AUGUST
All the lights in the loft are out, the moonlight bathing what little furniture is spread across the room. Derek is lying on his back staring at the ceiling as he has done multiple times during the last month. The apartment has never been quieter than now, not even the mice are squeaking as they make their way around the beams.
Stiles, the last of the pack to leave, has been gone for exactly 40 hours and Derek already regrets not saying anything.
But what could he have said that would change things? Stiles had been in love with Lydia for ages, Derek knew that. Whatever kind of banter Stiles and him had, didn’t mean anything.
You’re not in love. You’re nineteen.
But the smile on his face when he talked about her? The sparkle in his eyes when she came into a room? The spike in his heart rate when she grabbed his hand? Those things were real and they all pointed to Stiles having feelings for her.
And Stiles?
Stiles looked happy. He looked like everything was going his way for once.
The last time Derek saw him, Stiles was pacing back and forth, leaving a trail in the middle of the loft, a bundle of nervous energy.
“What if there are werewolves in Quantico and I’m stepping into their territory?” Stiles asked again, the frantic look in his eyes meant he had had too much or too little Adderall.
“Stiles, you’re gonna be fine,” he said. Derek opened one of the brown delivery bags on the table and unwrapped a burger, gesturing Stiles to sit down. “Eat.”
“Can’t. I’m meeting Lydia for dinner,” he replied.
Derek put the burger down, no longer hungry.
Stiles didn’t say anything for a long time, still pacing. Derek now knows he could’ve said something then. He wanted to say something when Stiles’ phone alerted him of a message.
He checked his phone and smiled. The first real smile of the night.
“Lydia’s dad just dropped her at home,” Stiles read out loud. He typed a quick reply and put his phone back in his pocket. “Thanks, I guess. For listening.”
“Good luck, Stiles.”
Stiles gave him a small smile and left, sliding the door shut.
The metallic clank still echoes in the loft as the 40th hour after Stiles’ departure comes to an end.
NOVEMBER
Eventually, it becomes easy -or at least, easier- to be apart from Stiles.
He gets out of bed in the mornings, he runs, he eats breakfast. Cora calls him every day at precisely 8:10 am, as she walks from her house to the Geology campus. She always has something to say about the weather or the people in Colombia. Derek listens and chips in every once in a while, knowing Cora needs little encouragement to keep talking.
Today, she’s idly telling him about a book or her class or something. Derek’s been distracted since he woke up, today’s call is a blur of disconnected sentences that he can’t make sense of.
“It was in November, wasn’t it?” Cora asks abruptly.
“What was?”
“Laura.”
His chest tightens in his chest, the familiar sting behind his eyes threatens to spill the tears he’s been holding inside for the past three years. Sometimes, late at night when the only sound in the neighborhood is the occasional car speeding out of town, Derek breathes out, letting the tears flow onto the pillow. The release he begs never comes.
“Derek?” Cora asks softly.
“It was on November 12th,” he confirms.
“Do you want me to come to Beacon Hills?”
Of course. Always. I miss you.
“It’s fine. I’ll see you on Christmas,” he says instead.
Cora stays silent, but Derek can hear her breathing and the faint sound of her steps on the pavement three thousand miles away.
Please come home.
“I’ll call you tonight, okay?”
Please come home.
“Okay.”
He’s been lying down in the tub for what feels like ages, his clothes drenched through, the water no longer warm. His phone has rung many times since he got in the water, but Derek can’t be bothered to get out and turn it off.
The only way he’s interacted with Stiles for months -if it can be considered an interaction- is by reading his texts in the group chat Scott created for the pack. Scott and Stiles are responsible for most of the texts, with Isaac taking the lead in random animals he finds in the East coast streets. Lydia only ever replies to correct the grammar in Scott’s rants, though sometimes she’ll share a picture taken by one of the many creeks in Palo Alto. She once mentioned Allison would’ve loved it and no one spoke in the chat for days. Derek broke the silence with a picture of a deer he’d found in the preserve. Allison wasn’t mentioned again and Derek had no reason to do anything else but lurk in the chat.
