Mating Habits of the Domesticated North American Werewolf (2/5)
Title: Mating Habits of the Domesticated North American Werewolf (2/5)
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Pairing: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Rating: R
Word Count: 4,698 (This part)
A.N.: Millions and millions of hugs and kisses to my beta, queenitsy. You have no idea how much hand holding and cheer leading she provided. Love you, bb! :*
Chapter Summary: Derek doesn't believe in pining. It's pointless. A waste of fucking time. So he doesn't pine, damn it. He doesn't pine at all. He does get drunk a lot. He does sleep around. He does let his wolf run wild whenever it wants. But that's not pining. That's him dealing with the situation as best he can.
Part 1
Derek doesn't believe in pining. It's pointless. A waste of fucking time. So he doesn't pine, damn it. He doesn't pine at all.
He does get drunk a lot. He does sleep around. He does let his wolf run wild whenever it wants. But that's not pining. That's him dealing with the situation as best he can.
*
Derek is not the reason Stiles chooses to stay in the Bay Area the summer between his junior and senior year. He's not, even though no one back home believes him. He stays because he landed a dream internship and because Robert decided to stick around for the summer, too. Because apparently it's boring in Vermont. Who knew?
Anyway, the pair of them rent a dinky studio in The Tenderloin-- a really sketchy part of The Tenderloin-- and pay way more than they should for it. But it's theirs and he loves it.
Scott and Allison make the trip up to see him, bringing with them news of the pack and a soon-to-be addition to their family. Scott rests his hand possessively on Allison's rounded belly and asks Stiles to be the as yet unnamed baby's godfather. Stiles, of course, says yes.
Scott does not mention Derek once.
But Allison does.
She hugs him tight as they are taking their leave and tells him not to worry, that they are keeping an eye out for their Alpha. He still loves you, she adds in a whisper, I don’t want to hurt you, and I know you are happy with Robert, but I thought you should know. Stiles nods and manages to make it through the rest of their farewells without breaking down, but once the door is shut behind them, he crumples.
Robert doesn't ask, doesn't judge. Just holds him tight and tells him that times heals all wounds.
Not this one, Stiles thinks. Not this one.
*
Derek sees Stiles at the christening of the McCalls’ new pup. The baby is fat and happy, with Allison's bright eyes and Scott's dopey grin, squirming like a devil in her godfather's arms. But the baby might as well not be there for all Derek cares. Not when Stiles is there, not when Derek can see him, hear him laugh.
Stiles's boyfriend is not present, ostensibly at the request of the new parents to limit the event to close friends and family only, but everyone knows it’s really so that Derek won't lose his shit. It's humiliating, knowing that his pack mates had to make the excuse, but it's necessary, too. Because Derek can barely be in the same room with Stiles as-is. God, he looks so damn happy and the scents of love and sex and other male are all over him, making Derek's wolf furious and desperate for blood.
Derek barely stays long enough to be polite, bowing out as soon as the ceremony is over. He makes his excuses and does not attend the party the happy family throws afterwards. But then, he doesn't need to. The baby is part of Derek’s pack and Derek, in his role as Alpha, has already welcomed the pup into his fold.
*
Stiles pretends not to notice the way that Derek stares at him throughout the christening. He pretends like it didn't make his insides ache, being that close to Derek and not being able to say anything. He pretends for all he's fucking worth. And if he cries the entire ride back to the City, well, that's just between him and his Jeep.
He's got his shit together by the time he's home, though, and is able to babble happily at Robert about his friends and his father and the precious, precious baby. Because, god, that baby. She's too cute for words with her gummy smiles and fresh baby smell and the way she felt all soft and warm in his arms.
Dude, Stiles is not a girl, not a girl at all, but he totally wants him a baby.
Problem is... Robert does not. Robert does not at all.
Robert doesn't even like having the baby over to visit, which... how is that possible? How can you not want to just coo at that darling little duck and blow on her belly and play with her toes and call her a sweet little amazon princess, just like her mommy? How can you be human and be presented with the adorableness of a three-month-old baby girl and not turn to goo?
Wanna know what else Robert doesn't like?
Stiles asking him that question.
*
Derek doesn't ask for information about Stiles's life; he doesn't want to know. But certain members of his pack -- read: Scott-- are too stupid to live. And so they tell him. All the fucking time.
Which is how he finds out that Stiles and Robert are not so unshakable as they always seemed. And how he finds out that Stiles and Robert are "going through a rough patch" for "reasons" having to do with babies. Or something. Derek wasn't really listening and he's not sure he wants to know what babies have to do with Stiles's relationship with fucking Robert because even if Scott and Allison have made that jump, that doesn't mean that Stiles should be thinking like that.
Oh holy fucking shit.
Stiles with a baby.
Stiles holding Derek’s baby.
A sweet little pup like the one Allison places so gently in his arms and that blows bubbles up at him while trying to eat his fingers. Silly, useless thing.
Derek's heart clenches and his wolf fucking howls. Because that? That's never going to happen.
*
It’s not just the baby thing. Yeah, the baby thing is important because Stiles wants a family like whoa, but Robert not wanting kids isn’t a dealbreaker in and of itself. It’s the baby thing on top of the different value system and the different goals for their lives and the fact that Robert doesn’t understand why Stiles wants to go back to Beacon Hills to visit, let alone live.
