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"Hey," Erica leans around the door into Stiles' fucking mess of an office, "did you eat the bag of popcorn I was keeping in the break room freezer?"
Stiles spins around in his desk chair, pulling his red channel five pen out from between his lips. "What? Why were you keeping popcorn in the freezer?"
"Just kernels," Erica says, "in a ziploc bag." She's wearing her street clothes - tight jeans and flat boots on the bottom, for mobility, and a shiny blue blouse on top that squishes her boobs up, for the camera - her hair up in a clip that allows her to shake it down in a couple of seconds so it reverts to the way make-up did it in the morning.
Stiles tries to flick his pen between his fingers, fumbles it, and watches it go flying into a stack of New York Times. "No, I didn't eat a frozen bag of popcorn kernels. Why on earth do you even need that?"
Erica rolls her eyes at him, like he's slow or something. "Boyd has a black eye."
"And you're going to ice it with popcorn kernels," Stiles says. "Wha - How did Boyd get a black eye again?"
Erica turns to leave, still talking to him, and Stiles isn't really in the middle of anything, so he gets up, suit on the top and jeans on the bottom, and follows her down the narrow hallway in back of the studio. "We got caught in the middle of a skirmish on UCLA's campus, trying to interview some students about that whole 'theology teachers going on strike in protest of the death penalty' thing, and a fucking mini riot broke out in the middle of the goddamn quad." She's got a mouth like a sailor, which is not usually something highly valued in live reporters, but, well -
They turn a corner into the back hall that leads to the break room, one wall lined with a snack table, most of which is covered in different varieties of coffee machines. "Everyone started yelling about morality and civil liberties, and none of it made any sense, but that's how street mobs work, so. I had to take a bitch out with the mike, but I think we got a lot of it on tape, so - totally worth it."
"Yeah, sure, you think it's worth it," Boyd says. He's sitting on the counter in the break room, all the half-eaten boxes of cookies that usually occupy that space shoved off to the side. Erica said 'black eye,' but it really looks like he got hit in the face with a battering ram or some such shit, the whole side puffed up.
Stiles grabs a half-drunken jamba juice out of the fridge that he's ninety percent sure is his. "You look like a bad case of wisdom tooth surgery gone way wrong."
"At least in wisdom tooth surgery they give you percocets," Boyd says.
"Don't be a wuss." Erica has managed to rile up a frozen bag of 'berry assortment,' which is probably something Derek puts in those super-health smoothies he drinks twice a day. She holds it against Boyd's face, and he winces, but it's slight enough that Stiles figures he's probably putting on at least a little bit of a front to get Erica leaning against the counter between his legs, boobs pressed up against him.
Stiles shakes the jamba juice with his finger plugging the straw as best he can without spraying it all over the place, and plunks down on the couch next to a breathing mound covered under a pile of blankets that he's pretty sure is Danny. "So's Lydia still making you guys go back out again for live stuff tonight, do you think, even all beat up?"
"Probably," says Erica, and Boyd corroborates, "I'm just the cameraman, it doesn't matter if my face is bashed in."
"Whose face is bashed in?" Isaac appears in the doorway, eating a muffin and wearing a dark blue suit topped of with a multicolored, patterned tie that is one hundred percent fit for a weatherman. "Did Erica start a brawl again?"
Erica scowls over her shoulder, even though Stiles doesn't really understand how anyone could scowl at Isaac. "That was not my fault, I was rambunctiously provoked - "
"Erica," says Isaac. "We all know you're belligerent, you don't have to give us your excuses." He nudges the mound on the couch with his foot, and whoever's under there groans and shifts away from the threat of daylight. "You, on the other hand. I know you're hungover, but Lydia wants to talk to you, so you're going to have to muster excuses something fierce."
Stiles helps out by ripping the top blanket off, to reveal not Danny, but a very unhappy looking Jackson curled up around a pillow that looks like it came out of a home improvement magazine, and so probably came out of Lydia's office. "What does she want?" Jackson grumbles.
"You probably got her coffee order wrong," Stiles offers. "Ordered a Grande instead of a Venti, or something."
Jackson snorts. "Please. I could order Lydia's coffee in my sleep, and it changes weekly, seasonally, and depending on her mood. I don't even have to consult the calendar anymore."
