Story by write_light
Art by Wolfspurr
Hale Ranch sits in a remote but hopelessly scenic corner of the Rockies known as Ouray County, western Colorado.
Laura Hale’s (former) office, where the last remnants of the Hale family try to reconnect, is cold today. Sometimes everything, and everyone, is just too remote…
The call took forever to connect; it was Cora’s fifth try and still there was no guarantee Derek would ever answer. She pressed her eyes shut and hoped.
Buzz. Click. …Click. … … Click. … “-fuera de cobertura. Por favor-“
“Always fucking out of touch, Derek.”
She ended the call and redialed immediately.
“What is it? I’m in the middle of… moving," Derek said quietly.
Surprised by the instant connection and her brother’s distant tone and coded words, she stumbled. It all came out wrong.
“Laura’s dead. Animal attack.”
Silence, on both ends of the call. Their wordless pain stretched for so very long through endless grief and shared rage. A full minute passed.
“I can’t be there. Not for at least a week,” Derek said softly. “Are they investigating?”
“I’m at the ranch now. I’ll try to keep things quiet.”
“Why’d they call you?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was first on the list. C before D…”
“I’m sorry,” Derek said. Pain and deep regrets tinged his words now, but the silence returned, marred by crackling on the line. “I’ll be there in … five days. Moving, like I said.”
“Be careful.”
The line clicked off; whether Derek’s inexcusable phone manners or her cell company’s failings was not clear. Cora was alone, with work to do.
~~~
Two Years Later
Hale Ranch is in rapid decline after a series of nearby fires, animal attacks on their horses, and the opening of no fewer than four cattle and sheep ranches along the 150-mile stretch of highway that had once been all their own. Two years without Laura running the business and she’s never been more missed.
The First Summer
All was sunny and warm that June day, in contrast to Derek’s icy mood.Cora had taken the bull by the horns, a metaphor she herself chose despite running a horse ranch.
“You came up with this in a week?” Derek asked, looking at the straightforward but extremely detailed (and ambitious) business proposal she had prepared.
“I had time. You only got in this morning; I called you well over a week ago.”
“I told you-“
“And I’m sure they’re grateful you helped them get there. Every group is.”
“They are. They have a new home, new forests to run through. Forests they ruled for years.”
“Don’t sell me on your stuff when I’m trying to sell you mine, okay?” She paused; he seemed distracted. “Hey?”
He’d stopped reading at the words “sleepover horse camp for kids,” but finally burst out, “You - You’re jok-”
“I’m going to make this ranch profitable. There’s no money in cattle or sheep - or horses anymore, not on our small scale; Laura could see it coming. Not enough money, anyway. The supply of parents who want to be free of their kids for a week? Endless.”
“Sleepover kids camp? Ugh, saying it out loud just makes it worse,” he grumped.
“We need camp counselors, fast."
“Well, hire some.”
“Faster than that.” Cora tilted her head slightly.
“I- What?”
“You’d look good in shorts and a t-shirt...”
Derek couldn’t quite find his words.
“…the kind with the rings around the arms and neck? Get you a whistle?”
“No”was the only word he found, yet she had so many more on her side.
~~~
Beacon Hills, California
“Dad? DAD?” Stiles yelled up the stairs. “You better be up!”
“When did you turn into me?” his father asked from the kitchen behind him and Stiles jumped, startled.
“Since you ended up on probation at work? Since you agreed to rehab.”
“It’s not ‘rehab’. It’s just a police department psychologist.”
“No, it’s rehab. I got you into a real program.”
“We can’t afford-“
“We can, we did, you interview Thursday.”
“We can’t afford actual rehab if I’m not working.”
“I’m looking at a couple of jobs right now.”
“No, you’re going to college. Which we also can’t afford,” he despaired.
“Oh, I’m going to college. Just… in a bit. I deferred.”
“STILES!”
“No worries! I’ll take a gap summer or whatever it turns out to be and make a ton of money.”
“Stiles, you can’t.”
“I have two leads already, both pay well, interviewed online last night for the one in Colorado. She wants me there on Saturday, so we’re going to get you into rehab on Thursday, then I drive out. All taken care of.”
“Can I at least ask which program?”
“The one you didn’t flinch at last month, before you rejected all of them.
“I’m going to need some coffee.”
“I left you a cup. It’s on the table. It’s decaf.Where can I get some horse-riding lessons in Beacon Hills?”
That interview last night
The online connection was spotty at best. “Ms. Hale” was staring, perplexed, at the very professional but very, very brief application Stiles had sent.
“Your name is …”
“Call me Stiles.”
“So that’s how you pronounce all those letters.”
“Just call me Stiles. Please.”
“Mr. Stilinski, sorry – Stiles – have you ever been a camp counselor before? It’s not stated in your application anywhere.”
“I did help my friend Scott make it through high school. Several friends, actually. We grew up in kind of a rough town.”
“Ours will be actual kids, seven to eleven years old, not teens.”
“I’m confident I have the skill set.”
“Confidence is-“
“I can be there by Saturday.”
“Normally I would say no, but you’ve actually included the DOJ fingerprint check and FBI clearance. How did you-?”
“My dad’s the Sheriff here.”
Cora paused. I feel like I’m being played. Necessity won out.
“Saturday it is. We’ll have the horses ready.”
Stiles turned paler than he already was as she mercifully ended the call.
***
“What a strange kid,” Cora said after carefully closing the chat window.
“He lied about knowing how to ride,” Derek confirmed from her office doorway, where he’d been lurking.
“Clearly. Something about his eagerness though.”
“I’m the one who has to work with him.”
“Sit in with me Saturday when he gets here," Cora begged.
“There’s a Restore the Wolves meeting at the bar. You know, you could hire internally.”
“Not enough of us were-folk, not here. Everyone’s leaving. The Argents make everything too risky.”
He stared at his little sister. “Why are you still here? Putting up with hunters, and all the other wolf-hating ranchers?”
“Sometimes the very same people? Because I won’t let them win. I know they’re behind Laura’s murder. And probably Mom’s. And every other Were who’s died since they showed up. Why are you here?”
“I’m here for you, for one summer. And for Laura.”
“Can you at least try to figure out how the Argents are getting their info on all the other ranches? … You don’t think-”Cora wondered, looking at her computer.
“That kid’s no Argent.”
***
Hale Ranch, Saturday, end of May – Staff Arrival Weekend
Stiles pulled through the main gate of Hale Ranch, the furthest he’d been from civilization in a very long time. He passed under the arch with its narrow, wrought-iron “H” – more like fangs, he thought. His Jeep gave up right then and there, the last of its fumes gone. Stiles was in about the same condition.
He tumbled awkwardly out the door and into the immovable wall of a man who had materialized there.
“Oh my god!” Stiles swore under his breath, stepping back into his own car door, giving Derek a chance to take a better look.
Their new hire reeked of a two-day drive fueled by nothing but pizza – the boxes were stacked behind the driver’s seat and even belted in. He looked older in person, more mature, but weary and unshaven.
“I misjudged how remote this place is?” Stiles offered, smiling widely at a man just about his height, black stubble with a few white hairs, green eyes and brows that seemed to mock Stiles. “Beautiful though.”
Derek did not respond.
“Are these Hales fugitives hiding way out here in the hills? Or vampires?” Stiles joked, pointing up at the wrought iron overhead, “Cuz of the… the fangs?”
Derek could not keep his eyebrows from rising at the vampire remark.
“You ran out of gas, blocking our main road on your first day. Cora won’t like that.”
Stiles’ eyes widened as he rapidly swallowed the rest of his thoughts.
“Please don’t tell her! Look if you can just help me move the Jeep; it’s not that heavy, just get to the back and push while I steer. We can make it look like I parked up by the lodge.”
Derek continued to observe Stiles, narrowing his eyes. He decided to have some fun.
“That brand up above the gate? That’s an H, for Hale.” He extended his hand in friendly greeting. “Derek Hale. … You must be Stiles.”
Shit. He’s good. I am so fucked.
~~~
That evening in Cora’s office
The sun was low over the western hills and the valley had been cast in shadow, but the sunlight still streamed into the windows, hitting Stiles right in the eyes. He shifted his chair in tiny increments, trying to get into the shadow but still appear normal.
“Stiles, I’ll be clear. We need counselors, and you have a good attitude, and well, you’re here, and that’s 90% of it. One of your fellow counselors said he wasn’t free and then turned up anyway - you’ve already met.”
“Did we?” Stiles asked, confused.
“My brother.”
“Oh god!” was all he could say. Cora looked confused and he quickly overcorrected: “What luck! We talked at the main gate, yes, just now, yes. Appeared out of nowhere when I arrived. Great guy. Can’t wait.”
Cora was torn between the babbling coming from Stiles’ mouth and the furious mix of smells coming from everywhere else on Stiles’ body. One of them was fear, mixed with … no, he’s not aroused, what is that...?
“I’d like to finish the interview we started a few days ago,” she went on, hoping to clear the air. “I just need to be sure you know how to ride and can safely teach our guests to ride.”
“As long as your horses don’t spook,” Stiles said. Definitely siblings – her eyebrows went up just like his, “Yes, yes, I’ve had lessons with a local trainer in Beacon Hills. My mom’s folks had a ranch too, so I was around them a lot as a kid.”
“No working with kids though-“
“I won’t scare them as bad as your brother will,” he blurted out.
Cora badly stifled her sudden laugh.
“Well, like I said,” she continued, “you’ll be spending a lot of time with him and sharing the bunkhouse. When you’re not tent camping.”
“As long as you have more than one bed.”
“Oh, of course. You’ll always have your own tent and your own bed. You’ll meet the other two counselors tomorrow; lovely couple, Casandra and Julie; they’ll be sharing the downstairs room in the employee cabin, you’re upstairs. With Derek.”
Cora moved on to describing for Stiles what she hoped the ranch would become, the success they could make of it as a family. Stiles, after two days of solid driving, could barely focus.
As his eyes drifted to the wall of family photos. he recognized Cora in some, looking younger in the faded ones. Beside her was always a tall boy, and in others, a tall handsome man, bearded in the newer pictures, always behind her. She seemed to have a large family, squeezing together in most pics, laughing. But something else caught his eye.
No one’s looking at the camera, I guess they really like candid pics. No, a few people are looking. It’s just not her or her family.
“Your family is-“ he started, but before he could make a complete fool of himself, Cora interrupted.
“They’re here in spirit,” she said, her voice sadder, “but the ranch is just Derek and me now. Please be patient with him; he’s very, very into wolf restoration rights and will probably talk your ear off.”
“I can’t wait,” Stiles said, giddy with hunger yet fully aware of how oddly he’d said that.
This kid is kind of a mess, Cora thought. “Would you like some dinner?”
“Would I?” Stiles gasped.
“Great, Derek’s cooking. Shower up and come by the main house, He did show you where you’re sleeping, didn’t he?”
“Y-yes, eventually, after we got the car placed. Parked!”
Little Cabin in the Woods
Within a week, Derek had had enough of Stiles and the feeling was mutual.
Hale Ranch Sleepaway Camp got off to a great start, but the little girl that Derek scared just by looking at her should have been seen as the omen it truly was. Each counselor was assigned six kids, and both Casandra and Julie were naturals. They bonded instantly and had their kids making leather crafts and mounting their horses within a day.
Stiles was winging it, but to his mind, it wasn’t all that different from helping Scott make it through AP – lots of encouragement, lots of treats. He decided to teach his kids a song - what could go wrong? Derek, however, chose almost the same song.
Stiles gathered his kids around the campfire one night after dinner; Derek’s group was on the other side of a roaring campfire. Stiles could see his grumpy frown through the leaping flames.
“Okay, kiddos, we’re going to learn “Little Bunny Foo-Foo” – does anybody know it already? No? That’s sad. I’ll teach you how to do it. You have to sing and act. Can you do that?”
From across the fire, the imminent, inevitable doom sounded – Stiles could hear Derek playing the song’s tones on a recorder, and well enough.
“They’re learning it too, so let’s sing ours really loud!” Stiles suggested, and with that he was off and running, going one line at a time but no stopping him now. With each new lyric came a set of very specific hand gestures the kids would use to mime their words. First there was a quickly drawn house and trees (“In a cabin, in the woods”) and a man looking out the cabin window (“little man by the window stood”). The kids got it so fast and so well, anything seemed possible.
“Saw a rabbit hopping by” Stiles sang, and you could swear you saw the tiny little rabbit with big floppy ears, not just Stiles’ hand. “Knocking at the door,” he concluded.
Derek was watching him now, frowning even worse than usual. The lyrics were already wrong, he would have said, but he was on the other side of a roaring fire and had his own kids to teach correctly.
“HELP ME HELP ME” Stiles (or, the rabbit) cried. “Before the hunter shoots me dead.” Here, he made the unfortunate but artistically viable choice to mime a machine gun.
“That is not how you do it!” Derek exclaimed from across the firepit, stomping around the fire to Stiles’ side
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a kids’ song, not a horror movie.”
With Derek towering over them, brows alive with indignant rage, Stiles’ group of kids were beginning to feel like it was indeed a horror movie.
“Mr. Hale is going to teach us the next verse!” Stiles said with unbridled enthusiasm.
This completely blindsided Derek; he had to teach them that part and a few more lines and mimed bits before retreating, finally, to his own kids.
“Now I’ll tell you how it really goes,” Stiles whispered. His group practiced in a very subdued way, but their constant collapses into laughter had Derek dreading the next day’s show.
~~~
The “performance” began with skits from Casandra’s group and music (again recorders, which Cora deeply regretted ever buying) from Julie’s charmingly overeager troop. Cora wasn’t sure how a Stiles/Derek song contest would play out, but it soon became memorable.
Stiles began with “Our two groups are going to sing ‘Little Bunny Foo-Foo’-“
“’Little Cabin in the Woods’,” Derek interrupted. “’Little Bunny Foo-Foo’ is a different song.”
Casandra and Julie exchanged a glance. Cora simply said “… Okay?”
What followed was a sing-off at high volume with wild gesticulations and overacting (Stiles’ team and Stiles in particular) vs a careful, one might say theater-quality performance from the Hale team.
The wedge was set, and Stiles’ ensuing popularity only made things worse. Derek was the Grumpiest Thing Ever, worse each day, if that were possible. He scared the campers by lurking outside their tents casting evil shadows (“That was just my profile!”) and being pissed off at small birds during the day hikes.
Kids complained to their parents, to Miss Cora, and to the other counselors, Stiles most of all, to do something about Derek. It was time for a talk.
~~~
Between groups, there was always a brief period of cleaning, restocking, and even rest. And difficult conversations. Cora chose the horse barn at chore time, so Derek couldn’t get away too easily.
“You are –“ Cora stopped herself when she saw the strained look on Derek’s face. Why am I doing HR now? How do I tell him he’s the worst counselor ever?
“Is this about the song contest?”
“Yeah, the kids got a little … over-invested, and that really came down to-“
“Stiles doesn’t have counseling experience,” Derek interrupted.
Cora thought for a second, her mouth opening and closing. I don’t pay myself enough.
“You also are new at this,” she said with care. “You know how kids are – we grew up in a big family.”
“Yeah, you fight. Over everything.”
“NO! You-.” Cora caught the glimmer of a smile and realized he was teasing.
“Just… take a walk with him, get to know him, dial it down a few notches, and then the kids will like you.”
“Like me?”
“Six of them used the word “grumpiest” on their evaluations. A couple misspelled it grumbyist, but…”
~~~
The next morning, Derek found Stiles putting some finishing touches on the Bunny FooFoo puppets he’d made.
“Are those-?”
“For the next group.”
“We can’t do the song contest again.”
“Song battle. Bigger and better.”
“Take a walk with me,” Derek said and turned toward the trailhead by the lodge
“Um, I still have the stage to build, and the curtains-,”
“Come with me,” Derek said, without looking back or slowing down.
Stiles caught up to him where the trees started and the trail grew shady. He could have sworn Derek’s shoulders relaxed audibly the moment the trees took over and the rest fell away behind them. They settled into an easy pace side by side on the shady, soft, needle-covered path.
“What’s up?” Stiles asked nervously.
“Cora wants us to be better counselors.”
“I think we’re pretty good-“
“I have never worked with kids. You lied in your interview; I was listening.”
“Oh and you have magic truth-sensing ears?”
“Yes, I do, Stiles. You’re what, 20?”
“Yeah, so?”
“No college?”
“I … did some stuff after high school, to, you know, get my head together. I’m going to college this fall.’
Derek said nothing.
“Got my dad into rehab just before I came here, literally.”
Derek looked at Stiles anew, but kept walking, waiting for the rest.
“Alcohol, lost his job. We’re going to get it back when he’s sober.”
“That’s good.”
“Mostly I just need a quiet place.”
“You’re a kids’ camp counselor!”
“They go to sleep.”
“They do everything BUT go to sleep. And then they have nightmares and miss mom and dad, and … and get hungry-“
“Not in my cabin,” Stiles gloated.
“Well, we can’t all afford to bribe them.”
“Dude, no, you wear them down. The more tired they are, the faster and longer they sleep. That’s why I did the song contest.” The look on his face was pure self-aggrandizing pride.
“Not to annoy me?”
“Everything annoys you?” Stiles noted, seeing how much he could push. “I mean, that’s just -first impressions.”
Derek was quiet for so long that Stiles thought he’d gone too far. Then, Derek put a hand on his arm to stop him and pointed at a deer far off in the trees. It saw them, froze briefly, and bolted.
“This forest is… better than any drug,” Stiles said softly. “Well except for the rattlesnakes, and the bears, and the wolves.”
“Wolves won’t hurt you. They avoid humans. Not many left in this part of the state anyway. Ranchers like the Argents slaughtered most of them.”
“Cora said you were really into wolves-“
“Yeah, I’ll stop.”
“No, don’t.”
Derek continued walking in silence. Stiles wanted more – more words, more wolves, more nature – more time with Derek.
“Tell me why you do the restoration work.”
Derek thought for a minute and then talked about how the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone had changed so many things. He went on with Stiles’ full attention until the path looped back close to where they’d started.
“That was a three-mile hike,” Stiles said, amazed. “And I actually focused.”
“So, we’re doing the song battle again?” Derek asked.
“If you want your kids to sleep, you will.”
“What do you want for dinner?”
“Fries with anything.”
“I can do curly fries. I got a gadget. 6 p.m. sharp, same as always.”
Derek watched Stiles head back to his room. Cora came out a minute later.
“We talked. We’re good,” Derek reported, and headed inside to get started on the fries.
“Your camp counselor shirts just came in,” Cora called after him.
Derek’s smile dissolved into panic.
~~~
“What did you do?” Cora asked Stiles abruptly the next day.
“Huh?” He was worried by Cora’s sudden accusation.
“To make Derek normal again.”
“Oh, I asked him about wolf restoration. And we walked through the forest. It was one of those, or maybe the combo.”
“Astonishing.”
AND THEN THE BULL RIDE HAPPENED.
Monday night at The Quarter Horse Saloon – neon, cowboys, and an infamous mechanical bull; the dive to beat all dives. Last chance before the next batch of kids arrived.
“Give it a try!” the waitress yelled enthusiastically over the din of the bar.
She’d spotted city boy Stiles instantly.
The waitress played her best card last. “If you stay on, we buy everyone a drink; if you fall, you buy everyone at your table a drink.”
“I – okay, I’ll try.” Stiles regretted this instantly.
The coworkers he’d come with rolled their eyes, but he had to learn this lesson himself.
Stiles willed his legs not to wobble as he crossed the thick, bouncy mat and pulled himself atop the bull, It lurched violently before he’d even gripped it and he caught the waitress high-fiving the bartender just before the bull spun wildly to the right. A strange feeling of ease settled over him and quickly the other guests began to take notice.
Front and center for the show sat Derek Hale, watching his new coworker about to die, probably. And yet.
Stiles hung on, body flexing and legs tight. Derek was mesmerized.
The way he mooooves…
In the background, Dolly Parton’s “Here You Come Again”, playing on the jukebox, kicked in a second time. He should have recognized that warning sign, but it was too late.
“You need him on your-“
“Stop.”
“- your team!” said the familiar oily voice, all false indignation.
Peter Hale, the uncle every family disavows, sank comfortably into the next seat – and so uncomfortably close to Derek. He kept his eyes on the young city boy ranch hand taking his first crack at the bucking bull.
Stiles’ body was doing things no professional rider would ever do, and it worked and it was breaking Derek’s guard down as the clock ticked up, second by second.He couldn’t have looked away if he tried.
Derek tried to shut down any and every reaction his body might betray him with. His uncle Peter had switched to watching Derek closely, briefly distracted from Stiles by this carnival of chemosignals.
“If he can ride that, just imagine him riding your- “
“Peter!” Derek shook his head side to side in disbelief and clenched his jaw.
“- horses! What is wrong with you?”
A wide, tightlipped grin spread across Peter’s face, making him even more terrifying. Derek was failing to hide what others in the crowd were obviously also feeling about Stiles.
