Where the Walls Came Down

The smell hits first—wet drywall and ancient pipes and the sour, metallic tang of water where it should not be. Stiles stands in his front doorway, sneakers already soaked, and watches a stream pour down the staircase like his house is auditioning to be a water feature.

“Okay,” he says to no one, voice wobbling as a bulb in the ceiling flickers and dies with an offended pop. “Okay, that’s not… this is fine. It’s fine.”

It is not fine. The kitchen looks like a crime scene where the murder weapon was a fire hydrant. Water gurgles from the sink, spreading across the tile in shimmering waves that lap at the threshold. The living room rug floats like a listless raft. The couch has taken on a distinct tilt, cushions dark and heavy, one of them drifting toward the hallway with lazy determination.

Stiles sloshes forward because that’s who he is—because there is always an urge to try, even as the universe points and laughs. He wades past the island, opens cabinet doors that vomit water, and fumbles with the shutoff under the sink. The knob refuses to budge. He tries the main valve in the laundry room. It squeals, gives an inch, and then his hand slides off. He grabs a wrench from a toolbox on the shelf, bangs his knuckles into something sharp, swears loudly, then braces his whole weight and turns. The pipe shudders. Water pressure groans, dips, and finally—finally—slows to a sullen trickle.

Silence roars. It’s the kind you only notice when everything else stops. It’s him, breathing hard. It’s the steady drip from a breach upstairs. It’s the squelch of his socks inside his shoes.

He leans his forehead against the cool metal of the washing machine and lets out one long, thin exhale. He counts to five. Then ten. Then twenty, because the smell is getting worse and the worry is getting louder. He turns and surveys the damage. The waterline on the walls is already high, swelling the paint. The family photos on the stairway are damp, frames fogging up. The one of him and his mom at his sixth birthday has a bubble trapped under the glass, distorting her smile.

He grabs buckets, a mop, a stack of towels that immediately become saturated and useless. He throws down bathmats. He plays at triage and knows he’s losing. Upstairs, the drip becomes a steady patter. He looks up and sees a bulge forming in the ceiling above the hallway. Plaster splits. A wet, heavy chunk drops into the flood with a rude plop.

“Great,” he mutters. “Excellent. Love that for us.”

He fishes his phone out of his pocket, shakes water off it, and opens his contacts. Plumber. The first three numbers go to voicemail. The fourth picks up and says something about a ten-hour wait and weekend rates that make Stiles laugh in a high, slightly unhinged way. Insurance. He gives details, tries not to cry when the agent says words like adjuster and temporary relocation and we’ll be in touch. The words bounce around inside him and land somewhere near panic.

He calls Scott.

“Dude,” he says when Scott answers. “Dude.”

“What happened? Are you okay?”

“There’s… so much wet. I think my house is trying to become the Titanic, but without the romance and with more broken pipes. My kitchen is a kiddie pool. My couch is a boat. My—my entire life is floating.”

“Oh man. I’m on my way.”

“Don’t you dare wolf-sprint into my mold farm,” Stiles says, because sarcasm is a life raft. “It’s not dangerous, it’s just gross. Maybe bring… I don’t know. Shop vac? Towels? A priest?”

Scott promises towels and arrives twenty minutes later with two rolls of contractor bags, a stack of old blankets, and Melissa’s stern advice over speakerphone about turning off electricity to the flooded areas. They flip breakers. The house falls into a hushed, dim half-light. They haul furniture onto blocks, shove books into bins, and try to save what can be saved. The rug goes into the backyard, heavy and sad. The couch gives up an unholy amount of water when they tilt it, and Stiles makes a noise that is very close to a whimper.

“Your room?” Scott asks, nudging his shoulder with a wet elbow.

“Upstairs is… damp. The water came from the bathroom. Burst pipe.” He gestures helplessly. “Downstairs is worse. Kitchen, living room—both screwed.”

Scott’s jaw tightens in that earnest way. “We’ll fix it.”

“Sure,” Stiles says. “We’ll just—what? Put the house in a dehydrator? It’s going to be gutted. Floors. Drywall. I saw this video once where they put giant fans everywhere and it sounded like a wind tunnel and the guy had to move out for, like, weeks.” The word hits him full force. Weeks. “My dad—”

Scott already knows. “He can stay with Melissa,” he says gently. “We have a spare room.”

“Yeah, with Isaac. And it’s not… there isn’t enough space.” He tries to make it a joke. “I like sleeping. I like not hearing Isaac’s very loud, very French nightmares. He says mon dieu in his sleep, dude.”

