triskehale | closed; thomas

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closed,
thomas

closed; thomas

Truthfully, Derek doesn't how good of an idea it is to spend so much time with Thomas. It seems like sort of a dangerous, painful road to go down, but then again, Derek isn't known for his fantastic decision making skills.

Thomas is so different that Stiles in so many ways, and Derek likes him for the person that he is dependent of what he looks like, but sometimes Derek looks at him and forgets that he can't reach out and touch him, pull him in. It's confusing, and painful, but Derek pushes past it. Thomas deserves better than to be brushed aside because he looks like the person that Derek was in love with, and he can handle it.

Derek gets up early on Friday morning and puts on running pants and a white tank, and then feeds his cat before pulling on his sneakers. He grabs two protein bars and two bottles of water, throwing them in a plastic bag before heading out the door. He makes it to the Bramford building in no time flat, not even working up a sweat. Once inside, he takes the stairs and then lets out a breath before stepping up to Thomas' door and knocking on it.

This will be fine. Totally, completely fine.

Probably.

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As soon as those two words leave Derek's mouth, Thomas gets his feet moving. He's trailing behind Derek at first, watching his broad back and dark hair before shifting into another gear. Legs pumping, he managed to close the gap until he was just behind Derek, running at his shoulder.

While Thomas isn't as fast as Derek, he's faster than most people. His endurance is off the charts and even if he runs out of strength and stamina, he'll continue to push himself until someone physically stops him.

The wind in his hair and the burn in his lungs feels good. It takes him back to the Maze, takes him back to running with Minho around twisting walls and down through narrow corridors.

"Right behind you," Thomas chanted, pleased that he'd been able to keep up as well as he had. "Enjoying yourself?"

He was.

Derek is impressed by just how well Thomas is keeping pace with him, and when he speaks, he sounds light. He sounds happy, and even if it's fleeting, Derek is glad to have helped.

"Oh, I'm just warming up," Derek calls back, but he slows down just a fraction so that he's next to Thomas. He can hear their breathing, their accelerated heartbeats, and he can smell the sweat forming at Thomas' temples. "This way."

Derek leads them into the park, winding them around the large concrete around it at an even pace. A small group of sparrows that had been picking at seeds on the ground go scattering as they approach, tiny wings fluttering rapidly, and Derek looks over at Thomas with a smile.

If Thomas closed his eyes, he could picture the Maze. He could see the walls reaching up to the sky, stone walls cracked and overgrown with ivy vines. He could hear the thump of boots on rock and he could hear Minho's panting beside him.

If this was the Maze, there'd be the fear of a Griever around the next corner and their lives would be in imminent peril with every step they took. The city wasn't the Maze and Thomas wasn't in danger of dying.

Not today, at least.

He inhaled, held his breath for a long time before exhaling slowly. The regular meals he'd been having were proving very helpful right now. He wasn't tired. He felt energized. He felt good.

When Derek smiled at him, Thomas grinned in return. "Pretty impressive. You scared the birds. I'm terrified."

"You are a cocky little shit, huh?" Derek asks, but his voice is fond. Thomas is smiling, smiling excited and healthy, and Derek jerks his chin towards the woods. "Let's see if you can keep up with me out here."

He turns onto a dirt path that heads into the trees, feeling better now that his feet are on hard-packed earth instead of concrete. It smells better out here, the air cleaner, and Derek breathes deeply as he speeds up. He looks over his shoulder at Thomas, raising an eyebrow and smirking before turning forward again.

Thomas's response to Derek's words are a one shouldered shrug and crooked smile that was still on his face when Derek's changed their route. He'd been expecting something like this, something to try and throw him off and he'd been ready.

He didn't try and match Derek's speed because he knew doing that would only blow out his lungs. That'd be a pretty terrible way to end their run. When Thomas fell behind again, he laughed though he wasn't sure if Derek would hear it. The sounds of their feet hitting dirt and Thomas's quick breathing might have muffled the sound but maybe Derek's enhanced sense had heard it anyway.

Thomas put on his own burst of speed, keeping close to Derek's heels. The last time he'd run on dirt prior to his arrival had been in the Scorch. That dirt had been hard and unforgiving. Deprived of water and nutrients, it'd been comparable to running on the hardest of stone. This dirt was soft and rich and Thomas couldn't stop himself from inhaling greedily.

Derek figures that he's pushed Thomas enough for now, and he doesn't want to wear him out too early, so he slows his pace to more of a jog. He falls in step with Thomas and looks over at him curiously, pleased to see that he's enjoying himself.

"It's nice out here, right?" Derek asks, breath punching out of him as he jogs. "Sometimes the city can be overwhelming."