“You hired well,” Peter commented in his most neutral and contrite voice.
“It was Cora’s idea. She found him.”
“Where is my niece…?” he asked, looking around.
“At the ranch.”
“You left her alone?”
“She can handle herself.”
“Maybe you’re right – every Argent is here getting drunk.”
Peter paused and took in the scene atop the mechanical bull; Stiles’ body was hitting a new and fascinatingly lewd rhythm.
“Obscene…” he hissed.
“I’m out,” Derek said quickly and leapt awkwardly from his chair, nearly spilling a few drinks. He would have stalked his way to the exit to make his point, but the other guests were pressing closer to watch Stiles break the saloon’s record for longest ride, cheering him on - mainly for the free drink, but they were impressed too.
Derek, to rescue his own inner calm, could no longer watch Stiles, but his brain was kindly replaying it all, Loose dark hair tousled by the ride, strong thighs and long fingers, so fucking lithe, gyrating….. He fought through the crowd and out into the cool night to clear his head with gulps of thin mountain air.
Stiles still hadn’t fallen off.
~~~
Hale Ranch, the day after the Quarter Horse ride
“You didn’t say he could ride…like that,” Derek said, trying to make it sound like a complaint.
“Why would I hire a ranch hand who can’t ride?” Cora asked. “Although I’ve heard several versions of what happened last night. I guess Stilinski has his own… unique way of staying on the bull? What did you think of it?”
“Hmph.”
“You sound hurt. I’m sure you can ride just as well as he can.”
“Peter’s in town. Watch your back.”
“He’s already been in. Wanted to remind me that it’s always a good idea to go into business with family.”
“It’s NEVER a good idea to do business with family!“ Derek countered.
“I’m aware,” she chided him. “He had some ideas you might like, though.”
Derek gave her his full attention, hoping for a reprieve from a summer of bratty kids.
“Had to tell him we’re sticking with the kids camp.”
Derek sighed his pain out and frowned.
~~~
Field Trip Day, two weeks later
“Lots of hiking and climbing today!” Stiles yelled to his hard-to-corral group.
“I thought we got a gondola ride,” said one of the more…demanding girls.
“No, Kallie, it’s a chair lift. Like when you go skiing. They’re fun!”
“I’m afraid of heights!”
“We’ll – we’ll figure something out, no worries,” Cora promised her.
What Cora figured out was that the gondola wasn’t running at all, officially. Derek was very persuasive (“Overt flirting”, Stiles said, as Casandra and Julie shared another glance). Before long, the gondola was indeed able to make a special run, and they got all the kids packed into it.
The company was a stickler about the passenger limit in the gondola and Cora apologized several times, even more that evening when they were finally able to rescue Derek and Stiles.
~~~
Sometime after the Chair Lift Incident, back at the Quarter Horse Saloon
“Wait, let me tell this part,” said Casandra, already laughing.
“It’s the best meet-cute,” Julie said to her, ignoring Derek’s very confused face.
“So Derek got them to start up the gondola and run the kids to the top. No idea how he did that.”
“I told the kids to pretend to scream and cry,” said Stiles.
“You did not,” Derek said, hoping.
“No, no of course not,” Stiles said, but no one believed him.
“But you two were already kind of pissed off,” Casandra started.
“…so they had to ride up the chair lift,” Julie added.
“…which broke that day when they were halfway up!” Casandra finished.
***
On the slimmest of seats, Stiles and Derek find themselves in peril
Halfway up the steep hillside over a boulder-strewn ski run, the chair lift jerked and shuddered and Stiles grabbed Derek and squealed. That was not a moment to include in any story, Stiles felt.
Their lift bench swayed dangerously over the rocks far below, but they were not moving up anymore. After ten minutes, Derek’s phone buzzed.
“How long?!” he asked, shocked.
“What’s going on?” Stiles asked him, unable to hear.
“Cora says six hours – how can it take six hours?!”
Stiles tugged on Derek’s arm and got such a look that he let go instantly. Derek carefully put the phone into the inside pocket of his coat before he could drop it.
“She says the gondola people say the chair lift is broken – like a piece broke and jammed it and we could have fallen.” He looked down at the rocks.
“Six hours?”
“That was the optimistic estimate. Could be longer.”
“Six hours – where’s the ladder? Where’s the helicopter?!”
“Think about where we are. Steep side of a mountain.”
“Where are the kids now?”
“With Casandra and Julie at the top.”
“I’m gonna need to…pee,” Stiles whispered.
“We’ll figure that out later.”
~~~
Three hours later…
“No, TURN away. Turn your whole body. Pee on your side.
“I will fall through the gap!” Stiles objected.
“Get on your knees then.”
“I am not standing up, I am not kneeling, and I am not going to ‘just lean really far forward’. You have not figured this one out.”
Derek unzipped his jeans and Stiles’ eyes went wide.
“Look away,” Derek said brusquely, and Stiles snapped his eyes up to the sky.
“Do like this,” Derek said.
“I am looking the other way,” Stiles said, needing to pee so very much.
“Then take one quick look!”
Stiles turned to see Derek’s ass, clenched for the gods and thank those same gods still covered by his very fitted shorts. He had braced his muscular legs straight against the footrest, and was now fully rotated onto his side, relieving himself onto the mountain far below them. A distant, gentle splashing would embed itself in Stiles’ consciousness for weeks.
“Got it,” Stiles said, and Derek rotated back but wasn’t able to get everything put away so easily. Stiles nearly cracked a vertebra, his head spun so fast, yet not nearly fast enough. He saw things.
The chair lift swayed dangerously again as Derek struggled to get himself zipped up and Stiles watched the gondola of kids glide past with a soft hum. He wondered how much a kid could see from 100 feet away.
~~~
Ten hours later
“God I’m hungry,” Stiles whined.
“Cora says a mechanical team out of Denver is working on it right now.”
“Are we going to make it?” Stiles asked dramatically.
“Absolutely.”
“This is not what I signed up for.”
“I didn’t sign up either - my sister got murdered.”
“WHAT?”
“Never mind. Forget I said that.”
“I can’t forget you said that, sorry.”
“We think she was killed. It’s being investigated. End of story.”
“That was a lot of passive verbs….”
Derek was staring off into the trees again.
“You like the forest, the mountains,” Stiles said softly.
“I like being out in them, not dangling over them.”
“It’s trees and rocks to me; what am I missing?”
“It’s not trees and rocks! There’s room to run.” The passion rose in Derek’s voice. “Trees mean cover, protection. Rocks mean places to-.” He stopped and looked at Stiles, then back at the view.
“You run in the mountains,” Stiles said, putting pieces together.
“My sister Laura and I would go running. A lot. I spend most of my time in the desert now, and I miss this. … I miss her,” he added very softly, but Stiles heard it. He wanted more than anything to just lean over and hug this very infuriating, enchanting, grieving man.
The lift lurched and Derek put his arm across Stiles’ chest instantly, pinning him to the seat.
“Okay, I’m not going anywhere.”
The lift trundled forward, taking them higher, then slowed and stopped. It reversed a moment later and they were heading backwards down into the now-dark valley. The first star came out right about when they were able to make out Cora waving wildly from the end station below them. Derek’s arm relaxed, and he realized it had been against Stiles for nearly ten minutes, but Stiles hadn’t objected.
Nearly half a day and I didn’t throw him to his death.
God, I peed in front of him.
Shake it off
July was a month of campfire smoke in his eyes, and horseback riding by the creek and longer walks in the woods when the kids were asleep; blink and it was over.
Derek and Stiles set off one early afternoon on the loop trail while Cora took the kids to the llama ranch around the mountain.
This time Derek talked about wolves, again. Stiles had to fight to keep his mouth shut but it was so worth it to hear how much Derek knew about wolves. Unfortunately, one thing Stiles really wanted to say was “that looks like a bad storm but I’m not from here and I don’t know my directions and it might hit us.” Instead, he let Derek talk about the Argent ranchers and how the wolves in Colorado were being reintroduced along the New Mexico border for the first time in a century.
The lightning flashed, illuminating the shadowed areas of Derek’s face not already hit by the low sun. Derek’s eyes had flashed gold, Stiles was certain.
“We’re going to get soaked,” Derek said, but Stiles was just staring at him.
A rumble of thunder broke into a louder roar.
“Three seconds,” Stiles said, still staring at Derek.
“It’s south of us so we have a few minutes.”
“I’m more worried about getting hit by lightning or a tree falling or animals running at us-“
“They don’t run from storms. Storms are natural. We get a few every month, especially with the monsoon-“
Lightning flashed again and the scent of rain came on the gusty breeze ahead of the storm.
“We shouldn’t be under the trees,” Stiles worried.
“Nowhere else to be in a forest,” Derek said calmly. “Let the mountaintops and the tallest trees take the worst of it.”
The rain came suddenly, sweeping across the river valley with a rising hiss and up through the forest to drench them. Stiles tried to cover himself with his hoodie; Derek closed his eyes and looked happier than Stiles had ever seen him.
When Derek finally opened his eyes, Stiles was still staring at him, looking like a cat after a bath. Derek leaned close to him to wipe his face dry, and was surprised to see Stiles lean in for a kiss. Derek pulled back, Stiles faked his way out of it, and Derek paused with his hand inches from touching Stiles’ face. He instead wiped the water from his own face. Stiles cleared his throat and stared up at the sun on the bottoms of the retreating storm clouds, and the rainbow it was making.
“You can wipe my face off,” Stiles said quietly. He radiated wild nerves and lust.
Derek wished, not for the first time, that he could shut off the wolf senses. He hesitated, until Stiles made an odd move to brace himself for whatever might be coming.
Derek ran his hands roughly down Stiles’ face and then gently slid his thumbs across his eyelids. He brushed some hair out of Stiles’ face and stepped back.
“Or you could just shake it off,” Derek said, and proceeded to whip his head and shoulders back and forth, sprinkling water all over Stiles again.
“Thanks, dude,” Stiles was finally able to choke out through the infatuation gripping his throat.
“You should bring a raincoat next time.”
“Yeah, we should check the weather reports too.”
They made their way back to the main lodge without saying another word to each other, but it was a curious silence. Dinner was equally quiet as they thought and thought. Casandra and Julie assumed they were fighting again.
~~~
The Outing to Dinosaur National Monument
August spun by through impossibly bright days of leading the camp kids along creeks and rivers to discover that nature was in fact their friend and partner, worth saving. Occasionally, and during one memorable night in sleeping bags under the stars, nature would remind them otherwise, with the howl of wolves. Casandra wove in folk tales told by her Ute grandmothers.
On late warm nights playing card games with Cora and the rest of the staff, Stiles felt more and more like he belonged, never more than when the seat next to him was left vacant because everyone knew Derek would be there soon enough
Shortly before winning her last hand of the night, Cora reminded everyone of their next and last big trip.
“Don’t forget to pack well and Derek, check all the tents. Once the next group arrives, we have a week with them here, and then we’re in Dinosaur for three days.”
“What’s Dinosaur?” Stiles asked.
“National Monument,” Julie answered. “Kayaking if we’re lucky.”
“Some beautiful land – towering yellow rock cliffs and winding rivers.”
“Treeless and not the easiest place to set up tents,” Derek added.
“But dinosaurs? Dino bones?” Stiles asked, hopeful.
“A whole wall of them,” Cora assured him.
***
Lights out in the tents at Dino N.M., after an eventful day
“That was the most boring dino museum ever!” one of the kids in Stiles’ group complained.
“Until he lost Sonia for an hour!” Miryam replied, loudly and with obvious glee.
“Shhhh!”
“SSHHHHHH!”
All of this was overheard by everyone in the surrounding tents because Miryam had what Derek had kindly called “a voice for the opera.”
Stiles, hiding in his tent, pressed his head into his hands and regretted his choices.
“They aren’t saying his name; I guess that’s a good thing,” Casandra noted to the other counselors around the firepit.
“Who else could lose a kid in a one-room museum?” Julie wondered.
In the tent, blessed with seemingly super-human hearing, or maybe just the wind direction, Stiles heard this conversation too.
“He didn’t lose her permanently,” Derek noted.
Shit, he found out.
“Or in the canyons.”
“Or in the bone quarry.”
Thank you for your support, guys.
Footsteps outside the tent caught him off guard as Derek pushed aside the door flaps and stepped in.
“You can come out, you know.”
“I’m already a legend in my group,” Stiles moped.
“And how can I live up to that?” Derek asked
“You- Are you trying to win “Worst Counselor of the Month” just to make me look better?”
“I’d like you to come help eat the s’mores they keep making. I can’t stand them and you seem to thrive on sugar.”
“You know I lost a kid.”
“Not permanently.”
“And they hated the dino museum. I can’t be responsible for kids hating dinos.”
“Your T-Rex impression changed a few minds.”
Wild giggling and hushed voices continued in several other tents.
“You’d better go do your thing,” Stiles said.
“I could really use you at the firepit.”
“Meet you there,” Stiles agreed.
Stiles was halfway to the s’mores when he heard a deep voice yell “Bedtime!” followed by several terrified shrieks.
Looking back, he saw the monstrous looming shadow Derek was casting on the side of the noisiest tent. How he made his hands look like they had giant claws was a mystery. Need him to show me that trick.
Endless
“Where is Derek? He’s supposed to be taking the horse trailer up to Stevenson’s to get the new horses.”
“How many did you end up getting?” Julie asked.
“Six, but he’s giving us four of them back free because we gave them to him last year. Derek thought the ranch idea wouldn’t work. Horse ranch camping for kids is going to be huge and we’re already ahead of the competition,” Cora bragged. “Especially now we got Otto back – giant black horse, loves kids, they love him. Oh, I need to update the website with that!”
“I haven’t seen Derek or Stiles since I got up, but two of the horses are gone,” Casandra answered Cora’s first question.
***
The night before - the night of the new moon
They’d hiked farther than Stiles thought his legs could carry him, higher up than he’d ever been but he had adjusted to mile-high life well, Derek noted. The view at the end of the trail was breathtaking – rock faces towering around them, well above the tree line, the bluest sky above.
Derek brought two tents -I am not going to ruin things with a friend was his thinking- but set them up right next to each other -so I can get to him if there are any wild animals, of course-.
He wondered who he was justifying himself to. Is it Cora?
It’s me, idiot, the sister who knows you best. The one who actually cares if you’re happy? Don’t tell me you forgot all about me already.
Derek smiled, even as he missed Laura’s sass. It comforted him that his memory was still so clear.
***
Summer swept along but the stars that night took their time.
Derek watched Stiles watching the flames of the small camp stove they’d brought, yellow light dancing over his features, giving his brown eyes a luminous golden tone.
Never love a human, Derek told himself, wondering if that was a family rule or just something his mother had said. Because you have to let them in. Our secret is too important. He’s too young – life ahead of him, college to complete, job and career and all that. What the fuck am I doing? Do I need ten different reasons to let things be?
The fire faded slowly to embers, but the air was warm enough that night. Stiles was looking up at the sky now as stars appeared one after the other. Above them, everything was impossibly deep blue, even the world around them, the space between them. Stiles looked at Derek in this luminous twilight and couldn’t put anything he felt into words, but it made him laugh with joy.
Derek dropped his eyes, listening to the beauty of that laugh. When he dared look back again, Stiles was lying on his back, legs still crossed, arms under his head, which rested on his backpack. He was staring up at the constellations revealing themselves in the near dark. Stiles was barely visible but clear to Derek’s wolf eyes.
“My god, the sky!” Stiles whispered.
Derek moved closer and laid down next to him. Stiles shoved his pack sideways to give Derek a pillow to share and they settled in to stargaze.
Stiles lost himself in the wonder of the sky above them, vast and silent. Looming and retreating, like Derek. Like his future.
***
Derek hadn’t been near this kind of wonder in ages. He was in knots and had been from the time Stiles had agreed to camp out until he laid himself next to Derek under the shimmering sky. One by one, those knots were slipping loose.
“I’ve never seen-” Stiles began.
“I thought you’d like it.”
“-so many.” Stiles named several constellations, and a couple of planets. Derek was staring at him now, not the marvels above them.
Stiles could feel Derek’s warm breaths on his cheek every now and then, but he was in love with the sky tonight.
He rambled on about the Milky Way being so wide and bright and deep, and how he could finally see the galaxies and double stars, and how he’d only gone camping with his parents that one time. Derek was content to listen to every word and hope that this night wouldn’t end.
After a time, Stiles fell silent and just watched the heavens move. Derek fell too, breaking apart inside in the best way, freer with each breath he took.
Stars wheeled overhead, unreachable.
***
They were soon asleep, right by each other, waking at various times to sneak off and pee, or to shift away from a hard rock beneath. These ended with them captured and enchanted by the wonders twinkling above them until they slept again. It was enough just to be there and to have the other beside them. Warmth drained away into the rock below, but was restored at the places their bodies pressed together.
They woke, finally, shivering in the cold early dawn atop the mountain, angry at the passage of time, unable to talk to each other about anything but their boots and Stiles’ blisters, and why Derek had no blisters even though his boots were brand new, a wildly unfair and inexplicable situation.
~~~
“Summer ends when the Elks turn white.”
Cora knew Stiles could work magic with Derek’s moods, but she hadn’t expected the calm she could clearly detect from her brother when they finally re-appeared, or the softness for Derek she found in Stiles’ face. She confirmed her suspicions with Casandra and Julie, who didn’t have wolf senses and didn’t need them in the least to reach the same conclusion: things were about to get very rough for everyone.
The last two weeks of the job were busy, and the final group of kids got an experience like no other. Derek had the middle schoolers up at dawn for nature hikes before breakfast – always somehow missing the hour when Stiles’ group came to eat. The kids’ days were packed with horse riding, lariat skills, knot-tying, leather punching, lizard observations, turning over rocks in creeks to find caddis-fly larvae, gold panning, bird calls, and so many other skills and crafts Cora didn’t know Derek and Stiles could even do.
Derek was soon grumpy again despite the busy-ness, and she suspected the chaos was just a barrier against the inevitable closing. She did make a long speech to the campers one night over dessert, talking about going back home, going back to school, separation from friends, and uncertainty. It confused some of the kids and made one cry, but Stiles just stared into space, chewing his lower lip.
He was vibrating from the sugar of his third dessert (because if Derek wasn’t going to eat it, he was) and was consumed with thoughts of his father and of college, of duty and money.
Derek had played down the final weeks like they were nothing new, like he wasn’t drowning inside, but when Stiles announced that his college had sent a formal welcome letter, Derek stalked from the room.
Stiles saw that departure and followed him across the grass and down the long drive.
“They won’t defer after all,” he said in apology. “Gotta go start burning through all the money I haven’t already sent to my dad’s rehab.”
“Of course. College is great. Lucky to have you,” Derek said, reaching the upper paddock gate but not turning.
“I don’t want to go, but- Shit.“
“You need to.”
Derek was striving with all his heart to be bigger, to be the adult, to be 24 to Stiles’ 20 without knowing how to be 20 himself either.
“I do want to go back,” Stiles said, more for his own ears, and took a huge breath to steady himself. “You’ll be okay with the kids. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them,” he teased.
The sound of a rattling old truck driving past the ranch unsettled Stiles for reasons he couldn’t pin down, except that Derek was on alert too. They’d forgotten it all moments later, but it cemented a bad mood.
“You need to move on,” Derek repeated, and they returned to the main building without another word.
~~~
That Last Day
Stiles was leaving Hale Ranch – bags packed, goodbyes said, Jeep tuned and prepped to survive the road ahead. Derek was nowhere to be found.
“I know we’re far, far away from Beacon Hills and from college, but can you come work here next summer?” Cora asked.
“I … have no idea. See how college goes, see how my dad is.” She could feel the despair in him and wondered how her brother could be such a coward.
“Derek will give you a call – if he’s held up somewhere. His truck’s still here. I’m sure he just forgot the time-“
“No, it’s good, it’s better.”
Cora gave him a professional handshake as a goodbye, which bothered him almost as much as Derek’s absence, but he waved back at her as he drove slowly down the long road to the main gate.
***
When Stiles was nearly at the gate, Derek rode up past the Jeep on a horse, but not in the way any normal person would. He was riding Otto, their huge, dark Frisian. He turned back at the gate looking like a god astride a mythical beast. Stiles slammed on the brakes and rolled the window down, intending to let Derek know how he felt, right there. Instead, he froze. After a few moments of staring at each other, at the ground, the sky, and the hills around them, Derek finally broke the silence.
“I like you, somehow,” was all he said and the windswept silence returned.
Stiles was puzzled by the “somehow,” and finally managed to reply “I like you too. … I’ve got to go; I’m driving home to Beacon Hills first and then up to college, all in like, three days total.”
Derek remained ridiculously dramatic atop the massive black horse, finally nodding like some valiant knight to his king.
Stiles returned the nod, slowly got back in the Jeep, eyes on Derek, and started the Jeep again, eyes still on Derek.
Derek and Otto carefully stepped aside.