"There's a calendar?" Isaac asks, incredulously, bless his soul.
"Of course there's a calendar." Jackson sinks back down into the couch, but Isaac seizes him by the bottom of his pretentious slacks and drags him bodily from it. "Jeez man, lay off - "
"Just go deal with your girlfriend," Stiles says. "We only have a few hours left before air, and you know how she gets about the Sunday night broadcast. 'Setting people up for a successful week' and all that."
Jackson climbs to his feet like it pains him a great deal to do so - which, judging by the bags under his eyes and the fact that he's wearing the same clothes as yesterday, which he never does because he thinks it's unprofessional, this may be the worst hangover he's ever put himself through. He still gets up the chutzpah to flip Erica off when she asks, "How the fuck are you still hungover at five o'clock in the afternoon? Didn't anyone ever teach you to make a prairie oyster?"
"Yuck," says Isaac.
xxx
"Ready, Stiles," Derek says steadily from behind the floor camera, all-but blending into the background in his black henley, so it's a good thing Stiles knows where to look for him. "Five, four - " He holds up fingers to count down the last three numbers that way, and Stiles spreads his notes out in front of him on the news desk.
Derek points at him with two fingers, mouths 'go,' and Stiles hears the channel five evening news action jingle play in his earpiece.
"Good evening, Los Angeles," Stiles says, looking dead into the camera, lest he catch Derek's gaze and get tripped up and start rambling, "this is Stiles Stilinski and the channel five news team with your evening update. Tonight we're continuing coverage of the earthquake whose aftershocks are still wracking the city, keeping emergency personnel on their toes as they hurry to clear wreckage and help aid reach those in danger."
His eyes flicker over to the cue screen, and he says as prompted, "We first go to Isaac Lahey for a review of the quake itself and an assessment of the damage radius."
Derek nods to indicate that the live cam has switched over to Isaac at the weather map. He comes out from behind the camera and approaches the news desk, which is tall enough that Derek can only just prop his elbows on it, leaning forward into Stiles' space. Stiles can't help but lean into him a bit too, because he's warm and it's a little chilly in the studio, and Stiles' legs are still unsteady from the whole rush and jumble of the day.
"Erica thinks she can get the FEMA director for the crisis to talk," Derek says lowly, to keep his voice from carrying to the rest of the studio. He taps his earpiece, "They're not past the tape yet, but we might have to cut to them quick, so watch for a cue."
"Kay," Stiles says, "got it. Is Lydia still planning on running that human interest segment about the puppy mill in the warehouse district, where half the building collapsed and the cops found it - "
"I know what happened, Stiles, every newspaper in the country has been all over that - "
" - because I really think she should get Scott to do that, if she's going to run it. I know he whines every time we make him do something without sports, but his face just screams save the puppies."
Derek doesn't seem to share Stiles' opinion of Scott's adorableness. Instead he just gives Stiles a very businesslike look and says, "You're back in thirty seconds. Go over routine emergency protocol, and cut to street cam with the cue. Danny's got a twenty-four hour earthquake feed set up through our home page, so direct to that before you sign off for breaks. The network wants us to run around the clock for the next cycle or so, so Kira's going to come in at eleven to cover you for a while."
Before Stiles can say 'thanks,' or something dumber like 'appreciate it, babe,' Derek ducks out of the shot and back around to behind the floor camera, just in time to count down three, two, one, and point to Stiles again.
"Los Angeles, I know you've had a long day," Stiles starts, and this speech is well-practiced, delivered a few times a year, "and I know we're all old hat at earthquake protocol here, but safety is always out number one priority at channel five - " he has to try hard not to laugh, at that, because they're probably one of the least-safe, craziest news teams.
"So, remember to evacuate damaged buildings as quickly as possible, and to check any buildings that appear undamaged for gas and chemical leaks. Never leave small fires burning, always put them out before they have time to spreadif at all possible, but as always maintain a safe distance from unstable structures. Remember to stay away from the beach, in case of possible tidal waves caused by aftershocks. If your place of residence has been compromised, please proceed now to designated public shelters, a complete list of which I will now read..."
He could do this part in his sleep. The reassuring tone, the sense of having control of the situation even though he's just a twenty-three year old sitting in a television studio with what probably amounts to half of a communications degree. For whatever reason, people trust him - they hear him say 'don't panic' and they think he's some sort of voice of reason and calm, some sort of rock, when really he's just fumbling as much as the next guy.
