want.” He’s trying to look unaffected
but Derek sees the gloss of hurt in his eyes. “Why?”
Why? Where to start. Derek’s body is changing, even if not in the wolf sense.
His voice makes odd noises out of his control. He knows he's gotten stronger,
better at lifting and throwing the spear when he fishes. More hair on his legs
and face. And around his. . . manhood, God, even thinking it makes him wince.
And other things are happening at night. Dreams. They’re vague, but in them
he’s being touched about the face and shoulders by beautiful women, beautiful
men. Sometimes he embraces them and they hold him sweetly in return. Recently,
in one, a boy Derek didn’t recognize kissed him and kissed him on the deck of
the lost ship under the moonlight. And he woke up to wet, sticky pants and
Stiles snoring obliviously beside him.
Why?
“We have the room, now,” Derek says. “I thought it would be nice. And you’re
alway saying I snore like a bear, like you’re one to talk.”
Stiles ducks down to hide a smirk and kicks at the leaves, then kneels down to
spread them out again. “Alright,” he says. “You have a point. I’ve tired of
your incessant rumbling. Just. . when there’s a storm. . . “

“Of course,” Derek says, and exhales.
***** Descent *****
Chapter Summary
     *Handwaves* Stiles and Derek are now 13 and 15, respectively, and
     things are changing.
Chapter Notes
     Please note Derek and Stiles are both becoming sexual beings as of
     this chapter, so if the sexuality of young teenagers is not your cup
     of tea, this is a good time to turn back. Thank you again to
     everybody who left comments or kudos or bookmarks. It seriously keeps
     me going. More soon!
Stiles isn’t careful at all. He runs from the treehouse into the jungle,
Derek’s bitter yell chasing him until he can’t hear it anymore. He doesn’t
bring a knife or a canteen, he’s barely clothed. A small, practical part of him
knows he should bring a bucket for mollusks or something to bundle fruit in but
he doesn’t care.
He doesn’tgoddamncare.
At the lip of the lagoon, panting from having run so far at such a pace, he
forgoes the stone steps that naturally descend down. In his head, Derek is
chastising him, as always, not to run so fast so close to the lagoon. He could
slip. He could fall. You idiot. Be careful.
He approaches the waterfall, the rushing crash blocking out any other sounds
around him. It’s like entering the current of his own rage.
Goddamn Derek.
He dives.
The water hits hard against his shoulders and chest as he goes in. He’s not
graceful like Derek, who can slice through air and water like a seabird going
for fish. But Stiles isn’t the flailing mess of limbs Derek makes him out to be
either.
The length of his arms and legs, of his torso, it scares him sometimes. His
body started stretching in earnest a few months ago and it doesn’t seem like it
intends to stop. He doesn’t see himself in it, doesn’t see his parents either.
Not the Hales and certainly not Derek. They’re nothing alike. Nothing.
Underwater, Stiles pushes right past schools of angelfish, which glimmer silver
in the softened light. Three long strokes and he surfaces for air just on the
other side of the waterfall, just as he intended.
In the cavern behind the waterfall, there is a small expanse of flat rock where
he and Derek have sat before in good company, enjoying the beauty of the falls
and the strange feeling of such a special, secret place. Now, Stiles strips off
his undershorts, the only item he bothers with lately in the heat of the day,
and tosses them to the side, with a squelch.
The flat rock is slippery cool beneath his back and he glances down at himself
as his breathing slows down. His chest rises and falls and the skin seems
almost like webbing over the outline of his sternum, the flash of ribs he can
see on the inhale. He still doesn’t have any hair on his chest, like Derek does
now, or much on his face, like Derek. Derek tired of shaving sometime last year
and now he keeps his beard neat for the most part but it’s a beard, like a man.
Derek looks like a man.
Derek, Derek, Derek. Stupid goddamn Derek.
Stiles runs both his hands over his face and screeches into them as loud as he
can. Then he sits up, dropping his hands. The rock is wet and smooth enough
that he can just push off and slide to the edge farthest from the waterfall,
dangling his feet into the lagoon.  His back is still shaded by the cavern but
sunlight plays lightly along his legs. He stares off into the water and listens
to the rushing falls behind him.
It’s hard to even remember what exactly they were fighting about because they
fight all the time now. Derek didn’t like his idea for another platform on the
treehouse because Derek never likes his ideas even though they all work .
Mostly. There was that sleeping porch that nearly killed them. And the
accidental war with the monkeys. So two ideas didn’t work but they have a
beautiful home and they’re safe. They’ve weathered typhoons without losing a
wall and they’ve made it two more years and all Derek does is yell at him. For
being clumsy, and reckless and too talkative. For tripping and knocking things
over and being useless.
Derek maybe doesn’t love him anymore.
Stiles’ eyes catch on the one place on his body that does have hair, a strange
spot that starts below his navel and travels into his, his place down there.
His prick, the word is prick. At least that’s the schoolboy word he and Scott
giggled over years ago and later James said it once or twice but Derek never
did. The word made Derek’s ears red.
There’s a more medical word, Stiles is sure, in that big medical volume that
they found in one of the trunks. The problem is finding it again. It got packed
up when they moved the trunk into the treehouse, had only been out in the first
place to make sure it was dry and free of mold. It seemed boring and
impenetrable when they were younger but Stiles was desperate to find it and try
to make sense of it. How to do that and not be found out by Derek was the
problem. Especially lately. Derek seemed to do nothing but eye him suspiciously
if he wasn’t calling him an idiot.
There’s some hair around his prick, on his sack, a thing that doesn’t seem to
have any purpose other than hurting like hell when you accidentally get hit
there. And then there’s his prick. Swollen again, at least partly, and Stiles
doesn’t know why. It happens sometimes, when he’s eating or waking up or
digging up greens or searching for seashells to decorate their home. It happens
sometimes too, when he’s looking at Derek. Or angry at Derek. Or both.
He gingerly runs one finger up his length and feels that feeling again. It
almost hurts, it feels so good, and his prick swells further.
Derek’s not here, he thinks. The hell with Derek.
He wraps his hand around himself fully and cries out from the sensation. His
sounds are gathered up in the waterfall and the birds above.
Derek.
***
They have a home now. Not just a shack against the elements or a temporary
measure. It’s really and truly a home.
The house is so strong. Derek walks around the cluster of tree trunks that
support the foundation. He and Stiles have been reinforcing it and adding on to
it for two years now and they’re just at the point where they could keep doing
it, as a safety measure, but maybe they don’t have to. Maybe they’re safe.
That’s almost frightening in a way.
They might not be alive if it weren’t for Stiles, and that’s frightening, too.
Stiles was stubborn and adamant about the treehouse and some of his ideas were
frankly insane, the fanciful imaginings of a precociously intelligent child. A
greenhouse, a slide from the top floor to the ground. Derek vetoed those and
Stiles didn’t take that well to say the least. But for the most part, Stiles
was able to recall all the lessons he learned about building, either from trial
and error with Scott or his father’s advice. Then he took those lessons and
added on to them, adapted them.
Derek climbs their main ladder, ropes and slats, and pulls himself up to stand
in the doorway. It took awhile to see the beauty in this place but now that’s
all he sees. The first floor has tall open windows with shutters that lock to
the walls on the inside. It lets them control the crossbreeze, and they can
shut them all against storms. There are even additional outside shutters they
can close ahead of a storm coming for extra protection, with ropes that can be
thrown out of each one in a pinch. Derek had to cut the slats because Stiles
was not at all precise with that sort of thing nor someone you could trust not
to somehow cut himself on the back of the neck while cutting wood. But the
idea, the design, the sketches in dirt, the painstaking work of attaching each
slat so it lined up correctly, that was Stiles.
Stiles is everywhere in here.
Derek itches for something to do. Strangely, life has been more difficult in
some respects since they added on the second floor loft and completed the
latest furniture projects. They focused their efforts on survival, and then, as
things became more stable, on reaping better and better results with their wits
and hard work and the materials they had on hand. Now, without that focus,
things have grown tense between them, if not contentious.
Stiles is changing. His body is changing and it’s discomfiting. Derek went
through his changes on his own and it was lonely sometimes, and alarming, but
this is worse. He knows what is happening to Stiles but Stiles doesn’t mention
it and Derek can’t mention it but he’s so curious. Is Stiles having the dreams?
Will his voice deepen? What will happen to them when Stiles is truly no longer
a child?
His single cot is kept in a small alcove off the main area that is shrouded
with lengths of strung-together shells. Stiles has a similar one on the other
side of the domain, and up in the loft is a large, wide bed meant for them to
share on cold nights. Heat rises, they’ve learned. It’s always warmer up there.
Beneath Derek’s cot is a small pouch refashioned from old boots by Peter, years
ago, and in the pouch are some pieces of wood and a small penknife. They are
innocuous enough that Stiles wouldn’t have reason for suspicion should he
stumble across them -- or hunt under Derek’s bed for secrets, which Derek
wouldn’t really put past him.  
He walks to the dining table. It’s really an everything table but there’s no
word for that, so it’s the dining table. Stiles reads his Bible there, often
out loud to Derek, and they both do small handcrafts. Sometimes they prepare
food there for drying or eating and they have some rudimentary games they’ve
made that, Derek supposes, they might have more occasions to use now.
Derek takes a canteen from its peg and shakes it. It’s about half full of water
so he takes a long sip, then sits on one of the stools and puzzles over his
wood, arranging and rearranging it in slightly different shapes. It’s been a
long time since he’s seen a rowboat, so the ideas he has are guesswork but he
needs to work this out soon. He’s fifteen and several months now, four, he
thinks. His human changes are complete. But his wolf change is late.
Peter never really explained to him what happens, only that he would explain it
when Derek was old enough and then Peter was lost to them. When he was younger,
well, it was never discussed. Never. He understood that grownups did that,
became the wolves they were all meant to be. His mother told him that his wolf
was in his heart and it would be ready to come out when he grew up. He thought
maybe his father had started telling James the secrets. James had been fourteen
when the fire happened, so maybe he was already showing signs.
But he didn’t know how it happened or what happened. Adults were supposed to
help you through it, when it was time, and here Derek was now with no adults
and no information and no pack. Peter had made it clear that an adult wolf with
no pack could be dangerous. To children.
To Stiles.
He has to get back to the islet, for Stiles’ own protection, when the signs
start to show.
His penknife scores the insides of his boat’s sides easily and Derek thinks he
can see how to attach a bench to sit on. It might be time to fit the pieces
together and then he can try to float it in some water. Maybe in the lagoon, if
he can find a way to go without Stiles at his heels.
Stiles. Derek has been ghastly to him recently. He knows that. But he’s
everywhere and underfoot and never stops talking. And he’s taller. And he
smells like. . .
He smells like he’s growing up. He smells like. . .
Derek puts the knife down on the table and glances over at the strings of
shells that sequester Stiles’ cot. Before he knows it, he’s on his feet,
walking shakily toward it. He parts the strands of the curtain he and Stiles
strung and knotted together and glares down at the mattress. It’s the same as
his. It’s not like there’s anything to find here. But he kneels down upon the
frayed wool blanket and runs his hand over the double-wrapped muslin beneath.
He lays himself down in the cot and begins to tremble -- this feels like a
trespass. They’ve slept together upstairs before, clinging to each other
against the cold, and when they were younger, of course. But this is different,
this is wrong, it’s --
Derek inhales deeply against the mattress and he smells it. Beneath all the
familiar and everyday is something else, deep like the sea. Stiles has touched
himself here, has spent here, in this bed. Recently. He can smell it.
He clutches at the sheets as pain rips through his jaw. It feels like he’s been
struck in the face with a hatchet.
He muffles his scream into the mattress, and his fangs descend.
***** Remains *****
Chapter Summary
     In which there are discoveries.
Chapter Notes
     Thank you as always for reading along.
The moon is not completely full but it’s nearly so, swollen and edged in mist.
Derek feels it in a different way, like a pull in the pit of his stomach. He’d
embrace the moon if he could, now.
The blood on his gums is washed away. His fangs retracted on their own. Sitting
here now on the deck of the treehouse, he concentrates. On the moon and on the
bones in his face. He runs his hands over and over all the places he knows will
change -- his ears, his forehead. They will shift into different shapes soon.
Bones beneath his face will shift and lock, muscles will swell and cartilage
will elongate. He concentrates on his teeth, his gums, and the moon.
The tips of the fangs poke back through so suddenly at first Derek thinks he’s
imagined it. The pain is less than the first time, but still enough to make him
throw his hands back into the tree trunk and grip it tightly, breathing harshly
through his mouth so as not to make more noise. The fangs keep pushing out and
out slowly, and stop at about halfway. He doesn’t taste the tang of blood this
time so perhaps there’s passages for those teeth now that they’ve broken
through? Somewhere in the shaving kit is a small compact mirror. Maybe he can
manage a way to examine his mouth in the morning.
Derek runs his tongue slowly over the tips, carefully, so not to slice it open.
One thing he has heard is that these are the teeth of a predator, like a lion
or a bear. They’re weapons. And they’re in his mouth. He laughs quietly to
himself. It seems so ludicrous, but here it is. He’s becoming a wolf.
And Stiles is in danger, because of him.
Stiles is fast asleep upstairs in the house while Derek sits at the foot of one
of the trees beneath and considers the possibilities. Stiles, of course, has
diligently kept track of the moon’s phases on their calendar and has made
something of a case for the belief that it affects the tides, but the
correlation isn’t perfect. Still, he’s been tracking them, because he tracks
everything. Derek hasn’t been paying that much attention, because, Derek muses
now, he is an imbecile. The full moon is a couple of days away, Derek
estimates, and his other changes may start soon. Claws, then facial hair and
then his full body.
