#rmnthefox

[sterek]

hoechlindylan --> sterek

i’m tracking #sterekurl from now on although you can still tag me with #hoechlindylan if you want to :)

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, @rmnthefox!

Authors note: Merry Christmas! I hope this fic is everything you wanted it to be and maybe more? I am so sorry for the length and the lack of Sterek until the end but this is very much a story about Stiles learning, growing up, and getting ready for a relationship with Derek that he’d always wanted back in Beacon Hills but had never been able to ask for. It was an honor to write for you <3

***

Grounded in the Big Apple

A part of Stiles can’t believe the acceptance letter he’d just received.  New York University had always been his dream school—before.  Before his mother had died leaving a gaping hole where memories of his mother were tightly kept locked up.  Before he’d had to learn to cook meals for him and his dad because if he’d left it up to his dad he’d subsist on curly fries and bacon cheeseburgers and Stiles wasn’t ready to lose his dad, not yet.  Before he’d convinced Scott that they needed to prepare for their sophomore year by looking for dead bodies that turned out to be of the supernatural variety.  Before they’d killed peter. Before Derek had left, before Derek came back only to leave again. Before he and Scott and Lydia had sacrificed themselves to a twisted, rusty, magical stump of a tree to save their parents. Before a Japanese fox demon burrowed beneath the all-encompassing darkness around his heart and took residence in his body. NYI was a relic dream of his past-0-and Stiles was okay with that. Mostly. Most days.

After all it was Stiles who’d devised the plan that the pack attend the same or nearby colleges.  It was Stiles who’d helped coach Scott through his mock UCLA interview prep sessions. Lydia in turn had helped him craft his personal statement for Berkeley.  It was a good plan.  Stiles rationalized to himself that safety in numbers was smart and Scott and Lydia were tethered to beacon Hills in a way that he understood—because Stiles wasn’t keen on leave ng his dad behind.  Polus a part of Stiles—the part forever scared by the Nogitsune and forever entrenched in the darkness because of the Nemeton—wasn’t sure he deserved much beyond the bare minimum in terms of happiness—Stiles wasn’t sure he deserved much more than that.  

That’s why Stiles can’t comprehend the letter in his hands.  A letter accompanied by an offer of a partial academic scholarship.  Stiles knows he didn’t apply top NYU, he may run on little sleep and nothing more than red bull most days, but he’d remember something as big as applying to NYU.

Stiles hears the front door open and his dad yell “dinner” and so Stiles stuffs the NYU letter away under his bed.

“You better not have animal style fries stashed away in that order,” he yells as he takes the steps downstairs two at a time.

“Oh hell, whatever happened to respecting your elders?” John Stilinski muttered as Stiles neared the table.

Smirking, “just trying to help you reach your elderly years pops,” Stiles retorted back before he dug into his bacon cheeseburger and fries.

*************

Stiles had done a good job of forgetting the NYU letter because apparently trolls were a thing.  Despite the ABC movie marketing of trolls Stiles could attest that trolls were in fact neither small nor cute; they were rather a brute animal that apparently were enamored with flashy things.  So between chasing down trolls for the past month every night from dusk until just about daybreak Stiles did what any exhausted teenager would do when confronted with a sleep deficit after defeating the trolls—he alternated between marathoning video game sessions with Scott and sneaking in fits of sleep between bouts of stuffing his face with curly fries and chips.  However with the troll thoroughly dealt with and the supernatural underbelly of Beacon Hills laying low through the holidays (knock on wood) Stiles couldn’t run from the NYU letter any longer. Or rather a certain strawberry redhead wasn’t going to let him he would find out.

***

Stiles grabbed the tin of cookies he’d made earlier along with a thermos of coffee he’d filled before he barreled toward his cobalt blue jeep.  It’d become something of a Christmas tradition for Stiles to bring his dad cookies and coffee every Christmas since he was old enough to be left alone.

His dad worked every Christmas and Stiles is certain its better this way.  Every day without his mom was torture for him and his dad but the holidays were and extra burden.  His mom used to love the holidays going so far as to drag out the holiday ornaments and festive recipes the day after thanksgiving.  Every year his mom was alive each holiday season was filled with watching his mom bake, watching her decorate the tree and every year she’d put him on her shoulders so he could reach the very top to put the star on and Stiles also remember that each holiday season was full of watching cheesy holiday movies with his mom and dad.

Stiles’ dad had tried the first few years after his mom passed to make the holidays festive and full as they had been when his mom had been alive but it just wasn’t the same.

