triskehale | if only in my dreams

It seems like before Derek can even blink, it's December.

He stops paying attention for a minute and there are Christmas lights up everywhere, more hustle and bustle in the streets and canned holiday music pumping out from seemingly every single speaker in the city. Derek's in a decent mood, despite all this. Things with Stiles are moving forward in ways he never imagined. Stiles has feelings for him. Real, actual feelings similar to those Derek has for him, if maybe not as strong in intensity. It's enough to keep Derek buoyant and light on his feet, able to ignore most everything else.

They need some groceries, so Derek heads into the grocery store and grabs a basket. He gets sort of lost in his own head and slips into auto-pilot, grabbing things from the shelves. He comes back to awareness in the seasonal aisle and blinks down at the bag of candy cane Hershey's kisses in his hand. They were Laura's favorite Christmas candy. Derek hated the smell and the taste and she'd eat them all day, crumpling up the wrappers and throwing them with perfect precision at Derek's head.

Laura always handled Christmas. She made sure Derek never got too lost in memories or pain, made sure to keep his spirits bright, as the song goes. He swallows hard and looks from the candy, down to the basket where many of their holiday staples are currently residing.

He'd been shopping for his sister, like he hadn't remembered that she was gone. For one lingering moment, she was alive again, and Derek was looking forward to another year of her being a pain in the ass.

But no, she's dead. She's dead and buried in pieces in a place he can't even get to anymore, and she won't be here for Christmas. She won't be anywhere with Derek ever again.

The basket in his hand rattles noisily and that's when he realizes how badly he's shaking. He calmly sets the basket on the floor and walks out of the store. The holidays snuck up on him and he's just now realizing that this is the first Christmas where he has no family left. They're all dead, except for Peter who is pretty much dead to him anyway.

Derek doesn't stop walking until he's at the edge of the forest just past the park, and he starts taking clothes off as he heads into it. It's cool outside, the last sunny day before an oncoming storm that Derek can smell on the air. But it doesn't matter. He can't feel the cold. The world tilts for a second and then he's shifted, shaking out his thick black fur.

It's easier to deal with things like this when he's shifted, running as hard as he can on four paws. He runs until he's panting and lets out a long, mournful howl when he just can't keep it all inside anymore.

It's still daylight by the time he comes back to himself, but there isn't much of it left. He stops about a dozen feet from the treeline, still shifted, and looks out at the park as he drops to the forest floor with a whuff. His ears are back and his tail is curled around himself, and he looks every bit like a sulking puppy. He doesn't even care. There's not much here cares about at all right now.

Loneliness hasn't consumed him like this for awhile, and he misses his big sister like a severed limb. He lays there, whimpering softly, and tucks his nose under his paws to block out the world.

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"God, it's freezing out here; what on earth possessed me to think that I'd be able to deal with that?"

Along the edge of the forest, branches and other dead brush crunches underneath Sookie's boots as she shivers her way through the thick of the trees. After being chided some time ago by Kisuke for being completely incapable of aiming, Sookie has made it her priority to learn how to use her powers more effectively. The only problem is, there's no good place to practice in the thick of the city, where there are too many people around with prying eyes, and too little room for recovery from potential harm done to property. When even the smallest of blasts from her hand is able to send a vase smashing against the opposite wall, Sookie knows that she needs to take to other measures to practice.

Even if it means dunking her warm Louisianan ass into the bitter cold.

"It's gonna get worse," she breathes to herself, teeth chattering slightly. "It's only December now; imagine what January's gonna be like. Shit." She feels a little remorseful for swearing so much, but it's cold. Trundling through the forest and finding herself unable to even concentrate, Sookie only pauses when she realizes that there's a wolf sitting in her path, curled up and entreating.

"...so I should have looked where I was going," she murmurs to herself, pausing and considering turning right around.

Derek hears and smells Sookie before he sees her, and when she comes into view Derek lifts her head to look at her, eyes ruby red and bright. She smells a little like fear, just a hint of the acrid scent clinging to her. Derek likes Sookie, trusts her, and the wolf sees that. He pulls himself up to his feet and approaches slowly, butting gently at her hip with his head and curling around her feet, huffing a bit. He could use a friend about now.

Hello Sookie, he thinks loudly, but he doesn't know if her powers will still work on him while he's in this form.

The wolf certainly isn't acting like Sookie would expect a wild animal to, far too deliberate as it approaches her and presses his snout up against her hip. Dropping to a crouch, Sookie curiously runs her hand over the wolf's head, and that's when the thought comes across at last, loud and clear. It doesn't sound as clearly spoken as a human's thoughts, but instead comes across as an onslaught of sensation, smells and sounds and a muted, low voice not quite like Derek's own.

