#stiles is a true crime youtuber | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

automatismascrive · 2 years

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Su tumblr, per tumblr, con tumblr: what happens next

Vi ricordate i webcomic? No, non parlo di cose tipo Stand Still Stay Silent o Kill Six Billion Demons, fumetti pubblicati online che hanno come scopo ultimo quello di essere stampati in una bella edizione con copertina rigida e tavole immacolate. Pensavo più a roba tipo questa. O questa. O in generale tutte quelle serie nate dalla penna di un solo autore che partiva dal presupposto di non saper disegnare, spesso pure di non saper sceneggiare e in casi più gravi manco di saper fare lo spelling di parole oltre le tre sillabe; sì, c’era naturalmente un mucchio di robaccia di questo genere in giro per l’internet, ma il fascino di poter prendere carta e penna (o pennino e tavoletta grafica, ma siamo lì) e poter creare un prodotto finito da poter postare sul web che veniva letto e commentato da un mucchio di persone è qualcosa che è sempre più difficile da ricreare al giorno d’oggi – e in mezzo a questa pila gigante di spazzatura non mancavano i piccoli tesori che riuscivano a raccontare una storia che nei medium più tradizionali non avrebbe trovato spazio. Non che oggi i webcomic di questo tipo siano spariti per mancanza di mezzi o di piattaforme, sia chiaro, ma quando chi compete per l’attenzione del tuo pubblico è un illustratore con una laurea in arti figurative che ha pure fatto qualche corso di sceneggiatura è quasi impossibile costruirsi un pubblico che vada oltre lo stile incerto e l’iniziale mancanza di coerenza e continuità invece di scegliere qualcosa di più accattivante.

Il mondo dei webcomic così come si intendeva dieci-quindici anni fa è stato largamente sorpassato: ogni tanto però spunta fuori un’eccezione. Eccezione che, per essersi fatta largo in questo mercato ipercompetitivo e frenetico, deve avere qualche qualità che non la faccia istantaneamente ricondurre alla satura categoria dei three dudes talking about videogames (storico antenato dei three dudes with a podcast che oggi piagano la rete): è proprio il caso di what happens next, disegnato e sceneggiato da Max Graves, che si prefigge di narrare una storia che parte da un episodio di cronaca nera che cambia per sempre le vite dei protagonisti, per esplorare in che modo filtrare questi avvenimenti attraverso la rete può peggiorarli, distorcerli, o creare nuovi mostri che sarebbero stati impossibili da immaginare prima dell’avvento dei social. E già vi sento, come una sola voce, pensare: che due maroni. Che due gargantueschi, flaccidi maroni. Fermi, prometto che questo webcomic merita almeno il tempo che spenderete a leggere questo consiglio; anzi, per rientrare nelle vostre grazie, lancio l’amo: è un webcomic su tumblr. Proprio così, una parte significativa delle interazioni tra i personaggi avverranno tramite una versione di tumblr molto simile a quella attuale – l’autore ha specificato l’ambientazione è un mondo parallelo molto simile al nostro – con interfacce ricreate minuziosamente e dinamiche così vicine a quelle reali da essere chiaramente state oggetto di uno studio accurato. A questo punto potrei avervi perso definitivamente, ma per chi di voi si è sentito intrigato alla menzione del tumblero, ecco di che cosa parla il consiglio di oggi.

Vikki, assistente in uno studio di pompe funebri e proprietaria di un canale YouTube dedicato al true crime, decide di chiedere assieme alla sua amica Xandra un’intervista a Milo Holliday, ragazzo trans coinvolto anni prima in un omicidio particolarmente efferato assieme al suo migliore amico-slash-fidanzato-slash cotta pre-eggcracking (Griffin Petty – uhm, è complicato) che ha portato alla morte di due ragazze. Pur essendo rimasto diversi anni in un istituto di igiene mentale a seguito della sentenza del processo, è attualmente in libertà e vive con suo padre e con sua nonna, cercando di mantenere il più possibile l’anonimato per lasciarsi il passato alle spalle. Oh, tranne per il fatto che ha un account su tumblr con il suo vero nome a cui arrivano ogni giorno messaggi crudeli, transfobici o semplicemente scioccati all’idea che un tizio coinvolto in un evento tanto traumatico scelga di passare diverse ore al giorno a discutere su che cosa dovrebbe o non dovrebbe meritarsi per il resto della sua vita. Su tumblr è però attivo anche Gage, attuale fidanzato di Griffin e proprietario di un account pieno di contenuti grafici e disturbanti che insiste per contattare Milo per avere più informazioni sull’omicidio in cui è stato coinvolto e sul rapporto che aveva con Griffin prima del tragico evento: come è facile immaginare, questo mix letale di riflettori sulla vita di Milo e di traumi passati che bussano alla porta innescherà una spirale che lo porterà a dover ripensare radicalmente come ha vissuto fino a quel momento e in che modo dovrebbe gestire le responsabilità di ciò che ha fatto. Spoiler: nulla andrà come dovrebbe.

La prima tavola del primo capitolo, featuring Vikki che è ovviamente la mia preferita perché è la mean goth del cast.

La prima caratteristica di what happens next che salta subito all’occhio è l’estremo realismo della componente social che costituisce uno dei motori principali della vicenda. Ogni interfaccia è resa graficamente con un notevole livello di cura e dettaglio, e il modo in cui ciascuno dei personaggi interagisce con la rete è molto vicino alla realtà – nonché chiaramente basato sulle esperienze dell’autore: non mancano i riferimenti a meme, dinamiche e nerderie di vario genere che hanno fatto la storia di tumblr e di altre sottoculture online, ma non sono mai buttati nella storia fini a loro stessi, giusto per strappare una risata al lettore o per fargli un occhiolino come a dirgli “so che tu sai che io so”. Il fatto che Milo riguardi ossessivamente le prime stagioni di My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic e che non sia in grado di impegnarsi nella visione o nella lettura di alcuna narrativa che si allontani da ciò che guarderebbe un ragazzino di seconda media, o l’interesse che Vikki prova per il true crime, o ancora quei contenuti morbosi e talmente gore da risultare ridicoli che Gage posta sul blog sono tutti riflessi del modo in cui i personaggi hanno scelto di gestire i traumi e le difficoltà che li hanno accompagnati fino a quel momento. Ulteriormente significativo è il fatto che queste dinamiche sono presentate in modo molto realistico: persino io, che ai social propriamente detti mi sono avvicinata abbastanza tardi e che sono su tumblr da meno di un anno, non ho avuto nessuna difficoltà a riconoscere quanto le interazioni online presentate nel corso delle tavole rispecchino fedelmente moltissime situazioni che si evolvono tutti i giorni nella realtà – dai comportamenti più macroscopici, come bullismo o stalking, fino alla complessità dei comportamenti di persone depresse, terminally online e incapaci di gestire le proprie responsabilità in maniera diversa da come gestivano a tredici anni le liti tra fandom.

Va sottolineato come questo realismo non si limiti a permeare le relazioni che si costruiscono online tra i personaggi, che soprattutto nella prima parte del webcomic tendono a dominare la narrazione, ma anche a quelle che vediamo offline. Se vi aspettavate una storia con buoni e cattivi, o perzone tossike e brava gente, be’, what happens next non ha nessuna intenzione di raccontarvela; persino i personaggi più sgradevoli e con cui è più difficile empatizzare, come il padre di Milo, che non esita a ridicolizzare il figlio e si rifiuta di comprendere o di accettare la sua transizione, sono protagonisti di dialoghi rivelatori e credibili che riescono a farci percepire tutta la complessità racchiusa in una storia così dolorosa come quella che Graves vuole raccontare. In questo webcomic non ci sono persone “moralmente giuste”, e uno dei focus centrali della serie è proprio sul ruolo della vittima, che può essere indubbiamente liberatorio da vestire, ma che se cucito addosso troppo stretto impedisce di diventare qualsiasi altra cosa e porta a liberarsi di qualsiasi percezione di responsabilità, rifiutando la crescita e il cambiamento necessari per diventare adulti; quasi tutti i personaggi hanno comportamenti infantili e bizzarri, spesso esasperati da spazi online incapaci di rispondere alle loro esigenze ma più che felici di intrappolarli in dinamiche adolescenziali e prive di complessità: tu sei una persona moralmente corretta (hai rispettato il mio dni), tu un mostro che farebbe meglio ad ammazzarsi appena possibile (hai postato un contenuto con una ship incestuosa).

Sì, Milo sta guardando una puntata di MLP. Grave che io sappia qual è anche se non l’ho mai visto in vita mia.

Persino la giustapposizione tra elementi comici e grotteschi ed eventi traumatici e violenti, che in altre mani avrebbe rischiato di risultare in un pastrocchio incoerente e privo di qualsiasi carica drammatica, in questo webcomic è dosata in modo da fornire sufficiente realismo alle interazioni senza per questo scadere in sterile citazionismo o nell’illusione che citare la realtà permetta di dare spessore alla finzione. Insomma, se siete arrivati fin qui è evidente il mio entusiasmo per questo webcomic, ma proprio in virtù del suo status indie presenta qualche limite. Il più evidente è il disegno: se le interfacce sono assai realistiche e i mezzibusti dei protagonisti molto espressivi nella loro semplicità, quando il tratto è costretto a rappresentare persone in movimento, composizioni complesse o gestualità peculiari viene messa in evidenza la sua inadeguatezza; è perlopiù abbastanza chiaro nel rappresentare ciò che sta succedendo, ma difficilmente è gradevole alla vista o bello in senso tecnico. Anche la colorazione è piatta e priva di ombre e luci, stratagemma che funziona nel primo capitolo che utilizza una palette molto limitata ma molto meno in quello successivo. Non dovrebbe sorprendere, considerando che si tratta di un webcomic vecchia scuola che è evidentemente frutto di anni di lavoro da autodidatta, ma contribuirà sicuramente ad allontanare qualche potenziale lettore abituato a standard grafici molto superiori.

Ecco, appunto. Anche se hobbit!Milo ha il suo appeal.

Come già feci per Romulus, inoltre, sono costretta a segnalare che il webcomic è ancora in corso: il primo capitolo – dog names – è completo ed è leggibile anche come una storia a sé stante, com’era nelle intenzioni originarie dell’autore, mentre il secondo è ancora incompleto; viene aggiornato regolarmente e fino ad ora non ha dato segni di peggioramento qualitativo: sembra che l’autore sappia quello che fa e che non si stia affidando al caso o a una prima geniale intuizione per scriverlo, dunque mi sento di consigliarlo caldamente anche con questi caveat (e poi volevo ricominciare a scrivere sul blog, okay?). Se i temi citati vi interessano e avete almeno una qualche curiosità di vedere in che modo le dinamiche dell’Internet possono essere sfruttate per scrivere una storia complessa, competente e conscia dei medium di cui vuole parlare – o se vi è piaciuto Bokura no Hentai – what happens next potrebbe rivelarsi una lettura interessante.

#ita #comic #webcomic #what happens next #max graves #recensione

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rebeleden · 7 months

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Watch "True Crime: Grady Stiles aka Lobster Boy ✖️#truecrime #shorts #storytime #ahs #creepy" on YouTube

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andavs · 4 years

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So I watched Bumblebee...

...

The jeep was bright blue and the most obnoxious vehicle Derek had ever seen, but it was perfect. It was a 1980 CJ5 and once the list of defects was read aloud, he was the only bidder so he got it for next to nothing. Not that the price could’ve kept him from buying it, because Laura had a thing for jeeps.

Specifically older jeeps, none of that Cherokee or Sahara or SUV kind of models—she liked Jeeps. And she also liked to rant about shoddy craftsmanship of modern models and how they weren’t really jeeps… Derek usually tuned her out by the time she got to the wave hierarchy.

For someone who didn’t actually own a jeep and never actually had, she really liked jeeps.

And she would really like this one.

There was the expected wear of a vehicle over thirty years old and some body damage from an accident; the leather seat was ripped, and it looked like there was a scorch mark near the driver’s side door, a sizable dent in the passenger side. Aside from that, it seemed as though the jeep was relatively well taken care of, until it ended up in a county abandoned vehicle auction.

It would definitely take some work, and he'd probably have to replace everything under the hood, but it was worth it to see Laura happy and excited.

It had been a long time since she was happy and excited.

Now he just had to get it home to get it fixed up, without it breaking down on the side of the road. And despite the fact that he was going to have to fix every part of it in some way, that seemed like the much greater challenge at the moment.

The jeep lurched violently as he shifted, and he struggled briefly to get it into gear. That was where he could really feel the age of the car; he never had any difficulty shifting in his Camaro.

"Clutch, dude."

He slammed on the brakes and the jeep swerved violently to the side of the empty highway. Derek twisted around in his seat to threaten whoever the hell stowed away in the back seat, eyes glowing and furious—

But the back seat was empty.

There were no other heartbeats, no muffled breathing, and the trunk was far too small for anyone to fit into, even if they did somehow manage to conceal the sounds of a living, breathing person.

"First clutch, then gas—seriously have you never driven stick?"

That time the voice came from the other direction, and he turned back towards the front.

The radio was off, his phone was in his pocket...

“Oh, and there’s a weird kind of delay? So wait a second before the gas or it stalls, and you gotta put some muscle into it.”

Derek did as the disembodied voice instructed and the car jerkily started forward again.

So the jeep was haunted. Cool.

The ghost’s name was Stiles, and he was the most obnoxious person, living or dead, that Derek had ever met. He never thought he could have such disdain for a disembodied voice, but the very sound of it was starting to fill him with such a deep-seated rage and irritation that there were new claw holes in the side of the leather seat.

Okay, not entirely true. He’d grown to hate a lot of radio personalities over the years, but at least there were music breaks and they were limited to the hours of their show. They babbled for an hour and then they stopped.

Stiles had no such limitations. If the car was on, he was talking.

And talking.

“I was stuck in an impound lot for who knows how long! Of course I want to talk!”

Derek rolled his eyes, thankful that Stiles didn’t seem to be able to see anything, because he would probably have something to say about that too.

“Well I don’t,” Derek said flatly, hoping his tone conveyed just how much he didn’t want to talk, “so shut up.”

His tone did nothing.

“Was that supposed to be threatening?” He wasn’t laughing, but Stiles sounded entirely too amused, which just pissed Derek off even more. “What are you going to do, hit me?” He taunted. “Punch the dashboard? Run into a tree? I’m dead, dude, you can’t hurt a ghost!”

“Are you sure about that? Because I’m sure I could find a way.”

“Please do, I’d love to watch you fail.”

Derek turned onto his street. He was almost home. In just a few short seconds, he could turn the car off.

“You can’t even see.”

“But I have a very vivid imagination.”

He turned into his driveway.

“That sounds like a brooding silence,” Stiles continued. “Deep frown, furrowed brow, are you clenching your jaw? I think I can hear teeth grinding.”

