Chapter Text
An old, black sedan sits parked in front of Hale house. In front of it, walking toward the front steps, is a man holding a shotgun. From the shotgun comes the smell of wolfsbane. Around him, the air hums with the metallic scent of silver.
Talia Hale, the current head of the family, is standing on the steps to the house's wraparound porch. The house is isolated physically, grandfathered in from before the nature reserve existed, but it stands neat and well maintained in the dry California woods.
"I wonder what you think you're doing," Talia says, for all appearances perfectly calm. In jeans and a button-down over a t-shirt, she looks like any normal not-quite-suburban mom. To Derek, watching secretly from his bedroom window, she looks like his mom, standing calmly on the front steps, staring down a man with a shotgun.
*
The new kid at school didn't set out to make friends, but he had such a mysterious aura, Derek couldn't help getting close. Without any particular extracurricular activities, they both had a habit of studying in the library after school.
*
"I heard an interesting rumor," the man says. His identity isn't a mystery. Derek has seen that car before, and his mom probably has, too, whether or not she took note of it.
*
"A 1967 Chevy Impala," Dean had said with a tone of awe that said he probably knew something about cars. "It's a really good car – I mean, it's lasted this long, hasn't it?" Derek agreed, but tried to steer the conversation toward something he knew more about. Like the walking trails in the Reserve. Or the Social Studies homework Dean was currently avoiding.
*
Here and now, Derek's mom stood calmly in front of a man holding a shotgun and said, "I'm not sure I've ever met someone who would arm themself so heavily to chase down a rumor.”
*
"You've never shot a gun?" Dean asked when he was trying to brag about a new firearm his dad had bought him.
"I never really thought about it," Derek admitted. "My family doesn't really go hunting." Not like that, anyway. He had been out, himself, with claws and teeth, with powerful limbs made for the chase. But hunting with a gun? No, never.
He was much more lethal than a gun.
"Maybe we can take you to the range with us sometime," Dean offered, and licked his lips. The soft, pink shine of them was picked up by the punishing California sun.
"Sounds fun," Derek agreed, and took a bite of his undersized school lunch cheeseburger.
*
”Less like a rumor," John Winchester said, and changed his grip on the gun to show he meant business, though he didn't raise it yet. "More… something my son told me. He's been spending time with one of yours."
"I know," Talia Hale said, calm as anything. "One of my own, actually, though if you'd visited more politely you'd find relatives of every type in my house. What on Earth did he tell you that prompted you to bring a gun to a private residence?"
Her demeanor, alone, gave a lot away. There was very little reason to be scared of a human with a gun, when you could react faster than they could fire. But then, if he'd come here looking for werewolves, he wouldn't be convinced even if they really were human.
*
"Hey, uh, do you ever think about…" Dean started, but then trailed off. "No, never mind."
"I'd been thinking something," Derek admitted. They were walking toward downtown from school, but they weren't there yet. It was a hot day for April, probably over 90. He was pretty sure he was thinking about the same thing as Dean.
He ducked into a doorway on the shady side of the back street they were walking through. Backing off, in a way, in case what he said next was too aggressive. Mom said he could come across as aggressive sometimes, to people who didn't know him.
"I'd been thinking… I really like the way your hair gel smells." A sort of sideways confession. Small enough to plausibly deny later. Dean's heartbeat quickened and, right there, just at the very corner of his mouth, was the smallest smile. "And. I was also thinking, maybe we could hold hands."
Dean looked at his hands. Derek held one of them out, ripe for the holding. Miraculously, Dean took it.
They walked a couple blocks like that. Before they emerged into the busy downtown strip, Dean let go of his hand and said, "It's too hot to hold hands. Can't believe it's topped ninety when it isn't even May. In Montana, there'd still be snow on the ground!"
Derek just regretted that he couldn't smell their combined nervous palm-sweat, not while Dean was right there.
They went and got hot dogs and didn't talk about what they'd just done.
*
The gun shifted in Mr. Winchester's grip again, as if it were possible to forget he intended to use it. "Heard all kinds of strange things," he said. "Pointed teeth. Glowing eyes. …Compulsions."
*
"Can I show you something?" Derek asked, lying with Dean on the bed in the little half-house his dad was renting in town.