The day before, he woke up to a text from Stiles asking if he was in town. Derek mindlessly replied and his phone rang displaying Stiles’ name for the first time in months.
“What is it, Stiles?”
“My dad told me he hasn’t seen you around town in a while,” Stiles’ voice was still as warm and sweet as honeyed milk. It triggered a memory of something earthy, something sweet and cheap aftershave.
“I’ve been busy,” he replied, getting out of bed and walking barefoot around the bed, rummaging for a clean-ish t-shirt. Stiles hums unconvinced.
“I was thinking about making the trip to Beacon Hills this weekend,” he said when Derek didn’t volunteer any extra information.
“Your break starts on the 23rd,” Derek replied, neglecting to mention he’d been counting the days for everyone to be back in town.
“I could call in a few favors,” Derek heard the turning sign in the background. He didn’t want to distract Stiles but he couldn’t let go of the only connection he’s had with him in months.
“You don’t have any favors to call in with the FBI,” he deadpanned.
Don’t hang up yet.
“I have my ways,” Stiles added mysteriously. After a moment, unsure, “do you mind if I drop by when I get there?”
Of course, I don’t mind.
“There’s not much to do in the loft,” he said instead.
“We’ll go somewhere else, then.”
Stiles hung up after that and Derek spent the rest of the day and most of the night turning his thoughts around his head until they no longer held any distinct shape.
Now, soaked and chilled to the bone, Derek listens to his phone ring one more time, wondering what was the point of the tub when he first got in. He thinks the warm water is the closest he could get to a hug, yet it didn’t hold a candle to the real thing, the persistent thrumming in his head as loud as it’s been since Cora asked about Laura.
He absentmindedly listens to the cars in the distance, thinking that Laura would know what to say to him to get him out of his rut.
If Laura was here, nothing would need to be said.
Derek startles with the loud pounding in his door.
“Derek, you better be inside unharmed or I swear to God-” Stiles’ next words are muffled by the metallic sound of the door opening.
He sits up, acutely aware that if that truly is Stiles, he can’t see him like this. The odds of Derek finally losing his mind are higher than zero, so he doesn’t reply.
“Derek, for fuck’s sake,” Stiles grunts, running up the stairs, his feet solid against the stairs. Derek springs to action, getting out of the tub just as Stiles enters the bathroom. “What the hell, man? Can’t you pick up your damn phone?”
It takes him a minute to reconcile the image of the Stiles in front of him with the Stiles that left Beacon Hills three months ago. Not much has changed in his appearance but his lips are set in an uncharacteristic, harsh line, his eyes are hardened by worry.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, dumbfounded. His clothes cling to his body, dripping wet. There’s no hiding where he was or what he was doing.
“I told you I’d drop by.”
“It’s not the 23rd.”
“I know. It’s November 12th.”
The silence between them hangs thick with things left unsaid. Derek has never been as glad as he is now that Stiles can’t hear the way his heart speeds up with understanding.
“Get dressed. We’ll go somewhere else,” Stiles says softly, turning to leave the bathroom.
Thank you.
DECEMBER
The night before New Year’s, as he drives to drop Cora at the airport, she says “I don’t want to go back to Medellin.”
Derek looks in her direction but she’s, in turn, glancing out the window. He exits the highway the next chance he gets and parks at the far edge of a cheap motel parking lot.
“Did something happen?” he asks.
You can tell me anything.
“I don’t even like Geology,” is all she says.
I miss you too.
“Okay.”
When she doesn’t say anything else, Derek reaches across the gears to touch her left arm. She quickly wipes her face with the right sleeve of her cardigan.
“Can we get pizza on the way home?” Derek doesn’t mention her sniffling.
“Sure.”
The following night, Cora sits between Isaac and Scott at the bonfire, unbothered by the open flame, telling the guys about Colombia. Derek is leaning against a tree, looking up at the branches that reach up into the night sky. Stiles comes to stand next to him and offers him a beer.
“Are you trying to make a wish?”
Yes.
“There’s no such thing as wishing stars, Stiles,” he retorts.
