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There’s a student bar buried deep in the side streets of Portland, small and unknown, and just about the only place that lets the band play any more.
They’re not very good – Stiles had started learning guitar in tenth grade with some grand idea of serenading, or something like that, but never committed to learning it – but it’s… nice. Or, nice to be in a band, and play terrible Blondie covers, passing it up as experimental-heavy-metal-grunge, to an audience of five, maybe six, people every Wednesday night. The music isn’t nice. The type of camaraderie that comes with knowing you’re all kind of talentless is nice, is an unbreakable bond.
The band met at college. Aaron was Stiles’s roommate, for a while, and studying architecture, and he’s the one that introduced Stiles to Ishmael – a biological anthropology student with a passion for fetish photography – and Spades, whose actual name is Jake, but Spades was supposed to be cooler, or whatever, even though he ended up in this dupe band all the same.
It’s not bad that they’re bad. It’s fine, it is, because none of them really like music, anyway. It’s just – a thing to do. None of them actually have other things to do.
Stiles enjoys it. He does – even though they suck, and he’ll never listen to Blondie again once he inevitably moves out of Portland, and they lose fans they never even had at every gig. It’s just something to do, and he likes the guys, and he likes that there’s no pressure from it. No one ever comes into this shitty little bar, anyway.
Someone comes into the shitty little bar one Wednesday, while the band is in the middle of probably their worst song – Stiles can’t just pick the strings, because he’s pretty fucking terrible at guitar, so he has to play everything on one string and mute the other strings by resting his index and middle finger over them, but as aggressive as Stiles strums the guitar the muted strings overpower the actual note, which is more of a miss than a hit as it is.
It’s – oh jesus, oh fucking obviously. Stiles gets lost in the song, and it makes absolutely zero auditory difference, because it’s not like he’s good to fucking begin with.
∞
Afterwards, Stiles comes up to him at the bar, because of course that’s where he stands, warming a beer in his hands, watching Stiles, and watching, and watching.
“Derek,” Stiles says, and tries not to curl his hands in the sleeves of his sweatshirt, and tries not to look Derek in the eyes, and tries not to look anywhere else. He turns to the bartender, and lifts a finger, purposefully lazily, so he doesn’t look like he’s trying too hard. But he is, he is, and he doesn’t want to be here suddenly.
“Stiles.” Derek sounds – he sounds good, and Stiles almost could have forgotten what his voice sounds like.
He looks good, too: he’s more tanned, and his eyes don’t flicker around the room constantly. Derek’s wearing a brown jacket, suede, over a white shirt, and he’s wearing a navy scarf, and he looks comfortable. His beard is full and obviously groomed, with gray streaking through it, and the signs of aging are probably obvious in the both of them. It’s been a while. Fuck, it’s been a long time.
Stiles is only a couple of inches shorter than Derek, and always has been. Back when they – back in Beacon Hills, Stiles never felt smaller than Derek for it. Likely, it was the lack of actual self-preservation skills – mouthing off anyone that could reach down his throat and pull everything out, which was pretty much everyone – but he feels smaller now. Like, Derek looks sure of himself, which isn’t a look Stiles has ever seen Derek wear, and he’s caught Stiles in his ugly little band in this ugly little bar, and Stiles knows how he looks, and he knows what Derek sees when he looks at him.
“You look good,” Derek says anyway, because apparently he’s nicer, now, too.
Stiles, from the absolute beginning, has been attracted to Derek. When he was mean, with the leather jacket that was too big for him, to when he was a little softer, a little more sarcastic, with the same leather jacket hung in the back of his closet. Around the same time Derek stopped wearing that jacket all the time, whatever it was to him, is to him, Stiles actually started to like Derek, or something like it, and it got bad, really, really quick.
And then Derek left, and then Stiles left. And now here they are.
Stiles coughs, and feels so, so little. “Yeah,” he rasps, and it’s absolutely fucking enjoyable that his voice chooses now to crack out like that, “so – you look – you look good.”
Desperately, Stiles wants Derek to know what he means by that. He looks like a person now, like he’s not just existing from day to day, or whatever.
But Derek smiles, too fucking soft for someone like Stiles, and Stiles thinks that he gets it.
The bartender – a blonde girl called Melissa who always mimes hanging herself when the band walk in and start setting up – pushes a tall boy in front of Stiles, who takes it and steadfastly doesn’t look at the way Derek’s eyes follow him.
Stiles licks at his lips, feels an old cut open up – his lips are always dry these days, but it doesn’t escape Stiles’s notice that Derek’s aren’t, for once – and says, “What are you doing here?”
Derek laughs, and it’s an unfamiliar enough sound that Stiles feels like someone pushed his hair the wrong way and made his skull feel like static, even though it’s just a huff of a laugh. “And how are you, Stiles?” he narks, and shrugs, “I got a job here. In the city.”