Stiles drove past slowly so as not to spook the horse, and Derek called out “Come back”.He meant “Come back here for a sec I need to say something really, really important to you!” but Stiles answered simply “I’ll try…” and he was gone off down the road, teeth gritting as the ranch pulled him back and the Jeep surged ahead.
Derek sat there on horseback, watching until Stiles had rounded the last hillside he could still just barely see in the distance.
On campus, September fled and October dragged, and none of it was views over canyons or easy games by firelight, or the dark-haired, green-eyed brother of the boss. College kept a choke-hold on Stiles, briefly interrupted by the arrival of a new tuition bill, or an argument about money with his father, or the vast Thanksgiving dinner at Lydia’s vast house, so well worth the drive home. Derek interrupted his studies frequently, but only in Stiles’ daydreams.Then, in a flash, the semester was over.
Living at home again over Winter Break was everything Stiles had expected – frugal, familiar, and frustrating. Grades appeared and were excellent and his father hugged him, but winter truly set in with all its chilly grayness, and Stiles wished for the soft gloves he’d slipped on to chop firewood at the ranch.
He missed the dark V of the glove-owner’s eyebrows when Derek appeared in front of him and handed him his own gloves to wear, “before you get blisters”. The warm, dusty leather smelled of Derek, and pine sap – and he could hear his own stuttered apology. It fit perfectly into the entire fantasy of that summer.
Late December brought daily holiday cards, but on the 21st his father tossed in front of him a simple envelope with an address label directing it to “M. Stilinski”. The return address said, “Hale Ranch”. Stiles tore it open, much to his father’s surprise.
Inside was a two-page letter.
“What is this?” Stiles asked, turning it over and back again. “‘Happy Solstice from the Hales’??”
Stiles raced through the letter, which wasn’t hard as it was interrupted by several photographs, many shrunk to fit beside the paragraphs and nearly impossible to see clearly.
His father looked expectantly at him. “Well?”
“It’s a how-our-year-went letter from the ranch I worked on. Cora goes hard for tradition and family stuff, and the ranch is her life, so…. She came up with the kids camp on her ranch, and hired - as she says - ‘several promising new counselors’.”
“That’s you,” his father said proudly.
“I lost a kid at the Dino museum. I don’t think I’m the ‘promising’ one.”
“You said you found him an hour later – was he even lost?”
“Not the point, dad. Derek knew.”
“Which one was he?”
“We’re not getting into that again. I have lots of friends in college.”
“Uh-huh. Except you don’t have friends in college that write you letters you tear open.”
“It’s not from him, it’s from Cora, the manager. Very generic family letter.”
“So you’re family.”
“Dad, drop it, please. It was just a summer job.”
***
Alone on the couch, lit with a twinkling glow from colorful tree lights, Stiles read the letter again, line by line. It was clearly Cora’s voice and her view of things; Derek was not present, Stiles realized with growing frustration. Then, at the very end, after her signature, he made his only appearance: Photos by Derek Hale
Stiles pored over every tiny photo again, recognizing most of them instantly. The first was a standard shot of the ranch’s main gate and its iconic iron brand.
“Heh, he got my Jeep in that one.”
Another couple of photos showed the kids they’d worked with, clustered around Stiles, or Casandra and Julie. The rest were uniquely familiar, and each awoke a memory.
“My puppet stage! The hike around the lake, where we got soaked. When did he take a picture of that? And the day I lost Sonia! God, Derek, why remind me?”
One photo was almost fully black with a smudge of white across the center. Stiles stared at it from a couple of angles before it hit him and he smiled, at a loss for words.
That night – the stars!
The seven badly printed photos in Cora’s letter told a story that was far more interesting than hers. Stiles knew every moment of it – it was their summer.
“Still reading that?” his father interrupted, startling him.
“I’m probably going to go back next summer. You know, if they need help.”
“That sure, huh? You’ve got another big semester coming up,” He sipped his coffee as he left. “Thought you didn’t like being a counselor for kids.”
“It was… Derek is the one who didn’t like it.”
His father, a sly grin on his face, called from far away down the hall, “Who?”
~~~
Stiles lasted until Spring Break and finally just called Cora directly to see if he could work for her again. That’s when she dropped the bomb.
“GLAM-ping, with a G L. Very high-end, very luxe dude ranch.”
“I’m – what would I do? Do they need sing-a-longs? Or even want to make hand puppets?”
“We’re thinking slow horseback rides in the woods and adult-style excursions – Telluride, the Food & Wine over in Aspen. Oh, and yoga.”
“Is Derek-?”
“He’s fine,” Cora interrupted. “He’s in Mexico for the summer but he’ll be fine with it. He was fine with the sleepaway camp last year, so…” she trailed off.
“Feels like you’re trying to convince-“
“Excuse me?”
He pivoted.
“Uhh, …convince a higher level of clientele to enjoy the ranch. Better up the thread count on those sheets.”
“Already done; it’s in the high hundreds now. Look, text me your arrival info so I can get you on the schedule.”
“Ok-“ Stiles said to his already disconnected phone. “Well now I have to go back. Derek will never be able to handle this alone.”
High Summer
Stiles, get down here,” his father called up the stairs. “You promised me you’d get an early start and not drive two days straight through this time.”
From upstairs, amid running feet and banging drawers, he heard the familiar tempo of Stiles’ voice, now rare between college and the ranch taking up nearly his whole year.
“I’m trying to get my stuff packed. Cora’s new format means new clothes and more clothes.”
“Yes, I know, I paid most of the bills to make you look ‘presentable’. Is she raising your pay too?”
The running and banging stopped for few seconds as Stiles thought.
“She didn’t say. Derek didn’t mention it. I bet she pays him more…” Stiles trailed off into his thoughts and then continued buzzing around.
“So this is about Derek,” the Sheriff muttered. “Not about looking the part.”
“I have to look the part,” Stiles said as he came down the staircase.
“You look like me when I used to dress up. No offense.”
“Hey, I saved us money by shopping at thrift stores. And I think I look good.”
“So Hale Ranch is now-“
“Luxe camping with horses and fancy food. And Derek can really cook. I mean, his curly fries are like, from heaven, but he can do fancy, too.”“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned him.”
“Dad, please. It takes three to make a pattern. Sit down at the table, enjoy your coffee, revel in my report card yet again.”
“My boy,” the Sheriff said, taking him in proudly. ”Off to … set up chandelier tents and chocolate fountains for rich weirdos.”
“Yeah, well the guests may be weird, but-“
“I was talking about the Hales.”
God I need this summer break, Stiles thought. “Thanks a lot, Dad. Be back the first of September. I’ll call when I can.”
“I know, son.”
~~~
Agua Verde peak, Sonora, Mexico, deep in the Sonoran desert
“We’re not making good time,” Derek complained to his crew.
“The patrols are relentless. Most of this group can’t shift very fast after a week of nighttime running, if they ever could fully shift,” Rafa complained.
“We need to be at the refuge within two days, and there’s only one place to cross where a wolf pack won’t attract so much notice,” Derek reminded them.
“We’ve fallen behind before. Why the worry?” Rafa persisted. “The heat won’t get here in full force for a month.”
“Tiene su crush, en Colorado, I bet,” said Lalo softly, laughing at the change in Derek’s face.
Derek Hale had a second mission that led him south through New Mexico and Arizona, and beyond, traveling in a wolf pack down river valleys far from the lights and roads of normal folk.
At his side was not Stiles, "su crush," but a werecoyote known to most only as Apoderado. Derek called him Lalo, a childhood nickname that had stuck. Derek remembered their first kiss, and their pledge to be friends forever. Lalo shared their mission side by side.
Lalo, a genius with rope and wrangling, and a true coyote, full shift and all, would not let Derek fail. He was the odd man out, but their pact went back years.
“You’ve got someone to get back to,” Lalo said, not betting anymore. "Un flechazo.
“Nothing like that,” Derek said, trying to block out a sudden, powerful desire to get into a fight with Stiles just to get an inch from his face. It had been all he could think about as the full moon approached.
The Hale Ranch Glampers
“Welcome everyone!” Cora said brightly as she raised her champagne flute and toasted the newest arrivals, her first crop of cash-heavy, nature-tolerating city folk on the reimagined, rebooted Hale Ranch.
Surely Derek knew how to behave around people like this; hopefully Stiles would as well. If only those two had made it to my opening night reception like they promised.
“I had a flat tire in Elko, almost died of thirst out there,” was Stiles’ excuse when he’d finally called, and he stuck with it when he arrived. Derek complained that his latest group of wolves relocated into the southern corner of the state were already being threatened by ranchers. “We took an extra two days to get them settled down there, with Casandra’s help, after they came all the way from Tucson.”
Cora had hung up the phone that very afternoon after both of them cancelled on her, resigned to pulling off a welcome buffet with caterers instead of her brother’s cooking. Custom cooking was for her a selling point; Derek hadn’t fully agreed, so she had work to do.
“Welcome everyone!” Cora said to the refilled and well-fed room again, as if it would help salvage the evening, and at that instant, Derek burst through the main door of the great hall, tugging Stiles by the arm, both in the sharpest clothes they could find, both unfortunately a mass of wrinkled fabric and tousled hair. The appearance they gave was of two newlyweds who’d started the honeymoon early and only just now remembered to greet their wedding guests.
***
“What the hell was that?” Cora asked them in the kitchen minutes later, furious.
“We made it! And we looked polished … enough.” Stiles stopped talking, sensing Cora’s anger.
“Sorry for-“ Derek began, but that only gave her the opening she needed.
“You two look like you were making out in the catering truck and stopped long enough to come grab some more liquor.” And you smell like far worse.
“That’s kind of harsh-” Stiles began but Derek elbowed him hard.
“We’ll make up for it,” Derek promised.
“You sure as hell will.” She paused there, uncertain what more to say. “How was your freshman year, Stiles?”
“Huh? Oh, almost all As. Organic Chem kicked my ass.”
“You got a B+, come on,” Derek said with a tone of pride that made Cora’s eyes narrow.
“You’ll both be helping out on the Telluride trip.”
“When’s that?“
“Two days from now. Get your wardrobe sorted. And ironed. Derek, why do you look like a waiter?”
Derek looked down at the crisp white shirt and black vest he’d picked out.
“It’s…. I’m…”
Cora gave him her most disappointed look and left.
“It’s the rolled-up sleeves. But you look good.”
It was meant as a compliment, but Derek whirled on him.
“This is your fault!” he snapped, jabbing his finger into Stiles’ chest, his face an inch from Stiles, who didn’t flinch this time.
“How is you kissing me the second I got out of the Jeep my fault, dude? You didn’t even ask.”
“I’m… It’s…”
“Yeah you got nothing. Look, no more of that… whatever that was. We can’t keep secrets on this little ranch with everyone watching us. Let’s just … be friends. Light and easy.”
“Friends.” Derek said it with such utter confusion.
“And I’m not angry about the kiss.”
“You kissed right back!”
“Okay, yes, I like you. This past year was rough, and I thought I got it out of my system.”
“Got what out?”
“You, dude.”
Derek managed to look both eye-wateringly hot and wounded at the same time as he stared at the wall.
“I *thought* I got it out, but I sure as hell didn’t.”
Derek looked directly at Stiles, unclear where they might go with this.
“Fuck, how do you do that?” Stiles complained.
“What am I doing, exactly?” Derek asked.
“GOD! It’s infuriating!”
Cora strode back through the door, unannounced, ready to say one more thing on her mind, but something about Stiles’ outburst, the mood in the room, the scents that all hit at once - words left her.
“I’ll… Good night. See you both tomorrow, bright and early.” She turned abruptly and started to go, talking over her shoulder. “Brunch starts at 10 and then a short nature walk. Keep it very short. These are not people who like nature.”
Stiles and Derek returned to their separate rooms, but sleep was hard to come by.
Stiles texted Lydia once, *He kissed me wtf why*, then turned his phone off.
~~~
Nature-walkin’ for Dummies
The first big brunch was a roaring success thanks to Derek’s creativity with waffle batter, avocados, and a vast array of spices he’d brought back. The nature walk was equally successful but that was due to Stiles, channeling his father’s disinterest in nature into a kind of comedic monologue about the scant quarter mile of trail they ventured down. His group drifted between bored, hung over, oblivious, and fearful of the flowers possibly touching them. Despite these obstacles, they were united in chuckling at the patter Stiles provided.
Derek, running on little sleep and worrying texts from Lalo about the new arrivals down on the Ute lands to the south, was much less impressed. He found himself back in the first year of Cora’s ranch makeover, the grumpiest of all wolfmen, watching the popular guy get all the accolades. He was not in the mood for Stiles and deeply regretted the kiss the day before, more and more with every passing minute.
***
“What was that?” he asked rudely when Stiles had ditched his group at the bar for their midday cocktails.
“Huh? Oh, that was my dad. I can channel him sometimes.”
“You dad consists entirely of dad jokes?”
“They liked it,” Stiles said, gesturing toward the bar.
“Hmph.”
The upside-down smile on Derek’s face was all too familiar to Stiles too. Fortunately, he was a quick thinker.
“We have a few hours free. You never took me up to the high lakes last summer.”
“That’s a long way.”
“Okay, well. When we have more time. There’s always the lodge with the guests.”
Derek looked alarmed, trapped even.
“We could make it. If you can keep up.”
“I can,” Stiles promised.
“Let’s go then.”
***
Stiles was not keeping up. The effects of the altitude were sapping his strength and giving him a mighty headache, but he kept trying to move his legs forward. Derek was unbothered.
Eventually, they came up over the crest and the deep blue lakes lay below them, tucked in their high valley and surrounded by a flower-filled alpine meadow. A large stand of aspens quaked and fluttered just to the east.
Stiles gasped at the beauty and sped up, now moving blessedly downhill toward the shore. The path faded away into dense meadow grass and waist-high wildflowers all down the slope, but Derek kept going and Stiles kept pace.
“Laura brought me here when I was eight. We ran all the way.” Running through this grass as a wolf is so much better than tromping along in hiking boots.
Derek stopped abruptly and Stiles nearly collided with him but swung around using Derek’s shoulder. Derek stopped him hard, catching his arms tight with both hands. It was all very electric and close and it pissed Stiles off.
“We agreed.”
“You almost walked into it,” Derek said, voice now cautious and on edge.
“Into what?” Stiles asked, looking over his shoulder at a stand of wild coneflowers, mixed with dense bunches of leaves and dancing spires above them covered in rich dark purple blooms.
“You protect wildflowers too? Or is that poison oak?”
Derek pulled him back, away from the flowers.
“That’s wolfsbane. It’s toxic,” he explained, looking at Stiles then back at the slope full of flowers.
“It’s only toxic if you eat it,” Stiles replied. “Besides, it’s pretty.”
He reached out to cup a flower, shaped like a tiny hood.
“See, it’s like a hoodie. Monkshood. Aconitum… columbianum, probably. I did my organic chem paper on toxins. Professor said I was getting too into it.”
Derek had stepped back a good couple of feet, but still held Stiles’ forearm as if to keep the flowers from dragging him in.
“I’ll wash my hands off in the lake if it makes you feel better-“.
“It would,” came out clipped and nervous.
They detoured wide around the wolfsbane patch and Stiles got to the marshy shoreline first, making a big show of washing his hands off, fully soaking his shoes in the process.
“Your professor sounds like an asshole,” Derek said, and the easy conversation was back.
Stiles sloshed up the hill to the crest and rested there with Derek on a convenient shelf of flat seat-like rocks, to let his shoes and socks drain and dry. He wiggled his toes in the sunlight while Derek sat barefoot as well, enjoying the warm sandy soil on his soles. Stiles complained of lake swimming and the muck you have to walk through to get in. Derek listened patiently. Both were quiet for a long time after that, enjoying the breeze and the sound it made in the pines. At the same moment, they spoke:
Stiles said, “I like the lakes.”
Derek said “I like you-“ but cut it short when “you” wasn’t Stiles’ next word.
Stiles heard the catch, the honesty, and looked up to confirm the embarrassed flush and the inner monologue that seemed to play across Derek’s face.
Derek said the first thing he could think of besides Stiles. “Yes, they’re good lakes.” What is wrong with me? Good lakes?
“Somehow,” was all Stiles said, Derek’s mysterious final word from the summer before.
“Yeah. Somehow.”
“Shit, it’s been ages since I left the ranch last fall.”
“Let’s take the horses next time. We’ll get farther,” Derek suggested.
The Telluride Trip
“The purpose?” Cora asked, unsure she’d heard Derek’s question right.
“To, um, to give the city folk a little city life because they’re tired of the ranch already?” Stiles ventured.
“No, well, yeah, that too,” Cora admitted.
“No offense. I blame them, not you,” he added.
Derek glared at him savagely for that, and Stiles simply mouthed “You asked!”
“So we’ll let them spend money and hit some of the hot spots and some nightlife that I was not able to provide here…”
“Well, not at their level,” Stiles said, thinking he was helping, but Derek slapped his chest quickly with the back of his hand.
“OW!”
“In any case, you two will take one group, Carlos and Tanya will take the other. We have two luxury vans hired.”
“Are we making money on all this?” Derek asked.
“Oh so much,” Cora confessed. “Did you not see the prices on the website?”
Derek looked embarrassed. “I was in Mexico?”
“You signed off on the email back in February.”
“She’s charging them over $8,000 for the week. Each!” Stiles marveled, and again Derek didn’t seem pleased with him for saying this.
***
Telluride was bustling with high-summer crowds. Derek’s mood hadn’t improved much and the trip there was painfully quiet. The guests seemed to think he and Derek were chauffeurs and said nothing to them the entire drive.
Once the guests were set free, spilling out onto the main street and scattering into shops or taking selfies, Stiles took Derek’s arm and tugged him toward a sign saying “Free Gondola”.
“NO!” Derek said very clearly.
“Not the gondola; I found a place. Follow me.” He tugged Derek gently and Derek obliged, but he was tense and silent for the short walk.
Not letting go of me, okay. This is interesting. “When did you have time to ‘find a place’?”
“While you were driving and they were all… vegetative. You seemed down yesterday,” Stiles said.
“You cut down everything Cora has done.”
“I did. I’m bad at compliments. Like when I told you your face was infuriating.”
“What did that mean?”
“I apologized to her. It’s a smart plan, and I told her.”
“What do you mean, my face is infuriating?”
“Here we are. Beaver Pond!"
***
Beaver Pond was small but it had the advantage of being deserted, and Derek spotted a beaver almost immediately. Stiles could feel Derek’s arm relax and still neither wanted to let go.
“Better?” Stiles asked.
“I’ve never been here. This goes on the list.”
“The list?”
“Places to go with-“
Stiles looked puzzled and Derek struggled to make the words right.
“…with people who get it. I like going places with you, just the two of us.”
Stiles’ thumb stroked Derek’s arm unconsciously but he quickly became conscious of it and let go.
“I grew up with eight brothers and sisters, and I love them, but I could never do anything that I wanted to. They would never go to a beaver pond.”
“Why not?” Stiles asked sincerely. “It has beavers!”
Derek stared out toward the dam and watched the beaver place a stick.
“I mean, it’s a bit on the nose – there’s probably a documentary team filming right now,” Stiles commented.
Derek laughed.
First time I heard that. I like it.
Stiles said nothing more, afraid of scaring the moment away.
***
Hunger pushed them back toward town a couple of hours later; they were looking for a café when Derek froze. He quickly turned toward a window full of maternity clothes, leaving Stiles half turned as well, and confused.
A truck, rattling like Death had come for it, turned onto their street, suddenly loud. The sound took Stiles back nearly a year to when he’d heard the very same sound along the road near the ranch gates. What unnerved him more this time was how Derek reacted, pulling him quickly off the street into an alley and behind a dumpster. Derek’s hand rested over his mouth just as he was about to protest; his other hand was tight around Stiles’ waist.
Stiles heard the truck pass, and shuddered without knowing what unsettled him so much. Derek felt the shiver pass through him, and the truck was gone.
Derek looked around after the truck had passed, scanning the people on both sides of the street.
“What the hell is going on, Derek?”
“The town is full of hunters,” Derek answered in a very hushed voice.
“Yeah, I’ve seen some huge gun racks, but why are you-?”
“Local ranch owners who hunt wolves, even on public land.”
“What are they doing in a tourist town?”
“They’re rich; they own half the land here.”
He heard the rattling sound close by again and yanked Stiles into the tiny maternity boutique.
A woman approached the two grown men in her store who had no visible wives.
“May I help you? Looking for something for the wife? Wives?” she asked.
“Looking for those wives, actually,” Stiles improvised. “Mine’s about six months along now, long dark hair, red coat, lost her in one shop and thought I’d try them all.”
Stiles powered through his lie as Derek stared at him in amazement, mouth a small “o”.
“I haven’t noticed a woman matching that description. Um, and yours is missing too?” she asked Derek.
“Yes. We’ll keep trying. Must be in town somewhere. Come on.”
“If you see her, tell her-“ Stiles was saying as Derek yanked him toward the door.
