Chapter Text
When he wakes up, there is nothing.
Well, not nothing nothing.
There is a dead rabbit on the road, looking rather rugged, while cars are rushing by from both sides. He can hear them droning on from a great distance like the headache lurking around the corner of an already bad day. He looks up at the sky, rubbing his head in search of something that could have possibly fallen on his head and caused the emptiness in his mind via serious concussion.
There is only the blue sky, not a cloud in sight. He can feel the icky press of dry grass under his palms, where he is putting his weight on his arms to hold himself up. He feels like he has been lying here for a while, his back aching, uneven ground, stones and sticks pressing into the underside of his legs. Scenting the air around him he notices nothing but wilderness and the dirt of the road for miles. There is a black Chevrolet Camaro parked on the other side of the road and he can smell familiarity all over it.
Deciding that he does not like to sit in the dirt, he gets up. He tries to clean himself of the dirt from the field, which makes him sway a little. He looks up and down the road, focuses on the car and starts staggering up to the asphalt. Suspiciously watching the roadkill rabbit out of the corner of his eye, he crosses the road, another car approaches, has to slow down a little before he is out of the way and immediately starts honking. He frowns. The sun is high up in the sky and he can see some flies circling over the rabbit, another car drives by, directly over the rabbit, missing it with its tires, but not the flies, which are then missing from the scene for a few seconds, before new ones begin to swarm around the carcass.
Breathing deeply, he reaches for the car door, but finds it locked. He sniffs, is sure of the fact the car belongs to him or that he has at least driven it recently, and begins to pat down the pockets of his leather jacket and jeans. He finds the car keys in the front pocket of his trousers, unlocks the doors and swings himself behind the wheel.
He tries to assemble himself.
“Okay.”
Nothing is okay.
He is stranded on the side of a nameless road in the middle of nowhere, nothing, not even traffic signs in sight.
He tries to remember why he had been sitting in the field next to the road. He cannot.
He tries to remember, where he is. He cannot.
He considers stopping one of the frequently passing cars in order to ask directions, but does not like the hypothetical results his brain is immediately coming up with.
“Hello. Where am I?”, he would say.
“You don`t know?”, the imaginary car driver would answer and
No.
He stops his brain at this point before it could come up with further dialogue, because he does very much not like being this out of control. He cannot trust strangers. He cannot trust to tell a stranger that he was not knowledgably in a topic as vital as his own location.
“Better not give anyone that kind of leverage.”
Huffing in annoyance, he searches the inside of the car until he finds a folded map and wallet in the glove compartment. He unfolds the map and finds it’s a map of California. He hopes that means he knows at least which state he is in now. Though, curiously, a piece of the map is missing, torn out rather than neatly cut and he focuses on the area around the missing piece. Unfortunately, it does not ring any familiarity and the surest thing he could say, was that it was part of Northern California. Frustrated he puts the map aside, opening the wallet with his thumbs and going through the cards inside.
Not much to go by.
But.
He pulls out a driver’s license.
“Derek Hale”, he reads the name aloud, turning it over in his head. He is not sure it sounds any more like his own name than any other name would. After a long look in the rearview mirror, he decides that yes, that is his driver’s license. He looks at where it had been issued. “New York.” He scowls.
“Well, that’s fucking helpful.”
He- or well, Derek Hale apparently, puts the driver’s license back into the wallet, and at first, he thinks there is nothing else but some cash in it, before he notices a folded piece of paper sticking out between the dollar notes. It was the missing piece of the map.
On the front there seemed to be nothing unusual of it, just way too much ground to cover, when trying to find oneself, and not a clue as to where to start.
As he turns the piece of paper over, he blinks at stark words that had been messily scrawled over the road lines and various towns and cities, trying not to drown in the infrastructure. Above the words, a tiny speck of Northern California had been circled in blue ballpoint, a town called “Beacon Hills”.
He reads the message quietly.
“Don’t try to get memory back. You traded it for sth better. Find Stiles. You can trust him. D.H.”
“What’s a Stiles?”, Derek mumbles.
*
It takes some contemplation, but finally Derek decides to follow the road the direction the car is pointing to. If he rolls down the window and concentrates on the scent traces, he can recognize that he has come from the other direction, parked the car, and, well, then the scent loses itself.
