THANK YOU OMG I LOVE ITTTTT

THANK YOU OMG I LOVE ITTTTT

Talk in Cell Block B

@golenstar asked for a prison au!

criminal!stiles & guard!derek

im so sorry this is all angst. just a lot of angst and maybe like a little flirting. also just a warning - i did do research on prisons for this but im certainly no expert and so some of this might be terribly inaccurate.

ao3   send me a prompt

“Stiles wasn’t the noisiest inmate, but he definitely spoke more often than any other.”

-

They did this dance almost nightly. Stiles wasn’t the noisiest inmate, but he definitely spoke more often than any other. And Derek was loathe to admit it, but he sometimes listened to him ramble.

He spoke mostly to himself, his mouth following his mind as it wondered about his friends in whispers he shared with the prison’s blank cell walls. No one came to visit him regularly; Derek knew from his file that Stiles had no immediate family. His voice would drift to Derek as he did his rounds, he’d become familiar with the name Scott, Stiles brought him up most nights, Allison, on his quiet nights he’d whisper apologies to her in choked sobs before going silent. He sometimes heard him speak of his father, about how he missed him and his mother, Derek caught the impression that this wound was fresh and stinging, his father couldn’t have passed long before Stiles was incarcerated.

Sometimes, when Derek idled near Stiles’ cell, he would find himself a part of the ramble. Stiles would speak to him, about the crappy prison food, which he said somehow tasted better than high school cafeteria food, about his loneliness, vile and asphyxiating, about his guilt, a dead weight he could not bear. They were, unfortunately, things Derek could relate to.

Derek never spoke to him, and Stiles probably didn’t even know his name. It awarded him some strange nicknames, but he always knew when Stiles was addressing him, he had no one else to address.

When Stiles was out of his cell, throughout the day, Derek mostly avoided getting too close to him. He usually worked nights anyway, so it wasn’t hard. On the rare occasion Derek worked dayshift, he’d sometimes find ways to loiter around the commissary. Stiles worked there, giving out items and moving money around on prison ID cards. He’d smile at Derek, who’d avoid his eyes, and huff a quiet laugh before getting back to work.

It was a full moon night when Derek first answered Stiles. He’d been in the middle of some whisper-shouting rant about the fabric of his blanket when he’d paused and asked quietly if Derek could stop jingling his keys, a little tick he’d had since he first started working at the prison. Back then it was born of nerves, now just old habit.

“Sorry.” He’d said gruffly. Stiles’ eyes had gone wide. They’d shared an uncomfortable stretch of silence before Derek had stalked off to finish his rounds.

The next night he’d paced, doing his rounds and then doubling back in Stiles’ block to pace the stretch in front of his cell. Stiles stopped him on his fourth lap.

“Hey,” he’d said, and Derek had ignored him at first.

“Hey!” He whispered more vehemently, and Derek’s head snapped to him. “Calm down, it’s not like you did anything wrong, big guy.” And Derek’s feet had shuffled for a moment before he realized Stiles was right. He wasn’t really supposed to socialize with the inmates, but this was no big deal. That wasn’t exactly why he’d been so anxious though. He never spoke to Stiles specifically, it was something he’d made carefully sure to never do. He was already too fond of him. He already empathized with him too greatly, already looked at Stiles and saw a little too much of himself in his eyes.

He sighed, shrugged his shoulders a little and crossed his arms over his chest. His keys clinking together with his movements. Stiles chuckled at him, told him he had a nice voice and he shouldn’t be so stingy with it.

“I bet you can sing. Maybe I’m just projecting the image I have of you in my head onto the real you, but I’d bet you can sing.” Derek frowned, told himself that this was a terrible idea, and gave in.

“I can’t sing.” He said, “At least I don’t think I can. I don’t remember the last time I tried.” And it was worth his guilt to see Stiles eyes light up with his response. He flailed up out of his bed and stood closer to the bars, beaming at Derek.

“Holy shit, man. I think you should try, when you go home in the morning and take a shower or whatever you should full on Ferris Bueller that shit… Uh? What’s your name?”

After the awkwardness of Derek having to introduce himself, everything came easy. Derek had been surprised at how well Stiles took to suddenly having someone to have actual conversations with. Like a fish to water. Most inmates who’d been in prison for as long as him suffered socially once faced with people from the outside, but it wasn’t like Derek was exactly a shining star when it came to conversation. They fit well.

It was after a few months of back and forth, banter and sometimes bad flirting Derek marked off as nothing real, in hushed whispers in between Derek’s rounds, that Derek started to really give in. It was one of Stiles’ quieter nights, he told Derek about his dad and about Allison’s death being the reason for his prison sentence, all his words stifled with his wet breath, his voice strained from holding back his sobs. Derek knew the basics of it, impaired driving resulting in death. He listened to Stiles’ guilt. He told Stiles about his family, about his own guilt over their deaths, about how Laura was the only one he had left and sometimes she couldn’t put up with his bitterness, his stubborn self-deprecation, his occasional unwillingness to be a real functioning human that did things like make friends and go on dates. They stayed silent after that, just Stiles slumped behind the bars, shaking and torn open and Derek leaning against them, almost wishing he was in there too.

