acollectionofsterek:

So was using ‘inspirobot’ and then this hits me in the feels.

I wanna thank Lady Drace’s Sterek Bar, especially @ladydrace for the beta ❤

Read on AO3

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Derek Hale left. He left because he didn’t know what else to do. He had nothing left so he just didn’t return there after Mexico. He wandered, or well, drove, around for quite some time. Never staying more than a day here and there until he found himself in yet another small town. Always with the small towns but this one close to mountains. He bought a small cottage just outside of town.

He was just so tired of everything. He would just live out the rest of his life here No one would know where he was and it wasn’t like anyone actually cared – He ignored the voice in his head that sounded very much like someone he never said a proper goodbye to back in Mexico – about what happens to him. So here he would stay.

Days turned into weeks, which turned into months.

‘You might be considering yourself a hermit dear, but you are still invited to come to all the events going on in town,’ Mrs. Jackson pointed out when she yet again found him browsing the event board outside the town’s library. ‘You do not have to share your entire life just because you take some time to spend with other people.’

He gave her a small smile and said a quiet goodbye. Most of the townsfolk he had come across seemed to be decent people, but then again he wasn’t the best judge of character if his past was anything to go by. Several of them had invited him to join them in all kinds of activities, which he had politely declined.

But he was running out of excuses, even to himself. Mrs. Jackson was right, he didn’t have to share his entire life to have some human interaction that was more than the ordering at the restaurant or the hellos in the stores.

That’s what found him almost sneaking into the Town Hall later that week for the monthly town meeting. He wasn’t sure it was the best place to start, but if he wanted to know more about the town and going ons, then town meetings sounded like a good place to start.

So here he was, sitting down in the back, next to one of the Mr. Thompsons – His partner was up on the stage, and if Derek had gotten it right the other Mr. Thompson was on the town council – you pick up a lot of things when just walking around town.

‘Evening.’ Mr. Thompson said with a nod, and turned back to listen to the Mayor. Derek nodded and did the same.

After the meeting there were some coffee and tea being served by Sarah – ‘Just call me Sarah’ – the diner owner just across the street from Town Hall.

‘Glad to see you here, dear.’ Mrs. Jackson said, patting him on the arm.

After that he started doing other things in town. He joined the book circle and the knitting group – Stiles would have a field day if he could see Derek, not that Derek thought about what Stiles thought or didn’t think. And somehow he was tricked – never listen to Jamie and Joe, they have all kinds of ideas – into selling what the things he knitted in the little store in town.

‘Would you mind doing commissions, Derek?’ Joe asked one morning when Derek was helping him carry groceries for the people who had trouble getting to the store when it’s was so icy and snowy outside.

‘Commissions? No? I guess I wouldn’t mind. Why? Want me to do something for you?’

‘Yeah, I told you about the website right? Yeah, and people have been asking about if they could commission you for work since most of the things you’ve done keep getting sold out.’

Derek put most of the money he made from his knitting back into knitting projects, and to help Mrs. Jackson make baked goods for the meetings and such.

‘Would you mind taking a couple commissions? And we’ll figure out time frames and everything for every project and we can set up-’ Joe kept talking about it and Derek kinda enjoyed the idea of things he made making people happy in other places, and told Joe as much and sat down with him and his son later that day to go over estimated times for typical things he made and such. Derek wasn’t inept with laptops – thank you very much, Stiles-voice-in-his-head. Derek is not a complete tech failure – but he trusted Jeramy to handle the actual page. He would just, you know, make the actual projects.

And as spring is around the corner he feels like he hears a sound he shouldn’t be hearing here, not so far away from Beacon Hills.

‘So. Knitting.’ Derek can hear the smile before he sees it as he turns around and sees Stiles, looking the same and yet so different. Derek is fairly sure the hat and the scarf are both things he made a couple months back.

‘That’s what you decided to start with?’ Derek says, and without much thought pulls him into a hug. ‘Haven’t seen you in years-’

‘I missed you.’ Stiles says as he buries his face in Derek’s neck. ‘I missed you so freaking much you have no idea.’

‘I missed you too. Fuck Stiles.’ A throat clearing makes them move away from each other – not by much but still – to look at the one interrupting them.

‘Sorry dear, I just wanted to have the last of my groceries.’ Mrs. Jackson said with a smile, reaching for the last of her bags by their feet. ‘Then feel free go back to this lovely reunion and please, Derek, dear, bring your friend over for dinner on Friday.’

They blush and laugh and Derek doesn’t care, because Stiles is here, holding his hand and smiling at him.

Derek had thought he didn’t have anything or anyone to make his life matter. But a small town in the mountains proved him wrong and he has never been happier about being wrong. Especially when Stiles tells him he wants to stay.