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It begins with an ending.
Well, that's not quite right. It begins with a break.
It begins will his mother sitting him down at the kitchen table after the first full night's sleep he's had for two months. (The first night for two months that Beacon Hills has been safe from... from whatever those things had been that came out of the woods at night - like twisted, fleshy trees that walked and jibbered and screamed - called by coven of barely teenage would-be-witches with anger issues and a spellbook that turned out to be painfully real. Scott is so, so glad it's finally over, even though they still don't know what happened to the man the girls say brought them the spellbook; the tall, faceless man they called Mister Skin.)
She brings him a cup of tea and a sandwich, then leaves for a few minutes, coming back with a stack of papers she fans out across the table before sitting down at the corner next to him.
They're college acceptance letters. Many of them. A fair amount more than the colleges he remembers even applying to, and scanning over them, a lot are from colleges out of state.
Scott puts his teacup down, fingers skimming across the papers. "Mom? What is this?"
"I applied for you," she tells him. "When you applied for only the same places as..." She stops, swallows, and her mouth is set in an unhappy line, but her hand is soft and warm when she puts it over his. "I'm worried about you, Scott. I'm so, so worried about you, all the time. I know I don't understand everything, about you, about what it's like being what you are; a werewolf and an alpha. But I see the way you run yourself ragged, putting everyone else before yourself-"
"Mom-" he tries interrupting, but she cuts him off with a hand gesture, and the tears shining in her eyes steals all the breath from his lungs.
"No, Scott, please let me say this. I... I need to say this, okay? I'm your mother. And I know I told you that it was important to help, to use your powers to do good. But you're doing too much. You've done too much, bled too much. You've died." Her fingers clench around his as she brings them to her lips, kissing his still-bruised knuckles. "And even when you're not fighting whatever new monster that's dragged itself into town, you're always putting the pack first. And it's good to think about your friends, to want to make them happy. But it can't always be at the expense of your own happiness. You can't give away all of yourself. So I applied to schools all over for you, because... Because I want you to take a break. Just... Just for a while. I want you to take care of yourself, to exist just for you."
He plans to argue. He does. He really does.
But he's been tired for such a long time, and his mother's eyes are sad and shining and determined, so when he opens his mouth, the only thing that comes out is "okay."
His mother smiles at him, squeezes his fingers, and the smile that spreads across his lips in return comes more naturally than any he can remember for the last year.
Well, okay, maybe that's not quite right either.
Technically it begins five days later, with a text.
[U used to live in NY, right? Going there for college, so maybe u have recs for idk cafes & cheap bookstores & stuff? :)]
Derek texts back three hours and twenty eight minutes later (not that Scott is counting or anything).
[I'll send you a list.]
In retrospect, Scott feels like he really should have known Derek well enough to maybe kind of expect what followed. At least a little bit.
Of course Derek wouldn't just email a short list of addresses and be done with it. (To be honest, Scott's starting to doubt Derek even has an email address.)
No, four days after they exchanged those two texts, a delivery man shows up and has Scott sign for an envelope a third of an inch thick.
Sitting on his bed, Scott opens it up, pulling out a hefty stack folded papers covered in Derek's small, blocky script.
Derek has written thorough, in-depth reviews of over fifty coffee shops, restaurants, bookstores, clothes stores, and good groceries, complete with neatly drawn maps for some of the places that are apparently a bit tricky to find if you don't know the neighborhoods.
It's absolutely fucking ridiculous, but Scott finds himself smiling so hard it hurts as he reads Derek's frankly quite passionate opinion on what is apparently the best aloo matar in the city.
Later he sends Derek a text, thanking him for the list and saying he didn't have to go through all that trouble.
This time Derek replies after only eight minutes.
[I wanted to.]
Getting to New York is a nightmare (Scott is not a fan of flying, and apparently neither was the baby two rows down), but once he arrives at campus he's excited enough that the exhaustion of the past twelve hours just melt away.
