justsookie | memories like embers keep us

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derek hale

memories like embers keep us

When Sookie had returned to her apartment the evening after first discovering that Jason had vanished, she had very carefully prepared herself for bed. Stepped in the shower, mind unfocused and movements aimless, letting the hot water run over her body until she was pink from the heat of it. She had slipped quietly under her sheets, leaned over to her nightstand, making sure to set an alarm for the next day.

She was going into Semele's, because she needed the work to keep her hands occupied, to lose herself in mindless work that wouldn't give her the time or energy to focus on Jason's disappearance.

She didn't have time for five stages of grief. She wanted it done, finished, over with so that she could go back about her day and start to figure out exactly how she was supposed to go on now that her anchor was missing. Now that family wasn't a thing that Darrow supplied.

For the first few hours, it worked. She rushed about with twice the speed that she normally had on her feet, working herself to the bone and sustaining more than a few bruises as she bumped into chairs and tables. But it was good, hard work, the sort that her parents had taught her to appreciate, and never before had she been so glad for the thick skin she'd developed over years of working at Merlotte's.

And then suddenly, it was too much. A customer who had heard the news. A regular, who stopped by Semele's every week for a Bloody Mary — heavier on the blood than most — and had left ten times the usual amount of tip with a kind note scribbled on the check. Her hands had shook, avoiding the touch of the paper as though it would make everything even more real, and before Sookie could snap back to, somehow, she had made it past the flurry of faces and to the outside alley, breath wheezing as she leaned up against the wall and slid slowly to the ground.

Get a grip, she wanted to tell herself, though all that came out was another gasp.

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Derek has good days and bad days. They're usually bad, so bad that the air around him feels heavy, like it's pushing him into the ground and every step is difficult. But there are good days scattered in there, and they're getting better all the time. He has good friends that care about him, and keep him from getting too far into his own head. He's still having some trouble with his anchor, but knowing that there's an angel that will swoop in and drag him back if he spends too long in his fur is a comfort.

Today wasn't great. It seemed like everything reminded him of Stiles and what he's lost. It's late and he doesn't really want to go home, so he points himself towards Semele's. It's late, but they're still open for a bit and he can get a drink that will actually have some sort of effect on him. Plus, Semele's has the added bonus of having a Sookie in it.

Derek walks past the alley next to the bar and stops when he hears a sharp inhale of breath. He turns on his heel and lifts his chin, inhaling a bit. There's the stench of garbage and cigarette smoke, but beyond that is a familiar scent. Sookie.

He frowns and turns into the alley, eyes widening a bit when he spots her sitting on the ground. She reeks of grief and Derek goes over to squat down in front of her, reaching out to rest a hand on her shoulder. "Sookie, what's going on?"

It's almost time to close up. Sookie can see, out of the corner of her eye, the last couple of customers making their way towards the entrance, and hopes dearly that they haven't been driven out by her hysterics. She can't quite bring herself to stand yet and urge them not to rush, though, instead leaning against Derek and clutching his arm, almost folding herself into the familiar warmth and sense of company.

"It's Jason," she says, figuring that there's no sense in dodging the issue, especially since it'd be easy enough for Derek to find out the problem one way or another. Every single employee at Semele's is aware, has known that their boss has been on edge for days. They're only polite enough not to try to do anything about it, Sookie thinks, until if and when she decides to bring it up.

"Jason's gone. He vanished from the city. And I know that I shouldn't be upset, 'cause he might just be headed off to a better place than here, but," she takes a shuddering breath, then exhales almost angrily. "Oh, what the hell am I talking about? Bon Temps is terrible. He's going back to that shithole and I don't know if he'll be safe, and I don't have my brother around anymore, and — I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

The second breath comes with a broken sob as Sookie presses her face against Derek's jacket.

Derek tenses, because she's feeling everything that he's feeling. Stiles is gone and Beacon Hills is in crisis. He's going somewhere that Derek can't keep him safe and it kills him; it kills him to not be able to touch or see or smell or hear him and there's just this big empty void and --

He takes a breath. Sookie's grief is a potent scent and it's mixing with Derek's own, reverberating like one big feedback loop of misery and pain. It's a fucking epidemic. People have always disappeared but it seems to be happening in droves lately, going and going until there's no one left in this fucking prison that doesn't have someone to mourn.

