Chapter Text
As both Derek and Stiles were much more alike than either man thought, it would only make sense that they also tended to take the same things for granted, especially when it came to their families and friends.
They took their loved one's comfort and condolences and kept them huddled away from prying eyes, reminding themselves that they were in the right, that they were the victims, that they weren't wrong.
But that never lasted very long. When those rose-colored shades were ripped away by the very people they relied to feed them such platitudes, there was little they could do but face the realization that sometime they weren’t as innocent as they liked to pretend they were.
“She said that I was an idiot.”
“Uh huh.”
“And that Stiles leaving was inevitable.”
“Ok.”
“That it was my fault he was gone.”
“Well, do you think it's your fault?”
“I don’t… I don’t know.”
“Derek, you need to think about this, and when I say that, I mean actually think about it and not just angst stupidly. Do you really want him to come back?”
“Yeah. That’s not the problem, Laura, I never wanted him to leave in the first place! Not like... not like that!”
“Well, why did you throw his stuff out then.”
“We weren’t ready for that sort of commitment yet! I told him that! I told him that it wasn’t a good idea and he didn't listen.”
“Told him. You didn’t discuss it with him. You told him.”
“Yeah. We weren’t ready Laura!”
“We, or you, Derek.”
“…”
“When you start being honest with yourself, Derek, then you can start placing the blame. At this point, you two are never getting back together if you can't even admit that something was fundamentally wrong before this whole moving-in fiasco happened.”
“But I... I didn’t want him to go. I just… I want him to understand.”
“Then you need to learn to stop pushing him away because you’re not giving him any incentive to stay, Derek.”
“I’m not pushing him away. It was too soon! Why can't you understand, I can’t lose him like I lost-“
“…Like you lost?”
“…”
“Like you lost Paige, you mean?”
“… We weren’t ready. I wasn’t ready.”
“Stiles isn’t Paige, Derek. You know that better than anybody.”
“... ... I think I need to think for a bit.”
“You do that, little brother. I’ll be here if you need me.”
“Thanks, Laura.”
“Love you, Derek.”
“… Love you, too.”
Derek let the phone fall onto the couch as he stared up at his ceiling.
“Fuck.”
Maybe it wasn't all Stiles fault after all.
Maybe Derek needed to re-evaluate all of his life choices because at this rate, he was never going to be able he was good at knowing what the right thing to do was (and wasn't).
“I am so not ready for this conversation.” Stiles murmured as he sat down and grabbed the mug in front of him. He took a quick swig and shuddered angrily for his efforts. The coffee, though still piping hot, rested distastefully on his tongue. Stiles knew that his father must've been really agitated if he knowingly did not put enough sugar and milk in his cup so that he could watch him cringe in disgust.
The Stilinski father, much like the Stilinski son, was an asshole in just about every single way.
Stiles was still not sure how the two men managed to coexist without imploding sometimes.
“And yet here we are still having it.” John snapped back. “What’s going on, kiddo? Why have you been so down?”
“I… uh…”
‘Think quickly, think quickly, think quickly, think quickly-‘
“There’s a girl.” Stiles stuttered out, knowing as soon as the words came out that they were the wrong one's to say.
‘Wait, WHAT?!’
John gave his son a peculiar stare but did not interrupt.
Stiles considered it a plus at this point.
“And she is…” Stiles felt his tongue click against his teeth, not even sure where he was going with this. “She isn’t as interested in me as I am in her.”
Somehow Stiles was digging a bigger hole for himself and he wasn’t even sure where it was coming from and why he continued to speak, his mouth should be arrested and left to rot in jail, Jesus Christ.
“Really, now?” John leaned back in his seat, obviously enjoying the show.
There was something to be said about the art of bullshitting a Stilinski, especially when the other was also a Stilinski.
It usually didn’t end very well.
Though Stiles wasn’t so sure he was bullshitting anymore.