He can’t hide this for long. The fact that he hid the blood in his mouth from
Stiles is a minor miracle. While it’s tempting to think he could just make
Stiles mad enough to drive him away for a few hours every time his body
threatens to spill its secrets, Stiles would notice that quickly. He looks for
patterns and anomalies.
Within a few more minutes, breathing deeply and watching the glow of the moon,
Derek feels the fangs slide back into his gums, curling up beneath like they
were never there. He stands up and leans his neck to one side, then the other,
hearing the crack inside his own head.  He feels like everything is becoming
more sensitized within his own body. His senses have always been strong because
of his lineage but now strong is no longer the word for it. He can hear Stiles
breathing up above him, can hear the blood coursing in his veins. Derek feels
the shake of his body’s inner workings like typhoons have been set spinning
underneath his own surface.
This is just going to get worse. So much worse.
The dirt path is cool beneath his feet as he walks. Around halfway to the
juncture he seeks, Derek realizes he’s broken into a full run. He’s not sure
when that started.
Even in the darkness, the moon lights a clear path for him to the islet. All he
knows is he has to get away from here before he harms Stiles, or worse. So he
wades into the water, tripping past the first line of shells, then pushes
through knee-deep. Within moments he is swimming, reaching for another shore,
hopefully leaving behind all the pain he could cause.
***
Something is very wrong.
That’s all Stiles knows when he bolts upright in his bed. Even before he fully
comes to, he knows Derek is gone. When he scrambles to the window, he just
catches the back of Derek jogging out of sight, heading toward the east side of
the island.
Toward the islet?
Stiles flies out of bed and pounces to the rope in nearly one leap, slips down
with rope fibers splintering into his palms despite all the oil and elbow
grease they’ve put into it. Ignoring it, he runs.
The next time he sees Derek, it’s just his bobbing head, the suggestion of the
motion of his arms and legs as he gets further and further away.
Despite the fact that he is nearly convulsed with fear, Stiles jumps in.
He counts the strokes and immediately wishes he knew how many it will take to
get the to the islet so he could count backward. The sea is cold beyond
anything he can remember, in England or Maine, or even the night they wrecked.
It is hard to keep track of his own body. The freezing depth of the sea seems
to dissolve him, consume him, until his own limbs are indiscernable from the
endless cold.
He can’t see Derek anymore. He thinks his name over and over, like earlier
today under circumstances so absurdly different that Stiles might laugh if he
weren’t in the middle of realizing this might be the night he dies.
His father is. . . at his mother’s bedside and she is pale as always. She and
the overcast sky have almost no contrast. The look his parents give one another
is painful for Stiles to witness. Love and hopelessness. The bedclothes seem
stiff and puffed out around her. Stiles. . .
. . . has his hand at the chin of a black mare, balanced on the wooden fence
while Derek feeds her an apple. James stands at the foot of the fence and
Stiles had insisted he’s not a baby, he doesn’t need James to hold him up, and
James smiled indulgently. The truth is it feels better knowing James is there,
just in case. The mare’s coat is smooth beneath Stiles’ hand and she is
shockingly calm and gentle. . .
. . .it’s the softest breeze imaginable inside the treehouse. Stiles darts
excitedly from one thing to the next, explaining everything to Scott as they
go. How he and Derek made the shutters, and how the pegs the cooking pots hang
from are anchored into the walls. Scott stops and passes his hand over the
small, carved stone wolf that Peter gave to Derek years ago. It stands guard
just inside the doorway. “It’s a beautiful home, Stiles,” he says. . .
. . . Stiles. . .
“Stiles.”
Breath heaves into his lungs of it’s own accord and here he is, knees down in
the sand, again. They’ve shipwrecked again, they’ve landed again, it’s another
memory, only--
“Stiles, thank God, Stiles.”
Derek is across his back, arms wrapped around Stiles’ chest and as his
awareness of the surroundings reawakens, Stiles feels that his body is nearly
convulsing. From cold, from shock. He was in there, down deep in the waters.
Derek is here. Derek must have seen him and pulled him out. Derek.
“You’re alright. You’ll be alright.”
“You left me,” Stiles whispers. It’s wrong. He should say thank youor ask Derek
what's wrong with him but it’s as if the last of his propriety sank to the sea
floor while he was drowning and all that’s left is how he really feels.
“I’m sorry,” Derek says and his body is searing with heat. It hurts. Stiles
tries to twist away from him but Derek just holds on tighter and they fall
together against the damp shoreline.
“No,” Stiles says, but it’s weak, and he doesn’t entirely mean it. He knows
Derek is still trying to save him.
“Shh,” Derek says and they curl together like that as Stiles gasps in more air
and eventually shivers himself to sleep.
***
The darkness has the suggestion of dawn within it when Derek wakes, still
attached to Stiles like a barnacle. He peels away as carefully as he can and
moves back a few paces, to gather his thoughts.
They are both exhausted and hungry so Derek should probably go scout for food
and how, Derek thinks, how could Stiles be so stupid as to follow him?
“How could I be so stupid? Me?”
Derek snaps his gaze up to find Stiles, very awake and pulling himself up to
stand, managing of course to trip over his own feet and nearly fall on top of
Derek. He catches and rights himself, brushing sand from his hair and chest,
and Derek is certain he didn’t say anything out loud just now.
“I didn’t--”
“You came out here in the middle of the night, to a place you have always told
me we’re forbidden to go! Have you been coming here all along?”
“No! And stop yelling at me, you idiot--”
“I’m not the idiot!”
“You almost died!” Derek yells at the top of his lungs and Stiles staggers
back. Derek feels a sick, preening satisfaction that at last he has shut Stiles
up, if only for this moment. At last Stiles is listening to him.
“I would have been fine, Stiles. I would have been here and back when I was
ready, unlike you--”
“Go to hell!” Stiles says. He’s regained himself and then some, looking Derek
right in the eye. They’re the same height, almost, Derek realizes, and for some
reason that’s just awful.
And then Stiles turns and starts to stomp off.
“Where are you going?”
“Home!” Stiles screams, throwing his arms up over his head. He looks completely
deranged, even from the back.
“You can’t swim across any better now than you could last night!” Derek calls
to him. He won’t go after him and indulge this petulance, he won’t. “Don’t be
stupid!”
“And again, I say, go to hell! I’ll find the goddamn rowboat! You obviously
don’t need me, or care if you die here and never come back, so I guess I don’t
need you either!”
The sun is breaking on the horizon and Derek looks back at the island, their
island. It seems such a short distance away and last night, to be honest, he
wasn’t sure he’d make it across. It took all the strength he had and the
conviction that he was doing the right thing. Then, just as his feet could
touch sand beneath the waves again, he'd heard Stiles cry out his name and
turned just in time to see him go under.
Stiles, who is now frozen in his tracks at the shoreline. Derek takes off
without thinking and when he reaches him, before he can ask, he sees it, too.
It's lying beneath a small copse of trees, far enough from shore that it is
probably untouched by the tides.
“Come on,” Derek hears his own voice say. Slowly, with Stiles trailing right
behind him, he walks forward until he reaches it. After a taking a long breath,
Derek squats down beside what is certainly a human skeleton.
“Derek,” Stiles says and Derek can only close his eyes. Stiles, who was
screaming bloody murder at him a minute ago, and maybe rightly so, sounds
uncertain and frightened as a child.
“It’s alright,” Derek says. It’s reflexive now. He says it so often and almost
never believes it. He hopes Stiles doesn’t know.
“Is it Peter?”
The skeleton is propped against the tree at a strange angle. It doesn’t look
like it was sitting up exactly, nor like someone placed it here. The head is
nearly ninety degrees from the neck. The bones look like sea-worn stone, or
bleached, weathered wood. The bones in the hand have little separations along
the fingers and at base where the fingers meet the palm. Derek raises his own
hand alongside it and flexes it, looking carefully at the bones.
This must be Peter. And this is how they’re made.
“I think so,” Derek says and his own voice sounds very small. There’s a hand on
his shoulder, briefly, and then Stiles moves away. He comes to sit in front of
Derek, to the side of Peter’s remains.
“What happened to him?” Stiles asks. He ducks his head down, peering at the
skull, eyes searching. Derek’s not sure how he manages to stay so composed. His
own attention is caught by the sloping curve of ribcage. He fits his hands
around his own ribs, and feels them expand and contract with the mechanism of
his breath.
“I don’t know. The neck isn’t right. Maybe he broke it.”
“Or someone snapped it,” Stiles says. He traces a line in the air just above a
segment of skull. “There’s a thin crack here, so maybe he hit his head?”
“There’s no flesh,” Derek says. His hands are frozen in midair, as if to touch
the skeleton or push it away, he’s not sure.
“I know,” Stiles says gently.
“There’s no eyes,”Derek says and his own guts seize up then and there. What
happened? Did his corpse rot or, or, was it picked over by birds, or? Derek
chokes on air, on bile, the hands of ghosts seeming to constrict around his
throat.
When he’s calmed somewhat, on his hands and knees in the sand, Stiles speaks
again.
“I need you to look at this,” he says.
Derek heaves a sigh, spits into the sand once, then again, clearing his mouth
of his own putrid fear. When he looks up, Stiles is facing the skeleton,
reaching a hand behind himself to signal for Derek to draw near.
Together, they look inside the mouth of the skeleton of their dead uncle, dead
by what means they do not know. Very deliberately, Stiles raises a finger and
moves it back past the first row of teeth. He runs his fingertip over the
second partial row behind it. A row of fangs.  
***** Loosening *****
Chapter Summary
     In which there are wolves.
Chapter Notes
     Hey! As always, thanks for reading. I do want to mention here, that
     in both the book and the film of The Blue Lagoon, there is a very
     uncomfortable othering of indigenous people, who are only glimpsed as
     "savages" as per the era. I am working like hell not to do that here
     while keeping pieces of that part of the story in tact. The spiritual
     elements alluded to here are based on Santeria practices, and the
     boys themselves are trying to piece together what things mean based
     solely on artifacts and feelings. If you think there's any element of
     this issue that needs amending, please please let me know.
     Also, Stiles prods at some bones in the opening paragraphs, if that
     skeeves you out.
     Other than that, enjoy!
Stiles cocks his head to one side and then the other, examining the jawbone.
There are two elongated teeth on one side of the bottom row, behind the normal
teeth. A space is next to it, like one might have fallen out. When he draws his
finger back, he knocks out a human tooth on the upper left just by brushing
past it. He stares at the space for a moment as an involuntary shudder runs up
his body, belly to throat.
“There aren’t any gums anymore,” he says, mostly to himself. “So. . . there’s
nothing left to hold the teeth there.” Derek says nothing behind him and Stiles
ducks down so his chest touches his thighs. Looking up, behind the scattered
remains of the human teeth, there are at least two more fangs.
He straightens up and carefully stretches one hand out to touch the bone of the
forearm. It’s dry and smooth. It almost has a little give to it, like timber,
but not exactly.
“Maybe this isn’t Peter,” Stiles says.
From behind him, Derek clears his throat.
“It’s Peter,” he says.
Stiles turns on his knees and sits in the sand. Derek is right there, so close
and pale in a way that seems almost feverish. He grinds his jaw for a moment,
opens and closes his eyes. Stiles just waits.
“Please. Please Stiles, just, stay calm,” Derek says gravely and then clenches
his eyes shut. His brow furrows and he grabs at his knees, his whole body going
tight and still. Stiles is about to go to him when Derek opens his eyes and
opens his mouth, deliberately. It seems nonsensical, and then Stiles sees them.
Fangs. Like the ones on the corpse. Reaching toward him from within Derek’s
mouth.
“What is this?” he asks. His voice sounds like it’s underwater and his
breathing is spotty but he wills himself to stay focused. The teeth are
continuing to extend, slowly, and then they stop as if they can’t go any
further. He looks up to Derek’s eyes and sees deep creases in his forehead, as
if this action has taken all his concentration and strength.
“What. . . “ Stiles tries. He swallows against the sudden dryness in his
throat. “Derek, what are you?”
Within a moment, Derek’s mouth is just Derek’s mouth again, and Derek himself
grasps Stiles’ hands before he can think to pull away.
“My family,” he begins. “We’re different, most of us. Not my father, nor your
mother,  but everyone else. Peter. My mother.” A blush begins to push across
his features. “And now, me. It just started.”
“Different. . . how?” Stiles asks.
Derek sighs. “We’re called shapeshifters. We, well, we change.”
“Your teeth change,” Stiles says carefully.
“Not just that,” Derek admits.
Stiles pulls his hands from Derek’s grasp and places them on his own knees,
facing Derek head on. “Alright,” he says. “What, then?”
“Our features change. Our bodies and, and our minds. We become, well, we become
-- this is going to sound mad,” he says and gets up as if to walk away but
Stiles throws himself forward and grabs at his wrist.
“No,” he says. “No, you ran from me once already, and now you’re going to
explain this properly.”
Derek stares at him incredulously, like he can’t believe Stiles’ nerve, but he
continues. “We’re wolves. We become wolves. Like them, anyway.”
Stiles lets go of Derek’s wrist and to his own shock does not reel back or
vomit or any of the other reactions that it seems, within his mind’s eye, that
might be rational to have right now.
“Fine,” he says.