As if he could hear anything over the deafening, rattling roar of the shitty jeep.

Derek said nothing as he unclenched his jaw.

“Do you have prominent cheekbones? I’m picturing cheekbones, maybe some artfully tousled—”

“Oh look, we’re home,” Derek interrupted, deadpan, and parked the jeep in his garage.

“Oh no, don’t you dare turn me off! Derek! Der—”

He turned the key and breathed a sigh of relief at the blissful sound of silence.

It was a full week and a half before he turned the jeep on again.

A week and a half of standing in the door of the garage, staring at it for three minutes, and then closing the door and walking away.

A week and a half of opening the driver’s side door, hesitating, and slamming it shut again (because the lock didn’t catch properly unless he slammed it).

A week and a half of steadily mounting guilt eating away at his stomach until he couldn’t take it any longer and stormed out to the garage at four in the morning to turn the damn car on, only to be greeted by an irate Stiles calling him a dick and a number of other colorful names. Followed by the deafening squeal of audio feedback in retaliation.

They finally reached a tentative truce; Derek would start the jeep every day, and Stiles would learn to shut the hell up when Derek needed a break.

Starting the jeep daily turned into taking it out for a drive daily, usually to the auto parts store so he could get some advice from the employees about what he needed to buy for it.

“Everything,” was the answer he got, so he sighed and handed over his credit card, silently wondering if this stupid jeep was even worth it.

He wasn’t giving it to Laura with a ghost, so why even bother fixing it up? He asked himself that a lot, late at night while he stared up at the ceiling in bed. He didn’t need a jeep, especially one with so little room for anything more than two people. His Camaro had a larger backseat, a larger trunk, more power—it was better than the old blue jeep in pretty much every way except getting up a steep driveway without scraping the front bumper.

Except his Camaro didn’t contain the last remaining consciousness of a person.

His Camaro wasn’t the one thing keeping that person from fading from existence.

It wasn’t the one thing he enjoyed talking to.

Well, not talking to—bickering with, more like. Arguing. Insulting. Their conversations were usually just shy of mutual verbal abuse, and for some reason, Derek kind of enjoyed it. He was spending thousands of dollars and hours of labor to continue interacting with a single person, in a manner that could barely be considered more eloquent than a YouTube comments section.

Maybe it was because no matter how nasty he got, Stiles gave it right back. Stiles didn’t walk away and cut off contact. He didn’t let Derek’s shitty moods linger in his mind and poison their next conversation. He didn’t drag it up to use it against him. He called him a dick, a tool, a monumental douchebag, and moved on to his next thought.

Except it wasn’t just bickering and insults. Not anymore.

Because Stiles got it. He understood. He understood when Derek went quiet for days at a time and drove through the neighborhood for hours without saying a word. He understood when Derek started the car and just sat there in the driver’s seat in his garage, staring at the unfinished drywall he’d put up and never painted. He never even taped the seams.

“I get it, dude,” Stiles said during one of those days. “So I’m just going to keep talking and you can jump in whenever you’re ready.”

And oddly enough, it helped. When Stiles rambled on from one topic to the next, spewing facts and anecdotes he’d read at some point, it dragged Derek out of his spiraling thoughts and guilt and grief and gave him something to focus on that wasn’t his own self-loathing. His pity parties, as Stiles had dismissively named them, but even that helped in some twisted way.

“I’m not going to be the goody bag at your pity party,” he’d said like he was quoting something, and then given Derek entirely too much information about the bathroom situation in Versailles.

“You’re going to have to replace the transmission as soon as possible if you’re going to keep driving this,” Dave said, shaking his head at the mess under the hood of the jeep.

Derek nodded, resigned, and handed over his credit card.

For all that Stiles talked, he never talked about himself. Derek wasn’t really sure how the whole ghost thing worked, but if Stiles could remember the entire history of the imperial system of measurement, it seemed like he should remember his own life. And yet, he never mentioned it. The entire history of the Genovese crime family, yes, Derek had heard it twice, but nothing personal about Stiles.

The few times Derek had asked, he got vague answers. The kind of answers that made it sound like he was hiding something big. Talking around specifics, not referencing any names, occupations, locations—anything that could be used to identify him.

Normally, this would be a giant red flag and send Derek running into the night, but Stiles was a ghost. He was dead. He couldn’t even change the radio station, let alone hurt someone, so Derek let it slide. Plus, he was fun. And Derek couldn’t remember the last time he’d used that word to describe anything in his life.

“You’re going to have to pound this out,” Dave said, gesturing to the pretty significant dent on the passenger side of the jeep. “What happened? Did you hit a tree or something?”

Derek shrugged, told him it was there when he bought it, and accepted his recommendations for a few body shops in the area. But the thought lingered.

It had crossed his mind before, plenty of times, but never more than a passing thought. It felt strangely invasive, asking a ghost how they died. Was there etiquette for that? How did one approach that subject this far into a relationship?

“Did you die in this car?” Derek asked bluntly one afternoon, ripping off the bandaid with all of the tact and finesse he usually showed in social situations.

Luckily Stiles was used to that by now and didn’t bat a proverbial eye.

“Probably? Don’t remember.”

Derek frowned at the freeway in front of him, letting the roar of the jeep’s new engine fill the silence. “You don’t remember your death?” That seemed like the kind of thing that would leave an impression.

“Weird, right? Kind of seems like a major milestone in someone’s life.”

To say the least.

“Dude, you have to look me up!” Stiles said excitedly, like the idea just came to him. “Stiles Stilinski, with an I.”

Derek didn’t exactly jump for his phone, and not just because he was driving.

“Where’s the I?”

“Everywhere, it’s like the only vowel in my name. Just do it. I need to know if my death was as embarrassingly pathetic as the rest of my life.”

Well that was depressing. And a very effective guilt trip.

When he got home and parked the jeep in his garage, he pulled his phone out of his back pocket and guessed how to spell Stiles’ name. He guessed wrong, and even when he corrected it, he didn’t find anything. Just an old voter record website and some totally locked down social media profiles that didn’t even have a picture of his face.

“Wow, so I made zero impact even in death.”

Derek shifted uncomfortably and kept himself from pointing out darkly that even if Stiles hadn’t, his jeep had made a big one. Into something very hard.

“Okay hang on,” he bounced back quickly, “if my jeep was in an accident, there would be an accident report! That should say what happened!”

This was turning into a much bigger project than Derek expected.

“How am I supposed to find that? You don’t know where it happened, and even if you did, I don’t think the cops give out accident reports to anyone who asks.”

Stiles sighed dramatically. “Just get a laptop.”

Derek wasn’t sure which law he’d broken by using a sheriff’s login to access a national law enforcement database, but he was pretty sure he could go to jail for it.

“It’s fine, I do it all the time,” Stiles had assured him, but he had a feeling a sheriff was much more likely to overlook his own son committing fraud with his account than a complete stranger. Even if his son was directing all of it. As a disembodied voice through his car.

Derek glared at the radio and adjusted the computer on his lap. It was a bit of a tight fit with the steering wheel in the way. And also because it was a jeep from the eighties and was roughly the size of an oven.

Stiles stepped him through the search process. When the license plate and VIN number came up with nothing (and who knew their VIN off the top of their head, even in death?), he got more creative until finally, there was one, single result.

“It says here there was a car accident, a hit and run,” Derek summarized as he scanned through the report. “The jeep was found on the side of the road, no plates, no VIN, no witnesses. The unidentified driver was unconscious and taken to the hospital.”

“Unconscious,” Stiles repeated, immediately latching onto the same point Derek did. “So I’m not dead!”

“Would it say if you died later at the hospital?”

“Probably depends on how much later it was. When did the accident happen?”

Derek scrolled up to the date. “About a year ago. You don’t remember any of this?”

“Conveniently, it’s a total blank. Where did it happen?” Derek read off the county name, just two over from where he lived, and not the one he’d bought the jeep in. “Great! Just a few hours from Beacon Hills!”

Derek froze, heart starting to pound. It couldn't be...

“California?” It was a stupid question; the state was huge, everything a few hours away from them was still in California.

“Yeah, you know it?”

“No,” he lied, and if Stiles heard the lie, he didn’t push it.

There was no way this was a coincidence, Derek thought frantically. Beacon Hills wasn’t that big and since he left, he’d never met anyone who knew where it was, let alone someone who came from there.

"You have to find me, Derek, I need to know!" Stiles was practically yelling to get his attention, and when Derek still didn’t respond, he sighed dramatically. "I know it's a pain in the ass, and I'd do it myself, but I’m literally a disembodied voice in a jeep.”

Making him feel bad about the fact that he had a body. Annoyingly effective strategy.

“And how exactly am I supposed to find you?” Derek asked, giving in but telling himself he was just playing along. Warning alarms were going off at the back of his mind, every part of him screaming not to go back to the place where he’d lost everything. But he couldn’t bring himself to outright refuse this one thing for Stiles. The only thing he’d outright asked him to do since buying the jeep.

“You know where the crash happened, right? Look for the closest hospital and start there.”

Derek glared at the radio, not appreciating his condescending tone in the least. Stiles was such a dick sometimes.

Most of the time.

The moments he wasn’t a dick were the real anomalies.

“And say I find you,” Derek returned in his own snotty tone, “how exactly am I supposed to identify you? I don’t know what you look like!”

Stiles scoffed like that was somehow Derek’s fault. “Caucasian male, twenty-five, brown hair, brown eyes, five ten, roughly a hundred and fifty-seven pounds, tattoo sleeves on both arms.”

Derek blinked at how quickly he’d rattled that off, but most importantly,

“Tattoos?”

“What, I don’t sound like I have tattoos?”

“You’re trapped in my car, you don’t sound like you have a body at all.”

“Watch it, buddy. We don’t know that I’m dead, so this isn’t your car yet.”

Derek had a receipt from the auction and a very large credit card balance that said otherwise.

As it turned out, the county of the car accident wasn’t exactly a metropolitan area, so there weren’t very many hospitals to search. In fact, there was exactly one within an hour of the crash site.

“You have to go! Even if I died, they’ll at least have the record,” Stiles said like that was an upside. Like Derek wasn’t about to stroll into a hospital and start asking questions about unidentified dead people like some kind of creep.

“And then I get to be the one to call your family and tell them,” Derek muttered quietly under his breath, and if Stiles heard him, he didn’t respond.

He pulled into a parking spot at the back of the lot, even though there were plenty of open spots closer to the hospital, and sat there for a while, psyching himself up for what was about to happen. He was about to walk into a hospital and ask about the probably protected private information of the man whose ghost was haunting the jeep he bought in a county auction.

Totally normal.

“So are you going in, or…?” Stiles asked after a long few minutes of silence.

"Not if you keep bothering me," Derek snapped, but took off his seatbelt anyway. There was no way he wasn’t going in.

“Be fast!” Stiles yelled at the last second before he turned off the car.

He dragged his feet a bit to the front desk in the lobby, rehearsing how exactly he was going to phrase this, but the woman behind the computer saw him coming and smiled welcomingly and he couldn't turn back after that.

“Can I help you?” she asked with a cheerful smile.

Derek plastered on his best charming smile in return. His approximation of a functioning human being with basic social skills.

“Yeah, I’m looking for a friend of mine. He was in a car accident last June, in a blue jeep.” He rambled on about a disappearance, devastated family, and how they’d been scouring nearby hospitals for any unidentified patients.

“Oh, of course,” she said sympathetically. “Can you describe him?”

He rattled off the description Stiles gave him as she typed them into the computer, and waited (somewhat) patiently while the system searched. His claws were leaving impatient pinpricks in the wooden desk, but they would probably wouldn’t be too noticeable.

“And you said this was last June?” she asked, clicking around a few times. “We had one John Doe admitted after a car accident that month, a white male in his twenties, with tattoos.”

Derek’s heart started pounding. That had to be Stiles.

“What happened to him?”

He was having a hard time interpreting her professionally neutral yet still pitying expression. “Oh, sweetie. He’s still here.”

John Doe 24, was what the name tag outside the door said, and through the blinds in the window, Derek could see the room was filled with machines, blocking his view of the man lying inside. There was a steady beeping, the mechanical whirs and hisses of a ventilator, something dripping from an IV bag.

The social worker who led him there opened the door and stepped aside for him to enter.

The first impression Derek had was that underneath the smell of hospital and sterile medical equipment, he could smell the jeep. Or the person who had driven the jeep for so many years that the scent of him was permanently embedded in the interior.

His second impression was, once the face under all of the wires and tubes and tape registered…

He didn’t know what he expected Stiles to look like. His voice sounded young, a little high and scratchy, he knew a lot about a lot of things—a nerd, was what Derek would say if pressed. Someone who spent way too much time reading Wikipedia and had a “fun fact of the day” calendar for every year since he learned how to read.

Stiles did not look like a nerd.

He was skinny, his cheekbones prominent, but he’d been in a coma for a year. A little weight loss was probably normal, as was the messy, amateur haircut. Brown hair, moles, an upturned nose, but the real identifying trait was the tattoo sleeves. Runes and symbols, starting at his wrists and continuing up under the sleeves of his hospital gown. Most of the symbols Derek had never seen before, but the ones he did recognize…

The triskele.

On its own, it could be nothing. A complete coincidence. But paired with everything else around it...

Stiles knew about werewolves.

“Is this your friend?” the social worker asked, looking hopeful.

Derek swallowed. “That’s Stiles.”

Derek slammed the jeep’s door behind him and started the engine.

“Well?” Stiles immediately asked. “What happened?”

“You know about werewolves,” Derek found himself saying, even though he intended to work that in a little later. After the whole I found your comatose body in the ICU reveal.

There was a beat of silence before a slightly high-pitched and unconvincing, “What?”

“Your tattoos. You know about werewolves?”

“Well that explains why you took this whole haunted car thing so well.” He didn’t elaborate. “But you saw my tattoos? You found me?”

“Yes, I found you,” Derek snapped. “You’re in a coma and you have symbols from werewolf lore tattooed on your body, including the symbol of my dead pack. Why.” Stiles wasn’t a wolf, he could feel that much from seeing him in person. But the only other group that studied werewolf lore so closely were hunters, and if Stiles turned out to be a hunter…

“I’m in a pack, okay?” He paused, and if he had lungs, he would probably be taking a steadying breath. “I’m an emissary, and now you need to call them and tell them where I am, so they can get me out of this coma!”

“What makes you think they can?” Derek snapped, still on edge and maybe a little scared of losing the most intimate connection he’d made with anyone in years. Which was really just sad.

“My consciousness is trapped inside my jeep, Derek, this clearly isn’t your average coma!”

Valid point, Derek admitted with a bitter eyeroll. He could also admit to himself, bitterly, that he couldn’t keep Stiles in a coma forever so he could keep talking to his car. It was selfish and cruel and probably sadistic on some level. The fact that he was completely inept at connecting to real, live humans wasn’t Stiles’ cross to bear and it shouldn’t keep him from potentially waking up and living his life.