When Derek pulled up even with him, Thomas nodded slightly. A gesture of thanks for not completely leaving him in the dust. He'd keep on running even if Derek had left him behind but it would have sucked. It would have pissed him off.

"There wasn't anything like this where I came from," he shared, swiping some sweat off his forehead with his arm. "Everything was dead and we didn't have a lot of time to take in our surroundings anyway. This is -- "

Thomas looked around, closing his eyes briefly. Opened them again and looked back at Derek. "This is so different. It's alive."

Derek isn't surprised by what Thomas says. If there wasn't any drinking water, he highly doubts that there could have been any lush, green forests either. He tries to imagine that, a barren dried out wasteland, and has to suppress a shudder. He's been in forests his entire life aside from the years that he spent in New York, but even then he had Central Park.

"Thriving," Derek says with a smile. He looks around to gauge where exactly they are, and then reaches out to tap Thomas on the back as he slows down. "Come on."

He heads off of the trail and into a thicket of trees, pushing past them until he finds a cluster of wild blackberry brambles. He crouches down, mindful of the thorns as he plucks a few of of the vine and turns to hold them out to Thomas. "Snack time."

"You came prepared," Thomas noted, pulling up to a stop behind Derek. When he crouched down, Thomas leaned over, bringing himself closer to Derek's shoulder and scanned the blackberry brambles. He hadn't seen those before and if he was going to be here for any amount of time, he wanted to know as much as he could. Knowledge was power. He'd find a way to use that to his benefit when he got back.

Thomas plucked the blackberries from Derek's hand and let them roll around in the palm of his hand for a second. "You spend a lot of time in forests before?"

It hadn't escaped Thomas's notice how comfortable Derek was here. It was something Thomas envied, being that at home somewhere. Maybe he'd felt it once, before the Maze, but he couldn't remember.

"You could say that," Derek says with a wistful smile. "I grew up on a nature preserve. I spent most of my time out in the forest."

Sometimes these woods remind him of home, and he does like it out here. They may be trapped in this bubble, but in the trees is where he feels the most free. Derek breathes in deeply and picks a few more blackberries before straightening up, and he pops one into his mouth. It's perfectly ripe and sweet, and he licks the juice from his teeth before gesturing at the berries in Thomas' hand. "Go ahead, try one."

There were questions rattling around in Thomas's brain about how someone could grow up in a nature preserve since, put together, Thomas could guess at the meaning of the word but didn't really see it as a place someone could live. He set the questions aside to ask Derek in awhile.

Thomas peered down at the berries for a second longer before picking one up and tossing them into his mouth. The flavor was unlike anything else he'd ever tasted. Thomas couldn't stop his eyes from going momentarily wide before he got a hold of himself.

He had to wonder if every new experience with something as simple as food was going to be like that. In the Scorch, there wasn't time to savor new things. Stopping to smell the proverbial roses was a waste of time there. Here, time was one of those things Thomas had in abundance.

"Wow," he mumbled, rubbing his berry juice covered fingers together before bringing them to his mouth and licking them clean.

Derek is, at first, pleased by Thomas' reaction to the fruit, but his lips flatten into a thin line when he starts to lick at his fingers. Derek bites back a sigh and watches for half a second before mentally kicking himself and turning to pick a few more berries.

"Don't just go eating any berry you find out here," Derek tells him, flicking a bad berry off into the bushes. "Some will make you sick."

Derek walks away from the bushes with a handful of perfect blackberries for them each, and he pops a few into his mouth. When he smiles over at Thomas, his lips are stained a dark purple until he licks them clean.

"Ready to keep going?" He asks, holding the rest of the berries out for Thomas to take.

Thomas's attention hadn't been so on his fingers that he hadn't seen Derek's change in expression. He tilted his head, a question on his lips before Derek turned away. Thomas dropped his hand to his side, debating whether to ask the question anyway.

Thomas padded after Derek, eyes on his shoulder until he turned and did that whole lip licking right in front of him. Thomas blinked and then, after realizing Derek had asked him a question, he nodded.

"Question is, are you ready?" he asked, trying to recover from that temporary bout of staring with some cockiness. "Thought I'd be lying in the dirt right now, declaring you the best or something."

Derek notices Thomas staring and nearly quirks a brow at him, wondering why, but Thomas distracts him enough to make him laugh. The comment makes Derek want to show Thomas how fast he can really run, and again he wonders how Thomas might react to finding out what he is.

"I could still put you in the dirt," Derek says with a laugh, popping the last of his berries into his mouth and squinting into the distance. "If we follow this trail for about half a mile, we'll hit the beach. It's a small cove, kind of hidden. Race you?"

If Derek would have gotten his question out, Thomas wouldn't have had an answer. It'd just been a moment where he'd been caught up with something before it dissipated, lost in the breeze that ruffled his hair.