"Is it another thing with your fingers?" Dean's lips were flushed almost red from kissing him, shiny and soft. Beautiful. His hair smelled like early summer sweat and the hair gel that Derek had bought a small bottle of, to keep under his bed.
"I was just thinking… When you asked me to bite you… Want to see something I can do with my teeth?" It was a silly thing to say, not something he would usually offer, but he wouldn't usually have a secret relationship, either.
Or. Secret from Dean's dad. When he came home, they were just study partners. Friends. At Derek's house, or in private, they could kiss as much as they wanted.
Dean laughed. "Why don't you show me?" he asked.
So Derek dropped his wolf teeth.
*
”You'll have to be more specific," Derek's mom was saying, still standing on the front steps. "If you're going to accuse me of something, I at least deserve to know what it is. You wouldn't want to hurt people based on a misunderstanding."
Mr. Winchester raised his gun, said "Werewolves," and Derek flinched and shut his eyes as a shot rang out.
He might not have been brave enough to look out again if he couldn't hear his mother's heartbeat downstairs, alive and well and very stressed. "Careful," she grunted, and there was a metallic sound and a heavy little thunk as a bullet landed on the leaf-covered dust. A small clatter as she laid the rifle on the porch. "Wouldn't want to hurt someone. Now, let me get this straight: after several months of friendship with your son," thank goodness, he would have to thank her later for calling it 'friendship' and not making Mr. Winchester any angrier than he had to be, "during which time neither your son, nor you, nor anyone you know has been harmed, your son accused him of being a fantasy creature and you decided that was anadequate justification to murder a whole house full of people? I assume because you think we're dangerous?"
"Are you saying you aren't?" Mr. Winchester asked, looking bare and vulnerable without his weapon. He'd pulled a knife out of his pocket, but Derek wondered if he'd even be able to use it if it came to a fight.
"John, think this through for a few moments. If I didn't know you were a hunter, would I have taken your gun in quite that way just now? And yet, I've given you every benefit of the doubt. Our sons are friends. I had been thinking of you as an ally, someone who hunts actual monsters for the harm they do, not pretend monsters because of their shape."
"Your son bared his teeth at mine!" Mr. Winchester snapped. "The pointy ones. If that isn't a threat, what is?"
*
Dean scrambled away from him, nearly falling on the floor. "Whoa, whoa, what?"
Derek retracted the teeth, so they looked like human canines, and grinned. "I'm not going to bite you with them or anything," he promised.
"You have– you're– what?" Dean stuttered.
"Hey, hey, it was a joke," Derek told him. He was starting to get worried; he knew Dean's dad was a monster hunter, but maybe Dean didn't know? Come to think of it, he'd never talked much about his dad's work…
"What the hell are you?" Dean asked, which stung more than it should. He was scrabbling around for something on the cluttered nightstand.
"I'm sorry," Derek said, because it felt like the right thing to say. "I didn't mean to scare you. I'll– I'll never do it again." He understood Pandora and her box very keenly now.
Dean found what he was looking for and pointed a knife, thick and strong and gleaming, at Derek.
*
"Teenagers do inadvisable things sometimes," Talia Hale said in the here and now. "It's a talent they have. If he posed an actual danger to anybody, wouldn't you have heard about it? You know people let their children go hiking in these woods, and we haven't had so much as a cougar sighting in a decade? Not until this dingmaul issue."
"What are you trying to say?" Mr. Winchester asked, his knife steady in his grip. "You aren't real werewolves?"
Talia Hale sighed, the same sigh Derek heard when she was handling PTA business and someone was being especially hard-headed about something that didn't matter. He associated that sigh with his mom sitting on the couch in her reading glasses, not staring down an armed, aggressive trespasser.
*
"What are you?" Dean asked, the knife still pointed at Derek. As upsetting as it was, it was also confusing; they'd been making out on his bed just moments before. "What do you know about me?"
"Whoa, hey, it's fine," Derek said, putting his hands up so Dean could see them. "I thought… I thought you knew about… people like me."
*
"You might be surprised to learn that I don't think you're completely stupid," Derek's mom told Dean's dad. "Look, if we're saying it out in the open, of course I'm a real werewolf. Of course Derek is a real werewolf; when have you ever heard of fake werewolves? What I'm trying to say is that we aren't dangerous, to you or to anyone. We don't let our pups out as wolves until they're able to handle themselves. Beacon Hills is our home; we aren't about to go around murdering our neighbors."