“Fine,” Derek said after a long, loaded pause. “Who should I call?”

“My dad, sheriff of Beacon Hills. He’ll handle the rest.”

The McCall pack rolled into town like an army and hadn't stopped working since.

Now that they'd found him, there was always someone at Stiles' bedside at the hospital, while everyone else had set up camp in Derek's garage to work through the problem. They'd brought a mountain of books, computers, all types of occult paraphernalia—anything they could possibly need to fix this.

Meanwhile, Derek was going through an absurd amount of money buying gas for the damn jeep, because now that they had Stiles back, in any kind of form, the pack didn't want to turn off the car and lose him again.

Derek tried to explain that he’d turned the car off and on countless times and Stiles was still there, nagging him constantly, but they didn’t want to risk it. He wanted his garage to stop stinking of exhaust, but there was no way he could deny a father the chance to talk to the son he believed to be dead for over a year.

(Though he definitely wished there was a way he could deny Stiles’ desire to sing ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, screaming it into the garage in the middle of the night over the roar of the jeep’s engine.)

Beyond setting up their base of operations in his living room and taking over most of his home, the McCall pack was also able to fill in a lot of gaps and answer a lot of questions. Namely, what the hell happened to Stiles.

A rogue faction of the Argent family had been closing in on the McCall pack at the time he went missing, and given the way both he and his car had been scrubbed of his identity, it wasn't much of a leap to suspect the hunters were responsible.

"But why not just kill you?" Lydia mused aloud. She was settled in the passenger seat of the jeep with four open books stacked in her lap. "Why go to so much trouble to hide your identity when they could've just killed you and dumped the body? We're right by the mountains, there's plenty of places to do it."

"Why does it sound like you've considered doing this before?" Stiles asked, sounding insulted and a little wary.

"Because you really piss me off sometimes," she said dismissively, and moved right along. "There's no way what they did is neater, especially with the risk of you waking up at the hospital."

"It’s because even hunters wouldn't kill an emissary," Derek cut in from the doorway, stepping forward and putting himself out of his misery. It was actually painful listening to young and inexperienced packs try to navigate the intricacies of the culture. "Emissaries are considered neutral and vital to maintaining the balance, and killing one is like declaring all out war, even as a hunter."

"Ha! See? I'm vital!"

Derek ignored Stiles’ interruption. "Leaving him in a hospital to die from his wounds, completely anonymous, is probably the cleanest way they could’ve handled it. If they killed him outright and his body was identified, it would only be a matter of time before his pack traced it back to them.”

Lydia looked at him thoughtfully for a long moment, processing. Then her eyes hardened.

“Then that’s what we’ll do.” She closed the book at the top of her stack with a threatening finality Derek had never mastered. “We’re going to war.”

Considering that up until recently, Stiles had become something of an emotional crutch and coping mechanism for Derek, it was ironic that he suddenly found himself filling that roll for all of Stiles’ pack.

Scott, the impossibly young alpha sought him out on the back porch almost every evening, and spent an hour picking his brain on everything from werewolf culture to the guilt he felt for not finding Stiles himself sooner.

“I never felt him die, but after so many months…” Lydia confessed quietly one morning in the kitchen, her hands clasped tightly around a mug of coffee that had turned lukewarm an hour ago. Her eyes were haunted with a grief Derek knew all too well. “It was easier. To accept that I was wrong. It was easier to give up.”

He ran into Stiles’ father just outside the garage door at four in the morning, leaning against the wall with red-rimmed eyes.

“I had alerts for his name, the plates…” he started, and Derek could remember that regret. The constant, unrelenting scream at the back of his mind that he should’ve known. That he should’ve done more. That he should’ve been able to stop her.

“The plates were removed,” Derek explained, hoping to save the man from some tiny bit of what he’d gone through. “The VIN, all of the insurance information, his wallet—anything that could identify him or the car.”

"But he was a—” He swallowed, cutting himself off before his voice got loud enough for Stiles to hear through the garage door. “If he didn't have any ID, it's standard procedure to do a search for missing persons, I should've gotten an alert, I should've found him!"

"Hunters have people everywhere. It's possible the police kept it under the radar for them."

The Sheriff rubbed a hand over his mouth, practically vibrating with emotion.

"My son has been sitting here for a year, as a John Doe. Just three hours away."

Derek had nothing to say to that.

"Is he hot? He sounds hot."

Derek froze outside the garage door at Stiles’ question. He would deny to anyone who asked and himself that he in any way cared about the answer.

"He's very hot," Lydia said with an uncomfortably approving tone. "Muscles, stubble, a great ass."

Derek wanted to die.

In the end, it was a simple fix.

In his last moments of consciousness, when the hunters were approaching the crashed jeep to drag Stiles off, he’d run. Not physically, his body had been too broken for that, but mentally. His consciousness fled, and aided by his emissary magic, it jumped to the closest thing capable of housing it.

“At least there wasn’t like, a skunk walking by,” Stiles joked, and Derek was the only one who grinned at the thought.

“Both his body and consciousness need to be in the same place,” Lydia explained, and she made it sound like that alone would allow Stiles to return to his body. A simple fix.

So Derek disconnected the radio from the dashboard, and the pack took it to the hospital, and Derek was left sitting there in a silent car, staring at the loose wires dangling from the dash and suddenly feeling more alone than he had in years.

The pack hadn’t asked if he wanted to go and he wasn’t about to impose on such a monumental and emotional moment, but he wanted to. He wanted to be there when Stiles opened his eyes. He wanted to see how he looked when he was happy or annoyed, how he looked when he called Derek a dick, if his eyes went distant in those rare moments he went quiet. He wanted to see the recognition on his face.

But would he recognize him?

Would he remember him at all?

Did a ghostly consciousness retain memories of what happened outside of its body, stuck in a car radio?

He started the car once more, a new habit when he wanted to just stop thinking and live in the now, but aside from the rumble of the brand new, powerful engine, it was quiet.

Stiles was gone.

“He wants to see you,” Lydia said with some judgment two days later. This time her coffee was still warm and the bags under her eyes and lightened. A book on werewolf traditions was open in front of her, to the chapter on formal declarations of war, so she was clearly intending to make good on her promise of justice for Stiles.

Derek couldn’t say how Scott and the Sheriff were handling things because he was pretty sure they’d been sleeping at the hospital since Stiles opened his eyes. He hadn’t seen them once.

Derek concentrated on pouring himself the perfect amount of coffee and retreated to the garage. The new radio arrived that morning.

He was being an idiot, Derek told himself, sitting there in the jeep in the hospital parking lot. The new radio was still in its box in the passenger seat, because though he’d gone out to the garage to install it, he ended up at the hospital.

Stiles wanted to see him, so he clearly remembered him. He wasn’t going to walk into the room and meet the eyes of a stranger.

But he didn’t think he could handle seeing the recognition and then being looked over for something better. Stiles had his friends and family, the people he loved and who loved him, the most important people in his life right there at his side. Derek had a strained and distant relationship with his sister across the country and an unhealthy attachment to the disembodied voice of a ghost that used to live in his jeep.

Stiles’ jeep.

He would probably be wanting his car back now that he wasn’t dead, and Derek wouldn’t deny him that. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, not after everything Stiles had done for him. Put up with for him. He had a stupid, deeply ingrained impulse to repay debts out of self-defense, and restoring the jeep Stiles loved so much could only account for a fraction of what Derek owed him.

“That might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Stiles said, and Derek’s eyes flicked over to the loose wires hanging from the dashboard.

Great, now he was hearing his voice in his mind. Would he ever escape Stiles’ commentary on every thought he had?

“No,” Stiles answered, matter of factly. “So are you going in, or…?”

Derek glared out through the windshield at the Subaru parked in across from him, telling himself he wasn’t going to let the phantom of Stiles’ judgment dictate his life. He lasted all of twenty seconds before he turned off the car and got out.

The John Doe name tag had been replaced with one that said Stiles Stilinski, was the first thing Derek noticed approaching Stiles’ new room. There was also a slightly creepy illustration of a rabbit with a basket of Easter eggs taped up next to it, even though they were nowhere near Easter.

Derek really took his time staring at it, shamefully stalling but refusing to give in to the soulless, judgmental eyes of the smiling rabbit. He wasn’t being a coward, he just wasn’t going to lose to that damn rabbit.

“Creepy, right?” Scott said as he came up beside him, and Derek nodded. “His dad and I are about to go grab some lunch, but you can go in.”

Derek nodded again, and as the Sheriff passed him, he squeezed his arm reassuringly. Or sympathetically. Derek didn’t know him well enough to know how to interpret that.

A full two minutes after they left, Derek pushed open the door and walked into Stiles’ room.

Stiles didn’t notice him at first; he was frowning down at the remote to the TV, and stabbing at the buttons, trying to change the channel from a sappy Lifetime movie. It looked like he hadn’t quite found his coordination yet, but given that he’d been in a coma for a year, Derek was amazed he was moving at all. Magic probably had something to do with that.

He still looked small in his hospital bed, but his shoulders were broad and suggested he wouldn’t look very small at all once he regained his strength and muscles. There were dark circles under his eyes and a scar in his hairline that was hard to ignore, but he was sitting up and the breathing tube was gone and when he finally changed the channel and sneered down at the remote in victory, his brow crinkled.

Derek’s life would’ve been a lot easier if he’d been ugly.

Stiles looked up to the TV to see what channel he’d landed on, his tongue poking out through his lips in concentration, and froze when he noticed Derek standing in the doorway. Silently, without announcing his presence, like some kind of stalker.

They stared at each other for probably a solid minute, Stiles totally confused and Derek suddenly at a complete loss for anything to say after a month of saying whatever the hell he wanted to Stiles through the radio. Then it visibly clicked on Stiles’ face and he smiled crookedly and reached out, and Derek had no choice but to step forward and take his slightly shaky hand.

A month of talking and driving, arguing, bickering, fighting, and sitting in stubborn, angry silence, and now finally, they were touching.

“Hey, Derek.”

His voice was quiet and scratchy, still regaining its strength after a year of silence, but that was definitely Stiles’ voice.

Stiles was back.

#who knew a transformers movie would be so inspiring?#also that movie was way better than it had any business being #sterek #ficlet

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stereksecretsanta · 3 years

Text

Merry Christmas, serenelystrange!

For @serenelystrange. Hope this was the right balance for your prompt and that it had just the right amount of Christmas Fluff, Merry Christmas :)

Read On AO3

*****

Make you Mine this season

The flight to Melbourne was a long one and not for the first time Stiles was cursing the fact that Lydia had refused to use at least some of the cash from their Patreon to upgrade from cattle class to at least business class so he could try and sleep out the jet lag. He had heard of more than enough podcasters that would use their Patreon money for more non-essentials than that but since her email address was on the account it seemed to make her the boss where the finances were concerned.

Of course being on a non-stop Seventeen hour flight with a minor stop over in Sydney was something that he appreciated but he wasn’t sure that his back would thank him for the small seat he was in which was crushed up against the window as he had stupidly taken the window seat instead of the middle.

He cast a glance at Lydia whose nose was deep into a book on Australian serial killers which was part of her research for one of their three Australian based episodes while they were staying in the country. Usually he would be right there with her, trying to decide on which was the most gruesome and which had the most information to warrant an hour long episode but since their wake up call had been ridiculously early leaving him packing his books in his suitcase instead of his carry on he was instead trying to find a documentary of interest on the inflight entertainment system which was to do with true crime instead of the life and times of a retired sports star that he didn’t really care about.

Though against his will he did seem to find himself letting the documentary play, his gaze out the window instead of on the screen as the documentary played though his earphones, letting his thoughts wander to the person that he always seemed to find himself thinking of when stuck on a plane for hours on end with nothing else to do.

While his and Lydia’s podcast focused on all the ins and outs of true crime, from the historic to cults to everything in between, his best friend Derek’s was focused not just on the history of sports but the most up to date sports news. It was something that Stiles didn’t really get having not exactly been into sports since he had spent most of his time on the lacrosse team at high school on the bench no matter how hard he had tried. Though his oldest friend Scott had tried numerous times unsuccessfully to actually get him on the team there was no denying that it was a lost cause leaving him with a kind of hatred for sports which had seen his interests instead settle on the academic which had swiftly moved to True crime after going down a Youtube hole of True Crime documentaries on Ted Bundy late one night in his last year at school. It had been the beginning of an obsession that had concerned his father as though he was sure that would consume Stiles to practise what he learned which there was no likelihood of happening, despite him being the town sheriff who’d let Stiles read the files he brought home since he was in middle school.

Of course, that hatred of sports had faded when he first met Derek.

It had been his and Lydia’s first podcast festival in LA, and Stiles who had had an overwhelming case of stage fright before he even got on stage, had been sitting on the side as Lydia talked with their management about a Plan B in case Stiles did something embarrassing out of nerves. That was when Derek came and sat beside him.

Even at that moment Stiles had known Derek was handsome in a way that he had long since considered his type. Tall and muscular with a slender waist and his biceps making it obvious that at some point or another he had been a jock, yet it had been his face which had Stiles’ heart pounding his chest. The perfectly chiselled cheek bones, the alluring green eyes and stubble that seemed to enhance his lips and make Stiles unable to look away.

Derek seemed to feel Stiles staring at him from where he was looking over his notes for his panel and looked up with a frown.

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

“No….no sorry. I am just a little nervous. I’ve never done a panel before and I’m scared I’m going to do something wrong.” Stiles said offering him a weak smile that immediately had Derek’s frown melting into an understanding smile.

“I promise the first one is always the hardest but once it’s done, you’ll wonder what you were so worried about. Just think of it this way, everyone out there has paid to see you because they obviously like what your podcast is about and no matter what happens they won’t hold it against you. You just need to relax.” Derek assured him.

“You aren’t going to tell me to picture them naked are you?" Stiles asked, watching Derek laugh that seemed to make his face even more irresistible to Stiles’ fledgling crush in the making.

“God no. My first manager tried to tell me that with my first one and it only made it worse. No just pretend that a friend is stood at the very back and you are talking to only them. It helps you to focus on what you are saying instead of trying to be someone that you’re not for the sake of the panel.” Derek said, rolling up his notes between his hands.

“Ok, but I don’t really have any friends here and the only person I know is the one I’ll be at the panel with. It makes it kind of hard to focus on that.” Stiles said watching Derek tilt his head in understanding.

“Ok well how about this, I could stand at the back if you think it would help.” Derek suggested.

“Only if you tell me your name.” Stiles said, watching the other roll his eyes like Stiles had just used a bad chat up line on him.

“it’s Derek, Derek Hale. Yours?” Derek asked.