“We’ve been together for almost a good year and everything has been going great, right?! I met her sisters and h-she, she has met Scott. We were with each other so much, we might as well have been living together.” Stiles leaned forward, the steam of his coffee tickling his nostrils as he brought the cup up towards his lips. “I thought that the next logical step would have been moving in together. It’s what people do, right? And we are people. We are awesome people! But he quote-unquoute 'decided' that we weren’t ready. Like, he straight up said, “Stiles, this isn’t happening, stop pushing it!” in his stupid, gruff voice and intense green eyes, all snarly and crap as if he had any right to snarl, I give you orgasms, how dare you snarl! And who was he to decide all that by himself anyway! The moving-in committee?! Cause I sure as hell didn’t vote him into power! In fact, I wanted him impeached the moment he said no, the jerk-off!”
John blinked as he watched his son continue to rant, not commenting on the change of pronoun as she abruptly became he.
“So, yeah, I challenged the shit out of him. What did he expect?! And guess what, we went almost two months living together and the bastard didn’t even realize we were living together. Like, I had almost all of my stuff in the damn apartment and this mofo didn’t even realize all of my shit was congregating in his space. He didn’t even blink. And everyday I would think, this will be the moment he notices. This will be the day he realizes that he was wrong and I was right and what is wrong with him, how is he not figuring this out?! I honestly thought I was dating the most oblivious man on Earth for a good two weeks before I realized that he just couldn’t tell the difference.”
“We had been spending so much time together that he hadn’t been able to tell that we had been staying together in a whole different way than just seeing each other every other day.” Stiles laughed as he glanced down at his coffee, still a murky dark-brown color and not nearly as sweet as he liked it to be. The taste was still slightly repellant but it had not halted his incessant need to drink it. The taste wasn't exactly growing on him but he was becoming more tolerant of it the more he drank. “I thought we were doing so good that I didn’t realize that things weren’t so good until I caught him throwing all of my stuff out into his hallway and no speech as to why. I didn’t even get a goodbye. Just a ‘here’s your shit, thanks for the sex, have a nice day.'”
John almost gagged on his coffee, glaring at his son for taking him off guard.
Stiles, who was now off in his own world, didn’t even notice.
“I know that he didn’t want me to move in but why couldn’t he just say ‘Stiles, you need to get your shit out.’ Or ‘Stiles, what the hell is the matter with you, I said no!’ Instead, I get silence and the boot... like, as if I did something wrong! As if I was the one to overstep my bounds and be all creepy!”
“Which you pretty much did.”
“Yea-what?!”
The blue-eyed officer rolled his eyes, wondering how such a smart boy could be so… oblivious.
It seemed like Stiles wasn’t as immune to the feeling as he thought.
“First off, can I ask when she became he and whether I should be worried by this sudden change?” The sheriff drawled, enjoying the gobsmacked look on his son’s face as the younger man’s thoughtless mistake had been lost once he had began unleashing his load onto the older man’s lap.
“Now that, that’s out of the way, let’s get back to the point at hand. You moved into a man’s home without his consent, Stiles. I think that’s pretty wrong in and of itself, which apparently your ‘guy’ seems to think too.” John took a long sip of his coffee as Stiles’ face slowly transformed from befuddled to utterly frustrated.
It was obvious that his son truly believed that he had not been in the wrong; or rather that the wrong had been minor in comparison to Derek’s ‘mistake’.
Only his son.
“In my opinion, he had every right to throw your stuff out. And I know you, Stiles. This man must be a saint to be able to tolerate living with you for two months without any type of compensation for it. The fact that he didn’t even notice just tells me he is… uh… of a special type of fortitude.”
“Oh, he was getting compensated, thank you. And don’t call my boyfriend special, I don’t like that word. He is of a particularly different designation, is all.” Stiles snapped back, enjoying the shade of red his father’s face managed to achieve in a few short seconds.
It was the little things that Stiles appreciated, really.
John, apparently took in one part of that come back, and it was not the part that would grant him any small mercies. “Oh God, Stiles! There are some things a father does not need to know!”
The lithe brunet smirked. “… Nailed it.”
“Stiles!”
“Okay, okay…” The brown-eyed barista gave the older Stilinski the side-eye. “So you’re saying it’s okay that he threw me out?”