“And there’s no such thing as werewolves,” Stiles counters.
Instead of responding, he takes a long gulp of his lukewarm beer and watches as Lydia passes a tin of brownies around. Scott laughs at something Cora says and Isaac shoves as many brownies as he can in his face.
“What are you so serious about?” Stiles asks.
Save from Cora, everyone will leave again soon. My family will be here and yet it won’t be. I don’t know what to do anymore.
“It’s been too quiet around town,” he says.
“And that’s a problem?”
“I don’t know,” Derek admits.
“Guys, come on! It’ll be midnight soon!” Scott calls.
Say something.
They don’t move, listening to Scott and Isaac’s excited countdown.
“Happy New Year, Derek,” Stiles says softly. Then he makes his way to the bonfire where he scoops Lydia up in his arms and kisses her briefly on the lips, ignoring the catcalls of the rest of the pack.
FEBRUARY
With Cora around, Derek had to pick up something to do so she wouldn’t worry when he didn’t leave the house for days on end. He turned to the book that had been forgotten by Laura in the glove compartment of the Camaro, a dog-eared, heavily annotated copy of Wuthering Heights. The line where Catherine says ‘he’s more myself than I am’ is underlined three times with an arrow pointing to a note that reads ‘dumbass’ in Laura’s round handwriting. Derek can hear her voice so clearly in his head that every time the darkness begins to creep up on him, he turns back to that chapter and rereads that passage.
“You’ve been reading that book since I got here, Der,” Cora said that morning over breakfast.
“It’s a good book,” he replied. Deflection is easier than trying to explain the reason behind it without breaking.
“There’s a public library right here in town, you know?” she added without looking up from her phone.
And because he didn’t want Cora to know just how deep into the shit he was, he made his way to Beacon Hills’ public library and sat between two shelves with Laura’s book open to the ‘dumbass’ note.
His phone startles him with the sound of an upcoming text.
how do i tell my dad the fbi is not for me?
The FBI is not for me, dad.
haha very funny
i’m srs
he thinks i’m gonna be a field agent or smthng
he’s gonna ask what my plan is
What’s your plan?
i’m going to apply to stanford
That’s not a bad plan
i’m going to ask lydia to marry me
Derek’s thumb hovers over his phone as something heavy sets in his stomach. His brain scrambles to catch up with that sentence, each word a nail in the coffin he will bury whatever feelings have been blossoming inside him. He refuses to let his feelings cost him someone else.
She’ll say, he backspaces.
That’s a g-. Backspace.
Are you su-. Backspace.
He decides no answer is better than what he’s trying to say, suspecting that Stiles is not really asking for advice. Derek is not Scott, his opinion doesn’t even rank in the big scheme of things.
derek?
aren’t you going to say anything?
you think it’s a bad idea right?
you’re probably right
but my dad says he always knew my mom was the one
i’ve known lydia’s the one since the first time I saw her
it can’t be a /terrible/ idea
Derek knew, of course he knew. He’s known for years but there’s a difference between knowing and seeing the thing you dread come true before your eyes. He never stood a chance, not really.
Please don’t.
Instead, he types it’s not terrible and hits send.
APRIL
come to palo santo for my bday, the text reads. It’s only seven words long but Derek thinks there must be something else written in there. After the day at the library, Stiles took to texting Derek at all times of the day, sometimes with questions, sometimes to say anything that crossed his mind.
He’s not the only one, though. Scott checks in on him almost every day; Isaac sends him constant commentary on the state of varsity Lacrosse in the East Coast. Even Lydia texts him sometimes but he can’t reply to her without feeling he’s hiding something. Derek is aware that Cora mentioned something to someone about his mental state as of late, but that’s not what’s bothering him. It’s the absence of news from Stiles about Lydia. Maybe Stiles will announce the engagement on his birthday.
He can’t go to Palo Santo to witness that.
“Why aren’t you going to Stiles’ birthday party?” Cora asks, waving a hand in front of his face. Derek closes the book before his sister can see the annotations on the borders.
“Why aren’t you going to Stiles’ birthday party?” he parrots back at her.