Derek is pretty sure, he did not just get out of the car, cross the road, sit in the dry grass in order to write an ominous note to himself and then conspicuously lose his own memory without any outer assistance.
He is pretty sure.
Still, that is exactly what his nose tells him happened.
So, in lack of a better option, he decides to follow the path he was originally going until he would come across a road sign, a gas station or whatever else, which could point him in the right direction to Beacon Hills.
Which is where he would be going
in order to find
a Stiles.
Whatever that is.
Oh, he has no illusions that his was not a trap, set by malicious minds, first taking his memory from him and then directing him without any trace of suspicion to the place, where they were undoubtably going to catch him and… well, he is not sure, what they are going to do to him, but probably something bad, like torture or religious sacrifices. Maybe that is why they had not just kidnapped him, but they want him to come ‘on his own free will’, leading the lamb to slaughter and such.
He was not going to run into a trap that easily.
Still, where else is there for him to go?
Decisively, he puts the map on the passenger seat and starts the engine.
*
The first road sign he comes across is not much help. It points him into the direction of a tiny ass town, whose name he actually finds in close proximity to Beacon Hills, but he is not completely sure whether he is driving in the direction of Beacon Hills, or away from it.
So, he keeps going.
Only as he is crossing the tiny ass town and finds the “You’re are leaving/entering” sign on the other side, can he tell for sure that he is, in fact, heading in the right direction. Though, by his own judgement and map reading skills, it will still take him close to an hour until he reaches his goal.
The sun begins to set and he glances at the time, seeing it is already close to seven pm. He tries to calculate back to when he had awoken in the field. He thinks, it might be important to know exactly when and where he has lost everything he had known and had been. But it had all been so fuzzy. Even now, he feels dizzy, thinking back to those first thoughts, where there had been nothing in his mind at all.
The roadside had looked unbelievably unspectacular.
There had been no specific smell to differentiate the place he had woken up in from any other.
Nothing but the direction he had come from, the car, and that damned dead rabbit.
Gripping the stirring wheel tighter, he growls slightly and then squints at the upcoming sign on the right side.
“Welcome to Beacon Hills”
*
There seems to be nothing special about Beacon Hills itself.
It appears to be a nice little town with parks, houses, diners, schools in a green valley surrounded by hills and forests and wilderness. Derek has the window rolled down, breathing the deep fresh air, letting it sooth him.
Immediately, he gets his guards up again and reminds himself of the traps.
Nevertheless, he does not get the feeling that the town itself poses any threat, and he slows his car down as he drives first through the suburban, then the urban areas, trying to catch a glimpse or a scent of anything that would lead him the way further.
He is not sure, whether he should avoid any eye contact with pedestrians at all, or give his best try in staring them down, just in case. He reaches for the glove compartment, because he had noticed sunglasses in there earlier, and puts them on his nose in order to leave his across guessing as to which option he had chosen.
Then, Derek would never admit it to anyone, not even himself, he nearly dies, as a police cruiser pulls onto the street behind him and signals him to stop the car
He tells himself to keep cool, sets the blinker and pulls the car to the side. The police cruiser parks behind him and an older man in uniform steps out from the driver’s side. As he comes closer, Derek catches a glimpse of his Sheriff’s star in the side mirror. The older man walks up to Derek and looks through the open car window.
“I thought that car looked familiar”, he says evenly after a few seconds.
“Sheriff”, Derek replies, keeping his voice even. He hopes this has not already been a false move.
“I didn’t know you’d be back in town.” The Sheriff sounds… disapproving? “Since when have you been back? Did you tell Stiles about your plans?”
Derek’s heart somersaults, but he tries not to let it show. He still has the sunglasses on and feels there is a good chance, none of his emotions show on his face.
Stiles.
This man knows Stiles.
Like, personally, it seems.
“I’ve only returned just now, and no, I didn’t tell anyone”, he says with as little inflection as possible.
The Sheriff musters him thoughtfully, while hooking his thumbs into his belt. Derek’s eyes flick for a second over the gun, then back to the Sheriff’s face, which looks as if he is contemplating, what he now wants to do with Derek. He does not look as if arresting him is completely out of the question.
