d is what it says in Stiles’ phone, looking sparse and strange next to the elaborate nicknames and full names of everyone else on the contact list. He supposes he put it in there to make it easier for him to forget.
But he was wrong.
Every time he flicks through his contact list– its alphabetical, the d is still there, reminding him of what isn’t.
He thumbs past it a thousand times, sometimes because he’s looking for someone else, sometimes because he’s looking for it, specifically. It hurts each time, like someone punched him in the stomach, leaving him short of breath.
Stiles should delete it. Really, he should.
He doesn’t.
He couldn’t say why.
It’s completely illogical. But every time his thumb hovers over the
“delete contact” button, he cancels out and leaves the contact there.It’s been…Stiles doesn’t know how long it’s been honestly, because it’s not like they texted or called a lot before
Derek fucked off out of Beacon Hills yet again. But it’s late, and
Stiles just finished showering and bandaging himself up after
Supernatural Baddie #2367 waltzed through town, and the only good thing
he can say about the fight is that the blood he washed off was mostly
someone else’s.He’s frustrated and angry and feels like he’s been
stretched thin, like he’s been screaming himself hoarse trying to warn
people and no one’s listening. He’s so exhausted, more so than he’s ever been in his life, it seems. He wishes he could sleep, wishes he could rest and let it all go, but he can’t turn off the side of him that’s on alert at all times.He tells himself he isn’t thinking clearly, and that’s why he scans through his phone and punches in a text message to d.
Hey asshole, where are you? We need you.
I need you.
Stiles hits send before he can second-guess himself. He makes a mental promise that he’ll go to sleep and not check his phone obsessively, but of course he spends the next 15 minutes staring at it, hoping for an answer.
He doesn’t get one. He doesn’t know why he was even expecting one.
The number’s probably bad now, anyway.
Stiles plugs his phone in and shoves it as far away from him as he can. He’ll definitely delete the number.
Tomorrow.
Stiles tosses and and turns all night, a restless, agitated
sleep filled with fractured wisps of dreams: lupine, haunting eyes that never
stop changing colors, veins blackened with blood, a broken-but-resolute voice
echoing save him from every
direction. He jolts awake at dawn with the smell of chlorine assaulting his
nose, punches his pillow in frustration and then takes more of the
sleeping pills he finally convinced Melissa to give him, refusing to even
glance towards his phone.He wakes up again around two pm, this time reaching for his
phone first thing, sighing in anticipation of whatever fresh hell likely awaits. (Is that why you left, he thinks
at Derek, a new little mental habit he’s developed since the asshole left town.
Again. At least you said goodbye this
time, Zenwolf.)He has one text, and Stiles tells himself that his clenching
stomach and pounding heart is fear of today’s Supernatural Baddie,
not anticipation, and definitely not something as naïve and
ridiculous as hope. Stiles has been living the my-BFF-is-the-True
Alpha-charged-with-protecting-a-beacon-of-supernatural-power life long enough
now that he recognizes how messed up it is that he’d rather be scared than
hopeful, but no longer has any fucks to give about it. Fear, anxiety, loss,
sheer fucking terror: those are familiar, well-known. But hope? Stiles hasn’t
felt hope in so long, he’s not sure he’d recognize it.(I hope you find what
you’re looking for, he had said to Derek, his tongue twisting around the
word goodbye, too stubborn to
actually say it.)Biting his lip, Stiles enters his passcode and check his text,
searching for the d.The text is from Scott, from a few hours ago, telling him that
he’s spending the day with Kira.Sighing and tossing his phone to the bed, he runs his hands
through his bedraggled hair as he walks downstairs in nothing but his boxers,
trying to hold on to the memories of his dreams, piecing together the fragments of
Derek his subconscious sees fit to torture him with.He stumbles into the kitchen in search of food, rubbing at his
bleary eyes. “Fucking sleeping pills,” he mutters, glancing sidelong at the
table on his way to the fridge. “Melissa didn’t say one of the side effects was
hallucinations,” he tells the mirage sitting there, a Derek-shaped mirage,
reading a book and calmly sipping from his mom’s favorite coffee cup, chipped-edge
Miracle Mets mug from the ’69 World Series. Distantly, Stiles is impressed with
his mind’s and the drugs’ accuracy and attention to detail.“It’s about time you woke up,” hallucination-Derek says. “Your
dad left for work about an hour ago. Wants you to call him. Coffee’s fresh,” he
adds, nodding towards the pot on the counter.Stiles stills, finally looking directly at the kitchen table,
stunned, mouth hanging open. Derek is wearing a threadbare flannel shirt with
the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and his hair is longer than Stiles has ever
seen it, shaggy and brushing along the tops of his ears. His beard his fuller
too, and this is clearly not a memory, not an illusion, not a fantasy.This is Derek, the real Derek, in the stupidly-perfect flesh,
sitting at his kitchen table, reading a book called Women Who Run With the Wolves and sipping coffee from his
grandfather’s coffee mug, crooking up one of his stupidly-perfect eyebrows at
Stiles’ Yoda boxers.“What the fuck, dude?” Stiles manages to sputter out, crossing
his arms awkwardly over his bare stomach, silently cursing his racing heart, pulsing
harder with each beat as it dawns on him that Derek is real, that he’s back,
that he’s home. “Why are you here?”Derek rolls his eyes, which Stiles finds incredibly soothing, but then he smiles gently at him, which Stiles finds incredibly terrifying. “You said you needed
me,” Derek answers, cheeks above his ink-black beard going pink, but shrugging, like it makes
perfect sense.Stiles feels his own cheeks growing hot, but he’s smiling too,
because suddenly, it does.
d
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