Scott snorts, then sobers. “You can take the couch with me. I’ll talk to my mom.”

“Your couch is a loveseat from 1999 that tries to eat people,” Stiles says. “And you have night shifts. And patrols. And I have school and my dad’s paperwork and the thing with the missing hikers in the preserve. I can’t be in the way. I can’t be… I can’t be a burden.” The last word slips out, soft and raw, and he hates it immediately.

Scott puts a wet hand on his shoulder. “You’re not.”

Stiles swallows. The house creaks around them. Water drips somewhere like a metronome. He thinks of his dad at Melissa’s table with coffee, Isaac sprawled on her couch, the easy rhythm they’ve all fallen into, and how he would stick out like a sore, damp thumb.

“Lydia?” Scott tries. “Her mom—”

“Her mom hates me,” Stiles says automatically, then winces. “Okay, not hates, but doesn’t relish the idea of me traipsing through her polished floors like a chaos goblin.”

“Jackson?”

Stiles barks out a laugh. “I have a restraining order with his name on it, and it’s laminated.”

“That was a joke—”

“Only slightly.” He sags, scrubbed raw by adrenaline and the ache behind his eyes. “I don’t have a lot of options.”

They work until the sun slides low and the air turns chilly with wet. The adjuster finally calls and tells Stiles words he never wanted: uninhabitable, remediation, thirty days minimum. They schedule crews. He signs a permission form with a hand that doesn’t feel like his.

When his dad pulls up, Stiles is sitting on the top step with his chin on his knees. The Sheriff takes one look at the war zone, then at Stiles, and his face softens around the edges. “You okay, kid?”

“Define okay,” Stiles says, voice thin.

His dad squeezes his shoulder. “We’ll figure it out.”

“I know. I—Scott offered his couch. Melissa offered the garage.” He grimaces. “I love her. I love her, but the garage.”

His dad makes a face. “Not the garage.” He looks like he’s doing math in his head, weighing floorspace and pride and the way Stiles’s eyes keep darting to the waterline like it’s going to rise again. “It’s just for a little while,” he says at last. “We’ll make it work.”

“I know,” Stiles says again, because it’s easier than admitting he wants to curl into the dent in the couch and pretend time is a circle.

They lock up what they can, pile damp laundry into bags, and carry boxes to the trunk. Night falls purple and quiet over the street. Neighbors turn on porch lights and pretend not to stare. The house looks wrong when Stiles pulls the door shut—too dark, too quiet. He presses his hand to the wood for a second, then steps back.

At Melissa’s, there are blankets folded on the back of the couch and Isaac’s boots in a pile by the door. The kitchen smells like chicken soup and bleach. Melissa hugs him tight and tells him he’s not in the way, that family is messy, that houses can be fixed. Isaac waves, awkward and sincere. Scott hands him a dry hoodie and a look that says we’ll keep you afloat.

Stiles smiles and thanks them and sits on the edge of the couch, hands clasped, mind running laps. He nods along to Melissa’s plan for work in the morning. He laughs at something Isaac says. He helps Scott carry in the bags. He tries to picture himself wedged into this living room night after night, listens to the ghost sound of fans spinning in his ruined house, and feels something sour curl in his stomach.

He needs a place he won’t wreck by breathing too loud. He needs somewhere big and empty and quiet and annoyingly sturdy. The thought comes uninvited, inconvenient, and refuses to leave.

He stares at his phone, at the screen’s glow, at the contact he never uses except when lives are on the line.

“Don’t,” he tells himself under his breath. “Don’t be stupid.”

The little knot of dread and hope in his chest tightens anyway. He texts Scott: tomorrow, I might have an idea.

Scott’s reply pings back in seconds: oh no or oh good?

Stiles chews the inside of his cheek. Types: TBD. Then deletes it. Then types: both. He locks his phone and sits back, the couch too small, the ceiling too close, the weight of the day pressing down. He watches the clock tick toward a future he hasn’t quite admitted to yet.

By morning, the house looks worse in his head than it did in the dark. If he closes his eyes he can still hear the soggy tear when the ceiling gave way. He handles coffee like a bomb, sits at Melissa’s table, and tries to make lists. They look like circles. Every line item ends with another list that starts with “call” and ends with “wait.”

He tries the couch again in daylight. He tries to pretend his spine isn’t already protesting. Isaac pads in, snags cereal, says something about keeping the bathroom door open because the fan is broken. Melissa moves like a hurricane, dropping off a thermos and a box of masks “because of spores.” Stiles thanks her and feels his skin crawl. He needs out. He needs something that isn’t watching the ceiling for drips anymore.

