[ Maybe Derek should have been more vocal about how it felt, always seeing Tate as just a shell. Never being able to rely, instinctively, on the things he's always instinctively relied on when talking to a person - the listening, the sensing. Tate lost his life back home - suicide, he'd said, after years of heartache Derek's foolishly sure he never deserved - and every time Tate snuck up on him or stared at him in deafening silence or just felt like he disappeared when Derek couldn't see him, he always remembered that.

And maybe it's cowardly to not want to, but. He's already called himself a coward. Tate moves his hand and Derek lets him, thumb smoothing over his heart. He closes his eyes and listens for a while. The repetitive thuds, back where they should be. Hope that Tate could still be alive here, somehow. Could still leave here alive. ]

It's a part of you. I didn't want to lose... I didn't want you to lose... a part of you.

[ He didn't like that Tate changed. Derek sighs, dropping his head forward, nudging his nose against Tate's neck in a silent demand for physical affection. He ghosts his other fingers back down Tate's thigh and up to his waist, instead, following the V of his hip. ]

We don't have to do anything. If you're too tired. But.

[ He clearly wants to. ]