“Well, maybe you pay him a visit, at least, if you stick around. That the plan?”
“Huh?”
“You plan on staying or are you just… passing through?”
“I- I don’t know yet.”
“Huh.”
A few second pass again.
“Yeah, well, if you want to tell Stiles, you’re back, I know he’d like to know. He’s only been back a few days himself. Hasn’t made plans for staying yet, either. Quite a coincidence that you both return just at the same time after having been gone for such a long time, huh?”
The Sheriff’s tone indicates, he did not think it a coincidence. At all.
“I guess.” Derek shrugs and tried to look standoffish at the possible invasion of privacy. To be honest, he is quite glad to get some information on his person, even if it is possibly unreliable. He now knows, that he had been in Beacon Hills before, that he knows the Sheriff, though, whether that was a good thing remains to be seen, and he had not been here for quite some time.
“Alright”, the Sheriff says suddenly, backing a bit off from the car. “I guess, I let you get going, then. But if you want to drop by sometime, you know where we live.”
Derek does not know.
He wants to know, though.
Especially, if it would lead him straight to this mysterious Stiles.
So, he takes a risk and gives his own person some humor.
“Your house didn’t change place?”, he asks, trying to put sarcasm in his voice, but without sounding snarky. He wants an answer, after all.
“Ha”, the Sheriff says, seemingly surprised. Yeah, Derek also could not imagine himself as a jokester. “Nah, still ol’ Woodbine Lane. Not much changes around here, it seems. Although, I’m quite alright with that, after all the ruckus we had in the past.” The Sheriff’s tone turns quite melancholic against the end here and Derek tries to take up the atmosphere.
“Yeah, I guess, a little bit boringness never hurt anybody.”
The Sheriff nods. Nods again, indicating the end of this conversation, and returns to his own car. Derek grips the wheel a little harder, breathes and repeats quietly “Woodbine Lane. Woodbine Lane. Woodbine Lane” as he starts the engine again and pulls back onto the road.
*
Once he cannot see the police cruiser in the rearview mirror anymore, Derek parks in front of a diner and pulls the map into his lap. It is difficult to locate single street names in the mess that is a whole state’s infrastructure, and he quickly gives up, decides, Beacon Hills cannot be that big, and returns to driving. He is sure to find the correct street by curving around slowly, reading signs, but once he is surprised by that one new scent, he forgets what he is looking for entirely.
The surprising new scent makes the hairs in his neck stand on ends, leaves his skin prickling and the wolf inside him whine pitifully.
He’s never smelled something like this before, which… does not say much in his current state of mind.
It smells of cinnamon, caffeine, freshly cut grass, forest, sweat
and magic.
It smells comforting and familiar, which soothes him and scares him at the same time. He does not know what to do, how to react to these strong feelings over the scent of a person, he has no memory of, has, as far as his mind is concerned, never even met.
His wolf does not care.
It pulls him down the street, turning down onto another, another, until he is pulling into the driveway in front of a seemingly ordinary house with an old-looking Jeep parked in front of it, and before he even knows what he is doing, he is out of the car and on the front porch, knocking on the door.
He can hear movement inside.
His mind tells him to LEAVE IMMEDATELY!
His wolf tells him to staystaystay!
He does nothing and the door opens.
The man in front of him is lean, though muscular with broad shoulders, wearing a dark shirt with a plaid flannel shirt over it. He is about the same height as Derek himself, and has short brown hair and honey eyes that widen in surprise as he sees Derek.
“Dude! I didn’t know you were back in town!”, he exclaims, looking at Derek in wonder.
“I-“, Derek stammers, but is left hanging by his apparent confusion.
The man obviously seems to know him. It absolutely fits what the Sheriff has hold him and if he concentrates, Derek can smell the Sheriff in this house as well, but Derek does not care about that currently. Derek inhales and is horrified to notice his nostrils are flaring. With every breath he takes in more of the man’s smell and he needs to stop immediately, before loses control.
“Dude, don’t strain yourself, I know you don’t like being called dude, but man, why didn’t you tell me, you were back in town? I didn’t expect you to call, but at least a short text? Would that have been too much? Don’t answer, I know being sociable isn’t your modus operandi. Honestly, I’m just glad you’re showing yourself without me having to drag your furry ass out of some hole. By the way? The door!? I don’t even remember, if you ever did that before!”