“Stiles, Stiles Stilinski. And before you say anything yes, I know how bad it is.” Stiles said, earning a grin from Derek.

“Good to meet you, Stiles….” Derek smiled, though he was interrupted by a tall blond woman who stood between the two so Derek would fixate only on her.

“Derek, honey you’re on next. They’ve managed to sort out the issue with the projector and the PA so I’ve given them the USB with the PowerPoint.” She smiled, her fingertips caressing Derek’s neck though from what Stiles could see Derek hadn’t exactly been happy at her interrupting them but before he could say a word a member of staff had appeared and was herding Derek on stage leaving Stiles staring after him even after he was gone and Lydia had come back.

“So, I’ve spoken to Aiden and he’s agreed to cut the panel short if you go off topic….” Lydia said, though she paused when she realised wasn’t paying her attention. “Hey, Stiles!”

“Yeah yeah sorry. I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” Stiles said, letting his attention move to the copy of the script Lydia had already prepared for them.

Once he got on the stage and spotted Derek standing at the back against the wall of the hall, his nerves had disappeared, and it had been as easy as breathing. Almost as though he and Lydia were back in their apartment just recording a regular episode.

Once the panel was over, he had looked for Derek in the crowd of other podcasters hanging around but not been able to catch sight of him.

It wasn’t until the afterparty that he spotted him, drunk off his face and making out with the blonde woman from before up against the wall outside of the toilets. It had made something in his stomach squirm with jealousy and left him returning to the bar himself hoping that if he drunk enough, he could erase the vision from his memory.

He had tried to tell himself that there was little if any chance of him and Derek being together anyway, that they were probably better off as acquaintances that saw each other once in a blue moon at cons and festivals. But that seemed to fade when the week after the festival their podcast Talk Murder to me social media accounts received requests from Derek’s podcast accounts called The final countdown with Derek.

It then seemed to grow with Derek himself following Stiles’ own accounts, leaving comments on pictures and retweeting tweets they released when a new episode was out. A fledgling kind of friendship grew there, and though Stiles tried not to obsessive over it when he saw more and more pictures of the blonde woman called Kate on Derek’s Instagram page, with the two of them doing all the couple pictures it had that feeling from before returning twice as much every time.

Stiles even made himself listen to Derek’s podcast just to hear the sound of the other’s voice, to hear him using laymen's terms instead of all the complicated technical terms that others not interested in the sport would not understand. To hear him laughing with the odd guest he brought on which all seemed to be related to Derek’s own sports past from baseball to basketball to football it was like Derek had done everything and made Stiles even more sure that the other would never feel the same way.

It wasn’t until the DCon a few months later that they met up again and it had been like they had never parted as they had drinks at the bar the first night. As Stiles asked Derek about the episodes he’d listened to of Derek’s podcast and Derek asked Stiles what had got him into True crime and why all the murderers they chose seemed to be well-known instead of the lesser known.

And with that their friendship just continued to grow, through Derek’s break up with Kate who had cheated on him with one of his guests and saw all pictures of her deleted from his Instagram in the space of a week after Stiles skyped him to check he was ok, to Stiles moving from California to Chicago on a scholarship leaving him meeting Derek in New York every weekend to show him all the best places as he got settled in.

It all just seemed so normal, but Stiles would be lying if he said his crush had not continue to grow on the other which always seemed worse after Skyping Derek when he had come back from the gym and was always shirtless revealing a body that Stiles daydreamed about constantly. Something he confided in Lydia about one night when Derek had dropped him off after a bar crawl through the western village. To her credit though Lydia wasn’t surprised in the slightest but had told him to be careful about getting in too deep when it was painfully clear how straight Derek was and that it would only ever end in heartbreak.

Stiles tried to keep that in mind, really, he did, especially when Derek started dating a cheerleader called Jennifer from the New York Jets. How yet again the jealousy would set in and leave him ghosting Derek online for a few days as he tried to work through the reality that him and Derek could never be anything more. Thankfully it was around the time his scholarship finished and he managed to leave town at the same time Derek took Jenifer to the Hamptons for a long weekend so he didn’t have to answer any awkward questions.

He moved in with Lydia and their new manager/her new boyfriend Jordan in LA, which was awkward too but he didn’t really want to move back to Beacon hills if he could get away with it. And since they lived together it made the production of their episodes all the smoother as they were able to plan things weeks in advance.

Of course, that all came to a head when they attended the Vancouver podcast festival before starting the long tour through Europe for live panels. Stiles had kept his distance from Derek this time, staying with the true crime crowd when at the venue as he finally met people he had only been speaking to online from other podcasts. It had been surprisingly easy to just forget that Derek was even there as the convention was the biggest one in Canada and everyone there just stuck with their own genre.

But then the after party came and Stiles had been drinking at the bar alone to give Jordan and Lydia the time alone that they needed. That was the downside to being the third wheel in both the business and the apartment. He tried not to let it get to him, as there was little if any chance of him seeing himself with anyone that wasn’t Derek. That night he was at least going to try with Theo the producer from a podcast on criminology, the other buying him just enough drinks to have him buzzed and kissing him up against the edge of the bar hard enough that Stiles could at least pretend for a moment that it was Derek.

As the other’s mouth detoured to kissing Stiles’ neck hard enough to leave very visible bruises and the alcohol making Stiles’ inhibitions so low that if Theo had asked he would have easily gone to a room or hell even a cubicle in the mens bathroom. But that illusion had been interrupted by the sound of Derek saying his name from the other end of the bar just as Theo’s fingers were unzipping his fly.

“Um, Derek?" Stiles murmured, his back still arching against the bar edge and the thrum of arousal flowing through his veins when Theo’s fingers curled around his cock through his boxers.

“Stiles, what are you doing?” Derek asked, appearing beside them looking furious as though he was sure Theo was taking advantage of him.

“Getting a hand job what does it look like?" Stiles sighed, Theo mouthing at his neck in an attempt to keep him fixated on what they were doing causing Stiles to curse and push one hand into Theo’s back pocket to pull him closer into his personal space.

“Come on Stiles, you’re drunk let’s get you up to your room so you can sleep it off.” Derek said, Stiles groaning as he felt the impending orgasm just on the brink of Theo jerking him off a few more times.

“Or…. you could come to my room Stiles. Just you, me, a bed, your clothes on the floor and a good thorough fucking. What do you say?” Theo crooned softly into Stiles’ ear, his pace around Stiles’ cock picking up.

“Oh god yeah…” Stiles groaned, curling his free hand in Theo’s hair, and pulling his lips from his neck to meet his own just as the orgasm crashed over him.

“Stiles, this is a bad idea.” Derek tried as Stiles’ mouth opened willingly to Theo’s tongue while the other tried to hold him up against the edge of the bar while zipping his fly.

“I think that’s up to Stiles, don’t you? Still keen Stiles?" Theo snarked at Derek, before turning his attention back to Stiles who was downing the last of his tequila shot to leave.

“Um, yeah but you’ll have to make sure I don’t fall on the way to the lift….” Stiles sighed, Theo’s arm curling around his waist and easing him from against the side of the bar before leading the way out the bar towards his room.

After that night Derek didn’t speak to him, which was just as well for Stiles as the less time they spoke the more he could focus on easing back on his crush. It helped a little that Theo was pulled along on their tour through Europe but it soon became clear to Theo that Stiles was hung up on someone else and just using him for the relief he couldn’t get otherwise. Once the European tour was over Theo returned to the states while they continued to the Japanese podcast festival in Tokyo, leaving Stiles the third wheel yet again and wishing more than anything that Derek would contact him.

It took a couple of months in the run up to the Webby Awards for them to start talking again, Derek having long since broken things off with Jennifer though when Stiles asked why Derek got an indiscernible look on his face and said something about how she was always touring with the players meaning little time for them to be together although to Stiles it didn’t seem complete true but he didn’t push as they still hadn’t completely rebuilt their bridges. That year they had both gotten nominated for Webbys and since the awards were in New York Derek seemed determined that they spent as much time together as possible. Something which Stiles knew was going to cause his crush to flare up again but there was nothing he could really do to stop it.

Everytime he and Derek went out with Lydia and Jordan his co-presenter would flash him that look that told him to be careful but that she felt sorry for him being in this position with Derek again. But Stiles tried not to think of that, to not focus on the fact his heart was probably going to break again when Derek started seeing someone else and instead on actually getting to spend time together with a friend he hasn’t seen in months.

Being at the award show together was something Stiles knew he would never forget as he watched Derek get the Webby award for best sports podcast while he and Lydia jointly received the Webby People’s voice award in comedic podcasts. It was a big night and yet when it came to the after-party Stiles found himself yet again sat alone at the bar watching all the other winners and participants mingling among themselves and celebrating. Lydia and Jordan had left early with the trophy to make up for lost time in their hotel room leaving Stiles wondering where Derek was as he reached for the tequila.

Derek finally appeared from a crowd of fashion vloggers that had taken a fancy to him at the ceremony not that Stiles could blame them, but instead he made his way to the bar and took a seat beside Stiles. It didn’t escape Stiles’ notice that they were back in the same situation they had been when they stopped talking before but at least this time there was no-one else making a move on the other though Stiles was sure at least one of the fashion vloggers would try again after a few more drinks.

“Big night huh?" Stiles smiled, toasting Derek with his glass at the other ordered beer from the bartender.

“Yeah, I guess it has been, though I never thought I would find myself getting a Webby for a podcast. It seems a bit surreal.” Derek said, setting his trophy on the bar and looking at it as though he was sure it would disappear if he didn’t.

“Same here, I mean for me and Lydia it was just a hobby to put out there to begin with and now we have thousands of fans willing to pay through Patreon to support us financially. Although to be fair now I can’t exactly imagine myself doing anything else.” Stiles said downing his shot and ordering another.

“Yeah, I mean it gives me a sense of achievement that I never managed to completely reach when I was a sports star, you’re always trying to reach for the next trophy or the next record you know? At least with this I know I’m doing something that people enjoy that was initially just for me. Though sometimes I do wonder…” Derek said, wistfully looking at Stiles he got his next shot.

“About what?” Stiles asked, squeezing the lime juice into the shot.

“There’s been a few podcasts that have gone on to create their own network to help other people with putting their podcasts out there. I think I’d like to do something like that…I just wouldn’t know where to start.” Derek said thoughtfully downing a mouthful of his beer.

“I suppose that would be amazing to do, but honestly me and Lydia struggle enough to so much as keep our own going now. Even with the odd producer on tap and Jordan as management I’m not sure we would be able to keep something like that a float. Still if that is something you think you would like to do you can always send feelers out to other podcasts in your genre and see if they would be interested in combining your resources to make something like that happen.” Stiles shrugged, toying with the empty lime.

“Yeah I’ll have to give it some more thought.” Derek agreed downing the rest of his beer and making like he was about to get up when Stiles rested a hand on his arm.

“Where are you going? The night’s still young and besides, we’re celebrating!” Stiles grinned causing Derek to sigh but sit back down and order them each some more shots as Stiles downed his second in one.

They spent most of the night into the early hours downing shots and coming up with ludicrous ideas for podcast network names as well coming up with new episode ideas for the other’s podcast. They were still there as the staff started coming around to clear up and herd the remaining occupants to the door which seemed to contain quite a few fashions vloggers stumbling in their high heels like they had been waiting for Derek to leave the bar before giving Derek a come on. But Derek seemed more fixated on Stiles coming to crash at his as it was closer to the venue and would mean he didn’t have to worry about getting an uber or waking Lydia.

In the back of Stiles’ mind alarm bells started ringing, but he still agreed letting Derek’s arm curl around his waist as they walked down the sidewalk to make sure he didn’t stumble and fall into the gutter. But that little touch had a spark reigniting the previously dormant crush deep in Stiles’ mind. He tried to silence it by listening to Derek rambling on about an idea for a podcast that was solely on different mythologies around the world and why they were so different.

Derek seemed to have planned at least the first ten episodes by the time they go to his apartment building, though he nearly dropped his webby when trying to find his keys leaving him to hand it to Stiles for safe keeping while he found it in his wallet. Stiles followed his lead into the building, using the webby in his hand to try and ground him before he did something he regretted though when they got in the lift it seemed like whatever restraint he had left disappeared when the doors closed behind them.

Derek was still rambling about an episode involving Polynesian mythology compared with the Caribbean when Stiles pushed himself away uneasily from the wall and approached where Derek was leaning in a corner to keep his balance, letting his fingertips graze Derek’s cleanshaven cheek when he crowded into his personal space.

“Stiles….” Derek sighed at the touch; his eyes flickering closed as though it had been so long since someone had so much as touched him that it broke Stiles’ heart.

Before he could stop himself, he was leaning in and kissing Derek deeply.

He froze once the kiss was finished expecting Derek to shove him off and ask him what the hell but instead Derek’s fingers curled in his hair while his other arm curled around Stiles’ neck to bring him closer when he kissed him back. It was a deeper kiss, tainted by the taste of tequila and lime but to Stiles it was perfect because it was Derek’s tongue in his mouth, Derek’s hand sliding down his back to palm at his ass and Derek’s hot body pressed up against his torso.

“Um god Der….” He murmured as the other deepened the kiss even more sliding his hand up the back of Stiles’ dress shirt to brush against his bare back, the touch feeling like an electric current flowing through his very veins.

At some point Derek took control, backing Stiles’ body up against the opposite wall so his back pushed against the emergency stop button. Derek’s lips detouring from Stiles’ lips to his neck once his collar buttons were ripped open despite the murmur of objection from Stiles’ lips at being deprived of Derek’s tongue in his mouth. He soon found all his shirt buttons open and Derek’s mouth moving to colour his bare chest with bruises that Stiles never wanted to disappear.

But soon Stiles’ legs were curled around Derek’s waist, his lower back pushing the emergency button again to restart the lift though neither of the couple were too interested until the doors opened on the right floor.

“Fuck Stiles…. I want you so bad….” Derek murmured into his neck as he curled his arms around Stiles’ body to keep him balanced as he carried Stiles out the lift into the corridor.

Through some miracle and after making out against the wall beside Derek’s front door for quite a while they had managed to get inside the apartment.

The rest had been a blur.

Swallowing heavily on the plane to Melbourne Stiles rubbed away the tears that threatened to fall from his eyes as he stared at the darkening sky while Michael Jordan rambled away about the highlights of his career in one ear as the inside of the plane powered down for the night. Lydia had put her book on the seat between them and was curled up with the thin inflight blanket over her and her sleeping mask on since she had flown with him enough times to know Stiles’ insomnia would probably keep him awake long enough that he would start reading.

The morning after that glorious night continued to haunt him horribly even months later. Of waking up in Derek’s bed to no sign of the object of his affections beside him let alone in any other part of the apartment. Of finding a note held up against the Webby trophy on his nightstand that made it clear that as far as he was concerned nothing had happened and they should just forget it. Of that sinking feeling in his chest as his heart slipped into his stomach and he had gathered all his clothes before leaving the apartment to return to his and Lydia’s hotel room.