He texts Lydia. The little dots pulse and stop, then a reply: My mother says absolutely not. Renovation dust. Allergies. Also, you don’t take your shoes off.

He stares at that last part. He does take his shoes off. Sometimes. He types back a long defense of his shoe hygiene and then deletes it. Okay. So not Lydia.

“Jackson?” Melissa offers, like it’s a kindness.

He opens his mouth to say, “Technically we’re on speaking terms since he stopped being a lizard,” but instead what slips out is, “Technically there’s a restraining order, and I am trying to respect the law.”

Melissa blinks. Scott, who’d just come in from a night shift and looks half-asleep, chokes on his coffee. “That was a joke,” he tells his mom quickly. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?” Melissa repeats, deeply unimpressed.

Stiles holds up his hands. “It was a legal prank,” he says, then groans. “I am not living with Jackson Whittemore. I can’t. He probably has a white couch, and I would contaminate it by breathing.”

He tries Danny. Danny has a roommate with a night terrarium of snakes that Stiles tries to be cool about for three seconds until he remembers how snakes move. He tries Coach, who offers him a cot in the locker room and a lecture about grit that lasts six minutes. He tries the motel outside town and reads five reviews about bedbugs within the first scroll.

He rubs his eyes and feels very small. Scott slides into the chair next to him and bumps their knees. “We’ll find something. You don’t have to decide today. You can stay here for a few nights.”

Stiles looks at the compact couch. The lump in his throat is ridiculous. “I don’t want to screw up your routine,” he says. “Your mom does enough. Isaac talks in his sleep. You have to sleep sometimes too.”

“I do,” Scott says gently. “Not a lot. But some.” He hesitates, biting his lip like he’s about to offer a suggestion that could get him mauled. “There is… someone else.”

Stiles lifts his head. “If you say Peter, I am burning your house down as a sympathy arson to match mine.”

“No.” Scott grimaces. “I wouldn’t. I mean. No.” He drops his voice, even though it’s just them. “What about Derek?”

Stiles laughs, loud and too high. He cuts it off with a cough. “Ha. Hahaha. Wow, okay, love that comedy. I get it, I do, because he does have that giant concrete cave, and probably there’s no mold because nothing can grow where joy goes to die.”

Scott’s mouth twitches. “It’s big. It’s secure. It’s… empty.” He taps his fingers against the mug. “And he cares. He won’t say it, but he does. You know he wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says, because that part is true in a bone-deep way he can’t joke away. “But also he might glare me into dust. He doesn’t like mess. I am… this.” He gestures at his entire being. “I am walking entropy. He has one huge bed and no couch. I know that because I’ve seen it. I’m not—” Sharing a bed with Derek Hale is not a thought he should be having before breakfast.

Scott’s ears go a little pink, which is unfair because Stiles doesn’t think he actually said the bed part out loud. “Dude. You’d figure it out. You’ve shared worse sleeping arrangements on stakeouts.”

“In cars,” Stiles says weakly. “And once in a crypt.”

“And if Lydia’s mom hadn’t vetoed, you’d be in a guest room with doilies, which you would also survive.” Scott leans in. “Just ask. He can say no. He probably won’t. He’s pack.”

The word lands like a weight in Stiles’s chest, steadying. Derek is pack the way a mountain is a landmark. He is stubborn and heavy and the kind of safe you don’t have to explain. Stiles swallows around the knot and tries to ignore how his stomach flips at the idea of Derek’s eyes on him for weeks. The idea of his voice saying fine like it’s a concession and a promise.

“What if I break something?” he mutters, because self-sabotage is easier than hope.

“Then he’ll fix it,” Scott says simply. “Or grumble while you fix it together.” He nudges him. “You don’t have to keep floating. Pick somewhere solid.”

Stiles stares at his phone again. Derek’s name sits there like a loaded trap. He pictures dialing, Derek picking up with that rough, patient silence he only uses when Stiles is spiraling. He pictures asking. He pictures being told to come over. He pictures the elevator, the echo of his own stupid heart slamming against his ribs as the doors open and Derek turns from whatever broody thing he’s doing to face him.

His pulse trips. “Worst case scenario, he says no,” he says, half to Scott, half to himself.

“Worst case, he says yes and you’re stuck with Derek’s terrible taste in documentaries,” Scott says, then winces. “Don’t tell him I said that.”

Stiles huffs out something not quite a laugh. “He knows.”

He unlocks his phone. His thumb hovers over the call button and then chickens out to text. He types: house flooded. long story. can i talk to you?