Not that they could live there, what with the whole Derek will kill you thing, which Robert doesn’t know about, thank god, but still. Stiles wants to live in a town like Beacon Hills, even if he can’t live in Beacon Hills itself. And he wants a family. And a slower paced life. And Robert does not.
So.
Yeah.
That sucks.
But they are still friends in the end. Which... doesn’t really make Stiles feel a whole hell of a lot better about it, but what can you do? At least they don’t hate each other. At least Robert isn’t cutting Stiles out of his life like he never fucking mattered, the way some people have. Not that Stiles is comparing the end of the relationship with his first love to the end of the weirdly codependent friendship with his best friend’s Alpha who happens to be his mate or anything.
Because that would be weird, right?
Anyway, they are still friends and Stiles gets to keep the apartment and nothing really has to change in his life at all. Expect for the part where he is no longer with Robert. That part sucks balls.
*
Derek knows better than to rush to Stiles’s side the moment he hears about the breakup. He fucking knows better. Just like he knew better than to get mixed up with Kate -- but knowing better didn’t stop him then and it doesn’t stop him now. Not that Derek can really compare Kate and Stiles, other than that they happen represent the two biggest lapses in judgement he has ever had, one resulting in the loss of all he held dear and the other resulting in the loss of the companion, the mate, he should have had.
The only thing that makes it sorta alright is that Derek doesn’t hear about the breakup until it’s old news. Like, months old. Which... still doesn’t make things better, but at least his need to be with Stiles right this very second doesn’t translate into Derek waiting for Stiles on his doorstep the day after he and Robert called it quits.
Of course, Stiles still doesn’t respond well to coming home and finding Derek waiting for him, but it probably would have been worse if this had happened a couple of months ago. At least Derek thinks it would, anyway. Kind of hard to tell, with how pretty fucking horrible Stiles’s current response is.
Stiles hasn’t said anything since the oh fuck no he let out when he first spotted Derek, but his mouth is a tight line, his eyes are radiating anger, and the smell of disgust is so thick in the air that it is turning Derek’s stomach. He doesn’t say “you need to leave” but he doesn’t have to. It’s written all over his face.
Derek pushes himself to his feet, trying desperately to come up with something, anything that will change Stiles’s mind. But before he can, Stiles is up in his face, slamming him back against the wall beside his door in a complete reversal of their traditional interactions.
I am not a toy he hisses. You don’t get to pick me back up the second someone else is done playing with me.
Derek’s mouth falls open and his mind reels because, really? Is that Stiles’s opinion of him? Is that what he took away from everything that happened between them? He stands there, gaping like a fish, while Stiles unlocks his door and slams his way inside.
Derek is not invited to join him.
*
No. No. No.
Not only no, but hell fucking no. That is not how this works. That is not how things are going down. Derek doesn’t get to drop off the face of the fucking planet for just over two years and then magically reappear the second Stiles is on the market again.
That is not how friendships work. Not at all. Sure, there’s some sort of werewolf bullshit going on, but still. If Derek cared at all about Stiles as a person, he wouldn’t have pulled the vanishing act in the first place. He would have talked to Stiles, explained his side of things. Tried to figure out some way that they could all still be friends, or at least still be acquaintances. He didn’t have to come visit. He didn’t have to call. But he could have included Stiles in mass emails or something. Hell, he could have not defriended Stiles on fucking Facebook. That would have been a start.
But he did. Derek cut him out of his life completely and even went so far as to make a fucking point of not making eye contact whenever they happened to meet by “accident.” And by “accident” Stiles means whenever he’s caught Derek stalking him like a creeper, which, by the way, has happened pretty much every single time Stiles has gone home for a visit. But can Derek just smile and wave it off like a normal person? No, he has to go all stone-faced and avoid looking Stiles in the eye and pretend like he never hears Stiles's pointed Hello, Derek, which Stiles always says because dude. They aren’t five. They can act civilly to each other. Or at least they ought to have been able to. So yeah. Two-plus years of Derek acting like Stiles is invisible and now he, what, just expects Stiles to pretend like none of that ever happened? To just let him back into Stiles life because it’s convenient for him?
Not going to happen.
Derek had a chance to work things out with Stiles. He had a chance two-plus years ago. He blew it. And that’s all Stiles is going to say about that.
*
Stiles’s reaction to Derek makes Derek stop and think, really think, about how things must have looked from Stiles’s perspective. And... well... when he does that, things look pretty bad. Because while Derek knows how hard he struggled with the just friends thing, Stiles does not. Stiles doesn’t know anything.
Derek never told him anything.
The more Derek thinks about it, the more disappointed in himself he becomes. Because... truth be told, the reason Derek never shared important things with Stiles, like how much being just his friend sucked or how much he hated Robert or, you know, that they were even mates to begin with, is because of everything that went down with Kate.
Which, by the way, is another thing he never mentioned.
Kate fucking Argent. The be-all and end-all of Derek’s fucking problems.
She wasn’t his mate. He knew she wasn’t. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t love her. God, how he loved her. It makes him sick to stomach to think about it. Because, fuck. She got everything. He was so stupid, just this young pup with his head in the clouds and his heart on his sleeve and that bitch, that stupid, manipulative bitch, took him for all he was worth.
Derek had worshipped her. Had wooed her like something out of a romance novel, saving up the money he made by working part time at the autoshop so he could take her to dinner or buy her some little thing that caught his eye. He picked her fucking flowers and sent her cards and love letters and thought that their love was so strong, so fucking pure, because she was willing to turn her back on her family for him.
