Chapter Text
Chapter 1
They weren't really able to tell how or when it happened, but they were pretty sure it was at some point between the Sheriff dying during a call at work and Stiles leaving for college.
It all started when Stiles woke in the middle of the night to someone knocking on the front door. It turned out to be Parrish, who told him that his dad had been attacked by some wild animal while on duty. He had died of blood loss before the ambulance could reach him.
That was one month before graduation and Stiles hadn't spoken a single word ever since.
He had just stopped.
Stopped talking.
Stopped attending pack meetings.
Stopped answering the texts his concerned pack sent him everyday.
He would just go to school, stare at his table and ignore everyone who tried to talk to him.
He didn't even react when Coach Finstock had enough of his behavior and yelled at him to get his ass to the principle.
He just got up and left.
He didn't even attend his own graduation. He sat at home, with the door and windows lined with mountain ash and retrieved his diploma the next day.
Lydia had been there because she forgot something in her locker at school and she didn't know she would be the last person to see him in Beacon Hills for the next three years.
It had been three hard years for the pack. It felt like a part of them was missing.
No one knew where Stiles was. All they knew was that he had left his jeep at Derek’s loft and put the house up for sale before he left for college.
Wherever that might have been.
Three years had passed.
The pack, they were...coping. Some better than others.
It took months until Scott stopped ringing the doorbell at Stiles' old house only to find a stranger opening the door. After the third time it happened they only looked at him with pity and closed the door again.
Isaac still randomly stopped in the middle of the street because he thought he'd caught Stiles' scent. But it was always someone else.
Derek had sold the loft after rebuilding the old Hale house in the preserve the year after Stiles left. The pack thought he was over Stiles leaving but only Lydia knew the truth.
She knew Derek had a room in the house filled with everything Stiles hadn't taken with him. Clothes, books, even his All Time Low poster hung on a wall.
Lydia only knew how much Derek actually missed Stiles because she once walked in on him sitting on a windowsill in that room, Stiles favorite pillow pressed to his chest and reading and old, worn copy of the first Harry Potter book.
When she knocked on the door frame the alpha had looked up surprised, like he hadn't noticed the girl standing in the doorway at all.
After sitting down next to him, Derek had slowly started to explain how sitting there surrounded by his things and reading his old books made the pain of Stiles leaving them all behind a little bit more bearable. How it hurt a little less to smell the faint scent that still clung to his things.
From then Lydia came over a lot, just to talk about Stiles.
Because that's what helped her coping.
It was one of these days when Isaac burst through the door, a haunted look on his face. Derek was instantly on his feet, his claws out to fight any possible danger.
But Isaac only shook his head, panting like he had run all the way to the house and could hardly get a few words out. But these few words sparked hope in all of them.
“I smelled his scent.”
And for the first time in three years Isaac had turned out to be right.
After being told exactly where the beta had caught the scent, Derek drove out to the parking lot of a motel where Stiles scent hit him before he even left his Camaro.
He had parked next to a blue Ford Focus that reeked of the missing boy like he had actually lived in there.
It was unmistakable although it was overlapping with the scent of leather, cigarettes and something he couldn't really define.
It was Stiles.
He was back in Beacon Hills.
The alpha followed Stiles scent all the way from the car over to the door of the motel room where it was the strongest and where he could clearly hear the boy's heartbeat.
After hesitating for a few minutes and taking a deep breath to calm his nerves, Derek finally knocked on the door, ready to turn around and leave in case it actually wasn't Stiles to open.
But the second the door crept open he knew it.
He was almost overwhelmed with the wave of pure Stiles that hit him.
But it were the eyes that took his breath away.
They were still the same, warm whiskey colored eyes framed with long, dark lashes that looked first confused, a second later angry.
“Stiles...”
“Oh for fucks sake! I've been in town for what? An hour? What has a guy to do to get some fucking sleep in this town?!”
Searching for words Derek just stared that the boy...no, cross that, the man leaning against the door frame.
