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.
AU:Derek comes back to Beacon Hills to protect Stiles, as an Alpha.
“When I pathetically ran out of excuses as to why I should never come back here, I realized I needed to face reality and admit to myself that this is my home. Nowhere else but here. And I also needed to come back because this is the only place where I’m meant to be the alpha I should’ve always been. And I couldn’t be a better alpha without my anchor. So, I’m back home. I’m back, to you Stiles.”
but where are the fics where derek comes back to beacon hills and he immediately goes to stiles’ house to visit him obvsly, and then only the sheriff is downstairs and he just takes a look at derek and says “im glad youre back, son. stiles is upstairs”
and derek JUST, goes to stiles’ room ok, and he is there and stiles is distracted and doesnt see him entering the room. so when stiles hears a movement behind him he just turns and SLAMS DEREK TO THE WALL because of his gained reflexes from all these years fighting the supernatural. so stiles only sees it’s derek when they are face to face against that same door again ok.
and this time derek is the one that looks at stiles’ mouth and swallows, and stiles has vulnerability in his eyes because this is derek, derek is back!! AND WE’VE GOT A PERFECT PARALLEL EXCEPT THIS TIME THEY LEAN IN TO KISS AND THEIR LIPS ARE ALMOST TOUCHING AND THEN BOOM EVERYTHING GOES BLACK THE SHOW IS OVER
So a few weeks ago, @andavs and I started this thing where we make bets and the wager is that the winner gets to give the loser a prompt. I lost a bet and the prompt was cop!stiles. I wanted to have this up for her birthday but i missed it by a few days. Still, Leda, HAPPY BIRTHDAY YA LOSER! (and here is my bet payment)
Sterek, 4.5k, Canon Compliant, post s5, Derek returns, based a little on my tags on this
Good At That
“Hello!” Scott calls as he throws open the door to their apartment. It hits the pile of shoes that he and Stiles keep claiming they are going to move but never do. “I’m home!” From the sound of it, Stiles is in the bathroom.
“Scott!” Stiles all but yelps back and Scott exhales strongly through his nose because he is quite familiar with Stiles’ guilty yelp and if he’s doing it now – at 3pm on a Tuesday while in the bathroom – well, as a fellow twenty-six year old man, Scott is pretty sure he knows what’s happening. “What are you doing home? I thought you worked til five today!”
“Deaton let me go early,” Scott says, throwing the mail on the counter. It’s a sizeable stack. Neither of them ever remember to grab it from their slot. “Two cats threw up on me and there were only three appointments this afternoon.” Plus Scott had mentioned how Stiles is working the night shift for two weeks (7pm- 7am) and may have promised to give up a Saturday in the future.
He hasn’t seen his best friend and roommate in four days. Sue him.
“Oh!” Stiles’ voice is still a little too high to be natural. “Oh, that’s cool, man.”
“Yeah,” Scott says. “Are you gonna be out soon? I want to take a shower and then maybe we order pizza?”
“Sure! Sure, yeah, sure thing,” Stiles says. He’s talking a beat too fast but Scott did just interrupt him doing… you know so no big deal. Scott rolls his eyes and heads towards his room. He’s going to have to wash these scrubs. “I’ll be out in a second!”
“Kay,” Scott replies and holds his breath walking by the bathroom out of politeness because Stiles has told him many times that his ability to smell when Stiles is turned on is “weird and not appreciated” and smelling Stiles when he’s close isn’t that high on his to-do list either. So he makes it down the hallway to his room and takes his time stripping down to his boxers. Then he throws his scrubs in their washing machine (having one in-unit was non-negotiable even on their tight budget) and when Stiles still hasn’t come out of the bathroom, Scott goes along to hurry him up.
And that’s when he finally ends up taking a breath near their bathroom door.
I asked dylandhoechlin for permission to write this and they said yes because they’re lovely. 100% of the credit for this goes to them. I hope this is okay! I wrote it in a rush and I didn’t proof-read it.
lately you’ve been on my mind, more than you know
♚♞♚♞♚♞
“I miss Derek,” Erica says, as she closes her eyes. Stiles knows she’s focusing on the noise around them. She leans against the brick wall and exhales softly. Stiles tries not to fidget too much; it breaks her concentration. He can’t stop his hands though and he fiddles with his thumbs. Erica’s hand is on his in a flash, holding them together and keeping them still.
Stiles swallows. Erica had been getting better at controlling her werewolf powers, but hearing in the distance is hard for her. She explains that she focuses way too much on the noises immediately around her that and she never learned how to properly sense things in the distance.
“I think the coast is clear,” Erica says a moment later. She slips her fingers in Stiles’ hand and tugs him around the corner. “Stay close. I couldn’t hear Boyd, and I know he’s around here somewhere.”
Stiles nods. He focuses on walking like a normal person, who didn’t seem to have two left feet like him. It’s harder than it looks.
“Dammit!” Erica says, stopping suddenly. She turns and pushes Stiles back towards their hiding place. “Go, Stiles, go!”
They barely make it inside the dark alley and behind the garbage dumpster before a shadow joins them. Erica presses her finger to Stiles’ lips. He wants to close his eyes, but he can’t.
A moment later, Erica sighs with relief. “They’re gone. That was close. Fuck, I wish Derek was still here. He’d be forcing me to train properly.”
Stiles huffs, but he squeezes Erica’s hand. “Yeah, he probably would.”
For the Anon who sent me a lovely heart as part of Sterek-Stories’ Sterek Valentine Meme with the prompt: my mate. Tumblr’s being stupid so I can’t answer your ask but here it is! Hope you like it 🙂 Thank you so much for all your love!! ❤
Also, a huge thank you to the lovely @mad-madam-m and @apinkducky for the awesome beta! Title from Adele’s ‘Can’t Let Go’
Want me to write you a little something? Send me a prompt from the meme!
Derek’s been away for almost three years when he’s awoken in the dark of the night by the telltale beep of an incoming text.
Groaning, he flips over the bed and reaches out a hand toward the nightstand to grab his phone.
> Scott, 3:55am:You should probably come back as soon as you can.
Derek frowns. In the three years that he’d been gone, he and Scott have kept in touch here and there but never once had Scott texted him with this request. He has just enough time to shoot out a why, everything ok? before there’s a shrill beep of another text.
> Scott, 3:56am:It’s Stiles.
Derek packs his bag, shoves the extra key to Mrs. Hudson’s half-asleep, half-annoyed face, and is in a cab heading to JFK Airport in less than an hour.
shealwaysreads 