Really - he can't even catch the orange Scott tosses at him during his break - it just goes sailing past him while he makes excuses about not being ready, and Derek is left to snatch it out of the air before it brains an unsuspecting bystander.
Derek grabs Stiles by the shoulder of his suit jacket and spins him around to face him, giving him a quick up-and-down like he's assessing him for injuries. Stiles squirms a little to try and twist out of Derek's grip, but Derek's hand is clamped down tightly on his shoulder, thumb pressed into his collarbone, and he's known Stile's long enough to have gotten used to dealing with the random firings of his limbs.
He looks skeptical. "Have you slept at all yet?"
Stiles grabs the orange from Derek and throws it over his shoulder without looking. He's ninety-nine percent sure it whacks Scott in the head, like he wanted it to. "I had a coffee," he says, "I think that counts."
Derek stares him down, somehow saying 'no' without actually moving anything but his eyebrows, and even those only fractionally. He nudges Stiles gently down the hall towards his office, following behind him close enough that Stiles can't try to turn around without tripping him up. "You need sleep, Stiles," Derek says. "Makeup will burn you alive if the bags under your eyes get any darker."
He closes the door to the office behind both of them and pushes Stiles down on the couch, into the heap of cartoon pattern fleece blankets and airplane pillows piled at one end. "This is my office," Stiles says indignantly. "Kindly refrain from manhandling me in my office. I'm pretty sure I've told you that before, at least twice - "
Derek flicks off the lights instead of deigning to answer Stiles. There's still artificial light from the hallway leaking in through the cracks around the door and the blinds on the one window that looks out at the hall, noises of whatever work's happening in the rest of the studio drifting in through the background.
Derek settles down at Stiles' desk, his feet up on the edge of it, which Stiles can't really reprimand him for without being a giant hypocrite. So he settles back into the couch for the long haul, because he is not a fast runner, at all, and Derek would tackle him down before he ever reached the safety of the break room and his and Scott's stash of Nerf guns.
He relaxes back into a Flinstones blanket that only just covers his shoulders, and sets his face in the curve of a neck pillow. The small TV in the corner clicks on, and blue light flickers through Stiles' half-lowered eyelashes; he thinks it's ABC, but whoever it is, they're covering the damage done to an interstate bridge by one of the earthquake's aftershocks.
"You're not going to sleep?" Stiles asks.
There's no answer from Derek, but it's only a couple of minutes before Derek lies down on the couch next to him, squishing him into the back pillows and insinuating himself half-under Stiles, an arm flung over his waist. Stiles pulls up another blanket, with a giant wolf emblazoned on the front surrounded by some swirling cgi wind, and Derek burrows his face into Stiles' shoulder, breathing even.
Stiles doesn't really fall asleep - he's still wired - but he does doze off, swathed in warmth and heavy cameraman. On-screen, an anchor is saying in that in-control voice that Stiles knows so well, "The FEMA correspondant for the FDLA reports that a fire in south Brentwood is spreading quickly, and advises residents to stay calm, make their way to shelters, and let the authorities do their jobs..."
xxx
"Stiles," Scott bounds around the corner into the breakroom, followed closely bt a much less excited but equally as dimple-y Danny, holding a laptop, "something fantastic and sort of weird is happening."
Even if he tried, Stiles wouldn't be able to answer him around the half of an 'uncrustable' sandwich he's got stuffed in his mouth. He does sit up a little straighter, though, because who the hell doesn't love something fantastic and sort of weird. Allison, who's in between spoonfuls of yogurt and has full use of her mouth, laughs lightly at Scott's ridiculously wide smile, and asks, "What is it?"
Danny sets his laptop with the channel five sticker on it down and slides into the seat next to Stiles. "Lydia's been pushing for higher ratings," Danny starts, "and we've been getting really deep into trying to play up the show on social networks. So, last night during the broadcast we ran banners for an online chat room."
He pulls up a minimized screen, and there in all it's well-programmed, overloaded glory is their website's brand-spanking new online chat room, for the few bored, middle-aged fans that the evening news has. It's fucking loaded with comments, which is shocking.
