#Laura handled everything. she got the apartment. she made sure they had food. Derek looks back and feels so useless

[sunmoontruth-stiles]

I need a completely rewritten teen wolf series with Derek Hale as the main character. I think it would heal me.

[thisdiscontentedwinter]

Baby Daddy - Chapter 2

You can find the Chapter Index here. Or read it on AO3! 

Derek comes awake from the same old nightmare, gasping for breath in a world that tastes like ash and thick, choking smoke. Stupid, since the fire was already out by the time he made it to the house, but since when do nightmares have to make sense? He lurches upright, sucking in a ragged breath, and the night air chills his sweat-slick skin.

It’s dark.

It’s quiet.

In the distance he can hear a siren, but it might be miles away. Noise at night travels strangely.

From the room next door he can hear Laura’s heartbeat. It’s a little fast, a little too strong for sleep.

“Bad dream,” he murmurs into the darkness.

She doesn’t answer him, but he hears the rustle of her sheets and comforter as she settles back down in her bed.

Derek reaches for his phone. He keeps it on the nightstand beside his bed, although “nightstand” is an exaggeration. It’s a plastic crate he took from work, brought home, and upended beside his bed. It does what it’s supposed to do.

The screen on his phone tells him it’s 4:32 a.m.

He didn’t work last night, but Laura did, until two. So, great. She’d probably barely gotten to sleep before he woke her up with his nightmare.

Ever since they came back to Beacon Hills, Laura has been working at an all-night diner. Derek works a few shifts a week as a bouncer at a club. They’re not great jobs, but they’re something. Something to do instead of sitting around wondering what the fuck is going to go wrong next.

Derek hates that they came back here at all. He doesn’t know why they couldn’t just keep moving, but Laura has her alpha instincts and they’ve been pulling her back towards Beacon Hills for a while now. It’s her territory, and it’s harder for her to ignore that than it is for Derek. He’s a beta. His territory is wherever his alpha is, and for a long time that was a collection of shady motel rooms and crappy apartments on the east coast. Coming back to Beacon Hills hasn’t settled anything inside him. It doesn’t feel like home anymore.

Sometimes, when the wind is right, it carries the scent of the Preserve into town, and homesickness hits Derek in the gut like a fist. Homesickness, and longing. It’s worse somehow, because the Preserve is right there, but it’s still not home. It can never be home again, he thinks, despite what Laura wants, because of what happened there to their family.

Derek doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night. He can’t. He lies awake and waits until dawn.

***

On Friday and Saturday nights, Derek is partnered up with Boyd on the door of the club. The club is a shithole, basically, and the clientele reflects that. There are usually at least one or two fights every evening, and while it’s nothing Derek couldn’t handle on his own, he likes knowing Boyd’s got his back. Boyd is big and quiet. Derek likes him. He doesn’t talk much about his personal life. Derek knows he works days at the tire place out by the exit to the highway, and he knows he has a girlfriend, but she doesn’t come to the club. Something about the flashing lights. Other than that he doesn’t know much about Vernon Boyd at all, but Derek likes him.

It’s been a long time since he was comfortable enough to turn his back on someone, but he finds he can do that with Boyd. There’s just something about his calm, solid presence that Derek trusts. It’s been so long that Derek doesn’t know what to do with a revelation like that, so he guards the feeling carefully and, when Laura badgers him about whether or not he’s made any friends yet, he grunts and refuses to be drawn further into any conversation.

Laura seems better since they came back to Beacon Hills, more settled somehow, and a part of Derek hates her for it. A part of him is jealous of her.

He wishes they were still living in shitty hotel rooms and shittier apartments. At least when they were on the run they weren’t here.

Sometimes he drives past the coffee shop on Main where he remembers being sixteen-years-old and stumbling over a complicated coffee order, because he wanted to get Kate the exact one she liked.

Sometimes he drives past the high school, where he first caught a glimpse of the beautiful new substitute teacher, and his heart skipped over a few beats.

Sometimes he drives past the turnoff to Harper’s Bluff or, as the kids probably still call it, Makeout Point, and he can still smell her perfume, cloying and sickly sweet in his memory now, although he never hated it at the time.

