Home- You Remind me of Home
Title: You Remind me of Home
Length: ~900 words
Rating: PG
Warnings: Unbeta'd
Summary: Stiles had always planned on taking his guitar, leaving home, and never looking back, but he never made it very far, and though he's done a pretty good job at forgetting the past, seeing Derek Hale again brings up all kinds of abandoned feelings.
A/N: Okay, so I wanted to do something more legit for the Teen Wolf fandom, and I decided that I really wanted to take a shot at another album fic. Yes, I know that I haven't finished the other one, but that's beside the point. Anyways! This is based off of Ben Gibbard and Andrew Kenny's album Home. Each chapter will correspond with a song in the established order, so this one's You Remind me of Home. Please, please, please listen to the song before/after/during reading as it is very important to me and the story! Plus it's just a really good album. :P R&R por favor! I love to hear from you guys
It’s odd, getting up on stage on the weeknights, feeling out the mood of the crowd, testing out the waters and making up the set-list on the fly while he picks nervously at the guitar strings and tells rambling stories about his frankly boring home life. He’s exactly where he wants to be and yet, so clearly not. He’d always thought that if anyone had the chance, he’d be the one to make it out of his hometown. He was supposed to graduate high school, hitch hike across the country, take whatever odd jobs he could find, and wait until he caught his big break.
He’d made it one state over before getting stuck. And yet, he was okay with that. It was almost always raining, the ocean was tragically gorgeous, the people were always kind, and hell, here it didn’t feel like much of anything mattered. Sometimes, he felt guilty, sometimes he felt like he was letting himself stagnate, wasting so much potential, but then he’d realize he was happier than he’d ever been before and all those concerns just faded away.
Everything was fine and life was just- happening, until the day he saw Derek Hale. Derek had been one of the lucky few that had genuinely made it. He was practically some kind of legend in the halls of Beacon Hill’s high school. He’d bought himself a motorcycle, taken off and never looked back. Everyone assumed he’d gone on to see the world, seduce hoards of women, and experience everything that humanity had to offer.
But when Stiles walks into a new hole-in-the-wall on Friday night, a little early to get the lay of the land, and sees the one and only hero of Beacon Hills behind the bar, mixing drinks, it nearly knocks him flat on his ass. He makes a rather undignified squealing sound and falls back against the door. Of course this is really quite counterproductive and immediately Derek’s eyes flick away from the martini shaker in his hand and alight on his face.
Recognition flashes clear as day in his muted, cool green eyes and he very nearly drops the shaker, having to contort into an awkward position to keep it from slipping out of his hand. Stiles takes the opportunity to dash over to the stage and hide in the back room. He thinks that he should be at least a little ashamed of his cowardice, but all he can think of is watching old paint crack, tapping his fingers in time with the water that drips from the rusty pipes above his head and just talking. Talking endlessly, about anything and everything as Derek sat on the broken bed with dirty sheets that creaked every time he shifted his weight.
The whole thing sits heavy and aching in his chest, old wounds feeling raw now that the scab was so suddenly ripped off. It takes him a few long moments to regulate his breathing- bring it back from wheezing and shuddering to deep intakes through his nose and out through his mouth. He can do this- it’s been nearly four years now- it shouldn’t hurt this much, the feelings shouldn’t be this vivid.
Him and Derek- they were both supposed to escape, to keep going forward, no excuses, no apologies. There weren’t supposed to be anymore suburban town, no more waiting around for things to happen. But then again nothing really went according to their plan, did it? He can’t handle this all, not right now, so he does what he’s always done when he’s feeling overwhelmed. Throwing himself across the grungy thrift store couch in the room, he pulls his guitar out of its case and grabs one of the many crumpled notebooks stuffed beside it.
It takes a moment for him to find s page without cramped, lazy scrawl plastered all over it, but when it does he just starts to write it all down. He writes about the ancient heater that used to cough out more dust and gas fumes than actual warm air, the coffee table with one leg that was at least two inches shorter than the others, the windows that wouldn’t open and the doors that wouldn’t shut. All of these things, all of these feelings, Derek- they remind him of home.
And when he gets it all on the page he tries to make it coalesce, tries to make this unwanted nostalgia a melody. He’s supposed to be warming up- he has to go on soon, but suddenly this seems hugely important, for him to say, for Derek to hear. It doesn’t come out as much when he finishes, he’ll probably be the only one to find it satisfying, but it’s just what he wanted it to be, it’s just what he needed it to be.
So he step out there, makes a show of tuning and re-tuning his guitar, performs a gratuitous amount of sound checks, and clears his throat. “Hey everybody, I’m Stiles and-uh… I wanna try out something new tonight.” He breathes deep, closes his eyes, and plays.