Dear To Dear Derek,

Umm, hi. I don't really know where to start… Well, we're into the last week of summer vacation, and I guess it's just hit me that this is where we all split up and go our separate ways, yadda yadda yadda. Lydia's off to Harvard, Scott's going to UC Davis, Jackson's got his sports scholarship to Stanford, Boyd and Erica are both headed to Washington and I'm off to Berkeley. Looks like it'll just be you and Isaac left of the ol' gang…

But I'm getting sidetracked here. What I wanted to say was that I'm gonna miss you guys. Well, of course I'm gonna miss you, I mean, come on! We save each other's' lives on a regular basis! But I think I'm really gonna miss YOU Derek. Well, maybe not the maiming, or the threats to rip my throat out, or the weird supernatural shit that is constantly trying to kill us. But I will miss the other stuff. Like full moon nights when there's a dog pile in the TV room and we spend the entire night watching LOTR and eating popcorn and Doritos (Don't lie- I know you're secretly the biggest geek ever- I've seen you mouthing the words at the Helm's Deep scene). Like spending weekends camping in the woods. Like finally being able to interpret the Eyebrows of Doom. Like watching you almost-smile when Erica and Isaac get something right. Like the feeling of coming home whenever you're around. Feeling safe. Warm. Needed… I know this probably isn't what you want to hear and I'm pretty sure that you hate my guts, but… I think I love you Derek. Sorry.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you before I leave next week. No regrets, get it out of my system and all that jazz.

Bye Dere-

"SHIT!"

The ballpoint pen Stiles was chewing had exploded in his mouth. He felt the sticky ink in his mouth and on his hands before he could do anything to save his letter. He watched as the ink pooled over the bottom of the letter as he tried to sponge it off without smudging the rest. Most of his writing was still legible, but the bottom half of the page was no longer usable, and the rest of the letter was covered in sticky black fingerprints. Even if he'd had the guts to post the letter before, he couldn't now. Stiles sighed. This was obviously fate telling him that it just wouldn't work out between him and Derek. Folding the letter up into a paper aeroplane, he aimed at the trash can and threw… just as a gust of wind blew in through the open window and pulled the letter outside.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Stiles ran down the stairs two at a time and out in the street in less than a minute. There was no sign of the paper aeroplane, just the garbage truck disappearing down the road, followed by its garbage men. Stiles searched his garden and the sidewalk for ten minutes before giving up and heading back inside- he was supposed to be at Scott's for their COD and Pizza Friday.

After an hour of shooting people and flailing round Scott's bedroom, the little paper aeroplane had been forgotten.

Dwayne wasn't entirely happy with his life. He was in his mid-40s, divorced, going bald and was getting rounder by the year. Every kid has dreams of what they want to grow up to be. Dwayne had always wanted to be a zookeeper, but then life happened. He didn't get the grades to do zoology, and he didn't have the money to fund going to college. So, he took what life gave him. He got a job as a garbage man after leaving school and had stuck with that for the last 20 years. It wasn't a great job by anyone's standards, but it paid the bills. For 20 years he had walked the same route behind the truck, and nothing even remotely out of the ordinary had ever happened. But that day, as he'd passed the Sheriff's house, a paper aeroplane covered in ink had landed on the sidewalk at his feet. Out of habit, he'd picked it up, but instead of throwing it in the truck, he'd put it in his pocket. And now, sat in a bar with his friends, he remembers the aeroplane and pulls it out.

After reading it once to himself, he reads it to the rest of the group. There's something about the words that makes the usually loud group of garbage men fall quiet and pay attention. Dwayne sees Garrett, his best friend for the past 20 years, crumple a little bit as he listens. Dwayne knows he's thinking about Maggie, the first girl that he dated in high school, a bright, blonde, beautiful girl who had been set to make it big as a model. She had broken up with Garrett, and had started dating the captain of the lacrosse team, Gordon Miller. She'd married him just after graduation because she was pregnant. Within 8 months, Maggie was dead- killed in a hit and run car crash along with Gordon, but living just long enough to have her baby- a boy, they said, called Jackson. Maggie was Garrett's 'one that got away' and he would never have the chance to get her back…

On the other side of Dwayne is Rob, a slip of a boy, a mirror of Dwayne back when he had just started on the job. Dwayne had pulled him under his wing the first day he started, and he'd become a sort of father figure for the boy. For the last 2 months, Rob's been singing the praises of some girl that works in the waffle house on the edge of town. Last week he'd been threatening to ask her out, but tonight he was quiet, shoulders slumped, head down. Dwayne knew the look of a broken heart. But as he read the letter aloud, he watched Rob's back straighten, his head come up, as he listened to the words of a fellow soul feeling the pain of unrequited love. Dwayne thought he saw a bit of life come back into the boy's eyes, the pain obviously still there, but muted now, bearable instead of crushing him down. Dwayne knows the boy will be alright in the end…

A few hours and perhaps one-too-many beers later, Dwayne sways home, aeroplane tucked safely in his pocket. He stops down a side alley to have a piss, when he trips and lands heavily on the wall, pulling the letter out of his jeans in the process. It dances just out of reach as Dwayne makes a move to grab it, and he watches it fly with the wind back onto the main road. It flies low under street lamps and across roads. A diner bell rings as a man wearing far too much leather and attitude steps out into the cool summer night, directly into the path of the oncoming plane, which hits him in the head, before getting stuck on the zipper of his jacket. For the second time that day, the letter is read and tucked into a pocket, only this time, it has a fair idea of where it's going next…

Stiles gets home just after 2am. He trips on the stairs, cursing quietly as the floorboards squeak under his feet. He flicks the light in his bedroom on, and lets out a very manly squeak as he sees Beacon Hills' #1 Creeper staring at him from the chair by the window.