“Would you shut up and stop drawing attention?” Derek whispered, trying to make their departure as natural as possible, but his grip on the door made the bell on it ring like an alarm. Everyone looked as they slid out and stalked off down the street.
“I pity their wives,” said a customer in the boutique.
“I don’t,” said the shopgirl dreamily before she snapped out of it and apologized.
***
“Who are these hunters, exactly?”
“They’re bad people. Most of them are one family. The Argents.”
“Silver,” Stiles noted. “I took French last semester.”
“They’re our problem; don’t get involved in any of that. Please.” Derek was being both gentle and sincere and that worried Stiles.
“We need to pick up our group by the café in twenty,” Stiles said. “Why don’t you go get in the van and lay low for now? I can gather the glampers.”
Derek nodded and headed down the street, checking his surroundings at every corner.
“Shit, what the fuck are these Argents up to? He’s got the hair on my neck standing up.”
Stiles texted Lydia to dig into Argents in Colorado ranching. He heard the rattling truck once more but couldn’t see it; the same discomfort returned.
Lydia quickly supplied him with dirt about the questionable expansion of ranches, land grabs pushing out the original owners, and the many, many lawsuits against them.
*Oh, and he likes me, I think. Somehow* Stiles dropped into the text stream after thanking her. His phone buzzed so much he had to turn it off during the ride back to the ranch.
The White Party
“These people need some enrichment,” Stiles said one day in July when every single guest was on their phone and complete silence filled the lodge’s main room.
“What do you have in mind?” Cora asked. She’d seen his wild ideas work often enough to at least entertain another.
“I spent my first summer staring at the sky up here, lost in the Milky Way. You can’t see skies like these in the city.”
“They’re all glued to their phones.”
“SO, we have a full moon party! An evening to gaze at the full moon. It was so bright last month that I tried to get Derek out on the roof with me, but I couldn’t find him.”
“Uh...”
“Full moon WHITE party,” Stiles went on, fully in his flow, unaware of the look on Cora’s face. “Everyone wears all white, and they light up in the moonlight! They’ll love it. We can take them out for a night ride, amateur stargazing, find their astrological sign or whatever they want. Drinks, probably.”
“I don’t think the full moon is a good night to-” Cora countered, trying not to toss out a good idea with horrific timing for her and many of the staff. “We could do it a few days before or after, still get pretty much the same effect.”
“What?” Stiles asked, fully not comprehending.
“I love the idea!” Cora corrected. “We just need to time it for when they’re here. The full moon happens to fall on the days between groups.”
“Well okay, but-“
“Stiles, I love it. We’re going to do it. I’ll find a bright moon in August and we’ll do it!” She had enthused herself so fully that she strode off to her office to get things underway.
“Oh, okay,” Stiles said to the lobby full of guests, still scrolling their phones.
“Dessert?” he asked, and a few heads popped up.
***
Stiles lay on his bed, texting off and on with Lydia about Derek, but was increasingly thinking of his own Full Moon White Party idea. He pulled up the ranch’s calendar to find dates to match. Several days were blacked out as “down” days to regroup and recover, clean the tents, and more.
“So when’s the full moon then?"
He looked up full moons for that year and his eyes narrowed. He flipped to the ranch calendar again and back to the moon phases.
“No way,” slipped out softly. “What are they, werewolves? Why is every full moon of the summer a down day?”
*I found out their dark secret. They’re all werewolves. =D* he texted Lydia and the very second he made that thought real, he remembered the flowers by the lake. “What does wolfsbane do to werewolves?* he texted again before she could reply.
*What is wrong with you - they aren’t werewolves!!* was her response.
~~~
When the August schedule came out shortly after their chat, there - on the day after the August full moon - was his moon party.
“Weird,” was all he could say.
Derek wouldn’t discuss it.
“Let Cora manage the calendar; we’ve got enough to do.”
***
Derek was fully gaslighting Stiles about the moon now, and he hated himself for it.
“Is it really gaslighting if you are just not telling him all the Hales are werewolves?” Cora asked Derek point blank. “You know we can’t tell him. He doesn’t need to know, either - he wouldn’t take it well. Let’s just-“
“He’s smart. He knew about wolfsbane. He dug into the Argents.”
“He WHAT?”
“He gave up; thinks they’re just ranch mafia.”
“Why did I hire him back?”
“He’s really good with the guests?”
“Well he’s really good with you. Look, I haven’t said anything because honestly, you’re better around him, but you can’t date, or canoodle, or-“
“Oh jeez, Cora, canoodle?”
“Whatever the hell is going on, I see it. I sense it,” she said, letting that sink in.
Derek blushed up the sides of his neck and stopped protesting instantly.
“You’re my brother, I love you, but he’s human. Have a summer fling if you like him but end it.”
Derek heard a very old family argument in her words and it angered him.
“I’m not going to lie to him.”
“You already are.”
Shit.
Late August under a still-brilliant moon
Things, as Stiles very delicately put it later, got a bit more serious during the last month of the Hale Luxe Ranch Experience. He wasn’t sure how or why exactly, but it started with a hike again. It ended with the two of them skinny-dipping and Stiles almost dying, and midnight lakeside sex - all key parts he left out when telling his father later.
Cora had finally agreed to host the White Party on the night after the full moon, although several of the ranch staff were unable to attend for various odd reasons.
To Stiles’ surprise, Derek seemed different too after the full moon, when he was away on business, and especially after the very successful event Stiles had hosted.
Their week off began with a hike, and as often happened, Derek’s return to the forest lifted his mood. This time, though, it was late at night, still brightly lit by the nearly full moon, and unbearably warm in the cabins.
“Yes, I’d love to get out of this sweatbox,” Stiles had said when Derek knocked on his door and offered. “Is it safe?” he asked, suddenly nervous.
“You’ve got me beside you. Nothing will touch you,” Derek said confidently.
Along a trail Stiles knew well, Derek took a sharp turn off the main path and downslope toward the road, a route Stiles had never been, with no clear path to see.
“Where to now?” Stiles asked.
“A different place,” Derek said mysteriously.
“A place on your list?” he asked again, but the moon was hidden behind the treetops for now, not yet high enough to shine down on them, and Derek’s face was unreadable.
They came soon to a creek just too wide to jump across, and followed it as it babbled along in the dark, dropping occasionally over rocks into tiny dark pools. The sound made Stiles ache but he couldn’t yet say why.
The creek eventually left the trees and snaked out across a meadow, the grass silvery in the light of the moon above them. The meadow went on for a while, with dark trees in the distance. Derek’s face was lit with the same silvery gray light but it remained unreadable.
“When I said your face is infuriating, I just meant I like it. And I don’t know what to do with that,” Stiles confessed.
“Can’t you just like it? Without hating me or yourself?”
“You’re damned good-looking, dude. You must know that.”
“My sisters didn’t give compliments.”
“Well, you are.”
Their awkward conversation ended abruptly when Stiles saw their goal ahead.
“It’s a pond. With beavers?” Stiles asked.
“Nope. But it’s warmer than the lakes. And no mud on this side.”
“You remembered I hate muck!”
“Come on,” Derek said, a new tone in his voice, conspiratorial and excited.
He ran ahead, then turned and jogged backward, looking at Stiles. For a second, the moon hit his eyes and they shone. Stiles took it as a trick of the moonlight, but it happened again as he got closer.
“What are your eyes doing? It’s like cats’ eyes.”
“It’s not like a cat at all. It’s just something they’ve always done. Runs in my family, I guess. Come on!” he said again and turned.
The creek rushed through a narrower channel now; Stiles could hear it splashing and he felt the same pain. He knew it now.
“I don’t want to leave. I miss this place when I’m at college.”
“College is good for you.”
“I like hearing the creek.”
“Find a creek near the college.”
“There aren’t any. It’s a very urban campus. It’s good for what I wanted to study, but it’s not everything I want.”
“Study abroad. Mexico’s nice. Or study faster and come back,” Derek reasoned in a tone that had Stiles thinking about calling the registrar and dropping out right then and there.
They came to the edge of the small pond; moonlight danced over ripples in the dark water.
Stiles turned to find Derek was just a few feet away, already shirtless and unzipping his pants.
“What are you doing?”
“Seriously? You haven’t ever-“
“Skinnydipping?”
“Looks like,” Derek said, and slid his thumbs under his waistband, tugging jeans and underwear down in one quick movement. He stepped free of them and Stiles was speechless, wishing he hadn’t just licked his lips.
“I like this new you,” Derek said. “He’s quiet.”
Derek dashed into the water naked and Stiles could breathe again – barely.
“My whole world just changed.”
“Not yet. Get in here.”
“How unfair is it that you’re INSANELY HOT in the dark with just a little moonlight on you?”
“I’m pretty sure you’re hot too.”
“God damn I am either dreaming or the luckiest man alive. I like the new you, too. Did the full moon do this to you?”
“GET IN.”
Stiles got in, fully nude, fully freezing his ass off despite it being “warmer”. He was variously thrilled and embarrassed, and more aroused than he could remember, ever. Derek moved toward him, standing up when the pond was too shallow to crouch and Stiles strode toward him as he rose up, dripping water from everywhere and everything that Stiles had no need to imagine anymore. Stiles grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him, abruptly pulled back and then hugged Derek fiercely.
“Whoa there, you’re gonna make me- Ohhh fuck!” Derek said a moment later as he slipped and toppled back into the pond, yelling as he sank under the surface. Stiles held on and it was worth the grazed knees and chilly shock and warmth Derek gave off as their bodies pressed together. Derek re-emerged and shook himself like a dog.
“Closer,” Derek said quietly, and Stiles obeyed.
Derek wiped the water from his face and leaned closer each second, finally pressing into the side of Stiles’ neck and nuzzling him.
Stiles was ready for a kiss, had been ready for such a long time and Derek had surprised him twice now – a kiss at his car door and this not-a-kiss but something better.
***
The night’s quiet had vanished, mainly because they had been kissing for so long that the frogs and crickets felt it was safe to speak again. They hadn’t moved more than a few inches apart, up to their necks under a brilliant moon, knees and thighs bumping as they looked at each other.
Derek kissed Stiles again. A twig snapped and Derek broke the kiss to look.
“Wait here,” he whispered. “Could be a bear.”
“A bear?! Bears don’t come out at-“
Derek put his finger to his lips and sank under the water as he turned away. Stiles could see the pond surface ripple as he swam toward the other shore in powerful strokes, but even in the moonlight it was hard to make anything out on the far side.
Derek was under water for a long time and Stiles began to worry.
Show-off. Chiseled and a good swimmer. You’re trying too hard.
Near the far shore, a dark figure surfaced, then left the pond, wet and sleek, moving up through the reeds. Stiles strained to see it, hoping it was Derek but not entirely clear that it was a person at all. It looked dog-like, on four legs, but soon enough it straightened up and he was sure it was a man again.
Okay, that’s him. I mean who else could it be? Wait, where the fuck did he go?
There was no more dark figure, no Derek at all, just Stiles very alone and very nude in a Rocky Mountain pond on a warm, moonlit night.
A wolf howled.
Shit. SHIT SHIT SHIT.
Stiles was instantly backing toward the shore where their clothes lay, looking everywhere for Derek, or a wolf.
Was there a wolf at the *pond* with us?“Derek…” he croaked out.
Derek came running across the grass from a very different direction, like he was enjoying the night air, not fleeing something carnivorous.
“DEREK!” Stiles yelled.
“Nothing to worry about!” Derek yelled back. “Just a mountain lion. Took off when it heard the wolf.”
“Yeah, I heard that too. Seems like something to worry about.”
“No, no… “ Derek said now at the shore. “I’m here. Do you want me to come back in, or-“
“Honestly, I’d rather you just stand there. I’m coming out.”
Derek held out his hand and pulled Stiles from the pond into another long kiss, and Stiles had no way to ignore how hard both of them were now.
“You’re safe,” Derek said. “No wolves here now.”
Derek kept going with his hands, his tongue, obsessed; Stiles matched his curiosity. The imaginary bear, the mountain lion, the wolf he’d heard, all slipped from his mind.
Derek’s body was muscular but soft to Stiles’ touch, and responsive in a way Stiles had never experienced. The versatile approach to what was okay led to a long exploration of everything Stiles needed and Derek wanted to give him.
***
They were dry, more or less, by the time they’d both come, but sweaty too, so they dipped into the pond again, and wiped the water off with their t-shirts, then dressed again in silence. Stiles took all the long looks he could, begging his memory not to fail him.
“What are we doing?” Stiles asked as they made their way up the creek again.
“I’m having a good summer,” Derek said.
“It’s almost over.”
“It’s not over,” Derek said, taking his hand. “I need to make a trip up into Wyoming soon, if you want to come along. Just business.”
“I do, yes. Yes!”
Derek moved ahead into the dense trees like he could see it all in broad daylight and Stiles held tight to his hand.
***
“While there was some wild animal nearby??” Lydia asked when he called her.
“It was a WOLF, I swear. I know my animals. We were swimming, so-“
“Where?” Lydia demanded facts. “The lake where the flowers were?”
“No, a pond.“
“You hate freshwater swimming. You didn’t stop complaining the entire month you spent with us up at the lake.
“Yeah, well, I was eight.”
“Oh you’ve got it bad.”
“He made sure the pond had a rocky edge.”
“Oh, then he’s got it bad. Wait, was he, were you both naked?”
“Well yes, now that you’ve dragged my story into the dirt.”
“Stiles Stilinski SKINNYDIPPING. What a headline.”
“Do not ever tell my dad!”
“You’re an adult!”
“And I have my private life.”
“So you were naked when you saw this wolf – go on.”
“I heard it - on the far side. But Derek had gone off to pee or whatever. In that same direction.”
“So he was out there in the dark with an actual wolf?!”
“I guess, I didn’t see him, just thought I saw a wolf and I definitely heard one.”
“So he is a werewolf.”
“No,” Stiles laughed. “He’s not. He’s just… he’s private too.”
Stiles kept the rest of that night from her once he’d said that word aloud.
Wolves in the North
Stiles got to stew for days about what they’d done by the lake and try to cover up the hickey and the many mosquito bites, neither of which troubled Derek.
Derek’s business trip involved a long drive up into remotest central Wyoming to meet with other “wolf enthusiasts” as Stiles rudely called them until Derek had had enough.
The conference was largely a series of very dry sessions on wolf statistics, methods of translocation, and other science that failed to hold Stiles’ attention for long. He stored it all away as his mind raced through the night at the pond and the waning days of summer and the chance that he’d found something real.
The best time they had in Wyoming was a visit to a remote quarter of national forest where re-introducing wolves had been especially successful. The attendees had to remain far from the valley, using binoculars and telescopes to view a pack that had grown by six pups that year.
“Of course, we get rancher pushback,” said the program director for Wildlife Trust, while they observed. “They think we can keep the wolves inside the boundaries, and when anything dies on their land, we get threatened with lawsuits.”
“That’s one of the biggest failures – sorry, challenges – of this program,” said a man using high powered rifle sight, rankling the director with his tone.
Stiles looked to see who it was had spoken and then stepped up to him during the cocktail hour afterward back in Laramie.
“Dept. of Game and Fish,” Stiles began, reading the man’s tag. “In California, it’s “Fish and Game”.
“It’s Fish and Wildlife”, the man answered, his voice flat.
“Is it? I must watch too much TV, Mr. … Silber. Is that German?”
“Who did you come with?” Silber asked, his tone unwelcoming now.
“Oh, my paper sent me, we do a blog, and videos, and a podcast and, and all that.”
“You must have a card.”
“Let’s not get into business just yet; let’s celebrate the rebound of the wolves up here,” he said, raising his drink.
“They’re a danger; you should report that,” Silber said, finishing his whiskey in one go.
“Well, they’re predators, sure, but at least they aren’t werewolves or something,” Stiles joked, and the immediate shift in Silber’s face was obvious.
“Don’t make light of the threat. Unless you run a comedy blog, in which case I suggest you quit.”
Silber left, much to Stiles’ surprise, and he went to find Derek.
Derek was deep in a hushed conversation in a side room, but the older woman with him broke it off abruptly as Stiles approached.
“That fish guy is not a humorist,” he said to Derek.
“Who’s this?” the woman asked Derek, not looking at Stiles.
“This is a …colleague,” Derek said quickly. “Mr. Stilinski. He’s trustworthy.”
“You should be careful around Silber,” she noted, looking him up and down.
“Call me Stiles, Prof. Silene.”
He held out his hand to see if she’d shake; she wouldn’t. Derek was wound up, he could tell, and the alcohol wasn’t working on him, for some reason, but it had made Stiles wobbly.
“Stiles … Stilinski? Haven’t heard that name before.”
“I’m gonna,… head back to the motel, if that’s okay with you. Good evening, ma’am.”
“I’ll drive you back,” Derek said. “October - let me know numbers,” he said to the grim-faced woman.
“Ooh, business, at last,” Stiles said, now regretting the three drinks his new ID had gotten him.
“We’re going now,” Derek said and his arm around Stiles’ shoulders was compelling.
Oversharing
Derek had gotten a cheap room with two single beds and slept soundly from the minute his head hit the pillow until daylight. Stiles moved from watching the ceiling spin to odd nightmares, to waking up hard thinking about their hours by the pond, and then dozing in one-hour chunks as the full hangover kicked in. The ride back was unpleasantly bumpy and silent.
He finally asked one of the two questions burning a hole in him.
“So Silber is Fish and Game, but clearly hates wolves and the work you’re doing. Is he a mole?”
“Damn!” Derek swore. He braked to a stop on the shoulder of the windswept highway where they’d seen no cars for an hour. “You’re right. We’ve been trying to figure out who was sabotaging us and you got it in one night.”
“I’m in college and my dad’s a Sheriff,” Stiles joked and then held his head as the laughter brought only pain.
Around the truck, the Wyoming prairie spread out wide in every direction under deep blue skies, and Derek chose to ask his own question.
“Are we okay? I went after what I wanted without thinking about-”
“Dude I was there, I consented. I’m pretty sure you heard me agreeing, violently.”
Derek was staring at his lap, fingers white-knuckled on the wheel. The stiff wind hit, shaking the truck back and forth.
“This life we have here… you need to get back to school.”
Stiles’ heart sank.
“Do not dump me here on the side of the road, in the state where they killed Matthew Sheppard and no one noticed.”
“No, I – that was a few miles back. We could go see the memorial.”
“No, it’s… Sorry if I embarrassed you with the lady who didn’t like me, or made it worse with the spy guy. I know I have a lot ahead of me, and getting involved with you was not in my original plan, trust me.”
“You have another plan now?”
“What?”
“Original.”
“What? No, I just don’t know you and this is all really sudden and it’s perfect and my life doesn’t have perfect stuff in it. I have to ask. Are you– ?” Stiles hesitated but got an answer anyway.
“I’m a werewolf. Whole family.”
Stiles burst out laughing and then laid his head against the cool window glass and moaned.
“I’m bi, Derek, as long as we’re both confessing things. That’s what I was asking. I just want to know you better.”
“Right. Right. I … Thank you.” Derek was flustered, by this perfect man who had fallen into his world of imperfect lies. “I’m not all that experienced.”
“You’re like, almost 30. And clearly into me.”
“I’m 24! I just haven’t had a lot of…”
Stiles turned his head to watch Derek, who was clearly grappling with something deep. Derek’s experience was a single relationship, years earlier in Mexico, and he’d salvaged a friendship out of that wreck. He didn’t know how to not ruin the moment, so he went with the one word that helped least.
“I just like you. Somehow. The sex was….” Derek’s voice trailed off here.
Stiles leaned himself back upright slowly. He inched himself closer, blessing the bench seat in the old truck for giving him a clear path to Derek.
“I like you somehow, too.” He watched it sink in, now just inches apart, watched Derek’s pulse rise at the base of his neck as that curious word was lobbed right back at him. “I promise I will live my life, go my way, make my choices – be a strong and independent person like my dad wants me to be, and that might include coming back next summer and every summer after that.”
He leaned in, sliding his left hand into the very warm space between the seat and the small of Derek’s back, rough denim and sweat filling his senses. His other hand moved to Derek’s face, sliding up over the stubble to hold his head gently and pull him closer.
“Next summer would be good-“ Derek said before Stiles kissed him, and felt him tremble.
Or it might have been the truck, shaken by the wind.
“I don’t care if you are a werewolf,” Stiles joked in a whisper.
Derek had both arms around him and their next kiss lasted even longer than the one at the pond.
The long trip home gave Stiles plenty of time to watch Derek’s face as he drove, soft angles lit by the dashboard’s warm glow, AM radio fading in and out. Derek had even longer to contemplate his life choices when Stiles leaned against his shoulder and quickly fell asleep for the next few hours.
***
Aspen Food & Wine Fest
The summer ended on a definite sour note but given how things got out of hand at the food fest, that wasn’t a surprise to anyone, least of all Cora.
Derek was not opposed to attending with the guests; he had a lot to learn and wanted to be a solid “home cook” for the ranch. He could bring back some fun new ingredients and recipes.
