"Hey, it's Stiles. Call me back."

—

"Hey, Derek. You know, you coulda said good-bye or something. Maybe tell us where you're going. Not like you need to report in or anything, free will, but woulda been nice to know."

—

"Hey. Stiles again. Are you getting these? It doesn't seem like you're getting these. Because if you are, then you're not calling on purpose, which is a little offensive. And if you're not...

"Look, just call me back."

—

"Okay, so there's no cell reception, right? You've gone somewhere with no service. Because if you didn't, that means you're ignoring my many voicemails, which is not human and...just rude. Which, I guess, you actually are, but that's not the point. Proof of life, okay?"

—

"Right. Fine. Not calling back. Point taken. Things here are...different than I thought they'd be. Weirdly almost normal. Scott's trying to figure out the alpha thing by, can you believe this, talking to the twins. Apparently we forgive them now. Which, I don't—Why do we forgive them? They tried to kill us. Multiple times. And they probably killed lots of other people before they even got here. But hey, date my friends and apparently we're cool.

*sigh*

"SATs are a thing I am not enjoying. But, yeah, normal. So...bye."

—

"Hey, Derek. How are things? That's good. How am I, you ask? Well, funny thing. I am at home on a Friday night, stealth assassinating my way through colonial New England. Lydia, Aiden, Ethan, and Danny have a movie thing they do now. It's totally sweet, but mostly involves making out. Serious movie watchers not invited. And Scott. Jesus, where do I start? Is still in love with Allison? Is trying really hard not to order Isaac to leave her alone? I mean, he could do that, I think, right? Pull alpha rank. But he's Scott, so...yeah. Instead they all go for pizza. Seriously, all three of them, and it's the most uncomfortable thing ever. I told him to stop. He says he can't. ...I know. Teenager drama. But for me it's like...both real and a holding pattern. Like I look out the window and I'm just waiting for my life to start again."

—

"Man, I hope—I hope nothing's wrong. Not that I can do anything if you're not answering, but I just wanted to say that I hope nothing's wrong. "

—

"Hey, me again. Scott's dad is in town. Did I mention that earlier? He got here just before you left. We hate him, by the way. It's a rule. Since the fourth grade, Scott and I have had a club. I'm thinking of opening enrollment so the pack can join. We have buttons! I'll save you a button.

"Seriously, though. What does he even want? He walked out on them. And now, all of a sudden, he's a concerned parent? Wants to know why Isaac is in their house? Why Scott's grades dropped? Like, who the fuck is he?

"He actually tried to ground Scott for not answering his FBI agent-style interrogation. Called his mom "irresponsible", and "too lenient." And basically told her she sucks as a person. Scott can't hit him. I could have.

—

"Fuck! Fuck, are you there? Goddammit, Derek, please be there. I'm gonna hang up. Call me back when I hang up."

—

"You didn't call me back. Fuck! Fuck. Okay...

*panting*

"Okay. Just a dream, right? People have dreams. Shit.

*quietly, strained* "...Where are you? I real—I really need to know. I'm sorry."

—

"Derek, seriously, I need to know what's going on. Okay? I don't—

"It's the second night in a row, the same dream, and it's not pretty, okay? Screaming and a lot of blood, and I have SATs soon. If I'm having prophetic dreams, I need to know. And if I'm not, I need a therapist.

"Jesus. I can't—Just answer me.

*quietly* "Why won't you answer me?"

—

Derek paused for a moment to adjust the frame of his backpack, shifting the straps so they wouldn't dig quite so deep. The sun was still rising, but already the air on the forest floor was heavy with moisture. He might have been sweating; it was hard to tell with the constant rain.

He gazed up the trail that was holding on to a tenuous existence in the face of the encroaching ferns. Plants respected no boundaries. Only the repeated wanderings of humans kept the dirt packed hard enough to leave a trail. Cartago was close enough he could reach it by nightfall, if he tried.

He brushed a hand through hair that needed a trim and let himself sink into the moment. The scents were still so new, so strikingly different from California: a thousand birds whose names he'd never know, rodents pushing through the undergrowth, and snakes slinging themselves through trees. He'd come to know the sharp, dangerous tang of poisonous frogs and the hauntingly sweet perfume of the guaria morada.

He felt sunbeams on his skin and let the heat soak in until it settled in his bones, a calm, steady energy. So much life. So much richness. Derek drew a deep breath and sighed until he felt it in his palms, in the soles of his feet. And then he walked.

—

Hotel Casa Turire let him check in late and without a reservation.

Aching, he slung his bag toward the foot of the bed and groaned at the sudden relief that spread across his back and shoulders. He fought the urge to just fall forward in his dirt-caked clothes and collapse into the softness and safety of the mattress. If the staff's faces were any indication, though, he was in even greater need of a shower.