He hauls his luggage past the throngs of frazzled, emotional families moving their kids into their dorms, and the more he sees, the more he's happy it's just him and his bags, that he got to say goodbye to his mom and Deaton and all his friends yesterday, unburdened by stress or exhaustion or arguments about how best to get a bookcase up three narrow flights of stairs without getting it stuck.
He signs for his keys with a lonely, tired looking RA who keeps throwing unhappy glances at the two empty chairs next to him at the makeshift desk set up by the front doors, thanks him with a sympathetic smile, and is about to leave when the guy stops him. "Hey! Hey, wait. Your name was McCall, right?"
Scott raises an eyebrow. "Yeah?"
The RA points at the lawn outside. "That girl over there, with the pink braids, she showed up two hours ago and asked for you."
Scott's never seen her before, and he hesitates for a moment before dropping his bags off at the RA desk and making his way over, trying not to seem too wary.
The girl, maybe a year or so older than Scott, looks up from her phone when Scott's shadow falls on her. "Scott McCall?" she asks, squinting.
"Um, yeah?"
"Cool," she says, getting up from the big, cylindrical bag she'd been sitting on. "I'm Monifa," she adds, holding out her hand. "On behalf of my father, I offer our pack's friendship and hospitality to the true alpha of Beacon Hills, for as long as he wishes to stay in our territory," she recites solemnly, and suddenly Scott notices the tattoo of a three pointed star enclosed in a circular halo set on the side of her neck.
"You're from the Turner pack," he says in understanding, taking her hand. She smells entirely human, but now that he pays attention, he can find traces of werewolf scent on her, the way he expects another werewolf might find traces of his mom's scent on him. "I humbly accept your generous offer, and hope you will express my gratitude to your father," he recites next.
Monifa smiles as they let go of each other's hands, and whatever solemnity she'd affected vanishes into thin air. "Sure thing, tiger. Though you'll have plenty of opportunity to tell him yourself when you come over for the full moon," she says, lips quirking into a wry grin. "Grandma's been planning your welcome dinner since Derek wrote to tell us you were coming, more or less. She's very excited. Apparently he spoke very highly of you."
Scott finds himself blushing a little, pleased warmth spreading in his chest. He's still getting used to the idea of being held in such high esteem, to be the kind of person people speak highly of to their family friends. It's... weird. Nice weird. "I'll be looking forwards to it," he accepts.
"Oh right, speaking of Derek," Monifa says, turning around to pick up the giant black bag. "He asked us to please deliver this. Said to tell you that it was a moving in present," she says, pushing the thing into his arms.
Paying this close attention, Scott reads the label proclaiming it a "deluxe latex foam mattress." He grins. Apparently he won't have to spend his first night in New York sleeping on just a blanket, or his first day hunting down where to buy a cheap mattress.
"Well, I guess I'll leave you to your moving in and writing a gushing thank you text to Derek," Monifa says, grinning as she walks slowly backwards towards the bus station. "It was nice meeting you, Scott. Don't get into too much trouble, and we'll see you for dinner in two weeks." Then she's turning around and walking away, pink braids bouncing.
Scott calls out "goodbye" and "thank you" at her back, getting a jaunty wave in return. Then he looks back at the bag in his arms. "Time to settle in, I guess?" he asks it.
Unsurprisingly, the mattress doesn't respond.
The first month at college passes in no time.
He'd been worried about being able to keep up with his coursework, but surprisingly he has no problem keeping on top of things.
Apparently a high school career spent juggling his school workload and near-constant supernatural dangers threatening life and limb of both him and everyone around him has left him incredibly efficient, and very resilient against "normal" levels of stress. Go figure.
He even has time to go to a few parties with his roommate Chad, a psychology major who reminds him a bit Mason, if Mason had been a tall white guy who owned over twenty snapbacks and went to the gym at least four times per week.
(The first time, Scott had been a bit worried about being dragged to a frat or something, but instead he'd ended up sitting in the kitchen of a feminist collective, discussing gender theory over wine.
Apparently all of Chad's friends are people he's met either in Women's Studies or at the university GSA, which, okay, maybe should teach Scott not to judge the dudebro by his cover.)