The man uses his hands a lot when he is speaking. Derek has troubles following their movement, not just because of their speed, but because he keeps getting stuck on individual elements of his physic, his hands, his fingers, the faint scares on his skin. His skin.
The man raises his arms above his head and exclaims:
“Like, don’t take this as a complaint, but why didn’t you enter through my window?”
Well.
Derek is not sure.
Instead, he is terrified.
And possibly heating up a bit.
“No words, man, huh? Don’t worry, I can converse with your eyebrows if must be. But come inside mi casa, don’t just stand there on mi doormatta, come in!”
So, Derek does. He follows the waving man, who strides through the entryway into the kitchen, and even closes the door behind him. In the kitchen the man begins to go through the cabinets, pulling out a plate with what seems leftover pizza, turns to Derek, asks:
“Want anything?”
Derek shakes his head.
The man shrugs.
“More for me then.”
Then he stuffs one of the pizza slices into his mouth, and Derek stares, and the man turns around, walks around Derek out of the kitchen again and Derek numbly follows him up the stairs. The room they land in is pure chaos. A giant suitcase is taking up most of the floor space, clothes are hanging out of, books sticking out in between. The bed is unmade and the desk almost is not visible under opened documents, books and various plates with left overs or half empty glasses.
The man sits himself into his desk chair and lets Derek sort himself out. Derek decides, there are no other options than to sit on the bed, so he does that. He immediately regrets the choice as the bed smells like someone, the man, has just taken a nap in it and now Derek also notices the slight traces of sleep sand around the man’s eyes, the soft red marks on his cheek and Derek also notices the little brown freckles.
“So how long have you been back for?”, the man asks after chewing and swallowing.
Derek tries to shake himself, but his mind is quite clouded and he has to focus to remember what the man had asked him.
“Today”, he answers briskly, trying not to inhale too much of the warm, comfortable air.
“Only today?!”
“Yes.”
“Well, not gonna lie, I’m surprised you’re dropping by so shortly after you’re back. I’m kinda feeling honored. You plan on staying?” He inspects Derek closely, drawing his eyes together, while chewing on pizza crust.
Derek is silent.
“We’ll see.”
The man nods.
“Guess that’s as good as I can expect. I don’t know what to do either, honestly. Kinda trying to figure myself out. That’s why I came back to stay with my dad again, like, for the meantime while I figure something else out. You know?”
It is a rhetoric question, since the man clearly does not need Derek’s input in order to hold up the conversation. So, Derek mostly just tries to look attentive, but also like he does not want to give any answers. He doubts he is able to hold a conversation at this moment, not just because he has no idea what to say, but because he is very much distracted.
The man notices, or maybe he is just used to people reacting like that, and replies himself.
“My dad, of course, thinks I should go back or anywhere really, look for some better job offer in the big city and get out of little old Beacon Hills, where your nice and friendly neighborhood consists of kanimas and hunters trying to kill you.”
Derek does his best to control his heartbeat.
The man knows about the supernatural. The wonderful smelling man knows about the supernatural. He must know about werewolves, too. He must know Derek is a werewolf. He must.
“Hm!”, the man makes a noise like he just remembered something important. He puts the plate aside and jumps out of the chair. “Stay there, I just forgot, I still have this open pack of chips lying around down in the living room.”
With that he is out of the room and Derek breathes in deeply, giving himself the chance to blink, repeatedly, and look dazedly around the room. He notices the window and remembers what the man had said to him about Derek usually coming through the window.
He quickly tries not to think about it, instead straightening his jacket, his hands pulling sharp fingernails over his jeans, trying to calm himself.
He closes his eyes and smells mountain ash.
*
Within the second Derek knows he has made a mistake. He flies out of the room and takes almost three steps at ones on his way down and to the front door which is staying wide open.
Why didn’t he hear the door?
Why did he let the man leave the room?
Why did he follow him inside in the first place?
He knows why and he curses himself for letting his wolf get the better of him.
Why did he have to be so stupid?
Why had he been so trusting?
He had just lost his memory, for god’s sake! He could not go around following strange men into their bedrooms without any second thought! He had been stupid and now he was paying the prize for it!