He stares at it. He deletes it. He types: emergency? Not exactly. Need a place to crash? and immediately wants to punt himself into space. He deletes that too. He settles on: Can I come by? Need to ask you something.

His thumb hits send before he can think himself out of it. The second after, his skin crawls with nerves. He shoves the phone under his thigh like that will hide him from fate.

The reply is almost instant. A single word: Okay.

He exhales so hard he sways. “He said okay.”

Scott grins into his coffee like a cat that found cream. “Told you.”

“Don’t,” Stiles warns, pointing. “Don’t get smug. I am very fragile.” He stands, nearly trips on Isaac’s boots, and throws his bag over his shoulder. “If I’m not back in two hours, I’ve been murdered by a man with cheekbones, and my safe word is sarcasm.”

Scott stands too and pulls him into a hug that smells like laundry soap and hospital corridors. “Text me when you get there.”

“Will do.” Stiles steps back, scrubs a hand over his face, and tries to arrange his mouth into something that isn’t wild-eyed panic. He fails. He waves at Melissa in the kitchen. “I’m going to go… make a questionable decision.”

“Be polite,” she calls without turning. “And take your shoes off.”

He barks a laugh that feels like it might be a sob if it tilts wrong. “Yes, ma’am.”

Outside, the air is crisp and clean, cutting through the damp that’s seeped into him. He gets in the Jeep, sits for a second with his hands on the wheel, and stares at the road that leads out of suburbia, past all the places that are too full, too noisy, too kind in ways that make his skin itch. He starts the engine. The radio crackles to life with some song about home that he turns off after two bars because he is not letting a chorus wreck him.

He pulls away from the curb and heads toward the steel-and-glass emptiness he’s convinced himself is a good idea. His phone buzzes on the passenger seat. A second text: Door’s unlocked.

His throat tightens. He presses his foot a little harder on the gas.

The loft swallows him whole the second he pushes the heavy door open. It’s cooler inside, the kind of clean, concrete chill that makes the hair on his arms lift. It smells like metal and detergent and a faint, steady undernote that is just Derek.

He steps in and freezes. Derek’s in the middle of the floor, shirtless, hands wrapped, sweat shining along the cut lines of his shoulders as he snaps a punch into a heavy bag. The chain creaks, the bag swings, and Derek pivots, drives a knee up with brutal precision, follows with another punch that makes the sound reverberate through Stiles’s ribs. He’s wearing gray sweats that ride low on his hips, the waistband dark with sweat at the sharp V of his pelvis. There’s a small scar on his side that Stiles has never noticed, pale against tan skin. Stiles realizes his mouth is open and closes it with an audible click.

Derek glances over, a quick slant of his eyes, then returns to the bag like Stiles is not a distraction, which is insane. He finishes the combination, drives the bag to stillness with both hands, breathing hard and even. The silence after the last hit buzzes in Stiles’s ears.

“Door was unlocked,” Stiles says, voice too high, too bright. “Which, you know, I did see, because you told me, and I’m capable of following simple instructions even though my track record suggests otherwise, but in my defense there was sewage in my house yesterday, like, biblical levels, Old Testament plague stuff, and if there was ever a time for a person to misread a text, it would be when they are ankle-deep in what I can only describe as domestic despair.”

Derek pulls one wrap loose with his teeth, spits the end into his hand, and looks at him, eyebrows slightly up. His chest is moving slower now, the heat in his skin visible even from across the room. “Hi,” he says, like Stiles isn’t spiraling. It’s flat, not unfriendly. “You okay?”

Stiles laughs, which is not the right reaction. “Define okay,” he says, and then his mouth is off and running, because if he doesn’t talk he’s going to notice the way Derek’s abs flex when he unwraps his other hand and he will die here. “So. Okay. Hypothetically, if a person’s entire ground floor becomes a water feature overnight because a pipe decided to commit seppuku in the crawlspace, and that person’s father is very much housed but also very much housed with his girlfriend who is deeply kind but already has one werewolf son and I do not want to be the human-shaped straw that breaks that camel’s back, and that person has exhausted literally every couch option within a fifty-mile radius except for the motel with the single Yelp review that uses the words ‘body lice’ unironically, then that person might, theoretically, consider coming to the giant murder loft owned by the guy who once threw them against a wall and snarled about boundaries.”

Derek’s mouth does a tiny twitch that might be a smile if it had more practice. He strips the wraps off and goes to the kitchen island, drops them there, and grabs a towel. He scrubs it over his face, hair, the back of his neck, then braces his hands on the counter and just looks at Stiles. Stiles shifts his weight. The towel leaves a damp patch on the steel.

