Obviously, I don't own anything you recognize.
This is my first TW, my first Sterek, my first slash... just, ah, bear with me.
Stiles grumbled when his phone beeped next to his head, effectively waking him up in one of the most annoying ways ever.
Fuck, he thought, too tired to say anything out loud. What time is it? Who's even awake this early?
He slid one eye half open (because, really, who even opens both eyes first thing in the morning?) and unlocked his phone, instantly blinded by the bright white numbers declaring that it was actually two. In the afternoon.
He clicked on the text message that had so rudely woken him up, and groaned when he saw it was from Scott.
Jst a heads up- Derek got in2 town this mrning –scott
Okay? Stiles shot back quickly, wondering idly why Scott insisted on signing every single text message. He knew Scott didn't know how to set up a signature, because he barely knew how to text, as was apparent by the poor spelling and complete lack of non-autocorrected capitalization.
Jst thought ud wna kno –scott
Stiles rolled his eyes, and reached over to grab a smoke off of his night stand. And by "night stand" he meant "mostly-working mini-fridge he got for ten bucks at a garage sale."
Thanks.
He knew that if he didn't respond, Scott would keep texting him about it. Constantly. It was like, after everything happened, Scott didn't know how to handle the silence between Stiles and him, so he filled their time with constant chatter that was no longer supplied by Stiles. It was unsettling, and kind of annoying.
He sat up a little, leaning against his headboard and trying to clear the hangover-fog from his brain. Damn, he was tired. He was too tired to deal with the fact that Derek fucking Hale was in the same town as him. Probably back at that fucked up house, brooding and being a dick in general.
He sighed. Even after all this time, after what he did, Stiles still wanted to see the asshole. Maybe just from afar.
He stamped out his cigarette in the ash tray (and by "ash tray" he means "a plate he ate…. something off of, once, and now it's become an ash tray by default"), and got out of bed.
He'd considered showering, for all of three seconds, before shrugging and grabbing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt out of his dresser (giant suitcase), and walking toward the front door of his very, very tiny apartment. He clumsily slipped his feet into a pair of socks as he walked, and slid on his boots, grabbing his leather jacket on his way out the door.
He tried to ignore the fact that, at times, he pretty much looked like a Derek mini-me. He wasn't trying to be Derek. He actually tried really, really hard to be nothing like Derek. It just so happens that he and Derek both dressed similarly because that's what you do when you're depressed or brooding or… whatever and you just don't give a fuck.
No, but seriously. He was nothing like Derek.
He didn't do the things Derek did, and that's obviously excluding the werewolf-y things. He wouldn't go as far as to say he was a good person, but he was definitely a better person than Derek. And yeah, sure, it was really horrible that Derek's whole family died and now he was all alone (when you ignore the Mayor of Crazyville, aka his uncle). But, guess what? Just because horrible shit ruins your life, doesn't mean you get to ruin someone else's. It doesn't even the score or anything.
Stiles huffed to himself, walking through the steam created by his breath hitting the cold air and made to open the door of the Jeep. It tended to stick, so he had to slam into it a few times. The cold weather and his baby weren't exactly best friends. Why the fuck is it snowing in California, anyway? Motherfuck.
He drove out of the parking lot of his apartment complex with a purpose. He was going to see Derek Hale (from a distance, obviously… because, duh) if only to prove to himself that all of his dreams from the past five years had come true. Derek was going to be broken, so depressed over what he'd done to Stiles that he was just a shell of his former shell-like self. A shell of a shell. A sad, pathetic, asinine shell of a… Well. You get where this is going.
Stiles parked far enough away from the Hale house that Derek wouldn't hear him and trudged, slowly and quietly, through the woods until he was within sight of the Hale house. He wasn't even a little surprised to see Derek's Camaro outside of the house. The sight of the car brought a small pang to his chest, which he ignored. It didn't affect him, damnit.
What did surprise him, though, was when Derek got out of the Camaro. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.
The man exiting that car was not the thin, shriveled, broken person he'd been expecting. He wasn't suddenly frail, hovering under the protection of a leather jacket now three sizes too large for him. No, of course he wasn't.
Instead, Derek was the exact same perfect build that Stiles had always remembered. Shoulders broad, legs sturdy, and Stiles didn't even have to look to know that the jillion-pack still rested happily on Derek's stomach. He was different, though. Very different.
Instead of his normal funeral-casual attire, Derek was dressed like… well, sort of like a dork. A fashionable dork, yes. But a dork. He was wearing a cardigan, a red fucking cardigan, over what looked like an expensive, blue plaid dress shirt and a black skinny tie. You can't even make this shit up, Stiles thought to himself. Derek's hair was parted… on the side. Like, with gel. All he was missing was a pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses and Stiles might have mistaken him for Joseph Gordon-Levitt's long-lost, steroid-loving brother.