When Derek breaks through the open front door, he violently comes to a halt, hands curled to fists at his sides. Too late he notices he has wolfed out, boring his claws into his own palm and his bottom lip catching on his prolonged fangs.
There the man in the shirt and plaid flannel is standing in the front yard, a line of mountain ash between him and Derek, probably circling the whole house. Derek is trapped inside and it is of his own fault.
The man is still holding a little bag, probably where he is keeping his stack of mountain ash. He watches Derek with stern, hard eyes, which Derek likes a lot less on him, in contrast to the open and surprised smile he had given him, when he had first seen him only minutes earlier.
“Look, I’m really sorry if this is a mistake on my part”, the man begins. “but if not, then you know that I’ve gone through enough to not just ignore a bad feeling. We both have, I guess. And again, if this is a mistake, then I’m really sorry to do this to you, but you gotta answer me some questions.”
Derek growls, and the man, oddly, smiles a little sadly.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. You’ve just been a little off today, with, like everything”, he says, almost to himself. “So, tell me, who are you?”
“You know me”, Derek insists. Because he is sure of that. He admits, he has not been on top of his mind with most things today, first, losing his memory, second, getting off path in order to follow a smell and third, getting so caught up in that said smell that he lets himself get trapped like a newborn pup. But he is sure.
This man knows him, or at least, has known him.
Derek just could not bear it any other way.
The man shakes his head a little, and Derek’s heart stutters.
“I’m not so sure of that.”
“You do”, Derek insists.
“Then tell me, how did I first save your life?”
Derek is quiet.
What else is he supposed to do? He has no idea, how this man has saved his life. He has no memories of any of it and he is too afraid, no, not afraid. He is too unsure of the little he knows to risk and say something false.
At his silence, the man looks even sadder.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. You know what, I’m gonna give you another try, because maybe you’re just getting things mixed up. We saved each other quite a lot, after all, but this next question is something I never used to shut up about, so you know… better not get that wrong.”
He looks at Derek as if he really hopes this was just a fluke and he will get the next question right. Derek really has no hope he will.
“Who’s the person, I was in love with for like, all my teenager life, like you know, crush so giant you can see from the moon?”
And Derek is quiet. He thinks it may be a trick question, but he rather says nothing than saying anything so horribly wrong it will get him killed.
The man sighs.
“Well shit, what am I-“
“Wait!” Derek calls, holding his hand up, still in beta shift. “I really am me. I’ am, I guess, I’m Derek Hale, I just-“
The man looks rather skeptically and Derek cannot really blame him.
“I just lost my memory.”
The man raises his eyebrows.
“You lost your memory?”
“Yes.” Derek exhales, feeling surprisingly light after his confession.
“Like, lost your memory like because of amnesia, because you hit your head? Or did you get some sickness, like dementia? Is it dementia, dude? Because I thought werewolves couldn’t get sick and I really hope you didn’t get cursed and now have the memory of a goldfish. Wait, do you still know how you got here? Do you remember me eating that pizza? Wait, yeah, you probably do, but, like amnesia?”
Derek feels a bit faint.
“Yes”, he says, not sure, what he is answering to, “I remember you eating that pizza.”
The man wrinkles his nose.
“Well, I guess that’s good. Though, I can’t just believe you, you get that?”
“I get that.” Derek lets his shoulders hang. The man nods, keeps nodding and begins to walk up and down in front of the porch, always a few inches between himself and the barrier of mountain ash. Derek tries to pull himself together and get his wolf back on the inside, lest he be seen by some noisy neighbors. He watches the man thinking about possible solutions to having a potentially dangerous strange werewolf trapped in his own house, with him on the outside.
“Better get this resolved, before dad’s shift ends”, the man mutters as if they had just thought the exact same thing. The swirls around to Derek and points at him with his index finger.
“I know a spell. I mean, I know many spells, but I can do this specific spell in order to, like, see if you’re possessed or whatever.”
He looks at Derek. Contemplating.
“Well?”, Derek asks after a while, because, well, what other option is there.
“I need some stuff from my room to perform it”, Stiles explains.
“What?”