"Lydia had me start a couple of dummy threads last night to get some conversation going, you know." He clicks on a thread to pull it up. Stiles was reading at an eighth grade level by the time he was seven, but he's not sure he can believe his eyes now -
"Everyone's wondering why you make googly eyes at the camera all the time," Scott supplies. He drops into the last seat at the table, in the Dodgers jersey he wears whenever he's not on camera.
Danny nods, gesturing at the screen while he scrolls slowly through. "The most popular theory is that you're currently fucking and/or in love with whoever's operating the camera."
Allison's reading over Stiles' shoulder, smiling. "That, or you've got a really weird thing going with the city of Los Angeles."
Stiles has stopped chewing his sandwich. "I don't - " he tries to say around his food. He recovers, swallows, almost chokes, and manages, "I don't make googly eyes."
He maybe gets a little lost, sometimes, but Derek's eyes are ten thousand different colors, and Stiles doesn't think it's fair to hold him accountable for his loss of brain function. They're like quicksand, those eyes, they're unassuming until you catch them at the right angle, and then you're sunk, dragged under before you can so much as try and grab onto a vine and pull yourself out.
Stiles spends most of his day every day with Derek - he's there when Stiles is on air, he's a cue card and an emergency exit sign and 'phone a friend' all rolled into one. He makes Stiles sleep and a lot of times he makes Stiles go home when he realizes he's been at the network building for more than forty-eight hours, he stops Stiles on his third donut every morning, he put pants on Stiles that one time he wanted to do the broadcast in his boxers.
Allison looks at him sideways over her cup of Yoplait. "Maybe not googly eyes," she allows, "but definitely bedroom eyes."
Stiles scoffs and chokes a little. Danny thumps him on the back. Scott's laughing with Allison, and Stiles hates them both, truly, honestly, he does. He's trying really hard not to read the comments in the thread on Danny's laptop, so instead he just stuffs the rest of the 'uncrustable' in his mouth.
"Our website hits have gone up something like sixty percent," Danny says. "Lydia's going to be all over this from now on."
xxx
The one day Stiles takes the subway into work, and it fucking explodes on top of him. Really, it's just his luck to be stuck down there, to be the only one who seems capable of doing anything, or at least willing to -
"We need to move people away from the front of the train," he says loudly, into the confusion of dust still settling and more than a dozen cell phone lights blinking on in the darkness of the electrical failure. "The tunnel's probably still coming down on top of us, so we have to move quickly - "
Someone starts to yell out, "Who the hell are you to tell us what - "
"If you've got any better ideas, I'm all ears," Stiles cuts him off waspishly before the protest gets out of hand. "In the mean time, we're short on time, so help the wounded and everybody move towards the back cars as quick as possible - "
The metal structure surrounding them groans ominously, and something like ice travels down Stiles' spine, makes his muscles feel like absolute jelly. He has an itch in the back of his mind, he feels like he has to be able to turn to the side and catch sight of Derek, because Derek's always there, he always fixes things -
But right now, there's just Stiles and a subway car full of people looking at Stiles like he's going to get them all out of there, going to pull a Sylvester Stallone in Daylight and be the hero where emergency crews have tripped up. He takes a deep breath, to steady his shaking knees. He thinks he feels blood on his head, and there's a dull throbbing, but it's an afterthought, a minor concern, not something that needs to be dealt with right this very second.
"Alright," Stiles says. His voice doesn't carry, instead cracks, and he tries again, "Alright, everyone, we need to move now, before the rest of the damaged portion comes down."
He snaps his fingers loudly in the hush, and people seem to snap out of their stunned, hollow stupor. One guy steps up and moves past Stiles into the collapsed area of the train, and the rest of the crowd - those who can move - start to follow him, hoisting up those who are slumped in seats, injured. Stiles moves with them, and the first person he comes to has a piece of metal through the neck, piercing the jugular and the throat, and there's no way it missed the spinal chord -
Stiles says weakly to those around him, "Check for pulses."
They've moved seven injured people from the front of the train when the rest of the damaged car collapses inwards. Stiles isn't sure, but he thinks there are rocks among the twisted metal rubble, which can't be a good sign at all. He tries to look up through the hole in the roof of the car while they're pulling one of the men who was helping out from under a large crossbeam, but he can't really see anything in the gloom, even though there's a set of emergency lights blinking futilely a ways down the tunnel.