“Fi--Stiles,” Derek says. He turns round himself in a circle as if he can’t
decide which way to go and then comes to stand at the feet of Peter’s skeleton.
Suddenly he turns and grabs Stiles by the shoulders, yanking him forward to
stand next to him, holding him in place as much as he can as Stiles tries to
wriggle from his grasp.
“Hey!”
“We’re creatures, Stiles! Or monsters, even. Peter came here, every month,
every full moon, to change so he wouldn’t hurt us. So he wouldn’t hurt you! You
can’t just say, you can’t. . . “
Stiles still beneath Derek’s grip but his body is taut. He looks and looks at
the skeleton, at Peter, and then closes his eyes. Stiles brings his hands to
lay atop Derek’s where they still clutch at his shoulders. Derek’s hands seem
searing hot.
“I can say and think whatever I want, Derek,” he says. “I agree this seems mad.
It is mad. But you are my family, and so was Peter. And I say it’s fine.”
***
They leave Peter behind. The idea leaves Derek uneasy, but given that they
don’t know if anyone else has been here and would notice if the skeleton had
been moved, it is the best idea. Stiles’ idea.
A small group of birds run past along the shore on spindly legs, darting to and
fro. Stiles chuckles under his breath and then glances sheepishly at Derek, as
if to see if his laughter is unwelcome under the circumstances. Derek pinches
at his nose, kicks slightly at the sand, but keeps walking.
“So, he came every full moon?”
“Yes, Stiles,” Derek says again.
“And, what did he do? Just run around and howl? Kill prey?
“I--I don’t really know, actually. Wolf change for us is like other matters of
discretion. It’s just not talked about until it’s time. It’s considered
impolite.”
Stiles seems to mull this over for a bit as they continue East. While Peter
told Derek of various features of the islet, he never drew a map or explained
it in any detail.
Derek thinks about the other things he could tell Stiles, long-ago things. That
his mother and eventually Laura changed on full moons but it was festive, like
a Christmas with extended relatives. Sometimes Derek and his siblings would go
along and have a fine dinner and games with one or another family’s relatives
or house staff, while the adults did. . . whatever it was they did. After
Stiles came to stay with them, it was just simpler for the younger children to
stay home with Thomas at the Hale house. Derek tries to remember now what the
excuse was to Stiles. Some kind of monthly ladies’ society event, exactly the
sort of ruse that would bore Stiles immediately.
“He was coming other times, at the end, not just the full moon,” Stiles muses,
drawing Derek back out of his thoughts.
“More frequently, yes,” Derek admits. “I don’t know why. I honestly don’t.”
“I believe you,” Stiles murmurs but his attention is captured by an opening
between the trees that seems too large to just be a natural parting. Stiles
turns on his heel and grabs the edge of Derek’s shorts to reorient him to the
new direction.
“Stiles, we were looking for the rowboat,” Derek protests.
“Yes, and now we’re seeing where this goes,” he replies, and to be honest, it’s
a terrible idea, Derek just knows it, but he has nothing left within him with
which to fight Stiles right now. So even when Stiles ceases tugging him along,
he follows.
Together they pick their way through this new jungle, and the path remains
obvious for a good five minute walk. Derek looks curiously at the plants and
trees on either side of the path, how the slender, makeshift road they walk is
dotted here and there with bits of foliage or a fallen branch but for the most
part it’s clear and the earth seems packed. Now and then a plant seems bent
back as if recoiling, but nothing appears hacked away or cleared. Not recently,
anyway.
Overhead, parrots converse with each other just as they do on Derek and Stiles’
home island. It’s strange how similar things are here and yet this place seems
to change them by the minute. They don’t speak as they go. Derek tries to focus
straight ahead and not on the slope of Stiles’ neck or the determination of his
stride. Not on the things still unsaid between them and the things Derek knows
he will soon have to explain, whether or not he can force the words to his
tongue.
The light filters in so gradually that Derek almost doesn’t notice it at first.
As the sun begins to glint in his eyes he realizes they’ve either reached the
other side of the islet or there’s some kind of a clearing ahead. Stiles turns
back to him.
“There’s something here,” he says.
***
It’s a very curious place.
There are flat stones in a circle that have been worked hard into the dirt and
fitted together so closely that they seem like a patch of cobblestone street.
Upon this sort of plaza there are three chairs. Bigger than chairs. They’re
almost like thrones, Stiles thinks. Also carved of stone. One is low enough for
Stiles to sit down in, one a little higher. The third, the one in the middle,
is high enough that he would have to hoist himself into it.
“Stiles,” Derek says, in a voice that is somehow a very loud whisper. Stiles
spins back and knocks into the side of one of the thrones, then nearly crashes
into the one on the left as he tries to escape.
“Stiles,” Derek hisses. Stiles tries to still himself but he skin is still
pricking with the shocks of having slammed himself about. He places a hand on
the arm of the middle throne and then pulls back immediately from what feels
like a spark beneath his palm.
Derek doesn’t seem to notice if his general look of consternation is anything
to go by. He remains on the outskirt of the circle, glancing warily into the
trees that surround them.
“Be careful,” he says and while that is usually the source of Stiles’ every
moment of rage, he is not affected as usual. Instead he nods back, deep and
slow, and continues to pace around the three thrones, examining them. There’s
not much to them, and yet they seem regal, almost. At the base of one of them
there appears to be slight traces of paint, or maybe a dye, that stains a dark,
muddied kind of blue.
Stiles steps back a few paces and takes in the sight of them all together, and
then he approaches Derek, who hasn’t moved.
“What do you think it is?” Derek asks, low in his ear. Stiles’ skin prickles at
that, even though there is no sign of cold in the air.
“I don’t know,” he says. “But it feels like. . . I don’t know, Derek, like a
holy place.”
Derek purses his lips and cocks his head slightly at the thrones, but doesn’t
add anything.
“Did Peter tell you anything about this?”
Derek shakes his head. “No, but he did say there was evidence there had been a
civilization here once. I was never really sure if it was true, or just
something he said to keep me wary of the place. He made it seem like maybe
people could still be here.”
“Nobody lives here, I don’t think,” Stiles says. He crouches down on the ground
and looks along that new sightline, in case he could find something new.
“There’s no signs of anyone having been here recently. Oh.”
“What?” Derek says, and crouches down beside him.
“There’s a bowl, there,” Stiles says, pointing to the general area of the
thrones. “Stone, like everything else, it looks like.”
“The little wolf,” Derek says. He puts his hands on his knees as if to fix his
balance. “Peter brought that from here. Maybe he found it near here.”
“Maybe,” Stiles says. His stomach begins to claw at him from within, and Derek
must hear it because he obviously tries to suppress a smile. Stiles glares to
cover his shame, and Derek rises.
“Come,” he says, and extends his hand down to Stiles. “We should find some food
and then make our way home.”
Stiles gets to his feet and brushes his knees off. He eyes Derek critically.
“You’re not going to run off again?”
Derek looks as if he’s about to say something, but then he only shakes his
head. He seems almost sad. It’s not until they discover the rowboat back near
where the sand becomes finer that Derek speaks again. The boat is weathered and
cracked, but it seems basically intact and there’s even still an oar inside.
“We need to talk, when we get home,” Derek says. “We need a plan.”
They haven’t really talked in some time, Stiles thinks. He looks at Derek,
infuriating and beautiful and protective and, maybe for the first time since
they came here, vulnerable. A man who can shift into a predator, a man not in
control of his own body, and that, surprisingly, does make Derek so vulnerable
now.
“We’ll make one,” Stiles says. He knows what this is, the first time he’s
assured Derek about anything. A first promise.
“We will,” Derek says and he looks out onto the lapping waves, searching for
their entry point.
 
***** The Repercussions of Restraint *****
Chapter Summary
     Derek has his first wolf change.
Chapter Notes
     Full of angst and some stretches of imagination involving wolfsbane.
     Sorry.
Talia’s wolf face was just her wolf face. Derek can’t recall having ever not
known it, or a moment when the transformation came as a shock. He mainly
remembers her shifting while caring for Cora when she was small, so Cora could
get used to it. It is likely that Talia did the same with all her children.
He can remember Cora’s small hands, smooth and plump, patting at their mother’s
face as she read to them both, fairy tales mostly. She did the voices better as
a wolf. There were times she shifted when she was stern, to make a point.
Otherwise, Derek wasn’t exposed to his mother running in the moonlight, or
meeting with other packs in Cheshire. At least one time she journeyed to London
with Peter for a larger affair with wolves from all over England. All he
remembers is the delight of the gifts they brought back with them: fairy floss
and barley candies.
He tells Stiles these stories until he runs out of memories, which happens
quicker than he would like. Probably quicker than Stiles would like, too. Derek
can’t remember much about Laura’s transition. He was younger and it was
probably kept from him and Cora due to their age and vulnerability. Maybe if
the fire hadn’t happened and they hadn’t been parted, he would have learned
more from his parents while James was being guided through his first shifts.
Instead, he has vague images that are mixed up with how much he misses his
mother. He has the recollection of Peter explaining to him where wolfsbane
grows on the island and enough remembrance of their early days here to undo the
lie Peter told Stiles about it being poisonous to all of them. And he has the
three trunks, which Stiles now scavenges for rope.
“I wish we had chains,” Derek mutters.
“I don’t,” Stiles says flatly. “So it’s a good thing we have the wolfsbane.”
His voice is muffled because he’s half in the trunk, just his legs sticking
out. He arches his toes to shove in further. He looks ridiculous and Derek
knows he should laugh and make a joke but instead the sight of nothing but
those long legs leading up to Stiles’ ass makes the humor fade quickly. He
knows he should avert his gaze but he doesn’t.
Stiles’ body has been changing. As of late, Derek has thought of him as
coltish, like the horses they used to visit on his neighbors’ farm at home. He
has seen newborns twice at least, invited for such occasions by the Kents. They
were beautiful and silly at once, glossy with birth. They had long limbs but
were unable to work those limbs correctly. Trippingly graceful, like Stiles.
But Stiles continues to grow and he’s not quite that anymore. He’s something
else.
Derek looks away and clears his throat. He feels at his cheekbones and ears
with his fingers, moving quietly so as not to wrest Stiles’ attention from the
trunk. Those will go next, they will elongate and move around. He doesn’t
really understand how but from seeing how Peter’s skull looked back on the
islet, it doesn’t appear that his bones will actually stretch and later
retract. It can’t be like that. For some reason, that calms him. It seems less
monstrous.
Stiles emerges from the trunk, throws some things to the floor, and then dives
back in. From his seat on one of the benches they keep along the windows, Derek
can see there’s rope, several lengths of it, a wad of canvas he doesn’t recall
having seen before, and a couple of books or ledgers. The smell of the trunk is
always strange, but even more so now as his sensitivities are heightened with
the coming moon and his coming change. The wolfsbane is safely in a lidded jar.
“We should unpack everything. Things could start to rot in there. I could build
some storage.”
Stiles pops back up with some sort of clamp. He is red faced and breathless.
“That’s a good idea. After we both don’t die tomorrow night, that can be next
on our agenda.”
“Listen to me, Stiles,” Derek begins but Stiles cuts him off.
"I will until you say the word ‘idiot’. After that I’m done.”
Derek presses his teeth together against parted lips and breathes in harshly to
keep from yelling. It astounds him that his fangs don’t just drop then and
there. “Fine,” he says. “I just wanted to say that once you’ve coated the knots
in wolfsbane, it should keep me from cutting through them. But if I do break
the ropes and become unmanageable, or. . . or violent, Stiles.” Stiles
continues to keep his gaze levelled cooly at Derek, but he visibly swallows. He
places the clamp in his hands on the dining table and pulls out a chair across
from Derek to sit down.
“Yes?” he says. His voice sounds rough, like he’s catching cold. Maybe it’s
changing.
“If that happens. You’re a good distance runner but I’m faster, and I could be
faster still when I change. So you won’t be able to outrun me.”
“Derek--”
Derek presses on. “I want to fashion something, like a spade, with what we have
so if you need to you can knock me unconscious. Then you’ll have time to either
tie me back up or run into the jungle.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It could be necessary. Peter made it sound like I’ll take leave of my senses
altogether. I could become wild.”
“We’ll have the rope. I can tie a good knot,” Stiles insists.
“If I hurt you, I won’t be able to live with myself. If I. . .” he tries to
make himself say it, even just whisper it. If I kill you.But Stiles must hear
it, because in the next moment he has risen from his chair and is kneeling at
Derek’s feet, his overgrown hands firmly on Derek’s knees. Derek is so startled
he falls silent.
“I won’t get hurt, Derek. I promise. Can you, can you just, decide you’ll
believe me and let me take care of you, this once?”
The pulse thrumming in Derek’s ears, he realizes, is not his own, but Stiles’,
acute and consistent in its rhythm. That means truth. His parents slyly
chastised them all about Talia being able to hear a lie enough times for Derek
to know that. It’s a heartbeat, Stiles’ heartbeat. And Derek can, it seems, now
take it inside himself when he needs to. His senses are continuing to sharpen
as the full moon grows near.
He still doesn’t believe, but hearing the truth of it for Stiles is enough for
him to nod in acquiescence.
***
Derek is being ridiculous. Stiles is certain of this. Almost certain.
It is very odd, to say the least, to reconsider his time in England and the
last few years in light of this new knowledge that he’s been living all the
while among werewolves. Real werewolves. And he has a million questions, all of
which he plans to ask in due time, multiple times, until Derek answers them.
Now, however, is another matter.
