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When You're Broken Open

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Derek started dancing after the fire. He had so many emotions that he wasn’t letting out and they were taking their toll, on his well-being and his control. Laura didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t just let him go on as he was; he’d give them away. Letting him hole up away from the world would just kill him slowly. For awhile Laura thought about making him take a sport. It would be good way to release pent up aggression and pain. Then she realized it would be too easy to just let it all out and the wolf with it. Sports weren’t an option. It was a program on WTTW that gave her the idea: ballet. It was a sport, of a kind, it took physical exertion, exhausted the negativity out of you, made you live, but it was about control. She found a nearby studio, cheap but disciplined, and enrolled Derek with out a second thought. She bought him the clothes and dragged him to classes and sat in the hallway to make sure he didn’t sneak out.

She didn’t have to for long. After a few weeks of stubborn rebellion Derek admitted that he liked the classes and went without prodding. She’d find him going over combinations in the living room of their cramped apartment, and his teachers started stopping her to tell her how good he was and that he might actually have a shot at this. When she passed the praise on to Derek he wouldn’t say anything. He would just smile that shy, pleased smile that he wore so rarely. It was funny, because he never talked about it. His friends, the few of them that he had, didn’t know he danced. He never even invited Laura to any of his recitals; she found out from the parents of his classmates while they waited for their students to leave class chatting about costume fittings. Laura always made sure to show up for his recitals and afterwards he’d blush, give her a hug, and thank her for coming. She would just tug at his ear and tell him that was what big sisters are for.

Now that Laura is dead Derek still dances. Only, he’s not enrolled in any classes in Beacon Hills and nobody knows. He charges his ipod at the local cafe and swipes batteries for his speakers from Stiles room (he’s sure Stiles is too scared of him to call him on it). He dances on the charred earth behind his house when no one can see him, jetés, assemblés, and brisés along with pirouettes, fouettés, and tours en l'air.

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Sheriff Stilinski doesn’t trust Derek, not with the way these teens revolve around him. First they claim he’s a murderer and now whenever they can’t be found it’s safe to assume they’re hanging around that condemned property known as the Hale house. What the Sheriff hates most about whatever is going down at the Hale house is that Stiles and Scott are somehow wrapped up in it. It’s not a hard decision then for the Sheriff to head to the Hale house to have a talk with Hale and figure out what exactly is going on and if he’ll be hauling Hale to jail anytime soon.

The Sheriff doesn’t drive down the road to Hale’s house. He’s already seen how easy it is to spook the young man, make him run. So he parks at the turn off for that road in the woods and walks. It isn’t until he’s on the dilapidated porch that he hears a percussive sound coming from behind the house. As he walks around the house, he realizes that the sound is part of a song, music.

“And if I need a rhythym it’s going to be to my heart I listen.” The lyrics say once he can figure them out.

He comes around the last corner of the house to see Hale, dancing. He does some sort of flying turn through the air one leg extended and we lands he flows smoothly in a sort of jaggedly complicated line of fluid motion, that Sheriff Stilinski recognizes as some sort of ballet. The Sheriff freezes. This was not what he was expecting.

Then there is a gust of wind, he barely has a chance to reach for his hat before it flies off his head and Derek stops startled, turns around.

“Sheriff.” He nods, laconic as ever, but there is something to the set of his shoulders, the distribution of his weight that says that this is not the young man’s usual gruffness.

“Ballet, that’s supposed to help with sports footwork, isn’t it?” The Sheriff flops an arm in Derek’s direction, vaguely reminiscent of his son.

“Yeah.” Derek shifts his weight with a grunt.

“So you’ve been, uh, helping the boys with lacrosse that way, huh?” The Sheriff sticks to fingers under the brim of his hat to scratch his forehead.

Derek coughs. “Yeah.”

The Sheriff nods. “Well, I just dropped by to remind you that it’s against the law to live in a condemned residence, and not particularly healthy, besides.” It explains a lot. Most teenage boys would keep learning ballet a secret, even if it was just to improve their sports technique.

“Thanks.” Derek grunts as he stretches out the ball of his left foot.

“Alright then, have good afternoon.” And with that the Sheriff turns and leaves, preparing a speech for Stiles about he can talk to him about these things. He’s not going to judge his son for ballet.

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“Why does my dad think I’m learning ballet?” Stiles unceremoniously drops his bag on the floor as he barges into the room not caring that he’s interrupting whatever self-centered mess Jackson is talking about this time.

“Huh?” Derek raises an eyebrow at him, though he obviously already knows what’s going on. There is amusement written all over his face.

