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stereksummerexchange · 7 years

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Memory's Fingertips

@menqlu | AO3 - I hope you like it, giftee :)

by @hazelandglasz

PG - some mention of masturbation / mention of Stiles’ mother’s passing and grief (very briefly)

For his senior year of high school, Derek wanted to have a blast with his best friends. Alas, he’s by himself for his free period. Or is he?

Derek hates his afternoon free period, and he hasn’t lived through it yet.

Alright, so maybe “hate” is too strong a word–he despises it with a passion.

Whatever, he has strong negative feelings about it, because all of his friends are not sharing it with him.

It’s his Senior year of High School, the last milestone of youthful freedom he has before going to college and learn how to Adult™.

Derek should be able to spend whatever free pockets of time he gets with the family he has chosen among his peers.

Not be condemned to one period of abject loneliness.

He’s a highly social animal, so sue him.

When he enters the library for the aforementioned free period (might as well make it useful, right?), Derek tightens his hold on the strap of his bag.

There isn’t a single student that he recognizes in the sea of people–who are they and why are they here–and Derek needs to find a place where he can be in peace, a nook of solitude so to speak–

Ah.

Maybe there is one person he recognizes, but to be honest, Derek half-thinks that he would have preferred not to.

Stiles Stilinski.

The boy on the verge of manhood–and really, Stiles and manhood in the same sentence hurts Derek in the best of ways–who has starred in more dreams than Derek is comfortable to confess.

The boy Derek wants to invite to Prom.

The boy Derek wants to be his first boyfriend.

The boy Derek wants–period.

The boy … whose belongings Derek just knocked off the table he had found for himself.

“I am so sorry,” Derek babbles, adjusting his glasses as he kneels to gather the notes and books spread on the floor. “I wasn’t looking where I was–”

And suddenly, Stiles’ pink cheeks and caramel eyes are far closer than they should be.

“–going.”

“It’s–it’s alright,” Stiles stammers, helping Derek reorganize the whole mess. “I was attempting a very perilous balance of things anyway?”

“Recreating the tower of Babel?”

Stiles smiles at him and Derek needs to chill the heck out.

“Of a sort,” he says, holding up two books–one in English, one in French.

It’s enough to make Derek smile and look away.

Dear Lord he’s a mess.

“By all means, Hale, take a seat, Lord knows I don’t anyone else barging in my citadel of solitude,” Stiles tells him and Derek has to pinch himself as discretely as possible.

Stiles knows his name.

Stiles wants to spend time with him.

Stiles is smiling at him.

Cool cool cool cooo-ooool.

Derek does sit down across the round table Stiles has managed to find, and he toys with the idea of getting ahead (not getting a head, shut up Laura) in his literary class.

Even if he doesn’t make a lot of progress because of Stiles, any progress is still something.

He pulls the book out of his bag, and he manages to read the whole first page before Stiles speaks up and ruins his focus.

“Would you say that language is a living system?”

“Uh?”

Stiles pokes his pencil against the back of the books towering next to him. “If a living system is defined as a system that evolves and adapts,” he explains, his fingers never stopping their twirling of his pen, “and if language always evolves, in the sense that, say, a phone today doesn’t mean the same thing than a phone in the fifties, right, then isn’t it right to say that language is a living system?”

A part of Derek’s brain is puzzled by this question and wonders what class is exactly requiring this topic.

Knowing Stiles, though, this could be a Biology essay for all Derek knows, and Stiles would pull it off.

The rest of his brain is wailing at how unfairly attractive Stiles is when his brain kicks into gear.

Which is to say maybe 22 hours a day.

Or so Derek assumes.

Unfair unfair unfair.

“Uhhh?”

See? Unfair.

Stiles sits up, leaning over the table toward Derek, and Derek is going to hyperventilate if no one minds.

“I mean, one could argue that we make language evolve, we are the ones deciding of its fate–”

“Sure,” Derek says, unconsciously leaning forward too, elbows resting on his knees. “But who makes us evolve in the first place?”

Stiles beams at him, and isn’t it amazing how his eyes shine like copper in this light. “I knew you’d see my point!”

“In a way, if language is an evolving system, we are not the masters of said evolution,” Derek says, inspired by the enthusiasm in Stiles’ eyes, “merely the … nudge to push the missing link towards a new form.”

“A nudge huh?”

Derek looks down at his hands. “Just an idea.”

Stiles’ knee bumps into his. “I knew your silence didn’t mean nothing ran through your beautiful head, Hale.”

Derek’s face is burning.

Beautiful?

Eh, takes one to know one.

—

This odd conversation topic is only the first in a list that takes the two of them way into the school year.

What is everything without nothing.