"It's okay," Derek says quietly, finally folding his arms around her. He turns and falls onto his ass on the grimy asphalt, leaning against the wall and pulling Sookie into his lap. She's bawling like Derek has never allowed himself to do, but his eyes well up and there's this big lump in his throat and he doesn't know what to do.

"Stiles is gone too," Derek tells her, because he doesn't even know if she knows. He doesn't tell her to try and take away anything that she's feeling. He just wants her to know that he understands. If there are words for this situation, Derek doesn't know what they are, but he understands. He rubs her back and sniffs, resting his chin on top of her head as he closes his eyes tightly. "I wish I knew how to make it better but I don't. I'm sorry."

The first thing that Sookie focuses on is the heat of Derek's body as he wraps his arms around her, slightly warmer than most others she's fallen into embraces with — and that, more than anything else, has been the detail that Sookie has come to associate with life over the past several months. Derek's here, he's solid and present and alive; it becomes at once a comfort and a chilling reminder of those she can't lean on like this anymore.

When she cries, she feels small, like that same child who lingered by the front door of her house ever morning after her parents passed away. Some people might say that repeating oneself while expecting a different result is a sign of insanity, but for Sookie, it's always been a sign of childish innocence peeking through. She reverts. She's that same little girl who thought that crying would make everyone hand things over to her. Her future. Her dreams. Her family.

But it doesn't work like that.

"I'm sorry," she says, more of a wheeze than audible words. And in that moment, it isn't about feeling sorry for Derek or herself — instead, it's the melding of grief into one terrible storm.

The worst thing is that she knows she'll survive it.

"I'm sorry that Stiles is gone. I wish — I wish they'd all come back."

He holds her while she cries, and he feels helpless. It isn't a particularly new feeling, but it doesn't get any easier. All he can do is press his lips to her forehead and rub his hand up and down her back. "I wish that too."

But they aren't coming back, and if they do, he doubts they'll remember them. There's evidence enough of that with Lydia and Emma. He doesn't say any of this out loud, but he feels it. There's a chill in the air and Derek hooks his arms under her shoulders and knees, lifting her easily and cradling her against his chest. "Let's go inside, okay?"

The last lingering customers have left, and Derek carries her over to the door, holding her easily in one arm as he locks it, and then grabs a bottle of whiskey and some wolfsbane ale before going over to the booth in the corner. He slides into it backwards and pulls Sookie back into his lap. He feels like he can't let go of her, and that might be as much for his own benefit as it is for hers.

He never got to have this. No one ever held him after Stiles disappeared. And now, he and Sookie can comfort each other. She smells like sweet honeysuckle and sunshine and Derek presses his nose into her hair, closing his eyes and just breathing in the scent of her. There's a lump in his throat so big he can't speak, and his eyes sting as he squeezes them shut tightly.

"I'm here, okay?" He whispers quietly, voice wavering with emotion. He knows that he's no substitute for Sookie's brother or anyone else that she's lost. He's nothing special, but he's here. And he isn't going to leave.

The force of Sookie's sobs only begins to subside as she feels Derek take her into his arms. It might be trite, it might be far too predictable, but there's something in mix of a gentle hand and a warm touch that soothes the tumult in her chest. It leaves behind only the deep ache of grief, and she buries herself in it — physically keeps her face hidden in Derek's. She can still hear the lingering thoughts of the last members of the staff who clear out, some regretful, others dying of curiosity.

She doesn't bother looking up to meet their gazes.

Hearing a couple of bottles clink together, Sookie finally blinks, her eyes already feeling swollen and overly warm. Rubbing at them with the back of her hand, Sookie sits up but a little, not yet extricating herself from Derek's arms. Instead, she glances over at the bottles and sniffles.