The problem was Stiles, now fully confused by how fast things had moved with his first real relationship. It made him distracted, leaving guests to interact with Derek – a man whose stoic reserve and seriousness were not a gift to the hospitality industry.
When they’d managed to ditch all the guests in Aspen, they admitted over coffee one morning how little they enjoyed other people; this opened a floodgate of conversation. This in turn led them to avoid most of the festival events (and their guests) to spend their days and evenings talking. By Monday, they had lost all track of time, very unlike Derek, and when Stiles’ phone rang, he was surprised to hear Cora.
“Did you mean to call Derek? He’s right here.”
“Shut up!” Derek whispered back.
“NO. His phone is off. I meant to call you, to ask if you would please go pick up our guests right now. They just called ME.”
“It’s your sister. We were supposed to-“
“Oh shit the pickup time was 10AM!” Derek swore, leaping from the chair.
“Of course he’s with you,” she muttered but Stiles heard it clearly and Derek’s wonderful ears did too.
“On our way” Stiles said. “If they call, tell them five minutes, tops. … Sorry.”
“Come see me when you get back,” were her parting words.
“Shit, she said ‘See me’!” Stiles worried, running now.
“I’ll talk to her. It’s my fault and she can’t fire me.”
“She’s gonna fire me?!”
“No, no, just – get the van started.”
***
“Blowback is a nice word for what I had to sit through,” Cora said, pacing. “Do you have any idea how primed these people are to complain, and how entitled they feel to do it?”
“Well you did charge them over $8,000 each,” Stiles said, but she silenced him with a single look.
“Derek tried to take the blame, but I know it wasn’t entirely his fault,” Cora continued.
“It wasn’t. I didn’t set the alarm-“
“I am not done yet.” Cora snapped and he sank deeper into the chair, the same one he’d interviewed in and now would be fired in.
She loomed over him and opened the worst topic.
“My brother’s love life is his own.”
“I’m not his love life.”
“Stiles!”
“Sorry.”
“Whatever you are, it has to end. I need him focused on the ranch, not you. You’re going back to college in a couple of weeks; do you know how much I have to hear about you when you leave?”
“Really? He-“
“My god, you’re perfect for him. He never speaks and you never stop.” To her horror, Stiles looked proud of this. “Do not mess up the next week, and we might get some decent reviews out of these guests; they might even add stars to the reviews they already posted.”
Cora sat down into her chair finally, exhausted; Stiles, avoidant, was looking again at the collection of family photos on her wall again.
“Are you listening to me?”
“I am, Ms. Hale, thank you. I know I let you down.”
He paused here to try to judge how long he had to wait before asking what really mattered. He waited until he heard her exhale slowly.
“I like your family photos. Is that Derek?”
“Yes, always the tallest of us. Just like Dad.”
“When you hired me, you said they were “here in spirit”. Did your parents pass away?”
“They all- … Yes, our parents are gone now. Derek doesn’t talk about it.”
“And Laura?”
“You know about Laura?”
“Derek does talk about her. A lot.”
“Does he?” She seemed surprised. “They were closer than he and I ever were. She was killed … I’d rather not go into all that again.”
“The photos are a wonderful way to remember them. Really candid, not posed.”
“Our mother never liked being photographed. I guess we all took that from her.”
Stiles’ phone buzzed and he saw Lydia’s text pop up.
“I’m glad at least your phone was on. Tell Derek to turn his back on.”
***
Lydia Gets It
In his room again, Stiles looked more closely at Lydia’s text. It was a list:
- Glowing eyes
- Wolf howls when they’re around
- “Away” / Can’t schedule parties at the full moon
- Fear of wolfsbane
- LOVES wolves
- Fangs, claws, extra hair? << Well?
Jeez Lydia.
He called her. “No, he doesn’t have fangs, claws or extra hair, just this very hot beard. I had no idea how into—"
“Okay well I’ve got two more since I texted. #7: Doesn’t photograph well or shows light distortion around the eyes.”
“What? That’s a thing? Where are you getting this?”
“From you, mostly! And some online sources. #8. Injured by silver” she continued.
“Well no, come on. I’m not going to hurt him-”
“Well yes, metaphorically. The Argents? Silver?”
“So metaphorically he’s a werewolf? You know what? Derek’s a good brother who helps his sister run the family ranch. What I need are the police records from around here to find out how the Argents are-.”
“You cannot do that; you promised your dad you’d stay clean so he wouldn’t get fired, and I quote, ‘for anything I might do.’ “
“How about if I tell you some of the passwords and you go looking?”
“Stiles!”
“Okay, so what’s #9?”
“I don’t have a #9. You have eight good reasons not to date your werewolf boyfriend.”
“Good night, Lydia.”
***
The next day, Stiles knocked on Derek’s door and waited but no response came. He eventually found Carlos and asked about Derek.
“Went running up by the lakes. No idea when he’s coming back.”
Frustrated, Stiles headed up toward the lakes trail. He could handle the altitude now, and even made good time, but there was no sign of Derek. The lakes reflected the puffy clouds; he stopped at the crest to take in the moment and the view back down toward the ranch. He sat where they’d sat before and took out his phone. Coverage was a single bar. Lydia’s text was still there, #1-6.
“The Hales are not werewolves, which don’t exist; therefore, they aren’t werewolves.”
He shifted himself around to look at the lake and kicked against a flat rock Derek had sat on, moving it just a bit. Under the rock were a t-shirt and running shorts, and a jock strap. It took great restraint not to look further into what the hell this was, so he replaced the rock and turned his attention back to the lake and the sound of wind in the trees, louder now.
Maybe he really, really likes skinny-dipping, even in freezing cold lakes in the daytime. If I like him, I need to be understanding of his-
“That’s a wolf,” Stiles said out loud, and scrambled to hide himself behind the rocks, which were all of six inches high. The wolf was running at top speed across the meadow for the tree line, where it vanished. His eye caught a movement a bit farther up the slope among the trees seconds later, fast and dark.
Shit, is Derek around? Do I call out for him? Do I wait for the wolf to move on? Or just come tear me apart for dinner?
“DEREK!” He shrieked more than called out, and the black shape stopped. It was still far off, but he saw it turn and look right at him, then bolt the opposite direction.
Yeah, that’s right. Take off running!
He turned and did the same, hoping Derek would be okay.
***
At the ranch, the horses were spooked. Derek was nowhere to be found, and Cora was cursing his love of fitness.
“Someone was here,” she said. “I need to talk to Derek - where the hell is he? We had intruders on the ranch, all the way into the horse barn!”
“I’ll call him,” Stiles said.
“I’ve tried, twice. He doesn’t take his phone when he runs. I should know that by now.”
As he reached his room, Derek came running up behind, in the same clothes Stiles had seen stuffed under a rock. Derek was sweating everywhere and still looked great.
“Were you-?”
“Up on the hill running, yeah, up by the lakes.”
“I saw a wolf up there,” Stiles said, still nervous.
“Wh-When?” Derek said, masking the panic with a hitch as he breathed deeper after the run.
“Just an hour ago? Up on the hill by the trees.”
“Could have been a-“
“No, I know my wolves; I’ve been doing some research on the wolf population.”
“On wolves. Really?”
“The gray wolf and the Mexican wolf are the two most common types found here, right?”
“Very good,” said Derek, impressed. “But those are the same wolf, really; just a variation at the species level. What color was the animal you saw?”
“Black- oh.” Stiles realized his error.
“Maybe dark brown?” Derek asked.
“Maybe, yeah.”
“We don’t have brown wolves here, and the gray wolves are usually clearly gray.”
He headed up the stairs and Stiles followed. When he opened his door, Stiles remembered the break-in.
“Your sister needs to talk to you. Sorry, just remembered. Someone broke into the horse barn.”
“Fuck, again? Happened this Spring twice already. I have to shower first. Come in.”
Stiles decided to gamble.
“Lydia thinks you’re a werewolf. She has evidence.”
“Lazy mythology is not enough to convict.”
“I kind of think she’s right.”
Derek turned his head and looked at Stiles like he was nuts.
“I already told you I was," Derek said, not blinking.
“So you are what I think you are?”
“I am.”
“Now you’re being ambiguous.”
“Am I?”
“Do I want to get involved with you?”
“Do you? You should probably make a clean break at the end of summer and move on,” he said to Stiles. “You don’t need to be dating a wolf relocation specialist. I’m very busy. It’s very difficult work. I travel a lot. Months at a time, and you can’t come along.”
Stiles couldn’t find words, so Derek, hearing nothing, continued, heading for the kitchen.
“And besides, if I am in fact a werewolf, that would just be very, very complicated. You’d have to introduce me as your werewolf husband.”
Stiles fell in love right then and there and when his brain eventually cleared, he realized the mess he was in.
***
The next day, conversations about werewolves were forgotten and dismissed. Security was the topic of the day. Even as the last group of guests was enjoying a cocktail, Cora had called a staff meeting and asked Derek to lead it.
“What’s this?” Stiles asked of the small black object he noticed in Derek’s hand.
“A new thing we’re trying – a security fob for all the guests, for emergencies, or if they get lost. And to get in and out of the property.”
Stiles grabbed it and pushed on it.
“Holy f-“ Derek swore, but gathered all his strength to appear unbothered as a shrill whistling noise drilled into his head.
“I don’t hear anything,” Derek guessed Stiles was saying by reading his lips.
“It’s- It’s contacting a call center and they’ll contact the ranch to inform us.” His voice was louder for some reason. “Let’s go to the main office right now to make sure we shut it off. Don’t want false alarms.”
“Oh, wow, sorry.”
At the main office, Derek made a show of calling the company to let them know it was an error.
“It should really ring in here, too, even if it’s silent out there,” Stiles argued.
Cora tried hard to cover her ears as she entered, while also trying to look natural and urge Stiles to hand her the fob.
Carlos and two other staff burst in.
“WTF is that? Why won’t it stop?”
Derek gestured oddly to them and they froze, looking at Stiles.
Stiles had opened the fob to remove the battery and it was finally, blessedly silent for four people in the office as well as Stiles.
Cora swept Carlos and the two staff members out with loud comments about “coming to her first with any complaints” and Derek was left, ears jangling, while Stiles talked to him about how to set up better security.
The Fire in His Eyes
On his very last night, when Stiles had pulled himself away from Derek and retreated to his small room to pack, alone, he heard shouts, then heard Derek tearing down the stairs. When he opened his door, the smoke hit him and under the wood smell, burning hair and flesh. He gagged, but ran as fast as he could after Derek. Derek was far ahead already, a black outline against the orange wall of flame.
The horse barn was ablaze on all sides. When Stiles got closer, Derek was trying to pull the door open but he had to break the lock, which he did with his bare hands. Stiles gasped as he heaved the door wide. The horses bolted out with frantic, wild neighing, heading in every direction; Stiles tried to reach for them but Derek yelled to let them go.
“And get out of their way!”
Derek ran into the barn, into the flames, and chased a few panicked horses out before the roof cracked and fell in. He made it out, just barely, then seemed to see something behind Stiles, and roared. Stiles turned to see a truck come to life just outside the gates, invisible in the dark until it rattled to life.
His summer turned in this moment, and he knew a thing in his heart: I guard this ranch too and you’re fucking with the wrong people. He heard growling growling? and spun back around to see Derek stalking toward him, heading straight for where the truck was parked.
Derek’s head tilted left and then right, sinuous. He tipped it back, and then dropped it down into the most terrifying thing Stiles had seen in his life.
Oh my god that’s cool. Lydia was right!
Derek had grown a full set of sharp teeth and long fangs; his hands now ended in razor-edged claws, ready to attack. His face was still changing form into something wild. Derek’s eyes glowed bright yellow in the night.
What is happening? Stiles swallowed, unable to speak.
Derek strode right past him, ignoring him for now, ignoring what he’d just become in front of him.
The truck rattled off into the dark without lights, picking up speed. Stiles watched Derek run after it, but could see no plates, no people inside. Everything was dark, apart from the now collapsed barn burning behind him in a heap, its orange glow cast over everything.
Above the ranch gate, the Hale brand was barely visible in the distance– a bold, elongated H with two curved extensions jutting down.
Why did I think those were vampire fangs?
Several realizations dropped into place one after the other for that poor California city boy.
I need to get my hands all over him.
Dad’s not going to like this.
I’m not frightened. Why am I not frightened? Okay, a little frightened.
***
The barn was a heap of charred wood and smoking embers by the time the local fire department arrived. Engine 35 doused the entire ranch with water, fire season standard practice, and pulled the horse barn apart board by board, covering the dead horses with tarps out of respect. Several horses hadn’t made it out.
Cora was on the phone most of the night; Derek never left her side. Casandra’s family, tribal police on the reservation down south, were advising them, but could do nothing concrete to help. Derek avoided Stiles at every turn until he was left to mourn over the horses, including Thunder, the first one he’d ridden at the ranch.
He wept for Thunder and waited for life to make sense.
***
Cora was in shock the next day and would not talk about Derek in any way. Stiles spoke to her about returning soon, promising over and over that he would, even as he was preparing to leave. She merely nodded.
Derek finally showed up for Stiles’ departure, this time. He was not on horseback, at the last second, not being cryptic or romantic. He looked the same as the man Stiles had fallen for, no more, no less. Neither of them knew what to say.
“I don’t want to go, not now. I will come back. I promise.”
“Just forget everything I said, everything you saw. It’ll be better for you - and for us.”
“You told me the truth. Why didn’t I believe you?”
“I never want to lie to you, never again. I’m sorry. But get away from here, put some distance between yourself and the ranch.”
“Why would-“
“They’ve caught your scent. They won’t let up. I - I’m sorry.” Derek stopped talking with that final apology, and didn’t speak again.
Stiles’ eyes were brimming with tears; Derek wiped them from his cheeks as they fell, then kissed him so gently on the lips that Stiles could hardly breathe again after.
“I won’t ask. Don’t have to,” Stiles said haltingly. “I know what I know and I’ll be back when I can.”
Derek straightened his shoulders and looked Stiles in the eyes; Stiles didn’t blink.
...
“My wolf-man,” Stiles said so softly that only Derek heard him.
And then he was gone.
Stiles was a mess of anxiety and regret, beating himself up for leaving, for everything he’d said and done that had come out all wrong. He was lucky he didn’t wreck the Jeep on the winding road north despite making six U-turns, watching his phone for any sign of wifi and tears filling his eyes again and again.
Just south of the highway to Utah, his signal returned, but no messages from Derek came with it. He skidded to the side of the road and called.
Answer. Answer.
He stopped again later for gas and Derek answered that time.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, no, no, I’m not all right. What did I see?”
“You said you didn’t have to ask.”
“Well I’m asking.”
“Not on the phone.”
Stiles sighed loudly. “I miss you.”
“Stiles don’t.”
He had no response to that one, so Derek continued, holding on to the clarity the fire had given him.
“Get to your father. Get back to college. Take that path for now.”
“Yeah…”
“Let the future be.”
…
“Drive safely. I mean it.”
Stiles’ phone beeped and died as he looked at the screen.
***
The Jeep, ever loyal, abandoned him too, east of Moab. He noticed a truck far behind him pulling off the side of the road, but no driver got out, even for the hour it took him to tape his engine together again. The dark truck sat there, dark and ominous as he heard the Jeep failing to start, over and over.
It was there when the tow truck finally arrived and pulled out to follow them, all the way to Moab, where it stopped again far down the street from the repair shop. It wasn’t the rattling truck from Telluride, or the ranch, but it had Stiles on edge. When he finally left in his restored Jeep, it was gone, but he watched his rear-view mirror for the next ten hours until the light left the sky.
***
Stiles entered the dark house, turning on a single hallway light. He heard his father getting up.
“Dad?”
“Stiles? It’s 3:30 in the morning, where were you? You have a phone,” his father scolded as he came sleepily down the stairs.
“By the time I had reception up by Reno, it was 12:30 a.m.; I just wanted to get home.”
“You need to leave for college in… six hours.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen. I need to sleep. And then we will go to see Mom, yes. College will wait.”
“Tomorrow’s the first day of classes, isn’t it?”
“Attendance isn’t a big thing. Professors just review their syllabus the first day,” Stiles replied, dropping his bags with a loud thump near the door.
Stiles’ father pulled him in and hugged him tight.
“Let’s get you to bed. You look awful. And you smell – did you drive through a fire?”
“Long story. Later,” was all he could say as they trudged up the stairs to his old room.
***
The following day at the cemetery, Stiles avoided talking about his summer in any detail, for reasons that were obvious to him. His father, though, was concerned by this uncharacteristic silence and pushed at the facts like a trained investigator. Together they managed to antagonize each other into one squabble after another.
By the time the Sheriff asked him point blank about Derek, Stiles was ready to snap.
“Derek is – in Colorado, that’s where he stays, and I go to college.”
“Yeah, and I get one day of having my son back – one day! Between this summer work and your college classes-“.
“You’re an empty-nester now, Dad.”
“I’m not ready for that,” the Sheriff said, his voice breaking.
Stiles looked at him, shocked. Is he using again? Am I why he’s using?
“I lost your mother ten years ago and I will not lose you.”
Stiles paused and put his hand on his father’s shoulder, squeezing it softly the way his dad squeezed his, the Stilinski love language.
“He likes me, I like him in a really stupid way, and it won’t work, and everything got so much worse just when I left.”
His father’s face softened immediately. Stiles embraced him there on his mom’s grave and held on tight.
“If he hurt you, I’ll kill him,” the Sheriff said, fully serious, making Stiles laugh.
“I don’t think you’d come out of that alive either,” he chuckled, fighting a sob.
“We have time. Tell me, how can love be bad?”
***
As he reloaded the Jeep less than 24 hours later, Stiles tried calling Derek again.
“Yes, Stiles.”
“I’m in your contacts!”
“I only have three people in my contacts.”
“Well that’s, - not sad, but-“
“Did you get to college safely?”
“No, I’m at home. It’s complicated.”
“Is your father okay?“
“He’s okay. I told him about you.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Not the… whole story. He sort of knew… about us. I think he always has. I mean your message in Cora’s letter - you weren’t subtle.”
Absolute silence from the other end greeted this accusation.
“Derek?”
“I’m not good at this stuff on the phone. Better in person.”
“It’s just – talk. You talked in the forest.”
“Sorry. I’m not good at this. Look, I’ll try to call again before I go down south. But I’ll be gone for a few months then. I can’t call or take calls. It’s too risky.”
“What’s risky about wolf relocation?”
“Some other time. The insurance people just arrived about the barn. I have to go.”
Again, silence, because he’d hung up.
“Fuck.”
Spooky Stalker
Stiles arrived back at college after a grueling 12-hour overnight drive, which he did straight through and suffered for it. He crashed in his thankfully single room and missed several key events at the start of the semester, including all his first day of class info.
Sometime in October, as the days shortened, his problems grew. He’d broken one of the requirements of his financial aid agreement by arriving late and missing meetings; the reduced amount left him with a surprisingly large bill due. Emails from the bursar piled up, turning to paper letters delivered to his campus housing weekly.
His father began medicating again for the first time in a long while on the anniversary of his mother’s death, and while the clinic said it was understandable and even expected for new patients to relapse, that didn’t relieve Stiles of the need to drive home mid-semester and miss exams to admit his father again. Money was shorter than ever now.
Derek was ghosting him, then in mid-October his phone simply wasn’t there. Stiles heard a few automated messages in English, and then the week after in Spanish, but couldn’t leave any of his own. Cora would only say Derek was “in Mexico.”
“I know that, but I can’t reach him.”
“That’s the point, Stiles. He needs to do his work. Just as well he’s gone - I still can’t forgive him for what he did. Or myself for hiring you – twice.”
“Whoa, that’s not-“ he said, but she’d hung up.
“Pissed off two Hales now. Can this year get any worse?”
***
The year soon got worse, in a meeting with Financial Aid officers, not his first. Due to some obscure criteria – and documents he had not sent “in the proper time frame”, his aid was being further reduced. They seemed less than sympathetic, deaf to his pleas for extensions on his extensions.
Stiles stormed out of the building, keeping his composure for all of fifty feet before he gasped, his chest tight with panic. He tried to head around the corner of the building, wiping tears from his eyes, but crashed into a man there who took the hit without moving too much, and gripped Stiles by the shoulders.
“Now, now, what’s got you all upset?” the man smiled.
“God I’m sorry, I didn’t see- Are you okay?” Stiles asked, but the man didn’t let go and didn’t stop smiling.
“Stiles Stilinski, I presume.”
...
“We met briefly, in Colorado," he continued. "Well, I saw you. Not sure you saw me.”
Stiles tried his hardest to recall meeting this man, and was on his guard, remembering Derek’s warning about the Argents. Stiles stepped back, pulling free of the man’s grasp.
He was well-dressed, in a stylish jacket and black jeans, black cowboy boots with silver tips. Under his jacket he had the lowest V-neck Stiles had ever seen.
Stiles hit first. “Caught my scent? Came all the way here to what? Scare me?”