“I didn’t say that. I said it was within his right. Now, whether that was the right relationship move on his part is debatable but not so reprehensible. You did break his trust when it seems pretty obvious that this seems like a guy that doesn’t take that too lightly.” John gave his son a scrutinizing glare, seeming to put together the puzzle pieces as he spoke. “You knew what you were doing, Stiles. You knew how he would react. You can’t say that you’re surprised by his actions when you had a feeling based on what you just told me that he would do something drastic once he figured out your scheme. You didn’t really want him to figure it out. You wanted him to keep remaining oblivious and not have to face up to the music. You wanted to absolve yourself of all responsibility without having to confront the fact that the way you achieved what you wanted was wrong.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong, he said he wasn’t ready and I wanted to prove him wrong!” Stiles objected strongly. “We were doing fine. I don’t get what the big deal was!”
Narrowed blue eyes gleamed as an idea entered John’s head. “You really don’t see the problem?”
“No!”
“Not at all?”
“I said no, didn’t I?”
“Stiles, have you met his family yet?”
“Just his two sisters…” Stiles hesitantly answered in return, not sure where his father was going with this but not trusting the look on his face either. “He met Scott so it’s not like we aren't even there. Scott’s basically like the brother I never had.”
“So you were really serious about him?”
“Yes, I am, not were.”
“So why haven’t I met him yet? Almost a year together and yet I don’t hear about this guy at all in the whole amount of time you’re together? Just that you're kind of 'seeing somebody'.”
And there was the question that Stiles was dreading.
“… Um…”
“Why did you try to pass him off as a girl?” John continued, not slowing his momentum now that he managed to catch Stiles off guard.
“Uh…”
“Why did you feel the need to come home and yet not want to tell me that you had been seriously involved with someone, let alone that it was so serious that you had moved in with them?”
“Goddamn it.” Stiles lowered his head in defeat. “I… I guess I wasn’t…”
“Hm? Weren’t, what, Stiles?”
“I wasn’t ready, okay!”
John pushed his coffee cup forward, the empty mug stained a dark, deep black on the inner rim. “And I rest my case.”
Stiles pouted for a moment. Then looked inside his cup, which was now just as empty as his father’s.
When the hell did that happen?
“Do you love this guy?”
The college student almost laughed hysterically as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. His father had the unerring knack of asking all of the wrong (right) questions.
“Does it matter?”
John’s lips thinned out as Stiles lifted himself up off of the chair and walked out of the kitchen without a glance back, obviously hitting the mark too close for Stiles’ comfort.
At least now John knew that Stiles would take action. Once backed into a corner, Stiles’ first reaction was to do just that; react. The boy did not do anything by halves, and even if the impulsive action would not have positive results, they would at least yield more results than the stagnant existence that his son had inhabited so far. Stiles was not a person that was meant to live within shades of gray and whoever this guy was would be an idiot if he just let his son go without a second thought.
He might be an oblivious, overly-impulsive jerk but he was also one of the most sensitive, caring and loyal jerks that you would ever come to love.
“Yeah, son. It really does.” John stated quietly, thinking of long brown hair, endless pale skin and twinkling amber-brown eyes.
And these two… these two were definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, so drenched in it you might as well give them a towel, in love
Later that night, John slept with a picture of Claudia over his chest.
Stiles pretended that he didn’t notice the picture missing in the living room the next morning.
Derek was surprised when he told his friends that he doubted that he and Stiles would going to be getting back together and basically received nonchalance in return.
He had expected to be treated like glass much like when he and his other significant others had broken up.
That was not what he got.
“Are you fucking serious?” Erica rolled her eyes as she stood up and walked out of the living room she shared with Boyd. “I thought you had managed to find a keeper this time and you go and chase him away.”
“I didn’t chase him away!” Derek argued, though after the scolding he had received at Lydia’s hands and the conversation he had shared with Laura, the words didn’t carry the same weight that they did two weeks back. “I thought… I thought… I don’t even know what I thought.”
Derek pretended that he didn’t hear the snort carry through the open doorway leading to the kitchen.