God, he was such a stupid fucking idiot.
And the things he told her, about how he would love her forever, love her till he died. And she would laugh and say I bet you will which he thought meant that she believed him, that she felt the same way, but it was really just her mocking him, laughing at the fact that she planned on his stupid ass being dead by the end of the year.
So... yeah. She did a number on him. And, yeah, that meant that when he realized that Stiles was it, that Stiles was the one, he panicked. Freaked the fuck out. He growled at the kid and slammed him up against walls and took all his anger and confusion and pain out on him. Fuck. It’s a wonder that Stiles ever became his friend in the first place, after a beginning like that.
But that’s Stiles. Always willing to forgive, always willing to overlook bad behavior and offer out that second chance.
Except not this time. Not for Derek.
Because Derek hurt him too much for that. Derek didn’t give him all the information he needed, didn’t give him a chance to say yes or no. Just decided that being friends was the best choice for them. Who knows what might have happened if Derek had told him from the start what they were to each other?
Maybe Stiles would have blown him off. Or maybe Stiles would have felt obligated. Or Stiles would have fallen for him hook, line and sinker.
Who knows? Because none of that happened.
Derek didn’t let it happened.
Derek just kept his dumb mouth shut and then didn’t even explain anything when Stiles found out, from Scott. Hell, he never spoke to Stiles again after that.
Still hasn’t spoken to him. He’s seen him plenty of times, sure, but Derek’s never opened his mouth and said so much as “hi.”
So why would Stiles just welcome him back with open arms?
Of course he blew Derek off. Of course he did.
Stiles doesn’t have any reason not to. And that needs to change. God, does that ever need to change. No more keeping his mouth shut, no more making decisions for the both of them. From now on, Derek is going to have an open door policy. He’s going to be just as outspoken as he possibly can. That way, if things don’t work out, at least it won’t be because Derek never gave them a chance.
*
Stiles doesn’t know what to do with himself.
He’s alone, really alone, for the first time in his life. He was part of a little unit with Robert the whole time he’s been living in the City, and before that he was living in the dorms, surrounded by people. But now he’s all on his own, and guess what, living in a big, anonymous city sucks as much as he always thought it would.
He has friends, lots of friends, but they are mainly school friends, and even the ones who he’s close enough with to invite over to his place all end up going home sooner or later.
And... Stiles doesn’t like being alone. His bed feels too large. Hell, his whole apartment feels too large. Empty. He thinks about getting a cat or a dog, but he’s hardly ever home during the week and it just doesn’t seem right, leaving an animal to fend for itself.
Still, it’s depressing, spending the long, empty weekends by himself. And don’t even get him started on how much waking up alone sucks.
So Stiles starts going out. Starts partying the way he never did back when he was a freshman. He goes to clubs and picks up guys or girls, whichever happens to catch his eye, and brings them back home for the night.
He’s careful, of course he’s careful. His father is a sheriff, after all. But even though he’s careful and they are all consenting adults, it just doesn’t feel right.
The sex is fine, more than fine, but afterwards.... Look, Stiles isn’t a one-night-stand kind of guy. He’s a commitment and marriage kind of guy. Which means that all that partying gets old pretty quick.
And then he’s back to being alone in his apartment again. With nothing to distract him from his thoughts at all.
*
Derek tries Skyping. He tries calling. He texts. He emails. He asks Stiles to be his friend again on Facebook. Stiles doesn’t respond to any of it.
So Derek decides to think outside of the box. He sends a letter. An honest to god letter. Via the post office. And when it doesn’t come back to him unopened, he starts sending more. Little things, at first, like postcards and pictures and poems. Things he thinks that Stiles will like. He never gets a response, but he still feels like they are in dialogue, the two of them.
He writes letters multiple times a day, whenever he has something he wants to tell Stiles or sees something he thinks Stiles might find interesting or comes across an article he thinks Stiles might like. He pours out his thoughts and feelings, telling Stiles things he’s never told another soul. Things he never wanted anyone else to know, but suddenly needs to share with Stiles. He holds nothing back, shares it all, and, for the first time in a long time, he starts to hope.
And that, of course, is when Scott shows up at his door with an apprehensive look on his face and a giant box in his arms.
You need to stop, he tells Derek, his eyes sad and filled with understanding. You need to leave him alone.
And, god. It’s like being gutted all over again. Because in that box is every little thing that Derek ever sent Stiles. Every picture, every token, every word. Brought back, Scott tells him, because Stiles wants to make a point. Because just throwing it away wouldn’t have solved the problem.
But this... this does.
This drives the point home like nothing else could have. Because the envelopes have all been opened and the letters inside them are worn in a way that only comes from being read multiple times. Derek spreads them out on his kitchen table, re-reads the words he wrote and hears his heart stutter. It’s all there, everything he feels, everything he has felt, written out for anyone to see and Stiles read it all, read each and every letter, but in the end, nothing Derek wrote mattered. Nothing he said, none of his explanations or feeble excuses or pathetic bleatings about his hopes for a future together, for there to someday be a them, made any difference at all.
Not that Derek really ever believed that it would, but still. It hurts to have his lack of importance spelled out for him. But even worse than that, even worse then having his stupid, pointless hopes dashed and his unwanted letters returned, is the fact that in the box isn’t just the things that Derek has given Stiles in the last month or so of his awkward, undesired courtship. It’s full of all the things Derek has ever given Stiles. Right down to the sand dollar he gave him on that trip to the beach, during that summer that seemed so full of promise, so filled with potential.