“That’s an interesting choice of words, Mr. Stilinski. I’m sorry, I should introduce myself. I’m Peter. I’m sure my nephew never once mentioned me.”
“You- You’re-”
“Peter Hale, Derek’s uncle, brother of the woman who once owned the Hale Ranch, and its future owner, with your help.”
Stiles’ brain, filled with financial aid details and the Spanish class he was three weeks behind in, finally stepped up and offered something horrifying but useful.
“A were–“
“Shhh. Let’s get a drink somewhere… quiet.”
***
Stiles found himself in the local student bar, far in the back room in a high-walled booth with a werewolf. Not the werewolf he wanted.
“You know what we are, or you think you do. It can’t leave your lips, but I have heard that you almost always have words spilling out of your mouth.”
“Who said-?”
“Cora doesn’t like you that much.”
“She liked my ideas for the ranch.”
“And she likes mine – we’re joining forces,” Peter stated. “I respect your ideas too – the White Party was hilarious.”
Stiles frowned, unable to tell if Peter was being sincere but feeling he never was.
“Where did you learn to ride bulls like that?” Peter said changing the subject suddenly.
“I didn’t.”
“A savant!”
“I just went with it. I never did that before.”
“You had quite the effect on Derek that night.”
Stiles flushed more with anger than embarrassment.
“Sorry, sorry, not trying to be crass,” said Peter.
“What do you want?”
“We don’t trust you.”
“Derek does.”
Peter shook his head. “Derek trusts everyone, even that werecoyote he works with. He trusted the Argents enough to leave Laura unguarded while he ran his little wolf operation. And look how that ended up. One less Hale.”
Stiles stood up to leave, looking for a way out, but they were far from any exits, and the staff had forgotten them. Peter stood up with him.
“Option One, we reach an agreement, Option Two, you forget everything, or Option Three…”
At that point, Peter’s claws slid forward from each fingertip, a foot from Stiles’ face.
Stiles braced himself.
“…I kill you.”
“You can’t possibly kill everyone who guesses your secret.”
“Mainly they forget – names, lives, how to breathe,” Peter said, moving his claws slowly back and forth until one finger remained extended, pointing directly at Stiles. “What will it be?”
“Did you know I can text without looking? Comes in handy in class.”
Peter blinked slowly but was unbothered.
“I just wrote a message to Derek. Asking what’s wrong with you.”
Peter grabbed his arm before he could send the text, and he could feel the claws again, painfully sharp in the bend of his elbow.
“That ranch belongs to me.”
“Well, it’s out of my price range.”
“I have money. For college, for your father’s treatment….”
“Then what the hell do you need?”
“Just a signature. Derek doesn’t want the ranch; he’s busy repopulating wolves and smuggling cowards down to his “refuge”. Cora is…well her heart’s not in it. Get her to sign.”
“Need the check?” the server called, coming toward them.
“Drinks on him tonight,” Stiles said, bolting for the door.
Peter’s claws vanished as he turned his head and smiled.
***
By December, the college had run out of patience and Stiles found himself with the VP of Something Important having a(nother) chat about finding “a new path”. He’d been through the Bursar and several deans already; all were exhausted and frankly terrified of another conversation with him.
“I’m going to have the money next week – I have three work-study jobs-“
“And you’re taking more units than anyone else in the college; have you considered… not doing that?”
“I’m considering changing my major to pre-law or administration of justice. Or business.”
“My god.”
“Is that not-?”
“I apologize. It’s not something most students do.”
“Or maybe a study abroad program. Do you have any in Mexico?”
“Do you even speak Spanish?”
“THAT’S WHY I’D GO!”
…
“Goodbye, Mr. Stilinski.”
Fresh into his academic dismissal and now without dorm space or a way to return to Beacon Hills that didn’t involve shame, he was homeless. Stiles headed east out of California in December, sure that Cora would understand if he just showed up, hoping that Derek would be home for the holidays (and Peter would not).
It snowed from Winnemucca to Salt Lake, and he had no winter tires. After that, the storm became so bad it got a name, dropping over five feet of snow. The roads east of Salt Lake and into Colorado closed, the roads back toward California closed too, and Stiles spent Thanksgiving in Utah burning cash and hating himself, all while shoveling turkey into his mouth at a dismal little diner.
He drove home and lied about college from the moment he opened the door.
***
“Stiles, why is my laptop’s search history all about werewolf lore?” the Sheriff asked one damp and rainy day in January.
“Because ‘my’ laptop was a loaner from the college, and I had to return it over break. I can’t lose this research, so I’m doing it all on yours. Keeps me busy and out of trouble.”
“I doubt that.” He watched Stiles type and then scowl. “So this friend you keep texting…
“Dad-“
“Is he a werewolf?”
“I’ll tell you when I find out for sure. 99% likely.”
This left the Sheriff speechless and stuttering. “I – I was joking.”
“Me too, Dad,” Stiles said without looking up from the laptop.
~~~
Spring Break but no break from the lies
Much of what Stiles discovered online about werewolves was just plain wrong; he only noticed that occasionally, though, and couldn’t confirm the stories because Derek refused to be his fact checker.
Between Derek’s big trip to Mexico and Stiles’ third year of however he defined college at that point, they had only talked twice without interruption for any length. Derek often just didn’t answer, which meant he was in danger.
“Time apart is hard for everyone,” Lydia counseled Stiles at the Stilinski house. “Especially if you’re in love. With someone who’s not exactly human.”
“I’m not in love-“.
Lydia gave him such a look.
“Derek is. All that stuff he said, assuming you remembered and reported it accurately? He showed you something deeply personal. You love him too, you just haven’t focused long enough to realize it.”
“Is that Lydia? Say hi,” his father interrupted from downstairs, uniform pressed into straight lines everywhere.
“Hello Sheriff,” Lydia called back to him.
“Not quite yet. Interviewing tomorrow.”
“You’ll get your job back,” she said encouragingly.
“Thanks. Stiles, you have a letter from the ranch.”
Stiles tumbled down the stairs so fast his life passed before the Sheriff’s eyes.
“Give me that!”
“I’ll leave you and Lydia to discuss love,” the Sheriff said, handing him Cora’s letter.
***
“Oh my god, she’s sending out summer plans.”
“Read, Stiles. Enunciate,” Lydia demanded.
Stiles read as quickly and articulately as he could, using a wild approximation of Cora’s voice, then stopped cold.
“She’s changing the format again. It’s not ‘luxe glamping’, it’s …animal therapy?”
“Is she qualified for that?”
“No idea. I mean, she’s an animal.”
“Stiles.”
“There aren’t any photographs in this one,” Stiles said, his voice falling away. No! There’s one at the end, the arch over the gate. …”
“Why did you stop?”
“It’s the main ranch gate. It’s captioned. It says “Come back.” He held it up for her.
“So she wants you to work again, great-“
“It says “Come back. -D.H.”
“In her corporate, mass-mailed Spring Equinox letter, her brother asked you, personally, to come back to him?”
“Yeah, I – … I guess.”
“Now do you believe me? He’s not good at it, not at all, but he is in love with you.”
“What does that even mean? Some broody wolf-man who repopulates actual wolves thinks I’m… neat?
~~~
‘Very bad man! DANGER!’
One day near the end of Spring break, the doorbell rang, and Stiles, upstairs, briefly thought he’d forgotten to intercept the mail. His father answered.
“I’m looking for Stiles.”
The hairs on Stiles’ neck stood up.
“And you are?”
Good one, Dad.
“My family runs the ranch where he’s been working; they wanted me to see if he was coming back again, now that he’s not-“
“Got it, Dad. Thanks!” Stiles shouted, flying down the stairs.
“Oh, you must be Derek!” the Sheriff said.
The look on Peter’s face at that moment was one Stiles would cherish for years and years to come.
“That’s his uncle, Dad. Surely you can see how much older he is.”
Peter frowned.
Okay, this is going to be easier and way more entertaining than I thought.
“Come in,” Stiles said, waving Peter into the living room. “Dad, help me get some snacks.”
His father knew trouble when he saw it.
“I’m so glad that’s not Derek. He’s up to something.”
“No, get the good cookies!” Stiles said over him, scribbling a quick note that read: Super hearing, VERY bad man. Danger!!!
“Cookies, yes. In the cupboard.”
“Make him some coffee, and I’ll be right back,” Stiles said, as calmly as possible.
“What? Where are you going?”
“Honestly, the less you know…”
Stiles texted something briefly and then took the good cookies to Peter in the living room.
“Coffee’s coming as soon as Dad can make it.” Stiles dropped his voice to a whisper. “He doesn’t know, no one knows. What the hell do you want here?”
“Well, Stiles …” Peter nibbled a cookie. “I thought I’d try being nicer this time. I’ll pay for college, you get Cora to sign the ranch over to me.”
“I thought it was Laura’s?” Stiles said, feigning confusion.
Peter paused and tilted his head a bit. He sat on the couch, crossing his legs and taking another bite of his cookie. After a moment, he looked up at Stiles. “These are stale,” he commented, putting it on the coffee table. “Maybe you do know about Laura, But tell me, Stiles, why is my loser nephew so into you?”
“Let’s ask him.”
Stiles’ phone buzzed. It was Derek, after months.
“Hey Der.”
“Ecch,” said Peter, disgusted.
What Stiles got was an earful of how wildly dangerous it was to be anywhere near Peter, ending with “Put him on now.”
Peter held the phone so tight to his ear that Stiles could barely hear a word. His face changed as Derek spoke, and he finally handed the phone back to Stiles without looking at him.
Derek said only, “Peter’s good. No worries.”
“Good as in leaving, never to return?”
“He’s coming to the ranch as fast as he can.”
“Should I?”
“Absolutely not. Stay in school and finish the semester.”
“Oh, yeah, sure. I can come back a bit earlier than usual because they shifted the calendar a bit, shorter semesters.”
Peter was giving him a deeply disappointed look.
“Riiiight,” Derek said. “Well, when you can. See you then.”
“Okay-” Stiles said but the phone beeped. Again, Derek had hung up abruptly.
“Goodbye, Peter,” Stiles said.
“I had so much respect for you – you threatened my life, you served me stale cookies, but really, Stiles? ‘They shifted the calendar’? Derek hates liars.”
Summer Heat
Late May in the high desert was unseasonably cloudless and scorching, withering the last of the flowers quickly, drying the ground and making the graves harder to dig.
“This is not our role - gravediggers,” Lalo finally said when he and Derek were finally alone in the moonlight.
“We’ve lost people before,” Derek said as calmly as he could.
“Your mother would slap you for that one. And she never slapped.”
Derek’s head drooped with grief and with shame.
“Dig, bury, hide. It’s all we can do out here right now,” Derek said.
“It’s not all we can do! We can hunt them right back, these Argents. I smell them on his corpse and I know you do too,” Lalo argued.
“We can’t abandon the rest of the group.”
“We’re three days past the border and we’ve lost two already. They’re onto us. We can’t lead hunters to the refuge,” Lalo pleaded.
“We bury Horacio now. I’ll track them tomorrow,” Derek said sharply.
Lalo jammed his shovel against the rock and it bounced off with a sharp “ting”. This was going to take a while, but battling the hard ground seemed to help ease their anger.
The moon had raced far toward the distant hills by the time they’d said their last words and scattered earth over Horacio Moreno, werewolf.
***
But two days after burying Horacio, they were divided by the disappearance of another member of their group who’d trusted them. The body of Horacio’s cousin Trinidad was left to foul the stream while his head was found nearby on a path, unavoidable, and the message undeniable.
“No doubt now,” Derek said, discouraged.
“They left the arrow in his head?” Lalo said, amazed. “Why are they killing with silver still?”
“They’re traditionalists. And arrows are quieter,” Derek said, his mouth grim and tight.
“We were awake all night, moving. We didn’t hear them. Nobody saw nothing.”
“They’re changing tactics. Coming in on foot, judging by the tracks.”
“Coming in with paragliders, if the tracks don’t lie.”
“They know where we are. We have to change the route, travel in daylight.”
“We go back. This is doomed,” Lalo argued.
***
That evening after a dinner over a small fire, the remaining four werewolves were given a choice, and they chose to flee back to civilization and blend in.
Derek, disappointed, agreed to turn back, taking the shortest route. Lalo led the group northwest and Derek cleared the campsite.
He never rejoined them. When he woke, he was chained hand and foot in a cave.
Cora was torn – she needed help but her only brother had abandoned her and his “mission” was now a week longer than he’d promised. Her best and simultaneously most annoying option was Stiles Stilinski, and he wasn’t to be found either. His college emails bounced; his father swore he was back at school, had been for weeks, and Cora wasn’t about to panic a stranger with ideas of werewolf hunters chasing down his son.
She called Stiles’ number repeatedly but there was no answer; eventually, she allowed herself to admit she was worried about him. And about Derek.
Three days later, she got a single text: *OTW will explain soon, tell Derek I’m okay.*
***
Stiles arrived in a (for him) shockingly dilapidated Jeep less than 24 hours later; the first words out of his mouth were “Where’s Derek?” Any explanation Cora might have hoped for was shoved aside by Stiles’ concern verging on panic. She finally shared the barest minimum of information about Derek’s trips bringing wolves up into Colorado.
“You won’t believe the things I found on the Argents with all my free time- “ He stumbled over the accidental revelation and rephrased it. “With the time I had.”
“Who?” Cora asked, very unconvincingly.
“The people who burned the horses alive,” Stiles frowned.
“I recall Derek saying you should stay well away from all that.”
“Yeah, well.”
“We have no conclusive evidence that Argents were involved. Aren’t you setting a record for finishing college faster than any normal person should? When did you have free time?”
“No. that was Vincent Carney, 2001, 1.75 years start to finish, I’m nowhere near that. I’ll be like…two and a quarter…” His voice trailed off. “Okay, I dropped out. Why lie when you can just sense that?”
“I’m sorry, what?” Cora asked, her voice taking on a different tone.
“That sense of perception you have, you know,” he tumbled through his lies. “Being as perceptive as you are.”
“Peter was right!”
“Shit, is he here?” Stiles was truly scared now, far more than the fear Cora invoked.
“He’s not. But you’re right to be afraid - of ME! Gah, I am going to kill Derek when I see him again.”
“Look I swore to Peter and I will swear to you too – not a word out of my mouth to anyone. I don’t care. Not interesting to me even. Yawn! Boring. Werewolves, who cares? Right?”
He stopped because he’d run out of air to make words with. He took a deep breath and stared at Cora with the same eyes that captured Derek’s heart.
“You’re going to be trouble. For all of us.”
“I should probably start by finding Derek, then. Where is he exactly?”
***
Cora spent one of the most awkward and unusual afternoons of her life helping Stiles make up his bed, the same one he’d slept in for two summers – occasionally with Derek the second summer, which he held secret in his memories.
Stiles’ mind, diverted by the busywork of unfolding and tucking, did let Cora in just once.
“My dad’s better, but I’m worse,” he admitted.
“You can’t drop out now. You’re… doing well, I assume. You’re smart.”
“3.89 GPA.”
Cora lofted the top sheet into the air and watched Stiles relax as he held the other corners, arms raised.
“And I’m technically homeless. My dad doesn’t know.”
“Isn’t he paying for some of it?”
“I told him I had a couple of jobs.”
“And do you?”
“I make so much on bull riding bets, you wouldn’t believe. Only works once though and then word gets around. Not enough mechanical bulls in the northwest.”
“You have an odd skill set.” She watched Stiles try to take the compliment. “Tell your Dad you left college.”
“Derek doesn’t know either,” he admitted.
“He won’t care. No – he will care. He’ll tell you to go back.”
“I don’t want to-“
“I don’t think you can disappoint him. That’s not in him.”
“I hear he doesn’t like liars.”
“This isn’t that. Peter, now he’s a liar. This is just news. And life.”
They pulled the pillowcases on - a struggle.
“Do you have any brand new ranch ideas?” Stiles asked. “Because I could use some happy kids running around a campfire.”
“Nothing yet. We’re going to hold off on Hale Ranch 3.0 until we rebuild the barn and restock the horses.”
Stiles’ eyes glistened as he looked out the window.
“Thunder was the best. No way to replace her,” Cora said softly. “Get some sleep. Shower first, maybe. You stay. You work.”
“Thank you, Cora.”
***
Stiles slept for nearly 16 hours that first night, and he kept talking to Cora over the next few days. She had no clear idea about how Derek did his work, or where he might be, but she guessed he was in the US still.
“I need to try to find him.”
“He’s not on the roads; you can’t track him.”
“I’m going to try.”
“Start by going down to the reservation. Find Casandra. She’ll point you on.”
***
Stiles almost made it to the Ute lands, but stopped just shy of the reservation road to fuel up and talk with locals. Months of living in his car had given him an edge, longer hair, and beard of his own, and he didn’t look out of place in a shabby Jeep that wheezed if he went too fast.
The bar across from the gas station had a row of trucks in front, so he ventured in, ordered, and sat at the bar, trying to be inconspicuous. The Argent men at the bar, at the booth behind him, and clustered by the door all took a good long look and listened as he asked about the road to the Ute reservation.
“It’s not far, just a quarter mile more, then right. It’s a dirt road, so you’ll need a truck.”
“I have my Jeep. Trust her to get me there.”
“Right on the dirt road. Quarter mile,” said the first man.
Stiles made it to the Jeep without noticing that five men had left the bar behind him, but he sure as hell noticed the trucks pulling out of the lot as he drove down the road.
The dirt road led him exactly nowhere, and he was soon in a very dark place, lit only by the headlights of five trucks that had surrounded him. One rattled threateningly, and he knew whose trap he’d sprung.
Mother May I
Stiles fought, more for his Jeep and his promise to find Derek than for himself, but the Argent boys beat him into the gravel and he woke in a chair in a trailer, lit only by the weak fluorescent light over the small sink. His face was swollen and painful, as were many other parts of his body. Someone had wiped the blood off his face and left the towel on his leg.
From the kitchen area, a werewolf watched him and he hoped for a split second that it might be his wolf. This was a thinner, hungrier version of Derek, half-transformed and uninterested in him personally.
“Carlos, you’re a werewolf. Thought they killed werewolves,” Stiles observed.
“They care for us. We help them.”
“I heard different.”
“You heard lies. Argents keep me safe, my family too. If shifters die, that’s our work.”
“You kill your own kind,” Stiles concluded. “O-kay.“
Three loud knocks on the thin trailer door made Stiles jump, and he realized he wasn’t tied in any way.
“Carlos, bring him out. She’s ready to meet him.”
“Carlos!” Stiles said, remembering the ranch hand who’d never fit in, not with Cora, not with the horses, not with the glampers. “You can still help me. Let me go.”
“Shut up, you idiot. All you ever did was flirt with Mr. Hale. Look where that got you.”
The thin werewolf grabbed Stiles by the arm and jerked him toward the door, pushing it open and him through. He fell forward, stopped by the large forearm of one of the men he’d seen in the bar. Carlos, now in human form, grabbed him again and they walked toward a ranch house far larger than any at the Hale Ranch.
“Don’t like seeing the real you, huh? I have to agree,” Stiles snapped.
***
Inside it smelled of roughhewn pine and a day spent baking cookies, mixed with a fine cigar smoke. The cigar rested on carefully manicured fingers, blood red claws in their own right; the voice that called him into the sitting area was sweet, small, and firm. As he rounded the chair, he realized the woman herself was also sweet, small, and very much enjoying her cigar.
“Please have a seat, Stiles.”
“Who are you?”
“Sit, please.”
“You’re an Argent.”
“They told me you were clever; not particularly smart, but clever. A smart boy wouldn’t work for the Hales after he learned their secrets.”
Stiles held his tongue with so much restraint. He imagined he was Derek around children, and oddly, that helped.
“You’re looking for someone,” the woman continued.
“I’m going to see a friend.”
“He’s not your friend.”
“She. We worked together.”
“The Indian.”
“She’s-“
“Spare me. I didn’t spend all day baking sugar cookies so you could lecture me on the right words for her kind.”
“Am I free to go?”
“Sit. And have a cookie. Or a smoke, if you’ve got the balls for it. I want to tell you how this corner of the world works.”
“Other than running your little ranch mafia, and a bit of Rocky Mountain genocide, what do you contribute to the region?”
The sweet, small woman suddenly seized Stiles’ balls firmly in her hand before he knew what was happening or could move away. He listened intently as the pain spread.
“Do you know what happens if you get even the tiniest scratch from them? If they turn you? If it FAILS?!”
“No,” he whispered. Breathing hurt too much now.
“You will. They’ll slip up, and you’ll know. You monsterfuckers are just as bad as the real monsters.”
“That’s not what monsterf-hnnngh!” he choked out as she squeezed his balls tight in her small, sweet, firm little fist.
“You should go home. Clearly, losing your mother made you small and simple. Go to work, help your father become a real man again. You won’t find work at Hale Ranch for long. You won’t find any Hales soon enough. That’s the world we’re building.”