“It’s too bad, I actually kinda liked him a little bit. Sometimes.” Boyd stated as he kept his eyes firmly on the television screen in front of them, clearly uninterested in Derek’s relationship problems. “At least you don’t have to deal with all the non-stop talking anymore.”
“Yeah…” The green-eyed writer reluctantly agreed, clearly unsettled by the prospect of a newly-silent apartment.
“And no more messes to clean.” Erica chimed in as she re-entered the living room, the box of pizza cradled within her arms.
“Or loud noises that wake you up at like five o'clock in the morning.”
“Yeah, and he won’t have to deal with anymore clinginess. That kid took constant cuddling to the extreme.”
Derek shrunk in on himself the more they spoke, the reverberating emptiness that had been settled deep in his gut since Stiles’ disappearance growing larger and larger.
“Or clutter, remember how much clutter he had going on in Derek’s?! Oh my God, I thought that kid was trying to get on Hoarders or something.”
“Remember the random action figures he had lying around?”
“He called them collectibles cause they were still in the box.”
“What a nerd!”
“Shut up!” Derek finally snapped, fists clenched and eyes narrowed with rage and frustration.
Both Boyd and Erica instantly quieted, staring at Derek with wide eyes as the normally silent man boiled over with seething anger.
“Derek, man…” Boyd patted the man on the shoulder but Derek did not want the touch.
There was only one person that Derek wanted right now and damn it, he had practically driven him away to another fucking state.
“I’m gonna go home,” the eldest man in the room muttered before grabbing his coat, ignoring the two other people in the room trying to cajole him into staying. “Thanks for having me over.”
“Anytime.” Erica said, the room growing colder as Derek left without another word.
“Think he’s going to get his shit together and get his man back?” Boyd asked once he was sure Derek was not coming back inside.
The blonde rolled her eyes and then snorted. “If that doesn’t work, I don’t know what well. Idiots the both of them.”
Boyd didn't even dignify his girlfriend with a response.
The next time John would make Stiles a cup of coffee, he made it the exact same way he made it the first time he had given him a cup of coffee, that dreadful conversation still ringing in his ears even when he tried to will away the thoughts and concentrate only on the cup in front of him.
Then the next time he made coffee, John did it again.
And again.
And again.
What really bothered Stiles each time he drank his coffee, however, wasn’t the taste.
It was that he never bothered to fix it.
The bitter flavor of the coffee wasn’t masked by any sweetness and the swirl of milk didn’t do much to dilute any of the caffeine within drink. The cup was unnaturally hot every time it was handed to him but Stiles never waited for it to cool down.
And the first sip was always the absolute worst. The second was almost as bad but Stiles drank through it. By the time he got to his sixth sip he was already good and accustomed to the terrible taste, not sure why he was still drinking the disgusting thing but not willing to put the cup down regardless of all the logic in his head screaming at him to give in and just change what he didn’t like about it.
The light bulb turned on over his head with not a gentle glow but a blinding shine.
Sometimes, Stiles had to catch up to his own brain because the connections it made were not always cognizant.
“I’ve been trying to change him.” Stiles mumbled to himself as he stared down at the new mug of coffee, absolutely horrified with himself.
“Hm?” The sheriff turned to face his son, confused by the sudden proclamation.
“I kept saying that he was fine. Everything was perfect. He was perfect. But I was lying. That’s why I never brought up you meeting him. I didn’t think he was ready yet. I didn’t want to go to you and feel like I wasn’t doing everything right. That he wasn’t right.” Stiles felt his mouth drop open, eyes growing glossy by the revelation. “I didn’t trust him to make the right decisions so I let them go or made them for him behind his back but when he decided that we weren’t ready to move in, I decided that he was wrong without even asking him why and oh God, I'm a horrible person.”
John said nothing as his son stared at his coffee morosely.
“I’m not just horrible, I'm deplorable. That's even worse, right?!”
“You’re human.” The older man countered, grabbing his son by the shoulder and shaking him. “And now that you know what you’ve done wrong, you can decide whether or not your relationship is worth fighting for.”
Stiles nodded as he grabbed his coffee and brought it to his lips.
It was still bitter.
It was still too hot.
It was still too strong.
But he said nothing and drank it anyway.
