The first time Stiles admits it to himself, he’s sitting in his Jeep with the engine running and the headlights cutting through the fog outside the Hale land. The house is gone, the dirt’s been reclaimed by weeds, and the wind is howling like the world’s loneliest animal.
He thinks he sees movement - a shadow slipping between the trees - and his heart leaps, stupidly hopeful, painfully naive.
But it’s just the wind. It’s always just the wind.
He presses his forehead against the steering wheel and exhales. “You could’ve at least said goodbye,” he mutters, voice cracking halfway through.
The Jeep hums quietly in response. The radio flickers, static filling the silence until a song starts playing - slow, mournful, with soft harmonies that feel like a knife to the chest.
“Cause without you, I'm not okay…
And without you, I've lost my way…”
Stiles slams the radio off, but the lyrics stick in his head for days.
Time passes. The days bleed together.
Scott’s working at the highschool, Lydia’s off being a super genius, and Stiles - well, Stiles stays busy pretending everything’s fine. He throws himself into his FBI training, into late nights and empty takeout boxes, into every distraction that doesn’t involve the name Derek Hale.
But sometimes, when he’s lying awake in some motel room or staring out over Quantico’s training fields, he sees him. Not literally - Derek’s too smart, too careful to leave any trace - but in flashes. In the way the moonlight glints off a metal railing. In the scent of pine when it rains. In the way his pulse jumps at the sound of someone saying “wolf.”
It’s pathetic, he knows. It’s not like they were anything. Not really.
There were glances. A few too long silences. A handful of touches that meant more than either of them could say.
And that one night - the night before Derek left - when Stiles had found him standing on the loft balcony, eyes reflecting the city lights, shoulders heavy with something like peace.
“You’re leaving,” Stiles had said, not asking, just knowing.
Derek had nodded. “It’s time.”
He’d shrugged. “To stop waiting for something that’s never going to happen.”
Stiles had swallowed hard, fighting to keep his voice steady. “Yeah. I get that.”
“Cause without you, I'm not okay…
And without you, I've lost my way…”
The song plays again months later - same station, same verse - and Stiles doesn’t turn it off this time. He lets it wash over him, raw and honest.
He thinks about all the things he didn’t say. How he’d joked when he should’ve been sincere. How he’d pushed Derek away, because caring about someone like him was terrifying.
Derek had been a storm - beautiful, dangerous, impossible to hold - and Stiles, the idiot that he was, thought he could just ride it out without getting struck.
But now? Now it’s just quiet.
When Lydia calls one night, she doesn’t have to say much. Just, “You’ve been thinking about him again, haven’t you?”
Stiles laughs, brittle. “You say that like I ever stopped."
She hums softly. “You could try finding him.”
“Yeah, sure. Because ‘Hey, remember me? The guy who drove you crazy and kept you alive and maybe loved you a little?’ is a great opener.”
There’s a pause. Then Lydia, gentle but firm, “He’d want to know.”
Stiles doesn’t answer. He just watches the rain streak down his window, listens to the thunder roll far off in the distance, and pretends that the ache in his chest is weather related.
Weeks later, he’s cleaning out his inbox when he sees it.
An email. No subject. No name. Just an address he doesn’t recognize.
He clicks it open before he can stop himself.
Hope you’re still driving that Jeep.
No signature. No location. Nothing else.
Because Stiles knows the cadence of that silence. The way the words are too few but just right. The way they hum under his skin like a low growl.
He reads it again, heart pounding, and smiles - small, unsure, but real.
“Yeah,” he whispers to the empty room. “Still got her.”
And maybe, just maybe, that means he’s still got him, too.