“Why does my dad think that when we are all here, you are teaching us ballet?” Stiles over enunciates as if it will make Derek take him more seriously.

“What?” Stiles has gotten Jackson’s attention now. He’s probably wondering what it will do to his popularity if people hear he’s taking ballet of all things.

“Yeah.” Stiles frowned. “I get home to a speech about how it’s not shameful for guys to dance and how he knows that ballet helps with sports footwork and that I’m only trying to improve for lacrosse.”

“Wait, does it really improve sports footwork?” It Scott’s turn to chime in and he’s got this serious look on his face as if he is actually considering dance lessons to improve his lacrosse game, not that there is anything wrong with that.

“Of course, it does,” Allison smiles at Scott as if he is a particularly inquisitive child. “It helps you learn how to precisely control your body. That’s a huge part of dance.”

“And I want to know, what is up and how did this come to be!” Stiles finishes with a huff, glaring at Derek.

“You’re dad came snooping around trying to figure out what was going on. Ballet is better than werewolves, so there you go. It’s all okay, no big deal.” Derek shrugs and turns back to Lydia and Jackson. Lydia has been watching this whole thing with a particular brand of amusement on her face.

“No. It’s not okay!” Stiles splutters. “Because my dad, wants to see what I have learned! I barely got away with some fib about how I’m a beginner and I don’t know anything worth showing. He then told me that since he doesn’t know anything about ballet he’ll be impressed no matter what and that I’ll have to show him something eventually. He’s not going to forget this!”

Jackson and Scott both laugh out right at this and Stiles turns on Scott wagging a finger. “Don’t think you’re off the hook either. He’s going to tell your mom. You can count on that and then she’s going to want to see what you’ve learned, too. So she can coo over the amazing dancer that is her little boy.” Scott pales and Stiles crosses his arms over his chest triumphantly. “And do you know what’s going to happen if we don’t have anything to show them? They will know we were lying and then there will be more snooping!”

Lydia shrugs from the wall she’s leaning against and cleans some dirt out from under her fingernails. “Then we give you something to show them. I mean there has to be a reason why Derek chose ballet of all things as the cover story.” She smirks at their alpha who blanches.

“I.” He pauses and manly stuffs his hands into his pockets. “I could show you a thing or two.”
“You know ballet?” Jackson raises one delicate, arched eyebrow at Derek snidely.

“It’s a good sport.” Derek grunts.

And that’s how they end up on the burnt ground behind Derek’s house practicing positions and tendus and plies Derek barking orders at them and Tchiakovsky playing in the background. All of them at least struggling a little bit, except Lydia, who it seems has done this before.

“Stiles, tuck your tail under.”

“My tail is tucked.” Stiles whines, wobbling with his heels stuck together in first position.

“I’m not going to tell you again.” Derek growls and Stiles gives a half-hearted wiggle before Derek is at his side, one hand firmly pressed low on his abdomen holding him steady as is other hand presses Stiles’ bottom down and forward, tucking it under with a scooping motion, and though Derek’s hands aren’t anything but professional Stiles feels something twist deep in his gut, behind the hand that Derek has pressed against his stomach and huh, maybe this ballet thing isn’t so bad after all.

Once Stiles gets a hang of his balance he isn’t that bad, and every time he messes up Derek is there to move his arm or his leg or to grab his foot and pull it up higher because he believes Stiles can keep it there and it hurts but it’s kind of worth it. So Stiles isn’t that bad, at least he’s better than Allison, who balances well but can’t seem to hold her foot more than six inches off the ground. Scott is okay and Jackson is actually pretty flexible, but Lydia is turning pirouettes around them all.

Stiles figures that it’s okay though because his dad hasn’t figured out the werewolf thing yet and Scott’s mom doesn’t think he’s on drugs anymore.

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They actually get noticeably results on the field in a few weeks. Coach even asks them if they’ve been working on their game.

It’s Scott that lets it slip, that it’s ballet that’s been making them improve so much. There’s no backlash though, no one makes fun of them. Instead Derek ends up swamped in jocks asking him for dance lessons and offering to pay him.

Derek doesn’t say no, even though it means he has to rent a studio space because he can’t hold official paid ballet lessons in the burned out lot behind a condemned building; though, he tried.

In the end, Derek ends up a respectable member of Beacon Hills society. He buys the studio space so he can go on helping jocks with their foot work after class, giving bored housewives something to do during the day, and letting little girls have a reason to wear pink tutus on Saturdays.

He is still the same awkwardly gruff young man with no social skills but people love him and even Chris Argent gives him grudging respect.

Things seem to be working out for him and maybe that’s because he’s not running anymore—he’s dancing.