If It's Wrong or If It's Right Anthology
Author: Dira Sudis (dsudis)
Date: 2014-12-24T05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Alternate Universe - Prostitution; Teen Wolf (TV); Comeplay; Watersports; Barebacking; Scent Marking; Secrets; Laura Hale; Sexual Assault; Fisting; Car Sex; Stiles Stilinski/Original Male Character(s); Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence; Stiles Stilinski; Derek Hale; FanFiction; Angst and Hurt/Comfort; M/M; Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski; Safeword Use; Trauma; Relationship Negotiation; Completed; Anthology
Description: Not really a SERIES-series, just Sell Your Body to the Night + an extremely belated epilogue. Anthology containing: Sell Your Body to the Night Put on the Red Light
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Rights: Copyrights as per source stories

Sell Your Body to the Night by Dira Sudis (dsudis)

Series: If It’s Wrong or If It’s Right [1]
Fandoms: Teen Wolf (TV)
AO3 Categories: M/M
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Stiles Stilinski/Original Male Character(s)
Characters: Derek Hale, Laura Hale, Stiles Stilinski
Freeform Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Barebacking, Car Sex, Comeplay, Fisting, Scent Marking, Secrets, Sexual Assault, Watersports
Status: Completed
Chapters: 15
Words: 122,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2023-03-16 23:44:10
Summary:

“No,” he repeated impatiently. “I’m not a cop. I’m someone who wants to exchange my money for your sexual services. I was told you were in that line of work.”

“I, uh, yeah, sorry,” Stiles said. He glanced around again and then up—the full moon was almost directly overhead. Just one of those nights, maybe. “Yeah, I am. I do that.”

I Bookmarked Story: False

1. Chapter 1

Author’s Note:

The Sexual Assault tag/warning is for a specific (not Derek/Stiles) incident in Chapter 5. A more detailed description is in the end notes.

Many thanks to Lynnmonster for beta, to oaknfell for advice on San Francisco which I have nonetheless probably managed to mess up in inventive ways, to Rubynye for cheering this on, and to everyone who’s been encouraging this for the last two and a half years.

Technically Stiles did lose his virginity to a guy who bought him dinner first. Any self-respect he might have gained from that fact was pretty much obliterated by the fact that dinner included a job offer and the virginity-losing was basically orientation.

He gave Frank a blowjob, which tasted like latex and was accompanied by a lecture on avoiding teeth but otherwise, “Keep that, keep the awkwardness. That can be your thing.” Then he got a lecture on why it was better to rinse with Listerine than to brush his teeth before and after.

He got fucked, too, which was sort of dizzyingly weird and a little painful. It was occasionally incidentally vaguely sexy, except that all possible sexiness was drained from it by the continuing lecture on Ass Hygiene and How To Tell If Your Ass Is Really Hurt or Just Kinda Hurt. (Blood, mostly, which Stiles probably could have figured out but would definitely have nightmares about forever, now.)

Right at the end, though, Frank said, “Good work, kid. You want me to jerk you off now?”

Stiles had turned down the offer of booze or drugs. He had insisted he could find his own place to live. But right then, sore and sweaty and despite all the gross details kind of turned on because, hello, this was his virginity getting lost, he nodded. Frank smiled at him in the bathroom mirror and then turned him around and closed his hand on Stiles’s dick. Stiles shut his eyes and enjoyed the sensation and the total lack of boner-killing soundtrack for the few minutes it lasted, and for just a few seconds, when he came, he didn’t think about anything at all.

When he opened his eyes again, Frank said, “So, you ready to let me help you make some easy money?”

Stiles nodded, and that was that. He was a prostitute, and he had a pimp. It was all way less dramatic than he would have imagined.

It stayed pretty easy, too. Frank gave him a cheap cell phone and a couple more lectures—what to wear, when to make eye contact (when spoken to), when to touch customers in a way they didn’t specifically request (never)—and assigned Stiles a work schedule. From eleven at night to four in the morning, Thursday through Sunday (“Starting Thursday, into Friday, ending Monday morning, smartass,”) he was on the job.

“The rest of the time I don’t care what the hell you do,” Frank said. “You can go right back to scamming tourists out of bus fare, you’re not bad at that.”

Stiles was, he thought, actually pretty good at it, except he hated lying to nice people who just wanted to help a lost kid get home. He also risked getting beaten up or having the cops called on him by people who realized he was scamming. He was sixteen, he was on his own, and there was no way he could get a legitimate job with no address, no work permit, and no adults involved. He really didn’t want to call any kind of official attention down on himself. Working for Frank seemed like a pretty reasonable course of action. Like he said, it was easy money. Who wouldn’t want to get paid to have sex?

“You just answer your phone when I call, do what you’re told when you’re working for me, and give me my cut of the cash, and we’re all good,” Frank told him.

“Yeah,” Stiles said. “Hey, when you said you could get me stuff to take the edge off…”

Frank raised his eyebrows.

“I could really use some Adderall,” Stiles shrugged. “And whiskey, maybe? Jack—no. Anything that’s not Jack.”

Frank shrugged, genuinely bored where Stiles was struggling to be nonchalant. “Sure. Comes out of your cut, like I said.”

Stiles nodded. This wasn’t like accepting coke or meth or something. This was just stuff he already knew he could handle; he even knew approximately how much it cost and could argue if Frank charged him too much for it. This wasn’t the start of some downward spiral; Stiles was just looking after himself.

No one else was going to, after all. Not ever again.

Frank had him working mostly tourists and businessmen; after the first night Stiles realized that he was being cast as The Kid Who Doesn’t Usually Do This Kind of Thing, and was being used by guys who liked to think they didn’t do this kind of thing either. They were closeted, or in denial, the kinds of guys who slunk off to have their little gay slice of The San Francisco Experience down here on Shotwell instead of venturing into the Tenderloin. They got their guilty rocks off in a motel room or the back of a rental car with some awkward kid who called himself Billy, who wore tight t-shirts and tight jeans and insisted on rolling on a condom before he went down.

None of them wanted anything very elaborate—none of them wanted him to take his clothes off, or wanted to take more of their own clothes off than they had to to get their dick sucked. Stiles never saw any of them more than once, but he started to feel like they were familiar anyway: the dad in a rental SUV or minivan wearing a souvenir sweatshirt, the business traveler wearing khakis and a polo shirt and driving a mid-sized sedan, scooting his briefcase out of the way to let Stiles take a seat.

They muttered different things, liked different little tricks, got grabby at different moments, but they were all basically the same five or six guys, and they all handed over the same crisp-from-the-ATM twenties to pay for his services before they dropped him off within a block or two of where they’d picked him up.

It wasn’t too close to where he slept, in an SRO up in SOMA; he liked the feeling of separateness, knowing that there was a bus or train ride or longish walk between work and not-work. He spent his nights sitting out the time between tricks, if he had any time to speak of, in a late-night taqueria a little way off Shotwell, a couple of blocks from his usual pick-up point.

He took a cheap used paperback in with him, and left the book on the table when Frank texted him to go meet a car on the corner. By the third night the taqueristas—who never seemed to mind that he only ever bought sodas—had taken to picking up the book and keeping it behind the counter for him. After that he dropped it off with them when he left, and made sure to drop more money into the tip jar than he had before.

Stiles didn’t get fucked on the job until his second week. He’d dutifully prepped himself every night he worked, and ever since he accepted Frank’s offer he’d been on the carefully regimented schedule of eating and shitting required to be sure his ass was available for professional purposes from eleven to four every night. Even on his first Monday-to-Wednesday “weekend” he’d kept to the pattern, since it made sense to stay in practice.

He’d even prepped his ass around two in the morning on Tuesday night, telling himself it was just to keep in practice or keep his ass limber or whatever. But actually he’d wound up jerking off like that, fingers in his ass, chasing down the part of it that felt good while desperately avoiding thinking about any of the dicks he’d been up close and personal with in the last week, or any of the circumstances under which he was likely to have a dick up his ass in the foreseeable future.

Coming felt as good as ever—better, maybe. He somehow never felt like jerking off on workdays, so he hadn’t gotten off in a while. Afterward, because it seemed like the thing to do and he didn’t want to start thinking, he opened up the bottle of Wild Turkey Frank had given him along with his Adderall.

He had one drink, enough to make him feel a little more floaty and sleepy than he already had from coming. He crawled back into bed and let his hand drift down, rubbing at his slick asshole and then at his dick, and jerked off again slowly, one arm over his eyes, still not thinking of anything or anyone. This time when he was done he slipped easily into sleep.

But his second week on the job started up soon enough, and a few hours into Thursday night he got a slightly different text than he ever had before: Blue Corolla. Wants a fuck.

His body went cold and then hot, and Stiles realized that he’d been kind of dreading this, and that Frank had been easing him in gently, letting him not do this for a week. (Or, Stiles thought, possibly just making sure that he had time to get on the eating-and-shitting schedule properly. He’d given Stiles very specific advice on that, back during Stiles’s orientation fuck.) But now the gloves were off. So to speak.

Stiles walked up to the counter and handed his book over to Kristina without quite meeting her eyes, and hurried out to the corner where he would meet the blue Corolla.

It wasn’t so bad, really. A familiar type of guy in a familiar type of car took him to a familiar type of motel room. This time he had to take his clothes off and lie down and open his legs. He’d prepped himself before his shift, so it didn’t hurt that bad, even though the guy barely bothered to check whether he was ready and definitely wasn’t as patient as Frank had been. He didn’t last as long as Frank had, either, and at least he didn’t talk about ass hygiene the whole time.

Stiles carefully didn’t listen to what the guy did talk about.

He paid at the end, with a tip and everything, and he let Stiles go and clean up in the bathroom and get dressed in private before driving him back to his usual corner. Stiles went back to the taqueria, washed his hands thoroughly and picked up his book from Kristina before he settled gingerly into a seat in the corner.

It wasn’t that bad, really.

Stiles got through the rest of the night’s work on autopilot—funny how easy and simple blowjobs seemed now; he could get through one and barely think about what he was doing. The bus ride home sucked—was shitty—was mildly painful and deeply aggravating. Stiles took a shower when he was locked safely in his own room, washed everywhere, and did the night’s last thorough Listerine rinse.

Then he poured himself out a double of Wild Turkey.

“No drinking every night,” he said to the glass, because he knew these things and they needed to be said. “No getting drunk every time you drink. But tonight—yes. Tonight.”

He got very drunk, and then he slept, and the next night he went back to work.

On Saturday, around two—he’d already been fucked twice and was kind of sore and had firmly decided to do some research over his weekend on exactly what poppers were and whether to ask Frank for them, because ow—he got a perfectly ordinary text.

Black Camaro, northeast corner.

Frank didn’t always specify beyond which car Stiles was supposed to get into and where; he warned Stiles if it was a fuck, and a few times he’d specified how much a guy was supposed to pay. Stiles had noticed that if the car was really nice, Frank sometimes charged them more; that seemed only fair, and Stiles got to keep his usual proportion of the price.

He didn’t think he’d ever been picked up by a Camaro before. Stiles wondered idly whether it was new or vintage as he took the last sip of his water and handed his book over to Kevin behind the counter before he went out into the night.

The black Camaro pulled up just as Stiles reached the designated corner; it was shiny-new and pristine, so probably a rental for somebody’s mid-life crisis vacation. No wife waiting back at the hotel, probably. Maybe the guy would take his time and get Stiles close enough to quitting time that Frank would come get him to settle up after this and then send him home.

Stiles looked in as he opened the door and stopped dead.

Black Camaro was nowhere near a mid-life crisis. He was wearing aviators at night, and he had a chiseled jaw covered in stubble and a black leather jacket that seemed to melt right into the black leather of the car’s interior. There was a weird kind of relaxation in his body, like he owned this place—the car, the corner, and probably Stiles. This was no furtive closeted businessman, no tourist hiding from his real life. This was definitely nobody who had to pay for sex.

Stiles forgot every single thing Frank had taught him and said, “Are you a cop?”

“No,” Black Camaro said, flexing his hands on the steering wheel and not deigning to actually look at Stiles.

Stiles stared, mouth hanging open. “That’s it? No?”

“No,” he repeated impatiently. “I’m not a cop. I’m someone who wants to exchange my money for your sexual services. I was told you were in that line of work.”

“I, uh, yeah, sorry,” Stiles said. He glanced around again and then up—the full moon was almost directly overhead. Just one of those nights, maybe. “Yeah, I am. I do that.”

“So get in the car,” Black Camaro directed, still without looking over at Stiles.

Stiles got in.

The car, new as it was, had a scent to it—not bad, but personal, a long way from the sanitized rental car smell that usually accompanied this moment. Stiles took a breath as he put his seatbelt on, trying to get back into a more normal on-the-job headspace as Black Camaro pulled away from the curb.

“So wh—”

Black Camaro took a sharp turn at the end of the block and took one hand off the wheel, flicking open the button of his jeans.

“What,” Stiles demanded, going straight off script again.

“Blowjob,” Black Camaro said flatly. “I already negotiated this with your boss.”

“Not in a fucking moving vehicle you didn’t,” Stiles replied, because Frank was pretty clear on how inconvenient it would be for him if Stiles got arrested or killed.

“I want to drive fast and get my dick sucked,” Black Camaro replied, swerving around a couple of slower-moving cars and taking another quick turn through the next intersection. “I will pay extra if it costs extra.”

Stiles opened his mouth meaning to say no and instead, as the inevitable calculations went on in the back of his head—fast food instead of ramen, maybe some comic books, a little more money to squirrel away for later—he heard himself say, “A hundred bucks.”

“Fine,” Black Camaro said, and tugged down the zipper of his jeans. “Now get over here.”

“Um,” Stiles said, eyeing the center console. “I’m a safety boy—”

“Condom’s fine,” Black Camaro agreed, wriggling his hips to push his jeans down, and Stiles was momentarily distracted by the sight of his dick straining against his underwear in the gap, and how very obvious it was that he was ready to have his dick sucked right now. This was probably going to be easy, except for the not-dying-in-a-car-accident part.

“No, I mean, seatbelt,” Stiles insisted.

Black Camaro huffed annoyance and accelerated in a not at all reassuring manner—where had he even found a street this empty in San Francisco? “I have excellent reflexes. And I can hold on to you if you feel unsteady. Now get over here or I’m leaving you on the side of the road.”

Stiles glanced outside, trying to guess how to navigate back to either the taqueria or a bus stop, and couldn’t begin to tell from the buildings whipping by at distinctly freeway-like speeds. Black Camaro swerved around a couple of slower drivers like he was doing a slalom; he really did seem to have good reflexes.

“Okay, fine,” Stiles said, and turned to climb half over the console without taking his seatbelt off. It wound up mostly around his knees and thighs, but that was probably still very slightly better than nothing, right?

Black Camaro grunted in satisfaction as Stiles settled with the console under his ribs and helped him peel his jeans and jockeys down a crucial couple of inches, getting his dick out. Stiles pulled a condom from his pocket and got through the process of rolling it on—Black Camaro was uncut, which was a first for Stiles, but the distinction was probably going to be kind of lost under the condom. He didn’t hit his head on the steering wheel or elbow Black Camaro and the car hadn’t crashed by the time he got the condom fully in place. So far, so good.

Stiles curled his left hand around the base of Black Camaro’s dick, steadying it and making sure the condom didn’t slip all at the same time, and braced his right hand on the dash. He closed his eyes and got down to business.

This part was just like any other night at work, although the extra skin turned out to be different even through a condom, and he spent a little time mouthing curiously around the head, getting the hang of it. After the second or third hard suck, Black Camaro’s hand clamped down on Stiles’s hip, bracing him through what felt like another high-speed car-slalom and then a hard turn. Stiles was sort of glad he couldn’t see the road. It was better if you couldn’t see a crash coming, wasn’t it?

Stiles went down farther, falling into a familiar rhythm despite the disorienting circumstances. Black Camaro’s grip on Stiles’s hip tightened and loosened spasmodically but always kept him steady through the turns, and he didn’t start trying to fuck Stiles’s mouth, didn’t even call him names or babble at him. Maybe that meant he was focusing on driving. Stiles hoped so, for both their sakes, and tried to figure out how to do his small repertoire of interesting tongue moves when he was bent sideways over a dude’s lap instead of going head on. So to speak.

It worked well enough, apparently, because before Stiles had had a chance to get motion sickness from the sudden turns and accelerations or even a sore jaw, Black Camaro grunted again, sounding startled this time, and his hand closed painfully hard on Stiles’s hip. Stiles sucked harder, working him over a little more with his hand, and pretty soon Black Camaro’s hips were twitching up in little helpless thrusts, and Stiles could feel the swell and throb of his cock as he came. He relaxed his mouth and waited it out until Black Camaro’s grip on him released entirely, and then he lifted his head.

“Uh,” Stiles said, and then paused to wipe his mouth on the back of his hand and swallow saliva, resisting the impolite urge to cough. “Sorry, usually I’m not in a moving car when I have to deal with condom disposal.”

“In the console,” Black Camaro said, sounding a little breathless himself.

Stiles sat up further and figured out how to open the console, and there were indeed all sorts of random supplies, including hand sanitizer and wet wipes and those little plastic bags you were supposed to use to throw out a dog’s crap. Stiles opened one and got the condom off Black Camaro—he was driving slower now, Stiles noticed—and then cleaned him up with a wet wipe and tucked him back into his pants. He stuffed the wipe into the bag with the condom before he tied it off and then sanitized the hell out of his hands.

“There are mints, too,” Black Camaro said, tugging his own jeans back up. “Help yourself.”

“Oh,” Stiles said. He considered the possibility of drugs or something, then realized how completely redundant it was when he was already in the dude’s car and had already gone down on him, and helped himself to an Altoid. “Thanks.”

“No, thank you,” Black Camaro replied, weirdly solemn and not visibly much more relaxed than he had been when he picked Stiles up. He reached into his pocket and came up with a few folded bills—not in his wallet, already prepared—and tucked them into Stiles’s jeans pocket without looking, which reminded Stiles to slide back down into his seat and get his seatbelt on the right way.

He got settled just in time for Black Camaro to turn back onto the block where he’d picked Stiles up. He pulled up to the curb and came to a perfectly gentle stop, as if he’d never broken a traffic law in his life.

“Right,” Stiles said, and remembered that he was not supposed to count money in front of johns no matter what. Now was not the time to check whether Black Camaro had actually given him the hundred he demanded. Stiles got out of the car without another word, and walked away before Black Camaro pulled back into the street. That had been quick, at least.

When he got back into the taqueria he slipped into the bathroom to check the contents of his pocket, and stared blankly at the four fifties folded together.

“No,” he said, grinning in bafflement. “Thank you.”

Frank came by to settle up at quitting time, after three more blowjobs, all standard work for standard prices. Stiles had squirreled away half of Black Camaro’s money in his shoe with his other tips, but he had the rest ready to hand over as he counted out that night’s jobs, rattling them off by vehicle.

But when he got to Black Camaro in the list, holding out two fifties, Frank shook his head—although his eyes narrowed at the bills, way more than what Stiles would normally collect just for a blowjob. “I’m not taking his money. Keep that.”

“He paid extra for—wait, what?”

“I don’t do business with that guy,” Frank said, weirdly definite, like it was a matter of principle. Stiles was pretty sure Frank’s only principle was not to have any because they got in the way of making money: case in point, pimping out teenagers.

“You want to take his money, from now on you do it on your own time. This was a one-time-only arrangement.”

“But he,” Stiles said, and then shut his mouth, because that was an extra full hundred to keep, all his own. “Is he dangerous?”

Frank snorted. “Not to you, kid. Not yet. Like I said, you can make up your own mind what you want to do with him, but keep it on your own time. I am not doing business with him.”

“Oh… kay,” Stiles said finally.

It was only after he was back at his own place, laying out his night’s earnings, that he noticed the other interesting thing about the fifties, beyond the fact that there were four of them and he still had them all. They each had some letters written in block capitals on one end, and numbers on the other. If he put the letter ends in order, they spelled out BLACK CAMARO.

If he lined up the opposite ends in the same order, they made a phone number.

Stiles squinted long enough to memorize the number and then split the bills up among their various uses and hiding places—two for the rent stash, two for the long-term stash. Combined with the usual share of the night’s normal proceeds, that left him with some extra money in the emergency stash and some bonus walking-around money, too.

The next day he spent hours turning over the possibilities: the extra money, the extra risk, that Not yet of Frank’s when Stiles asked if Black Camaro was dangerous. In the middle of the afternoon, Stiles gave up and programmed the number into his phone. He hadn’t gotten a bad vibe from the guy, and if things went south—well, he could go south, too. He knew there was a chance he wasn’t going to be able to stay in San Francisco in the long run. That was one of his contingency plans. For now it was a gamble worth taking, Stiles was pretty sure.

He touched his hip as he thought about it; he couldn’t forget the way Black Camaro had held him absolutely steady, no matter how fast he drove or how hard he took the turns. Stiles remembered the mints, too, and the hand sanitizer, and somehow that stuck in his head even more than the two hundred bucks.

He spent several minutes composing the text message before he sent it: If you want to take another drive, I’m available Mon-Wed, 11pm-4am. 1 hour notice required. Weird stuff costs extra.

Stiles hesitated at that point. On the one hand, Black Camaro probably had not given his phone number to unlimited numbers of hookers last night; on the other hand, for all Stiles knew, he could have, and he obviously didn’t have Stiles’s phone number or any less direct way to get in touch than writing on money. There was also the fact that Stiles didn’t actually know if Black Camaro knew his name—his work name, anyway. They hadn’t had that part of the usual conversation, and Black Camaro hadn’t used it at the times when johns usually did.

Stiles had told Frank that his name was Will. His first name got butchered to Will or William pretty regularly by teachers when they tried to read it, grabbed the first consonants they recognized and guessing wildly. Stiles had figured that the instinctive that’s not my name but I know you mean me reaction he always had to it was just right for this job. Frank had adjusted his name to Billy for johns, which gave him another layer of differentiation, and Stiles knew enough about true and false and chosen and assumed names to like that.

But none of that told him what Frank had called him to Black Camaro, or if Black Camaro remembered it. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to draw the line himself—now that he was, apparently, going into the unmediated-hustling sideline as well as getting pimped out. Stiles added —billy to the end of the text message and hit send.

He didn’t get an answer until he was on his way to work that night. When the phone vibrated he expected a text from Frank telling him he was going to have a john waiting as soon as he came on-shift. When he saw it was from Black Camaro, Stiles was startled into a smile.

Requesting a reservation for Tuesday night, 2AM. Will pay the same as last time.

Before Stiles could respond—shit, another two hundred just for a blowjob?—another message came through, suggesting an intersection well north of where Stiles usually worked—halfway back to his SRO, in fact. It was also about a block from the freeway.

Stiles smiled wider, and texted back quickly, Sure you don’t want to just slow down on the on-ramp and let me jump in?

Only a minute passed before Black Camaro replied. That kind of coordination takes practice. Not this time.

Stiles snorted and texted back a confirmation of the time and place of their appointment, more businesslike than the stupid grin on his face. Black Camaro’s text back was just a terse agreement, but Stiles felt weirdly accomplished and pleased with himself for having arranged all by himself to have sex with somebody for (a lot of) money. It kept him in a good mood all the way through the night’s work.

When Stiles woke up it was Monday. He counted over the money he’d divvied up again, and thought about the extra money he could pull down from Black Camaro, and then he took the long-term stash and headed out for the daytime part of his day, which started around two in the afternoon. He converted the cash to a money order at the nearest check cashing place, and then took two buses up to the Marina to send it safely off in the mail to his savings account; he’d be able to get at it if he really, really needed it, but this way the money wasn’t around for anyone to steal from him.

If anybody thought to monitor a savings account at the Beacon County Credit Union that didn’t even have a debit card attached to it, he supposed it would be proof of life, if not much use in tracking him down. He sure wasn’t hanging out anywhere near where it would be postmarked; the Marina was like a foreign country, the pretty-shiny San Francisco of postcards and TV shows and the big-city fantasies of Beacon Hills kids.

He got straight on a bus back to the part of the city that felt like his own, and turned aside from his SRO to duck into the library, now that it was definitely late enough in the afternoon for him to be out of school. He couldn’t risk drawing attention to himself by getting a card, but he could grab a GED study book and hole up in a quiet corner for a few hours. The big main library offered a variety of corners. He got antsy and had to get up and move around every twenty minutes, usually just migrating to a new place to sit with the book, sometimes pacing around the library while he mentally shuffled through what he’d been reading. He passed the computers about a dozen times, and just the sight of them gnawed at him.

He’d left his phone with the Jeep outside Sacramento. He’d had it turned off since he left; he’d sent Scott a quick text of reassurance when he took off, but he hadn’t been in touch at all since. If he could get on the computers he could let Scott know he was okay—just a quick email—

But if he had access to a computer he knew what he would do first. Just a quick Google search. His fingers twitched over the search terms just thinking about it.

But then he would see it, and it would be real, and that was the whole reason Stiles had run away in the first place. There was no point in being here—in doing what he was doing—if he was going to look back now.

Stiles turned his back on the computers and went to sit by the rack of Westerns while he reviewed Chemistry.

Tuesday night, standing on the agreed-upon street corner at ten minutes to two, it suddenly occurred to Stiles to wonder if Black Camaro had meant twenty-four hours ago, which had technically been Tuesday, while it was now technically Wednesday. But wouldn’t Black Camaro have texted him to complain? Or maybe he’d blown it off—maybe it made no fucking difference to Black Camaro. Why should it mean anything? He’d probably been relieved not to be stuck overpaying for a blowjob—and if he did show up there was nothing to say that he would pay that much. Or at all. No one knew Stiles was even out here, not even Frank would notice if he never came back—

Stiles made himself breathe, because no one else was going to remind him; he’d gotten about two deep breaths into it when the Black Camaro squealed to a halt next to him.

Stiles blinked—he hadn’t noticed the car approaching, which wasn’t really surprising when he’d been that close to a panic attack, but it still felt like the car had just materialized out of nowhere in response to his fear. He took another deep breath, and the window rolled down.

“Do I have to convince you to get in again?” Black Camaro demanded.

He kind of sounded like he would if Stiles said yes, or at least would stay and argue rather than drive off. Stiles grinned, remembering that he’d been glad to do this, and opened the door. “I think we can take all of that as read.”

“Good,” Black Camaro grunted, and pulled away from the curb, rolling Stiles’s window up for him as he headed toward the freeway.

“Oh, that reminds me, though,” Stiles said. “Frank said he doesn’t do business with you, what the hell did you do? Are you sure you’re not a cop?”

Black Camaro was wearing sunglasses again, but he shook his head in a way that made it pretty obvious he was rolling his eyes. “Didn’t you just say we were taking that as read?”

“Come on, I’m curious, it was weird. He didn’t want to take your money, and he sounded pretty freaked. I should probably know if you’re secretly a mob hitman or—uh, wait, no, I probably don’t want to know that at all.”

“I’m not a hitman,” Black Camaro said flatly, but Stiles thought he detected a smile at the corner of his mouth. “And he’s not scared of me. He’s scared of my sister. She objects to some of his business practices.”

“Oh,” Stiles said, trying to process the fact that his john had a sister who knew his pimp. “Wait, is your sister a cop?”

“Closer,” Black Camaro said, heading down the on-ramp. “But no. And you’re done talking now.”

“Oh, come on, you’re not going to say it? Come on, tell me to put my mouth to better—”

Black Camaro grabbed him by the back of the neck and tugged him down, and the console punched him in the chest hard enough to make him huff out a startled breath. The engine roared as Black Camaro accelerated, and Stiles shook his head and twisted around to face down, reaching for Black Camaro’s fly.

Black Camaro’s hand moved from the back of his neck to his hip, holding him steady, and Stiles pulled a condom from his pocket and got to work. He realized as he pulled the zipper down that Black Camaro wasn’t hard. He was getting there, a nice plump semi that pushed out into Stiles’s hand once he got those ridiculously tight jeans open, but still distinctly floppy.

Stiles had already learned that the thing to do in this situation was not notice. And he did have the advantage of knowing that Black Camaro was capable of getting it up and getting off—he even had an idea of what Black Camaro liked him to do—so he wasn’t too worried about anything but condom mishaps. But he got the thing rolled on, and even that much handling was obviously making Black Camaro’s dick rise.

It was still a little soft as Stiles closed his mouth around it, tonguing the reservoir tip of the condom to be sure it was positioned correctly. He actually kind of liked feeling a dick swell and harden in his mouth. Black Camaro’s felt like it was changing shape as the foreskin pulled back; it was a weirdly fascinating sensation, and Stiles took his time with it.

Black Camaro didn’t seem to mind him going slow; he pushed up into Stiles’s mouth in tiny twitches. He was driving pretty fast, Stiles thought, but it was smoother on the freeway, a weightless swing instead of a series of sharp turns, so Stiles could concentrate on Black Camaro’s dick. When it was at the fully-hard proportions Stiles remembered he got down to business, his tongue falling into the twists he’d figured out the last time to get the sweet spots from this sideways angle.

Black Camaro shifted under him and the little twitches up got sharper and more regular. His hand tightened hard on Stiles’s hip, and he swerved over a couple of lanes and let the car coast as Stiles sucked hard at the head. Stiles slipped his hand down into the scant space available in Black Camaro’s unzipped jeans to try stroking his balls, and that was it. Black Camaro’s dick jerked as he came, seeming to swell a little more in Stiles’s mouth.

Stiles waited through it, and when Black Camaro’s grip on his hip relaxed, he sat up and went straight for the center console, digging out a baggie and wet wipes to clean Black Camaro up. Then the hand sanitizer, then a mint. By the time he had that all sorted out they were only a couple of exits from where Black Camaro had picked him up, and he was driving, if anything, faster than he had while Stiles was sucking his dick.

Stiles supposed that was probably for the best, safety-wise.

As they rolled up the exit ramp, Black Camaro shifted in his seat again and pulled out some bills already folded together.

“Same as last time,” he said, handing it over.

Stiles pocketed the money without looking, but before he could remember not to talk about the money with the john while he was still in the fucking moving car, he popped out with, “Is there a secret message again, too?”

Black Camaro just snorted. “Next time I want to send you a message I’ll text you. Next week, same time?”

“Same bat channel, same bat station,” Stiles agreed, without even considering the decision. Fuck, if it actually was the same as Black Camaro had given him last time, it was going to be the easiest money he ever made. And if he could depend on it being a regular thing…

Black Camaro pulled up to the curb and Stiles was out of the car and watching him speed off before he realized that he wasn’t on the corner where Black Camaro had picked him up. He was at the stop for the northbound bus that would take him back to his SRO.

The next day, Stiles took the bus to the address on the bag of assorted condoms Frank had given him at the start of the week and signed in for a free STD test. He kept expecting someone to ask him how old he was, or where he lived, or where his parents were—or at least to try to talk to him about his life choices—but they focused on taking his blood and lecturing him about using condoms every time.

After half an hour of fidgeting he got another lecture—this one about how stuff like HIV didn’t always turn up right away—and then his results: negative for everything on the test sheet. So far, so good. He probably hadn’t done himself any permanent damage yet.

When he went to the library, after, it was even harder to ignore the computers. It kept rocketing around his brain, the idea that he wasn’t sick and that meant he could walk away. He had Black Camaro’s money on hand; it was more than enough for a bus ticket back to Beacon Hills. Whatever happened to him there, it wouldn’t be this, it wouldn’t be blowjobs and fucks for money. Scott would be there.

He felt suddenly sick at the idea that Scott being there would make it okay, that anything could make it okay. He turned on his heel and walked out without going anywhere near the computers or the GED books, reasoning that it was his day off and he’d held it together really well so far and it was after five PM, never mind that he’d only been awake for four hours.

The next twenty-four hours were a dizzy, and then sick, blur, but nobody cared if he had a headache as long as he gave them a blowjob anyway.

The week that followed sucked, pun in-fucking-tended. Nothing terrible happened, except for the thing where Stiles had sex with an endless succession of guys for money, where he had dicks in his mouth or in his ass every hour of the night, one night after another. The novelty had entirely worn off, now, and it was just a gross, aggravating job. The guys were pathetic and mean in little ways that Stiles probably hadn’t noticed three weeks ago, and every time one of them called him Billy it hit the same irritated nerve from first-day-of-school roll calls—except he couldn’t correct them and they were never going to get it right.

On Saturday night, after settling up with Frank, Frank handed him a brown paper bag and said, “That’s what you’re wearing tomorrow. Don’t say I never gave you nothing.”

Stiles thought vaguely that maybe it was something warmer than his usual Frank-mandated tight jeans and tight, thin t-shirt. It was getting colder as October wore on, so it would be nice to have something extra to wear. He muttered a vague, “Thanks, man,” and didn’t even look into the bag until the next day.

It was a brand new and possibly child-sized Batman t-shirt—he just barely managed to get the thing on without busting a seam, and it showed a strip of skin above his jeans no matter how he tried to tug it down—plus a black domino mask. Even then Stiles almost didn’t get it, but he tried the mask on, trying to figure out if it would impede any of his slowly-developing repertoire of blowjob moves, and he suddenly remembered testing Halloween masks for ease of eating candy through them with Scott. That made him actually think of the date, and then the realization smashed into him.

Today was Halloween. This was his Halloween costume, and he was going to wear it to get in cars with strange men and have sex with them for money.

Stiles stared at his masked reflection for a while and then made the executive decision that it was okay to pre-party for work on holidays.

After all of that, his Tuesday appointment with Black Camaro was weirdly normal. He wore the Batman t-shirt again, because dudes had seemed to like it on Sunday and there was no point throwing out a free t-shirt.

Black Camaro raised his eyebrows high enough that they emerged entirely from behind his aviators. “I think maybe you’ve outgrown that.”

“See, and it’s funny because the shirt is too small for me and superheroes are for kids,” Stiles agreed, getting into the car.

“Can you even move in that? If you had to run you’d pop a seam the first time you took a deep breath.”

“If I had to run I would probably castrate myself in these jeans way before I had to worry about Hulking out of my t-shirt,” Stiles pointed out. “Nothing about this outfit is optimized for running.”

Black Camaro made a dubious noise and shifted in his seat, and Stiles said brightly, “And speaking of somebody’s balls being uncomfortably constricted in their jeans—” and leaned over to get down to work as they pulled onto the freeway.

Black Camaro was once again not all the way hard to begin with, and it gave Stiles a funny little warm feeling to know that this was a thing about Black Camaro, that he wasn’t always hard when they started and would let Stiles get him there without trying to defend his condition. Stiles put his best effort into it, but after a few seconds he got suddenly, startlingly distracted by the bracing hand on his hip, which landed on the strip of bare skin exposed between the tiny t-shirt and his jeans.

Stiles only realized he’d stopped working when Black Camaro started to move his hand, and then Stiles hurriedly got back to it, sucking a little harder than he meant to. Black Camaro made a tiny startled noise, barely more than a sharp exhalation, but he didn’t take his hand all the way away. When Stiles had gotten a rhythm going again Black Camaro’s hand tightened firmly on his hip, two fingers and his thumb on bare skin. Stiles had never been more aware of the skin of his hip, and had never made more of an effort to hold his hips absolutely still.

He didn’t know if Black Camaro was driving faster, or if he was failing to sway with the motion like he normally did, or what, but he felt way less steady than usual. Black Camaro’s grip tightened hard in the process of keeping him in place. Stiles sucked harder in turn, making the blowjob an exercise in speed and intensity, dialing everything up higher. Black Camaro’s grip didn’t relax at all—at the moment he came, Stiles could have sworn he felt the scratch of fingernails against his skin for just an instant before Black Camaro’s fingers flexed and the sensation vanished. When Black Camaro finally took his hand away so Stiles could move, the spot where he’d been holding on throbbed with a deep ache, and Stiles made himself not look down or rub his bare skin, even after he’d cleaned Black Camaro up and settled back into the passenger seat.

He focused on going through the normal motions, sanitizing his hands and then reaching for the tin of mints—but his hand encountered something else in that spot. Stiles pulled out an individually wrapped Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, which had been set on top of the mints.

“That’s for you,” Black Camaro said, voice sounding perfectly even, and Stiles looked from the candy to the stubbled jaw and sunglasses that told him, as usual, absolutely nothing.

“I figured you might have missed trick-or-treating,” Black Camaro added. “Probably had to work, right? I had some candy left over. That’s for you.”

Stiles looked down at the peanut butter cup again and then set it carefully on top of his knee and reached down to take a mint. He wasn’t supposed to eat anything during work hours, and he shouldn’t take candy from—whatever Black Camaro was. Not completely a stranger, maybe. Wasn’t the whole point of Halloween that it was okay to take candy from strangers sometimes?

Stiles tucked the mint between his teeth and his cheek, focusing on the almost antiseptic burn of it against his gums instead of any other sensation anywhere in his body. After a couple of seconds he managed to say, “Did you seriously give out candy? Did you dress up—wait, no, you totally just dressed like this, right? Who needs a Halloween costume when you’re a man of mystery all the time?”

“I thought about adding a nametag that said God,” Black Camaro said blandly, changing lanes without looking around. “But I figured it would be overkill.”

Stiles turned his head and stared. “Did you just—you just made a Buffy reference. You just made a joke about Oz.”

“If that makes me your favorite customer, I’m truly touched,” Black Camaro said, as he reached into his pocket and handed over the usual little rectangle of folded bills. Stiles pocketed the money without even being tempted to look and rested his palm lightly over the peanut butter cup for the rest of the ride.

Stiles didn’t eat the peanut butter cup that night, even when it was time for his usual snack before bed. He didn’t eat it the next day, either. He left it tucked in next to one of his cash stashes when he went out to the library and to get another STD test—at a different clinic, this time, in case they thought it was weird that he wanted to get tested all the time. They gave him the same spiel as the other clinic had but didn’t take any more interest in him.

It wasn’t until he caught sight of a nurse’s curly hair out of the corner of his eye that he finally realized he was expecting the nurses to treat him the way Scott’s mom did. After that he had to spend a few minutes driving his fingernails into his palms and counting the dots in the ceiling tiles until he could stop thinking at all.

He didn’t eat the peanut butter cup that night when he got home, but he did take it out and look at it. He didn’t sniff it, but he held it in his hand and let himself think about Black Camaro specifically bringing it for him. He’d set it where Stiles would find it after his hands were clean. He’d made a Buffy joke.

Stiles peeled down his jeans to confirm that there was just the faintest shadow of a reddish bruise where Black Camaro’s first two fingers had dug into his bare skin, and then he jerked off left-handed while he pressed his fingers down into those marks. He tried not to think about anything at all, but fuck, if somebody was going to pay to get off on him, it was only fair if he got off on them, right? And if it was his hand and a piece of candy that kept coming back to Stiles instead of a face he’d never really seen or a dick that was just his job to deal with, well, whatever.

It was nowhere near his bedtime after that, and he couldn’t lie there and let his thoughts wander. Stiles turned on the TV for background noise to drown out his brain while he made up Geometry problems for himself.

2. Chapter 2

The following week wasn’t so bad. Stiles found himself settling into a routine, working out a plan for his GED studies so he’d cover all the subject areas by the end of the year. Once he’d been on his own for six months he was pretty sure he could get emancipated, and then he’d be able to get a legit job, take the tests, maybe do some community college classes to bridge his way to college. He could get there right about on time, he thought, if he could just last until spring.

There were some holes in his plan, things he couldn’t find in the library books he could look up without asking for help, without checking the internet. He knew there had to be more information somewhere, but he knew he couldn’t go looking for it, and it definitely wasn’t something he could ask a librarian to look up without hanging a sign over his own head that said, I’m a homeless runaway minor, please call the cops so they can stick me in foster care.

But it was okay. He had a plan. Even if emancipation didn’t work like he was hoping it did, after another six months he’d have pretty good money saved up. He could at least get some under-the-table job that didn’t pay as much. As long as Black Camaro kept tipping, and Stiles kept putting the money away safely—as long as business stayed as steady as it had and he was still pulling in a hundred or so every night after Frank’s cut, he could be okay. Six months. Five now, really, because he’d run at the beginning of October and they were into November now. Five months. He could do this. He had a plan.

Every night, every trick, it echoed in his head. He had a plan. Not forever. Five months. He could do this. He could do this.

On Saturday night, his phone startled him by vibrating while he was in mid-blowjob. He played it off like he’d choked on the guy’s dick, and the guy was that mixture of apologetic and totally turned on that meant Stiles was going to be done in the next three minutes and getting a decent tip. He got back to it, and forgot all about his phone until he’d already rinsed out his mouth in the taqueria’s bathroom and took the phone out to text Frank that he was ready for his next trick.

He had a text message from Black Camaro. They’d agreed to same-time-same-place before he dropped Stiles off on Tuesday, so there was no reason for him to contact Stiles. He never had before. Stiles stared, heart racing; all he could think was oh fuck, he knows.

After a second Stiles realized Black Camaro had no way of knowing any of the things that had raced through Stiles’s brain just then: that Stiles still had that peanut butter cup hidden in the pocket of some cargo pants he never wore—that Stiles had jerked off thinking about him—that Stiles really, really needed him to keep tipping for about five more months so Stiles could fucking escape this.

He also realized that he should probably actually look at the message.

Want something different this week. Monday at 2 ok? Get a room?

Stiles sucked in a breath and then started trying to figure out what he could charge Black Camaro for a perfectly standard behind-locked-door fuck. He’d been willing to drop two hundred bucks a week for an adrenaline-junkie orgasm—but maybe he’d want some weird kind of fuck, too. Whatever it was he didn’t want to wait until Tuesday for it, which was interesting and maybe lucrative.

Pick me up at the usual place. Stiles typed back, carefully professional. We’ll agree on rates when you tell me what something different is.

He was out the bathroom door and halfway to his usual table before he remembered to text Frank back and tell him he was available, and Frank texted back immediately to tell him to get his ass out to meet a gray Toyota. Stiles pocketed the phone and got back to work, and didn’t think about Black Camaro again for hours.

Stiles prepped himself thoroughly before he got on the bus to meet Black Camaro, so his ass was still all warm and squidgy with lube when he dropped into the leather seat. It was a distracting sensation; Black Camaro had the car in gear again before Stiles noticed that neither of them had said a word.

“So,” Stiles said brightly. “Something different, huh?”

“We’ll talk about it in the hotel room,” Black Camaro said. He sounded tired—not interested in talking, and nowhere near making even oblique deadpan jokes.

Stiles watched a couple of motels go by and realized that they hadn’t gotten on the freeway. They were headed downtown—toward Stiles’s SRO, toward the part of his life that he kept separate from this. “Um, I can navigate to—”

“I know a place,” Black Camaro said, with equal finality.

“Oh,” Stiles said, and strategically waited until they were stopped at a light before he inched his hand toward his phone in his pocket and said, “Is it like a murder basement or something, because—”

“It’s the Holiday Inn by the Civic Center,” Black Camaro said, without cracking a smile or raising an eyebrow. “They have a basic standard of hygiene. I already got a room.”

He reached into his pocket and tossed Stiles a keycard, which did in fact purport to be from the Holiday Inn. Stiles knew the one they were heading toward. It was about two blocks from the library branch Stiles usually visited. It was also about two blocks, in the opposite direction, from the SRO.

Stiles turned the keycard over in his hands and tried to figure out what this meant and why Black Camaro was so unexcited about whatever it was. If he’d already gotten the hotel room so he could set up elaborate bondage gear or something, he’d be at least as chipper as he usually was when he was about to get his dick sucked, wouldn’t he?

What if—shit, what if Black Camaro wasn’t planning on getting off at all? What if he’d gotten Stiles for someone else, some stranger, someone Black Camaro owed money or a favor or—

“Hey,” Black Camaro said, sounding suddenly really present for the first time as he set one hand on Stiles’s knee. “It’s nothing bad, okay? We’re not going to do anything you don’t agree with. I just don’t want to try to drive and talk about it at the same time.”

Stiles took a deep breath. “That means that even talking about it is more distracting than getting your dick sucked.”

Black Camaro snorted. “I didn’t say I couldn’t. I just don’t want to.”

After that, neither of them said a word for the rest of the drive, but Black Camaro left his hand on Stiles’s knee until he made the turn into the hotel’s parking garage. Black Camaro parked, and by the time Stiles got out of the car and shut the door behind him, Black Camaro was already walking away toward the hotel entrance. Stiles hurried to catch up, but could never quite draw even with him. Black Camaro went straight for the stairs, and Stiles followed him up to the third floor and down a hallway to a room, always a couple of steps behind.

At the door Black Camaro took another keycard out of his pocket, opened the door, and handed the card to Stiles. Stiles pocketed it next to the first one—did he have all the keys to the room, now? Was that important?—while Black Camaro headed straight inside. Stiles followed more slowly, shutting the door firmly but not putting the security chain on, just in case he wanted to get out quickly.

He could see as soon as he stepped further in that there was no one else in the room, and nothing special set up. The beds were undisturbed. Black Camaro was leaning against the desk, and he had his sunglasses in his hand. Stiles automatically trained his eyes on that hand, not making eye contact without being spoken to.

“Hey,” Black Camaro said, sounding just like he had when he calmed Stiles down in the car. “My eyes are up here, Stiles.”

Stiles looked up, meeting his eyes—they were a kind of vague gray-brown, and Stiles didn’t know why he’d expected them to be a bright, chilly blue—and it took him a second to realize what Black Camaro had called him.

Stiles.

No one knew his real name, not even Frank, no one.

Stiles took an instinctive step back toward the door, heart racing again. Black Camaro spread his hands and said, “Look at me, Stiles. Just look. Are you sure you don’t know why I know your name?”

And it clicked all of a sudden—it might not have, but Stiles meant Beacon Hills and it took his brain back there. The eyes did the rest.

“Derek Hale,” Stiles said blankly.

Derek had been a high school kid hanging out in the waiting room of the sheriff’s department while Stiles did homework at his dad’s desk. They’d talked maybe twice, but Stiles had been fascinated by him. He’d known all about the fire, had known exactly why Derek and his sister had to take turns talking to various deputies and social workers and people in suits from out of town.

He had a weird sense of double vision for a minute, superimposing that kid—who’d seemed impossibly grown up at the time but had been only as old as Stiles was now, smooth-cheeked and skinny—over Black Camaro, with his perpetual stubble and leather jacket and artful bedhead. But the steady gray gaze was the same, and then it was just Derek standing in front of him.

“What,” Stiles said, because what.

“I recognized you a while ago, and I felt bad about knowing who you were when you didn’t know who I was,” Derek said with a stiff shrug. “I figured we should be somewhere private if we were talking about your secret identity, so.”

“So you—did you—” He could still feel lube slick in his ass and it felt stupid and presumptuous now; Stiles was suddenly ashamed of expecting Derek Hale to want to fuck him, to pay money to fuck him. “Do you—did you just bring me here to tell me that?”

Derek studied him for a couple of seconds and then looked down. “If you don’t want me as a customer anymore, that’s your choice. But we don’t have to be strangers to have a professional relationship.”

Stiles blinked, still trying to work out what to make of that when Derek glanced up.

Derek went on more confidently in the silence. “I mean, you know how it is in a small town. The person who cuts your hair or fixes your car or sells you food is your neighbor, or somebody your brother went to school with—”

Stiles abruptly remembered that there had been a Hale kid in his grade. Not his class, but the same age. He couldn’t remember the name, or even if it was a boy or girl, but Derek was the brother of somebody he would have gone to school with, if they’d both made it to high school.

“And that’s okay,” Derek went on. “You still pay them when they do their job. You don’t have to be strangers for that to work. You have a job that you do. I want to pay you to do it. We just—we don’t have to be strangers.”

“Okay,” Stiles said slowly. Sure. Derek was still Black Camaro, after all, still the guy who overpaid him ridiculously for blowjobs—maybe because he felt bad about Stiles being a Beacon Hills kid hustling in the big city, but it had been sort of obvious that Black Camaro was overpaying him for some reason, and Stiles needed the money.

“I just—I have to be sure,” Derek said, and he looked a little pained as he looked Stiles up and down. “Are you in any kind of trouble? Is anybody making you do this? Because if you need help, if you want to go home—”

Stiles shook his head sharply, and managed to say, “No, it’s fine, I’m fine,” in a totally normal voice.

But Derek pushed on, his voice getting even gentler, turning into exactly the voice Stiles never wanted to hear. It was the voice he’d run hundreds of miles to keep from hearing from a deputy at the front door. “Your dad—”

“No,” Stiles said, and that came out really loud and harsh, kind of yelling, maybe.

Derek stopped, putting his hands up, palms out, placating. His eyes were wide and worried.

“Just don’t,” Stiles said, looking away from Derek’s too-knowing face and shoving the thought away, locking it up and painting over it. “Don’t. Talk about him.”

“Okay,” Derek said. “I get it. You have your reasons for being here, that’s your call. But if you run into trouble—you have my number. I know I’m not the right person to be helping you with things, but if you need somebody who’s not a stranger, you can call, okay?”

“Sure,” Stiles muttered, not looking up. He wondered if he should change the name in his phone from Black Camaro to Derek. But the phone was Frank’s, really, and he wasn’t sure he wanted Frank to be able to see that they were on a real-first-name basis with each other. If Frank even knew, if…

Stiles realized he’d just been standing there for a while, and he looked up. Derek was still leaning on the desk, watching him.

“So apart from my secret identity,” Stiles said, because if Derek still wanted to pay him to do his job, maybe he should do his job. “Was there actually something different you wanted, or—”

Derek looked away sharply. Up to then he’d kept his eyes steady on Stiles, but now he looked away.

“Okay, definitely something different,” Stiles deduced, starting to feel like he knew what he was doing for the first time since he got into the car tonight. “You gonna tell me? Or you could do, like, expressive hand gestures. Or you could just write it down and pass it over to me—”

“It’s not,” Derek said, but he rubbed the back of his neck and still wasn’t looking at Stiles. “It’s not—I don’t know if it’s something that you would—if it’s not for sale, I get that. But what I want is to go down on you and make you come.”

Stiles had his mouth already open to discuss the particulars of Derek fucking him, and it dropped open further as his mind went blank.

Derek looked up, and Stiles saw him flush, his shoulders curling in defensively. “I just—I haven’t—I’m not good in relationships and I don’t like strangers, so until a few weeks ago, with you, I hadn’t really done anything with anyone in a while. Watching you—feeling—I just started missing doing it the other way, but I know that’s not—I don’t even know if you’re actually into guys, or…”

Stiles snapped his mouth shut before, Well I’m into you, could burst out.

Derek glanced up again, and Stiles realized that Derek was embarrassed to be asking this. He obviously thought it was too much to ask, that he wanted something so weird he had to explain and defend it to a hooker. But this was Stiles’s job, too, wasn’t it? Derek should get what he wanted as long as he paid a fair price for it, and he shouldn’t have to feel bad about wanting something perfectly nice like sucking somebody’s dick. Stiles had a professional responsibility to make sure Derek didn’t feel like a fucking weirdo for confessing to wanting to give a blowjob.

“No, hey, that’s totally fine, I’m just trying to figure out the price point for you blowing me,” Stiles said quickly. “I don’t get a lot of demand for that, but it’s not like it’s a hardship.”

Derek looked a little skeptical, and Stiles kept on going. “What do you think is fair? I mean—”

“Same as the other way,” Derek said firmly. “A hundred.”

Stiles made himself not freeze in shock again. A hundred included the front-seat-of-a-moving-car premium on a blowjob that Stiles had made up out of thin air when Derek was a total stranger, but on the other hand Stiles wasn’t going to bargain him down.

“Sure, that’s—sure.”

Stiles popped the button on his jeans and looked around. “Where do you want me?”

“Sit,” Derek said, waving toward the bed. “I’ll kneel. Condom?”

“Yeah, I’ve got,” Stiles said, and tugged one out of his pocket as he walked over to the bed, starting to hold it out to Derek and then hesitating. He was still the hooker here. Technically he was the one providing the service; maybe he was supposed to provide his dick pre-wrapped for Derek’s cocksucking convenience?

“Okay,” Derek said, plucking it from his fingers. “Condom it is, that’s fine.”

Stiles did go still, that time. “Wait, you were—”

“I don’t like the taste,” Derek said with a shrug, flipping the little packet between his fingers. “But you don’t know where I’ve been, and you’re right to be safe. Go on, take a seat.”

Stiles wanted to point out that it was a bigger problem that Derek didn’t know where Stiles had been—or rather, that he ought to know exactly where Stiles had been, with dozens of different guys in any given week—but he shouldn’t argue about this, either. He’d promised himself he would be safe and anyway condoms were supposed to slow you down a little from coming, weren’t they? Stiles was probably going to need that because, holy fuck, Derek Hale was about to give him the first blowjob he’d ever had in his life.

And pay him for the privilege.

Stiles sat, and Derek dropped down to kneel in front of him before he could figure out what to do next. Stiles spread his knees, then winced. The jeans really didn’t leave a lot of maneuvering room, and their usual barely-tolerable tightness was becoming truly uncomfortable as the reality of this dawned on him.

“Let me,” Derek said, and eased the zipper down, which helped a little. Derek peeled Stiles’s jeans and underwear down as far as he could with Stiles sitting. Stiles planted his hands on the mattress and pushed up to let Derek work them down his thighs.

Derek smirked up at Stiles. “Told you these were too tight.”

“Gotta highlight the assets,” Stiles replied a little breathlessly, but the waggle of his hips didn’t actually show off his ass, since he was sitting on it. It did make his dick—which was way more than half hard—bounce. Derek’s eyes fixed on it with an expression Stiles could only describe as hungry.

Stiles felt suddenly really naked in a way that was different, and maybe even more, than stripping to his skin to let a guy fuck him. Those guys saw a hole to fuck. They didn’t see Stiles, or what Stiles wanted. None of them knew his name. Only a few of them had ever even bothered to touch his dick, and none of them had cared that he didn’t come, and barely got hard, even when they did touch him. But Derek wanted to get him off, which meant letting Derek know what got him off—starting with Derek himself, but Stiles had no idea how obvious that was. Maybe Derek would believe that Stiles was just an expert at getting hard on command if that was what the customer wanted.

That was totally true, after all, as long as the customer was Derek.

Derek tugged off Stiles’s shoes quickly enough that Stiles couldn’t flail around trying to help and kick him in the gut or something. When he got Stiles’s jeans off him he turned them right-side in with his underwear neatly separated, and tossed them past Stiles so they were behind him on the bed somewhere. Then Derek tore open the condom and Stiles pressed his lips together and bit down on them to keep himself from making a sound.

Derek didn’t look up to see whatever weird face Stiles was making; he closed his hand on Stiles’s dick and jacked it, two or three firm, confident strokes. Stiles instantly adored Derek’s broad, unsweaty palm and the just-right pressure he used, and only barely managed not to fuck up into Derek’s fist. Then Derek took his hand away to get the condom and oh God, this was really happening. To Stiles. Right now.

“So like I said,” Derek said, looking up at Stiles with the condom in one hand and his other hand just hovering in the air right beside Stiles’s dizzyingly hard dick. “I haven’t done this in a while.”

“I won’t judge,” Stiles promised. Given that he had nothing to compare this to, he pretty much couldn’t, unless Derek bit his dick or something.

Derek snorted, lips turning up in an almost-smile. “I didn’t figure you were going to insult my technique before I paid you. I just—I might not catch on to exactly what you like, but I know enough to know you can’t hurt me at this. I don’t mind if you grab my hair or my head and put me where you want me, and I’d like it if you got to the point where you just wanted to fuck my mouth. Just go for it, you don’t have to warn me. Okay? I like it like that.”

Stiles was now pretty sure that either this was a dream or Derek was shitting him—but why? It wasn’t like Derek would pay a bunch of money for the privilege of going down on Stiles in a way he didn’t like. He didn’t even have any idea that Stiles hadn’t done this before. Who would believe there was something a hooker hadn’t done? Literally nothing else made sense except that Derek was telling the truth and he actually wanted Stiles to be rough with him. If Stiles acted like he didn’t believe him Derek might start feeling weird again, and Stiles wasn’t going to do that to him.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Stiles agreed, and Derek gave him a sudden wide smile, full of teeth.

“I’m sure you won’t let me down,” Derek agreed, and then he looked down and rolled the condom on. Out of practice or not, he was nearly as deft at it as Stiles was, and it was only a few seconds before his mouth was following the latex down.

Stiles made some kind of noise—mostly through his nose, because he was biting down on his lips again to hold back words. His brain mostly shorted out in the overload of sensation, his balls tightening already. He felt the thought dart across his mind—I need to figure out how to do whatever he’s doing, I would make so many tips—but he couldn’t isolate sensations. His hand was in Derek’s hair without volition, and it occurred to him that he had his eyes squeezed shut at the same time his fingers tightened, a half-involuntary yank.

“Stiles?” Derek’s voice already sounded rough, and, more to the point, Derek was suddenly not sucking Stiles’s dick anymore. After a second that freed up enough brain cells for Stiles to open his eyes and let go of Derek’s hair.

“Sorry, I’m good,” Stiles said, putting his hand behind his back, leaning on it as he slouched back. “Go ahead.”

Derek looked him over for a minute—his lips were shiny and Stiles couldn’t stop staring—and then reached for Stiles’s hand. He closed his hand on Stiles’s wrist and tugged lightly, and Stiles gave in immediately, letting Derek drag his hand back. He slid his fingers into Derek’s hair, and this time he watched as Derek leaned in and closed his mouth over Stiles’s dick, sinking onto it slowly.

Stiles remembered to keep breathing, curling his toes against the floor, and this time he could separate out the heat of Derek’s mouth, the supple wet feeling of his tongue through the latex, the way Derek sucked right at the head of his dick.

Derek’s hand settled on Stiles’s thigh and Stiles pushed into it a little, his dick jerking in Derek’s mouth. The noise Derek made was low and warm, good in a way that shot right down Stiles’s spine. Stiles did it again, pushing up harder, digging his fingertips into Derek’s scalp—he remembered Derek’s grip on his hip in the car, remembered that moment when it had felt like Derek’s fingernails were going to dig right through his skin, though they hadn’t even left a mark—and Derek actually moaned.

Stiles moaned right back, too fast to stop and wonder if it sounded weird or fake or like he was just doing it because Derek had done it, instead of because Derek’s moan had wrenched the sound out of him like a reflex. Derek’s palm rubbed against his thigh in a way that felt encouraging, and Stiles tugged at Derek’s hair in no particular direction, just to do it. Derek took him deeper, sucked harder, and Stiles was headed straight back to that blinding overload of the first moment; he was going to come any minute.

Derek had wanted him to do something, though—wanted Stiles to be rough, fuck his mouth. Stiles braced his free hand on the bed, trying to map out his moves through the steady maddening heat and suction of Derek’s mouth. He pushed up awkwardly. He was nowhere near a rhythm, just shoving his dick farther into Derek’s mouth.

Instinct took over after the first few tries—his hips just wanted to move like that, wanted to hunch and thrust and push, no matter how awkward it was. Derek took it all. He leaned in and made more encouraging noises, working his mouth around Stiles’s dick until Stiles figured he’d done the job and he could let go.

Stiles folded forward as he came, bracing his hands on his knees and letting his head hang as his hips twitched and his dick spurted. Derek kept sucking him, running one hand up and down Stiles’s thigh encouragingly and making tiny noises that Stiles couldn’t stop echoing, until Stiles pulled it together enough to say, “Okay, that’s—that’s—”

Derek pulled back immediately, ducking and backing away—on his knees, he was impossibly graceful—to sit on his heels in front of Stiles.

Which gave Stiles a pretty good view of the bulge in his jeans. Derek wasn’t doing anything to draw attention to it, but it was there: evidence that Derek had gotten at least half of what he wanted out of sucking Stiles’s dick. Win-win. Or it would be once Derek actually got off and Stiles got paid.

Stiles straightened up and looked down at his own dick, registering the gross sensation of his jizz being bagged up with his dick as it cooled. “I’m gonna, um—”

“I’ve got it,” Derek said, and Stiles was startled into looking up at the sound of his voice—he’d moved in the second Stiles looked away, and was already walking back from the desk with the hotel room’s little trash can and what Stiles would swear was the same package of wet wipes from the console of his car. While Stiles was still staring at him, Derek stripped the condom off him and dropped it into the trash, and cleaned up his shrinking dick with a few quick swipes of a wet wipe.

Stiles had never given any thought to how that felt to Derek—it just seemed polite, cleaning up the mess he’d made—but it was strange. Even though Derek’s hand and mouth had been all over his dick just a second ago, it felt different now, to have Derek handling his dick now that it was going soft, cleaning him up like he couldn’t do it for himself. It wasn’t like he had his hands full controlling a moving car, after all. It felt like—being taken care of, in a weird way. It made him feel freshly naked all over again.

Derek’s eyes flicked up to meet his as he finished, uncertainty sneaking back in. “Um. Sorry, I shouldn’t—”

“No, it’s fine, it’s—fine. Thanks.”

Derek looked away, tossing the wet wipes in the trash, and Stiles plunged onward. “Anyway, Monday night special for valued repeat customers—blowjobs are two for one, so if you want me to take care of that for you, it’s free.”

Derek looked startled, like it seriously had not occurred to him that he was also going to get his dick sucked here. Stiles really thought he would have had a better grip on the mechanics of their professional relationship than that. “That… doesn’t seem like good business.”

“Are you kidding, man? I’m building customer loyalty and brand identity. Do you want a blowjob or not? Because you kind of look like you do, and if you tell me you don’t I’m gonna feel like you haven’t been getting your money’s worth for the past three weeks. I thought you liked my blowjobs, Derek!”

Derek smiled a little—smirked, maybe even. Stiles wondered if he was supposed to remember so easily exactly how long it had been since he started blowing Derek in moving cars, but, whatever. Good customer service.

“Okay,” Derek said, and sat down on the foot of the bed, not right next to Stiles—but to his left, leaving almost exactly the Camaro’s console-width between them.

“I see what you did there,” Stiles said, swallowing a laugh, but it was easy enough to squirm sideways, bracing one foot on the floor as he stretched sideways to put his head over Derek’s lap. “You gonna make revving noises, too?”

“Nah,” Derek said, and dropped back to lean on his elbows. Stiles turned his head, looking up Derek’s body at him, and Derek gave him a weirdly easy, friendly smile. “I think we can skip the sound effects.”

“Sure,” Stiles agreed, and got back to it. He was pretty good, by now, at getting Derek’s zipper down and dick out; it was only when he reached for his pocket that he was really aware he was naked from the waist down.

“Here,” Derek said, holding out a condom he must have fished from the pocket of Stiles’s jeans. Stiles took it with a slightly sheepish smile—he was totally off his game, but it didn’t seem like Derek minded. His dick was as hard as it had been that first night he picked Stiles up, and Stiles rolled the condom on easily and got to work.

It was sort of weird doing this without a steering wheel looming above his head, without Derek’s stomach against his left cheek, and the console hard under his ribs and the seatbelt tangled around his knees and the growl of the Camaro’s engine. Even though they were holding totally still, even though he was lying across the bed with one foot on the floor, Stiles felt the absence of the steadying hand on his hip, weirdly aware of all the open space around him. He sucked Derek’s dick more or less on autopilot, trying to get the suction just right to make Derek’s breath stutter.

When he got it, he heard Derek’s breath catch instead of feeling the motion against his ear. Derek’s hand settled on his shoulder, and Derek’s thumb pressed down on the bump of Stiles’s spine right above his shirt collar. Stiles didn’t think too hard about how good it felt to have Derek hanging on to him; he just closed his eyes and did his job, working his mouth over Derek’s dick and listening to the tiny hitches and catches of Derek’s breath, letting them tell him how he was doing. Derek’s thigh tensed under him and Derek let out a stuttering tiny sound that Stiles had never heard before as he came. It was only when Derek finished that Stiles realized he’d been rocking his own hips against the bed, his dick half-hard again between his naked thigh and the softness of the bedspread.

Stiles pulled away—Derek’s hand dropped from the back of his neck as soon as he moved—and he grabbed the wet wipes and used one to strip the condom off of Derek’s dick. Derek made a little startled noise, and Stiles winced and felt his face go hot.

“Sorry, sorry.” He made his hands gentler as he cleaned Derek up and tucked him back into his jeans. Derek, Stiles realized, had never taken off so much as his jacket. Stiles looked away, reaching for his pants. “Um, I guess…”

“You can stay,” Derek said.

Stiles froze, looking up to figure out what Derek meant by that. Derek looked as startled as Stiles felt.

“No, I mean—I’m going to go, but the room’s paid for.” Derek waved his hand around. “If you want to stay and—whatever, watch TV, order room service, take a nap—you can.”

“You gave me both keys,” Stiles realized.

Derek nodded quickly. “Yeah, just—if you want—or I can just drop you off like usual.”

“No,” Stiles said, because it didn’t make any sense for Derek to drive him back down to 14th just so Stiles could catch a bus back up to 6th. It would be an easy walk from here. “Thanks, man, yeah, I think I will.”

Derek nodded quickly, and it was about then that Stiles realized that Derek was carefully not looking down at Stiles’s dick, like—like Stiles didn’t even know what. He had just paid to suck Stiles’s dick and now he was politely not looking at it?

“Okay,” Derek said, and fished in his pocket, coming up with the standard little rectangle of quarter-folded bills. Stiles had gotten to know the exact thickness: there were four, just like usual. Stiles reached over and snagged his pants, sticking the money in his pocket without looking more closely.

“Okay,” Derek repeated. He nodded and then stood and turned away, walking straight out of the room without looking back.

When the door closed, Stiles followed him. He put the security chain on and then watched through the peep hole until Derek was out of sight, at which point he leaned his head against the door and laughed a little at the unspeakable awkwardness of it. This was the downside of not being strangers, obviously, but Stiles figured he could deal. Derek paid him enough to deal.

He went back to the bed and dragged his underwear and pants on, wincing a little as he zipped up his too-tight jeans. He looked around, considering actually hanging out in the room. They’d hardly disturbed the bed; only the trash can was out of place, and the pack of wet wipes Derek had left behind.

The longer Stiles just stood there, absorbing the quiet and the way the room still looked like housekeeping had just left, the weirder it got. Without a john here, it wasn’t a place where Stiles did his job. It just looked like a moderately nice hotel room, like normal people stayed in on vacation, like he was up in Seattle or down in San Diego with his parents. It was like being up in the Marina again; it was like someone else’s life. It was like his life, two months ago, or maybe longer than that—

Stiles squeezed his eyes shut and walked back to the door, fumbling the security chain off without looking and making for the stairs as fast as he could.

3. Chapter 3

It wasn’t until he woke up the next day—feeling none the worse for however much Wild Turkey he’d slopped into a plastic cup and chugged before he went to sleep—that he actually pulled out Derek’s money from his pants pocket and went to divvy it up among the usual stashes.

Except the four bills weren’t fifties. They were hundreds.

“Derek,” Stiles said out loud, because there was no universe in which the money Derek was paying him made sense for what Derek was getting from him. You didn’t pay a hundred bucks to go down on somebody and then also pay a hundred bucks for a perfectly ordinary blowjob and then also tip a hundred percent on the total. No sane human being would do that. “What the fuck.”

Then, because what the hell, he pulled out his phone and sent a text message. I’m pretty sure I remember telling you the second one was free.

Derek replied almost immediately. I can tip whatever I want to.

“You can’t tip me three hundred percent for a blowjob you gave me, you lunatic,” Stiles replied, staring at his phone.

As if Derek had heard that, another text popped up: I have literally more money than I want or know what to do with.

“That,” Stiles said, “is a fucking dumb thing to tell a hooker, oh my God.”

Except even as he said it, he realized a couple of things: Derek almost certainly had all that money because of his whole family dying in a fire six years ago, which was kind of too awful to contemplate—and Stiles knew that because he knew that Black Camaro was Derek Hale, and Derek knew Stiles, too. He knew that Stiles was never going to try to scam or steal more money from him. This was the downside of not being strangers.

And then another text popped up, still without Stiles replying: Regular time tonight?

Stiles frowned, his thumbs hovering over the keys of his phone as he considered and discarded answers. He and Derek had agreed last Tuesday on this Tuesday, but he’d assumed Monday had replaced Tuesday. Not that he had any problem with a standard Tuesday blowjob except, seriously, it was weird for Derek to be throwing this much money at him.

Stiles remembered the way Derek had asked him, Is somebody making you do this? Do you need help?

Stiles rolled his eyes and hit the call button instead of trying to compose a text.

Derek picked up on the first ring, his voice sounding wary as he said, “Stiles?”

“Dude, look, just because you know my name you don’t have to—I’m doing fine, okay? You don’t have to tip crazy and hit me up twice in a week just because—whatever, okay? I’m doing fine.”

“Okay,” Derek said, sounding a little dubious. “So yes or no for tonight?”

“What,” Stiles said, and then hesitated, feeling his resistance crumble. What did it matter? If Derek really wanted to keep spending his money on Stiles, why the fuck should Stiles care? He needed the money and apparently Derek didn’t, and this was his job. Why should he argue with what his best customer wanted? It wasn’t his business to tell Derek that part was weird any more than he should tell him wanting to suck somebody’s dick was weird. Maybe he got off on tipping.

“I wanted to fuck you,” Derek said, apparently taking the one word Stiles had gotten out as a question. “If that’s an option.”

“Oh,” Stiles said. That was at least actual value for money. Totally normal people paid a hundred bucks to fuck him sometimes, but he could guess Derek wouldn’t be willing to pay the same for a fuck as a blowjob. “One fifty, and you aren’t allowed to tip more than a hundred percent. You want me to meet you at the hotel again?”

“No, I’ll pick you up—”

“Oh my God, not in a moving car,” Stiles blurted out, so he only caught the last word of what Derek was saying.

“…Home.”

“Wait, what?” Stiles demanded.

“If it’s a hotel room or nothing, then okay,” Derek said patiently. “But I don’t like hotels. I’d rather be at home.”

“You want to bring me to your house,” Stiles said blankly, even as he put hotels on the list of things Derek didn’t like along with the taste of condoms and strangers. “Derek.”

I’m a hooker. Stiles couldn’t quite make himself point out the obvious.

“No one will see you, my upstairs neighbor works nights,” Derek said, like those were the reasonable concerns here. “If I come pick you up, you can come in through the garage.”

“But I will know where you live,” Stiles said, waving his free arm wildly.

Derek was silent for a few seconds and then said very dryly, “I think I can defend myself against you if I have to, Stiles.”

“I could—steal things from you,” Stiles offered desperately.

“You don’t even want me to tip you,” Derek pointed out, sounding openly amused now. “And my stuff isn’t that nice, but if you really need a looser t-shirt or something you can help yourself.”

“I—” Stiles said, and then he realized that there was actually a nuclear option here. He was blurting it out even as he realized that wait, no, maybe he didn’t want to blow this up for no reason except that Derek was being stupidly trusting and nice. “I’m sixteen.”

There was another silence, and this time it was Stiles who filled it first. “That makes it a felony, Derek. A worse felony. More felonies. Whatever. I can’t—I don’t want to bring that down on you, especially not where you live.”

After another long pause, Derek said, “I knew that, Stiles. You were in Cora’s class.”

“I wasn’t,” Stiles said, even as everything went bright and sharp and he felt like he’d been punched in the head, even though it was Derek’s—baby sister, wasn’t she? He remembered that now. He hadn’t wanted to remember that. It was Derek’s sister they were talking about. Derek should be the one upset about this.

“She had Mrs. Granger,” Stiles said, when Derek didn’t say anything else. “I had Mrs. Sinclair.”

“Okay,” Derek said, and his voice wasn’t gentle exactly, but he was speaking very evenly, like he thought Stiles was freaking out. “I just—I knew that. I already accepted the risk. If you’re choosing to do this job, I’m still choosing to be your customer.”

“Okay, well,” Stiles said. “Then don’t—I don’t want you to pick me up. I want to get there myself.”

Derek didn’t say anything right away, and Stiles didn’t want to lay out how he needed to know his escape routes and be able to assure himself in advance that he knew where he was going. He didn’t want to spell out how he had to keep some little fragment of control over this.

“You’ve ordered more than the minimum for free delivery,” Stiles explained instead. “Gimme your address, I’ll be at your door at two. Hot and fresh.”

Derek lived almost but not quite in the Marina. At one in the morning it was a different combination of buses than Stiles had taken to the post office. Derek’s block, in the dark, looked almost grubby enough for Stiles not to feel out of place. He was glad he’d put on a hoodie over his work clothes, although he clocked at least three hipster dudes on the 31 bus wearing their jeans nearly as tight. Hell, Derek wore his just about as tight as Stiles did.

He liked having pockets he could physically fit his hands into, though, and it was getting cold at night now, even when it wasn’t raining. Stiles managed to get from the bus stop to Derek’s address without having to deal with any precipitation that he was sure was rain and not just really aggressive fog, and then he hesitated at the steps up to the door, unsure again. There weren’t any lights on.

The front door swung open and Derek called down quietly, “Is my pizza free if you’re late?”

Stiles darted up the stairs, and Derek stepped back to let him come in without either breaking stride or colliding with him. “On the bright side, if anyone heard that they’re going to think I’m selling you weed instead of my ass.”

“I don’t—”

“Like weed,” Stiles finished with him, stripping out of his hoodie and looking around. The only light came from what he assumed was the bedroom door, but the dim shapes of the rest of the apartment looked kind of normal and comfy, not scary-interior-designer fancy. “I know, princess, you don’t like anything except driving fast and having sex.”