So, once Stiles was old enough he remembers him and his dad came to an agreement that his dad would work every Christmas so those on the force who had families could celebrate with their loved ones and every Christmas Stiles would make his moms famous sugar cookies and deliver them to John while he was still working.  Before Stiles had gotten his license that meant that Melissa had to drive him and even when he did get his license sometimes Scott had tagged along stull. But with this being the last Christmas before they both headed out to college Scott and Stiles had agreed to do the annual cookie

“Don’t eat all of these in one sitting,” Stiles remarked as he handed over the thermos and cookie tin to his father.

“Hey never forget that I’m the adult here,” John retorted.

Stiles huffed and rolled his eyes, “bakers make the rules pops.”

Both Stilinski men lapsed into a silence then which was filled with John occasionally grabbing and eating a cookie Stiles had brought while he caught up on some end of the year paperwork.  With each passing minute the weight of the NYU letter grew heavier in Stiles; jacket pocket. For all the vaunted talking Stiles had perfected over the years he’d mysteriously was ever careful to not reveal anything of substance.  Stiles had mostly taken up the habit of talking a mile a minute to try and fill the nooks and crannies his mom had left behind.  The silence and absence of his mother’s laugh and voice had felt suffocating to Stiles in the days immediately following his moms death so Stiles endeavored to fill that silence with whatever he could—useless trivia, trivial musings, and whatever came to his minds forefront would spill out of his mouth.

Stiles had gotten good at filling the vacuum of dead air with meaningless words but whenever he needed to say anything of substance or weight he often found that the words would dry up in his throat even before he’d open his mouth to speak.

So, because Stiles couldn’t form the right words to tell his dad about NYU, about how Lydia had sent in his application, and about how the dream he’d always talked about could become a reality even after all his massive screw ups of the past few years Stiles merely grabbed the letter an d flung it at his dad.

“Stiles…” John began.

“What kind of school gives me, someone who once wrote about the history of male circumscion, as an answer on an economics final, a partial academic scholarship” Stiles interrupted his father to say.

“A school…” John began again before once again being cut off midsentence by Stiles.

Stiles shot up out of his chair and began pacing around his dads office, “I had a plan. A good plan.”

“Sometimes things..” John once again tried to make it through one uninterrupted sentence only to be denied.

“I mean who does Lydia think she is? She doesn’t show practically any interest in me for over 17 years of my life and then she goes behind my back and applies me to NYU?” Who does that?”

“Someone who cares,” John breathed out.

“I can’t go.” Stiles says finally, decisively.

“Your mother would want you to go,” John breathed out shallowly, almost as though saying it any louder would have broken some cosmic balance.  And in a way it would have because part of the reason why the John and Stiles relationship worked so well was because they’d come to an unspoken agreement that all mentioned of Claudia would be minimal.  It simply was too big a wound to get over if the wound wasn’t able to be caulked over and the wound would never be able to be caulked over if the pair had continued to openly talk about her every day.  

At the mention of his mom Stiles felt the wind be knocked out of him and he plopped back into the chair opposite his dad’s desk.

“I’m going,” Stiles managed to strangle out of his throat a minute later before he nervously began to bite his nail.

John swallowed past a lump in his throat before saying, “you’re going.”

The Stilinski men lapsed into a charged, heavy silence after that.

“Fathers of NYU bound sons deserve animal style fries,” John said a little while later after he’d finished all the paperwork he’d been working on before Stiles had arrived.

“Don’t think for one second I’m letting your diet go to shit just because I’ll be halfway across the country,” Stiles shot back which earned him a hearty laugh from John and a “oh hell.”

***

Once winter break had finished the race towards the end of senior year felt at times, too fast to Stiles.

In between supernatural bouts of activity, prom, filling out FAFSA documents, and marathon gaming sessions with Scott graduation and the summer before his freshman year of college had snuck up on him.

Before he knew it he was picking up his maroon graduation gown along with his honor cords (that’s right Stiles may not have been Lydia Martin levels of smart but he had a smart bone or two in his body).

Stiles found the whole walking across the stage at graduation to be a surreal moment because a part of him wasn’t ever quite sure that he’d make kit there but somehow he did.

The final summer before college was spent much like every other summer before that for Stiles.  The summer days were chalk full of gaming sessions with Scott, supernatural baddies that were hell bent on making the collective packs life a living hell, and late night sessions at the station with his dad.

However, the summer was also filled with new things like Stiles letting Lydia drag him around the mall for hours on end to help him pick out a college wardrobe (because in her words she couldn’t let him loose in new York with his pathetic plaid as his only defense), late night cooking with his dad because for the first time in a while his dad wasn’t going to have him around to do all the cooking and Stiles was serious he didn’t invest all this hard work into getting his dads health back on track only to have him undo it as soon as he was gone.