“Because Lydia will be there and I’m trying this new thing called not thinking about her,” she responds easily, sitting down next to him. She waves a joint in front of his face. “Want some?”
Cora lights it up without waiting for his answer, takes a deep drag and passes it to him. Derek’s mind flashes back to a smaller living room, green curtains and the stench of pizza cardboard boxes in what had been their first apartment in New York. Technically, it was Peter’s, but Laura was managing the Hale properties and that was the farthest away from California they could get without putting an ocean between them and their last living relative.
Laura came back from her classes that day with a jar of weed, declaring that she was going to make them feel happy even if it cost her the entirety of their parents’ inheritance. Derek thought it was pointless as his mother always told him they couldn’t get intoxicated. Lycanthropy doesn’t agree with drugs, she’d say.
“Derek, it’s a ruse to keep the cubs from stealing the good stuff,” she said, grinding the bud in a shiny, pink thing that filled the room with a sweet smell. Laura expertly rolled a blunt, lit it up, and offered it to Derek.
“I’m not 18,” he reminded her with a raised eyebrow.
“And I’m not stupid, I know what the basketball team got to after the games. I invented that tradition,” she answered, waving the thing in front of his face, a trail of smoke following her movements.
A blink later, Derek takes the joint Cora offers him and inhales, the sweet smoke curling in his lungs, his head feels lighter after the second drag. He passes it back to Cora, blowing the smoke out of his nostrils.
“I didn’t know Lydia and you-”, he starts, but Cora’s raised eyebrow interrupts him. “What?”
“There was never a ‘Lydia and me’,” she says plainly.
They smoke in silence for a while. There’s no point in mentioning Stiles and Lydia’s imminent engagement, so he doesn’t. When Cora passes the joint back, she asks “what about Stiles?”
There was never a ‘Stiles and me’.
“What do you mean?” is what he says out loud, flicking ash onto the floor.
“Why are you not driving down to see him? Everyone will be there.”
Not everyone.
“Isaac too?”
“Yeah, he said it was better than writing essays,” she gestures for Derek to give her the joint and he complies, unsure of what to reply. On the table, his phone lights up with an upcoming message. Cora’s phone chimes a couple of minutes later. She passes what’s left of the joint and checks her messages.
“Scott says you better be on your way because Stiles is not having a good day. Whatever that means.”
Derek flicks the butt of the joint to the floor and walks up to his bed, changing into a clean t-shirt on the way. He grabs his jacket, Laura’s book and tilts his head in Cora’s direction. She makes a show of rolling her eyes but follows him anyway.
Derek knocks on the door of Stiles’ room and waits. He doesn’t know what to expect, but it’s definitely not the weak Scott, go away from inside the room. He pushes the door open and he’s hit with the smell of something earthy, something sweet and cheap aftershave. The door clicks shut behind him.
“I don’t want to hear it, Scott. It’s still too fresh,” Stiles says, his face covered by the arm slung over his face.
“What’s too fresh?” he asks, startling Stiles who quickly scrambles into a sitting position.
“I thought you forgot it was today,” Stiles says, his warm voice small in the space of the room.
How could I forget?
“Oh, I was just driving around the neighborhood and thought I could stop by,” he jokes, hoping it draws a smile out of Stiles. It does.
God, please do that again.
“Sit down. Adrian is on a field trip; he’s not going to kick you out.” Then he opens the drawer next to his bed and takes out a small cookie tin. “You better not have the same complaints as Isaac about weed or I’m kicking you out.”
Derek thinks he should be asking questions but Stiles is focused on the task in front of him. He spreads the weed over the blunt wrap generously, the tip of his tongue peaks out of his lips in concentration. Then he licks the edge of the wrapper and Derek’s mind goes blank for a second.
Say something.
He’s saved from himself when Stiles offers him the lit blunt. Derek takes it and stands next to the open window, blowing the smoke into the cool spring twilight.
“There’s nothing special about turning 20,” Stiles says when Derek gives the blunt back. “No big milestone to unlock, nothing.”