Now, he must focus his attention on the fact that he lived all that time among
real werewolves and no harm came to him. They loved him, they teased him, they
took care of him. He never knew, never even had an inkling, and Stiles knows
himself well enough to admit he is the suspicious only child of a constable. If
there had been a sign that he had been in danger, he would have seen it. Derek
will never agree with that, so Stiles simply won’t tell him.
He is himself the evidence: werewolves can live with humans, even small
children, without revealing themselves or harming them. Admittedly, he and
Derek have no clue about how that is possible, but it is possible. So they will
find the way through, because there is no other option available. Not one that
Stiles will allow himself to think about.
The other thing Stiles can’t say to Derek:
Goddamn it, Peter.
The day of the full moon, Derek grows more restless by the hour. He becomes of
no good use by mid-morning. As Stiles is considering what food to have
available -- will Derek’s dietary needs be different as a wolf?-- Derek makes a
wounded sound from his bed.
“What is it?” Stiles asks and darts to the bed.
The curtain is already tied back. Derek is lying on his side, facing away from
Stiles. After a moment, without otherwise moving, he lifts his hand to the side
of his head. He pushes his hair back from where it covers his ear. For a
moment, Stiles expects he’s been hurt, that there will be blood. Instead, there
is a sight that is hard to reconcile with reality, perhaps even more difficult
than the fangs.
Derek’s ear is growing, the top of the shell of it stretching up and up as the
shape resolves into a point. It’s a little disgusting to be honest, but Stiles
steels himself and reaches out to tentatively place his hand on Derek’s
shoulder. He flinches but doesn’t pull away or yell. His breathing is labored.
“Does it hurt?”
“It doesn’t feel good,”Derek replies, “but no, it isn’t painful. Does it--does
it look terrible?”
“Um,” Stiles says. “It looks like your ears are pointy, Derek.” Stiles pulls
his hand away and braces himself for an onslaught but instead Derek murmurs a
reply.
“I remember my mother, like that,” he says and, after a breath, he turns over
in his bed.
Stiles screams and starts back, waving his arms behind himself and stuttering
to a stop when he doesn’t find a wall or anything behind him to halt his
motion. Derek’s face, among all the other things happening to it, grows sour
with anger.
“I’m sorry!” Stiles yells. “I’m sorry. It’s just surprising.”
The bones in Derek’s face seem to be moving,or something in his face is making
his bones move. It would be fascinating if it weren’t concurring with Stiles’
breakfast rising to his throat.
He steals a look over at his own bed. Propped against it is a length of wood,
maybe half his height, that he carved and smoothed down a bit. He can work on
it more later, polish it and make it easier to hold. He can’t bring himself to
attach anything metal to it like Derek requested, but he has it if he has to
knock Derek out. If that’s enough.
He kneels by the bed and watches silently as Derek’s normal face returns, for
now. Derek has a fine shiver running over his body, like an imitation of the
fevers he never gets.
“How do you feel,” Stiles asks.
“Upset,” Derek spits out. “And like I really want to run.”
Stiles tugs lightly at his own hair and considers this. The running might
actually be a good idea, but not if Derek doesn’t return in time, or can’t make
himself return.
“We could tie you up now,” Stiles whispers.
Derek closes his eyes. “You should,” he whispers back.
The process takes hours. Stiles sits Derek beneath a tree close to the house
and then moves everything outside; they’d determined it was too dangerous to
try to stay in the house, lest Derek destroy it, or try to jump out the window,
or any number of other things. Stiles loosely ties him with plain rope for now,
just to keep him tethered in case the urge to run becomes some sort of
compulsion. He’d meant to take Derek to catch fish, or at least gather some
mollusks but time ran out too quickly. Peter had made it sound like wolves like
to hunt when they’re shifted, but Stiles learned a long time ago those
“rabbits” they ate on day one were some kind of rodent, and anyway neither of
them have any recent experience with hunting. There are pheasants here, or
something like them, and even ducks and geese at certain times of year. Perhaps
they’ll learn to catch them and cook them, if Derek needs it, so even if he
can’t hunt them he can eat something more like meat.
Derek actually falls asleep against the tree for a bit. Stiles takes the
opportunity to tighten the ropes and then bind them over again and again until
they are layered thick. He ties small pouches of wolfsbane all along them,
until his fingers ache, and then he winds rotted, frayed canvas over that to
lessen the possibiilty of Derek slicing them open. By the time he’s done, the
sun is setting.
Stiles looks up to check on Derek and finds Derek looking back at him, shaking.
“How long have you been awake,” Stiles says.
“Don’t know,” Derek says and his mouth sounds like it has more teeth, like it’s
full. There are no fangs yet but maybe something else is happening. “It’s
getting harder to stay still.”
“Hopefully, you won’t have much choice,” Stiles tries to joke, but it isn’t
funny. None of this is funny. Derek begins to loll his head back and forth like
he can't help it, and Stiles runs back up to the house to get food and water
and blankets.
Stiles keeps busy arranging these things at a distance, setting up a makeshift
bedroll for himself although it is unlikely he will sleep tonight. At full
dark, Derek has begun to murmur to himself.
“You can do this,” Stiles whispers. Derek stares into the trees but nods his
head and that’s the last time he seems to hear Stiles. Soon after, he is
humming, a mournful kind of song that has a tune and then none. Stiles devours
some dried mango and several handfuls of nuts, doing everything he can to block
out the sound as it moves from hum to whine.
Then the moon is high, and Derek pulls hard against the rope.
“It’s alright,” Stiles says, moving toward him. The air is moist, as if the sea
is filtering a fine mist to them from the shoreline, and Derek growls and his
face goes wild, completely wild. Everything Stiles has seen before and now the
hair of an animal. Fur, really, everywhere. His forehead and cheek bones
continue to stretch and Stiles cries out “It’s alright, Derek!” although
surely, it is not.
He says it again and again, getting right up to where Derek sits bound and
growling. He looks up at the moon, frantic, panting, and Stiles bends to touch
him. Derek roars then and strains forward at him in reply, bearing down on the
ropes as hard as he can. He must press hard against one of the wolfsbane
pouches, because he practically screams and then pushes back against the tree
trunk, keening and anguished. His skin sizzles for a moment and then seems to
heal itself, as they hoped it would.
Stiles doesn’t approach him again. Instead, he sits on his bedroll, telling
Derek it’s alright, long after he stops believing himself. He does this until
the first moments of dawn. He holds the homemade bat in one hand, and the
little stone wolf in the other.
***** Transparencies *****
Chapter Summary
     Derek and Stiles try to manage his changes and learn the unexpected.
Chapter Notes
     Sorry this has taken so long to update. Thanks for reading!
It’s hard, the morning after his first change, not to just run and run. Across
the island, into the water. Away forever, where he never has to feel himself
given over to the monster again. Where Stiles won’t have to see it.
Stiles is still asleep not far from where Derek watches, human again against
the newly risen sun but still bound to the tree. Stiles himself looks like a
cut rope, his body sprawled in sleep. One arm is thrown overhead and one leg is
at what looks like a painful angle. He’s on his front. Now and then his
ridiculous snore can be heard over the sounds of the island awakening. Derek
can’t help but smile tiredly at it, even as smiling sends a new pang of
distress through his heart.
Something rests beneath Stiles’ cheek, pushing it forward toward his closed
eye. Upon closer inspection, Derek can see it’s the little stone wolf.
Derek relaxes back against the tree. The skin of his back feels fragile against
the bark. It’s as if he can feel every pore and every hair on his body, too
sensitive and unprotected in this human skin. He feels the difference between
human and wolf acutely now, and yet he can’t clearly remember much of what
happened last night. It’s a strange meld of foggy pain and sharp observations,
his body going on without him. And Stiles: so, so afraid.
When Derek opens his eyes again, Stiles is sitting very close, studying the
ropes with their canvas. He holds Derek’s own knife in his hand. The little
wolf is nowhere to be seen.
“Good morning,” Stiles murmurs, not meeting Derek’s eyes. “Are you ready?”
Stiles cuts away the ropes, giving each knot all the benefit of his focus, the
tip of his tongue peeking out from one side of his mouth. Derek watches him,
embarrassed anew. But then the ropes go slack, fall like ribbons around his
body. He could rise, and run. But he doesn’t.
They stare at eachother for a moment and then Stiles rises. He backs up a
couple of steps. He doesn’t offer Derek his hand, but he waits without moving
further away. When Derek gets to his feet, Stiles nods at him once, as if to
say well done, and then busies himself with gathering up the refuse.
Derek looks down at himself, mostly in an effort to avoid Stiles’ eyes, and
notices that his clothes might be beyond repair. He’d only worn an open
oversized shirt and loose shorts, since they hadn’t been able to estimate how
much room his body would need for the change. They aren’t completely in
tatters, but there are marks and rips scattered all along both items. He’s not
sure how that could have happened when he wasn’t able to claw at himself, but
perhaps his twisting and turning was enough. The ropes could have chafed
against him, and his muscles, they might have expanded? He could ask Stiles,
but it seems cruel to trouble Stiles for his observations right now.
“I’m going to try to wash this,” Stiles says, tilting his head toward the pile
of canvas. He’s looping rope from one hand to his elbow until it forms a thick
circle. He throws that down and picks up another one, repeating the process.
“We’ll just have to treat it with the wolfsbane again, but in the meantime you
won’t get hurt by accident.” He pauses and pushes out a fast breath, as if
winded, then starts looping the rope again.
“Um,” Derek says. He feels like he ought to help but can’t bring himself to
ask. Instead, he says, “I think I should bathe?”
“Alright,” Stiles says. He throws the new loop of rope down atop the first and
remains motionless.
“I--” Derek says. Maybe he should just go. But. “Did I hurt you last night?”
“No,” Stiles says. His eyes flick up to Derek and then away again. “No, you
didn’t. I’m sorry, I should have--”
“I’m sorry,” Derek interrupts and closes the distance between them. When Stiles
doesn’t flinch back, Derek carefully lays his hand on Stiles’ clothed shoulder.
“I’m just so sorry.”
Stiles shrugs, bringing the knuckles of his hand to his lips for a moment. Then
he drops his hand to his side as his fingers move rapidly, like birds
scattering in flight.
“Don’t be,” Stiles says. “We made it. You didn’t kill me. You didn’t die.” He
lays his hand across Derek’s, still resting upon Stiles’ shoulder, and although
it is meant in brotherhood Derek feels a sting of what can only be lust go
through him, a swoop in his stomach that is like terror and joy all at once.
Stiles snatches his hand back so quickly, for a moment Derek fears that maybe
Stiles sensed what he felt.
“We’ll do better next time,” Stiles says. “We’ll figure it out. I promise you.”
“Thank you,” Derek says. He’d been about to ask Stiles to come to the lagoon
with him, to try to close the distance that last night’s trials had seemingly
created. Now he wants to get away again and examine what just happened when
Stiles touched him. But he knows with Stiles, he must be measured in his
responses. Stiles is attuned to every hitch in breath, every evasion. If Derek
runs, he’ll either be devastated, or he’ll doggedly follow.
“Did you sleep?” Derek asks gently. Stiles shakes his head.
“Maybe? If I did it was for moments at a time. It was confusing. You slept,
here and there. It was -- it looked like you passed out from the pain. And then
you’d wake up again, sort of, screaming.”
“I’m--” Derek begins but then presses his lips together when Stiles glares at
him sternly. “You should sleep now. We can clean this up later.”
“You feel alright?” Stiles asks.
“I feel like myself again. Not poorly. A dip in the lagoon would help.”
“Alright,” Stiles says. “Wake me when you get back.” He yawns then, stretching
his arms high over his head. It’s as if he was waiting for permission to be
tired and now it’s about to batter him right down to sleep.
“Of course,” says Derek, and he doesn’t wake him until much later, when the sky
is streaked with pink and softening into dusk.
***
Measured in full moons and checkmarks, they’re able to improve the quality of
Derek’s changes. It’s dreadfully slow going, both in the days leading up to
change and during the event itself. Stiles has always kept diligent track of
the moon's phases, but now Derek pays attention, too. He marks the calendar as
often as Stiles does, and can even be dragged out to the shore throughout the
day as Stiles tries to master the timing of the tides and find out if there’s
really a connection.
The first change was horrible. The second is not much better. Derek is in pain,
and bound, and seems like he would claw his way out of his skin if he were
able. But small things are different. The day leading up to it, for one thing,
is not so frightening. Stiles thinks at first that’s only because they both
have some idea of what to expect, but in the hour before dusk he realizes that
much of the difference is Derek. He breathes, deep and measured, against the
tremors of his body and spirit, throughout the day. He pushes through the
feverishness that seems to possess him and helps to carry things down the
ropes, acquiescing without much argument when it becomes clear he needs to stop
exerting himself.
On the third change, Derek seems grim throughout the days leading up to it.
“It’s not like you remember much,” Stiles says. He hands Derek a fish out of
the bucket to gut.
“And you think that’s not terrifying?” Derek mutters quietly, pressing the
knife in.  
Stiles watches Derek uncertainly as he dispenses with the insides of the fish,
tosses them into the trees.
“Is it?” he says.
Derek doesn’t answer. He’s less angry with Stiles lately, he doesn’t yell at
him nearly as much or call him names. But there’s some feeling of mourning
between them that is hard to shake. Derek seems chastened by what is happening
to him, reserved and still, holding himself ever at a distance. When he’s done
with the fish, he just nods and rises, signaling Stiles with an incline of his
head to follow him home.