The end of the summer creeped up on Stiles and before he was ready he was packing up his jeep for the ride to New York and sitting on Scott’s porch at ass o’clock in the morning saying goodbye to his best friend.

“I’m happy for you dude,” Scott said as he sat down on his front porch steps next to Stiles.

“I can’t believe I let Lydia talk me into this,” Stiles remarked as he wiped sleep out of his eyes.

“Your too good for this town,” Scott said white stretching his legs out in front of him.

Stiles let out a small huff before he responded, “we all deserve better.”

Scott shrugged adding “probably so but you’ve needed to get away for awhile.”

“I’m always a call away dude. And seriously your mom better keep an eye on my dad while I’m away.”

Scott leaned over and bumped his side against Stiles’ “don’t go getting into any supernatural messes cause Lydia won’t be there to save you.”

“Pfft, as if I’m the one who has a penchant for getting into trouble,” Stiles said letting a small smirk grace across his face.

Stiles and Scott shared a laugh before Stiles meandered over to his jeep and shared one last hug with Scott before making his way through the back roads of Beacon Hills and toward the city lines.

Stiles exhaled as he crossed over the city lines and he knows the darkness around his heart would always be there but the darkness felt a little lighter than before.

Stiles was sure that was some figment of his imagination but it was a welcome feeling nonetheless.

***

Most days Stiles thought New York was the best thing that ever happened to him.  He loved how the city was always thrumming with energy, it reminded him of his pre ADHD medication days, he loved hoe he could constantly find a new coffee shop full of oversized chairs and mismatched colored coffee tables.  He loved how even though he didn’t know anyone there is still felt like home all the same.

Within days of starting at NYU Stiles had scoped out various shops and delis and staked his claim to different vendor trucks and so he settled in nicely into some sort of routine. Like every Tuesday he and some of his friends would meet up and study at McKenna’s—a colorful bakery whose manager couldn’t help but fall for Stiles’ neediness from day one and who would now whenever Stiles was there try to fill him up with coffee and banana nut cookies because in her words he’s simply “one large gust of wind away from being blown away,” and Stiles feels like the manager would actually miss him if he stopped coming in.

That was a new feeling. It was a warm and welcome feeling though.

Then there was Casablanca, a seedy dive bar, which was a frequent stop for Stiles if only because the bar owner never checks id’s. Casablanca us a dimly lit, city smelling bar that Stiles favors a lot when he can’t sleep because of his ongoing Nogitsune filled dreams that overtake his nightly sleeping habits still from time to time. And its easier for Stiles to get drunk of last in the sterile warmth of the backroom with any guy who found his twinksih good looks endearing.  Because yea apparently Stiles is gay, or maybe bi, he hasn’t figured it out yet.  But unlike Beacon Hills where Stiles had felt suffocated by his virgin status and uncertainness regarding his sexuality New York felt liberating.  It felt okay that he couldn’t define his sexuality yet—for the first time Stiles felt as though he had time to explore, to figure it all out and when he’d finally come to that realization it felt like he’d finally reached the surface and was able to take a deep breath after drowning beneath the surface for what felt like forever,.

So yea NYU and New York were treating Stiles well.  He’d made a close knit group of friends, he wasn’t drowning in school the way he thought he’d be.  Stiles felt grounded at NYU in a way he’d never felt in Beacon Hills despite the fact that he was metaphorically tethered to a magical tree stump.

Sure, there were time where he’d see something funny and turn to Scott to mention it only to remember that he wasn’t there anymore. And too there were other times where Stiles would struggle with reading writers like Marx and turn to Lydia to help him through a tough passage or paper only to realize a second too late that she wasn’t there to help him like that anymore.

But for every moment like that he has other tiny, little moments that vindicate Lydia’s push to get him out there and those little moments amounted to a lot of small victories in helping him feel moor grounded, more in the moment than he’d ever felt before.

Because of course Lydia was right.

***

Stiles had just come off a week of almost no sleep because of back to back papers for his psych and soc classes so he decided that a visit to Casablanca was in order, as a way to celebrate getting through another week.

“One Bud Light please,” Stiles said as he greeted Tim, the bar owner.

“Coming right up Stiles,” Tom said as Stiles watched him take the capo off the beer before passing it to him a minute later.

Stiles had taken a swig of his beer before he felt a presence at his back.

“You aren’t 21.”

“And you’re still McCreepy wolf I see,” Stiles muttered before he reached his hand back to feel for the telltale signs of a leather jacket and when his hands found purchase on the well-worn leather he grabbed a fistful of it and pulled Derek closer to the table. He literally pulled Derek out of darkness just now and if that wasn’t a metaphor for their entire weirdly dysfunctional yet touching relationship Stiles didn’t know what would have been a better metaphor,.

