Stiles smokes his first cigarette the morning of his mom's funeral. He remembers the smell well enough; remembers how it used to stick to her clothes, to her hair, to the bed sheets when he crawled beneath them after a particularly bad dream. The taste of the tobacco is new, but not unpleasant, and it makes his head buzz like he's forgotten to take his Adderall again.

He's careful to stub out the end and throw it in the trash, careful to wash his face and brush his teeth and change his clothes so his dad won't find out. Stiles knows what cigarettes can do to people; Mom used to joke about how the habit would kill her one day. They used to laugh about it together, puffs of smoke threading through the air between them.

Stiles isn't laughing anymore.

This is a Saturday. Stiles is ten years old.

It sort of becomes a thing, after that. By the time he's eleven, by the time he's twelve, smoky clouds greet him like old friends, filling up him with memories and tar. He knows what he's doing is wrong. He's had enough health classes to figure it out.

But the tobacco calms him down in a way not even his meds can. So Stiles doesn't stop.

He doesn't tell anyone, either.

Scott's bitten by a werewolf and Stiles smokes a whole pack a day to soothe his nerves. He opens his bedroom window, of course, because he's not an idiot, and showers both that night and the next morning, but when he gets to school and greets Scott in the corridor, his best friend gives him a look.

"Why do you smell like smoke?" Scott asks, sniffing the air in front of in a way that's completely unsubtle, even for Scott. Stiles does a double take as he slides books out of his locker.

"What?"

Scott fixes him with those goddamn puppy dog eyes. "You smell like smoke, Stiles. Like smoking."

Stiles flails a bit under the glare. "Well, I burnt dinner last night, so, um."

Scott narrows his eyes, opens his mouth to say something else, but like an angel from heaven, Allison Argent walks through the doors. Stiles nudges Scott, and in his friend's confusion and eagerness, manages to make a quick, if slightly stumbling, getaway.

When he sees Scott later that day, his friend doesn't say anything else on the matter, and Stiles thanks God for small miracles.

Of course, it's only a matter of time before he starts craving the taste of tobacco again. He makes sure no-one's around that afternoon before slipping a cigarette between his lips and sighing in relief. Even after all these years, the smell reminds him of her, and it hurts, but in a good way.

In a memories kind of way.

He showers for an extra ten minutes than he usually would that night, scrubs and scrubs the smell from his skin until he looks pink and rubbed raw. He takes another shower before school the next day, and sprays deodorant on himself like nobody's business. When he sees Scott at the lockers his friend once again wrinkles his nose, but this time it's only because he's been assaulted by Axe.

Stiles considers this a win.

Derek Hale in his bedroom is kind of a thing, now. Stiles has just stubbed out his third cigarette of the day when the werewolf slithers in through the already open window. Stiles wouldn't call the movement graceful, lest Derek rip out his throat with his teeth, but it is fluid, smooth in a way Stiles could never achieve with his various outbursts of flailing and falling.

Derek straightens and is moving towards where Stiles is sitting at his desk when he stops still. Sniffs the air. Zeroes in the burnt out cigarette butt that's still hanging limply from Stiles' fingers.

He looks at Stiles. Stiles stares back.

Neither of them say a word about it, but Stiles can feel the werewolf's gaze on the back of his neck as he types what's requested into his search engine.

In some small part of his mind, Stiles knew Scott would find out eventually. If he's being honest with himself, he thought it would be sooner. But he supposes with an Alpha werewolf who turns out to be Peter Hale on some sort of vengeance killing spree, the way his best friend smells would be pretty far down on Scott's priority list.

Then, of course, there're the Argents, and Derek being kidnapped, and Lydia almost dying, and Peter killing Kate, and Derek killing Peter, and everything's just a bit of a mess.

Stiles goes through more cigarettes than he can count over those last few days, so it's only a matter of time before Scott catches him in the act.

It's a Tuesday. Derek's the alpha and Scott and Allison are sunshine and daisies (secret sunshine and daisies, of course). Stiles heads to the preserve after school with a fresh pack and a lighter in his pocket.

Scott finds him when he's on his second smoke. "What the hell," he says flatly, and Stiles can't be bothered to make a sarcastic comment about how like Derek that sounded, or even make a half-hearted attempt to hide the cigarette. He waits it out.