The dinner with the Turner pack goes smoothly. It's fun, being around another werewolf pack, one that's stable and well adjusted and safe. And the food is amazing, though he regrets letting his poor student instincts rule his choices on portion size once Monifa drags him outside to help the younger werewolf kids work off the worst of their moon restlessness with games of tag and play wrestling. He's utterly exhausted by the time he gets back to the dorm early the next morning, pushing the boxes of leftovers he'd been gifted into Chad's arms before he collapses into bed and sleeps his entire Saturday away.
And then there's Derek's letter, which arrives late the fourth week.
Scott opens it and starts reading it while waiting for his microwave brownie (recipe graciously provided by Maya two doors down) to bake.
It's a long letter, and the brownie is eaten and replaced by a cup of tea before Scott finishes it.
Derek is in Peru these days, spending time with Cora and some distant relatives on their father's side that own a farm down there. He tells Scott about how Cora is doing, how the two of them are learning to properly be a family again, about the work on the farm, about how the kids in town have come to the (probably not unwarranted) conclusion that he's the softest pushover ever, how his cousin (once removed)'s horses have stopped shying from him finally, about the stray cat that has adopted him. He doesn't tell Scott very much about himself in text, but Scott can read it anyway, how Derek is doing well. He sounds happy. Peaceful.
At the end of the letter, Derek asks how Scott is doing, how he's enjoying New York, how his studies are going, and there's a return address on the back of the envelope, so the next day, Scott goes to one of the cafes that Derek had recommended, and he sits down to pen his response. It takes three hours, twice as many cups of tea as that, and three sheets of paper to finish it, and he ends it with some only mildly awkward sounding requests for Derek to elaborate on some things in his letter.
He mails it that evening, feeling oddly happy when he hears the envelope drop into the mailbox.
He gets Derek's eight page reply a couple of weeks later, and this time Derek has sent along pictures taken with an old polaroid camera. There are pictures of Cora, looking less and less amused by proceedings the more pictures Scott flips through, and pictures of Derek's relatives, and the horses that no longer hate Derek's guts, and a lot of pictures of the fat grey and white cat Derek has named Mrs Snowybottom. The last picture in the stack is a hilariously awkward selfie of Derek himself, the only picture featuring his face in the entire collection. Scott's heart does a complicated little flip at the self-conscious yet open and relaxed look on Derek's face. He looks rested and almost carefree, softer. He looks... good.
Scott stares at this smiling, tanned Derek for few minutes, then he puts it up on the wall over his desk along with the rest of the ones of his family and friends. After a few minutes of feeling oddly self conscious about it, he flips through the pictures of Cora, picking one where she's making a face to spite Derek, and he puts that up too.
Chad asks him who the hottie is when he comes home from the gym, and Scott asks him which one he means.
"The one you put right next to your mom's picture, dumbass," Chad replies, rolling his eyes as he flops onto his bed. "You've been holding out on me, bro? Got a secret boyfriend?" He waggles his eyebrows.
Scott's not blushing when he says "Derek's just a friend from back home" and buries his nose anatomical diagrams.
Absolutely not.
"Look, dude, are you sure this Derek guy isn't your boyfriend?" Chad asks him in the beginning of March.
There's been several letters since then, and they've become... really important to Scott.
Like, obviously his almost daily Skype calls with his mom are important, just like the weekly calls to Deaton, and the regular calls to Kira and Malia, and Liam and Mason. He's not even exaggerating when he thinks he wouldn't survive without being able to talk them, see them, as often as he does.
But there's something different about these letters. About waiting patiently for them, then sitting down and reading Derek's stupidly neat handwriting describing anything and everything Derek finds important enough to share. About going back to the cafe where he'd written his first letter and penning his reply over a pot of Jaswinder's Tea of the Week, deciding what to share, picking his words, writing them down slowly, neatly, intently. Then folding the papers into an envelope and sealing it, writing Derek's address down from memory, then applying the stamps, and finally dropping it into the mailbox down the road from the cafe.
It's routine. Ritual.
It's... It's just really important, is the thing.