Things changed a lot more after that. With the passage of time they grew closer to each other and to Stiles’ release date. Neither of them knew how to feel about it, Stiles swung from elation into panic and sometimes into shame, he wanted out even though it was terrifying, he wanted out even though it made him feel so guilty and undeserving.

They almost get caught during one of Derek’s dayshifts. He’d been loitering around the commissary, doing nothing more than watching to make sure the inmates in line stayed orderly, sneaking glances at Stiles hands as he swiped the prison identification cards and poked around at the keyboard, and his sly eyes, meeting Derek’s from time to time. One of the other prison guards had come down to fetch Derek, and he’d made the mistake of glancing at Stiles, who cast his eyes carefully on his work, but watched diligently from his peripherals as Derek stalked away.

He’d gotten a warning, he needed to be where he was assigned. It was fair. They evidently didn’t know anything about Stiles and Derek’s friendship, only that Derek always weaseled his way to the commissary warehouse. He breathed out, nodded to the warden and went back to his rounds.

They still talked at night, briefly and cautiously as Derek did his full laps. He was more diligent with his work in those few days after than he had been since his first days as a guard. But they wound back down eventually, their normal routine returning with ease.

“Do you visit them a lot?” Stiles asked one night, the darkness from his cell clinging to him, almost swallowing him from where it rested in the hollows of his eyes, in the folds of his shirt over his heart. “Your family, I mean.” He clarified.

Derek felt the tension in his shoulders, crossed his arms over his chest and tried to keep his voice steady as he spoke.

“I- For a long time I didn’t. But, after the first time I went, I knew I would go again. I go every year and sometimes just when I feel the worst.” He confessed, the silence following sounding so deafening that he begins to question how loud he actually spoke.

“I wish I could visit my parents.” Stiles said as he leaned back on his bed. “I don’t even have any pictures of them.” He huffed out a laugh and it hurt Derek to even hear it. “That’s the first thing I’m going to do when I get out of here, I don’t care if I’m still in my prison uniform. I’m going to go see them and then Allison.” His eyes shone with wetness in what little light flowed in, but his voice was firm, his hands were clenched over his stomach. Derek met his eyes and nodded. They didn’t speak after that, Derek did his rounds and clocked out early that morning.

Stiles’ release date crept up on them. While Derek had been thinking about it every day, Stiles had been pointedly ignoring it’s approach. He had a month left before being released on parole.

“I’m not going to see you after you get out,” Derek asked, though it came out more like a statement. He knew Stiles wouldn’t want a walking reminder of prison hanging around him. He was standing with his arms crossed, facing Stiles from outside of the cell. He was trying not to show how vulnerable he felt, he usually was.

“If- If you don’t want to then I won’t, like, harass you.” Stiles said, voice careful and closed off. Like he was toeing a line he didn’t want to cross. Derek’s eyes widened and he took a step closer.

“You’d want to see me?” He asked, face open with disbelief and raw emotion. Stiles leaned against the bars, clutched the cool metal in his hands and felt it go warm under his fingers. For the briefest of moments he imagined himself melting the bars, stepping out and holding Derek the way he wanted to, tight against his chest where his heart beat. He closed his eyes, rested his forehead against the bars and smiled.

“Yeah, big guy, I want to see you.”

Derek didn’t work on the day Stiles was released. Instead, he woke up that morning, got cleaned up and dressed in his favorite jeans and a shirt he’d had since he and Laura had moved back from New York. He cooked breakfast and made himself sit down to eat it even though he didn’t think his nervous stomach could hold down a single bite. He went to the florist and bought three bouquets. They were pretty, smelled like the sun and the springtime, splashed their scent and their color all over his back seat as he drove to the cemetery.

He went to the memorial for his family, laid his flowers at its base. As he whispered his I love you’s Derek shook his head at himself.

“Today is a good day.” He said.

He walked the grounds, followed the cemetery’s paved path around the little pond and the thriving trees, he thought about all the new life springing up out of the lives-passed.

He heard Stiles before he saw him. He was dressed in jeans and a baggy hoodie, his hands tucked into his pockets. He stood before the graves of his parents. Derek gave him his privacy, sat down on a bench not far away and listened to the doves cooing in the trees above him.

Derek stood when Stiles walked towards him. He looked different out of his cell. His burdens were just as heavy, but their weight was no longer so apparent. His eyes didn’t reflect the cold prison lights in the warmth of the morning sun. Derek held out the bouquets.

“I thought that-” He started, before Stiles grabbed them and moved them quickly but gingerly to the bench.

“Thank you.” He said, all his breath going out in the rush of his words as he came into Derek’s space. “Thank you.” He said again. And then he was holding Derek around the shoulders, tucking his face into his shoulder and Derek shook with the relief of it, with the shuddering thought that he could touch Stiles. They breathed each other in, Stiles’ hoodie smelled stale, from the box it’d been kept in for years. Derek could imagine Stiles wrinkling his nose at it but grinning and throwing it on anyway. He let out a wet noise that he thought might pass as a laugh and squeezed Stiles tighter, felt the wetness of tears soaking into his shoulder, and didn’t bother holding in his own.

They stayed there for a long time, under the cover of the open sky and the watchful eyes of the doves before they laid the bouquets on Stiles; parent’s grave and on Allison’s, not far.

They had their burdens, but they had each other now, too.