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( c ) brigid finn ➜ bostonhowler

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Summer is truly starting to set in as the sun rises slowly in the blue, cloudless sky, and the birds outside are chirping merrily. But with the large window covering most of the wall in the main living space and the sunlight above, Derek stirs with a groan, burying his face further into the warm pillow and the covers surrounding him to shield his sensitive eyes.

He feels a little groggy as he starts to pull himself out from the depths of sleep, not that far from what it feels like after experiencing wolfsbane in his system, and, what he can only assume, it feels like to have a hangover.

It doesn't take long for him to fully come to his senses and when he does he jolts up with a start. Brigid. He looks to his right where she's still lying beside him, but thankfully he doesn't appear to have disturbed her. She looks peaceful in slumber, he thinks, unable to remove his eyes from her sleeping form, and he reaches out without thinking about it, carefully brushing the wild strands of red hair away from her face. He finds himself smiling, almost as if nothing's changed and they're still teenagers without a care in the world, but the weight of the darkness around his heart doesn't let him forget for long.

He's glad she's here, he realises, even though he still can't let himself believe it's going to last; he wants to, but he can't. The second he starts to let himself hope, he knows everything can only go downhill from there, it always does. But maybe if she sticks around long enough, if she manages to settle without bolting as soon as she discovers every single sordid detail, and he knows she's going to have to meet the others at some point.

Derek carefully manoeuvres himself into a sitting position, back against the head of the bed and covers hanging over his clothed lap. He didn't plan to sleep through the entire night and half of the morning as well, but he needed it, and he knows that Brigid did as well. And he can already feel a lot of the weariness gone from the solid night of sleep. He catches the fresh scent of Isaac, but he can't hear his heartbeat from within the loft, so he knows he must have been and gone, always trying to stay out of his way to make sure he's not a nuisance. He doesn't mind having him around, though, and it's not as if either of them have anyone else, but he can't help feeling relief that he can hold off on introductions a while longer until he can catch her up with the recent going-ons.

He doesn't know how long he sits there, watching as the sun fully rises in the sky and glancing down to the woman beside him, a woman he never thought he would get to meet and the memories of the girl she used to be faded from the hard years that followed. He's an alpha, yes, but he knows he's far from perfect, that he wasn't born to the role, and that he's going to make a lot more mistakes before he finds his feet. And he's still got a long way to go before he can be anything to anyone beyond that, but if she's at his side then he thinks he can learn to try that much harder to discover who he was supposed to be before he got thrown off course.

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Changing is mind is the last thing he's ever going to do, he knows that, he feels confident in it in a way he's not felt about anything for a very long time. She's barely been back in his life for a whole twenty-four hours, but he doesn't plan to back out, not now that she's here, that he has her back. He always knew Kate was never the one, he was young and she was experienced, and it was fun, sneaking around, but he always thought about Brigid, wondered what it would be like if that were them, if it would feel the same or different. He knows now that with Kate it was wrong, it felt wrong, but he was foolish and impressionable. But with her, here and now, it feels right in a way that never could have, even before the fire.

"I can't make you a promise that it's going to work out," he tells her, voice shaky, but honest, lacking the usual blunt harshness he tends to deliver facts with. She deserves to know that much, though, that he won't make promises he isn't sure he can keep. "But I want to. I want to be with you, to marry you, to have a family with you." He craves it like nothing else, the bond that comes with family, but the kind that also comes along with pack; he misses it, because as much as he cares for his betas, they're not blood, and it's not the same, it could never be the same.

"I want to try to be the man I should have been," he admits, and he feels naked, like he's been ripped open out of no where and he's spilling his insides everywhere, not sure how to stop them or if he even wants to, or even how it happened. "I've been so lost since..." The fire, he thinks, but can't quite manage the words. "But with you, I know I can do it. I want to try."

Brigid curls their fingers together. He mentions a family and the blush rises on her cheeks. She can't help it. She's always imagined red haired children with his eyes, chasing after each other and filling halls with their laughter and voices. Just a couple, one of each maybe.

Looking up at him, she steps closer, wanting his body warmth. She listens to his heartbeat, able to hear the truth in his words. Brigid wonders when he lost all confidence in himself. He's not as bad as he thinks. Sure, he needs a break and some help, but from what she's seen, he's dealing with a deck stacked against him and at least one teenager that knows nothing of respect.