Scott sighs. "Why do you even think that?"
Chad snorts. "Not to be that guy, bro, but like, he sent you a pressed flower, man. And," he leans down to look at the pages of Derek's latest letter, lying spread out over Scott's desk, "he's quoting love poetry in Spanish at you."
Scott frowns. "He sent the flower because his cousin has been trying to crossbreed two plants for ages and that flower was from the first bush that took. And the poem is describing the poet's love for Peru, not a person."
Chad rolls his eyes. "Okay, whatever you say, man. I'm just saying, this whole thing is looking awfully romantic..."
Scott throws a stress ball at Chad's head in response, but Chad catches it effortlessly without barely even glancing in Scott's direction. Sometimes he really wonders if Chad isn't supernatural somehow.
The problem is, now that Chad has planted the idea in Scott's mind, he can't get it out.
He rereads all of Derek's letters over and over when Chad isn't at home to notice and give him knowing looks, and he tries to recall as much as possible from the letters he wrote to Derek, and... and it's really romantic, the whole thing. Maybe. Or maybe he just thinks so, now, because Chad is a jerk who uses his psych major powers to brainwash people into questioning their totally non romantic friendships with hot, nice guys that like cats and wear shirts with fucking thumb holes.
Scott is so screwed.
You wish, a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like a brainwashing psych major says, and Scott glares at Chad's desk before trying for the eighth time today to focus on his lab report.
Writing letters to Derek starts feeling like navigating a minefield. He doesn't want to give it up for the world, but his letters take longer and longer to write as he spends more and more time weighing his words and fretting about what to say and how to say it.
He spends longer Saturdays at the cafe, Jaswinder giving him free refills on his teapot and asking him if he's doing okay, and after the second time of missing Saturday movie night with Rebecca and Ty (lacrosse fanatics from the next building over) for the second time, opting to go straight to bed once he's back home, Chad starts surreptitiously leaving pamphlets for a mental health hotline around the room.
He reassures Jaswinder that he's fine, ignores Chad's worried looks, and tells himself there isn't a problem.
Because he absolutely isn't engaging in a one-sided epistolary romance with Derek "Eight Years Older Than You and Also Living In Peru" Hale.
Except for how he absolutely is and it's the worst.
Correction: that wasn't the worst.
The worst is picking up his phone half asleep a Tuesday morning, murmuring a sleepy "hello" into the microphone, expecting one of his classmates asking for help with an essay in return for free food, or maybe his mom, only to hear Derek's voice on the other line.
"Scott? Scott, are you there?"
Scott feels like he just got dunked in ice water and he nearly flies out of bed. "Derek! Derek, hi. Um. You're calling? Uh. Hi?"
"Hi, Scott." Derek sounds careful. "How are you doing?"
Yeah, this is the worst. He drags his hand through his hair. "Fine. Good. I'm doing good. A bit sleepy because you woke me up, but otherwise fine." That was too many positives. Fuck. "How're you?"
"I'm good," Derek says, and Scott can hear birdsong and a cat meowing in the background. "Not a lot going on right now. Look, I know you're probably wondering why I'm calling suddenly, I just... I got your latest letter and I don't know, you sounded different? Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yeah," Scott says, trying to project as much okayness as humanly possible. "I'm totally fine."
Derek still doesn't seem convinced, hesitating for a moment before saying "If there's something wrong, you can talk to me, you know? You don't need to deal with everything yourself, Scott. There are people around you that want to help, support you."
He sounds so genuine it makes Scott want to fucking cry, and he tries stifling the hitch in his breath, he really does, but apparently not hard enough.
Derek's breath catches on the line, then softly; "Scott?"
"I messed up," Scott blurts out, and once those words are out, it's like he loses control of his stupid, stupid mouth. "I messed up, Derek," he says, lump in his throat as he rubs at his tired, wet eyes.