“What are you doing here Stiles?” Derek asked in a whine like it almost pained him to be in the same space as Stiles.

“They don’t card and sometimes I need to let off some steam,” Stiles said as he shrugged and pointed to the backroom area.

“Why New York?” Derek asked changing the subject while taking the bottle out of Stiles’ hands to take a long swig of beer himself.

“I didn’t know you came back here if that’s what you’re asking.” And Stiles wasn’t lying; he didn’t know what had happened to Derek after Mexico.  By the time Stiles and the rest of the pack had settled back into Beacon Hills Derek had already packed up his loft, and left again.  And even though Stiles had wanted to search for him he had also figured that if anyone deserved an pout of Beacon Hills it was Derek.  And even if Stiles had been hurt by the lack of a proper goodbye from Derek once again because Stiles thought after the Nogitsune thing the pair had maybe had the chance for something to happen between them but even knowing and feeling all that Stiles still understood. Stiles watched Derek scowl, “I felt you when you crossed into New York, I tried to ignore it but the longer you stayed and the more placed you visited the harder it was.”

Stiles felt his eyes widen at that “why didn’t you come scowl at me sooner then Mr. Leather McCreeper?”

Derek rolled his eyes taking a final swig of his beer because I don’t care remember,” before he was gone and Stiles was left with any empty beer bottle but a warm feeling in his stomach that had nothing at all to do with the alcohol in his blood stream.

And if when Stiles finally made kit back to his dorm room and masturbated to the image of Derek’s strong lined body and his name was on his lips that was no one’s business but his own thank you very much.

***

After the first chance meeting at Casablanca Stiles found himself hyper aware of whoever was around him and he found himself longing to run back into Derek.

One day while he was at Cassie’s bakery Stiles got his chance.

“So do you live around here, Stiles asked as he slid across the table from Derek with a coffee and scone of his own.

Stiles watched Derek tense up for a minute and he wondered if maybe seeking Derek out was a bad idea if maybe the thing at Casablanca had been a fluke and something Derek wasn’t interested in having more off.

“You don’t have a monopoly finding off the beaten trail treasures in New York,” Derek responded back.

“I thought all the pops of color would scare off monochrome wolf is all,” Stiles said as he smiled around his coffee cup.

“The manager knew Laura, this was her spot not mine,” Derek respond back crisply.

Stiles almost choked on his bite of his scone before he picked up the front page of the New York Times quite content to let the charged silence linger between him and Derek.

When Stiles looked up next as he was reaching for another section of the Times he was unsurprised to find Derek gone.

Things went on like that for the next few weeks. When Stiles had downtime he’d meander into different favorite places of his in the hopes of seeing Derek again.  More often than not Derek wouldn’t be there but sometimes he’d run into Derek and they’d share a heavy silence or exchange a quick greeting or two in between sips of coffee.

It should have felt weird to Stiles but it was oddly comforting, like trying to piece together an old jigsaw puzzle.

***

Then, one week out of the blue towards the end of his first fall semester at NYU Stiles came back to his dorm room to find Derek stretched out by his door.

“I don’t even want to know how you got in here,” Stiles said as he came closer to his dorm.

“College students will do anything for coffee,” Derek said wrinkling his nose in a way that Stiles absolutely didn’t find endearing. Nope. Nope. Nope, nothing to see here Stiles thought to himself,

“It’s our only form of sustaence,” Stiles laughed out as he opened his dorm room and letting Derek into his room first before shutting the door.

“How’d you end up with a single?” Derek asked as he took in the sparsely decorated room littered with bunched up notebook paper and coffee cups.

“Nightmares,” Stiles said no longer ashamed of the dreams that would leave himself creaming himself away.  The nightmares didn’t come as often as they used to and they usually only came after Stiles had been awake for too long or when he’d consumed too much red bull on too little sleep.”

“So what are me?” Stiles asked Derek after the pair had lapsed into a silence.

Derek took his shoes off and jacket before he shrugged “I’m not ready yet for much.”

Stiles shook his head before he leaned back against his bed.

“I can wait,” Stiles said simply before taking Derek’s hand and laying the two down on his bed before flipping on the television.

And Stiles for the first time had time. He had time to continue to grow, to continue to explore, time to make room for someone else in his life that wasn’t Scott or his dad. Had time to continue to learn how to continue to learn to live with charged silences.

And he had Derek by his side to help him figure it out and enjoy NYU with and nothing could be much better than that.