And sometimes at night he hears sirens as a fire truck hurtles down the street, and his blood runs cold.

***

Peter turns up every Sunday morning with bagels. He lives over on Maple, in an airy modern apartment. Derek has only been there once or twice. Everything was so new, apart from the books, that the smells made his nose twitch. It didn���t smell lived-in last time Derek visited. It didn’t smell like pack. Neither does the loft, really, but at least it makes no pretence of being a home.

Derek had commented once on how everything in Peter’s place was so sterile.

And Peter had only raised his eyebrows. “Sterile? I’ll tell you what sterile is, nephew. It’s hospital-grade disinfectant, bleach, and ammonia. I’ve got fucking years of sterile behind me!”

Derek had flinched back, and Peter had turned away, and neither of them had mentioned it again.

Still, Peter turns up every Sunday morning, and Derek makes the attempt to remember who he was before the fire. Who they all were. Peter was the fun uncle once, and Laura and Derek adored him. It’s all gone now. They’re all broken, and they all broke in different ways. They don’t fit together the way they used to. Instead, all their jagged edges come up against each other, and cut and tear. They all pretend they don’t, but the wounds still rip open every time, if only because they remember that once it was all so different.

Or maybe…

Derek watches as Laura and Peter fight over the last bagel, tearing the bag and showering crumbs all over the couch, both of them immediately bickering about who has to clean up the mess.

Or maybe it’s just Derek who’s still broken.

***

Derek doesn’t always dream of the fire.

Sometimes he dreams of his life before that. He dreams of walking through the house, the light painting the floorboards gold, and he can hear his family all around him. Cora’s laugh. One of the twins squealing from upstairs. His mom yelling at Patrick to take his shoes off before he tracks mud through the kitchen. His dad humming along to some song on the radio, the keys on his keyboard clicking as he works.

And Derek walks through the house looking for them, but every room he checks is empty.

***

Boyd shifts from foot to foot, breathing on his cupped hands to keep them warm. It’s two in the morning, and tonight has been quiet. It probably won’t stay that way—it’s a dive, really—but it hasn’t been too bad yet. Derek doesn’t feel the cold like a human does, so he makes sure to stand between Boyd and the wind as much as he can.

“Forgot my jacket,” Boyd grumbles.

Derek shrugs his off.

“Derek. Man, really, you don’t have to—”

“Just put it on,” Derek says, and rolls his eyes.

Boyd’s too cold to refuse, he guesses.

The next night, Boyd turns up with a thermos of hot chocolate his girlfriend made.

“You have to have some,” he tells Derek, his mouth quirking in a smile that’s both pleased and a little embarrassed. “Erica made me promise to share.”

It’s been years since Derek had hot chocolate.

It reminds him of his mom’s.

***

Derek wakes up one afternoon to find that Laura’s been out and bought a throw rug and cushions for the couch.

“Like it?” she asks him, hands on her hips as she squints down at them. The cushions are a weird plum color. The throw rug is olive. Laura’s brows tug together. “Maybe I should have got the white throw. Do they clash? Peter’s going to be all snooty about it if they clash.”

Derek shrugs, fetches a glass of water, and climbs the stairs back to his room.

He can hear Laura muttering under her breath as he goes.

All of Derek’s possessions fit in a single gym bag. It’s been that way for years. Pack light and move fast. Derek’s been on the run for so long that he doesn’t know how not to be. How the fuck do throw rugs and cushions fit into the world that he and Laura have lived in since the fire? How can she just decide that they’re done running, and suddenly they own cushions and throw rugs?

Because, if he’s honest with himself. Derek never thought a day like this would come.

He thought Laura was lying every time she talked about how they’d settle down one day. How they’d stop running. He thought she was just saying the things that an alpha and a big sister should. He’d thought she was lying to him to protect him from the truth: that the only way this would end would be by dying.

And isn’t that what he deserves, for what he did to his family? His pack?

Sometimes Derek doesn’t know if Kate intended for him to live or not. He thinks she probably did.

Because it’s so much more cruel this way.

***

Derek wasn’t with Laura when she first came back to Beacon Hills and met the crazy werewolf in the woods. Neither her nor Peter talk much about what happened, but Derek knows that Peter tried to kill her. He knows it was only luck that she dodged him long enough to give him a moment to come back to his senses.