Stiles looks at him then, elbows resting against the bar, making him lean over a bit, making him look up at Derek. “Yeah?” he says, breathless, breathless, and he hates himself for it. Derek’s so composed, and here Stiles is – stupid, stupid, fuck.
“Yeah,” Derek looks away for a second, then back at Stiles. “At the college. I’m just a TA, but–”
“That’s great,” Stiles blurts. “I mean – that’s a long shot from being shot up in some hole, yeah?”
Derek nods. “Yeah.” Then: “And you?”
Stiles is the one to look away then, and shrugs in a horribly obvious way. What is Stiles up to these days? It’s a laughable question. Stiles feels like he has razor blades underneath the surface of his skin, suddenly. “I have the band,” he tries.
“You have more than the band.”
“And I work in – Barnes and Noble. In the stock room. That’s all.” His fingers are tapping against the can, the bar, and he bites his tongue to keep from spilling everything. He – there’s so much he wants to tell Derek, but he’s forgotten how.
Then Derek leans in a little, and Stiles can feel the heat of him, and there’s always been something about Derek that even now Stiles wants to lean in. “That’s not all,” he smiles a little, “you could never lie to me.”
“You have an unfair advantage, I don’t know if anyone ever told you.”
Derek closes his eyes and shakes his head, and his smile slips. Stiles doesn’t know where he went wrong. Then again, that’s a theme. “You can lie to Scott. I know you can. But you could never lie to me.”
His phone chimes, and Derek slips it out of his back pocket to peak at it, and pushes it back in. “I have to go. Hey, take this–” he takes a slip of paper out of his jacket pocket this time, and holds it out between them. A beat, then Stiles reaches out to take it, careful to only touch the edges of it, “–and give me a call. We’ll catch up,” he says instead of asking, and Stiles just nods and wonders when Derek became this assertive. Like an alpha, he thinks, and then again: like an alpha. He’s grown into the power he lost, finally, finally, while Stiles stayed just the fucking same.
Derek takes a step back, towards the door. Stiles just watches him. “Call me,” he says again, and just like that – he’s out of Stiles’s life again.
∞
Stiles doesn’t call.
It’s not that – it’s not that Stiles doesn’t want to call. But.
But the thing is. Derek walked into that bar, wearing nice clothes, with his hair grown a little longer and pushed back like some kind of Prince Eric bullshit, and his beard, and his fucking aura, while Stiles is in a shitty cover band with zero natural talent, working the stock room in Barnes and Noble, and he hasn’t shaved in weeks. He has this horrible, patchy stubble, and his hair is too long, and his nails are chewed down.
Derek has it all together. Stiles just – he doesn’t need Stiles, like this, and Stiles doesn’t want Derek to see what a fucking mess Stiles is, not at all, not even a little.
Stiles isn’t proud of it. But – Portland isn’t a small city, and the band will find another bar. Or Stiles could just quit. Likely, the band will sound even better then.
He carries on, with the stock room and the not-band rehearsals and every this and that Stiles does these days, and he doesn’t call.
∞
“You didn’t call.”
Stiles is in the line for the grocery store. He only came in here for milk and chips, of course, and there’s that damned voice again. Always, always.
He turns around. “I did not,” Stiles says.
Derek watches him for a moment. He looks good again, healthy and happy in a way he didn’t until the day he left Beacon Hills. “I was hoping you’d call. I’m not surprised you didn’t, though.”
There’s this ugly little thing inside of Stiles, this horrible darkness from the time they died in the ice. It flares up, now, like it does all the time at everything. “If you’re not surprised–” and that’s not something he wants to think too much about, it’s not – “…why bother give me your number in the first place?” His hands clench around the milk and chips.
Derek just shrugs, like it doesn’t mean a thing to him. “I was hoping you would.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“I thought I told you that you can’t lie to me.”
Stiles flushes a little. “I’ve been busy,” he says again. Then: “I’m sorry I didn’t call.”
Derek’s got a basket full of groceries – vegetables, and all. He says, softer, “That’s fine. Are you busy now?”
Stiles is – but Derek offers to walk him home, and there was always this stupid fucking thing about him, and Stiles can’t say no. Of course he can’t, of course, of course.
“You look better now,” Stiles says. “I mean – with everything that happened back home.”