*
"What did you do to me?" Dean asked, standing up slowly with that knife still pointed at Derek. "You… seduced me! Manipulated me! What kind of information were you hoping to get out of me, huh?"
That was the most hurtful insinuation so far. Even worse than the suggestion that Derek was dangerous: the suggestion that he'd mind-controlled and manipulated his way into Dean's heart.
He didn't know what to do. He didn't know where to go. Dean had long since removed the safety screen from his bedroom window, so without a clear way out of the house, Derek jumped down from the second story – his ankle buckled a bit, but it healed quickly – and fled.
*
"I've never met a werewolf like that," John Winchester said. "I've been all around the country doing this."
"You follow the emergencies," Derek's mom reminded him. "Strange sightings and unexplained murders. The Hale family is a proud part of the Beacon Hills community, and we have been for decades. Tell me: have you seen anything in the local paper, or heard anything in the rumor mill, that would indicate a problem with werewolves?"
"You're trying to manipulate me," Mr. Winchester accused. "Why don't you turn on the glowing eyes and make it final?"
"Because I don't want to," Derek's mom told him clearly. "John, be reasonable; I know you can. If I admit that we're werewolves, I need you to understand that Beacon Hills has no werewolf problem. The problem with the werewolves you've hunted before is the murder, not the shapeshifting. Put down the knife, John."
Derek heard police sirens far away. That had been Tia Paloma's job: calling the police. Then she had hustled down into the basement with the pups and most of the adults. Derek's special dispensation to watch from an upstairs window had come from his personal connection to the problem, not any recklessness or lack of planning on his mom's part.
"I have to say, it's hard to believe you after so long," Mr. Winchester said. "So you play the long game. I didn't know it was possible, but let's say I believe you. That's still only the long game."
Derek heard his mom's heart rate pick up as she got even more frustrated. She threw up her hands. "I'm telling you there is no game," she insisted. "Put down the knife. The police are coming. I want to like you, John. I want to be allies in keeping Beacon Hills safe. I don't want you to leave here with police saying they saw you threatening the nice PTA secretary with a hunting knife. And it certainly won't help your case if you accuse me of being a fairy tale."
"You wouldn't risk me exposing you," Mr. Winchester accused. "You're bluffing!"
"Further, you don't want me to talk to the authorities about you," Derek's mom continued. "Dean is a wonderful boy, and he loves you very much, but things do slip out, don't they, when a child thinks his upbringing is normal? Things you wouldn't want CPS to hear about."
Naturally, Derek's mom had been discussing with the other adults exactly how and when to move on that issue. It was beyond obvious that Mr. Winchester hit his kids, especially Dean. It was also clear he abandoned them for long stretches of time, sometimes. They just didn't want to move in a way that would make things worse. It was likely the police were already at the Winchesters' house right now with a social worker, who would be very interested in why Sam and Dean's dad had been brandishing weapons at his neighbors up in the hills.
"I'm not letting a band of mongrels touch my kids," Mr. Winchester said, which honestly hurt a lot to hear. He had never liked Derek that much – Dean said he was suspicious of strangers – but the open vitriol was new.
"Before the police get here, I want to say one thing very clearly," Derek's mom said, and energy hummed in the air, probably making John Winchester feel the same way Derek did when she turned her alpha eyes on him. "I have never killed a single human. I have ensured that no one in my pack kills a single human. And, if anyone in my house treated a child the way you treat yours, they would very quickly find that they were never alone with that child anymore."
Mr. Winchester twitched, and said, "You did call the police," but didn't put his knife down.
"I had no reason to lie about that," Derek's mom reminded him. "Now, do you intend to be brandishing a weapon when they get here, or not?"
"Give me the gun," Mr. Winchester insisted.
"It will be delivered to you before sunset," Derek's mom promised. "I don't like the risk that there could be more bullets in your car."
The sirens stopped, suddenly, but the cars were close enough that Derek could hear them coming: old engines and wheels on dusty roads.
“What will our story be?” Talia asked. “Why did you come up here and threaten to shoot me, in the polite fiction we intend to tell these police officers?”