“No,” Peter is saying hours later when Derek comes downstairs again. “The throw, I like. The cushions though?”

“They clash, right?”

“Not violently,” Peter says. “But they aren’t exactly pleasing to the eye.”

Derek shuffles past them to the refrigerator. He makes himself a protein shake, because he learned to live on them when they were on the run, and living in places with no refrigeration. Like the car. Protein shakes, crackers, and, if they had cash at the time, gas station food.

Laura hums thoughtfully. “I should have got the white throw.”

“No, you should have got some cream cushions and kept the olive throw,” Peter says. “In fact, you should still go and get some cream cushions, and get an armchair to put under that window. And you can put these cushions on the chair.”

Fuck if Derek knows how they made the leap from almost killing one another in the Preserve only a few months ago to this home decorator stuff, but it’s ridiculous. You don’t just go from running for your life to picking out cushions. You don’t.

What happens—

What happens if Kate finds them?

Derek’s grip loosens suddenly, he drops his plastic shaker, and his protein shake spills all over the kitchen floor.

“Derek?” Laura calls.

He doesn’t turn and look at her, already too aware that his sudden spike of panic must have been as loud as a blast of static to her and Peter. He pads over to the sink, grabs the cloth, and wets it.

“It’s fine,” he mutters, and bends down to clean the mess up. “I got it.”

He swipes the cloth over the floor, his face burning, and listens to the silence between Laura and Peter that tells him everything he needs to know.

They’re not broken anymore. Not like he is.

And if they don’t know what to say to him to make it better, then that must be because there’s nothing they cansay.

Maybe this is just how Derek is now.

Maybe this is what Kate made him.

***

The weeks pass. Derek goes to work, comes home, sleeps, rinse and repeat. His shifts sometimes end up in sync with Laura’s for a few days here and there, and they eat together and Laura tells him about her day, about her co-workers, about this one college kid who comes to the diner and pays his tips in nickels and dimes, and Derek nods and grunts to show he’s more or less listening.

“I think it’s time,” she says one night, her eyes bright with determination. “Time to start rebuilding the pack.”

Derek’s dinner tastes suddenly like ash.

[1989dreamer]

Chapter 15 of Looking for a Place to Call Home

                                                                                                                        ~ * ~

Derek almost makes it to lunch, which he can smell Erica cooking from his room, before he caves and eats the second pastry. It does nothing to sooth the hunger burning his stomach. If anything, it makes it worse.

It feels so bad he wants to cry. Maybe Erica can help? He can smell the medicine she uses on her. She might know what to do for a tummy ache.

Erica freezes when he stumbles into kitchen.

“Are you okay?” she asks, and Derek shakes his head.

In the short walk, his stomach has started cramping. He has both hands pressed against it, trying to draw the pain out of himself.

It isn’t working, and in his pain-addled state, Derek can’t figure out why. It makes him growl in frustration.

Erica wipes her hands on a dish towel and presses Derek into a seat at the little round table. From somewhere, she produces a thermometer. Derek stares at it in horror. It was bad enough when Scott took his temperature when he was in his delta shift. But, he’s human now. Surely Erica doesn’t expect to stick that…?

“Open your mouth, please,” she directs.

He obeys out of sheer relief. She sticks the probe under his tongue and instructs him to hold it for a few minutes.

Derek would grumble but he’s not sure how much she knows. Sometimes she looks at them like she’s aware and then she does this. Werewolves expend a lot of heat due to their heightened abilities. If Erica thinks she’s going to get an accurate reading, then he’ll know she isn’t in the know.

Erica takes the thermometer when it beeps. She makes a tsking sound and plops a bowl of stew in front of Derek.

“Eat,” she says, moving away to wash the thermometer and stir her pots.

The stew is good, and Derek picks up the bowl to drink it. Erica stops him.

“Slowly. You’ll get sick if you don’t.”

Derek uses the spoon she hands him, taking as large of a bite as he can manage. Erica pats his head.

“After lunch, if you feel up to it, we’ll go back to the hospital for a checkup.”