Take it back, Stiles is saying. Take everything back. Every memory, every moment. Everything. I don’t want it and I don’t want you.
*
Stiles may have sent everything back to Derek, but he made copies of all the letters first. Because Stiles is a fucking masochist. And, yes, Derek needs to fucking stop, but that doesn’t mean that Stiles is one hundred percent ready to let go just yet himself.
No, Stiles isn’t able to let go at all. Instead he reads every word Derek wrote over and over again. But reading them doesn’t make the pain in his chest lessen, doesn’t make it any easier for him to forgive, let alone forget.
All it does is make him angry.
So damn angry. Because why couldn’t Derek have done this back then? Why couldn’t he have told Stiles how much he meant to him, how much he wanted him around? If Derek can fill page after page after page with intelligent observations and heartfelt confessions now, why couldn’t he do it then?
It’s just... Derek was the most important person in Stiles’s life. More important by far than Scott or any of his other friends, more important than his father. And that, right there, is enough to tell Stiles that what he felt back then was love. Maybe not the sort of grand passion people dream of, but a strong, steady platonic love. And if Derek had bothered to tell Stiles any of what he can so easily share now, that platonic love? It would have grown into something more.
But instead Derek kept his tender emotions to himself, didn’t even hint that Stiles was anything more to him that a kind of adopted kid brother. Let them spend a good four years being nothing more than friends, when he knew that they had the potential to be so much more to each other than that. Then Derek dropped him like he had the plague the second he no longer fit into Derek’s grand plan.
Because clearly Derek had a grand plan. Maybe Derek never said the words out loud, never committed them to paper, but he had a plan. A timeline he was working off of. One that involved Stiles finishing up school and coming home and then being sucked back into the pack and, at some point when it was most convenient for Derek, Stiles being let in on the oh-hey-we’re-mates secret.
It was a shitty plan, but Derek had it. Derek had been working towards it. Stiles isn’t exactly sure how Derek planned to make the transition from close friends to more, but he’s pretty sure, based on his own understanding of his feelings back then, that Derek would have been successful. That Stiles would have jumped at the chance to be something more to him. God, if Derek had so much as hinted about being into him, Stiles probably never would have even looked twice at Robert, let alone fallen in love with him.
But Derek hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t hinted or given any other indication that Stiles was anything more to him than a friend. So when Robert came onto the scene, Stiles had no reason to discourage him at all. Completely the opposite, in fact. Stiles had gone into their relationship with a smile on his face and the thought of forever on his mind, falling in love so easily, without any thought to how it might affect Derek at all.
And, yeah, Stiles can see how that would be upsetting. A werewolf’s mate is the equivalent of a human’s soulmate. And if Stiles realized he had a soulmate (which Stiles is kind of hoping he doesn’t, because if he does it’s probably Derek and he doesn’t even want to think about that right now) and that soulmate fell in love with someone else, Stiles would probably cry big tears too. But Stiles wouldn’t amputate them from his life. Sure, he would back off a bit, because no one wants to see the one they love with someone else. But Stiles wouldn’t let them go without telling them why. Stiles wouldn’t deliberately hurt them, the way Derek hurt him.
Hell, Stiles wouldn’t have fucking kept them in the dark in the first place.
Which is probably why Stiles is so damn mad. Because, if roles were reversed, he would have done everything in his power to try to get Derek to fall in love with him. And if, for some reason, Derek still fell in love with someone else, Stiles would have wished him well, no matter how much it was hurting him. He would have smiled and then bowed out quietly, like a fucking gentleman.
Because putting someone’s emotions before your own is what loving someone means.
But then, being mates isn’t about being in love, now, is it?
*
Derek doesn’t stop writing Stiles, he just stops sending what he writes. He buys Moleskine notebooks and fills them with all his words, all the things he’ll never get a chance to say. It doesn’t make things better, but it makes them easier.
Derek hasn’t been thinking about the future, not really. It’s like he sort of put his life on pause the second Stiles left it and has been waiting all this time for Stiles to come back so he can press play again.
But Stiles isn’t coming back.
At least not to him.
And Derek needs to stop waiting for something that’s never going to happen. He writes to Stiles about it, how he didn’t want to make plans because if he did, he would be acknowledging that his plans wouldn’t include Stiles. He tells Stiles about how he stopped caring, these past few years. How even being an Alpha didn’t matter to him any more.
He writes about the fights he’s had with Isaac, how out of control Erica has gotten. He writes about Scott’s deepening frown lines and the way Allison always hesitates before agreeing to bring her pup over to his house. He writes about how empty he feels. How alone. No matter how much time he spends out partying or how many people he brings back home.
Once he’s written it all down, he goes back and reads through it, stares his bad choices in the face. And then he tells himself that is it. Enough is enough. Time to let go, time to move on.
Not that he will ever be able to fully move on. Stiles is his mate and that job is a lifetime appointment. But he can do better than he’s been doing. He can stop fucking dwelling.
And that’s just what he does.
He stops drinking. He stops sleeping around. He stops letting his wolf ravage the countryside. He makes Erica straighten up and fly right, he gives Isaac that guiding hand he needs. He finds ways to make Scott smile again and he makes Allison so damn comfortable that she starts dropping her pup off three times a week so Bethany can establish a good relationship with her grandalpha, a term that he bristles at every time Allison says it, but secretly loves.