How Jordan had made a crack at breakfast of him getting lucky only for Lydia to nudge her boyfriend and shake her head as though she knew exactly what had happened and that Stiles didn’t need the teasing. Stiles had spent the rest of their stay after breakfast holed up in their hotel room while Lydia and Jordan did all the touristy bits without him and without Derek.

Stiles did try and text Derek a few times, asking him to at least call so they could work this out. That it did not have to change anything unless he let it. But he got no reply and even when Lydia and Jordan came back the redhead hadn’t manged to get through to him either.

Stiles had even gone round to Derek’s the morning before he was due to fly back to LA, he managed to persuade a fellow resident to let him in and made it to the right floor. He’d knocked on Derek’s door until his knuckles were bruised but even though he could hear ESPN playing a basketball match Derek didn’t come to the door. He’d left a note pushed under the door as well as sent him one last text while the plane was taxiing but had heard nothing since.

That had been close to nine months ago and every Podcast Festival or Convention since he would look for Derek in the crowd just to see if he was there. But it seemed like he was only going to ones specific to sport leaving Stiles hopelessly texting and tweeting him over and over asking about the next one he would go to on the off-chance that they could bump into each. And though it was a constant torment he did keep following Derek’s social media, seeing pictures of the owner of his heart walking along beaches shirtless, of seeing him in studios with guests and having family picnics with his sisters when they were in town. The only thing he noted was that there were no pictures of a new woman in his life and each time a fan would comment and ask, Derek seemed to either delete the comment or just straight up ignore it.

That at least did seem to reassure Stiles that what had happened between them had meant something to Derek. He just wished he could at least talk to him so he could find out what.

That had all changed three months before the run up to OZPod, when Lydia was doing some final research on a killer cult in Japan for the last episode in that series they were going to record and called out to Stiles who was trying unsuccessfully to post the second part of the series on the music publishing site.

“What is it Lyds, I’m struggling to upload the most recent episode and would prefer to get it out before the end of the day.” Stiles sighed, refreshing their music page just to check and see if it had finally been uploaded by coming up with nothing that had him returning to their portal to try again.

“Derek has just posted something on Instagram I think you should see.” Lydia said, causing Stiles to frown as he opened a fresh tab to open Derek’s Instagram page which had been saved into his favourites months ago.

The most recent picture showed a bi-pride flag draped over his webby trophy that immediately had Stiles’ heart jumping as he clicked on the picture to see the description that read.

‘DerekHale: I suppose this has been a long time coming considering how I know some of you have noticed that I’m not dating as much as I was before. So here is the long and the short of it on what is probably the best possible day to say this, I’m bisexual. I’ve been trying to ignore this side of myself for a long time by just dating who I thought was the best for me professionally, but honestly, I’ve been kidding myself for a very long time.

There’s a person out there, they know who they are, that I have used, hurt, and put our friendship on the backburner for because of how they made me feel. They made me question myself from the moment we first met, sat backstage at #lapodfest four years ago assuring them that everything was fine was the beginning of something beautiful. And though we’ve had many more downs than ups they mean the world to me.

And while I’m not sure if they will forgive me, if they will let me explain and make up the past nine months of silence to them, I just want them to know how much I have never stopped thinking about and wanting them even if I know that there is a chance they are already taken by someone else.

As for my LGBT fans out there, please believe me when I say I see you, no matter your gender, your pronouns or who you love, you are valid and I love you more than words can ever express.

Derek x

#bivisibilityday #loveislove #bipride #bipositivity #lgbtq #mlm #tfcwdPFam’

“What….?” Stiles murmured, unable to stop himself from reading Derek’s words over and over again as though part of him was sure this was a damned joke.

“Did you never for a moment think that might be why he was distancing himself from you? I could just see it in his face everytime he was around you that he was questioning himself because of you Stiles. While you never felt the real need to come out to anyone except me, Jordan and your dad….it’s harder for some people to get their head around….especially after sleeping with another guy for the first time ever.” Lydia said, from her own computer where she seemed to have taken over trying to upload the episode to give Stiles time to process what he had just read.

“No I didn’t because he was always with women, and I find it so damned to believe that someone like me could turn Derek’s head long enough for him to make him question his sexuality.” Stiles said, scrolling down to read the comments which were filled with admiration and reassurance that whoever he was talking about was so lucky to have Derek in their life. “Although what does he mean by ‘there is a chance he maybe with someone else’?”

“He probably means me.” Lydia sighed causing Stiles to turn in his chair to look at her.

“Wait, what?”

“I don’t know how or who it was, but someone seems to have convinced Derek that you and me are together and have been in all the time that we’ve been doing this podcast together.” Lydia said, meeting Stiles’ gaze over the top of her own computer.

“Oh no….nonono that’s insane! I love you like a sister…. I had a crush on you in high school that went away when you started seeing Jackson. And I mean you’re with Jordan for god’s sake!” Stiles cursed raking his fingers through his hair.

“Well obviously Derek didn’t get the memo. Anyway, if you think about it, it does explain a lot….” Lydia shrugged, attention back on her computer as Stiles turned back to staring at Derek’s post while more comments appeared from fans of Derek’s podcast.

Stiles bit his lip as he let all thoughts of him and Derek together fill his mind, of how Derek would always be touchy feely in his own discreet way when it was the two of them but move away from Stiles when Lydia was with them, how he would always insist that Stiles and Lydia sat together when they went out to eat or how Derek seemed to want to spend time alone with Stiles much more than with Lydia. How Derek had tried to pull Stiles away from Theo since he was under the misconception that Stiles was cheating on Lydia and how even during the Webby’ s show before the after party Derek had sat on the opposite side of the table to the pair. It was all blindingly obvious, that he couldn’t believe that he had missed it.

“Damnit Derek….” Stiles grumbled under his breath, barely restraining the urge to book the first flight to New York to shake some sense into Derek…sense he was sure would end up with the pair of them together again minus a stitch of clothing to the alluring breathy sounds of him fucking Derek hard enough to assure him without a shadow of a doubt that everything Derek felt for him was returned tenfold.

“He’s just sent out a tweet saying he’s going to Melbourne around Christmas for a podfest, I can get Jordan to see if we could be squeezed in if you want the chance to see him in person.” Lydia said, interrupting Stiles from his thoughts.

“That might be the best idea you’ve ever had. Now if you can get that episode to upload all with be right with the world for the next week.” Stiles said, his gaze back on Derek’s post even though deep inside he wasn’t sure he would be able to wait the three months until they were in the same place.

And yet now there he was, wide awake in a powered down plane half way through the flight, staring blankly at the screen showing Michael Jordan’s shot scenes in Space Jam as though that demonstrated just how great of an athlete he actually was.

He had wanted to contact Derek but knew until they were in the same place that there would be only words that could fix this without any action and yet it was the action that he knew they both desperately needed after how it had been since they were together in the same bed. Every night since he discovered Derek’s post he had gone back to it to see more comments of encouragement, more people claiming that whoever that person was they were sure that they missed him and were counting down the days to be back with Derek as well as a couple of people calling Stiles out for not contacting Derek for getting on to twelve months as though it was his fault. To those people Derek had kindly but firmly reiterated that it was his fault, that he had been the one to push that person away and avoided all contact from them and that while he appreciated their support if they posted those comments again they would be blocked.

And yet deep inside Stiles knew he should have tried harder to get Derek to listen to him, instead of giving in when Derek effectively cut him off. He could have camped inside his apartment until he came back, he could have used every social media outlet that they shared to keep contacting him, but he did have to admit that he knew for all his stubbornness that Derek still would have found some way or another keep him at arm’s length until he could figure things out.

Giving in at last when the narrator’s voice started to grate on his nerves, Stiles turned the documentary off and changed the channel to an easy listening radio station before picking up the book from the seat between them and settling in to start the next chapter on Paula Denyer, avoiding moving Lydia’s bookmark in the process since nothing annoyed her more.

The rest of the flight seemed to pass a lot quicker once he fell asleep halfway through reading the chapter on Ivan Milat and woke up to Lydia nudging him as their breakfast was being served by the air hostess. He ended up taking whatever one Lydia didn’t want since it all seemed to taste the same in the air anyway and downed two cups of coffee as he put his own bookmark in the form of his boarding pass to save his page before handing the book back to Lydia.

By then they were only half an hour away from Sydney and a further hour and a half from getting into Melbourne itself and Stiles settled down to watch a couple of episodes of Friends he had seen multiple times before to distract him for the remainder.

They soon arrived in Sydney to blinding sunshine through the windows and the pilot giving the usual welcome to Sydney with the weather forecast and time giving Stiles enough time to push what little he had removed from his carry on back in while removing his passport and next boarding pass for their connecting flight which thankfully gave them long enough to grab a decent coffee in duty free once they passed through security before needing to go to their next gate. Thankfully, their seats were close enough to the main entrance that it made it easy for them disembark first.

They made it through security quickly once they were in the domestic terminal and then join the queue in Starbucks, Lydia pulling out a twenty Australian dollar note from her purse while Stiles let his gaze linger on the menu trying to decide what he felt like. He finally settled on a chocolate Frappuccino and left Lydia in the queue to order after taking their combined luggage to a table outside.

He spent a while checking his social media accounts, liking a few posts from a few fellow true crime podcasters that were also going to the festival and scrolling through Derek’s Instagram page until he reached the most viewed post the other had. Up until that point he hadn’t actually liked Derek’s coming out post because he wasn’t sure if it had been intended to be seen by him or not, but now when they were about to meet he felt he should at least acknowledge it since it meant so much to Derek finally coming out.

He pressed the like button on the post and then typed the three hearts in the colours of the bisexual flag into a comment and pressed post before he changed his mind. Immediately he got a reply from Derek like he had been waiting for Stiles to comment, a heart-eyed emoji followed by a winking blowing kiss emoji with a red heart at the end along with multiple users hearting Stiles’ comment now that Derek had pretty much told them who he had been waiting for.

“You finally reacted to Derek’s post?” Lydia asked as she set his Frappuccino down in front of him before sitting down in the chair beside the one practically creaking under the weight of their carry-on luggage.

“I couldn’t not when hopefully things will finally be sorted between us. I didn’t think Derek would reply…. let alone that every one of his followers would like my comment. My alerts are going to be crazy for the next week.” Stiles sighed, turning the data off on his phone, and setting it on the table so he could focus on his drink.

“Hmmm, well I highly doubt you’ll be spending much time online when you tell Derek the truth about you and me. I’ll be lucky to get you out the hotel for our panel.” Lydia smiled knowingly with a raise eyebrow as Stiles pushed his straw into the drink.

“I doubt we’ll be that bad…. besides maybe I want him to wine and dine me first considering last time was such a disaster.” Stiles shrugged, though knew by the grin on the other’s face she didn’t believe him for a second. She knew him so well.

They spent the rest of their time talking about which serial killers to use for their three Australian killer episodes and downing their drinks before starting the walk towards their gate and sitting with the other passengers waiting to board the rest of the half hour wait.

Yet all too soon they were back on a plane, Stiles back to staring out the window though this time with a knowing smile on his lips as they got settled for the next hour and a half. Lydia immediately began to draw up pros and cons of each of the three serial killers they had chosen and became engrossed in the book again, leaving Stiles to turn on his Wi-Fi once they were in the air and see a DM alert for Instagram waiting for him in his sea of notifications.

DerekHale: I was beginning to wonder if you’d blocked me since it took you so long to react….

Stiles rolled his eyes but shook his head as he replied.

StilesStilin: I couldn’t make myself even if I wanted to….no I was just trying to prevent the onslaught of likes from your fans….so much for that now.

DerekHale: Sorry. I was just so happy to see your comment…. we’ll have to meet up when I get back in the country.

StilesStilin: Or….we could meet up when I finally set foot in Melbourne in about…..oooo an hour….

DerekHale: Wait….you’re coming to OZPod? I didn’t see it mentioned in the schedule for guests….

Stilesstilin: Well it was a last-minute decision….one my manager somehow managed to swing in record timing I might add. Besides, I thought at least this way we could meet up and clear up a few things face to face…

DerekHale: Erm, that….that sounds pretty good actually. What hotel are you staying at? I can come pick you up once you’ve checked in…

StilesStilin: Hold on a sec….

“Lyds what’s the name of the hotel Jordan booked us into? Derek wants to know so he can pick me up when we’ve checked in.” Stiles asked, Lydia barely looking up from what she was doing as she handed him her travel wallet with all the details from her bag and turned back to the book as she left Stiles to sort through the thick pile of paperwork for the right thing.

StilesStilin: QT Melbourne, 133 Russell St. I’ll let you know when we’ve arrived

DerekHale: Sounds good, I’ll see you soon x

Stiles closed the app and turned off the Wi-Fi, letting his gaze rest on the map showing the progress of the flight on the screen in front of him and tried not to count down the minutes obsessively by trying to help Lydia with the final decision on the serial killers they wanted to delve deeper into.

All too soon they were landing in Melbourne and Stiles was barely paying attention to the pilot as he grabbed his bag and led Lydia off the plane as soon as the doors were open. They made it through security and immigration quickly and made their way to the baggage claim where they had to wait longer than normal since Lydia had been hellbent on bringing double her normal luggage and the second case was at the very end of the bundle for their flight. So though he was itching to say to hell with it and leave Lydia there, he settled for putting all the luggage they currently had on a trolley and waiting for the taxi Jordan had booked at the exit of the airport which thankfully didn’t come before Lydia did.

The drive to their hotel wasn’t that far though Stiles spent most of the ride taking pictures of the scenery out the window and itching for them to get there quicker so he could message Derek that he was ready.

Soon they stopped outside a rather posh looking building that had Lydia written all over it and he had a feeling that Jordan had been talked into booking it for that very reason. After paying the driver Lydia led the way inside with Stiles bringing up the rear, as the redhead checked them in.

Since the hotel was one of those with bellboys that reminded Stiles too much of Home Alone 2, one was called to take them to their rooms when Stiles would have preferred to be just given his key and figure out how to get to his room later. But before he could object Lydia was clearing her throat and jerking her head pointedly in the direction of the main entrance, revealing Derek stood there looking as handsome and perfect as the first time they set eyes on each other.

“How?” Stiles asked the redhead as he watched Derek’s face light up from the doorway.

“I texted him on the way from the airport…. I thought it would drive you crazy if you had to wait any longer. So, here’s your key, I’ll get this gentleman to take your luggage up to your room and all being well I’ll see you both at the venue for the convention tomorrow. If you get lost just text me, but whatever you do…. don’t leave him until this is sorted ok?” Lydia said, putting Stiles' key in his hand.

