Status: complete
When I Find Myself in Times of Trouble, Mother Mary Comes to Me.
i.
i.
It’s been a hundred days.
It’s been longer than that since the first time they kissed, when Derek had smiled fondly in his button-down with the distinct scent of tang and laundry detergent still pressed into the seams like butterflies, and their legs had dangled off the tree branch and Stiles had rested his hand over Derek’s, leaned in to bump noses and breathe out a laugh, and he’s still eighteen. Derek’s nineteen.
Derek had tasted like lemonade and cigarettes.
ii.
It’s been a hundred days, more than a hundred letters written.
They use each other like journals, constantly scribbling down the days’ happenings, and Stiles, he sends along photographs, sketches of the animals surrounding Beacon Hills and of Lydia Martin, of Allison and Scott when he can manage it, of Jackson and Danny and Isaac and Boyd and Erica and—
And he signs the letters with a tiny scrawl, an I love you, you know, only to met with, I love you more than you’ll ever know, always in the reply. And it’s cheesy and stupid, but the closing is Stiles’ favorite part.
iii.
It’s been a hundred days since they buried Derek Hale.
It’s been a hundred days since Vietnam took his life, reclaiming a body that nature desperately needed back, opening up like a monster in a horror film and ripping apart everything Stiles had ever held dear.
It’s been a hundred days since Stiles had rested flowers upon a freshly covered grave, and Derek, he doesn’t have any family left. His sister’s dead, his uncle, his mother and father the same. It’s always just been him.
I earned a medal, he’d written simply once. Stiles rereads the letters so often that he’s memorized them. I made a difference.
Stiles wishes he’d replied with, The bullets in your gun did. They should be flowers. But no, he’d only written, You’re a hero, and meant it. Still means it. Always means it.
iv.
It’s been more than a hundred days since the first and only time they made love.
Their mouths had been sealed into each other, welded, desperate with curled fingers and breaths mingled with breaths, and the sheets had been on the ground by morning, undone and messy and gone, but Stiles, he’d pressed kiss upon kiss to Derek’s throat at one point. Hands had found purchase on his hips and the slowness of the burn, the elation of being full had been that of Heaven, maybe, if Heaven exists.
But the sunlight that had bored into them like knives the next morning, an ache in Stiles’ lower back and fresh love bites on Derek’s neck, had made everything seem worth it in the sense that Derek’s hazy smile fit perfectly against the younger’s.
v.
“He said he’d done something brave,” he tells Scott after three hundred and sixty-five days. His best friend looks at him without a waver in his expression, eyes surprisingly focused, and the tree branch might break underneath them, splinter and fracture and everything in between, but Scott doesn’t say a thing about it. Only listens. “In one of his letters,” continues the boy, and Stiles is quiet, staring at the ground. Ink circles up and around his wrist—I love you more than you’ll ever know, always—and he’s eighteen now and he’s in Central Park trying to make sense of it all and nothing makes sense anymore and it’s just him. And Scott. And an art career that’s going nowhere and maybe a band that isn’t really a band but more like a bunch of stoners that play instruments and Stiles, he just tugs at the knit cap on his head and breathes, “I called him a hero.”
“He was a hero,” says Scott.
“He is one.” Stiles pauses, frowns, brow furrowed as he shakes his head. “I’m okay, I— He should just be alive, you know?”
“I know, man.”
“D’you think he’s still around here somewhere?”
“What, you mean like a ghost?”
“Yeah.”
Scott hums, leans back against the tree trunk; he doesn’t answer until after the policeman down below them shouts for the two boys to get down from there. Stiles only flips him the bird, grins maniacally upon making a landing on the grass and taking off in the opposite direction of Scott.
The two meet up in front of a café in the Village not too long afterwards, and Scott grins, helps Stiles light his cigarette before he breathes: “He’s here somewhere, laughing along too.”
Stiles believes him.
vi.
It’s been four hundred days.
Stiles takes a drag of his cigarette and lets out a long stream of gray-black-white-cancer-smoke as he sticks a flower in the barrel of the police officer’s gun, and he smiles, the ink on his wrist worn like a medal on his chest, (like the one Derek had been buried with,) whispers, “There. Now you can shoot.”