Is objectivity a myth.

Which religion has it right about what happens after death.

This one topic is mostly Stiles listening to Derek rambling about how the different myths actually converge to one vision of the afterlife, strangely quiet and reserved, somewhere around Halloween.

The following day, he’s back to his chatterbox self, but Derek still gives him his Reese’s cups.)

After Christmas and the holidays, Derek almost expected Stiles to abandon their weekly sessions in the library.

But here he was, with a perfectly wrapped rectangle in his hands and a blush on his cheeks–a beautiful copy of the Iliad that makes Derek want to leap over the table and kiss the breath out of Stiles’ mouth, even though he does not

More subjects pile up over the table (and snacks snuck in the library).

If neither a camera or a mirror show you how you really look, how can you know how you actually look.

Is doing what is just always what is right.

This one gets them kicked out because they start screaming at each other. That doesn’t stop them from smiling at each other like lunatics on the stairs while snow starts falling down.

(Derek nearly whimpers when snowflakes get caught in Stiles’ eyelashes, but it’s nothing compared to the way his heart stutters when Stiles reaches out to brush one snowflake from Derek’s cheek)

What is happiness.

Derek has a couple of ideas on the subject.

February approaches, and red and pink storm through the school.

Derek softly hits his head against his locker door.

“You need to woman up, little bro.”

“Leave me alone, Laura.”

“He would only be the happiest man on Earth if you decide to unplatonic this relationship.”

“That’s not a word, and what didn’t you understand in ‘leave me alone’?”

“The alone part, little bro, you do that perfectly without my help.”

“Ha.”

“And you deserve better,” she says softly before ruffling his hair, “lil’ bunny.”

“Lil’ bunny?”

Derek looks up with wide eyes at the voice replacing Laura’s.

That Mata Hari.

Traitor.

Stiles has his head cocked to the side, looking at Derek with open interest and, yes, amusement. “Did your sister call you Lil’ Bunny, Derek ‘I’m too badass to wear any real color besides black’ Hale?”

“Black is not a color, and you heard nothing.”

“Sure, sure,” Stiles says, and Derek could almost believe him, “Lil’ bunny.”

“Stiles …”

“Hm, yes, I love when you growl my name.”

Derek is pretty sure the school cook could fry the whole school’s lunch on his cheeks.

“Oh, Der-bear…”

“That’s even worse.”

“Bunny Der?”

“Stiles, I’m asking you, as a friend, ‘cause we’re friends, can you please shut up?”

“Shut up? When I finally found the strength and courage to ask you to be my Valentine?”

That makes Derek look up with wide eyes and cheeks a shade to rival the fiercest of Ferraris.

“Your what?”

Stiles’ blush rivales his.

Interesting.

Lovely, too.

“Say, do you–do you think Love is something we do or something we are?”

The question has the familiarity of all those pseudo (or maybe not so pseudo) philosophical conversations they shared, and Derek’s lungs work again.

“Depends,” he replies, focusing on the way Stiles is wringing his hands together.

“On what?”

On the way Stiles’s eyes never leave his.

“On whether this particular love is reciprocated or not.”

On the way he bites his lower lip as he takes a step closer to Derek.

“But I ask about Love, capital L.”

On how warm he feels, standing so close to Derek his fingers could brush against Derek’s if he just moved so–

“There is no Love, capital L,” Derek says, voice dropped to a whisper, “only singular loves, marvelous in their own rights, that make us who we are and that we bring to life.”

“Derek–”

“So my answer is,” Derek adds, reaching for Stiles’ hand and lifting it to his lips to brush them against the knuckles, “love is both, in all of its incarnations.”

Stiles’ eyes are wide, and dark, more like maple syrup than caramel now as they stare at the point of connection between his hand and Derek’s lips.

“And yes.”

“Y-yes?”

Derek smiles, pulling courage from the pink on Stiles’ cheeks. “I’ll be your Valentine.”

Stiles blinks once, twice, and the beaming smile he gave Derek a couple of months ago is nothing in the face of the smile stretching his lips now.

“Oh, Der-bear,” he replies, “I’m gonna woo the fuck out of you.”

“I thought the discussions were already your best wooing tech–hmph!”

Probably 90% of Derek’s brain is busy focusing on Stiles’ everything–his lips, warm against his and tasting of mint (the sneaky little shit); his hands, framing Derek’s jaw; his chest, strong against Derek’s–but the ten remaining percent completely register Laura shooting fucking finally and Scott McCall whooping in the background.

When he catches his breath, he also catches Stiles flipping them both the bird.

God bless his afternoon free period.

#stereksummerexchange17 #sse17 #sterek #submission #fic

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