Stiles' mouth fell slack, and a confused, hushed breath left his mouth. Before he even had time to shut it, because damn it was so cold outside it made his teeth hurt, Derek's head snapped up to face directly in Stiles' direction, nostrils flared.
Stiles stood, stock still, waiting to see what Derek would do next. He hadn't realized he'd moved so close to the edge of the trees, and that his one exhalation of breath probably shot his scent straight in Derek's direction until it was entirely too late.
Derek initially looked startled, and immediately calmed his facial expression, before squinting into the woods in Stiles' direction.
"Stiles?" He asked, his voice raised in volume, and slightly in octave, as if he were nervous.
Stiles chose not to respond, not to move, not to breathe. The idea of actually speaking to Derek made his chest constrict and the inside corners of his eyes suddenly feel like he hadn't rubbed all of that morning's sleep out of them.
Derek scratched the back of his neck, switched his weight from one foot to the other, looking down at his feet in the snow for a moment.
"I know you're there." He sighed, and looked conflicted before speaking again. "Look… I'm going to go inside, and make a pot of coffee. I'm going to leave the front door unlocked. I'm going to pour a cup with so much milk and sugar that it's barely coffee anymore…" He stopped speaking again, squinted his eyes shut so tightly that he looked like he was in pain.
"You know where the kitchen is," he said before turning and walking into the house.
Stiles stood, silent, for a moment longer. What the fuck was that?
His legs began pacing without his brains knowledge, and he felt almost like his torso was trailing behind his legs' rapid movement back and forth through the snow. Yes, pacing was good. He paced, and thought about what would happen if he went inside. If he didn't go inside.
He paced for so long that by the time he looked down at his feet again, he realized that he'd kicked and stomped the snow so much that he could see a clear line of the forest floor where he'd been walking.
"Fuck. If you've been thinking about it this long, you're obviously going to go in. Find your balls and get it over with." Sometimes, his personal, slightly schizophrenic pep-talks weren't actually that inspiring. He did what he could.
He didn't even notice until he got onto the porch that the house looked different. Sure, the top floor of the house, and the outside in general, still looked like shit, but the first floor had obviously had some work done. The porch no longer felt as if it would collapse beneath his feet like it used to, and the door was new. The boards that used to serve as the outside of the house were new. They looked as if they were supposed to blend into the rest of the outside of the house, but it was obvious that they were newer, sturdier, served a purpose to protect the inside of the home.
When he walked inside, the changes were almost alarmingly different. It looked… homey. There were carpets, and real furniture, and finished walls with paintings and photos hung just so. It was insanely, anal-retentively organized and clean. Stiles almost turned around and walked out, thinking he'd accidentally entered some sort of Whovian time vortex. Almost.
He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and walked toward the back of the house into the kitchen. He found Derek sitting at a kitchen table, his back toward Stiles, facing a mug of coffee that was so light it looked more like a tan-ish milk. He never remembered telling Derek how he liked his coffee, but there it was, perfect and waiting for him to drink it and destroy the remnants of his hangover.
Stiles held in his sigh and walked around the table slowly, plunked down into the seat across from Derek, and guzzled down half of the coffee in one go, refusing to look its maker in the eye. Instead, he settled on the tip of Derek's nose. That seemed less scary. As body parts go, noses are pretty much as unassuming as they come.
Has it come to this? He thought to himself, rolling his eyes at his own stupidity. Am I contemplating the amount of fear a nose can induce in order to avoid looking this asshole in the eyes? NO. Fuck no. This asshole doesn't get to make me pussy out.
He closed his eyes, took a steadying breath, and opened his eyes to look directly into Derek's, whose widened almost comically large at the sudden lack of avoidance.
Stiles looked him dead in the eye, unblinking, and picked up his coffee mug for another sip, refusing to look away. He tried to really take in the appearance of Derek with his peripheral vision, still refusing to break the eye contact. He didn't care if that asshole was the Alpha, he would not lose this battle.
There were dark circles under Derek's eyes, as if sleep were an afterthought in the life he lead now. His face was cleanly shaven, his sideburns short and close cropped, hair gelled and combed within an inch of its life to keep the ridiculous style in place. He looked pale, but mostly just tired. Exhausted, really.