“What do you need?” Derek asks.

The question lands like a hand on the back of Stiles’s neck. He swallows. “I need… a place to be that isn’t my house, which currently smells like a swamp murdered an electrical fire. I need somewhere for like, a month? Maybe less. Depending on insurance and whether the restoration guys are wizards or just men with dehumidifiers. I tried Lydia—well, Lydia’s mom, and she said no, which is fine, because I do wear shoes indoors sometimes, and Danny has snakes, which I respect from a distance but not from across a room at night, and Coach offered me a cot next to the showers, which is how horror movies start.”

He hears himself speeding up and doesn’t stop. “I know you like quiet. I know you like clean. I know you like not having me in your space because I am loud and I have a lot of… stuff. Brain stuff. Physical stuff. I own three different chargers for the same phone because I lose them. I talk in my sleep. Sometimes I kick. I will buy the groceries. I will not touch your… thing.” He gestures at the free weights, the knives mounted perfectly on the wall, the general Derekness. “Your ritual sharpening station. Your wolf… gear. I will stay out of your way. I will build a small fort in a corner. I will sleep on the floor. I brought a sleeping bag, which is in my car, which is in your murder parking lot.”

Derek’s gaze drifts past him to the bed, a huge, simple slab of mattress and dark sheets. “You’re not sleeping on the floor,” he says, tone firm enough to stop Stiles’s heart for a second. He straightens, tosses the towel aside, and crosses the space between them with unhurried steps that still manage to eat the distance.

Up close, he’s even more intimidating. His skin is flushed from the workout, a bead of sweat still tracking from his temple down to his jaw. Stiles tracks it without permission until it falls, catches on the notch of Derek’s collarbone, and disappears.

“I can be… considerate,” Stiles says, softer, caught between hope and the urge to run. “I can set boundaries. I brought earplugs? For you. For me. For the world.”

Derek’s eyes flick down Stiles’s body and back up, assessing, not lingering. “You smell like bleach,” he says, which is weirdly tender. “And mildew. And stress.”

Stiles makes a face. “Yeah, I kind of bathed in hand sanitizer before I got in the car. I was trying to—this is not the point.” He drags a hand through his hair. “The point is: I need somewhere to land. And I hate asking you for anything because you already do so much and I know I annoy you and I’m fully prepared for you to say no and I will understand and then I will go back to the cot next to the haunted showers and—”

“Stiles.” His name, low and steady, stops him. Derek’s mouth is very close. His eyes are very green. “Breathe.”

He does, a shuddering inhale that feels like it’s been stuck for hours. The room steadies. Derek’s expression doesn’t move much, but something in it eases, like settling into a shape that fits.

“I’ll stay out of your way,” Stiles says again, desperate to fill the air that breath made. “I’ll label my food. I won’t touch… the knives. Or the books. Or the—look, if there’s a system, I’ll learn it.”

Derek glances toward the bed again, then back. His jaw ticks once. He wipes his palm on his sweats, like he just remembered he’s sweaty, and Stiles’s brain derails at the smear of damp it leaves on his hip bone.

“You can put your stuff over there,” Derek says finally, nodding to a clear stretch by the wall. “Bathroom’s the same. Don’t use the left faucet in the kitchen; it sticks.” He lifts his chin toward the bed. “There’s no couch.” The words are simple. They hit like a thrown knife, neat and unavoidable. “We’ll deal with it.”

Stiles’s heart knocks hard enough to make him lightheaded. He nods too fast. “Right. Totally. We’ll deal. I am very good at dealing. I have dealt with worse. Remember the crypt? This will be nothing. Sharing—sharing space. Sharing air. Sharing—okay, I’m going to stop saying sharing before it becomes a drinking game.”

Derek just looks at him a second longer, then steps back, giving him space to cross fully into the loft. Stiles toes off his shoes automatically at the threshold, toes curling against the cold floor. He doesn’t look at the bed again. He tries not to look at Derek either, but that’s impossible. He feels watched, not like prey, but like a thing someone is choosing to keep an eye on so it doesn’t fall apart.

He swallows, adjusts his grip on his bag strap, and lets his shoulders drop. “Thank you,” he says, and he means it in a way that makes his throat hurt.

Derek’s mouth does that almost-smile again and then smooths out. He goes back to the island, picks up his water bottle, and drinks, throat working. “You’re welcome,” he says, and it’s not grudging. It’s just true.