“So did you figure it out?”
“I think so.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m hoping I will be.”
“Do you even know where he is?”
“Nope.”
“And yet you’re not the least bit worried?”
“Well, I know who does know where he is and whether or not he’s coming back so it’ll be up to them whether they mail it or keep it or just… throw it away.”
“You really think they’ll give it to him?”
“I have to try and stay positive here, Laura.”
“… Can you say that again, I think my brain may be suffering from explosion-itis where things are said that make my mind go kabloowie.”
“You just hurt my writer’s brain by saying all of that.”
“Please, you being positive trumps my horrible grammar and random garble You are really serious about this, aren’t you?”
“I want to do this right.”
“I just want you to be happy.”
“I know, Laura. I want you to be happy, too.”
“Fingers crossed?”
“Ok, too far.”
“Sorry!”
Lydia blinked as she stared down at the paper, not quite sure how she managed to get herself involved in these idiotic spats.
“You want me to give this to him. What are we in third grade?”
Derek rolled his eyes.
It was as if she was testing him. And by him, he meant his patience, which he had none left of, thank you very much.
“How do you know I won’t throw it away as soon as you leave?”
“Because despite not wanting to admit to this and lose any semblance of sanity I have left, I trust you not to. And that may be the most idiotic decision I make in the next coming weeks but I have nothing else to lose and you’re all I got in connections to Stiles. Minus Scott. But I refuse to go there, even as the last option of all options.” Derek couldn’t even find himself thinking up that scenario, the enraged face of Stiles’ best friend distorted too heavily by the puppy dog eyes he would be sure to invoke the moment Derek’s fist came flying up and towards his face. “You don’t have to give it to him but if you think he might want to still talk to me, even for just five minutes, you would be a bad friend not to.”
Lydia rolled her eyes and pushed the envelope into her designer purse, her momentum back in stride. “Whatever.”
Derek smirked as he backed away from the tiny redhead and made his way back to the Camaro.
Maybe Stiles didn’t want to talk to him.
Maybe he had lost his chance the moment he had closed that door, his apartment completely vacant of anything resembling Stiles’ presence.
Maybe he was fighting for a lost cause.
But maybe, just maybe, Stiles was secretly thinking all the same things and hoping that this thing was worth fighting for too.
Stiles grinned as he hugged his dad goodbye, eyes closed as he held onto his father as tightly as possible.
“You’ll call me when you land, right?”
“Yup.” The long-limbed brunet stumbled out of the older man’s grasp, bouncing in place. “I’ll probably need a pep talk as soon as I get there. You are not obligated to provide it but it would be much appreciated, please and thanks.”
“What are you planning on doing?”
Stiles didn’t say anything as he shrugged, a large, almost cartoonish smile stretching out his lips until they were taut and thin against the apples of his cheeks.
“I’ll let you know when I figure it out, dad.”
John waved at his son as he disappeared through the clog of people and security, hand lingering upwards until it hurt to keep it up anymore. He would miss his son, just as he always did when he said goodbye, but he would hope and pray for good things once he returned.
One of those good things being a potential son-in-law who happened to be tolerant of Stilinski’s and everything they could dish out.
That made him a man cut from steel in John’s book, and it was going to be very interesting to see how the dynamics were going to shift the next visit that would grace the sheriff’s company.
The first thing Stiles did when he landed was call his dad, just as he said.
He still didn’t know what he was going to do.
Who else to call.
Where else to go.
But unlike the feeling of loss that had weighed heavily in his gut before he left, Stiles felt elated. Rejuvenated. Uplifted.
Beacon Hills had done him some good.
It had reminded him that relationships, they were just one piece of the grander puzzle that was life and even if Derek didn't want to be with him anymore, he'd be damned if he didn't have him in his life one way or another.
But most importantly, the trip had given him perspective.
When he got to back to his overly-cramped apartment, he re-evaluated everything when he got to the door of his bedroom and blinked up at the envelope taped to the wood, a familiar cramped script scrawled along the milky-white paper of the casing.
To: Stiles
Please, just read.
It seemed that perspective was not willing to wait and needed to be confronted now.