"What the hell," Scott repeats, wrinkling his delicate werewolf nose at the smell. Stiles shrugs and stubs out the end on the sole of his Converse.

"Thought you'd be with Allison."

"She's got a family thing on – Stiles, what the hell? Since when do you smoke?"

Stiles shrugs again. Scott storms closer.

"Do you have any idea how bad they are for you, oh my god, your mom –"

"Carked it via a different terminal illness, Scotty," Stiles bites back coolly. "And I'm not dumb. I know what they're doing to me."

Scott just stares, incredulous, and Stiles sighs.

"Look, buddy, I didn't tell you because I knew you'd react like this, okay? I know what I'm doing and I know it's wrong and illegal and really fucking stupid, but it's just something I do." He chews on his lip that still tastes of tobacco. "It's something I've done for a while now."

Scott looks like somebody just killed his kitten. "How long's a while, Stiles?" he asks, voice strange.

"I dunno." Stiles knows exactly. "Couple years?" Six and a half.

There's a beat. "You're lying," Scott says, and Stiles shrugs.

They don't say much else on the matter, and Stiles makes an excuse about being needed at home. Scott doesn't buy it, but he lets it slide. Stiles turns away from his best friend's accusing eyes and tries not to feel dirty, contaminated, wrong wrong wrong.

He gets home and throws away all his cigarettes. He turns the water in the shower to scalding, strips away flakes of skin with a hard sponge until he's bleeding from small cuts all over his body. He sticks his toothbrush so far down his throat in an effort to make himself clean that he gags, retches, vomits into the bathroom sink.

He is infinitely glad his dad is on the night shift, because Stiles spends the rest of his evening curled up between the tub and the cistern, knees drawn up to his chest, eyes focused on nothing.

He lasts all of four days before driving to the next town over and getting three new packs from the place he always goes to. He smokes three in the jeep on the way back home, and where the smell used to comfort him, wrap him in his dead mother's arms, now all he can see are Scott's narrowed eyes, the look on his face like he didn't know Stiles at all.

Beacon Hills just wouldn't be Beacon Hills without a nice, supernatural murder at least once a fortnight. And of course it happens right near the full moon. And obviously there's a brand spanking new werewolf locked up in the Sheriff's station baying for blood. And naturally Stiles is the closest happy meal available, because that's what the token human is for in these kinds of situations, right?

His life is starting to turn into a really bad episode of Buffy.

But Derek's there to save him, thank fuck, and alpha-werewolfs some shit up around town, and when Stiles gets safely home he sucks down four cigarettes before he really registers what he's doing.

He still sees Scott's disgust clear as day when he closes his eyes, but then he remembers that it was Derek who found out first. Derek who looked at him without saying a word and who hasn't said anything since.

Something tight constricts itself around Stiles' internal organs at the thought, and it's not an altogether unpleasant feeling.

Stiles' arms fucking hurt. He held up Derek for two fucking hours and right now he just wants to kind of curl up and die. Instead, he lights up, breathing in the familiar smell that calms him down almost instantly.

Derek appears at his side so suddenly Stiles fumbles and almost drops his cigarette. The alpha's eyebrows judge him silently, before Derek plucks the half-empty pack and lighter from Stiles' pocket, and lights up a cigarette of his own.

They smoke together in silence, and Stiles knows that if Scott were here he'd give them bitchface #17, but he isn't. Somehow it's ended up just being Stiles and Derek, and it's strangely not awkward at all.

Stiles finishes his first, wordlessly accepting the pack and lighter from Derek's warm, rough hand. They stand together for a little while after, staring up at the stars, before Derek speaks.

"My dad used to smoke," he says, pursing his lips and blowing out a stream of smoke up towards the Big Dipper.

"So did my mom," Stiles confesses, and offers up a small half-smile to the werewolf, who doesn't smile back but whose eyebrows soften into something Stiles has never witnessed before.

He gets that tight feeling inside of him again, but if Derek notices the way his heartbeat trips slightly, he doesn't show it.