Stiles felt no sympathy. For him, or his exhaustion, or his stupid fucking sweater. Who wears cardigans anyway? Douche. I bet he doe-
"I guess you're waiting for me to speak," Derek spoke, interrupting Stiles' inner-mockings of Derek's current life choices.
Stiles blinked once, slowly, refusing to respond.
"Okay." Derek sounded resigned, almost like a man going to slaughter. He rubbed a hand over his face roughly, and Stiles noticed that all of Derek's normal callouses were gone, as if he hadn't done a day's hard labor since leaving five years ago. Well, hard labor was probably the wrong word... but werewolf-ing just sounded weird.
"You look different," Derek finally said.
Stiles raised an eyebrow, but stayed otherwise motionless, concentrating on the tiny freckle-like dot in the iris of Derek's left eye.
"You smell different, too. Not as…" and he trailed off, as if frightened to finish his statement. Stiles narrowed his eyes, urging Derek to continue. Daring him to.
"Not as innocent," he finished quietly. "Like cigarettes and anger and defeat and…" He trailed off again, as if he were trying to annoy Stiles. He almost preferred the old Derek, who spoke in short, succinct, complete sentences.
"And annoyance, now. But you also smell like… Well, it's obvious you've had sex. Often." He said the last word with disdain, like it offended him. Stiles narrowed his eyes even more, to the point that they were almost slits. Like he was trying to burn Derek with his stare. Mainly because he was. Who is this asshole to judge me for my sexual endeavors?
"With many different people. I guess I just wasn't expecting that. Wasn't expecting you to be that person."
"What did you expect, Derek?" Stiles yelped out abruptly, slamming his fists down onto the table. He tried to ignore the fact that the name practically tasted bitter in his mouth; like a beer that was just reaching room temperature because he'd been nursing it too long.
"No, but seriously. What did you expect to find when you came back? Did you expect me to be the exact same? Like nothing had happened? No, wait, did you expect me to wait for you?" He sneered out the end of the sentence, saw each word hit Derek, like small knives to the chest. It felt good. He wanted to do more of that.
Derek looked mildly nauseated, like he was genuinely surprised by the fact that Stiles had changed, too. As if Derek was the only one allowed to change. As if Derek was the only one who was affected by anything.
And then Stiles just went off. Just went nuts. His mouth opened, and everything he'd ever wanted to say to Derek, and everything he never wanted to say to Derek, all poured out of him in a giant rush that he couldn't control.
"I was sixteen. Sixteen! I was in love with this girl, who granted didn't know I existed, but I had a plan… That's beside the point. I was just a kid, man. And then you came in, all mysterious and throwing pheromones around like beads at Mardis Gras. And then you fucking kissed me. It changed everything. Nothing could have stayed the same after that, because I knew. It didn't matter that you were a guy. Who gives a fuck?! It mattered because I was in love with you, immediately, and you just…" He stopped for a second, to take a breath, to try and calm down because his voice was getting shaky and he didn't know if he could cry about it again. He didn't even know if he had anything left to cry out.
He got up suddenly, stiffly, gently placing his coffee mug into the sink before stomping toward the door, and continued to speak because he could hear, could feel, Derek following him toward the door, through the ridiculously clean living room. He desperately wanted to run through the room, to punch the glass frames encasing obviously expensive photographs, to un-organize the coasters just to see if Derek would freak out and fix them immediately.
"You just left me. Like it was nothing." Like I was nothing, he had to stop himself from saying.
"You pushed me way, from a kiss you started, and then left. Changed your number… I didn't even know what happened to you!" After he walked through the door, he stopped right at the front porch and turned around to face the person he hated most in the world.
He didn't so much card his hands through his hair, more scraped his nails against his scalp, trying to find an anchor to calm himself. This was not how this was supposed to go. Derek was not supposed to see how much he'd ruined Stiles. He wasn't even supposed to see Stiles. That just wasn't how it was supposed to work.
"I thought I could handle this, but five years just… it's too soon. I think it will always be too soon. You need to just leave." Stiles didn't give Derek a chance to reply before awkwardly turning on his heel and stomping back to the Jeep.
He cursed himself the whole way, because it was a much longer stalk back to than it was a silent walk from his car. He heard Derek every step behind him, and knew that Derek made it that way on purpose. He wished he knew why, and then cursed himself for his curiosity.
When he finally, finally, made it to the Jeep, he practically ran toward the driver's side door. He had to sort of hip-check the door while pulling the handle to get it to open, and he could feel his cheeks flame with embarrassment.
Of course, he couldn't even have been granted a good exit.
Thank you for reading. Please, review if you enjoyed. I guess you could also do the same if you didn't enjoy it, but that just doesn't seem very nice.