Brigid licks her lips, hoping she says this right. "I want the fairy tale, Derek. But I'm willing to work for it." Her lips twitch just a little bit. "A dream is meant to be worked for." She's put in the work to learn Gaelic, to get her PhD, to do what she'd dreamed of doing. This dream? This is one she's willing to work harder for, to run herself ragged in helping him find his feet and become the Alpha he wants to be.

Her fingers ghost along his jaw, feeling the scruff. It makes him look older, harder. She wonders what he would look like without it. "I will help you do anything you want, Derek. Pick a direction and I will follow you and help you reach whatever it is you want." Her tongue darts out, wetting her bottom lip. the blush rises again. "And I want to give you a family. I always dreamed of having children with you." Another dream she's willing to work for.

"You shouldn't have to," he whispers, the words broken and tinged with a defeated sadness that runs deep, and if she weren't of the werewolf variety, it might be too quiet for her to even pick up. But she shouldn't have to, she should be with someone where it's easy and enjoyable as opposed to with him where everything will be hard and frustrating, and he knows it'll take its toll; he hopes she doesn't learn to resent him, if she doesn't change her mind first, if things don't work out quite as smoothly as they ought to.

He takes her comfort, though, giving her hand a squeeze, because he's grateful that she's choosing to stay, and beyond flattered that she believes him to be worth it, but there's still that part of him that's waiting on the other shoe to drop and he knows if it does it'll be his own fault from something catching up down the line.

But he meets her gaze when she confesses she's dreamed of having a family, and not just any family, but one with him, one with their children. It brings out a small smile, but it touches his eyes, and the overwhelming feeling behind it is genuine.

"I miss family," he confesses himself, the smile turning sad, but he's learning to think of everyone he's lost without breaking beneath it; it's a work in progress, but at least he's trying. "And I thought I'd never get the chance to have one of my own, not with the trouble I always find myself in the middle of." And he didn't think he deserved one, couldn't stand the thought of anything happen to anyone else he loves, but with her, with them both, and a pack that holds potential - well, he feels more secure in that thought than he has in any other since the night of the fire.

"Anything truly worth something is worth working for, Derek." It's something she's always believed. She worked hard for her degree, to keep her head above water, even when Markus was being his worst. Brigid knows that when it comes to betas, she tends to be submissive and bows her head to most others. But, she is the one that will work, that will put in the time. Just look at everything she's done with the chronicle so far.

Brigid smiles, her own eyes meeting his. "I can't promise trouble-free futures for anyone. And I can't promise that you won't find me slumped over translations, even after you've ordered me to go to bed five or six times." Brigid knows herself. She's had that happen more than once even before her Da had been killed. "I won't promise you a huge Irish Catholic family." One of the reasons Markus had such a huge pack was that almost all of them were Irish Catholics that followed Rome's teachings about birth control. Something Brigid didn't follow.

"I can promise, though, to bore you with history reciting of some of the most obscure facts ever. And slipping into Gaelic, because I don't swear, but Gaelic has a few phrases that just sound good." Her favorite one involves a sheep. "And, after we marry, I can promise you children. Probably loud ones that would make our parents smirk and point out that we were the exact same way."

To be honest, she's looking forward to it. Loud children, loud pack members, Sunday dinners, arguing over football and hockey.

So many dreams, so many thoughts about the future that she could share. But there's food to start cooking. Rubbing her thumb along his jaw, she turns and starts chopping vegetables again, after washing her hands. "If it's with you, I'm willing to work for a lot. I always have been."

He leans into her touch before it disappears, her warmth lingering long after, and he knows it's something he's never going to stop craving, but it's also something no one else can offer him in quite the same way. It feels right with her in a way it never has with anyone else, and deep down, he's always known it never would.

"You don't need to promise me anything." He means it, she doesn't, and he doesn't expert her to. "But when you paint it like that, I can't deny the fact that I'm tempted by it."

He's beyond tempted. He's not there yet, but in time he thinks he'll show her the letters he kept, every last one that she sent him, safely stored away in a small box with their envelopes still encasing them. After the fire, he missed waiting for the next to come, eagerly waiting for the mailman to leave what was for the Hales and to sift through them to find her handwriting staring back at him. He smiles at the memory, a stupid kid with foolish dream, but here he is - here they are - and it suddenly feels incredibly real. But he's letting it sink in a little bit at a time, not sure if he can withstand to break the dam all at once.