Thomas wiped his hands on his pants and then crossed his arms. "Race?" He'd never raced with anyone before. Maybe races would have worked better than the stupid Gatherings the Gladers had held in the maze. "What's the winner get?"

He knew that much about races, that the winner always got something.

"Cocky and greedy, huh?" Derek huffs out a laugh and then tilts his head curiously, crossing his own arms over his chest and watching him. "What do you think you should get if you win?"

Thomas thought about it for a second before he shrugged one shoulder. Shaking his head, he said, "I don't have a clue."

The one thing he really wanted was the one thing that winning a race wouldn't get him. Bringing that up right now would skew the mood and Thomas didn't want to do that. Not right now. He could do that later when he was on his own and wouldn't wreck anyone else but himself.

"What's a good thing to ask for?" he asked quizzically. "What do you want if you win?"

Or when he won, that was.

"I don't know either. We're pretty bad at this, aren't we?" It's no secret that Derek isn't really all that great at taking care of himself, or being selfish. He looks over at Thomas and cocks his head to the side curiously. "If I win, I get to tell you a secret about me. And you have to really think about it before you react."

It's an odd request, he's sure, but he finds that he wants Thomas to know that part of him. Thomas might freak out or decide he doesn't want anything to do with Derek anymore, but still. He wants him to know.

Derek's proposal made Thomas pause for a moment. He'd expected something different, if he was honest. Maybe Derek would have wanted to be treated to dinner or for Thomas to sing and dance and make a fool of himself. Instead, Derek's offering to reveal something about himself even if he won. Thomas thought it was supposed to be the other way around but he isn't going to argue either.

"All right," he finally said, nodding. "Same for me. If I win -- " Which he'd only do if Derek let him. " -- I'll tell you a secret about me."

There were plenty of those to go around.

Derek is tempted to let Thomas win, just for that. There are all sorts of things that he's curious about when it comes to Thomas. but he supposes that can wait. "Deal."

He's a little nervous, just because he knows that he and Thomas have been forging a bond, and he doesn't want to ruin it. But it does feel important that he let Thomas know him, all of him, and the wolf is a very vital piece.

Derek nods and then slides one foot back, getting into position. "Ready?"

Thomas took a deep breath and nodded.

The only races he'd run in the past few months had been races against Walls. He and Minho, out in the Maze, running against time and trying to make it back to the Glade before they were trapped beyond the Walls with nothing but the Grievers for company.

"Ready," Thomas confirmed with a brief nod of his head. He mimicked Derek's position and rubbed his hands together. "I'm good to go."

His heart was already pumping and the adrenaline was surging. Win or lose, he already felt good.

Thomas' heart is speeding up next to him, and he smells excited and anticipatory. Derek smiles and then counts down from three, pushing through his heel once he says go. At first, he keeps pace with Thomas, who is exceptionally fast for a human, and he even lets him fall ahead a few times.

It's just a little over half a mile to the cove and Derek pulls ahead just before the break in the treeline, hopping gracefully between two pines to find himself on a small, rocky beach. It's blocked in by two tall cliff faces, creating a small, private bay where the ocean comes through. Derek slows once he reaches the smoother sand, tipping his head back and taking a deep breath of the salty ocean air.

For a fleeting moment, Thomas actually thought he was going to win. When Derek had fallen behind, Thomas had almost faltered and turned to stare at him like this was all crazy. He hadn't expected to be the one that would have to tell a secret. He hadn't prepared for that.

Then, it all changes. Derek breezed by him and Thomas tried to speed up, to keep pace but couldn't keep up. He managed to keep Derek's broad shoulders and dark hair in his sights but every single time he got closer, Derek pulled further away.

By the time the salt of the ocean hit him, he was panting and sucking in great gulps of air. He came to a stop, legs feeling wobbly and unstable. The last time he'd run that fast, he'd been drawing the Griever away from Alby in an insane attempt to save both their lives.

"You're fast," Thomas panted, hands on his hips. "Shuck, you're a fast shank. You barely look tired."

Thomas' odd slang makes Derek chuckle, and then he bites his lip as he looks at him thoughtfully. "Yeah, that's part of what I have to tell you."

There's a big flat rock near the water's edge and Derek wanders over to it, pulling himself up onto the sun-warmed surface and stretching his legs out, turning his gaze over to Thomas as he approaches. "Do you remember your first day here, when I told you that not everyone here was human?"

"I remember," Thomas said as he followed behind Derek. He kicked up sand idly as he went, watching it cling to the bottom of his pants before falling off when he took another step. "

"What about it?" he asked, moving until he was standing in front of Derek. His legs begged him to sit down but he didn't. He needed to cool down and he didn't want to be looking up at Derek while he talked.

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