And through it all he keeps writing. Letter after letter, notebook after notebook. All filled with the thoughts and feelings and love he wishes he could share.
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Pairing: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Rating: R
Word Count: 4,698 (This part)
A.N.: Millions and millions of hugs and kisses to my beta, queenitsy. You have no idea how much hand holding and cheer leading she provided. Love you, bb! :*
Chapter Summary: Derek doesn't believe in pining. It's pointless. A waste of fucking time. So he doesn't pine, damn it. He doesn't pine at all. He does get drunk a lot. He does sleep around. He does let his wolf run wild whenever it wants. But that's not pining. That's him dealing with the situation as best he can.
Part 1
Derek doesn't believe in pining. It's pointless. A waste of fucking time. So he doesn't pine, damn it. He doesn't pine at all.
He does get drunk a lot. He does sleep around. He does let his wolf run wild whenever it wants. But that's not pining. That's him dealing with the situation as best he can.
*
Derek is not the reason Stiles chooses to stay in the Bay Area the summer between his junior and senior year. He's not, even though no one back home believes him. He stays because he landed a dream internship and because Robert decided to stick around for the summer, too. Because apparently it's boring in Vermont. Who knew?
Anyway, the pair of them rent a dinky studio in The Tenderloin-- a really sketchy part of The Tenderloin-- and pay way more than they should for it. But it's theirs and he loves it.
Scott and Allison make the trip up to see him, bringing with them news of the pack and a soon-to-be addition to their family. Scott rests his hand possessively on Allison's rounded belly and asks Stiles to be the as yet unnamed baby's godfather. Stiles, of course, says yes.
Scott does not mention Derek once.
But Allison does.
She hugs him tight as they are taking their leave and tells him not to worry, that they are keeping an eye out for their Alpha. He still loves you, she adds in a whisper, I don’t want to hurt you, and I know you are happy with Robert, but I thought you should know. Stiles nods and manages to make it through the rest of their farewells without breaking down, but once the door is shut behind them, he crumples.
Robert doesn't ask, doesn't judge. Just holds him tight and tells him that times heals all wounds.
Not this one, Stiles thinks. Not this one.
*
Derek sees Stiles at the christening of the McCalls’ new pup. The baby is fat and happy, with Allison's bright eyes and Scott's dopey grin, squirming like a devil in her godfather's arms. But the baby might as well not be there for all Derek cares. Not when Stiles is there, not when Derek can see him, hear him laugh.
Stiles's boyfriend is not present, ostensibly at the request of the new parents to limit the event to close friends and family only, but everyone knows it’s really so that Derek won't lose his shit. It's humiliating, knowing that his pack mates had to make the excuse, but it's necessary, too. Because Derek can barely be in the same room with Stiles as-is. God, he looks so damn happy and the scents of love and sex and other male are all over him, making Derek's wolf furious and desperate for blood.
Derek barely stays long enough to be polite, bowing out as soon as the ceremony is over. He makes his excuses and does not attend the party the happy family throws afterwards. But then, he doesn't need to. The baby is part of Derek’s pack and Derek, in his role as Alpha, has already welcomed the pup into his fold.
*
Stiles pretends not to notice the way that Derek stares at him throughout the christening. He pretends like it didn't make his insides ache, being that close to Derek and not being able to say anything. He pretends for all he's fucking worth. And if he cries the entire ride back to the City, well, that's just between him and his Jeep.
He's got his shit together by the time he's home, though, and is able to babble happily at Robert about his friends and his father and the precious, precious baby. Because, god, that baby. She's too cute for words with her gummy smiles and fresh baby smell and the way she felt all soft and warm in his arms.
Dude, Stiles is not a girl, not a girl at all, but he totally wants him a baby.
Problem is... Robert does not. Robert does not at all.
Robert doesn't even like having the baby over to visit, which... how is that possible? How can you not want to just coo at that darling little duck and blow on her belly and play with her toes and call her a sweet little amazon princess, just like her mommy? How can you be human and be presented with the adorableness of a three-month-old baby girl and not turn to goo?
Wanna know what else Robert doesn't like?
Stiles asking him that question.
*
Derek doesn't ask for information about Stiles's life; he doesn't want to know. But certain members of his pack -- read: Scott-- are too stupid to live. And so they tell him. All the fucking time.
Which is how he finds out that Stiles and Robert are not so unshakable as they always seemed. And how he finds out that Stiles and Robert are "going through a rough patch" for "reasons" having to do with babies. Or something. Derek wasn't really listening and he's not sure he wants to know what babies have to do with Stiles's relationship with fucking Robert because even if Scott and Allison have made that jump, that doesn't mean that Stiles should be thinking like that.
Oh holy fucking shit.
Stiles with a baby.
Stiles holding Derek’s baby.
A sweet little pup like the one Allison places so gently in his arms and that blows bubbles up at him while trying to eat his fingers. Silly, useless thing.
Derek's heart clenches and his wolf fucking howls. Because that? That's never going to happen.
*
It’s not just the baby thing. Yeah, the baby thing is important because Stiles wants a family like whoa, but Robert not wanting kids isn’t a dealbreaker in and of itself. It’s the baby thing on top of the different value system and the different goals for their lives and the fact that Robert doesn’t understand why Stiles wants to go back to Beacon Hills to visit, let alone live.
Not that they could live there, what with the whole Derek will kill you thing, which Robert doesn’t know about, thank god, but still. Stiles wants to live in a town like Beacon Hills, even if he can’t live in Beacon Hills itself. And he wants a family. And a slower paced life. And Robert does not.