Derek picks up the book on Stiles’ nightstand and flips through a couple of pages. Stiles has underlined and strikethrough the line ‘all at once he realized that it was this: it was this:--she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen’.
“What about Lydia?” he asks.
“What about her?” Stiles blows smoke to the ceiling, his mole-dotted, pale throat a stark contrast in the darkening room.
“Did you ask her?”
“Yeah.”
“And?” he prompts.
Please don’t.
“She said no,” Stiles bites, his jaw set in a harsh line, shoulders squared, expecting a blow.
She said no.
“Did she say why?”
“She just said no,” he retorts with a finality that doesn’t leave space for more questions.
Derek feels guilty at the weight that lifts off his chest. He flips a couple more pages in Stiles book and sees a note that only says ‘Derek?’. No explanation, no arrows pointing at a paragraph, nothing. He closes the book with the nagging feeling that he saw something he wasn’t supposed to.
“What does one do when plans change?”
It’s not a real question, yet Derek still answers: “you adapt.”
Stiles doesn’t reply. Instead, he lies down on his bed and pats the bed next to him. Even if Derek’s heart skips a beat, he doesn’t make a big deal out of it and stretches on the space left by Stiles.
“How do you always keep going?” Stiles is on his back looking at the ceiling, his profile delineated by the soft glow of the blunt as he takes a drag. “Things keep happening to you, to your family. No matter how many times you got your spine half-ripped out of you, you still got up the next day. One rejection and I’m 17 again, being chased by kanima on school grounds, asking myself how did this happen to me.”
He takes another drag, slower this time, blowing out a big cloud of smoke that traps both of them under it, an ocean tide of its own carrying the scent of something earthy, something sweet and cheap aftershave.
“Listen to me. I’m comparing a breakup with being chased by a homicidal shapeshifter. Pathetic.”
Derek turns to his side, looking at Stiles’ long eyelashes, his nose, his lips, his chest rising and falling with every breath.
There’s nothing pathetic about you.
Stiles passes the blunt back to him and their fingers brush. When he doesn’t move his hand away, Stiles turns his head to look at him.
“It’s gonna pass, you know? Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit,” Derek brings the blunt to his lips under Stiles’ watchful eyes.
“Fuck. Did you just quote Virgil at me?” he asks with a comical frown. Derek can’t help it, he laughs blowing a mouthful of smoke in Stiles’ direction. He laughs loud and open mouthed and real for the first time in a long time. Stiles joins him, chuckles turning into full on laughter until he dissolves in a coughing fit.
The silence that falls afterwards is warm and light like a summer night, Derek basks in it, the wave of calmness that Stiles’ presence brings with him. His eyes follow the outline of Stiles’ profile and he knows this: this is it: he is the most beautiful person he’s ever seen.
“Thanks for coming, Derek.”
I wish I could stay.
I wish you’d asked me to stay.
I wish there was a way.
“Happy birthday, Stiles.”
MAY
[05.01.20 07:30]
there’s some tree-spirit thing living on campus
I know this bc last night I woke up from a nightmare and I saw her come out of a tree
[05.01.20 09:33]
What was the nightmare about?
[05.01.20 09:34]
trees
[05.01.20 09:36]
And you don’t think it’s related?
[05.01.20 09:36]
i think the tree-lady would not take kindly to you denying her existence
[05.06.20 11:02]
I think you’d hate the sofa Cora bought
[05.06.20 11:04]
why?
[05.06.20 11:05]
Green
Velvet
Hideous
[05.06.20 11:06]
I like green. your eyes are green
[05.06.20 11:07]
Not this green.
[05.06.20 11:07]
shut up and show it to me so I can hate it properly
[05.11.20 23:47]
do you feel anything when the moon rises?
[05.11.20 23:51]
Yeah
[05.11.20 23:52]
how is it?
