Title: Two Photos
Fandom: Teen Wolf
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Pairing: Stiles/Derek
Summary: When Stiles leaves for college, there are two photographs tucked into his wallet.
Author notes: A small ficlet. Written for the photo challenge on fan_flashworks. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. :)



When Stiles leaves for college, there are two photographs tucked into his wallet. One has been there for years, has moved from one wallet to the next as Stiles grew older. The first one he’d put it into had been a brightly coloured Spiderman one meant for little boys’ pocket money. The one after was brown, cheap fake leather that only lasted about six months. Stiles doesn’t know how many wallets he’s had since then, but he knows that he never lost a single one of them because that would have meant losing this picture.

The photo itself is one of the old, proper photographs done by a professional photographer and durable. That’s a good thing too, because if it wasn’t it probably wouldn’t have survived this long. But it’s still good, if a little scratched and creased around the edges.

It’s a photo of the Stilinskis from before Stiles’ mom died. She’d already had cancer back then and they’d known for about three months. Both mom and dad look a little tired, a little brittle around the edges, the tragedy already carving it’s way onto their faces. But they are all smiling, looking at the camera, determined to make this a good memory, a happy moment.

Mom had insisted on having some formal photos taken so her men would have something nice to remember her by if things didn’t work out so well. They hadn’t and she’d been right. Stiles is grateful that he has this picture.

The second photograph is very different. It’s new for one. Printed on crappy photocopy paper on Stiles’ home printer. It's not going to last very long, but Stiles keeps digital copies of it on his phone and on his laptop, so he can always reprint it when it falls apart.

It’s a snapshot taken by Lydia on her iPhone and she’d only sent it to Stiles weeks later, after he’d ranted at her for a good two hours about their resident not-anymore-Alpha and his latest stupid stunt that had gotten Stiles mad. (Stiles doesn’t even remember what it was. They worked things out again a few days later. They always did.)

This second photo is of Stiles and Derek together. They’d been unaware that they were being photographed and neither of them is looking at the camera. Instead they are looking at each other, sitting on a fallen log in the middle of the woods with bright sunlight slanting through the trees behind them. They both look relaxed and happy, peaceful.

Stiles chose this picture simply because peaceful wasn’t something they got very often. It wasn’t something him and Derek were particularly good at either. So the moments when it worked, when they could both relax and just be and savour being with each other were rare enough to be worth remembering.