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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Yeah, he had a few. Or about a thousand. He probably wouldn't ask Derek each and every question that was running through his head. Maybe over time, if Derek was amiable, he'd ask. For now, he was going to try and ask the questions that he was most curious about.

"Does it -- " He stuttered and trailed off, looking Derek up and down like he'd be able to see traces of the wolf he'd just been. "Does it hurt at all? When you change like that?"

"Not really," Derek answers, a bit surprised that Thomas' first question was about his well being. And that isn't due to Thomas himself, but more that Derek still isn't quite used to anyone putting him first. "The full shift sort of twinges a bit, but only for a few seconds. The rest of it--"

He holds out his hand and extends his claws, offering his hand to Thomas so that he can see them. "It feels sort of like scratching an itch, or stretching a muscle. It's easy."

Thomas took a step closer and actually reached out to gently touch his fingertips to the ends of Derek's claws. He'd never seen anything like them before. In the Maze, the Grievers weapons consisted of syringes, saws and their own girth. Nothing that felt this real, this alive.

"What's the difference between being an alpha and the other one, the beta?" he asked, pulling his fingers back after a moment.

Derek's breath catches when Thomas touches his claws, surprised by the actual contact. It makes him feel like maybe Thomas doesn't think he's a monster. He doesn't want Thomas to look at him like a Griever, or something meant to torture him inside that maze.

"This would all make a lot more sense if you knew anything about the hierarchy of wolves," Derek says with a soft chuckle, watching Thomas' fingers glide over his claws with something like fascination. When Thomas pulls his hand away, Derek drops his and lets his claws retract. "They travel in packs, usually. An alpha is a pack leader, and betas make up the rest of the pack."

Derek turns on the rock, twisting so that Thomas can see the triskele tattooed between his shoulder blades. "Werewolves are like that. This was my pack's symbol."

There were a lot of emotions roiling around in Thomas's gut right now. Fascination, astonishment, curiosity and concern tumbled around and meshed together, making it impossible for Thomas to really know what he was feeling.

He knew this: none of it was bad. He'd been frightened at first, too caught up in his own memories to see Derek for something different. And he was. He was something different. He was something completely unfamiliar. Something new.

Thomas wasn't going to let the Maze make him afraid of someone like Derek.

Thomas leaned forward, peering closely at the tattoo's lines and curves. He memorized, made sure he wouldn't forget that symbol even if someone wiped his memories again. "Do you have a pack here?"

Derek turns around and looks up at Thomas before shaking his head sadly. There's this hollow in his chest where pack should be, and he feels it every single day.

"No, I don't," he says quietly. "I have people who I care for as if they were pack, but nothing official."

His friends are incredibly important to him. He'd protect them with his life and there are some that, if they asked, he would accept readily into his pack. Derek doesn't think highly enough of himself as an alpha to ask for that, not of anyone else.

The fear and adrenaline that Thomas was feeling have faded so much that Derek can barely smell them anymore, and he's glad for that. Relief sweeps through him and he gives Thomas a small, but genuine smile.

Thomas smiled gratefully in return. The embarrassment over reacting badly would take some time to fade but it didn't seem like Derek was holding that against him. It would have been easy for him to do that, to just walk off after how he'd reacted earlier but Derek had stayed and Thomas was genuinely glad for that.

"Can I ask..." He trailed off again, unsure if this question would be a little too personal. If it was, he hoped Derek knew he didn't have to answer. "How are you born like this? Does that mean your parents were like you too?"

"They were," Derek says quietly. It's hard to talk about his family, but he's proud of where he came from. "My whole family was, aside from my aunt and two cousins."

He wouldn't have told Thomas the truth if he wasn't prepared for questions. He's heard them all, in some way or another, and Thomas hasn't done anything yet that has offended Derek. He reacted about as well as could be expected. Better, even. Derek feels himself relaxing slightly, watching Thomas as the sun warms his bare shoulders. "Wolves are born, or they're made with a bite from an alpha."

"A bite?"

For some reason, Thomas doesn't think Derek just means a gentle nip on the finger either. The fangs he'd seen when Derek had changed looked like they could saw through a shucking tree if it was needed.