"What are we going to do?" a motherly woman dressed in a flowy sundress and looking almost paralyzed latches onto Stiles' arm. "Are we going to die in here?"
She's the only one brave enough to ask, but there are a handful of people watching him, waiting for the answer. "We're going to stay in the most stable area," Stiles says, in his 'don't panic' voice. "We're going to stay as safe as possible and wait until the emergency crews can reach us." He's reported on situations like these enough to know that it will be a good while before that happens, but -
His cell phone rings, and it's so unexpected that Stiles jumps about a foot in the air, because when the hell did AT&T get coverage at the bottom of a pile of explosion wreckage. He recovers, fumbles to get it out of his jean pocket, and the light from the cracked screen seems overly-bright to his sore eyes. The display has a picture of Lydia looking very businesslike and lovely, that she made him put in her caller i.d. instead of that one he had of her eating a tastycake like a mere mortal.
Before he can get a word in edgewise, Lydia's at his throat, "Where the fuck are you, Stiles, we go live in ten minutes. Something big is going down in the subway network, and none of our correspondants know what it is, but apparently some of the tunnels fell in - "
"Something exploded," Stiles cuts her off. "I think it was a terrorist attack, because I don't smell any gas leaks and from the magnitude it seems like it was more than one tunnel. I don't think there are any emergency crews under ground yet, they're probably still assessing the situation themselves, that's why none of your contacts are talking."
Lydia actually stops talking long enough to spit that all out, so he thinks he must sound pretty damn shaken. "Stiles," she says, when he's done, and she's got her situation management, defcon one tone, "where are you?"
Stiles swallows hard. "I gotta tell you, Lyds," he says, softly, "there's a reason I never take the subway into work."
Lydia swears quite colorfully, and maybe invents a couple new words, which just about adequately expresses what Stiles is feeling. "Christ, Stiles," she tacks on at the end, probably just for courtesy, "are you okay?"
"I'm alive, if that's what you mean," Stiles says. He knows it's not what she means - she means, does the space around him feel like it's constricting, does he feel like he can't catch his breath, is he starting to see black around the edges -
"Not what I meant, Stiles," Lydia snaps, but it's not an angry snap, just a high-strung snap. "I'm putting Derek on."
Stiles will never admit it to a soul, but the sound of Derek's voice goes a long ways towards calming Stiles' pounding heart. It's not as good as his arms, or his hands, sunk in Stiles' hair and pressed flat against the skin of his hip under a fleece wolf blanket, but it's not nothing, it's still Derek, still the guy he looks for whenever he feels lost.
"Stiles," Derek says, and Stiles exhales for the first time in what feels like days. "Are you hurt?"
Stiles touches that hot, throbbing spot on his forehead, and his fingers come away sticky and shining red with blood. "I'm fine," he says, because there's a college kid with a bone sticking out of his arm lying on the floor of the subway car next to him. "There are a lot of people down here who aren't fine, though."
The metal groans around them again, and Stiles looks up at the ceiling. It may be his imagination, but it looks like the roof of the whole thing is buckling. "What was that," Derek says, and before he gets an answer, "Stiles, get out of the train, you idiot."
Stiles the phone, with the call still connected, in his pocket, and says over the loud continuous noise of the car moving and straining around them, "We need to move everybody out onto the tracks. As far away from the collapsed portion of the tunnel as possible, and stay away from the third rail, it's charged."
He gets under the arm of a woman with an ankle twisted in completely the wrong direction and starts hobbling towards the back of the train car, where the emergency exit door is. The handle is warped, but a guy of much bigger stature than Stiles sets his shoulder against it and manages to push it open; Stiles leads the way down the warped ladder and onto the tracks, his feet numb but working of their own accord, which is all the better.
It's dusty and smoky in the tunnel outside the train, and Stiles hacks and wheezes his way twenty meters or so down the tunnel until the woman he's supporting squeezes his shoulder and tells him to stop, rest here. He sets her down against the wall of the tunnel, and steps out onto the tracks to wave everyone else in with them, saying, "Stick together, don't let anyone get separated."