Stiles sets his bag down like it might explode. The sound is too loud in the open space, echoing off concrete, and Derek doesn’t even flinch. He’s just watching. Not glaring, not snarling—just that flat, unreadable stare that always makes Stiles want to fill the silence with a thousand words and a drum solo.

He does, obviously. “I’ll, um. I can sleep in the Jeep if that’s easier. I’ve done it before. Not great for the spine, which, you know, I would like to keep intact, but I don’t want to mess up your whole… zen monk aesthetic. I can be very quiet. Okay, not very, but like—moderately. Moderate is an achievable life goal. I can—”

Derek’s eyes tick down to Stiles’s jittering hands, then back up. Nothing on his face changes. It makes the back of Stiles’s neck prickle. He can feel sweat gathering under his collar. The silence stretches. Stiles’s heart keeps time with the ticking of the giant loft clock, too slow, then too fast, and he thinks maybe this was stupid. Maybe he should have taken the haunted showers. Maybe he should—

“Fine,” Derek says.

It’s one word. It lands with the weight of a door unlocking. Stiles blinks. “Fine?” he repeats. His voice squeaks, traitor that it is. “Fine like—fine? Like yes? Like I can stay here and not in my Jeep and you won’t throw me through a window if I snore?”

Derek’s mouth does a small, resigned twist. “You can stay.” He glances away for a second, toward the high windows, then back. “For a month. Maybe less. Until your place is livable.”

Stiles’s brain misfires, doing small, delighted laps around the concept. “You’re serious,” he says, just to hear the words out loud, to test them in the air. Derek’s silence isn’t angry; he can see that now. It’s wary. Measured. Protective in a way that has nothing to do with comforters and everything to do with the way Derek stands like he’s taking a blow for him before it even hits.

“Pack,” Derek says, like that explains everything and also nothing. He picks up his phone, sets it down again. “And you attract trouble like it’s your job. Easier to keep you alive here.”

Stiles lets out a breath that turns into a laugh against his will. It bounces off the high ceiling. “I do not attract trouble. Trouble finds me because it’s jealous of my natural charisma. There’s a difference.” He scrubs a hand over his face, palm dragging at his eyes. He’s tired. He’s been running on adrenaline and bleach fumes for twenty-four hours, and the relief hits so hard he has to grab the edge of the island.

Derek’s gaze dips to his hand like he’s checking to make sure Stiles won’t actually go down. “There are rules,” he says, a low warning. “Don’t touch the weapons. Don’t bring anyone here without telling me. If you’re going to do something stupid, I want to know before you do it.”

Stiles nods furiously. “Yes. Absolutely. I can do rules. I love rules. We’re best friends. I’ll laminate them. I’ll wear them as a necklace. I’ll get them tattooed if we’re feeling edgy.”

“Don’t,” Derek says, on reflex. He takes a breath, looks at the bed like it offended him, then returns to Stiles. “There’s one bed. You know that.”

Stiles’s stomach flips, because yes, he is acutely aware. He is intimately acquainted with the bed from every time he’s been here and very deliberately not looked at it. “I can—uh—I can make it work. I’ll stay on my side. I’ll—” He gestures vaguely, fingers fluttering. “I starfish, but I can ball up. I’ll cocoon myself. I’ll… install a seatbelt.”

A huff of air that could almost be a laugh escapes Derek before he shuts it down. “We’ll figure it out. It’s not a problem.” The way he says it makes Stiles believe that even if it is, Derek will treat it like a mission: identify issue, solve, move on.

“Okay,” Stiles says. He bites the inside of his cheek to stop the grin that wants to break his face. He forces himself to be cool, which has never worked, but whatever. “Okay. Thank you. I will do dishes. I will vacuum. I will—do you vacuum? Is there a vacuum? Do werewolves vacuum?”

Derek stares at him for three beats, then blinks slow. “Yes. There’s a vacuum.”

“Great. Good. I can use it. I will vacuum the hell out of this… concrete.” He finally bends, hauls his duffel over and tries not to look like he’s expecting Derek to change his mind at any second. He unzips it, revealing a chaotic avalanche of T-shirts, socks, a tangled mess of chargers that have somehow mated in the dark. He shoves it back down, face hot. “I will organize.”

Derek’s eyes flick to the bag, then to Stiles’s face. Whatever he sees there makes him nod, slow and decisive, like a judge granting bail. “Pack responsibility,” he says again, more to himself than Stiles. “And if you’re here, I don’t have to drive across town when you decide 2 a.m. is a good time to break into a library.”

“That happened once,” Stiles protests. “And it was a very crucial book! Also the alarm system was outdated.”