Stiles had...grown up.
He had grown out of graphic tees and layers. Instead he was standing there in tight, black skinny jeans and a well fitting, grey henley that accented the lean muscles in his arms and his broad shoulders.
From where the sleeves were rolled up he could see parts of more than just one tattoo.
Stiles' hair, wet from a shower, stuck to his forehead but it seemed longer than Derek remembered.
“I...can we talk? Please?”
It was all he could get out after another moment of staring.
With an annoyed sigh Stiles nodded his head inside and moved from the door so Derek could follow him into the small room.
Next to the bed, the sheets still untouched, were a duffle bag and a suitcase with some clothes strewn on the floor and a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray, already holding two cigarette butts, on the nightstand.
Stiles stood in front of the window, arms crossed and one of his bare feet tapping on the floor.
“You wanted to talk, so talk. I don't have all day.”
Derek had to swallow a few times in order to find his words.
“Stiles I...we... where have you been? We haven't heard from you in three years. Three years!”
Derek started pacing the room and running his hands through his hair over and over in distress.
The other man only chuckled.
“I've been to college. Where else would I have been. I worked my ass off, got my degree and now I'm here for some unfinished business.”
“What do you mean? Unfinished business?” Derek wasn't quite sure, what the other man was talking about.
“Oh please, you don't really believe my dad was killed by a mountain lion, do you? I've hacked the databases, I've seen all the evidence pictures. That was not a mountain lion, that was definitely a werewolf.”
Stiles had toyed with a lighter while speaking and was now putting the flame to the tip of another cigarette, inhaled the smoke and blew it out in circles.
Derek was impressed.
“And what are you going to do, when you find that werewolf? Or whoever it was?”
Stiles raised an eyebrow and smirked in his direction before blowing another bout of smoke-rings.
“That's pretty easy. I am going to kill him. It will be painful and he's going to regret that he even took a look at my father let alone that he put his dirty claws against his skin.”
Derek was stunned. This was so not the boy he remembered from three years ago. This man was ruthless and apparently wouldn't hesitate to use violence against those who hurt the people close to him.
Although he wondered, was there even anyone left Stiles felt close to?
Anyone he cared about enough to kill someone?
“Was that all? I only have this room for tonight and I'd love to get some sleep in a real bed for a change.”, Stiles said while stubbing his cigarette into the ashtray and walking over to the bed where he pulled the covers back and sat down.
“No, just, why don't you stay here longer? Or are you leaving tomorrow?”
“Hah, no. One night was all I could pay for. I'm literally one pack of smokes from broke. Not that you would get the reference.” Stiles was laughing about his own joke while pointedly moving his eyes from Derek to the door. It was obviously a hint that he wanted to go to sleep now, so Derek nodded his head, mumbled a “Bye, see you around...” and closed the door behind him.
“Isaac was right.”
The whole pack was assembled inside the living room of the Hale house.
Scott and Allison sat on the love seat, Isaac in front of them, leaning his back against Scott's legs while Lydia sat in the armchair.
They all had perked up when Derek opened the door and looked hopeful at their alpha.
The only one who hadn't moved all that much was Cora, who had returned about six months ago, after hearing about her big brother being alive. But since she hadn't met Stiles she didn't really get what was so special about him.
“Have you seen him?”
“Did you talk to him? What did he say?”
“Is he going to stay?”
They all asked at once and Derek could barely understand them.
“I can't understand any of you if you keep talking like that.”, he shut them up.
“Yes, I saw him and yes we talked. He told me he finished his degree and now he's back here to find and kill the werewolf who killed his father. He didn't say if he's going to stay here afterwards.” Derek hoped he would, but the Stiles he met back at the motel was so different from the one he once thought he knew.
“And what are going to do now?”, Isaac asked while nervously wringing his hands.
“I don't know...”, Derek answered, running a soothing hand through Isaac's blonde curls. “I really don't know.”