"I should be the one pouring that out for you, not the other way around," she says with the barest of exhales, a joke that doesn't quite make it all the way to a laugh. "What a funny picture we must make. A grown woman crying all over her good friend. I'm getting my snot all over your shirt."

With the smallest of smiles on her lips, Sookie raises a hand to rake her fingers briefly through his hair. "I'll get you a new one."

Derek manages to smile a little, eyes going soft and hooded as her fingers slide through his hair. He enjoys the touch and takes comfort in it, and he swallows hard as he keeps his arm wrapped around her waist. "Don't worry about it. Do you have any idea how quickly I go through shirts? I buy them in bulk."

He laughs a little and reaches up to slide her hair out of her face with his thumb, tucking it behind her ear and cupping her cheek gently. "I'm here for you, okay? Me and my shirt."

Her eyes look like they hurt and Derek pulls at that pain, taking any physical ache she may be feeling from her. He wishes his powers worked on heartache, but this is all that he can do.

"I think we could both use a drink, huh?" He keeps one arm around her waist, holding her on his lap as he reaches for a bottle. They both have pour spouts on them, and he fills one glass with whiskey and hands it over to Sookie before pouring some of the wolfsbane liquor for himself. He lifts the drink and gives her a wry, sad smile as he clinks their glasses together and knocks back a big gulp. It makes him wince slightly, the herb making him burn, but it passes quickly enough.

"We're going to be okay, Sookie," he tells her, and he means it. They have to be, because there isn't another choice.

"I'm concerned about this talk of you goin' through shirts, Derek, 'cause I don't know if that means you manage to rip your way out of them every day, or if you just hate doing laundry," Sookie says, her gaze softening when she feels Derek's fingers brushing over the curve of her ear, tucking her hair out of the way. It's such a small gesture, but a telling one nonetheless. It's not the sort of thing that a person would do unless they cared for a person.

It makes Sookie's cheeks flush slightly. Even in a moment like this — or maybe especially considering the circumstances — it's nice to feel cherished. Protected. Shielded.

Tomorrow, she can work on galvanizing herself again. But today, she just can't summon the effort.

"Mm, if you don't mind seeing me home if I get impossibly sloshed, then a drink sounds like a good idea," Sookie agrees with a nod, holding her hand out for the glass of whiskey and taking a small sniff. She's always liked the scent of it, spicy and sharp, reminding her of days long ago when she used to sit next to her grandfather while he was reading a book late at night. Smiling at the large gulp Derek takes, Sookie follows suit, wrinkling her nose briefly at the burn.

"That's kind of the tragedy of it all, Derek," she says, looking up to meet his gaze. "We're going to be okay, because there's nothing else we can be. We're stubborn survivors like that."

Back home, Derek lost shirts to blood stains and tears with a frequency that made him wonder why he even bothered trying to do laundry at all. That still happens here, though not as often. Some of his shirts are strewn about the forest here, he's sure, from the times where he shifted and had no interest in going back to track them down.

"Maybe a little of both," Derek tells her, not wanting to tell her that he usually just throws them away because he knows that he'll never get the blood out.

He takes another drink from his glass and he can already feel the wolfsbane traveling through his veins. It seems to dull his senses just a little, but when you have senses like his, that's not always a bad thing. It makes it easier to focus on the little things, like the way Sookie's skin feels against the pads of his fingers where his hand rests against her hip, fingers slipping just under the edge of her shirt.

She looks at him, calls them stubborn survivors, and all Derek can do is nod. He's lost every single person he's ever loved, and he sometimes wonders if there's a limit to just how much he can take. Will it ever be so much that he just stops functioning, shuts down, because it's just too much.

Sometimes it feels like all he knows is loss, and it's a thought that makes him swallow hard and pull Sookie tighter against him. She's real, and she's here, and Derek clings to that. In this moment at least, he isn't alone.

"The tragedy of it all," Derek repeats quietly, huffing out a breath and knocking back the rest of his drink. "Sometimes I think that I'm so busy surviving that I forget that I'm supposed to live."