“I can do a spell to see if you are an evil being or Derek who lost his memory, but in order to do that, you need to go and get me a few things from my room”, Stiles elaborates as if this was completely reasonable.
Derek crosses his arms. He can feel that the fresh air is doing wonders to his confused mind. Less having to inhale the scent of this particularly weird man and more breathing, well, different things. More manageable things.
“And why should I do that?”
“See?”, the man says like he might be crazy, “this is where we have to think logically. If you are, indeed Derek, oh emotionally constipated Derek we all know and love, or love to hate or whatever, then this is in your best interest. You go and get me my stuff and let me do my thing as usual, you know, like all the times you came over to have me do your research. Or… I guess, you don’t know. Anyway, in the other case, the case of you being some evil being that took over Derek’s body, and let’s face it, goals, because if you’re gonna steal a body, this is definitely the one to go by, then you would, of course, not want me to find about it, and therefore, not go get me my things and let me do my thing.” He stops walking up and down and gives Derek an expectant look.
“You want me to go get your stuff, so you can perform some spell on my to convince you I’m really me?”
“Yeah, dude.”
“Don’t call me dude”, Derek replies irritably.
“You already sound like yourself again. So?”
Derek lifts an eyebrow. The man makes shooing motions with his hands. Derek curses his existence, rolls his eyes and gets going.
*
About half an hour later, Derek is still leaning against the doorframe and watches the man sitting cross-legged in the dry grass, tinkering with his equipment and occasionally glancing at the open book lying in the yard next to him. It looks a little like he decided to cook his dinner not in the kitchen like a normal person, but in the grass instead, cutting ingredients on his wooden board, grinding them and mixing them together in a little bowl.
Lost in thought, Derek watches the man’s face as he concentrates on the recipe for his spell, the little freckles on his face, his forearms, now visible as he has rolled up his sleeves. Derek does not notice the man has asked him something, as he is trying to count the freckles and unconsciously leans in a little closer to get another whiff of his scent.
“Dude.”
Derek staggers.
“What?”
“I said it’s ready. Come over and have a sip.”
“You want me to drink that?”
“Yeah, doesn’t work as well as an ointment, so, bottoms up.”
He holds the little bowl up, offering. Derek unfolds the arms he has crossed in front of his chest and steps closer. He bends down a little to take the bowl from the man’s hand and eyes it warily.
“How do I know this isn’t poison?”
The man shrugs.
“I guess, you don’t. But look at it that way. I got you trapped, so, I could have killed you already. No need for making a cooking lesson out it.”
Derek nods and puts the bowl against his bottom lip. He drinks every drop of the liquid, which is surprisingly tasteless. Only when he lowers it again, he thinks to ask:
“What’s this going to do?”
“It’s truth juice, man. Unsuspected consequences might be evisceration, time travel, flaying of flesh, STDs or castration. Tell me if any of these things happen to you.”
“What the hell?”
“Does it work already? Do you ever lick your own ass when you’re fully shifted?”
“What the hell?”, Derek asks annoyed, thrusting the bowl back into the other man’s arms.
“So, no?”
“No, I mean, it’s how wolves clean themselves, I mean, nyes, nyes!”, Derek shouts as he furiously tries to deflect the man’s question. He tries to say no, but his mouth does not seem to work right anymore.
“Oh my god, it’s working, that’s great! Also, the other thing, amazing, but now what am I gonna ask you to find out, whether or not you lost your memory, I mean, I cannot really ask you anything about yourself, if you don’t know… or do I ask you about yourself and if you do know, I know you did not lose your memory?”
Derek looks at him sternly.
“Oh, yeah, right! Are you Derek Hale?”
“Yes”, Derek hears himself replying and he had not known how badly he wanted to know this himself until he feels the relief wash over him.
“Good! Are you yourself?”
“I, er, yes, I guess.”
“You aren’t possessed?”
“No.”
“Alright, alright. Did you lose your memory?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember how you lost it?”
“No.”
“So, you don’t remember anything from before you lost it?”
“I, no, er, nothing personal.”
“Nothing personal, hm?”
The man glances around the area and seems to notice for the first time the other car parking in the driveway.
“Yeah, I guess, you wouldn’t have been able to drive your car here if you’d forgotten everything. How do you know you’re Derek then, though?”