“You bled on my passenger seat,” Derek counters, deadpan.

Stiles points at him. “Technically that was me and the book. But your point is taken.” He rocks on his heels, the manic buzz slowly softening into something looser, like he can finally breathe into his lungs. He glances toward the huge bed and then quickly away, heat climbing his neck. “So. Should I, like, stake out a corner? Or are we at the point where you tell me to take a shower because I smell like a janitor’s closet and despair?”

Derek’s gaze slides over him in a way that makes Stiles weirdly conscious of his damp shirt sticking to his back. “Shower,” Derek says. “Towels are in the cabinet. Don’t flood my bathroom.”

Stiles salutes. “No promises,” he says, then winces. “Kidding. Totally promises. Dry as the Sahara. I’m going. I’m moving.”

He grabs his toiletry bag and backs toward the hallway, still not breaking Derek’s gaze, like a gazelle carefully retreating from a large apex predator who has just decided not to eat him. Derek just leans his hip against the island, arms folding across his chest, expression smoothing back into that blank, solid thing that somehow doesn’t scare Stiles as much as it used to.

“Stiles,” he says, just as Stiles reaches the bathroom door.

Stiles pauses. “Yeah?”

Derek meets his eyes, steady. “I meant it,” he says. “It’s fine.”

Stiles swallows. His throat feels tight and stupid. “Okay,” he says, softer. “Okay.” He ducks into the bathroom, closes the door, and presses his forehead against the wood for a second, breathing in tile and steam and the faint scent that is all Derek. He lets himself smile, a little wild and disbelieving, then straightens and turns on the water. Outside, the loft is quiet, holding the shape of Derek’s grudging generosity like it’s been there all along.

The water runs hot enough to sting. He scrubs off the bleach and dust and the panic-sweat, trying not to think about the bed like it’s a live wire in the next room. He uses the soap that smells like cedar and something darker, something that sits low in his lungs and makes him feel too aware of his own skin. He tries not to picture Derek’s hands on it—on the soap, on his own body. He fails and bangs his elbow on the tile as punishment.

He takes longer than he should, then steps out, wraps himself in a towel that’s too plush for the person who owns it, and catches his reflection. Hair plastered to his forehead, eyes too big. He looks like someone in a horror movie who just realized the house wants to eat him. He drags the towel over his head, makes his hair worse, and pulls on soft pajama pants and a T-shirt he grabbed from the top of the duffel. The shirt smells like his laundry detergent and faint wet dog from his Jeep. He hopes the Jeep smell doesn’t offend the wolf.

When he opens the bathroom door, the loft is dimmer. Derek has turned off the harsh overheads; warm pools of light sit on the kitchen island and near the bed. The windows reflect streaks of the town’s far-off glow. Derek has moved like a silent stagehand, putting away the chaos Stiles left on the island. There’s a folded pile of spare linens at the foot of the bed, squared edges, corners sharp.

Derek looks up. His eyes skim Stiles, pause on his bare feet, then flick away. He straightens from where he’s been leaning and walks a slow circuit, not like he’s showing off his space, more like he’s pointing to exits in a plane. “Bathroom,” he says, tipping his chin toward the hall Stiles just left. “Kitchen.” He gestures at the sink, the industrial fridge, the coffee machine that’s clearly used like a religion.

He stops with his hand loose at his side and points, finally, at the bed. The bed is huge in the low light—dark frame, gray sheets pulled tight. There’s a second duvet folded at the end now, like Derek made the thought tangible between Stiles’s shower and now. “This is it,” Derek says. “There’s no couch.”

Stiles’s mouth opens. Nothing comes out. His brain tries several sounds, abandons them, settles on a small, strangled, “Right.” He stares at the bed like if he looks hard enough, a couch will apparate, IKEA directions fluttering from the sky. The mattress is large enough for two people to occupy different continents, sure, but it’s still one country. One sheet. One pillow in the middle that, if he thinks about it too hard, makes his stomach do an Olympic routine.

He realizes he’s been standing barefoot on concrete for thirty seconds too long, clutching his towel like a maiden aunt. He lets the towel hang and forces his feet to move closer, to the edge of the rug under the bed. He doesn’t get on it. He hovers like a satellite.

“I can—uh,” he starts, then stops. His heart is too loud. Derek’s heartbeat is probably louder to Derek, which is mortifying. He tries again. “I won’t… sprawl. I’ll go… north. You can have—south.” His hands try to map the bed like a cartographer on meth. He drops them to his sides. “I’ll build, like, a DMZ. Pillows. A Great Wall. You won’t even know I’m there. I’ll hold my breath.”