“Fuck you,” Mr. Winchester said. At last, he lowered his knife and started walking back toward his car. “I don’t take orders from werewolves!”
“They’ll just block your way if you go now, John.” Sure enough, they were rounding the corner. “Listen to me very carefully: you came out here on a hunting trip and got lost, and we panicked when we saw your gun and called the police. But it’s all cleared up now.”
John Winchester wasn’t exactly a rational man. If he were, he wouldn’t have become a monster hunter in the first place. But he lowered his knife and said, “Yeah, sure,” and Derek let out a long breath.
He noticed his mom didn’t.
The police car doors opened and out came police officers in that dusty beige that never looked dirty. Derek recognized Mr. Stilinski, who he’d met when his mom’s car got rear-ended at a traffic light last year.
“Hello there,” he said, announcing himself. Three other officers were getting out of the cars behind him. “I got a call saying there was some sort of disturbance up here.”
“All a misunderstanding,” Derek’s mom told him. She walked down the steps toward him. “John here – do you know John? His son and mine are friends – John got turned around while he was hunting, and we saw the gun before we saw him and got a little spooked.”
“You certain about that?” Mr. Stilinski asked. “Could’ve sworn I saw him pointing a knife at you.”
“It’s a very nice knife,” Derek’s mom said. “The blade is silver. He was telling me all about how that impacts the performance. I wouldn’t have wanted him to leave before you got here; it might look like he was fleeing the scene.”
“We were just killing a little time,” Mr. Winchester agreed. “What happened was, I parked here so I could walk down to the state park – have my hunting license right here,” and, sure enough, Derek heard fabric rustling and paper crinkling, “But I got turned around down in that gulch a while back – new in town, you know? But Talia was just telling me how someone here panicked on account of my having a shotgun and called the police, and by the time everything was sorted out, we figured it would be easier to just explain ourselves.”
Something came through the police radio, staticky and hard to listen to, but the humans seemed to hear it just fine.
“John, I wonder if you can clear something else up for me,” Mr. Stilinski told him. “Because that same caller seemed to know you pretty well. They had some things to say about the way you treat your children.”
*
Dean smelled nervous on a good day. Derek had finagled them into a pair project together, which meant Dean stayed at his house for dinner.
Derek wasn’t stupid. He knew what it meant when someone his age tensed up every time an adult called him. But Derek was the alpha’s second-eldest, and the oldest kid in the house while Laura was out at choir, and some of the adults wanted help with small tasks.
“Do you understand what’s going on between Dean and his father?” his dad asked him that night.
“Yeah. I think it’s probably pretty bad.”
“You understand we have mandatory reporters in the family? We can’t just have him over for dinner sometimes and hope for the best.”
Dean knew CPS had a knack for putting their foot in it, but he also knew just about anything was better than Dean’s stories about times he’d been left alone for weeks at a time, no matter how much he tried to make them sound like fun interludes of badass independence.
“He has a little brother named Sammy,” he said. “You should make sure he gets help, too.”
Two days later, he showed Dean his teeth.
*
Whatever happened with the police and CPS and Dean’s dad, it kept Derek’s mom out of the house until past dinner. Not long after everyone went into town, Derek’s dad came upstairs and told him it was really brave to stay, but he was glad Derek hadn’t needed to go out and say anything. The pups and all the aunts and uncles came up from the basement and a feeling of normalcy was enforced with the help of some cartoons and a MarioKart tournament, but Derek hung out by the kitchen to listen to the adults gossip.
“I mean, who even does that?” Uncle Marco was saying when Derek sidled up onto one of the barstools on the far side of the counter. “Are we even sure he’s a professional? Der’s been necking his kid for weeks, and he shows off the sharp-and-pointies and suddenly he’s supposed to be some kind of cold-blooded killer?”
Dad chimed in with, “I know who’s been leaving marks on that kid, and it sure wasn’t Derek,” and all the wolves growled in agreement. Tia Paloma and Cousin Aggy pounded on the counter a couple times.
“It’s just insulting,” Uncle Marco agreed. “We raise our kids right, make sure they stay out of trouble on full moons, and to a guy like him, it means nothing! Who’s the one starting things around here?”
