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this WAS meant to be a WIP Wednesday posted on an actual Wednesday but the tumblr gods didn't let me save the damn post. so here I am like two weeks later finally posting it

thank you SO much for the tag @patolemus <333 I'm pretty sure I've got a few tags backlogged from people since I haven't been writing as much lately so consider this a late response to any and all tags I've ever received at all

Here's a snippet from chapter 16 of Third Time's the Charm: 'La Iglesia' :)))))))

He couldn’t do it. The Jeep had only been parked at their apartment complex for maybe two and a half of the ten months they’d lived there so far because Stiles hadn’t been able to even go back to the school in fear of seeing it, let alone driving it. Now, in the backseat, exactly as it had been ten months ago, the grimoire sat abandoned. Untouched. Unmoved. It was the one thing Stiles could admit was not fine. What had happened to his mom. How he was handling it. How it had happened. None of it was fine. And guilt was far from unfamiliar to him, but it was so smothering and loud whenever he looked at that book, that car, anything to do with her at all, that he couldn’t hear himself think. All he could do was mourn her voice in his head, and her cruelty, and love.

That grimoire was not something he could touch. Not yet. 

So, they called Scott.

Such a sweet thing was Scott. A brilliant reminder of the past. Fluffy-haired and pink-cheeked, somehow still starry-eyed after everything and so full of magic. It shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was. Stiles hadn’t thought Scott had any sort of spark but, then again, he was a True Alpha somewhere else. That was more magic than Stiles was capable of. It was good magic. Stiles’ power, his very heart, was born from chaos, wasn’t it? Scott’s was born from goodness. He’d followed Stiles into the woods out of goodness, he’d never taken a life out of goodness, he’d grown his power out of goodness. And, here, he was a vision of what that Scott could’ve been if Stiles hadn’t brought his chaos into his life. He was still joyful, and youthful, and living as loudly and happily as he possibly could. Like he was still a child. And he was. Allison may have just turned eighteen, but she was a year older. Scott was only barely seventeen. He was a child. Stiles had taken that from the both of them, a long time ago. But not here.

Here, Stiles had done good. 

Here, Scott and Allison were still alive and disgustingly in love with the Nogitsune swimming around the Bermuda Triangle or the wreck of the Titanic. Now, he got to stand back one more time to let Scott save the day, and save her. 

It had been far more than ten months of pretending Derek’s face didn’t trip him up with just as much nostalgia as the rest of them. It was still different. But it still happened. And, now, with the Deadpool and Liam Dunbar creeping back up on him like a mouthless bounty hunter with an axe, stood in those woods, looking right at Derek, he could remember him so clearly. He could remember what the Deadpool had ultimately meant for him. Peter, and Kate, and La Iglesia, and Braeden, and control, and evolution, and walking away. 

A knot formed in his throat. He swallowed it down. And, as Derek turned his head to give him a small smile, Stiles had to look away, back at Allison and Scott holding hands across the Nemeton.

He wasn’t sure when it happened – a bad, terrible, horrible thing – but he had a sneaking suspicion it had something to do with Derek’s hand finding its way to his shoulder and squeezing. That weight. The memories of resting his own hand on that Derek’s shoulder, of squeezing his arm tight as Liam almost killed them both in the back of the prison van Braeden was driving, of holding his face in his hands as Kate’s wolfsbane bullet almost killed him, of teasing, joking, flirting—

A damned hand on his shoulder was enough to break the universe. 

Well over a year ago, Stiles was still violet. He was lavender. Periwinkle. Orchid. Amethyst. He’d ran through the rain for miles, racing through the preserve on aching feet and shaking with rage, fear, hatred, determination. He’d slammed the grimoire down on the Nemeton the second he saw it, flipped through soaked pages until he found the one He had pressed against his chest. Derek had shown up just as he finished the incantation, caught up in some insane love-blind moment of psychopathy. At least it’d seemed like it at the time; maybe he had a little bit of sense, but he still left his entire life behind to follow Stiles to the lowest point of said life. Dumb. Stupid. A tear falling to the Nemeton had been the final piece of connection it had needed to do its job. All the violet and lavender and periwinkle and orchid and amethyst had been so blinding, Stiles almost hadn’t noticed Derek throwing himself into it. Then Kate had been there. And it had all gone horribly, horribly wrong. 

It looked similar when it went wrong this time. Though wrong in a different way. Not too different. Scott leant back, still holding Allison’s hands, twisting his face up in confusion and turning to Stiles as the place was swallowed up by a bright red light. Flickers – shimmers, almost – of sharp violet bursting through like sunlight through frosted glass, reaching out, consuming.

Stiles had yet to learn to think before throwing himself into potentially life-threatening situations. In his defence, Derek did it, too.

oouuugh this chapter is very precious to me.

thank you again for the tag - I can't remember who the hell I normally tag on these so no pressure tags @dontcallpanic and (sending it back) @patolemus and as usual anyone who wants to share <3333333