He holds the phone back up to his ear. "We're all clear," he says. "But we've got some people who aren't mobile, I don't think we can move them any further without risking making their injuries worse." He lowers his voice, "I mean, I'd rather make them worse than sit around and make them dead, but if there are emergency crews coming - "
"There are emergency crews coming," Derek says, evenly, and Stiles tries to match the steadiness of his voice to his own panicked unfocused brain. "You're going to be fine, Stiles, they're going to get you out of there. I'll make sure you get out of there."
Stiles is silent for a long moment, in the dark and the wreckage, a crowd of cell phone lights and sweaty haggard faces surrounding him. "Okay. Just - Derek, quickly. Please."
"Sit tight. Stay put."
Stiles laughs, sharp. "Where the hell do you think I'm going to go?"
Derek doesn't laugh, but he does say, "Knowing you, you're that guy in Daylight who thinks he can mountaineer his way out - "
He's cut off by what sounds like a short struggle on the other end of the line, followed by Lydia saying whip-quick and businesslike into his ear, "I put Erica on as anchor in your place, but I'm going to patch you through via Facetime, since you seem so eager to play street reporter tonight. We're trying to get a three-way patch going with a FEMA coordinator topside, but until then just give us the sitrep based on what you can see."
"I can do that," Stiles says. Freedom of the press runs deep in his veins, strums through his heart, and there's a story that needs to be told and told well, not by the teenager wandering around the immediate area with the camera on on his phone.
Lydia hmms into the phone, and she sounds proud. "I'm hanging up, and I'll call you back on Facetime."
The screen goes dark, and for a moment Stiles' world narrows around him, but then it's lit up and Stiles can see Boyd on the other side, scrambling with a bunch of wires in the control room of the studio. He slides his thumb across the screen to answer.
Someone's yelling frantically in the background, and Boyd shoots back, "There isn't exactly a Facetime fucking wire that I can just plug into here, this is some serious MacGyver shit going on here, throw me the duct tape - "
He ducks out of the screen, and a few seconds later, Boyd shouts shortly, "We're good, go ahead."
Lydia appears on-screen, in a smart skirt suit and that purple-pink lipstick she's always making Jackson run out to resupply. "Ready, Stiles," she says, "you're live in three, two, one - "
He holds the phone out in front of him so that the thumbnail of him in the corner is positioned like a regular headshot, if a lot darker and with considerably more blood in his face than he was expecting. He tries to wipe at it with the back of his hand, and starts, "Good evening, Los Angeles, this is Stiles Stilinski reporting to you from several hundred feet below the city."
He starts stumbling back down the tracks towards the subway car, and feels people's stares on the back of his head as he goes. "I don't really have a great grasp on the situation, but from what I can see, some sort of explosion has occured in the subway system, collapsing at least one tunnel, but I suspect more."
The phone light probably doesn't do shit to illuminate the scene in front of him, but he turns the screen around to survey the wreckage anyways. "There are definitely casualties, upwards of a dozen from my train alone, but probably more in other areas of the system. The tunnel appears to have finished collapsing - "
There's a loud rumbling, and a whole section of tunnel ceiling in front of Stiles falls in, knocking him on his ass and making him scramble backwards along the track, his fingers almost brushing the third rail.
After a few moments of not breathing, he holds the phone back up with the screen turned to face him, to see Lydia looking deathly pale with her hands covering her mouth. "Nevermind, Los Angeles," he says, and his 'don't panic' voice may be slightly broken. "The tunnels are still working on killing us."
xxx
It's four hours later that they finally see flashlights at the end of the tunnel. Two guys went off hours ago to see if they could find a way out, and Stiles never knows if they made it or not, if they were the ones who brought the emergency crews, but they're alive, he sees them when they all finally reach the surface.
His phone is on its last two percent of battery life, but he's still broadcasting when he finally clambers out, the last one other than the emergency crews, and the shot is of his Adidas sneakers rising through a bored hole in the groud as he's rope-lifted out of there, then finally setting down on solid ground. It's hailed later as an inspiring shot, his sneakers appear on the front page of Time magazine, people think it's representative of the end to a horrible ordeal, but really Stiles' fingers were too tired to hold the phone upright, he had sort of forgotten he was on air by then.
Derek runs out from behind the police barrier and gets Stiles out of the harness himself. But the second he's free, he wraps his arms around Stiles tighter than he ever has before, presses his mouth against Stiles' forehead harder than can really be called a kiss -
Stiles latches onto him, buries his face in Derek's neck and just tries to breathe, in and out, in and out, the feeling of Derek's hands on his back, against his bruised ribs, the scent of safe, finally, thank you, everything's alright.