Because the bullets never make a difference: the flowers do.
It’s been a hundred days.
It’s been longer than that since the first time they kissed, when Derek had smiled fondly in his button-down with the distinct scent of tang and laundry detergent still pressed into the seams like butterflies, and their legs had dangled off the tree branch and Stiles had rested his hand over Derek’s, leaned in to bump noses and breathe out a laugh, and he’s still eighteen. Derek’s nineteen.
Derek had tasted like lemonade and cigarettes.
ii.
It’s been a hundred days, more than a hundred letters written.
They use each other like journals, constantly scribbling down the days’ happenings, and Stiles, he sends along photographs, sketches of the animals surrounding Beacon Hills and of Lydia Martin, of Allison and Scott when he can manage it, of Jackson and Danny and Isaac and Boyd and Erica and—
And he signs the letters with a tiny scrawl, an I love you, you know, only to met with, I love you more than you’ll ever know, always in the reply. And it’s cheesy and stupid, but the closing is Stiles’ favorite part.
iii.
It’s been a hundred days since they buried Derek Hale.
It’s been a hundred days since Vietnam took his life, reclaiming a body that nature desperately needed back, opening up like a monster in a horror film and ripping apart everything Stiles had ever held dear.
It’s been a hundred days since Stiles had rested flowers upon a freshly covered grave, and Derek, he doesn’t have any family left. His sister’s dead, his uncle, his mother and father the same. It’s always just been him.
I earned a medal, he’d written simply once. Stiles rereads the letters so often that he’s memorized them. I made a difference.
Stiles wishes he’d replied with, The bullets in your gun did. They should be flowers. But no, he’d only written, You’re a hero, and meant it. Still means it. Always means it.
iv.
It’s been more than a hundred days since the first and only time they made love.
Their mouths had been sealed into each other, welded, desperate with curled fingers and breaths mingled with breaths, and the sheets had been on the ground by morning, undone and messy and gone, but Stiles, he’d pressed kiss upon kiss to Derek’s throat at one point. Hands had found purchase on his hips and the slowness of the burn, the elation of being full had been that of Heaven, maybe, if Heaven exists.
But the sunlight that had bored into them like knives the next morning, an ache in Stiles’ lower back and fresh love bites on Derek’s neck, had made everything seem worth it in the sense that Derek’s hazy smile fit perfectly against the younger’s.
v.
“He said he’d done something brave,” he tells Scott after three hundred and sixty-five days. His best friend looks at him without a waver in his expression, eyes surprisingly focused, and the tree branch might break underneath them, splinter and fracture and everything in between, but Scott doesn’t say a thing about it. Only listens. “In one of his letters,” continues the boy, and Stiles is quiet, staring at the ground. Ink circles up and around his wrist—I love you more than you’ll ever know, always—and he’s eighteen now and he’s in Central Park trying to make sense of it all and nothing makes sense anymore and it’s just him. And Scott. And an art career that’s going nowhere and maybe a band that isn’t really a band but more like a bunch of stoners that play instruments and Stiles, he just tugs at the knit cap on his head and breathes, “I called him a hero.”
“He was a hero,” says Scott.
“He is one.” Stiles pauses, frowns, brow furrowed as he shakes his head. “I’m okay, I— He should just be alive, you know?”
“I know, man.”
“D’you think he’s still around here somewhere?”
“What, you mean like a ghost?”
“Yeah.”
Scott hums, leans back against the tree trunk; he doesn’t answer until after the policeman down below them shouts for the two boys to get down from there. Stiles only flips him the bird, grins maniacally upon making a landing on the grass and taking off in the opposite direction of Scott.
The two meet up in front of a café in the Village not too long afterwards, and Scott grins, helps Stiles light his cigarette before he breathes: “He’s here somewhere, laughing along too.”
Stiles believes him.
vi.
It’s been four hundred days.
Stiles takes a drag of his cigarette and lets out a long stream of gray-black-white-cancer-smoke as he sticks a flower in the barrel of the police officer’s gun, and he smiles, the ink on his wrist worn like a medal on his chest, (like the one Derek had been buried with,) whispers, “There. Now you can shoot.”
Because the bullets never make a difference: the flowers do.