Derek doesn’t answer, scraping the bottom of the bowl. His stomach feels better with the food in it. He doesn’t think he needs to go to the hospital again.

“Also, if you feel like you can handle it, we have to go to the Sheriff’s Station to give your statement.” Erica refills Derek’s bowl halfway and he carefully spoons the hot stew into his mouth to delay responding.

Erica calls Laura and Cora in to eat, and between the two of them, they polish off the rest of the pot.

“Lots of small meals,” Erica says, sticking the thermometer back into Derek’s mouth. She tits at whatever it reads. “We’ll get the hospital out of the way before we go to the Sheriff’s Station.”

“You said if I felt up to it,” Derek points out, and Erica laughs.

“If you’re trying to figure out a way out, then you definitely feel up to going to the hospital.”

Derek scowls at his empty bowl. His stomach doesn’t hurt anymore, so why does he have to go back? The only thing the hospital could do for him was give him another bag of fluid. If he was healed enough, though, the bag wouldn’t do anything for him.

“Can we go to the Sheriff’s Station first?” he asks. “If I feel bad again, we can go to the hospital then.”

“Smart,” Erica says. “Okay, deal. We’ll go to the hospital only if you need it and not until after the Sheriff’s Station. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish the dishes. Why don’t you go make your beds?”

“Can I help with the dishes?” Derek asks. Erica is being very nice to them. Her hospitality must be wearing thin. Anything they can do to help her, they should.

“That’s so nice of you to offer, but I’ve got this round. You go make your bed and then we’ll head out.”

Derek pauses in the doorway. Erica seems happy enough scrubbing their bowls while the stew pot soaks, but Derek has had experience with people who can mask their emotions or mimic others’ to confuse werewolf senses.

He decides to check on her after he makes the bed like she told him to. Maybe she’s like Stiles and her betrayal will come later. He’ll be ready for it this time.

For now, he returns to the room he slept in last night. He doesn’t know who to make a bed—Mom and Dad weren’t picky and the hunters never gave him a bed.

In the end, he just tugs the blanket until there are as few wrinkles as he can manage, sets the pillows against the headboard, and calls it good.

Back in the kitchen, Erica has everything done. She smiles at Derek, ruffling his hair with an affectionate yank.

“Ready?” she asks. “Do you want a snack before we leave?”

Derek shrugs. A snack would be nice. But what would Erica prefer?

“Cheese sticks and an apple okay?” She hands him two packages of cheese while she cuts an apple. Cora and Laura come running into the kitchen, and Erica throws them each a whole carton of milk, a box of crackers, the rest of the cheese sticks and apples, and some containers of yogurt.

Derek finishes his apples and cheese in the time it takes them to eat the entire stack of food. Erica smiles, scent fond as she watches them.

“Still hungry?” she asks Derek, and he nods. She gives him a package of graham crackers. “Okay, let’s go. Sheriff’s Station. Socks and shoes, please.”

Derek watches in amazement as Erica produces a pack of thick socks. There are enough pairs for them to each have two. Brand new never worn socks.

The shoes Erica gives them aren’t new, but Derek hasn’t worn shoes in three years, so he isn’t going to complain. Besides, Erica gives him another package of crackers to eat while she tries to convince his sisters that it’s necessary to wear shoes out in public.

Derek eats his crackers too fast and ends up hiccupping so hard that he throws up a little.

Erica takes the graham crackers away, replacing them with something she calls saltines. He likes them almost better than the graham crackers, and he eats them carefully to keep from being sick again.

Finally, after a series of exasperated glares and grunts from Erica, Laura agrees and gets Cora to put her shoes on. Derek offers them each a cracker. Then it’s out to Erica’s car with Laura in the front seat and Derek and Cora in the back.

The ride to the Sheriff’s Station is quick and painless. And Derek gets another pack of saltines as a reward for not throwing up again.

Laura and Cora fight over the last pack of graham crackers while Erica goes to the front desk and asks to see the Sheriff. The deputy blanches.

“You’ll have to wait,” he says nervously. “The Sheriff is occupied at the moment.”

“He’s lying,” Derek whispers to Erica.

“Funny, Kincaid. Is he in his office? Perhaps having a little afternoon imbibing session?”