“Thanks Lyds, I owe you one.” Stiles beamed, pushing the card in his hoodie pocket and pecking a kiss to her cheek after putting his bags minus his wallet and phone on the trolley before turning to Derek.

“Aren’t you a sight for jet lagged eyes.” Derek said softly, closing the gap between them and grazing his hand against Stiles’ cheek softly.

“I was just going to say the same thing. Why don’t you show me the way to your hotel just in case and we can get over those few hurdles on the way hm?" Stiles asked, Derek’s hand leaving his face to entwine with his own before leading the way out the hotel.

They had walked a few steps down the street when Stiles began the conversation that they desperately needed to have.

“So, I guess first things first…. congrats on coming out. Though you didn’t really need to.... not for me or for anyone.” Stiles said gently watching Derek’s gaze move to the floor.

“It wasn’t for you at least not completely….it was for me more than anything. Everything I put in that post was true….I had been fighting with myself to ignore who I truly was for so long that it was just getting to the point of exhausting. I’d look at you everytime we were together and all I could feel was acceptance and affection. It was something I had wanted to give myself over to but I struggled so hard to be honest about who I wanted.” Derek said brushing his thumb against Stiles’ knuckles.

“I mean I’ll let you into a secret…. not everyone knows I’m bi. It’s not something I actively tell people about because for me it’s just who I am. I like guys and girls and there is nothing wrong with that…. I just struggle to go for who I want when I find them. I mean for you it was a four-year crush before I could so much as make myself kiss you. Sure, I was drunk which might not have helped…. but that was everything I wanted then and everything that I want now more than ever.” Stiles said softly.

“And I’d be lying if I said I could remember much aside from us making out in the lift that morning….but there was something so freeing about waking up beside you and knowing that what we had done was what I wanted. But it was complicated by my own feelings, the guilt of being so sure I took advantage of you like Theo did…” Derek said thickly, the realization that Derek was sure he had forced himself on Stiles made his eyes wide and his stomach roll.

God no wonder he had been so hell bent on leaving.

“But you didn’t. I remember more than enough to know that every single part of that I wanted and needed because it was you Derek.” Stiles soothed, even as Derek swallowed and shook his head.

“But Theo….” Derek began only for Stiles to sigh and shake his head

“No, you are not Theo. Theo was jumped up little upstart who wanted what he could get so it would help his career in the future. You, god Derek…you are nothing like him. Not to mention the whole time I was kissing Theo and letting him fuck me I was thinking of you. If I hadn’t had you on my mind I’m sure without a shadow of a doubt that I would not have let him so much as touch me.” Stiles said, earning a sad smile from Derek.

“What did Lydia say when she found out about you and Theo?" Derek asked causing Stiles shake his head and laugh.

“Another thing we need to clear up Derek, me and Lydia aren’t together together. She’s been one of my closest friends since high school who agreed to do me a solid with a podcast that ended up bonding us and while I had a crush on her it didn’t last long and meant nothing. Besides she’s taken to dating our manager for the past two years….so even if I was interested which I’m not I wouldn’t have a chance anyway. So, I don’t know who told you that but it isn’t true.” Stiles said watching Derek’s ears flush red.

“It was Kate, though looking back she might have done that on purpose to make sure my attention was on her. It definitely explains a lot and makes me wonder why I didn’t just ask you sooner…” Derek said thoughtfully.

“I suppose that does make sense; she really was a possessive little bitch. Still at least you know the truth now.” Stiles smiled, as they finally appeared outside a hotel that looked way more expensive than anything, he could afford even after ransacking their Patreon savings. “Damn Derek…”

“It’s quite something isn’t it? My assistant Braeden picked it at random when she was doing the bookings for this trip. Still the outside pales in comparison to the inside…” Derek smiled, leading Stiles through the foyer towards the lift.

“How about compared to your room…?” Stiles asked, watching a shy twinkle appear in the other’s eyes.

“My room is amazing in itself, but I’m sure without a shadow of a doubt that it would be all the better if you were sharing it with me.” Derek murmured, grazing Stiles’ cheek with his free hand before cupping the back of his neck and kissing Stiles deeply.

It wasn’t filled with the same drunken urgent hunger that their first one was, it was sweet and yet filled with a sense of adoration that had Stiles practically melting into it. Letting Derek take the lead and suck at his bottom lip gently enough to part them before deepening it just a little more with Derek’s tongue grazing against his own.

“Um….you know if you’re going to come up with smooth lines and kisses like those every damn time I get an invitation like that then I think I can easily agree….” Stiles murmured when they parted far enough for their foreheads to rest together.

“You sure….? I don’t want to rush things this time Stiles…. I don’t want it to be like it was before all wham bam thank you mam get the fuck out my bed. I want you to devour you sober, to know what you like and how your body reacts with each touch. So, if you aren’t ready….” Derek said huskily.

“Derek Derek Derek….it’s been twelve months since I last set eyes let alone tasted your gorgeous body so there is no doubt in my mind that I’m ready. But I think that this time…. after that morning after I think I deserve a turn don’t you?" Stiles purred, the doors opening and him tugging Derek inside so he could press the right button.

“Oh really? What do you have in mind?” Derek asked, pressing the ninth-floor button without looking, his whole attention fixated on Stiles.

“Oh, I don’t know, your whole gloriously naked hot body on display for my attention only and willing to give in to any whim that I want. After all…. you may have got to fuck me Derek…..but I haven’t had the complete joy of showing you how amazing it can feel on the receiving end just yet.” Stiles smiled flirtatiously, biting his bottom lip as he backed into a corner of the lift and curled his arms around Derek’s neck to pull him with him.

“I thought I was supposed to be making it up to you, that hardly seems fair…” Derek murmured, brushing his lips teasingly against Stiles’ as his hands rested on Stiles’ hips.

“Oh, but you will be. Trust me?” Stiles whispered, letting one hand move from Derek’s neck and tracing down the length of his back until his fingers grazed down between Derek’s denim clad ass cheeks causing the taller to groan in the back of his throat.

“I can’t imagine doing anything else….” Derek said hoarsely, letting Stiles’ lips capture his own as the youngers hand slid inside his jeans and boxers and dug his nails into the bare skin of his ass willingly just as the doors opened on the correct floor.

Stiles directed Derek out the lift their mouths still moving hungrily together, until Derek was pushed up against the wall opposite the lift so the doors could close. Their mouths parted as Derek arched his back against the wall at the tightening grip Stiles had on his ass and how Stiles’ mouth moved from his own despite his whimper of objection to sucking bruises into his neck.

“Which room is yours?" Stiles asked, as the tip of his index finger grazed against Derek’s taint causing him to curse and his hips to jerk against Stiles’ at the sensation.

“Erm….Fuck Stiles….” Derek cursed, Stiles taking pity on him enough to remove one hand to take the key card from Derek’s pocket.

“Room 903…. which is right here…..” Stiles crooned, catching Derek’s mouth again in a dirty kiss as he guided him across the corridor to the right door. “Um…. you gonna open the door for me Der? Sooner we get in there sooner I can make you feel even better.”

Derek cursed again as he panted hungrily against Stiles’ mouth reluctantly letting go of Stiles’ hip long enough to take the key from Stiles and swipe it as the younger ground his cock against his own teasingly. Once the door was opened Stiles smiled at him wickedly and captured Derek’s lips again with his own as he pushed away from the wall and let Derek back him into the room, slamming the door shut behind them.

The next morning the pair arrived at the convention a little later than initially planned, though that was in no small part due to Stiles getting distracted by Derek’s naked body in the shower at least twice and being unable to help himself from indulging in the body that he had worshipped that night before. It was more than obvious to everyone around them why they were late, if not due to the fact that Stiles was wearing some of Derek’s clothes that were ridiculously big on him or because of the bruises covering Derek’s neck and how his attention seemed fixated on Stiles then by the way they were holding hands as they wove their way through the crowd with Derek’s assistant Braeden who was no doubt going to give Derek a talking to for being late.

“Stiles there you are! I was beginning to think you weren’t coming or that was I was going to have to send Jordan to Derek’s hotel to get you.” Lydia huffed, appearing from the crowd with Jordan behind her.

“Sorry Lyds, we got a bit distracted or else we would have been here earlier.” Stiles smiled, the innuendo causing Derek’s ears to go read and Braeden to roll her eyes.

“Hm, I’m sure. Anyway, we’re up next, I’ve managed to get together enough information on Paula Deyer but we might need to do a bit of comparison with a few other well-knowns to stretch it out a little.” Lydia said, letting Stiles take the script she was holding in his free hand and give it a look through as Derek let go of his hand and curled his arms around his waist instead, letting his lips rest against the nape of Stiles’ neck as he looked the script over too.

“I think I might have a few more books on Australian serial killers I can loan you when we’re back in the states if that would help…” Derek said gently into Stiles’ skin causing a shiver down Stiles’ spine even as he looked over his shoulder at his other half.

“Really? I didn’t know that was something you were interested in Der…” Stiles asked, turning the page on the script.

“Not so much….but since I knew it was what you were going to be looking into next I asked a few old friends in the true crime genre who gave me some recommendations.” Derek shrugged, one hand sliding under the hemline of Stiles’ shirt only for Stiles catch it by lacing the fingers of his free hand with Derek’s to stop it venturing any further.

“We’d appreciate any help we can get…” Stiles said out loud, before raking his fingers through Derek’s hair and pulling his ear closer towards his mouth before murmuring. “Not now Der…but I swear as soon as this is over you can do whatever you want to me.”

“Um, I’m planning it right now as we speak.” Derek grinned into the side of his neck before letting Stiles go and watching him follow Lydia up on to the stage.

Stiles met his gaze before he disappeared through the curtains and winked at him knowingly before the sound of the Talk Murder to Me Theme song blared over the PA accompanied by the sound of fans screaming in welcome and closely followed by Stiles’ Melodious voice welcoming the crowd and doing the usual introduction that Derek had heard so many times before. Though never had it made his heart soar more than to know that the man on the other side of that curtain was and would always be his if he had anything to say about it.

Fin.

#serenelystrange #stereksanta20 #*fic20 #*gifts20

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theofficialstereklibrary · 5 years

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I love this blog! Its the only thing that gets me through a boring day at work.. thank you for all your efforts!! May i check, it seems that the bodyguard tag is broken? (As well as a few others from the "jobs" list) thank you once again!

Looks like more tags to restart. When people request those tags separately, I’ll start them :) For now, here’s some bodyguard aus! - Jeep

A Bro’s Guide to Surviving an Assassination Attempt by TuppingLiberty (30,818 | 9/9 | E)

In college, Stiles stumbled into a gig on YouTube as an activist for supernatural rights. Now in his early twenties, he loves the work he does - that is, until someone wants to kill him for it.

Enter Agent Derek Hale and his team, who are trying to catch a killer, and keep Stiles safe.

reminder (*) means Jeep has read and enjoyed this fic

How to Survive a Hurricane by Scavengersdaughter2 (128,878 | 5/26 | NR)

John Stilinski, head of the largest crime syndicate in The States, has passed away. Hale Security is tasked with protecting his successor, John’s only son. The syndicate is in chaos. The other head bosses are restless and unsatisfied. The underworld demands more blood.

Also featuring oddly protective bees, sensitive crime lords, a team of wolves who are grossly underpaid for the shit they have to put up with, a Druid godfather who is Having None of This, and two oblivious, damaged idiots in love.

In which there are supernatural shenanigans, a crime syndicate, and the race for succession.

The Presidents Son by Some1sprincess (46,415 | 8/8 | M)

Stiles was a normal teenage kid… okay that wasnt true, she was far from normal which is how she found herself taking a bullet for President Talia with the infamous Derek Hale near by.

Whatever It Takes by rebekahdarian (9,695 | 1/1 | NR)

After Derek’s daughter witnesses Deucalion tear one of his betas to shreds, she’s the only one who can tie him to the recent string of murders. Advised to proceed with their lives as normally as possible, Stiles is assigned to watch over them and keep them safe. Even if that means attending their family holiday party and being introduced as Derek’s boyfriend.

A Moon Among Starlight by Whispering_Sumire (6,142 | 1/1 | G)

The Lord bows, “The King requested you be put in the care of a… guard, until such a time as the threat against your person is apprehended.”

“Isaac,” Stiles hisses, and the scowly knight motherfucker raises one thick, overly expressive eyebrow. Stiles ignores him, Isaac just looks like an asshole as Stiles drags him off to the side for a little more privacy. “First of all, dude, no one talks like that anymore, what is wrong with you? Secondly, I don’t need a gods damned guard, and you can tell my father I said that when you take whatshisname away.”

Isaac snorts, “I’m not telling his royal highness shit, Stiles. I’ve got more important things to do than pander to your whining-” Stiles’ jaw drops as his eyes narrow in sardonic fury, Isaac shrugs, unbothered, simultaneously backing away from his hold- “besides,” he smirks, eyes alight with infuriating mischief, “I have a feeling you two’ll like each other.”

With that, he turns to sweep out of the room, leaving Stiles with…

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Derek,” the knight says, face stony, blank, indecipherable. Stiles wants to punch it. Badly. “Derek Hale.”

#ask #anonymous #tag update #bodyguard

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ohalemalia · 5 years

Text

stiles headcanon

I’m watching American Crime Story on Netflix and I can’t get it out of my head that of course Stiles is really into True Crime and he’s perfectly content spending hours indulging in every form of true crime media he can get his hands on. So he could spend hours with his s/o listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, TV specials, Buzzfeed Unsolved, researching cases, the list goes on and on. Stiles would literally get so into that he’d want to start his own crime podcast/series thing and you’d be totally down to help.

#teen wolf imagine #imagines #tw imagine #teen wolf #fandom imagines #imagine teen wolf #stiles stilinski #stiles stilinski imagines #stiles stilinski headcanon #stiles stilinski imagine #im hella down to have a crime podcast with Stiles holy shit

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uniewaznic · 5 years

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CHARACTER SHEET repost. do not reblog.

𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

FULL NAME. mieczysław stilinski PRONUNCIATION. mee - chee - slah - v / s - til - ihn - skee NICKNAME. stiles , miechief GENDER. cis - male HEIGHT. 182.8 cm AGE. 21 , verse dependent ZODIAC. aries SPOKEN LANGUAGES. english , minimal polish

𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

HAIR COLOR. brown EYE COLOR. golden - brown SKIN TONE. pale BODY TYPE. skinny penis ACCENT. none VOICE. higher in tenor , prone to breaks in syntax , generally leans into higher volume , quick in speed that makes speech difficult to understand for some audiences DOMINANT HAND. ambidextrous , prefers right POSTURE. horrendous , prominent slouch to the shoulders SCARS. bite mark on right shoulder , various scars from self - inflicted accidents , five - inch scar on right pectoral region TATTOOS. none BIRTHMARKS. none MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S). moles and freckles on his face and body , prominent cupid’s bow , whiskey - colored eyes , large flailing hands and limbs

𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝 !

PLACE OF BIRTH. beacon hills , california HOMETOWN. beacon hills , california BIRTH WEIGHT. 9.8 lbs BIRTH HEIGHT. 23 in MANNER OF BIRTH. natural FIRST WORDS. mama SIBLINGS. none , verse dependent PARENTS. noah stilinski & claudia stilinski ( deceased ) PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT. heavy involvement from both parents until his mother’s diagnosis and eventual death . noah suffered from alcoholism for several years following the loss of claudia , which resulted in a slack in his involvement and allowed for behavioral issues seen in stiles both at school and at home . this began to change upon stiles’ freshman year in high school .

𝐚𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 !

OCCUPATION. police officer , eventual detective and head of the occult crime division CURRENT RESIDENCE. cambridge , massachusetts ; eventually beacon hills , california CLOSE FRIENDS. scott mccall , lydia martin , malia tate , kira yukimura , liam dunbar , cora hale RELATIONSHIP STATUS. dating & eventually married to lydia martin ( @lydstm ) FINANCIAL STATUS. middle class DRIVER’S LICENSE. obtained , suspended twice CRIMINAL RECORD. expunged VICES. anger , doubt , envy , greed , impatience , jealousy , untrustworthiness , weakness , wrath

𝐬𝐞𝐱 & 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 !

SEXUAL ORIENTATION. bisexual , no preference ROMANTIC ORIENTATION. biromantic , no preference PREFERRED EMOTIONAL ROLE. submissive | dominant | switch. PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE. submissive | dominant | switch. LIBIDO. very high TURN ON’S. intelligence , matched sarcasm , loyalty , control , both independence & neediness ( to an extent ) TURN OFF’S. no sense of humor , stupidity , ignorance LOVE LANGUAGE. time , acts of service , physical touch RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES. affectionate and attentive , though prone to jealousy . generally very romantic .

𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐨𝐮𝐬 !

CHARACTER’S THEME SONG. ode to sleep . HOBBIES TO PASS TIME. extensive google searches about anything and everything , youtube , true crime documentaries and books , going over old case files , supernatural research , video games & chess , critiquing his father’s dietary habits , sending inappropriate memes at inappropriate times to the pack’s group message , watching buzzfeed unsolved , taking every opportunity to keep lydia in bed when it’s his day off MENTAL ILLNESSES. adhd , bpd , insomnia , anxiety , depression , post traumatic stress disorder , addiction PHYSICAL ILLNESSES. deaf in left ear , seasonal allergies LEFT OR RIGHT BRAINED. right brained PHOBIAS. aquaphobia , pyrophobia , entamaphobia , nycotophobia , nosocomephobia , chronophobia , autophobia , somniphobia SELF CONFIDENCE LEVEL. dismal VULNERABILITIES. himself

TAGGED BY. i stole it TAGGING. @lydstm , @mysterynerd , @selfprotect , @taeted , @moonlearns , @moonseething , @alwaystragic , @samemersons , @dangeress , @fableborne , @geminaie , @griefphd , @kitsuneas , @killlercunt , @crimscnmalice , @boybitten

#☇ wise men at their end know dark is right ↠ study .#whew this was so much #but fun !!!!!#loved this for me !!!

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ashleygren · 5 years

Text

Fandoms I'm in

I have been in a lot of fandoms over the years and I won't be able to list all of them but I'm at least putting down the recent ones.

Harry Potter- I mean most people have been or currently are in this fandom I'm nineteen I grew up with the books and watching the movies. I'm a hufflepuff/slytherin mix with slightly more hufflepuff and my favorite character is snape.

BBS- this is not really a group but I'm a fan of a bunch of youtubers that happen to play with each other. Youtubers in general really fascinate me in the same way that other celebrities do. My favorite is Ohmwrecker/masked gamer because of his uplifting words.

Villainous- a show coming to cartoon network its pretty great they have some awesome characters and I love villains so yeah. My favorite is doctor flug.

Dan and phil- what can I say these two are amazing to watch. They also seem very genuine in life and that makes me happy.

Umbrella Academy- the show was so good I would happily wait 10 years for season 2 if it was guaranteed to be just as good or better than season 1. Vanya, Klaus, five, and ben are all my favorites.

Overwatch- I used to play this game so much for a long time but I started playing other things and kinda forgot about it. I still keep up with lore, characters, and fanworks though. My favorite is hanzo.

Teen Wolf (tv)- ok so this one is kinda weird I actually have never watched the show because it looked so dramatic and weird. I did stumble upon some fanfiction for it though and even if I never watch the show I still check out a lot of the fanwork of it. My favorite is Stiles followed by Peter.

Buzzfeed Unsolved supernatural/true crime- I have a lot of apathy towards buzzfeed they do some good things then they do some shady/shitty things I just don't care, but I do love thier unsolved series. Ryan and Shane are both my favorite which is fitting considering I'm a shitfish (its a thing from the show).

The Try Guys- a lot of youtube fandoms on this list. I admire all the try guys I love most of their videos. My favorites are Eugene and Ned.

Like I said I've been in a lot of fandoms so I have a hard time keeping track of them and some I'm just extremely casual in. I'll just pop up out of nowhere to check in then go to one of my major fandoms again. I've of course left fandoms whether because I was bored, they were stagnant, or because they became too toxic.

This list wasn't really for anything other than fun. I might upload different fanfiction I want to write from some of these fandoms.

#fandom rambling

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heartofthra · 4 years

Note

Hey, I'm sorry you're in pain. Chronic illness is a bitch. For your asks: 2, 9, 71 and 77 Hope your injection starts to help quickly. <3

thank you, i hope it helps too 💕 chronic pain really is a bitch haha

2. Nationality: i’m from new england but my ethnicity is european (irish, scottish, english, itialian, french) and afro-caribbean specifically haitian!

9. What do you/did you study? i’ve got a degree in criminal justice and an emt certification, was hoping to use my degree to become a park ranger/game warden once my back heals :)

71. Which fictional character is you? dude i’m such a kinnie 👀 fox mulder, stiles stilinski, jon snow, will graham, jack sparrow, mando, newt scamander, u name it

77. Favourite youtubers? don’t know if i have any favorites! i like a lot of true crime channels and gaming channels, used to adore achievement hunter but i’m stepping back from them for a while. i also watch food/cooking youtubers, pet youtubers, and art/soap youtubers!

thank u pal!

ask me questions!

#anonymous

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maciesportfolio-blog · 5 years

Text

ARTS AND CULTURE

Macie Murrane

Editor in Chief

Some students at Southeast Polk listen to podcasts as an alternative to music. Podcasts are sort of like talk shows, but can be on a range of topics from unsolved mysteries to comedies. They are usually only audio, with no videos or pictures to watch or look at. Essentially, podcasts are the digital talk shows of the entertainment world.

“Sometimes I just get annoyed of music,” said senior Michael Babcock. Babcock listens to the H3H3 podcast, which is a youtube comedy podcast. Sometimes, podcast producers bring on special guests, like other podcasters or celebrities. Other youtubers like gamers and other comedy stars are featured on the H3H3 podcast. Some lifestyle podcasters bring on celebrities, like fitness trainers or fashion influencers.

Senior Cameron Bristow listened to podcasts for a P.E. class.

“We would go to the exercise center and put on podcasts [instead of music],” said Bristow. PE teacher Tia Stiles had her students listen to podcasts instead of music while working out.

“I thought it was a good experience….it takes your mind away from your exercising,” said Bristow. A lot of students enjoyed listening to podcasts while working out, however Bristow believes it depends on the type of exercise.

“If you’re doing a long distance thing, [I would] probably do a podcast, but if you want to get hyped up then music,” Bristow said.

Podcasts can be listened to on a ton of different apps. Apple iTunes is the largest podcast directory, however there are many other platforms to listen on. Spotify, a popular music app, has podcasts available. Youtube also has some podcasts available, but isn’t necessarily the best to stream them on, as they usually have some sort of video or picture playing in the background.

Podcasts can have a large range of categories and topics, we made a few suggestions from a few different varieties for you to try out.

Infographic thing:

Mystery: Unsolved Murders: True Crime Stories-Parcast Network

This podcast has about 30-50 minute episodes highlight some of the most notorious and chilling unsolved murders throughout the world. They cover anything from one-off murders to the famous serial killers, like Jack the Ripper.

Science: The Habitat- Gimlet

This science focused podcast tells the story of a NASA mock Mars mission. Six people were chosen to go to Hawaii to simulate living on Mars. One journalist, the host, was allowed to speak to the “astronauts”, and tells their story of their year in simulation Mars.

Entertainment: Insanely Chill- Cody Ko

Youtubers Cody Ko and Noel Miller host a podcast where they tell funny stories, talk about life, and bring on other popular youtubers. Their episodes are about an hour long, but are filled with super funny moments and a lot of laughs.

#Arts & Culture #RampageArticles

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bibliosexxual · 7 years

Note

Pst hi I LOVE YOUR FICS you have no idea how much they give me life

It IS frankly heartbreaking… which means I’m totally into it.

(now also on AO3!)

***

Derek definitely went to sleep alone. He always does, these days. It doesn’t explain why he drifts awake in the middle of the night to the feeling of someone lightly poking his shoulder.

It’s probably not a good sign that when he opens his eyes and sees a gangly teenage boy in a red hoodie and grubby-looking black fingerless gloves standing over him, he doesn’t startle. His claws don’t come out; his eyes don’t flash. He just feels… resigned.

“You live like this?” the guy says, soft. Almost pitying. “I mean. You actually live here?”

That seems too obvious, not to mention too insulting, to merit a response. “What are you doing here?” Derek asks instead. His voice comes out low and rough. This is the first time in days he’s had any reason to say anything. “This is private property.”

The guy shifts on his feet and sticks his hands under his armpits uncomfortably. “Okay, straight to the awkward questions. I like that.”

Derek waits.

The guy sighs. “Look, I didn’t know this was your house. I mean… it is your house, right? You’re not just, I dunno, squatting here?”

Derek shakes his head.

“Okay,” the guy says. “So, um, sorry. I seriously thought this place had been abandoned years ago.”

Derek looks pointedly down at himself and then back up.

“Uh, yeah,” the guy mutters. “Obviously I was mistaken. We’ve established that. So… I found some stuff on YouTube on how to pick locks and— Wait, do you know what YouTube is? Do you go on the Internet, ever? Does your creepy haunted mansion come with wifi?”

Derek glares.

“Okay, never mind. Anyway. So I found these videos on lock-picking and I wanted to try it out, and I knew this place was abandoned—I mean, I thought I knew—and I was thinking it would be a victimless crime kind of thing, but then your door wasn’t even locked, and even if it had been, there are all these holes in the walls and all these windows with no glass in them anymore, and… Listen, you really shouldn’t live like this, dude. It’s not safe. Anybody could come in.”

“People like you, you mean,” Derek says. By this point he’s almost cautiously amused, but he keeps his face stern.

“No, people like… Bad people. Burglars.”

“You’re not a burglar?”

“No! Jesus, no. I’m just your average high school student.”

Derek raises his eyebrows.

“Okay,” the guy revises, “so I’m just your not-quite-average high school student… who was kinda curious about breaking and entering. I’m going to be a detective someday; I need to know these things.” He holds up his hands, palms out. “Definitely no burgling in progress, though, I swear. Except, um. When I thought this place was abandoned, I was thinking about maybe taking a trophy so I could prove to Scott that I was here? But obviously I’m not going to do that now.”

“Thanks,” Derek says dryly.

The guy appears to miss the sarcasm. He nods like, You’re welcome, and goes on, “Anyway, you do need some home security, dude. I mean it. Theoretically, there could be burglars in the future.”

Derek shrugs. “There’s nothing worth stealing here.”

“Dude. You’re missing my point by, like, a mile.”

Derek doesn’t know what to say to that, so he settles on another shrug.

There’s a bit of silence after that while Derek eyes this guy, curious. At first glance he’s nothing much to look at. Pale. Skinny. Baggy jeans. Brown eyes. Brown hair, buzzed short. Closer up, though, there’s something appealing in the long lines of his body, and something about his face that draws Derek in—the delicate curve of his mouth, maybe, or the intelligent gleam in his eyes, like he’s thinking about a hundred things at once.

Right now, it’s not too hard to guess what those hundred thoughts might be. He’s looking around with quiet horror at Derek’s bedroom. No doubt he’s taking in the bean bag chair Derek is using as a bed, the open suitcase on the floor that holds all of Derek’s spare clothes, and the far corner where there’s a hole in the ceiling—a small hole, though—and some weeds starting to grow up through the floorboards. It’s like this guy thinks he’s standing in a museum exhibit. He doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave.

“I’m guessing I don’t need to call the cops on you,” Derek says at last.

The guy winces, focusing back in on Derek. “Uh, yeah, it would be really cool of you if you could not do that. My dad would kill me. He’d arrest me and then he’d kill me.” Derek must look confused, because the guy clarifies, “I’m Stiles Stilinski? My dad’s the sheriff, Sheriff Stilinski? So he can do that. Arrest people. Except, you know, not me. Hopefully.”

“Hopefully,” Derek agrees, and this time he can’t quite hold back the little smile he can feel tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah, so.” Stiles smiles back, a soft, private kind of smile, and takes a few steps toward the door. “Thanks for that. It’s very decent of you. So… I’ll just go now. Let you get back to sleep and all.”

“Yeah,” Derek says. This has been the most bizarre conversation he’s had in years, and he’s secretly a bit disappointed that it’s over. It’s probably not normal that when Stiles—who’s just finished breaking into Derek’s house—pauses in the doorway, Derek feels a little pleased about it.

“Hey,” Stiles says, “I mean it about the locks. Get some.”

Derek lies back on his bean bag chair after that and listens, mentally tracing Stiles’ progress. He goes back across the hallway and down the stairs, floorboards creaking under his every step, and opens the front door, which lets out a harsh, drawn-out groan under his hand. Then he’s clattering across the porch and crunching away through the underbrush, slamming a car door, cranking the engine, and driving away. It’s amazing he didn’t wake Derek up when he broke in earlier, Derek thinks with something bordering suspiciously on fondness. He’s far too noisy to ever be a burglar.

When he’s gone, the house feels a lot quieter than before, and very, very empty.

Derek’s not exactly surprised when this same guy knocks on his door bright and early Saturday morning, two days later. He could hear it as soon as Stiles’ Jeep turned off the main road a mile from Derek’s house and headed up into the Preserve, blasting Duran Duran, and he could hear it when Stiles parked right outside the house and hopped out, his heart racing.

So yeah, by the time Stiles knocks on the door, Derek has been expecting him for a while. On the other hand, he is surprised Stiles is bothering with knocking after what happened last time. He’s also not sure what Stiles is even doing here.