The brush of Derek's fingertips against her skin is subtle, perhaps not even a conscious choice on Derek's part. For a brief while, Sookie can't even bring herself to look. She knows what it's like to let grief fade away by pursuing the company of another person, but where friends are concerned, it seems so tenuous. A risk that might not be wise to take. So her brow furrows, and the presence of Derek remains strong in the room, from the intake of every breath to the warmth of his hold, and she tries her best to focus on his words, even though they leave her feeling even more isolated. Alone.

In need of something to fill that void and bridge that gap.

"Your mind forgets it. But the rest of you doesn't. You still wake up every morning, and when life throws shit at you, your body still knows to run away. Or to face it, the stronger you get, the more you know that you can overcome it all," Sookie says, clearing her throat as she downs more of her own glass, tilting the comforting weight in her fingers. She's not sure if it's Derek who pulls her closer, or if she moves in that direction of her own volition, but her eyes are stinging again and the tears threaten to fall. Somehow, right now, it feels like it'd be the worst admission of defeat.

This is the last thing that Jason would have wanted, for her to grieve over the simple fact that Jason's stepped only into the next room, inaccessible for a brief period of time.

"Don't close your mind off to that," she says, looking up to meet Derek's gaze. "To living. Because the rest of you is gonna get through everything the world throws at you, and the worst would be if you don't let yourself to see the happiness in every new day that you get. It's there, it's just... buried, sometimes." She huffs a soft, broken laugh, leaning her head to rest briefly on Derek's shoulder. "I don't even know what the hell I'm saying."

Pausing, after a few moments, Sookie tilts her head up slightly, the bridge of her nose pressed soft against the line of Derek's jaw. She doesn't have his sense of smell, and yet she feels like everything around her is heightened. Maybe she's reading his mind, she thinks to herself. He always did think in sensation — the smell of fresh grass, the feel of dirt soft under each step. The smell of sunshine, indescribable and clear.

Sookie is so close to him, and when her nose presses to his jaw, he hesitates for only a moment before tipping his head back just a little. Her breath is warm and steady against his neck, against the most vulnerable part of him, but Derek finds that he trusts her. She can press her face to his neck and he won't pull away. It even feels good, in a way, to let another person get that close.

"I don't really know what you're saying either," Derek says with a breathy laugh, swallowing hard and sliding his hand up her back. "Something about not shutting myself off to happiness, right?"

He swallows hard and turns to press his nose to her temple, subtly inhaling her scent. It's so easy to get lost in that scent, the summertime sunshine and freshly bloomed flowers. She feels so warm and he closes his eyes, sighing deeply.

"I don't know how to find it," Derek admits, lips brushing the apple of her cheek as he speaks. "I don't know how to make happiness."

The irony of the moment doesn't escape Sookie. Sometimes, she feels like she's practically desperate for warmth — a statement more metaphorical than it is literal, though in the moment, Derek offers both. She sighs quietly between her lips when his hand spans over the small of her back, fingers spanning broadly across her skin. For a while, it feels like every last nerve in her body is focused on that brief area of contact, until suddenly his words hit her, deep and sudden and slightly off-center against her chest.

"I think that's 'cause you don't. Make happiness, I mean," she says, frowning briefly as she shifts, knees suddenly lightly on either side of Derek's hips as her hand balances her glass of whiskey precariously to the side. "The moment you try to make it, it feels false. Feels like a lie. It's not about making happiness, it's just..."

Her gaze blurs over for a moment, far away and unfocused.

"Letting it happen when the opportunity is there."

It's his eyes that she settles on first. She's seen them take on other colors before, though it's the dark shade that she thinks she likes the most well. Soft, quiet, and vulnerable. She hesitates for only a moment before leaning in, her cheeks too warm and blood rushing dizzily to her head, almost overwhelming all other sensation when she presses her lips softly against his.

Almost, but not quite.

Derek's breath hitches slightly when she straddles him, mainly because it kicks up her scent in a way that nearly overwhelms him. It's just there, wrapping him up like a blanket and it feels so good, so warm and comforting. The way she's looking at him makes him swallow hard, and this is so out of the realm of anything that he's used to that he doesn't even really understand what's happening until she leans in.

