Sterek One-shots

When The Coward's Tears Fall.

The two of them had grown close. Stiles had wormed his way deep into Derek's life and Derek found himself letting it happen. It felt good to have someone there, someone who cared, after so long. He had spent years trapped in a cage and Stiles had finally handed him the key. Stiles had sat through nightmares and flashbacks, he had spent months (or possibly years) changing the way Derek thought about himself and teaching him that it was okay to talk about his feelings. Derek couldn't be more grateful.

The Pack had helped, too, but Stiles had always been the one he could turn to. He was the first person he learned to trust, the first person he learned to rely on, the first person he truly cared about, and in return, Stiles had shared his own stories. Stories from his childhood: what his mother had been like before she had been hospitalised and what it was like being blamed by her for her condition, how his father had reacted afterwards and how long it had taken for Stiles to learn to trust again. He shared his nightmares and flashbacks, too. From when he was possessed and from when he was forgotten, from all the monsters he had fought alone.

But Derek knew it was different for Stiles; Stiles had his dad to lean on, he had Scott and Lydia, he could turn to them if he needed to. Derek had tried to turn to people other than Stiles, a few times actually, but it was like wading through drying concrete, so he stuck with Stiles. Which made them different. Derek wasn't Stiles' key, he was a single plank on the long bridge across the stormy river that led towards healing. Maybe he was the fraying rope that barely held it up. And yet he would never stop listening, never stop trying to help Stiles in the same way he had helped Derek.

Some days he felt like he was only Stiles' project and that could set him back by weeks, leaving Stiles confused. He would always hide away on the days where he felt most useless to Stiles and Stiles would always sit outside his room and just talk. Talk until Derek was okay again. Talk until his eyelids drooped and the moon swung high in the sky. And then he would talk some more.

Stiles had saved him from a lot of things, but one of the biggest of those things was loneliness. He had been alone after the fire; yes, he had had his sister but she was grieving too. Always lost, moving around their shared living space like a ghost, haunting her own life and possessing her own body. It was worse than having her dead, or it felt like that right up until she had actually died. Then he had felt true loneliness. Stiles and Scott had brought him some semblance of normal; an echo of sanity. Peter had come back but he had been insane and that had made things worse, pushing Derek further away from the shadow of a life he'd been desperately pulling together.

Even when he'd built himself a Pack of three teenagers, he knew they would leave him and it just made him feel empty. Cora and Peter were there for some of it and yet they seemed colder, nothing like what he remembered from before the fire. Then again, he wasn't the same either. Part of him had burned with his family, as had part of them.

Stiles had been the first fully there presence in his life; consistent and reliable in times of need. Trustworthy. Caring in ways Derek was sure Stiles wasn't even aware of. He had been a light in the void. Cool air in the blistering heat. A parachute as Derek fell. And Derek owed him everything.

And yet Stiles only wanted one thing: his friendship. Stiles wanted to be friends. And Derek had been okay with that – he wanted it too – but things can't just keep going up, eventually they hit breaking point.

__________

Stiles had grown a lot over the years, not only as a person but also physically: he was taller, more muscular, faster, kinder, more trusting and somehow smarter. He had become an amazing chef after a lot of time thinking about whether or not he actually wanted to go into a law enforcement job. He drew commissions "for fun", occasionally helped people with their supernatural problems, and worked in a high-end restaurant in New York with plans to set up his own with Lydia within the next five years. His life was going well. The Pack that had moved away came back to town once or twice a month. But every time Stiles left to go back to New York after a Pack night, Derek realised how much he relied on him.