Derek’s silence had a certain specific weight to it; when Stiles looked over he had his eyebrows raised and was fighting a smile. “Princess?”

“Sorry, is there something else you want me to call you?”

Derek’s eyebrows came back down and he stepped into Stiles’s personal space in a way he never had before. Stiles was suddenly aware of how big Derek was—not that much taller, but solidly muscular. Suddenly that sense of presence was back, that aura of owning everything around him that he’d had the first night he picked Stiles up.

Stiles clenched his fists in his hoodie and held absolutely still as Derek leaned in, and Stiles thought, he’s going to kiss me, as Derek’s arm went around him. Kiss me or bite me.

And then Derek stepped back, holding up the condom he’d just plucked from Stiles’s Chinese finger trap of a back pocket.

“My name is Derek,” he said before he turned away, heading toward the bedroom door.

Stiles exhaled in a whoosh and then followed him, conscious of every inch of his body and the wetness of lube on his ass—conscious of his dick stirring and the almost-certain fact that he was going to come when Derek fucked him.

Derek was taking his socks off when Stiles stepped into the bedroom. Stiles stopped short and stared at the weird mundanity of it, and then Derek tugged off his t-shirt in the process of standing up. Stiles found himself staring all over again. He’d had a general impression that Derek was in good shape, and if he’d given it any thought at all he would have guessed that his body was likely to be as stupidly gorgeous as his face had turned out to be. But this was—

“You are really really ridiculously good looking,” Stiles said blankly. He knew that he had his own appeal; nobody had ever seemed disappointed to be having him get into their car to suck them off. But Derek was model-hot. Derek was no seriously why are you paying for this hot.

Derek was giving him a very blank look; Stiles realized he was being wildly unprofessional.

“Sorry,” Stiles said hastily, tossing his hoodie to the floor and hauling his own t-shirt off. “Um, how do you want…”

He bent to unlace his own shoes, and then looked up when he got the first one off and Derek hadn’t said anything.

Derek was just standing there with his hands at his fly.

Stiles popped to his feet and toed his other shoe off, and Derek—huh. Derek just stood there and watched him. The tops of Derek’s ears were pink.

It didn’t matter why Derek wanted to pay somebody to do this. He’d chosen to pay Stiles, and he liked the look of what he was about to get. Stiles smiled a little and took the couple of steps over to where Derek was standing before he dropped to his knees.

“Let me help you with that,” Stiles said, sliding his hands under Derek’s to get his jeans open.

Derek dropped his hands, letting them fall to his sides. Stiles reached back and plucked another condom from his pocket, holding it between his teeth as he used both hands to ease Derek’s jeans and underwear down and get his dick out. He was hard, tonight.

Stiles dared to comment on it this time, looking up as he tore the condom packet open. “You get all revved up when I called you—”

Derek pressed two fingers over Stiles’s mouth, and Stiles let himself be stopped. Derek raised his eyebrows and shifted his fingers a fraction of an inch off Stiles’s mouth, and Stiles said, “Derek.”

“Yeah,” Derek said. “That works for me.”

Stiles stared up at him a second longer; his face was getting hot and he wasn’t sure what the hell he’d just said, or Derek had just said. He dropped his gaze to Derek’s dick and got on with the part of this he knew how to do: rolling on a condom and sucking a little to get things wet and make sure Derek was thoroughly ready.

Derek pushed him back—another light touch, this time on Stiles’s cheek—before he’d really gotten into a rhythm.

“On the bed,” Derek said. “On your knees.”

Stiles nodded sharply and scrambled up to his feet and then onto the bed, realizing even as he did that Derek had turned down the covers. Stiles had done this folded over a couch or a desk or a chair. He’d done it lots of times on top of a slick motel bedspread. He’d gotten fucked one time under the covers with the lights off, though he was working hard on forgetting all about that one, because it had been so boner-killingly depressing. But he’d never done it on the sheets of someone’s actual own bed. They were dark blue with faint stripes, creased like Derek hadn’t changed them in a while, though they looked and smelled clean enough.

Derek settled one hand on Stiles’s hip and Stiles felt the blunt press of Derek’s dick against his hole.

“Stiles,” Derek said, not quite a question, but Stiles could tell he was supposed to answer.

He pushed back against Derek, feeling the heat under the wet chilliness of the lube, and said, “Derek.”

Derek gave a little noise like a sigh and then pushed into him, and Stiles shut his eyes and bit his lip. It didn’t hurt. There was that hot stretch, that weird startling moment of something is inside my body, but both eased after the first couple of slow, steady thrusts.

Derek started speeding up, and Stiles started getting those little flickers of feeling: the drag of Derek’s dick through his hole, the way he was filled up. It started feeling good in that staticky, intermittent way that made him want to put his hand on his dick.

Then Derek pulled almost-but-not-quite all the way out and used the hand he still had on Stiles’s hip to adjust the angle by some tiny fraction. He fucked back into Stiles with a short, sharp thrust, and Stiles felt his whole nervous system light up.

Prostate, he observed to himself. He knew that; he’d had his own fingers up his ass, he’d poked around there, but—

Derek did it again and again. Stiles opened his eyes to watch his dick fill, hardening with every pulse of his blood, jerking with every one of Derek’s thrusts into his ass.

“Please,” Stiles said, the word wrenched from him. He had no idea what he was asking for, what he even had any right to ask for, but Derek gave it to him, fucking deep into him and folding down over his back. Derek’s hand slid from his hip down to his dick, and Stiles nearly sobbed as Derek’s fingers closed around him.

Stiles tried to hold still. He knew he should let Derek use him however he wanted, jerk him off or not, but Derek stayed still. He had his face pressed against Stiles’s shoulder, his hand around Stiles’s dick, his dick buried inside Stiles’s ass. Stiles couldn’t help just rocking his hips a little, shifting his dick in Derek’s grip, his ass around Derek’s cock.

Derek took a sharp breath in and pushed up from Stiles’s back, like Stiles had startled him, and then he was moving again, jerking Stiles off and fucking him smoothly. Stiles tried to breathe, admired Derek’s coordination, and realized all at once that he was going to come and wasn’t wearing a condom.

“Derek,” Stiles said, thinking through the rushing of blood and the bright-sharp pleasure gathering between his ass and his balls, unsanitary, infection risk. He meant to say something out loud, too, but it came out as a garbled rush of vowels.

Derek’s hand on his dick sped up, wringing every spurt of jizz from him, but Derek’s dick felt steady and immovable as stone in Stiles’s ass—nicer than stone, hot and just the right shape and size and attached to Derek. Stiles’s ass clenched around it in waves, and Stiles’s attempt to speak trailed off to spit-choked little noises; his ass seemed to go on coming a lot longer than his dick, and it felt good in a way Stiles couldn’t put words to. He couldn’t stop making little noises about it, either.

When it died down Stiles managed to make himself shut up, took a breath, and then rocked back onto Derek’s dick. “Derek?”

“Yeah,” Derek said, sounding a little strained. “Can I just—”

“Yeah,” Stiles agreed. He felt kind of weird and floating, like only Derek’s dick in his ass and Derek’s hands on his hips were holding him down. “Derek, your turn, come on, fuck me.”

“Stiles,” Derek said, pulling out slowly from Stiles’s ass and then pushing in fast, wrenching another involuntary noise from Stiles as aftershocks of his orgasm shivered through him.

Derek folded down over Stiles’s back, pressing his face to Stiles’s skin as he fucked him slow and steady, until the sparks of pleasure were just a sort of weird haze and Stiles felt like the top of his head might come off. He was aware that Derek had an arm around his chest, and that he wasn’t so much holding himself up on all fours as he was hanging from Derek’s grip. He could feel the wet slap of skin as Derek kept on fucking him. There was a wet spot on the sheets under him. Derek was going to have to wash his sheets.

“Stiles,” Derek said again, after a while, and his grip tightened as he pushed into Stiles for the last time, shaking silently as he came.

There was a moment of total stillness, after, with Derek breathing against Stiles’s skin and still holding him up. Then Derek pulled out—Stiles couldn’t help whining a little—and lowered him to the sheets. Stiles landed in the wet spot and didn’t move away. This was his grenade to fall on. He shouldn’t let Derek touch it until he could warn Derek that it was there. Which he would; he was totally going to pick up his head from Derek’s pillow in a minute and do that.

He felt the mattress shift, and managed to look over to find Derek lying beside him, looking as blissed out as Stiles felt.

“Hey,” Derek said, and settled an arm over Stiles. He sounded sleepy; it was kind of adorable. “Can you stay a minute?”

“Sure,” Stiles replied, fighting a yawn. God, he felt good. It was like being drunk but warmer. He tried thinking I’m a hooker, this is just my job, but it didn’t make him feel any less comfy and sleepy. “First half hour’s free, after that’s an extra charge.”

“Mm,” Derek said, but then he rolled away from Stiles and there were some clicks and a little plastic noise. “Okay. I set an alarm.”

“You…” Stiles said. “That was a joke, dude.”

“Okay,” Derek agreed. “Shh, I’ve still got twenty-nine minutes.”

“Weirdo,” Stiles muttered, but then he closed his eyes and lay still, enjoying the warm fucked-out sensation that had settled over his entire body, lazy and sleepy and good. Even Derek’s arm holding him felt good; even the way Derek was slowly shifting closer, like Stiles wouldn’t notice.

Stiles huffed and squirmed back against him. “Cuddle if you want to cuddle, man, it’s all part of the service.”

Derek didn’t say anything this time, just tucked his face down against Stiles’s shoulder and hooked one leg over Stiles’s knee. Stiles smiled and let himself drift. This was nice, having someone touching him just to touch, just warm and quiet and not going anywhere, skin all pressed to his without all the grunting and thrusting and—okay that part had also been pretty great, tonight, but still. This was even better. Maybe he could start up a whole cuddling sideline. People would pay for cuddling if it felt like this.

Stiles was working out his imaginary rates for cuddling work—from lingering hugs up to full on naked spooning—when Derek suddenly pulled away.

Stiles hadn’t heard the alarm go off, but he had no idea how much time had passed. He rolled onto his back, pushing up on an elbow to look at Derek, who was looking toward the bedroom door.

“What are you doing here,” Derek whispered. “You’re supposed to be at work.”

“Huh?” Stiles asked, and looked out the door himself, but the rest of the apartment was still dark and silent.

Derek looked over at him. “Not you. I’m sorry about this, it’s not you she’s going to be mad at, okay? This isn’t your fault.”

Then Stiles heard a key in the lock on the front door, and Derek scrambled off the bed and grabbed his underwear from the floor. He yanked them on and flipped the covers up over Stiles as the front door of the apartment opened.

“Uh,” Stiles said, wide-eyed, and clutched the blanket as a dark-haired woman stormed in.

Derek darted forward, meeting her just past the bedroom doorway. Stiles braced himself for screaming, slapping, things getting thrown around, but all he heard was a low, fierce whisper, too quiet for him to make out the words. Derek’s shoulders hunched defensively and—huh, Derek had a tattoo, a big black triple spiral between his shoulder blades. Stiles didn’t get long to look at it before the woman grabbed Derek by the arm and pushed, turning Derek enough so that she could see into the bedroom. Derek put his arm across the doorframe, like he was trying to hold her out.

She was scowling. Stiles raised his hand in a stupid, pointless wave even as it finally occurred to him that this must be Derek’s wife or girlfriend, and his best source of income was about to vanish while Derek desperately attempted to make up for cheating on her with a sixteen-year-old boy hooker. No matter what Derek said, Stiles was going to be lucky to escape the apartment without a scene or—God, what if she called the cops? He wanted to look around to see which article of clothing would be easiest for him to grab, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to take his eyes off the woman.

“You’re scaring him,” Derek said, and his voice was loud in the silence.

The woman looked up at Derek and then said tensely, “Why don’t you introduce us.”

“No, you know what, I can just—” Stiles scooted toward the side of the bed. There was a window he could probably fit out through; maybe it had a fire escape.

“Stiles,” Derek said, and Stiles froze, wanting to protest Derek using his real name and feeling naked all over again. “My sister, Laura. Laura, Stiles.”

“Wait, your sister who my boss is scared of?” Stiles could totally understand it now. She didn’t need to be a cop. She came up to Derek’s chin, but that presence that Derek had sometimes just radiated off Laura. Stiles wanted to show her his throat and also wanted to be out the window and gone ten minutes ago.

Laura closed her eyes and sighed, and said something very low under her breath that made Derek wince. A second later Derek stepped aside, giving up on keeping himself between Stiles and Laura; Stiles mentally saluted the attempt, however short-lived. He clutched the blanket higher as Laura stepped into the room. Her nostrils flared as she walked over to the bed, and Stiles winced. There couldn’t be any possible mistaking what had been happening here.

But Laura came around and sat on the side of the bed, facing him from arm’s length, not towering over him. When she spoke, her voice had none of the snap she’d used on Derek. “You work for Frank, Stiles?”

Stiles nodded.

“How does he treat you? Is he paying you fairly? Pressuring you to do anything you don’t want to?”

Stiles nodded and shook his head and then said out loud, “He’s fine, he’s—I mean, he’s my pimp, there’s a certain—but it’s fine. This is my job and he’s my boss. I’m okay.”

“Except I know Derek’s not going through him,” Laura said, shooting a sharp look over her shoulder. “So what’s going on here?”

Stiles looked at Derek, who opened his hands like, go for it, so Stiles told the truth. “Separate arrangement. I perform a service, Derek pays. He’s a good customer, actually, he tips really well.”

Laura sighed and rubbed her forehead, muttering something that could have been he’d better. Then she straightened up, meeting Stiles’s eyes with a steady gaze he couldn’t look away from. “Is anyone—even Derek, anyone—hurting you or threatening you?”

Stiles shook his head.

“Drugs?”

Stiles shook his head again, but he didn’t want to lie to that steady gaze, and, fuck, she knew Frank, what was going to shock her?

“Just, I mean—Adderall. I get it from Frank because I can’t exactly fill my own prescription anymore, but I just take it like I’m supposed to. And I drink sometimes, not—not a lot, it’s under control.”

Laura’s mouth tightened, but she nodded. “What’s your HIV status, and how often are you getting tested?”

“Negative,” Stiles said, feeling a sharp spike of relief at being able to say that. “I get tested every week, I just went this afternoon. Clean for everything, so far.”

“You use condoms? Every time?”

Stiles nodded, though he couldn’t help glancing down at the bed. Laura was frowning a little when he met her eyes again, but she didn’t ask him to explain.

“Okay,” Laura said. “Last question. Who’s your phone call if something goes wrong? If you get arrested, if you get hurt, if a test comes up positive, if somebody’s threatening you or scaring you—who do you call?”

Stiles opened his mouth and then shut it hard. All his life he’d known the answer to that question as sure as he’d known his own name, and now he had no clue.

He looked down. He’d be tempted to call Derek if he was in trouble, but that would be stupid—especially if it was the arrested kind of trouble; no way could he ask a twenty-something guy who’d fucked him for money to walk into a police station for him, and a hospital wouldn’t be any better. The only other phone number he had was Frank’s, but calling his pimp for any of that stuff would be even worse than calling Derek, and then… Phone numbers flashed through his mind: his own home phone number, Scott’s, the direct line to his dad’s office, the nurse’s station at the hospital. No, no, no, no. None of those were his options anymore.

He made himself shrug, and a business card appeared, held out just above his hand. He took it.

It was white with stark black lettering: LAURA HALE and then a phone number.

“You call me,” Laura said. “I live right upstairs from here if you ever need to find me. You get in trouble, you call. And if my idiot brother hurts you or scares you or shorts what he owes you, if he’s even rude, you just say the word. I will take it out of his hide and make it up to you however I can. I promise you that, Stiles.”

Stiles looked up, meeting her gaze again. “Why…”

Why should I trust you, why would you do that for me, why aren’t you just throwing me out the door and telling me to stay away from your brother.

Laura smiled a little, and when she looked over at Derek the smile stayed, tired and sad as it was. Stiles stole a glance at Derek, and found Derek looking down, his shoulders still hunched, arms folded protectively across his chest.

“Derek’s my brother,” Laura said, and when Stiles looked back at her he found her watching Derek as she said it. Her expression had gone fond and exasperated, so familial it made Stiles’s chest hurt.

Laura’s gaze returned to Stiles, sharpening only a little as it did. “There’s only so much I can do to make him act like a civilized person, but I’ll do what I can. And I know that any trouble you get into, he’s going to jump into the middle of it to try to bail you out, whether that’s a smart idea or not, and then I’m going to have to wade in after both of you. So just save everybody some headaches and call me if you need someone, all right? Anytime, day or night, if it’s life-or-death or you need to borrow a cup of sugar, you call me. Understood?”

“I don’t do a lot of baking,” Stiles said, but Laura just raised an eyebrow and somehow loomed at him without moving and without being taller than him.

“Okay!” Stiles cracked instantly. “Okay, yes, you are bound to be scarier than anyone else I meet ever. I promise, if I’m in trouble, I’ll call.”

“Good boy,” Laura said, flashing a smile that made Stiles want to earn another one. Laura reached out as she stood, giving him a casual hair-ruffling touch despite his hair being too short to ruffle.

Laura walked to the door, but this time whatever she whispered to Derek made him unfurl a little; she went up on tiptoes to kiss his bowed forehead.

“I’m going back to work. You boys be good.”

Stiles found himself nodding in sync with Derek as Laura walked back out the door, shutting it firmly behind her; he heard the scrape of the key as she locked it again from the outside. When he shifted his gaze to Derek, he was still standing in the doorway, head still bowed for Laura’s kiss. He was frowning a little, like he was thinking hard about something.

He looked up with lips parted, about to say something, and then the phone on the nightstand started vibrating. Derek lunged for it, and Stiles was snapped out of the daze he’d been in since Laura burst in; he shoved the covers down and got up to find his clothes as he said, “Yeah, that’s my cue. Time to go.”

Stiles focused intently on collecting and putting on his clothes, carefully not looking at Derek; it was startling when he his head popped out of the collar of his hoodie and he found Derek standing there fully clothed.

“Let me give you a ride,” Derek said, holding out the inevitable neatly-folded rectangle of cash. “Laura will kill me if I make you take the bus at three in the morning.”

Stiles took it, pocketing it without counting. He knew by feel that it was four bills, like always, and he would eat his shoes if it weren’t two hundreds and two fifties, the one-fifty he’d quoted Derek plus as much of a tip as Stiles would accept. For a second Stiles thought about rejecting Derek’s offer, but—what the hell was the point? He nodded.

Derek nodded back and slipped out of the bedroom ahead of Stiles, grabbing his keys from a little table by the door. Stiles made an automatic mental note. He could steal the Camaro, if he really wanted to, if Derek were distracted enough. If he needed to get out of town and didn’t mind having Derek and Laura and the cops on his tail.

He followed Derek through the kitchen, where a back door let them into a narrow stairway. Derek’s apartment was the middle landing; the stairs up must lead to Laura’s apartment, but now they went down, to a door into the garage. Stiles went around to the passenger side and slid in, fastening his seatbelt and then sitting quietly while Derek started up the car and eased out of the garage and down the driveway.

“You can drop me off by the Holiday Inn,” Stiles said. “I can get to my place from there.”

There was a little silence. Stiles braced himself for Derek to insist on delivering him to his door—Stiles was considering where he could claim to live or whether it would be better to just make Derek drop him off at the taqueria and cope with the bus ride home—and then Derek said, “Sure.”

Stiles nodded. “Thanks.”

Stiles lasted through another four blocks in silence—Derek didn’t even turn on the radio, and this was the first time Stiles had enough free attention to notice that—before he said, “So, that seemed like it went pretty well.”

Derek said nothing, but when Stiles looked over, Derek was looking back at him, eyebrows slightly raised.

“I mean. Laura,” Stiles elaborated, even as it occurred to him that he could play that off as a comment on Derek fucking him for the first time, and that maybe he should be never mentioning Derek’s sister to Derek ever again. “Um. You seemed like—you thought she was going to be really mad. But she seemed to take it pretty well.”

“You didn’t hear what she said to me when she came in,” Derek pointed out.

Stiles winced. “Oh. No. Sorry. But she didn’t—you know—in the end, she seemed—”

“She didn’t forbid me to see you again?” Derek sounded a little amused now, and Stiles was just glad he didn’t have to try to describe the affection and acceptance that that forehead-kiss had seemed to encompass.

“Yeah,” Stiles said. “I figured there was going to be an ultimatum, at least, even if she didn’t call the cops on me or something.”

“Ah,” Derek said, and then nothing else through an entire red light. Stiles focused on shutting up, and managed to hold out until Derek said, “We made a deal a long time ago. Laura lets me have one really bad decision every month. It’s been a while since I cashed that in, so even if you’re a whole series of bad decisions, she’ll let it go.”

“One a month, huh,” Stiles said. PMS flashed across his mind, but by the time the words got out of his mouth they’d advanced along his train of thought to, “It was the full moon.”

Derek frowned a little, looking puzzled, and ducked his head to look out at the sky before he looked over at Stiles.

“No,” Stiles said, “Not tonight—is it? I don’t think it is.”

It was, in fact, solidly overcast and probably about to start raining again, so whatever phase the moon was in, it was pretty well hidden. “But, no, the first time you picked me up. It was the full moon, I remember looking up and seeing it.”

“Oh,” Derek said. “Yeah, Laura works at a crisis hotline, she always pulls a double shift on the full moon. It’s usually a busy night. Gives me some extra time to make decisions she won’t approve of.”

Stiles snorted, but he was already working that out—if Laura worked at a crisis hotline, his probably wasn’t the most fucked up story she’d ever heard. It made sense that she’d been able to rattle off all those questions, assess his risk factors. It even made sense that she wanted to help; she thought he was another kid who needed rescuing. She didn’t know he had a plan, that this was just for the moment, until he worked things out.

She probably knew how emancipation worked, though. She might even be willing to help him get the forms and stuff, when the time came. And he wouldn’t have to explain to her how he’d been supporting himself.

“She meant it,” Derek added, and Stiles looked over at him and realized that they hadn’t stopped at a light; Derek had pulled up across the street from the Holiday Inn. “About wanting you to call. Even if it’s me you’re calling about. Laura might let me make bad decisions, but she’d never let me hurt anyone. She’d come down harder on me than she would on anyone else.”

Stiles nodded slowly, trying desperately not to think about his dad and his first speeding ticket.

Derek looked away, checking traffic, already getting ready to pull away. “Next Tuesday, same time?”

“I’ll be there,” Stiles assured him firmly, and got out of the car without a backward glance, striking off in the opposite direction from his SRO. He didn’t let himself touch the money in his pocket, and even more he didn’t let himself touch the business card. Derek’s money was going to help get him through this, but Laura—Laura might really be his way out.

4. Chapter 4

He’d made the absurd sum of $700 off of Derek in the last two days, so Stiles had more than enough to send another deposit to his savings account. He thought about taking the train to Oakland to mail it, but then he figured that if he kept going as far as he could from where he lived and worked, anybody who was bothering to look could triangulate it back to him. He took the envelope to the Holiday Inn and asked the clerk at the counter to mail it for him.

He went to the library afterward, and came up with a list of the next ten places he would send mail from, scattered all over the Bay Area without any obvious origin point or spots avoided. After that, he found an almanac and looked up the date of the next full moon.

It wasn’t for more than a week—the Sunday after his next regular appointment with Derek. He told himself it didn’t mean anything, but he made a mental note of it anyway, before he went to find the copy of To Kill a Mockingbird that he’d hidden among the auto repair books.

He didn’t put Laura’s number into his phone; he didn’t know what the deal was between her and Frank, but he didn’t want to take the chance of Frank recognizing it. He memorized it, instead, and tucked the card itself away next to the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup he still hadn’t eaten. He recited the number to himself, sometimes, to drown out the weird or creepy or sad or fucking tedious stuff guys said while he was sucking their dicks, or while they were fucking him.

By Friday night he had sort of made up a tune for it, something he could hum under his breath while he was waiting at the taqueria, drinking real-sugar Mexican Coke and trying to tell himself he didn’t mind never getting to eat the tacos while he was on-shift. He kept meaning to come down here when he wasn’t working and get one, but he didn’t really want to walk down Shotwell when he wasn’t on duty, and he suspected that knowing how good the tacos tasted would only make it worse.

So he drank his Coke, and he sang Laura’s phone number to himself in his head, and told himself it was only for a few more months.

Stiles didn’t hesitate this time when he got to Derek’s, jogging right up the steps to the unlit door. Derek opened it as soon as Stiles got there, and Stiles grinned and walked in without breaking stride, brushing just a little against Derek as he did. Derek almost smiled back; the way his eyes narrowed was definitely friendly. Anyway, Stiles knew that the guy was one good fuck away from wanting to cuddle for half an hour, so he wasn’t going to quibble over pre-sex facial expressions.

“Bedroom?” Stiles asked, entirely rhetorically, as he slipped past Derek and started pulling his hoodie off. It was somewhere between damp and actually wet, and Derek took it from him before he could drop it on the floor and hung it up with some coats by the door.

“Take your shoes off,” Derek said, waving at a couple of neatly lined-up pairs of shoes under the coats. Stiles obeyed, and flicked open the button on his jeans as he turned toward the bedroom again, but Derek said, “Wait. Don’t get undressed yet.”

Stiles stopped and looked back. Derek was just a couple of steps behind him, and now his almost-friendly look was decidedly tense. Stiles stood completely still, fighting down the rush of worst-case scenarios—you changed your mind, Laura changed her mind, Laura called CPS—until Derek put both hands on Stiles’s bare arms, below the sleeves of his t-shirt.

“Nothing bad,” Derek said, physically turning Stiles toward the bedroom and giving him a little push. “I just want to ask for something and it’s easier when you’re not naked.”

“You’re developing a pattern,” Stiles noted, trying not to sound as relieved as he felt. “I should just mentally allot ten minutes for negotiation when I get here.”

“If that’s a problem I can pay extra for the ten minutes,” Derek said dryly. “I don’t want to take it out of the lying in bed time at the end.”

“Cuddling time, and no, negotiation time is also included in the base rate,” Stiles improvised. He sat down on the foot of Derek’s bed. “So? What are we negotiating tonight? Roleplay? Exciting new positions?”

Derek stepped past Stiles, and Stiles turned his whole body to watch as Derek went to the nightstand, picked up a white envelope, and sat down by the pillows. The sheets were turned down again. They looked like they’d been washed since the last time—Stiles abruptly remembered the wet spot and winced in memory.

“Sorry about last time,” Stiles said, waving a hand toward the sheets. Derek looked up, eyebrows cranked up to puzzled. “The—I kind of made a mess. And also a biohazard. Sorry. I meant to say. I should wear a condom, obviously, and you might want to put a towel down or something just in case—”

“Stiles,” Derek said, just sharply enough to make Stiles shut his mouth. Derek was definitely actually smiling a little now. “That’s—it was fine. Sex is messy. It’s supposed to be messy. That’s actually what I wanted to ask you about. If the answer is no, it’s fine, but…”

Derek held out the envelope, and Stiles took it and looked down at it, baffled into silence. It had Derek’s name and address on it, and the return address was just a street address, no name listed. It was sealed.

“Test results,” Derek said. “Go ahead and open it.”

“Your results,” Stiles said blankly, and then, quickly ripping it open, “Shit, I’m sorry, I’ll—you can subtract it from my rate, it’s my fault, I exposed you—”

“No,” Derek said patiently, even as Stiles worriedly scanned the page. “I’m fine. I wasn’t worried about that.”

Stiles looked up, frowning. Derek was fine—everything had come up negative—but, “If you weren’t worried, why did you get tested?”

Derek rolled his eyes. “Because I don’t want you to be worried.”

“I’m not,” Stiles said, because while he was worried in an existential way about catching something from someone, he’d never really been worried about catching anything from Derek. And anyway, they used condoms.

Oh. This again.

“This is what you’re asking me? You want to skip the—Derek, are you out of your mind?”

Derek ducked his head, his shoulders hunching and the tops of his ears going pink. Stiles felt a sick lurch of reciprocal shame, and he hastened to add, “No, I don’t mean—it’s not a weird thing to want, guys try for it all the time, I’m not judging you for wanting to.”

Derek was still a little flushed when he looked up, but his closed off expression had shifted into faintly amused semi-mockery. “Really? It sounded like you were judging me.”

“It’s a totally normal thing to want,” Stiles insisted. “It’s just a fucking dumb thing to do. I am literally a whore, Derek. That is my actual job description. I am the last person anybody should be having unprotected sex with. I’m a walking disease vector.”

Derek’s eyebrows went higher, and the mockery vanished. “Did you get a positive test result? Last week you said you were okay.”

“No, I went this afternoon, everything was fine, but—that’s just this time, there are incubation periods, and—”

“If something didn’t turn up in a test you probably don’t have the viral load to infect anyone else with it, either,” Derek said. “Not the same day.”

“Don’t turn this into a fucking virology argument! This is about risk factors, and I am nothing but a risk factor.”

“Risk factors are about averages and statistics,” Derek said patiently. “Statistics don’t apply to individual cases. Sex workers as a population have a very high risk of disease, but your personal risk depends on what you personally are doing. Do you let other guys skip the condoms?”

“No,” Stiles said vehemently. “Never. But—”

“No, never,” Derek repeated. “So your risk is the same as any other person who always uses condoms, which is pretty low. And you get tested every week, so you’ll know right away if you do catch something. Today, with negative results on today’s test, you’re actually a completely safe person for me to have unprotected sex with. And I’m letting you know that I’m safe for you, too.”

“There is nothing safe,” Stiles started, his arms flying out wide, and then he made himself stop when he had no idea where he was going with that sentence, except that he was pretty sure he would be embarrassed after he said it. He curled his arms around himself and looked away, trying to think about it logically, trying to push away the instinctive terror he felt at what Derek wanted from him.

“Stiles,” Derek said, very gently, still on the other side of the bed. “I’m asking you to perform a special service for me, and if that service isn’t something you want to offer, for whatever reason, then that’s up to you. You can say no, we’ll do other stuff that you’re okay with doing, nothing has to change. But you’ve only told me why this is dangerous for me.”

Stiles frowned. That was true; he wasn’t, at all, concerned about his own safety if he let Derek skip the condom. Derek wouldn’t be bothering to pay Stiles for sex if he were getting it anywhere else, so Stiles believed that Derek wasn’t going to go catch syphilis from some random hookup and give it to him. He was worried that Derek would catch something from him—that Derek would get sick and it would be Stiles’s fault. That was pretty much the opposite of how he’d felt every time some john tried to get him to skip the condom; he’d always thought it would serve them right if he did and they wound up with herpes. And then he’d always remembered that it was more likely some other hooker had already given it to them and it would be Stiles who got infected.

“This is what it means that we’re not strangers,” Derek said, and Stiles looked up without thinking. There was a tiny but undeniable smile on Derek’s face.

“You don’t want to get me sick or hurt me,” Derek went on patiently. “Because I’m someone you know, and you don’t want anything bad to happen to me because of you. You won’t lie to me or downplay the risks. If there are consequences, if something goes wrong, we’ll both still be around when it happens. It will matter. And that’s why I can believe that you’re telling me the truth about your test results. Because you’re not just some guy I pay for sex. You’re Stiles, and I know you.”

Stiles felt really naked again, like he only ever felt with Derek, who actually looked at him and saw him. This time he still had all his clothes on, but it didn’t help. Stiles told himself that Derek was just as naked with him—he knew Derek, too, didn’t he?—but that didn’t help either.

Stiles rubbed his palm over his hair and thought—well, why not? Logically, Derek was right, it was pretty low-risk. Whatever Derek was risking was Derek’s choice to make, and Stiles had Derek’s test results right here telling him he was clean. He knew that he was clean himself, so he wasn’t really scared about getting Derek sick—not today, not this time.

“Okay,” Stiles said. “Fine. There’s an extra charge.”

“Of course,” Derek agreed. “How much if I want you to suck my dick?”

Stiles’s mouth fell open and no sound came out. He hadn’t expected that; he’d figured once Derek got to fucking he wouldn’t want to downgrade back to oral. Fucking with or without a condom was only different in terms of the risk, at least for the one getting fucked.

Sucking Derek’s dick with no condom meant his mouth on Derek’s bare dick, tasting whatever Derek tasted like, and all that interesting extra skin moving between his lips and under his tongue without the latex holding it back. And then Derek would come, and Stiles would have to decide whether to spit or swallow or just wind up with an awkward mouthful of Derek’s jizz.

“A hundred,” Stiles said, trying frantically to strategize.

“Okay,” Derek agreed easily, because Derek never bargained, even when Stiles really wanted him to because it would give him some extra time to figure out what the fuck he thought he was doing. “So two hundred for you to go down on me, and—”

“But the extra hundred is a surcharge and you can’t tip on surcharges, only on the base rate,” Stiles said, because he could see this getting wildly, embarrassingly out of control.

Derek gave him the eyebrows again, but then took off his shirt. “Okay, no tips on surcharges. Got it. Would you mind taking off your clothes, please?”

“Sure!” Stiles chirped, popping to his feet as he stripped his shirt off, because his brain was a whirlwind of too many thoughts, freaked out but also curious and excited in a way he didn’t want to think about too much. He peeled his pants and underwear off, resigned to the fact that he was half-hard embarrassingly early in the proceedings. Derek had to be used to Stiles getting overexcited. Stiles bent over and yanked both socks off, dropping them with the rest of his clothes, and when he looked up again Derek was lounging exactly where he’d been when he asked Stiles to take his clothes off.

Except now Derek was naked, legs spread wide, hand loosely curled around his dick. He wasn’t all the way hard yet, but he was getting there as Stiles watched. He was barely moving his hand, just squeezing a little, but Stiles could see his dick stiffening, pulse by pulse, and without really thinking about it Stiles was crawling across the bed. He stopped on all fours with his hands between Derek’s knees, his face going red with a dull ache of rushing blood as he looked up to meet Derek’s gaze.

Derek was smiling—not mockingly, like Stiles half-expected. He just looked… happy, like this was going to be fun, like they were about to do something fun together. Stiles couldn’t help smiling back the same way, his heart beating faster and his dick hardening; he licked his lips without thinking about it, and Derek’s eyes widened a little.

“Come on,” Derek said, taking his hand from his dick to pat the mattress right in front of his crotch. “You can go as slow as you want. I know it’s different like this.”

Stiles lowered his gaze to Derek’s dick and eased himself down to the mattress between Derek’s splayed legs. It occurred to him that a lot of guys had said something like that to him—the ones who took him to a motel just for a blowjob, the ones who got really into the whole idea that Stiles wasn’t really a hooker and didn’t usually do this, that Stiles was awkward and reluctant. But none of them had said it like Derek, like it was really okay, like he actually did understand.

You’re Stiles, and I know you.

Stiles glanced up at Derek’s face, and Derek was watching him with a weird, intense expression that Stiles couldn’t quite read. Derek’s hand came up to cup Stiles’s cheek. Stiles expected Derek to shove him back down—at least tilt his head so he couldn’t look—but Derek just let his hand rest there, his thumb right at the corner of Stiles’s mouth. Stiles had to look away, which meant twisting his face to press against the inside of Derek’s thigh. Derek’s hand stayed on his cheek, and Derek let out this little noise that made Stiles feel good even though he hadn’t actually done anything. He nuzzled at the soft skin of Derek’s thigh, and then pulled himself together and picked his head up.

He shifted his weight to free his right hand and curled it around the base of Derek’s dick. Stiles gave him a couple of slow up-and-down strokes, feeling the heat and the silky softness of bare skin, the way it shifted and swelled under his hand as Derek got harder in his grip. Stiles worked Derek’s foreskin up over the head of his cock, squeezing there where a hard suck always made Derek let out that broken moan. Derek made almost the same noise, his fingertips digging into Stiles’s cheek a little. But he still didn’t try to move Stiles toward his dick, which reminded him that his mouth should be on Derek’s dick.

Before he could think about it too much Stiles turned his head and licked over and between his fingers. Derek’s breath hitched, and Stiles kept licking up, curious now that he’d gotten started. He pressed his tongue to the shaft of Derek’s dick, between his fingers and the head.

It didn’t really taste like anything—just skin, clean. It occurred to Stiles that Derek had always smelled clean like this, which was in no way a given among Stiles’s clientele. He smelled familiar, too—the same sweat-musk-sex-crotch smell that Stiles associated with giving Derek blowjobs. It was a little more obvious without the smell of a condom, with Derek naked, but as soon as Stiles was there he recognized it. That was Derek. No one else smelled exactly like that.

Stiles closed his eyes and got down to it then, working his tongue up over Derek’s foreskin. He could taste what he smelled, then, and it moved interestingly under his tongue, and Derek made a noise Stiles had never heard before. Stiles kept going, opening his mouth to take in the head of Derek’s dick. He hadn’t even closed his mouth around it when he heard Derek catch his breath, and the jump of Derek’s dick against his tongue made it feel like his whole mouth was flooded with the taste of him.

Derek’s dick tasted mostly like Derek smelled, which shouldn’t have been a surprise, but Stiles’s mouth watered and for a second he wasn’t sure if it was in a yes more way or a gonna puke way. There was a startling bitter edge to the taste, and the silky-slick feel of pre-come on his tongue was weirdly not at all mistakable for lube. Stiles sucked softly at Derek’s dick, swallowing spit and pre-come, and Derek’s fingers spasmed against his cheek.

Stiles darted a glance up at Derek, and found that he had his head tilted back, his other hand in a fist pressed halfway into his mouth. Stiles thought he could actually see the pulse beating in Derek’s bared throat. He grinned around Derek’s dick and got to work, trying out all the tricks he’d used on Derek before. It wasn’t so different, really, once he got down to it—there was the taste, and everything was wetter, and Derek made interesting noises when Stiles swallowed. Derek made interesting noises basically the whole time, and between that and cataloging the differences Stiles lost all track of time.

It seemed like out of nowhere Derek was pushing at his cheek and saying, “Stiles, I’m gonna—”

Stiles froze for a second when he realized, and then thought, what the hell and swatted Derek’s hand away, sucking harder, just like he usually did when Derek had a condom on. How bad could it be, really? He didn’t have to swallow—

And then Derek kind of whimpered and his dick jerked in Stiles’s mouth, the first bitter spurt of come hitting Stiles right in the back of his mouth. He jerked back instinctively, his mouth falling open. He still had one hand curled around Derek’s dick, and jerked him again almost on autopilot as his mouth left Derek’s dick.

The next stripe of come hit his mouth and he thought don’t stop when it’s working, which was one of the rules he’d made for himself in pursuit of good tips. It wasn’t that bad, anyway—not like he hadn’t tasted come before, and letting his mouth hang open felt pretty good right now—so he let Derek finish coming on his parted lips.

He was mostly thinking about not coughing, but when he looked up Derek was staring down at him, and his expression was satisfyingly dazed.

Stiles grinned as he swiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and then gave in and turned his head, coughing a little into his elbow.

“Sorry,” Derek said, scooting back a little and swiping his fingers over Stiles’s cheek. “Uh, the bathroom is the next door, if you want—there’s a spare toothbrush in the drawer.”

“Thanks,” Stiles said, scooting backward and making the very proper decision not to explain to Derek how brushing teeth opened up micro-abrasions on the gums that increased the possibility of disease transmission. It probably didn’t matter—Derek was clean—but the thought of getting Derek’s come mixed up with his blood still seemed like it was over the line somehow.

Stiles turned on the water, found the still-packaged toothbrush in the drawer, and held it under the faucet while silently searching the cupboards. There was a dusty half-bottle of mouthwash—not Listerine, just some minty-smelling useless crap. Stiles figured it was better than his alternatives, though, so he took a hit of it and swished thoroughly, then splashed water over his face, scrubbing with his fingers until all the come was gone. He checked the appearance of his mouth in the mirror—his lips were pink, not red, so Derek must not have lasted all that long. His jaw wasn’t sore, either, but it almost never was at the end of the first or second blowjob of the night now.

He half-expected Derek to be standing right outside when he opened the door, but Stiles didn’t see him until he stepped back into the bedroom. He was sprawled on his back on the bed, one arm slung over his face.

Stiles grinned. “Man, did I knock you out? I’m gonna go rifle your drawers now.”

“Easier to just take my wallet,” Derek said, waving vaguely toward his pants on the floor.

Stiles shook his head but walked in that direction, intending to fish his pay out of the pocket Derek had no doubt had it ready in.

When he was beside the bed, though, Derek rolled over and reached out, touching a hand to Stiles’s naked thigh. It only occurred to Stiles then that he’d walked past his own clothes to get here, and it hadn’t occurred to him at all to grab even his underwear before he went to Derek’s bathroom.

“So it’s another two hundred if I want to go down on you without a condom, right?”

Stiles was looking down at Derek’s hand on the outside of his thigh, which meant he could actually see exactly how humiliatingly obvious it was that his dick twitched at the question. He shifted his gaze to Derek’s face, expecting him to look smug, or at least amused, but Derek’s gaze was on his face, and he just looked politely inquiring. Right, because he’d asked a question about the price of a service.

“Yeah,” Stiles said, because he was absolutely fucked if he could think enough to do math right now, when Derek’s fingers were warm against his skin and he was thinking of Derek’s mouth on his bare dick. “Yeah, same price.”

“Come here, then,” Derek said, scooting back on the bed and tugging Stiles toward him.

Stiles went where Derek wanted him, collapsing onto the bed without putting his knee in Derek’s face. Derek rolled forward from his side over Stiles’s thigh, almost faceplanting into his lap, and Stiles let out a startled noise without meaning to.

Derek looked up at him with a lazy smile and said, “Same rules as last time. Put me where you want me, fuck my mouth. I like it like that, okay?”

Stiles nodded, and then blurted out, “This might be, uh. Fast. I’ve never done this without a condom.”

He’d only done it once with a condom, but Derek didn’t need to know that part. As it was Stiles’s dick was recovering fast from the unsexiness of cleaning Derek’s come off his face and out of his mouth.

Derek’s smile widened a little, and he said, “I’d better hurry up and get my money’s worth, then.”

Stiles bit hard on his lip as Derek leaned down again, Derek’s hand closing on the base of his dick as Derek took the head into his mouth. Stiles’s dick wasn’t all the way hard yet, but it stiffened fast in the wet heat of Derek’s mouth, with Derek’s tongue working the sweet spots. Stiles put both his hands in Derek’s hair, just for something to hold onto while Derek’s tongue on his dick reduced his brain to syrup.

“Oh, God,” Stiles couldn’t help saying, when Derek took his hand off Stiles’s dick and went down further, “Oh, fucking God, yes, Derek—”

Derek made an encouraging kind of humming noise, low in his throat, and the next thing out of Stiles’s mouth was just noise. He arched up, shoving his dick further into Derek’s mouth—into his throat—but Derek didn’t pull away, leaning heavily onto Stiles’s leg and sucking encouragingly. Stiles flexed up under his weight, thrusting awkwardly into Derek’s mouth, his fingers tight in Derek’s hair.

Derek put his hand on Stiles’s hip, and it was the wrong way around but the same exact spot where Derek used to hold him steady when Stiles blew him in his car. That was it. Stiles made a noise like he was dying as he came, and the sensation of Derek sucking him through it without a pause nearly made the eyes roll back in his head.

It wasn’t until after, lying there catching his breath, when the cool air hit his dick as Derek finally let it slip from his mouth, that he realized he hadn’t actually warned Derek he was about to come, or given him a chance to pull off.

“Uh,” Stiles said. He opened his eyes with an effort. The ceiling didn’t tell him anything. He looked down, at Derek lying with his head on Stiles’s stomach, eyes closed, looking asleep again. “That okay?”

“Yeah, good,” Derek mumbled. “Gimme my phone?”

Stiles reached over to the nightstand and snagged it, setting it down on his hip next to Derek’s face. Derek didn’t open his eyes, and Stiles watched in fascination as Derek swiped blindly but with perfect precision at the phone, tapping a few buttons to start a timer for thirty minutes.

“Cuddling time,” Derek announced, tossing his phone down to the floor and then settling his arm firmly over Stiles’s hips. “Shh.”

“Not a word,” Stiles agreed, and he wiggled down under Derek’s grip to rest more comfortably against the pillows. Derek lifted his head and resettled it on Stiles’s ribcage, and Stiles wasn’t awake enough to worry about the fact that he liked the weight of it there.

Derek handed over the money while they were getting dressed—he actually went out of the room first, and came back with a little folded rectangle of bills that was definitely thicker than usual. Stiles shook his head a little and didn’t have to count it to know that he’d just made six hundred bucks for giving and getting a blowjob. He tucked it into his pocket and when Derek said, “Next week, same time?” Stiles nodded.

Derek gave him a ride back to the Holiday Inn, and the whole way there, Stiles didn’t ask him whether he was planning on making any bad decisions on the next full moon. If it were planned ahead it wouldn’t be a full moon bad decision, would it?

It would be a weird, dumb thing to hope for, so Stiles didn’t let himself hope that Derek would turn up on Sunday. It was just a possibility that lurked in his mind all through the week, which turned out to be rainy and cold. Business was slow, and Stiles used up more zinc lozenges and vitamin C tablets than Listerine strips, trying desperately to stave off a cold he could feel looming. He was tired all the time, and his joints and his head ached, but there was nothing really wrong yet, nothing he could point to and say I am definitely sick. He slept late into the afternoons all week, letting his study time at the library slide. He could catch up later, when he was feeling better.

He kept getting “November Rain” stuck in his head, and hummed the song he’d made of Laura’s phone number to make it go away, although that turned into singing Laura’s phone number in the style of Guns N’ Roses at least half the time. Luckily the taqueria was nearly empty, and Kristina was pretty used to him by now.

On Sunday Frank came to settle up early, throwing in the towel just after two. Stiles had given three blowjobs in five hours, which after a new bottle of Adderall came to exactly nothing he got to keep. Stiles got out of Frank’s car, tucking his hands under his armpits for the walk to the bus stop. It wasn’t quite raining, at least, so he was damp but not dripping. And tomorrow was Monday, so he could sleep for fucking ever if he wanted to.

A car stopped beside him and Stiles stopped even before he had really registered what—who—it was. He darted over and yanked the door open, throwing himself into the passenger seat and letting out a sigh that was nearly a moan at the blasting heat of the inside of Derek’s car.

“Hey,” Stiles said. He meant to say something witty about the full moon, or bad decisions, but he’d been too careful not to think about this and didn’t have anything planned. Now he was cold and tired as hell, and he was kind of hoping Derek wanted something he could do lying down.

“You didn’t argue,” Derek said, sounding faintly put out.

Stiles looked over at him, and then unbent enough to fasten his seatbelt as he said, “If you wanna argue we can argue now. I just—your car’s warm, man.”

Derek frowned, looking over Stiles’s bare arms and damp t-shirt. “If you—you don’t have to, I could—”

“What, no, it’s bad idea night, come on, hit me with your bad idea. Just please tell me it involves you paying me for sex, because that’s my favorite kind of bad idea for you to have.”

Derek’s frown eased slightly and he faced front again, pulling away from the curb as he said, “You’re in luck.”

“Awesome,” Stiles agreed, and then he tilted his head back and closed his eyes just for a second.

He opened them again to find Derek leaning over him. Stiles blinked and realized that Derek was leaning the wrong way, in through the passenger door instead of across from the driver’s seat. He was in the process of undoing Stiles’s seatbelt, and Stiles said, “Bridal style or sack of potatoes?”

“By the heels,” Derek said, without any sign of surprise. “Head bouncing off the stairs all the way up.”

“Sorry, dude, head injuries are a hard limit. This is a concussion free zone. But I can totally pretend to be unconscious if you want me to.”

“Yeah?” Derek said, leaning back enough to meet Stiles’s eyes. “You’re not doing great at it so far.”

“This is the negotiating part,” Stiles pointed out. “Ten minutes, remember? Ten minutes to decide what you want and then I will pretend to be in a coma if you’re into that.”

“No,” Derek said, straightening up abruptly. “No comas. Come on, let’s get inside.”

“Sure,” Stiles said, and pulled himself up to follow Derek inside and up the stairs. Fuck, he was tired. His eyes were almost closing even as he walked, despite having Derek’s ass conveniently at eye level the whole way up. “So, what’ll it be?”

“I want to fuck you,” Derek said as he unlocked the door to his apartment. He turned back as Stiles stepped through, and Stiles kept his face perfectly blank even as he thought wearily of the amount of work fucking would be. He hadn’t prepped at all for it tonight; he had some lube in his pocket, but Derek would probably want more, and it would take so much time, and…

Stiles didn’t realize he’d stopped moving until Derek tugged him out of the doorway and shut the door behind them. Derek turned him by the shoulder he was holding and pressed himself up against Stiles’s back. He was already hard, and Stiles thought vaguely, Well, maybe it’ll be quick, then.

“I want you to let me get you ready,” Derek said, his mouth nearly touching the back of Stiles’s neck; Stiles felt a shivery zing of adrenaline run through his body, waking him up a little more. “I want to do everything. I want you to just—let me have you.”

“That’s,” Stiles said, and he had to swallow before he could get more words out. “That’s pretty much what you pay me for, man.”

“Tell me what I’m not allowed to do,” Derek said. “I won’t hurt you, but tell me what you don’t like.”

“I, uh,” Stiles said, trying to figure out what the hell to say. He knew there were a lot of ways to fuck somebody, but he didn’t think Derek was really aiming for the elaborate porn-scenario stuff. “Don’t hurt me pretty much covers it. Fuck me however you want, man.”

“I want to use my mouth,” Derek said, and that time Stiles felt the scrape of teeth against his skin—not pain, just the presence of something unyielding. He was all the way awake for sure now.

“What if I leave marks?” Derek said, breath hot against Stiles’s skin.

“Uh,” Stiles said, because no one had ever, ever wanted to do that before. He knew theoretically that hickeys were a thing, but they kind of went with kissing and making out and boyfriends, none of which was in Stiles’s wheelhouse. He had to work it out logically. “No breaking the skin, and nowhere it shows when I’m wearing these clothes.”

“Mm-hm,” Derek said. “And no condoms. Is the surcharge the same for fucking, or more?”

“Same,” Stiles said. “So—one-fifty plus a hundred.”

“And I can only tip on the one-fifty,” Derek said.

Stiles thought of his empty pocket with an extra four hundred bucks tucked into it, and said, “Anything else you want me to do? Anything special?”

“Tell me if it’s not good,” Derek said. “I want you to let me make it good for you.”

“Sure,” Stiles said, and then, “Um, just, like, pinch me if I fall asleep, though, okay? It’s been a long night, it’s nothing personal.”

Derek huffed against the back of his neck and shoved him forward with a gentle motion of his whole body against Stiles’s. “Let’s get going, then.”

Derek stayed right on Stiles’s heels, with his hand on Stiles’s shoulder, all the way to the foot of the bed. He stopped Stiles with a gentle tug there, and said, “You need to get out of those clothes, first.”

Stiles nodded and reached for the hem of his t-shirt, and Derek huffed and caught his wrist, knocking his hands away. “What did I say about letting me?”

“Right,” Stiles said. “Sorry, habit.”

He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands if he wasn’t stripping. He put them out to his sides a little while Derek peeled his shirt gently up, and then he raised them over his head and let Derek pull the shirt off over his face and toss it away. Stiles expected Derek to go straight for his jeans, but Derek looped his arms—bare now, he’d lost his leather jacket somewhere—around Stiles’s bare chest. He tucked his face into the crook of Stiles’s neck, nuzzling into Stiles’s skin. They weren’t even touching below the waist.

It was warm, though, and Stiles didn’t mind if Derek wanted to get some of his cuddling time in before the fucking, or during for that matter. He lowered one hand to Derek’s hair and tilted his head to the side to give Derek better face-mashing access to his throat. It occurred to him to wonder if he was going to wind up with stubble-burn all over his throat and shoulder, but what the hell, if Derek saw it on Tuesday he’d know where it came from, and Stiles wasn’t working for Frank again until Thursday, so fuck it.

Derek licked his skin—not even his throat, just a random spot on the back of his shoulder—and then shifted, standing up straight again behind Stiles and loosening his grip. He slid his hands slowly over Stiles’s chest to his shoulders and a little way down his arms.

“So your t-shirt covers to—here,” Derek said, circling his fingers around Stiles’s upper arm. He took his hand away from Stiles’s left shoulder and said, “So—here—” as he pressed his mouth to the point of Stiles’s shoulder, and then to the back of his arm right beside his armpit. “I could leave a mark.”

It was sort of weird, not being able to see Derek. It was weirder having Derek’s face right there, where Stiles must smell kind of sweaty at the end of the night, and the skin felt thin and soft and vulnerable. Derek licked him, and Stiles felt a shudder reverberate through his whole body. He held himself still.

“Stiles?”

“Uh,” Stiles said. “Yeah. There’s okay.”

He felt a tiny pinch that might have been teeth, and then Derek said, “Not yet. When we’re in bed.”

Stiles looked down longingly at the bed in front of him. It wasn’t neatly made like usual, he realized. It was a tangle of kicked covers. Stiles grinned at the thought that he might have been really an impulse decision tonight, for all that he’d seen it coming weeks ago. It was a warm thought, the idea that he could guess what Derek would do when Derek himself hadn’t planned on it.

Meanwhile, Derek’s hands were sliding down his sides and meeting at the fly of his jeans. Derek got him unbuttoned and unzipped and then hooked his thumbs into Stiles’s underwear, peeling it down along with his jeans. When they were down a few inches Derek slid his hands inside, pressed flat to Stiles’s hips, and worked his jeans the rest of the way down to his thighs via a nice slow grope. Stiles was a little distracted by looking down at his own decidedly soft dick. He was tired, that was mostly all it was, but Derek wanted him to like this, which meant Derek wasn’t going to be satisfied until Stiles got hard and got off.

Even as Derek guided him to step out of his jeans and underwear, Stiles was trying to jump-start himself, thinking ahead and thinking back. Derek was definitely the most skilled person ever to get Stiles off, and Stiles was pretty sure that Derek would come through tonight, too. He just found that his mind kept slipping to cuddling time. As much as he knew he was about to get off so hard he’d see stars or something, he really just wanted to be done with the sex and lying cuddled warmly with Derek, where he could doze until Derek’s alarm went off.

Derek tugged on his shoulder and Stiles shuffled around to face him in the tight space between Derek and the foot of the bed. Standing there naked while Derek was still fully clothed, Stiles remembered the first time he’d come to Derek’s apartment, that moment when Derek stepped into his space and Stiles was sure, just for a second, that he was about to be kissed. Derek had said he wanted to use his mouth, but he hadn’t said kiss. He hadn’t asked for that. He had to know that was an extra service; that was the thing everyone knew about whores. No kissing on the mouth.

Derek smiled, and Stiles remembered that he’d also thought Derek might bite him, which usually was a thought that didn’t make any sense. But standing here naked, with Derek’s teeth bared in that particularly sharp smile, Stiles remembered it and knew it had been as real as any fleeting observation could be. He stood very still, not sure whether to lean in or bare his throat or beg Derek to just stop smiling at him, but Derek’s smile twitched into something friendlier at the same time that he shoved Stiles backward.

Stiles landed on the bed with a bounce and Derek followed him down, kneeling astride his thighs. He pulled Stiles further up between his legs, so that he was all the way on the bed, and pushed him to lie down. Stiles went where Derek put him, trying to relax. He was breathless, heart beating fast, and he still didn’t know what to do with his hands. He left them sprawled out to the sides as Derek bent over him—still dressed—and tucked his face against Stiles’s throat again, from the front this time.

Stiles lay under Derek and willed himself to get hard. He didn’t begrudge Derek whatever—nuzzling? sniffing? face-cuddling?—thing he was doing right now, but it wasn’t doing much for Stiles, and at some point Derek was going to expect to make some kind of use of Stiles’s dick. Stiles couldn’t discreetly jerk off in this position, and Derek obviously wasn’t going to let him do it for himself, but—

“Shh,” Derek said, his mouth suddenly right next to Stiles’s ear.

Stiles froze. He hadn’t said any of that out loud, had he? He didn’t think he had, but he was tired, and he used to do that, and he might be relaxed enough around Derek, and—

“No, the opposite of that,” Derek said, pushing up and resting both hands on Stiles’s ribcage as he met Stiles’s eyes. He was still smiling. “I meant I could hear you worrying. Relax.”

“Oh,” Stiles said, and tried to make himself go limp. “Right.”

Derek shook his head a little and shifted one hand down to Stiles’s dick, curling his hand gently around it. “That what you’re worried about?”

“No?” Stiles replied. He couldn’t help pushing up into Derek’s hand. Just the familiar warm touch was moving things in the right direction. “Not for long?”

Derek snorted and bent down over Stiles again, licking at Stiles’s nipples, which made Stiles squirm. Derek shifted his mouth lower, down to Stiles’s stomach, mouthing at the soft skin below his ribs. Stiles was weirdly aware of how unprotected his body was there—his belly, not his still-not-really-hard dick, which Derek was just sort of holding in his hand. Derek scraped his teeth lightly against Stiles’s stomach and he couldn’t help jumping a little.

“Sorry,” Derek said. “I won’t bite.”

“You could,” Stiles said, because he’d agreed to marks. He almost wanted Derek to bite him, just to get past this weird moment of vulnerability, just do it. “Just—don’t break the skin.”

“Mm,” Derek said, but when he put his mouth to Stiles’s skin again it was an open-mouthed kiss, dragging over to his side, the delicate stretch of skin between his ribcage and his hip. Derek started sucking at the skin there, and something about the suction made Stiles arch up into Derek’s mouth. Derek’s hand started moving, working his dick, and Stiles groaned and tried to push in two directions at once.

Derek let up, breathing harshly against Stiles’s skin for a few seconds, and then he settled his mouth a little higher, right against Stiles’s lowest rib, and started sucking there. Stiles reached down and slid one hand into Derek’s hair, clutching at the sheets with the other to keep from making Derek jerk him off faster.

Derek raised his head and Stiles watched him look thoughtfully down at Stiles’s skin for a moment and then nod to himself and shift lower again, and with no warning he was sucking Stiles’s dick, as fast and forceful as if he wanted to leave another hickey. Stiles groaned out loud and tightened his fingers in Derek’s hair, and then let go to press his fingers against the spit-wet red spots on his side while he shoved his dick into Derek’s mouth.

Derek pulled off just as abruptly as he’d gone down, and he sucked two of Stiles’s fingertips into his mouth before he got to work sucking another bruise against Stiles’s side, leaving Stiles’s dick bobbing wetly in the air.

“Fuck, dammit,” Stiles whined, “I’m supposed to be the one with the short attention span, would you—”

“Mm-hm,” Derek said, but his mouth settled down again on the spot where Stiles’s leg met his body, sucking right over the tendon there. Stiles’s dick actually brushed Derek’s cheek when Stiles wriggled under Derek’s mouth.

“Please, just, please,” Stiles begged.

“Sure,” Derek said, like all Stiles had to do was ask, and he had his mouth on Stiles’s dick again. Stiles didn’t even consider what he was doing before he shoved in, fucking Derek’s mouth, but he only got a handful of thrusts before Derek pulled off and grabbed him by the hips, pushing him up the bed and flipping him over in one dizzying move.

Stiles hadn’t even finished making a startled noise into the pillow before Derek’s mouth was on him again. Derek sucked hard at his tailbone, leaving a mark no one could possibly miss while fucking him.

“Jesus fuck,” Stiles said into the pillow, because he knew where Derek had to be going with this, and he tucked his knees up under himself, trying to spread himself open for it. Derek’s hands were on his ass, squeezing gently. Derek spread him open and his mouth shifted down, licking wet and warm all the way to Stiles’s hole, and Stiles pressed his face into the pillow and concentrated fiercely on not shoving his ass up into Derek’s mouth.

Derek’s tongue circled and then pushed, lapped softly at one spot and then swiped down to his taint and back up. When he actually poked his tongue into Stiles’s asshole, Stiles couldn’t resist turning his head to blurt out, “Holy fuck, Derek.”

“We’ll get there,” Derek said. There was a little bit of a laugh in his voice as his breath ghosted against Stiles’s thoroughly wet ass, and then he was back at it. Stiles closed his eyes and went back to focusing on not moving. His dick was throbbing, and he had never wanted so badly for someone to just hurry up and fuck him, but Derek just went on and on, eating him out like he had nothing better to do. It seemed like an eternity before Derek even eased a finger inside him, and Stiles honestly couldn’t tell whether he’d bothered with actual lube, or if it just slid in that easily on Derek’s spit and Stiles’s readiness.

“You can,” Stiles said, and he sounded drunk to his own ears. “Derek, you can fuck me, I’m good, I swear.”

Derek made a sort of huh noise while licking around the finger that he had working inside of Stiles, but a few seconds later he closed his hand on Stiles’s dick, which was almost as good as an actual answer. Stiles couldn’t help moving then, rocking back and forth between Derek’s hand and his mouth, and at some point he realized Derek had two fingers in him now, teasing at his rim, stretching him open so slowly and gently that all he felt was how much he wanted more.

“Please,” Stiles tried, because that had worked before, he thought, like an hour ago when he actually got Derek to suck his dick just by asking. “Please, please, Derek, come on, I know you want to fuck me, just, please. Sometime tonight.”

Derek made a thoughtful noise and worked another finger into him, but Stiles took it easily, rocking back onto Derek’s hand. He wondered if he was going to come like this, Derek just gripping his dick and fingering his ass while Stiles got himself off. Maybe that was what Derek was waiting for, maybe that was how Derek wanted to make him ready.

Stiles aimed to please, hips jerking helplessly back and forth between Derek’s hands, but just when Stiles thought he was going to get there Derek said, “All right.”

It sounded weirdly final, and Stiles stopped moving even before Derek took his hands away. Before Stiles got further than lifting his head to look around for Derek, he felt Derek’s warmth blanketing his whole body, a second before Derek actually touched him. Derek’s dick pushed into him and it was like clicking puzzle pieces together, like it belonged there, filling him up. Derek rolled onto his side, dragging Stiles along, and Stiles sighed shakily as he stretched his legs out of that fold. Being free to move his feet felt almost—not really, but almost—as good as finally having Derek inside him, moving in tiny little shivers, and then Derek’s hand closed on his dick.

Stiles said, “Oh,” out loud, like he’d realized something. He was coming before Derek’s hand had even really moved on him.

Derek’s mouth was soft on the back of his neck, licking but not biting, not sucking a mark. He shifted behind Stiles, thrusting into him only a handful of times before he exhaled and went still.

Stiles thought vaguely that that meant Derek had really been getting off on having his mouth all over Stiles, to come that fast. Derek didn’t pull out right away, just stayed there, leaning into Stiles and licking idly at the back of his neck after every few breaths. Stiles realized he was falling asleep, and muttered, “First thirty minutes are free.”

“Mm-hm,” Derek murmured back agreeably. “After that it’s extra.”

Stiles thought there was probably something important about the unconcerned way Derek said that, but he couldn’t figure out what it was before he stopped thinking anything at all.

5. Chapter 5

Notes for the Chapter:

This is the chapter with the Sexual Assault tag, so please check the End Notes if you need to know what’s coming.

Stiles woke up slowly, groggy and confused and warm and comfortable except that he really, really had to piss.

Also, he was naked and his ass was kind of sticky and gross; Derek was still spooned up behind him, one arm over his waist. Stiles shifted Derek’s arm away and scooted muzzily off the bed, walking naked to Derek’s bathroom to pee and then wash himself up as best he could with toilet paper and a few splashes in the sink.

He paused for a moment, staring at himself in the mirror. There was a little trio of dark purple bruises down his side, the most visible marks of Derek’s mouth. Stiles pressed his fingers against one and then winced; it was a real bruise, not just the appearance of one.

Still, he stroked his fingers over the spot one more time before he shut off the bathroom light.

It wasn’t until he came back into Derek’s room—lights still on, Derek now lying on his back with one foot on the floor, blinking sleepily toward the door—that Stiles looked at the clock and realized it was past six in the morning.

“Oh, shit,” Stiles said automatically, and then stopped short. It wasn’t like he was going to be late for school if he overslept.

Derek turned his head and looked at the clock. “Four hours? Three and a half? What’s the rate for extra cuddling time?”

Stiles snorted and walked over to sit on the edge of the bed by Derek’s knees. “Dude, I was asleep. You can’t pay me for sleeping.”

“I was asleep too,” Derek replied. “And I was taking up your time, and it was nice sleeping with you, so you were providing a service. You said it’s extra past the first thirty minutes, we agreed on that. What’s the rate?”

“Ugh, I don’t know,” Stiles said. “Twenty bucks an hour.”

“That’s not a surcharge,” Derek announced. “That’s a separate service. So that’s—eighty bucks, plus tip, hundred and fifty plus surcharge plus tip, and then I went down on you—”

“That was part of the fuck,” Stiles insisted weakly, but his brain was still woolly and distracted with the way it had felt to wake up with Derek all warm and solid behind him, the way he felt better now than he did waking up after an entire night’s—morning’s—sleep back in his SRO.

“It’s a different kind of sex, it’s a separate charge,” Derek said. “Fucking is fucking, sucking your dick is sucking your dick. Where’s my…” He got up and found his wallet in his discarded jeans, then wandered naked out of the room, and came back with a folded rectangle of cash.

“You can tell me later if my math is wrong,” Derek said, rubbing a hand through his hair as he handed it to Stiles. “You want a ride?”

“Sure,” Stiles said, and dropped the thick fold of bills on the bed so he could find his clothes. There wasn’t any point arguing with Derek about anything at this point, and he honestly didn’t want to try to navigate the buses home when he was this fuzzy with sleep.

Derek moved around him, gathering up and pulling on his own clothes, and Stiles gathered enough sense to peel a twenty off and tuck it into his pants pocket for mugging money, hiding half of the rest in each sock. If Derek noticed or thought anything of that, he didn’t say. They leaned against the wall by the front door to put on their shoes, and then Derek steered him with a hand on his elbow to the staircase door down to the garage.

Stiles nearly fell asleep again in the car, as comfortable in Derek’s passenger seat as he was in Derek’s bed. When they reached the always-brightly-lit stretch of street by the Holiday Inn, he snapped properly awake, and had his seatbelt off as Derek pulled to a stop in the loading zone.

Derek looked over at him without saying anything, and Stiles looked back; it wasn’t like those other moments when he’d thought he was about to get kissed. Derek wasn’t moving in on him that way, wasn’t moving in on him at all. It was just the spot where a kiss should have been—would have been, if he weren’t a whore, and Derek weren’t paying him for sex. But he was, and Derek was.

Stiles yawned, scrubbing one hand over his hair. He needed to get it cut soon. “So, uh, Tuesday?”

Derek nodded and turned to face front. “Tuesday.”

Stiles nodded back and got out of the car. He ducked into the parking garage like he was going to cut through to the next block. He stood behind a pillar for a while, rubbing his fingers over the bruises Derek had left under his shirt. He didn’t think about anything but counting off enough time to be sure Derek would be gone when he came back out.

There was no sign of the black Camaro when Stiles came back to the parking garage entrance, and Stiles shoved both hands into his pockets and began walking fast toward his SRO. The streetlights were still on and it had started to rain again. He was shivering by the time he’d gone half a block. His joints were starting to hurt again and a headache was starting up at the base of his skull. He’d be able to fall into bed soon, and if it wasn’t as comfortable as Derek’s bed, at least it was behind a locked door and he could stay in it as long as he wanted to.

Stiles wrapped his arms around himself as he walked, and he couldn’t help pressing his fingers against the bruises again.

He stopped at a corner on Mission, waiting for the light to change, and a black SUV pulled right up to the curb. The window on the passenger side rolled down, and Stiles walked over to it like a reflex.

The guy inside kind of looked like one of Stiles’s clients—the same age, with brown hair going gray and the collar of a polo shirt peeking out from under his multi-pocketed brown coat. But he looked tired, unshaven, like he’d been up all night, definitely not keyed up for action like the guys Stiles usually met.

“Hey,” the guy said wearily. “I’m not anywhere near Pacific Heights, am I.”

Stiles barked out a laugh, which was kind of rude, but he was tired too. “Uh, I mean, as the crow flies it’s maybe two miles? You’re in the same city as Pacific Heights so in the grand scheme of things you’re actually practically right next door to it, but—”

The guy was not looking amused.

“No,” Stiles finished. “No, dude, you’re fucking south of Market here, this is not at all where you want to be.”

The guy glanced nervously toward his back seat, and Stiles just glimpsed a blanket covering a person-shape.

“My daughter is sleeping, I’ve been driving since Seattle—do you think you could just ride along and point me where we’re going? My phone died or I’d use the GPS. I could pay,” the guy added, awkwardly, giving Stiles a hesitant up-and-down look like it was just now occurring to him what kind of person could be found on street corners around here.

Straight out of Pretty Woman, Stiles realized, except for the sleeping kid in the backseat and also Stiles already had a perfectly good client showering stupid amounts of money on him. Plus he somehow doubted this was going to end up with him behind the wheel of the SUV. Still—getting in cars with strangers was kind of what Stiles did for a living, and it felt weirdly good to know San Francisco better than someone else.

“Sure,” Stiles said, reaching for the door handle. He heard the locks click open and nodded judiciously. At least the guy had had enough sense to keep the doors locked until now.

Stiles climbed up into the passenger seat, and the guy said, “Seatbelt.”

“Yeah, got it,” Stiles said, reaching for the seatbelt, but he didn’t even have it fastened before the guy pulled away from the curb, whipping a U-turn hard enough to make Stiles’s whole body swing sideways a little. He jammed his seatbelt down and looked back, only to see that the blanket had fallen away in the backseat, and there was no girl sleeping back there, just a sleeping bag rolled into a tube and draped over a couple of backpacks.

Stiles turned wide eyes toward the guy driving even as he heard the locks thunk down.

“I lied about my daughter,” the guy said calmly. His eyes were very pale blue, cold and calm; the weary lost worried guy had vanished without a trace. “What kind of father would pick up a prostitute with his daughter in the backseat?”

Stiles grabbed at the door handle with one hand and his seatbelt with the other. But the door handle didn’t do anything—child locks, fuck—and the guy caught his wrist before he could get his seatbelt off anyway.

“Don’t worry,” the guy said, shoving Stiles’s hand away from the seatbelt and letting go. “You’ll still get paid, we’re just going to have a nice private conversation.”

Stiles held his wrist to his chest and didn’t take his eyes off the guy, trying to breathe evenly. “Okay, sure, I am an A-plus talker, man, anything in the world you wanna talk about, I am—”

“Not now,” the guy said flatly. “There’s an extra twenty in it for you if you don’t make another sound until we get to where we’re going.”

Stiles opened his mouth to argue, and the guy shifted his weight, sweeping his jacket back to show the gun holstered at his hip. Stiles shut his mouth hard. Shit, a gun, he’d been lured into the car and now the guy had a gun and all Stiles could remember was his seventh grade teacher who told them never to get in a car with a stranger because if you get in that car, you’re never going to see your mom again, and now it didn’t matter, because he was never going to see his mom again anyway. He was never going to see his dad again, either, but he found himself pressing his fingers to the bruises on his side, thinking, you’re never going to see Derek again. His head felt light with panic, and he just had to breathe and wait this out. He was going to get paid, supposedly. That sort of suggested he’d still be alive at the end of whatever this was.

Stiles looked away, like the guy and the gun just wouldn’t be there if he didn’t look. The guy was taking him north, across Market and into the Tenderloin. Stiles mostly knew better than to think that this meant he was about to be raped and murdered and disappear without a trace—or at least, he knew it didn’t really change his odds. The guy could take him up to Nob Hill and do whatever he wanted to there, just the same.

They didn’t go that far, though. The guy pulled into a street parking space in the heart of the Tenderloin and got out, walking around fast to the passenger side. Stiles tried the door handle again while the guy was outside the car, but it wouldn’t budge until the guy opened it from the outside. Stiles didn’t say a word or even make eye contact as the guy opened the door and escorted him out of the car and into a motel up the street. Stiles noticed vaguely that the guy had totally ignored the meter, but he somehow didn’t think parking tickets concerned this guy at all.

They went straight up a couple of flights of stairs to a room, and the whole time Stiles was aware of the way the guy had his arm half around Stiles, hand hovering at his side but not touching him. He wasn’t walking far enough away from Stiles to be discreet about what they were doing, but he wasn’t touching him, either. The incongruity was making the hairs stand up on the back of Stiles’s neck.

Could be a blowjob, Stiles told himself. Maybe he just wants a blowjob. Maybe he thinks I’m a filthy whore and doesn’t want to touch me except to get what he wants.

Stiles had had those customers before; they got their dicks out but nothing else and insisted on the condom before Stiles could. They weren’t so bad. Shitty tippers, but really, Stiles didn’t give a fuck how much this guy paid him as long as he got out of this without that gun coming out.

Maybe just a blowjob. A blowjob wouldn’t be bad.

The guy stopped at a door and gave Stiles a hard look. “Don’t move.”

Stiles nodded. They were halfway down the hallway; there was nowhere he could get to cover faster than the guy could pull that gun, and he doubted anyone was coming out of any of these rooms to see what happened if they heard a shot or a scream.