"I was never loud, though," he teases, a smile playing aruond his lips in spite of himself, and they both know it's a lie.

She'd still be holding onto him, but there is food to cook. And she wants to have an actual full meal tonight. She's been living on fast food and gas station stuff. This is real food. With spices and meat that's identifiable and vegetables.

Her stomach is pretty sure her throat has been sealed off from real food.

"I had all sorts of dreams about us." Brigid admits softly. "They never stopped. It's part of why I was so ready to believe a stranger's voice on my phone."

And why she'd thrown everything away and bolted out here. She hadn't lost many dreams in her life - she's one of the privileged few - but losing him had just made her more determined to make everything else come true.

His tease, though draws an inelegant snort from her as she tosses vegetables into the crockpot. "No, I'm sure you were the model of patience and silence when I wasn't around." Brigid looks at him, cleaning off the carrots. "Was it just my innocent presence that made you lose all decorum?"

She'd been just as loud as him when she'd been out here. It was around Markus's pack that she'd been subdued. Markus didn't like noise; she obeyed.

He tries to hide the full-blown smile that creeps up on him, head dipping down, cheeks reddening ever-so-slightly.

"If anything, I was more behaved when you were around." He can imagine his mother, now, giving him an amused look of disapproval at the lie, but lacking any real heat behind it; he couldn't even recall the amount of times the rest of the family complained about the basket ball bouncing at all hours and the laughter that often escaped him. It still hurts to think about, but it comes easier in her presence somehow, and he hopes he can reminisce this easily from now on because one of his fears is forgetting them, even if the boy he remembers feels like someone else now.

"Tell me about them?" It's a question, not a demand, but he's curious, and although he can't say he's had too many in recent times, he never stopped wondering, letting himself have a little light in the dead of night when he couldn't take much more of his own depressing thoughts. "Your dreams."

She chuckles. Brigid can't help it. She remembers how loud they'd been together, when he'd been dragging her out of her corner with a book - usually by taking it after trying other methods - and tapping at her window, even though his bedroom had been down the hall. They'd been terrors.

It's part of the reason, she thinks, that her Da always approved of Derek. Someone to draw her out of self-imposed silence and make her see more of life.

His question startles her and she stops scraping the carrot for a moment, while she thinks. Her cheeks pinken, again, and she takes a moment to gather her thoughts.

"I never thought we'd live in the big house, with the entire pack. We'd have something smaller, on the edge of the reserve. It'd still be on Hale land, but separate enough that we had our own household, and we didn't bother your mother." The house had been nice in her dreams. Hardwood floors, warm colors on the walls, with pictures of the family lining up next to each other. "It wasn't huge, but it was ours. My Da would have left Markus and come out here when I came, on the premise that he can't spoil grandchildren across the country."

Brigid is a natural storyteller. Her voice takes on a lilting quality that storytellers of old had used to teach.

"Our kids would constantly run between the two places." She'd often been over to her grandmother's place as a child. Even after her mother had died. "I'd be a professor, probably of history, and while every once in a while, there'd be an issue or trouble, it wasn't anything we couldn't handle. Our daughter would have these deep, black curls with green eyes and she'd constantly try to run away whenever someone chased her with a comb. But she'd sit for you, even if you were terrible at doing hair."

The carrots drop into the crockpots, making soft thunking sounds.

It's hard not to notice the colour that fills her cheeks, but he finds himself enjoying it each and every time the warmth rises to the surface, and he decides, now, that he's going to find as many ways as possible to always bring it out in her. It takes everything he has not to reach out and run the back of his hand over it, to feel the heat coming from the blotches.

He pulls and slides himself up onto an empty counter instead, hands curling around the edge, as he makes himself comfortable to watch her, to listen to the voice he thought he would never hear again, and his memories never quite did her justice.

As she speaks, Derek watches her unseeing, imagining the picture she paints so vividly, and he smiles as he does, even picturing their daughter and feeling something pull tight inside of him that he didn't realise was even there at the thought of her being a daddy's girl. It's almost as if there's a void there on top of the one where his family should be that he hoped to fill once upon a time, but didn't realise just how much he craved it.

"Mom would have liked that," he adds, because he knows she would; she would have loved for him to be happy, to have found someone to settle with, to create a family of his own, but also to have stayed closer. He knows all too well if he had been given the choice, he would never have strayed far from his family, he couldn't have, so when she says her father would have joined them, he starts to feel the weight of a dream they could have lived if things had been different. But they can still have that, even if it's not quite the way it should be. "Laura always said if one of us were having children, it wasn't her, but she'd spoil mine rotten. She would have been someone they could turn to when they didn't feel they could come to us. And Cora someone they could have looked up to." He barely got to know his younger sister, but she was a character someone would have to see to believe.