"Jesus, Derek!" Stiles shuts the door behind him quickly. "What are you doing here? You do know that it's like… 2am, right?"

"Stiles. I've been sat here for hours. Of course I know what time it is." Derek rolls his eyes. There is something about Stiles that just seems to get under his skin.

"Riiiiiight. Sorry 'bout that, been at Scott's all day. But you can probably smell that right? What with the wolfy voodoo you got goin' on there-" Derek sighs. A tired Stiles is a ridiculously talkative Stiles. "Hey, wait a minute, did you say you'd been here for hours- why? Something wrong?" Derek watches as Stiles' eyes scan his body for blood or any blatantly obvious injuries. Or perhaps, given the contents of the letter, Stiles is just appreciating the view. Derek can smell Stiles' arousal from across the room – it had always been there, but Derek had never paid that much attention to it before, especially not since Lydia had joined the pack.

Derek's standing now, all lean muscles and dark mysteriousness. Stiles wills himself to calm down, thinks of anything and everything to stop the involuntary bodily reaction that now seems ordinary whenever Derek makes an unexpected appearance.

"Just something I found earlier." Derek says, reaching into the pocket of his jacket. "I thought you might want to have a look at it." He pulls out a familiar piece of ink-stained paper, and watches as Stiles' oh so expressive face morphs from disbelief to horror before settling on pained obliviousness.

"What is it? Couldn't it wait until morning? My dad's asleep across the hall, you know." Stiles lies, lacing his words with the not-so-subtle threat of an angry Sheriff. He can't be dealing with this right now. He sees Derek's shoulders tense, and moves back slightly. Derek wheels around at the movement, launching himself across the room, pushing until Stiles' back is pressed against the door with Derek's arm across his throat. He's wide awake now, his whiskey-coloured eyes flying over every inch of Derek's face, no more than a hand-width away.

"Don't you dare try and pull that one on me, Stiles" he whispers. "We both know that your Dad is at the station, and will be for at least another few hours." Derek's hold on Stiles doesn't lessen. The smell of Stiles' arousal is so much stronger than before. "Just tell me- did you mean what you wrote?"

Stiles' eyes widen and his face flushes.

"What if I did?" He turns his head to face Derek, eyes defiant. "What does it matter? I'll be gone by next week anyway." Stiles turns his head away again, bitterness clouding his voice. Derek makes his move then, surging forward to catch Stiles' lips, nipping, licking, chasing the other boy's taste with his tongue. For a few moments, Stiles gives as good as he gets, before pushing Derek away.

"Hang on- what the fuck is this?!" Stiles' face is a wild mix of confusion and anger. "I thought you hated me, Derek!" he paces across the room, his flailing even more pronounced than normal. "If this is some kind of… of joke, or pity thing, then you can get the fuck out right now." Stiles motions towards the window, only to have Derek grab him by the wrists. Stiles twists, trying to get out of the werewolf's vice-like grip. "I'm serious, Derek- I've dealt with my feelings for you for far too long to have you come and trample all over them when I can finally get away and clear my head." Derek's grip loosens at that, just enough that Stiles can pull free, rubbing the feeling back into them.

"What do you mean 'for far too long', Stiles?" Derek is almost completely still, and Stiles can practically see Derek's brain working to make sense of this new information. Stiles is slightly calmer now, can feel the rationality kicking back in. He knows he should have this talk with Derek, clear the air between them, perhaps it'll make him feel better to get it off his chest.

"I think it started not long after the pool incident with the Kanima." Stiles begins. They didn't refer to the Kanima as Jackson- as far as the pack was concerned, they were two entirely different beings. "I mean, there's always been something there that pulled me towards you, but not in the way I felt after then." And Stiles meant it. After spending so long keeping Derek alive, Stiles had to be more honest with himself, and that meant acknowledging the now undeniable feelings that he had for the werewolf.

"Wait- you mean that you've liked me for TWO YEARS?" Derek interrupts, as he sits down heavily on Stiles' bed, slowly putting together the pieces in his mind. "Ugh, it all makes sense now…" Derek is almost talking to himself and Stiles has to strain to hear him. "And here I always thought you had it bad for Lydia." He huffs quietly to himself. "What a pair of idiots we are." He looks up at Stiles, and Stiles thinks he can see the same almost-smile that he wrote about it his letter forming at the corner of Derek's eyes.

"I guess you'll be very glad to learn that I really don't, as you put it, 'hate your guts' then?" Derek stands, and they are almost eye to eye. He reaches up to stroke Stiles' cheekbone, fingers ghosting over the small scar left from Gerard Argent's attack. "In fact, you could say that it's quite the opposite." Stiles' holds his breath as Derek's fingers follow the contours of his face, before stopping on his neck, pulling Stiles down for a far gentler kiss than the first. Derek breaks the kiss, resting his forehead against Stiles, simply breathing in the smell that was Stiles- cardamom, pine, the smell of the woods after rain. "I love you, Stiles. Even if you are the most irritating creature I have ever met. And I don't think that's going to change anytime soon."

FIN.