The guy turned half away from him, opening the door without letting Stiles see what he did with the key after. Stiles remembered, in a brief disorienting flash, the way Derek had carefully given him all the keys to the hotel room when he’d taken Stiles to the Holiday Inn—the way he’d gone in first, and had been careful not to get between Stiles and the door. Stiles pressed his hand to the marks on his side, thinking of dozing warmly in Derek’s bed, and then the guy’s cold eyes were on him again, dropping down to stare at his hand. Stiles jerked his hand away from his side like the guy could somehow see what he’d been thinking.

“Get in,” the guy said. “Come on.”

Stiles didn’t wait to be forced, stepping quickly past the guy into the room.

It was dim inside, almost dark. In the gray light leaking around the curtains on the window, Stiles could make out one bed and an ancient bolted-down TV on a stand. No phone, no alarm clock. What would you need them for in a room like this?

The door closed behind him, and Stiles heard the click of the lock, the rattle of the chain. He closed his eyes. It might not be that bad. Maybe just a blowjob. Maybe a fuck, he could deal with a fuck, he could—

“Take your clothes off,” the guy said.

Stiles turned toward him and froze; he had something dark in his hand—but then the guy flipped on the flashlight, shining the bright white beam not quite directly into Stiles’s eyes, and repeated, “Take your clothes off.”

Stiles just stared at the light. This wasn’t work. This wasn’t a customer. He wasn’t going to make it out of this. Whatever this guy wanted from him it wasn’t sex, not any kind of sex that Stiles was willing to sell. His throat was tight, choked off with words he couldn’t make himself speak, arguments and defenses and distractions.

He shook his head in a tiny, jerky movement. He had his arms wrapped around himself, shielding his soft belly like that could protect him. He couldn’t think of anything but how badly he wished he’d stayed asleep, stayed in Derek’s bed—that was better than thinking about how badly he wanted his dad to be looking for him, how he wanted anything but every stupid choice he’d made in the last two months catching up with him in the form of this cold-eyed guy and his flashlight.

“Oh, right,” the guy said, sounding sort of amused, and reached into his jacket. Stiles flinched with his whole body, but the guy flicked a couple of bills—two crisp twenties from the ATM, backlit by the flashlight—toward him. The money floated to the ground between them and Stiles stared down at it blankly.

“Now your turn,” the guy said. “Take your clothes off.”

Stiles looked down at the money on the carpet. He was already in the room. He was already lured everywhere the guy could possibly want him to go; why the fuck was he still bothering to offer money?

“I gotta tell you,” Stiles said, his throat unjammed all of a sudden by the sheer surreality of the moment. “Anything you want me to do after I take my clothes off costs more than forty bucks, and you’re gonna have to come closer than that.”

“I’m giving the orders,” the guy said impatiently. “Take your clothes off. Now.”

“You could at least be polite,” Stiles insisted, trying to make his hands move, telling himself that he didn’t want to make the guy wait, didn’t want to make him mad. “I’m not a machine, here, I’m a human being.”

“That remains to be seen,” the guy muttered, which, what the fuck, but then he said in his same hard flat tone, with a bright, insincere smile, “Please, would you be so kind as to remove your clothing.”

“See, that’s all you had to say,” Stiles said, trying not to think about how bad a sign it was that the guy flat out didn’t even think he was a person. He made himself crouch down to untie his shoes.

If he didn’t look at the guy, it wasn’t so bad. Just shoes, who cared about taking off their shoes? He focused on the problem of getting his socks off without spilling money everywhere, and once he’d done that it was totally natural and automatic to stand up and yank off his t-shirt.

The flashlight beam landed on the marks on his side like a searchlight and the guy took two fast steps toward him. Stiles froze and didn’t look up.

“Raise your arms above your head,” the guy said. He still wasn’t close enough to touch. “Slowly.”

Was it some kind of fetish? Did he like seeing people with bruises? Was he going to want to add more? At least that might be a sex thing. That might make sense. Even if he roughed Stiles up maybe Stiles could make it out of this alive, if he could just figure out how to get the guy off. Stiles raised his arms over his head. Sweat was running coldly down his sides, dripping where the light was shining on the purple marks that ran from his ribs to his hip.

“These are fresh,” the guy said. “This happened tonight.”

Stiles nodded, trying not to think about Derek’s hands on him, Derek lavishing attention on him, Derek’s mouth driving him slowly insane. The guy didn’t sound excited by the bruises, exactly, but he didn’t back off, either.

“Take the rest off,” the guy said, and Stiles lowered his arms. He watched his hands shake as he undid the button of his jeans and shoved down the zipper. He let himself close his eyes as he shoved his pants and underwear down. He should kick them off, he knew. He was hobbled like this, with his pants around his ankles, but he couldn’t make himself let go of that last little bit of cover.

He could feel the guy walking around him; he imagined he could feel the heat of the flashlight playing over his skin, lingering no longer on his ass or his dick—which was beyond soft and trying to retreat into his abdominal cavity—than on the backs of his knees or the nape of his neck. Stiles flinched from it equally everywhere. He felt more horribly exposed than he ever had before anyone, even the guy who’d made him strip slowly and commented on every inch of skin before he got on with the fucking. Stiles shifted from foot to foot, feeling the last sticky residue of lube and come between his ass cheeks. He wondered if the guy could see that too.

“Did she draw blood anywhere?” the guy asked finally.

Stiles frowned and actually looked up, distracted from feeling naked and terrified by the imperative of someone being incorrect. “Uh, no. He didn’t. I don’t let the guys who pay me do that kind of thing.”

The guy looked so thrown that Stiles had to fight down a wild hyena laugh. He hadn’t pictured being able to turn the tables on this guy in any way, least of all that one, but he would take it.

“Man, I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re in San Francisco? Gay sex? Kind of a thing? You didn’t bring me here alone and get me naked just so you could turn all homophobic on me, did you?”

The guy stepped in sharply and Stiles froze again, the laugh drying up. Fuck, what if he was some kind of crazy homophobe? Getting fucking gay-bashed to death in San Francisco, in the goddamn Tenderloin, would be just the perfect irony to cap off Stiles’s short, stupid life.

“This guy,” he said, staring into Stiles’s eyes. “This guy you were with tonight. He left those bruises on you?”

Stiles nodded.

“And you were with him all night?”

Stiles shrugged stiffly. He didn’t know what the guy had seen—it seemed obvious that he hadn’t grabbed Stiles at random, but how long had he been watching? What had he seen? Had he been lurking outside Derek’s place? Had he followed them there?

Only one way to find out. “I was at home washing my hair until two, then he took me to his place and I stayed there the rest of the night.”

The guy’s eyes flicked up to Stiles’s only slightly overgrown buzz cut, and his mouth twisted into a cold smile. “All that hair, of course it took you half the night. I’m sure you had some help washing it. But no women?”

Stiles shook his head slowly. The guy knew what he’d been doing—he knew Stiles was a whore—but Stiles couldn’t tell how much he’d seen. “No women. My hair is a no-girls-allowed zone.”

“And this particular guy you were with until this morning,” the guy insisted. “Did he hurt you? Scare you?”

Stiles had a weird flashback to Laura asking him if Derek had ever threatened him; he wanted to laugh or cry or oh God he wanted to call Laura. His eyes actually prickled a little, but he held the guy’s gaze and shook his head. “The only person who’s scared me tonight is you.”

The guy raised his eyebrows at that, smiling slightly, like the idea that he was scary as shit was somehow funny to him. “Well. We can’t have that. Put your clothes back on, kid.”

Stiles stood there staring for a few seconds before he realized what the guy had said, and then he hauled his pants up so fast he just about zipped up his dick. The weight of his shitty cell phone in the back pocket felt like an anchor. He bent over to grab his shirt and hurried into it, then stopped short; the guy was standing between him and his shoes. He couldn’t go out into the Tenderloin barefoot, and also his shoes had his night’s pay from Derek in them. That mattered, if he wasn’t about to die.

The guy looked him up and down. “You shouldn’t let anybody hurt you like that,” he said, jerking his chin toward Stiles’s side.

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Stiles said, and then, with all the courage of having his clothes back on, he did the same little chin-jerk and added, “You shouldn’t deprive people of their shoes.”

The guy snorted, but he didn’t dispute that Stiles was people this time. He stepped aside, and Stiles sat down on the end of the bed and carefully worked his feet into his socks, trying not to let the guy see the shapes of folded bills inside them.

“Listen,” the guy said, when Stiles stood up. “You shouldn’t have to do this. I really do have a daughter; she’s about your age. I hate to think of her in this kind of situation. You must have parents. Let me put you on a bus.”

Stiles felt cold all over again, and like the bottom had dropped out from under him when he thought he had reached solid ground. He felt hot and cold and tears threatening all at once, but his voice was mostly steady when he said, “Fuck you.”

“Apparently that costs more,” the guy said coolly. “But when you realize I’m not the worst monster you’ve met tonight, you give me a call.”

And with that he turned and walked out. Stiles stared after him, and then thought to pick up that fucking forty bucks from the floor—he’d earned it a thousand times harder than all the money stuffed into his socks—and realized there was a business card lying on top of it.

It could have been printed from the same uninformative template as Laura’s. Just Chris Argent and a phone number.

Phone number. Laura.

Stiles dropped the money and the card and crept to the door. He knew, logically, that he was safer inside, behind a door he could lock, but he wanted out of this place so badly he was shaking with it. There was no one in the hallway waiting, and Stiles bolted to the staircase and ran all the way down, out through the little lobby and into the street. No black SUV, no creepy guy watching him; Stiles turned south and ran flat out through the Tenderloin, dodging cars and other pedestrians. When the Art Institute loomed up in front of him out of the drizzling fog he let out a sob of relief. He ran straight to it, pressing his back against the pale gray stone like it was home base in the worst game of tag ever, and then he just stood there, breathing in huge, painful gasps and staring around.

After a while Stiles became aware of the heavy beat of his heart like an impact against his ribs: thump, thump, thump. His chest ached with it, but it didn’t seem to slow down. He was exhausted, sore everywhere, but he couldn’t make himself sit down, or move away from the wall.

He worked one hand down to his jeans and pulled his phone out, making himself look down at it as he dialed the numbers he’d had running through his head for weeks.

Laura picked up on the second ring. “Stiles?”

“Yeah,” Stiles said, and faltered, trying to think of what to tell her.

“Are you all right?” Laura demanded, her tone revving up to something like Stiles’s own level of anxiety even though he hadn’t managed to say anything at all, as if she’d heard it in that one word. “I just got in, did Derek—”

“It wasn’t Derek, why does everyone think Derek would hurt me,” Stiles burst out. “Jesus fucking Christ, Derek was fucking great, I wish Derek—” Stiles shut his mouth with a wet clack of teeth to keep from finishing that sentence. There were too many things he wished Derek had done, or would do, or. No. Not thinking about it.

“Okay,” Laura said, her voice suddenly brisk. “Okay, good, not Derek. Someone else, somewhere else. I can come get you right now. I’d be in the Camaro, is that okay?”

“Fuck yes,” Stiles said. He found himself sliding down the wall to sit on his heels at just the thought of being able to sink into the familiar passenger seat of Derek’s car. “Please, please, that would be so great right now, I can’t even tell you.”

“Okay, I’m on my way,” Laura said, and Stiles actually heard a car door slam and what might have been the growl of the Camaro’s engine starting up. “Where?”

“The Art Institute. The north side, on McAllister. McAllister and Leavenworth.”

“Got it. Are you safe there? Are you alone now?”

“I,” Stiles looked around rapidly. It was starting to be daylight, and there were people around who looked like normal people, museum workers and people in suits heading for the big court building two blocks down. “I think so. He’s gone, I think I’m. I’m okay. I can wait here.”

“Okay,” Laura said. “Good, I’m glad you got away from him. I’m glad you’re somewhere safe now. I need you to do something for me until I get there, okay, are there people walking past you?”

“Yeah, yeah, there are—there are people. Regular people, daytime people.”

“Good,” Laura said again. “I want you to do this for me, it’s going to sound weird but it’s important. I need you to watch the people walking by, and I need you to count how many kids you see under the age of ten, and how many women over the age of sixty. It’s okay to guess, I know you can’t know for sure. But I need you to count, okay? You need to tell me how many when I get there.”

“Uh,” Stiles said, but he remembered exactly how hard she could push, and he didn’t want to make her insist. He turned his attention to the sidewalks, both on his side of the street and across the way. “Okay, I—okay, I’m—there’s a lady there, and—two, three—I don’t see any kids yet.”

“That’s fine,” Laura assured him. “Just keep looking for both, okay? Keep counting.”

Stiles nodded, forgetting to say anything as he scanned the sidewalks. There—there was a kid with an old lady, that made four and one, and there was a lady pushing a stroller, that had to have a kid in it, did that count? He’d count it, that was two kids, four ladies—no, five, that Japanese lady was probably older than she looked, he could count her.

He was so busy counting that he was startled when Laura said in his ear, “Stiles, you can stop now, I’m here.”

He looked away from the sidewalk and realized that the Camaro was pulled up right in front of him at the curb, and he dove through the door and blurted out, “Four kids and seventeen old ladies, why was that important?”

Laura smiled and hung up her phone, dropping it on the dash. “It kept you from focusing too much on whatever just happened. Seatbelt.”

“Oh,” Stiles said. He locked his door first, then fastened his seatbelt. Laura pulled away from the sidewalk as soon as it clicked, roaring down McAllister at a speed that might have made even Derek raise his eyebrows. Her phone flew off the dash and Stiles caught it in the air and then stared down at it, frowning. His heart was starting to feel like it wasn’t going to beat out of his chest, now, and he was starting to think maybe he’d overreacted. What had really happened, after all? What was he going to tell her? He was a whore. He’d gotten into the car willingly. A guy had paid him to take his clothes off.

“It, uh,” Stiles said, “It wasn’t really that bad. I mean. He didn’t, he didn’t hurt me. He hardly even touched me.”

“Bad enough for you to call me is bad enough for me to come and get you,” Laura said calmly. “Do you want to come back to my place? You and I are both up past our bedtimes, we can get comfy on the couch and when you’re ready you can tell me about why you called, okay? Meantime, see if you can beat the next level of Angry Birds for me, I’ve been stuck for a week on that thing.”

“It’s kind of obvious what you’re doing now,” Stiles pointed out, even as he opened up the Angry Birds app and saw that Laura was stuck on a level he hadn’t played before.

“Being obvious doesn’t make it not work,” Laura replied calmly. “A cast on a broken arm is obvious. And if you get me past that stupid level I will cook you whatever meal you feel like eating at this time of day, I swear. I am going to break my phone one of these times when those pigs laugh at me.”

Stiles took the precaution of turning the sound effects off before he started the level, and he scowled down at the puzzle through four tries and then looked up when the light from outside went dark. They were in the garage at Derek’s—at Derek and Laura’s, because Laura lived upstairs.

Stiles was tempted, just for a second, to run up the stairs to Derek’s, to pound on his door and beg Derek to let him back in so he could crawl into Derek’s bed and pretend that the last hour had been a bad dream. But that wasn’t an option. That wasn’t how he and Derek worked—wasn’t how Stiles worked, when he was doing his job with Derek.

Laura led him up to the top-floor apartment without pausing at Derek’s. She went in ahead of Stiles, not even looking back as he hesitated on the threshold, looking around. There was morning light coming in the windows, still gray and drizzly but brightening. The layout of the apartment was pretty much like Derek’s, though her furniture seemed to have more rounded edges while the glimpses Stiles had gotten of Derek’s had run to IKEA straight lines. The couch was leather, and there were throw pillows and a couple of knit blankets piled at one end.

Laura called softly, “Stiles?”

Stiles stepped inside, but still didn’t shut the door behind him. Laura was standing in a doorway that must lead to her bedroom, holding a towel and a folded gray hoodie.

“You want to dry off? You’ve been shivering. You could take a shower, if you want, but I don’t have a full change of clean clothes for you.”

The very thought of taking his clothes off had Stiles shaking his head frantically. He didn’t want to show his skin, not to anyone, not even himself.

“Okay, it’s fine,” Laura said, coming back to the living room and setting the towel and hoodie on the arm of the couch. “I’m gonna take a shower myself, then, you caught me just coming back from work. Will you be okay here by yourself for a few minutes?”

Stiles nodded jerkily, not really thinking about it. Before he could think anything at all he was asking, “Is Derek home? Downstairs?”

“He’s sleeping right now,” Laura said, firmly, like she thought Stiles might try to go down there and bother him and she had to head that off right now. Her voice was gentler as she added, “But he would wake up if anyone but you or me tried to come into the building. You’ll be safe, okay? And if you want me to stay here with you, I absolutely will.”

“No, it’s, it’s fine.” Stiles remembered the night he’d met Laura, the way Derek had heard her coming into the building long before Stiles heard her at the door. It was true; he would know if a stranger was coming in. But Stiles wouldn’t want to put Derek between him and the cold-eyed guy with the gun.

“Okay,” Laura said. “I’ll be right back. Ten minutes.”

Stiles nodded again, and stayed right where he was, just inside the open apartment door, until Laura shut the bathroom door behind her and started the water. Then he took another step inside and made himself close the door behind him. He locked it for good measure, and noticed that Laura’s door didn’t even have a chain. One twist of the lock and he could be out.

Stiles walked over to the couch and picked up the towel, rubbing himself dry. It smelled like nothing, like it had been dried outside on a clothesline, though that couldn’t be possible here. Stiles’s mom had only occasionally managed to dry sheets or towels on the line before it rained even in Beacon Hills. It would never work at all in San Francisco, especially not this week. He moved on from drying his face and hair and ran the towel over his arms, rubbing everywhere, and then his chest and belly until his damp t-shirt burned against the bruises Derek had left on his side. He moved on then, rubbing the towel everywhere, sawing it over his back and his ass and then rubbing over his jeans, down to his ankles. He toed out of his shoes and dried his socks, making the corners of the folded bills stab into the skin of his feet, and then he had to stop, feeling dizzy and out of breath suddenly for no reason.

He crouched down, clutching the towel, and buried his face against his knees. He could do this, he knew how to breathe through it, he just had to—to—

The water in the bathroom shut off, and Stiles made himself stand so quickly he got a head rush. He didn’t fall down, though, so it was fine; after a few seconds he was able to let go of the towel and pick up the sweatshirt instead, pulling it on and pulling the hood up. He moved over to the end of the couch where the blankets and cushions were piled up and burrowed under the whole stack, covering himself up to the chin.

He almost wasn’t shivering anymore when he heard the bathroom door open and Laura called out, “Stiles?”

“Yeah,” Stiles called back. “Still here.”

“Glad to hear it,” Laura said, and Stiles watched over the back of the couch as she came out wearing pajama pants and a tank top, her wet hair falling down over her shoulders. She didn’t even look at Stiles, just walked into the kitchen and rummaged in the fridge. “Are you lactose intolerant? Allergic to anything?”

“I will eat literally anything,” Stiles assured her, and his stomach twisted with something that could have been hunger. He usually ate a little snack after work, right before he went to bed. He was about three hours late for it, now.

Laura came over to the couch balancing two containers of yogurt, a pear, an orange, and two spoons. She held out her hands to Stiles, and he took the chocolate yogurt instead of the strawberry, the orange, and a spoon. Laura settled herself all the way at the other end of the couch and didn’t remark on his impromptu blanket fort or the way he rearranged it so the he could eat yogurt left-handed without anything but his hand and his face uncovered. She ate the pear first, then the yogurt, without saying anything at all. Stiles found himself stealing glances at her bare arms, the little bit of the curve of her breast he could see, the line of her throat. All that bare skin, like it was nothing, like nothing could hurt her and it didn’t matter who saw.

Stiles wormed his other hand out to peel the orange, and Laura held her hand out to take the peel without touching him or even quite looking at him. Stiles dropped it into her palm and then ate the orange, sucking on one section at a time. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate any fresh fruit. He should probably be getting it more often.

When the orange was gone, Laura said, “We could talk, or you could take another crack at Angry Birds. What do you think?”

“Um,” Stiles said. He tried to think about how to describe it to Laura, and he felt ashamed of making a big deal over nothing and heart-thumpingly terrified at the same time. “Angry Birds?”

Laura nodded calmly. She passed him a wet wipe to clean his hands and then handed him her phone. Stiles balanced it on his blanket-covered knee and did his best to smash pigs until even moving his finger and keeping his eyes open felt like too much effort.

He woke up to someone knocking on the door, and for a half-second he thought it was his dad coming to tell him to get up for school, and then the sad awfulness crashed down on him and he heard Laura’s voice.

“You shouldn’t be here. You can’t help with this, not right now.”

“I just brought some food,” Derek’s low voice came through the door.

Laura looked over at Stiles, and he met her eyes. She raised her eyebrows, tilting her head toward the door, and Stiles shrugged and then nodded. His heart was beating fast, wanting Derek to be here, wanting to see Derek even though he wasn’t sure he could bear Derek being able to see him.

Laura opened the door and Derek stepped through with a paper bag in his hands. He glanced in Stiles’s direction, nodded, and then turned away toward the kitchen, too fast for Stiles to feel anything under his gaze at all. Stiles watched him putting things into cupboards until his eyes drifted shut, but Derek never looked his way again.

The next time Stiles woke up, Laura was curled up asleep at the other end of the couch. Derek was gone, but there was a pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups balanced on the back of the couch by Stiles’s head.

Stiles reached for it without thinking, and his head was a jumble of things all at once: the single peanut butter cup still hidden in his room, and the night Derek had given it to him, and being in Derek’s car with Laura, and that moment when he’d had to put his arms up and let the guy look at the bruises Derek had left on his side, and Derek coming in with a grocery bag, giving Stiles that little nod, and…

Stiles was crying suddenly, his fingers tightening hard on the candy. He tried to be quiet, but he couldn’t make himself stop, and he couldn’t stop the tangled mess of thoughts and memories. At some point he sobbed, and Laura uncurled on the other end of the couch, raising her head and reaching out a hand to him. She didn’t touch him, just offered her hand. Stiles grabbed for it, almost flinging the peanut butter cups at her as he hauled himself closer to her. Blankets and pillows went everywhere, but Laura just curled an arm around him as Stiles huddled down with his head in her lap and sobbed brokenly.

Some guy with a gun had threatened him, and his dad was never ever going to come and save him because of some other guy with a gun, and it was all the same thing. Stiles had been able to hold it together while he had to, while he was on his own, but now there was Laura, murmuring something softly above him and running a hand gently over his hair, and Derek had brought him peanut butter cups, and Stiles couldn’t stop crying.

Eventually he did stop, winding down into little hiccupy hitches. His head hurt and his face hurt and he could hardly breathe through all the snot in his nose, and he was pretty sure he’d gotten some of it on Laura’s pajama pants and he’d definitely gotten some on the hoodie she’d loaned him. He felt too warm now, still half-tangled in the blankets and bundled up in the hoodie, but he didn’t want to take anything off.

“I think it’s time to tell me what happened,” Laura said softly.

Stiles nodded, sniffed, and tried to sit up. “Can I have some water?”

Laura helped push him upright and then snagged a glass of water off the coffee table and offered it to him. Stiles chugged down half of it, wiped his nose surreptitiously on his sleeve while Laura was putting it back down on the coffee table, and tried to work out what to say.

He couldn’t talk about his dad. He just couldn’t. It probably hadn’t made the news here in San Francisco, but Laura and Derek had to have figured out what was going on, why he was here. And it wasn’t what Laura was asking about, anyway. That had happened nearly two months ago. She was talking about what happened last night. Or this morning, whatever.

“Derek dropped me off like usual,” Stiles said, remembering that moment when Derek hadn’t kissed him and he’d been stupidly a little sad to remember that this was just his job. “And then I was walking down Mission and this guy pulled up right in front of me, black SUV, fucking cliché, and—I was so stupid, he said he was lost and asked me to ride along and show him. He said he would pay, but I didn’t even really—I just wanted to help, I didn’t care about the money. He said his daughter was sleeping but then when I got in—it wasn’t a kid in the backseat, just blankets, and he locked the doors and grabbed my wrist when I tried to get my seatbelt off, he wouldn’t let me out of the car and then I saw he had a gun—”

“Was he pointing it at you?” Laura interrupted.

Stiles ducked his head and shook it. “No, he. He just had it, he let me see he had it when I tried to get out of the car. But I was locked in, I couldn’t get out by then—I was so stupid, who gets in a fucking car with a stranger—I mean, a fucking whore, that’s who, but—but then I was trapped and I just—I just did whatever he said, because I didn’t want him to pull that gun on me and I couldn’t get away.”

“That was the right thing to do,” Laura said quietly. “You know that, don’t you? You were kind, you made a mistake. It’s not your fault this guy lied to you and tricked you. You didn’t do anything wrong, Stiles. Whatever keeps you alive is the right thing to do in a situation like that. You did what you had to do and I’m proud of you for holding it together through that.”

Stiles shook his head and another sob snuck out of him. Laura scooted closer on the couch, and he leaned into her. He wanted Laura to be proud of him. He wanted his dad to be proud, but—but his dad wasn’t going to say that to him ever again. Laura might.

“But I,” Stiles said, and his voice came out thin and high-pitched. “He didn’t really, I, I just—”

“You did the right thing,” Laura repeated. “He was scaring you and you got through it. Don’t try to tell yourself he didn’t mean to scare you or you took it the wrong way, that’s how people mess with your head. I’m not a jury, Stiles, you don’t have to prove to me beyond a reasonable doubt that he broke the letter of whatever law. He forced you to go with him when you didn’t want to. He’s the bad guy, and you did what you had to do.”

Stiles nodded, remembering the cold eyes, the way he handled the flashlight.

“He never touched me,” Stiles said. “Just—he grabbed me when I went for my seatbelt, but after that, in the room, he never. Like that, like that made it okay or something, like he—he said his daughter was my age, like that made it less fucked up.”

“Jesus,” Laura muttered, and then, back to her calm, even voice, a voice that probably talked a kid off a bridge every night, “Do you want to tell me what he did?”

“He just, he made me take my clothes off and he looked at—he made me hold my arms up so he could look at me, everywhere, with a fucking flashlight, and he kept staring at the, the marks Derek left—”

“Derek left marks on you?” There was an iciness under Laura’s calm all of a sudden.

Stiles shook his head frantically. “Not like that, not bad, he asked me and I said it was okay for him to, to use his mouth, but he didn’t break the skin or, or draw blood—” That was what the guy had asked, did she draw blood?

“Just, like, hickeys,” Stiles finished awkwardly.

Laura covered her face with both hands and blew out a breath, shaking her head. “Okay. So Derek is still not the problem here.”

“No,” Stiles said, as firmly as he could with his nose running. “No, Derek’s great. This asshole just—Jesus, what fucking business was it of his what bruises I had or when I got them or who the fuck I spent the night with? And acting like throwing money at me made it okay, or—”

Laura didn’t say anything, but her posture had suddenly gone rigid.

“Stiles,” she said, and her voice was suddenly very carefully controlled in a way that it hadn’t been before. “Do you remember anything about what he looked like? Could you describe him for me?”

“Blue eyes,” Stiles said, groping for other details. “Cold. A little bit taller than me, I think? Skinny, but—” he remembered it in a flash, the plain card, the phone number. “Chris Argent.”

Laura’s whole body jerked, and her hand slapped down hard on the arm of the couch. Stiles shrank away from her.

“No,” Laura said quickly. “Stiles, no, it’s—I’m not angry at you, not at all. I’m sorry, I’m incredibly sorry, because this wasn’t random, and it wasn’t about you.”

She, Argent had said. Did she draw blood?

“He thought I was with you,” Stiles whispered. “That’s why?”

Laura rubbed her palms over her face again. “I’m sorry, Stiles. It’s—it’s a long, weird story, but the main thing to know is that he stalks us. Me and Derek. He’s heavily armed and buddies with law enforcement all over the West Coast, so we’ve never been able to get rid of him. We just try not to let him get to us. He’s obsessed with the idea of us getting close to people, having—having any kind of family beyond each other. He scares people off, and you were absolutely not wrong to be scared of him.”

Stiles straightened up, feeling indignant—threatening a teenaged hooker was one thing, but no one had a right to be stalking Laura and Derek. He remembered Derek saying I’m not good in relationships and wondered if that was because some gun-toting nutjob scared off anyone Derek tried to date. “He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with that, that’s fucking sick.”

Laura looked over at him with a smile. “Funny, that’s just what I was thinking about what he did to you. Stiles—I can’t make him go away completely. I am definitely going to go tell him to stay the hell away from you, and that should be enough to make him back off at least for a while, but there’s the possibility that he’ll cross the line again if you keep coming here, whether for Derek or to see me.”

Stiles squared his shoulders. “Fuck him, he’s not telling me who I can have as a customer and he’s definitely not telling me who I can call when I need help. What if I need a cup of sugar, who else could I call?”

“He’d probably say you could call him,” Laura said, with a little wry smile.

“Yeah, he fucking tried that, but I think I know the difference between people who are nice to me and people who drag me into a motel in the Tenderloin and order me to take my clothes off. No way, fuck that guy, he’s not scaring me off.”

Laura’s smile widened a little. “That’s the spirit, kid.”

Stiles grinned back, and then his mind skipped ahead and he winced. “Are you—are you going to tell Derek what happened?”

Laura winced too. “He needs to know, Stiles. You can choose to keep coming around, but Derek has to know what he’s choosing the next time he hires you, too. He can be protective. He might not want to risk it. I can’t hide that from him. But if you don’t want him to know the details—”

“No, tell him,” Stiles said quickly, decisively, like jumping into cold water. “He should—I need him to know it’s not him, if I’m weird the next time I see him.”

Laura looked like she wanted to argue, but she just nodded. “I’ll make sure he knows.”

Stiles didn’t stay long after that. It wasn’t that he was in such a hurry to leave. He wanted to stay curled up on Laura’s couch for days, sleeping under her watchful gaze and eating the contents of her fridge. He thought Laura would let him, too, which was the thing that made him sure he had to go. The last few hours aside, he couldn’t bear the thought of Laura looking at him like he was a broken kid in need of rescuing. She could help him with a bad day, sure, but there was a line Stiles didn’t want to cross.

He could see it in her eyes when he said he was leaving; she was one welling tear or hitching breath away from asking him if he wanted to stay, if he wanted to stay forever, if he wanted help escaping his sordid life of prostitution. He already had a plan. He didn’t want Laura rescuing him. He had to take care of himself now. He couldn’t just expect some grownup to look after him.

Stiles forced as wide a smile as he could manage and said, “Things to do, you know. I don’t want to fuck up my circadian rhythm any more than I already have, even if it is my day off. Gotta be ready to go on Thursday.”

She gave him kind of a funny look that wasn’t the worried sympathetic one he’d been getting before and said, “Thursday?”

Stiles almost sighed relief; it was so much easier to have something to explain that wasn’t about what had happened tonight. “Yeah, my weekend is Monday to Wednesday, Derek’s kind of a bonus thing on Tuesdays. Thursday is when I get back to work.”

Laura frowned, but nodded slowly, like the idea of having a different weekend from other people was totally bizarre, but she was humoring him. “Okay. Well, if you need anything, you call, okay? I was happy to do this today, you can call anytime.”

Stiles nodded quickly, not thinking about what situation he might get into next that would require him to call again. “Thanks, really, you were the greatest.”

Laura nodded again and opened the door for him, and Stiles waved jauntily and took off.

He caught a bus toward downtown pretty easily, and was disoriented to find it full of kids his own age heading home from school. He heard them talking about what somebody had done during sixth period, who was going to the winter formal with who, and he felt a million miles away from them and also strangely at home. Like he could infiltrate whatever nice school they went to in the Marina, pretend to be a regular kid, try his life over again.

And then he got off the bus and caught his connection down to SOMA, because, no, that wasn’t his life anymore. This was his life, going home on a Monday afternoon to get back into the swing of his life as a hooker.

Stiles spent his second bus ride planning out the rest of his day. He was getting a late start; he usually got up around one or two in the afternoon, and it was past four now. He usually went to the laundromat on Mondays. He should do that.

He didn’t let himself stop and think when he got back into his room—he had to take a shower, and that meant he had to strip his clothes off, from Laura’s sweatshirt down to his sweaty, money-filled socks. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of the crumpled cash, and realized that he had no idea whether Derek had overpaid him. He decided to call it a wash, squirreling the money away safely before he got into the shower. He scrubbed everywhere, twice, cleaning away the sweaty funk of a day spent sleeping all bundled up in his clothes—not the smell of fear or whatever, he told himself, soaping his pits again. That was a metaphor, humans couldn’t fucking smell fear. He just smelled like stank, and that was plenty.

He wasn’t scared, anyway. Every time he thought about Chris Argent—about Laura telling him about Chris Argent—he found himself lit up again with the same indignant anger at the fucking creep who’d been messing up Derek and Laura’s lives for years. Anger was good, anger felt warm, anger would keep him moving.

Stiles kept moving. He got dressed in laundry-day ratty clothes, and gathered everything else, including his sheets and towel and Laura’s sweatshirt, into his laundry bag. He grabbed money for quarters, jammed his detergent and dryer sheets on top of the laundry in the bag, and headed down to the laundromat on the next block.

The people Stiles usually saw during his Monday laundry sessions were there—the two people in heavy eyeliner whose genders Stiles wasn’t sure of (their jumble of underwear, going around in the dryer, had never helped him toward figuring that out) and the skinny Korean guy who Stiles thought was probably a waiter—he was always carefully folding identical pairs of black pants and black button-down shirts, so Stiles thought he probably worked somewhere kind of swank. He’d been thinking that when he had enough money to quit whoring he’d ask the guy if they needed a busboy or dishwasher or something.

There was also the usual smattering of rough-looking guys and women doing laundry out of garbage bags—those faces were different every week, but, just like Stiles’s customers, they were always basically the same set of people, SOMA’s finest pulling it together enough to do some laundry on a Monday.

Stiles couldn’t command his usual preferred washer, but he found an acceptable one and got his laundry started—his tight jeans and tiny t-shirts didn’t take up much laundry space, at least. He could fit Laura’s hoodie in without having to do a second load. He went over to his usual molded yellow plastic chair—no one had taken that, at least—and settled in, two seats down from the Korean waiter.

“You doing okay?” the guy asked.

Stiles looked over at him, and suddenly realized that he was a regular himself—Korean Waiter had been sitting here wondering where White Twink Hooker was. It was a weird feeling; it made it somehow real. This was actually his life. Other people saw him doing this.

“Yeah, man, I’m fine,” Stiles said, shoving the weirdness away and manufacturing a smile. “Long night.”

Korean Waiter gave him a commiserating look and said, “I was gonna try to keep your washer free, but…”

Stiles looked over and saw who was using his usual washer, and quickly shook his head. He wouldn’t have argued with that lady either. “Yeah, no. Thanks, man.”

Korean Waiter nodded again and went back to frowning down at his phone, and Stiles tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling until his phone vibrated in his pocket, telling him to go move his stuff to the dryer.

Notes for the Chapter:

The Sexual Assault tag is for an incident in Chapter 5: Stiles is tricked into a car and then threatened by a man with a gun, who takes Stiles to a hotel room and forces him to take off his clothes. Stiles is frightened of being murdered or raped the entire time, but the man doesn’t actually touch him or harm him. You can search for the phrase “Art Institute” to get to the part where the assault is over and the comfort happens, or go to Chapter 6 to skip all of it.

6. Chapter 6

Stiles considered, on and off, texting Derek to ask whether they were still on for Tuesday night. He spent a few hours—while getting his weekly STD test and wandering around the library, not looking at anything—halfway convinced that he was going to send a text that said, So are you going to let Chris Argent decide who can suck your dick?

When he actually typed out the words and looked at them, though, he got this awful feeling like Derek might say yes, a fluttering in his chest that felt like the beginnings of a panic attack or maybe like something else. Maybe hope. Then he thought about texting Derek to say he wasn’t feeling like it—he had Derek’s stupid pile of money from Sunday, he didn’t really need Tuesday money, he could stay in—but he knew that that panicky feeling was about that fucking creep, and Stiles was determined not to give in to it.

He didn’t have an actual panic attack, so that had to mean he was okay. The creepy feeling of dread down his spine was a proportional response, probably. It wasn’t weird to be a little freaked out, but he had to get back on the horse—he had to get back on the horse now, with Derek, before he had to go back to other customers. He could ignore the little shivers of fear, anyway, as long as it didn’t stop him from breathing. He could do this. It was his job and he could do it. As long as Derek didn’t tell him he couldn’t.

Stiles didn’t text Derek, and Derek didn’t text him. A little before one in the morning on Tuesday night, Stiles put Laura’s hoodie in a shopping bag, put his work clothes on plus a hoodie against the chilly rain, and got himself on a bus heading up to the Marina. He checked his phone about every twenty seconds, but there were still no texts from Derek, or from anyone else.

When the bus stopped Stiles mumbled his usual thanks to the driver and stepped toward the door. He stopped short on the bottom step, because there was someone standing there, but not like they were waiting to get on the bus. They were hanging back in the shadow of a building. Stiles felt a sudden sharp spike of fear and shifted his weight backward—he could wait, get off at the next stop and double back—but then Derek stepped forward and Stiles exhaled.

“I actually deliver right to your door,” Stiles said, stepping down onto the sidewalk. “You didn’t have to come meet me.”

Derek rolled his eyes and tossed something as the bus pulled away, and Stiles caught it automatically, even though he dropped the shopping bag with Laura’s hoodie in the process. He froze when he saw what he was holding, looking down at it under the streetlight. “Is this—”

“Hold it so your fingers fit into the grooves, that way you don’t shoot yourself in the face,” Derek said.

“You bought me mace?” Stiles said, but he turned the little canister in his hand so he could tell how it was supposed to go.

“It’s the kind with nerve gas, pepper spray, and ultraviolet dye, so whoever you hit with it can be identified later,” Derek said. “You aim for the eyes and push down with your thumb, and then you run while you call 911, okay?”

“Um,” Stiles said, finally looking up at Derek, who was staring at him with an almost scary intensity; it was easier to look down at the mace. He thumbed the cover on the button open and closed. “I. Okay?”

“This is the deal now,” Derek said. “You carry that, and if that guy shows up again, you use it. Or if anybody tries anything on you. You use it. Okay?”

“You bought me mace,” Stiles repeated. It was a sweeter gesture than the candy.

“I can’t keep paying you to do this if you’re not going to be able to protect yourself,” Derek said, sounding faintly impatient for the first time. “It’s this or Laura gives you self-defense lessons. Or both, if you want.”

“I, uh, this is probably easier to schedule,” Stiles said, and shoved the mace into his pocket before bending over to grab the bag he’d dropped, not letting himself think about it being sweet. “Laura, um, loaned me this. I washed it.”

Derek reached for the bag, taking it when Stiles held it out. “This is mine,” he said, frowning down at it. “Laura said I must have lost it doing laundry. I knew she was lying.”

“Oh, um.” Stiles made vague jazz hands at the bag. “There you go, then.”

Derek smiled a little, and Stiles found himself smiling back. Something unclenched in his chest. It was Derek, just Derek, the same as ever, even if he had something new to be weird about. This could be okay.

“We should think about going indoors for the actual commission of felonies,” Stiles said, tilting his head toward Derek’s place, and Derek rolled his eyes like Stiles was the one being indiscreet when Derek waited for him at the bus stop.

“Oh my God, you were waiting for me at the bus stop, what is that?”

Derek’s shoulders hunched a little, and Stiles almost felt bad about making him feel weird, except he was pretty sure it was legitimately weird this time, not just Derek feeling weird about normal stuff. “How did you even know which bus I would be on? There’s like four different ways I could have come up here, were you wandering from bus stop to bus stop?”

“This one was the closest,” Derek said, but he didn’t look at Stiles when he said it. “I guessed.”

“Sure,” Stiles said, and then realized—what else could he do? Accuse Derek of stalking him? Accuse Derek of liking him? The thing that actually leaped to mind was the way his mom used to collect him from the bus stop when he was in first grade and—no. Not talking or thinking about that in relation to Derek, not now or ever.

The rest of the walk back to Derek’s place was silent, and mercifully short. As they walked up the stairs to Derek’s front door Stiles’s brain switched into professional gear, which he’d been totally jarred out of by seeing Derek on the sidewalk. Now he was at Derek’s, walking up to the door, which meant it was time to start the usual negotiation over activities and prices. He’d been thinking about that on the bus, while staring at his silent phone. He’d tried to figure out what Derek was going to want, what they would do. And now the rubber was going to meet the road and Stiles was realizing that there was something he had to do, whether it was part of what Derek wanted or not.

Derek ushered him in, and Stiles automatically went over and took his shoes off while Derek locked up, tugging his hoodie off over his head and hanging it up on the usual hook.

As he turned to face Derek again Stiles said, “There’s something I need to—” at the same time Derek turned away from the door and said, “There’s something I want to—”

They’d spoken nearly in sync, except for the clash of need and want. Stiles immediately said, “I mean, it’s not—need like—”

Derek shook his head sharply. “Whatever you need. You get to decide how the deal works, too. If you want new rules for tonight or for good, that’s up to you.”

Stiles shook his head quickly. “Not a rule, just—there’s something I want to do and I don’t think you’re going to be really into it, but I’m going to ask you to, as a favor, okay?”

Derek looked wary. “What kind of favor?”

“I—I don’t know what Laura told you about what happened. I told her she could tell you and she said you needed to know.”

Derek gave a short, sharp nod, eyebrows drawing in further. “I have a pretty good idea.”

“Okay,” Stiles said, and tried to keep his voice steady, tried to focus on just saying the words to Derek without really remembering too much. “Well, the thing is—I had to take my clothes off? Which, like, I realize, I do that all the time—”

“Not at gunpoint you don’t,” Derek said flatly. “Not with people who trick you into their car.”

“Yeah, well,” Stiles said, waving his hands and not bothering to argue with the details there. “That’s—that’s the thing, though, is—I think I might have a little problem with it now, and I want to try with you. I want—I need to practice. On you, because I—I know you.”

“You need to practice taking your clothes off,” Derek said, still wary and flat, entirely aware that there was some kind of catch here.

“I need to take my clothes off while you still have all of yours on,” Stiles explained. “I need to practice letting you see me like that. Getting looked at like that. I know that’s not really your thing, but—seriously, it would be a favor. I will totally not argue about whatever it is you wanted to ask for in exchange, man.”

Derek looked, if possible, even warier. “No. I’m not going to ask if you’re going to agree in advance. This is something you have to be able to say no to.”

“I—”

“Don’t say you trust me,” Derek said sharply. “I’m not—I don’t want you trusting me that much, not with this.”

Stiles threw his hands up. “Well, too bad! You’re my fucking regular customer non-stranger and I spent a day sleeping on your sister’s couch. I trust you. If you’re going to keep saying considerate shit like that I am going to keep fucking trusting you, so either resign yourself to fucking me like you did the other night or tell me what you actually want.”

Stiles could actually see the muscles bunching in Derek’s jaw as he ground his teeth and his nostrils flared. He ducked his head, clearly working on pulling himself together, and then he repeated, “You can’t say yes in advance. You have to decide whether it’s all right with you. If it’s not we can do the usual stuff.”

“Okay,” Stiles said. “Okay, sure, if it’s something viscerally terrible I will say no.”

Derek didn’t look up. His shoulders hunched up and his hands closed into fists, and Stiles felt a shiver of actual fear of what Derek might be working himself up to asking for.

Derek said, low and reluctant, “I want to kiss you.”

Stiles’s mouth dropped open and he just stood there staring blankly at Derek with no thoughts in his head at all until Derek risked a cautious glance up at him and then quickly looked away again.

“No,” Stiles said, “I mean, yes—I—not no, just—uh, hang on, I’m going to stop talking.”

Derek was looking at him again, a little bit sideways, and almost smiling.

Okay, so hookers weren’t supposed to kiss on the mouth, because it was personal and, Stiles was just guessing here, probably hard to fake. He definitely wouldn’t have wanted any of his normal customers’ mouths all up in his mouth, even the ones who it would shut up for a few merciful minutes.

Derek, though—he wouldn’t mind kissing Derek at all, he was pretty sure. He wouldn’t have to fake anything other than knowing how to kiss, since up until now he’d been insisting that he’d had a first kiss on the basis of one closed-mouth smooch from Amber Johnston in seventh grade, in the hallway at a middle school dance. It had been a dare, which she’d told him in advance, so there were no hard feelings. Before that all he had to go on was a few curious lip-smacks from Heather when they were in kindergarten. Derek probably wanted something a little more involved than that.

But it was personal, it was—he’d seen Pretty Woman, he knew it made things unprofessional. But everything Derek had just said about not wanting Stiles to trust him said everything Stiles needed to know about how much Derek didn’t want this getting unprofessional.

It occurred to Stiles suddenly that Derek had never offered to rescue him from his life of prostitution, never asked him to give up fucking other dudes for money and just be Derek’s. Stiles had gotten that offer from guys he’d known less than fifteen minutes, but not Derek, not even now. Derek had just given Stiles mace and told him not to trust him so much.

So Derek wasn’t going to get unprofessional about it. And Stiles knew better than to think anything unprofessional was going to happen. If he had dumb feelings about Derek because of kissing, they probably wouldn’t be any dumber than the feelings he had from Derek fucking him until he came or cuddling him while he slept.

Derek had stopped smiling while Stiles was figuring that out.

Stiles gave what he hoped was a totally businesslike nod and said, “Okay, I think we can do that. It’s a special rate, obviously. Did you want to add it on to a fuck or a blowjob or something?”

Derek shrugged stiffly. “I kind of just wanted to do that for a while. Maybe a handjob or something? If you’re going to want me to keep my clothes on.”

Stiles nodded briskly. “Bedroom?”

Derek shook his head. “Couch tonight. Come on.”

Stiles realized there was actually a lamp turned on in the little living room, a space he’d never really noticed before except as the dim place he walked through to get to Derek’s bedroom. It was nice, if weirdly lacking in a TV. There was a couch against the wall, with a familiar-looking knit blanket crumpled up at one end.

“Is that Laura’s?”

Derek made kind of a weird face and shook his head as he sat down on the couch, reaching out to touch it. “No, this one’s mine. Laura made it, though. She did a lot of knitting for a while.”

Derek wasn’t looking at Stiles. He was frowning down at the blanket, watching his own hand pluck at it while Stiles stood awkwardly in front of him where a coffee table wasn’t, obstructing his view of the nonexistent TV.

“The first few years we were on our own,” Derek said, and Stiles mentally translated that to the first few years after our entire family died in a fire, “Laura was trying really hard to be—something. A family, even though we were just two teenagers in a shitty apartment together. I ran away from her about a dozen times before I turned eighteen.”

Stiles told himself that this was not the weirdest or most personal thing anyone had ever confessed to him. He and Derek weren’t strangers, that was all.

“I did my share of stupid things,” Derek said. “If I never officially fucked people for money it’s only because I couldn’t ever stick with running away long enough to get to it. I always gave up and called Laura to come and find me when things got scary. She always did. With a blanket, sometimes.”

Stiles couldn’t think about what that story was supposed to mean, or about Derek doing what he was doing, or—any of it, basically.

Derek looked up, and Stiles hooked his thumbs into his jeans, drawing Derek’s gaze straight to his crotch. “If I take my clothes off are you going to try to wrap me in a blanket?”

Derek’s eyes flicked up to his. Derek gave him a smile that was almost a smirk, letting it be mostly a joke, although he sounded perfectly serious as he said, “Only if you ask me to.”

Stiles definitely wasn’t going to think about what that could mean—it was just about a blanket, just about this right now. Right now he was taking his clothes off for practice and then kissing Derek for money. Nothing else.

Stiles shifted his hands to his t-shirt, which was tight enough that he had to peel it up and off girl-style from the bottom. Stiles didn’t even have it all the way off when he saw Derek’s eyes focus on the marks on Stiles’s side, the ones Derek’s mouth had left, and Stiles couldn’t imagine anything less like the moment when he’d had to let Chris Argent see them. Stiles yanked his shirt the rest of the way off and kept his arms over his head, turning halfway toward Derek to let him see. Derek’s eyes stayed fixed on the string of bruises trailing down from Stiles’s ribs, even when Stiles did a dumb little hip-shake to try to throw him.

Derek’s hand lifted, like he wanted to touch, and then dropped down to his thigh, curling into a fist. It was like he thought this was a strip club and he wasn’t allowed to touch, which was sort of hilarious. It was also just so Derek that Stiles upped the hip-shake to a jerky attempt at actual shimmying.

That did make Derek look up enough to meet his eyes, but he didn’t look any less appreciative. Stiles burst out laughing anyway, but he dropped his t-shirt and started getting his jeans open, still swaying a little as he worked. “You like what you see, mister?”

“I didn’t agree to weird role play,” Derek replied. “But yes.”

Stiles snorted. If that counted as weird role play for Derek then his sexual horizons were incredibly narrow for a dude paying stacks of cash to fuck a teenager. Stiles started peeling his jeans down, shuffling forward a little as he dragged his pants and underwear down together far enough to show the crease of his hip, where there was another little bruise.

“Here, check that one out,” Stiles offered, his dick flopping as he shoved his jeans the rest of the way down. He didn’t look up far enough to see Derek’s face, but his hand twitched again. Stiles toed his socks off and then stepped in closer, fully naked with his feet almost between Derek’s.

It didn’t feel like stripping for Chris Argent at all. He thought distantly this is terrible practice, this isn’t going to help but he was distracted by the way Derek was looking him up and down, his gaze jumping from place to place on Stiles’s skin. Stiles turned in a slow circle, letting Derek see him everywhere, and this time when he saw Derek’s hand move, Stiles reached down and caught it, bringing Derek’s hand over to settle on the outside of his thigh.

Derek sat forward, following where Stiles moved him, and he ran his hand up and down Stiles’s thigh for a moment before he leaned in and touched his mouth, soft and wet, to the mark he’d left on Stiles’s groin. Stiles stood staring down at him, watching his own dick fill while Derek just brushed his lips over Stiles’s skin, and then Stiles gently shoved him back.

“I don’t think that was the kind of kissing you had in mind, was it?”

Derek slumped all the way back against the couch cushions and shook his head, meeting Stiles’s eyes now like there was nowhere else at all that he wanted to look. Stiles moved in, planting his knees outside Derek’s thighs and bracing his hands on the back of the couch above Derek’s shoulders. He scooted in so he was perched on Derek’s thighs looking down at him, trying not to think too much about the way the worn denim of Derek’s jeans felt against his bare ass.

“So I don’t know what exactly you were thinking,” Stiles said, bending his head cautiously toward Derek’s. His heart was beating faster now, anticipating something new, something weird, something he might be totally awful at but wanted to try anyway; he had a flash of memory of trying out skateboard tricks with Scott, eyeing the stair railings at the park and daring each other.

“Maybe you should, um…”

“Like this.” Derek reached up and settled his hand on Stiles’s cheek, tilting his head and holding him just where Derek wanted him. Derek pushed up slightly into the kiss, and Stiles’s breath caught at the first contact of lips on lips even though it was just that, their closed mouths brushing lightly over each other.

“Oh,” Stiles said, trying not to sound giddy and breathless and like he desperately wanted to do that again. “Okay, we can…”

He tried it again and again, dragging his lips across Derek’s without pushing, enjoying the gentle friction of skin on skin. Derek’s lips were very soft; his own felt a little chapped. Derek’s hand stayed on his face, just the right amount of warmth against his cheek, not pushing him anywhere.

It didn’t take long before Stiles was shifting restlessly on Derek’s thighs, his hands dropping to grip Derek’s shoulders. Derek’s hand stayed light on his cheek, but Stiles pushed harder into Derek’s undemanding kisses until Derek tilted his head back to laugh.

“Come on,” Stiles said, and was surprised to find he was breathless, heart beating fast, halfway hard already when he hadn’t even gotten tongue. “I’m going to refuse to take your money if this is all you wanted.”

Derek raised his eyebrow and shifted his legs to rock Stiles on his lap. “You bored already?”

Stiles felt himself flush a little—it had to be obvious to Derek how not-boring Stiles was finding this—but he held Derek’s gaze and said, “I’m just saying, man, so far you haven’t done anything I charge for. You wanna do this all night, I’m not taking anything but bus fare when I leave.”

There was a weird fluttering sensation in his stomach like he actually wouldn’t mind if this was all Derek wanted, just this warm and easy thing that didn’t go anywhere, but that had to be a bad idea. Luckily just saying that seemed to be enough to spook Derek away from it.

“Come here, then.” Derek shifted his hand from Stiles’s cheek to the back of his neck, tugging him in gently, guiding him to lean further over Derek.

This time when Stiles pressed his lips to Derek’s, he felt Derek’s mouth open under his, warm and wet. Stiles followed suit, cautiously pressing his tongue into Derek’s mouth. He didn’t taste like anything, but Stiles was still oddly struck by being inside Derek in this little way. In the next second Derek’s tongue pressed against his, and the sensation of it was so weird that Stiles sort of laughed into Derek’s mouth, shivering all over. He sealed his mouth to Derek’s again before Derek could react, shoving his tongue gracelessly inside, looking for that touch again, and Derek’s hand slid away from the back of his neck as Derek hooked his arm around instead.

The next kiss wasn’t weird, just tingly-hot. Derek’s mouth was open to his, letting him in, letting him have whatever he wanted. Stiles forgot to pretend that he didn’t want this, didn’t want Derek. Stiles kissed him greedily, hungrily, learning his mouth one spit-slick taste at a time. He scooted in on Derek’s lap, his hands wandering restlessly. When Derek’s hips pushed up Stiles’s hand dropped like it was magnetized, finding Derek’s cock in his still-zipped jeans.

Stiles pulled away to ask him what he wanted, but Derek didn’t let him speak, leaning in to kiss him again and again. Stiles was breathless, and his lips were tingling and almost raw, but he kept going back for more kisses. He kept his hand on Derek’s cock, giving Derek something to grind against; he seemed like he was holding back for a while, only moving in irregular stutters, but eventually he got a rhythm going.

It felt good, even powerful in the way that giving a blowjob used to feel powerful, to be taking Derek apart like this with just his mouth and his hand. Stiles wasn’t giving him anything but kisses and still-clothed friction and Derek was shaking under him like he couldn’t stand it. Stiles tried scraping his teeth against Derek’s lower lip, and Derek made a startled noise and jerked up hard against Stiles’s hand. Stiles felt the unmistakable damp heat of Derek coming in his pants.

Stiles leaned back, somewhere between startled and awed. He watched his own hand like it was porn, rocking against the bulge of Derek’s cock until Derek caught his wrist and tugged his hand away. Stiles looked up, and it was only when he met Derek’s eyes that he became entirely aware of himself—his nakedness, and his dick standing up ridiculously hard against his belly, leaking already, and his lips that had to be blazing red. Stiles licked his lips just to feel the way they tingled against his tongue.

Derek groaned and twisted, dropping Stiles onto the couch and following him down, leaning over him and kissing him again as Stiles writhed against the cushions. Derek’s mouth was a different kind of soft against his now, lazy and easy instead of just letting him take the lead. Now Derek was pressing him into the couch and Derek finally closed his hand on Stiles’s dick.

Stiles let out a startled noise that turned into a porn-worthy moan as Derek started jerking him off. They were still kissing—Stiles never wanted to stop kissing—and Derek’s hand had barely gotten a rhythm going before Stiles was coming. Derek stroked him through it, and Derek’s mouth never left his until Stiles pulled back a little, trying to catch his breath. Even then Derek didn’t move back far enough to look him in the eye.

It was only then, with his dick going soft and Derek poised over him—not resting any weight on him but not giving him anywhere else to go—that kissing started to seem weird again. He’d had his face all up on Derek’s dick, he’d had Derek’s mouth on his ass, but somehow this thing where they were face to face in a way that you could show on TV in the middle of the day, this was the thing that made Stiles feel not just naked but like he was missing a layer of skin. Even Derek’s breath felt like too much, exhaled onto his lips.

Stiles didn’t pull away any further, though.

“Stay awhile,” Derek said softly. “I’m not done kissing you yet. I’m going to make you earn that two hundred.”

“Sure,” Stiles agreed, and realized as he spoke that he was grinning. “But if you stop kissing me for more than ten minutes at a time, cuddling rates apply.”

“Sure,” Derek echoed, and brushed his mouth across Stiles’s again.

Stiles fell asleep in the middle of kissing, an hour or so after they moved the party to Derek’s bed. Derek held on to him like a teddy bear until it was broad daylight outside. He took Stiles home at nine in the morning with an improbable amount of money stuffed in his pocket to finish sleeping there. Stiles woke up at noon, early for him, feeling weirdly well-rested. He was nearly bouncing off the walls by the time two o’clock rolled around and he felt safe going over to the library.

He stopped short at the notice on the door, and suddenly understood what Laura had meant when she said Thursday? so dubiously, like no one should be starting their work-week on Thursday.

The library will be closed Thursday, November 25 for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Stiles went inside, brain already whirring frantically, trying to think of what he was going to do. He couldn’t check anything out from the library—he’d need a card, which would mean showing ID, which would mean getting caught—so he’d have nothing to do tomorrow except try not to think. He could… drink, probably. He’d already decided day-drinking was okay on holidays.

He gathered the stuff he’d been studying, took it to one of the quieter corners, and then fished his phone out of his pocket and texted Frank. Regular hours tomorrow?

He opened a book and tried to study while he waited for Frank’s response, but he didn’t take in a word. He had to get up and move spots twice when he got too restless to stay still. After half an hour his phone finally buzzed.

Frank’s text said, Don’t need you, you’re not the kind they want on holidays. Switching you to full call-out anyway, street traffic’s bad in the winter.

Stiles blinked, staring at the phone, and then typed, Call-out?

Frank’s reply was almost fast enough for him not to fidget, waiting. I’ll tell you when you’re needed and where to go. Mostly hotels. You should still get your days off, I’ll check with you if I get a request M-W.

Stiles thought no more getting in cars and then frowned down at his phone, wondering if Laura had somehow forced Frank to change the terms of his employment. His thumb hovered over the keys as he tried to think of how to ask, and then Stiles realized he was happier not knowing.

Ok, he sent back, shoved his phone into his pocket, and went back to staring at his books without reading them, trying not to think of anything all, and definitely not of Thanksgiving.

A little after five, his phone buzzed again, rescuing him from staring fixedly at the wall and mentally replaying The Professional line by line to stop himself from thinking about anything else. Stiles wondered if it was Frank with an assignment already, or…

He frowned a little when he pulled the phone out and saw a text from Laura’s number.

Lie convincingly to me about your dinner plans for tomorrow or be at my place at three o’clock. Your choice.

Stiles stared down at his phone, trying to imagine what might qualify as a convincing lie. If he and Korean Waiter were friends, maybe, or if he’d ever met Frank’s other whores more than passing them at Frank’s car, if he’d tried to make friends with those hard-eyed slim boys. If he had fucking anyone in the world other than Laura who gave a fuck where he spent Thanksgiving. Laura and Derek.

If he were giving up and going back to Beacon Hills.

He shuddered, thinking of what was waiting for him in Beacon Hills—just a cold and long-overdue visit to the cemetery, and then—and then Scott’s mom being kind, and then the system, and…

Stiles shook his head and forced his eyes open, wiping them with the back of his hand and then staring at the wall again. He picked up the movie where he’d left off, Leon making the pig oven mitts grunt to tease Matilda. When he got to the end of that scene, he could at least look at his phone again, typing with shaking fingers, Should I bring anything?

Stiles checked his phone as he stepped off the bus; it was 2:53 as he walked up the sidewalk to Laura and Derek’s. It looked weird in daylight, or weirdly not-weird, just an ordinary neighborhood. He wasn’t coming here to work; he was coming for Thanksgiving dinner.

Laura opened the door to him before he could knock or ring the bell, and she beamed at the white bakery box in Stiles’s hands. “Pie?”

“Um,” Stiles said. “Dessert empanadas. Four kinds.”

“Perfect,” Laura pronounced. Her eye skipped up and down Stiles’s body, and he looked down at himself. He’d worn not-working clothes, retrieved from the bottom of the pile of his clothes: clean loose khakis, and a long-sleeved plaid shirt mostly buttoned over his plainest t-shirt, dark blue with a target on the chest. He had a dark blue suit jacket on, too, one he’d picked up yesterday at Goodwill. It hadn’t smelled like anyone had died in it when he dug it out of the bin. It fit all right, too, but that consideration had honestly been a distant second.

“Good,” she decided. “You look just right.”

Stiles straightened up a little at her approval, and held out the box to her.

“Hang on to that,” Laura said, and she stepped out onto the stoop rather than letting him in. “So we’re going somewhere else—the people who run the hotline where I work, they do a big open house Thanksgiving dinner and invite basically everyone in San Francisco who doesn’t have anywhere else to be. You won’t be the only kid your age on your own there, okay? There will be a lot of people, no one’s going to ask you questions, and I’ll stay right with you if you want me to.”

Stiles swallowed and nodded.

“And if you don’t want Derek there,” Laura went on, “I will tell him to stay home and order takeout.”

Stiles jerked back, and then shook his head quickly. “Don’t—Derek shouldn’t have to be by himself, I can—”

“Stiles, I don’t know if you’ve met Derek, but he’s not really big on people,” Laura said, smiling slightly. “He kind of hates this thing. I drag him out because it’s good for him to interact with people who—” Laura broke off, and Stiles mentally filled in who he’s not paying for sex.

“Aren’t me,” Laura finished. “So if you’re not going to be able to relax with him there, believe me, it’s no hardship for him to stay away.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Stiles said, hoping he wasn’t saying it too quickly, hoping he didn’t sound too much like he actively wanted Derek there. “He could come. You’re right, he should, um, meet people.”

Laura gave him a long, steady look, but then she nodded and said, “All right, let’s go get him,” and led Stiles inside.

Given what he’d already observed about Derek’s freaky hearing—and the fact that Laura had probably already told him he might or might not be coming to Thanksgiving dinner—it was no surprise when Derek opened the door of his apartment almost as soon as Laura’s knuckles made contact.

Derek was dressed the way Derek always dressed, in tight dark jeans and a soft dark henley—this one was cranberry-colored, probably Derek’s attempt to be festive—under a leather jacket.

“Grab whatever you’re bringing,” Laura said. “I’ll be right back.”

Derek nodded and his eyes flicked down Stiles’s body before he turned away, too. He didn’t ask Stiles in, and Stiles stayed there in the hall, feeling awkward. He wasn’t here for Derek, so he didn’t belong in Derek’s apartment, but it was the most familiar place in the building. If he took three steps inside he’d see the bed he’d woken up in yesterday morning. But he’d also see the spot where Derek paid him a few hundred dollars for that service, so on balance he should probably stay in the hall.

Derek came back holding, improbably, an entire Crock Pot in one arm, the cord neatly coiled and secured with a twist tie.

“Did you cook?” Stiles blurted.

Derek shrugged. “It’s not hard. Just something Laura likes.”

“Don’t even think about it, Stiles, that whole pot of soup is mine,” Laura declared, coming back down the stairs in a hip-length leather jacket, two reusable shopping bags swinging from her hand. “Okay, let’s roll.”

There was a staggering amount of food laid out on the tables and counters in the kitchen and dining room; Stiles tried to pile as many different things as he could onto his plate, then had to figure out how to also hold a bowl of Derek’s soup when Laura graciously allowed that other people could try it now that she’d served herself a bowlful. It was made of apples and sweet potatoes, but surprisingly spicy, and Stiles’s sinuses felt a little scoured after he’d eaten it.

Eating was good, because no one really tried to talk to him while he perched on the corner of a couch, shoveling down food with Laura planted between him and all the other—many—people in the room. When he stopped eating he was apparently fair game.

Laura had been right; no one asked him intrusive questions, but they did try to engage with him, making eye contact and using his name and asking for his opinion on whatever they were talking about. Laura gently deflected people away from him, but that was its own version of the same thing; every time someone else was nice to him Stiles wanted to scream, to say something really cruel, to offer to blow someone for twenty bucks or a beer.

On the other hand, three different people offered him pie while he sat there, and the fourth person offered him a glass of wine. Stiles accepted all of them—something to do with his hands, something to do with his mouth so he wouldn’t do something stupid. If he was sucking down pie he couldn’t tell everyone he was a runaway whore who didn’t even want to be rescued by some nice responsible grownup. He was halfway through the glass of wine and three-quarters of the way through the last slice of pie when someone used the word covenant—talking about a fucking condo or something—and it tripped a switch in his brain.

All of Stiles’s bad impulses of the last hour boiled up and out of him in the form of a recitation, with verbal footnotes and tangents, of the paper he’d written on the history of male circumcision. He watched the faces of the people around him turn from politely interested to pitying to vaguely alarmed, but he couldn’t stop talking, and no one made him. He just kept barreling along like there was a safe landing somewhere if he could just get to the end of the story. If he just fucking knew what the end of the story was.

He stopped for breath somewhere close to the end, talking about the differential rates of disease transmission between circumcised and uncircumcised men, and Laura’s hand closed firmly on his arm, getting his attention.

“Stiles,” she said briskly, “could you just go see if you can find Derek? I think he’s hiding again.”

Stiles actually coughed around the frantic pileup of words in his throat, but he managed not to start up again. He nodded and stood, left his pie plate and wineglass on the first horizontal surface he passed, and didn’t let anyone stop him until he got to the bathroom. He splashed some water on his face and then peed while thinking unpleasant thoughts about how fucked up his eating-and-shitting schedule was going to be after this. He thought for a second about throwing up so he wouldn’t mess himself up so badly, and then realized what he was thinking and turned away from the toilet, washing his hands until they were a slightly scalded pink.

After that, he definitely wasn’t going back to the living room where Laura was sitting with all those nice normal people. There were new people arriving in a flurry of greetings and hugs and new food-smells at the front door, so Stiles slipped away up the stairs. It was quieter upstairs, although there were still people, gathered in the hallway and in bedrooms in small groups having intense low-voiced conversations. There was one more staircase up, but the lights were off at the top and it was obviously not where guests were supposed to be.

On the other hand, it was probably quiet up there. Stiles checked that no one was watching him and then hurried up on his tiptoes.

There was another hallway, seeming pitch-dark except for a weirdly-shaped little window at the far end letting in fading gray light. Then Derek moved, and Stiles realized the window was a perfectly normal rectangle, it just had Derek leaning halfway out of it.

Stiles hesitated, but Derek said quietly, “Did Laura send you to find me?”

Stiles shrugged. “I mean, that’s what she said—”

Derek moved sharply, waving one hand and bringing the other to his lips. Stiles shushed instantly and Derek beckoned him toward the far end of the hallway. Stiles looked down to make sure no one had heard him and then hurried over.

“It’s only a good hiding place if no one realizes anyone else has come up here,” Derek said softly, almost a whisper, when Stiles came over. Stiles nodded and leaned against the opposite side of the window. It was chilly, but there was a breeze coming in, carrying the almost-fresh smell of the ocean to cut the heavily mingled scents of food and wine and too many people.

Derek leaned out again, and there was enough light—or Stiles’s eyes had adjusted enough—that Stiles could see the way his expression eased a little as he leaned out into the salt-smelling air, his eyes closing as he breathed deeply through his nose.

“You really, really hate this, don’t you,” Stiles said.

Derek shrugged and didn’t open his eyes. “It makes Laura happy. Feeling like we sort of belong somewhere.”

Stiles huffed and leaned closer to Derek to inhale the smell of the ocean. “Can’t she just do all the belonging for all of us? She’s good at it.”

Derek snorted agreement. They stood there for another minute, sharing the window, before Derek said, “You wanna get out of here?”

Stiles turned his head to just stare at Derek, because that was a line, but Derek was already wincing and shaking his head.

“Not like that. Just, I’m ready to leave, are you ready to leave?”

“Right,” Stiles said.

Derek wouldn’t actually use a line. Derek would just say, Let’s go back to my place and I’ll pay you to blow me or whatever. Leaving here would mean going back to his place and still having the whole night ahead of him to do nothing, but at least he’d gotten a meal out of it, and he probably wouldn’t get sick-drunk with this much food already lining his stomach. If Derek was going to leave there wouldn’t be any point in staying just to hide out up here alone. If he left with Derek at least he could hang out with Derek on the walk back to the bus stop.

Derek was watching him like his answer mattered. Stiles shrugged and nodded. “Yeah, let’s go.”

Derek gave him a weird, shy smile, and then leaned out the window and looked down. “Not this way, I guess.”

Stiles was startled into a little laugh. “No. Although Laura wouldn’t see us, at least.”

“I think there’s a better window lower down,” Derek agreed, like he seriously did plan on going out a window. He pulled himself back inside, brushing past Stiles as he headed for the stairs, and Stiles followed on his heels.

On the next floor down, Derek went straight for the rearmost bedroom, grabbing Stiles’s hand to pull him along. No one else was in this room right now, but Derek let go of Stiles’s hand and went right for the window, opening it and leaning out, like he seriously—

“I can lower you down and then jump,” Derek announced, still smiling a little bit. “It’s not that far from here.”

Stiles stared at him, thinking about arguing for a second, and then grinned. They were escaping out the window, hell yes. He crowded up next to Derek to see how far down it was, but it didn’t look that bad; they were on the second floor, but the ground was higher at the back of the house than the front. He could just about hang from the window and drop even without Derek’s help.

“Okay,” Stiles said, climbing out. He focused on not falling instead of on Derek’s hands guiding him through the window frame and steadying him as he turned to drop his legs down. Derek’s hands closed around his upper arms, helping to take his weight and hold him away from the wall, lowering him down a little further.

“Ready?” Derek asked, and Stiles barely had time to nod before Derek dropped him. He hit the ground on his feet and crumpled against the wall of the house, feeling a little breathless from the drop. He heard a thump behind him and turned to see Derek had landed in a crouch, one hand out to steady himself.

“Dude,” Stiles said, sincerely impressed.

Derek flashed him a toothy smile and said, “I think if we stay close to the house no one will see us before we get to the sidewalk.”

Stiles nodded quickly and headed for the corner, and Derek stayed right behind him. They made it to the end of the block before Derek looked back like he thought Laura might actually chase them down the street and drag them back, and Stiles burst out laughing.

Derek grinned at him and said, “You have no idea what it was like, growing up with her.”

Stiles looked away, not thinking too much about growing up. They walked side by side in silence until Stiles said, “Laura’s gonna have to bring back the Crock Pot.”

“That’s what she gets for stealing my sweatshirt for a year,” Derek replied immediately, sounding genuinely irritated about it. “The Crock Pot is hers anyway. I just borrowed it from her to make the soup.”

Stiles nodded, and they both fell silent again for a while. It was a longish walk back to Derek and Laura’s, but downhill through unthreatening neighborhoods, even in the falling dark. When they were a block away Stiles fished the folded, tattered bus schedule out of his pocket and squinted at it, trying to figure out the holiday schedule.

Derek said, “Oh, are you…”

Stiles looked up.

“I thought we could,” Derek said, and then shook his head, looking sharply away.

“Oh,” Stiles said. “Did you want, um—I mean, it’s usually a work day for me anyway…”

When Stiles actually thought about it, though, the prospect of any kind of vigorous activity was sort of nauseating at the moment, and if he lay down flat he was going to fall asleep. Also his ass was a no-go zone for the next several hours.

Derek looked sort of horrified, though. “No! No, it’s a holiday, Laura would literally kill me. And you shouldn’t have to—no, I just meant, you could stay a while? Watch some movies or something.”

“Oh,” Stiles said, and his stomach clenched around too much food, thinking of what his holidays with his dad had dwindled down to the in the last few years, eating store-bought pie in front of whichever movies were on cable.

It wouldn’t be the same with Derek, but it was a hell of a lot nicer thought than going back to his SRO and getting wasted.

“Yeah,” Stiles said, and then, as he followed Derek up the stairs to his front door, “Wait, you don’t even have a TV.”

“Laura does,” Derek said with a shrug. “I have a key to her place. That’s—probably a better place to hang out, anyway.”

Not the couch they’d made out on for hours, not the bed where Derek had fucked him, where they’d slept together the other night.

“Oh,” Stiles said. “Yeah, that works.”

He followed Derek up the flight of stairs to Laura’s, and Derek let them in and waved at the shelf of DVDs. “You can pick, I don’t care.”

Derek disappeared in the direction of the bathroom, leaving Stiles to browse through the film selection. There was one whole shelf devoted to horror movies, everything from cheesy schlock monsters to some stuff that Stiles wasn’t sure he could stand to watch. He read the backs of all of them, fascinated.

“Stiles, fuck,” Derek said, materializing beside him just to rip a DVD case out of his hand. “Not those, those are—”

Derek waved a quick, dismissive hand over the horror movie shelf. Stiles was about to insist that he really wanted to watch An American Werewolf in London or Saw for Thanksgiving out of sheer contrarianism, but his eye skipped down to the lower shelf, which had normal movies—Jurassic Park and Kill Bill and Labyrinth, and—

“Oh, shit, can we watch Charlie Brown?” Stiles asked before he could stop himself, his voice almost squeaking on the words. As soon as they were out he heard how stupid it sounded, and he said, “I mean, you know, that’s—”

“No, that’s good,” Derek said, picking up the DVD. “Did you get to see Great Pumpkin this year? We never watched it.”