"So, if you wanted to, you could bite someone and change them?" That seemed to be how it worked but Thomas's head was such a mess that he could have been reading it all wrong. "If that's how it works, why would you bite someone? Self defense?"

"If I was trying to defend myself, I wouldn't want to make my opponent faster and stronger," Derek says with a huff of laughter. "But yes, I could bite someone and make them a wolf. It's not something that I would do without consent and a lot of serious thought."

He thinks of Victoria with some regret, but that was different. She was attacking him while he was half out of his mind with wolfsbane and it wasn't just his life on the line, but Scott's as well. He panicked.

"See, the way I was raised-- the bite was a good thing. Being a wolf was a good thing. It was like a gift," Derek explains, trying hard to keep his voice from wavering. "Not everyone thinks that way, of course."

Thomas licked his dry lips again, pondering Derek's words as he did. Until Derek had explained it, Thomas had found himself wondering if being a wolf was something that had been foisted onto Derek without any input from him. He'd been born into that life and it wasn't like he could just find a doctor to reverse it.

The fact that Derek thought of his ability as a gift forced Thomas to change his thinking. He imagined the possibilities of someone like Derek being alive where he'd come from. How WICKED wouldn't have been able to stop someone like that and would have tried to harness his ability rather than let him live freely.

He shivered at the thought. No one deserved to be caught up with WICKED. "You still think it's a gift?"

There seemed to be some past tense in Derek's words but he couldn't be sure without asking.

"Yes," Derek says, but only after he thinks about it for a long moment. This isn't a subject that he talks about too much, and every word feels heavy on his tongue. "But being werewolves is what got my family killed."

It's not their fault that they're dead, but it's why they were targeted. Derek swallows hard and looks out at the surf rather than Thomas' face. "There were those back home that thought we deserved to be hunted down like animals, and it didn't matter that we lived in peace. We were werewolves, and so we needed to die. Most of us did."

After a long moment, he looks back over at Thomas. His expression is one full of sorrow, but it's resolute as well. "But just because someone doesn't understand it doesn't mean that it isn't a gift."

"Have you ever offered it to anyone here?"

The question is out before he can stop it and Thomas instantly looked abashed. The last thing he wanted to do was upset Derek but he can't take back words that he's already stupidly said aloud.

The expression on Derek's face made his stomach clench and he winced, rubbing his suddenly chilly arms. "You don't have to answer that. I was just curious. Sorry."

"No, it's okay," Derek assures him, letting one corner of his mouth quirk up into something like a smile. "You can ask whatever you want. If I don't want to answer, I'll just tell you so."

He looks down at his hands for a moment and then shakes his head before looking back up at Thomas. "But no, I haven't offered it to anyone here. Back home, right after I became alpha, I was a little-- hasty. I offered it to some people that I thought would benefit from it, but I didn't really think it through."

That's sort of an understatement, but he doesn't really want to get into the mistakes he's made right now. "Back home, I needed a pack. Here, I don't need one. It would be nice to have one, but I'm not in danger like I was there. If someone wanted the bite, or if someone was sick and wasn't going to get any better, that's different. But it isn't something to be taken lightly."

Thomas's gaze sharpened very obviously when Derek mentioned someone being sick. It was almost like he could feel the Flare eating away at his brain in that single moment. Thomas's throat suddenly felt like sandpaper and his eyes burned.

"Turning someone into a wolf can cure sicknesses?" he asked, unable to help himself. After being told the Safe Haven was the only possible way of curing the Flare, hearing that maybe there was another way nearly knocked the wind out of him. "How?"

Derek notices the change in Thomas' expression, and the way he speaks with obvious interest. Thomas doesn't smell sick, at least not to Derek's nose, but he looks at him curiously.

"Yes," Derek tells him, watching his face. "Werewolves heal from just about anything, exceptionally fast. And we're immune to any human disease. If a human becomes a werewolf, any sickness they may have is then healed."

He thinks of Erica and her epilepsy, and how confidently she moved after she got the bite. She was in control of her own body, finally. That was the main reason that Derek chose her.

Thomas took a deep, steadying breath. Derek's words, more than anything else, were nearly enough to convince Thomas this wasn't a Trial. There's no way WICKED would drop him somewhere that a cure could be found without some interference from them. No way.