"Hey," she breathes, reaching out to press both of her hands up against Derek's head. "Derek, right? The only of your kind of werewolf that I know around here. What brought you out so far in the forest?"

Derek nods when she says his name and closes his eyes, butting up against her hands, enjoying her touch. He whines a little when she asks for a reason and thinks of the Christmas lights and the intense ache in his chest, his sister's smiling face last year and about how she's dead in the ground now.

He whines again and nuzzles her hip again, letting out a please growl at the feeling of her fingers in his fur.

It's still a little more difficult than usual to interpret Derek's thoughts in this form, but she gets enough images, sounds, and the sensation of a tightening chest to understand that he's feeling grief. Combined with what she's known of his life from before, Sookie presses her lips thin as she drops to her knees, scratching both of his ears with her hands with a sympathetic look.

"Oh, honey," she murmurs, sighing. She's no stranger to loss. "I'm sorry about all those memories comin' forth right now. I know it's not easy to move on after people leave us. I feel like you should probably come inside, though. None of us are her, but... it's gotta be better than freezing out here on your own."

Derek almost objects when she scratches him behind the ears, because he isn't a dog, but he knows she doesn't mean to offend him, and he could really use the comfort she's offering.

He presses against her, head hooked over her shoulder as he nuzzles into her neck, ears flicking as he listens to her speak. She's right, he admits to himself with a huff. It doesn't do him any good to sit out here and mope, not when he has people here who actually care about him. He pulls back and swipes his wet tongue across her cheek in retaliation for the ear scratching, and then grabs his jeans between his teeth and heads behind a tree to shift back.

He looks vaguely embarrassed when he comes back out, buttoning up his jeans and reaching up to scratch the back of his head. "Hey."

Coughing a laugh when Derek swipes his tongue across her cheek, Sookie gets to her feet and rubs the wetness off with the cuff of her sleeve. Realistically, she knows that it's no different than receiving a kiss, but even then she thinks she'd probably wipe away an especially wet one. She sighs soon afterward, watching Derek retreat with his clothing and come out looking slightly sheepish, and steps forward with her arms open to envelop him in a hug.

"Look, I can still scratch behind your ears when you're a human, see?" Sookie points out, scratching along the delicate hairline right behind one of Derek's ears, before lifting herself onto her toes to press a quick kiss to Derek's cheek.

"Having a little trouble with the holidays too, huh?" she asks quietly, settling back on her heels with a soft look.

Derek isn't expecting the hug and he tenses a little when Sookie envelops him, because he's still expecting pain and not kindness when someone reaches for him. God, he's probably any therapist's walking wet dream.

But Sookie is warm and soft, holding him tight, and Derek sinks into it, curling over to rest his head on her shoulder even though she's so much smaller. She scratches his scalp and he rolls his eyes in fond exasperation, nipping light and playful at her shoulder before she pulls away. He even blushes a little when she kisses his cheek, and it's so much that it's like he's drowning in affection. It's not a terrible feeling.

"Just a little," Derek admits, when really it's like he can't breathe without her. "I miss my sister. It's my first Christmas without her and - and I feel guilty, for missing her so badly when my entire family is gone. I miss them too, but it was just me and Laura for so long, and it's like she was just here next to me, but now she isn't, and I don't know what to do. She's supposed to be alpha, not me. She's supposed to tell me what to do."

Derek is embarrassed by his rambling, but it's not like she couldn't hear him screaming it inside his own head anyway. It makes it easier to talk, knowing how hard it would be to hide from her.

Reaching up to ruffle his hair, Sookie shakes her head at Derek's admissions before looping her arm with his and turning both of them away from the forest, back towards the city. The forest may be a comfort to Derek at times, but right now, she suspects that it might serve instead as too many reminders of what he's recently lost and won't be able to get back. He needs to move forward.

"Don't feel guilty about missing someone. No matter what, you can't let yourself feel guilty about missing someone," she says, squeezing his arm. "It's okay to know that you've got blessings but to miss one thing more than you miss others. She was your sister. The person closest to you. I... you know, the first Christmas I spent without gran was so painful I don't even know how to start, and that's even though I still had my brother with me. I still have him here in the city, even, just like how you've got people here too. But just because you have good things doesn't mean that you won't miss those you've lost."

Pressing her cheek briefly against Derek's shoulder, Sookie then turns to get a better look at him. "Is there anything I can do to help? I can boss you around, if that would make you feel better at all, or, or we could go shopping for presents, talk about other people, get drinks. I can be either a listening ear or a distraction. Whatever you need."

Derek loops his arm around her waist and smiles a little as she speaks, looking back at the forest for a moment before following her out of it.

"She would have liked you, Laura." He smiles a little brighter. "Tiny and bossy, the both of you."

if only in my dreams

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