Well, if Derek wanted to, that made it all right. “Yeah, we could do the whole set,” Stiles agreed, and went to sit on the couch when Derek waved him in that direction.

It wasn’t even anything special—it wasn’t like a big tradition, watching Peanuts holiday specials, but he’d watched them from the couch at his parents’ house and sitting on carpet squares in the second grade classroom, and now he was settling down on Laura’s couch with Derek to watch cartoons. Derek reached over and dropped a blanket on him without really looking at him. Stiles tugged it over himself while Derek cued up the DVD.

He was asleep before Linus’s second trip to the pumpkin patch.

Stiles woke up with his cheek pressed to Derek’s bicep. He looked up first, and found Derek asleep too, with his head tilted back and mouth hanging open. The TV was still on, now showing one of the Mythbusters guys talking to some dude in a trucker hat about a catapult and pumpkins.

Laura was standing in the open front door with a look on her face Stiles couldn’t read.

“We weren’t,” Stiles mumbled, and Derek jerked awake and said, sounding more panicked, “Laura, we weren’t—”

Laura rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Don’t even, either of you. Scoot over, I want to watch Punkin Chunkin.”

Stiles was already kind of mashed up against Derek, but Derek pulled him along toward the left side of the couch, leaving a whole cushion free for Laura to sit down with them. Stiles meant to watch—he should stay awake, it wasn’t anywhere near his bedtime—but he passed out again while Adam was explaining the aerodynamic properties of pumpkins. He wasn’t sure if Laura and Derek were actually talking over his head about building a pumpkin cannon, or if it was only a dream, but it felt safe to doze off between them either way.

7. Chapter 7

Going back to work on Friday seemed even more unjust than having his week start on a Thursday, when everyone else’s was mostly over. Stiles felt new at this all over again, too, doing his same old job in a different way. Frank explained the best ways to get in and out of most of the hotels he was going to be visiting—he would mostly have to go in through the front door but it was usually possible to get out a back way.

“We’re operating on a plausible deniability basis with hotel staff,” Frank said firmly. “They don’t wanna have to call the cops and upset guests, and I don’t wanna cut in ten clerks and twenty rent-a-cops on the business my boys are doing. So you keep your head down, you get in and out quietly, and you don’t make it so they have to know why you’re there, got it?”

Stiles nodded. That was logical, he figured. He could probably even figure out how to get in a back door, stay out of sight completely. He was pretty good at that.

“And if shit goes south, it’s up to you how to handle it on the spot,” Frank went on. “Don’t go offering security a blowjob unless they ask for one. Up to you what to do if they do ask for one, but if something like that goes down I’m going to need to know about it in case I need to be keeping you boys out of that hotel for a while. Still, as long as you’re not wearing hot pants, not doing coke in their bathrooms, and not trying to pick up tricks in their bar, you should be fine.”

Stiles nodded again and thought about what would happen if he wasn’t fine. He imagined Laura coming to get him out of jail and telling him that was it—he was done, he couldn’t work anymore.

He thought about that all night, slinking across hotel lobbies and up to rooms where he tried not to let the guy waiting get between him and the door.

The money was good, anyway. Guys who didn’t have to leave their hotel room for a suck or a fuck tipped pretty generously, and sometimes even extravagantly, although Stiles never had to tell any of them to tip less. He never had to get into anyone’s car at all.

He had the mace in his pocket every time, and he got really good at taking his clothes off the right way so it never fell out and the johns never saw it. It was always there, securing his escape.

He could do this for a few more months. He could handle it as long as no one told him he couldn’t.

Stiles didn’t bother to wonder whether he and Derek were still on for Tuesday, or whether it was going to be weird. He just held Tuesday as a fact in his mind: when he got to Tuesday, he would go to Derek’s and they would fuck in whatever way Derek decided he wanted. Derek would let Stiles sleep in his bed for a while and then give him an arbitrarily ridiculous sum of money. Stiles didn’t let himself think about any other possibility.

When he got to Derek’s—1:57 AM, perfectly prompt, mace in his pocket like a good boy—Derek was leaning in the front door waiting for him. That was an improvement over coming to the bus stop, at least.

Derek took a step back, silently inviting Stiles inside. Stiles followed his lead, not bothering to say anything until they got inside. He hung up his hoodie without being prompted and took off his shoes. Derek, not wasting time, was down to a t-shirt and bare feet already, and his jeans were a little less ludicrously tight than usual. He looked… comfortable, and the idea of this being comfortable somehow put Stiles right on edge.

“So,” he said, straightening up after he’d set his shoes neatly beside Derek’s boots. “What’ll it be? Have you dreamed up something special?”

Derek raised his eyebrows. He still hadn’t said a word.

“Do you want me to guess?” Stiles felt anticipation tightening every muscle in his body. “We could do charades. Hand gestures? Pictionary? I can—”

Derek moved in fast, suddenly in Stiles’s space, his hands on Stiles’s hips. Stiles’s mouth hung open, words and breath halted by surprise.

Derek didn’t quite touch his mouth to Stiles’s—I’m not touching you, I’m not touching—as he said, “I want to be allowed to kiss you again. You said I could do that as an add-on with other stuff?”

Stiles nodded, dragging his mouth shut, not quite letting his lips brush against Derek’s.

“Good,” Derek said, and gave him a brief, dry kiss. “Do you still trust me?”

The correct answer to that question, Stiles thought, was no. Not with his heart still beating fast from Derek’s sudden move, not when Derek was asking if he could use that trust for whatever he wanted tonight. Stiles knew that, but he couldn’t summon up any actual fear, just curiosity and an increasing tension that felt like excitement. He felt present in his body, willing to actually feel what happened to him, for the first time in days.

“Yeah,” Stiles said.

Derek raised a hand slowly and covered Stiles’s eyes. “Do you still trust me now?”

Stiles swallowed and nodded. Derek’s hand was warm and gentle on his face, not pressing hard. He could pull away if he needed to; he could…

Derek’s hand closed around one of Stiles’s wrists, twisting it gently but firmly behind his back. “Now?”

Stiles’s heartbeat was not slowing down. He was helpless and Derek could take advantage if he wanted to. Stiles tried to imagine that he wasn’t going to like what happened next, that Derek would make this awful and scary and painful. It didn’t take.

“I trust you,” Stiles repeated.

“Huh,” Derek said, which wasn’t really the answer Stiles had expected.

Derek took both of his hands away from Stiles. Stiles blinked—his eyes hadn’t been covered that long, he didn’t know why the light felt so bright. The sight of Derek’s face a few inches from his own was startling; Stiles found himself staring in fascination at the muddle of colors in Derek’s eye, the variegations of each individual contractile fiber that made up the iris of his eye.

Derek blinked and Stiles jerked back a little, making himself remember that he was here to do a job. He needed to get on with his job.

“So I trust you,” Stiles repeated. “Do you trust me with the secret of what the hell you want to pay me to do tonight, or is that top top secret?”

A smile flashed across Derek’s mouth, there and gone, before he said, “I want you to let me play with you.”

Stiles’s brain went a little bit blank but his mouth ran right on without him. “Done, dude, I am totally picking you first for my lacrosse—”

Derek’s hand covered his mouth, gently but firmly, just like he’d covered Stiles’s eyes.

“I want to tie you up a little bit,” Derek said patiently. “Just so you remember to let me do what I want without you thinking that you have to help.”

Stiles pulled back from Derek’s hand enough to say, “And cover my eyes?”

Derek nodded. “So you don’t know what I’ll do next. So you have to trust me.”

“That costs extra,” Stiles said, because he wanted so badly to say yes, please, do it, yes. He knew he had to draw a line somewhere. “And I’m gonna need a safeword.”

Derek smiled slightly. “Sure. Your safeword is no or stop or don’t or red or Cuisniart or whatever you want. I don’t want to hurt you or scare you, and I’m not going to keep going if you want me to stop. I just want you to be still and let me do what I want with you.”

For once Stiles actually caught the words he was about to say as they shot from his hindbrain to his mouth; he bit his lip to keep from saying my safeword is Laura. It was absolutely true, and he knew for a fact that it would work, but it would work by being completely ball-shrivelingly destructive to sexiness. That was the opposite of what Stiles was going for right now.

Still, it was good to know he had a weapon like that in his pocket. It was better than mace.

“You’re not going to gag me, then?”

“If I gag you I can’t kiss you,” Derek said, and gave Stiles another brief kiss, like he just wanted to show off that he could. “And I like hearing you talk.”

“That is absolutely not extra,” Stiles said, trying not to feel stupid butterflies in his stomach at the fact that Derek liked kissing him and liked listening to him talk. “You should probably get a discount for that.”

“You argued with me the first time I picked you up,” Derek pointed out. “I think it’s always been included in the base rate. Come on, bedroom.”

Stiles turned and went, saying, “I didn’t tell you how much extra it costs to tie me up.”

“I’m good for it,” Derek said, unconcerned. “Does it make a difference if it’s just your wrists? I’m only going to tie your ankles if you’re really bad at holding still.”

“Dude,” Stiles said, turning back to look at Derek when he reached the bed. “Do you have any idea how bad I am at holding still?”

Derek smirked a little bit and gave him a gentle shove as he said, “Do your best.”

Stiles let himself fall onto the bed. The pillows were on the floor and the covers were messily turned down, like Derek had gotten the bed ready but in a hurry. Like he hadn’t decided to ask for this until right before Stiles got here. Maybe Derek hadn’t let himself think about it too much either.

Derek climbed on after him, straddling him and pulling Stiles’s t-shirt off. Stiles squirmed, trying to help, and Derek huffed in mild annoyance and said, “Give me your wrist.”

Stiles’s heart thumped faster—this was it, he was letting himself be tied up on purpose. This was definitely on Frank’s top ten list of ways for a dumb whore to get himself killed, but it was Derek. Stiles had a safeword, and he knew he didn’t need one. He knew he was safe.

Stiles gave Derek his wrist, and Derek stayed still for the length of a couple of breaths, his hand holding Stiles’s wrist up, holding Stiles’s gaze. Then Derek kissed the inside of Stiles’s wrist, right where the veins were close to the surface, and pushed Stiles’s hand down gently over his head. He reached down with his other hand and started wrapping a soft length of rope around Stiles’s wrist.

Stiles frowned and turned his head up, twisting his neck to try to see. Derek’s bed didn’t have a headboard. He’d preset the ropes, but—Stiles caught a glimpse of shiny metal, down past the edge of the mattress. Maybe Derek had been planning ahead further than Stiles thought.

“Did you install bondage hardware for this?”

“Nope,” Derek said, frowning a little as he used both hands to tie a knot. “Came with the house.”

Stiles was startled into a laugh, and Derek paused with his hand on Stiles’s not-yet-tied wrist, looking down at him with an uncertain smile.

“Go ahead, get on with it, you realize I’m fucking dying of curiosity now,” Stiles said, pushing his wrist toward the wall and taking Derek’s hand with it.

Derek’s smile turned to a smirk, suddenly not uncertain at all. Stiles wiggled again, because, oh, fuck, he was going to like this. He was going to like this a lot.

Derek tied his other wrist the same way, with multiple loops of rope, and when he was done he said, “Test it?”

Stiles had enough slack to rest his hands easily on the mattress and move them a few inches, but no more than that. He tugged against the ropes and felt them dig in a little as he came up against his limits. The force was distributed among the loops, though, so nothing really cut in. Stiles thought for just a second of everything he’d learned about restraining people by their wrists from various ill-fated games of cops and robbers with Scott, and then he shut that down hard.

He was with Derek. He was getting tied up and fucked for money. He was living in the now.

“Feels fine,” Stiles said.

“Tell me if it isn’t,” Derek said, holding his gaze. “If your fingers start tingling, if you just need to move your arms to a different position, anything.”

Stiles rolled his eyes and said, “I got it, Captain Safety.”

“Well, someone has to be,” Derek muttered, twisting away and coming back with something black in his hand. “Obviously you’re not.”

“Am so,” Stiles said, but his gaze was stuck on the thing in Derek’s hand. The blindfold.

“I don’t have to do this part,” Derek said, his fingers curling around it as if to hide it from Stiles.

“No, I,” Stiles looked up and met Derek’s eyes. He took a deep breath and then said firmly, “I trust you.”

Something flickered in Derek’s eyes, like that meant more than just that Stiles was still willing to go along with Derek’s idea for the night. Stiles didn’t look away.

“Okay,” Derek said finally. “Close your eyes.”

Stiles obeyed, and a second later something soft was draped over his eyes. Derek’s hand slid behind his head, lifting it up slightly off the mattress. Stiles held his head up and Derek’s hands moved behind him. He could feel the warmth of Derek’s arms on either side of his head, even where they didn’t touch. He had a sense of Derek’s body bent over his.

“Can you see anything?” Derek asked softly.

Stiles tried to open his eyes, but the blindfold was pressing gently against them.

“Nope,” Stiles said. His voice came out weirdly hushed.

“All right,” Derek said back, just as softly. “Good. I’m going to kiss you now.”

“I thought the whole point of not seeing was—”

Derek said, “Shh,” right against Stiles’s mouth. He pressed down into the kiss, just as gentle as the blindfold against Stiles’s eyes. Stiles gave up.

Stiles was intensely aware that Derek wasn’t touching him anywhere but at their mouths. He could feel the presence of Derek’s hands braced against the mattress on either side of his head, and he knew Derek’s thighs bracketed his body, but the kiss felt like the only real thing in the darkness. He felt every flicking touch of Derek’s tongue, every millimeter of contact between their lips. He couldn’t hear anything but Derek’s breathing. Stiles made a little whimpering noise of his own as much to find out if he could as because of the way Derek’s tooth scraped against his lip.

Derek made a warm encouraging noise back and closed his teeth firmly on Stiles’s lower lip. Stiles whined and wriggled under him, bringing his arms in to press against Derek’s wrists and arching his hips up to try to find Derek’s body above him.

“Okay.” Derek’s hands settled on Stiles’s upper arms, just heavy enough to be reassuring. Derek kissed him again, open-mouthed and wet, Derek’s tongue sweeping into his mouth. Stiles squirmed some more just to see what it would get him, and pretty soon it got him Derek’s weight coming down on him, Derek’s ass resting just right against his pelvis so Stiles could grind up against it and feel like something was holding him in place.

Derek kept kissing him for a long time after that, until Stiles’s hips were rocking rhythmically. He was hard, and Derek was kissing him. Derek’s hands were warm and Derek’s ass felt great even through two layers of jeans, and there was nothing else but this, and—

“Okay,” Derek said again, in an entirely different way. “This is the part where you don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

Stiles made a wordless frustrated noise, and Derek was suddenly gone, his weight and warmth lifting away from Stiles. Stiles tugged his wrists against the rope just to feel anchored by something.

“Hang on,” Derek said, “I’m right—” and then something touched Stiles, right in the center of his chest. It wasn’t Derek—it was cold—but it was something. Stiles squirmed under the chill of it, trying to push into it and pull away at the same time. It slid down the center of his chest slowly, leaving a path of cold near-numbness, and when something warm touched him in its wake Stiles shivered helplessly, felt his nipples go tight and his balls tense as his dick twitched in his pants.

“Derek?” Stiles said. He was trying to figure out what was touching him. It was resting on his skin at the soft place just below his rib cage. If Derek pushed up and in right now he could shove whatever it was right through Stiles’s heart and, oh, great, now he was definitely picturing a chilled knife blade. It wasn’t wet, so he didn’t think it could be just an ice cube, but it was really fucking cold.

“I’m right here,” Derek said quietly, and his hand—chilly like he’d been holding something cold, but a hell of a lot warmer than the cold thing—flattened against Stiles’s side. Stiles squirmed some more, and the cold thing lifted off his skin at the same time as Derek’s hand.

It came back faster this time, though, brushing over his nipple and making Stiles yelp and then arch up into it. It pressed down, staying still until the cold turned to a burn and Stiles whined and tried to squirm away. In the next second it was gone and Derek’s mouth replaced it, burning hot in contrast. His tongue flattened over Stiles’s nipple and then he sucked gently. Stiles groaned low in his throat, and his arms jerked with the impulse to put his hands in Derek’s hair and hold him there.

Derek took his mouth away to say, “I’ve got you,” and then the cold was back on the other side, rocking against Stiles’s left nipple while Derek’s mouth worked the right, and Stiles was wriggling under him, so overstimulated that his brain was completely empty. He couldn’t do anything but writhe and repeat breathlessly, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Everything went away at once. For a second it was a relief, and Stiles lay limp and panting, and then he felt a light touch on his hips, brushing up the outside seams of his jeans. Stiles twisted into it, aware all over again that he was hard—but as soon as he moved the touch went away, so completely that he thought it might not have been there at all.

“Derek?”

“Right here,” Derek said, and there was a faint feather-light touch along Stiles’s jaw that made him shiver all over and arch toward it—but once again, as soon as he moved the touch vanished.

“Derek, please, Derek—” Stiles tried to be still, aching to move toward wherever Derek might be.

“Shhh, it’s okay,” Derek said, and this time the touch traced over his knee. Stiles went rigid with the effort of not moving so the touch would stay. He didn’t even breathe while the barely-there touch traced lazy patterns over his kneecap, and then it went away without him doing anything. He let out a tiny whine.

“Breathe,” Derek said, sounding amused. “I know you know how, Stiles. Breathe.”

Stiles let the rest of his breath out and then gasped in, and he was rewarded with something lightly touching him: Derek’s finger, maybe his thumb, tracing across Stiles’s forehead. Stiles didn’t tilt into it, didn’t move, and when the touch went away it came back almost immediately, on the top of his foot.

He would have sworn he wasn’t ticklish there, but he gave a yelp of strangled laughter and yanked his whole leg away. Even before he’d stopped moving he was saying, “No I mean, please, please touch me, Derek, come on, please, more—”

He shoved his foot back in the direction where the touch had been, and his foot was abruptly caught in both of Derek’s hands. They were big and warm and held him very still, touching every inch of skin on his foot at once. Stiles pressed into the touch and it didn’t go away this time; Derek began to rub his foot instead, pressing firmly along the arch and the ball of his foot. He massaged without tickling at all, chasing away aches Stiles hadn’t known he had.

Stiles groaned, shifting his hips uselessly against nothing, but Derek kept it up, stopping only to get something slick to cut down the hot friction as he rubbed. Stiles giggled a little, wondering if it was lube and not lotion, then groaned again as Derek’s thumbs worked around the back of his heel.

He brought his other foot over, tapping his toes against the back of Derek’s hand, and Derek gave a warm little laugh. “Did you have a request there, Stiles?”

“I know you have a whole elaborate plan and everything,” Stiles said. “But yeah, come on.”

There was a soft touch against the ball of his foot that Stiles didn’t identify as a kiss until Derek had put Stiles’s foot down and flipped a blanket over it, so Derek was already closing his hands on Stiles’s other foot when Stiles said, “I’m really not sure you’re clear on how this tying-someone-up-and-having-your-way-with-them thing works.”

“I’m having a good time,” Derek said. “I think you’re not clear on how holding still and letting me do what I want works.”

Stiles squirmed, pushing his foot into Derek’s grip and trying to get some friction on his dick, and Derek laughed again and kept rubbing his foot. Stiles kept squirming, because he liked the sound of Derek’s laugh and Derek didn’t really seem to mind if he moved now.

And then Derek’s hands went away again.

“Derek,” Stiles whined, dragging his name out into about eight syllables, but Derek didn’t say anything this time. Stiles stretched out, sweeping his legs around and then rolling from side to side, trying to find him. “Derek? Derek, come back.”

There was nothing until he’d rolled all the way onto his face, wrists crossed over each other, and then something heavy settled over him from his heels to the back of his neck. It wasn’t the warm, moving weight of Derek’s body, but a uniform cool pressure, like the x-ray apron at the hospital.

“Stay still,” Derek said, like he’d never been gone. Like he had never let Stiles move. Stiles snuggled down a little under the heavy blanket but then went very still. He was rewarded with hands in his hair, rubbing at his scalp the same way Derek had rubbed his feet. Stiles tilted his head into Derek’s hands and Derek eased his touch gradually down to Stiles’s neck, nudging the blanket down to bare it.

He slid his palms flat across Stiles’s neck, side to side and then up and down, and then he pushed one down to rest at the top of Stiles’s back, under the heavy blanket, and the other on the back of Stiles’s head. That left the back of his neck bare, framed between Derek’s hands.

Stiles had never been so aware of any part of his body. Not his hands, usually flailing but now held still. Not his mouth during his first blowjob and now open against the mattress. Not his dick trapped and throbbing in his jeans. His whole body was covered up, he was still half dressed, and he couldn’t feel anything but the nakedness of that little stretch of skin between Derek’s hands.

Derek’s breath puffed out over his spine, and Stiles felt every last hair on his body try to stand up. It actually ached a little where the goosebumps rose under the weight of the blanket, all his skin feeling stretched tight, and on the back of his neck he knew the little hairs were standing up. He made a weird keening noise into the mattress. The urge to talk, to distract and break the tension, was like a physical thing, like the need to pee or the need to come. His heart was racing like he’d run a mile.

“Shh,” Derek said, and Stiles felt that, too. “Very still now.”

Stiles squeezed his eyes more tightly shut under the blindfold and tucked his fingers between the mattress and the wall, holding on tight. He didn’t move.

Derek’s teeth touched the nape of his neck, and Stiles’s dick jerked and he was abruptly, dizzily close to coming. He was panting, almost sobbing, without making a sound, but he didn’t move. Derek’s teeth pressed a little harder, and Stiles was aware distantly that it didn’t hurt—it was just a blunt, gentle pressure, concentrated into points and backed by Derek’s slow, hot breath.

When Derek’s tongue pressed to the back of his neck Stiles’s control broke, and he writhed under Derek, fighting the blanket, shoving his hips against the mattress. Derek’s mouth went away from his neck at the same time the blanket was shoved off him, and Derek flipped him face up and rolled onto him, his weight pressing Stiles down while his hand opened Stiles’s fly and shoved his pants down.

Stiles was vaguely aware that his squirming probably wasn’t helping, but he couldn’t have held still if his life depended on it and Derek didn’t let Stiles slow him down. In another moment they were both naked, and Derek had them lined up, his dick pressed against Stiles’s and just as hard. Derek rocked down into him fast and rough, like he was just as frantic for it as Stiles was. He peppered kisses all over Stiles’s throat that made Stiles sob with every soft touch of lips that could have been teeth and wasn’t.

“Derek,” Stiles gasped, and realized he’d been silent since Derek laid the blanket over him. “Derek, Derek, please I gotta, Derek—”

Stiles came, arching up under Derek, Derek’s dick providing friction to his, Derek’s weight and warmth holding him to the bed. Derek moved gently over him through his orgasm, and when Stiles went limp Derek kissed along the line of his jaw. Stiles turned his mouth toward that touch, and Derek kissed him softly and then closed his teeth on Stiles’s lower lip, and Stiles whimpered into his mouth, his body shuddering with the yes-please-too-much of it.

Derek’s hand settled on his cheek, and Derek said, “Close your eyes, all right?”

Stiles couldn’t actually open his eyes under the blindfold, but he pressed them shut tighter, nodding, and Derek pushed the blindfold up. Stiles felt naked all over again, his eyelids as bare as the back of his neck. He didn’t move or open his eyes.

Derek kissed each closed eye and then his mouth again, rocking slowly against Stiles. Stiles felt Derek’s fingers moving in the tight, hot space between their bodies, and he shuddered again when he realized Derek was running his fingers through the mess of Stiles’s jizz, and he had to open his eyes and look.

It was almost too much to take in—sight, bodies, Derek’s glistening-wet hand wrapping around Derek’s dick. Derek shifted up off of Stiles, kneeling astride him, and Stiles lay still, mesmerized as he watched Derek jerk off slicked with Stiles’s come. Derek’s other hand was planted on Stiles’s chest, holding Stiles down and holding himself up. Stiles heard himself saying, “Come on, Derek, come on, all over me, you can, I want you—”

Derek grunted like he’d been punched and did what Stiles asked, coming all over his chest and belly. Stiles watched the quick movements of Derek’s hand, the way his cock spurted and the drops pattered down on his skin. He folded lower after Stiles when he was done, nuzzling at Stiles’s chest, licking sometimes, sometimes just brushing his lips and nose over the sticky mess he’d made of Stiles.

“You like that?” Stiles asked, knowing the answer was yes and feeling warm and sleepily fond of Derek’s weirdness. “Making a mess of me?”

“Smells good,” Derek said, and flicked his tongue out, licking a random spot on Stiles’s chest that shouldn’t have felt that good but made Stiles’s dick twitch hopefully anyway. “You smell more like you now. Plus me.”

“That’s creepy,” Stiles informed him, but he hooked one leg over Derek’s as he said it so Derek wouldn’t think it was a bad thing.

“Is creepy extra?” Derek sounded amused, but he stopped the nuzzling thing, which made Stiles feel a little bad. Derek just reached up and untied his wrists. He guided both of Stiles’s arms down, settling Stiles’s hands on his chest and rubbing gently at his wrists where the ropes had been.

“Tying you up was extra, right?” Derek said. “Did you decide how much?”

“Say a number,” Stiles said. “I can’t think of any right now.”

“Three hundred,” Derek said decidedly. “It’s dangerous, your rate should reflect that. Plus kissing and no condoms, and cuddling rates for the rest of the night.”

Stiles tried to work out the math in his head and gave up almost immediately. “Ugh, whatever, come here.”

Derek kissed him again and gathered him in close, and Stiles hid his face against Derek’s shoulder and let himself relax. It was all right if he lost track of time. Derek was paying for it.

The next morning Derek handed him an honest to God envelope full of cash. Stiles stared at it, baffled, and Derek said, “The tip’s not as good as usual but I think that covers everything? I don’t know if there’s a rate for rubbing off on each other.”

“You jerked yourself off, you should probably get a discount,” Stiles observed absently, and gave in to temptation and extremely bad manners and peeked into the envelope, thumbing the bills to count—six hundreds. Eight fifties.

“Derek, this is a thousand dollars.”

“Yep,” Derek said. “Like I said, I would’ve tipped more but that’s all the cash I had on hand.”

Stiles did the math—three hundred, Derek had said, for tying him up, plus two hundred for kissing plus a hundred for no condoms, plus another hundred or so for cuddling, and Derek was allowed to tip on most of that.

“You should get a cheaper hobby,” Stiles informed him, taking some of the money out of the envelope to hide down his pants. “Like heroin.”

“I tried that,” Derek said, and flashed a toothy smile. “I didn’t like it.”

Stiles spent the entire walk from the Holiday Inn back to his SRO silently coaching himself on acting like he didn’t have a thousand dollars in cash stuffed into his pockets and underwear. It was only when he was locked in his little room and had checked it over and found everything where he left it that he sat down, pulled all the money out and dumped it in a little pile on the floor.

A thousand dollars. He’d seen a thousand dollars in one place a few times before—in Frank’s hands, generally—but this thousand dollars was his. It had been earned as fairly as he ever earned money from Derek, and short of the constant danger of getting mugged or robbed, no one was going to take it away from him.

He could live a long fucking time on a thousand dollars. Or he could live a lot better than he did now, if he could be sure of getting a thousand dollars for a night’s work on a vaguely regular basis. If he could rely on Derek tying him up one night a month, let alone every week, he wouldn’t have to do any other work at all.

But if he was depending only on Derek, then… he would be depending only on Derek. He trusted Derek to tie him up and fuck him gently, but putting his whole existence into the guy’s hands was a lot. And Derek had never asked him to give up fucking other people for money, which, given how many things Derek had been perfectly willing to ask him for, had to mean it wasn’t something Derek wanted.

If Derek found out Stiles had quit his regular job—and it would take about five minutes, Stiles would bet, for word of that to get from Frank to Laura to Derek—then he would probably feel weird about Stiles becoming his exclusive piece of ass. He just wanted to pay Stiles to do his job. He might back off, and then Stiles would have nothing. And if Laura and Derek could find out that Stiles wasn’t selling it to anyone else, what about Chris Argent? He hadn’t bothered Stiles again so far, but that might change if he thought Stiles had an exclusive arrangement with Derek.

All he could do was act normal. Like he didn’t have an extra thousand dollars lying around. Like it didn’t change anything. It probably didn’t, in the long run. Derek wasn’t going to actually do anything that cost a thousand dollars on a regular basis; next week they’d probably be back to a regular fuck or something. This was just a blip. An anomaly. Stiles divvied up the cash among all his usual hiding places and invented a couple new ones, and resolved not to think about it anymore.

8. Chapter 8

Stiles had a busy work week, and he spent most of his downtime trying not to think about anything he did at work. He was settling into the call-out thing and hadn’t had any trouble getting into and out of the hotels yet, but it was getting harder not to hear the things they said, not to feel their hands on him even when he’d scrubbed himself clean. He took a shower when he got home and another when he woke up and he still felt it sometimes, which sucked. They weren’t paying for his time anymore, they weren’t even there. They shouldn’t get any more of his attention once he walked out of their hotel rooms.

He tried to think about Derek instead. Derek paid him enough that he probably ought to be getting a little more thought than any of Stiles’s other customers. At night, trying not to feel anyone else’s hands on his skin, trying not to think about how much time he had left before they were touching him again for real, Stiles lay in his rickety narrow bed and thought about the last time he’d been in Derek’s bed. He thought about Derek jerking off over him, thought about the way that Derek had made sure to take Stiles’s blindfold off before he did that. He hadn’t had to; it wasn’t like he’d wanted to come on Stiles’s face and didn’t want to hit the blindfold.

He’d wanted Stiles to be able to see Derek coming on him. He’d wanted Stiles to see the part after, when he smelled and licked at Stiles’s skin. He’d seemed embarrassed when Stiles said something about it, but he’d wanted Stiles to see.

Stiles played that over in his mind, letting himself go back to that moment over and over all week, whenever work made him feel strange in his own skin. You smell more like you, Derek had said.

By the time his regular work week ended, Stiles thought he knew how to turn that into added value for Derek. It was a little weird—creepy, even—but he was almost sure he was right, and absolutely sure that Derek, of all his customers, deserved the effort.

He scrubbed himself like his life depended it after the end of his last Sunday night appointment, and got out of bed and scrubbed again on Monday, leaving his skin pink everywhere it wasn’t red. He worried through his whole Monday routine—laundromat, library visit, occupying himself with made-up homework and trying desperately not to think—that Frank was going to come at him with an unexpected Monday night call-out, but his phone stayed quiet.

He didn’t shower before he went to bed, and had just one shot of whiskey to get him down to sleep. His dreams were the same ones he’d been having for weeks now, hands and dicks and staring eyes and the tedious disgustingness of his job. He woke up on Tuesday wanting to shower, but he lay in bed and thought of Derek, and he didn’t.

It was Tuesday, and he would see Derek tonight, and he would smell like himself just as hard as he knew how.

Stiles second-guessed the idea through more or less every hour of Tuesday. He also didn’t put on deodorant, and lay around in his little room, not working up a sweat so he wouldn’t definitely have to wash.

Around midnight he did necessarily wash his ass, carefully and thoroughly, because he wasn’t going to fuck that up. He washed his hands, thoroughly and redundantly, when he was finished, but then he changed into clean work clothes and threw himself down on his bed to stare at the ceiling and not think about whether or not this was a good idea for another hour.

He also tried not to think about why he cared so much whether or not this was a good idea. He wasn’t trying to impress Derek. Derek had woken up next to him twice now and knew his body inside and out. Derek didn’t go for the careful illusion of his professional life. Derek had never called him Billy. If Derek thought he smelled bad, Derek would roll his eyes and tell Stiles to take a shower.

So, there. If it didn’t work it wouldn’t work and that would be it. Stiles let that hopeful thought get him up and on his way, and he was on his second bus already when he realized exactly why he was nervous.

He was trying to give Derek a gift, and he wanted Derek to like it.

Stiles thumped his head a couple of times against the window. That was stupid. He was such an idiot. He couldn’t do shit like that. This was a professional relationship he and Derek had; he performed services for Derek and Derek paid for them. He performed the services Derek asked him for. He shouldn’t be trying to give Derek things for free, and he definitely shouldn’t be spending time off the clock thinking of what Derek would like, what might surprise him into a smile.

He got off the bus still feeling like an idiot, ashamed of the impulse that had consumed the last day. He stood frozen on the sidewalk after the bus pulled away, wondering if there was any way out of this. He had just realized that there wasn’t when he saw Derek step out onto the stairs up to his door, like he knew Stiles was stalling halfway down the block. Stiles jammed his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and walked up, watching his own feet instead of checking whether Derek was standing there watching him all the way in. It still left him feeling off-balance when he looked up and realized Derek wasn’t. He’d gone inside and left the door standing open for Stiles.

Stiles rolled his eyes—sure, Stiles was the only person close enough to get in the door, but still, you didn’t leave your door hanging open. Stiles slammed it shut firmly behind him, twisting the lock to make a point. The door to the apartment was open, too, and Stiles stomped in and shut it firmly, locking that as well before he started toeing off his shoes and looked around for Derek.

Derek was leaning against the wall just past the row of hanging coats, staring at him with a really weird look on his face. He wasn’t smiling or surprised, but really intent, like he was trying to see through Stiles’s skin.

Stiles went completely still, feeling like a rabbit in the headlights, with something big looming toward him. “Derek?”

Derek straightened up and took a step closer. “Stiles. Could you take your sweatshirt off?”

“Yeah,” Stiles said, because yeah, of course. He always took his hoodie off along with his shoes, as soon as he came in. His hands stalled, though, and Derek came another step closer.

“Or I could,” Derek offered, but Stiles shook his head and went for it, tugging his hoodie up and off and—

He startled at the touch, because his hoodie was still covering his face and his arms were up over his head and Derek was right there, hands on Stiles’s sides. Stiles fought the rest of the way out of his hoodie, somehow managing not to elbow Derek in the head. Even before he’d dropped his sweatshirt on the floor Derek had his face tucked into Stiles’s throat, nosing at the collar of his t-shirt.

“So, um,” Stiles said weakly. “I’m getting this vibe like you—uh—you like how I smell right now.”

“I like how you smell right now,” Derek said, sounding oddly deadpan for a guy who was physically wrapping himself around Stiles and nuzzling his throat.

Stiles put his hand gingerly on the back of Derek’s head and raised the other arm, and Derek turned his head toward Stiles’s armpit. He rubbed his cheek against Stiles’s collarbone and didn’t actually mash his face under Stiles’s arm, but somehow gave Stiles the strong impression that he was only holding back to be polite.

“Holy shit, you really do,” Stiles said, his voice shaking with something that could have been a laugh.

Derek huffed and twisted to press his hips tight against him, and Stiles could feel how hard he was—God, Derek really liked it. Stiles felt a little giddy with how well his surprise had worked, and he couldn’t help blurting out, “I thought you would.”

Derek pulled back a little and looked him in the eyes.

“Um,” Stiles said. “I mean—you said, last time, you liked how I smelled, so I thought—”

“You were right,” Derek agreed. “So you did this on purpose, then?”

“Yeah,” Stiles said, and it flitted through his mind that he could charge for this. He could call it a surcharge and let Derek pay him a hundred bucks not to shower.

“I thought you would like it,” Stiles said instead. “Thought I’d give it a shot.”

Derek nodded and leaned close to him again, and murmured, “I like it even more when you smell like both of us.”

Stiles felt on slightly firmer ground there. “Yeah, well, that part you have to pay for, big guy. Although I’m drawing a line right now, I’m not letting you piss on me for any money.”

Derek twitched at that, but before Stiles could freak out Derek licked a line up Stiles’s throat and said, “So let’s talk about what I’m paying for tonight.”

“Let me guess,” Stiles said, baring his throat to Derek’s mouth. “You have a plan.”

“Kissing and no condoms,” Derek said, like Stiles hadn’t guessed that before he walked in the door.

Stiles nodded with his head tilted back. “And?”

“God,” Derek muttered, “it’s fucking overkill now, I could just—”

Derek broke off abruptly and took a step back, shaking his head like he was trying to clear it. He really, really liked the way Stiles smelled.

“It’s a request,” Derek said, wary, and Stiles knew he would argue again if Stiles agreed too fast. “If you don’t want to at all, or if you don’t want to today but maybe some other time, that’s fine, I’d be happy just to fuck you tonight. Okay? We don’t have to do anything else.”

Stiles stripped out of his t-shirt and let it dangle from his hand so he could throw it at Derek’s face if he kept this up much longer. “Derek. Ask.”

Derek took a deep breath, visibly bracing himself, and then said, “I want to fist you.”

Stiles’s mouth fell open and Derek half-smiled. “Okay, so you do know what that means.”

“I’m a hooker, Derek, yes I know what it means,” Stiles snapped, although it was the kind of thing he wouldn’t have let any other customer do for any money—just like he wouldn’t let anyone else tie him up, just like he wouldn’t kiss any of them. He knew what it meant from his old life, when it was a fascinatingly weird thing he’d seen in late-night porn surfing, not something that someone might want to do with him—to him. For money.

“I know it’s—a lot,” Derek said. “If you just want to consider it—decide on a price, whatever—it’s fine. It doesn’t have to be tonight. Or if it’s out of the question, I get that.”

“Four hundred,” Stiles decided. It was probably more dangerous than getting tied up, at least the way Derek had done the tying up. He glanced down at Derek’s hands. He’d always liked Derek’s hands, Derek’s thick fingers. He’d just never noticed quite how far across Derek’s knuckles were, solid and square and… big.

He was curious, though. Now that Derek had put the idea in his head, Stiles knew he wasn’t going to last a week wondering about this. If Derek didn’t do it to him tonight, Stiles would be drunk and trying to jam his own hand up his ass by Saturday after work, and that would probably be way worse. Derek would be all careful and gentle about it.

“Plus sleepover rates,” Stiles added firmly. “I’m not riding home less than six hours after you put your hand up my ass, even in your car.”

“Deal,” Derek said immediately, and then looked Stiles over again and said, “Uh, I don’t know if you… do you want to wash up first?”

Wash up meant hands and face in Stiles’s head, and for a second he thought he’d gotten everything backward and Derek actually wanted Stiles’s hand in his ass, which was a dizzying, amazing thought. His hands were narrower, it’d probably be easier—and then his brain caught up with what Derek really meant. Derek was about to get up close and extremely personal with Stiles’s ass, and he knew Stiles hadn’t showered in a while.

“Oh! No,” Stiles said quickly. “No, I, uh—I washed up already. I mean, even if you didn’t want to do this, I figured you wanted, you know,” Stiles waved his hands vaguely ass-ward. “To get all up on this, that is kind of why I’m here. I’m clean where it counts, I promise. Um, so do you just want to… go for it?”

“I should definitely wash up first,” Derek said. “Go take your clothes off.”

Stiles twirled his t-shirt, by way of pointing out that he didn’t have much left to take off, and Derek’s eyes darted to it like he could smell Stiles on the little breeze it made. Stiles wondered if he had a freaky sense of smell to go with his freaky hearing and then decided not to contemplate Derek getting wrist-deep into his ass from that perspective. He went into the bedroom instead, like a nice obedient whore, and stripped off his remaining clothes. He sat down on the end of Derek’s bed—the covers were turned down neatly tonight, so Derek had probably been thinking of this, maybe overthinking it a little.

The water was still running in the bathroom. Stiles sat there and bounced and sang the alphabet song twice under his breath, which was how long you were supposed to wash your hands to get them sterile. The water was still running.

“Derek?” Stiles yelled. “How dirty were your hands, man?”

Derek didn’t say anything, and Stiles got up and walked over to the bathroom door, which was firmly closed.

Stiles leaned against it, the surface of the door smooth and cool against his bare skin; he was desperately curious and at the same time he knew exactly what was going on here. “Derek? Are you jerking off in there?”

He could actually hear Derek not responding. It was a very distinct silence next to the continued running of the water.

Stiles turned the doorknob and pushed the door open slowly, giving Derek plenty of time to slam it shut on him or yell at him to get out or do basically anything that wasn’t letting Stiles stick his head in the door to find Derek leaning on the edge of the counter with his pants open and his dick in his hand.

Stiles pushed the door open wide and leaned against the frame, looking Derek up and down. Derek’s ears were red and his hand was still on his dick. Stiles realized all over again that he was gorgeous, and also so weird.

“Okay,” Stiles said. “I mean, I would have thrown in the take-the-edge-off handjob for free as, like, an appreciation of how totally into me you apparently are, but you can just do it yourself if you’re gonna insult my professional skills and sneak off and have orgasms without me.”

Derek snorted and gave himself a slow, pointed stroke as Stiles watched, looking Stiles up and down right back. Stiles’s dick twitched. “I actually was doing it myself. That’s why I was in here with the door closed.”

“Yep,” Stiles observed. “Which is super weird, for the record, when you have your friendly neighborhood overpaid hooker in the next room. Did you think I’d be offended by you getting hard, or could you just honestly not wait?”

Derek’s hand tightened a little and Stiles felt himself flush, his own dick chubbing up.

“Oh, wow, okay. Okay, I can work with that.”

Derek looked away, but his nostrils flared, like he was breathing Stiles in, and that was… weird and hot, so par for the course with Derek. “Stiles, you don’t have to—”

“Uh-huh,” Stiles said, and came over to perch on the edge of the sink, pressing up against Derek. “But I’m a super helpful guy, so what if I just, like…”

Stiles raised his arms overhead, stretching ostentatiously. Derek’s dick jumped in his hand, and then Derek grudgingly went back to jerking it.

“Or I could just,” Stiles said, and put his arm over Derek’s shoulders, his armpit right next to Derek’s face. Derek closed his eyes and let out a little broken moan and stroked himself faster. Stiles was fascinated—he’d watched Derek jerk off just last week, sort of, but that had been something else, something directed at him. This was just Derek being so unbearably turned on that he had to get off as quickly as he could, and letting Stiles see. The sight of it under the bright light of the bathroom—and the sound, the little sounds of Derek’s hand working his dick and Derek’s breath coming fast, echoing off the tile—and the sex smell that even Stiles could recognize—all of that was doing it for Stiles, too.

Derek let out a few sharp little sounds as he came, like it was wrenched out of him. He turned toward Stiles almost immediately, closing his come-dripping hand on Stiles’s dick and jerking him off with the same quick strokes. Stiles yelped at the sudden switch from observer to participant, but he also threw both arms around Derek’s neck, keeping him there. Derek turned his head to press his face against the inside of Stiles’s arm, jerking him off with merciless speed, and Stiles curled a leg around his hips and leaned into his touch, gasping and moaning and letting Derek get him there within minutes.

He came quickly in the insistent tug of Derek’s hand, and afterward he leaned his forehead against Derek’s and panted in his general direction. Derek was breathing hard, too, which made Stiles feel better about that, even though—

“Uh, so,” Stiles said. “Do we… start over later?”

Derek tilted his head back and raised his eyebrows. “Stiles, fisting takes time. If you’re even able to get it up during and want to get off on it—and you probably won’t—you’ll have plenty of time before we get there. In the meantime you just need to be really, really relaxed.”

“Oh,” Stiles said, and leaned in against Derek again. “Okay, got it.”

Derek, because he was clearly just that kind of gross dude, wiped his sloppy handful of come—his and Stiles’s all mixed together now—on Stiles’s chest. “I really do have to wash my hands, though.”

Stiles huffed and slid down off the sink. He gave Derek a friendly smack on the ass to move him along and went back to Derek’s bed, sprawling out across the turned-down covers. He felt pretty relaxed—kind of sleepy, though the kind that would pass if he did something more interesting than just lying here by himself.

He sprawled out, enjoying the way Derek’s apartment was warm enough to just hang out in naked, and scratched idly at the tacky smear of come on his chest.

Derek came into the bedroom a couple minutes later, with his pants zipped up and his shirt still on, although his questionable choices in the clothing department were eclipsed by the fact that he was carrying a stack of folded towels, an entire box of nitrile gloves—non-latex, so thoughtful, although if Stiles had a latex allergy he’d have fucking died of it already—and an honest to god bright blue can of Crisco.

“Is that,” Stiles said, grinning. “Seriously? Seriously?”

“It’s the best consistency for this,” Derek said blandly. “And no nasty artificial ingredients. As long as you’re not worried about trans fats, it’s the best choice.”

“Well I wasn’t worried about trans fats until I started picturing you shoving a gallon of them up my ass,” Stiles said, a nervous edge of laughter leaking into his voice. The can was seriously the size of his head. He knew there was no such thing as too much lube, but this was going to be ridiculous. He realized there was an honest to God cherry pie on the label and he actually did laugh a little.

Derek looked up questioningly, like he knew Stiles wasn’t just laughing at the Crisco, and Stiles took a breath and shook his head. “I’m good.”

Derek nodded and got back to what he was doing, spreading out a towel and tugging Stiles over until his hips were on it. Something about the way Derek just moved him like he didn’t weigh a thing made Stiles laugh again in a startled burst, but Derek ignored it this time and knelt down at the foot of the bed.

“If you need to pee or you want a drink of water or anything you should probably say so right now,” Derek said seriously. “Especially if you need to pee, actually, because aside from the fact that you’re not getting up for a while you’re going to be getting pressure in places you don’t usually.”

Stiles kind of shivered at the thought of Derek putting pressure on him from the inside, and shook his head. He took a couple of careful breaths—getting the giggles with Derek’s hand inside him probably wouldn’t get good either. “I’m good, I went before I came over. Promise.”

“Tell me if you need to stop for any reason,” Derek said firmly. “If you need to move or you want a drink of water or a breather or if it hurts too much—especially if it hurts too much—I need you to tell me, okay?”

Stiles nodded impatiently and hooked his hands behind his knees, pulling his legs up so his ass was bared and spread for Derek. He wiggled his hips a little, helpfully.

Derek just looked for a moment; Stiles thought he could see Derek breathing in the smell of him again, and he still couldn’t decide if that was more hot or weird. Derek cut off that train of thought by grabbing Stiles’s hips and yanking him another six inches closer to the end of the bed.

He kept his hands there, holding Stiles down, as he buried his face between Stiles’s legs, nuzzling at the hair on his balls, pressing his tongue into Stiles’s taint. Stiles had come barely five minutes before, but his dick twitched a little, and Stiles made an encouraging noise. He could go for this.

“Easy,” Derek said, nuzzling the crease of Stiles’s groin, avoiding his dick but not leaving the neighborhood. “You need to relax, remember?”

“You may be overestimating how relaxing I find it to feel like you’re about to suck my dick,” Stiles pointed out.

“Mm,” Derek said, but he picked his head up. He had kind of a goofy smile on his face. “You still smell really good. And I’m definitely not about to suck your dick.”

“Are you sure?” He didn’t really even want Derek to suck his dick for at least the next ten minutes—okay, five, maybe—but Derek’s mouth was…

Derek put his head down and licked Stiles’s hole, and Stiles choked off a whimper. He hadn’t gotten fucked in days, but his asshole felt all sensitive already—from coming, he thought. The soft, wet press of Derek’s tongue felt like it lit up his whole body, even if it didn’t get his dick hard.

“Try to just enjoy what’s happening,” Derek advised, and then paused to lick him again. Stiles at least managed not to make a noise that time. “Don’t expect it to go anywhere, just let it happen. Okay?”

“Sure,” Stiles said, shifting his grip a little to keep hold of his legs. His palms were starting to sweat. “You’re the boss.”

Derek snorted, like he somehow thought he wasn’t the boss here, and then he had his mouth on Stiles’s ass again, licking and teasing at the pucker, not even trying to push inside. Stiles thought about pointing out that Derek didn’t have to go this slow, but he had a feeling that was going to make Derek give him advice on how to be zen about getting Derek’s hand shoved up his ass or make Derek go even slower. Or both.

Derek was going glacially fucking slow already. Stiles couldn’t do anything else while he was holding his legs in place. He alternated between staring down past his own limp dick to Derek’s bowed head between his legs and closing his eyes, trying to just feel what Derek was doing. If he concentrated, he could pick out the exact individual sensations of Derek’s tongue and Derek’s lips on him, the wetness of Derek’s spit trickling down from his ass and the soft scratch of Derek’s stubble. Derek still had both hands on Stiles’s hips, squeezed between Stiles’s body and his bent-back thighs.

He used nothing but his mouth, getting Stiles wet, and it got sort of hypnotic after a while. Derek wasn’t going to stop, and Stiles just lay back and let it play out—sort of like he did with other clients, sometimes, except that instead of trying to be anywhere but where he was, Stiles didn’t want to be anywhere else. He didn’t want to feel anything but Derek’s mouth on him; he checked out of everything else, instead, letting himself relax under Derek’s mouth, only vaguely aware of his dick firming up and his feet starting to tingle from being in the air. Derek’s tongue pushed inside him and Stiles remembered the first time he’d felt that, how desperate he’d been to come, to get Derek to fuck him. He felt smugly, sleepily zen compared to the Stiles of a couple of weeks ago. Derek could rim him forever, and that would be just great.

Stiles felt thoroughly warmed up and open. Derek could have pushed his dick in without any trouble at all, but of course Derek wanted more than that. Stiles thought about asking why—hands were sensitive and everything, but Stiles didn’t think Derek was going to come from having his fist in Stiles’s ass—but he thought he probably should’ve asked that before now, if he was going to, or maybe later. Not now. Not when answering would mean Derek taking his mouth away from Stiles’s ass.

Derek’s right hand shifted down to Stiles’s spread open ass, and Derek’s thumb slid easily over the wetness around Stiles’s hole. Derek brought his left hand around without putting the right one back, stroking all around Stiles’s hole with his thumbs. Stiles shivered and tried to push closer.

“Mm-hm,” Derek mumbled. “Hold still for me.”

Derek’s thumbs pressed in. Neither one actually went into his ass, but they tugged his hole open, giving Derek’s tongue more room to work. He traced over the rim and flicked inside again and again.

Stiles turned his head, pressing his cheek against the coolness of the sheet while he tried to hold still, letting Derek open him up by agonizingly slow degrees. By the time Derek’s thumb actually did push in Stiles couldn’t hold back a moan, and even then Derek just hooked the tip of his thumb around the rim and pulled him further open, licking and kissing and tasting.

Stiles made himself look again, and Derek looked up a second later, like he’d felt Stiles’s eyes on him. Derek was flushed pink, making his brown-gray eyes look startlingly green, and they were glassy and dazed. Derek picked his head up enough for Stiles to see his mouth dripping wet, lips a bright, used pink and stretched in a sloppy grin.

Oh, Stiles thought, and a wordless understanding hit him. That’s why he wants to.

“Doing okay?” Derek asked, licking his shiny lips. “Bored yet?”

Stiles couldn’t help smiling back at Derek’s grin and said, “I’m all right, you can keep going if you want.”

“Mmm,” Derek said, and took his left hand from Stiles’s ass—leaving just his right thumb toying with Stiles’s hole—to reach up and pinch Stiles’s big toe. Stiles twitched but didn’t say anything, even though it did make it kind of obvious that he couldn’t feel his feet all the way.

“You need to put your legs down,” Derek said decidedly, even though Stiles hadn’t said a word. He took both hands away entirely and sat back on his heels. “Here, scoot back.”

Stiles started to scoot and then realized he was going to come off the towel and grabbed the edge, pulling it up unevenly with him. Derek stood up and helped, guiding him into place in the middle of the bed. Derek grabbed most of the remaining towels and slipped them under the one Stiles was lying on, propping his hips up. Derek straightened up and looked down at him, lying there with his legs spread wide and knees drawn up, feet flat on the bed. Stiles looked back, waiting, until Derek grabbed the gloves and Crisco and set them by Stiles’s right foot, settling on his belly between Stiles’s legs.

Stiles folded his arms behind his head and only shook his ass a little at Derek, enticing him to get on with it.

“Stiles,” Derek said, ducking his head in to kiss along the cheek of his ass, only to end with a little bite right at the top of his thigh. “You’ll tell me if you’re not okay? If you need me to do something different or stop?”

“Promise,” Stiles said, looking down at Derek with his eyes almost closed, and Derek finally leaned in and put his mouth on Stiles again, licking him softly but thoroughly. Stiles pushed back into it as much as he could without sliding off his towel-prop. Stiles heard a few noises and then Derek’s finger was there, pushing in all greasy-slick, and Stiles held his breath against the temptation to let out another nervy laugh.

Derek nipped at the top of his thigh again, and Stiles wriggled, making Derek’s finger sink in deeper. It was definitely happening now: he definitely had a fingerful of Crisco in his ass. There was no going back.

Derek didn’t stop eating him out just because fingers were involved, and Stiles realized that Derek had picked Crisco because he planned on winding up with his tongue all over it, which was maybe the most Derek part of all of this. Of course Derek didn’t like the taste of lube.

Derek worked up to two fingers almost immediately; Stiles was plenty relaxed, soft and easy and open to his touch, and Derek just kept slicking him up more, so two fingers slid in and out of him without any resistance at all. Stiles couldn’t even really feel Derek’s actual fingers, just the slippery glide of something in and out of his ass, no real friction at all. Derek eased a third finger in, and at least that was enough to feel solid and real in Stiles’s ass despite the slickness, twisting around his rim and working him open for real.

It was going to be so much more than this, Stiles realized. This was just the very beginning of the warm-up, and Derek pushed in his three fingers to the hilt and Stiles realized that Derek had never actually done that, because the stretch of it was startling, a warm ache as the muscle stretched. He could feel Derek’s knuckles pressing against the outside of his ass as the full length of Derek’s fingers twisted in him, and Stiles shivered at the thought of those knuckles and more—Derek’s whole fucking hand—inside of him, and he pushed back toward the pressure. Derek eased back, though, adding more Crisco to make everything glide smoothly again.

Stiles squirmed a little, trying to get comfortable, and Derek licked around his rim, soft-firm-wet where Stiles was stretched on his fingers.

“Bored?” Derek asked again.

Stiles shook his head this time, not bothering to lift his head as he mumbled, “Keep it up, champ.”

Derek laughed softly against him, a gust of warm breath against hot skin, and kept working his fingers into Stiles in slow, patient twists. His fingers pushed in and out and around again and again, slick and sliding and going on forever. Stiles didn’t even realize at first that the soft touch skating around his hole was Derek’s pinky and not his tongue, pressing in on him.

“Okay?” Derek said.

“Okay,” Stiles agreed, and Derek pulled his fingers out almost all the way until just his fingertips—three of them—hooked at the rim of Stiles’s hole, not letting him close up. There as a silly squelchy noise and Derek rocked his fingers around and then pushed back in, and Stiles knew when just the tip of his little finger got in, because Derek stopped there, just twisting his fingers again, easing Stiles into it. He kissed lightly at the cheek of Stiles’s ass and worked his fingers in deeper on a little twist, then deeper again.

Stiles heard a muffled whimpering sound escape him—it wasn’t that it hurt so much, but the uneven stretch was starting to make itself felt. Derek had four fingers into him, and no matter slippery-slick everything was, Stiles could feel his ass straining to accept him as Derek pushed in further.

“Breathe,” Derek said quietly. “It’s all right. You’re doing great.”

Stiles writhed at that, needing to move under Derek’s gentle words; somehow he couldn’t keep still with the idea that he was doing anything, let alone doing great at it. Derek pulled his hand back, setting the other on Stiles’s hip to steady him.

“Look at me,” Derek said, and Stiles obeyed.

Derek only met his eyes for a few seconds, but Stiles couldn’t look away when Derek looked down at his hand again. His teeth dug into his shiny-slick lower lip and he looked fascinated, almost reverent as he watched what he was doing. His fingers kept sliding, twisting as they eased further into Stiles’s ass a millimeter at a time. Derek did something and Stiles gasped and jerked. He realized he was half hard and then realized that Derek was curling all four fingers inside him, buried to the second knuckle.

“Oh, fuck,” Stiles gasped. “Derek, fuck, fuck.”

Derek’s gaze darted up to his immediately, his face stiffening into anxious lines. “Stiles?”

“No, it’s good, it’s just—a lot, holy fuck.”

Derek smiled a little bit and looked down again, and Stiles moaned helplessly, pinned and opened so wide and still nowhere near being done. Derek twisted his fingers inside and then flexed them again, and Stiles felt the tap of Derek’s thumb on the outside of his rim while four fingers pressed against the inside.

Stiles strangled back a sob, dizzy with something that he couldn’t name as pleasure or pain. It was just so much.

Derek lowered his head, watching all the way down, but he didn’t lick this time, just nuzzled behind Stiles’s balls. Stiles could feel him breathing there.

Stiles’s voice came out high and tense, but he managed a whole sentence. “Do you like the way I smell right now?”

Derek let out a low, warm little laugh and then he mouthed at Stiles’s balls. Stiles thought about trying to push into Derek’s mouth, but Derek’s fingers in his ass held him pinned exactly where he was.

“You smell great. And you’re so calm right now,” Derek said wonderingly, and it was Stiles’s turn to laugh, which made him feel Derek’s fingers inside him in a whole other way.

“No, you are,” Derek insisted. “I mean—keyed up, but—” Derek’s finger curled in him again, “I can feel your heart beating, I can—you’re so—you trust me.”

“Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” Stiles pointed out, then moaned as Derek’s fingers twisted inside him.

“But you—you really…” Derek trailed off and worked his fingers slowly inside Stiles, tapping with his thumb again on the stretched edge. He curled his fingers, and Stiles was dimly aware that that would have been a scratching motion if Derek had any fingernails to speak of and wasn’t wearing a glove and a quarter-pound of Crisco.

“I could hurt you so badly right now,” Derek said, still sounding fascinated. “Without even trying. And you’re not scared.”

Stiles shuddered a little at the thought—images flashed through his mind of just how incredibly badly Derek could hurt him right now. But they were only flashes; none would take hold, dragging him down into the spiral of panic that he knew was there. Derek himself was too real, Derek’s fingers in his ass anchored him too firmly to this moment and this place.

“You wouldn’t, though,” Stiles managed. Derek was careful with him, always gentle and kind and considerate. He meant to say something nice about that, and what popped out of his mouth was, “Oh my God you would try to tip me an entire suitcase full of cash if you did.”

Derek snorted, turning to press his face to the inside of Stiles’s thigh, rippling his fingers inside Stiles again and easing in a half-twist further, another breathtaking incremental stretch. “It wouldn’t be a tip if I hurt you. It would just be what I owed you.”

“You break it you buy it?” Stiles asked breathlessly. He realized he was tensing up to speak and let himself relax a little into the mattress, and felt Derek’s fingers slip in a fraction farther as he eased up. The stretch was right on the edge of unbearable, but not tipping over, and nothing felt more comfortable than arguing with Derek about tips. “That’s fair, I guess. Like insurance or something.”

“I want that in writing,” Derek muttered. “That you’ll let me pay for everything if you get hurt.”

“Pretty sure that’s—” Stiles’s breath hitched as the pain of the stretch in his ass went from dull to sharp, “Backwards.”

Derek eased back without Stiles having to ask, and the pain settled back into the same ache of strained muscle it had been before.

“Everything about this is backwards,” Derek muttered, and before Stiles could say anything else Derek leaned in and mouthed at the head of Stiles’s dick.

Stiles choked out a long moan, stuttering as Derek worked his fingers in deeper again; the pain got worse, but it wasn’t a surprise this time, and the hurt was half-drowned under the weird pleasure of Derek’s mouth on his half-hard dick, not really sucking, just closing his mouth over it.

“I thought you weren’t,” Stiles managed. “Weren’t gonna—”

“I changed my mind,” Derek said, and this time he took in most of Stiles’s dick.

Stiles made a high breathless noise, stranded between the wet hot goodness of Derek’s mouth and the relentlessness of Derek’s fingers pushing deeper into him. He was still going slow, still slick as anything, but there was no ignoring the pain of being split open now.

Stiles panted helplessly, making noise on every breath, and Derek eased off his dick to lick around his stretched-open hole again, then went back to his dick as he rocked his fingers in Stiles’s ass. Stiles wasn’t getting any harder—possibly shrinking, actually—but Derek’s mouth felt so good, contributing to the dizzy overwhelming rush of sensation.

“Stiles?” Derek said after a while, and his other hand was on Stiles’s belly, stroking softly up to his chest and back down. It took a minute for Stiles to realize that Derek had eased his fingers most of the way out of Stiles’s ass, and of course wasn’t sucking his dick while he was talking. “Are you all right? Do you want to take a break?”

“Nnn,” Stiles managed. “Keep going, keep—s’good, I’m good.”

“You’re very good,” Derek murmured, pushing his fingers back in and lowering his mouth back onto Stiles’s dick, and Stiles whined helplessly at the push and pull, everything hot and slick at once. Then he felt a wider stretch, pressure from another direction. He realized Derek was pressing the tip of his thumb between his other fingers, and Stiles let out a shuddering sob.

It wasn’t that it hurt so much, it was just that he couldn’t hold everything he was feeling inside him; he felt like his skin would burst open everywhere. Tears were leaking from his eyes and Derek’s hand was stroking gently over his stomach again. Derek was saying his name and Stiles was shaking his head, sobbing out, “More, do it, do it, I can—”

Derek went back to sucking his soft dick, engulfing the whole thing in his mouth and stroking it with his tongue, and meanwhile Derek’s fingers and thumb pushed deeper inside him. It was too much and so good and Stiles had never been held so still, opened up so much and so sweetly, never wanted to be filled up so full.

“Please, keep going, please, please…” Stiles realized dimly that those words were coming from his own mouth, ripped out of him in wet gusts as tears rolled down his face. He couldn’t—didn’t dare—move anything but his mouth, and he kept begging for more. Derek gave it to him, sucking him harder and pushing further inside of him, and then Stiles felt the studded curve of Derek’s knuckles pressing against his rim.

“Breathe,” Derek said, his hand pressing gently against Stiles’s belly. His breath was still warm against the spit-wetted head of Stiles’s dick, and Stiles whined but took as deep a breath as he could. He let it out in a long shuddering sob, in and out and in and out in the cadence of Derek’s petting hand, and then Derek pushed. The pain went sharp, and Stiles felt his whole body freeze up.

“Stop stop stop,” Stiles yelped out and the pressure was gone almost before he had the first word out. Derek’s hand on his belly stayed still, and suddenly Stiles’s ass was gapingly empty except for the tips of Derek’s fingers—he couldn’t tell how many, just less, just not enough.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Stiles rattled out, feeling all off balance and wrong, and somehow there were still tears running from his eyes and his breath was still catching on sobs. “Derek, I’m sorry, I can—”

“No, hey, no,” Derek kissed up along his hip. “No, you were perfect, that was plenty, shh, shh.”

“I didn’t, you can—you can, I’m sorry, I just—” Stiles tried to push his ass onto Derek’s hand, to let him try again, but Derek moved with him, his fingers staying just barely inside Stiles, not stretching him at all anymore.

“Hey, hey,” Derek’s petting hand on his belly pressed down a little, and Derek scooted up to lie beside him. Derek kissed the chilly wet line of tears leaking down his temple. “I don’t need anything else. That was perfect. I wanted you to tell me to stop if you needed to, and you did. You did everything I wanted.”

“But I didn’t,” Stiles mumbled, not even sure what he was trying to say. He was shivering, and he felt all wrong and he didn’t know why.

“I’ve got you,” Derek murmured, and he scooted closer, throwing one leg between Stiles’s, holding him in place as Derek slid his fingers free of Stiles’s ass. He felt wide open in a weird way and arched up against Derek’s leg holding him down. His ass twinged and he reached out wildly, grabbing at Derek’s wrist to force his hand back.

“Do it, you can do it now,” Stiles insisted. “I just had to relax, I just freaked out, you can, I promise.”

Derek’s fingers pressed gently back into him, just stroking along the rim. “I don’t actually have a briefcase full of cash on hand,” Derek said. “So how about I just don’t hurt you.”

“Fuck me, then,” Stiles offered. His teeth were trying to chatter, and he was pushing as close to Derek as he could, feeling weirdly cold. Derek shifted closer, leaning over him and pinning him down a little. Stiles hated it when other people did that, but he kind of needed Derek to hold him still right now.

“I wouldn’t fuck you right now,” Derek murmured, “if you paid me.”

Stiles let out a stuttering, achy laugh. “You’d be the worst hooker.”

Derek kissed his cheek, and his fingers curled gently in Stiles’s ass. “I know. I’m not brave like you.”

“I’m not,” Stiles said, and turned to catch Derek’s mouth in a kiss. His lips were greasy-slick but he tasted like Derek usually did, and he kissed back once Stiles started kissing him, shifting further over Stiles. When Derek pulled back from the kiss, Stiles felt a little more anchored, less like he was about to spill out of his own skin.

He squirmed on Derek’s fingers in his ass, and Derek said, “Want me to stop?”

“No?” Stiles said, and he reached down cautiously to touch his own ass where Derek’s fingers were still just barely inside. It was slippery and soft and loose, but not as bizarrely stretched as he’d been imagining.

Stiles’s dick twitched, brushing against his wrist where he was reaching down, and Stiles reflexively curled his hand around it. He wanted Derek’s hands exactly where they were, and if Derek could jerk himself off tonight, then so could Stiles. He turned his head for another kiss, and Derek curled a little further over him as his tongue eased into Stiles’s mouth.

Stiles reached up instinctively, catching hold of Derek’s shoulder, and Derek leaned into Stiles’s grip encouragingly. Stiles slid his arm around Derek’s neck, holding him there and kissing deeper while he stroked his own dick. It felt weird to be doing this for himself with Derek—it almost felt weird to be jerking off at all. He didn’t much anymore.

But he didn’t have to think about that now. He didn’t have to think about anything. Derek was kissing him and fingering him and looming warmly over him, and Stiles was jerking off, making his brain go pleasantly blank again.

Derek’s mouth went away from his after a while, dropping kisses on his face and down his throat. Stiles was left panting as he jerked off, arching up toward Derek, pushing back onto Derek’s fingers. He looked down at his hand and his dick, and realized that Derek was hard, holding himself away from Stiles while Stiles jerked off, and it was so fucking typical of him not to be bothering a hooker with his hard-on while he let the hooker jerk off.

Stiles started laughing, and the laugh shook his whole body, trailing off into a moan as he jerked himself faster. Derek’s fingers pushed in deeper, and Stiles was coming. His ass clenched tight on Derek’s fingers and he let out a startled sob at the feeling—not like before, but an echo of how it had felt to have all of Derek’s fingers buried inside him.

“Shh, shh,” Derek murmured, kissing Stiles again, slipping his fingers free of Stiles’s ass to rest on his belly. “Shh, you’re done, that was good. That was so good.”

“You’re not done, though,” Stiles said, feeling dazed and half-drunk on nothing but Derek’s fingers and too much time in Derek’s bed. “I can—”

“No, just—just hold still a second,” Derek said, and Stiles did what Derek wanted, lying there with one arm still hooked around Derek’s neck while Derek rocked down into him, rubbing his dick against Stiles’s belly. Right through the mess of come Stiles had left, because Derek was still that kind of gross dude, no matter what else they got up to.

“Do I smell good now?” Stiles murmured in Derek’s ear. “Smell like you enough?”

“Almost,” Derek said, his voice sounding a little strained. “Stiles, fuck, you have no idea—”

And that was it. Derek came on Stiles’s belly. There was just enough room between their bodies for Stiles to watch Derek’s cock spurting out on his belly, adding to the general mess.

Derek sighed when he was done and lowered himself down on top of Stiles, covering his whole body. “This okay?”

“Gonna make you move in about ten minutes so I can breathe,” Stiles murmured, squashed into the mattress. “But yeah, fine.”

“Ten minutes,” Derek murmured into his neck. “Got it.”

He didn’t set a phone alarm, though.

Stiles woke up face down on the bed, having his ass wiped with something warm and damp. He turned his head, blinking over his shoulder, and of course it was Derek and a washcloth.

“You want a shower?” Derek asked.

Stiles squirmed one hand under himself and found that the skin of his belly and chest was clean and dry already. “Did you sponge bathe me?”

“It’s a washcloth, not a sponge,” Derek said blandly. “Do you want to go take a shower?”

“Uh-uh,” Stiles said, parting his legs a little.

Derek made an amused noise and set one hand on Stiles’s hip a second before Stiles felt the warm washcloth against his balls.

Stiles woke up again with Derek wrapped around him and Derek’s face still tucked in against his throat. He could smell himself without even trying, and, okay, he’d officially had enough of this.

“Hey,” Stiles muttered, poking Derek’s shoulder. “I’m gonna take that shower now.”

“Yeah,” Derek said, instantly awake and pulling away. “Of course.”

Stiles hesitated for a second, but what could he say? Come back, I didn’t mean right now. Cuddle me some more, it’s only been six hours.

Stiles rolled out of bed and groaned at the battered feeling of his ass when he moved. He saw Derek move slightly in his peripheral vision, but Stiles shook his head a little and limped to the bathroom.

“Clean towels are under the sink,” Derek said, and otherwise let Stiles go.

The toothbrush he’d taken out of the packaging and rinsed one time, weeks ago, was in the medicine cabinet waiting for him. Stiles stared at it for a second and then decided firmly not to think about it or what it could mean. He brushed his teeth until they felt shiny-clean, and then pulled out a towel and started up the shower.

He just stood under the hot spray for a while, enjoying the miracle of excellent water pressure. Derek’s shower was attached to a full-sized bathtub, weirdly spacious after the tiny cubicle shower he’d gotten used to. It was also immaculately clean, even more unlike Stiles’s at the SRO, and didn’t even smell like it had been bleached. It didn’t smell like anything.

Stiles squinted at the array of plastic bottles lined up on the edge of the tub. There were four, tinted slightly different colors, but they didn’t have any labels. When Stiles opened the caps and sniffed, he couldn’t smell a thing. He stood there huffing long enough to make himself lightheaded, but Derek’s soap and shampoo—or whatever was in the bottles—were apparently totally unscented.

Stiles picked one and squirted some of the contents out into his palm. It had a liquid-soap consistency, so he lathered it between his hands and washed with it, scrubbing his pits and his crotch and, very cautiously, his sore ass, until he felt properly clean. He looked carefully, but didn’t spot any blood in the white lather on his hands, not even the little traces he’d gotten used to dismissing as not enough to worry about. Derek really had been careful with him.

When Stiles felt clean and smelled like absolutely nothing, he turned the water off and dried off. He hesitated, realizing that he’d strolled in here naked, and then he wrapped the towel around his hips and stepped cautiously back out.

Derek was in the kitchen, doing something that made a moderate amount of noise but didn’t smell like food. Stiles left him to it and went to the bedroom. Derek had gathered up his clothes and left them for him on the bed, the mace resting neatly on top of his jeans. Stiles was just pulling on his t-shirt when Derek walked in, holding out an envelope again.

Stiles stared at it. “What—oh, kissing, I guess? And cuddling time?”

“And no condoms,” Derek said, stepping closer, pushing the envelope at him. “And four hundred for fisting. Plus tip.”

“I didn’t,” Stiles said. “Derek, I tapped out.”

“You did exactly what I asked you to do,” Derek said firmly. “You let me do what I wanted, you risked getting hurt by it—”

“I didn’t risk anything,” Stiles insisted, ignoring the lingering ache in his ass. No blood, no problem. “I told you to stop.”

“I was there, Stiles,” Derek said. “Look, I knew when I asked that we might not get all the way there. What I didn’t know for sure was whether you would tell me to stop if you needed me to stop. So I’m calling it a pleasant surprise.”

Stiles took a half step back. “Are you saying—what, it was a test? Just to see if you could make me tell you to stop?”

Derek shook his head quickly. “No. Just—I was more worried about you getting hurt because you tried to tough it out than I was about not getting to shove my entire hand up your ass. You let me try, and that was great. That’s all I could ask for. Just—take the money. Please. You earned it.”

Stiles huffed, but he plucked the envelope from Derek’s hand like he was doing him a favor, and didn’t bother to check the contents before he said, “I’m not taking the bus with this much money on me.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Derek said with a slight smile, and that was that.

It turned out to be fifteen hundred dollars, and Stiles didn’t even let himself wonder what that kind of money meant. He divvied it up, stashed it away, and took the slightly alarming pile he’d accumulated in the long-term stash to convert into a money order and mail back to his savings account in Beacon Hills.

He told himself that there had to be a reversion to the mean coming. Derek couldn’t keep dropping this kind of money on him all the time. Derek was going to run out of freaky things to ask for.

Stiles remembered the way Derek had twitched when Stiles had ruled out getting pissed on, remembered how happy and clingy he’d gotten over the way Stiles smelled.

Stiles had said not for any money, but if Derek was really into it, if Stiles could score one more big payday off of him…

Stiles didn’t actually know what would follow that if. He knew it would be a good thing. He knew he was safer with money than without it.

He had some research to do.

9. Chapter 9

“Okay, so,” Stiles said, struggling out of his cold, damp hoodie in Derek’s apartment the following Tuesday. “I’m sure you have a plan, but I just have to revise something I said last week.”

Derek raised his eyebrows.

Stiles hadn’t gone all out on the not-showering this time, so Derek was looking a normal level of interested. Actually now he looked kind of skeptical, but Stiles had figured it was better to start with a clean slate before he brought this up.

“I don’t know if you’re actually interested or anything,” Stiles said, because he’d been trying to guess about that for an entire week and he still had no idea. He thought the odds were good enough to be worth bringing it up, but that was all he knew.