[05.11.20 23:54]
It’s hard to explain
It’s like the ocean tide
Sometimes it barely touches your feet. If you really wanted you could reach out and touch it
Sometimes it knocks you on your ass and drags you back into the ocean with it
[05.12.20 00:00]
you sound like an english major
[05.12.20 00:01]
I was an English major
[05.12.20 00:02]
say sike
say sike right now
Derek
Derek
Derek
you cant be srs
[05.12.20 00:03]
I am
[05.12.20 00:04]
and you were going to take this to your grave?
[05.12.20 00:06]
It’s not a big deal
[05.12.20 00:07]
It is
This is the exact opposite of finding out someone was a business major
[05.12.20 00:08]
Thanks?
[05.12.20 00:11]
Derek?
[05.12.20 00:11]
Yeah?
[05.12.20 00:11]
I think I like someone
should I
should I say something
[05.12.20 00:12]
Audaces fortuna iuvat
[05.12.20 00:12]
I think it’s incredibly sexy of you to bring virgil into the conversation unprompted
[05.13.20 02:22]
are you awake?
[05.13.20 02:22]
yeah
[05.13.20 02:22]
i can’t sleep
[05.13.20 02:23]
Did something happen?
[05.13.20 02:24]
I still miss lydia
[05.13.20 02:25]
There’s nothing wrong with missing people
[05.13.20 02:25]
but she’s right here
I see her in the library
I see her in the group chat
I see her when I’m leaving my last class of the day
[05.13.20 02:26]
Eventually, even that stops hurting
[05.13.20 02:28]
I guess u know more about this than me
[05.16.20 17:59]
wht was Laura’s favorite movie?
[05.16.20 18:02]
The fast and the furious
[05.16.20 18:03]
it wasn’t
[05.16.20 18:03]
It was
[05.16.20 18:04]
I didn’t peg her for a vin diesel fan
[05.16.20 18:04]
She wasn’t
She was a Michelle Rodriguez enthusiast
[05.20.20 13:44]
tell Cora I found the thing
[05.20.20 13:56]
What thing?
[05.20.20 13:57]
oh, the thing
she knows
[05.20.20 13:59]
she says if you buy it for her she’ll love you forever
[05.20.20 14:00]
tell her
actually
I can tell her that myself
[05.22.20 21:13]
my mom died exactly 10 years ago
[05.22.20 21:15]
I’m sorry Stiles
[05.22.20 21:20]
she wouldn’t want you to be
I think she’d like you
[05.22.20 21:20]
Yeah?
[05.22.20 21:21]
yeah
she’d tell me to put a ring on it
[05.22.20 21:23]
Ha ha
Very funny Stiles
[05.22.20 21:23]
you know you love me
[05.22.20 21:24]
Maybe I think you’re a nuisance
[05.22.20 21:24]
you don’t
[05.22.20 21:25]
You’re right. I don’t.
[05.22.20 21:35]
do you have any Virgil quotes for me tonight, english major?
[05.22.20 21:36]
Omnia vincit amor et nos cedars amori
[05.22.20 21:36]
I’ve heard that one before
[05.22.20 21:37]
You’ve heard most of them before, Stiles
They’ve been around for 2000 years
[05.22.20 21:39]
give me another one?
[05.22.20 21:41]
Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae.
[05.22.20 21:45]
damn, you’re like a walking encyclopedia for the clsic
classics*
ngl that’s kind of hot
[05.22.20 21:58]
Goodnight, Stiles.
[05.24.20 23:07]
hey
call me?
[05.25.20 02:41]
thank you Derek
[05.28.20 18:12]
I’m bleaching my hair
will you still love me if it’s green the next time u see it?
[05.28.20 20:05]
It’s just hair, Stiles
[05.28.20 20:13]
look
what do u think
[05.28.20 20:20]
You look good :)
JUNE
He’s reading Stiles’ book again, trying to make sense of Stiles’ spidery handwriting along the margins of the pages he’s still not deciphered. Most of Stiles annotations are questions: does Mrs. Ramsay really love Mr. Ramsay? Is she tired of her marriage? Helen of Troy? Finishing the painting = moving on with life/accepting grief/personal realization through art? Sometimes there’s only a question sign at the end of a paragraph, sometimes there’s a word underlined with an arrow pointing to synonyms written by a different person.