"It won't be the same, but we can still do it." He spent the previous night lying awake for a time, thinking about how the Hale land is going to be taken from him if he doesn't take any action. But he has a reason to, now, a purpose worthy of it, something to rekindle the family name and make it mean something again. "There's still time."

"Da would have too. He loved roughhousing with the younger members of the pack." She remembers more than once finding her Da on the floor, surrounded by the children. Some would be asleep, some dozing and some stupid movie would be on TV. Most of the time, Brigid had just joined them.

She tosses the last of the vegetables in the crockpots and flips over the cutting board, pulling out the meat. Chicken for one; pork for another. The last will be just a vegetable soup.

"I want to still do it." Brigid admits, looking up at him. "I want to come home and find you collapsed on the floor with the kids, watching some inane cartoon we've seen a million times." Her attention goes back to the meat she's chopping for the crockpots. "Or get up in the morning to one of the kids giggling and saying your pancakes don't look anything like mine." Because hers are the best of course. "I want to argue over the colors to paint the living room, and which kitchen appliances we should invest in."

A deep breath. "And I'd love to stay on Hale land. It's beautiful and there's a peacefulness to it that Boston never had." Brigid looks up at him again. "We can build new dreams, a new home. From the ground up."

She knows nothing about construction, but building the house can't be that hard, right?

He doesn't know how long he perches there on the edge of the counter top, watching her, partly seeing, but partly picturing something so distance, and something that doesn't feel as if it could be his, hasn't for a long time. But, now, there's a hint of hope covering it, making it a little brighter, a little easier to put together and watch play out in his mind's eye.

The woman before him is offering him a path to walk that he thought was long cut off, lost to every mistake he's made to lead him where he is today, and he knows if he decides to take it, to follow through on it, nothing will ever be quite the same as it's been ever since his world was burned down to the ground around him; he fears the thought, the change, but most of all he's terrified of not being able to live up to it, of stepping across the line and ending up somewhere worse, and, even more so, taking everyone else with him.

But he knows he's already make the decision, he made it as soon as he clapped eyes on her and it dawned on him who she was; he hadn't wanted to believe, at first, told himself it wasn't possible, and it's all happened so suddenly. But he knows.

Using the strength of his arms, he lowers himself back down until his feet are firmly on the ground, and he takes a tentative step closer, standing behind her and hesitantly lifting his arms up to wrap aruond her slight waist. He lowers his chin to her shoulder and closes his eyes, nuzzling his face into the spot where her neck meets her should and breathes in her comforting scent.

"Marry me," he whispers, throat dry around the broken words, and he sounds as vulnerable as he feels, which is far from the image of what an alpha should be. "Marry me, and I'll find a way to give you it all. Whatever you need, anything you want."

His silence isn't uncomfortable. She finishes starting the stews and sets them to cook. Her hands swiftly clean up the minor mess that she'd made.

The warmth of his body and his touch make her melt back against him. Her eyes close and her head drops back against his shoulder. As if its done it a thousand times, her body molds itself to his, fully relaxing and enjoying the moment.

She laces her fingers with his, wanting everything she'd been talking about. Admitting to herself that some of it would never come true had been a hard thing to realize. But they can still have some of it. She can still marry Derek, still have that bright-eyed, black-haired little girl who wraps him around her little finger.

Her heart flutters just a moment at his words. Tears prick her eyes because yes, always yes. "Yes." Her own throat forces out the croaked word. "As soon as possible, as soon as you want, yes." Brigid doesn't want him to mistake anything she says. "There's a church and a priest. All we need is the license and the witnesses." She'll call Carlos. He'd run up here if necessary.

Her hand cups his cheek. "But. We'll give each other everything and anything we want." Gently, she strokes the scruff that covers his face. "Not just me, Derek. Us."

Even though it's been clear from the off-set what her answer will be, knowing it and hearing it are two different things, and he stills as she speaks, pointing out the terms without demanding them, but he'll give it to her anyway. It's about them, now, and even though he's been struggling to accept that with his newly acquired pack, being in this with Brigid will make the real difference.