“So, just, imagine me writing this on the menu board behind the counter: pissing on me costs five hundred dollars up front, plus an extra fifty bucks for every five minutes you make me wait before I can wash up. No pissing in my mouth or on my face, that’s non-negotiable.”

The books Stiles had found—he’d been appalled and delighted that there was more than one, and his GED reading had gone straight to hell this week while he devoured the 306.7 call numbers—said that was pretty safe. Urine itself was more or less sterile, and he already knew Derek didn’t have any actual diseases to transmit.

Derek’s body language went sort of soft and surprised and then tensed up again, his eyebrows lowered.

“That’s all, I just wanted to let you know that service is available,” Stiles said. “Um. What did you want to do tonight?”

Derek frowned a little, and then he said, “I’m gonna need more than ten minutes to decide. How much do you charge to sit on the couch and not say anything else until I make up my mind?”

“Oh,” Stiles said, because that meant Derek definitely wasn’t not interested in pissing on him for money. “For a valued repeat customer I think I can throw that in for free.”

Derek nodded and then walked away, and Stiles followed him cautiously into the living room. Derek switched on a light and then unearthed a laptop from amid stacks of books on a desk in the corner. He opened it up and tapped a few keys, and then set it down on the end table next to the couch, open to the Netflix screen.

“Pick anything,” Derek said, waving Stiles toward the spot next to the laptop. Stiles was sitting down and reaching for the laptop before he understood that Derek had just put him in front of an internet-connected computer.

Derek shot him a weird look when he jerked his hands back. It would be just a quick Google, he could just log into his email. It wouldn’t take thirty seconds. Derek wouldn’t even mind. He wouldn’t mind that part, anyway; he would probably mind whatever Stiles did with what he found.

Stiles forced the thought away. “You, um. You pick. Your house.”

Derek stared at him for a minute and then said, “Stiles, you don’t have to—”

“I’m fine,” Stiles said, pressing his hands against his thighs to keep from lunging at the laptop, struggling not to think about why he wanted to and why he didn’t want to at all. “I just—so many things to watch, so little time. You pick.”

Derek stared at him for a second, and then pulled up the Recommended for You screen and tapped on the icon for CSI. Stiles nodded and curled his arms around his stomach, letting the predictability of the opening scene of a procedural wash over him while Derek sat down next to him—behind him, relative to the laptop. Stiles turned toward it to give Derek his space, and watched the corpse get discovered before they segued into the credits.

Eventually Derek said, “You want anything to drink?”

Stiles looked back over his shoulder at Derek, and found that he was blushing a little.

Oh. That hadn’t actually taken more than ten minutes, but… there was an intermediate step here that Stiles hadn’t really considered.

“No,” Stiles said. “I’m good. Are you having something to drink?”

“Yeah,” Derek said. “If that’s still okay with you?”

“It’s on the menu board, man, order at will.”

Derek nodded and stood, and Stiles went back to staring blankly at CSI. A moment later Derek came back with an opened bottle of beer—nothing Stiles recognized at a glance. It was probably some local microbrew, organic or somehow fancy enough for Derek to like it. He also had a glass of water.

Stiles squirmed just thinking about what Derek was doing. He sort of expected Derek to chug all of it immediately, but he heard Derek take a sip and then set the bottle and the glass both on the floor in front of the couch.

Derek scooted closer to him, and Stiles held carefully still until Derek said, “You realize I’m not just gonna whip it out on the couch, right?”

Stiles ducked his head to hide the way his face got hot, and he muttered, “I don’t know, man, it’s your show.”

“No, hey,” Derek said, putting one hand firmly on Stiles’s shoulder. “This is a service you’re offering me. I realize it’s a special thing and you wouldn’t offer it if you didn’t trust me. I’m not going to mess with that. I won’t push you on your rules, and I won’t make it more unpleasant for you than it has to be.”

“I don’t, um,” Stiles said. Obviously there was going to be something unpleasant about getting pissed on. Right? Piss was gross, this was going to be gross. It was just also going to be… Derek, so Stiles couldn’t imagine it being really awful, and Derek had cleaned off his ass for him last week after shoving fifty percent of his hand into it, so there weren’t a lot of boundaries left between them.

Plus, after that plunge into the library books, Stiles was really, really curious about this whole thing. “I don’t really mind?”

“Are you asking me?” Derek said, sounding a little amused. “I don’t think you really mind either, but I do think you’re kind of nervous about having offered to do this, so if you don’t want to—you know I’ll stop if you say stop. You know that.”

Stiles nodded, remembering last week and that hazily frantic moment when he just couldn’t. “I know.”

“And you didn’t say it up front,” Derek added, “but I’m not going to get any bodily fluids on your clothes.”

Stiles hadn’t actually thought to stipulate that, but. “Oh. Thanks. I guess I’d just steal some of yours if you did.”

“I did say you could,” Derek agreed, definitely amused now, and Stiles turned to look back at him, groping to place the words.

“You said that, like, before the first time I ever came here,” Stiles remembered, frowning at him.

“Good memory,” Derek said, smiling a little, and neither of them could really throw stones if both of them remembered it. Derek dropped his hand from Stiles’s shoulder and took another long swallow of the beer. Stiles didn’t even register that he was watching Derek’s mouth on the bottle and the motion of Derek’s throat until Derek put the bottle down and said, “Watch your show and try to relax, okay? It’s going to be a little while before I can… perform.”

“Happens to lots of guys,” Stiles said, like a reflex, and then he turned hastily to watch the laptop again before he could see whether Derek had any reaction to the half-joke. He didn’t really talk about the rest of his job to Derek—not that he talked about much of anything other than the sex they were having with Derek—and he didn’t want to know if the implication that he saw a lot of guys’ limp dicks had been a mood killer.

Derek’s hand came to rest on the back of his neck after another minute, and when Stiles leaned back into it Derek started rubbing the muscles there. Stiles’s shoulders sagged at the firm massage, and he moaned a little as Derek kept going past the first few kneading motions. Pretty soon both of Derek’s hands were on Stiles’s shoulders, working over muscles that Stiles just now realized had been aching with tension for months. Derek’s hands were really strong, as well as really big—warm and sure as they moved over his body.

“Possibly I should be paying you,” Stiles said at one point, when he opened his eyes, flinching at the sound of a TV gunshot. He had no idea what was going on in the episode anymore.

“Call it a tip,” Derek said. One of his hands went away briefly, the other rubbing gently up and down Stiles’s spine before Derek started rubbing his shoulders again.

“Just the tip,” Stiles muttered, and then shook his head as he added, “Or however much you want, obviously—”

Derek leaned in and kissed the back of his neck instead of answering. Stiles thought it was probably just supposed to be a nice way to tell him to shut up, but Stiles abruptly remembered two weeks ago, and the moment when he’d felt Derek’s teeth close on the back of his neck. He went very still. Derek rubbed his nose against the spot he’d kissed.

“Do I smell okay?” Stiles asked.

“Mm,” Derek said. “Yeah, good enough.”

Stiles squirmed at that, and Derek said, “Here, take your shirt off and I’ll rub your back some more.”

“I might even let you touch my boobs,” Stiles suggested, because this was starting to feel more like a stereotypical night on somebody’s couch than the prelude to the kinkiest sex Stiles had ever been paid for. Derek reached around while Stiles was peeling out of his tight t-shirt, flattening both hands on Stiles’s ribs, below where his pecs would be if he had any visible muscle definition at all.

“Can I?” Derek asked, pressing his thumbs in against Stiles’s sides. “Please?”

“Ah-ah,” Stiles shook his head. “Backrub, maybe some kissing, then groping.”

“Got it,” Derek said, and Stiles heard him take another drink before he got on with rubbing Stiles’s back.

It wasn’t long before Stiles was pulled back into Derek’s lap. He turned sideways so the kissing and groping could be multi-tasked, although Derek kept his hands politely above the belt. Derek kept pausing to drink, and when he tilted the bottle toward Stiles’s mouth he accepted a sip of the beer—he wasn’t surprised that it barely tasted like beer at all—and then a sip of water when Derek offered him that. By the time Stiles squirmed at Derek pinching his nipple and kicked over the glass and bottle, they were both empty.

Stiles looked from the Netflix menu screen to Derek.

It was Derek’s turn to squirm.

“Yeah?” Stiles asked, feeling abruptly excited. He reached between them with one finger to poke Derek a little below the top of his jeans. “Good to go?”

Derek tried to glare, but Stiles knew he was excited too, because he just said, “I think so.”

“Oh man, you don’t get pee-shy, do you?” Stiles asked abruptly. “I didn’t think about that. Maybe you don’t like having strangers around wh—”

“You’re definitely not a stranger,” Derek said, and stood up, pushing Stiles up onto his feet as he went, which made Stiles flail and put his foot down on the knocked-over beer bottle. Derek caught him before he had a chance to really slip and lifted him right off the ground. Stiles froze when he realized what was happening, and Derek took a long stride away from the couch and set Stiles down on his feet with pointed care.

“Get the rest of your clothes off,” Derek said. “We’ll do this in the shower. Okay?”

“Sure,” Stiles said, unbuttoning his jeans. “Makes sense.”

Derek went back for the bottle and glass and took them into the kitchen. Stiles heard him refilling the water glass. He squirmed a little standing alone in the living room—as much because he felt a vague phantom need to pee through sheer power of suggestion as because of what was about to happen.

Just doing my job, Stiles told himself, stripping out of his jeans and underwear and socks and leaving them on the couch with his t-shirt. Just doing what Derek is about to pay me a stupid amount of money to do, just like every week.

He hesitated in the bathroom. He should probably already be in the shower, waiting for Derek when he came in, but this wasn’t exactly like being in Derek’s bed. This was… exactly not at all like being in Derek’s bed.

There was a little knock on the doorframe behind him, and Stiles startled and turned, even though there was only one person it could be. Derek was standing there naked, and Stiles’s eyes dropped automatically to his dick: soft, of course, and it wasn’t like Stiles hadn’t seen it like that plenty of times, but this time it wasn’t a problem he was going to solve or a sign of a job well done. This time Derek’s dick not being hard was kind of the point.

“I was just, um,” Stiles said, waving vaguely at the shower. He hadn’t even opened the curtain.

Derek stayed where he was, just outside the doorway, waiting for Stiles to pull his shit together. Stiles gave him a little nod and then turned and pulled the curtain back, carefully making sure that all of it was outside the tub. He eyed the space thoughtfully. There was just about exactly room for him and Derek to both be in the shower—definitely room if they were both standing up, but any other position would get tight.

“I’d like you on your knees,” Derek said quietly behind him, and Stiles glanced back. Derek still hadn’t come closer. Derek was giving him room to work this out. “I know you said not on your face, but I’d like your throat. If that’s all right.”

Stiles swallowed and raised his hand, rubbing not at his throat but the back of his neck. Derek smiled slightly and tilted his head. That, too.

“Okay,” Stiles said, looking again. “I can kneel, yeah.”

“Put a towel down for your knees,” Derek suggested. “You can be on the side by the tap—if it starts really grossing you out you can turn the water on and wash up right away.”

Stiles nodded, opening the cupboard under the sink to grab a towel. He pulled out two, since he was going to want one clean and dry afterward, and grabbed a washcloth while he was at it, tossing it over the bottles of soap/shampoo/whatever. He would want to scrub when this was over.

“Do you want to be facing me or facing away?” Derek asked, as Stiles turned to set the towel down. Stiles tried to picture it—watching Derek’s dick, maybe looking up at Derek’s face, or the warm stream hitting him from behind…

He knelt down with his back to the tap, his feet pressed up against the end of the tub, and waved Derek into the empty space he’d left in front of him.

Derek came over and stepped neatly into the tub—Stiles couldn’t help watching the swing of his dick as he did. Derek crouched down to face him almost before Stiles could be really aware of being on his knees in front of him. Derek’s hands framed his face in a warm, gentle touch, and Derek leaned in for a kiss, soft and sweet.

Stiles just stared at him when Derek pulled back slightly.

Derek sighed and said, “Okay, you’re sure?”

“I am sure I’m charging you five hundred dollars for this, yeah,” Stiles said, because this was a job he was doing. He could do his job. “Plus a kissing charge. Plus probably some kind of actual sex at some point.”

Derek’s mouth twitched, a smile that only lasted a second. “Okay. Got it.”

Derek slid a hand back to squeeze the nape of his neck, and Stiles shivered a little but held still. Derek straightened up.

“Chin up,” Derek said quietly, taking himself in hand, and Stiles bared his throat, leaning back slightly so that his body was a single slope from his throat to his knees. Stiles let his eyes close almost all the way, watching Derek’s hand and Derek’s dick, waiting for it.

There was nothing for a second—Derek adjusted his grip, shifted on his feet—and then Derek sighed, and Stiles saw a little jet of piss arcing through the air—he somehow had time to think, Oh, this is actually happening—and then he felt it hit his throat, warm and wet and incredibly startling despite the fact that he’d been waiting for this for a week. He couldn’t stop a flinch at the liquid splashing against his skin. This was actually happening. He was getting pissed on for money.

He looked up at Derek’s face, because nothing followed that first shot. He kind of expected Derek to be silently offering him yet another chance to tap out.

Derek didn’t look uncertain anymore, though. Derek looked really fascinated. Derek was looking at Stiles the way he’d looked watching Stiles’s ass take all of his fingers, like they were an hour into this.

Stiles’s dick twitched, and suddenly this whole thing was a lot more interesting. “Come on, man. Hit me with your best shot.”

Derek met his eyes at that and exhaled sharply—not nearly soft enough to be a sigh—and then he looked down to where Stiles could feel the cooling piss rolling down his skin, trickling somewhere in the vicinity of his belly button. Derek started pissing again and didn’t stop. The stream started at Stiles’s throat and shifted down, hitting his collarbones and shoulders and then down his chest, methodical, like Derek was deliberately covering as much skin as he could. Stiles glanced up at Derek’s face to see that absorbed expression again. He thought it wouldn’t have been surprising if Derek had tried writing his name on Stiles, like he’d heard of guys doing when there was enough snow on the ground.

Stiles shivered again at the thought of Derek writing his name, and he dropped his gaze back to Derek’s hand and his dick. Piss was dripping down his chest now, over his stomach and down to his pubes. It wasn’t actually awful—not really weirder than Derek coming on him. It didn’t smell like much of anything—of course it didn’t—a little acrid, but not horrible. The piss was warm where it hit him, cooling on his skin, but he felt hot all over with a confused mix of embarrassment and vague arousal, so even that didn’t feel bad.

Piss hit his dick directly and Stiles couldn’t help making a noise, shivering again at the sensation, at the sheer enormous fact of Derek pissing on him there.

And just like that Derek stopped again. Stiles looked up and Derek was staring down at him, eyes wide and dark. He’d gone from looking fascinated to looking dazed, and Stiles wondered how strong that beer had been—but Derek had seemed totally under control until they started doing this. If he was drunk off anything, it was this.

“I need,” Derek said, and then shook his head. “Is it okay if I touch you?”

Stiles nodded slowly. He didn’t exactly know why Derek would want to touch him when Stiles was covered in piss, but on the other hand—of course Derek would revel in the grossness of this, too. Of course.

Derek stepped in closer, then closer again, until Stiles shifted his knees closer together on the barely-wet towel so that Derek’s feet could slot in to the outside of them. Derek bent his knees a little, bracketing Stiles’s body with his legs, and touched the head of his dick to Stiles’s throat, tracing it over the places he’d already pissed on, smearing the wetness around. Stiles kept his chin tilted up and his eyes closed, just feeling the touch of Derek’s body all around him, the heavy softness of Derek’s dick where it touched him.

His own dick stirred a little, helplessly turned on by how personal this was. He was the one on his knees, but he felt like Derek was broken open for him to see, to feel.

“Closer,” Derek murmured, and his left hand settled on the back of Stiles’s head, drawing him in until his face was tucked against Derek’s hip. He couldn’t see anything from here, could only smell Derek, and Derek pressed his dick against the side of Stiles’s neck, letting him feel it, hot and lax and damp.

He started pissing again, in little spurts at first that dripped over the back of Stiles’s bent neck, and then he shifted back, pulling Stiles’s head with him, so that Stiles’s back sloped down from his shoulders. Derek was pissing down the line of his spine. Stiles could feel it dribbling down over his ass and in between, wetting Stiles’s asshole, dripping down to his balls, covering every part of him. Occasionally the stream shifted—Stiles felt it hit the heel of each of his feet, dripping ticklishly down his arches, but Derek came back again and again to that line, piss flowing down the center of Stiles’s back to his ass.

Stiles squirmed. It was like Derek was touching him everywhere, seeing every part of him, controlling him more than he had when Stiles was tied up. It was some weird kind of hot that Stiles’s whole body was confused by, but he wanted to know where it went.

After a while Derek’s left hand let go of Stiles’s head. Stiles didn’t move—it didn’t feel like he was supposed to—and he heard a different splashing-on-skin sound, and then Derek’s hand came back again. Wet, soaking into his short hair and trickling down the curve of his skull to the back of the neck. Stiles shivered hard, but Derek was already pissing down his back again and—his hair wasn’t against the rules, really, even if it was closer than he’d expected to get. Derek’s thumb swept gently over the crown of his head, and the fact that Derek was smearing piss across Stiles’s head somehow didn’t make it feel less sweetly reassuring.

It seemed like it went on for a long time, with Derek’s hand holding him in place and hot piss trickling down his back, but when it was over Stiles still felt like he could have stayed there longer. Derek didn’t let go of him right away, and Derek’s dick was still pressed close to the side of his neck. Stiles stayed there, kneeling at his feet, until Derek said his name in a weird, hoarse voice.

Stiles tried to pick his head up and Derek let him. When Stiles met his gaze this time Derek looked wrecked, his face flushed and his eyes almost all black. He wasn’t just fascinated. He looked stoned on this. Stiles felt his whole body heat up, knowing that that was for him, that he’d done that for Derek just by getting on his knees and letting Derek do this.

“I will pay you literally anything you ask,” Derek said, sounding drowsy and intense all at once, and Stiles felt a tiny cold sensation in his stomach. He was doing a job. Right. He was doing this for money, not for Derek. “If you’ll let me come on your face, and let me suck you off afterward, and let me be the one to wash you up when we’re done.”

“What if I say no?” Stiles asked, because this was his job, and he had to do it safely. Derek was being weird about this and Stiles had to know. He didn’t want to wreck this, didn’t want Derek to stop touching him and looking at him like that, but there had to be limits somewhere.

He could see Derek struggling to answer, and finally Derek said in a low, steady voice, “If you say no I’ll stop. I’ll leave.”

Stiles believed it. Derek wouldn’t like it, and it would be hard for him, but he would stop. He wouldn’t force Stiles to do any of this. He just wanted Stiles to, more desperately than he’d ever wanted anything they’d done.

Stiles was aware that it was actually a bad idea to give a john every single thing he wanted, but this wasn’t just a trick. This was Derek, and Stiles… Stiles really wanted to give Derek everything he wanted.

“Will you tip me a briefcase full of cash if I suck your dick until you’re ready to come?”

Derek’s eyes went wide and then he clenched them shut, his whole face crumpling with the effort. He said through gritted teeth, “That’s against the rules. Not in your mouth. You said.”

Stiles lowered his gaze to Derek’s dick. He still had his right hand curled around it. Stiles could see him starting to get hard.

His dick was also wet, because he’d just been pissing and rubbing his dick all over Stiles’s piss-wet skin, and as far gone as Derek was he was remembering Stiles’s rules. Stiles thought this was a bad time to just throw the rules out the window, even if he honestly didn’t care that much about that rule right now. He looked around and grabbed the washcloth draped over one of the interchangeable plastic bottles. It was dry, but clean and soft: good enough.

“Here,” Stiles said, and brushed Derek’s hand away from his dick, swiping the washcloth cursorily over it. “There. You’re good.”

“Seriously, anything, I’ll give you my car,” Derek said, and Stiles managed to catch himself before he said, No you won’t, Laura would kill you. He wasn’t going to safeword out of this by mistake.

“Shut up before I change my mind,” Stiles said, curling his own fingers around Derek’s dick and taking the head into his mouth.

He flinched from the taste—that was piss, he definitely knew what Derek’s piss tasted like now, and there was no getting around the fact that it tasted like piss—but he made himself swallow. He licked and sucked, felt the familiar shift as Derek’s dick hardened in his mouth, and the taste of piss was quickly lost in the normal, familiar taste of Derek’s cock, basically clean and good.

Derek’s left hand cupped the back of his head again, and Stiles closed his eyes and leaned into his work. This part was familiar, getting Derek hard, sucking his cock. They’d hardly ever done it just like this, with Stiles on his knees at Derek’s feet, but judging by the harsh gasping above him, and the way Derek’s fingers curled in against his skull, this was working for Derek right now. He started to thrust before long, just little stutters of his hips, like he was trying not to and couldn’t quite hold back.

“Stop, stop,” Derek said, not long after that, and Stiles pulled off, swaying back to look up at him.

Derek curled his hand around his dick, and Stiles remembered that this wasn’t just a blowjob. He closed his eyes and let his mouth fall open a little.

Derek made a gutted noise and the slick sound of his hand working his dick got frantically fast. Stiles wanted to peek—just the sound of that was hot, and the sight would only be more so—and then Stiles felt yet another warm splash against his skin. Derek’s come hit him high on his cheek, between his eyes, striped over his mouth.

When he was finished, Derek mumbled, “Sorry, I—” and Stiles heard a faint damp screech of skin sliding against the shower wall before something soft touched his face, swiping at his eyes. “You—you can open your eyes now, it’s okay. Sorry.”

Stiles blinked—God, his eyelashes felt sticky—and Derek was still staring at him with wide eyes showing just a rim of gray-green around the black.

“Please let me kiss you,” Derek said quietly, and Stiles nodded, entranced by how completely gone Derek was right now. Derek hauled him in, sitting back on his heels and pulling Stiles onto his lap. He kissed Stiles roughly, fast and deep, like he wanted to taste himself in Stiles’s mouth and halfway down his throat. Stiles spared a fraction of a second to think that he was getting Derek fucking filthy and then he gave up on that whole problem and put his arms around Derek’s shoulders. He kissed back the best he could while Derek’s hands slid down his back, sliding on wet skin, gripping his ass and teasing in between his cheeks.

Stiles squirmed a little at that touch—fucking had felt weird and too-intense all week, although there was nothing actually wrong with his ass. Derek pulled back enough to make a shushing noise and then got a firm grip on Stiles’s ass and stood up under him, like Stiles’s weight wasn’t even a burden. Stiles managed to mostly strangle the startled noise he made, and Derek hardly even seemed to notice, turning around to set Stiles on his feet at the opposite end of the shower, away from the tap.

Derek pressed him back against the shower wall and started kissing down his body, nuzzling at Stiles’s skin like he couldn’t get enough of the smell of Stiles covered in piss. Before Stiles could even decide never to contemplate that idea again, Derek was folding down to his knees and mouthing at Stiles’s dick.

He wasn’t all the way hard yet, and Derek’s mouth on his soft dick gave him a weird, full-body memory of the week before, Derek sucking his dick while stretching him open. Stiles whimpered a little, caught between that and the reality, which was that he was getting hard about as fast as he ever had in his life in the heat of Derek’s mouth.

Derek sucked him off as relentlessly as he’d kissed, like he was on some kind of time limit, like Stiles would take his dick away if Derek didn’t finish him fast enough. It reminded him of those first blowjobs he’d ever given Derek—not so much the feel of Derek’s dick in his mouth but the feel of the Camaro flying along the highway, the way every turn had swung him out with an unseen momentum. Derek’s mouth was going straight from zero to a hundred miles an hour and dragging him along for the ride. Stiles was already writhing with the intensity of it as soon as he was hard.

He tried to writhe, anyway. Derek held him pinned to the wall, not pushing hard but not budging when Stiles tried to move. Stiles struggled more and felt the ache of soon-to-be-bruises on the points of his hips where they ground against Derek’s hands. Derek’s mouth was hot on his dick, a startling contrast to the chill Stiles was beginning to feel from his wet skin, and Stiles put his hands in Derek’s hair and held on, even though he couldn’t have pushed Derek down any further onto his dick if he wanted to.

It felt like it had gone on longer then he could bear, and almost no time at all, and then he was hearing the hard-edged echoes of his moans as he came right down Derek’s throat.

Derek stayed on his knees for a few breaths, gasping against Stiles’s dick as it softened, though his hands eased their grip on Stiles’s hips, and then he slid back up Stiles’s body to kiss him again, pressing him against the wall with his whole body. Stiles accepted Derek’s kisses in a daze, his body still catching up with the fact that he’d just gotten off.

Derek ducked his head after a moment, pressing his face against Stiles’s throat, and Stiles muttered, “You are so fucking gross, dude.”

Derek made an indistinct noise but didn’t come up for air. Stiles put up with it for a couple more minutes, but he remembered the way Derek had looked totally lost. At any other time, Derek would have been a little embarrassed by Stiles calling him gross, or at least noticed.

Stiles gave him a little shove and said, “Come on. Time for washing up.”

Derek swayed back from Stiles’s shove, but after leaning in for another kiss he turned and started the water. Derek rinsed his hands in the water from the tap, and then reached over and grabbed one of the bottles, pouring out soap to wash his hands before he turned the shower on. Derek turned and tugged Stiles under the hot water, shifting around awkwardly so that Stiles was directly under the spray with Derek behind him, the sodden towel he had knelt on kicked to the end of the bathtub. Stiles tilted his head, letting hot water run over his head—it was almost scalding, definitely nothing that could have been coming from a human body, and Stiles tilted his face up into it, opening his mouth to rinse away the lingering taste.

Derek pressed close to him, leaning down around him to retrieve a bottle of soap and the washcloth, and Derek murmured, “Will you let me wash you up?”

Stiles nodded, remembering that that had been part of what Derek asked for. It was only fair to let him clean up his own mess, wasn’t it? He watched Derek’s hand, lathering soap on the cloth, and then Derek said quietly, “Chin down,” and Stiles ducked his head, letting Derek scrub his hair and behind his ears and the back of his neck.

“Face?” Derek said, and Stiles nodded and turned, closing his eyes and holding carefully still. It wasn’t the cloth that touched his face but Derek’s bare hands, slick with soap, and Stiles was glad he’d actually seen Derek wash his hands before they got to this. Derek’s fingers rubbed gently over his face, his eyebrows and eyelids, down his cheeks, over his nose and mouth. Stiles thought he caught a faint smell from the soap as it was rubbed into his skin—something fresh and cool, like mint, but a mile away—and then Derek said, “Rinse.”

Stiles turned his face into the spray and the smell was gone. After that Derek used the washcloth again, gently but firmly soaping Stiles’s throat, all the way up under his jaw and down to his collarbones. Stiles kept his eyes closed and let Derek work, moving where Derek nudged or pulled him. He’d thought it felt like Derek was touching him everywhere when Derek was just pissing on him, but now Derek really did touch every inch of his skin. He soaped and rinsed every boring or interesting part of Stiles with equal care—as much for the middle of his arm as his armpit and each of his fingers. It didn’t feel sexual, exactly, but it wasn’t like being touched by a doctor or a stranger, either, nothing like being touched by one of his other customers. It was personal, not in the scarily intense way that the sex had been, but inescapably. Derek washed his dick and balls and ass with the same gentle thoroughness, and then each of his legs and his feet, until Stiles felt perfectly clean, but still with Derek’s touch lingering everywhere.

When Derek stood up and reached for the tap, Stiles said, “No, you too.”

Derek turned and blinked at Stiles. Water beaded on his eyelashes and the tip of his nose, and his hair was all flattened. He should have looked ridiculous, his eyes still wide and dark and not quite present, but Stiles just felt a strange kind of warmth toward him, nothing to do with sex. Nothing to do with his job.

Stiles shook off that thought and plucked the washcloth from Derek’s hand, squirting more soap into it. “You need to wash up, too,” Stiles repeated.

He wasn’t sure he was up for cleaning Derek as carefully and well as Derek had cleaned him—he had a funny sense that Derek deserved it, but he knew his own impatience and he knew he wouldn’t be as good. Derek shook his head slightly and took the washcloth back from Stiles, saving him from the attempt. Stiles stood back and watched as Derek scrubbed himself off quickly. He picked up one of the other bottles—the one that was faintly blue—to wash his hair. Nothing but organic gourmet shampoo for Derek, Stiles thought, and that warm sense of wanting to take care of him didn’t go away.

When Derek shut the water off he grabbed the towel Stiles had taken out and left on top of the toilet, giving that to Stiles, so apparently being toweled dry was not part of the service. Stiles felt vaguely relieved and disappointed at the same time, and got to work drying himself off in the quiet of the bathroom with no water running. Derek stepped out gingerly onto the wet floor—they’d never pulled the shower curtain shut—and got another towel for himself, drying off thoroughly.

Derek offered Stiles a hand when he made to step out of the shower, steadying him on the slippery floor, and held on, leading him out of the bathroom. They stood there equidistant between Stiles’s clothes in the living room and the door to Derek’s bedroom. Derek was still holding Stiles’s hand.

“Do you,” Stiles said, at the same time Derek said, “Would you—”

Derek looked away and dropped Stiles’s hand, and Stiles felt like he’d lost something. Even more, looking at Derek standing there, naked and still damp from the shower and unable to look at him, Stiles couldn’t ignore that impulse to take care. He had no idea what had happened to Derek in the shower, but he knew it had been somehow every bit as intense for Derek as getting halfway fisted had been for Stiles. He knew he didn’t want Derek to be alone tonight.

“First thirty minutes of cuddling are still free,” Stiles said, stepping in a little closer. “Usual rates apply after that.”

Stiles caught a glimpse of something that looked like relief on Derek’s face, and then Derek was hauling him into something too frantic and too naked to be merely a hug. Stiles stood there, letting Derek cling to him. He couldn’t see a clock, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if it turned out that he spent the whole first thirty minutes just standing there in the hallway, warmed by nothing but Derek’s skin, before Derek finally managed to tow him to bed.

Derek held on just as tight once they were lying down with a blanket pulled over them. Stiles put a tentative hand on his side, petting him gingerly, his hand moving slower and slower until he fell asleep.

Stiles woke up again and again, because he came up against Derek’s grip every time he tried to move. Sometimes they both moved in silence, sometimes Derek woke up enough to say something confused or apologetic and Stiles would yawn out a mumbled reassurance. Each time Derek plastered himself up against Stiles all over again, and Stiles went back to sleep with Derek holding on.

It was light, after a while, but Derek mumbled, “Stay,” and Stiles said, “Yeah, course,” and curled an arm around Derek when Derek had a grip on him again.

Stiles finally woke up in a weird shadowed daylight. He blinked at the clock, but it really said 1:28. He’d gotten his entire night’s sleep at Derek’s, with Derek aggressively cuddling him. That was why the light seemed strange: he had never stayed so late at Derek’s apartment that the angle of the sunlight shifted that far.

He was hungry, and he had to pee, and even though he was alone in the bed now he felt his face heat when he remembered the weird intensity of the night before. That had gone past sex and into something else, and now Stiles was waking up late and naked in Derek’s bed, and Derek…

Stiles opened the bedroom door and realized that Derek was cooking breakfast, or at least he was cooking bacon and some kind of delicious baked good. Stiles’s stomach growled and his mouth watered so hard it hurt, and he darted into the bathroom.

He made himself drink some water to shut up the hunger pangs, and then he had to take a few deep breaths before he could pee. He stared down at his dick and the stream of piss in weird fascination, like he’d never seen it before. The floor was dry underfoot, he noted, and the shower curtain and rug were gone along with the towels they’d used; Derek must have put them all in the laundry.

Stiles brushed his teeth—Derek’s toothpaste was weirdly totally normal Colgate—and then headed out of the bathroom, still naked. He hadn’t seen his clothes in the bedroom, and found them where he’d left them, piled untidily on the couch. He got dressed and was just patting his pocket for the familiar shape of the mace when Derek said, “Um,” behind him.

Stiles turned. Derek had a dishtowel over his shoulder, and was fully dressed: jeans and a thick henley, boots on his feet.

“Hey,” Stiles said. “Um, I can—”

“No, come have breakfast first,” Derek said, cutting off Stiles’s awkward attempt to excuse himself like the last kid lingering at a sleepover party. “I mean—if you want. You must be hungry, though.”

“Uh, yeah,” Stiles said. Letting Derek feed him breakfast seemed like crossing another line, but he’d already accepted food from Derek—mostly candy he’d never eaten, and Thanksgiving soup that had really been for everyone, but this wasn’t technically a new thing. “Is breakfast another tip?”

“Overtime,” Derek said, smooth and deadpan and back to normal except for the way he was determined to feed Stiles bacon, which wasn’t really a bad thing. “I kept you on the clock for almost twelve hours, you’ve gotta have a meal break coming. Come on, the eggs are just right.”

Stiles followed him into the kitchen, and perched at the tiny table for two while Derek heaped up a plate of bacon and eggs and actual homemade biscuits. Stiles could see a floury mixing bowl in the sink; they hadn’t even come from a refrigerated tube.

“You actually do like cooking, don’t you?” Stiles asked as Derek set the enormous breakfast down in front of him.

“I like,” Derek said, and then cut himself off, turning away as he said, “knowing what I’m eating.”

“Of course you do,” Stiles said, and he told himself that the warm, fond feeling was for the perfectly crisp bacon. That was definitely why he moaned.

Derek ate his own breakfast standing against the counter, but there was barely room for two plates on the little table, and Stiles was too busy devouring all the food in sight to feel self-conscious about Derek not joining him. His stomach was already starting to ache a little with fullness—he hadn’t had a meal that big since Thanksgiving—and when he looked up Derek was just watching him, his own plate tilting a little in his hand.

Stiles reached out without thinking; Derek had an entire unattended strip of bacon there, he couldn’t resist. Derek jerked the plate away from him as soon as Stiles reached for it, but then rolled his eyes and tilted it back, offering, and Stiles found room for one last slice of bacon.

“There’s juice,” Derek said, looking down at his plate. “No coffee, sorry.”

“Juice is good,” Stiles said, making to stand, but Derek waved him down and went to the fridge, and Stiles sank back to his seat. There wasn’t really room for two people to be moving around in the tiny kitchen, so he let Derek pour him a glass of orange juice—Tropicana, not some weird organic thing. Derek did have some vestigial hints of contact with civilization.

Stiles had finished most of his orange juice and Derek was frowning down at the last crumbs on his plate when he said, “Did you decide how much?”

Stiles tipped up the glass and made an inquiring face, like he had no idea what Derek was asking. He knew, but he wanted to see exactly how serious Derek was about it.

“I told you you could set your price for last night,” Derek went on, after flicking a quick glance toward Stiles. “For sucking my dick and the rest of it. That was over and above. I meant that, whatever you think I owe you, I’ll pay.”

He didn’t offer Stiles the Camaro again, at least, so Stiles didn’t have to feel too bad about taking advantage of him when he was clearly out of his mind.

That just meant that Stiles had to decide how much to charge Derek for… whatever that had turned out to be. It hadn’t been awful—he didn’t want to run up the charge so high that Derek felt like Stiles was mad at him for what he’d asked for, or for bending the rules when Stiles had been the one to suggest it in the first place.

At the same time, that had been more than just Stiles letting Derek piss on him. It had been weird and huge and Derek had liked it so much he’d made Stiles sleep for ten hours afterward and then cooked him breakfast. Stiles remembered the way he’d felt, looking at Derek toward the end of it, the warmth and the wanting to look after him, and he knew they couldn’t do this again. Not lightly, not the way Derek just casually dropped hundreds of dollars to add on kissing and skip condoms. Derek would try it again if Stiles left the price reasonable enough to allow it.

Stiles came up with a number that sounded fucking insane. He ran over the calculation in his head again a few times. It seemed right for what he was trying to tell Derek by it, but he was still mostly convinced that Derek was going to laugh when he looked up from his empty orange juice glass and said, “Five thousand dollars.”

Derek flinched a little, exactly like Stiles had reached out and shoved him back a step. He nodded, turning to put his plate in the sink, and said, “Could you wait here for a few minutes? I don’t have that much on hand, but I can get it for you before you go.”

Stiles nodded, and Derek rinsed his plate off and then dried his hands on the dish towel still slung over his shoulder.

“I’ll be right back,” Derek said, and headed for the door, grabbing his keys on the way. He closed the door behind him without looking back and Stiles was alone in Derek’s apartment. It was very quiet, and Stiles looked around, thinking of the things he could do—rifle through drawers, find Derek’s laptop and switch it on, steal himself a clean pair of socks—but after a few minutes he stood up and rinsed his plate and glass, and then rinsed out the mixing bowl, because he knew from experience that anything with flour in it would set up like concrete if you let it dry.

When the door opened again, Stiles realized that he’d never heard the Camaro start up, and that there hadn’t been time for Derek to go very far at all. Derek hesitated halfway to the kitchen, when he saw Stiles with his hands in the sink, and then he shook his head and came in, setting down an overstuffed white envelope. Stiles could see the bills inside, rubber-banded together.

“Don’t do my dishes,” Derek said mildly.

“I was just being polite,” Stiles insisted. “But, fine, next time I’ll pretend I was raised by wolves.”

Derek gave him a weird fake smile at that, baring his teeth, and Stiles figured they’d officially had about enough of each other.

“Okay, okay. I won’t do any more of your dishes. I’m going.”

“Stiles,” Derek said, when Stiles had brushed past him, envelope full of money in hand. “You shouldn’t—”

Stiles turned back. He didn’t really want a ride home from Derek right now, but it was also true that he didn’t want to get on the bus with what he had in his hand.

But Derek shook his head slightly and gestured upward. “Laura’s awake, she’ll give you a ride if you want one.”

“Oh,” Stiles said. “Okay. Thanks.”

Derek nodded, and then turned away to deal with the dishes. Stiles turned around, grabbed his hoodie and toed on his shoes, and walked out without saying another word.

He only hesitated outside Derek’s door for a few seconds before he turned and trotted upstairs. He knocked, and Laura answered almost before he’d lowered his hand.

She was giving him kind of a weird look, and Stiles said, “Derek didn’t just come up here and ask you for f—for a whole bunch of money, did he?”

Laura’s eyes narrowed slightly, but she said, “No. He came up here to get something out of the safe.”

“Oh,” Stiles said. Of course there was a safe, of course Laura guarded all the important things. “That makes more sense. Um. Do you… store a lot of things for him?”

Laura leaned against the doorframe, folding her arms. “Do you need to make a deposit at the Bank of Laura, Stiles?”

“Yes,” Stiles said, leaping on that idea, because he’d owned five thousand dollars—or however much it was, Jesus Christ, Derek had probably tipped him—for about two minutes and he had no idea what to do with it. “Could I? Please?”

“Of course,” Laura said, lowering her arms and taking a step back into the apartment. “Do you want to put it in the safe, or just hide it somewhere? It’s okay either way, I promise.”

Stiles considered asking to put it right back in the safe Derek had just gotten all the money out of, and that seemed even more ludicrous than everything else. “Could I just… hide it?”

“Sure,” Laura said. “I’m gonna finish eating breakfast—” Laura waved toward the couch where she’d obviously just been sitting, since there was food out on the coffee table, “and you stash whatever it is you need to hide wherever you need to hide it. I promise I won’t throw out anything in the apartment without making sure it’s not your stuff. Okay?”

“Thanks,” Stiles said, and shut the door behind him as Laura turned away, going back to the couch and her abandoned yogurt.

Stiles went into the kitchen—visible from the couch, he knew, but Laura wasn’t looking. He crouched down by the cupboards first, just to count.

Six thousand dollars. Derek had tipped twenty percent, which was practically sane. Stiles pressed his wrist to his mouth to hold back the hysterical laughter he could feel pressing against his ribs, just waiting to get out.

When he’d calmed down he pulled out two hundred dollars and pocketed it. He remembered, as he did, the simpler time in his life when Derek had been paying him two hundred dollars for a blowjob and he’d thought that was insanely good money. It still was; the rest of what was in the envelope was beyond good money, into something Stiles couldn’t think about.

He stood up again and started rummaging around until he found Laura’s junk drawer, full of rubber bands and small tools and random shit. There was a roll of duct tape, and Stiles took it and then opened the cupboards under the kitchen sink.

There were almost no cleaning supplies, he noticed. A big jug of vinegar, and a box of baking soda, paper towels and rags. Obviously she and Derek were on the same wavelength when it came to unscented organic everything. Stiles took enough stuff out of the cupboard to make room for himself, and slid in until he could see the backside of the sink, the narrow space between it and the wall.

There was already something taped there.

Stiles scooted over and taped his own envelope in place a few inches away from the first one. He went back to the junk drawer for a Sharpie and wrote STILES on one last strip of tape, which he smacked on over his little bundle. Wouldn’t want the Hales getting the secret stashes mixed up.

Stiles put everything back in the cupboard when he was done, dusted himself off unnecessarily, and checked his pocket to be sure he had the few bucks for bus fare that he’d started with, as well as the little tube of mace.

“Thanks, Laura,” Stiles said when he was at the front door again. “I’m gonna go now.”

Laura nodded, licked her spoon clean, and said, “Stiles, you remember what I said, right, about if Derek does anything you don’t like. If he’s pressuring you or anything.”

Stiles nodded. It wasn’t that he hadn’t liked it. It wasn’t him who needed to be protected from what had happened last night. “He’s fine. It’s fine.”

“Okay,” Laura said. “I’m trusting you to tell me if it’s not.”

Stiles nodded one more time, and then he got the hell out of there.

10. Chapter 10

It was weird taking the bus back from Derek’s. He hadn’t done that in a long time, not since… he’d taken the bus back from Laura’s, after Chris Argent. That was nearly a month ago—it was the middle of December already, although it didn’t feel like winter yet down here by the Bay. Not that Stiles would wish it to be any colder; it was pouring rain most days. Stiles huddled in his hoodie, which still carried a little bit of the warmth of Derek’s apartment.

He didn’t have much money to sort out when he got home, and other than checking that his room still hadn’t been broken into, he didn’t let himself think about the money he already had stashed away. He didn’t let himself think about money at all. He had some—had enough. Enough for this week. That was all he could think about it, because every time he let himself think about six thousand dollars held safe for him at the Bank of Laura, he felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, like there was open space absolutely all around him and he was going to fall away into it any second. Anything could happen now.

He did normal Wednesday things, instead. He went to the library. He revised his study schedule to account for losing a week of study time. He knew the dates the tests were offered; they were on a flyer by the computer lab. He wasn’t going to have to worry about paying the fees now.

That teetering feeling of open space stayed with him even when he was trying his best not to think about where it came from. He just had to avoid making any sudden moves. He just had to stick to his routines. He was doing fine. Act normal, that was the trick, right? Fake it till you make it.

If he just pretended that he didn’t—if he just pretended that nothing had changed, he didn’t have to decide what was going to happen next. He wouldn’t have to figure out how to look forward to a whole life that started with this, with what had happened back in October. He could just stay right where he was, in this kind of shitty but familiar space he’d carved out for himself. He just had to not get robbed or beaten up. He just had to get through another week. He could do that. He was pretty good at that.

Thursday night he started crying while he was getting fucked. He wasn’t sobbing or anything, just his eyes kept watering and his breath hitched a couple of times. He didn’t think the guy noticed, but he also didn’t get a tip, so maybe he had. It was probably better to lose his tip for crying than to get a big one for it, really.

Friday night the prickly about-to-cry feeling came back with his first john, but he managed to fight it off by reeling off all the Star Wars trivia he could think of in his head. With his second john he was clumsy—not in the mostly-under-control semi-charming way he usually was, but in the way where he was in serious danger of doing someone bodily harm. He had to suck the guy’s dick for twenty minutes to get him back into the mood after Stiles ruined it. The guy called him Billy at the end of it and Stiles just stared blankly at him, like he’d never heard that name before.

With the third guy of the night he started crying while sucking the guy’s dick, which was way harder to hide than crying while getting fucked. The guy shoved him away and yelled at him for pulling pathetic shit trying to get a big tip. Stiles yelled back, like an idiot, and the guy yelled louder, slapped him across the face, and shoved him out the door without his shoes or hoodie. After the door slammed behind him Stiles realized that he was lucky it hadn’t been a punch or a beating or a violent unlubed fuck and started to shake.

Stiles went and stood by the ice machine for the time it took three successive ice cubes to melt between his red cheek and his shaking hand. He wiped his face dry on his t-shirt and then went back, ready to beg the guy for his stuff back. He couldn’t walk home in the pouring rain barefoot in a t-shirt. He needed his stuff. He would suck the guy’s dick for free, he wouldn’t cry, he would—

His stuff had been dumped outside the door, exactly like an empty room service tray. Stiles gathered it up, feeling shaky all over again, and got himself fully dressed before he texted Frank that he’d fucked up and the guy had kicked him out before Stiles could get him off.

I am fucking well aware, Frank texted back. Go the fuck home.

Stiles went home, got thoroughly drunk, and thought about calling Laura because someone was mean to him when he sucked—ha!—at his job. He didn’t call. He didn’t know how he would explain any of it to her, and he knew she would ask sooner or later. Eventually he passed out.

Saturday he got zero call-outs, which was bad: that meant no money from Saturday, and he’d made almost nothing on Friday. It also meant he spent the whole night awake and sober and waiting for nothing, his thoughts circling again and again over the possibilities he couldn’t let himself think about. If he could do anything, he could—but it didn’t matter what he could do. He couldn’t fix anything that mattered. He couldn’t imagine life after this.

At four AM he chugged enough Wild Turkey to render him woozy and half-sick and then went to sleep.

Sunday night Frank came and picked him up—partly to get the money Stiles had collected on Friday, and partly to deliver a pep talk that reminded Stiles unwillingly of his lacrosse coach.

“What’s the deal here, William?” Frank demanded, and even though it wasn’t his name, Stiles felt the full-name-scold Frank intended. “You were better at this in your first week. When I met you, I thought, hey, here’s a kid who has shit squared away, really knows how to handle himself. I figured you were gonna be good at keeping it professional, you knew how to do a job. You going to pieces on me now?”

Stiles shook his head, gaze fixed on the dashboard. He knew it was stupid to not want to let his pimp down, but he had to be able to handle himself. He had to have things squared away. He had to be able to take care of himself, by himself. How else was he going to survive?

“I just had a couple of bad days,” Stiles muttered. “I’m fine, I can do my job.”

“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” Frank said skeptically. “Hop in back, you’re not on call-outs tonight.”

Stiles went around and got into the backseat of Frank’s car, and within ten minutes two other boys—one Japanese, the other blond and so young-looking Stiles was a little creeped out—piled in beside him. They both glared suspiciously at him and squeezed against each other to avoid touching him. Stiles figured that either they knew he was the team fuckup or they suspected him of trying to steal their jobs; either way, he stuck to staring out the window.

Frank drove them down to a strategically chosen intersection, and Stiles spent the next six hours standing on a street corner. No one spoke to him; not the other whores, not the johns. When Frank gestured, Stiles got into a car and did what the guy wanted. He gave eight blowjobs, went through an entire pack of Listerine strips, and didn’t shed a single tear. He was holding it together. He could do this.

It was a relief to wake up on Monday and know that he’d somehow survived the week. The relief lasted almost two hours, and then, while he was at the laundromat, perched on top of his washer and watching Korean Waiter’s load of black pants tumble across from him, Stiles got a text from Derek.

Stiles just stared at his phone without reading the message for a while, thinking about Derek and what the hell was going to happen this week. What if the text said Derek didn’t want anything? What if the text said Derek did want something, something special? What if…

Stiles shook his head and flipped open the phone to read the message.

How do you feel about overtime? Will pay a surcharge for wrong shift if applicable.

Stiles almost smiled at his phone—who used the word applicable in a text?—and then the message sunk in. Derek wanted him for another twelve hours straight, or maybe more, or—God knew what overtime might mean.

Stiles typed out, Depends. What exactly do you want?

He stared at the message a minute—it sounded kind of impatient, almost mean, and he should be nicer to his best customer than that, especially after the week he’d had, except—

Except Stiles didn’t really have to worry about money, and he definitely didn’t have to worry about Derek. He hit send.

A moment later the reply came back. Tomorrow is the winter solstice. It used to be a big deal for my family. I’d like to not be thinking about that.

The winter solstice: December 21. Which meant that all the Christmas stuff everywhere that Stiles had been resolutely ignoring wasn’t really premature anymore, because Christmas was less than a week away, and, oh God. Christmas.

Stiles squeezed his eyes shut, and then realized that it was exactly like this for Derek, except worse. He opened his eyes again and tapped out. Okay. You want me to stay late?

Come early, Derek replied immediately. Sundown. Like I said, I’ll pay for making you start early.

Sundown was something like five o’clock now; Stiles tapped out, Seven pre-midnight hours is a one-forty surcharge on whatever else you want, and if you want to fuck me before eleven you’d better say so now.

He’d have to mess up his whole eating-and-shitting schedule if Derek wanted to fuck him as soon as he walked in the door, but he didn’t think it would be totally impossible. Except it would mean going basically a whole day without eating; he’d be a mess after that, and if he fucked up again next week Frank would keep him on street corner duty forever.

Okay, no sex before midnight, the first seven hours are just escort service. Do you have any food allergies?

Stiles actually flailed at that, violently enough that Korean Waiter came a couple of steps toward him, like he thought Stiles was signaling or possibly about to fall off the washer in some kind of seizure. Stiles reined it in and made an apologetic face toward Korean Waiter and then tried to figure out what on earth to say to Derek.

He finally settled on Anything is fine, I won’t eat much. And I need to use your shower at eight.

I will put that on the schedule for the night.

Stiles covered his face with both hands and tried not to think about what he’d gotten himself into.

He was walking up the sidewalk to Derek’s when it suddenly occurred to him that escort service might mean he wanted Stiles to escort him somewhere. Stiles stopped right there on the street in the late, slanting sunlight giving way to shadows and stared down at his scuffed shoes—the only pair he owned—and his tight jeans and baggie hoodie, the mace a reassuring line in his pocket. He wondered where on earth he and Derek could go without someone just looking at them and knowing, and what he was going to do if—if—

“Stiles?”

Stiles looked up. Derek was standing at the foot of the stairs up to his door, barefoot and wearing only tight jeans and a thin t-shirt. Not ready to go anywhere, especially not anywhere fancy. Stiles shook himself into motion, jogging as best he could over to Derek, who was giving him a searching look. Stiles waved it off. “Nothing, I just, uh, suddenly didn’t know if I was dressed for the occasion.”

Derek blinked, frowning a little, and said, “The occasion usually calls for not being dressed at all, but you look fine.”

“Thanks,” Stiles said, starting up the stairs with Derek lagging a little behind him. He’d left the door standing open again, he was wasting heat on top of everything else. “But tone down the flattery, man, you’re making me blush.”

Derek snorted like Stiles had said something ridiculous, and Stiles turned back, making Derek stop short on the step below him. He looked up at Stiles—that searching gaze again—and then said, “Stiles. I spend incredibly stupid amounts of money to persuade you to fuck me. You have to know that I like the way you look.”

Stiles just barely managed to say I don’t really take this much persuading, and instead managed, “So you’re just really bad at compliments.”

Derek nodded. “I’ve been told I don’t know how to accept them, either, if it makes you feel any better.”

Stiles remembered the first time he’d seen Derek naked, the blank look Derek had given him when Stiles mentioned how good he looked. It occurred to him abruptly that someone who hated being told how attractive he was probably wouldn’t go around telling other people what he never wanted to hear himself. He was being polite, in his way.

Stiles shook his head a little. “You are a weird dude, Derek.”

“Thanks,” Derek said, but he smiled a little instead of looking like he wanted to escape. “Creepy, gross, weird. I can tell why you keep coming back.”

“Well,” Stiles said lightly, turning toward the door again. “You do spend incredibly stupid amounts of money on me.”

Derek didn’t make any sound at all in response to that. He didn’t say anything until he’d locked the front door behind them and Stiles was moving toward the apartment door.

“Upstairs,” Derek said. “I thought we could hang out at Laura’s until midnight.”

“Oh,” Stiles said. Escort service, huh. “Isn’t Laura…”

“Tonight’s a full moon,” Derek said absently. “She took a double shift at work.”

“Oh,” Stiles repeated. “Huh, that means—it’s the longest possible full moon, isn’t it? The longest night. I wonder how often that happens.”

“Once when I was a kid,” Derek replied. “After tonight, not for about eighty years.”

Stiles looked back at him, and Derek shrugged and said, “Like I said, solstice was a thing for my family.”

Stiles bit back a lot of insensitive questions about the Hales doing pagan rituals out in the woods on the solstices, and walked up to Laura’s apartment without saying anything. He wasn’t especially surprised to find the apartment door unlocked when he got there, and his eye was drawn immediately to the stack of DVDs on the table.

“I got some new stuff,” Derek said. “You can pick, I’m gonna go get the food.”

Stiles nodded absently and walked over to the coffee table. Captain America was on the top of the stack, and Stiles remembered the end of the movie with sudden, awful vividness—Steve Rogers alone in New York, everyone he knew dead, everything lost. He flipped the case facedown only to find Cowboys and Aliens underneath. He remembered coming home from that one to hug his dad fiercely—the sheriff, his grandson. He shoved it away after Captain America, so forcefully that both DVDs skidded off the table.

Stiles flinched at the clatter and went and picked them up, but he put them on the DVD shelf with the horror movies instead of back on the coffee table.

The other choices were a little simpler: The Hangover II, Fast Five, and—

“Oh, man,” Stiles said to no one, picking up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II.

He still hadn’t seen it. He and Scott had never managed to go while it was in theaters, and even though they each kept telling the other to go without them, they never had. They’d seen Part I together, and Half-Blood Prince before that.

The first three movies, Stiles had seen in the theater with both of his parents. His dad had taken him to the next two, but when Stiles said he wanted to go with Scott—

Stiles jumped at the apartment door opening and closing, and Derek was standing there with two bags of food—Chinese, Stiles thought, from the muddle of smells wafting in.

“I did tell you I wasn’t that hungry, right?” Stiles asked. He usually had his bigger meal shortly after he woke up, a smaller one around now. His mouth was watering already, though. It smelled so good.

“Most of it’s for me,” Derek said blandly. “Do you want to watch that one?”

Stiles nodded jerkily, blushing a little. It was a kids’ movie, really, even if things had gotten pretty dark by the end.

“Cool,” Derek said, coming over and fishing another DVD out of what was left of the little stack. If he noticed the movies that were missing, he didn’t say anything. “You mind if we start with the first part? I haven’t seen it yet.”

“Sure,” Stiles said, and Derek nodded and walked off—to the kitchen, for drinks and spoons. When Derek held up a bottle of beer with a questioning expression, Stiles gave a quick nod, remembering the crisp taste of it from last week when Derek held the bottle to his lips and let him have a sip.

Stiles turned to opening the DVD case—still shrink-wrapped—and got the DVD set up while Derek came back and opened the bags of food, setting out the various cartons and containers. He was obviously of the school of thought that did not require plates or bowls for Chinese food, which Stiles approved of. Why dirty dishes when everything was in containers already?

They settled in together on the couch, and Stiles claimed the little container of hot and sour soup while Derek dug into a carton of broccoli beef.

They hardly spoke to each other through the movie, but by the time of the last fight Stiles was halfway into Derek’s lap and Derek was holding his hand in a fierce, tight grip. Derek didn’t make a sound, but his whole body jerked when Dobby was killed and Stiles, who had been bracing himself for it for half an hour by then, realized that Derek was surprised.

Stiles managed to keep silent, still cuddling into Derek and returning his tight grip, for the remaining moments of the movie. As soon as the credits started he turned to Derek and said, “Have you not read the book?”

Derek looked back at him, wide-eyed, and then shook off the trance of the movie and said, “No, I. I used to—I read them with Cora. When the seventh one came out, I couldn’t.”

Stiles thought that he and Derek between them were doing a shitty job of making sure Derek didn’t have to think about his family tonight, but Stiles said, “You want me to tell you what happens in the next one?”

Derek shook his head slightly. “It’s fine, I can—the good guys win, right?”

“Yeah,” Stiles promised him. “The good guys win.”

Derek nodded, and then glanced toward the TV and said, “Uh, do you have to… shower?”

It was going on eight, and now that Derek mentioned it… Stiles blushed a little, wondering if Derek knew exactly what Stiles had meant by that, but he managed to say, “Yeah, now’s good. If you don’t mind?”

Derek shook his head. “It’s fine. Go on down, the door’s unlocked.”

“Don’t start the next one without me,” Stiles admonished, and Derek just waved him off, standing up to pack up the leftovers.

Stiles turned and jogged down to Derek’s apartment, glad that Derek was further away than just on the other side of the bathroom door while he took care of everything that needed taking care of to get his ass all empty and clean for later use. Then, since it was what he’d said he’d be doing, he took a quick shower, using the stuff in the blue-tinted bottle on his hair, the clear bottle on the rest of him. None of it smelled like anything and the short fuzz of his hair was probably not noticeably more lustrous after, but he didn’t worry about that, just dried off, got his clothes back on, and jogged back upstairs.

Stiles had been gone more than half an hour, and Derek had opened a second beer for each of them. Stiles curled up against his side and took Derek’s hand in a firm grip, and Derek switched the lamp off before he started the movie.

Derek held it together better through this one—he was braced for how bad it could get, Stiles thought—and Stiles found himself making his own wounded noises, even at things he’d known were coming. By the time Harry’s parents and Sirius and Remus gathered around him in death, Stiles had tears leaking from his eyes and had crawled all the way into Derek’s lap. Both of Derek’s arms were around him, crushing him close.

The epic final showdown was even better than Stiles remembered, though; he held his breath while Derek’s fingers dug into his ribs at Neville’s seeming surrender, and they both burst into cheers when Neville stood strong, and through everything that followed. When Voldemort was finally dead, Derek actually started clapping, and Stiles twisted to look at his face instead of the TV.

He was grinning hugely and his eyes were suspiciously shiny, and Stiles didn’t think; he leaned in and pressed a kiss to Derek’s mouth because he forgot any reason why he shouldn’t.

He remembered when Derek jerked back from the kiss, and flinched, feeling like an idiot—it was definitely not midnight yet, and Derek hadn’t even asked for kissing, and it wasn’t Stiles’s place to start anything. And worst of all, he hadn’t even meant to start anything; he’d kissed Derek right then because he wanted to kiss the guy who’d been clutching him like a shield all the way through a Harry Potter movie and applauded when the bad guy was finally dead.

Then Derek’s hand came up to cup the back of his head. Derek tilted his head and pushed back into the kiss, opening his mouth and licking along Stiles’s lower lip. So it wasn’t unwelcome, and Stiles could pass it off as—proactive customer service, whatever. Stiles kept kissing him, only vaguely aware of the movie continuing behind him until the music changed and Stiles realized what it must be.

He broke away from Derek, lunging for the remote to turn the TV off as the epilogue started, catching only a glimpse of Harry and Ginny in horrible age makeup.

“What,” Derek said, panting a little.

“Nothing,” Stiles said firmly. “You’ll thank me. Nothing.”

“Okay,” Derek said, looking amused. “Thank you, then,” and he leaned in to cradle Stiles’s face in his hands, drawing him back in for another kiss.

Stiles went with it until Derek started rocking his hips up against Stiles’s, and then he pulled back to say, “Should we go downstairs?”

“Not until midnight,” Derek said. “Only kissing until midnight.”

Stiles looked around for a clock; it wasn’t even eleven yet. “Seriously? You just want to make out for an hour?”

“Mm-hm,” Derek said. “I promise to pay you an incredibly stupid amount of money for it.”

That was exactly what Derek was supposed to say, Stiles reminded himself. That was exactly what he wanted Derek to say. He wanted Derek to know that Stiles was only doing his job by kissing him. He knew that.

He looped his arms around Derek’s neck, closed his eyes, and kissed Derek for all he was worth. Which was at least two hundred dollars plus tip, so far, with a hundred and forty dollar surcharge for starting early.

Stiles gave up on trying to peek at a clock, after a while. Whenever he did, Derek would cup his hand around the side of Stiles’s face, blocking his view and drawing him gently back into the kiss. So Stiles gave in to it, just rocked in Derek’s lap and kissed him; they were both hard, and they were both going to be hard forever, because Derek pushed him back a little every time he found a good rhythm, not letting him really work himself up.

Stiles had a feeling Derek wouldn’t stop him if he shoved a hand into his own pants, but Derek wouldn’t let Stiles get him off, and this was Stiles’s job. He wasn’t going to jerk off in the middle of it just for his own entertainment.

After about a thousand years and a few breaks for lubricating sips of warm beer, Derek said, “Downstairs?”

Stiles nodded frantically, jumping up before Derek could lift him. He promptly ran into the coffee table and Derek had to catch him anyway—by both arms, leaving Stiles’s shoulders feeling yanked half out of their sockets. Derek pulled him upright and kissed the tip of his nose instead of his mouth, then pointedly let go of Stiles’s arms. Stiles turned and headed for the door, and Derek was on his heels all the way down.

“Bedroom?” Stiles asked as he kicked his shoes off just inside.

“Bedroom,” Derek agreed firmly, and they were both undressing as they went. Stiles still had to kick his underwear off when he got to Derek’s bed, but Derek stopped to get the lube from the nightstand, so they hit the bed together at about the same time.

For once Derek didn’t drag out the process of prepping Stiles’s ass, slicking his fingers as he pushed Stiles over onto his side. Stiles pulled one leg up, feeling more desperate than helpful. He’d wanted Derek inside him literally an hour ago, and now that they were here Derek wasn’t wasting time, working one finger and then two inside him while Stiles tried to keep his hips still so he wasn’t rutting into the sheets.

“I’m good,” Stiles said after a few minutes, “Derek, please, I promise—”

Derek gave one more twist of his fingers but didn’t require any more persuading, easing his fingers out and pushing his cock into Stiles in one steady thrust. Stiles groaned, pushing back into it, and he realized it had been weeks since Derek actually fucked him. Other stuff, but not this, not this direct, undeniable connection.

Stiles turned his face down against the sheets. It wasn’t about connection. It was about what felt good for Derek; it was about whatever Derek was paying him for.

But Derek slid his arm around Stiles, curling his lube-wet fingers around Stiles’s dick while he pressed his face in against Stiles’s throat. Stiles knew Derek was inhaling the smell of him. He knew that Derek wanted him to like this too, that Derek was letting Stiles make demands tonight. Derek paid him incredibly stupid amounts of money because Derek wanted him here, wanted him—

Stiles bit down hard on his lip and tried not to think about it, tried to just feel Derek’s cock moving inside him, filling him up, and Derek’s hand on him, finally giving him some direct friction after all that waiting. It didn’t take long before Derek said against his ear, “Can I—” and Stiles nodded frantically, because Derek could do whatever he wanted as long as he wanted to fuck Stiles.

This time all Derek wanted was to roll him face down, hips tugged up into the air. Stiles propped himself on elbows and knees so Derek still had room to jerk him off while fucking him, faster and harder now that he had some leverage. Stiles had a pillow to hide his face in, but Derek was still nuzzling and mouthing at the side of his throat and the back of his neck. Stiles knew what that meant even if he couldn’t think about it, even if it was only his job.

It occurred to him as he hid his face, as he let Derek fuck him for money, that he’d never felt further from crying in his life.

Stiles didn’t last long after that, coming with a long moan into the pillow. Derek kept going after Stiles finished, and Stiles lay still and let him, shivering a little from the overstimulation. It was good, though. It was still good. It was still Derek.

When Derek finally finished he rolled back onto his side, spooning up behind Stiles. He said, “Can I wake you up in a little while?”

“Sure,” Stiles said, snuggling into him. “M’still on the clock, I’m good for whatever.”

“Okay,” Derek said, and he kissed the back of Stiles’s neck. “Sleep a little bit.”

Stiles woke up to the sensation of Derek’s fingers on his hole, so wet he must have slicked them all over again.

“Stiles?” Derek said in his ear. “I want to fuck you again, is that—”

“Yeah,” Stiles said sleepily, still feeling drugged with warmth and Derek’s closeness. “Want me to move?”

“Yeah,” Derek said. “On your back?”

“Kay,” Stiles agreed, and he squirmed down onto his back, spreading his legs so Derek could fit between. Derek’s fingers came back, dipping into him; he was still pretty relaxed from last time—or from being half asleep—and he was squishy-wet inside from lube and, he realized, waking up a little more, Derek’s come. Another effect of skipping the condoms.

Derek moved over him, pushing Stiles’s legs up so he was folded almost in half before Derek pushed into him again.

Stiles moaned a little—at the stretch in his legs as much as his ass opening up for Derek. None of it hurt, though, and all of it felt good. His dick was still mostly asleep, but Derek leaned in, fucking deep into Stiles, and it didn’t take long before Stiles was getting hard too, hooking his legs around Derek and flexing his hips up to meet Derek’s thrusts. Derek leaned in harder, compressing Stiles’s lungs to brush a kiss across his mouth, and Stiles smiled into it and didn’t complain about not being able to breathe.

They both lasted longer this time, and Derek got his hand good and wet to jerk Stiles off, nosed at his throat when Stiles tipped his head back into the pillow as the dizzy-hot sensations built. It felt more intense the second time, just more, and this time when Stiles came he dropped immediately into a dreamy daze. He stared up at Derek through half-open eyes, aware of Derek still fucking him but already half asleep.

He smiled at the face Derek made as he finished, and moaned a little at the feel of Derek pulling out of him. He felt Derek’s hand on his belly, sticky-wet—playing with the come on his skin, Stiles knew, and he mumbled, “Gross.”

“I know, I know,” Derek muttered, and he leaned in and kissed Stiles softly. “Sleep a little bit more, okay?”

“Mm-hm,” Stiles muttered. “On the clock.”

He woke up again in the dark, with Derek behind him and Derek’s cock snugged up against his ass, already wet and slippery. “Stiles?”

“Mm-hm,” Stiles mumbled, and tilted himself forward a little, pulling one leg up.

“So good,” Derek murmured against his throat, and Stiles moaned a little when he pushed inside, the familiar stretch a little sore now. Derek pulled Stiles’s top leg back over his leg, so that Stiles was leaning back against Derek’s body instead of forward. Derek fucked up into him in a slow rocking motion.

Stiles leaned limply against him. His dick ached, trying to get hard again from the slick fullness of Derek inside him, but Derek’s hand rubbed along his hip instead of jerking him off again, and Derek was kissing the hinge of his jaw, nuzzling into his hair. Stiles let his eyes close, let himself melt into Derek’s hold and Derek’s steady fucking.

Derek was inside him, saying his name, and Stiles noticed he was face down now, and it was dark, and Derek wanted him to say something. There was only one thing he wanted to say to Derek.

“Yeah,” Stiles muttered. “Okay.”

Derek started to move, gentle and slow but not stopping. His hand ran up and down Stiles’s side, and Stiles knew Derek wouldn’t really mind if he just closed his eyes again.

Stiles opened his eyes and could see the gray sky outside the window. The room was still so dim that he couldn’t quite see colors, but it was starting to be light out, and he was lying on his belly, his legs spread, and Derek was nuzzling at the back of his thigh, just below his ass.

He was sore in a dull way, like he’d been very gently fucked—how many times? He thought he’d dreamed of Derek fucking him while he slept in between the times Derek fucked him, so he had no idea how many times it had actually been. He was still muzzy with sleep—he should only just be going to bed now, on a non-Derek night, and even on Derek nights he usually slept until the sun was actually up before he went home to sleep some more.

“Derek?” Stiles asked, because he had a feeling Derek was going somewhere with this.

Derek moved, and Stiles actually picked his head up and looked over his shoulder to see Derek propped on his elbows over Stiles’s hips. Derek’s eyes were serious, intent, and Derek said, “Did I ask you for too much tonight?”

Stiles shook his head, twisting onto his side so he could lay his head on the pillow and still look at Derek. Derek pushed up a little higher to let him, and Stiles left his leg resting awkwardly against Derek’s arm. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be staying curled up like this for long.

“You asked for all night, you got all night,” Stiles offered, yawning around the edges. “I’m fine. You wanna go again?”

Derek glanced toward the window and then nodded. “Just one more. The sun will be up soon, the night will be over.”

“Go easy on me,” Stiles admonished, and squirmed back over onto his belly.

He startled fully awake a few seconds later when Derek’s hands spread him open and Derek’s tongue pressed soft and wet against his hole.

“Derek,” Stiles said, a little sharply, “I’m not—I’m all—”

Even as he said it, he realized that if his ass was as filthy as it felt, it was from getting fucked full of Derek’s come. Derek wasn’t going to consider that a downside.

“I like the way you smell,” Derek said, and Stiles shivered at the low rasp of his voice. “Will you let me taste?”

“Yeah,” Stiles said, his voice coming out strangled and small, and he buried his face in the pillow again, but he was wide awake for every stroke of Derek’s tongue, licking over and over his hole and pushing gently inside. Stiles was already relaxed, but Derek still licked him open like he was strung tight, like he needed to be coaxed. Like Derek really liked licking his own come out of Stiles’s ass. The ache of overuse faded into pleasure, and when Derek slid a slick finger inside him along with his tongue, Stiles started pushing back onto it.

“Okay?” Derek asked, and Stiles nodded frantically into the pillow, rocking up into Derek’s hand. Derek slid his finger free, gave Stiles’s ass a last sloppy kiss, and then his hands were on Stiles’s hips, pulling him up onto his knees. Stiles got his hands under him, looking over his shoulder again as he waited there on all fours. He watched Derek’s face as Derek pushed into him, slow and smooth, dripping wet with lube and still waking just a little soreness.

Stiles let his head hang down while Derek moved inside him, his hands tight on Stiles’s hips while he made his first slow thrusts. He dragged out and eased back in again and again until Stiles couldn’t feel the ache of it anymore, just the need for Derek to move faster, fill him up more. Stiles swayed back into him, trying to move him along.

“Come on,” Stiles coaxed, “Come on, I’m good for it, if you’re gonna do this, then—”

Stiles broke off into a startled moan as Derek’s slow glide into him turned into a sharp snap, and Derek’s hand closed around his dick, which was already half hard. Derek folded down over him, his chest warm against Stiles’s back. The hand that wasn’t on his dick flattened against his chest, over his heart, which had to be beating hard enough for Derek to feel as Stiles pushed back into him again.

Derek started moving faster, fucking him in a steady rhythm and jerking him off in counterpoint. Stiles’s arms felt wobbly, but he knew Derek would hold him up. Derek kept kissing along the back of his neck, making Stiles shiver with little scrapes of teeth. It didn’t take long before Stiles was moaning, thrusting into Derek’s grip while Derek fucked him, never letting Stiles’s movements throw off his rhythm.

“Please,” Stiles gasped. “Please, Derek, please—”

“You gonna come for me one more time?” Derek murmured. “You’ve been so good already, better than I could ask for. Almost done. You ready?”

Stiles nodded frantically.

Derek pulled him upright against his chest, making Derek’s dick sink further inside him as Derek jerked him off. Stiles felt the sudden exposure of being stretched out like this as Derek’s left arm tightened around his chest and Derek’s teeth touched his throat. He came, spurting over Derek’s fingers, his ass clamping down tight on Derek’s dick.

Derek started coming even before Stiles finished, rocking into him, his face buried in the crook of Stiles’s neck. Stiles felt like he was dangling on the edge of something, held in place only by Derek’s grip on him, by Derek’s cock inside him. He closed his eyes and leaned back into Derek’s chest.

A moment later the world spun sideways as Derek laid him down. Derek settled behind him again, his lips brushing the back of Stiles’s neck as he murmured, “It’s morning now. You can sleep, I won’t ask for more. You can sleep now.”

Stiles nodded, but he wasn’t quite asleep yet. The daylight had brightened so that he could see colors again, and Derek had an arm and leg resting heavily over him. Stiles could smell the sweat-and-jizz reek of both of them, knew they were half glued together everywhere they touched. His ass and his dick were both sore now—not in a bad way, exactly, but like the end of an exhausting lacrosse practice, if a lacrosse practice was all sex drills instead of the other kind.

Stiles almost slipped away into a dream at that, except he thought of Coach yelling at them to jerk themselves off, and opened his eyes to shake off the thought. Derek was still cuddled up behind him—Stiles had only dozed for a few minutes—but Stiles was aware again that it was full daylight.

It was time to be off the clock and going to bed. If he let himself sleep now, when he woke up it would be afternoon again, and Derek would want to cook him breakfast again. Stiles would probably let him, because Stiles would let Derek do anything whether he paid Stiles for it or not, because… because he was an idiot. Derek was his client, and this was a professional relationship, and Stiles couldn’t afford to get unprofessional. He could afford a lot of fucking things now, but not that.

He shoved out of Derek’s grip without noticing what he was doing, struggling just to breathe under that weight. The pressure didn’t lift from his chest when he was on the other side of the bed, not even when he tumbled off it onto his knees. He was still gasping, trying to remember what to do—breathe, he had to breathe, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t—

There was a different pressure on his chest, matched by pressure on his back—fingers, digging in, squeezing his ribs, compressing his lungs and making him breathe out when he already had no breath. When the pressure let up he gasped automatically, getting some air before the hands—Derek, Derek’s hands—forced his breath out again. After a few rounds he was aware of Derek’s voice in his ear, coaching him. “In, hold on, hold, out, out. In, hold—”

When he had the hang of breathing again Stiles shoved weakly at Derek’s hands, and Derek moved away from him. Stiles realized that he was kneeling on the floor at the far side of the bed, in the little space between the bed and the window, and Derek was crouched beside him. They were both naked. Stiles could feel sweat trickling down his back and sides, jizz and lube dripping down the inside of his thigh.

