Voicemails

acountrygirlsfun:

@pale-silver-comb made this post and then I had post-season-5-feelings so this happened 🙂 

It just became a thing they did. Stiles knew Derek needed to get out, needed to get away. Stiles knew better than a lot of his friends and could understand how much it would help Derek to get out of Beacon Hills and the hellhole that it is. But over the course of all their interactions Stiles had started to trust Derek, had started to rely on him. Stiles had gotten a hold of Derek’s number just for emergencies but he didn’t have to resort to theft to always have Derek’s latest number because Stiles became the first person Derek shared it with.

So even though he has a connection to Derek, Stiles doesn’t use it all that often. He doesn’t use it to beg Derek to come back even when he really, really could. He sends Derek stupid shit he finds on the internet. He asks Derek where he is and what he’s doing. If he’s still with Braeden, if he’s happy. Derek always, always responds. Sometimes it takes a couple hours but they both know the texts are their way of making sure the other is still alive. Even if things aren’t perfect on either side, they’re alive and that’s the most important part.

Derek doesn’t lie to him. He doesn’t sugar coat things. He rants in a voicemail and tells Stiles how sick he is of driving. How he knows he will probably come back but he just can’t stomach it yet. They need to find Kate and Peter; he needs to see them dead and gone for good before he trusts himself to settle in Beacon Hills for good. 

He and Cora fight sometimes.

Whenever that happens Stiles gets a voicemail of Derek complaining about younger siblings and they don’t understand and she’s so spoiled Stiles. She got taken in after the fire right away as soon as she’d stopped running and she didn’t want for anything. Laura and I survived off soup kitchen and homeless shelters for a whole year, Stiles, before the insurance money was cleared and we could afford to stop and stay somewhere, afford to actually buy groceries.

But he always sends a second voicemail saying how much he really is glad to have his sister. That he’s glad she didn’t have to live like he and Laura did. That for as much as they irritate each other they’re happy to have each other.

Stiles was the one that started the voicemail thing, and he does it more often than Derek really ever does. But Derek’s life isn’t as driven by insanity as Stiles’ life in Beacon Hills is anymore. At the beginning he’d sent Derek a text that read: “I just need to vent to someone I know understands but I don’t want to just throw this shit at you so just don’t answer your phone and let it go to voicemail.  It’s your choice if you want to listen or not. Don’t feel like you have to.”

It used to be stupid stuff over the summer that Derek would listen to as he worked in the yard around the house he bought up in New England. But things changed when Stiles left a message ranting about some guy named Theo and how Stiles doesn’t trust him, something is off and Stiles knows he’s up to something. It had been amusing initially because it was just such a Stiles reaction. But after all they’ve been through, Derek knows this isn’t some misguided knee jerk reaction to someone new coming into their group. If Stiles got this worked up it means he’s got a reason, and most likely, Scott didn’t want to listen until Stiles had more proof.

Derek had been settled in the little cottage in New Hampshire since the spring when he got that first voicemail about Theo. He’d wanted to really experience a New England fall and was determined to do so. Stiles didn’t have to know he listened to the message. Didn’t have to know that Derek was always waiting for the next one, waiting for a call for help.

Stiles kept sending him his normal comments on his day or his dad but Derek got an increasing amount of voicemails left on his phone.

Somebody is making supernatural creatures. Creatures that don’t have to follow the supernatural laws they should. There’s a halfhearted joke about the laws being ‘more like guidelines anyway.’

Scott’s trying to be a leader without actually using the people he’s leading to help him. He’s trying to just do everything, figure out everything by himself.

(He doesn’t get a voicemail from Stiles that people are dying but he does get a text from Scott that if he’s heard anything about it not to worry that they’ve got everything under control. He doesn’t need to come home. Derek had appreciated Scott’s words, he knew Scott didn’t mean that Derek wasn’t welcome but they both knew things would just be weird between them because of the power shift. That it would take an adjustment period before they would ever be able to be in the same pack.)

The voicemail that has Derek almost packing up and jumping on a plane is the one that starts with Stiles’ voice coming through so shaky and vulnerable Derek had had a bag pulled out of his closet before he even heard the words, “I killed somebody.”

He listens to the whole message though before he does anything rash. He listens as Stiles pulls himself together, rationalizes that even if he has to tell Scott eventually, it was self-defense. It was self-defense. Stiles was going to die if he hadn’t done what he’d done. Surely Scott would rather Stiles be alive and a killer than let the bad guy kill him. It takes a lot for Derek not to buy a red-eye flight back to California.

But then he gets a second message telling him that Stiles doesn’t want him to come back for him, he wants Derek to come back for himself.

And then Stiles doesn’t text or call for almost two weeks.

Derek wakes up from a deep, uninterrupted sleep to a beautiful fall day and two voicemails.

“Derek,” Stiles’ voice comes through quiet and shaky and Derek already dreads what this message is going to end like. “Theo is worse than I expected him to be. He- he went after my dad. He hurt my dad. And Scott,” Derek hates the way Stiles’ voice breaks. ”Scott he doesn’t trust me, didn’t believe me and-“

There’s silence for a moment but Derek knows, Scott is Stiles’ brother, he’s Stiles’ rock, someone he depends on always being there. He knows what it’s like to have the world pull out from under your feet like this. Peter wasn’t always clinically insane. Derek hates that Stiles has to experience that feeling, that feeling like everything you depend on suddenly shifts and changes and isn’t there anymore.

Stiles’ voice is croaking like he’s speaking through a throat tight with emotion when he says, “I need,” before he just groans and hangs up.

Derek fumbles with his phone for a minute trying to see when the second voicemail came through and listen to it. He knows Stiles’ had been crying before he called back and finally told Derek what he has been waiting to hear.

“I know I always say I don’t want you to come back for me, to-to help me. And I still don’t; I wish you could make the decision if you’re coming back or staying away. But I can’t not ask you to come back because I want your help. I need you here, not across the country listening to my voicemails. Please, Derek, I need you to come back. You don’t have to stay, you can leave again if you need to but I just-”

“I need you here.”

Derek left the cottage within the hour, with one ticket to California and two tickets back to New Hampshire.