"What-"
"This. I messed up... This. Us. I really like being your friend, Derek. Please don't think I don't think that's enough. It is. It really is. But I just... Your letters mean so much to me. Too much, and I... I don't expect it to be the same for you, okay? Like, I totally understand that you don't feel this way, that you don't feel the same. I'm not saying this to... to make you say something you don't mean or anything. I need you to know I'd never do that, okay? I-"
"Scott!" Derek cuts him off, sounding... Sounding almost desperate. "Scott, what are you saying?"
"I'm in love with you!"
The silence stretches between them for seconds that feel like eternities, until Derek breaks it with a small, quiet "oh."
Scott hiccups a laugh. "Yeah. 'Oh.'" He rubs his forehead. "Ugh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to just lay this on you like this. I don't even know what's wrong with me, I didn't used to be this way, I used to know how to deal with-"
"No! No, Scott, that's... It's okay. If this was bothering you, you needed to tell me." He pauses "I... I'm so-"
And Scott definitely can't listen to that - absolutely not - and he cuts Derek off immediately. "Oh God, please don't apologize for not being in love with me back. Please, please, Derek, don't."
"I..." Derek starts, then changes his mind. "Okay."
Scott sighs. "Well, now you know what's wrong. But really, Derek, you don't need to worry about me. I'll be fine. I meant what I said. Being your friend is more than enough for me. So... So if you're comfortable with it, I'd... I'd like it if we kept writing?"
"Of course!" Derek says quickly. "Of course we'll keep writing, Scott. I'll always be your friend."
"I know," Scott says, forcing a smile into his voice. "Uh, I need to go now, I think. I'm meeting some friends for early lunch to work on a lab, and if I'm going to have a shower I probably need to get out of bed now."
"Yeah sure," Derek says, even though he sounds kinda reluctant. "Good luck with that, and I'll send you a letter soon?"
"Awesome," Scott says, still smiling. "I'll look forward to it. Take care, okay? And say hi to Cora for me."
"Thanks, you too, Scott. And I will."
"Bye."
"Bye."
Once the call ends, Scott falls back into bed.
The tears are not far behind.
Scott is still in bed when Chad comes home from class, curled up in his blankets and sniffling weakly, caught in between crying jags.
"Dude, Scott, what's wrong?" Chad asks, dumping his bags on the floor and rushing over, putting his hand on Scott's shoulder. "Dude, you never get sick. Are you okay?"
"I told Derek I'm in love with him," Scott says, and he hates how small and pitiful he sounds. "And he doesn't feel the same way, obviously."
Chad sighs, then sits down next to Scott on the bed. "That's rough, bro," he says kindly, pushing Scott so he's on his back and they're looking each other in the eyes. "You know what we have to do?"
"What?"
"I'm gonna go smuggle in some booze and ice cream, and then we're going to invite some friends, and then we're going to share all our sad, unrequited love stories with each other and feel super bad for ourselves, and tomorrow you're going to feel better."
The amazing thing is Chad is right.
There's something really cathartic in allowing himself to wallow in self pity for the night, feeling sorry for himself and telling everyone about it, getting their confirmations that the whole thing fucking sucks.
No one tells him to suck it up and stop whining, instead they just top off his mug of cheap boxed wine and tell him to have more ice cream while they tell him about their doomed unrequited pining.
It really, really helps.
The situation is still awful, it still hurts, but it feels easier to deal with when he wakes up the next morning with Linda from one floor up snoring next to him, still clutching Chad's stuffed alligator that she'd stolen from his bookcase after they'd gone through the first box of wine, right before she passed out on Scott's bed and refused to be moved.
He can live like this, he decides. It'll get better.
It does.
Especially after he tells his mom, a week and a half after the dubbed Pity Party. She says all the right things, and the love and sympathy in her voice soothes something deep inside him, and he loves her so, so much.
So yeah, it gets better.
He's still in love with Derek, he won't deny that, but it gets easier to write his letters now that there's nothing he needs so desperately to hide, and reading Derek's return letters becomes less fraught with anxiety and double guessing. I haven't lost anything, he reminds himself sometimes when the grief rears its head. We're still friends, and that's perfect.
"You're handling this whole thing super well, bro," Chad tells him one night, bringing Scott another beer from the bar while Jin from Scott's lab group croons about love and darkness and rot and whatever else goths like on the club's stage. "You're like the most well adjusted person I've ever met."
