Kings of the Moonlight

Fly Again

So things are changing but I am on your side, and I know you're waiting but we'll make it back this time.

-

When Derek wakens in his bed on Sunday morning, he's sprawled on his back blinking lazily as the dim light of the dawning day filters in slow, lethargic sunbeams through the curtains. The first thing he's aware of is the overwhelming sense of relief that courses through him, cool and fresh, as he begins to drag himself into an upright position.

He's slept through the night, completely uninterrupted, which can only mean that Isaac did so too.

It had taken a long while for Isaac to fall asleep; he was obviously tired, twitching a little in Derek's lap with his fist screwed tight into the material of his father's shirt, but his eyes had only begun to flutter in impending sleepiness over an hour after his designated bedtime and only after Derek had already read through half of Isaac's bedtime book.

When Derek goes to check on him now, he pads quietly down the hall to peek his head into Isaac's bedroom and finds him deeply asleep, drooling on his pillow as his arm clutches a wad of his blanket to his chest.

Derek feels nervous for a whole different reason now. This, he supposes, is what the last couple of months have been so perilously leading up to, the one moment to speak to his son about the horrors that Kate had orchestrated with her fury.

It's going to be difficult, he knows, it's going to be cumbersome and heartbreaking but it's unavoidable and so Derek wants to make this day as comfortable as he can for his son; he showers quickly and dresses before he heads into his office.

Stiles isn't going to be coming over to the apartment until much later, Derek had called him the night before and found that the conversation was stilted and awkward, filled with helpless sighs and half-abandoned sentences.

It wasn't awkward between them so much as the whole topic in itself. Tension had hung in the distance between them and in that moment Derek had wanted nothing but to have Stiles near him, around him and kissing him.

Derek had taken a deep, calming breath and told Stiles of the talk he intended to have with Isaac. Stiles' quiet but sincere encouragements on the other end of the line had contrasted with the nervous energy that Derek could practically feel Stiles displaying.

Stiles had sounded half distracted as he spoke, Derek could hear him pacing on the other end of the line, fast and jittery, but the earnestness his words had more than loosened the bubble of uncertainty hovering in the pit of Derek's stomach.

The phone call had been brief, with Derek weighted down by the sheer stress of the day and its effects on him, Stiles had been quick to agree and Derek could hear the smile in his voice as he said, "I love you, Derek."

To distract himself, Derek steadily reviews on his weekly reports for close to three hours, his mind going blissfully blank as he works with a single-minded focus. He pulls on his reading glasses almost as soon as he sits at his dark wooded desk and pulls his laptop close to him.

His attention is focused and specific as he reads through the quarterly reports for the company, periodically pushing his glasses up and over the bridge of his nose as he types.

He sends e-mail after e-mail to his junior associates, dividing up the company tasks between them in preparation for the coming week, looking over the reports and memos of the company's most recent acquisitions just to make sure that his new associates aren't making any monumental, newbie mistakes.

He's overviewing one of their most prominent cases, a privately owned vineyard in the south of Beacon County, when Isaac wakes up. He's annotating the details by hand, a pen shoved in his mouth, another tucked behind his ear, eraser in one hand and a pencil in the other, squinting as he scribbles away on the paper in front of him.