“I found my driver’s license.”
“Smart.”
Derek rolls his eyes.
“Okay, so why did you come here, then? If you don’t remember me. You don’t, do you?”
“I don’t remember you from before I lost my memory.”
The man looks at him like he waits for him to continue. Derek does not even have to force the words out, they just come flying, like being pulled by an invisible fishing hook.
“I woke up a few hours ago in a field. I was right next to the road where the Camaro stood and I had the keys, so I gathered it is my car. In the car I found my driver’s license and my wallet. In the wallet I found a map with Beacon Hills circled and”, he hesitates, “a note.”
The man perks up.
“A note?”
“Yeah”, Derek grits out. The man looks back at the car, back at Derek again, and, without saying anything, runs up to the black Camaro. For a short second Derek thinks he will not be able to get inside since Derek still has the keys. But then he remembers the frenzy he had been in to get to the house from where that wonderfully enticing smell was coming from, and just as sure, the door opens without trouble as the man pulls at it. He climbs through the driver’s door and when he finally resurfaces again, he holds the torn-out piece of paper in his hand.
From a distance, Derek can see his face frowning in concentration as he reads the short note, then he looks up, over to Derek with wide eyes.
“So, you just followed this note to me?”
“No. I tried to find Stiles.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, I”, Derek stops himself before he could embarrass himself even further. Still, he obviously is not fast enough, because the man has seen the surprise on his face and is now looking even more confused. The man. The man is Stiles. The man is Stiles from the note!
Derek could have hit himself.
The note told him to find Stiles. He followed the note to this town, where the Sheriff stopped him and also told him to find Stiles. He has smelled the Sheriff in the house of this man. This man is Stiles.
“What the hell is a Stiles?”, he asks indignantly, because if he is going to look like an idiot anyway, he at least wants to drag this man down with him.
“The better option to my birthname”, Stiles smirks. “But, dude, how did you find me, if you only just realized that it’s me, you’re looking for?”
“I followed your scent” is out of Derek’s mouth before he even has a chance to bite down on his lip. He curses himself.
“My scent?”, Stiles squawks.
“It smelled familiar”, Derek cries.
“But I thought you can’t remember anything?!”
“I can’t! Not with my mind anyway!”, Derek manages to press out without the additional “not even with my nose”. Because he cannot actually remember Stiles’ scent. He just likes it very, very much. He knows how his nose works. He was able to smell himself all over the Camaro, which is why he recognized it as his car. He does not remember the Sheriff, although he had obviously met him before and he does not remember Stiles, even thought, he smells like all things home. But Derek be damned if he just tells him that.
“Well, that’s not too bad. Then I guess, we’re done. You remember you’ve smelled eau de stiles before, your note screams of survivor guilt and you being like all self-sacrificing and taking every opportunity to make your own life more miserable is just your standard weekday. So, I’m gonna take your word on that one, also the spell would have given you really bad cramps if you’d be lying on principle as in impersonating someone else.”
“What? You said it’s a truth serum.”
“I called it truth juice, and preventing you from lying in any form is exactly what it does. Pretending to be someone else and wearing their face is just another form of lying.”
“Alright! Alright!”. Derek barks, crossing the arms in front of his chest once more. Stiles looks at him curiously and the werewolf begins to scowl.
“So? What now?”, he asks impatiently.
“Now I’m gonna go and trust you to not kill me, when I break the mountain ash barrier.” He begins to destroy the line with the tip of his shoe, his eyes never leaving Derek’s. “And now I’m gonna go inside, because it’s getting late and I still have to cook dinner, before dad comes home from his shift.” He crosses the destroyed barrier, passes Derek, who stops him with a hand on his arm.
“My note”, he barks. Stiles looks surprised for a second that he is still holding the note and drops it into Derek’s open palm.
“Here, sourwolf. Now come. We’ll need to figure out a plan on what to do about your amnesia. But first there will be vegan burgers. Since you forgot, my dad needs to watch his cholesterol.”
*
“Man, I can’t believe you lost your memory. That’s like, so cliché, a real bummer”, Stiles says as he flips the veggie patties in the pan.
He has Derek slicing the tomatoes, who is slightly confused on how they got to this stage. Still, he has found Stiles, which is the person he is to trust if the note was really written by himself, so, he would say the day has been pretty successful.
