Chapter Text
It starts when Claudie has a nightmare. Derek comes struggling out of sleep to find Stiles already cuddling their little girl in his arms and mumble-singing something under his breath as he sways from side to side and Claudie wails softy. Stiles is sleep-mussed with lines on his cheek from the way he sleeps with his face jammed into the pillow. His gaze is unfocussed, his movements slow. He might still be asleep, Derek thinks.
Derek doesn’t know the song that Stiles is murmuring, but very slowly Claudie’s wails trail off into hiccupping little sobs, and then just hiccups, and then a long drawn-out sigh, and finally silence. Stiles sways with her for a few minutes more, then sets her down in her crib again and turns around.
“Hey,” he murmurs, knocking his hip against Derek as he stands in the doorway of the nursery. “You didn’t have to get up.”
Derek wraps his arms around him and draws him close. He presses a kiss to the top of his head.
Stiles yawns, snuffles, and lets Derek draw him back to bed.
***
The song makes a reappearance years later, for Conor. Conor isn’t prone to nightmares like Claudie was for a little while there. But he is prone to dressing up and singing the songs he loves from the movies that he and Stiles watch avidly. Derek has come home more than once to find Stiles dressed like Cinderella, and Conor dressed like Little Red.
“I refuse to be embarrassed,” Stiles tells him one afternoon, lifting his skirts and stalking away haughtily. “I look incredible.”
Conor trails after him, the hem of the red hoodie he borrowed from Stiles sweeping the ground behind him.
Derek and Claudie exchange a dubious look, and Derek sets Claudie’s school backpack down on the floor.
“He does look incredible,” Derek admits to Claudie.
She bursts into giggles, and runs after Stiles and Conor.
***
“Holy fuck,” Stiles whispers as he holds the baby close. Because, in times of high emotion, Stiles is terrible at modifying his language around children. And not just his own children. He’s been asked not to return to story time at the library. Apparently he got overenthusiastic during We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. “Der!”
Derek crouches down in front of him. He curls one hand around Stiles’s knee, and the other around the baby’s crown.
“Der, where’s his mom?” Stiles asks, and his voice strains on the word, and then breaks.
Derek leans forward and inhales gently, learning the scent of their newest pup.
Luke is a gift, and he’s one that both Stiles and Derek are afraid they will get asked to give back at any time. They don’t know what pack he’s from. They don’t know how he ended up in Beacon Hills. They don’t know what happened to the people who loved him before they did.
With Luke, the song takes on a different tone when Stiles sings it.
“Sometimes people leave you,” Stiles sings softly to Luke, “halfway through the wood.”
And Luke stares up at him placidly, as if he doesn’t mind the way Stiles sometimes ends the song there, before it’s even really begun.
***
As the kids grow, Derek finds he misses the song. He misses listening to Stiles sing it to the kids. It’s just a song from some dumb movie, and the kids have outgrown it. They’re into different things now. Even Stiles doesn’t hum the song as much. He’s happy to be into whatever the kids are into.
But Derek kind of misses the song.
***
“Der?” Stiles asks, leaning in the doorway. “What are you doing?”
That should be obvious, surely. He’s on his knees in the living room, pulling every DVD they own out of the cabinet underneath the television, because he’s crazy. He’s a crazy man now. It’s almost three a.m. and why the fuck does this even matter right now? He finished his shift by midnight, and he came home to the dinner Stiles had left for him in the fridge, and he should be in bed, but for some reason he needs to find that stupid movie, find that stupid fucking song, and—
Stiles’s knees thump down onto the rug behind him, and he wraps his arms around him from behind. “Der.”
“What?” He stares at the glossy DVD covers shining on the floor.
How the hell did they end up with so many damn kids’ DVDs when DVDs are meant to be obsolete now anyway? Probably because the kids go through these intense periods of attachments to their favorites, and some of their less technologically-minded babysitters—Stiles’s dad, mostly—don’t have the first clue how to stream their movies. And it would be unthinkable to have a sleepover at Grandpa’s without Minions, right?
“What are you doing?” Stiles asks again, his breath warm against Derek’s shoulder.
He has no fucking idea. No idea. “I wanted to find that movie. That one with the song?”
“What?”
"The song!”
He misses the warmth and the weight of him when Stiles stands up. But then Stiles moves around in front of him and holds out a hand to help him to his feet.
“Okay,” Stiles says quietly. “I was gonna ask what the hell is going on with you, but it’s the twelfth, isn’t it?”
Shit. Is it? Derek feels the blood drain from his face. How could he forget? He never forgets. It’s the anniversary of the fire, and it’s three in the morning, and what the hell is he even doing right now?
Stiles draws him away from the open cabinet and the cascade of DVDs. Draws him quietly up the stairs and into the quiet sanctuary of their bedroom. The moonlight is bright tonight. It paints their bedroom in silver, and makes Stiles’s skin glow.
Stiles shoves the comforter back and eases Derek down onto the mattress. Then he climbs in beside him, and puts his arms around him. It’s easy for Derek to close his eyes and rest his cheek on Stiles’s chest. Stiles is warm and smells of home.
And he always knows exactly what Derek needs.
Stiles’s voice is a little croaky, and he stumbles over a word or two, maybe wavers a little between notes. He sounds exactly the same way he did when he sang this song to their kids. It’s not just the song. It’s not just the words. It’s the way that Stiles sings it, like it’s a promise he’s making, one that Derek didn’t even consciously realize he needed to hear tonight.
“You are not alone,” Stiles tells him. “Believe me, no one is alone.”
Derek closes his eyes as Stiles cards his fingers gently through his hair. Tears sting his eyes as he cries for his lost family. As he thanks whatever power exists in the universe for his new one. And the entire time he cries, until the moment he at last falls into an exhausted sleep, Stiles sings to him:
“Someone is on your side. You are not alone.”