Derek hums. “It’s been a long time since Beacon Hills.” It’s cold, this time of year, and the sun’s setting quick. Stiles never realizes how much he hated sunset until he saw the gold spilling over Derek’s face, catching the grays in his beard. Fuck, but Stiles has missed so much, and he’s never seen Derek in this light before. Everything in Beacon Hills was so fucking gloomy, Stiles never realized Derek could look like this. “I’ve done a lot of thinking. Went travelling for a while,” and there’s a little scar near the corner of his eye, and Stiles knows that he’s staring, but – did Derek choose not to let it heal? Did he want the scar there? Stiles is so covered in them, and his skin is grotesque and ugly, but Derek must have chosen to keep that scar, “…and I’ve been,” and Derek hesitates, now, “I started talking to someone. Professionally.”
“Yeah?” Stiles is as surprised as he isn’t. Neither of them were exactly the best at the whole ‘healthy’ thing, but looking at Derek now – he looks a lot lighter. Stiles has been stuck in the same old trench his whole life, but Derek looks a whole lot less tortured than he did a few years ago. “That’s good. I mean – I used to speak to one. After, you know, my mom and all. It helped. I’m glad that – you know – you do.” Then he takes a breath, and steels himself, because it feels a little too open to say this. “It takes a lot. Go you.” Stiles punches his fist half-heartedly into the air, and wonders briefly whether or not he’d be quick enough to throw himself into traffic before Derek stopped him.
Derek nods. “It’s been – a lot, but it helps. I’m not looking for a fight, which is a start.”
“I noticed that.”
He laughs a little. “You used to notice everything.”
“Used to?”
Derek puts his hands up. “It’s been a long time, Stiles. We’ve all changed. Maybe you got stupid.”
Stiles rolls his eyes. “Maybe I did. Yo, where did you go? Like, when you left. What happened to Braeden?”
Braeden, as it turns out, took Derek to South America where they stayed with Cora and her pack for a while. Then Braeden wanted to move on – restless, always restless, Derek says – and Derek wanted to stay a little longer.
But Cora’s pack wasn’t his own, so Derek tells Stiles about how he went to the French Riviera, made friends in Prague and drank cheap beers, how he walked through the Van Gogh museum and saw the Berlin wall. Went diving in Italy, saw the sun set along the Amalfi coast and sat through mass in the Florence cathedral, and the time Derek spent in Iceland, because it’s quiet there, and pretty, and the northern lights are nice there. “I almost stayed,” Derek says, “but I never finished my degree in New York, and it was a loose end.” Derek, he explains, wanted to close that chapter of his life, and he couldn’t think to do it without getting his degree. That is – he could have traveled, and traveled, and traveled, “but it’s lonely being nomadic. I didn't want that anymore. I wanted – I wanted to settle down, and make real friends.”
Stiles gets that. The only people Derek had in Beacon Hills were tied together desperately, and the only thing they had in common was the threat constantly looming over their heads.
“I’m in touch with Scott sometimes, but he never really talks about you.”
Stiles shrugs. “It’s because I don’t tell him much. There’s not really anything going on with me.”
Derek tilts his head a little. “You’re still lying to me,” Derek says.
“I’m not–”
“Stiles,” Derek says, and god, he really is different. Stiles almost wants to ask where this Derek was back in Beacon Hills, but he knows.
He bites at the skin around his thumbnail instead. “I don’t know,” he tries. “It’s nothing really. Just something stupid.”
“Stiles.”
“I hate you, you know that?” He sighs. “It’s just a network I’ve been setting up. For, you know. Anyone involved in this heeby-jeeby stuff. A supernatural network kinda thing.”
Derek’s smiling again, and Stiles hates it, he hates it so much, and he pats Stiles on the shoulder, once, squeezing it. “That’s just like you.”
“What?”
“Helping others. And being smart about it. Making a network is a really good idea, Stiles.”
Stiles wonders if this is what dying feels like. “Uh,” he says. “Um. This is me.”
He rents a little studio above a travel agency. It’s not much, but it has a bed, and it has running water, and he’s fine with it. He doesn’t bother feel self conscious when Derek looks up at it, because Derek has lived in much worse places.
Derek looks at him while Stiles gets his keys out, and puts a hand on his elbow. “Are you taking care of yourself?”
Stiles hates himself for shrugging Derek off. “I’m fine, dude. All good in the hood, or whatever.”
Derek hesitates before nodding. “Will you call me, this time?” he asks, a little too softly. Stiles has always thought of Derek as attractive, as gorgeous and beautiful and every this and that. But now he’s standing in front of Stiles’s front door, with a dark green sweater and that brown jacket, the light as the sun sets catching in his hair, the grays of his stupid fucking beard, and Stiles thinks: he’s lovely. He is so, so lovely.
But Stiles shrugs. “Things are hectic, man, but I’ll try. I’ll give you a ring, yeah. Just – maybe not, like, right now.”
“But you will?”
He breathes in, and he breathes out, and says, “I’ll call, Derek.”
Derek breaks out in a smile – not a small and controlled one, but a big one, and Stiles wonders if he always knew how to smile like that.
