#anotherscreamingfangirl

This is a perfect headcanon, I am so completely on board with this concept.

I’ve always been in love with the idea of baking!Derek or woodworking!Derek because he just seems like the kind of person who would be so soothed by that kind of activity. Like working out (which Derek has been shown to use as a coping mechanism) these are straightforward physical tasks requiring little mental effort, which is honestly just so great for pushing through certain forms of depression.

And gardening is another hobby that fits right into that. It’s the kind of quiet and straightforward activity that you can see a positive result from, but it’s also low pressure: if you bake some bread and it doesn’t rise right, if a particular flower dies or weeds creep in... it’s not the end of the world. It’s a place Derek can screw up without worry about lives on the line, but it’s also something that can produce something positive and beautiful that he can be proud of, that he can look out into his yard and feel this bright, warm feeling blossom inside him over. That he did something good, he made that. And maybe it’s a silly thing, small and insignificant in the grand scheme, but it makes him happy. Makes him feel like he’s getting a little bit of control back in his world.

And now I imagine Stiles being the one to get him started on it. Just showing up at the loft one day with a simple little spider plant dangling awkwardly in one hand, saying it’s a housewarming or whatever, the place looks too empty and hey, no big deal if you kill it ‘cause I got it for like five bucks and Derek aims a sarcastic smirk at the implication but when Stiles leaves the plant is sitting at the corner of his table. And Derek ignores it determinedly for a day or so on principle before he ends up pouring a little water out of the glass he’s drinking from into it because why not, right? It’s not like it’s actually a hassle to water the thing once a day. Just as easy to keep it alive as not.

Except, Derek wonders a few days later, squinting to see if the thing seems a little yellow at the tips, is he supposed to water a plant like this every day? Is he drowning it? Is it getting enough sunlight, or... whatever else plants need? Which is how Derek finds himself at the local gardening store, fists stuffed into the pockets of his his black leather jacket, asking the startled looking salesman a series of clipped questions on how to care for spider plants.

It’s a couple months before Stiles shows up with another plant (because the first one seems lonely) and then before he knows it, Derek’s racking up a collection. The long table in front of his window becomes a veritable flower bed, out of place but strangely homey at the heart of the sparse loft.

Derek doesn’t actually buy any of his own plants until he moves, over to a little cottage on the outskirts of town. It edges the preserve, not the way the Hale house had but close, and the small space is comfortable and pleasant in a place the echoed warzone of the loft never could be. It lets him patrol for trouble more easily, he tells the pack... and then once they’re gone, in the quiet where only the plants can hear him, admits that he likes it there.

But the yard is sparse, even when he transfers the majority of the plants (the ones that would survive outside, anyway) to the garden, so a few days after he’s moved in he finds himself back from the gardening store, car bed packed with shovels and trowels, ferns and groundcover, and a few carefully chosen bright flowers.

He finds himself out there often. When he’s stressed or the loneliness twists too deep in his gut, when harsh memories push him too close to dark dreams. There’s always something to do: weeding, watering, trimming, landscaping. It’s soothing, somehow, watching the yard develop. Feeling the odd burst of pride when a bud blooms, or when the little edging wall he’d made from scavenged rocks in the preserve comes out just barely lopsided. When it starts to look like a home.

And when Stiles appears at the edge of his yard, a half-hour early for a pack meeting, to find Derek on his knees in the dirt, carefully coaxing a bunny-bitten geranium upright in the earth.

“See Spiderplant’s doing ok.”

Derek glances up, follows Stiles’ gaze out to the cluster of grasslike plants lining the flowerbed leading into the preserve. 

“That’s the runners. The original’s...” on my nightstand, he doesn’t say. It feels like that might say too much. He lets the words hang, goes back to carefully patting dirt down. Stiles is quiet for a few beats, though Derek can hear him moving around the edges of the garden, taking it in. No one’s been back here before, and a part of Derek tightens up at the intrusion. Like Stiles –– clever mind and quick tongue –– might see something in this space to take away the haven Derek’s made here.

But when he finally pushes himself up, brushing dirt from his knees with dirty palms, Stiles is watching him with eyes that remind him of how he looks at the garden.

“It looks good,” Stiles says, and he’s not looking at the flowers.

Derek doesn’t look away for a long moment and then glances down, a faint smile playing over his lips.

#reading the ending of wrath-#amazing how different they made it once they found they would be cancelled

thank you so much! ♥ 

Thank you! :)

A few recs (warning that many of them talk about rape/sex/violence/etc):

What Women Deserve - Sonya Renee

The Tampon Poem - Sierra deMulder

Not Your Erotic, Not Your Exotic - Suheir Hammad

Dead Men Can’t Catcall - Samantha Peterson

Fuck You, Old People - Tayler Geiger, Ben Tolkin, Andie Berry, Sam Lai

An Origin Story - Sarah Kay, Phil Kaye

Personhood - Luren Zuniga

BNV 2013 Finals Round #1 - Denver

Fantastic Breasts and Where To Find Them - Brenna Twohy

Piñata - Pages Matam

BNV 2013 Finals Round #2 - Albuquerque

Fuck I look like - Kai Davis

Shrinking Women - Lily Myers