The day Stiles came back to Beacon Hills for the summer, he spent the entire afternoon at the loft. He brought a bunch of books that Derek might like. Based on vibes alone, he said.
“Cora thinks your obsession with Wuthering Heights is no longer cute.”
“It was Laura’s,” Derek replied.
“Oh. I didn’t know. I don’t think Cora knows either.”
“I hadn’t told anyone.”
Stiles looked at him curiously, his pretty brown eyes searching for something in Derek’s face. Whatever he found, made him open his backpack and reach for another book, the same copy of To the Lighthouse that Derek had seen on his bedside table back in the Stanford dorms.
“This was Allison’s,” he explained, flipping a couple of pages. “It had a bookmark right at the beginning of Time Passes. I don’t think she ever finished it. She never found out Mrs. Ramsay died suddenly little after the events of the first part. I wonder if she would’ve liked the ending.”
Stiles offered the book to Derek, who took it carefully. His fingertips brushed the back of Stiles’ hand, sending bright, crimson sparkles up his arms. Once again, he was glad Stiles couldn’t hear his heartbeat. It was embarrassing.
Now, staring at the margin that only reads ‘Derek?’, Stiles’ warm voice ringing in his ears, he wonders if he’s been missing something the whole time, something painfully obvious in hindsight.
The door slides open and Stiles walks in with a big, sugary coffee drink.
“I sent you, like, five messages asking what you were doing today and all I got was silence,” he says, popping the straw in his mouth and drinking his monstrosity.
“I thought you didn’t like Starbucks,” he notes, moving his eyes away from Stiles’ hollowed out cheeks.
“I don’t. This is Tessa’s.” He sits down on the sofa, a friendly distance away from him.
Say something.
“Did you finish the book?” Stiles asks before he can figure out what to say.
“Yeah.”
“What do you think?”
“Struggling to deal with the fallout of war and the inevitable passage of time told through a stream of consciousness that could rival Ulysses’? Yeah, I’m into it,” he replies.
“God, I fucking hate Ulysses.”
“Take that back. Take that back, right now,” he deadpans. Stiles’ lighthearted snort is enough to encourage him to ask about his name in the book when Stiles puts his coffee on the table and turns to him, serious.
“So, I need advice,” he starts.
“What happened to Scott?”
“Well, he’s the one who told me I should bring this to you.”
Derek frowns. That doesn’t sound right.
“Okay, so, there’s this guy-”
No.
“-and he’s, well, he’s so out of my league actually that he’s not even in the same sport-“
Don’t say it.
“-but the last couple of times we were hanging out weren’t so bad. Or at least, I think, it wasn’t a terrible experience-“
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Don’t say anything.
“-and I’m over here dropping hints over texts that I want to get to know him carnally-“
Stiles.
“-but I think he might not have the faintest idea that I’m talking about him. All he does is quote Virgil at me and it’s driving me crazy.”
Stiles?
Derek’s mind is running on overdrive, his heart pounding loud in his ears.
All he does is quote Virgil at me and it’s driving me crazy.
When he doesn’t reply immediately, Stiles starts fidgeting with the hem of his t-shirt.
“Derek, will you please say something?”
Say something
Say someth-
Say-
“Something,” he replies, the corners of his mouth turning upwards into a small smile.
“God, you’re so annoying.”
“I learned from the best.”
Stiles shakes his head in amusement, his honeyed milk smile is unsure, hopeful, beautiful. “Can we make out now or do I need to spell it out for you?”
Derek finds Stiles’ eyes, a deep-set brown that looks cheerful, yet scared. He doesn’t notice his hand moving until his fingers are running down Stiles’ cheek, his thumb softly moving over his chapped lips. Stiles’ sharp intake of breath is all the encouragement he needs to learn forward.
Stiles meets him halfway, the scent of something earthy, something sweet and cheap aftershave fills his nose. Derek’s drunk on it. Their lips touch. His heart stops, light fills his vision, the ocean rises, falls, and rises again. Derek knew this: and it’s this, right here: these are the only lips he’s ever going to kiss again.