That time Stiles gives Derek the little stone wolf. Derek can’t really hold it
since his hands are bound, but Stiles tucks it into the pocket of Derek’s
unbuttoned linen shirt, soon before the moon is at its apex above them. Derek
seems to try to smile at him when he does it, but they don't speak of it again.
On the fourth change, Derek holds the stone wolf all day, sitting by the ocean
and watching the water. He turns it over and over in his hand. When the change
comes he asks Stiles to leave it nearby in the sand where he can look at it.
He still howls most of the night, and Stiles still clutches his bat.
Now and then, when Derek is elsewhere, Stiles tries to make sense of the
medical book. He’d found it in the trunk while looking for binding for Derek,
and he secreted it away beneath his cot. Some mornings he hefts it over to the
table, adjusting it this way and that to catch the light that pushes into the
house from the eastern facing window and here and there from seams in their
home's walls. He looks at one page a day, as the writing is tiny and hard to
understand, filled with medical terminology he can only guess at.
If only he could share these discoveries with Derek. It is fascinating how the
human body works, all its systems and inner workings. At least the times Stiles
can understand what he’s reading. But then he’d have to explain why he was
searching in the first place, something he finds answers for around the third
month of reading.
Sexual reproduction.
It’s difficult to understand what he reads in the context of the things his
body does. Stiles has no wife; he has no desire for a wife. If he thinks about
it, he hasn’t really longed for or missed the idea of a woman for companionship
beyond missing his own family, and that is really, really different. He loved
Laura but he never wanted to court her. Or kiss her. The idea is revolting. And
then, the more he thinks about it, the idea of those things with any woman is
not much more palatable.
Oh. But Derek. Oh no. Stiles pushes the book away and pulls it back almost
immediately. There is too much to cope with right now to even examine that
thought any further. Later, he thinks. When we're safe. And so he reads on.
About a week after Derek’s fourth change, Stiles comes across the vellum pages.
He turns the thin, crumpled sheets with as steady a hand as he can, given that
said hand is trembling. There is man, uncovered, not unlike himself and yet his
own body does not make him jolt forward like this, does not make his heart make
to escape through his own throat. The skin, he has learned, is an organ. The
prick, he has learned, is called a penis or sometimes a member. Those are
things he has already learned from the book and yet seeing it all put together
on the surface of this drawing of a man is somehow very arresting.
He turns the page and lets out an undignified squawk that could rival the
morning parrots. The same figure lies beneath but without the epidermis (that
means skin, he remembers); a startling tangle of muscles. It’s hard to look at,
but Stiles forces himself to run his fingers along the deltoid and trapezius,
the erector spinae and all the rest.
“We all have this,” he says to encourage himself. “It’s just your body.”
He then turns the page and is faced with Peter’s corpse. Not Peter’s corpse,
but the human skeleton. The skull and the ribs and the joints, and there is
still another page.
Stiles has already recognized that he must show this to Derek, because this can
help him make sense of what they saw months ago in the sand, but then he sees
it, alongside the organs and the bulging eyes.
Handwriting in the margins.
***
The night before the fifth change, Derek lays on his cot before dinner,
watching his own chest rise and fall with his breath. He’s found that he can
calm himself somewhat with this. Perhaps he can do it again tomorrow.
His attention is drawn by Stiles’ shadow against the frame of his curtain of
shells. Stiles lingers there, maybe watching, and then raps softly at the wall.
It’s unlike him. Normally he would just throw the curtain aside, toss himself
on the bed and start chattering away. But things have changed these last few
months. Derek’s changes have changed them.
“Yes?” Derek says.
There’s a pause. Derek can see Stiles lift his hand to his mouth, then drop it
to his hip. “I need to show you something,” he says, and then he walks away.
At their table, by lamplight, Derek struggles to read Peter’s notes in the
margins of the medical book. The pictures are incredible, he needs to go back
and look at them another time, and between that and the realization that
reading is no longer second nature to him, Derek feels as if everything is
happening beneath a film of mist.
Stiles pulls the lamp closer. They seldom use these, their supply of oil is
precious.
“This is what happens to your muscles,” Stiles says. He speaks in a low voice,
like he’s telling Derek a secret. And he is, Derek supposes. The secrets of his
body and of his lineage, secrets Peter did indeed prepare to tell him, in some
way.
“The tendons actually stretch. There’s a whole explanation for it. I don’t
quite understand it yet.” He casts a glance at Derek, and shocked anew by how
breathtaking Stiles can be when he speaks with determination, when he focuses
his passion upon Derek.  
“But I will,” Stiles says. 
“I know,” Derek finds himself saying but Stiles doesn’t hear him. He’s moved on
to the next note.  
“Look at this,” Stiles says. “Who knew he could draw?”
Indeed, there are several small faces, nicely rendered. Derek wonders where on
earth Peter found the inkwell and pen that surely must exist somewhere on the
premises. The first face is human, the second is in transition, and the third
is the wolf face, complete with tiny fangs and brow. Derek feels a smile come
to his lips for the first time in weeks. Then Stiles says:
“Find your anchor.”
Derek licks his lips, or tries to. His mouth has suddenly gone dry. “What?”
“Here,” Stiles says and he taps at a corner of the page. “It even says your
name. Derek. Find your anchor.” He looks at Derek, expression open, perhaps
even hopeful, and Derek feels something impossible, and wrong, and very right
surge up inside him.
“Do you know what that--” Stiles begins but he is cut off because Derek leans
in, grasps Stiles' face in his still-human hands, and presses their lips
together.
***** Moorings *****
Chapter Summary
     In which Derek finds his anchor.
Chapter Notes
     This chapter is short. The poetry Derek recites is taken from "The
     Forging of the Anchor" by Samuel Ferguson. TW: Stiles has a panic
     attack, including breathing difficulty, and it is described from his
     perspective.
Derek’s mouth is pressed hard against his. Stiles can’t seem to find any air.
They separate with a smacking sound and Stiles still can’t seem to find any
air. He feels like he’s lost control of his face. He can’t even imagine his
expression; it has likely crossed over from “astonished” and “speechless” into
something that makes him look insane. That’s a good word for it. He feels
insane.
Derek does not look insane. He looks gentle and beautiful, his eyes remaining
closed for a moment as he pulls away. It’s how he looks in sleep sometimes, how
Stiles has imagined him looking as they speak softly to one another across the
house when they’ve bedded down in their separate beds for the night.
Derek’s eyes slowly open and he is still very close. His body is bent toward
Stiles, leaning far enough from his chair to bridge the gap between them.
Stiles can feel the heat of him against his own cheek, like the precursor of a
touch. He’s wearing a thin undershirt and ragged sleep pants that were probably
once very fine, belonging to some fellow traveler, long gone.
Stiles still can’t get any air. He opens his mouth to do something, to speak or
to breathe but nothing comes into his lungs. His body feels like it’s going
stiff, like a cadaver, like the bodies in the book they were just reading
together. Stiles feels his vision narrowing, feels himself being lifted and
moved. He can hear noises, thumps and scraping, and Derek’s voice, sharp and
frenzied.
This used to happen, this has happened before. His mind goes terrifyingly
blank.
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
Warmth against his back.
. . .
. . .
. . .
His feet are flat on the floor and his knees are bent. The smell of a blown-out
wick, wisps of smoke.
. . .
The sound of his own breath being pulled into his body. It sounds like the
shipwreck. No. Don’t think that. Another breath, less labored.
Stiles’ sight never actually left him but now he slowly becomes aware of it
again, like the dawn is rising, peeling back darkness. He is seated on the
floor. The table is above him. The near-full moon tinges the treehouse with
only a faint skimming of light. He is leaned back against Derek’s chest. Derek
himself might be leaned up against the wall. He feels solid and steady where
Stiles is pressed against him, back to chest.
Derek’s hands rest on his own knees. He’s not holding Stiles at all, not
confining him or constraining him. He just lets Stiles curl back into him as
they breathe.
Stiles realizes he’s breathing again.
Something like this has happened before.
***
One. Two. Three. Derek actually likes it better for himself when he breathes to
a count of five and then releases very slowly. But he senses that might be too
hard for Stiles to mirror right now. So he breathes in for three, out for
three. Every few breaths, Stiles seems incrementally more relaxed.
He is very careful not to press down on Stiles in any way. Not to hold his
arms, nor hook his own chin over Stiles shoulder. Derek remembers, when Stiles
was little, how this would happen. It was frightening the first time, and the
second, watching his young, sullen cousin suddenly gasping for air like a fish
taken from the water. But his mother knew just what to do.
It makes sense, now that Derek is here, on the floor helping Stiles find his
air again, that Talia knew so well how to help him. He didn’t understand
before, but now he does. Talia had wolf children. Talia went through this
herself, saw Peter go through it, and perhaps others. She saw and experienced
what it is to have no control over the changes of your body and how that cuts
you off from life itself.
It’s not that different from a panic attack.
Derek breathes in, and pushes aside the tremendous wave of grief that comes
with that breath. They need their families. He needs his mother. Stiles had
these as a child in the first place because of his own mother. He missed her so
much and he was alone, all alone. Somehow kissing Stiles put him right back in
that place. It’s Derek’s fault.
He can’t let himself think about that right now, about his own bruised ego. Not
when Stiles is in real distress. Instead, he says:
“This is an anchor, I think.”
Stiles rises and falls against his body. Derek thinks they are still in perfect
sync.
After another few breaths, Stiles leans his head back a bit, so it’s resting
lightly against Derek’s shoulder. He sighs.
“What is?” he says.
Derek is careful to keep his voice measured and low. Breathing together, and
the relief of the danger seeming to have passed, has put him back into his own
mind and body in a way he hasn’t entirely felt since the changes started.
Certainly the most he’s felt like this so close to a full moon. He clears his
throat.
“My mother recited a poem to us, sometimes. It was by, um, Ferguson, perhaps?”
Stiles tilts his head slightly. Derek feels the tickle of his hair against his
neck. He sounds exhausted when he speaks. “I thought your father was the one
who liked poetry.”
“He did, very much, but she did, too. She didn’t read it nearly as often as he
did.”
“Nor pontificate upon it to anyone who would listen.”
Derek smiles. That’s a very accurate assessment of his father. “No,” he says,
“but she had a few she would recite to us. And one of them was about an
anchor."
They breathe together for a few more moments, then Stiles says, “Can you tell
it to me?”
In the dark, Derek searches his mind and can grasp at a section that might
illustrate what he’s trying to explain.
“Leap out, leap out, my masters; leap out and lay on load!
Let ’s forge a goodly anchor, a bower, thick and broad;
For a heart of oak is hanging on every blow, I bode,
And I see the good ship riding, all in a perilous road,—
The low reef roaring on her lee, the roll of ocean poured
From stem to stern, sea after sea; the mainmast by the board;
The bulwarks down, the rudder gone, the boats stove at the chains
But courage still, brave mariners, the bower still remains,
And not an inch to flinch he deigns save when ye pitch sky-high,
Then moves his head, as though he said, “Fear nothing,—here am I!”
There is silence long enough in the wake of his poetic outburst that Derek
thinks maybe Stiles has fallen asleep. But then he says, “What does it mean?”
Derek can’t help it, he strokes his hand down the length of Stiles’ arm, then
pulls it away and resettles it on his own knee. “You sound more like yourself.”
“I am more like myself, thank you,” Stiles says. He tips his head back again,
further this time, so he’s looking Derek in the eye, upside-down. “What does
the poem mean?”
Derek tips his own head back. It’s dark enough that it’s like looking into the
night itself, even if he’s only staring at the roof of his home.
“It’s literally an anchor, like a ship’s anchor, telling its story,” he says.
“But what you read to me in the book, what Peter wrote--”
“Find your anchor,” Stiles repeats.
“Yes. She would say that, at the end of the poem. Find your anchor. I think she
meant to tell us, maybe before we could really understand, that the change
would feel like the ship in the poem, like being torn apart by the sea.”
“Does it feel like that?” Stiles asks. And Stiles would, he supposes,
understand what that feels like as well.
“A lot like that. And an anchor will moor you, keep you from getting lost in
the sea. Keep you connected and safe through the change, like the ship staying
connected to the ocean floor.”
“How do you find it?” Stiles asks. He sounds like a child again, almost, asking
these questions, asking Derek to guide him. Stiles hasn't needed Derek to guide
him for a long time. And maybe it's time for Derek to admit to himself that
Stiles isn't a child anymore, either. Derek's eyes know that, and his body has
known that for awhile. But it's been hard for his mind to accept it, to accept
that Stiles could possibly be ready for what Derek wants. And if he isn't, it's
not because he's a child, but because he can't be Derek's. 
“Oh,” says Derek. He takes one more breath, to savor the feeling of Stiles
leaned against him, in case he is about to lose it.
“I think I found it.”
 
***** Thrum of Our Veins *****
Chapter Summary
     In which our castaways master their fate, and their feelings for one
     another continue to grow.
Chapter Notes
     I was not freaking kidding when I tagged this slow burn. Thank you as
     always for reading. <3
The fifth change is different.
Stiles wakes that morning and repeats much of the routine they have maintained
since Derek first came into maturity as a wolf.
How do two werewolves have sexual relations? Is it any different? Are their
members different? Is it, is it scary? Is it nice?
What’s it like for anyone, anyway?
Having enough water to drink is a problem that the lagoon handily solves for
them, but it seems like they are forever going back and forth to collect it.
Rain collection has been difficult to master, since rain here is both
infrequent and often accompanied by massive winds. Stiles has considered the
idea of somehow pushing water to them, or closer to them, via some mechanical
means, but it would be a large undertaking for little gain.