Apart from losing all of his memories.
He imagines even that had some sort of purpose, as even the note he had left for himself to find suggests. He just wonders what he could have possibly traded his own memory for.
Not at the moment, though.
At the moment he slices tomatoes and listens to Stiles describing how much of a bummer it is that Derek lost his memory.
“Yes. Bummer”, he deadpans and Stiles cackles.
“Am I only imagining it or did you get funnier for losing your memory.” He instantly snaps his mouth shut after he said it, looking at the sizzling pan in horror. “Sorry, I guess, I guess I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why not?” Derek draws his eyebrows together.
“Well, I, er, forget it, did you want onions in your burger? If yes, there must be some in that bowl over there.”
Despite still being interested in what Stiles had wanted to say, Derek decides to let it slide for now and goes to retrieve one of the onions. They continue to work mostly in silence as Stiles seems to be lost in thought.
After a while, Derek’s ears perk up upon hearing another car arrive. At first, he cannot tell which car it is, but when a door is shut and steps are approaching the house, he can hear the familiar scent and heartbeat of the Sheriff he had met earlier. Only seconds later, a key twists in the lock of the front door and the Sheriff walks into the kitchen, halting as he sees Stiles preparing the burgers and Derek setting the table.
“Hello, son. Derek.”
Son. The Sheriff is Stiles’ father.
“Hello, daddio, dinner’s just finished.”
The Sheriff eyes the burgers on the table, then throws Derek another inspecting glance.
“Didn’t expect to see you so soon again.”
“Huh?”, Stiles asks and sits down at the table. “What do you mean? Derek’s been away forever.”
“Maybe so, but it seems he is back in town”, the Sheriff says, washing his hands in the sink and sitting down on the other side of the table. He fixes his eyes on Derek. “And when I met him a few hours earlier driving through town, I told him he should come see you. I didn’t think right away, though.”
Derek sits down at the table as well and reaches for the mayonnaise.
“You already met today?”, Stiles squawks indignantly. “And you told him to visit?” He turns to Derek. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Derek shrugs.
“I didn’t know he meant you and then I sort of forgot.”
The Sheriff looks at him strangely. Then he turns to his son.
“Son? Explain?”
“Derek lost his memory and can’t remember either of us. He’s really confused, but not possessed so I invited him to dinner.”
The Sheriff inspects the werewolf closely.
“Lost your memory, hm? And you didn’t think you could have told me that earlier when I mildly threatened you to be more sociable?” He takes a large bite from his vegan burger, chewing like a man already having had to except one faith today and therefore not willing to let this other thing slide.
“Er”
“Dad, he didn’t know he could trust you! I mean, he lost his memory! How should he have known he can trust you if he doesn’t remember you or maybe remembering you in a deep underlying way but not in what relation you stand to each other. He can’t go up to the next best person, saying, help me, I lost my memory!”
“Well, next time he loses his memory he knows.”
“I don’t think it works that way.” Derek grunts. Both of these people are seemingly crazy and here he is, sitting with them at the table and eating burger patties made of fritted peas and corn. He weirdly feels like he should have objected to this kind of treatment. Asking to give real meat to the wolf or something.
He had never once in his life thought about cholesterol.
“So, Derek, where are you staying?”
“Here, tonight, I think that’s for the best”, Stiles answers in the werewolf’s place.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Better keep an eye on him.” Then Stiles winks at Derek and Derek hastily stuffs the rest of his burger in his mouth.
Later, they set up the guest bedroom for him, Stiles tells him to find his way, “You know, just follow your nose, I bet bathrooms have a particular smell, you’ll know it”, then hands him shirt and joggers and a towel. When Derek holds the clothes up and asks whose they are, Stiles tells him, “Yours. Well, I borrowed them once and left them in my closet. No reason to sort them out when I was away to study, anyway.”
The clothes smell of washing powder and soap and very faintly of Stiles. Stiles leaves him to it, and Derek changes into the borrowed clothes, hugging them to him as he settles in the freshly prepared guest bed. As he listens to the calming sound of Stiles breathing in the other room, he falls asleep and only wakes in the morning when he hears someone singing in the shower.
*