That becomes clear when he opens the door and Stiles cheerfully hefts a toolbox up for Derek to see. “I brought a new lock for your front door! And some nails and a bunch of spare wood to board up the holes in the wall and the windows. And a tarp for that hole in the roof. It’s just a temporary fix, of course, but it’s better than nothing.”

At first Derek is too stunned to speak. Finally, he asks, “Is this some kind of apology for breaking into my house? Because that’s really not necessary. If you really feel like you need to give me something, it could just be, I dunno, a coffee. You don’t have to—”

Stiles sighs so heavily it’s basically an interruption and starts unpacking his toolbox on the floor of Derek’s porch. “Yeah, I do have to, or I’ll never forgive myself when you get murdered.”

And, well, that’s unexpected. And weirdly touching. People normally take one look at Derek and seem to assume he’s the one about to be doing all the murdering and maiming.

“Also, I can do it,” Stiles adds. “I’m totally qualified. I read like fifteen different Wikipedia articles last night.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “Oh, well, in that case.”

Stiles stands back up, determinedly wielding a hammer. “Dude, just let me do this. I’m not going to be able to stop worrying about it otherwise.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Derek says, because it’s true. People never worry about Derek, and it’s fine. Really. Derek is fine. He’s always fine.

Stiles huffs. “Okay, but I’m going to anyway, so. Are you going to step aside and let me fix your lock, or do I have to stand here and argue with you first? I’ll do it. I have a whole speech ready about Beacon Hills’ seedy criminal underbelly, and trust me, I know. I have a police scanner in my bedroom, and I know all the crime statistics for the past year at least.”

He’s obviously not going to give up without a fight, and honestly… Derek hasn’t been in a fighting mood for a long, long time. He sighs. “Fine. You can fix the lock. But only under my supervision, and only if you agree not to sue me if you accidentally nail your hand to the door.”

“Gotcha. I’ll just focus on nailing other things,” Stiles says with a wink.

Derek can’t believe the nerve of this guy. He’s weirdly charmed by it, but he glares anyway, on principle.

They finish with all of Stiles’ planned repairs by noon.

Stiles wipes his hands on his jeans, steps back from the house, and turns to look Derek up and down consideringly. And then he says, casual, like an afterthought, “You’re a werewolf, right?”

Derek has him pinned up against the wall a second later, unable to hold in a growl, his claws sinking into the soft cotton of Stiles’ hoodie. He should’ve known Stiles was too good to be true. He doesn’t smell supernatural, though. He doesn’t even smell like a hunter, or like magic, or—anything, really. Just plain old human, a little sweaty now after working on the house. It’s innocuous enough to raise Derek’s hackles.

Stiles swallows and brings his hands up to rest gently over Derek’s fists where they’re gripping Stiles’ shoulders. “Yep,” he says, “okay. I thought so.”

“How did you know?” Derek demands, speaking slowly around the fangs crowding his mouth. “And what do you want from me?”

“At this moment?” Stiles taps Derek’s knuckles. “For you to stop leaving holes in my favorite hoodie. That would be nice.”

With effort, Derek retracts his claws and takes a step back.

Stiles brushes down his clothes rather pointedly and says, “Thank you.”

Derek refuses to feel guilty. Stiles can’t just walk up to his house and accuse him of being a werewolf and not expect Derek to react. That’s not how the world works. “Explain,” he growls.

“Not much to explain. I’ve got werewolf friends. And once you know what to look for, it’s not exactly rocket science to identify you guys.“

“What are you going to do about it?” Derek asks, wary.

“I dunno. I guess that depends on you. Do you like going to the movies?”

Derek blinks, completely taken off guard. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m getting some friends together,” Stiles says easily. “Werewolf friends included. We’re gonna see Fantastic Beasts this Friday night. You could come.”

Derek hasn’t been to the movies since before the fire. His family didn’t go often. The Hale house had a home theater in the basement, specially calibrated for sensitive werewolf eyes and ears. Still, he remembers liking it the few times he and his sisters did hit up the theater downtown. It was always an event. “I like movies,” he says now, cautiously.

Stiles beams and punches Derek’s arm lightly. It’s a brave move, considering Derek’s fangs are still out. “Awesome,” he says. “See you at seven, then.”

Derek shows up expecting maybe two or three people besides Stiles. Instead, Stiles has amassed a small army, or so it seems to Derek. Derek stops dead in intimidated surprise when he sees them all.

Stiles sees him standing there and amiably leads the whole herd his way, then starts in on introductions without a pause for breath. It’s too fast and furious for Derek to keep up—Boyd, Erica, Kira, Allison, Scott, Lydia, Danny… They all look friendly, at least. As crowds go, it’s not too intimidating. It relaxes him that he can tell at a whiff that some of them are fellow shapeshifters, just like Stiles promised.

During the movie, Stiles sits next to Derek and lets Derek share his popcorn. Afterwards he hangs back from the group, walking a little ways back with Derek as he absently kicks along a random pebble on the ground. It makes Derek a little nervous, wondering if Stiles is going to expect him to talk a lot. He doesn’t. Instead, he fills the silence easily for both of them with a long ramble about the movie. Derek read the Harry Potter books, most of them anyway, as they came out; he thought he knew plenty just from that. Not as much as Stiles, though. He can spout all sorts of trivia.

Stiles seems to be enjoying it, too, just having someone to listen to him. Still, Derek feels like he hasn’t been a lot of fun. He hasn’t cracked any jokes, or warmed up much to any of Stiles’ friends. It’s a surprise when they get to their cars and Stiles pauses by Derek’s, says they’re all going to head over to iHop now if Derek wants to join them.

Derek appreciates the thought, and the fact that Stiles doesn’t look judgey when he bows out. It’s been a lot of socializing for one night.

“Maybe next time, though,” Derek says, and means it. Stiles smiles like he can tell.

A couple weeks later, Stiles gives Derek a cell phone. "Don’t freak out about it,” he says, shoving his hands in his back pockets. “It’s not like I went out and bought you a brand new iPhone or anything. It’s just my old flip phone.”

“I can see that,” Derek says. He might live alone in the woods, but he’s not that out of the loop. He used to have a phone a lot like this, back in high school.

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “I was keeping it in the Jeep for emergencies, but then I figured this qualified as an emergency. It’s 2016. Who doesn’t have a phone in 2016?”

Derek assumes that’s rhetorical.

“I bought you a limited data plan, too. It was cheap. It’s not much, but you can text me sometimes, I mean, if you want. I put my number in there. It’s under ‘The Sex Bomb.’”

“Classy,” Derek says.

“Yeah,” Stiles grins. “That’s me, classing it up, all day every day.”

“Have you ever thought about… you know… not living in that house?” Stiles asks him one night, shifting sideways and kicking his feet up on the dashboard. They’re sitting in Stiles’ Jeep after another group movie night, eating burgers and fries—Stiles’ idea and Stiles’ treat. He treats Derek a lot. It’s like he thinks Derek doesn’t have any money.

Derek does have money, as a matter of fact, and not just from the insurance payouts. He has a job, part-time, at the greenhouse on the other side of town. It suits him. He gets to haul around bags of dirt all day and tend to the plants and not talk to people very much. It’s very zen.

So Derek does have money, and he’s determined to start treating Stiles for a change. Stiles doesn’t make it easy, though. He’s masterful at distracting Derek with chatter or a smile when it’s time to pay for things.

“Why wouldn’t I live in the house?” Derek asks now. “It’s mine.”

Stiles shoots him a look like, Who even are you? “Tell me this. Does your house even have electricity? Running water?”

“Yes. Of course it does.” There’s one working outlet in the kitchen. Derek uses it to run his mini-fridge and charge his flip phone. As for the running water, there’s a perfectly good stream right down the hill from the house.

Stiles looks doubtful. He slouches down a little lower in his seat, getting comfortable, and says, “Okay, but. You can’t tell me that’s your first choice of places to live.”

Derek shrugs. It was there, when he came back to Beacon Hills from New York. It was there, and it had been home his whole life, up until the fire, and he missed it. He’d camped out there on his first night back, and after that he just hadn’t had any compelling reason to leave. He’s a werewolf, after all. He could live in a cave if he had to.

“Can you, like… afford…?” Stiles starts, displaying an unusual level of tact and sensitivity.

“Yes,” Derek says shortly. He hates these moments where it almost seems like Stiles is pitying him. He’s not Stiles’ charity case. He can look out for himself. He was doing just fine before Stiles came along.

“Okay, well,” Stiles says, “at least promise me you’ll think about moving out.”

Derek grits his teeth and doesn’t say anything.

He does think about it, though. He starts looking at things like Stiles might, wondering what Stiles might think of this or that. He thinks about how it’s kind of cold, sometimes, bathing in the stream in the mornings. It’s kind of cold at night, too, when he’s curled up under his lone blanket on his bean bag chair. There’s a draft from somewhere, and sometimes he wakes up shivering. And it’s kind of lonely, too, waking up and not hearing anyone else around for miles. He didn’t used to think it was lonely, but now it’s different. Now he has something to contrast it with: all those evenings out with Stiles and his friends.

Maybe, even for a werewolf, this house isn’t as tolerable as he thought it was going to be. It’s annoying, but maybe Stiles was right. Maybe he should start thinking about moving out.

A week later, they’re all at In-N-Out after a bowling night. They go out together all the time, and Stiles keeps inviting Derek to come along. Derek even stays for the meals afterwards now, sometimes at least, and talks to Stiles’ friends.

When they’re all finished and just sitting around talking, Stiles leans back in the booth, stretches contentedly, and casually brings up Isaac Lahey. Derek doesn’t know Isaac as well as some of the others. He’s a freshman at the local community college, making him a little older than most of Stiles’ other friends, and he doesn’t always have time to come out with them, but when he does, he tends to be pretty quiet, like Derek.

Derek doesn’t get why Stiles is bringing him up now, at least not until Stiles says, “So I hear Isaac is looking for a roommate. Just, if anyone’s interested. Just throwing that out there.”

He isn’t looking at Derek in particular as he says it, but he nudges Derek’s calf under the table with his sneaker. Subtle he is not.

Isaac’s number is already programmed in the phone Stiles gave him. Stiles put everyone’s number in there, all his friends. All their friends now, Derek thinks tentatively. Derek stares at the number for half an hour when he gets home. Then he calls him.

The week after that, Derek moves into the spare room in Isaac’s apartment and takes his first hot shower in months. It’s bliss.

Stiles lets himself into their apartment all the time. He’s made himself a key; Derek doesn’t comment on it. He likes having Stiles around, likes watching him move and hearing him talk and having his scent in the apartment. He comes over a lot just to hang out, to watch TV with them on the couch or cook with Isaac or pester Derek to help him with his Spanish homework. Sometimes he drops by just to leave Derek things, like posters for the walls and DVDs and pizzas and fuzzy socks. Ambushing Derek with kindness and then disappearing off again.

Part of Derek likes it. It’s like having a pack again, albeit a small one, and it’s nice to be thought of.

Another part of him grits his teeth, because does Stiles still think Derek is so penniless and needy that he can’t even buy himself a pizza? Isaac has even jokingly started referring to Stiles as Derek’s sugar daddy, which is just so much no.

The more Stiles does it, the more Derek grits his teeth.

“I have a job,” he blurts one night when he catches Stiles mid-kindness-ambush. A jar of toffees, this time, because Derek mentioned a few days ago that he liked them.

“I… know?” Stiles says slowly, one hand on the doorknob. “You work at the Beacon Hills Plant Emporium.”

“Yeah, so, I have money.”

“I know,” Stiles says again. He lets go of the doorknob.

Derek deflates a little; he wasn’t expecting Stiles to know that. It doesn’t make sense for Stiles to know that. Stiles looks shifty. Deeper in the apartment, Derek can hear a door creaking—Isaac getting up from his nap. Derek crosses his arms and demands, “So why are you doing all this?”

Stiles blinks, all faux-innocence. He’s not very good at it. “Doing what?”

Derek ignores that. “Is this a pity thing? Like, ‘Poor Derek Hale whose earthly possessions all burned in a fire’?”

Stiles flails. “No! I mean, maybe at first it was, a little, but… no. I know you have money. It’s not— I’m not trying to suggest— Look, it’s because we’re friends, okay? We’re friends, and—”

“And he thinks you’re hot,” Isaac snickers, passing behind them on his way to the kitchen.

“—and,” Stiles goes on determinedly, as though he hasn’t heard, “every time I see you I just wanna do nice stuff for you.”

“He wants to do a lot of nice stuff to you, all right,” Isaac calls suggestively over his shoulder.

“Shut up,” Stiles calls after him, flipping him off.

He’s blushing furiously. Derek feels like he probably is, too. He doesn’t know where to look. Fucking Isaac.

“Wow, okay. I’m just going to…” Stiles gestures awkwardly to the door behind him.

Derek nods, but Stiles doesn’t see it. He’s already in the hallway, door slamming shut behind him.

Well then.

Derek stands there for a moment, staring numbly at the blank expanse of the door and listening to the sound of Isaac microwaving something in the other room.

Then he goes after him. This isn’t the kind of thing he should just walk away from, or let Stiles just walk away from. It’s tempting to let him (Derek can still feel his face burning with embarrassment), but then again, it’s probably not going to be any less embarrassing three hours from now, or three days, so. Why put it off?

It’s pouring rain outside, thick sheets of water. Derek doesn’t want to go back for an umbrella, though. If he goes back inside, he might just wimp out and never come out again. So he pulls the hood of his jacket up over his head, takes a couple deep breaths, and jogs down the stairs to the parking lot.

Stiles hasn’t left. He hasn’t even turned on his Jeep yet. He’s just sitting there, banging his head repeatedly against the steering wheel.

Derek’s a bit concerned.

He walks over and knocks on the driver’s side window, and when Stiles rolls it down (after flailing and honking the horn), Derek doesn’t really know what comes next. There’s just the persistent thought that he shouldn’t let Stiles drive off like this, not when they’re on the brink of something here, and not when Derek’s been thinking about kissing him more or less since the night Stiles first broke into his house.

Stiles stares at him. His hair is a little wet, bangs dripping down into his eyes, but he’s nowhere near as soaked as Derek.

“Do you not own an umbrella?” Stiles frowns. “Or even a poncho?”

Instead of answering, Derek steps up on the Jeep’s running board, leaning his elbows on the sill, and kisses him through the open window. Stiles squeaks out an “Mmmph?” and then, “Mmm, yeah,” in a much more appreciative tone and grabs Derek by the ears to tilt his head to a better angle. They don’t stop until Derek starts to shiver, soaked through to the skin by the rain.

Stiles blinks at him, dazed, and then grins. “Do you wanna go on a date with me? With more kissing?”

Derek grins back. “Yes, but only if you let me pay.”

“I can do that,” Stiles says.

(end)

#eternalsterek #my fic #prompt fill #2tired2care

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