Derek’s change seems to require more of everything: more food and more water.
Stiles layers as many vessels as he can carry on their various straps across
his back, and makes a run to the lagoon.
If Derek runs free tonight, will he be safe? Will I be safe? His senses are
heightened even more when he changes. Will he be able to sense danger, see in
the dark? Will he find his way home?
Can he sense how I feel?
When he arrives back, Derek is outside the house, hacking coconuts open with a
machete across a board, laid out in the sand. Stiles watches him for a few
moments: concentration heavy on his face, the swing of his arms, legs firmly
planted in the sand, wearing nothing but pants cut into shorts. Stiles stands
there and wants to lie down in the sand at Derek’s feet. He wants to strip off
his own meager clothes, or be back in bed with his hand on his prick. Instead
he waits, trying to appear normal, until Derek glances up and sees him.
Why did you kiss me?
“Good morning,” Derek says. He throws the machete down so it sticks, handle up,
and tosses Stiles one of the coconut halves. Stiles catches it handily despite
the canisters strapped all over his back, and gets them off as well as he can,
holding the meat of the coconut between his teeth. He thinks Derek smiles a
bit, then he turns to retrieve the machete and put it away.
As they agreed, Derek spends the morning helping Stiles with chores so the
afternoon is free to. . . it’s been hard to say what they’re doing, exactly.
Being Derek’s anchor seems like a huge honor and a confusing mess all at the
same time. Stiles isn’t sure what he’s meant to do and
Why did you kiss me?
is playing along the edges of his every thought, but he musn’t pursue that
right now. Derek needs him right now.
He messed it up anyway.
Where there has been an aura of dread among the preparations, this time feels
very different. It’s not happy, precisely, but Stiles can feel a kind of
hopeful anticipation that has been in short supply. Peter’s instructions were
concise, but they at least existed, and they must be a shorthand of generations
of Hale family transitions. And Stiles was to be Derek’s anchor, to keep him
connected to himself, so as not to be lost.
Stiles looks to the sun, still not at its apex in the sky. They have lots of
time, and yet they don’t. Night always comes. He exhales, pushing his breath
through the spaces in his teeth, and goes upstairs to fetch what they’ll need.
Except for the wolfsbane and the rope and the tarps. Not yet.
He gets a rucksack, one they use for gathering tree nuts, and starts out with
some of those and a couple of flat rocks good for easily getting to the meats.
He adds some dried fruit, inspecting it first for mold, and lays clean cloth
down over the food. Then the stone wolf and a handful of shells that he keeps
by his own bed for no other reason than he particularly likes them. He stops at
the dining table and muses over the medical book. It’s incredibly heavy, even
as the pages themselves are fragile. There’s not much in there to help them now
beyond the one page of their reading.
On impulse, Stiles adds a different book to the collection of items in the
rucksack and scrambles back down the ladder.
***
This isn’t going to work. Derek went to bed last night with his first glimmer
of hope in five cycles of the moon and now this isn’t going to work. The
afternoon breeze is upon them. That’s often his favorite time of day, when the
high morning unfolds around them and softens into cooler air, dissipating the
heat of harsh sun and toiling at chores. Now it just reminds him that it will
be evening soon and this isn’t going to work.
“I’m sorry,” he says. Stiles is sitting across from him beneath a low-hanging
palm close to the house.
“For what?” Stiles asks. They’ve been sitting there for what feels like forever
but is probably closer to an hour, trying to will some kind of mystical bond
into fruition that Derek only understands from a single sentence left behind in
the margins of that medical book.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Derek says. Stiles cocks an eyebrow,
and Derek thinks maybe that in itself is Stiles poking fun at him.
“I’m serious, Stiles, it’s mid-afternoon and we’re just sitting here. Maybe you
should get the ropes.”
“Alright, Grumpy,” Stiles says. He stands up and brushes himself off, front and
back, seemingly in agreement with Derek.
“Really? That’s it?” Derek says. Stiles squats back down, his face very, very
close, and nods his head.
“No,” he says, and ducks back before Derek manages to smack him on the
shoulder. He lands on his ass in the sand but doesn’t seem upset. He smiles.
It’s very beautiful.
“Tell me what your mother did when I was little,” he says. He makes a second
attempt at standing and getting the dirt off himself, then pulls his rucksack
over to where they’re seated. Something seems to occur to him, then. He spins
one way, then the other, then points to the trunk of the tree.
“Here,” he says and sits, legs spread wide. He reaches for the rucksack with
one long, elegant arm, and Derek wonders when that happened. It’s been some
time that Stiles has held his fascination in a different way, but he’s not sure
when Stiles became gorgeous, not just subjectively. Anyone with eyes would be
able to see this, how exquisite he is now.
The exquisite creature is now patting at the ground just in front of him,
beckoning Derek to sit down between his open legs.
“What?” Derek says dumbly.
“Like last night,” Stiles replies. He throws back the flap of the rucksack
which sits to one side of him and feels around inside it one-handed. “When I
had my fit.”
“I’m not having a fit,” Derek says.
“Not yet,” Stiles says and then hurries to interrupt Derek’s impending retort.
Derek’s not even sure what it would have been, but he did take a pretty big
breath.
“I’m not saying the wolf change is a fit, Derek. But you said it yourself, your
mother knew what to do when I was troubled because she had wolf children, wolf
knowledge.” He pats the ground in front of him again with his free hand. “We
have to do what she would do, exactly. As much as you can remember.”
He’s right. Of course he’s right. It’s annoying. So Derek sits between Stiles’
legs, faced away from him. They sit there silently for a moment and then Stiles
flings his arms around Derek’s front and drags him so they’re flush tight
against one another.
“Stiles!” Derek shouts. He shimmies forward just a bit so he is not pressed so
tightly between Stiles’ legs, against his, where his--
“Derek, relax,” Stiles says and his voice is so stern Derek actually stops
still. He could swear he hears Stiles let out a soft breath of laughter, but he
manages to keep his composure. At least one of them is.
“Lean back,” he says, and Derek does, gingerly. Part of him is screaming to
run. Another part is grateful. When his back is against Stiles’ chest, Stiles
places his right hand on his own knee, just like Derek did last night when
their roles were reversed. In Stiles’ left hand is a thin volume Derek doesn’t
think he’s seen before.
“What’s that?” he asks but Stiles places the book beside him.
“That’s for later,” he says. Instead of placing his left hand on his own knee,
Stiles brings it across Derek’s chest. Derek pauses, unsure, but then places
his own hand atop Stiles’ and lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was
holding.
“She did this, I think, once I was calmer,” Stiles says softly. He sounds
nervous, maybe as nervous as Derek. “I’m going to breathe like you did, in for
three and out for three. You match me. And then see if you can remember
anything else, alright?”
“Alright,” Derek says. He lets his head loll back against Stiles’ collarbone,
like a question. Stiles doesn’t say anything so it must be fine. “I prefer
five,” he adds.
“Count of five?” Stiles says. Derek nods in reply. “That’s fine,” Stiles says.
He shifts back against the tree trunk, settling into place. “In for five.”
***
Stiles doesn’t remember most of his panic attacks as a small child. He can’t
even remember much about the one he had last night. Sitting with Derek like
this, as Derek relates what he can recall of Talia’s kind authority, of how she
cared for him, Stiles almost wishes he could remember. He felt safe with her,
he remembers that, and he can see aspects of her reflected in Derek, even now.
So that’s one thing he wishes. The other is that he could somehow make his
completely inappropriate erection (that’s what the book called it) go
awaybefore Derek notices.
Stiles also wishes he could bring himself to ask why Derek kissed him. If it
was just excitement at having discovered the anchor. If it was something else.
Like, perhaps, wantingto kiss him. Or if he has thoughts, too, of things that,
like Stiles, he can’t quite envision but knows he wants all the same. To press
up close. To feel their bodies moving together in some way the medical text
fails to properly explain, no many how many times he reads it, hoping words
would appear that somehow speak the thrum of the pulse in his veins.
He wishes he could ask that. But the sun is dropping low, and Derek needs him.
Derek needs his anchor.
They breathe in time, peppered with Derek’s memories and thoughts on what they
might mean, until the sun breaks the horizon into the glorious colors of dusk.
The ropes are still upstairs and Derek is lax now against Stiles’ body.
“I think we have it,” Derek murmurs. He turns his head against Stiles’ chest,
not looking up at him but over to the side. Stiles feels it acutely, like
fingertips dragging over his skin. He stifles a yelp and moves his pelvis back
the tiniest fraction, again.
“Have what?” he murmurs. His hand is still clamped to Derek’s chest, rising and
falling with their breath.
“I think I’m anchored,” Derek says. He sounds surprised, like he’s afraid to
say it out loud. “Stiles, feel my face.”
Stiles carefully walks his fingers up Derek’s neck and then makes his palm
flat, concerned he might poke Derek in the eye by mistake. He’s done that even
when he could see what he was doing. He lays his hand on Derek’s cheek and
something tightens in his own chest. Tears are forming in the corners of his
eyes. It takes him a second but then he realizes what Derek is trying to show
him.
“Your muscles,” he says. Derek’s face remains human, even with the quickening
dark. It has, all this time.
“I think I can control my shift,” Derek whispers. “It’s because of you. I can
feel you,” he says, and thumps at his chest. Stiles snatches his hand back,
catching the first roll of tears against his sleeve before Derek can notice.
“I don’t think you need the ropes anymore,” Stiles says. He removes his hand
from Derek’s cheek and chances a brief touch against Derek’s ear. It remains
unchanged.
“I’m free,” Derek says. “I think. I mean maybe--”
“You just need to stay anchored, right? Then don’t doubt it. Don’t doubt
yourself. Don’t doubt me, Derek,” Stiles says and it’s all he can do to keep
from sobbing into the thin shirt at Derek’s back.
“I don’t,” Derek says. He squeezes at Stiles’ hand, still clutched to his
heart. “I don’t.”
“What should we do?” Stiles ventures. He wishes they could stay like this,
pressed together with Derek looking ahead and happy. With Derek unable to see
the longing that must be writ clear all over Stiles’ features.
“I don’t know. Were you going to read that?” He nods toward the small book of
poetry by Stiles’ side. He’d thought maybe reading them aloud to Derek would be
soothing, another reminder of home, but he doesn’t seem to need that now.
“Another time.”
“Can I,” Derek starts. He hitches forward slightly and Stiles’ hand drops away.
“I think I need to--”
“What?” Stiles says. He presses back against the tree, feels the cool bark at
his back.
Derek turns to face him, standing on his knees. He closes his eyes, and just
like that he is the wolf, like a magician’s trick. His breathing remains steady
and his demeanor is calm. He rises, majestic, a master of himself. Then,
because he’s clearly trying to kill Stiles, he throws off his shirt and even
with thicker hair and changed muscles, he is magnificent. And nearly naked.
“I want to run,” Derek says. His voice is lower, unhinged sounding as the wolf
and yet Stiles is not afraid. He can feel Derek's control, his ease with
himself. It's not the same. “As the moon rises. Stiles, I need to run. Is that
alright, will you be alright if I--” he glances off into the jungle, clearly
drawn away.
“Yes,” Stiles says. “Yes, this is wonderful, Derek, I’ll be fine.” Derek rises
to his feet and Stiles can only watch, wide-eyed.
Derek places his hand over his heart again and smiles, his mouth gleaming with
newly grown fangs.
“You’re right here, Stiles,” he says, his voice full of wonder. And then he
runs.
***** Fountain of Gold *****
Chapter Summary
     FINALLY.
Chapter Notes
     Thank you for reading and following along. Your comments and
     bookmarks and kudos really do keep me going. I think we're officially
     past the halfway point, yay!
It’s not often that Derek gets to really look at Stiles. He’s always in motion,
for one thing. For another, he’s a difficult person to steal a glance at.
Stiles seems to know when he’s being watched. Since childhood, even when they
were in England, he had a sense of when someone was regarding him, and would
turn his own scrutiny on them immediately. So, recently, when Derek has found
himself wanting to look at Stiles, more carefully and more frequently, he’s
done everything he can to avert his gaze and keep Stiles from finding him out.
Derek walked home as the dawn broke, fully human and freshly washed in the
lagoon. Everything seemed crisp to his senses, perhaps a residual effect of the
change, but he didn’t mind it. He was naked, and well fed on fish caught in the
ravines of the lagoon under moonlight. He’d slept awhile, sated and cooled by
the stone beneath the waterfall, a place he and Stiles had spent many days
together seeking shade or rest or idle talk.  He woke having faded back to
human form, the waterfall rushing past him.
After a brief search for Stiles on the grounds, then in the house, he crept up
the stepladder to the top floor. They rarely use this bed now, but they kept it
for cold, windy nights when it made sense to stay together for warmth.  So it’s
a puzzle that Stiles is in it now, fast asleep. But Derek isn’t going to
question that just now, when he has the rare opportunity to study him.
It’s cool since the sun is still breaking, and Stiles is beneath a thin
coverlet. His head rests unpillowed upon the mattress and Derek smiles when he
notices the stone wolf is laid on its side in what would be Derek’s space, its
carved snout poking out toward Stiles from beneath the coverlet.
Unsurprisingly, Stiles is sprawled out, one arm thrown out across the mattress
and the other bent weirdly overhead so that his forearm runs up the wall. He’s
not snoring, for a change. Derek draws closer to the bed, as softly as he can.
The floorboards shift but Stiles pays no mind.