He could not get back into Derek’s bed. Not now. Not today. He couldn’t let Derek comfort him or apologize for this or—

“I have to go,” Stiles said, pushing himself up to his feet. “I just, I remembered. I mean, I—I’ve been here like fifteen hours already, so, no offense, but time’s up. I gotta get going. Sorry, that probably wasn’t a full thirty minutes—”

“It’s fine,” Derek said, and Stiles looked toward the sound of his voice. Derek only straightened up from his crouch when Stiles was looking at him. “Stiles, it’s fine. You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to. Will you let me give you a ride?”

He thought for a second about taking the bus—thought about his aching ass and the way he smelled—and gave a jerky nod. “Thanks. I just—I gotta get going.”

“No problem,” Derek said, looking away and bending to pick up Stiles’s underwear, dropping them on the bed for him. “Let me just get my wallet.”

“Also clothes,” Stiles pointed out, because even now he was inescapably aware that Derek was naked and very, very distracting.

Derek flashed a smile over his shoulder and said, “Right. Also clothes.”

Derek pulled on his underwear before he stepped out of the bedroom. Stiles finally unfroze from his spot by the bed and put on all of his clothes that he could find—underwear on the bed, jeans kicked half underneath it, socks crumpled by the door.

Stiles went out into the hall in search of his t-shirt. It was over near the front door, where Derek was standing, fully dressed, feet already in his boots, looking through his wallet. He waited until Stiles got his shirt and shoes on, and then offered him a thick stack of hundreds.

Stiles looked from the money to Derek and then figured he’d already broken every other rule, and asked, “How many fucks are you paying me for?” as he thumbed the edges of the bills, counting up.

“Six,” Derek said. “I fucked you six times.”

Six sounded like a lot but not exactly impossible. Stiles’s brain, running a little fast and frantic after the panic attack, tripped quickly through the math rather than latching onto anything else. A hundred and fifty per fuck, that was nine hundred dollars, plus two hundred for kissing. That was eleven hundred in tippable services, plus a hundred and forty for starting early and a hundred and fifty for no condoms—those were surcharges. That meant with a hundred percent tip Derek was allowed to pay him a total of $2,490, and Stiles didn’t want to think about what that much money meant on top of everything else, but also…

“This is twenty-five hundred dollars,” Stiles said. “You went over on the tip.”

Derek frowned in calculation and then said, “Cuddling—”

“No,” Stiles shook his head. “If you fucked me six times since midnight, no way was there time to rack up any cuddling charges in between. That’s just fucking and negotiation time. You went over on the tip. I fucking told you you’re only allowed to tip a hundred percent, so—no tip, I’m not accepting this.” Stiles shoved the whole wad of cash back at him and folded his arms. Derek fumbled, a couple of bills slipping away, and Stiles didn’t watch them drift to the floor. “You owe me exactly thirteen ninety, and I’m not taking one cent more from you. I’ll knock off ninety bucks since you’re such a good customer if you need it to be a round number.”

Derek’s jaw clenched visibly; Stiles watched him take a breath before he said, “I can make exact change. Don’t give me a discount. Just—wait.”

Derek stalked away, and Stiles heard quiet rummaging sounds in the living room and then the bedroom. If he were better at his job he would mark those as places to steal loose cash from later—but if he were better at his job he wouldn’t have thrown a thousand-dollar tip back in Derek’s face. Stiles looked down at the two hundred-dollar bills lying on the floor in front of him, looked at his empty hands, and thought, I am the fucking worst at my job.

Derek came back and said, “Give me your hand.”

Stiles held it out, palm up, and Derek silently but with pointed exactness counted out thirteen hundred dollar bills, four twenties, and two crumpled fives. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Stiles agreed, tucking the money into the back of his pants before he grabbed his hoodie and pulled it on. Derek waited in grim silence until he was ready, then walked him down into the garage. They didn’t speak on the drive to the Holiday Inn, not until they were stopped at the very last light.

“I’m sorry I overtipped,” Derek said, his voice flat. He had a determined look on his face when Stiles glanced over. “I didn’t mean to just ignore the rules. I won’t do that again.”

Stiles nodded. “I know, I just. There have to be limits. There are things I can’t let you do for me.” He swallowed and forced the words out. “This is my job, you know?”

Derek nodded sharply, his jaw clenching again. “I know. I’ll remember.”

“Okay,” Stiles said, and then Derek pulled up in front of the Holiday Inn and Stiles could make his escape.

11. Chapter 11

He spent basically all of Wednesday drunk, and pre-partied for work on Thursday—partly to chase away the hangover, and partly because Frank sent him a terse text message telling him he was still on street corner duty. It drizzled on and off, but he and the other boys weren’t allowed back into Frank’s car except during actual blinding downpours. There were two of those, and Stiles still had to go out into one when Frank somehow flagged a guy down from inside the car and sent Stiles to run over to the gray sedan idling behind them.

He had all of sixty bucks to keep at the end of the night, and he was cold and dripping wet and miserably not drunk anymore when Frank said, “You’re benched the next few days, Will. Even at the top of your game I wouldn’t let you anywhere near the kind of guy who’s cruising for ass on Christmas. I’ll give you a call after and let you know what I want you for.”

“Sure,” Stiles agreed, shoulders hunching against the cold. It was stupid to feel rejected and blown off like Frank was a girl who was never going to go to Homecoming with him, but it was easier to think about that than almost anything else. He nursed the lonely, unwanted feeling all the way home, trying not to shiver on the bus, trying not to see anybody looking at him like he was exactly what he was. He got all the way up to his SRO, locked himself inside his shitty room, stripped his clothes off and crawled into his narrow, hard bed with its persistent faint weird smell and pulled the thin blanket over himself. He curled up small and shivered himself to sleep.

When he woke up it was the 24th of December, and he was alone and feeling grimy and sweaty from not showering after work. He stared at the wall for a little while, thinking about how much whiskey he had and how much of the next two or three days he could make himself completely black out on. That was going to require him to get up, though, and he thought maybe he would just stay right here in the dubious semi-warmth of his bed until something absolutely forced him to move. A fire, maybe. An earthquake. An earthquake followed by a fire followed by the realization that he’d been transported back in time to 1906 and all the people he knew weren’t even born yet.

His phone buzzed, and Stiles lunged toward it without even thinking.

He didn’t even realize he was expecting a message from Laura, ordering him to come over for Christmas, until he saw Derek’s name and felt a rush of—something. Not disappointment, exactly, but Derek—the Derek who contacted Stiles directly instead of showing up as Laura’s brother—was so much more complicated than Laura.

Stiles glanced toward the bottle of Wild Turkey, half full, and thought that complicated was probably the best offer he was going to get for the next few days. He flipped the phone open and read the message.

Do you have any availability for the next two days? If so please call to negotiate.

He tried to think of another time Derek had asked to actually talk to him. All Stiles could think of was that first time he’d actually seen Derek’s face, when Derek had taken him to a hotel room. Derek had wanted to be sure Stiles wasn’t being forced, then. Stiles wondered if he wanted something now, too. Maybe he thought Stiles was still mad at him for overtipping and wanted more than a text message to go by if he was going to ask for something.

Stiles hesitated a little longer, phone cradled in both hands, but in the end it was still the best offer he was going to get. Even a couple of days of being stupid about Derek was probably better than the kind of stupid he might start to be if he stayed here alone.

Derek picked up on the first ring, almost before Stiles had the phone to his ear. “Is that a yes?”

Stiles snorted and sat down on the end of his bed, and something unclenched in his chest. Derek wanted him, at least. Derek wanted him to do his job. He could do that. “Let’s say I’m curious to hear what it is you want to negotiate.”

“I want to get out of town for the next couple of days and ignore the calendar,” Derek said. “There’s a place my family used to go, up on the ocean. It’s kind of remote, seems like a good place to just get away from the world for a little while. I’d rather not be there alone.”

“Oh,” Stiles said. That sounded… kind of fantastic, actually. There had to be a catch somewhere. “Wait, what do you mean by kind of remote? Is it a yurt?”

“It’s not a yurt.” Derek sounded amused. “There’s indoor plumbing and heat and a solid roof, I swear.”

Stiles frowned. That still wasn’t the catch. “No, but seriously what do you mean by kind of remote?”

“There’s no internet or TV,” Derek said hesitantly. “And cell service is pretty bad. So if you’ve ever been afraid I would murder you and dump your body in the ocean we shouldn’t go there.”

Stiles opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before he settled on saying, “I had never been afraid of you murdering me and dumping my body in the ocean until this very moment, so thank you for saying that.”

“Is that a no?”

“Not really,” Stiles said. “I mean—because I don’t think you’d do it, not because it wouldn’t be a drawback if you did.”

There was a little silence. Stiles pounded the heel of his hand against his forehead a couple of times and then said briskly, “What kind of services would you want from me while we’re there?”

“Sex if we’re both in the mood for it,” Derek said evenly. “Nothing special or intensive. I’m not planning on keeping you naked for two days or setting some minimum standard you have to deliver. We could explore a little or just hang around the cottage. It’s just… it would be strange to be there alone.”

Stiles didn’t ask why Derek didn’t want to go there with Laura. Being there with someone who remembered how things used to be would probably be even worse, and anyway, Laura was probably one of those people who worked holidays so her subordinates wouldn’t have to. Crisis hotlines were probably a lot like any other emergency service that way.

Stiles shook off that thought and all the other thoughts it inevitably led to and focused on Derek and his maybe-only-good-enough-to-be-true offer. Stiles couldn’t just say yes. He had to set limits. He wasn’t walking into a repeat of last week, or the week before for that matter, even if Derek probably would find a chance to feed him breakfast.

Well. He didn’t really mind Derek feeding him breakfast, actually.

“That sounds doable,” Stiles said, figuring it out as he spoke. “But you have to agree right now to pay the special all-inclusive late-December-unspecified-occasion round-the-clock rate available only to very good customers.”

“Which is,” Derek said warily.

“All the food I can eat from the time you pick me up until the time you drop me off,” Stiles said firmly. “Take it or leave it.”

“Am I still allowed to tip a hundred percent?” Derek asked.

“Uh, yeah, I’m not a math genius but I’m pretty sure a hundred percent of no money is no money,” Stiles said, smiling a little. “Sure, go ahead and tip a hundred percent on that if you’re pleased with the service you receive.”

“Okay,” Derek said solemnly. “Do you like steak?”

“Um,” Stiles said blankly. “Yeah?”

“Any other food requests?”

Stiles tried to think of what Derek was likely to feed him, or not think to feed him, for two days, and said, “Doritos.”

Derek made a little disapproving noise, so Stiles added, “Something chocolate, too. Lots of chocolate. Required.”

“Got it,” Derek said. “What time can I pick you up?”

Six hours later Stiles was standing on the street corner a couple of blocks up from the Holiday Inn, backpack with a few changes of clothes slung on his shoulders for the first time in a long time. Derek pulled up right on time and Stiles climbed into the car, which was already toasty-warm inside. Stiles rearranged his feet around his backpack in the footwell and glanced into the backseat, which was empty.

“The trunk is full,” Derek said calmly, and headed for the freeway. “Are you hungry? According to the terms of the deal, I’m supposed to start feeding you now.”

“Uh,” Stiles said. He hadn’t really expected Derek to pay that much attention to what exactly he’d demanded. Apparently not being allowed to tip was a really effective punishment. “No, I’m fine.”

Derek just nodded and didn’t say another word as he navigated toward the freeway.

“Man,” Stiles said as he pulled onto 101. “This is just like old times. You want a nostalgic blowjob before we get out of town?”

Derek raised his eyebrows and tilted his head in a significant nod, drawing Stiles’s attention to the traffic around them—much heavier at nine o’clock than it ever had been at two in the morning. “Not right now, thanks.”

“Your loss, man,” Stiles said, and settled back to watch the city go by.

Derek was driving as fast as he could find spaces for, which was faster than seemed safe but not as fast as Stiles had ever seen him driving. He was glad to have his ass in his seat and his seatbelt on the right way, though. Stiles pressed his nose to the window as they made the approach to the Golden Gate, and as they crossed. He felt a little stupid doing it, but when he looked over Derek was smiling slightly, so Stiles went back to staring, picking out the lights of Alcatraz in the Bay. He sat back when they got into the park on the other side, and Derek said, “You can put on some music if you want.”

Stiles reached for the radio and then realized what he was going to get if he turned it on. Derek fished in his pocket and pulled out a slender black iPod. Stiles figured out how to get it hooked up and then scrolled through Derek’s music—only albums, no playlists at all, Derek was such a weirdo—until he found the complete works of My Chemical Romance and hit play from the beginning.

Derek didn’t say anything about his choice, or about anything else, until Stiles jerked awake and realized he’d been leaning forward against his seatbelt, head hanging down.

“Put your seat back,” Derek said. “It’s a long drive, you might as well take a nap.”

“I’m not tired,” Stiles said, “I can keep you company.”

“Stiles,” Derek said more firmly. “I don’t need company to drive. Put your seat back and take a nap.”

“Bossy,” Stiles muttered, but he also put his seat back and closed his eyes.

He startled awake again when a song was cut off in the middle, jumping jarringly into “This Is the Best Day Ever.”

Stiles blinked up at Derek, who seemed one hundred percent focused on driving, eyes straight ahead and hands on the wheel. Just like he was still Black Camaro; he even still wore his sunglasses at night.

Sensitive eyes, Stiles thought, needing protection from all those headlights. Sensitive eyes to go with his sensitive ears and sensitive nose. He thought about the Hales living in that big house in the woods far from town, vacationing at some remote cottage. He thought, Oh.

Derek didn’t look over but he said, “Are you awake?”

Stiles nodded and then returned his seat to its upright and locked position. “Yeah, I’m here. Wanna play I Spy?”

Derek snorted and shook his head. “No, I just wanted to ask you… Are you sure this is what you want to do tonight?”

“Um,” Stiles said, looking around at whatever random suburbs they were driving through. “Yeah? What else was I going to—”

“I mean I could take you somewhere else,” Derek said. “I could take you home, or—”

“No,” Stiles said sharply. “I don’t—no, Derek, there’s nowhere for me to go.”

“Your dad—”

“I will jump out of this fucking car if you say another word about my dad, Derek, I am not fucking kidding.” The words came out steady—sharp, but not a yell—and Stiles was vaguely, distantly surprised to see his hand on the door handle, but he could not do this. Derek of all people shouldn’t be doing this to him, Derek knew what it was like.

Derek grabbed a handful of his hoodie, squarely in the center of his chest. “I won’t, Stiles, not a word, I’m sorry, I just had to—”

“Where the fuck even are we?” Stiles demanded, looking around. “Where are we going? What did—where are you—” Stiles could swear he’d just seen a freeway sign, but he couldn’t remember what it had said. Were they heading toward Sacramento, toward 5, toward—

“We’re on 101,” Derek said. “Almost to Petaluma, here, my phone has GPS, you can see.”

Derek unlocked his phone and handed it over, grabbing hold of Stiles’s shirt again as soon as he’d done it. Stiles opened the map as Derek said, “We’re taking 101 up to Willits, and then we’ll head west on Fort Bragg Road to 1, and then it’s a little further north along the coast from there. We’re not going anywhere near Beacon Hills, Stiles, I swear. I don’t want to go there either.”

Stiles clutched Derek’s phone, staring at the little indicator on the map that did indeed show them pointing north on 101. “I’m keeping this.”

“Okay,” Derek said, opening his hand to press gently against Stiles’s chest. Stiles’s heart was pounding against Derek’s hand, and Stiles remembered Derek making him breathe the other day. He wondered if Derek’s sense of touch was sensitive enough to feel that, or if he could hear it, but he didn’t ask. Stiles clutched the phone and looked from it to the lights and signs he could see outside the car, making sure they were still on the route Derek promised.

Derek didn’t drop his hand until they were coming up on Cloverdale.

Stiles didn’t relax enough to really sleep again—his grip on Derek’s phone stayed tight—but the car was warm and mostly dark. Derek was quiet beside him, leaving just the familiar music filling the car. Stiles closed his eyes again after a while, occasionally looking up to see more road and more dark around them, or once in a while the disorienting bright lights of a town as they passed through.

He woke up all the way as he felt Derek braking down to what felt like a crawl. A moment later they slowed down even more, turning down a little lane. They crept along it at what felt like a walking pace, passing a few small houses, until they pulled up at a tiny cottage surrounded by trees.

There was a light on over the front door, like someone was home, waiting up for them. Stiles felt a sudden burst of crushing emotion, his eyes stinging while he blinked rapidly, trying not to name it or know it or let it out.

“Stiles?” Derek said, turning the car off, reaching tentatively toward him, like he thought Stiles was asleep. “We’re here.”

“Yeah,” Stiles said, shoving Derek’s phone into his hand. “It looks—it looks nice.”

He scrambled out of the car before Derek could say anything, swinging his backpack onto his shoulders. He looked up as he did and stopped, staring. The sky was deeply black and full of stars except around the brightness of the moon, which was still big and bright, only a few days past full. Stiles could hear the shushing roar of the ocean, just out of sight; he could smell the salt of it on the cool air, mingled with the damp green smell of the trees around them.

He was startled out of his stillness by the sound of Derek getting out of the car. He came around to the trunk and Stiles went to join him, focusing on Derek instead of the place.

Derek hadn’t been kidding about the trunk being full: there were rows of full shopping bags, a cooler, and a cardboard box that looked to be full of pots and pans and kitchen gear. Stiles could just see a duffel bag crammed into a corner under all the food and supplies.

“I’ll get the box and the cooler,” Derek said. “Take a few bags, we’ll have to make a couple of trips.”

Stiles picked up the nearest shopping bags, spotting veggies and boxes of cereal and… “Is that a whole bag of chocolate?” Stiles demanded, peering into that bag. He could see a couple of bags of regular candy—Hershey kisses, M&Ms—plus a bunch of those fancy expensive big chocolate bars. Derek had gotten the kind that was organic and fair trade and everything, Stiles would bet.

“You said everything chocolate,” Derek said, rearranging things to get at the big box of pans. “I didn’t want to have to drive back into town if you ate all of it on the first day.”

“Jesus, Derek,” Stiles said helplessly, shaking his head as he pulled the bags out and turned away from the open trunk of the car.

“There should be a key under the turtle by the porch,” Derek said behind him, and Stiles spotted the little ceramic turtle and set his bags down beside it to feel for the key.

“That’s some awesome security,” Stiles observed, going up onto the well-lit porch to unlock the front door.

“I talked to Donna this afternoon, she put the key out for us before she went to bed, and her place is just on the other side of the trees over there,” Derek said. “It’s safer than most, I promise.”

Stiles opened the front door and realized it was more of the door—the cottage was basically one room, with a half-wall separating the main room from the kitchen. There was a double bed at his left hand, and a glass-fronted woodstove angled in the corner to the right. He turned around to pick up the bags he’d set down and nearly collided with Derek, coming in with the big box of supplies and a few bags dangling from one hand. Stiles flailed a little, but Derek managed to swing around him without knocking him off the porch, and Stiles hurried down to grab his share of the bags and headed back in. Derek had, of course, left the door open behind him.

They made a couple of trips, sidling around each other in the little space of the cottage, but it didn’t take long to empty out the Camaro. Groceries and supplies covered nearly every flat surface in the tiny kitchen, including most of the floor. Derek stood knee-deep among the shopping bags and said, “Do you know how to start a fire?”

Stiles looked around, really seeing the woodstove for the first time. “Uh. Approximately? Wood, matches,” Derek was starting to look dubious. “You… probably don’t want to give me that job.”

Stiles shivered a little as he said it, though, huddling down into his hoodie. The cottage wasn’t really cold, but it was a lot cooler than the cozy interior of the Camaro after three hours with the heat running. “You promised heat, I’m feeling cheated.”

Derek shook his head slightly but came over to Stiles, stripping off his leather jacket as he did. He put it around Stiles’s shoulders, and Stiles immediately shoved his hands into the sleeves. It fit over his hoodie only a little snugly, and it was warm.

“Better?” Derek asked. “Will you last until I put away some of this stuff?”

“I could put things away?” Stiles offered.

Derek looked even more dubious and said, “Put some wood in the stove. I think you can probably figure out that part.”

“I don’t think that’s in my job description,” Stiles pointed out as Derek went back to the kitchen and started sorting through the bags.

“I find it intensely arousing,” Derek said, utterly flatly, without looking up. “Nothing gets me off like you putting firewood into the stove. This is going to be deeply erotic, I almost can’t bear to look.”

“Doing chores while wearing your clothes, got it,” Stiles said, grinning as he knelt down in front of the stove. It was cold to the touch everywhere, and inside it was pretty obvious where the wood went: there was a fireplace-like grate, a small layer of gray ash below it. Wood was stacked in a little rack against the wall, so Stiles didn’t have any trouble piling up enough to fill the grate.

“Woodpile is around back,” Derek called out as soon as Stiles sat back on his heels to consider whether he should add another log or two. “The only thing sexier than putting firewood in the stove is bringing more inside to dry.”

“I’m making a list of your kinks,” Stiles informed him, and then headed out to find the woodpile. Just as he was rounding the corner of the cottage it occurred to him that he should have brought a flashlight, but the woodpile was right there, stacked against the wall under the glow of the curtained kitchen window. Stiles scooped up a damp, splintery armload, glad for the protection of Derek’s jacket, and hurried back inside. Once there, he dumped the wet wood on the floor and moved what was left in the rack so the wetter wood was on the bottom, dry wood handy on top. He brushed the bits of bark and splinters that had fallen while he was rearranging things into a little pile and then dumped them on top of the logs he’d put in the stove.

Derek came over as Stiles straightened up from doing that, and Stiles was startled to see that the kitchen floor was clear, shopping bags all folded into each other and stashed on top of the fridge. One cupboard door was slightly open, and the open shelves he could see were all lined with food now, including what looked like four different kinds of Doritos.

Derek took Stiles by the arms and steered him firmly away from the woodstove before he crouched in front of it, retrieving a box of matches from the wood rack. Stiles watched as he rearranged the logs more to his own liking, and then touched matches to the loose pieces of bark and splinters, propping some of them like candles among the larger pieces of wood.

Derek stared into the little flames with a strange intensity, and Stiles realized abruptly that fire was maybe not Derek’s favorite thing. He wondered if Derek had thought about that before they’d gotten here, or if he’d needed the time putting away groceries to brace himself against setting a fire in the place where he was going to sleep.

Stiles fidgeted, staying exactly where Derek had put him, until Derek closed the glass doors of the woodstove and closed the little latch that held them, shutting the fire safely away. He turned back without touching Stiles or even looking directly at him, returning to the kitchen as he said, “How do you feel about hot chocolate?”

“Um,” Stiles said, drifting after him. There was already a saucepan on the stove, he saw, a carton of milk sitting out next to a bag of sugar and a plastic container of what looked like shavings of chocolate. “Yes?”

“Good,” Derek said, turning on the burner. “You’ll like this.”

Derek started measuring out sugar, and Stiles said, “Chocolate plus more sugar?”

“Chocolate plus caramel,” Derek corrected, and Stiles edged up to watch over Derek’s shoulder as he poured sugar into the pan. His mouth started watering as the sugar melted into bubbling brown liquid.

“Derek,” Stiles said, not even teasing. “You’re magic.”

“I know how to cook some things,” Derek corrected dryly, but Stiles didn’t take his eyes off Derek’s hands and the contents of the pan; by the time Derek took it off the heat and stirred in chocolate, Stiles was bouncing a little in anticipation.

“Mugs,” Derek directed, nodding toward the row of them hanging below one of the cupboards. Stiles chose two and set them down, and Derek poured out the hot chocolate, which looked as thick and rich and amazing as you always imagined hot chocolate would be and it never was. He bounced on his heels a little.

Derek said, “Last touch. Just for you.”

Stiles looked up from the hot chocolate to Derek’s face, and Derek sighed and opened the cupboard to pull out an aerosol can of whipped cream.

“Oh my God,” Stiles whispered reverently, reaching to take it from Derek’s hand. “Did that hurt? Is your soul dying right now?”

“I’ll survive,” Derek assured him, smiling a little. “Go on.”

Stiles dispensed a mound of whipped cream onto the mug he figured was his, and then hesitated over Derek’s. Derek waved permission, and Stiles sprayed on a more sedate layer of whipped cream for Derek.

“Come on,” Derek said. “Let’s get you warmed up.”

Derek led him back into the main room, and sat down on the rug a little way in front of the woodstove, stretching his legs out toward it and patting the spot at his left side, between him and the wall. Stiles squeezed into the spot, propping his feet on Derek’s ankles. The rest of the room was still cool, but he could already feel the warmth of the fire against his feet. With the mug of hot chocolate in his hands and Derek cuddled up to his side, Stiles didn’t really need any more warming up.

He looked over to find Derek watching him—better than Derek staring at the fire, probably—and Derek said, “Drink up, let’s see if I got it right.”

“Oh, I see,” Stiles said, raising the mug to inhale the rich smell of chocolate and caramel and whipped cream. “I’m the guinea pig, huh?”

“Yeah,” Derek agreed, not smiling. “I used the kind of sugar that turns to poison if you overcook it. You go first.”

Stiles opened his mouth to make a crack about how intensely erotic Derek found it to feed Stiles, and he tilted the mug to his lips before he could actually say it. Derek feeding Stiles was part of the deal, after all. It was a barter system. Very professional, even if no money was changing hands.

Stiles forgot all about professionalism at his first sip of the hot chocolate; his toes curled a little and he couldn’t restrain an appreciative moan as he swallowed. “Holy fuck, Derek. I am gonna finish drinking this and then I’m gonna blow you, this is amazing.”

Derek breathed a little laugh, and then he took a sip of his own hot chocolate. He made a quietly pleased sound, satisfied with his work, and Stiles closed his eyes and leaned into Derek, resting his head on Derek’s shoulder, as he drank more.

“You’re not gonna want your mouth to taste like dick instead of chocolate,” Derek observed a minute later, when Stiles was halfway through his mug.

“I’ll just make a sad face at you until you make more.” Stiles tilted his head to look at Derek, who was staring into his mug and maybe blushing a little. Stiles took one hand away from his mug to rest high on Derek’s thigh. “You will, won’t you?”

Derek looked directly at him, then, smirking as he said, “I did promise all you could eat, right? I’d have to.”

“There we go, then,” Stiles said. “It’s a plan. I’ll blow you, and you’ll continue to feed me hot chocolate until I pass out from happiness.”

“Hm,” Derek said. “But what if I blew you while you were drinking hot chocolate?”

“Uh,” Stiles said, because his brain went blank, not equipped to deal with that much possibility. “Well, probably you get hot chocolate dumped on your head at some point. Also my brain melts and you are out one favorite hooker, and you have to dump my body in the ocean after all.”

Derek took a long sip of his hot chocolate and said, “Well, I won’t do that if you think it’s too dangerous.”

“Seriously, it would end in tears,” Stiles insisted. His stomach was full of warmth and milky sweet rich chocolate, and he was already feeling close to overwhelmed. Derek put his arm around Stiles’s shoulders, and Stiles leaned into him and sat still, listening to Derek’s breathing and the quiet snap of the fire, watching the flames. It was going to be weird in another minute, if he let himself think about how he hadn’t done anything worth getting paid for, about why Derek wanted to feed him and dress Stiles up in his clothes, but then Derek shifted beside him, setting his mug down. Stiles looked toward him, and he realized Derek was twisting in for a kiss.

That was all right, then. Kisses were part of the deal.

This kiss felt as warm and sweet as the hot chocolate, and it made him feel just as spoiled as Derek cuddled him close—all of this was a thousand times nicer than Derek needed to be to him. Stiles tried to kiss Derek back just as softly, and he thought that he probably ought to set an upper limit on niceness sometime. But not today; they’d already agreed on terms for today. It wouldn’t be fair to make new rules now.

Stiles blindly set his own mostly-empty mug down and twisted toward Derek, hooking one leg over his thighs. Derek pulled Stiles the rest of the way in to straddle him and then leaned back, propping himself on his elbows on the thick, soft rug.

Stiles followed him down, grinding against him as they kissed, and Derek arched under him just enough to let Stiles feel that he was already mostly hard. He tilted his head back under Stiles’s kisses but didn’t touch, didn’t take charge. It was strange for Derek to just sit back and wait for Stiles to do his thing—he hadn’t really done that since back when he was Black Camaro, and Stiles had so much more room to play now than he had back then. Derek hadn’t said what he wanted, although he’d seemed agreeable to Stiles sucking his dick. That was the target, then, but Derek didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get there. Stiles could take the scenic route.

Stiles kept kissing him, but reached down and started pushing up Derek’s shirt, a soft dark gray henley. Derek made a little appreciative noise into Stiles’s mouth, so Stiles figured he was on the right track.

Derek sat up enough to let Stiles push the shirt all the way off, and tilted his head up for more kisses when Stiles leaned back in. Stiles let his hands wander over Derek’s bare chest—he’d done a lot of things for Derek, but never really just touched him like this, especially with Derek half-naked while Stiles was still more than fully dressed, with Derek’s jacket over his hoodie and jeans. If anybody was naked it was always Stiles, and Derek did most of the touching. So maybe Derek wanted Stiles to finally return the favor; maybe he wanted to be thanked for his epic hot chocolate and warm jacket and bringing Stiles to the ocean for an unspecified occasion in late December. Stiles could do that.

Stiles let his hands wander, first in broad strokes over Derek’s skin, which was pleasantly warm under his hands, and then zeroing in a little, looking for what Derek liked. He thumbed at Derek’s nipple, which made Derek push up under him. He sagged back a second later, like he remembered that he was letting Stiles do the work. Stiles grinned and did it again, and then on the other side, and Derek’s hips rocked under him, pressing his dick up against Stiles. Nipples, check.

Stiles tried switching up the kisses then, shifting backward slightly so he could move his mouth to Derek’s throat, kissing along the line of the vein. Derek let his head fall back, and Stiles could hear the quick rush of his breathing, could feel Derek’s chest rising and falling faster under his hands. He rubbed his face against Derek’s throat, realizing as he did it that it was the thing Derek did to him all the time. Derek shuddered under him, so apparently he liked it just as well the other way.

“What if I want to use my teeth?” Stiles asked, remembering Derek asking him that weeks ago. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” Derek said, the word coming out kind of breathy. “Yeah, you—I don’t bruise that easily. You can bite.”

Stiles made a little growling noise—Derek laughed—and then closed his teeth on the base of Derek’s throat, just above his collarbone. Derek whined, a little high-pitched wordless noise as he pushed up under Stiles, tilting his head back further to bare his throat.

“That’s better than okay, huh?” Stiles murmured, and scooted back further, biting down harder on Derek’s collarbone.

Derek pushed up under him again, but they weren’t lined up enough for Derek to grind into him anymore. Stiles dropped one hand to Derek’s crotch, pressing down just enough with the heel of his hand to give him some friction while Stiles went on experimenting with biting. He tried his teeth on the curve of Derek’s pec and then on his nipple, which made Derek say, “More, please, do that—”

Stiles grinned at Derek being so fucking polite and bit down harder. He sucked and licked the same spot, rocking his hand down on Derek’s dick the whole time.

Derek squirmed and gasped, “Harder,” and Stiles let his cheeks hollow out, sucking hard, and then bit down. Derek arched up under him, shoving his dick into Stiles’s hand.

“Please,” Derek said, giving another pointed jerk of his hips. Stiles got his pants undone while he shifted his mouth to the other side of Derek’s chest, biting around his nipple but not quite on it until he got Derek to say, “Fuck, Stiles, just—”

Stiles curled his hand around Derek’s dick, instead. Derek relaxed a little under him, like he knew Stiles wasn’t just going to tease him forever.

“I’ll be nice, I promise,” Stiles said, and he didn’t tease any more, just scooted back, bending over on his knees.

“Wait,” Derek said sharply, before Stiles quite got his mouth onto Derek’s dick, and Stiles looked up, mostly in surprise at Derek doing anything to slow him down.

“Can you,” Derek said, and then bit his lip.

Stiles grinned and raised his eyebrows, because this was obviously going to be awesome.

Derek reached out with his right hand and patted the rug off to his side, like he wanted—

“I knew you were totally fucking nostalgic for blowjobs in the car,” Stiles said, and he shifted over to kneel at Derek’s side and lean over his lap that way.

“You got me,” Derek sighed as Stiles closed his mouth on Derek’s dick, and Stiles gave a triumphant wiggle of hips as he got to work, remembering how to do this sideways. He was still wearing all his layers, too, so his cheek pressed against the sleeve of Derek’s jacket as he went down, because he still had his hand on Derek’s dick. He knew that Derek wasn’t going to mind if his jacket smelled like sex after this.

Derek held still under him, letting Stiles work, for all of a minute before he was squirming around again, but Stiles made his own little noise of approval when Derek’s hand landed on his hip. Now it really was almost like being in the car.

Derek didn’t just hold on, though. He twisted a little sideways as he ran his hand over Stiles’s ass, down his thigh and back up. Stiles kept working through the distraction, trying to focus on Derek’s dick in his mouth and not Derek’s hand skimming over his leg, right up until he felt Derek’s fingers hook into the front of his jeans and pop the button open.

Stiles froze, and Derek said, “Don’t let me interrupt you,” at the same time he started working Stiles’s zipper down.

Oh, now it was a challenge. Stiles shifted his hand to rest on Derek’s thigh, adjusting his angle to take more of Derek’s cock. All he could smell was Derek, and all he had to think about was working his tongue to hit just the right spots. He didn’t have to pay any attention to anything else.

Stiles whimpered, low in his throat, as Derek’s hand slid into his underwear and wrapped around his dick. Derek moved a little more, changing the angle, and Stiles tried to focus, working up and down the dick in his mouth, ignoring everything else but the little twitches and pushes that told him he was doing a good job.

Derek pressed a wet kiss against Stiles’s hip and pushed Stiles’s jeans down further, and Stiles actually choked on Derek’s cock and had to pull off. He had to look down his own body to meet Derek’s eyes—concerned, like he hadn’t known exactly what the fuck he was doing.

“Are you fucking serious?” Stiles demanded.

Derek grinned and said, “It’s easier if you lay down on your side.”

“I am going to—” Stiles was already lying down, curling onto his side so he could still get at Derek’s dick while Derek leaned closer to his. “Fuck, seriously, you are about to get the worst blowjob you’ve ever paid money for.”

“Good thing I’m just paying you in food, then,” Derek said, and Stiles made a helpless noise as Derek licked softly over the head of his dick, then turned his head and got his mouth on Derek’s again.

He tried to mimic what Derek was doing so he didn’t have to think about anything except what he was feeling, and then Derek went all the fucking way down on him and swallowed around him. Stiles knew he wasn’t going to pull that off without choking, not when he couldn’t actually concentrate on what he was doing. He tried for blowjob autopilot—mouth relaxed, teeth covered, bobbing motion, occasional sucking—but he just kept whimpering around Derek’s dick because Derek was so good at this he couldn’t stand it.

Stiles caught himself just sucking at the head of Derek’s cock, and when he tried to correct for that he wound up going down nearly far enough to gag himself, hoping Derek would start moving and do some of the work for him. But Derek didn’t fuck his mouth; Derek was too polite and too busy sucking Stiles’s brain out through his dick. Stiles’s brain felt like it was floating away, and the feel and taste of Derek’s cock in his mouth was the only thing that kept him from feeling nothing at all but Derek’s mouth on him.

Derek’s hand tightened hard on his hip, fingernails digging in just slightly, just like the way Derek had held him in the Camaro. Stiles remembered the way he’d gotten hard that time without being touched, just from Derek holding onto him. He had to pull off completely to gasp as he came, mouthing uselessly at the base of Derek’s dick as Derek swallowed around him.

Stiles picked his head up when Derek’s mouth relaxed around his softening dick, and he took Derek down again. He didn’t even try for finesse now, just sucking hard and fast. Derek’s fingers touched his cheek, pressing in against his own dick through Stiles’s skin. Derek groaned against Stiles’s oversensitive dick, and that was as much warning as Stiles got before he was coming in Stiles’s mouth.

Stiles mostly swallowed, but he wound up with come leaking out of his mouth. He pulled off, wiping his mouth with his hand, and Derek made a low noise that made Stiles twitch his hips, pulling his dick out of Derek’s open mouth. Stiles looked down and licked at the cuff of his hoodie where it stuck out past the sleeve of Derek’s leather jacket, cleaning away the spot of jizz he’d gotten on it before it could bleach anything.

Derek sat up, pulling Stiles up with him and kissing him again, licking thoroughly into his mouth. They both tasted like come, just like they’d both tasted like chocolate before. Stiles laughed at the thought and pulled away to say, “Oh my fucking God, Derek, no one does that in real life!”

“We just did,” Derek pointed out, like he was being the reasonable one. “I liked it. We don’t have to do it again if you didn’t.”

“I didn’t not like it, I just,” Stiles flailed a little, and Derek leaned in and kissed him again.

“You were good,” Derek said firmly, when Stiles had stopped waving his arms and started kissing back. “I just didn’t want to wait until you were finished to suck your dick. That’s all.”

Stiles shut his eyes and kissed Derek again and didn’t say, Don’t say things like that, don’t want me like that.

“Ugh, I’m still wearing pants,” Stiles muttered, wriggling to try to get his jeans down from his thighs. “You’re still wearing pants.”

“You’re still wearing my jacket,” Derek pointed out, pushing at it, and they fumbled through undressing each other and themselves. Stiles shoved their bags off the bed onto the floor and pulled Derek over to lie down, and Derek let himself be dragged, curling around Stiles and pulling the blankets up over them.

“You want more hot chocolate?” Derek asked, nuzzling into Stiles’s throat. “If you make sad eyes at me I’ll go make more.”

“Shut up, it’s cuddling time,” Stiles muttered, reaching back to hold on to Derek’s arm. Derek held him tighter and didn’t try to get away.

Stiles woke up to a weirdly complete silence. It was light out in a gray, directionless sort of way, and Stiles knew even without peering through the curtains covering the nearest window that whatever time it was, the sky was a blanket of white cloud. He could hear the ocean, a faint distant sound like faraway traffic or someone breathing. It was nothing he would have noticed if he weren’t lying still under the covers alone with nothing nearer making any noise.

He was alone. He glanced around the cottage to confirm it, but the door of the little bathroom—Stiles had made its chilly acquaintance around three in the morning before coming back to bed to curl up with Derek again—stood open. There wasn’t anywhere else for Derek to be and be out of sight. He wasn’t in the cottage.

Stiles felt a vague stirring of anxiety at that—waking up and not being able to find anyone was a whole genre of his nightmares—but it didn’t get even as far as making his mouth go dry before he saw Derek’s jacket tossed across his legs. Stiles grabbed it by the collar and pulled it up over his shoulders, snuggling back down into his pillow. The leather was heavy and cool against his skin, and Stiles twisted a little to press his face into it, inhaling the familiar smell. It smelled the same as the inside of the Camaro, and there was always a hint of that smell in Derek’s apartment, too. Derek. The jacket was better than a note; it was like Derek had left a touch behind for him.

He snuggled down into the bed, thinking he’d just stay put until Derek came back and told him what the plan was for the rest of the day, but his stomach grumbled and he thought of the overstuffed cupboards and shelves full of food in the kitchen. His mouth watered a little, thinking of what might be waiting for him to eat, and he sat up and shrugged Derek’s jacket on. He was otherwise naked, which seemed a little weird. He liked the touch of the leather against his bare skin, but leather jacket and bare ass didn’t seem right. He peered over the bed and saw the crumpled pile of his and Derek’s clothes from last night; the extent of the tidying up either of them had done had been to kick their clothes halfway under the bed. Stiles reached into the pile, feeling around for underwear, and came up with Derek’s black jockeys.

Stiles gave them a crooked grin and muttered, “Doing chores, wearing your clothes,” and pulled them on. Reminded, he went and checked the fire, which was burning pretty well but looked to have eaten through most of the wood in the grate. He opened up the doors and cautiously added a couple of pieces of firewood, and remembered to latch the doors again after himself.

The door opened while he was still crouched there watching the fire lick around the new wood. A gust of chilly, misty air came in along with Derek, barefoot and damp in track pants and a tank top. Stiles fell back onto his ass and stared. “Did you—did you get out of bed and go running? Barefoot?”

“I decided it was too cold to swim,” Derek said, tugging his phone out of his pocket. “I had to talk to Laura, anyway—if you go far enough down the beach toward town you start getting cell service.”

Stiles winced at the thought of what might have made Derek go running down the beach to talk to Laura, and Derek shook his head slightly. “We check in with each other every day when we’re not in the same place, that’s all. Nothing’s wrong.”

Derek tossed the phone onto the bed and stripped his tank top off before he came further inside to kneel next to Stiles on the rug, looking him up and down.

“This okay?” Stiles asked when Derek didn’t say anything, just stared. He shifted a little, making the jacket fall open around his thighs, so Derek could see which underwear he was wearing.

Derek leaned in close, pressing his face—and his cold nose, and his damp hair—against Stiles’s neck, half into the collar of the jacket. Stiles shivered and caught his breath but didn’t pull away. Derek smelled salty, a little like sweat but more like the ocean.

“I was kind of hoping you would still be in bed,” Derek murmured. “Figured I’d just crawl in with you and let you warm me up, or apologize for making you cold and warm us both up.”

“See,” Stiles said, throwing one arm around Derek to steady himself. “You gotta tell me the plan if you want me to follow the plan. I got hungry, I didn’t know if you were ever coming back to feed me.”

“I’m al—” Derek stopped short, pressing his face in tighter against Stiles’s skin, and then he picked his head up and said, “Already contractually obligated to keep feeding you as long as you’re here,” as he stood, pulling Stiles up to his feet.

Stiles was pretty sure that wasn’t what Derek had started out meaning to say, but he also thought it was probably better not to know what the hell else it could have been. He shoved down Derek’s wet track pants, instead. Derek picked them up and draped them over the stove, and walked naked into the kitchen.

“What do you want for breakfast?” Derek asked without looking back, and Stiles realized, looking at the clock, that it wasn’t even noon yet. He hadn’t been awake this early for longer than it took to collect his pay from Derek and get back to his own bed in months. Technically this was earlier than he was supposed to eat, but—fuck that, for the next day or two his eating schedule could go fuck itself. If he was getting paid in food he’d eat when he wanted to eat.

“Uh,” Stiles said, following Derek into the kitchen, not quite able to tear his gaze away from Derek’s ass. “Is cooking naked really—”

Derek turned around, and Stiles jerked his gaze up to see Derek looking at him with his eyebrows raised, holding a box of Crunch Berries in one hand, Reese’s Puffs in the other.

“Oh,” Stiles said, “Oh, man, Crunch Berries.” He could almost taste them—and he could definitely taste the way his mouth would get shredded chewing the crunchy pieces. Never mind brushing his teeth before a blowjob, he’d have actual open wounds in his mouth.

“I mean, um,” Stiles reached for the Reese’s Puffs. Chocolate and peanut butter for breakfast sounded ridiculous in a pretty good way. “This is good.”

“More Crunch Berries for me, then,” Derek said, with another slight smile. Stiles thought about warning Derek of the consequences and then figured that Derek was a grown man and could do what he wanted to the roof of his mouth. If he wasn’t going to be in the mood to suck Stiles’s dick for the rest of the day, well, sucking Stiles’s dick wasn’t actually his job.

Derek got bowls and spoons and the carton of milk from the fridge, and they sat together at the tiny table under the side window, Derek naked and Stiles wearing Derek’s underwear and leather jacket, eating their respective bowls of cereal. Stiles pushed back the curtain when the sound of rain against the window became a distinct patter, and watched it pouring down outside while he ate a second bowl of cereal, Derek’s foot brushing idly against his.

Stiles found himself surprised by Derek’s nakedness every time he looked over and saw him again. There was nothing about Derek’s body language that suggested he was doing anything but eating his cereal; he just happened to be naked while he was doing it. He was so quietly unconcerned about that fact that Stiles kept forgetting it, only to see it again when he glanced over and saw all that skin.

Eventually Stiles got permanently distracted by Derek and just sat staring while Derek drank the last of the milk from his bowl. Derek smirked, like there was something amusing in Stiles not being able to take his eyes off a gorgeous naked guy, and he pushed his bowl and spoon over to clink against Stiles’s. “Wash these and then come back to bed.”

Derek got up and put the cereal and milk away while Stiles stared at him, just moving around the kitchen like this was normal. Derek sauntered over to the bed and lay down, stretching out across the surface and closing his eyes, like he didn’t particularly care whether or not Stiles was watching. Or, Stiles supposed, like Derek was exactly that casual even when he knew for absolutely certain that Stiles was watching. Stiles got up and took the dishes to the sink, turning the sleeves of Derek’s jacket back before he turned the water. He snorted as he looked down at himself, muttered, “Doing chores, wearing your clothes,” and he shook his ass a little as he worked, washing everything and setting the bowls and spoons in the tiny dish rack on the counter.

When he went over to the bed, he tossed Derek’s jacket over his shins, just about where Derek had left it when Stiles was the one in the bed alone. Derek opened his eyes and watched with a warm, attentive look as Stiles shimmied out of Derek’s underwear, and he made a little beckoning gesture when Stiles was naked. He lay down next to Derek, and let Derek arrange him to his liking—no surprise, Derek wanted to be the big spoon—and pull the covers over them.

They lay there a while, until Stiles tried shaking his ass again and Derek said, “Shh.”

It was the first word either of them had spoken since Stiles chose his breakfast cereal, and Stiles thought that was probably weird. It shouldn’t be so easy to hang out with Derek just being quiet. Stiles had never been a big fan of quiet, never good at it. Derek was good enough at it for both of them, maybe.

Stiles was too aware of the quiet not to ask. “Did you want me to come back to bed for something in particular?”

“Mm,” Derek said. “Yeah, now that you mention it.”

He moved, pressing Stiles down to lie flat on his back while Derek looked down at him, propped on one arm. He pushed Stiles’s arms up over his head, and Stiles’s heart started to beat faster as he lay still under Derek, waiting. Derek leaned in, nuzzling along the edge of Stiles’s armpit, and Stiles squirmed, trying not to laugh. It wasn’t that it tickled that badly, but he felt the need to move, to make some kind of noise, and laughing was the one that felt closest to right.

Derek’s hand came down on his elbow, pressing down harder on his arm to keep his armpit bared, and Derek’s mouth touched him lower on his side, over his ribs. Stiles went tense, pressing his heels into the mattress, and held perfectly still while Derek sucked at his skin, biting down hard on that little patch he’d taken possession of. Stiles tilted his head back, let his hands close into fists, breathing hard but as quietly as he could. He didn’t make a sound until Derek pushed up to look down at him again. For a while Derek just looked at the spot he’d kissed, and then he nodded and met Stiles’s eyes.

Stiles looked back, waiting for what was going to come next, and then Derek smiled a little and said, “Okay.”

“Okay?” Stiles echoed blankly. All of that and… okay?

“Okay,” Derek repeated, and he lay back down, pushing Stiles onto his side again and spooning up behind him, tugging the covers back into place.

“That’s… it?” Stiles asked, when it was obvious that Derek wasn’t going to do anything else.

“Just wanted to leave a mark,” Derek said, sounding sleepy. “Shh, I ran ten miles and talked to my sister already today, I want to take a nap.”

“Got it,” Stiles agreed, letting himself relax. That was it. He didn’t need to do anything else right now. “Cuddles are definitely included.”

“Shh,” Derek repeated, and Stiles wasn’t even supposed to be awake yet anyway, so he didn’t argue.

12. Chapter 12

The next time Stiles woke up Derek was lying on the rug—wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt now, so Naked Time was apparently over. His bare feet were toward the stove, and he was angled toward the bed so Stiles had to shift toward the edge to see his face. There was an empty plate at his elbow and he had his chin propped on one fist as he read from a thick book.

“Rude,” Stiles announced, which made Derek look toward him, eyebrows raised.

“Eating without me,” Stiles added, waving toward the plate.

“I asked if you wanted any and you said you wanted extra mustard but dragons don’t eat sandwiches,” Derek replied evenly. “Yours is in the fridge.”

“That… seems like a conversation we could’ve had,” Stiles admitted. He looked down, rummaging for clothes in the pile on the floor, to hide the sudden rush of homesickness for Scott or—or his dad, or anyone who had ever reported to him a conversation they had while Stiles was asleep.

Derek didn’t say anything, although he’d rolled onto his side and was still looking toward Stiles when Stiles sat up to pull on a t-shirt and his own underwear. Derek didn’t press, though, and went back to reading his book when Stiles went into the kitchen to retrieve the sandwich waiting on a plate in the fridge—it had bacon and turkey as well as extra mustard. He poured himself some water and snagged the bag of Cool Ranch Doritos before he went back to sit on the rug between Derek and the bed, tucking his toes under Derek’s stomach.

Derek shifted sideways to let him and settled again, still reading. Stiles opened the Doritos and then stuck his entire face in the bag, inhaling the smell as his mouth watered. He hadn’t eaten Doritos in forever. They were a stupid thing to buy when you could only eat two meals and a snack every day, and he’d gotten accustomed to thinking of himself as broke, stretching his money carefully. He could afford Doritos if he wanted them, though; he could—

Well. He was getting paid in Doritos right now; that was the main thing. He could eat all the Doritos he wanted. He sat back and pulled out a handful, shoving them into his mouth. He leaned sideways as he chewed, looking to see what Derek was reading. It was all in Spanish, and Stiles squinted at the words, automatically struggling to decode them like it was a homework assignment; he gave up after about five words and then realized the title and author were printed at the tops of the pages. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote.

“You’re reading that?” Stiles said, with his mouth full. “In Spanish?”

“Old Spanish, actually,” Derek said, still frowning at the book, like that was in any way what Stiles had been asking about. “Old Castilian, I mean. It was slow going for the first hundred pages, but I’ve kind of got the hang of it now.”

Stiles poked his toes into Derek’s ribs, and Derek smiled, ducking his head, and then looked over his shoulder at Stiles as he said, “I read it in English in college, and I always wanted to try it in Spanish. My Spanish is pretty good, but I knew this would be a challenge, so.” Derek waved at it. “I’ve been working on it for a while. I’ve made it through two entire pages without looking anything up.”

“Well, now I’m impressed,” Stiles said, and took a bite of his sandwich, and then added as he chewed, “Super impressed, this is really good.”

Derek smiled and squirmed a little before he went back to reading. Stiles focused on his sandwich and the Doritos for a while, and tried not to notice too much how comfortable this was: just hanging out with Derek, being close and easy with each other, plumbing the depths of Derek’s weird and unexpected nerdiness. Stiles wiggled his toes from time to time, and Derek would reach back and squeeze his ankle until he stopped. When Stiles ran out of water but still had most of a bag of Doritos left, he did the logical thing and got up for more water.

When he came back he sat down astride Derek’s back. He just sat there for a while, enjoying his perch and eating Doritos, but eventually he lay himself down over Derek’s back and put his chin on Derek’s shoulder. “I’m bored.”

“Okay,” Derek said. “Gimme a—” Stiles rubbed his face against the side of Derek’s throat. “Oh—okay.”

Stiles grinned and picked his head up, and Derek pushed the book away.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Derek said, and pushed up under Stiles.

Stiles scrambled off before he could find out if Derek was going to just stand up under him and tip him off, or find some way to pick Stiles up as he stood.

“Uh,” Stiles said. “A walk?”

“The ocean is right there,” Derek said, waving a hand in what Stiles presumed was a westerly direction. “And it stopped raining an hour ago.”

“Well in that case we should definitely go for a walk,” Stiles said, and Derek reached for his jacket like he had no idea sarcasm was a thing.

Stiles rolled his eyes and waved his arms. “Derek, it’s December! It’s cold. We could do fun things inside. Nice warm things. Hot, even.”

“I’ll keep you warm,” Derek said solemnly, holding out his jacket.

Stiles sighed and turned away, looking for his hoodie—if he was going out there he was layering. He was skinnier than ever this winter; he had no natural insulation.

Derek apparently didn’t recognize surrender when he saw it, because he stepped in close and murmured in Stiles’s ear, “Also, I really enjoy walks on the beach.”

Stiles turned to stare at him, wide-eyed, and caught the glint of humor in Derek’s eyes.

“Dude,” Stiles said, shaking his head a little and struggling not to smile. “I did not sign up for this level of kink.”

Derek grinned, flashing all his teeth, and he said, “Can I talk you into it?”

“I am going to require so much hot chocolate,” Stiles declared, and Derek just held up the jacket for him to put on.

Stiles couldn’t actually complain once they broke through the trees and he was looking out across the sand to the ocean. It was cold and windy and, if not actually raining, still about to rain in the way that it always was in winter. But there was also the ocean, crashing in against the sand in head-high white breakers, gray and impossibly vast beyond that. Stiles walked with Derek, more or less on autopilot, through the dunes down toward the smooth sand of the shore. His eyes were fixed on the rolling waves and the distant horizon, gray water fading into gray sky.

Derek put himself between Stiles and the water as they walked along it, a coatless human windbreak. His cheeks and ears turned red and his hair got blown around wildly, but otherwise the cold and wind didn’t seem to bother Derek at all. Stiles kept his hands tucked into the pockets of Derek’s jacket and huddled down in the hood of his sweatshirt.

They walked north along the beach, not bothering to shout to each other over the crashing of the waves, until they came to a line of low fencing, sand heaped halfway up it, with a little plastic sign. Private Property. The beach on the other side looked exactly the same, stretching northward ahead of them, but they weren’t allowed to go there. Derek had already stopped and turned, looking out at the ocean, acknowledging that the stupid little fence and stupid little sign meant they couldn’t go any further.

Stiles stood there facing north, not looking at the ocean, not looking at Derek, just looking at that sign. He knew it wasn’t a big deal; there was plenty more public beach in the other direction and nothing different about that beach than this beach. But somehow standing there looking at it, with the wind stinging his eyes and Derek just standing there waiting patiently, Stiles couldn’t make himself turn around and start back. He couldn’t accept a limit, not one this arbitrary and stupid and petty. Why couldn’t people just let other people walk on their beach? Why did he have to turn around? Why did he have to—why—why was he even here, why had he ever—

Stiles lunged forward, running up the drift of sand and jumping over the exposed part of the fence; he half-fell on the other side but staggered up running. He heard Derek yelling after him, but that only made him run faster, aiming for the packed wet sand at the water’s edge. Running hurt—he was out of shape and his jeans were too fucking tight for this—but he did it anyway. He forced himself on, stretching his legs and running north, running and running like no one could stop him, like nothing could catch him. He ran like he could escape somehow if he just kept going, like there was some safe place he could get to if he just—just—

He tripped and sprawled flat, landing with a hard wet smack that knocked the air out of him. A wave lapped up to his side, splashing his face. He thought about salt water on Derek’s jacket and he thought about breathing and he thought Derek should have caught him by now, but he hadn’t. Stiles was just lying her in the wet sand, alone, like an idiot, and his chest ached with emptiness and he couldn’t—he couldn’t breathe—he couldn’t—

He gasped and scrambled up onto his hands and knees, crawling away from the water, hauling in one heaving breath after another. His mouth tasted like blood; he’d bitten his tongue, and he hurt dully, everywhere, from the impact. He was sobbing, just shaking and wailing and crying, his face wet with it, his throat already feeling raw. He slumped over to sit on the sand, staring out at the ocean, and he screamed his way through another sob, and after a while he realized that the black shape in his peripheral vision was Derek, crouching a little way away, watching him.

Stiles turned his face away, trying to huddle up small, like he could stop Derek from seeing any of this, but Derek moved closer. Derek came all the way in, wrapping himself around Stiles—God, he was warm, how could he be warm in all of this?—and he said in Stiles’s ear, “Come here, you’re freezing.”

“I can’t,” Stiles tried to say, except he was already clutching two fistfuls of Derek’s shirt, pressing himself to Derek’s chest and sobbing into his shoulder. Derek’s arms were tight around him, holding him in, holding him still.

“I ca—” Stiles tried again, and then, “Fuck, Derek, it’s Christmas.”

“I know,” Derek said. “I know. I’m here. I’ll keep you warm.”

“You can’t,” Stiles said, even as he felt Derek’s warmth all around him, because he knew Derek didn’t just mean this, shielding him from the wind and absorbing his shivers. “Derek, you can’t.”

“For now I can,” Derek insisted softly. “For today. I’ll keep you warm. Let me keep you warm.”

Stiles shook his head, but he was shaking too hard to talk, too hard to think. He burrowed into Derek’s grip, pressing his face against Derek’s throat while he was sobbing in huge, messy gusts. He was covered in sand and snot and water, and he was shivering, and he couldn’t stop. “I can’t.”

“Let me,” Derek said quietly. “Let me help.”

Stiles nodded finally, when tears were still streaming from his eyes but the sobs were diminishing. Derek stood up, tugging Stiles with him. For a second Stiles thought Derek would just pick him up and carry him all the way back to the cottage, but Derek just looked around and then pointed uphill toward a faintly visible path, turning them to face it. He kept an arm around Stiles, helping when he stumbled in the shifting dry sand, and Stiles gradually stopped crying, distracted by the effort of climbing the slope of the beach. He wiped his face the backs of his hands—his palms, like the whole front of his body, were covered with sand—and sniffled as he walked, trying to get his breathing to cooperate.

Once they were up into the trees, Derek stopped and brushed Stiles off with his quick swipes of his hands, dropping into a crouch to brush sand from Stiles’s knees and shins. That made Stiles feel wobbly, like the wind was hitting for the first time even though they were in the shelter of the trees now. He bent over, steadying himself with a hand on Derek’s shoulder. Derek finished quickly and then straightened up and pulled Stiles into his arms.

It felt more like a hug this time, less like being held still against a hurricane or whatever that had been back there. Stiles started shaking again, sobbing into the side of Derek’s neck. Derek rubbed his back and waited for Stiles to try to pull away before he loosened his grip. He put his arm around Stiles again, guiding him along the path, which was barely wide enough for them to walk side by side.

They got out to a road pretty quickly, and then it wasn’t far to the lane that led back to their cottage. Stiles was shivering and exhausted, like that panicked dash had been a whole morning of punishing lacrosse practice. He leaned against the wall while Derek unlocked their door.

No porch light this time, he noted, although the cloud-covered daylight was already giving way to dusk, the short afternoon already fading out. Stiles sniffed and squeezed his eyes shut, feeling like an idiot for not being able to pull it together. Derek was the one who was supposed to be here to hide from his shitty feelings about the holiday, not Stiles. Stiles was here to make Derek feel better, and he couldn’t even fake it himself.

“Come on,” Derek said softly. “Come in. Let me warm you up.”

Stiles nodded, keeping his eyes shut, not trusting himself to speak. Derek herded him into the warmth of the cottage. The distant sound of the ocean disappeared when Derek closed the door. He started pulling Stiles’s clothes off right there, dropping them with a series of wet thumps onto the floor.

Derek’s hands guided him to the bed, but as soon as Derek let go of him Stiles grabbed for him, eyes flashing open as he lunged. Derek’s eyes were wide as they met Stiles’s, looking almost as wild and lost as Stiles felt.

Stiles thought, Oh shit, he’s scared too, but as quickly as he’d recognized the expression it was gone. Derek leaned in and kissed him, a hard press of his mouth, and by the time he pulled back to let Stiles breathe, Derek was perched on the edge of the bed, boots and socks off. Stiles leaned into Derek’s side while he wriggled out of his jeans and underwear. He pulled Derek’s shirt off himself, remembering doing that—last night?—when he’d been dressed and warm and full of hot chocolate, when it had been work, or fun, or something other than this shivering desperation for Derek’s skin against his.

“I’m here,” Derek said, taking Stiles’s hand to make his fingers unclench from his shirt, flattening Stiles’s fingers against his bare skin. “I’m here. I won’t go anywhere. Come on, let me warm you up.”

Derek had joked about this, Stiles remembered. About coming to bed and letting Stiles warm him up. About warming them both up. Stiles pulled Derek on top of him and Derek blanketed Stiles’s whole body with his, pressing his mouth to Stiles’s in a more lingering kiss.

Stiles pressed up to feel the warm weight of Derek’s body against his. He didn’t feel anything like horny, but he needed it suddenly, needed something hot and hard and filling up the emptiness, needed to feel Derek more than he felt whatever this was. He needed not to be alone, not to have any part of him that Derek didn’t hold.

“Please,” Stiles gasped, arching up under Derek again. He wasn’t hard, he was still shivering, his face still wet, eyes still swollen and sore, but he had to hope Derek wouldn’t mind any of that. “Please, Derek, please, can we, I can—”

“I know,” Derek said, kissing his mouth again and then his cheeks, his temples, his forehead. Derek rocked down into him, running his hands down Stiles’s sides. “I know. I’m here. We’ll get warm. It’s okay.”

“I need,” Stiles managed, running his hands down Derek’s back to grab his ass, spreading his own legs to let Derek fit between them, “Derek, please.”

“I’ve got you. I know,” Derek repeated, thrusting against him. Derek wasn’t hard either, but he shifted to get his hand between them, that hot familiar grip circling Stiles’s dick, coaxing him to feel this. Stiles returned the favor, getting his hand on Derek as Derek kissed him again. It was awkward—they knocked knuckles and landed kisses wrong, bumping noses, mashing lips against teeth, but it was what he needed. It was Derek. It was him and Derek together, keeping warm, still alive.

When he started to get hard Stiles sobbed again, feeling the gathering pleasure like it was the first time he’d figured out what his dick was good for. He couldn’t brace himself against it, just whimpered and pushed wildly into Derek’s hand, and a moment later Derek tugged his hand away and pressed it into the pillow above Stiles’s head. Derek thrust against him, his dick sliding alongside Stiles’s, letting Stiles grind against him in uncoordinated desperate jerks. Derek was hot all around him, and Stiles felt hot too—unnaturally so, too fast, like a fever. He thought he was sweating, but he could still feel the cold inside him, even as he shivered with pleasure everywhere his skin touched Derek’s, his cock throbbing and balls pulling tight.

“Come on,” Derek murmured between kisses, his hand tightening rhythmically on Stiles’s hand. “Come on, you can do it—” and then Derek’s mouth was on his, sucking on his tongue, teasing him with a scrape of teeth. Stiles moved faster, thrust harder, chasing the sensation, chasing Derek’s warmth and the moment when he would forget again, when there would be nothing at all in his head.

Derek took his mouth away from Stiles’s to press against his throat, and Stiles squeezed his eyes shut and hauled in a deep, cold breath of air. He tried to thrust up but Derek was pushing down, pinning him to the mattress so he couldn’t move at all, and Stiles let out a yell that was almost a howl, frustration and pleasure and something else all surging out of him as he came, arching helplessly against Derek, who couldn’t be budged at all.

He stopped trying when his orgasm ended, going limp and quiet under Derek, and then Derek pushed up enough to let him move. Derek pulled Stiles’s hand back down and Stiles let him, opening his eyes to watch. His hand curled reflexively around Derek’s cock, and Derek’s hand closed around it, using Stiles’s hand to jerk himself off. He peppered little kisses all over Stiles’s face, only incidentally hitting his mouth and seeming to need nothing from Stiles, which was good. Stiles wasn’t good for much of anything right now but lying still and watching, letting Derek use him. He was almost warm now. Almost.

Derek pressed his cheek against Stiles’s, letting his breath out in a slow hiss as he came, and Stiles watched Derek’s jizz land on his skin, adding to the sticky mess of his own. Derek tugged Stiles’s hand away when he was finished, lowering himself on top of Stiles again. He wriggled around like he was trying to get comfortable on top of Stiles, but Stiles knew he was rubbing the mess of come into both their skins, being gross like always.

Derek kissed him again, nuzzled along the side of his face, and murmured, “Are you warm now?”

Stiles closed his eyes and nodded, raising the hand Derek wasn’t holding to loop around Derek’s back. Derek tucked his face down beside Stiles’s, his nose under Stiles’s jaw.

“What do I smell like now?” Stiles asked.

“Salt,” Derek said, a little muffled against Stiles’s throat and the pillow. “And you and me.”

Stiles didn’t sleep, and he didn’t think Derek did either. After a while Stiles said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Derek replied without hesitation. “I know how it is.”

That, Stiles thought, was really fucking true. The ache he felt for Derek was easier to bear than the emptiness in his own chest. It was something else to feel; it meant someone else was there.

“And I know,” Derek added, more quietly. “Even after everything, sometimes it still feels good to be alive.”

Stiles closed his eyes and shook, and Derek stayed where he was, holding him down.

It was dark in the cottage, except for the faint red glow of the fire, when Derek said, “I’m going to make some hot chocolate. Do you want a shower?”

Stiles shrugged, but he got up when Derek got up, and padded into the bathroom while Derek went into the kitchen. He got under the hot water and scrubbed over his skin with his bare hands, no soap. He rinsed away the come and the salt, turned his face up into the spray and let it wash him clean, but he didn’t touch the soap. He didn’t want to smell less like Derek than he did now.

He stayed in the shower long enough that Derek came in after him—not into the shower, which was a single-person cubicle with barely enough room for him to maneuver alone, but into the bathroom. Derek had a towel in one hand, a mug in the other, and he raised both for Stiles to see through the fogged-up glass door.

Stiles shut the water off and opened the door, and Derek held out the mug, not the towel. Stiles took it in a careful two-handed grip, inhaling the rich chocolate caramel smell as he raised it to his mouth for a sip. Derek stepped closer with the towel and started drying him off, starting from the top of Stiles’s head and working down. Stiles drank his hot chocolate, letting it warm him up and wake him while Derek rubbed him dry. Stiles caught himself smiling a little when he looked down at Derek’s nose tucked into the crease of his groin.

“Smell good?” he asked, and his voice sounded almost normal.

Derek looked up with a grin that looked… hungry, and Stiles’s dick twitched, so close to Derek’s cheek that he had to feel it. Derek held Stiles’s gaze while he tilted his head, rubbing a stubbled cheek against the top of his thigh, and Derek’s hands kept rubbing the towel along the backs of Stiles’s thighs. Stiles drank more hot chocolate, but the thread of awareness didn’t go away.

“Come on,” Derek said finally, when he’d finished drying each of Stiles’s feet. Stiles followed him out of the bathroom, drinking down the last of the hot chocolate.

The cottage was brightly lit now, the fire filling the whole stove, but Derek pulled him back to bed. Derek’s copy of Don Quixote was there, along with an even older-looking clothbound book that Stiles thought must be Derek’s dictionary for Old Castilian.

There was a third book, too, lying on the pillow. It looked battered, like it had been read a hundred times, but a lot newer than the other two.

“I thought you might want something to read while I’m working on this,” Derek said calmly, stretching out naked on the bed and opening Don Quixote, the dictionary waiting beside it. Stiles lay down next to him and picked up The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, the ‘good parts’ version.

“I was so mad when I realized there wasn’t actually an unabridged version,” Stiles said. “I wanted to know all of that stuff he left out.”

“Me too,” Derek said, and pulled Stiles closer, leaving an arm and leg draped over him.

Stiles opened the book and actually read for a while, until Derek made a frustrated noise. Stiles had to look over, and then had to kiss the corner of his scowl.

Derek kissed back distractedly and went back to frowning over the book until Stiles, reading again, cracked up over a footnote. Derek’s mouth pressed in just behind his ear, which tickled a little and made him squirm. Derek kissed all down the back of his neck and Stiles reached back blindly and tried to tickle him, which made Derek jerk and squeak. Stiles twisted around and tried harder then, and Derek grabbed at his hands and wriggled away.

“Don’t,” Derek yelped as Stiles tickled at his ribs, and Stiles went for his armpit. Derek tried to pin his hands, and Stiles shoved back, and they tussled across the bed—Stiles managed to briefly get on top of Derek, only to get thumped definitively back down, and he returned to trying to tickle.

Derek caught both of his hands and pinned him, licked a broad, wet stripe up the side of his face, and then rolled away and went back to Don Quixote.

“Ugh,” Stiles rubbed his face against the back of Derek’s shoulder. “Why do I even like you?”

“I brought four kinds of Doritos,” Derek replied, which Stiles thought was a pretty tactful way of saying because I pay you to, but also, four kinds of Doritos.

Stiles got up and went into the kitchen and collected the Tacos at Midnight Doritos—it wasn’t even seven, but it felt like midnight and it was certainly dark enough outside—plus two bottles of beer from the six-pack in the fridge, because he could totally be polite.

He only realized when he got back to the bed with the supplies that the bottle caps weren’t twist-offs, but Derek said, “Give me that,” without looking up from his book. He expertly knocked the caps off each bottle by hitting them just so on the edge of the windowsill.

“I would definitely have just broken a full bottle of beer over the bed if I tried to do that,” Stiles said, drinking off the foamy first sip of his beer.

“Mm,” Derek replied, taking his own sip, still reading. “That’s why I told you to give it to me.”

“Boring,” Stiles declared, but he draped himself over Derek and went back to reading, careful to only turn pages with the hand not contaminated with Dorito dust. After a while he got distracted and tried finger-painting with Dorito dust and spit over Derek’s tattoo, highlighting the curves in weird, unnatural red-orange. Derek twitched and then looked back over his shoulder, eyebrow raised, and Stiles sheepishly licked it away.

Derek twitched at that, too, but didn’t tell him to stop, so Stiles licked some more even after the taco flavor was gone, nuzzling at Derek’s wet skin. Stiles traced his whole tattoo and then kissed down the line of his spine. Derek squirmed, hips rocking promisingly, and when Stiles continued licking tentatively lower, Derek spread his legs apart as he tilted up into Stiles’s mouth.

Stiles turned his head and saw Derek watching over his shoulder, his eyes intent this time.

Stiles held Derek’s gaze, rubbing his cheek against the top curve of Derek’s ass. When Derek licked his lips, Stiles licked too, angling in. Derek spread his legs a little more.

“Do you,” Stiles said. “I mean, whatever you want, I’ll…”

He felt himself blush, thinking about what he was offering. He’d never eaten anybody out before, but he was close enough to Derek’s ass to know that Derek was pretty clean down there. He’d sucked a lot of dicks that were objectively way grosser than Derek’s ass could possibly be. Mostly he was worried because he knew Derek had skill when it came to rimming, and while Stiles was reasonably competent at sucking dick and getting fucked, he wasn’t going to be any good at this.

“I want you to fuck me,” Derek said, calmly, like he was talking about Don Quixote. “If that’s okay with you. You don’t have to use your mouth, fingers are fine.”

Stiles reflexively defied that, licking across the cheek of Derek’s ass. Derek smiled.

Stiles smiled back, but his brain was ticking through what Derek had actually asked for. Derek obviously had better hygiene than most of Stiles’s customers, but there was clean and then there was… clean. Stiles had no idea what Derek’s eating and shitting schedule was like, but he had to assume it was something Derek gave a lot less thought to than Stiles had for the last few months.

“Do you, um,” Stiles rested his chin on Derek’s ass and waved one hand vaguely. “Need to wash up or anything?”

Derek’s eyes widened the tiniest bit, and it was Derek’s turn to go slightly pink. Stiles grinned.

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Derek said, rolling over, giving Stiles a flash of his half-hard dick before he scooted past Stiles and headed to the bathroom.

Stiles stared after him for a moment, watching the motion of his ass as he walked, trying to get his head around the fact that he was about to hit that, like. With his dick. Derek wanted Stiles to fuck him.

Stiles put his face in his hands as Derek closed the bathroom door. He was going to be so much worse at this than he would have been at rimming. Fuck. At least with rimming it wouldn’t have mattered if Stiles came in a minute flat. Like, Derek might have laughed at him, but at least his tongue wouldn’t have stopped working before Derek got any enjoyment out of it.

The shower switched on, and Stiles wondered if that was enough to keep Derek from hearing if he screamed a little bit right now. Probably not. Stiles lowered his hands and got off the bed to look around for lube. He’d brought the stuff he used on himself, but he knew that Derek would have brought some too, and Derek would probably want his own stuff. It was his ass, after all. Derek deserved whatever kind of extra-nice lube he liked if he was going to be the one getting fucked.

Derek’s bag was open, leaning against Stiles’s backpack at the foot of the bed, and Stiles was already rummaging through Derek’s underwear before it occurred to him that it was kind of rude to be going through Derek’s stuff. His hand closed on a familiar little bottle in the next second, though, and he pulled it out and sat back down on the bed. He opened the bottle and sniffed, unsurprised that the lube smelled like absolutely nothing. He squeezed a little drop onto his finger and tested the slickness of it against his thumb. He’d had this stuff in his ass, but he’d never really touched it or used it himself.

He looked down at his dick—he hadn’t even touched it and he was mostly hard already, just from knowing what was about to happen. It had been a long time since he’d thought of himself having any kind of virginity left to lose, but he’d never fucked anyone. He was glad as hell to be doing it the first time with Derek. Derek was going to laugh his ass off when Stiles came after thirty seconds, but he wouldn’t… he wouldn’t really mind.

