Dear Derek, Stiles started, his hand shaking. He shook his head, appalled that he could even bring himself to write this stupid letter. Derek had been gone for seven months and four days, and he was still all that Stiles could think about. He looked down at the piece of paper on his desk, in the center of his focus rather than the computer off in the corner. I hate you.
But hate wasn't really the right word, Stiles realized as he continued to write. The tears burned at the back of his eyes as he erased the phrase, frustrated. I miss you every day. You had no right to leave me like this. Stiles blinked and swallowed hard, closing his eyes against the memories.
Everyone had gathered at Derek's for a movie. It was pack night, and Derek, for once, had decided that everyone deserved a break. Scott and Allison were curled up into each other, Boyd and Erica were smiling at each other from their perch on the couch, and Isaac was settled in between Jackson and Lydia, perpetually in the off-again stage of their relationship. He and Derek were sitting together in front of the tv, with Derek's arm slung over Stiles' shoulder, and Stiles' head resting on Derek's chest. They were comfortable.
"Damn it, Derek," Stiles said out loud. You and I…we could have actually been a thing. But then you went and screwed it up and now I can't even talk to you. Or see your face. You're always so damn independent, but you can't do everything on your own. Stiles' sob surprised him, and he set down the pencil to choke on another one.
There had been so much screaming, and all Stiles was aware of at the time was that he was being ushered out of the building because it was on fire, and Isaac was grabbing his arm and Scott was pushing him through the opening of the door while shouting at Allison. "But where's Derek?" Stiles had asked over the noise of the foundation of the building crackling. But Isaac and Scott couldn't answer. There was wolfsbane in the firebombs, and they were dragging Stiles out and trying to keep him safe. His heart started to beat double time, and he repeated his question, three times as frantic.
It had taken two hours for the fire to die down, and Stiles had forced all of his friends to go home. He waited for his father to show up at the scene, and when the sheriff pulled up, Stiles had gone for his father's chest immediately, crying and shaking his head. "He's still inside, dad. He's still inside!" Hysterics had taken him then, and Stiles' father held onto his son while signaling for men to go inside and look for Derek Hale.
"It'll be okay, son. He'll be okay. Kid's built like he's made of Teflon," Sheriff Stilinski tried as comfort. But Stiles could feel the tug in his chest as his father forced the words. His mouth went dry, and then the tears started again in full force.
"I loved you," Stiles said out loud as he wrote, finding peace in breaking the silence as he wrote. "And my dad, everyone told me that writing this letter to you would make me feel better about what happened." Stiles scoffed as a tear fell onto the letter, smudging the D in Derek's name at the beginning of the letter. "But what do they know? I wrote my mom letters, too, and I still miss her."
After thirty minutes, paramedics and firemen came back out of the Hale house carrying a body on a stretcher. Stiles' father tried not to let him see it, but Stiles bolted out of his father's arms and to where Derek was being carried, unconscious, to the back of an ambulance. "No!" Stiles screamed, and the sound tore through his entire body. But nobody seemed to hear him, to understand that this couldn't happen. Derek couldn't just… "NO!" he screamed again, with enough force to knock him off his feet. In the time it took him to stand up, his father was already against him, pulling him back into his arms.
"Son, you gotta let them get him to the hospital."
"No. No! He doesn't…he just gets better. Is he breathing? Dad. Dad! Is he breathing? Why isn't he breathing? Derek, no. Please open your mouth." Stiles had pulled out of his father's grasp again and touched Derek's jaw. Even though so much of him was charred and burned—the necklace that matched the one Stiles wore was singed through and falling off—his jaw was cold. "Call me an idiot. Tell me to do something." Stiles took a ragged breath as an EMT lifted Derek into the ambulance.
"Tell me you love me," he screamed as they closed the door. The sirens whined to life and the car took off. "Tell me you love me!" Stiles screamed again, and his father's hands on his shoulders were the only thing keeping him from running after the bus.
"I still think that you're going to come back." Stiles choked on his words, hand shaking too much to write it all down at first. Even now, it didn't feel real. "They keep telling me I'm crazy, because all I ever talk about is how I want to just talk to you again. I just want to see you. Honestly, I'm sure that I've gone off the deep end." He paused to stretch his hand and ignored the tears, sniffling and diving back into his letter. He could feel himself breaking again, and writing was keeping it down somewhere that the pain wasn't allowed.
"Honestly, if I got the chance to see you, I don't even know what I would do. I just want to see you again. Even if I only got a minute, I'd take it."
The funeral was quiet and small, and when it was Stiles' turn to walk up to the casket, it had taken his father, Scott, and Isaac to drag Stiles, crying and hysterical, from the room. Later that night, he heard people talking about him, about how he'd never been one to cry, and how different this was from his mother.
"Dad I want to go home," was all he said, and his father had Stiles in the car and on the way home in the same breath. In his room, he cried and punched the wall and ripped all of the pictures he'd ever taken of Derek apart. An hour later, he held the pieces while trying to find a way to put them back together.
"Do you know how hard it is every day? The alphas, they leave us alone now, but now that I can have a normal life, I don't…" he scratched out his words. "It's not normal if you're not here. All I can think about is how I told you to be careful, you selfish son of a bitch. I loved you! You were never allowed to die." The second he whispered the word, Stiles started to hyperventilate. He heard his father clamoring up the stairs, but he couldn't stop. He was so close to being able to say it.
"I don't pray. After my mom died, she took all of the faith I had left. And I've started praying again because I want to dream about you and not about the last time I saw you. I just want to know that you're okay." Stiles choked back a laugh that ended in a hiccup as his father opened the door to his room.
I don't know how to survive without you, Stiles wrote, and turned to his dad with a broken smile on his face. "I just want to see him again, Dad," he said, hoarse. His father nodded, but kept his distance by the door. They'd talked about the fact that Stiles' grieving needed space. He loved Derek for so long, and things were finally starting to fall into place before they were ripped apart at the seams. I'm tired of being a fighter. Just give me a minute to see you. A minute's enough, and I swear I'll be happy.
Tell me you love me, too.
Stiles left the letter unsigned and rolled it into a scroll. Then, he tied it with the remains of Derek's necklace, and squeezed it to his chest. His father watched from the doorway as Stiles shook his head and began to cry in earnest. "He's been gone for so long, dad, but I can't…I can't let him go." The sheriff nodded his head.
Stiles talked for four more hours afterward, until he passed out. He talked to his father some, a little bit to his mother, and some to himself. But mostly he talked to Derek: called him an ass and a liar and beautiful and told him the same things over and over again until he had no voice left, but he made sure to tell Derek how much he loved him. When he was in bed, Stiles opened his eyes to find his dad staring at him. "Do you think he knows I love him?" Stiles looked small underneath the covers, like he was four again and had a nightmare.
"Yeah, son. I think he knows."
"And do you think he loves me, too?" Stiles closed his eyes against the answer he was afraid to hear.
"I think he does, son," he repeated, slower as Stiles' breathing calmed. There was silence for a few more minutes, and then Stiles was asleep. His father left the room, sending up his own prayer for Stiles' mother to watch him tonight.
While Stiles slept, his dream was filled with darkness, but a warm, comfortable dark. He turned to his left at a noise, but couldn't quite make out the person making it. Immediately, Stiles' mind knew who it was. "I love you," he said. There was a long silence before Stiles heard a response.
"I love you, too."