Some things about Stiles are just the same as always: his honeyed eyes and the
moles that kiss the spaces between his cheek and his jaw. Derek finds that
familiarity comforting. It grounds him amidst the rest of the changes he and
Stiles have in some cases been gifted and, in others, suffered. Stiles’ hands
and feet were always big, and Laura used to joke he might grow into them like a
puppy. That’s just what happened, though his hands still seem broad, with long
fingers that appear tensed even as he sleeps. His hands are sun-worn and
roughened, Derek notes, like much of the rest of him.  Strong forearms, dusted
with darker hair than Derek had recalled, lead up to defined muscles and broad
shoulders. That’s one thing he’s been able to steal looks at, quick ones.
Stiles’ back, sinewy and speckled with yet more moles, the muscle moving
beneath his smooth skin.
He’s beautiful in sleep, his features relaxed and his cupid’s bow mouth set
just so. He’s beautiful all the time.
Derek is aware that his curiosity is slowly rising into lust, complete with all
the complicated stirrings of his stomach and of his prick. He’s still naked,
and this not what Stiles should wake up to.
He takes a last, lingering look at Stiles’ face, his anchor’s face. His love’s
face. He can at least recognize what he feels within the privacy of his
thoughts. Then he steals downstairs as quietly as possible.
He’d like to remain naked. The day is growing warm and something about having
worn his wolf clothes, as it were, with such freedom last night makes the
nudity seem more natural, more normal. Perhaps it’s silly that he and Stiles
continue to dress, however sparsely, around one another. When they were younger
they wouldn’t have had the thought to do otherwise. Now it seems even more
improper, although it’s not like that last step of going without covering
themselves in their most intimate areas would really make that much of a
difference. Except, perhaps, in instances like what just happened upstairs.
Derek wonders what Stiles would look like, naked and hard. Maybe hard just from
looking upon him, like what happens when he looks upon Stiles?
Derek sighs. He pulls on a pair of shorts that are laying on the bed and
considers breakfast. He still feels full-bellied and content from all the fish.
He may have eaten them still squirming. He smiles at the thought of telling
Stiles that, the kind of delightfully disgusting thing Stiles lives for.
As he’s thinking of this, Derek notices the little book resting upon the table.
It looks like the book Stiles brought with him last night. He picks it up; the
cover is rough like burlap and it weighs almost nothing, it’s so thin, not like
the sturdy tomes he remembers from school and his parents’ library.
The words are familiar as he reads them: Selected Works of Alfred Lord
Tennyson.
***
When Stiles descends from the sleeping loft, Derek is standing there, leafing
through the book of poetry. Stiles clears his throat, which feels ridiculous as
soon as he does it, but it has the intended effect of Derek looking up at him.
They stare at one another for a moment.
“Good morning,” Derek says. He seems careful, wary.
“How was it?” Stiles asks.
“It was good,” Derek says, his full-bloom smile taking Stiles aback. “It was so
good, Stiles. But I’m sorry I ran off.”
“It was fine,” Stiles says. It was. He was glad to see Derek so unencumbered,
able to follow his instincts without drowning in them. It felt lonely to fall
asleep without him, though, so he went up to the loft. It was a strange desire,
against reason to sleep in a bigger bed to stave off loneliness, but it helped.
There was a space beside him where Derek should be, and that helped.
“Were you worried?” Derek asks.
Stiles thinks about this for a moment. “No, not really. It’s strange, I know
you were alright. I just knew. When I went to bed, I knew I could, and I fell
asleep almost immediately.” His right leg twitches against his will and he
scratches at his ear. “Could that be the. . . anchoring? I don’t know how to
say it.”
“Maybe,” Derek says. “Peter didn't say anything about that, but then he didn't
say much. Maybe.” He turns the book over in his hands. “You were going to read
this last night?”
“Oh,” Stiles says. “I was. I thought, since you remembered your parents
reciting poetry to you, it might help. If I read it to you. It was a silly
idea, you obviously didn’t need it.”
“That’s not silly,” Derek murmurs, extending the book to Stiles, who takes it.
For some reason, his cheeks feel warm. “It’s nice.”
“Oh, well, you’re welcome, then,” Stiles says. He shifts the book from hand to
hand and fumbles it just as he finishes speaking. It flies from his grasp but
Derek snatches it from the air as if it were just sitting on a shelf.
“Wow,” Stiles says. Now it looks like Derek’s cheeks might feel warm.
“Anyway, I tried to read some of the poems, but I fear my grasp of reading is
even worse than I’d realized.” He extends the book back for Stiles to take. His
eyes are downcast. “You could read them to me now.”
“Oh,” Stiles says dumbly. Derek takes a step back.
“Unless you don’t want to. You just woke up. And yesterday must have been
tiring for you--”
“For me?” Stiles sputters. “I can’t believe you’re even walking around right
now.”
“I’m fine,” Derek says. He moves back toward Stiles and places a hand on his
shoulder and Stiles feels it, like lightening striking the water. A single
point of contact and he can trace the movement of the feeling through him and
then it’s gone as Derek withdraws his hand again. “Honestly, Stiles. I’m so
grateful you found Peter’s notes. You saved me.”
Stiles hears the words, hears how much they mean. Yet all he can think about is
how he wants Derek’s hand back on him. How he wants to feel that current snake
through him, spark all along and within his body.
“I can read it to you now,” he says, instead.
***
They sit outside. After Stiles has brought them both some water, they settle at
the base of the tree Stiles has been tying Derek to in recent months. Derek can
practically feel his back mold to fit it without him meaning to do it.
Stiles squints up into the rising sun, then opens the book with his careful,
long fingers.
“This would be good for you to practice with,” he says, scanning through the
contents page. “Poems are complicated but they’re short. I could help you, you
know, if you didn’t know the words.”
“Sure,” Derek says. “I’d like that.” They are together so often now and yet
something about this makes Derek feel like he is alone with Stiles, really
alone with him. That’s ridiculous, given that they are literally the only two
beings on this island. Still, it feels different. Private and close.
“Here, this one is rather charming” Stiles says. He reads:
Who would be
A mermaid fair,
Singing alone,
Combing her hair
Under the sea,
In a golden curl
With a comb of pearl,
On a throne?
He continues to speak of the mermaid, the speaker it seems isthe mermaid. After
the first part it’s a bit hard to follow. She’s down in the sea, and there is a
snake, and then mermen. She is pursued by them but only gives herself to the
king, he thinks. What Derek does follow is the mermaid is desired. She is
wanted by everyone who casts eyes upon her. There’s nothing unseemly about the
description, nothing explicit, at least as far as Derek can tell. But she is
wanted and delights in that wanting. It is her reason for living.
And if I should carol aloud, from aloft
All things that are forked, and horned, and soft
Would lean out from the hollow sphere of the sea,
All looking down for the love of me.
Stiles looks up at him, alive with his interest. “You know, I bet if I read
these to you and then you read them to me that will be easier. Not
memorization, exactly, but if you hear them a few times maybe that will help.”
“Yes,” Derek says. He is watching Stiles’ lips as they form the words. Stiles’
mind is always working, sometimes on three things at once. He is always trying
to help, finding ways to improve.
“Did you like it?” he asks, the brightness leaving his voice.
“Yes, I did,” Derek replies. He is aware, suddenly, of how close they are,
facing one another with their knees nearly touching. Derek feels trapped
against the trunk of the tree, but not in the same way he has in the last few
months. Not in a bad way.
“Should I read you another?” Stiles says. He is nearly whispering, it’s nearly
shy. Derek can’t help himself when he reaches out to touch Stiles’ cheek.
Stiles’ eyes clamp shut but he moves slightly into Derek’s hand. Derek runs his
thumb across Stiles’ skin, as lovely where the moles aren’t as where they are,
and watches his lips part, watches his shoulders twitch.
“If you wish,” Derek says. Stiles opens his eyes, looking dizzy and unfocused.
Derek realizes he’s nearly cross-eyed because he’s focused on Derek’s mouth.
“I scared you the other day,” Derek whispers. The wind flowing around them
nearly drowns out his words but Stiles seems to hear him. Or he doesn’t hear
him but he understands anyway. That’s how Stiles is.
“You didn’t,” Stiles says. "Startled, maybe." He folds the book shut with one
hand and places it on the ground, giving it a gentle push so it slides a bit
away from them. He puts one hand over Derek’s, on his own face, and with the
other he gently drags his fingertips up Derek’s bare arm. The sensation is so
acute he feels he might cry out but he grits his teeth against it. Stiles, of
course, notices, and looks down to observe what his touch has done to Derek. He
looks back up and surely finds the same answers on Derek’s face. He drops his
hand from Derek’s, and then takes hold of both of Derek’s shoulders in his
broad palms.
He grins, easy and wild, and Derek feels his own smile take shape in response.
Stiles moves closer, close enough that their noses touch. Close enough that
Derek has to close his eyes, as much as he wants to see every moment of this.
Stiles rubs the tip of his nose against Derek’s, and, just as Derek starts to
laugh, takes Derek’s mouth with his own.
***** Too Wild for Words *****
Chapter Summary
     I'm sorry this took so long but THEY DO IT.
Chapter Notes
     Title taken from "Young Lions" by The Constantines. Please note the
     rating is now explicit. Also, just to keep track, Derek is nearly 16
     at this point and Stiles is 14.
Kissing Derek is as simple and sweet as biting into ripe fruit. Stiles draw his
lips together slowly over Derek’s mouth. It feels very daring, to be suckling
at Derek’s mouth like this, to feel the shape of Derek’s lips beneath his own.
This leads to the end of a kiss, a slippery, thrilling little thing. He stays
close, their mouths barely parted from one another, their foreheads almost
touching.
He can hear his own breath. The closeness of their faces to one another makes a
small, tight space between them so the sound of his breath seems louder,
harsher. He can hear his own panting, a kind of animal sound. The shame of that
makes him start for a moment but then he realizes they are both panting,
catching their breath, the air from Derek’s mouth fanning over his cheeks and
chin.
It warms him, the sound of them breathing together, so close. His shame falls
away.
Derek moves first this time, sealing them to one another again. Derek’s mouth
stays softly open and Stiles tries keeping his mouth the same; relaxed and
soft. He’s about to draw this kiss to a close when he feels Derek’ mouth
pushing harder against him. His tongue moves forward, like he’s darting a lick
into Stiles’ mouth.
Stiles pauses slightly, unsure. He fights the urge to pull back, to drop his
hands from where they rest on Derek’s shoulders. Derek’s tongue pushes into his
mouth and the sensation is foreign and strange but a flash of excitement pushes
across his stomach, as if he’s unexpectedly heard a thunderclap. That -- that
he does not want to pull away from.
Derek pushes in closer with his mouth and a spark of sensation flutters about
Stiles’ chest when Derek’s hands settle, one at Stiles’ left hip and the other
against his right cheek. He can’t help but press his cheek firmly against
Derek’s palm. The touch is so intimate; it seems impossible that any of this is
happening. But it is. It is.
Stiles’ mouth gently opens wider, as easy as the press of his cheek to Derek’s
palm. He feels like he could melt completely into Derek, and as his mouth opens
more he feels bold enough to push his own tongue into Derek’s mouth. The
joining of their mouths this way makes the weight in his stomach sink slowly
deeper down his body, into his groin. It’s a slow-rolling kind of shiver that
reminds Stiles of the ocean’s waves when they roll back into the water again
and again, far from the shore where he might watch.
He’s aware of his body in bright flashes, like lightening in a thunderstorm far
out at sea. Stiles feels his tongue and then the stirrings of his prick; the
swell of his heart and the trembling of his thighs. The feel of Derek’s thick
hair tangling in his fingers as he dares to let his fingers play there. The
feel of the rough, sturdy tree trunk against his back. Then just air behind him
and a sort of shocky delight, as Derek’s hands move behind him, as Derek takes
Stiles in his arms and pushes them both down to lie on the ground together.
***
Derek lays Stiles down as carefully as he can, but that’s not all that
carefully, given that they are pressed together everywhere and joined still at
the lips. Stiles does manage to crane his neck up a bit so his head doesn’t hit
the ground, and Derek opens his eyes and pulls back from their kiss.
Stiles is looking up at him from beneath drowsy lids. His honey-golden
eyes spark with life as they always do, but he is also watching Derek with a
new intensity that pulls Derek  forward into another embrace. He cradles
Stiles’ head in one hand and gently leads him to rest completely on the ground.
Derek can feel Stiles’ tension disappearing beneath his fingers and he sits up
somewhat to get a proper look at him again.
Stiles smiles up at him, beautiful and sly. That mouth, that has captivated
Derek for years, if he’s being honest, was just against his own mouth. Stiles
was just against his mouth. Derek can’t help but grin back in response. The
familiarity, the sameness of it as enumerable other looks they’ve shared fills
him with a bubbling excitement. Perhaps it is the new context of that smile,
that it’s being given to him with Stiles spread out beneath him, happy and
desirous of Derek. Perhaps it’s also relief, and wonder, that kissing Stiles,
pressing against him, even here in the dirt with his hair getting mussed, is
what Stiles wants. They both want this.
“You’re not going to stop, are you?” Stiles murmurs.
“I’m not a complete fool,” Derek responds. Stiles’ smile only brightens.
“I only ever thought you were a partial one,” he says.
                                                      
Derek’s laugh catches in his throat. He thumbs at a smudge of dirt on Stiles’
cheek and then, still smiling, lowers himself back down to prove that he isn’t
a fool, at all.