“Well, not him, anymore,” Tia Paloma murmured, and Derek just about choked on nothing. “Hey, do you guys think Talia will be home for dinner? How many olives are we going to need?”
“If she isn’t, she’ll want to go for a run,” Dad said, and Derek thought he was probably right. “She’ll be hungry either way. She can never sit still when she’s mad.”
Tia Paloma made a noncommittal sound and scattered a small handful of olives over one corner of the arroz con pollo bake that she had just taken out of the oven before putting it back in for a final browning.
“Do you think I’ll still get to see Dean?” Derek asked, and he knew it was a bad time, he knew it was an insensitive question when wanting to be close to Dean had led to a big house-wide emergency, but the question burned in his chest and he had to ask it.
“I think it depends on what’s happening in town right now,” his dad told him, looking apologetic. “And also on what Dean thinks of you. Maybe there’s enough happening that he’ll realize you were trying to open up and tell him more about yourself. Sometimes, people do realize they made a mistake when they panicked. But sometimes, they don’t.”
“I screamed, the first time I saw the claws,” Tia Paloma told him. “Really loud. My landlord came downstairs to check on us, and everything. But now we have kids together, so.” She shrugged and chopped some scallions.
“He feels like he knows what a werewolf is,” Aggy told him, getting a start on some of the dishes, “but he probably hasn’t met one before. He probably spent a lot of that time that his dad was driving out thinking about what a good time you had together. And it’s pretty obvious nothing bad is happening here at the house.” Their point was only emphasized by the cacophony of power-ups and sabotages and racing music coming from the TV in the next room.
Dean’s dad put a hand on his shoulder. “I wish I could make a world for you where everything you did with Dean wasn’t about figuring out which risks you want to take.” He kissed Derek on the side of his head and rubbed his cheek there, and his scent was as warm and comforting as it had ever been. “But I can’t make other people into the way I want them to be. I can only tell you that I don’t think you did anything wrong. You didn’t even expose the masquerade, since he was already a monster hunter’s son.”
"Mom said it was 'inadvisable,'" Derek pointed out. He felt a very strong twinge of shame that he'd done something to make her feel that way.
"Your mother was facing down a man who brought a gun to the house," his dad reminded him, and pulled Derek closer against his chest. Derek breathed in the scent of his parent, of protection. "She wanted to say what was true, but she had to say whatever would calm him down. Maybe you spooked John Winchester's son a little, but the decision to bring a gun to a house full of children isn't one you're responsible for."
"Speaking of responsibility," Uncle Marco said, "Peter, what are you planning to do with the gun?"
"Well, I hardly think we can return it right now, with police and what-have-you all over his house," Uncle Peter said from upstairs. "I have a trunk that locks, so little puppy hands won't be able to reach it overnight." All the wolves downstairs heard a key turn in a lock from the direction of Uncle Peter's bedroom. "I can drop it off in the morning."
Then someone pointed out that things were sounding kind of restless in the media room, and maybe everyone would like to go for a run, so Derek joined in the run with all the pups, still in his human shape because, with Laura gone, he was the only one who knew how to shift at will, and he and Cora were the only two who could shift at all.
*
Dean had been doing everything he could to send the CPS woman away when a police car approached. Out came officers, Derek's mom, and his dad.
He didn't think Mrs. Hale compelled him to do anything, he really didn't (and he wasn't so sure anymore that he thought Derek had compelled him to do anything, either) but she asked things in a way that made him want to answer.
It wasn't that he wanted to betray his dad, or to leave. But things were so hard, and having to look after a no-good kid like him wasn't helping. Maybe it would be a relief, kind of.
So he answered questions like "how long does your dad have to leave for, when he's on a job?" and "does your dad ever get rough with you?" and "how much money does your dad leave when he goes out for a long time?" and then all the adults except the social worker went outside so she could ask how he made money when his dad didn't leave enough, like they all knew what his answer was going to be.
His dad was mad, but he couldn't do anything, not with police and an alpha werewolf there. And he'd see. Things would be better if he didn't have Dean weighing him down.
*
Derek's mom returned late, soaked in sweat and covered in a few stray wolf hairs. She scented Derek quickly before going upstairs for a shower.
"It all worked," she said just as she was about to disappear up the stairs. "The boys are spending the night at the fire station and we'll see how they feel tomorrow."