She let go of him and he stepped back, and it was agony, even to move a few inches.
“Do the police know what you’re doing?” he wheezed.
“Alan! Come in here!”
A man in a sheriff’s uniform came in, cookie crumbs and tiny sugar crystals clinging to his mustache.
“Fuck,” Stiles muttered.
“Give him some cookies to take with. Give him his phone back too.”
Stiles slapped every pocket and panicked.
“We got the number off it, traced it,” Alan said proudly. “He’s coming up the Chama.”
“Shut up, Alan.”
“Yes, ma’am. Ms. Argent I mean.”
Alan vanished around the corner briefly and came back with a brown paper bag of what Stiles assumed were this parting gift of cookies.
The Argent matriarch never looked at them again. She settled back into her armchair and took a long puff on her cigar.
Sharp werewolf claws closed on Stiles' arm again and Carlos, who’d brought him, now took him back outside into the sharp, dry evening air. The magnificent stars overhead would have to be ignored; Stiles walked stiffly to his Jeep, flung the bag of cookies far into the shrubs, and seated himself as gently as he could. He drove fast and far until he felt her grip ease for good.
He pulled off the road onto a sandy shoulder; when the engine stopped, it was pitch dark. The Milky Way sparkled still, and Stiles stared at it, shaking. I need you back, Derek.
He called Lydia, and his day spilled out in a rush of fear and relief.
“Tell your father!”
“I can’t, he won’t believe it. Look, can you find out who owns the land, like, ten miles west of Highway 371?”
“Stiles, get home. Or get back to the ranch at least. Let Derek know.”
“They already have his number; I think they’re tracking him.”
“Then you need to track faster. Where is he?”
“No idea. The sheriff said “coming up the Chama”, what does that mean?”
“Spell it.”
“Really no idea.”
“Roughly where?” Lydia pushed, losing patience.
“New Mexico? Near Colorado. South of the 371.”
He heard Lydia’s fingers clicking across the keyboard, lightning fast.
“Chama River. Big kayaking tourism spot; why is Derek there?”
“I’ll ask him.”
“It’s 75 miles away. Are they following you?”
“They know where he is.”
“Then it’s definitely a trap.”
“I know, Lydia. I’m going anyway. Tell my Dad all this if you don’t hear from me soon."
“Tell him what?”
“Tell him his only son went off into the desert to find his werewolf boyfriend before some bloodthirsty hunters get to him first.”
On the Banks of the Chama River
Stiles drove south, through small farming settlements, along roads that turned 90º every few miles to detour around green alfalfa fields, then plunged into empty tan desert, trying to find Derek in a hundred square miles. When the Chama River finally appeared like a miracle before him, he took the road south alongside it. He had no plan other than to look, and to yell across canyons until it worked. Somehow.
Lalo Apoderado was way ahead of Stiles; he was coming up the Chama on Derek's trail as well, a trail that was now mixed with Argent sweat and leaking oil.
Stiles, scanning the hills as he drove, noticed the caves. and then the coyote trotting along halfway up the hillside. He braked sharply and pulled off the two-lane road. The road went nowhere near the caves and no matter how hard he looked, the coyote was gone. He drove up the canyon until the road turned to gravel, then sand that began to grab at his tires. He left the Jeep and set out on foot among the dry grass and sage scrub, not a shade tree in sight.
Later on, Stiles would be very jealous and yet very, very grateful that Derek knew someone who could track through scent; Stiles had only sight and sound.
In the short term, though, he found himself wishing that he’d known this friend of Derek’s was even around at all. He wouldn’t have swung so hard when Lalo caught up with him, not twenty yards from the Jeep.
***
“You mudderfucker!” Lalo spluttered as blood poured from his nose and lip.
“Give me back Derek Hale!” Stiles demanded.
“Take him, cabrón! He deserves you.”
Lalo’s wounds healed quickly enough that Stiles could guess a few things about him.
“Where is he?” Stiles demanded to know.
“In the fucking cave, where I was about to rescue him from.”
“I’m rescuing him.”
“Fine, have it your way. It’s so much more romantic,” Lalo said, making a face that implied no time for romantic things. “Hurry it up, nunca-lobo. We have Argents on our trail and they’ve killed two already.”
“What?! You're not one of them?"
"You. Of course, it's you. You are the crush. Gotta say, most crushes don't come down this far to do a rescue."
"You know Derek?" Stiles ignored the crush part.
“Yes, we do our serious work. What did you think? Derek smuggles people into the US?”
“He-. We-.“ Stiles mouth moved but he had no reply.
“If he told you nothing, you’re not serious yet.”
“Listen, we- “
“Ask him who I am, some time: Who is LA-LO? Really take your relationship to the next level.”
“You’re incredibly annoying!” Stiles blurted out.
“No, I’m just Lalo. Derek is annoying. And you - you’re … what’s the word? Smitted.”
“Smitten? I am not.”
“Go on! Go rescue him before you get us all killed, smitten boy!”
***
Stiles left the annoying man behind and scrambled up to the cave opening, looking around every minute for Argents and seeing only rock and scrub and the pissed-off man he'd punched, who somehow also knew Derek.
“Derek??” he shouted into the cave.
No response. He made his way deeper, draining his phone battery in exchange for a feeble light that didn’t reveal even the floor under his feet.
“Derek?” he said again, softer, and tripped over a body, falling hard as his phone skidded ahead on the rocky ground.
Shit.
He recognized the body by touch, the stubble, the brows, the arms … all the parts he could feel.
“Derek! You should be moving. Why aren’t you moving?”
Stiles reached for his phone and sprinted to the cave entrance. Lalo was sauntering up the hill.
“He’s not waking up!” Stiles called down to him.
Lalo looked worried; he raced the rest of the way up.
***
“He’s been here for two days without food or water. He’s… conserving," Lalo explained, after a quick assessment.
“He’s hibernating? Can you help?”
“He needs water. From the river is good.”
Stiles fetched what he could in an empty plastic bottle he hadn’t tossed. When he returned, he learned a bit more about Lalo. It was the glowing blue eyes that gave it away.
“You’re a wolf too.”
Lalo sneered, “No-o-o. I’m way better than that. They made a cartoon about me. Me and that asshole roadrunner.”
Lalo sat cross-legged, with Derek’s head resting on his legs. His hands were on Derek’s neck, and his fingers were now tipped with sharp claws.
“Be quiet. I haven’t done this in years, so look away if you get sick easy,” he warned.
With that, Lalo slid his fingers under Derek’s neck and Stiles would have said into it, if he believed his eyes in the dim light of the cave.
Derek breathed a sudden deep gasp of air and roared, then sat up straight, eyes glowing in the dark cave.
“Your eyes,” Stiles said.
“Stiles! Why are you here? You can’t be here.”
“Hey, man, he came to save you. All the way down from Colorado. Punched me so hard he drew blood.”
“Stiles!”
“Derek, the Argents know where you are; they’re tracking your phone, waiting for you to come north, up this river.”
“How do you know their-“
“I had my balls crushed by one terrifying little woman, 5’4” of racism, red nails, and sugar cookies.
“Joyce,” Derek said, and Lalo nodded.
“JOYCE? That’s her name?”
“Fuck, she’s trouble,” Lalo said softly. “If they knew how to track you, that’s how they killed the others.”
Derek took out his phone and crushed it in one hand.
“Yours too,” he said, hand out to Stiles.
“What? No, we need-“
“Stiles, now.”
Stiles handed over the dusty, cracked phone and watched it meet its swift, sad little end.
“You weren’t supposed to be here in this… in my life,” Derek said in his most serious voice, which the cave’s echoes made even more impressive.
“Which part of your life should I be in?” Stiles demanded.
“You should be at college. Safe.”
“You turned into a werewolf right in front of me, fangs and all.”
Lalo gave a long slow whistle of disbelief, looking at Derek, then at Stiles, then back at Derek.
After a long silence, with Lalo and Stiles both watching him, Derek finally shrugged it all off.
“I told you the truth.”
“And it was awesome,” Stiles gushed, happy about all of the fucked up things in his life, for once.
“You can be boyfriends back on your fancy ranch, but you’ll get me killed and yourself too if we stay here longer.”
“I’m in your life, Derek. I’m in all of it. No, that sounds scary and weird," Stiles muttered.
“Out of here, now!” Lalo insisted.
~~~
“How did you get down here?” Derek asked. “And tell me the Jeep is nearby.”
“Oh, now you want my Jeep.”
"¡Hijole! Stop flirting.”
“The Jeep’s right there, where I left it,” Stiles pointed.
“Get back to Colorado,” Lalo said. “Preferably on a very large, very busy highway. I’m going to the refuge – yes, another way that only I know, don't worry. Come down when you can, Derek. Bring this Stiles kid with you. She needs to meet him. En serio.“
Derek embraced Lalo for a very long time. Stiles waited, watching their way with each other. He had a lot of questions, full of words like “intimate” and “who is he?”.
When Derek let go, Lalo said, “And tell him, when you get a moment," he said, nodding toward Stiles. "Tell him all of it. You finally found one better than me, so don’t fucking lose this.”
Stiles had even more questions now, but he forgot every single one of them when Lalo transformed into a coyote before his eyes and ran off through the sagebrush across the plateau.
Derek tugged him toward the Jeep as Stiles babbled his million questions.
Rough Roads
Derek dozed in the passenger seat as Stiles drove; his arm was quickly reddening in the sun, sweat dripping into his eyes. He looked over at Derek, who wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable.
“HEY,” he said, fully intending to ruin the nap.
“What? What, Stiles? Problem?”
“I’m about to pass out from heat, you haven’t drunk anything in a long time. I say we stop at the lake store and get drinks.
“Too many people. Keep driving.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t a suggestion. My Jeep, so I say we stop for drinks.”
Derek’s head lolled back, resignation and fatigue taking over, despite the urge to wolf out and insist on a safer course of action.
***
The store was packed with teens eating, drinking, talking, giggling, and Derek turned an abrupt 180 but Stiles caught him.
“We look like we just committed murder; do not abandon me here or someone will call the cops on us," Stiles begged.
Twenty minutes in line later, Derek fought a headache and had finished most of the drink he hadn’t paid for. Stiles put the two nearly-empty bottles on the counter and paid for them “and two more – we’ll get out of your hair.”
The owner barely shrugged and yelled “NEXT”.
“Keep him looking your way,” Stiles said and snaked a long arm and dexterous fingers over the counter to the phone.
Derek turned on the charm, but in his disheveled state, the owner expected trouble and kept an eye on him.
Stiles dialed Cora and unobtrusively pulled the phone toward him, stretching the cord across the counter.
“Cora, listen. I have Derek, we’re okay, you’re not. Someone on staff is an Argent spy.”
“Who?”
“No idea.”
“Not helpful.”
“Did I mention I have Derek and he was almost dead but Lalo and I saved him? We’re on our way. Be safe. Watch your back.”
“Stiles, I-“
Stiles was already sliding the phone back, but the cord snagged on a box of lighters and sent them spilling across the counter.
“Sorry!” he mouthed to the clerk, then sharply said, “Derek! Out.”
***
“You don’t have to keep the AC off. There are gas stations just a few miles from here.”
“And be spotted?” Stiles countered.
“They won’t be waiting in a gas station; that’s not the way Argents attack. And you might smell better if you dried off."
“Thanks. You’re no fresh breeze yourself. Why the hell are we in remotest New Mexico anyway? What do you do with all your free time, exactly?” Stiles asked.
“I try to save people.” Derek's voice was weaker now, sadder. “It doesn’t work sometimes.”
“Yourself included."
“I lost two people this week, buried them out in the desert.”
“Oh my god. I just complain about my professors.”
“That’s what you should do. You do not belong in this world. In my world.”
“You don’t seem to like it much, either,” Stiles guessed, watching Derek scanning the road ahead and the mirrors aimed behind. “You need the trees.”
Derek looked at him, intensely, as if Stiles had said a secret code word.
“What, dude?” Stiles asked, sweating even more under that gaze.
“You’re quick.”
“When it matters.”
A long silence filled the Jeep as Stiles watched Derek in frequent glances, one eye on the road.
“Is this about Laura?” he asked finally.
Derek gave him that same intense look, and Stiles felt like he’d lit a fuse and had no idea how long it was.
“Sorry,” he added.
“I do it to keep them alive. There are fewer of them every year. The hunters hunt, the open land vanishes, and there’s nowhere to go.”
“Wolves?”
“And Weres. Wolves go north, Weres go south to the refuge.
Stiles asked a question he couldn’t hold inside any longer: “What is Lalo?”
“There are so many creatures in the world, Stiles." Derek paused, and thought, and opened a bit more. "He’s a coyote, turned by the ones that killed his parents. Never had a home, so we gave him one. He lived.”
Stiles looked at Derek with equal intensity.
“No, don’t fall for me because you think I’m noble. I’m not,” Derek warned. “Lalo definitely isn’t.”
Silence fell again as Stiles thought.
“I can’t do this," he said finally.
“We don’t have to do anything. I didn’t mean to say I liked you.”
“What? No, I meant I can’t drive all the way to the Ranch; I’m about to fall asleep at the wheel. And you – you totally meant to say you liked me, last year and two years ago too. You don’t lie.”
Derek, looking for any way to change this topic, saw a road sign and recognized the gift of sanctuary it was pointing toward.
“Turn at the next left!”
“What? Why?”
“Turn. HERE.”
Stiles made a sharp left off the highway by a faded old sign for “Nighthorse Lake Lodge”.
The road got bumpy, and Stiles reached out to balance himself as the Jeep tilted, his hand landing on Derek’s thigh. He was about to pull it back, but Derek settled his own hand firmly down on it as if it was the most normal thing.
“I’m going to need that back to stay on the road," Stiles said as calmly as he could.
“Oh, sorry, okay. I just thought… I liked it.”
“Somehow.”
“Stop throwing my idiotic words back at me," Derek complained.
Stiles’ hand was still there, pinned to Derek’s thigh as the muscles flexed. He did just fine keeping the Jeep on the road single-handed. Derek was struggling to say something but he kept stopping himself. Stiles noticed and slowed the Jeep so he could concentrate.
“Being around you is… intense. It’s worse when I can’t do anything about it.”
“We could stop.”
“I think it would be better if you just had both hands on the wheel and nowhere near my….”
Stiles slid his hand higher up Derek’s thigh and felt the very firm bulge in his jeans against the side of his hand.
“That's not helping," Derek said, evident strain in his voice.
“I’ll stop,” Stiles said, his own heart racing. “Okay, so we can’t do that now. Let’s kill it. Here’s my life story. That always kills desire.”
Derek was rapt.
“My dad-“
“Okay, it’s gone.”
A laugh burst from Stiles, and with it, Derek felt hope returning.
“Just getting started! My dad is trying very hard to stay sober. He’s been an alcoholic since my mother’s illness and it cost him his job. I’m helping him keep the job he only just now got back.”
“Sheriff.”
Stiles nodded.
“And that’s not easy, being a child of a dead mom and an alcoholic dad. I had some … mental issues that high school just made worse, and I never went to college like everyone else did. I wasn’t in a good place. Lydia helped, but she's a genius.”
Derek put his hand on Stiles’ knee and felt his heart racing, then slowing, then a regular beat. The road calmed too and old pavement reappeared under blowing sand.
“Why are you rushing college?” Derek asked.
“Well that was my next mistake,” Stiles chuckled, and his breath shook as he exhaled.
“It’s okay,” Derek said so softly Stiles barely heard it, but it helped.
“College made things worse, and the money for college and the money for rehab, and Dad trying to get his shit together for me, and-“ but words failed as his voice cracked.
Derek waited, hand squeezing Stiles’ knee.
Stiles drove for a while, composing himself, wiping tears off rather than outright cry in front of Derek.
“You took a job you didn’t know how to do to pay for your Dad’s treatment," Derek continued. "And then you were miraculously good at it, just like the bull riding.”
“Honestly I don’t know how… My next mistake was a big one, falling in love with you.”
“Was it?” Derek asked, unfazed. “A mistake?”
“I think you want me out of your life; you’ve said it enough times.”
“I need you safe. I want you with me every second you’re not here.”
“You keep saying ‘go to college’ and I can’t even do that. They kicked me out. We only had money for Dad and that’s all gone.”
Derek’s eyebrows shot up.
Stiles looked over at him, as if he’d heard the brows rising, or seen their sudden movement in the corner of his eye.
“Did that take your mind off the horniness?”
“Completely, thank you.” There was a long pause. “Tell me. All the things.”
“Someday, maybe. But falling for the owner’s brother, that’s definitely not good.”
“Well, that's your fourth mistake,” Derek replied.
“What?!” Stiles protested.
“Cora’s not the owner, I am,” Derek explained slowly. “But don’t tell Peter, whatever you do! My mother left it to Laura, Laura left it to me, and Cora just took over the day to day.”
The road ended at a fork.
“Go left,” Derek said. “We can hide the Jeep in the trees and walk to the cabin,” Derek said.
“Cabin in the woods. That always goes well.”
“This is an old Hale vacation spot. Closed years ago, abandoned. We can rest.”
~~~
Can you just…?
“Things must have looked bigger when you were a kid,” Stiles said, as they came up to a tiny cabin, weatherbeaten and sagging. The small hut on Nighthorse Lake was certainly dilapidated enough, and far out along the southern shore the lake, nestled under the trees where they were thickest.
They felt safer now; the trees were their shield against the Argents’ spies, at least for now.
At the cabin door, Stiles reprised his greatest stage performance, squeaking “'Help me help me', the rabbit cried, ‘fore the hunter shoots me dead'.”
“Get inside,” Derek scowled, grinning and shaking his head when Stiles couldn’t see him.
They ate, in silence. They packed everything away again, in silence. The sky grew dim as evening approached and fatigue caught up with them for the third time in as many days.
A blanket on the floor was enough, now that they were back together.
***
In the early morning light, Stiles went to sit on the front steps and stare at the lake. Derek joined him a few minutes later, sitting on the step just above him, legs on either side, arms folding around Stiles carefully.
Stiles leaned back into him, warm on Derek’s chest, at their tiny cabin on the shore. Derek was running the fingertips of his left hand slowly along Stiles’ neck where bruises had appeared; he enjoyed the reaction he felt in Stiles’ heartbeat. Stiles was asking questions about Lalo, and Peter, and Lalo again.
“Lalo was… he’s my oldest friend. He lost everything when he was bitten, and he was too young to know what was happening. I made him my friend.”
“He said you finally did better?”
“He was the first person I- I loved him. We’re past all that, but… I trust him and he trusts me. I bring Weres down to a safe place in Mexico with his help, and he helps me bring wolves north to resettle them.” Derek paused after sharing so much, then added, “He likes you.”
“How do you know that?”
“He didn’t kill you. Yet.”
The fresh wind off the lake blew away clouds and troubles, but also hid the noise of two approaching trucks until it was almost too late.
Stiles didn’t take kindly to Derek’s hand suddenly clamping over his mouth.
“Mmmph -- fucking hell, I’m just curious! Tell me more about were-coyotes.”
Derek clamped his hand hard over Stiles’ mouth again, firmer this time, and his other arm pinned Stiles to him like a doll as he stood up, dragging a wiggling Stiles up with him.
“Quiet. Now!” he breathed into Stiles’ ear.
Stiles made a muffled but angry noise.
“Can you just shut up?!” Derek said, pulling Stiles with him and closing the door of the cabin.
Stiles finally heard what Derek heard, the death-rattle of Argents come to hunt.
“Pull the closet door closed,” Derek whispered after he’d backed into it. “Quietly!”
Stiles complied with his left hand, still dangling. Soon he was lowered down until he was standing on Derek’s feet in the tiniest of closets, Derek’s right hand tight on his stomach, the other still over his mouth, fingers spreading so Stiles could breathe.
“How?” Stiles breathed out.
“Hunters hunt.”
The rattling truck stopped nearby, and voices outside came closer, near the neighboring cottage, then along the shore, finally at their windows and door, footsteps creaking across the porch.
Derek’s nose was pressed tight against Stiles’ neck, but he wished he was in front, defending, not cowering. He also felt Stiles calming again just as he had in the car the day before, and on the front steps, moments earlier.
The voices outside were angry, frustrated, and they kicked the cabin door hard before moving away. The rattling truck’s noise chilled Stiles again, then faded away, so very, very slowly. Derek waited until even his ears couldn’t hear it, and slowly let Stiles go.
“Fuuuuuuuck,” Stiles said, letting it out in a long breath.
The closet door knob squeaked as it slowly turned. Stiles watched in horror as it turned further and further, and then the door swung wide. Bright light blinded both of them.
***
“Stiles?!”
Behind him, Derek said only “You!” but didn’t sound scared.
As Stiles’ eyes adjusted, he could only ask, “Casandra!?”
“They’re gone. Heard my car coming or saw the flashing lights on my roof. You two still hiding your kisses?
Derek blushed but Stiles ignored the remark.
Stiles tumbled out and then Derek stepped out of the closet warily. Derek lurked and loomed by the door and windows, watching, for at least ten minutes.
