Work Text:
Stiles is two weeks into his first semester when the postcards start arriving. They're uniformly old, photos of beaches and amusement parks where the color's a little wrong; illustrations of Yosemite and Yellowstone splashed across dog-eared cardboard. Stiles likes to think of Derek rooting around in junk shops to find them, carefully building up a stockpile, 25c at a time. Derek's handwriting is even and easy to read, unlike Stiles' which is spiky and scattered, betraying that he's always in a hurry, his brain rocketing from one idea to the next, dragging along his big hands and awkward elbows, his long legs which twitch and bounce as he tries to concentrate. He writes back in a dozen different forms – his own supply of postcards bought at the college bookstore; letters written on pages torn from his notebook; once, a napkin with a coffee stain at the corner, stuffed into an envelope.
They could write email – even Derek thinks wifi's a necessity in life – but emails can't be tacked up above Stiles' desk, or carried in his pocket, or stuck between the pages of his chemistry textbook. Stiles can't spread emails out over his desk and revisit ordinary moments; he can't hold an email to his nose when no one's looking to see if he can smell Derek, or the loft, or the Hale house. And there's something soothing about picking up a pencil or selecting a pen, committing his thoughts to paper, no matter how abstract or mundane they are.
So they write, and there are days when Stiles' hopes Derek can feel how much he misses him rising right up out of the ink; days when he can't say how he feels but hopes Derek can read between the lines, can parse his ridiculous stories into care and concern and eat a sandwich, or take it easy the night after the moon.
Then Derek shows up one afternoon in the middle of a rainstorm that has Stiles cooped up and restless, too jumpy to write.
"Got your letter," Derek says, and holds up a damp, folded square of notepaper, the letter Stiles had mailed two days before.
And Stiles stares at him, because it's been too long since he saw him last, and he's staggeringly beautiful, and he came because Stiles wrote I wore your t-shirt today and meant I wish I'd woken up beside you this morning.
"Gonna invite me in?" asks Derek, and Stiles presses himself in close, kisses him, would climb him if he could, and Derek wraps his arms around Stiles' back, shuffles them into the apartment, closes the door.
When they lie together later, Stiles sprawled out on his stomach, his body humming and pleasantly sore, he feels the whisper-touch of Derek's finger against his back. "What're you doin'?" he mumbles as Derek's fingertip loops and banks.
"Writing," Derek says, and Stiles pays attention, catches smart and selfless and needed and love.