Their lips brush and it's electric, in a way. His eyes slip shut and he just breathes, feeling her exhale shakily against his mouth. A lot of things come to his mind at once, and it's mostly the image of the last person he kissed. Part of him feels like this is a betrayal, but it isn't. That person isn't here anymore, and Derek can never kiss him again. He has no one to be loyal to like that, not anymore.

The thought is a painful one, and Derek's hand tightens on Sookie's hip. He takes a deep breath and lets her scent overcome him again, and he feels better. This is what she's talking about, isn't it? Letting it happen.

It may not be the best idea, but in this moment, Derek doesn't really care. Her scent and her warm presence is like a balm on his wounds and maybe, just maybe, he's doing the same for her. If they can find even one moment of happiness, of something other than pain, shouldn't they take it?

His breath is shaky and he pulls back to look at her, eyes glinting briefly in the light before he leans in again, letting their lips brush softly. Derek stops thinking about the reasons why not, and he lets his hand slide up under the back of Sookie's shirt to rest against her bare, soft skin.

He breathes her in and shuts his eyes as he lets it happen. It's not clear to him who moves first, but suddenly they're kissing and Derek feels dizzy with it. It's overwhelming, all-encompassing, and in this moment, he thinks that it may be exactly what he needs.

She wonders when it was that she started finding solace in other people. Having lived with telepathy has exposed Sookie to far too much of other people's hearts, to the selfishness and malice that often doesn't otherwise see the light of day. She's seen how duplicitous people can be, even those who mean no harm by it, and it's resulted in Sookie keeping some distance from most of the people in her life.

Until she let herself cross that threshold with Bill. Until she reminded herself that other people having flaws didn't necessarily mean that they weren't worth growing close to. That sometimes, the warmth of company was enough to overpower the hurt.

Before Sookie realizes it, her glass has somehow made its way back to the table and her arms are looped loosely around Derek's neck. A part of her remains conscious even now that this may be a mistake. She's not in a place to think about entering a relationship, not when she's still in mourning over the loss of Lafayette and Jason. But ever since she let the first person in, it's been harder and harder to keep the door closed and turn away the prospect of company. Of comfort.

She rests her forehead briefly against Derek's, one hand gently raking down the front of his chest, disturbing the fabric and feeling the folds underneath her fingertips. After she catches her breath, she leans forward to capture his lips again, harder this time — she'll beg forgiveness rather than ask permission tonight. She can feel her shirt hiking up, and the slide of the hem against her skin makes Sookie shiver, cheeks already flushed in some mix of embarrassment and anticipation.

When Sookie kisses him like that, hard and unyielding, Derek knows that he isn't going to put a stop to this. Something overcomes him in that moment, and a rush of endorphins tumbles through him, sending him arching up against her.

He's never really been one to turn to sex in times of strife. It was sex that caused all of his problems in the first place, and he finds it nearly impossible to let his guard down enough to be that intimate and vulnerable with a stranger. But Sookie isn't a stranger. Derek has liked her since the moment they met, in some way or another, and he'd be lying if he said he'd never thought about what this might be like. Not recently, and not when his heart belonged to someone else, but it has crossed his mind.

The reality of it is so much better, and he does his best to shut himself off to everything that isn't this. Sookie tastes like she smells, like summer and sunshine, this citrusy bite that has Derek licking into her mouth. Her thighs are spread around his waist and Derek slides his hand further up the back of her shirt, fingers nudging up under the strap of her bra.

The faint buzz of wolfsbane in his veins and the feeling of Sookie's lips on his bolsters him, and a soft sound like a growl escapes him as he pulls away from the kiss to fix his lips to her jaw instead, tongue tracing the edge of it before setting his blunt teeth to her neck, not quite hard enough to mark or sting, before he presses a kiss to the spot.

This is happening, and Derek isn't going to fight it. He doesn't want to, not with the way this drowns out everything else. He's firmly in this moment, and he drags her closer as he lets out a hot, ragged breath against her throat.

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memories like embers keep us

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