So.
Yeah.
That sucks.
But they are still friends in the end. Which... doesn’t really make Stiles feel a whole hell of a lot better about it, but what can you do? At least they don’t hate each other. At least Robert isn’t cutting Stiles out of his life like he never fucking mattered, the way some people have. Not that Stiles is comparing the end of the relationship with his first love to the end of the weirdly codependent friendship with his best friend’s Alpha who happens to be his mate or anything.
Because that would be weird, right?
Anyway, they are still friends and Stiles gets to keep the apartment and nothing really has to change in his life at all. Expect for the part where he is no longer with Robert. That part sucks balls.
*
Derek knows better than to rush to Stiles’s side the moment he hears about the breakup. He fucking knows better. Just like he knew better than to get mixed up with Kate -- but knowing better didn’t stop him then and it doesn’t stop him now. Not that Derek can really compare Kate and Stiles, other than that they happen represent the two biggest lapses in judgement he has ever had, one resulting in the loss of all he held dear and the other resulting in the loss of the companion, the mate, he should have had.
The only thing that makes it sorta alright is that Derek doesn’t hear about the breakup until it’s old news. Like, months old. Which... still doesn’t make things better, but at least his need to be with Stiles right this very second doesn’t translate into Derek waiting for Stiles on his doorstep the day after he and Robert called it quits.
Of course, Stiles still doesn’t respond well to coming home and finding Derek waiting for him, but it probably would have been worse if this had happened a couple of months ago. At least Derek thinks it would, anyway. Kind of hard to tell, with how pretty fucking horrible Stiles’s current response is.
Stiles hasn’t said anything since the oh fuck no he let out when he first spotted Derek, but his mouth is a tight line, his eyes are radiating anger, and the smell of disgust is so thick in the air that it is turning Derek’s stomach. He doesn’t say “you need to leave” but he doesn’t have to. It’s written all over his face.
Derek pushes himself to his feet, trying desperately to come up with something, anything that will change Stiles’s mind. But before he can, Stiles is up in his face, slamming him back against the wall beside his door in a complete reversal of their traditional interactions.
I am not a toy he hisses. You don’t get to pick me back up the second someone else is done playing with me.
Derek’s mouth falls open and his mind reels because, really? Is that Stiles’s opinion of him? Is that what he took away from everything that happened between them? He stands there, gaping like a fish, while Stiles unlocks his door and slams his way inside.
Derek is not invited to join him.
*
No. No. No.
Not only no, but hell fucking no. That is not how this works. That is not how things are going down. Derek doesn’t get to drop off the face of the fucking planet for just over two years and then magically reappear the second Stiles is on the market again.
That is not how friendships work. Not at all. Sure, there’s some sort of werewolf bullshit going on, but still. If Derek cared at all about Stiles as a person, he wouldn’t have pulled the vanishing act in the first place. He would have talked to Stiles, explained his side of things. Tried to figure out some way that they could all still be friends, or at least still be acquaintances. He didn’t have to come visit. He didn’t have to call. But he could have included Stiles in mass emails or something. Hell, he could have not defriended Stiles on fucking Facebook. That would have been a start.
But he did. Derek cut him out of his life completely and even went so far as to make a fucking point of not making eye contact whenever they happened to meet by “accident.” And by “accident” Stiles means whenever he’s caught Derek stalking him like a creeper, which, by the way, has happened pretty much every single time Stiles has gone home for a visit. But can Derek just smile and wave it off like a normal person? No, he has to go all stone-faced and avoid looking Stiles in the eye and pretend like he never hears Stiles's pointed Hello, Derek, which Stiles always says because dude. They aren’t five. They can act civilly to each other. Or at least they ought to have been able to. So yeah. Two-plus years of Derek acting like Stiles is invisible and now he, what, just expects Stiles to pretend like none of that ever happened? To just let him back into Stiles life because it’s convenient for him?
Not going to happen.
Derek had a chance to work things out with Stiles. He had a chance two-plus years ago. He blew it. And that’s all Stiles is going to say about that.
*
Stiles’s reaction to Derek makes Derek stop and think, really think, about how things must have looked from Stiles’s perspective. And... well... when he does that, things look pretty bad. Because while Derek knows how hard he struggled with the just friends thing, Stiles does not. Stiles doesn’t know anything.
Derek never told him anything.
The more Derek thinks about it, the more disappointed in himself he becomes. Because... truth be told, the reason Derek never shared important things with Stiles, like how much being just his friend sucked or how much he hated Robert or, you know, that they were even mates to begin with, is because of everything that went down with Kate.
Which, by the way, is another thing he never mentioned.
Kate fucking Argent. The be-all and end-all of Derek’s fucking problems.
She wasn’t his mate. He knew she wasn’t. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t love her. God, how he loved her. It makes him sick to stomach to think about it. Because, fuck. She got everything. He was so stupid, just this young pup with his head in the clouds and his heart on his sleeve and that bitch, that stupid, manipulative bitch, took him for all he was worth.
Derek had worshipped her. Had wooed her like something out of a romance novel, saving up the money he made by working part time at the autoshop so he could take her to dinner or buy her some little thing that caught his eye. He picked her fucking flowers and sent her cards and love letters and thought that their love was so strong, so fucking pure, because she was willing to turn her back on her family for him.
God, he was such a stupid fucking idiot.