With a resigned twist of his mouth, Derek focused on rifling through pockets and side-pockets. Eventually he had collected soap, shampoo, and a beard trimmer tangled with his cell phone charger. Derek gave the charger a look and then rummaged further until he found his phone wrapped in a t-shirt in the middle of the bag. The wall adapter that would make the whole thing work had found its way to the bottom. His phone had run out of battery shortly after takeoff, and it just hadn't seemed…necessary. He set it up to charge on the nightstand and went to see about the shower, unhurried.

Moonlight shone in through the open windows by the time he came out, and he shut off all the artificial lights in the room. Their yellow, alien glow offended his senses, the rhythms he'd come so far to try to know. The colors of the room shifted, and the slight breeze from the windows sent a thrill across Derek's damp skin. He let himself take his time, moving with intention, as he lay down and felt his weight sink into the bed. Nothing to think about. Nothing to do. Cora had people in Brazil she'd wanted to see—a pack she missed.

He glanced at the phone and then stretched until he could reach it and turn it on. It vibrated as it booted. Then again. And again. Derek scowled, annoyed at first at the message count. But it kept going. And his heart sped up as the message count ticked higher. Who—Why?

*JANGLE!* *JANGLE!*

*BZZZZT!*

Jesus Christ. Startled, he nearly dropped the phone on his own face. It rang, buzzed, and made a racket like an angry bee, and Derek could feel his racing pulse in his fingers as he stabbed at the button to answer.

"Look man, I know it's 3AM, and I'm sorry, but this is three nights. And I can't keep doing this."

Stiles. Derek frowned at the quick onslaught of words, the sharp fear hidden behind them. "Stiles," he said. The first sound he'd made since connecting the call. He could just make out a sharp intake of breath, and he sat up, trying to focus.

"Derek?" A tentative voice came back. Then stronger, demanding. "Are you okay? Are you alive?"

"If...I'm okay, then I'm alive," he answered, and the frown in his voice deepened. "What's wrong?"

"I don't—"

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know! Okay? So you, you're fine? No knives, no blood?"

Jesus, what the hell? Stiles sounded just this side of panicked, and Derek found himself having to relax the tension in his shoulders just to answer without making it worse. "No knives. No blood," he said as calmly as he could. Stiles took a shuddering breath and sighed it all out. Derek heard a thud and something that sounded like springs. "Stiles?" he ventured after letting a moment of calm settle.

"Yeah."

"Why do I have 46 voicemails?"

"Because, dude, you didn't answer your phone for a month."

Derek narrowed his eyes. "There are only 30 days in a month."

A pause, and he could just make out Stiles breathing. "Yeah. Well, sometimes it hung up. Look, you can just delete them all."

Derek frowned at that and leaned forward, replaying the first thing Stiles had said. "What did you mean third night?"

"I..."

"I can hear your heart beating through the phone."

"I—well that is creepy, thank you."

"Stiles."

"Nightmares. Okay? And I thought—It's nothing."

"It's 4AM."

"3AM."

"No, here it's 4AM, so it's not nothing."

Stiles sighed, and Derek could picture him waving his hand in the air as if to say, Granted, But I Didn't Want This. "I thought it might mean something. Like you might be in trouble, but you're not, so it's fine."

He sounded so resigned. "You don't sound fine," Derek told him, because it was true.

"Yeah, well. I'm gonna be less fine if I don't get some sleep before tomorrow's test. So, I'm sorry I woke you up for nothing."

Derek's expression shifted to a worried frown. "I wasn't asleep."

"Well, you should be. I should be. Goodnight, Derek."

"Good—"

"I'm glad you're not dead." And then he hung up.

Derek sat staring at the phone in his hand as an uneasy guilt pooled in his stomach. He hadn't— Maybe he should have told…someone.

I'm glad you're not dead. And the sad, sweet part of that knife point pressed against his heart was that he couldn't recall the last time someone had bothered to say something that kind.

He scrubbed a hand over his face and lay back, eyes locked on tiny forty-six on his screen. He pressed a few keys and rested the phone on his chest. "First message. Hey, it's Stiles. Call me back." He didn't need the speakerphone but turned it on anyway, as his room suddenly felt like a cavern, achingly empty, and the sound helped fill the void.

He heard, he thought, every kind of Stiles: the annoyed one, full of resentment and sarcasm. Tentative and unsure. Blasé and funny, chuckling a little at his own jokes. The sound of his laughter seemed to radiate from the phone, warming Derek's chest and making him grin. The quiet and worried Stiles that watched with dark eyes.