“The Sheriff would never drink on the job,” the deputy says outraged. Derek points that out as a lie too and Kincaid glares at him.

“The Sheriff is indisposed. We’ll call you when we can take your statement.”

Erica rolls her eyes and ushers them back to the car. “Since you did throw up, I think we should stop by the hospital. Just in case.”

Derek tries not to worry about it, but he knows he’s probably going to be hooked up to one of those liquid bags again.

“I don’t want to,” he tells Erica when they’re at Beacon Memorial Hospital’s entrance. “Please don’t make me.”

Laura puts her hand on Derek’s shoulder, and his wolf subsides, the panic dissipating somewhat.

“I’m right here. I’ll stay with you through it all. You won’t be alone.”

Bravely, Derek steps up to the doors. With his alpha on one side, his pack mate on the other, and Erica leading the way, he enters the hospital for his check up.

                                                                                                                        ~ * ~

Stiles pulls into the station. He’s just spent the whole morning looking for the animal control van. He’d called their dispatcher and was told they were responding to a call out for a mountain lion sighting.

The deputies who’d arrived at Sheriff Lahey’s house had confirmed that the Sheriff had been torn apart by some kind of animal, and that Allison was telling the truth about trying to save his life.

Stiles hits his steering wheel in frustration. He doesn’t believe for a second that there’s a mountain lion. Everywhere he checks, he can’t find Boyd or Isaac. And because they’re on the outskirts of town, there’s no one around to ask.

Beyond frustrated, Stiles stomps up to the front desk. Kincaid winces when he sees him.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes, “Parrish wasn’t available and I still haven’t been able to get the Hales’ statements.”

Fucking shit, Stiles thinks. “Well, you know where they’re going to be. Why don’t you go talk to them, get their statements. I need to talk to Haigh.”

Kincaid stops Stiles before he walks off. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think anyone’s too broken up about the situation of the Sheriff.”

“No,” Stiles agrees, “but we still have to investigate.” He shrugs off Kincaid and heads to the holding cells. Haigh whistles lowly when Stiles walks up to his cell.

“Heard about the Sheriff.” Haigh shakes his head. “Shame.”

“What do you know about his death?”

“Are you sure you should be the one talking to me about this?”

Stiles ignores Haigh’s grin. “Did you know about him abusing his son?”

“Rumors, slander.”

Stiles shakes his head. “I don’t think so. The source is credible. I trust them. So, I ask again: was Michael Lahey abusive toward his son Isaac?”

“If he was, why would I know anything about it?”

“Because you’re so far up Lahey’s ass that he couldn’t shit you out even if he wanted to.”

Haigh laughs. “I’m flattered, but that doesn’t mean I knew anything about his home life. If he was abusing his kid, why didn’t anyone care before now?”

Stiles thinks of Boyd, who called Allison to evaluate his work buddy, who made Isaac stay at his place to give him at least one night of reprieve, who is out on a “call” with his partner during the discovery of the Sheriff’s body.

“Someone did,” Stiles says. Much as he hates to admit it, Boyd and Isaac are the main suspects. Jesus fuck.

Stiles goes to his desk, calling animal control dispatch again.

“Where are they now?” he demands as soon as Callie answers.

She sighs. “They’re at lunch, Stilinski.”

“Where?”

“Where else? The Burger Joint.”

“Don’t let them know I’m coming,” he warns her. “In fact, stall them. There’s something vital I gotta talk to them about.”

“Oh really? What?”

“Miguel,” Stiles lies. That oughta be good enough. Callie must agree because she says she’ll pass on the message and hangs up.

Kincaid is gone and a new deputy, Virginia Ramirez, is in his place.

“Tell Parrish to call me when he gets a chance,” Stiles tells her. “I’m heading to lunch now.”

“Yes sir.” Ramirez all but salutes. Stiles refrains from rolling his eyes. She’s a rookie, newer than even Kincaid. She’s entitled to a little ass-kissing—as long as she doesn’t take it as far as Haigh.

Stiles still has no idea why Haigh tried to punch him this morning.

He can figure it out later. Right now, he needs to focus on the murder of Sheriff Lahey.

                                                                                                                        ~ * ~

MP, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15