“You’re a cop now?” Stiles asked Casandra.
“Tribal ranger, in animal control. Joined last year. All the wolf complaints come through me.”
“We’re not on reservation land,” Derek noted.
“it’s all our land, isn’t it?” she asked, smiling. “You’re about five hundred feet from the northern border. They don’t know basic shit like that anyway. Argent women are smart; their men… not quite.”
“Carlos works for them now,” Stiles said, the only relevant info he had at the moment.
“Wait, what?” Derek asked, shocked. “He was a spy?”
“He was guarding me when I came around, took me to meet Joyce.”
“You met Joyce?!” Casandra asked, wide-eyed. “Holy- Did she grab your-?”
Stiles nodded, grimacing.
“Yeah, that’s Joyce. Who’s Carlos?” Casandra asked.
“He did your job last summer,” Stiles explained.
“Cora needs to know this,” Derek said, now worried and kneeling with them.
"I told her when I called."
“I’ll come up with you. It’s what, three, four hours?” Casandra offered. “Not my jurisdiction, but again, they aren’t that bright.”
“Thank you,” Derek said.
“Anything for family,” she said, winking at Stiles.
***
Derek called the ranch using Casandra’s phone. No one answered.
He called again, letting it ring a dozen times, then more, in case she was out in the paddock.
“What’s Peter’s number?” Stiles asked.
“Why?”
“The more the merrier," Stiles said, utterly without merriment.
***
For much of the drive, Stiles entwined his fingers with Derek’s. There was little talk as he sped north on side roads, and little he could say to make Derek calmer.
They made it to the ranch before 10:00 a.m. with Casandra on their tail.
“Holy shit-“ Stiles burst out as he turned off the road.
The ranch gate was shattered and scattered across the entrance road in a dozen pieces. The iconic “H” brand lay bent on the ground where they’d torn it down and driven over it.
Stiles picked It up. It was larger than he’d thought. He turned it in his hands, the sharp points grazing his stomach.
“Come on, back in the car Stiles!”
The Battle for Hale Ranch
Casandra followed them up the long drive then swerved around them, heading for the staff building.
Derek leapt from the Jeep while Stiles was still skidding to a stop; he ran straight to the main office. No Cora. Everything was trashed and broken, even the family photos. Especially the family photos. A floorboard creaked behind him and he lunged at the noise.
Stiles grabbed the Hale brand from the back of the Jeep and swung it. It was heavy. I could kill with this.
***
At the end of the hall, Casandra found Cora, alive at least, but not free. She was tied to a chair and threatened by the men on either side. A knife grazed Casandra’s throat and she froze.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” asked a familiar, angry voice.
“Not looking for you, you lying bitch,” Casandra answered, turning slowly against the knife blade to see the person whose voice she’d known.
“Cora?” Casandra asked, calm as ever, “you hired this one after I told you we broke up?”
“She said she needed the work,” Cora mumbled.
“Carlos didn’t work out so well,” Julie sneered. “We sent him south.”
“So now you work for the Argents?”
“I am an Argent, Cassie, I run this whole area. Joyce warned me about that little shit and his wolf boyfriend coming this way.”
“That little shit is right behind you,” Casandra smirked and Julie actually turned to look. Casandra stepped back just enough to be clear of the knife.
“I didn’t think the women were smarter, not really,” Casandra prodded.
“Where are they?” Julie asked, angry and wary now.
“At the new stables, last I looked. The ones you burned down. You killed horses, you know.”
Julie shrugged a clear So what? “Does that offend your native sensibilities?”
“No, it offends my human soul, a thing you don’t have.”
“Let’s go. Get up, Cora, walk! We’ll find Derek soon enough.”
Julie marched Cora toward the stable, and behind her at the point of Julie’s knife, Casandra
***
“Der?”
The office was trashed, and amid the ruins was a man Stiles didn’t know, unmoving, covered in red claw marks.
“Okay, the guy I like is actually a wild animal, and I knew that, and I’m okay with it.”
Stiles raised his makeshift weapon and searched the entire building, but there was no sign of Derek.
Shit. - Oh, what’s this?
A security system instruction manual lay on the floor near the man. He scanned the office and found the base unit and flipped it on, activating every part of it he could.
“I hope you got cameras, Cora. And they work.”
He headed for the lodge, but ducked back into the doorway suddenly as Cora, Casandra and Julie came into view, moving toward the stables.
“Julie…” he whispered, and Cora’s head turned briefly toward him.
The lodge doors just across from the main office slammed open and two other henchmen called to Julie.
"We got the wolf; should we use the wolfsbane?"
Stiles’ eyes went wide as he tried to take in just how fucked they were.
Juile and her captives headed toward the lodge now instead.
***
Stiles made his way into the lodge unseen after Cora faked a stumble and dropped an employee key card unnoticed by Julie. He found them gathered in the main room under the vaulted timber ceiling, Cora and Derek next to each other on a couch, two men behind, guarding them with cattle prods.
Before Julie could speak, Stiles lunged forward and swung the Hale brand hard against the head of one guard, knocking him to the floor unconscious and bleeding. He turned toward the other but Derek was standing now, arms out, begging him to stop.
A car roared up outside, an expensive motor revving in a flashy way, horn beeping three times for no reason at all.
“Who the fuck is this now?” Julie yelled, sensing the balance tipping to her disadvantage.
Stiles remained a threat to the other guard, brandishing his "H", now bloodied.
“Whose idea was it to call him?” Cora asked, chuckling.
“Mmmmine?” Stiles said uncertainly.
The lodge doors swung open, and Peter Hale entered as dramatically as he possibly could.
Casandra looked at Stiles for an answer.
“Their uncle, Peter," Stiles explained.
Is he gay? Casandra mouthed back.
Stiles shrugged.
“Their Uncle Peter indeed," Peter said, fully aware of and relishing his place in the middle of a standoff.
“Oh god,” Derek said softly, then glared at Stiles.
“What do you want, Julie “Jules” Argent?” Peter asked, unfazed.
“The rest of this valley, Peter.”
“You know him?” Stiles asked, caught off guard.
Cora was still laughing off and on.
Julie pointed to the table in front of Cora and snapped her fingers to get Cora’s attention.
“You sign, we leave. Give us what we want and then get off our land.”
“Well now you know how it feels,” Casandra observed quietly.
Derek leaned forward to look at the document.
“This is a deed to everything north of the highway, clear over the ridge. Even the lakes," he said, anger creeping in.
“Even the lakes. Everything your family still controls.”
“Why would we sign this?” Cora asked.
“Well, to live. To not burn like your horses did. To not die like an animal like the rest of them."
Derek lunged up but the guard hit him with a cattle prod until Stiles struck it from his hand with the iron "H", nearly taking a finger with it.
Cora was not laughing now. She was panicking, a thing Stiles knew well.
“Sign, Cora," Julie said. "As the owner, you are the only one the state will recognize. We all just want to be rid of you. We've killed you off one by one but that doesn't seem to work."
“The true owner is Peter, not Cora,” Stiles blurted out.
“Say that again?” Julie asked, watching him closely. “And don’t be too clever.”
“He is. Laura left it to him, like her mother wanted. Cora never really owned it, she just runs it."
Cora stared at Stiles, unable to understand what he was doing; Derek was furious that Stiles would put the ranch at risk, and yet, he sensed Stiles was lying. Julie didn’t.
Peter was silent, watching Stiles, quite simply impressed and feeling his goal to take the ranch come true at the same time.
“Good choice, nephew,” was all he said to Derek, then settled himself between Derek and Cora, pushing them aside on the small couch. “I will do this to save my family. Life is more valuable than land.”
With great style, Peter took up a pen from the table and signed his name in three places across the deeds and agreements. His face became a work of anger, then sadness. Stiles called it "masterful acting" later on when he needed to flatter Peter.
Cora stared at Peter and then at the document and then back at Stiles, who was waiting for the roulette wheel to stop spinning and the ball to find the one pocket that would make him a winner. Derek, too, wondered and waited.
“You have 10 days to vacate," Julie stated.
“You have to wait ten after submitting the deed, and with the fire investigation still open, probably more like 30 days," Casandra noted.
“Get him off the floor, take him to the truck," Julie snapped at the bleeding henchman. "And then get Roy – where is Roy?”
“On the floor of the office,” Derek and Stiles said at the same time.
***
When the men had been collected, the remaining guard returned.
“Bring Derek with us,” Julie said. “He’ll be good collateral.”
The roulette ball bounced out of black and into red.
Julie, Derek and the guard made it to their truck, about ten feet out the door before Casandra could no longer restrain Stiles. Peter wouldn’t help, despite her pleas.
Stiles, frantic, chased them outside, swinging wildly at the guard and wounding him with the heavy brand, before Derek could stop him and try to calm him. Julie was behind Derek in the bed of the truck already, where Derek pleaded for calm. The guard backed away from the clearly insane kid with a pointy weapon and go in the truck.
Stiles wasn’t listening; he raced to save Derek. He swung at Julie but Derek deflected the blow with his arm. One of the iron fangs gashed Derek’s arm just before the now-bloodied tip of that fang finally sank into Julie’s thigh as Stiles roared.
In the chaos that followed, Stiles snapped to clarity as to what he done to Derek, but Julie was screaming so loudly as she wrenched the metal from her leg that nothing else could be said or thought.
“You POISONED me with WOLF blood! Oh my god oh my god!” Julie screamed.
She kicked Derek off the truck bed viciously and screamed “DRIVE, DRIVE!”. The truck rattled to life and sped away down the long entry road as she held on, her right arm reaching through the rear window as her left pressed on her leg wound.
***
“Derek, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to – “
“Stiles, calm down," Derek said slowly.
“I cut you, I hurt you!”
“I can handle this.”
“Why are you so fucking calm?”
“Because you aren’t. One of us needs to be.”
“He’ll be fine,” Peter said, joining them finally. “We heal quickly.”
“Why are you telling me even more wolf secrets?” Stiles asked.
“You’re much smarter than I thought," Peter replied.
“Is… is that the reason?” Stiles asked. His arm sagged under the sudden weight of the ranch brand.
“My first duty as new owner is to hang that back up.” Peter gloated.
“You’re not the owner any more, you just signed over the ranch,” Cora noted, limping toward him.
“Right and wrong,” Derek said.
“He’s not the owner at all," Stiles explained. "You still are, Cora," he lied. "Checkmate," he said to Peter.
"And since he’s not the owner, he can’t sign anything of legal standing," said Derek, now fully up to speed.
“I’m kind of surprised she didn’t bring a lawyer with her,” Casandra said.
“Derek, your arm, we should get you to – oh. Okay. That’s one I didn’t know about.”
“Not even a scar,” Derek said. He put his arm around Stiles’ shoulders. “You saved my sister and me. That means a lot.”
“I just… wanted to kill them. I need to get that under control. That was way too easy.”
“Don’t limit yourself,” Peter said to Stiles. “You’d be a good wolf.”
The Siblings
“You get between those two, you’re dead,” Casandra commented to Stiles.
“She’s his little sister,” he said, looking confused. “But she likes me, somehow.”
“She’s his only sister. His only family. Those people you ate cookies with in New Mexico are Argents, just like the ones who own the land from here to Telluride. They tore the Hale family apart, one by one, even their mother, eight deaths in sixteen years, all covered up as “animal attacks” or suspicious fires. That’s why he saves the ones he still can, takes them to a refuge down in Mexico somewhere.
Stiles watched Derek and Cora talk and gave them time and space to be family again.
“And Peter?” he asked.
“Talia’s trickster younger brother. You should read up on Ute legends about Sinawavi. He’s a coyote in the legends, not a wolf, but I know they had Peter in mind when they thought him up”.
“He already threatened to kill me once,” Stiles said.
“Then why ask?”
“Don’t they care? Isn’t he trying to get the ranch for himself?” Stiles asked, still looking at Derek and Cora.
“He didn’t kill any Hales,” Casandra reasoned, shrugging.
“Are we sure?” Stiles asked.
“Now you’re thinking. So think some more.”
***
"Okay, so... You're the owner, Derek, so I couldn't have signed over the ranch either?" Cora asked. "Why the games?"
"Stiles used Peter to convince Julie that you couldn't sign, but Peter could."
"But Peter can't-"
"Stiles kept me on the board, as king. The ranch is still mine. Ours, Cora. The papers Peter signed are worthless and even a judge they own can't overrule it."
Summer on Hale Ranch began in June, at what Cora called “family dinner,” surely an auspicious sign for Stiles’ role. He felt relaxed, for the first time since he’d returned to college in the rains of January, since he dropped out and slept in his Jeep for months, since he’d been kidnapped and released and then rescued his werewolf boyfriend from hunters.
He was watching Derek talk to Cora and clearly sliding towards sleep. He eventually succumbed and let his eyes close as his head rested on the back of the tall dining chair.
***
“Hey.”
Stiles snored softly and settled into the lodge chair more comfortably.
“Hey,” came the deep voice again, soft, warm breath on his face, and then a kiss on his temple that fully woke him.
“Hey! Did I?”
“You did,” Cora confirmed, smiling at him.
“Until Prince Charming here woke you,” Casandra laughed.
Stiles struggled back to an upright position appropriate for the dinner table.
“You need to rest,” Derek said, warm hands on Stiles’ shoulders.
“We have almost no staff, so come help me wash up first,” Cora said to Stiles.
“Um, yes, yes, sure.”
***
“What the hell do you see in him?” Cora asked when the kitchen door swung shut.
Stiles had no way to answer this appropriately and his just-woken brain was no help.
“I know you can’t answer that, but he’s never dated anyone and then along you come and I’ve practically got a brother-in-law.”
“I… What?”
“He’s distant, he’s dour, he over-commits and then vanishes.”
“Are you trying to get me to leave ?”
Cora went on without noticing. “Our worst guests are lonely, they’re spoiled, they’re uncooperative – but my brother’s all that and worse.”
At that moment, it hit Stiles how young Cora was, a bit younger even than him but nearly his age. He understood her - how lost she felt, how little she knew, how big the world around her was, in her eyes.
She had stopped talking, and stopped drying plates, and was looking at Stiles in a way she hadn’t before; “friendly” was the word he might have picked.
“You saved the only brother I have.”
Her lip was trembling and he could hardly believe those were tears filling up her eyes.
“I had to.”
She threw her arms around Stiles and crushed him with her arms, still wearing her dishwashing gloves.
“Oh! Okay, okay.” He’d never felt more loved outside his father’s arms, or his mother’s.
Nature Walk
The ranch was humming along in mid-June, when the greatest idea of all time came to Stiles.
“Weddings!” he shouted, leaping up from the game board.
“Hey, watch it,” Derek complained as pieces scattered.
“My god, he’s right,” Cora said. “That’s insanely brilliant. You’re amazing.”
“I’m not working here, then,” Derek protested.
“Surprisingly expensive weddings,” Stiles elaborated.
“I like this, keep talking,” Cora replied.
“I don’t like when you two like the same thing,” Derek worried.
“Take a walk with me,” Stiles said, and turned for the door.
“We’re in the middle of a game-“ Derek griped, but he was already halfway out of his seat.
Derek caught up to Stiles where the trees began and the trail grew shady.
“You needed to get outside,” Stiles said, finally turning.
Derek straightened and his brows eased just a little. Only a little, because he could feel the future shifting under his feet and didn’t know why just yet.
“What are you doing?” he asked, feeling suspicious. “Cora doesn’t need more wild ideas.”
“She’s a great manager. You want the ranch to succeed, so does she. So do I for some reason.”
...
“Why are you here again, Stiles?”
The question was not cruel, not a trace of rejection, only curiosity.
“I came back here looking for you. Once in winter, never made it. Once in early May, thinking you’d be here but you were off south.”
“When you should have been in school-“
“Kicked out, remember? Cash-free in the Stilinski household we are. ... I’m not here because I’m avoiding college; I’m here so I won’t avoid you anymore. I’m-"
He stumbled over the small word.
“I love-“
“It can’t be just me,” Derek said, calmer, eyes on the russet carpeting of pine needles underfoot.
“It can," Stiles affirmed. "You should love yourself better. Like Cora does. Like Lalo does. Like I do.”
Derek frowned. “Love.” He let the word hang there in the warm afternoon air, realizing that no one, no one, had asked him about the forest except Stiles. Asked him, brought him there, found him ways to be together and be happy again and again.
“Two years ago, I was looking for a way to escape my life. You?” Stiles asked.
“Looking for peace,” Derek admitted, under the green forest roof, where it felt safe to say anything.
“Surrounded by enemies on every side.”
“You brought some of that peace back. You saved us from the enemy.”
The conversation paused, but the birds still sang, and the trees rustled, and the creek burbled.
“You need college; you need to finish that path,” Derek repeated, cutting his heart into pieces with every well intentioned wish. “Complete something. For yourself, not for your Dad, not for me.”
“I would hate you forever if you made me do the right thing right now.”
“Stiles-“
“Well the other option is to ask Peter for the money. He already offered to pay for college and get my dad out of debt.”
“NO!” Derek meant that word with his whole being.
Stiles chuckled. “Give me some credit. Which is why I think a better idea is to convert most of your land into a public trust. The Argents can’t buy that. Keep the ranch area and let Cora run it. We could even turn it into a kids camp again!”
Derek’s brows protested.
“And then we keep some of the land just for us and build us a house. You get to live in the trees, and you get me.”
Derek was unable to speak, let alone think clearly. His vision blurred as he stared first at the wildflowers lining the path ahead out in the summer sun, then tipped his head back to follow the slope up to the bluest sky." He longed to run there again, next to Laura. A tear ran down each cheek. Some of this was possible, most was straight out of his dreams.
Stiles moved closer and wrapped one arm around Derek’s waist, wiping the tear from his cheek.
“Did you-? How could we even-?” Derek asked, his throat still too tight to speak properly.
“Somehow. All I know is, I can’t do these seasons apart anymore.”
“Winter here is brutal.”
“This situationship is brutal.”
“It’s brutal to all of us,” Cora interrupted. She had followed them to the trailhead and was surprised not only that her brother could cry from joy but that a human like Stiles had been the one to make it happen. She put an arm around Derek and hugged him tight, and he laughed, easy now, like a flood was set loose in him.
“Just who I wanted to talk to,” Stiles smiled.
“Stiles, no.” Derek said.
“Oh god, what?” Cora asked, nervous.
“Why are you here?” Stiles asked her. “Like big picture, life purpose kind of answer.”
“Have you called your Dad recently? You did almost die, speaking of life purposes.”
“Just answer. Please.”
“You’d better,” Derek added, waiting to hear what she would say.
“I wanted to rebuild the ranch because I wasn’t here to save Laura." Cora bit her lip, trying not to cry. "This is her legacy or my tribute, I don’t know. I want to keep Derek and not lose him. Not even to you.”
““Oh,” Stiles said. “Yeah, no, I get that.”
“I think it was always her dream to be here and have it work; it wasn’t mine until she was gone.”
“What if we made a couple of small changes, Derek and I.”
“Um, like the surprisingly expensive weddings?”
“Bigger changes. We donate the land, most of it, to a public trust. The Argents won’t be able to touch it, not one inch, not ever.”
“What about-?"
"Hale Ranch stays a ranch, you run it, it’s yours.” Derek explained. “You’re the best manager it’s ever had.”
“Derek-“
“I stay too," he said quickly, before she mistook anything. "Build a house up in the forest.”
“It’s your land, Derek. I can’t sign anything like that. As you so nicely pointed out to the Argents, Stiles.”
“Stiles would be around a lot more,” Derek said grudgingly, the corner of his mouth curving up so very slightly.
“A lot more," Stiles grinned.
“I knew there was a catch,” Cora said. “But seriously, call your Dad. I just came out to tell you he’s on his way here.”
“WHAT?”
"Derek, help me put the brand back up over the new gate. Stiles is going to be busy for a while," Cora said.
September, with a cloudless sky, is waiting.
Stiles and Derek were pinned down and penned in, surrounded by contracts and paperwork. As part of agreeing to take on the ranch and to start building a new house for themselves and run everything as partners, several trees had given their lives to produce the required documents, all of which begged for dozens of signatures and initials.
“Gotta get my Dad and Lydia out here sometime,” Stiles said casually in the middle of the third pile.
“OK.” Derek responded, but he was deep into a subparagraph in the escrow documents.
Stiles casually added, “this would be a lot easier if we were married,” and sank back into his own mountain of paperwork,
“OK.”
“What?”
“What?”
Stiles was now unable to write even his initials. He was staring intently at this mystery of a wolfman across the table from him.
A moment later, Derek said, with his eyes locked on the form he was filling out, “Just seems like a lot of commitment to… get out of checking some boxes on a form.”
Stiles eventually picked up the tone of Derek’s teasing as Derek tried hard not to laugh.
“You know, I’m gonna need a couple more years to get used to you.”
“And probably a few more to get used to the Wolf side.”
“And probably a few more to get used to the Wolf side.”
“Yep.”
“Yep.