"What if the sickness is incurable?" he wondered, trying not to sound overly interested or nervous. Derek had basically just answered his question but he had to hear it again. "Even then?"

"Yes," Derek tells him, standing up and looking at him urgently. "Thomas, what is it?"

He can hear Thomas' heart racing and he swallows hard, looking him over. He inhales deeply, just in case he missed something, but nothing about Thomas' scent indicates that he's sick.

"Nothing, nothing," Thomas lied, crossing his arms before dropping them to his sides. His fingers twitched and he stilled them by curling his hands into fists. "Just surprised is all."

It was a pitiful excuse for a lie and he knew it. And Thomas knew that Derek would know it too. A blind person would have been able to sniff out his lie. "Never heard of anything like that before. That's amazing."

"You know what else werewolves can do? They can tell when someone's lying." Derek reaches out and taps two fingers against Thomas' chest, just over his heart. "Your pulse quickens, and we can hear it."

Derek feels his worry growing but if Thomas doesn't want to tell him, that's his choice to make. "You don't have to tell me, but if you want to you can."

"I think a tree could have figured out I was lying," Thomas muttered, shaking his head at himself. He rubbed the spot where Derek had tapped him and looked up, trying to get the words to come out.

Someone needed to know about this. It wasn't going to get better. Slowly, he was going to turn into an aggressive, violent, insane cannibalistic killer. There were a lot of people in this city and if he turned into a Crank, everyone was at risk.

"I don't know," he said, rubbing his face and shaking his head. "Maybe -- maybe another time? A better time. I didn't win, remember. Don't have to tell a secret."

"Okay," Derek agrees, even though part of him wants to push. Thomas meets his eyes and he looks so scared that Derek lets his hand slide up to curl around the back of his neck. He starts to draw him forward to-- who knows what, hug him maybe, but then he stops and pulls his hand away, swallowing hard. Sometimes those big amber eyes of Thomas' draw him in, and make him feel things that he shouldn't, not anymore.

"I want to help if I can," he says after a moment, holding his hands down at his sides. "And I'm trusting you with my secret, so I hope you know that you could trust me with yours."

Derek's hand was warm against the back of his neck, making his already hot skin feel hotter. When he felt Derek drawing him forward, he didn't know exactly what was happening but he didn't resist. Touching as a means to comfort was a foreign concept for him. Comfort back in the Maze was mostly an arm pressed against his and mostly given by Teresa.

Teresa was long gone, though. The only thing left of her were the memories Thomas had locked away behind a dark door in his mind.

When Derek dropped his arm, Thomas looked up at him, a question in his eyes. But, it slipped away and Thomas looked down at the ground. He dug his shoe into the sand, watched it disappear. "I'll keep your secret," he promised, bringing his eyes back up to Derek's. He watched Derek's face intently. "And I'll tell you mine. Just -- just not now."

Talking about the Flare would make the whole thing even more real than it already was. It'd label Thomas a patient, a victim, and he needed time to deal with and accept that.

Edited 2015-08-06 00:48 (UTC)

When Thomas looks up at him with this slight confusion in his eyes, Derek sort of feels like an ass. He reaches out and throws an arm around Thomas' shoulders, pulling him in and nodding. "Alright. Whenever you're ready, I'm here."

He gives Thomas another comforting squeeze and then lets him go, looking around before squinting out at the ocean. The moment hangs tense and heavy in the air, and Derek lets out a breath before jerking his chin towards the waves. "Water's calm. Do you want to take a quick dip before we head back?"

Thomas didn't resist when Derek pulled him in. He'd been surprised, caught off guard by the first actual hug he could really remember. It's different than he'd imagined, firmer yet gentle all at once. Derek's all hard edges and strong lines but there's a softness underneath all that and Thomas leaned against him gratefully. He looped his own arms around Derek, hanging onto him during their brief embrace.

When Derek let him go, he stepped back and carded his hands through his hair. The sweat had long since dried and the adrenaline that had been coursing this his veins was gone, leaving him boneless and weary.

"Yeah," he answered, looking from Derek to the ocean. "Yeah, let's go for a swim. I think I could use it."

His secret loomed large above the both of them, hanging their like a guillotine that was going to come down at any moment. Swimming wouldn't make it go away but maybe they could both forget it for awhile.

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