He would just laugh, and Stiles would—would tell him it was his fault for having such a great ass, what did he expect. Stiles played that over in his head until he thought he could remember to say it, and then…

Stiles reached down without really thinking, circling his dick with his slick thumb and finger, stroking himself a little as he thought about it. He would pull out and push his fingers in where his dick had been, fuck Derek that way instead. His breath caught a little and he jerked himself harder at that thought—his fingers were skinnier than Derek’s, could he fit three in all the way to the knuckle after he’d had his dick inside him? On the other hand Derek wasn’t getting fucked a dozen times a week—Derek probably hadn’t been fucked in years. He was probably going to be tight as hell.

The water shut off in the bathroom, and Stiles yanked his hand away from his dick, feeling weirdly guilty for fantasizing about exactly what Derek had just asked him to do. What he was about to do, as soon as—

Derek opened the bathroom door and stepped back out, rubbing a towel over his head.

“If you spent all that time washing your hair we’ve just had a serious failure to communicate,” Stiles said, and his voice came out almost totally steady.

Derek dropped the towel and looked him up and down, and Stiles scooted backward on the bed as Derek came toward him. Derek’s dick probably didn’t get that hard just from washing his hair—whatever Derek had been doing in there, he liked it a lot.

Derek came over to the bed and straddled him, planting his knees on either side of Stiles’s thighs. That put Derek’s dick temptingly right in front of Stiles’s face, and Stiles didn’t hesitate to lean in and lick.

Derek’s breath caught a little and—don’t stop when it’s working—Stiles leaned in closer. He got his hand on Derek’s cock and opened his mouth for it, sucking just at the head. Derek touched his cheek, stroked the corner of his mouth where it was stretched open, and then said, “If this is what you’re going with we’ve definitely had a failure to communicate.”

Stiles pulled off and looked up to meet Derek’s eyes, and Derek said, “Do you—I can get myself ready, I already—”

“I got it,” Stiles said, finding the bottle of lube where it had slid down next to his thigh. He held it up to show Derek what he was using, and Derek gave a jerky nod, and that meant they were doing this. Stiles was doing this to Derek.

Stiles slicked the first two fingers of his right hand, and that much was automatic—he did this to himself all the time. He could figure out how to do this for Derek. Stiles leaned in again, slipping his hands between Derek’s legs, skating his finger lightly behind Derek’s balls to his hole. He couldn’t really see, but then he didn’t need to; he always did it for himself by feel, after all, and he would be able to tell if he was hurting Derek whether he could see or not. Stiles licked absently up the underside of Derek’s cock as he circled Derek’s hole with his finger, feeling his way around. He could feel the firmness of the muscle under the wrinkled skin, but Derek felt kind of relaxed, not tense-tight the way Stiles was sometimes when he knew that prep was going to suck and take forever and still hurt anyway.

Stiles pushed in a little, mouthing at Derek’s dick without taking it in, and Derek’s hole gave under his touch, letting him in almost effortlessly in a slick slip. Stiles moaned a little against Derek’s dick, because even with just the tip of his first finger inside, he could feel how hot and tight Derek was around him, and he could only imagine how that was going to feel on his dick.

“You can,” Derek said, and his breath caught again as Stiles worked that finger around, testing just how much Derek could take. “You don’t have to be too careful. You won’t hurt me.”

“Excuse you,” Stiles replied, taking his mouth away from Derek’s dick to focus on working his finger in deeper, rubbing at Derek’s rim with the second finger. “I don’t want my dick crushed. I’m opening you up for my sake as much as yours, man.”

“I promise not to crush your dick?” Derek offered breathlessly, but he was moving in response to Stiles’s finger inside him, his cock bouncing in Stiles’s face.

Stiles put his mouth on it again, sucking a little as he eased his first finger out and pushed two back in. Derek pushed down onto him, forcing Stiles’s fingers into him faster than Stiles would have tried. Derek’s dick was still hard against his lips, and the noise Derek made didn’t sound pained at all.

Stiles worked his fingers around inside Derek, trying to duplicate the things he did for himself—the ones that were useful for easing himself open, and the ones that felt good in their own right. Derek shifted a little, spreading his legs apart more, and Stiles got his mouth on Derek’s dick for real, taking him in as well as he could at this angle while he worked two fingers in Derek’s ass.

Derek’s hand was on his face again, but Derek didn’t object this time, just rocked his ass back into Stiles’s hand, which meant working his dick in and out of Stiles’s mouth. Stiles pulled his fingers almost all the way out, teasing the rim of Derek’s hole, testing the stretch of it. Derek shivered all over, his hand tightening on Stiles’s jaw, and Derek said, “Stiles, fuck—fuck.”

“Can do,” Stiles said, pulling off, and Derek huffed but also moved, getting off of Stiles and throwing himself down on the bed. He settled on his elbows and knees, ass tilted up, legs spread.

“Like this?” Stiles asked. “You—you don’t want to be on top or anything?”

Derek shook his head and didn’t look back. “Unless you—”

“No, I got this,” Stiles said quickly, reaching for the lube with his left hand. He added more to his fingers, kneeling between Derek’s spread thighs and circling his fingers over Derek’s hole again. He watched his fingers slide in, watched the way Derek opened to take them, and reassured himself that everything was as slick and easy as it had seemed a minute ago. Derek pushed back against his hand just like he had before, and Stiles gave up on prep, gave up on going slow. He squeezed more lube into the palm of his slicked hand, stroking it over his dick.

He was already so hard it hurt, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he got himself good and wet, trying not to feel the friction more than he had to. But a moment later his eyes were open again and he was scooting up so his thighs were tight between Derek’s, lining up his dick with Derek’s ass. Derek was pushing back again, tilting his hips like he could fuck himself right back onto Stiles’s dick, and Stiles bit down hard on his lip—oh God, he wasn’t going to last at all—and pushed forward. Derek went still when Stiles’s dick pressed against his ass, and Stiles had one last second of heart-thumping anticipation before he pushed inside.

He let out a helpless low noise as he watched his dick slide into Derek’s ass, Derek opening up just as sweetly for his dick as his fingers. The hot, wet slide of it, the perfect tight grip of Derek’s ass around him, blanked out Stiles’s brain completely. He just stared, rocking his hips to push in and pull out, and the sensation was so fascinating that he couldn’t even be overwhelmed by how good it felt.

“Derek,” he said, settling one hand on Derek’s hip. “Holy shit, Derek.”

“Uh-huh,” Derek said, pushing back onto his dick, and Stiles snapped into focus. He was fucking Derek, he was fucking Derek and trying to be good at it for Derek. He was inside Derek, oh God.

Stiles had mostly managed to forget that about getting fucked, to block out the fact that another person was inside him, but he couldn’t think of anything else now that he was doing it to Derek. Stiles was inside him, inside his actual body; Derek was letting him do this, letting him have this, asked for it and pushed right into it.

“God,” Stiles managed, leaning over Derek’s back. “Oh God, Derek, you feel so fucking good.”

Stiles got his lube-wet hand on Derek’s dick—still hard, so he wasn’t doing too badly so far. He tried to jerk Derek off in the same rhythm as he was fucking him, but Derek was so hot around him, so tight and perfect. He kept fucking faster into him, even though he knew that didn’t feel especially good.

“Fuck, Derek, fuck,” Stiles whispered, dropping his forehead against Derek’s tattoo. He caught a phantom whiff of taco seasoning and started laughing suddenly, which made his movement erratic, his hand and dick falling totally out of sync, but he couldn’t stop giggling.

“You smell like,” he managed, and then he heard Derek snort under him, and he felt—felt on his dick, felt all over his body—the rumble of Derek’s submerged laugh, silent but unmistakable. Stiles’s laughter died into a groan, because he could feel Derek’s laughter on his dick, he was so far inside Derek he could feel that, Derek tightening around him and—

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, you’re so,” Stiles managed, and he fucked harder into Derek as he came, his hand moving fast on Derek’s cock.

Stiles held absolutely still for a moment after he came, waiting for Derek to laugh, trying to remember what he was supposed to say. But then he felt Derek clenching tight in slow, deliberate motions around his softening dick, and Stiles whimpered at the intensity of the sensation, the overwhelming fact of Derek still wanting him inside like this. He started moving his hand on Derek’s dick again, paying enough attention to focus on the moves Derek liked. He rocked his hips a little, too, thrusting his dick in Derek’s ass for whatever it was still worth. It sounded… squelchier, now, and Stiles moaned at the thought that his come was slicking Derek now.

Derek let out a shuddery breath, dick jumping in Stiles’s hand, and Stiles knew he was getting somewhere. He raised his other hand to Derek’s chest, finding a nipple to toy with, and he dropped a biting kiss on Derek’s shoulder blade. Derek groaned out loud, his hips answering Stiles’s rhythm, and Stiles whimpered at the pressure on his dick but kept it up.

“This working for you, man?” Stiles muttered, in between kisses. “I thought I was going to have to pull out and give you my fingers, I was trying to think how many I’d be able to get into you—”

“Fuck,” Derek gasped, thrusting back against him hard. “Fuck, Stiles.”

“You’re so fucking wet inside, I bet three would be easy,” Stiles went on, just barely moving inside him. “With all that lube and come in you, the question would be could I get four—”

Derek tightened hard around him, and Stiles choked on his own spit and breath, just barely remembering to stroke Derek through it as he came, his ass impossibly tight around Stiles’s dick. Stiles pulled out as soon as Derek was done, so sensitive he couldn’t bear the pressure, but he stayed draped over Derek’s back, running his hands along Derek’s sides and down his thighs. Derek’s head was hanging down, and after a moment Derek exhaled and tipped over, taking Stiles with him as he collapsed to the bed on his side.

“Oh man,” Stiles said, snuggling in. “Do I get to be the big spoon, too?”

“Shh, quiet time,” Derek grumbled, but he got hold of Stiles’s hand and held it pressed to his chest, keeping Stiles’s arm around him, so Stiles didn’t really have anything to argue with. He pressed his lips to the nape of Derek’s neck and waited for Derek to be willing to move again.

It wasn’t anywhere near thirty minutes—maybe three or four—before Derek squirmed over onto his back, tugging Stiles on top of him, face to face this time. Derek just looked up at him, and Stiles lasted about ten seconds looking back before he said, “Sorry, that was, um. Probably better for me than for you.”

Derek shook his head slightly and said seriously, “Tell me the truth. Had you ever done that before?”

Stiles winced and closed his eyes, because there wasn’t really any other way to avoid Derek’s gaze as he shook his head.

“Hey, no,” Derek murmured, and his hand settled on the back of Stiles’s neck, tugging him into a kiss.

“You were perfect,” Derek insisted between brushes of lips. “That was perfect. I got exactly what I wanted.”

“Your kinks, man,” Stiles muttered back, but kissing was easier to deal with than staring. Stiles was getting pretty good at kissing, or at least pretty good at kissing Derek. He didn’t even have to think about it, he could just lean into Derek and kiss him easily, not exactly sleepy but fucked out and so relaxed that it was almost the same thing.

“You can charge extra if you want,” Derek murmured. “Is it time to feed you again?”

“Hmmm,” Stiles squirmed, trying to feel anything other than the pleasant warmth of cuddling with Derek after coming. “Maybe?”

Derek ran a hand down his side and then poked at his stomach. “Steak?”

“Ohh,” Stiles picked his head up, mouth suddenly watering in a not-kissing-appropriate way. “Oh. Yeah. Definitely.”

Derek smiled and pushed up for one more kiss. “Get off me, then.”

Derek put him in charge of the potatoes and then bossed him through the whole process anyway. Stiles would have argued, but mashed potatoes with milk and sour cream stirred in turned out to be fucking amazing even next to the steaks Derek made, perfectly seared and just pink enough in the middle.

“Fuck,” Stiles said after he’d swallowed his first bite. “I haven’t had steak in—”

More than a year. Long before he was living on his own, eating cheap tacos and ramen heated in his illegal microwave, he’d been fanatically avoiding red meat at home, because—because—and it hadn’t made any goddamn difference. They should have eaten steak every night, should have—

Derek’s foot brushed his under the table, and Stiles shook his head and focused on eating, on how good it tasted. He couldn’t look at Derek, but Derek’s words were ringing in his ears. Sometimes it still feels good to be alive.

This was good, right now. This moment, eating steak with Derek at nine o’clock at night in a little cottage by the ocean, the woodstove keeping them warm against the winter night. And maybe that was okay. Maybe that was just what it meant to still be alive. It felt good sometimes.

Stiles cut another piece of steak, and hazarded a look at Derek.

“Good?” Derek asked, eyebrows raised.

Stiles knew Derek meant the food, but he answered everything when he said, “Yeah, it is.”

They sprawled on the rug for a little change of pace from sprawling on the bed. Derek went back to Don Quixote, but Stiles stole Derek’s phone, which had no signal but did have Angry Birds installed. Derek had beaten about three levels, and Stiles wondered if Laura had told him to install it, or installed it for him. The laughing pigs didn’t seem to bother him, even when Stiles got stuck on the same level for a solid twenty minutes.

Stiles punched the air when he finally beat it, and belatedly looked over to see Derek watching him with a smile that was something more than just amusement. He had his finger on the page of the book marking his place, like he’d been watching Stiles for a while, and it belatedly occurred to Stiles that his furious little noises at the uncooperative birds had probably been kind of distracting.

“Chocolate,” Stiles announced, dropping Derek’s phone and jumping up to go rifle through the kitchen. He found the contents of that whole bag of chocolate he’d seen: a dozen big bars of gourmet chocolate in various flavors. He scooped up all of them and brought them back to the rug, dumping them next to Derek and then lining them up neatly, from sweetest and most normal (plain milk chocolate and caramel-filled) at one end to darkest and weirdest (70% cocoa with chili pepper) at the other end.

“So,” Stiles said, surveying the options. “Recommendations?”

Derek grabbed the dark chocolate with orange and opened the wrapper. “You’ll like this.”

Stiles leaned in as Derek broke a piece off, and Derek popped it directly into his mouth.

“Oh,” Stiles said, and then closed his eyes to focus on the flavor of it as he chewed. “Mmm, oh, yeah.”

When he opened his eyes again, Derek’s expression wasn’t amused at all. Stiles leaned in and kissed him, opening his mouth right away to let Derek lick the taste of the chocolate from his tongue.

They worked through every flavor that way. Derek actually ate some of the chocolate, too—he liked the chili pepper one a lot, and Stiles let him have most of it. He found that he didn’t like actually eating it nearly as much as he liked kissing Derek and catching just the bitter burn of it from him.

Eventually Stiles rolled over onto Derek’s phone in the midst of an only faintly chocolate-and-caramel flavored kiss, and he pulled it out from under him and absently checked the time.

It was 12:04, and he thought, We made it, even before he put together what that meant.

He tilted the phone toward Derek and said, “It’s the 26th now.”

Derek smiled crookedly. “Good.”

“Yesterday,” Stiles said, because it was yesterday now, everything that had happened before the last few minutes, that day was gone. “Wasn’t the worst day ever, really.”

Derek shook his head. “I’ve had a lot worse. Thanks.”

“No problem,” Stiles said, and popped another piece of chocolate into Derek’s mouth. That was the end of talking about it.

Stiles woke up to daylight and enough actual sunshine angling through the windows to tell it was late morning. Derek was still lying beside him, pressed warmly against his side. Stiles stretched and looked over, expecting Derek to be awake, maybe already back from running, but Derek was lying utterly limp beside him, mouth half open. There was a wet spot on the pillowcase where he’d drooled.

Stiles rolled over onto his side, facing Derek, and Derek didn’t twitch. Stiles ran his thumb over Derek’s lower lip, and Derek snuffled a little and smacked his lips, tucking his head further into the pillow, now with his mouth shut. Stiles let his hand rest on the pillow just under his chin, staring at the sweep of Derek’s black eyelashes against his cheekbone, which looked pale and vulnerable above the stubble that was nearly a beard this week. Stiles touched his knuckles to the prickle of it, brushing against the soft underside of his jaw, and Derek’s breathing stayed just the same, shallow and even.

“Derek?” Stiles said, because he didn’t want to think about what it meant that Derek could sleep while Stiles touched him and watched him.

“Mm?” Derek opened his eyes a little, blinking sleepily, and that was almost worse, because Derek looked all soft and half-awake, even more defenseless than when he was asleep. It was so obvious that he didn’t think he had anything to defend against.

“Nothing,” Stiles said, because Derek was starting to frown, expecting Stiles to say something more. He leaned in and kissed Derek, not wanting to let anyone, even himself, see him so sleepily exposed. “It’s okay. Go back to sleep.”

“Mm,” Derek repeated, this time with a declarative falling intonation, and he tugged Stiles close enough that Stiles couldn’t see him. Stiles kept his eyes closed anyway.

Stiles slipped away from Derek eventually, hit the bathroom and then went to the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of cereal. Derek joined him a few minutes later, and when they’d each gotten a bowl of cereal down, Derek said, with his eyes fixed on his bowl, “Do you need to be back at any specific time?”

Stiles’s stomach did a sick roll around the cereal he’d already eaten. Derek was asking when Stiles needed to be back for work, because this was almost over. Derek had hired him for a couple of days, to avoid yesterday, and that was done now. Stiles had to go back to his regular life, his regular job. Whatever his regular job was right now, whatever Frank texted him—if Frank even did, if he even still wanted Stiles to work for him.

Stiles was going to have to be ready to get fucked tonight. He thought for a second about not eating anything else for the rest of the day, but even that wouldn’t make him sure of his timing. He poured himself another bowl of Reese’s Puffs and made himself shrug like the question wasn’t a big deal. “Eight, I guess? That’d give me time to…”

Stiles waved a hand vaguely. Derek didn’t need to know about the stuff Stiles was going to have to do to get ready for work tonight; Stiles didn’t even want to think about it right now. He chomped down more cereal. Derek poured himself another bowl, too, nodding. “We should leave in a few hours, then.”

They didn’t talk much more than that. Derek laid him out on the rug and sucked him off, slowly and thoroughly, until Stiles felt shaky and lost under Derek’s mouth. His brain kept circling around the fact that this—the soft rug, the heat of the fire, Derek’s gentle hands and relentless mouth—this was his job. He was almost done with it, and then he had to go back to his regular job. Derek was going to drop him off and drive away because that was the fucking deal, that was Stiles’s job, that was what they agreed to.

It was a relief to come just because it made him stop thinking for a minute. He rolled over and batted Derek’s hand away from his dick where he was jerking himself off, sucked him down for the couple of minutes Derek lasted after that. Stiles was getting better at swallowing, and he lay there with his head on Derek’s thigh while Derek ran a hand over his short hair, and he thought, This is still good. This moment. Not tonight, but right now.

But the moment ended. They took turns in the shower—Stiles used soap this time, scrubbing himself really clean everywhere—and packed up their stuff.

Derek went into the kitchen and started pulling things out of the cupboards, and then he called Stiles in.

“I don’t want to fuck up the math,” Derek said. “So—you pick out your tip, okay? Whatever you think is fair.”

Stiles stared at him.

“You said I could tip,” Derek said, smiling with just one side of his mouth, cautious but not letting it go. “No money, but I’m paying you in food, so I can tip you in food, right? Up to a hundred percent of all the food you ate. Some of it wouldn’t be any good to you, I’m guessing, but you can work out fair equivalents. I think we ate all the good chocolate, though.”

“Derek,” Stiles said helplessly, because he hadn’t earned this, didn’t deserve to go back to his shitty regular life and still be eating good food when all he’d done was take a vacation with Derek. He couldn’t quite stop himself from thinking right out loud where he couldn’t avoid knowing it, I don’t want you to tip me. I didn’t want you to pay me for this.

But he could see in the anxious, hopeful look on Derek’s face that this was a long way from being a tip Derek would give anyone else. Derek wanted to keep him fed. Stiles couldn’t bear not to accept what Derek was trying to give him. He turned half away in the little space, grabbing the shopping bags and snapping one open to start packing up food.

“Man, this is some tricky math,” Stiles said, just to fill the silence, to hush the words floating around in his head. “I mean, is it a hundred percent of the equivalent price? Volume? Calories? Nutritional value?”

“I’ll accept your judgment,” Derek said solemnly, and Stiles shoved the two unopened bags of Doritos into a shopping bag along with all the remaining candy, and went to rummage through the selection for stuff he could cook in just a crappy microwave.

Not long after that there was nothing else to do, and it was time to go. Derek banked the fire in the woodstove, hung up the key on a little hook by the door and locked it before he pulled it shut. Stiles did his best not to look back at the dark, empty cottage in the dim afternoon as they pulled away.

“I was thinking of taking 1 most of the way back down,” Derek said. “Shouldn’t be too much traffic, so we won’t lose much time.”

Stiles nodded agreeably. He was on the ocean side this way, and he stared out his window, watching for whatever glimpses of the water he could catch. Derek turned on the iPod after a few minutes of silence, starting the music with the same track Stiles had chosen on the way down. It wasn’t long before he was driving at his usual ridiculous speeds.

Stiles looked over when the song changed abruptly, skipping over—Stiles racked his brain, trying to identify the thing he wasn’t hearing now, but he couldn’t think of it. He remembered that Derek had skipped a song on the way down, too, so there must be one on the album he really couldn’t stand. The one about 9/11, maybe? Stiles hadn’t been paying that much attention to the music.

He still didn’t pay much attention to the music after he looked over. He was struck by how much Derek looked like Black Camaro: his stubble was heavier, but he was back in his leather jacket, which showed only a faint pattern of salt staining on the left side, and his aviators, which looked as weird as ever in the failing light. Looking at him, Stiles could almost remember what it had been like when he was just a customer and nothing more.

“You sure you don’t want a blowjob while you drive?” Stiles asked. “I know it’s your favorite thing, and you can drive fast as fuck out here.”

Derek didn’t say anything, or look over at him, but Stiles saw his jaw clench, and he heard the growl of the Camaro’s engine get louder as Derek pressed down a little harder on the accelerator. Stiles looked out the windshield, but there were only a few cars in sight, and the road was pretty straight here, stretching out before them in a long ribbon, washed orange by the sinking sun where it peeked through the clouds.

Stiles took one last look at the ocean and then squirmed over to kneel on his seat, leaning into Derek’s lap. “Tell me to stop, man, otherwise I’m going for it.”

“Stiles,” Derek said, which definitely wasn’t stop, especially in that slightly strangled voice.

Stiles grinned and squirmed a little further, settling his seatbelt around his thighs, and then Derek’s hand caught his hip, anchoring him. Stiles knew just how strong Derek’s grip was. He knew he could trust that hand on him—but he thought he’d known it even way back when they started. He’d jerked off thinking about Derek’s hand on him, back when Derek was still Black Camaro, back when he’d never given Stiles an orgasm in person and on purpose.

Stiles pushed Derek’s jacket out of the way and got his jeans open and his dick out, and Derek was already well on the way to being hard. Stiles thought about using a condom just to complete the callback to the way they used to do this, but he didn’t have any handy—there were some in his bag, but none in his pockets.

Well, he was getting better at swallowing anyway. He got down to it, taking Derek’s dick into his mouth and sucking gently, encouragingly. He savored the feel of Derek getting harder against his tongue, his dick changing shape as his foreskin pulled back. Derek’s hand tightened on his hip and the car swung in a quick, tight curve—Derek passing someone—and Stiles moaned a little around Derek’s cock and sucked harder, bobbing his head up and down.

He could smell Derek’s clean body smell, he could smell leather and salt and the Camaro’s interior. The press of Derek’s cock in his mouth at this angle was familiar, and it felt right along with the square pressure of the console under his ribs, the seatbelt around his thigh and Derek’s hand on his hip holding on tight. All of it together felt good—familiar as much as it was hot, like something he’d come back to after too long away, like somewhere he belonged. Stiles sank into it and didn’t think, just sucked Derek’s cock and leaned into Derek’s grip, letting the car carry them forward faster and faster until Derek’s hand was suddenly painfully tight on him and Derek was gasping his name louder than the song on the stereo as he came.

Stiles choked a little and pulled up coughing, ducking his head a second later to apologetically lick up some of the mess he’d left all over Derek’s dick. Derek groaned and Stiles retaliated without thinking, closing his mouth on Derek’s dick and sucking again as it went soft.

Derek took his hand off Stiles’s hip and grabbed the back of his neck, pulling him away like a naughty puppy. Stiles gave in, settling mostly back into his own seat so he could open the console and get out the usual supplies. He cleaned Derek up with the wet wipes and tucked him back in, and just for old times’ sake he sanitized his hands and popped an Altoid into his mouth. He regretted a little, now, the way the sharp smell of alcohol and the even sharper taste of mint cut through the smell and taste of sex—he didn’t mind the taste of Derek’s come nearly as much as he minded the taste of latex, and he smiled a little at the thought that Derek was converting him to his own picky ways. Pretty soon he’d only be able to eat expensive organic chocolate, turning up his nose at Reese’s and Hershey.

Stiles squirmed back all the way into his own seat, adjusting his seat belt so it was actually across his hips. It was tricky picking a spot, because he’d gotten hard as hell sucking Derek off.

“Do something for me,” Derek said, and Stiles looked over at him. Derek still wasn’t looking at him, but there was a faint pink flush lingering on his cheeks above the stubble.

“Yeah?” Stiles asked, looking around for anything he’d left undone. Maybe Derek wanted a mint too?

“Open your pants,” Derek said. “Fair’s fair.”

“Uh,” Stiles said, looking around. It was nearly fully dark now. “You’re driving.”

“I promise not to try to suck you off while driving,” Derek said blandly. “But open your pants for me, please.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely,” Stiles allowed, tugging his seatbelt out of the way so he could get his pants pushed down a little and his dick out.

Derek, without taking his eyes off the road, reached over and started jerking him off.

“Oh, fuck,” Stiles gasped, hips pushing automatically toward Derek’s hand while Stiles stared helplessly at the road and the darkness of the ocean. “Derek.”

“Mm-hm,” Derek said, steering expertly with his left hand, jerking Stiles with his right. “Is that too dry? Here, lick.”

Derek took his hand off Stiles and held his palm to Stiles’s lips, and Stiles groaned and then licked, getting in a few wet swipes before Derek put his hand on Stiles’s dick again. He gripped tighter, and Stiles could feel the wet sound of his strokes even over the Camaro’s engine and the sound of the road under them. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes, letting himself thrust up into Derek’s fist as well as he could against the seatbelt.

He felt the car swerve and his eyes flashed open to watch as they sped by a pickup truck towing a horse trailer, the ocean suddenly reappearing on his right as Derek pulled them back into their own lane, and all the time Derek was jerking him off. Stiles looked over and saw Derek grinning, a faint gleam of reflected light shining off his teeth, and he closed his eyes again and made a noise that wasn’t really a warning before he came.

Derek eased him through it, slowing the movement of his hand to just coax Stiles through his orgasm. When Stiles opened his eyes, meaning to help with cleanup, he was stopped dead by the sight of Derek licking his hand clean.

“Fuck,” Stiles moaned.

Derek flashed a smile at him and then grabbed the wet wipes and cleaned off Stiles’s dick, tucking him back in one-handed.

“You zip up, I don’t want to catch you,” Derek directed, and Stiles obeyed.

“Mint?” Stiles offered a few minutes later, when his brain cells were starting to drift back into place.

“Come here,” Derek said, and Stiles leaned closer to Derek, straightening up out of his limp slump in the passenger seat.

Derek darted over for a kiss, just a fast press of his lips to Stiles’s that couldn’t possibly taste like anything, and then he said, “I’m good.”

Stiles blinked at him, then shook his head and collapsed back into his seat to stare mindlessly out at the ocean for as long as he could. He didn’t notice Derek’s hand resting warmly on his thigh until Derek took it away, and then he felt cold without it.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to drop you off somewhere closer?” Derek asked. “You have a lot to carry.”

Stiles glanced into the backseat, which held his backpack and three reusable shopping bags full of tip food. He thought for half a second about letting Derek know where he lived, about knowing that Derek knew.

He shook his head. “It’s fine, it’s not that heavy.”

“Okay,” Derek said, pulling up to his usual stop down the block from the Holiday Inn. “One thing, then. This isn’t a tip for today, it’s an end-of-the-year gift, for everything you’ve done for me the last few months, and part of it is a present from Laura.”

“Derek,” Stiles started, because he couldn’t take money today, not from Derek, and not from Derek pretending it was from Laura. “Don’t—”

“Just, if you don’t want to use it, don’t,” Derek said, and he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out something small and silver-bright and held it out to Stiles. A key.

“It opens the front door,” Derek said. “That’s the part that’s from Laura, I had to get her to agree to let me make a copy for you.”

“Derek,” Stiles said helplessly.

It could be just a practical thing. It would come in handy—Derek wouldn’t have to come outside for him, Stiles could let himself in as far as the hall. But Derek set the key down on Stiles’s knee and turned off the car, turning his keys over in his hands.

“This part is just from me, and you don’t have to use this either if you don’t want to, but I want you to have it.”

Derek worked a dull bronze-colored key off the keyring and set it down by the shiny new silver one.

“That’s my key to Laura’s apartment,” Derek said, and Stiles jerked his head around to stare. Derek didn’t meet his eyes. “If you need a place to go, somewhere safe—you can go there anytime. Laura won’t mind. And I can’t follow you there unless you let me, because you have my key. I just—I want you to have those. Okay? You don’t have to use them, but please keep them and keep them safe.”

“Derek,” Stiles repeated helplessly, but he put his hand over the keys. Of course he would keep them safe; of course he would make sure no one else could get into Laura and Derek’s house. As soon as he thought of it he thought of Argent coming after him again, finding these keys on him, taking them and using them to get at Laura, at Derek.

“I shouldn’t have these,” he said weakly, his fist already clenched around them. “Derek, I shouldn’t, I’m not—”

“I talked to Laura about it,” Derek said firmly. “She agreed. You’re welcome anytime. It’s not—not everything has to be about you doing your job. We’re not strangers, we know you and you know us. You can come anytime. Okay?”

Stiles just nodded, unable to speak, unable to make sense of the million things flying around his brain.

“Okay,” he said finally, without looking at Derek, and then he yanked his door open. He shoved the keys into his pocket before he leaned into the backseat to grab his backpack and the shopping bags. He shut the door behind him, and was already in the Holiday Inn parking garage, waiting for Derek to drive away, when he realized he hadn’t said thank you or goodbye or even looked at Derek.

He ducked behind a pillar and pressed his forehead against it for a while. When he finally made himself walk back outside, Derek was long gone.

13. Chapter 13

He made himself look at his phone after he’d gotten back to his SRO and stashed all the food. There was a message from Frank: Call-out for you 11:30, with the hotel and room number.

A call-out was better than the street corner, but it meant he was almost certainly getting fucked tonight, which meant he had to get himself cleaned out.

He’d bought an enema kit in his first week, when he was worried that the eating-and-shitting schedule wouldn’t take. He’d never had to resort to it, even after Thanksgiving, but clearly the time had come.

Stiles didn’t let himself think about the options he had that weren’t doing this. He had a job. He was going to do it. He read the instructions on the back of the little box and started getting ready.

The call-out wasn’t actually terrible—he thought Frank was easing him in gently—but halfway through it Stiles noticed that he couldn’t really feel anywhere the guy was touching him. He knew there was a dick in his ass—he could feel the pressure of it, and a sort of dull pain that was more of a status report than anything else. He knew the guy’s hands were on him. But none of the sensations actually seemed to connect up; it was like there was something between his skin and the john, sealing him away.

Good, Stiles thought. That made it easy to pay attention to manufacturing the kinds of movements and noises that would help things along. Feeling nothing was a hell of a lot better than bursting into tears. If he didn’t have to feel any of it, the job would be easy.

He felt nothing through three blowjobs and another fuck that night. The only thing that really got at him was when Frank picked him up to settle the money, and Frank said casually, “You already had your days off this week, so you’re on the corner the next three nights unless I get a call-out for you.”

Stiles wanted to argue. His nights off were his, that was the deal—but he felt a little relief, too. He couldn’t have seen Derek this week without feeling everything, and there were too many things to feel, too many things he shouldn’t be feeling at all. Derek hadn’t asked him to feel anything. Derek had given Stiles a way to escape him. Stiles didn’t want to think about what that meant. He didn’t want to feel anything.

He texted Derek when he got back to the SRO that night: No availability this week, Tuesday is out.

Derek replied a few minutes later: Okay. Thanks for letting me know.

Stiles thought about feeling something about that, but it was easier not to. He made himself a peanut butter sandwich from the bread and peanut butter Derek had given him, ate it in six bites, and threw himself down on his awful bed to sleep.

He knew it was Monday and that meant laundromat day, but he had enough clean clothes to last a while longer. Derek had rinsed out his salty jeans, so they looked fine. Stiles didn’t really care what he smelled like, anyway. Why should he? His customers didn’t.

He did make himself shower eventually, put on clean clothes and got down to the corner on time. He was sort of pleased to find that he was still numb—it was like a magic trick he’d just figured out. He thought the others must know it; this must be the secret handshake of the seasoned prostitute, being able to just turn off all sensation. His tips weren’t any better than they’d been his first few nights on the corner, but no one yelled at him for crying either. He’d take it.

He got back onto a regular eating-and-shitting schedule, although it didn’t matter much; he spent the next two nights on corner duty, giving nothing but blowjobs. He didn’t have another fuck until Thursday, and that was kind of unnerving: the guy kept smacking his ass and thighs, and Stiles could hear the impacts and even see reddened skin when he looked back, but he could hardly feel anything at all.

He felt a curl of fear, but he pushed it down and got on with the fuck—and the one after, where the guy remarked on his marked-up ass, asked him if he was a naughty boy and then gave him a few more smacks on the ass before fucking him. He was a little worried about how that was going to escalate, but he wound up with nothing but blowjobs for the rest of the night. Even having his jeans on made him aware of the marks on his ass, and he couldn’t sit still while he was settling up with Frank, but Frank didn’t even seem to notice.

Derek would know, Stiles thought, out of nowhere. He hadn’t thought about Derek in days, but suddenly that thought was lodged in his head. Derek would know. Derek would—

He couldn’t think of what exactly Derek would do about it, his brain trying to split between “beat up the guys who did it” and “kiss it better”, but Stiles felt suddenly shaky and overwhelmed, suddenly conscious that people had been hitting and spanking him tonight. He couldn’t have done a fucking thing about it if it had gotten worse, would hardly even have known if it got worse. But Derek would have known. Derek would have known even if Stiles didn’t.

Stiles focused on the money. Frank was telling him that tomorrow was all call-outs, and Stiles nodded and pocketed the hundred bucks he’d made and got out of the car, walking away without saying goodbye.

He woke up and knew that he’d worked the last five days and had to work again tonight. He rolled facedown into his pillow and tried not to know any of it. He told himself he wouldn’t feel anything, that it wouldn’t be so bad.

He shifted and felt the sore places on his ass, and felt a sharp, cold burst of fear, remembering what not feeling anything could turn into. Every guy who fucked him tonight would see the marks if they had darkened into real bruises. Maybe they would like it, or maybe they wouldn’t, or maybe they’d pretend not to notice, or—

Derek would—

Stiles rolled onto his back and covered his face with his hands, and then squirmed because his ass hurt. He couldn’t be thinking about Derek. It didn’t matter what Derek would do; Derek was only Stiles’s customer once a week, or less. Derek wasn’t going to see Stiles’s ass anytime soon.

Someone else would. Whoever called Frank for a boy whore delivered to their hotel room. Stiles reached for his phone to check whether Frank had already texted him with the information for his first call-out. There was no message; he found himself staring at the time and date. It was going on three in the afternoon, December 31.

New Year’s Eve.

It wasn’t like when Stiles had finally let himself know it was Christmas; he’d genuinely lost track of the date and the fact that New Year’s was coming.

He loved New Year’s. He always made a whole set of resolutions, a complicated arrangement of plans for how the next year was going to be better.

Next year was supposed to be better. Somehow. He was supposed to—to—this wasn’t supposed to be forever. He was supposed to stop. He could stop.

He had money. He had keys. He could stop. He could stop right now and no one else could fuck him. No one would hit him; he didn’t even have to see Frank again if he played it right. No one could touch him if he just quit and got out.

No one else could fuck him. He wouldn’t have to feel or not feel anything. And Derek—

Derek—

If he wasn’t a whore anymore, Derek wouldn’t hire him anymore. He and Derek wouldn’t have a professional relationship, so they’d just be… not strangers. Not being strangers wasn’t enough to do any of the things he and Derek did, but—

But no strangers would fuck him. It wouldn’t be his job anymore. He could find out if Derek had meant what he seemed to be saying back at the cottage, and either way he wouldn’t have to take money from Derek for anything he did. It wouldn’t be his job anymore.

It wasn’t his job anymore.

“Fuck this,” Stiles said to the phone. He saw his hands shaking before he realized that he was shivering, and then he started shaking harder, shivering so violently his teeth started chattering.

“Fuck this,” he repeated. “Oh my God, fuck this.”

He stood up and looked around, wrapping his arms around himself against the shivering. He could leave. He never had to come back here. He could go to Laura’s. Laura would tell him what to do next, where to go, how to get to whatever the next thing was supposed to be. He didn’t have to do this. He could stop.

As soon as he stopped shivering. He could stop.

He lugged all of his stuff, and the one bag of food he had left, back to the Holiday Inn. He had showered—scrubbing himself clean just for himself, just to be clean, not for anyone else—and he was wearing his loosest pants and a button-down shirt. The first cab to come by picked him up without hesitation.

Sitting in the backseat, he texted Derek first: This isn’t my phone anymore. Don’t use this number.

Then he texted Frank: I quit. I’m gone.

As soon as the text was sent he took the battery out of the phone and dropped the rest of the phone into the footwell, nudging it under the driver’s seat. He stuffed the battery into a pocket on his backpack. Ten minutes later he was in front of Derek’s—Laura’s—house, the keys clenched in his hand. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and hesitated for a moment, expecting Derek to come out and let him in.

Nothing happened. Stiles shook his head and jogged up the stairs, took a breath and let himself in the front door. He walked softly down the hall to the stairs, and trotted up the last flight.

He knocked at Laura’s door. It was barely five; if Laura worked nights she should still be home and awake, but there was no answer. He thought for a moment about calling her—he still knew her number—but he didn’t have a phone anymore. He hadn’t thought to call Laura in advance. He’d figured she would just be here, knowing he needed her.

He leaned his forehead against her door and laughed silently at himself, and then tried knocking again. There was still no answer, and Stiles took another deep breath—three of them—and finally slipped the worn key into the lock. The door opened for him, and he stepped into the quiet apartment.

“Laura?”

Still nothing, and he knew Laura would have heard him if she were here.

Stiles shuffled all the way inside and shut the door behind him. He carried his backpack and duffel bag over to the far side of the couch and set them down. He carried the shopping bag to the kitchen and set it on the counter. Then he explored the rest of the apartment, walking softly and not touching anything, experiencing the deep weirdness of being in someone else’s house without them, like when he’d been responsible for feeding Mrs. Kowaleski’s cat for a week in middle school.

The bathroom looked the same as it had at Thanksgiving, nothing unusual. There were two bedrooms past that, both doors standing open; one was blandly decorated, obviously a guest room, and the other had pictures and art on the walls. There was a picture frame on the nightstand, angled so that Stiles couldn’t see what the picture was from the doorway. He didn’t step further inside.

He went back to the couch and curled up there, pulling a blanket over himself. It was only then that he saw The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, the ‘good parts’ version on the coffee table. He started shaking again, and tears were leaking from his eyes, and—

Derek knew. Derek had already known. Derek had given him the keys because Derek had known, days ago.

Stiles buried his face in the blanket Laura had made and didn’t bother trying to be silent about crying. Derek would hear him no matter what he did. Derek already knew.

It got dark. Stiles realized he had to pee, and a while after that he got up and found his way by feel to Laura’s bathroom. He turned on the light and avoided looking at himself in the mirror, just peed and flushed and washed his hands, making sure he wasn’t leaving any trace of his presence behind. He tried to adjust the hand towel to the exact state of crookedness it had been in before he used it, then shut the light off and aimed himself at the couch again.

He wrapped himself up in the blanket again and curled up on the couch. Then he squirmed over to sit on his other side because his ass was sore, and then he tried lying facedown, and a while after that he admitted to himself he was bored. He got up, still wrapped in the blanket, turned on the lights, got a bag of Doritos and a glass of water, and shuffled back to the couch. He sat for a while without opening the Doritos, just eyeing the book on the coffee table. He’d been maybe halfway through by the time he and Derek left the cottage; things were looking pretty bad, but he remembered how it would go from here. Inigo would get revenge on the guy who killed his dad; Westley and Buttercup would find each other and kiss a perfect kiss. They’d all ride off together, safe and sound and free.

Stiles didn’t think he could bear to read the part where everything worked out okay. He reached over and turned the book facedown, and then got up and shuffled over to the DVD shelves.

He wasn’t really surprised to see that all of the Harry Potter movies were there in a row now, though he hadn’t seen them there before. He pulled out the first one and put it into the DVD player, opened up the Doritos and curled up on the couch again.

He fell asleep sometime during the third movie, but he dreamed about it anyway: Harry finding Sirius, Sirius hugging him and telling him they would be a family now before he flew away, safe. In his dream it went on for a long time, and he was Harry and he was watching Harry, chasing after Sirius, glad he was safe but wanting to go with him, wanting not to be left behind again.

He woke up when he hit the ground, and found himself wedged between the couch and coffee table, still tangled in the blanket. Getting himself unstuck seemed like too much to figure out right then, so he just snuggled down until he was flat on the floor and reached up to pull another blanket off the couch on top of himself. The floor wasn’t bad.

He woke up again and it was light out. The TV had shut off at some point, and he felt stiff and a little bruised from sleeping on the floor, pressed up against the coffee table. He managed to squirm out without knocking anything over, used the bathroom again and fixed himself a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast with another glass of water. It was ten in the morning and—he checked carefully—Laura still hadn’t come home.

He sat on the couch and waited for her, and then he lay on the couch and waited for her, and then he lay down on the floor and waited some more. He heard little sounds downstairs: Derek moving around. Stiles wasn’t really alone, then. He was just upstairs while Derek was downstairs, and Laura wasn’t home yet. He just had to wait for Laura to get back, and then she would tell him what to do. He thought about putting another movie on, but Laura had to be coming back any minute, so there was no point. Stiles stayed where he was, lying on the floor, listening for Derek.

After a while he heard low voices and then a muffled scream, followed by familiar theme music, and he smiled and pressed his ear harder to the floor. Derek was watching CSI. Stiles couldn’t actually hear what was going on, just the rise and fall of voices, but he found that he could kind of follow the inevitable arc of the episode. There were the excited voices of figuring-things-out—angry voices of someone disputing the thing they figured out—gunshots and yelling—calm declarative voices explaining everything when it was over—friendly voices for an episode tag. Done.

He heard Derek moving around again. He heard the water running, the fridge opening and closing, Derek’s voice speaking words he couldn’t catch. Then he heard a little sound that might be the couch, and another episode of CSI.

Stiles woke up on the floor and realized it was dark again and Laura still hadn’t come back. That seemed weird. She had to come home, right? Not just because he needed her to tell him what to do next. She lived here. She had to come back. She had to come back to Derek. Derek had run ten miles on the beach in December to talk to her; she couldn’t leave him to his own devices. So she had to be coming back. But Stiles had been waiting in her apartment for more than twenty-four hours, and she wasn’t back.

There was no sound at all from downstairs. Maybe Derek had fallen asleep too. Maybe Derek was gone, and Stiles really was alone now. Maybe Laura wasn’t coming back, and Derek wasn’t coming back either, and Stiles would be alone here—

There was a tap at the door, and Stiles exploded up off the floor. He got tangled in the blanket wrapped around him and fell down hard, then staggered up again.

“Stiles?” Derek said from outside the door. Stiles limped over to it, reaching for the locks, and then hesitated.

“What—” his voice came out weird, unused. Stiles cleared his throat and said, “Derek? What—um…” What do you want sounded wrong, but Stiles couldn’t think of a polite way to say it.

“Laura isn’t answering her phone,” Derek said. It sounded like he was leaning against the door, speaking almost in Stiles’s ear. “She never does that. She always answers when I call, but she—she had to go out of town and now she’s not answering her phone. I want to go see what’s going on, but I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

“I could,” Stiles said, trying to think of what he could do. Stay in a hotel? Not alone, not sixteen with no ID. He could just find a place to sleep for the night…

“I guess you’d be safe enough if you stayed in,” Derek said. “But if anything happened, there would be no one here—if Argent showed up or something, I don’t want you to be on your own.”

Stiles bit his lip and let his shoulders sag. It wasn’t that Derek didn’t trust him here; Derek didn’t want him to have to deal with things by himself. Derek didn’t want to leave him all alone.

“I want you to come with me,” Derek went on. “I think—whatever’s going on, if you—if you came here, she’ll want to see you when we find her. If you’re willing to come with me.”

Stiles leaned against his side of the door and didn’t say anything; he couldn’t. He wanted it too much. He wanted to go anywhere Derek was going, if he could just go with Derek and not be alone.

“It’s not…” Derek said. “This is because you’re someone who’s welcome here, okay? Nothing to do with—anything else. But I think something is wrong and—I’d like it if I didn’t have to look for her alone. I’m asking you just—as a favor, because I want you there. If that’s okay.”

“Okay,” Stiles echoed back, and remembered that that had been the last thing he said to Derek the last time he saw him. It seemed suddenly intolerable that he hadn’t seen Derek in days, that Derek was worried about Laura and Stiles was still keeping a locked door between them. He flipped the locks open and turned the light on as he yanked the door open.

Derek stood there in the hall, wearing the dark red shirt he’d worn for Thanksgiving. He already had his leather jacket on—no sign of salt now, Stiles noticed. There was a duffel bag at his feet.

“Should I bring my stuff?” Stiles asked, glancing at it and back up to Derek.

Derek nodded. He looked pale. He looked young. He’d shaved, Stiles realized. His whole face was exposed. “I’m not sure when we’ll be back home. This could take a few days.”

Stiles gave a jerky nod and darted over to the couch to pick up his bags. When he came back he saw Derek looking at the crumpled blanket on the floor, but Derek didn’t say anything. He just beckoned for Stiles to come out to the hallway, and Stiles hurried after him. Derek turned off the light, locked the doorknob and pulled the door shut, and then turned to herd Stiles down the stairs and down again to the garage. Derek put his bag in the trunk, and Stiles threw his stuff in along with it, and then hurried around to take his seat.

Stiles thought he could feel the effort it cost Derek to keep to sane speeds until they reached the freeway. It wasn’t until they were actually getting on the freeway that Stiles realized it wasn’t the familiar route north on 101—they were heading for the Bay Bridge and 80 and…

“Derek? Where…”

“We’re going after Laura,” Derek said flatly. “I know how to find her.”

Stiles couldn’t argue with that. He couldn’t demand a better answer, not when Derek looked so pale and lost—he wasn’t wearing his sunglasses, eyes exposed equally to oncoming headlights and Stiles’s gaze. 80 went lots of places, anyway. 80 went to Chicago. It didn’t have to mean what Stiles was thinking; Stiles was just a kid who’d only ever lived two places. Laura could have gone anywhere.

There was no music playing, and Stiles didn’t want to ask Derek for his iPod or his phone. He curled down small in his seat and stared at Derek’s hands on the wheel. He could see in the tightness of Derek’s grip just how hard Derek was trying to stay calm and in control; the speed they were driving at now felt desperate, not like the free-flying race when Derek was driving fast just because he liked it.

Stiles stole glances at Derek’s face and out the windows, but neither Derek nor the road signs told him anything. He wished he could do something, be something other than a body in the passenger seat for Derek. He knew it would be horrible to offer Derek a blowjob right now—he’d happily do it for free, just for Derek, but he knew it was the wrong thing to offer. Derek had made it clear that that wasn’t the kind of company he wanted Stiles for, anyway. Stiles just didn’t know what else he could offer. He couldn’t even touch him, and he doubted Derek wanted to talk. Stiles didn’t even think he could remember how to talk like he used to, filling up silences.

There had been so many silences, when it was just him and his dad.

Stiles thought that must have been the same for Derek, when it was down to just him and Laura, except Derek obviously wasn’t too good at filling silences. Maybe that was why he’d run away so many times, feeling the pressure of being the only one left for Laura. And now Laura, who was all Derek had left, had gone away and wasn’t answering her phone. Now Derek was scared that he was really all alone, and he had no one but Stiles for company, and Stiles wasn’t any good at this.

Stiles hadn’t had anyone. No one he could bear to ask, anyway. Derek was better at being left alone than Stiles had been, too. But there was still a chance things could be all right; they could find Laura and it would just turn out that her phone was broken. She might even call at any moment. Derek might just be overreacting out of fear, because Laura was all he had.

Stiles wanted to say I know how it feels, but he couldn’t make himself say it. That would mean acknowledging that he and Derek were both all alone now, and he couldn’t. Not yet. Not when there was a chance things might still be okay for Derek. If the worst happened, if it was true, Stiles could say it then. He could hold on to Derek and—and try to keep him warm, and tell him he knew how it felt.

He’d leave out the part about how it felt good sometimes to be alive. Derek might not want to hear that yet, not today, not if they found—

Stiles stared down at his own hands and tried not to think. The silence got heavier, the growl of the Camaro like a live thing under them as they raced down the freeway.

“Do you think she’s dead?” Stiles slapped a hand over his own mouth as soon as the words were out, turning his head to stare at Derek. He could see Derek’s jaw clench, but Derek shook his head slightly.

“She can’t be,” Derek said. “She—she’s still—” Derek took his right hand off the wheel, rubbed his eye, and glanced in the rearview mirror before he grabbed the wheel again. “I would know. If she were dead, I would be—I would know. So she can’t be dead.”

“Oh,” Stiles said.

“I’m not,” Derek said sharply. “It’s not denial, I’m just saying—we’re—we’re close. I would know.”

Stiles nodded slowly. Maybe he would. Maybe Derek had some special sense just for Laura, on top of his freaky hearing and sense of smell and the maybe-special eyes he wasn’t shielding behind sunglasses tonight. “Okay.”

“She’s not dead,” Derek repeated one last time, just a whisper, fierce and desperate, and Stiles wanted more than ever to say I know how that feels.

Derek was braver than Stiles, though. He was running toward Laura, toward the truth, rather than away.

Stiles stared out the window for a while again, watching 80 go by.

When they got to 505 and Derek sailed through the interchange, Stiles’s heart went cold. He stared, unable to speak. 505 led to 5, and 5 went north to Beacon Hills.

“Stiles,” Derek said, and Stiles looked over enough to see Derek take one hand from the wheel and reach for Stiles. Stiles wasn’t actually fighting to get away—he wasn’t sure he could move at all—but Derek settled a hand over his heart. Stiles remembered the time Derek had made him breathe through a panic attack by pressing on his lungs. He thought he might need that now, although he still seemed to be breathing. His face felt kind of numb.

It was stupid. He was alone in the car with Derek, fully clothed and seatbelted in, and he didn’t think he’d ever been this scared in his life.

Well. Not since the night he ran away from home. He couldn’t remember much about that night, just the cold clarity of knowing he had to get away, that he couldn’t live through waiting for the knock on the door and a uniformed deputy coming to tell him what he already knew.

“We’re going to Beacon Hills,” Stiles said, because it was happening and he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t. Derek needed him, and Stiles couldn’t leave Derek all alone. He knew how that felt. Wherever Derek was running, Stiles was along for the ride.

Derek’s hand pressed a little tighter against his chest, fingers digging in. The touch was muffled by Stiles’s hoodie, but he could still feel it, the most vividly he’d felt any other person’s touch in days.

“It’ll be okay,” Derek said. “I won’t let anything happen to you. You know that, don’t you?”

Stiles let out a laugh that felt like a sob, wild and too bright in his ears. “Too fucking late for that, Derek. It already happened.”

Derek’s hand tightened in his shirt. “I’m sorry. You just—you stay with me. You’ve got me, okay? Even if—even if we can’t find Laura, you’ve got me, and we’ll be okay.”

“Sure,” Stiles said feeling distant and light. He was still, impossibly, breathing. “But it won’t change anything. My dad will still be dead.”

Derek swerved sharply, pulling over so fast Stiles was thrown against his seatbelt.

It felt right. It felt like the kind of thing that should happen when he finally said that out loud for the first time. The whole world should stop, not just the car. Even with the pressure of the seatbelt against his chest, Stiles was conscious of Derek’s hand not being there. He curled in on himself as soon as the first slam of the brakes allowed it, feeling cold and just as alone as he’d known he was for months now. Derek was looking rapidly back and forth from Stiles to the shoulder where he was pulling them over. His eyes were wide and horrified and shocked, like he hadn’t known, like the news somehow really hurt him when he’d hardly known Stiles’s dad at all.

“Is that,” Derek said, as the Camaro rolled to a halt. “Stiles, is that why you ran away? Is that why you didn’t want me to talk about him?”

Stiles nodded, looking down at his hands. “Dad wouldn’t let me have a police scanner, but there are websites that broadcast the channels if you know where to look. I found one for Beacon County, and I would listen to it when he was out on a late shift and I was home alone—I would hear his voice sometimes, and it was like—”

Stiles swallowed, shaking his head. The last words he’d ever heard his father say were, Driver is alone, show me out of the car at Old 48 and Manzano.

“Deputy Gutierrez called it in,” Stiles said, his voice high and small. They’d come to a complete stop now. The car shook sometimes with the passage of other vehicles on the freeway. “My dad was shot dead at a traffic stop, just—just for nothing. I heard the call, I heard him—”

Oh Jesus, there’s blood everywhere, he’s dead, the sheriff is dead.

“I couldn’t,” Stiles whispered, drawing his legs up to curl smaller in his seat. Derek still wasn’t touching him. “I couldn’t just sit there and wait for someone to come and tell me. And I couldn’t go and see him lying on the side of the road. So I just—I just ran. Like maybe if I never let them tell me, it wouldn’t be real.”

“Stiles,” Derek said, still sounding horrified, and Stiles made himself look up and meet Derek’s wide eyes. Derek just stared, and Stiles looked back at him across the width of the car, until he realized he was shivering.

He couldn’t talk about it anymore, and he knew they had to get back on the road and find Laura, but he just—he just needed Derek to touch him. Just a little, just for a minute. Just so he could remember he wasn’t really alone.

“You said,” Stiles managed, before his voice strangled off to nothing and he had to start over. “You said you would keep me warm.”

Derek lunged across the console, wrapping his arms around Stiles and hauling him in tight. Stiles pressed his face against Derek’s shoulder and shook as Derek whispered, “I did. I will. I will.”

Derek rubbed his back, keeping his grip tight, and then said carefully, “Stiles, do you trust me?”

Stiles swallowed hard but nodded against Derek’s shoulder. He did trust Derek. He knew this was going to suck beyond all description, but he knew they had to do this, that they had to go—

Derek was pushing him back, but he kept a firm grip on Stiles’s shoulders. It was dark here, but the lights from the dashboard and passing cars were enough for him to see Derek’s face.

“Stiles,” he said, looking Stiles in the eyes, his expression intense and like nothing Stiles had ever seen on him. “Listen to me. Listen, okay? Your dad did not die that night. He’s alive. He’s looking for you.”

Stiles shook his head, but Derek’s grip on his arms stayed tight, and Derek’s gaze stayed steady on his, and—he trusted Derek. He knew Derek wouldn’t lie to him. Not like this. Not about this.

Derek had asked him if he wanted to go home at Christmas. Derek had asked him way back in October.

He’s looking for you.

“How do you know,” Stiles whispered. He was shaking harder now, his eyes prickling with tears, and something inside him was breaking loose, something he had no words for.

“I met him,” Derek said firmly. “The weekend before Thanksgiving, and back in October, before I told you my name. He told me he was looking for you, that was why I asked you if you wanted to go home. Laura saw him on Christmas Eve, he brought your friend Scott—”

“No,” Stiles screamed. He grabbed the door handle, tearing himself loose of Derek’s grip and the seatbelt and flinging himself out into the night, running away from the road into the flat empty darkness.

Derek caught him before he’d gone more than a handful of strides, grabbing him in a bear hug and holding him still. He was dimly aware that he was kicking Derek as he flailed his legs, still trying to run, but Derek just stood there, immovable, holding on.

“No,” Stiles screamed, because this couldn’t be happening, he’d heard Gutierrez, he knew it had been real. “No, Derek, you can’t—he can’t be—”

“It’s okay,” Derek said. “Stiles, it’s going to be okay. You can go home—”

“I can’t go home!” Stiles yelled, struggling out of Derek’s grip again but whirling to face him instead of running away. “Derek, I can’t fucking go home, I’m a fucking whore. I was sucking dick for money while my dad was—was—I can’t go back, I can’t—”

He’d run away for nothing. He’d done all of this for nothing. Everyone who’d touched him, every guy who fucked him, every dick he sucked from Frank’s to that last guy the other night—

“Stiles,” Derek said, low and firm.

“I was fucking you for money,” Stiles yelled, feeling sick. “My dad was looking for me and I was, I was—”

Derek didn’t touch him again, but he stepped closer, arms spread wide to block Stiles’s path. Derek, Stiles thought irrelevantly, must have played basketball.

“You did what you had to do to survive,” Derek said. “Stiles, he’s not going to care what you were doing if you just come home.”

“I can’t,” Stiles insisted, shaking his head. “Derek, I—I’m not—if he finds out what I’ve been doing, he’ll—was he in the hospital? Was he—he’s got to have been hurt, Deputy G wouldn’t get it that wrong.”

“Yeah,” Derek said softly. “He has a pretty nasty scar on his throat, and last time I saw him he was still limping, but he’s recovering well.”

Stiles’s knees went out from under him, thinking of his dad with a scar, his dad limping. Jesus, there’s blood everywhere.

“He must have almost died,” Stiles whispered as Derek crouched down in front of him. “He must have—he must have been in the hospital for weeks, and he must have been asking where I was every time he was awake, and eventually someone had to tell him I fucking ran away. Ran away, like a—a—”

Like a bad kid. Like a delinquent. Like someone doing his level best to give his father a heart attack.

“Stiles,” Derek said softly. “Your dad is alive.”

Stiles just stared at Derek.

“Come here,” Derek said quietly, beckoning with one hand. “You’re shivering.”

Stiles shook his head, even though he was shivering again, even though he felt colder than he ever had, like he was falling from some impossible height and still couldn’t see the ground. Derek shouldn’t be so fucking nice to a kid like him. No one should. He’d run away, turned his back on everything, hid from everyone. He’d hidden from Scott, and Scott had still come looking for him. It was all his own fault he was alone, and it always had been.

“Derek, I can’t,” Stiles whispered.

“Let me, then,” Derek said, tipping forward and tugging Stiles into his arms. Stiles didn’t fight this time, just let Derek do what he wanted. Derek was warm. Derek’s arms still felt good around him, no matter how wrong it was.

“Listen to me,” Derek said softly. “This is—this is something Laura used to say to me all the time, and I never believed her when she said it to me, but it’s exactly what I want to say to you. I think it’s what she would say to you, and I think your dad would say so too. They’re a lot smarter than me, so you listen, okay?”

Stiles shook his head again, already anticipating, but he found himself clutching the sleeve of Derek’s jacket.

“You deserve to go home,” Derek whispered, ignoring Stiles’s silent refusal. “Whatever mistakes you made, whatever you fucked up, whatever bad thing you did, you deserve to go home. You deserve to be loved by whatever’s left of your family. Your dad still loves you. He wants you back no matter what.”

“Derek,” Stiles whispered. “I fucked up so bad.”

“I fucked up worse,” Derek whispered back. “Stiles, you have no idea the things I did. But Laura took me back every time, because I’m her brother and her—her family. You might have done some bad things, but you’re not a bad person. The people who love you still love you. You can go home, I promise. You can go home.”

Stiles clung to Derek, shaking in his grip. His knees were cold; the ground was muddy here. He was making a mess of himself. But Derek didn’t let go, and his warmth felt like the only thing keeping Stiles from just shaking apart.

“What did you do?” Stiles whispered.

Derek shook a little, laughing or shivering or something else.

“I kept secrets,” Derek said quietly. “I trusted someone I never should have even talked to, and my whole family died. And I’ve never told Laura what I really did, because I thought she couldn’t forgive that, but—now I think, if she’d done it—if you did it—I would tell you—I would still—”

“Laura said,” Stiles remembered abruptly, his throat going tight. He fumbled to get his arms around Derek, to hold him as tightly as Derek was holding him. “She told me, when Argent—” Derek jerked at the name, but Stiles had to get this out.

“She told me it wasn’t my fault I got tricked. I was trying to be nice, and he was the bad guy, because he lied to me and threatened me. So if you—if you made a mistake, if you were wrong—that wasn’t your fault either. Laura would say so. Whoever…” Oh God, someone had tricked Derek and then killed his whole family, “whoever did it, it’s his fault. Not yours.”

“Her fault,” Derek said quietly, holding Stiles tight, but that had to mean he’d listened, to Laura’s words if not to Stiles.

“Come on,” Derek said after a while. “We need to get on the road.”

Stiles nodded against Derek’s shoulder, and when Derek stood up Stiles got his feet under him. Derek kept an arm around him all the way back to the car, and Stiles held on to Derek just as tightly.

They got about ten minutes down the road before Stiles realized he was crying. He wiped the tears away with his knuckles, thinking, This is stupid, he’s alive, Derek’s seen him, but that didn’t stop the tears.

Every time he tried to tell himself his dad was alive he heard what he hadn’t let himself think about for months: He’s dead, the sheriff is dead. For the first time he felt the loss of it—not the terror he’d run from, but the idea of never seeing his dad again, never speaking to him, of his dad just being as senselessly and irrevocably gone as his mom was. And it was stupid, because he wasn’t dead, but now that Stiles didn’t have to wall off the very knowledge of it to survive, he couldn’t get it out of his head.

He remembered this, from the days after his mom died: the swamping waves of sadness, grief just flooding him until he couldn’t think of anything else. Pretty soon he couldn’t even think, This is stupid, he’s alive, he could only think, He’s dead, the sheriff is dead, as the tears rushed down. It wasn’t long before he started sobbing, and Derek’s hand tightened on his knee. Stiles grabbed Derek’s hand in both of his, curling around it as he sobbed—and not just for his dad, maybe, because he kept thinking of the last three months, too, and everyone who had touched him and fucked him and all the things they’d said to him and everything he’d done, and he couldn’t stop crying.

Derek didn’t slow down, but he held on hard to Stiles’s hand, and Stiles knew he wasn’t alone. He just held on and shook with the sobs, breathing in ugly snorts and sniffles, the sleeves of his hoodie sodden. His face went numb and his head ached and he still couldn’t stop, but he had Derek’s hand to hold, and the steady rushing of the car carrying him forward, so he didn’t have to worry about anything else.

Laura, too—what if Laura was dead, despite Derek’s determination? What if she was in danger now as they drove toward her—what if Stiles’s dash from the car meant they showed up too late to help her? Every possibility he could imagine led to Laura dead, and Derek all alone back in San Francisco, and Laura never helping anybody ever again, her number disconnected and no more reassuring voice, no more stern certainty. No more Laura, sitting on her couch eating yogurt for breakfast. No more Laura looking at whatever that picture was that she kept by her bed.

Stiles cried for a long time, until he was too tired to haul in another breath and his face was hot and dry as a fever, all out of tears even though the grief was just as heavy and overwhelming. Derek tugged his hand free of Stiles’s, and Stiles tried to croak out an apology, but it just came out as a shuddery noise.

“It’s okay,” Derek said, quiet now that Stiles’s sobs weren’t echoing through the confined space of the car. “Lean back, we’ve got another hour.”

Stiles reclined his seat about five degrees and stayed curled up tight, and Derek’s hand touched his forehead like he was checking his temperature.

“Close your eyes,” Derek said quietly, and Stiles obeyed. His headache evaporated under Derek’s steady hand, and then it was just exhaustion carrying him down into the dark.

14. Chapter 14

Stiles woke up as they exited the freeway. He stared at the familiar lights of the first intersection off the Beacon Hills exit, the gas stations and grocery store and the Burger King that told him he was almost home. It was perfectly familiar and normal for a second, and then he remembered that he was in the car with Derek, that he’d been a whore for the last three months, that his dad was alive, that they were looking for Laura.

His heart started beating faster, and he struggled upright in his seat. Derek looked over at him as they pulled to a stop at the light.

“Are you scared?”

Stiles blinked at him, not knowing how to answer. He was scared for Laura, scared in some general way of everything that was about to topple down on him. He shook his head slightly, uncertain.

“Of your dad,” Derek elaborated. The light turned green, but Derek just stayed put, looking over at Stiles, waiting for an answer. The one other car at the intersection pulled through. “You seemed scared when I mentioned him, that’s why I thought—that’s why we never let him find you. So I’m not going to assume I know what’s going on this time. Before I take you back to him—are you scared of him?”

Stiles shook his head decisively this time. Scared wasn’t the word for it, not the way Derek meant. Stiles couldn’t find words to say what he was, so he just pointed. “It’s a left here.”

Derek stared at him for another second, and then as the light turned yellow he pulled over into the turn lane and made the left. They headed down the county road as Stiles thought about how crazy it was to imagine being scared of his dad, out of all of this. Other kids had sometimes been intimidated by his dad, looking at him and seeing The Sheriff or, when Stiles was younger, A Deputy, but Stiles had never seen anything but his dad, kind and patient and only yelling when Stiles already knew he really, really deserved it.

He remembered suddenly how he’d thought, when he was starting to notice that he liked guys, that the upside of bringing a guy home would be that his dad would get a kick out of the overprotective-sheriff-dad-cleaning-his-guns routine. He’d thought it would probably play into the way his classmates were all intimidated by his dad. He’d never thought about bringing home someone like Derek—not that he was bringing Derek home to meet his dad, but—

“I won’t tell him,” Stiles blurted out.

Derek didn’t say anything, and Stiles went on, “About you and me, about you—hiring me. I won’t tell my dad. So don’t—don’t worry.”

That got a white-knuckle tightening of Derek’s grip on the steering wheel, and then Derek’s hands relaxed as he said, “Stiles, if you want to, you tell him. Tell your teachers, your doctor, put it in the Beacon Press. That’s your right. You tell if you want to tell, you don’t protect me. I knew what I was doing, I’m responsible for it. I won’t ask you to keep secrets for me.”

I kept secrets, Derek had said in the dark by the side of the road, and her fault.

Stiles didn’t let himself think too hard about that. “I don’t want to tell. I don’t want him to know what I did, I—” he thought of it, of his father knowing about him, about how many men he’d gotten on his knees for, how easily he’d taken to whoring himself out.

He felt sick at the idea. His dad might still love him, might take him back, but he’d know what Stiles was. He’d be hurt by what Stiles was, even more than he must have been hurt by Stiles disappearing for no fucking reason, staying hidden while his dad searched.

“I don’t want to tell anybody,” Stiles muttered, looking away.

“Just as long as you know it’s your choice,” Derek said, and then, “Which way?” as they rolled up to a stop sign.

Stiles pointed, and Derek made the right turn. Stiles looked out the window, the familiar houses where he’d trick-or-treated and tried to sell magazine subscriptions and popcorn, and now he was back and he literally could not count the number of people he’d had sex with in the last three months. Everyone in those houses knew he was the sheriff’s son who ran away; what if they made the same assumption Derek and Laura made, that Stiles must have had a good reason? Had they been looking at his dad for months like it was his fault? At least now that Stiles was back all the stares would be at him and not his dad.

Everyone would look at him and know it was all his own fault. They might not know exactly what he had done, but they would make their own guesses. Stiles squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, feeling sick and shaken and tempted all over again to just open the car door and bolt.

“If you were brave enough to do the rest,” Derek said quietly, turning again when Stiles pointed the way at the next intersection. “You’re brave enough to do this.”

“I’m not, though,” Stiles said in a small voice, and Derek pulled up across the street from his house, not needing Stiles to point this time. His dad’s cruiser was in the driveway.

The porch light was on. It was after midnight and his dad was obviously home, but the porch light was on. He’d left it on for Stiles, waiting for him to come home.

Stiles started to shiver again, and he shook his head. “Derek, I can’t. I can’t.”

“Let me, then,” Derek said quietly, but instead of touching Stiles he got out of the car and came around to open Stiles’s door. He reached in like he was going to unbuckle Stiles’s seatbelt, too, and Stiles saw, through blurry eyes, the front door opening.

He yanked his own seatbelt off and fumbled his way out of the car, barely aware of Derek catching him from falling, shadowing him as he ran across the street. His dad was on the porch, hurrying down the stairs—slower than he used to, maybe, but not really limping—and Stiles met him in the middle of the driveway. He buried his face against his father’s shoulder and clung to him for dear life.

His dad smelled the same. His arms felt the same. He held on tight and didn’t let go, one hand on the back of Stiles’s neck and one around him, rocking him a little, like he was a little kid, like he was a baby. Stiles had a sudden, vivid memory of his dad rushing in after his mother had died, finding Stiles in the hospital and holding him just like this. He wasn’t alone anymore. It would be okay somehow. Dad was here now.

“I’m sorry,” Stiles whispered. “Dad, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t you ever,” his dad said, shaking him a little by that grip on the back of his neck, but then he just hugged Stiles tighter and didn’t finish his sentence.

“I won’t,” Stiles managed, because whatever his dad didn’t want him to do, he wouldn’t, if he could just stay here forever. “I’m sorry. I thought you—I thought—I heard G say you were dead and I just. I couldn’t.”

His dad pushed back a little at that, looking Stiles in the eye, and Stiles saw, for the first time, the ugly red scar on his father’s throat, and the way his dad looked older—the bones of his face standing out, new lines around his eyes, his hair faded to a grayer shade of brown. Some of that was the shooting, but some of that was him, too.

“I’m sorry,” Stiles repeated in a tiny voice.

His dad shook his head a little. “I love you,” his dad said hoarsely. “I promised myself, when you came home, the first thing I’d do was tell you I love you and I’m so damn glad you’re home and safe, and we can talk about the rest of it later.”

Stiles shut his eyes and nodded, and after a couple of tries he managed to say, “I—I love you too, Dad.”

His dad hugged him again, so tight he almost couldn’t breathe, and held him there for a long time. Eventually he sighed against Stiles’s ear and said, “And now you’d both better come inside, because I’m guessing this isn’t any kind of coincidence.”

Stiles looked around as his dad’s grip relaxed and realized that Derek was standing about three feet away, staring toward the front door, which was standing open.

“Dad?” Stiles said. “Did you—is Laura—”

“She says she’ll live,” his dad said, and turned to pull Stiles with him toward the door. “Go on in, Derek, she said she’d be better once you were here.”

Derek turned his head and there was something broken-open and terrified in his face as he met the sheriff’s eyes. He turned and jogged into the house, and Stiles couldn’t help hurrying after him, even though it meant breaking his dad’s grip. Laura was here; Laura was alive. Safe.

Stiles didn’t think twice about it as he passed through the front door, even though everything around him said home in a way he’d thought he would never see again.

Derek was kneeling in front of the couch. Laura was lying there, covered with a blanket, and she was pale behind the four red gashes that ran parallel down the side of her face. Her eyes were closed, and Stiles realized, as he fell to his knees at Derek’s side, that she wasn’t opening her eyes and wasn’t moving.

Stiles looked around for his dad, who was walking slowly in from the front door. “Dad, why—”

“Hospital didn’t seem like a good idea,” his dad said, his gaze skipping past Stiles to settle on Derek and Laura.

Stiles looked back, only to find Derek pushing back the blanket to reveal more of Laura’s body—a towel was wrapped around her under the blanket, covering her breasts but revealing the bandages that wrapped around her midsection, dark dried blood showing through.

Derek made a small pained noise. Stiles looked helplessly from his dad to Derek to Laura, and her eyes fluttered open, glowing red.

Stiles couldn’t look away, even when she smiled and said weakly, “Good boys. Both here. Better now.”

His dad’s hand closed on his shoulder, firm and tight, and Stiles didn’t make a sound, staring at Laura’s eyes—still red, still glowing—as they closed again.

“Laura?” Stiles said.

“She’ll heal faster now,” Derek said. “With her pack here. It’s better if you touch her, so she knows you’re here.”

“Her pack,” Stiles repeated, even as he obediently reached out, only to leave his hand hovering in the air above the bandages. Derek caught his wrist and guided Stiles’s hand in to rest on Laura’s upper arm. Derek put his own hand just above the bandages, pushing the towel up a little to touch bare skin high on her belly.

The veins on Derek’s hand turned black, and blackness writhed up his arm, and Stiles couldn’t take his eyes away from that any more than he’d been able to look away from Laura’s red eyes. His dad’s hand clenched tighter on his shoulder.

“What are you doing there, son?” his dad asked. Stiles could hear the difference when he said it, and would have known even without seeing Derek’s arm that it was the generic son that meant Derek, and not the one that meant my son and was only for Stiles.

“Taking her pain,” Derek said, and Stiles dragged his eyes up to Derek’s face at the gritted-teeth sound of his voice. He looked paler than he had when he told Stiles that Laura was missing.

Stiles understood without needing Derek to say more: he was absorbing the pain of a bleeding gut wound. He was doing that instead of getting her to a hospital where she could have surgery and some morphine, because… Derek could absorb pain, and Laura’s eyes glowed red, and—

Everything Stiles had observed, from the first night they’d met to the word pack to Derek’s superpower, slotted together in his head. He came up with one answer.