∞
A week passes. Then two. Stiles doesn’t know if he’s actually busy, or if he’s just picking up extra shifts so that he’s too tired to call Derek.
It’s stupid, and he doesn’t get it even a little. It’s not, really, like Stiles doesn’t have things together – it’s just this whole process he’s working on. That is, he doesn’t have things together, but he doesn’t not have things together.
It’s just – fuck, it’s just Derek, looking all put together like that, with a real job and a degree and a therapist, jesus, he makes Stiles feel like he’s walking through Target after closing hours, or something, whatever.
Stiles just feels inadequate next to Derek, maybe, and maybe he is embarrassed about his stupid apartment and the stupid beard he’s been trying to grow and his stupid fucking band and job. Derek probably pities him, and – and – he’s right to, maybe, because Stiles is the only one stuck in this goddamn trench.
But. At the same time.
The card Derek gave Stiles is hanging from a magnet on the refrigerator. Stiles doesn’t know how to quantify how embarrassed this makes him, if at all. It’s worn now around the corners, the edges soft. This, too, Stiles is on the fence about.
It’s Derek’s business card, pretty obviously, as a TA. It has his office hours and the classroom he teaches in at the college.
It’s been two weeks. Stiles feels like he’s waited too long, maybe.
Christ, it’s the thing about Derek, isn’t it, that Stiles always comes back to him. It always, always comes back to Derek, and just as much as Stiles doesn’t want to see how great Derek has got it nowadays – he just wants to see Derek again. Derek needed a good thing, and now he’s got it, and Stiles doesn’t know what to do with that.
Jealous. Stiles is jealous of Derek. God, isn’t that a thought?
It’s been two weeks. The card’s on his refrigerator.
∞
Derek, apparently, is crazy passionate about war history. Stiles stands in the doorway, to the side of the seats in the auditorium, so only a couple of people turn and notice the weird homeless man in the room, and listens for a whole thirty minutes of Derek talking about the effect of the media during the Vietnam war on the American public. Stiles had only walked in halfway through the lecture, but he’s just about ready to apply for college again.
Derek, of course, knew that Stiles was there – he’d looked straight at Stiles as soon as he had walked in, offering him that fucking smile again. He’d just smiled, and then carried on like Stiles wasn’t even there.
Stiles leaves before the class ends and bumps into a girl who directs him to Derek’s office. It’s a small room a good walk from the classroom, with the walls lined with bookcases spilling books, and two desks, over which the sun falls through the windows, curtains drawn back. One of the desks has a picture of Cora, and Stiles shuffles some of the papers out of his way to sit on the desk instead of the chair in front of it. A tall guy, with brown skin and bleach blond hair and a star of David around his neck, comes in at one point to grab some files and glare at where Stiles is sitting on Derek’s desk, legs swinging.
He’s playing mahjong on his phone when Derek comes in, and the room feels warmer already. Stiles watches Derek close the door behind him, click the lock shut, all the while never looking away from Stiles.
“Derek,” he starts, and his throat feels dry, and there’s a warmth pooling in the pit of his stomach. He just wants to see Derek, and he feels like a young boy again, clumsily trying to hold onto a glass ball too big for his hands.
“You didn’t call.”
“I like to think of this as a social call,” Stiles says, “because I still used your card, didn’t I?”
Derek tilts his head a little, and comes up close to Stiles, stopping just in front of him. “I forgot how annoying you can be. I don't know why I forgot about that.”
“Why did you come to Portland?” Stiles demands. “Everywhere in the world. Everywhere you’ve been. You chose Portland. You go to the one bar my band is allowed to play at. That grocery store. I’ve never seen you around Portland until less than a month ago. Why?”
Derek doesn’t say anything for a long, long time. Then: “You’re here.”
“But you didn’t know that!” Stiles says. “Scott doesn’t even know I’m in Portland.”
He just sighs through his nose, and smiles at Stiles, and says, “I’ll always know where you are,” and a part of Stiles knew that, already. It always comes back to Derek, all the time, all the fucking time.
“Why?” he asks anyway, quiet, breathless.
And Derek says, you already know, and Stiles does, and he does, and he does.
∞
There's a lot, still, that Stiles wants to tell Derek about. About why he's in Portland, working in a Barnes and Noble, and why he never graduated college, why Scott knows about the network - why he's sworn to secrecy about it - but not that Stiles is in Portland. There's a lot, and Stiles is still figuring out how to say it, but he doesn't need to wait any more to figure out how to tell Derek how he feels about him, because they both know, and it's easy, it is.
He hopes, he hopes that he gets to keep this, because the hairs in Derek’s beard are graying, and he never got to see them gray before. He missed that. He wants to keep this.