Derek’s face doesn’t change, but the corner of his mouth wants to. “You’ll pass out,” he says, mild.

“Then you can give me mouth-to—nope.” Stiles claps his lips shut. Heat licks up his neck. He stares very intently at the folded duvet like it’s a miracle of modern engineering. The second blanket. He swallows, the knot in his throat loosening just enough to let words through. “Thank you. For—this. The extra blanket. You didn’t have to.”

Derek shrugs, which in Derek is a heavy, deliberate thing. “You said you get cold.”

“I say a lot of things,” Stiles mutters, softer than it’s meant for anyone else to hear. But Derek’s ears catch everything, and his eyes flick over like he did hear, like he’s cataloging it with all the other Stiles data he pretends not to keep.

They stand there with the bed a third person between them. The air feels thick, not bad, just dense. Stiles clears his throat. “Rules of engagement,” he says, half joking, half begging structure to keep him from slipping into the gravitational pull of everything about this and about Derek. “If I encroach, you can shove me.”

“I won’t shove you in your sleep,” Derek says, dry.

“Okay, push. Nudge.” Stiles lifts his hands, palms out. “If I kick you, it’s an accident. If I talk, ignore me. If I say your name—”

“Stiles.”

“—it’s probably because I’m dreaming I’m late to a test, or because of—things.” He gestures vaguely, a catchall for ghosts and foxes and memories that have fingerprints. He looks down at his toes. “If I wake you up, I’m sorry. In advance. Retroactively. Forever.”

Derek’s eyes soften in a way that’s almost imperceptible if you don’t know how to look for it. “You won’t,” he says. “And if you do, it’s fine.”

“Fine,” Stiles echoes, and somehow the word tastes different now, warmer. He takes a breath. It sinks deeper than the others. “Do you want the wall? Pillows?”

Derek looks at the bed, at the empty, wide expanse. He shakes his head once. “We don’t need it.”

Stiles nods too fast. “Right. Confident. I can be confident.” He finally puts a knee on the mattress. It gives under him, firm and expensive. He crawls awkwardly to the side nearest the window, drags the extra duvet up, and sits cross-legged on top of the covers, like that will prevent something from happening he can’t name.

Derek moves with quiet efficiency. He turns off the lamp by the island, leaving just the low light near the bed. He toes off his boots, sets them neat by the wall, and peels off his shirt, which is unfair to everyone, especially Stiles’s circulatory system. He doesn’t stare. He absolutely stares. He snaps his eyes to the headboard when Derek unbuttons his jeans, looks anywhere but the line of hip and the trail that disappears under cotton. He swallows his tongue, probably.

Derek slides under the sheets on his side, the mattress dipping, the smell of cedar and heat hitting Stiles like a hand on the back of his neck. There’s a foot of space between them. It might as well be a millimeter. Stiles pulls the duvet up to his chest. He has no idea what to do with his arms. He chooses to hug his own ribs until it hurts.

“Lights?” Derek says, voice low and ordinary.

“Yeah,” Stiles answers, and his hand doesn’t shake when he leans to click off the lamp. Darkness folds in soft. The city glow pours in through the high windows, painting the ceiling. Stiles listens to Derek breathe—a steady, even sound, like ocean on concrete.

He stares into the dim and tries not to count. Tries not to think about how the bed is solid under him, about how Derek’s weight lives on the other side, reshaping the mattress with his presence. Tries not to think about the line between. About how easy it would be to roll over and erase it. He tries to slow his lungs. He tries to be small, to take up less space, to be unnoticeable.

“Stiles,” Derek says into the dark, not loud. Not a warning. Just his name, a quiet hook.

“Yeah?”

“It’s fine,” Derek repeats, and somehow it is, for a few heartbeats. The tightness loosens. Stiles nods even though Derek can’t see him. He turns his face toward the ceiling and lets his eyes close. He can feel the bed like he can feel the Jeep under him on a long road—every shift, every whisper of fabric. He lies there, very awake, staring at the inside of his eyelids, and does not move. He will not be the one who moves first.

Minutes stretch. The heat under the extra duvet soaks into him. The scent of Derek’s detergent and skin wraps around the edges of his brain. The bed holds both of them, solid and absolutely, like it was built to. There is no couch. There is only this, and it is too much and exactly enough, and Stiles breathes through it until the rhythm of Derek’s slow inhale-exhale pulls his own into sync. He doesn’t sleep, not yet. He just exists in the shared shape of the mattress, rigid and ridiculously grateful, waiting for the night to decide what happens next.