"Isaac can be the witness, Scott and Stiles aren't usually far behind," he offers, knowing Isaac would do it if he were asked, and not even begrudging the others if they were to follow. It's a new start, for him, for her, and for their pack, and he's never felt quite so at peace with things as he does in the moment, even if it is moving quick, it's not as if neither of them have considered it before, planned for it.

But he pauses as something occurs to him, turning awkwardly in their embrace to meet her gaze.

"But don't you want the big wedding?" he asks, unsure, because Laura always banged on about how her wedding would be a big deal, a day to remember, and he knows the wedding doesn't make the marriage, but if it's something she wants in spite of their other circumstances, then he wants to make sure she knows it's on offer. "I don't know about having enough people to fill the church with, but don't you want something more than a simply ceremony?"

She smiles, leaning back against him, her eyes closed. Brigid wants this. She wants the comfortableness that seems to be growing between them. "I need to call Carlos. He's just down at Stanford; he'd come up for me." Because she needs someone from her former life at her wedding. And Carlos... has been a friend for a long time.

His question draws her eyes open and she looks at him. A sputtered laugh escapes her and she shakes her head.

"Oh, no. No no no. I am not... no." It's amused and fond and warm, but a definite statement. "A church, a priest a few witnesses and our marriage is done in the eyes of God and the state. I dislike being the center of a large amount of attention." Which doesn't do her much good when she's teaching, but that's different. Then she has facts and dates and knowledge to back her up. She can retreat into them when she feels out of place and awkward.

She knows that had the Hales survived and her Da lived, there would have been a much bigger deal than this, but then she would have gone through with it for the packs, and not for herself.

Brigid turns in his arms, draping her arms over his shoulders. "I need the Church to sanction the wedding and for Carlos to come, but beyond that? I don't need or want anything else." She shrugs a shoulder. "I've always liked the simpler things in life." Give her a good book and a little bit of music and she'll lose herself for hours. Give her a chance to cook and she's happy.

Brigid is a creature of simple pleasures.

"Will he expect me to sit and listen while he threatens to do violent things if I hurt you?" He sounds hesitant, as if he's regretting the offer to leave it open for her to invite whoever she wants, but he doesn't mind, really, he kind of likes the idea that there's someone looking out for her in case she ever needs them to be there.

But he tries to subtly wipe away the smile that's making his face ache with the effort as she shifts around in his arms, feigning seriousness.

"A teacher who doesn't welcome attention." It's a statement, not a question, and the amusement is evident, now, creeping in through the cracks as he rests his hands around her waist. "If you're sure that's all you want, then that's okay with me." He's not one for a fuss, either, although it wasn't always that way, but since losing his family, and especially Laura, he keeps himself to himself; it's usually the best for everyone.

Brigid sputters. She can't help it. The thought of Carlos threatening anyone is more than a bit ridiculous. "Threatening violent things? Carlos?" She giggles again. "He's more likely to threaten your bank account or your credit rating than your physical person." She smirks. "Or, your car. He is a doctoral candidate for mechanical engineering."

She shrugs. "His boyfriend might loom, but Kevin's a teddy bear." Brigid wrinkles her nose. "He's huge, but a teddy bear." She's tiny compared to him and it's an odd thing to feel when she's used to bigger people around most of the time.

Brigid threads her fingers into his hair. "When I teach, I can disappear into facts and dates and things I've memorized. Doing that around people tends to put them a bit off." She shrugs. "there's a reason I usually retreat into a corner with a book."

Derek isn't exactly known to be a people-person, rubbing everyone up the wrong way without even trying, and it's the only reason why he's really worried; he doesn't want to end up saying something he'll regret later, because she only has the one close friend, he doesn't want to upset her by doing something to prevent them from getting along.

"The car's off-limits."

But otherwise, he doesn't particularly mind; he doesn't exactly sound like anyone he keeps around, but if he's important to Brigid then he'll do whatever he can to make them feel welcome.

"I prefer the quiet," he assures her, but he also likes sitting down to conversation that goes beyond small-talk, which he's never been great at; if she wants to discuss whatever it is at the time that she happens to be reading about, then he definitely doesn't hate the thought of getting to listen. "Not that I've had the chance to enjoy it recently, but I'm hoping that's going to change."

With a soft, rare smile, he leans in to her touches and brushes his lips to hers, and then leads her to the living room to pass the time until dinner. Something tells him that everything might just start to look up from here on out.

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