It had crept up on him, the wanting, mostly since it had been years since he'd felt anything close. Until suddenly it hit him like a fucking car crash, like a switch flipped inside him, because he never thought he could want something so badly that...
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Derek doesn't hate his birthday. As a child, he thinks maybe he might have hated it. There was some kind of cruel irony to being born on Christmas, after all. But after Paige, and Kate, and the fire, and Laura, there just didn't seem to be a reason to care anymore. And after everything that's happened now, it seems bizarre to think about, celebrating the passing of another year with something as pedestrian as a birthday party.
Not when the pack had spent most of the year being chased by a giant lizard monster.
He kind of likes it, how calm and still everything gets on Christmas Eve. Everything's closed in Beacon Hills, and the streets are empty, and he doesn't have to try so hard to shut everything out: the roar of passing traffic, the constant slamming of windows and doors, even the seemingly ceaseless yammering of the people in the building is enough to drive him crazy sometimes. One of the hardest things to learn when he was little was how to turn it all off. It had been a lot more difficult for him than it had been for any of his other siblings. Laura had always been good at it, had made it look so easy, carried herself with so much confidence, so much control. He'd hated her for it. For him, every sound was too loud, every smell too overwhelming, and the world outside of his home had always felt like too much. His mother had called him sensitive. All he knew was that he felt like a raw nerve that people wouldn't stop pressing on.
He takes the quiet now where he can get it.
So yeah, tomorrow's his birthday, and he's unsurprisingly alone, but it's okay. It's almost midnight, and he hasn't bothered to turn any lights on in the loft. He's sprawled out, limbs splayed haphazardly across the lumpy sofa Lydia had insisted he buy because we can't all sit on your bed, Derek, you need actual furniture.
Whatever.
He's been re-reading the same few paragraphs of Of Mice and Men, the part where Slim's dog has the puppies, but his mind keeps wandering, and he lets it, punctuated by the occasional interlude of dozing. There's no image in particular he focuses on as he wades through the daydreams-the pack, where the hell is Peter, what dumb thing is Scott doing now, and where's Stiles?
Stiles, Stiles, Stiles. Boney knees, freckles on a wrist so small and thin he's sometimes worried he'll snap it in half on accident, bright eyes with an obscene red mouth, a mouth that was made by god, or the devil. He hasn't quite decided, because it seems to change day to day. Bless me father for I have most definitely sinned.
The wolf in him stirs, sniffs the air.
Wants.
He must really be dreaming deep, so deep, because he thinks he can smell her for real: sweet and sour, like licking a penny (and yet, still wanting more), Irish Spring soap because it's what her father buys. Plasticine watermelon gum and cherry chapstick.
But then he stills, knows that he hears her for real, because the jeep always rattles when she shifts it into second. Derek's offered to fix it a hundred times. She threw a wrench at his face the last time he tried.