And the things he told her, about how he would love her forever, love her till he died. And she would laugh and say I bet you will which he thought meant that she believed him, that she felt the same way, but it was really just her mocking him, laughing at the fact that she planned on his stupid ass being dead by the end of the year.
So... yeah. She did a number on him. And, yeah, that meant that when he realized that Stiles was it, that Stiles was the one, he panicked. Freaked the fuck out. He growled at the kid and slammed him up against walls and took all his anger and confusion and pain out on him. Fuck. It’s a wonder that Stiles ever became his friend in the first place, after a beginning like that.
But that’s Stiles. Always willing to forgive, always willing to overlook bad behavior and offer out that second chance.
Except not this time. Not for Derek.
Because Derek hurt him too much for that. Derek didn’t give him all the information he needed, didn’t give him a chance to say yes or no. Just decided that being friends was the best choice for them. Who knows what might have happened if Derek had told him from the start what they were to each other?
Maybe Stiles would have blown him off. Or maybe Stiles would have felt obligated. Or Stiles would have fallen for him hook, line and sinker.
Who knows? Because none of that happened.
Derek didn’t let it happened.
Derek just kept his dumb mouth shut and then didn’t even explain anything when Stiles found out, from Scott. Hell, he never spoke to Stiles again after that.
Still hasn’t spoken to him. He’s seen him plenty of times, sure, but Derek’s never opened his mouth and said so much as “hi.”
So why would Stiles just welcome him back with open arms?
Of course he blew Derek off. Of course he did.
Stiles doesn’t have any reason not to. And that needs to change. God, does that ever need to change. No more keeping his mouth shut, no more making decisions for the both of them. From now on, Derek is going to have an open door policy. He’s going to be just as outspoken as he possibly can. That way, if things don’t work out, at least it won’t be because Derek never gave them a chance.
*
Stiles doesn’t know what to do with himself.
He’s alone, really alone, for the first time in his life. He was part of a little unit with Robert the whole time he’s been living in the City, and before that he was living in the dorms, surrounded by people. But now he’s all on his own, and guess what, living in a big, anonymous city sucks as much as he always thought it would.
He has friends, lots of friends, but they are mainly school friends, and even the ones who he’s close enough with to invite over to his place all end up going home sooner or later.
And... Stiles doesn’t like being alone. His bed feels too large. Hell, his whole apartment feels too large. Empty. He thinks about getting a cat or a dog, but he’s hardly ever home during the week and it just doesn’t seem right, leaving an animal to fend for itself.
Still, it’s depressing, spending the long, empty weekends by himself. And don’t even get him started on how much waking up alone sucks.
So Stiles starts going out. Starts partying the way he never did back when he was a freshman. He goes to clubs and picks up guys or girls, whichever happens to catch his eye, and brings them back home for the night.
He’s careful, of course he’s careful. His father is a sheriff, after all. But even though he’s careful and they are all consenting adults, it just doesn’t feel right.
The sex is fine, more than fine, but afterwards.... Look, Stiles isn’t a one-night-stand kind of guy. He’s a commitment and marriage kind of guy. Which means that all that partying gets old pretty quick.
And then he’s back to being alone in his apartment again. With nothing to distract him from his thoughts at all.
*
Derek tries Skyping. He tries calling. He texts. He emails. He asks Stiles to be his friend again on Facebook. Stiles doesn’t respond to any of it.
So Derek decides to think outside of the box. He sends a letter. An honest to god letter. Via the post office. And when it doesn’t come back to him unopened, he starts sending more. Little things, at first, like postcards and pictures and poems. Things he thinks that Stiles will like. He never gets a response, but he still feels like they are in dialogue, the two of them.
He writes letters multiple times a day, whenever he has something he wants to tell Stiles or sees something he thinks Stiles might find interesting or comes across an article he thinks Stiles might like. He pours out his thoughts and feelings, telling Stiles things he’s never told another soul. Things he never wanted anyone else to know, but suddenly needs to share with Stiles. He holds nothing back, shares it all, and, for the first time in a long time, he starts to hope.
And that, of course, is when Scott shows up at his door with an apprehensive look on his face and a giant box in his arms.
You need to stop, he tells Derek, his eyes sad and filled with understanding. You need to leave him alone.
And, god. It’s like being gutted all over again. Because in that box is every little thing that Derek ever sent Stiles. Every picture, every token, every word. Brought back, Scott tells him, because Stiles wants to make a point. Because just throwing it away wouldn’t have solved the problem.
But this... this does.
This drives the point home like nothing else could have. Because the envelopes have all been opened and the letters inside them are worn in a way that only comes from being read multiple times. Derek spreads them out on his kitchen table, re-reads the words he wrote and hears his heart stutter. It’s all there, everything he feels, everything he has felt, written out for anyone to see and Stiles read it all, read each and every letter, but in the end, nothing Derek wrote mattered. Nothing he said, none of his explanations or feeble excuses or pathetic bleatings about his hopes for a future together, for there to someday be a them, made any difference at all.
Not that Derek really ever believed that it would, but still. It hurts to have his lack of importance spelled out for him. But even worse than that, even worse then having his stupid, pointless hopes dashed and his unwanted letters returned, is the fact that in the box isn’t just the things that Derek has given Stiles in the last month or so of his awkward, undesired courtship. It’s full of all the things Derek has ever given Stiles. Right down to the sand dollar he gave him on that trip to the beach, during that summer that seemed so full of promise, so filled with potential.