“But I was with you on the full moons,” Stiles said, and his dad’s fingers dug in on his shoulder. “You were fine.”

But Chris Argent had thought he wouldn’t be. Chris Argent had thought that Laura would have bitten Stiles—Laura, but not Derek? But Derek had to be what Laura was, even if his eyes—

Stiles caught a flash of cool, glowing blue before Derek squeezed his eyes shut.

“Laura and I learned to stay in control from the time we were kids. We were born this way. Full moons call to us, but they don’t force us.”

Derek had stayed awake, all through the night of the longest full moon, fucking Stiles again and again, unable to rest until the sun rose. Until the moon set.

“But why,” Stiles said, looking from Laura’s wounds to Derek’s hand up to his dad, “Dad, did you—”

“I didn’t take her to a hospital,” his dad said, meeting Stiles’s gaze with a slight smile, the same one he wore when he stepped into the aftermath of Stiles’s first attempt at his eighth grade science fair project, too resigned to be disbelieving, “because she’d changed into a wolf. She let me carry her to the car, but when I told her I was going to take her to Dr. Deaton, she changed back to tell me she didn’t trust him—said he might not be on her side—and asked me to just let her rest somewhere quiet. And then she passed out, naked and bleeding all over my jacket, in the back of my squad car.”

Stiles registered for the first time that, despite the cruiser in the driveway which meant his dad was at least on call if not officially on duty, he was wearing a plain t-shirt. He’d had to change; he’d gotten Laura’s blood all over his uniform.

“What happened,” Derek asked, his voice a little stronger and steadier. The blackness was gone from his hand; his hand on Laura was just a touch now.

“Ah,” the sheriff said, his expression turning pained. “Well.”

“It was Peter,” Laura said, her voice low and weak, but steadier than it had been before, and Derek’s head whipped around. Stiles looked too, but her eyes weren’t glowing anymore; they were the same gray-brown as Derek’s. The gouges on her face didn’t look so ugly anymore, just four long bloody scratches.

“Uncle Peter?” Derek repeated, sounding stunned. “But he—”

“Ambushed me,” Laura managed. “Lured me here. Animal attacks—revenge sigils.”

Derek looked up at the sheriff, looking young and lost again, and the sheriff said, “That part I know about—we’ve had a half-dozen deer killed in the Preserve in the last month or so, throats slit and no bullets or arrow wounds. All of them have had a spiral carved into the body. Laura told me the spiral stands for revenge, among…” the sheriff hesitated, then said firmly, “werewolves.”

So this had to be real, then. His dad had just said it, so this wasn’t just Stiles jumping to wild, crazy conclusions and Derek and Laura humoring him somehow, this was… this was really, actually real. Werewolves.

Stiles looked over at Derek, wondering what the deal was with this uncle; he’d never known that Derek and Laura had any family left but each other. Although he could see why you wouldn’t talk about an uncle who would do something like this. Except Derek seemed surprised.

Derek was looking down, frowning hard, and Laura raised a hand to touch his cheek.

“The other thing I knew,” his dad went on, gentling his grip on Stiles’s shoulder to rub the spot with his open hand, “after running into one or both of them every damn time I went to the city to look for you, was that Laura and Derek probably knew something about where you were.”

Stiles winced at that, looking over at them. Laura was looking back at him, a certain steady gaze that Stiles understood to be a question—the same question Derek had asked. Are you scared of your dad? Laura would protect him from his dad even now, if he asked her to.

Stiles had to look up at that, into his father’s face looking down at him with worry and love, and then Stiles met Laura’s gaze and shook his head slightly. Laura nodded, and Stiles realized that the scratches on her face had healed to pink lines.

“And,” his dad went on, “my deputies were also aware that I had those concerns, so we’ve had an unofficial BOLO on their vehicles. Laura’s car was spotted in town this afternoon, and although nobody wanted to bother her while she was visiting the cemetery—”

Stiles saw Derek’s hand spasm a little against Laura’s skin.

“When she headed out to the Preserve I was notified, and I went to see what she was doing out there.”

Stiles blinked and looked up at his dad again. “Like, in case she was dumping my body?”

His dad made a weird face and shook his head slightly. “In case I got a chance to talk to her alone and ask her again to tell me what she knew about your whereabouts.”

Also, Stiles thought, in case she’d been dumping his body. That had to have been a possibility his dad considered, even if he didn’t want to put it into words. All this time, every day, his dad had had to wonder whether Stiles was dead somewhere.

“So imagine my surprise,” his dad went on, “when I see her attacked by someone who doesn’t even look human, and see her transform into a wolf to defend herself.”

“At which point you did something smart like call for backup, right?” Stiles said, looking up at his dad again. God, his dad could have survived everything else and then died tonight, an hour before Stiles got home to him.

His dad snorted. “At which point I saw the fight going against Laura and yelled at her attacker to freeze. Peter at least came after me, and I found out that bullets don’t do much to stop werewolves. They do distract them, though, and Laura did the rest.”

“Bullets helped,” Laura said, smiling a little. “I couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t given me that breathing space. And I’d still be bleeding out in the woods.”

“Team effort,” the sheriff agreed, and Stiles had heard him use exactly that tone with enough of his deputies over the years to know that his dad had come out of this liking Laura. That tone of voice usually meant a deputy would start showing up at their house for dinner from time to time—Stiles remembered that suddenly, viscerally, how it had been a regular thing when he was little, before his mom got sick. Sunday dinners had been him and his mom and dad and two or three young deputies who didn’t have much other family, taken firmly under the sheriff’s wing.

Pack, Stiles thought again.

“So he’s…” Derek said, not looking up.

“Dead,” Laura said, brushing her fingers gently against Derek’s cheek. “I made sure. He wanted to be alpha—he must have been pretending for a long time now that he wasn’t healing, in order to set me up. He’s been running around killing deer for weeks to bring me back here, so he was well enough to call us, or even to negotiate with me if he wanted to do this cleanly.”

“But he wanted revenge,” Derek said in a hollow voice. “For the fire.”

My whole family died, Derek had said. And I’ve never told Laura what I really did.

And now Derek was thinking that this was his fault, too, or at least that he had been Peter’s next target. Maybe both.

Stiles took his hand off Laura’s arm and reached down to grab Derek’s hand, squeezing tight. Derek looked over at him, and Stiles said, “Your turn to be brave.”

Derek shook his head slightly. “I told you, I’m not as brave as you.”

“Derek?” Laura said, dropping her hand from his cheek, her voice sharpening. “Did you know something about this?”

Derek flinched and turned his gaze to Laura. “Not about Peter, not what he was doing—but about needing revenge.”

Laura’s gaze flicked to Stiles and then settled on Derek again, an she tugged the blanket over herself and half sat up, touching Derek’s face again. “Der, I know you always suspected—”

“I didn’t suspect,” Derek said, not looking up. “I knew. I know. I’m the reason Kate Argent knew enough to set that fire.”

Laura’s hand jerked, and then she tugged Derek’s chin up. Derek’s eyes glowed blue as they met hers, glowing red.

“You knew Kate Argent back then?” Laura said. “Before the fire? You were—fifteen, sixteen that year.”

Derek nodded and didn’t look away from Laura’s gaze. “I met her in the fall. I thought—she said she loved me. I thought I loved her. I thought she was different.”

“Did you ever think she would hurt us?” Laura asked, and there was something serious and deliberate in her voice.

“I didn’t,” Derek whispered. “Laura, I didn’t know.”

Laura exhaled, her eyes fading to gray again, and the glow in Derek’s eyes disappeared too. She leaned forward, gathering him in. He pressed his face to her chest, half-hiding in the fall of the blanket around her.

“You should have told me,” she said quietly. “Der, you should have trusted me.”

Stiles heard a tiny sound that might have been Derek saying something—probably enough for Laura to hear, but Stiles didn’t catch it. Stiles was still holding his hand, though, and Derek’s grip was tight.

Laura looked up, over Stiles’s head to his dad. “Sheriff, I think I’m going to need to talk to my brother privately. I’ll come to the station tomorrow morning? Identify the body, give a statement, and… maybe more than one statement.”

His dad nodded. “I saw you attacked by your uncle, fired at him but don’t know if I hit him, and then a wolf attacked him to defend us both?”

Laura nodded. “You brought me back here because I was distraught and didn’t want to go to the hospital, and then Derek and Stiles showed up. I’ll be sure to have a few wounds to show off tomorrow. Derek, I need some clothes.”

Derek nodded against her chest, but didn’t move until Laura gave him a little push.

“I should, um, get my stuff from the car,” Stiles said, when Derek let go of his hand to get up. His dad let go of his shoulder, and Stiles followed Derek out of the house.

Derek didn’t look back. He stood carefully to one side when they were both fishing their bags out of the trunk. Stiles swung his backpack on while Derek rummaged through his own bag for a t-shirt and pants.

He knew he couldn’t ask Derek to keep him warm, not now, not when he could go home. Not when his dad was probably watching them from the door, and Laura was about to get Derek to tell her the whole story of why their family had died. He wanted to offer to keep Derek warm, but that wasn’t his place now, either.

Derek finally looked up when he had the clothes in his hands. Stiles stepped back to let him close the trunk, but he held Derek’s gaze.

“We’re still not strangers, right?” Stiles asked, because they could at least be that. They were both part of Laura’s pack, maybe, although Stiles still wasn’t sure what that meant, whether it was real now that Stiles was home with his dad again and Derek and Laura were going off somewhere to figure out their own stuff without him.

Derek’s lips pressed together, and he glanced toward the house, but he nodded and met Stiles’s eyes again. “We’re not strangers.”

That would have to be enough for right now. They weren’t leaving town; Laura would be at the station in the morning, at least. And Stiles knew her phone number. He turned and headed back to the house, and sure enough his dad was standing in the doorway waiting for him. He stepped back inside to make room for Stiles and Derek to come in, and Derek went straight to Laura, helping her sit up with the blanket still wrapped around her. She moved slowly and carefully, but she obviously wasn’t bleeding out anymore.

His dad touched his shoulder, turning Stiles toward the stairs. “It’s late,” his dad said. “Why don’t you get some rest?”

Stiles could hear the tentativeness in it—not an unquestionable get to bed, kid, just a suggestion. Stiles felt unmoored for an instant, despite his dad’s hand on his shoulder, despite standing in his own house, safe again, and then he just pushed the thought away. However he’d phrased it, his dad was here, telling him to go to bed.

“Yeah, okay,” Stiles agreed. “Good night, Laura. Derek.”

“Good night, Stiles,” Laura said, a little breathless, wiggling into a pair of pants. Derek, steadying her, didn’t look up. “Sleep well.”

Stiles nodded and looked toward his dad, who said, “I’ll be up when I’ve locked the doors. Your room’s right where you left it.”

Stiles nodded and didn’t say good night yet, just turned and headed upstairs. He almost stumbled in the hall from the sheer weird normality of walking to his room with his backpack and duffel bag; it was exactly like coming home from a late lacrosse practice. He was just… three months late.

His room looked cleaner than he’d left it, like his dad had tidied up a little. Tore the place apart a few times, probably, and then tidied up. Stiles dropped his bags and thought about getting into his bed, his bed. He was leaning over it when he realized he was long overdue for a shower. He’d been in Laura’s apartment for more than a day, to say nothing of getting muddy by the side of the road and crying himself dry.

He went over to the dresser—his dresser, with his stuff on it—and pulled out clean underwear and pajama pants and a t-shirt. All his stuff was here waiting for him. He pressed his face into the clean clothes, smelling the familiar scent of clean laundry he hadn’t washed at the laundromat in the cheapest available detergent.

He thought for a second of Korean Waiter, wondered if he would wonder where White Twink Hooker had disappeared to, and then he shook off the question and headed for the shower.

When he came back from the shower, dressed in clean pajamas and smelling like his own familiar soap and toothpaste, his dad was sitting on the foot of his bed. Stiles hesitated for a second and then sat down next to him, and his dad said quietly, “Let me see your hands.”

Stiles held them out to his dad, palm up, and his dad turned toward him, keeping a grip on Stiles’s hands and tugging to stretch out his arms. Checking the insides of his arms, his elbows, the obvious injection sites.

“I didn’t,” Stiles said, his voice wobbling again. “Dad, I swear I didn’t.”

His dad let go of his hands then and pulled Stiles into another hug.

“Good,” he said gruffly, against Stiles’s ear. “I’m glad. But son—every time you sent a deposit to the credit union, they sent a receipt here.”

Stiles flinched and jerked away, and his dad let him go. Stiles shifted away from him, but he knew there was no point going any further. His dad knew. He could feel himself shaking, down in his belly. His dad knew.

“You were making enough money to sock some away,” his dad said, his voice gentle but methodical, relentless. “You were supporting yourself and then some. There’s only a few ways you could have been making that kind of money in those circumstances, and I know you well enough that I don’t think you were dealing drugs or stealing. Were you?”

Stiles shook his head in short, jerky movements. He’d never wanted to survive by hurting other people. He hadn’t thought he had to worry about hurting his dad.

“Did Laura and Derek know what you were doing?” his dad asked, and his voice was soft in the way that could explode any second.

Stiles squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t—don’t be mad at them. It was a job I was doing, it was my choice. They asked if I needed help, and I said I didn’t.”

“That’s not a choice a kid is supposed to be allowed to make for himself,” his dad said, still softly. “That’s what the age of consent means, among other things.”

Stiles nodded, but he said, “I thought I—I thought I had to make all the choices for myself. And when I—when I couldn’t do it anymore, Derek and Laura gave me somewhere to go. Derek made sure I knew I would be safe with them, he didn’t.” Stiles had to look then, because he needed his dad to believe this part. “Dad, he never hurt me, never.”

His dad’s mouth went tight and hard—obviously catching the implication that Derek had done other things with Stiles, even if he hadn’t hurt him—but he nodded. “Stiles, you know that if he had—if anyone did, and I don’t care if they’re a—a werewolf or a criminal mastermind or anyone—if someone hurt you, you know that all you have to do is say the word and you never have to worry about that person hurting you or anyone else, ever again. Do you know that?”

Stiles nodded. He always had known that—even if he didn’t see his dad as scary, he had always taken a certain pride in the fact that his dad couldn’t just beat up anybody else’s dad, he could arrest them. He had no doubt that if he told his dad about the guy who’d hit him for crying—hell, if he told his dad about Frank—there was a pretty strong chance that his dad wouldn’t bother with getting warrants sworn out in the correct jurisdiction.

His dad had a scar on his throat and gray in his hair and Stiles didn’t want his dad going up against any of those people. He didn’t doubt that his dad would do it, but Stiles wanted him safe, wanted him in a cruiser or behind a desk or anywhere away from the kind of people Stiles had been surrounded by for the last few months. But he couldn’t tell his dad, Don’t protect me. He couldn’t let his dad know that Stiles thought he was the one who needed protecting; that would be worse.

“I know,” Stiles whispered, feeling all off balance. He was home, and things were supposed to go back to the way they’d been, but he wasn’t that kid who had run away anymore. Losing his dad wasn’t just an abstract fear anymore. It had happened. Stiles couldn’t let it happen again. He couldn’t just trust that it wouldn’t as long as he kept his dad’s cholesterol down.

“Do you want to tell me what you were doing?” his dad asked.

Stiles shook his head, looking down again.

“You know you can,” his dad said quietly. “You know nothing you can tell me hasn’t crossed my mind in the last few months, and you know nothing you could have been doing is going to change how glad I am to have you home now. How much I love you.”

Stiles shook his head harder, and his dad’s hand closed firmly on his shoulder again.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” his dad said. “But you’re going to see the doctor tomorrow, and you’re going to tell her the truth, and she’s going to run some tests to make sure you’re okay. And I want you to go back to therapy for a while, until you’re settled in at school and here.”

“Oh, God,” Stiles folded forward, burying his face in his hands. “Dad, I can’t—can I go to Beacon Tech or something? I can’t go back to my school.”

Beacon Tech was where you went when you’d been kicked out of BHHS or Riverside, Trinity Lutheran and Sacred Heart and Haverford. Girls who’d gotten pregnant and boys who’d been to jail went to Beacon Tech. He’d fit right in. He wouldn’t be worth staring at in the halls.

“We’ll meet with your principal and figure out what you’re going to do,” his dad said firmly. “But I’d think you’d want to be with Scott.”

Stiles flinched at that. He’d left Scott behind with a single text message. He was going to have to try to explain that.

“Derek said,” Stiles started and then he stopped until his dad squeezed his shoulder, silently prodding him onward.

“Derek said Scott came with you,” Stiles said. “At Christmas. To look for me.”

“He did,” his dad said. “He’d been begging to come the other times I went to look for you—he ran away twice to try it alone and got hauled home—and Melissa finally relented for Christmas. My deputies conspired with each other over the scheduling to get me clear for thirty-six hours.”

“I’m sorry,” Stiles whispered. His dad had been right there, when Derek tried to ask him and he’d threatened to throw himself out of the car. If Stiles had just let Derek tell him, they could have turned around and driven back to the city, and…

Stiles scrubbed at his face, wiping away yet more tears. He should have been finished crying by now.

“You’re home now,” his dad said softly.

“Derek and Laura thought I had some good reason,” Stiles said. “They didn’t know I—they thought I was scared of you. They were trying to help. That’s why they lied to you.”

“That’s the impression I got,” his dad said. “Stiles—I think it’s long past time we had this conversation. I know you never wanted to hear it, but you need to know that what happens to you if I die.”

Stiles was startled into looking up and meeting his dad’s eyes.

“Your mom had plans in place from before you were born, in case something happened to me,” his dad said. “It was always a possibility. It’s always a possibility for a cop—for any parent, but especially one in my line of work. And after your mom got sick, we made sure. Even before she died, we had it worked out—your mom was the one who asked Jerry and Eileen if they’d be willing to raise you with Heather, if anything happened to me after she was gone.”

“Dad,” Stiles said in a small voice, because he could picture it all of a sudden. Aunt Eileen had been Mom’s best friend; she and Uncle Jerry were in a ton of his baby pictures and could pronounce his first name almost as well as his dad did. He and Heather had played together all the time before Mom died. They would have picked him up from the station, stood with him at the funeral, decorated a bedroom for him next to Heather’s. Their house had a guest room; he remembered playing there with Heather, pulling holiday tablecloths and old clothes out of the closet. That would have been his room.

“This last year or two, you and Heather haven’t been so close,” his dad went on. “I never would have sent you to the McCalls before Melissa got her divorce, but after, it seemed like it would be a good place for you. A good option, if that was what you wanted. Melissa agrees, and my life insurance policy would be plenty to put you and Scott both through college—”

“Dad,” Stiles said sharply, because that was even easier to picture, going to sleep over at Scott’s and just never coming back.

“Stiles, I need you to know this stuff,” his dad said. “I need you to know that you don’t have to figure this out alone. I thought you at least knew there would be someone to take care fo you, even if we never talked about what the plan was. You would never be on your own, no matter what happened to me. You weren’t going into the foster system or—”

“Dad,” Stiles said again, and then he had to look away, his voice shaking as he forced the words out. “I didn’t run because I was scared of going into foster care. I ran because I couldn’t handle you being dead. I just—I thought, if I didn’t let anyone tell me, if I didn’t see it…”

Stiles laughed abruptly, grinning painfully widely as he looked over at his dad through the tears standing in his eyes. “I just realized, it worked. I ignored something so hard it stopped being true.”

His dad smiled a little, but Stiles caught a glimpse of the water standing his eyes as he hauled Stiles into another hug.

“I’d rather have died,” his dad said roughly, shaking him a little, “than you have spent one day thinking there was no one to take care of you. Promise me you’ll never do anything like that again. Even if you want to get away from me, promise me you’ll go to Melissa, or Eileen, or—or Laura. Just don’t go out on your own again.”

Stiles nodded into his dad’s shoulder. He’d had more than enough of going it alone. He knew that. If he couldn’t have his family, at least he’d have pack, or friends, or something. “I will. I promise.”

15. Chapter 15

Stiles lay awake a while in the dark, listening to the small sounds of the house around him. His dad made some work calls—even without catching the words, Stiles recognized Sheriff Voice—before settling in his own bed. It was going on two by now, which had been basically the middle of Stiles’s day for the last few months, although he’d managed to wreck his circadian rhythm pretty well since he quit.

Not that he’d have been able to just go to sleep even if he was used to sleeping at two, not when he was home and his dad was here and holy shit werewolves were real. He caught himself thinking I gotta tell Scott and for the first time in three months he could just let himself think it; he didn’t have to squash the thought down into silence before it could tempt him. He didn’t have to shy away from computers and phones.

He scrambled out of his bed and reached for his phone, which was plugged in next to his computer—his dad must have picked up his Jeep with his phone miraculously still inside, or—

Stiles squinted, running his thumb over the back of the phone. No. The familiar pattern of scratches was gone. It was a new phone, identical to the old one, all of his data restored.

Scott was still at the top of his contacts list, and Stiles tapped his name and hurriedly thumbed a text.

I’m home. I’m okay. Sorry

Stiles’s thumbs twitched over all the things he should apologize for—Christmas, not calling, not running to Scott first—and finally he just tapped out, for everything.

He stared at it for another minute and then reminded himself that every second he waited was another second Scott didn’t know he was alive. If it had been Stiles left behind he would have been ready to strangle Scott for adding another minute to the suspense, as soon as he got done hugging him until his ribs cracked.

He hit send, and went to sit on his bed in the dark, phone cradled in his hands. It made sense that Scott didn’t answer right away. It was late. He was probably sleeping. School started back up the day after tomorrow, and early lacrosse practices would already be going. Scott had been determined to make the varsity team this year.

Stiles opened his contacts list and typed out a memorized number, labeled it Laura Hale. He thought about texting her, but he knew she was busy right now, and what could he say? Am I your pack even if I’m safe at home in Beacon Hills with my dad? The answer seemed kind of obvious. He didn’t really need Laura anymore.

Or Derek.

Even if the thought of not seeing Derek anymore, not having Laura to call on, made him feel every bit as terribly alone as he’d ever been in San Francisco.

His phone lit up, chiming for an incoming text. HLY SHIT DDUE and then, a second later, DONT MOVE.

Stiles grinned at the phone, his heart clenching tight at the thought of Scott’s face right now. That second text had to mean Scott was going to come over here right away. Stiles glanced at his window, considered Scott’s usual level of agility, and chose to construe DONT MOVE loosely.

He slipped quietly out of his bedroom, down the stairs, and out the front door, leaving it unlocked behind him. He sat down on the porch, feet on the step, and waited. It was maybe five minutes before he saw Scott come zooming up on his bike.

Stiles stood up. He could hear Scott’s loud, rough breathing as he ditched his bike in the middle of the driveway, and Stiles couldn’t help calling out softly, “Dude, where’s your inhaler?” as Scott rushed up to grab him in a fierce hug.

Stiles hung on back, listening to the whistle of Scott’s lungs, but the sound got better instead of worse, so Stiles figured he could let it go.

“Where did you go?” Scott finally demanded, taking a half step back but holding on to Stiles’s arms, shaking him a little. “One message? Have to go away, don’t worry about me, and then nothing for three months?”

Stiles winced. “I’m sorry, Scott. I wasn’t thinking straight. I heard the call on the scanner about my dad. I thought he was dead and I just—couldn’t stick around for that.”

“And you thought it would be better on your own? Even if that had been true, I would’ve been with you, and my mom, and Heather and her parents—”

“Whoa,” Stiles said, “wait, you know Heather? How do you know Heather?”

Scott gave him an incredulous look. “Stiles, all I have done since you went missing is worry about you and try to figure out how to find you. Heather was doing the same thing. We were in the Freaking Out Over Stiles Stilinski Club together.”

“Were you the president?” Stiles asked weakly.

Stiles shook his head. “Heather had seniority on me. Plus she can pronounce your first name from hearing your mom yell it at you.”

Stiles winced. Heather was even better at pronouncing his name than her parents were.

“She let me be vice president and secretary, though,” Scott added, smiling a little. “I kept all the notes.”

“I didn’t think to text her,” Stiles said. “I, uh, we hadn’t really talked in a while.”

“I sent her a—”

A car came racing up the street, stopping just short of running over Scott’s bike in the driveway, and Heather spilled out of the door, running over in the beam of the headlights, blond hair flying. She was wearing pajamas and a hoodie, and she tackled Stiles in a hug every bit as tight as Scott’s, if… softer in places.

Stiles couldn’t remember the last time Heather had hugged him.

“Where did you go?” Heather demanded, shaking him a little by her grip on his arms when she stepped back.

Stiles looked from her to Scott. “I am having so much déjà vu right now, it’s kind of scary.”

Heather looked over at Scott and said, “If you’d stayed put until I could answer you I would’ve given you a ride.”

“I couldn’t wait,” Scott said sheepishly. “He’s home!”

“Which is exactly where both of you should be,” Stiles’s dad said from behind him, and Stiles kind of enjoyed the startled, caught-out looks on both their faces before he turned to see his dad standing in the front door, arms folded across the BHPD t-shirt he was wearing with his pajama pants.

“I know you’re both out well after curfew,” his dad went on. “I understand why. But now that you’ve both seen Stiles, you’re going to call your parents, and we’re going to work out how you’re getting home. And Stiles, you’re going back up to bed. You can all see each other in the morning.”

“Lacrosse practice,” Scott groaned, at the same time Heather said, “Morning swim,” and they looked at each other and grinned a little, their bodies angling in.

Stiles thought, Oh.

But Scott quickly turned back toward Stiles and said, “Lunch, though? I’ll come here after practice.”

Stiles nodded, and Scott leaned in and hugged him again, and then so did Heather, before his dad caught Stiles by the shoulder and gave him a firm push toward the front door. Stiles went halfway up the stairs and stopped. He listened to Scott and Heather’s voices, apologetic over waking their parents up, excited to tell them Stiles was home. All the time his dad stood right in the doorway, watching over them.

Heather was going to drive Scott home—his dad confirmed it, talking in a pointedly stern voice to Aunt Eileen and then Ms. McCall—and Stiles waited while they got Scott’s bike loaded into Heather’s car, while his dad watched them down the road. When his dad came back inside and locked the door, he turned and looked right at Stiles, like he’d known Stiles was listening the whole time.

“Think you can sleep now?” his dad asked, smiling slightly.

Stiles nodded as he smiled cautiously back, feeling more at home than he had lying in his own bed. “Yeah, I think so.”

Stiles woke up late to the light of an overcast morning. He stretched and thought about breakfast—he could hear his dad moving around downstairs and it was late—so weekend, so maybe eggs or pancakes, except… something was wrong. He felt some nagging sense of dread, and he frowned, rolling onto his other side as he tried to remember.

He caught sight of his phone on the edge of the mattress, his backpack and duffel on the floor, and it all crashed back onto him. Not a bad dream, not a test or tough practice coming up. The last three months had all happened: his dad had been shot and (almost) killed, and he had run away to San Francisco.

He had a sudden, visceral memory of a time he’d been fucked without enough prep, gritting his teeth and forcing himself not to make a sound because he wouldn’t be able to keep from screaming. That time hadn’t been anything unique, not worse than a dozen other times, but it was suddenly happening all over again—he remembered the smell of the guy, the feel of his fingers digging in—and Stiles couldn’t shake the memory off. A little tea-kettle keening noise leaked out of his mouth, and he pressed his hand to his mouth. It didn’t help; as soon as he took another breath he was making that noise again. It wasn’t crying or screaming, just a kind of loud, unvarying whimper.

His bedroom door opened and his dad was there, and Stiles choked off the sound to nothing a second before his dad’s arms went around him. Stiles clung to him and tried to get his breathing under control, inhaling the smell of his dad, clean and familiar. Stiles wasn’t crying. There wasn’t anything to cry about. His dad was here. He was home. No one was going to touch him like that anymore.

“Come on,” his dad said, when Stiles’s breathing had settled down, and Stiles realized he was already in uniform. “You’ve just about got time for breakfast before we go to the doctor’s office.”

His dad signed him in at the doctor’s office and then headed down the street to the sheriff’s department to check in there, promising to be back soon. Stiles went back to the examination room with Linda by himself and got weighed—he was under one thirty, which he hadn’t been since eighth grade, and he’d grown about six inches since then. Linda measured him—he wasn’t any taller than last time, which wasn’t much of a surprise—and took his blood pressure and temperature, and then told him Dr. Thompson would be there soon.

Dr. Thompson had been his doctor since he was eight, which was when Dr. Fehr retired. His mom used to bring him to see Dr. Thompson. He stared at the wall and contemplated the questions she was about to ask him. He thought about climbing out through the tiny frosted window, and then Dr. Thompson walked in. She smiled gently and said, “Stiles, I’m so glad to see you.”

Stiles smiled the best he could, ducking his head, and Dr. Thompson sat down in front of him, pulled up his file on her computer, and started asking questions. Stiles stared at his hands and answered as best as he could.

“I don’t know,” he said eventually. “Um. A lot. I don’t know.”

“Okay,” Dr. Thompson said. “We won’t worry about the number. Did you use condoms?”

Stiles nodded frantically. “And I—I got tested. Like, every week almost. And I was negative every time.”

“Then you know the drill,” Dr. Thompson said, pulling out a test kit that actually did look like every other test kit he’d seen in the last few months. Stiles nodded.

It was nearly lunchtime once they were out of the doctor’s office—Dr. Thompson had called his dad into the room to tell him directly that Stiles was in good health pending his test results, except that he needed to gain some weight back and sleep more. His dad had covered his face with one hand, turning half away for a second, and Stiles had felt another wash of sickening guilt for everything he’d done.

Then his dad turned back smiling and said, “All right, sounds like getting some lunch into you is job one.”

Stiles texted Scott to meet them at the diner, and he rolled up on his bike, wearing uniform shorts and a Beacon Hills lacrosse hoodie, his stick tied to his backpack. He ran over and hugged Stiles again as soon as Stiles got out of the car, and Stiles grinned and clung to him. “You gonna just greet me like this every time you see me now?”

“Until it stops being a surprise, yeah,” Scott said, squeezing tighter, and Stiles winced and pulled away.

“Come on, boys,” his dad said. “Lunch is on me, and Stiles is under doctor’s orders to clean his plate and eat dessert.”

Scott took a half-step further back and looked Stiles up and down, frowning a little, and then nodded. Stiles had a feeling Scott was going to be bringing him snacks for at least as long as the hugs kept going, and he couldn’t really bring himself to mind the thought of either one.

Stiles managed to keep Scott talking all the way through lunch, asking him about lacrosse practice. Scott had made varsity but seemed likely to spend the year on the bench, but he sounded determined to spend the season improving.

“Heather’s been helping me practice some stuff,” Scott added, and Stiles caught his dad suppressing a smile as he took another drink of his coffee. Stiles wasn’t the only one who had noticed that, then.

“You and Heather are pretty close, huh?” Stiles asked, giving Scott a sideways look over his burger.

Scott’s eyes went wide. “She’s not, like—she’s not my best friend, Stiles. You are. Always.”

“Huh,” Stiles said. If he hadn’t gotten anything else out of the last three months he’d at least gotten the ability to roll with things and not freak out where other people could see. “Some other kind of close?”

Scott opened and closed his mouth a few times, and finally said, grinning brightly, “Maybe?”

Stiles grinned back.

“I just—is she like your sister? Because would it be weird if I was, like, if I wanted to maybe date her?”

Stiles shook his head. “You don’t need my blessing, man. I’ve totally been naked with her already, though.”

His dad snorted and Scott’s jaw dropped, and Stiles barely managed to choke back a laugh as he said, “We used to take baths together when we were, like, three, Scotty. I hadn’t even seen her in a year before last night.”

Stiles shoved his shoulder and Stiles shoved back, and his dad said, “Boys.”

Stiles took another bite of his burger. Doctor’s orders, after all.

After lunch Scott said he had to go to work, and Stiles’s dad paused in mid-stride and said, “You’re working over at the vet clinic for Dr. Deaton, right?”

Stiles froze too. His dad had mentioned Dr. Deaton last night; he’d been going to take Laura to him, when she was hurt in wolf shape, and Laura had changed back to human to say she didn’t trust him. She had thought he might be on Peter’s side, maybe even helped him lure Laura to that ambush. Stiles looked anxiously at his dad, who gave him a tiny headshake.

“Yeah,” Scott was saying, paying no attention. “It’s pretty great, I get to hang out with the dogs and cats the whole time.”

“That’s good,” his dad said, and Stiles could see him wanting to ask Scott something and not knowing what to ask. “I’ll have to stop by there later. We had an animal attack in the woods last night.”

“Another deer?” Scott asked, suddenly worried.

“No,” his dad said, looking grim. “I think the deer will be safe from now on.”

Scott frowned and looked to Stiles, and Stiles mouthed, Later. He had no idea what he could tell Scott about what had happened out there—the whole werewolf thing was obviously a secret for pretty important reasons, but Scott would never hurt anyone. But Scott was working for Deaton, who Laura didn’t trust, and Scott was kind of terrible at secrets.

This was going to get complicated.

“We should get going too,” his dad said instead. “It’s just about time for our appointment at school.”

Stiles grimaced, and Scott gave him a sympathetic look and a commiserating punch on the shoulder before he hopped on his bike and took off down the street.

The school parking lot was nearly empty; his dad parked near the doors, next to a big black SUV. Stiles twitched a little in sudden memory, walking wide around the truck to get to the sidewalk. His dad didn’t say anything about it, but he reached for Stiles’s shoulder, guiding him toward the door.

A dark-haired girl was coming out and Stiles stopped, giving way, and then the guy behind her stepped through—her dad, logically.

He’d said that. I have a daughter your age.

Chris Argent glanced at Stiles and his eyes traveled right past him, only catching on his dad, still in his sheriff’s uniform.

Stiles didn’t think he made a sound—didn’t think he could, didn’t think he could even breathe. He must have done something, though, because his dad’s hand tightened hard on his shoulder, and Chris Argent was suddenly looking at him again, frowning a little.

“Stiles?” his dad asked, in that mild voice that meant he was ready to be very, very angry.

“I’m okay,” Stiles said, trying to convince himself as much as reassure his dad, and Stiles saw it, the tiny widening of Argent’s eyes. Argent hadn’t really looked at his face much, but he recognized Stiles’s voice.

Stiles was abruptly aware that he could turn to his father and tell him to arrest Chris Argent—tell him to take him somewhere and make sure the body was never found. Argent had threatened him, made him strip, thrown money at him like that made it okay. His dad wouldn’t forgive that.

Stiles saw Argent’s gaze shift, clocking the hand on his shoulder and his dad’s badge, then coming back to meet Stiles’s gaze. He was waiting for Stiles to make his move, seeing if Stiles would dare. Laura had said he was friends with a lot of cops—he’d be used to being able to get them on his side. He’d probably never paid a cop’s kid to take his clothes off before, though.

“Dad?”

Stiles’s throat was still blocked with fear; it was the dark-haired girl who had spoken. Argent’s daughter.

My dad could arrest your dad, Stiles thought, but he couldn’t summon up any spite for the girl, who was wide-eyed and a little scared. She didn’t deserve to have to know what her dad was, what he’d done to Stiles.

“It’s okay, honey,” Argent said, without looking back at her, his gaze still flicking back and forth from Stiles to his dad. Trying to protect her, Stiles thought.

Stiles gave a vicious smile—he could hurt Argent a lot right now, just by telling his daughter the truth. She didn’t know what her dad had done to Stiles, and he would bet she didn’t know what her—mom? older sister?—had done to the Hales. Stiles didn’t have to show his whole hand at once. He just had to tell his dad enough to keep him safe.

“Dad,” Stiles said. “This is Chris Argent. He insisted on introducing himself to me in San Francisco. He didn’t think I should be hanging out with Derek and Laura.”

His dad tugged on his shoulder when Stiles said insisted and by the time he finished speaking his dad had stepped firmly between him and Argent. Stiles thought his voice had stayed steady, but he knew his dad and the Argent girl both knew something was wrong. Argent’s face didn’t show anything, but Stiles went ahead and delivered the coup de grace anyway.

“Mr. Argent, this is my dad, John Stilinski, Sheriff of Beacon County.”

Argent held out a hand to shake, his expression closed and wary.

“Argent,” his dad said. “I was just talking to Laura Hale this morning—I’ve got her and her brother to thank for bringing Stiles home, and the Hales were always a pillar of this community. At least until they were murdered.”

Argent’s jaw clenched visibly, but he didn’t snap at the bait. “It was my understanding that the fire was an accident.”

“Some new evidence has come to light,” the sheriff said. “Are you close to your sister Kate?”

Argent glanced back toward his daughter, and he said, “If we’re going to have this conversation, I’d rather not have my daughter present. I doubt you want your son in the middle of this, either.”

“Dad, what’s going on?” the girl demanded. “Why is he asking about Aunt Kate?”

Argent looked back at his daughter, then at Stiles and the sheriff again, and Stiles saw him make his decision even before he reached into his pocket for his keys. “Allison, you go on back to the house, tell your mother I’m having a talk with the sheriff.”

“Dad,” Allison said again, and Argent turned his head and said something short and sharp in French.

Allison’s face changed, turning abruptly very controlled; she shot a glance at Stiles that he couldn’t read at all. She said, “Yes, Father,” and took the keys, walking away without looking back.

Stiles had a feeling he and Allison were not going to bond over making new starts at BHHS this semester.

His dad turned half toward Stiles, looking him up and down before glancing toward the school doors. “I don’t want to leave you to do this on your own.”

“I’m okay,” Stiles said, without looking away from Argent. “Dad, just—so you know. He carries a gun.”

His dad looked back to Argent, who twitched his jacket open.

Stiles was suddenly back in the front seat of the black SUV, seeing that gun, hearing the locks click down, and he pulled out his phone without a thought, backing up a few steps as he unlocked it and dialed Laura almost without looking. His dad and Argent both shifted to watch him as Stiles brought the phone to his ear with shaking hands, and he heard about half a ring before a reassuring voice said, “Laura Hale.”

“Laura,” Stiles said, and Argent looked like he’d bitten a lemon while his dad’s posture relaxed slightly, “could you—”

“Stiles, where are you? Are you safe? Is your dad there?”

“School,” Stiles said. “My dad’s here. With Chris Argent.”

“Argents,” Laura snarled, like it was a filthy curse, and then a few furious words in French which possibly were actual filthy curses.

“He was getting his daughter Allison registered for school,” Stiles said, because Allison with her wide dark scared eyes was a long way off from the cool mercilessness of her father, better to focus on right now. “So I guess they live here now.”

“I’m on my way,” Laura said. “Five minutes. Do you want me to stay on the phone?”

“I’m okay,” Stiles said. “Two hands on the wheel. Don’t get pulled over.”

“We’ll just stay until she gets here,” his dad said evenly as Stiles lowered his phone. “Argent, why don’t you come with me and stand a little further away from my son. You seem to make him uncomfortable.”

Argent nodded sharply and turned to walk away. He stood near the cruiser with Stiles’s dad while Stiles sank down to sit on the steps in front of the school doors. It was cold; maybe that was why he was shaking. He shouldn’t be scared. He had nothing to be scared of. His dad was right there, with him the whole time. Argent might think he could do what he wanted with some teenaged hooker he found on the street, but he wasn’t going to mess with the sheriff’s kid.

Stiles just had to remember which one of those he was now, and everything would be fine.

He should find something to count, Stiles thought. Something to play, something else to think about. But Argent was still standing right there, still armed, and Stiles couldn’t look away.

The car that pulled up into the space where the black SUV had been wasn’t Derek’s Camaro but a blue Subaru. Laura must have parked it somewhere else most of the time, and used it when she had to drive up to Beacon Hills. She got out now, nodded sharply to Argent and the sheriff, and came straight to Stiles’s side, sitting down on the steps beside him. She sat next to him in silence while the sheriff directed Argent into the passenger seat of the cruiser and pulled away, and then she bumped her shoulder against Stiles’s.

“We here for a reason?” she asked. “Doesn’t look like you’re going to school today.”

Stiles shook his head. “I was supposed to meet the principal, figure out what I’m doing now.”

Stiles looked down at his phone, checking the time. They’d been a little early. His dad didn’t like being late. “About two minutes from now.”

“Ah,” Laura says, smiling. “So you need an adult, then.”

Stiles blinked. “I… I guess? I guess I have to…”

“Consider me your adult,” Laura said, standing up and reaching out a hand for Stiles. He took it, surprised by her strength as she hauled him up to his feet. Werewolf.

She led off into the school, and Stiles followed her. She walked straight to the office, and it struck Stiles that she’d gone to high school here; she knew her way around.

“Ms. Acevedo!” Laura called as she came in, and the school secretary looked up with a bright, startled smile. “Hey, I’m kind of standing in for Sheriff Stilinski, a situation came up and he couldn’t stay for Stiles’s meeting with the principal. He and Stiles both asked if I could sub in, is that okay?”

“Ah,” Ms. Acevedo looked sharply from Laura to Stiles, and Stiles could see the currents of gossip swirling around them, but she said only, “you’d better ask him—Mr. Thomas is the principal now, Laura.”

“Oh!” Laura said, still cheerfully, just as Principal Thomas stepped out of his office. “Mr. Thomas, hi!”

“Laura,” he said, sounding baffled. “Ah, I’m sorry, Laura, I’d love to catch up, but—”

“Nope, that’s okay, I’m here with Stiles,” Laura put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve been living in San Francisco the last few years, my brother and I kind of kept an eye on Stiles while he was there. The sheriff asked if I could sit in on this with Stiles—there was a bit of an incident, he was called away. That’s okay, right? It’s just a matter of working out Stiles’s schedule for this semester, isn’t it? I mean, he’s already registered, obviously.”

“He… is,” Principal Thomas said slowly. “Stiles, are you all right with Ms. Hale sitting in for your dad today?”

Stiles nodded quickly. “That’s fine. That’s what my dad wanted.”

“All right, then,” Principal Thomas allowed. “Come into my office, please.”

Laura basically ran the meeting; Stiles didn’t have to say much of anything, just nodded agreement from time to time when Laura looked at him and said, “You can do that, can’t you, Stiles?”

Laura steamrolled Thomas’s couple of attempts to suggest that Stiles’s needs might be better served at some other school, and then it really did come down to figuring out his class schedule. His English, Spanish, and History teachers were letting him stay in their classes and would assign him make-up work to cover what he’d missed in the first semester.

“We’ll arrange for some tutoring in Spanish to help get him caught up,” Laura said casually, and Stiles thought of Derek reading Don Quixote in Old Castilian, and his heart jumped. Laura shot him a sideways look and a half smile—holy shit, she could definitely hear his heart beating—and kept going.

He would be allowed to do some independent study in math, working alone during that class period to catch up; he would meet with Mrs. Van Appel each day after school to check his work and get help with anything he didn’t understand. His art elective and gym class would stay the same.

He’d been kicked out of Chemistry completely, and when Principal Thomas mentioned that Mr. Harris wouldn’t give Stiles anything but a failing grade for the first semester, Laura stiffened slightly, then said, “Stiles is better off in another science class anyway, if that’s the teacher’s attitude.”

He wound up in Earth Science, which was a jock class, but he could do Chemistry in summer school and be on track to do Bio and Physics in his junior and senior years like he was supposed to.

“And of course,” Principal Thomas said, “our guidance counselors will be available to assist you in adjusting…”

“My dad’s already sending me to therapy,” Stiles interrupted, before he could get stuck with a regular appointment. “I, um, I went for a while after my mom died. Carlos helped me with a lot of stuff, so. I think I’m set.”

Principal Thomas nodded agreement, Laura gave him an approving look, and that was apparently it. Ms. Acevedo printed a copy of Stiles’s schedule for him, and Laura steered him back out of the office.

Stiles stopped in the hallway, looking around. “Can we just…?”

Laura nodded, and Stiles set off down the hall to his locker. For a second he thought he wasn’t going to remember, but he closed his eyes and touched the lock and his combination came right back to him, the locker popping open. Everything was still there, the familiar jumble of books and notebooks and, tucked down in a corner, emergency Twinkies and an unopened bottle of Mountain Dew. He stood there for a moment, just touching everything, trying to imagine the fact that tomorrow he was going to be here going to class again.

Tomorrow he’d be surrounded by people who would know he was that kid who disappeared for three months after his dad got shot. If they weren’t asking him where he’d gone and what he’d done, it would be because they were making up their own versions. Allison Argent would be here, probably hating him.

But Scott would be here. And his dad would be alive. And no matter what anybody said about him, none of them were going to expect him to suck their dick for any amount of money.

And if they did—if the rumors hit on that somehow—Scott would stand by him. He could tell Laura. He could tell his dad. No one could actually do anything to him anymore.

Tomorrow was going to suck, and the rest of high school was probably going to suck, but he might actually be okay.

Stiles straightened up and shut his locker. “Okay. I’m ready to go.”

Laura looked him up and down and nodded firmly as she said, “Yeah, I think you are.”

She said it like she thought he really was ready for this. He straightened up a little as they walked.

They both stayed silent until Stiles was belted into the passenger seat of Laura’s Subaru, and then, as she was backing out of her parking space, she said, “So you probably have some questions.”

Stiles looked over at her. There wasn’t a trace of a scar left on her face; he could almost believe that the gouges he’d seen last night had been some kind of Halloween makeup job, except that he’d watched them healing.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded, smiling a little. “I’m healed up, Peter’s dead officially due to wolf attack, and you and Derek are safe, so I’m aces.”

Stiles nodded slowly and then asked the real question, even though he thought the last hour had already given him a pretty definitive answer. “Am I in your pack?”

Laura’s smile turned tense, and she glanced over at him. “Little warm up and then straight in, huh?”

“That’s what I do,” Stiles said, making Laura give a startled, punched-out laugh.

“You are…” Laura trailed off. “You’re welcome in my pack, if that’s where you want to be. You have other options now.”

“But you,” Stiles said, feeling his way up to the possibility he hadn’t been letting himself think about for the last twelve hours. “You want me to be? Does that mean—do you want me to be a werewolf?”

Laura blew out a breath. “Not if you’re as scared of it as you sound and smell right now, and not before you’re eighteen in any case. Packs have human members sometimes—there were humans in our family before the fire, so even if you didn’t want the bite, you’d be welcome. You are welcome.”

Stiles frowned at the dashboard, looked up to watch the familiar streets going by, and finally asked, “Why?”

“A pack is supposed to be more than two,” Laura said. “If Derek or I were a little older one or both of us would have gotten married and started having babies, and that would have built the pack. If we’d been a little younger we’d have been adopted into another pack. But we were just old enough to be on our own, and it was up to me to choose people for the pack. I guess I fixated on wanting—family. Siblings. Our sister Cora was your age.”

“I remember,” Stiles said.

Laura nodded in his peripheral vision. “A bigger pack is stronger, more stable. And then—Beacon Hills is our pack’s territory, has been for generations. The land is ours to protect from other wolves, and the people are ours to protect, too. I know my mom felt the pull, but she focused on building alliances with other packs, politics with other wolves, that stuff. Me—maybe it’s because I never had much of a pack to lead and still don’t feel ready to deal with other packs, but I want to look out for people—humans, not just wolves—in a different way.”

“The crisis hotline,” Stiles said. “And me.”

“Yeah,” Laura said. “I spotted you probably two days after you got to the city; I just felt drawn. As soon as I saw you, even before I figured out who you were, I knew you were… mine. In a certain way, not—not that I have authority over you if you don’t want me to have it, but that I was responsible for you. I tried to look out for you without being pushy about it, but—”

She turned down Stiles’s street and snorted. “But Derek had other ideas.”

As she spoke, Stiles spotted the Camaro, and a second later he spotted Derek: sitting on the porch of his house in his leather jacket. Waiting.

Stiles’s heart started beating double time.

“So now’s a good time to tell you that Derek and I are going to be sticking around,” Laura said, pulling into the driveway. Derek didn’t move. “And the same rules go as before—if Derek is even rude to you, you just say the word and I will take it out of his hide.”

Stiles nodded, unable to stop staring at Derek.

“And now,” Laura said, “you should hop out so I can go charm your dad’s deputies and listen in on his conversation with Chris Argent.”

Stiles nodded and undid his seatbelt, but he didn’t get out until Laura gave him a little shove on the shoulder. He looked back as he stopped to shut his door, and Laura was just watching him, looking perfectly patient. Like he hadn’t called her away from whatever she was doing in a panic; like she could also just stay here in the driveway if he needed her to.

He’d never had an older sister, but he was pretty sure Laura was a good one to be adopted by. “Thanks. For everything.”

Laura smiled. “Anytime. Now stop stalling, kid. Go on.”

Derek stayed where was, not even looking up, until Stiles walked over and sat down beside him. He couldn’t sit as close as he meant to, because Derek had set something down beside his hip, hidden from Stiles’s view by his body until he was right here.

The Princess Bride, and a thick envelope mostly covered in duct tape, with STILES written on the front in his own handwriting.

“Laura asked me to pick up some stuff from her place,” Derek said, pushing book and envelope slightly closer to Stiles. “She gave me her key. I thought you might want these.”

“Derek,” Stiles said helplessly, because he had even less idea what to do with Derek’s six thousand dollars now than he had when Derek first gave it to him.

Derek shrugged, not looking at him. “I know you’re not doing that anymore, but you earned it. Stick it to the back of your own sink if you want, but it’s yours.”

“I earned it,” Stiles repeated, remembering how he’d earned it, the dazed, blissed-out look on Derek’s face when he offered Stiles any amount of money to…

Stiles put his face in his hands and started laughing, finally getting the fucking joke. When he finally looked up Derek was watching him, not quite smiling.

“Oh my God, you’re a wolf,” Stiles gasped. “And I let you piss on me. No fucking wonder you liked that so much.”

Derek actually did crack a little smile at that.

“Wait, are we, like,” Stiles stopped laughing, suddenly overwhelmingly curious. “Are we werewolf married? Am I your territory or something now?”

Derek’s smile dropped away and he looked down. “I wouldn’t have done anything like that while you didn’t know what it meant. It just—I liked it. That’s all.”

Stiles looked at Derek not looking at him, at the curl of his shoulder, and he said hesitantly, “I liked it too.”

Derek looked over, startled. “You charged me five thousand dollars for it.”

“Derek, come on,” Stiles said. “You have to know I liked it, you were there. I just—it was too much. It wasn’t… professional. Was it?”

Derek shook his head slightly, but didn’t look away this time.

“I was trying really hard to be professional,” Stiles said, holding Derek’s gaze. “You wanted me to be doing my job, and I thought… everything was okay if I was just doing my job. You never told me to quit, you know? You never told me I should just be sleeping with you and no one else. I heard that ten times a week from strangers, but not you.”

“I didn’t want to scare you off,” Derek said, and he did drop his gaze. “I wasn’t supposed to—I wasn’t supposed to be doing any of it. Laura told me to keep an eye on you, but I could see that you didn’t really let anyone close except customers, so I thought—fine. I’ll be the best customer you’ve got. I thought I could get you to like me, and then you’d be willing to join the pack.”

“So it was just… just trying to get me into the pack?” Stiles asked, testing that idea against the first few times he’d met Derek. “For Laura?”

Derek gave a jerky shrug. “I also really wanted you to suck my dick. You were ours, you weren’t really a stranger, even if you didn’t know it, and I hadn’t let myself close to anybody in a long time. Full moon, bad decisions.”

Stiles felt a smile pass across his mouth, there and gone.

“But you—if I had joined the pack, would I have been—did you want… I mean, what was your endgame? Get your dick sucked, give me a lot of money, and then I join the pack and… keep sucking your dick?”

Derek flinched at that and shook his head, still not looking at Stiles. “Pack is family. Pack is—no one is in the pack just to—to serve anyone else. I would never have—”

“Okay,” Stiles said, waving that off, “but I join the pack and then you keep sucking my dick?”

“I—I didn’t really think it through that first night,” Derek said. “And then, when I got to know you better… I just wanted you to stay. I wanted you to like me. To trust me.”

Stiles remembered the first time Derek had asked if Stiles trusted him; he remembered the touch of Derek’s teeth on the back of his neck and shivered at the memory. Derek glanced over at him.

“Cold?”

Stiles opened his mouth to reply, and then reached down and shoved the book and envelope out of the way so he could scoot over, pressing himself against Derek’s side. Derek didn’t move, just watching him.

“You gonna keep me warm?” Stiles asked, and his heart was beating so fast all of a sudden that it hurt. He’d done everything with Derek, trusted him with everything, but sitting on the porch of his own house in broad daylight felt like the most he’d ever dared.

“I said I would,” Derek answered, holding Stiles’s gaze while he shrugged out of his coat and put it around Stiles’s shoulders, warm and familiar and heavy. Stiles put his arms into the sleeves and then pressed close to Derek again, and Derek put one arm around him.

Derek’s arm felt as good and familiar as Derek’s coat; Derek’s whole body was so familiar to him. Stiles could feel himself falling into the automatic script: negotiate, have sex, get some cuddles. The thought made him feel a little shaky and lost now; he knew if he and Derek had sex he would like it, like he always had, but…

That hadn’t been this. That hadn’t been Derek caring about him—or if it had, it had still been all tangled up in Derek being a customer, and Stiles wasn’t supposed to have customers anymore. The idea of sex made his stomach hurt a little, like the thought of eating a pack of M&Ms when he’d just washed down Red Vines with Mountain Dew. Too much, too soon.

“Would you,” Stiles said, and then fell silent, looking down at his hands peeking out from the long sleeves of Derek’s coat, not sure he could ask.

Derek’s arm squeezed around him, silently encouraging, and Stiles made himself notice how Derek’s hand was on the outside of the jacket, not even trying for skin, not even through his shirt or jeans.

“Would you still keep me warm if I didn’t want to suck your dick?” Stiles asked, his voice coming out mostly steady. “Or—sex at all, for a while? Maybe… maybe a long while. Not just because of my dad or the law, but. Would you, would you still…”

“Yes,” Derek said, and then he touched Stiles’s chin, and Stiles looked up to meet his eyes.

Derek smirked a little and glanced toward the book Stiles had pushed away before he repeated, “I’ll keep you warm. Fully clothed, if that’s what you want, for as long as you want.”

Stiles smiled, feeling his lips tremble as he did, and he said, “I’ll keep you warm, too. I want to. I wanted to for—for a while, even before you said that.”

He remembered that feeling, watching Derek in the shower the night he’d earned that envelope full of cash, the way the lost look on Derek’s face had made Stiles want to take care of him.

“The first time I asked to kiss you,” Derek said. “That’s what I wanted. To keep you warm.”

Stiles bit his lip, smiling a little, but—there was nothing professional about this anymore. He didn’t even have to pretend it was. Even if neither of them were ready to translate keep you warm into other words just yet, he didn’t have to pretend it wasn’t real.

“That was kind of my first time,” Stiles said. “Kissing, I mean. Really kissing, not just on a dare or something.”

Derek smiled. “I thought it might have been.”

Stiles felt himself blush as he huffed. “You didn’t complain!”

“I didn’t have anything to complain about,” Derek replied, still smiling.

“Kissing’s not illegal,” Stiles said, and then winced, because that was the worst way to say it. Derek was just watching him, though, completely undeterred. “I mean—I wouldn’t mind. Kissing. I’d like to. If you wanted to.”

Derek just nodded, and then he leaned in and kissed Stiles, soft and light and gentle. It was a kiss no one would pay for, stupidly tame; that was good, because they were in full view of the neighbors and Stiles’s dad could come back anytime.

Derek broke away after a few seconds, and Stiles rested his head on Derek’s shoulder. He found that his hand was on Derek’s thigh and left it there. He had a thousand things to ask Derek—Spanish tutoring was the least of it, there was a whole other world Stiles needed to learn about now—but all of that could wait. Cuddling was unlimited now. Derek’s arm was steady around him, and Stiles was finally getting warm.

Author’s Note:

The Sexual Assault tag is for an incident in Chapter 5: Stiles is tricked into a car and then threatened by a man with a gun, who takes Stiles to a hotel room and forces him to take off his clothes. Stiles is frightened of being murdered or raped the entire time, but the man doesn’t actually touch him or harm him. You can search for the phrase “Art Institute” to get to the part where the assault is over and the comfort happens, or go to Chapter 6 to skip all of it.

Works inspired by this one:

- [Podfic] Sell Your Body to the Night by readbythilia (thilia)

- First thirty minutes is Free by Ithinkmycatwantsyoudead

Put on the Red Light by Dira Sudis (dsudis)

Series: If It’s Wrong or If It’s Right [2]
Fandoms: Teen Wolf (TV)
AO3 Categories: M/M
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Characters: Derek Hale, Laura Hale, Stiles Stilinski
Freeform Tags: Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Relationship Negotiation, Safeword Use, Trauma
Status: Completed
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2023-03-16 23:44:25
Summary:

“I don’t want to… not do it again, that would suck. And saying we won’t just feels like… a lie, or like… saying I’m gonna keep the air cast on my ankle for three weeks or something.”

“So, a lie,” Derek said dryly.

I Bookmarked Story: False

Put on the Red Light

Author’s Note:

I don’t even know, guys, I was sitting in the parking lot of a McDonald’s in May eating my weekly venture-out-of-the-house-for-fast-food lunch and it occurred to me all of a sudden that, in Chapter 7 of Sell Your Body to the Night, Stiles chooses a safeword—and knows for absolutely sure that it will work even though he doesn’t tell Derek what it is—and then despite all the awkwardness that would have ensued if he did, Stiles never actually used his safeword.

So… obviously, here in the year of somebody’s Lord 2020, I had to write a story where he did?

Many thanks to brighteyedjill and dizzylu for beta, and everyone who has kindly given me the impression that this story is of interest to people other than me, five and a half years after I posted the original. :D

“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t actually illegal,” Stiles said, about forty-eight hours after he’d left Derek and Laura’s apartment without saying any actual words to Derek about the probably-not-illegal act that had gone down on the couch.

Derek, who was in the middle of looking over Stiles’s Spanish homework while the two of them sat on opposite sides of Derek and Laura’s big kitchen table, looked up at Stiles. He held the pen still poised against the page, very obviously intending to get back to what he’d been doing when this interruption ended. Derek raised his eyebrows but still didn’t say anything, though it was also pretty obvious that despite the context or lack of it, he knew what Stiles meant.

He hadn’t said anything at the time, either. He’d let Stiles scramble away from him and watched him—just watched him, paying attention like he always did. To kind of a creepy and invasive extent, as it turned out, what with him having werewolf senses, but Stiles wasn’t going to tell Derek not to pay attention to him. Or not to be quiet and let Stiles decide how to handle something. There had been a lot of that, in the month since they’d both come back to Beacon Hills, Stiles in possession of a lot of exciting new traumas while Derek was newly working through some of his old ones.

“Not, um…” Stiles waved vaguely in the direction of those traumas, and everything else that had happened during his three months in San Francisco when Derek had paid him really absurd amounts of money for sex, and a lot of other people had paid him more or less market rates. “Not all that stuff before, that was definitely illegal. But the other day, I, um. I’m pretty sure that was okay.”

“Technically,” Derek said, finally looking down again, writing down some note or correction on the page. “Because the laws in California defining unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor require actual intercourse. Penetration.”

“Um,” Stiles said, remembering all over again that he was not actually the only person in the room who ever had reason to look into whether someone had committed that exact crime against him. And the woman who’d done it to Derek had topped off the statutory rape by murdering his entire family, so.

So, no surprise that sex was kind of complicated for both of them, even if it had been just handjobs on the couch while kissing, both of them still practically fully clothed.

“Do you think that the technicalities of the law are what we have to worry about?” Derek asked, still in that mild voice, his hand holding the pen sliding down the page, his eyes darting over it as he checked.

“Well,” Stiles said. “No. We have to worry about whether my dad decides to arrest you, but… he won’t.”

Because his dad knew that if he did, Stiles would leave again, because Stiles had already left once and lived without his dad for three entire months. Now he’d come back and nothing was like it used to be, though it was close enough sometimes that he could almost forget—and then he’d see his dad hesitating over telling him to do something, or carefully not asking questions about Derek, and he’d remember.

He’d broken what they used to have, the basically normal father-son unit they used to be, by running away. And his dad still loved him and Stiles still loved his dad, but whatever they were putting back together out of the broken pieces, it was never going to be exactly the same.

Case in point, his dad was never going to tell him he couldn’t date a twenty-two-year-old werewolf who his dad knew, even if neither of them had ever said it in words, used to pay Stiles to have sex with him.

Stiles sighed and leaned his elbows on the table, slumping forward as he said, “The statute was just a lot easier to look up than… anything else.”

Derek tilted his head, not meeting Stiles’s eyes but letting him see the crooked little smile on his face, tapping the end of the pen gently against the page. “Yeah. I know that one, too.”

Because, yeah, Derek’s whole thing—being a werewolf whose werewolf family had been nearly wiped out by a werewolf hunter after she seduced Derek to get information from him—was actually maybe a lot more complicated than Stiles’s worry about whether having sex with Derek a month after he said he didn’t want to have sex again for a while, after three months of sex Derek paid him for, was a bad sign or maybe… maybe a good sign?

“The thing is, I…” Stiles looked down now too, keeping his eyes fixed on his finger as he traced the grain of the tabletop. “It was… I liked it. I think I… it was good, wasn’t it? But that kind of freaked me out too.”

It had felt really good. Hanging out with Derek seemed like the only part of Stiles’s life that was mostly easy now—school, and Scott, and his dad, and juggling the various secrets he was keeping from various people, and his twice-weekly appointment to cry and talk about awful stuff with Carlos, also while keeping certain secrets… all of that sucked in various ways.

Derek knew all the secrets, though. Derek knew all the worst things about Stiles and also kind of dumb boring things about him, because Derek just kept paying attention to him, and Derek never made him talk about any of it. Possibly because Derek knew that Stiles would eventually start blurting things out without prompting. But Derek just… pulled him close and kept him warm and was a level of weird and fucked up that made Stiles feel okay about his own level of weird and fucked up.

So when a cuddling-and-kissing session had segued into grinding on each other and then unzipping and getting off together… it had only been more good. It had been easy and simple and nothing they had to talk about or think about, and it had felt so fucking good. Sex, orgasms, with Derek, that was… that was the best thing he’d felt in a really long time.

But then he’d started second-guessing himself, and couldn’t tell if it felt like before in a good way or a bad way or if he just couldn’t help mentally comparing it to before, or if there was just something wrong with him. Like, more than was already clearly wrong. So, yeah, he hadn’t wanted to talk about it, and Derek had let him not talk about it, and now Stiles was trying to talk about it but he still had no idea what to say.

“I liked it,” Derek said, after Stiles had been spiraling in his own head for a couple of minutes. “And it seemed like you liked it, at least while it was happening. That… doesn’t mean you have to want to do it again, or anytime soon.”

Stiles blew out a breath. “I don’t want to… not do it again, that would suck. And saying we won’t just feels like… a lie, or like… saying I’m gonna keep the air cast on my ankle for three weeks or something.”

“So, a lie,” Derek said dryly.

“Well, not a lie on purpose, at the time,” Stiles said, waving his hands. “Because I know! Logically I know why it’s a good idea, just… Then it’s annoying and after a few days it’s more annoying than it hurts, so…”

“So.” Derek shrugged. “So, people make choices. Tradeoffs. Your ankle would heal eventually, one way or the other.”

“Yeah,” Stiles said, glancing up to meet Derek’s eyes. Derek looked calm, and Stiles couldn’t hear his heartbeat or smell his feelings or anything, so he didn’t know how much of that was Derek being older and having perspective on this shit and how much was Derek having a really good poker face.

It was kind of comforting to imagine that Derek knew what he was talking about, so Stiles didn’t ask.

“I just…” Stiles looked away again. “Saying we’re definitely going to do it again feels… worse. Even though it’s you and I know it’d be good, you wouldn’t push anything, so I don’t know why—”

“Why agreeing to have sex with me in advance feels like going back to the thing where we would negotiate sex acts in advance, with prices?” Derek asked, raising his eyebrows again.

“Fuck,” Stiles muttered, putting his face in his hands. As soon as Derek said it, he knew that he had known that, that that was exactly what it felt like, but… he hadn’t wanted to know that. He hadn’t wanted to know that it could still feel like that when it wasn’t like that anymore.

“It’s been a month, Stiles,” Derek said gently. “Maybe it feels like a long time, but… there’s no deadline. You’re going to keep getting further away from it and more able to tell what you want and how you feel. Five or six years from now…”

Stiles picked his head up to look at Derek, who shrugged and grimaced. He was six years on from his most horrendous traumas, and…

Well, so. Maybe Stiles would still be weird and fucked up six years from now; maybe Derek would still be weird and fucked up six years from now, when he was at the twelve-year mark. Maybe they’d both have accumulated a ton of other bad shit by then. Maybe they’d have broken up—

Stiles quashed that last thought, because it made him feel breathless and lost if he considered it for too long. He didn’t know if that was a better reason to date someone than our traumas go well together, but if it was working for Derek then Stiles wasn’t doing any harm, regardless of why he was here.

“Five or six years from now doesn’t really help with today, though,” Stiles said, slouching back in his chair and looking down at his hands. “Or… whenever we’re on the couch together again.”

Kissing was mostly a couch activity, or a standing-up activity. They very much did not ever kiss in either of their beds or in the Camaro, because that was… a whole other level that they were definitely not at yet. Stiles didn’t feel even a little bit bad about drawing that line for the foreseeable future.

Derek nodded, looking down at Stiles’s homework probably a lot more intently than his practice sentences on the perfect tense really required. “So what if we just… don’t decide.”

“Don’t… decide,” Stiles repeated, and he felt some tension unknot, some weight lift, as he realized that was an option.

Just because they’d done it once, that didn’t mean that it was now something they absolutely had to talk about. Not talking about the important shit, or only talking about it indirectly, was sort of a hallmark of their relationship. They could just go with that. “Just… let stuff happen if it happens, you mean. Fly by the seat of our pants.”

“You always struck me,” Derek said solemnly, “as a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of boy.”

Stiles put his head down and laughed, maybe a little harder than his boyfriend making a Pretty Woman joke deserved. By the time he managed to sit up and wipe his eyes, Derek had pushed his homework across the table, along with fresh paper for him to start over on.

Stiles heaved a dramatic sigh and grabbed his pen.

So they didn’t talk about it, and a few more times over the next month, they got off together like they had the first time. On the couch, mostly clothed, kissing and touching and nothing beyond that.

Stiles got kind of wound up in his own head afterward, but he recognized the pattern now—even diagrammed it on one the worksheets Carlos had given him, although that particular worksheet stayed at home in his desk drawer. When he did this, it reminded him of that, and then he felt like this. Feeling like this was just an emotion, a chemical reaction, and would get less intense over time, because the feeling was about the thing that happened before, not the thing that was happening now. He just had to strategize how to deal with the feeling without letting it take over.

So he held ice cubes and focused on his senses and repeated memorized sentences until he remembered they were true, and he sat next to Derek and talked to him about their lives outside of having sex. He wasn’t going to let his dumb trauma feelings push him away from Derek or make him forget that what he and Derek had now wasn’t just the sex; it was about being friends, about being part of each other’s lives. Occasional sex was a fun bonus. It was good.

It was working.

When Stiles pushed the envelope a little it wasn’t like he even pushed it far. They’d been making out for a while and he was getting literally hot in an uncomfortable way, so he took off his flannel, leaving himself in a t-shirt that was worn thin and fit a lot tighter than it had when he was in sixth grade. He was straddling Derek’s lap and had a great view of the way Derek’s eyes went wide and pupils flared, the way his nose twitched. Even Stiles could catch the smell of himself right then; Derek had to be drowning in it.

Derek pulled him down for another kiss, hotter and hungrier, and Stiles grinned and wriggled closer so he could feel—yeah, Derek was definitely hard, and Stiles was too, and he liked where this was going. He rocked a little, enjoying the friction, and Derek’s mouth slid from his as he moved.

“Stiles,” Derek breathed, lips against Stiles’s jaw, and Stiles tipped his head to the side, making an encouraging noise somewhere between a hum and a moan.

Derek nuzzled along Stiles’s jaw and then dragged his lips down to Stiles’s throat, licking and kissing—softly, nothing that would leave marks. His hands tightened on Stiles’s hips, guiding him, and then Derek’s teeth scraped lightly across Stiles’s skin and Stiles shivered and whined. Derek huffed, almost a laugh, and did it again, and it felt—so good, but so much that Stiles felt it through his whole body.

His hips jerked in Derek’s grip, chasing more sensation without consulting his brain, and Derek hummed happily against his skin and kept kissing and teasing at Stiles’s throat. It was good, it was so good, it was sex, they were having sex right now and it was so, so good, it was—

Stiles didn’t want to say no or stop but he could feel the fluttering edges of his own panic under the excitement and he wanted Derek to smell his scent turning to fear even less. He didn’t even really think; he’d known for a long time what to say in this situation, and he hauled in a breath and blurted it out: “Laura.”

Derek jerked in an entirely different way and his hands on Stiles’s hips moved him back nearly to Derek’s knees. Derek’s eyes were wide, but after a quick glance at Stiles, he turned his head—looking not toward the door, but… east. Toward town; toward where Laura actually was right now.

“No,” he said, a little dazed, and then, “I don’t think—Stiles? She’s listening. Did you… want to say something to her?”

Stiles blinked. He was feeling a little dislocated—he’d known it would work, but that had somehow still been more dramatic than he’d expected, and also—also Laura had heard him say her name and was listening to him now. He remembered the times she’d asked him if Derek was hurting him, if he needed her to keep Derek in line, and let out an incoherent yelp before he found words. “Nope! No, sorry, that was a complete sentence, I just—needed a timeout. Sorry, Laura, didn’t mean to, um. Do you hear me any time I say your name?”

Derek was relaxing a little now, calming down from his own startle. “She says: it depends. She definitely hears when you say it like that, if you’re within a few miles.”

“That’s… good to know. Um. Sorry again. That may have been weird. I—”

Derek was shaking his head, and squeezed firmly on Stiles’s hips for emphasis. “She says, anytime. Just like calling her on the phone—do you want her to call, so you can actually hear her say this stuff?”

Stiles felt himself flush painfully at the idea of that, which was somehow even worse than knowing that Laura had heard him and was now focusing her senses on him and Derek and therefore knew what they were doing and—“No! Nope, I’m good, we’re good, please, um, disregard. Everything.”

Stiles plastered a hand over his own mouth to make himself stop and curled forward, hiding his face against Derek’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” Derek said, very soft. “Yeah, Laur, we’re good. Thanks.” He ran his hand up and down Stiles’s back a few times, then said, “She’s not listening anymore. If you want to talk about whatever just happened. Or not talk about it.”

Stiles shook his head without lifting it away from Derek’s nice warm shoulder. “I just—sorry, I don’t even—I was starting to freak out? I don’t know why, I—dammit.”

His brain was starting to spiral—this was a Setback, they would have to be cautious, they would have to Talk, he’d ruined everything.

“Hey,” Derek said, and took his hands off Stiles’s hips to push him up so he could see Stiles’s face. Stiles kept his eyes squeezed shut for a few seconds, but then he had to look, of course. He could never resist knowing.

Derek was just looking at him, calm and maybe a tiny bit amused. Not upset. Not guilty.

“It’s okay,” Derek said. “Shit happens. I know that. She knows that. I’m pretty sure you know that, when you’re not busy freaking out. But it’s just today. Next time will probably be fine. Or the time after, or sometime. This doesn’t have to be a big deal.”

A warm rush of gratitude ran through him—less toward Derek for being just as wise in the ways of being weird and fucked up as he generally was, but to the universe and every moment of his life that had brought him to this moment. To Derek. And it wasn’t like he didn’t know, even if he’d never said it, but somehow, right then, it was too much to keep inside, so he said, “Shit, I really love you.”

Derek frowned a little, studying him intently, lips slightly parted, and then said, in a tone of actual wonder that stabbed right through Stiles’s soul, “I believe you.”

Stiles stared back for a few seconds, so filled with emotion he couldn’t move or speak, could hardly breathe, and then he saw Derek wince and start to flush, and he realized what they’d each actually said. Stiles let out a crack of sound that resolved into laughter, and then he was flailing with it. Derek’s grip was the only thing keeping him from falling off Derek and the couch and hitting some important body parts on the hard floor.

And then he stilled and had to stare again, because Derek was laughing too, laughing so hard tears were running down his face. Despite that—fucking werewolves—Derek had the coordination to lever Stiles closer to him again before he gasped out, “I also love you, apparently.”

“Apparently,” Stiles gasped, but he was grinning too hard to carry off the faux outrage. He was also grinning too hard to kiss Derek, who was still letting out little hiccups of laughter, but they made it work well enough. They were getting pretty good at that.

Table of Contents

- Sell Your Body to the Night

- 1. Chapter 1
- 2. Chapter 2
- 3. Chapter 3
- 4. Chapter 4
- 5. Chapter 5
- 6. Chapter 6
- 7. Chapter 7
- 8. Chapter 8
- 9. Chapter 9
- 10. Chapter 10
- 11. Chapter 11
- 12. Chapter 12
- 13. Chapter 13
- 14. Chapter 14
- 15. Chapter 15

- Put on the Red Light