The second most famous shot from that night doesn't win any awards, isn't particularly symbolic or unique. It's a weird camera angle, over Derek's shoulder from the phone still clutched in Stiles' hand like a lifeline - just the shell of Derek's ear and the dark shock of his messy hair, and Stiles' face hidden mostly by the line of his neck, but both of them are shaking, crying, laughing -
The two percent of remaining battery on Stiles' phone runs out before anyone sees Derek kiss him, for the first time, eleventh-hour and risky, last-gasp as if he needs Stiles like he needs to breathe.
xxx
Stiles has the spare key to Derek's loft, but he knocks anyways. It's sort of late to be dropping by on someone, by their standards - one in the afternoon, because they have to be up for work in a couple of hours, no rest for the wicked, or the night shift.
Derek answers the door in pajama pants and an undershirt, his eyes foggy and mouth slack like he's just woken up, which he probably has. His eyebrows draw together in confusion, and he says, "Stiles, what are you doing here?"
Stiles holds up a six pack of beer and a Target bag of top-secret contents and smiles, "I come bearing gifts."
Derek shuffles out of the doorway, and Stiles steps inside past him, his heart in his throat and his arm skimming briefly against Derek's in the entryway. There's only one light on in the apartment, but it's enough to make the conclusion that Stiles has come to seem kind of crazy, even though Derek takes the beer from him and sinks into one of the most comfortable armchairs Stiles has ever seen, and all he wants to do is sink down with him.
He sits on the edge of the coffee table instead, picking at the handle of the Target bag, one shoe already lost to Derek's technicolor quicksand eyes. "I got a call from NBC today," he says, instead of dithering.
Derek pops the lid off the beer and takes a swig, but his heart doesn't seem in it - he sets it down after that, on a coaster with a Dodgers logo, from a set of ten that Scott got him for Christmas last year. He doesn't say anything, just makes eye contact unwaveringly, and Stiles has to look down at the rug or he'll start rambling like an idiot, probably.
"They offered me a job as a traveling correspondant," he spits out. "They saw the whole subway bombing thing, and they said they think I work well under pressure. That I kept a lid on the whole 'panic' thing pretty well. They want me to move to New York."
He looks up. Derek wasn't talking before, but now he's deliberately shut-off, Stiles can tell. His jaw is clenched, eyes hooded, and his fingers are digging into the arms of the chair, knuckles whitening slowly. He presses his lips together into a line, and Stiles doesn't know if what he's about to say will help soothe that or make it worse, make it like that time he reported on the appeals trial of Kate Argent and Derek barely talked to him for a month -
"Fuck it," he says, and he didn't mean for that to be out loud, but Derek's eyes snap up to his, and it's too late. "I told them I would do it, under the condition that I could bring my own cameraman."
For a long moment, neither of them say anything.
Stiles breaks first, laughs and looks down again. He reaches into the Target bag, and pulls out an I heart NY tee shirt, that he picked up completely as an afterthought, when he was feeling a whole lot more confident about this thing. "I, uh, got you a preemptive shirt, because - "
Derek leans forward and catches Stiles' mouth with his before Stiles can dig himself too deep into that anecdote, knots his fingers in Stiles' hair and presses forward. Stiles sways back, but then he recovers and kisses back with everything he's got, because he doesn't know if this is a goodbye kiss or a stay kiss or a wherever you go kiss. Either way, he winds his arms around Derek's shoulders best he can and pulls him closer, smiles against his lips -
Derek tilts his head to pull his lips away from Stiles', just slightly. "Okay," he says.
Stiles breathes out shakily against his chin, and repeats, "Okay."
Derek grins, "Someone has to keep you out of danger. You know, make sure you eat actual food - "
Stiles laughs, and kisses him again, and laughs. "I don't think donuts exactly constitute danger - "
"Shut up, Stiles." Derek pulls him across onto the armchair with him, and Stiles falls into him, into his bedhead and his calm voice and his strong hands and his mouth moving easily against Stiles' neck, hand sliding up the back of Stiles' shirt, the fading graphic across the front proclaiming Metaphors be with you.