"I think about it a lot. What we did. Deaton said we'd have scars around our hearts…I don't know what that means, and I didn't care and I'd do it again. But…I think I feel it sometimes. Like...emptiness. Like being alone in a crowd. Even if Scott's here and we're laughing and it's a good time, like old times. It's like I'm not...quite...there. Watching it happen, but not feeling it happen." He sighed, and made a few sounds that Derek couldn't quite make out. Derek found himself staring at the phone on his chest anyway, as though he could catch glimpses of body language on the mirrored surface. One of the muffled noises resolved into a sob. He sounded so close, so touchable.

"Stiles..." Derek's own voice came out a croak as he forced it around the tightness in his throat.

The recording pressed on. "I don't know what to do."

The message ended. Derek just stared at the ceiling, his ribs aching when he breathed.

The calls changed after that.

Derek took it off speaker and held the phone to his ear, so it wouldn't broadcast. So no one might hear.

Stiles stopped reporting on Lydia and the twins. Stopped keeping him updated on homework and essays. He stopped talking about Scott, eventually, too. "It's been a good day, today," or more often, "I worried about the following things…" His voice sounded like empty grasslands and moonlight, and wherever he was calling from, Derek was sure he was alone. No people in the background, no TV. Just this voice, hypnotic, clear across distance and time. Messages cast out in bottles at the witching hour.

"If you're dead," Stiles said softly, "tell my mom I miss her."

That was the whole message.

Derek pressed his hand over his mouth, closed his eyes, and waited for his heart to stop hurting quite so much.

After dawn, he heard about the first nightmare. "Fuck. Fuck, are you there?" Yes! He sat bolt upright, jerked to full waking by the panic on the other end of the line."Goddammit, Derek, please be there. I'm gonna hang up. Call me back when I hang up."

Derek swallowed, his face twisting in anguish. Because he wasn't going to call back. Didn't. But the cold fire in his veins told him he should have, that he was guilty of something he couldn't quite name.

The next message was already playing, but he only caught small parts of it, and the small plea to make contact.

"End of messages," the phone reported. Derek blinked and hung up, then clutched the phone in both hands. He bent, pressing his lips against his knuckles in thought—in worry. Exhaustion stabbed at the backs of his eyes, but it was already too bright to sleep. He glanced down at the towel still vaguely wrapped around his waist and figured clothes would be a good place to start. Then breakfast.

By 8:30, he'd already spent ten minutes staring at the clock. Fuck it.

"Stiles's office." The answer came after the first ring, sounding distracted.

"Hey," Derek said. And then unsure if he needed to introduce himself, "It's—"

"Derek." The shock in Stiles's voice hit him in the chest. In the background, he heard the clink of metal on ceramic. Cereal bowl?

"I listened to what you said."

"You—Oh my God I told you to delete that!" The lift of exasperation in his voice tugged at the corners of Derek's mouth.

"Well, I didn't," he said seriously.

Stiles sighed, then muttered, "Unbelievable. How—I'm sorry. Okay? For using your phone like a confessional."

"You did what?" The sheriff's voice.

"Dad! Privacy!" And there was a scrape of a chair and footfalls as Stiles presumably changed rooms.

"You don't have to be sorry." He wanted to say that it was enlightening, funny, sad. The most honest thing anyone had ever done for him.

"Okay…" Stiles said, then fell silent.

Derek stared down at the hotel room floor, trying to decide which of the feelings beating against his senses could be words. He grimaced. "You're not okay." It wasn't a question.

"What? We're fine! Everyone's happy. Mostly, almost happy. No ooky monsters and bad juju…you know…yet."

Derek smirked. "Not what I said."

Stiles sounded like he was deflating. "I'm fine."

And that earned a snort. "You're lying."

"You—I told you that is seriously creepy, stop it."

"I can't stop it!"

"Well, pretend!"

Derek scowled, embers of anger glowing in his chest. "You're not," he growled, and it earned him petulant silence.

Eventually, Stiles caved. "You gonna tell me where you went?"

"Costa Rica."

"Costa—Are you kidding me? I thought you were dead and you took a tropical vacation!"

It felt like a slap, and Derek's anger spiked higher. "I didn't think anyone would care!"

"I cared!" Stiles spat back, and the fire of Derek's anger winked out. Stiles's heart raced, and Derek could feel his own pulse keeping time. "I cared…" Stiles said again, hushed.

"I should be back in a couple of days. Flight leaves tonight."

"Derek, you are not leaving paradise because I'm having bad dreams."

He quirked an eyebrow at that. "No…I'm leaving because my flight leaves tonight."

"…Oh."

The way the word fell…like stones. Like hope. God, he was terrible at this. "But... you can call. Or text. If you need to, before then."

"Thanks," Stiles sounded breathless.

"I'll answer."

"That'd be nice." Somehow, it didn't sound quite as cutting as it could have, not the soft way Stiles said it.

Derek swallowed. "Good luck on your SATs," he offered.

"What? Oh. Yeah. Thanks…" Stiles paused. "Hey, Derek?"

"Hmm?"

"Bring me a souvenir?"