After months -- longer, if he considers it in certain ways -- of fearing his
own body, Derek feels like one long, languorous sigh is resonating all
throughout him. He’s alert, responsive to Stiles’ beautiful face and the
promise of further exploration, but it’s not the terrified vigilance of the
last few months. It’s delicious, and Derek wants to keep feeling it. With his
mouth, he thinks. And so he kisses the tip of Stiles’ turned-up nose, the plump
line of his upper lip and then across his sweet face, over moles and freckles
and the weathered mix of sun-worn tan and grime they both bear.
Derek reaches Stiles’ ear and kisses it, then props himself up on one hand so
he can trace its outline with the other. Stiles’ eyes fall shut and he gives a
little huff of breath that Derek can’t quite decipher. He lets his fingers
trail from Stiles’ ear to the juncture of his skull and the top of his neck. He
sweeps his hand over Stiles’ neck and feels his body jump, like the very center
of him felt the touch upon his neck, somewhere deep within.
As if drawn there by an irresistible force, Derek lays himself down next to
Stiles and lets his lips follow the path of his hand.
***
Derek does a host of things with his mouth that Stiles struggles to categorize
as they’re happening.
First there’s a dry brush of lips fluttering against his neck, not much more
discernable than a strong breeze. Then Derek kisses Stiles closer to the point
where his neck and shoulder meet, and that is like a kiss upon the mouth, with
a jump of a pulse low in his body as the sensation spreads. Then Derek -- good
Lord  -- there’s no mistaking the flat of Derek’s tongue lapping against the
side of his neck.
It’s a good thing Stiles is already on his back in the sand because the
sensation makes his heart and his knees -- and also sort of the back of his
scalp -- seize up. Surely if he were standing he would fall. Instead he lets
out an odd sort of squawk, and jerks upward, catching himself on his elbows.
Derek startles back, his dazed expression giving way to mild alarm.
“Oh, goddamn it,” Stiles blurts out, and Derek looks like he’s not sure whether
to laugh or apologize.
“No, no, I--”
“Are you alright?” Derek says gently.  His eyes seem to sparkle but then that’s
their odd beauty, several colors at once like a halo of the sun around an
eclipse. They’ve seen an eclipse since they’ve been here and it’s all Stiles
could do not to stupidly compare it to Derek’s eyes at that time, but it’s
true. They’re lovely, powerful, like that.
“I’m fine,” Stiles says and it comes out a little cross and yes, now Derek is
suppressing a smile. “I liked that, I just felt it everywhere.”
Derek swallows. It’s a little hard to believe that he can turn into a feral
creature because right now he looks as vulnerable as a bunny rabbit.
“Everywhere?”
Stiles can feel that he is blushing, and the flush is spreading down to his
chest. He starts to turn away but Derek gently takes his chin between his
fingers and nudges it back to face him. His look is changing, from nervous to
ravenous, and oh, yes, Stiles does indeed feel that everywhere.
He reaches for Derek and draws him back for another kiss, leading them both to
lay down. This time Derek’s leg is thrown across his, and he can feel Derek’s
chest pressing at his ribcage through the frayed cotton of his shirt. He can
feel both their hearts pounding furiously, as if they’ve been running toward
one another. And, in a way, that is what they’ve been doing, all this time, and
now they are finally meeting as Stiles has always wished they would. As, it
seems, Derek has wished as well.
Derek moves up just enough to pull Stiles’ shirt off, looking into his eyes as
he does. Stiles nods fiercely and his words follow the motion. “Yes, yes,” he
says and reaches to pull down his own shorts, managing to get them part the
swell of his own ass and about halfway down his thighs before giving up and
throwing his arms around Derek’s torso. Derek loosens his own shorts with one
hand, Stiles can feel it brushing against his stomach and the little motions of
adjustment as Derek tries to undress without halting what they’re doing. As if
he could stop.
Derek kneels up in the dirt, hair pressed damp with sweat against his head,
shirt still on but wildly askew, and shucks his shorts off. Stiles gets a fast
glimpse of him naked, astounding; the strong muscles of his stomach and thighs,
his prick thicker than Stiles’ own, only slightly darker than the rest of him.
Stiles’ meditation on the glory of Derek with no clothes on is disrupted when
Derek hastily gets Stiles’ own pants the rest of the way down and shoves them
aside behind him.
He places his palms by the sides of Stiles’ head and sinks back down atop him
in a single, fluid motion that makes Stiles moan wantonly. Derek’s own breath
seems to leave him all at once, punched out against Stiles’ cheek. They press
together everywhere: chests and legs and cocks. Stiles wraps his arms back
around Derek, letting his palms smooth along the swell of derek’s shoulders and
back down again. Without considering just what he’s doing, he wraps his legs
around Derek’s middle, and they both move, grunting and pushing against
eachother. Derek smells like sun and soil, like sweat and danger and love. He
makes the sweetest noises into Stiles’ ear, like he’s lost and found at the
same time. Their pricks rub against one another and in the grooves between
their groins and thighs, sometimes catching uncomfortably but mostly pushing
Stiles further and further along a path of unbelievable pleasure.
Stiles clutches at  Derek, his fingers pressing further and further in like
he’s the one with claws, like Derek is his anchor .Derek’s breath grows rougher
and he’s panting like he’s nearing the end of a long run, like he’s almost
there and Stiles has a moment of feeling near-to-bursting, like he’s about to
cry or scream, or go insane, and then everything happens at once.
He does scream, tilting his head back to let the sound unleash past Derek’s
ears, but that seems minor in comparison to the pulsing of his prick, a hot
explosion that has him arching his back and clinging to Derek, who looks up at
him in amazement and then shuts his eyes tight and curls up over Stiles,
pressing his head hard onto his shoulder and releasing his own pleasure against
Stiles’ hip.
They lay there together, shuddering and gathering their breath. The world comes
back: the feel of the dirt and the scent of the ocean carrying along on the
breeze. The sound of parrots not far from them, scolding them for their frank
display, it seems.
Derek presses the briefest kiss to Stiles’ dirty shoulder, then slides off of
him, rolling onto his own back.
“Agh,” he says with a wince, and before Stiles can ask, he reaches beneath his
back and pulls out the book of poetry. He sets it down on Stiles’ chest,
probably sticky with semen, and dares a glance at Stiles. Derek looks stunned,
blown wide open, by the force of what they’ve done.
Stiles smiles. He’s filled with joy and contentment, and amazement. The grin on
his face grows so wide, it starts to reflect back to him in Derek’s own smile.
***** Impossible to Tether *****
Chapter Summary
     In which there is nothing but sex because y'all have earned it.
     Thanks for waiting. The chapter is short; plot will continue with the
     next update.
The slate beneath Derek’s back provides an unusual sensation. It cools him
through his skin, right into the muscle and bone. As hard and unforgiving as it
is there’s something gentle about the surface of it, almost soft. The feeling
is comforting as he lies naked and damp in the cave by the lagoon, the
waterfall smashing past as Stiles touches his lips to every part of Derek’s
body.
They’ve been pressed together for the last week straight. The notations Stiles
keeps -- now just indentations on the inside cover of the medical book -- are
somehow much more interesting since they’ve started touching one another. Every
mark is a day spent learning Stiles’ body, and Stiles learning his. Derek
should be keeping track of the moon’s cycle but that’s proving difficult when
looking at their makeshift calendar makes his cheeks burn with what those days
were filled with. He stares at the marks, though, frequently.
Stiles is marking him right now, come to think of it. His mouth has paused in
its travels along Derek’s chest, from where he was just coaxing Derek’s left
nipple into a hard peak to the very middle of his sternum. Stiles sucks almost
as hard, all wet suction, and the tip of his nose nuzzles against the dark hair
that grows there like he’s is trying to smell Derek as deeply as he’s tasting
him.
Derek gasps and lets his palms cradle Stiles’ head, trying not to clutch too
tightly or swing his legs up in response. There’s a smacking noise and then
Stiles releases the grip of his kiss on Derek’s chest. He rubs his cheek there
and Derek can feel the warmth of him, feel the movement of every hair and the
slight ache of the bruise that must be forming in the wake of Stiles’ beautiful
mouth.
Water trickles along the slate floor of the cave, gently caressing Derek’s legs
as Stiles moves lower. Nearby, the waterfall splashes unendingly into the
lagoon below, a constant current. Derek feels held: by the cave, by the water
and then, lush and hot, by Stiles’ lips, as his tongue swirls along the head of
Derek’s prick and then laps beneath as Stiles’ mouth closes around Derek’s
member.
Derek groans. He was self-conscious, the first couple of times, about the
sounds that fell from his mouth, animal and impossible to tether. It’s still
strange to hear his own voice like that, unbound and needy. But he realized how
much he likes Stiles’ sounds, and that sometimes, when he responds, Stiles
grows more excited upon hearing him. So now he just lets it spill forth:
shuddering inhales and shaky near-howls. Stiles tightens his lips and shoves
his face forward, making Derek yelp from the intensity building in his groin.
It seems safest to remove his hands from Stiles’ hair, so Derek lets them fall
to his sides. He glances down, then moves one arm beneath his own head so he
can get a better view. Stiles is kneeling between his spread legs, crouched
over too far for Derek to see much more than the bobbing of his head, the
repeated flash of the base of his own cock disappearing again and again into
Stiles’ mouth.
Stiles’ firm hands, which rested outside his legs, move to the tops of his
thighs with a strong grip. Just as Derek registers that, they move again to his
hips, then fly away. Stiles can’t seem to decide where to put them, how to get
the leverage he wants. It’s distracting for a few moments, but then Stiles
settles, with one flat palm spread across Derek’s lower belly and the other
coming to grip Derek’s cock in a tight fist.
“God,” Derek says. He squirms, trying so hard not to push his hips forward and
startle Stiles, or worse, hurt him. But Stiles’ hands are immobilizing him,
making him hotter, and the building of his pleasure seems to take forever.
“Please,” Derek says and lifts up, his shoulders pushing cold and hard against
the rock as he offers himself up to Stiles’ mouth, to the promise of an orgasm
that Stiles reaffirms with his every move. And then, something happens. Stiles
loosens his left-handed grip enough that his fist moves wetly along Derek’s
length along with his mouth, and he wails from how good it feels, nearly bends
in half as he’s sliced through by the explosive feeling of his dick, emptying
and pulsing against Stiles’ touch.
*
Stiles nearly swoons from the feeling of Derek’s semen in his mouth, excess
finding its way to smear against the skin of his fingers and knuckles where he
cradles Derek’s member in his fist. He pulls off, and Derek gasps above him.
Stiles screws his eyes shut and swallows, a sensation that is hard to handle
and yet he want to do it, wants Derek’s spend, thick and too pungent, sliding
down his throat.
“Did that hurt?” he asks, hearing the rough edge of his own voice over the
waterfall. He runs the back of his arm across his lips to get the last of it,
and tries to swish it into the shallow water at the floor of the cave.
Derek says something in reply that Stiles can’t hear but he doesn’t look hurt
at all. He looks at peace, his body splayed out, arms and legs extended at
diagonals like rays of the sun. His chest heaves with the effort of taking in
big breaths.
After glancing at his arm to see most of the mess is gone, Stiles rises up to
his hands and knees so he is crouched over Derek’s legs and groin and belly.
The stone of the cave and the thin layer of rushing water seems to cool his
overheated body and he looks down in admiration at Derek’s softening, satisfied
cock.
“What was that?” Stiles asks. His gaze skates up along Derek’s hips and stomach
to the slowing breaths and dampened hair at his chest, then up to Derek’s face.
His eyes are closed, his lips are parted and his cheeks are rosy even in the
dim light.
“Didn’t hurt. Maybe slower next time,” Derek says. His eyes open slowly and his
eyes meet Stiles’. With a widening, wicked grin, he lifts his hands from his
sides and beckons Stiles forward. “Come here, Stiles.”
The command and the term of affection both remind Stiles that his own member is
still hard, his own body is still taut with desire, waiting for the eager
ministrations that will bring his own release. He crawls up the length of
Derek’s body, and, just as he begins to lean down to take a kiss and feel
himself press against Derek, broad hands wrap around the cheeks of his ass.
“Come here, I said,” Derek says, and Stiles could swear he hears him chuckle
just before he pulls hard on Stiles’ body. He slides forward, upwards, his
knees catching in Derek’s armpits and Stiles realizes how close his hard cock
is to Derek’s face.
“What,” Stiles splutters, trying to back away but Derek’s hands hold him
firmly. He puts his hands on either side of Derek’s face and can’t deny how
pleased Derek looks right now, like this is just what he wants.
“Yes?” Derek asks, eyes sparkling.
“Yes,” Stiles replies. Derek slides his hands up to Stiles’ waist and guides
him to awkwardly walk on his knees until he is straddling Derek’s face. Then
Derek guides Stiles’ penis into his waiting, eager mouth.
It is an endless feeling and yet concentrated in one spot, so much pleasure
Stiles thinks he could pass out. Warm and wet inside Derek’s mouth, and his
hands slide back to grip Stiles’ hips, making a rhythm for him by pushing and
pulling his pelvis back and forth. Stiles isn’t sure where to put his hands,
isn’t sure he can stay upright. But Derek keeps moving him into mounting heat,
and Stiles relaxes into letting Derek hold him up, letting Derek make him chase
his orgasm.
He wraps his arms around himself and it is like Derek is holding him in two
places at once. Like this, he whimpers as he feels his balls thicken, feels his
cock thicken, and then he lets go into the very best feeling there is.
***
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