Of course, all this goes immediately to hell when Derek and the leather triplets come for Lydia, who turns out to not even be the fucking kanima. Stiles' fingers itch for a cigarette all that night, but between running for his life and running for Lydia's life, he is so utterly done that by the time he gets home, he hits the mattress and is out like a snuffed candle.

Things get really bad for a while after that, so bad that he's sucking down a pack a day and Scott doesn't make a single comment about it. Stiles smokes because of kanima!Jackson, he smokes because of human!Jackson, because of Gerard and Lydia and fucking Derek, who, after that night of mutual family angst, hasn't said a single friendly word to Stiles.

Well, Derek can go fuck himself. Stiles has bigger problems to deal with – like the small matter of resurrected psychopath Peter Hale, because what's life without a little good old fashioned soap opera dramatics?

The whole hostage situation with Matt – which he totally called, like, a month ago – shakes Stiles up more than he'd care to admit. He gets home with his dad that night, numb all over like the kanima venom is still pulsing through his veins, and has a small panic attack alone in his room when he realises he's out of cigarettes.

He needs – he fucking needs –

He manages to make it to the bathroom and turns on the shower, sitting fully-clothed under the freezing stream of water until he can breathe again. His hands are trembling. Dad knocks on the door after a little while, asking if everything's all right in there. Stiles gives a halting yeah, fine and hauls himself off of the tiles, stripping his clothes and turning the water to warm.

He doesn't want to think about Matt, or the gun that was waving in his face, or the look in his dad's eyes as he was dragged away. He especially doesn't want to think about lying beside Derek, feeling every inch of his skin flushing red and being unable to do anything about it. He doesn't want to think about the way the werewolf had looked at him, had spoken to him, like Stiles was nothing.

He doesn't want to remember the way it had felt to lay on top of Derek, to inhale his scent, the feeling of rightness that had settled in the pit of his stomach and now won't go away.

Stiles just needs a cigarette. That's all he'll let himself think about.

Gerard snatches him away from the game so fucking easily, Stiles would kick himself if the hunter didn't already do so. He'd just slipped away for a quick smoke, adrenalin still coursing through his veins – and that's when he'd been jumped. Suffice to say, tobacco now tastes bitterer that it used to on his tongue.

They take him to a freakin' underground lair, where Erica and Boyd are strung up like fairy lights, and Stiles tries his hardest not to scream as he takes the hits again and again and again and –

he loses count.

He's just the token human once more, just a message for Scott-the-hero, and Stiles would laugh at the irony of his dad's words that night if it didn't hurt so much.

Things don't really work out in the end. Erica and Boyd and Gerard are gone, Jackson's abandoned Lydia for London, and Peter's now officially starring as Creepy Uncle #1. Isaac shows up at Scott's house one morning and never really leaves. Derek prowls around looking like someone's killed his puppy, and there's a fucking alpha pack on the loose. And Stiles?

Stiles still goes through a pack a day just to keep his head above water.

Derek finds him like this one night in the preserve, cigarette stubs laid in a half-circle around his head like a halo, a freshly lit one between his lips. Derek lies down beside him and they look up at the waxing moon. It's a pretty thing, when it's not driving werewolves mad.

Stiles offers Derek a smoke, and somewhere in between the exchange of tobacco and lighters, their fingers tangle together and stay like that. They don't kiss, or even say a word to one another, and Stiles is still brimming with all the things he needs to yell into Derek's face, but amidst kanimas and hunters and serial killers they've finally managed to carve out a space for just the two of them, a safe place where Stiles can breathe in the smoke and the memories and not think about Scott's disappointment, where Derek can close his eyes and not worry about his mess of a pack.

It's warm, that night, beneath the moon, and Stiles gets this bone-deep ache inside of him every time he turns his head to look at Derek. There's a cigarette between his lips, still, but slowly, so slowly, he reaches up with his free hand and tugs it loose, stubbing the end out on the sole of his shoe and breathing, finally breathing, for the first time in seven years.

Author's Note: Had this one sitting in my drafts for over a month before I basically rewrote it today. Needed to get it out of my system. Title from David Condos' "The Ache," though I much prefer his song "Like Wolves." Listen to it. Guess which TW scene it's from. (Hint: season 2 with Stiles & Derek.)