Scott laughs so hard he chokes on his beer.
Then suddenly it's June, and it's time to go back home to Beacon Hills. Back to his mom, to his pack. Chad's moms drive him to the airport, and Chad hugs him so hard Scott almost hears his ribs creak, and yeah, he should really ask Chad about possible supernatural powers at some point next semester.
The first leg of his trip passes without any screaming babies or other disturbances, but once he reaches his stopover in Denver, he has eight hours to wait for his connecting flight.
He contents himself to wait it out on a couch he manages to secure himself in the airline's lounge, and pulling out a notebook, he starts writing Derek a letter he plans to mail as soon as he arrives in California.
He's halfway through a particularly funny anecdote about Chad and how he had had his breakfast burrito stolen by squirrels when someone clears their throat next to him. "Is this seat free?"
"Yeah sure, go ahead," Scott mumbles, waving his hand vaguely at the space next to him before he freezes and looks up.
At Derek.
Derek who is grinning at him.
"Wha...?" Scott wants to punch himself to be honest.
"Your mom told me you had a long wait in Denver, so I figured I might as well keep you company here and join you on the flight back home," Derek explains.
"Wait, you're coming back to Beacon Hills?" Scott asks, tucking his letter away (weirdly embarrassed about it, even though Derek is who it's intended for in the first place) as Derek sits down next to him.
"Yeah, I think it's time," Derek replies. "Cora is going off to study at a university in the fall, and... and Beacon Hills will always be home for me in a way it isn't for her. I might as well stick around and protect it for a while, right?" he says, turning to look at Scott with a small, fond smile on his lips.
Scott finds himself smiling back. "It'll be nice to know the town is in good hands."
Derek huffs a laugh. "Okay, let's not get too confident in my abilities," he says, grinning, before turning a bit more solemn. "But I figure at least I can help." He sits back, slouching a bit against the backrest of the couch. "So how are you doing, Scott? Happy to be going home for the summer?"
"Oh God, so much. There are no words," Scott assures him. "I miss my mom's cooking, and trees that smell right, and not having to take the subway. How do werewolves survive living in New York their entire life, having to use the subway?"
Derek laughs. "Exposure therapy. And you have to start young."
"Ugh," Scott says to that. "So how about you? How are you doing?"
"I'm good," Derek says, pausing for a while, line forming between his eyes as he stares off into the middle distance. "Looking forwards to be back as well. And... I've had a lot on my mind lately, but I'm getting to a point where I think I've mostly sorted everything through, and I figure it'll be a relief when that's finally over."
Scott sits up a bit more attentively. "Are... Do you want to talk about it? The whole help and support thing goes both ways, you know?"
Derek smiles. "Actually, I kind of do want to talk about it."
"Okay?"
"I'm in love with you," Derek says, so easily and simply that Scott can't even begin to react.
"Excuse me?" Scott is really quite proud, in a distant, mostly subconscious kind of way, of how not hysterical he managed to make those two words sound.
"I'm in love with you," Derek repeats, gazing serenely at Scott, like it's no big deal.
"I..." And nope, still can't even begin.
"And I totally understand if you don't feel the same anymore. If you've moved on," Derek continues. "Or if you're angry about how long it took me to realize and tell you. But I only think it's fair that I tell you, so you can make your own decision about what to do about it."
Scott stares wide eyed at Derek for the longest time, opening his mouth a few times to speak, only to close it against without a sound, and Derek sits there calmly, waiting - presumably - for Scott to get his shit together and say something.
"You're in love with me?" is the embarrassingly squeaky sentence that eventually manages to tear itself loose from Scott's throat.
"Yes," Derek confirms, and honestly he needs to stop being so collected because Scott is going to develop a complex.
"So if I, say, told you to kiss me...?"
"I would kiss you."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Okay. Okay, right, well… Well, I swear to God, Derek, if you don't kiss me right n-"
It ends with a beginning.
Well, that's not quite right. It doesn't end.