Take it back, Stiles is saying. Take everything back. Every memory, every moment. Everything. I don’t want it and I don’t want you.
*
Stiles may have sent everything back to Derek, but he made copies of all the letters first. Because Stiles is a fucking masochist. And, yes, Derek needs to fucking stop, but that doesn’t mean that Stiles is one hundred percent ready to let go just yet himself.
No, Stiles isn’t able to let go at all. Instead he reads every word Derek wrote over and over again. But reading them doesn’t make the pain in his chest lessen, doesn’t make it any easier for him to forgive, let alone forget.
All it does is make him angry.
So damn angry. Because why couldn’t Derek have done this back then? Why couldn’t he have told Stiles how much he meant to him, how much he wanted him around? If Derek can fill page after page after page with intelligent observations and heartfelt confessions now, why couldn’t he do it then?
It’s just... Derek was the most important person in Stiles’s life. More important by far than Scott or any of his other friends, more important than his father. And that, right there, is enough to tell Stiles that what he felt back then was love. Maybe not the sort of grand passion people dream of, but a strong, steady platonic love. And if Derek had bothered to tell Stiles any of what he can so easily share now, that platonic love? It would have grown into something more.
But instead Derek kept his tender emotions to himself, didn’t even hint that Stiles was anything more to him that a kind of adopted kid brother. Let them spend a good four years being nothing more than friends, when he knew that they had the potential to be so much more to each other than that. Then Derek dropped him like he had the plague the second he no longer fit into Derek’s grand plan.
Because clearly Derek had a grand plan. Maybe Derek never said the words out loud, never committed them to paper, but he had a plan. A timeline he was working off of. One that involved Stiles finishing up school and coming home and then being sucked back into the pack and, at some point when it was most convenient for Derek, Stiles being let in on the oh-hey-we’re-mates secret.
It was a shitty plan, but Derek had it. Derek had been working towards it. Stiles isn’t exactly sure how Derek planned to make the transition from close friends to more, but he’s pretty sure, based on his own understanding of his feelings back then, that Derek would have been successful. That Stiles would have jumped at the chance to be something more to him. God, if Derek had so much as hinted about being into him, Stiles probably never would have even looked twice at Robert, let alone fallen in love with him.
But Derek hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t hinted or given any other indication that Stiles was anything more to him than a friend. So when Robert came onto the scene, Stiles had no reason to discourage him at all. Completely the opposite, in fact. Stiles had gone into their relationship with a smile on his face and the thought of forever on his mind, falling in love so easily, without any thought to how it might affect Derek at all.
And, yeah, Stiles can see how that would be upsetting. A werewolf’s mate is the equivalent of a human’s soulmate. And if Stiles realized he had a soulmate (which Stiles is kind of hoping he doesn’t, because if he does it’s probably Derek and he doesn’t even want to think about that right now) and that soulmate fell in love with someone else, Stiles would probably cry big tears too. But Stiles wouldn’t amputate them from his life. Sure, he would back off a bit, because no one wants to see the one they love with someone else. But Stiles wouldn’t let them go without telling them why. Stiles wouldn’t deliberately hurt them, the way Derek hurt him.
Hell, Stiles wouldn’t have fucking kept them in the dark in the first place.
Which is probably why Stiles is so damn mad. Because, if roles were reversed, he would have done everything in his power to try to get Derek to fall in love with him. And if, for some reason, Derek still fell in love with someone else, Stiles would have wished him well, no matter how much it was hurting him. He would have smiled and then bowed out quietly, like a fucking gentleman.
Because putting someone’s emotions before your own is what loving someone means.
But then, being mates isn’t about being in love, now, is it?
*
Derek doesn’t stop writing Stiles, he just stops sending what he writes. He buys Moleskine notebooks and fills them with all his words, all the things he’ll never get a chance to say. It doesn’t make things better, but it makes them easier.
Derek hasn’t been thinking about the future, not really. It’s like he sort of put his life on pause the second Stiles left it and has been waiting all this time for Stiles to come back so he can press play again.
But Stiles isn’t coming back.
At least not to him.
And Derek needs to stop waiting for something that’s never going to happen. He writes to Stiles about it, how he didn’t want to make plans because if he did, he would be acknowledging that his plans wouldn’t include Stiles. He tells Stiles about how he stopped caring, these past few years. How even being an Alpha didn’t matter to him any more.
He writes about the fights he’s had with Isaac, how out of control Erica has gotten. He writes about Scott’s deepening frown lines and the way Allison always hesitates before agreeing to bring her pup over to his house. He writes about how empty he feels. How alone. No matter how much time he spends out partying or how many people he brings back home.
Once he’s written it all down, he goes back and reads through it, stares his bad choices in the face. And then he tells himself that is it. Enough is enough. Time to let go, time to move on.
Not that he will ever be able to fully move on. Stiles is his mate and that job is a lifetime appointment. But he can do better than he’s been doing. He can stop fucking dwelling.
And that’s just what he does.
He stops drinking. He stops sleeping around. He stops letting his wolf ravage the countryside. He makes Erica straighten up and fly right, he gives Isaac that guiding hand he needs. He finds ways to make Scott smile again and he makes Allison so damn comfortable that she starts dropping her pup off three times a week so Bethany can establish a good relationship with her grandalpha, a term that he bristles at every time Allison says it, but secretly loves.
And through it all he keeps writing. Letter after letter, notebook after notebook. All filled with the thoughts and feelings and love he wishes he could share.
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5